The Lady Doc Part 22

"I haven't!" she snapped.

"You truly believe that her influence over Augusta is not good?"

She leaned toward him in quiet intensity--

"Believe it? I _know_ it! I've been prayin' that you might see it yourself before it is too late."

"Too late? What do you mean?"

"Just what I say." Her old chin trembled. "Before Augusta has lost every spark of affection for you and me--before I am sent away."

He looked at her incredulously.

"You don't mean that?"

She nodded.

"I've been warned already. I'm in Dr. Harpe's way; she knows what I think of her, and she'd rather have some stranger here."

"You amaze me. Does she dominate Augusta to such an extent as that!"

His mind ran back over the events of the past few weeks and he could see that those occasions from which Dr. Harpe had been excluded had seemed flat, stale, footless to Augusta. She had been absent-minded, preoccupied, even openly bored. He recalled the fact now that it was only at this woman's coming that animation had returned and that she had hung absorbed, fascinated upon her words. She became alive in her presence as though she drew her very vitality from this stronger-willed woman.

"I've noticed a change--but I thought it was nerves--the alt.i.tude, perhaps--and I've intended taking her with me on my next trip East."

"She wouldn't go."

"I can't believe that."

"Ask her," was the grim reply.

"She obeyed me in that other matter," Symes argued.

"Because she was _allowed_ to do so."

"I'm going to stop this intimacy; I'm tired of her interference--tired of seeing her around--tired of boarding her, as a matter of fact, and I _will_ end it." He spoke in intense exasperation.

"Look out, Andy P., you'll make a mistake if you try in that way. You might have done it in the beginnin' or when I first warned you; but Augusta's like putty in her hands now. She don't seem to have any will of her own or grat.i.tude--or affection. I'm tellin' you straight, Andy P."

Symes considered.

"There is a way, if I could bring myself to do it."

"What's that?"

"Make Augusta jealous. Touch her pride, wound her vanity by making love to Dr. Harpe. No," he put the thought from him vehemently, "I'm not that kind of a hypocrite. But she can't be invulnerable--tell me her weaknesses. You women know each other."

The old woman a.s.sented vigorously--

"I know her you kin be sure. For one thing she's a coward. She's brave only when she thinks she's safe. She's afraid of people--of what they'll say of her, and she's crazy for money."

They were getting up, the two in the hammock, and as Dr. Harpe sauntered to the porch, Andy P. Symes looked at her in a sudden and violent dislike which he took no pains to conceal. Her hands were shoved deep in her jacket pockets as she swaggered toward him, straight strands of hair hung in dishevelment about her colorless, immobile face, while her muddy hazel eyes became alternately shifting or bold as she noted the intentness of his gaze. No detail of her slovenly appearance, her strange personality, escaped him.

"I'll be goin', Gus; good-night," Dr. Harpe said shortly. She felt both uneasy and irritated by the expression on his face.

Symes watched her swaggering down the sidewalk to the gate, and when it had slammed behind her, he said, sharply--

"I'll be greatly obliged to you, Augusta, if you will ask Dr. Harpe not to abbreviate your name. It's vulgar and I detest it."

Mrs. Symes turned and regarded him coolly for a moment before answering.

"I do not in the least mind what Dr. Harpe calls me."

"That is obvious"--his voice was harsh--"but I do--most emphatically."

Her eyes flashed defiance.

"Then tell her yourself, for I have no notion of doing so," and she stalked inside the house.

The incident of the evening brought to a head certain plans which long had been formulating in Dr. Harpe's mind; and the result was a note which made his lip curl as he read and re-read it the next morning with various shadings of angry scorn.

MY DEAR MR. SYMES:

Kindly call at your earliest convenience, and oblige,

Faithfully yours, EMMA HARPE

Symes had spent a sleepless night and his mood was savage. Another defiant interview before leaving the house had not improved it and now this communication from Dr. Harpe came as a climax.

He swung in his office chair.

"'My earliest convenience!' If that isn't like her confounded impudence--her colossal nerve! When she's stalking past here every fifteen minutes all day long. 'My earliest convenience!' By gad!"--he struck the desk in sudden determination--"I'm just in the mood to humor her. Things have come to a pretty pa.s.s when Andy P. Symes can't say who and who not shall be admitted to his home. If she wants to know what's the matter with me, I'll tell her!"

He closed his desk with a slam and slung his broad-brimmed hat upon his head. Dr. Harpe, glancing through her window, read purpose in his stride as he came down the street. Her green eyes took on the gleam of battle and to doubly fortify herself she wrenched open her desk drawer and filled a whiskey gla.s.s to the brim. When she had drained it without removing it from her lips she drew her shirtwaist sleeve across her mouth to dry it, in a fashion peculiarly her own. Then she tilted her desk chair at a comfortable angle and her crossed legs displayed a stocking wrinkled in its usual mosquetaire effect. She was without her jacket but wore a man's starched pique waistcoat over her white shirtwaist, and from one pocket there dangled a man's watch-fob of braided leather. She threw an arm over the chair-back and toyed with a pencil on her desk, waiting in this studied pose of nonchalance the arrival of Symes.

The occasion when he had last climbed the stairs of the Terriberry House for the purpose of visiting Dr. Harp was unpleasantly vivid and the secret they had in common nettled him for the first time. But secret or no secret he was in no humor to temporize or conciliate and there were only harsh thoughts of the woman in his mind.

"How are you, Mr. Symes?" She greeted him carelessly as he opened the door, without altering her position.

"Good morning," he responded curtly. There was no trace of his usual urbanity and he chewed nervously upon the end of an unlighted cigar.

"Sit down." She waved him casually to a chair, and there was that in her impudent a.s.surance which made him shut his teeth hard upon the mutilated cigar.

"Thanks," he said stiffly, and did as she bid him.

"Light up," she urged, and fumbled in a pocket of her waistcoat for a match which she handed him. "Guess I'll smoke myself. It helps me talk, and that's what we're here for."

He had not known that she smoked, and as he watched her roll a cigarette with the skill of much practice the action filled him with fresh repugnance. Through rings of smoke he regarded her with coldly quizzical eyes while he waited for her to open the conversation.