The Desired Woman Part 22

"Dry up all that!" he yelled, furiously. "Dry up, I say! She's sick."

Feeling his support, Dolly revived a little, and he led her out into the hall and saw her go slowly up the stairs to her room. As for Mrs.

Drake and Ann, they had pounced on the paper and had it spread out before their wide-open eyes. Sally-Lou was now on her feet. She had gone to the door, seen Dolly's wilting form disappear at the head of the stairs, and was now breathlessly feasting on the bewildered chagrin of the stunned mother and daughter.

Ann finished reading sooner than her mother. Pale and indignant, she turned to the caller. She had opened her mouth when John Webb promptly covered it with his red paw. "Come out o' here!" he ordered, sharply.

"You go up-stairs an' 'tend to Dolly. She ain't well. She's been ailin'

off an' on for a week. You school-children have deviled the life out of the poor thing. What are you all talkin' about, anyway? Mostyn told me an' Dolly all about him an' that woman. We knowed all along that he was goin' to git married, but it was a sort o' secret betwixt us three."

Astounded, and warningly pinched on the arm, Ann, with a lingering backward look, left the room and reluctantly climbed the stairs.

"You'll have to excuse me, Miss Sally-Lou, here's your paper," Mrs.

Drake was slowly recovering discretion. "I'll have to see about Dolly.

John's right, she ain't well--she ain't--oh, my Lord, I don't know what to make of it!"

"I see she _is_ sort o' upset," Miss Sally-Lou said, "an I don't wonder. I oughtn't to have sprung it so sudden-like. I'll tell you all good day. I'll have to run along. If thar's anything I kin do for Dolly just let me know. I'm a good hand about a sick-bed, an' I know how to give medicine. If Dolly gets worse, send word to me, an' I'll step right over. This may go hard with her. You know I think that idle scamp might 'a' had better to do than--"

But Mrs. Drake, obeying her brother's imperative nod, was moving toward the stairs. Sally-Lou and Webb were left together. Her glance fell before the fiercest glare she had ever seen shoot from a masculine eye, and yet Webb's freckled face was valiantly digging up a smile.

"I see what _you_ thought," he laughed. "You went an' thought Dolly was in love with that town dude. Shucks, she seed through 'im from the fust throw out o' the box. She liked to chat with 'im now an' then, but la, me! if you women are so dead bent on splicin' folks why don't you keep your eyes open? Listen to me, an' see if I ain't right. You watch an'

see if Dolly an' Warren Wilks--"

"Pshaw!" Miss Sally-Lou sniffed. "Dolly will never give Warren a second thought--not _now,_ nohow. She's got 'er sights up, an' she'll never lower 'em ag'in."

Webb, almost outwitted, stood on the edge of the porch and watched the spinster trip down the walk. She glanced over her shoulder coquettishly. "You are losin' all your gal_lant_ ways, Mr. John," she simpered. "You don't even open the gate for visitin' ladies here lately."

"I greased that latch t'other day," he answered, laconically. "It works as easy as the trigger of a mouse-trap. I don't know as I ever was a woman's jumpin'rjack. I ain't one o' the fellers that fan flies off'n 'em at meetin'. If they draw flies an' gnats that's the'r lookout, not mine."

CHAPTER XIX

Alone in her room, Dolly stood at a window, her distraught eyes on the placid fields lying between the house and the mountains. She was still pale. The tips of her fingers clung to the narrow mullions as if for support. She seemed scarcely to breathe. Her beautiful lips were drawn tight; her shapely chin had a piteous quiver.

"Oh, that was it!" she moaned. "I understand it now. He was engaged to her all the time, but wouldn't tell me. He got tired of us here and went back to her. I'll never see him again--never, never, never!"

The bed, with its snowy coverlet and great downy pillows, invited her.

She was about to throw herself upon it, but her pride, pierced to the quick, rebelled. "I sha'n't cry!" she said. "He is marrying for her money. I sha'n't weep over it. He lied to me--to _me!_ He said something was wrong with his business and when that was settled he would write. He was just trifling, pa.s.sing time away this summer as he did three years ago, and I--I--silly little gump--actually kissed him.

I trusted him as I trust--as I _trusted_ G.o.d. I even confided father's secret to him. I loved him with my whole soul, and all the time he was comparing me to her."

Far across the sunlit meadows on the gradual slope of a rise she saw her father and George cutting and raking hay. How odd it seemed for them to be so calmly working toward the future feeding of mere horses and cattle when to her life itself seemed killed to its germ. There was a step on the stairs. The door was thrown open, and her sister rushed in.

"Oh, Dolly!" Ann cried, her begrimed fingers clutching at Dolly's arm, "what does it mean? Is it so? Do you think he really is going to--"

"Oh, go away, go away, _please_ go away!" the older pleaded. "Don't talk to me now--not now!"

"But I want to know--I _must_ know!" Ann ran on, hysterically, her young, piping voice rising higher and higher. "I can't stand it, Dolly.

Ever since you told me about you and him I have thought about Atlanta and your beautiful home down there and the things I was going to do.

Oh, I thought--I thought it was actually settled, but if--if the paper tells the truth--Why don't you talk? What has got into you all at once?

Surely--surely he wouldn't--surely you wouldn't have gone out to meet him as late at night as you did and let him--you know, sister, I saw him holding you tight and--"

Dolly turned like an automaton suddenly animated. She laid her hands on her sister's shoulders and bore down fiercely. She shook her so violently from side to side that Ann's plaited hair swung like a rope in a storm.

"Don't tell that to a soul!" Dolly panted. "You must not--don't _dare_ to! You promised you wouldn't. Sometime I will explain, but not now--not now. I'm losing my mind. Go away and leave me."

"I really believe you think the paper is telling the truth," Ann moaned. "You _must_ think so, or you wouldn't look this way and beg me not to tell. Oh, I can't stand it!"

For a breathless moment Ann stood staring at her dumb-lipped sister, and then, tottering to the bed, she threw herself upon it, burying her face in a pillow. Sob after sob escaped her, but Dolly paid no heed.

Her lifeless stare on the mountain view, she stood like a creature entranced.

The sun went down. Like a bleeding ball it hung over the mountain's crest, throwing red rays into the valley. A slow step was heard on the stair, the sliding of a dry hand on the bal.u.s.trade. Mrs. Drake opened the door and advanced to Dolly.

"You mustn't take on this way," she began. "I want you to be sensible and strong. Thar is plenty of fish in the sea. I sort o' thought Mr.

Mostyn was talking too much to you for it to be exactly right, but you always had such a level head--more level than I ever had--that I thought you could take care of yourself."

"Mother, please leave me alone for to-day, anyway," Dolly pleaded.

"I--I'm not a fool. Take Ann down-stairs. I--I can't stand that noise.

It makes me desperate. I hardly know what to do or say."

"I just asked her to tell me the truth." Ann sat up, holding her pillow in her lap as for comfort, her eyes red with rubbing. "But she won't say a word, when all this time I've been counting on--"

"Well, I'm going down and see about supper," Dolly said, desperately.

"Father and George have stopped work and they will be hungry."

Her mother tried to detain her, but she went straight down the stairs.

Mrs. Drake crept stealthily to the door, peered after her daughter, and then, heaving a sigh, she stood before the girl on the bed.

"Now," she said, grimly, "out with it! Tell me all you know about this thing--every single thing!"

"But, mother"--Ann's eyes fell--"I promised-"

"It don't make no difference what you promised," Mrs. Drake blurted out. "This ain't no time for secrets under this roof. I want the facts.

If you don't tell me I'll get your pa to whip you."

Half an hour later, as Tom Drake trudged across the old wheat-field back of the barn, his scythe on his shoulder, he met his wife at the outer fence of the cow-lot. There she stood as still and silent as a detached post.

"Whar's your bucket?" he asked, thinking she had come to milk the cow, which was one of her evening duties.

"I'm goin' to let it go over to-night," she faltered. Then she laid a stiff hand on her husband's sweat-damp sleeve. "Tom Drake," she gulped, "I'm afraid me an' you are facin' the greatest trouble we've ever had."

"What's wrong now?" he asked, swift visions of moons.h.i.+ne stills, armed officers, and grim court officials flas.h.i.+ng before him.

Haltingly she explained the situation. He bore it stolidly till, in a rasping whisper, she concluded with the information forced from Ann.

She told him of the low whistle in the moonlight at their daughter's window, of Dolly's cautious exit from the house, of the tender embrace on the lawn. Drake turned his tortured face away. She expected a storm of fury, but no words came from his ghastly lips.

"Now, Tom," she half wailed, "you _must_ be sensible. This is a family secret. For once in your life you've got to keep your temper till we can see our way clear. After all, goin' out that way to meet 'im don't actually prove that our girl is bad; you know it don't. Young folks these days--"

"Don't tell _me_ what it meant!" He bent fiercely toward her. "I know.