CHAPTER XVII AN ANNOUNCEMENT

AN occasional early spring day was making its appearance in the Connecticut valley. Only a few faint spears of green showed on the long, pointed fingers of the willow trees, a bursting of the hardiest buds on the lilac bushes, while the pussy willow was enjoying its usual triumph, the first harbinger of the approaching season.

As a matter of fact, when the Girl Scouts and their Troop Captain set out on their afternoon hike, except to eager and trained eyes winter was still chiefly in evidence.

In out-of-the-way places there were thin layers of ice with the melted water showing beneath. The skies were gray, with rare streaks of blue, the atmosphere had the clear sharpness of recent frost, the wind blew with a definite chillness.

The group of twelve girls and their Captain were on their way to Beechwood Forest, where they had spent the previous summer in camping.

191 “Do you suppose we can manage to stop by the House in the Woods and see Miss Frean? I have not seen her in ages!” Dorothy McClain remarked. “Do you see as much of her as usual, Tory?”

Her companion shook her head.

“No; I don’t believe Memory cares for me as much as she did when we first knew each other. It is difficult to explain. She is as kind and charming as ever, but I have lost the feeling that she wants me with her. Uncle Richard no longer goes to see her. I don’t know what could have happened and he declined to explain. After Memory’s illness in the early winter he used to call on her frequently. I have sometimes wondered if I remind her too much of him. But here I am romancing again! Glad you do not object so seriously as Kara!”

The girls were not walking in drill formation and so were able to talk with one another.

Louise Miller at this moment caught up with her two friends.

“Forgive me if I overheard a part of what you were saying, Tory,” she began, “and forgive me again if I say that I don’t think you ought to have thought or expressed such an opinion. Miss Frean is as fond of you as192 she ever was. There is no question that she has more real affection for you than any other of the Girl Scouts. The other thing you spoke of is her own affair and I don’t feel you should have mentioned it.”

Louise had an abrupt, awkward fashion of speech that at times made her family and friends angry.

Reproachfully Dorothy McClain shook her head at this moment.

Tory had a quick temper. She rarely made unfortunate remarks to other persons, and having beautiful manners under most circumstances, perhaps possessed the right to resent the lack of them in other people.

At this moment she flushed and bit her lips, but made no reply.

“Don’t you think, after all, that what Tory thinks and declares is her own affair and not yours, Ouida? When did you decide to become the censor of our manners?”

Dorothy’s tone held a slight dryness that was a sharper rebuke than irritation, especially as she so rarely criticized the other girl, in spite of their years of intimacy.

“Dorothy is right, I beg your pardon, Tory,” Louise faltered, a slow color making her heavy features less attractive.

193 “The truth is I am so grateful for what Miss Frean has offered to do for me that I am too ready to defend her where I have no shadow of justification.”

“What is Memory going to do for you, Louise?” Tory inquired, having fought and conquered her sudden gust of temper. She was learning more self-control of late, when she had been tried in more than one fashion.

“Perhaps I should not have said what I did, but Dorothy and I have grown so intimate over the problem of Kara’s strange attitude that I tell her most things. I suppose Memory is helping you because she thinks you are specially in need of her help. She has a way of passing herself from one person to the other for this reason.”

Louise hesitated.

“I am one of the most awkward persons in the world, Tory, and you are a dear not to be angry! I overheard what was not intended for me and reproached you for it.

“Yes, I do need Miss Frean’s help. I have not had a happy winter, things at home are becoming more and more difficult. It is just such things as my having made that impolite speech to you without intending or realizing how it might affect you, that makes my mother194 hopeless concerning me. I thought after last summer I would improve.”

“Yes, Ouida, but come to the point. What is Miss Frean to do to help reconcile you to life? Don’t you suppose I appreciate that things have been specially hard for you at home? Perhaps you have not been conscious of the fact, but I have seen less of you this winter than since we were tiny girls. Even old Don noticed the fact and asked me what was the matter,” Dorothy McClain protested.

For just a flashing moment Louise’s heavy features lightened and Tory caught the look of affectionate devotion in the large, pale-gray eyes with their queerly fringed lashes.

“No day has passed without my seeing you, Dorothy, when I have not missed you and longed for you. But I knew you had Tory and the excitement of Lance and Kara. Then mother did not wish me to see so much of you,” Louise added with her fatal tactlessness.

At this it was Dorothy whose color flushed her clear, bright skin. Her gray-blue eyes dropped.

“Sorry your mother thinks I am a bad influence! Perhaps I am! Only, Tory, I trust Miss Victoria and Mr. Fenton will not reach the same conclusion, or I should be deserted indeed.”

195 “Now you are hurting Ouida. Do let’s be sensible and stop arguing. Louise did not mean that her mother considered you an undesirable character, Dorothy. Perhaps she may be just a little jealous of Louise’s affection for you. We are but mortals, all of us, even mothers, I suppose, although Dorothy has no mother and I only a stepmother.” Tory made an amusing grimace. “I would like to recall the fact, Louise, that we still are in the dark with regard to you and Memory Frean. Here, I may as well confess my jealousy. I don’t like Louise being more of a favorite than I am, just as I resented Edith Linder, I suppose.”

“Oh, it is nothing to create envy, hatred, malice or other uncharitableness, Tory,” Louise answered, her serenity restored, and smiling happily. “You would hate what Miss Frean and I are planning to do. I am to be allowed to spend an afternoon each week with her and go on with the studies of the outdoors that I found so thrilling during our summer camp. We are going to study tree-ology and bug-ology and stone-ology. Miss Frean insists she does not know about them, but we can work outdoors together and she will have as much pleasure as I feel. This196 cannot be true, but is a delightful idea. She does not think it absurd for me to wish to become a naturalist. One may have it for a pastime at least! Anyhow, I won’t do what I dislike all the time!”

Half an hour later one would scarcely have believed in the lessening of the affection between Tory Drew and Memory Frean.

The Troop of Scouts and their Captain having halted at the House in the Woods, Miss Frean had been persuaded to join them for the deeper walk into the forest.

The beech woods were full of shadows and little shivery, sighing winds. A few seared leaves that had clung all winter to the otherwise bare branches rattled and shook like castanets. The younger beeches showed a few uncurling leaves and ripples of light along the gray-brown bark of their trunks.

On the ground under the trees were the first spring beauties and wild pale violets.

The girls had scattered into groups and were investigating the favorite haunts of the past summer.

Tory Drew led Miss Frean apart from the others and away from the woods toward the shore of the small lake. Above rose the three pine hills.

197 The girl shrugged her shoulders with a faintly nervous gesture.

“I don’t like the woods to-day for some reason, Memory; they are kind of ghosty and unfriendly. I like shining places filled with light and color.”

The older woman shook her head.

“You are too impressionable, Tory dear! I wish you would not always yield to your fancies.”

In response Tory smiled and dropped her head an instant against her companion’s shoulder with one of her favorite gestures of affection.

“It is nice to hear you scold. I was just telling Dorothy and Louise that you had ceased to care for me as you did in the beginning of our friendship. I have not enjoyed it.”

“You are mistaken, Tory. I care for you perhaps more than ever. Your winter has been more absorbed than you realize in your interest in the strange circumstances concerning Kara and in your concern over Lance McClain. Besides, I thought it best to realize I might be making a mistake if I should become too devoted to one Girl Scout who might any day go away to join her father and her friends and Westhaven see her no more.”

198 There was a gravity in her companion’s voice that startled the girl, who had been only half in earnest.

“Why, I am not going away, Memory! At least I have no idea of any such possibility! Father has said nothing of it. And in any case I should always come back to Westhaven. There is Uncle Richard and you and the Girl Scouts! Why did you make such a suggestion? Do you remember that when you presented me with my talisman you said I would learn to love Westhaven with all my heart and that no matter where I might be I would wander back now and then?”

Miss Frean nodded.

“Yes, Tory, I remember very well. I want to make a confession. I was growing too fond of you to be content with an occasional sight of you, perhaps with a year or years in between. So I came to my senses and concluded I had no possible claim upon you except that we must always be good friends and you must come to me freely at any time when I can be of use.”

Tory’s face clouded.

“I see. So before anything happened you put me out of your life and thought, just as you must have Uncle Richard many years ago.”

199 If Tory’s speech startled her companion it was as unexpected in her own ears. What a fatal gift she had of speaking from the depth of her inner thought!

“Tory!” Miss Frean exclaimed.

“I am sorry. I had not intended to be rude, only what I said must be true. You are such a self-sufficient person, Memory Frean, and Uncle Richard and I are not. We have found we are a good deal alike since we have been living together, although I never believed I was in the least like my mother’s people. I suppose you won’t tell me why you will not allow Uncle Richard to be friends with you at present? He was enjoying coming to see you, and he calls on very few people.”

The older woman hesitated, her blue eyes, ordinarily serene, looking uncertain and troubled.

“You are an impetuous person, Tory, and will never fail in this world for any lack of sincerity. After all, there is no reason why I should not tell you what you ask! You may be annoyed with me, but I think I am right.”

Tory sighed.

“Yes, I suppose you are. You are one of the persons who would be right, yet I have an idea it has been hard for Uncle Richard.”

200 Her speech made Miss Frean’s answer more difficult, nevertheless she went on firmly:

“Your uncle and I were more than friends when we were younger. I don’t know how much or how little you have been told. His family never wished him to marry me, and for that and other reasons our engagement was broken. I have never cared for any one since. Well, this winter when we renewed our friendship I was enjoying it. I am lonelier than you believe, Tory, with your rather hard opinion of me. But by and by, Richard—Mr. Fenton seemed to have the impression that we might ignore the passing of nearly twenty years. I thought he was mistaken and that it was wiser we should not meet often. Do you understand?”

Tory shrugged her shoulders with the little foreign gesture that she had not yet wholly lost.

“Yes; how can I fail to understand? It is just as I thought.”

The silence that followed was not comfortable and Miss Frean added:

“Suppose we don’t talk about ourselves, Tory. Please tell me about Kara. I am deeply interested and not so surprised as most people by her attitude toward Mr. Moore.”

“Well, I am surprised and, more than that,201 I am awfully annoyed with Kara. Not that it makes the slightest difference to her. You know Kara is one of the quietly firm people whom one cannot change. She must see for herself.

“She has decided to accept the fact that Mr. Moore is her guardian in the sense that her mother begged this favor of him many years ago, not otherwise. She has declined to allow him legally to adopt her. She is friendly but does not wish him to do anything for her. She says that he will not find her congenial and that as soon as she is well enough she wants to come back to the Gray House on the Hill until she has finished school. Nothing will induce her to give up the idea that she wishes to make her own living as soon as she is strong enough. In the meantime she is studying stenography whenever she has any leisure. And actually Mr. Hammond and Dr. McClain and Uncle Richard uphold her. They say they admire her spirit. Mr. Hammond has given Kara a typewriter which she was at least gracious enough to accept. She has taken nothing from poor Mr. Moore, who wants to be as nice as possible, except books and candy and flowers. She has condescended to drive with him a few times. I really think202 Kara is partly obstinate because I used to tell her she would be sure to develop a romantic history. She insisted I wanted her to have a rich guardian and to grow up and marry him like the sentimental stories of girls in orphan asylums the world over. So now Kara, who might have a rich guardian, repudiates him!”

Memory Frean laughed.

“Well, I must say I too admire Kara’s fortitude. And we all suffer a little from your romantic tendencies, Tory. By and by Kara will become more friendly. Naturally she is more concerned with getting well at present.”

“If she does not recover in New York, Mr. Moore has spoken of taking Kara and Lance to Europe so that Lance can study music and Kara see what can be done for her. If she does not get well I don’t see how she can refuse this. I believe Kara would accept anything to make her walk again, even if she insisted on earning the money in the future and returning it to Mr. Moore.

“Isn’t it nearly teatime, Memory? I see several of the girls walking toward the evergreen cottage.”

The arrangement had been that after a walk to the woods the Girl Scouts and their203 Captain would have tea inside their cabin with Philip Winslow, the artist, who had been living there during the winter and been added as a member of the Girl Scout Council.

At this moment he and the Troop Captain were walking away from the cabin toward them.

“Tory, if you are determined upon a romance, have you ever thought there may be any deeper feeling between Mr. Winslow and Sheila than mere friendship? I know she has been very kind to him all winter, wishing to make him feel less a stranger in Westhaven.”

Tory laughed.

“Thought of a romance between them? Why, Dorothy and I feel perfectly certain. Haven’t you noticed not only the change in Mr. Winslow but in Sheila? Isn’t she gay and charming? She never talks of being unhappy any more. Dorothy and I are so pleased and responsible. You see, we really persuaded Mr. Winslow to come to Westhaven and actually Dorothy suggested the idea of Sheila’s helping him to recover from some disappointment we felt sure he had suffered. Sheila was annoyed but seems to have followed the advice.”

No other conversation upon the subject204 was possible, since at this moment the Troop Captain and Philip Winslow were within a few yards of Tory and Miss Frean.

“We were afraid you would forget to come to the cabin in time for our feast,” Sheila Mason remarked, slipping her hand inside Miss Frean’s. “There is something I want to tell you.”

Tory and Philip Winslow were walking on together.

“I have had a piece of good luck, Tory. I want you to congratulate me. You have been my mascot, you see.”

“Good luck? I am so glad! Dorothy and I thought it was true, but we were not sure. It is such a heavenly relief to know.”

Her companion appeared puzzled and amused.

“How could you have guessed I was going to receive a prize at the National Academy exhibition this year? I had no conception of any such good fortune, myself. And what’s more I have sold the picture for two thousand dollars. I believe the fates have turned and I am now in their good graces. This is all due to you and my coming to Westhaven and becoming, well, not a Girl Scout, as you once suggested, but the nearest205 thing I could manage, a member of your Council.”

In spite of the good news Tory made no immediate reply.

“Aren’t you going to congratulate me, Tory? I thought we artists had a fellow feeling for each other! As a matter of fact, I thought we were great friends. Some day I am going to be proud of you as an artist, Tory, when your time comes.”

Still Tory was reluctant and surprisingly ungracious.

“Oh, yes, I do congratulate you,” she said finally with a change in manner and tone. “And it is not only because of the picture, although that is wonderful, but I realize this will help with the other thing. Not that she would care, but that you will feel so much more sure of yourself and your future.”

If Tory was not very clear or coherent, Mr. Winslow made no pretence of not understanding her.

“Yes, Tory, I did not dare to speak to Sheila until this happened. She and I were going to tell the Girl Scouts when we had finished tea, but I am glad to tell you first and alone.

“We are to build a house near Westhaven206 and for a time I am going to make pictures of this beautiful Connecticut valley. We will work together, you and I, Tory. The disappointed, dissatisfied man you met in the old New York studio not many months ago seems almost a stranger. Come, they are waiting for us.”