The Reverend Mr. Carew gathered his crutches; the night was a trifle damp for him; besides, he desired to read. Brandes, as always, rose to aid him. His wife followed.
“Don’t stay out long, Rue,” she said in the doorway.
“No, mother.”
Brandes came back. Departing from his custom, he did not light a cigar, but sat in silence, his narrow eyes trying to see Ruhannah in the darkness. But she was only a delicate shadow shape to him, scarcely detached from the darkness that enveloped her.
He meant to speak to her then. And suddenly found he could not, realised, all at once, that he lacked the courage.
This was the more amazing and disturbing to him because he could not remember the time or occasion when the knack of fluent speech had ever failed him.
He had never foreseen such a situation; it had never occurred to him that he would find the slightest difficulty in saying easily and gracefully what he had determined to say to this young girl.
Now he sat there silent, disturbed, nervous, and tongue-tied. At first he did not quite comprehend what was making him afraid. After a long while he understood that it was some sort of fear of her — fear of her refusal, fear of losing her, fear that she might have — in some occult way — divined what he really was, that she might have heard things concerning him, his wife, his career. The idea turned him cold.
And all at once he realised how terribly in earnest he had become; how deeply involved; how vital this young girl had become to him.
Never before had he really wanted anything as compared to this desire of his for her. He was understanding, too, in a confused way, that such a girl and such a home for him as she could make was going not only to give him the happiness he expected, but that it also meant betterment for himself — straighter living, perhaps straighter thinking — the birth of something resembling self-respect, perhaps even aspiration — or at least the aspiration toward that respect from others which honest living dare demand.
He wanted her; he wanted her now; he wanted to marry her whether or not he had the legal right; he wanted to go away for a month with her, and then return and work for her, for them both — build up a fortune and a good reputation with Stein’s backing and Stein’s theatre — stand well with honest men, stand well with himself, stand always, with her, for everything a man should be.
If she loved him she would forgive him and quietly remarry him as soon as Minna kicked him loose. He was confident he could make her happy, make her love him if once he could find courage to speak — if once he could win her. And suddenly the only possible way to go about it occurred to him.
His voice was a trifle husky and unsteady from the nervous tension when he at last broke the silence:
“Miss Rue,” he said, “I have a word to say to your father and mother. Would you wait here until I come back?”
“I think I had better go in, too — —”
“Please don’t.”
“Why?” She stopped short, instinctively, but not surmising.
“You will wait, then?” he asked.
“I was going in.... But I’ll sit here a little while.”
He rose and went in, rather blindly.
* * * * *
Ruhannah, dreaming there deep in her splint armchair, slim feet crossed, watched the fireflies sailing over the alders. Sometimes she thought of Brandes, pleasantly, sometimes of other matters. Once the memory of her drive home through the wintry moonlight with young Neeland occurred to her, and the reminiscence was vaguely agreeable.
Listless, a trifle sleepy, dreamily watching the fireflies, the ceaseless noise of the creek in her ears, inconsequential thoughts flitted through her brain — the vague, aimless, guiltless thoughts of a young and unstained mind.
She was nearly asleep when Brandes came back, and she looked up at him where he stood beside her porch chair in the darkness.
“Miss Rue,” he said, “I have told your father and mother that I am in love with you and want to make you my wife.”
The girl lay there speechless, astounded.
CHAPTER VIII
A CHANGE IMPENDS
The racing season at Saratoga drew toward its close, and Brandes had appeared there only twice in person, both times with a very young girl.
“If you got to bring her here to the races, can’t you get her some clothes?” whispered Stull in his ear. “That get-up of hers is something fierce.”
Late hours, hot weather, indiscreet nourishment, and the feverish anxiety incident to betting other people’s money had told on Stull. His eyes were like two smears of charcoal on his pasty face; sourly he went about the business which Brandes should have attended to, nursing resentment — although he was doing better than Brandes had hoped to do.
Their joint commission from his winnings began to assume considerable proportions; at track and club and hotel people were beginning to turn and stare when the little man with the face of a sick circus clown appeared, always alone, greeting with pallid indifference his acquaintances, ignoring overtures, noticing neither sport, nor fashion, nor political importance, nor yet the fair and frail whose curiosity and envy he was gradually arousing.
Obsequiousness from club, hotel, and racing officials made no impression on him; he went about his business alone, sullen, preoccupied, deathly pale, asking no information, requesting no favours, conferring with nobody, doing no whispering and enduring none.
After a little study of that white, sardonic, impossible face, people who would have been glad to make use of him became discouraged. And those who first had recognised him in Saratoga found, at the end of the racing month, nothing to add to their general identification of him as “Ben Stull, partner of Eddie Brandes — Western sports.”
* * * * *
Stull, whispering in Brandes’ ear again, where he sat beside him in the grand stand, added to his earlier comment on Ruhannah’s appearance:
“Why don’t you fix her up, Eddie? It looks like you been robbing a country school.”
Brandes’ slow, greenish eyes marked sleepily the distant dust, where Mr. Sanford’s Nick Stoner was leading a brilliant field, steadily overhauling the favourite, Deborah Glenn.
“When the time comes for me to fix her up,” he said between thin lips which scarcely moved, “she’ll look like Washington Square in May — not like Fifth Avenue and Broadway.”
Nick Stoner continued to lead. Stull’s eyes resembled two holes burnt in a sheet; Brandes yawned. They were plunging the limit on the Sanford favourite.
As for Ruhannah, she sat with slender gloved hands tightly clasped, lips parted, intent, fascinated with the sunlit beauty of the scene.
Brandes looked at her, and his heavy, expressionless features altered subtly:
“Some running!” he said.
A breathless nod was her response. All around them repressed excitement was breaking out; men stood up and shouted; women rose, and the club house seemed suddenly to blossom like a magic garden of wind-tossed flowers.
Through the increasing cheering Stull looked on without a sign of emotion, although affluence or ruin, in the Sanford colours, sat astride the golden roan.
Suddenly Ruhannah stood up, one hand pressed to the ill-fitting blue serge over her wildly beating heart. Brandes rose beside her. Not a muscle in his features moved.
* * * * *
“Gawd!” whispered Stull in his ear, as they were leaving.
“Some killing, Ben!” nodded Brandes in his low, deliberate voice. His heavy, round face was deeply flushed; Fortune, the noisy wanton, had flung both arms around his neck. But his slow eyes were continually turned on the slim young girl whom he was teaching to walk beside him without taking his arm.
“Ain’t she on to us?” Stull had enquired. And Brandes’ reply was correct; Ruhannah never dreamed that it made a penny’s difference to Brandes whether Nick Stoner won or whether it was Deborah Glenn which the wild-voiced throng saluted.
* * * * *
They did not remain in Sara
toga for dinner. They took Stull back to his hotel on the rumble of the runabout, Brandes remarking that he thought he should need a chauffeur before long and suggesting that Stull look about Saratoga for a likely one.
Halted in the crush before the United States Hotel, Stull decided to descend there. Several men in the passing crowds bowed to Brandes; one, Norton Smawley, known to the fraternity as “Parson” Smawley, came out to the curb to shake hands. Brandes introduced him to Rue as “Parson” Smawley — whether with some sinister future purpose already beginning to take shape in his round, heavy head, or whether a perverted sense of humour prompted him to give Rue the idea that she had been in godly company, it is difficult to determine.
He added that Miss Carew was the daughter of a clergyman and a missionary. And the Parson took his cue. At any rate Rue, leaning from her seat, listened to the persuasive and finely modulated voice of Parson Smawley with pleasure, and found his sleek, graceful presence and courtly manners most agreeable. There were no such persons in Gayfield.
She hoped, shyly, that if he were in Gayfield he would call on her father. Once in a very long while clergymen called on her father, and their rare visits remained a pleasure to the lonely invalid for months.
The Parson promised to call, very gravely. It would not have embarrassed him to do so; it was his business in life to have a sufficient knowledge of every man’s business to enable him to converse convincingly with anybody.
He took polished leave of her; took leave of Brandes with the faintest flutter of one eyelid, as though he understood Brandes’ game. Which he did not; nor did Brandes himself, entirely.
* * * * *
They had thirty miles to go in the runabout. So they would not remain to dinner. Besides, Brandes did not care to make himself conspicuous in public just then. Too many people knew more or less about him — the sort of people who might possibly be in communication with his wife. There was no use slapping chance in the face. Two quiet visits to the races with Ruhannah was enough for the present. Even those two visits were scarcely discreet. It was time to go.
Stull and Brandes stood consulting together beside the runabout; Rue sat in the machine watching the press of carriages and automobiles on Broadway, and the thronged sidewalks along which brilliant, animated crowds were pouring.
“I’m not coming again, Ben,” said Brandes, dropping his voice. “No use to hunt the limelight just now. You can’t tell what some of these people might do. I’ll take no chances that some fresh guy might try to start something.”
“Stir up Minna?” Stull’s lips merely formed the question, and his eyes watched Ruhannah.
“They couldn’t. What would she care? All the same, I play safe, Ben. Well, be good. Better send me mine on pay day. I’ll need it.”
Stull’s face grew sourer:
“Can’t you wait till she gets her decree?”
“And lose a month off? No.”
“It’s all coming your way, Eddie. Stay wise and play safe. Don’t start anything now — —”
“It’s safe. If I don’t take September off I wait a year for my — honeymoon. And I won’t. See?”
They both looked cautiously at Ruhannah, who sat motionless, absorbed in the turmoil of vehicles and people.
Brandes’ face slowly reddened; he dropped one hand on Stull’s shoulder and said, between thin lips that scarcely moved:
“She’s all I’m interested in. You don’t think much of her, Ben. She isn’t painted. She isn’t dolled up the way you like ‘em. But there isn’t anything else that matters very much to me. All I want in the world is sitting in that runabout, looking out of her kid eyes at a thousand or two people who ain’t worth the pair of run-down shoes she’s wearing.”
But Stull’s expression remained sardonic and unconvinced.
So Brandes got into his car and took the wheel; and Stull watched them threading a tortuous path through the traffic tangle of Broadway.
They sped past the great hotels, along crowded sidewalks, along the park, and out into an endless stretch of highway where hundreds of other cars were travelling in the same direction.
“Did you have a good time?” he inquired, shifting his cigar and keeping his narrow eyes on the road.
“Yes; it was beautiful — exciting.”
“Some horse, Nick Stoner! Some race, eh?”
“I was so excited — with everybody standing up and shouting. And such beautiful horses — and such pretty women in their wonderful dresses! I — I never knew there were such things.”
He swung the car, sent it rushing past a lumbering limousine, slowed a little, gripped his cigar between his teeth, and watched the road, both hands on the wheel.
Yes, things were coming his way — coming faster and faster all the while. He had waited many years for this — for material fortune — for that chance which every gambler waits to seize when the psychological second ticks out. But he never had expected that the chance was to include a very young girl in a country-made dress and hat.
As they sped westward the freshening wind from distant pine woods whipped their cheeks; north, blue hills and bluer mountains beyond took fairy shape against the sky; and over all spread the tremendous heavens where fleets of white clouds sailed the uncharted wastes, and other fleets glimmered beyond the edges of the world, hull down, on vast horizons.
“I want to make you happy,” said Brandes in his low, even voice. It was, perhaps, the most honest statement he had ever uttered.
Ruhannah remained silent, her eyes riveted on the far horizon.
* * * * *
It was a week later, one hot evening, that he telegraphed to Stull in Saratoga:
“Find me a chauffeur who will be willing to go abroad. I’ll give you twenty-four hours to get him here.”
The next morning he called up Stull on the telephone from the drug store in Gayfield:
“Get my wire, Ben?”
“Yes. But I — —”
“Wait. Here’s a postscript. I also want Parson Smawley. I want him to get a car and come over to the Gayfield House. Tell him I count on him. And he’s to wear black and a white tie.”
“Yes. But about that chauffeur you want — —”
“Don’t argue. Have him here. Have the Parson, also. Tell him to bring a white tie. Understand?”
“Oh, yes, I understand you, Eddie! You don’t want anything of me, do you! Go out and get that combination? Just like that! What’ll I do? Step into the street and whistle?”
“It’s up to you. Get busy.”
“As usual,” retorted Stull in an acrid voice. “All the same. I’m telling you there ain’t a chauffeur you’d have in Saratoga. Who handed you that dope?”
“Try. I need the chauffeur part of the combine, anyway. If he won’t go abroad, I’ll leave him in town. Get a wiggle on, Ben. How’s things?”
“All right. We had War-axe and Lady Johnson. Some killing, eh? That stable is winning all along. We’ve got Adriutha and Queen Esther today. The Ocean Belle skate is scratched. Doc and Cap and me is thick with the Legislature outfit. We’ll trim ’em tonight. How are you feeling, Eddie?”
“Never better. I’ll call you up in the morning. Ding-dong!”
“Wait! Are you really going abroad?” shouted Stull.
But Brandes had already hung up.
He walked leisurely back to Brookhollow through the sunshine. He had never been as happy in all his life.
CHAPTER IX
NONRESISTANCE
“Long distance calling you, Mr. Stull. One moment, please.... Here’s your party,” concluded the operator.
Stull, huddled sleepily on his bed, picked up the transmitter from the table beside him with a frightful yawn.
“Who is it?” he inquired sourly.
“It’s me — Ben!”
“Say, Eddie, have a heart, will you! I need the sleep — —”
Brandes’ voice was almost jovial:
“Wake up, you poor tout! It’s nearly noon — —”
“Well, wasn’t I singing hymns with Doc and Cap till breakfast time? And believe me, we trimmed the Senator’s bunch! They’ve got their transportation back to Albany, and that’s about all — —”
“Careful what you say. I’m talking from the Gayfield House. The Parson got here all right. He’s just left. He’ll tell you about things. Listen, Ben, the chauffeur you sent me from Saratoga got here last evening, too. I went out with him and he drives all right. Did you look him up?”
“Now, how could I look him up when you gave me only a day to get him for you?”
“Did he have references?”
“Sure, a wad of them. But I couldn’t verify them.”
“Who is he?”
“I forget his name. You ought to know it by now.”
“How did you get him?”
“Left word at the desk. An hour later he came to my room with a couple of bums. I told him about the job. I told him you wanted a chauffeur willing to go abroad. He said he was all that and then some. So I sent him on. Anything you don’t fancy about him?”
“Nothing, I guess. He seems all right. Only I like to know about a man — —”
“How can I find out if you don’t give me time?”
“All right, Ben. I guess he’ll do. By the way, I’m starting for town in ten minutes.”
“What’s the idea?”
“Ask the Parson. Have you any other news except that you killed that Albany bunch of grafters?”
“No.... Yes! But it ain’t good news. I was going to call you soon as I waked up — —”
“What’s the trouble?”
“There ain’t any trouble — yet. But a certain party has showed up here — a very smooth young man whose business is hunting trouble. Get me?”
After a silence Stull repeated:
“Get me, Eddie?”
“No.”
“Listen. A certain slippery party — —”
“Who, damn it? Talk out. I’m in a hurry.”
“Very well, then. Maxy Venem is here!”
The name of his wife’s disbarred attorney sent a chill over Brandes.
“What’s he doing in Saratoga?” he demanded.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 811
