Chapter XX: A Flirtation

Next morning Doctor Somers rose early. I heard him splashing in the bathroom, slapping his razor against its strop, whistling louder and shriller than the ubiquitous quail outside. I was fagged out and irritable; his cheerfulness annoyed me. A man who had been drunk last night should be more subdued, I thought.

I pounded on the bathroom door. “Shut up, man!” I called. “You’re worse than the bobwhites!”

I heard a chuckle from within. “’Smatter, unk? Get up on the wrong side? Cheer-i-o, old thing! So you prefer the birds, do you?”

And straightway he fell to imitating the shrill call of the quail: “Bob_white_! Bob_white_!”

I grinned helplessly. What could be done with such a man? “Better cut that out,” I warned him. “You’ll catch it at breakfast, if Aunt Mary hears you.”

That silenced him. Presently he emerged, shaved to a miracle, the heavy beard showing blue beneath his dark skin. “Aren’t I pretty, unk? Going out in society to-day!”

He came down to breakfast in a gorgeous pongee silk suit, whose fitted coat and tight, creased trousers made him more incredibly thin and angular than usual. He bowed grotesquely, struck an attitude, knuckles on hip, looking rather like those tiny figures of some cartoonist, whose bodies are made of one straight line; he was almost as thin as that. The slender Malacca cane, which he brandished, seemed as thick as his long legs.

“Uncle George, I want the flivver to-day,” he announced. “I’m going for a drive with my best girl.”

“Humph!” said I. “Is she blind?”

“Not yet, but this rig may put her eye out.”

“Very likely,” I told him grimly. “All right; take the car.”

“Who’s going with you?” asked Dorothy curiously.

Aunt Mary had not appeared; she was taking breakfast in bed, it seemed. But the nurse was there, quiet and unobtrusive as always, eyes on her plate. At our hostess’ question I fancied that the color rose in her cheeks.

“Miss Minnie Satterfield,” said Somers. “She works at night, unfortunately; but she’s going to get up early this morning, and we’re driving to Jackson Springs for lunch.”

He ate hurriedly and pushed back his chair. “Excuse me? I’ve got a lot of running round to do; I want to drop in and see Parker, too. It would never do to keep Miss Satterfield waiting. She’s a very pretty girl.”

Somers disappeared, and Dorothy looked at me askance. “He doesn’t seem exactly reluctant,” she murmured. “Oh, I know, Uncle George, he’s doing it to help Lewis, but it does seem as if he could go about it some other way than getting drunk at night and chasing round with pretty girls all day. I keep thinking of my poor husband, locked up alone in that horrid j-jail, and Doctor Somers enjoying himself like this! You needn’t tell _me_ that he hated so to get drunk,” she went on stubbornly. “And now it’s that Minnie Satterfield! You’ve seen her, Peter? She’s just awfully pretty, and you know what her father is!”

My nephew’s bride was rather uncharitably inclined. “My dear,” I told her mildly, “that’s not the poor girl’s fault.”

Miss Christie rose abruptly and pushed back her chair. “I--I must see to Miss McGregor,” she murmured. Her plump face was scarlet, her big eyes flamed.

We saw no more of Doctor Somers that day. The time went slowly enough. Dorothy and I visited my nephew. The wedding decorations had all been taken down, but the young lady’s housewifely eye detected dried leaves and petals in a corner, and straightway she dispatched me after a broom and dustpan.

“If my very own husband’s _got_ to live in this miserable old jail, I’m going to keep it clean for him, at least!” she announced.

I brought the required implements, and Dorothy fell to work in a cloud of dust. “A fine sort of jailer, that man Wakefield,” she declared. “The place hasn’t been swept out in months!”

While she bustled about, setting things to rights with the prideful, loving care of the new-made housewife, Lewis watched her slim form with wistful eyes. Poor boy! Already his confinement was telling on him. His face was pale and worn, and he seemed thinner, older, more conscious of his responsibilities. I fancied that, if he were free, my nephew’s hot temper would be under better control. This experience, however bitterly bought, was maturing him fast.

I sat back, watching this pitiful bride and groom; and the girl’s happy activity, her housewifely care, the whole pathetic travesty of a honeymoon, brought tears to my old eyes. I rose abruptly.

“This dust is too much for me.” Then I blew my nose. “I’ll sit on the steps a while, children, till you get through.”

On the steps I sat and glowered down at the absurd deputy-sheriff’s star which I wore. I have no doubt that I was the unhappiest jailer who was ever forced to sunder loving hearts.

Aunt Mary appeared at luncheon in an unusually subdued, amiable mood. Indeed the old lady seemed much changed of late; the cloud of trouble, which had settled over Fort House had left its mark upon her, also. At times she was more querulous, more irritable and exacting, than I had ever seen her; and again she was kinder, more thoughtful of others. In the midst of her sharpest mood she would soften suddenly and be so kindly, so pathetically sweet, that one could not but pity her and forgive her the stabs which she inflicted upon us all. Her face had changed subtly, grown thinner, more sharply lined. Its former expression of sweetly pathetic resignation, which I had grown to believe, uncharitably, was assumed for the provoking of sympathy, was in evidence less often. Now her softly faded countenance wore a look of honest pain, of mental anguish, not unmixed with human resentment. And I, for one, fancied it much more than the old expression of strained, angelic sweetness.

To-day she merely played with her food; though, as a rule, even when she suffered most from the “knots in her neck,” her appetite was not visibly affected. She said nothing; and, when Dorothy spoke sadly of Lewis’ lonely meal in the lockup, she burst quite suddenly into broken weeping and had to be wheeled back to her room.

Dorothy looked at me, then at Peter, almost with awe. “Why,” she exclaimed, “auntie is really upset! She’s really thinking about somebody else for once. Oh, Peter, we must be kinder to her.”

And she was, I think, even more thoughtful of her aunt than usual, all through that long, weary week, though to my mind she had never failed in forbearance. It was a long week, that one! A tedious, dreary time, that taxed the patience of us all. Lewis grew somber, depressed, almost morose. He could see nothing before him but darkness: the meeting time of the grand jury came closer and closer, and he would not be convinced but that they would bring in a true bill against him.

“That district attorney, solicitor, as they call him down here, that man Vanbrugh will see to _that_,” he predicted gloomily. “There’s no possible chance that they won’t indict me; we might as well make up our minds to that.”

At once Dorothy would strive to comfort and encourage him; and then she would break down and cry on his shoulder and beg him indignantly to send for a lawyer, to hire detectives--anything!

“Because, dearest, that Doctor Somers isn’t doing one thing to help us--not a single thing! He’s just out riding round all day with that Satterfield girl, the bold, hard thing! And in your flivver, too! And out till all hours, every night, and coming in drunk, and everything like that. He’s a fine friend, I must say!”

Lewis and Peter and I would try to soothe her, pointing out all Somers had done, reminding her that even this intimacy was carried on in the hope of extracting further information from Ralph Satterfield. But Dorothy would shake a stubborn head.

“You needn’t tell _me_ he’s doing it all for Lewis! It’s just because he _likes_ to get drunk and chase over the country with that--that _thing_! So there!” A mercurial young person was Dorothy, as I have said, prone to injustice at times. But she was not too much to blame, perhaps; it was a terrible situation for any bride.

And Somers’ conduct rather worried me, also. Day after day he rose late, flattered and cajoled Rosina into preparing him an extra breakfast, climbed into Lewis’ flivver and disappeared. Sometimes he would be back for lunch or dinner--often late--and again he would not return until midnight or later. Then he would stumble in, half drunk. He never returned again in the condition which had disgraced Dorothy’s wedding day; he was always able to navigate after a fashion, and he made no great disturbance getting to his room. But every night he had been drinking; that was not hard to know.

Once or twice Peter and I waited up for him; then we gave up in disgust. Curiously it was Miss Christie, the somnolent nurse, who used to doze the evenings through on the couch, it was this girl who never failed to sit up against Somers’ erratic appearances. “Go to bed if you like,” she would say, “I’ll wait. He--he might need somebody. And I remember, if the rest of you don’t, that he’s doing this for _you_!”

Miss Christie, too, had altered greatly. I saw the change in her from day to day. Whether it was Doctor Somers’ pills or some more subtle medicament, she grew more vivid, more alive. Her bovine calm altered; she yawned no more; life seemed to have taken on newer, fresher colors to her. No longer did she doze the evenings away; and in the mornings she appeared at breakfast as fresh and alert as Dorothy, not dull and somnolent, as a fortnight ago. She lost flesh; her overplump figure grew willowy. Her round face changed, and with the passing of its superfluous flesh grew shapelier. It was as though some delicate, spiritual chisel were at work, carving new planes of beauty, bringing out clearly the rare loveliness her moments of deep feeling had hitherto promised.

I rhapsodize, no doubt, and rhapsodies are out of place, coming from a battered, disillusioned old rheumatic. But I cannot exaggerate the change wrought in Anne Christie. Even in that time of deep discouragement the miracle impressed me. She was no longer stolid, unresponsive; a new mobility curved her lips, a new light shone in her violet eyes; a new animation imbued her fair face, as her expression changed constantly with each nuance of thought, and her delicate color ebbed and flowed charmingly.

“I’ll wait up for the doctor!” she insisted. “He’s doing this for you, but look at what he’s done for _me_. I feel so much better in every way; it’s wonderful! And I’m grateful, if you-all aren’t!”

And so the time passed until the meeting of the Carabas County grand jury for July was only one day off; and still nothing more was done for Lewis. It was settled that his case should be considered first; and I could see nothing ahead of him but an indictment.

That evening Doctor Somers appeared in time for supper; and, for once, he was cold sober. He left the flivver at the curb, climbed the broad steps wearily and entered the big sitting room, where I sat with Dorothy and Peter.

“Oh, lordy!” he groaned, thrusting his long, lean legs straight out before him. “I’m done up. But it’s over now, thank goodness!”

He did look tired. His sallow face was almost colorless; his thin cheeks were hollower than ever, and his eyes were sunk deep into their sockets. Even his arms and legs seemed thinner, if that were possible. Miss Christie came in, her color a trifle higher than usual. Her eyes brightened at sight of Somers, I thought, and I wondered if she had heard him enter. The doctor looked her over critically. “You’re improving,” he drawled, with impersonal approval. “I knew thyroid was what you needed.”

The girl stood silent, eyes downcast, her cheeks pink.

“Well,” continued Somers, and paused to yawn. “It’s over now. If we ought to get a bit of action to-morrow, as I hope, I shan’t have to drink any more of Satterfield’s beastly liquor. You know”--with one of those sudden changes of subject so characteristic of him--“they put chewing tobacco into this moonshine down here--and concentrated lye, to give it a bead. Bah! And I’m through with Minnie, too--shan’t have to listen to her giggle any more atall!”

He looked vastly relieved at the prospect; and so, I thought, did Miss Christie.

“But,” protested Dorothy maliciously, “that’s not quite kind, is it? Here you’ve been making love to that girl for a week and more; you’ve engaged her young affections, and now you’re going to jilt her!”

“Yes,” declared Somers, in his characteristic drawl, half whimsically, half bitterly, “I’m a fine figure of a lover, ain’t I? Handsome, robust, and muscular!” His eyes traveled down over the lank, skinny length of him. “I’m a handsome devil, what?”

“You are _so_!” exclaimed Anne Christie. Then she bit her lip, and a hot flush dyed her face to the very roots of her fair hair.

“But you may set your mind at rest, Mrs. Parker,” Somers went on, mercifully ignoring Anne’s confusion. “It’s me that’s jilted, not the fair Minnie. A burly person, named Conover, has cut me out. You see, he owns a real car, and I only had a borrowed flivver. Minnie won’t miss me. And I’ve found out what I wanted to--all I hoped to, at any rate. Peter, do you want to go out scouting with me to-morrow?”

“It’s about time something was done!” exclaimed Dorothy. “The grand jury meets to-morrow!”