Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories Part 13

"I can't go," she insisted miserably, trying to free her hand from Floss's plump grasp. "My brother is expecting me and Miss Hill--"

"Oh, bother Miss Joe Hill! You don't have to tell her anything about it!

You can pretend you are going to your brother's and meet me some place on the road instead."

Miss Lucinda looked horrified, but she listened. A material kept plastic by years of manipulation does not harden to a new hand. Her objections to Floss's plan grew fainter and fainter.

"Think of the theaters," went on the temptress, putting an arm around her neck, and ignoring the fact that caresses embarra.s.sed Miss Lucinda almost to the point of tears; "think of it! A new show every night, and operas and pictures. There will be three Shakspere plays that week, 'Merchant of Venice,' 'Twelfth Night,' and 'Hamlet.'"

Miss Lucinda's heart fluttered in her bosom. Although she had spent a great part of her life interpreting the Bard of Avon, she had never seen one of his plays produced. In her secret soul she believed that her own rendition of "The quality of mercy," was not to be excelled.

"I--I haven't any clothes," she urged feebly, putting up her last defense.

"I have," declared Floss in triumph--"two trunks full, and we are almost the same size. It's just for a week, Miss Lucy; won't you come?"

Miss Lucinda, sitting rigid, felt a warm cheek pressed against her own, and a stray curl touched her lips. She sat for a moment with her eyes closed. It was more than disconcerting to be so close to youth and joy and life; it was infectious. The blood surged suddenly through her veins, and an exultation seized her.

"I'm going to do it," she cried recklessly; "I never had a real good time in my life."

Floss threw her arms about her and waltzed her across the room, but a step in the hall brought them to a halt.

"It's Miss Joe Hill," whispered Floss, with trepidation; "I am going out the way I came. Don't you forget; you have promised."

When Miss Joe Hill entered, she smiled complacently at finding Miss Lucinda in the straight-back chair, absorbed in the second volume of the "Power Through Poise."

At the Union Depot in Chicago, two weeks later, a small, nervous lady fluttered uncertainly from one door to another. She wore a short, brown coat suit of cla.s.sic severity, and a felt hat which was fastened under her smoothly braided hair by a narrow elastic band.

On her fourth trip to the main entrance she stopped a train-boy. "Can you tell me where I can get a drink?" she asked, fanning her flushed face. He looked surprised. "Third door to the left," he answered. Miss Lucinda, carrying a hand-bag, a suit-case, and an umbrella, followed directions. When she pushed open the heavy door she was confronted by a long counter with s.h.i.+ning gla.s.ses and a smiling bartender. Beating a confused retreat, she fled back to the main entrance, and stood there trembling. For the hundredth time that day she wished she had not come.

The arrangements, so glibly planned by Floss, had not been adhered to in any particular. At the last moment that mercurial young person had decided to go on two days in advance and visit a friend in Philadelphia.

She wrote Miss Lucinda to come on to Chicago, where Tom would meet her and give her her ticket, and that she would meet her in New York.

With many misgivings and grievous twinges of conscience, Miss Lucinda had bade Miss Joe Hill a guilty farewell, and started ostensibly for her brother's home. At the Junction she changed cars for Chicago, missed two connections, and lost her lunch-box. Now that she had arrived In Chicago, three hours late, nervous and excited over her experiences, there was no one to meet her.

A sense of homesickness rushed over her, and she decided to return to Locustwood. It was the same motive that might prompt a newly hatched chicken, embarra.s.sed by its sudden liberty, to return to its sh.e.l.l. Just as she was going in search of a time-table, a round-faced young man came up.

"Miss Perkins?" he asked, and when she nodded, he went on: "Been looking for you for half an hour. Sis told me what you looked like, but I couldn't find you." He failed to observe that Floss's comparison had been a squirrel.

"Isn't it nearly time to start?" asked Miss Lucinda, nervously.

"Just five minutes; but I want to explain something to you first." He looked through the papers in his pocket and selected one. "This is a pa.s.s," he explained; "the governor can get them over this road. I got there late, so I could only get one that had been made out for somebody else and not been used. It's all right, you know; you won't have a bit of trouble."

Miss Lucinda took the bit of paper, put on her gla.s.ses, and read, "Mrs.

Lura Doring."

"Yes," said Tom; "that's the lady it was made out for. Nine chances out of ten they won't mention it; but if anything comes up, you just say yes, you are Mrs. Doring, and it will be all right."

"But," protested Miss Lucinda, ready to weep, "I cannot tell a falsehood."

"I don't think you'll have to," said Tom, somewhat impatiently; "but if you deny it, you'll get us both into no end of a sc.r.a.pe. h.e.l.lo! there's the call for your train. I'll bring your bag."

In the confusion of getting settled in her section, and of expressing her grat.i.tude to Tom, Miss Lucinda forgot for the time the deadly weight of guilt that rested upon her. It was not until the conductor called for her ticket that her heart grew cold, and a look of consternation swept over her face. It seemed to her that he eyed the pa.s.s suspiciously and when he did not return it a terror seized her. She knew he was coming back to ask her name, and what was her name? Mrs.

Dora Luring, or Mrs. Dura Loring, or Mrs. Lura Doring?

In despair she fled to the dressing room and stood there concealed by the curtains. In a few moments the conductor pa.s.sed, and she peeped at his retreating figure. He stopped in the narrow pa.s.sage by the window and studied her pa.s.s, then he compared it with a telegram which he held in his hand. Just then the porter joined him, and she flattened herself against the wall and held her breath.

"It's the same name," she heard the conductor say in an undertone. "I'll wire back to headquarters at the next stop."

If ever retribution followed an erring soul, it followed Miss Lucinda on that trip. No one spoke to her, and nothing happened, but she sat in terrified suspense, looking neither to right nor left, her heart beating frantically at every approach, and the whirring wheels repeating the questioning refrain, "Dora Luring? Dura Loring? Lura Doring?"

In New York, Floss met her as she stepped off the train, fairly enveloping her in her enthusiasm.

"Here you are, you old darling! I have been having a fit a minute for fear you wouldn't come. This is my Cousin May. She is going to stay with us the whole week. New York is simply heavenly, Miss Lucy. We have made four engagements already. Matinee this afternoon, a dinner to-night--What's the matter? Did you leave anything on the train?"

"No, no," stammered Miss Lucinda, still casting furtive glances backward at the conductor. "Was he talking to a policeman?" she asked suspiciously.

"Who?"

"The conductor."

The girls laughed.

"I don't wonder you were scared," said Floss; "a policeman always does remind me of Miss Joe Hill."

They called a cab and, to Miss Lucinda's vast relief, were soon rolling away from the scene of danger.

It needed only one glance into a handsome suite of an up-town hotel one week later to prove the rapid moral deterioration of the prodigal.

Arrayed in a sh.e.l.l-pink kimono, she was having her nails manicured. Her gaily figured garment was sufficient in itself to give her an unusual appearance; but there was a more startling reason.

Miss Lucinda's hair, hitherto a pale drab smoothly drawn into a braided coil at the back, had undergone a startling metamorphosis. It was Floss's suggestion that Miss Lucinda wash it in "Golden Glow," a preparation guaranteed to restore l.u.s.ter and beauty to faded locks. Miss Lucinda had been over-zealous, and the result was that of copper in suns.h.i.+ne.

These outward manifestations, however, were insignificant compared with the evidences of Miss Lucinda's inner guilt. She was taking the keenest interest in the manicure's progress, only lifting her eyes occasionally to survey herself with satisfaction in the mirror opposite.

At first her sense of propriety had been deeply offended by her changed appearance. She wept so bitterly that the girls, seeking to console her, had overdone the matter.

"I never thought you _could_ look so pretty," Floss had declared; "you look ten years younger. It makes your eyes brighter and your skin clearer. Of course this awfully bright color will wear off, and then it will be just dear."

Miss Lucinda began to feel better; she even allowed May to arrange her changed locks in a modest pompadour.

The week she had spent in New York was a riotous round of dissipation.

May's fiance had prepared a whirlwind of pleasures, and Miss Lucinda was caught up and revolved at a pace that made her dizzy. Dances, dinners, plays, roof-gardens, coaching parties, were all held together by a line of candy, telegrams, and roses.

There was only one time in the day when Miss Lucinda came down to earth.

Every evening, no matter how exhausted she might he from the frivolities of the day, she conscientiously penned an affectionate letter to her celestial affinity, expressing her undying devotion, and incidentally mentioning the health and doings of her brother's family. These she sent under separate cover to her brother to be mailed.

Her conscience a.s.sured her that the reckoning would come, that sooner or later she would face the bar of justice and receive the verdict of guilty; but while one day of grace remained, she would still "in the fire of spring, her winter garments of repentance fling."