Chambers Robert William
The Dark Star

“Listen, Ben. I’m a busy man. I got to be back in town and I got to have a wedding trip too. You know me, Ben. You know what I mean. That’s me. When I do a thing I do it. Maybe I make plenty of mistakes. Hell! I’d rather make ’em than sit pat and do nothing!”

“You’re crazy.”

“Don’t bet on it, Ben. I know what I want. I’m going to make money. Things are going big with me–”

“You tinhorn! You always say that!”

“Watch me. I bet you I make a killing at Saratoga! I bet you I make good with Morris Stein! I bet you the first show I put on goes big! I bet–”

“Ah, can it!”

“Wait! I bet you I marry that little girl in two weeks and she stands for it when I tell her later we’d better get married again!”

“Say! Talk sense!”

“I am.”

“What’ll they do to you if your wife makes a holler?”

“Who ever heard of her or me in the East?”

“You want to take a chance like that?”

“I’ll fix it. I haven’t got time to wait for Minna to shake me loose. Besides, she’s in Seattle. I’ll fix it so she doesn’t hear until she gets her freedom. I’ll get a license right here. I guess I’ll use your name–”

“What!” yelled Stull.

“Shut your face!” retorted Brandes. “What do you think you’re going to do, squeal?”

“You think I’m going to stand for that?”

“Well, then, I won’t use your name. I’ll use my own. Why not? I mean honest. It’s dead level. I’ll remarry her. I want her, I tell you. I want a wedding trip, too, before I go back–”

“With the first rehearsal called for September fifteenth! What’s the matter with you? Do you think Stein is going to stand for–”

“You’ll be on hand,” said Brandes pleasantly. “I’m going to Paris for four weeks – two weeks there, two on the ocean–”

“You–”

“Save your voice, Ben. That’s settled.”

Stull turned upon him a dead white visage distorted with fury:

“I hope she throws you out!” he said breathlessly. “You talk about being on the level! Every level’s crooked with you. You don’t know what square means; a square has got more than four corners for you! Go on! Stick around. I don’t give a damn what you do. Go on and do it. But I quit right here.”

Both knew that the threat was empty. As a shadow clings to a man’s heels, as a lost soul haunts its slayer, as damnation stalks the damned, so had Stull followed Brandes; and would follow to the end. Why? Neither knew. It seemed to be their destiny, surviving everything – their bitter quarrels, the injustice and tyranny of Brandes, his contempt and ridicule sometimes – enduring through adversity, even penury, through good and bad days, through abundance and through want, through shame and disgrace, through trickery, treachery, and triumph – nothing had ever broken the occult bond which linked these two. And neither understood why, but both seemed to be vaguely conscious that neither was entirely complete without the other.

“Ben,” said Brandes affably, “I’m going to walk over to Gayfield. Want to come?”

They went off, together.

CHAPTER VII
OBSESSION

By the end of the week Brandes had done much to efface any unpleasant impression he had made on Ruhannah Carew.

The girl had never before had to do with any mature man. She was therefore at a disadvantage in every way, and her total lack of experience emphasised the odds.

Nobody had ever before pointedly preferred her, paid her undivided attention; no man had ever sought her, conversed with her, deferred to her, interested himself in her. It was entirely new to her, this attention which Brandes paid her. Nor could she make any comparisons between this man and other men, because she knew no other men. He was an entirely novel experience to her; he had made himself interesting, had proved amusing, considerate, kind, generous, and apparently interested in what interested her. And if his unfeigned preference for her society disturbed and perplexed her, his assiduous civilities toward her father and mother were gradually winning from her far more than anything he had done for her.

His white-faced, odd little friend had gone; he himself had taken quarters at the Gayfield House, where a car like the wrecked one was stabled for his use.

He had already taken her father and mother and herself everywhere within motoring distance; he had accompanied them to church; he escorted her to the movies; he walked with her in the August evenings after supper, rowed her about on the pond, fished from the bridge, told her strange stories in the moonlight on the verandah, her father and mother interested and attentive.

For the career of Mr. Eddie Brandes was capable of furnishing material for interesting stories if carefully edited, and related with discretion and circumspection. He had been many things to many men – and to several women – he had been a tinhorn gambler in the Southwest, a miner in Alaska, a saloon keeper in Wyoming, a fight promoter in Arizona. He had travelled profitably on popular ocean liners until requested to desist; Auteuil, Neuilly, Vincennes, and Longchamps knew him as tout, bookie, and, when fitfully prosperous, as a plunger. Epsom knew him once as a welcher; and knew him no more.

He had taken a comic opera company through the wheat-belt – one way; he had led a burlesque troupe into Arizona and had traded it there for a hotel.

“When Eddie wants to talk,” Stull used to say, “that smoke, Othello, hasn’t got nothing on him.”

However, Brandes seldom chose to talk. This was one of his rare garrulous occasions; and, with careful self-censorship, he was making an endless series of wonder-tales out of the episodes and faits divers common to the experience of such as he.

So, of moving accidents by flood and field this man had a store, and he contrived to make them artistically innocuous and perfectly fit for family consumption.

Further, two of his friends motored over from Saratoga to see him, were brought to supper at the Carews’; and they gave him a clean bill of moral health. They were, respectively, “Doc” Curfoot – suave haunter of Peacock Alley and gentleman “capper” – whom Brandes introduced as the celebrated specialist, Doctor Elbert Curfoot – and Captain Harman Quint, partner in “Quint’s” celebrated temple of chance – introduced as the distinguished navigating officer which he appeared to be. The steering for their common craft, however, was the duty of the eminent Doc.

They spent the evening on the verandah with the family; and it was quite wonderful what a fine fellow each turned out to be – information confidentially imparted to the Reverend Mr. Carew by each of the three distinguished gentlemen in turn.

Doc Curfoot, whose business included the ability to talk convincingly on any topic, took the Reverend Mr. Carew’s measure and chose literature; and his suave critique presently became an interesting monologue listened to in silence by those around him.

Brandes had said, “Put me in right, Doc,” and Doc was accomplishing it, partly to oblige Brandes, partly for practice. His agreeable voice so nicely pitched, so delightfully persuasive, recapitulating all the commonplaces and cant phrases concerning the literature of the day, penetrated gratefully the intellectual isolation of these humble gentlepeople, and won very easily their innocent esteem. With the Reverend Mr. Carew Doc discussed such topics as the influence on fiction of the ethical ideal. With Mrs. Carew Captain Quint exchanged reminiscences of travel on distant seas. Brandes attempted to maintain low-voiced conversation with Rue, who responded in diffident monosyllables to his advances.

Brandes walked down to their car with them after they had taken their leave.

“What’s the idea, Eddie?” inquired Doc Curfoot, pausing before the smart little speeder.

“It’s straight.”

“Oh,” said Doc, softly, betraying no surprise – about the only thing he never betrayed. “Anything in it for you, Eddie?”

“Yes. A good girl. The kind you read about. Isn’t that enough?”

“Minna chucked you?” inquired Captain Quint.

“She’ll get her decree in two or three months. Then I’ll have a home. And everything that you and I are keeps out of that home, Cap. See?”

“Certainly,” said Quint. “Quite right, Eddie.”

Doc Curfoot climbed in and took the wheel; Quint followed him.

“Say,” he said in his pleasant, guarded voice, “watch out that Minna don’t double-cross you, Eddie.”

“How?”

“ – Or shoot you up. She’s some schutzen-fest, you know, when she turns loose–”

“Ah, I tell you she wants the divorce. Abe Grittlefeld’s crazy about her. He’ll get Abe Gordon to star her on Broadway; and that’s enough for her. Besides, she’ll marry Maxy Venem when she can afford to keep him.”

“You never understood Minna Minti.”

“Well, who ever understood any German?” demanded Brandes. “She’s one of those sour-blooded, silent Dutch women that make me ache.”

Doc pushed the self-starter; there came a click, a low humming. Brandes’ face cleared and he held out his square-shaped hand:

“You fellows,” he said, “have put me right with the old folks here. I’ll do the same for you some day. Don’t talk about this little girl and me, that’s all.”

“All the same,” repeated Doc, “don’t take any chances with Minna. She’s on to you, and she’s got a rotten Dutch disposition.”

“That’s right, Doc. And say, Harman,” – to Quint – “tell Ben he’s doing fine. Tell him to send me what’s mine, because I’ll want it very soon now. I’m going to take a month off and then I’m going to show Stein how a theatre can be run.”

“Eddie,” said Quint, “it’s a good thing to think big, but it’s a damn poor thing to talk big. Cut out the talk and you’ll be a big man some day.”

The graceful car moved forward into the moonlight; his two friends waved an airy adieu; and Brandes went slowly back to the dark verandah where sat a young girl, pitifully immature in mind and body – and two old people little less innocent for all their experience in the ranks of Christ, for all the wounds that scarred them both in the over-sea service which had broken them forever.

“A very handsome and distinguished gentleman, your friend Dr. Curfoot,” said the Reverend Mr. Carew. “I imagine his practice in New York is not only fashionable but extensive.”

“Both,” said Brandes.

“I assume so. He seems to be intimately acquainted with people whose names for generations have figured prominently in the social columns of the New York press.”

“Oh, yes, Curfoot and Quint know them all.”

Which was true enough. They had to. One must know people from whom one accepts promissory notes to liquidate those little affairs peculiar to the temple of chance. And New York’s best furnished the neophytes for these rites.

“I thought Captain Quint very interesting,” ventured Ruhannah. “He seems to have sailed over the entire globe.”

“Naval men are always delightful,” said her mother. And, laying her hand on her husband’s arm in the dark: “Do you remember, Wilbour, how kind the officers from the cruiser Oneida were when the rescue party took us aboard?”

“God sent the Oneida to us,” said her husband dreamily. “I thought it was the end of the world for us – for you and me and baby Rue – that dreadful flight from the mission to the sea.”

His bony fingers tightened over his wife’s toilworn hand. In the long grass along the creek fireflies sparkled, and their elfin lanterns, waning, glowing, drifted high in the calm August night.

The Reverend Mr. Carew gathered his crutches; the night was a trifle damp for him; besides, he desired to read. Brandes, as always, rose to aid him. His wife followed.

“Don’t stay out long, Rue,” she said in the doorway.

“No, mother.”

Brandes came back. Departing from his custom, he did not light a cigar, but sat in silence, his narrow eyes trying to see Ruhannah in the darkness. But she was only a delicate shadow shape to him, scarcely detached from the darkness that enveloped her.

He meant to speak to her then. And suddenly found he could not, realised, all at once, that he lacked the courage.

This was the more amazing and disturbing to him because he could not remember the time or occasion when the knack of fluent speech had ever failed him.

He had never foreseen such a situation; it had never occurred to him that he would find the slightest difficulty in saying easily and gracefully what he had determined to say to this young girl.

Now he sat there silent, disturbed, nervous, and tongue-tied. At first he did not quite comprehend what was making him afraid. After a long while he understood that it was some sort of fear of her – fear of her refusal, fear of losing her, fear that she might have – in some occult way – divined what he really was, that she might have heard things concerning him, his wife, his career. The idea turned him cold.

And all at once he realised how terribly in earnest he had become; how deeply involved; how vital this young girl had become to him.

Never before had he really wanted anything as compared to this desire of his for her. He was understanding, too, in a confused way, that such a girl and such a home for him as she could make was going not only to give him the happiness he expected, but that it also meant betterment for himself – straighter living, perhaps straighter thinking – the birth of something resembling self-respect, perhaps even aspiration – or at least the aspiration toward that respect from others which honest living dare demand.

He wanted her; he wanted her now; he wanted to marry her whether or not he had the legal right; he wanted to go away for a month with her, and then return and work for her, for them both – build up a fortune and a good reputation with Stein’s backing and Stein’s theatre – stand well with honest men, stand well with himself, stand always, with her, for everything a man should be.

If she loved him she would forgive him and quietly remarry him as soon as Minna kicked him loose. He was confident he could make her happy, make her love him if once he could find courage to speak – if once he could win her. And suddenly the only possible way to go about it occurred to him.

His voice was a trifle husky and unsteady from the nervous tension when he at last broke the silence:

“Miss Rue,” he said, “I have a word to say to your father and mother. Would you wait here until I come back?”

“I think I had better go in, too–”

“Please don’t.”

“Why?” She stopped short, instinctively, but not surmising.

“You will wait, then?” he asked.

“I was going in… But I’ll sit here a little while.”

He rose and went in, rather blindly.

Ruhannah, dreaming there deep in her splint armchair, slim feet crossed, watched the fireflies sailing over the alders. Sometimes she thought of Brandes, pleasantly, sometimes of other matters. Once the memory of her drive home through the wintry moonlight with young Neeland occurred to her, and the reminiscence was vaguely agreeable.

Listless, a trifle sleepy, dreamily watching the fireflies, the ceaseless noise of the creek in her ears, inconsequential thoughts flitted through her brain – the vague, aimless, guiltless thoughts of a young and unstained mind.

She was nearly asleep when Brandes came back, and she looked up at him where he stood beside her porch chair in the darkness.

“Miss Rue,” he said, “I have told your father and mother that I am in love with you and want to make you my wife.”

The girl lay there speechless, astounded.

CHAPTER VIII
A CHANGE IMPENDS

The racing season at Saratoga drew toward its close, and Brandes had appeared there only twice in person, both times with a very young girl.

“If you got to bring her here to the races, can’t you get her some clothes?” whispered Stull in his ear. “That get-up of hers is something fierce.”

Late hours, hot weather, indiscreet nourishment, and the feverish anxiety incident to betting other people’s money had told on Stull. His eyes were like two smears of charcoal on his pasty face; sourly he went about the business which Brandes should have attended to, nursing resentment – although he was doing better than Brandes had hoped to do.

Their joint commission from his winnings began to assume considerable proportions; at track and club and hotel people were beginning to turn and stare when the little man with the face of a sick circus clown appeared, always alone, greeting with pallid indifference his acquaintances, ignoring overtures, noticing neither sport, nor fashion, nor political importance, nor yet the fair and frail whose curiosity and envy he was gradually arousing.

Obsequiousness from club, hotel, and racing officials made no impression on him; he went about his business alone, sullen, preoccupied, deathly pale, asking no information, requesting no favours, conferring with nobody, doing no whispering and enduring none.

After a little study of that white, sardonic, impossible face, people who would have been glad to make use of him became discouraged. And those who first had recognised him in Saratoga found, at the end of the racing month, nothing to add to their general identification of him as “Ben Stull, partner of Eddie Brandes – Western sports.”

Stull, whispering in Brandes’ ear again, where he sat beside him in the grand stand, added to his earlier comment on Ruhannah’s appearance:

“Why don’t you fix her up, Eddie? It looks like you been robbing a country school.”

Brandes’ slow, greenish eyes marked sleepily the distant dust, where Mr. Sanford’s Nick Stoner was leading a brilliant field, steadily overhauling the favourite, Deborah Glenn.

“When the time comes for me to fix her up,” he said between thin lips which scarcely moved, “she’ll look like Washington Square in May – not like Fifth Avenue and Broadway.”

Nick Stoner continued to lead. Stull’s eyes resembled two holes burnt in a sheet; Brandes yawned. They were plunging the limit on the Sanford favourite.

As for Ruhannah, she sat with slender gloved hands tightly clasped, lips parted, intent, fascinated with the sunlit beauty of the scene.

Brandes looked at her, and his heavy, expressionless features altered subtly:

“Some running!” he said.

A breathless nod was her response. All around them repressed excitement was breaking out; men stood up and shouted; women rose, and the club house seemed suddenly to blossom like a magic garden of wind-tossed flowers.

Through the increasing cheering Stull looked on without a sign of emotion, although affluence or ruin, in the Sanford colours, sat astride the golden roan.

Suddenly Ruhannah stood up, one hand pressed to the ill-fitting blue serge over her wildly beating heart. Brandes rose beside her. Not a muscle in his features moved.

“Gawd!” whispered Stull in his ear, as they were leaving.

“Some killing, Ben!” nodded Brandes in his low, deliberate voice. His heavy, round face was deeply flushed; Fortune, the noisy wanton, had flung both arms around his neck. But his slow eyes were continually turned on the slim young girl whom he was teaching to walk beside him without taking his arm.

“Ain’t she on to us?” Stull had enquired. And Brandes’ reply was correct; Ruhannah never dreamed that it made a penny’s difference to Brandes whether Nick Stoner won or whether it was Deborah Glenn which the wild-voiced throng saluted.

They did not remain in Saratoga for dinner. They took Stull back to his hotel on the rumble of the runabout, Brandes remarking that he thought he should need a chauffeur before long and suggesting that Stull look about Saratoga for a likely one.

Halted in the crush before the United States Hotel, Stull decided to descend there. Several men in the passing crowds bowed to Brandes; one, Norton Smawley, known to the fraternity as “Parson” Smawley, came out to the curb to shake hands. Brandes introduced him to Rue as “Parson” Smawley – whether with some sinister future purpose already beginning to take shape in his round, heavy head, or whether a perverted sense of humour prompted him to give Rue the idea that she had been in godly company, it is difficult to determine.

He added that Miss Carew was the daughter of a clergyman and a missionary. And the Parson took his cue. At any rate Rue, leaning from her seat, listened to the persuasive and finely modulated voice of Parson Smawley with pleasure, and found his sleek, graceful presence and courtly manners most agreeable. There were no such persons in Gayfield.

She hoped, shyly, that if he were in Gayfield he would call on her father. Once in a very long while clergymen called on her father, and their rare visits remained a pleasure to the lonely invalid for months.

The Parson promised to call, very gravely. It would not have embarrassed him to do so; it was his business in life to have a sufficient knowledge of every man’s business to enable him to converse convincingly with anybody.

He took polished leave of her; took leave of Brandes with the faintest flutter of one eyelid, as though he understood Brandes’ game. Which he did not; nor did Brandes himself, entirely.

They had thirty miles to go in the runabout. So they would not remain to dinner. Besides, Brandes did not care to make himself conspicuous in public just then. Too many people knew more or less about him – the sort of people who might possibly be in communication with his wife. There was no use slapping chance in the face. Two quiet visits to the races with Ruhannah was enough for the present. Even those two visits were scarcely discreet. It was time to go.

Stull and Brandes stood consulting together beside the runabout; Rue sat in the machine watching the press of carriages and automobiles on Broadway, and the thronged sidewalks along which brilliant, animated crowds were pouring.

“I’m not coming again, Ben,” said Brandes, dropping his voice. “No use to hunt the limelight just now. You can’t tell what some of these people might do. I’ll take no chances that some fresh guy might try to start something.”

“Stir up Minna?” Stull’s lips merely formed the question, and his eyes watched Ruhannah.

“They couldn’t. What would she care? All the same, I play safe, Ben. Well, be good. Better send me mine on pay day. I’ll need it.”

Stull’s face grew sourer:

“Can’t you wait till she gets her decree?”

“And lose a month off? No.”

“It’s all coming your way, Eddie. Stay wise and play safe. Don’t start anything now–”

“It’s safe. If I don’t take September off I wait a year for my – honeymoon. And I won’t. See?”

They both looked cautiously at Ruhannah, who sat motionless, absorbed in the turmoil of vehicles and people.

Brandes’ face slowly reddened; he dropped one hand on Stull’s shoulder and said, between thin lips that scarcely moved:

“She’s all I’m interested in. You don’t think much of her, Ben. She isn’t painted. She isn’t dolled up the way you like ’em. But there isn’t anything else that matters very much to me. All I want in the world is sitting in that runabout, looking out of her kid eyes at a thousand or two people who ain’t worth the pair of run-down shoes she’s wearing.”

But Stull’s expression remained sardonic and unconvinced.

So Brandes got into his car and took the wheel; and Stull watched them threading a tortuous path through the traffic tangle of Broadway.

They sped past the great hotels, along crowded sidewalks, along the park, and out into an endless stretch of highway where hundreds of other cars were travelling in the same direction.

“Did you have a good time?” he inquired, shifting his cigar and keeping his narrow eyes on the road.

“Yes; it was beautiful – exciting.”

“Some horse, Nick Stoner! Some race, eh?”

“I was so excited – with everybody standing up and shouting. And such beautiful horses – and such pretty women in their wonderful dresses! I – I never knew there were such things.”

He swung the car, sent it rushing past a lumbering limousine, slowed a little, gripped his cigar between his teeth, and watched the road, both hands on the wheel.

Yes, things were coming his way – coming faster and faster all the while. He had waited many years for this – for material fortune – for that chance which every gambler waits to seize when the psychological second ticks out. But he never had expected that the chance was to include a very young girl in a country-made dress and hat.

As they sped westward the freshening wind from distant pine woods whipped their cheeks; north, blue hills and bluer mountains beyond took fairy shape against the sky; and over all spread the tremendous heavens where fleets of white clouds sailed the uncharted wastes, and other fleets glimmered beyond the edges of the world, hull down, on vast horizons.

“I want to make you happy,” said Brandes in his low, even voice. It was, perhaps, the most honest statement he had ever uttered.

Ruhannah remained silent, her eyes riveted on the far horizon.

It was a week later, one hot evening, that he telegraphed to Stull in Saratoga:

“Find me a chauffeur who will be willing to go abroad. I’ll give you twenty-four hours to get him here.”

The next morning he called up Stull on the telephone from the drug store in Gayfield:

“Get my wire, Ben?”

“Yes. But I–”

“Wait. Here’s a postscript. I also want Parson Smawley. I want him to get a car and come over to the Gayfield House. Tell him I count on him. And he’s to wear black and a white tie.”

“Yes. But about that chauffeur you want–”

“Don’t argue. Have him here. Have the Parson, also. Tell him to bring a white tie. Understand?”

“Oh, yes, I understand you, Eddie! You don’t want anything of me, do you! Go out and get that combination? Just like that! What’ll I do? Step into the street and whistle?”

“It’s up to you. Get busy.”

“As usual,” retorted Stull in an acrid voice. “All the same. I’m telling you there ain’t a chauffeur you’d have in Saratoga. Who handed you that dope?”

“Try. I need the chauffeur part of the combine, anyway. If he won’t go abroad, I’ll leave him in town. Get a wiggle on, Ben. How’s things?”

“All right. We had War-axe and Lady Johnson. Some killing, eh? That stable is winning all along. We’ve got Adriutha and Queen Esther today. The Ocean Belle skate is scratched. Doc and Cap and me is thick with the Legislature outfit. We’ll trim ’em tonight. How are you feeling, Eddie?”

“Never better. I’ll call you up in the morning. Ding-dong!”

“Wait! Are you really going abroad?” shouted Stull.

But Brandes had already hung up.

He walked leisurely back to Brookhollow through the sunshine. He had never been as happy in all his life.