WINDING A WEB.
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.”
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.