The Girl at Central

I swung my feet on to the floor and sat up on the edge of the bed, nibbling at a chocolate almond.

"Here's where I get dumb," I said, sort of casual to encourage her.

"Sylvia Hesketh's a girl that needs a strong hand over her and there's no one has it. Her father's dead, her mother – poor Mrs. Fowler's only a grown-up baby ready to say black is white if her husband wants her to – and Dr. Fowler's trying to do it and he's going about it all wrong. You see," she said, turning to me very serious, "it's not only that she's head-strong and extravagant but she's an incorrigible flirt."

"Is there a place in the back of the book where you can find out what incorrigible means?" I said.

Anne smiled, but not as if she felt like it.

"Uncontrollable, irrepressible. Her mother – Mrs. Fowler's ready to tell me anything and everything – says she's always been like that. And, of course, with her looks and her fortune the men are around her like flies round honey."

"Why does the Doctor mind that?"

"I suppose he wouldn't mind if they just came to Mapleshade or Longwood. But – that's what the quarreling's about – he's found out that she meets them in town, goes to lunch and the matinée with them."

"Excuse me, but I've left my etiquette book on the piano. What's wrong about going to the matinée or to lunch?"

"Nothing's really wrong. Mind you, Molly, I know Sylvia through and through and there's no harm in her – it's just the bringing-up and the spoiling and the admiration. But, of course, in her position, a girl doesn't go about that way without a chaperone. The Doctor's perfectly right to object."

I was looking down, pretending to hunt over the box.

"Who does she go with?" I said.

"Oh, there are several. A man named Carisbrook – " I'd seen him often, a swell guy in white spats and a high hat – "and a young lawyer called Dunham and Ben Robinson, a Canadian like me. People see her with them and tell the doctor and there's a row."

I looked into the box as careful as if I was searching for a diamond.

"Ain't Mr. Reddy one of the happy family?" I asked. "Ah, here's the last almond!"

"Oh, of course, young Reddy. I think it would be a good thing if she married him. Everybody says he's a fine fellow, and I tell you now, Molly, with Sylvia so willful and the doctor so domineering and Mrs. Fowler being pulled to pieces between them, things at Mapleshade can't go on long the way they are."

That was in May. At the end of June the Fowlers went to Bar Harbor with all their outfit for the summer. After that Jack Reddy didn't come into Longwood much. I heard that he was spending a good deal of his time at the bungalow at Hochalaga Lake, and I did see him a few times meeting his company at the train – he had some week-end parties out there – and bringing them back in the gray car.

At the end of September the Fowlers came home. It was great weather, clear and crisp, with the feel of frost in the air. Most everybody was out of doors and I saw Sylvia often, sometimes on horseback, sometimes driving her motor. She was prettier than ever for the change and seemed like she couldn't stay in the house. I'd see her riding toward home in the red light of the sunset, and as I walked back from work her car often would flash past me, speeding through the early dark toward Maple Lane.

Anne said they'd had a fairly peaceful summer and she hoped they were going to get on better. There had only been one row – that was about a man who was up at Bar Harbor and had met Sylvia and paid her a good deal of attention. The Doctor had been very angry as he disapproved of the man – Cokesbury was his name.

"Cokesbury!" I cut in surprised – we were in Anne's room that evening – "why, he belongs round here."

Anne had heard that and wanted to know what I knew about him, which I'll write down in this place as it seems to fit in and has to be told somewhere.

When I first came to Longwood, Mr. and Mrs. Cokesbury were living on their estate, Cokesbury Lodge, about twenty-five miles from us, near Azalea. They had been in France for a year previous to that, then come back and taken up their residence in Mr. Cokesbury's country seat, and it was shortly after that Mrs. Cokesbury died there, leaving three children. For a while the widower stayed on with nurses and governesses to look after the poor motherless kids. Then, the eldest boy taking sick and nearly dying, he decided to send them to his wife's parents, who had wanted them since Mrs. Cokesbury's death.

So the establishment at the Lodge was broken up and Mr. Cokesbury went to live in town. There were rumors that the house was to be sold, but in the spring Sands, the Pullman conductor, told me that Mr. Cokesbury had been down several times, staying over Sunday and had said he had given up the idea of selling the place. He told Sands he couldn't get his price for it and what was the sense of selling at a loss, especially when he could come out there and get a breath of country air when he was scorched up with the city heat?

I'd passed the house one day in August when I was on an auto ride with some friends. It was a big, rambling place with a lot of dismal-looking pines around it, about five miles from Azalea and with no near neighbors. Mr. Cokesbury only kept one car – he'd had several when his wife was there – and used to drive himself down from the Lodge to the station, leave his car in the Azalea garage, and drive himself back the next time he came. He had no servants or caretaker, which he didn't need, as, after Mrs. Cokesbury's death, all the valuable things had been taken out of the house and sent to town for storage.

It gave me a jar to hear that Sylvia Hesketh – who, in my mind, was as good as engaged to Jack Reddy – would have anything to do with him. I'd never seen him, but I'd heard a lot that wasn't to his credit. He hadn't been good to his wife – everybody said she was a real lady – but was the gay, wild kind, and not young, either. Anne said he was forty if he was a day. When I asked her what Sylvia could see in an old gink like that, she just shrugged up her shoulders and said, who could tell – Sylvia was made that way. She was like some woman whose name I can't remember who sat on a rock and sang to the sailors till they got crazy and jumped into the water.

My head was full of these things one glorious afternoon toward the end of October when – it being my holiday – I started out for a walk through the woods. The woods cover the hills behind the village and they're grand, miles and miles of them. But wait! There was a little thing that happened, by the way, that's worth telling, for it gave me a premonition – is that the word? Or, maybe, I'd better say connected up with what was in my mind.

I was walking slow down Main Street when opposite the postoffice I saw all the loafers and most of the tradespeople lined up in a ring staring at a bunch of those dago acrobats that go about the State all summer doing stunts on a bit of carpet. I'd seen them often – chaps in dirty pink tights walking on their hands and rolling round in knots – and I wouldn't have stopped but I got a glimpse of little Mick Donahue stumping round the outside trying to squeeze in and trying not to cry because he couldn't. So I stopped and hoisted him up for a good view, telling the men in front to break a way for the kid to see.

There was a dago scraping on a fiddle and while the acrobats were performing on their carpet, a big bear with a little, brown, shriveled-up man holding it by a chain, was dancing. And when I got my first look at that bear, in spite of all my worry I burst out laughing, for, dancing away there solemn and slow, it was the dead image of Dr. Fowler.

You'd have laughed yourself if you'd seen it – that is, if you'd known the Doctor. There was something so like him in its expression – sort of gloomy and thoughtful – and its little eyes set up high in its head and looking angry at the crowd as if it despised them. When its master jerked the chain and shouted something in a foreign lingo it hitched up its lip like it was trying to smile, and that sideways grin, as if it didn't feel at all pleasant, was just the way the Doctor'd smile when he came into the Exchange and gave me a number.

It fascinated me and I stood staring with little Mick sitting on my arm, just loving it all, his dirty little fist clasped round a penny. Then the music stopped and one of the acrobats came round with a hat and little Mick gave a great sigh as if he was coming out of a dream. "If you hadn't come, Molly, I'd have missed it," he said, looking into my face in that sweet wistful way sickly kids have, "and it's the last time they'll be round this year."

I kissed him and put him down and told the men as I squeezed out to keep him in the front or they'd hear from me. Then I walked off toward the woods thinking.

It was a funny idea I'd got into my head. I'd once read in a paper that when people looked like animals they resembled the animals in their dispositions – and I was wondering was Dr. Fowler like a bear, grouchy and when you crossed him savage. Maybe it was because I'd been so worried, but it gave me a kind of chill. My thoughts went back to Mapleshade and I got one of those queer glimpses (like a curtain was lifted for a second and you could see things in the future) of trouble there – something dark – I don't know how to explain it, but it was as if I got a new line on the Doctor, as if the bear had made me see through the surface clear into him.

I tried to shake it off for I wanted to enjoy my afternoon in the woods. They are beautiful at that season, the trees full of colored leaves, and all quiet except for the rustlings of little animals round the roots. There's a road that winds along under the branches, and trails, soft under foot with fallen leaves and moss, that you can follow for miles.

I was coming down one of these, making no more noise than the squirrels, when just before it crossed the road I saw something and stopped. There, sitting side by side on a log, were Sylvia Hesketh and a man. Close to them, run off to the side, was a motor and near it tied to a tree a horse with a lady's saddle. Sylvia was in her riding dress, looking a picture, her eyes on the ground and slapping softly with her whip on the side of her boot. The man was leaning toward her, talking low and earnest and staring hard into her face.

To my knowledge I'd never seen him before, and it gave me a start – me saying, surprised to myself, "Hullo! here's another one?" He was a big, powerful chap, with a square, healthy looking face and wide shoulders on him like a prize fighter. He was dressed in a loose coat and knickerbockers and as he talked he had his hands spread out, one on each knee, great brown hands with hair on them. I was close enough to see that, but he was speaking so low and I was so scared that they'd see me and think I was spying, that I didn't hear what he was saying. The only one that saw me was the horse. It looked up sudden with its ears pricked, staring surprised with its soft gentle eyes.

I stole away like a robber, not making a speck of noise. All the joy I'd been taking in the walk under the colored leaves was gone. I felt kind of shriveled up inside – the way you feel when someone you love is sick. I couldn't bear to think that Jack Reddy was giving his heart to a girl who'd meet another man out in the woods and listen to him so coy and yet so interested.

As far as I can remember, that was a little over a month from the fatal day. All the rest of October and through the first part of November things went along quiet and peaceful. And then, suddenly, everything came together – quick like a blow.

III

For two days it had been raining, heavy straight rain. From my window at Galway's I could see the fields round the village full of pools and zigzags of water as if they'd been covered with a shiny gray veil that was suddenly pulled off and had caught in the stubble and been torn to rags. Saturday morning the weather broke. But the sky was still overcast and the air had that sort of warm, muggy breathlessness that comes after rain. That was November the twentieth.

It was eleven o'clock and I was sitting at the switchboard looking out at the streets, all puddles and ruts, when I got a call from the Dalzells' – a place near the Junction – for Mapleshade.

Now you needn't get preachy and tell me it's against the rules to listen – suspension and maybe discharge. I know that better than most. Didn't the roof over my head and the food in my mouth depend on me doing my work according to orders? But the fact is that at this time I was keyed up so high I'd got past being cautious. When a call came for Mapleshade I listened, listened hard, with all my ears. What did I expect to hear? I don't know exactly. It might have been Jack Reddy and it might have been Sylvia – oh, never mind what it was – just say I was curious and let it go at that.

So I lifted up the cam and took in the conversation.

It was a woman's voice – Mrs. Dalzell's, I knew it well – and Dr. Fowler's. Hers was trembly and excited:

"Oh, Dr. Fowler, is that you? It's Mrs. Dalzell, yes, near the Junction. My husband's very sick. We've had Dr. Graham and he says it's appendicitis and there ought to be an operation – now, as soon as possible. Do you hear me?"

Then Dr. Fowler, very calm and polite:

"Perfectly, madam."

"Oh, I'm so glad – I've been so terribly worried. It's so unexpected. Mr. Dalzell's never had so much as a cramp before and now – "

"Just wait a minute, Mrs. Dalzell," came the Doctor. "Let me understand. Graham recommends an operation, you say?"

"Yes, Dr. Fowler, as soon as possible; something awful may happen if it's not done. And Dr. Graham suggested you if you'd be so kind. I know it's a favor but I must have the best for my husband. Won't you come? Please, to oblige me."

Dr. Fowler asked some questions which I needn't put down and said he'd come and if necessary operate. Then they talked about the best way for him to get there, the Doctor wanting to know if the main line to the Junction wouldn't be the quickest. But Mrs. Dalzell said she'd been consulting the time tables and there'd be no train from Longwood to the Junction before two and if he wouldn't mind and would come in his auto by the Firehill Road he'd get there several hours sooner. He agreed to that and it wasn't fifteen minutes after he'd hung up that I saw him swing past my window in his car, driving himself.