The Rose in the Ring

G >> George Barr McCutcheon >> The Rose in the Ring

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"You knew my father quite well, didn't you, Mr. Jenison? He has often
told me of the close friendship that existed between you in those
days, how he tried to help you and how appreciative you were."

David concealed his astonishment.

"They were wretched days for me," he said evasively.

"I am sure you wouldn't believe all the horrid things they said about
him, knowing him, as you did, for a kindly, honorable gentleman. My
mother was desperate, Mr. Jenison. She believed everything the lawyers
put into her head. Of course, I understand now why it was so necessary
to blacken his character. It was for the money--the alimony, they call
it. And, more than that, it was to compel the court to give me into
her custody. I had no choice in the matter, it seems, in spite of the
law which says a child may elect for herself after she is fourteen.
They made it so dreadful for him, that he could not take me, although
I would have gone with him, oh, so gladly. I--" She stopped short.

He waited for a moment, appalled by this undisguised antipathy to the
mother, who, as he knew so well, had been wronged beyond measure by
the beast whom the girl, in her ignorance, defended. "My dear Miss
Grand," he said, "I am more than sorry if any rude inquisitiveness on
my part has led you to--"

"Oh, I want to talk about it to you," she interrupted with a
directness that made him more uncomfortable than ever. "I know that
you knew my father for what he really was. You knew how kind and good
he was, and how nobly he befriended the Braddocks and all those
wretched show people. You know how they treated him in return for his
generosity. I feel as if I had known you always."

"It's very nice of you," he mumbled helplessly. "You say the show
people turned against him. Do you mean at the--er--the trial?"

She lifted her brows, a sudden coldness in her manner.

"Not at all. I refer to what happened afterward."

"I am quite ignorant, Miss Grand," he said, a certain hoarseness
creeping into his voice.

"He was actually compelled to pay something like twenty thousand
dollars on the complaint of Mary Braddock, who set up the claim that
she owned part of the show. It was a blackmailing scheme, pure and
simple, but he paid it. He is a man. He took his medicine like one."

David glowed. He felt the blood surge to his head; he grew warm with
suppressed joy.

"When did this happen?" he asked, the tremor of eagerness in his
voice.

"Oh, I don't remember--three or four years ago. It really never came
to a public trial. He settled her infamous claim out of court. Her
lawyers hounded him as if he were a rat."

"I happen to know that Mrs. Braddock was part owner in the show," he
said quietly.

"But he had already bought her out," she exclaimed. "He wrote all of
this to me, after it came out in the papers. I had the whole story
from him, just as it really happened. No, Mr. Jenison, he was
compelled to pay twice."

He was half smiling as he looked into her face. The smile died, for he
saw in the features of Bob Grand's daughter a startling resemblance to
the man himself, hitherto unnoted but now quite assertive. A moment
before he had thought her pretty; now he realized that he had scarcely
looked at her before. There was the same beady, intent gleam in her
dark eyes, which were set quite close to each other over a straight
nose with rather flat nostrils. Her mouth and chin were unlike
Grand's. They were perfect, they were beautiful. The eyes were
unmistakably his, and therefrom peered the character of the girl as
well as that of the man.

David was sharply cognizant of a feeling of repugnance. Much that had
puzzled him a moment before was perfectly plain to him now. She
championed the father because he had been stronger in her creation
than the mother.

"Did Mrs. Braddock prosecute her claim in person?" he asked, subduing
the impulse to set his friend right in the eyes of this girl.

"Not at all. She kept out of sight. Lawyers did it all."

"Did your father say where she was living at the time?"

"Oh, I know where she was living in London."

"London?" he said, suddenly cold.

"Yes. We saw her there, Centennial year. She had a home in one of
those nice little West End streets. Of course, we could have nothing
to do with her."

"Of course not," murmured he dumbly. "And Christine?"

"She was at the Sacred Heart Convent in Paris,--at school, you know.
Father wrote me about her."

He could not ask her the sickening question that was in his mind: was
Mary Braddock the woman in the case? But his heart was cold with
despair. He could not, would not believe it of her, and yet the
circumstances were damnably convincing.

"In a month, Mr. Jenison, I will be of age. I am sure that you, having
been such a friend to him, will be glad to know that I am going to
him. If he wants me, I shall stay with him."

"You--you will leave your mother?" he demanded, unconsciously drawing
back in his chair.

"Just because my mother cast him out is no reason why I should do
likewise. I love my father--I adore him! What did you say?"

Under his breath he had uttered the word "God!"

"I beg your pardon," he said hurriedly He felt like cursing her. "I
just happened to think of something," he explained.

"I am sorry to have bored you. I thought you'd like to know about
father after all these years. Pray forgive me."

"You intimated awhile ago that perhaps he could tell me where Mrs.
Braddock is living, he said. His forehead was covered with moisture.

"I've no doubt he knows, Mr. Jenison. She is living in New York."

She was perfectly calm and matter-of-fact about it. If there was more
that she could have told him, her inscrutable smile signified plainly
that it should be left for him to find out for himself.

He looked into her eyes for a moment without speaking. A feeling of
loathing such as he had never known before welled up in his heart
against this girl. He hated the sight of her face. He almost imagined
he could see its soft, warm tints changing subtly into the gray,
putty-like complexion of his oldtime enemy. A beastly jowl seemed
suddenly to spread from her smooth round cheek and sag heavy over her
neck; her smile, bewitching to other eyes than his, took on a
mysterious breadth that horrified him. He was seeing visions. He knew
that there was no change such as his mind pictured, and yet he could
not cast out the illusion. He arose abruptly, fearful that she might
see the repugnance in his eyes. He could not sit there an instant
longer, facing this reminder of Bob Grand. Something atavistic in his
nature urged him to strike out with all his strength at the fantastic
face that forced itself upon him.

"I beg your pardon," he said, and his voice sounded queer in his own
ears, "but I must get off some letters to-night. May I take you to the
stairs?"

A few minutes later he was lying flat on his back, fully dressed, on
the bed in his chamber, staring up at the ceiling, his brain a chaos
of anguish, dread, pity--and faith, after all, in Mary Braddock. The
walls seemed papered with the faces of Bob Grand and Roberta Grand. He
was haunted by them.

At daybreak he arose, without a single instant of sleep behind him.
His mind was made up to one purpose. He could not stay in the same
house with Roberta Grand.

Before going in to breakfast at eight o'clock, one of the young men in
the party of the night before asked the clerk at the desk if Mr.
Jenison had come down.

"Mr. Jenison left by the morning stage, Mr. Scott. He had a letter
calling him back to Jenison Hall. Something very important, sir. He
left a note for Miss Beaumont, I believe, to tell her he can't be back
in time for the trip to Natural Bridge."

CHAPTER II

THE STRANGER AT THE HALL

The letter that called David to Jenison Hall came, by curious
coincidence, at a most opportune time. He had decided to leave the
Springs within a day or two, cutting short his proposed stay of a
month almost at its beginning. The advent of Roberta Grand, heretofore
an unknown quantity, brought with it new and unpleasant complications.
Her revelations disturbed him, her attitude angered and disgusted him.
It was from this girl, so amazingly like her father, that he would
have fled in any event. His nature revolted against the possibility of
constant association with her, he scarcely could have maintained even
a perfunctory show of consideration for her. And then something told
him that her confidences would grow, that she would go farther in the
effort to justify her father. He realized that he could not stand by
and hear the things she doubtless would feel called upon to say in
respect to Mary Braddock. His sleepless night had drawn many ugly
pictures for him to efface before he could be at peace with himself.

All through that dismal night he had given his thoughts to these
people, and to three cities,--London, Paris and New York.

In the last of these, Mary Braddock was living. Staring up at the dim,
flickering shadows on the ceiling, he traveled in horrid conjecture
from one to the other of these immense wildernesses. Ahead of him
stalked the ugly figure of Robert Grand, who _knew_--who perhaps had
known all the time; at his side was the knowledge that the five years
had come to an end. Was Mary Braddock, after all, in a position to
redeem her promise?

The candle sputtered and went out. But he was no more in the dark than
he had been all along. If there was to be light, he must make it for
himself. He would not wait for her to speak out of the darkness. He
would search her out, come what may; he would claim Christine.

With his mind full of the decision to go to New York as soon as
possible, where it would be an easy matter to find Colonel Grand, at
least, he hurried down to an early breakfast, successfully evading his
body-servant. There were two letters in his box, products of the night
mail.

One of them caused him to start and almost cry out aloud. It was from
Artful Dick Cronk. The envelope bore the Jenison crest and it had come
from Jenison Hall. A year had passed since he had heard from the
pickpocket.

The missive was brief, as were all of Dick's communications, written
or oral. It said: "Just stopped off on my way north. Niggers say you
are at the Springs. I'll wait here till you come back, if it ain't too
long. Hope this reaches you prompt, because I am in a hurry to get up
to New York. Don't write. You can get here just as quick as a letter.
Maybe quicker."

Except for the schoolboyish signature, that was all; but there was a
world of importance between the laconic lines. David caught the early
morning stage and was on his way over the ridge to the railroad with
old Jeff, before eight o'clock.

He reached home that night, surprising the housekeeper and servants.
To his amazement, they knew absolutely nothing of Dick Cronk. He had
not been there, nor any one answering to the description. David was
thunderstruck. He carefully examined the letter, which he had
retained. There could be no mistake as to the stationery or the
postmark. He went to his room, gravely mystified by the circumstance.
A messenger was sent post haste to the village hard by, with
instructions to find Dick if he were at either of the boarding-houses.
The master of Jenison Hall could not help chuckling to himself in
contemplation of the crafty tricks the writer of the letter had
employed in securing his information and in appropriating stationery.

It was nearly eleven o'clock when the darky boy returned with the word
that no one fitting the description had been seen in the village.

"But he must be there," said the young master, vastly perplexed and
not a little annoyed.

"Yas, sah," agreed the darky, not for a moment questioning the
assertion that fell from his master's lips. If "Marse David" said he
was there, he _was_ there; that is all there could be to it. "He
suttinly mus' be thah, sah. But I 'spec's he mussa fo'got to tell
anybody 'bout hit, sah."

"Ask Jeff to call me early in the morning, Pete," said David. "Good
night."

"Good night, Marse David."

The boy went out, gently closing the door behind him. Almost instantly
it was reopened.

"What now, Pete?" demanded David, who, with his back to the door, was
advancing to the mahogany bureau across the room. He came in line with
the tall mirror that surmounted the chest of drawers. His fingers
stopped suddenly in the light task of removing a pin from his scarf.

Just inside the door stood Artful Dick Cronk, a genial smile
reflecting itself in the mirror which confronted the other. David
stared unbelievingly for a few seconds and then whirled to face the--
but it was not an apparition.

The lean, cunning visage of the pickpocket was illumined by the never-
to-be-forgotten smile of guilelessness that so ably stood him in hand
in moments of peril. The humor of it gradually succumbed to the
satirical leer that always came to translate his strange sophistry
into something more expressive than mere words. He was plainly
enjoying the effect of his magic invasion. To make the puzzle all the
more startling, Mr. Cronk was attired in one of David's loose
dressing-gowns. He wore a pair of comfortable slippers and he smoked
David's picturesque Algerian pipe. A picture of domestic contentment
was he. You might have taken him to be the owner of the house, and not
the sly intruder.

"What are you doing in my room?" Dick demanded, assuming an air of
severity.

David's astonishment gave way to a hearty laugh. He advanced with his
hand extended.

"Well, you _do_ beat the world," he exclaimed. "In the name of heaven,
where did you come from?"

They shook hands. Dick's sprightly face presented a myriad of joyous
wrinkles.

"Where did I come from, kid--I should say, Mr. Jenison? I--"

"Call me David," interrupted the other.

"Sure! Come from? Take a seat, kid. You are my guest for the evening.
Make yourself at home. I've got a couple of toddies planted here
behind the dresser. You see, I was expectin' you." He went over and,
reaching down behind the bureau, came up with two toddy glasses in
which the ice clinked cheerily. "I made 'em just before you came in,"
he explained. David passed his hand across his brow. Then he accepted
one of the glasses from the pseudo host.

"Do you mean to tell me that you were in this room all the time I sat
over there waiting--"

Dick put his finger to his lips. "Sh! Not so loud, please. I'm not
really supposed to be here, you know. Just think what heart disease
would do to the wooly old boy that runs the front door if he heard you
talking to me at this time o' night. I'm glad to see you, David. You
got my letter, I see. Well, well, it's wonderful what a two-cent
stamp'll do sometimes. A postage stamp is the greatest detective I
know of. I've had 'em find me time and again, right off the real, when
twenty plain-clothes men couldn't get a smell of me to save their
souls. Sit down, David. Make yourself at home. It's good to see you
here, old chap. I'm sorry you must be leaving so soon."

"Leaving so soon?"

"Yep. You're going away to-morrow." He was sitting now, with his long
legs crossed, leaning lazily back in the lounging chair at the end of
David's desk.

"Don't talk in riddles, Dick. What's up? And how do you happen to be
here, occupying my house without the knowledge of my servants?"

"A simple question, with a simple answer. I've been here two days and
two nights, right here in the house. My bedchamber is down the hall
there, and this has been my lounging room. Of course, I had my meals
in the dining-room--my after-the-theater suppers, you might say. It's
been good fun, foolin' the servants. I hope you don't mind my fakin'
grub from your larder, kid. I used to sit around, unbeknownst to the
niggers, and listen to them talk about spirits and ghosts and all that
sort of thing. It was most amusin'. They couldn't account for the
disappearance of pies and cakes and Sally Lunn--say, how I do love
Sally Lunn. And jam, too. To say nothin' of fried chicken. Say! I've
been living like a prince, kid. Sleepin' in a real bed and hangin'
around in swell togs like these. Say! You _do_ know how to live,
David. You'd have been very much entertained half an hour ago if you
could have seen me swipe a Washington pie and a quart of milk right
out from under the nose of old Aunt Fanny. Milk is my favorite
beverage, David. You notice I'm not drinkin' this fire-water. I made
two of 'em for company's sake, but I still turn my back on the wine
when it's pink. Not for me--not for little Dicky-bird."

"I don't see how you do it, Dick," cried David delightedly.

"That's part of my game, kid--not letting people see how I do
anything. But it's as simple as rollin' off a log, as the jays say. I
must confess--and that is something I make it a rule never to do--that
this high living is not good for me. I'll get into awful habits, if I
keep it up. I won't be satisfied with pretzels and bologny sausages.
Seems to me I feel a touch of the gout coming on now."

"You will have breakfast with me in the dining-room to-morrow morning,
Dick," announced the master of the house. "It won't be necessary to
swipe it, as you call it."

Dick grinned. "My dear chap," he mimicked, "I have my breakfast stowed
away in the garret at this minute. Never put off till to-morrow what
you ought to do to-day. In time of plenty prepare for famine. Still,
if you insist, I'll join you at some ham and eggs--and coffee. I _do_
miss my coffee, old chap. We take a train for Richmond at nine A. M."

David's patience gave out. "What does it all mean, Dick? I must know
at once. It must be important or you wouldn't--"

"Maybe it's important and maybe it ain't," philosophized Dick,
relighting the long pipe.

"Well, let's have it."

"Tom Braddock's out."

"Out? I don't understand."

Dick's surprise was genuine. "You don't mean to say you never heard
what happened to him?"

"Joey wrote me that he had gone completely to the dogs in Chicago."

"Joey's off his nut. Brad's just out of Sing Sing."

"Sing Sing! The penitentiary?"

"The sure-enough cooler. He's been there for nearly three years."

"Christine's father a convict!" groaned David.

"As I said before, he's out. It may interest you to know that I spent
a year's vacation up there in '78. I needed the rest, old chap. Brad
came in shortly after I got settled. He _had_ been in Chicago for
two years, boning his friends and living like a gutter-snipe. We spent
most of our evenings at Sing Sing on the same piazza. During the day
we sauntered back and forth between our apartments and the academy for
physical research. Just to amuse ourselves we learned to make barrel
staves between times. It was two months before we managed to speak to
one another. After that we corresponded quite reg'lar. I had notes
from him, and he from me. I soon got on to Brad's troubles. Seems that
Bob Grand owed him several thousand dollars. He had owed it for more
'n two years. Some deal in connection with the show. You remember Brad
was froze out soon after his wife left the aggregation in '75. He says
Grand bulldozed him into duckin' the--I mean, leavin' the show, all
the time owin' him the long green. Seems that Brad hadn't delivered
all the goods mentioned in the bill of sale. Bob wouldn't settle until
he got the goods.

"Well, Brad hung around Chicago, fightin' firewater and always gettin'
licked at it, for two years or more. Then he up and sashayed to New
York for a show-down with our old friend Robert. He had blood in his
eye, Brad had. He'd been buncoed bad, and a bad man hates that worse
than the thought of hell. When he got to New York he hunted up Mr. Bob
Grand, who was just leavin' for England. It seems that Brad's wife and
girl had been located over there by the Colonel, who had never stopped
lookin' for them. Which is more than you could say for Brad. Mrs.
Braddock, through her father and a firm of lawyers, had forced old
Colonel Dough-face to fork over a big wad of greenbacks. Her share in
the show, you understand. Brad heard of it in some way. So he
concludes he'll get in his little graft. He goes to the Colonel's
rooms in a hotel on Broadway, but misses him. Then he lays for him on
the street. They have it hot and heavy, back and forth, and it all
ends with the Colonel puttin' over a job on Brad that lands him in the
cooler. Charge of highway robbery. Brad gets three years in the pen.
I'll say this for him, though; I'm dead sure he wasn't guilty."

Dick paused to relight his pipe.

David was trembling with eagerness. "What did he have to say of Mrs.
Braddock and Christine? I am interested only in them, Dick."

"He's up a tree regardin' them. They never peeped, so far as he's
concerned. He never heard from them after they dusted that time. Of
course, he thinks it was a put-up job, that gag of the Colonel's,
payin' her all that money. He argues that it was all understood
between 'em, and that it wasn't a squeeze on her part. The Colonel
denied it, mighty strong, sayin' he had never heard from Mrs. Braddock
until her lawyers and old man Portman came down on him, just after his
own wife had got a divorce from him."

"I have heard," ventured David, "that Mrs. Grand based her complaint
on the fact that her husband was mixed up in some way with an
actress."

"She had to have _something_, Davy," said the other. "They faked up an
imitation--that ain't the word--an imaginary actress for the occasion.
Joey Noakes told me all about that. She first tried to get some of the
old crowd to swear that Mrs. Braddock was the one, but she got a
terrible throw-down there. They was all for Mary Braddock, strong. Then
what do you think her lawyers up and does? They actually went to Joey
and offered him ten thousand if he'd let 'em use Ruby's name."

A spasm of rage transfigured the face of the imperturbable rascal. His
hands were clenched and the veins stood out in his temples.

"What a cowardly, outrageous thing to do!" cried David.

Dick did not speak for several minutes, but sat staring at his hands,
his thoughts five hundred miles away. At last his lips spread into a
dry, crippled smile.

"Joey told 'em to go to hell. And he rather helped the guy along the
route by kickin' him half-way down stairs. If he hadn't caught himself
against the railing half-way down, he'd 'a' been in the bad place
these last four years. I wish to state at this point, Davy, that for
the past four years I've made it my business to make that guy wish he
was there a hundred times over. It's mighty hard to do a lawyer, but
I've got that feller so's he sits up nights, looking like a ghost,
waitin' to see what's going to happen to him if he should accidentally
fall asleep. But, 'nough of that. After I got out of the pen I dropped
in to see Joey. He was just organizin' that road pantomime show of
his. He told me all about Mrs. Grand's proposal, and I was for cutting
the dame's throat, only he wouldn't hear to it. You been in Joey's
home in Tenth Street, haven't you? I mean the old one, just a little
ways off Broadway. Well, you remember _them_ stairs? Can you
imagine bein' kicked down them stairs? Gee whiz! How I'd like to ha'
been there! Well, you know all about Joey's pantomime fizzle. It
almost busted the old boy's heart. He went stony broke the first year.
Him and Ruby had to go over to live in an awful place on the east
side, just off the Bowery. It happened to be right near the joint
where Ernie and me hang out in the winter time. Our palatial residence
then was back of a cobbler's shop, two flights off the sidewalk. I
can't say that it's as sunny and as nicely aired as your joint here,
kid, but it's harder to get inside of. And it would be impossible to
get out if you once got in, unless you had a recommend from one of the
gang. Seven of us hangs out there now. Maybe I'll show you the joint
some time, if you can keep your jaw shut about it.

"But I'm gettin' off the trail. After Joey's bust up, Centennial year,
who comes along and offers him a stake but old Colonel Grand. Offers
to lend him money enough to start all over again. That's where Joey
made his mistake. The old jay took the money and started all over
again with--"

David started to his feet. "Impossible!" he exclaimed. "Why, I--I
myself, Dick, lent him the money three years ago to get on his feet
again."

"Sure you did. I haven't come to that yet. I said he took a couple of
thousand from the Colonel. That was before you come into it, and he
was so ashamed of it he never told you. Well, out they go on the road
again, with him as the clown, Ruby as the columbine, Casey as
harlequin and a guy named Smith as pantaloon. They had a show
something like Humpty Dumpty. But you know all about that."

"Perfectly," said David, smiling reflectively. "I was with the show
for a week on the road in '78. I must say I liked the rough old tent
days better than the life they led in those abominable country town
opera houses."

"Umph!" was the other's comment. "That's originally the way the
Colonel's wife took it into her head to drag Ruby in if she could.
Well, what does the Colonel do, after the show gets to going well, but
drop in occasionally just as he did to Van Slye's circus, and proceed
before long to make love to Ruby. Yes, sir! That's what he did, the
hell-rotter that he is. Soon as Joey finds out his game, he up and
takes a fall out of him. Then the Colonel threatens to put him out of
business. Right then and there is where Joey writes to you for help.
You fork over proper-like, as you should, and he pays back what he
owes Grand, preferring to owe you. So he got rid of the devil for more
than forty days. That's about the time I goes to the pen. I carelessly
lets myself get nabbed, actin' on Ernie's advice. He's a slick kid,
that boy is. He ain't goin' to let me get hung if he can help it. You
see, I'm booked for hangin', sure as fate; he knows it as well as I
do, only he's smart enough to want to put it off till I'm so old I
won't mind it. So I goes to the pen just to keep from killin' Bob
Grand. A year in the cooler makes you see things most sensible-like. I
knowed that when I went in. If I'd waited a week after hearin' Joey's
story of that dog's attentions to Ruby, I'd ha' been in Kingdom Come
long ago, and so would he. We'd both been down below to welcome Mrs.
Grand's lawyer when he arrived. So, actin' on Ernie's advice, I gets
pinched the second night after hearin' about it. Ernie's a humane
cuss. He saved two lives, then and there."

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