Along the drive I showed Halsey where I had found Rosie’s basket with the bits of broken china piled inside. He was rather skeptical.
“Warner probably,” he said when I had finished. “Began it as a joke on Rosie, and ended by picking up the broken china out of the road, knowing it would play hob with the tires of the car.” Which shows how near one can come to the truth, and yet miss it altogether.
At the lodge everything was quiet. There was a light in the sitting-room down-stairs, and a faint gleam, as if from a shaded lamp, in one of the upper rooms. Halsey stopped and examined the lodge with calculating eyes.
“I don’t know, Aunt Ray,” he said dubiously; “this is hardly a woman’s affair. If there’s a scrap of any kind, you hike for the timber.” Which was Halsey’s solicitous care for me, put into vernacular.
“I shall stay right here,” I said, and crossing the small veranda, now shaded and fragrant with honeysuckle, I hammered the knocker on the door.
Thomas opened the door himself–Thomas, fully dressed and in his customary health. I had the blanket over my arm.
“I brought the blanket, Thomas,” I said; “I am sorry you are so ill.”
The old man stood staring at me and then at the blanket. His confusion under other circumstances would have been ludicrous.
“What! Not ill?” Halsey said from the step. “Thomas, I’m afraid you’ve been malingering.”
Thomas seemed to have been debating something with himself. Now he stepped out on the porch and closed the door gently behind him.
“I reckon you bettah come in, Mis’ Innes,” he said, speaking cautiously. “It’s got so I dunno what to do, and it’s boun’ to come out some time er ruther.”
He threw the door open then, and I stepped inside, Halsey close behind. In the sitting-room the old negro turned with quiet dignity to Halsey.
“You bettah sit down, sah,” he said. “It’s a place for a woman, sah.”
Things were not turning out the way Halsey expected. He sat down on the center-table, with his hands thrust in his pockets, and watched me as I followed Thomas up the narrow stairs. At the top a woman was standing, and a second glance showed me it was Rosie.
She shrank back a little, but I said nothing. And then Thomas motioned to a partly open door, and I went in.
The lodge boasted three bedrooms up-stairs, all comfortably furnished. In this one, the largest and airiest, a night lamp was burning, and by its light I could make out a plain white metal bed. A girl was asleep there–or in a half stupor, for she muttered something now and then. Rosie had taken her courage in her hands, and coming in had turned up the light. It was only then that I knew. Fever-flushed, ill as she was, I recognized Louise Armstrong.
I stood gazing down at her in a stupor of amazement. Louise here, hiding at the lodge, ill and alone! Rosie came up to the bed and smoothed the white counterpane.
“I am afraid she is worse to-night,” she ventured at last. I put my hand on the sick girl’s forehead. It was burning with fever, and I turned to where Thomas lingered in the hallway.
“Will you tell me what you mean, Thomas Johnson, by not telling me this before?” I demanded indignantly.
Thomas quailed.
“Mis’ Louise wouldn’ let me,” he said earnestly. “I wanted to. She ought to ‘a’ had a doctor the night she came, but she wouldn’ hear to it. Is she–is she very bad, Mis’ Innes?”
“Bad enough,” I said coldly. “Send Mr. Innes up.”
Halsey came up the stairs slowly, looking rather interested and inclined to be amused. For a moment he could not see anything distinctly in the darkened room; he stopped, glanced at Rosie and at me, and then his eyes fell on the restless head on the pillow.
I think he felt who it was before he really saw her; he crossed the room in a couple of strides and bent over the bed.
“Louise!” he said softly; but she did not reply, and her eyes showed no recognition. Halsey was young, and illness was new to him. He straightened himself slowly, still watching her, and caught my arm.