SOPHIE'S STORY

I had to lay my journal aside last night before I reached the really thrilling occurrence of Thanksgiving day, which was, strangely enough, neither the dinner nor the ball, although each was in its own peculiar way a decided success.

I have Evelyn's word that the ball was a success, for neither Sophie nor I attended it, albeit Richard had, at my whispered suggestion, sent Sophie a box of long white gloves from the city, getting them off on an early train that they might reach her in time; and sending along with this a box of roses--Marechal Niel for Sophie, La France for Mrs.

Chalmers and Evelyn, while for me there was a great sheaf of American Beauties.

But he did not come back in time for the ball, and I suddenly lost all interest in the affair as the last train out from the city that evening failed to bring him. Sophie had been suffering all day with a frightful neuralgic headache, and, as night drew near, it became so much worse that she declared that she could not go to the ball. The lights and dizzy whirling around would be the death of her, she decided, so she dropped down into a chair in the library after dinner and said she would give it up.

"Then I'll stay with you," I volunteered, and, despite her own protestations and feebler ones from Mrs. Chalmers and Evelyn, the matter was thus arranged. There were always far too many girls at such affairs anyway, they all knew, so that my absence would really be a blessing.

Mr. Maxwell came into the room just as the matter had been thus satisfactorily settled and when he heard of the arrangement his face beamed with a kind of mischievous happiness.

"Now, that's what I call luck," he said, as the door closed upon Mrs.

Chalmers' retreating form and left us three alone together. "I'll go with the ladies and stay long enough to see that Evelyn's card is filled--then I'll take a sneak, and come on back home to see how the headache is progressing."

His smile spoke immense approval of his own cleverness, but Sophie cut it short.

"You'll do nothing of the kind," she said decidedly, looking up at him as he stood by the library table, a folded newspaper in his hand; "you'll stay and do your duty by the wall-flowers."

"Not I, sweet lady," he answered banteringly. "Life is too short. I'm coming back here and entertain your headache away!"

And he did. He came in at about half-past ten, for the filling up of Evelyn's card had been a matter quickly despatched, and he was in radiant spirits over having "jumped the game."

"Mrs. Chalmers didn't mind at all," he explained as he drew a chair up to the fire and lighted a cigarette. "I left her in a corner with a few other fond mammas and she even insisted that I should not go back, as Jim goes for them about two o'clock. All I'm to do is to go out to the stables and punch Jim in the ribs and wake him up in time. So we are going to have a jolly evening together."

"Oh, dear, what a pleasant prospect!" Sophie said, only half in jest, as her hand went up to her aching head. "Now, if I could just get rid of this one-eyed pain I might find life decidedly worth living."

"Isn't there anything we can do?" he asked solicitously, casting his cigarette quickly into the fire as if he thought the smoke might make her head worse. "Can't Miss Fielding and I make you a mustard plaster--or something?"

"There is a little bottle of stuff in my bag up-stairs that sometimes acts like magic in a case like this," she finally said with some hesitancy, and I realized that she was hesitating because she disliked the idea of having any one fussing over her. She is one of these capable creatures who seldom ask even a small service of any one.

"Let me run and get it," I said starting up and resolving that I should get the bottle, hand it in to Mr. Maxwell at the door, then betake myself off to my own room and leave them alone together. I imagined that he would enjoy the privilege of hunting about to get her a gla.s.s and a spoon himself. And it would make them feel more at home with each other for him to be rendering her these little services.

I went to Sophie's room and found a bag where she had told me to look, in the closet on the lower shelf. I caught it up and moved across to the bed, where I sat down and deposited it by my side; then I began a wrestling match with the most obstinate catch that it has ever been my ill-fortune to come across on an alligator-skin bag.

"I'll just have to take it down and get Mr. Maxwell to open it," I finally decided, after I had worked with the thing until my strength and patience were both exhausted. "It is provoking to see the ease with which a man can subdue a thing like this after a woman has broken off all her best-looking finger-nails over the task."

So I caught the bag up in one hand and my trailing skirts in the other and wended my way back to the library. My load was quite heavy, heavier than an ordinary traveling-bag I remembered afterward; and in struggling with the lock I had at one time pulled slightly apart an end of the stubborn opening. A whiff of drugs was borne to me in that instant--a kind of combination of odors, none of which I knew by name, but they were all strikingly familiar, for they were exactly like the smells in Alfred's small black instrument case.

"I hope you don't take all these different kinds of dope for your headaches," I thought with a quick little feeling of contempt, for I don't have much patience with the headache-powder habit. I learned this contempt from Alfred, of course.

Mr. Maxwell was alone in the library when I returned and told me that Sophie had gone to get a gla.s.s of hot water.

"She says that is all she ever takes for these spells of neuralgia,"

he said, holding out his hand for the bag, when I explained to him about the fastening. "But there is a little bottle of something or other in here that she rubs on her forehead--and that eases the pain."

"Then why on earth didn't she rub it on early this morning?" I inquired wonderingly.

"That's what I asked her," he answered with a slight laugh, "but she says that the stuff burns the skin and leaves a red mark; and she didn't want to be disfigured for the ball--I told her that she would have looked just the same to me--red mark or no red mark."

He was smiling good-naturedly as he worked with the lock of the bag, which after a moment or two came open with a lamb-like docility. He was walking across the room to deposit it upon the table when Sophie came in and saw him with the bag opened in his hand. She gave a little startled exclamation and we both wheeled and faced her.

"That's the wrong bag," she said, speaking with such nervous haste and her face wearing such a white, scared look that we both instinctively glanced into the open case Mr. Maxwell held in his hands. "Don't!

There's something in there that I don't want you to see!"

Poor girl, if it had been a dynamite bomb or a counterfeiter's kit of tools, she could scarcely have looked more frightened, for Mr. Maxwell and I had already seen the contents. His face suddenly went white, too, as he quickly strode across the room and laid the bag upon the table.

"_This_ is likely the thing you didn't want us to see," he exclaimed, reaching in and holding up to the light a glittering little object. It was a hypodermic syringe!

When she saw the silvery-looking instrument actually in his hand and observed the stern, harsh look in his eyes she gave a wild, hysterical laugh and walked quickly across to him. She clutched the shining thing from his hand and held it up before me.

"_Now_ you both know the 'disgraceful secret' which Aunt Ida has made me keep so securely locked away from you," she cried, holding the instrument in her hand and pulling the piston backward and forward with a deftness born of long familiarity. "She made me promise to keep it a secret, for she said that if her 'society' friends knew of it I should be considered beyond the pale. Heavens knows that I am sorry for it and ashamed of it, but there was a mighty--temptation."

She sat down in the nearest chair and began to cry, her face buried in her folded arms, and her shoulders heaving convulsively. I went over quickly and laid my hand upon her head.

"Don't cry, Sophie!" I begged, "it will make your head worse; and--_this_ doesn't make the slightest difference in our feeling for you. We are not 'society,' are we, Mr. Maxwell?"

I glanced appealingly toward him, but he did not see me. His eyes were fixed upon Sophie's bowed head with a pitying, yet _horrified_ stare, then the look of bewilderment which he wore at the first sight of her came over his face, painfully intensified this time.

"My G.o.d!" he finally broke out, and I knew that he did not know he was speaking aloud. "I have seen you before to-night with that thing in your hand! I can even feel its sharp little sting in _my_ arm--but where--_where_--I can't remember."

At his queer words Sophie looked quickly up, but he had already turned his back to us two and was leaving the room. We heard him linger a moment in the hall as if he might be looking for his hat; then the big front door closed behind him.

"He still doesn't remember!" she said slowly, looking at me in surprise. "I thought he would. I don't imagine that he has had much experience with trained nurses, so I fancied it would all come back to him when he found that I was one."

"You took care of him when his head was hurt last year?"

"Yes. I nursed him from the night he was brought into the hospital until he was almost out of danger--it was a long, tedious case, and we thought for a while that we were not going to save him."

"And you really were telling some child about the little pigs going to market one night when he heard you?" I asked, thinking how much stranger than fiction this case was.

"Yes. That was after he was beginning to be better, but I was still his 'special.' The baby's cot had been moved out into the corridor just beyond his door--it was so hot--and I used to slip out there occasionally and get the little fellow to sleep. But I came down with malarial fever myself before Mr. Maxwell was entirely well. That's the reason his memory of me is so hazy."

"Then why didn't you tell him plainly--when you first met him here and saw that he remembered you?" I asked as she got up and opened the bag wider to try to find the bottle of medicine she wanted, for her hand went to her head in a manner which told me that all this excitement had in nowise lessened the pain.

"That's what I am so sorry for and ashamed of," she answered simply, as she lifted some of the contents of the bag out and placed them upon the table. "I shouldn't have stayed here an _hour_ after Aunt Ida told me I must sail under false covers, but--I said a while ago, in my excitement, that there was a mighty temptation! I didn't intend to say it, but--it is true."

"And the temptation was--"

We heard the front door open then and close again softly. Mr. Maxwell had finished his walk out in the cool night air. I hoped that he would come on back into the library as he heard our voices, but he pa.s.sed the door and in another moment we heard his footsteps on the stairs.

"They told me that _he_ was coming," Sophie said.

Four days have pa.s.sed since the night of the Thanksgiving ball; and at a house-party where four days drag there is a greater sense of calamity than would be caused by a dreary four weeks at some other time. For there is always the tormenting thought of how much hay one might have been piling up if the sun would only shine.