CHAPTER III
DODO JOINS THE RANKS
Back in Denver once more, Mr. Alexander found a telegram awaiting him. In it he read that his wife and daughter would leave Colorado Springs and planned to arrive in the city that same evening, as Mrs. Alexander had unexpectedly decided to join the travelers to Arizona.
“Now, what d’ye think of that?” exclaimed little Mr. Alexander, snapping the telegram with impatient fingers. “It’s all right for Dodo to come, but my wife isn’t used to roughin’ it—least-ways, she don’t care for it, since we got so much money to spend.”
“Oh, I shall enjoy having another woman help me to keep all the girls in order,” remarked Mrs. Courtney, pleasantly.
“Don’t fool yourself, Madam—my wife isn’t goin’ to be much help in lookin’ after others. She demands all the lookin’ after for herself. I gen’ally see to it that she has a lady’s maid to wait on her—that lets me out of buttonin’ her boots, and runnin’ here and there like a beast of burden, to take or carry her shawl, or parasol, or smellin’ salts. Since she’s takin’ to golf and tennis, it’s her golf-bag or the tennis racquet I’m expected to carry. I’m sorry to have to explain so much of my family troubles to you, Madam, but you must know that I hate to play caddie, though my wife says I resemble one.” The humility and meekness of the little man made Mrs. Courtney feel as though she must stand by him in some way—just as Polly’s friends had felt, as soon as they had grown to understand him on that European tour.
“If you really wish to secure a competent lady’s maid for your wife, maybe I might help you in seeking for one in the city to-day,” ventured Mrs. Courtney, though she realized what a social error she was committing in offering to engage a maid for another woman.
“Oh, say! If you’d do that for me, Madam, I’ll never forget it. I want to give my time to Mr. Dalken and the men we hope to meet here in Denver and, later on, in Prescott. If Mrs. Alexander demands my attention, how can I serve two masters?” appealed the little man.
“Just tell me the kind of maid I ought to hire, and I’ll move heaven and earth to find one for you,” promised Mrs. Courtney; at the same time she wondered what had come over her to make her step into another woman’s place in this way, and thus force that woman to give the husband all the spare time he craved to attend to business affairs. But Mrs. Courtney had no idea that she was acting because of her deep interest in the South American land plans, in which Mr. Dalken had not only committed himself as well as his keen business brain, but also had signed for great blocks of stock that would bankrupt him should the scheme fail.
“It must not fail!” said Mrs. Courtney, vehemently, to herself.
Thus it came to pass that Polly and Eleanor were invited to accompany their chaperon to one of the best employment offices in Denver that same afternoon of their arrival at the hotel. And to their amusement, they heard and saw Mrs. Courtney interrogate several maids, believing as she did, that maids out west must be much like maids in New York. She was soon informed to the contrary however.
To her questions of “Can you dress hair stylishly?” “Do you wash and mend laces neatly?” “Are you experienced in manicuring?” “and in preparing the bath?” and other personal attentions, she heard to her surprise: “I kin darn socks, lady”; or “I have sewed clothes sence I was knee-high to a prairie-dog”; or, perhaps, the applicant would explain, “I ain’t no common general worker, lady, but I kin do plain cookin’, er lend a hand at the wash-tub, when it’s called for. I even will agree to het the water fer the baths, ef so come yuh-all need it that way.”
Hence the polished society woman from the East had to confess herself vanquished in her effort to help Mr. Alexander provide a lady’s maid for his wife. On the way back to the hotel Polly made a suggestion which Eleanor thought would prove very exciting, if not practical, for Mrs. Alexander’s future peace and personal comfort.
“Why waste time in finding a maid for Dodo’s mother when we can get a first-class Indian servant, who will cook, pack, wash, and do everything else for the men, when they have to camp in the mountains; then he can work for Mrs. Alexander, when the men are with us and have no need of the Guide.”
“But, Polly, Mrs. Alexander will not need an Indian to cook or wash for her—she wants a maid to look after her comfort in the hotels along the beaten track,” argued Eleanor.
“If she annexes herself and her wardrobe trunks to our select party, she’ll have to put up with discomforts in Arizona, even as we are willing to do,” declared Polly, impatiently.
“Well, I’ve done all I could to smooth away the obstacles from little Mr. Alexander’s pathway—now it is up to his wife to find her own maid,” complained Mrs. Courtney.
That evening Eleanor amused the men by describing the visit at the employment office and the interviews with sundry maids. Mr. Alexander felt deeply obliged to Mrs. Courtney, but she begged him to forget it, since she had not succeeded as she had promised him.
About eight o’clock that same evening, a commotion outside the hotel entrance announced the arrival of Mrs. Alexander and her daughter. This time, the commotion was caused by the taxi running head on into a costly limousine which was waiting for its owner. Not only the scene between the two chauffeurs, but also the hysterical screams from the lady inside the cab, drew a crowd that refused to be dispersed until an officer came running up to arrest the culprits—should he find any.
Jack and Tom had been the first of the loungers in the hotel-lobby to hurry to the street and watch the altercation between the two drivers; but the moment they saw Dodo gazing anxiously from the taxi window, they sprang across the sidewalk and quickly opened the door.
“Thank goodness, Jack, you’re here to get mother out of this!” cried Dodo, in relief. Then she managed to slip her arm underneath her mother’s, and urged her to get up and out of the cab.
Mrs. Alexander spied handsome Jack, and quickly decided she must lean upon the strong right arm of a young man, instead of accepting her daughter’s equally strong arm. With a rolling of her eyes between pencilled eyelashes, and a plaintive gasp meant to enlist Jack’s sympathy, Mrs. Alexander permitted herself to be coaxed from the cab, and half-carried into the hotel. How she loved all this confusion, which she considered better than nothing, in the absence of other ways of announcing her arrival!
“Well, so here you are, my dear!” exclaimed little Mr. Alexander, coming from the smoking-room, in time to see his wife sink upon a huge lounge in the large reception hall.
Had it not been that Mr. Dalken, Tom, and the ladies now hastened to greet the new arrivals, Mrs. Alexander might have amused herself by scolding her spouse for his neglect in meeting her train at the station—though she had failed to mention in the telegram the time of its arrival in Denver. Being the center of interest, because of the fuss she made over the collision in front of the hotel, Mrs. Alexander forgot to take her husband to account for his oversight of duty.
Mr. Dalken had planned to leave Denver the following morning—in fact, he would not have stopped over-night at the hotel, had it not been for the wire received by Mr. Alexander, in which Mrs. Alexander said she would join the party in Denver that evening.
Now, to end the lady’s little tableau, Mr. Dalken looked at his watch. “We must retire, friends, if we wish to get the train to Albuquerque to-morrow morning.”
“Oh!” cried Mrs. Alexander, “I cannot think of it! I have a great deal of shopping to attend to and, besides, I promised faithfully that Dodo and I would wait here for a certain dear friend to join us. He leaves the Springs in the morning, and I am sure he will be with us by noon.”
“Who is he?” demanded her little lord and master. “Not a fool who’s after Dodo’s money, I hope.”
“Ebeneezer! How can you speak so shamelessly of your child’s admirers?” complained Mrs. Alexander.
“Don’t worry, Daddy,” added Dodo, frankly as ever. “He makes a fine fetch-and-carry addition to Ma’s cortège, and I don’t mind him a bit—he manages to dust his wisp of a moustache upon my finger-tips now and then, and that seems to pay him for his doglike devotion to Ma.”
“But why wait for him to come to Denver?” demanded her father.
“Why—because Ma invited him to join your party on its trip to Arizona. She thinks the invigorating climate may cause certain dormant brain cells in sweet little Algy’s cerebrum to open. If that should develop, think how thankful we would be!” Dodo laughed heartlessly.
“Poor Dodo!” whispered Eleanor to Polly. “What a life she must have had with her mother, at such a resort as the Hot Springs.”
“Darling child!” cried Mrs. Alexander, reprovingly, to Dodo. “Some day you will appreciate such a devoted love as adoring Algernon has for you. At present you are too young to understand it.”
“I am as old as Polly and Eleanor, Ma, in spite of your denials of my true age. I think it is too silly for anything—the way you tell people how grown up I am for my tender age! How much older I look than I really am! That I ought to be in school, with my hair in pigtails! Now, I’m going to have it out, since Daddy is here to stand by me. The next time you start in to sigh about my precociousness for my age, I’m going to tell right out how old you are. I’m going to inform people that you married very late in life, and that I am a child of your old age.”
Ebeneezer Alexander smiled approvingly at his daughter’s threat, and the others in the group had difficulty in controlling their facial muscles—not that the elders approved of such remarks to a parent, but Mrs. Alexander’s was an exceptional case, and Dodo happened to be a very frank, even blunt, character, much like her father’s. Mrs. Courtney heard and saw the attitude between mother and daughter, and she was intelligent enough to understand the situation without any other explanations. She felt that possibly she might be of great service to both.
But Mrs. Alexander now commanded all attention. Dodo’s speech could not be denied by her, so she took refuge in her usual way—hysterics. All present, but Dodo and her father, rushed around in search for smelling-salts and other remedies, but the two who should have been most concerned were least concerned. They understood that the third member of the family would come out of her attack instantly, once she realized no one paid any attention to her. Now, however, she continued the pretension as long as there seemed hope of annoying others.
“I sure am sorry to interrupt you-all from waitin’ on my missus, folks,” finally said Mr. Alexander, “but I got to get to bed, ‘cause we’re goin’ to make an early start.”
This made his wife forget her recent indisposition. She sat up.
“Ebeneezer! I told you that I could not get ready to start away from here so early as you plan. I have to do necessary shopping for myself and Dodo,” exclaimed she.
“I will pass up the shopping, Ma, because I really prefer going on with the rest of the party,” said Dodo, quickly.
“Children must be seen not——” Mrs. Alexander began, but she suddenly remembered her daughter’s threat to expose her true age, and she sighed aloud.
“If you say you must shop fer things, you can stay over and come along on another train. Our’s won’t be the last one out of Denver, you know,” ventured Mr. Alexander, hopefully.
“I am sorry that your shopping will detain you here, and not permit you to go on with us in the morning,” added Mr. Dalken, hoping to end the argument, and to show the lady that he was obdurate over her selfishness.
“You men might go on, and we ladies follow in the afternoon,” suggested Mrs. Alexander, appealing to Mrs. Courtney.
“No,” instantly retorted her spouse. “We got all the mileage on one ticket, and the crowd can’t break up that way. You make up your mind to stay and shop, and at the same time hire a maid for yourself to go down to the desert of Arizona, and we’ll go on and wait for you at Albuquerque.”
The evident desire of her liege lord to be rid of her society, even for a day, caused the contrary woman to change her plans. “I will sacrifice myself and all my appointments in Denver for you, dear Ebeneezer. What time must I be ready in the morning?”
“Huh! All this time and talk wasted—might have said this in the start!” snorted Mr. Alexander, marching away without replying to his wife’s honeyed question.
Now the other members in the party believed Mrs. Alexander was persuaded to go with them before noon the following day. But those who had crossed wills with her in England and, later, on the Continent, might have known her better. The next day proved that Mrs. Alexander had won her point; she acted too guileless about it to deceive any one.
It had been decided to take the eleven-forty train from Denver, but this decision came to naught much to the aggravation of the men. Polly and Eleanor, knowing as they did Mrs. Alexander’s stock of tricks, had to laugh at this newest one.
Everything was ready, and cabs were called to take the tourists to the station. Bags, girls and all were settled in the taxis, and the men were impatiently waiting for Mrs. Alexander to appear. Finally, at the very last moment in which they might reach the train by speeding the cars, she came out to the curb. Just as she was going to step inside her cab, she cried in alarm and sank down upon the curb.
Naturally her male companions sprang over to help her up, but she could not stand. She hung limply between Mr. Dalken and her husband. Meanwhile she groaned and seemed in genuine distress.
“Good gracious, Maggie, what ails you now?” wailed little Mr. Alexander, wishing to thrust her into the cab, in order to permit them to drive on.
“Take me back to the hotel! I cannot go——” she seemed to grow faint and her head drooped forward.
“She’s ill, Mr. Alexander,” whispered Mr. Dalken, anxiously.
“Well, we’ll lift her in the cab, and the air’ll bring her to, as soon as the driver starts,” suggested her husband.
The chauffeur now ventured a disconcerting announcement. “If you-all planned to catch the noon express, you’re goin’ to be disappointed. Can’t possibly make it now, not if you had wings to fly there.”
“Why, man, we’ve got to catch it! Made dates with business men for to-morrow,” said Jack impatiently, looking at his watch.
“Too bad, but you-all can understand that I’m not talking for my own good, seein’ that I’m losin’ all these fares to the station,” said the driver.
“He’s kerrect, Jack!” cried Mr. Alexander, in distress. “No use scootin’ to catch that train. Gotta wait fer the five o’clock now.” But his expression boded no future peace to his wife, who had been the cause of the delay.
Mrs. Alexander was too wise an actress to revive immediately after she had won her game. She allowed them to carry her into the ladies’ parlor, and there she secured the interest of the maid by slipping her a liberal tip to attend upon her.
Mrs. Courtney remained with the sighing lady, but the girls would not join them, lest Dodo express her candid opinion of this unusual incident. In fact, it was all Polly could do to restrain Dodo from telling her mother what she believed to be the truth; and the men were equally engaged in keeping Mr. Alexander from announcing to his wife his intentions to divorce her. Mr. Dalken laughed and explained that a husband had to prove more serious misdemeanors on the part of a wife than clever acting.
Mrs. Alexander revived quickly, once she had gained her point, and by the time Mr. Algernon Alveston was announced, she had regained her usual strength of mind, as well as strength of ankles—the weakness which had caused her graceful subsidence upon the curb seemed to have vanished like magic.
Mr. Dalken’s party had given up their rooms at the hotel, at the time they believed themselves to be leaving for the train; then it became necessary for the Alexanders to engage another suite to allow the indisposed lady to recover without being annoyed by strangers.
Every member of the Dalken party, except Mrs. Alexander, was waiting in the luxurious lounge for further news of the invalid, when a thin, sallow-faced, silver-haired youth pranced into the hotel and glanced eagerly around. He must have been weak-sighted, because Dodo was a prominent figure in the waiting party of friends, yet the newcomer failed to see her.
“Oh, goodness!” whispered Dodo. “There’s Algy,—spats, cane and monocle!”
The others had seen the ridiculous-looking young man, and now they gasped at Dodo’s information. Was that the cause of their hold-up? Mr. Alexander frowned ominously, as he muttered aloud: “Where’d he come from, Dodo? And how long’ve you known him?”
“He doesn’t seem to know himself where he hailed from,” tittered Dodo, getting back of her friends to avoid being spied by the little green eye back of the monocle. “As for time in which to know him, Daddy, a minute or two is sufficient. There’s nothing more to discover, once you’ve had a look at his clothes and general get-up.”
Polly and Eleanor giggled, because Dodo’s description seemed to fit the object perfectly. Then they suddenly turned their attention to each other and seemed deeply interested in what the gentlemen were saying,—because a bell-hop was seen to take a card from the clerk and leave the desk. In a few seconds thereafter, he began to page “Mrs. Alexander! Mrs. Alexander!”
“S—sh! don’t one of you dare to reply to that!” warned Mr. Alexander, making sure that Dodo was safely screened from view by the girls and Mrs. Courtney. “If that swell collar-ad over there’s called to see Mrs. Alexander, let her answer the call. It ain’t fer you ner me, Dodo!”
Having paraded all around the public rooms on the first floor, the bell-hop was returning to the desk with the card in his hand, when the vigilant clerk spied the Alexanders in Mr. Dalken’s party.
“There, you’ll find out where the lady is by asking of her husband or daughter—over by the palms,” said the clerk. Then Mr. Alexander saw the boy hurry across the lobby in his direction.
The little man drew himself up, to look as majestic as possible, before he turned to stare at the bell-boy. “You say this caller is for my wife? Well, I’ll go and entertain him, until she comes in.”
Without another word, Mr. Alexander started off, but Dodo felt it would surely create a divorce in her family if her father was permitted to interview Mr. Alveston alone—perhaps he would tell him he was holding up a private touring party, and then ask him to get out of the way. It was well known that Mr. Alexander stood on little ceremony and lost no time in speaking bluntly to people who caused him any annoyance. Therefore it happened that Dodo got her two girl-friends to hurry with her at the heels of her father. All four approached the caller about the same time.
Algernon Alveston sprang up from the great leather chair, in which he had been quite lost, and gave his coat and vest a nervous yank to straighten out any possible creases. Then he flicked off an imaginary speck of dust from his sleeve, and “hem-hem-ed” several times, before he was ready to welcome Dodo and her friends.
Dodo stood still, expecting Algy to join her, then she would prevent her father from taking a high hand in the addition of the young man to the touring party.
Algernon’s spirit was willing to fulfill Dodo’s wishes, but his head was weak. As he nervously started to greet Dodo and be introduced to her father and the two handsome girls beside her, his extremely pointed-toed shoe caught in the long fringe of the Turkish rug. Presto! away went the dapper youth, as though he was performing a fancy dance for the benefit of his audience. In fact, his body seemed to be suspended above the floor in a horizontal position instead of being upright.
Even so, he might have eventually balanced himself, in order to gain a vertical position, as man was meant to be, had it not been for his thick, heavy walking-stick. As he went two-stepping over the carpet, the cane struck the table legs and came back like a boomerang. In another moment it had managed to get between his weak knees, and in another moment Algy was measuring his full length upon the floor directly in front of little Mr. Alexander.
It was all done in so short a time that the girls had not had leisure to catch their breaths, and Mr. Alexander was not provided with any other exclamation than his favorite one, which always came from him like a blast from a small furnace.
“By the Great Horned Spoon! What’cha floppin’ in front o’ me for? I ain’t no royal personage waitin’ to have my subjecks kiss my shoe, like-as-how you Britons do, when you got a favor to ask. Now, git up, and behave like a real man.” With this advice, Mr. Alexander assisted Algy by kicking the troublesome cane out of the way.
“Ah,—I beg pawdin; aw, I neveh thought of saluting you, Mr. Alexandeh. It was owing to a trifling catch of my boot on the rug,” explained Algy, rising awkwardly to his feet, and groping about for his beloved monocle. So nervous was he, that he adjusted the eye-glass and never realized that the fall had loosened and lost the glass. He wore the fine gold-wire rim as though the glass was there.
“Yeh, I noticed the triflin’ trip,” smiled Mr. Alexander.
Algy interpreted the smile as one of paternal sympathy, and never dreamed that Dodo’s father was actually laughing at the vapid admirer who seemed so feather-brained.
“Weally, Miss Dodo, I must apologize for such accidental behavior on my part. I feah I frightened you a bit, but I assure you it was owing to that trifling trip,” repeated Algy, finding it difficult to think of any new sentence.
“As Daddy said, ‘never mind.’ Remember you are out west now, and not in your oft-quoted British Isles. You must know how awfully democratic father is—just the opposite of you, Mr. Alveston.”
“Oh, I see! Perhaps youh fatheh will convert my views on democracy. At pwesent, howeveh, I am a thoroughbred autocrat with tendencies toward my English ancestry.” Algy was not very clear about his tendencies, thought Polly, as she stood listening very seriously.
“Naturally you would have ancestral tendencies—every one has,” laughed Dodo; then Algy was ready to be presented.
“In these modern days, the young folks gen’ally take after themselves,” grunted Mr. Alexander. “All the same, ef this young feller is like his ancestors was, it’s a lucky thing they didn’t have rugs with fringes on ’em in the old times.”
Mr. Alexander’s remark was quite lost, however, because Algy was being introduced, and he never grasped more than one thing at a time. At the moment, he was grasping Polly’s fingers in order to waft a dainty kiss upon their tips in salute. Then came Eleanor’s turn. And at last, Mr. Alexander was introduced. The little man scowled at the excessively polite young man, and seemed to be ready to defend himself in case his fingers were lifted to those thin, white lips.
Just as the formal introductions ended, Jack strolled over and called out cheerily: “Oh, here you are! Found, the friend Mrs. Alexander thought to be lost, strayed or stolen?”
Tom had accompanied Jack, but he remained in the open doorway, annoyed at what he saw. He had appeared just in time to see Algy kiss Polly’s fingers, and he felt like cuffing the little dandy’s ears for such impertinence.
Now, however, he crossed the room and spoke impatiently to Polly. “Why do you permit that Jackanapes to perform as he did?”
“Why—what do you mean, Tom?” asked Polly, surprised.
“Well, you know very well! A man who loves a girl hates to see her made a fool of in a public place,” retorted Tom, forgetting Anne Brewster’s advices and allowing his jealousy to show itself again.
“Don’t you dare speak like that to me! I am not made a fool of by you or any other man, and I refuse to allow any one to correct me—especially in a public place, and before all my friends.” With this reply, Polly turned and marched away.
Too late Tom remembered what Anne had tried to teach him, but it seemed too late now to make amends. He watched Polly go, and then, instead of running up to apologize and explain himself, he decided that this was no place for him. He then went to the porter and asked him to transfer his baggage to a cab which he would get to take him to the Denver railway station. Leaving a note of explanation for Mr. Dalken, he slipped away, and that afternoon was on his way back to Oak Creek. Long before he reached his destination, however, he had time to regret his hasty act. How he had longed for this very wonderful tour with Polly and her friends, and now because of his demon jealousy all was spoiled again!