The Dark Star

“Yes. I gave father three thousand. I kept three thousand.”

“In bills,” he repeated, laughing. “Is your suitcase locked?”

“Yes. I insisted on having my money in cash. So Mr. Wexall, of the Mohawk Bank, sent a messenger with it last evening.”

“But,” he asked, still immensely amused, “why do you want to travel about with three thousand dollars in bills in your suitcase?”

She flushed a little, tried to smile:

“I don’t know why. I never before had any money. It is – pleasant to know I have it.”

“But I’ll give you all you want, Rue.”

“Thank you… I have my own, you see.”

“Of course. Put it away in some bank. When you want pin money, ask me.”

She shook her head with a troubled smile.

“I couldn’t ask anybody for money,” she explained.

“Then you don’t have to. We’ll fix your allowance.”

“Thank you, but I have my money, and I don’t need it.”

This seemed to amuse him tremendously; and even Rue laughed a little.

“You are going to take your money to Paris?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“To buy things?”

“Oh, no. Just to have it with me.”

His rather agreeable laughter sounded again.

“So that was what you forgot to put in your suitcase,” he said. “No wonder you went back for it.”

“There was something else very important, too.”

“What, darling?”

“My drawings,” she explained innocently.

“Your drawings! Do you mean you’ve got them, too?”

“Yes. I want to take them to Paris and compare them with the pictures I shall see there. It ought to teach me a great deal. Don’t you think so?”

“Are you crazy to study?” he asked, touched to the quick by her utter ignorance.

“It’s all I dream about. If I could work that way and support myself and my father and mother–”

“But, Rue! Wake up! We’re married, little girl. You don’t have to work to support anybody!”

“I – forgot,” said the girl vaguely, her confused grey eyes resting on his laughing, greenish ones.

Still laughing, he summoned the waiter, paid the reckoning; Ruhannah rose as he did; they went slowly out together.

On the sidewalk beside their car stood the new chauffeur, smoking a cigarette which he threw away without haste when he caught sight of them. However, he touched the peak of his cap civilly, with his forefinger.

Brandes, lighting a cigar, let his slow eyes rest on the new man for a moment. Then he helped Rue into the tonneau, got in after her, and thoughtfully took the wheel, conscious that there was something or other about his new chauffeur that he did not find entirely to his liking.

CHAPTER X

DRIVING HEAD-ON

It was mid-afternoon when they began to pass through that series of suburbs which the city has flung like a single tentacle northward for a hundred miles along the eastern banks of the Hudson.

A smooth road of bluestone with a surface like velvet, rarely broken by badly paved or badly worn sections, ran straight south. Past mansions standing amid spacious lawns all ablaze with late summer and early autumn flowers they sped; past parks, long stretches of walls, high fences of wrought iron through which brief glimpses of woodlands and splendid gardens caught Rue’s eye. And, every now and then, slowing down to traverse some village square and emerging from the further limits, the great river flashed into view, sometimes glassy still under high headlands or along towering parapets of mountains, sometimes ruffled and silvery where it widened into bay or inland sea, with a glimmer of distant villages on the further shore.

Over the western bank a blinding sun hung in a sky without a cloud – a sky of undiluted azure; but farther south, and as the sun declined, traces of vapours from the huge but still distant city stained the heavens. Gradually the increasing haze changed from palest lavender and lemon-gold to violet and rose with smouldering undertones of fire. Beneath it the river caught the stains in deeper tones, flowing in sombre washes of flame or spreading wide under pastel tints of turquoise set with purple.

Now, as the sun hung lower, the smoke of every river boat, every locomotive speeding along the shores below, lay almost motionless above the water, tinged with the delicate enchantment of declining day.

And into this magic veil Rue was passing already through the calm of a late August afternoon, through tree-embowered villages and towns, the names of which she did not know – swiftly, inexorably passing into the iris-grey obscurity where already the silvery points of arc-lights stretched away into intricate geometrical designs – faint traceries as yet sparkling with subdued lustre under the sunset heavens.

Vast shadowy shapes towered up ahead – outlying public buildings, private institutions, industrial plants, bridges of iron and steel, the ponderous bowed spans of which crossed wildernesses of railroad tracks or craft-crowded waters.

Two enormous arched viaducts of granite stretched away through sparkling semi-obscurity – High Bridge and Washington Bridge. Then it became an increasing confusion of phantom masses against a fading sky – bridges, towers, skyscrapers, viaducts, boulevards, a wilderness of streets outlined by the growing brilliancy of electric lamps.

Brandes, deftly steering through the swarming maze of twilight avenues, turned east across the island, then swung south along the curved parapets and spreading gardens of Riverside Drive.

Perhaps Brandes was tired; he had become uncommunicative, inclined to silence. He did point out to her the squat, truncated mass where the great General slept; called her attention to the river below, where three grey battleships lay. A bugle call from the decks came faintly to her ears.

If Rue was tired she did not know it as the car swept her steadily deeper amid the city’s wonders.

On her left, beyond the trees, the great dwellings and apartments of the Drive were already glimmering with light in every window; to the right, under the foliage of this endless necklace of parks and circles, a summer-clad throng strolled and idled along the river wall; and past them moved an unbroken column of automobiles, taxicabs, and omnibuses.

At Seventy-second Street they turned to the east across the park, then into Fifth Avenue south once more. She saw the name of the celebrated avenue on the street corner, turned to glance excitedly at Brandes; but his preoccupied face was expressionless, almost forbidding, so she turned again in quest of other delightful discoveries. But there was nothing to identify for her the houses, churches, hotels, shops, on this endless and bewildering avenue of grey stone; as they swung west into Forty-second Street, she caught sight of the great marble mass of the Library, but had no idea what it was.

Into this dusky cañon, aflame with light, they rolled, where street lamps, the lamps of vehicles, and electric signs dazzled her unaccustomed eyes so that she saw nothing except a fiery vista filled with the rush and roar of traffic.

When they stopped, the chauffeur dropped from the rumble and came around to where a tall head porter in blue and silver uniform was opening the tonneau door.

Brandes said to his chauffeur:

“Here are the checks. Our trunks are at the Grand Central. Get them aboard, then come back here for us at ten o’clock.”