The Daughter of Anderson Crow
possibility of unwholesome revelations in connection with her birth,
they purposely blindfolded themselves and indulged in the game of
consequences.
Mrs. Bonner was waiting in the automobile, having said good-bye to
Wicker.
"I'll keep close watch on him, Mrs. Bonner," promised Anderson, "and
telegraph you if his condition changes a mite. I ast 'Doc' Smith to-day
to tell me the real truth 'bout him, an'--"
"The real truth? What do you mean?" she cried, in fresh alarm.
"Don't worry, ma'am. He's improvin' fine, 'doc' says. He told me he'd be
out o' danger when he got back to Boston. His heart's worryin' 'doc' a
little. I ast 'im to speak plain an' tell me jest how bad it's affected.
He said: 'At present, only the left ventricle--whatever that be--only
the left one is punctured, but the right one seems to need a change of
air.'"
CHAPTER XXVII
The Grin Derisive
"I like your ma," said Anderson to Wicker, later in the evening. "She's
a perfect lady. Doggone, it's a relief to see a rich woman that knows
how to be a lady. She ain't a bit stuck up an' yet she's a reg'lar
aristocrat. Did I ever tell you about what happened to Judge
Courtwright's wife? No? Well, it was a long time ago, right here in
Tinkletown. The judge concluded this would be a good place fer a summer
home--so him an' her put up a grand residence down there on the river
bluff. It was the only summer place on this side of the river. Well, of
course Mrs. Courtwright had to turn in an' be the leader of the women in
this place. She lorded it over 'em an' she give 'em to understand that
she was a queen er somethin' like that an' they was nothin' but
peasants. An' the derned fool women 'lowed her to do it, too. Seems as
though her great-grandfather was a 'squire over in England, an' she had
a right to be swell. Well, she ruled the roost fer two summers an'
nobody could get near her without a special dispensation from the
Almighty. She wouldn't look at anybody with her eyes; her chin was so
high in the air that she had to look through her nose.
"Her husband was as old as Methoosalum--that is, he was as old as
Methoosalum was when he was a boy, so to speak--an' she had him skeered
of his life. But I fixed her. At the end of the second summer she was
ready to git up an' git, duke er no duke. Lemme me give you a tip, Wick.
If you want to fetch a queen down to your level, jest let her know
you're laughin' at her. Well, sir, the judge's wife used to turn up her
nose at me until I got to feelin' too small to be seen. My pride was
wallerin' in the dust. Finally, I thought of a scheme to fix her. Every
time I saw her, I'd grin at her--not sayin' a word, mind you, but jest
lookin' at her as if she struck me as bein' funny. Well, sir, I kept it
up good an' strong. First thing I knowed, she was beginnin' to look as
though a bee had stung her an' she couldn't find the place. I'd ketch
her stealin' sly glances at me an' she allus found me with a grin on my
face--a good, healthy grin, too.
"There wasn't anything to laugh at, mind you, but she didn't know that.
She got to fixin' her back hair and lookin' worried about her clothes.
'Nen she'd wipe her face to see if the powder was on straight, all the
time wonderin' what in thunder I was laughin' at. If she passed in her
kerridge she'd peep back to see if I was laughin'; and I allus was. I
never failed. All this time I wasn't sayin' a word-jest grinnin' as
though she tickled me half to death. Gradually I begin to be scientific
about it. I got so that when she caught me laughin', I'd try my best to
hide the grin. Course that made it all the worse. She fidgeted an'
squirmed an' got red in the face till it looked like she was pickled.
Doggone, ef she didn't begin to neglect her business as a
great-granddaughter! She didn't have time to lord it over her peasants.
She was too blame busy wonderin' what I was laughin' at.
"'Nen she begin to look peaked an' thin. She looked like she was seem'
ghosts all the time. That blamed grin of mine pursued her every minute.
Course, she couldn't kick about it. That wouldn't do at all. She jest
had to bear it without grinnin'. There wasn't anything to say. Finally,
she got to stayin' away from the meetin's an' almost quit drivin'
through the town. Everybody noticed the change in her. People said she
was goin' crazy about her back hair. She lost thirty pounds worryin'
before August, and when September come, the judge had to take her to a
rest cure. They never come back to Tinkletown, an' the judge had to sell
the place fer half what it cost him. Fer two years she almost went into
hysterics when anybody laughed. But it done her good. It changed her
idees. She got over her high an' mighty ways, they say, an' I hear she's
one of the nicest, sweetest old ladies in Boggs City nowadays. But
Blootch Peabody says that to this day she looks flustered when anybody
notices her back hair. The Lord knows I wa'n't laughin' at her hair. I
don't see why she thought so, do you?"
Bonner laughed long and heartily over the experiment; but Rosalie
vigorously expressed her disapproval of the marshal's methods.
"It's the only real mean thing I ever heard of you doing, daddy Crow!"
she cried. "It was cruel!"
"Course you'd take her part, bein' a woman," said he serenely. "Mrs.
Crow did, too, when I told her about it twenty years ago. Women ain't
got much sense of humour, have they, Wick?" He was calling him Wick
nowadays; and the young man enjoyed the familiarity.
The days came when Bonner could walk about with his cane, and he was not
slow to avail himself of the privilege this afforded. It meant enjoyable
strolls with Rosalie, and it meant the elevation of his spirits to such
heights that the skies formed no bounds for them. The town was not slow
to draw conclusions. Every one said it would be a "match." It was
certain that the interesting Boston man had acquired a clear field.
Tinkletown's beaux gave up in despair and dropped out of the contest
with the hope that complete recovery from his injuries might not only
banish Bonner from the village, but also from the thoughts of Rosalie
Gray. Most of the young men took their medicine philosophically. They
had known from the first that their chances were small. Blootch Peabody
and Ed Higgins, because of the personal rivalry between themselves,
hoped on and on and grew more bitter between themselves, instead of
toward Bonner.
Anderson Crow and Eva were delighted and the Misses Crow, after futile
efforts to interest the young man in their own wares, fell in with the
old folks and exuberantly whispered to the world that "it would be
perfectly glorious." Roscoe was not so charitable. He was soundly
disgusted with the thought of losing his friend Bonner in the hated
bonds of matrimony. From his juvenile point of view, it was a fate
that a good fellow like Bonner did not deserve. Even Rosalie was not
good enough for him, so he told Bud Long; but Bud, who had worshipped
Rosalie with a hopeless devotion through most of his short life, took
strong though sheepish exceptions to the remark. It seemed quite settled
in the minds of every one but Bonner and Rosalie themselves. They went
along evenly, happily, perhaps dreamily, letting the present and the
future take care of themselves as best they could, making mountains of
the past--mountains so high and sheer that they could not be surmounted
in retreat.
Bonner was helplessly in love--so much so, indeed, that in the face of
it, he lost the courage that had carried him through trivial affairs of
the past, and left him floundering vaguely in seas that looked old and
yet were new. Hourly, he sought for the first sign of love in her eyes,
for the first touch of sentiment; but if there was a point of weakness
in her defence, it was not revealed to the hungry perception of the
would-be conqueror. And so they drifted on through the February chill,
that seemed warm to them, through the light hours and the dark ones,
quickly and surely to the day which was to call him cured of one ill and
yet sorely afflicted by another.
Through it all he was saying to himself that it did not matter what her
birth may have been, so long as she lived at this hour in his life, and
yet a still, cool voice was whispering procrastination with ding-dong
persistency through every avenue of his brain. "Wait!" said the cool
voice of prejudice. His heart did not hear, but his brain did. One look
of submission from her tender eyes and his brain would have turned deaf
to the small, cool voice--but her eyes stood their ground and the voice
survived.
The day was fast approaching when it would be necessary for him to leave
the home of Mr. Crow. He could no longer encroach upon the hospitality
and good nature of the marshal--especially as he had declined the
proffered appointment to become deputy town marshal. Together they had
discussed every possible side to the abduction mystery and had laid the
groundwork for a systematic attempt at a solution. There was nothing
more for them to do. True to his promise, Bonner had put the case in the
hands of one of the greatest detectives in the land, together with every
known point in the girl's history. Tinkletown was not to provide the
solution, although it contained the mystery. On that point there could
be no doubt; so, Mr. Bonner was reluctantly compelled to admit to
himself that he had no plausible excuse for staying on. The great
detective from New York had come to town, gathered all of the facts
under cover of strictest secrecy, run down every possible shadow of a
clew in Boggs City, and had returned to the metropolis, there to begin
the search twenty-one years back.
"Four weeks," Bonner was saying to her reflectively, as they came
homeward from their last visit to the abandoned mill on Turnip Creek. It
was a bright, warm February morning, suggestive of spring and fraught
with the fragrance of something far sweeter. "Four weeks of idleness and
joy to me--almost a lifetime in the waste of years. Does it seem long to
you, Miss Gray--oh, I remember, I am to call you Rosalie."
"It seems that I have known you always instead of for four weeks," she
said gently. "They have been happy weeks, haven't they? My--our only
fear is that you haven't been comfortable in our poor little home. It's
not what you are accustomed--"
"Home is what the home folks make it," he said, striving to quote a
vague old saying. He was dimly conscious of a subdued smile on her part
and he felt the fool. "At any rate, I was more than comfortable. I was
happy--never so happy. All my life shall be built about this single
month--my past ends with it, my future begins. You, Rosalie," he went on
swiftly, his eyes gleaming with the love that would not be denied, "are
the spirit of life as I shall know it from this day forth. It is you who
have made Tinkletown a kingdom, one of its homes a palace. Don't turn
your face away, Rosalie."
But she turned her face toward him and her dark eyes did not flinch as
they met his, out there in the bleak old wood.
"Don't, please don't, Wicker," she said softly, firmly. Her hand touched
his arm for an instant. "You will understand, won't you? Please don't!"
There was a world of meaning in it.
His heart turned cold as ice, the blood left his face. He understood.
She did not love him.
"Yes," he said, his voice dead and hoarse, "I think I understand,
Rosalie. I have taken too much for granted, fool that I am. Bah! The
egotism of a fool!"
"You must not speak like that," she said, her face contracted by pain
and pity. "You are the most wonderful man I've ever known--the best and
the truest. But--" and she paused, with a wan, drear smile on her lips.