Chapter 27

The Grin Derisive

"I like your ma," said Anderson to Wicker, later in the evening. "She's a perfect lady. Doggone, it's a relief to see a rich woman that knows how to be a lady. She ain't a bit stuck up an' yet she's a reg'lar aristocrat. Did I ever tell you about what happened to Judge Courtwright's wife? No? Well, it was a long time ago, right here in Tinkletown. The judge concluded this would be a good place fer a summer home--so him an' her put up a grand residence down there on the river bluff. It was the only summer place on this side of the river. Well, of course Mrs. Courtwright had to turn in an' be the leader of the women in this place. She lorded it over 'em an' she give 'em to understand that she was a queen er somethin' like that an' they was nothin' but peasants. An' the derned fool women 'lowed her to do it, too. Seems as though her great-grandfather was a 'squire over in England, an' she had a right to be swell. Well, she ruled the roost fer two summers an' nobody could get near her without a special dispensation from the Almighty. She wouldn't look at anybody with her eyes; her chin was so high in the air that she had to look through her nose.

"Her husband was as old as Methoosalum--that is, he was as old as Methoosalum was when he was a boy, so to speak--an' she had him skeered of his life. But I fixed her. At the end of the second summer she was ready to git up an' git, duke er no duke. Lemme me give you a tip, Wick. If you want to fetch a queen down to your level, jest let her know you're laughin' at her. Well, sir, the judge's wife used to turn up her nose at me until I got to feelin' too small to be seen. My pride was wallerin' in the dust. Finally, I thought of a scheme to fix her. Every time I saw her, I'd grin at her--not sayin' a word, mind you, but jest lookin' at her as if she struck me as bein' funny. Well, sir, I kept it up good an' strong. First thing I knowed, she was beginnin' to look as though a bee had stung her an' she couldn't find the place. I'd ketch her stealin' sly glances at me an' she allus found me with a grin on my face--a good, healthy grin, too.

"There wasn't anything to laugh at, mind you, but she didn't know that. She got to fixin' her back hair and lookin' worried about her clothes. 'Nen she'd wipe her face to see if the powder was on straight, all the time wonderin' what in thunder I was laughin' at. If she passed in her kerridge she'd peep back to see if I was laughin'; and I allus was. I never failed. All this time I wasn't sayin' a word-jest grinnin' as though she tickled me half to death. Gradually I begin to be scientific about it. I got so that when she caught me laughin', I'd try my best to hide the grin. Course that made it all the worse. She fidgeted an' squirmed an' got red in the face till it looked like she was pickled. Doggone, ef she didn't begin to neglect her business as a great-granddaughter! She didn't have time to lord it over her peasants. She was too blame busy wonderin' what I was laughin' at.

"'Nen she begin to look peaked an' thin. She looked like she was seem' ghosts all the time. That blamed grin of mine pursued her every minute. Course, she couldn't kick about it. That wouldn't do at all. She jest had to bear it without grinnin'. There wasn't anything to say. Finally, she got to stayin' away from the meetin's an' almost quit drivin' through the town. Everybody noticed the change in her. People said she was goin' crazy about her back hair. She lost thirty pounds worryin' before August, and when September come, the judge had to take her to a rest cure. They never come back to Tinkletown, an' the judge had to sell the place fer half what it cost him. Fer two years she almost went into hysterics when anybody laughed. But it done her good. It changed her idees. She got over her high an' mighty ways, they say, an' I hear she's one of the nicest, sweetest old ladies in Boggs City nowadays. But Blootch Peabody says that to this day she looks flustered when anybody notices her back hair. The Lord knows I wa'n't laughin' at her hair. I don't see why she thought so, do you?"

Bonner laughed long and heartily over the experiment; but Rosalie vigorously expressed her disapproval of the marshal's methods.

"It's the only real mean thing I ever heard of you doing, daddy Crow!" she cried. "It was cruel!"

"Course you'd take her part, bein' a woman," said he serenely. "Mrs. Crow did, too, when I told her about it twenty years ago. Women ain't got much sense of humour, have they, Wick?" He was calling him Wick nowadays; and the young man enjoyed the familiarity.

The days came when Bonner could walk about with his cane, and he was not slow to avail himself of the privilege this afforded. It meant enjoyable strolls with Rosalie, and it meant the elevation of his spirits to such heights that the skies formed no bounds for them. The town was not slow to draw conclusions. Every one said it would be a "match." It was certain that the interesting Boston man had acquired a clear field. Tinkletown's beaux gave up in despair and dropped out of the contest with the hope that complete recovery from his injuries might not only banish Bonner from the village, but also from the thoughts of Rosalie Gray. Most of the young men took their medicine philosophically. They had known from the first that their chances were small. Blootch Peabody and Ed Higgins, because of the personal rivalry between themselves, hoped on and on and grew more bitter between themselves, instead of toward Bonner.

Anderson Crow and Eva were delighted and the Misses Crow, after futile efforts to interest the young man in their own wares, fell in with the old folks and exuberantly whispered to the world that "it would be perfectly glorious." Roscoe was not so charitable. He was soundly disgusted with the thought of losing his friend Bonner in the hated bonds of matrimony. From his juvenile point of view, it was a fate that a good fellow like Bonner did not deserve. Even Rosalie was not good enough for him, so he told Bud Long; but Bud, who had worshipped Rosalie with a hopeless devotion through most of his short life, took strong though sheepish exceptions to the remark. It seemed quite settled in the minds of every one but Bonner and Rosalie themselves. They went along evenly, happily, perhaps dreamily, letting the present and the future take care of themselves as best they could, making mountains of the past--mountains so high and sheer that they could not be surmounted in retreat.

Bonner was helplessly in love--so much so, indeed, that in the face of it, he lost the courage that had carried him through trivial affairs of the past, and left him floundering vaguely in seas that looked old and yet were new. Hourly, he sought for the first sign of love in her eyes, for the first touch of sentiment; but if there was a point of weakness in her defence, it was not revealed to the hungry perception of the would-be conqueror. And so they drifted on through the February chill, that seemed warm to them, through the light hours and the dark ones, quickly and surely to the day which was to call him cured of one ill and yet sorely afflicted by another.

Through it all he was saying to himself that it did not matter what her birth may have been, so long as she lived at this hour in his life, and yet a still, cool voice was whispering procrastination with ding-dong persistency through every avenue of his brain. "Wait!" said the cool voice of prejudice. His heart did not hear, but his brain did. One look of submission from her tender eyes and his brain would have turned deaf to the small, cool voice--but her eyes stood their ground and the voice survived.

The day was fast approaching when it would be necessary for him to leave the home of Mr. Crow. He could no longer encroach upon the hospitality and good nature of the marshal--especially as he had declined the proffered appointment to become deputy town marshal. Together they had discussed every possible side to the abduction mystery and had laid the groundwork for a systematic attempt at a solution. There was nothing more for them to do. True to his promise, Bonner had put the case in the hands of one of the greatest detectives in the land, together with every known point in the girl's history. Tinkletown was not to provide the solution, although it contained the mystery. On that point there could be no doubt; so, Mr. Bonner was reluctantly compelled to admit to himself that he had no plausible excuse for staying on. The great detective from New York had come to town, gathered all of the facts under cover of strictest secrecy, run down every possible shadow of a clew in Boggs City, and had returned to the metropolis, there to begin the search twenty-one years back.

"Four weeks," Bonner was saying to her reflectively, as they came homeward from their last visit to the abandoned mill on Turnip Creek. It was a bright, warm February morning, suggestive of spring and fraught with the fragrance of something far sweeter. "Four weeks of idleness and joy to me--almost a lifetime in the waste of years. Does it seem long to you, Miss Gray--oh, I remember, I am to call you Rosalie."

"It seems that I have known you always instead of for four weeks," she said gently. "They have been happy weeks, haven't they? My--our only fear is that you haven't been comfortable in our poor little home. It's not what you are accustomed--"

"Home is what the home folks make it," he said, striving to quote a vague old saying. He was dimly conscious of a subdued smile on her part and he felt the fool. "At any rate, I was more than comfortable. I was happy--never so happy. All my life shall be built about this single month--my past ends with it, my future begins. You, Rosalie," he went on swiftly, his eyes gleaming with the love that would not be denied, "are the spirit of life as I shall know it from this day forth. It is you who have made Tinkletown a kingdom, one of its homes a palace. Don't turn your face away, Rosalie."

But she turned her face toward him and her dark eyes did not flinch as they met his, out there in the bleak old wood.

"Don't, please don't, Wicker," she said softly, firmly. Her hand touched his arm for an instant. "You will understand, won't you? Please don't!" There was a world of meaning in it.

His heart turned cold as ice, the blood left his face. He understood. She did not love him.

"Yes," he said, his voice dead and hoarse, "I think I understand, Rosalie. I have taken too much for granted, fool that I am. Bah! The egotism of a fool!"

"You must not speak like that," she said, her face contracted by pain and pity. "You are the most wonderful man I've ever known--the best and the truest. But--" and she paused, with a wan, drear smile on her lips.

"I understand," he interrupted. "Don't say it. I want to think that some day you will feel like saying something else, and I want to hope, Rosalie, that it won't always be like this. Let us talk about something else." But neither cared to speak for what seemed an hour. They were in sight of home before the stony silence was broken. "I may come over from Bonner Place to see you?" he asked at last. He was to cross the river the next day for a stay of a week or two at his uncle's place.

"Yes--often, Wicker. I shall want to see you every day. Yes, every day; I'm sure of it," she said wistfully, a hungry look in her eyes that he did not see, for he was staring straight ahead. Had he seen that look or caught the true tone in her voice, the world might not have looked so dark to him. When he did look at her again, her face was calm almost to sereneness.

"And you will come to Boston in June just the same?"

"If your sister and--and your mother still want me to come."

She was thinking of herself, the nameless one, in the house of his people; she was thinking of the doubts, the speculations--even the fears that would form the background of her welcome in that proud house. No longer was Rosalie Gray regarding herself as the happy, careless foster-child of Anderson Crow; she was seeing herself only as the castaway, the unwanted, and the world was growing bitter for her. But Bonner was blind to all this; he could not, should not know.

"You know they want you to come. Why do you say that?" he asked quickly, a strange, dim perspective rising before him for an instant, only to fade away before it could be analysed.

"One always says that," she replied with a smile. "It is the penalty of being invited. Your sister has written the dearest letter to me, and I have answered it. We love one another, she and I."

"Rosalie, I am going to write to you," said he suddenly; "you will answer?"

"Yes," she told him simply. His heart quickened, but faltered, and was lost. "I had a long letter from Elsie Banks to-day," she went on with an indifference that chilled.

"Oh," he said; "she is your friend who was or is to marry Tom Reddon, I believe. I knew him at Harvard. Tell me, are they married?"

"No. It was not to take place until March, but now she writes that her mother is ill and must go to California for several months. Mr. Reddon wants to be married at once, or before they go West, at least; but she says she cannot consent while her mother requires so much of her. I don't know how it will end, but I presume they will be married and all go to California. That seems the simple and just way, doesn't it?"

"Any way seems just, I'd say," he said. "They love one another, so what's the odds? Do you know Reddon well?"

"I have seen him many times," she replied with apparent evasiveness.

"He is a--" but here he stopped as if paralysis had seized him suddenly. The truth shot into his brain like a deadly bolt. Everything was as plain as day to him now. She stooped to pick up a slim, broken reed that crossed her path, and her face was averted. "God!" was the cry that almost escaped his lips. "She loves Reddon, and he is going to marry her best friend!" Cold perspiration started from every pore in his body. He had met the doom of love--the end of hope.

"He has always loved her," said Rosalie so calmly that he was shocked by her courage. "I hope she will not ask him to wait."

Rosalie never understood why Bonner looked at her in amazement and said:

"By Jove, you are a--a marvel, Rosalie!"