Part 8 (1/2)
CHAPTER VII
With each stop of the cross-continent train rain-coated men, with occasionally a woman, entered the car and pa.s.sed down the corridor to disappear into the compartments. Porters wearing that air of authority and responsibility for which one might justly look in a premier or secretary of state, came and went; conductors punched tickets and answered questions more or less amiably; the wheels rattled and roared and ground ceaselessly; outside the rain descended with a persistence worthy a better cause.
From the window of her compartment Geraldine Courtlandt looked out upon a drenched world. There was nothing to see save a dense white sheet ten feet beyond the window. In an hour she and Steve would reach their destination, the first stop on the detour, she thought with a sudden mist before her eyes. She hoped that the storm was not an omen of what lay before them. She shook herself mentally. ”Don't be silly and superst.i.tious,” she admonished that Jerry Courtlandt who persisted in having a queer lumpy feeling in the region of her throat whenever she thought of the curious twist the apparently broad, straight road of her marriage had taken.
Her father had maintained his att.i.tude of angry aloofness. He had not come to the station to see her off, she had waited on the platform until the train started, hoping that he would relent at the last moment. He had sent a curt typewritten note to the effect that if she and Steve regained their common sense and returned to the Manor before the end of the year he would double the income he had allowed them. There were a dozen glorious American beauties in her compartment when she entered it.
The roses had set the atmosphere tingling with life and color and love.
Jerry laughed happily and kissed each one of them. How like her father it was to write the note with one hand and send flowers with the other.
What difference would it make if her income were doubled if she were disloyal to the promise she made when she married Steve, the girl thought, as chin on her hand she gazed unseeingly out at the rain. ”An easy conscience is more to be desired than great riches,” she paraphrased to herself as she thought of the weeks when she had been engaged to Greyson. Her heart still smarted with contrition as she remembered how ashamed she had been that she could make so little response to the love he lavished upon her. ”Never again!” she said aloud. ”I've made two mistakes, Bruce and Steve. From now on I'll do what I know to be right even if I hurt someone else and--and hate doing it. But--but just what shall I do for money?” she questioned with puckered brows.
She opened her beaded bag and poured the contents into her lap. ”How are the mighty fallen!” she quoted with a laugh as she looked down upon the collection displayed. A handkerchief, one gold pencil, the key to her safe-deposit box, the members.h.i.+p card of her club, a book of postage stamps. Nothing else. She had carried out the terms of the will in letter and spirit. After her bills had been paid she had transferred her bank balance to her father and had dropped her remaining cash into the box of a Salvation Army la.s.sie as she entered the station to take the west-bound train. The woman in the red-banded pokebonnet, standing on a board to keep her stout boots from the dampness, had looked at the bills crushed into her box, then after the donor incredulously. Such lavish generosity was rare in her experience.
Jerry frowningly regarded the objects in her lap. Not one cent of money.
”Being marooned on a desert island has nothing on being marooned on a ranch without a penny,” she mused under her breath. She hastily stuffed her belongings back into her bag as she heard an approaching whistle.
It was Steve. The queer merry-go-round of fortune had accomplished one thing, it had restored Steve's spirits. Since leaving New York he had been a different person from the morose, touchy individual she had known since her engagement to him. He had been companionable, sympathetic in a fraternal sort of way which had made her wish fervently that Fate had given her a brother instead of a husband.
”Won't you come in?” she asked as Courtlandt stopped at the open door, then as he entered, ”Is it time to get on my coat?”
”Not for half an hour.” He seated himself opposite her. There was a new expression in his eyes which set the girl's heart to beating uncomfortably. She couldn't define it, she couldn't meet it long enough to define it.
”Jerry,” there was an ”'tention company” note in his voice which brought her chin up defiantly, ”I suppose--if you complied with the terms of Uncle Nick's will you must be rather down and out financially--yes?” She succ.u.mbed to the lure of his smile and the laughter in his eyes.
”Thought telepathy,” she responded gayly. ”I was taking account of stock when you appeared. I have in this bag, one pencil, one handkerchief, one perfectly good club-members.h.i.+p card--good, that is, until January first--and a book of two-cent stamps. Those stamps won't imperil our hopes of the inheritance, will they?” she asked with exaggerated anxiety. ”Caleb Lawson held me up before I boarded the train. I had to sign a paper and show him my empty purse to prove that I was really the Beggar-maid, bare-pursed instead of barefooted, following my King Cophetua out into the cold, cold world.”
”Your simile is faulty. As I remember it the Beggar-maid loved the King.”
”Also the King loved the Beggar-maid. You're right, the similarity ceases with my lack of funds.”
”I shall open an account for you in the bank at Slippy Bend. Until then----” his hand went to his pocket. The girl's face whitened.
”Don't offer me money, Steve,” she commanded tensely.
”I'm not offering money. I am giving you what belongs to you. Aren't you earning what Uncle Nick left as well as I?”
”Weren't you earning your share of Father's money when you married me?”
”That's different.”
”Why? You refused to take my money. I refuse to take yours.”
”You will take it.”
Jerry leaned forward, her face as colorless as his.
”Take that 'Hands up!' expression out of your eyes, Steve. I shall not take a cent of your money. You will find that a Glamorgan has as much pride as a Courtlandt if she hasn't several generations of aristocrats behind her.” Her angry eyes blazed as he retorted laughingly:
”You forget. You're not a Glamorgan now.”