Nick wrote Miss Frazier asking her to meet him at a certain spot on the Common in Boston the day he was to be released. He wanted to discuss Elsie and what they were to do about her. He knew that his appearance in Oakdale would cause Miss Frazier painful embarrassment. He meant to avoid that for her. But when he had waited for hours at the place he had designated and she had not come, he had grown desperate. He was obsessed with a fear that Elsie might be sick. Why, she might be dead, almost, for all he knew. He had not had one word from her in two years. He boarded a train, not stopping to leave his suitcase at a hotel or check it in the South Station, and started for Oakdale.
Elsie was just coming down the steps of Aunt Katherine’s house as her father got out of the taxi he had hired to avoid being seen in Oakdale and to gain speed to his destination. Aunt Katherine was away and most of the servants, for it was Thursday afternoon—a week ago last Thursday. Father and daughter had longed to be alone, unobserved by any curious eyes. The orchard house occurred to them as the best place to talk. They went around the house and managed to reach it, unseen, through the gardens. They had climbed in at a window at the back. Elsie was beside herself with happiness, and Nick was like a boy in his joy and relief about her.
He told Elsie that the first year in prison he had written “The King of the Fairies.”
“There was so much in it that he had told me about the ‘other side of things’ and the more life that even stones have that we don’t see, that when the book was published and I looked into it at the bookshop I knew right away it must be Father’s. He had always wanted to write. At the very first sentence I knew. It was like a letter from him. I read it and read it and read it. Do you wonder I didn’t want you to snatch it for yourself that very first morning, Kate?”
The second book was almost finished when Nick came out of prison. Only a chapter remained. The publishers had promised an advance on the royalties as soon as the manuscript was sent them. The first book had already made over two thousand dollars. So the two decided, between them, that Nick should live in the orchard house for a week, long enough to finish the book, send it to the publishers and get their check. Then he would leave the two thousand dollars, the earnings from the first book, for Aunt Katherine. That was exactly what he had taken from her vault. With the new check of five hundred dollars, he and Elsie would go away together. He could write in the orchard house undisturbed, and without any one’s knowing he was there. Elsie could bring him some food now and then. But they would not run away together until he could leave the two thousand that really belonged to Aunt Katherine behind them.
Kate interrupted there. “But how can you! How can you treat Aunt Katherine so?”
“It’s this way. I’ve made Father see that she doesn’t like me. She is awfully kind, but that’s not liking. If I vanish, it will be just a relief to her. But she wouldn’t let me go, probably, if I told her. She would argue and try to keep me because it was her duty. Even Father sees that. Well, the new check has come. That was my special delivery yesterday. Father wrote Aunt Katherine a long letter and put the two thousand dollars in checks from his publishers into it. I’ve pinned the letter to her pincushion for her to read when she gets back to-night. Father hopes you’ll stay on here and your mother come back, too, and everything be set right at last. We don’t belong in the Frazier family at all, you know. We are sort of vagabonds, different, Father and I. Father thinks the quarrel between Aunt Katherine and your mother was in some way because of him. When we vanish, it will come right.”
“Oh, but it won’t, and it wasn’t, and you aren’t. Imagine you a vagabond!” Kate exclaimed.
“That’s the beautiful clothes Aunt Katherine gives me. They make me look just like anybody. But really underneath I belong in a tent or something like that. Anyway, I’d rather tramp the country with my father than live in a palace with any one else!”
Kate leaned toward her, taking her hand, not timidly now but with assurance. “So would I,” she agreed, heartily. “So would any one, he’s so splendid and wonderful. And we are friends now, you and I, aren’t we? Will you write to me when you have gone?”