The Lady of Big Shanty Part 4

Whatever sorrows life had for him were nothing compared to the joy of this daughter.

All his anger was gone in an instant.

"Little girl, you know it's against orders, this reading in bed," he said in his kindly tone. Never in all her life had he spoken a cross word to her. "You'll ruin your eyes and you must be tired."

She closed her book. "Tired--yes, I am tired. Mother's dinners are such dreadfully long ones, and, then, daddy, to-night I've been worrying about you. You seemed so silent at dinner--it made my heart ache. Are you ill, daddy? or has something happened? I tried to sleep, but I couldn't. I've been waiting for you. Tell me what has happened--you will tell me, won't you, daddy?" Her smooth, young arms were about his neck now. "Tell me," she pleaded in his ear.

"There's nothing to tell, little girl," he said. "I'm tired too, I suppose; that's all. Come--you must go to sleep. Pouf!" and he blew out the flame of the reading candle at her bedside.

For a long time that night Thayor sat staring into the fire in his room, his mind going over the events of the day--the luncheon--the talk of those around the table--the tones of Holcomb's voice as he said, "It was about his wife," and then the added refrain: "He couldn't get away; his little girl fell ill." How did his case differ?

Suddenly he roused himself and sprang to his feet. No! he was wrong; there was nothing in it. Couldn't be anything in it. Alice was foolish--vain--illogical--but there was Margaret! Nothing would--nothing could go wrong as long as she lived.

With these new thoughts filling his mind, his face brightened. Turning up the reading lamp on his desk he opened his portfolio, covered half a page and slipped it into an envelope.

This he addressed to Mr. William Holcomb, ready for Blakeman's hand in the morning.

CHAPTER THREE

Two days subsequent to these occurrences--and some hours after his coupe loaded with his guns and traps had rumbled away to meet Holcomb, in time for the Adirondack express--Thayor laid a note in his butler's hands with special instructions not to place it among his lady's mail until she awoke.

He could not have chosen a better messenger. While originally hailing from Ireland, and while retaining some of the characteristics of his race--his good humor being one of them--Blakeman yet possessed that smoothness and deference so often found in an English servant. In his earlier life he had served Lord Bromley in the Indian jungle during the famine; had been second man at the country seat of the Duke of Valmoncourt at the time of the baccarat scandal, and later on had risen to the position of chief butler in the establishment of an unpopular Roumanian general.

It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that he was at forty-five past master in domestic diplomacy, knowing to a detail the private history of more than a score of families, having studied them at his ease behind their chairs, or that he knew infinitely more of the world at large than did his master.

Blakeman had two absorbing pa.s.sions--one was his love of shooting and the other his reverent adoration of Margaret, whom he had seen develop into womanhood, and who was his Madonna and good angel.

At high noon, then, when the silver bell on Alice's night table broke the stillness of her bedroom, her French maid, Annette, entered noiselessly and slid back the soft curtains screening the bay window.

She, like Blakeman, had seen much. She was, too, more self-contained in many things than the woman she served, although she had been bred in Montmartre and born in the Rue Lepic.

"Did madame ring?" Annette asked, bending over her mistress.

Alice roused herself lazily.

"Yes--my coffee and letters."

The girl crossed the room, opened a mirrored door, deftly extracted from a hanging ma.s.s of frou-frous behind it a silk dressing jacket, helped thrust the firm white arms within its dainty sleeves, tucked a small lace pillow between Alice's shoulders and picking up the glossy ma.s.s of black hair, lifted it skilfully until it lay in glistening folds over the lace pillow. She then went into the boudoir and returned with a dainty tray bearing a set of old Sevres, two b.u.t.tered wafers of toast and two notes.

Alice waited until her maid closed the bedroom door, then, with the impatience of a child, she opened one of the two notes--the one Annette had discreetly placed beneath the other. This she read and re-read; it was brief, and written in a masculine hand. The woman was thoroughly awake now--her eyes shining, her lips parted in a satisfied smile. "You dear old friend," she murmured as she lay back upon the lace pillow. Dr. Sperry was coming at five.

She tucked the letter beneath the coverlid and opened her husband's note. Suddenly her lips grew tense; she raised herself erect and stared at its contents:

I shall pa.s.s the summer in the woods if I can find suitable place for you and Margaret. Make no arrangements which will conflict with this. Will write later.

SAM.

Again she read it, grasping little by little its whole import: all that it meant--all that it would mean to her.

"Is he crazy?" she asked herself. "Does he suppose I intend to be dragged up there?"

It was open defiance on his part; he had done this thing without consulting her and without her consent. It was preposterous and insulting in its brusqueness. He evidently intended to change her life--she, who loathed camp life more than anything in the world was to be forced to live in one all summer instead of reigning at Newport.

She understood now his open defiance in leaving for the woods with Holcomb, and yet this last decision was far graver to her than his taking a dozen vacations. Still deeper in her heart there lurked the thought of being separated from the man who understood her. The young doctor's summer practice in Newport would no longer be a labour of love. It really meant exile to them both.

At one o'clock she lunched with Margaret, hardly opening her lips through it all. She did not mention her husband's note--that she would reserve for the doctor. Between them she felt sure there could be arranged a way out of the situation. Again she devoured his note.

Yes--"at five." The intervening hours seemed interminable.

That these same hours were anything but irksome to Sperry would have been apparent to anyone who watched his use of them. The day, like other days during office hours, had seen a line of coupes waiting outside his door. Within had a.s.sembled a score of rich patients waiting their turn while they read the ill.u.s.trated papers in strained silence--papers they had already seen. There was, of course, no conversation. A nervous cough now and then from some pretty widow, overheated in her sables, would break the awkward silence, or perhaps the voice of some wealthy little girl of five asking impossible explanations of her maid. During these hours the mere opening of the doctor's sanctum door was sufficient to instantly raise the hopes and the eyes of the unfortunates.

For during these office hours Dr. Sperry had a habit of opening the door of this private sanctum sharply, and standing there for an instant, erect and faultlessly dressed, looking over the waiting ones; then, with a friendly nod, he would recognize, perhaps the widow--and the door closed again on the less fortunate.

It was, of course, more than possible that the young woman was ill over her dressmaker's bill, rather than suffering from a weak heart or an opera cold. Sperry's ear, however, generally detected the cold.

It was not his policy to say unpleasant things--especially to young widows who had recently inherited the goods and chattels of their hard-working husbands.

"Ill!--nonsense, my dear lady; you look as fresh as a rose," he would begin in his fascinating voice--"a slight cold, but nothing serious, I a.s.sure you. You women are never blessed with prudence," etc., etc.

To another: "Nervous prostration, my dear madame! Fudge--all imagination! Silly, really silly. You caught cold, of course, coming out of the heated theatre. Get a good rest, my dear Mrs. Jack--I want you to stay at least a month at Palm Beach, and no late suppers, and no champagne. No--not a drop," he adds severely. Then softening, "Well, then, half a gla.s.s. There, I've been generous, haven't I?"

etc., etc., and so the day pa.s.sed.

On this particular day it was four o'clock before he had dismissed the last of his patients. Then he turned to his nurse with an impatient tone, as he searched hurriedly among the papers on his desk:

"Find out what day I set for young Mrs. Van Ripley's operation."

"Tuesday, sir," answered the nurse.

"Then make it Thursday, and tell James to pack up my big valise and see that my golf things are in it and aboard the 9.18 in the morning."

"Yes, sir," answered the girl, dipping her plump hands in a pink solution.

All this time Alice had been haunted by the crawling hands of the clock. Luxurious as was her house of marble, it was a dreary domain at best to-day, as she sat in the small square room that lay hidden beyond the conservatory of cool palms and exotic plants screening one end of the dining room--a room her very own, and one to which only the chosen few were ever admitted; a jewel box of a room indeed, whose walls, ceiling and furniture were in richly carved teak. A corner, by the way, in which one could receive an old friend and be undisturbed.

There was about it, too, a certain feeling of snug secrecy which appealed to her, particularly the low lounge before the Moorish fireplace of carved alabaster, which was well provided with soft pillows richly covered with rare embroideries. To-day none of these luxuries appealed to the woman seated among the cushions, gazing nervously at the fire. What absorbed her were the hands of the clock, crawling slowly toward five.

He did not keep her waiting. He was ahead of time, in fact--Blakeman leading him obsequiously through the fragrant conservatory.

"Ah--it is you, doctor!" she exclaimed in feigned surprise as the butler started to withdraw.

"Yes," he laughed; "I do hope I'm not disturbing you, dear lady. I was pa.s.sing and dropped in."

Alice put forth her hand to him frankly and received the warm pressure of his own. They waited until the sound of Blakeman's footsteps died away in the conservatory.

"He's gone," she whispered nervously.