47CHAPTER VEX MACHINA
After she had become accustomed to the smell of rancid oil and dyestuffs and the interminable racket of machinery she did not find her work at the knitting mill disagreeable. It was like any work, she imagined, an uninteresting task which had to be done.
The majority of the girls and young men of the village worked there in various capacities; wages were fair, salaries better, union regulations prevailed. There was nothing to complain of.
And nothing to expect except possible increase in wages, holidays, and a disquieting chance of getting caught in the machinery, which familiarity soon discounted.
As for the social status of the mill workers, the millwasGayfield; and Gayfield was a village where the simpler traditions of the Republic still survived; where there existed no invidious distinction in vocations; a typical old-time community harbouring the remains of a Grand Army Post and too many churches of too many denominations; where the chance metropolitan stranger was systematically “done”; where distrust of all cities and desire to live in them was equalled only by a passion for moving pictures and automobiles; where the school trustees used double negatives and traced their ancestry to Colonial considerables—who, however, had signed their names in “lower case” or with a Maltese cross—the world in miniature, with its due48proportion of petty graft, petty squabbles, envy, kindness, jealousy, generosity, laziness, ambition, stupidity, intelligence, honesty, hypocrisy, hatred, affection, badness and goodness, as standardised by the code established according to folk-ways on earth—in brief, a perfectly human community composed of the usual ingredients, worthy and unworthy—that was Gayfield, Mohawk County, New York.
Before spring came—before the first robin appeared, and while icy roads still lay icy under sunlit pools of snow-water—a whole winter indoors, and a sedentary one, had changed the smoothly tanned and slightly freckled cheeks of Rue Carew to a thinner and paler oval. Under her transparent skin a tea-rose pink came and went; under her grey eyes lay bluish shadows. Also, floating particles of dust, fleecy and microscopic motes of cotton and wool filling the air in the room where Ruhannah worked, had begun to irritate her throat and bronchial tubes; and the girl developed an intermittent cough.
When the first bluebird arrived in Gayfield the cough was no longer intermittent; and her mother sent her to the village doctor. So Rue Carew was transferred to the box factory adjoining, in which the mill made its own paper boxes, where young women sat all day at intelligent machines and fed them with squares of pasteboard and strips of gilt paper; and the intelligent and grateful machines responded by turning out hundreds and hundreds of complete boxes, all neatly gilded, pasted, and labelled. And after a little while Ruhannah was able to nourish one of these obliging and responsive machines. And by July her cough had left her, and two delicate freckles adorned the bridge of her nose.49
The half-mile walk from and to Brookhollow twice a day was keeping her from rapid physical degeneration. Yet, like all northern American summers, the weather became fearfully hot in July and August, and the half-mile even in early morning and at six in the evening left her listless, nervously dreading the great concrete-lined room, the reek of glue and oil, the sweaty propinquity of her neighbours, and the monotonous appetite of the sprawling machine which she fed all day long with pasteboard squares.
She went to her work in early morning, bareheaded, in a limp pink dress very much open at the throat, which happened to be the merciful mode of the moment—a slender, sweet-lipped thing, beginning to move with grace now—and her chestnut hair burned gold-pale by the sun.
There came that movable holiday in August, when the annual shutdown for repairs closed the mill and box factory during forty-eight hours—a matter of prescribing oil and new bearings for the overfed machines so that their digestions should remain unimpaired and their dispositions amiable.
It was a hot August morning, intensely blue and still, with that slow, subtle concentration of suspended power in the sky, ominous of thunder brooding somewhere beyond the western edges of the world.
Ruhannah aided her mother with the housework, picked peas and a squash and a saucer full of yellow pansies in the weedy little garden, and, at noon, dined on the trophies of her husbandry, physically and æsthetically.
After dinner, dishes washed and room tidied, she sat down on the narrow, woodbine-infested verandah with50pencil and paper, and attempted to draw the stone bridge and the little river where it spread in deeps and shallows above the broken dam.
Perspective was unknown to her; of classic composition she was also serenely ignorant, so the absence of these in her picture did not annoy her. On the contrary, there was something hideously modern and recessional in her vigorous endeavour to include in her drawing everything her grey eyes chanced to rest on. She even arose and gently urged a cow into the already overcrowded composition, and, having accomplished its portrait with Cezanne-like fidelity, was beginning to look about for Adoniram to include him also, when her mother called to her, holding out a pair of old gloves.
“Dear, we are going to save a little money this year. Do you think you could catch a few fish for supper?”
The girl nodded, took the gloves, laid aside her pencil and paper, picked up the long bamboo pole from the verandah floor, and walked slowly out into the garden.
A trowel was sticking in the dry earth near the flower bed, where poppies, and pansies, and petunias, and phlox bordered the walk.
Under a lilac the ground seemed moister and more promising for vermicular investigation; she drew on her gloves, dug a few holes with the trowel, extracted an angleworm, frowned slightly, holding it between gloved fingers, regarding its contortions with pity and aversion.
To bait a hook was not agreeable to the girl; she managed to do it, however, then shouldering her pole she walked across the road and down to the left, through rank grasses and patches of milkweed, bergamot, and queen’s lace, scattering a cloud of brown and silver-spotted butterflies.51
Alder, elder, and Indian willow barred her way; rank thickets of jewelweed hung vivid blossoming drops across her path; woodbine and clematis trailed dainty snares to catch her in their fairy nets; a rabbit scurried out from behind the ruined paper mill as she came to the swift, shallow water below the dam.
Into this she presently plumped her line, and the next instant jerked it out again with a wriggling, silvery minnow flashing on the hook.
Carrying her pole with its tiny, glittering victim dangling aloft, Rue hastily retraced her steps to the road, crossed the bridge to the further end, seated herself on the limestone parapet, and, swinging her pole with both hands, cast line and hook and minnow far out into the pond. It was a business she did not care for—this extinguishing of the life-spark in anything. But, like her mill work, it appeared to be a necessary business, and, so regarding it, she went about it.
The pond above the half-ruined dam lay very still; her captive minnow swam about with apparently no discomfort, trailing on the surface of the pond above him the cork which buoyed the hook.
Rue, her pole clasped in both hands between her knees, gazed with preoccupied eyes out across the water. On the sandy shore, a pair of speckled tip-ups ran busily about, dipping and bobbing, or spread their white, striped wings to sheer the still surface of the pond, swing shoreward with bowed wings again, and resume their formal, quaint, and busy manners.
From the interstices of the limestone parapet grew a white bluebell—the only one Rue had ever seen. As long as she could remember it had come up there every year and bloomed, snow-white amid a world of its blue comrades in the grass below. She looked for it now,52saw it in bud—three sturdy stalks sprouting at right angles from the wall and curving up parallel to it. Somehow or other she had come to associate this white freak of nature with herself—she scarcely knew why. It comforted her, oddly, to see it again, still surviving, still delicately vigorous, though where among those stone slabs it found its nourishment she never could imagine.
The intense blue of the sky had altered since noon; the west became gradually duller and the air stiller; and now, over the Gayfield hills, a tall cloud thrust up silvery-edged convolutions toward a zenith still royally and magnificently blue.
She had been sitting there watching her swimming cork for over an hour when the first light western breeze arrived, spreading a dainty ripple across the pond. Her cork danced, drifted; beneath it she caught the momentary glimmer of the minnow; then the cork was jerked under; she clasped the pole with all her strength, struck upward; and a heavy pickerel, all gold and green, sprang furiously from the water and fell back with a sharp splash.
Under the sudden strain of the fish she nearly lost her balance, scrambled hastily down from the parapet, propping the pole desperately against her body, and stood so, unbending, unyielding, her eyes fixed on the water where the taut line cut it at forty-five degrees.
At the same time two men in a red runabout speeding westward caught sight of the sharp turn by the bridge which the ruins of the paper mill had hidden. The man driving the car might have made it even then had he not seen Ruhannah in the centre of the bridge. It was instantly all off; so were both mud-guards and one53wheel. So were driver and passenger, floundering on their backs among the rank grass and wild flowers. Ruhannah, petrified, still fast to her fish, gazed at the catastrophe over her right shoulder.
A broad, short, squarely built man of forty emerged from the weeds, went hastily to the car and did something to it. Noise ceased; clouds of steam continued to ascend from the crumpled hood.
The other man, even shorter, but slimmer, sauntered out of a bed of milkweed whither he had been catapulted. He dusted with his elbow a grey felt hat as he stood looking at the wrecked runabout; his comrade, still clutching a cigar between his teeth, continued to examine the car.
“Hell!” remarked the short, thickset man.
“It’s going to rain like it, too,” added the other. The thunder boomed again beyond Gayfield hills.
“What do you know about this!” growled the thickset man, in utter disgust. “Do we hunt for a garage, or what?”
“It’s up to you, Eddie. And say! What was the matter with you? Don’t you know a bridge when you see one?”
“That damn girl––” He turned and looked at Ruhannah, who was dragging the big flapping pickerel over the parapet by main strength.
The men scowled at her in silence, then the one addressed as Eddie rolled his cigar grimly into the left corner of his jaw.
“Damn little skirt,” he observed briefly. “It seems to worry her a lot what she’s done to us.”
“I wonder does she know she wrecked us,” suggested the other. He was a stunted, wiry little man of thirty-five. His head seemed slightly too large; he had a54pasty face with the sloe-black eyes, button nose, and the widely chiselled mouth of a circus clown.
The eyes of the short, thickset man were narrow and greyish green in a round, smoothly shaven face. They narrowed still more as the thunder broke louder from the west.
Ruhannah, dragging her fish over the grass, was coming toward them; and the man called Eddie stepped forward to bar her progress.
“Say, girlie,” he began, the cigar still tightly screwed into his cheek, “is there a juice mill anywhere near us, d’y’know?”
“What?” said Rue.
“A garage.”
“Yes; there is one at Gayfield.”
“How far, girlie?”
Rue flushed, but answered:
“It is half a mile to Gayfield.”
The other man, noticing the colour in Ruhannah’s face, took off his pearl-grey hat. His language was less grammatical than his friend’s, but his instincts were better.
“Thank you,” he said—his companion staring all the while at the girl without the slightest expression. “Is there a telephone in any of them houses, miss?”—glancing around behind him at the three edifices which composed the crossroads called Brookhollow.
“No,” said Rue.
It thundered again; the world around had become very dusky and silent and the flash veined a rapidly blackening west.
“It’s going to rain buckets,” said the man called Eddie. “If you live around here, can you let us come into your house till it’s over, gir—er—miss?”55
“Yes.”
“I’m Mr. Brandes—Ed Brandes of New York––” speaking through cigar-clutching teeth. “This is Mr. Ben Stull, of the same.... It’s raining already. Is that your house?”
“I livethere,” said Rue, nodding across the bridge. “You may go in.”
She walked ahead, dragging the fish; Stull went to the car, took two suitcases from the boot; Brandes threw both overcoats over his arm, and followed in the wake of Ruhannah and her fish.
“No Saratoga and no races today, Eddie,” remarked Stull. But Brandes’ narrow, grey-green eyes were following Ruhannah.
“It’s a pity,” continued Stull, “somebody didn’t learn you to drive a car before you ask your friends joy-riding.”
“Aw—shut up,” returned Brandes slowly, between his teeth.
They climbed the flight of steps to the verandah, through a rapidly thickening gloom which was ripped wide open at intervals by lightning.
So Brandes and his shadow, Bennie Stull, came into the home of Ruhannah Carew.
Her mother, who had observed their approach from the window, opened the door.
“Mother,” said Ruhannah, “here is the fish I caught—and two gentlemen.”
With which dubious but innocent explanation she continued on toward the kitchen, carrying her fish.
Stull offered a brief explanation to account for their plight and presence; Brandes, listening and watching the mother out of greenish, sleepy eyes, made up his mind concerning her.56
While the spare room was being prepared by mother and daughter, he and Stull, seated in the sitting-room, their hats upon their knees, exchanged solemn commonplaces with the Reverend Mr. Carew.
Brandes, always the gambler, always wary and reticent by nature, did all the listening before he came to conclusions that relaxed the stiffness of his attitude and the immobility of his large, round face.
Then, at ease under circumstances and conditions which he began to comprehend and have an amiable contempt for, he became urbane and conversational, and a little amused to find navigation so simple, even when out of his proper element.
From the book on the invalid’s knees, Brandes took his cue; and the conversation developed into a monologue on the present condition of foreign missions—skilfully inspired by the respectful attention and the brief and ingenious questions of Brandes.
“Doubtless,” concluded the Reverend Mr. Carew, “you are familiar with the life of the Reverend Adoniram Judson, Mr. Brandes.”
It turned out to be Brandes’ favourite book.
“You will recollect, then, the amazing conditions in India which confronted Dr. Judson and his wife.”
Brandes recollected perfectly—with a slow glance at Stull.
“All that is changed,” said the invalid. “—God be thanked. And conditions in Armenia are changing for the better, I hope.”
“Let us hope so,” returned Brandes solemnly.
“To doubt it is to doubt the goodness of the Almighty,” said the Reverend Mr. Carew. His dreamy eyes became fixed on the rain-splashed window, burned a little with sombre inward light.57
“In Trebizond,” he began, “in my time––”
His wife came into the room, saying that the spare bedchamber was ready and that the gentlemen might wish to wash before supper, which would be ready in a little while.
On their way upstairs they encountered Ruhannah coming down. Stull passed with a polite grunt; Brandes ranged himself for the girl to pass him.
“Ever so much obliged to you, Miss Carew,” he said. “We have put you to a great deal of trouble, I am sure.”
Rue looked up surprised, shy, not quite understanding how to reconcile his polite words and pleasant voice with the voice and manner in which he had addressed her on the bridge.
“It is no trouble,” she said, flushing slightly. “I hope you will be comfortable.”
And she continued to descend the stairs a trifle more hastily, not quite sure she cared very much to talk to that kind of man.
In the spare bedroom, whither Stull and Brandes had been conducted, the latter was seated on the big and rather shaky maple bed, buttoning a fresh shirt and collar, while Stull took his turn at the basin. Rain beat heavily on the windows.
“Say, Ben,” remarked Brandes, “you want to be careful when we go downstairs that the old guy don’t spot us for sporting men. He’s a minister, or something.”
Stull lifted his dripping face of a circus clown from the basin.
“What’s that?”58
“I say we don’t want to give the old people a shock. You know what they’d think of us.”
“What do I care what they think?”
“Can’t you be polite?”
“I can be better than that; I can be honest,” said Stull, drying his sour visage with a flimsy towel.
After Brandes had tied his polka-dotted tie carefully before the blurred mirror:
“What do you mean by that?” he asked stolidly.
“Ah—I know what I mean, Eddie. So do you. You’re a smooth talker, all right. You can listen and look wise, too, when there’s anything in it for you. Just see the way you got Stein to put up good money for you! And all you done was to listen to him and keep your mouth shut.”
Brandes rose with an air almost jocular and smote Stull upon the back.
“Stein thinks he’s the greatest manager on earth. Let him tell you so if you want anything out of him,” he said, walking to the window.
The volleys of rain splashing on the panes obscured the outlook; Brandes flattened his nose against the glass and stood as though lost in thought.
Behind him Stull dried his features, rummaged in the suitcase, produced a bathrobe and slippers, put them on, and stretched himself out on the bed.
“Aren’t you coming down to buzz the preacher?” demanded Brandes, turning from the drenched window.
“So you can talk phony to the little kid? No.”
“Ah, get it out of your head that I mean phony.”
“Well, what do you mean?”
“Nothing.”
Stull gave him a contemptuous glance and turned over on the pillow.59
“Are you coming down?”
“No.”
So Brandes took another survey of himself in the glass, used his comb and brushes again, added a studied twist to his tie, shot his cuffs, and walked out of the room with the solid deliberation which characterised his carriage at all times.
60CHAPTER VITHE END OF SOLITUDE
A rain-washed world, smelling sweet as a wet rose, a cloudless sky delicately blue, and a swollen stream tumbling and foaming under the bridge—of these Mr. Eddie Brandes was agreeably conscious as he stepped out on the verandah after breakfast, and, unclasping a large gold cigar case, inserted a cigar between his teeth.
He always had the appearance of having just come out of a Broadway barber shop with the visible traces of shave, shampoo, massage, and manicure patent upon his person.
His short, square figure was clothed in well-cut blue serge; a smart straw hat embellished his head, polished russet shoes his remarkably small feet. On his small fat fingers several heavy rings were conspicuous. And the odour of cologne exhaled from and subtly pervaded the ensemble.
Across the road, hub-deep in wet grass and weeds, he could see his wrecked runabout, glistening with raindrops.
He stood for a while on the verandah, both hands shoved deep into his pockets, his cigar screwed into his cheek. From time to time he jingled keys and loose coins in his pockets. Finally he sauntered down the steps and across the wet road to inspect the machine at closer view.
Contemplating it tranquilly, head on one side and his left eye closed to avoid the drifting cigar smoke,61he presently became aware of a girl in a pink print dress leaning over the grey parapet of the bridge. And, picking his way among the puddles, he went toward her.
“Good morning, Miss Carew,” he said, taking off his straw hat.
She turned her head over her shoulder; the early sun glistened on his shiny, carefully parted hair and lingered in glory on a diamond scarf pin.
“Good morning,” she said, a little uncertainly, for the memory of their first meeting on the bridge had not entirely been forgotten.
“You had breakfast early,” he said.
“Yes.”
He kept his hat off; such little courtesies have their effect; also it was good for his hair which, he feared, had become a trifle thinner recently.
“It is beautiful weather,” said Mr. Brandes, squinting at her through his cigar smoke.
“Yes.” She looked down into the tumbling water.
“This is a beautiful country, isn’t it, Miss Carew?”
“Yes.”
With his head a little on one side he inspected her. There was only the fine curve of her cheek visible, and a white neck under the chestnut hair; and one slim, tanned hand resting on the stone parapet.
“Do you like motoring?” he asked.
She looked up:
“Yes.... I have only been out a few times.”
“I’ll have another car up here in a few days. I’d like to take you out.”
She was silent.
“Ever go to Saratoga?” he inquired.
“No.”62
“I’ll take you to the races—with your mother. Would you like to go?”
She remained silent so long that he became a trifle uneasy.
“With your mother,” he repeated, moving so he could see a little more of her face.
“I don’t think mother would go,” she said.
“Would she let you go?”
“I don’t think so.”
“There’s nothing wrong with racing,” he said, “if you don’t bet money on the horses.”
But Rue knew nothing about sport, and her ignorance as well as the suggested combination of Saratoga, automobile, and horse racing left her silent again.
Brandes sat down on the parapet of the bridge and held his straw hat on his fat knees.
“Then we’ll make it a family party,” he said, “your father and mother and you, shall we? And we’ll just go off for the day.”
“Thank you.”
“Would you like it?”
“Yes.”
“Will you go?”
“I—work in the mill.”
“Every day?”
“Yes.”
“How about Sunday?”
“We go to church.... I don’t know.... Perhaps we might go in the afternoon.”
“I’ll ask your father,” he said, watching the delicately flushed face with odd, almost sluggish persistency.
His grey-green eyes seemed hypnotised; he appeared unable to turn them elsewhere; and she, gradually63becoming conscious of his scrutiny, kept her own eyes averted.
“What were you looking at in the water?” he asked.
“I was looking for our boat. It isn’t there. I’m afraid it has gone over the dam.”
“I’ll help you search for it,” he said, “when I come back from the village. I’m going to walk over and find somebody who’ll cart that runabout to the railroad station.... You’re not going that way, are you?” he added, rising.
“No.”
“Then––” he lifted his hat high and put it on with care—“until a little later, Miss Carew.... And I want to apologise for speaking so familiarly to you yesterday. I’m sorry. It’s a way we get into in New York. Broadway isn’t good for a man’s manners.... Will you forgive me, Miss Carew?”
Embarrassment kept her silent; she nodded her head, and finally turned and looked at him. His smile was agreeable.
She smiled faintly, too, and rose.
“Until later, then,” he said. “This is the Gayfield road, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
She turned and walked toward the house; and as though he could not help himself he walked beside her, his hat in his hand once more.
“I like this place,” he said. “I wonder if there is a hotel in Gayfield.”
“The Gayfield House.”
“Is itverybad?” he asked jocosely.
She seemed surprised. It was considered good, she thought.
With a slight, silent nod of dismissal she crossed the64road and went into the house, leaving him standing beside his wrecked machine once more, looking after her out of sluggish eyes.
Presently, from the house, emerged Stull, his pasty face startling in its pallor under the cloudless sky, and walked slowly over to Brandes.
“Well, Ben,” said the latter pleasantly, “I’m going to Gayfield to telegraph for another car.”
“How soon can they get one up?” inquired Stull, inserting a large cigar into his slitted mouth and lighting it.
“Oh, in a couple of days, I guess. I don’t know. I don’t care much, either.”
“We can go on to Saratoga by train,” suggested Stull complacently.
“We can stay here, too.”
“What for?”
Brandes said in his tight-lipped, even voice:
“The fishing’s good. I guess I’ll try it.” He continued to contemplate the machine, but Stull’s black eyes were turned on him intently.
“How about the races?” he asked. “Do we go or not?”
“Certainly.”
“When?”
“When they send us a car to go in.”
“Isn’t the train good enough?”
“The fishing here is better.”
Stull’s pasty visage turned sourer:
“Do you mean we lose a couple of days in this God-forsaken dump because you’d rather go to Saratoga in a runabout than in a train?”
“I tell you I’m going to stick around for a while.”
“For how long?”65
“Oh, I don’t know. When we get our car we can talk it over and––”
“Ah,” ejaculated Stull in disgust, “what the hell’s the matter with you? Is it that little skirt you was buzzing out here like you never seen one before?”
“How did you guess, Ben?” returned Brandes with the almost expressionless jocularity that characterised him at times.
“Thatlittle red-headed, spindling, freckled, milk-fed mill-hand––”
“Funny, ain’t it? But there’s no telling what will catch the tired business man, is there, Ben?”
“Well, what does catch him?” demanded Stull angrily. “What’s the answer?”
“I guess she’s the answer, Ben.”
“Ah, leave the kid alone––”
“I’m going to have the car sent up here. I’m going to take her out. Go on to Saratoga if you want to. I’ll meet you there––”
“When?”
“When I’m ready,” replied Brandes evenly. But he smiled.
Stull looked at him, and his white face, soured by dyspepsia, became sullen with wrath. At such times, too, his grammar suffered from indigestion.
“Say, Eddie,” he began, “can’t no one learn you nothin’ at all? How many times would you have been better off if you’d listened to me? Every time you throw me you hand yourself one. Now that you got a little money again and a little backing, don’t do anything likethat––”
“Like what?”
“Like chasin’ dames! Don’t act foolish like you done in Chicago last summer! You wouldn’t listen to me66then, would you? And that Denver business, too! Say, look at all the foolish things you done against all I could say to save you—like backing that cowboy plug against Battling Jensen!—Like taking that big hunk o’ beef, Walstein, to San Antonio, where Kid O’Rourke put him out in the first! And everybody’s laughing at you yet! Ah––” he exclaimed angrily, “somebody tell me why I don’t quit you, you big dill pickle! I wish someone would tell me why I stand for you, because I don’t know.... And look what you’re doing now; you got some money of your own and plenty of syndicate money to put on the races and a big comish! You got a good theayter in town with Morris Stein to back you and everything—and look what you’re doing!” he ended bitterly.
Brandes tightened his dental grip on his cigar and squinted at him good-humouredly.
“Say, Ben,” he said, “would you believe it if I told you I’m stuck on her?”
“Ah, you’d fall for anything. I never seen a skirt you wouldn’t chase.”
“I don’t mean that kind.”
“What kind, then?”
“This is on the level, Ben.”
“What! Ah, go on!Youon the level?”
“All the same, I am.”
“You can’t be on the level! You don’t know how.”
“Why?”
“You got a wife, and you know damn well you have.”
“Yes, and she’s getting her divorce.”
Stull regarded him with habitual and sullen distrust.
“She hasn’t got it yet.”
“She’ll get it. Don’t worry.”
“I thought you was for fighting it.”67
“I was going to fight it; but––” His slow, narrow, greenish eyes stole toward the house across the road.
“Just like that,” he said, after a slight pause; “that’s the way the little girl hit me. I’m on the level, Ben. First skirt I ever saw that I wanted to find waiting dinner for me when I come home. Get me?”
“I don’t know whether I do or not.”
“Get this, then; she isn’t all over paint; she’s got freckles, thank God, and she smells sweet as a daisy field. Ah, what the hell––” he burst out between his parted teeth “—when every woman in New York smells like a chorus girl! Don’t I get it all day? The whole city stinks like a star’s dressing room. And I married one! And I’m through. I want to get my breath and I’m getting it.”
Stull’s white features betrayed merely the morbid suffering of indigestion; he said nothing and sucked his cigar.
“I’m through,” repeated Brandes. “I want a home and a wife—the kind that even a fly cop won’t pinch on sight—the kind of little thing that’s over there in that old shack. Whatever I am, I don’t want a wife like me—nor kids, either.”
Stull remained sullenly unresponsive.
“Call her a hick if you like. All right, I want that kind.”
No comment from Stull, who was looking at the wrecked car.
“Understand, Ben?”
“I tell you I don’t know whether I do or not!”
“Well, what don’t you understand?”
“Nothin’.... Well, then, your falling for a kid like that, first crack out o’ the box. I’m honest; I don’t understand it.”68
“She hit me that way—so help me God!”
“And you’re on the level?”
“Absolutely, Ben.”
“What about the old guy and the mother? Take ’em to live with you?”
“If she wants ’em.”
Stull stared at him in uneasy astonishment:
“All right, Eddie. Only don’t act foolish till Minna passes you up. And get out of here or you will. If you’re on the level, as you say you are, you’ve got to mark time for a good long while yet––”
“Why?”
“You don’t have to ask me that, do you?”
“Yes, I do. Why? I want to marry her, I tell you. I mean to. I’m taking no chances that some hick will do it while I’m away. I’m going to stay right here.”
“And when the new car comes?”
“I’ll keep her humming between here and Saratoga.”
“And then what?”
Brandes’ greenish eyes rested on the car and he smoked in silence for a while. Then:
“Listen, Ben. I’m a busy man. I got to be back in town and I got to have a wedding trip too. You know me, Ben. You know what I mean. That’s me. When I do a thing I do it. Maybe I make plenty of mistakes. Hell! I’d rather make ’em than sit pat and do nothing!”
“You’re crazy.”
“Don’t bet on it, Ben. I know what I want. I’m going to make money. Things are going big with me––”
“You tinhorn! You always say that!”
“Watch me. I bet you I make a killing at Saratoga!69I bet you I make good with Morris Stein! I bet you the first show I put on goes big! I bet––”
“Ah, can it!”
“Wait! I bet you I marry that little girl in two weeks and she stands for it when I tell her later we’d better get married again!”
“Say! Talk sense!”
“I am.”
“What’ll they do to you if your wife makes a holler?”
“Who ever heard of her or me in the East?”
“You want to take a chance like that?”
“I’ll fix it. I haven’t got time to wait for Minna to shake me loose. Besides, she’s in Seattle. I’ll fix it so she doesn’t hear until she gets her freedom. I’ll get a license right here. I guess I’ll use your name––”
“What!” yelled Stull.
“Shut your face!” retorted Brandes. “What do you think you’re going to do, squeal?”
“You think I’m going to stand for that?”
“Well, then, I won’t use your name. I’ll use my own. Why not? I mean honest. It’s dead level. I’ll remarry her. I want her, I tell you. I want a wedding trip, too, before I go back––”
“With the first rehearsal called for September fifteenth! What’s the matter with you? Do you think Stein is going to stand for––”
“You’llbe on hand,” said Brandes pleasantly. “I’m going to Paris for four weeks—two weeks there, two on the ocean––”
“You––”
“Save your voice, Ben. That’s settled.”
Stull turned upon him a dead white visage distorted with fury:
“I hope she throws you out!” he said breathlessly.70“You talk about being on the level! Every level’s crooked with you. You don’t know what square means; a square has got more than four corners for you! Go on! Stick around. I don’t give a damn what you do. Go on and do it. But I quit right here.”
Both knew that the threat was empty. As a shadow clings to a man’s heels, as a lost soul haunts its slayer, as damnation stalks the damned, so had Stull followed Brandes; and would follow to the end. Why? Neither knew. It seemed to be their destiny, surviving everything—their bitter quarrels, the injustice and tyranny of Brandes, his contempt and ridicule sometimes—enduring through adversity, even penury, through good and bad days, through abundance and through want, through shame and disgrace, through trickery, treachery, and triumph—nothing had ever broken the occult bond which linked these two. And neither understood why, but both seemed to be vaguely conscious that neither was entirely complete without the other.
“Ben,” said Brandes affably, “I’m going to walk over to Gayfield. Want to come?”
They went off, together.
71CHAPTER VIIOBSESSION
By the end of the week Brandes had done much to efface any unpleasant impression he had made on Ruhannah Carew.
The girl had never before had to do with any mature man. She was therefore at a disadvantage in every way, and her total lack of experience emphasised the odds.
Nobody had ever before pointedly preferred her, paid her undivided attention; no man had ever sought her, conversed with her, deferred to her, interested himself in her. It was entirely new to her, this attention which Brandes paid her. Nor could she make any comparisons between this man and other men, because she knew no other men. He was an entirely novel experience to her; he had made himself interesting, had proved amusing, considerate, kind, generous, and apparently interested in what interested her. And if his unfeigned preference for her society disturbed and perplexed her, his assiduous civilities toward her father and mother were gradually winning from her far more than anything he had done for her.
His white-faced, odd little friend had gone; he himself had taken quarters at the Gayfield House, where a car like the wrecked one was stabled for his use.
He had already taken her father and mother and herself everywhere within motoring distance; he had accompanied them to church; he escorted her to the72movies; he walked with her in the August evenings after supper, rowed her about on the pond, fished from the bridge, told her strange stories in the moonlight on the verandah, her father and mother interested and attentive.
For the career of Mr. Eddie Brandes was capable of furnishing material for interesting stories if carefully edited, and related with discretion and circumspection. He had been many things to many men—and to several women—he had been a tinhorn gambler in the Southwest, a miner in Alaska, a saloon keeper in Wyoming, a fight promoter in Arizona. He had travelled profitably on popular ocean liners until requested to desist; Auteuil, Neuilly, Vincennes, and Longchamps knew him as tout, bookie, and, when fitfully prosperous, as a plunger. Epsom knew him once as a welcher; and knew him no more.
He had taken a comic opera company through the wheat-belt—one way; he had led a burlesque troupe into Arizona and had traded it there for a hotel.
“When Eddiewantsto talk,” Stull used to say, “that smoke,Othello, hasn’t got nothing on him.”
However, Brandes seldom chose to talk. This was one of his rare garrulous occasions; and, with careful self-censorship, he was making an endless series of wonder-tales out of the episodes andfaits diverscommon to the experience of such as he.
So, of moving accidents by flood and field this man had a store, and he contrived to make them artistically innocuous and perfectly fit for family consumption.
Further, two of his friends motored over from Saratoga to see him, were brought to supper at the Carews’; and they gave him a clean bill of moral health. They were, respectively, “Doc” Curfoot—suave haunter of73Peacock Alley and gentleman “capper”—whom Brandes introduced as the celebrated specialist, Doctor Elbert Curfoot—and Captain Harman Quint, partner in “Quint’s” celebrated temple of chance—introduced as the distinguished navigating officer which he appeared to be. The steering for their common craft, however, was the duty of the eminent Doc.
They spent the evening on the verandah with the family; and it was quite wonderful what a fine fellow each turned out to be—information confidentially imparted to the Reverend Mr. Carew by each of the three distinguished gentlemen in turn.
Doc Curfoot, whose business included the ability to talk convincingly on any topic, took the Reverend Mr. Carew’s measure and chose literature; and his suave critique presently became an interesting monologue listened to in silence by those around him.
Brandes had said, “Put me in right, Doc,” and Doc was accomplishing it, partly to oblige Brandes, partly for practice. His agreeable voice so nicely pitched, so delightfully persuasive, recapitulating all the commonplaces and cant phrases concerning the literature of the day, penetrated gratefully the intellectual isolation of these humble gentlepeople, and won very easily their innocent esteem. With the Reverend Mr. Carew Doc discussed such topics as the influence on fiction of the ethical ideal. With Mrs. Carew Captain Quint exchanged reminiscences of travel on distant seas. Brandes attempted to maintain low-voiced conversation with Rue, who responded in diffident monosyllables to his advances.
Brandes walked down to their car with them after they had taken their leave.74
“What’s the idea, Eddie?” inquired Doc Curfoot, pausing before the smart little speeder.
“It’s straight.”
“Oh,” said Doc, softly, betraying no surprise—about the only thing he never betrayed. “Anything in it for you, Eddie?”
“Yes. A good girl. The kind you read about. Isn’t that enough?”
“Minna chucked you?” inquired Captain Quint.
“She’ll get her decree in two or three months. Then I’ll have a home. And everything that you and I are keeps out of that home, Cap. See?”
“Certainly,” said Quint. “Quite right, Eddie.”
Doc Curfoot climbed in and took the wheel; Quint followed him.
“Say,” he said in his pleasant, guarded voice, “watch out that Minna don’t double-cross you, Eddie.”
“How?”
“—Or shoot you up. She’s someschutzen-fest, you know, when she turns loose––”
“Ah, I tell you shewantsthe divorce. Abe Grittlefeld’s crazy about her. He’ll get Abe Gordon to star her on Broadway; and that’s enough for her. Besides, she’ll marry Maxy Venem when she can afford to keep him.”
“Younever understood Minna Minti.”
“Well, who ever understood any German?” demanded Brandes. “She’s one of those sour-blooded, silent Dutch women that make me ache.”
Doc pushed the self-starter; there came a click, a low humming. Brandes’ face cleared and he held out his square-shaped hand:
“You fellows,” he said, “have put me right with the old folks here. I’ll do the same for you some day.75Don’t talk about this little girl and me, that’s all.”
“All the same,” repeated Doc, “don’t take any chances with Minna. She’s on to you, and she’s got a rotten Dutch disposition.”
“That’s right, Doc. And say, Harman,”—to Quint—“tell Ben he’s doing fine. Tell him to send me what’s mine, because I’ll want it very soon now. I’m going to take a month off and then I’m going to show Stein how a theatre can be run.”
“Eddie,” said Quint, “it’s a good thing to think big, but it’s a damn poor thing to talk big. Cut out the talk and you’ll be a big man some day.”
The graceful car moved forward into the moonlight; his two friends waved an airy adieu; and Brandes went slowly back to the dark verandah where sat a young girl, pitifully immature in mind and body—and two old people little less innocent for all their experience in the ranks of Christ, for all the wounds that scarred them both in the over-sea service which had broken them forever.
“A very handsome and distinguished gentleman, your friend Dr. Curfoot,” said the Reverend Mr. Carew. “I imagine his practice in New York is not only fashionable but extensive.”
“Both,” said Brandes.
“I assume so. He seems to be intimately acquainted with people whose names for generations have figured prominently in the social columns of the New York press.”
“Oh, yes, Curfoot and Quint know them all.”
Which was true enough. They had to. One must know people from whom one accepts promissory notes to liquidate those little affairs peculiar to the temple76of chance. And New York’s best furnished the neophytes for these rites.
“I thought Captain Quint very interesting,” ventured Ruhannah. “He seems to have sailed over the entire globe.”
“Naval men are always delightful,” said her mother. And, laying her hand on her husband’s arm in the dark: “Do you remember, Wilbour, how kind the officers from the cruiserOneidawere when the rescue party took us aboard?”
“God sent theOneidato us,” said her husband dreamily. “I thought it was the end of the world for us—for you and me and baby Rue—that dreadful flight from the mission to the sea.”
His bony fingers tightened over his wife’s toilworn hand. In the long grass along the creek fireflies sparkled, and their elfin lanterns, waning, glowing, drifted high in the calm August night.
The Reverend Mr. Carew gathered his crutches; the night was a trifle damp for him; besides, he desired to read. Brandes, as always, rose to aid him. His wife followed.
“Don’t stay out long, Rue,” she said in the doorway.
“No, mother.”
Brandes came back. Departing from his custom, he did not light a cigar, but sat in silence, his narrow eyes trying to see Ruhannah in the darkness. But she was only a delicate shadow shape to him, scarcely detached from the darkness that enveloped her.
He meant to speak to her then. And suddenly found he could not, realised, all at once, that he lacked the courage.
This was the more amazing and disturbing to him77because he could not remember the time or occasion when the knack of fluent speech had ever failed him.
He had never foreseen such a situation; it had never occurred to him that he would find the slightest difficulty in saying easily and gracefully what he had determined to say to this young girl.
Now he sat there silent, disturbed, nervous, and tongue-tied. At first he did not quite comprehend what was making him afraid. After a long while he understood that it was some sort of fear of her—fear of her refusal, fear of losing her, fear that she might have—in some occult way—divined what he really was, that she might have heard things concerning him, his wife, his career. The idea turned him cold.
And all at once he realised how terribly in earnest he had become; how deeply involved; how vital this young girl had become to him.
Never before had he really wanted anything as compared to this desire of his for her. He was understanding, too, in a confused way, that such a girl and such a home for him as she could make was going not only to give him the happiness he expected, but that it also meant betterment for himself—straighter living, perhaps straighter thinking—the birth of something resembling self-respect, perhaps even aspiration—or at least the aspiration toward that respect from others which honest living dare demand.
He wanted her; he wanted her now; he wanted to marry her whether or not he had the legal right; he wanted to go away for a month with her, and then return and work for her, for them both—build up a fortune and a good reputation with Stein’s backing and Stein’s theatre—stand well with honest men, stand well78with himself, stand always, with her, for everything a man should be.
If she loved him she would forgive him and quietly remarry him as soon as Minna kicked him loose. He was confident he could make her happy, make her love him if once he could find courage to speak—if once he could win her. And suddenly the only possible way to go about it occurred to him.
His voice was a trifle husky and unsteady from the nervous tension when he at last broke the silence:
“Miss Rue,” he said, “I have a word to say to your father and mother. Would you wait here until I come back?”
“I think I had better go in, too––”
“Please don’t.”
“Why?” She stopped short, instinctively, but not surmising.
“You will wait, then?” he asked.
“I was going in.... But I’ll sit here a little while.”
He rose and went in, rather blindly.
Ruhannah, dreaming there deep in her splint armchair, slim feet crossed, watched the fireflies sailing over the alders. Sometimes she thought of Brandes, pleasantly, sometimes of other matters. Once the memory of her drive home through the wintry moonlight with young Neeland occurred to her, and the reminiscence was vaguely agreeable.
Listless, a trifle sleepy, dreamily watching the fireflies, the ceaseless noise of the creek in her ears, inconsequential thoughts flitted through her brain—the vague, aimless, guiltless thoughts of a young and unstained mind.
She was nearly asleep when Brandes came back, and79she looked up at him where he stood beside her porch chair in the darkness.
“Miss Rue,” he said, “I have told your father and mother that I am in love with you and want to make you my wife.”
The girl lay there speechless, astounded.