Sometimes Ferdie's jokes were successful; sometimes they were not. This
was one of the jokes that didn't succeed; but as it led to a chain of
circumstances that proved eminently satisfactory, Ferdie's wife praised
him as highly for his share in it as if he really had done something
rather meritorious.
At the time it occurred, however, nobody praised anybody, and feeling
even ran pretty high for a time between Ferdie and Elsie, his wife, and
her sister Sally, and Dr. Bates.
Dr. Samuel Bates was a rising young surgeon, plain, quiet, and kindly.
He was spending a few busy months in California, and writing dutifully
home to friends and patients in Boston that he really could not free
his hands to return just yet. But Sally knew what that meant; she had
known business to keep people in her neighborhood before. So she was
studiously unkind to the doctor, excusing herself to Elsie on the
ground that nothing on earth would ever make her consider a man with
fuzzy red hair and low collars.
Sally was a "daughter" and a "dame"; the doctor was the son of "Bates's
Blue-Ribbon Hair Renewer"--awful facts against which the additional
fact that he was rich and she was not, counted nothing. Sally talked
all the time; the doctor was the most silent of men. Sally was
twenty-two, the doctor thirty-five. Sally loved to flirt; the doctor
never paid any attention to women. Altogether, it was the most
impossible thing ever heard of, and Elsie might just as well stop
thinking about it!
"It's a wonderful proof of what he feels," said Elsie, "to have him so
gentle when you are rude to him, and so eager to be friends when you
get over it!"
"It's a wonderful example of hair-tonic spirit!" Sally responded.
"There's a good deal behind that quiet manner," argued Elsie.
"But NOT the three generations that make a gentleman!" finished Sally.
Sally was out calling one hot Saturday afternoon when Ferdie, as was
his habit, brought Dr. Bates home with him to the Ferdies' little
awninged and shingled summer home in Sausalito. Elsie, with an armful
of delightfully pink and white baby, led them to the cool side porch,
and ordered cool things to drink. Sally, she said, as they sank into
the deep chairs, would be home directly and join them.
Presently, surely enough, some one ran up the front steps and came into
the wide hall, and Sally's voice called a blithe "Hello!" There was a
little rattle to show that her parasol was flung down, and then the
voice again, this time unmistakably impeded by hat-pins.
"Where's this fam-i-ly? Did the gentlemen come?"
This gave an opening for the sort of thing Ferdie thought he did very
well. He grinned at his guest, and raised a warning finger.
"Hello, Sally!" he called back. "Elsie and I are out here! Bates
couldn't come--operation last minute!"
"What--didn't come?" Sally called back after an instant's pause. "Well,
what has happened to HIM? But, thank goodness, now I can go to the
Bevis dinner to-morrow! Operation? I must say it's mannerly to send a
message the last minute like that!" She hummed a second, and then added
spitefully: "What can you expect of hair-tonic, anyway?" The frozen
group on the porch heard her start slowly upstairs. "Well, I might be
willing to marry him," added Sally, cheerfully, as she mounted, "but
it's a real relief to snatch this glorious afternoon from the burning!
Down in a second--keep me some tea!"
Nobody moved on the porch. The doctor's face was crimson, Elsie's kind
eyes wide with horror. Sally called a final reflection from the first
landing:
"Too bad not to have him see me looking so beautiful!" she sang
frivolously. "Operation--h'm! An important operation--I don't believe
it!"
She proceeded calmly to her room, and was buttoning herself into a trim
linen gown when Elsie burst in, flushed and furious, cast the baby
dramatically upon the bed, and hysterically recounted the effects of
her recent remarks. Sally, at first making a transparent effort to seem
amused, and following it with an equally vain attempt at being
dignified, finally became very angry herself.
"When Ferdie does things like this," said Sally, heatedly, "I declare I
wonder--I was going to say I wonder he has a friend left in the world!
As you say, it's done now, but it makes me so FURIOUS! And I don't
think it shows very much savior faire on your part, Elsie. However, we
won't discuss it! Ferdie will try one joke too many, one of these days,
and then--Now, look here, Elsie," Sally interrupted her tirade to state
with deadly deliberation, "unless that man goes home before dinner, as
a man of any spirit would do, I'm going over to Mary Bevis's, and you
can make whatever apologies you like!"
"Of course he won't go," said Elsie, with spirit. "The only thing to do
is to ignore it entirely. And of course you'll come down."
Sally had resumed her ruffled calling costume, and was now pinning on
an effective hat. Her mouth was set.
"Please!" pleaded her sister, inserting a gold bracelet tenderly
between George's little jaws, without moving her eyes from Sally.
"I will not!" said Sally. "I never want to see him again--superior,
big, calm codfish--too lofty to care what any one says about him! I
don't like a man you can walk on, anyway!" She began to pack things in
a suit-case--beribboned night-wear, slippers, powder, and small jars.
Presently, hasping these things firmly in, she went to the door, and
opened it a cautious crack.
"Where are they?" she asked.
"I don't know," said Mrs. Ferdie, dispiritedly. "I think you're very
mean!"
The bedrooms of the Ferdies' house opened in charming Southern fashion
upon open balconies, over whose slender rails one could look straight
into the hall below. Sally listened intently.
"What a horrible plan this house is built upon!" she said heartily.
"Nothing in the world is more humiliating than to have to sneak about
one's own house like a thief, afraid of being seen! Where's the
motor--at the side door? Good. I'll run it over to the Bevises' myself,
and Billy can come back with it. That is, I will if I can manage to get
to the side door. Those idiots of men are apparently looking at Ferd's
rods and tackle, right down there in the hall! I can distinctly hear
their voices! I wish Ferd had thought of situations like this when he
planned this silly balcony business! The minute I open this door
they'll look up; and I'll stay up here a week rather than meet them!"
"They'll go out soon," said Elsie, soothingly, as she removed a
shoe-horn from contact with George's mouth.
"I knew Ferd would regret this balcony!" pursued Sally, eyes to the
crack.
"Ferdie's not regretting it!" tittered her sister.
Sally cast her a withering glance. Elsie devoted herself suddenly to
George.
"Go down and lure them into the garden," pleaded Sally, presently.
Elsie obligingly picked up her son and departed, but Sally, watching
her go, was infuriated to notice that a mild request from George's
nurse, who met them in the hall, apparently drove all thoughts of
Sally's predicament from the little mother's mind, for Elsie went
briskly toward the nursery, and an absolute silence ensued.
Sally went listlessly to the window, where her eye was immediately
caught by a long pruning ladder, leaning against the house a dozen feet
away. Alma, the little waitress, quietly mixing a mayonnaise on the
kitchen porch, was pressed into service, and five minutes later Sally's
suit-case was cautiously lowered, on the end of a Mexican lariat, and
Sally was steadying the top of the ladder against her window-sill. Alma
was convulsed with innocent mirth, but her big, hard hands were
effective in steadying the lower end of the ladder.
Sally, who was desperately afraid of ladders, packed her thin skirts
tightly about her, gave a fearful glance below, and began a nervous
descent. At every alternate rung she paused, unwound her skirts, shut
her eyes, and breathed hard.
"PLEASE don't shake it so!" she said.
"Aye dadden't!" said Alma, merrily.
The ladder slipped an inch, settling a little lower. Sally uttered a
smothered scream. She dared not move her eyes from the rung immediately
in front of them. Her face was flushed, her hair had slipped back from
her damp temples. It seemed to her as if she must already have climbed
down several times the length of the ladder. At every step she had to
kick her skirts free.
"Permit me!" said a kind voice in the world of reeling brick walks and
dwarfed gooseberry bushes below her.
Sally, with a thump at her heart, looked down to see Dr. Bates lay a
firm hand upon the rocking ladder.
Speechless, she finished the descent, reeling a little unsteadily
against the doctor's shoulder as she faced about on the walk. Her face
was crimson. To climb down a ladder, with him looking pleasantly up
from below, and then to fall into his very arms! Sally shook out her
skirts like a furious hen, and walked, with one chilly inclination of
the head for acknowledgment of his courtesy, toward the waiting motor.
"Ferdie has promised Bill Bevis that you will spin me over in the
motor," said the doctor, a little timidly, when they reached it.
Sally eyed him stonily.
"Ferd--"
"Why, I had promised Bevis that I would look in to-day," pursued the
doctor, uncomfortably; "and when they telephoned about it, a few
minutes ago, one of the maids said that she believed that you were
going right over, and would bring me."
"I have changed my mind," said Sally. "Perhaps you will drive yourself
over?"
"I don't know anything about motors," apologized the doctor, gravely.
"Ferd told one of the maids to say I would?" Sally said pleasantly.
"Very well. Will you get in?"
They got in, Sally driving. They swept in silence past the lawns, and
into the wide, white highway. A watering-cart had just passed, and the
air was fresh and wet. The afternoon was one of exquisite beauty. The
steamer from San Francisco was just in, and the road was filled with
other motor-cars and smart traps. Sally and the doctor nodded and waved
to a score of friends.
"I am as sorry as you are," said the doctor, awkwardly, after the
silence had grown very long.
"Don't mention it," said Sally, her face flaming again. "That's my
brother's idea of humor. I--I shall stay at the Bevises' overnight."
"I--why, I said I would do that!" said Dr. Bates, hastily. "I just
called in to the maid, when she telephoned Bevis, and said, 'Ask him if
he can put me up overnight.' You see, I've got my things."
"Well, then, I won't," said Sally. Her tone was cold, but a side glance
at his serious face melted her a little. "This is ALL Ferdie!" she
burst out angrily.
"Too bad to make it so important," said the doctor, regretfully.
"I don't see why you should stay at the Bevises'," said the girl,
fretfully. "It looks very odd--when you had come to us. I--I am going
to Glen Ellen early to-morrow, anyway. I would hate to have the Bevises
suspect--"
"Then I will go back with you," agreed the doctor, pleasantly.
Sally frowned. She opened her lips, but shut them without speaking. She
had turned the car into a wide gateway, and a moment later they stopped
at a piazza full of young people. The noisy, joyous Bevis girls and
boys swarmed rapturously about them.
After an hour of laughter and shouting, Sally and the doctor rose to
go, accompanied to the motor by all the young people.
"Ah, you just got in, doctor?" said gentle Mrs. Bevis, with a glance at
the suit-cases.
Sally flushed, but the doctor serenely let the misunderstanding go.
There was no good reason to give for the presence of two cases in the
car.
"You look quite like an elopement!" said Page Bevis with a joyous shout.
"Put one of the cases in front, Bates, and rest your feet on it,"
suggested the older boy, Kenneth.
As he spoke, he caught up Sally's case, and gave it a mighty swing from
the tonneau to the front seat. In mid-flight, the suit-case opened.
Jars and powders, slippers and beribboned apparel scattered in every
direction. Small silver articles, undeniably feminine in nature, lay on
the grass; a spangled scarf which they had all admired on Sally's
slender shoulders had to be tenderly extricated from the brake.
With shrieks of laughter, the Bevis family righted the case and
repacked it. Sally was frozen with anger.
"Mother SAID she knew you two would run off and get married quietly
some day!" said pretty, audacious Mary Bevis.
"Dearie!" protested her mother. "I only said--I only thought--I said I
thought--Mary, that's very naughty of you! Sally, you know how
innocently one surmises an engagement, or guesses at things!"
"Oh, mother, you're getting in deeper and deeper!" said her older son.
"Never you mind, Sally! You can elope if you want to!"
"San Rafael's the place to go, Sally," said Mary. "All the elopers get
married there. The court-house, you know. No delays about licenses!"
"They're very naughty," said their mother, beginning to see how
unwelcome this joking was to the visitors. "Are you going straight
home, dear?"
"Straight home!" said the doctor.
"Well, speaking of San Rafael," pursued the matron, kindly--"can't you
two and Elsie and Ferd go with us all to-night, say about an hour from
now, up to Pastori's and have dinner?"
"Oh, thanks!" said Sally, trying to smile naturally. "I'm afraid not
to-night. I've got a headache, and I'm going home to turn in."
Amid cheerful good-bys, she wheeled the car, and drove it along
rapidly, pursuing thoughts of the Bevis boys hardly short of murderous.
The doctor was silent; but Sally, glancing at him, saw his quiet smile
change to an apologetic look, and hated both the smile and the apology.
They went more slowly on the steep road from the water front to the
hillside. The level light of the sinking sun shone brilliantly on
daisies and nasturtiums at the roadside. Boats, riding at anchor,
dipped in the wash of another incoming steamer. Dr. Bates hummed; but
Sally frowned, and he was immediately hushed.
"Boy looking for you?" he said presently, as a small and dusty boy rose
from a boulder at one side of the road and shouted something
unintelligible.
"Why, I guess he is for me!" said Sally, in the first natural tone she
had used that afternoon.
But the boy, upon being interrogated, said that the telegram was for
"the doc that was visiting up to Miss Sally's house."
Dr. Bates read the little message several times, and absently dismissed
the messenger with a coin, which Sally thought outrageously large, and
a muttered worried word or two.
"Bad news?" she asked.
"In a way," he said quickly. "When's the next train for San Rafael,
Miss Sally? I've got to be there to-night--right away! Do we have to
stand here? Thank you. There's a case Field and I have been watching;
he says that there's got to be an operation at eight--" His voice
trailed off into troubled silence, and he drew out his watch. "Eight!"
he muttered. "It's on seven now!"
"Oh, and you have to operate--horrible for you!" said Sally, taking the
car skilfully toward the railroad station as she spoke. "But I don't
see how you CAN! You've missed the six-thirty train, and there's not
another until after nine. But you can wire Dr. Field that you will be
there the first thing in the morning."
The doctor paid no attention.
"The livery stable is closed, I suppose?" he asked.
"Oh, long ago!"
He ruminated frowningly. Suddenly his face cleared.
"Funny how one thinks of the right solution last!" he said in relief.
"How long would it take you to run me up there? Forty minutes?"
"I don't see how I could," said Sally, flushing. "I can take the car
home, though, and ask Ferd to do it. But that woman's at the hotel,
isn't she? I couldn't go up there and sit outside, with every one I
knew coming out and wondering why I brought you instead of Ferd! Elsie
wouldn't like it. You must see--"
"It would take us fifteen minutes at least to go up and get Ferd,"
objected the doctor, seriously; "and he's not much better than I am at
running it, anyway!"
"Well, I'm sorry," said Sally, shortly, "but I simply couldn't do it.
Dr. Field should have given you more notice. It would look simply
absurd for me to go tearing over these country roads at night--Elsie
would go mad wondering where I was--"
They were in the village now. Troubled and stubborn, Sally stopped the
car, and looked mutinously at her companion. The doctor's rosy face was
flushed under his flaming hair, and in his very blue eyes was a look
that struck her with an almost panicky sensation of surprise. Sally had
never seen any man regard her with an expression of distaste before,
but the doctor's look was actually inimical.
"I feared that you would be the sort of woman to fail one utterly, like
this," he said quietly. "I've often wondered--I've often said to
myself, 'COULD she ever, under any circumstances, throw off that pretty
baby way of hers, and forget that this world was made just for flirting
and dressing and being admired?' By George, I see you can't! I see you
can't! Well! Now, whom can I get to take me up there within the hour?"
He appeared to ponder. Sally sat as if stupefied.
"Don't resent what I say when I'm upset," said the doctor, absently.
"You can't help your limitations, I can't help mine. I see a young
woman--she's just lost a little boy, and she's all her husband has
left--I see her dying because we're too late. You see a few
empty-headed women saying that Sally Reade actually went driving alone,
without her dinner, for three hours, with a man she hardly knew. I am
not blaming you. You have never pretended to be anything but what you
are. I blame myself for hoping--thinking--but, by George, you'd be an
utter dead weight on a man if it was ever up to you to face an
epidemic, or run a risk, or do one-twentieth of the things that those
very ancestors of yours, that you're so proud of, used to do!"
Sally set her teeth. She leaned from the car to summon a small girl
loitering on the road.
"You're one of the White children, aren't you?" said she to the child.
"I want you to go up to Mrs. Ferdie Potter's house, and tell Mrs.
Potter that her sister won't be home for several hours, and that I'll
explain later. Now," said Sally, turning superbly to the doctor, "pull
your hat down tight. We're going FAST!"
They were three miles farther on their way before he saw that her
little chin was quivering, and great tears were running down her small
face. Time was precious, but for a few memorable moments they stopped
the car again.
Miss Sally and Dr. Bates returned to the sleepy and excited Ferdies' at
one o'clock that night. The light that never was on land or sea
glittered in Sally's wonderful eyes; the doctor was white, shaken, and
radiant. Sally flew to her sister's arms.
"We waited to see--and she came out of it--and she has a fair fighting
chance!" said Sally, joyously; and the look she gave her doctor made
Elsie's heart rise with a bound.
"Runaways," said Elsie, "come in and eat! I never knew a serious
operation to have such a cheering effect on any one before!"
"It all went so well," said Sally, contentedly, over chicken and ginger
ale. "But, Elsie! Such fun!" she burst out, her dimples suddenly again
in view. "I am disgraced forever! After we had done everything to make
the Bevis crowd think we were eloping, what did we do but run into the
whole crowd at San Anselmo! I wish you could have seen their faces! We
had said we couldn't possibly go; and we were going too fast to stop
and explain!"
"We'll explain to-morrow," said the doctor, so significantly that
Ferdie rose instantly to grasp his hand, and Elsie fell again upon
Sally as if she had never kissed her before.
"Not--not really!" gasped Elsie, turning radiantly from one to the
other.
"Oh, really!" said Sally, with her prettiest color. "He despises me,
but he will take the case, anyway! And he has done nothing but mortify
and enrage me all day, but I feel that I should miss it if it stopped!
So we are going to sacrifice our lives to each other--isn't it edifying
and beautiful of us? We'll tell you all about it to-morrow. Jam--Sam?"