  The girls stood where Gib had left them staring at each other in puzzled amazement. “Well, what do you make of it?” Dories was the first to exclaim. Nann laughingly shook her head. “I don’t know unless this confirms our theory that Gib writes the notes. I almost think it does.” They started walking toward the cabin. “Well, time will tell and a short time, too, if we are to know all today,” Dories remarked, then added, “That long walk has made me ravenously hungry and we haven’t a thing cooked up.” Then she paused and sniffed. “What is that delicious odor? It smells like ham and something baking, doesn’t it?” “We surely are both imaginative,” Nann agreed, “for I also scent a most appetizing aroma on the air. But who could be cooking? We left Miss Moore in bed and anyway, of course, it is not she.” They had reached the kitchen door and saw that it was standing open and that the tempting odor was actually wafting therefrom. Puzzled indeed, they bounded up the steps. A surprising sight met their gaze. Miss Jane Moore, dressed in a soft lavender gown partly covered with a fresh white apron, turned from the stove to beam upon them; her eyes were twinkling, her cheeks were rosy from the excitement and the heat. “Aunt Jane! Miss Moore!” the girls cried in astonishment. “Ought you to be cooking? Are you strong enough?” “Of course I am strong enough,” was the brisk reply. “Haven’t I been resting for nearly two weeks? I thought probably you girls would be hungry after your long walk.” Then, as she saw the legal envelopes, she added with apparent satisfaction: “Well, they have come at last, have they? Put them in on my dresser, Dories; then come right back. It is such a fine day I thought we would take the table out on the sheltered side porch and have a sort of picnic-party.” It was hard for the girls to believe that this was the same old woman who had been so grouchy most of the time since they had known her. Would surprises never cease? The girls were delighted with the plan and carried the small kitchen table to the sunny, sheltered side porch and soon had it set for three. When they returned they found the flushed old woman taking a pan of biscuits from the oven. How good they looked! Then came baked ham and sweet potatoes, and a brown Betty pudding. The elderly cook seemed to greatly enjoy the girls’ surprise and delight. They made her comfortable in an easy willowed chair at one end of the table facing the sea and, when the viands had been served, they ate with great relish. To their amazement their hostess partook of the entire menu with as evident a zest as their own. Dories could no longer remain silent. “Aunt Jane,” she blurted out, “ought you to eat so heartily after such a long fast? You haven’t had anything but tea and toast since we came.” Nann had glanced quickly and inquiringly at the old woman, and the suspicions she had previously entertained were confirmed by the merry reply: “I’ll have to confess that I’ve been an old fraud.” Miss Moore was chuckling again. “Every time you girls went away and I was sure you were going to be gone for some time, I got up and had a good meal.” “But, Aunt Jane,” Dories’ brow gathered in a puzzled frown, “why did you have to do that? It would have been a lot more fun all along to have had our dinners all together like this.” Miss Moore nodded. “Yes, it would have been, but I’m an odd one. There was something I wanted to find out and I took my own queer way of going about it.” “D—did you find it out, Aunt Jane?” Dories asked, almost anxiously. “Yes and no,” was the enigmatical answer. Then, tantalizingly, she remarked as she leaned back in her comfortable willow chair, having finished her share of the pudding, “This is wonderful weather, isn’t it, girls? If it keeps up I won’t want to go back next Monday. Perhaps we’ll stay a week longer as I had planned when we first came.” Then before the girls could reply, the grey eyes that could be so sharply penetrating turned to scrutinize Dories. “You look much better than you did when we came. You had a sort of fretful look as though you had a grudge against life. Now you actually look eager and interested.” Then, after a glance at Nann, “You are both getting brown as Indians.” Would Miss Moore never come to the subject that was uppermost in the thoughts of the two girls? If she had written the message telling them that today they were to know all, why didn’t she begin the story, if it was to be a story? How Dories hoped that she was to hear what had become of the fortune she had always believed should have been her father’s. Her own mother had never told her anything about it, but she had heard them talking before her father died; she had not understood them, but as she grew older she seemed vaguely to remember that there should have been money from somewhere, enough to have kept poverty from their door and more, probably, since her father’s Aunt Jane had so much. But Miss Moore rose without having satisfied their burning curiosity. “Now, girls,” she said, “I’ll go in and read my letters while you wash the dishes. Later, when the fog drifts in, build a fire on the hearth and I’ll tell you a story.” Then she left them, going to her own room and closing the door. “I’m so excited that I can hardly carry the dishes without dropping them,” Dories confided to Nann when at last they had returned the table to its place in the kitchen and were busily washing and drying the dishes. “What do you suppose the story is to be about?” “You and your mother and father chiefly, I believe,” Nann said with conviction. “Aunt Jane’s saying that she had a story to tell us proves, doesn’t it, that she wrote the messages?” “I think so, Dori.” “I hope the fog will come in early,” the younger girl remarked as she hung up the dish-wiper on the line back of the stove. “It will. It always does. Now let’s go out to the shed and bring in a big armful of driftwood. There’s one log that I’ve been saving for some special occasion. Surely this is it.” As Nann had said, the fog came in soon after midafternoon; the girls had drawn the comfortable willow chair close to the hearth. The wood was in place and eagerly the girls awaited the coming of their hostess. At last the bedroom door opened and Miss Moore, without the apron over her lavender dress, emerged. Although she smiled at them, the discerning Nann decided that the letters had contained some disappointing news. Dories at once set fire to the driftwood and a cheerful blaze leaped up. When Miss Moore was seated the girls sat on lower chairs close together. Their faces told their eager curiosity. Glancing from one to the other, their hostess said: “Dori, you and Nann have been the best of friends for years, I think you wrote me.” “Oh, yes, Aunt Jane,” was the eager reply, “we started in kindergarten together and we’ve been in the same classes through first year High, but now Nann’s father has taken her away from me. They are going to live in Boston. And so a favorite dream of ours will never be fulfilled, and that was to graduate together.” “If only your mother would consent to come and live with me, then your wish would be fulfilled,” the old woman began when Dories exclaimed, “Why, Aunt Jane, I didn’t even know that you wanted us to live with you in Boston.” Miss Moore nodded gravely. “But I do and have. I have written your mother repeatedly, since my dear nephew died, telling her that I would like you three to make your home with me, but it seems that she cannot forget.” “Forget what?” Dories leaned forward to inquire. Nann had been right, she was thinking. The something they were to know did relate to her father’s affairs, she was now sure. The old woman seemed not to have heard, for she continued looking thoughtfully at the fire. “I know that she has forgiven,” she said at last. “Your mother is too noble a woman not to do that, but her pride will not let her forget.” Then, turning toward the girls who sat each with a hand tightly clasped in the others, the speaker continued: “I must begin at the beginning to make the sad story clear. I loved your father, as I would have loved a son. I brought him up when his parents were gone. The money belonged to my father and he used to say that he would leave your father’s share in my keeping, as he believed in my judgment. I was to turn it over to my nephew when I thought best.” She was silent a moment, then said: “When your father was old enough to marry, I wanted him to choose a girl I had selected, but instead, when he went away to study art, he married a school teacher of whom I had never heard. I believed that she was designing and marrying him for his money, and I wrote him that unless he freed himself from the union I would never give him one cent. Of course he would not do that, and rightly. Later, in my anger, I turned over to him some oil stock which had proved valueless and told him that was all he was to have. Then began long, lonely years for me because I never again heard from the nephew whose boyish love had been the greatest joy life had ever brought me. I was too stubborn to give him the money which legally I had the right to withhold from him, and he was so hurt that he would not ask my forgiveness. But, when I heard that my boy had died, my heart broke, and I knew myself for what I was—a selfish, stubborn old woman who had not deserved love and consideration. Then, but far too late, I tried to redeem myself in the eyes of your mother. I wrote, begging her to come and bring her two children to my home. I told her how desolate I had been since my boy, your father, had left. Very courteously your mother wrote that, as long as she could sew for a living for herself and her two children, she would not accept charity. Then I conceived the plan of becoming acquainted with you, for two reasons: one that I might discover if in any way you resembled your father, and the other was that I wanted you to use your influence to induce your mother to forget, as well as forgive, and to live with me in Boston and make my cheerless mansion of a house into a real home.” She paused and Dories, seeing that there were tears in the grey eyes, impulsively reached out a hand and took the wrinkled one nearest her. “Dear Aunt Jane, how you have suffered.” Nann noted with real pleasure that her friend’s first reaction had been pity for the old woman and not rebellion because of the act that had caused her to be brought up in poverty. “Mother has always said that you meant to be kind, she was convinced of that, but she never told me the story. This is the first time that I understood what had happened. Truly, Aunt Jane, if you really wish it, I shall urge Mother to let us all three come and live with you. Selfishly I would love to, because I would be near Nann, if for no other reason, but I have another reason. I believe my father would wish it. Mother has often told me that, as a boy, he loved you.” The old woman held the girl’s hand in a close clasp and tears unheeded fell over her wrinkled cheeks. “But it’s too late now,” she said dismally. Dories and Nann exchanged surprised glances. “Too late, Aunt Jane?” Dories inquired. “Do you mean that you do not care to have us now?” “No, indeed, not that!” The old woman wiped away the tears, then smiled tremulously. “I haven’t finished the story as yet. This is the last chapter, I fear. I ought to be glad for your mother’s sake, but O, I have been so lonely.” Then, seeing the intense eagerness in her niece’s face, she concluded with, “I must not keep you in such suspense, my dear. That long legal envelope brought me news from your father’s lawyer. It is news that your mother has already received, I presume. The stock, which I turned over to your father years ago, believing it to be worthless, has turned out to be of great value. Your mother will have a larger income than my own, and now, of course, she will not care to make her home with me.” “O, Aunt Jane!” To the surprise of both of the others, the girl threw her arms about the old woman’s neck and clung to her, sobbing as though in great sorrow, but Nann knew that the tears were caused by the sudden shock of the joyful revelation. The old woman actually kissed the girl, and then said: “I expected to be very sad because I cannot do something for you all to prove the deep regret I feel for my unkind action, but, instead, I am glad, for I know that only in this way would your mother acquire the real independence which means happiness for her.” With a sigh, she continued: “I’ve lived alone for many years, I suppose I can go on living alone until the end of time.” Then she added, a twinkle again appearing in her grey eyes, “and now you know all.” “O, Aunt Jane, then you did write those messages and leave them for us to find?” “I plead guilty,” the old woman confessed. “I overheard you and Nann saying that you wished something mysterious would happen. I had been wondering when to tell you the story, and I decided to wait until I heard from the lawyer. I know you are wondering how Gibralter Strait happened to give you that last message the very day a letter came telling about the stock. That is very simple. One day when Mr. Strait came for a grocery order, you were all away somewhere. I gave him that last message and told him to keep it in our box at the office until a letter should arrive from my lawyer, then they were to be brought over and that letter was to be given to you girls.” The old woman leaned back in her chair and it was quite evident that her recent emotion had nearly exhausted her. Nann, excusing herself thoughtfully, left the other two alone. “Dori,” the old woman said tenderly, “as you grow older, don’t let circumstances of any nature make you cold and critical. If I had been loving and kind when your girl mother married my boy, my life, instead of being bleak and barren, would have been a happy one. No one knows how I have grieved; how my unkindness has haunted me.” Just then Dories thought of her sweet-faced mother who had borne the trials of poverty so bravely, and again she heard her saying, “The only ghosts that haunt us are the memories of loving words that might have been spoken and loving deeds that might have been done.” Impulsively the girl leaned over and kissed the wrinkled face. “I love you, Aunt Jane,” she whispered. “And I shall beg Mother to let us all live together in your home, if it is still your wish.” Then, as Miss Moore had risen, seeming suddenly feeble, Dories sprang up and helped her to her room and remained there until the old woman was in her bed. When the girl went out to the kitchen where her friend was preparing supper, she exclaimed, half laughing and half crying: “Nann Sibbett, I’m so brimming full of conflicting emotions, I don’t feel at all real. Pinch me, please, and see if I am.” “Instead I’ll give you a hard hug; a congratulatory one. There! Did that seem real?” Then Nann added in her most sensible, matter-of-fact voice: “Now, wake up, Dori. You mustn’t go around in a trance. Of course the only mystery that you are interested in is solved, and wonderfully solved, but I’m just as keen as ever to know the secret the old ruin is holding.” “I’ll try to be!” Dories promised, then confessed: “But, honestly, I am not a bit curious about any mystery, now that my own is solved.” A moment later she asked: “Nann, do you suppose Mother will want me to come home right away?” “Why, I shouldn’t think so, Dori,” her friend replied. “You always hear from your mother on Friday, so wait and see what tomorrow brings.” The morrow was to hold much of interest for both of the girls. |
|
