Chapter 7 THE THREAT

"Then you refuse to help me or to keep my secret?" Polly O'Neill protested indignantly. "Really, Esther, I never knew any one with such a gift for considering herself her sister's keeper. We belong to the same Camp Fire Club. And if that means anything I thought it was loyalty and service toward one another.

"'As fagots are brought from the forest

Firmly held by the sinews which bind them,

So cleave to these others, your sisters,

Wherever, whenever you find them.'"

Esther had walked across the room and had her back turned during this recitation. But now she moved around, facing her visitor until it was Polly's eyes that dropped before her own. The older girl had always the dignity that comes from truth and sincerity.

"Don't be absurd, Polly," she said, speaking quietly, but with no lack of decision. "You know as well as I do that loyalty has nothing to do with aiding one another to do what one does not believe to be right. I don't want to preach. Yet don't you think perhaps you are breaking a part of our Camp Fire law? 'Be Trustworthy. This law teaches us not to undertake enterprises rashly.'"

"Oh, please hush, Esther," Polly insisted. "There is no use in our quarreling, and we are sure to if you go on preaching like that. I told you what I have made up my mind to do. If you don't wish to help me, that of course is your affair. All I have the right to demand is, that what I told you in the strictest confidence you repeat to no one else."

She picked up her coat and began slowly buttoning it, waiting for Esther's reply, which did not come at once.

"I don't know whether I can promise you even that," the older girl answered finally. Her face was white and she moved her hands in the old nervous fashion that Betty had almost broken her of. "I don't suppose you can understand, Polly, what an almost dangerous thing you are about to undertake. And without your mother knowing it! O Polly, please don't! Why, if anything should happen to you what would she say to me or Molly and Betty, if knowing your intention I did not warn them?"

Polly was like a hot flame in her anger. In her life Esther scarcely remembered ever having seen any one in such intense yet quiet passion. All the blue seemed to have gone out of her visitor's eyes until they were almost black. Her lips were drawn and although she tried to control her voice, it quivered like a too-tightly-drawn violin string.

"Esther," she said, "I shall not leave this room until I have your solemn promise. Perhaps you don't know anything about the standards of conduct between people of birth and breeding. You were brought up in an orphan asylum and had no mother. Whether you disapprove of me or not makes no difference. I am not objecting to your disapproval. I can perfectly understand that. But what I absolutely will not endure is for you to tell my secret because it happens to strike your conscience that that is the right thing to do. My secret belongs to me as absolutely as my clothes or any of my other possessions do. And because you chance not to approve of it or of them is no reason why you should steal them from me and give them away to other people."

Again Esther was silent and her eyes filled with tears. What was the use of arguing with Polly when she was in this mood? Yet there were so many things that she could honestly say. And one of them, that if she had had the good fortune to have a mother, she at least would not have tried to deceive her as Polly was doing.

However Esther was not sure that the latter part of her companion's argument was not true. Had she the right to betray Polly's confidence, even though she might consider it for her good? For Polly had begun her revelation by insisting that what she told be kept in the strictest secrecy, and she had listened with that understanding.

Unfortunately Esther's failure to reply did not strike her visitor as indicating a change in her point of view. Polly flung herself angrily down into a chair, as though intent upon beginning a siege. She was trying in a measure to control her temper, realizing how ashamed she usually felt after the flare of it was past. Still she did honorably consider that Esther's attitude in the present situation was the wrong one. Perhaps she was being disobedient, wilful, wicked even. Yet she had made up her mind to take the consequences (at least the consequences that she was now able to foresee). And she had no idea of being frustrated in her purpose by an outside person, whose assistance she had been foolish enough to ask. No, some way must be devised that would force Esther into silence.

Polly glanced desperately about the small room. There was a big photograph of the Princess, smiling at her from the wall, the Princess at her loveliest, with her exquisitely refined features, her delicate, high-bred air. She turned away from it rather quickly to look again at her companion. Goodness, what a contrast there still was between the two girls! They had believed that Esther was improving a little in her appearance. Yet just now worry and uncertainty made her seem plainer even than usual. And she had on an ugly but thoroughly useful chocolate-colored dress that Betty would have made her throw into the fire at once.

"Betty, it was always Betty with Esther Crippen!" If only she could reach Esther in some way through their friend. This was an ugly thought of Polly's. She was ashamed of it and yet felt herself driven to using almost any means toward attaining her end.

"Look here, Esther Crippen," she began, breaking the silence first. "I wonder if it has ever occurred to you that you may some day have a secret in your life (or you may have one already for all that I know), which you want more than anything to keep hidden from people. Say you particularly wished Betty never to find it out. Well, suppose I discovered your secret, suppose I knew about it right now, would you want me to tell Betty everything that I had found out just because I decided that it would be the right thing to do?"

Polly happened to be staring into her own lap as she delivered this speech, feeling none too proud of it and having to trust to her imagination as she went along. Now, however, she glanced up into the face of the other girl, who was standing near her.

Then with an exclamation of regret, almost of fear, Polly jumped to her feet.

"Good heavens! Esther, what is the matter with you? Are you ill, do you feel like you were going to faint? If you are sick why on earth haven't you told me before? We could talk over this business of mine any time."

And Polly, forgetting her anger, put her arm reassuringly about her former friend, fairly leading her to a chair. Esther continued staring at her, with a deathly white face, evidently trying to speak, but not able. Then suddenly the girl collapsed and dropping her head on her arm began to cry. She was ordinarily self-restrained; and being brought up in an orphan asylum among people who took no interest in her emotions she had learned unusual self-control. Probably only three or four persons had ever seen her give way like this before in her life. So she did not cry easily, but in a kind of shaken, broken fashion that brought a remorseful Polly on the floor at her feet.

"What on earth have I said that has hurt you so, Esther?" she begged. "I know I am a wretched little beast who does or say 'most anything sometimes in order to get my own way. But of course I don't know any secret of yours and if I did I should never tell. I only like to threaten things because I'm cross. You see I don't believe in telling secrets."

This was a Polly-like way of apologizing and yet driving in her own claim at the same time. If only at this moment Esther had had the Princess' understanding of Polly O'Neill's character, most certainly she would have laughed. But Esther could not pull herself together so quickly. A few moments later, however, she put her hands on Polly's shoulders and in the face of all that had just happened, kissed her.

"No, Polly," she said, "I know that if ever you should make up your mind that there was something, which I thought best should never be known, you would never tell it, even if I betray your secret now. Perhaps we don't agree about some things. But you could never be revengeful. I am sure I don't know what I ought to do. Of course you have the right to choose for yourself. I-I wish you wouldn't do what you have decided upon. But if I don't tell and yet don't let you stay here with me, what on earth would you do about this theatrical scheme?"

"Why, go to some other boarding house for two weeks," Polly replied calmly. "I am sure that is exactly what you are doing, boarding in New York and going on with your work. Of course your work happens to be studying music at present, but you have already sung at two church concerts and--"

This time Esther did laugh. "Well, church concerts are hardly to be compared with the stage, Polly. And please look in your mirror and remember that I am I and you are you. But of course you realize that if you will go on with this whim of yours, I am not going to let you live in any place by yourself. You would be sure to get ill or something dreadful might happen. No, I shall beg you every minute till the time comes, not to do what you must know would worry your mother. But if you still persist, why, you are coming right here to stay with me and I shall be your shadow every moment until you go back to school."

Polly jumped up hastily. "What an impolite suggestion for a hostess!" she murmured, pretending that the seriousness of the situation was now entirely past. "Go back to school? Dear me, that is what I must do this very minute! Good-bye." And kissing Esther hastily on the hair, Polly seized her hat and fled out the door.

Yet halfway down the long stairs the girl hesitated and stopped for an instant as if intending to return.

"Perhaps I ought to give up and be good for once," she whispered to herself. "It won't be fair, and mother and Mollie and Betty may be angry with Esther for not telling. Even if I have the right to get into trouble myself, I haven't the right to drag in other people. But, oh dear! what fun it will be! And with Esther for my duenna, things are sure to turn out all right."

On the lowest steps Polly passed a small boy hobbling up toward Esther's room. He was evidently a boy from the streets, as he was shabbily dressed and carried half a dozen papers under his arm. But there was a hungry, eager look in his face that Polly remembered having seen sometimes in Esther's in those early days of her first coming to Mrs. Ashton's home. So straightway she guessed that the boy was some child, whom Esther had discovered, with a talent and love for music and that she was giving him lessons in her leisure moments.