VIII.
As the sun rose after his night of tramping and troubled reminiscence, Edgar Braine resolutely put the past out of his mind, and turned to the future.
"The old Edgar is dead," he said; "let us see what we can do for the new Edgar."
But before attacking that problem, he cleared his head by going out to the little shed that served him for a bath house, filling his home-made shower-bath with fresh water and drenching himself in the chill air of the June morning. When dressed, all the weariness of watching was gone, his pulse was full and his mind clear.
He called across the street and bade the negro caterer bring him a cup of coffee, and not until it came did he permit himself to think of anything more important than the beauty of the morning, and a pet scheme he had of persuading the aldermen of Thebes to offer citizens some sort of inducement to plant more permanent trees among the quick growing and quick decaying cotton-woods of the streets.
When the coffee came, he dismissed all these things, and set himself to work out some problems.
"Hildreth thinks he has made himself my master," he thought, "and Duncan and the Boston crowd are sure of it. They intend to make me serviceable to them, and kindly mean to toss a financial bone or two to me now and then. Thank you very much, gentlemen, but the relation you propose doesn't suit me. I prefer to occupy the place of master myself. It suits my peculiar temperament better."
Saying this in imagination, he began to think earnestly of means.
His first task was to discover as accurately as possible what the plans of the speculative combination were,—to spy out the camp which he meant to conquer.
The levee, which the Common Council was about to cede to the Central Railroad, covered the whole water-front of Thebes available for steamboat-landings, wharfs, grain-elevators, warehouses, and the like. To Thebes, the loss of the ground-rents and wharf-charges would be a great sacrifice, but the value of the privilege in that way was clearly not enough to account for the eagerness of the railroad people to secure it. They had other things in mind-indeed, there had been a reference to other things in Duncan's letter. It was Edgar Braine's first care to find out what those other things were.
He reflected that another railroad—the Northern—was in process of extension to Thebes. Upon consideration, he saw that the grant of the levee to the Central would effectually cut off the Northern from a terminus on the river. "That," he said to himself, "will enormously depress Northern stock, as soon as the effects of the cession are understood. Then, this crowd will buy it up for a song, consolidate with the Central and make a Union Depot at the Point. Yes—I see. That's the first part of the game. Then there's the Southern connection. They mean to build the twenty-five miles of road between here and Columbia on the other side of the river, and probably lease the whole system from that point, south. That will give them complete control of a vast system all centring here in Thebes. They'll establish a railroad ferry across the river, of course. Oh, by Jove!" he cried, starting up in excitement, "There are two sides to this river!"
With that he hastily finished his toilet by putting on a paper collar, thinking, as he did so: "I must take to linen, I suppose, now that I am to be a great financier."
After he was dressed, he hastily wrote a note to Helen, which began with the greeting he sent her every morning, and continued with a few loving words as to their approaching marriage.
"I have leased the little cottage, with the bed of sweet-williams in front, dear—by the way, I expect you to call them sweet Edgars in your splendid loyalty—with an option of buying it at the end of two years. It will be good property to own, but you shall not live there long, dear. I have grown ambitious since you consented to be my partner. I shall make money and reputation, and surround you with every luxury—for which you do not in the least care. I shall place you where your superior intellectual and social gifts will have play. You don't care for that either? Ah! but you will, when you find how greatly your social supremacy will aid me in my more masculine ambitions. When you are my wife, I shall be not twice, but ten times the man I am now. But first, I must teach you to appreciate yourself, dear, and convince you that I am not the infatuated lover you think me, when I tell you how superior you are to other women. Abner Hildreth told me yesterday that I have a remarkable head for business; well, the best justification my vanity has for accepting his opinion, is that I have had the shrewdness to recognize your worth, and to secure you for my partner. That's a joke not to my taste, Helen dear, but I haven't time to write this sheet over. You know I marry you simply because I love you, and that I would not profane my thought of you by associating you, even in my mind, with the things of this world. But I do want to see you shine. I want everybody to know your superiority as well as I do. I am ambitious for you, because I love you and wish to exalt you."
A little later, Edgar Braine, with a gun and game-bag, crossed the river in a skiff. It was his custom to shoot a little in the woods beyond the great stream twice or thrice a week, for exercise and for love of the woodland odors that brought back memories of his boyhood. But he was not thinking of exercise or odors this morning, or of the squirrels with which his sport usually filled his bag. When he landed, he walked immediately to the cabin occupied by Waverley Cooke. There he was greeted by Waverley, a tall and once very fine-looking man, whose broad brow was now marked with blotches which had run over as it were, from his brandy-pimpled nose.
Waverley Cooke was a Virginian, whose dignified courtesy of manner had been inherited from ancestors of the old stately school. In his youth he had been promising far beyond the common; in his young manhood he had quickly won distinction as an advocate whose eloquence was singularly persuasive. All doors to success had seemed open to him once; now, all were forever closed. Drink had mastered him before he reached his thirtieth year, and now at fifty, he was old, broken, and hopeless. His patrimony had been wasted, and he had come some years before to live upon the wild waste lands he owned opposite Thebes.
It had been his hope to develop this property, to build up a city there, which should share with Thebes the prosperity that had always been predicted for that town, and was now at last approaching.
But fortune had tarried too long for Waverly Cooke. Hope deferred had made his heart sick, and sorrow and solitude and drink had made wreck of his once buoyant nature. He had no longer any capacity to hope, and all the plans he had cherished lay dead now in his enfeebled hands.
Among these plans had been one to make the river his toll-gate whenever commerce should begin to cross it. In anticipation of that time he had secured in perpetuity the ferry franchise from his own miles of desolate river front to the shore where Thebes had then stood, a half-drowned hamlet waiting to become a city.
In the conviction that some day railroads from the north would meet railroads from the south at this place, he had seized upon this strategic point; this ferry franchise should make him rich, while the building of a town upon his land—it must be there, because there alone was a landing possible for many miles—should make his wealth princely.
But Waverley Cooke had not been able to wait, and all that remained of his project was the plying of his skiff—sometimes rowed by his own hands, and sometimes by a negro man, once his slave, who had remained his faithful attendant in his decay,—to carry infrequent passengers across the stream for hire.
It was to purchase this ferry franchise that Edgar Braine had crossed the river that morning. When the matter was mentioned to Cooke, a sad, dreamy look came into the poor fellow's face, and for a time he said nothing. He poured and drank some undiluted spirit—courteously motioning an invitation to his guest, for he could not speak—and then passed into the rear room of his house.
After a few moments he returned, erect, and with a touch of his old stateliness in his manner, and said:—
"Pardon me, Braine, but it is not a pleasant thing for a man to contemplate a wrecked life, when that life is his own. I quite understand the value this franchise will have some day, and until this hour I have hoped myself to reap the advantage of its possession. It was weak and foolish to cherish such a delusion, but until now I have never frankly admitted to myself the completeness of the ruin I have wrought. I know now that if there were a dozen railroads seeking ferry accommodations here, I could not arrange to provide them. I should have to go to Thebes to negotiate for the means, and I should get helplessly drunk there and part with everything to the first man that found out I had anything. I would rather sell to you, an honest man, and better still, a brave one. I have loved you with a knightly admiration, boy, ever since that affair with Summers. We Virginians cherish our inherited respect for personal courage, Braine. We hold it the chief virtue of manhood. This money-grubbing age laughs at our chivalric folly and mocks it; but our chivalric folly scorns this money-grubbing age, and so we are quits with it."
After a little further conversation, the wrecked Virginian took another drink, and said:
"Why not face the facts? That is my master"—pointing to the bottle. "I drink whiskey before breakfast; I get up in the night to drink it. I cannot go on in that way much longer, and I should go off at once if I quitted it. It's a sorry thing to joke about, isn't it? No matter. What I have in mind is this: I'm a wreck. I shall never do any good to myself or anybody else. My wife is buried out there in the swamp that poisoned her with its miasms. My children lie by her side. There remains for me only a brief period of wretchedness, and then death and oblivion. Why should I stay here in this pestilential wilderness? Why not sell out the whole thing to you,—land—there's seven thousand acres of it—all worthless at present—ferry franchise, railroad charter, and all? You are young and vigorous. You will make something of it. You will realize my dreams, and I have a sentimental pleasure in thinking of that. Sentiment is out of fashion, I know, but never mind. I'm out of fashion too."
"But I haven't money enough for so large a transaction, Mr. Cooke," said Braine.
"Money? It won't take much. If you were to pay me a thousand dollars now, or five thousand, do you know what I would do? I would go over to Thebes, get drunk and die probably. What would be the use of giving me money in large sums? I can't be helped in that way. But I'll tell you how you can buy me out, and at the same time do the best thing there is to be done for me. The home of my fathers in Virginia is vacant—abandoned as worthless since the war. The man who owns it will let me have the use of it, he says, for a song, and the offer has brought a great longing over me. I want to go home again."
Here the poor fellow broke down completely, tears streaming from his eyes and his utterance choking. Braine turned and walked apart in respectful sympathy. After a time he returned, and Cooke, having recovered himself, resumed:
"I want to take my wife and children out of the swamp and bury them in the little graveyard back of the garden at home, where the sweet-briar roses grow. I want to sit there by them every day till I die, trying to tell them how I repent me of my sin that ruined their lives. Who knows? Perhaps the wife's spirit might smile upon me then, as she smiled when she believed in me. Perhaps the little ones might remember in their graves the stories I used to tell them, and learn to love me again. I want to live in the old home till I die, and I want nothing else in the world. Edgar Braine, you can make that possible. Do it, and all these accursed possessions of mine, which will be golden possibilities to you, are yours!"
Braine was too deeply moved to speak for a time. Broken down drunkard that this man was, he had a certain nobility of character yet—it was all that remained to him of his inheritance from his fathers. It was a reviving glow of the old inherited courage and love of truth that prompted him thus to face his own condition, and assume the responsibility of his folly without an attempt to excuse or palliate the wrong he had done.
"What do you want, Mr. Cooke?" at last Braine asked.
"I want to go back to the old home to die. I want you to pay my passage and theirs"—motioning toward the graves—"and to pay me enough every month after I get there to provide me with food and clothes—and this," seizing the bottle and hurling it into the corner angrily. "You are not to send the money to me, mind. That would end all at once. You are to send it to some one I will name. A hundred dollars every month will be ample, and it won't be for long, as your debt is to cease with my death. Will you do this? Oh! will you do this, Braine? Will you have pity on me, and give me one breath of the old air, one look at the old hills, one little rest under the old trees, before I die?"
In the great longing that had taken possession of his imagination, the broken man was in panic lest his proposal should be refused.
"The land will be valuable some day, Braine, and so will the ferry franchise. It is absolute and exclusive, and the railroad commerce of this region must cross the river here. Then there is the railroad franchise."
"What is that?" asked Braine. "You mentioned it before, but I do not understand."
"Why, I have a special charter, granted years ago, for a railroad from here to Columbia—and on to the State line, for that matter, but as there is already a line from Columbia south, it is this twenty-five miles that are important. The charter will be very valuable whenever anybody is ready to build the connecting link, as they will be some day, because it grants valuable, exclusive privileges which can't be had under the present constitution. I drew the charter myself with an eye to the future, and legislatures in those days were ready to grant anything, in their eagerness to encourage railroad-building. I can't recall all the legal points now—my head isn't clear—but I'll show you the charter. You'll see for yourself that whoever builds any railroad to connect the lines centring at Thebes with the Southern system, is absolutely obliged to have this charter."
He took the document from his desk, and Braine read it through carefully. Then he said:
"Mr. Cooke, this is a very valuable piece of paper."
"Then you will grant what I have asked?" eagerly interjected the other, almost in accents of prayer.
"I will if you insist. But as an honest man, or one who tries to be tolerably honest"—he remembered his suicide—"I cannot accept your offer without telling you that you are giving greatly more than you imagine. This twenty-five miles of road must be built, and men of enormous means will build it."
"Will they buy the charter on my terms, and now? A month hence it may be too late."
"They would buy it now, and on better terms than I am able to offer, if they knew of its existence," said Braine.
"I tell you there are no better terms possible. I won't have money paid me for it. I should get drunk and die, and never get home with them," again pointing to the graves. "Now listen to me, Edgar Braine. I must start home in three days, with them, or I must drown myself. I cannot live if this thing is not carried out. It is impossible to make better terms for me. All other terms would be worse, infinitely worse."
"Could I not execute a mortgage to you for a sum fairly representing the worth of this?" holding up the paper.
"No! I should trade it off for liquor and die the sooner. I tell you I want one thing and no other. There is nobody to come after me to inherit anything I might leave."
"Very well. Take to-day to think over the matter. You're excited now. If you adhere to your proposal to-morrow, I will accept it."
"No, no, no! It must be now, I tell you. I will execute the papers now, and begin to get ready for home!"
And so it was arranged. Excitement seemed to clear the head of the inebriate, and though his hand trembled, he wrote without a pause until every detail of the transaction was covered in legal form. Then he directed the negro boy, Sam, to harness the horse to the rickety buggy, and drove his visitor to the county seat, ten miles away, where the necessary legal forms of acknowledgment, record, etc., were completed.
When Edgar Braine walked into Hildreth's bank parlor late that afternoon, he said quite carelessly:
"I have come into a little property, and have some payments to make in the settlement. I may have to borrow a few hundred dollars to-morrow on a thirty days' acceptance."
"You can have a few thousands if you want it," said the banker, "any time you like. Now that you're one of us, I'll take care that your credit is good."
"Now that I'm one of you," replied Braine, "perhaps I shall be able to look after that a little myself. You say I have a good head for business."
With that he strolled out and bought a copy of the Enterprise to see if Mose Harbell had read his proofs carefully in his absence. As he passed a shop he paused and said to himself:
"As there really are two sides to the river, I may as well take to linen collars at once." And he went in and bought a supply.
IX.
[From Helen's Diary.]
June 5, 18—. Received a short note from Edgar at noon. It was a peculiar, unnatural note in some respects. It seemed a mechanical affair, instead of an impulse of the heart. He did not call this evening. I am much worried over it.
June 6, 18—. Edgar is just now gone. This morning I received a note from him as usual, saying that he had secured a cottage just at the edge of town for us. He called at eight. He was in the wildest spirits. I have never seen him in this way before. His happiness infected me. He has had a wonderful stroke of good fortune, by which he has come into the proprietorship of the Enterprise, as well as the editorship, and he has just engaged in a land speculation—which I am not to mention—that is going to be worth a fortune to him,—something about a railroad grant, or something. I don't understand it exactly.
The cottage has seven rooms, and we are going to furnish them all. Ed laughed, and observed that he had already reached the linen collar period of his existence. There was a certain grim ring in his laugh to-night. I feel anything but grim. My entire person feels like a perpetual smile of joy. This stroke of fortune is glorious. Ed said that I must say absolutely nothing about affairs. That he had some people in his hands, and that we must be very discreet. I can't bear discretion. It always seems to suggest something to be ashamed of. Of course, it doesn't in this instance, because Edgar is the one who enjoins it. There is something glorious in this feeling of absolute faith. To know that for the rest of my life I shall never know the responsibility of having to decide anything. To know that I can place myself entirely in his hands, and be confident of always being counselled aright. I could never have loved him if I could not have felt this. It is my temperament. I do not feel this because I love him, but I love him because of this feeling. A good and honorable man—a man above the petty meanness of his fellows—inspires one almost with reverence.
There is a certain magnificent assurance of superiority in Edgar Braine, so that at times the thought of his marriage with a woman like me seems almost outrageous. I feel so inferior, morally and intellectually. I fear being a drag upon him; an obstacle in the road of his advancement. I am determined to keep up with him as far as it lies in my power. He said to-night that he lived for but two things—power, and my love. I can satisfy the latter, and will never hinder the former. I realize how dear this wish for power is to him; how he longs to be able to better the condition of those people whom he comes in contact with. His ideas are constantly broadening. To-night he talked a little wildly, but in a tone and with a manner that in some way carried conviction with it, of becoming a power not only among his immediate associates but among the people in general; a power in the nation.
When I think of the noble aims of this man that I love, I cannot help feeling that such a situation would vastly benefit the country. With such a spirit at the helm, there could be no danger of wreck. Heigho! What speculations.
I found myself smiling at the absurdity of my thoughts just now. If I believed that such a thing could be, I should not be so supremely happy as I am now. I could sacrifice my feelings, if it were to the interests of the country, or Edgar. I should even enjoy sacrificing them, I think. But there will never be any question of that. It seems to me that all has come to the point that I have longed for. We are to be married; never separated; live comfortably, without the necessity for anxiety as to the practical things of life, and love each other unmolested by anyone or anything. This is absolute and perfect happiness. To love and live with no ambition save to do right, and feel that the world may be a little better for two loving people having lived in it.
When I teased Ed to-night about not taking me to New York for our wedding trip, he actually looked unhappy, and as though he thought I meant it. It made me laugh to see the miserable expression on his face for a moment, when I have been thanking Heaven all this time that we could not afford to go further than Chicago, and so would get back here to Thebes and our little home in half the time. Besides, I hate travelling. It covers me with dust till I feel as if I could never be clean again. The dust seems to get even into my mind and soul. It isn't so with Edgar. There is a halo of immaculateness about him: cleanliness is in the very atmosphere when he is near. He is absolutely an indescribable man. He walks down the street, and if one but gets a glimpse of his shiny coat-tails rounding the corner, one is impressed with the superiority of the manner those coat-tails have of rounding that corner. One knows that they belong to a man who is worth knowing. One would be impressed that the proprietor of those shiny coat-tails had accomplished some great thing.
If I don't stop right here, I shall get to elaborating on this subject until I shall not get to bed at all.
Good night, Edgar. I hold up my face to be kissed.
June 19th. I have not written in this diary for days. There has been plenty to write about—plenty of emotions, not many incidents.
Edgar has reached what, to me, seems the pinnacle of fame and honor—though he only laughs when I say so, and says, with almost a touch of contempt in his tone—"Wait!"
I am a thousand times more elated over the situation than he is—and yet I hardly know whether I am quite as happy as I was before, or not. When I am overwhelmed with exaltation and admiration for his wonderful achievements, Edgar smiles indulgently, and the other night he turned suddenly and said:
"Listen, dear! When I was a young boy, I used to become frenzied at times with certain indignities that other boys with only half my brains compelled me to endure, because they happened to be situated more advantageously than I as regards material things. While I had perfect contempt for them, I felt a wild desire to convince them of my superiority, as I was convinced of it. I decided that brute force was the only thing at my command at first, and one morning, went out and whipped that one of them whose prestige was such in the town that victory over him meant reverence for me from the rest in the set. It was this very respect which I had whipped the fellow to gain, and which these little ruffians accorded me afterward, that disgusted me. I found I didn't value the respect of a lot of little loafers who could appreciate superiority of that kind only. That evening, when I saw my mother patching those clothes that had been torn in the fight, I discovered that there was no longer even the flavor of satisfaction left me. I said then, 'I will adopt a larger plan.' I did. I had then no thought that—that just this would be the outcome," and here he looked out of the window for a time, with the strange, determined, ominous look that I have seen in his face so often lately.
"But the situation is more than my—wildest dreams could have anticipated."
Here he laughed. His laugh, too, has changed a little lately. He went on in a sort of abstracted tone. "And what that first brutal success was to me, now is this that enthuses you so. Like that first success it has, from the very fact of its unsatisfactory character, urged and assured greater achievements. I think of it as paltry, inconsequential—from my present point of view. It is only a means by which to accomplish great things, things worthy of achievement—as most people regard worthiness.
"The present is nothing to me, absolutely nothing, except so far as it affects the future."
Then he fell into one of his little silent moments, of which he has so many now. There is something about it all that makes me feel strange and hysterical. I am so proud of him that I want to cry out on the street corners that this man belongs to me—and yet there is something lacking. He is with me even more than usual, for it seems as though he has sudden plans and constantly occurring things to tell me about.
He always says: "Be discreet; never speak to your Aunt or anyone but me of any of these things. They are just between us." He says that I am remarkably trustworthy, and that he could not live if he could not tell me about how things are going. He never seems to think of himself. He will sit for ten minutes looking at me without speaking, and suddenly say:
"Wait, wait! Just a little time and everything shall be yours. I will bring the world to you and lay it at your feet," and when he says it I almost believe it to be true for a moment.
It is only because his nerves are overwrought. (He is nervous to the verge of insanity sometimes.) It seems to me that I am the only one in the world who could possibly understand his temperament. He says I am. The other night we were at a small reception given by Mrs. Clews. He walked about the house all the time I was putting on my things. I knew that he was so nervous and excited over something that he could hardly control himself.
When we reached the Clews's he suddenly became another man. For an hour and a half he was calm almost to coldness. He was magnificent. Mr. Hildreth was there, and once while Edgar and I were talking together we saw him near us. Edgar had taken me a little aside, and was saying nothing, but allowing himself to relax for a moment from the strain under which I knew he was keeping himself. Suddenly he saw Mr. Hildreth, and his tone and attitude and manner changed completely. Where he had seemed almost like a tired, petulant child looking for comfort from me, he suddenly changed to a stern, masterful man without a trace of helplessness or nervousness.
He said: "This is as good a time as any," and excused himself and went over to Hildreth, and touched his arm. It seemed to me that Mr. Hildreth was positively deferential to him. It was no doubt my imagination, but they disappeared for a while, and when they returned, Edgar and I left.
He was his usual self—the self that others know, until we were outside. Then he became silent—preoccupied. I asked him what he wanted with Mr. Hildreth, and he laughed and said:
"A little matter of business—technicalities that you could not understand." There is a great deal that I cannot understand, and these things he never tells me about, because he says that if he annoyed me with these dry details, I would not listen to him at all by and bye. As though that were true!
When we reached home, he suddenly took me in his arms, and said: "How glorious you are! It would be nothing to me if you were not to share it with me."
He talks in such a wild fashion at times. I suppose he means all this honor and attention that he receives. Since it has become certain that his exertions are to carry through the railroad affair to the advantage of Thebes, he seems to have become a sort of god with the Thebans. I don't understand the business part of it very well, but I know that every one thinks that he has done a great thing for the town. When I speak of the gratitude that the people of Thebes should feel, he shrugs his shoulders and changes the subject. Once, he said in a sort of a passion:—"For heaven's sake never speak again of anything I seem to have done for Thebes."
This sensitiveness and modesty are constant with him in everything that he does—though the trait seems to be intensified now.
The other day I stopped at the office and some man was in there talking to Edgar, and said something about his being a public benefactor, and Edgar said, coldly:
"Don't be grateful too soon, my dear fellow," and when he saw me, his whole face lighted up, and he dismissed the man.
The man stared at me as he went out, and suddenly Edgar looked like a thunder cloud, and slipped between us a sort of improvised screen for me. He said after the door had closed:
"I don't want you to come to the office any more—things are a little different now."
They are different because he has grown to thinking of the effect of everything on other people now, instead of just ourselves, as he always has done. He has always said:
"As long as one has a clear conscience, and is satisfied with one's self, the opinions of other people are of little consequence."
I don't feel quite comfortable with the change, but he reminded me that circumstances alter cases; that one must adapt himself to changed situations. I asked him if it was quite right, and he looked at me a long time, and finally said with the old, new determination in his face and voice: "We are to do it," without answering my question. Somehow it taught me a lesson. I think I shall never again question anything that he says. His tone, his manner seemed to forbid it, seemed to settle forever any doubt as to a possibility of anything being wrong that he says or decides.
I was almost astonished at myself afterwards, when I realized that I had questioned any motive he might have had, or any suggestion he might have made. A woman like me, questioning the propriety of anything that such a man as Edgar Braine might do!
Sometimes I try to make up my mind whether he looked more magnificent in his shiny coat with fringed bindings, or in his present immaculate toilet. I can come to no conclusion. The reverence and awe that Edgar Braine inspired in his shabby suit were overwhelming. The dignity that he lends to his present clothes is—well, is simply glorious. He makes the clothes. In either case, one is impressed that clothes are but a matter of convenience, and really of too little importance to be remembered—except long enough to put them on and take them off—by Edgar Braine. Such a man as he would be perfect in any clothes.
X.
The doings of Edgar Braine, during the few weeks following his negotiations with Waverley Cooke, were a riddle to those who knew of them; but Thebes was so well used to his puzzling methods that the little ripple of talk raised at this time did not swell into a wave of chatter, as it might in another man's case.
In the first place, he borrowed a very considerable sum of money from Hildreth, and insisted upon so arranging the terms of the loan, that he could repay the money at any time after ninety days, but should be free to retain it for a year upon renewals, if that suited him better.
Hildreth was willing enough to lend him the money, but he speculated a little as to what Braine was going to do with so large a sum. He did not find out.
Next, Braine jauntily upset all the plans for the marriage, which he and Helen had so laboriously formed. It was on the evening of the special charter election that he did this. Up to that day he had worked ceaselessly at the task of persuading the people of Thebes that the best thing they could do with their one valuable municipal possession was to give it away to the Central Railroad Company. He had found time in the interval, however, to see Helen almost every day. He had not contented himself with supporting the measure in the Enterprise, but had organized support for it in quarters where support was not to be expected, and in quarters in which it was supposed that he of all men had least influence. The machinery of his own political party was easy to handle, but Braine boldly undertook to control that of the opposing party as well.
A city clerk, to replace the one who had defaulted and run away, was to be chosen by the City Council, in which Braine's own party was dominant. Braine seized upon this circumstance as his lever. He boldly offered the place to the leader of the opposite party in return for that party's support of the levee transfer proposal, which, being in no respect a political question, men of either party might advocate or oppose at will. Having made the bargain he set to work to induce the aldermen of his own party to carry it out. He reckoned upon their venality as a stronger motive than their party zeal, and his reckoning was not amiss.
"Hildreth is to pay those rascals for voting the transfer, of course," he reasoned; "and they can't vote it unless this election is carried to authorize it. Hildreth isn't fool enough to pay them till the thing is done. Very well. There is a ring in the nose of every scamp of them."
And it was so. The aldermen were angrily reluctant to surrender a political office, and the one with whom Braine negotiated at first flatly refused. But Braine knew his ground.
"Very well," he said, "but reflect a little. This election is very close. We need all the help we can get. Davidson has his men perfectly in hand, and now that I've offered the thing to him he will vote them to a man on the other side if this isn't carried out."
"Why in thunder did you make him such an offer, then? Nobody authorized it."
"It is not worth while to discuss that. Call it impertinent intermeddling on my part, if you choose, and ease your mind in that way. But the offer has been made. If you ratify it, we shall carry the charter election. If you refuse,—well, you know what the result is likely to be as well as I do."
The alderman understood perfectly, and was not minded to take risks. The bargain as to the city clerkship was carried out. This was one of many ways in which Braine organized the victory he had set out to win, and during those few short weeks, the people of Thebes discovered a new fact about Edgar Braine; they learned that he had what they called "a genius for politics."
When Edgar heard that said, he reflected: "Well, I seem to be developing new qualities rapidly. What with a 'good head for business,' discovered by that expert, Abner Hildreth, and a 'genius for politics,' diagnosticated by those eminent specialists the aldermen of Thebes, I ought to make my way, especially as I own a railroad charter and a ferry franchise. Poor old Waverley Cooke! I hope he is breathing his native air with a relish by this time. I shall be sorry when the payments to him cease."
He sighed deeply. Was it over Waverley Cooke, or was he thinking of another wreck?
As soon as the polls closed after an exciting contest—for the opposition had been very determined—Edgar turned his back upon the bustling crowds, and briskly walked away.
Helen met him at the door, though she had not expected him that evening. Somehow she had acquired a habit of always discovering his approach and meeting him in the vestibule, a convenient place for the exchange of certain quasi masonic—but we must not intrude upon privacy with prying eyes.
As she was not expecting him, she was not dressed to receive him, a circumstance in which he rejoiced mightily, her careless costume seeming in his eyes to set off her beauty ravishingly.
She wore a loose gown of a thin, limp goods, Pompeiian red in hue, with flowing sleeves of white, equally limp, and a broad, starchless collar of white to match the sleeves. The gown was belted in at the waist with a rope girdle of dull, oxidized silver. The costume seemed to cling lovingly to the lines of her superb length, and Braine was at the moment certain that he should never permit her to wear any other. "Man-like," was her commentary, when he told her this a few weeks later.
"You are weary," she said, "and it is very warm. Loll here by the windows. No, not in that chair, it is rickety, and you are so big and strong I always expect weak things to break with you. My will did, you know, when you made up your mind to marry me. No, no, you mustn't, now! people are passing."
What this last injunction and remark had to do with the subject of conversation, I cannot make out, but that is what Helen said, hurriedly, as she drew back a little.
"Now you shall not talk to me," she said, as she sank in graceful folds upon the floor, with an ease which made one doubt the existence of bones in her tall person. "You are tired, and I'll do the talking. What shall the subject be?"
"Tell me of yourself. What have you been doing and thinking?"
"Nibbling pickles, sewing, trying to read Browning because you told me to, and carrying pins in my mouth."
"I thought you promised me not to put pins in your mouth. I gave you a cushion, to bind the bargain."
"That's why I told you about it. You see I'm honest above all things. I get busy and forget, but I'm really trying, Edgar."
"What have you been sewing on?"
"I must tell you. (I'm too honest.) Clothes."
"What sort?"
"White. Linen and cotton."
"But what—"
"Hush! You're not to talk. Where did Browning get the story of Hervé Riel? Is it historical?"
"I can't tell you without talking."
"Oh, you can talk just a little, you know—enough to answer my questions. But I don't care anything about Hervé Riel. I asked because I could not think of anything else at the moment. Tell me instead, where our wedding cards should be made—Chicago or St. Louis?"
Taking that evening's Enterprise from the table Edgar read aloud:
"There is no longer any occasion for citizens of Thebes to incur the delays and uncertainties incident to having printing of any kind done in Chicago or St. Louis. The job office of the Daily Enterprise is now perfectly equipped for all work of the kind, from the plainest of posters to the daintiest of wedding invitations."
"But I won't have printing done at that establishment, Mr. Braine."
"Why not, Miss Thayer?"
"I don't approve of its editor."
"What has the poor fellow done to incur your displeasure?"
"Many things. He persists in asking me about the clothes I am making; he insists upon changing my pretty name, and he is too stingy of his time to take me further than Chicago for a wedding trip when I am crazy to be stunned and bewildered by the glories of New York."
"Helen dear," broke in Braine, with a sudden earnestness of protest in his tone, "you know, do you not—"
"Certainly I know, and I perfectly approve that and everything else you do, Ed. Forgive me. I was only teasing."
At this point there was a brief wait in the dialogue. Then Helen, sitting down on the floor again, resumed in an earnest tone, with her large eyes looking fixedly at her lover:
"You must never misunderstand me, Ed. You know I am devoted to your interests only. I would not let you spend an hour that you cannot spare from your work, in gratifying me. I was only jesting, dear. You understand me, don't you?"
If the words did not make the matter entirely clear to Braine's intelligence they were helped a good deal by the "eloquent language of signs," and the whole matter was rapidly becoming perfectly lucid, when a knock at the door startled the pair, and caused Helen to withdraw suddenly to a particularly prim and painful Queen Elizabeth chair on the other side of the room. By the time she was uncomfortably seated, the knock was repeated, and it dawned upon her mind that some one should open the door. She did this herself, as on the whole, best.
"It's Mikey, with a note for me," said Braine; "I told Mose Harbell to send him."
Helen brought in the note, and Braine quietly opened and read it.
"Please tell Mikey to wait for an answer," he said. "May I have some paper?"
Helen supplied him, and he wrote. When the messenger was gone, he turned and said:
"Come here, Helen dear. Kneel down here by my chair. I want to talk to you."
His manner was a trifle puzzling. It indicated a good deal of earnestness and some concern to enforce whatever it was he meant to say; but there was an inflection of exultation in his voice:
"I'm going to upset all our arrangements, Helen. You needn't have any wedding cards printed at all."
"Oh Edgar!" she cried in distress. "What has happened? Are you ruined in your business, dear? Tell me what it is?"
"No, I'm not ruined—not in my business at least," he added, with a meaning to which Helen had no clew. "On the contrary, my prospects were never so good before. But you don't need any wedding invitations, dear, because we must be married to-night. We leave by the midnight train for a wedding journey to New York."
"But, Edgar, how absurd!"
"Yes, I know it's absurd. Many things I do are so. But it must be, all the same. I have just had the returns from this election. It has gone as I wished, and that involves a good many things—among them an immediate journey to New York, and perhaps a stay of several weeks there. I have only been waiting till Mikey brought me certain news of the result before telling you about this."
"You mean to tell me that you have sat there chatting with me all this time, with that in your mind, and not telling me a word about it?"
"I couldn't, you know. You told me not to talk."
"You don't deserve that I should marry you at all."
"I know it. I've told you so all along. But the same thing is true of every other man in the world, and so you will have to put up with it."
"But you're not serious about this, Edgar?"
"Perfectly."
"It's preposterous!"
"Of course it is, but I can't help it."
"It's out of the question."
"Of course it is. Things that are decided are no longer in the question."
"But seriously, Edgar, I'm not ready. I can't be married so suddenly. I haven't any clothes," with that tremendous emphasis on the word clothes which the feminine mind instinctively places on the idea it represents, where marriage is in question.
"Seriously, Helen, I know this is a great annoyance to you, and I deeply regret annoying you with anything. But it is absolutely necessary for me to go to New York at once, and to remain there for I don't know how long. It means more to me than you can imagine. It means success and power. Perhaps it may mean wealth, also. We were to have been married in July. I may not be able to leave New York then without risk of loss and ruin. So we must be married to-night, and you shall have your vision of New York after all. It is now nine o'clock. I will be back here at eleven, with a license and a clergyman. I have written to Mose Harbell to send you a dozen newsboys for messengers. They'll be here soon. He will send 'genial' ones, of course, and they will carry notes summoning all your friends to the wedding. Lily Holliday will help you with the notes. You might send for Daisy Berkeley too, or I'll call by there on my way down town, and tell her you've a romantic secret to confide to her. That will send her to you in five minutes. It would if it were midnight and she in bed."
With that he hurried away, leaving Helen standing in the middle of the floor in a dazed condition, till Daisy Berkeley, who lived but a little distance away, came hurriedly in to ask: "What is it?" in many and varied forms of words.
"I could not think of yielding to so preposterous a plan," said Helen, after she had briefly explained the situation, "but what am I to do? Edgar is gone, and I can't argue it with him. And the clergyman will be here at eleven, and there come the newsboys now, and I haven't a stitch of clothes! Oh, what shall I do?"
"Do?" cried Daisy. "Why carry the thing through, of course. It's the most deliciously romantic thing I ever heard of in my life. Oh, how I do envy you!"
"But what am I to do for clothes, Daisy? And besides, it's so undignified!"
"A fig for Dignity! Vive la Romance! I'll lend you all my clothes. I always have lots of them, and mamma is sure to know where they are."
"Daisy Berkeley! You forget yourself. You are under five feet high, and I am five feet eight inches."
"Well, never mind about clothes. You have plenty of them. It's all nonsense, the way we women talk about nothing to wear. Somebody wrote a book or something to prove it once. Who would spoil a delicious romance—oh, it is so delicious—for nonsense like that! Why, it'll make you the talk of the town."
"That's just it. I have no desire to be the talk of the town. But there is no help for it now."
So the two, with Lily Holliday, summoned from next door, set to work upon the notes, while the trunk packing was done by Helen's aunt, who was weeping all the time, till Mary Malony, the maid, who was helping her, exclaimed:
"Sure mum, it's not packin' a thrunk, but a dampenin' down of clothes ye are, and they's no ironin' convayniences on the cars at all."
XI.
For a man on his wedding journey Braine seemed to have an extraordinary amount of business to attend to from the first hour of his arrival in New York. Sometimes it occupied his mornings, and sometimes his down town engagements stretched far into the afternoon, though he avoided that as much as possible, and managed almost always to have his evenings free.
In his hours of freedom he threw off care so completely that if Helen had been capable of doubting anything he said, she would not have believed in his business engagements at all.
He took her to the theatres, where light summer plays of no possible interest were running, and joined in the poor sport with the relish of a boy, and apparently without once thinking of the affairs with which he was toiling down town every day. He sought out all the places where summer music was to be heard. He went to the sea side, and would sit on the sands for hours with Helen, idly listening to the lazy swash of the surf as it surged in from the indolent summer sea. He watched even the merry-go-rounds with a contagious interest in the joy the children seemed to get out of them.
And yet all this time Braine was playing a great game, with success or failure for the stakes; a game mainly of skill, at which he was a novice, while his adversaries were veterans. If he succeeded, nothing was beyond his reach. If he failed—but he did not contemplate failure. It had never been his habit.
At first, Helen enjoyed the privacy of a stranger in the great town, going and coming at will, knowing nobody and expecting attention from nobody. But this was of brief duration, and signs that it was destined speedily to end appeared when men of wealth and social prominence began to show themselves at the hotel with Braine, and to seek presentation to herself in her private parlor.
It was during this blissful period of obscurity that Helen wrote in the diary:
We have been in the city now three days. I am happy, but tired out with a rush of new experiences. I am still in the daze occasioned by the suddenness with which events have occurred. Married, and seeing New York, all in six days, is too much for any woman, even a Western woman. And my wardrobe! Until this evening I have had no time to think of it. But at this moment it comes to me with terrible and tragic force that I have just three presentable dresses to my name, and these are not so presentable as they seemed before we went down to dinner that first evening.
By the way, dinner means that of which I have never dreamed before,—and means it at six o'clock. In Thebes, dinner meant a sort of juggling at noon; and supper, a scrabble at six. Dinner here means science, art, and awesome ability in some one.
For just one moment I was ready to sink through the floor when I entered the dining-room—no, we dined in the café. (These little distinctions must not escape me, nor be neglected.) But in an instant I glanced at Edgar, who seemed so unconcerned with surrounding things, and so preoccupied with some weighty matter, that everything but him seemed to sink into insignificance, and by the time I was seated at the table, and remembered the strangeness and magnificence of it all, I had forgotten to be overpowered.
I noticed that Edgar was looking at me with a smile and very earnestly once, and when I said, "What is it?" he replied:
"Any other woman who had never eaten terrapin would have said that she didn't like it. This dinner has convinced me that you are a wonderful woman."
I half understood him, and my happiness at having unconsciously pleased him made me blush. The blush itself seemed to delight him, and he said: "Good heavens! a woman who has had time to enjoy terrapin, and is still able to blush so beautifully!"
I left the dining-room in a state of mind almost bordering on exaltation.
People stare very rudely here. Every one looked at us. Edgar did not seem to observe it, but somehow I could not help being conscious of it. I first thought that they looked at Edgar, but I found they were staring at me too. That was because I was with him. I am more than ever determined to keep up with him as well as I can, that I may be no drag upon his advancement—or rather on his efforts to advance others.
I experience a little suspicion of regret now and then. Edgar and I cannot possibly seem so near to each other while we are amid such startling surroundings, and one has to bear in mind, to an extent, that she must not appear too much surprised.
He has hardly been in the room half an hour at a time since our arrival. He no sooner comes in and gets ready to talk to me, than he receives a card from some one and goes to the parlor—he will have no one come to our private parlor. He says "Not yet," and laughs.
He seems almost fierce sometimes, at the thought of other people even looking at me. He said, when he saw a man looking after me in the hall: "It makes me feel murderous! These men are not fit to breathe the same atmosphere with you. Neither am I, for that matter, any more, but I love you, that makes it different; and what I do is because I love you."
It delights me cruelly to hear him depreciate himself—not because of that depreciation, but because it illustrates his extraordinary love for me.
I wish we were in the little cottage at Thebes. The sweet-williams are ravishingly sweet now; and I would like to have just my dog near when I love Edgar so. He would be so sympathetic! There is such an aggressive feeling of selfishness in the air here. Something not quite sympathetic, or clean, or good. It is because it is all new and strange to me, of course, but it certainly seems so. I mentioned this thoughtlessly a while ago, and Edgar threw his arms around me and stopped the words with kisses. I know that he did it so that I would say no more, for his face looked peculiarly pained. His lip quivered for a moment, and that almost frightened me. Such a thing in Edgar means more than even I can divine. In a moment he was gravely gay again. Even in his merriest moments there is a sweet dignity about him that fascinates and commands me. I seem to demand, but he seems to command. There is no other man living whom I could have loved.
New York, July 2. Until now I have always thought that the day on which I met Edgar was the most marvellous one of my life. I now think it is not so. This has been the most eventful one surely.
Last night I said to Ed that this morning I must go out and get something to wear. He said, "Very well. While I am down town you can do your shopping." That was all that was said. We breakfasted at nine, and at ten Ed said we had better go, as he must be down town by 10:30. I had no idea where to go or just what to do. There was a certain embarrassment about the situation, but I concealed the fact, and trusted to Ed's wonderful management and delicacy.
He was equal to the occasion. Nothing was said as to where I should go, or concerning means with which to go, until we reached the hotel entrance. He put me into a coupé, and said: "The man will take you to an establishment where they can tell you what you want without your having to bother about it," and thrust a roll of bills into my hand, threw me a kiss, nodded, smiled, and closed the door.
The coupé started before I could recover from astonishment. For a minute I sat looking at the bills in my hand. They made a terrible roll. When I found what he had given me I could only gasp and drop them on the floor. The amount frightened me. I was sure that he had made a mistake, and I put the bills in a separate compartment of my purse, all but fifty dollars, to give them back when I returned.
We stopped at a ladies' tailoring establishment of some kind. I was really too much overcome and disturbed to know what I was about. The coachman opened the coupé door, and said:
"Blossom's, madame," and my heart quite stopped beating for a moment. But I suddenly felt the necessity of not displaying my ignorance, for Edgar's sake, and pretended to be preoccupied, and so gained time to look about me covertly, and prepare an excuse for any faux pas on my part.
Well, in about one minute after I entered the parlor, I felt that I had been born passing judgment on styles and fabrics. I seemed to have nothing to do. I said rather abstractedly and indifferently "Something in a street dress. I leave it to you," and made a little inconsequent gesture. In a minute I found everything taken out of my hands, and a man and a woman declaring that they knew at once what madame wished; they would satisfy me, etc., etc., all in a suddenly changed manner that amazed me. They were treating me like some extraordinary personage. It was my little gesture of ennui that accomplished this. (By the way, I did not say "dress" a second time, but "gown," which is now considered the proper term.)
I felt almost like an impostor at first, but I had a desire that Edgar might be there to witness the little performance. I felt that I had, at least, not disgraced him.
Then I said: "Something in a house gown," when they had settled the street gown. The house gown was decided, and before I knew it they had the most wonderful designs for dinner and reception gowns before me that I ever dreamed of.
I seemed to be in a maze, and acquiesced mechanically in what they proposed. Finally, things seemed to come to an end, and I asked for my bill. They were to supply the materials, calculate the cost, etc. They seemed a little surprised, and said I could attend to that at my convenience—when I came to-morrow. I suddenly felt panic-stricken and determined to find out the extent of my madness. I insisted in a peremptory and dignified way—saying I preferred to settle such little matters on the spot. They kept me waiting half an hour, and then-handed me the bill.
It makes me faint now to think of that moment. I sat staring at the paper. It amounted to one hundred and fifty dollars more than was in that roll of bills! I felt my hair make an attempt to stand erect. I mechanically opened my purse, and handed them the money that was to have been returned to Edgar, and said in a voice that I did not recognize as my own: "That is all I happen to have with me—I will attend to the other trifle to-morrow."
Trifle!! The remainder was more than I had ever spent for clothes before in a year. It never occurred to me that I could countermand the order. I felt that I was helpless and in the hands of the Philistines. I gave them my address, fully determined to get back to the hotel and smuggle Edgar off before the next morning, before the "trifle" could be asked for.
I kept saying all the way:—"We are just married. We are just married. Men always forgive things when they are just married!" I said it over and over.
When we stopped at the hotel entrance some one opened the door at once. It was Edgar. He was smiling and helping me out, and saying that he had been smoking and waiting for me. I prayed that I might sink right down through the coal-hole in the sidewalk.
I did not speak, and Edgar said, anxiously:—"Your shopping has been too much for you, dear. You look pale and tired out!" I thought of that trifling balance, and nearly staggered. I said, "No, oh no!" and got into our rooms in some way.
To think that I, Helen Braine, who never possessed more than three gowns at once, the wife of a man who had had to wear coats with frayed edges, should have spent a small fortune in two hours, and that there was still a "balance"! And it had yet to be told of! That was the worst. I expected to hear him say every minute:
"By the way, my dear, I made a little mistake this morning, and gave you the wrong amount of money. I knew you would understand it."
Well, when we were inside our rooms, with the door shut, I leaned up against the wall. Edgar saw there was something terrible the matter, and he looked quite pale and said: "What is it?"
I was waiting for him to say: "You haven't spent all the money!" and kept thinking to myself very hard—"Men always forgive things when they are just married."
Finally, I said, "Edgar, how much money have you?" And then he stared at me. He laughed, and said: "How mercenary shopping expeditions do make women!"
I thought I should drop down in one minute more, and hoped that I should die. I asked if he had enough to settle our bill and get out of town. He said afterward that he thought I had suddenly developed a propensity for shoplifting, and had been discovered, and that he would have to smuggle me out of the city.
He looked very serious though when I asked the question, and said: "Certainly, dear. We will not stay a moment longer than you wish to." He asked what had happened. I managed to gasp that I had spent all the money. He looked puzzled and said: "Well, go on. What is the matter?" and I repeated that I had spent all the money. It seemed heartless for him to torture me by making me repeat it.
He looked still more puzzled, and said: "Yes, well, what about it?" I said: "And there's a—a balance—a trifle."
He answered: "Of course-well?" And then—I don't know what happened then. I was sobbing, and Edgar kept frantically pouring cologne over me, and kissing me and saying: "Don't cry, for heaven's sake, Helen," and by degrees he managed to understand the situation, and before I knew it he was lying back in a chair fairly shouting with laughter, and my hair was dripping wet, and I felt as though I had passed through the resurrection, and found myself on the right side.
I finally found that there was no mistake, except that I had not spent the money for the right things; that I was supposed to have purchased all the little things like gloves and shoes and hats and a hundred other trifles with that, and that this frightful bill was to have been sent in to Edgar or me, beside, and settled then.
I may live to be a thousand, but that terrible hour will always be fresh in my memory. I was not unhappy. I experienced a despair that was truly tragic. And the reaction that followed!
Edgar Braine was never so dear and great and glorious before to me. He held me in his arms for two hours and let me cry. He tried to be sympathetic and serious, but every few moments he would burst out in an uncontrollable fit of laughter. He, too, says that he will never forget that hour.
I am still dazed over the situation. But the relief! Oh, the relief!
He says that I am to carry no money hereafter, for I don't like it. It seems—I don't know what. I don't like to handle it, and he says that I am to get anything and everything I want, and have the bills sent to him, and he will attend to them.
I shall know how to deport myself to-morrow, and know about what I want, for I find that I unconsciously noticed everything this morning, and am pretty well informed.
If I had not had that thought, that newly married men cannot be very severe—at any rate I don't think they can, judging by Edgar—while I was coming home, to sustain me, I do not think I could have endured that terrible hour.
XII.
It was about the time of Helen's shopping expedition that Braine began to present certain select gentlemen of his acquaintance to Helen in their private parlor. Their visits were promptly followed by attentions that surprised her not a little. Their wives, sisters, and daughters journeyed from Newport, Richfield and Long Branch to call upon her, and, as Gladys Van Duyn said, when she called with her fiancé—young Grayson—"to snatch her as a brand from the burning of a scorching July." By this, Gladys merely meant that she had come for the purpose of taking possession of Helen, and carrying her bodily out of town "to where you can get your breath, dear, and see civilized people again."
Gladys had come reluctantly, and only because old Van Duyn had given her orders to that effect by telegraph. He had told her that Helen was beautiful, accomplished and fascinating, by way of softening the command to his daughter, though he wrote and sent the telegram half an hour before he was presented to the woman whom he thus confidently commended.
Gladys was not much given to trusting her father's judgment of women, or his accuracy of statement, where he had an object in view, and so that part of the dispatch she counted as so many superfluous words, paid for without occasion; but she understood clearly enough that her papa, for some reason connected with business—all his reasons centred in business—meant her to make as much as possible of Helen Braine, and so she arrived in the city fully prepared to pretend a great liking for the wild Westerner with big feet, whom she expected to find there.
Perhaps the agreeable surprise helped, but, whatever the cause, Gladys Van Duyn fell in love with Helen at first sight, and went rejoicingly back to Dorp House, the family place on the Sound, where the Van Duyns were accustomed to entertain their friends by platoons, and make a revel of the summer.
Gladys was a prudent young women, whose twenty summers had not been misspent; so, when she saw Helen and arranged to have her for a guest during an indefinite period, she decided that Grayson should put his yacht out of commission immediately, and rest himself with a little stay in Switzerland. Grayson accepted the arrangement, under the impression that he had been eagerly contemplating something of the sort for months, and his departure was made so promptly that the only thought he had time to give to Helen was that she was a "dooced fine woman, don't you know."
Braine remained in the city during the day, but joined Helen in the evening at the sumptuous Van Duyn summer place.
Helen was puzzled to understand it all, and in her bewilderment she questioned Edgar a little as to the cause of her sudden finding of favor in the eyes of people who had known nothing of her till then, and that, too, in a society which is not much given to looking beyond its own borders for people to "take up."
Braine laughed and said: "You are much too modest, Helen. You never did appreciate your own charms," and Helen, upon thinking the matter over, found a sufficient explanation in the thought that nobody could possibly come in contact with her Edgar without recognizing his superiority of mind and character, and wanting to make him an intimate. "These men have met him down town," she reflected, "and have been charmed with him, of course. In order to get as close to him as possible, they have taken up poor me. Well, that places a duty on me. I must acquit myself as well as I can, for dear Ed's sake."
And how she did acquit herself!
Gladys Van Duyn wrote rapturous reams about her new friend to all her old friends at Newport and elsewhere, and in angular, up and down characters, which allowed but three words to the line, and five lines to the page, sang Helen's praises in so many keys that only its scattered condition in summer cantonments saved the feminine part of New York society from panic lest the new star should elect to pass the winter in the metropolitan firmament.
Gladys encouraged confidence and order somewhat by assuring her friends, and especially her enemies, to whom, of course she sent her longest and most affectionate epistles, that Helen was "awfully much married to the dearest fellow in the world, and hasn't a notion of flirting in her."
In the mean time, Helen confided her emotions and experiences mainly to her diary, though her writing in that literary work varied considerably in frequency and fulness according to her moods and the demands upon her time.
[From Helen's Diary.]
July, 18—. This has been a very delightful day. I must record its happenings while Edgar is out. There is no moment that can be spared to record anything when he is here.
This morning I again went shopping. There is something delightful in being able to walk into a shop with the assurance that you are going to buy something. I do not mean to be extravagant. I seem to have regained my mental equilibrium to some extent, and am able to select judiciously what I want; and besides it would be something of an effort to me, I think, to be extravagant. I have had to be economical so long, and extravagance seems vulgar. There is no pleasure in having more things than one wants, and no delicate mind can rejoice in spending money merely for the sake of spending. In fact, the idea that I need have nothing to do with that part of the matter multiplies the enjoyment of the indulgence a hundredfold.
I have selected some charming things, and my gowns will be very beautiful. They have enabled me to understand myself better. They interpret my points, as it were, and I am now capable of making telling suggestions. I have decided to have nothing fashionable. Everything shall illustrate style, not fashion. There is something intolerable in the thought that you are wearing your clothes like a manikin; to walk in the streets and be conscious of a Vanderbilt on one side, with clothing far richer than you have on, which you have tried to copy, as well as limited means will enable you; and on the other side, a shop girl, and behind her, a washerwoman, who are reflections of your fashion, but falling as far short of you as you do of the woman whose purse is on the Vanderbiltean scale; to know that there is this eternal similarity to be seen among the entire multitudes!
I have decided that fashion is intolerable, and style indispensable. I have decided my own style. I shall not change it. It could not be improved for me, and so there is no justification for a change. I think a woman's style should be illustrative of her mind. Of course, if she has no mind of her own, then one does not expect her to have a style of her own. I have a mind of my own.
Edgar says we are to remain here six weeks longer, and then return to Thebes for a little time. While every moment here is one of happiness, I cannot help a little longing for the cottage, as we had planned it. I believe I would even have foregone all these charming new things for it. I do not have Edgar entirely to myself, but after all, I experience such a delight after waiting a time for him to come, that it may be an advantage.
He seems to regard me with wonder, amazement almost. Last night, he looked at me for a long time and finally said:
"Honor is well lost for you."
It made me shiver a little to hear him speak so, and I put my hand over his mouth, but at the same time it gave me a thrill of happiness—as it would even had he said, "I could commit murder for you," for nothing could express his love as that did.
If he loves me better than honor, I know how well that is. Is not honor dearer to Edgar Braine than his life? It is strange how women can even love wickedness—when they are the cause of it.
I think I shall never be able fully to enjoy anything because of my astonishment. Edgar says every little while, with my face between his hands: "You astonished child, how I love you!"
There is nothing in heaven above nor on this earth so wonderful and glorious as married life. Sometimes I do not know what I say or do. I am seized with a sudden ecstasy. At these times I find myself wondering if I have done or said anything that Edgar might not approve. I sometimes fear that I may not be quite womanly. I do not know why, but I feel so, and when I tried to explain it, he held me away from him and smiled a little with his eyes, and said in his dearest voice—"Yes, quite womanly," and then he drew me to him and said: "Whatever you say or do I am sure to approve. Whatever you say or do is your right," and then I went off into an ecstasy right then, and forgot again what I said or did, and so I was very glad that he approved, and that it was very womanly and right.