The Lady Doc - Caroline Lockhart (ebook reader computer .txt) 📗

Society

The change which a marcelled pompadour, kimona sleeves, a peach-basket hat, and a hobble skirt wrought in the appearance of Mrs. Andy P. Symes, nee Kunkel, was a source of amazement to Crowheart. Her apologetic diffidence was now replaced by an air of complacency arising from the fact that since her return she began to regard herself as a travelled lady who had seen much of life. The occasions upon which she had sat blushing and stammering in the presence of her husband's friends were fast fading from mind in the agreeable experience of finding herself treated with deference by those who formerly had seemed rather to tolerate than desire her society. Until her return to Crowheart she had not in the least realized what a difference her marriage was to make in her life.

In that other environment she had felt like a servant girl taken red-handed and heavy-footed from the kitchen and suddenly placed in the drawing-room upon terms of equality with her mistress and her mistresses's friends, but she had profited by her opportunities and now brought back with her something of the air and manner of speech and dress of those who had embarrassed her. While Crowheart laughed a little behind her back it was nevertheless impressed by the mild affectations.

It is no exaggeration to say that Crowheart's eyes protruded when Mrs. Symes returned the neighborly visits of the ladies who had "just run in to see how she was gettin' on," by a series of formal afternoon calls. No such fashionable sight ever had been witnessed in the town as Mrs. Symes presented when, in a pair of white kid gloves and a veil, she picked her way with ostentatious daintiness across several vacant lots still encumbered with cactus and sagebrush, to the log residence of Mr. and Mrs. Alva Jackson.

There was a pair of eyes staring unabashed at every front window in the neighborhood when Mrs. Symes stood on Mrs. Jackson's "stoop" and removed a piece of baling wire from the lace frill of her petticoat before she wrapped her handkerchief around her hand to protect her white kid knuckles and knocked with lady-like gentleness upon Mrs. Jackson's door.

Mrs. Jackson, who had been peering through the foliage of a potted geranium on the window-sill, was pinning frantically at her scolding locks, but retained sufficient presence of mind to let a proper length of time elapse before opening the door. When she did, it was with an elaborate bow from the waistline and a surprised—

"Why, how do you do, Mis' Symes!"

Mrs. Symes smiled in prim sweetness, and noting that Mrs. Jackson's hands looked reasonably clean, extended one of the first two white kid gloves in Crowheart which Mrs. Jackson shook with heartiness before bouncing back and inquiring—

"Won't you come in, Mis' Symes?"

"Thanks." Mrs. Symes took a pinch of the front breadth of her skirt between her thumb and finger and stepped daintily over the door-sill.

"Set down," urged Mrs. Jackson making a dash at a blue plush rocking-chair which she rolled into the centre of the room with great energy.

When the chair tipped and sent Mrs. Symes's feet into the air Mrs. Jackson's burst of laughter was heard distinctly by Mrs. Tutts across the street.

"Trash!" exclaimed that person in unfathomable contempt.

Mrs. Jackson had two missing front teeth which she had lost upon an occasion to which she no longer referred, also a voice strained and husky from the many midnight choruses in which she had joined before she sold her goodwill and fixtures. She now rested her outspread fingers upon each knee and wildly ransacked her brain for something light and airy in the way of conversation.

Mrs. Symes, sitting bolt upright on the edge of the plush rocking-chair with her long, flat feet pressed tightly together, tweaked at the only veil in Crowheart and cleared her throat with subdued and lady-like restraint before she inquired—

"Isn't it a lovely day?"

"Oh, lovely!" Mrs. Jackson answered with husky vivacity. "Perfeckly lovely!"

Another silence followed and something of Mrs. Jackson's mental state could be read in her dilated pupils and excited, restless eyes. Finally she said in a desperate voice—

"It's a grand climate anyhow."

"If it wasn't for the wind; it's one drawback."

Another burst of laughter from Mrs. Jackson who covered her mouth with her hand after the manner of those who have been unfortunate in the matter of front teeth.

"Cats!" hissed Mrs. Tutts across the street. "I'll bet they are laffin' at me!"

"We had charming weather while we were gone," continued Mrs. Symes easily. The word was new to her vocabulary and its elegance did not escape Mrs. Jackson.

"That's good."

"The change was so beneficial to me. One so soon exhausts a small town, don't you think so, Mrs. Jackson?"

Mrs. Jackson could not truthfully say that she ever had felt that she had exhausted Crowheart, but she agreed weakly—

"Uh-huh."

"I had so many new and delightful experiences, too." Mrs. Symes smiled a sweetly reminiscent smile.

"You musta had."

"Going out in the train we had cantelope with cracked ice in it. You must try it sometimes, Mrs. Jackson—it's delicious."

"I can't say when I've et a cantelope but, Oh Lord, I has a hankerin' for eggs! I tell Jackson the next time he ships he's gotta take me along, for I want to git out where I can git my mitt on a pair of eggs."

"We became quite surfeited with eggs, Phidias and I," observed Mrs. Symes with an air of ennui.

Mrs. Jackson blinked.

"I can't go 'em onless they're plumb fresh," she replied non-committally.

"I've had such a pleasant call." Mrs. Symes rose.

"Run in agin." Mrs. Jackson's eyes were glued upon the leather card-case from which Mrs. Symes was endeavoring to extract a card with fingers which she was unable to bend.

"Thanks. I've been so busy getting settled and all but now I mean to keep a servant and shall have more time."

Mrs. Jackson had read of ladies who kept servants but never had hoped to know one.

"Where you goin' to git—it? From Omyhaw or K. C.?"

"Grandmother has promised to come to me," said Mrs. Symes languidly.

Mrs. Jackson's jaw dropped.

"Gramma Kunkel ain't a servant, is she? she's 'help.'"

"'Help' are servants," explained Mrs. Symes with gentle patience as she laid her printed visiting card upon the centre table.

"Gosh! that strikes me funny." Mrs. Jackson was natural at last.

"Not at all," replied Mrs. Symes with hauteur. "She must work, so why not for me? She's strong and very, very capable."

"Oh, she's capable all right, but," persisted Mrs. Jackson unconvinced, "it strikes me funny. Say, is Essie Tisdale a servant, too?"

Mrs. Symes smiled ever so slightly as she fumbled with her visiting card and laid it in a more conspicuous place.

"Certainly."

"Was that why she wasn't ast to the banquet?"

Again Mrs. Symes smiled the slow, deprecating smile which she was assiduously cultivating.

"Society must draw the line somewhere, Mrs. Jackson."

Mrs. Jackson gulped with a clicking sound, and at the door shook hands with Mrs. Symes, wearing the dazed expression of one who has bumped his head on a shelf corner. Through the potted geranium she watched Mrs. Symes picking her way across another vacant lot to the dwelling of the Sylvanus Starr's.

Mrs. Abe Tutts with her blue flannel yachting cap set at an aggressive angle over one eye paddled across the street and was upon Mrs. Jackson before that person was aware of her presence.

"Has that guttersnipe gone?" A quite superfluous question, as Mrs. Jackson was well aware.

"Of who are you speakin'?" inquired Mrs. Jackson coldly.

"Who would I be speakin' of but Gus Kunkel?" demanded Mrs. Tutts belligerently.

"Look here, Mis' Tutts, I don't want to have no words with you, but——"

"What's that?" interrupted Mrs. Tutts eyeing the visiting card which Mrs. Jackson had been studying intently. "Is she leavin' tickets for somethin'?"

"Oh, no," replied. Mrs. Jackson in a blasé tone, "this is merely her callin' card."

"Callin' card! You was to home, wasn't you?"

"It's the new style to leave your callin' card whether they're to home or not," explained Mrs. Jackson, hazarding a guess.

Mrs. Jackson's air of familiarity with social mysteries was most exasperating to Mrs. Tutts.

"What's the sense of that? Lemme see it."

Mrs. Tutts read laboriously and with unmitigated scorn:

Mrs. Andrew Phidias Symes

At Home
Thursday 2-4

She sank cautiously into the blue rocking-chair and removed a hatpin which skewered her yachting cap to a knob of hair.

"That beats me! 'Mrs. Andrew Phidias Symes!'" Mrs. Tutts saw no reason to slight the letter p and pronounced it distinctly. "At home Thursdays between two and four! What of it? Ain't we all generally home Thursdays between two and four?"

"Gussie has improved wonderful," replied Mrs. Jackson pacifically.

"Improved! If you call goin' around passin' of them up that she's knowed well 'improved' why then she has improved wonderful. Snip!"

"I don't think she really aimed to pass you up."

"I wasn't thinkin' of myself," replied Mrs. Tutts hotly, "I was thinking of Essie Tisdale. I hope Mis' Symes don't come around to call on me—I'm kind of perticular who I entertain."

Mrs. Jackson's hard blue eyes began to shine, but Mrs. Jackson had been something of a warrior herself in her day and knew a warrior when she saw one. She had no desire to engage in a hand to hand conflict with Mrs. Tutts, whose fierceness she was well aware was more than surface deep, and she read in that person's alert pose a disconcerting readiness for action. It was a critical moment, one which required tact, for a single injudicious word would precipitate a fray of which Mrs. Jackson could not be altogether sure of the result. Besides, poised as she was like a winged Mercury on the threshold of Society, she could not afford any low scene with Mrs. Tutts. Conquering her resentment, Mrs. Jackson said conciliatingly—

"Yes, of course, now we 're married it's different—we have to be perticular who we entertain. As Mis' Symes says—'Society must draw the line somewhere!'"

Mrs. Tutts searched her face in quick suspicion.

"Who'd she say it about?"

"Promise me that this won't go no further—hope to die?—but to tell the truth we was speakin' of Essie Tisdale."

Mrs. Tutts looked mystified.

"What's she done?"

In unconscious imitation of Mrs. Symes, Mrs. Jackson curled her little finger and smiled a slow, deprecating smile—

"You see she works out—she's really a servant."

Mrs. Tutts nodded in entire comprehension.

"I know; back East in Dakoty we always looked down on them more or less as was out'n out hired girls. But out here I've aimed to treat everybody the same."

"I'll say that for you, Mis' Tutts," declared Mrs. Jackson generously, "you've never showed no diffrunce to nobody."

"I'm glad you think so," said Mrs. Tutts modestly, "and I don't mean to pass Essie Tisdale up altogether."

"Ner me," declared Mrs. Jackson, "she's a perfeckly good girl so far as I know."

"Where do you suppose Mis' Symes got them cards printed?" inquired Mrs. Tutts. "I gotta git Tutts to git to work and git me some."

"Over to the Courier office I should think," Mrs. Jackson added. "It's lucky I got some in the house since they've started in usin' em."

There was a moment's silence in which Mrs. Tutts eyed Mrs. Jackson with unfriendly eyes. It seemed very plain to her that her neighbor was trying to "put it over her." The temptation against which she struggled was too strong and she inquired pointedly while she discreetly arose to go—

"Business cards, Mis' Jackson—some you had left over?"

Diplomacy was scattered to the four winds.

"No; not business cards, Mis' Tutts! Callin' cards. I'll show you one since I've no notion you ever saw one back there in that beer garden where you cracked your voice singin'!"

Mrs. Tutts put on her yachting cap and pulling it down on her head until her hair was well covered, advanced menacingly.

"You gotta eat them words, Mis' Jackson," she said with ominous calm.

Mrs. Jackson retreated until the marble-topped centre table formed a protecting barrier.

"Don't you start no