The Dark Star
by Robert W. Chambers · English · Gutenberg #28440 · 658,558 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Dark Star
Author: Robert W. Chambers
Illustrator: William Dodge Stevens
Release date: March 29, 2009 [eBook #28440]
Most recently updated: January 4, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/28440
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Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DARK STAR ***
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THE DARK STAR
[Illustration: "My darling Rue--my little Rue Carew----"]
THE DARK STAR
By ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
Author of "The Girl Philippa," "Who Goes There,"
"The Hidden Children," Etc.
[Illustration]
WITH FRONTISPIECE
By W. D. STEVENS
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers--New York
Published by Arrangement with D. Appleton & Company
Copyright, 1917, by
ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
Copyright, 1916, 1917, by the International Magazine Company
Printed in the United States of America
TO MY FRIEND
EDGAR SISSON
Dans c'métier-là, faut
rien chercher à comprendre.
RENÉ BENJAMIN
ALAK'S SONG
Where are you going,
Naïa?
Through the still noon--
Where are you going?
To hear the thunder of the sea
And the wind blowing!--
To find a stormy moon to comfort me
Across the dune!
----
Why are you weeping,
Naïa?
Through the still noon--
Why are you weeping?
Because I found no wind, no sea,
No white surf leaping,
Nor any flying moon to comfort me
Upon the dune.
----
What did you see there,
Naïa?
In the still noon--
What did you see there?
Only the parched world drowsed in drought,
And a fat bee, there,
Prying and probing at a poppy's mouth
That drooped a-swoon.
----
What did you hear there,
Naïa?
In the still noon--
What did you hear there?
Only a kestrel's lonely cry
From the wood near there--
A rustle in the wheat as I passed by--
A cricket's rune.
----
Who led you homeward,
Naïa?
Through the still noon--
Who led you homeward?
My soul within me sought the sea,
Leading me foam-ward:
But the lost moon's ghost returned with me
Through the high noon.
----
Where is your soul then,
Naïa?
Lost at high noon--
Where is your soul then?
It wanders East--or West--I think--
Or near the Pole, then--
Or died--perhaps there on the dune's dry brink
Seeking the moon.
THE DARK STAR
"The dying star grew dark; the last light faded from it; went out.
Prince Erlik laughed.
"And suddenly the old order of things began to pass away more
swiftly.
"Between earth and outer space--between Creator and created, confusing
and confounding their identities,--a rushing darkness grew--the
hurrying wrack of immemorial storms heralding whirlwinds through which
Truth alone survives.
"Awaiting the inevitable reëstablishment of such temporary conventions
as render the incident of human existence possible, the brooding Demon
which men call Truth stares steadily at Tengri under the high stars
which are passing too, and which at last shall pass away and leave the
Demon watching all alone amid the ruins of eternity."
The Prophet of the Kiot Bordjiguen
CONTENTS
Preface. Children of the Star
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Wonder-Box 1
II. Brookhollow 18
III. In Embryo 30
IV. The Trodden Way 38
V. Ex Machina 47
VI. The End of Solitude 60
VII. Obsession 71
VIII. A Change Impends 80
IX. Nonresistance 88
X. Driving Head-on 102
XI. The Breakers 112
XII. A Life Line 122
XIII. Letters from a Little Girl 137
XIV. A Journey Begins 157
XV. The Locked House 162
XVI. Scheherazade 180
XVII. A White Skirt 193
XVIII. By Radio 202
XIX. The Captain of the Volhynia 216
XX. The Drop of Irish 223
XXI. Method and Foresight 239
XXII. Two Thirteen 246
XXIII. On His Way 253
XXIV. The Road to Paris 261
XXV. Cup and Lip 280
XXVI. Rue Soleil d'Or 290
XXVII. From Four to Five 305
XXVIII. Together 312
XXIX. En Famille 325
XXX. Jardin Russe 337
XXXI. The Café des Bulgars 347
XXXII. The Cercle Extranationale 358
XXXIII. A Rat Hunt 377
XXXIV. Sunrise 395
XXXV. The First Day 410
THE DARK STAR
THE DARK STAR
PREFACE
CHILDREN OF THE STAR
Not the dark companion of Sirius, brightest of all stars--not our own
chill and spectral planet rushing toward Vega in the constellation of
Lyra--presided at the birth of millions born to corroborate a bloody
horoscope.
But a Dark Star, speeding unseen through space, known to the ancients,
by them called Erlik, after the Prince of Darkness, ruled at the birth
of those myriad souls destined to be engulfed in the earthquake of the
ages, or flung by it out of the ordered pathway of their lives into
strange byways, stranger highways--into deeps and deserts never
dreamed of.
Also one of the dozen odd temporary stars on record blazed up on that
day, flared for a month or two, dwindled to a cinder, and went out.
But the Dark Star Erlik, terribly immortal, sped on through space to
complete a two-hundred-thousand-year circuit of the heavens, and begin
anew an immemorial journey by the will of the Most High.
What spectroscope is to horoscope, destiny is to chance. The black
star Erlik rushed through interstellar darkness unseen; those born
under its violent augury squalled in their cradles, or, thumb in
mouth, slumbered the dreamless slumber of the newly born.
One of these, a tiny girl baby, fussed and fidgeted in her mother's
arms, tortured by prickly heat when the hot winds blew through
Trebizond.
Overhead vultures circled; a _stein-adler_, cleaving the blue, looked
down where the surf made a thin white line along the coast, then set
his lofty course for China.
Thousands of miles to the westward, a little boy of eight gazed out
across the ruffled waters of the mill pond at Neeland's Mills, and
wondered whether the ocean might not look that way.
And, wondering, with the salt sea effervescence working in his
inland-born body, he fitted a cork to his fishing line and flung the
baited hook far out across the ripples. Then he seated himself on the
parapet of the stone bridge and waited for monsters of the deep to
come.
* * * * *
And again, off Seraglio Point, men were rowing in a boat; and a corded
sack lay in the stern, horridly and limply heavy.
There was also a box lying in the boat, oddly bound and clamped with
metal which glistened like silver under the Eastern stars when the
waves of the Bosporus dashed high, and the flying scud rained down on
box and sack and the red-capped rowers.
* * * * *
In Petrograd a little girl of twelve was learning to eat other things
than sour milk and cheese; learning to ride otherwise than like a
demon on a Cossack saddle; learning deportment, too, and languages,
and social graces and the fine arts. And, most thoroughly of all, the
little girl was learning how deathless should be her hatred for the
Turkish Empire and all its works; and how only less perfect than our
Lord in Paradise was the Czar on his throne amid that earthly paradise
known as "All the Russias."
Her little brother was learning these things, too, in the Corps of
Officers. Also he was already proficient on the balalaika.
* * * * *
And again, in the mountains of a conquered province, the little
daughter of a gamekeeper to nobility was preparing to emigrate with
her father to a new home in the Western world, where she would learn
to perform miracles with rifle and revolver, and where the beauty of
the hermit thrush's song would startle her into comparing it to the
beauty of her own untried voice. But to her father, and to her, the
most beautiful thing in all the world was love of Fatherland.
* * * * *
Over these, and millions of others, brooded the spell of the Dark
Star. Even the world itself lay under it, vaguely uneasy, sometimes
startled to momentary seismic panic. Then, ere mundane self-control
restored terrestrial equilibrium, a few mountains exploded, an island
or two lay shattered by earthquake, boiling mud and pumice blotted out
one city; earth-shock and fire another; a tidal wave a third.
But the world settled down and balanced itself once more on the edge
of the perpetual abyss into which it must fall some day; the invisible
shadow of the Dark Star swept it at intervals when some far and
nameless sun blazed out unseen; days dawned; the sun of the solar
system rose furtively each day and hung around the heavens until that
dusky huntress, Night, chased him once more beyond the earth's
horizon.
The shadow of the Dark Star was always there, though none saw it in
sunshine or in moonlight, or in the silvery lustre of the planets.
A boy, born under it, stood outside the fringe of willow and alder,
through which moved two English setters followed and controlled by the
boy's father.
"Mark!" called the father.
Out of the willows like a feathered bomb burst a big grouse, and the
green foliage that barred its flight seemed to explode as the strong
bird sheered out into the sunshine.
The boy's gun, slanting upward at thirty degrees, glittered in the sun
an instant, then the left barrel spoke; and the grouse, as though
struck by lightning in mid-air, stopped with a jerk, then slanted
swiftly and struck the ground.
"Dead!" cried the boy, as a setter appeared, leading on straight to
the heavy mass of feathers lying on the pasture grass.
"Clean work, Jim," said his father, strolling out of the willows. "But
wasn't it a bit risky, considering the little girl yonder?"
"Father!" exclaimed the boy, very red. "I never even saw her. I'm
ashamed."
They stood looking across the pasture, where a little girl in a pink
gingham dress lingered watching them, evidently lured by her curiosity
from the old house at the crossroads just beyond.
Jim Neeland, still red with mortification, took the big cock-grouse
from the dog which brought it--a tender-mouthed, beautifully trained
Belton, who stood with his feathered offering in his jaws, very
serious, very proud, awaiting praise from the Neelands, father and
son.
Neeland senior "drew" the bird and distributed the sacrifice
impartially between both dogs--it being the custom of the country.
Neeland junior broke his gun, replaced the exploded shell, content
indeed with his one hundred per cent performance.
"Better run over and speak to the little girl, Jim," suggested old
Dick Neeland, as he motioned the dogs into covert again.
So Jim ran lightly across the stony, clover-set ground to where the
little girl roamed along the old snake fence, picking berries
sometimes, sometimes watching the sportsmen out of shy, golden-grey
eyes.
"Little girl," he said, "I'm afraid the shot from my gun came rattling
rather close to you that time. You'll have to be careful. I've noticed
you here before. It won't do; you'll have to keep out of range of
those bushes, because when we're inside we can't see exactly where
we're firing."
The child said nothing. She looked up at the boy, smiled shyly, then,
with much composure, began her retreat, not neglecting any tempting
blackberry on the way.
The sun hung low over the hazy Gayfield hills; the beeches and oaks of
Mohawk County burned brown and crimson; silver birches supported their
delicate canopies of burnt gold; and imperial white pines clothed hill
and vale in a stately robe of green.
Jim Neeland forgot the child--or remembered her only to exercise
caution in the Brookhollow covert.
The little girl Ruhannah, who had once fidgeted with prickly heat in
her mother's arms outside the walls of Trebizond, did not forget this
easily smiling, tall young fellow--a grown man to her--who had come
across the pasture lot to warn her.
But it was many a day before they met again, though these two also had
been born under the invisible shadow of the Dark Star. But the shadow
of Erlik is always passing like swift lightning across the Phantom
Planet which has fled the other way since Time was born.
_Allahou Ekber, O Tchinguiz Khagan!_
A native Mongol missionary said to Ruhannah's father:
"As the chronicles of the Eighurs have it, long ago there fell metal
from the Black Racer of the skies; the first dagger was made of it;
and the first image of the Prince of Darkness. These pass from Kurd to
Cossack by theft, by gift, by loss; they pass from nation to nation by
accident, which is Divine design.
"And where they remain, war is. And lasts until image and dagger are
carried to another land where war shall be. But where there is war,
only the predestined suffer--those born under Erlik--children of the
Dark Star."
"I thought," said the Reverend Wilbour Carew, "that my brother had
confessed Christ."
"I am but repeating to you what my father believed; and Temujin before
him," replied the native convert, his remote gaze lost in reflection.
His eyes were quite little and coloured like a lion's; and sometimes,
in deep reverie, the corners of his upper lip twitched.
This happened when Ruhannah lay fretting in her mother's arms, and the
hot wind blew on Trebizond.
* * * * *
Under the Dark Star, too, a boy grew up in Minetta Lane, not less
combative than other ragged boys about him, but he was inclined to
arrange and superintend fist fights rather than to participate in
battle, except with his wits.
His name was Eddie Brandes; his first fortune of three dollars was
amassed at craps; he became a hanger-on in ward politics, at
race-tracks, stable, club, squared ring, vaudeville, burlesque. Long
Acre attracted him--but always the gambling end of the operation.
Which predilection, with its years of ups and downs, landed him one
day in Western Canada with an "Unknown" to match against an Athabasca
blacksmith, and a training camp as the prospect for the next six
weeks.
There lived there, gradually dying, one Albrecht Dumont, lately head
gamekeeper to nobility in the mountains of a Lost Province, and
wearing the Iron Cross of 1870 on the ruins of a gigantic and bony
chest, now as hollow as a Gothic ruin.
And if, like a thousand fellow patriots, he had been ordered to the
Western World to watch and report to his Government the trend and
tendency of that Western, English-speaking world, only his Government
and his daughter knew it--a child of the Dark Star now grown to early
womanhood, with a voice like a hermit thrush and the skill of a
sorceress with anything that sped a bullet.
* * * * *
Before the Unknown was quite ready to meet the Athabasca blacksmith,
Albrecht Dumont, dying faster now, signed his last report to the
Government at Berlin, which his daughter Ilse had written for
him--something about Canadian canals and stupid Yankees and their
greed, indifference, cowardice, and sloth.
Dumont's mind wandered:
"After the well-born Herr Gott relieves me at my post," he whispered,
"do thou pick up my burden and stand guard, little Ilse."
"Yes, father."
"Thy sacred promise?"
"My promise."
* * * * *
The next day Dumont felt better than he had felt for a year.
"Ilse, who is the short and broadly constructed American who comes now
already every day to see thee and to hear thee sing?"
"His name is Eddie Brandes."
"He is of the fight _gesellschaft_, not?"
"He should gain much money by the fight. A theatre in Chicago may he
willingly control, in which light opera shall be given."
"Is it for that he hears so willingly thy voice?"
"It is for that.... And love."
"And what of Herr Max Venem, who has asked of me thy little hand in
marriage?"
The girl was silent.
"Thou dost not love him?"
"No."
* * * * *
Toward sunset, Dumont, lying by the window, opened his eyes of a dying
_Lämmergeier_:
"My Ilse."
"Father?"
"What has thou to this man said?"
"That I will be engaged to him if thou approve."
"He has gained the fight?"
"Today.... And many thousand dollars. The theatre in Chicago is his
when he desires. Riches, leisure, opportunity to study for a career
upon his stage, are mine if I desire."
"Dost thou desire this, little Ilse?"
"Yes."
"And the man Venem who has followed thee so long?"
"I cannot be what he would have me--a _Hausfrau_--to mend his linen
for my board and lodging."
"And the Fatherland which placed me here on outpost?"
"I take thy place when God relieves thee."
"_So ist's recht!... Grüs Gott_--Ilse----"
* * * * *
Among the German settlers a five-piece brass band had been organised
the year before.
It marched at the funeral of Albrecht Dumont, lately head gamekeeper
to nobility in the mountains of a long-lost province.
Three months later Ilse Dumont arrived in Chicago to marry Eddie
Brandes. One Benjamin Stull was best man. Others present included
"Captain" Quint, "Doc" Curfoot, "Parson" Smawley, Abe Gordon--friends
of the bridegroom.
Invited by the bride, among others were Theodor Weishelm, the Hon.
Charles Wilson, M. P., and Herr Johann Kestner, a wealthy gentleman
from Leipsic seeking safe and promising investments in Canada and the
United States.
* * * * *
A year later Ilse Dumont Brandes, assuming the stage name of Minna
Minti, sang the rôle of _Bettina_ in "The Mascotte," at the Brandes
Theatre in Chicago.
A year later, when she created the part of _Kathi_ in "The White
Horse," Max Venem sent word to her that she would live to see her
husband lying in the gutter under his heel. Which made the girl
unhappy in her triumph.
But Venem hunted up Abe Grittlefeld and told him very coolly that he
meant to ruin Brandes.
And within a month the latest public favourite, Minna Minti, sat in
her dressing-room, wet-eyed, enraged, with the reports of Venem's
private detectives locked in the drawer of her dressing table, and the
curtain waiting.
* * * * *
So complex was life already becoming to these few among the million
children of the Dark Star Erlik--to everyone, from the child that
fretted in its mother's arms under the hot wind near Trebizond, to a
deposed Sultan, cowering behind the ivory screen in his zenana,
weeping tears that rolled like oil over his fat jowl to which still
adhered the powdered sugar of a Turkish sweetmeat.
Allahou Ekber, _Khodja_; God is great. Great also, _Ande_, is Ali, the
Fourth Caliph, cousin-companion of Mahomet the Prophet. But, _O
tougtchi_, be thy name Niaz and thy surname Baï, for Prince Erlik
speeds on his Dark Star, and beneath the end of the argument between
those two last survivors of a burnt-out world--behold! The sword!
THE DARK STAR
CHAPTER I
THE WONDER-BOX
As long as she could remember she had been permitted to play with the
contents of the late Herr Conrad Wilner's wonder-box. The programme on
such occasions varied little; the child was permitted to rummage among
the treasures in the box until she had satisfied her perennial
curiosity; conversation with her absent-minded father ensued, which
ultimately included a personal narrative, dragged out piecemeal from
the reticent, dreamy invalid. Then always a few pages of the diary
kept by the late Herr Wilner were read as a bedtime story. And bath
and bed and dreamland followed. That was the invariable routine, now
once more in full swing.
Her father lay on his invalid's chair, reading; his rubber-shod
crutches rested against the wall, within easy reach. By him, beside
the kerosene lamp, her mother sat, mending her child's stockings and
underwear.
Outside the circle of lamplight the incandescent eyes of the stove
glowed steadily through the semi-dusk; and the child, always
fascinated by anything that aroused her imagination, lifted her gaze
furtively from time to time to convince herself that it really was the
big, familiar stove which glared redly back at her, and not a dragon
into which her creative fancy had so often transformed it.
Reassured, she continued to explore the contents of the wonder-box--a
toy she preferred to her doll, but not to her beloved set of
water-colours and crayon pencils.
Some centuries ago Pandora's box let loose a world of troubles; Herr
Wilner's box apparently contained only pleasure for a little child
whose pleasures were mostly of her own invention.
It was a curious old box, made of olive wood and bound with bands of
some lacquered silvery metal to make it strong--rupee silver,
perhaps--strangely wrought with Arabic characters engraved and in
shallow relief. It had handles on either side, like a sea-chest; a
silver-lacquered lock and hasp which retained traces of violent usage;
and six heavy strap hinges of the same lacquered metal.
Within it the little child knew that a most fascinating collection of
articles was to be discovered, taken out one by one with greatest
care, played with discreetly, and, at her mother's command, returned
to their several places in Herr Wilner's box.
There were, in this box, two rather murderous-looking Kurdish daggers
in sheaths of fretted silver--never to be unsheathed, it was solemnly
understood, except by the child's father.
There was a pair of German army revolvers of the pattern of 1900, the
unexploded cartridges of which had long since been extracted and
cautiously thrown into the mill pond by the child's mother, much to
the surprise, no doubt, of the pickerel and sunfish.
There were writing materials of sandalwood, a few sea shells, a dozen
books in German with many steel plate engravings; also a red Turkish
fez with a dark blue tassel; two pairs of gold-rimmed spectacles;
several tobacco pipes of Dresden porcelain, a case full of instruments
for mechanical drawing, a thick blank book bound in calf and
containing the diary of the late Herr Wilner down to within a few
minutes before his death.
Also there was a figure in bronze, encrusted with tarnished gold and
faded traces of polychrome decoration.
Erlik, the Yellow Devil, as Herr Wilner called it, seemed too heavy to
be a hollow casting, and yet, when shaken, something within rattled
faintly, as though when the molten metal was cooling a fissure formed
inside, into which a few loose fragments of bronze had fallen.
It apparently had not been made to represent any benign Chinese god;
the aspect of the yellow figure was anything but benevolent. The
features were terrific; scowls infested its grotesque countenance;
threatening brows bent inward; angry eyes rolled in apparent fury; its
double gesture with sword and javelin was violent and almost
humorously menacing. And Ruhannah adored it.
For a little while the child played her usual game of frightening her
doll with the Yellow Devil and then rescuing her by the aid of a fairy
prince which she herself had designed, smeared with water-colours, and
cut out with scissors from a piece of cardboard.
After a time she turned to the remaining treasures in the wonder-box.
These consisted of several volumes containing photographs, others full
of sketches in pencil and water-colour, and a thick roll of glazed
linen scrolls covered with designs in India ink.
The photographs were of all sorts--landscapes, rivers, ships in dock,
dry dock, and at sea; lighthouses, forts, horses carrying soldiers
armed with lances and wearing the red fez; artillery on the march,
infantry, groups of officers, all wearing the same sort of fez which
lay there in Herr Wilner's box of olive wood.
There were drawings, too--sketches of cannon, of rifles, of swords;
drawings of soldiers in various gay uniforms, all carefully coloured
by hand. There were pictures of ships, from the sterns of which the
crescent flag floated lazily; sketches of great, ugly-looking objects
which her father explained were Turkish ironclads. The name "ironclad"
always sounded menacing and formidable to the child, and the
forbidding pictures fascinated her.
Then there were scores and scores of scrolls made out of slippery
white linen, on which had been drawn all sorts of most amazing
geometrical designs in ink.
"Plans," her father explained vaguely. And, when pressed by reiterated
questions: "Plans for military works, I believe--forts, docks,
barracks, fortified cuts and bridges. You are not yet quite old enough
to understand, Ruhannah."
"Who did draw them, daddy?"
"A German friend of mine, Herr Conrad Wilner."
"What for?"
"I think his master sent him to Turkey to make those pictures."
"For the Sultan?"
"No; for his Emperor."
"Why?"
"I don't exactly know, Rue."
At this stage of the conversation her father usually laid aside his
book and composed himself for the inevitable narrative soon to be
demanded of him.
Then, although having heard the story many times from her crippled
father's lips, but never weary of the repetition, the child's eyes
would grow round and very solemn in preparation for her next and
inevitable question:
"And did Herr Wilner _die_, daddy?"
"Yes, dear."
"Tell me!"
"Well, it was when I was a missionary in the Trebizond district, and
your mother and I went----"
"And _me_, daddy? And _me_, too!"
"Yes; you were a little baby in arms. And we all went to Gallipoli to
attend the opening of a beautiful new school which was built for
little Mohammedan converts to Christianity----"
"Did I see those little Christian children, daddy?"
"Yes, you saw them. But you are too young to remember."
"Tell me. Don't stop!"
"Then listen attentively without interrupting, Rue: Your mother and
you and I went to Gallipoli; and my friend, Herr Wilner, who had been
staying with us at a town called Tchardak, came along with us to
attend the opening of the American school.
"And the night we arrived there was trouble. The Turkish people, urged
on by some bad officials in the Sanjak, came with guns and swords and
spears and set fire to the mission school.
"They did not offer to harm us. We had already collected our converts
and our personal baggage. Our caravan was starting. The mob might not
have done anything worse than burn the school if Herr Wilner had not
lost his temper and threatened them with a dog whip. Then they killed
him with stones, there in the walled yard."
At this point in the tragedy, the eagerly awaited and ardently desired
shivers passed up and down the child's back.
"O--oh! Did they kill him _dead_?"
"Yes, dear."
"Was he a martyr?"
"In a way he was a martyr to his duty, I suppose. At least I gather so
from his diary and from what he once told me of his life."
"And then what happened? Tell me, daddy."
"A Greek steamer took us and our baggage to Trebizond."
"And what then?"
"And then, a year later, the terrible massacre at our Trebizond
mission occurred----"
That was what the child was waiting for.
"I know!" she interrupted eagerly. "The wicked Turks and the cruel
Kurds did come galloping and shouting 'Allah!' And all the poor,
converted people became martyrs. And God loves martyrs, doesn't He?"
"Yes, dear----"
"And then they did kill all the poor little Christian children!"
exclaimed the child excitedly. "And they did cut you with swords and
guns! And then the kind sailors with the American flag took you and
mamma and me to a ship and saved us by the grace of our Lord Jesus!"
"Yes, dear----"
"Tell me!"
"That is all----"
"No; you walk on two crutches, and you cannot be a missionary any
more because you are sick all the time! Tell me, daddy!"
"Yes. And that is all, Rue----"
"Oh, no! Please! Tell me!... And then, don't you remember how the
brave British sailors and our brave American sailors pointed their
cannon at the _I_-ronclads, and they said, 'Do not shoot or we shall
shoot you to pieces.' And then the brave American sailors went on
shore and brought back some poor little wounded converted children,
and your baggage and the magic box of Herr Wilner!"
"Yes, dear. And now that is enough tonight----"
"Oh, daddy, you must first read in the di-a-ry which Herr Wilner
made!"
"Bring me the book, Rue."
With an interest forever new, the Carew family prepared to listen to
the words written by a strange man who had died only a few moments
after he had made the last entry in the book--before even the ink was
entirely dry on the pages.
The child, sitting cross-legged on the floor, clasped her little hands
tightly; her mother laid aside her sewing, folded it, and placed it in
her lap; her father searched through the pencilled translation which
he had written in between the lines of German script, found where he
had left off the time before, then continued the diary of Herr Conrad
Wilner, deceased:
_March 3._ My original plans have been sent to the Yildiz Palace.
My duplicates are to go to Berlin when a messenger from our
Embassy arrives. Murad Bey knows this. I am sorry he knows it. But
nobody except myself is aware that I have a third set of plans
carefully hidden.
_March 4._ All day with Murad's men setting wire entanglements
under water; two Turkish destroyers patrolling the entrance to the
bay, and cavalry patrols on the heights to warn away the curious.
_March 6._ Forts Alamout and Shah Abbas are being reconstructed
from the new plans. Wired areas under water and along the coves
and shoals are being plotted. Murad Bey is unusually polite and
effusive, conversing with me in German and French. A spidery man
and very dangerous.
_March 7._ A strange and tragic affair last night. The heat being
severe, I left my tent about midnight and went down to the dock
where my little sailboat lay, with the object of cooling myself on
the water. There was a hot land breeze; I sailed out into the bay
and cruised north along the coves which I have wired. As I rounded
a little rocky point I was surprised to see in the moonlight, very
near, a steam yacht at anchor, carrying no lights. The longer I
looked at her the more certain I became that I was gazing at the
Imperial yacht. I had no idea what the yacht might be doing here;
I ran my sailboat close under the overhanging rocks and anchored.
Then I saw a small boat in the moonlight, pulling from the yacht
toward shore, where the crescent cove had already been thoroughly
staked and the bottom closely covered with barbed wire as far as
the edge of the deep channel which curves in here like a
scimitar.
It must have been that the people in the boat miscalculated the
location of the channel, for they were well over the sunken barbed
wire when they lifted and threw overboard what they had come there
to get rid of--two dark bulks that splashed.
I watched the boat pull back to the Imperial yacht. A little later
the yacht weighed anchor and steamed northward, burning no lights.
Only the red reflection tingeing the smoke from her stacks was
visible. I watched her until she was lost in the moonlight,
thinking all the while of those weighted sacks so often dropped
overboard along the Bosporus and off Seraglio Point from that same
Imperial yacht.
When the steamer had disappeared, I got out my sweeps and rowed
for the place where the dark objects had been dropped overboard. I
knew that they must be resting somewhere on the closely
criss-crossed mesh of wires just below the surface of the water;
but I probed for an hour before I located anything. Another hour
passed in trying to hook into the object with the little
three-fluked grapnel which I used as an anchor. I got hold of
something finally; a heavy chest of olive wood bound with metal;
but I had to rig a tackle before I could hoist it aboard.
Then I cast out again; and very soon my grapnel hooked into what I
expected--a canvas sack, weighted with a round shot. When I got it
aboard, I hesitated a long while before opening it. Finally I made
a long slit in the canvas with my knife....
She was very young--not over sixteen, I think, and she was really
beautiful, even under her wet, dark hair. She seemed to be a
Caucasian girl--maybe a Georgian. She wore a small gold cross
which hung from a gold cord around her neck. There was another,
and tighter, cord around her neck, too. I cut the silk bowstring
and closed and bound her eyes with my handkerchief before I rowed
out a little farther and lowered her into the deep channel which
cuts eastward here like the scimitar of that true believer, Abdul
Hamid.
Then I hoisted sail and beat up slowly toward my little dock under
a moon which had become ghastly under the pallid aura of a
gathering storm----
"A poor dead young lady!" interrupted the child, clasping her hands
more tightly. "Did the Sultan kill her, daddy?"
"It seems so, Ruhannah."
"Why?"
"I don't know. He was a very cruel and wicked Sultan."
"I don't see why he killed the beautiful poor dead lady."
"If you will listen and not interrupt, you shall learn why."
"And was the chest that Herr Wilner pulled up the very same chest that
is here on the floor beside me?" insisted the child.
"The very same. Now listen, Rue, and I shall read a little more in
Herr Wilner's diary, and then you must have your bath and be put to
bed----"
"Please read, daddy!"
The Reverend Wilbour Carew turned the page and quietly continued:
_March 20._ In my own quarters at Trebizond again, and rid of
Murad for a while.
A canvas cover and rope handles concealed the character of my
olive wood chest. I do not believe anybody suspects it to be
anything except one of the various boxes containing my own
personal effects. I shall open it tonight with a file and chisel,
if possible.
_March 21._ The contents of the chest reveal something of the
tragedy. The box is full of letters written in Russian, and full
of stones which weigh collectively a hundred pounds at least.
There is nothing else in the chest except a broken Ikon and a
bronze figure of Erlik, a Yildiz relic, no doubt, of some Kurdish
raid into Mongolia, and probably placed beside the dead girl by
her murderers in derision. I am translating the letters and
arranging them in sequence.
_March 25._ I have translated the letters. The dead girl's name
was evidently Tatyana, one of several children of some Cossack
chief or petty prince, and on the eve of her marriage to a young
officer named Mitya the Kurds raided the town. They carried poor
Tatyana off along with her wedding chest--the chest fished up with
my grapnel.
In brief, the chest and the girl found their way into Abdul's
seraglio. The letters of the dead girl--which were written and
entrusted probably to a faithless slave, but which evidently never
left the seraglio--throw some light on the tragedy, for they
breathe indignation and contempt of Islam, and call on her
affianced, on her parents, and on her people to rescue her and
avenge her.
And after a while, no doubt Abdul tired of reading fierce,
unreconciled little Tatyana's stolen letters, and simply ended the
matter by having her bowstrung and dumped overboard in a sack,
together with her marriage chest, her letters, and the Yellow
Devil in bronze as a final insult.
She seems to have had a sister, Naïa, thirteen years old,
betrothed to a Prince Mistchenka, a cavalry officer in the Terek
Cossacks. Her father had been Hetman of the Don Cossacks before
the Emperor Nicholas reserved that title for Imperial use. And
_she_ ended in a sack off Gallipoli! That is the story of Tatyana
and her wedding chest.
_March 29._ Murad arrived, murderously bland and assiduous in his
solicitude for my health and comfort. I am almost positive he
knows that I fished up something from Cove No. 37 under the
theoretical guns of theoretical Fort Osman, both long plotted out
but long delayed.
_April 5._ My duplicate plans for Gallipoli have been stolen. I
have a third set still. Colonel Murad Bey is not to be trusted. My
position is awkward and is becoming serious. There is no faith to
be placed in Abdul Hamid. My credentials, the secret agreement
with my Government, are no longer regarded even with toleration in
the Yildiz Kiosque. A hundred insignificant incidents prove it
every day. And if Abdul dare not break with Germany it is only
because he is not yet ready to defy the Young Turk party. The
British Embassy is very active and bothers me a great deal.
_April 10._ My secret correspondence with Enver Bey has been
discovered, and my letters opened. This is a very bad business. I
have notified my Government that the Turkish Government does not
want me here; that the plan of a Germanised Turkish army is
becoming objectionable to the Porte; that the duplicate plans of
our engineers for the Dardanelles and the Gallipoli Peninsula have
been stolen.
_April 13._ A secret interview with Enver Bey, who promises that
our ideas shall be carried out when his party comes into power.
Evidently he does not know that my duplicates have been stolen.
Troubles threaten in the Vilayet of Trebizond, where is an
American Mission. I fear that our emissaries and the emissaries of
Enver Bey are deliberately fomenting disorders because Americans
are not desired by our Government. Enver denies this; but it is
idle to believe anyone in this country.
_April 16._ Another interview with Enver Bey. His scheme is flatly
revolutionary, namely, the deposition of Abdul, a secret alliance,
offensive and defensive, with us; the Germanisation of the Turkish
army and navy; the fortification of the Gallipoli district
according to our plans; a steadily increasing pressure on Serbia;
a final reckoning with Russia which is definitely to settle the
status of Albania and Serbia and leave the Balkan grouping to be
settled between Austria, Germany, and Turkey.
I spoke several times about India and Egypt, but he does not
desire to arouse England unless she interferes.
I spoke also of Abdul Hamid's secret and growing fear of Germany,
and his increasing inclination toward England once more.
No trace of my stolen plans. The originals are in the Yildiz
Palace. I have a third set secreted, about which nobody knows.
_April 21._ I have been summoned to the Yildiz Palace. It possibly
means my assassination. I have confided my box of data,
photographs, and plans, to the Reverend Wilbour Carew, an American
missionary in the Trebizond sanjak.
There are rumours that Abdul has become mentally unhinged through
dread of assassination. One of his own aides-de-camp, while being
granted an audience in the Yildiz, made a sudden and abrupt
movement to find his handkerchief; and Abdul Hamid whipped out a
pistol and shot him dead. This is authentic.
_April 30._ Back at Tchardak with my good missionary and his wife.
A strange interview with Abdul. There were twenty French clocks in
the room, all going and all striking at various intervals. The
walls were set with French mirrors.
Abdul's cordiality was terrifying; the full original set of my
Gallipoli plans was brought in. After a while, the Sultan reminded
me that the plans were in duplicate, and asked me where were these
duplicates. What duplicity! But I said pleasantly that they were
to be sent to General Staff Headquarters in Berlin.
He pretended to understand that this was contrary to the
agreement, and insisted that the plans should first be sent to him
for comparison. I merely referred him to his agreement with my
Government. But all the while we were talking I was absolutely
convinced that the stolen duplicates were at that moment in the
Yildiz Kiosque. Abdul must have known that I believed it. Yet we
both merely smiled our confidence in each other.
He seemed to be unusually good-natured and gracious, saying that
no doubt I was quite right in sending the plans to Berlin. He
spoke of Enver Bey cordially, and said he hoped to be reconciled
to him and his friends very soon. When Abdul Hamid becomes
reconciled to anybody who disagrees with him, the latter is
_always_ dead.
He asked me where I was going. I told him about the plans I was
preparing for the Trebizond district. He offered me an escort of
Kurdish cavalry, saying that he had been told the district was not
very safe. I thanked him and declined his escort of assassins.
I saw it all very plainly. Like a pirate captain, Abdul orders his
crew to dig a secret hole for his treasure, and when the hole is
dug and the treasure hidden, he murders the men who hid it for
him, so that they shall never betray its location. I am one of
those men. That is what he means for me, who have given him his
Gallipoli plans. No wonder that in England they call him Abdul the
Damned!
_May 3._ In the Bazaar at Tchardak yesterday two men tried to stab
me. I got their daggers, but they escaped in the confusion. Murad
called to express horror and regret. Yes; regret that I had not
been murdered.
_May 5._ I have written to my Government that my usefulness here
seems to be ended; that my life is in hourly danger; that I desire
to be more thoroughly informed concerning the relations between
Berlin and the Yildiz Palace.
_May 6._ I am in disgrace. My Government is furious because my
correspondence with Enver Bey has been stolen. The Porte has
complained about me to Berlin; Berlin disowns me, disclaims all
knowledge of my political activities outside of my engineering
work.
This is what failure to carry out secret instructions invariably
brings--desertion by the Government from which such instructions
are received. In diplomacy, failure is a crime never forgiven.
Abandoned by my Government I am now little better than an outlaw
here. Two courses remain open to me--to go back in disgrace and
live obscurely for the remainder of my life, or to risk my life by
hanging on desperately here with an almost hopeless possibility
before me of accomplishing something to serve my Government and
rehabilitate myself.
The matter of the stolen plans is being taken up by our Ambassador
at the Sublime Porte. The British Embassy is suspected. What
folly! I possess a third set of plans. Our Embassy ought to send
to Trebizond for them. I don't know what to do.
_May 12._ A letter I wrote May 10 to the German Embassy has been
stolen. I am now greatly worried about the third set of plans. It
seems safest to include the box containing them among the baggage
of the American missionary, the Reverend Wilbour Carew; and, too,
for me to seek shelter with him.
As I am now afraid that an enemy may impersonate an official of
the German Embassy, I have the missionary's promise that he will
retain and conceal the contents of my box until I instruct him
otherwise. I am practically in hiding at his house, and in actual
fear of my life.
_May 15._ The missionary and his wife and baby travel to
Gallipoli, where an American school for girls is about to be
opened.
Today, in a café, I noticed that the flies, swarming on the edge
of my coffee cup, fell into the saucer dead. I did not taste my
coffee.
_May 16._ Last night a shot was fired through my door. I have
decided to travel to Gallipoli with the missionary.
_May 18._ My groom stole and ate an orange from my breakfast tray.
He is dead.
_May 20._ The Reverend Mr. Carew and his wife are most kind and
sympathetic. They are good people, simple, kindly, brave,
faithful, and fearlessly devoted to God's service in this vile
land of treachery and lies.
_May 21._ I have confessed to the Reverend Mr. Carew as I would
confess to a priest in holy orders. I have told him all under
pledge of secrecy. I told him also that the sanctuary he offers
might be violated with evil consequences to him; and that I would
travel as far as Gallipoli with him and then leave. But the kind,
courageous missionary and his wife insist that I remain under the
protection which he says the flag of his country affords me. If I
could only get my third set of plans out of the country!
_May 22._ Today my coffee was again poisoned. I don't know what
prevented me from tasting it--some vague premonition. A pariah dog
ate the bread I soaked in it, and died before he could yelp.
It looks to me as though my end were inevitable. Today I gave my
bronze figure of Erlik, the Yellow Devil, to Mrs. Carew to keep as
a dowry for her little daughter, now a baby in arms. If it is
hollow, as I feel sure, there are certain to be one or two jewels
in it. And the figure itself might bring five hundred marks at an
antiquary's.
_May 30._ Arrived at the Gallipoli mission. Three Turkish
ironclads lying close inshore. A British cruiser, the _Cobra_, and
an American cruiser, the _Oneida_, appeared about sunset and
anchored near the ironclads. The bugles on deck were plainly
audible. If a German warship appears I shall carry my box on
board. My only chance to rehabilitate myself is to get the third
set of plans to Berlin.
_June 1._ In the middle of the religious exercises with which the
new school is being inaugurated, cries of "Allah" come from a
great crowd which has gathered. From my window where I am writing
I can see how insolent the attitude of this Mohammedan riffraff is
becoming. They spit upon the ground--a pebble is tossed at a
convert--a sudden shout of "Allah"--pushing and jostling--a
lighted torch blazes! I take my whip of rhinoceros hide and go
down into the court to put a stop to this insolence----
Her father slowly closed the book.
"Daddy! Is that where poor Herr Wilner died?"
"Yes, dear."
After a silence his wife said thoughtfully:
"I have always considered it very strange that the German Government
did not send for Herr Wilner's papers."
"Probably they did, Mary. And very probably Murad Bey told them that
the papers had been destroyed."
"And you never believed it to be your duty to send the papers to the
German Government?"
"No. It was an unholy alliance that Germany sought with that monster
Abdul. And when Enver Pasha seized the reins of government such an
alliance would have been none the less unholy. You know and so do I
that if Germany did not actually incite the Armenian massacres she at
least was cognisant of preparations made to begin them. Germany is
still hostile to all British or American missions, all Anglo-Saxon
influence in Turkey.
"No; I did not send Herr Wilner's papers to Berlin; and the events of
the last fifteen years have demonstrated that I was right in
withholding them."
His wife nodded, laid aside her work basket, and rose.
"Come, Ruhannah," she said with decision; "put everything back into
the wonder-box."
And, stooping, she lifted and laid away in it the scowling, menacing
Yellow Devil.
* * * * *
And so, every month or two, the wonder-box was opened for the child to
play with, the same story told, extracts from the diary read; but
these ceremonies, after a while, began to recur at lengthening
intervals as the years passed and the child grew older.
And finally it was left to her to open the box when she desired, and
to read for herself the pencilled translation of the diary, which her
father had made during some of the idle and trying moments of his
isolated and restricted life. And, when she had been going to school
for some years, other and more vivid interests replaced her dolls and
her wonder-box; but not her beloved case of water-colours and crayon
pencils.
CHAPTER II
BROOKHOLLOW
The mother, shading the candle with her work-worn hand, looked down at
the child in silence. The subdued light fell on a freckled cheek where
dark lashes rested, on a slim neck and thin shoulders framed by a mass
of short, curly chestnut hair.
Though it was still dark, the mill whistle was blowing for six
o'clock. Like a goblin horn it sounded ominously through Ruhannah's
dream. She stirred in her sleep; her mother stole across the room,
closed the window, and went away carrying the candle with her.
At seven the whistle blew again; the child turned over and unclosed
her eyes. A brassy light glimmered between leafless apple branches
outside her window. Through the frosty radiance of sunrise a blue jay
screamed.
Ruhannah cuddled deeper among the blankets and buried the tip of her
chilly nose. But the grey eyes remained wide open and, under the faded
quilt, her little ears were listening intently.
Presently from the floor below came the expected summons:
"Ruhannah!"
"Oh, _please_, mother!"
"It's after seven----"
"I know: I'll be ready in time!"
"It's after seven, Rue!"
"I'm so cold, mother dear!"
"I closed your window. You may bathe and dress down here."
"B-r-r-r! I can see my own breath when I breathe!"
"Come down and dress by the kitchen range," repeated her mother. "I've
warm water all ready for you."
The brassy light behind the trees was becoming golden; slim bluish
shadows already stretched from the base of every tree across frozen
fields dusted with snow.
As usual, the lank black cat came walking into the room, its
mysterious crystal-green eyes brilliant in the glowing light.
Listening, the child heard her father moving heavily about in the
adjoining room.
Then, from below again:
"Ruhannah!"
"I'm going to get up, mother!"
"Rue! Obey me!"
"I'm _up_! I'm on my way!" She sprang out amid a tempest of
bedclothes, hopped gingerly across the chilly carpet, seized her
garments in one hand, comb and toothbrush in the other, ran into the
hallway and pattered downstairs.
The cat followed leisurely, twitching a coal-black tail.
"Mother, could I have my breakfast first? I'm so hungry----"
Her mother turned from the range and kissed her as she huddled close
to it. The sheet of zinc underneath warmed her bare feet delightfully.
She sighed with satisfaction, looked wistfully at the coffeepot
simmering, sniffed at the biscuits and sizzling ham.
"Could I have one little taste before I----"
"Come, dear. There's the basin. Bathe quickly, now."
Ruhannah frowned and cast a tragic glance upon the tin washtub on the
kitchen floor. Presently she stole over, tested the water with her
finger-tip, found it not unreasonably cold, dropped the night-dress
from her frail shoulders, and stepped into the tub with a perfunctory
shiver--a thin, overgrown child of fifteen, with pipestem limbs and
every rib anatomically apparent.
Her hair, which had been cropped to shoulder length, seemed to turn
from chestnut to bronze fire, gleaming and crackling under the comb
which she hastily passed through it before twisting it up.
"Quickly but thoroughly," said her mother. "Hasten, Rue."
Ruhannah seized soap and sponge, gasped, shut her grey eyes tightly,
and fell to scrubbing with the fury of despair.
"Don't splash, dear----"
"Did you warm my towel, mother?"--blindly stretching out one thin and
dripping arm.
Her mother wrapped her in a big crash towel from head to foot.
Later, pulling on stockings and shoes by the range, she managed to
achieve a buttered biscuit at the same time, and was already betraying
further designs upon another one when her mother sent her to set the
table in the sitting-room.
Thither sauntered Ruhannah, partly dressed, still dressing.
By the nickel-trimmed stove she completed her toilet, then hastily
laid the breakfast cloth and arranged the china and plated tableware,
and filled the water pitcher.
Her father came in on his crutches; she hurried from the table, syrup
jug in one hand, cruet in the other, and lifted her face to be kissed;
then she brought hot plates, coffeepot, and platters, and seated
herself at the table where her father and mother were waiting in
silence.
When she was seated her father folded his large, pallid, bony hands;
her mother clasped hers on the edge of the table, bowing her head; and
Ruhannah imitated them. Between her fingers she could see the cat
under the table, and she watched it arch its back and gently rub
against her chair.
"For what we are about to receive, make us grateful, Eternal Father.
This day we should go hungry except for Thy bounty. Without presuming
to importune Thee, may we ask Thee to remember all who awake hungry on
this winter day.... Amen."
Ruhannah instantly became very busy with her breakfast. The cat beside
her chair purred loudly and rose at intervals on its hind legs to
twitch her dress; and Ruhannah occasionally bestowed alms and
conversation upon it.
"Rue," said her mother, "you should try to do better with your algebra
this week."
"Yes, I do really mean to."
"Have you had any more bad-conduct marks?"
"Yes, mother."
Her father lifted his mild, dreamy eyes of an invalid. Her mother
asked:
"What for?"
"For wasting my time in study hour," said the girl truthfully.
"Were you drawing?"
"Yes, mother."
"Rue! Again! Why do you persist in drawing pictures in your copy
books when you have an hour's lesson in drawing every week? Besides,
you may draw pictures at home whenever you wish."
"I don't exactly know why," replied the girl slowly. "It just happens
before I notice what I am doing.... Of course," she explained, "I do
recollect that I oughtn't to be drawing in study hour. But that's
after I've begun, and then it seems a pity not to finish."
Her mother looked across the table at her husband:
"Speak to her seriously, Wilbour."
The Reverend Mr. Carew looked solemnly at his long-legged and rapidly
growing daughter, whose grey eyes gazed back into her father's sallow
visage.
"Rue," he said in his colourless voice, "try to get all you can out of
your school. I haven't sufficient means to educate you in drawing and
in similar accomplishments. So get all you can out of your school.
Because, some day, you will have to help yourself, and perhaps help us
a little."
He bent his head with a detached air and sat gazing mildly at
vacancy--already, perhaps, forgetting what the conversation was
about.
"Mother?"
"What, Rue?"
"What am I going to do to earn my living?"
"I don't know."
"Do you mean I must go into the mill like everybody else?"
"There are other things. Girls work at many things in these days."
"What kind of things?"
"They may learn to keep accounts, help in shops----"
"If father could afford it, couldn't I learn to do something more
interesting? What do girls work at whose fathers can afford to let
them learn how to work?"
"They may become teachers, learn stenography and typewriting; they
can, of course, become dressmakers; they can nurse----"
"Mother!"
"Yes?"
"Could I choose the business of drawing pictures? I know how!"
"Dear, I don't believe it is practical to----"
"Couldn't I draw pictures for books and magazines? Everybody says I
draw very nicely. You say so, too. Couldn't I earn enough money to
live on and to take care of you and father?"
Wilbour Carew looked up from his reverie:
"To learn to draw correctly and with taste," he said in his gentle,
pedantic voice, "requires a special training which we cannot afford to
give you, Ruhannah."
"Must I wait till I'm twenty-five before I can have my money?" she
asked for the hundredth time. "I do so need it to educate myself. Why
did grandma do such a thing, mother?"
"Your grandmother never supposed you would need the money until you
were a grown woman, dear. Your father and I were young, vigorous, full
of energy; your father's income was ample for us then."
"Have I got to marry a man before I can get enough money to take
lessons in drawing with?"
Her mother's drawn smile was not very genuine. When a child asks such
questions no mother finds it easy to smile.
"If you marry, dear, it is not likely you'll marry in order to take
lessons in drawing. Twenty-five is not old. If you still desire to
study art you will be able to do so."
"Twenty-five!" repeated Rue, aghast. "I'll be an old woman."
"Many begin their life's work at an older age----"
"Mother! I'd rather marry somebody and begin to study art. Oh, _don't_
you think that even now I could support myself by making pictures for
magazines? Don't you, mother dear?"
"Rue, as your father explained, a special course of instruction is
necessary before one can become an artist----"
"But I _do_ draw very nicely!" She slipped from her chair, ran to the
old secretary where the accumulated masterpieces of her brief career
were treasured, and brought them for her parents' inspection, as she
had brought them many times before.
Her father looked at them listlessly; he did not understand such
things. Her mother took them one by one from Ruhannah's eager hands
and examined these grimy Records of her daughter's childhood.
There were drawings of every description in pencil, in crayon, in
mussy water-colours, done on scraps of paper of every shape and size.
The mother knew them all by heart, every single one, but she examined
each with a devotion and an interest forever new.
There were many pictures of the cat; many of her parents, too--odd,
shaky, smeared portraits all out of proportion, but usually
recognisable.
A few landscapes varied the collection--a view or two of the stone
bridge opposite, a careful drawing of the ruined paper mill. But the
majority of the subjects were purely imaginary; pictures of demons and
angels, of damsels and fairy princes--paragons of beauty--with
castles on adjacent crags and swans adorning convenient ponds.
Her mother rose after a few moments, laid aside the pile of drawings,
went to the kitchen and returned with her daughter's schoolbooks and
lunch basket.
"Rue, you'll be late again. Get on your rubbers immediately."
The child's shabby winter coat was already too short in skirt and
sleeve, and could be lengthened no further. She pulled the blue
toboggan cap over her head, took a hasty osculatory leave of her
father, seized books and lunch basket, and followed her mother to the
door.
Below the house the Brookhollow road ran south across an old stone
bridge and around a hill to Gayfield, half a mile away.
Rue, drawing on her woollen gloves, looked up at her mother. Her lip
trembled very slightly. She said:
"I shouldn't know what to do if I couldn't draw pictures.... When I
draw a princess I mean her for myself.... It is pleasant--to pretend
to live with swans."
She opened the door, paused on the step; the frosty breath drifted
from her lips. Then she looked back over her shoulder; her mother
kissed her, held her tightly for a moment.
"If I'm to be forbidden to draw pictures," repeated the girl, "I don't
know what will become of me. Because I really live there--in the
pictures I make."
"We'll talk it over this evening, darling. Don't draw in study hour
any more, will you?"
"I'll try to remember, mother."
* * * * *
When the spindle-limbed, boyish figure had sped away beyond sight,
Mrs. Carew shut the door, drew her wool shawl closer, and returned
slowly to the sitting-room. Her husband, deep in a padded
rocking-chair by the window, was already absorbed in the volume which
lay open on his knees--the life of the Reverend Adoniram Judson--one
of the world's good men. Ruhannah had named her cat after him.
His wife seated herself. She had dishes to do, two bedrooms,
preparations for noonday dinner--the usual and unchangeable routine.
She turned and looked out of the window across brown fields thinly
powdered with snow. Along a brawling, wintry-dark stream, fringed with
grey alders, ran the Brookhollow road. Clumps of pines and elms
bordered it. There was nothing else to see except a distant crow in a
ten-acre lot, walking solemnly about all by himself.
... Like the vultures that wandered through the compound that dreadful
day in May ... she thought involuntarily.
But it was a far cry from Trebizond to Brookhollow. And her husband
had been obliged to give up after the last massacre, when every
convert had been dragged out and killed in the floating shadow of the
Stars and Stripes, languidly brilliant overhead.
For the Sublime Porte and the Kurds had had their usual way at last;
there was nothing left of the Mission; school and converts were gone;
her wounded husband, her baby, and herself refugees in a foreign
consulate; and the Turkish Government making apologies with its fat
tongue in its greasy cheek.
The Koran says: "Woe to those who pray, and in their prayers are
careless."
The Koran also says: "In the name of God the Compassionate, the
Merciful: What thinkest thou of him who treateth our religion as a
lie?"
Mrs. Carew and her crippled husband knew, now, what the Sublime Porte
thought about it, and what was the opinion of the Kurdish cavalry
concerning missionaries and converts who treated the Moslem religion
as a lie.
She looked at her pallid and crippled husband; he was still reading;
his crutches lay beside him on the floor. She turned her eyes to the
window. Out there the solitary crow was still walking busily about in
the frozen pasture. And again she remembered the vultures that hulked
and waddled amid the débris of the burned Mission.
Only that had been in May; and above the sunny silence in that place
of death had sounded the unbroken and awful humming of a million
million flies....
* * * * *
And so, her husband being now hopelessly broken and useless, they had
come back with their child, Ruhannah, to their home in Brookhollow.
Here they had lived ever since; here her grey life was passing; here
her daughter was already emerging into womanhood amid the stark,
unlovely environments of a country crossroads, arid in summer, iron
naked in winter, with no horizon except the Gayfield hills, no outlook
save the Brookhollow road. And that led to the mill.
She had done what she could--was still doing it. But there was nothing
to save. Her child's destiny seemed to be fixed.
Her husband corresponded with the Board of Missions, wrote now and
then for the _Christian Pioneer_, and lived on the scanty pension
allowed to those who, like himself, had become incapacitated in line
of duty. There was no other income.
There was, however, the six thousand dollars left to Ruhannah by her
grandmother, slowly accumulating interest in the Mohawk Bank at
Orangeville, the county seat, and not to be withdrawn, under the terms
of the will, until the day Ruhannah married or attained, unmarried,
her twenty-fifth year.
Neither principal nor interest of this legacy was available at
present. Life in the Carew family at Brookhollow was hard sledding,
and bid fair to continue so indefinitely.
* * * * *
The life of Ruhannah's father was passed in reading or in gazing
silently from the window--a tall, sallow, bearded man with the eyes of
a dreaming martyr and the hands of an invalid--who still saw in the
winter sky, across brown, snow-powdered fields, the minarets of
Trebizond.
In reading, in reflection, in dreaming, in spiritual acquiescence,
life was passing in sombre shadows for this middle-aged man who had
been hopelessly crushed in Christ's service; and who had never
regretted that service, never complained, never doubted the wisdom and
the mercy of his Leader's inscrutable manoeuvres with the soldiers who
enlist to follow Him. As far as that is concerned, the Reverend
Wilbour Carew had been born with a believing mind; doubt of divine
goodness in Deity was impossible for him; doubt of human goodness
almost as difficult.
Such men have little chance in a brisk, busy, and jaunty world; but
they prefer it should be that way with them. And of these few
believers in the goodness of God and man are our fools and gentlemen
composed.
On that dreadful day, the Kurd who had mangled him so frightfully that
he recovered only to limp through life on crutches bent over him and
shouted in his face:
"Now, you Christian dog, before I cut your throat show me how this
Christ of yours can be a god!"
"Is it necessary," replied the missionary faintly, "to light a candle
in order to show a man the midday sun?"
Which was possibly what saved his life, and the lives of his wife and
child. Your Moslem adores and understands such figurative answers. So
he left the Reverend Mr. Carew lying half dead in the blackened
doorway and started cheerfully after a frightened convert praying
under the compound wall.
CHAPTER III
IN EMBRYO
A child on the floor, flat on her stomach in the red light of the
stove, drawing pictures; her mother by the shaded lamp mending
stockings; her father reading; a faint odour of kerosene from the
glass lamp in the room, and the rattle of sleet on roof and window;
this was one of her childhood memories which never faded through all
the years of Ruhannah's life.
Of her waking hours she preferred that hour after supper when, lying
prone on the worn carpet, with pencil and paper, just outside the
lamp's yellow circle of light, her youthful imagination kindled and
caught fire.
For at that hour the magic of the stove's glowing eyes transformed the
sitting-room chairs to furtive watchers of herself, made of her
mother's work-table a sly and spidery thing on legs, crouching in
ambush; bewitched the ancient cottage piano so that its ivory keys
menaced her like a row of monstrous teeth.
She adored it all. The tall secretary stared at her with owlish
significance. Through that neutral veil where lamplight and shadow
meet upon the wall, the engraved portrait of a famous and godly
missionary peered down at her out of altered and malicious eyes; the
claw-footed, haircloth sofa was a stealthy creature offering to entrap
her with wide, inviting arms; three folded umbrellas leaned over the
edge of their shadowy stand, looking down at her like scrawny and
baleful birds, ready to peck at her with crooked handles. And as for
Adoniram, her lank black cat, the child's restless creative fancy was
ever transforming him from goblin into warlock, from hydra to
hippogriff, until the earnestness of pretence sent agreeable shivers
down her back, and she edged a trifle nearer to her mother.
But when pretence became a bit too real and too grotesque she had
always a perfect antidote. It was merely necessary to make a quick
picture of an angel or two, a fairy prince, a swan, and she felt
herself in their company, and delightfully protected.
* * * * *
There was a night when the flowing roar of the gale outside filled the
lamplit silence; when the snow was drifting level with the window
sills; when Adoniram, unable to prowl abroad, lay curled up tight and
sound asleep beside her where she sat on the carpet in the stove
radiance. Wearied of drawing castles and swans, she had been listening
to her father reading passages aloud from the book on his knees to her
mother who was sewing by the lamp.
Presently he continued his reading:
"I asked Alaro the angel: 'Which place is this, and which people are
these?'
"And he answered: 'This place is the star-track; and these are they
who in the world offered no prayers and chanted no liturgies. Through
other works they have attained felicity.'"
Her mother nodded, continuing to sew. Ruhannah considered what her
father had read, then:
"Father?"
"Yes----" He looked down at her absently.
"What were you reading?"
"A quotation from the Sacred Anthology."
"Isn't prayer really necessary?"
Her mother said:
"Yes, dear."
"Then how did those people who offered no prayers go to Heaven?"
Her father said:
"Eternal life is not attained by praise or prayer alone, Ruhannah.
Those things which alone justify prayer are also necessary."
"What are they?"
"What we really _think_ and what we _do_--both only in Christ's name.
Without these nothing else counts very much--neither form nor
convention nor those individual garments called creed and
denomination, which belief usually wears throughout the world."
Her mother, sewing, glanced gravely down at her daughter:
"Your father is very tolerant of what other people believe--as long as
they really do believe. Your father thinks that Christ would have
found friends in Buddha and Mahomet."
"Do such people go to Heaven?" asked Ruhannah, astonished.
"Listen," said her father, reading again:
"'I came to a place and I saw the souls of the liberal, adorned above
all other souls in splendour. And it seemed to me sublime.
"'I saw the souls of the truthful who walked in lofty splendour. And
it seemed to me sublime.
"'I saw the souls of teachers and inquirers; I saw the friendly souls
of interceders and peacemakers; and these walked brilliantly in the
light. And it seemed to me sublime----'"
He turned to his wife:
"To see and know _is_ sublime. We know, Mary; and Ruhannah is
intelligent. But in spite of her faith in what she has learned from
us, like us she must one day travel the common way, seeking for
herself the reasons and the evidences of immortality."
"Perhaps her faith, Wilbour----"
"Perhaps. But with the intelligent, faith, which is emotional, usually
follows belief; and belief comes only from reasoning. I think that
Ruhannah is destined to travel the way of all intelligence when she is
ready to think for herself."
"I am ready now," said the girl. "I have faith in our Lord Jesus, and
in my father and mother."
Her father looked at her:
"It is good building material. Some day, God willing, you shall build
a very lofty temple with it. But the foundation of the temple must
first be certain. Intelligence ultimately requires reasons for belief.
You will have to seek them for yourself, Ruhannah. Then, on them build
your shrine of faith; and nothing shall shake it down."
"I don't understand."
"And I cannot explain. Only this; as you grow older, all around you in
the world you will become aware of people, countless millions and
millions of people, asking themselves--ready with the slightest
encouragement, or without it, to ask you the question which is the
most vital of all questions to them. And whatever way it is answered
always they ask for evidence. You, too, will one day ask for evidence.
All the world asks for it. But few recognise it as evidence when it is
offered."
He closed his book and dropped a heavy hand upon it.
"Amid the myriad pursuits and interests and trades and professions of
the human race, amid their multitudinous aspirations, perplexities,
doubts, passions, endeavours, deep within every intelligent man
remains one dominant desire, one persistent question to be answered if
possible."
"What desire, father?"
"The universal desire for another chance--for immortality. Man's
never-ending demand for evidence of an immortality which shall
terminate for him the most tremendous of all uncertainties, which
shall solve for him the most vital of all questions: What is to become
of him after physical death? Is he to live again? Is he to see once
more those whom he loved the best?"
Ruhannah sat thinking in the red stove light, cross-legged, her slim
ankles clasped in either hand.
"But our souls are immortal," she said at last.
"Yes."
"Our Lord Jesus has said it."
"Yes."
"Then why should anybody not believe it?"
"Try to believe it always. Particularly after your mother and I are no
longer here, try to believe it.... You are unusually intelligent; and
if some day your intelligence discovers that it requires evidence for
belief seek for that evidence. It is obtainable. Try to recognise it
when you encounter it.... Only, in any event, remember this: never
alter your early faith, never destroy your childhood's belief until
evidence to prove the contrary convinces you."
"No.... There is no such evidence, is there, father?"
"I know of none."
"Then," said the girl calmly, "I shall take Christ's evidence that I
shall live again if I do no evil.... Father?"
"Yes."
"Is there any evidence that Adoniram has no soul?"
"I know of none."
"Is there any that he has a soul?"
"Yes, I think there is."
"Are you sure?"
"Not entirely."
"I wonder," mused the girl, looking gravely at the sleeping cat.
It was the first serious doubt that Ruhannah had ever entertained in
her brief career.
That night she dreamed of the Yellow Devil in Herr Wilner's box, and,
awaking, remembered her dream. It seemed odd, too, because she had not
even thought of the Yellow Devil for over a year.
But the menacing Mongol figure seemed bound to intrude into her life
once more and demand her attention as though resentful of long
oblivion and neglect; for, a week later, an old missionary from
Indo-China--a native Chinese--who had lectured at the Baptist Church
in Gayfield the evening previous, came to pay his respects to the
Reverend Wilbour Carew. And Rue had taken the Yellow Devil from the
olive-wood box that day and was busily making a pencil drawing of it.
At sight of the figure the native missionary's narrow almond eyes
opened extremely wide, and he leaned on the table and regarded the
bronze demon very intently.
Then he took from his pocket and adjusted to his button nose a pair of
large, horn spectacles; and he carefully examined the Chinese
characters engraved on the base of the ancient bronze, following them
slowly with a yellow and clawlike forefinger.
"Can you read what is written there?" inquired the Reverend Mr.
Carew.
"Yes, brother. This is what is written: 'I am Erlik, Ruler of Chaos
and of All that Was. The old order passes when I arrive. I bring
confusion among the peoples; I hurl down emperors; kingdoms crumble
where I pass; the world begins to rock and tip, spilling nations into
outer darkness. When there are no more kingdoms and no more kings; no
more empires and no emperors; and when only the humble till, the
blameless sow, the pure reap; and when only the teachers teach in the
shadow of the Tree, and when the Thinker sits unstirring under the
high stars, then, from the dark edges of the world I let go my grasp
and drop into those immeasurable deeps from which I came--I, Erlik,
Ruler of All that Was.'"
After a silence the Reverend Mr. Carew asked whether the figure was a
very old one.
"It is before the period called 'Han'--a dynasty during which the
Mongols were a mighty people. This inscription is Mongol. Erlik was
the Yellow Devil of the Mongols."
"Not a heathen god, then?"
"No, a heathen devil. Their Prince of Darkness."
Ruhannah, pencil in hand, looked curiously at this heathen Prince of
Darkness, arrived out of the dark ages to sit to her for his scowling
portrait.
"I wonder what he thinks of America," she said, partly to herself.
The native missionary smiled, picked up the Yellow Devil, shook the
figure, listening.
"There is something inside," he said; "perhaps jewels. If you drilled
a hole in him you could find out."
The Reverend Mr. Carew nodded absently:
"Yes; it might be worth while," he said.
"If there is a jewel," repeated the missionary, "you had better take
it, then cast away the figure. Erlik brings disaster to the land where
his image is set up."
The Reverend Mr. Carew smiled at his Chinese and Christian confrère's
ineradicable vein of superstition.
CHAPTER IV
THE TRODDEN WAY
There came the indeterminate year when Ruhannah finished school and
there was no money available to send her elsewhere for further
embellishment, no farther horizon than the sky over the Gayfield
hills, no other perspective than the main street of Gayfield with the
knitting mill at the end of it.
So into Gayfield Mill the girl walked, and found a place immediately
among the unskilled. And her career appeared to be predetermined now,
and her destiny a simple one--to work, to share the toil and the
gaieties of Gayfield with the majority of the other girls she knew; to
marry, ultimately, some boy, some clerk in one of the Gayfield stores,
some farmer lad, perhaps, possibly a school teacher or a local lawyer
or physician, or possibly the head of some department in the mill, or
maybe a minister--she was sufficiently well bred and educated for any
one of these.
* * * * *
The winter of her seventeenth year found her still very much a child
at heart, physically backward, a late adolescent, a little shy,
inclined to silences, romantic, sensitive to all beauty, and
passionately expressing herself only when curled up by the stove with
her pencil and the red light of the coals falling athwart the slim
hand that guided it.
She went sometimes to village parties, learned very easily to dance,
had no preferences among the youths of Gayfield, no romances. For
that matter, while she was liked and even furtively admired, her
slight shyness, reticence, and a vague, indefinite something about her
seemed to discourage familiar rustic gallantry. Also, she was as thin
and awkward as an overgrown lad, not thought to be pretty, known to be
poor. But for all that more than one young man was vaguely haunted at
intervals by some memory of her grey eyes and the peculiar sweetness
of her mouth, forgetting for the moment several freckles on the
delicate bridge of her nose and several more on her sun-tanned
cheeks.
She had an agreeable time that winter, enchanted to learn dancing,
happy at "showers" and parties, at sleigh rides and "chicken suppers,"
and the various species of village gaiety which ranged from moving
pictures every Thursday and Saturday nights to church entertainments,
amateur theatricals at the town hall, and lectures under the auspices
of the aristocratic D. O. F.--Daughters of the Old Frontier.
But she never saw any boy she preferred to any other, never was
conscious of being preferred, excepting once--and she was not quite
certain about that.
It was old Dick Neeland's son, Jim--vaguely understood to have been
for several years in Paris studying art--and who now turned up in
Gayfield during Christmas week.
Ruhannah remembered seeing him on several occasions when she was a
little child. He was usually tramping across country with his sturdy
father, Dick Neeland of Neeland's Mills--an odd, picturesque pair with
their setter dogs and burnished guns, and old Dick's face as red as a
wrinkled winter apple, and his hair snow-white.
There was six years' difference between their ages, Jim Neeland's and
hers, and she had always considered him a grown and formidable man in
those days. But that winter, when somebody at the movies pointed him
out to her, she was surprised to find him no older than the other
youths she skated with and danced with.
Afterward, at a noisy village party, she saw him dancing with every
girl in town, and the drop of Irish blood in this handsome, careless
young fellow established him at once as a fascinating favourite.
Rue became quite tremulous over the prospect of dancing with him.
Presently her turn came; she rose with a sudden odd loss of
self-possession as he was presented, stood dumb, shy, unresponsive,
suffered him to lead her out, became slowly conscious that he danced
rather badly. But awe of him persisted even when he trod on her
slender foot.
He brought her an ice afterward, and seated himself beside her.
"I'm a clumsy dancer," he said. "How many times did I spike you?"
She flushed and would have found a pleasant word to reassure him, but
discovered nothing to say, it being perfectly patent to them both that
she had retired from the floor with a slight limp.
"I'm a steam roller," he repeated carelessly. "But you dance very
well, don't you?"
"I have only learned to dance this winter."
"I thought you an expert. Do you live here?"
"Yes.... I mean I live at Brookhollow."
"Funny. I don't remember you. Besides, I don't know your name--people
mumble so when they introduce a man."
"I'm Ruhannah Carew."
"Carew," he repeated, while a crease came between his eyebrows. "Of
Brookhollow---- Oh, I know! Your father is the retired missionary--red
house facing the bridge."
"Yes."
"Certainly," he said, taking another look at her; "you're the little
girl daddy and I used to see across the fields when we were shooting
woodcock in the willows."
"I remember you," she said.
"I remember _you_!"
She coloured gratefully.
"Because," he added, "dad and I were always afraid you'd wander into
range and we'd pepper you from the bushes. You've grown a lot, haven't
you?" He had a nice, direct smile though his speech and manners were a
trifle breezy, confident, and _sans façon_. But he was at that
age--which succeeds the age of bumptiousness--with life and career
before him, attainment, realisation, success, everything the mystery
of life holds for a young man who has just flung open the gates and
who takes the magic road to the future with a stride instead of his
accustomed pace.
He was already a man with a profession, and meant that she should
become aware of it.
* * * * *
Later in the evening somebody told her what a _personage_ he had
become, and she became even more deeply thrilled, impressed, and
tremulously desirous that he should seek her out again, not venturing
to seek him, not dreaming of encouraging him to notice her by glance
or attitude--not even knowing, as yet, how to do such things. She
thought he had already forgotten her existence.
But that this thin, freckled young thing with grey eyes ought to
learn how much of a man he was remained somewhere in the back of
Neeland's head; and when he heard his hostess say that somebody would
have to see Rue Carew home, he offered to do it. And presently went
over and asked the girl if he might--not too patronisingly.
In the cutter, under fur, with the moonlight electrically brilliant
and the world buried in white, she ventured to speak of his art,
timidly, as in the presence of the very great.
"Oh, yes," he said. "I studied in Paris. Wish I were back there. But
I've got to draw for magazines and illustrated papers; got to make a
living, you see. I teach at the Art League, too."
"How happy you must be in your career!" she said, devoutly meaning it,
knowing no better than to say it.
"It's a business," he corrected her, kindly.
"But--yes--but it is art, too."
"Oh, art!" he laughed. It was the fashion that year to shrug when art
was mentioned--reaction from too much gabble.
"We don't busy ourselves with art; we busy ourselves with business.
When they use my stuff I feel I'm getting on. You see," he admitted
with reluctant honesty, "I'm young at it yet--I haven't had very much
of my stuff in magazines yet."
After a silence, cursed by an instinctive truthfulness which always
spoiled any little plan to swagger:
"I've had several--well, about a dozen pictures reproduced."
One picture accepted by any magazine would have awed her sufficiently.
The mere fact that he was an artist had been enough to impress her.
"Do you care for that sort of thing--drawing, painting, I mean?" he
inquired kindly.
She drew a quick breath, steadied her voice, and said she did.
"Perhaps you may turn out stuff yourself some day."
She scarcely knew how to take the word "stuff." Vaguely she surmised
it to be professional vernacular.
She admitted shyly that she cared for nothing so much as drawing, that
she longed for instruction, but that such a dream was hopeless.
At first he did not comprehend that poverty barred the way to her; he
urged her to cultivate her talent, bestowed advice concerning the Art
League, boarding houses, studios, ways, means, and ends, until she
felt obliged to tell him how far beyond her means such magic
splendours lay.
He remained silent, sorry for her, thinking also that the chances were
against her having any particular talent, consoling a heart that was
unusually sympathetic and tender with the conclusion that this girl
would be happier here in Brookhollow than scratching around the
purlieus of New York to make both ends meet.
"It's a tough deal," he remarked abruptly. "--I mean this art stuff.
You work like the dickens and kick your heels in ante-rooms. If they
take your stuff they send you back to alter it or redraw it. _I_ don't
know how anybody makes a living at it--in the beginning."
"Don't _you_?"
"I? No." He reddened; but she could not notice it in the moonlight.
"No," he repeated; "I have an allowance from my father. I'm new at it
yet."
"Couldn't a man--a girl--support herself by drawing pictures for
magazines?" she inquired tremulously.
"Oh, well, of course there are some who have arrived--and they manage
to get on. Some even make wads, you know."
"W-wads?" she repeated, mystified.
"I mean a lot of money. There's that girl on the _Star_, Jean
Throssel, who makes all kinds of wealth, they say, out of her spidery,
filmy girls in ringlets and cheesecloth dinner gowns."
"Oh!"
"Yes, Jean Throssel, and that Waythorne girl, Belinda Waythorne, you
know--does all that stuff for _The Looking Glass_--futurist graft, no
mouths on her people--she makes _hers_, I understand."
It was rather difficult for Rue to follow him amid the vernacular
mazes.
"Then, of course," he continued, "men like Alexander Fairless and
Philip Lightwood who imitates him, make fortunes out of their drawing.
I could name a dozen, perhaps. But the rest--hard sledding, Miss
Carew!"
"Is it _very_ hard?"
"Well, I don't know what on earth I'd do if dad didn't back me as his
fancy."
"A father ought to, if he can afford it."
"Oh, I'll pay my way some day. It's in me. I feel it; I know it. I'll
make plenty of money," he assured her confidently.
"I'm sure you will."
"Thank you," he smiled. "My friends tell me I've got it in me. I have
one friend in particular--the Princess Mistchenka--who has all kinds
of confidence in my future. When I'm blue she bolsters me up. She's
quite wonderful. I owe her a lot for asking me to her Sunday nights
and for giving me her friendship."
"A--a princess?" whispered the girl, who had drawn pictures of
thousands but was a little startled to realise that such fabled
creatures really exist.
"Is she _very_ beautiful?" she added.
"She's tremendously pretty."
"Her--clothes are very beautiful, I suppose," ventured Rue.
"Well--they're very--smart. Everything about her is smart. Her Sunday
night suppers are wonderful. You meet people who do things--all
sorts--everybody who is somebody."
He turned to her frankly:
"I think myself very lucky that the Princess Mistchenka should be my
friend, because, honestly, Miss Carew, I don't see what there is in me
to interest such a woman."
Rue thought she could see, but remained silent.
"If I had my way," said Neeland, a few moments later, "I'd drop
illustrating and paint battle scenes. But it wouldn't pay, you see."
"Couldn't you support yourself by painting battles?"
"Not yet," he said honestly. "Of course I have hopes--intentions----"
he laughed, drew his reins; the silvery chimes clashed and jingled and
flashed in the moonlight; they had arrived.
At the door he said:
"I hope some day you'll have a chance to take lessons. Thank you for
dancing with me.... If you ever do come to New York to study, I hope
you'll let me know."
"Yes," she said, "I will."
He was halfway to his sleigh, looked back, saw her looking back as she
entered the lighted doorway.
"Good night, Rue," he said impulsively, warmly sorry for her.
"Good night," she said.
The drop of Irish blood in him prompted him to go back to where she
stood framed in the lighted doorway. And the same drop was no doubt
responsible for his taking her by the waist and tilting back her head
in its fur hood and kissing her soft, warm lips.
She looked up at him in a flushed, bewildered sort of way, not
resisting; but his eyes were so gay and mischievous, and his quick
smile so engaging that a breathless, uncertain smile began to edge her
lips; and it remained stamped there, stiffening even after he had
jumped into his cutter and had driven away, jingling joyously out into
the dazzling moonshine.
* * * * *
In bed, the window open, and the covers pulled to her chin, Rue lay
wakeful, living over again the pleasures of the evening; and Neeland's
face was always before her open eyes, and his pleasant voice seemed to
be sounding in her ears. As for the kiss, it did not trouble her.
Girls she went with were not infrequently so saluted by boys. That,
being her own first experience, was important only in that degree. And
she shyly thought the experience agreeable. And, as she recalled,
revived, and considered all that Neeland had said, it seemed to her
that this young man led an enchanted life and that such as he were
indeed companions fit for princesses.
"Princess Mistchenka," she repeated aloud to herself. And somehow it
sounded vaguely familiar to the girl, as though somewhere, long ago,
she had heard another voice pronounce the name.
CHAPTER V
EX MACHINA
After she had become accustomed to the smell of rancid oil and
dyestuffs and the interminable racket of machinery she did not find
her work at the knitting mill disagreeable. It was like any work, she
imagined, an uninteresting task which had to be done.
The majority of the girls and young men of the village worked there in
various capacities; wages were fair, salaries better, union
regulations prevailed. There was nothing to complain of.
And nothing to expect except possible increase in wages, holidays, and
a disquieting chance of getting caught in the machinery, which
familiarity soon discounted.
As for the social status of the mill workers, the mill _was_ Gayfield;
and Gayfield was a village where the simpler traditions of the
Republic still survived; where there existed no invidious distinction
in vocations; a typical old-time community harbouring the remains of a
Grand Army Post and too many churches of too many denominations; where
the chance metropolitan stranger was systematically "done"; where
distrust of all cities and desire to live in them was equalled only by
a passion for moving pictures and automobiles; where the school
trustees used double negatives and traced their ancestry to Colonial
considerables--who, however, had signed their names in "lower case" or
with a Maltese cross--the world in miniature, with its due proportion
of petty graft, petty squabbles, envy, kindness, jealousy, generosity,
laziness, ambition, stupidity, intelligence, honesty, hypocrisy,
hatred, affection, badness and goodness, as standardised by the code
established according to folk-ways on earth--in brief, a perfectly
human community composed of the usual ingredients, worthy and
unworthy--that was Gayfield, Mohawk County, New York.
Before spring came--before the first robin appeared, and while icy
roads still lay icy under sunlit pools of snow-water--a whole winter
indoors, and a sedentary one, had changed the smoothly tanned and
slightly freckled cheeks of Rue Carew to a thinner and paler oval.
Under her transparent skin a tea-rose pink came and went; under her
grey eyes lay bluish shadows. Also, floating particles of dust, fleecy
and microscopic motes of cotton and wool filling the air in the room
where Ruhannah worked, had begun to irritate her throat and bronchial
tubes; and the girl developed an intermittent cough.
When the first bluebird arrived in Gayfield the cough was no longer
intermittent; and her mother sent her to the village doctor. So Rue
Carew was transferred to the box factory adjoining, in which the mill
made its own paper boxes, where young women sat all day at intelligent
machines and fed them with squares of pasteboard and strips of gilt
paper; and the intelligent and grateful machines responded by turning
out hundreds and hundreds of complete boxes, all neatly gilded,
pasted, and labelled. And after a little while Ruhannah was able to
nourish one of these obliging and responsive machines. And by July her
cough had left her, and two delicate freckles adorned the bridge of
her nose.
The half-mile walk from and to Brookhollow twice a day was keeping her
from rapid physical degeneration. Yet, like all northern American
summers, the weather became fearfully hot in July and August, and the
half-mile even in early morning and at six in the evening left her
listless, nervously dreading the great concrete-lined room, the reek
of glue and oil, the sweaty propinquity of her neighbours, and the
monotonous appetite of the sprawling machine which she fed all day
long with pasteboard squares.
She went to her work in early morning, bareheaded, in a limp pink
dress very much open at the throat, which happened to be the merciful
mode of the moment--a slender, sweet-lipped thing, beginning to move
with grace now--and her chestnut hair burned gold-pale by the sun.
* * * * *
There came that movable holiday in August, when the annual shutdown
for repairs closed the mill and box factory during forty-eight
hours--a matter of prescribing oil and new bearings for the overfed
machines so that their digestions should remain unimpaired and their
dispositions amiable.
It was a hot August morning, intensely blue and still, with that slow,
subtle concentration of suspended power in the sky, ominous of thunder
brooding somewhere beyond the western edges of the world.
Ruhannah aided her mother with the housework, picked peas and a squash
and a saucer full of yellow pansies in the weedy little garden, and,
at noon, dined on the trophies of her husbandry, physically and
æsthetically.
After dinner, dishes washed and room tidied, she sat down on the
narrow, woodbine-infested verandah with pencil and paper, and
attempted to draw the stone bridge and the little river where it
spread in deeps and shallows above the broken dam.
Perspective was unknown to her; of classic composition she was also
serenely ignorant, so the absence of these in her picture did not
annoy her. On the contrary, there was something hideously modern and
recessional in her vigorous endeavour to include in her drawing
everything her grey eyes chanced to rest on. She even arose and gently
urged a cow into the already overcrowded composition, and, having
accomplished its portrait with Cezanne-like fidelity, was beginning to
look about for Adoniram to include him also, when her mother called to
her, holding out a pair of old gloves.
"Dear, we are going to save a little money this year. Do you think you
could catch a few fish for supper?"
The girl nodded, took the gloves, laid aside her pencil and paper,
picked up the long bamboo pole from the verandah floor, and walked
slowly out into the garden.
A trowel was sticking in the dry earth near the flower bed, where
poppies, and pansies, and petunias, and phlox bordered the walk.
Under a lilac the ground seemed moister and more promising for
vermicular investigation; she drew on her gloves, dug a few holes with
the trowel, extracted an angleworm, frowned slightly, holding it
between gloved fingers, regarding its contortions with pity and
aversion.
To bait a hook was not agreeable to the girl; she managed to do it,
however, then shouldering her pole she walked across the road and down
to the left, through rank grasses and patches of milkweed, bergamot,
and queen's lace, scattering a cloud of brown and silver-spotted
butterflies.
Alder, elder, and Indian willow barred her way; rank thickets of
jewelweed hung vivid blossoming drops across her path; woodbine and
clematis trailed dainty snares to catch her in their fairy nets; a
rabbit scurried out from behind the ruined paper mill as she came to
the swift, shallow water below the dam.
Into this she presently plumped her line, and the next instant jerked
it out again with a wriggling, silvery minnow flashing on the hook.
Carrying her pole with its tiny, glittering victim dangling aloft, Rue
hastily retraced her steps to the road, crossed the bridge to the
further end, seated herself on the limestone parapet, and, swinging
her pole with both hands, cast line and hook and minnow far out into
the pond. It was a business she did not care for--this extinguishing
of the life-spark in anything. But, like her mill work, it appeared to
be a necessary business, and, so regarding it, she went about it.
The pond above the half-ruined dam lay very still; her captive minnow
swam about with apparently no discomfort, trailing on the surface of
the pond above him the cork which buoyed the hook.
Rue, her pole clasped in both hands between her knees, gazed with
preoccupied eyes out across the water. On the sandy shore, a pair of
speckled tip-ups ran busily about, dipping and bobbing, or spread
their white, striped wings to sheer the still surface of the pond,
swing shoreward with bowed wings again, and resume their formal,
quaint, and busy manners.
From the interstices of the limestone parapet grew a white
bluebell--the only one Rue had ever seen. As long as she could
remember it had come up there every year and bloomed, snow-white amid
a world of its blue comrades in the grass below. She looked for it
now, saw it in bud--three sturdy stalks sprouting at right angles
from the wall and curving up parallel to it. Somehow or other she had
come to associate this white freak of nature with herself--she
scarcely knew why. It comforted her, oddly, to see it again, still
surviving, still delicately vigorous, though where among those stone
slabs it found its nourishment she never could imagine.
The intense blue of the sky had altered since noon; the west became
gradually duller and the air stiller; and now, over the Gayfield
hills, a tall cloud thrust up silvery-edged convolutions toward a
zenith still royally and magnificently blue.
* * * * *
She had been sitting there watching her swimming cork for over an hour
when the first light western breeze arrived, spreading a dainty ripple
across the pond. Her cork danced, drifted; beneath it she caught the
momentary glimmer of the minnow; then the cork was jerked under; she
clasped the pole with all her strength, struck upward; and a heavy
pickerel, all gold and green, sprang furiously from the water and fell
back with a sharp splash.
Under the sudden strain of the fish she nearly lost her balance,
scrambled hastily down from the parapet, propping the pole desperately
against her body, and stood so, unbending, unyielding, her eyes fixed
on the water where the taut line cut it at forty-five degrees.
At the same time two men in a red runabout speeding westward caught
sight of the sharp turn by the bridge which the ruins of the paper
mill had hidden. The man driving the car might have made it even then
had he not seen Ruhannah in the centre of the bridge. It was instantly
all off; so were both mud-guards and one wheel. So were driver and
passenger, floundering on their backs among the rank grass and wild
flowers. Ruhannah, petrified, still fast to her fish, gazed at the
catastrophe over her right shoulder.
A broad, short, squarely built man of forty emerged from the weeds,
went hastily to the car and did something to it. Noise ceased; clouds
of steam continued to ascend from the crumpled hood.
The other man, even shorter, but slimmer, sauntered out of a bed of
milkweed whither he had been catapulted. He dusted with his elbow a
grey felt hat as he stood looking at the wrecked runabout; his
comrade, still clutching a cigar between his teeth, continued to
examine the car.
"Hell!" remarked the short, thickset man.
"It's going to rain like it, too," added the other. The thunder boomed
again beyond Gayfield hills.
"What do you know about this!" growled the thickset man, in utter
disgust. "Do we hunt for a garage, or what?"
"It's up to you, Eddie. And say! What was the matter with you? Don't
you know a bridge when you see one?"
"That damn girl----" He turned and looked at Ruhannah, who was
dragging the big flapping pickerel over the parapet by main strength.
The men scowled at her in silence, then the one addressed as Eddie
rolled his cigar grimly into the left corner of his jaw.
"Damn little skirt," he observed briefly. "It seems to worry her a lot
what she's done to us."
"I wonder does she know she wrecked us," suggested the other. He was a
stunted, wiry little man of thirty-five. His head seemed slightly too
large; he had a pasty face with the sloe-black eyes, button nose, and
the widely chiselled mouth of a circus clown.
The eyes of the short, thickset man were narrow and greyish green in a
round, smoothly shaven face. They narrowed still more as the thunder
broke louder from the west.
Ruhannah, dragging her fish over the grass, was coming toward them;
and the man called Eddie stepped forward to bar her progress.
"Say, girlie," he began, the cigar still tightly screwed into his
cheek, "is there a juice mill anywhere near us, d'y'know?"
"What?" said Rue.
"A garage."
"Yes; there is one at Gayfield."
"How far, girlie?"
Rue flushed, but answered:
"It is half a mile to Gayfield."
The other man, noticing the colour in Ruhannah's face, took off his
pearl-grey hat. His language was less grammatical than his friend's,
but his instincts were better.
"Thank you," he said--his companion staring all the while at the girl
without the slightest expression. "Is there a telephone in any of them
houses, miss?"--glancing around behind him at the three edifices which
composed the crossroads called Brookhollow.
"No," said Rue.
It thundered again; the world around had become very dusky and silent
and the flash veined a rapidly blackening west.
"It's going to rain buckets," said the man called Eddie. "If you live
around here, can you let us come into your house till it's over,
gir--er--miss?"
"Yes."
"I'm Mr. Brandes--Ed Brandes of New York----" speaking through
cigar-clutching teeth. "This is Mr. Ben Stull, of the same.... It's
raining already. Is that your house?"
"I live _there_," said Rue, nodding across the bridge. "You may go
in."
She walked ahead, dragging the fish; Stull went to the car, took two
suitcases from the boot; Brandes threw both overcoats over his arm,
and followed in the wake of Ruhannah and her fish.
"No Saratoga and no races today, Eddie," remarked Stull. But Brandes'
narrow, grey-green eyes were following Ruhannah.
"It's a pity," continued Stull, "somebody didn't learn you to drive a
car before you ask your friends joy-riding."
"Aw--shut up," returned Brandes slowly, between his teeth.
They climbed the flight of steps to the verandah, through a rapidly
thickening gloom which was ripped wide open at intervals by
lightning.
So Brandes and his shadow, Bennie Stull, came into the home of
Ruhannah Carew.
Her mother, who had observed their approach from the window, opened
the door.
"Mother," said Ruhannah, "here is the fish I caught--and two
gentlemen."
With which dubious but innocent explanation she continued on toward
the kitchen, carrying her fish.
Stull offered a brief explanation to account for their plight and
presence; Brandes, listening and watching the mother out of greenish,
sleepy eyes, made up his mind concerning her.
While the spare room was being prepared by mother and daughter, he and
Stull, seated in the sitting-room, their hats upon their knees,
exchanged solemn commonplaces with the Reverend Mr. Carew.
Brandes, always the gambler, always wary and reticent by nature, did
all the listening before he came to conclusions that relaxed the
stiffness of his attitude and the immobility of his large, round
face.
Then, at ease under circumstances and conditions which he began to
comprehend and have an amiable contempt for, he became urbane and
conversational, and a little amused to find navigation so simple, even
when out of his proper element.
From the book on the invalid's knees, Brandes took his cue; and the
conversation developed into a monologue on the present condition of
foreign missions--skilfully inspired by the respectful attention and
the brief and ingenious questions of Brandes.
"Doubtless," concluded the Reverend Mr. Carew, "you are familiar with
the life of the Reverend Adoniram Judson, Mr. Brandes."
It turned out to be Brandes' favourite book.
"You will recollect, then, the amazing conditions in India which
confronted Dr. Judson and his wife."
Brandes recollected perfectly--with a slow glance at Stull.
"All that is changed," said the invalid. "--God be thanked. And
conditions in Armenia are changing for the better, I hope."
"Let us hope so," returned Brandes solemnly.
"To doubt it is to doubt the goodness of the Almighty," said the
Reverend Mr. Carew. His dreamy eyes became fixed on the rain-splashed
window, burned a little with sombre inward light.
"In Trebizond," he began, "in my time----"
His wife came into the room, saying that the spare bedchamber was
ready and that the gentlemen might wish to wash before supper, which
would be ready in a little while.
* * * * *
On their way upstairs they encountered Ruhannah coming down. Stull
passed with a polite grunt; Brandes ranged himself for the girl to
pass him.
"Ever so much obliged to you, Miss Carew," he said. "We have put you
to a great deal of trouble, I am sure."
Rue looked up surprised, shy, not quite understanding how to reconcile
his polite words and pleasant voice with the voice and manner in which
he had addressed her on the bridge.
"It is no trouble," she said, flushing slightly. "I hope you will be
comfortable."
And she continued to descend the stairs a trifle more hastily, not
quite sure she cared very much to talk to that kind of man.
* * * * *
In the spare bedroom, whither Stull and Brandes had been conducted,
the latter was seated on the big and rather shaky maple bed, buttoning
a fresh shirt and collar, while Stull took his turn at the basin. Rain
beat heavily on the windows.
"Say, Ben," remarked Brandes, "you want to be careful when we go
downstairs that the old guy don't spot us for sporting men. He's a
minister, or something."
Stull lifted his dripping face of a circus clown from the basin.
"What's that?"
"I say we don't want to give the old people a shock. You know what
they'd think of us."
"What do I care what they think?"
"Can't you be polite?"
"I can be better than that; I can be honest," said Stull, drying his
sour visage with a flimsy towel.
After Brandes had tied his polka-dotted tie carefully before the
blurred mirror:
"What do you mean by that?" he asked stolidly.
"Ah--I know what I mean, Eddie. So do you. You're a smooth talker, all
right. You can listen and look wise, too, when there's anything in it
for you. Just see the way you got Stein to put up good money for you!
And all you done was to listen to him and keep your mouth shut."
Brandes rose with an air almost jocular and smote Stull upon the
back.
"Stein thinks he's the greatest manager on earth. Let him tell you so
if you want anything out of him," he said, walking to the window.
The volleys of rain splashing on the panes obscured the outlook;
Brandes flattened his nose against the glass and stood as though lost
in thought.
Behind him Stull dried his features, rummaged in the suitcase,
produced a bathrobe and slippers, put them on, and stretched himself
out on the bed.
"Aren't you coming down to buzz the preacher?" demanded Brandes,
turning from the drenched window.
"So you can talk phony to the little kid? No."
"Ah, get it out of your head that I mean phony."
"Well, what do you mean?"
"Nothing."
Stull gave him a contemptuous glance and turned over on the pillow.
"Are you coming down?"
"No."
So Brandes took another survey of himself in the glass, used his comb
and brushes again, added a studied twist to his tie, shot his cuffs,
and walked out of the room with the solid deliberation which
characterised his carriage at all times.
CHAPTER VI
THE END OF SOLITUDE
A rain-washed world, smelling sweet as a wet rose, a cloudless sky
delicately blue, and a swollen stream tumbling and foaming under the
bridge--of these Mr. Eddie Brandes was agreeably conscious as he
stepped out on the verandah after breakfast, and, unclasping a large
gold cigar case, inserted a cigar between his teeth.
He always had the appearance of having just come out of a Broadway
barber shop with the visible traces of shave, shampoo, massage, and
manicure patent upon his person.
His short, square figure was clothed in well-cut blue serge; a smart
straw hat embellished his head, polished russet shoes his remarkably
small feet. On his small fat fingers several heavy rings were
conspicuous. And the odour of cologne exhaled from and subtly pervaded
the ensemble.
Across the road, hub-deep in wet grass and weeds, he could see his
wrecked runabout, glistening with raindrops.
He stood for a while on the verandah, both hands shoved deep into his
pockets, his cigar screwed into his cheek. From time to time he
jingled keys and loose coins in his pockets. Finally he sauntered down
the steps and across the wet road to inspect the machine at closer
view.
Contemplating it tranquilly, head on one side and his left eye closed
to avoid the drifting cigar smoke, he presently became aware of a
girl in a pink print dress leaning over the grey parapet of the
bridge. And, picking his way among the puddles, he went toward her.
"Good morning, Miss Carew," he said, taking off his straw hat.
She turned her head over her shoulder; the early sun glistened on his
shiny, carefully parted hair and lingered in glory on a diamond scarf
pin.
"Good morning," she said, a little uncertainly, for the memory of
their first meeting on the bridge had not entirely been forgotten.
"You had breakfast early," he said.
"Yes."
He kept his hat off; such little courtesies have their effect; also it
was good for his hair which, he feared, had become a trifle thinner
recently.
"It is beautiful weather," said Mr. Brandes, squinting at her through
his cigar smoke.
"Yes." She looked down into the tumbling water.
"This is a beautiful country, isn't it, Miss Carew?"
"Yes."
With his head a little on one side he inspected her. There was only
the fine curve of her cheek visible, and a white neck under the
chestnut hair; and one slim, tanned hand resting on the stone
parapet.
"Do you like motoring?" he asked.
She looked up:
"Yes.... I have only been out a few times."
"I'll have another car up here in a few days. I'd like to take you
out."
She was silent.
"Ever go to Saratoga?" he inquired.
"No."
"I'll take you to the races--with your mother. Would you like to go?"
She remained silent so long that he became a trifle uneasy.
"With your mother," he repeated, moving so he could see a little more
of her face.
"I don't think mother would go," she said.
"Would she let you go?"
"I don't think so."
"There's nothing wrong with racing," he said, "if you don't bet money
on the horses."
But Rue knew nothing about sport, and her ignorance as well as the
suggested combination of Saratoga, automobile, and horse racing left
her silent again.
Brandes sat down on the parapet of the bridge and held his straw hat
on his fat knees.
"Then we'll make it a family party," he said, "your father and mother
and you, shall we? And we'll just go off for the day."
"Thank you."
"Would you like it?"
"Yes."
"Will you go?"
"I--work in the mill."
"Every day?"
"Yes."
"How about Sunday?"
"We go to church.... I don't know.... Perhaps we might go in the
afternoon."
"I'll ask your father," he said, watching the delicately flushed face
with odd, almost sluggish persistency.
His grey-green eyes seemed hypnotised; he appeared unable to turn them
elsewhere; and she, gradually becoming conscious of his scrutiny,
kept her own eyes averted.
"What were you looking at in the water?" he asked.
"I was looking for our boat. It isn't there. I'm afraid it has gone
over the dam."
"I'll help you search for it," he said, "when I come back from the
village. I'm going to walk over and find somebody who'll cart that
runabout to the railroad station.... You're not going that way, are
you?" he added, rising.
"No."
"Then----" he lifted his hat high and put it on with care--"until a
little later, Miss Carew.... And I want to apologise for speaking so
familiarly to you yesterday. I'm sorry. It's a way we get into in New
York. Broadway isn't good for a man's manners.... Will you forgive me,
Miss Carew?"
Embarrassment kept her silent; she nodded her head, and finally turned
and looked at him. His smile was agreeable.
She smiled faintly, too, and rose.
"Until later, then," he said. "This is the Gayfield road, isn't it?"
"Yes."
She turned and walked toward the house; and as though he could not
help himself he walked beside her, his hat in his hand once more.
"I like this place," he said. "I wonder if there is a hotel in
Gayfield."
"The Gayfield House."
"Is it _very_ bad?" he asked jocosely.
She seemed surprised. It was considered good, she thought.
With a slight, silent nod of dismissal she crossed the road and went
into the house, leaving him standing beside his wrecked machine once
more, looking after her out of sluggish eyes.
Presently, from the house, emerged Stull, his pasty face startling in
its pallor under the cloudless sky, and walked slowly over to
Brandes.
"Well, Ben," said the latter pleasantly, "I'm going to Gayfield to
telegraph for another car."
"How soon can they get one up?" inquired Stull, inserting a large
cigar into his slitted mouth and lighting it.
"Oh, in a couple of days, I guess. I don't know. I don't care much,
either."
"We can go on to Saratoga by train," suggested Stull complacently.
"We can stay here, too."
"What for?"
Brandes said in his tight-lipped, even voice:
"The fishing's good. I guess I'll try it." He continued to contemplate
the machine, but Stull's black eyes were turned on him intently.
"How about the races?" he asked. "Do we go or not?"
"Certainly."
"When?"
"When they send us a car to go in."
"Isn't the train good enough?"
"The fishing here is better."
Stull's pasty visage turned sourer:
"Do you mean we lose a couple of days in this God-forsaken dump
because you'd rather go to Saratoga in a runabout than in a train?"
"I tell you I'm going to stick around for a while."
"For how long?"
"Oh, I don't know. When we get our car we can talk it over and----"
"Ah," ejaculated Stull in disgust, "what the hell's the matter with
you? Is it that little skirt you was buzzing out here like you never
seen one before?"
"How did you guess, Ben?" returned Brandes with the almost
expressionless jocularity that characterised him at times.
"_That_ little red-headed, spindling, freckled, milk-fed
mill-hand----"
"Funny, ain't it? But there's no telling what will catch the tired
business man, is there, Ben?"
"Well, what does catch him?" demanded Stull angrily. "What's the
answer?"
"I guess she's the answer, Ben."
"Ah, leave the kid alone----"
"I'm going to have the car sent up here. I'm going to take her out. Go
on to Saratoga if you want to. I'll meet you there----"
"When?"
"When I'm ready," replied Brandes evenly. But he smiled.
Stull looked at him, and his white face, soured by dyspepsia, became
sullen with wrath. At such times, too, his grammar suffered from
indigestion.
"Say, Eddie," he began, "can't no one learn you nothin' at all? How
many times would you have been better off if you'd listened to me?
Every time you throw me you hand yourself one. Now that you got a
little money again and a little backing, don't do anything like
_that_----"
"Like what?"
"Like chasin' dames! Don't act foolish like you done in Chicago last
summer! You wouldn't listen to me then, would you? And that Denver
business, too! Say, look at all the foolish things you done against
all I could say to save you--like backing that cowboy plug against
Battling Jensen!--Like taking that big hunk o' beef, Walstein, to San
Antonio, where Kid O'Rourke put him out in the first! And everybody's
laughing at you yet! Ah----" he exclaimed angrily, "somebody tell me
why I don't quit you, you big dill pickle! I wish someone would tell
me why I stand for you, because I don't know.... And look what you're
doing now; you got some money of your own and plenty of syndicate
money to put on the races and a big comish! You got a good theayter in
town with Morris Stein to back you and everything--and look what
you're doing!" he ended bitterly.
Brandes tightened his dental grip on his cigar and squinted at him
good-humouredly.
"Say, Ben," he said, "would you believe it if I told you I'm stuck on
her?"
"Ah, you'd fall for anything. I never seen a skirt you wouldn't
chase."
"I don't mean that kind."
"What kind, then?"
"This is on the level, Ben."
"What! Ah, go on! _You_ on the level?"
"All the same, I am."
"You can't be on the level! You don't know how."
"Why?"
"You got a wife, and you know damn well you have."
"Yes, and she's getting her divorce."
Stull regarded him with habitual and sullen distrust.
"She hasn't got it yet."
"She'll get it. Don't worry."
"I thought you was for fighting it."
"I was going to fight it; but----" His slow, narrow, greenish eyes
stole toward the house across the road.
"Just like that," he said, after a slight pause; "that's the way the
little girl hit me. I'm on the level, Ben. First skirt I ever saw that
I wanted to find waiting dinner for me when I come home. Get me?"
"I don't know whether I do or not."
"Get this, then; she isn't all over paint; she's got freckles, thank
God, and she smells sweet as a daisy field. Ah, what the hell----" he
burst out between his parted teeth "--when every woman in New York
smells like a chorus girl! Don't I get it all day? The whole city
stinks like a star's dressing room. And I married one! And I'm
through. I want to get my breath and I'm getting it."
Stull's white features betrayed merely the morbid suffering of
indigestion; he said nothing and sucked his cigar.
"I'm through," repeated Brandes. "I want a home and a wife--the kind
that even a fly cop won't pinch on sight--the kind of little thing
that's over there in that old shack. Whatever I am, I don't want a
wife like me--nor kids, either."
Stull remained sullenly unresponsive.
"Call her a hick if you like. All right, I want that kind."
No comment from Stull, who was looking at the wrecked car.
"Understand, Ben?"
"I tell you I don't know whether I do or not!"
"Well, what don't you understand?"
"Nothin'.... Well, then, your falling for a kid like that, first crack
out o' the box. I'm honest; I don't understand it."
"She hit me that way--so help me God!"
"And you're on the level?"
"Absolutely, Ben."
"What about the old guy and the mother? Take 'em to live with you?"
"If she wants 'em."
Stull stared at him in uneasy astonishment:
"All right, Eddie. Only don't act foolish till Minna passes you up.
And get out of here or you will. If you're on the level, as you say
you are, you've got to mark time for a good long while yet----"
"Why?"
"You don't have to ask me that, do you?"
"Yes, I do. Why? I want to marry her, I tell you. I mean to. I'm
taking no chances that some hick will do it while I'm away. I'm going
to stay right here."
"And when the new car comes?"
"I'll keep her humming between here and Saratoga."
"And then what?"
Brandes' greenish eyes rested on the car and he smoked in silence for
a while. Then:
"Listen, Ben. I'm a busy man. I got to be back in town and I got to
have a wedding trip too. You know me, Ben. You know what I mean.
That's me. When I do a thing I do it. Maybe I make plenty of mistakes.
Hell! I'd rather make 'em than sit pat and do nothing!"
"You're crazy."
"Don't bet on it, Ben. I know what I want. I'm going to make money.
Things are going big with me----"
"You tinhorn! You always say that!"
"Watch me. I bet you I make a killing at Saratoga! I bet you I make
good with Morris Stein! I bet you the first show I put on goes big! I
bet----"
"Ah, can it!"
"Wait! I bet you I marry that little girl in two weeks and she stands
for it when I tell her later we'd better get married again!"
"Say! Talk sense!"
"I am."
"What'll they do to you if your wife makes a holler?"
"Who ever heard of her or me in the East?"
"You want to take a chance like that?"
"I'll fix it. I haven't got time to wait for Minna to shake me loose.
Besides, she's in Seattle. I'll fix it so she doesn't hear until she
gets her freedom. I'll get a license right here. I guess I'll use your
name----"
"What!" yelled Stull.
"Shut your face!" retorted Brandes. "What do you think you're going to
do, squeal?"
"You think I'm going to stand for that?"
"Well, then, I won't use your name. I'll use my own. Why not? I mean
honest. It's dead level. I'll remarry her. I want her, I tell you. I
want a wedding trip, too, before I go back----"
"With the first rehearsal called for September fifteenth! What's the
matter with you? Do you think Stein is going to stand for----"
"_You'll_ be on hand," said Brandes pleasantly. "I'm going to Paris
for four weeks--two weeks there, two on the ocean----"
"You----"
"Save your voice, Ben. That's settled."
Stull turned upon him a dead white visage distorted with fury:
"I hope she throws you out!" he said breathlessly. "You talk about
being on the level! Every level's crooked with you. You don't know
what square means; a square has got more than four corners for you! Go
on! Stick around. I don't give a damn what you do. Go on and do it.
But I quit right here."
Both knew that the threat was empty. As a shadow clings to a man's
heels, as a lost soul haunts its slayer, as damnation stalks the
damned, so had Stull followed Brandes; and would follow to the end.
Why? Neither knew. It seemed to be their destiny, surviving
everything--their bitter quarrels, the injustice and tyranny of
Brandes, his contempt and ridicule sometimes--enduring through
adversity, even penury, through good and bad days, through abundance
and through want, through shame and disgrace, through trickery,
treachery, and triumph--nothing had ever broken the occult bond which
linked these two. And neither understood why, but both seemed to be
vaguely conscious that neither was entirely complete without the
other.
"Ben," said Brandes affably, "I'm going to walk over to Gayfield. Want
to come?"
They went off, together.
CHAPTER VII
OBSESSION
By the end of the week Brandes had done much to efface any unpleasant
impression he had made on Ruhannah Carew.
The girl had never before had to do with any mature man. She was
therefore at a disadvantage in every way, and her total lack of
experience emphasised the odds.
Nobody had ever before pointedly preferred her, paid her undivided
attention; no man had ever sought her, conversed with her, deferred to
her, interested himself in her. It was entirely new to her, this
attention which Brandes paid her. Nor could she make any comparisons
between this man and other men, because she knew no other men. He was
an entirely novel experience to her; he had made himself interesting,
had proved amusing, considerate, kind, generous, and apparently
interested in what interested her. And if his unfeigned preference for
her society disturbed and perplexed her, his assiduous civilities
toward her father and mother were gradually winning from her far more
than anything he had done for her.
His white-faced, odd little friend had gone; he himself had taken
quarters at the Gayfield House, where a car like the wrecked one was
stabled for his use.
He had already taken her father and mother and herself everywhere
within motoring distance; he had accompanied them to church; he
escorted her to the movies; he walked with her in the August evenings
after supper, rowed her about on the pond, fished from the bridge,
told her strange stories in the moonlight on the verandah, her father
and mother interested and attentive.
For the career of Mr. Eddie Brandes was capable of furnishing material
for interesting stories if carefully edited, and related with
discretion and circumspection. He had been many things to many
men--and to several women--he had been a tinhorn gambler in the
Southwest, a miner in Alaska, a saloon keeper in Wyoming, a fight
promoter in Arizona. He had travelled profitably on popular ocean
liners until requested to desist; Auteuil, Neuilly, Vincennes, and
Longchamps knew him as tout, bookie, and, when fitfully prosperous, as
a plunger. Epsom knew him once as a welcher; and knew him no more.
He had taken a comic opera company through the wheat-belt--one way; he
had led a burlesque troupe into Arizona and had traded it there for a
hotel.
"When Eddie _wants_ to talk," Stull used to say, "that smoke,
_Othello_, hasn't got nothing on him."
However, Brandes seldom chose to talk. This was one of his rare
garrulous occasions; and, with careful self-censorship, he was making
an endless series of wonder-tales out of the episodes and _faits
divers_ common to the experience of such as he.
So, of moving accidents by flood and field this man had a store, and
he contrived to make them artistically innocuous and perfectly fit for
family consumption.
Further, two of his friends motored over from Saratoga to see him,
were brought to supper at the Carews'; and they gave him a clean bill
of moral health. They were, respectively, "Doc" Curfoot--suave haunter
of Peacock Alley and gentleman "capper"--whom Brandes introduced as
the celebrated specialist, Doctor Elbert Curfoot--and Captain Harman
Quint, partner in "Quint's" celebrated temple of chance--introduced as
the distinguished navigating officer which he appeared to be. The
steering for their common craft, however, was the duty of the eminent
Doc.
They spent the evening on the verandah with the family; and it was
quite wonderful what a fine fellow each turned out to be--information
confidentially imparted to the Reverend Mr. Carew by each of the three
distinguished gentlemen in turn.
Doc Curfoot, whose business included the ability to talk convincingly
on any topic, took the Reverend Mr. Carew's measure and chose
literature; and his suave critique presently became an interesting
monologue listened to in silence by those around him.
Brandes had said, "Put me in right, Doc," and Doc was accomplishing
it, partly to oblige Brandes, partly for practice. His agreeable voice
so nicely pitched, so delightfully persuasive, recapitulating all the
commonplaces and cant phrases concerning the literature of the day,
penetrated gratefully the intellectual isolation of these humble
gentlepeople, and won very easily their innocent esteem. With the
Reverend Mr. Carew Doc discussed such topics as the influence on
fiction of the ethical ideal. With Mrs. Carew Captain Quint exchanged
reminiscences of travel on distant seas. Brandes attempted to maintain
low-voiced conversation with Rue, who responded in diffident
monosyllables to his advances.
* * * * *
Brandes walked down to their car with them after they had taken their
leave.
"What's the idea, Eddie?" inquired Doc Curfoot, pausing before the
smart little speeder.
"It's straight."
"Oh," said Doc, softly, betraying no surprise--about the only thing he
never betrayed. "Anything in it for you, Eddie?"
"Yes. A good girl. The kind you read about. Isn't that enough?"
"Minna chucked you?" inquired Captain Quint.
"She'll get her decree in two or three months. Then I'll have a home.
And everything that you and I are keeps out of that home, Cap. See?"
"Certainly," said Quint. "Quite right, Eddie."
Doc Curfoot climbed in and took the wheel; Quint followed him.
"Say," he said in his pleasant, guarded voice, "watch out that Minna
don't double-cross you, Eddie."
"How?"
"--Or shoot you up. She's some _schutzen-fest_, you know, when she
turns loose----"
"Ah, I tell you she _wants_ the divorce. Abe Grittlefeld's crazy about
her. He'll get Abe Gordon to star her on Broadway; and that's enough
for her. Besides, she'll marry Maxy Venem when she can afford to keep
him."
"_You_ never understood Minna Minti."
"Well, who ever understood any German?" demanded Brandes. "She's one
of those sour-blooded, silent Dutch women that make me ache."
Doc pushed the self-starter; there came a click, a low humming.
Brandes' face cleared and he held out his square-shaped hand:
"You fellows," he said, "have put me right with the old folks here.
I'll do the same for you some day. Don't talk about this little girl
and me, that's all."
"All the same," repeated Doc, "don't take any chances with Minna.
She's on to you, and she's got a rotten Dutch disposition."
"That's right, Doc. And say, Harman,"--to Quint--"tell Ben he's doing
fine. Tell him to send me what's mine, because I'll want it very soon
now. I'm going to take a month off and then I'm going to show Stein
how a theatre can be run."
"Eddie," said Quint, "it's a good thing to think big, but it's a damn
poor thing to talk big. Cut out the talk and you'll be a big man some
day."
The graceful car moved forward into the moonlight; his two friends
waved an airy adieu; and Brandes went slowly back to the dark verandah
where sat a young girl, pitifully immature in mind and body--and two
old people little less innocent for all their experience in the ranks
of Christ, for all the wounds that scarred them both in the over-sea
service which had broken them forever.
"A very handsome and distinguished gentleman, your friend Dr.
Curfoot," said the Reverend Mr. Carew. "I imagine his practice in New
York is not only fashionable but extensive."
"Both," said Brandes.
"I assume so. He seems to be intimately acquainted with people whose
names for generations have figured prominently in the social columns
of the New York press."
"Oh, yes, Curfoot and Quint know them all."
Which was true enough. They had to. One must know people from whom one
accepts promissory notes to liquidate those little affairs peculiar to
the temple of chance. And New York's best furnished the neophytes for
these rites.
"I thought Captain Quint very interesting," ventured Ruhannah. "He
seems to have sailed over the entire globe."
"Naval men are always delightful," said her mother. And, laying her
hand on her husband's arm in the dark: "Do you remember, Wilbour, how
kind the officers from the cruiser _Oneida_ were when the rescue party
took us aboard?"
"God sent the _Oneida_ to us," said her husband dreamily. "I thought
it was the end of the world for us--for you and me and baby Rue--that
dreadful flight from the mission to the sea."
His bony fingers tightened over his wife's toilworn hand. In the long
grass along the creek fireflies sparkled, and their elfin lanterns,
waning, glowing, drifted high in the calm August night.
The Reverend Mr. Carew gathered his crutches; the night was a trifle
damp for him; besides, he desired to read. Brandes, as always, rose to
aid him. His wife followed.
"Don't stay out long, Rue," she said in the doorway.
"No, mother."
Brandes came back. Departing from his custom, he did not light a
cigar, but sat in silence, his narrow eyes trying to see Ruhannah in
the darkness. But she was only a delicate shadow shape to him,
scarcely detached from the darkness that enveloped her.
He meant to speak to her then. And suddenly found he could not,
realised, all at once, that he lacked the courage.
This was the more amazing and disturbing to him because he could not
remember the time or occasion when the knack of fluent speech had ever
failed him.
He had never foreseen such a situation; it had never occurred to him
that he would find the slightest difficulty in saying easily and
gracefully what he had determined to say to this young girl.
Now he sat there silent, disturbed, nervous, and tongue-tied. At first
he did not quite comprehend what was making him afraid. After a long
while he understood that it was some sort of fear of her--fear of her
refusal, fear of losing her, fear that she might have--in some occult
way--divined what he really was, that she might have heard things
concerning him, his wife, his career. The idea turned him cold.
And all at once he realised how terribly in earnest he had become; how
deeply involved; how vital this young girl had become to him.
Never before had he really wanted anything as compared to this desire
of his for her. He was understanding, too, in a confused way, that
such a girl and such a home for him as she could make was going not
only to give him the happiness he expected, but that it also meant
betterment for himself--straighter living, perhaps straighter
thinking--the birth of something resembling self-respect, perhaps even
aspiration--or at least the aspiration toward that respect from others
which honest living dare demand.
He wanted her; he wanted her now; he wanted to marry her whether or
not he had the legal right; he wanted to go away for a month with her,
and then return and work for her, for them both--build up a fortune
and a good reputation with Stein's backing and Stein's theatre--stand
well with honest men, stand well with himself, stand always, with
her, for everything a man should be.
If she loved him she would forgive him and quietly remarry him as soon
as Minna kicked him loose. He was confident he could make her happy,
make her love him if once he could find courage to speak--if once he
could win her. And suddenly the only possible way to go about it
occurred to him.
His voice was a trifle husky and unsteady from the nervous tension
when he at last broke the silence:
"Miss Rue," he said, "I have a word to say to your father and mother.
Would you wait here until I come back?"
"I think I had better go in, too----"
"Please don't."
"Why?" She stopped short, instinctively, but not surmising.
"You will wait, then?" he asked.
"I was going in.... But I'll sit here a little while."
He rose and went in, rather blindly.
* * * * *
Ruhannah, dreaming there deep in her splint armchair, slim feet
crossed, watched the fireflies sailing over the alders. Sometimes she
thought of Brandes, pleasantly, sometimes of other matters. Once the
memory of her drive home through the wintry moonlight with young
Neeland occurred to her, and the reminiscence was vaguely agreeable.
Listless, a trifle sleepy, dreamily watching the fireflies, the
ceaseless noise of the creek in her ears, inconsequential thoughts
flitted through her brain--the vague, aimless, guiltless thoughts of a
young and unstained mind.
She was nearly asleep when Brandes came back, and she looked up at
him where he stood beside her porch chair in the darkness.
"Miss Rue," he said, "I have told your father and mother that I am in
love with you and want to make you my wife."
The girl lay there speechless, astounded.
CHAPTER VIII
A CHANGE IMPENDS
The racing season at Saratoga drew toward its close, and Brandes had
appeared there only twice in person, both times with a very young
girl.
"If you got to bring her here to the races, can't you get her some
clothes?" whispered Stull in his ear. "That get-up of hers is
something fierce."
Late hours, hot weather, indiscreet nourishment, and the feverish
anxiety incident to betting other people's money had told on Stull.
His eyes were like two smears of charcoal on his pasty face; sourly he
went about the business which Brandes should have attended to, nursing
resentment--although he was doing better than Brandes had hoped to
do.
Their joint commission from his winnings began to assume considerable
proportions; at track and club and hotel people were beginning to turn
and stare when the little man with the face of a sick circus clown
appeared, always alone, greeting with pallid indifference his
acquaintances, ignoring overtures, noticing neither sport, nor
fashion, nor political importance, nor yet the fair and frail whose
curiosity and envy he was gradually arousing.
Obsequiousness from club, hotel, and racing officials made no
impression on him; he went about his business alone, sullen,
preoccupied, deathly pale, asking no information, requesting no
favours, conferring with nobody, doing no whispering and enduring
none.
After a little study of that white, sardonic, impossible face, people
who would have been glad to make use of him became discouraged. And
those who first had recognised him in Saratoga found, at the end of
the racing month, nothing to add to their general identification of
him as "Ben Stull, partner of Eddie Brandes--Western sports."
* * * * *
Stull, whispering in Brandes' ear again, where he sat beside him in
the grand stand, added to his earlier comment on Ruhannah's
appearance:
"Why don't you fix her up, Eddie? It looks like you been robbing a
country school."
Brandes' slow, greenish eyes marked sleepily the distant dust, where
Mr. Sanford's Nick Stoner was leading a brilliant field, steadily
overhauling the favourite, Deborah Glenn.
"When the time comes for me to fix her up," he said between thin lips
which scarcely moved, "she'll look like Washington Square in May--not
like Fifth Avenue and Broadway."
Nick Stoner continued to lead. Stull's eyes resembled two holes burnt
in a sheet; Brandes yawned. They were plunging the limit on the
Sanford favourite.
As for Ruhannah, she sat with slender gloved hands tightly clasped,
lips parted, intent, fascinated with the sunlit beauty of the scene.
Brandes looked at her, and his heavy, expressionless features altered
subtly:
"Some running!" he said.
A breathless nod was her response. All around them repressed
excitement was breaking out; men stood up and shouted; women rose, and
the club house seemed suddenly to blossom like a magic garden of
wind-tossed flowers.
Through the increasing cheering Stull looked on without a sign of
emotion, although affluence or ruin, in the Sanford colours, sat
astride the golden roan.
Suddenly Ruhannah stood up, one hand pressed to the ill-fitting blue
serge over her wildly beating heart. Brandes rose beside her. Not a
muscle in his features moved.
* * * * *
"Gawd!" whispered Stull in his ear, as they were leaving.
"Some killing, Ben!" nodded Brandes in his low, deliberate voice. His
heavy, round face was deeply flushed; Fortune, the noisy wanton, had
flung both arms around his neck. But his slow eyes were continually
turned on the slim young girl whom he was teaching to walk beside him
without taking his arm.
"Ain't she on to us?" Stull had enquired. And Brandes' reply was
correct; Ruhannah never dreamed that it made a penny's difference to
Brandes whether Nick Stoner won or whether it was Deborah Glenn which
the wild-voiced throng saluted.
* * * * *
They did not remain in Saratoga for dinner. They took Stull back to
his hotel on the rumble of the runabout, Brandes remarking that he
thought he should need a chauffeur before long and suggesting that
Stull look about Saratoga for a likely one.
Halted in the crush before the United States Hotel, Stull decided to
descend there. Several men in the passing crowds bowed to Brandes;
one, Norton Smawley, known to the fraternity as "Parson" Smawley, came
out to the curb to shake hands. Brandes introduced him to Rue as
"Parson" Smawley--whether with some sinister future purpose already
beginning to take shape in his round, heavy head, or whether a
perverted sense of humour prompted him to give Rue the idea that she
had been in godly company, it is difficult to determine.
He added that Miss Carew was the daughter of a clergyman and a
missionary. And the Parson took his cue. At any rate Rue, leaning from
her seat, listened to the persuasive and finely modulated voice of
Parson Smawley with pleasure, and found his sleek, graceful presence
and courtly manners most agreeable. There were no such persons in
Gayfield.
She hoped, shyly, that if he were in Gayfield he would call on her
father. Once in a very long while clergymen called on her father, and
their rare visits remained a pleasure to the lonely invalid for
months.
The Parson promised to call, very gravely. It would not have
embarrassed him to do so; it was his business in life to have a
sufficient knowledge of every man's business to enable him to converse
convincingly with anybody.
He took polished leave of her; took leave of Brandes with the faintest
flutter of one eyelid, as though he understood Brandes' game. Which he
did not; nor did Brandes himself, entirely.
* * * * *
They had thirty miles to go in the runabout. So they would not remain
to dinner. Besides, Brandes did not care to make himself conspicuous
in public just then. Too many people knew more or less about him--the
sort of people who might possibly be in communication with his wife.
There was no use slapping chance in the face. Two quiet visits to the
races with Ruhannah was enough for the present. Even those two visits
were scarcely discreet. It was time to go.
Stull and Brandes stood consulting together beside the runabout; Rue
sat in the machine watching the press of carriages and automobiles on
Broadway, and the thronged sidewalks along which brilliant, animated
crowds were pouring.
"I'm not coming again, Ben," said Brandes, dropping his voice. "No use
to hunt the limelight just now. You can't tell what some of these
people might do. I'll take no chances that some fresh guy might try to
start something."
"Stir up Minna?" Stull's lips merely formed the question, and his eyes
watched Ruhannah.
"They couldn't. What would she care? All the same, I play safe, Ben.
Well, be good. Better send me mine on pay day. I'll need it."
Stull's face grew sourer:
"Can't you wait till she gets her decree?"
"And lose a month off? No."
"It's all coming your way, Eddie. Stay wise and play safe. Don't start
anything now----"
"It's safe. If I don't take September off I wait a year for
my--honeymoon. And I won't. See?"
They both looked cautiously at Ruhannah, who sat motionless, absorbed
in the turmoil of vehicles and people.
Brandes' face slowly reddened; he dropped one hand on Stull's shoulder
and said, between thin lips that scarcely moved:
"She's all I'm interested in. You don't think much of her, Ben. She
isn't painted. She isn't dolled up the way you like 'em. But there
isn't anything else that matters very much to me. All I want in the
world is sitting in that runabout, looking out of her kid eyes at a
thousand or two people who ain't worth the pair of run-down shoes
she's wearing."
But Stull's expression remained sardonic and unconvinced.
So Brandes got into his car and took the wheel; and Stull watched them
threading a tortuous path through the traffic tangle of Broadway.
They sped past the great hotels, along crowded sidewalks, along the
park, and out into an endless stretch of highway where hundreds of
other cars were travelling in the same direction.
"Did you have a good time?" he inquired, shifting his cigar and
keeping his narrow eyes on the road.
"Yes; it was beautiful--exciting."
"Some horse, Nick Stoner! Some race, eh?"
"I was so excited--with everybody standing up and shouting. And such
beautiful horses--and such pretty women in their wonderful dresses!
I--I never knew there were such things."
He swung the car, sent it rushing past a lumbering limousine, slowed a
little, gripped his cigar between his teeth, and watched the road,
both hands on the wheel.
Yes, things were coming his way--coming faster and faster all the
while. He had waited many years for this--for material fortune--for
that chance which every gambler waits to seize when the psychological
second ticks out. But he never had expected that the chance was to
include a very young girl in a country-made dress and hat.
As they sped westward the freshening wind from distant pine woods
whipped their cheeks; north, blue hills and bluer mountains beyond
took fairy shape against the sky; and over all spread the tremendous
heavens where fleets of white clouds sailed the uncharted wastes, and
other fleets glimmered beyond the edges of the world, hull down, on
vast horizons.
"I want to make you happy," said Brandes in his low, even voice. It
was, perhaps, the most honest statement he had ever uttered.
Ruhannah remained silent, her eyes riveted on the far horizon.
* * * * *
It was a week later, one hot evening, that he telegraphed to Stull in
Saratoga:
"Find me a chauffeur who will be willing to go abroad. I'll give you
twenty-four hours to get him here."
The next morning he called up Stull on the telephone from the drug
store in Gayfield:
"Get my wire, Ben?"
"Yes. But I----"
"Wait. Here's a postscript. I also want Parson Smawley. I want him to
get a car and come over to the Gayfield House. Tell him I count on
him. And he's to wear black and a white tie."
"Yes. But about that chauffeur you want----"
"Don't argue. Have him here. Have the Parson, also. Tell him to bring
a white tie. Understand?"
"Oh, yes, I understand you, Eddie! You don't want anything of me, do
you! Go out and get that combination? Just like that! What'll I do?
Step into the street and whistle?"
"It's up to you. Get busy."
"_As_ usual," retorted Stull in an acrid voice. "All the same. I'm
telling you there ain't a chauffeur you'd have in Saratoga. Who handed
you that dope?"
"Try. I need the chauffeur part of the combine, anyway. If he won't
go abroad, I'll leave him in town. Get a wiggle on, Ben. How's
things?"
"All right. We had War-axe and Lady Johnson. Some killing, eh? That
stable is winning all along. We've got Adriutha and Queen Esther
today. The Ocean Belle skate is scratched. Doc and Cap and me is thick
with the Legislature outfit. We'll trim 'em tonight. How are you
feeling, Eddie?"
"Never better. I'll call you up in the morning. Ding-dong!"
"Wait! Are you really going abroad?" shouted Stull.
But Brandes had already hung up.
He walked leisurely back to Brookhollow through the sunshine. He had
never been as happy in all his life.
CHAPTER IX
NONRESISTANCE
"Long distance calling you, Mr. Stull. One moment, please.... Here's
your party," concluded the operator.
Stull, huddled sleepily on his bed, picked up the transmitter from the
table beside him with a frightful yawn.
"Who is it?" he inquired sourly.
"It's me--Ben!"
"Say, Eddie, have a heart, will you! I need the sleep----"
Brandes' voice was almost jovial:
"Wake up, you poor tout! It's nearly noon----"
"Well, wasn't I singing hymns with Doc and Cap till breakfast time?
And believe _me_, we trimmed the Senator's bunch! They've got their
transportation back to Albany, and that's about all----"
"Careful what you say. I'm talking from the Gayfield House. The Parson
got here all right. He's just left. He'll tell you about things.
Listen, Ben, the chauffeur you sent me from Saratoga got here last
evening, too. I went out with him and he drives all right. Did you
look him up?"
"Now, how could I look him up when you gave me only a day to get him
for you?"
"Did he have references?"
"Sure, a wad of them. But I couldn't verify them."
"Who is he?"
"I forget his name. You ought to know it by now."
"How did you get him?"
"Left word at the desk. An hour later he came to my room with a couple
of bums. I told him about the job. I told him you wanted a chauffeur
willing to go abroad. He said he was all that and then some. So I sent
him on. Anything you don't fancy about him?"
"Nothing, I guess. He seems all right. Only I like to know about a
man----"
"How can I find out if you don't give me time?"
"All right, Ben. I guess he'll do. By the way, I'm starting for town
in ten minutes."
"What's the idea?"
"Ask the Parson. Have you any other news except that you killed that
Albany bunch of grafters?"
"No.... _Yes_! But it ain't good news. I was going to call you soon as
I waked up----"
"What's the trouble?"
"There ain't any trouble--_yet_. But a certain party has showed up
here--a very smooth young man whose business is hunting trouble. Get
me?"
After a silence Stull repeated:
"Get me, Eddie?"
"No."
"Listen. A certain slippery party----"
"Who, damn it? Talk out. I'm in a hurry."
"Very well, then. Maxy Venem is here!"
The name of his wife's disbarred attorney sent a chill over Brandes.
"What's he doing in Saratoga?" he demanded.
"I'm trying to find out. He was to the races yesterday. He seen Doc.
Of course Doc hadn't laid eyes on you for a year. Oh, no, indeed!
Heard you was somewhere South, down and out. I don't guess Maxy was
fooled none. What we done here in Saratoga is growing too big to hush
up----"
"What _we've_ done? Whad'ye mean, _we_? I told you to work by yourself
quietly, Ben, and keep me out of it."
"That's what I done. Didn't I circulate the news that you and me had
quit partnership? And even then you wouldn't take my advice. Oh, no.
You must show up here at the track with a young lady----"
"How long has Maxy Venem been in Saratoga?" snapped Brandes.
"He told Doc he just come, but Cap found out he'd been here a week.
All I hope is he didn't see you with the Brookhollow party----"
"Do you think he _did_?"
"Listen, Eddie. Max is a smooth guy----"
"Find out what he knows! Do you hear?"
"Who? Me? Me try to make Maxy Venem talk? That snake? If he isn't on
to you now, that would be enough to put him wise. Act like you had
sense, Eddie. Call that _other matter_ off and slide for town----"
"I can't, Ben."
"You got to!"
"I _can't_, I tell you."
"You're nutty in the head! Don't you suppose that Max is wise to what
I've been doing here? And don't you suppose he knows damn well that
you're back of whatever I do? If you ain't crazy you'll call that
party off for a while."
Brandes' even voice over the telephone sounded a trifle unnatural,
almost hoarse:
"I can't call it off. _It's done._"
"What's done?"
"What I told you I was going to do."
"_That!_"
"The Parson married us."
"Oh!"
"Wait! Parson Smawley married us, in church, assisted by the local
dominie. I didn't count on the dominie. It was her father's idea. He
butted in."
"Then is it--is it----?"
"That's what I'm not sure about. You see, the Parson did it, but the
dominie stuck around. Whether he got a half nelson on me I don't know
till I ask. Anyway, I expected to clinch things--later--so it doesn't
really matter, unless Max Venem means bad. Does he, do you think?"
"He _always_ does, Eddie."
"Yes, I know. Well, then, I'll wait for a cable from you. And if I've
got to take three months off in Paris, why I've got to--that's all."
"Good God! What about Stein? What about the theaytre?"
"_You'll_ handle it for the first three months.... Say, I've got to
go, now. I think she's waiting----"
"Who?"
"My--wife."
"Oh!"
"Yes. The chauffeur took her back to the house in the car to put
something in her suitcase that she forgot. I'm waiting for her here at
the Gayfield House. We're on our way to town. Going to motor in. Our
trunks have gone by rail."
After a silence, Stull's voice sounded again, tense, constrained:
"You better go aboard tonight."
"That's right, too."
"What's your ship?"
"_Lusitania._"
"What'll I tell Stein?"
"Tell him I'll be back in a month. You look out for my end. I'll be
back in time."
"Will you cable me?"
"Sure. And if you get any later information about Max today, call me
at the Knickerbocker. We'll dine there and then go aboard."
"I get you.... Say, Eddie, I'm that worried! If this break of yours
don't kill our luck----"
"Don't you believe it! I'm going to fight for what I got till someone
hands me the count. She's the first thing I ever wanted. I've got her
and I guess I can keep her.... And listen: there's nothing like her in
all God's world!"
"When did you do--it?" demanded Stull, coldly.
"This morning at eleven. I just stepped over here to the garage. I'm
talking to you from the bar. She's back by this time and waiting, I
guess. So take care of yourself till I see you."
"Same to you, Eddie. And be leery of Max. He's _bad_. When they disbar
a man like that he's twice as dangerous as he was. His ex-partner, Abe
Grittlefeld, is a certain party's attorney of record. Ask yourself
what you'd be up against if that pair of wolves get started after you!
You know what Max would do to you if he could. And Minna, too!"
"Don't worry."
"I _am_ worrying! And you ought to. You know what you done to Max.
Don't think he ever forgets. He'll do you if he can, same as Minna
will."
Brandes' stolid face lost a little of its sanguine colour, where he
stood in the telephone box behind the bar of the Gayfield House.
Yes, he knew well enough what he had once done to the disbarred lawyer
out in Athabasca when he was handling the Unknown and Venem, the
disbarred, was busy looking out for the Athabasca Blacksmith,
furnishing the corrupt brains for the firm of Venem and Grittlefeld,
and paying steady court to the prettiest girl in Athabasca, Ilse
Dumont.
And Brandes' Unknown had almost killed Max Venem's blacksmith; Brandes
had taken all Venem's money, and then his girl; more than that, he had
"made" this girl, in the theatrical sense of the word; and he had
gambled on her beauty and her voice and had won out with both.
Then, while still banking her salary to reimburse himself for his
trouble with her, he had tired of her sufficiently to prove unfaithful
to his marriage vows at every opportunity. And opportunities were
many. Venem had never forgiven him; Ilse Dumont could not understand
treachery; and Venem's detectives furnished her with food for thought
that presently infuriated her.
And now she was employing Max Venem, once senior partner in the firm
of Venem and Grittlefeld, to guide her with his legal advice. She
wanted Brandes' ruin, if that could be accomplished; she wanted her
freedom anyway.
Until he had met Rue Carew he had taken measures to fight the
statutory charges, hoping to involve Venem and escape alimony. Then he
met Ruhannah, and became willing to pay for his freedom. And he was
still swamped in the vile bog of charges and countercharges, not yet
free from it, not yet on solid ground, when the eternal gambler in him
suggested to him that he take the chance of marrying this young girl
before he was legally free to do so.
Why on earth did he want to take such a chance? He had only a few
months to wait. He had never before really cared for any woman. He
loved her--as he understood love--as much as he was capable of loving.
If in all the world there was anything sacred to him, it was his
sentiment regarding Rue Carew. Yet, he was tempted to take the chance.
Even she could not escape his ruling passion; at the last analysis,
even she represented to him a gambler's chance. But in Brandes there
was another streak. He wanted to take the chance that he could marry
her before he had a right to, and get away with it. But his nerve
failed. And, at the last moment, he had hedged, engaging Parson
Smawley to play the lead instead of an ordained clergyman.
All these things he now thought of as he stood undecided, worried, in
the telephone booth behind the bar at the Gayfield House. Twice Stull
had spoken, and had been bidden to wait and to hold the wire.
Finally, shaking off the premonition of coming trouble, Brandes called
again:
"Ben?"
"Yes, I'm listening."
"I'll stay in Paris if there's trouble."
"And throw Stein down?"
"What else is there to do?"
"Well, you can wait, can't you? You don't seem to be able to do that
any more, but you better learn."
"All right. What next?"
"Make a quick getaway. _Now!_"
"Yes, I'm going at once. Keep me posted, Ben. Be good!"
He hung up and went out to the wide, tree-shaded street where Ruhannah
sat in the runabout awaiting him, and the new chauffeur stood by the
car.
He took off his straw hat, pulled a cap and goggles from his pocket.
His man placed the straw hat in the boot.
"Get what you wanted, Rue?"
"Yes, thank you."
"Been waiting long?"
"I--don't think so."
"All right," he said cheerily, climbing in beside her. "I'm sorry I
kept you waiting. Had a business matter to settle. Hungry?"
Rue, very still and colourless, said no, with a mechanical smile. The
chauffeur climbed to the rumble.
"I'll jam her through," nodded Brandes as the car moved swiftly
westward. "We'll lunch in Albany on time."
Half a mile, and they passed Neeland's Mills, where old Dick Neeland
stood in his boat out on the pond and cast a glittering lure for
pickerel.
She caught a glimpse of him--his sturdy frame, white hair, and ruddy
visage--and a swift, almost wistful memory of young Jim Neeland passed
through her mind.
But it was a very confused mind--only the bewildered mind of a very
young girl--and the memory of the boy flashed into its confusion and
out again as rapidly as the landscape sped away behind the flying
car.
Dully she was aware that she was leaving familiar and beloved things,
but could not seem to realise it--childhood, girlhood, father and
mother, Brookhollow, the mill, Gayfield, her friends, all were
vanishing in the flying dust behind her, dwindling, dissolving into an
infinitely growing distance.
They took the gradual slope of a mile-long hill as swallows take the
air; houses, barns, woods, orchards, grain fields, flew by on either
side; other cars approaching passed them like cannon balls; the
sunlit, undulating world flowed glittering away behind; only the
stainless blue ahead confronted them immovably--a vast, magnificent
goal, vague with the mystery of promise.
"On this trip," said Brandes, "we may only have time to see the Loove
and the palaces and all like that. Next year we'll fix it so we can
stay in Paris and you can study art."
Ruhannah's lips formed the words, "Thank you."
"Can't you learn to call me Eddie?" he urged.
The girl was silent.
"You're everything in the world to me, Rue."
The same little mechanical smile fixed itself on her lips, and she
looked straight ahead of her.
"Haven't you begun to love me just a little bit, Rue?"
"I like you. You are very kind to us."
"Don't your affection seem to grow a little stronger now?" he urged.
"You are so kind to us," she repeated gratefully; "I like you for
it."
The utterly unawakened youth of her had always alternately fascinated
and troubled him. Gambler that he was, he had once understood that
patience is a gambler's only stock in trade. But now for the first
time in his career he found himself without it.
"You said," he insisted, "that you'd love me when we were married."
She turned her child's eyes on him in faint surprise:
"A wife loves her husband always, doesn't she?"
"Do _you_?"
"I suppose I shall.... I haven't been married very long--long enough
to feel as though I am really married. When I begin to realise it I
shall understand, of course, that I love you."
It was the calm and immature reply of a little girl playing house. He
knew it. He looked at her pure, perplexed profile of a child and knew
that what he had said was futile--understood that it was meaningless
to her, that it was only confusing a mind already dazed--a mind of
which too much had been expected, too much demanded.
He leaned over and kissed the cold, almost colourless cheek; her
little mechanical smile came back. Then they remembered the chauffeur
behind them and Brandes reddened. He was unaccustomed to a man on the
rumble.
"Could I talk to mother on the telephone when we get to New York?" she
asked presently, still painfully flushed.
"Yes, darling, of course."
"I just want to hear her voice," murmured Rue.
"Certainly. We can send her a wireless, too, when we're at sea."
That interested her. She enquired curiously in regard to wireless
telegraphy and other matters concerning ocean steamers.
* * * * *
In Albany her first wave of loneliness came over her in the stuffy
dining-room of the big, pretentious hotel, when she found herself
seated at a small table alone with this man whom she seemed, somehow
or other, to have married.
As she did not appear inclined to eat, Brandes began to search the
card for something to tempt her. And, glancing up presently, saw tears
glimmering in her eyes.
For a moment he remained dumb as though stunned by some sudden and
terrible accusation--for a moment only. Then, in an unsteady voice:
"Rue, darling. You must not feel lonely and frightened. I'll do
anything in the world for you. Don't you know it?"
She nodded.
"I tell you," he said in that even, concentrated voice of his which
scarcely moved his narrow lips, "I'm just crazy about you. You're my
own little wife. You're all I care about. If I can't make you happy
somebody ought to shoot me."
She tried to smile; her full lips trembled; a single tear, brimming,
fell on the cloth.
"I--don't mean to be silly.... But--Brookhollow seems--ended--forever...."
"It's only forty miles," he said with heavy joviality. "Shall we turn
around and go back?"
She glanced up at him with an odd expression, as though she hoped he
meant it; then her little mechanical smile returned, and she dried her
eyes naïvely.
"I don't know why I cannot seem to get used to being married," she
said. "I never thought that getting married would make me
so--so--lonely."
"Let's talk about art," he suggested. "You're crazy about art and
you're going to Paris. Isn't that fine."
"Oh, yes----"
"Sure, it's fine. That's where art grows. Artville is Paris' other
name. It's all there, Rue--the Loove, the palaces, the Latin Quarter,
the statues, the churches, and all like that."
"What is the Louvre like?" she asked, tremulously, determined to be
brave.
As he had seen the Louvre only from the outside, his imaginary
description was cautious, general, and brief.
After a silence, Rue asked whether he thought that their suitcases
were quite safe.
"Certainly," he smiled. "I checked them."
"And you're sure they are safe?"
"Of course, darling. What worries you?"
And, as she hesitated, he remembered that she had forgotten to put
something into her suitcase and that the chauffeur had driven her back
to the house to get it while he himself went into the Gayfield House
to telephone Stull.
"What was it you went back for, Rue?" he asked.
"One thing I went back for was my money."
"Money? What money?"
"Money my grandmother left me. I was to have it when I married--six
thousand dollars."
"You mean you have it in your suitcase?" he asked, astonished.
"Yes, half of it."
"A cheque?"
"No, in hundreds."
"Bills?"
"Yes. I gave father three thousand. I kept three thousand."
"In bills," he repeated, laughing. "Is your suitcase locked?"
"Yes. I insisted on having my money in cash. So Mr. Wexall, of the
Mohawk Bank, sent a messenger with it last evening."
"But," he asked, still immensely amused, "why do you want to travel
about with three thousand dollars in bills in your suitcase?"
She flushed a little, tried to smile:
"I don't know why. I never before had any money. It is--pleasant to
know I have it."
"But I'll give you all you want, Rue."
"Thank you.... I have my own, you see."
"Of course. Put it away in some bank. When you want pin money, ask
me."
She shook her head with a troubled smile.
"I couldn't ask anybody for money," she explained.
"Then you don't have to. We'll fix your allowance."
"Thank you, but I have my money, and I don't need it."
This seemed to amuse him tremendously; and even Rue laughed a little.
"You are going to take your money to Paris?" he asked.
"Yes."
"To buy things?"
"Oh, no. Just to have it with me."
His rather agreeable laughter sounded again.
"So _that_ was what you forgot to put in your suitcase," he said. "No
wonder you went back for it."
"There was something else very important, too."
"What, darling?"
"My drawings," she explained innocently.
"Your drawings! Do you mean you've got them, too?"
"Yes. I want to take them to Paris and compare them with the pictures
I shall see there. It ought to teach me a great deal. Don't you think
so?"
"Are you crazy to study?" he asked, touched to the quick by her utter
ignorance.
"It's all I dream about. If I could work that way and support myself
and my father and mother----"
"But, Rue! Wake up! We're married, little girl. You don't have to work
to support anybody!"
"I--forgot," said the girl vaguely, her confused grey eyes resting on
his laughing, greenish ones.
Still laughing, he summoned the waiter, paid the reckoning; Ruhannah
rose as he did; they went slowly out together.
On the sidewalk beside their car stood the new chauffeur, smoking a
cigarette which he threw away without haste when he caught sight of
them. However, he touched the peak of his cap civilly, with his
forefinger.
Brandes, lighting a cigar, let his slow eyes rest on the new man for a
moment. Then he helped Rue into the tonneau, got in after her, and
thoughtfully took the wheel, conscious that there was something or
other about his new chauffeur that he did not find entirely to his
liking.
CHAPTER X
DRIVING HEAD-ON
It was mid-afternoon when they began to pass through that series of
suburbs which the city has flung like a single tentacle northward for
a hundred miles along the eastern banks of the Hudson.
A smooth road of bluestone with a surface like velvet, rarely broken
by badly paved or badly worn sections, ran straight south. Past
mansions standing amid spacious lawns all ablaze with late summer and
early autumn flowers they sped; past parks, long stretches of walls,
high fences of wrought iron through which brief glimpses of woodlands
and splendid gardens caught Rue's eye. And, every now and then,
slowing down to traverse some village square and emerging from the
further limits, the great river flashed into view, sometimes glassy
still under high headlands or along towering parapets of mountains,
sometimes ruffled and silvery where it widened into bay or inland sea,
with a glimmer of distant villages on the further shore.
Over the western bank a blinding sun hung in a sky without a cloud--a
sky of undiluted azure; but farther south, and as the sun declined,
traces of vapours from the huge but still distant city stained the
heavens. Gradually the increasing haze changed from palest lavender
and lemon-gold to violet and rose with smouldering undertones of fire.
Beneath it the river caught the stains in deeper tones, flowing in
sombre washes of flame or spreading wide under pastel tints of
turquoise set with purple.
Now, as the sun hung lower, the smoke of every river boat, every
locomotive speeding along the shores below, lay almost motionless
above the water, tinged with the delicate enchantment of declining
day.
And into this magic veil Rue was passing already through the calm of a
late August afternoon, through tree-embowered villages and towns, the
names of which she did not know--swiftly, inexorably passing into the
iris-grey obscurity where already the silvery points of arc-lights
stretched away into intricate geometrical designs--faint traceries as
yet sparkling with subdued lustre under the sunset heavens.
Vast shadowy shapes towered up ahead--outlying public buildings,
private institutions, industrial plants, bridges of iron and steel,
the ponderous bowed spans of which crossed wildernesses of railroad
tracks or craft-crowded waters.
Two enormous arched viaducts of granite stretched away through
sparkling semi-obscurity--High Bridge and Washington Bridge. Then it
became an increasing confusion of phantom masses against a fading
sky--bridges, towers, skyscrapers, viaducts, boulevards, a wilderness
of streets outlined by the growing brilliancy of electric lamps.
Brandes, deftly steering through the swarming maze of twilight
avenues, turned east across the island, then swung south along the
curved parapets and spreading gardens of Riverside Drive.
Perhaps Brandes was tired; he had become uncommunicative, inclined to
silence. He did point out to her the squat, truncated mass where the
great General slept; called her attention to the river below, where
three grey battleships lay. A bugle call from the decks came faintly
to her ears.
If Rue was tired she did not know it as the car swept her steadily
deeper amid the city's wonders.
On her left, beyond the trees, the great dwellings and apartments of
the Drive were already glimmering with light in every window; to the
right, under the foliage of this endless necklace of parks and
circles, a summer-clad throng strolled and idled along the river wall;
and past them moved an unbroken column of automobiles, taxicabs, and
omnibuses.
At Seventy-second Street they turned to the east across the park, then
into Fifth Avenue south once more. She saw the name of the celebrated
avenue on the street corner, turned to glance excitedly at Brandes;
but his preoccupied face was expressionless, almost forbidding, so she
turned again in quest of other delightful discoveries. But there was
nothing to identify for her the houses, churches, hotels, shops, on
this endless and bewildering avenue of grey stone; as they swung west
into Forty-second Street, she caught sight of the great marble mass of
the Library, but had no idea what it was.
Into this dusky cañon, aflame with light, they rolled, where street
lamps, the lamps of vehicles, and electric signs dazzled her
unaccustomed eyes so that she saw nothing except a fiery vista filled
with the rush and roar of traffic.
When they stopped, the chauffeur dropped from the rumble and came
around to where a tall head porter in blue and silver uniform was
opening the tonneau door.
Brandes said to his chauffeur:
"Here are the checks. Our trunks are at the Grand Central. Get them
aboard, then come back here for us at ten o'clock."
The chauffeur lifted his hand to his cap, and looked stealthily
between his fingers at Brandes.
"Ten o'clock," he repeated; "very good, sir."
Rue instinctively sought Brandes' arm as they entered the crowded
lobby, then remembered, blushed, and withdrew her hand.
Brandes had started toward the desk with the intention of registering
and securing a room for the few hours before going aboard the steamer;
but something halted him--some instinct of caution. No, he would not
register. He sent their luggage to the parcels room, found a maid who
took Rue away, then went on through into the bar, where he took a
stiff whisky and soda, a thing he seldom did.
In the toilet he washed and had himself brushed. Then, emerging, he
took another drink _en passant_, conscious of an odd, dull sense of
apprehension for which he could not account.
At the desk they told him there was no telephone message for him. He
sauntered over to the news stand, stared at the display of
periodicals, but had not sufficient interest to buy even an evening
paper.
So he idled about the marble-columned lobby, now crowded with a
typical early-autumn throng in quest of dinner and the various
nocturnal amusements which the city offers at all times to the
frequenters of its thousand temples.
Rue came out of the ladies' dressing room, and he went to her and
guided her into the dining-room on the left, where an orchestra was
playing. In her blue, provincial travelling gown the slender girl
looked oddly out of place amid lace and jewels and the delicate tints
of frail evening gowns, but her cheeks were bright with colour and her
grey eyes brilliant, and the lights touched her thick chestnut hair
with a ruddy glory, so that more than one man turned to watch her
pass, and the idly contemptuous indifference of more than one woman
ended at her neck and chin.
What Rue ate she never afterward remembered. It was all merely a
succession of delicious sensations for the palate, for the eye, for
the ear when the excellent orchestra was playing some gay overture
from one of the newer musical comedies or comic operas.
Brandes at times seemed to shake off a growing depression and rouse
himself to talk to her, even jest with her. He smoked cigarettes
occasionally during dinner, a thing he seldom did, and, when coffee
was served, he lighted one of his large cigars.
Rue, excited under an almost childishly timid manner, leaned on the
table with both elbows and linked fingers, listening, watching
everything with an almost breathless intelligence which strove to
comprehend.
People left; others arrived; the music continued. Several times people
passing caught Brandes' eye, and bowed and smiled. He either
acknowledged such salutes with a slight and almost surly nod, or
ignored them altogether.
One of his short, heavy arms lay carelessly along the back of his
chair, where he was sitting sideways looking at the people in the
lobby--watching with that same odd sensation of foreboding of which he
had been conscious from the first moment he had entered the city
line.
What reason for apprehension he had he could not understand. Only an
hour lay between him and the seclusion of the big liner; a few hours
and he and this girl beside him would be at sea.
Once he excused himself, went out to the desk, and made an inquiry.
But there was no telephone or telegraph message for him; and he came
back chewing his cigar.
Finally his uneasiness drew him to his feet again:
"Rue," he said, "I'm going out to telephone to Mr. Stull. It may take
some little time. You don't mind waiting, do you?"
"No," she said.
"Don't you want another ice or something?"
She confessed that she did.
So he ordered it and went away.
As she sat leisurely tasting her ice and watching with unflagging
interest the people around her, she noticed that the dining-room was
already three-quarters empty. People were leaving for café, theatre,
or dance; few remained.
Of these few, two young men in evening dress now arose and walked
toward the lobby, one ahead of the other. One went out; the other, in
the act of going, glanced casually at her as he passed, hesitated,
halted, then, half smiling, half inquiringly, came toward her.
"Jim Neeland!" she exclaimed impulsively. "--I mean _Mr._ Neeland----"
a riot of colour flooding her face. But her eager hand remained
outstretched. He took it, pressed it lightly, ceremoniously, and,
still standing, continued to smile down at her.
Amid all this strange, infernal glitter; amid a city of six million
strangers, suddenly to encounter a familiar face--to see
somebody--anybody--from Gayfield--seemed a miracle too delightful to
be true.
"You are Rue Carew," he said. "I was not certain for a moment. You
know we met only once before."
Rue, conscious of the startled intimacy of her first greeting, blushed
with the memory. But Neeland was a tactful young man; he said easily,
with his very engaging smile:
"It was nice of you to remember me so frankly and warmly. You have no
idea how pleasant it was to hear a Gayfield voice greet me as 'Jim.'"
"I--didn't intend to----"
"Please intend it in future, Rue. You don't mind, do you?"
"No."
"And will you ever forget that magnificent winter night when we drove
to Brookhollow after the party?"
"I have--remembered it."
"So have I.... Are you waiting for somebody? Of course you are," he
added, laughing. "But may I sit down for a moment?"
"Yes, I wish you would."
So he seated himself, lighted a cigarette, glanced up at her and
smiled.
"When did you come to New York?" he asked.
"Tonight."
"Well, isn't that a bit of luck to run into you like this! Have you
come here to study art?"
"No.... Yes, I think, later, I am to study art here."
"At the League?"
"I don't know."
"Better go to the League," he said. "Begin there anyway. Do you know
where it is?"
"No," she said.
He called a waiter, borrowed pencil and pad, and wrote down the
address of the Art Students' League. He had begun to fold the paper
when a second thought seemed to strike him, and he added his own
address.
"In case I can do anything for you in any way," he explained.
Rue thanked him, opened her reticule, and placed the folded paper
there beside her purse.
"I do hope I shall see you soon again," he said, looking gaily, almost
mischievously into her grey eyes. "This certainly resembles fate.
Don't you think so, Rue--this reunion of ours?"
"Fate?" she repeated.
"Yes. I should even call it romantic. Don't you think our meeting this
way resembles something very much like romance?"
She felt herself flushing, tried to smile:
"It couldn't resemble anything," she explained with quaint honesty,
"because I am sailing for Europe tomorrow morning; I am going on board
in less than an hour. And also--also, I----"
"Also?"--he prompted her, amused, yet oddly touched by her childishly
literal reply.
"I am--married."
"Good Lord!" he said.
"This morning," she added, tasting her ice.
"And you're sailing for Europe on your honeymoon!" he exclaimed.
"Well, upon my word! And what is your ship?"
"The _Lusitania_."
"Really! I have a friend who is sailing on her--a most charming woman.
I sent flowers to her only an hour ago."
"Did you?" asked Rue, interested.
"Yes. She is a widow--the Princess Mistchenka--a delightful and pretty
woman. I am going to send a note to the steamer tonight saying
that--that my very _particular_ friend, Ruhannah Carew, is on board,
and won't she ask you to tea. You'd love her, Rue. She's a regular
woman."
"But--oh, dear!--a Princess!"
"You won't even notice it," he said reassuringly. "She's a corker;
she's an artist, too. I couldn't begin to tell you how nice she has
been to me. By the way, Rue, whom did you marry?"
"Mr. Brandes."
"Brandes? I don't remember--was he from up-state?"
"No; New York--I think----"
As she bent forward to taste her ice again he noticed for the first
time the childlike loveliness of her throat and profile; looked at her
with increasing interest, realising that she had grown into a most
engaging creature since he had seen her.
Looking up, and beyond him toward the door, she said:
"I think your friend is waiting for you. Had you forgotten him?"
"Oh, that's so!" he exclaimed. Then rising and offering his hand: "I
wish you happiness, Rue. You have my address. When you return, won't
you let me know where you are? Won't you let me know your husband?"
"Yes."
"Please do. You see you and I have a common bond in art, another in
our birthplace. Gayfield folk are your own people and mine. Don't
forget me, Rue."
"No, I won't."
So he took his leave gracefully and went away through the enthralling,
glittering unreality of it all leaving a young girl thrilled,
excited, and deeply impressed with his ease and bearing amid
awe-inspiring scenes in which she, too, desired most ardently to find
herself at ease.
Also she thought of his friend, the Princess Mistchenka. And again, as
before, the name seemed to evoke within her mind a recollection of
having heard it before, very long ago.
She wondered whether Neeland would remember to write, and if he did
she wondered whether a real princess would actually condescend to
invite her to take tea.
CHAPTER XI
THE BREAKERS
The east dining-room was almost empty now, though the lobby and the
café beyond still swarmed with people arriving and departing. Brandes,
chafing at the telephone, had finally succeeded in getting Stull on
the wire, only to learn that the news from Saratoga was not agreeable;
that they had lost on every horse. Also, Stull had another disquieting
item to detail; it seemed that Maxy Venem had been seen that morning
in the act of departing for New York on the fast express; and with him
was a woman resembling Brandes' wife.
"Who saw her?" demanded Brandes.
"Doc. He didn't get a good square look at her. You know the hats women
wear."
"All right. I'm off, Ben. Good-bye."
The haunting uneasiness which had driven him to the telephone
persisted when he came out of the booth. He cast a slow, almost sleepy
glance around him, saw no familiar face in the thronged lobby, then he
looked at his watch.
The car had been ordered for ten; it lacked half an hour of the time;
he wished he had ordered the car earlier.
For now his uneasiness was verging on that species of superstitious
inquietude which at times obsesses all gamblers, and which is known as
a "hunch." He had a hunch that he was "in wrong" somehow or other; an
overpowering longing to get on board the steamer assailed him--a
desire to get out of the city, get away quick.
The risk he had taken was beginning to appear to him as an unwarranted
piece of recklessness; he was amazed with himself for taking such a
chance--disgusted at his foolish and totally unnecessary course with
this young girl. All he had had to do was to wait a few months. He
could have married in safety then. And even now he didn't know whether
or not the ceremony performed by Parson Smawley had been an illegally
legal one; whether it made him a bigamist for the next three months or
only something worse. What on earth had possessed him to take such a
risk--the terrible hazard of discovery, of losing the only woman he
had ever really cared for--the only one he probably could ever care
for? Of course, had he been free he would have married her. When he
got his freedom he would insist on another ceremony. He could persuade
her to that on some excuse or other. But in the meanwhile!
He entered the deserted dining-room, came over to where Rue was
waiting, and sat down, heavily, holding an unlighted cigar between his
stubby fingers.
"Well, little girl," he said with forced cheerfulness, "was I away
very long?"
"Not very."
"You didn't miss me?" he inquired, ponderously playful.
His heavy pleasantries usually left her just a little doubtful and
confused, for he seldom smiled when he delivered himself of them.
He leaned across the cloth and laid a hot, cushiony hand over both of
hers, where they lay primly clasped on the table edge:
"Don't you ever miss me when I'm away from you, Rue?" he asked.
"I think--it is nice to be with you," she said, hotly embarrassed by
the publicity of his caress.
"I don't believe you mean it." But he smiled this time. At which the
little rigid smile stamped itself on her lips; but she timidly
withdrew her hands from his.
"Rue, I don't believe you love me." This time there was no smile.
She found nothing to answer, being without any experience in
give-and-take conversation, which left her always uncertain and
uncomfortable.
For the girl was merely a creature still in the making--a soft,
pliable thing to be shaped to perfection only by the light touch of
some steady, patient hand that understood--or to be marred and ruined
by a heavy hand which wrought at random or in brutal haste.
Brandes watched her for a moment out of sleepy, greenish eyes. Then he
consulted his watch again, summoned a waiter, gave him the
parcels-room checks, and bade him have a boy carry their luggage into
the lobby.
As they rose from the table, a man and a woman entering the lobby
caught sight of them, halted, then turned and walked back toward the
street door which they had just entered.
Brandes had not noticed them where he stood by the desk, scratching
off a telegram to Stull:
"All O. K. Just going aboard. Fix it with Stein."
He rejoined Rue as the boy appeared with their luggage; an under
porter took the bags and preceded them toward the street.
"There's the car!" said Brandes, with a deep breath of relief. "He
knows his business, that chauffeur of mine."
Their chauffeur was standing beside the car as they emerged from the
hotel and started to cross the sidewalk; the porter, following, set
their luggage on the curbstone; and at the same instant a young and
pretty woman stepped lightly between Rue and Brandes.
"Good evening, Eddie," she said, and struck him a staggering blow in
the face with her white-gloved hand.
Brandes lost his balance, stumbled sideways, recovered himself, turned
swiftly and encountered the full, protruding black eyes of Maxy Venem
staring close and menacingly into his.
From Brandes' cut lip blood was running down over his chin and collar;
his face remained absolutely expressionless. The next moment his eyes
shifted, met Ruhannah's stupefied gaze.
"Go into the hotel," he said calmly. "Quick----"
"Stay where you are!" interrupted Maxy Venem, and caught the
speechless and bewildered girl by the elbow.
Like lightning Brandes' hand flew to his hip pocket, and at the same
instant his own chauffeur seized both his heavy, short arms and held
them rigid, pinned behind his back.
"Frisk him!" he panted; Venem nimbly relieved him of the dull black
weapon.
"Can the fake gun-play, Eddie," he said, coolly shoving aside the
porter who attempted to interfere. "You're double-crossed. We got the
goods on you; come on; who's the girl?"
The woman who had struck Brandes now came up again beside Venem. She
was young, very pretty, but deathly white except for the patches of
cosmetic on either cheek. She pointed at Brandes. There was blood on
her soiled and split glove:
"You dirty dog!" she said unsteadily. "You'll marry this girl before
I've divorced you, will you? And you think you are going to get away
with it! You dog! You dirty dog!"
The porter attempted to interfere again, but Venem shoved him out of
the way. Brandes, still silently struggling to free his imprisoned
arms, ceased twisting suddenly and swung his heavy head toward Venem.
His hat had fallen off; his face, deeply flushed with exertion, was
smeared with blood and sweat.
"What's the idea, you fool!" he said in a low voice. "I'm not married
to her."
But Ruhannah heard him say it.
"You claim that you haven't married this girl?" demanded Venem loudly,
motioning toward Rue, who stood swaying, half dead, held fast by the
gathering crowd which pushed around them from every side.
"Did you marry her or did you fake it?" repeated Venem in a louder
voice. "It's jail one way; maybe both!"
"He married her in Gayfield at eleven this morning!" said the
chauffeur. "Parson Smawley turned the trick."
Brandes' narrow eyes glittered; he struggled for a moment, gave it up,
shot a deadly glance at Maxy Venem, at his wife, at the increasing
throng crowding closely about him. Then his infuriated eyes met Rue's,
and the expression of her face apparently crazed him.
Frantic, he hurled himself backward, jerking one arm free, tripped,
fell heavily with the chauffeur on top, twisting, panting, struggling
convulsively, while all around him surged the excited crowd, shouting,
pressing closer, trampling one another in eagerness to see.
Rue, almost swooning with fear, was pushed, jostled, flung aside.
Stumbling over her own suitcase, she fell to her knees, rose, and,
scarce conscious of what she was about, caught up her suitcase and
reeled away into the light-shot darkness.
She had no idea of what she was doing or where she was going; the
terror of the scene still remained luridly before her eyes; the
shouting of the crowd was in her ears; an indescribable fear of
Brandes filled her--a growing horror of this man who had denied that
he had married her. And the instinct of a frightened and bewildered
child drove her into blind flight, anywhere to escape this hideous,
incomprehensible scene behind her.
Hurrying on, alternately confused and dazzled in the patches of
darkness and flaring light, clutched at and followed by a terrible
fear, she found herself halted on the curbstone of an avenue through
which lighted tramcars were passing. A man spoke to her, came closer;
and she turned desperately and hurried across a street where other
people were crossing.
From overhead sounded the roaring dissonance of an elevated train; on
either side of her phantom shapes swarmed--figures which moved
everywhere around her, now illumined by shop windows, now silhouetted
against them. And always through the deafening confusion in her brain,
the dismay, the stupefaction, one dreadful fear dominated--the fear of
Brandes--the dread and horror of this Judas who had denied her.
She could not drive the scene from her mind--the never-to-be forgotten
picture where he stood with blood from his cut lip striping his fat
chin. She heard his voice denying her through swollen lips that
scarcely moved--denying that he had married her.
And in her ears still sounded the other voice--the terrible words of
the woman who had struck him--an unsteady, unreal voice accusing him;
and her brain throbbed with the horrible repetition: "Dirty dog--dirty
dog--dirty dog----" until, almost out of her mind, she dropped her bag
and clapped both hands over her ears.
One or two men stared at her. A taxi driver came from beside his car
and asked her if she was ill. But she caught up her suitcase and
hurried on without answering.
* * * * *
She was very tired. She had come to the end of the lighted avenue.
There was darkness ahead, a wall, trees, and electric lights sparkling
among the foliage.
Perhaps the sudden glimpse of a wide and star-set sky quieted her,
calmed her. Freed suddenly from the cañon of the city's streets, the
unreasoning panic of a trapped thing subsided a little.
Her arm ached; she shifted the suitcase to her other hand and looked
across at the trees and at the high stars above, striving desperately
for self-command.
Something had to be done. She must find some place where she could sit
down. Where was she to find it?
For a while she could feel her limbs trembling; but gradually the
heavy thudding of her pulses quieted; nobody molested her; nobody had
followed her. That she was quite lost did not matter; she had also
lost this man who had denied her, somewhere in the depths of the
confusion behind her. That was all that mattered--escape from him,
from the terrible woman who had struck him and reviled him.
With an effort she checked her thoughts and struggled for
self-command. Somewhere in the city there must be a railroad station
from which a train would take her home.
With the thought came the desperate longing for flight, and a rush of
tears that almost choked her. Nothing mattered now except her mother's
arms; the rest was a nightmare, the horror of a dream which still
threatened, still clutched at her with shadowy and spectral menace.
For a moment or two she stood there on the curb, her eyes closed,
fighting for self-control, forcing her disorganized brain to duty.
Somebody must help her to find a railroad station and a train. That
gradually became clear to her. But when she realised that, a young man
sauntered up beside her and looked at her so intently that her
calmness gave way and she turned her head sharply to conceal the
starting tears.
"Hello, girlie," he said. "Got anythin' on tonight?"
With head averted, she stood there, rigid, dumb, her tear-drenched
eyes fixed on the park; and after one or two jocose observations the
young man became discouraged and went away. But he had thrust the fear
of strangers deep into her heart; and now she dared not ask any man
for information. However, when two young women passed she found
sufficient courage to accost them, asking the direction of the
railroad station from which trains departed for Gayfield.
The women, who were young and brightly coloured in plumage, displayed
a sympathetic interest at once.
"Gayfield?" repeated the blonder of the two. "Gee, dearie, I never
heard of that place."
"Is it on Long Island?" inquired the other.
"No. It is in Mohawk County."
"That's a new one, too. Mohawk County? Never heard of it; did you,
Lil?"
"Search me!"
"Is it up-state, dearie?" asked the other. "You better go over to
Madison Avenue and take a car to the Grand Central----"
"Wait," interrupted her friend; "she better take a taxi----"
"Nix on a taxi you pick up on Sixth Avenue!" And to Rue, curiously
sympathetic: "Say, you've got friends here, haven't you, little one?"
"No."
"What! You don't know anyone in New York!"
Rue looked at her dumbly; then, of a sudden, she remembered Neeland.
"Yes," she said, "I know one person."
"Where does your friend live?"
In her reticule was the paper on which he had written the address of
the Art Students' League, and, as an afterthought, his own address.
Rue lifted the blue silk bag, opened it, took out her purse and found
the paper.
"One Hundred and Six, West Fifty-fifth Street," she read; "Studio No.
10."
"Why, that isn't far!" said the blonder of the two. "We are going that
way. We'll take you there."
"I don't know--I don't know him very well----"
"Is it a man?"
"Yes. He comes from my town, Gayfield."
"Oh! I guess that's all right," said the other woman, laughing. "You
got to be leery of these men, little one. Come on; we'll show you."
It was only four blocks; Ruhannah presently found herself on the steps
of a house from which dangled a sign, "Studios and Bachelor
Apartments to Let."
"What's his name?" said the woman addressed as Lil.
"Mr. Neeland."
By the light of the vestibule lantern they inspected the letter boxes,
found Neeland's name, and pushed the electric button.
After a few seconds the door clicked and opened.
"Now, you're all right!" said Lil, peering into the lighted hallway.
"It's on the fourth floor and there isn't any elevator that I can see,
so you keep on going upstairs till your friend meets you."
"Thank you so much for your great kindness----"
"Don't mention it. Good luck, dearie!"
The door clicked behind her, and Rue found herself alone.
The stairs, flanked by a massive balustrade of some dark, polished
wood, ascended in spirals by a short series of flights and landings.
Twice she rested, her knees almost giving way, for the climb upward
seemed interminable. But at last, just above her, she saw a skylight,
and a great stair-window giving on a court; and, as she toiled up and
stood clinging, breathless, to the banisters on the top landing, out
of an open door stepped Neeland's shadowy figure, dark against the
hall light behind him.
"For heaven's sake!" he said. "What on earth----"
The suitcase fell from her nerveless hand; she swayed a little where
she stood.
The next moment he had passed his arm around her, and was half
leading, half carrying her through a short hallway into a big,
brilliantly lighted studio.
CHAPTER XII
A LIFE LINE
She had told him her story from beginning to end, as far as she
herself comprehended it. She was lying sideways now, in the depths of
a large armchair, her cheek cushioned on the upholstered wings.
Her hat, with its cheap blue enamel pins sticking in the crown, lay on
his desk; her hair, partly loosened, shadowed a young face grown
pinched with weariness; and the reaction from shock was already making
her grey eyes heavy and edging the under lids with bluish shadows.
She had not come there with the intention of telling him anything. All
she had wanted was a place in which to rest, a glass of water, and
somebody to help her find the train to Gayfield. She told him this;
remained reticent under his questioning; finally turned her haggard
face to the chairback and refused to answer.
For an hour or more she remained obstinately dumb, motionless except
for the uncontrollable trembling of her body; he brought her a glass
of water, sat watching her at intervals; rose once or twice to pace
the studio, his well-shaped head bent, his hands clasped behind his
back, always returning to the corner-chair before the desk to sit
there, eyeing her askance, waiting for some decision.
But it was not the recurrent waves of terror, the ever latent fear of
Brandes, or even her appalling loneliness that broke her down; it was
sheer fatigue--nature's merciless third degree--under which mental
and physical resolution disintegrated--went all to pieces.
And when at length she finally succeeded in reconquering
self-possession, she had already stammered out answers to his gently
persuasive questions--had told him enough to start the fuller
confession to which he listened in utter silence.
And now she had told him everything, as far as she understood the
situation. She lay sideways, deep in the armchair, tired, yet vaguely
conscious that she was resting mind and body, and that calm was
gradually possessing the one, and the nerves of the other were growing
quiet.
Listlessly her grey eyes wandered around the big studio where shadowy
and strangely beautiful but incomprehensible things met her gaze, like
iridescent, indefinite objects seen in dreams.
These radiantly unreal splendours were only Neeland's rejected Academy
pictures and studies; a few cheap Japanese hangings, cheaper Nippon
porcelains, and several shaky, broken-down antiques picked up for a
song here and there. All the trash and truck and dust and junk
characteristic of the conventional artist's habitation were there.
But to Ruhannah this studio embodied all the wonders and beauties of
that magic temple to which, from her earliest memory, her very soul
had aspired--the temple of the unknown God of Art.
Vaguely she endeavoured to realise that she was now inside one of its
myriad sanctuaries; that here under her very tired and youthful eyes
stood one of its countless altars; that here, also, near by, sat one
of those blessed acolytes who aided in the mysteries of its wondrous
service.
"Ruhannah," he said, "are you calm enough to let me tell you what I
think about this matter?"
"Yes. I am feeling better."
"Good work! There's no occasion for panic. What you need is a cool
head and
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