Chapter 8

Bellevale is not so large a place that neighbors' affairs are not observed of neighbor. Prior to the elaboration of the law of thought-transference, there was no way of accounting for the universality of knowledge of other people's affairs which certain Bellevale circles enjoyed. The good gossiping housewives along the highways leading into the town are often able to tell the exact contents of the packages brought home by their neighbors, under the seats of their buggies and farm-wagons and late at night; but this is a phenomenon not at all unusual. Neither is it in the least strange that, in town or country, John and Sarah could not sit out an evening together in the parlor or settin'-room without all that occurred being talked over, with perfect certainty as to facts, in the next day's meeting of the Missionary Society or the Monday Club. But what Phyllis thought, what were the plans of Thestylis, and how Jane felt when William jilted her, and why William did it--all of which difficult circumstances were canvassed with equal certitude--are things, the knowledge of which, as I said above, was not to be accounted for on any theory at all consistent with respect for the people possessing it, until thought-transference came into fashion. Now all is clear, and our debt to science is increased by another large item.

Mr. Brassfield and his affairs were as a city set upon a hill, and could not be hid. There was a maid in Elizabeth's home, and a maiden aunt who had confidential friends. A stenographer and bookkeepers were employed in the counting-room of the Brassfield Oil Company, and the stenographer had a friend in the milliner's shop, and an admirer who was a clerk in one of the banks. There were clubs and other organizations, social, religious and literary; and the people in all of them had tongues wherewith to talk, and ears for hearing.

Hence:

At the meeting of the Society for Ethical Research, Mrs. Meyer read an essay on "What _Parsifal_ Has Taught Me," during the reading of which Mrs. Alvord described Miss Waldron's trousseau to Miss Finch and Doctor Julia Brown. Because of the conversation among these three, the president asked Doctor Brown, first of all, to discuss the paper. And Doctor Julia, who talked bass and had coquettish fluffy blond bangs and a greatly overtaxed corsage, said that she fully agreed with the many and deeply beautiful thoughts expressed in the paper.

"I'm sincerely glad _Parsifal_ taught her something!" said the fair M.D. to her companions, as she resumed her seat. Mrs. Meyer was the only woman in the town who had ever been to Bayreuth, she added short-windedly in explanation of her remarks, and had lobbied herself into a place on the program on the strength of that fact.

"Does Bess know," asked Miss Finch, "about this mesmerist person?"

"Oh, there isn't anything there," said Doctor Brown, "I feel sure. Though his inti--ah, friendship with this Le Claire woman is, just at this time, in bad taste. But all men are natural polygamists, you know."

"They say," said the voice of a member from across the room, "that it will be quite a palace--throw everything else in Bellevale in the shade--entirely so."

"They are all talking of it," said Mrs. Alvord. "Jim says it seems odd to have this Mr. Blodgett looking into the Brassfield business. But everything is odd, now--the hypnotist and Mr. Blodgett, and Daisy Scarlett; she's still here."

"O----o!" said Doctor Brown, in a sinuous barytone circumflex.

"Really," said Miss Finch, who wore her dress high about the neck, and whose form was a symphony in angles, "such promiscuous associations may be shocking, but as to surprise--who knows anything of his life before he came here?"

"Judge Blodgett," said Doctor Brown, "told a friend of mine that he had known Brassfield from infancy."

"The first light Bellevale has ever received on a dark past," said Miss Finch, "if it is light. And how strangely he acts! Everybody notices it. Always so chatty and almost voluble before, and now--why, he's dreadfully boorish. You know how he treated you, Miss Brown!"

"Yes, and he knows how I treated him for it!" said Doctor Brown. "I propose to call people down when they act so with me!"

"Quite right," said Mrs. Alvord, "quite correct, Doctor. Oh, what a change! And who has changed for the worse lately more than Bessie Waldron? Pale, silent and clearly unhappy. I can't attach any importance to that affair of the strange woman with the striped hair; but that Miss Scarlett matter--that's quite different. Jim and I saw the beginning of that up in the mountains last summer. Daisy Scarlett is a queer girl, so wild and hoidenish--but the people who know her in Allentown just think the world of her, the same as do the people in Bellevale--and her appearance here right after the announcement of the engagement means something. Poor Bess! Hush! There she comes. Oh, Bessie, it's so sweet of you to come, even if you are late! Everybody has been saying such sweet things of you!"

"How kind of them!" said Elizabeth. "Has _Parsifal_ received any attention?"

At the club, of course, no such gossip as that uttered at the meeting of the Society for Ethical Research was heard. Men are above such things. To be sure Alvord and Slater and Edgington and the rest of the "the gang" did exchange views on some matters involving the welfare of the club--and in the course of duty.

"I tell you," said Slater, "Brass has been practising that French doctrine about hunting for the woman--a little too industriously. They're getting to be something--something----"

"Fierce," suggested Alvord.

"Well, that isn't quite what I meant to say," said Slater, "but pretty near. 'Terrible as an army with banners,' you know, and condemned near as numerous."

"It's changed Brassfield like a coat of paint, this engagement," said Edgington. "I saw something last week that showed me more than you could print in a book as big as the Annual Digest. You see, he went sort of gravitating down by where the sewer gang was at work, like a man in a strange country full of hostiles, and although he must have been conscious of the fact that he's slated for mayor in the spring, he never showed that he knew of the presence of a human being, to say nothing of a voter, in the whole gang, and Barney Conlon's gang, too. Why, he'd better have done anything than ignore 'em! He'd better a darn sight have stood and sung _Drill, Ye Tarriers, Drill!_ as a political move. Now that shows a revolution in his nature. It's uncanny, and it'll play the very deuce with the slate if it goes on."

"Well, you all know what took place at his counting-room," asked Slater, "the day after he got back from New York? Old Stevens resigned, on the street the night before, and Brass didn't seem to know any more than to accept his resignation. Hired him back since, I've heard, but he ought not to have noticed it. He certainly has gone off badly."

"I knew a fellow once," said Edgington, "who went sort of crazy on the girl question--batty. D'ye s'pose this engagement----"

"They change to their lady friends," said Slater, "sometimes. But he--why, he passed me a dozen times with a cold stare!"

"Me, too," said Edgington, "and he didn't seem to know Flossie Smith when he met her, and Doctor Julia Brown gave him a calling-down on the street--a public lecture on etiquette. Colonel McCorkle claims to have been insulted by him, and won't serve any longer on the same committees with him in the Commercial Association. And he stays at the hotel all the time, and seems afraid to leave this old judge, and collogues with the German professor and the occultist--and, let me say, I've seen cripples in the hospital that were worse-looking than she is!--and what in thunder it means beats me."

"He wants the judge and the professor at our supper next week," added Slater.

"I've sent 'em invitations," said Alvord. "Anything to please the patient. I could tell you a good deal about this, fellows; but 'Gene and I are brothers and closer than brothers; and F. D. and B. goes with me; but it won't hurt anything for you to know that he's got carloads of trouble, and you haven't any of you come within a mile of the mark. He told me all about it the night he got back from New York. I think it will blow over if things can be kept from blowing up instead, for a few days--slumbering volcano--woman scorned--hell's fury, you know; don't ask me any more. But this hiding out won't do."

"Well, I should think not," said Slater. "We've got to get him going about as usual or there'll be questions asked and publicity--those red-headed women are pretty vivacious conversationalists when they get mad, and you can't tell what may be pulled off, even if he acts as natural as life."

"This supper ought to help some," said Edgington.

"It will," said Alvord. "We must make it a hum-dinger. And we must see that he shows himself of tenor at the club and lodge meetings and hops. Why, it's shameful, the way we've let him drop out."

And men being above gossip, at this point the meeting dissolved.

At the hotel, conference after conference had taken place in the parlor of Professor Blatherwick, and Blodgett and Blatherwick's _Notes_ had been studied out most assiduously. Judge Blodgett and Florian Amidon had spent their days at the counting-house, and an increased force of clerks worked ceaselessly in making up statements and balances showing the condition of the business. Amidon could now draw checks in the name of Brassfield with no more than a dim sense of committing forgery. The banks, however, refused to honor them at first, and the tellers noted the fact that after his return from New York Mr. Brassfield adopted a new style of signature, and wondered at it. Some noticed a change in all his handwriting, but in these days of the typewriter such a thing makes little difference. His abstention from bowling (to the playing of which Brassfield had been devoted), and his absolute failure at billiards, were discussed in sporting circles, and accounted for on the theory that he had "gone stale" since this love-affair had become the absorbing business of his life. No one understood, however, his sudden interest in photography, and his marvelous skill in it. He seemed to be altogether a transformed man.

"I am beginning to see through this," said Amidon, referring to the business.

"Yes," said the judge, "this side of the affair is assuming a pretty satisfactory aspect. But your reputation is suffering by the sort of constraint you've been under. These things are important. A man's behavior is worth money to him. Many a man gets credit at the bank on the strength of the safe and conservative vices he practises. Business requires you to act more like Brassfield. A man who uses a good deal of money must be like other people who use a good deal of money. He mustn't have isms, and he mustn't be for any reforms except impractical ones, and he mustn't have the reputation of being 'queer.' Isn't that so, Professor?"

"Kvite uncontrofertible," said the professor. "You must minkle up vit more beople."

"And in other matters besides business," said the judge; "boxes of flowers every few minutes are all right, but some things require personal attention."

Amidon blushed.

"You see," said he, "if every one were not so strange; if part of the people were as familiar to me as I am to them, it wouldn't be so trying. I suppose these receptions, and other functions to follow, I must attend alone. But you two are going to that banquet with me?"

"Oh, certainly," said the judge. "I want to see just what sort of a gang you've been forgathering with here. The folks at Hazelhurst----"

"Must never know, Judge! And you, Professor?"

"I shall be more tan bleaced. Supliminally gonsidered, I rekard it as te shance of a lifetime."

"Well," said Amidon, "you are very good, and I am glad that's settled. Now I want you to grant me another favor--or Clara, rather. I should be more than glad if she would ask Brassfield about some things that there's no need for you people to hear. It's nothing about the business. Won't you see if she will give me a--a--demonstration?"

The judge and the professor disappeared, and soon word came that Madame le Claire would give him audience. Amidon's heart beat stiflingly as he came into her presence. For this man's conscience was a most insubordinate conscience, and held as wrong the things felt and thought, as well as things said and done; and his remorse was as that of an abandoned but repentant jilt. But when he saw how cheerfully she smiled, he grew easier in his mind. The women always have such a matter fully under control--I mean the other party's mind.

"Well?" said she interrogatively--"at last? I have been wondering why I was brought down here?"

"It must have been very dull and lonesome----"

"Oh, no!" she answered. "I am a business woman, you know, and I haven't been idle. And now, there is something you need, my friend? Let us begin at once."

There were definite repudiation of claims to tenderness, clear denial of resentment, in her tone. Amidon brightened and reddened. He stammered like a boy teased by reference to his first love-affair.

"You are wonderfully kind," he said. "I wanted to ask you to have this Brassfield tell you all he will about the wedding--the date, and everything you can get out of the fellow. And have him act as naturally as you can, so as to see more clearly how he carries himself. You see what I want, don't you?"

"I think so," she returned. "Conversation must be a little difficult, isn't it? You remembered some of the things I told you about?"

"Difficult?" he exclaimed. "Oh, Clara, it's impossible! It's so much so, that I hardly dare go back any more. I'm sending flowers and notes and doing the best I can; but it won't do at all: I must call oftener--must! And I'm afraid I have spoiled everything."

"Then you find the lady quite--quite endurable?"

"She's adorable," went on Florian, with the gush which comes at the first opportunity to discuss the dear one with a sympathetic third party. "She's perfectly exquisite! I have thought of nothing, dreamed of nothing, since I left her, except, except----"

"Ah!" said Clara, "the situation must be perfectly lovely--for you--both---- And I'm sure you got along nicely."

"No, no! I spoiled everything, I know I did. But bring this fellow up and ask him those things, please; and also about a Miss Scarlett---- No, leave that out. Just about the wedding, and about--I was going to ask about our house; but the judge found that out, where it is, and all. Just about the--the things between her and me, a little more, you know!"

The hypnotic subject yields to control more and more readily by repeated surrender. So there was little of gazing into the party-colored eyes now.

"You will soon sleep," said Madame le Claire, in that dominating way of hers; "and when you wake you will be Eugene Brassfield just as he used to be, and the room and all the surroundings, and myself--all will seem familiar, and you will be quite at home with me. Sleep, sleep!"

Her hand swept down and closed his eyes, and he lay back in his chair entranced. Madame le Claire sat long and looked at him yearningly. She smoothed back the hair from his brow with many soft touches, and stooped and softly kissed his forehead. Then she lightly tapped his wrist, and sharply said, "Wake!"

Eugene Brassfield opened his eyes with a smile. There was something still faintly suggestive of tenderness in the look with which Madame le Claire regarded him, and he returned it with the air of a man to whom such looks are neither unusual nor repugnant.

"We were just talking," said she, with the air of reminding him of a topic from which he had wandered, "about your wedding. When is it to be?"

"The appointed date," said he, "is April the fifth; but, of course, I shall move for an earlier one if possible."

"I should think," remarked Madame le Claire, "that the date fixed would give Miss Waldron all too short a time for preparation."

"From a woman's standpoint," said Mr. Brassfield, "it probably seems so. But you and I can surely find matters of more mutual interest to talk about, can't we?"

"Perhaps," said the girl, "but I don't think of anything just now. Do you?"

"Well, for one thing," said he, "I have just found out what makes your eyes so beautiful."

"Wouldn't it be just as well to cease discovering things of that kind? It's so short a time to the fifth of April, you know."

"I've made all my money," said Brassfield, "by never quitting discovering. I like it. And this last find especially."

"I think there are other lines of investigation," said she, "which demand your time and attention."

"Oh, pshaw!" said he. "Don't be so prudish. You know that your eyes are beautiful, and you are not really offended when I tell you so. Such eyes are the books in which I like to read--I can understand them better than Browning, or the old Persian soak. It's not unpleasant to get a volume you understand--at times."

"Why, Mr. Amidon--Brassfield, I mean--aren't you ashamed of yourself!"

"A little," said he; "not much, though. And who is this 'Mr. Amman,' or whatever the name is, that is so much in your mind that you call me by his name when you speak without thinking?"

"A dear friend of mine!"

"Well, now, if you should happen to see something agreeable in me, and should let me know about it, I shouldn't throw your Mr. Amden, or Amidon, at your head. Why not forget about the rest of the world for a while? We can be in only one place at a time, and so, really, our whole world just now has only us two. You oughtn't to repel the only person in the wide, wide world; you won't, will you?"

"Don't be foolish!"

"Don't be wasteful! This may be the only world of this kind we shall be allowed to have. Come over and sit by me and be nice to me, won't you?"

"I certainly shall do nothing of the kind!"

"No? Ah, how wasteful of opportunity! Well, then, I shall have to come to you!"

Oh, the depravity of society in these days, and oh, the unpleasantness of setting these things down! But, on the other hand, what a comfort it is to think that men as base as Brassfield are so rare that you and I, my boy, have probably never met a specimen. And if you ever find, my love, that any person in whom you have any tender interest has ever behaved in a way similar to the conduct of Brassfield, you should give the prisoner the benefit of every doubt, and accord full weight to the precedent contained in this history, and to the fact that it was Brassfield and not Amidon who did this. A man can not be blamed for lapsing into the Brassfield state. A man should be acquitted--eh? Defending some one? Why, certainly not! And how long this paragraph is growing! Yes, I feel sure Clara Blatherwick repulsed these advances as she should, and that Brassfield, being fully under "control," did not--why, of course not, as you say!

But I am going no further with the matter now; except to say that in something like an hour Mr. Amidon departed much perturbed by the prospect of the nearness of his happiness, fully convinced of his unworthiness, and quakingly uncertain as to many things, but most of all, just then, as to his clothes!

"This man Brassfield," said he to himself, "seems to have been a good deal of a dude, and Elizabeth--the darling!--will expect me to be fully up to vogue in this regard--as she will be in all things. And I don't believe a thing has been done about clothes."

Meantime, Madame le Claire walked up and down in a locked chamber, struggling with her grief.

"Oh, it is hopeless, hopeless!" said the poor girl to herself, over and over again. "Florian, my darling Florian, whom I found blind and wandering in the wilderness, and took by the hand and guided to the light--Florian has gone from me! She has taken him, just as she took him before. But the man she thinks loves her--her Eugene--I'm sure he's coming to love me; and to be tired of her! And I could keep him Brassfield, if I chose--if I chose! I wonder--I wonder if it would be wrong? What would she do if she had my power? Twice I had to try, before I could restore him. I could! I could!"

Small wonder, therefore, that Madame le Claire sat wild-eyed and excited, and flew fearfully to Judge Blodgett and the professor, when Mr. Brassfield went free, with Alderson at heel. And all the time, as the crew of a ship carry on the routine of drill while the torpedo is speeding for her hull, these social amenities went on all unconscious of the explosion now imminent.

XV

THE TURPITUDE OF BRASSFIELD

Man to black Misfortune beckons When upon himself he reckons, Marshals Faith among his assets, Blinks his nature's many facets. This dull gem is an ascetic, Bloodless, pulseless, apathetic: Shift the light--a trifling matter-- Fra Anselmo turns a satyr! --_The Kaleidoscope_.

Airily, Mr. Brassfield preceded his clerk down the stairway, and out into the street. There, something in the air--the balm of advancing spring; a faint chill, the Parthian shot of retreating winter; some psychic apprehension of the rising sap; the slight northing of the sun; or some subconscious clutch at knowledge of minute alterations in the landscape--apprised Mr. Brassfield's strangely circumscribed mind of the maladjustment with time resulting from the reign of Amidon. But however bewildered Florian's mentality might become at such things, it was different with Brassfield. The plane of consciousness in which he had so long moved, with a memory running back five years and there ending in a blank wall of nescience, had made him cunning and shifty--necessarily so. The struggle for existence had had its inevitable effect--the faculty paralyzed had been compensated for by the development of others. So he was not at all at a loss now, when this little hiatus in time struck on his mind in the form of a suspicion. He turned to Alderson with a smile.

"Do you remember what date this is, my boy?" he inquired.

Alderson named the date. Brassfield nodded, as if he were pleased to find Alderson correct in his exercises.

"Of course you know what we've arranged for to-day, don't you?" he went on.

"The deferred annual meeting of the Construction Company?" asked Alderson. "If that's it, it's all attended to. I took the proxies to Mr. Smith yesterday."

"Good!" was Brassfield's hearty response. "You'll do for an animated 'office tickler' if you continue to improve. You used to forget all these things."

They had now come to a certain turning, down which Brassfield gazed, to a place where the highway was torn up and excavated. A center line of bowed backs, fringed by flying dirt. Indicated that the work was still in progress.

"You may go on to the office," said Brassfield, "and I'll be up immediately. I'm going down to see Barney Conlon a moment."

He walked down among the men, nodding to the busy ones, and stopping for a handshake or a joke with others.

"Hello, Barney," he shouted to the man who seemed to be in charge. "How long are you going to keep people jumping sideways to prevent themselves from being buried alive? You old Fenian!"

Conlon looked at him for a moment with an air of distinct disfavor.

"Look out there!" he shouted to a teamster who was unloading pipe. "D'ye want to kill the min in the trinch? Ah, is thot you, Mr. Brassfield?"

"What's left of me," replied Brassfield, quickly aware of the coolness of the reception--the politician's sensitiveness to danger. "By the way, Conlon, can't you come up to the office soon? I've got some specifications I want you to see. Pipe-line. Can you do that sort of work?"

"Do it!" gushed Conlon, thawing. "Do it! Ah, Mr. Brassfield, d'ye ask me thot, whin ye mind 'twas me thot done the Rogers job!"