Part 10

She rushed him through the outskirts of the town; she bumped over the cumbrous plank crossings, she grazed one or two of the wooden posts that held up oil-lamps, she charged a flock on its homeward way from church and cut it into two frightened and indignant halves. She was on her native heath; she felt it; she showed it.

George grasped the buggy-cover with his left hand and held his right in readiness to seize the reins. The buggy, with many a bump and sudden wrench, sped on over the stones and ruts and puddles and rough crossings of an indifferent country road, and presently it turned into a yard with a rasping graze on one of the two painted white posts that made the entrance way. On the side porch of the house stood the girl's parents. They were laughing.

Jessie jumped out briskly. She struck a masculine attitude on the carriage-block, her right hand resting on the stock of her whip, her left arm a-kimbo.

"I was to get yer through on time; them was my orders, and here ye are!"

George climbed out carefully.

"Poor Horace!" chuckled Bradley, coming down; "he's here all right, but is he able to give his lecture?"

Mrs. Bradley followed, to shake hands. She wore a black silk dress, and there was a bit of lace over her thin hair--an adornment which her consciousness seemed to put forth as a modish novelty. Her wrinkles all flowed together in a companionable smile.

"He may have lost his voice on the way," she joked, "but we hope he saved his appetite."

"They're both all right," said George, laughing in turn.

Bradley was at the horse's head. "The voice is there, anyway," he said in cautious acknowledgment. "And we'll see about the appetite as soon as you've got enough spare breath to say 'Amen' to our grace." The Bradley house was a mere box of a building set in an acre lot. They had built for themselves, on finally breaking with the city, two years before; and they had accepted the gables and dormers and shingles and the brown and yellow paint that the modest suburban house of the period finds it so difficult to evade. They stood on high, rolling ground; there were half-hints of considerable vistas here and there, and they were surrounded by groves and copses through which, to-day, the first faint colors of the spring were hurtling. Bradley, after dinner, walked Ogden around the house--previous visits had been confined to the parlor. He dwelt on the swelling of the lilac buds, and he drew attention with an impartial interest to the first sproutings of his peonies and of his rhubarb. The back of the place was littered with the debris of a second green-house in an advanced stage of construction, and through this disorder he picked his way, along with his daughter and his guest, towards the door of the first.

"Hop in," said Bradley, lifting his own foot over the perpendicular threshold. The air within was but a few degrees warmer than the air without, yet closer. On either side stretched fragmental beds of young plants, with frequent breaks between. "It's late for prims, after all; and a good many of them are outside, anyway." He waved his hand over a few patches of color on the left; there were white, pink, cherry, pale purple, such as Jessie was wearing, and a few belated clumps of young and indeterminate green.

Ogden passed to and fro, with the oh's and ah's that accompany the exposition of any host's pet hobby, however partial and trifling the exhibit may be. He had done the same last autumn with the chrysanthemums.

Bradley took this tribute with the customary complacency, and presently drifted to one side for a word with his man about a small matter of glazing--he had quite an eye for broken panes. Ogden leaned against a damp ledge. Jessie had seated herself on one of the steps of a rude flower-stand; she brushed aside two or three small pots that had been left standing on it.

She showed an air of lassitude; it had been stealing over her all through dinner, and now it had completely overtaken her in the languid atmosphere of the flowers. Her slender arms hung limply, and she moved her back as if to find a comfortable rest for it. Her face, under the pallor of the painted glass, looked rather colorless and a little drawn, and a languorous apathy seemed to have taken the sparkle from her _eyes_.

She looked up at him as she dropped the petals of a primrose one by one. "You didn't care to drive, then?"

"Bid you want me to? I'm sorry not to have understood. You drove down, and so I thought--Was it too much for you, both ways?"

"Oh, no. It only struck me that you might want to. You were not--that is, you understand horses?"

"Certainly; I drive on occasion." He smiled serenely, not in the least disturbed by her perfectly obvious thought. "However, a wise man never goes out of his way to handle a strange horse--perhaps that isn't one of Solomon's proverbs, but it ought to be."

"You are awfully cautious." She rose undecidedly, and presently she sat down again with a little sigh.

"I have to be. That is my business--from half-past eight till four. Perhaps it's growing on me."

"I don't mean that. Ton were born cautions; you'd be cautions anyway."

"I'm a Down-easter, you know. Look before you leap. Perhaps I shall learn the off-hand Western ways in time. I'll try to. I'll make myself over."

"I wonder if you can," she said, half to herself. Then aloud:

"But I don't believe all Down-easters are as careful as you are. There must be lots of them who would have just laid the whip on that horse, and run over a boy or two, and knocked our gate-post to pieces, and come up to the door with a wheel just ready to break to flinders. Why couldn't you have done it? I shouldn't have minded it--I should have liked it first-rate." She spoke with a kind of lingering drawl, and there was a half-smile in her lack-lustre eye.

"Your father would have minded it, though, and so should I. Never begin to dance without arranging about the fiddler--good rule, don't you think?"

She threw a bare stem to the ground. "Oh, yes; but tiresome." She rose. "Close in here, isn't it? Let's go outside."

XIV

The sun that had given some warmth to the early hours of the afternoon was dimmed, later, by an overcasting of thin clouds, and the rest of the time was passed in-doors. George smoked a friendly cigar with Bradley in the dining-room, and after Mrs. Bradley had disappeared for a short nap he whiled away the remaining hours with Jessie in the parlor. They sat in two easy-chairs on opposite sides of the fireplace, in which a handful of coal was working against the last lingering chill of winter. The girl had partly recovered her earlier tone, and she chatted with him in a-string of smart jocularities with the manner which sometimes assures a doubtful caller that he has not made a mistake in coming and that he has not remained too long after coming. But between these uptilted strata of facetiousness there came now and then a layer of greater seriousness, and in one of these intervals she trenched on the domestic affairs of the Brainards.

"Poor Mayme went South the other day, didn't she? I hardly suppose you could call it a visit?" She looked at him soberly, with her eyebrows slightly raised.

George winced. "To visit her uncle's family," he answered. He half wondered why he reiterated her word and even emphasized it.

"Her sister was going to run down there with her."

"I heard so."

"You see Abbie occasionally?"

"Occasionally."

"I suppose she is at the bank a good deal?"

"Not often." He fixed his eye on the last Bickerings of the coals and lapsed into silence. It was not so easy now as once before to discuss Abbie Brainard with Jessie Bradley.

Mrs. Bradley came in brisk and refreshed about half an hour before train-time. The young people were chatting amusedly enough on indifferent subjects, and she urged Ogden to stay to tea with the clinging insistency of the suburban housekeeper.

"You can go home by moonlight; I've arranged it all for you." She drew aside a window curtain and showed him a pale white disk in a bluish sky.

"It's full, you see. We just have cold meat and tea and biscuits--I don't want to keep you under false pretences."

The moon kept faith with his hostess;--lighting him to the station and following him in to town and keeping him in sight through a mile of noisy and glaring streets. From the car-window, now and then, as the train passed back through a string of scattered suburbs and crossed the flat reaches of prairie-land between he was conscious of her bland insipidity; and as he traversed the down-town business district she raked the long parallels of the east-and-west streets with an undiscriminating indifference that a mind less preoccupied might have found irritating. It was all the same to that big, foolish face--town and country were one. It had its vacuous smile for trees and fields, and it had the same smile for the variant lights of the street-cars, for the clamorous cab-drivers around the depots, for the flaring jewelled guide-posts of the theatres, for the gaudy fronts of sample-rooms, for the cheap dishevelment of occasional strayed revellers, for the signs of chiropodists and the swinging shingles of justices of the peace, and for a certain meditative young man, whether he was traversing the rustic roads of Hinsdale or the sophisticated planks of the State Street Bridge. Ogden's thoughts flowed along with a quiet and grateful sense of the friendliness of the Bradleys, and with many a ripple, wave, and eddy to correspond with the changing moods of their daughter. He made a careful rehearsal of some of their bits of talk--why had she said this? what had she meant by that? why had she done the other? He dwelt on these matters with an absorbed speculation, and with a young man of Ogden's temperament speculation was but the first step on the way to love.

The spring trailed along slowly, with all its discomforts of latitude and locality, and then came the long, fresh evenings of early June, when domesticity brings out its rugs and druggets, and invites its friends and neighbors to sit with it on its front steps. The Brainards had these appendages to local housekeeping--lingering reminders of a quick growth from village to city. Theirs was a large rug made of two breadths of Brussels carpeting and surrounded on all four sides with a narrow border of pink and blue flowers on a moss-colored background. This rug covered the greater part of the long flight of lime-stone steps. In the beautiful coolness of these fresh June evenings Abbie frequently sat there on the topmost step, under the jig-saw lace-work of the balcony-like canopy over the front door, while her mother occupied a carpet camp-chair within the vestibule and languidly allowed the long twilight to overtake her neglected chess-board. They sat out, now, only after dark. Ogden called at intervals, and was not flattered that the poor girl brightened at his coming; it seemed as if she must brighten at the coming of almost anybody.

One evening he elected to tell off their long street on foot--the street whose ornamental lamp-posts and infrequent spindling elms had partly decided him in the selection of his first quarters. When within a few streets of the Brainard corner he passed a house (one of a long row) on whose front steps (as with its neighbors, right and left) were camped a large and merry party, whose exaggerated domesticity made it plain that they were all fellow-boarders. They occupied two rugs as well as two chairs and a foot-stool at the head of the steps. Through their light-minded hubbub came dominatingly a voice which Ogden recognized, and he threw up his head to meet the frank but overdone bow of Cornelia McNabb. Beside Cornelia sat a young man who bowed at the same time with a somewhat forced and conscious smile. It was Burton Brainard.

Cornelia had returned to the neighborhood of her early trials. She considered herself now on a distinctly fashionable street; she put "Washington Boulevard" on her cards, and thought her eight dollars a week was none too much. She had had a plate engraved and a hundred cards printed. She had not found it easy to dispose of many of them; sometimes she gave them in shops, when she was asked to what address the goods were to be sent.

"But just wait till I order my next plate!" she would say to herself.

She had left one of her cards with Mrs. Gore. The poor, good soul (come in from her baking) was quite taken aback. Then Cornelia, conscious of too stiff an application of the social code, kissed her on coming away and made herself more intelligible.

"Yes," Abbie was saying to Ogden, a few minutes later, "Cornelia is a pretty smart girl. Father has come to be quite taken with her."

He noticed that she said--Cornelia.

"She takes down some of his letters, now, too," she continued. "I never learned," she added, in a tone of slight self-reproach.

"Good Peter!" exclaimed Ogden, with a protesting admiration, "you can do almost everything else!"

She waved aside this ardent apology, and looked rather shyly through the rusty iron-work of the hand-rail. The syringas were in blossom; the asphalt path had stopped its afternoon's running and had solidified since sundown.

"I think he likes her because she isn't afraid of him. Neither are you," she added, in a low tone, as if on an after-thought. She did not look his way.

Ogden appreciated this appreciation of his behavior. He had always been prompt and respectful with Brainard, but he had never knuckled down.

"He gives her letters almost every day. She corrects his mistakes."

"And he corrects hers?"

"He says she doesn't make many. When she does she sticks it out. She talks back. That's where she's bright. It kind of irritates him, I think, to have his--his clerks--his employés seem afraid. It pleases him, though, when other business men are."

This piece of filial analysis fell softly and slowly on the thickening darkness. The lamplighter was zigzagging across the wide roadway with his kerosene torch, and the voices of talkative neighbors on the other side of the street were brought over by the breeze along with the fumes of burning oil.

Ogden was pleased with this touch of gilding that the daughter's devotion applied to the father's clay. Perhaps the old man was not hopelessly beyond the reach of idealization's hand, after all.

Besides the people on other steps around, many clattered by over the asphalt pavement, and others promenaded slowly along the sidewalk. These moved in couples towards the Park, whose scant clumps of citified foliage appeared a few hundred yards away under the light of a waning moon and a half-bemisted sprinkling of stars; many of them issued from basement doors.

Presently another couple came sauntering along, and they paused at the foot of the Brainard steps. They were Burt and Cornelia. Cornelia came up and found a place on the rug that suited her, and greeted Mrs. Brainard in a familiar and masterful manner, before which the good woman soon boxed up her chessmen and retired. Cornelia then turned on Ogden.

"Stiff--or bashful?"

"H'm?"

"Why didn't you stop and say a word as you passed by?"

"Oh! Yes, bashful; too many people."

"Too bad about you!" She turned to Burton. He had seated himself on a lower step with his back to the others. His hat was on the back of his head and his chin was propped up by his knees and elbows. He was looking thoughtfully at the curbstone. "Come up and be sociable," she called.

Burt rose and ascended a step or two.

"Oh, how are you, Ogden?" he said rather absently. George felt that he should have said more, and said it sooner and said it differently.

Cornelia passed a cushion down to Burt. "There; take that and be comfortable." She regarded him studiously. It was dark, but he was all there--the short, thick, yellow moustache, the virile chin lately shaved and powdered, the dense hair that rose in a level line from the top of his forehead. Cornelia would have seen all these things in darkness that was Egyptian. She felt her fingers working towards them.

Cornelia was dressed with a trim and subdued modishness. She had taken a good many cues from Mrs. Floyd, and she had not been above cultivating an intimacy with a girl who worked for the excessively dear and fashionable house that dressed Mrs. Ingles. Mrs. Floyd had had no need to teach Cornelia anything about grammar, but she had shown her, all unconsciously, the advantage of a regulated use of slang.

Her fingers, debarred by the cold conventions of society from any entanglement in the head of hair just before her, smoothed and patted the folds in her own skirt. She further relieved herself by a high, sniffling toss of the head and a long, deep respiration.

"Well, isn't this a great night!" she said, addressing the little party generally. "Isn't the air splendid! I declare, I could just ramble about till morning. And yet I suppose your mother"--to Abbie--"has checkmated herself and gone to bed. Dear me, if there wasn't any city, and no clatter-clatter on that machine! Seems as if I must just make a break for the country before long--just get up home and hop into my little boat and paddle all around that whole blessed lake!"

"Why don't you?" asked Ogden. "Can't you give yourself a vacation?" He spoke a little wistfully; there was none ahead for him--no Underground man ever had an outing during his first year.

"I don't see hour. They say you can't serve two masters. Well, I've got five--four too many. At least," she tacked on, as if a closer calculation would further increase the number of these superfluities. "Can I go all over the building and tell each one of them that my services are going to be demanded exclusively for several days by some other one of them? Or shall I he sick--just for a day, at first, and keep adding days, one at a time, until I've had a week? I don't know what _to_ do."

"Drop the whole business," said Burt brusquely, without turning about.

"And leave all my poor people in the lurch?" she cried, as if her employers were her most poignant concern.

"They can get somebody else."

"Oh, yes!" cried Cornelia, with mock humility; "I'm nobody; I can be easily replaced." She cast her humility aside lightly. "I'll tell you what I would do, though, if I was up at Pewaukee this eve. I'd paddle down to Lakeside and back--by the light of that moon." She pointed down the street towards the park foliage. "The moon that gilds those fruit-tree tops--Shakespeare. And it would be a good deal brighter up there than it is in this smoky old place."

"Can you row?" asked Ogden.

"Can I? I guess. Pair of oars made to order; and I can feather with 'em, too. Speaking of Lakeside, I know who's going to be there the last of this month; that Miss Bradley--Mrs. Floyd's niece."

"Cousin," corrected George.

"Is it? Cousin, then. She's a lively girl; she and I would make a pair. Only she don't look very strong."

"I thought," said he, "that she was going to Ocon--Ocon--"

Cornelia gave an encouraging ha, ha. "That's right! Take time and you'll get it. Mow, then; Ocono--"

"Ocono--"

"Mowoc."

"Mowoc."

"Oconomowoc; easy enough when you have it. Accent on second syllable. The only trouble is when you write it; you never know where to stop. Well, so she _is_ going to Oconomowoc, later--to stay through July. They're only twelve miles apart."

"You know Miss Bradley, then?" Abbie asked Ogden. "She was over here once or twice, to see--Mayme. She seemed like a real nice girl."

Ogden bowed assent. He found himself as unwilling to discuss Jessie Bradley with Abbie Brainard as he had been to discuss Abbie Brainard with Jessie Bradley. Whenever he debated them it was a silent debate, in which he himself took both sides.

"She's a high-stepper," volunteered Cornelia, filling in Ogden's silence. "Good deal of style, too. Yet they say her father isn't so extra well off. She's a great contriver, I expect. Well, gumption goes a long ways; it's wriggled _me_ off my back a good many times." She turned to Burt. "Now then, young man, do you want to walk me along to the park? Haven't we roosted about long enough?"

"All right," said he, getting up promptly. He seemed to be smiling appreciatively at her pertness.

"Ta!" cried Cornelia, dabbing her hand to Ogden and Abbie; and off she went. "Perhaps you'll see us later--if you're good!"

A big, bulky figure came stamping along the walk, and reached the foot of the steps just as Burt and Cornelia started off.

"I guess they'll be good," a heavy voice said. The voice was not greatly disguised by its assumption of unaccustomed jocularity, and George with a flush recognized it as Brainard's.

"Well, Abbie," he said, lumbering up the steps. And, "How are you, Ogden?" he said to George, as he passed on and seated himself with a loud grunt on his wife's chair.

George bit his lip; the old man had no business to misuse other people's pronouns in that way. Cornelia's "you" might have meant one person--if it meant more than one still it might have meant them separately; but Brainard's perverting "they" bracketed him and his companion in a fashion utterly unwarranted.

Brainard lingered a few moments above their heads. He made one or two clumsy attempts at facetiousness, and George surmised that this was his way of showing a friendliness. But his joking was much more painful than any hectoring could have been, and George was greatly relieved when he presently rose and retired unceremoniously into the house.

XV

After Brainard's withdrawal Abbie and Ogden sat for some time in silence. The moon sank; the clatter of hoofs on the asphalt sounded less frequently; some of the neighbors over the way had pulled in their rugs, and were now seen, by new-lighted gas-jets, at upper windows pulling down their shades. The breeze freshened; it rustled the lilacs and syringas in the side yard, and it swayed the stringy mass of wild cucumbers that had taken it upon themselves to hide the red hideousness of the barn.

Suddenly Ogden spoke.

"There! I knew I should forget it, and I have. I laid it on my bureau the last thing, too!"

"What?"

"Why--'A False Start.' You haven't wanted it, have you?"

"No; keep it if you like. I've read it."

She meant, "Keep it; please do. Keep it, for my sake."

"It's a pretty good book; didn't you think so?" he asked.

"Yes; I liked it ever so much. He married the right one, after all, didn't he?"

"Might have done it before," Ogden commented. "No earthly reason why not. Only you know how they spin these things out."

There was a sudden shutting down of windows over their heads. Ogden drew out his watch, and turned it so as to profit by the lamp-post on the corner. "Why, I'd no idea!" Burt and Cornelia had not returned from the park, or, if so, had passed on the other side of the street. "Good-night."

"It isn't late, is it?"

"Only for a North-sider."

"Good-night," she said, slowly, and sat alone on the steps until her father came down and called her in.

On the first of July Brainard summoned George into his own private room.

"We have about decided to have an assistant cashier here," he said. His voice was gruff, but his glance was a little sheepish. "Mr. Fairchild thinks it will be convenient about signatures and a good many other things. Burt's out a good deal and likely to be off all through August, and I don't like to have drafts signed in advance. You could make up the reports, too, and swear to 'em. Besides, it's elective--puts you in the Bankers' Almanac, for one thing. As to salary, I suppose we could stand an extra five hundred--or six."

He looked at George with some constraint, but his intention appeared to be friendly.

"We might expect you to go on helping with the tellers' work on occasion--vacation-time, for instance. Now, about your own vacation--"

George bowed with an additional acknowledgment of the favor; he had expected to pass an unbroken summer in town.