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The Desired Woman

W >> Will N. Harben >> The Desired Woman




Miss Mitchell had the air of one subduing interest. She forced a faint
smile into the general gravity of her face. "Andy had asked me a month
before," she said, "or, rather, his mother asked me for him the day
the cards were sent out."

"I knew _she_ had a hand in it," Mitchell retorted, in a tone of
conviction. "That old woman is the most cold-blooded matchmaker in the
State, and she's playing with you like a cat with a mouse. They want
my money, I tell you--that's what they are after. I know how the old
thing talks to you--she's always telling you her darling boy is dying
of grief, and all that foolishness."

Irene avoided her father's eyes. She wound a thick wisp of her hair
around her head and began to fasten it with a hairpin. He heard her
sigh. Then she looked straight at him.

"You are bothering entirely too much," she half faltered, in a tone
that was all but wistful. "Now, I'll make _you_ a promise if--if
you'll make _me_ one. You are afraid Dick Mostyn and I will never
come to--to an understanding, but it is all right. I know I must be
sensible, and I intend to be. I'm more practical than I look. Now,
here is what I am going to propose. Andy Buckton _may_ be at Atlantic
City with his mother, and I want you to treat them decently. If you
will be nice to them I will assure you that when Dick gets back from
the mountains he will propose and I will accept him."

"You talk as if you knew positively that he--"

"I understand him," the young lady said. "I know him even better than
you do, with all your business dealings together. Now, that will have
to satisfy you, and you've got to let me see Andy up there. You simply
must."

"Well, I don't care," the old man said, with a breath of relief. "This
is the first time you ever have talked any sort of sense on the
subject."

"I know nothing else will suit you," Irene said, with a look of
abstraction in her eyes, "and I have made up my mind to let you have
your way."

There was a tremulous movement to her breast, a quaver in her voice,
of which she seemed slightly ashamed, for she turned suddenly and left
the room.





CHAPTER III




At the gate in front of his farmhouse in the mountains Tom Drake
received a letter from the rural mail-carrier, who was passing in a
one-horse buggy.

"That's all this morning, Tom," the carrier said, cheerfully. "You've
got good corn and cotton in the bottom below here."

"Purty good, I reckon, if the drouth don't kill 'em," the farmer
answered. The carrier drove on, and Tom slowly opened his letter and
turned toward the house. He was a typical Georgia mountaineer, strong,
tall, broad-shouldered, middle-aged. He wore no beard, had mild brown
eyes, heavy chestnut hair upon which rested a shapeless wool hat full
of holes. His arms and legs were long, his gait slouching and
deliberate. He was in his shirt-sleeves; his patched jean trousers
were too large at the waist, and were supported by a single home-
knitted suspender. He was chewing tobacco, and as he went along he
moved his stained lips in the audible pronunciation of the words he
was reading.

His wife, Lucy, a slender woman, in a drab print dress with no sort of
adornment to it or to her scant, tightly knotted hair, stood on the
porch impatiently waiting for him. Behind her, leaning in the doorway,
was her brother, John Webb, a red-haired, red-faced bachelor, fifty
years of age, who also had his eyes on the approaching reader.

"Another dun, I reckon," Mrs. Drake said, tentatively, when her
husband had paused at the bottom step and glanced up from the sheet in
his hand.

"Not this time." Tom slowly spat on the ground, and looked first at
his wife and then at his brother-in-law with a broadening smile. "You
two are as good at guessin' as the general run, but if I gave you a
hundred trials--yes, three hundred--and all day to do it in, you
wouldn't then come in a mile o' what's in this letter."

"I don't intend to try," Mrs. Drake said, eagerly, "anyways not with
all that ironin' to do that's piled up like a haystack on the dinin'-
room table, to say nothin' of the beds and bed-clothes to be sunned.
You can keep your big secret as far as I'm concerned."

"It's another Confederate Veteran excursion to some town whar whisky
is sold," said the bachelor, with a dry cackle. "That's my guess. You
fellows that was licked don't git no pensions from Uncle Sam, but you
manage to have enough fun once a year to make up for it."

Tom Drake swept the near-by mountain slope with his slow glance of
amusement, folded the sheet tantalizingly, and spat again.

"I don't know, Luce," he said to his wife, as he wiped his lips on his
shirt-sleeve, "that it is a good time to tell you on top o' your
complaint of over-work, but Dick Mostyn, your Atlanta boarder, writes
that he's a little bit run down an' wants to come an' stay a solid
month. Money seems to be no object to him, an' he says if he kin just
git the room he had before an' a chance at your home cooking three
times a day he will be in clover."

"Well, well, well!" Lucy cried, in a tone of delight, "so he wants to
come ag'in, an' all this time I've been thinkin' he'd never think of
us any more. There wasn't a thing for him to do that summer but lie
around in the shade, except now an' then when he was off fishin' or
huntin'."

"Well, I hope you will let 'im come," John Webb drawled out, in his
slow fashion. "I can set an' study a town dude like him by the hour
an' never git tired. I never kin somehow git at what sech fellers
_think_ about or _do_ when they are at home. He makes money, but
_how_? His hands are as soft an' white as a woman's. His socks are as
thin an' flimsy as spider-webs. He had six pairs o' pants, if he had
one, an' a pair o' galluses to each pair. I axed him one day when they
was all spread out on his bed what on earth he had so many galluses
for, an' Mostyn said--I give you my word I'm not jokin'--he said"--
Webb laughed out impulsively--"he said it was to keep from botherin'
to button 'em on ever' time he changed! He said"--the bachelor
continued to laugh--"that he could just throw the galluses over his
shoulders when he was in a hurry an' be done with the job. Do you
know, folks, if I was as lazy as that I'd be afraid the Lord would cut
me off in my prime. Why, a feller on a farm has to do more than that
ever' time he pulls a blade o' fodder or plants a seed o' corn."

"Well, of course, I want 'im to come." Mrs. Drake had not heard a word
of her brother's rambling comment, and there was a decidedly expectant
intonation in her voice. "Nobody's usin' the company-room, an' the
presidin' elder won't be here till fall. Mr. Mostyn never was a bit of
trouble and seemed to love everything I set before him. But I reckon
we needn't feel so flattered. He's coming here so he'll be near Mr.
Saunders when he runs up to his place on Sundays."

John Webb, for such a slow individual, had suddenly taken on a new
impetus. He left his sister and her husband and passed through the
passage bisecting the lower part of the plain two-story house and went
out at the rear door. In the back yard he found his nephew, George
Drake, a boy of fifteen years, seated on the grass repairing a ragged,
mud-stained fish-net.

"Who told you you could be out o' school, young feller?" John
demanded, dryly. "I'll bet my life you are playin' hookey. You think
because your sister's the teacher you can run wild like a mountain
shote. My Lord, look at your clothes! I'll swear it would be hard to
tell whether you've got on anything or not--that is, anything except
mud an' slime. Have you been tryin' to pull that seine through the
creek by yourself?"

The boy, who had a fine head and profile and was stoutly built and
generally good-looking, was too busy with his strings and knots to
look up. "Some fool left it in the creek, and it's laid there for the
last month," he mumbled. "I had to go in after it, and it was all
tangled up and clogged with mud. Dolly knew I wasn't going to school
to-day."

"She knew it when you didn't turn up at roll-call, I bound you," Webb
drawled. "Say, do you know a young gal like her ain't strong enough to
lick scholars as sound as they ought to be licked, and thar is _some_
talk about appointin' some able-bodied man that lives close about to
step in an' sort o' clean up two or three times a week. I don't know
but what I'd like the job. A feller that goes as nigh naked as you do
would be a blame good thing to practise on."

"Huh!" the boy sniffed, as he tossed back his shaggy brown hair. "You
talk mighty big. I'd like to see you try to whip me--I shore would."

"Well, I may give you the chance if Dolly calls on me to help 'er
out," Webb laughed. "Say, I started to tell you a secret, but I
won't."

"I already know what it is," George said, with a mischievous grin.

"You say you do?" Webb was caught in the wily fellow's snare.

"Yes, you are going to get married." The boy now burst into a roar of
laughter and threw himself back on the grass. "You and Sue Tidwell are
going to get spliced. The whole valley's talking about it, and hoping
that it will be public like an election barbecue. You with your red
head and freckled face and her with her stub nose and--"

"That will do--that will do!" Webb's frown seemed to deepen the flush
which, fold upon fold, came into his face. "Jokin' is all right, but
it ain't fair to bring in a lady's name."

"Oh no, of course not." The boy continued to laugh through the net
which he had drawn over him. "The shoe is on the other foot now."

"Well, I'm not goin' to tell you the news," Webb declared, with a
touch of propitiation in his voice; and, not a little discomfited, he
turned away, employing a quicker step than usually characterized his
movement.

"The young scamp!" he said. "He's gittin' entirely too forward--
entirely, for a boy as young as he is, and me his uncle."

Crossing a strip of meadow land, then picking his way between the rows
of a patch of corn, and skirting a cotton-field, he came out into a
red-clay road. Along this he walked till he reached a little meeting-
house snugly ensconced among big trees at the foot of the mountain.
The white frame building, oblong in shape, had four windows with green
outer blinds on each of its two sides, and a door at the end nearer
the road. As Webb traversed the open space, where, on Sundays, horses
were hitched to the trees and saplings, a drone as of countless bees
fell on his ears. To a native this needed no explanation. During five
of the week-days the building was used as a schoolhouse. The sound was
made by the students studying aloud, and John's niece, Dolly Drake,
had sole charge of them.

Reaching the door and holding his hat in his hand, Webb cautiously
peered within, beholding row after row of boys and girls whose backs
were turned to him. At a blackboard on the platform, a bit of chalk in
her fingers, Dolly, a girl eighteen years of age, stood explaining an
example in arithmetic to several burly boys taller than herself. Webb
glanced up at the sun.

"They haven't had recess yet," he reckoned. "I swear I'm sorry for
them boys. I'd rather take a dozen lickin's than to stay in on a day
like this an' try to git lessons in my head. I don't blame George a
bit, so I don't. I can't recall a thing in the Saviour's teachin's
about havin' to study figures an' geography, nohow. Looks to me like
the older the world gits the further it gits from common sense."

Patiently Webb held his ground till Dolly had dismissed the class;
then, turning to a table on which stood a cumbersome brass bell, she
said: "I'm going to let you have recess, but you've got to go out
quietly."

She had not ceased speaking, and had scarcely touched the handle of
the bell, when there was a deafening clatter of books and slates on
the crude benches. Feet shod and feet bare pounded the floor. Merry
yells rent the air. On the platform itself two of the arithmetic
delinquents were boxing playfully, fiercely punching, thrusting, and
dodging. At a window three boys were bodily ejecting a fourth, the
legs and feet of whom, like a human letter V, were seen disappearing
over the sill.

Smilingly Webb stood aside and let the clamoring drove hurtle past to
the playground outside, and when the way was clear he entered the
church and stalked up the single aisle toward his niece. Dolly had
turned back to the blackboard, and was sponging off the chalk figures.
She was quite pretty; her eyes were large, with fathomless hazel
depths. Her brow, under a mass of uncontrollable reddish-brown hair,
was high and indicative of decided intellectual power. She was of
medium height, very shapely, and daintily graceful. She had a good
nose and a sweet, sympathetic mouth. Her hands were slender and
tapering, though suggestive of strength. She wore a simple white
shirtwaist and a black skirt than which nothing could have been more
becoming. Hearing her uncle's step, she turned and greeted his smile
with a dubious one of her own.

"Why don't you go out and play with the balance an' limber yourself
up?" he asked.

"Play? I say _play!_" she sighed. "You men don't know any more about
what a woman teacher has to contend with than a day-old kitten. My
head is in a constant whirl. Sometimes I forget my own name."

"What's wrong now?" Webb smiled eagerly.

"Oh, it's everything--everything!" she sighed. "Not a thing has
happened right to-day. George flatly refused to come to school--even
defied me before some other boys down the road. Then my own sister--"

"What's wrong with Ann? I remember now that I didn't see her in that
drove just now, and she certainly ain't at home, because I'm just from
thar."

"No, she isn't at home," Dolly frowned, and, for an obvious reason,
raised her voice to a high pitch, "but I'll tell you where she is, and
as her own blood uncle you can share my humiliation." Therewith Dolly
grimly pointed at a closet door close by. "Open it," she said. "The
truth is, I told her she would have to stay there twenty minutes, and
I've been bothered all through the last recitation for fear she
wouldn't get enough air. All at once she got still, though she kept up
a terrible racket at first."

With a grin Webb mounted the platform and opened the door of the
closet. He opened it quite widely, that Dolly might look into the
receptacle from where she stood. And there against the wall, seated on
the floor, was Dolly's sister Ann, a slim-legged, rather pretty girl
about fourteen years of age, her eyes sullenly cast down. Around her
were some dismantled, ill-smelling lamps, a step-ladder, an old stove,
and a bench holding a stack of hymn-books.

"She ain't _quite_ dead," John said, dryly. "She's still breathin'
below the neck, an' she's got some red in the face."

"She ought to be red from head to foot," Dolly said, for the culprit's
ears. "Ann, come here!"

There was no movement on the part of the prisoner save a desultory
picking of the fingers at a fold of her gingham skirt.

"Didn't you hear what Dolly--what your teacher said?" Webb asked, in
an effort at severity which was far from his mood.

"Of course she heard," Dolly said, sharply. "She thinks it will mend
matters for her to pout awhile. Come here, Ann."

"I want to stay here," Ann muttered; "I like it. Shut the door, Uncle
John. It is cool and nice in here."

"She wants to stay." Webb's eyes danced as he conveyed the message.
"She says she likes it, an' I reckon she does. Scripture says them
whose deeds is evil likes darkness better'n light. You certainly made
a mistake when you clapped 'er in here--that is, if you meant to
punish 'er. Ann's a reg'lar bat, if not a' owl."

"Pull her out!" Dolly cried. "I've got to talk to her, and recess is
almost over."

"Come out, young lady," Webb laid hold of the girl's wrist and drew
the reluctant creature to her feet, half pushing, half leading her to
her sister.

"I'm glad you happened in, Uncle John," Dolly said. "I want you to
take a look at that face. How she got the money I don't know, but she
bought a dozen sticks of licorice at the store as she passed this
morning and brought them to school in her pocket. She's been gorging
herself with it all day. You can see it all over her face, under her
chin, behind her neck, and even in her ears. Look here at her new
geography." Dolly, in high disgust, exhibited several brown smudges on
an otherwise clean page.

Webb took the book with all the gravity of a most righteous, if highly
amused judge. "Looks like ham gravy, don't it?" he said. "An' as I
understand it, the book has to be handed on to somebody else when she
gits through with it. What a pity!"

"I know you are ashamed of her, Uncle John, for I am," Dolly
continued. "You see, she's my own sister."

"And my own sister's child," Webb deplored. "Of course, she ain't
_quite_ as close to me as she is to you, but she's nigh enough to
make me feel plumb ashamed. I've always tuck pride in both you gals;
but lawsy me, if Ann is goin' to gaum 'erself from head to foot like a
pig learnin' to root, why, I reckon I'll jest hang my head in shame."

"I've lost all patience," the teacher said. "Go home, Ann, and let
mother look at you. Don't come back to-day. I don't want to see you
again. I've lost heart completely. I want to be proud of you and
George, but I'm afraid I never can be. She can't write, Uncle John;
she can't spell the simplest words in three syllables; and as for
using correct grammar and pronunciation--" But Ann was stalking off
without looking back.

Dolly sat down at the table and drew a sheet of paper toward her.
"She's got me all upset," she sighed. "Mr. DeWitt, the new teacher,
has been sending about a test example in arithmetic to see who can
work it. He says he can do it, and one or two other _men_, but that he
never has seen a woman teacher yet who could get the answer. I was
within an inch of the solution when I caught sight of that girl's
face, and it went from me in a flash. Uncle John, if fifteen men own
in common three hundred and eighty-four bushels of wheat, and three
men want to buy sixty-seven and three-fourths of--"

"Oh, Lord--thar you go!" Webb groaned. "Let me tell you some'n',
Dolly. The fool feller that concocted that thing to idle time away
with never hoed a row of corn or planted a potato. Do you know what
that's meant for? It is for no other reason under the shinin' sun than
to make the average parent think teachers know more'n the rest o'
humanity. In the first place, the fifteen common men must be common
shore enough if they couldn't own all told more than that amount o'
wheat in this day and time when even a one-horse farmer can raise--"

"You don't understand," Dolly broke in, with an indulgent smile.

"And I don't want to, either," John declared. "It is hard enough work
to sow and reap and thresh wheat in hot weather like this without
sweatin' over fifteen able-bodied men that are jowerin' about a pile
no bigger'n that."

Dolly glanced at the round rosewood clock on the plastered wall and
reached for the bell-handle. "My time's up," she said. "I wish I could
stop my ears with cotton. They always come in like a drove of iron-
shod mules on a wooden bridge."

"Your pa's got a piece o' news this mornin'." Webb knew his words
would stay the hand now resting on the bell.

"What is it?" Dolly inquired.

"He got a letter from Mr. Mostyn; he's comin' up to board at the house
for a month."

The pretty hand dropped from the bell-handle. Dolly was staring at the
speaker in surprise. She said nothing, though he was sure a flush was
creeping into her cheeks.

"I sorter thought that 'ud stagger you," Webb said with a significant
grin.

"Me? I don't see why." Dolly was fighting for perfect composure under
trying circumstances, considering her uncle's mischievous stare.

"Well, I do, if you don't, Miss Dolly," he tittered. "You wasn't a bit
older 'n Ann is when he was here last, but you was daffy about 'im the
same as your ma an' all the rest o' the women. In fact, you was wuss
than the balance."

"Me? I'm ashamed of you, Uncle John; I'm ashamed to hear you accuse me
of--of--why, I never heard of such a thing."

"No matter, I wasn't plumb blind," Webb went on. "You kept puttin'
fresh flowers in his room an' you eyed his plate like he was a pet cat
to see if he was bein' fed right. La me, I'm no fool! I know a
_little_ about females, an' I never saw a mountain woman yet that
wouldn't go stark crazy over a town man or a' unmarried preacher. I
reckon it must be the clothes the fellers wear or the prissy stuff
they chat about."

Dolly put her hand out toward the bell, but dropped it to the table.
"When is he coming?" she asked, her eyes holding a tense, eager stare.

"Thursday," was the answer, accompanied by a widening grin. "I
wouldn't give the children a holiday on the strength of it if I was
you. Part o' these mountain folks is men an' moonshiners, an' they
don't think any more about a feller that owns a bank in Atlanta 'an
they do of a mossback clod-hopper with the right sort o' heart in 'im.
Say, Mostyn ain't nothin' but human, an' if what _some_ say is so he
ain't the highest grade o' that. Over at Hilton's warehouse in
Ridgeville t'other day I heard some cotton-buyers talkin' about men
that had riz fast an' the underhanded tricks sech chaps use to
hoodwink simple folks, an' they said Dick Mostyn capped the stack.
Accordin' to them, he--"

"I don't believe a word of it!" Dolly stood up and angrily grasped the
bell-handle. "It's not true. It's a meddlesome lie. They are jealous.
People are always like that--it makes them furious to see another
person prosper. They are mean, low back-biters."

"Oh, I don't say that Mostyn will actually be arrested before he gits
up here," John said, dryly. "From all reports he generally has the law
on his side, an'--"

But Dolly, still angry, was ringing the bell. She had turned her back
to Webb; and, unable to make himself heard, he made his way down the
aisle to the door.

"She's a regular spitfire when she gits 'er back up," he mused. "Now I
_know_ she likes 'im. It's been three years since she laid eyes on
'im, but she's as daffy now as she was then. It must 'a' been the
feller's gallant way. I remember he used to say she was the purtiest
an' brightest little trick he ever seed. Maybe he said somethin' o'
the sort to her, young as she was. I remember I used to think Sis was
a fool to let 'im walk about with Dolly so much, pickin' flowers an'
the like. Well, if he thought she was purty an' smart then he'll be
astonished now--he shore will."





CHAPTER IV




As Mostyn's train ascended the grade leading up to the hamlet of
Ridgeville, within a mile of which lay the little farm to which he was
going, he sat at an open window and viewed the scene with delight,
drawing into his lungs with a sense of restful content the crisp,
rarefied air. To the west, and marking the vicinity of Drake's farm,
the mountain loomed up in its blended coat of gray and green, growing
more and more indistinct as the range gradually extended into the
bluish haze of distance.

"I'm going to like it," he said, almost aloud, with the habit he had
of talking to himself when alone. "I feel as if I shall never want to
look inside a bank again. This is life, real, sensible life. I have,
after all, always had a yearning for genuine simplicity. It must have
come to me from my pioneer, Puritan ancestry. That man over there
plowing corn with his mule and ragged harness is happier than I ever
was down there in that God-forsaken turmoil. The habit of wanting to
beat other men in the expert turning over of capital is as dangerous,
once it clutches you, as morphine. I must call a halt. That last
narrow escape shall be a lesson. I am getting normal again, and I must
stay so. What are Alan Delbridge's operations to me? He has no nerves
nor imagination. He could have slept through that last tangle of mine
which came within an inch of laying me out stiff and stark. I wonder
how all the Drakes are, especially Dolly. She must be fully grown now.
Saunders says she is beautiful and as wise as Socrates. I suppose
there are a dozen mountain boys after her by this time. For a little
girl she was astonishingly mature in manner and thought. I ought not
to have talked to her as I did. I have never forgotten her face and
voice as I saw and heard them that last night. I see the wonderful
eyes and mouth, the like of which I have never run across since. I am
ashamed to think that I acted as I did, and she only an inexperienced
child; but I really couldn't help it. I seemed to be in a dream. It
was really an unpardonable thing--and proves that I _do_ lack
character--for me to tell her that I would often think of her. But the
worst of all, really the most cowardly, considering her unsuspecting
innocence and exaggerated faith in me, was my kissing her as I did
there in the moonlight. How exquisite was her vow that she'd never
kiss any other man as long as she lived! Lord, I wonder what ails me.
Surely I am not silly enough to be actually--"

Mostyn's meditations were interrupted by a shrill shriek from the
locomotive. Leaning out of the window, he saw the little old-fashioned
brick car-shed ahead and heard the grinding of the brakes on the
smooth wheels beneath the car. Grasping his bag in his hand, he made
his way out and descended to the ground.

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