Part 14

The place came under the consideration of the Floyds as soon as the intentions of the Ogdens became known. A decided change had come over Walworth's affairs; a less expensive house than his present one now seemed a great advantage. But his own lease ran for a year more; besides, his wife had too high an idea of their position and its dues to think of succeeding the young Ogdens in such a tenancy. The Floyds, as a matter of fact, were sinking to bed-rock-a foothold whose reality they had never tested yet; and there need be no wonder that the beginning of their downward course was marked by a slow reluctance. Walworth endeavored to make good the shortages occasioned through his brother's clippings by intrusting Ann with commissions on his behalf upon the Open Board--affairs in which she was no more successful for him than for herself; while his wife, for the first time, made some efforts in a society for which she had always had a shade of careless contempt.

The Ogdens established themselves anew in a large building where they had four or five, small rooms, and where they could breakfast and dine with a few hundred persons of like requirements and like situation. George now began renewed efforts to turn to account the property for which he had received deeds from McDowell. His halfyear of married life had put him in an awkward and straitened position, and the usual activity in real property that comes with the spring was something of which the utmost advantage must be taken.

He placed some of his outside acres with one or two good houses, but this entire side of business seemed pervaded by apathy.

"It's going to be an off-year," he was told. "Acres are down, and it looks as if they were going to stay so--for some time, anyway. We'll take this, though, and do what we can. You pay this year's taxes, of course?"

So much for the real estate. McDowell's notes, which he had made to run for a longer term than pleased anybody but himself, showed the due and prompt endorsement of interest payments; and if there was anything else in the general situation to call for gratulation Ogden failed to discover it.

XX

Jessie Ogden's supposition with regard to Mary Brainard was justified by events; the poor exile was allowed to come back to town to attend her mother's funeral, and, thanks to a providential escort, she was enabled to bring her child with her. The two arrived under the charge of a distant relative by marriage of the Centralia Brainards, who was understood to be on the point of visiting the city anyway, for the purpose of "buying goods." He was presented by the name of Briggs.

He was a somewhat uncouth and slovenly man of thirty-five--a fair specimen of the type evolved by the small towns of southern Illinois. But he had a bright and capable way with him, and it seemed likely enough that if he were to transfer himself and his business to Chicago, as he once spoke of doing, he might work himself up into pretty fair shape. He was a widower.

He showed some fitting sense of the solemnity of the occasion that had brought him to the house; but it was fair to surmise from various tokens that his usual treatment of the subdued young mother was in the line of familiar kindness, which only genuine solicitude kept apart from semi-jocularity--a jocularity that had almost the effect of an understanding. He seemed to have about the same understanding with the baby; he had held it part of the time on the train, and he had shown a willingness to be useful in the same direction subsequently.

Brainard saw the child once. He looked at the boy's dark hair and eyes and vented a dreadful oath, and signified that while he and his mother were in the house the infant must be kept out of sight and out of sound.

Abbie Brainard made no effort towards further mediation between her father and her sister. The present status was endurable, and there was little to be gained by additional appeal to the irascible old man; it was irascibility rather than sorrow which now possessed him. Nothing irritated him more than an address to the deeper emotions, and the passing of his life-long partner was an address of this character. And this irascibility had risen to a pitch of fury on account of the unfortunate resemblance of Mary Vibert's child to its father.

Abbie was still leading her old life in her old way. She had her reading, her accounts, her church-work; but she went at these with less energy than she had shown a year ago. She had lost something in flesh and something in spirits, but nothing was slighted. She had no confidants and she made no moan.

"What _is_ the matter with her?" Cornelia would now and then ask herself. "If she would only rip out and say something; but I never saw a girl who was so mum. I'll get her out of this place, though, if anybody can. She has got to come up there and live with me. I'll fetch that, if I have to pull her up by the roots."

And then, putting generalization in the place of any tangible particulars, "I believe she's just starving"--which was not altogether wrong.

Cornelia found no specific grounds for approaching her father-in-law about Abbie, but she had some words with him about Abbie's sister.

She went to him one evening in his den; it was the day after the funeral. The distant wailing of the baby's voice had caused him to shut the door of his little room with a profane slam.

"Mr. Briggs is right there in the parlor," she said to him boldly, "waiting for her to come down; I don't see that it's going to help things any to slam doors. If he don't mind the baby, I guess we don't have to."

He turned upon her fiercely and half rose from his chair. It seemed for a moment as if he was intending to put her out of the room.

But she stood her ground and stared him full in the face. She was the only one in the family who, when the real pinch came, could look him down. He fell back in his seat and fixed an uncertain eye upon the panels of the door.

"There's such a thing as sense at such places as this, if you'd only know it," she went on. She spoke out loudly; she knew that if she used a moderate voice her tones would tremble. "I should think we might hold in for the day or so that the man's here. He knows why she was sent off down there, and that's bad enough; but it's worse for him to bring her up here and have her treated bad right before his face. Why can't you speak to her at table? Why can't you have--"

"That will do, Cornelia." He beat on the arm of his chair with his doubled-up fist. "We won't have anything more of this sort of thing. That will do."

But there was a kind of harsh grin on his face; he either admired her pluck or anticipated her point. She saw this and knew that she held him in her hand.

"No, it won't do, Cornelia--not yet. Why do you think he is here? Do you suppose a man goes travelling around the country with a woman and a three months' old baby for the fun of it? And he hasn't come up to 'buy goods'--don't you believe it. This is a great chance for Mayme, everything considered. He's a smart fellow, and you don't want to go and spoil it all. This is a thing that will take care of itself, if you'll only give it a show."

He stared at her--still rather forbiddingly. But she saw admiration appearing through indignation, and she judged that it was gaining the upper hand.

"Now," she said, with her own hand on the door-knob, "when you ask May me to-morrow morning if she would like another piece of steak, I want you to look at her; seems to me this is a time when a family should act _like_ a family. And I guess it wouldn't hurt you much to put yourself out far enough to ask that man to smoke a cigar with you. You try. And I think this door had better stay the way I leave it."

She passed out, leaving the door open. And open it remained.

In such fashion as this came Mary Brainard to her mother's burial. But her younger brother came not, and no one knew where he was or what he might be doing.

Briggs left for Centralia on the following evening, his charges remaining behind, by an inconclusive arrangement that might terminate in almost any way. Cornelia, who attended his departure with a lively interest, noticed that Abbie, in her hat and cloak, was trying to take advantage of this same occurrence to steal out of the house. She followed her through the vestibule and overtook her half way down the steps.

"Abbie!" she called after her, "where are you going?"

"'Sh!" Abbie said, softly. "I'm just going out for a few minutes."

"Neighbors?"

"No, not exactly," the girl hesitated. "I'm just going a block or two."

"You don't want to be trotting around alone this time of night. Sha'n't I go with you?"

She placed her hand on Abbie's arm to draw her back while she put on her own things. She felt her companion tremble, and saw an expression of anxiety on her face which she took to mean embarrassment.

"No, Cornelia, I don't want you to go with me. I don't need you, I've got to go alone."

"Upon my word, I think you're acting mighty queer. I just believe, Abbie Brainard, that you are going out to meet somebody--you, of all people!"

Abbie started. "Supposing I am?" she stammered.

"Who is it?" asked Cornelia, peremptorily. Only an extremely eager interest would have made her take this tone with Abbie. "Well, I must say, I think your father is a little too bad. Why can't he see that girls have got to be girls? First it's Mayme and now it's--"

"Cornelia!" cried Abbie, with a violent blush and the trembling voice that foreshadows tears. "It's my brother! It's Marcus!"

"Marcus!" exclaimed Cornelia. "Then I _am_ going, sure. Where are you to meet him--in the park?"

Abbie bowed assent.

"Well, then, you wait one second. I'll he right out again."

"Don't come. He won't speak to me if he sees anybody with me."

"I can stand around somewhere--I won't do any harm."

She was actuated as much by curiosity as by sympathy. She had never seen Marcus, but she remembered the "erring son" of her first play, and nothing more than one's first play has a fixed footing in one's association of ideas.

The park lay under the cold glare of the electric light, in the state of forbidding bareness that overtakes all such urban tracts during the earlier days of spring. Soggy footprints showed everywhere in the soaked brown turf that bordered the winding paths, and masses of dead leaves were matted together at the roots of the spindling shrubbery. The arc-lights threw a ghastly illumination on the flat white fronts of the houses that stood around in rows outside as well as on the stretches of theatrical posters which filled up the spaces between; and they flung deep shadows into the flimsy arbors and kiosks that started up here and there within. Abbie, with her companion, traversed a number of spongy, gravelled paths, and presently the figure of a man emerged from a summer-house and advanced to meet her. Cornelia turned off, and paused behind the thickened stalks of a bare bush.

"Marcus!" cried Abbie, as her brother moved towards her, "Marcus, why didn't you come? I waited at the door to let you in. Could anybody have made any trouble at such a time as that?"

He came up to her with a few unsteady steps. His eyes were blood-shot, and on his face, which seemed paler and thinner than ever under the white flood from the globe overhead, there was a long, half-healed scar. He looked at her in a dull, dazed way; perhaps he simply misapprehended these present words, perhaps he was unable to fully comprehend any words at all.

"You could have gone in a carriage all alone with me," she went on, in pitiful reproach. "And you could have stayed in it--you needn't have seen anybody else at all. I wanted you so much. Mayme came; why couldn't you? Oh, Marcus, you were thought of; your name was almost the last one said."

She threw her head on his shoulder and burst into tears. He gave way a little, and then, with an effort, he mastered a steadier pose.

Her crape brushed his face; he felt it, rather than saw it.

"Is he dead?" Something like light came into his dull eye. The lamp above gave a sudden vast flicker, and the long scar on his face deepened and lengthened and came back to itself again. It was all like a sinister and cynical smile.

"Marcus! don't you know? Where have you been? Haven't you got any of my letters?"

He leaned against the silly rusticity of the summer-house, and looked at her with a dazed but inquiring eye.

"It's mother! It's mother!" the poor girl cried. "Why didn't you come?"

"Why, how is this?" asked Cornelia, stepping forward. "Hadn't he heard?"

"I mailed them to the same place. And the money--didn't you get that, either?"

He looked at her steadily and soberly, but his eyes had a heavy droop. "It's mother," he said at length; "it's mother that's dead." He sat down carefully on the steps of the summerhouse. "And my name was the last. Always the last, Abbie. When was it?"

"Has he moved--do you suppose?" asked Cornelia. She regarded him long and steadily. She seemed about to recognize him--though voice was apparently counting for more than face.

"It was only day before yesterday," Abbie said. "I tried to see you, but it was so far and there was so much to do. But I sent you word."

"I haven't been there lately," he said slowly. "I couldn't have come day before yesterday," he added presently.

"Where have I seen him before?" thought Cornelia. And, "What is the matter with him?" she seemed to ask of Abbie.

"I couldn't come," he repeated. "I'm sorry," he added humbly. "I was--somewhere else."

"Have you been away all these three months? I haven't seen you since almost New Year's. Have you been away from the city all this time?"

"I have been somewhere--somewhere else," he repeated thickly. 'He rose tremblingly. "I suppose they'll have me there again, some time. Well, all right," he said, with resignation.

"What does he mean?" asked Abbie, turning appealingly to Cornelia.

Marcus followed his sister's eyes. He looked at Cornelia narrowly, his own eyes half closed. "Who is this?" he asked.

"It's Cornelia--Burt's wife."

"Burt's wife?" He held her with an enigmatical stare. "I have seen her," he said; "before."

"Where?" thought Cornelia. "Not possibly at--the theatre?"

"In church," he explained, with a slow gravity. "He isn't dead--Burt?"

"Dead?" cried Cornelia. "No, indeed."

"No, he isn't dead," Marcus repeated deliberately. His eyelids raised themselves. "He is married; he has half a million," he went on, with the same slowness. His eye lighted up with a malignant glare. "No, he isn't dead. But--"

He stretched himself aloft, and thrust out his arm, and staggered, and only half-saved himself.--"but I will kill him," he added suddenly.

"Marcus!" his sister screamed; "are you mad?"

He lay slantingly against the corner of the summer-house. His arm caught at the crosspieces of the rustic carpentry, and he hung there panting. Presently a little stream of blood began to trickle across the palm of his hand--he had torn himself on a nail. He felt the warm fluid on his skin, and held up his hand to his own curious and impersonal inspection.

"Give me your handkerchief, Cornelia," Abbie implored pitifully. She folded her own and laid Cornelia's over it, and twisted it around his thumb and tied it over his wrist.

His fingers felt thin and claw-like, and there was a grime rubbed into their cracked and roughened skin--those girlish fingers (his mother's fingers) that had once held a pencil so delicately.

"I have seen her--before," he repeated. "Here." He jerked his hand out of his sister's hold and waved it over the circumscribed and shabby landscape. The light shimmered on the leaden surface of the pond behind them, and the wind rustled the stark weeds along its muddy edges. "I knew it was coming." Abbie caught his hand back. "Half a million; he never did anything for me. I will kill _him_" he muttered faintly.

Cornelia continued her inspection of him. "Abbie, just look at these clothes, will you? And he hasn't got any cuffs on, either."

"Marcus!" his sister called appealingly. Her raised voice indicated that, after all, she must acknowledge him as other than himself. "All that money I sent you--you need it. Go right away to-morrow to your old number and get it." She turned to Cornelia. "I haven't got any; have you? I forgot it, after all."

"Just this half-dollar," she answered. "Exactly what I paid," she said to herself, "to see him in this part once before." She recognized him now; she saw that she had been interested in the new actor because nobody else had seemed so; and she felt sure that his attempt on the stage had been the same brief failure that all of his other attempts must have been as well.

Marcus raised himself, and a sly smile came over his face. "Money?" he said. "Keep it. I don't want it. I can raise all I need. Vibert knew the ropes, and now I know them just as well myself. I can do business all right again. No money, Abbie; no." He thrust it back upon her. "He always said I wasn't _fit_ for business; but I'll show him."

He braced himself and stepped out decidedly into the path. He turned in the direction of the exit. The other two insensibly took this direction as well, and fell to regulating their steps by his.

"You are a good sister, Abbie," he said, as they passed out. "You have been good to me. Good." He put his hand on hers; he had forgotten that it was bandaged. There was a soft stringency in the folds of the handkerchiefs, but she felt his grateful pulses underneath.

"Oh, Cornelia," moaned poor Abbie; "I must take him home--I must--I must! So near at hand--and the place where he belongs. I can't leave him to go wandering around like this."

Marcus laid his bandaged hand on his sister's shoulder. "No, Abbie." The earlier waves of a sodden stupor now seemed to be washing over him, and he looked on the two girls with a dull leer. "Not home. Better place than home. But some time--I will come home some time. He never treated me as well as he did Burt." His tones came thickly. "I will kill him," he murmured softly to himself in a drunken confidence.

He turned off, down a side street. Abbie stood watching him as he disappeared, to reappear in the light of frequent lamp-posts. Presently he turned a corner. Abbie clasped her hand tightly in her companion's and allowed herself to be led home.

"Another job for me," said Cornelia, thoughtfully.

XXI

The Ogdens, in their apartment, presented to their callers substantially the same aspect that they had offered in a complete house, save that the dining-room had been lopped off, along with the kitchen. They were a shade more compact and, if anything, a shade more luxurious.

Among the first of their callers here was the faithful Brower. As he lounged back in a familiar easy-chair he cast his eye around the drawingroom and the reception-hall; he recognized a number of things from the other house, and detected, too, a good many novel elegancies. In one corner of the room, in particular, there stood a delightful little tea-table; and he learned that the full paraphernalia of the delicate function known as "a tea" could be produced at a moment's notice.

On the purchase of this adjunct to polite living Jessie had brought all her insistence to bear. Life to her had now come merely to mean receiving and being received; and to receive at all she must receive correctly and elegantly.

"It's about all I feel equal to doing now--giving teas," she explained; "and that's all the more reason why I should do it properly. Now, Cecilia Ingles's table and china--"

"For Heaven's sake, Jessie, please to remember that you are not Mrs. Ingles and that I am not her husband. Can you expect me to compete with a man who has an income like his? Do you know what that building--that building alone--pays him a year?"

"Well, I only want things nice. I shall have to live quietly for a while--I don't feel as if I had any great strength; and I don't think I ought to be denied such a small thing as this."

Hence the charming little tea-table, the delicate and exquisite porcelain, and the beautifully burnished kettle; and hence, too, the cup for Brower, so that he might see how the whole thing went. But the hand that passed it to him was white and tremulous, and the graceful bit of lace over the wrist fluttered with a pitiful palpitation.

"I'm going to put another lump on your saucer; so sorry you have caught us without a lemon." She smiled at him as she spoke, and he could not but see that her lips had a bluish tinge. "So good of you to let me come in just as I was." She smoothed down the fall of lace along the front of her wrapper. "But I hardly felt equal to dressing this evening; besides, an old friend like you--"

The "old friend" went home and talked things over with his room-mate.

He lit the burners on both sides of his dressing-case mirror and slowly took off his coat. His room-mate was in his shirt-sleeves, too.

"I wonder if he is happy," said Brower, thoughtfully running his thumb-nail along the teeth of his tortoise-shell comb.

"He tried hard enough to be," answered his room-mate, running his thumb along the teeth of _his_ comb.

Brower sighed and looked with frank but troubled eyes into his friend's face. "Too hard, perhaps."

The other returned his glance in kind. "I'm afraid so," he breathed.

"He figured it all out beforehand," said Brower. "We talked a good deal on the subject generally."

"That sort of thing doesn't always pay."

"We considered the rich girl and the poor girl," Brower went on. "But there's another kind of girl that we both failed to take account of."

"What kind is that?"

"The girl in very moderate circumstances who has spent all her time in going about among wealthy relatives and friends."

"The poor princess who makes the grand chain of other people's castles?"

"Yes," assented Brower; "the grand chain of other people's castles. It's demoralizing."

"Is he a disappointed man?"

"Yes; I'm certain of it. Disappointed, and worried half to death. I'm sorry for him. I'm afraid for him."

He sat down on the edge of the bed and began to unlace his shoes. His room-mate wore shoes of the same size and laced them in the same way.

"I wonder," said he, "if he really loved her?"

"'Sh!" said Brower.

"Wasn't there another one that he _did_ love?"

"Not a word more!" cried Birower.

He undressed and got into bed. He took a book with him. It was "A Mistaken Marriage"--he read everything.

"What do you want to read for?" asked the other. "It's late."

"I read because I don't want to think." He opened at the mark and settled back on his pillow and started in.

"Where are you now?" demanded his double.

"Page 316; the castle's on fire."

"Do you want anything more about castles?"

"No."

"And haven't you had enough of fires?"

"Plenty."

"Well, then!"

Out went the gas, and sleep presently succeeded.

The Ogdens had other callers; among them was Frederick Pratt.

Frederick had left the Underground for the temple at the extreme end of the street, where he was engaged in an ardent study of puts and calls. The atmosphere of the Board of Trade is less sedate than that of the clearing-house association, and the new recruit had become still more volatile and giddy. He was skating on thinner ice and was putting more assurance into his movements.

Pratt, like Brower, made his own observations on the new status of the Ogdens; but unlike Brower, he did not keep his opinions and conjectures to himself. He gave the same currency to his reflections on this pair that he had given to those on the Viberts--and among others thus favored were the Floyds.

"What's the matter with George, anyhow?" he asked Walworth one evening. They were sitting again in Floyd's library, and a light haze of tobacco-smoke prompted to elegiac revery. "He looks old. And he has come to be as poky as the deuce. He seemed last night as if he was worried half to death."