PAGE 21
An Episode of Fiddletown
by
The day closed with a clouded sky and a bitter, searching wind. With the night fell a few wandering flakes of snow. She was still content and hopeful; and, as Jack wheeled her from the window to the fire, she explained to him how that, as the school term was drawing near its close, Carry was probably kept closely at her lessons during the day, and could only leave the school at night. So she sat up the greater part of the evening, and combed her silken hair, and as far as her strength would allow, made an undress toilet to receive her guest. “We must not frighten the child, Jack,” she said apologetically, and with something of her old coquetry.
It was with a feeling of relief that, at ten o’clock, Jack received a message from the landlord, saying that the doctor would like to see him for a moment downstairs. As Jack entered the grim, dimly lighted parlor, he observed the hooded figure of a woman near the fire. He was about to withdraw again when a voice that he remembered very pleasantly said:
“Oh, it’s all right! I’m the doctor.”
The hood was thrown back, and Prince saw the shining black hair and black, audacious eyes of Kate Van Corlear.
“Don’t ask any questions. I’m the doctor, and there’s my prescription,” and she pointed to the half-frightened, half-sobbing Carry in the corner–“to be taken at once.”
“Then Mrs. Tretherick has given her permission?”
“Not much, if I know the sentiments of that lady,” replied Kate saucily.
“Then how did you get away?” asked Prince gravely.
“BY THE WINDOW.”
When Mr. Prince had left Carry in the arms of her stepmother, he returned to the parlor.
“Well?” demanded Kate.
“She will stay–YOU will, I hope, also–tonight.”
“As I shall not be eighteen, and my own mistress on the twentieth, and as I haven’t a sick stepmother, I won’t.”
“Then you will give me the pleasure of seeing you safely through the window again?”
When Mr. Prince returned an hour later, he found Carry sitting on a low stool at Mrs. Starbottle’s feet. Her head was in her stepmother’s lap, and she had sobbed herself to sleep. Mrs. Starbottle put her finger to her lip. “I told you she would come. God bless you, Jack! and good night.”
The next morning Mrs. Tretherick, indignant, the Rev. Asa Crammer, principal, injured, and Mr. Joel Robinson, Sr., complacently respectable, called upon Mr. Prince. There was a stormy meeting, ending in a demand for Carry. “We certainly cannot admit of this interference,” said Mrs. Tretherick, a fashionably dressed, indistinctive-looking woman. “It is several days before the expiration of our agreement; and we do not feel, under the circumstances, justified in releasing Mrs. Starbottle from its conditions.” “Until the expiration of the school term, we must consider Miss Tretherick as complying entirely with its rules and discipline,” imposed Dr. Crammer. “The whole proceeding is calculated to injure the prospects, and compromise the position, of Miss Tretherick in society,” suggested Mr. Robinson.
In vain Mr. Prince urged the failing condition of Mrs. Starbottle, her absolute freedom from complicity with Carry’s flight, the pardonable and natural instincts of the girl, and his own assurance that they were willing to abide by her decision. And then, with a rising color in his cheek, a dangerous look in his eye, but a singular calmness in his speech, he added:
“One word more. It becomes my duty to inform you of a circumstance which would certainly justify me, as an executor of the late Mr. Tretherick, in fully resisting your demands. A few months after Mr. Tretherick’s death, through the agency of a Chinaman in his employment, it was discovered that he had made a will, which was subsequently found among his papers. The insignificant value of his bequest–mostly land, then quite valueless–prevented his executors from carrying out his wishes, or from even proving the will, or making it otherwise publicly known, until within the last two or three years, when the property had enormously increased in value. The provisions of that bequest are simple, but unmistakable. The property is divided between Carry and her stepmother, with the explicit condition that Mrs. Starbottle shall become her legal guardian, provide for her education, and in all details stand to her IN LOCO PARENTIS.”