The months passed by, and autumn came around once more.
Ogden's first year as a widower was lived with his mother; he used
the same time to establish himself in the real-estate business, whose
ins and outs he had now mastered in the bitter school of experience.
He had left the Clifton altogether, and had established himself in
another street and a different neighborhood. Every stone of the great
pile seemed to have raised its tongue against him, and to have driven
him out with the loud and insulting hubbub of its angry clamor. He had
no wish ever to see again the room in which he had first met his wife,
the room in which he had wrestled with his brother-in-law, the room in
which disgrace had forced him to bow his head. Bradley lay in wait for
him in the court, Jane Doane dogged him through the long corridors,
Marcus Brainard rose up as a pallid spectre within the entrance-way.
He left the building for once and for all. The placards that he placed
on vacant tenements and the signs that he caused to be reared on open
corners in the suburbs directed inquirers to a street and number quite
different from any near his old neighborhood.
Within this year Cornelia Tillinghast Brainard had moved into her new
house and had moved out again. For three poor months she occupied her
French Renaissance château on the Lake Shore Drive, and then she gave
it up forever. In vain her anxious plannings of chambers and stairways,
her long waitings for the slow finishing of the carved oaks and walnuts
of her vast interiors; in vain (for the present, at least) her lofty
aims in the direction of social distinction. For Burt with his father
was one man, and Burt without his father was another. He had relied
upon the elder's advice more than he had realized, and he had felt
the steadying and restraining power of his father's hand to a greater
degree than he would have been willing to acknowledge. When he came to
act for himself and by himself the difference soon became apparent. He
operated in a variety of directions; he was confident and daring and
ambitious, and one day he risked all and lost all.
His failure swept away everything of his and nearly everything of
his sister's. Abbie had come into the new house along with Burt and
Cornelia--no great urging had now been required to induce her to
abandon the house on the West Side. She led the same retired and quiet
life in the one quarter that she had led in the other, save that she
never felt otherwise than utterly strange and forlorn. And as she had
placed herself in her brother's house, so she put a great part of her
share in her father's estate into her brother's hands when ruin came
and every available resource was required. She had never used much
money; she may not have realized the gravity of her sacrifice. Perhaps,
too, she had hoped to rest her disappointed soul on something that
money could not buy.
To Cornelia the failure came as a sudden and awful blow. Considering
the brief time at her disposal, she had made a distinct impression
on society. A great many people of consequence came to her house and
invited her to theirs. They laughed at her freedoms and familiarities;
they enjoyed her picturesque and untrammelled phraseology. Some of the
more insatiable invited her twice. She encountered but one decided
check; this was from Mrs. Floyd.
The ship of the Floyd household, now navigating regardless of its
customary dependence on the distant admiral of the whole Floyd fleet,
was tossing in shallow yet stormy waters; there were not lacking
indications that it was occasionally grazing bottom, and there was a
notion abroad that it might presently beach or founder. Mrs. Floyd
therefore manned the helm with more than her customary caution. For
one thing, she set the ship's chronometer by local time. That is to
say, her own watch, which had now been giving the time of Boston for
the last three years (and she had become very expert in the deducting
of the hour and some minutes of difference) came to be set by the hour
of Chicago. For another thing, she must think twice before speaking
every strange craft--such a one, for example, as that propelled by the
Brainards. She did think twice, and concluded to remain silent.
"Huh!" said Cornelia; "all because I worked in her husband's office,
and she met me there! Thank goodness, I wasn't allowed to have my wish
and work for Ingles, too! I'll fetch things around, though--you see if
I don't; and I'll capture Cecilia Ingles yet!"
Abbie, along with many other persons and things, became a mere piece of
driftwood in the general wreck of her brother's fortunes. She swirled
and eddied about for some time through a succession of boarding-houses,
and after a while she found refuge in the latest home that her
sister had made. She found her new brother-in-law a good-humored
and well-disposed fellow. Briggs had established his family in the
old neighborhood on the West Side, and readily admitted Abbie; he
made no more objection to his sister-in-law than he had made to his
sister-in-law's nephew.
Ogden saw nothing of them, heard nothing of them. He merely went
around in a quiet way among a few old friends, and he dropped in at
frequent intervals on the faithful Brower. Brower was sometimes at home
and sometimes away; the fire-fiend still kept him on the move. One late
September evening, after an interval of a month or more, Ogden repaired
again to the house which had once been their common home, and found
Brower just back from Minnesota.
He was seated on his trunk, the rigors of whose cover he had
softened by the doubled folds of a striped travelling-wrap. He had
his brier-wood pipe in his mouth and a book in his hand. It was a
paper-bound volume; the back cover was missing, and there was exposed
to view the fine, close tabulation of the books composing a well-known
"library."
"Well, my dear fellow," cried Brower, rising and grasping his hand,
"how are you? Say, I believe you're looking better. Here; put yourself
in the light where I can have more of a chance at you."
George stood immovable, and Brower jerked out the elbowed gas-jet,
so as to make the light fall upon his visitor's face. It fell on his
visitor's head, too, and the whole brown head was sprinkled with silver.
Ogden put his two palms on his temples and spread out his hands until
the finger-tips met over the part in his hair.
"There are more," he said, with a smile of quiet sadness; "don't count
them again."
"I won't," said Brower. He drew away his eyes, but threw his arm over
the other's shoulder.
"I've had quite a trip, this time," he went on, in the tone which
we employ when contriving a light diversion. "Been away out into
Dakota--Bismarck, Mandan, Yankton, Sioux Falls. I was at the Falls one
Sunday."
"Is that any great place to spend Sunday?"
"Lots of folks go there to spend a few Sundays--twelve or fourteen
Sundays, and the week-days between. On the evening of _my_ Sunday I
went to church."
"I've known you to go to church on Sunday evenings before. Service any
different from any other?"
"It was a song service. Don't you suppose the poor creatures waiting
along out there in Sioux Falls have got to have their little
consolations? Ain't music the great consoler?"
"They _were_ consoled, then?"
"Oh, yes, indeed; the principal consoler had been there himself. He
sang tenor."
"Better tenor than the average?"
"Good deal better. The most touching, pathetic tones I ever heard. He
sang the 'Angel's Serenade,' with another man playing the violin. It
was affecting. One poor lady near me, with a sort of Eastern look
about her, just caught up the child in the pew by her side and burst
right out crying. I was all broke up, myself."
"That's a good song," declared Ogden. "I always like to hear it."
"You've heard it before, then? At St. Asaph's, perhaps?"
"At St. Asaph's; yes."
"Well," said Brower, "the man you heard sing it at St. Asaph's was the
man I heard sing it at Sioux Falls."
"Vibert!"
"Vibert."
George dropped his eyes; he had no wish to pursue the theme further.
"What have you there?" he asked. He indicated the book that Brower had
left lying on top of the trunk.
"Oh, nothing special. It's just one of those cheap novels. I was merely
running it through to see if he really did marry the right one in the
end. Might have done it in the first place as well as not." He passed
the book to Ogden wrong side up. "I guess it's yours, by rights--one
you left behind when you moved out." Ogden turned the book over and
read the title. It was--"A False Start."
He started. He blushed. "Yes, perhaps it is," he stammered. He held it
awkwardly in his hand for a moment. Brower watched him curiously, yet
sympathetically. "Yes," Ogden repeated, in a bold, firm voice, "it
_is_ mine." He put it in his inside pocket and buttoned his coat.
"Oh, come," cried Brower, trying to throw a veil of jocularity over his
earnestness, "that isn't fair! I've got to finish it. I've got to know
whether he did or didn't. Anyway, let me see the end."
"There is no end," said Ogden, soberly. "Or if there is, it has come."
"Then I can only guess." Brower looked at him, with a studious anxiety
in his brown eyes. "He made a mistake, sure enough, but I think he sets
it right. Yes, I think he sets it right." Ogden's eyes sought the floor.
"Ho; he abides by it."
"He _can_ set it right," said Brower, gravely; "and if he can he
ought."'
"Not now; not after--everything. Let bad enough alone."
"Make bad enough better," cried Brower. "Is he the only one to be
considered? Upon my word," he went on, with a nervous attempt at
lightness, "we are getting these great truths down finer and finer. A
couple of years ago we agreed that marriage concerned but two people;
now we are finding that it concerns only one. The question simply
is--which one?"
"The one who would be most exposed to injury," said Ogden, with a
distant mournfulness in his face and voice.
"There are different kinds of injury; there is the injury of
commission, and there is the injury of omission. Sometimes the last is
harder--on a woman. Why not let the victim choose her own particular
woe? Why not be generous enough to give her an opportunity?"
"Not now," groaned Ogden. "You don't know. Not after all--that's
happened."
"Well, then," continued Brower, with kindly perseverance, "out goes
generosity. Now bring in selfishness and give _that_ a chance. What
is our hero going to do? Must there be more sorrow for him, more
suffering, more self-punishment, and everlasting dissatisfaction
generally? What is he made of? Can he stand it? If so, how long? And if
he does, why should he?"
"Brower, Brower!" Ogden cried; "not another word if you care for me--if
you care anything at all for me!" He crossed his arms on the table and
bowed his head upon them.
Brower passed his hand softly over this head and said no more. He was a
patient husbandman; he would sow the good seed and wait for the harvest.
Ogden took the book home with him. He fluttered its leaves a few times;
then he sat down on the edge of his bed and read the title-page for an
hour. The next night he read it some more and dreamed about it. The
next night he was reading it still, and he lay awake thinking of it
until daylight.
On the following evening he took the old, familiar way to the West Side.
He found Abbie Brainard at home alone. Mary and her husband had gone
out, and the baby had been put to bed.
Abbie was sitting in the half-gloom of one small lamp; the parlor was a
little room, and a rather cheap and ugly one. But the lamp, thanks to
its beflowered shade, was discreet and reticent in the disclosure of
unprepossessing detail; besides, twenty lamps would not have had power
to divert his thoughts from the channel through which they were now
coursing.
On his entrance she started up to light the gas. She looked pale and
worn, and older than he would have believed possible. But he looked
older, too, and felt much older than he looked. The light beat down
upon his silvered hair, and heightened the glance of pitying surprise
that shone from her eyes.
In this increased illumination he saw that fortune had left her, as
well as her youth and beauty, as well as the father whose life he had
felt to make their union impossible, and whose memory might still keep
it so. But she herself, in her own essence, was before him--the same
courage, the same resolution, the same tenderness and fidelity. And in
him she saw the only man she had ever seen, or had ever cared to see.
To her, he came as a messenger of pity to heal the wounds that knavery
and scandal and violence had hacked upon her quivering heart. A
messenger of pity, yes; but could he, by any possible chance, find her
worthy of the pity that was akin to love?
To him, she appeared as the victim of his own faint-heartedness and
faithlessness. After all that he had done to wring her heart, could he
venture upon the crowning indignity of offering her his tarnished name?
To her, he stood there as a tower of refuge--a tower from whose summit
the swathing fogs might be cleared away by the warm breath of trust
and confidence, and whose smirched walls--if smirched indeed they
were--might be purified by the tears of love and the fingers of
forgetfulness.
To himself, he lay before her as a heap of crumbling and smoke-stained
ruin. Every stone cried out for the cleansing power of pity and for
the firm and friendly hand that was to rear them all again to their
pristine use and comeliness.
The clock had struck eight as he entered; it was striking eleven as he
rose to go.
"Not yet," she said, softly. She pressed him back into the depths of
his great easy-chair, and, leaning upon its rounded and padded arm,
she looked down upon him.
"You take me, then, as I am?" he asked her, soberly.
"How else do you take _me_?"
He raised his hand to his head. "There will be more of them," he said.
"They tell me I shall be white at forty."
"How many of them are mine?"
He pressed her hand.
"Not one, not one! Or, no," he continued, with a stronger pressure,
"they are all yours--do with them as you please."
He felt something warm drop on his head and trickle down his temples.
"Yes, that is the best thing to do," he said. "To think," he added,
with a tender seriousness, "that you might have saved me from
them--from every one!"
They were married within a month, and they began their married life in
the same house in which he had begun his Western life as a bachelor.
Mrs. Gore's kindliness still survived, after the hard rubs of three
years of city life, and she spread her sympathetic interest over her
new couple with an unstinted hand.
[Illustration: "She pressed him back into the depths of his great easy
chair."]
Their wedding involved no social celebration, unless we note their
participation in one of a series of great public functions that
sometimes mark the early winter. This took place in a vast hall that
was luminous in ivory and gold. They sat before a wide curved frame
brilliant with a myriad points of light, and listened to the united
endeavors of many voices and instruments to please the four thousand
people about them. Ogden and his wife had taken places in the balcony.
They had toned down existence to a quiet gray; they recognized the
middlingness of their lot. Cornelia and her husband, unknown to the
Ogdens, had seats on the floor beneath.
One box in the two long, parallel rows remained vacant during the
first and second acts. As the prelude to the third act began among the
violins the box was claimed. A party of four entered.
"There she is," said Cornelia to herself, in her place on the main
floor. "Just you wait. Burt's smart and I'm careful, and we shall catch
up to you yet!"
"Who are those people?" asked Abbie, turning towards her husband. "Who
is the gentleman with gray hair?" She was beginning to admire her
husband's own.
The two ladies of the party had seated themselves; the two gentlemen
were busy with their own and their companions' wraps in the back of the
box.
"That is Mr. Atwater, the architect. The lady in yellow is his wife.
The tall, brownish man, just handing the glass, is Mr. Ingles; he owns
the--the Clifton."
"And the other lady?" his wife continued. She indicated a radiant,
magnificent young creature, splendid, like all her mates, with the new
and eager splendor of a long-awaited opportunity. This new-comer had
nodded smilingly to many people on entering--to her neighbors on either
side, to a large dinner-party that filled three boxes across the house.
She seemed pleased to have so many persons to bow to so publicly; and
everybody whom she favored seemed equally glad of an opportunity to
return her attention.
Ogden looked at her and turned his eyes away.
"I--I have never seen her before," he said. "I don't know who she is,"
he appeared to imply.
But he knew perfectly well who she was. He knew that she was Cecilia
Ingles, and his heart was constricted by the sight of her. It is for
such a woman that one man builds a Clifton and that a hundred others
are martyred in it.