Part 5

"Well, it's timely," rejoined Brower, knocking the ashes of his pipe into the cover of the soap-dish; "and always will be. Pro: if the girl's rich, she'll have had things, and got used to them, and perhaps tired of them. If the girl's poor, she'll be ravenous after her long starve-out, and will expect her husband to feed her with everything."

"Lay on."

"Con: if the girl's rich, she'll expect all the comforts and luxuries she has been used to at home. If she's poor, she'll have had some sense ground into her; she'll know how to manage and contrive. So there it is. What's your idea?" "No general rule. Depends on circumstances." "What does?"

"The girl. To begin with."

"The girl depends on circumstances. And after?"

"After? Oh, then circumstances depend on the girl."

"H'm! Can't lay down any general law--same as with little Johnny. Pshaw! You go to the foot."

But they both agreed on one point, as young men always do when they discuss this standard subject: they stood together on the assumption that such a venture concerned only the two people primarily involved.

Brower preceded Ogden into the hallway; he stood with the toe of one slipper on the heel of the other. "Well, remember me to the swells."

"Oh, shucks!" said George, turning back and laughing.

He walked down and out rather sedately, and picked his way over the muddy sidewalks with his thoughts fixed on the two recent marriages. That in his own family had just occurred under such disadvantages as must prevail in a disorganized household, and with the infliction of such discomforts as will sometimes be undergone by people who, while not in society, still feel impelled to have such a function proceed after the fashion that society prescribes. Kittie Ogden was duly married, then, with a certain regard to cards, carriages, caterers, and the rest; and the feast was graced by a number of McDowell's family and friends--people of a fairish sort, who called for little comment in either way. At least, little comment was bestowed by Ogden, whose principal thought was that his sister was now the wife of a fellow of some means and ability, and who felt that it would not come amiss to have a good business man in the family.

At the Floyds' he found the other wedding the subject of much comment, more or less discreet. On the other hand, the affair in his own family received but a mere civil mention; the Ogdens, he felt, must be only an insignificant little group, after all. Must they--must he--always remain so?

The Floyds occupied a snug little house which filled a chink between two bigger and finer ones, and commanded a view of the back yard of a third, which was bigger and finer still. Mrs. Floyd had lately begun to fill a chink in the social world as well, by having an "evening." She had approached the idea with a good deal of deliberation, and she had achieved something very small and quiet. She overcame her husband's weakness for knowing people and inviting them to the house; she was not after a deluge, but a drop; and if her tardy distillation did not equal the perfumes of the fragrant East, still it was the best result to be arrived at under the circumstances.

He found the Fairchilds there, and he came upon Fairchild and Floyd smoking, _sub rosa,_ in a secluded corner of the library, which was furnished in a sombre and solid fashion. In the Floyd family the household divinity was the lace-curtain, whose susceptibility to offence from the fumes of tobacco is well known; her high-priestess was Mrs. Floyd, and her chief victim was Walworth. Associated with the two smokers was young Freddy Pratt, whose solicitude regarding Brainard's mental state on the occasion of his daughter's call at the bank has been already touched upon, and who was now puffing a cigarette with a learned and expert air. This attitude was displeasing to Ogden, who was perhaps over-disposed to feel official differences on social occasions; but no oppressive sense of his own subordinate rank troubled Freddy Pratt, who had but a feeble and intermittent realization of the orders of the business hierarchy, or indeed of anything else.

"It was a matter that concerned just her and him," Fairchild was saying as Ogden entered, with a contemplative regard fastened on the lengthening ash of his cigar. "It was nobody else's business."

He stopped. He had spoken in a low, quiet voice, but he had conveyed unmistakably the presence of quotation-marks.

"I called on 'em the other night," volunteered Freddy Pratt, unabashedly. His perky little nose was tipped in the air, and his eyes were closed to the two fine slits that denote the complete enjoyment of the smoker. "I wasn't going to stand off. They're at the Northumberland--big name, but not much else. Ragged matting in the halls, and the janitor didn't look very slick. I guess they've rented ready furnished. Mayme was real glad to see me. But _he_ was rather grumpy, I thought."

"Everybody ought always to be glad to see _you_, Freddy," smiled Walworth, with a caressing irony.

"I suppose," resumed Fairchild, thoughtfully, "that the human family will always go on considering a wedding as a joyous occasion. It always has; it always must--hope springs eternal."

Ogden wondered what other view there might be to take. Everybody had seemed lively and happy enough when Kittie was married.

"But there's the other side--the side that turns to view with a consideration of the complicated relations of a good many new and diverse elements--new people coming in. We had a case in our own family some years ago, when my young cousin married. Poor Lizzie; she is dead now. Her father died six months before her and left a good deal to be divided up. Her husband was trustee for the boy after she herself went, and he made us a good deal of trouble. He had his eye on the estate from the start, and more than his share in the handling of it. There were a good many meetings in lawyers' offices--more trying than the courts themselves. There was a good deal of money lost, and there is a good deal of feeling that will never be got over. He traded on his wife's memory all through. Yet the family welcomed him very cordially and trustfully; we thought the poor girl was going to be so happy. She was; she never knew."

Ogden sighed; this was dismal matter.

"Oh, well," continued Fairchild, resuming his cigar, with an air of passing to lighter topics, "this can't apply here. All of us are happily married or are going to be--"

Freddy Pratt nonchalantly blew an ineffable smoke-ring across the room; Walworth slipped around the table to close the last inch of crack in the door.

"Oh, dear, yes!" he exclaimed.

"--and none of us are being troubled through relations by marriage."

The door was shut, but the penetrating voice of Ann Wilde came through it clearly, and Walworth winced.

"Oh, dear, no!" he protested.

"I should say not," chimed in Freddy Pratt, with his self-satisfied little ba-a.

The cigars were ending. "Come, let us go out to the others," said Floyd.

In the drawing-room Ogden presently encountered Jessie Bradley and her parents. The girl herself appeared as dressed as the occasion could warrant, but her father and mother wore the every-day habiliments in which he had first seen them, a fortnight before, on the occasion of a call at Hinsdale. They had an easy-going aspect, as if they hardly cared to put themselves out greatly. They were present in the triple capacity of relatives of the hostess, of suburbanites, and of body-guard to escort their daughter back home after another of her frequent visits in town, and their effect was quite provisional and transitory.

Mrs. Bradley was a pleasant woman whose face was full of the fine lines of experience and whose hair had thinned greatly without changing its dry, sandy brown. She wore an old-fashioned tortoise-shell comb. She met Ogden here precisely as she had met him in her own house. He noticed presently that she treated everybody else in exactly the same fashion, and he learned subsequently that she had, practically, one invariable manner for all times, places, and people. It was a manner that he found very quiet, simple, straightforward, and friendly. It showed that she valued herself, and was also disposed to accord a good value to anybody else. It seemed to say, as plainly as words: "The Lord is the maker of us all; so let's have no more fuss about it." It was the good American manner in full bloom.

Her husband had a jovial eye, a grizzled moustache, a rotund, polished forehead, and cheeks that hung downward fatly into his big, round, short neck. He appeared to have valued his peace of mind sufficiently to preserve it and to be satisfied with the moderate success that comes from moderate effort. He wore a short-waisted, double-breasted frock coat, and there were no wrinkles in it, either front or back: he would have found it impossible to thrust his plump hand in between any two of the buttons.

He was given in the directory as "Bradley, Danl. H., secty. and treas. Darrell & Bradley P't'g & Lith'g Co." He had been one of the organizers of the corporation, but had since yielded the lead to others of more push and means. He had a moderate salary and a small block of the stock. Since he was assisting the business as an officer, rather than directing it as an individual, he had little personal annoyance from typographical unions and from the paper manufacturers' trusts. As for "pi" and proof-readers' errors, matters which have a power to make some men agonize, he merely laughed at them. The concern, besides its central establishment, had a few retail branches placed here and there through the business district; one of them, on the ground floor of the Clifton, supplied the La Salle Street banks and insurance offices with ledgers, ink, and blotting-pads.

He had an acre of ground and a two-story frame house at Hinsdale, and Ogden remembered the small green-house where he fed his craze for chrysanthemums.

"We have come to take our girl back home," he said to Ogden as he laid his plump hand lightly on his daughter's shoulder. "That is, if she can make up her mind to go with us."

"Just us two all alone in the house," added her mother, with a humorous pathos. "No chick nor child."

Jessie laughed and shook out a bit of her frivolous finery. Her face had a tired look, but motion seemed more restful to her than rest itself.

Ogden canvassed the three. Whence could this girl have got her supple leanness, her light, gay, rapid, incisive air, her aspen-like quiverings of nervous force? Not from her parents. From the March winds, perhaps, that sweep down from Mackinaw, over the limy and choppy expanse of Lake Michigan; from the varied breezes, hot and cold, that scour the prairies on their way from scorched-up Texas or from the snow-fields beyond Manitoba.

"Not even a relative," pursued her father; "not one in all the country round--except Frances. All our people are down East," he continued, addressing Ogden more directly. "They write every so often to learn if we are millionnaires yet. We always have to say 'no,' and that discourages them. They stay where they are."

"But Jessie goes around to look after them," contributed her mother, with combined complacency and reproach. "She goes to Pittsfield and Nantucket and everywhere. People are beginning, now, to ask her up to Wisconsin, summers. And sometimes Florida."

The girl shrugged her shoulders in a fidgety fashion.

"Oh, well, mamma," she said, "I have to circulate. Let's circulate some now," she suggested, turning to Ogden. "I'll be ready to go when you are," she called back to her father.

VII

"We ave been expecting to see you out at the house again," she said to the young man, as they settled on the stairs. They were seated just below the landing. Her dress, trimmed with silver braid and little groups of flaunting bows, grazed his knees; he could number every stone in the rings that crowded her long, thin fingers. "We didn't suppose a matter of eighteen miles would scare you."

"It doesn't. But you're never home."

"Oh, yes, I am--once in a while. When you do favor us again, get a time-table for the next time after. I never heard of the 'Q.' charging anything for them."

"I will."

"Awfully sudden about Mayme, wasn't it?" she said, with a suddenness of her own. "I didn't suppose it was going to end like that--at least, not right away. I dare say you have been noticing how Cousin Frances looks at me, every now and then. You might think _I_ was the one to blame. She's been talking to mother about it to-night--and me. I guess I'm going home all right enough."

"Don't you want to?"

"Oh, I don't mind. But what's the dif.--far as May me is concerned, I mean? She was bound to have him: she wouldn't have anybody else. It was their affair, wasn't it? Well, then, why not let them manage it?"

"I suppose so," assented George, dubiously.

"Her father won't see her, I hear. I'd like such a father. Her sister can't do anything with him."

"Her sister?"

"Yes; she's got about as much influence as anybody. Have you seen her?"

"Yes. Are _you_ very well acquainted with her?" he asked.

"Not very. She belongs to the next older generation."

"How much older? Two or three years?"

"Twenty or thirty. She's about the same age as her mother. But more useful. Mayme thinks everything of her. She's a good, steady, plodding stay-at-home. She ought to have been let out and given a show--she's buried there. He makes her do lots of work."

"Her father?"

"Yes. She writes and figures a good deal of the time. She keeps the grocer's and butcher's books, for one thing. Mayme says she knows how to telegraph--they've got their own wire right to the house. When she wants dissipation she goes to her 'Friendly.' And she belongs to a club over there where they read papers and discuss. She was a good deal upset."

"Urn," said Ogden, abstractedly. He recalled the girl's appearance and her little ordeal of having to face a complete stranger at so distressful a juncture. Yet she had borne herself with dignity and composure; nor was he able to deny that she had been as perfectly courteous as her brief appearance permitted. How that he understood, he had less cause for complaint against her brother, and none at all against her.

He dwelt lingeringly on the idea of "a complete stranger." He did not feel that it would have been infinitely more trying to face a curious neighbor. He had begun to idealize the ordeal and the victim of it.

"A penny for your thoughts," he presently heard his companion saying. He came out of his study and looked through the stair-rail at the little throng below. Two gentlemen had just come out of the dining-room.

"I was wondering who they were," he replied, at a venture.

"Who?"

"Those two."

The pair was followed by Walworth, whose pleasure it was to pour libations whenever the gathering of two or three together gave a pretext for that ceremony. One of the two sucked in his upper lip with due caution, and both united in a pretence--decent, but slight and futile--that the ladies knew nothing of these hospitable doings.

"The tall, brown one is Mr. Ingles. Haven't you met him here before?"

She indicated a man of forty, whose face was shaven except for a small pair of snuff-colored whiskers, and whose mouth made a firm, straight, thin line.

"Ingles? Arthur J.?"

"I don't know; I guess so. He owns the building--the Clifton."

"He's no dude," murmured Ogden to himself.

"Eh? Who said he was?"

"Oh, nobody. Who is the other?"

"That's Mr. Atwater--Mr. Ingles's architect. They're chums; were in college together. Isn't he the most fascinating-looking man you ever saw?"

"By Jove, he _is_ distinguished, for a fact! Was he born--here?"

"Don't you think it's lovely for a man of his age to have gray hair--gray that's almost white? I shall do all I can to make _my_ husband grayhaired before he is middle-aged!"

She laughed at her own audacity. He turned about and stared at her, and she laughed more heartily yet.

"And don't you like the twirl of his moustache? Or would you have preferred him with whiskers?--cut in a straight line right across his cheeks, with the corners near his mouth rounded off--but not too formally. And do you notice the bridge of his nose and the air it gives him? And his eyes--wait till he turns around; there, did you ever see such a hazel? He seems to have everything--youth, experience, style, family;--why did you ask if he was born here?" she demanded suddenly.

"Did I? I must have meant--is he going to die here?"

"Why not? You don't suppose that men of talent are going to leave Chicago after this?"

"Do you expect to provide them with careers?"

"I don't see why we shouldn't. We're on the crest of the wave, and we're going higher yet. From now on anybody who leaves us is likely to be sorry for it."

Ogden looked back at Ingles; he stood in a doorway, between Fairchild and Jessie's father.

"Is his wife here?"

"Oh, he isn't married, I don't believe."

"Hot married?--Ingles, I mean."

"Oh! Yes, he's married."

"Is his wife here?"

"Dear, no; you have to speak weeks ahead to get her."

"He's the one, then," Ogden assured himself.

"Which one?"

"Her husband. Do you know her?"

"I've met her here." She leaned over the railing. "What are they all laughing about, down there?"

"Do you want to go and see?"

Mrs. Floyd and her sister had appeared in the doorway. Between them was a little girl of five; she had one hand in her mother's, and with the other she clutched a dilapidated doll. The child wore a guimpe and a prim little frock with puffed sleeves; she had long, smooth brown hair that turned thickly at her shoulders, and a pair of big, round, wondering brown eyes.

"It's Claudia," said Jessie Bradley. "Yes, let's go down."

Atwater had placed himself before the child, half crouching, half kneeling. He had the persuasive and ingratiating manner proper to a fashionable architect whose clients were largely women and wealthy ones, and he seemed willing enough to bring his batteries to bear on the tiny woman before him.

"Isn't it pretty late for dolly? Oughtn't she to be put to bed in her own little house?"

The child looked at him soberly. "She hasn't got any house."

"Hasn't got any house?" He glanced at her father. "'Oh, it is pitiful--in a whole cityful.' But if I were to say that I would make you one?" he went on; "one with four rooms. And windows in each room."

The child pondered, fixing a bashful look on his handsome face.

"Would there be stairs?"

"Yes."

"And closets? Mamma says we never have enough closet-room."

"That's right, Claudia," said Ingles, commendingly; "score the profession."

"Yes, closets, if you insist."

"And glass in the windows?"

"Yes. Dear me, they get more exacting with us every year!"

"And--and--" she rolled her eyes around the group, as if wondering whether any important detail had been overlooked--"gas-fixtures? Would there be one in every room, with four globes on it?"

"Perhaps."

"But don't charge the poor child a full commission on them," said Ingles, grimly.

"Ah!" murmured Atwater, with a world of meaning. "And if I were to promise to put a nice little red chimney on the roof--what would you say?"

The child clasped her doll firmly and looked down at the carpet. "I shouldn't know whether to belave you," she said, shyly.

There was a burst of laughter. "You dear little tot!" cried Mrs. Fairchild, gathering her up, on no very definite grounds, for a kiss. Her father laughed loudest of all, but her mother contracted her eyebrows in distress.

"That dreadful Horah!" whimpered the poor woman. "She must go."

"Don't dismiss your _bonne_," laughed Atwater, thankful for the diversion; "she'll produce a beautiful accent in time."

"Well, after that," said her father, "I think our little McGintums had better retire. Say good-night, Claudia."

"Not yet," said Ingles. "Not before she has learned that she may have her doubts about a contractor, perhaps, but about an architect--never. Remember that great truth. Good-night, my child. Won't you kiss me?"

He lowered his face, but Claudia drew back. "I don't like whishky," she said, solemnly.

"For Heaven's sake, my pet," cried Floyd, "are you trying to start a panic? There's Horah; go-go."

"Good-night, Claudia," called Atwater; "we won't forget your house. Upon my word, Ingles," he went on rapidly, and with a face still slightly flushed, "I believe I shall have to reconsider that determination of mine I spoke to you about the other day."

"What's that?" asked Walworth.

"To give up sky-scrapers and to do nothing but colonial houses for the nobility and gentry. Sky-scraping is bad enough, but the demands of the modern house-builder are worse. Ingles, you're not as evil as I said you were; I'm sorry I ever called you a Philistine."

"Why did you do that?" asked Fairchild, amused.

"Because," answered Ingles, "I took two weeks to consider whether I could afford to let the Clifton have four good street-fronts."

"Didn't you say," demanded Atwater, "that you wanted to put up an architectural monument that would be a credit to the town? Would an eighteen-story flank of bare brick have been a pleasant object? Or, rather, is it?--for you see that sort of business all over the city. Heavens!" he went on, "we're doing some horrible things here, but we are not the ones who are altogether to blame."

"Who says you haven't done well with the Clifton?" demanded Ann Wilde. Host of the ladies had retired from these masculine topics, and were huddled in a gossipy little group at the foot of the stairs; Ann had remained behind, as an owner of real property. "That system of elevators is the most magnificent thing I ever saw."

Atwater groaned. "That's all a building is nowadays--one mass of pipes, pulleys, wires, tubes, shafts, chutes, and what not, running through an iron cage of from fourteen, to twenty stages. Then the artist comes along and is asked to apply the architecture by festooning on a lot of tile, brick, and terra-cotta. And over the whole thing hovers incessantly the demon of Nine-per-cent."

"A slap at me," said Ingles.

"It's enough to make you wonder whether Pericles ever lived. I doubt if he did," concluded Atwater.

"Are you the only sufferer?" asked his client. "How many of our sub-contractors failed?"

"Two."

"How many times were we set on fire by salamanders?"

"Three."

"How many drunken night-watchmen were discharged?"

"Four or five."

"How much of the tin-work did you condemn?"

"Lots."

"How many of the contractors suffered a penalty for over-time?"

"Too many."

"How many times did carpenters wreck plaster-work?"

"Fifty."

"How many times did plasterers ruin woodwork?"

"A hundred."

"How many men were killed or injured?"

"Thirteen."

"Thirteen!" cried Ann Wilde; "how horrible!" "Then you don't encourage building," commented Bradley; "and Mr. Atwater wouldn't encourage young men to go into architecture."

"As engineers, not as architects," replied Atwater. "Or shall I say--as constructionists?"

"Good word," murmured Ingles.

"Thanks. I've got fifteen draughtsmen up under the roof of the Clifton. When a new one comes, I say, 'My dear boy, go in for mining or dredging, or build bridges, or put up railway sheds, if you must; but don't go on believing that architecture nowadays has any great place for the artist. There won't be another Fair until long after you are dead and gone.'"

"I think I've had one of your young men with me lately," Bradley said. "He told us that he had been designing labels out at the Stock Yards, but had been in your office before that. Art may cover a wide range, you see," he said, laughing.

"Yes? What is his name?"

"Brainard, I think. He was a dark young fellow. He looked a little dissipated, it seemed to me."