The Brown Study Part 16

They remembered Mrs. Brainard at last, and they remembered that Helena, also, had had nothing at all to eat since the hour for afternoon tea.

Brown flung open the door into his living-room, his face aglow, and stood laughing at the sight of Mrs. Brainard's posture in his red rocking-chair. As if exhausted by the tortures of fatigue and starvation she lay back in an att.i.tude of utter abandonment to her fate, and only the gleam of her eyes and the smile on her lips belied the dejection of her pose. "It's a shame!" he cried, coming to her side. "Or would be if--you hadn't aided and abetted it all."

"Are you happy, Donald dear?" asked the lady, sitting up and reaching up both hands to him. "Ah, yes; I only need to look at you!"

"So happy I don't know what I'm doing, you kind, wise friend."

"Wise? I wonder if I am. What will they all say to me, I wonder, when they know the part I've played? Never mind! Is Helena happy, too? I hope so, for the poor girl has been through the depths, bless her!"

"Come and see!" And with his arm about her, Donald led her out into the kitchen.

Helena came forward. "Dearest lady, will you stay and have supper with us?" said she with quite the air of the proud young housewife, and Brown laughed in his delight.

"Had I better stay?" inquired Mrs. Brainard, laughing with the man at her side, while both regarded the figure before them with eyes which missed no note in the appeal of her presence in that place.

"Oh, yes, indeed. We've plenty and to spare. Donald paid a visit to the corner grocery not long ago, and we've new-laid eggs, and radishes and all. Do stay!"

"I think I will." And Mrs. Brainard took the radiant face between her soft, white, ringless hands and kissed it as a mother might.

In no time at all the hour had come for the visitors to go to their train. In spite of their protests Brown would have a cab come for them, though it took him some minutes to get one in a quarter of the city where such luxury was rare.

"Time enough for self-denial," said he as he took his place facing them.

"Let me play I'm a man of affluence again--just for to-night."

"I'm afraid, Don, you'll always be tempted to call cabs for your wife,"

Mrs. Brainard said, and suppressed a bit of a sigh; for, after all, she knew what the future must cost them both, and she herself would miss them sadly from her world.

But it was Helena who silenced her. "When he walks, I'll walk," said she.

"Haven't I been in training for a year--even though I didn't know why I was training?"

"I think we've both been in training for the year," said Brown.

"Even though we didn't know--G.o.d knew--and when He trains--then the end is sure!"

When he had put them in their car, and had taken leave of them with a look which he found it hard to tear away, plain and unpretentious travellers though they were that night, he went striding back through the April midnight to the little old house the Englishman had built so long ago.

As he let himself in, Bim came tearing to meet him. The firelight was still bright upon the hearth, and Brown sat down before it, leaning forward to look into the glowing coals with eyes which saw there splendid things. The dog came close and laid his head on Brown's knee and received the absent-minded but friendly caress he longed for. Also, with the need for speech, Bim's master told him something of what he was thinking.

"The look of her, Bim, boy, in those simple clothes--why, she was never half so beautiful in the most costly things she ever wore. And she's mine--mine! She's coming here--next month, Bim, to be my wife! Can you believe it? I can't--not more than half. And yet, when I remember--remember--

"And it seemed hard to me, Bim--all this year--my life here. I thought I was an exile--I, with this coming to me! _O G.o.d--but You are good to me--good_! How I will work--how we will work--_we_--"

He got up, presently, and as he stood on the hearth-rug, about to leave it for his bed, a whimsical, wonderful thought struck him.

"I'll never have to borrow little Norah Kelcey any more, for the want of something to get my arms about. Instead--some day--perhaps--_O G.o.d, but You are good_!"

THE TIME OF HIS LIFE

"Dot, do you remember Kirke Waldron?"

Dorothy Broughton, daintily manipulating her breakfast grapefruit, her shapely young arm showing interesting curves through the muslin and lace of her morning gown--made by her own clever fingers--looked up at her brother Julius. He was keeping her company at her late and solitary breakfast, sitting casually on the arm of his brother-in-law's empty chair, his long legs crossed, his arms folded upon his chest. His bright eyes surveyed his sister as he spoke, from the crown of her carefully ordered hair to the tips of her white shoes--he could see them from his position at one side, and he observed that they were as white and as fresh as her gown. That was one of the things Julius heartily approved of in his pretty sister--her fastidiousness in such matters. He was fastidious himself to a degree; nothing more correct in its way than his own morning attire could have been imagined.

"Waldron?" Dorothy repeated. "That tall, solemn boy who used to stumble over himself on his way to the blackboard?"

"And then had the rest of the cla.s.s looking like a set of dough-heads while he covered the blackboard with neat little figures that always came out right; a perfect shark at 'math.' Yes, he's the one. Five cla.s.ses ahead of us then--fifteen now. We aren't in it, any of us, with Kirkie Waldron these days."

"I've never heard nor thought of him since then," averred his sister. "Do you mean he's made something of himself? I should never have thought it."

"No, you'd never have thought it, because he stumbled over his own feet when he was a kid. Well, let me tell you it's the only thing he's ever stumbled over. He's just been taken into the office of Haynes and Ardmore, consulting mining engineers, and everybody says that'll mean a partnership some day. And that brings me to my point. He hasn't taken a day's vacation for two years. Day after to-morrow he sails for South America to stay six months, looking after the development of a new mine down there in Colombia. He can take to-morrow for a holiday, and I've asked him out--with Bud's permission. And I want you to help me give him the time of his life."

"Me?" Dorothy opened her brown eyes. "Oh, but I can't give you to-morrow!

The bridal party's going on an all-day motor trip."

Julius ran his hand through the crisp, half-curly locks of his black hair. "Cut it out. You don't need to be on every last one of their junketings. Get 'em to let you off for to-morrow."

"I can't possibly. I'm to be maid of honour, you know. Irene would never forgive me, nor--some of the others."

Julius frowned. "See here, you're not letting Ridge Jordan get any headway with you, are you? If you are you'd certainly better make him take a day off while you see what a real man is like. After you've had a good look at Kirke Waldron you'll be ready to let Tom Wendell and Ridge Jordan and the rest of those bridal party men go to thunder. I don't suppose Waldron was ever an usher or best man at a wedding in his life, but I tell you he'll make every one of those little society men look like copper cents, just the same."

Dorothy rose from her chair. Her brown eyes surveyed her brother from between heavy chestnut lashes, and just now they were very haughty eyes.

Her curving, crimson lips were scornful. "I find it difficult to believe," she observed, "that a boy whom I particularly detested, one of the most awkward, solemn-faced, uninteresting boys I ever saw in my life, can have blossomed into such a wonder. As for Ridgeway Jordan, I like him very much. He may be a society man--which is no crime, I believe--but he is also making quite as good, in his way, as your friend, Mr. Waldron.

And I certainly am not going to throw over an engagement as binding as this one to give anybody 'the time of his life.'"

She walked out of the room, cancelling the effect of her haughtiness by turning to throw back a smile at her brother, as ravishing a smile as if he were no brother at all.

Her sister, Mrs. Jack Elliot, entering in time to glance curiously from Dorothy's smile to Julius's scowl, inquired of Julius what might be the matter.

He shook his head. "I don't like the symptoms. She takes it more and more seriously when I hit Ridge Jordan in any way. I like Ridge myself, but I wouldn't see Dot marry him for a good deal."

"I don't believe there is the least danger," his elder sister replied.

She looked a mere girl herself. She was immolating herself just now, as was everybody else in the suburban town, on the altar of the Clifford-Jordan bridal party. That the dinners and dances, drives and luncheons might proceed without hindrance many family schedules were being upset. Mrs. Jack's one anxiety at present was to have her charming sister's bloom remain unworn by fatigue. Thus far Dorothy was holding out better than any of the other bridesmaids. "Her colour was just as good as ever, wasn't it?" Mrs. Jack murmured absently, preparing to remove Dorothy's fruit plate. "I don't believe she ate a thing but fruit," she murmured.

"Best thing she could do. After the stuff she undoubtedly got away with at midnight her only salvation's a light breakfast. As to her colour, I enriched it," he explained grimly, "by mentioning my feeling about Ridge.

If I thought, after all the attentions that girl has had, that she'd take Ridge Jordan--with all his money! Dot's no girl to care such a lot about money. It's this crazy bridal-party business that's upset her, I'll go you! The thing's contagious. Lord Harry! I don't know that I could look long at Irene and Harold myself without getting a touch of it."

"A touch! You and Sally?" Mrs. Jack smiled.

"Oh, well; that's different." Her brother thrust his hands into his pockets and walked over to the window. "Entirely different. Sally and I were intended for each other from the beginning; everybody knows that.

But now--what in thunder am I going to do with Waldron? Tell me that.

I've got him to come down here expressly to meet Dot. Of course I didn't tell him so; he's not that sort. And now she's off for all to-morrow with that confounded bridal party."

"Can't he come some other time?"

"I should say not; certainly not for months. He's off to South America for a long stay--has this one day to himself. You see it wasn't till I met him yesterday that I realized what the fellow had become; and then it came over me all at once what it might mean to have him meet Dot just now. I'm no matchmaker--"