IXThe Ways of Polite Society
The change which a marcelled pompadour, kimona sleeves, a peach-basket hat, and a hobble skirt wrought in the appearance of Mrs. Andy P. Symes, nee Kunkel, was a source of amazement to Crowheart. Her apologetic diffidence was now replaced by an air of complacency arising from the fact that since her return she began to regard herself as a travelled lady who had seen much of life. The occasions upon which she had sat blushing and stammering in the presence of her husband's friends were fast fading from mind in the agreeable experience of finding herself treated with deference by those who formerly had seemed rather to tolerate than desire her society. Until her return to Crowheart she had not in the least realized what a difference her marriage was to make in her life.
In that other environment she had felt like a servant girl taken red-handed and heavy-footed from the kitchen and suddenly placed in the drawing-room upon terms of equality with her mistress and her mistresses's friends, but she had profited by her opportunities and now brought back with her something of the air and manner of speech and dress of those who had embarrassed her. While Crowheart laughed a little behind her back it was nevertheless impressed by the mild affectations.
It is no exaggeration to say that Crowheart's eyes protruded when Mrs. Symes returned the neighborly visits of the ladies who had "just run in to see howshe was gettin' on," by a series of formal afternoon calls. No such fashionable sight ever had been witnessed in the town as Mrs. Symes presented when, in a pair of white kid gloves and a veil, she picked her way with ostentatious daintiness across several vacant lots still encumbered with cactus and sagebrush, to the log residence of Mr. and Mrs. Alva Jackson.
There was a pair of eyes staring unabashed at every front window in the neighborhood when Mrs. Symes stood on Mrs. Jackson's "stoop" and removed a piece of baling wire from the lace frill of her petticoat before she wrapped her handkerchief around her hand to protect her white kid knuckles and knocked with lady-like gentleness upon Mrs. Jackson's door.
Mrs. Jackson, who had been peering through the foliage of a potted geranium on the window-sill, was pinning frantically at her scolding locks, but retained sufficient presence of mind to let a proper length of time elapse before opening the door. When she did, it was with an elaborate bow from the waistline and a surprised—
"Why, how do you do, Mis' Symes!"
Mrs. Symes smiled in prim sweetness, and noting that Mrs. Jackson's hands looked reasonably clean, extended one of the first two white kid gloves in Crowheart which Mrs. Jackson shook with heartiness before bouncing back and inquiring—
"Won't you come in, Mis' Symes?"
"Thanks." Mrs. Symes took a pinch of the front breadth of her skirt between her thumb and finger and stepped daintily over the door-sill.
"Set down," urged Mrs. Jackson making a dash at a blue plush rocking-chair which she rolled into the centre of the room with great energy.
When the chair tipped and sent Mrs. Symes's feet into the air Mrs. Jackson's burst of laughter was heard distinctly by Mrs. Tutts across the street.
"Trash!" exclaimed that person in unfathomable contempt.
Mrs. Jackson had two missing front teeth which she had lost upon an occasion to which she no longer referred, also a voice strained and husky from the many midnight choruses in which she had joined before she sold her goodwill and fixtures. She now rested her outspread fingers upon each knee and wildly ransacked her brain for something light and airy in the way of conversation.
Mrs. Symes, sitting bolt upright on the edge of the plush rocking-chair with her long, flat feet pressed tightly together, tweaked at the only veil in Crowheart and cleared her throat with subdued and lady-like restraint before she inquired—
"Isn't it a lovely day?"
"Oh, lovely!" Mrs. Jackson answered with husky vivacity. "Perfeckly lovely!"
Another silence followed and something of Mrs. Jackson's mental state could be read in her dilated pupils and excited, restless eyes. Finally she said in a desperate voice—
"It's a grand climate anyhow."
"If it wasn't for the wind; it's one drawback."
Another burst of laughter from Mrs. Jackson who covered her mouth with her hand after the manner of those who have been unfortunate in the matter of front teeth.
"Cats!" hissed Mrs. Tutts across the street. "I'll bet they are laffin' at me!"
"We had charming weather while we were gone," continued Mrs. Symes easily. The word was new to her vocabulary and its elegance did not escape Mrs. Jackson.
"That's good."
"The change was so beneficial to me. One so soon exhausts a small town, don't you think so, Mrs. Jackson?"
Mrs. Jackson could not truthfully say that she ever had felt that she had exhausted Crowheart, but she agreed weakly—
"Uh-huh."
"I had so many new and delightful experiences, too." Mrs. Symes smiled a sweetly reminiscent smile.
"You musta had."
"Going out in the train we had cantelope with cracked ice in it. You must try it sometimes, Mrs. Jackson—it's delicious."
"I can't say when I've et a cantelope but, Oh Lord, I has a hankerin' for eggs! I tell Jackson the next time he ships he's gotta take me along, for I want to git out where I can git my mitt on a pair of eggs."
"We became quite surfeited with eggs, Phidias and I," observed Mrs. Symes with an air of ennui.
Mrs. Jackson blinked.
"I can't go 'em onless they're plumb fresh," she replied non-committally.
"I've hadsucha pleasant call." Mrs. Symes rose.
"Run in agin." Mrs. Jackson's eyes were glued upon the leather card-case from which Mrs. Symes was endeavoring to extract a card with fingers which she was unable to bend.
"Thanks. I've been so busy getting settled and all but now I mean to keep a servant and shall have more time."
Mrs. Jackson had read of ladies who kept servants but never had hoped to know one.
"Where you goin' to git—it? From Omyhaw or K. C.?"
"Grandmother has promised to come to me," said Mrs. Symes languidly.
Mrs. Jackson's jaw dropped.
"Gramma Kunkel ain't a servant, is she? she's 'help.'"
"'Help' are servants," explained Mrs. Symes with gentle patience as she laid her printed visiting card upon the centre table.
"Gosh! that strikes me funny." Mrs. Jackson was natural at last.
"Not at all," replied Mrs. Symes with hauteur. "She must work, so why not for me? She's strong and very, very capable."
"Oh, she's capable all right, but," persisted Mrs. Jackson unconvinced, "it strikes me funny. Say, is Essie Tisdale a servant, too?"
Mrs. Symes smiled ever so slightly as she fumbled with her visiting card and laid it in a more conspicuous place.
"Certainly."
"Was that why she wasn't ast to the banquet?"
Again Mrs. Symes smiled the slow, deprecating smile which she was assiduously cultivating.
"Society must draw the line somewhere, Mrs. Jackson."
Mrs. Jackson gulped with a clicking sound, and at the door shook hands with Mrs. Symes, wearing thedazed expression of one who has bumped his head on a shelf corner. Through the potted geranium she watched Mrs. Symes picking her way across another vacant lot to the dwelling of the Sylvanus Starr's.
Mrs. Abe Tutts with her blue flannel yachting cap set at an aggressive angle over one eye paddled across the street and was upon Mrs. Jackson before that person was aware of her presence.
"Has that guttersnipe gone?" A quite superfluous question, as Mrs. Jackson was well aware.
"Of who are you speakin'?" inquired Mrs. Jackson coldly.
"Who would I be speakin' of but Gus Kunkel?" demanded Mrs. Tutts belligerently.
"Look here, Mis' Tutts, I don't want to have no words with you, but——"
"What's that?" interrupted Mrs. Tutts eyeing the visiting card which Mrs. Jackson had been studying intently. "Is she leavin' tickets for somethin'?"
"Oh, no," replied. Mrs. Jackson in a blasé tone, "this is merely her callin' card."
"Callin' card! You was to home, wasn't you?"
"It's the new style to leave your callin' card whether they're to home or not," explained Mrs. Jackson, hazarding a guess.
Mrs. Jackson's air of familiarity with social mysteries was most exasperating to Mrs. Tutts.
"What's the sense of that? Lemme see it."
Mrs. Tutts read laboriously and with unmitigated scorn:
Mrs. Andrew Phidias Symes
At HomeThursday 2-4
She sank cautiously into the blue rocking-chair and removed a hatpin which skewered her yachting cap to a knob of hair.
"That beatsme! 'Mrs. Andrew Phidias Symes!'" Mrs. Tutts saw no reason to slight the letter p and pronounced it distinctly. "At home Thursdays between two and four! What of it? Ain't we all generally home Thursdays between two and four?"
"Gussie has improved wonderful," replied Mrs. Jackson pacifically.
"Improved!If you call goin' around passin' of them up that she's knowed well 'improved' why then she has improved wonderful. Snip!"
"I don't think she really aimed to pass you up."
"I wasn't thinkin' of myself," replied Mrs. Tutts hotly, "I was thinking of Essie Tisdale. I hope Mis' Symes don't come around to call on me—I'm kind of perticular who I entertain."
Mrs. Jackson's hard blue eyes began to shine, but Mrs. Jackson had been something of a warrior herself in her day and knew a warrior when she saw one. She had no desire to engage in a hand to hand conflict with Mrs. Tutts, whose fierceness she was well aware was more than surface deep, and she read in that person's alert pose a disconcerting readiness for action. It was a critical moment, one which required tact, for a single injudicious word would precipitate a fray of which Mrs. Jackson could not be altogether sure of the result. Besides, poised as she was like a winged Mercury on the threshold of Society, she could not afford any low scene with Mrs. Tutts. Conquering her resentment, Mrs. Jackson said conciliatingly—
"Yes, of course, now we 're married it's different—wehaveto be perticular who we entertain. As Mis'Symes says—'Society must draw the line somewhere!'"
Mrs. Tutts searched her face in quick suspicion.
"Who'd she say it about?"
"Promise me that this won't go no further—hope to die?—but to tell the truth we was speakin' of Essie Tisdale."
Mrs. Tutts looked mystified.
"What's she done?"
In unconscious imitation of Mrs. Symes, Mrs. Jackson curled her little finger and smiled a slow, deprecating smile—
"You see she worksout—she's really a servant."
Mrs. Tutts nodded in entire comprehension.
"I know; back East in Dakoty we always looked down on them more or less as was out'n out hired girls. But out here I've aimed to treat everybody the same."
"I'll say that for you, Mis' Tutts," declared Mrs. Jackson generously, "you've never showed no diffrunce to nobody."
"I'm glad you think so," said Mrs. Tutts modestly, "and I don't mean to pass Essie Tisdale up altogether."
"Ner me," declared Mrs. Jackson, "she's a perfeckly good girl so far as I know."
"Where do you suppose Mis' Symes got them cards printed?" inquired Mrs. Tutts. "I gotta git Tutts to git to work and git me some."
"Over to theCourieroffice I should think," Mrs. Jackson added. "It's lucky I got some in the house since they've started in usin' em."
There was a moment's silence in which Mrs. Tutts eyed Mrs. Jackson with unfriendly eyes. It seemed very plain to her that her neighbor was trying to"put it over her." The temptation against which she struggled was too strong and she inquired pointedly while she discreetly arose to go—
"Business cards, Mis' Jackson—some you had left over?"
Diplomacy was scattered to the four winds.
"No; not business cards, Mis' Tutts! Callin' cards. I'll show you one since I've no notion you ever saw one back there in that beer garden where you cracked your voice singin'!"
Mrs. Tutts put on her yachting cap and pulling it down on her head until her hair was well covered, advanced menacingly.
"You gotta eat them words, Mis' Jackson," she said with ominous calm.
Mrs. Jackson retreated until the marble-topped centre table formed a protecting barrier.
"Don't you start no rough-house here, Mis' Tutts."
Mrs. Tutts continued to advance and her lips had contracted as though an invisible gathering string had been jerked violently.
"You gotta eat them words, Mis' Jackson." Unwavering purpose was in her voice.
"I'll have the law on you if you begin a ruckus here." Mrs. Jackson moved to the opposite side of the table.
"The law's nothin' to me." Mrs. Tutts went around the table.
"I haven't forgot I'm a lady!" Mrs. Jackson quickened her gait.
"Everybody else has." Mrs. Tutts also accelerated her pace.
"Don't you dast lay hands on me!" Mrs. Jackson broke into a trot.
"Not if I can stomp on you," declared Mrs. Tutts as the back fulness of Mrs. Jackson's skirt slipped through her fingers.
"What's the use of this? I don't want to fight, Mis' Tutts." Mrs. Jackson was galloping and slightly dizzy.
"You will onct you git into it," encouraged Mrs. Tutts, grimly measuring the distance between them with her eye.
"You ought to have your brains beat out for this!" On the thirteenth lap around the table Mrs. Jackson was panting audibly.
"Couldn't reach yours th'out cuttin' your feet off!" responded Mrs. Tutts, in whose eyes gleamed what sporting writers describe as "the joy of battle."
The strength of the hunted hostess was waning visibly.
"I've got heart trouble, Mis' Tutts," she gasped in desperation, "and I'm liable to drop dead any jump!"
"No such luck." Mrs. Tutts made a pass at her across the table.
"This is perfeckly ridic'lous; do you at all realize what you're doin'?"
"I won't," Mrs. Tutts spoke with full knowledge of the deadly insult; "I won't until I git a few handfuls of yourredhair!"
Mrs. Jackson stopped in her tracks and fear fell from her. Her roving eye searched the room for a weapon and her glance fell upon the potted geranium. Mrs. Tutts already had possessed herself of the scissors.
"My hair may be red, Mis' Tutts," her shrill voice whistled through the space left by her missing teeth, as she stood with the geranium poised aloft, "but it'smy own!"
Mrs. Tutts staggered under the crash of pottery and the thud of packed dirt upon her head. She sank to the floor, but rose again, dazed and blinking, her warlike spirit temporarily crushed.
"There's the door, Mis' Tutts." Mrs. Jackson drew herself up with regal hauteur and pointed. "Now get the hell out of here!"
XEssie Tisdale's Enforced Abnegation
There was one place at least where the popularity of the little belle of Crowheart showed no signs of diminution and this was in the menagerie of domestic animals which occupied quarters in the rear of the large backyard of the hotel. The phlegmatic black omnibus and dray horses neighed for sugar at her coming, the calf she had weaned from the wild range cow bawled at sight of her, while various useless dogs leaped about her in ecstasy, and a mere glimpse of her skirt through the kitchen doorway was sufficient to start such a duet from the two excessively vital and omniverous mammals whom Essie had ironically named Alphonse and Gaston that Van Lennop, who had the full benefit of this chorus, often wished the time had arrived for Alphonse and Gaston to fulfil their destiny. Yet he found diversion, too, in her efforts to instil into their minds the importance of politeness and unselfishness and frequently he laughed aloud at the fragments of conversation which reached him when he heard her laboring with them in the interest of their manners.
A loud and persistent squealing caused Van Lennop to raise his eyes from his book and look out upon the pole corral wherein the vociferous Alphonse and Gaston were confined. Essie Tisdale was perched upon the top pole, seemingly deaf to their shrill importunities; depression was in every line of her slim figure, despondency in the droop of her head. Her attitude held his attention and set him wondering,for he thought of her always as the embodiment of laughter, good-humor, and exuberant youth. Of all the women he ever had known, either well or casually, she had seemed the farthest from moods or nerves or anything even dimly suggestive of the neurasthenic.
Moved by an impulse Van Lennop laid down his book and went below.
"Air-castles, Miss Tisdale?" he asked as he sauntered toward her. He still insisted upon the whimsical formality of "Miss Tisdale," although to all Crowheart, naturally, she was "Essie."
The girl lifted her sombre eyes at the sound of his voice and the shadow in them gave them the look of deep blue velvet, Van Lennop thought.
"You only build air-castles when you are happy, don't you? and hopeful?"
"And are you not happy and hopeful, Miss Tisdale?" Amusement glimmered in his eyes. "I thought you were quite the happiest person I know, and to be happy is to be hopeful."
"What have I to make me happy?" she demanded with an intensity which startled him. "What have I to hope for?"
"Fishing, Miss Tisdale?" He still smiled at her.
"For what? To be told that I'm pretty?"
"And young," Van Lennop supplemented. "I know women who would give a king's ransom to be young and pretty. Isn't that enough to make one person happy?"
"And what good will being either ever do me?" she demanded bitterly; "me, a biscuit-shooter!" Her musical voice was almost harsh in its bitterness. She turned upon him fiercely. "I've been happy because I was ignorant, but I've been enlightened; I've been made to see; I've been shown my place!"
That was it then; some one had hurt her, some one had found it in his heart to hurt Essie Tisdale whose friendliness was as impartial and as boundless as the sunshine itself. He looked at her inquiringly and she went on—
"Don't you think I see what's ahead of me? It's as plain as though it had happened and there's nothing else possible for me."
"And what is it?" he asked gently.
"There'll come a day when I'm tired and discouraged and utterly, utterly hopeless that some cowpuncher will ask me to marry him and I'll say yes. Then he'll file on a homestead away off somewhere in the foothills where the range is good and there's no sheep and it's fifty miles to a neighbor and a two days' trip to town." She stared straight ahead as though visualizing the picture. "He'll build a log house with a slat bunk in one end and set up a camp-stove with cracked lids in the other. There'll be a home-made table with a red oilcloth table cover and a bench and a home-made rocking chair with a woven bottom of cowhide for me. He'll buy a little bunch of yearlings with his savings and what he can borrow and in the spring I'll herd them off the poison while he breaks ground to put in a little crop of alfalfa. I'll get wrinkles at the corners of my eyes from squinting in the sun and a weather-beaten skin from riding in the wind and lines about my mouth from worrying over paying interest on our loan.
"In the winter we'll be snowed up for weeks at a time and spend the hours looking at the pictures in a mail order catalogue and threshing the affairs of our acquaintances threadbare. Twice a year we'll go to town in a second-hand Studebaker. I'll be dressed inthe clothes I wore before I was married and he'll wear overalls and boots with run-over heels. A dollar will look a shade smaller than a full moon and I'll cry for joy when I get a clothes-wringer or a washing machine for a Christmas present. That," she concluded laconically, "is my finish."
Van Lennop did not smile, instead he shook his head gravely.
"No, Essie Tisdale, I can't just see you in any such setting as that."
"Why not? I've seen it happen to others."
"But," he spoke decisively, "you're different."
"Yes," she cried with a vehemence which sent the color flying under her fair skin, "Iamdifferent! If I wasn't I wouldn't mind. But I care for things that the girls who have married like that do not care for, and I can't help it. They save their money to buy useful things and I spend all mine buying books. Perhaps it's wrong, for that may be the reason of my shrinking from a life such as I've described since books have taught me there's something else outside. Being different only makes it all the harder."
"And yet," said Van Lennop, "I'm somehow glad you are. But what has happened? Who has hurt you? Did something go wrong at this wonderful dinner of which you told me? Were you not after all quite the prettiest girl there?"
"I wasn't asked!"
Van Lennop's eyes widened.
"You were not? Why, I thought the belle of Crowheart was always asked."
"Not now; I'm a biscuit-shooter; I work—and—'Society must draw the line somewhere.'"
"Who said that?" Amazement was in Van Lennop's tone.
"Mr. Symes said it to Mrs. Symes, Mrs. Symes said it to Mrs. Jackson, Mrs. Jackson said it to Mrs. Tutts, Mrs. Tutts said it to me."
"Of whom?"
"Of me."
"But what society?" Van Lennop's face still wore a puzzled look.
"Crowheart society."
A light broke over his face; then he laughed aloud, such a shout of unadulterated glee that Alphonse and Gaston ceased to squeal and fixed their twinkling eyes upon him in momentary wonder.
"When I told you I was going I thought of course they would ask me. I thought the tardy invitation was just an oversight, but now I know"—her chin quivered suddenly like a hurt child's—"that they never meant to ask me."
Van Lennop's face had quickly sobered.
"You are sure he really said that—this Andy P. Symes?"
"I think there's no mistake. It was the easiest way to rid themselves of my friendship." She told him then of the reproof Symes had administered.
An unwonted shine came into Van Lennop's calm eyes as he listened. This put a different face upon the affair, this intentional injury to the feelings of his stanch little champion, it somehow made it a more personal matter. The "social line" amused him merely, though, in a way, it held a sociological interest for him, too. It was, he told himself, like being privileged to witness the awakening of social ambitions in a tribe of bushmen.
Van Lennop was silent, but the girl felt his unspoken sympathy, and it was balm to her sore little heart.
"This—society?" she asked after a time. "What is it? We've never had it before. Everybody knows everybody else out here and there are so few of us that we've always had our good times together and we have never left anybody out. The very last thing we wanted to do was to hurt anyone else's feelings in that way."
"You have left those halycon days behind, I'm afraid," Van Lennop replied. "The first instinct of a certain class of people is to hurt the feelings of others. It's the only way they know to proclaim their superiority, a superiority of which they are not at all sure, themselves. Just what 'society' is, is an old and threadbare subject and has been threshed out over and over again without greatly altering anybody's individual point of view. Good breeding, brains and money are generally conceded to be the essentials required by that complex institution and certainly one or all of them are necessary for any great social success."
Van Lennop watched her troubled face and waited.
"Then that's why old Edouard Dubois was asked, though he never speaks, and Alva Jackson, who is uncouth and ignorant? They represent money."
Van Lennop smiled.
"Undoubtedly."
"And the Starrs are brains."
He laughed outright now.
"The power of the press! Correct, Miss Tisdale."
"And Andy P. Symes——" Van Lennop supplieddryly—"is family. He had a great-grandfather, I believe."
Van Lennop returned the persistent, pleading stare of Alphonse and Gaston while Essie pondered this bewildering subject.
"But out here it's mostly money that counts, or rather will count in the future."
"Yes, with a man of Symes's type it would be nearly the only qualification necessary. If you had been the 'rich Miss Tisdale' you undoubtedly would have been the guest of honor."
"Then," she said chokingly, "my good times are over, for I'm—nobody knows who—just Essie Tisdale—a biscuit-shooter whose friendship counts for nothing."
With feminine intuition she grasped Crowheart's new point of view, and Van Lennop, because he knew human nature, could not contradict her, but in the security of his own position he could not fully understand how much it all meant to her in her small world.
"You mustn't take this to heart," he said gently, conscious of a strong desire to comfort her. "If the cost of an invitation were a single tear it would be too high a price to pay. In explaining to you what the world recognizes in a general way as 'Society,' I had no thought of Crowheart in my mind. There can be no 'Society' in Crowheart with its present material. What it is obvious this man Symes means to attempt, is only an absurd imitation of something he can never hope to attain. The effort resembles the attempts of a group of amateurs to present a Boucicault comedy, while 'in front' the world laughs at them, not with them. It is a dangerousexperiment to pretend to be anything other than what you are. It means loss of dignity, for you are merely absurd when you attempt to play a part which by birth and training and temperament you are nowise fitted to play. You become a target for the people whom you care most to impress.
"When one begins to imitate he loses his individuality and his individuality is the westerner's chief charm. Be yourself, Essie Tisdale, be simple, sincere, and you can never be absurd.
"I am sorry for what you have told me, since, if what seems threatening comes to pass, Crowheart will be only a middle class, commonplace town of which it has a thousand prototypes. Its strongest attraction now is its western flavor, the lingering atmosphere of the frontier. This must pass with time, of course, but it seems a shame that the change should be forced prematurely by the efforts of this man Symes. Really I feel a distinct sense of personal injury at his innovations." Van Lennop laughed slightly. "The old way was the best way for a long time to come, it seems to me. That was real democracy—a Utopian condition that had of necessity to go with the town's growth, but certainly not at this stage. In larger communities it is natural enough that those of similar tastes should seek each other, but, in a place like Crowheart where the interests and the mental calibre of its inhabitants are practically the same, the man who seeks to establish an 'aristocracy' proclaims himself a petty-minded, silly ass. Be a philosopher, Miss Tisdale."
But Essie Tisdale was not a philosopher; the experience was still too new and bewildering for philosophy to prove an instant remedy. She found Van Lennop's sympathy far more comforting than his logic,but through her heavy-heartedness there was creeping a growing appreciation of the superiority of this stranger in worn corduroys to his surroundings, a clearer conception of his calm mental poise.
Van Lennop himself was a living contradiction of the fallacious statement that all men are equal, and now, moved by her unhappiness, she caught a glimpse of that lying beneath the impregnable reserve of a polite and agreeable exterior which made the distinction. She realized more strongly than before that he lived upon a different plane from that of any man she ever had known.
"Do you know who I think must have been like you?" she asked him unexpectedly.
He shook his head smilingly.
"I can't imagine."
"Robert Louis Stevenson."
He flushed a little.
"You surely flatter me; there is no one whom I admire more." He looked at her in something of pleased surprise. "You read Stevenson—you like him?"
Her face lighted with enthusiasm.
"So very, very much. He seems so wise and so—human. I have all that he has written—his published letters, everything."
He continued to look at her oddly. Yes, Essie Tisdale was "different" and somehow he was glad. The personal conversation had shown him unexpected phases of her character. He saw beneath her youthful unworldliness the latent ambitions, undeveloped, immature desires and something of the underlying strength concealed by her ordinarily light-hearted exuberance. While the readjustment of Crowheart'ssocial affairs was hurting her on the raw he saw the sensitiveness of her nature, the quick pride and perceptions which he might otherwise have been long in discovering. Previously she had amused and interested him, now she awakened in him a real anxiety as to her future.
"Be brave," he said, "and keep on smiling, Essie Tisdale. You must work out your own salvation as must we all. This will pass and be forgotten; there will be triumphs with your failures, don't forget that, and the long years ahead of you which you so dread may hold better things than you dare dream. In some way that I don't see now I may be able to lend you a helping hand."
"Your friendship and your sympathy are enough," she said gratefully.
"You have them both," he answered, and on the strength of ten years' difference in their ages he patted her slim fingers with a quite paternal hand, in ignorance of the malevolent pair of eyes watching him from the window at the end of the upper corridor.
XIThe Opening Wedge
It was with mixed feelings that Dr. Harpe saw Van Lennop ride briskly from the livery stable leading a saddle horse behind his own. It was for Essie Tisdale, she surmised, and her conjecture was confirmed when she saw them gallop away.
While the sight galled her it pleased her, too, for it lent color to the impression she was discreetly but persistently endeavoring to spread in the community that the open rupture between herself and the girl was of her making and was necessitated by reasons which she could but did not care to make public. She made no definite charge, but with a deprecatory shrug of her shoulder and a casual observation that "it was a pity Essie Tisdale was making such a fool of herself and allowing a perfect stranger to make such a fool of her" she was gradually achieving the result she desired. The newcomers seized upon her insinuations with avidity, but the old settlers were loath to believe, though upon each, in the end, it had its effect, for Dr. Harpe was now firmly established in Crowheart's esteem. She had, she felt sure, safeguarded herself so far as Essie Tisdale was concerned, yet she was not satisfied, for she seemed no nearer overcoming Van Lennop's prejudice than the day she had aroused it. He distinctly avoided her, and she did not believe in forcing issues. Time, she often averred, would bring nearly every desired result, and she could wait; but she did not wait patiently, fretting more and more as the days driftedby without bringing to her the desired opportunity.
"I hate to be thwarted! I hate it! I hate it!" she often said angrily to herself, but she was helpless in the face of Van Lennop's cool avoidance.
In the meantime the bugbear of her existence was making history in his own way. The Dago Duke was no inconspicuous figure in Crowheart, for his daily life was punctuated with escapades which constantly furnished fresh topics of conversation to the populace. He fluctuated between periods of abject poverty and briefer periods of princely affluence, the latter seldom lasting longer than a night. He engaged in disputes over money where the sum involved rarely exceeded a dollar, with a night in the calaboose and a fine as a result, after which it was his wont to present his disfigured opponent with a munificent gift as a token of his esteem. Who or what he was and why he chose to honor Crowheart with his presence were questions which he showed no desire to answer. He was duly considered as a social possibility by Andy P. Symes, but rejected owing to the fact that he was seldom if ever sober, and, furthermore, in spite of his undeniably polished manners, showed a marked preference for the companionship of the element who were unmistakably goats in the social division.
At last there came a time when the Dago Duke was unable to raise a cup of coffee to his lips without scalding himself. He had no desire for food, his eyes were bloodshot, and his favorite bartender tied his scarf for him mornings. He moved from saloon to saloon haranguing the patrons upon the curse of wealth, encouraged in his socialistic views by the professional gamblers who presided over the poker games and roulette wheels. In view of their interestthere seemed no likelihood that the curse would rest upon him long.
Then one night, or morning, to be exact, after the Dago Duke had been assisted to retire by his friend the bartender, and the washstand by actual count had chased the bureau sixty-two times around the room, the Dago Duke noticed a lizard on the wall. He was not entirely convinced that it was a lizard until he sat up in bed and noticed that there were two lizards.
He crept out and picked up his shoe for a weapon.
"Now if I can paste that first one," he told himself optimistically, "I know the other will leave."
He struck at it with the heel of his shoe, and it darted to the ceiling, whence it looked down upon him with a peculiarly tantalizing smile.
The Dago Duke stood on the bureau and endeavored to reach it, but it was surprisingly agile; besides other lizards were now appearing. They came from every crack and corner. They swarmed. Lizards though harmless are unpleasant and the perspiration stood out on the Dago Duke's brow as he watched their number grow. He struck a mighty blow at the lizard on the ceiling and the bureau toppled. He found himself uninjured, but the breaking of the glass made something of a crash. The floor was all but covered with lizards, so he decided to return to his bed before he was obliged to step on them. He was shaking as with a chill and his teeth clicked. They were on his bed! They were under his pillow! Then he laughed aloud when he discovered it was only a roll of banknotes he had placed there before his friend the bartender had blown out the light. But the rest were lizards, there was no doubt about that, and he would tell Terriberry in the morning what he thought ofhim and his hotel! They were darting over the walls and ceiling and wiggling over the floor.
"I can stand it to-night," he muttered, "but to-morrow——"
What was that in the corner? He had only to look twice to know. He had seen Gila monsters in Arizona! He had seen a cowpuncher ride into town with one biting his thumb in two. The puncher went crazy later. Yes, he knew a Gila monster when he saw one and this was plain enough; there were the orange and black markings, the wicked head, the beady, evil eyes—and this one was growing! It would soon be as big as a sea-turtle and it was blinking at him with malicious purpose in its fixed gaze.
The Dago Duke's hands and feet were like ice, while the cold sweat stood in beads on his forehead. Then he screamed. He had not intended to scream, but the monster had moved toward him, hypnotizing him with its stare. He could see clearly the poisonous vapor which it was said to exhale! He screamed again and a man's scream is a sound not to be forgotten. The Dago Duke "had them," as Crowheart phrased it, and "had them" right.
The bartender was the first to arrive and Van Lennop was not far behind, while others, hastily dressed, followed.
The Dago Duke gripped Van Lennop's hand in dreadful terror.
"Don't let it come across that seam in the carpet! Don't let it come!"
"I'll not; it shan't touch you; don't be afraid, old man." There was something wonderfully soothing in Van Lennop's quiet voice.
"I'll tell the lady doc to bounce out," said thebartender. "He's got 'em bad. I had 'em twict myself and took the cure. It's fierce. He's gotta have some dope—a shot o' hop will fix him."
The bartender hurried away on his kindly mission, while the Dago Duke clung to Van Lennop like a horrified child to its mother.
Dr. Harpe came quickly, her hair loose about her shoulders, looking younger and more girlish in a soft negligee than Van Lennop had ever seen her. She saw the faint shade of prejudice cross his face as she entered, but satisfaction was in her own. Her chance had come at last in this unexpected way.
"Snakes," she said laconically.
"Yes," Van Lennop replied with equal brevity.
"I'll have to quiet him. Will you stay with him?" She addressed Van Lennop.
"Certainly."
"Look here," protested the bartender in an injured voice. "He's my best friend and havin' had snakes myself——"
"Aw—clear out—all of you. We'll take care of him."
"Folks that has snakes likes their bes' friends around 'em," declared the bartender stubbornly. "They has influence——"
"Get out," reiterated Dr. Harpe curtly, and he finally went with the rest.
"I'll give him a hypodermic," she said when the room was cleared, and hastened back to her office for the needle.
Together they watched the morphine do its work and sat in silence while the wrecked and jangling nerves relaxed and sleep came to the unregenerate Dago Duke.
Dr. Harpe's impassive face gave no indication of the activity of her mind. Now that the opportunity to "square herself," to use her own words, had arrived, she had no notion of letting it pass.
"He seems in a bad way," Van Lennop said at last in a formal tone.
"It had to come—the clip he was going," she replied, seating herself on the edge of the bed and wiping the moisture from his forehead with the corner of the sheet.
The action was womanly, she herself looked softer, more womanly, than she had appeared to Van Lennop, yet he felt no relenting and wondered at himself.
She ended another silence by turning to him suddenly and asking with something of a child's blunt candor——
"You don't like me, do you?"
The awkward and unexpected question surprised him and he did not immediately reply. His first impulse was to answer with a bluntness equal to her own, but he checked it and said instead——
"One's first impressions are often lasting and you must admit, Dr. Harpe, that my first knowledge of you——"
"Was extremely unfavorable," she finished for him. "I know it." She laughed in embarrassment. "You thought, and still think, that I'm one of these medicine sharks—a regular money grabber."
Van Lennop replied dryly——
"I do not recollect ever having known another physician quite so keen about his fee."
She flushed, but went on determinedly—
"I know how it must have looked to you—I've thought of it a thousand times—but there were extenuatingcircumstances. I came here 'broke' with only a little black case of pills and a few bandages. My hotel bill was overdue and my little drug stock exhausted. I was 'up against it'—desperate—and I believed if that fellow got away I'd never see or hear of him again. I've had that experience and I was just in a position where I couldn't afford to take a chance. There isn't much practice here, it's a miserably healthful place, and necessity sometimes makes us seem sordid whether we are or not. I'd like your good opinion, Mr. Van Lennop. Won't you try and see my position from a more charitable point of view?"
He wanted to be fair to her, he intended to be just, and yet he found himself only able to say—
"I can't quite understand how you could find it in your heart even to hesitate in a case like that."
"I meant to do it in the end," she pleaded. "But I was wrong, I see that now, and I've been sorrier than you can know. Please be charitable."
She put out her hand impulsively and he took it—reluctantly. He wondered why she repelled him so strongly even while recognizing the odd charm of manner which was undoubtedly hers when she chose to display it.
"I hope we'll be good friends," she said earnestly.
"I trust so," he murmured, but in his heart he knew they never would be "good friends."