"I have not. I"ve been talking straight from the shoulder, as I advise you to do."
He capitulated. "After the turkey. Come on, Ben, we"re in for a lecture by the Professor-Doctor Lee Congdon."
Under the influence of his humor they took seats about the pretty, candle-lit table as gay a group as the city held--apparently; for Alice was of that temperament which responds quickly and buoyantly to humor, and Frank Congdon never took anything quite seriously--except his portrait-painting. He could do a cake-walk with any one, but he would not discuss art with the unsympathetic. He always had a new story to tell of his amazing experience. Something was always happening to him.
Other men come and go up and down the whole earth without an adventure, but no sooner does Frank Congdon slip out of the door than the fates--generally the humorous ones--pounce upon him. Drunken women claim him for a son. Sheriffs arrest him in the mountains and transport him long distances, only to find him the wrong man. Confused Swedish mothers give him babies to hold in the cars, and rush out just in time to get left. And these tales lose nothing in his recount of them.
In the present instance he took up half the dinner-hour with a description of his latest mishap. A neighbor"s cook had suddenly gone mad, and had charged him with putting a spell over her. "Somebody calls me up on the "phone this morning: "Is this Frank Congdon?"... "Yes." ...
"h.e.l.lo, Frank, this is Henry. What you been doing to my cook?" ... "What does she say I have?" ... "Says you"ve hypnotized her--put a spell over her." ... "I pa.s.s." ... "Fact; she"s crazy as a bed-bug, and we can"t do a thing with her--and she was _such_ a good girl. How could you, Frank?" ... "I never saw the creature in my life." ... "Well, you"ll see her now. You"re to come right over and remove this spell, or we won"t have any breakfast."" Here Congdon looked solemnly round at his guests.
"Now wouldn"t that convulse a body? I didn"t know her name; on my word, I couldn"t remember how she looked. But my curiosity was roused, and over I toddled. It was all true. Karen was in the kitchen, armed with the jig-saw bread-knife and calling for me. Henry was all for my appearing suddenly at the door a la Svengali, and with a majestic wave of the hand lift the cloud from her brain. "Not on your tintype," says I; "I guess this is a case for the police. If I put this spell on that h.e.l.l-cat it must have been by "absent treatment" during sleep, and it"s me to my studio again." ... "No you don"t," said Henry. "You stay till this incubus is cleared away. It ain"t reasonable to suppose that an ignorant maid like this is going to charge a complete stranger with a crime of this kind unless--"
""That"s what I say. It isn"t reasonable, I refuse to believe it." Just then something seemed to break loose in the back part of the house.
Wash-boilers seemed to be falling on the kitchen range, and wild yells made Mrs. Henry turn pale.
""That"s your work, monster!" shrieked Henry.
""Is it?" I said. "My opinion is she"s broke into your wine-cellar. It"s you to the police."
""Go calm her. Come, it"s a fine chance to experiment."
""So it is--with a cannon. Do you mean to tell me seriously that she thinks I"ve hypnotized her?"
"Then he got down to business, and a.s.sured me that he was telling the truth. This interested me, and I thought I"d chance opening the door--particularly as everything was quiet inside."
His company was very tense now, so vividly had he set the whole scene before them. "I opened the door, and found her standing at the far side of the room, her hair in ropes and her eyes wild. She was "bug-house"
all right. "Karen," I said, in my most hypnotic voice, "I lift the spell. You are free. Go back to work.""
"What happened?" asked Alice, breathless with excitement.
His face was grave and his voice sad. "Not a thing! My Svengali pa.s.s didn"t work. I was as the idle wind to her. Therefore, I withdrew and "phoned the police."
"What an extraordinary thing," said Ben.
Mrs. Congdon brightly answered: "It would be for any one else, but I"m so used to that now I don"t mind. Whenever the telephone bell rings I expect to hear that Frank is sued for breach of promise, or arrested for burglary, or some little thing like that. If he were only a novelist he"d make our everlasting fortune. But I know why he started this story--he wants to head off my talk with you about the Haneys, and I don"t intend to let him do it. Have you taken on Haney"s legal business?"
"Yes."
"For good and all?"
"Yes. He"s advanced me part of my fee, and I"ve spent it for desks, rugs, and office rent. I think I may say the offer is accepted."
"I"m sorry," she said, simply.
Her husband objected. "I don"t see why. Haney is a man of large means, his mines are paying hugely, and he needs some one to look after the investment side of his income, and to keep tab on the output of the mines, and to be ready to settle any legal points that may come up.
Ben"s just the boy to do this."
Lee was firm. "That"s one side of it. But these young people should not start in wrong. Haney"s past is said to be criminal, and Mrs. Haney is called low--"
Congdon hotly interrupted. "Who says so? It"s a lie!"
"That"s the talk over town. It was all right for Crego to transact their business, for he is an old and well-known lawyer here; but it"s different with Ben, who is just starting."
Ben laughed. "Yes, it is different. Crego didn"t need the job, and I do."
"How bad do you need it?" she asked.
"Well, it makes it possible for us to marry at once and settle here." He looked at Alice with a renewal of the admiration he had felt for her in the days of their dancing feet. She shrank from his gaze, and Mrs.
Congdon perceived it.
"You"re not so poor as all that," she stated rather than asked.
"I don"t suppose we"re likely to need bread of a sort, but I don"t feel able to buy or rent and keep house--or I didn"t till Haney made this offer."
"How did he come to make it?"
His fair skin flushed at her question, for he couldn"t quite bring himself to tell the whole truth. He knew the decision came from Bertha, and at the moment, and for the first time, he saw how it might be misconstrued. He evaded her. "Modesty forbids, but I suppose it must come out. It is all due to my open-faced Waterbury countenance. He thinks I am at once able and honest."
"There you have it, Lee. Haney knows a good thing when he sees it."
Mrs. Congdon, putting the rest of her lecture aside for future use, said: "Well, if it"s all settled, then I"ve no more to say. Probably I"m too fussy about what the town thinks, anyway."
"Precisely my contention, Mrs. Congdon," replied her husband.
She was audaciously frank and truth-seeking, but she could not say to any one but her husband that Little Mrs. Haney, expanding into a dangerously attractive woman, was already in love with Ben Fordyce.
"There are limits to advice, after all," she said to Frank, when they were alone.
"I"m glad you recognize the limit in this case," he replied, "but I don"t intend to worry. Ben is all right, and the girl has got to have her tragedy sooner or later. If it isn"t Ben, it will be somebody else.
A wonder it wasn"t with me."
"Oh, I don"t know." She laughed. "I feel very secure about you."
"Am I such a bad shape?" he asked, with comical inflection.
CHAPTER XIII
BERTHA"S YELLOW CART
Ben found his office a most cheerful and pleasant resort--just what he needed. And each morning as soon as his breakfast was eaten, he went to his desk to write, to read his morning paper, and to glance at the law journals. He called this "studying." About eleven o"clock the Haneys regularly drove down, and they went over some paper, or some proposal for investment, or Williams came in with a report of the mines. This filled in the time till lunch. Not infrequently he got into the carriage, and they rode up to get Alice to fill out the table. In the afternoon they sometimes went out to the mesas, and it was this almost daily habit of driving and lunching with the Haneys which infuriated Mrs. Crego (who really loved Alice) and troubled Lee Congdon (who was, as she said, frankly in love with Ben). Gossips were already discussing the outcome of it all.
"Just such a situation as that has produced a murderess," said Mrs.
Crego to the judge one night. But he only shook his paper and scowled under its cover, refusing to say one word further concerning the Haneys.
Alice, studying Ben with those uncanny eyes of hers, saw him slowly yielding to the charm of Bertha"s personality, which was maturing rapidly under the influence of her love. She was as silent as ever, but her manner was less boyish. The swell of her bosom, the glow that came into her face, had their counterparts in the unconsciously acquired feminine grace of her bearing. She was giving up many of the phrases which jarred on polite ears, and she did this, naturally, by reason of her a.s.sociation with Alice. She saw and took on many of the little niceties of the older woman"s way of eating and drinking.
At Lee Congdon"s suggestion, she abandoned the cross-saddle. It required a great deal of character to give up the free and natural way of riding (the way in which all women rode until these latter days), and to a.s.sume the helpless, cramped, and twisted position the side-saddle demands; but she did it in the feeling that Ben liked her better for the change. And he did. She could see approval in his eyes when she rode out for the first time in conventional riding-skirt, looking very slim and strong and graceful. "I can"t stand for the "hard hat,"" she confessed. "I"ll wear a cap or a sombrero, but no skillet for me."