Cornelia McNabb became Mrs. Barton Brainard during the first week in
August. Neither of the pair was inclined to wait, and neither had such
a circle of friends as to make a midsummer wedding less preferable than
a later one.
The wedding took place in church--as Cornelia had intimated to Ogden.
She was not disposed to let false delicacy clog the heels of success,
and she had her way. They were married in the daytime, as a partial
concession to the social inexperience of one father and the social
indifference of the other. The young men of the bank were drawn on
freely; Ogden served as an usher--as Cornelia had requested. Adrian
Valentine supported Burt at the chancel-rail, and gave some friendly
counsel as to details at both church and house.
Cornelia's circle of girl-friends yielded nothing suitable in the
way of bridesmaids; but there was the groom's sister--and one maiden
attendant was enough. Abbie therefore took this part--for the first
time. She walked up the long aisle with a bashful modesty. She had a
dozen opportunities to meet Ogden's eye, but her embarrassed shyness
prevented her from once looking into his face.
Mary Brainard was still in exile, and her mother was confined to her
room by one of her nervous attacks; but in one of the back pews, in the
twilight under the gallery, a dark, meagre, and dissolute-looking young
man had taken his post. And as Burt, with a proud and prosperous smile,
led Cornelia down the aisle, tears of indignant rage started from the
eyes of his banned and mistreated brother.
The Brainard marriage was celebrated in print, just as the Brainard
divorce had been. Some of the cuts that had illustrated the one were
also used to illustrate the other.
Mr. and Mrs. Burton Brainard went to California and were absent a
month. On their return they took up their quarters in the Brainard
house, while Burt considered the question of building. Cornelia had
made up her own mind where this building should be done.
They returned to town in accordance with the mandate conveyed by
certain cards that had been sent out, directed by the serviceable
Abbie, during their absence. These cards announced that "Mr. and Mrs.
Burton Tillinghast Brainard" would be "at home" on the "Thursdays in
September."
Cornelia had gloated over these cards on their arrival from the
stationer's.
"Mrs. Burton Tillinghast Brainard," she read, with a vigorous hitch of
her shoulder. "H'm! now we're ready to knock out your Smiths and your
Joneses." She tossed her head. "And then bring on your Floyds and your
Ingleses!"
Before going away she had wrung Ogden's hand, and had committed her
parents to him during the concluding days of their stay. Especially
was he enjoined to take them up to the top of the Clifton on the
very first clear day. A clear day came; he conducted them up to the
roof-observatory and showed them the city, and they numbered the towers
thereof.
The old people tiptoed gingerly around the parapet, while Ogden waved
his hand over the prospect--the mouth of the river with its elevators
and its sprawling miles of railway track; the weakish blue of the
lake, with the coming and going of schooners and propellers, and the
"cribs" that stood on the faint horizon--"that's where our water comes
from," George explained; the tower of the water-works itself and the
dull and distant green of Lincoln Park; the towering bulk of other
great sky-scrapers and the grimy spindling of a thousand surrounding
chimneys; the lumber-laden brigs that were tugged slowly through the
drawbridges, while long strings of drays and buggies and street-cars
accumulated during the wait. "My! don't they look little!" cried Mrs.
McNabb.
George smiled with all the gratified vanity of a native.
"And that," he said, pointing southward down the street, "is the Board
of Trade."
"Where we was the other day," the old man reminded his wife. "And that
gilt thing on the top of it is a ship, I swan. And wasn't they noisy,
though. Well, now, Josephine, ain't it handsome?"
A simple soul found to admire the tower of the Board of Trade--let it
be put on record.
George and McNabb had got on very well. The old countryman had felt
rather frost-bitten on seeing George in full social regalia, but
seeming to find him more human and approachable in a simple business
suit, he had thawed out again. Mrs. McNabb had taken to him kindly from
the start. Most women did, though he appeared never to have observed
it. She joined with her husband in wreathing him in an atmosphere of
simple friendliness.
The other father concerned in the festivities had also thawed towards
George, though it would be a mistake to attribute simplicity to any
friendliness shown by the head of the Underground. At one stage of the
proceedings Erastus M. Brainard had laid his hand on Ogden's shoulder,
and the young man had asked himself with distressful circumspection
what it meant. It might have been to his advantage if he had found an
answer.
George's engagement to Jessie Bradley was now an accomplished fact; the
nail was driven--only a formal announcement was required to clinch it.
He had preferred to withhold this until his affairs with McDowell were
more accurately adjusted. Freeze & Freeze had put on a pretty positive
pressure, and an arrangement had been contrived that had some of the
externals, at least, of an adjustment.
McDowell's affairs had not been taking a very favorable turn; some of
his ventures had been too rank for even gullibility itself, and his
hope of relations with Ingles was now completely at an end. Ingles,
in fact, had signified to him that an accounting for of the St. Asaph
funds was desired by himself and the other contributing members of the
former committee, that a remittance in accordance therewith was looked
for, and that his resignation of the financial guidance of the choir
would receive prompt consideration.
This communication might have been made by Ingles personally, or it
might have been sent by his office-boy, or it might even (as a physical
possibility) have been pushed in under the crack of the door between
them. As a matter of fact, it came through the mail. So formal a
transmission of so formidable a communication was conclusive; McDowell
felt at once that all possibility of personal relations between
himself and Ingles was at an end--that door in the wall between them
was as good as bricked up.
[Illustration: "Burt led Cornelia down the aisle."]
Kittie came around late one afternoon to see her mother. "Do you know,
George," she said to her brother, "that Eugene is going to give up our
pew at St. Asaph's? Can you imagine why?"
He had heard and read a good deal in his lifetime about the fine
penetration of feminine intuition; he wondered why feminine intuition
always failed when it came up for application to business matters. The
pretty, high-held female heads that would droop in shame if they could
come to learn the how and wherefore of their own costly bedeckings!
Poor innocent Kittie--sitting there and twirling in unsuspecting
surprise the sparkling novelties that encircled her fingers, and never
caring or thinking about the means by which they had come to be there!
The principal instruments in McDowell's settlement with the
Ogden estate were certain promissory notes and certain warranty
deeds--warranty, after quit-claims had been refused; and Ogden found
himself in possession of his brother-in-law's signature on several bits
of paper which he hoped might realize their full value when the time
came, and also of two or three largish tracts of suburban property
in which the general public interest seemed rather diminishing than
increasing. McDowell saved the best here, just as he had managed to
secure the best of his father-in-law's estate for his wife. In the
original division--fair, according to appraised values--his knowledge
of tendencies of growth had put into his wife's third almost everything
that was likely to show a quick increase in price. George took his
notes and his lands, and the task of turning them into money; and he
left to Kittie an unimpaired trust and confidence in her own husband.
The matter of a house shared his thoughts, along with the McDowell
business--an October wedding, a week for a trip, and then the beginning
of housekeeping on the first of November in a home of their own.
"You want to see Mrs. Cass," Floyd had told him; "she fixed us up when
we first came out here."
"Who is she?"
"A clever little woman who makes a sort of specialty of North-side
houses. She has got desk-room somewhere upstairs--sixteenth or
seventeenth. She married badly--her husband doesn't do anything. She
began by renting friends' houses to other friends, and has kept on
until she has worked up quite a business. In such a big town as this
has got to be you need to go to a specialist for almost everything. You
might take in the whole lot of those big house-renting agencies and
never get satisfied."
The office of the Massachusetts Brass Company was as much a social
exchange as ever. Jessie frequently came down with Mrs. Floyd and
Ann and Claudia, and George would sometimes step up to see her
for a few minutes during his noonings. Mrs. Floyd looked upon the
meetings indulgently enough, but Ann seemed to hold against Ogden a
deeply-seated grudge.
She had been considerably embarrassed in the matter of her special
assessments, and she had as much feeling against George as against
McDowell himself. Her efforts to fortify and to recoup herself had led
her into other fields of business, and she was now spending a good part
of every forenoon in the neighborhood of the Board of Trade. Thus far
she had not been so successful as to lessen the grudge.
The particular institution in which Ann was interested bore some
external resemblance to its great prototype across the street. It was
smaller and, if possible, uglier; but it, too, had its quadrangular
arcade, its big square skylight, its ladies' gallery. In this gallery
Ann sat daily for several hours, along with other women of a like turn
of mind, and kept an eye on the proceedings generally. After a few
sessions she became accustomed to the mere externals of the place--the
endless shuffle of feet on the grimy floor, the sharp yawps of raw and
eager voices, the flinging aloft of excited arms, the little tangles
of noise and passion that were instantly woven around every new-comer
with, an offer to buy or to sell. She looked over this choppy sea
across to the promised land that was being portrayed on the opposite
blackboard; the artist paced to and fro on a long, high, narrow
platform, and worked in the uncertainty of a single drop-light. He
frequently changed his mind, and his alterations usually had a deep and
sometimes a discouraging effect upon Ann and her associates. Every now
and then one would retire into the hallway and consult with her agent,
and then there would be the rustle of greenbacks, and the agent would
take the elevator down and presently be seen among the crowd of men on
the floor. The agent was likely to be a gallant fellow, only too happy
to be of service to a lady.
Ann was now a member of Floyd's household, in good and regular
standing. She felt herself very much at home. What was her
brother-in-law's was her sister's, and what was her sister's was hers.
She was usually the first to unfold the morning paper; she pre-empted
the bathroom with little regard to Walworth's established habits; and
if the idea of some trifling delicacy occurred to her she would order
it from the grocery, and after it had appeared on Walworth's table it
appeared again in his bill. She did not stand on ceremony; she waived
all stiff formality; cosily and frankly she was quite one of the
family.
As such, she used Walworth's office quite freely, and in the same
capacity she joined in the conferences which the Floyds were now
beginning to hold with Atwater up under his great skylight in the roof.
Atwater's little house for Claudia had given great satisfaction, and
he was now about to do a larger one for Claudia's parents, who had
begun to look upon their banishment to the West as a perpetual fact.
Claudia's house had been delivered with its stairs, its windows, its
red chimney, and its chandeliers--which last were composed by a pushing
young draughtsman who was as anxious to make interest with Atwater as
Atwater had perhaps been to make interest with Floyd.
Atwater was accustomed to people who didn't know their own minds, to
people who knew their own minds too well, to people who had too many
minds to really have any mind at all, and to people who had so much
money that they didn't need to have any mind. He was impeccably suave
and unruffled, but he had the immense advantage of being able to
impress the unduly brusque and capricious and exasperating among his
clients with the fact that they were dealing with a gentleman and an
artist. He also put a good deal of "presence" into the rendering and
the collecting of his accounts; there was no more disputing his charges
than his taste.
He took equally, with his urbane imperturbability, the anxious
carpings of Mrs. Floyd and the easy joking of her husband. Ann he
quietly ignored, and Walworth thanked him; for his sister-in-law's
interest in the new house was becoming oppressively personal. As for
Claudia, he always saw that she had, out of his sample cabinet, all the
bits of tiling and scraps of marqueterie that she needed; and if she
fancied a promenade among the boards and trestles of his drawing-room,
her whim was gratified. Ogden and Jessie, who sometimes came too, he
welcomed pleasantly--the guests of the present were the clients of the
future. Ogden admired his beautiful manners and his whitened hair; one
day he amusedly recalled Jessie's determination to make her husband's
hair like it.
He looked at Atwater, who was explaining his preliminary sketches
to the Floyds and was trying to fix the general bearings of hall,
stairway, and closets; his hair looked whiter still under the diffused
glare from the skylight.
George turned to Jessie, with his hand on his own head, so smooth and
shining brown.
"This is the hair you are to whiten," he said, and he lifted his
eyebrows in a smile.
"I never saw such a boy!" she murmured in a repressed ecstasy. "Do you
remember _everything_ I have said?" No one was looking, and she placed
her own hand on his other temple.
"Wouldn't powder do?" he asked lightly.
"Only for girls."
"Couldn't it be bleached?"
"Not and get that color."
"Must I suffer, then?"--with his hand still on his brow.
"I'm afraid that's the only way." She lowered his hand in her own, and
gave it a tender pressure on its descent.
"Must it be lingering, or something sharp and sudden?"
She pressed his hand again, and looked affectionately into his eyes.
"Both, perhaps."
"Will it be fear or anxiety or shame?"
"Wait and see."
Atwater rolled up his sketches and threw them into a drawer. Then he
went to his cabinet and took out a few small strips and squares of
encaustic tiling in yellow and gray.
"And now I wonder if our little Colleen wouldn't like to take some of
these home to play with." He turned courteously to Mrs. Floyd, while
his hand reached out for a sheet of brown paper.
"They're not too--too heavy?" she asked, cautiously. "Nor too easily
broken?"
The child opened wide her brown eyes, in one of her sober little
ecstasies. "Oh, plaze, mamma! Oh, lave me have them--do!"
Ogden turned to Jessie, mutely asking her to share his appreciation of
this. But she did not seem, especially amused. He remembered, then,
that to himself he had frequently called her treatment of Claudia
"uneven." Sometimes the child entertained her, sometimes she annoyed
her. Jessie seemed to regard her--and he felt now and then that she
so regarded children generally--as a doll to be played with until
weariness came, and then to be carelessly thrust away.
"Oh, let her have 'em," said Ann, with an air of authority.
"_Very good_ of you, I'm sure," said Floyd to Atwater.
"Not at all; I'm sampled to death. There, my child." He gave her a
neat little package. "I'm sure they'll understand you when you get to
Paris!"