"I want to get away from the gilded palaces of vice and my solicitous friends; I want to lead the simple, virtuous life of a sheep-herder until my system recovers from a certain shock," explained the applicant glibly, "and something within me tells me that you are not the man to refuse a job to a youth filled with such a worthy ambition."
Dubois grinned understandingly and gave him work at half a sheep-herder"s usual pay.
Whatever the nature of Dr. Harpe"s business with his employer, the interview appeared to have been eminently satisfactory to them both, for she was smiling broadly, while Dubois seemed not only excited but elated when they returned together.
He looked after her buggy as she drove away, and chuckled--
"Ha--she brings me good news--zat woman!"
While the Dago Duke was warming up the fried potatoes and bacon, which remained from breakfast, over the rusty camp-stove, Dubois was diving under his bunk for a box from which he produced a yellowed shirt and collar, together with a suit of black clothes, nearly new.
"Per Iddio! "Tis the Day of Judgment and you"ve gotten inside information!" jeered the Dago Duke.
Dubois showed his yellowed teeth.
"Mais oui, "eet is ze Resurrection."
"I swear, you look like Napoleon, Dubois!" gibed the Dago Duke, when he was fully arrayed.
"Why not?" The Frenchman"s face wore a complacent smirk. "Ze Little Corporal, _he_ married a queen."
The frying-pan of fried potatoes all but dropped from the Dago Duke"s hand, while his employer enjoyed to the utmost the amazement upon his face.
"The lady doc?"
Dubois threw up both hands in vehement protest.
"Non, non! Mon Dieu, non, non!"
The Dago Duke shrugged his shoulders impertinently.
"You aim higher, perhaps?"
"Mais certes," he leered. "Old Dubois has thirty thousand sheep."
"To exchange for----"
"A queen, ze belle of Crowheart--Mees Essie Teesdale!"
The Dago Duke stared and continued to regard his employer fixedly. Essie Tisdale! Had the solitude affected the old man"s mind at last? Was he crazy? How else account for the preposterous suggestion, his colossal egotism? Why, Essie Tisdale, even to the Dago Duke"s critical eye, was like a delicately tinted prairie rose, while old Dubois with his iron-gray hair bristling on his bullet-shaped head, his thick, furrow-encircled neck, his swarthy, obstinate, brutal face, was seventy, a remarkable seventy, it is true, but seventy, and far from prepossessing. It was too absurd! It must be one of the lady doc"s practical jokes--it was sufficiently indelicate, he told himself. At any rate he would soon see Dubois returning crestfallen from his courting expedition, and the sight, he felt, was one he should relish.
"I"ll reserve my congratulations until you come," said the Dago Duke as he picked up his sheep-herder"s staff and returned to his band of sheep.
"You will have ze opportunity, my frien"," grinned Dubois confidently.
Dr. Harpe had advised--
"Give her a night to cry her eyes out. Twenty-four hours will put a crimp in her courage. Let the fact that she"s jilted soak in. Give her time to realize what she"s up against in Crowheart."
And the woman had been right in her reasoning, for a night of tears and grief, of shame and humiliation left Essie Tisdale with weakened courage, mentally and physically spent.
Back of everything, above all else loomed in black and gigantic proportions the fact that Van Lennop had gone away forever without a word to her, that he even had thought less of her when it came to leaving than of the woman whom he had seemed to avoid.
In the long hours of the night her tired brain constantly recalled the things which he had said that had made her glow with happiness at the time, but which she knew now were only the pleasant, idle words of the people who came from the world east of the big hills. Dr. Harpe was right when she had told her that in her ignorance of the world and its men she had misunderstood the kindness Van Lennop would have shown to any person in her position.
"But he didn"t show it to her--he didn"t show it to anyone else but me!"
she would whisper in a fierce joy, which was short-lived, for, instantly, the crushing remembrance of his leave-taking confronted her.
Her face burned in the darkness when she remembered that Dr. Harpe had taunted her with having displayed her love to all the town. She no longer made any attempt to conceal it from herself, the sure knowledge had come with Van Lennop"s departure, and she whispered it aloud in the darkness in glorious defiance, but the mood as quickly pa.s.sed and her face flamed scarlet at the thought that she had unwittingly showed her precious secret to the unfriendly and curious.
She crept from bed and sat on the floor, with her folded arms upon the window-sill, finding the night air good upon her hot face. She felt weak, the weakness of black despair, for it seemed to her that her faith in human nature had received its final shock. If only there was some one upon whose shoulder she could lay her head she imagined that it might not be half so hard. There was Mrs. Terriberry, but after what had happened could she be sure even of Mrs. Terriberry? Could any inconsequential person like herself be sure of anybody if it conflicted with their interests? It seemed not. She shrank from voicing the thought, but the truth was she dared not put Mrs. Terriberry"s friendship to any test.
"The best way to have friends," she whispered bitterly with a lump in her aching throat, "is not to need them."
She dreaded the beginning of another day, but it must be gotten through somehow, and not only that day but the day after that and all the innumerable, dreary days ahead of her. Finally she crept shivering to bed to await the ordeal of another to-morrow.
The long shadows of the afternoon"s sun lay in the backyard of the Terriberry House when Essie sat down in the doorway to rest before her evening"s work began. The girl"s sad face rested in the palm of her hand and her shoulders drooped wearily as Mrs. Abe Tutts in her blue flannel yachting cap came down the road beside her friend Mrs. Jackson, who rustled richly in the watered silk raincoat which advertised the fact that she was either going to or returning from a social function. Mrs.
Jackson"s raincoat was a sure signal of social activity.
"Let"s walk up clost along the fence and see how she"s takin" it,"
suggested Mrs. Tutts amiably. "Gittin" the mitten is some of a pill to swaller. Don"t you speak to her, Mis" Jackson?"
Mrs. Jackson glanced furtively over her shoulder and observed that Mrs.
Symes was still standing on the veranda.
"If I come upon her face to face, but I don"t go out of my way a-tall,"
she added in unconscious imitation of Mrs. Symes"s newly-acquired languor of speech. "One rully can"t afford to after her bein" _so_ indiscreet and all."
"Rotten, I says" declared Mrs. Tutts tersely.
"She looks kinda pale around the gills s"well as I can see from here,"
opined Mrs. Jackson, staring critically as they pa.s.sed along. They t.i.ttered audibly. "I tell you what, Mrs. Tutts, Essie ought to get to work and marry some man what"ll put her right up in society where Alva put me."
A biting comment which it caused Mrs. Tutts real suffering to suppress was upon the tip of that lady"s tongue, but it was gradually being borne in upon her that the first families were not given to actual hand-to-hand conflicts, so she checked it and inquired significantly instead--
"But could he, after ridin" over the country t"hout no chaperon and all?"
Mrs. Tutts had only recently found out about chaperons and their function, but, since she had she insisted upon them fiercely, and Mrs.
Jackson was finally forced to admit that this violation of the conventions was indeed hard to overlook.
Essie Tisdale was too unhappy either to observe the pa.s.sing of the women or their failure to recognize her. In the presence of this new, real grief their friendliness or lack of it seemed a small affair. The only thing which mattered was Ogden Van Lennop"s going. The sun, for her, had gone down and with the inexperience of youth she did not believe it ever would rise again.
The girl sat motionless, her chin still resting in her palm, until a tremulous voice behind her spoke her name.
"Essie."
She turned to see Mrs. Terriberry, b.u.t.toned into her steel-colored bodice and obviously fl.u.s.tered.
"Yes?" There was a trace of wonder in her voice.