CHAPTER XIII
MRS. TOOMEY'S FRIENDSHIP IS TESTED
Momentarily flustered, flattered, and not a little curious, Mrs. Toomeyopened the door one afternoon and admitted Mrs. Abram Pantin, whoannounced vivaciously that she had run in informally for a few minutesand brought her shadow embroidery.
Since Mrs. Pantin never ran in informally anywhere, and she was wearingthe sunburst and rings which Mrs. Toomey had noted were in evidence whenshe wished particularly to have her position appreciated, the hostess,while expressing her pleasure, sought for the real purpose of the visit.
Ostensibly admiring Mrs. Pantin's new coiffure, she thought, bridling,"Perhaps she's come to find out how we're managing since Mr. Pantinrefused us."
Yet Mrs. Toomey had to acknowledge that this did not seem like hervisitor, either, for ordinarily she was too self-centered to be verycurious about others.
As the afternoon passed and Mrs. Pantin twittered brightly on impersonalsubjects, introducing topics which evidenced clearly that her mentalitywas of a higher order than that of the women about her, whoseconversation consisted chiefly of gossip and trivial happenings, Mrs.Toomey came to think that she was mistaken and that this friendly visitwas a rare compliment.
While Mrs. Pantin's bejewelled and rather clawlike fingers flew in andout of the embroidery hoop as she plied her needle, and while Mrs.Toomey adroitly selected the stockings which needed the least darningfrom her basket of mending, the latter came nearer really likingPriscilla Pantin than she had since she had known her.
Mrs. Pantin exhibited a completed spray for Mrs. Toomey's approval andcommented upon the swiftness with which time sped in congenial company.A delightful afternoon was especially appreciated in a community wherethere were so few with whom one could really unbend and talk freely--toall of which Mrs. Toomey agreed thoroughly, understanding, as she did,what Mrs. Pantin meant exactly.
"Even in a small community one must keep up the social bars and preservethe traditions of one's up-bringing, mustn't one?"
"One is apt to become lax, too democratic--it's the tendency of thiswestern country," Mrs. Toomey assented. She felt very exclusive andelegant at the moment.
Mrs. Pantin's eyes had been upon her work, now she raised them andlooked at Mrs. Toomey squarely.
"Have you seen--a--Miss Prentice lately?"
Mrs. Toomey had the physical sensation of her heart flopping over. Thatwas it, then! She had the feeling of having been trapped--hopelesslycornered. In a mental panic she answered:
"Not lately."
"Are you expecting to see much of her?"
There was something portentous in the sweetness with which Mrs. Pantinasked the question.
It was a crisis--not only the test of her promised friendship andloyalty to Kate but to her own character and courage. Was she strongenough to meet it?
It was one of Mrs. Toomey's misfortunes to be not only self-analytical,but honest. She had no hallucinations whatever regarding her ownweaknesses and shortcomings. As she called a spade a spade, so she knewherself to be by instinct and early training a toady. Of the same type,in appearance and characteristics, in this trait, lay the maindifference in the two women: while Mrs. Pantin with her betterintelligence was intensely selfish, Mrs. Toomey's dominant trait was amoral cowardice that made her a natural sycophant.
No quaking soldier ever exerted more will power to go into battle thandid Mrs. Toomey to answer:
"I hope so."
Mrs. Pantin's bright blue eyes sharpened. "Ah-h, they must have money!"she reflected. Aloud she said:
"Really?"
"Certainly."
This was mutiny. Mrs. Pantin lifted a sparse eyebrow--the one which theapplication of a burnt match improved wonderfully.
"Do you think that's--wise?"
Mrs. Toomey had a notion that if she attempted to stand her legs wouldbehave like two sticks of wet macaroni, yet she questioned defiantly:
"Why not?"
Undoubtedly they had made a raise somewhere!
"Why--my dear--her reputation!"
"She doesn't know any more about that murder than we do," bluntly.
"I wasn't referring to the murder--her morals."
"I don't question them, either."
"You are very charitable, Delia. She lived alone with Mormon Joe, didn'tshe?"
A frost seemed suddenly to have touched the perfect friendship betweenthese kindred spirits.
"I'm merely just," Mrs. Toomey retorted, though her heart was beatingfuriously. "All we know is hearsay."
With the restraint and sweetness of one who knows her power, Mrs. Pantinreplied:
"I'm sure it's lovely of you to defend her."
"Not at all--I like her personally," Mrs. Toomey answered stoutly.
It was time to lay on the lash; Mrs. Pantin saw that clearly.
"Nevertheless, as a friend I wouldn't advise you to take herup--to--er--hobnob with her." Mrs. Pantin did not like the word, but theoccasion required vigorous language.
"I'm the best judge of that, Prissy." Her hands were icy.
"When you came to town a stranger I tried to guide you in socialmatters," Mrs. Pantin reminded her. "I told you whose call to return andwhose not to--you found my judgment good, didn't you?"
"You've been more than kind," Mrs. Toomey murmured miserably, and added,"I'm so sorry for her."
"We all are that, Delia, but nevertheless I think you will do well tofollow my suggestion in this matter."
Mrs. Toomey recognized the veiled threat instantly. It conveyed to hersocial ostracism--not being asked to serve on church committees--omittedwhen invitations for teas were being issued--cold-shouldered out of theY.A.K. Society, which met monthly for purposes of mutual improvement--ofbeing blackballed, perhaps, when she would become a Maccabee! Sherepressed a shudder; her work swam before her downcast eyes and she drewup the darn on the stocking she was repairing until it looked like awen. The ordeal was worse than she had imagined it.
And how she hated Priscilla Pantin!
Always Mrs. Toomey had had a quaint conceit that if she listenedattentively she would be able to hear Priscilla's heart jingling in herbody--rattling like a bit of ice in a tin bucket. Now the woman's mean,chaste little soul laid bare before her filled Delia Toomey with a dumbfury.
Mrs. Pantin waited patiently for her answer, though the experience was anew one. Usually she had only to reach for the whip when her satellitesmutinied; almost never was it necessary to crack it.
While Mrs. Toomey hesitated Mrs. Pantin folded her work--this, too, wassignificant.
Mrs. Toomey replied, finally, in desperation:
"I'll think over what you've said, Priscilla. I appreciate yourintentions, thoroughly, believe me."
There was a cowed note in her voice which Mrs. Pantin detected. Shesmiled faintly.
"I don't know when I've spent such a delightful afternoon," and kissedher.
Mrs. Toomey curbed an impulse to bite her friend as she returned theparting salute.
"And I've so enjoyed having you," she murmured.
* * * * *
Mrs. Toomey turned pale when she looked through the front window and sawKate, a few days after Mrs. Pantin's visit, dismount and tie her horseto the cottonwood sapling, for the threat, which held for her all theimport of a Ku-Klux warning, had been hanging over her like the sword ofDamocles.
It had haunted her by day, and at night she could not sleep for thinkingof it, and yet she was no nearer reaching a decision than when thestruggle between her conscience and her cowardice had started.
Quite instinctively she glanced again to see if the neighbors werelooking. There were interested faces at several windows. Mrs. Toomey hada sudden feeling of irritation, not with the sentinels doing picket dutybut with Kate for tying her horse in front so conspicuously. Mrs. Toomeyshrank from the staring eyes as though she had found herself walkingdown the middle of the road in her underclothing.
The feeling vanished when K
ate came up the walk slowly and she saw howwhite and haggard the girl's face was.
Mrs. Toomey opened the door and asked her in nervously.
Kate looked at her wistfully as though she yearned for some display ofaffection beyond the conventional greeting, but since Mrs. Toomey didnot offer to kiss her she sank into a chair with a suggestion ofweariness.
"I hope you're not busy--that I'm not bothering?"
"Oh, no--not at all."
"I couldn't help coming, somehow--I just couldn't go back without seeingyou. I wanted to see a friendly face--to hear a friendly voice." Sheclasped her fingers tightly together: "Oh, you don't know how much youmean to me! I feel so alone--adrift--and I long so for some one to leanon, just for a little, until I get my bearings. It seems as though everyatom of courage and confidence had oozed out of me. I don't believe thatever again in all my life I'll long for sympathy as I do this minute."She spoke slowly with breaths between, as though the heaviness of herheart made talking an effort.
"I presume you miss your--uncle." There was a constraint in Mrs.Toomey's voice and manner which Kate was too engrossed and wretched tonotice.
She put her hand to her throat as though to lessen the ache there.
"I can't tell you how much. And remorse--it's like a knife turning,turning--his eyes with the pain and astonishment in them when I struckat him so viciously in my temper; they haunt me. It's terrible."
Mrs. Toomey fidgeted.
Kate went on as though she found relief in talking. Her voice soundedthick, somehow, and lifeless with suffering.
"I have such a feeling of heaviness, of oppression"--she laid her handupon her heart--"I can't describe it. If I were superstitious I'd say itwas a premonition."
"Of what, for instance?" Mrs. Toomey looked frightened.
Kate shook her head.
"I don't know. The thought keeps coming that, bad as things have been,there are worse ahead of me--unhappiness--more unhappiness--like apreparation for something."
Distinctly impressed, Mrs. Toomey exclaimed inanely:
"Oh, my! Do you think so?" Was _she_ going to get "mixed up" insomething, she wondered.
"I have a dread of the future--a shrinking such as a blind person mighthave from a danger he feels but cannot see. Your friendship is the onlybright spot in the blackness--it's a peak, with the sun shining on it!"Kate's eyes filled with quick tears. They were swimming as she raisedthem and looked at Mrs. Toomey.
"I'm glad you feel that way," Mrs. Toomey murmured.
Something in the tone arrested Kate's attention, an unconvincing,insincere note in it. She fixed her eyes upon her face searchingly,then she crossed the room swiftly and dropped upon her knees beside her.Taking one of her thin hands between both of hers she said, pleadingly:
"You will be my friend, won't you? You won't go back on me, will you?"She could scarcely have begged for her life with more earnestness.
"I am very fond of you," Mrs. Toomey evaded. She did not look at her.
Kate regarded her steadily. Laying down the hand she had taken she askedquietly:
"Will you tell me something truthfully, Mrs. Toomey?"
Mrs. Toomey's mind, ratlike, scuttled hither and thither, wondering whatwas coming.
"If I can," uneasily.
Kate laid her hand upon the older woman's shoulder and searched herface:
"Is my friendship an embarrassment to you?"
Mrs. Toomey squirmed.
"Tell me! The truth! You owe that to me!" Kate cried fiercely, her griptightening on the woman's shoulder.
As Mrs. Toomey was a coward, so was she a petty liar by instinct. Herfirst impulse when in an uncomfortable position was to extricate herselfby any plausible lie that occurred to her. But Kate's voice and mannerwere too compelling, her eyes too penetrating, to admit of falsifying oreven evading further. Then, too, she had a wild panicky feeling that shemight as well tell the truth and have it over--though it was the lastthing in the world she had contemplated doing.
"It is--rather."
"Why?" Her voice sounded guttural.
Like a hypnotic subject Mrs. Toomey heard herself whimpering:
"People will talk about it--Mrs. Pantin has warned me--and I'll--I'llget left out of everything, and--and when Jap gets into something itwill hurt us in our business."
Kate got up from her knees; involuntarily Mrs. Toomey did likewise.
The girl did not speak but folded her arms and looked at her "friend."Mrs. Toomey had the physical sensation of shrivelling: as though shewere standing naked before the withering heat of a blast furnace.
In the silence that seemed interminable, Kate's eyes moved from her headto her shabby shoes and back again, slowly, as though she wished toimpress her appearance upon her memory, to the minutest detail.
As by divination, Mrs. Toomey saw herself as Kate saw her. Stripped ofthe virtues in which the girl had clothed her, she stood forth ascheming, inconsequential little coward in a weak ineffectual rack of abody--not strong enough to be vicious, without the courage to bedangerous. Thin-lipped, neutral-tinted, flat of chest and scrawny,without a womanly charm save the fragility that incited pity; to Katewho had idealized her she now seemed a stranger.
Kate completed her scrutiny, and searched her mind for the word whichbest expressed the result of it. Her lip curled unconsciously when shefound it. She said with deliberate scathing emphasis:
"You--Judas Iscariot!"
Then she walked out, feeling that the very earth had given way beneathher.
Nothing was definite, nothing tangible or certain; there was not anybodyor anything in the world, apparently, that one could count on. She hada feeling of nausea along with a curious calm that was like the calm ofdesperation. Yet her mind was alert, active, and she understood Mrs.Toomey with an uncanny clearness. She believed her when she had saidthat she liked her, just as she knew that she had lied when she had saidthat she was glad to see her. She understood now that Mrs. Toomey hadaccepted the loan hoping to carry water on both shoulders, and findingherself unable to do so, had eased herself of the burden which requiredthe least courage. The perspicacity of years of experience seemed tocome to Kate in a few minutes, so surely did she follow Mrs. Toomey'smotives and reasoning.
Was this human nature when one understood it? Was this what the worldwas like if one were out in it? Wasn't there anybody sincere or kind ordisinterested? She asked herself these questions despairingly as sheuntied her horse and swung slowly into the saddle.
"Poverty makes most people sordid, selfish, cowardly." She fancied sheheard Mormon Joe saying it, and herself expressing her disbelief in thestatement. "There are few persons strong enough to stand the gaff ofpublic opinion." She had contradicted him, she remembered.
She recalled--word for word, almost--a philosophical dissertationapropos of Prouty as he sat on the wagon tongue one evening smoking hispipe in the moonlight.
"People who live without change in a small community grow to attach anexaggerated importance to the opinions of others. They come to live andbreathe with a view to what their neighbors think of them. When liferesolves itself into a struggle for a bare existence, it makes forcowardice and selfishness. In time the strongest characters deterioratewith inferior associates and only small interests to occupy theirminds. Wills weaken, standards lower unconsciously, ideals grow misty orvanish. Youth, enthusiasm, hope, die together. Ambition turns tobitterness or stolid resignation. Suspicion, meanness, cruelty, are thenatural offspring of small intelligences and narrow environment--andthey flourish in a town like Prouty."
"I don't believe it!" she had cried, shocked by his cynicism. He hadshrugged a shoulder and replied solemnly:
"I hope to God you'll never know how true it is, Katie. I hope nocombination of circumstances will ever place you at their mercy. It isto make any such condition impossible that I am bending all my energiesto get on my feet again."
In this moment it seemed to Kate that his cynicism had the sweetness ofhoney compared to her own bitterness. br />
Since the murder, curiosity had changed to unfriendliness, andunfriendliness in some instances to actual hostility. Her slightestadvance was met by a barrier of coldness that froze her, and she quicklyhad come to wince under each fresh evidence of enmity as from a blow inthe face. Thoughts of Mrs. Toomey's friendship and the belief that thisantagonism was only temporary and would disappear when the localauthorities had brought out the truth concerning the murder, hadsustained and comforted her. The last time she had questioned Lingle,the deputy had told her with much elation in his manner that "the trailwas getting warmer."
Now, crushed, heartsick, staggering fairly under the brutal blow thatMrs. Toomey's weak hand had dealt her, it was an ordeal to ride back toMain Street and run the gauntlet.
All that was left to her was the hope that Lingle might soon clear her,and she felt in her despair that she could not return to the ranch untilhe had given her some reassurance. She checked her horse at the cornerand looked each way for him, but he was nowhere visible. Then, while shehesitated she saw him emerge from a doorway where a steep stairway ledto the office of the mayor on the second floor of Prouty's onlytwo-story building.
Kate received the swift impression that the deputy was agitated, and acloser view confirmed it. His face was pale, and the light that shone inhis eyes was unmistakably due to anger. He walked to the edge of thesidewalk and stood there, too engrossed in thought to see Kate until shehad ridden close to him.
"Will you tell me what progress you're making? It's so hard, thiswaiting and not knowing."
The deputy's eyes blazed anew when he recognized the girl, and understress of feeling he blurted out harshly:
"I'm called off, Miss Prentice!"
"Called off!" she gasped. "You mean--"
"Stopped!" fiercely. "I've been blocked at every turn by the authoritiesand others, and now it's come straight from 'Tinhorn' himself--themayor."
Speechless, Kate's trembling hand sought the saddle horn and gripped it.
"But why?" finally.
Ineffable scorn was in the deputy's answer:
"It might hurt the town to have this murder stirred up and the storysent broadcast--make prospective settlers hesitate to invest in such adangerous community--that's what was given me, along with myinstructions to quit. But another reason is that the man implicatedbelongs to one of them secret orders."
"I can't believe it!" she cried piteously.
"I couldn't either, until I had to. But I've got sense enough to knowthat I'm done, with nobody to back up my hand. After all, I'm only adeputy," he said savagely. "I'm all broke up, I can tell you!"
"But aside from the way in which it leaves me it seems such a--such aninsult to Uncle Joe--as though nobody cared--as though--" she could notfinish.
"I know--I know," he nodded gravely.
"I'm going up to see the mayor--to beg him to keep on--to tell him whatit means to me!" she declared passionately.
"I wouldn't, Miss Prentice," Lingle advised.
"I must! It can't stop like this! He shall understand what it means tome--this suspicion--this disgrace that is nearly killing me!"
He saw that she was determined, so he did not protest further, but hisreluctant gaze followed her as she disappeared up the narrow dirtystairway.
The mayor attended to the official business of Prouty at a flat-top deskin a large front room where he also wrote an occasional life insurancepolicy. As the insurance business was a rise from a disreputable saloonand gambling joint, so the saloon and gambling joint had been a stepupward from his former means of livelihood as a dance-hall tout in aneighboring state.
With his election to an office which nobody else wanted, an incipientambition began to stir. Already his mind was busy with plans foradvancement, and each move that he made was with an eye to the future.But one thing was certain, and it was that wherever his Star of Destinyled him he would remain, underneath any veneer of polish whichexperience might give him, the barroom bully, the mental and moraltinhorn that Nature had made him.
Enveloped in a cloud of the malodorous smoke of a cheap cigar andtilted on the hind legs of his chair with his heels hooked in the rungs,he was resting his head against the wall where a row of smudges from hisoily black hair bore evidence to the fact that it was a favoriteposition.
Hearing a woman's light step and catching a glimpse of a woman's skirtas Kate came down the corridor, he removed his cigar and unhooked hisheels preparatory to rising.
She was in the doorway before he recognized her; where she paused duringa moment's look of mutual inquiry. Then, with all the deliberation of anintentional insult he retilted his chair, returned his heels to therungs and replaced his cigar while he surveyed her with a quiteindescribable insolence.
"Tinhorn" had no special reason for the act and it served no purpose; itwas merely the instinctive act of the bully who strikes in wantoncruelty at something or somebody he knows cannot retaliate. His Honorfound a satisfaction now in watching the blood rise flaming to the rootsof Kate's hair and it gave him a feeling of power knowing that she mustaccept the humiliation or leave with her errand unstated, though heguessed the nature of her visit.
It pleased him, however, to feign ignorance when, gripping the frame ofthe doorway, she said in a voice that trembled noticeably in spite ofher obvious effort to steady it:
"I came to ask you if it's true--that you mean to stop work--onthe--case?"
He rolled the chewed end of his cigar between his yellow snags of teethand asked insolently:
"What case you talkin' about?"
"There's only one that interests me," she replied, with a touch ofdignity.
"What do you want, anyhow?"
Kate's labored breathing was audible.
"Is it so that you are not going to do any more about the murder of myuncle?"
"Your uncle!" he snorted, necked the ashes from the end of his cigar,rolled it back into place with his tongue and reiterated: "Your uncle!"Then: "What's it to you? You got off, didn't you?"
She came into the room a step or two.
"It's everything to me or I wouldn't be here. Can't you understand whatit means to me--going through life with people thinking--"
"You got the money, didn't you?" he interrupted.
"What you throwing a bluff like this for, anyhow? I guess what peoplethink ain't worryin' you."
Kate's fingers clenched, but she said quietly:
"You haven't answered my question."
He resented the rebuke, but chiefly her self-control. The bully in himwanted to see tears, to see her overawed and humble; she had too muchassurance for a social cipher. If she did not realize that fact yet, itwas for him to let her know it.
He brought the front legs of his chair down with a thump and thundered:
"Yes--it's closed, and it won't be opened, neither! You'd better notstart in tryin' to stir up somethin', or you'll be sorry--as it is,you're a detriment to the community!"
He mistook her white-faced silence, and added with less violence:
"Why don't you fade away, anyhow--sell out and get into something inyour line in some good town or city?"
She was shivering as with a chill as she walked closer and asked in ahoarse whisper:
"What would you suggest--exactly?"
Ah, this was more like it! There was something even beneficent in hisrelaxed features as he answered:
"You could open a first-class place with your stake. It's quick and bigmoney, if you can get the right kind of a stand-in with the police. Nocheap joint, but a high-toned dance hall in some burg where you can geta liquor license. That's my advice to you."
"It's what I thought you meant, but I wanted to be sure of it!" Hervoice came between her teeth, guttural, and the face into which hisstartled eyes looked was the face of Jezebel of the Sand Coulee. "I'dkill you if I had anything to do it with, but, so help me God, youshan't say that to me and get away with it!"
The girl struck him full across the face with such force that herecoiled under it,
while the prints of her fingers stood out like scarson his sallow cheek for a full minute. She was gone before he recovered,but curses followed her as she ran panting in her blind rage down thenarrow stairway.
Kate felt as though liquid fire were racing through her veins, like someone rushing from a house with his clothes on fire, as she tore open theknot of the bridle reins and swung into the saddle. She did not need tohear the words to know that the guffaw which reached her from a group onthe sidewalk was inspired by some coarse witticism concerning her.
There was not a single friendly pair of eyes, or one pair that was evenneutral, among the many that looked at her and after her as she gave herhorse its head and let it clatter at a gallop that was all but a rundown the main street and over the road that led out of Prouty.
It was a crisis, and intuitively she recognized it--one of thoseemotional climaxes that sear and burn and leave their scars forever.
The powerful horse bounded up the steep grade without slackening, but atthe top she checked it, and from the edge of the bench stood lookingdown upon the crude town sprawling on the flat beneath her. Itrepresented one antagonistic personality to her, and as such sheaddressed it aloud, with deliberately chosen words, as one throwing downthe gauntlet to an enemy.
"You've hurt me! You've never done anything else but hurt me, and I'veforgiven and forgotten and tried to make myself believe you didn't meanit. Now I know better.
"You still have it in your power to hurt me, to anger me, sometimes todefeat me. I am one and you are many, but you can't crush me, you can'tbreak my heart or spirit; you can't keep me down! I'll succeed! I may beyears in doing it, but I'll win out over you. I'll be remembered whenyou're rotten in your graves, and if I can live long enough I'll payback every blow you've ever given me, one by one, and collectively--nomatter what it costs me!"