Concerning Belinda Part 12

"We must go," she said at last.

John Ryder pushed his coffee-cup aside, rose, and wrapped her cloak around her, without a word. Still silent, he put her into the cab and took a seat beside her.

"I shall go to-night," he said after a little.

"Go? Where?"

Belinda's voice was surprised, regretful.

The man looked down at her.

"It's a good deal better. I belong out there. There's no place for me here, unless----"

He stopped and shook his head impatiently.

"I'd better go. I'd only make a fool of myself if I stayed. I'll run up and spend a day with the girls and then I'll hit the trail for the ranch again. I'll be contented out there--perhaps. There's something here that gets into a man's veins and makes him want things he can't have."

"I'm sorry," Belinda murmured vaguely. "It's been very nice, hasn't it?"

He laid a large hand over her small ones.

"Nice--that's a poor sort of a word, little girl."

The cab stopped before the school door. The two Christmas comrades went slowly up the steps and stood for a moment in the dark doorway.

"You are surely going?"

"Yes, I'm going."

"You've been very good to me. I shall remember to-day----"

"And I." He put a hand on each of her shoulders. "I'm forty-five and I'm--a fool. You've given me a happy day, little girl, but some way or other I'm more homesick than ever. I've had a vision--and I think I shall always be homesick now. Good-by. G.o.d bless you!"

Belinda climbed the stairs to her room with a definite sense of loss in her heart.

"Still," she admitted to herself, as she put the violets in water, "he was forty-five."

CHAPTER VI

THE BLIGHTED BEING

KATHARINE HOLLAND was distinctly unpopular during her first weeks in the Ryder School. Miss Lucilla Ryder treated her courteously, but Miss Lucilla's courtesy had a frappe quality not conducive to heart expansion. Miss Emmeline showed even more than her usual gentle propitiatory kindliness toward the quiet, unresponsive girl, but kindliness from Miss Emmeline had the flavour of overtures from a faded daguerreotype or a sweetly smiling porcelain miniature. It was a slightly vague, impersonal, watery kindliness not calculated to draw a shy or sensitive girl from her reserve.

The teachers, all save Belinda, voted Katharine difficult and unimpressionable. As for the girls, having tried the new pupil in the schoolgirl balance, and having found her lamentably wanting in appreciation of their friendliness, they promptly voted her "snippy,"

and vowed that she might mope as much as she pleased for all they cared--but that was before they knew that she was a "Blighted Being."

The moment that the cause of Katharine's entrance into the school fold and of her listless melancholy was revealed to her schoolfellows, public opinion turned a double back-somersault and the girl became the centre of school interest. Her schoolmates watched her every move, hung upon her every word, humbly accepted any smallest crumbs of attention or comrades.h.i.+p she vouchsafed to them. No one dared hint at a knowledge of her secret, but in each breast was nursed the hope that some day the heroine of romance might throw herself upon that breast and confide the story of her woes. Meanwhile, it was much to lavish unspoken sympathy upon her and live in an atmosphere freighted with romance.

Amelia Bowers was the lucky mortal who first learned the new girl's story and had the rapture of telling it under solemn pledge of secrecy to each of the other girls. Sentiment gravitates naturally toward Amelia. She is all heart. Possibly it would be more accurate to say she is all heart and imagination; and if a sentimental confidence, tale, or situation drifts within her aura it invariably seeks her out. Upon this occasion the second-floor maid was the intermediary through which the romantic tale flowed. She had been dusting the study while Miss Lucilla and Miss Emmeline discussed the problem of Katharine Holland, and happening to be close to the door--Norah emphasised the accidental nature of the location--she had overheard the whole story.

Norah herself had loved, early and often. Her heart swelled with sympathy, and she sped to Amelia, in whom she had discovered a kindred and emotional soul.

Fifteen minutes later Amelia, in one of her many wrappers, and with but one side of her hair done up in kids, burst in upon Laura May Lee and Kittie Dayton, who were leisurely preparing for bed. Excitement was written large upon the visitor's pink and white face. She swelled proudly with the importance of a bearer of great tidings.

"Girls, what do you think?" She paused dramatically.

The girls evidently didn't think, but they sat down upon the bed, big-eyed and expectant.

"Cross your hearts, hope to die?"

They crossed their hearts and solemnly hoped they might perish if they revealed one word of what was coming.

"You know Katharine Holland?"

They did.

"Awful stick," commented Laura May.

Amelia flamed into vivid defence.

"Nothing of the sort. I guess you'd be quiet too, Laura May Lee, if your heart was broken."

With one impulse the girls on the bed drew their knees up to their chins and hugged them ecstatically. This was more than they had hoped for.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "The girls on the bed drew their knees up to their chins"]

"Yes, sir, broken," repeated Amelia emphatically.

"How d'you know?" asked Kittie Dayton.

"Never you mind. I know all about it."

"She didn't tell you?"

"No, she didn't tell me, but I know. She's madly in love with an enemy of her house."

"Not really?" Laura May's tone was tremulous with interest.

Kittie gave her knees an extra hug. "It's like Romeo and Juliet," she said. Kittie was a s.h.i.+ning light in the English Literature cla.s.ses.

Satisfied with the impression she had made Amelia gathered her forces for continuous narrative.

"You see, her folks have got lots of money, and she's their only child, but her father's an awful crank and her mother don't dare say her soul's her own."

"Don't Katharine's father like her?"