CHAPTER VIPREMONITIONS
Helen stared at her chum for a moment and her laughing mouth turned downward, lending an expression of momentary gravity to her merry face.
“You don’t mean to say, Ruthie Fielding, that you are actually afraid of Sol Bloomberg?”
Ruth laid down the pictures and for the moment her face reflected the gravity of Helen’s.
“Iamafraid of Sol Bloomberg,” she told them simply. “Not that I think that he can get the better of me in a long fight. I believe that when it comes to a matter of endurance I have a far better chance than Bloomberg to win.”
“You bet you have, especially when you consider your wonderful support!” broke in Tom, with a grin.
“I am considering him,” said Ruth, with a grateful glance but no relaxing of her gravity. “That’s one of the things that makes me pretty sure of winning in a long race.
“But, oh, you don’t realize!” She leaned forward and cupped her little fighting chin in one hand while she regarded her companions with an intense earnestness. “It’s impossible for any one to understand who isn’t situated as I am how many small annoyances, little enough in themselves, but terrible when you group them all together, a man like Bloomberg can perpetrate. He knows the picture business through and through, he knows just how to hit in a vital spot and just the time to do it. He knows, and Charlie Reid knows too, that small delays mean actual loss in dollars and cents. He knows that when a company of actors is worked up to acting pitch that just some small delay or the introduction of a ludicrous incident will sometimes completely ruin their morale. He knows—but there!” She checked herself and looked a little embarrassed at her impassioned flow of words. “I’m going on dreadfully and you both must think me a regular kill-joy, but you asked me a question, Helen, and I’ve answered it the best I know how. Iamafraid of Sol Bloomberg!”
And this fear was in no way lessened during the busy, interest-filled days that followed.
Ruth might gradually have managed to forget Bloomberg had that man not taken great pains to keep himself alive in her memory. The threatening letter she had received from him just beforethe Charlie Reid incident proved to be only the first of many.
In the beginning Ruth determined to ignore these sneering missives. But when they continued to pour in upon her she laid the matter in desperation before Tom, and that young gentleman took a prompt and decisive hand in the game.
He wrote just one letter to Sol Bloomberg, and though Ruth never knew exactly what the contents of that letter were, it seemed to have the desired effect upon her enemy.
Bloomberg’s threatening missives ceased to come. But they had left their poison in the air behind them and, day or night, Ruth could never banish completely from her mind the vision of a malignant Bloomberg, promising dire things should she go on with her plans and undertake the filming of “The Girl of Gold.”
Lucky for Ruth and for Mr. Hammond’s hopes that hers was a fighting spirit and that opposition such as Bloomberg’s only made her more determined to succeed in spite of him.
It had been necessary for them to stay only one night in New York, since Mr. Hammond, in eager anticipation of Ruth’s acceptance of his proposition, anxious as he was to start the serious work of production without further delay, accepted Tom’s terms without question and immediately. He had already planned out all thedetails of the trip, to which it remained only for Ruth to acquiesce.
On reaching Cheslow, reservations were made at once by Tom on the train that would start the following morning for New York. The girls, while in New York, had done all the necessary shopping—though Helen had taken the heavy end of this undertaking, since Ruth was far too absorbed in her plans and in the scenario of “The Girl of Gold” to care much what she wore on the trip.
So on this particular evening Ruth was at work in her little study at the Red Mill, methodically gathering up all the loose ends of her affairs.
She was leaning over her desk, scanning again the pictures she had selected of the points they were to visit along the Yukon River when there was a slight rustling, and she looked around to see Aunt Alvirah coming into the room.
“I had to come in and sit with you, my pretty, just for a little while,” said the old woman, half apologetically. “I won’t see you for so long and I never know when you go away on one of these trips whether you’ll come back to your old Aunt Alvirah again, or whether she’ll be here to see you, when you do.”
“Why, Auntie, what a dreadful thing to say!” Ruth was on her feet in an instant and tenderly led the old woman to a chair. “You mustn’t talklike that, you know,” taking the wrinkled old hand in both her young ones and rubbing it gently, “or I won’t have the heart to go at all!”
“Oh, yes, you will, my pretty. And I wouldn’t hold you back if I could—I’m that proud of you! But it’s lonesome here at times, and your uncle, my dear——”
“Oh, I know,” Ruth broke in quickly. “I know just how trying he can be. But you mustn’t let him worry you, dear. It’s only his age that makes him so disagreeable, and he really doesn’t mean half he says——”
“There’s the doorbell!” cried the old lady, as a shrill clamor woke the echoes of the old house. “Oh, my back! and oh, bones! Let me go, my pretty. I must answer it.”
“I’d like to see you,” mocked Ruth gayly, as she pushed the old woman back into the chair with a firm and gentle hand. “It’s probably Tom, anyway.”
Ruth started toward the door, but on the instant there came the click of a latch and Tom’s cheery whistle sounded within the house.
“Right this way, Tommy-boy,” Ruth called. “Aunt Alvirah and I are holding a last minute confab. Join us!”
Tom came in, jaunty and joyful.
“I’ve made reservations all the way through to Seattle, though we have to change at Chicago,” hetold Ruth, after greeting Aunt Alvirah in his usual hearty way. “And, say, Ruthie, I’ve got a surprise for you. I’ve reserved a compartment for you and Helen for the whole trip.”
For a moment Ruth’s face radiated pleasure. Then it clouded again as she asked anxiously:
“What reservations have you made for Tommy-boy?”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter about him,” and Tom grinned. “He gets a lower berth in the Pullman—and lucky enough not to pull an upper,” he added, throwing his hat in one chair and himself in another. “The train is just about packed to capacity. It’s the flyer, you know, and mighty popular.”
“Then I don’t see how you managed to get a compartment,” Ruth said, puzzled. “You would think they would all have been snapped up long ago.”
“So they were—from Chicago out, at any rate,” said Tom. “But the millionaire diamond king that had yours changed his plans at the last minute and relinquished it. Thus my opportunity, which I grasped with both fists, and then some.”
“Luxury, thy name is sweet!” sighed Ruth, and went on with her work of gathering up loose ends.
“Where’s Helen?” asked Aunt Alvirah suddenly.
So quiet had the little old woman been, lost in the depths of the great chair, that Ruth and Tom had almost forgotten her presence in the room.
Now they both looked at her with the gentle consideration they always reserved for the frail old lady.
“Helen’s at home with Chess,” said Tom, with a grin. “Holding hands with him and sighing a last sad farewell.”
“Itisright hard on Chess,” said Aunt Alvirah gently. “In my day young ladies didn’t keep their future husbands waiting around so long. It don’t—well, it don’t seem quite fair.”
Ruth guessed that this was meant as a gentle rebuke to her as well as to Helen. She flushed a little and bent still more intently over her work.
It was Tom who broke the rather awkward silence.
“Oh, Chess doesn’t blame her,” he said easily. “Thinks she ought to have all the fun coming to her before she has to settle down. His chief worry is that he can’t go along with us. Poor old Chess, he works too hard. Thing he needs is to chuck business for a time and take a good long vacation.”
“When a man is to be married it’s right he should work hard” said Aunt Alvirah, looking soprim and sweet that Tom got up and enfolded her in a bear hug.
“The thing he ought to do, Auntie,” he said, resuming his seat and stretching out his long legs comfortably before him, “is to be like me and get himself interested in the movies. Then he can combine business with pleasure and pleasure with business and everybody’s happy!”
“I suppose so,” said Aunt Alvirah, with a gentle sigh. “But it wasn’t so in my day, indeed it wasn’t!”
Not until Aunt Alvirah had gone to bed, complaining patiently of her back and her bones, did Ruth broach the subject that was nearest her heart.
She and Tom were alone, and for a long time nothing had been said between them. They were in the habit of falling into these comfortable silences. A smile touched the corners of Tom’s wide, good-humored mouth as he watched Ruth neatly file the last few papers on her desk.
When it was all done Ruth turned around and answered Tom’s smile in kind.
“I don’t believe I’ve told you, Tommy-boy,” she said earnestly, “just how much I appreciate the sacrifice you’ve made.”
“Sacrifice?” repeated Tom, understanding but pretending that he did not.
“You know what I mean,” said Ruth gently.“It was big of you to give your consent to my undertaking this for Mr. Hammond. Not every one would have done that, under the circumstances, Tommy-boy.”
“Oh, I’m quite a remarkable fellow,” agreed Tom, with his cheery grin. “But then, so are you a remarkable young lady, Ruth Fielding,” he added gravely. “I don’t suppose any one understands what you are doing better than I, or appreciates it more. I’m lucky,” with another grin, just a bit rueful this time, “that you let me hang around at all!”
But Ruth was suddenly very much in earnest. She leaned forward and for just a moment let her hand rest lightly over Tom’s.
“Don’t ever say that again, Tommy-boy,” she said. “If I have succeeded, so have you. You don’t know how much you have helped me. Why, I just wouldn’t know how to go on without you!”
“As long as you feel that way about it, Ruth,” said Tom, very sincerely touched, “then I don’t care—a lot—about anything else!”