During the week that followed, Mr. Elmendorf seemed to tread on air and
bask in sunshine and favoring breeze. When returning from the trip,
Allison had almost made up his mind to get rid of him. Now, while at the
bottom of his heart he felt that he liked, and suspected that he
trusted, him less than ever, Allison found himself powerless to carry
out his intention. In the first place, Cary was certainly behaving
better than he had behaved in long months before: Aunt Lawrence vouched
for that. She deplored only the fact that he seemed unable now to fix
his ambition on any other career than the army. Still, even doting and
distracted parents have been known to cherish such an ambition long
months at a time, and to stimulate it by promises of "working all
possible wires" to secure the much-desired cadetship. Then if it
couldn't be had they were just so much ahead: the boy had been weaned
from evil habits and associations through his longing to enter the army.
That he should have been disappointed at the last was through no fault
of theirs, even though it gave them secret joy. They were doubly the
gainers. Had the father stopped to think, he would perhaps have seen
that Cary's steadiness and studious ways were all due to this new and
consuming desire and to the advice of his friends at head-quarters; but
Allison had many cares and worries now, and could only thank heaven, and
perhaps, as Aunt Lawrence suggested, Elmendorf, that such reformation
had been achieved in his boy.
But never until the evening of his return had he seriously faced the
problem as to Forrest for a son-in-law. Only once or twice had he
vaguely asked himself if there was danger of Flo's falling in love with
him. With parental fondness he looked upon it as quite natural that
Forrest should fall in love with her, and with worldly wisdom thought it
more than probable that Forrest should desire to become possessed of so
many charms and concomitant stocks and bonds. All that made no serious
difference. Forrest might love and languish all he liked, if it was fun
for Flo. It never occurred to him that her father's daughter could fall
in love on her own account with a penniless lieutenant. But now he and
Aunt Lawrence had had a sharp talk. Florence was not to go down, said
she, and it was time her brother knew why. The child was infatuated with
a man unworthy of her from almost every point of view, yet who, while
paying her lover-like devotions, dared to slight her at times for
a--creature with whom he was maintaining relations that needed to be
promptly investigated and put an end to. He, that man Forrest, had dared
to send a note to Florence Allison excusing himself from dinner on the
plea of urgent work that had to be finished, and then was seen in a
public place supping with the low-bred person herself. Yes, since
Allison demanded to know, Mr. Elmendorf _was_ her informant. But ask
anybody at the Hotel Belmont, where the two brazenly appeared together
at the very hour Forrest was due here. It wasn't a block from the
library. Then ask the janitor of the Lambert who were there in the
private office afterwards, and, though he is here now, see if from here
Forrest does not go back to her, back to that same office where so often
they have been closeted before this. Mrs. Lawrence had been compelled,
she said, to open Florence's eyes as to this deceit and duplicity of her
lover, and naturally she had declined to go downstairs and receive him.
She did not say, however, that Florence had indignantly refused at first
to believe that there was anything wrong, had worked herself up into a
glorious passion of tears over the matter, and was looking like a fright
in consequence when, full twenty minutes after its arrival, Mrs.
Lawrence pushed Forrest's card under the locked door of her niece's
room. Elmendorf had slipped out twice during the evening, was in and out
like a flitting shadow, and on each return had brought Mrs. Lawrence
new and more significant tidings. Florence had bathed her face and done
all she could to make herself presentable, and was preparing to go down,
when informed that Forrest was gone. And later that night Mrs. Lawrence
deluged her, as she had her brother, with the details of Forrest's
scandalous doings.
Wells was out when Allison visited the library the following morning,
but the janitor was on hand to do reverence to the great director and
trustee. "Who was in the private office last night, Maloney?" said he,
sternly. And, distressed to think that anybody could suppose he'd allow
any one there who had no business, Maloney promptly answered, "Sure
nobody, sorr, barrin' Miss Wallen and Mr. Forrest. He come back twice
and took her home. Misther Elmendorf was here, sorr----" But Allison did
not wait to hear about him. Seated at her desk when he entered, Jenny
promptly arose in respect to the distinguished arrival, but he merely
growled an inquiry for Mr. Wells, looked her sharply over, and banged
out again, leaving the poor girl with vague sense of new trouble to add
to the weight of care she was already bearing. As he tramped away down
town, Allison told himself he was not sorry that he had so crushing a
piece of circumstantial evidence with which to demolish Forrest's
aspirations, yet down in the depths of his heart he knew he was sorry,
for he had grown to like him well. Just what course to pursue he had
not determined. He would see Wells, see the Hotel Belmont people, see
one or two parties referred to by Mr. Elmendorf as "highly respectable
and responsible" who could tell him far more in the same strain, then
see his brother trustees and dispose of Miss Wallen's case. Meantime,
Florence was kindly, affectionately urged not to see Mr. Forrest in the
event of his calling. And so Elmendorf's schemes were working grandly.
He could well afford now to let them seethe and bubble. He could hold
his peace and position at home, give renewed attention to those grander
projects for the elevation of the down-trodden and the down-treading of
the elevated, keep out of Forrest's way, and occupy himself in the
cultivation of his new acquaintance Major Cranston, in the enjoyment of
the privileges accorded him in Cranston's library, and in the incidental
conversion to the true political faith of those dyed-in-the-wool
devotees to Cranston's service,--iniquitous, feudalistic, slave-like
service Elmendorf deemed it,--old Sergeant McGrath, his better half, and
the nephew.
And while he was in the midst of this, came other helping hands.
Florence Allison's social friends were prompt to hear of her return and
of her bringing with her the objectionable aspirant, and were equally
prompt to call in eager shoals. Somewhere the impression had got abroad
that her army friend had been ordered off under a cloud, and, though no
one at head-quarters could explain it, many society people could, and
entirely to their own satisfaction. The men who knew Forrest liked him,
but few women seemed to know him at all. After standing a social siege
of some forty-eight hours, even Miss Allison's nerves gave way, and she
had to deny herself to callers. In the midst of the speculation and
sensation ensuing at the moment came the news that once more, suddenly
and without the faintest explanation, Mr. Forrest had left Chicago. "I
deeply regret your illness and that I was unable to see you to-day," he
wrote from the club to Miss Allison, "but I am ordered away on duty that
may cover several weeks, and have not a moment to spare. Tell Cary for
me that I will leave with my landlady the books I promised him. I would
urge his reading them carefully. With my regards to Mr. Allison and Mrs.
Lawrence, believe me, Yours faithfully." And this was only four days
after the luckless dinner. Florence ministered to the consuming
curiosity of her aunt and showed her the letter, but the
adjutant-general at head-quarters was less considerate; even society
reporters could extract from him no hint as to why or where Lieutenant
Forrest had gone. But that only served to stimulate conjecture and
suggestion; and, to gossips born, a little stimulant goes, like the
stories it sets afloat, long leagues beyond hope of recapture.
Then there were some lonely, anxious days for a pale-faced, slender,
sad-eyed girl who seemed to get no benefit from the bracing breezes, and
then, bursting suddenly from winter to summer, as is often the way with
our ill-ordered, turbulent, defiant, and generally indescribable
climate, came the first day of moisture-laden heat, depressing,
debilitating,--a day when the tide of his affairs swept Elmendorf from
his moorings at Cranston's and sent the freeholder thereof in search of
a stenographer,--the day when poor Jenny begged to be excused from
having even to write that detested name. And then speedily came the
long-threatened outbreak, the demand of the American Railway Union that
the public cease to patronize or the railway companies to run, no matter
what their contracts, the cars of the Pullman Company. "We've got 'em by
the throat at last," screamed Mart Wallen at Donnelly's Shades that
night. "This means that the people, the people of the whole nation, have
risen to down that damned old miser, and we'll make a clean sweep of
other misers while we're about it."
"We've got 'em foul," echoed with drunken hiccoughs the graceless nephew
Mrs. Mac and her sobered sergeant were dragging home between them, deaf
to the eloquence of Elmendorf haranguing the crowd in the open square
beyond. What was he saying?--"Stand firm, and the blood of the innocent
victims of the glorious appeal of seven years ago, the martyred lives
of the innocent men who died upon the scaffold, strangled in their
effort to speak for you and your children, not only will not have been
lost in vain, but soon shall be magnificently avenged. Oh, that it had
been my lot to lead you here in '86! God be thanked, it is my lot to
lead you now!"
"Oh, that ye had been here to lead in '86, ye howling lunatic," echoed
Mrs. Mac, shaking her one unoccupied fist at the glorified but luckily
distant face of the speaker; "yer only lot this night would have been in
the graveyard, for ye never would have lived to lead anything, barrin'
yer own funeral."
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