DAVID WHITCOMB sat in the dining-room of the Barford Eagle. It was
fifteen minutes of eleven by the loud-ticking clock, with a calendar
attachment proclaiming a new day, which hung against the wall in
full view of the breakfaster, yet he appeared quite unabashed by the
lateness of the hour as he attacked the platter of fried ham and eggs
which the pink-cheeked waitress set before him. She was a pretty girl
with curly light hair and wide open eyes of an innocent babyish blue.
“Here’s your toast, Mr. Whitcomb, nice an’ hot—jus’ as you like it,”
she said, reaching over his shoulder to set a covered plate before him.
“An’ I tried the coffee m’self this morning. That ol’ cook, she makes
me good and tired! _She_ don’t care whether you like things or not.”
David flashed a brilliant smile at the waitress.
“You’re a nice little girl, Jennie,” he said, and tasted the steaming
cup which she handed him. Then he made a wry face.
“Isn’t it good?” asked the girl, with a grieved droop of her full red
lips. “I made it jus’s you said, with the egg an’ all, an’ it jus’
boiled up good once. I stood right over it for all o’ that nasty
Sarah. She swatted me with her dish-towel, ’cause I wouldn’t——”
“It’s made well enough,” interrupted David; “but it’s a cheap brand of
coffee, and—bring the coffee-pot here; will you?”
“The coffee-pot?”
“Yes. Bring it here; the one you make my coffee in.”
The girl disappeared kitchenward with a hasty rustling of her crisp
blue gingham skirts. David leaned back in his chair and thrust both
hands in his trousers pockets while he eyed the table service of coarse
crockery and cheap glass with a cynical smile. Three or four flies
hovered aimlessly about the plate of buttered toast, and one crawled
into the half-filled cream jug where it buzzed helplessly, its wings
spattered with the liquid.
“Damn!” muttered David, pushing back his chair and yawning. There were
shrill voices in loud altercation in the not distant kitchen, the sound
of a hard-shut door, and the waitress reappeared, red-cheeked and
breathless, bearing a large black coffee-pot in her two hands held far
in front of her.
“Here it is, Mr. Whitcomb,” she said. “That nasty ol’ cook was bound I
shouldn’t bring it in ’ere. She threw dish-water on my clean apron. I
could ’a’ killed her!”
She held the coffee-pot for his inspection and David lifted the lid,
peered in, and sniffed disgustedly.
“Ugh!” he said. “I thought so. Now I like decent coffee, and I’ll buy
a coffee-pot just to make my coffee in. Do you suppose you could keep
it, so that termagant in the kitchen wouldn’t annex it?”
“You bet I can,” giggled the girl delightedly, “an’ I’ll do it, too,
jus’ to spite Sarah. An’ I’ll make your coffee every morning. I’d love
to, Mr. Whitcomb.”
“Good girl,” drawled David. He waved his hand toward the table. “You
may as well take these things away,” he said. “I’m—er—not hungry this
morning.”
The girl’s face fell; her full lips quivered and pouted like a child’s
on the verge of sobbing.
“I made the toast,” she said. “I made it jus’ like you said. It—it’s
good.”
David uncovered the plate hastily.
“It looks fine, Jennie; but you see it’s so near dinner-time—see here,
my girl, you buy the coffee-pot for me; will you?—just a plain tin one,
mind. And—er—keep the change.”
He threw a crisp bill on the table.
The girl took up the money and folded it together carefully. When she
raised her blue eyes they were swimming in tears.
“I—I’ll do anythin’ you say,” she whimpered, “anythin’ you want me to.”
By way of answer, perhaps, David pushed back his chair with a harsh,
scraping sound that echoed dismally through the empty room. Then he
rose, clapped his straw hat on the back of his curly head, searched
for his cigarette case and matches and stalked out to the piazza by
way of the passage which, in country fashion, afforded an easy mode of
transit between the bar and the dining-room. At one side of the passage
was set a high, ink-spattered desk, and behind it a long-legged stool,
upon which perched a fattish, elderly man intent upon a ledger. This
individual appeared to feel the heat of the June morning exceedingly,
for he mopped his face from time to time with a large handkerchief, in
the intervals of setting down laborious lines of figures. He looked up
as David Whitcomb approached, and his large face creased itself into a
dubious smile.
“Good-morning, Sutton,” remarked David blandly. “Finding out how much
the public owes you for your astonishing good cheer—eh?”
“Mornin’, Mr. Whitcomb,” mumbled the Boniface. “Um—yes; I was sort of
goin’ over m’ books. Warm mornin’, ain’t it?”
He eyed David closely, taking note apparently of the heavy ring of
virgin gold on the third finger of his left hand and descending slyly
to the polished toes of his tan Oxfords.
“How much do I owe you?” asked the young man nonchalantly, allowing a
thin wreath of smoke to escape from his lips.
“‘Twon’t break ye, I guess,” hazarded Mr. Sutton, pushing a slip of
pink paper across the desk with alacrity. “The’s a few extrys on this
week’s bill,” he added, breathing heavily as he indicated with the
handle of his pen various items annotated on the account.
David flung his half-smoked cigarette out of the open window and
produced a roll of bills from his pocket, from which he detached one.
“Take it out of that,” he said carelessly. “I need some change.”
“Yes, sir; all right, sir. Thank you, sir,” said Mr. Sutton effusively.
He sucked in his lips in a windy whisper as he counted out the change
in bills of smaller denominations and topped them with a little pile of
silver.
“Hope you find everythin’ t’ your likin’ at the Eagle.”
David shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh, it’s all right,” he said. “I’m used to roughing it.”
The hotel-keeper signed his name to the receipted bill with a heavy
flourish.
“Heh?” he ejaculated.
Then he climbed hastily down from his perch.
“Come across,” he said hospitably, “an’ have one on me. Anythin’ you
say, Mr. Whitcomb.”
“Something cold, if you have it,” David directed the bartender”—and
bitter. No, no! not too much of that. Fill it up with water.”
He drank thirstily and set down the glass, lifting his eyes to look out
of the window at a passing vehicle.
“That’s the Hon’rable S. Jarvis, _Es_quire,” pronounced his host,
sucking his lips over the contents of his own glass. “Warm man, Jarvis.”
“By that you mean?” queried David, strolling toward the door.
“He’s got the rocks, Jarvis has; but my! ain’t he the screechin’ limit?
I’ll bet you——”
Mr. Sutton waddled heavily after David, and seated himself comfortably
in one of the big splint-bottomed chairs ranged along the piazza for
the convenience of patrons.
“I’ll bet you,” he concluded, “he’s got half a million salted down, if
he’s got a penny.”
“Is there a decent horse in the stable?” inquired David, after a
silence, which Mr. Sutton filled in with various animal-like noises,
expressive of his entire physical comfort.
“No; but I c’n git y’ one over to the livery stable. I’ll send over for
it, if you say so,” Mr. Sutton responded.
“I want to find Bellows,” David said.
“Who? The auctioneer? Wall, y’ don’t need no livery hoss t’ locate
Thomas. He’s over t’ Henry Maclin’s this mornin’, sellin’ out the
stock. Hank’s concluded to go west. Thinks there’s more doin’ out
there. But I dunno ’bout that. You mus’ know somethin’ ’bout the West?”
David was smoking a second cigarette with short, impatient puffs.
“I’ve been there,” he admitted, with a transient scowl.
“How’d you like it?” asked Mr. Sutton, folding his pudgy hands across
his protuberant front. “What sort of a place is it? Gamblers—heh?
Cowboys, shootin’ parties, sage brush, prairie fires, etcetery—heh?”
“You’ve named the principal features of the great West,” drawled David.
“It’s all there, more particularly the et cetera. There’s lots of that
roaming about.”
He pulled his hat over his eyes and stepped down from the veranda.
“I may not be back to dinner,” he said, “but I’d like a decent steak
for supper, if you can get it in this centre of civilization.”
Mr. Sutton watched the young man’s muscular figure in its leisurely
progress down the street. Then he went back to the barroom, where his
underling, a slim, sallow young man, with oily black hair parted very
particularly in the middle of his narrow head, was languidly arranging
clean glasses on a tray.
“He’s hot stuff, ain’t he?” observed the bartender.
“Who?—Whitcomb?”
“Thinks he’s the whole thing, don’t he?”
Mr. Sutton frowned. “I ain’t made up my mind ’bout that young feller,”
he said ponderously. “But I’m kind of watchin’ him. It strikes me he’ll
bear—watchin’.”
David Whitcomb, walking slowly down the village street under the shade
of the spreading maples, was experiencing that vague dissatisfaction
which in individuals of his temperament is apt to follow the attainment
of some hotly pursued desire. Barbara had long represented to his
imagination the distant, unsealed peak, the untrodden wild, the
unstaked, unexplored claim. He had come back from the West with no very
fixed intention of marrying her; but with something of the languid
curiosity the traveller feels regarding scenes long unvisited.
He had not felt at all sure that he would find Barbara the lovely
vision that he had pictured her, in the infrequent intervals given
to a vague remembrance of past days. But he had lost sight of his
indifference in the excitement of the auction and his subsequent
impulsive endeavors to break down the girl’s scruples. Now he had won
her, fairly or unfairly, and he was thinking with some irritation of
the future to which he had committed himself. The dull vista of a
married life, spent in hard work on a farm, which in the end could not
belong to him, appeared more and more intolerable the longer he dwelt
upon it. He was in a thoroughly bad humor by the time he had reached
the scene of Thomas Bellows’ latest activities.
Henry Maclin’s hardware, flour, and feed store was situated on the
outskirts of the village. As David approached it he could hear the
loud voice of the auctioneer upraised in the raucous monotone of his
calling, and the dull thud of his hammer, as he proclaimed the sale of
the various articles an assistant was rapidly passing up to him.
David sauntered up to the edge of the crowd and stood there, gloomily
reviewing the events of the previous month. He glanced up suddenly to
find a keen pair of eyes riveted upon him.
“Mornin’, Mr. Whitcomb,” called Peg Morrison, as if he feared the
young man might attempt to avoid him. “Thinkin’ o’ biddin’ in any o’
the stuff? The best of it’s gone b’ now. I got a good cross-cut saw,
though. B’en wantin’ one fer quite a spell. The’s quite a lot o’ dead
timber standin’ on th’ farm in diff’rent places ’at ought t’ come down.”
David was plainly indifferent, and after cautiously studying his
unresponsive face Mr. Morrison went on.
“Miss Barb’ry, she leaves mos’ everythin’ t’ me; but the’s times when
I feel as ’o I’d like a man t’ go over the place with me. Course she’s
got her idees, an’ some o’ ’em’s all right; but I d’clar’ I hate t’
see her botherin’ with outdoor work. Females had ought to keep house
an’ sew an’ look after the cookin’, an’ not be tryin’ t’ do men’s work
b’sides. That’s what I tell her, an’ I been thinkin’ ’at some day you’d
go ’round with me, since you’re such a good friend o’ Miss Barb’ry’s.”
David frowned in an irritated fashion.
“I don’t understand farming, my good fellow,” he said coldly. “So I’m
afraid my advice wouldn’t prove very valuable.”
“That’s jus’ what I was thinkin’,” was Peg’s incautious comment. “An’
mebbe fer that very reason, you’d better——”
He hesitated and stopped short under the steady stare of Whitcomb’s
blue eyes.
“Y’—see,” he blundered on, “ef Miss Barb’ry hes to go ’way fer five
years, I was thinkin’——”
“She won’t go away for five years, if I can help it,” said David. “I’m
going to try and get her out of the mess she’s made of things.”
His eyes wrinkled at the corners and he laughed outright at the strange
working of Peg’s untutored features.
“Don’t you bother your old head about Miss Barbara’s affairs,” he said
carelessly, “nor”—his keen look threatened serious displeasure—“mine.”
He turned decidedly and made his way towards Bellows, who had just
disposed of the last lot of merchandise and stepped down from his perch
among the rapidly dispersing crowd.
But the auctioneer could not, when questioned, furnish the address of
the small man in checked clothes, who had paid four thousand dollars
for a hypothetical term of Barbara’s service. He shook his head
vigorously when urged to a further explanation of what had immediately
followed the event at the Preston farm.
“Nope,” he persisted. “I can’t help you none. I done all I was paid t’
do an’——”
David whipped out a yellow-backed bill from his vest-pocket.
“You had references,” he said in a cautious tone, “for I heard you say
so. Who figured as referee?”
Mr. Bellows waved David’s hand aside.
“It’d cost me more’n you’ve got t’ tell you,” he said. “Nope. I ain’t
a-goin’ t’ say nothin’ more. Anyway, what business is it of yours?”
David did not choose to acquaint the auctioneer with the reasons for
his anxiety, and presently he found himself walking swiftly along the
road leading to the Preston farm. He was uncomfortably hungry by this
time, but with the unreason of the average man attributed his gloomy
feelings to a higher source than his clamorous stomach.
Barbara met him at the door with an agitated face.
“I have heard from—the person who—— Oh, I was hoping you would come!”
“Do you mean the fellow who bought you?” he demanded sharply. Her
apparent faith in himself he passed over without notice. “Has he been
here?”
“No-o,” murmured Barbara. “But I had a letter.”
She put it into his hand, and watched him eagerly, timidly, while he
read it. She had lain awake half the night, thinking of David, of his
eyes, of the strong pressure of his arms, of the touch of his lips upon
hers. Love had drawn near at last, and she bent her head meekly to his
accolade, almost forgetting her chain in the rapture of the moment.
But with the morning had come the painful recurrence of all her doubts
and fears; and later, as if in answer to her agitated questionings, the
letter.
David read it with frowning brows.
“There’s nothing in this,” he said impatiently, “to show you who the
person is, nor when you’ll be called for.”
“No,” Barbara agreed faintly. “But you see——”
“It’s some mean dog-in-the-manger, who is watching you in secret, and——”
He stopped short.
“The boy is coming,” he said, and got to his feet.
“You’ll stay to dinner?” she begged him timidly. “I made cherry pies
this morning. I think”—humbly—“that they’re that they’re very good.”
David put his arm around her, with a sudden untraced impulse of
tenderness.
“Don’t worry about the letter,” he said magnificently. “I’ll—think it
over.”
It was a very happy meal they ate together, in spite of the prying
presence of Miss Cottle, who had assumed control of the teapot. There
was stewed chicken, an abundance of fresh vegetables, strawberries and
yellow cream, and, to top off with, the cherry pie of such unexampled
excellence that David forgot the unpleasant doubts which had assailed
him in the morning. As he sat, smoking a cigarette, on the shaded porch
at the conclusion of the meal, it occurred to him that the farm was
not, after all, so bad a place to live. His eyes wandered dreamily
across the broad fields to the blue distance, and lingered there
unseeingly.
Barbara came out presently and sat down at his side.
“I should be so happy,” she sighed, “if——”
“Eh—what?” he roused himself to say. He reached out and patted her
hand. “Why be unhappy about anything—just now?” he murmured. He smiled
dreamily into her eyes. “The dinner was perfect, sweetheart; as for
the reminder from your unknown, why not be thankful that ’it’ contents
itself with correspondence?”
Barbara turned her eyes away. An aching lump arose in her throat as if
to choke her. When she finally answered him it was in a low, controlled
voice.
“There will be other letters—other reminders; you saw that.”
David was at the moment languidly optimistic. It occurred to him
to silence her grieving lips with a kiss; but he was too drowsily
comfortable to move. He contented himself by again caressing her
fingertips.
“Don’t poison our happiness by perpetual references to something
neither of us can possibly help,” he murmured.