Part 5

"Wall," he drawled, "thinkin' abeout movin', be ye? I guess Leah an' me'll make a pretty good elevator. I'll help ye get dressed, fust-off, an' then we'll take ye up tenderly, lift ye with care."

The two women left while I got my clothes on. It felt good to leave the bed.

"We been a-tinkerin' on that air machine o' yourn, but it's a leetle bit too much for us, I guess," Uncle Jerdon said. "You'll have to send deown a man, I expect. I wouldn't ride in one o' them pesky things for all the gold of Ophir, no sirree, bob! When I want to go to ride I want to see the back of a good hoss--I know I'll get home by sun-deown."

He monologued away thus as he helped me into my clothes, and, when I had finished, called to Leah.

She came in, and I took an arm of each, though I scarcely needed their help. We descended a narrow, paneled stairway slowly but safely, without causing me any pain, and turned into a door on the left-hand side of the lower hall. There I found a morris chair ready for me, drawn up before a wide brick fireplace where an oak log was burning. Uncle Jerdon left me with a wink at seeing Leah placing a foot-stool for me and drawing up a taboret on which were cigars and cigarettes. There ensconced, I looked about with interest.

It was a large room, finished all in paneled unvarnished redwood, most beautiful in color--a lighter red than mahogany, with more softness and bloom. Two sides were lined with book-cases, except for the chimney-breast; another was almost filled with a broad bow-window of leaded glass with a deep seat covered with corduroy cushions. There was a narrow shelf supported by carved brackets part way up, and a cornice above that. Between the adzed beams of the ceiling were panels of old Spanish leather, lacquered and stamped. The whole effect was a modified French Renaissance worked out with many charming originalities of detail. The pilasters, and the elaborate mantel with its ornamented moldings and graceful consoles, showed handicraft of an interesting sort. They seemed to have been carved by some artistic amateur, being boldly cut without the machine-like regularity of the professional. There was, besides the unusualness of the wood, much to interest me as an architect.

The library was well filled without appearing crowded, and everything, furniture and appointments, betokened, as had my chamber, not only taste, but luxury. It was evident that Miss Fielding was very well off, and knew how to use her money. It was as evident that she had a strong personality, for there were details that were unique. A large prism of rock-crystal, for instance, carelessly resting in the sunshine upon the dull brown cushions of the window-seat, threw a prismatic spot of splendor upon the ceiling. It was like a gorgeous butterfly pinned to the leather. There was a silver cage of waltzing Japanese mice upon the mantel, little grotesque, pied creatures that spun wheels, washed their necks with their paws and nibbled at rice. The books, too, were arranged upon the shelves apparently not as regards subjects, but rather on account of their bindings, giving masses of color, green and red and brown and black and white.

But it had all been indubitably so well lived in, its properties all ministered so to one's comfort, and the tones were all so restful and admirably composed, that I could imagine no more charming environment for a rainy day with Miss Fielding.

A great library table stood in the center of the apartment, one end of which was covered with magazines--everything from _The Journal of Abnormal Psychology_ to the _Pink 'Un_. Upon the other end, resting on a hide of ooze leather, were scattered tools and materials, and the unfinished chest upon which Miss Fielding had been working. This was covered with young calfskin, the soft hair still on, a pretty brindled tan and white, and it was bound on the edges with brass strips. These were fastened in place by close rows of brass-headed nails, which accounted for the pounding I had heard. I was admiring the workmanlike way in which the chest was made, when Miss Fielding came in.

"What d'you think of my 'bossy coffret'?" she said. "Isn't it going to be a beauty? My own invention. Don't steal the scheme, and I'll show you how."

She stood up to the table, and, taking one of the brass strips, laid off the divisions and punched holes for the nails, and then hammered it on. She kept up, meanwhile, a running fire of persiflage. Occasionally she would stop to toss her hammer into the air and catch it nimbly by the handle as it fell.

"I thought you were going to call me Edna," she said after a while, pausing with some nails in her mouth to look over at me. "Don't you like the name?"

"I thought _you_ didn't like it," I said, my eyes turning from her brisk, clever hands, to her absorbed face. A wave passed over it as I looked--that baffled expression I had noticed before.

"Did I say so!" Her hammer was poised in mid air.

"Why, didn't you?"

"Oh, yes, I suppose so. It doesn't matter. Nicknames seldom stick, anyway." She placed a nail in the hole.

"Oh, I don't object to 'Chet' at all."

"'Chet' goes, then." She drove in her nail with a frown.

Before I had thought of my promise, I said: "It's funny you don't remember it!"

Bang, _bang-bang_! Another nail went in, driven viciously.

I fully expected that she would speak of "the island" again, but she didn't. Instead, she dropped her tools, and said:

"I'm building a house, too!"

"Where?" I asked.

She laughed and galumphed across the room and back again without looking at me, before she answered. Then she stopped at the door and called up for Leah to bring down her bunch of keys. When these had come, she knelt in front of the window-seat and unlocked a cupboard below it. From this she brought out a little model house, built of pasteboard, perfect in all its details.

It had windows of mica, behind which were white sashes and lace-paper curtains. The house, an old-fashioned New England homestead, was placed in a little yard of green velvet divided by paths of sandpaper, and set out with toy trees. A child would have loved it. A fairy would have appropriated it at first sight. As an architect, the model made a great appeal to me. It had charm and atmosphere, good massing, good proportions, detail and color. I complimented her enthusiastically.

She was poking about the little front porch and the platform in the rear, where a miniature ash-barrel stood, adjusting the doors and blinds with her slender forefinger, when she frowned and said:

"Why, some one's broken that tree in front! Leah, have you been touching this house? There's a blind gone, too!"

"No, Miss Joy, I haven't touched it!" Leah protested.

Miss Fielding stamped her foot. "You must have! It was all right when I left it here last. Who could have done it, if you didn't?"

Leah grew more and more uneasy, but stood her ground. "Indeed, I didn't touch it, Miss Joy!" she repeated.

"You're all the time meddling with my things. I've caught you at it before. You know altogether too much. Well, go back to your work now!"

Leah left in silence, and Miss Fielding put back the house and locked it up. A hard look came into her face that I had not seen before.

Her temper passed off almost as soon as it had risen, and she was as gay as before. So until luncheon-time, she worked while I looked over the magazines and talked with her.

We sat, at luncheon, on opposite sides of the table in a long and rather narrow room without windows, lighted by a huge skylight. The walls of this strange place were covered with an old-fashioned imitation tapestry paper whose fanciful patterns consisted of consecutive scenes from _The Lady of the Lake_. Everything about the table was heavy, spotless, valuable and old, from the yellow linen to the hand-made forks and spoons. We were waited upon by King, a smiling, round-faced Chinaman with a cue coiled up on top of his head, and wearing a snowy white uniform. He moved like a ghost in and out. Leah and Uncle Jerdon I noticed, when the door was opened, eating at a table in the kitchen.

Miss Fielding and I spent the afternoon together in the library. She worked and talked alternately; it appeared that she could not do both at once, and always had to stop with her tool in hand when she spoke to me, like a child. Occasionally she would come over to my chair and seat herself familiarly upon the arm as she joked with me. Then she would spring up, to galumph up and down the room, sidewise, running her hand mischievously through my hair as she passed. I took no notice of the liberty, but I was a little surprised at it. It began to rain that afternoon and by five o'clock it was so dark that Leah came in to light the candles in the silver sconces on the walls. Miss Fielding's spirits were gradually tamed. I asked her to play the violin for me but she refused moodily without excuses.

Our talk fell to books, and I went back to Leah's surprising love for Browning.

"Oh, Leah knows more than is good for her," Miss Fielding said. She was on the window-seat, looking out at the steadily falling rain, her feet curled up under her. "Leah's so educated that she's unhappy; it's a great mistake, that. I can't seem to keep her in her place any more. But really, I don't see any poetry in Browning, do you?"

"Why!" I said, "I thought you were fond of Browning--that you 'felt' him, even if you didn't 'see' him. Didn't Leah do that for you?"

"Leah! Fancy! What d'you mean by 'seeing' and 'feeling' him, anyway?" She turned to me with her chin resting on the curled back of her hand.

"They're your own words," I answered, testily perhaps.

She opened her eyes wider. "Oh, I mean what do _you_ mean?"

I didn't answer.

"If I said it," she continued slowly, as if searching for a plausible excuse, and then giving it up, "I suppose I was trying to impress you. You mustn't expect me to be consistent _all_ the time."

"I'll never expect you to be again," I said, now irritated by her contrariness. I suppose I showed it in my tone.

She came right over to me, and took my hand, sitting on the arm of my chair. "Oh, Chet," she pleaded, "don't mind me. I'm a fool, and I know it. I know you don't approve of me any more, but I can't stand it to have you cross with me. I can't bluff you any longer, so I might as well tell you. The fact is, my memory is bad. It's really a disease. Amnesia is the name of it. Now do you see? It isn't my fault, is it? I can't depend upon myself for anything. Sometimes I absolutely forget all about a thing that happened only yesterday. I have great blank spaces in my life when I don't know what has happened. It's perfectly awful! Did you ever hear of any one like that?"

"Do you really mean to tell me that you forget what you said to me about Browning?" I asked her, taking her hand, for I was filled with a sudden pity.

"Yes, Chet, sure I do!" She rolled my seal ring between her fingers as she looked down.

"And about preferring 'Joy' to 'Edna', too?"

"Oh, did I say that, too? Yes, I forget."

"It doesn't seem possible!" I exclaimed. Then, tentatively, almost fearfully, for it seemed the crux: "And about 'the island'?" I held my breath.

"What 'island'?"

I dropped her hand. It was too much for me. "Oh, never mind." I sighed. "I'm very sorry. But I don't quite see, yet. Has this anything to do with your refusal to play for me?"

She rose, now, and tossed her head back, with that shake I had noticed before. The gesture seemed to be the only link between her two moods, and, for a moment, she seemed to be again the melancholy princess. But the phase passed instantly, and she grew petulant.

"I don't know how to play well enough. It bores me."

I refused to let her off, however. "Then how about playing chess?"

She shrugged her shoulders and said: "Oh, I haven't got the kind of brain for chess."

My mind leaped over the remark, obviously untrue, to get to the other side of the perversity, where I might see more clearly.

"But it's incredible!" I cried. "How do you get along? How do you account for things? Do you mean to tell me that you can't remember yesterday, for instance? Not even what you did?"

She was growing more and more impatient. "No--sometimes I don't know how much time I've lost at all. You see, it's like being asleep, that's all. That's what Doctor Copin comes down here for."

"Oh, I see!" I exclaimed.

"That, and other things--" she hinted coquettishly.

"Ah?" I raised my eyebrows. "Among the other things, I suppose, is the fact that you're perfectly charming."

"Oh, I don't think he quite ignores that," she laughed, and then, her mood changing, as if it had been pent up by such serious discussion and sought relief, she bounded away and galumphed madly up and down the room, waving her hands.

After dinner we spent the evening by the fire. She had put on an evening gown of black net over silver tissue, in which she looked more like a princess than ever. But it was only the costume now; her demeanor was far from royal. She snuggled herself into a bunch on the fur rug by the hearth, disclosing one slender ankle and a stocking of snaky silver silk. Had she not been so slender and _petite_, I might almost say she sprawled, though her hoidenish abandon was not quite immodest. She had her coffee and a cigarette or two, chattering a steady stream meanwhile. I could get no more about her malady out of her; the subject seemed to annoy her. But I could not get it out of my mind. I went back over what had passed, and found that her explanation accounted for much that had baffled me. Still, it did not account for everything. It did not account, for instance, for the way she now treated me.

[Illustration: After dinner we spent the evening by the fire.]

She got up, after a while, as if annoyed at my abstraction, and began to roam up and down the room.

"I guess coffee makes me a little drunk," she remarked. I did not quite get the point of this till she stopped behind my chair and ran her fingers through my hair carelessly.

"What a jolly wig you've got, Chet! Your hair is almost as fine as mine."

The familiarity made me, I confess, somewhat uncomfortable. I was neither a prig nor a prude, but her talk of the afternoon had wrought on me. I couldn't quite see my way. I didn't at all like, for instance, what she had said about Doctor Copin's coming down--for more than one reason. Perhaps it was this, more than any instinctive dislike of her unconventionality, that put me on my guard with her, and made me appear to ignore what I acknowledge, in other circumstances I might have been tempted to take advantage of. For she was distinctly making up to me. I could see that very plainly. She did like me. So I was unchivalrous enough, or chivalrous enough, if you like, to try to keep her at arm's length, though that is putting it rather too strongly.

It was not so easy, though, that night, with the seclusion, the comfortable open fire, the soft lights, and the rain outside. The situation was romantic; I was alone with a pretty girl, prettily gowned, and quite frankly desirous of a little more intimate companionship than I vouchsafed. Somehow I was rather proud of myself, having at that time, after all, such hazy reasons for forbearance. I scarcely need add to this that I was becoming fond of Miss Fielding, in spite of the puzzling mystery about her. She was alluring in any mood. My intuitions, however, were all for caution.

With such distractions the hours flew fast. The candles burned low and flickered till we talked only by the light of the fire. She told me a good deal of her life as a girl--there were no lapses of memory at that time--how she had been left an orphan and had always been more or less of a hermit thereafter. Part of the time she played with my hand, quite as a child might. Part of the time she sat, her chin at her knees, gazing into the dying flames in the fireplace. Then she would smile, look up suddenly, and quote some nonsense rhyme, or make fun of my discretion. Her body was never quite still; she was nervous and restless. If nothing else about her moved, her toe would be describing little circles on the rug.

She and Leah helped me up-stairs at ten o'clock. Miss Fielding flung me a cheery "Good night, Chet!" and went into her room alone.

A few minutes after, I heard a soft tapping at my door. Leah was there with a jug of milk and some biscuits.

"I thought you might like something to eat, perhaps, before you went to bed," she said. "Miss Joy forgot to speak of it."

"Thank you, Leah," I said, taking the little tray. I was about to close the door when she gave me a look that delayed me.

"Did you want anything else?" I asked.

"Do you mind if I speak to you for a minute?" she asked. She stopped and listened intently for a moment.

"Leah, where in the world are you?" Miss Fielding called impatiently.

Leah, spoke in an undertone to me. "Please wait. I'll be in as soon as I can." Then she went into Miss Fielding's room.

I left my door ajar and sat down by the window. The rain had ceased, and a full moon was breaking through masses of drifting cumulous clouds over the top of the hill behind the house. I could hear the dogs snapping and growling occasionally in their sleep, and below, in his little box of a room off the library, Uncle Jerdon's deep snoring. I must have been there for fifteen minutes before Leah reappeared with her candle. She shut the door noiselessly and came softly up to my side.

"Mr. Castle, how are you feeling, now?" she asked.

"Oh, I'm afraid I'm getting well," I said, smiling. "Why? Do you think I ought to be leaving?" I asked the question jocosely, but she took it up with seriousness.

"I'm really afraid you'd better, Mr. Castle." She looked me square in the eyes. Her own shone very wide and deep.

"I don't wish to hurry you," she went on, "but it will be much better for you to leave as soon as you can. You'll forgive me for mentioning it, won't you? I hope that you won't think that I don't realize my position; but--I can only say that I am doing what I think is best. If I weren't so sure that you are a gentleman, and a friend of Miss Joy's, I'd never dare mention it. But, oh, there'll be trouble if you stay, and Heaven knows we've had trouble enough." Her voice grew lower at the end of her sentence, and then she breathed poignantly, "Oh, _please_ go!"

I felt a pang of self-reproach and a great pity for her. "Oh, I'll go!" I reassured her. "I understand. Or, at least, if I don't quite understand, I'm sure you're quite right. I think I can get away to-morrow morning, if you'll get the carriage for me."

"I'll attend to that. Uncle Jerdon can drive you to the station. And don't, please, mention it to Miss Joy that I spoke to you about it. She may ask you to stay--she likes you, really; but she doesn't know what I know, and I don't dare tell her." She clasped her hands and pressed them closely to her breast in the intensity of her feeling, as she added, "You must help me, Mr. Castle! I have nobody else to turn to."

"Are you sure that I can't help you by staying here?" I asked. "I'll do anything you suggest. Why can't you trust me? I dread to think of your having to fight it out alone, whatever it is."

"Oh, I don't dare to tell--I have no right to tell," she moaned, turning half away, looking down. "Indeed, I wish I might. It's breaking my heart." She turned to me again with a desperate glance. "We'll get on, somehow."

"The doctor will help you, won't he? Surely you can trust him?"

She gave me a frightened look, and her white teeth shone through her parted lips, gleaming in contrast to her fine dark face. Then her eyes strayed again, and she said, slowly, "Do _you_ think he can be trusted?"

"Why not?" I replied, watching her sharply. "How, at any rate, can I tell, after having seen him only once?"

She gave a quick indrawn sigh. "Oh, once was enough for _me_!"

"You mean--that you _don't_ trust him?" I exclaimed in surprise.

"I mean I'm not sure that I do." She was speaking slowly now, choosing her words with an effort. "That's quite as bad, isn't it? For I don't know what to do about him. I am afraid that I may make things worse, perhaps."

"You're sure that you can't tell me?"

"Oh, I daren't! If I were only sure, I might, but even then it would be hard." Her voice was plaintive, and yet her accent was decisive.

There was a pause in which I thought of many things. As I waited, uncertain, my eyes stayed on the fine, erect, colored girl before me, so passionately loyal to her mistress, so delicately sensitive to the anomalous part she was playing. Though her resolution had in no way broken down, I could see how she was wrought upon, how difficult a position was hers in that strange house.

"Well," I said finally, "there's of course nothing for me to do, then, but to leave. Miss Fielding has told me explicitly that your judgment can be depended upon. I have no right here, of course; I'm an interloper----"

She put a dark, well-shaped hand on my arm, in timid reproach.

"Yet, I hope you can trust me," I added, not hesitating to clasp that hand in friendship and confidence.

She took it away quickly, but looked at me with her soul in her dark eyes. "Oh, I'm sure of you!" she said simply.

"You make it very hard for me to go," I ventured.

"I shall think of you," she replied. "I shall long for your strength and judgment. I must think it over, more, and try to decide on a line of

## action. It may be--I won't promise--that I shall send for you to come

down."

"I'll come at a moment's notice!" I exclaimed. "Oh, do let me help in some way!"