Suddenly Sheila appeared in the doorway, carrying the recovered property, her eyes wide and indignant but a steady look about her white lips.
Sheila had been trained in the school of sorrow. She knew how to speak in a low, controlled voice. “They may have seemed like trash to you,” she said with a quiver of her lips, “but they were very precious to me!”
Jacqueline stared for an instant, startled at the vision of a girl fully as good looking as herself and dressed in what she knew to be a smart outfit. Then she drew away toward the window and leaned against the wall, lifting her chin a trifle haughtily yet smiling indulgently.
“Oh? Really?” she said sweetly. “I couldn’t imagine it, of course, that anything as forlorn could be at all precious to anyone. I thought I was helping to clean up. I hope you’ll excuse me.”
“I’ll excuse you,” said Sheila gravely, still holding the armful of smoky garments, “if you’ll tell me what you did with the rest of the things. Particularly the little carved box and the things that were in it.”
“Box?” said Jacqueline, drawing her slim, plucked eyebrows in puzzlement. “Why, really, I don’t remember seeing any box. You must have put it somewhere else. Or else perhaps it got burned up. I really didn’t notice.”
“It was not burned up,” said Sheila firmly, “and I must have it, please, right away. It had some very valuable papers in it. One quite important!”
“Now, isn’t that too bad,” said Jacqueline sweetly. “I really didn’t see any papers at all that I remember. Perhaps an old letter or two. But people never keep old letters nowadays. And as for valuable papers, those things are always registered, aren’t they? You probably won’t have any trouble getting a duplicate. I have a lawyer friend, and he told me that once. By the way, nobody has introduced us. Who is she, anyway, Aunt Myra?”
“She is my granddaughter, Sheila Ainslee,” snapped out Grandmother, “and I don’t like the way you have treated her in the least.”
The way she said “my granddaughter” made it plain that the relationship was just a little closer and a little finer in Grandmother’s estimation than it was between herself and Jacqueline.
“Oh really!” said Jacqueline, turning around and appraising her rival with a wide, disagreeable stare. “Why, how thrilling! How is it I never heard of her before?”
Grandmother did not deign to answer. She swept the sheets into closer compass and waved her hand toward her grandniece.
“Just move over to the yellow room, Jacqueline; this room has been Sheila’s since she came. Janet, take those dresses out of the closet and bring them to the other room.”
“Oh, but really, Aunt Myra, you always put me in this room when I’m here. Don’t you remember?” Then whirling on Janet. “Don’t you dare touch my things, Janet! I’ll move them myself when I get ready.”
“They’ll be moved at once!” said Grandmother. “What did you do with the sheets that were on this bed?”
“Oh, I threw them down the laundry chute,” said Jacqueline, as if she were greatly enjoying the scene.
“You took a great deal upon yourself!” said Grandmother irately. “However, it was almost time she had clean sheets anyway. Janet, get some of the linen sheets out from the top shelf and make up this bed again. But first, move those clothes out of the closet! I am still mistress in my own house, I hope. Now, Jacqueline, if you have anything in the bureau drawers you may get it out at once. Shelia’s trunk will be here in a few minutes, and she wants to unpack.”
Jacqueline lolled in the window seat and laughed.
“I don’t see why I should move my things. Let Janet move them all if she is going to do any,” she said perversely.
Sheila meantime had put down her bundle of things in the hall on a chair and came now and took the sheets from her grandmother.
“You are tired, Grandmother; let me make the other bed.”
“No,” said Grandmother decidedly. “Jacqueline will make it. She unmade your bed, and now she will make her own bed if it is made.”
“But I made it once,” laughed Jacqueline, giving a pretty little bored yawn. “Why should I have to make it again? If I were at home I wouldn’t have to make my bed at all.”
“Then why aren’t you at home?” asked the old lady, giving her a piercing look. “I was given to understand that you were spending the month in the mountains.”
“So I was till I got bored silly. But you see my boyfriend left and came on here, so I came to be near him. That’s plain, isn’t it?”
“Perfectly!” said Grandmother. “Now tell me what you did with Angus Galbraith’s flashlight and the card attached?”
“Oh, was that Angus’s flashlight? I thought he had thrown it away on the beach somewhere. It didn’t seem to be worth much. I’m sure I don’t know what I did with it. Threw it away with the trash perhaps. How can I be expected to look after other people’s keepsakes?” And she flashed a look of amused contempt at Sheila.
Sheila stooped over Grandmother to hide the flush that came to her sensitive cheeks and took the bundle of sheets. “I can at least carry these into the other room,” she said.
“Very well,” said Grandmother, surrendering the sheets and pulling open a bureau drawer. “Then I’ll move the rest of her things since she won’t do it herself.”
Grandmother drew the drawer entirely out of the bureau and marched out of the room, stopping on her way, however, to set the drawer down on a chair, pick up the key to the room, which lay on the floor, and put it in her pocket. Then she took up the drawer again and carried it briskly down the hall, though she was tired to weakness with all this excitement and anger, and her knees were fairly shaking under her. When she arrived in the yellow room she was puffing and panting like a steam engine, but she marched over to the unmade bed and dumped the contents of the drawer upon it.
“Now, Sheila, see if your box is here!” she commanded.
But Sheila only stood afar and could see at a glance that her property was not there.
Janet carried the drawer back again, Grandmother following, and found Jacqueline calmly sitting in the window seat, working at her nails with a little silver file and humming a popular song, as if she had no interest whatever in what was going on around her.
Janet carried the rest of the drawers in and emptied them on the bed in the yellow room, and Grandmother went back with them and looked over every article, but no sandalwood box appeared. Jacqueline remained indifferent.
But when they returned to the room the third time, Jacqueline was not there, and a moment later they saw her out on the beach running along in her little pink bare feet and nothing on but her orange and black pajamas.
“The hussy!” said Grandmother excitedly. “The hussy! I told her the last time she was here that I wouldn’t be disgraced this way by her again, and neither I will. I’ll send for her father. Janet, fetch me the telephone book, or call up the telegraph office for me.”
It was Sheila who protested.
“Don’t do it now, Grandmother. Go lie down for a little while and get rested. She’ll surely be ashamed and come in pretty soon.”
“Not she! Ashamed? She doesn’t know the meaning of the word. She’s a spoiled child, and she knows it. Dotes on it! Just see her! The shameless hussy! Dancing all over the beach like a five-year-old! And who is that coming down to meet her? Hugh Galbraith’s son Malcolm as I’m alive! Oh, I shall never be able to lift my head while she’s here.”
Sheila looked out of the window, and there was Jacqueline dancing around on her bare feet, her fingers interlaced around her sleek black head, flinging up first one orange and black–clad leg and then the other, whirling, pirouetting, and then turning a series of somersaults right on the beach, and righting herself on her pink toes again, like a mad sprite.
“Never mind, Grandmother; you can’t help it now, and surely anybody who knows you will know you don’t approve. Don’t feel so badly. Please go lie down, dear. You look all worn out.”
“I’m not worn out!” declared the belligerent old lady. “I’ve strength enough left in me to spank her yet, and I’ll do it when she comes in, see if I don’t!”
“Now, Grandmother! You’ll make yourself sick!” worried Sheila. “She’s only a kid, anyway, isn’t she?”
“No, she’s no kid. She’s twenty-four years old, nearly twenty-five. She’s just a little devil, that’s what she is! Look at her. Running to meet that young man! A married man, too! She knows his wife is dreadfully jealous, and yet she runs and catches his hand. See, they are running now along the beach. Oh, if my poor sister could have known that her daughter’s child would perform that way, she couldn’t have died happy. That girl is just doing all this to torment me!”
“Well then, Grandmother, why let her see that you are tormented? Why be tormented? Come on in the other room and let me help you into your robe. Get your hat off and wash your face in cool water. Janet, can’t you bring her a nice cold drink? Come, Grandmother, why bother about her? Just let—why—just let God manage her. Wouldn’t that be best? She’ll certainly get tired of acting after a while. And if she doesn’t feel she has an audience, it won’t be half so much fun for her, will it?”
“Well, I suppose you’re right, child,” said the old lady, suddenly sitting down as if her strength had given out and fanning herself with a magazine that lay on the hall table. “But it does make me furious to think she dared to touch your things! And that paper, too! Sheila, we must find it.”
“We’ll find it,” said Sheila calmly. “I’m sure we will. Or else, I’ve been thinking—perhaps there’s some reason why God wouldn’t want us to find it. I’m sure we’ll find it unless there is.”
“You’re a dear child, Sheila!” She smiled and patted the girl’s hair as she knelt before her to unfasten her shoes.
Janet had hustled off for the cool drink and now came bringing it, the ice cubes clinking musically against the thin glass.
The old lady drank it slowly and then submitted to be led off to her room. At the door she paused. “I’ll lie down on one condition: you two are to look through everything and see if that box is around.”
“I’d rather not, please, Grandmother!” said Sheila, looking distressed. “I don’t feel as if I should. She would never forgive me if she knew I had. If anything was missing of hers, she would always think I had taken it.”
The old lady looked at her thoughtfully. “What about her having looked through your things?”
“That’s it, Grandmother. It makes me very angry, and I’d just rather not think about it anymore.”
“You’re a wise, good child!” said Grandmother.
“No, not good a bit,” said Sheila, with sudden tears in her eyes.
“Well, a wise child then, anyway. All right, I’ll lie down provided you do the same as soon as your bed is made.”
“That’s a bargain,” said Shelia. “Now, let me unfasten your dress and put your hat away, and your gloves. Here are your slippers. Now, Grandmother dear, don’t think about anything. Just smile and sleep. Think where I’d be if you should get sick just now. I wouldn’t know what to do.”
“Well, run along. There comes the express man with your trunk. Have him put it in your room, and here’s the key to the door. Don’t leave either the key or the trunk around when you leave the room. There’s no telling what that bad girl might take it into her head to do next.”
When Sheila ran down to open the door for the express man, she saw two figures walking along hand in hand on the beach in the distance, and the smaller of the two wore bright black and orange garments. A great wave of dislike rolled hotly over Sheila, and she wondered that this moment of homecoming with a new trunk and a whole wardrobe of beautiful new garments had so quickly been spoiled for her. Somehow she felt as if she had no place here in this sweet bright cottage, no right in the family where this wanton girl belonged, no right nor place anywhere in the great world.
The express man put the trunk down in the pretty room that three days ago had seemed to Sheila such a haven of peace for her storm-tossed soul, but she did not take out the key and open the trunk after he had gone. Instead, she locked her door and dropped down on her knees beside the unmade bed and wept.
After a time she remembered her promise to her grandmother, got up and made her bed, washed her face and lay down to rest. But she did not sleep. Instead, she lay and fought the awful anger that surged over her when she remembered the poor scorched garments that used to belong to her precious mother. It just seemed as if she could not forgive that other pampered girl who had tossed her precious things into the fire so carelessly.
But meantime Janet was not idle. She had no scruples against looking through this haughty beauty’s things, even if Miss Sheila had. She went through everything methodically, laying them in piles on two chairs, and discovered not one thread or scrap of paper that she thought looked like any of the things Miss Sheila had described. A little carved wooden box, some letters, some papers, a few bits of old-fashioned jewelry, and an old tarnished silver penholder. Those were the things that Sheila had told her were missing. But there wasn’t a sign of them.
Disappointed, at last she turned back to her task of hanging up the freakish garments Jacqueline had brought with her to the shore, and when that was completed, she hurried downstairs to start the dinner preparations.
Sheila had been lying still for perhaps a half hour when she heard a gentle tap at the door. There stood Grandmother with her pretty white curls hanging down each side of her flushed old face and a sweet smile on her lips.
“I just came in to talk with you a minute,” she whispered, looking furtively behind her. “Has Jacqueline come in yet?”
“No,” said Sheila. “I think she is still out there. They walked away up the beach and back again. See! They are standing out there now.”
Grandmother looked, and there were the two, the man and woman, facing one another, the fingers of their hands linked in each other’s, swinging their arms back and forth as children do, both talking animatedly, silhouetted against the evening sea and sky.
Grandmother looked for an instant and then determinedly turned around with her back to the window and sat down.
“I’ve just come in here to say that I think you were right, Sheila. I think we’ll just not notice her antics. If she doesn’t have a distressed audience, perhaps she will stop sometime, get tired of it. Anyway if she doesn’t, I’ll get her father on the telephone tonight and tell him to come down and manage her, for I can’t. But I mustn’t look out of the window and watch her carry on or I’ll forget all my good intentions. It makes me so mad to see her. She thinks she’s being so very modern and shocking me so much.
“So now,” went on Grandmother, “if you, child, think you can stand it to be your own sweet self and act as if nothing had happened, I’ll try to do the same.”
“I’ll try,” said Sheila smiling. “I’ve got no call to be disagreeable, anyway. I’m really only an interloper here, you know, and she knows it. She has more right here than I have. She probably thinks I have no right here at all. I’ve been thinking it out, and, Grandmother, I’ve come to the conclusion that I ought to go away again. It would be a lot easier for you.”
“Child!” said Grandmother, getting up and walking the floor excitedly, two bright red spots springing into her cheeks. “If you talk like that I’ll go right out there on the beach and spank that girl, bit as she is. I can’t stand it, dear, to have you talk that way!”
Sheila sprang up and went to her grandmother, putting her arms around her. “Dear, I won’t talk that way again if you don’t want me to. If you’ll just promise me up and down that you’ll tell me if you ever feel it would be better for me to go. Will you, please?”
“I certainly will,” said Grandmother with satisfaction in her voice, “if I ever feel that way! But I won’t! I’m certain of that. I feel now as if you were more a part of me than any of my grandchildren. Now that’s the truth, child. I’m not just t
alking.”
“Dear Grandmother!” said Sheila shyly, putting her face down in the old lady’s neck and receiving a soft, trembling kiss on her troubled brow.
“And now,” said Grandmother after a minute, “I’ve thought it all out. You are to put on one of your pretty dresses and look smiling and lovely at supper, and let this whole thing blow over. I don’t know what she’s here for, but I suspect some monkey shines with some young man. She has plenty of them. But we’ll just try to be happy in spite of it, and perhaps tomorrow something else will turn up, and she’ll decide to go somewhere else. How about the pink dress, the frilly one? Put that on. It’s rather sophisticated, and that is the only thing in the world that girl stands in awe of—sophistication! Let’s give her some. I thought we’d have a call for that pink dress. Put it on and come down to the garden. I’ll be down myself as quick as I can get this hair into order!”
So Sheila, her cheeks glowing for the fray, her eyes bright with the tears she had been shedding, arose and unlocked her new trunk. She got herself into battle array in the soft, frilly pink dress that she had thought much too expensive and elaborate to buy, and when Jacqueline at last came pattering in from the beach, a new Sheila stood in the garden with a placid Grandmother, picking rosebuds for the table.
Chapter 11
Angus Galbraith, as he sailed through the silver sky, thought a great deal about the sweet, unspoiled girl he had seen that night.
He got to thinking about his mother, and a little-girl picture of her that hung on the old gray castle wall at home in Scotland. There was something about that little Ainslee girl that reminded him of his mother’s girlhood face. Sweet and unspoiled and clean and modest. Not wild and daring and bold like the girls he had been seeing in the mountains.
All the girls nowadays, especially those he had met the last two months, seemed sharp and hard, according to his standards. Of course times had changed since his mother was young, but he couldn’t seem to think of marrying one of those sharp little giddy creatures that he was playing around with now. He couldn’t think of a home with such a girl enshrined there as wife and mother. He sighed and wondered if such homes were out of fashion entirely. He didn’t want to link his life with a girl who lived for herself. A girl who drank daringly and boasted how many cigarettes she could smoke. Who wore clothes that would attract, and who considered every man, married or unmarried, her prey. That wasn’t his ideal at all. He would rather never have a home than put such a girl at the head of his.