Following hard upon the interrupted wedding came other events that not
only helped to hush matters up, but gave the world a plausible reason
why the ceremony did not come off as soon as the groom was convalescent
from what was reported in the papers to be an attack of acute
indigestion, easily accounted for by the round of banquets and
entertainments which usually precede a society wedding.
During that eventful night while Starr still lay like a crushed lily
torn rudely from its stem, her mother, after a stormy scene with her
husband, in which he made it plain to her just what kind of a man she
was wanting her daughter to marry, and during which she saw the fall of
her greatest social ambitions, was suddenly stricken with apoplexy.
The papers next morning told the news as sympathetically as a paper can
tell one’s innermost secrets. It praised the wonderful ability of the
woman who had so successfully completed all the unique arrangements for
what had promised to be the greatest wedding of the season, if not of
all seasons; and upon whose overtaxed strength, the last straw had been
laid in the illness of the bridegroom. It stated that now of course the
wedding would be put off indefinitely, as nothing could be thought of
while the bride’s mother lay in so critical a state.
For a week there were daily bulletins of her condition published always
in more and more remote corners of the paper, until the little ripple
that had been made in the stream of life passed; and no further mention
was made of the matter save occasionally when they sent for some famous
specialist: when they took her to the shore to try what sea air might
do; or when they brought her home again.
But all the time the woman lay locked in rigid silence. Only her cold
eyes followed whoever came into her room. She gave no sign of knowing
what they said, or of caring who came near her. Her husband’s earnest
pleas, Starr’s tears, drew from her no faintest expression that might
have been even imagined from a fluttering eyelash. There was nothing
but that stony stare, that almost unseeing gaze, that yet followed,
followed wherever one would move. It was a living death.
And when one day the release came and the eyes were closed forever from
the scenes of this world, it was a sad relief to both husband and
daughter. Starr and her father stole away to an old New England
farm-house where Mr. Endicott’s elderly maiden sister still lived in
the old family homestead; a mild-eyed, low-voiced woman with plain gray
frocks and soft white laces at wrists and neck and ruched about her
sweet old face above the silver of her hair.
Starr had not been there since she was a little child, and her sad
heart found her aunt’s home restful. She stayed there through the fall
and until after the first of the year; while her father came and went
as business dictated; and the Endicott home on Madison Avenue remained
closed except for the caretakers.
Meanwhile young Carter had discreetly escorted his mother to Europe,
and was supposed by the papers to be going to return almost
immediately. Not a breath of gossip, strange to say, stole forth.
Everything seemed arranged to quiet any suspicion that might arise.
Early in the fall he returned to town but Starr was still in New
England. No one knew of the estrangement between them. Their immediate
friends were away from town still, and everything seemed perfectly
natural in the order of decency. Of course people could not be married
at once when there had been a death in the family.
No one but the two families knew of Carter’s repeated attempts to be
reconciled to Starr; of his feeble endeavor at explanation; of her
continued refusal even to see him; and the decided letter she wrote him
after he had written her the most abject apology he knew how to frame;
nor of her father’s interview with the young man wherein he was told
some facts about himself more plainly than anyone, even in his
babyhood, had ever dared to tell him. Mr. Endicott agreed to keep
silence for Starr’s sake, provided the young man would do nothing to
create any gossip about the matter, until the intended wedding had been
forgotten, and other events should have taken the minds of society,
from their particular case. Carter, for his own sake, had not cared to
have the story get abroad and had sullenly acceded to the command. He
had not, however, thought it necessary to make himself entirely
miserable while abroad; and there were those who more than once spoke
his name in company with that of a young and dashing divorcée. Some
even thought he returned to America sooner than he intended in order to
travel on the same steamer that she was to take. However, those
whispers had not as yet crossed the water; and even if they had, such
things were too common to cause much comment.
Then, one Monday morning, the papers were filled with horror over an
unusually terrible automobile accident; in which a party of seven, of
whom the young divorcée was one and Stuyvesant Carter was another, went
over an embankment sixty feet in height, the car landing upside down on
the rocks below, and killing every member of the party. The paper also
stated that Mr. Theodore Brooks, intimate friend of Carter’s, who was
to have been best man at the wedding some months previous, which was
postponed on account of the sudden illness and death of the bride’s
mother, was of the party.
Thus ended the career of Stuyvesant Carter, and thus the world never
knew exactly why Starr Endicott did not become Mrs. Carter.
Michael, from the moment that he went forth from delivering his message
in the church, saw no more of the Endicotts. He longed inexpressibly to
call and enquire for Starr; to get some word of reconciliation from her
father; to ask if there was not some little thing that he might be
trusted to do for them; but he knew that his place was not there, and
his company was not desired. Neither would he write, for even a note
from him could but seem, to Starr, a reminder of the terrible things of
which he had been witness, that is if anybody had ever told her it was
he that brought her home.
One solace alone he allowed himself. Night after night as he went home
late he would walk far out of his way to pass the house and look up at
her window; and always it comforted him a little to see the dim
radiance of her soft night light; behind the draperies of those
windows, somewhere, safe, she lay asleep, the dear little white-faced
girl that he had been permitted to carry to her home and safety, when
she had almost reached the brink of destruction.
About a week after the fateful wedding day Michael received a brief
note from Starr.
My dear Mr. Endicott:
I wish to thank you for your trouble in bringing me home last week.
I cannot understand how you came to be there at that time. Also I
am deeply grateful for your kindness in making the announcement at
the church. Very sincerely, S.D.E.
Michael felt the covert question in that phrase: “I cannot understand
how you came to be there at that time.” She thought, perhaps, that to
carry his point and stop the marriage he had had a hand in that
miserable business! Well, let her think it. It was not his place to
explain, and really of course it could make little difference to her
what she believed about him. As well to let it rest. He belonged out of
her world, and never would he try to force his way into it.
And so with the whiteness of his face still lingering from the hard
days of tension, Michael went on, straining every nerve in his work;
keeping the alley room open nightly even during hot weather, and in
constant touch with the farm which was now fairly on its feet and
almost beginning to earn its own living; though the contributions still
kept coming to him quietly, here and there, and helped in the many new
plans that grew out of the many new necessities.
The carpenter had built and built, until there were pretty little
bungalows of one and two and three rooms dotted all about the farm to
be rented at a low price to the workers. It had come to be a little
community by itself, spoken of as “Old Orchard Farms,” and well
respected in the neighborhood, for in truth the motley company that
Michael and Sam gathered there had done far better in the way of
law-and-orderliness than either had hoped. They seemed to have a pride
that nothing that could hurt “the boss’s” reputation as a landowner
should be laid to their charge. If by chance there came into their
midst any sordid being who could not see matters in that light the rest
promptly taught him better, or else put him out.
And now the whole front yard was aflame with brilliant flowers in their
season. The orchard had been pruned and trimmed and grafted, and in the
spring presented a foreground of wonderful pink and white splendor; and
at all seasons of the year the grassy drive wound its way up to the old
house, through a vista of branches, green, or brown.
It had long been in Michael’s heart to build over the old house—for
what he did not know. Certainly he had no hope of ever using it himself
except as a transitory dwelling; yet it pleased his fancy to have it as
he dreamed it out. Perhaps some day it might be needed for some supreme
reason, and now was the time to get it ready. So one day he took a
great and simple-hearted architect down to the place to stay over night
and get an idea of the surroundings; and a few weeks later he was in
possession of a plan that showed how the old house could be made into a
beautiful new house, and yet keep all the original outlines. The
carpenter, pleased with the prospect of doing something really fine,
had undertaken the work and it was going forward rapidly.
The main walls were to be built around with stone, old stone bought
from the ruins of a desolated barn of forgotten years, stone that was
rusty and golden and green in lovely mellow tones; stone that was gray
with age and mossy in place; now and then a stone that was dead black
to give strength to the coloring of the whole. There were to be
windows, everywhere, wide, low windows, that would let the sunlight in;
and windows that nestled in the sloping, rambling roofs that were to be
stained green like the moss that would grow on them some day. There was
to be a piazza across the entire front with rough stone pillars, and a
stone paved floor up to which the orchard grass would grow in a gentle
terrace. Even now Sam and his helpers were at work starting rose vines
of all varieties, to train about the trellises and twine about the
pillars. Sam had elected that it should be called “Rose Cottage.” Who
would have ever suspected Sam of having any poetry in his nature?
The great stone fireplace with its ancient crane and place to sit
inside was to be retained, and built about with more stone, and the
partitions between the original sitting-room and dining-room and hall
were to be torn down, to make one splendid living-room of which the old
fireplace should be the centre, with a great window at one side looking
toward the sea, and a deep seat with book cases in the corner. Heavy
beams were somehow to be put in the ceiling to support it, and fine
wood used in the wainscoting and panelling, with rough soft-toned
plaster between and above. The floors were to be smooth, wide boards of
hard wood well fitted.
A little gable was to be added on the morning-side of the house for a
dining-room, all windows, with a view of the sea on one side and the
river on the other. Upstairs there would be four bedrooms and a
bath-room, all according to the plan to be white wainscoting half-way
up and delicately vined or tinted papers above.
Michael took great pleasure in going down to look at the house, and
watching the progress that was made with it, as indeed the whole colony
did. They called it “The Boss’s Cottage,” and when they laid off work
at night always took a trip to see what had been done during the day,
men, women and children. It was a sort of sacred pilgrimage, wherein
they saw their own highest dreams coming true for the man they loved
because he had helped them to a future of possibilities. Not a man of
them but wistfully wondered if he would ever get to the place where he
could build him a house like that, and resolved secretly to try for it;
and always the work went better the next day for the visit to the
shrine.
But after all, Michael would turn from his house with an empty ache in
his heart. What was it for? Not for him. It was not likely he would
ever spend happy hours there. He was not like other men. He must take
his happiness in making others happy.
But one day a new thought came to him, as he watched the laborers
working out the plan, and bringing it ever nearer and nearer to the
perfect whole. A great desire came to him to have Starr see it some
day, to know what she would think about it, and if she would like it.
The thought occurred to him that perhaps, some time, in the changing of
the world, she might chance near that way, and he have opportunity to
show her the house that he had built—for her! Not that he would ever
tell her that last. She must never know of course that she was the only
one in all the world he could ever care for. That would seem a great
presumption in her eyes. He must keep that to himself. But there would
be no harm in showing her the house, and he would make it now as
beautiful as if she were to occupy it. He would take his joy in making
all things fair, with the hope that she might one day see and approve
it.
So, as the work drew near its completion he watched it more and more
carefully, matching tints in rooms, and always bringing down some new
idea, or finding some particular bit of furniture that would some day
fit into a certain niche. In that way he cheated the lonely ache in his
heart, and made believe he was happy.
And another winter drew its white mantle about its shoulders and
prepared to face the blast.
It bade fair to be a bitter winter for the poor, for everything was
high, and unskilled labor was poorly paid. Sickness and death were
abroad, and lurked in the milk supply, the food supply, the unsanitary
tenements about the alley; which, because it had not been so bad as
some other districts had been left uncondemned. Yet it was bad enough,
and Michael’s hands were full to keep his people alive, and try to keep
some of them from sinning. For always where there is misery, there is
the more sinning.
Old Sal sat on her doorstep shivering with her tattered shawl about her
shoulders, or when it grew too cold peered from her little muslin
curtained window behind the geranium, to see the dirty white hearse
with its pink-winged angel atop, pass slowly in and out with some
little fragment of humanity; and knew that one day her turn would come
to leave it all and go—! Then she turned back to her little room which
had become the only heaven she knew, and solaced herself with the
contents of a black bottle!