I have just learned through the papers here that Ogden Van Lennop is
"roughing it" in your country and I thought I'd write and give you a
hint in case you come across him. Grab him, my dear, if you have the
ghost of a show, for he is the most eligible man in seven states.
Money, family, social position--it makes me green to think of your
chance, it's the chance of a lifetime--for I'd never meet him in my
humble sphere in a thousand years. He's an awfully decent sort, too,
they say. He overworked after he came out of college and he's there
getting his health back. Good luck to you and I hope you appreciate
my tip.
Lovingly,
ADELE
Dr. Harpe folded the letter and put it away.
"Don't I though?" she said grimly.
She frowned as Van Lennop's low, amused laugh, mingling with Essie
Tisdale's merry trill, reached her through the open window.
"The presumptuous little upstart! The biscuit-shooter!" Dr. Harpe's face
was not pleasant to see.
She took care to keep to herself what she had learned for when they met,
as she was now determined that they should, she wished the friendship
she meant to proffer to seem above all else disinterested. While she
realized that she had his prejudice to overcome, she believed that she
could overcome it and she would wait now with eagerness for the
opportunity to insert the opening wedge.
Heretofore the dubious compliment "a good fellow," from the men with
whom she smoked and drank, had pleased and satisfied her. She had no
desire to appeal to them in any other way; but this was different
because Ogden Van Lennop was different, being the first really eligible
man who had ever come within the circle to which she had been limited by
her always straitened circumstances. She looked upon Van Lennop in the
light of an exceptional business chance, and with a conceit oddly at
variance with her eminently practical nature, she believed she had only
to set about exerting herself in earnest to arouse his interest and
attach him to herself.
Van Lennop found himself still smiling at Essie Tisdale's sallies as he
came up the stairs. Her droll originality amused him as he had not been
amused in a long time, and he found himself unbending to a degree which
often surprised himself; besides, with her frankness, her naturalness
and perfect unconsciousness of any social barrier, she seemed to him a
perfect western type. He prized the novel friendship, for it had become
that, and would have regretted keenly anything which might have
interrupted it.
Her realistic descriptions of the episodes of a small town were
irresistible and Van Lennop never found himself more genuinely
entertained than when after a certain set form of greeting which they
went through daily with the greatest gravity, he would inquire--
"Well, Miss Tisdale, what are the developments in the world to-day?" And
with her quick, dimpling smile she would respond with some item of local
news which took its humor chiefly from the telling.
When a sign on the tar-paper shack which bore the legend "Warshing" was
replaced by "Plane Sewing Done," she reported the change and, again, the
fact that he was aware of Mrs. Abe Tutts's existence was due to Essie
Tisdale's graphic account of the outburst of temper in which that
erratic lady, while rehearsing the role of a duchess in an amateur
production, kicked, not figuratively but literally, the duke--a role
essayed by the talented plasterer--down the stairs of Odd Fellow's Hall
over the General Merchandise Store. The girl enjoyed life and its small
incidents with the zest of exuberant youth and Van Lennop often declared
himself as anxious that Mrs. Percy Parrott should accumulate enough from
the sale of milk to buy screens before flytime as that lady herself
since Essie sustained his interest by daily account of the addition to
the screen fund. He was still thinking of the combative Mrs. Tutts when
he opened a book and sat down by the open window.
A murmur of voices which began shortly underneath his window did not
disturb him, though subconsciously he was aware that one of them
belonged to Essie Tisdale. It was not until he heard his own name that
he lifted his eyes from the interesting pages before him.
"You lak him I t'ink--dat loafer--dat fellow Van Lennop?"
Van Lennop recognized the thick, gutteral voice of old Edouard Dubois.
"Like him? Of course I like him, and"--there was asperity in Essie's
tone now--"he isn't a loafer."
"Hold-up, then," substituted Dubois.
"Nor a hold-up."
"What you t'ink he is?"
"Something you would never recognize," she answered sharply; "a
gentleman."
Van Lennop smiled, for in his mind's eye he could see the tense
aggressiveness of her slim figure.
"Chentleman!" was the contemptuous snort. "Chentleman--and never buy de
drinks for nobody all de time he is in Crowheart. Fine chentleman dat!"
"When do you buy any?" was the pointed inquiry.
"I haf to work for _my_ money; his comes easy," he replied
significantly.
"You said that before." The voice was growing shriller. "How do you
know?"
"Robbin's easy."
"I must believe it if _you say_ so."
"Why you get mad? Why you stick up for him so hard?" persisted the
Frenchman stubbornly.
"Why wouldn't I stick up for him? He's a friend of mine."
"Fine fren--dat lazy cheap-skate!" There was real venom in the voice.
Van Lennop heard the stamp of Essie Tisdale's small foot upon the
hard-trodden dooryard.
"You needn't think you'll advance your own interests by calling him such
names as that! Let me tell you I wouldn't marry you if you asked me a
million, million times!"
Van Lennop started. So he was asking Essie Tisdale to marry him--this
old Edouard Dubois with the bullet-shaped head and the brutal face that
Van Lennop had found so objectionable upon each occasion that he had
been his vis-a-vis in the dining-room?
"Oh, you wouldn't marry me?"--the guttural voice was ugly now--"I offer
you good home, good clothes, ze chance to travel when you lak and hear
ze good music zat you love and you wouldn't marry me if I ask you
million times? Maybe some time, Mees Teesdale, you be _glad_ to marry me
when I ask you once!"
"Maybe I will," the angry young voice flung back, "but that time hasn't
come _yet_, Mr. Dubois!"
"And God forbid that it ever should," breathed Van Lennop to himself at
the window above. His eyes had grown a little moist at this exhibition
of her loyalty and somehow the genuineness of it made him glow, the more
perhaps that he was never without a lurking suspicion of the
disinterestedness of women's friendship for the reasons which Dr. Harpe,
for instance, knew.
What Van Lennop had learned through his unintentional eavesdropping was
something of a revelation. In his mild conjectures as to Crowheart's
opinion of him it never had occurred to him that it considered him
anything more interesting than an impecunious semi-invalid or possibly a
homeseeker taking his own time to locate. But a hold-up! a loafer! a
lazy cheap-skate! Van Lennop shook with silent laughter. A skinflint too
mean to buy a drink! He had no notion of enlightening Crowheart in
regard to himself because of the illuminating conversation he had
overheard. The situation afforded him too much amusement and since Essie
Tisdale liked him for himself and trusted him in the face of what was
evidently Crowheart's opinion, nothing else mattered. The only result
then was to give him a more minute interest in his surroundings.
Heretofore he had viewed the life about him in the impersonal fashion in
which persons of large interests and wide experience regard unimportant
people doing unimportant things. In the light of what he had learned he
placed a new interpretation upon the curious stares, averted faces,
frankly disapproving looks or challenging insolence of glances such as
he received from Mr. Rhodes's bold eyes. He smiled often in keen
enjoyment of his shady reputation and kept adding to his unpopularity by
steadfastly refusing to be drawn into poker games which bore evidence of
having been arranged for his benefit.
The experience of being avoided by the respectably inclined and sought
after by those who had no respectability to lose was a new experience to
Van Lennop, who had been accustomed from infancy to the deference which
is tacitly accorded those of unusual wealth; but even had he found the
antagonistic atmosphere which he encountered frequently now annoying, he
would have felt more than compensated by the knowledge that he had
discovered in the little belle of Crowheart a friend whose loyalty was
strong enough to stand the difficult test of public opinion.
Essie Tisdale had no notion that Van Lennop had overheard her quarrel
with the Frenchman, but her quick perceptions recognized an added
friendliness in his manner--a kind of unbending gentleness which was
new--and she needed it for she daily felt the growing lack of it in
people whom she had called her friends.
In the days which followed, Van Lennop sometimes asked himself if
anything had gone wrong with Essie Tisdale. Her shapely head had a proud
uplift which was new and in unguarded moments her red, sensitive lips
had a droop that he had not noticed before.
Essie Tisdale was not, in her feelings, unlike a frolicsome puppy that
has received its first vicious kick. She was digesting the new knowledge
that there were people who could hurt others deliberately, cruelly, and
so far as she knew, without provocation; that there were people whom she
had counted her friends that were capable of hurting her--who could
wound her like enemies. And, like the puppy who runs from him who has
inflicted his first pain and turns to look with bewilderment and
reproach in his soft puppy eyes, Essie felt no resentment yet, only
surprise and the pain of the blow together with a great and growing
wonder as to what she had done.
The ordeal of the dinner had been greater even than she had anticipated.
For the first time in her life she had been treated like an inferior--a
situation which Essie Tisdale did not know how to meet. But it had
remained for Andy P. Symes who but a few months previous had pressed her
hand and called her the prettiest girl in Crowheart to inflict the blow
that hurt most.
The guests were leaving when she had found a chance to whisper, "You
look so well to-night, Gussie," and Andy P. Symes had interrupted
coldly, "Mrs. Symes, if you please, Essie."
Her cheeks grew scarlet when she thought of it. She had meant to tell
them in that way that the slight had not altered her friendship and Andy
P. Symes had told her in his way that they did not want her friendship.
She did not understand yet, she only felt, and felt so keenly, that she
could not bring herself to speak of it, even to Ogden Van Lennop, who
still supposed that she had gone as an invited guest.