CHAPTER VIII.
When Miss Tuttle and Leola were alone together they talked over the news, and neither one was very well pleased, the girl, since their coming would break up her happy days with Ray, and the governess, because the Stirlings were always supercilious with her, and naturally made more work for the household.
“I do not see why I should put myself out to wait on pretentious fine ladies this warm weather, especially when my employer has not paid a dollar of my salary for five months,” she complained, and Leola added:
“There will be no more good times with Ray, for like as not they will join hands with Uncle Hermann in persecuting him, and try to have me marry old Bennett because he is rich. Oh, dear! I’m sorry Ray isn’t coming back to-night, so I could tell him not to come to-morrow.”
“You might send word to him in the morning before they come,” suggested Miss Tuttle, and Leola agreed to the plan, which would have worked itself out all right had not fate decreed that Leola’s little black messenger should lose the note and Widower Bennett find it.
He was riding briskly toward Wheatlands when his fine bay mare shied, wildly, at a square white envelope blowing about in the dusty road, and an impulse of curiosity made him dismount and pick it up.
When he saw Leola’s familiar writing on the sealed envelope, he was seized with such poignant wrath and jealousy that no scruple of honor prevailed to prevent his becoming master of the contents.
“To Ray Chester, the young dandy—wonder if she’s giving him the mitten as she did me yesterday!” he muttered, wrathfully, and broke the pretty seal of blue wax with a ruthless hand.
The blood bounded hotly through his veins as he read:
“My Own Darling Ray:“You must not come in the morning as usual, because the Stirlings are coming, Uncle Hermann says, and I do not want them to know of our engagement yet, for they both are very mercenary, and would take sides against you, and want me to marry old Bennett, because he is rich, while you are poor! As if I would have that dumpy old fright on any terms—no, not even if he were President of the United States! Oh, why didn’t the old silly lose his heart to dear Miss Tuttle instead of me, when she loves the very ground he walks on, and would make him such a suitable wife? Fate seems to play at cross purposes with us, my darling Ray, but we will outwit our enemies and be happy yet.“You had better not come to Wheatlands to-day, but if you will stay in all afternoon, I will try to make an errand to Widow Gray’s, and we can talk things over and make plans for the future.“Oh, isn’t it just hateful the way things seem to work against our happiness? Just think, if only Jessie Stirling hadn’t got engaged to a fortune already, we might get my rotund suitor in love with her, and she could have all the money she craves.“Be sure to stay in until I come this afternoon.Your own loving“Leola.”
“My Own Darling Ray:
“You must not come in the morning as usual, because the Stirlings are coming, Uncle Hermann says, and I do not want them to know of our engagement yet, for they both are very mercenary, and would take sides against you, and want me to marry old Bennett, because he is rich, while you are poor! As if I would have that dumpy old fright on any terms—no, not even if he were President of the United States! Oh, why didn’t the old silly lose his heart to dear Miss Tuttle instead of me, when she loves the very ground he walks on, and would make him such a suitable wife? Fate seems to play at cross purposes with us, my darling Ray, but we will outwit our enemies and be happy yet.
“You had better not come to Wheatlands to-day, but if you will stay in all afternoon, I will try to make an errand to Widow Gray’s, and we can talk things over and make plans for the future.
“Oh, isn’t it just hateful the way things seem to work against our happiness? Just think, if only Jessie Stirling hadn’t got engaged to a fortune already, we might get my rotund suitor in love with her, and she could have all the money she craves.
“Be sure to stay in until I come this afternoon.
Your own loving“Leola.”
Widower Bennett stamped upon the ground in a fury, hissing out the epithets she had used in writing of him in the bitterest voice ever heard:
“‘Old Bennett!’ ‘Dumpy old fright!’ ‘Old silly!’ ‘My rotund suitor!’ She would not marry me if I were President of the United States! Why, now, I swear I will marry the little spitfire if it costs me my fortune!”
In this rage he remounted his mare and galloped on to Wheatlands, between whose master and himself there ensued an excited interview.
Leola’s letter refusing Bennett’s hand was exhibited in furious anger by the slighted recipient.
“She would prefer to marry a younger man than me, and she recommends me to take Miss Tuttle—that skinny, homely old maid, almost as old as I am!” he blustered, wrathfully, adding:
“You promised faithfully she should marry me, Hermann, but instead of watching her as you ought, you go poking among your old chemicals, as blind as a bat, and let her get engaged to a pretty-faced young jackanapes from the city—a pauper without a dollar to support his wife on, sir, and yet it lacks only a few days of the time set for my marriage to that saucy girl, and, mind you, if the ceremony is not pulled off in due time, I’ll lose not a day, I swear, in foreclosing the mortgage.”
It was in vain that Wizard Hermann tried to pacify him, saying that he would certainly keep his promise, and that he was sure that there was some mistake about Leola’s engagement to young Chester, who was almost a stranger.
But at this point Bennett produced his proof in the shape of Leola’s letter to Ray.
“This is worse than I thought, but it does not alter the fact that the girl shall be your wife, Bennett, for I have sworn to keep my promise, and I will not fail you, by Heaven!” vowed Hermann, continuing:
“As for neglecting to get matters into shape, that is false, for I have been quietly working to the promised end all these weeks, but, having encountered such determined opposition from the girl, I thought it expedient not to press her too hard, but to depend on force and cunning, since fair means failed. In fact, one of my objects in going to New York was to enlist the aid of my clever half-sister, Mrs. Stirling, in accomplishing the end in view. She will arrive with her daughter this morning, and although I admit that the case looks unpromising now, I believe we will soon wind a web around Leola from which she cannot escape. Go home, Bennett, and rest easy in the thought that before the end of a week she will be your charming bride.”
The prospective bridegroom beamed with joy and assured Hermann that he was ready to co-operate in any plan proposed for Leola’s subjugation.
“I will go to any length now to punish her for her contempt, and for advising me to marry a skinny old maid like Amanda Tuttle when I’m rich enough to buy a lovely young girl for a bride!” he vowed, coarsely, and took leave with renewed hope.
In the hall, as he was going out, he encountered Miss Tuttle, and fancied she might have been eavesdropping from her air of confusion, but he stalked past her with a curt nod that cut to her tender heart like a knife.
“Oh, what has come over him when he used to be so friendly? Can it be that he is angry at Leola’s suggestion that he should court me?” sighed the poor thing, deprecatingly.
It would have been well indeed if she had been listening, as Bennett suspected, for then she might have been able to inform Leola of the perils that threatened her in the joining of forces of Wizard Hermann and his worldly-wise sister, but she had only been loitering about the hall in hopes of a little interview when he came out, and tears of disappointment brimmed over in her kind gray eyes, when he passed her with so indifferent a greeting.
As she followed to the door and watched him galloping away toward home, she saw the carriage coming with the Stirlings, and ran to tell Leola the news.