The Girl at Central Read online

  II

  About a mile from Longwood, standing among ancient, beautiful trees, isMapleshade, Dr. Dan Fowler's place.

  It was once a farmhouse, over a century old, but two and a half yearsago when Dr. Fowler bought it he fixed it all up, raised the roof, builton a servants' wing and a piazza with columns and turned the farmbuildings into a garage. Artists and such people say it's the prettiestplace in this part of the State, and it certainly is a picture,especially in summer, with the lawns mown close as velvet and theflower-beds like bits of carpet laid out to air.

  The Doctor bought a big bit of land with it--I don't know how manyhundred acres--so the house, though it's not far from the village, iskind of secluded and shut away. You get to it by Maple Lane, a littlewinding road that runs between trees caught together with wild grape andVirginia creeper. In summer they're like green walls all draped overwith the vines and in winter they turn into a rustling gray hedge, wovenso close it's hard to see through. About ten minutes' walk from the gateof Mapleshade there's a pine that was struck by lightning and stands upblack and bare.

  When the house was finished the Doctor, who was a bachelor, married Mrs.Hesketh, a widow lady accounted rich, and he and she came there as brideand groom with her daughter, Sylvia Hesketh. I hadn't come yet, but fromwhat I've heard, there was gossip about them from the start. What I cansay from my own experience is that I'd hardly got my grip unpacked whenI began to hear of the folks at Mapleshade.

  They lived in great style with a housekeeper, a butler and a French maidfor the ladies. In the garage were three automobiles, Mrs. Fowler'slimousine, the Doctor's car and a dandy little roadster that belonged toMiss Sylvia. Neither she nor the Doctor bothered much with thechauffeur. They left him to take Mrs. Fowler round and drove themselves,the joke going that if Miss Sylvia ever went broke she could qualify fora chauffeur's job.

  After a while the story came out that it wasn't Mrs. Fowler who was sorich but Miss Hesketh. The late Mr. Hesketh had only left his wife asmall fortune, willing the rest--millions, it was said--to his daughter.She was a minor--nineteen--and the trustees of the estate allowed her alot of money for her maintenance, thirty thousand a year they had it inLongwood.

  In spite of the grand way they lived there wasn't much company atMapleshade. Anne Hennessey, the housekeeper, told me Mrs. Fowler was sodead in love with her husband she didn't want the bother of entertainingpeople. And the Doctor liked a quiet life. He'd been a celebratedsurgeon in New York but had retired only for consultations and specialcases now and again. He was very good to the people round about, andwould come in and help when our little Dr. Pease, or Dr. Graham, at theJunction, were up against something serious. I'll never forget when MickDonahue, the station agent's boy, got run over by Freight No. 22. ButI'm sidetracked again. Anyhow, the Doctor amputated the leg and littleMick's stumping round on a wooden pin almost as good as ever.

  But even so they weren't liked much. They held their heads very high,Mrs. Fowler driving through the village like it was Fifth Avenue,sending the chauffeur into the shops and not at all affable to thetradespeople. The Doctor wouldn't trouble to give you so much as a nod,just stride along looking straight ahead. When the story got about thathe'd lost most of the money he'd made doctoring I didn't bear anyresentment, seeing it was worry that made him that way.

  But Miss Sylvia was made on a different measure. My, but she was awinner! Even after I knew what brought Jack Reddy in from Firehill sooften I couldn't be set against her. Jealous I might be of a girl likemyself, but not of one who was the queen bee of the hive.

  She was a beauty from the ground up--a blonde with hair like corn silkthat she wore in a loose, fluffy knot with little curly ends hanging onher neck. Her face was pure pink and white, the only dark thing in ither big brown eyes, that were as clear and soft as a baby's. And she wasa great dresser, always the latest novelty, and looking prettier in eachone. Mrs. Galway'd say to me, with her nose caught up, scornful,

  "To my mind it's not refined to advertise your wealth on your back."

  But I didn't worry, knowing Mrs. Galway'd have advertised hers if she'dhad the wealth or a decent shaped back to advertise it on, which shehadn't, being round-shouldered.

  There was none of the haughty ways of her parents about Miss Sylvia.When she'd come into the exchange to send a call (a thing that puzzledme first but I soon caught on) she'd always stop and have a pleasantword with me. On bright afternoons I'd see her pass on horseback,straight as an arrow, with a man's hat on her golden hair. She'd alwayshave a smile for everyone, touching her hat brim real sporty with theend of her whip. Even when she was in her motor, speeding down MainStreet, she'd give you a hail as jolly as if she was your college chum.

  Sometimes she'd be alone but generally there was a man along. There werea lot of them hanging round her, which was natural, seeing she hadeverything to draw them like a candle drawing moths. They'd come and gofrom town and now and then stay over Sunday at the Longwood Inn--it's aswell little place done up in the Colonial style--and you'd see themriding and walking with her, very devoted. At first everybody thoughther parents were agreeable to all the attention she was getting. Itwasn't till the Mapleshade servants began to talk too much that we heardthe Fowlers, especially the Doctor, didn't like it.

  I hadn't known her long before I began to notice something thatinterested me. A telephone girl sees so many people and hears such a lotof confidential things on the wire, that she gets to know more than mostabout what I suppose you'd call human nature. It's a study that's alwaysattracted me and in Miss Sylvia's case there was a double attraction--Iwas curious about her for myself and I was curious about her because ofJack Reddy.

  What I noticed was that she was so different with men to what she waswith women--affable to both, but it was another kind of affability. I'veseen considerably many girls trying to throw their harpoons into men anddoing it too, but they were in the booby class beside Miss Sylvia. Shewas what the novelists call a coquette, but she was that dainty and slyabout it that I don't believe any of the victims knew it. It wasn't whatshe said, either; more the way she looked and the soft, sweet manner shehad, as if she thought more of the chap she was talking to than anybodyelse in the world. She'd be that way to one in my exchange and the nextday I'd see her just the same with another in the drugstore.

  It made me uneasy. Even if the man you love doesn't love you, you don'twant to see him fooled. But I said nothing--I'm the close sort--and itwasn't till I came to be friends with Anne Hennessey that I heard theinside facts about the family at Mapleshade.

  Anne Hennessey was a Canadian and a fine girl. She was a lady and had alady's job--seventy-five a month and her own bathroom--and being thereal thing she didn't put on any airs, but when she liked me made rightup to me and we soon were pals. After work hours I'd sometimes go up toher at Mapleshade or she'd come down to me over the Elite.

  I remember it was in my room one spring evening--me lying on the bed andAnne sitting by the open window--that she began to talk about theFowlers. She was not one to carry tales, but I could see she hadsomething on her mind and for the first time she loosened up. I waspicking over a box of chocolates and I didn't give her a hint how keen Iwas to hear, acting like the candies had the best part of my attention.She began by saying the Doctor and Miss Sylvia didn't get on well.

  "That's just like a novel," I answered, "the heroine's stepfather'salways her natural enemy."

  "He's not that in this case," said Anne--she speaks English fine, likethe teachers in the High--"I'm sure he means well by her, but they can'tget on at all, they're always quarreling."

  "There's many a gilded home hides a tragedy. What do they fight about?"

  "Things she does he disapproves of. She's very spoiled and self-willed.No one's ever controlled her and she resents it from him."

  "What's he disapprove of?"

  Anne didn't answer right off, looking thoughtful out of the window. Thenshe said slow as if she was considering her words:

  "I'm going
to tell you, Molly, because I know you're no gossip and canbe trusted, and the truth is, I'm worried. I don't like the situation upat Mapleshade."

  I swung my feet on to the floor and sat up on the edge of the bed,nibbling at a chocolate almond.

  "Here's where I get dumb," I said, sort of casual to encourage her.

  "Sylvia Hesketh's a girl that needs a strong hand over her and there'sno one has it. Her father's dead, her mother--poor Mrs. Fowler's only agrown-up baby ready to say black is white if her husband wants herto--and Dr. Fowler's trying to do it and he's going about it all wrong.You see," she said, turning to me very serious, "it's not only thatshe's head-strong and extravagant but she's an incorrigible flirt."

  "Is there a place in the back of the book where you can find out whatincorrigible means?" I said.

  Anne smiled, but not as if she felt like it.

  "Uncontrollable, irrepressible. Her mother--Mrs. Fowler's ready to tellme anything and everything--says she's always been like that. And, ofcourse, with her looks and her fortune the men are around her like fliesround honey."

  "Why does the Doctor mind that?"

  "I suppose he wouldn't mind if they just came to Mapleshade or Longwood.But--that's what the quarreling's about--he's found out that she meetsthem in town, goes to lunch and the matinee with them."

  "Excuse me, but I've left my etiquette book on the piano. What's wrongabout going to the matinee or to lunch?"

  "Nothing's really wrong. Mind you, Molly, I know Sylvia through andthrough and there's no harm in her--it's just the bringing-up and thespoiling and the admiration. But, of course, in her position, a girldoesn't go about that way without a chaperone. The Doctor's perfectlyright to object."

  I was looking down, pretending to hunt over the box.

  "Who does she go with?" I said.

  "Oh, there are several. A man named Carisbrook----" I'd seen him often,a swell guy in white spats and a high hat--"and a young lawyer calledDunham and Ben Robinson, a Canadian like me. People see her with themand tell the doctor and there's a row."

  I looked into the box as careful as if I was searching for a diamond.

  "Ain't Mr. Reddy one of the happy family?" I asked. "Ah, here's the lastalmond!"

  "Oh, of course, young Reddy. I think it would be a good thing if shemarried him. Everybody says he's a fine fellow, and I tell you now,Molly, with Sylvia so willful and the doctor so domineering and Mrs.Fowler being pulled to pieces between them, things at Mapleshade can'tgo on long the way they are."

  That was in May. At the end of June the Fowlers went to Bar Harbor withall their outfit for the summer. After that Jack Reddy didn't come intoLongwood much. I heard that he was spending a good deal of his time atthe bungalow at Hochalaga Lake, and I did see him a few times meetinghis company at the train--he had some week-end parties out there--andbringing them back in the gray car.

  At the end of September the Fowlers came home. It was great weather,clear and crisp, with the feel of frost in the air. Most everybody wasout of doors and I saw Sylvia often, sometimes on horseback, sometimesdriving her motor. She was prettier than ever for the change and seemedlike she couldn't stay in the house. I'd see her riding toward home inthe red light of the sunset, and as I walked back from work her caroften would flash past me, speeding through the early dark toward MapleLane.

  Anne said they'd had a fairly peaceful summer and she hoped they weregoing to get on better. There had only been one row--that was about aman who was up at Bar Harbor and had met Sylvia and paid her a good dealof attention. The Doctor had been very angry as he disapproved of theman--Cokesbury was his name.

  "Cokesbury!" I cut in surprised--we were in Anne's room thatevening--"why, he belongs round here."

  Anne had heard that and wanted to know what I knew about him, which I'llwrite down in this place as it seems to fit in and has to be toldsomewhere.

  When I first came to Longwood, Mr. and Mrs. Cokesbury were living ontheir estate, Cokesbury Lodge, about twenty-five miles from us, nearAzalea. They had been in France for a year previous to that, then comeback and taken up their residence in Mr. Cokesbury's country seat, andit was shortly after that Mrs. Cokesbury died there, leaving threechildren. For a while the widower stayed on with nurses and governessesto look after the poor motherless kids. Then, the eldest boy taking sickand nearly dying, he decided to send them to his wife's parents, who hadwanted them since Mrs. Cokesbury's death.

  So the establishment at the Lodge was broken up and Mr. Cokesbury wentto live in town. There were rumors that the house was to be sold, but inthe spring Sands, the Pullman conductor, told me that Mr. Cokesbury hadbeen down several times, staying over Sunday and had said he had givenup the idea of selling the place. He told Sands he couldn't get hisprice for it and what was the sense of selling at a loss, especiallywhen he could come out there and get a breath of country air when he wasscorched up with the city heat?

  I'd passed the house one day in August when I was on an auto ride withsome friends. It was a big, rambling place with a lot of dismal-lookingpines around it, about five miles from Azalea and with no nearneighbors. Mr. Cokesbury only kept one car--he'd had several when hiswife was there--and used to drive himself down from the Lodge to thestation, leave his car in the Azalea garage, and drive himself back thenext time he came. He had no servants or caretaker, which he didn'tneed, as, after Mrs. Cokesbury's death, all the valuable things had beentaken out of the house and sent to town for storage.

  It gave me a jar to hear that Sylvia Hesketh--who, in my mind, was asgood as engaged to Jack Reddy--would have anything to do with him. I'dnever seen him, but I'd heard a lot that wasn't to his credit. He hadn'tbeen good to his wife--everybody said she was a real lady--but was thegay, wild kind, and not young, either. Anne said he was forty if he wasa day. When I asked her what Sylvia could see in an old gink like that,she just shrugged up her shoulders and said, who could tell--Sylvia wasmade that way. She was like some woman whose name I can't remember whosat on a rock and sang to the sailors till they got crazy and jumpedinto the water.

  My head was full of these things one glorious afternoon toward the endof October when--it being my holiday--I started out for a walk throughthe woods. The woods cover the hills behind the village and they'regrand, miles and miles of them. But wait! There was a little thing thathappened, by the way, that's worth telling, for it gave me apremonition--is that the word? Or, maybe, I'd better say connected upwith what was in my mind.

  I was walking slow down Main Street when opposite the postoffice I sawall the loafers and most of the tradespeople lined up in a ring staringat a bunch of those dago acrobats that go about the State all summerdoing stunts on a bit of carpet. I'd seen them often--chaps in dirtypink tights walking on their hands and rolling round in knots--and Iwouldn't have stopped but I got a glimpse of little Mick Donahuestumping round the outside trying to squeeze in and trying not to crybecause he couldn't. So I stopped and hoisted him up for a good view,telling the men in front to break a way for the kid to see.

  There was a dago scraping on a fiddle and while the acrobats wereperforming on their carpet, a big bear with a little, brown,shriveled-up man holding it by a chain, was dancing. And when I got myfirst look at that bear, in spite of all my worry I burst out laughing,for, dancing away there solemn and slow, it was the dead image of Dr.Fowler.

  You'd have laughed yourself if you'd seen it--that is, if you'd knownthe Doctor. There was something so like him in its expression--sort ofgloomy and thoughtful--and its little eyes set up high in its head andlooking angry at the crowd as if it despised them. When its masterjerked the chain and shouted something in a foreign lingo it hitched upits lip like it was trying to smile, and that sideways grin, as if itdidn't feel at all pleasant, was just the way the Doctor'd smile when hecame into the Exchange and gave me a number.

  It fascinated me and I stood staring with little Mick sitting on my arm,just loving it all, his dirty little fist clasped round a penny. Thenthe music stopped and one of the acrobats came round
with a hat andlittle Mick gave a great sigh as if he was coming out of a dream. "Ifyou hadn't come, Molly, I'd have missed it," he said, looking into myface in that sweet wistful way sickly kids have, "and it's the last timethey'll be round this year."

  I kissed him and put him down and told the men as I squeezed out to keephim in the front or they'd hear from me. Then I walked off toward thewoods thinking.

  It was a funny idea I'd got into my head. I'd once read in a paper thatwhen people looked like animals they resembled the animals in theirdispositions--and I was wondering was Dr. Fowler like a bear, grouchyand when you crossed him savage. Maybe it was because I'd been soworried, but it gave me a kind of chill. My thoughts went back toMapleshade and I got one of those queer glimpses (like a curtain waslifted for a second and you could see things in the future) of troublethere--something dark--I don't know how to explain it, but it was as ifI got a new line on the Doctor, as if the bear had made me see throughthe surface clear into him.

  I tried to shake it off for I wanted to enjoy my afternoon in the woods.They are beautiful at that season, the trees full of colored leaves, andall quiet except for the rustlings of little animals round the roots.There's a road that winds along under the branches, and trails, softunder foot with fallen leaves and moss, that you can follow for miles.

  I was coming down one of these, making no more noise than the squirrels,when just before it crossed the road I saw something and stopped. There,sitting side by side on a log, were Sylvia Hesketh and a man. Close tothem, run off to the side, was a motor and near it tied to a tree ahorse with a lady's saddle. Sylvia was in her riding dress, looking apicture, her eyes on the ground and slapping softly with her whip on theside of her boot. The man was leaning toward her, talking low andearnest and staring hard into her face.

  _Sylvia was in her riding dress, looking a picture_]

  To my knowledge I'd never seen him before, and it gave me a start--mesaying, surprised to myself, "Hullo! here's another one?" He was a big,powerful chap, with a square, healthy looking face and wide shoulders onhim like a prize fighter. He was dressed in a loose coat andknickerbockers and as he talked he had his hands spread out, one on eachknee, great brown hands with hair on them. I was close enough to seethat, but he was speaking so low and I was so scared that they'd see meand think I was spying, that I didn't hear what he was saying. The onlyone that saw me was the horse. It looked up sudden with its earspricked, staring surprised with its soft gentle eyes.

  I stole away like a robber, not making a speck of noise. All the joy I'dbeen taking in the walk under the colored leaves was gone. I felt kindof shriveled up inside--the way you feel when someone you love is sick.I couldn't bear to think that Jack Reddy was giving his heart to a girlwho'd meet another man out in the woods and listen to him so coy and yetso interested.

  As far as I can remember, that was a little over a month from the fatalday. All the rest of October and through the first part of Novemberthings went along quiet and peaceful. And then, suddenly, everythingcame together--quick like a blow.