Some of the sunshine that had helped dry the muddy road, making possible the path between Jack's abode and MacFarlane's hired villa—where there was only room for Miss Felicia, Peter still occupying his cell at Mrs. Hicks's, but taking his meals with Ruth, so that he could be within call of MacFarlane when needed—some of this same sunshine, I say, may have been responsible for the temporary drying up of Ruth's tears and the establishing of various ways of communication between two hearts that had for some days been floundering in the deeps. Or, perhaps, the rebound may have been due to the fact that Peter had whispered something in Jack's ear, or that Ruth had overheard Miss Felicia praising Jack's heroism to her father—it was common talk everywhere—or it may have been that the coming of spring which always brings hope and cheer—making old into new, may have led to the general lighting up of the gloom that had settled over the house of MacFarlane and its dependents; but certain it is that such was the case.
MacFarlane began by taking a sudden change for the better—so decided a change that he was out of his room and dressed on the fifth day (although half his coat hid his broken arm, tightly bandaged to his side). He had even talked as far as the geraniums in the window, through which he could not only see Jack's hotel, but the big “earth fill” and mouth of The Beast beyond.
Then Bolton surprised everybody by appearing outdoors, his hand alone in a sling. What was left of the poor shanty men, too, had been buried, the dreadful newspaper articles had ceased, and work was again in full blast.
Jack, to be sure, was still in his room, having swallowed more gas and smoke than the others, badly scorching his insides, as he had panted under the weight of MacFarlane's body. The crisis, however, brought on by his imprudence in meeting Ruth at the station, had passed, and even he was expected to be out in a few days.
As for Miss Felicia, although she had blown hot and blown cold on Ruth's heart, until that delicate instrument stood at zero one day and at fever heat the next, she had, on the whole, kept up an equable temperature, and meant to do so until she shook the dust of Corklesville from her dainty feet and went back to the clean, moist bricks of her garden.
And as for Peter! Had he not been a continuous joy; cheering everybody; telling MacFarlane funny stories until that harassed invalid laughed himself, unconscious of the pain to his arm; bringing roses for the prim, wizened-up Miss Bolton, that she might have a glimpse of something fresh and alive while she sat by her brother's bed. And last, and by no means least, had he not the morning he had left for New York, his holiday being over, taken Ruth in his arms and putting his lips close to her ear, whispered something into its pink shell that had started northern lights dancing all over her cheeks and away up to the roots of her hair; and had she not given him a good hug and kissed him in return, a thing she had never done in her whole life before? And had he not stopped on his way to the station for a last hand-shake with Jack and to congratulate him for the hundredth time for his plucky rescue of MacFarlane—a subject he never ceased to talk about—and had he not at the very last moment, told Jack every word of what he and Ruth talked about, with all the details elaborated, even to the hug, which was no sooner told than another set of northern lights got into action at once, and another hug followed; only this time it took the form of a hearty hand-shake and a pat on Peter's back, followed by a big tear which the boy tried his best to conceal? Peter had no theories detrimental to penniless young gentlemen, pursued by intermeddling old ladies.
And yet with all this there was one corner deep down in Ruth's heart so overgrown with “wonderings” and “whys,” so thick with tangled doubts and misgivings, that no cheering ray of certainty had yet been able to pierce it. Nor had any one tried. Miss Felicia, good as she was and loving as she had been, had done nothing in the pruning way—that is, nothing which would let in any sunshine radiating from Jack. She had talked about him, it is true; not to her, we may be sure, but to her father, saying how handsome he had grown and what a fine man he was making of himself. She had, too, more than once commented—and this before everybody—on his good manners and his breeding, especially on the way he had received her the first morning she called, and to his never apologizing for his miserable surroundings, meagre as they were—just a theodolite, his father's portrait and half a dozen books alone being visible, the white walls covered with working plans. But when the poor girl had tried to draw from her some word that was personal to himself, or one that might become personal—and she did try even to the verge of betraying herself, which would never have done—Miss Felicia had always turned the subject at once or had pleaded forgetfulness. Not a word could she drag out of this very perverse and determined old lady concerning the state of the patient, nothing except that he was “better,” or “doing nicely,” or that the bandage was being shortened, or some other commonplace. Uncle Peter had been kinder. He understood—she saw that in his eyes. Still even Uncle Peter had not told her all that she wanted to know, and of course she could not ask him.
Soon a certain vague antagonism began to assert itself toward the old lady who knew so much and yet who said so little! who was too old really to understand—no old person, in fact, could understand—that is, no old woman. This proved, too, that this particular person could never have loved any other particular person in her life. Not that she, Ruth, loved Jack—by no manner of means—not in that way, at least. But she would have liked to know what he said, and how he said it, and whether his eyes had lost that terrible look which they wore when he turned away at the station to go back to his sick bed in the dingy hotel. All these things her Aunt Felicia knew about and yet she could not drag a word out of her.
What she ought to have done was to go herself that first night, bravely, honestly, fearlessly as any friend had a right to do; go to him in his miserable little hotel and try to cheer him up as Miss Felicia, and perhaps Miss Bolton, had done. Then she might have found out all about it. Exactly what it was that she wanted to find out all about—and this increased her perplexity—she could not formulate, although she was convinced it would help her to bear the anxiety she was suffering. Now it was too late; more than a week had passed, and no excuse for going was possible.
It was not until the morning after Peter's departure,—she, sitting alone, sad and silent in her chair at the head of her father's breakfast table (Miss Felicia, as was her custom, had her coffee in her room), that the first ray of light had crept into her troubled brain. It had only shone a brief moment,—and had then gone out in darkness, but it held a certain promise for better days, and on this she had built her hopes.
“I am going to send for Breen to-morrow, Ruth,” her father had said as he kissed her good-night. “There are some things I want to talk over with him, and then I want to thank him for what he did for me. He's a man, every inch of him; I haven't told him so yet,—not to his face,—but I will to-morrow. Fine fellow is Breen; blood will always tell in the end, my daughter, and he's got the best in the country in his veins. Looks more like his father every day he lives.”
She had hardly slept all night, thinking of the pleasure in store for her. She had dressed herself, too, in her most becoming breakfast gown—one she had worn when Jack first arrived at Corklesville, and which he said reminded him of a picture he had seen as a boy. There were pink rosebuds woven in its soft texture, and the wide peach-blossom ribbon that bound her dainty waist contrasted so delightfully, as he had timidly hinted, with the tones of her hair and cheeks.
It was the puffy, bespectacled little doctor who shut out the light.
“No, your father has still one degree of fever,” he grumbled, with a wise shake of his bushy head. “No—nobody, Miss MacFarlane,—do you understand? He can see NOBODY—or I won't be responsible,” and with this the crabbed old fellow climbed into his gig and drove away.
She looked after him for a moment and two hot tears dropped from her eyes and dashed themselves to pieces on the peach-blossom ribbon.
But the sky was clearing again—she didn't realize it,—but it was. April skies always make alternate lights and darks. The old curmudgeon had gone, but the garden gate was again a-swing.
Ruth heard the tread on the porch and drawing back the curtains looked out. The most brilliant sunbeams were but dull rays compared with what now flashed from her eyes. Nor did she wait for any other hand than her own to turn the knob of the door.
“Why, Mr. Breen!”
“Yes, Miss Ruth,” Jack answered, lifting his hat, an unrestrained gladness at the sight of her beauty and freshness illumining his face. “I have come to report for duty to your father.”
“But you cannot see him. You must report to me,” she laughed gayly, her heart brimming over now that he was before her again. “Father was going to send for you to-day, but the doctor would not let him. Hush! he musn't hear us.”
“He would not let me go out either, but as I am tired to death of being cooped up in my room, I broke jail. Can't I see him?” he continued in a lower key. He had his coat off and had hung it on the rack, she following him into the sitting-room, absorbing every inch of his strong, well-knit body from his short-cropped hair where the bandages had been wound, down to the sprained wrist which was still in splints. She noted, too, with a little choke in her throat, the shadows under the cheek bones and the thinness of the nose. She could see plainly how he had suffered.
“I am sorry you cannot see father.” She was too moved to say more. “He still has one degree of fever.”
“I have two degrees myself,” Jack laughed softly,—“one records how anxious I was to get out of my cell and the other how eager I was to get here. And now I suppose I can't stay.”
“Oh, yes, you can stay if you will keep as still as a mouse so father can't hear you,” she whispered, a note of joy woven in her tones.
She was leading him to the sofa as she spoke. He placed a cushion for her, and took his place beside her, resting his injured hand, which was in a sling, on the arm. He was still weak and shaking.
“Daddy is still in his room,” she rattled on nervously, “but he may be out and prowling about the upstairs hall any minute. He has a heap of things to talk over with you—he told me so last night—and if he knew you were here nothing would stop him. Wait till I shut the door. And now tell me about yourself,” she continued in a louder voice, regaining her seat. “You have had a dreadful time, I hear—it was the wrist, wasn't it?” She felt she was beginning badly; although conscious of her nervous joy and her desire to conceal it, somehow it seemed hard for her to say the right thing.
“Oh, I reckon it was everything, Miss Ruth, but it's all over now.” He was not nervous. He was in an ecstasy. His eyes were drinking in the round of her throat and the waves of glorious hair that crowned her lovely head. He noticed, too, some tiny threads that lay close to her ears: he had been so hungry for a glimpse of them!
“Oh, I hope so, but you shouldn't have come to the station that day,” she struggled on. “We had Uncle Peter with us, and only a hand-bag, each of us,—we came away so suddenly.”
“I didn't want you to be frightened about your father. I didn't know that Uncle Peter was with you; in fact, I didn't know much of anything until it was all over. Bolton sent the telegram as soon as he got his breath.”
“That's what frightened us. Why didn't YOU send it?” she was gaining control of herself now and something of her old poise had returned.
“I hadn't got MY breath,—not all of it. I remember his coming into my room where they were tying me up and bawling out something about how to reach you by wire, and he says now that I gave him Mr. Grayson's address. I cannot remember that part of it, except that I—Well, never mind about that—” he hesitated turning away his gaze—the memory seemed to bring with it a certain pain.
“Yes,—tell me,” she pleaded. She was too happy. This was what she had been waiting for. There was no detail he must omit.
“It was nothing, only I kept thinking it was you who were hurt,” he stammered.
“Me!” she cried, her eyes dancing. The ray of light was breaking—one with a promise in it for the future!
“Yes,—you, Miss Ruth! Funny, isn't it, how when you are half dead you get things mixed up.” Oh, the stupidity of these lovers! Not a thing had he seen of the flash of expectation in her eyes or of the hot color rising to her cheeks. “I thought somebody was trying to tell your father that you were hurt, and I was fighting to keep him from hearing it. But you must thank Bolton for letting you know.”
Ruth's face clouded and the sparkle died out in her eyes. What was Mr. Bolton to her, and at a time like this?
“It was most kind of Mr. Bolton,” she answered in a constrained voice. “I only wish he had said something more; we had a terrible day. Uncle Peter was nearly crazy about you; he telegraphed and telegraphed, but we could get no answer. That's why it was such a relief to find you at the station.”
But the bat had not finished banging his head against the wall. “Then I did do some good by going?” he asked earnestly.
“Oh, indeed you did.” If he did not care whether she had been hurt or not, even in his delirium, she was not going to betray herself. “It was the first time anybody had seen Uncle Peter smile; he was wretched all day. He loves you very dearly, Mr. Breen.”
Jack's hand dropped so suddenly to his side that the pain made him tighten his lips. For a moment he did not answer.
“Then it was only Uncle Peter who was anxious, was it? I am glad he loves me. I love him, too,” he said at last in a perfunctory tone—“he's been everything to me.”
“And you have been everything to him.” She determined to change the subject now. “He told me only—well,—two days ago—that you had made him ten years younger.”
“Me?—Miss Ruth!” Still the same monotonous cadence.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Well,—maybe because he is old and you are young.” As she spoke her eyes measured the width of his shoulders and his broad chest—she saw now to what her father owed his life—“and another thing; he said that he would always thank you for getting out alive. And I owe you a debt of gratitude, too, Mr. Breen;—you gave me back my dear daddy,” she added in a more assured tone. Here at last was something she could talk unreservedly about. Something that she had wanted to say ever since he came.
Jack straightened and threw back his shoulders: that word again! Was that all that Ruth had to say?
“No, Miss Ruth, you don't.” There was a slight ring of defiance now. “You do not owe me anything, and please don't think so, and please—please—do not say so!”
“I don't owe you anything! Not for saving my father's life?” This came with genuine surprise.
“No! What would you have thought of me, what would I have thought of myself had I left him to suffocate when I could just as well have brought him out? Do you think I could ever have looked you in the face again? You might not have ever known I could have saved him—but I should have hated myself every hour of my life. Men are not to be thanked for these things; they are to be despised if they don't do them. Can't you see the difference?”
“But you might have been killed, too!” she exclaimed. Her own voice was rising, irritation and disappointment swaying it. “Everybody says it was a miracle you were not.”
“Not a miracle at all. All I was afraid of was stumbling over something in the dark—and it was nearly dark—only a few of the rock lights burning—and not be able to get on my feet again. But don't let us talk about it any more.”
“Yes—but I will, I MUST. I must feel right about it all, and I cannot unless you listen. I shall never forget you for it as long as I live.” There was a note of pathos in her voice. Why did he make it so hard for her, she thought. Why would he not look in her face and see? Why would he not let her thank him? “Nothing in the world is so precious to me as daddy, and never will be,” she went on resolutely, driving back the feeling of injustice that surged up in her heart at his attitude—“and it is you, Mr. Breen, who have given him back to me. And daddy feels the same way about it; and he is going to tell you so the minute he sees you,” she insisted. “He has sent you a lot of messages, he says, but they do not count. Please, now won't you let me thank you?”
Jack raised his head. He had been fingering a tassel on the end of the sofa, missing all the play of feeling in her eyes, taking in nothing but the changes that she rang on that one word “gratitude.” Gratitude!—when he loved the ground she stepped on. But he must face the issue fairly now:
“No,—I don't want you to thank me,” he answered simply.
“Well, what do you want, then?” She was at sea now,—compass and rudder gone,—wind blowing from every quarter at once,—she trying to reach the harbor of his heart while every tack was taking her farther from port. If the Scribe had his way the whole coast of love would be lighted and all rocks of doubt and misunderstanding charted for just such hapless lovers as these two. How often a twist of the tiller could send them into the haven of each other's arms, and yet how often they go ashore and stay ashore and worse still, stay ashore all their lives.
Jack looked into her eyes and a hopeless, tired expression crossed his face.
“I don't know,” he said in a barely audible voice:—“I just—please, Miss Ruth, let us talk of something else; let me tell you how lovely your gown is and how glad I am you wore it to-day. I always liked it, and—”
“No,—never mind about my gown; I would rather you did not like anything about me than misunderstand me!” The tears were just under the lids;—one more thrust like the last and they would be streaming down her cheeks.
“But I haven't misunderstood you.” He saw the lips quiver, but it was anger, he thought, that caused it.
“Yes, you have!”—a great lump had risen in her throat. “You have done a brave, noble act,—everybody says so; you carried my dear father out on your back when there was not but one chance in a thousand you would ever get out alive; you lay in a faint for hours and once they gave you up for dead; then you thought enough of Uncle Peter and all of us to get that telegram sent so we wouldn't be terrified to death and then at the risk of your life you met us at the station and have been in bed ever since, and yet I am to sit still and not say a word!” It was all she could do to control herself. “I do feel grateful to you and I always shall feel grateful to you as long as I live. And now will you take my hand and tell me you are sorry, and let me say it all over again, and with my whole heart? for that's the way I mean it.”
She was facing him now, her hand held out, her head thrown back, her dark eyes flashing, her bosom heaving. Slowly and reverently, as a devotee would kiss the robe of a passing priest, Jack bent his head and touched her fingers with his lips.
Then, raising his eyes to hers, he asked, “And is that all, Miss Ruth? Isn't there something more?” Not once had she mentioned his own safety—not once had she been glad over him—“Something more?” he repeated, an ineffable tenderness in his tones—“something—it isn't all, is it?”
“Why, how can I say anything more?” she murmured in a lowered voice, withdrawing her hand as the sound of a step in the hall reached her ear.
The door swung wide: “Well, what are you two young people quarrelling about?” came a soft, purring voice.
“We weren't quarrelling, Aunty. Mr. Breen is so modest he doesn't want anybody to thank him, and I just would.”
Miss Felicia felt that she had entered just in time. Scarred and penniless heroes fresh from battle-fields of glory and desirable young women whose fathers have been carried bodily out of burning death pits must never be left too long together.
As the weeks rolled by, two questions constantly rose in Ruth's mind: Why had he not wanted her to thank him?—and what had he meant by—“And is that all?”
Her other admirers—and there had been many in her Maryland home—had never behaved like this. Was it because they liked her better than she liked them? The fact was—and she might as well admit it once for all—that Jack did not like her at all, he really DISliked her, and only his loyalty to her father and that inborn courtesy which made him polite to every woman he met—young or old—prevented his betraying himself. She tried to suggest something like this to Miss Felicia, but that good woman had only said: “Men are queer, my dear, and these Southerners are the queerest of them all. They are so chivalrous that at times they get tiresome. Breen is no better than the rest of them.” This had ended it with Miss Felicia. Nor would she ever mention his name to her again. Jack was not tiresome; on the contrary, he was the soul of honor and as brave as he could be—a conclusion quite as illogical as that of her would-be adviser.
If she could only have seen Peter, the poor child thought,—Peter understood—just as some women not as old as her aunt would have understood. Dear Uncle Peter! He had told her once what Jack had said about her—how beautiful he thought her and how he loved her devotion to her father. Jack MUST have said it, for Uncle Peter never spoke anything but the exact truth. Then why had Jack, and everything else, changed so cruelly? she would say—talking to herself, sometimes aloud. For the ring had gone from his voice and the tenderness from his touch. Not that he ever was tender, not that she wanted him to be, for that matter; and then she would shut her door and throw herself on her bed in an agony of tears—pleading a headache or fatigue that she might escape her father's inquiry, and often his anxious glance.
The only ray of light that had pierced her troubled heart—and this only flashed for a brief moment—was the glimpse she had had of Jack's mind when he and her father first met. The boy had called to inquire after his Chief's health and for any instructions he might wish to give, when MacFarlane, hearing the young hero's voice in the hall below, hurried down to greet him. Ruth was leaning over the banister at the time and saw all that passed. Once within reach MacFarlane strode up to Jack, and with the look on his face of a man who had at last found the son he had been hunting for all his life, laid his hand on the lad's shoulder.
“I think we understand each other, Breen,—don't we?” he said simply, his voice breaking.
“I think so, sir,” answered Jack, his own eyes aglow, as their hands met.
Nothing else had followed. There was no outburst. Both were men; in the broadest and strongest sense each had weighed the other. The eyes and the quivering lips and the lingering hand-clasp told the rest. A sudden light broke in on Ruth. Her father's quiet words, and his rescuer's direct answer came as a revelation. Jack, then, did want to be thanked! Yes, but not by her! Why was it? Why had he not understood? And why had he made her suffer, and what had she done to deserve it?
If Jack suspected any of these heartaches and misgivings, no one would have surmised it. He came and went as usual, passing an hour in the morning and an hour at night with his Chief, until he had entirely recovered his strength—bringing with him the records of the work; the number of feet drilled in a day; cost of maintenance; cubic contents of dump; extent and slope and angles of “fill”—all the matters which since his promotion (Jack now had Bolton's place) came under his immediate supervision. Nor had any word passed between himself and Ruth, other than the merest commonplace. He was cheery, buoyant, always ready to help,—always at her service if she took the train for New York or stayed after dark at a neighbor's house, when he would insist on bringing her home, no matter how late he had been up the night before.
If the truth were known, he neither suspected nor could he be made to believe that Ruth had any troubles. The facts were that he had given her all his heart and had been ready to lay himself at her feet, that being the accepted term in his mental vocabulary—and she would have none of him. She had let him understand so—rebuffed him—not once, but every time he had tried to broach the subject of his devotion;—once in the Geneseo arbor, and again on that morning when he had really crawled to her side because he could no longer live without seeing her. The manly thing to do now was to accept the situation: to do his work; look after his employer's interests, read, study, run over whenever he could to see Peter—and these were never-to-be-forgotten oases in the desert of his despair—and above all never to forget that he owed a duty to Miss Ruth in which no personal wish of his own could ever find a place. She was alone and without an escort except her father, who was often so absorbed in his work, or so tired at night, as to be of little help to her. Moreover, his Chief had, in a way, added his daughter's care to his other duties. “Can't you take Ruth to-night—” or “I wish you'd meet her at the ferry,” or “if you are going to that dinner in New York, at so-and-so's, would you mind calling for her—” etc., etc. Don't start, dear reader. These two came of a breed where the night key and the daughter go together and where a chaperon would be as useless as a policeman locked inside a bank vault.
And so the boy struggled on, growing in bodily strength and mental experience, still the hero among the men for his heroic rescue of the “Boss”—a reputation which he never lost; making friends every day both in the village and in New York and keeping them; absorbed in his slender library, and living within his means, which small as they were, now gave him two rooms at Mrs. Hicks's,—one of which he had fitted up as a little sitting-room and in which Ruth had poured the first cup of tea, her father and some of the village people being guests.
His one secret—and it was his only one—he kept locked up in his heart, even from Peter. Why worry the dear old fellow, he had said to himself a dozen times, since nothing would ever come of it.
While all this had been going on in the house of MacFarlane, much more astonishing things had been developing in the house of Breen.
The second Mukton Lode scoop,—the one so deftly handled the night of Arthur Breen's dinner to the directors,—had somehow struck a snag in the scooping with the result that most of the “scoopings” had been spilled over the edge there to be gathered up by the gamins of the Street, instead of being hived in the strong boxes of the scoopers. Some of the habitues in the orchestra chairs in Breen's office had cursed loud and deep when they saw their margins melt away; and one or two of the directors had broken out into open revolt, charging Breen with the fiasco, but most of the others had held their peace. It was better to crawl away into the tall grass there to nurse their wounds than to give the enemy a list of the killed and wounded. Now and then an outsider—one who had watched the battle from afar—saw more of the fight than the contestants themselves. Among these was Garry Minott.
“You heard how Mason, the Chicago man, euchred the Mukton gang, didn't you?” he had shouted to a friend one night at the Magnolia—“Oh, listen! boys. They set up a job on him,—he's a countryman, you know a poor little countryman—from a small village called Chicago—he's got three millions, remember, all in hard cash. Nice, quiet motherly old gentleman is Mr. Mason—butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. Went into Mukton with every dollar he had—so kind of Mr. Breen to let him in—yes, put him down for 2,000 shares more. Then Breen & Co. began to hoist her up—five points—ten points—twenty points. At the end of the week they had, without knowing it, bought every share of Mason's stock.” Here Garry roared, as did the others within hearing. “And they've got it yet. Next day the bottom dropped out. Some of them heard Mason laugh all the way to the bank. He's cleaned up half a million and gone back home—'so afraid his mother would spank him for being out late o' nights without his nurse,'” and again Garry's laugh rang out with such force and earnestness that the glasses on Biffy's table chinked in response.
This financial set-back, while it had injured, for the time, Arthur Breen's reputation for being “up and dressed,” had not, to any appreciable extent, curtailed his expenditures or narrowed the area of his social domain. Mrs. Breen's dinners and entertainments had been as frequent and as exclusive, and Miss Corinne had continued to run the gamut of the gayest and best patronized functions without, the Scribe is pained to admit, bringing home with her for good and all both her cotillion favors and the gentleman who had bestowed them. Her little wren-like head had moved from side to side, and she had sung her sweetest and prettiest, but somehow, when the song was over and the crumbs all eaten (and there were often two dinners a week and at least one dance), off went the male birds to other and more captivating roosts.
Mrs. Breen, of course, raved when Corinne at last opened the door of her cage for Garry,—went to bed, in fact, for the day, to accentuate her despair and mark her near approach to death because of it—a piece of inconsistency she could well have spared herself, knowing Corinne as she had, from the day of her birth, and remembering as she must have done, her own escapade with the almost penniless young army officer who afterward became Corinne's father.
Breen did not rave; Breen rather liked it. Garry had no money, it is true, except what he could earn,—neither had Corinne. Garry seemed to do as he darned pleased,—so did Corinne;—Garry had no mother,—neither had Corinne so far as yielding to any authority was concerned. “Yes,—let 'em marry,—good thing—begin at the bottom round and work up—” all of which meant that the honorable banker was delighted over the prospect of considerable more freedom for himself and considerable less expense in the household.
And so the wedding had taken place with all the necessary trimmings: awning over the carpeted sidewalk; four policemen on the curb; detectives in the hall and up the staircase and in the front bedroom where the jewels were exposed (all the directors of the Mukton Lode were represented); crowds lining the sidewalk; mob outside the church door—mob inside the church door and clear up to the altar; flowers, palms, special choir, with little bank-notes to the boys and a big bank-note to the leader; checks for the ranking clergyman and the two assistant clergymen, not forgetting crisp bills for the sexton and the janitor and the policemen and the detectives and everybody else who could hold out a hand and not be locked up in jail for highway robbery. Yes, a most fashionable and a most distinguished and a most exclusive wedding—there was no mistake about that.
No one had ever seen anything like it before; some hoped they never would again, so great was the crush in the drawing-room. And not only in the drawing-room, but over every square inch of the house for that matter, from the front door where Parkins's assistant (an extra man from Delmonico's) shouted out—“Third floor back for the gentlemen and second floor front for the ladies”—to the innermost recesses of the library made over into a banquet hall, where that great functionary himself was pouring champagne into batteries of tumblers as if it were so much water, and distributing cuts of cold salmon and portions of terrapin with the prodigality of a charity committee serving a picnic.
And then the heartaches over the cards that never came; and the presents that were never sent, and the wrath of the relations who got below the ribbon in the church and the airs of the strangers who got above it; and the tears over the costly dresses that did not arrive in time and the chagrin over those they had to wear or stay at home—and the heat and the jam and tear and squeeze—and the aftermath of wet glasses on inlaid tables and fine-spun table-cloths burnt into holes with careless cigarettes; and the little puddles of ice cream on the Turkish rugs and silk divans and the broken glass and smashed china!—No—there never had been such a wedding!
This over, Corinne and Garry had gone to housekeeping in a dear little flat, to which we may be sure Jack was rarely ever invited (he had only received “cards” to the church, an invitation which he had religiously accepted, standing at the door so he could bow to them both as they passed)—the two, I say, had gone to a dear little flat—so dear, in fact, that before the year was out Garry's finances were in such a deplorable condition that the lease could not be renewed, and another and a cheaper nest had to be sought for.
It was at this time that the new church to be built at Corklesville needed an architect—a fact which Jack communicated to Garry. Then it happened that with the aid of MacFarlane and Holker Morris the commission was finally awarded to that “rising young genius who had so justly distinguished himself in the atelier of America's greatest architect—Holker Morris—” all of which Garry wrote himself and had inserted in the county paper, he having called upon the editor for that very purpose. This service—and it came at a most critical time in the young man's affairs—the Scribe is glad to say, Garry, with his old-time generous spirit suddenly revived, graciously acknowledged thanking Jack heartily and with meaning in his voice, as well as MacFarlane—not forgetting Ruth, to whom he sent a mass of roses as big as a bandbox.
The gaining of this church building—the largest and most important given the young architect since he had left Morris's protection and guidance—decided Garry to give up at once his expensive quarters in New York and move to Corklesville. So far as any help from the house of Breen was concerned, all hope had ended with the expensive and much-advertised wedding (a shrewd financial move, really, for a firm selling shady securities). Corinne had cooed, wept, and then succumbed into an illness, but Breen had only replied: “No, let 'em paddle their own canoe.”
This is why the sign “To Let,” on one of the new houses built by the Elm Crest Land and Improvement Company—old Tom Corkle who owned the market garden farms that gave the village of Corklesville its name, would have laughed himself sore had he been alive—was ripped off and various teams loaded with all sorts of furniture, some very expensive and showy and some quite the contrary—especially that belonging to the servants' rooms—were backed up to the newly finished porch with its second coat of paint still wet, and their contents duly distributed upstairs and downstairs and in my lady Corinne's chamber.
“Got to put on the brakes, old man,” Garry had said one day to Jack. The boy had heard of the expected change in the architect's finances before the villa was rented, and so Garry's confidential communication was not news to him.
“Been up to look at one of those new houses. Regular bird cage, but we can get along. Besides, this town is going to grow and I'm going to help it along. They are all dead out here—embalmed, some of them—but dead.” Here he opened the pamphlet of the company—“See this house—an hour from New York; high ground; view of the harbor—(all a lie, Jack, but it goes all the same); sewers, running water, gas (lot of the last,—most of it in the prospectus) It's called Elm Crest—beautiful, isn't it,—and not a stump within half a mile.”
Jack always remembered the interview. That Garry should help along anything that he took an interest in was quite in the line of his ambition and ability. Minott was as “smart as a steel trap,” Holker Morris had always said of him, “and a wonderful fellow among the men. He can get anything out of them; he would really make a good politician. His handling of the Corn Exchange showed that.”
And so it was not surprising,—not to Jack,—that when a new village councilman was to be elected, Garry should have secured votes enough to be included among their number. Nor was it at all wonderful that after taking his seat he should have been placed in charge of the village funds so far as the expenditures for contract work went. The prestige of Morris's office settled all doubts as to his fitness in construction; and the splendor of the wedding—there could still be seen posted in the houses of the workmen the newspaper cuts showing the bride and groom leaving the church—silenced all opposition to “our fellow townsman's” financial responsibility, even when that opposition was led by so prominent a ward heeler as Mr. Patrick McGowan, who had planned to get the position himself—and who became Garry's arch enemy thereafter.
In these financial and political advancements Corinne helped but little. None of the village people interested her, nor did she put herself out in the least to be polite to them. Ruth had called and had brought her hands full of roses—and so had her father. Garry had continued to thank them both for their good word to the church wardens—and he himself now and then spent an evening at MacFarlane's house without Corinne, who generally pleaded illness; but the little flame of friendship which had flashed after their arrival in Corklesville had died down again.
This had gone on until the acquaintance had practically ended, except when they met on the trains or in crossing the ferry. Then again, Ruth and her father lived at one end of the village known as Corklesville, and Garry and Corinne lived at the other end, known as Elm Crest, the connecting link being the railroad, a fact which Jack told Garry with a suggestive laugh, made them always turn their backs on each other when they parted to go to their respective homes, to which Garry would reply that it was an outrage and that he was coming up that very night—all of which he failed to do when the proposed visit was talked over with Corinne.
None of this affected Jack. He would greet Corinne as affectionately and cordially as he had ever done. He had taken her measure years before, but that made no difference to him, he never forgetting that she was his uncle's nominal daughter; that they had been sheltered by the same roof and that she therefore in a way belonged to his people. Moreover, he realized, that like himself, she had been compelled to give up many of the luxuries and surroundings to which she had been accustomed and which she loved,—worthless now to Jack in his freedom, but still precious to her. This in itself was enough to bespeak his sympathy. Not that she valued it;—she rather sniffed at it.
“I wish Jack wouldn't stand with his hat off until I get aboard the train,” she had told Garry one day shortly after their arrival—“he makes me so conspicuous. And he wears such queer clothes. He was in his slouch hat and rough flannel shirt and high boots the other day and looked like a tramp.”
“Better not laugh at Jack, Cory,” Garry had replied; “you'll be taking your own hat off to him one of these days; we all shall. Arthur Breen missed it when he let him go. Jack's queer about some things, but he's a thoroughbred and he's got brains!”
“He insulted Mr. Breen in his own house, that's why he let him go,” snapped Corinne. The idea of her ever taking off her hat, even figuratively, to John Breen, was not to be brooked,—not for an instant.
“Yes, that's one way of looking at it, Cory, but I tell you if Arthur Breen had had Jack with him these last few months—ever since he left him, in fact,—and had listened once in a while to what Jack thought was fair and square, the firm of A. B. & Co. would have a better hold on things than they've got now; and he wouldn't have dropped that million either. The cards don't always come up the right way, even when they're stacked.”
“It just served my stepfather right for not giving us some of it, and I'm glad he lost it,” Corinne rejoined, her anger rising again. “I have never forgiven him for not making me an allowance after I married, and I never will. He could, at least, have continued the one he always gave me.”
Garry winked sententiously, and remarked in reply that he might be making the distinguished money-bags an allowance himself one of these fine days, and he could if some of the things he was counting on came out top side up, but Corinne's opinions did not change either toward Jack or her stepfather.