Ladybird (30 page)

“Now,” said Alison, “we’re going into the clubhouse and have a cocktail. Vi said I was to teach you to like them, and I give you fair warning there’s no use trying to get out of it. Then we’re going to have a smoke. It’s time you learned.”

Fraley walked thoughtfully toward the clubhouse, her mouth set in a firm little line. When they reached the porch, she paused.

“Come on,” said Alison, pointing to a group. “The gang’s all here, and Vi said I was to introduce you to them. This is Teddy and Rose Frelingheysen, May Ellen Montgomery, Martha Minter, Jill Rossiter, Jack Schuyler, Sam van Rensalaer, and Dick Willoughby.”

For the “gang” had thronged over to where they stood as if by preconcerted arrangement, and there was no opportunity to escape.

“And here come the drinks!” cried the one they called Dick, as if that were the end and aim of all mornings.

“I’ll wait in the car, Alison, if you’ll excuse me,” said Fraley with sudden determination.

“Not on your life you won’t!” cried Alison, laughing. “I’ve given my word to initiate you before I go home. Put her in a chair, boys, and let her see we mean business.”

Laughingly, they laid hands upon her—those maidens and elegant youths, dressed in the latest importation of fashion, children of fortune who had no need to do anything in the world but play. They literally carried her to a veranda chair with a great whorl of a back that looked like the top of a king’s throne and placed her in it. And then the youth called Jack laughingly held a glass to her lips.

Now it is well known that though you may lead a horse to water you cannot make him drink, and Fraley, though her arms were pinned to the straw arms of the big chair, and though there were so many of her tormentors that she could not hope to get free if she tried, resolutely held her lips closed.

At last the youth who held the glass stood back and said, “Why won’t you taste it? Just taste it!”

Fraley looked him in the eyes. “If I had no reason for not drinking it, I certainly would not drink it now. I will not be
made
to eat or drink or do anything. I would not drink it if you tried to kill me for it.”

There was something in her quiet tone that brought them to their senses, and they looked at one another. There were times perhaps when this group, after they had been drinking all night at a dance, would have kept up the buffoonery even under the gravest circumstances, but it was morning yet, and none of these young people had been drinking that day. They perceived that they were carrying a joke a little too far, and even Violet Wentworth might not uphold them in the torture they were putting upon this fair stranger.

“I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” drawled Alison now, standing in front of her cousin. “If you’ll tell us why you won’t drink or smoke or play bridge, we’ll let you off, but it’s got to be a real honest to goodness reason, and I’m to be the judge, or else we’re going to stay right here till you drink it.”

“Yes, I’ll tell you the reason,” said Fraley, “though I don’t like the way you are trying to force me to it. I don’t play cards or smoke or drink because I’ve seen criminals doing all those three things in the mountain cabin where I was born, till they were beside themselves. I’ve seen them lose every cent they had, and return and curse my little sweet mother and throw things at her, and then take my father, who tried to make them pay what they owed him, and drag him out and push him off the cliff and kill him!”

Fraley’s lips were trembling with feeling, and her eyes were flashing blue fire. As they watched her, the group gradually let go of her hands and stepped back almost respectfully, shocked and amazed, but recognizing the girl’s courage. Fraley looked at them steadily and then turned her eyes on Alison, saw a curl of a sneer on her lips, and was stung into words again.

“And you,” she said, “you who have always had everything you needed all your life, who never knew what it was to be hungry or cold or afraid, who have always been sheltered and cared for, are willing to do the same things that those vile men do. And not only that, but you are trying to make me do them. Alison Fraley, my mother, was your father’s only sister, and she gave her life to protect me and keep me clean. Do you suppose I would let you undo what she gave her lifetime to do, even if you killed me in the attempt?”

Fraley stood up, free. They were all watching her in amazement now, and drinks were forgotten. They were looking at Alison in startled question. There was a quality, too, in their looks of admiration, as Fraley stood and faced them all, a little lovely angry thing with enraged righteousness in her eyes.

“I will go back by myself now,” she said to Alison. “You need not come with me!” And she turned and walked off the porch and down the winding drive of the country club.

“Imposter!”

The word followed her like a hissing serpent.

“So that’s her game!” said the voice of Alison angrily, purposely loud so that she might hear it. “She is going to blackmail the family. She is expecting to get some money out of my father to finance herself. But she’ll find my father is not so easily taken in. My father
had
no sister!”

But Fraley walked steadily on out the gate of the country club and down the road out of sight.

G
eorge Rivington Seagrave was taking a horseback ride by himself. He had wearied of the attention of his hostess and had pleaded a promised call on members of his parish to shake her for the day. And now he had ridden out along the way where he had found the little pilgrim in a tree on his first day in the West.

It did not take him long to find the place and identify the tree.

“The little squirrel!” he said to himself as he stood looking up into the braches. “She must be some climber! Now to think of her going up into that tree as if she were a bird.”

He threw the horse’s rein over the saddle and sat down at the foot of the tree, going over that experience, which was now several months away, for he lingered, week after week, holding down the job for the poor fellow who was slowly recovering but was not yet able to take up his work. The pitiful letters scrawled from the hospital cot were the first thing that held him in the wilds, but later he grew to be interested in the strange, gnarled people who inhabited these forlorn log cabins so far from most human habitation, and who were willing to take such long toilsome journeys just to hear him read the Word of God once or twice a week. It was a continual miracle to him to see them come straggling into the schoolhouse faithfully on Sunday morning and one evening a week.

Sitting under the tree, Seagrave took out the Bible that Fraley had bought for him and, after much fumbling around and referring to the paper he carried in his pocket, found the place that the girl had showed him sitting under that same tree. For a while he sat and read, chapter after chapter, thinking of the quaint comments the child had made as she told him the story, seeing again her sweet, pure face—looking down at him from the tree when he first accosted her, smiling back to him from the saddle as they rode together, gleaming out at him from the shadows of the old schoolhouse as he told the story himself. Oh, she was a sweet child, and how she had taken hold upon him even in that one short day! It was strange. He had never seen a human being who so stirred him. He was beginning to think now that it was more than human; it was God, speaking through the lovely lips of the girl.

He wondered again, as he had wondered many times since she left him, what had been the circumstances of her own life that had so perfected her sweet young womanhood even out in the wilds, with only one book for contact with the great world. That, too, must have been a miracle. But he would like to know. He would like to find the place where she was born and see some of the people with whom she had associated. She had said they lived alone on a mountain, but of course that could not have been literally so. There must have been a settlement somewhere nearby. They must have had some contacts with life. How interesting to search them out. What if he should do it someday? Of course he had no idea how far she had come from her home before he met her. She had not given him any data to go by, and it might be a wild goose chase, but on the other hand, she had been walking with a rather heavy burden for such slender shoulders, and she could not have come far. He had the day on his hands, why not ride around and see if he could get any clue of her? She was far enough away now so that no harm could come to her by it, and anyhow, he would be careful of whom he asked questions.

So he mounted his horse again and rode fast up the road where he had first seen Fraley that day in early spring.

He loved the soft tints of the distant mountains and the lovely shadings of the woods. So he skirted the forest through which Fraley had come that last long day of her pilgrimage and eventually reached the far side of her lake near which she had camped on her last night out.

A fresh, spirited horse can quickly cover ground that a girl’s weary feet had taken hours to walk, and Seagrave found himself, though he did not know it, going over almost the same ground that Fraley had trod on her way out.

He kept for the most part down in the valleys, for he had little knowledge of scaling mountains. He was amazed to find that he could ride so far without coming to human habitation. The house where Fraley had milked the cow was the only one he saw, for he had kept his course several miles south of the log house where she stayed all night with the woman.

And now the sun began to warn him that he should better turn back, and looking at his watch, he was startled to find that it was so late. He would scarcely be able to reach the ranch in time for supper unless he hurried.

But when he tried to find his way back he was bewildered. The horse insisted on going one way when he felt sure he ought to go the other. He took his own turn and found himself winding up a trail above a steep precipice. He felt sure he had been in no such high path all day, but it seemed to be a well-beaten track, and he argued that it might be a shorter cut to where he wanted to go. In fact, there was likely to be human habitation at the end of this trail somewhere, and he might inquire the way, or perhaps even stay overnight, if the house were reasonably clean, and go back the next day.

So hurrying his horse onward, he came to a turn in the trail, where up a little higher he could see the outlines of a cabin. Ah! He had been right in coming. Now, if it was not vacated he would be able to get directions.

The trail wound along narrowly, dizzily close to the precipice, and because he did not care to risk his horsemanship in such a straitened path, he took to the woods just above the trail and circled around behind the cabin and beyond, studying it from afar. There was no smoke coming from the chimney, but he thought he heard the cackling of hens a little distance from the house. Holding his horse in check, he came slowly around the back, intending to approach from the front, when all at once before him there rose a big rock, high and smooth, and on it he saw writing in a clear round hand. He paused surprised. Perhaps here was a sign to guide strangers on their way. “The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them,” he read, and underneath it was signed “Fraley MacPherson.”

Ah! He was on the right track. His little girl had been here. That was her name, Fraley MacPherson. Could it be possible that she used to live in that cabin?

He gazed off at the mountains in the distance, and something of the greatness of the view impressed him. Here was beauty. Perhaps this was part of the explanation of her loveliness. This and the Book from which she had learned day after day.

So he picked his way among the rocks and came around in front of the cabin, dismounted, and knocked. If there was anybody still living here, perhaps they could tell him who the girl was and about her people. He would be careful, of course, and not mention her, for she had seemed to be afraid of someone. But he could find out a great deal just by judicious questioning.

So he tapped at the cabin door.

There was a sound like hollow surprise through the place and then a harsh movement like a heavy bench being shoved back. Heavy boots, too, dragging across the floor. A fumbling with the lock, and then the door was open a crack, and a gleaming sinister metal eye looked out, its cold menace almost in the face of the young man. Behind the gun there was a hand—gnarled and hairy—and behind the hand there appeared a face—dirty, unkempt, wild eyed, and full of hate.

“I beg your pardon,” said Seagrave, stepping back a pace. “I’m not an enemy; I merely stopped to inquire the way. I seem to be lost.”

But the shining gun did not withdraw a hair’s breadth.

“Lost! I guess ya air! In more ways ’n you know. Don’t you stir now. I’m goin’ to shoot around ya, just to give the rest of the gang a call!”

And the words were scarcely spoken when a bullet hissed by Seagrave’s ear, almost grazing it.

The door was opened a little wider, showing more of the ugly, unshaven face and bleared eyes. The breath of whisky came strongly out like an evil wind and struck his nostrils. It was combined with the smell of unwashed flesh and unlaundered garments.

“Now, stand still!” ordered the voice. “A fella never comes up here without intendin’, and he never goes out when he gets here. Stand still!”

Seagrave measured the distance from himself to his horse, which had reared and backed at the sound of the gunshot. He guessed at his chance if he tried to bolt and decided not to risk it.

“Oh, I say,” he began, putting on his best manner, “what’s your grouch, pardner? I had no intention of getting in bad with you. I’m just a stranger from the East out riding. I lost my way, that was all. If you’ll tell me which way to go I’ll get out and never trouble you again. I’m just the guy that’s holding down the preacher’s job over at the log schoolhouse till the right man gets here.”

“Oh, that’s who you are, is it? I been layin’ fer you. So you’re the man that’s stole my girl away from me.”

“Your girl?” asked Seagrave guilelessly. “Who is your girl, and how could I steal her? I haven’t got any girl.”