  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:
"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." |
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