Part 2

I was more comfortable now, and more sane. So, as I lay awaiting her, I wondered how such a woman, so instinct with refinement and with the air of having had considerable social experience, was to be found in so far-away a place. I knew of no residences in this vicinity except an occasional farmhouse; it was remote even from any village. The sight of her as she appeared last night in her elegant negligee came back to me, like the scene of a play. I longed to see her again, to discover if, perhaps, I had not exaggerated it all, or even, perhaps, had dreamed of one so exquisitely gracious.

Leah, also, was a part of the strangeness. She had none of the disturbing beauty of the quadroon--her beauty was without _diablerie_, it was far from showing any sensuality. It was even spiritual in type. Her face, as I brought it up, was more than intelligent, it was lighted by an inward vision. The more I thought of her, the more I wondered if I had not been tricked by my impressionability, by the strangeness of my adventure, by the glamour of the night awakening. To put it to the test, I took advantage of Miss Fielding's suggestion and rang the bell.

Leah appeared in a few moments, and came a little shyly into the room. She wore a clean, fresh, crisp gown of blue, like a hospital nurse's uniform, and was as trim and dignified. No, I had not been mistaken. The light of day showed her still more remarkable than I had remembered. Her regular features, her smooth, coffee-colored skin, her well-kept shapely hands, all testified to an extraordinary breeding.

"Are you ready for your breakfast, sir?" she asked. Her voice was like honey as she inquired how I had passed the night, and apologized for Uncle Jerdon's snoring.

"I'll bring your water first," she suggested, and retired noiselessly, to return in a moment with a bowl, some towels and toilet articles.

She seemed a little embarrassed by the situation, but assisted me in sitting up. Then, finding that I could do for myself well enough, she went down-stairs, and by the time I had finished my washing, she was back with the tray.

"Miss Joy will be in to see you in a little while, sir," she said as she made me comfortable with dexterous adjustments of my pillows.

But for her "sir," she had in no way acted as a servant, though, on the other hand, she had assumed no attitude of equality. I could not help admiring the fine neutrality she maintained without committing herself to either role. All my first impressions of her were intensified by this demeanor, and I awaited the opportunity of assuring her by my own manner of my lack of prejudice on account of her color. Indeed, it was not long before I was almost as unconscious of it, so far as any social distinction was concerned, as a child might have been.

Miss Fielding came in a little later, dewy and shining, dressed all in white--an embroidered linen blouse and a short skirt of serge, which made her seem even younger than I had remembered. The sight of her expressive, thoughtful, eager face, and the music in her sympathetic voice gave my room quite another aspect. It became a stage again where last night's drama would go on. How long I had waited for her, and now she was come! Only an invalid, perhaps, can understand the difference in atmosphere in that first quick sight of an expected delightful presence to one who has waited for the weary hours to go by and bring the wished-for vision.

She made a few kind inquiries as to my condition, moving meanwhile about the room, disposing of the fresh roses she had brought, lowering the window-sashes and raising the shades, rapid and graceful as a bird on the wing. She was all modern, now; the medieval princess had given place to something more complex, and as much more interesting. Every word, every inflection of her voice, every gesture of her hand, every expression of her mobile face showed subtlety of thought and sentiment; she was obviously a creature of fine distinctions, of nuances of feeling, though at present her talk was as simple and joyous as a child's. That simplicity of hers, however, was the simplicity of a Greek temple, made up of subtle ratios and proportions, of imperceptible curves and esoteric laws.

She drew up a chair, at last, and sat down beside me. We looked at each other frankly, and smiled, aware of a common thought, the desire to prolong the situation as far as we might. This quickness of her imagination was a delight. But the game was becoming too humorous, now, in broad daylight, for us to keep it up. Our romance was in danger.

"I'm bursting with the obvious," I remarked.

She shook her finger at me with spirit. "If you dare!"

"Oh, I'll not be the first. Man though I am, I can restrain my curiosity."

How quickly her face changed! An almost infantile look came into it, as she said:

"There are so many more curious things than curiosity, if you know what I mean. Curiosity is such a destructive process, don't you think?"

"And this is creative? The not satisfying it, I mean."

"Yes, wonder is--and mystery. It ramifies so. It splits the ray." She made a queer, mystical gesture, all her own.

"Oh, it quite blossoms!" I said. "I breathe all sorts of perfumes never smelt."

Her eager look came back, and she smiled joyously. "How quick you are! I wish we could keep it up a while! I should have liked to marry Bluebeard! What a splendid dowry he gave! Oh, I would never have opened the door! There was so much more outside than in, wasn't there? But now the role is yours; you must be Bluebeard's wife--or Robinson Crusoe. Oh, you must stay on the island--this island with me, and not try to get off. There are a few little places we can explore without danger--will you be satisfied with them?"

Somehow I got the spirit of it, as at hearing some words of a strange language eloquently spoken. She was warning me off--but from what? I would find out soon enough, should the meaning need to be made more definite. It was like a game of jackstraws; if I did not play gingerly I should bring down the commonplace upon us. My situation was delicate--it almost seemed that I had arrived, in some way, inopportunely.

But she had gone on. "Did you read my books?" she asked, taking up one of them.

"I read that one--the poems. I got quite lost in them."

"Which ones?" She looked up from the book eagerly.

"_The Journey_, and,--" I hesitated, "--_The Riders_." I was watching her face earnestly.

"Oh, how right you are!" She was perfectly simple about it. There was no conceit in her. "It means, doesn't it, that we already have a language? But you must read the essays, too. Then maybe we'll have a philosophy."

"I'll explore them with pleasure." I tried to keep the appeal out of my voice. "I have such a lot of things to do before I go."

She got this quite as I intended. "Well, we'll be perfectly natural and let come what may, as it seems to be all decided for us. We won't force the game. But I'm afraid you'll never be contented. You'll leave the island first, I'm quite sure."

I protested; she shook her head slowly. I knew she was thinking very hard of something. Her smile was wistful, her eyes, always fixed on mine, were almost somber in their expression.

"Would you dare promise?"

I knew now there was something behind all this; some fear of my presence.

"Shall I?" I fenced, more to draw her on than from any doubt of her meaning or reluctance to agree with her wish.

"It's base of me--it's foolish, too, for it can really do no good. But, you see, I don't quite know you, do I?"

"And don't quite want to?" I was unkind enough to say, but only with the same motive as before. I wanted to get at the bottom of it--find out what it was she dreaded, and dared not acknowledge that she did.

She was a little hurt and said that it wasn't fair to say so, that I wasn't playing the game. I was properly contrite, and, for the moment, gave up the duel.

"Let it be a promise, then," I said.

At this, I thought she looked relieved; and that she should be so at my bare word touched me. It did cross my mind that, perceiving my adaptability to this sort of affair, she might perhaps have taken an adventitious means of heightening the romance of the situation with such innuendo; but she seemed to me to be altogether too direct for that, and too sapient, as well.

"Thank you. I may hold you to that promise. Does that seem ungracious?"

There it was. There was most definitely something which she didn't wish me to know, and which my advent jeoparded. I was truly sorry for her now, and a little embarrassed at my position. Meanwhile her eyes were steadily questioning mine, as if to make sure that I was to be trusted. I took up her last remark to relieve the tensity of her mood.

"You couldn't be ungracious, I'm sure. I should as soon suspect Leah!"

She laughed more freely. "Oh, I'm so glad you appreciate her! That says more for you than all the rest."

"The rest?" I insisted, quite ready for a compliment.

She gave it to me with her head a little on one side, and her right eyebrow, the irregular one, whimsically upraised.

"Yes. Your keeping it up so well, you know."

"Oh, I'll keep it up! It's the chief charm of being here, flat on my back, in a strange place. I'm sure it will be most amusing."

"I'm not so sure. I'm full of moods and whims--you're going to be terribly disappointed in me sometimes--though that sounds like vanity--and I may take advantage of your complaisance, of your promise, that is. I hope you won't regret it."

So it rested, my promise not to be too inquisitive (for I took its meaning to be that), given and accepted. It quite whetted my appetite, you may be sure. If all this talk seems fine-spun, it is my fault in the telling of it, for in the give-and-take we perfectly understood each other. I can not, of course, give her delicate inflections, but these, with her looks and gestures, said as much as her words.

But if this equivocal conversation was vague and shadowy, she could pass into the sunshine as deftly. She seemed to do so now, as she rose and went to the open window and whistled. A chorus of barks answered her. She turned to me.

"I must go down to my dogs," she said. "I wish you could see them--that is, if you like collies. I have five, all thoroughbreds--they're beauties! You'll have to get acquainted with them as soon as you're able to go down-stairs."

She leaned a little out of the window and called, "Hi! Nokomis!" drawing out the vowels. A deep bark responded.

"Hiawatha!" she called next, and she was answered by a sharp, frenzied yelping. "Minnehaha!" followed--she almost sang the name, which was replied to like the others. Then Chevalier and John O'Groat greeted her in turn.

"I'm going to take them for their morning run," she said, as she left me. "I'll examine you on the essays when I come back."

She went down, and soon after I heard her talking, evidently to Uncle Jerdon and to King. Then the barking rose ecstatically, receded in the distance, and finally was lost. I took up the essays and read for a while. My head was much better, and my soreness was slowly disappearing, but the constrained positions I had to hold to keep my rib from paining me made me too weary and impatient to put my mind on my book. I could hardly wait for Miss Fielding to return, and lay inert, watching the flies drift lazily through the sunshine that filled the room, hoping that Leah, at least, might come in to break my ennui. I welcomed even the hoarse, squeaky cry of King's pump, the occasional crowing of a rooster, the twittering of birds in the apple-tree, and the many little homely sounds of country life. The fragrant perfume of the roses in the room was a blessed reminder of Miss Fielding's kindness.

In a half-hour, I heard the dogs approaching, and she came into the room again, hatless, bringing a new breath of June with her. Her hair was blown to a silky veil through which her eyes shone and her rosy cheeks glowed as she smiled at me over the footboard of my bed. Throwing off her little white bolero, a saucy thing with black velvet collar and cuffs, she went to the mirror and gathered up the loose strands of hair, tucking them in, here and there, with deft touches of her fingers, and adjusting them with dark tortoise-shell pins, until her little head, coiffed high, was as smooth as a cat's.

She came up to the bedside and was quick to notice by my nervous movements that I was suffering. Sitting down she began to tell gaily of her walk over the hill, and, as she spoke, my aching was calmed as if she had laid a finger on the electric switch that controlled it. Then she suggested reading to me, and took up the volume of poems we had discussed.

Her voice was not quite intense enough for strong emotion; it had not the momentum, so to speak, to carry the lines along with the swing and rhythm necessary. It was too light for that, but it more than made up for it by its sympathetic tenderness and the delicacy of its inflection. Her tones lulled me, and I fell asleep.

In the afternoon she brought her mending, and we talked for a couple of hours or so, always keeping, as she expressed it, "on the island." What personalities we discussed, that is, had no reference to her history or her plans. She warned me off very cleverly several times when the talk approached her circumstances or even her moods and tastes.

When she confessed that she played a little on the piano and violin, I positively insisted upon my rights as an invalid to be amused. She rolled up her work and went to get her violin without excuses or apologies.

I waited with considerable anxiety to hear what and how she would play, not committing myself as to my own choice of composers. She began in her own room, and through the opened doors I heard the strains of the _Prize Song_ played with great verve and sentiment. I was delighted. She came, still playing, into my chamber, her sleeves rolled up (she said she could not play else), and accepted my compliments graciously and simply. Then, walking up and down, absorbed, she gave me fragments of Cesar Franck's sonata for the violin and piano. To watch her, supple, virile, rapt, to note her clever, accomplished technique, her passionate, free-armed command of the bow--I have seldom seen such a splendid attack or so sure and true a vibrato--was a joy beautifully associated with the clarity and subtle craftsmanship of the master.

So she ran on, alternating her renditions with scraps of talk that showed a keen musical sense and an appreciation of the radical, ultra-modern movement of the time. Next she burst into a vibrant, dramatic Polish folksong that excited me like a fire. And finally, as a _tour de force_, her eyes dancing as she watched me over her shoulder with some new audacious devil in her smile, she enchanted me with a vivid piece most astonishingly enlivened with flights of technique--trills, brilliant chord passages, and runs with the upward and downward "staccato bow." Then she threw down her fiddle and came up to me, laughing.

That evening she had another delight for me, coming to my bedside and reading Villon and Verlaine in the original, translating the old French for me when I was perplexed by the _argot_. And for the picture, I need only add that Leah was of the circle, and made her own comments!

*III*

There was, next morning, a little dialogue much like that which I had overheard the day before, except that this time it was "stewed rose-leaves with a small pot of sunshine," which Miss Fielding was fanciful enough to demand. I wondered what, after such a pleasantry, she did have; for I took it to be some joke between her and Leah, who, no doubt, translated the metaphor into something more substantial.

As I ate breakfast, I could hear Miss Fielding singing in her room. She came in before I had finished my egg and coffee, bringing an armful of new magazines. This time she was dressed in pongee and wore a short string of graduated white coral beads which was mimicked, when she smiled, by her little teeth.

"I've found out about you--quite by accident, though, Mr. Castle, really," she said gaily; and, opening one of the magazines, she tapped with her hand the picture of a country house my firm had just rather successfully completed. "So you're an architect! And I'm the first to get off the island, after all!"

"It doesn't matter, I suppose, so long as I stay on?" I asked.

"Oh, this doesn't by any means absolve you of your promise," she answered, examining the illustration carefully, still standing at the foot of the bed.

"You aren't really very much wiser, are you? There are architects _and_ architects, you know."

"Yes," she said, apparently thinking of something else. "Quite as there are women and women," she added, turning over the pages idly.

"There's only one of _your_ sort!" I exclaimed.

A queer smile passed and was repressed upon her lips, molding them into new curves. "Yes, only one of _me_."

"I don't exactly mean that, either," I went on. "The fact is, rather, that there is more than one of me. There's the architect and the man in me--and how many more! One is always astonishing the others. Aren't there, after all, several of you, Miss Fielding?"

She gave me a frightened glance, then tossed the magazine on the bed. It wasn't petulance; she seemed to be disturbed at the subject.

"Oh, I'm only a White Cat!" she said cryptically.

She seemed anything but that, to me.

"I'll tell you about it sometime--perhaps," she added. "But not now."

She stood with her hands behind her back, raising herself on her toes, and changed the subject. "I'm awfully anxious to show you this house, now that I know you're an architect. It's one of the oldest hereabout, and it was a wreck when I bought it. I've had it all done over inside, and I shall expect you to compliment me on my taste, for it's mainly my own ideas."

"What I've seen of it is charming--but a bit impersonal, perhaps."

"Oh, this is only the guest-chamber. One doesn't inflict one's ideas on the transient visitor. Of course this is a bloodless, sexless place. You'll find personality enough in my room, I fancy. I hope you'll be able to get down-stairs by day after to-morrow, and have a chance to look about at the place. I'm sure you'll love Midmeadows. I'm expecting the doctor down here this afternoon, and he'll probably be able to tell you how long you'll have to stay. I do hope you won't get well too fast, Mr. Castle."

"Trust me for that," I said. "I give you fair notice, I shall probably do some malingering. But I shall be glad to see the doctor, if only to make sure that I can impose on him."

My heart sank, nevertheless, at the thought of his interruption of our idyl. I felt an illogical right to her by discovery, a certain franchise in her good graces that Fate herself had given me. The possible weakening of our alliance, however, was only the negative side of my annoyance. The positive aspect was that Doctor Copin seemed to be an old acquaintance, even a friend; for Miss Fielding had mentioned that she was going to walk over to the Harbor to meet him. It was possible, even--and the idea was poison--that she was in love with him. Well, I must needs wait and see him before I decided as to that chance.

I asked her to call her dogs again, and, seeing that it might amuse me, she offered to bring Nokomis, the best-behaved, and matron of the kennel, up to see me. I accepted eagerly, and, from the window, she called her favorite.

Nokomis was one of the most beautiful collies I have ever seen, a tawny red, or sable, with white ruff, feet, and tail-point. Her head was very finely shaped--not too dull for keenness, nor with too much of the silly greyhound's tapering muzzle, as not a few flat-headed prize-winners, bred chiefly for color and coat, have. She had dark brown eyes set with that obliqueness that gives the breed its characteristic look of brightness, kindness and craft. Her small ears, as she entered, were semi-erect, giving her, as she stopped with her head slightly on one side, the sharp, doubtful expression of the fox. She came with her flag up, as if she were on exhibition before judges, marched to Miss Fielding and waited for orders.

"Isn't she a darling?" Miss Fielding said affectionately, rubbing her pet's neck. "You hasn't got flappy, saddle-bag ears and a high forehead and a velvet jacket, _has_ you! I don't see no snipey nose! Hasn't she got an 'honest, sonsie, bawsint face,' Mr. Castle? Only it isn't 'bawsint.' And look at her gawcie tail, wi' upward curl!' She has old Cockie herself for an ancestor, _she_ has!"

Nokomis gravely stood on her hind legs with her forepaws on her mistress' skirt, panting--smiling, I might well say. Then, in obedience to a word and a gesture, she dropped and came over to me in so dignified and friendly a way that I fell promptly in love with her. Her outer coat was abundant, straight and stiff, the under one so thick and soft and furry that I could not find the skin. Her ruff was magnificent, her chest deep and strong. I was sure she would be a good worker; her wit had already been proved.

Miss Fielding was pleased with my appreciation, and consented to having Nokomis remain, and so, for the rest of the day, except for occasional inquisitive excursions, she lay on the floor beside my bed, thumping her tail and listening attentively whenever I looked down to speak to her.

Early in the afternoon Miss Fielding put on a fresh linen waist and corduroy skirt to set out for the station. Before she went she moved about the room, readjusting the flowers, drawing a shade or two which threatened to let the sun into my eyes, renewing my pitcher of water and so on, giving me in five minutes a dozen evidences of her tact, thoughtfulness and consideration. Then, with a last warning to Nokomis to take good care of me, she went away, leaving the apartment depressingly empty.