Chapter XIII: Heartbreak

SHE RAN out of the door and to the street, where she turned northward, away from home, with her cheeks afire and her heart still singing; but what it sang now was, “Monday! Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday—Monday again!” All through the year she would see him on every one of those days. Cornelia was happy.

She was altogether happy; and she had just spent the happiest hour of her life. Other happy hours she might know, and many different kinds of happiness, but never again an hour of such untouched happiness as this. Happiness unshadowed cannot come often after childhood, and sixteen is one of the years that close childhood.

She was too happy to be with any one except herself; she could not talk to any one except herself; and so her feet bore her lightly to the open country outside the suburban town, and here, pleased with the bracing winter wind upon her face, she walked and walked—and her walking was more like dancing. She did not come home until the twilight of the short day had begun to verge into dusk; and, when she entered the house she went quickly up to her own room without seeing anybody on the way. In her heart she was singing gaily, “Monday! Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday——”

But as she pressed the light on at a lamp upon her dressing-table, something disquieted her. She flew to her open desk, and, breathless, clasped both hands about her throat, for before her was her sacred mountain, but not as she had left it. The little papers had blown about the room. Someone had closed the window, and gathered the drawings together. Someone had left a paperweight upon them. Someone had seen the mountain.

The door opened behind her, as Cornelia stood staring at this violation, and she turned to face her mother.

Mrs. Cromwell closed the door, but she did not sit down or even advance farther into the room. “Cornelia, where have you been all day?”

“What? Nowhere in particular.”

“Where did you lunch?”

“What? Nowhere in particular.”

“Cornelia!”

“Yes, Mamma.” Cornelia had resumed her armour; her look was moody and her tone fatigued.

“Cornelia, I am asking you where you lunched.”

“I said, ‘Nowhere in particular,’ Mamma.”

“I know you did.” And upon this Mrs. Cromwell’s voice trembled a little. “I wish you to tell me the truth, Cornelia.”

Cornelia stood before her, apparently imperturbable, with passive eyes evasive; and Mrs. Cromwell, not knowing that her daughter’s knees were trembling, began to speak with the severity she felt.

“Cornelia, your father and I have been talking in the library, and we’ve made up our minds this sort of thing must come to a stop.”

“What sort of thing?”

“This rudeness of yours, this moodiness and secretiveness.”

“I’m not secretive.”

“You are. You’re an entirely changed girl. Last year you’d no more have done what you’re doing now than you’d have flown!”

“What am I doing now?”

“You’re standing there trying to deceive me,” Mrs. Cromwell answered sharply. “But I’m not deceived any longer, Cornelia; I’ve learned the truth. We knew that a change had come over you, and you were moody and indifferent toward your family, but we did at least suppose your mind was on your books. But to-day——”

“To-day!” Cornelia cried out suddenly, her look of moodiness all gone. She pointed to her desk. “Were _you_ in here to-day after I went out? Did you——”

“You left your door open and your window, and those sheets of paper were blowing clear out into the hall. Naturally, I——”

“Mamma!” Cornelia’s voice was loud now, and her finger trembled violently as she pointed to the mountain. “Mamma, did you—did you——”

Mrs. Cromwell laughed impatiently. “Naturally, as I picked them up I couldn’t very well help seeing what they were and drawing certain conclusions.”

“You _dared_!” Cornelia cried, fiercely. “Mamma, you _dared_!”

“Cornelia, you will please not speak to me in that tone. I’m very glad it happened because, though of course I shouldn’t take those little drawings of yours seriously, and they’re of no significance worth mentioning, there was one of them that did shed a light on something I heard later in the afternoon.”

“What? What did you hear?”

Mrs. Cromwell came a step nearer her, gravely. “Cornelia, you needn’t have tried to deceive me about where you went when you slipped out of the house before lunch and caused me so much anxiety. I telephoned and telephoned——”

Cornelia interrupted; her shaking finger still pointed to the desk: “I don’t care to hear this. What I want to know is how you dared—how you _dared_ to——”

“Cornelia, you must not ask your mother how she ‘dares’ to do anything. We know where you lunched, and you might have guessed that you couldn’t do such a thing without our hearing of it. A lady who saw you came straight here to know if it was by my consent, and I’m very grateful to her for it. In conjunction with the drawing I’d just seen, which surprised me greatly, to say the least, what this lady told me was a shock to me, as it is to your father, too, Cornelia. To think that you’d deceive us like this—to say nothing of the indiscretion of a schoolmaster who is supposed to be in _charge_ of——”

“Mr. Bromley?” Cornelia cried. “Do you mean Mr. Bromley?”

“I certainly do. I think his conduct——”

“I asked him,” Cornelia interrupted fiercely. “I saw him from the window and I ran down and walked ahead of him, and almost got run over by a taxicab on purpose, and he saved me, and I asked him to let me have lunch with him and told him I was going there anyway. Mamma, don’t you dare——” Her voice broke; she gulped and choked; her trembling was but too visible now. “Mamma, if you ever dare say anything against Mr. Bromley——”

“I agree that we may quite as well leave him out of it,” her mother said, sharply. “Your own excitement is all the evidence I need that your father and I have been wise in the decision we’ve just come to.”

Something ominous in this arrested Cornelia’s anger; and she stared at her mother incredulously. “‘Decision’?” she repeated, slowly. “What ‘decision’?”

“We’re going to put you into Miss Remy’s school on the Hudson,” Mrs. Cromwell said. “Your father’s already engaged a drawing-room for us on the afternoon train to-morrow. I’m going with you, and you’ll begin the new term there on Monday.”

Cornelia still stared. “No——” she said. “No, Mamma, no——”

Mrs. Cromwell was touched, seeing the terror that gathered in her child’s eyes. “You’ll love it there after a little while, dear. You may think it’s pleasant to stay here, but after you’ve been there a week or so, it’s such a lovely place that you——”

But Cornelia threw herself down passionately at her mother’s feet. “No! No! _No!_” she sobbed, over and over again; and in this half-articulate anguish, Mrs. Cromwell read and understood Cornelia’s secret indeed. She was compassionate, yet all the more confirmed in her belief that the decision just made with her husband was a wise one.

Cornelia could bring no eloquence to alter her fate. “No! No! _No!_” was only her protest against what she understood was inevitable, though, as she wept brokenly upon her pillow that night, she thought of one resource that would avoid the inevitable, so desperate she was. But she decided to live, and found living hardest when she was on her way to the train next day, and the route chosen by her father’s chauffeur cruelly passed the Blue Tea Room.

On the train, thinking of the flying miles that so bitterly lengthened between her and that sacred little blue-painted room, she came to the end of the song her heart had chanted there in time to a tapping foot;—it was the refrain of the car wheels upon the humming rails all that aching way:

I tell each bead unto the end and there
A cross is hung.