A CHANGE IMPENDS
The racing season at Saratoga drew toward its close, and Brandes had
appeared there only twice in person, both times with a very young
girl.
"If you got to bring her here to the races, can't you get her some
clothes?" whispered Stull in his ear. "That get-up of hers is
something fierce."
Late hours, hot weather, indiscreet nourishment, and the feverish
anxiety incident to betting other people's money had told on Stull.
His eyes were like two smears of charcoal on his pasty face; sourly he
went about the business which Brandes should have attended to, nursing
resentment--although he was doing better than Brandes had hoped to
do.
Their joint commission from his winnings began to assume considerable
proportions; at track and club and hotel people were beginning to turn
and stare when the little man with the face of a sick circus clown
appeared, always alone, greeting with pallid indifference his
acquaintances, ignoring overtures, noticing neither sport, nor
fashion, nor political importance, nor yet the fair and frail whose
curiosity and envy he was gradually arousing.
Obsequiousness from club, hotel, and racing officials made no
impression on him; he went about his business alone, sullen,
preoccupied, deathly pale, asking no information, requesting no
favours, conferring with nobody, doing no whispering and enduring
none.
After a little study of that white, sardonic, impossible face, people
who would have been glad to make use of him became discouraged. And
those who first had recognised him in Saratoga found, at the end of
the racing month, nothing to add to their general identification of
him as "Ben Stull, partner of Eddie Brandes--Western sports."
* * * * *
Stull, whispering in Brandes' ear again, where he sat beside him in
the grand stand, added to his earlier comment on Ruhannah's
appearance:
"Why don't you fix her up, Eddie? It looks like you been robbing a
country school."
Brandes' slow, greenish eyes marked sleepily the distant dust, where
Mr. Sanford's Nick Stoner was leading a brilliant field, steadily
overhauling the favourite, Deborah Glenn.
"When the time comes for me to fix her up," he said between thin lips
which scarcely moved, "she'll look like Washington Square in May--not
like Fifth Avenue and Broadway."
Nick Stoner continued to lead. Stull's eyes resembled two holes burnt
in a sheet; Brandes yawned. They were plunging the limit on the
Sanford favourite.
As for Ruhannah, she sat with slender gloved hands tightly clasped,
lips parted, intent, fascinated with the sunlit beauty of the scene.
Brandes looked at her, and his heavy, expressionless features altered
subtly:
"Some running!" he said.
A breathless nod was her response. All around them repressed
excitement was breaking out; men stood up and shouted; women rose, and
the club house seemed suddenly to blossom like a magic garden of
wind-tossed flowers.
Through the increasing cheering Stull looked on without a sign of
emotion, although affluence or ruin, in the Sanford colours, sat
astride the golden roan.
Suddenly Ruhannah stood up, one hand pressed to the ill-fitting blue
serge over her wildly beating heart. Brandes rose beside her. Not a
muscle in his features moved.
* * * * *
"Gawd!" whispered Stull in his ear, as they were leaving.
"Some killing, Ben!" nodded Brandes in his low, deliberate voice. His
heavy, round face was deeply flushed; Fortune, the noisy wanton, had
flung both arms around his neck. But his slow eyes were continually
turned on the slim young girl whom he was teaching to walk beside him
without taking his arm.
"Ain't she on to us?" Stull had enquired. And Brandes' reply was
correct; Ruhannah never dreamed that it made a penny's difference to
Brandes whether Nick Stoner won or whether it was Deborah Glenn which
the wild-voiced throng saluted.
* * * * *
They did not remain in Saratoga for dinner. They took Stull back to
his hotel on the rumble of the runabout, Brandes remarking that he
thought he should need a chauffeur before long and suggesting that
Stull look about Saratoga for a likely one.
Halted in the crush before the United States Hotel, Stull decided to
descend there. Several men in the passing crowds bowed to Brandes;
one, Norton Smawley, known to the fraternity as "Parson" Smawley, came
out to the curb to shake hands. Brandes introduced him to Rue as
"Parson" Smawley--whether with some sinister future purpose already
beginning to take shape in his round, heavy head, or whether a
perverted sense of humour prompted him to give Rue the idea that she
had been in godly company, it is difficult to determine.
He added that Miss Carew was the daughter of a clergyman and a
missionary. And the Parson took his cue. At any rate Rue, leaning from
her seat, listened to the persuasive and finely modulated voice of
Parson Smawley with pleasure, and found his sleek, graceful presence
and courtly manners most agreeable. There were no such persons in
Gayfield.
She hoped, shyly, that if he were in Gayfield he would call on her
father. Once in a very long while clergymen called on her father, and
their rare visits remained a pleasure to the lonely invalid for
months.
The Parson promised to call, very gravely. It would not have
embarrassed him to do so; it was his business in life to have a
sufficient knowledge of every man's business to enable him to converse
convincingly with anybody.
He took polished leave of her; took leave of Brandes with the faintest
flutter of one eyelid, as though he understood Brandes' game. Which he
did not; nor did Brandes himself, entirely.
* * * * *
They had thirty miles to go in the runabout. So they would not remain
to dinner. Besides, Brandes did not care to make himself conspicuous
in public just then. Too many people knew more or less about him--the
sort of people who might possibly be in communication with his wife.
There was no use slapping chance in the face. Two quiet visits to the
races with Ruhannah was enough for the present. Even those two visits
were scarcely discreet. It was time to go.
Stull and Brandes stood consulting together beside the runabout; Rue
sat in the machine watching the press of carriages and automobiles on
Broadway, and the thronged sidewalks along which brilliant, animated
crowds were pouring.
"I'm not coming again, Ben," said Brandes, dropping his voice. "No use
to hunt the limelight just now. You can't tell what some of these
people might do. I'll take no chances that some fresh guy might try to
start something."
"Stir up Minna?" Stull's lips merely formed the question, and his eyes
watched Ruhannah.
"They couldn't. What would she care? All the same, I play safe, Ben.
Well, be good. Better send me mine on pay day. I'll need it."
Stull's face grew sourer:
"Can't you wait till she gets her decree?"
"And lose a month off? No."
"It's all coming your way, Eddie. Stay wise and play safe. Don't start
anything now----"
"It's safe. If I don't take September off I wait a year for
my--honeymoon. And I won't. See?"
They both looked cautiously at Ruhannah, who sat motionless, absorbed
in the turmoil of vehicles and people.
Brandes' face slowly reddened; he dropped one hand on Stull's shoulder
and said, between thin lips that scarcely moved:
"She's all I'm interested in. You don't think much of her, Ben. She
isn't painted. She isn't dolled up the way you like 'em. But there
isn't anything else that matters very much to me. All I want in the
world is sitting in that runabout, looking out of her kid eyes at a
thousand or two people who ain't worth the pair of run-down shoes
she's wearing."
But Stull's expression remained sardonic and unconvinced.
So Brandes got into his car and took the wheel; and Stull watched them
threading a tortuous path through the traffic tangle of Broadway.
They sped past the great hotels, along crowded sidewalks, along the
park, and out into an endless stretch of highway where hundreds of
other cars were travelling in the same direction.
"Did you have a good time?" he inquired, shifting his cigar and
keeping his narrow eyes on the road.
"Yes; it was beautiful--exciting."
"Some horse, Nick Stoner! Some race, eh?"
"I was so excited--with everybody standing up and shouting. And such
beautiful horses--and such pretty women in their wonderful dresses!
I--I never knew there were such things."
He swung the car, sent it rushing past a lumbering limousine, slowed a
little, gripped his cigar between his teeth, and watched the road,
both hands on the wheel.
Yes, things were coming his way--coming faster and faster all the
while. He had waited many years for this--for material fortune--for
that chance which every gambler waits to seize when the psychological
second ticks out. But he never had expected that the chance was to
include a very young girl in a country-made dress and hat.
As they sped westward the freshening wind from distant pine woods
whipped their cheeks; north, blue hills and bluer mountains beyond
took fairy shape against the sky; and over all spread the tremendous
heavens where fleets of white clouds sailed the uncharted wastes, and
other fleets glimmered beyond the edges of the world, hull down, on
vast horizons.
"I want to make you happy," said Brandes in his low, even voice. It
was, perhaps, the most honest statement he had ever uttered.
Ruhannah remained silent, her eyes riveted on the far horizon.
* * * * *
It was a week later, one hot evening, that he telegraphed to Stull in
Saratoga:
"Find me a chauffeur who will be willing to go abroad. I'll give you
twenty-four hours to get him here."
The next morning he called up Stull on the telephone from the drug
store in Gayfield:
"Get my wire, Ben?"
"Yes. But I----"
"Wait. Here's a postscript. I also want Parson Smawley. I want him to
get a car and come over to the Gayfield House. Tell him I count on
him. And he's to wear black and a white tie."
"Yes. But about that chauffeur you want----"
"Don't argue. Have him here. Have the Parson, also. Tell him to bring
a white tie. Understand?"
"Oh, yes, I understand you, Eddie! You don't want anything of me, do
you! Go out and get that combination? Just like that! What'll I do?
Step into the street and whistle?"
"It's up to you. Get busy."
"_As_ usual," retorted Stull in an acrid voice. "All the same. I'm
telling you there ain't a chauffeur you'd have in Saratoga. Who handed
you that dope?"
"Try. I need the chauffeur part of the combine, anyway. If he won't
go abroad, I'll leave him in town. Get a wiggle on, Ben. How's
things?"
"All right. We had War-axe and Lady Johnson. Some killing, eh? That
stable is winning all along. We've got Adriutha and Queen Esther
today. The Ocean Belle skate is scratched. Doc and Cap and me is thick
with the Legislature outfit. We'll trim 'em tonight. How are you
feeling, Eddie?"
"Never better. I'll call you up in the morning. Ding-dong!"
"Wait! Are you really going abroad?" shouted Stull.
But Brandes had already hung up.
He walked leisurely back to Brookhollow through the sunshine. He had
never been as happy in all his life.