“Oh! oh! oh! The great horse chestnut!” cried Dorothy, springing aside from contact with the branches which fell crowding through the doorway. Hinges were torn from their places and the marvel was that the beautifully carved door had not itself been broken in bits.
Jim was the first to rally and to find some comfort in the situation, exclaiming:
“That’s happened exactly as I feared it would, some day; and it’s a mercy there wasn’t nobody sittin’ on that piazza. They’d ha’ been killed dead, sure as pisen!”
“Killing generally does mean death, Jim Barlow, but if you knew that splendid tree was bound to fall some day why didn’t you say so? We – ” with a fine assumption of proprietorship in Deerhurst – “we would have had it prevented,” demanded Dorothy.
Already she felt that this was home; already she loved the fallen tree almost as its mistress had done and her feeling was so sincere, if new, that nobody smiled, and the lad answered soberly:
“I have told, Dolly girl. I kept on tellin’ Mrs. Calvert how that lily-pond she would have dug out deeper an’ deeper, and made bigger all the time, would for certain undermine that tree and make it fall. But – but she’s an old lady ’t knows her own mind and don’t allow nobody else to know it for her! Old Hans, the gardener, he talked a heap, too; begged her to have the pond cemented an’ that wouldn’t hender the lilies blowin’ and’d stop trouble. But, no. She wouldn’t listen. Said she ‘liked things perfectly natural’ and – Well, she’s got ’em now!”
“Jim Barlow, you’re – just horrid! and – ungrateful to my precious Aunt Betty!” cried Dorothy, indignant tears springing to her eyes. To her the fallen tree seemed like a stricken human being and the catastrophe a terrible one. “It’s taken that grand chestnut years and years and years – longer’n you or I will ever live, like enough – to grow that big, and to be thrown down all in a minute, and – you don’t care a mite, except to find your own silly opinion prove true!”
“Hold on, Dolly girl. This ain’t no time for you an’ me to begin quarrelin’. I do care. I care more’n I can say but that don’t hender the course o’ nature. The pond was below; ’twas fed by a spring from above; she had trenches dug so that spring-water flowed right spang through the roots of that chestnut into the pond; and what could follow except what did? I’m powerful sorry it’s happened but I can’t help bein’ common-sensible over it.”
“I hate common-sense!” cried Molly, coming to the support of her friend. “Anyway, I don’t see what good we girls do standing here in this draughty hall. Let’s go to bed.”
“And leave the house wide open this way?”
Dorothy’s sense of responsibility was serious enough to her though amusing to the others, and it was Monty who brought her back to facts by remarking:
“The house always has been taken care of, Dolly Doodles, and I guess it will be now. Jim and I will get some axes and lop off these branches that forced the door in and prop it shut the best way we can. Then I’ll go down to the lodge with him to sleep for he says there’s a room I can have. See? You girls will be well protected!” and he nodded toward the group of servants gathered at the rear of the great hall. “So you’d better take Molly’s advice and go up-stairs.”
Dolly wasn’t pleased to be thus set coolly aside in “her own house” but there seemed nothing better to do than follow this frank advice; therefore, taking a hand of each of her girl friends, she led the way toward her own pretty chamber and two small rooms adjoining.
“Aunt Betty thought we three’d like to be close together, and anyway, if we had all come that I wanted to invite we’d have to snug up some. So she told Dinah to fix her dressing-room for one of you – that’s this side mine; and the little sewing-room for the other. She’s put single beds in them and Dinah is to sleep on her cot in this wide hall outside our doors. It seemed sort of foolish to me, first off, when darling Auntie planned it, as if anything could happen to make us need Dinah so near; but now – My! I can’t stop trembling, somehow. I was so frightened and sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too, and I’m scared, too; but I’m sleepier’n I’m ary one,” yawned Alfaretta.
“I’m sleepy, too;” assented Molly; and even the excited Dorothy felt a strange drowsiness creeping over her. It would be the correct thing, she had imagined, to lie awake and grieve over the loss of Mrs. Calvert’s beloved tree, which would now be cut into ignominious firewood and burned upon a hearth; but – in five minutes after her head had touched her pillow she was sound asleep as her mates already were.
Outside, the storm abated and the moon arose, lighting the scenery with its brilliance and setting the still dripping trees aglitter with its glory. Moonlight often made Dorothy wakeful and did so on this eventful night. Its rays streaming across her unshaded window roused her to sit up, and with the action came remembrance.
“My heart! That money! All those beautiful new bills that are to buy pleasant things for my Party guests! I had it all spread out on the library table when that crash came and I never thought of it again! Nobody else, either, I fancy. I’ll go right down and get it and I mustn’t wake the girls or Dinah. It was careless of me, it surely was; but I know enough about money to understand it shouldn’t be left lying about in that way.”
Creeping softly from her bed she drew on her slippers and kimono as Miss Rhinelander had taught her pupils always to do when leaving their rooms at night, and the familiar school-habit proved her in good stead this time. Once she would have stopped for neither; but now folding the warm little garment about her she tiptoed past old Dinah, snoring, and down the thickly carpeted stairs, whereon her slippered feet made no sound. Quite noiselessly she came to the library door and pushed the portière aside.
Into this room, also, the moonlight streamed, making every object visible. She had glanced, as she came along the hall, toward the big door, bolstered into place by the heavy settle and hat-rack; and the latter object looked so like a gigantic man standing guard that she cast no second look but darted within the lighter space.
Hark! What was that sound? Somebody breathing? Snoring? A man’s snore, so like that of dear Father John who used, sometimes, to keep her awake, though she hadn’t minded that because she loved him so. The sound, frightful at first, became less so as she remembered those long past nights, and mustering her courage she tiptoed toward the figure on the lounge.
Old Ephraim! Well, she didn’t believe Aunt Betty would have permitted even that faithful servant to spend a night upon her cherished leather couch; but the morning would be time enough to reprimand him for his audacity, which, of course, she must do, since she stood now in Mrs. Calvert’s place, as temporary head of the family. She felt gravely responsible and offended as she crossed the room to the table where three chairs still grouped sociably together, exactly as the three girls had left them.
Ah! yes. The chairs were in their places, Alfaretta’s list of guests as well, and even the little leather bag out of which she had drawn the wealth that so surprised her mates. But the ten crisp notes she had so spread out in the sight of all – where were they?
Certainly nowhere to be seen, although that revealing moonlight made even Alfy’s written words quite legible. What could have become of them? Who had taken them? And why? Supposing somebody had stolen in and stolen them? Supposing that was why he was sleeping in the library? Yet, if there had been thievery there, wouldn’t he have kept awake, to watch? Supposing – here a horrible thought crept into her mind – supposing he, himself, had been the thief! She was southern born and had the southerner’s racial distrust of a “nigger’s” honesty; yet – as soon as thought she was ashamed of the suspicion. Aunt Betty trusted him with far more than she missed now. She would go over to that window and think it out. Maybe the sleeper would awake in a minute and she could ask him about it.
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