A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill Part 20

It was not that he failed to appreciate her. The light that came into his serious eyes whenever she was near, the unfailing courtesy and gentleness with which he spoke to her, the absolute freedom he allowed her, and the flattering appeal he made to her intellect, calmed whatever doubts might have risen in her mind.

Of her own feelings she dared not stop to think. Life was all so strange, so different from what she had expected. The flashes of doubt and perplexity that came in the pauses between Connie's closely planned festivities, she attributed to homesickness.

It was late when her last caller departed, and as she ran lightly up to the Doctor's study, she realized with a little sense of disappointment that she had not seen him since breakfast. Even now she paused at the door, for fear she would interrupt some flight of the muse. But on peeping in she found his big armchair drawn up to the window, and the top of a head appearing above its back. Tiptoeing cautiously forward she clapped her hands over his eyes and dropped a kiss on his upturned forehead.

In an instant a strange, belligerent little gentleman had sprung to his feet and was confronting her with features that resembled those of a magnified and outraged b.u.mblebee.

"I am so sorry!" stammered Miss Lady in laughing chagrin, "I--I thought you were the Doctor!"

"Even so," admitted the stranger rather firmly, standing with chin lifted and nostrils dilated, "even so. You seem to have forgotten the fact that Doctor Queerington is now a benedict!"

"Yes, but you don't understand. I am--"

"A friend of Constance' no doubt. But under the circ.u.mstances you will permit me to say that such conduct is ill-advised. I should not mention it were I not a friend of the family--"

"Oh! You are Mr. Gooch?"

"I am. And I have the pleasure of addressing--"

"Why, I'm Mrs. Queerington," said Miss Lady, blushing furiously.

Mr. Gooch sank back into the chair and looked at her indignantly.

"Impossible!" he exploded. "They did not tell me--in fact I was not prepared--May I ask you not to mention my mistake to the girls?

Constance, as you doubtless have discovered, is very silly, given to making great capital out of nothing. We will not mention it."

"Ah!" said the Doctor in the doorway with his arms full of books. "How are you, my dear? How are you, Mr. Gooch? What is this conspiracy of silence?"

"It is only against the girls," laughed Miss Lady. "We'll take him in, won't we, Mr. Gooch?"

The Doctor listened with tolerant amus.e.m.e.nt as Miss Lady gave a dramatic account of the double mistake, but Mr. Gooch failed to smile.

All through supper that evening Miss Lady tried in vain to propitiate the guest. His manner showed only too plainly that he regarded her as an intrusion in the family which he had seen fit to adopt. It was not until the pudding arrived that his mood mellowed. Myrtella's cooking was so eminently to his taste that he was willing to put up with a great deal for the privilege of enjoying it. Moreover, laughter always improved his digestion and the young person at the head of the table was proving amusing.

"Mr. Gooch is waiting for more coffee," announced Hattie, interrupting an animated account Miss Lady was giving of her first day at the country school.

"Let her finish the story," said the Doctor to whom food was immaterial.

He was indulging in the unusual luxury of loitering at the table after the meal was finished, a habit seldom tolerated in the Queerington household.

"But there isn't time," insisted Hattie. "Connie is having a party to-night."

"A party?" The Doctor's brows lifted.

"Yes," broke in Connie. "Miss Lady said she didn't think you'd mind, and she persuaded Myrtella to let us dance in here. You won't mind the noise, just this one night, will you, Father?"

The Doctor considered the matter gravely. After all, his reading would be interrupted by Mr. Gooch, so he might as well a.s.sent. He seldom objected to any plan that did not interfere with his own actions. His absorption in the race precluded an interest in mere family matters.

"They are not pressing you into service, I hope?" he asked, glancing at Miss Lady.

"Indeed we are!" cried Connie. "She's going to play for us to dance, when she isn't dancing herself. Of course we want her with us."

"You forget, Constance, that there are other claims upon her. Mr. Gooch and I would like to have her with us in the study."

Miss Lady looked up in pleased surprise.

"That settles it, Connie," she said; "you girls can play for yourselves.

Come on and go to bed, Kiddie," and with Bertie at her heels, the new mistress of Queerington raced down the hall.

For ten years Doctor Queerington and Mr. Gooch had played pinochle every Friday evening. The Doctor did not especially enjoy it, except as one of those incidents that grows acceptable by long repet.i.tion. He was a born routinist, regarding a well-regulated world as a place where everything ran in the same grooves to eternity. One of his chief sources of satisfaction in regard to his second marriage was that it promised not to interfere with those established laws which regulated his day, from the prompt breakfast at 7:15 to the long hours with his books in the evening. In short, Doctor Queerington was a sort of well-regulated human clock, announcing his opinions as irrevocably as the striker announces the hours, and ticking along so monotonously between times that one almost forgot he was there.

If the Friday evening game was to him merely a habit, to Mr. Gooch it was an occasion. Having once seated himself, and glanced around to make sure his hand was not reflected in a mirror, he spread his cards gingerly in his palm with only the corners visible, squared his jaw and proceeded with solemnity to observe the full rigor of the game. There was no trifling with points, or replaying of tricks. The marriage of kings and queens was solemnized without rejoicing, and even the parade of a royal sequence brought no flush of triumph to his cheek, but moved him only to chronicle it in small, precise figures in a red morocco note-book which he always brought with him for the purpose.

When Miss Lady came up to the study, after giving Bertie two encores to "Jack the Giant Killer," she found the men silently absorbed in their game. Sitting on a ha.s.sock at the Doctor's side, she tried to follow the detailed explanation that he gave during each deal. But the jargon of "declarations," and "sequences," and "common marriages" soon grew wearisome, and she found herself idly studying the Doctor's fine, serious face, and listening for his low, flexible voice which unconsciously softened when he spoke to her.

In spite of the fact that the study was very warm these sultry September evenings, and the Doctor's mental strides much too long for her to keep pace, she nevertheless looked eagerly forward to the hours spent there.

If at times she failed to follow his elucidations, or grew sleepy reading aloud from some well-thumbed cla.s.sic, it was not because her admiration and respect for her husband were lessening. In fact, he was always at his best at this time, surrounded by the books he knew and loved, and expanding under the approbation of his one appreciative listener. Here he reigned, a feudal lord, safe guarded in his castle of books against that strange and formidable enemy, the World.

"Four aces, and pinocle," announced Mr. Gooch with grim satisfaction.

Miss Lady rose restlessly and went to the window in the alcove. From the parlor below came the strains of a waltz and s.n.a.t.c.hes of laughter; overhead the stars loomed big and white in the summer night. She thought how strange and lonesome it must be out at Thornwood with the lights all out and the windows nailed up. The little night things were singing in the garden by this time, and the cool breezes were beginning to stir the treetops. She wondered how Mike was getting along without her, and a lump rose in her throat. She swallowed resolutely, and smiled confidently up at the stars. Her married life was not in the least what she had expected, but it would all work out for the best. To be sure, n.o.body seemed to need her, nothing was required of her, but she would make a place for herself, she _must_ make a place for herself. Perhaps if she had something to do besides playing with Connie and her friends all day, she would get over this feeling of uselessness, and this haunting homesickness for the hills and valleys, for her horses and dogs, and the old brick house among the trees.

Suddenly she caught her breath and listened:

"He's coming home," Mr. Gooch was saying in the room behind her. "At least, they've sent for him. Young Decker, who has just gotten back, says Morley will come on a stretcher rather than have people believe that he shot a man, then ran away. They had never heard a word of the indictment."

"As I expected," the Doctor said, shuffling the cards. "When does he return?"

"When he's able to travel, I suppose. Decker left him down with a fever in a hospital in Singapore. He's done for himself, I am afraid."

"Very probably," said the Doctor. "Poor Donald! It's your lead."

Miss Lady slipped behind the curtain, and steadied herself by the window sill. Why had her heart almost stopped beating? Why was it beating now as if it would strangle her? Why did the thought of Donald Morley lying ill and friendless in a foreign hospital rouse every desire in her to go to him at once at any cost? Waves of surprise and shame surged over her.

She heard nothing, saw nothing, save the fact that something she thought was dead had come to life. She was wakening from a long numb sleep, and the wakening was terrifying. What irremediable catastrophe had happened between now and that supreme moment when she had stood under the lilacs in the twilight with Donald Morley's arms about her, his breath on her cheek, and his pa.s.sionate plea: "Oh, if you only knew how I need you!

I'll be anything under heaven for your sake if you'll only stand by me!"

"My game," said the Doctor. "Fortune has favored me. What became of Miss Lady? The call of the young people down-stairs grew too strong, I presume."

Mr. Gooch, in a very bad humor over the loss of the last game, sullenly packed his deck of cards in the case with the red morocco note-book and made ready to take his departure. The Doctor automatically placed the card table against the wall, arranged the chairs at their prefer angles, straightened a book on his desk, and turned out the lights, leaving a slim white figure with trembling hands and terror-stricken eyes, cowering in the starlight behind the swaying curtains.

CHAPTER XIII

It was always an occasion of significance when Mr. and Mrs. Basil Sequin found time in their busy lives to discuss a family matter. There was no particular lack of interest on either side, it was simply that their hours did not happen to fit. When he was not at his club, she was at hers; when she was dining at home, he was detained at a directors'

meeting; when he went North to a Bankers' Convention, she went South to attend a bridge tournament. So it was small wonder the butler, removing the breakfast things, should have looked puzzled when Mr. and Mrs.

Sequin remained at table in earnest conversation.