The waning day was cloudy, the crossings deep with slush, the pavements damp, and the chill of her wet soles made her shiver, adding the last touch to her forlornness and the depression which Bowers's desertion had induced. She dreaded returning to her cheerless room, but she could not walk the streets indefinitely, so she bought a magazine to read until it was time to dine alone in some one of the neighborhood's cheap restaurants. The night clerk was already on duty and through the fly-specked plate-gla.s.s window of the office saw her coming. Dashing from behind the desk, he skated recklessly across the tiles to open the door.

"Say--you're all right!" His tone was emphatic and sincere.

Kate eyed him without enthusiasm.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he demanded.

"Tell you what?"

He held up the afternoon newspaper that he had in his hand.

Kate's own face looked back at her from the front page and her name in the headlines met her astonished eyes. The picture, which had been made from a snapshot, was excellent, and the text was a highly colored recital of her achievements obtained from Bowers.

The clerk's tone conveyed his admiration as he confessed:

"Looks like you knew what you was talkin' about when you said I'd know who you was before you left Omaha."

Sitting on the edge of her bed Kate read the article again, but her first feeling of elation did not return. With her hands clasped about one knee, in her characteristic att.i.tude, she stared at a festoon of dusty cobwebs hanging from the ceiling, and there gradually crept over her a feeling of la.s.situde.

She had established a record price with the best trainload of range sheep that ever had come into the stockyards; she had been accepted as an equal in achievement and intelligence by every one of the worthwhile men with whom she had come in contact; and as a climax to the day's events she was proclaimed a successful woman in the public prints. Yet, in the silence of the cheerless room, she was cognizant of the fact that nothing inside of her was changed thereby. There remained in her heart the same dreary emptiness.

Two tears slipped slowly down her cheeks. She brushed them away with the back of her hand, looked at her watch, and got up. She had no appet.i.te, but ordering food in a restaurant would help the time to pa.s.s. After rubbing such mud as she could from her boots, she smoothed her hair before the mirror and put on her hat. The sheep woman was the cynosure of the respectful gaze of many eyes as she came down the stairs.

Outside all the world was going home with eager, hurrying feet and she paused, looking indifferently up and down the street. The nearest restaurant was not inviting, but it answered well enough. After a few mouthfuls, Kate crumpled the paper napkin, paid her bill, and walked dispiritedly back to the hotel.

More often than not, the momentous happenings in life come without warning, and with no stage-setting to enhance the dramatic effect.

Certainly there was nothing in the announcement of the now too friendly clerk that "she had a visitor who looked like new money," to prognosticate that once Kate had crossed the threshold of the red-plush parlor, her life would never be the same again.

It was Bowers, of course--she thought--Bowers come too late to take her to the restaurant whose delectable "grub" was one of his boasted memories of Omaha. Her conclusion was correct that Bowers was there, wearing his new clothes like a disguise, his eyes shining with eagerness. But it was not Bowers that Kate saw in the dim light as she stepped through the doorway--it was the man who at intervals had been strongly in her thoughts all day, for whom she had unconsciously kept a lookout, impelled by an inexplicable desire to see him again and remove that perplexing, haunting sense of having seen him somewhere before.

Kate felt herself trembling when the man arose from the sofa facing the door. As if by divination she recognized some impending event of importance to herself. He was no casual caller brought by idle curiosity, she was sure of that.

There was in his eyes a tremendous hope, and a yearning tenderness in his face which seemed to draw her into his arms. It required an effort of will to remain pa.s.sive as he approached.

Without explanation or apology, he put his hand under her chin and raised it with all gentleness, studying meanwhile every lineament of her face.

Kate watched the light of conviction grow in his eyes. Then she felt an arm about her shoulder and herself being drawn close against her father's heart as he exclaimed brokenly:

"My baby-girl, grown up! My _Kate_!"

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE SURPRISE OF MR. WENTZ'S LIFE

After an absence from Prouty of several weeks, Kate stepped off the train alone one afternoon and furnished the town with the liveliest sensation of its kind that it had known since the Toomeys had gone "on East."

Through the cooperation of the telephone and of breathless ladies dashing across lots and from house to house, the town, by night, had a detailed description of the clothes which had altered Kate's appearance beyond belief.

Mrs. Abram Pantin expressed the opinion that Kate's Alaskan-seal coat which, in reality, represented the price of a goodly band of sheep, was merely native muskrat rather skilfully dyed.

This verdict rendered before the Thursday afternoon session of the Y. A.

K.'s, which had gathered to hear a paper by Mrs. Sudds upon the Ming Dynasty, afforded its members immense relief. Their fears, too, that the smart ear-rings Kate wore might be real pearls were a.s.suaged by Mrs.

Neifkins, who declared she had seen their counterpart in b.u.t.te for seventy-five cents.

But the fact had soaked into the average citizen that Kate had "arrived."

Among those who admitted this was Mrs. Toomey, who lingered at the breakfast table the morning after Kate's return, thinking of many things while she absently clinked her spoon against the edge of her cup. j.a.p had just left after an animated argument as to whether policy demanded the entertainment at dinner of the barber and his wife, who contemplated buying a sewing machine of a make for which Toomey was now the agent.

Recalling the time when they had refused invitations right and left because there was no one in Prouty whom they had cared to know, a smile of bitterness came to her lips. Since then, she had eaten the pie of humbleness to the last crumb. She had become a self-acknowledged toady, a spineless sycophant, and for what? For the privilege of being invited to teas, bridge whists, of being sure of a place in the local social life.

This morning she was doubting the wisdom of her choice. Kate's sincere unswerving friendship might have been compensation enough for the anguish of being "left out." Yet she could not exactly blame herself, for who could have foreseen that things would turn out like this? It was not remorse that Mrs. Toomey felt, but regret for not arraying herself on the side which ultimately would have brought her the most benefits.

Mrs. Toomey never had been able to gather anything from Kate's expression upon the few occasions that they had met since the girl had called her a "Judas Iscariot" and left the house, but she recalled that at each later encounter she had experienced the same sense of uneasiness.

Was the feeling due to a guilty conscience, she asked herself, or was an implacable hatred that was biding its time, concealed by Kate's enigmatic face?

Mrs. Toomey concluded that this theory was farfetched--that it was not human nature to retain resentment for even a real wrong through such a lapse of years. Time took the keen edge off of everything, including the bitterest enemy. And yet, in spite of this comforting rea.s.surance, there remained an inexplicable feeling of disquietude when she thought of the woman to whom she had proved an ingrate and a cowardly friend.

While Mrs. Toomey's mind was thus engrossingly occupied, Jasper was having his own troubles in the Security State Bank.

Stimulated by three cups of strong coffee, Toomey had left the house full of hustle and hope--a state which was apt to continue until about eleven o'clock when the effect wore off, and then he might be expected home with another iridescent bubble punctured, and himself gloomy to the point of suicide.

To-day Toomey's feet as a means of locomotion seemed all too slow as he covered the distance intervening between his home and the bank. His black eyes were brilliant with caffeine and the excitement attendant upon a large and highly satisfactory idea which had come to him in the night.

Having obtained a hearing, he rolled a cigarette with tremulous fingers while he unfolded his plan to Mr. Wentz. The banker listened with equanimity as he sat on the back of his neck with his fingers interlaced across his smart bottle-green waistcoat. Wentz's lack of enthusiasm only increased Toomey's eagerness. He leaned forward and declared with all vehemence:

"Look at the territory I could cover, if I had an automobile! With a sideline of fruit trees, I can get an order of some kind out of every family in the northern part of the state. It's a cinch, Wentz. I'm giving you a chance to make a good loan that you can't afford to let pa.s.s."

Mr. Wentz yawned with marked weariness.

"What's a bank for if not to encourage legitimate enterprises in the community upon which it depends for its business? There isn't a flaw in this proposition, Wentz! Can you show me one?"

"It's perfect from your side," Wentz agreed, "but where would we get off if every family in the northern part of the state didn't happen to need fruit trees or a sewing machine? We'd have a worn automobile on our hands and another of your familiar signatures on our already too large collection of promissory notes. Can't see it, j.a.p."

Disappointment as well as Wentz's words stung Toomey more deeply than he had been touched for a long time. A rush of blood dyed his sallow face as he grabbed his hat and started for the door. Opening it partly, he turned and flung a retort over his shoulder.

"I'll tell you what I think, Vermin!" Mr. Wentz winced. This perversion of his name had darkened his childhood days and he never had outgrown his antipathy to it. "I think," Toomey went on, "that you're shaky as the devil--that Neifkins' big loss put such a crimp in you that an honest bank examiner could close your doors! I'll bet my hat against a white chip that even a boys'-size 'run' could shut your little two by twice bank up tight as a drum!"

It was a random shot, but the president's face showed that it went home.

He gathered himself immediately, but not before Kate who, on coming in brushed shoulders with the departing Toomey, had heard the speech and noted its effect.

So Neifkins had had a big loss! She grasped the full significance of it at once and exultation filled her heart.

Wentz looked at the "Sheep Queen" hard as she advanced. Astonishment and admiration were in his eyes when he recognized her at last. It was beyond belief that a mere matter of clothes could effect such a transformation as this. She looked the last word in feminine elegance.

Filled with the wonder of it, he forgot for a moment the specter which had been his sleeping and waking companion for some weeks past and which had confronted him with the substance of reality at Toomey's taunt.