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The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point; or a Wreck and a Rescue, a novel by Laura Lee Hope |
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Chapter 23. The Shadow Lifts |
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_ CHAPTER XXIII. THE SHADOW LIFTS "I wonder if it is going to rain forever," cried Mollie petulantly, beating a restless tattoo on the window pane. "As if we weren't forlorn enough without the old weather making things a hundred times worse." "They say troubles never come singly, and I guess they're right," sighed Amy. She was sitting near the window in the brightest spot she could find--which was not very bright at that--knitting and trying her best not to think of Will. The result was that he was never for a minute out of her mind. "What's the matter, Grace--I mean more than usual?" Betty laid aside her book and looked over at Grace questioningly. "I don't believe you've said three consecutive words all day long." "And left to myself I wouldn't say that much," returned Grace moodily, adding, as they turned to stare at her: "It seems as if I never open my mouth these days but what I say something unpleasant, so I made up my mind last night that I wouldn't talk till I had something cheerful to talk about." "Then you're apt to be dumb till doomsday," retorted Mollie, with such a depth of pessimism that the girls had to smile at her. "What an awful thing to happen to a girl," said Betty, with a wry little smile. "I'm glad you didn't say what girl," retorted Grace, and therewith subsided into her gloomy meditation again. Betty took up her book and Amy went on with her knitting while the rain came down in torrents and the surf thundered and roared. Mollie turned from the window and looked at them, and the whole situation suddenly appealed to her rather hysterical sense of humor. She began to laugh, and the longer she laughed the harder she laughed till she sank into a chair and shook with mirth. The other girls first looked surprised, then alarmed. Betty threw down her book and went over to her. "For goodness sake, Mollie, what's the joke?" she asked, as Mollie looked up at her with red face and watery eyes. "If it's as funny as all that I think you might share it with us," added Grace. "Oh, it isn't funny," gasped Mollie, "it's h-horrible." Then as suddenly as she had begun to laugh, she began to cry with great sobs that tore themselves from her and seemed utterly beyond her control. Alarmed, the girls soothed and patted and comforted her till finally the storm had passed and she became more quiet. "You must think I'm a p-perfect idiot," she sputtered, raising swollen eyes to them. "I don't know what in the w-world g-got into me. I just went all to pieces." "So we see," said Betty, while she gently wiped Mollie's eyes with a clean handkerchief. "But please don't do it again," she added whimsically. "I don't believe we could survive another one." "But it's made me feel better," said Mollie, a minute later, as though the discovery surprised her. "It's made me feel lots better," she added. "I wonder if we couldn't all try it," suggested Amy. "Yes, how do you get that way," added Grace, with interest. "I'm willing to try anything once." "It--it isn't pleasant while it lasts," said Mollie, adding with a suggestion of a smile: "And I doubt if I could give you the recipe." "I wonder," Amy suggested shyly after a little while, "if perhaps a little music wouldn't help out. Won't you play for us, Betty?" "Oh, Betty, please!" Grace took up the suggestion eagerly. "It would take our minds off ourselves." "Yes, do, Betty. You know you never refuse," urged Mollie, jumping up and escorting the Little Captain to the piano. Betty obediently sat down to the piano, but her fingers wandered over the keys uncertainly. She did not want to play. Music, good music, always roused in her a feeling of exquisite sadness, a pain that was akin to joy, and in her present mood she was afraid to play. But the girls had asked her to, and if it would make them feel any better-- She struck a chord of exquisite harmony, and every fibre in her seemed yearningly to respond. She had meant to play something bright and cheerful, but almost against her will her fingers wandered into Grieg's "To Spring." The elusive, plaintive melody floated throbbingly out into the room, while the girls sat motionless, fascinated. They had never heard Betty play just this way before, and instinctively they knew that she was showing them her heart. She played it through to the last whispering note, then dropped her head upon her arms and sobbed as though her heart would break. "You shouldn't have asked me," she said, when they tried to comfort her. "I knew I couldn't play without making a f-fool of myself. It was the one--Allen loved best--" the last words so low that they had to bend close to hear them. "Poor little Betty!" cried Mollie, stroking her hair gently. "It was selfish of us to ask you, but you did play it wonderfully," she added with a sudden little burst of enthusiasm. "You had us all hypnotized." "And then I had to go and spoil everything by making a baby of myself," Betty lamented. "Goodness, I've cried more in the last week than in all the rest of my life before." "Well, you have had plenty of company," said Grace dryly. "Though what comfort that is, I never could see." Betty sat up, dabbed a last tear from her eyes, and looked about her with a weak little attempt at a smile. "Well," she said, "now that Mollie and I have entertained the company, I wonder who's next?" "I'll recite that little ditty entitled, 'The Face On the Barroom Floor'," Amy volunteered. "Some kind person wished it upon me when I was too young to object." "Don't you dare," said Grace, alarmed. "If you do I'm going out, rain or no rain--" "And get drowned." "Well, there are worse things." "No there aren't," denied Amy, with a shiver. "I know, because I tried it." At that moment came an interruption in the shape of a sharp rapping at the kitchen door. The girls looked at one another questioningly. "Mercy, I wonder who's calling upon us in this weather?" said Mollie. "It might be a good idea to look and see," Betty returned dryly, and ran to the kitchen, followed closely by the others. She flung open the door, letting in a gust of wind and a flood of rain as she did so, and a tall figure in a rubber coat almost fell into the room. "Why, it's our delivery-boy-mail-carrier!" cried Betty, as the young giant recovered himself and pulled off his dripping hat. "Yes'm," he replied, with a good-natured grin that stretched from ear to ear. "The very same, an' at your service." "But how did you manage to get here?" cried Betty, too astonished even to offer the unexpected visitor a seat. "You never could drive through that awful mud." "No'm, I reckon mos' likely I couldn't," he answered amiably, adding with a return of the loquacity that was his most marked failing: "I remember one year we had a storm near's bad as this, an' Luke Bailey, he got kind of short o' pervisions--campin' in the woods he was--an' he tried to drive his team into town--" "But you said you didn't drive out!" Grace interrupted. "And if you didn't drive, you must have walked all the way." "Yes'm, reckon I did. Well, Luke he got jest about as fur--" "But why did you come?" broke in Mollie, unable to bear the suspense any longer. "I got this here package of letters," he replied, seeming suddenly to remember the cause of his errand. "Some o' them came a couple o' days ago, but I said to myself I might jest as well wait an' see if the weather didn't clear up--" "And so when it didn't, you walked away up here in all the rain," Betty finished for him, real gratitude in her voice. "It was most awfully kind of you." "Oh, that ain't nothin'," he denied, fidgeting uneasily, while Mollie hastily sorted the letters. "I ain't never finished tellin' you what happened to Luke Bailey--" He was off again, and the girls were vaguely conscious of his voice rambling on and on while they eagerly scanned the handwriting on their letters. Then suddenly Betty gave a little cry and stumbled back against the table, holding on to it for support. "Betty! Honey! What is it?" cried Amy. "You look as white as a ghost." "A letter," she gasped, holding out an envelope with the familiar red diamond in the corner. She was shaking from head to foot. "Girls, oh, girls, it's from Allen!" Then she turned and fled from the room. Luke Bailey's biographer stared after her stupidly while the girls gasped and looked wildly at one another for confirmation of what they had heard. "A letter!" she had said. "From Allen!" Then he was not dead--their dazed brains comprehended that fact. And he could not be missing either. After a minute that stupefying fact became equally clear. Then slowly they regained the use of their tongues. "Did you hear what I heard?" asked Mollie, looking from Grace to Amy and back again. "I think I'm awake," Grace answered, with the same incredulous look in her eyes. "She said," Amy repeated slowly, "that she had received a letter from Allen. Then the report that he was missing must have been a mistake." "It looks that way," said Mollie, two spots of color beginning to burn in her face. Then she turned to the boy who was still staring stupidly from one to the other of them. Even the story of Luke Bailey had been temporarily driven from his mind. "Miss Nelson," Mollie explained, taking pity on his bewilderment, "has received the most wonderful news, and we can't thank you enough for bringing it to her. Can't we get you a cup of tea or something?" she offered, rather vaguely. But the boy refused, and seeing that they were all tremendously excited about something, he finally took his leave, feeling very much abused that his story of Luke and his adventures had not been listened to with the attention it deserved. Once the door was closed behind this angel in disguise, the girls rushed after Betty and were met and nearly bowled over by that delirious little person herself. "He's not missing--never was!" she cried, waving the letter wildly in the air, beside herself with relief and joy. "He's just as well as ever he was, and Grace darling, and Amy, too, he says, he says--" "Oh, what?" cried Grace, her face growing white while Amy clutched the back of a chair. Betty tried to pull herself together. She turned the pages of the letter in search of a particular place. Finding it, she began: "He says that Will--Oh read it," she cried, thrusting the letter into Grace's hands. "There it is--that paragraph. Read it aloud, Grace. Oh, I think--I think--I'll die of joy!" _ |
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