The Lady Doc, Caroline Lockhart [classic books for 12 year olds .txt] 📗
- Author: Caroline Lockhart
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"What's that?" Mrs. Symes asked, smiling.
"I'm jealous—of your Phidias."
"How absurd!" Mrs. Symes laughed aloud.
"I mean it." Dr. Harpe spoke lightly and there was a smile upon her straight lips, but earnestness, a kind of warning, was in her eyes.
A clatter of tinware at the kitchen window attracted Symes's attention as he came from the bedroom.
"What's the matter, grandmother?" he asked in the teasing tone he sometimes used in speaking to her. "Not the cooking sherry, I hope."
She did not smile at his badinage.
"There's enough drinkin' in this house without my help," she returned sharply.
"What do you mean?" Symes's eyes opened. "Are you serious?"
The question he saw was superfluous.
"It's nothin' I'd joke about."
"You amaze me. Do you mean Augusta—drinks?"
"Too much."
"By herself?"
"No; always with Dr. Harpe. Dr. Harpe drinks like a man—that size." She held up significant fingers.
Symes frowned.
"I know that Dr. Harpe's sentiments are not—er—strictly temperance, but Augusta—this is news to me, and I don't like it." He thrust his hands deep in his trousers pockets and leaned his shoulder against the door jamb.
"When did this commence?"
"With the comin' of that woman to this house."
"It's curious—I've never noticed it."
"They've taken care of that. She's a—nuisance."
"You don't like Dr. Harpe?" Watching her face, Symes saw the change which flashed over it with his question.
"Like her! Like Dr. Harpe?" She took a step toward him, and the intensity in her voice startled him. Her little gray eyes seemed to dart sparks as she answered—"I come nearer hatin' her than I ever have any human bein'!"
"But why?" he persisted. Perhaps in her answer he would find an answer to the question he had but recently asked himself.
There was confusion in the old woman's eyes as they fell before his.
"Because," she answered finally, with a tightening of her lips.
"There's no definite reason? Nothing except your prejudice and this matter you've mentioned?"
A red spot burned on either withered cheek. She hesitated.
"No; I guess not," she said, and turned away.
"If I thought for a moment that her influence over Augusta was not good I'd put an end to this intimacy at once; but I suppose it's natural that she should desire some woman friend and it seems only reasonable to believe that a professional woman would be a better companion than that illiterate Parrott creature or the tittering Starrs." Symes shifted his broad shoulders to the opposite side of the door and his tone was the essence of complacency as he went on—
"Yes, if I had the shadow of a reason for forbidding this silly schoolgirl friendship I'd stop it quick."
The old woman's lips twisted in a faintly cynical smile.
"And could you?"
Symes laughed. Nothing could have been more preposterous than the suggestion that his control over Augusta was not absolute.
"Why, certainly. I mean to speak to Augusta at once in regard to this matter of drinking. I've never approved of it for women. There are two things that cannot be denied—Augusta is obedient and she's truthful." His good-nature restored by the contemplation of these facts, he turned away determined to demonstrate his control of the situation for his own and the old woman's benefit at the earliest opportunity. In fact, the present was as good as any.
He walked to the door opening upon the porch, where Dr. Harpe still sat on the arm of the chair, her hand resting upon Augusta's shoulder.
"One moment, Augusta, if you please."
She arose at once with a slightly inquiring look and followed him inside.
"I have reason to believe, or rather to know, that you have fallen into the way of doing something of which I do not at all approve," he began. "I mean drinking, Augusta. It's nothing serious, I am aware of that, it's only that I do not like it, so oblige me by not doing that sort of thing again." His tone was kindly but final.
He expected to see contrition in Augusta's face, her usual penitence for mistakes; instead of which there was a sullen resentment in the glance she flashed at him from her dark eyes.
"It's true, isn't it? You do not mean to deny it?"
"No."
"You intend to respect my wishes, of course?"
"Of course." She turned from him abruptly and went back to the porch.
The action was unlike her. He was still thinking of it when he put on his hat and went down town to attend to an errand before dinner.
As the gate swung behind him Dr. Harpe said unpleasantly—
"You were raked over the coals, eh, Gus?"
Mrs. Symes flushed in discomfiture.
"Oh, no—not exactly."
"Oh, yes, you were. Don't deny it; you're as transparent as a window-pane. What was it?"
"He has found out—some one has told him that we—that I have been drinking occasionally."
"That old woman." Dr. Harpe jerked her head contemptuously toward the kitchen.
"Probably it was grandma—she doesn't like it, I'm sure, for I never was allowed to do anything of the sort; in fact, I never thought of it or cared to."
"You are a free human being, aren't you? You can do what you like?"
"I've always preferred to do what Phidias liked since we've been married."
"Phidias! Phidias! You make me tired! You talk like a peon!"
Her hand rested heavily upon Mrs. Symes's shoulder. "Assert yourself—don't be a fool! Let's have a drink." Mrs. Symes winced under her tightening grip.
"Oh, no, no," she replied hastily. "Phidias would be furious. I—I wouldn't dare."
"Look here." She took Mrs. Symes's chin in her hand and raised her face, looking deep into her eyes. "Won't you do it for me? because I ask you?"
"I can't." There was an appeal in her eyes as she lifted them to the determined face above her.
"You can. You will. Do you want me to stay away again?"
"No, no, no!"
"Then do what I ask you—just this once, and I'll not ask it again." She saw the weakening in the other woman's face. "Come on," she urged.
Mrs. Symes rose mechanically with a doubting, dazed expression and Dr. Harpe followed her inside.
Throughout the constraint of the dinner Dr. Harpe sat with a lurking smile upon her face. The domestic storm she had raised had been prompted solely by one of those impulses of deviltry which she seemed sometimes unable to restrain. It was not the part of wisdom to antagonize Symes, but her desire to convince him, and Augusta, and herself, that hers was the stronger will when it came to a test, was greater than her discretion. This was an occasion when she could not resist the temptation to show her power, and Symes with his eyes shining ominously found her illy-concealed smirk of amusement and triumph far harder to bear than Augusta's tittering, half-hysterical defiance.
When she had gone and Symes had closed the door of their sleeping apartment behind him he turned to Augusta.
"Well, what explanation have you to make?"
The cold interrogation brought her to herself like a dash of water.
"Oh, Phidias!" she whimpered, and sank down upon the edge of the bed, rolling her handkerchief into a ball between her palms, like an abashed and frightened child.
Her uncertain dignity, her veneer of breeding dropped from her like a cloak and she was again the blacksmith's sister, self-conscious, awed and tongue-tied in the imposing presence of Andy P. Symes. Her prominent knees visible beneath her thin skirt, her flat feet sprawling at an awkward angle, unconsciously added to Symes's anger. She looked, he thought, like a terrified servant that has broken the cut-glass berry bowl. Yet subconsciously he was aware that he was wounded deeper than his vanity by her disregard of his wishes.
"I insist upon an answer."
"I—I haven't any answer except—that—that I'm sorry."
"Did you drink at Dr. Harpe's suggestion?" he demanded in growing wrath.
She wadded the handkerchief between her palms and swallowed hard before she shook her head.
"No."
"She should never come here again if I thought you were not telling me the truth."
Agitation leaped into her eyes beneath their lowered lids and she blurted in a kind of desperation—
"But I am—it was my fault—I suggested it—she had nothing to do with it!"
"Am I to understand that you have no intention of respecting my wishes in this matter?"
She arose suddenly and began weeping upon his shoulder. The action and her tears softened him a little.
"Am I, Augusta?"
"No; I'll never do it again—honest truly."
"That's enough, then—we'll say no more about it. This is a small matter comparatively, but it is our first clash and we must understand each other. Where questions arise which concern your welfare and mine you must abide by my judgment, and this is one of them. I am old-fashioned in my ideas concerning women, or, rather, concerning the woman that is my wife, and I do not like the notion of your drinking alone or with another woman; with anyone else, in fact, except when you are with me—and then moderately. Personally, I like a womanly woman; Dr. Harpe is—amusing—but I should not care to see you imitate her. One does not fancy eccentricity in one's wife. There, there," he kissed her magnanimously, "now we'll forget this ever happened."
Essie Tisdale's ostracism was practically complete, her position was all that even Dr. Harpe could desire, yet it left that person unsatisfied. There was something in the girl she could not crush, but more disquieting than that was the fact that her isolation seemed only to cement the friendship between her and Van Lennop, while her own progressed no farther than a bowing acquaintance. His imperturbable politeness formed a barrier she was too wise to attempt to cross until another opportune time arrived. But she fretted none the less and her eagerness to know him better increased with the delay.
She had plenty of time, too, in which to fret, for her practice was far from what she desired, owing to the climate, the exasperating healthfulness of which she so frequently lamented, and the arrival of a pale personality named Lamb who somehow had managed to pass the State Board of Medical Examiners. The only gratifying feature of her present life was the belief that Essie Tisdale was feeling keenly her altered position in Crowheart. The girl gave no outward sign, yet Dr. Harpe knew that it must be so.
The change in people Essie Tisdale had known well was so gradual, so elusive, so difficult of description that in her brighter moments she told herself that it was imaginary and due to her own supersensitiveness. But it was not for long that she could so convince herself, for her intuitions were too sure to admit of her going far astray in her conclusions.
She detected the note of uneasiness in Mrs. Percy Parrott's hysterical mirth when they met in public, although she was entirely herself if no one was about. The Percy Parrotts, with nearly $400 in the bank to their credit, were climbing rapidly, and Mrs. Parrott lost no opportunity to explain how dreadfully shocked mamma was when she learned that her only daughter was doing her own work—Mrs. Parrott being still in ignorance of the fact that local sleuths had learned to a certainty that Mrs. Parrott formerly had lived on a street where the male residents left with their dinner pails when the whistle blew in the morning.
Essie Tisdale saw Mrs. Alva Jackson's furtive glances toward the Symes's home when they met for a moment on the street and she interpreted correctly the trend of events when Mrs. Abe Tutts ceased to invite her to "run in and set a spell."
Pearline and Planchette Starr no longer laid their arms about her shoulders and there was constraint in the voices of the younger sisters, Lucille and Camille when they sang out "Hullo" on their way to school.
The only persons in whom Essie could
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