Jasper County Democrat, Volume 17, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 September 1914 — The Hollow of Her Hand [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Hollow of Her Hand

by George Barr McCutcheon

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(Continuation of Chapter XVI) “Yee. And what is more to the point, I am quite sure I should have said yes if you had asked me. Sounds odd, doesn’t it? Rather amaslng, too, being able to discuss it so unreservedly, isn’t it?” “Good heavens, Viv!” he cried uncomfortably. “I—l had no idea you cared —” Cared!” she cried, as he' paused. “I don’t care two pine for you in that way. But I would have married you, just the same, because you are worth marrying. I’d very much rather have you for a husband than any man I know, but as for loving you! Pooh! I’d love you in just the way mother loves father, and I wouldn’t have been a bit more trouble to you than she is to him.” “Gad, you don’t mind what you say!” “Falling to nab you, Brandy, I dare say I’ll have to come down to a duke or, who knows? maybe a mere prince. It isn’t very enterprising, is it? And certainly it isn’t a gay prospect. Really, I had hoped you would have me. I flatter myself, I suppose, but, honestly now, we would have made a rather nice looking'couple, wouldn’t we?” “You flatter me,” he said. “But,” she resumed, calmly exhaling, “you very foolishly fell in love with some one else, and it wasn’t necessary for me to pretend that I was in love with you—which I should have done, believe me, if you had given me the chance. You fell in love, first with Hetty Castleton.” “First?” he cried, frowning. "And now you are heels over head In love with my beautiful sister-in-iaw. Which all goes to prove that I would have made just the kind of wife you need, considering your tendency to fluctuate. But how dreadful it would have been for a sentimental. loving girl-like Hetty!” He sat bolt upright and stared hard at her. “See here, Viv, what the dickens are you driving at? I’m not in love with Bara —not in the least—and —” He checked himself sharply. “What an ass I am! You’re guying me.” “In any event, I am right about Hetty,” she said, leaning forward, her manner quite serious. “If it will eaee you mind,” he said stiffly, “I plead guilty with all my heart.” She favored him with a slight frown of annoyance. “And you deny the fluctuating charge?” “Most positively. I can afford to be honest with you, Viv. You are a corker. I love Hetty Castleton with all my soul.” She leaned back in her chair. “Then

why don't you dignify your soul by being honest with her?” “What do you mean?” For a half-minute she was silent "Are you and I of the same stripe, after all? Would you marry Sara without loving her, as I would have done by you? It doesn’t seem like you, Brandon.” “Good heaven, I’m not going to marry Sara!" he blurted out. “It’s never entered my head.” “Perhaps it has entered hers.” “Nonsense! She isn’t going to marry anybody. And she knows how I feel toward Hetty. If it came to the point where I decided to marry without love, ’pon my soul, Viv, I believe I’d pick you out as the victim.” “Wonderful combination!” she said with a frank laugh. “The quintessence of ‘no love lost’ But to resume! Do you know that people are saying you are to be married before the winter ie over?” ~ -V “Let ’em say it,” he said gruffly. . “Oh*, well,’ she said, dispatching it

all w'ith a gesture, “if that’s the way you feel about it, there’s no more to be said.” He was ashamed. “I beg your pardon, I shouldn’t have said that.” “You see,” she went on, reverting to the original topic, “people who know Sara are likely to credit her with motives you appear to be totally ignorant of. She set her heart on my brother Challie, when she was a great deal younger than she is now, and she got him. If age and experience count for anything, how capable she must be by this time.” He was too wise to venture au opinion. “I assure you she has no designs on me.” “Perhaps not. But I fancy that even you could not escape as St. Anthony did. She is most alluring.” “You don’t like her." “Obviously. And yet 1 don’t dislike her. She has the Virtue of consistency, if one may use the expression. She loved my brother. Leslie says she should have hated him. We have tried to like her. I think I have come nearer to it than any of the others, not excepting Leslie, who has always been her champion. I suppose you know that he was your rival at one time.” “He mentioned it,” said Booth drily. “I should have been very much disappointed in her if she had accepted him,” “Indeed?” “I sometimes wonder if Sara spiked Leslie’s guns for him.” “I can tell you something you don’t know, Vivian,” said he. “Sara was rather keen about making a match there.” Vivian's smile was slow but triumphant. “That is just what I thoughL There you are! Doesn’t that explain Sara?”

“In a measure, yes. But, you see, it developed that Hetty cared for some one else, and that put a stop to everything.” “Am I to take it that you are the some one else?” “Yes,” he said soberly. “Then, may I ask why she went away 60 suddenly?” “You may ask, but I can't answer.” “Do you want my opinion? She went away because Sara, failing in her plan to marry her off to Leslie, decided that it would be fatal to a certain project of her own if she remained on the field of action. Do I make myself clear?” “Oh, you are away off in your conclusions, Viv.” “Time will tell,” was here cabalistic rejoinder. Her father appeared on the lawn below and called up to them. "You are wanted at the telephone. Brandon. I've just been talking to Sara." “Did she call you up, father?” asked Vivian, leaning over the rail. "Yes. About nothing in particular, however.” She turned upon Booth with a mocking smile. He felt the color rueh to his face, and was angry with himself. He went to the telephone. Almost her first words were these: 1 “What has Vivian been telling you about me, Brandon?” He actually gasped. “Good heavens, Sara!” He heard her low laugh. “So she has been saying things, has she?” she asked. “I thought so. I’ve had it in my bones tonight.” He was at a loss for words. It was positively uncanny. As he stood there, trying to think of a trivial remark, her laugh came to him again over the wire, followed by a drawling “good night,” and then the soughing of the wind over the “open" wire.

The next day he called her up on the telephone quite early. He knew her habits. She would be abroad in her gardens by eight o’clock. He remembered well that Leslie, in commenting on her absurdly early hours, had once said that her “early bird” habit was hereditary: 6he got it from Sebastian. “What put it intp your head, Sara, that Vivian was saying anything'unpleasant about you last night?” “Magic,” she replied succinctly. “Rubbish!” “I have a magic tapestry that transports me, hither and thither, and by night I always carry Aladdin’s lamp. So, you see, I see and hear everything” “Be sensible.” “Very well. I will be sensible. If you intend to be influenced by what Vivian or her mother said to you last night, I think you'd be wise to avoid me from this time on.” Prepared though* he was, he blinked his eyes and said something she didn’t quite catch. She went on: “Moreover, in addition to my attainments in the black art, I am quite as clever as Mr. Sherlock Holmes in some respects. I really do some splendid deducing. In the first place, you were asked there and I

was n6L WEyT Because T was To “be discussed. You see —" “Marvelous!” he Interrupted loudly. “You were to be told that I have cruel designs upon you.” ‘Go on, please.” “And all that sort of thing." she said sweepingly, and he could almost see the inclusive gesture with her free hand. He laughed but still marveled at the shrewdness of her perceptions. ""I’ll come over this afternoon and show you wherein yon are wrong.” be began, hut she interrupted him with a laugh. “I am starting for the city before noon, by motor, to he gone at least a fortnight.” “What! This is the first I’ve heard of It.” Again she laughed. "To be perfectly frank with you, I hadn’t heard of it myself until just now. I think 1 shall go down to the Homestead with the Carrolls.” “Hot Springs?” '“Virginia,”, she added explicitly. “I -say, Sara, what! does all this mean? You—” “And if you should follow me there, Vivian’s estimate of us will not be so far out of the way as we'd like to make it.” r *

True to her word, she was gone when he drove over later on in the day. Somehow, he experienced a queer feeling df relief. Not that he was oppressed by the rather vivacious opinions of Vivian and her ilk, but because something told him that Sara was wavering in her determination to withhold the secret from him and fled for perfectly obvious reasons. He had two commissions among the rich summer colonists. One, a full length portrait of young Beardsley in shooting togs, was nearly finished. The other was to be a half-length of Mrs. Ravenscroft, who wanted oqe just like Hetty Castleton’s, except for the eyes, which she admitted would have to be different. Nothing was said of the seventeen years' difference in their ages. Vivian had put off posing until Lent. The Wrandalls departed for Scotland. and other friends of his began to desert the country for the city. The fortnight passed and another week besides. Mrs. Ravenscroft decided to go to Europe when the picture was half-finished. “You can finish it when I come back in December, Mr. Bobth,” 6he said. “I’ll have several new gowns to choose from, too.” "I shall be busy all winter, Mrs. Ravenscroft,'’ he said coldly. “How annoying.” she said calmly, and that was the end of it all. She had made the unpleasant discovery that it wasn’t going to be in the least like Hetty Castleton'6, so why bother about it?

Booth waited until Sara came out to superintend the closing of her house tor the winter. He called at Southlook on the day of her arrival. He was struck at once by the curious change in her appearance and manner. There was something bleak and desolate in the vividly brilliant face: the tired, wistful, harassed look of one w ho has begun to quail and vet fights on. ' 'Will you go out with me tomorrow, Brandon, for an all-day trip in the car?” she asked, as they 6tood together before the open fireplace on this late November afternoon. Her eyes were moody, her voice rather lifeless. “Certainly,” he said, watching her closely. Was the break about to come? “I will stop for you at nine.” After a short pause, she looked up and said: “I suppose you would like to know where I am taking you.” “It doesn’t matter, Sara." “I want you to go with me 1o Burton's inn.” “Burton's inn.” “That is the place where my husband was killed,” she said, quite steadily. He started. “Oh! But —do you think it best, Sara, to open old wounda by—” “I have thought it all out, Brandon. I want.to go there —just once. I want to go into that room again.” (TO BE CONTINUED.)

Good Heavens, Viv!” He Cried, Uncomfortably.