"Sure, if you want to put it that way," said Pearl "Come on! there"s the music again."
At the door she was taken from him by the audacious mill foreman.
Wilbur was chilled. Pearl had instantly recovered her public, or ballroom, manner. Could it be that she had not been rightly uplifted by the greatness of their moment? Did she realize all it would mean to them? But she was meltingly tender when at last they swayed in the waltz to "Home, Sweet Home." And it was he who bore her off under the witching moon to the side entrance of the Mansion. They lingered a moment in the protecting shadows. Pearl was chatty--not sufficiently impressed, it seemed to him, with the sweet gravity of this crisis.
"We"re engaged now," he reminded her. Pearl laughed lightly.
"Have it your own way, kid! Wha"d you say your name was?"
She kissed him again. Then he wandered off in the mystic night, far over a world reeling through golden moonshine, to reach his dark but glowing little room at an hour that would have disquieted Winona. It was the following day that he cheered her by displaying a new attention to his apparel, and it was before the ensuing Friday night dance that he had submitted his hands to her for embellishment--talking casually of love at first sight.
There followed for him a time of fearful delight, not unmarred by spells of troubled wonder. Pearl was not exclusively enough his. She danced with other men; she chatted with them as with her peers. She seemed even to encourage their advances. He would have preferred that she found these repulsive, but she continued gay, even hard, under his chiding.
"Tut, tut! I been told I got an awfully feminine nature. A girl of my type is bound to have gentleman friends," she protested.
He aged under this strain. He saw now that he must abandon his easy view about his future. He must, indeed, plan his life. He must choose his vocation, follow it grimly, with one end in view. Pearl must become his in the sight abandon his easy view about his future. He must, indeed, plan his life. He must choose his vocation, follow it grimly, with one end in view. Pearl must become his in the sight of G.o.d and man--especially man--with the least delay. He delighted Sam Pickering by continuing steadily at the linotype for five consecutive weeks, while business piled up at the First-Cla.s.s Garage and old Porter Howgill was asked vainly to do everything.
Then on a fateful night Lyman Teaford a.s.sumed a new and disquieting value in his life. Lyman Teaford, who for a dozen years had gone with Winona Penniman faithfully if not spectacularly; Lyman Teaford, dignified and genteel, who belonged to Newbern"s better set, had one night appeared at an affair of the Friday Night Social Club. Perhaps because he had reached the perilous forties he had suddenly determined to abandon the safe highway and seek adventure in miry bypaths. Perhaps he felt that he had austerely played the flute too long. At any rate, he came and danced with the lower element of Newbern, not oftener with Pearl than with others that first night. But he came again and danced much oftener with Pearl. There was no quick, hot alarm in the breast of Wilbur Cowan. Lyman Teaford was an old man, chiefly notable, in Wilbur"s opinion, for the remarkable fluency of his Adam"s apple while--with chin aloft--he played high notes on his silver flute.
Yet dimly at last he felt discomfort at Lyman"s crude persistence with Pearl. He danced with others now only when Pearl was firm in refusals.
Wilbur to her jested with venomous sarcasm at the expense of Lyman.
Women were difficult to understand, he thought. What could her motive be?
The drama, Greek in its severity, culminated with a hideous, a sickening velocity. On a Monday morning, in but moderate torment at Pearl"s inconsistency, Wilbur Cowan sat at the linotype in the _Advance_ office, swiftly causing type metal to become communicative about the week"s doings in Newbern. He hung a finished sheet of Sam Pickering"s pencilled copy on a hook, and casually surveyed the sheet beneath. It was a social item, he saw--the notice of a marriage. Then names amazingly leaped from it to sear his defenseless eyes. Lyman Teaford--Miss Pearl King! He gasped and looked about him. The familiar routine of the office was under way. In his little room beyond he could see Sam Pickering scribbling other items. He constrained himself to read the monstrous slander before him.
"Lyman N. Teaford, one of our best-known business men, was last evening united in the bonds of holy wedlock to Miss Pearl King, for some months employed at the Mansion House. The marriage service was performed by the Reverend Mallett at the parsonage, and was attended by only a few chosen friends. The happy pair left on the six-fifty-eight for a brief honeymoon at Niagara Falls, and on their return will occupy the Latimer mansion on North Oak Street, recently purchased by the groom in view of his approaching nuptials. A wide circle of friends wish them all happiness."
Wilbur Cowan again surveyed the office, and again peered sharply in at Sam Pickering. His first wild thought was that Sam had descended to a practical joke. If so it was a tasteless proceeding. But he must be game. It was surely a joke, and Sam and the others in the office would be watching him for signs of anguish. His machine steadily clicked off the item. He struck not one wrong letter. He hung the sheet of copy on its hook and waited for the explosion of crude humour. He felt that his impa.s.sive demeanour had foiled the mean intention. But no one regarded him. Sam Pickering wrote on. Terry Stamper stolidly ran off cards on the job press. They were all indifferent. Something told him it was not a joke.
He finished the next sheet of copy. Then, when he was certain he had not been jested with, he rose from the torturing machine, put on his coat, and told Sam Pickering he had an engagement. Sam hoped it wouldn"t keep him from work that afternoon.
Wilbur said "Possibly not," though he knew he would now loathe the linotype forever.
"By the way"--he managed it jauntily, as Sam bent again over his pad of yellow copy paper--"I see Lyme Teaford"s name is going to be in print this week."
Sam paused in his labour and chuckled.
"Yes, the old hard-sh.e.l.l is landed. That blonde hasn"t been bringing him his three meals a day all this time for nothing."
"She must have married him for his money," Wilbur heard himself saying in cold, cynical tones. The illumining thought had just come. That explained it.
"Sure," agreed Sam. "Why wouldn"t she?"
Late that afternoon, in the humble gymnasium at the rear of Pegleg McCarron"s, Spike Brennon emerged from a rally in which Wilbur Cowan had displayed unaccustomed spirit. Spike tenderly caressed his nose with a glove and tried to look down upon it. The swelling already showed to his oblique gaze.
"Say, kid," he demanded, irritably, "what"s the big idea? Is this murder or jest a friendly bout? You better behave or I"ll stop pullin" my punches."
It could not be explained to the aggrieved Spike that his opponent had for the moment convinced himself that he faced one of Newbern"s best-known business men.
Later he contented himself with observing Lyman Teaford at Niagara Falls. The fatuous groom stood heedlessly at the cataract"s verge. There was a simple push, and the world was suddenly a better place to live in.
As for his bereaved mate--he meditated her destruction, also, but this was too summary. It came to him that she had been a lovely and helpless victim of circ.u.mstances. For he had stayed on with Spike through the evening, and in a dearth of custom Spike, back of the bar, had sung in a whining tenor, "For she"s only a bird in a gilded cage----"
That was it. She had discarded him because he was penniless--had sold herself to be a rich man"s toy. She would pay for it in bitter anguish.
"Only a bird in a gilded cage," sang Spike again. An encore had been urged.
At noon the following day Winona Penniman, a copy of the _Advance_ before her, sat at the Penniman luncheon table staring dully into a dish of cold rice pudding. She had read again and again the unbelievable item. At length she snapped her head, as Spike Brennon would when now and again a clean blow reached his jaw, pushed the untouched dessert from her with a gesture of repugnance, and went aloft to her own little room. Here she sat at her neat desk of bird"s eye maple, opened her journal, and across a blank page wrote in her fine, firm hand, "What Life Means to Me."
It had seemed to her that it meant much. She would fill many pages. The name of Lyman Teaford would not there appear, yet his influence would be continuously present. She was not stricken as had been another reader of that fateful bit of news. But she was startled, feeling herself perilously cast afloat from old moorings. She began bravely and easily, with a choice literary flavour.
"My sensations may be more readily imagined than described."
This she found true. She could imagine them readily, but could not, in truth, describe them. She was shocked to discern that for the first time in her correct life there were distinctly imagined sensations which she could not bring herself to word, even in a volume forever sacred to her own eyes. A long time she sat imagining. At last she wrote, but the words seemed so petty.
All apparently that life meant to her was "How did she do it?"
She stared long at this. Then followed, as if the fruit of her further meditation: "There is a horrid bit of slang I hear from time to time--can it be that I need more pepper?"
After this she took from the bottom drawer of her bureau that long-forgotten gift from the facetious Dave Cowan. She held the stockings of tan silk before her, testing their fineness, their sheerness. She was still meditating. She snapped her dark head, perked it as might a puzzled wren.
"Certainly, more pepper!" she murmured.
CHAPTER XIV
A world once considered of enduring stability had crashed fearsomely about the ears of Winona Penniman and Wilbur Cowan. After this no support was to be trusted, however seemingly stout. Old foundations had crumbled, old inst.i.tutions perished, the walls of Time itself lay wrecked. They stared across the appalling desolation with frightened eyes. What next? In a world to be ruined at a touch, like a house of cards, what vaster ruin would ensue?
It did not shock Wilbur Cowan that nations should plunge into another madness the very day after a certain fair one, mentioned in his meditations as "My Pearl--My Pearl of great price," and eke--from the perfume label--"My Heart of Flowers," had revealed herself but a mortal woman with an eye for the good provider. It occasioned Winona not even mild surprise that the world should abandon itself to hideous war on the very day after Lyman Teaford had wed beyond the purple. It was awful, yet somehow fitting. Anything less than a World War would have appeared inconsequent, anti-climactic, to these two so closely concerned in the preliminary catastrophe, and yet so reticent that neither ever knew the other"s wound. Wilbur Cowan may have supposed that the entire Penniman family, Winona included, would rejoice that no more forever were they to hear the flute of Lyman Teaford. Certainly Winona never suspected that a mere boy had been desolated by woman"s perfidy and Lyman"s mad abandonment of all that people of the better sort most prize.
Other people, close observers of world events, declared that no real war would ensue; it would be done in a few days--a few weeks at most. But Winona and Wilbur knew better. Now anything could happen--and would. Of all Newbern"s wise folk these two alone foresaw the malign dimensions of the inevitably approaching cataclysm. They would fall grimly silent in the presence of conventional optimists. They knew the war was to be unparalleled for blood and tears, but they allowed themselves no more than sinister, vague prophecies, for they could not tell how they knew.
And they saw themselves active in war. They lost no time in doing that.
The drama of each drew to a splendid climax with the arrival in Newbern of a French officer--probably a general--bound upon a grave mission.
Wilbur"s general came to seek out the wife of Lyman Teaford.
To her he said in choice English: "Madame, I bring you sad news. This young man died gallantly on the field of battle--the flag of my country was about to be captured by the enemy when he leaped bravely forward, where no other would dare the storm of shot and sh.e.l.l, and brought the precious emblem safely back to our battle line. But even as the cheers of his comrades rang in his ears an enemy bullet laid him low. I sprang to his side and raised his head. His voice was already weak, for the bullet had found rest in his n.o.ble heart.
""Tell her," he breathed, "that she sent me to my death so that she might become only a bird in a gilded cage. But tell her also that I wish her happiness in her new life." Madame, he died there, while weeping soldiers cl.u.s.tered about with hats off and heads bowed--died with your name on his pale lips---"My Pearl of great price," he whispered, and all was over. I bring you this photograph, which to the last he wore above his heart. Observe the bullet hole and those dark stains that discolour your proud features."
Whereupon Mrs. Lyman Teaford would fall fainting to the floor and never again be the same woman, bearing to her grave a look of unutterable sadness, even amid the splendours of the newly furnished Latimer residence on North Oak Street.
Winona"s drama was less depressing. Possibly Winona at thirty-two had developed a resilience not yet achieved by Wilbur at twenty. She was not going to die upon a field of battle for any Lyman Teaford. She would brave dangers, however. She saw herself in a neat uniform, searching a battlefield strewn with the dead and wounded. To the latter she administered reviving cordial from a minute cask suspended at her trim waist by a cord. Sh.e.l.ls burst about her, but to these she paid no heed.
It was thus the French officer--a mere lieutenant, later promoted for gallantry under fire--first observed her. He called her an angel of mercy, and his soldiers--rough chaps, but hearty and outspoken--cheered her as La Belle Americaine.