Sahwah"s heart bounded painfully. "Let me take it up," she begged.
"All right," replied Migwan. "The rest of us are going to walk over with Agony and Oh-Pshaw while they take their berries home."
The rest went out of the front gate and Sahwah, not knowing what else to do, went upstairs to Veronica"s room, carrying the berries. She planned to leave them on Veronica"s dresser as a surprise for her when she should return, and then sit in her own room and read until dinner time.
Thinking Veronica"s room was empty she went right in without knocking.
Then she paused in astonishment, for there on the bed lay Veronica, with a wet towel tied around her head and her forehead drawn up into painful headache lines. Sahwah nearly dropped the berries on the floor in her surprise, but recovered herself with an effort and approached the bed.
Veronica opened her eyes and smiled when she saw Sahwah. Sahwah, unable to think of a thing to say, held out the berries silently, and Veronica exclaimed in delight:
"You dear thing," she said, taking the dainty basket in one hand and catching hold of Sahwah"s hand with the other. "You"re so good to me,"
she whispered, squeezing the hand she held and looking up at Sahwah with wide-open, candid eyes. "Come, sit on my bed, and make my headache go away, like you did once before."
Sahwah sat down beside her and smoothed her throbbing forehead with light, soothing fingers that had a magic power to charm away aches and pains. As she worked over Veronica and caught the sweet, straightforward glances from her eyes all her doubts concerning her vanished, and in their place there came uncertainty as to whether she herself had not been suffering under a delusion that afternoon. Had she really heard the telephone ring and Veronica answer it? Had hearing played some bizarre trick on her? She seemed to be perfectly awake and in her right mind in other respects. The girls had evidently not noticed anything peculiar about her actions when she came out of the house, not even Nyoda, the sharp sighted. Clearly she had not been walking in her sleep. She had certainly heard the telephone ring; she had certainly heard Veronica answer it. She had understood every word she had said perfectly; the hall had been absolutely still. And yet--she had not heard Veronica go out of either door! She remembered that distinctly, but her first impulse had been to wait until Veronica had gone out of the front door and then look after her. It was impossible not to have heard the front door open; one hinge was rusty and it emitted a dismal squeak every time the door opened. But if she had gone out of the back door the others would have seen her and would not have said that she was upstairs in her room. That was the point which made Sahwah doubt her own memory.
Veronica had not left the house; she must have gone right upstairs. And she must have said something else through the telephone and Sahwah"s ears had played her a trick. It was easy to have missed her in her search through the big house; Sahwah had merely run into one room after another, given a hasty glance around and then run on to the next.
Sahwah smoothed the brown satiny forehead lovingly, and laughed at herself for a suspicious idiot. And yet, the occurrence would not go from her mind, and she wakened in the night to think about it hour after hour and when she did sleep she was oppressed with a constant feeling of uneasiness, and woke again and again with that sense of groping after something that had just occurred, but which had escaped her utterly.
Then the next morning her doubts all vanished once more when the Winnebagos a.s.sembled on the front lawn for flag raising, and Veronica, whose turn it was to hoist the Stars and Stripes, stepped out with shining eyes, and with loving hands fastened the flag of her adopted country to the waiting halyard, carefully keeping it from touching the ground, and with an att.i.tude both proud and humble sent it fluttering to the top of the pole. Then she joined in the singing of the "Star Spangled Banner" with all her soul in her voice.
Clearly her actions told more eloquently than any pa.s.sionate words her love and reverence for that flag and all it symbolized. No, it could not be possible that she could be connected with anything that aimed to harm it.
And yet--that very night Sahwah had seen Veronica leaving the house after midnight when the rest were all asleep, and going down the hill behind the barn, and at the sight Sahwah had experienced that same indescribable chill of fear that she had felt in the train; a peculiar sense of hovering danger; a sensation which she could never clearly define while it lasted nor describe afterwards.
She still kept the secret, but it haunted her day and night and tormented her with its thousand possibilities. At last it seemed as if she could endure it no longer without an explanation of some kind and she made up her mind to ask Veronica about it. For this end she had asked her to come into the woods to-day.
But the sight of Veronica, skipping gaily before her along the path, whistling to the birds, calling the squirrels, whispering affectionate words to the shy flowers, made her fears seem ridiculous, and her resolution wavered and threatened to crumble. There was not a shadow on Veronica"s brow, not a glint of furtiveness in her eye, nowhere a hint of any secret knowledge or subdued excitement. Her eyes met Sahwah"s with candid directness, her laughter was spontaneous and not forced; she was neither paler than usual nor more flushed. How perfectly absurd to connect this happy-hearted girl with anything suspicious!
And yet--Sahwah knew now beyond a doubt that she had not been dreaming when she saw Veronica leave the house at night, and there was still that strange conversation over the telephone.
Sahwah slackened her pace and rubbed her ankles together, a gesture which in her denoted intensely concentrated thought. Veronica looked back to see where she was and came back to her, slipping her arm around her waist and hugging her in an ecstasy of girlish delight, born of the beautiful weather and the release from strenuous military drill.
"Oh, look at the darling old stump!" she exclaimed. "Why, it must be _miles_ across! Think what a tree that must have been! See, it has a sort of step up and then a broad seat, just like a throne. Come on, let"s climb up and pretend we"re queens."
She climbed up on the stump and drew Sahwah up after her.
"Why are you so quiet?" she asked finally, twisting her head and looking around into Sahwah"s face. "Have you a headache? The sun was so hot out there in the road where we were drilling, and the glare was so blinding."
"No, I haven"t a headache," replied Sahwah slowly.
"A toothache, maybe?" suggested Veronica in a playful voice in which there was a dash of concern. It was unusual indeed for Sahwah to lose her animation.
"No, it isn"t a toothache," replied Sahwah. "It"s just something I"ve been trying to figure out, that"s all."
"Can I help you figure it out?" asked Veronica eagerly.
"Veronica," began Sahwah, striving to speak in an offhand manner, "if--if you had a friend that you loved and that friend did something that you couldn"t understand and which seemed very strange and even suspicious to you, what would you do?"
Veronica"s eyes took on a thoughtful, far-away look, but they met Sahwah"s squarely. "If I loved that friend very much," she replied slowly, "and had always trusted her before, I would say to myself, "This is my friend whom I love and trust I don"t understand what she is doing, but I won"t permit myself to have any doubts about her now. I will have faith that she is doing nothing wrong. I will wait patiently and see what happens further, and very likely the matter will soon be explained to my satisfaction,""
"But," continued Sahwah, slowly and with an evident effort, "supposing you _had_ done that, had refused to have any doubts concerning your friend and had waited patiently, trusting that it was all right, but things had not been explained to your satisfaction, and other things had happened, things still stranger and more suspicious?"
To Sahwah, watching intently, it seemed that Veronica"s large luminous eyes had suddenly filmed over like an animal"s in pain, but she answered naturally, in her calm, sweet voice, "Then, if I really loved that friend, and was afraid my suspicions were going to injure our friendship, I would go to her and tell her what I had heard and seen and ask her for an explanation."
Sahwah was silent for a moment, seemingly engaged in some inward struggle with herself. Then she cleared her throat nervously and moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue.
"Veronica," she burst out desperately, "why did you go out of the house in the middle of the night on several occasions, and whom were you talking to on the telephone that day when you said to someone that you could slip out at that time without arousing any suspicions?"
Veronica started painfully and stared at Sahwah in amazement, and Sahwah fancied she saw a great terror leap up in her eyes. Veronica looked at her a moment, the expression of astonishment frozen on her face, and then to Sahwah"s great bewilderment she laughed aloud, a genuine, mirthful, unforced, ringing laugh.
"Sahwah dear," she said, looking her straight in the eye, "it"s perfectly true, all that you said. I did go out of the house in the middle of the night, and I did say just exactly what you said you heard me say over the telephone. But as for the explanation, I can"t give it now. It may be that you will never find out. It is not my secret, and I cannot tell it, even to clear away any suspicions you may have regarding it."
Sahwah gazed at her uncertainly, going over in her mind the unexpected effect her words had had upon Veronica, and the mysterious thing she had said in reply. They had both stepped off the throne and stood facing each other in the path. Veronica came up close to Sahwah and slipped a hand around each of her elbows and squeezed them, her favorite caress.
"Sahwah, dear," she said soberly, while the hurt animal look came back into her eyes, "you wouldn"t want me to tell you my secret, would you, dear? I wouldn"t want you to tell me yours, if you had one."
Sahwah felt rebuked and abashed, and very, very sorry. Her love for Veronica flamed higher than ever; all doubts concerning her vanished for good; she hugged and caressed her and begged to be forgiven for her foolishness, and with arms tightly entwined the two went blithely down the path.
CHAPTER IX
THE BABES IN THE WOODS
Arm in arm Sahwah and Veronica wandered on through the woods farther and farther away from the Oakwood side. They crossed the brow of the hill and descended to the valley on the other side. There they found a merry little stream which tumbled along with frequent cataracts over mossy rocks, and followed its course, often stopping to dip their hands in the bright water and let the drops flow through their fingers.
"I"d love to be a brook," said Sahwah longingly, "and go splashing and singing along over the smooth stones, and jump down off the high rocks, and catch the sunlight in my ripples, and have lovely silvery fishes swimming around in me. I"d sing them all to sleep every night, and wake them up in the morning with a kiss, and never, never let anyone catch them!"
"You love the water better than anything else, don"t you?" said Veronica, looking at Sahwah and thinking how much like the brook she was herself.
"Oh, I do, I do," said Sahwah, taking off her shoes and stockings and wading into the limpid stream. Soon she was dancing in the water, frolicking like a nixie, catching the water up in her hands and tossing it into the air and then darting out from beneath it before it could fall upon her. Veronica laughed and clapped her hands as she watched Sahwah, and wished she were an artist that she might paint the picture.
Finally they came to a place where the little stream poured down over a high rock and ran through a broad gully, widening into a great pond in the natural basin, which was like a huge bowl scooped out of rock.
"This must be the place they call the Devil"s Punch Bowl that Nyoda told us about," said Sahwah. "See, it looks just like a punch bowl."
"I wonder if it"s very deep," said Veronica, peering into the water from a safe distance away from the edge.
"Shall I dive in and find out?" asked Sahwah.
"Oh, don"t, don"t," said Veronica, catching hold of her arm.
"Don"t worry, you precious old goosie," said Sahwah, laughing. "I didn"t mean _really_. I was only in fun. Did you think I was going in with my clothes on? It must be deep, though, or the Indian couldn"t have jumped in. That must be the rock up there he jumped from," she said, indicating a flat, platform-like rock that overhung the gully some forty feet above their heads. "Don"t you remember Nyoda telling about it; how the soldiers were chasing this Indian and he got out on that rock and dove down into the Punch Bowl and swam under water and they never thought of looking down there for him?"
Both looked at the rock jutting out over the water, and shuddered at the height of the drop. At the far side of the gully the pond became a brook again and flowed on in a narrow channel the same as before. The woods were denser on this side of the gully and there was less sunlight filtering down through the branches. Several times they came upon cl.u.s.ters of fragile, pale Indian pipes growing out of wet, decayed stumps.
"Oh, it"s nice here," breathed Veronica, revelling in the coolness.