CHAPTER XIX QUEER CONFIDENCE

When the excitement died down, and Nancy found an opportunity to “look Rosa over,” as she expressed her scrutiny of the cousin’s physical condition, she found so many cuts, scratches, bruises and other marks of violence, that she really wanted to call Margot in to attend to their cleansing and bandaging.

“I tell you, Nance, they’re all right,” insisted Rosa rather petulantly. “I don’t poison easily and those are all scratches from the trees and bushes.”

“But just see that long cut on the side of your leg—”

“A wire, I guess it was a barbed wire—”

“That’s always dangerous,” interrupted Nancy. “The rust is one of the worst things. Rosa, how could you be so silly?” Nancy’s patience was by no means abundant. She213 hated to see Rosa’s skin torn that way; besides, she realized the danger of it.

“Nancy Brandon!” called out the cousin in a determined voice, “you have no idea what I went through. Orilla acted like a lunatic and I was honestly afraid of her. She seems quite fond of you—” there was sarcasm in this—“that is, she spoke of you as if you and she were pals. Just another one of her oddities, of course, so I let it go that way.”

Here was Nancy’s chance to tell Rosa why the girl considered her friendly. But the hot flush in her cheeks warned her. Besides, there was in Nancy’s mind a new thought. It came when Orilla had smiled at her in the woods. Perhaps Nancy could help Orilla!

So the moment passed and the cousins continued to bathe and bind the scratches. Rosa’s hands were cruelly torn and, as the girls talked, Rosa gave Nancy an inkling of the whole absurd plot.

“I never expected she would ask me to chop down trees, of course,” explained Rosa. “She had always insisted that what I needed was214 hard work. She made fun of me for being soft, and I suppose that made me mad. At any rate, she promised that I would lose five pounds a week if I faithfully followed her advice.”

“Five pounds a week?” repeated Nancy, incredulously.

“Yes. And you see, if I lost twenty pounds in the month the folks are in Europe I would be quite—quite slender when they came back,” and she smiled so prettily that Nancy wondered Why she wanted to spoil those dimples with trimming off their scallops.

“And she was going to do all that—with violent exercise?” Nancy questioned in amazement.

“That and—starvation.” Rosa uttered the last word tragically. “I didn’t promise to starve but—now, Coz, haven’t I been humble enough? You don’t want to hear any more of the horrible details, do you?”

“Well, I’d like to know,” continued Nancy cautiously, “why she wanted the trees cut215 down? What was she going to do with them?”

“That’s just what I wanted to know, too,” Rosa said in reply. “I knew for a long time that she had some secret scheme; you know the night I hurt my foot we saw that she had a hatchet in her car, but she has never told me what the real plan was. I’ve known Orilla since I was a baby, and I suppose I’m used to her ways, but I must say she is secretive. And sly! I couldn’t find out the least thing, ever, that she didn’t want me to know.”

“Yes, I think she is like that,” agreed Nancy, thereby dismissing for a time at least the mystery of the plot. “But what we have got to do now is to fix up her damages. Rosa, I do wish you would let Margot see that big scratch. I’m no good at nursing and I don’t want to take the responsibility—”

“I’ll be as beautiful as ever in a day or two—see if I don’t,” replied Rosa, making desperate efforts not to wince as she poured the disinfectant over her hands.

“But when Margot smells this drug store216 she’ll surely suspect,” intimated Nancy, for, as she said, the disinfectants had made havoc with the atmosphere of Rosa’s little dressing room, that adjoined her bath.

“I’m always getting cuts on my hands,” replied Rosa. “All I have to do is to hide the rest of me. Margot is pretty busy now, you know. If she hadn’t been she would have heard old Pixley’s story. Can’t that woman talk though?”

Nancy agreed that she could, and that led to further discussion of Mrs. Pixley, Orilla, Mrs. Rigney and some other folks that Nancy had recently become acquainted with.

This was to have been the evening of the dance at Sunset Hotel, but there was now no possibility of the girls attending it. Not only did Rosa’s battered condition make it impossible, but a heavy summer storm had descended upon the mountains, and showed no indications of subsiding.

Rain, wind, thunder, lightning! The girls watched the great spectacle from a west window, and at times it seemed as if the heavens217 were splitting asunder. The lightning flashed in a solid sea of fire behind one great mountain, and this looked indeed as if the sky were rent and another world was breaking through.

Somehow the storm seemed a fitting finish for the turbulent day that Nancy and Rosa had just passed through, and as they watched the display in the heavens they worried about Orilla. Was she safely under shelter? Why did not her mother prevent her foolish work? And, Nancy secretly wondered, what had that little flash of light meant which she had seen flame up suddenly and then die out?

For days following this there was no sign of Orilla nor did any word from her come to Fernlode. But this was in no way unusual, rather was it regarded as a good thing for Rosa and Nancy.

Mrs. Rigney came around occasionally, Nancy noticed, and she was surprised to find her a woman of intelligence. She appeared to be on the best of terms with Margot and the other servants at Fernlode, and this seemed218 to be cause for greater wonderment that Orilla should be so antagonistic.

Rosa recovered quickly, as she had promised to, and she also “reformed.” That is, she no longer kept secret trysts with the “fat-killer,” as she now called Orilla, although Nancy knew that letters, messages, and even bundles addressed to Orilla went out very privately from Rosa’s room.

The arrival of a lovely white scales for Rosa’s bath room came as a surprise one day, but a letter from Lady Betty presently explained it.

Rosa was to take long walks with Nancy, as she had promised to do; she was also to follow some sensible advice in the matter of diet, and just to keep up her courage she was to watch the scales!

This plan, which was really the fulfillment of Nancy’s written suggestion to Lady Betty, brought the dove of peace to Fernlode, in so far as Rosa’s conduct was concerned. For in the first week of her trial of it she actually lost three and one half pounds.

219 “And no barked paws nor skinned shins,” she gayly announced to everyone, including, of course, the Durands.

“I can’t see why you didn’t know that insistent exercise and cut-down rations was the real cure,” argued Nancy, reasonably enough. “Even at grammar school, and in the lower grades, babes, fat dimply little ones, are walking miles to school and turning their backs on lollipops.”

“But I hate to walk and I love lollipops,” explained the shameless Rosa.

“And you loved the excitement of a woodland mystery?”

“Yes; I could just see myself in a movie cutting down trees and falling away into skeleton lines. It was romantic now, Nance, wasn’t it, really?”

“Very. Especially when we brought you back on a tray. All carved up like a tatooed injun—”

They yelled at this, and Nancy was so relieved at Rosa’s change of disposition that she,220 Nancy, began to get fat! Just as Lady Betty had hoped!

Everything was so happy and cheerful; Rosa’s friends came almost every afternoon and evening, numbers of them, girls and boys, and at last the summer had opened up into a real vacation for Nancy.

They finally went to a dance at Sunset Hotel, and Rosa wore the blue cape. It was a perfect evening and everyone was so happy that even the sight of the cape upon Rosa’s shoulders failed to bring regret to Nancy. Four car loads of young folks from their summer homes paraded down the hillside road at nine o’clock. It seemed late to Nancy, but she knew better than to say so.

“The hotel children have the ball-room from eight until nine,” Dell had explained, “then the young folks swarm in. Don’t worry about being too young, Nancy. You look like a young lady in that stunning rig.”

The “rig” was stunning, even Nancy conceded that, for it was a flame-colored chiffon robe that fell down straight from her shoulders,221 sleeveless, and with the fashionable high neck. Her dark hair set the flame color off beautifully, as did the glints of her dark eyes, and she really did look lovely. This costume was one of Lady Betty’s presents.

Whether a girl was fourteen or nineteen no one could tell, for the bobbed heads were so much alike and so ineffably youthful, everyone looked very young indeed.

The hotel was fascinating to Nancy; its great posts and pillars flanked with baskets of growing vines, the spectacular lights set all over the ceilings, and the music!

It was a scene of gaiety such as Nancy had never before witnessed, and when Gar had danced with her and had then taken her out to the great porch to see the lake illuminations, Nancy Brandon felt like a girl in a dream. Summer life at a fashionable resort was to her like a page from a book, or a scene in a play.

“But I’d die if I had to stay at a hotel,” Gar assured her as she commented upon the grandeur. “It’s all right once in a while, but222 you would hate this artificial living as a regular diet.”

Nancy agreed that she might, but she also expressed her interest in a sample like this. Rosa had a wonderful time also, the best part of it being the number of compliments she received.

“Wasn’t she getting thin!”

The dance ended early for the Durand party, as Dell was a practical chaperon, and she insisted upon returning to the hills at a reasonable hour. But the memory of that first night stayed in Nancy’s mind just as she remembered her own little party in the Whatnot Shop last year.

Only Ted and her mother had been there to make that first one really complete.