Part 5

"I don't want you to come to the office any more--things are a little different now."

They are different because he has grown to thinking of the effect of everything on other people now, instead of just ourselves, as he always has done. He has always said:

"As long as one has a clear conscience, and is satisfied with one's self, the opinions of other people are of little consequence."

I don't feel quite comfortable with the change, but he reminded me that circumstances alter cases; that one must adapt himself to changed situations. I asked him if it was quite right, and he looked at me a long time, and finally said with the old, new determination in his face and voice: "_We are to do it_," without answering my question. Somehow it taught me a lesson. I think I shall never again question anything that he says. His tone, his manner seemed to forbid it, seemed to settle forever any doubt as to a possibility of anything being wrong that he says or decides.

I was almost astonished at myself afterwards, when I realized that I _had_ questioned any motive he might have had, or any suggestion he might have made. A woman like me, questioning the propriety of anything that such a man as Edgar Braine might do!

Sometimes I try to make up my mind whether he looked more magnificent in his shiny coat with fringed bindings, or in his present immaculate toilet. I can come to no conclusion. The reverence and awe that Edgar Braine inspired in his shabby suit were overwhelming. The dignity that he lends to his present clothes is--well, is simply glorious. He makes the clothes. In either case, one is impressed that clothes are but a matter of convenience, and really of too little importance to be remembered--except long enough to put them on and take them off--by Edgar Braine. Such a man as he would be perfect in any clothes.

X.

The doings of Edgar Braine, during the few weeks following his negotiations with Waverley Cooke, were a riddle to those who knew of them; but Thebes was so well used to his puzzling methods that the little ripple of talk raised at this time did not swell into a wave of chatter, as it might in another man's case.

In the first place, he borrowed a very considerable sum of money from Hildreth, and insisted upon so arranging the terms of the loan, that he could repay the money at any time after ninety days, but should be free to retain it for a year upon renewals, if that suited him better.

Hildreth was willing enough to lend him the money, but he speculated a little as to what Braine was going to do with so large a sum. He did not find out.

Next, Braine jauntily upset all the plans for the marriage, which he and Helen had so laboriously formed. It was on the evening of the special charter election that he did this. Up to that day he had worked ceaselessly at the task of persuading the people of Thebes that the best thing they could do with their one valuable municipal possession was to give it away to the Central Railroad Company. He had found time in the interval, however, to see Helen almost every day. He had not contented himself with supporting the measure in the _Enterprise_, but had organized support for it in quarters where support was not to be expected, and in quarters in which it was supposed that he of all men had least influence. The machinery of his own political party was easy to handle, but Braine boldly undertook to control that of the opposing party as well.

A city clerk, to replace the one who had defaulted and run away, was to be chosen by the City Council, in which Braine's own party was dominant. Braine seized upon this circumstance as his lever. He boldly offered the place to the leader of the opposite party in return for that party's support of the levee transfer proposal, which, being in no respect a political question, men of either party might advocate or oppose at will. Having made the bargain he set to work to induce the aldermen of his own party to carry it out. He reckoned upon their venality as a stronger motive than their party zeal, and his reckoning was not amiss.

"Hildreth is to pay those rascals for voting the transfer, of course," he reasoned; "and they can't vote it unless this election is carried to authorize it. Hildreth isn't fool enough to pay them till the thing is done. Very well. There is a ring in the nose of every scamp of them."

And it was so. The aldermen were angrily reluctant to surrender a political office, and the one with whom Braine negotiated at first flatly refused. But Braine knew his ground.

"Very well," he said, "but reflect a little. This election is very close. We need all the help we can get. Davidson has his men perfectly in hand, and now that I've offered the thing to him he will vote them to a man on the other side if this isn't carried out."

"Why in thunder did you make him such an offer, then? Nobody authorized it."

"It is not worth while to discuss that. Call it impertinent intermeddling on my part, if you choose, and ease your mind in that way. But the offer has been made. If you ratify it, we shall carry the charter election. If you refuse,--well, you know what the result is likely to be as well as I do."

The alderman understood perfectly, and was not minded to take risks. The bargain as to the city clerkship was carried out. This was one of many ways in which Braine organized the victory he had set out to win, and during those few short weeks, the people of Thebes discovered a new fact about Edgar Braine; they learned that he had what they called "a genius for politics."

When Edgar heard that said, he reflected: "Well, I seem to be developing new qualities rapidly. What with a 'good head for business,' discovered by that expert, Abner Hildreth, and a 'genius for politics,' diagnosticated by those eminent specialists the aldermen of Thebes, I ought to make my way, especially as I own a railroad charter and a ferry franchise. Poor old Waverley Cooke! I hope he is breathing his native air with a relish by this time. I shall be sorry when the payments to him cease."

He sighed deeply. Was it over Waverley Cooke, or was he thinking of another wreck?

As soon as the polls closed after an exciting contest--for the opposition had been very determined--Edgar turned his back upon the bustling crowds, and briskly walked away.

Helen met him at the door, though she had not expected him that evening. Somehow she had acquired a habit of always discovering his approach and meeting him in the vestibule, a convenient place for the exchange of certain quasi masonic--but we must not intrude upon privacy with prying eyes.

As she was not expecting him, she was not dressed to receive him, a circumstance in which he rejoiced mightily, her careless costume seeming in his eyes to set off her beauty ravishingly.

She wore a loose gown of a thin, limp goods, Pompeiian red in hue, with flowing sleeves of white, equally limp, and a broad, starchless collar of white to match the sleeves. The gown was belted in at the waist with a rope girdle of dull, oxidized silver. The costume seemed to cling lovingly to the lines of her superb length, and Braine was at the moment certain that he should never permit her to wear any other. "Man-like," was her commentary, when he told her this a few weeks later.

"You are weary," she said, "and it is very warm. Loll here by the windows. No, not in that chair, it is rickety, and you are so big and strong I always expect weak things to break with you. My will did, you know, when you made up your mind to marry me. No, no, you mustn't, now! people are passing."

What this last injunction and remark had to do with the subject of conversation, I cannot make out, but that is what Helen said, hurriedly, as she drew back a little.

"Now you shall not talk to me," she said, as she sank in graceful folds upon the floor, with an ease which made one doubt the existence of bones in her tall person. "You are tired, and I'll do the talking. What shall the subject be?"

"Tell me of yourself. What have you been doing and thinking?"

"Nibbling pickles, sewing, trying to read Browning because you told me to, and carrying pins in my mouth."

"I thought you promised me not to put pins in your mouth. I gave you a cushion, to bind the bargain."

"That's why I told you about it. You see I'm honest above all things. I get busy and forget, but I'm really trying, Edgar."

"What have you been sewing on?"

"I must tell you. (I'm _too_ honest.) Clothes."

"What sort?"

"White. Linen and cotton."

"But what--"

"Hush! You're not to talk. Where did Browning get the story of Hervé Riel? Is it historical?"

"I can't tell you without talking."

"Oh, you can talk just a little, you know--enough to answer my questions. But I don't care anything about Hervé Riel. I asked because I could not think of anything else at the moment. Tell me instead, where our wedding cards should be made--Chicago or St. Louis?"

Taking that evening's _Enterprise_ from the table Edgar read aloud:

"There is no longer any occasion for citizens of Thebes to incur the delays and uncertainties incident to having printing of any kind done in Chicago or St. Louis. The job office of the _Daily Enterprise_ is now perfectly equipped for all work of the kind, from the plainest of posters to the daintiest of wedding invitations."

"But I won't have printing done at that establishment, Mr. Braine."

"Why not, Miss Thayer?"

"I don't approve of its editor."

"What has the poor fellow done to incur your displeasure?"

"Many things. He persists in asking me about the clothes I am making; he insists upon changing my pretty name, and he is too stingy of his time to take me further than Chicago for a wedding trip when I am crazy to be stunned and bewildered by the glories of New York."

"Helen dear," broke in Braine, with a sudden earnestness of protest in his tone, "you know, do you not--"

"Certainly I know, and I perfectly approve that and everything else you do, Ed. Forgive me. I was only teasing."

At this point there was a brief wait in the dialogue. Then Helen, sitting down on the floor again, resumed in an earnest tone, with her large eyes looking fixedly at her lover:

"You must never misunderstand me, Ed. You know I am devoted to your interests only. I would not let you spend an hour that you cannot spare from your work, in gratifying me. I was only jesting, dear. You understand me, don't you?"

If the words did not make the matter entirely clear to Braine's intelligence they were helped a good deal by the "eloquent language of signs," and the whole matter was rapidly becoming perfectly lucid, when a knock at the door startled the pair, and caused Helen to withdraw suddenly to a particularly prim and painful Queen Elizabeth chair on the other side of the room. By the time she was uncomfortably seated, the knock was repeated, and it dawned upon her mind that some one should open the door. She did this herself, as on the whole, best.

"It's Mikey, with a note for me," said Braine; "I told Mose Harbell to send him."

Helen brought in the note, and Braine quietly opened and read it.

"Please tell Mikey to wait for an answer," he said. "May I have some paper?"

Helen supplied him, and he wrote. When the messenger was gone, he turned and said:

"Come here, Helen dear. Kneel down here by my chair. I want to talk to you."

His manner was a trifle puzzling. It indicated a good deal of earnestness and some concern to enforce whatever it was he meant to say; but there was an inflection of exultation in his voice:

"I'm going to upset all our arrangements, Helen. You needn't have any wedding cards printed at all."

"Oh Edgar!" she cried in distress. "What has happened? Are you ruined in your business, dear? Tell me what it is?"

"No, I'm not ruined--not in my business at least," he added, with a meaning to which Helen had no clew. "On the contrary, my prospects were never so good before. But you don't need any wedding invitations, dear, because we must be married to-night. We leave by the midnight train for a wedding journey to New York."

"But, Edgar, how absurd!"

"Yes, I know it's absurd. Many things I do are so. But it must _be_, all the same. I have just had the returns from this election. It has gone as I wished, and that involves a good many things--among them an immediate journey to New York, and perhaps a stay of several weeks there. I have only been waiting till Mikey brought me certain news of the result before telling you about this."

"You mean to tell me that you have sat there chatting with me all this time, with that in your mind, and not telling me a word about it?"

"I couldn't, you know. You told me not to talk."

"You don't deserve that I should marry you at all."

"I know it. I've told you so all along. But the same thing is true of every other man in the world, and so you will have to put up with it."

"But you're not serious about this, Edgar?"

"Perfectly."

"It's preposterous!"

"Of course it is, but I can't help it."

"It's out of the question."

"Of course it is. Things that are decided are no longer in the question."

"But seriously, Edgar, I'm not ready. I can't be married so suddenly. I haven't any _clothes_," with that tremendous emphasis on the word clothes which the feminine mind instinctively places on the idea it represents, where marriage is in question.

"Seriously, Helen, I know this is a great annoyance to you, and I deeply regret annoying you with anything. But it is absolutely necessary for me to go to New York at once, and to remain there for I don't know how long. It means more to me than you can imagine. It means success and power. Perhaps it may mean wealth, also. We were to have been married in July. I may not be able to leave New York then without risk of loss and ruin. So we must be married to-night, and you shall have your vision of New York after all. It is now nine o'clock. I will be back here at eleven, with a license and a clergyman. I have written to Mose Harbell to send you a dozen newsboys for messengers. They'll be here soon. He will send 'genial' ones, of course, and they will carry notes summoning all your friends to the wedding. Lily Holliday will help you with the notes. You might send for Daisy Berkeley too, or I'll call by there on my way down town, and tell her you've a romantic secret to confide to her. That will send her to you in five minutes. It would if it were midnight and she in bed."

With that he hurried away, leaving Helen standing in the middle of the floor in a dazed condition, till Daisy Berkeley, who lived but a little distance away, came hurriedly in to ask: "What is it?" in many and varied forms of words.

"I could not think of yielding to so preposterous a plan," said Helen, after she had briefly explained the situation, "but what am I to do? Edgar is gone, and I can't argue it with him. And the clergyman will be here at eleven, and there come the newsboys now, and I haven't _a stitch of clothes_! Oh, what shall I do?"

"Do?" cried Daisy. "Why carry the thing through, of course. It's the most deliciously romantic thing I ever heard of in my life. Oh, how I do envy you!"

"But what am I to do for clothes, Daisy? And besides, it's so undignified!"

"_A fig for Dignity! Vive la Romance!_ I'll lend you all my clothes. I always have lots of them, and mamma is sure to know where they are."

"Daisy Berkeley! You forget yourself. You are under five feet high, and I am five feet eight inches."

"Well, never mind about clothes. You have plenty of them. It's all nonsense, the way we women talk about nothing to wear. Somebody wrote a book or something to prove it once. Who would spoil a delicious romance--oh, it is so delicious--for nonsense like that! Why, it'll make you the talk of the town."

"That's just it. I have no desire to be the talk of the town. But there is no help for it now."

So the two, with Lily Holliday, summoned from next door, set to work upon the notes, while the trunk packing was done by Helen's aunt, who was weeping all the time, till Mary Malony, the maid, who was helping her, exclaimed:

"Sure mum, it's not packin' a thrunk, but a dampenin' down of clothes ye are, and they's no ironin' convayniences on the cars at all."

XI.

For a man on his wedding journey Braine seemed to have an extraordinary amount of business to attend to from the first hour of his arrival in New York. Sometimes it occupied his mornings, and sometimes his down town engagements stretched far into the afternoon, though he avoided that as much as possible, and managed almost always to have his evenings free.

In his hours of freedom he threw off care so completely that if Helen had been capable of doubting anything he said, she would not have believed in his business engagements at all.

He took her to the theatres, where light summer plays of no possible interest were running, and joined in the poor sport with the relish of a boy, and apparently without once thinking of the affairs with which he was toiling down town every day. He sought out all the places where summer music was to be heard. He went to the sea side, and would sit on the sands for hours with Helen, idly listening to the lazy swash of the surf as it surged in from the indolent summer sea. He watched even the merry-go-rounds with a contagious interest in the joy the children seemed to get out of them.

And yet all this time Braine was playing a great game, with success or failure for the stakes; a game mainly of skill, at which he was a novice, while his adversaries were veterans. If he succeeded, nothing was beyond his reach. If he failed--but he did not contemplate failure. It had never been his habit.

At first, Helen enjoyed the privacy of a stranger in the great town, going and coming at will, knowing nobody and expecting attention from nobody. But this was of brief duration, and signs that it was destined speedily to end appeared when men of wealth and social prominence began to show themselves at the hotel with Braine, and to seek presentation to herself in her private parlor.

It was during this blissful period of obscurity that Helen wrote in the diary:

* * * * *

We have been in the city now three days. I am happy, but tired out with a rush of new experiences. I am still in the daze occasioned by the suddenness with which events have occurred. Married, and seeing New York, all in six days, is too much for any woman, even a Western woman. And my wardrobe! Until this evening I have had no time to think of it. But at this moment it comes to me with terrible and tragic force that I have just three presentable dresses to my name, and these are not so presentable as they seemed before we went down to dinner that first evening.

By the way, dinner means that of which I have never dreamed before,--and means it at six o'clock. In Thebes, dinner meant a sort of juggling at noon; and supper, a scrabble at six. Dinner here means science, art, and awesome ability in some one.

For just one moment I was ready to sink through the floor when I entered the dining-room--no, we dined in the café. (These little distinctions must not escape me, nor be neglected.) But in an instant I glanced at Edgar, who seemed so unconcerned with surrounding things, and so preoccupied with some weighty matter, that everything but him seemed to sink into insignificance, and by the time I was seated at the table, and remembered the strangeness and magnificence of it all, I had forgotten to be overpowered.

I noticed that Edgar was looking at me with a smile and very earnestly once, and when I said, "What is it?" he replied:

"Any other woman who had never eaten terrapin would have said that she didn't like it. This dinner has convinced me that you are a wonderful woman."

I half understood him, and my happiness at having unconsciously pleased him made me blush. The blush itself seemed to delight him, and he said: "Good heavens! a woman who has had time to enjoy terrapin, and is still able to blush so beautifully!"

I left the dining-room in a state of mind almost bordering on exaltation.

People stare very rudely here. Every one looked at us. Edgar did not seem to observe it, but somehow I could not help being conscious of it. I first thought that they looked at Edgar, but I found they were staring at me too. That was because I was with him. I am more than ever determined to keep up with him as well as I can, that I may be no drag upon his advancement--or rather on his efforts to advance others.

I experience a little suspicion of regret now and then. Edgar and I cannot possibly seem so near to each other while we are amid such startling surroundings, and one has to bear in mind, to an extent, that she must not appear too much surprised.

He has hardly been in the room half an hour at a time since our arrival. He no sooner comes in and gets ready to talk to me, than he receives a card from some one and goes to the parlor--he will have no one come to our private parlor. He says "Not yet," and laughs.

He seems almost fierce sometimes, at the thought of other people even looking at me. He said, when he saw a man looking after me in the hall: "It makes me feel murderous! These men are not fit to breathe the same atmosphere with you. Neither am I, for that matter, any more, but I love you, that makes it different; and what I do is _because_ I love you."

It delights me cruelly to hear him depreciate himself--not because of that depreciation, but because it illustrates his extraordinary love for me.

I wish we were in the little cottage at Thebes. The sweet-williams are ravishingly sweet now; and I would like to have just my dog near when I love Edgar so. He would be so sympathetic! There is such an aggressive feeling of selfishness in the air here. Something not quite sympathetic, or clean, or good. It is because it is all new and strange to me, of course, but it certainly seems so. I mentioned this thoughtlessly a while ago, and Edgar threw his arms around me and stopped the words with kisses. I know that he did it so that I would say no more, for his face looked peculiarly pained. His lip quivered for a moment, and that almost frightened me. Such a thing in Edgar means more than even I can divine. In a moment he was gravely gay again. Even in his merriest moments there is a sweet dignity about him that fascinates and commands me. I seem to demand, but he seems to command. There is no other man living whom I could have loved.

_New York, July 2._ Until now I have always thought that the day on which I met Edgar was the most marvellous one of my life. I now think it is not so. This has been the most eventful one surely.

Last night I said to Ed that this morning I _must_ go out and get something to wear. He said, "Very well. While I am down town you can do your shopping." That was all that was said. We breakfasted at nine, and at ten Ed said we had better go, as he must be down town by 10:30. I had no idea where to go or just what to do. There was a certain embarrassment about the situation, but I concealed the fact, and trusted to Ed's wonderful management and delicacy.

He was equal to the occasion. Nothing was said as to where I should go, or concerning means with _which_ to go, until we reached the hotel entrance. He put me into a coupé, and said: "The man will take you to an establishment where they can tell you what you want without your having to bother about it," and thrust a roll of bills into my hand, threw me a kiss, nodded, smiled, and closed the door.

The coupé started before I could recover from astonishment. For a minute I sat looking at the bills in my hand. They made a terrible roll. When I found what he had given me I could only gasp and drop them on the floor. The amount frightened me. I was sure that he had made a mistake, and I put the bills in a separate compartment of my purse, all but fifty dollars, to give them back when I returned.