Westerfelt Part 26

"She's up-stairs," replied Mrs. Floyd. "I'll call her; but you'd better go in to the fire."

The girl shook her head and muttered something Mrs. Floyd could not understand, so she left her in the hall.

Mrs. Floyd found Harriet in her room. "Hettie Fergerson is down-stairs and wants to see you," she said. "She still acts very strange. I asked her to go into the parlor, but she wouldn't."

"How do you do, Hettie?" said Harriet, as she came down the steps.

"Come into the parlor; you look cold."

The girl hesitated, but finally followed Harriet into the warm room.

They sat down before the fire, and there was an awkward silence for several minutes, then the visitor suddenly pushed back her bonnet and said, in a hard, desperate tone:

"Where is Toot Wambush, Harriet?"

Harriet looked at her in surprise for an instant, then she answered:

"Why, Hettie, how could I know? n.o.body in Cartwright does now, I reckon."

"I thought _you_ might." Both girls were silent for a moment, then the visitor looked apprehensively over her shoulder at the door. "Is yore ma coming in here?"

"No; she's busy in the kitchen; do you want to see her?"

"No." The girl spoke quickly and moved uneasily.

"You came to see me?"

"I come to see _some_body--oh, Harriet, I'm so miserable! You didn't suspicion it, Harriet, but I'm afraid that man has made a plumb fool of me. I haven't slept hardly one wink since they driv' 'im off. I--"

She put her hand to her eyes, and as she paused Harriet thought she was crying, but a moment later, when she removed her hand, her eyes were dry.

"Why did you come to--to see me, Hettie?" questioned Harriet.

"Because," was the slow-coming reply, "I thought maybe he had wrote back to you."

"He has never written to me, Hettie--never a line."

The face of the girl brightened. "Then you ain't engaged to him, _are_ you, Harriet?"

"The idea! of course not."

"Oh, I'm mighty glad of that," exclaimed the visitor. "You see, I'm such a fool about him I got jealous. Oh, Harriet, there ain't no use in me tryin' to deceive myself; I know he would marry you at the drop of a hat if you'd have him. I know that, and still I am crazy about him. I ain't much to blame, Harriet, if I am foolish. He made me so, an' 'most any pore, lonely girl like I am would care for a good-looking man like he is. Oh, Harriet, it is awfully humiliating to have to think it, but I believe the reason he treats me like he does is that I showed him too plainly how much I loved him."

"I did not suspect till the other day," said Harriet, to avoid that point, "that he was paying you any particular attention. Mother told me he often drove you out home."

"Oh, la, that ain't a circ.u.mstance, Harriet! He used to come out home mighty nigh every day or night. Pa an' ma think he is a regular prince. You know he swore pa out of a big whiskey sc.r.a.pe in Atlanta, and since then pa and him has been mighty thick. They thought all along that Toot wanted to marry me, and it made 'em mighty proud, and then it began to look like he was settin' up to you. That's why I quit staying here, Harriet. I couldn't be around you so much and know--or think, as I did, that he was beginning to love you."

"I don't think," protested Harriet, "that he was ever deeply interested in me. You must not think that. In fact, I believe now, Hettie, that you and he will be happily married some day--if he ever gets out of his trouble."

Hettie drew in her breath quickly and held it, raising a glad glance to the speaker's face.

"Why do you think so, Harriet?--oh, you are just saying this to make me feel better."

Harriet deliberated for a moment, then she said: "He was here the night they run him off--the night they all took Mr. Westerfelt out. Mother and I had a long talk with him. Mother talked straight to him about flirting with you, and told him what a good, nice girl you were, and--"

"Oh, did she, Harriet? I could hug her for it!"

"Yes, and he talked real nice about you, too, and admitted he had acted wrong. Hettie, I believe in time that he'll come back and ask you to marry him. I believe that in the bottom of my heart."

The countenance of the visitor was now aglow with hope.

"Maybe he will--maybe he will," she said. "I was afraid I let him see too plain that I was a fool about him, but some men like that, I reckon; he always seemed to come oftener. Harriet, one thing has worried the life nearly out of me. I heard Frank Hansard say a young man never would think as much of a girl after she let him kiss her.

I'm no hypocrite--I'm anything else; but as much as I'd love to have a young man I cared for kiss me, I'd die in my tracks before I'd let 'im put his arm around me if I thought it would make 'im think less of me.

Do you reckon" (she was avoiding Harriet's eyes)--"do you think that would make any difference with Toot--I mean, with any young man?"

Harriet smiled in spite of the look of gravity in Hettie's eyes.

"Some men might be that way," she finally said, consolingly--she was thinking of the innate coa.r.s.eness of Hettie's lover--"but I don't think Mr. Wambush is. That was one of the first things my mother ever taught me. She told me she'd learned it by experience when she was a girl. I don't pretend to be better than other girls, but I've always made men keep their distance."

Hettie shrugged her shoulders, as if to throw off some unpleasant idea.

"Oh, I don't care. I'd do it over again. Lord, I couldn't help it. I love him so, and he is so sweet and good when he tries to be. He thinks I'm all right, too, in some ways. He says I'm just the girl to marry a dare-devil like he is. Did you ever know it was me that helped get him away from the revenue men the night he had a barrel o' whiskey on his wagon?" Hettie laughed impulsively, and her graceful little body shook all over.

"Mother thought you had a hand in it," answered Harriet, with an appreciative smile.

"It was fun," giggled Hettie. "Toot drove nipitytuck down the street from the Hawkbill as fast as he could lick it, and them a-gallopin'

after 'im. I had been on the front porch talkin' to his father, who was anxious about 'im and wanted to see 'im. Toot pulled up at the side gate an' said: 'No use, Het, d.a.m.n it; I can't make it, and they'll know my horse and wagon an' prove it on me.' Then I thought what to do; the men wasn't in sight back there in the woods. Quicker 'n lightnin', I made Toot push the whiskey across the porch into the kitchen an' shet the door, an' when the revenue men stopped at the gate Toot was settin' up as cool as a cuc.u.mber in his wagon talkin' to me over the fence. I think he was asking me to get in the wagon and go out home with him. I never seed--saw 'im so scared, though, in my life; but la me! it was fun to me, an' I had more lies on my tongue 'n a dog has fleas.

"'Did you have a barrel on that wagon a minute ago?' one of the two men asked.

"'What'n the h.e.l.l are you talkin' about?' asked Toot. 'I haven't seed--seen no barrel.'" Hettie was trying to speak correctly, but the spirit of the narrative ran away with her meagre ideas of grammar.

"'Oh,' said I, 'you've got the wrong sow by the ear; a wagon went whizzin' by here a minute ago like it was shot out of a gun.'

"'Which way?' the officer asked, rippin' out an oath that 'u'd a-took the prize at a cussin'-bee.

"I pointed down the road and said: 'I hear it a-clatterin' now,' and off they galloped. Well, Toot soon loaded the whiskey again and drove off up the mountain, but he's laughed about that a hundred times and told the moons.h.i.+ners about it. Whenever I meet one in the road--I know the last one of 'em--they ask me if I've seen a whiskey wagon anywheres about. Harriet," she added, more soberly, "you've give me a sight of comfort. Now tell me about you-know-who. Toot told me the last time he was at our house that he knowed you were gone on that new feller.

I'm sorry they fit, but he had no business refusin' to credit Toot.

n.o.body else ever did the like, and it was calculated to rile him, especially when he was full an' loaded for bear, as folks say. How are you and him makin' out, Harriet?"

Harriet's face had taken on a sober look, and she hesitated before replying; finally she said:

"There is nothing between us, Hettie, and I'd rather not talk about him."

"Oh, I'm _so_ sorry!" the other exclaimed. "He is such a good-looking man, and so many thought you and him would come to a understanding.

They say a girl gets a mighty good whack at a man when he is laid up flat of his back. I never have tried it, but it looks reasonable."

Then Hettie rose. "I'm goin' to stay to dinner with you all," she said, "and I'm going out now to help yore ma. Pore woman, she looked dead tired jest now!"

A few minutes later Mrs. Floyd came to Harriet, who was still seated in the parlor, an expression of deep thought on her face.