Part 4

"That's better still. Chet." She tried it audibly. "I rather like that."

"You're welcome to it." I laughed at her directness.

"But you haven't asked me any questions! I should think you'd be curious. Really, it isn't at all complimentary to have you so indifferent."

"Oh, I'm only keeping 'on the island'," I returned.

"Keeping--what?"

"Don't you remember--about staying 'on the island'? You know you asked me yourself to."

"Oh, yes--did I? I forget." The puzzled look on her face had appeared again, but was driven away. "Well, there really isn't much to know about me. It's stupid enough here at Midmeadows. It's my own place, you know. It used to belong to my grandfather. I've had it ever since he died. I suppose it's good for me here, for I'm ill a good part of the time. I'm up and I'm down. But when I'm up, I'm up pretty high, and when I'm down, I'm 'way down in the depths."

She had sat down in a chair and had crossed her legs, one over the other, wagging one foot and clasping her hands across her knees so tightly that the blood was driven from her white knuckles to the ends of her purple fingers. It is always an awkward pose; I have often wondered how a pretty girl could ever take it. Now she drew her chair closer to the bedside and took my hand.

"Let me see your hand," she said suddenly. "I'll read your palm, if you like."

She bent over it, drawing so near that her head was quite close to mine, so close that, had it not been for the perfume she used, I should have got the odor of her hair. When she turned to me, smiling, she seemed very near indeed, though none too near me. She began her reading of the lines, holding my hand in both hers, pointing to the signs with one finger, trying the resistance of my thumb, squeezing the flesh to determine its firmness, kneading it and handling it in quite the professional manner. It took her some time. The opinions she gave me were not particularly affording, but they were rather cleverly put. She made a good deal of my "magnetism," saying that she could actually feel it. I was properly flattered. I could feel hers, easily enough.

Then she dropped my hand, rose and yawned as freely as had Nokomis herself.

"I'm starving!" she exclaimed. "I must see what's the matter with dinner. I'm sorry you can't come down, Chet. I hate to eat all alone."

"Why, doesn't Leah eat with you?" I asked, surprised.

"No, I can't quite go _that_!" she said emphatically, as she made an irrelevant athletic gesture. "I have to draw the line somewhere, you know. I have Uncle Jerdon sometimes, though, just for the fun of seeing him eat. He's perfectly lovely! He holds his fork in the Kansas City style, this way--" She illustrated a familiar restaurant attitude, with the thumb and little finger of her left hand braced under a paper-knife, the three middle fingers curled atop. "Then he always loads up his fork with his knife, a little piece of meat, and a little piece of potato, and a little dab of butter and a little swish of gravy and then--" She showed me how, pretending to toss it into her mouth, and wiped her lips with the back of her hand, in a way that made me laugh aloud. "You could hear him eat, 'way up here! Golly! it makes me hungry to talk about it!" she added. "I'll see you later, Chet. Oh--I'll send you up some current jelly. I made it myself; sure cure for the measles! Remember, you have to like it!" And she was off in a two-step.

I smiled to myself at her pantomime, after she was gone. How I had misjudged her at first! She seemed commoner, but our friendship was, perhaps, more natural. She was no longer the wonderful, exotic, medieval princess in the tower, but she was a frank, wholesome creature, full of human charms and faults. I decided, by reason of that sane analysis, that I was improving in health. My bang on the head, no doubt, had made me unduly impressionable.

She did not keep her word in regard to coming in after dinner. Leah brought up my tray, as usual, and took it away, saying that she was unable to stay with me. She seemed abstracted and nervous, and I forbore to question her. I spent a dreary evening alone.

The pounding went on for two hours or more after dinner, and then Miss Fielding came up-stairs to her room. She contented herself with putting her head through the doorway and calling out "Good night, Chet!" and then I heard her door slam. There was no talk between the two women that I could hear.

*V*

"Sliced kisses, fried in tears," were the words I heard Miss Fielding reply to Leah's morning call, early the next day. I had waited long, for the day was bright and I wakened at sunrise. Her fanciful order put one immediately into a good humor, and I was intensely curious to see what the day would bring forth.

The collies were barking vociferously, joyously. Suddenly they stopped, and then, one by one, I heard them greet their mistress. It was very prettily done. Leah, coming in, found me smiling, and smiled back at me. Seeing me so much better, she offered timidly to help dress me, and I welcomed her proposal to bring me hot water and what was necessary for shaving. My own clothes had been sent down, so I prepared myself for my chatelaine's visit.

Joy came into my room with a sweet, low, "Good morning, Mr. Castle!" which threw me back not a little, after what had taken place on the yesterday. I was about to hazard some good-natured sarcasm, but the sight of her face inhibited it, and something of what Leah had said came back to me. I answered the greeting without comment, therefore, and waited for her to set the pace.

She was in an exquisitely fresh, simple organdy frock, and had on a garden hat and gauntleted garden gloves; her arms were filled with roses. Her brow wrinkled slightly as she noticed the fading blossoms which had been left in the vases.

"I'm afraid I neglected you yesterday," she said, as she set about removing the dejected roses and putting fresh ones in their places. As she came near me, I noticed little dewy drops on her neatly coiled hair, where she had dashed it with violet water. There was no trace of any other scent, save that of the roses. She drew off her gloves and I saw that she wore no rings.

She sat down for a moment. I had observed before that not only could Miss Fielding be remarkably graceful in pose and in action, but that she could be as astonishingly _gauche_ as well. Astonishingly, that is, for her--for one who _could_ be so graceful. This, however, was decidedly one of her graceful days, or rather, perhaps, as Leah had said, moods. Her lines melted and composed. There was positive elegance in the way she used her hands, gesticulating freely. It enhanced the charm of her voice, so limpid and full of feeling.

"Isn't it a beautiful morning! What a shame it is that you can't get up. You must hurry and convalesce--just enough to be able to see the place, and not so much as to have to go away. Perhaps you can get into a chair by to-morrow. Did you hear my doggies? I can recognize each of them by the voice, and you will be able to, too, if you only stay here long enough. Nokomis is the deepest-toned one. She's the oldest, you know, and the most dignified. Hiawatha is the little yappy one. He's a very silly little pup!"

"I'm sorry Nokomis didn't want to come up to see me, yesterday," I said. "But I hope you'll pardon my taking the liberty of asking for her. I know you probably don't often allow them in the house."

"Why, of _course_ Nokomis can come up; the idea! She'd love it. Would you like to see her now?" Then, with her eyes on mine, and noticing my bewildered look, no doubt, she added, with a queer expression, "Nokomis wasn't quite well yesterday. She is getting old, you know." She rose restlessly. "Will you wait a moment, please? I want to speak to Leah," and she went out.

Something had passed over her spirits, I couldn't tell what. It was like the shadow of a cloud sweeping rapidly across a sunny hillside. Whatever it was, it was gone when she returned.

She went directly to the window, threw up the sash, and called down, "Nokomis! Hi, Nokomis!" A bark responded.

"Come up here, old lady! Yes, come right up. Wipe your feet, please. Wipe your _feet_, Nokomis!"

The next thing there was a pattering of feet upon the stairs, and the bitch bounded into the room, her tail wagging. She ran up to Miss Fielding immediately for orders.

"Go and say 'How d'you do?' to Mr. Castle, Nokomis," said Miss Fielding, pointing at me.

Nokomis dropped to the floor again, and with the dignity of a duchess walked over to where I lay, raised her beautiful eyes to mine, lifted a forepaw and laid it on the bed. I shook it and felt for the dog's neck.

"Now, Nokomis--" Miss Fielding began.

She was down on the instant, went to her mistress and stood waiting, her head on one side, her ears half erect, her tail low.

"Go and bring up Chevalier, please," was the command. Nokomis was off like an arrow, and presently there was a to-do in the yard. By this time I could recognize Nokomis' heavy note among the others. Then she and a tan-and-black collie came rollicking into the room. Both came immediately up to their mistress.

"Here's Chevalier, Mr. Castle. He's a pretty good show dog, isn't he? He hasn't got a fancy livery, but he's all right, except his tail's set on a bit too high, and there's a little feather to his hind legs below the hock."

Chevalier whined, and looked up at Miss Fielding. I was quite ready to believe the dog understood what she said.

"Oh, that's all right, Chev, you's a booful, good doggie, and I love you! Chevalier's strain harks back to the original Scott--he's quite a swell, in his way, and has got blue ribbons. But they all want tri-colored calico dogs, now. Go over and pay your respects, Chevalier, please!"

The dog came up to me, was patted, and left with Nokomis, who was next instructed to return with John O'Groat, a big dog, almost wholly black, with a rather blunter muzzle than the others.

"John's got pretty good blood, too, and his mother was from the Lothian Hills, like Norval--no, that was the Grampians. A little hollow-backed, and his forelegs aren't quite straight, but Jack's a good dog, aren't you, Jack? A fine worker, too."

Jack was certainly listening to every word attentively, whether he understood or not. After he had gone, Nokomis brought up Minnehaha, one of her own youngsters, pure white.

"Poor little Minnie," said Miss Fielding, "she's got yellow eyes and a thin coat, but I love her just as much!" Taking the forepaws she held her own face tantalizingly near the dog's tongue. "Just as much, I do. Now go over to Mr. Castle, Miss!"

Last of all came Hiawatha, a frenzied, wriggling, capering puppy, sable-and-white like his mother, yelping, crouching, bounding, hysterical with joy. Miss Fielding and I fell to laughing at his antics, but Hiawatha was too young to care. He was up on top of my bed in half a minute, and stifling me with his eagerness, lapping my face and hands, growling, snarling, biting, scratching all at once. When this frisky, capering bunch of enthusiasm had departed, quite out of his head with the excitement of the visit, Miss Fielding talked dog for ten minutes. She had not forgotten, however, to compliment her pets with a lump of sugar apiece, filched from my tray and dropped from the window with strict precedence.

"Oh," I said, looking at her with admiration, "I do think your own name is the best! It's so like you."

"What d'you mean?" she asked, coming up to me.

"Why--Joy," I replied.

"Of course it is! Isn't it fun to have a name like that? One has quite to live up to it, though. It inspires me, sometimes, when I'm blue."

"Yes; it has distinction. I don't see why you ever should prefer Edna."

"Oh, Edna--" she said seriously. She waited a moment, to shake from her skirt the sand the dogs' paws had left. "Well, I do like Edna, sometimes. It depends upon my mood, I suppose. You know I told you I had moods. Don't try to reconcile me, I know I'm inconsistent. But I'm a woman," she added, looking up more brightly, "and I suppose I have that right."

"I haven't decided whether you're a woman or not," I returned. "Sometimes I have thought you were a princess in disguise."

"Oh, that's nice of you! But why?"

"You're so mysterious, so whimsical, so detached, so romantic."

"Take care!" she warned severely. "You aren't trying to swim off the island, are you?"

I opened my eyes at this.

"You still hold me to my promise--after yesterday?"

"Why not?" she said, a little blankly.

"Why, I thought we were well off the island--at least _you_ were. I thought that you had given up the game."

"Why?" she asked, looking at me directly, in seeming surprise. "I think you must have mistaken my meaning."

I couldn't quite get it. "You asked me all sorts of questions, anyway, you know," I ventured.

Her eyes begged for mercy. "I'm sorry if I was impertinent----"

"Oh, I don't mean that, of course. You couldn't be. You had a perfect right to ask, of course."

"Can't I row back in a boat, please?" she pouted whimsically. "Don't give it up yet. Not till I give you specific leave of absence. I suppose I'm spoiled. I want my cake to keep and eat, too."

I was a little relieved at her recognition of her own inconsistency, though I felt a queer hiatus somewhere. It was as if, mentally, I had tried to go up a step where there was none. But I let the subject drop. She took up the books on the stand and began to look them over.

"Don't you think Leah reads beautifully?" she asked.

"It's charming to hear her, but; if you don't mind, I prefer to hear you."

She took all my compliments so graciously, without either embarrassed denial or vanity, that I loved to watch her when I tried a gallantry. Now she only nodded to me, sweepingly, with mock deference, and went on:

"Leah and I disagree somewhat. I have more manner, perhaps, and less rhythm. We read a good deal together. I think she sees Browning much more clearly than I. Perhaps I feel him more keenly."

"She's a remarkable girl--I was going to add 'for a negress,' but I needn't qualify it."

"Oh, no! You don't _know_ how fine she is." Seating herself she added, as if to herself, in a sort of sigh: "What that girl has done for me!"

"I am sure that she would say just that of you," I remarked.

"Oh, I try her a good deal, sometimes. Her mother was my nurse. When I sent for Leah, I didn't expect to get anything more than, perhaps, some of the hereditary devotion darkies have, even if I got that. But I got a friend. You can't trust her too far, Mr. Castle, believe me! She's pure gold."

It happened that, as she spoke, Leah herself came into the room with letters for me. Miss Fielding took the girl's hand and pressed it against her own cheek affectionately. As she did so, I noticed a peculiar scar--a livid U-shaped mark on Leah's wrist. It was the sort of scar that might be left from the wound of a carving-tool--one of the narrower gouges.

"Was I very horrid yesterday, Leah?" Miss Fielding asked, looking up into the fine brown face.

"Oh, _please_, Miss Joy!" Leah begged uneasily.

"Of course _you_ understand, Leah; I only want Mr. Castle to know I'm sorry," Miss Fielding insisted.

"I need only to look at you to be sure you're sorry, and to look at Leah to be sure that there's no need of it," I declared. "At any rate, there's no need of my understanding. In fact that's just what I thought you _didn't_ want me to do. Isn't it?"

Leah looked quickly from me to Miss Fielding, and back again.

"Yes, I suppose it is," Miss Fielding said slowly, thoughtfully. "Let's get back on the island again. I'm sure it's big enough for us."

We stayed, therefore, "on the island" all that afternoon, touching, that is, but lightly on personal topics. But though we did not go wide, we went deep enough to make the talk hold us absorbed for an hour or more. In quite another way, I think, we went far, as well. Miss Fielding was a stimulating conversationalist. She made me feel at my best. She had that happy way of meeting me on my ground every little while, then going on, and giving me a hand up to hers, and so, by a series of alternate agreements and divergencies, keeping the discussion both sympathetic and various. In most of this quick give-and-take Leah was a passive listener unless specially appealed to, at which times she often expressed herself so succinctly and sapiently that Miss Fielding and I looked at her, and then at one another with a comic expression of admiration and depreciation of our own powers.

With such conversation the day went fast. In the afternoon Miss Fielding read to me, and in the evening I spent two or three hours in passive delight listening to her violin.

My pain had almost subsided, now, and I looked forward with something more poignant than regret at being able to be up and about, knowing that would mean the beginning of the end of our companionship.

*VI*

The next morning Miss Fielding slept late, and her breakfast order was, as it had been two days before, prosaic. Then, also, she had slept late. This coincidence struck me and gave me a presentiment. I looked curiously for the first sight of her to confirm or destroy a theory that I had been incubating during my long night hours alone. The fact that, as I ate my breakfast, I could hear her whistling in her room helped along my hypothesis. So did Leah's apparent mental detachment.

Miss Fielding romped into my room at about half-past nine, and with a laugh and a "Good morning, Chet!" pirouetted up to my bed. My theory instantly gained plausibility. Her manner was what I had anticipated. Her dress, also, was significant.

She had on a fussy sort of silk waist, inappropriate, I thought, with her cloth walking-skirt. Her hair was elaborately "marcelled," and she wore bangles that clinked on her wrists; there was the same odor of Santal that I had previously noticed. What was most suggestive was that this get-up was apparently meant to impress me. At least, that was how I interpreted her coquettish smile. I shouldn't care to say that she showed actual poor taste--it was only, I thought, poor taste for _her_. She needed such adjuncts of fashion so little!

"See here," she said, tossing her head and pointing at me dramatically, "you're getting altogether too lazy! I think that you've been in bed long enough. I'm going to get you down-stairs to-day. The doctor said three or four days in bed would do, and now it's five. How do you feel?" She shook the post of my bed with mock ferocity, as if to expend some surplus energy. There seemed to be an extra ounce of blood in her this morning.

"Oh, I'm game!" I replied. "Nothing would suit me better."

"I'll get the library ready, then; Leah and Uncle Jerdon will help you down. Then you can watch me work, if you don't mind. I'm trying to finish my coffret." She felt thoughtfully of her biceps. "I'll get quite a muscle before I'm through. I shall have driven about twelve hundred nails by the time it's done."

She walked to the door, swinging her arms, and called, "Leah! Come up here! Quick!"

Leah appeared, out of breath, as if, for the moment, she had expected that an accident had happened. She gave a quick apprehensive look about.

"Leah, we're going to get Mr. Castle downstairs to-day. Is Uncle Jerdon about?"

"Do you think Mr. Castle is well enough to be moved, yet?" Leah ventured.

"Didn't I say he was going down-stairs?" Miss Fielding repeated impatiently. "I think we can decide that question. You do as I say. Go and get Uncle Jerdon, and be quick about it, too!"

"She's spoiled. She thinks she runs this house," Miss Fielding complained to me, when Leah had left.

I said nothing, watching her closely. My theory was now pretty well substantiated. I could not pass this scene off as merely one of the "moods" that she and Leah had both mentioned. There was something definitely wrong with Miss Fielding to-day--something more than a mere whim of temper. There had been something wrong two days before, when she had acted similarly. She was distinctly not herself, if her normal self was the graceful, delicate, tactful creature who had first charmed me.

It was not only her mood or her taste in costume that seemed different. It was something not quite describable which seemed to permeate her whole personality. She had taken a chair and sat with her right arm cast up over the back. The angle of her raised elbow threw her into a distinctly awkward position. Her gestures, too, were characteristic of this mysterious difference. When they were not distinctly imitative, as in mimicking Uncle Jerdon's table-manners, they were irrelevant, mere spasmodic exhibitions of activity--as when she caught the fly, or swung her arms with active tennis-like gestures. This spontaneous irrelevancy she showed now in the way she doubled her fists and brought them athletically to her shoulders, as she talked, or, raising her foot a little, made circles with her toe, showing the slenderness and suppleness of her ankle. I don't say that all this ebullition of high spirits wasn't, in its way, charming. It was. But it was different from the way she had acted yesterday. Perhaps I can best describe it by saying that she seemed quite ten years younger.

She sprang up and, apropos of nothing at all, proceeded to dance or hop sidewise across the room and back hilariously, in sheer excess of vigor. It was what she called "galumphing," and, from time to time, during the day, usually at the end of some little over-serious conversation, she repeated the performance, to my great amusement and delight. It was the absurdly meaningless gamboling of a kid, but it was so delicious in its inconsequence that every time it provoked my laughter.

While we were talking nonsense there, Leah came up with Uncle Jerdon. Uncle Jerdon was distinctly a New England type--the chin-bearded, straw-chewing farmer, quaintly original, confident, droll. He was well on in years, a dried-up, wrinkled, toothless bachelor with sparse, straw-colored hair, long in the neck, and twinkling blue eyes full of good nature. He wore overalls and reeked of the stable.

Miss Fielding introduced him, and I shook his skinny hand.