The Rose in the Ring

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She interrupted him once, to ask him to tell her again how Braddock
looked and how he had acted. As he repeated the description, her
perplexed, even doubting, expression caused him to hesitate, but she
shook her head as if putting something out of her mind and signified
that he was to proceed.

"I would not have known him," he concluded, "he was so unlike the man
I knew."

"He had not touched whiskey, you say--not since--"

"Not in three years. It has wrought an unbelievable change in him."

"I knew him, David, before he drank at all," she said, staring past
him. "Perhaps the change would not be so great to me."

"He has aged many years. There are hard, desperate lines in his face.
You _would_ see a change, I am afraid, Mrs. Braddock."

She was silent for a moment. "Go on, David," she said, suddenly
passing her hand before her eyes in a movement as expressive as it was
involuntary. "Dick Cronk has a certain amount of influence over him,
you say."

"It will not last. When Colonel Grand hears that he is back in town
his first step will be to have him thrown into jail on one pretext or
another. Braddock realizes this. He has made up his mind to strike
first. I think he believes in you, Mrs. Braddock--in fact, I am sure
he does. I know he loves Christine. But he hates Colonel Grand even
more than he loves her or--you. He--"

"Oh, he does not love me, David. You need not hesitate," she said
drearily.

"As I have already said, he gave Dick a half-promise that he would try
to see you. He has two questions he intends to ask, I believe. I
think, Mrs. Braddock, you will be doing a very wise thing if you see
him--of your own free will. He will probably insist on seeing you in
any event--even in the face of opposition. You can avoid a great deal
of trouble by--well, by not barring him out. I know how it must
distress you. I wish I could take all the worry, all the trouble off
your shoulders. But there would be only one way in which I could do
it--and that would be a desperate one."

It was then that she laid her trembling, icy hand on his, and said,
"Search for him until you find him."

David hesitated a moment before putting his next question. It touched
on a very tender subject.

"Have you thought of divorcing him?"

"No, David," she said quietly. "I made my bed years ago, as Joey would
say. Tom is Christine's father. He is my husband. You may well say,
God help both of us. But, David, while I cannot live with him, I
intend to remain his wife to the end. I am ready to promise anything
to him if he will go away. I will give him all of the money I received
for my share of the hateful business. He must accept it quietly,
sanely. It is for _her_ sake, and he must be made to see it. The
world knows that I ran away to be married, but it has forgotten the
circumstances. The general belief is that my husband died years and
years ago, and that I have lived abroad ever since. There is one thing
to his credit, David. I shall not forget it. When he was arrested, he
thought of Christine and--and--well, he gave an assumed name, an
alias, to the police. Colonel Grand kept his own silence, and for
years he has held this over me as a threat. I have had many letters
from him, believe me. Christine is no longer the little, unheard-of
circus rider. She is--well, she is a _personage_. Do you understand?"

He nodded his head. She went on hurriedly.

"Tell Tom I _want_ to see him. Tell him I am ready to discuss
everything with him. Tell him that nothing must happen that can injure
her."

"He may insist on seeing--her."

"She does not know that he has been in prison," she said miserably.

"But if he should insist?"

"I should have to prepare her, David. She knows that he is alive--but
--Listen, David!" She leaned forward to give emphasis to her words. "If
he comes to her now with the story of his--his wrongs, of his
sufferings, she will forget all that has gone before. Her heart is
tender. I am afraid of the stand she may take--and she may compel me
to take it with her."

"I'll do all that I can, Mrs. Braddock, to--" he began. The sound of
voices in the vestibule came to them at that moment. Good nights were
being called from the steps to the street below. Then the door was
opened and closed quickly. Some one came rapidly down the hall. There
was a swift rustling of skirts, the low humming of an air from
"Pinafore." David was on his feet in an instant, visibly excited by
the impending encounter.

Christine came into the library. She was half-way across the room
before she realized that the tall young man beside her mother was a
stranger... She stopped. Her questioning gaze lingered on his face.
His smile puzzled her. Her eyes narrowed, then suddenly they were
distended; her lips parted in amazement, tremulously struggling into a
smile of wonder and unbelief. No one had spoken.

"It--it is David," she said, a quaver of breathlessness in the soft
tones.

He sprang forward, his hands extended.

"Yes," he cried, transported by the new aspect of loveliness.

She stood straight and slim before him, still unbelieving. Slowly her
hands were lifted to meet his, as if impelled by a power not her own.
He clasped them; they were cold. Something in their limp
unresponsiveness chilled him as if he had been touched by ice. He
gently released them and drew back, dismayed within himself.

"Why--why didn't you tell me, mamma?" she cried, the flutter in her
voice increasing. A swift wave of color rushed to her cheeks. She
suddenly held out her hands to him again, an eagerness in the action
that caught him unawares and lifted his spirits to dizzy heights. "Oh,
I am so glad--so glad to see you, David," she cried. Her firm little
hands were warm now, and trembling.

"Christine," he half whispered, "are you--are you truly glad to see
me? Do you mean it?"

She was looking straight into his eyes. In her own glowed a dark
appeal; she seemed to be delving in the secret recesses of his heart.

"David," she cried, forgetful of everything else in the world, "does
it mean that you--you still care for me? You haven't changed? I have
been wondering--oh, how I have been--"

The plaintive note drove all doubt from his mind. He was suddenly
exalted. Speech was beyond him. His dream had come true. She was
incomparably fairer than his waking hours had pictured her during the
five years of probation; only in fond dreams had she appeared to him
as she now appeared in reality. He could only look down into her face,
mute under the seal of wonder. All that he had longed for and prayed
for was here revealed to him; he could have asked for no more. He went
suddenly weak with joy.

"My little Christine," he murmured.

"I have been so afraid," she was saying, still searching his soul
through his eyes. "I am still afraid, David. It has been a long time.
So many things may have happened. We were such young, foolish things.
Oh, David, you don't know how I have worked and planned and striven to
make myself what you would like, if you were ever to come to see me
again. I--"

"You are perfect--you are divine!" he cried, all the passion of his
soul ringing in the tender words. "I can't believe it! You really
care, Christine? You have not changed? It has always been the same
with you?"

"Changed, David," she whispered, her lip trembling, a sudden mist
swimming in her sweet young eyes. "Changed?"

"You _do_ love me? I am not dreaming? It is really _you?_"

She suddenly lowered her eyes, the warm flush spreading to her throat,
her neck, her ears. She caught her breath in a half-sob.

[Illustration: Her lips parted in amazement, tremulously struggling
into a smile of wonder and unbelief]

Both had forgotten the tall woman who stood over there by the window,
her hands clasped, her heart in the eyes that looked upon them. They
did not see the beatific smile that came to her colorless lips. Nor
were they aware of the fact that she turned away, to gently draw aside
the curtain that she might look out, unseeing, upon the gloom of the
night beyond.

He quickly lifted the girl's hands to his feverish lips. There he held
them for many minutes while he steadied his rioting senses, regaining
control of his nerves. He looked down upon the dark, soft hair and
worshiped. A red rose rested there. He bent over and kissed her hair--
and the rose.

Then she looked up.

"I do love you, David," she said softly, "are you--are you sure that
you--Oh, David, are you sure?"

For answer, his eager arm stole over her shoulder and she was drawn
close to his breast. She raised her lips to greet the kiss. Her little
hand clutched his with a sudden convulsive ecstasy. He felt the warm,
quick breathing--and then their lips met.

"I am very sure," he murmured, his voice husky with emotion. "There
never has been a minute in which I was not sure, Christine, my
darling."

"You have forgotten--you can overlook those old days when I was Little
Starbright?" she whispered wonderingly. "They will make no difference
--now?"

"I loved you then. You and I and my love have grown older and stronger
and dearer with the years that have--"

She broke away from him, putting her hands to her cheeks in pretty
confusion. Her eyes were shining brightly as she looked beyond him.

"Oh, mother! I--I forgot that you were there. I forgot everything."
She ran to her mother and buried her face on her shoulder. "I told you
it would come true, mother. I knew it would. Oh, I am so happy! Have I
been ridiculous? Have I been silly, mother?"

It was the ecstatic David who reassured her on that point. In his
unbounded joy he rushed over and enveloped the two of them in his
long, eager arms.

Later on, after Mrs. Braddock had gone to her father's room, he sat
with Christine on the low, deep sofa under the bookshelf gallery. Her
hands were clasped in his. They had but little to say to each other in
words. Their eyes spoke the thoughts that surged up from their
reunited hearts. She had thrown aside the light, filmy wrap, and the
sweet, velvety skin of her neck and shoulders gleamed in the soft
light; her perfectly modeled, strong young arms were as clear and
white as marble.

He was lost in admiration--in marveling admiration. For long stretches
at a time he permitted himself to fall into silent, rapt contemplation
of this perfected bit of womanhood. Every childish feature that he
remembered so well had been subtly vignetted by the soft touch of
nature; he was sensing for the first time the vast distinction between
fifteen and twenty--the distinction without the difference; for she
was the same Christine, after all. It was unbelievable. A delicate bit
of magic was being performed before his very eyes; the slim, girlish
sweetheart of other days was being effaced. The soft, insinuating
loveliness of young womanhood, with all its grace, all its charms, was
being revealed to him as if by some wonderful process in photography--
new shades, new lights, new tints, all ineffably joyous in tone. He
could not remember that her hair was so soft and wavy at the temples,
nor had it ever seemed to caress her ears so adorably. Why was it that
he had never noticed the delicate arch of her eyebrows? Why had he
failed to see the limpid sweetness in her eyes? And her hair, too,
seemed to cling differently above the slim, round neck. What magic
sculptor had chiseled her lips into their present form? Her chin; her
nose; her broad, white brow--why had he never observed them before?
And what was this strange, new light in the dark eyes? This look that
was no longer childish, no longer inquisitive, but steady with
understanding!

The girl of fifteen was gone. This was the perfect, well-blown human
flower, the woman. The woman! Slender, beautifully molded, sinuous,
incomparably fine--the woman! He closed his eyes in sudden subjection
to that thing called rapture. He held her close, strained to his own
triumphant, vigorous body. She was his! The woman! Ah, it _was_
different!

"How beautiful--how wonderful you are, Christine," he whispered. "I
can't believe that you are _my_ Christine."

She could only smile her confirmation. No words could have told so
clearly the sensuous delight that stilled her tongue. There was joy in
her soft breathing, in the gently spreading nostrils, in the half-
closed eyes. She was experiencing the unspeakable thrill that comes
but once in the dream of love.

When he spoke, at uneven intervals, his voice was husky with the
passion that consumed him.

Once he was saying: "It is too good to be true. I came unbidden,
determined to learn how I stood with you. I could not wait. When I saw
you to-day, I said to myself that you had grown away from me. I told
myself I should have to win you all over again. You seemed
unapproachable. You were so wonderful, Christine--so utterly beyond
anything I had expected to find. I was alarmed, I was actually
dismayed. But I told myself that I would win you; I would begin all
over again and I--"

"You saw me to-day?" she interrupted in surprise. "Where?"

"I was waiting for you at the station--far back in the crowd. I wanted
to see you in that way first. Your mother and I met there. She did not
tell you. She asked me to come to-night, but she was careful to give
me no hope. You will never know the doubts and fears that have beset
me all this long evening. And then you came in. I was dazed. I was all
a-tremble. And then to find that--that I had had all my fears for
nothing! Why--why, I could have died for joy! You did not hesitate.
You swept me off my feet. When you kissed me, Christine, I--I--it was
as if night had turned to day in--"

"I have gone on loving you, David, from the beginning. There never has
been a moment in which I have ceased to do so. Ah, you had nothing to
fear. But I! Oh, my dear one, I was never free from doubt--never quite
certain. You were so far above me that I--"

"Don't say that!"

"That I was sure you would not take our--our love dream seriously.
When you came to be a man, with all that manhood meant to you, I felt
somehow that you would forget the little circus girl who--"

He kissed her. Then she was silent for a long time.

"Your mother was telegraphing me to-day to come," he said after a
time. "Did you know that she intended to do so?"

"No. I only knew that she would do it--soon. She had promised--both of
us, you know."

"Have you never asked her to send me the message?"

"Never! How could I? I would not have held you to the compact. Nor
would she."

"And have you not told her that you cared for me all these years?
Didn't she know?"

"Listen, David," she said seriously. "My mother has never spoken of
our compact. She did nothing to influence me. She was content to let
time take its course--and nature, too. Ah, how wise she is! But all
this time I have been conscious of a strange feeling that she was
making me over anew with but one object in view. She wanted me to be
all that you could expect, demand, exact, if you were to come some day
to--to look me over, to see if I was--was worth the effort. Yes,
David, she prepared me against this day. She worked with me, she
planned, she denied herself everything to give me all that you might
wish for in a--"

"My dear, you had everything to begin with," he began gallantly, but
she checked him with a shake of her head.

"No, I did not. True, I had not been brought up as other circus
children were. But I had a point of view that required years of
training to destroy. We won't speak of my father. I don't like to
think of him. David, as we used to know him, you and I. There was a
time when he was different--and I loved him. But that was long before.
I--I think he has gone out of my life altogether."

David realized then and there that she should not be kept in the dark
regarding her father's whereabouts and designs. She was sensible, she
was made of strong timber. She could face the conditions, no matter
what they proved to be.

The thought was responsible for the irrelevant remark that followed.
"I must have a word or two with Mrs. Braddock before I leave to-
night."

She looked up quickly. "A word concerning--you and me?" she asked.

"Yes."

Her eyes were lowered again, this time with some of the life gone from
them. A shadow crossed her face.

"David," she said, "I trust you, I know you are staunch and true. But,
dear, are you considering well? Are you sure that you will never
regret--this? No, don't speak yet, please. We must be frank with each
other. I am not a silly, romantic girl, believe me. I have faced and
can still face the real things of life. You are not driving yourself
to forget or to overlook all the conditions that surround me, are you?
I was a rider. My father was a rider. Oh, you are going to say that my
mother was different. But what has that to do with it? What does it
matter that she has brought me here, to this home of plenty and of
respectability and--well, let us say it, of position. I am the
granddaughter of Albert Portman. That may stand for something--yes, it
_does_ stand for a great deal. But do not forget, David, dear, that I
am the daughter of Tom Braddock. I am the granddaughter of old Stephen
Braddock, who was a--a--"

"Don't say it, dearest! Why should you be saying all this to me? You,
an angel among--"

"I must, David," she went on resolutely. "You have come here to ask me
to be your wife--to hold me to a promise. You must think all this out
in time, David. Please don't laugh in that scornful way. It hurts. I
am very serious. Your friends, your people, will welcome me gladly as
the granddaughter of Albert Portman, but will they take me, can they
accept me, as the granddaughter of Stephen Braddock? As the product of
a fashionable convent they may rejoice in me, but as the pupil of the
sawdust ring,--as Little Starbright, a thing of spangles! Ah! How
about that side of me? Who were my childhood friends and associates?
Don't misjudge me. I loved them all--I love them now. They were the
best friends and the truest. But could they ever be the friends of
your friends?"

"They are _my_ friends," he said simply, struck by her earnestness.
"Are you forgetting what they meant to me in the old days? And what was
I? A fugitive with a price on my head. A--"

"Ah, but you were different--you always had been different. You were a
Jenison. What are you going to say when some one--and there always
will be the miserable some one--reminds you that he saw your wife when
she was Little Starbright? What--"

"Don't look so miserable, Christine! If any one says that to me I
shall congratulate him."

"Congrat--Oh, do be serious! It doesn't matter what I am to-day, David;
it's what I was such a little while ago. I am not trying to belittle
myself. _I_ am proud of what I am. Don't misunderstand me. I am a
Portman! _Her_ blood is in me--her mind, her soul. But I am not all
Portman. Suppose, David--suppose that my father were to come back some
day. We know what he is--what he was. Perhaps the world may have
forgotten, but suppose that he reminds the world of the fact that he is
my father--"

"Christine! You are working yourself into a dreadful state over all
this--"

"Am I not calm? Am I excited? No; you see I am not."

"Dearest, I want you to be my wife. You urge me to think in time.
Haven't I thought it all out? What more is there for me to think
about, save my love for you? You are not presenting new conditions to
me, sweetheart. They are old ones. I do not intend that either of us
shall sail under false colors. When you go to Jenison Hall as my wife,
it shall also be as the daughter of Thomas Braddock, the showman."

"But, David, he may have fallen so low--he may have sunk to the very
lowest--oh, you must understand. We have heard nothing from him. We
don't know where he is, nor what his life has been. Suppose--oh, I
can't bear to think of it."

He put his hands on her cheeks and turned her face so that he could
look squarely into her eyes. He saw the trouble there, the agony of
doubt.

"Look at me, Christine," he said gently. The light in his eyes held
her. "It doesn't matter what he was, what he is or what he may become.
I love you, as I have always loved you. You are going to be my wife.
That is the end of it all."

His heart was sinking, however, under the weight of the thing he knew,
the thing she was yet to know. He would have given all he possessed in
the world for the power to shield her from the blow that was yet to
fall.

There came swiftly to mind the hazy, indistinct interior of a
dressing-tent, with its mysterious lights and strange people, just as
it had appeared to him on that first, never-to-be-forgotten night. He
felt himself again emerging from that state of insensibility to look
upon the queer, unfamiliar things that were to become quite real to
him. And out of the phantasmalian group of objects there grew a single
slim, well-remembered figure in red, to dazzle him with her strange,
unexpected beauty, and to soothe him with an unspoken faith that began
then and had not yet faltered in her lovely eyes. She had given him
food. She had said he was no thief. It all came back to him. He had
looked upon her as an angel then--a strange, unfamiliar angel in the
garb she wore, but an angel, just the same.

Now he knew that love began with the first glimpse he had of her. It
was as if she had been revealed to him in a vision. His mind swept
along over the rough days that followed. He saw her again in the ring,
in the dressing-tent--everywhere. Then there was that night under the
grocer's awning--that sweetest of all nights in his life!

And now she was here, with him again, but amidst vastly different
surroundings. She was here, and she would need him now as he had
needed her then. It was for him now to present himself as the bulwark
between her and the fickle, disdainful world of which she had become a
part. She was no longer the self-reliant, petted creature of the
circus, where environment and adversity formed a training-school for
disaster, but a delicate, refined flower set out in a new soil to
thrive or wither as the winds of prejudice blow. In the other days she
could have laughed with glee at the vagaries of that self-same wind,
but now, ah, now it was different. She was not Little Starbright.

He drew her closer. She trembled in the clasp of his arms. Her firm,
full young breast rose and fell in quick response to the driving
heart-beats. Again his thoughts shot back to the prophetic, perfect
figure of the girl at fifteen. He fought off a certain delicious,
overpowering intoxication, and forced himself to a bewildered
contemplation of her present powers of resistance to the hard problems
of life. She was strong of body, strong of heart, strong of spirit,
but was she strongly fortified with the endurance that must stand
unshaken through a period of sorrow and shame and--disgrace?

Again he looked into her half-closed eyes. He saw there the serene
integrity of Mary Braddock; the light of that woman's character was
strongly entrenched in the soul of Christine Braddock. He experienced
a sudden sense of relief, of comfort. She was made of the flesh and
spirit that endures. Product was she of Thomas Braddock in his
physically honest days, and of Mary, his wife, in whose veins flowed
the strain of a refinement elementally so pure that the bitterest
things in life had proved incapable of destroying a single drop of its
sweetness.

"What are you thinking of, David?" she asked, impressed by the look in
his eyes and the unconscious nodding of his head.

"Of you," he said, catching himself up quickly. "Always of you,
dearest."

"You were thinking of what I said to you a moment ago," she said
steadily.

"Yes," he agreed, "and of what you said to me five years ago."

Soon afterward he prepared to depart. She ran upstairs to tell her
mother that he wanted to see her. She had kissed him good night. He
did not see her again. Later on, she stood straight and tense, in the
center of her bedroom floor, her hands to her breast, waiting for her
mother's return. Vaguely she felt that something harsh and bitter was
to be made known to her before she slept that night.

In lowered tones David Jenison was saying to Mary Braddock: "She must
be told everything to-night. It isn't safe to put it off. She is
strong and she knows that I am staunch. Nothing else should matter. We
don't know what to-morrow may bring, but she must be as fully prepared
for the worst as we are. It isn't fair to her. Tell her everything."

"Yes," she said steadily. "And you will try to find him to-night?"

"I will," he said.

CHAPTER VI

DOOR-STEPS

David hurried off toward the car-line, bent on reaching Joey's home
before that worthy retired for the night.

At the top of a flight of stone steps leading to the doors of an
imposing mansion across the street from the Portman home a motionless
figure sat, as bleak as the shadows in which it was shrouded. Like a
malevolent gargoyle it glowered out upon the deserted street; a tense,
immovable chin rested in a pair of clenched hands, knees supporting
the elbows. This desolate, forbidding figure had been there for an
hour or more--ever since Christine's return from the concert. Not once
were the burning eyes removed from the lighted windows across the way.
At last, long after the footsteps of the anxious Virginian had died
away in the night, and the lights were extinguished in the house
opposite, the silent watcher moved for the first time. Slowly he came
to his feet, his eyes still upon the solitary window in which a light
had lingered long after all the others were gone.

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