Wired Love by Ella Cheever Thayer (summer beach reads .TXT) 📖

closed the door behind them. "And that is, are you, can you be foolish enough to imagine, that Clem and I are in love with each other?"

The small basket Nattie held in her hand fell to the floor, at this unexpected question. Had Cyn drawn forth a bowie-knife, and playfully clipped off her nose, she could not have been more astounded.

"If you can possibly reduce your eyes to their ordinary size, and give me a candid yes or no, I will be obliged," Cyn said, rather petulantly, after waiting in vain for an answer. The events of the day had sorely tried her usually even temper.

A little tremulously, while a burning flush covered her face, Nattie answered her,

"I—I have heard it intimated!"

"You have heard it intimated! That means yes, to my question," said Cyn; then sinking despairingly on the lounge, she added, "here is a crisis of which I never dreamed!"

Not understanding very well, and moreover much agitated by the subject,
Nattie knew not what to say.

"This is awful!" went on Cyn, savagely beating the pillow with her fist; "what contrary things love affairs are!"

Fearful of having in some way betrayed her secret—the only conclusion she could draw from Cyn's extraordinary outburst—Nattie stood looking guiltily at the floor a few moments, then recovering herself, she went to Cyn, and said, in a voice full of emotion,

"I do not just comprehend your meaning, dear, but it may be you think I might not quite like the idea, on account of that—that first affair on the wire. If so, dismiss the thought. You and Clem are suited to each other, and—" Nattie stopped, unable to continue.

Cyn, who had been beating the innocent pillow, as if it was the cause of all this, while Nattie was speaking, now threw it across the room, as she exclaimed.

"Oh! the perversity of human nature! Oh! you degenerate girl! As if I cared for Clem in that way! Have I not from the first set my heart on this real-life romance ending in the only way it could rightfully end?"

A sudden light came into Nattie's face, but it died away in a moment.

"Then you do not care for him? Poor Clem!" she said, in a low voice.

"Poor Clem, indeed!" cried Cyn, pacing the floor excitedly. "I cannot—no, I cannot—believe it of him! He certainly has sagacity enough not to run his head against a beam in broad daylight, even—"

"If Jo had not," she was about to add, but checked herself suddenly. Not for the world would she betray Jo's confidence. What had passed between them to-day should be a secret always, never again to be mentioned—but never forgotten in the friendship and companionship of after years.

"You must be very difficult to suit, dear, if you do not like Clem!" said Nattie, with unconscious significance, after waiting in vain for Cyn to finish her sentence.

"It is not that," replied Cyn, somewhat sadly. "Do you not know I have only one love,—music?"

"Poor Clem!" again said Nattie, from the depths of her tender heart.
"For I know he loves you, dear. He could not help it, who could?"

Such words would have been sweet to the vanity of an ordinary woman. But on Cyn they had a very opposite effect.

"Things have come to a pretty pass if one can not laugh and joke, and enjoy one's self with friends without being made love to!" she said, annoyed. Then looking scrutinizingly at Nattie, she asked,

"And you—did you really wish Clem and I might love each other?"

Nattie played nervously with the fringe of her dress, hesitated, then replied in a low tone,

"I fear I did not, Cyn!"

"Then it may come right yet!" exclaimed Cyn, hopefully.

Nattie shook her head.

"And he loving you? Oh, no!" she said. "I shall never be able to say
O.K. to what you term your romance of the dots and dashes, Cyn. In fact,
I have made up my mind that there are some people born to go through
life missing both its best and its worst, and that I am one!"

"Pray, do not say that!" urged Cyn, too disturbed to bring her easy philosophy to bear on the situation. "Of all things, do not get morbid."

"But it is the truth!" persisted Nattie. "Even my name, for instance, proves it! I was christened Nathalie, a very fine poetic name. But, in all my life no one ever called me by it! I was always mediocre Nattie!"

"And I have curtailed you down to Nat!" said Cyn, with whimsical remorse. "But what a tangle we are in! First it was the man of musk and bear's grease, who came between you! Then, when he was explained away, came blundering I! Why did you not lock me out of sight somewhere? I would have done it myself had I known—" ironically— "what an extremely fascinating and dangerous person I was!"

At this Nattie could not help smiling.

"Is was not your fault; it was Fate!" she said, her smile becoming a sigh, that Cyn echoed, for she thought of Jo. But yet unconvinced, she said,

"Fate! No; it cannot be! I think better of Clem than to believe he, too, has made a mistake, like Quimby, and fallen in love with the wrong woman!" then starting up, she exclaimed, tragically, "Who? ah! who shall cut the Gordian knot and bring about a crisis that shall cause this 'wired love' to terminate in 'O. K.'?"

As if invoked by Cyn's words, there came a sneeze from outside, and Miss
Kling pushed open the door unceremoniously.

"I wish to have some conversation with you, Miss Rogers," she said in a tone of severity.

"Some other time, if you please," Nattie replied, impatiently, for her talk with Cyn had unnerved her; "just now I am engaged."

Miss Kling drew herself up and said, with even more austerity,

"There is no time like the present, and since Miss Archer is here, it may not be amiss for her to hear what I have to say."

Nattie frowned, but Cyn, not unwilling to be diverted even by Miss Kling from the topic that was so annoying her, said,

"Very well. We are listening, Miss Kling."

"Miss Rogers," proceeded Miss Kling solemnly, after a preparatory sneeze, "I know all."

The emphasis on the last word was truly tremendous, and Nattie started astonished, while Cyn looked up with awakened curiosity.

"May I inquire what you mean by all?" inquired Nattie stiffly.

"Yes," repeated Miss Kling, without heeding the question. "I know ALL. I have for some time suspected that something underhanded was going on. Now I know what it is that has been so carefully concealed from me! I have long objected to your associates, Miss Rogers, but—"

"Pardon me, but that certainly does not concern you!" interrupted Cyn disdainfully.

Miss Kling looked at her and sneezed a sinister sneeze.

"It concerns me to know what kind of people I have in my house!" she replied, "and since you force me to speak out, Miss Archer, I will say that in my opinion no truly modest and proper girl would become intimate with those who pad their legs and paint their faces, and show themselves to the public"—this insinuation struck Cyn so comically that she could hardly suppress a laugh. "My suspicions, to return to what I was about to say, Miss Rogers, were first awakened by hearing that—that instrument"—Cyn and Nattie exchanged looks of intelligence—"you have here going, when I knew you were not in the room. And now, as I said, I know all! I pass over the audacity of such proceedings on my premises, but their utter immorality is too much for me to bear! Yes! I found a wire, and know where it leads! Into the room of two young men! That any young woman should so immodest as to establish telegraphic communication between her bed-room and the bed-room of two young men is beyond my comprehension!"

Cyn felt a mischievous desire to inquire how it would have struck her, had it been the bed-room of one young man? Nattie, who had flushed crimson at the first knowledge of Miss Kling's discovery, now drew herself up and replied with dignity,

"Really, Miss Kling, I think this extravagance of language utterly uncalled for! I admit it was not exactly correct for me to allow the wire to be run without consulting you, but beyond that, there was nothing reprehensible in my conduct."

Miss Kling held up her hands in horror.

"Nothing reprehensible in being connected by a telegraph wire with two young men!" she exclaimed. "Nothing—"

"Excuse my intrusion; but, Cyn, will you please inform me if I am to stand all night loaded with green stuff, like a farmer on a market day?" at this point the merry voice of Clem interrupted, as he came hastily in, still bearing the burden Cyn had piled upon him. Then becoming aware of Miss Kling's presence, he added to her, "I beg pardon for my abrupt entrance, but the outer door being open, I made bold to enter;" then explanatory to Cyn, "Your door was locked, as also was mine, of which Quimby has the key; and as Celeste has not yet been able to part with him, there I have been standing in the hall, like patience with a load of dandelions!"

"We were having such an interesting conversation," Cyn answered, with a scornful glance in Miss Kling's direction, "that I quite forgot you and the lapse of time."

Clem instantly became aware of something amiss in the atmosphere, and glanced around inquiringly. Miss Kling immediately enlightened him.

"There are many things you make bold to do, young man!" she said.
"Putting telegraph apparatus in my house, for instance!"

"Ah!" exclaimed Clem, comprehensively.

"Yes;" went on the aggrieved Miss Kling, "you and that Quimby, I suppose, did it. The idea originated with you, of course. He hasn't brains enough; if he had he would not marry Celeste!" and Miss Kling sniffed in utter contempt of poor Quimby.

"Thanks for the compliment to my intellectual abilities!" said Clem with a mischievous look; then advancing towards her, he answered in his own frank, manly way, "And so you have found us out? But I trust you will not be offended with us? It is, after all, a trifle, and we said nothing about it merely because we wished to have a little mystery of our own! It was, as the newsboys would say, a lark of ours!"

"Lark!" repeated Miss Kling, drawing herself up stiffly; "young man, you will oblige me by not using slang in my presence!"

"Pardon me," said Clem, good humoredly; "and in regard to the wire, blame me, if you must blame any one. As you say, it was all my doing, and I induced Miss Rogers to allow the wire to come into her room."

"And I, too," added Cyn, propitiatingly, for Nattie's sake, "I wished to learn the business, you know!"

But Miss Kling would not propitiate.

"Miss Rogers, I have no doubt, was very ready to be induced!" she said, with an effort at sarcasm. "I have heard of young females so much in love that they would run after and pursue young men, but never before of one so carried away and so lost to every sense of decorum, as to be obliged to have a wire run from her room to his, in order to communicate with him at improper times!"

This accusation, far-fetched and ridiculous as it was, yet being uttered in the presence of Clem, overwhelmed poor Nattie, and she sank on the lounge, burying her face in her hands, at which Clem made a hasty motion, and then, as if aware any interference of his would only make matters worse, checked himself. But Cyn came to the front with striking effect.

"You ought, certainly, to be well informed on the subject of old females who run after old men!" she said, witheringly. "If one may believe what the Tor—what Mr. Fishblate says!"

This shot told. Miss Kling turned livid with rage and mortification, and burst into a terrific spasm of sneezing.

"Miss Rogers," she said, wrathfully, as soon as she recovered sufficiently to speak, "your conduct and that of your associates is such, that I can no longer allow you to remain on my premises.

"Miss Kling, this is—is very unjust,", said the agitated Nattie.

"It is against the wishes of her friends that she has remained as long as she has," cried Cyn, hotly.

"Miss Kling, your proceedings are infamous!" exclaimed Clem,