“Don’t you think it’s queer?” she asked me.
“I think I’ll have a talk with that young man to-night,” I said,
“and see if he can give some account of himself.”
“But, my dear,” my wife said, gravely, “_she_ doesn’t know whether
they’ve had the measles or not.”
“Why, Great Scott!” I exclaimed, “they must have had them when they
were children.”
“Please don’t be stupid,” said my wife. “I meant _their_ children.”
After dinner that night—or rather, after supper, for we had dinner
in the middle of the day at Jacobus’s—I walked down the long
verandah to ask Brede, who was placidly smoking at the other end,
to accompany me on a twilight stroll. Half way down I met Major
Halkit.
“That friend of yours,” he said, indicating the unconscious figure
at the further end of the house, “seems to be a queer sort of a
Dick. He told me that he was out of business, and just looking
round for a chance to invest his capital. And I’ve been telling him
what an everlasting big show he had to take stock in the Capitoline
Trust Company—starts next month—four million capital—I told you all
about it. ‘Oh, well,’ he says, ‘let’s wait and think about it.’
‘Wait!’ says I, ‘the Capitoline Trust Company won’t wait for _you_,
my boy. This is letting you in on the ground floor,’ says I, ‘and
it’s now or never.’ ‘Oh, let it wait,’ says he. I don’t know what’s
in-_to_ the man.”
“I don’t know how well he knows his own business, Major,” I said as
I started again for Brede’s end of the veranda. But I was troubled
none the less. The Major could not have influenced the sale of one
share of stock in the Capitoline Company. But that stock was a
great investment; a rare chance for a purchaser with a few thousand
dollars. Perhaps it was no more remarkable that Brede should
not invest than that I should not—and yet, it seemed to add one
circumstance more to the other suspicious circumstances.
* * * * *
When I went upstairs that evening, I found my wife putting her hair
to bed—I don’t know how I can better describe an operation familiar
to every married man. I waited until the last tress was coiled up,
and then I spoke:
“I’ve talked with Brede,” I said, “and I didn’t have to catechize
him. He seemed to feel that some sort of explanation was looked
for, and he was very outspoken. You were right about the
children—that is, I must have misunderstood him. There are only
two. But the Matterhorn episode was simple enough. He didn’t
realize how dangerous it was until he had got so far into it that
he couldn’t back out; and he didn’t tell her, because he’d left her
here, you see, and under the circumstances——”
“Left her here!” cried my wife. “I’ve been sitting with her the
whole afternoon, sewing, and she told me that he left her at
Geneva, and came back and took her to Basle, and the baby was born
there—now I’m sure, dear, because I asked her.”
“Perhaps I was mistaken when I thought he said she was on this side
of the water,” I suggested, with bitter, biting irony.
“You poor dear, did I abuse you?” said my wife. “But, do you know,
Mrs. Tabb said that _she_ didn’t know how many lumps of sugar he
took in his coffee. Now that seems queer, doesn’t it?”
It did. It was a small thing. But it looked queer, Very queer.
* * * * *
The next morning, it was clear that war was declared against the
Bredes. They came down to breakfast somewhat late, and, as soon
as they arrived, the Biggleses swooped up the last fragments that
remained on their plates, and made a stately march out of the
dining-room, Then Miss Hoogencamp arose and departed, leaving a
whole fish-ball on her plate. Even as Atalanta might have dropped
an apple behind her to tempt her pursuer to check his speed, so
Miss Hoogencamp left that fish-ball behind her, and between her
maiden self and contamination.
We had finished our breakfast, my wife and I, before the Bredes
appeared. We talked it over, and agreed that we were glad that we
had not been obliged to take sides upon such insufficient testimony.
After breakfast, it was the custom of the male half of the Jacobus
household to go around the corner of the building and smoke their
pipes and cigars where they would not annoy the ladies. We sat
under a trellis covered with a grapevine that had borne no grapes
in the memory of man. This vine, however, bore leaves, and these,
on that pleasant summer morning, shielded from us two persons
who were in earnest conversation in the straggling, half-dead
flower-garden at the side of the house.
“I don’t want,” we heard Mr. Jacobus say, “to enter in no man’s
_pry_-vacy; but I do want to know who it may be, like, that I hev
in my house. Now what I ask of _you_, and I don’t want you to take
it as in no ways _personal_, is—hev you your merridge-license with
you?”
“No,” we heard the voice of Mr. Brede reply. “Have you yours?”
I think it was a chance shot; but it told all the same. The Major
(he was a widower) and Mr. Biggle and I looked at each other; and
Mr. Jacobus, on the other side of the grape-trellis, looked at—I
don’t know what—and was as silent as we were.
Where is _your_ marriage-license, married reader? Do you know?
Four men, not including Mr. Brede, stood or sat on one side or
the other of that grape-trellis, and not one of them knew where
his marriage-license was. Each of us had had one—the Major had
had three. But where were they? Where is _yours_? Tucked in your
best-man’s pocket; deposited in his desk—or washed to a pulp in his
white waistcoat (if white waistcoats be the fashion of the hour),
washed out of existence—can you tell where it is? Can you—unless
you are one of those people who frame that interesting document and
hang it upon their drawing-room walls?
Mr. Brede’s voice arose, after an awful stillness of what seemed
like five minutes, and was, probably, thirty seconds:
“Mr. Jacobus, will you make out your bill at once, and let me pay
it? I shall leave by the six o’clock train. And will you also send
the wagon for my trunks?”
“I hain’t said I wanted to hev ye leave——” began Mr. Jacobus; but
Brede cut him short.
“Bring me your bill.”
“But,” remonstrated Jacobus, “ef ye ain’t——”
“Bring me your bill!” said Mr. Brede.
* * * * *
My wife and I went out for our morning’s walk. But it seemed to
us, when we looked at “our view,” as if we could only see those
invisible villages of which Brede had told us—that other side of
the ridges and rises of which we catch no glimpse from lofty hills
or from the heights of human self-esteem. We meant to stay out
until the Bredes had taken their departure; but we returned just
in time to see Pete, the Jacobus darkey, the blacker of boots, the
brasher of coats, the general handy-man of the house, loading the
Brede trunks on the Jacobus wagon.
And, as we stepped upon the verandah, down came Mrs. Brede, leaning
on Mr. Brede’s arm, as though she were ill; and it was clear that
she had been crying. There were heavy rings about her pretty black
eyes.
My wife took a step toward her.
“Look at that dress, dear,” she whispered; “she never thought
anything like this was going to happen when she put _that_ on.”
It was a pretty, delicate, dainty dress, a graceful, narrow-striped
affair. Her hat was trimmed with a narrow-striped silk of the same
colors—maroon and white—and in her hand she held a parasol that
matched her dress.
“She’s had a new dress on twice a day,” said my wife, “but that’s
the prettiest yet. Oh, somehow—I’m _awfully_ sorry they’re going!”
But going they were. They moved toward the steps. Mrs. Brede looked
toward my wife, and my wife moved toward Mrs. Brede. But the
ostracized woman, as though she felt the deep humiliation of her
position, turned sharply away, and opened her parasol to shield
her eyes from the sun. A shower of rice—a half-pound shower of
rice—fell down over her pretty hat and her pretty dress, and fell
in a spattering circle on the floor, outlining her skirts—and there
it lay in a broad, uneven band, bright in the morning sun.
Mrs. Brede was in my wife’s arms, sobbing as if her young heart
would break.
“Oh, you poor, dear, silly children!” my wife cried, as Mrs. Brede
sobbed on her shoulder, “why _didn’t_ you tell us?”
“W-W-W-We didn’t want to be t-t-taken for a b-b-b-b-bridal couple,”
sobbed Mrs. Brede; “and we d-d-didn’t _dream_ what awful lies we’d
have to tell, and all the aw-awful mixed-up-ness of it. Oh, dear,
dear, dear!”
* * * * *
“Pete!” commanded Mr. Jacobus, “put back them trunks. These folks
stays here’s long’s they wants ter. Mr. Brede”—he held out a large,
hard hand—“I’d orter’ve known better,” he said. And my last doubt
of Mr. Brede vanished as he shook that grimy hand in manly fashion.
The two women were walking off toward “our view,” each with an arm
about the other’s waist—touched by a sudden sisterhood of sympathy.
“Gentlemen,” said Mr. Brede, addressing Jacobus, Biggle, the Major
and me, “there is a hostelry down the street where they sell honest
New Jersey beer. I recognize the obligations of the situation.”
We five men filed down the street. The two women went toward the
pleasant slope where the sunlight gilded the forehead of the great
hill. On Mr. Jacobus’s veranda lay a spattered circle of shining
grains of rice. Two of Mr. Jacobus’s pigeons flew down and picked
up the shining grains, making grateful noises far down in their
throats.