XII

Cornelia McNabb's campaign against the tenants of the Clifton proceeded

apace. Such as pleased her fancy or promised advantage to her future

she attacked one by one; she made quite a succession of engagements,

dropping here and picking up there, until she reached the point where,

for as many hours of the day as she chose, her time was occupied, and

occupied to her taste. We have already seen her in the office of the

Underground National, and we may now see her in the office of the

Massachusetts Brass Company. She did good work within the limits she

had set for herself; she was accurate and fairly rapid, and therefore

was in considerable request.

"I'd a good deal rather work around like this," she expounded to Ogden,

one day, "than put in all my time in one place. Lots more variety, to

begin with, and lots more pay. 'Most every one gives me half as much as

I could get in any single office; and then I can skip around and have

more of a show. You can talk about your rolling stone; that's all bosh."

Cornelia was now doing a daily stint of an hour or so in the office

of the Brass Company. This hour came in the middle of the forenoon,

and the work was oftener performed under the severe eye of Mrs. Floyd

than our young amanuensis could have wished. Mrs. Floyd's presence in

the office had always been rather frequent, and her prejudice against

female stenographers did not operate to make it any the less so. She

bestowed considerable scrutiny on Cornelia, and Cornelia returned the

interest in kind. She recognized in Mrs. Floyd one of the minor lights

of "Society," and she became more deeply indebted to her for points in

costume, speech, and behavior than either perhaps realized.

Mrs. Floyd was generally accompanied by Miss Wilde. This provided

Cornelia with a double course of instruction: she learned what to do

and what to avoid.

Miss Wilde was generally accompanied by her hand-bag, and that

receptacle was capable of an endless yield of documents calculated to

irritate and perplex her brother-in-law. Mrs. Floyd encouraged this.

Who, indeed, should take an interest in the affairs of her own sister

if not her own husband?

One morning Ann produced a memorandum that stunned him. As he studied

it she stood above him like the spirit of Bankruptcy.

"For Heaven's sake, Walworth, tell me what it means. Am I a ruined

woman, or what?"

Floyd glanced at the sum total; the figures mounted high. "They _have_

struck you pretty hard, that's a fact."

It was a bill for special assessments levied on the possessions of Ann

E. Wilde, in one of McDowell's subdivisions. Paving, so much; sewers

and water-mains, so much; stone sidewalk, so much.

"And eighteen dollars and a half for a quarter of a lamp-post," wailed

Ann. "Why, Walworth, I haven't got the money on hand for all this; I

never anticipated such a thing."

"What's a quarter of a lamp-post good for?" asked her sister.

"I suppose the cost is levied on four property-owners," said her

husband.

"And who's going to see by it when it's up?" asked the disconsolate

investor. "Nobody ever goes past."

"Not this year, perhaps; but there'll be plenty next year. You've no

idea how the town is spreading about. Why don't you step upstairs and

see McDowell?"

"Who starts these things going?" asked Ann. "Who fixes the amounts?"

"I guess it's done sometimes on the petition of other owners

about--according to the frontage."

"And who's the principal owner all about there?" demanded Ann. "Ain't

it McDowell himself?"

"Well, I don't suppose he's sold off very much yet."

"And so he's taxing me to make his own property more valuable. I like

that. I'm glad I went to him. And your young Ogden--I suppose I can

thank him for this."

"Good gracious, Ann; McDowell is taxed, too. The town's growing, and

all outlying property is subject to such things. And don't blame poor

Ogden."

"What more can you expect, Ann, in such a half-baked place as this?"

queried her sister.

"Go up and see McDowell," repeated Walworth. "He can tell you all

about it--when it's payable, and how, and whether there's a rebate or

anything." He passed the papers back to Ann with the definitive air

that closes a matter. "Jessie didn't come with you, then?" he inquired,

turning towards his wife.

"No, poor thing; she is away down this morning. Why, what do you think,

Walworth? They've been asking her if she can't testify."

"Testify fiddlesticks! What could she say? They don't need her; they've

got a clear enough case as it is."

"But think of her in court."

"Don't think of her in court. She may be a thousand miles away by the

time the thing comes up. Has anything more been seen or heard of that

interesting vocalist?"

"Nothing. He left the poor child all alone in that big place, with not

three days' supplies and the--"

She looked sharply over towards Cornelia. The girl's hour was ended,

but she had engaged in a pretence of tidying up the desk.

Ann creased her papers thoughtfully between her fingers. "I had no idea

that curb-stones cost so much," she sighed. "If I had only sold out on

that offer last month!"

Cornelia was now engaged in complicating her apron-strings.

Her interest in the Underground people, while becoming no less

professional, had become a good deal more personal. She would have

given anything for a decent pretext to remain. It was hard indeed

to tear herself away from this discussion of the affairs of Burton

Brainard's sister.

"--and the gas turned off," Mrs. Floyd finished, as the door closed

on the reluctant girl. "And that's the state Jessie found her

in--everything just about as bad as it could be."

"Well, no," Floyd dissented, thoughtfully. "There's one important

consolation--this suit could be brought."

"Oh, yes," answered his wife, quickly. "This Canadian woman doesn't

claim to be his wife--only that she ought to be, and that he promised

to make her so."

"Interesting family," murmured Walworth. "Should like to be related to

'em."

"She knew him in Toronto. She found him here before she had been in

town a week."

"Small world," remarked Walworth, negligently. He played with his

penholders.

Mrs. Floyd became silent. Gossip seemed out of the question with an

indifferent husband and a preoccupied sister.

Vibert's detection by the girl he had betrayed and discarded, and his

desertion of his young wife, were immediately followed by the proper

steps on the part of Brainard's attorneys. The old man had received the

intelligence of Vibert's double misdeed with a tremendous outburst of

wrath and vituperation. His indignation revived in him all the crude

violence of his youth; he drew out from the disused corners of his

memory such a vocabulary and such turns of phrase as are possible only

to one whose boyhood has been spent on the crass and barbaric frontier.

He towered and swayed like a rank plant that has sprung rapidly from

the earth and has brought up the slime and mould on its sheath and

stalk. His prodigal and picturesque indecencies were heard but half

understandingly by his son, and were lost, as to everything save their

animus, on his advisers.

The equilibrium of the scales (whose mathematical poise he had once

proven to his own satisfaction) was now destroyed; this outrage on

his daughter and himself and all his belongings put another and a

different face on the matter. The girl was received back into her

father's house. It was the understanding that she was to remain there

until the legal undoing of all this mischief had been accomplished,

and that, afterwards, she must prepare herself for an indefinite exile

among certain of her father's relatives still resident in Centralia.

During this interval Brainard allowed himself only the minimum of

communication with his daughter; her mother's fluttering sympathies

were too tenuous and too faded to furnish anything very definite or

vivid in the way of consolation; her brother did not readily abandon

himself to the softer feelings--particularly when work of so much

sterner character was before them; and but for her sister this crushed

and unfortunate child would have received but slender support and

comfort. Abbie was not only sister, but mother and family circle too;

she found a use for all the pent-up tenderness and domesticity of her

nature.

The bill in the case of Vibert _vs_. Vibert was filed without receiving

any undue attention from the press. Some exertions were taken, some

influence was used, and the matter merely made a cold, official,

numerical appearance in the legal columns of such of the dailies

as affect complete court reports. The relations between Vibert and

Jane Doane, however, made too good a "story" to be ignored in every

quarter; some brief mention of it appeared in a new and struggling

one-cent evening paper. The friends and well-wishers of the Brainards

were surprised by the extent of that paper's circulation--a good many

people appeared to have seen it.

The case of Vibert _vs_. Vibert had its place near the head of a short

docket and was reached with much less than the usual delay. It was

tried quietly and privately rather late one afternoon at a sitting

which might have been termed either a prolongation of the regular

session or a supplement to it. Perhaps only a legal mind could have

distinguished; probably the legal mind that dominated the occasion did

not attempt the distinction.

[Illustration: The matter was adjusted in a small and compact

court-room.]

The matter was adjusted in a small and compact court-room high up

in a certain vast and pillared pile--a room which differed little

in size and not greatly in furnishings from an ordinary office. The

court reporters and the crowd of court loungers had withdrawn; nobody

remained behind save the clerk and a bailiff or two. Yet the spectre

of publicity seemed hovering there; it hurled a flood of glaring light

in through the high and curtainless windows, it shimmered on the

staring yellow oak furnishings of bench and bar, and it searched out

the darkest corner of the yawning jury-box. Abbie Brainard, standing

beside her sister, peopled all this void with jargoning lawyers and

callous constables and malicious witnesses and indifferent jurymen

and sharp-witted reporters and trivial, time-killing spectators; and

then she set her unveiled sister in that revolving witness-chair and

brought to bear upon her the searching glare from the lofty windows

and the more pitiless glare of the thousand-eyed crowd. She shuddered,

and thanked Heaven--without going too deeply beneath the surface of

things--that present conditions were so favorable.

For they involved none of the ordinary phenomena of a "trial."

There was no wrangling, no eloquence, no auditory; there was no

humiliation--beyond that which was inevitable. It was hardly more

than a conference. The judge, with a quiet gravity, took a simple

conversational tone--a keynote to which the indignation of Burt,

the mortification of his sister, the sorrow of Jane Doane, and the

juvenility of Freddy Pratt all came to be attuned. There was a simple

recital of uncombated facts, the separation was decreed, and Mary

Vibert was presently at liberty to resume her maiden name. It was

considered best that she be known henceforth as Mrs. Mary Brainard.

There was no report in the next day's papers, nor the next; on the

third day things took a different turn.

One or two of the newspapers had sacrificed the Vibert-Doane story

with considerable reluctance. They felt a certain degree of martyrdom,

too, in withholding their hand from Brainard, who had been a standard

subject of attack throughout the careers of all the younger writers.

Nor were they at all sure that their position as guardians of the

public morals justified any such suppression of the truth. They learned

of the clandestine trial of the Vibert case, and that decided them.

Their virtue was strengthened; the whole affair was reopened and

thoroughly ventilated. The encroachments of wealth and privilege were

held up before the alarmed eyes of the public; the entire episode, with

everything leading up to it, was minutely rehearsed. A good many people

were interviewed--a few who knew something of the circumstances, a good

many who did not. Reportorial requisitions were also made on the bank

and the house. Some persons contributed facts relating to the matter

in hand; others, facts relating to matters whose connection was not so

close; still others volunteered opinions on the method of procedure

that made the trial noteworthy. "Vox Populi" and "Ruat Cœlum" wrote

letters "to the editor." Rough cuts from sketches and photographs

made their appearance. The whole career of Brainard was reviewed

with merciless detail, and the issue of one edition of a particular

publication was attended with the shouting of his name through the

streets. Certain sheets whose existence is unknown to the majority of

reputable people and whose circulation is in accordance therewith, gave

their clients a scare-head full of exclamation-points; and one pink

publication, whose single connection with respectability is through

the barber-shops, devoted its whole front page to the illustration

of the case: the wronged girl claimed her surpliced betrayer at the

altar-rail, while the equally wronged wife swooned in a front pew.

There was an appropriate Gothic background, while one corner of the

foreground--piquant touch of innocence--was filled in by an open-eyed

choir-boy.

All these manifestations of public interest caused Ogden a keen

personal distress that surprised him. He heard the names of Brainard

and Vibert bawled in the streets. He became familiar, for the first

time, with the salient points in Brainard's career. He heard himself

referred to once or twice as a clerk in Brainard's bank. As he handled

that pink sheet in the Clifton barber-shop while awaiting his turn, he

half expected some acquaintance to brand him as a caller at Brainard's

house. As he lay, lathered and defenceless, in his chair, he almost

dreaded lest some pitiless friend might happen in and stamp him as a

suitor for the hand of Brainard's daughter.... He paused and blushed

under the barber's eye; he saw now the reason for his personal distress

over these odious domestic entanglements. His surprise passed away, but

it left behind it a distress greater still.