The Lady Doc by Caroline Lockhart (best english novels for beginners TXT) 📖
- Author: Caroline Lockhart
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The bartender was the first to arrive and Van Lennop was not far behind, while others, hastily dressed, followed.
The Dago Duke gripped Van Lennop's hand in dreadful terror.
"Don't let it come across that seam in the carpet! Don't let it come!"
"I'll not; it shan't touch you; don't be afraid, old man." There was something wonderfully soothing in Van Lennop's quiet voice.
"I'll tell the lady doc to bounce out," said the bartender. "He's got 'em bad. I had 'em twict myself and took the cure. It's fierce. He's gotta have some dope—a shot o' hop will fix him."
The bartender hurried away on his kindly mission, while the Dago Duke clung to Van Lennop like a horrified child to its mother.
Dr. Harpe came quickly, her hair loose about her shoulders, looking younger and more girlish in a soft negligee than Van Lennop had ever seen her. She saw the faint shade of prejudice cross his face as she entered, but satisfaction was in her own. Her chance had come at last in this unexpected way.
"Snakes," she said laconically.
"Yes," Van Lennop replied with equal brevity.
"I'll have to quiet him. Will you stay with him?" She addressed Van Lennop.
"Certainly."
"Look here," protested the bartender in an injured voice. "He's my best friend and havin' had snakes myself——"
"Aw—clear out—all of you. We'll take care of him."
"Folks that has snakes likes their bes' friends around 'em," declared the bartender stubbornly. "They has influence——"
"Get out," reiterated Dr. Harpe curtly, and he finally went with the rest.
"I'll give him a hypodermic," she said when the room was cleared, and hastened back to her office for the needle.
Together they watched the morphine do its work and sat in silence while the wrecked and jangling nerves relaxed and sleep came to the unregenerate Dago Duke.
Dr. Harpe's impassive face gave no indication of the activity of her mind. Now that the opportunity to "square herself," to use her own words, had arrived, she had no notion of letting it pass.
"He seems in a bad way," Van Lennop said at last in a formal tone.
"It had to come—the clip he was going," she replied, seating herself on the edge of the bed and wiping the moisture from his forehead with the corner of the sheet.
The action was womanly, she herself looked softer, more womanly, than she had appeared to Van Lennop, yet he felt no relenting and wondered at himself.
She ended another silence by turning to him suddenly and asking with something of a child's blunt candor——
"You don't like me, do you?"
The awkward and unexpected question surprised him and he did not immediately reply. His first impulse was to answer with a bluntness equal to her own, but he checked it and said instead——
"One's first impressions are often lasting and you must admit, Dr. Harpe, that my first knowledge of you——"
"Was extremely unfavorable," she finished for him. "I know it." She laughed in embarrassment. "You thought, and still think, that I'm one of these medicine sharks—a regular money grabber."
Van Lennop replied dryly——
"I do not recollect ever having known another physician quite so keen about his fee."
She flushed, but went on determinedly—
"I know how it must have looked to you—I've thought of it a thousand times—but there were extenuating circumstances. I came here 'broke' with only a little black case of pills and a few bandages. My hotel bill was overdue and my little drug stock exhausted. I was 'up against it'—desperate—and I believed if that fellow got away I'd never see or hear of him again. I've had that experience and I was just in a position where I couldn't afford to take a chance. There isn't much practice here, it's a miserably healthful place, and necessity sometimes makes us seem sordid whether we are or not. I'd like your good opinion, Mr. Van Lennop. Won't you try and see my position from a more charitable point of view?"
He wanted to be fair to her, he intended to be just, and yet he found himself only able to say—
"I can't quite understand how you could find it in your heart even to hesitate in a case like that."
"I meant to do it in the end," she pleaded. "But I was wrong, I see that now, and I've been sorrier than you can know. Please be charitable."
She put out her hand impulsively and he took it—reluctantly. He wondered why she repelled him so strongly even while recognizing the odd charm of manner which was undoubtedly hers when she chose to display it.
"I hope we'll be good friends," she said earnestly.
"I trust so," he murmured, but in his heart he knew they never would be "good friends."
The Symes Irrigation Company was now well under way. The application for segregation of 200,000 acres of irrigable land had been granted. The surveyors had finished and the line of stakes stretching away across the hills was a mecca for Sunday sight-seers. The contracts for the moving of dirt from the intake to the first station had been let and when the first furrow was turned and the first scoop of dirt removed from the excavation, Crowheart all but carried Andy P. Symes on its shoulders.
"Nothing succeeds like success," he was wont to tell himself frequently but without bitterness or resentment for previous lack of appreciation. He could let bygones be bygones, for it was easy enough to be generous in the hour of his triumph.
"He had it in him," one-time sceptics admitted.
"Blood will tell," declared his supporters emphatically and there was now no dissenting voice to the oft-repeated aphorism.
Symes moved among his satellites with that benign unbending which is a recognized attribute of the truly great. The large and opulent air which formerly he had assumed when most in need of credit was now habitual, but his patronage was regarded as a favor; indeed the Crowheart Mercantile Company considered it the longest step in its career when the commissary of the Symes Irrigation Company owed it nearly $7000.
Conditions changed rapidly in Crowheart once work actually began. The call for laborers brought a new and strange class of people to its streets—swarthy, chattering persons with long backs, and short legs, of frugal habits, yet, after all, leaving much silver in the town on the Saturday night which followed payday.
Symes's domestic life was moving as smoothly and as satisfactorily as his business affairs. A lifetime seemed to lie between that memorable journey on the "Main Line" with Augusta in her brown basque and dreadful hat, and the present. She was improving wonderfully. He had to admit that. "No, sir," he told himself occasionally, "Augusta isn't half bad." Her unconcealed adoration and devotion to himself had awakened affection in return, at least her gaucheries no longer exasperated him and they were daily growing less. Dr. Harpe had been right when she had told him that Augusta was as imitative as a parrot, and he often smiled to himself at her affectations, directly traceable to her diligent perusal of The Ladies' Own and the column devoted to the queries of troubled social aspirants. While it amused him he approved, for an imitation lady was better than the frankly impossible girl he had married. Something of this was in his mind while engaged one day in the absorbing occupation of buttoning Mrs. Symes's blouse up the back.
He raised his head at the sound of a step on the narrow porch.
"Who's that?"
"Dr. Harpe."
"What—again?"
There was a suspicion of irritation in his voice, for now that he came to think of it, he and Augusta had not dined alone a single evening that week.
"What of it? Do you mind, Phidias?"
"Oh, no; only isn't she crowding the mourners a little? Isn't she rather regular?"
"I asked her," Mrs. Symes replied uneasily.
"It's all right; I'm not complaining—only why don't you ask some one else occasionally?"
"I don't want them," she answered bluntly.
"The best of reasons, my dear," and Symes turned away to complete his own toilet while Augusta hastened out of the room to greet the Doctor.
Symes wondered if the installation of a meal ticket system at the Terriberry House had anything to do with the frequency with which he found Dr. Harpe at his table, and was immediately ashamed of himself for the thought. It recalled, however, an incident which had amused him, though it had since slipped his mind. He had found a pie in his writing desk and had asked Grandma Kunkel, who still formed a part of his unique ménage, for an explanation.
"I'm hidin' it," she had answered shortly.
"From whom?"
"Dr. Harpe. I have to do it if I want anything for the next meal. She helps herself. She's got an awful appetite."
He had laughed at the time at her injured tone and angry eyes and he smiled now at the recollection. It was obvious that she did not like Dr. Harpe, and he was not sure, he could not exactly say, that he liked her himself, or rather, he did not entirely like this sudden and violent intimacy between her and Augusta, which brought her so constantly to the house. Some time he meant to ask Grandmother Kunkel why she so resented Dr. Harpe's presence.
Dr. Harpe was seated in a porch chair, with one leg thrown over the arm, swinging her dangling foot, when Mrs. Symes appeared. She turned her head and eyed her critically, as she stood in the doorway.
"Gus, you're gettin' to be a looker."
Mrs. Symes smiled with pleasure at the compliment.
"You are for a fact; that's a nifty way you have of doin' your hair and you walk as if you had some gumption. Come here, Gus."
Dr. Harpe pushed her unpinned Stetson to the back of her head with a careless gesture; it was a man's gesture and her strong hand beneath the stiff cuff of her tailored shirtwaist strengthened the impression of masculinity.
She arose and motioned Mrs. Symes to take the chair she had vacated while she seated herself upon the arm.
"Where have you been all day?" There was reproach in Mrs. Symes's dark eyes as she raised them to the woman's face.
"Have you missed me?" A faint smile curved Dr. Harpe's lips.
"Missed you! I've been so nervous and restless all day that I couldn't sit still."
"Why didn't you come over to the hotel?" Dr. Harpe was watching her troubled face intently.
"I wanted to—I wanted to go so much that I determined not to give in to the feeling. Really it frightened me."
Dr. Harpe's eyes looked a muddy green, like the sea when it washes among the piling.
"Perhaps I was wishing for you—willing you to come."
"Were you? I felt as though something was making me go, making me almost against my will, and each time I started toward the door I simply had to force myself to go back. I can't explain exactly, but it was so strange."
"Very strange, Gus." Her eyes now held a curious gleam. "But the next time you want to come—come, do you hear? I shall be wishing for you."
"But why did you stay away all day?"
"I wanted to see if you would miss me—how much."
"I was miserably lonesome. Don't do it again—please!"
"You have your Phidias." There was a sneer in her voice.
"Oh, yes," Mrs. Symes responded simply, "but he has been gone all day."
"All day! Dreadful—how very sad!" She laughed disagreeably. "And are you still so desperately in love with Phidias?"
"Of course. Why not? He's very good to me. Did you imagine I was not?"
"Oh, no," the other returned carelessly.
"Then why did you ask?"
"No reason at all except that—I like you pretty well myself. Clothes have been the making of you, Gus. You're an attractive woman now."
Mrs. Symes flushed with pleasure at the unusual compliment from Doctor Harpe.
"Am I? Really?"
"You are. I like women anyhow; men bore me mostly. I had
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