The Dark Star

“He told Doc he just come, but Cap found out he’d been here a week. All I hope is he didn’t see you with the Brookhollow party–”

“Do you think he did?”

“Listen, Eddie. Max is a smooth guy–”

“Find out what he knows! Do you hear?”

“Who? Me? Me try to make Maxy Venem talk? That snake? If he isn’t on to you now, that would be enough to put him wise. Act like you had sense, Eddie. Call that other matter off and slide for town–”

“I can’t, Ben.”

“You got to!”

“I can’t, I tell you.”

“You’re nutty in the head! Don’t you suppose that Max is wise to what I’ve been doing here? And don’t you suppose he knows damn well that you’re back of whatever I do? If you ain’t crazy you’ll call that party off for a while.”

Brandes’ even voice over the telephone sounded a trifle unnatural, almost hoarse:

“I can’t call it off. It’s done.”

“What’s done?”

“What I told you I was going to do.”

“That!”

“The Parson married us.”

“Oh!”

“Wait! Parson Smawley married us, in church, assisted by the local dominie. I didn’t count on the dominie. It was her father’s idea. He butted in.”

“Then is it – is it–?”

“That’s what I’m not sure about. You see, the Parson did it, but the dominie stuck around. Whether he got a half nelson on me I don’t know till I ask. Anyway, I expected to clinch things – later – so it doesn’t really matter, unless Max Venem means bad. Does he, do you think?”

“He always does, Eddie.”

“Yes, I know. Well, then, I’ll wait for a cable from you. And if I’ve got to take three months off in Paris, why I’ve got to – that’s all.”

“Good God! What about Stein? What about the theaytre?”

“You’ll handle it for the first three months… Say, I’ve got to go, now. I think she’s waiting–”

“Who?”

“My – wife.”

“Oh!”

“Yes. The chauffeur took her back to the house in the car to put something in her suitcase that she forgot. I’m waiting for her here at the Gayfield House. We’re on our way to town. Going to motor in. Our trunks have gone by rail.”

After a silence, Stull’s voice sounded again, tense, constrained:

“You better go aboard tonight.”

“That’s right, too.”

“What’s your ship?”

“Lusitania.”

“What’ll I tell Stein?”

“Tell him I’ll be back in a month. You look out for my end. I’ll be back in time.”

“Will you cable me?”

“Sure. And if you get any later information about Max today, call me at the Knickerbocker. We’ll dine there and then go aboard.”

“I get you… Say, Eddie, I’m that worried! If this break of yours don’t kill our luck–”

“Don’t you believe it! I’m going to fight for what I got till someone hands me the count. She’s the first thing I ever wanted. I’ve got her and I guess I can keep her… And listen: there’s nothing like her in all God’s world!”

“When did you do – it?” demanded Stull, coldly.

“This morning at eleven. I just stepped over here to the garage. I’m talking to you from the bar. She’s back by this time and waiting, I guess. So take care of yourself till I see you.”

“Same to you, Eddie. And be leery of Max. He’s bad. When they disbar a man like that he’s twice as dangerous as he was. His ex-partner, Abe Grittlefeld, is a certain party’s attorney of record. Ask yourself what you’d be up against if that pair of wolves get started after you! You know what Max would do to you if he could. And Minna, too!”

“Don’t worry.”

“I am worrying! And you ought to. You know what you done to Max. Don’t think he ever forgets. He’ll do you if he can, same as Minna will.”

Brandes’ stolid face lost a little of its sanguine colour, where he stood in the telephone box behind the bar of the Gayfield House.

Yes, he knew well enough what he had once done to the disbarred lawyer out in Athabasca when he was handling the Unknown and Venem, the disbarred, was busy looking out for the Athabasca Blacksmith, furnishing the corrupt brains for the firm of Venem and Grittlefeld, and paying steady court to the prettiest girl in Athabasca, Ilse Dumont.

And Brandes’ Unknown had almost killed Max Venem’s blacksmith; Brandes had taken all Venem’s money, and then his girl; more than that, he had “made” this girl, in the theatrical sense of the word; and he had gambled on her beauty and her voice and had won out with both.

Then, while still banking her salary to reimburse himself for his trouble with her, he had tired of her sufficiently to prove unfaithful to his marriage vows at every opportunity. And opportunities were many. Venem had never forgiven him; Ilse Dumont could not understand treachery; and Venem’s detectives furnished her with food for thought that presently infuriated her.

And now she was employing Max Venem, once senior partner in the firm of Venem and Grittlefeld, to guide her with his legal advice. She wanted Brandes’ ruin, if that could be accomplished; she wanted her freedom anyway.

Until he had met Rue Carew he had taken measures to fight the statutory charges, hoping to involve Venem and escape alimony. Then he met Ruhannah, and became willing to pay for his freedom. And he was still swamped in the vile bog of charges and countercharges, not yet free from it, not yet on solid ground, when the eternal gambler in him suggested to him that he take the chance of marrying this young girl before he was legally free to do so.

Why on earth did he want to take such a chance? He had only a few months to wait. He had never before really cared for any woman. He loved her – as he understood love – as much as he was capable of loving. If in all the world there was anything sacred to him, it was his sentiment regarding Rue Carew. Yet, he was tempted to take the chance. Even she could not escape his ruling passion; at the last analysis, even she represented to him a gambler’s chance. But in Brandes there was another streak. He wanted to take the chance that he could marry her before he had a right to, and get away with it. But his nerve failed. And, at the last moment, he had hedged, engaging Parson Smawley to play the lead instead of an ordained clergyman.

All these things he now thought of as he stood undecided, worried, in the telephone booth behind the bar at the Gayfield House. Twice Stull had spoken, and had been bidden to wait and to hold the wire.

Finally, shaking off the premonition of coming trouble, Brandes called again:

“Ben?”

“Yes, I’m listening.”

“I’ll stay in Paris if there’s trouble.”

“And throw Stein down?”

“What else is there to do?”

“Well, you can wait, can’t you? You don’t seem to be able to do that any more, but you better learn.”

“All right. What next?”

“Make a quick getaway. Now!”

“Yes, I’m going at once. Keep me posted, Ben. Be good!”

He hung up and went out to the wide, tree-shaded street where Ruhannah sat in the runabout awaiting him, and the new chauffeur stood by the car.

He took off his straw hat, pulled a cap and goggles from his pocket. His man placed the straw hat in the boot.

“Get what you wanted, Rue?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Been waiting long?”

“I – don’t think so.”

“All right,” he said cheerily, climbing in beside her. “I’m sorry I kept you waiting. Had a business matter to settle. Hungry?”

Rue, very still and colourless, said no, with a mechanical smile. The chauffeur climbed to the rumble.

“I’ll jam her through,” nodded Brandes as the car moved swiftly westward. “We’ll lunch in Albany on time.”

Half a mile, and they passed Neeland’s Mills, where old Dick Neeland stood in his boat out on the pond and cast a glittering lure for pickerel.

She caught a glimpse of him – his sturdy frame, white hair, and ruddy visage – and a swift, almost wistful memory of young Jim Neeland passed through her mind.

But it was a very confused mind – only the bewildered mind of a very young girl – and the memory of the boy flashed into its confusion and out again as rapidly as the landscape sped away behind the flying car.

Dully she was aware that she was leaving familiar and beloved things, but could not seem to realise it – childhood, girlhood, father and mother, Brookhollow, the mill, Gayfield, her friends, all were vanishing in the flying dust behind her, dwindling, dissolving into an infinitely growing distance.

They took the gradual slope of a mile-long hill as swallows take the air; houses, barns, woods, orchards, grain fields, flew by on either side; other cars approaching passed them like cannon balls; the sunlit, undulating world flowed glittering away behind; only the stainless blue ahead confronted them immovably – a vast, magnificent goal, vague with the mystery of promise.

“On this trip,” said Brandes, “we may only have time to see the Loove and the palaces and all like that. Next year we’ll fix it so we can stay in Paris and you can study art.”

Ruhannah’s lips formed the words, “Thank you.”

“Can’t you learn to call me Eddie?” he urged.

The girl was silent.

“You’re everything in the world to me, Rue.”

The same little mechanical smile fixed itself on her lips, and she looked straight ahead of her.

“Haven’t you begun to love me just a little bit, Rue?”

“I like you. You are very kind to us.”

“Don’t your affection seem to grow a little stronger now?” he urged.

“You are so kind to us,” she repeated gratefully; “I like you for it.”

The utterly unawakened youth of her had always alternately fascinated and troubled him. Gambler that he was, he had once understood that patience is a gambler’s only stock in trade. But now for the first time in his career he found himself without it.

“You said,” he insisted, “that you’d love me when we were married.”

She turned her child’s eyes on him in faint surprise:

“A wife loves her husband always, doesn’t she?”

“Do you?”

“I suppose I shall… I haven’t been married very long – long enough to feel as though I am really married. When I begin to realise it I shall understand, of course, that I love you.”

It was the calm and immature reply of a little girl playing house. He knew it. He looked at her pure, perplexed profile of a child and knew that what he had said was futile – understood that it was meaningless to her, that it was only confusing a mind already dazed – a mind of which too much had been expected, too much demanded.

He leaned over and kissed the cold, almost colourless cheek; her little mechanical smile came back. Then they remembered the chauffeur behind them and Brandes reddened. He was unaccustomed to a man on the rumble.

“Could I talk to mother on the telephone when we get to New York?” she asked presently, still painfully flushed.

“Yes, darling, of course.”

“I just want to hear her voice,” murmured Rue.

“Certainly. We can send her a wireless, too, when we’re at sea.”

That interested her. She enquired curiously in regard to wireless telegraphy and other matters concerning ocean steamers.

In Albany her first wave of loneliness came over her in the stuffy dining-room of the big, pretentious hotel, when she found herself seated at a small table alone with this man whom she seemed, somehow or other, to have married.

As she did not appear inclined to eat, Brandes began to search the card for something to tempt her. And, glancing up presently, saw tears glimmering in her eyes.

For a moment he remained dumb as though stunned by some sudden and terrible accusation – for a moment only. Then, in an unsteady voice:

“Rue, darling. You must not feel lonely and frightened. I’ll do anything in the world for you. Don’t you know it?”

She nodded.

“I tell you,” he said in that even, concentrated voice of his which scarcely moved his narrow lips, “I’m just crazy about you. You’re my own little wife. You’re all I care about. If I can’t make you happy somebody ought to shoot me.”

She tried to smile; her full lips trembled; a single tear, brimming, fell on the cloth.

“I – don’t mean to be silly… But – Brookhollow seems – ended – forever…”

“It’s only forty miles,” he said with heavy joviality. “Shall we turn around and go back?”

She glanced up at him with an odd expression, as though she hoped he meant it; then her little mechanical smile returned, and she dried her eyes naïvely.

“I don’t know why I cannot seem to get used to being married,” she said. “I never thought that getting married would make me so – so – lonely.”

“Let’s talk about art,” he suggested. “You’re crazy about art and you’re going to Paris. Isn’t that fine.”

“Oh, yes–”

“Sure, it’s fine. That’s where art grows. Artville is Paris’ other name. It’s all there, Rue – the Loove, the palaces, the Latin Quarter, the statues, the churches, and all like that.”

“What is the Louvre like?” she asked, tremulously, determined to be brave.

As he had seen the Louvre only from the outside, his imaginary description was cautious, general, and brief.

After a silence, Rue asked whether he thought that their suitcases were quite safe.

“Certainly,” he smiled. “I checked them.”

“And you’re sure they are safe?”

“Of course, darling. What worries you?”

And, as she hesitated, he remembered that she had forgotten to put something into her suitcase and that the chauffeur had driven her back to the house to get it while he himself went into the Gayfield House to telephone Stull.

“What was it you went back for, Rue?” he asked.

“One thing I went back for was my money.”

“Money? What money?”

“Money my grandmother left me. I was to have it when I married – six thousand dollars.”

“You mean you have it in your suitcase?” he asked, astonished.

“Yes, half of it.”

“A cheque?”

“No, in hundreds.”

“Bills?”

“Yes. I gave father three thousand. I kept three thousand.”

“In bills,” he repeated, laughing. “Is your suitcase locked?”

“Yes. I insisted on having my money in cash. So Mr. Wexall, of the Mohawk Bank, sent a messenger with it last evening.”

“But,” he asked, still immensely amused, “why do you want to travel about with three thousand dollars in bills in your suitcase?”

She flushed a little, tried to smile:

“I don’t know why. I never before had any money. It is – pleasant to know I have it.”

“But I’ll give you all you want, Rue.”

“Thank you… I have my own, you see.”

“Of course. Put it away in some bank. When you want pin money, ask me.”

She shook her head with a troubled smile.

“I couldn’t ask anybody for money,” she explained.

“Then you don’t have to. We’ll fix your allowance.”

“Thank you, but I have my money, and I don’t need it.”

This seemed to amuse him tremendously; and even Rue laughed a little.

“You are going to take your money to Paris?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“To buy things?”

“Oh, no. Just to have it with me.”

His rather agreeable laughter sounded again.

“So that was what you forgot to put in your suitcase,” he said. “No wonder you went back for it.”

“There was something else very important, too.”

“What, darling?”

“My drawings,” she explained innocently.

“Your drawings! Do you mean you’ve got them, too?”

“Yes. I want to take them to Paris and compare them with the pictures I shall see there. It ought to teach me a great deal. Don’t you think so?”

“Are you crazy to study?” he asked, touched to the quick by her utter ignorance.

“It’s all I dream about. If I could work that way and support myself and my father and mother–”

“But, Rue! Wake up! We’re married, little girl. You don’t have to work to support anybody!”

“I – forgot,” said the girl vaguely, her confused grey eyes resting on his laughing, greenish ones.

Still laughing, he summoned the waiter, paid the reckoning; Ruhannah rose as he did; they went slowly out together.

On the sidewalk beside their car stood the new chauffeur, smoking a cigarette which he threw away without haste when he caught sight of them. However, he touched the peak of his cap civilly, with his forefinger.

Brandes, lighting a cigar, let his slow eyes rest on the new man for a moment. Then he helped Rue into the tonneau, got in after her, and thoughtfully took the wheel, conscious that there was something or other about his new chauffeur that he did not find entirely to his liking.

CHAPTER X

DRIVING HEAD-ON

It was mid-afternoon when they began to pass through that series of suburbs which the city has flung like a single tentacle northward for a hundred miles along the eastern banks of the Hudson.

A smooth road of bluestone with a surface like velvet, rarely broken by badly paved or badly worn sections, ran straight south. Past mansions standing amid spacious lawns all ablaze with late summer and early autumn flowers they sped; past parks, long stretches of walls, high fences of wrought iron through which brief glimpses of woodlands and splendid gardens caught Rue’s eye. And, every now and then, slowing down to traverse some village square and emerging from the further limits, the great river flashed into view, sometimes glassy still under high headlands or along towering parapets of mountains, sometimes ruffled and silvery where it widened into bay or inland sea, with a glimmer of distant villages on the further shore.

Over the western bank a blinding sun hung in a sky without a cloud – a sky of undiluted azure; but farther south, and as the sun declined, traces of vapours from the huge but still distant city stained the heavens. Gradually the increasing haze changed from palest lavender and lemon-gold to violet and rose with smouldering undertones of fire. Beneath it the river caught the stains in deeper tones, flowing in sombre washes of flame or spreading wide under pastel tints of turquoise set with purple.

Now, as the sun hung lower, the smoke of every river boat, every locomotive speeding along the shores below, lay almost motionless above the water, tinged with the delicate enchantment of declining day.

And into this magic veil Rue was passing already through the calm of a late August afternoon, through tree-embowered villages and towns, the names of which she did not know – swiftly, inexorably passing into the iris-grey obscurity where already the silvery points of arc-lights stretched away into intricate geometrical designs – faint traceries as yet sparkling with subdued lustre under the sunset heavens.

Vast shadowy shapes towered up ahead – outlying public buildings, private institutions, industrial plants, bridges of iron and steel, the ponderous bowed spans of which crossed wildernesses of railroad tracks or craft-crowded waters.

Two enormous arched viaducts of granite stretched away through sparkling semi-obscurity – High Bridge and Washington Bridge. Then it became an increasing confusion of phantom masses against a fading sky – bridges, towers, skyscrapers, viaducts, boulevards, a wilderness of streets outlined by the growing brilliancy of electric lamps.

Brandes, deftly steering through the swarming maze of twilight avenues, turned east across the island, then swung south along the curved parapets and spreading gardens of Riverside Drive.

Perhaps Brandes was tired; he had become uncommunicative, inclined to silence. He did point out to her the squat, truncated mass where the great General slept; called her attention to the river below, where three grey battleships lay. A bugle call from the decks came faintly to her ears.

If Rue was tired she did not know it as the car swept her steadily deeper amid the city’s wonders.

On her left, beyond the trees, the great dwellings and apartments of the Drive were already glimmering with light in every window; to the right, under the foliage of this endless necklace of parks and circles, a summer-clad throng strolled and idled along the river wall; and past them moved an unbroken column of automobiles, taxicabs, and omnibuses.

At Seventy-second Street they turned to the east across the park, then into Fifth Avenue south once more. She saw the name of the celebrated avenue on the street corner, turned to glance excitedly at Brandes; but his preoccupied face was expressionless, almost forbidding, so she turned again in quest of other delightful discoveries. But there was nothing to identify for her the houses, churches, hotels, shops, on this endless and bewildering avenue of grey stone; as they swung west into Forty-second Street, she caught sight of the great marble mass of the Library, but had no idea what it was.

Into this dusky cañon, aflame with light, they rolled, where street lamps, the lamps of vehicles, and electric signs dazzled her unaccustomed eyes so that she saw nothing except a fiery vista filled with the rush and roar of traffic.

When they stopped, the chauffeur dropped from the rumble and came around to where a tall head porter in blue and silver uniform was opening the tonneau door.

Brandes said to his chauffeur:

“Here are the checks. Our trunks are at the Grand Central. Get them aboard, then come back here for us at ten o’clock.”

The chauffeur lifted his hand to his cap, and looked stealthily between his fingers at Brandes.

“Ten o’clock,” he repeated; “very good, sir.”

Rue instinctively sought Brandes’ arm as they entered the crowded lobby, then remembered, blushed, and withdrew her hand.

Brandes had started toward the desk with the intention of registering and securing a room for the few hours before going aboard the steamer; but something halted him – some instinct of caution. No, he would not register. He sent their luggage to the parcels room, found a maid who took Rue away, then went on through into the bar, where he took a stiff whisky and soda, a thing he seldom did.

In the toilet he washed and had himself brushed. Then, emerging, he took another drink en passant, conscious of an odd, dull sense of apprehension for which he could not account.

At the desk they told him there was no telephone message for him. He sauntered over to the news stand, stared at the display of periodicals, but had not sufficient interest to buy even an evening paper.

So he idled about the marble-columned lobby, now crowded with a typical early-autumn throng in quest of dinner and the various nocturnal amusements which the city offers at all times to the frequenters of its thousand temples.

Rue came out of the ladies’ dressing room, and he went to her and guided her into the dining-room on the left, where an orchestra was playing. In her blue, provincial travelling gown the slender girl looked oddly out of place amid lace and jewels and the delicate tints of frail evening gowns, but her cheeks were bright with colour and her grey eyes brilliant, and the lights touched her thick chestnut hair with a ruddy glory, so that more than one man turned to watch her pass, and the idly contemptuous indifference of more than one woman ended at her neck and chin.

What Rue ate she never afterward remembered. It was all merely a succession of delicious sensations for the palate, for the eye, for the ear when the excellent orchestra was playing some gay overture from one of the newer musical comedies or comic operas.

Brandes at times seemed to shake off a growing depression and rouse himself to talk to her, even jest with her. He smoked cigarettes occasionally during dinner, a thing he seldom did, and, when coffee was served, he lighted one of his large cigars.

Rue, excited under an almost childishly timid manner, leaned on the table with both elbows and linked fingers, listening, watching everything with an almost breathless intelligence which strove to comprehend.

People left; others arrived; the music continued. Several times people passing caught Brandes’ eye, and bowed and smiled. He either acknowledged such salutes with a slight and almost surly nod, or ignored them altogether.

One of his short, heavy arms lay carelessly along the back of his chair, where he was sitting sideways looking at the people in the lobby – watching with that same odd sensation of foreboding of which he had been conscious from the first moment he had entered the city line.

What reason for apprehension he had he could not understand. Only an hour lay between him and the seclusion of the big liner; a few hours and he and this girl beside him would be at sea.

Once he excused himself, went out to the desk, and made an inquiry. But there was no telephone or telegraph message for him; and he came back chewing his cigar.