_ CHAPTER XXI
If ten minutes make half an hour, then it took Jack that long to rush upstairs, two steps at a time, burst into his room, strip off his boots, tear off his wet clothes, struggle into others jerked from his wardrobe, tie a loose, red-silk scarf under the rolling collar of his light-blue flannel shirt, slip into a grey pea- jacket and unmentionables, give his hair a brush and a promise, tilt a dry hat on one side of his head and skip down-stairs again.
Old Mrs. Hicks had seen him coming and had tried to catch him as he flew out the door, hoping to get some more definite news of the calamity which had stirred the village, but he was gone before she could reach the front hall.
He had not thought of his better clothes; there might still be work to do, and his Chief might again need his services. Ruth would understand, he said to himself--all of which was true. Indeed, she liked him better in his high-water rubber boots, wide slouch hat and tarpaulins than in the more conventional suit of immaculate black with which he clothed his shapely body whenever he took her to one of the big dinners at one of the great houses on Washington Square.
And she liked this suit best of all. She had been peeping through the curtains and her critical admiring eyes had missed no detail. She saw that the cavalier boots were gone, but she recognized the short pea-jacket and the loose rolling collar of the soft flannel shirt circling the strong, bronzed throat, and the dash of red in the silken scarf.
And so it is not surprising that when he got within sight of her windows, his cheeks aflame with the crisp air, his eyes snapping with the joy of once more hearing her voice, her heart should have throbbed with an undefinable happiness and pride as she realized that for a time, at least, he was to be all her own. And yet when he had again taken her hand--the warmth of his last pressure still lingered in her palm--and had looked into her eyes and had said how he hoped he had not kept her waiting, all she could answer in reply was the non-committal remark:
"Well, now you look something like"--at which Jack's heart gave a great bound, any compliment, however slight, being so much manna to his hungry soul; Ruth adding, as she led the way into the sitting-room, "I lighted the wood fire because I was afraid you might still be cold."
And ten minutes had been enough for Ruth.
It had been one of those lightning changes which a pretty girl can always make when her lover is expected any instant and she does not want to lose a moment of his time, but it had sufficed. Something soft and clinging it was now; her lovely, rounded figure moving in its folds as a mermaid moves in the surf; her hair shaken cut and caught up again in all its delicious abandon; her cheeks, lips, throat, rose-color in the joy of her expectancy.
He sat drinking it all in. Had a mass of outdoor roses been laid by his side, their fragrance filling the air, the beauty of their coloring entrancing his soul, he could not have been more intoxicated by their beauty.
And yet, strange to say, only commonplaces rose to his lips. All the volcano beneath, and only little spats of smoke and dying bits of ashes in evidence! Even the message of his Chief about her not getting a new bonnet all summer seemed a godsend under the circumstances. Had there been any basis for her self-denial he would not have told her, knowing how much anxiety she had suffered an hour before. But there was no real good reason why she should economize either in bonnets or in anything else she wanted. McGowan, of course, would be held responsible; for whatever damage had been done he would have to pay. He had been present when the young architect's watchful and trained eye had discovered some defects in the masonry of the wing walls of the McGowan culvert bridging the stream, and had heard him tell the contractor, in so many words that if the water got away and smashed anything below him he would charge the loss to his account. McGowan had groveled in dissent, but it had made no impression on Garry, whose duty it was to see that the work was properly carried out and whose signature loosened the village purse strings.
None of these details would interest Ruth; nor was it necessary that they should. The bonnet, however, was another matter. Bonnets were worn over pretty heads and framed lovely hair and faces and eyes--one especially! And then again any pleasantry of her father's would tend to relieve her mind after the anxiety of the morning. Yes, the bonnet by all means!
"Oh, I never gave you your father's message," he began, laying aside his cup, quite as if he had just remembered it. "I ought to have done so before you hung up the hat you wore a while ago."
Ruth looked up, smiling: "Why?" There was a roguish expression about her mouth as she spoke. She was very happy this afternoon.
"He says you won't get a new bonnet all summer," continued Jack, toying with the end of the ribbon that floated from her waist.
Ruth put down her cup and half rose from her chair All the color had faded from her cheeks.
"Did he tell you that?" she cried, her eyes staring into his, her voice trembling as if from some sudden fright.
Jack gazed at her in wonderment:
"Yes--of course he did and--Why, Miss Ruth!--Why, what's the matter! Have I said anything that--"
"Then something serious has happened," she interrupted in a decided tone. "That is always his message to me when he is in trouble. That is what he telegraphed me when he lost the coffer- dam in the Susquehanna. Oh!--he did not really tell you that, did he, Mr. Breen?" The old anxious note had returned--the one he had heard at the "fill."
"Yes--but nothing serious HAS happened, Miss Ruth," Jack persisted, his voice rising in the intensity of his conviction, his earnest, truthful eyes fixed on hers--"nothing that will not come out all right in the end. Please, don't be worried, I know what I am talking about."
"Oh, yes, it is serious," she rejoined with equal positiveness. "You do not know daddy. Nothing ever discourages him, and he meets everything with a smile--but he cannot stand any more losses. The explosion was bad enough, but if this 'fill' is to be rebuilt, I don't know what will be the end of it. Tell me over again, please --how did he look when he said it?--and give me just the very words. Oh, dear, dear daddy! What will he do?" The anxious note had now fallen to one of the deepest suffering.
Jack repeated the message word for word, all his tenderness in his tones--patting her shoulder in his effort to comfort her--ending with a minute explanation of what Garry had told him: but Ruth would not be convinced.
"But you don't know daddy," she kept repeating "You don't know him. Nobody does but me. He would not have sent that message had he not meant it. Listen! There he is now!" she cried, springing to her feet.
She had her arms around her father's neck, her head nestling on his shoulder before he had fairly entered the door. "Daddy, dear, is it very bad?" she murmured.
"Pretty bad, little girl," he answered, smoothing her cheek tenderly with his chilled fingers as he moved with her toward the fire, "but it might have been worse but for the way Breen handled the men."
"And will it all have to be rebuilt?"
She was glad for Jack, but it was her father who now filled her mind.
"That I can't tell, Puss"--one of his pet names for her, particularly when she needed comforting--"but it's safe for the night, anyway."
"And you have worked so hard--so hard!" Her beautiful arms, bare from the elbow, were still around his neck, her cheek pressed close--her lovely, clinging body in strong contrast to the straight, gray, forceful man in the wet storm-coat, who stood with arms about her while he caressed her head with his brown fingers.
"Well, Puss, we have one consolation--it wasn't our fault--the 'fill' is holding splendidly although it has had a lively shaking up. The worst was over in ten minutes, but it was pretty rough while it lasted. I don't think I ever saw water come so fast. I saw you with Breen, but I couldn't reach you then. Look out for your dress, daughter. I'm pretty wet."
He released her arms from his neck and walked toward the fire, stripping off his gray mackintosh as he moved. There he stretched his hands to the blaze sod went on: "As I say, the 'fill' is safe and will stay so, for the water is going down rapidly; dropped ten feet, Breen, since you left. My!--but this fire feels good! Got into something dry--did you, Breen? That's right. But I am not satisfied about the way the down-stream end of the culvert acts"-- this also was addressed to Jack--"I am afraid some part of the arch has caved in. It will be bad if it has--we shall know in the morning. You weren't frightened, Puss, were you?"
She did not answer. She had heard that cheery, optimistic note in her father's voice before; she knew how much of it was meant for her ears. None of his disasters were ever serious, to hear daddy talk--"only the common lot of the contracting engineer, little girl," he would say, kissing her good-night, while he again pored over his plans, sometimes until daylight.
She crept up to him the closer and nestled her fingers inside his collar--an old caress of hers when she was a child, then looking up into his eyes she asked with almost a throb of suffering in her voice, "Is it as bad as the coffer-dam, daddy?"
Jack looked on in silence. He dared not add a word of comfort of his own while his Chief held first place in soothing her fears.
MacFarlane passed his hand over her forehead--"Don't ask me, child! Why do you want to bother your dear head over such things, Puss?" he asked, as he stroked her hair.
"Because I must and will know. Tell me the truth," she demanded, lifting her head, a note of resolve in her voice. "I can help you the better if I know it all." Some of the blood of one of her great-great-grandmothers, who had helped defend a log-house in Indian times, was asserting itself. She could weep, but she could fight, too, if necessary.
"Well, then, I'm afraid it is worse than the coffer-dam," he answered in all seriousness. "It may be a matter of twelve or fifteen thousand dollars--maybe more, if we have to rebuild the 'fill.' I can't tell yet."
Ruth released her grasp, moved to the sofa and sank down, her chin resting on her hand. Twelve or fifteen thousand dollars! This meant ruin to everybody--to her father, to--a new terror now flashed into her mind--to Jack--yes, Jack! Jack would have to go away and find other work--and just at the time, too, when he was getting to be the old Jack once more. With this came another thought, followed by an instantaneous decision--what could she do to help? Already she had determined on her course. She would work --support herself--relieve her father just that much.
An uncomfortable silence followed. For some moments no one spoke. Her father, stifling a sigh, turned slowly, pushed a chair to the fire and settled into it, his rubber-encased knees wide apart, so that the warmth of the blaze could reach most of his body. Jack found a seat beside him, his mind on Ruth and her evident suffering, his ears alert for any fresh word from his Chief.
"I forgot to tell you, Breen," MacFarlane said at last, "that I came up the track just now as far as the round-house with the General Manager of the Road. He has sent one of his engineers to look after that Irishman's job before he can pull it to pieces to hide his rotten work--that is, what is left of it. Of course it means a lawsuit or a fight in the Village Council. That takes time and money, and generally costs more than you get. I've been there before, Breen, and know."
"Does he understand about McGowan's contract?" inquired Jack mechanically, his eyes on Ruth. Her voice still rang in his ears-- its pathos and suffering stirred him to his very depths.
"Yes--I told him all about it," MacFarlane replied. "The Road will stand behind us--so the General Manager says--but every day's delay is ruinous to them. It will be night-and-day work for us now, and no let-up. I have notified the men." He rose from his seat and crossed to his daughter's side, and leaning over, drew her toward him: "Brace up, little girl," there was infinite tenderness in his cadences--"it's all in a lifetime. There are only two of us, you know--just you and me, daughter--just you and me--just two of us. Kiss me, Puss."
Regaining his full height he picked up his storm-coat from the chair where he had flung it, and with the remark to Jack, that he would change his clothes, moved toward the door. There he beckoned to him, waited until he had reached his side, and whispering in his ear: "Talk to her and cheer her up, Breen. Poor little girl-- she worries so when anything like this happens"--mounted the stairs to his room.
"Don't worry, Miss Ruth," said Jack in comforting tones as he returned to where she sat. "We will all pull out yet."
"It is good of you to say so," she replied, lifting her head and leaning back so that she could look into his eyes the better, "but I know you don't think so. Daddy was just getting over his losses on the Susquehanna bridge. This work would have set him on his feet. Those were his very words--and he was getting so easy in his mind, too--and we had planned so many things!"
"But you can still go to Newport," Jack pleaded. "We will be here some months yet, and--"
"Oh--but I won't go a step anywhere. I could not leave him now-- that is, not as long as I can help him."
"But aren't you going to the Fosters' and Aunt Felicia's?" She might not be, but it was good all the same to hear her deny it.
"Not to anybody's!" she replied, with an emphasis that left no doubt in his mind.
Jack's heart gave a bound.
"But you were going if we went to Morfordsburg," he persisted. He was determined to get at the bottom of all his misgivings. Perhaps, after all, Peter was right.
Ruth caught her breath. The name of the town had reopened a vista which her anxiety over her father's affairs had for the moment shut out.
"Well, but that is over now. I am going to stay here and help daddy." Again the new fear tugged at her heart. "You are going to stay, too, aren't you, Mr. Breen?" she added in quick alarm. "You won't leave him, will you?--not if--" again the terrible money loss rose before her. What if there should not be money enough to pay Jack?
"Me! Why, Miss Ruth!"
"But suppose he was not able to--" she could not frame the rest of the sentence.
"You can't suppose anything that would make me leave him, or the work." This also came with an emphasis of positive certainty. "I have never been so happy as I have been here. I never knew what it was to be myself. I never knew," he added in softened tones, "what it was to really live until I joined your father. Only last night Uncle Peter and I were talking about it. 'Stick to Mac,' the dear old fellow said." It was to Ruth, but he dared not express himself, except in parables. "Then you HAD thought of going?" she asked quickly, a shadow falling across her face.
"No--" he hesitated--"I had only thought of STAYING. It was you who were going--I was all broken up about being left here alone, and Uncle Peter wanted to know why I did not beg you to stay, and I--"
Ruth turned her face toward him.
"Well, I am going to stay," she answered simply. She did not dare to trust herself further.
"Yes!--and now I don't care what happens!" he exclaimed with a thrill in his voice. "If you will only trust me, Miss Ruth, and let me come in with you and your father. Let me help! Don't let there be only two--let us be three! Don't you see what a difference it would make? I will work and save every penny I can for him and take every bit of the care from his shoulders; but can't you understand how much easier it would be if you would only let me help you too? I could hardly keep the tears back a moment ago when I saw you sink down here. I can't see you unhappy like this and not try to comfort you."
"You do help me," she murmured softly. Her eyes had now dropped to the cushion at her side.
"Yes, but not--Oh, Ruth, don't you see how I love you! What difference does this accident make--what difference does anything make if we have each other?" He had his hand on hers now, and was bending over, his eyes eager for some answer in her own. "I have suffered so," he went on, "and I am so tired and so lonely without you. When you wouldn't understand me that time when I came to you after the tunnel blew up, I went about like one in a dream--and then I determined to forget it all, and you, and everything--but I couldn't, and I can't now. Maybe you won't listen--but please--"
Ruth withdrew her hand quickly and straightened her shoulders. The mention of the tunnel and what followed had brought with it a rush of memories that had caused her the bitterest tears of her life. And then again what did he mean by "helping"?
"Jack," she said slowly, as if every word gave her pain, "listen to me. When you saved my father's life and I wanted to tell you how much I thanked you for it, you would not let me tell you. Is not that true?"
"I did not want your gratitude, Ruth," he pleaded in excuse, his lips quivering, "I wanted your love."
"And why, then, should I not say to you now that I do not want your pity? Is it because you are--" her voice sank to a whisper, every note told of her suffering--"you are--sorry for me, Jack, that you tell me you love me?"
Jack sprang to his feet and stood looking down upon her. The cruelty of her injustice smote his heart. Had a man's glove been dashed in his face he could not have been more incensed. For a brief moment there surged through him all he had suffered for her sake; the sleepless nights, the days of doubts and misunderstandings! And it had come to this! Again he was treated with contempt--again his heart and all it held was trampled on. A wild protest rose in his throat and trembled on his lips.
At that instant she raised her eyes and looked into his. A look so pleading--so patient--so weary of the struggle--so ready to receive the blow--that the hot words recoiled in his throat. He bent his head to search her eyes the better. Down in their depths, as one sees the bottom of a clear pool he read the truth, and with it came a reaction that sent the hot blood rushing through his veins.
"Sorry for you, my darling!" he burst out joyously--"I who love you like my own soul! Oh, Ruth!--Ruth!--my beloved!"
He had her in his arms now, her cheek to his, her yielding body held close.
Then their lips met.
The Scribe lays down his pen. This be holy ground on which we tread. All she has she has given him: all the fantasies of her childhood, all the dreams of her girlhood, all her trust, her loyalty--her reverence--all to the very last pulsation of her being.
And this girl he holds in his arms! So pliant, so yielding, so pure and undefiled! And the silken sheen and intoxicating perfume of her hair, and the trembling lashes shading the eager, longing, soul-hungry eyes; and the way the little pink ears nestle; and the fair, white, dovelike throat, with its ripple of lace. And then the dear arms about his neck and the soft clinging fingers that are intertwined with his own! And more wonderful still, the perfect unison, the oneness, the sameness; no jar, no discordant note; mind, soul, desire--a harmony.
The wise men say there are no parallels in nature; that no one thing in the wide universe exactly mates and matches any other one thing; that each cloud has differed from every other cloud-form in every hour of the day and night, to-day, yesterday and so on back through the forgotten centuries; that no two leaves in form, color, or texture, lift the same faces to the sun on any of the million trees; that no wave on any beach curves and falls as any wave has curved and fallen before--not since the planet cooled. And so it is with the drift of wandering winds; with the whirl and crystals of driving snow, with the slant and splash of rain. And so, too, with the flight of birds; the dash and tumble of restless brooks; the roar of lawless thunder and the songs of birds.
The one exception is when we hold in our arms the woman we love, and for the first time drink in her willing soul through her lips. Then, and only then, does the note of perfect harmony ring true through the spheres.
For a long time they sat perfectly still. Not many words had passed, and these were only repetitions of those they had used before. "Such dear hands," Jack would say, and kiss them both up and down the fingers, and then press the warm, pink shell palm to his lips and kiss it again, shutting his eyes, with the reverence of a devotee at the feet of the Madonna.
"And, Jack dear," Ruth would murmur, as if some new thought had welled up in her heart--and then nothing would follow, until Jack would loosen his clasp a little--just enough to free the dear cheek and say:
"Go on, my darling," and then would come--
"Oh, nothing, Jack--I--" and once more their lips would meet.
It was only when MacFarlane's firm step was heard on the stairs outside that the two awoke to another world. Jack reached his feet first.
"Shall we tell him?" he asked, looking down into her face.
"Of course, tell him," braved out Ruth, uptilting her head with the movement of a fawn surprised in the forest.
"When?" asked Jack, his eager eyes on the opening door.
"Now, this very minute. I never keep anything from daddy."
MacFarlane came sauntering in, his strong, determined, finely cut features illumined by a cheery smile. He had squared things with himself while he had been dressing: "Hard lines, Henry, isn't it?" he had asked of himself, a trick of his when he faced any disaster like the present. "Better get Ruth off somewhere, Henry, don't you think so? Yes, get her off to-morrow. The little girl can't stand everything, plucky as she is." It was this last thought of his daughter that had sent the cheery smile careering around his firm lips. No glum face for Ruth!
They met him half-way down the room, the two standing together, Jack's arm around her waist.
"Daddy!"
"Yes, dear." He had not yet noted the position of the two, although he had caught the joyous tones in her voice.
"Jack and I want to tell you something. You won't be cross, will you?"
"Cross, Puss!" He stopped and looked at her wonderingly. Had Jack comforted her? Was she no longer worried over the disaster?
Jack released his arm and would have stepped forward, but she held him back.
"No, Jack,--let me tell him. You said a while ago, daddy, that there were only two of us--just you and I--and that it had always been so and--"
"Well, isn't it true, little girl?" It's extraordinary how blind and stupid a reasonably intelligent father can be on some occasions, and this one was as blind as a cave-locked fish.
"Yes, it WAS true, daddy, when you went upstairs, but--but--it isn't true any more! There are three of us now!" She was trembling all over with uncontrollable joy, her voice quavering in her excitement.
Again Jack tried to speak, but she laid her hand on his lips with--
"No, please don't, Jack--not yet--you will spoil everything."
MacFarlane still looked on in wonderment. She was much happier, he could see, and he was convinced that Jack was in some way responsible for the change, but it was all a mystery yet.
"Three of us!" MacFarlane repeated mechanically--"well, who is the other, Puss?"
"Why, Jack, of course! Who else could it be but Jack? Oh! Daddy!-- Please--please--we love each other so!"
That night a telegram went singing down the wires leaving a trail of light behind. A sleepy, tired girl behind an iron screen recorded it on a slip of yellow paper, enclosed it in an envelope, handed it to a half-awake boy, who strolled leisurely up to Union Square, turned into Fifteenth Street, mounted Peter's front stoop and so on up three flights of stairs to Peter's door. There he awoke the echoes into life with his knuckles.
In answer, a charming and most courtly old gentleman in an embroidered dressing-gown and slippers, a pair of gold spectacles pushed high up on his round, white head, his index finger marking the place in his book, opened the door.
"Telegram for Mr. Grayson," yawned the boy.
Ah! but there were high jinks inside the cosey red room with its low reading lamp and easy chairs, when Peter tore that envelope apart.
"Jack--Ruth--engaged!" he cried, throwing down his book. "MacFarlane delighted--What!--WHAT? Oh, Jack, you rascal!--you did take my advice, did you? Well I--well! I'll write them both--No, I'll telegraph Felicia--No, I won't!--I'll--Well!--well!--WELL! Did you ever hear anything like that?" and again his eyes devoured the yellow slip.
Not a word of the freshet; of the frightful loss; of the change of plans for the summer; of the weeks of delay and the uncertain financial outlook! And alas, dear reader--not a syllable, as you have perhaps noticed, of poor daddy tottering on the brink of bankruptcy; nor the slightest reference to brave young women going out alone in the cold, cold world to earn their bread! What were floods, earthquakes, cyclones, poverty, debt--what was anything that might, could, would or should happen, compared to the joy of their plighted troth! _