"'Goodness, George, don't knock the fire all to pieces.'"
"Shall you take your porch and your doors with you?" he asked, with a sorry smile. "They cost enough to be worth considering."
"No," she answered, with the simple literalness that builds a stone wall in a moment. "We shouldn't need them in an apartment-house."
"That's the idea, is it?"
"Yes, it strikes me that that would be the best thing all around—an apartment-house, with a cafe or something. Lots of nice people live that way now. Look at Cecilia Ingles's cousin; she is invited everywhere, and she entertains just the same as if she was in her own house. It's too hard work for me to run things like this, and I've just got to get farther away from this miserable lake."
"There's all the furniture."
"We could use some of it."
"And store the rest?"
"Yes—or auction it."
"Small profit in either. What are you going to do with the lease? Store it, or auction it, or use it for furnishing?"
Her lip quivered sensitively. "Why, I supposed—"
"Yes, wecansublet the house—if anybody is found to take it. There was something of a wait beforewetook it. There might be another."
"There's that Mrs. Cass—"
"I don't know how much she could do in three weeks—a good many people are fixed by this time. Two weeks sooner would have made some difference. I couldn't very well afford to carry the house all through the summer. There's a bottom to our pocket-book, and we are getting to it faster than you think."
This was a figure of speech that called for no direct response. For—
"Well," she went on, "that's my idea: a flat, with our meals. This would give me my chance to get away for a part of the summer—I'm sure I need it."
"Away for a part of the summer?"
"Yes. Mary Munson was saying something about my going to the White Mountains with her in July. They would do me good. Though perhaps the sea-shore might be better; plenty of those Down-east people are indebted to me now."
Another of those gauze veils was lifting. Married life was but a prolongation of girlhood, with all its associations and peregrinations. Where did the husband come in?
They left the house on the first of May. George recognized by this time the essential slightness and incapacity of his wife, and renounced the possibility of a home in any but a modified sense. Part of their goods were sacrificed at auction, part were stored at a rate that would have provided a home for a working-man's family, a few pieces were utilized in filling up a partly furnished flat, and the deserted house remained vacant through the summer. It was not until October that its ornate front and its tasteful decorations caught the eye of the right man, and by October a complication of interests had made a vacant house the very least of Ogden's concerns.
The place came under the consideration of the Floyds as soon as the intentions of the Ogdens became known. A decided change had come over Walworth's affairs; a less expensive house than his present one now seemed a great advantage. But his own lease ran for a year more; besides, his wife had too high an idea of their position and its dues to think of succeeding the young Ogdens in such a tenancy. The Floyds, as a matter of fact, were sinking to bed-rock-a foothold whose reality they had never tested yet; and there need be no wonder that the beginning of their downward course was marked by a slow reluctance. Walworth endeavored to make good the shortages occasioned through his brother's clippings by intrusting Ann with commissions on his behalf upon the Open Board—affairs in which she was no more successful for him than for herself; while his wife, for the first time, made some efforts in a society for which she had always had a shade of careless contempt.
The Ogdens established themselves anew in a large building where they had four or five, small rooms, and where they could breakfast and dine with a few hundred persons of like requirements and like situation. George now began renewed efforts to turn to account the property for which he had received deeds from McDowell. His halfyear of married life had put him in an awkward and straitened position, and the usual activity in real property that comes with the spring was something of which the utmost advantage must be taken.
He placed some of his outside acres with one or two good houses, but this entire side of business seemed pervaded by apathy.
"It's going to be an off-year," he was told. "Acres are down, and it looks as if they were going to stay so—for some time, anyway. We'll take this, though, and do what we can. You pay this year's taxes, of course?"
So much for the real estate. McDowell's notes, which he had made to run for a longer term than pleased anybody but himself, showed the due and prompt endorsement of interest payments; and if there was anything else in the general situation to call for gratulation Ogden failed to discover it.
Jessie Ogden's supposition with regard to Mary Brainard was justified by events; the poor exile was allowed to come back to town to attend her mother's funeral, and, thanks to a providential escort, she was enabled to bring her child with her. The two arrived under the charge of a distant relative by marriage of the Centralia Brainards, who was understood to be on the point of visiting the city anyway, for the purpose of "buying goods." He was presented by the name of Briggs.
He was a somewhat uncouth and slovenly man of thirty-five—a fair specimen of the type evolved by the small towns of southern Illinois. But he had a bright and capable way with him, and it seemed likely enough that if he were to transfer himself and his business to Chicago, as he once spoke of doing, he might work himself up into pretty fair shape. He was a widower.
He showed some fitting sense of the solemnity of the occasion that had brought him to the house; but it was fair to surmise from various tokens that his usual treatment of the subdued young mother was in the line of familiar kindness, which only genuine solicitude kept apart from semi-jocularity—a jocularity that had almost the effect of an understanding. He seemed to have about the same understanding with the baby; he had held it part of the time on the train, and he had shown a willingness to be useful in the same direction subsequently.
Brainard saw the child once. He looked at the boy's dark hair and eyes and vented a dreadful oath, and signified that while he and his mother were in the house the infant must be kept out of sight and out of sound.
Abbie Brainard made no effort towards further mediation between her father and her sister. The present status was endurable, and there was little to be gained by additional appeal to the irascible old man; it was irascibility rather than sorrow which now possessed him. Nothing irritated him more than an address to the deeper emotions, and the passing of his life-long partner was an address of this character. And this irascibility had risen to a pitch of fury on account of the unfortunate resemblance of Mary Vibert's child to its father.
Abbie was still leading her old life in her old way. She had her reading, her accounts, her church-work; but she went at these with less energy than she had shown a year ago. She had lost something in flesh and something in spirits, but nothing was slighted. She had no confidants and she made no moan.
"Whatisthe matter with her?" Cornelia would now and then ask herself. "If she would only rip out and say something; but I never saw a girl who was so mum. I'll get her out of this place, though, if anybody can. She has got to come up there and live with me. I'll fetch that, if I have to pull her up by the roots."
And then, putting generalization in the place of any tangible particulars, "I believe she's just starving"—which was not altogether wrong.
Cornelia found no specific grounds for approaching her father-in-law about Abbie, but she had some words with him about Abbie's sister.
She went to him one evening in his den; it was the day after the funeral. The distant wailing of the baby's voice had caused him to shut the door of his little room with a profane slam.
"Mr. Briggs is right there in the parlor," she said to him boldly, "waiting for her to come down; I don't see that it's going to help things any to slam doors. If he don't mind the baby, I guess we don't have to."
He turned upon her fiercely and half rose from his chair. It seemed for a moment as if he was intending to put her out of the room.
But she stood her ground and stared him full in the face. She was the only one in the family who, when the real pinch came, could look him down. He fell back in his seat and fixed an uncertain eye upon the panels of the door.
"There's such a thing as sense at such places as this, if you'd only know it," she went on. She spoke out loudly; she knew that if she used a moderate voice her tones would tremble. "I should think we might hold in for the day or so that the man's here. He knows why she was sent off down there, and that's bad enough; but it's worse for him to bring her up here and have her treated bad right before his face. Why can't you speak to her at table? Why can't you have—"
"That will do, Cornelia." He beat on the arm of his chair with his doubled-up fist. "We won't have anything more of this sort of thing. That will do."
But there was a kind of harsh grin on his face; he either admired her pluck or anticipated her point. She saw this and knew that she held him in her hand.
"No, it won't do, Cornelia—not yet. Why do you think he is here? Do you suppose a man goes travelling around the country with a woman and a three months' old baby for the fun of it? And he hasn't come up to 'buy goods'—don't you believe it. This is a great chance for Mayme, everything considered. He's a smart fellow, and you don't want to go and spoil it all. This is a thing that will take care of itself, if you'll only give it a show."
He stared at her—still rather forbiddingly. But she saw admiration appearing through indignation, and she judged that it was gaining the upper hand.
"Now," she said, with her own hand on the door-knob, "when you ask May me to-morrow morning if she would like another piece of steak, I want you to look at her; seems to me this is a time when a family should actlikea family. And I guess it wouldn't hurt you much to put yourself out far enough to ask that man to smoke a cigar with you. You try. And I think this door had better stay the way I leave it."
She passed out, leaving the door open. And open it remained.
In such fashion as this came Mary Brainard to her mother's burial. But her younger brother came not, and no one knew where he was or what he might be doing.
Briggs left for Centralia on the following evening, his charges remaining behind, by an inconclusive arrangement that might terminate in almost any way. Cornelia, who attended his departure with a lively interest, noticed that Abbie, in her hat and cloak, was trying to take advantage of this same occurrence to steal out of the house. She followed her through the vestibule and overtook her half way down the steps.
"Abbie!" she called after her, "where are you going?"
"'Sh!" Abbie said, softly. "I'm just going out for a few minutes."
"Neighbors?"
"No, not exactly," the girl hesitated. "I'm just going a block or two."
"You don't want to be trotting around alone this time of night. Sha'n't I go with you?"
She placed her hand on Abbie's arm to draw her back while she put on her own things. She felt her companion tremble, and saw an expression of anxiety on her face which she took to mean embarrassment.
"No, Cornelia, I don't want you to go with me. I don't need you, I've got to go alone."
"Upon my word, I think you're acting mighty queer. I just believe, Abbie Brainard, that you are going out to meet somebody—you, of all people!"
Abbie started. "Supposing I am?" she stammered.
"Who is it?" asked Cornelia, peremptorily. Only an extremely eager interest would have made her take this tone with Abbie. "Well, I must say, I think your father is a little too bad. Why can't he see that girls have got to be girls? First it's Mayme and now it's—"
"Cornelia!" cried Abbie, with a violent blush and the trembling voice that foreshadows tears. "It's my brother! It's Marcus!"
"Marcus!" exclaimed Cornelia. "Then Iamgoing, sure. Where are you to meet him—in the park?"
Abbie bowed assent.
"Well, then, you wait one second. I'll he right out again."
"Don't come. He won't speak to me if he sees anybody with me."
"I can stand around somewhere—I won't do any harm."
She was actuated as much by curiosity as by sympathy. She had never seen Marcus, but she remembered the "erring son" of her first play, and nothing more than one's first play has a fixed footing in one's association of ideas.
The park lay under the cold glare of the electric light, in the state of forbidding bareness that overtakes all such urban tracts during the earlier days of spring. Soggy footprints showed everywhere in the soaked brown turf that bordered the winding paths, and masses of dead leaves were matted together at the roots of the spindling shrubbery. The arc-lights threw a ghastly illumination on the flat white fronts of the houses that stood around in rows outside as well as on the stretches of theatrical posters which filled up the spaces between; and they flung deep shadows into the flimsy arbors and kiosks that started up here and there within. Abbie, with her companion, traversed a number of spongy, gravelled paths, and presently the figure of a man emerged from a summer-house and advanced to meet her. Cornelia turned off, and paused behind the thickened stalks of a bare bush.
"Marcus!" cried Abbie, as her brother moved towards her, "Marcus, why didn't you come? I waited at the door to let you in. Could anybody have made any trouble at such a time as that?"
He came up to her with a few unsteady steps. His eyes were blood-shot, and on his face, which seemed paler and thinner than ever under the white flood from the globe overhead, there was a long, half-healed scar. He looked at her in a dull, dazed way; perhaps he simply misapprehended these present words, perhaps he was unable to fully comprehend any words at all.
"You could have gone in a carriage all alone with me," she went on, in pitiful reproach. "And you could have stayed in it—you needn't have seen anybody else at all. I wanted you so much. Mayme came; why couldn't you? Oh, Marcus, you were thought of; your name was almost the last one said."
She threw her head on his shoulder and burst into tears. He gave way a little, and then, with an effort, he mastered a steadier pose.
Her crape brushed his face; he felt it, rather than saw it.
"'Is he dead?'"
"Is he dead?" Something like light came into his dull eye. The lamp above gave a sudden vast flicker, and the long scar on his face deepened and lengthened and came back to itself again. It was all like a sinister and cynical smile.
"Marcus! don't you know? Where have you been? Haven't you got any of my letters?"
He leaned against the silly rusticity of the summer-house, and looked at her with a dazed but inquiring eye.
"It's mother! It's mother!" the poor girl cried. "Why didn't you come?"
"Why, how is this?" asked Cornelia, stepping forward. "Hadn't he heard?"
"I mailed them to the same place. And the money—didn't you get that, either?"
He looked at her steadily and soberly, but his eyes had a heavy droop. "It's mother," he said at length; "it's mother that's dead." He sat down carefully on the steps of the summerhouse. "And my name was the last. Always the last, Abbie. When was it?"
"Has he moved—do you suppose?" asked Cornelia. She regarded him long and steadily. She seemed about to recognize him—though voice was apparently counting for more than face.
"It was only day before yesterday," Abbie said. "I tried to see you, but it was so far and there was so much to do. But I sent you word."
"I haven't been there lately," he said slowly. "I couldn't have come day before yesterday," he added presently.
"Where have I seen him before?" thought Cornelia. And, "What is the matter with him?" she seemed to ask of Abbie.
"I couldn't come," he repeated. "I'm sorry," he added humbly. "I was—somewhere else."
"Have you been away all these three months? I haven't seen you since almost New Year's. Have you been away from the city all this time?"
"I have been somewhere—somewhere else," he repeated thickly. 'He rose tremblingly. "I suppose they'll have me there again, some time. Well, all right," he said, with resignation.
"What does he mean?" asked Abbie, turning appealingly to Cornelia.
Marcus followed his sister's eyes. He looked at Cornelia narrowly, his own eyes half closed. "Who is this?" he asked.
"It's Cornelia—Burt's wife."
"Burt's wife?" He held her with an enigmatical stare. "I have seen her," he said; "before."
"Where?" thought Cornelia. "Not possibly at—the theatre?"
"In church," he explained, with a slow gravity. "He isn't dead—Burt?"
"Dead?" cried Cornelia. "No, indeed."
"No, he isn't dead," Marcus repeated deliberately. His eyelids raised themselves. "He is married; he has half a million," he went on, with the same slowness. His eye lighted up with a malignant glare. "No, he isn't dead. But—"
He stretched himself aloft, and thrust out his arm, and staggered, and only half-saved himself.—"but I will kill him," he added suddenly.
"Marcus!" his sister screamed; "are you mad?"
He lay slantingly against the corner of the summer-house. His arm caught at the crosspieces of the rustic carpentry, and he hung there panting. Presently a little stream of blood began to trickle across the palm of his hand—he had torn himself on a nail. He felt the warm fluid on his skin, and held up his hand to his own curious and impersonal inspection.
"Give me your handkerchief, Cornelia," Abbie implored pitifully. She folded her own and laid Cornelia's over it, and twisted it around his thumb and tied it over his wrist.
His fingers felt thin and claw-like, and there was a grime rubbed into their cracked and roughened skin—those girlish fingers (his mother's fingers) that had once held a pencil so delicately.
"I have seen her—before," he repeated. "Here." He jerked his hand out of his sister's hold and waved it over the circumscribed and shabby landscape. The light shimmered on the leaden surface of the pond behind them, and the wind rustled the stark weeds along its muddy edges. "I knew it was coming." Abbie caught his hand back. "Half a million; he never did anything for me. I will killhim" he muttered faintly.
Cornelia continued her inspection of him. "Abbie, just look at these clothes, will you? And he hasn't got any cuffs on, either."
"Marcus!" his sister called appealingly. Her raised voice indicated that, after all, she must acknowledge him as other than himself. "All that money I sent you—you need it. Go right away to-morrow to your old number and get it." She turned to Cornelia. "I haven't got any; have you? I forgot it, after all."
"Just this half-dollar," she answered. "Exactly what I paid," she said to herself, "to see him in this part once before." She recognized him now; she saw that she had been interested in the new actor because nobody else had seemed so; and she felt sure that his attempt on the stage had been the same brief failure that all of his other attempts must have been as well.
Marcus raised himself, and a sly smile came over his face. "Money?" he said. "Keep it. I don't want it. I can raise all I need. Vibert knew the ropes, and now I know them just as well myself. I can do business all right again. No money, Abbie; no." He thrust it back upon her. "He always said I wasn'tfitfor business; but I'll show him."
He braced himself and stepped out decidedly into the path. He turned in the direction of the exit. The other two insensibly took this direction as well, and fell to regulating their steps by his.
"You are a good sister, Abbie," he said, as they passed out. "You have been good to me. Good." He put his hand on hers; he had forgotten that it was bandaged. There was a soft stringency in the folds of the handkerchiefs, but she felt his grateful pulses underneath.
"Oh, Cornelia," moaned poor Abbie; "I must take him home—I must—I must! So near at hand—and the place where he belongs. I can't leave him to go wandering around like this."
Marcus laid his bandaged hand on his sister's shoulder. "No, Abbie." The earlier waves of a sodden stupor now seemed to be washing over him, and he looked on the two girls with a dull leer. "Not home. Better place than home. But some time—I will come home some time. He never treated me as well as he did Burt." His tones came thickly. "I will kill him," he murmured softly to himself in a drunken confidence.
He turned off, down a side street. Abbie stood watching him as he disappeared, to reappear in the light of frequent lamp-posts. Presently he turned a corner. Abbie clasped her hand tightly in her companion's and allowed herself to be led home.
"Another job for me," said Cornelia, thoughtfully.
The Ogdens, in their apartment, presented to their callers substantially the same aspect that they had offered in a complete house, save that the dining-room had been lopped off, along with the kitchen. They were a shade more compact and, if anything, a shade more luxurious.
Among the first of their callers here was the faithful Brower. As he lounged back in a familiar easy-chair he cast his eye around the drawingroom and the reception-hall; he recognized a number of things from the other house, and detected, too, a good many novel elegancies. In one corner of the room, in particular, there stood a delightful little tea-table; and he learned that the full paraphernalia of the delicate function known as "a tea" could be produced at a moment's notice.
On the purchase of this adjunct to polite living Jessie had brought all her insistence to bear. Life to her had now come merely to mean receiving and being received; and to receive at all she must receive correctly and elegantly.
"It's about all I feel equal to doing now—giving teas," she explained; "and that's all the more reason why I should do it properly. Now, Cecilia Ingles's table and china—"
"For Heaven's sake, Jessie, please to remember that you are not Mrs. Ingles and that I am not her husband. Can you expect me to compete with a man who has an income like his? Do you know what that building—that building alone—pays him a year?"
"Well, I only want things nice. I shall have to live quietly for a while—I don't feel as if I had any great strength; and I don't think I ought to be denied such a small thing as this."
Hence the charming little tea-table, the delicate and exquisite porcelain, and the beautifully burnished kettle; and hence, too, the cup for Brower, so that he might see how the whole thing went. But the hand that passed it to him was white and tremulous, and the graceful bit of lace over the wrist fluttered with a pitiful palpitation.
"I'm going to put another lump on your saucer; so sorry you have caught us without a lemon." She smiled at him as she spoke, and he could not but see that her lips had a bluish tinge. "So good of you to let me come in just as I was." She smoothed down the fall of lace along the front of her wrapper. "But I hardly felt equal to dressing this evening; besides, an old friend like you—"
The "old friend" went home and talked things over with his room-mate.
He lit the burners on both sides of his dressing-case mirror and slowly took off his coat. His room-mate was in his shirt-sleeves, too.
"I wonder if he is happy," said Brower, thoughtfully running his thumb-nail along the teeth of his tortoise-shell comb.
"He tried hard enough to be," answered his room-mate, running his thumb along the teeth ofhiscomb.
Brower sighed and looked with frank but troubled eyes into his friend's face. "Too hard, perhaps."
The other returned his glance in kind. "I'm afraid so," he breathed.
"He figured it all out beforehand," said Brower. "We talked a good deal on the subject generally."
"That sort of thing doesn't always pay."
"We considered the rich girl and the poor girl," Brower went on. "But there's another kind of girl that we both failed to take account of."
"What kind is that?"
"The girl in very moderate circumstances who has spent all her time in going about among wealthy relatives and friends."
"The poor princess who makes the grand chain of other people's castles?"
"Yes," assented Brower; "the grand chain of other people's castles. It's demoralizing."
"Is he a disappointed man?"
"Yes; I'm certain of it. Disappointed, and worried half to death. I'm sorry for him. I'm afraid for him."
He sat down on the edge of the bed and began to unlace his shoes. His room-mate wore shoes of the same size and laced them in the same way.
"I wonder," said he, "if he really loved her?"
"'Sh!" said Brower.
"Wasn't there another one that hedidlove?"
"Not a word more!" cried Birower.
He undressed and got into bed. He took a book with him. It was "A Mistaken Marriage"—he read everything.
"What do you want to read for?" asked the other. "It's late."
"I read because I don't want to think." He opened at the mark and settled back on his pillow and started in.
"Where are you now?" demanded his double.
"Page 316; the castle's on fire."
"Do you want anything more about castles?"
"No."
"And haven't you had enough of fires?"
"Plenty."
"Well, then!"
Out went the gas, and sleep presently succeeded.
The Ogdens had other callers; among them was Frederick Pratt.
Frederick had left the Underground for the temple at the extreme end of the street, where he was engaged in an ardent study of puts and calls. The atmosphere of the Board of Trade is less sedate than that of the clearing-house association, and the new recruit had become still more volatile and giddy. He was skating on thinner ice and was putting more assurance into his movements.
Pratt, like Brower, made his own observations on the new status of the Ogdens; but unlike Brower, he did not keep his opinions and conjectures to himself. He gave the same currency to his reflections on this pair that he had given to those on the Viberts—and among others thus favored were the Floyds.
"What's the matter with George, anyhow?" he asked Walworth one evening. They were sitting again in Floyd's library, and a light haze of tobacco-smoke prompted to elegiac revery. "He looks old. And he has come to be as poky as the deuce. He seemed last night as if he was worried half to death."
"I guess he is," answered Walworth. "He's anxious about his wife, for one thing."
"Well, she does look pretty bad, that's a fact. I don't believe she will live the year out. The first cold weather will carry her off."
"Don't say that!" exclaimed Mrs. Floyd. "She's delicate, and she has got to take care of herself. But to talk about dying—that's another thing."
"I'm not so sure." And Walworth shook his head gravely.
"But there's something more than that," said Freddy. "It's money. Gad! how they are fixed up! How can he stand it?"
"He can't," answered Walworth; "he's falling behind. And there is that house of his empty yet. I'd take it off his hands myself if it wasn't for being left in the same fix too. Wish I could help him; he hasn't said anything, though."
"He won't, either," replied Pratt. "He ain't that kind."
"Well, I don't see that we need trouble ourselves about help," Ann broke in. "He harmed me, anyway, a great deal more than he helped me—with that precious brother-in-law of his."
"I imagine he knows all about the brother-in-law, too, by this time," rejoined Walworth. "Haven't you got almost tired of twanging that string?"
He wondered if Ogden's brother-in-law were really as trying as his own sister-in-law.
Still other callers favored the Ogdens. Among them was one that had not called at the other house—that had never before, indeed, called at any house whatever. About the first of August a little debutante appeared on the social scene and was "received" with all the care and flattering attention that the new apartment had at its disposal She was a pale and fragile little bud, like many of the exotics with which her mother was fond of decorating her rooms; she had the same slender fingers that set these flowers around, and the same large blue eyes that studied their effect.
A nurse came, and she stayed long after the time when a mere nurse-maid should have taken her place. Curtains were pulled down and kept so; the doctor's carriage (and sometimes more than one) stood waiting before the big doorway of the "Westmoreland"; bottles big and little accumulated on tables and shelves; and cautious tiptoeing became the habit of the whole household; until, at the end of a month, mother and child were doing as well—and only as well—as could be expected. This was not well at all. But both were out of immediate danger, and presently both appeared to mend.
The nurse-maid now arrived, and the carriage and the cap. The languid young mother was capable of taking but a tepid interest in most things, but she rallied her powers to enforce the cap, Cecilia Ingles was her model here as in other matters, and the model was followed closely. Not every girl would wear a cap, but at last a capable one was found who was willing to. The lace cover of the perambulator and the white frills of its propeller were a frequent sight on the streets for a little time; then the necessity developed for the transfer of mother, child, and nurse, during a few weeks, to the convenient sanatorium provided by nature in southern Wisconsin.
The little party was back again in town at the opening of the fall season. Jessie employed her dwindling powers in a partial resumption of the duties which she felt that "society" demanded of her, and the child taxed the energies and resources of the maid, who received little real assistance from its mother. There were small gusts and starts of maternal affection now and then, but they would quickly run their brief course and baby would be carried out of the room. Ogden wondered, from a curiously impersonal outside standpoint, whether he was to attribute this to his wife's waning vitality or to an inherent incapacity for deep and genuine feeling.
But this matter soon passed beyond the confines of discussion. The day came when the nurse was dismissed, the carriage was put away, and Brower went with the stricken father to select a lot in the cemetery. It came that the two stood together one forenoon before a wide and polished mahogany counter, and bent their heads over a handsome plat that was neatly lettered and numbered, and was shaded in pleasant tints of blue and green. A man stood on the other side of the counter and tapped the drawing here and there with the reversed end of a fat penholder.
"This is a good section," he said; he was pausing over a green oval which was intersected by four or five fine black lines. "You are right on a leading drive-way"—carrying the pen-holder along between the waving of two other and wider lines that ran parallel—"and just over here is the lake"—with his little finger on a tangled and shapeless patch of blue.
"That small lot could be made to do," said Brower, softly.
"This is the most fashionable part of the whole place," the man went on, with an indifferent loudness. "See here." He took down a large warped photograph from its place on a dusty shelf behind him, and gave it a dexterous wipe with his elbow. "This monument here is just across the drive-way, and it cost twenty thousand dollars. Put up this summer by Arthur J. Ingles—I guess you've heard ofhim?
"Good God!" groaned Ogden. "Have I got to compete with that man even in the graveyard?"
The next afternoon a sombre little procession took its way limits-ward to a tract outside, which was tenderly enclosed by great stretches of barbed wire, and was neighbored by the noise and glare of several stone-cutting yards. This little train traversed the raw and ragged edges of the town, and trailed across the succeeding reach of open prairie-land, over which led a long, straight, sandy road, dotted here and there with houses of refreshment for the occupants of mourning-coaches and for their drivers. There was the raw chill in the air which the north sometimes sends down into our early October days. The poor mother sobbed and coughed and shivered in her corner of the carriage; she returned to her home ill and exhausted, and entered it never to leave it alive.
It costs when a baby comes, it costs when a baby goes, it costs when a wife lies sick and dying, and Ogden now confessed himself almost driven to the wall.
"I know, George," his wife said, "that everything has been a great expense; but I'm sure papa would help us if you only spoke to him."
"What!" he cried, harshly.
She started, and presently was all a-tremble. Then she fell back weakly and coughed long and violently. "Oh, George, how could you?" she gasped.
"Forgive me, my poor child," he said, and took her hand. "But I could never do anything like that—never."
"Then she fell back whanly and coughed long and violently."
The next day he took the McDowell notes and spent what time he could spare among the brokers. They passed commendingly on the prompt payment of the interest as shown by the endorsements; but McDowell was pretty well known, and it was intimated that endorsements of another sort would be needed to make negotiation possible.
Then he got out the abstract of one of the McDowell tracts—the only one that he personally and individually had any right to use. "You've got considerably more than a pocketful there," the door-keeper of the Clifton Deposit Vaults said to him as he passed out. He left the abstract with a firm of mortgage brokers for examination. In the course of a week they advised him that a release had been over-looked—an instrument which must show of record before a loan could be effected on the property.
The tract had been put through a good many paces, and some of McDowell's work had been too hurried to be careful. The man to give the necessary release was a professional tax-buyer. He lived on the mistakes and misfortunes of other people—their sins of omission and commission; and such an act from such a man would cost something. It might be ten dollars, or fifty, or five hundred.
He waited in this harpy's outer office, while another caller, a woman, claimed attention in the inner one. It was Ann Wilde; he recognized her and she recognized him. She threw a scowling glance upon him, and her harsh and vindictive tones fell on his ears for several succeeding minutes. She knew his necessities; could she be making them known to another?
It seemed so when his turn came. The release would be given only on payment of a sum that, in his present circumstances, was simply impossible.
He seemed now to have exhausted all expedients—all legitimate ones. A bitter recollection of that Sunday drive in the country came over him; he had indeed given a free rein to his wife, and just how close he was to graze against ruin only the future could show. He spent a miserable, sleepless night, and at daybreak he had decided to tax the bank for his own necessities—relying upon the present maturing of his notes to set himself right within a month or two. Do not inquire as to his precise method—there are many ways to take: the actual appropriation of currency, the abstraction of securities, the overissue of certificates of stock, and so on and on. He chose the method which seemed liable to the lightest misconstruction and allowable of the promptest reparation. He avoided seeing himself in the aspect of a criminal by pleading his own cruel needs and by believing in his ability to make a prompt and complete restitution. Perhaps neither of these two reasons could have stood alone, but they leaned together and held each other up—a precarious poise that was not long to endure.
It endured, in fact, scarcely a fortnight. It lapsed at the close of a dull October day—a day that was within one of the first anniversary of his marriage. Let the means by which he was detected be asked no more than the means through which he transgressed. The delicate mechanism of a bank's accounts responds sensitively to the slightest and most ingenious variation; and it may be, too, that some one in this particular bank was watching for the slip and was waiting for the chance to expose and punish it.
The smoky dusk of the short afternoon was falling outside, while within, under the illumination made by a single electric light, a mother, in the same room where one of Brainard's daughters had plead for the other, was now pleading with him for her son.
No taint had ever fallen before on any of her family or connections. She was crushed and dazed at the thought that anything like this had happened, could have happened, had had the slightest need of happening. And she was dumfounded that all explanation fell upon heedless ears, and that all offers of restitution encountered such, stubborn, brutish, and determined opposition.
"We have lands," she cried, with the tears coursing down her anxious face. "We can make this good, twice and three times over. What more can you want?"
But Brainarddidwant something more. He wanted the ruin of her son.
"A bank can't deal in real estate," he said doggedly.
He sent a malevolent glance across the table on whose far edge Ogden's bowed head was resting. Beside Ogden stood Fairchild; there was a look of sympathetic distress upon his kindly face.
"It is true," he said, in a low and quiet tone, "that it is not allowable for us to make a loan upon real property; but it would not be amiss for us to take it in payment of this—this—"
"Theft!" cried Brainard loudly. Ogden winced and shuddered; his mother sank into a chair with a low moan.
"Look here, Fairchild," the old man went on, holding up his forefinger with an offensively masterful effect of caution, "it will pay you to go pretty slow just about here. This"—he wagged his head contemptuously towards the bowed: head of the culprit—"wasyourman. You took his letters; you put him in here. Just stop and think of that!"
Fairchild bit his lip.
"And the other man, before him, was yours. Don't forget that, either." His face showed a cruel and malignant grin.
Fairchild flushed, and lowered his eyes to the floor in silence. Ogden half raised his head to look at him; what could these words mean? He looked at his mother, too; she was lying back with her face in her hands.
The young man's own dace was mapped with the lines of a worry that goads one on to desperation, and it was painted with the blended hue that comes from shame and anxiety and fear and the exhausting struggles carried on through long and sleepless nights. It was hard to face these other faces; it was hard to face even the light of day, thick and dulling though it might be. His head drooped again to the friendly dusk of the table-top before him.
"By Heaven," Brainard went on, "not another man comes into this bank except under a guarantee; and he'll pay the premium for it if he don't stay more than a week. You might think, in a small bank like this, that some kind of eye could be kept on things; but it seems not. It's pick and steal, all the time; first one, then another. No sooner is young Pratt rooted out than this fellow comes up. One steady string of flea-bites—I can't stand it; I won't stand it. Do you think I am going to have Shayne and Cutter and all the rest of 'em go around and tell how Brainard's always got somebody else's hand in his pants pocket and never finds it out? Not very much. I do find it out and I'm going to punish it. You needn't ask me to hold off—it's no use. There's a law for this, and that law is going to take its course."
His white hair stood up in a stiff shock over his forehead, and the gray gristle sprouting on his lip moved up and down forbiddingly as the lip itself worked over the broken row of his teeth. The red veins in his nose showed more redly yet, and his fists were clenched at the ends of his down-hung arms with the straightened tension of an inexorable will.
"My poor boy! My poor boy!" his mother cried. She came over to him and bowed her head on his.
Fairchild looked at Brainard—a look that called for all his self-control and fortitude. "This is too hard," he said. "There was provocation for him, and there are means to make everything good."
"See here, Fairchild," cried the enraged old man, "you have got to keep out of this, if you want to stay friends with me. We've pulled together a good while, but we shall pull apart after five seconds more of this. That young man there has fooled along with us a little too far. He has had his fun, and now he shall pay for it. He shall; by God, I say he shall!"
His voice rose to a harsh and strident cry, and his great fist fell with a ponderous thud on the table before him.
A second later another hand was heard—on the other side of the door. It was faint, but it was audible. It had been preparing for five long and hesitating minutes. To the heart that guided this hand the five seemed five-and-twenty.
Fairchild moved swiftly towards the door and laid his hand upon the knob to prevent any intrusion.
The knock was repeated. He opened the door to a narrow crack. Then he opened it wider.
Abbie Brainard stood on the threshold.
She stepped in swiftly and softly. She shut the door behind her quickly and then leaned her back against its shining panels.
Her face was pale; her bosom was heaving; but her gray eyes gave out the strong and steady light of courage and resolution.
Ogden saw her. He locked his jaws, and took a firm hold on the two arms of his chair, and raised himself and stood erect before her. Had not she herself, on this very spot, once done the same for him? However it might be, or might have been, with others, here, at least, was one who should not see him humbled.
There was no salutation of any kind on either side. She saw him, but seemed to be looking beyond him rather than at him; and in his eyes she stood there with the remote inaccessibility of some distant snow-peak.
Her father turned towards her.
"Abbie! You here? What do you want? What do you mean by coming in like this? Go out again!"
She looked at him with a cool and quiet inflexibility. But her voice was low and trembling as she said,
"I shall stay."
"You can't; you mustn't. You don't want to mix up in this business—you don't understand."
He laid one hand on her arm, and with the other he reached out towards the door-knob.
She withdrew her arm from the hold of his fingers.
"I understand," she said, immovably.
He drew back. "You do? Well, stay then, if you will, and understand better. Learn what kind of a man he really is."
He thrust out his arm towards Ogden, with a cruel and contemptuous smile.
"He came here with letters," he began. "We gave him a chance. Nobody really knew what he was—"
Ogden stood there straight before him. He ground his teeth together to keep his face composed; behind him his nails dug into the palms of his hands, as he held himself back from springing forward and fastening them around the throat of Abbie Brainard's father. There was a ringing in his ears, and through it there sounded faintly the fine tones of Fairchild, speaking to Mary Brainard:
"Nobody really knows who he is, or who his people are, or where he is from ... a town full to overflowing with single young men ... from everywhere. They are taken on faith. Most of them are all right, no doubt; but others—"
He was now one of the "others"; his "people," whom no one had known, were to be known now, after years of probity, as the relatives of a—
"Nobody really knew who he was," Brainard repeated; "but he was taken right in and given a good place. Hasn't he ever wondered why? Is it so easy to go into a new town, and get a good job in a bank the very first thing? Wasn't there any other men to jump at the chance of a position half as good—ain't the city full of 'em? Wasn't there any of 'em in the bank itself who was waiting for the place themselves—and had a right to it, too? Why was there a vacant place to fill, anyhow? Because, a week before, another man had done just what this man has done. He was your man, Fairchild, too. And why did this one here come stepping in ahead of all the old ones? You fixed it, Fairchild; you liked his looks and his talk, you said. Another bad guess for you."
Fairchild studied the carpet with abashed eyes, as were he himself the culprit.
"Yes," Brainard continued, "he was put in a good place and he was pushed right along. Hasn't he ever guessed why? Does a new man come into an office like this, and get as far along inside of a year as he has, without there being any reason for it 2 I'll tell him the reason for it. I did it because my girl here—"
"Father!" cried Abbie, with face aflame. "No! No!"
"You say you understand," he said, turning towards her. "Now, lethimunderstand, too. I advanced him to this position," he went on shamelessly, "because my girl here asked me to."
"No, father! No!" the poor child cried. She threw her shamefaced head on Mrs. Ogden's bosom. She had never seen her before, but under such circumstances the only place for a woman's face was on another woman's breast.
"Yes, you did, too—ask me," he went on, with increased hardihood. "Or just the same as asked—I knew what you meant, well enough. And I said to myself I'd do it. One girl went wrong," he continued, with a choking in his throat, "and I wanted to do what I could to—I wanted Abbie to do different; I wasn't going to have her carried off by another infernal scoundrel."
Ogden flushed and paled and sank down into his chair. His head dropped into his hands; there was no possibility of his holding it up before anything like this.
"And so I helped him on. I said, 'If I do the right thing by him, he will do the right thing by—her; he will act like a man.' Ididdo the right thing by him—and what then? He had been hanging around all the spring—taking walks and sitting out in front and borrowing books. But the moment I put him on his legs what did he do?"
He was addressing the young man's mother now, whose tear-stained face showed over Abbie's black hat, and whose poor old hand was laid tenderly on Abbie's shoulder. It was plain to every one now that the question was not one of money. Ogden saw clearly enough at last why he had suffered wreck when so many others had ridden the waves. Pratt had filched and had escaped. McDowell had plundered right and left and had never been brought down. Brainard himself had piled up a scandalous fortune and yet had contrived to evade the law. But none of them had come athwart the mortified rage of a father—a father who had humbled his inborn savageness and pride for a daughter's sake and had humbled himself in vain.