"What you t"ink he is?"
"Something you would never recognize," she answered sharply; "a gentleman."
Van Lennop smiled, for in his mind"s eye he could see the tense aggressiveness of her slim figure.
"Chentleman!" was the contemptuous snort. "Chentleman--and never buy de drinks for n.o.body all de time he is in Crowheart. Fine chentleman dat!"
"When do you buy any?" was the pointed inquiry.
"I haf to work for _my_ money; his comes easy," he replied significantly.
"You said that before." The voice was growing shriller. "How do you know?"
"Robbin"s easy."
"I must believe it if _you say_ so."
"Why you get mad? Why you stick up for him so hard?" persisted the Frenchman stubbornly.
"Why wouldn"t I stick up for him? He"s a friend of mine."
"Fine fren--dat lazy cheap-skate!" There was real venom in the voice.
Van Lennop heard the stamp of Essie Tisdale"s small foot upon the hard-trodden dooryard.
"You needn"t think you"ll advance your own interests by calling him such names as that! Let me tell you I wouldn"t marry you if you asked me a million, million times!"
Van Lennop started. So he was asking Essie Tisdale to marry him--this old Edouard Dubois with the bullet-shaped head and the brutal face that Van Lennop had found so objectionable upon each occasion that he had been his vis-a-vis in the dining-room?
"Oh, you wouldn"t marry me?"--the guttural voice was ugly now--"I offer you good home, good clothes, ze chance to travel when you lak and hear ze good music zat you love and you wouldn"t marry me if I ask you million times? Maybe some time, Mees Teesdale, you be _glad_ to marry me when I ask you once!"
"Maybe I will," the angry young voice flung back, "but that time hasn"t come _yet_, Mr. Dubois!"
"And G.o.d forbid that it ever should," breathed Van Lennop to himself at the window above. His eyes had grown a little moist at this exhibition of her loyalty and somehow the genuineness of it made him glow, the more perhaps that he was never without a lurking suspicion of the disinterestedness of women"s friendship for the reasons which Dr. Harpe, for instance, knew.
What Van Lennop had learned through his unintentional eavesdropping was something of a revelation. In his mild conjectures as to Crowheart"s opinion of him it never had occurred to him that it considered him anything more interesting than an impecunious semi-invalid or possibly a homeseeker taking his own time to locate. But a hold-up! a loafer! a lazy cheap-skate! Van Lennop shook with silent laughter. A skinflint too mean to buy a drink! He had no notion of enlightening Crowheart in regard to himself because of the illuminating conversation he had overheard. The situation afforded him too much amus.e.m.e.nt and since Essie Tisdale liked him for himself and trusted him in the face of what was evidently Crowheart"s opinion, nothing else mattered. The only result then was to give him a more minute interest in his surroundings.
Heretofore he had viewed the life about him in the impersonal fashion in which persons of large interests and wide experience regard unimportant people doing unimportant things. In the light of what he had learned he placed a new interpretation upon the curious stares, averted faces, frankly disapproving looks or challenging insolence of glances such as he received from Mr. Rhodes"s bold eyes. He smiled often in keen enjoyment of his shady reputation and kept adding to his unpopularity by steadfastly refusing to be drawn into poker games which bore evidence of having been arranged for his benefit.
The experience of being avoided by the respectably inclined and sought after by those who had no respectability to lose was a new experience to Van Lennop, who had been accustomed from infancy to the deference which is tacitly accorded those of unusual wealth; but even had he found the antagonistic atmosphere which he encountered frequently now annoying, he would have felt more than compensated by the knowledge that he had discovered in the little belle of Crowheart a friend whose loyalty was strong enough to stand the difficult test of public opinion.
Essie Tisdale had no notion that Van Lennop had overheard her quarrel with the Frenchman, but her quick perceptions recognized an added friendliness in his manner--a kind of unbending gentleness which was new--and she needed it for she daily felt the growing lack of it in people whom she had called her friends.
In the days which followed, Van Lennop sometimes asked himself if anything had gone wrong with Essie Tisdale. Her shapely head had a proud uplift which was new and in unguarded moments her red, sensitive lips had a droop that he had not noticed before.
Essie Tisdale was not, in her feelings, unlike a frolicsome puppy that has received its first vicious kick. She was digesting the new knowledge that there were people who could hurt others deliberately, cruelly, and so far as she knew, without provocation; that there were people whom she had counted her friends that were capable of hurting her--who could wound her like enemies. And, like the puppy who runs from him who has inflicted his first pain and turns to look with bewilderment and reproach in his soft puppy eyes, Essie felt no resentment yet, only surprise and the pain of the blow together with a great and growing wonder as to what she had done.
The ordeal of the dinner had been greater even than she had antic.i.p.ated.
For the first time in her life she had been treated like an inferior--a situation which Essie Tisdale did not know how to meet. But it had remained for Andy P. Symes who but a few months previous had pressed her hand and called her the prettiest girl in Crowheart to inflict the blow that hurt most.
The guests were leaving when she had found a chance to whisper, "You look so well to-night, Gussie," and Andy P. Symes had interrupted coldly, "Mrs. Symes, if you please, Essie."
Her cheeks grew scarlet when she thought of it. She had meant to tell them in that way that the slight had not altered her friendship and Andy P. Symes had told her in his way that they did not want her friendship.
She did not understand yet, she only felt, and felt so keenly, that she could not bring herself to speak of it, even to Ogden Van Lennop, who still supposed that she had gone as an invited guest.
IX
THE WAYS OF POLITE SOCIETY
The change which a marcelled pompadour, kimona sleeves, a peach-basket hat, and a hobble skirt wrought in the appearance of Mrs. Andy P. Symes, nee Kunkel, was a source of amazement to Crowheart. Her apologetic diffidence was now replaced by an air of complacency arising from the fact that since her return she began to regard herself as a travelled lady who had seen much of life. The occasions upon which she had sat blushing and stammering in the presence of her husband"s friends were fast fading from mind in the agreeable experience of finding herself treated with deference by those who formerly had seemed rather to tolerate than desire her society. Until her return to Crowheart she had not in the least realized what a difference her marriage was to make in her life.
In that other environment she had felt like a servant girl taken red-handed and heavy-footed from the kitchen and suddenly placed in the drawing-room upon terms of equality with her mistress and her mistresses"s friends, but she had profited by her opportunities and now brought back with her something of the air and manner of speech and dress of those who had embarra.s.sed her. While Crowheart laughed a little behind her back it was nevertheless impressed by the mild affectations.
It is no exaggeration to say that Crowheart"s eyes protruded when Mrs.
Symes returned the neighborly visits of the ladies who had "just run in to see how she was gettin" on," by a series of formal afternoon calls.
No such fashionable sight ever had been witnessed in the town as Mrs.
Symes presented when, in a pair of white kid gloves and a veil, she picked her way with ostentatious daintiness across several vacant lots still enc.u.mbered with cactus and sagebrush, to the log residence of Mr.
and Mrs. Alva Jackson.
There was a pair of eyes staring unabashed at every front window in the neighborhood when Mrs. Symes stood on Mrs. Jackson"s "stoop" and removed a piece of baling wire from the lace frill of her petticoat before she wrapped her handkerchief around her hand to protect her white kid knuckles and knocked with lady-like gentleness upon Mrs. Jackson"s door.
Mrs. Jackson, who had been peering through the foliage of a potted geranium on the window-sill, was pinning frantically at her scolding locks, but retained sufficient presence of mind to let a proper length of time elapse before opening the door. When she did, it was with an elaborate bow from the waistline and a surprised--
"Why, how do you do, Mis" Symes!"
Mrs. Symes smiled in prim sweetness, and noting that Mrs. Jackson"s hands looked reasonably clean, extended one of the first two white kid gloves in Crowheart which Mrs. Jackson shook with heartiness before bouncing back and inquiring--
"Won"t you come in, Mis" Symes?"
"Thanks." Mrs. Symes took a pinch of the front breadth of her skirt between her thumb and finger and stepped daintily over the door-sill.
"Set down," urged Mrs. Jackson making a dash at a blue plush rocking-chair which she rolled into the centre of the room with great energy.
When the chair tipped and sent Mrs. Symes"s feet into the air Mrs.
Jackson"s burst of laughter was heard distinctly by Mrs. Tutts across the street.
"Trash!" exclaimed that person in unfathomable contempt.
Mrs. Jackson had two missing front teeth which she had lost upon an occasion to which she no longer referred, also a voice strained and husky from the many midnight choruses in which she had joined before she sold her goodwill and fixtures. She now rested her outspread fingers upon each knee and wildly ransacked her brain for something light and airy in the way of conversation.
Mrs. Symes, sitting bolt upright on the edge of the plush rocking-chair with her long, flat feet pressed tightly together, tweaked at the only veil in Crowheart and cleared her throat with subdued and lady-like restraint before she inquired--
"Isn"t it a lovely day?"
"Oh, lovely!" Mrs. Jackson answered with husky vivacity. "Perf.e.c.kly lovely!"