Dr. Harpe standing at her office window saw the lovely Pearline Starr,
curled and dressed at ten in the morning, trip down the street bearing a
glass of buffalo berry jelly in her white-gloved hands, while Mrs. Percy
Parrott sitting erect in the Parrotts' new, second-hand surrey, drove
toward the hotel, carefully protecting from accident some prized package
which she held in her lap. Mrs. Parrott was wearing her new ding-a-ling
hat, grass-green in color, which, topping off the moss-colored serge
which, closely fitting her attenuated figure, gave Mrs. Parrott a
surprising resemblance to a katydid about to jump.
Dr. Harpe could not see Mrs. Abe Tutts walking gingerly across lots
carrying a pot of baked beans and brown bread in her two hands, nor Mrs.
Alva Jackson panting up another street with a Lady Baltimore cake in the
hope of reaching the hotel before her dearest friend and enemy Mrs.
Tutts, but Dr. Harpe knew from what she already had seen and from the
curious glances cast at the windows of the Terriberry House, that the
town was agog with Essie Tisdale's romantic story and her newly
established relationship to the important looking stranger. Mrs.
Terriberry could be trusted to attend to that and in her capable hands
it was certain to lose nothing in the telling.
The story was simple enough in itself and had its counterpart in many
towns throughout the West. Young Dick Kincaid had run away from his home
on the bank of the Mississippi River to make his fortune in the mining
camps of the far West. He did not write, because the fortune was always
just a little farther on. The months slipped into years, and when he
returned with the "stake" which was to be his peace offering, the name
of Kincaid was but a memory in the community, and the restless
Mississippi with its ever-changing channel flowed over the valuable
tract of black-walnut timber which had constituted the financial
resources of the Kincaids. The little sister had married a westerner as
poor as he was picturesque, and against her parents' wishes. They had
gone, never to be heard from again, disappeared mysteriously and
completely, and Samuel Kincaid had died, he and his wife, as much of
loneliness and longing as of age.
The triumphant return of his boyish dreams was, instead, an acute and
haunting remorse. The success that had been his, the success that was to
be his in the near-by city, never erased the bitter disappointment of
that home-coming. He had searched in vain for some trace of the little
sister whom he had loved. He had never given up hoping and that hope had
had its weight in influencing him to make the tedious trip to Crowheart.
And then, as though the Fates had punished him enough for his filial
neglect, his sister's eyes had looked out at him from the flower-like
face at the funeral of old Edouard Dubois. He had followed up his
impulse, and the rest is quickly told, for all Crowheart knew the story
of Essie Tisdale's miraculous rescue and of the picture primer which had
furnished the single clue to her identity.
With the news of Essie Tisdale's altered position--and Mrs. Terriberry
missed no opportunity to convey the impression that Kincaid's resources
were unlimited--the tide turned and the buffalo berry jelly, the Lady
Baltimore cake, baked beans and Mrs. Parrott's tinned lobster salad,
were the straws which in Crowheart always showed which way the wind was
blowing. That the ladies bearing these toothsome offerings had not been
speaking to Essie for some months past was a small matter which they
deemed best to forget.
Not so Mrs. Terriberry.
Mrs. Terriberry not only had Essie Tisdale's score to pay off but her
own as well, and who knows but that the latter was the sharper
incentive? To have been obliged to watch through a crack in the curtain
the fashionable world rustle by on its way to Mrs. Alva Jackson's euchre
had occasioned a pang not easily forgotten. To have knowledge of the
monthly meetings of Mrs. Parrott's Shadow Embroidery Class only through
the Society Column of the Crowheart _Courier_ and to be deprived of the
privilege of hearing Mrs. Abe Tutts's paper upon Wagnerian music at the
Culture Club were slights that rankled.
She was suspiciously close at hand when the ladies appeared in the
office of the Terriberry House with their culinary successes; also she
was wearing the red foulard which never went out of the closet except to
funerals and important functions.
Although the most conspicuous thing about these early callers was the
parcels they carried, Mrs. Terriberry chose to ignore them.
"Why, how do you do, Mrs. Parrott, and Miss Starr, too. It's a lovely
day to be out, isn't it?" Her voice was distinctly patronizing and she
extended a languid hand to Mrs. Jackson. "And usin' your brain like you
do, Mrs. Tutts, writin' them pieces for the Culture Club, I suppose you
have to git exercise."
"I've brought Essie some lobster salad from a receipt that mamma sent
me," said Mrs. Parrott when she could get an opening, "and while it's
canned lobster, it's really delicious!"
"The whites of sixteen aigs I put in this Lady Baltimore cake, and it's
light as a feather."
Mrs. Terriberry made no offer to take the package which Mrs. Jackson
extended.
"Just a little taste of buffalo berry jelly for Essie," said Miss Starr,
with her most radiant smile. "Her uncle might enjoy it."
"I ain't forgot," said Mrs. Tutts, "how fond Ess is of brown bread, so I
says to myself I'll just take some of my baked beans along, too. Tutts
says I beat the world on baked beans. Where's Ess? I'd like to see her."
"Yes; tell her we're here," chorused the others.
Mrs. Terriberry's moment had come. She drew herself up in a pose of
hauteur which a stout person can only achieve with practice.
"Miss Tisdale," she replied with glib gusto, "is engaged at present and
begs to be excused. But," she added in words which were obviously her
own, "you can put your junk in the closet over there with the rest
that's come."
* * * * *
Dr. Harpe understood perfectly now the meaning of the Dago Duke's
confident smile and the stranger's cold, searching look of enmity. He
was no weakling, this new-found relative of Essie Tisdale's, and the
Dago Duke's threats were no longer empty boastings.
If only she could sleep! Sleep? Was it days or weeks since she had
slept? Forebodings, suspicions of those whom she had been forced to
trust, Nell Beecroft, Lamb, and others, were spectres that frightened
sleep from her strained eyes. A tight band seemed stretched across her
forehead. She rubbed it hard, as though to lessen the tension. There was
a dull ache at the base of her brain and she shook her head to free
herself from it, but the jar hurt her.
Some one whistled in the corridor. She listened.
"Farewell, my own dear Napoli, Farewell to Thee, Farewell to Thee----"
How she hated that song! The Dago Duke was coming for his answer.
He stood before her with his hat in his hand, the other hand resting on
his hip smiling, confident, the one long, black lock of hair hanging
nearly in his eyes. He made no comment, but she saw that he was noting
the ravages which the intervening hours had left in her face. Beneath
his smile there was something hard and pitiless--a look that the
executioner of a de Medici might have worn--and for a moment it put her
at a loss for words. Then with an attempt at her old-time camaraderie,
she shoved a glass toward him--