Part 9

He himself removed Apache's new saddle and bridle and drove him with a vicious whack into the stall. Billy took himself off to find a more appreciative audience, while Peter dropped down on a stool inside the stable door, and with his chin in his hands sat watching the house. He saw the nurse fling wide the blinds of Bobby's room and roll up the shades; he wondered with a choking sensation what they were doing to the boy that they needed so much light. He saw Annie come out and hang some towels on the line. The whole aspect of the place to Peter's sharpened senses wore an air of tragic bustle. No one came near to tell him how the boy was doing; he had not the courage to go to the house and ask. He sat dumbly waiting for something to happen while twilight faded into dusk. One of the stableboys came to call him to supper and he replied crossly that he didn't want any supper. Presently he heard a step scrunching on the gravel, and he looked up to find Annie coming toward him.

"Is--is he dead?" he whispered.

"He's not goin' to die. He's feelin' better now; they've sewed up the hole in his head. The doctor did it with a thread an' needle just like you'd sew a dress. He took ten stitches an' Master Bobby bled awful. He never cried once, though; he just got whiter an' whiter an' fainted away. Don't feel so bad, Pete, he's goin' to get well."

She laid her hand caressingly on his hair and brushed it back from his forehead. He caught her hand and held it.

"It's me that's to blame for his gettin' hurt. He won't never speak to me again."

"Yes, he will; he's wantin' to speak to you now. They sent me out to fetch you."

"Me?" he asked, shrinking back. "What's he wantin' with me?"

"He's been out of his head an' callin' for you; he won't go to sleep till he sees you. The doctor said to fetch you in. Come on."

Annie's manner was insistent and Peter rose and followed her.

"Here he is," she whispered, pushing him ahead of her into the darkened room.

Bobby made a half movement to turn as the door creaked, but a quick pain shot through his shoulder and he fell back with a little gasp.

"Take care, Bobby," the nurse warned. "You mustn't move or you will hurt that bad arm." Her greeting to Peter was stern. "You may stay five minutes, and mind you don't get him excited!" She bent over the boy to loosen the bandage about his shoulder.

"You go out," said Bobby, querulously. "I want to see Peter alone."

"Yes, dear," she patted the bedclothes indulgently. "Remember, five minutes!" she added as she closed the door.

The two left alone stared at each other rather consciously for a moment. They both felt that the occasion demanded something heroic in the way of a reconciliation, but it was the natural instinct of each to fly from sentiment. The sight of Bobby's pale face and bandaged head, however, had their effect on Peter's already overwrought nerves.

"I'm a blunderin' fool!" he groaned. "I don't know why I can't never learn to attend to me own affairs. If I'd told yer father, as was me dooty, he'd never uv given ye that spotted devil of a horse."

"You aren't to blame, Pete. I guess I was hurt for more punishment 'cause I didn't take the first in the right spirit." He fumbled under his pillow and drew out the new five-bladed knife. "This is for a remembrance, and whenever you use it you will think 'it was me that cured Bobby Carter of telling lies.'"

Peter received the gift with an air of hesitation.

"I don't like to take it," he said, dubiously, "though I have a feelin' that perhaps I ought, for with five blades to choose from ye'll be cuttin' yer blamed young throat--I'd hate to be the cause of any more accidents." He balanced it thoughtfully in his palm. "But I'm thinkin," he added softly, "that the corkscrew might be doin' as much damage to me as the five blades to you."

Bobby grinned appreciatively, and held out his uninjured left hand.

"Pete," he said, "if I promise never, never to tell any more lies, will you promise never, never to use that corkscrew?"

"It's a bargain!" said Peter, grasping the boy's hand. "And I'm glad that we're friends again."

They stared at each other solemnly, neither thinking of anything further to add, when Peter suddenly became aware of the ticking of the clock.

"Holy Saint Patrick!" he ejaculated. "Me five minutes was up five minutes ago. I must be takin' me leave or that commandin' young woman will come back and eject me."

He moved toward the door, but paused to throw over his shoulder:

"I'd already promised the same to Annie, so ye needn't be takin' too much credit to yerself fer me conversion."

IX

MRS. CARTER AS FATE

As the summer wore to an end, the course of affairs between Peter and Annie became a matter of interested comment among the other servants. They had all seen Peter recover from many incipient attacks of love, but this they unanimously diagnosed as the real thing. Joe and his wife talked the matter over upon his return from the hospital, and decided that the time had definitely come for the livery stable; Peter, in all fairness, had served as groom long enough. They would move out of the coachman's cottage the following spring, and give the young people a chance. Thus was the way open for a happy conclusion, and everyone was preparing to dance at the wedding, except Peter and Annie themselves. They alone were not certain as to the outcome. Neither was quite comfortably sure that the other was in earnest, and when it came to the point they were both a little shy. Annie, with laughing eyes, tempted Peter at every point, but when he showed a disposition to control matters himself, she precipitously fled.

The two were standing on the back veranda one moonlight night, and Annie was engaged in pointing out to Peter the lady in the moon. Peter was either stubborn or stupid; he frankly declared that he saw no "loidy," and didn't believe there was one. In her zeal in the cause of astronomy, Annie unwarily bent her head too near, and while her eyes were turned to the moon, Peter kissed her. She slapped him smartly, as a well-brought-up young woman should, and fled into the house before he could catch her. Peter, strong in his new-found courage, waited about in the hope that she would reappear; but she did not, and he finally took himself off to his room over the carriage-house, where he sat by the window gazing out at the moonlight for two hours or more before he remembered to go to bed. The slap had hurt neither him nor his feelings; he liked her the better for it. She wasn't really mad, he reflected happily, for she had laughed as she banged the door in his face.

The next morning Peter went about his work with a singing heart and many a glance toward the kitchen windows. He swashed water over the stable floor and rubbed down the horses with a mind happily intent upon what he would say to Annie when he saw her. About ten o'clock Mrs. Carter ordered the victoria, but as the carriage horses were at the shop being shod, Joe sent Peter in to ask if Trixy and the phaeton would do as well.

Peter dropped his sponge and started for the house at exactly the wrong moment for his future peace of mind. He arrived at the kitchen door just in time to see the man from the grocery put his packages on the table and his arms around Annie, and kiss her with a smack that resounded through the room and would, to Peter's outraged senses, resound through all time. Annie turned with a startled cry, and as her gaze fell upon Peter, her face paled before the look in his eyes. Without a word he whirled about and strode back to the stables with white lips and clenched fists, and murder in his heart for the grocer's man. He did not hear what Annie said to him, nor did he know that she locked herself in her room and cried; what he did know was that she had been making a fool of him, and that she flirted with every man who came along, and that that wasn't the kind of a girl he wanted to do with.

Several days before, as Peter was driving Mr. Lane, who was visiting at Willowbrook again, and Master Bobby to the village, Annie had been sweeping the front veranda as they passed, and had thrown a friendly smile in the direction of the cart. The smile was intended for Peter, but Mr. Lane had caught it, and had remarked to Bobby:

"That's a deuced pretty maid you've got there."

"Annie's the bulliest maid we ever had," Bobby had returned appreciatively. "She swipes cake for me when Nora isn't looking."

But Peter had frowned angrily, as he longingly sized up Mr. Lane, and wished he were not a gentleman so that he could punch him. It was none of Mr. Lane's business whether Annie was pretty or not.

At that time Annie could do no wrong, and Peter had not thought of blaming her for Mr. Lane's too-open admiration, but now he wrathfully accused her of trying to flirt with gentlemen, than which, in Peter's estimation, she could do no worse. As he could take it out of neither of them in blood--which his soul thirsted for--he added it to the grocer's score, and his fingers fairly itched to be at work. The grocer was just the sort of man that he most enjoyed pummelling--big and florid, with curling hair, a black moustache, and a dimple in his chin.

Annie, after her _contretemps_ with the grocer, passed a miserable day. In vain she tried to get a word with Peter; he was not to be seen. Billy was the groom who came to the house on all further errands from the stables. That evening she put on her prettiest frock and sat for two hours on the top step of the back veranda with her eyes turned expectantly toward the carriage-house, and then she went to bed and cried. Had she but known it, Peter was in a vacant lot back of Paddy Callahan's saloon, blissfully remodelling the features of the grocer's man.

Annie passed a wakeful night, and the next morning she swallowed her pride and went to the stables in the hope of seeing Peter alone. Peter, too, in spite of his victory of the evening, had kept vigil through the night. He was listlessly currying one of the carriage horses when he saw Annie leave the house and come slowly down the walk toward the stables. His heart suddenly leaped to his mouth, but a moment later he was bending over the horse with his back to the door, whistling as merrily as though he had not a care in the world. He heard Annie's hesitating step on the threshold, and he smiled grimly to himself and whistled the louder.

"Pete, I'm wantin' to speak to you, if ye're not busy."

Peter glanced up with a well-assumed start of surprise. He looked Annie over, slowly and deliberately, and then turned back to the horse.

"Aw, but I am busy," he returned. "Lift up!" he added to the horse, and he solicitously examined her foot.

Annie waited patiently, struggling between a sense of pride which urged her to go back and never speak to Peter again, and a sense of shame which told her that she owed him an explanation.

"Pete," she began, and there was a little catch in her voice which went to Peter's heart; in his effort to resist it and mete out due punishment for all the misery she had caused him, he was harder than he otherwise would have been. "Pete, I wanted to be tellin' ye that it wasn't my fault. He--he niver kissed me before, and I didn't know he was goin' to then."

Peter shrugged.

"Ye needn't be apologizin' to me. I ain't interested in yer amoors. If ye wants to be apologizin' to any one go an' do it to his wife."

"His wife?" asked Annie.

"Aye, his wife an' his three childern."

"I didn't know he was married," said Annie, flushing again, "but 'tis no difference, for it weren't my fault. I niver acted a bit nicer to him than to anny other man, an' that's the truth."

"Oh, ye're a lovely girl, ye are! Flirtin' around with other women's husbands, and lettin' every fool that comes along kiss ye if he wants to."

"Ye needn't talk," cried Annie. "Ye did it yerself, an' ye're no better than the grocer man."

"An' do ye think I'd a-done it if I hadn't knowed ye was willin?"

Annie backed against the wall, and with flushed cheeks and blazing eyes, stared at him speechlessly, angry with herself at her powerlessness to say anything that would hurt him enough. As she stood there, Master Bobby and Mr. Lane came in on their way to visit the kennels. Mr. Lane looked curiously from the angry girl to the nonchalant groom, who had resumed his work, and was softly whistling under his breath. Master Bobby, being intent only upon puppies, passed on without noticing the two, but Mr. Lane glanced back over his shoulder at Annie's pretty flushed face, and paused to ask:

"My dear girl, has that fellow been annoying you?"

"No, no!" Annie said wildly. "Go away, Mr. Lane, please."

Mr. Lane glanced from one to the other with a laugh. "Ah, I see! A lovers' quarrel," and he followed Master Bobby.

Peter echoed his laugh, and in a tone which would have justified Mr. Lane in knocking him down had he heard.

"So ye're his dear girl too, are ye? He's a nice gentleman, he is! Ye ought to be proud o' him."

Annie straightened herself with her head thrown back.

"Peter Malone," she burst out, "I came here to 'pologize, 'cause, without meanin' any harm, I thought as I'd hurt yer feelin's an' was owin' an explanation. I niver had anything to do with that groc'ry man nor any other man, an' ye know it as true as ye're standin' there. Instead o' believin' what I say like a gentleman would, ye insult me worse than anybody's iver done in the whole o' me life, an' I'll niver speak to ye again as long as I live." She choked down a sob, and with head erect turned and walked back to the house.

The two had had differences before, but never anything like this. Peter, his arms dropped limply at his side, stood watching her go, while the words she had spoken rang in his ears. Suddenly a lump rose in his throat, and he leaned his head against the horse's neck.

"Lord!" he whispered. "What have I done?"

The week which followed was one of outward indifference and inward misery to both. Annie mourned when alone, but under the eyes of the stables she flirted openly and without conscience with one of the painters who was opportunely engaged in re-staining the shingle roof of the Jasper house. Peter watched her with a heavy heart, and formed a brave determination never to think of her again, and ended by thinking of her every minute of the day. He made one awkward attempt at reconciliation which was spurned, whereupon he, too, plunged into a reckless flirtation with Mary, the chambermaid, who was fat, and every day of thirty-five. As neither Peter nor Annie had any means of knowing how wretched this treatment was making the other, they got very little comfort from it.

Annie sat at the kitchen table polishing silver with a sober face. It was six days since the grocery man's historic visit, and the war clouds showed no sign of lifting. There was a houseful of company at Willowbrook, and the work was mercifully distracting. Mary, this morning, had hung a long row of blankets and curtains on the line to air, for the sole purpose, Annie knew, of being near the stables. Peter was visible through the open window, greasing harness in the carriage-house doorway, and exchanging jocular remarks with Mary. Annie's eyes were out of doors oftener than upon her work. Nora, who was sitting on the back veranda shelling peas, remarked on Peter's newly awakened interest in the chambermaid, but as Annie did not answer, she very wisely changed the subject.

"I guess that Mr. Lane what's visitin' here has got a heap o' money," she called in tentatively.

"I guess he has," Annie assented indifferently.

"He seems to be pretty taken up with Miss Ethel. That was an awful becomin' pink dress she had on last night. Mrs. Carter would be pleased all right."

Annie received this remark in silence, but Nora was not to be discouraged. She felt that this new freak of taciturnity on Annie's part was defrauding her of her rights. A maid whose duties call her to the front part of the house is in a position to supply more accurate gossip than it is given a cook to know, and it is her business to supply it.

"Mr. Harry would feel awful, havin' growed up with her like," Nora continued. "He's a sight the best lookin' o' the two, and I'm thinkin' Miss Ethel knows it. It ud be convenient, too, havin' the places joined. The Jaspers has got money enough, an' him the only son. I guess they wouldn't starve if she did marry him. I've always noticed 'tis the people who has the most money as needs the most. I don't think much o' that Mr. Lane," she added.

Annie suddenly woke up.

"I don't neither. 'Tis too fresh he is."

"That's what I'm thinkin' meself," said Nora, cordially. "An' I guess so does Mr. Harry. I'm after observin' that he hasn't been around much since Mr. Lane's been here."

Annie's mind had wandered again. Her own affairs were requiring so much attention lately that Miss Ethel's were no longer a source of interest. Out in the stable Peter was proclaiming, in tones calculated to reach the kitchen, "There's only one girl in this world for me." Annie's lip quivered slightly as she heard him; a week before she had laughed at the same song, but as affairs stood now, it was insulting.

The peas finished, Nora gathered the yellow bowl under her arm and returned to the kitchen, where she concentrated her attention upon Annie and the silver.

"I'm thinkin' ye must be in love!" she declared. "Ye've cleaned that same spoon three times while I've been watchin', an' ye didn't count the plates right last night for dinner, an' ye forgot to give 'em any butter for breakfast."

Annie blushed guiltily at this damning array of evidence, and then she laughed. "If it's in love I am whiniver I forget things, then I must a-been in love since I was out o' the cradle."

"An' there's him as would be in love with you, if ye'd only act dacent to him--and I'm not meanin' the painter."

Annie chose to overlook this remark, and Nora's sociability was suppressed by the entrance of Mrs. Carter.

"We have decided to have a picnic supper at the beach to-night, Nora," she said. "You will not have to get dinner for anyone but Mr. Carter."

"Very well, ma'am."

"I am sorry that it happens on your afternoon out, Annie," she added, turning to the maid, "but I shall need you at the picnic to help about serving."

"Certainly, ma'am," said Annie. "I don't care about goin' out anyway."

"We shall start early in the afternoon, but I want you to wait and help Nora with the sandwiches, and then Peter can drive you out about six o'clock in the dog-cart."

Annie's face clouded precipitously.

"Please, ma'am," she stammered, "I think--that is, if ye please----" she hesitated and looked about desperately. "I'm afraid if ye're after wantin' coffee, I can't make it right. I'm niver sure o' me coffee two times runnin', and I should hate to be spoilin' it when there's company. If ye could take Nora instead o' me, ma'am, I could just be gettin' the lovely dinner for Mr. Carter when he comes."

"Why, Annie," she remonstrated, "you've always made excellent coffee before, and Nora doesn't wait on the table. Is it because you want to go out this afternoon? I am sorry, but you will have to wait until Miss Ethel's guests have gone."

"No, ma'am," said Annie, hastily, "I'm not wantin' the afternoon, an' it's willin' I am to help Miss Ethel, only--only--will you tell Peter, ma'am, about the cart?" she finished lamely, "'cause if I tell him he's likely to be late."

Mrs. Carter passed out of the kitchen door and crossed the lawn toward the stables, casting meanwhile a sharp eye about the premises to be sure that all was as it should be. Mary was shaking blankets with an air of deep absorption; Peter was industriously cleaning the already clean harness, and Joe could be heard inside officiously telling Billy to grease the other wheel and be quick about it. Unless Mrs. Carter approached very quietly indeed, she always found her servants oblivious to everything but their several duties. As she drew near the doorway, Peter rose from the harness and respectfully touched his cap with a very dirty hand, while the coachman, with a final order over his shoulder to a brow-beaten stable-boy, came forward hastily, and stood at attention.

"Joe, we are going to have a picnic at the beach this afternoon, and I want you to have the horses ready at three o'clock. Miss Ethel, Mr. Lane, and Master Bobby will ride, and you will drive the rest of us in the waggonette."

"Very well, ma'am," said Joe.

"And Peter," she added, turning to the groom, "I want you to bring out the supper with Trixy and the dog-cart at five o'clock."

"All right, ma'am," said Peter, saluting.

"Be sure to be on time," she warned. "Stop at the kitchen for Annie and the hampers promptly at five."

Peter's face suddenly darkened. He drew his mouth into a straight line, and looked sullenly down at the harness. "Beggin' yer pardon, ma'am," he mumbled, "I don't think--that is----" He scowled defiance at Joe, who grinned back appreciatively. "If it's just the same to ye, ma'am, I'd like to drive the waggonette an' let Joe fetch the lunch. If I'm to be coachman, ma'am, I'd sort o' like to get used to me dooties before he goes."

Mrs. Carter was frankly puzzled; she could not imagine what had suddenly got into her servants this morning. A lady who has a grown daughter, of some attractions and many admirers, to chaperone, cannot be expected to keep _au courant_ of her servants' love affairs.

"You have had a month in which to get used to your duties while Joe was in the hospital; that is sufficient for the present. Joe will drive the waggonette and you will follow with the supper--I wish you to help Tom put new netting in the screen-doors this afternoon."

Her tone precluded argument. As soon as she was out of hearing, Joe remarked softly, "Now, if she'd only said Mary instead of Annie I 'spose----"

"Aw, let up," Peter growled, and he fell to rubbing in the grease with unnecessary vehemence. His misunderstanding with Annie was a subject he would stand no fooling about, even from his chief.

At five o'clock, Peter, in a spotless top-hat and shining boots, looking as stiff as if he were clothed in steel armour, drew up before the kitchen door and piled the hampers and pails he found on the back veranda onto the seat beside him. He climbed to the box again with an air of finality, and gathering his reins together made a feint of starting.

"Peter!" Nora called from the kitchen window. "Where is it ye're goin'? Wait for Annie."

"Annie?" Peter looked as if he had never heard the name before.

"Yes, Annie. Did ye think ye was to cook the supper yerself?"

"I didn't think nothin'," said Peter. "Me orders was to stop for the lunch at five o'clock, an' I done it. If she wants to come along she'll have to sit on the back seat. I ain't a goin' to change these baskets again."

Annie appeared in the doorway in time to hear this ungracious speech; she clambered up to the somewhat uncomfortable footman's seat in silence, and they drove off back to back, as stiff as twin ramrods.

The cart rolled along over the smooth roads, past country clubs and summer cottages, and the only sign either of the two gave of being alive was an occasional vicious crack of the whip from Peter when patient little Trixy showed signs of wishing to take a quieter pace. At such times Annie would instinctively stretch out a deterring hand and form her mouth as if to say, "Please, Pete, don't whip her; she's doin' her best," and then suddenly remembering that formidable vow, would straighten up again and stare ahead with flushed cheeks.