CHAPTER XX
EVERY DOG HAS HIS DAY
That was on a Saturday morning. During the golf season Saturday is
always a busy day with us, with the husbands coming up for over Sunday,
and trying to get in all the golf, baths and spring water they can in
forty-eight hours. But in the winter Saturday is the same as any, other
day.
It had stopped snowing and the sun was shining, although it was so cold
that the snow blew like powder. By eleven o'clock every one who could
walk had come to the spring-house. Even Mr. Jennings came down in a
wheeled chair, and Senator Biggs, still looking a sort of grass-green
and keeping his eyes off me, came and sat in a corner, with a book
called Fast versus Feast held so that every one could see.
There were bridge tables going, and five hundred, and a group around
the slot-machine, while the crocheters formed a crowd by themselves,
exchanging gossip and new stitches.
About twelve o'clock Mr. Thoburn came in, and as he opened the door,
in leaped Arabella. The women made a fuss over the creature and cuddled
her, and when I tried to put her out everybody objected. So she stayed,
and Miss Summers put her through a lot of tricks, while the men crowded
around. As I said before, Miss Summers was a first favorite with the
men.
Mr. von Inwald and Miss Patty came in just then and stood watching.
"And now," said Mr. von Inwald, "I propose, as a reward to Miss
Arabella, a glass of this wonderful water. Minnie, a glass of water for
Arabella!"
"She doesn't drink out of one of my glasses," I declared angrily.
"It's one of my rules that dogs—"
"Tut!" said Mr. Thoburn. "What's good for man is good for beast.
Besides, the little beggar's thirsty."
Well, they made a great fuss about the creature's being thirsty, and so
finally I got a panful of spring water and it drank until I thought it
would burst. I'm not vicious, as I say, but I wish it had.
Well, the dog finished and lay down by the fire, and everything seemed
to go on as before. Mr. Thoburn was in a good humor, and he came over to
the spring and brought a trayful of glasses.
"To save you steps, Minnie!" he explained. "You have no idea how it
pains me to see you working. Gentlemen, name your poison!"
"A frappe with blotting-paper on the side," Mr. Moody snarled from the
slot-machine. "If I drink much more, I'll have to be hooped up like a
barrel."
"Just what is the record here?" the bishop asked. "I'm ordered eight
glasses, but I find it more than a sufficiency."
"We had one man here once who could drink twenty-five at a time," I
said, "but he was a German."
"He was a tank," Mr. Sam corrected grumpily. He was watching something
on the floor—I couldn't see what. "All I need is to swallow a few
goldfish and I'd be a first-class aquarium."
"What I think we should do," Miss Cobb said, "is to try to find out just
what suits us, and stick to that. I'm always trying."
"Damned trying!" Mr. Jennings snarled, and limped over for more water.
"I'd like to know where to go for rheumatism."
"I got mine here," said Mr. Thoburn cheerfully. "It's my opinion this
place is rheumatic as well as malarious. And as for this water, with all
due respect to the spirit in the spring"—he bowed to me—"I think it's
an insult to ask people to drink it. It isn't half so strong as it
was two years ago. Taste it; smell it! I ask the old friends of the
sanatorium, is that water what it used to be?"
"Don't tell me it was ever any worse than this!" Miss Summers exclaimed.
But Thoburn went on. The card-players stopped to listen, but Mr. Sam was
still staring at something on the floor.
"I tell you, the spring is losing its virtue, and, like a woman, without
virtue, it is worthless."
"But interesting!" Mr. Sam said, and stooped down.
"Consider," went on Mr. Thoburn, standing and holding his glass to the
light, "how we are at the mercy of this little spring! A convulsion in
the bowels of the earth, and its health-giving properties may be changed
to the direst poison. How do we know, you and I, some such change has
not occurred overnight? Unlikely as it is, it's a possibility that,
sitting here calmly, we may be sipping our death potion."
Some of the people actually put down their glasses and everybody began
to look uneasy except Mr. Sam, who was still watching something I could
not see.
Mr. Thoburn looked around and saw he'd made an impression. "We may,"
he continued, "although my personal opinion of this water is that it's
growing too weak to be wicked. I prove my faith in Mother Nature; if it
is poisoned, I am gone. I drink!"
Mr. Sam suddenly straightened up and glanced at Miss Summers. "Perhaps
I'm mistaken," he said, "but I think there is something the matter with
Arabella."
Everybody looked: Arabella was lying on her back, jerking and twitching
and foaming at the mouth.
"She's been poisoned!" Miss Summers screeched, and fell on her knees
beside her. "It's that wretched water!"
There was pretty nearly a riot in a minute. Everybody jumped up and
stared at the dog, and everybody remembered the water he or she had just
had, and coming on top of Mr. Thoburn's speech, it made them babbling
lunatics. As I look back, I have a sort of picture of Miss Summers on
the floor with Arabella in her lap, and the rest telling how much of the
water they had had and crowding around Mr. Thoburn.
"It seems hardly likely it was the water," he said, "although from what
I recall of my chemistry it is distinctly possible. Springs have been
known to change their character, and the coincidence—the dog and the
water—is certainly startling. Still, as nobody feels ill—"
But they weren't sure they didn't. The bishop said he felt perfectly
well, but he had a strange inclination to yawn all the time, and Mrs.
Biggs' left arm had gone to sleep. And then, with the excitement and
all, Miss Cobb took a violent pain in the back of her neck and didn't
know whether to cry or to laugh.
Well, I did what I could. The worst of it was, I wasn't sure it wasn't
the water. I thought possibly Mr. Pierce had made a mistake in what he
had bought at the drug store, and although I don't as a rule drink it
myself, I began to feel queer in the pit of my stomach.
Mr. Thoburn came over to the spring, and filling a glass, took it to
the light, with every one watching anxiously. When he brought it back he
stooped over the railing and whispered to me.
"When did you fix it?" he asked sternly.
"Last night," I answered. It was no time to beat about the bush.
"It's yellower than usual," he said. "I'm inclined to think something
has gone wrong at the drug store, Minnie."
I could hardly breathe. I had the most terrible vision of all the guests
lying around like Arabella, twitching and foaming, and me going to
prison as a wholesale murderess. Any hair but mine would have turned
gray in that minute.
Mr. von Inwald was watching like the others, and now he came over and
caught Mr. Thoburn by the arm.
"What do you think—" he asked nervously. "I—I have had three glasses
of it!"
"Three!" shouted Senator Biggs, coming forward. "I've had eleven! I tell
you, I've been feeling queer for twenty-four hours! I'm poisoned! That's
what I am."
He staggered out, with Mrs. Biggs just behind him, and from that moment
they were all demoralized. I stood by the spring and sipped at the
water to show I wasn't afraid of it, with my knees shaking under me and
Arabella lying stock-still, as if she had died, under my very nose. One
by one they left to look for Doctor Barnes, or to get the white of egg,
which somebody had suggested as an antidote.
Miss Cobb was one of the last to go. She turned in the doorway and
looked back at me, with tears in her eyes.
"It isn't your fault, Minnie," she said, "and forgive me if I have ever
said anything unkind to you." Then she went, and I was alone, looking
down at Arabella.
Or rather, I thought I was alone, for there was a movement by one of the
windows and Miss Patty came forward and knelt by the dog.
"Of all the absurdities!" she said. "Poor little thing! Minnie, I
believe she's breathing!"
She put the dog's head in her lap, and the little beast opened its eyes
and tried to wag its blue tail.
"Oh, Miss Patty, Miss Patty!" I exclaimed, and I got down beside her and
cried on her shoulder, with her stroking my hand and calling me dearest!
Me!
I was wiping my eyes when the door was thrown open and Mr. Pierce ran
in. He had no hat on and his hair was powdered with snow. He stopped
just inside the door and looked at Miss Patty.
"You—" he said "you are all right? You are not—" he came forward and
stood over her, with his heart in his eyes. She MUST have known from
that minute.
"My God!" he exclaimed, "I thought you were poisoned!"
She looked up, without smiling, and then I thought she half shut her
eyes, as if what she saw in his face hurt her.
"I am all right," she assured him, "and little Arabella will be
all right, too. She's had a convulsion, that's all—probably from
overeating. As for the others—!"
"Where is the—where is von Inwald?"
"He has gone to take the white of an egg," she replied rather haughtily.
She was too honest to evade anything, but she flushed. Of course, I knew
what he didn't—that the prince had been among the first to scurry to
the house, and that he hadn't even waited for her.
He walked to the window, as if he didn't want her to see what he thought
of that, and I saw him looking hard at something outside in the snow.
When he walked back to the fire he was smiling, and he stooped over and
poked Arabella with his finger.
"So that was it!" he said. "Full to the scuppers, poor little wretch!
Minnie, I am hoist with my own petard, which in this case was a
boomerang."
"Which is in English—" I asked.
"With the instinct of her sex, Arabella has unearthed what was meant
to be buried forever. She had gorged herself into a convulsion on that
rabbit I shot last night!" |
