As the weeks rolled by, two questions constantly rose in Ruth's mind:
Why had he not wanted her to thank him?--and what had he meant by--“And
is that all?”
Her other admirers--and there had been many in her Maryland home--had
never behaved like this. Was it because they liked her better than
she liked them? The fact was--and she might as well admit it once for
all--that Jack did not like her at all, he really DISliked her, and only
his loyalty to her father and that inborn courtesy which made him polite
to every woman he met--young or old--prevented his betraying himself.
She tried to suggest something like this to Miss Felicia, but that good
woman had only said: “Men are queer, my dear, and these Southerners are
the queerest of them all. They are so chivalrous that at times they get
tiresome. Breen is no better than the rest of them.” This had ended it
with Miss Felicia. Nor would she ever mention his name to her again.
Jack was not tiresome; on the contrary, he was the soul of honor and
as brave as he could be--a conclusion quite as illogical as that of her
would-be adviser.
If she could only have seen Peter, the poor child thought,--Peter
understood--just as some women not as old as her aunt would have
understood. Dear Uncle Peter! He had told her once what Jack had said
about her--how beautiful he thought her and how he loved her devotion to
her father. Jack MUST have said it, for Uncle Peter never spoke anything
but the exact truth. Then why had Jack, and everything else, changed
so cruelly? she would say--talking to herself, sometimes aloud. For the
ring had gone from his voice and the tenderness from his touch. Not that
he ever was tender, not that she wanted him to be, for that matter; and
then she would shut her door and throw herself on her bed in an agony of
tears--pleading a headache or fatigue that she might escape her father's
inquiry, and often his anxious glance.
The only ray of light that had pierced her troubled heart--and this only
flashed for a brief moment--was the glimpse she had had of Jack's mind
when he and her father first met. The boy had called to inquire after
his Chief's health and for any instructions he might wish to give, when
MacFarlane, hearing the young hero's voice in the hall below, hurried
down to greet him. Ruth was leaning over the banister at the time and
saw all that passed. Once within reach MacFarlane strode up to Jack, and
with the look on his face of a man who had at last found the son he had
been hunting for all his life, laid his hand on the lad's shoulder.
“I think we understand each other, Breen,--don't we?” he said simply,
his voice breaking.
“I think so, sir,” answered Jack, his own eyes aglow, as their hands
met.
Nothing else had followed. There was no outburst. Both were men; in the
broadest and strongest sense each had weighed the other. The eyes and
the quivering lips and the lingering hand-clasp told the rest. A sudden
light broke in on Ruth. Her father's quiet words, and his rescuer's
direct answer came as a revelation. Jack, then, did want to be thanked!
Yes, but not by her! Why was it? Why had he not understood? And why had
he made her suffer, and what had she done to deserve it?
If Jack suspected any of these heartaches and misgivings, no one would
have surmised it. He came and went as usual, passing an hour in the
morning and an hour at night with his Chief, until he had entirely
recovered his strength--bringing with him the records of the work; the
number of feet drilled in a day; cost of maintenance; cubic contents of
dump; extent and slope and angles of “fill”--all the matters which since
his promotion (Jack now had Bolton's place) came under his immediate
supervision. Nor had any word passed between himself and Ruth, other
than the merest commonplace. He was cheery, buoyant, always ready to
help,--always at her service if she took the train for New York or
stayed after dark at a neighbor's house, when he would insist on
bringing her home, no matter how late he had been up the night before.
If the truth were known, he neither suspected nor could he be made to
believe that Ruth had any troubles. The facts were that he had given her
all his heart and had been ready to lay himself at her feet, that being
the accepted term in his mental vocabulary--and she would have none of
him. She had let him understand so--rebuffed him--not once, but every
time he had tried to broach the subject of his devotion;--once in the
Geneseo arbor, and again on that morning when he had really crawled to
her side because he could no longer live without seeing her. The manly
thing to do now was to accept the situation: to do his work; look after
his employer's interests, read, study, run over whenever he could to see
Peter--and these were never-to-be-forgotten oases in the desert of his
despair--and above all never to forget that he owed a duty to Miss Ruth
in which no personal wish of his own could ever find a place. She was
alone and without an escort except her father, who was often so absorbed
in his work, or so tired at night, as to be of little help to her.
Moreover, his Chief had, in a way, added his daughter's care to his
other duties. “Can't you take Ruth to-night--” or “I wish you'd meet
her at the ferry,” or “if you are going to that dinner in New York, at
so-and-so's, would you mind calling for her--” etc., etc. Don't start,
dear reader. These two came of a breed where the night key and the
daughter go together and where a chaperon would be as useless as a
policeman locked inside a bank vault.
And so the boy struggled on, growing in bodily strength and mental
experience, still the hero among the men for his heroic rescue of the
“Boss”--a reputation which he never lost; making friends every day both
in the village and in New York and keeping them; absorbed in his slender
library, and living within his means, which small as they were, now
gave him two rooms at Mrs. Hicks's,--one of which he had fitted up as a
little sitting-room and in which Ruth had poured the first cup of tea,
her father and some of the village people being guests.
His one secret--and it was his only one--he kept locked up in his heart,
even from Peter. Why worry the dear old fellow, he had said to himself a
dozen times, since nothing would ever come of it.
While all this had been going on in the house of MacFarlane, much more
astonishing things had been developing in the house of Breen.
The second Mukton Lode scoop,--the one so deftly handled the night of
Arthur Breen's dinner to the directors,--had somehow struck a snag
in the scooping with the result that most of the “scoopings” had been
spilled over the edge there to be gathered up by the gamins of the
Street, instead of being hived in the strong boxes of the scoopers. Some
of the habitues in the orchestra chairs in Breen's office had cursed
loud and deep when they saw their margins melt away; and one or two of
the directors had broken out into open revolt, charging Breen with the
fiasco, but most of the others had held their peace. It was better to
crawl away into the tall grass there to nurse their wounds than to
give the enemy a list of the killed and wounded. Now and then an
outsider--one who had watched the battle from afar--saw more of the
fight than the contestants themselves. Among these was Garry Minott.
“You heard how Mason, the Chicago man, euchred the Mukton gang, didn't
you?” he had shouted to a friend one night at the Magnolia--“Oh, listen!
boys. They set up a job on him,--he's a countryman, you know a poor
little countryman--from a small village called Chicago--he's got three
millions, remember, all in hard cash. Nice, quiet motherly old gentleman
is Mr. Mason--butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. Went into Mukton with
every dollar he had--so kind of Mr. Breen to let him in--yes, put him
down for 2,000 shares more. Then Breen & Co. began to hoist her up--five
points--ten points--twenty points. At the end of the week they had,
without knowing it, bought every share of Mason's stock.” Here Garry
roared, as did the others within hearing. “And they've got it yet. Next
day the bottom dropped out. Some of them heard Mason laugh all the way
to the bank. He's cleaned up half a million and gone back home--'so
afraid his mother would spank him for being out late o' nights without
his nurse,'” and again Garry's laugh rang out with such force and
earnestness that the glasses on Biffy's table chinked in response.
This financial set-back, while it had injured, for the time, Arthur
Breen's reputation for being “up and dressed,” had not, to any
appreciable extent, curtailed his expenditures or narrowed the area of
his social domain. Mrs. Breen's dinners and entertainments had been as
frequent and as exclusive, and Miss Corinne had continued to run the
gamut of the gayest and best patronized functions without, the Scribe
is pained to admit, bringing home with her for good and all both her
cotillion favors and the gentleman who had bestowed them. Her little
wren-like head had moved from side to side, and she had sung her
sweetest and prettiest, but somehow, when the song was over and the
crumbs all eaten (and there were often two dinners a week and at least
one dance), off went the male birds to other and more captivating
roosts.
Mrs. Breen, of course, raved when Corinne at last opened the door of her
cage for Garry,--went to bed, in fact, for the day, to accentuate her
despair and mark her near approach to death because of it--a piece of
inconsistency she could well have spared herself, knowing Corinne as she
had, from the day of her birth, and remembering as she must have done,
her own escapade with the almost penniless young army officer who
afterward became Corinne's father.
Breen did not rave; Breen rather liked it. Garry had no money, it is
true, except what he could earn,--neither had Corinne. Garry seemed to
do as he darned pleased,--so did Corinne;--Garry had no mother,--neither
had Corinne so far as yielding to any authority was concerned.
“Yes,--let 'em marry,--good thing--begin at the bottom round and work
up--” all of which meant that the honorable banker was delighted over
the prospect of considerable more freedom for himself and considerable
less expense in the household.
And so the wedding had taken place with all the necessary trimmings:
awning over the carpeted sidewalk; four policemen on the curb;
detectives in the hall and up the staircase and in the front bedroom
where the jewels were exposed (all the directors of the Mukton Lode
were represented); crowds lining the sidewalk; mob outside the church
door--mob inside the church door and clear up to the altar; flowers,
palms, special choir, with little bank-notes to the boys and a big
bank-note to the leader; checks for the ranking clergyman and the two
assistant clergymen, not forgetting crisp bills for the sexton and the
janitor and the policemen and the detectives and everybody else who
could hold out a hand and not be locked up in jail for highway robbery.
Yes, a most fashionable and a most distinguished and a most exclusive
wedding--there was no mistake about that.
No one had ever seen anything like it before; some hoped they never
would again, so great was the crush in the drawing-room. And not only
in the drawing-room, but over every square inch of the house for that
matter, from the front door where Parkins's assistant (an extra man from
Delmonico's) shouted out--“Third floor back for the gentlemen and second
floor front for the ladies”--to the innermost recesses of the library
made over into a banquet hall, where that great functionary himself
was pouring champagne into batteries of tumblers as if it were so much
water, and distributing cuts of cold salmon and portions of terrapin
with the prodigality of a charity committee serving a picnic.
And then the heartaches over the cards that never came; and the presents
that were never sent, and the wrath of the relations who got below the
ribbon in the church and the airs of the strangers who got above it; and
the tears over the costly dresses that did not arrive in time and the
chagrin over those they had to wear or stay at home--and the heat and
the jam and tear and squeeze--and the aftermath of wet glasses on
inlaid tables and fine-spun table-cloths burnt into holes with careless
cigarettes; and the little puddles of ice cream on the Turkish rugs and
silk divans and the broken glass and smashed china!--No--there never had
been such a wedding!
This over, Corinne and Garry had gone to housekeeping in a dear little
flat, to which we may be sure Jack was rarely ever invited (he had only
received “cards” to the church, an invitation which he had religiously
accepted, standing at the door so he could bow to them both as they
passed)--the two, I say, had gone to a dear little flat--so dear, in
fact, that before the year was out Garry's finances were in such a
deplorable condition that the lease could not be renewed, and another
and a cheaper nest had to be sought for.
It was at this time that the new church to be built at Corklesville
needed an architect--a fact which Jack communicated to Garry. Then
it happened that with the aid of MacFarlane and Holker Morris the
commission was finally awarded to that “rising young genius who had
so justly distinguished himself in the atelier of America's greatest
architect--Holker Morris--” all of which Garry wrote himself and had
inserted in the county paper, he having called upon the editor for that
very purpose. This service--and it came at a most critical time in the
young man's affairs--the Scribe is glad to say, Garry, with his old-time
generous spirit suddenly revived, graciously acknowledged thanking
Jack heartily and with meaning in his voice, as well as MacFarlane--not
forgetting Ruth, to whom he sent a mass of roses as big as a bandbox.
The gaining of this church building--the largest and most important
given the young architect since he had left Morris's protection and
guidance--decided Garry to give up at once his expensive quarters in
New York and move to Corklesville. So far as any help from the house
of Breen was concerned, all hope had ended with the expensive and
much-advertised wedding (a shrewd financial move, really, for a firm
selling shady securities). Corinne had cooed, wept, and then succumbed
into an illness, but Breen had only replied: “No, let 'em paddle their
own canoe.”
This is why the sign “To Let,” on one of the new houses built by the Elm
Crest Land and Improvement Company--old Tom Corkle who owned the market
garden farms that gave the village of Corklesville its name, would have
laughed himself sore had he been alive--was ripped off and various teams
loaded with all sorts of furniture, some very expensive and showy and
some quite the contrary--especially that belonging to the servants'
rooms--were backed up to the newly finished porch with its second coat
of paint still wet, and their contents duly distributed upstairs and
downstairs and in my lady Corinne's chamber.
“Got to put on the brakes, old man,” Garry had said one day to Jack. The
boy had heard of the expected change in the architect's finances before
the villa was rented, and so Garry's confidential communication was not
news to him.
“Been up to look at one of those new houses. Regular bird cage, but we
can get along. Besides, this town is going to grow and I'm going to help
it along. They are all dead out here--embalmed, some of them--but dead.”
Here he opened the pamphlet of the company--“See this house--an hour
from New York; high ground; view of the harbor--(all a lie, Jack, but it
goes all the same); sewers, running water, gas (lot of the last,--most
of it in the prospectus) It's called Elm Crest--beautiful, isn't
it,--and not a stump within half a mile.”
Jack always remembered the interview. That Garry should help along
anything that he took an interest in was quite in the line of his
ambition and ability. Minott was as “smart as a steel trap,” Holker
Morris had always said of him, “and a wonderful fellow among the men.
He can get anything out of them; he would really make a good politician.
His handling of the Corn Exchange showed that.”
And so it was not surprising,--not to Jack,--that when a new village
councilman was to be elected, Garry should have secured votes enough to
be included among their number. Nor was it at all wonderful that after
taking his seat he should have been placed in charge of the village
funds so far as the expenditures for contract work went. The prestige
of Morris's office settled all doubts as to his fitness in construction;
and the splendor of the wedding--there could still be seen posted in
the houses of the workmen the newspaper cuts showing the bride and groom
leaving the church--silenced all opposition to “our fellow townsman's”
financial responsibility, even when that opposition was led by so
prominent a ward heeler as Mr. Patrick McGowan, who had planned to get
the position himself--and who became Garry's arch enemy thereafter.
In these financial and political advancements Corinne helped but little.
None of the village people interested her, nor did she put herself out
in the least to be polite to them. Ruth had called and had brought her
hands full of roses--and so had her father. Garry had continued to thank
them both for their good word to the church wardens--and he himself now
and then spent an evening at MacFarlane's house without Corinne, who
generally pleaded illness; but the little flame of friendship which had
flashed after their arrival in Corklesville had died down again.
This had gone on until the acquaintance had practically ended, except
when they met on the trains or in crossing the ferry. Then again, Ruth
and her father lived at one end of the village known as Corklesville,
and Garry and Corinne lived at the other end, known as Elm Crest, the
connecting link being the railroad, a fact which Jack told Garry with a
suggestive laugh, made them always turn their backs on each other when
they parted to go to their respective homes, to which Garry would reply
that it was an outrage and that he was coming up that very night--all
of which he failed to do when the proposed visit was talked over with
Corinne.
None of this affected Jack. He would greet Corinne as affectionately and
cordially as he had ever done. He had taken her measure years before,
but that made no difference to him, he never forgetting that she was his
uncle's nominal daughter; that they had been sheltered by the same roof
and that she therefore in a way belonged to his people. Moreover, he
realized, that like himself, she had been compelled to give up many of
the luxuries and surroundings to which she had been accustomed and which
she loved,--worthless now to Jack in his freedom, but still precious
to her. This in itself was enough to bespeak his sympathy. Not that she
valued it;--she rather sniffed at it.
“I wish Jack wouldn't stand with his hat off until I get aboard the
train,” she had told Garry one day shortly after their arrival--“he
makes me so conspicuous. And he wears such queer clothes. He was in
his slouch hat and rough flannel shirt and high boots the other day and
looked like a tramp.”
“Better not laugh at Jack, Cory,” Garry had replied; “you'll be taking
your own hat off to him one of these days; we all shall. Arthur Breen
missed it when he let him go. Jack's queer about some things, but he's a
thoroughbred and he's got brains!”
“He insulted Mr. Breen in his own house, that's why he let him
go,” snapped Corinne. The idea of her ever taking off her hat, even
figuratively, to John Breen, was not to be brooked,--not for an instant.
“Yes, that's one way of looking at it, Cory, but I tell you if Arthur
Breen had had Jack with him these last few months--ever since he left
him, in fact,--and had listened once in a while to what Jack thought
was fair and square, the firm of A. B. & Co. would have a better hold on
things than they've got now; and he wouldn't have dropped that million
either. The cards don't always come up the right way, even when they're
stacked.”
“It just served my stepfather right for not giving us some of it, and
I'm glad he lost it,” Corinne rejoined, her anger rising again. “I have
never forgiven him for not making me an allowance after I married, and
I never will. He could, at least, have continued the one he always gave
me.”
Garry winked sententiously, and remarked in reply that he might be
making the distinguished money-bags an allowance himself one of these
fine days, and he could if some of the things he was counting on came
out top side up, but Corinne's opinions did not change either toward
Jack or her stepfather.