The Rose in the Ring/Part 1/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII
THE SALE
We will forsake David Jenison for the time being. He is well started on his journey to the home of his forefathers, where complete restoration and the newspaper reporters await him. Let the imagination picture the welcome he is to receive; if possible, let it also describe the attitude of the community which had hunted him with dogs and deadly weapons, but which now stood ready to cast itself without reserve at the feet of the boy who had been so cruelly wronged.
Picture Mr. Blake's disgust at learning from David's own lips how he had been outwitted by the circus people, and contrast it with his sincere relief in contemplation of the fact that he had not captured the boy in those days of prejudice.
We leave all these details to the generous intelligence of the reader, for he knows that the heir to Jenison Hall has come unto his own again; and he also knows that in spite of all that can be done to make life bright and cheerful for David, there is still a shadow in the background that turns the world into a bleak and desolate waste for him.
Two weeks passed over his head before he was able to turn away from the bewildering mass of legal requirements and look once more to the West, whither his heart was forever journeying. Not all the excitement that filled the fortnight to overflowing, nor all the homage that came to him, could ease the dull, insistent pain of separation from interests so vital to his young heart.
He stole away one night, accompanied by a single servant—for now he was "lord of the manor" and traveled only as a true gentleman of the South should travel. Half-way to his destination he stopped off to draw from the savings bank the money he had placed there. With this small fortune in his possession he resumed the journey, now closely guarded by old Jeff, who always had been a slave to the Jenisons and would be till he died, Abraham Lincoln to the contrary.
David's constant prayer was that he might not be too late.
He was destined to find many changes in Van Slye's Great and Only Mammoth Shows.
Let us go back to the night after the one which saw David's departure from the show. For two days Thomas Braddock had slunk about the show grounds, morose, ugly, taciturn. He avoided every one except those with whom he was obliged to consult. His wife and daughter caught fleeting glimpses of him; Colonel Grand and the others saw him but little more. He held aloof, brooding over his wrongs, accumulating a vast resentment against the world and all of its inhabitants, obsessed by the single desire to make some one else suffer for the ignominy that had come to him.
Strangely enough, his most bitter resentment was lodged against the wife who had stood by him all these years, through thick and thin, through incessant storm and hardship, with a staunchness that now maddened him, because, down in his heart, he could see no guile in her. She was too good for him; she held herself above him; she made him to feel that he was not of her world—from the beginning. She was loyal because it would have put her in his class if she had lifted her voice in public complaint. He knew that she loathed him; he hated her for the virtue which gave her the right to despise him and yet to remain loyal to him. His sodden, debased soul resented the odious comparison that his own flesh and blood justly could make. There had been bitter moments when this maudlin wretch almost convinced himself that he could rejoice in the discovery that Christine was not of his flesh and blood, that this too virtuous woman was not pure, after all.
His sullen despair brought him to even lower depths. In half-sober moments he began to realize that his daughter feared and despised him. She had come to feel the distinction between her parents, and she had done the perfectly obvious thing in following the instincts of the gentle blood that was in her: she had cast her lot with her mother. He forgot his own aspirations and hopes for her in this bitter hour. He wanted to hurt her, so that she might cry out with him in ugly rage against the smug, serene paragon. If he only could bring Mary to his level, so that Christine might no longer be so arrogantly proud of the blood that came through the Portmans.
He drove himself at last into such a condition of hatred for all that was good and noble that he would have hailed with joy the positive proof that his wife had been untrue to him!
All day long he had been singularly abstemious. His brooding had caused him to forget or to neglect the appetite that mastered him. Toward evening he resumed his drinking, however, mainly for the purpose of restoring his courage, which had slumped terribly in this estimate of himself.
When the time came to go over the receipts with the ticket-sellers he pulled himself together and prepared to assert his authority. He tossed away the empty bottle and advanced upon the wagon, his face blanched by self-pity. He was confounded by the sight of Colonel Grand, sitting inside and going over the cash with Hanks, the seller.
"What do you want?" demanded Colonel Grand, when Braddock, after trying the locked door, showed his convulsed face at the little window. Hanks looked uncomfortable.
"Let me in there, Grand!" grated the man outside.
"I'll attend to this. We can't have you bothering with the finances—"
"I'll kick that door in," roared Braddock; "and I'll kill somebody!"
Colonel Grand picked up the treasurer's revolver. He smiled indulgently.
"I'm taking care of the money after this, Brad."
"I own this show, damn you! I-I-I'll fix you!" sputtered the other. He began to cry.
"Get away from that window!" snapped Grand, his eyes glittering.
"Oh, say now Bob, treat me fair, treat me right," pleaded Braddock, all at once abject.
"I'll talk to you later on. Get away!"
"Don't throw me down, Bob. I've always done the square thing by you. Didn't I pay up everything I owed you by—"
"Are you going to leave that window?" demanded Grand.
The miserable wretch looked into the deadly eyes of the man inside, and realized. A great sob arose in his throat. He held it back for a moment, but it grew and grew as he saw no pity in the steely eyes beyond.
"My soul!" he groaned, with the bursting of the sob. He withdrew his ghastly face and rushed away in the night, stumbling over ropes and pegs, creating no end of havoc among the men who happened to toil in his path. They ran from him, thinking him mad.
Half an hour later Ernie Cronk came upon him. He was sitting on the curb across the street from the circus lot, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands—staring, staring through dry, hot eyes at the tented city that was slipping away from him.
"What's the matter?" asked the hunchback, in his high, querulous voice.
The older man did not respond. He did not alter his position when the questioner spoke to him.
"What are you looking at?" asked the other.
"Ernie," began Braddock in a voice that sent a shiver across the boy's crooked back, it was so sepulchral, "let me take your pistol a second."
Ernie Cronk drew back a step. He eyed Braddock narrowly.
"Who are you going to kill?" he asked after a moment.
"Myself," said Braddock, lifting his haggard face.
Again the hunchback looked long at the man. Then, without a word, he handed a new revolver to Thomas Braddock. It was not the small derringer he was wont to carry.
Braddock seemed surprised by the boy's readiness. He received the weapon gingerly. A sudden spasm shook his big frame.
"Is—is it loaded?" he inquired, less lugubrious than he had been before.
"No," said Ernie shortly. Braddock's chest swelled suddenly. "I suppose you think I'm fool enough to let you kill yourself with my gun and me right here where they could nab me. It's got blank ca'tridges, that's all. Somebody changed 'em on me last night—just before that—that sneak went away on the train."
Volumes could not have told more than that single sentence.
Braddock handed the weapon back to him.
"But if you really want to shoot yourself," went on Ernie maliciously, "I've got a round of real ca'tridges here. While you're loadin' the gun I can make a sneak. If I was you, though, I'd go up that alley there, Brad. It's terrible public here."
"You wicked little brute, you!" cried Braddock in horror, coming to his feet and drawing away as if from a viper. "You cold-blooded whelp! I—I never heard of such—"
"Ain't you going to kill yourself?" demanded Ernie, grinning.
Braddock appeared to ponder. "No," he said with eager finality; "not just now. I've changed my mind. I'm going to have it out with her first. Then, maybe I won't do it at all."
Without another glance at the hunchback he swung off toward the dressing-tent. Ernie's scoffing laugh followed him into the shadows. It was the last straw. He was an object of derision to this thing of jibes and sneers.
The flush of anger had come back into his bloated cheeks by the time he had slipped under the sidewall into the dressing-tent. A sense of loneliness struck him with the force of a blow as he paused to survey the conglomerate mass of gaudy trappings: the men, the women, the horses, the dye-scented paraphernalia of the ring. The very spangles on the costumes of these one-time friends seemed to twinkle with merriment at the sight of him; the tarletan skirts appeared to flaunt scorn in his face. There was mockery in everything. His humiliation was complete when this motley array of people disdained to greet him with the eager concern that heretofore had marked their demeanor. No one appeared to notice him, further than to offer a curt nod or to exchange sly grins with the others.
Christine was in the ring. Mrs. Braddock stood over by the tattered red curtains, peering out into the "big top." He knew just where to look for her; she always stood there while her daughter was performing with old Tom Sacks. Not Tom Braddock, but all the others, noted the weary droop of her shoulders.
She started violently when he came up from behind and spoke to her.
"Well, how does it look without the gentleman in stripes?" he asked coarsely. "It ain't so refined, eh?"
She faced him, hesitated an instant, and then said, without a trace of emotion in her voice:
"Tom, do you think Colonel Grand would be willing to buy out my share in the show?"
He stared. Then he laughed sardonically.
"What are you givin' us? Buy out your share? I should say not. He might buy you, but not your share."
"You are a beast, Tom Braddock," she said, the red mounting slowly to her pale cheek. "Why do you say that to me?"
"Say, don't you suppose I know how it stands with you and him?" he retorted. "Come off, Mary. You're both trying to freeze me out. I'm on to the little game."
"Don't speak so loudly," she implored, clasping her hands.
"Oh, I'm not tellin' any secrets," he snarled. "It's common property. Everybody's on. I should think you'd be ashamed to look Christine in the face."
"God forgive you, Tom Braddock," she cried, abject horror in her eyes.
"Say, I've got to have an understanding with you," he went on ruthlessly. "I'm going to find out just how I stand in this here arrangement. Grand's taken charge of the money box. He says it's you and him against me. He's going to—"
"He lies! He lies!"
"Oh, let up—let up! I'm no fool."
"Tom Braddock, are you—are you accusing me?" she cried, all a-tremble.
He opened his lips to utter the words which would have ended everything between them. His eyes met hers and the words slipped back into his throat. The spark of manhood that was left in him revolted against this wanton assault upon the pure soul that looked out upon him.
His gaze was lowered. He began fumbling in his pocket for a cigar.
"Course not," he said reluctantly. He peered hard at the opaque sidewall uncomfortably conscious of the scornful look she bent upon him. Neither spoke for a long time.
"How much lower can you sink?" she asked in low tones.
"Don't you turn against me like this," he returned sullenly.
"I have endured too long—too long," she said lifelessly.
"Now, shut up, Mary. Shut up your trap. I'm sick of having you whining all the time—"
"Whining!" she cried. "God in heaven!"
"Well, belly-achin', then." Her bitter laugh irritated him. "Say, I got to talk this business over with you. We've got to understand each other."
"We do understand each other," she said, a note of decision in her voice. "You are ready to prostitute me for the sake of worming money out of that horrid beast. I loathe him. You know it, and yet you force me to meet him. I am going to end it all. Either he leaves this show, or I do. I will not endure this unspoken but manifest insult a day longer. Do you understand me?"
"I'd like to know how you're going to help it," he said, glaring at her with half-restored belligerence. "You can't get out without losin' what you've got in the business, and he won't get out."
"Are you going to permit him to continue paying his odious attentions to me—to your wife?" she cried.
"I don't care what he does," roared Braddock. "That's his business. You don't have to give in to him, do you? If he thinks you've got a price, that's his lookout, not mine."
"Not yours?" she gasped. "Oh, Tom! Tom! What manner of man have you come to be?"
"Well, I'm just tellin' you, that's all."
"You—you surely are not in your right mind."
"You bet I am! Now, you listen to me. You are going to stick right with this show—you and Christine. And you're going to do what I tell you to do. You got to treat Bob Grand half-way decent. He's liable to leave us in the lurch any time. How'd you suppose we'd get on without his help right now? Just as soon as we get on our feet I'll put an end to his funny business. I'll show him what's what. He'll get out of the show business a heap sight wiser man than he is now. But we need him now. We got to stand together, you and me. No flunking, see. We—"
"Stop!" She stood before him like an outraged priestess. This time he did not shrink, but glared back at her balefully. "This is the end! We have come to the parting of the ways. I will never call you husband again. If you even speak to me, Thomas Braddock, I shall ask any one of a dozen men here to beat you as you deserve. Oh, they will be only too happy to do it! Now, hear me: I am going to take Christine away from you—forever. Don't curse me yet! Wait! I am not through. This very night I shall offer my share in this show to Colonel Grand. He may have it at his own price. If he will not buy, then I shall go forth and look for another purchaser. I—"
"You're my wife. You can't sell without my consent," he exclaimed.
"Then I will ask the court to give me the right. Now, go! I—"
"You can't take Christine. She's as much mine as she is—"
"I will hear no more. I have given you the last chance to be a man. This ends it!"
She turned and walked away from him. He knew that it was all over between them.
Considerably shaken, he went over and sat down on a trunk near the wall. Suddenly he sprang to his feet with a curious half-laugh, half-sob. He glared at the flap through which she had disappeared. A cunning, malevolent expression came into his pop-eyes.
"Sell out, will you?" he muttered. "I'll block that game. I'll sell out to him myself. That's what he wants."
He lifted the sidewall and passed out into the open air, directing his footsteps toward the ticket-wagon. Colonel Grand was leaving it as he came up.
"Hello, Brad," he said quite genially. "If I was a bit rough awhile ago, I apolo—"
"Say, I want to talk privately with you, right away. I've got a proposition to make. It's final, too,—and it's friendly, so don't look as if you're going to pull a gun on me. Come on to the hotel. Oh, I'm not as drunk as you think!"
"Mrs. Braddock expects me to escort her to the hotel—"
"No, she don't," rasped the other. "She's all right. Leave her alone. Are you coming?"
Colonel Grand was struck by the man's behavior. He shrewdly saw that something vital was in the air.
"All right," he said. "I'll go with you."
They were soon closeted in the room back of the hotel bar, a bottle between them on the table. The door was locked. Their conversation lasted an hour. When Colonel Grand arose to depart he stood a little behind and to the left of Braddock's chair, a soft, sardonic smile on his lips. He held a sheet of paper in his hand. Pen and ink on the table, alongside the more sinister bottle, told of an act of penmanship.
"We'll have the night clerk and some one else witness the signatures," he said quietly.
"All right," said Braddock hoarsely. He was staring at his fingers, which he twiddled in a nerveless, irresolute manner.
"The inside conditions are between you and me personally. You'll have to live up to them, Braddock."
"Oh, I'm a man of my word, don't fret."
"You are to get out at the end of the week. That's plain, is it?"
"If the cash is passed over. Don't forget that. Say, Bob, I swear, you're treating me dirt mean. I ought to have five times more than you are payin' me, and you know it. Five thousand dollars! Why, it's givin' the show away, that's what it is. I've built up this here show—"
"It is your own proposition. I didn't suggest buying you out. You came to me to sell. If you don't want to let it go at the price we've agreed on I'll tear up this bill of sale."
"I've got to take it, so what's the use kicking? I'm going to get out of the business. My wife's against me. Everybody is. Damn them all!"
Colonel Grand knew quite well that Mrs. Braddock, as the man's wife, could interpose legal objections to the transfer, but he was not really buying Tom's interest in the show; he was deliberately paying him to desert his wife and child. That was the sum and substance of it. Braddock was not so drugged with liquor that he could not appreciate that side of the transaction quite as fully as the other.
Down in his besotted soul there lurked the hope that some day, in the long run, through the wife whom he was selling so basely, he might succeed in obtaining the upper hand of Bob Grand, and crush him as he was being crushed!
"It will be a week before the currency can get here from Baltimore. I refuse to draw on my banker in the regular way. This money, being evil, must come from an evil source. My dealers will send it from the 'place.' Now, again, you understand that I can put you in the penitentiary if you go back on your word. You did take the boy's money out of the dressing-tent. My man saw you."
"I don't see why you hired a canvasman to watch me," growled the other, pouring another drink. "Mighty cheap work, Bob Grand."
"I always go on the principle that it isn't safe to have business dealings with a man until you know all that is to be found out about him. In your case I had to choose my own way of finding out."
"I'll knock off a couple of hundred if you'll tell me the name of that sneaking—"
"You need the two hundred more than I do, Brad," said Grand with infinite sarcasm—and finality.
"Well, I'm a Jonah in the show business. I guess it's the best thing I can do to get out of it. You'll do the right thing by Mary and—and—" he swallowed hard, casting a half glance at the other out of his bleary eyes—"and the young 'un. They'll get what's coming to them, Bob?"
"Certainly."
"I wouldn't sell out like this if—if Mary had acted decent by me," he said, trying to justify his action. He was congratulating himself that he had sold her out before she had the chance to sell him out. He closed his eyes to the real transaction involved in the deal. It gave him some secret satisfaction, however, to contemplate the futility of Colonel Grand's designs upon Mary Braddock.
"Of course," said Bob Grand.
"I am going to California," said Tom Braddock, for the third time during the interview.
"I've asked you not to mention that fact to me, Braddock. You are supposed to stay with the show as manager and overseer."
"Humph!" grunted the other. "You want to be as much shocked as the rest of 'em when I skip by the light of the moon, eh?"
"We'll sign the paper," was the only response of the purchaser.
Ten minutes later, after two men had witnessed their signatures, the document reposed in Bob Grand's pocketbook.
The next morning Mary Braddock appeared before the master of Van Slye's Circus and offered her interest for sale. He calmly announced that he could not afford to put any more money into the concern.
"I must sell out," she said. "All the money I have in the world is in this show."
"It could not be better invested," he said. She shrank from the look in his eyes.
"But I need it for Christine's education," she began.
"I will see to it that Christine is given the best of everything, Mary. Leave it to me. She shall be sent abroad next year, if you think best."
"I am asking no favors of you, Colonel Grand."
"It may interest you to know that I have purchased your husband's entire interest in this show," he said softly.
She stared, spellbound.
"He—he has sold out to you?" she murmured, going white to the lips.
"You seem surprised."
"He could not do it! It is necessary to have my consent. I—I—" Her brain was whirling.
"I understood that he was a perfectly free agent. I can send him to the penitentiary if he has swindled me. If you and Christine care to take that sort of stand against him, I'll have to do it. I should be terribly sorry on the girl's account, but— Oh, well, I'm sure it won't come to that."
"He—he has sold me out?" she cried weakly.
"Oh, hardly that!"
Unable to speak another word to him, she turned and blindly made her way to the women's dressing-room. The Colonel smiled comfortably as he lifted his hat to her retreating back.
Late that night four or five persons slipped out of the hotel by the rear doors. At the mouth of the dark alley a hack was waiting. With the utmost caution this small, closely huddled group approached the rickety vehicle. Three women climbed in, followed by numerous valises and small bags; their two male companions mounted the seat with the driver. Off through the still night rattled the mysterious cab, clattering across the cobbled streets for many minutes until at last it drew up at the darkest end of the railway station platform. Three trunks stood against the wall of the station building. One of the men attended to the checking of these heavy pieces, presenting two railway tickets for the guidance of the sleepy agent. The other stood guard over the cab and its occupants.
A train thundered in. The station platform was quite deserted except for the few belated revelers who had remained in town for the night performance of Van Slye's circus. When the train pulled out, a woman and two men stood beside the hack, where tearful farewells had been uttered and Godspeed spoken. Toward the east sped a tall woman and a slim, beautiful girl. In the outskirts of the town the train swept past a string of huge, cumbersome, ghostly wagons, all of them slinking away into the night-ridden pike that led to another city where the young and curious were already dreaming of the morning hours that were to bring the "circus to town."
"Good-by—good-by!" sobbed the girl, who had been peering intently through the window of the car. The tall woman did not look forth, but sat with her eyes riveted on the seat ahead.
"Yes, it is good-by, my darling," she said in very low tones.
Back at the railway station, after the rear lights of the train had disappeared, the lone woman turned her tear-stained face to the man whose arm was about her shoulder.
"Do you think we'll ever see them again, daddy?" she moaned.
"Yes," said the man huskily. "She said she'd let me know, one way or another, when it is safe to do so. Don't cry, Ruby. They're better off. They couldn't 'ave stayed on, God knows. And God will take care of 'em."
"I wish she'd said just where she's really bound for," muttered the other man, a tall ungainly fellow. "She's mighty near dead-broke, and I'm—I'm uneasy, Joey."
"She'll get on, Casey, confound you!"
"If she'd only make up her mind to go back to her father," said the girl.
"That's just it. If she's going back to 'im, it's best nobody knows yet—not even us. I've got their two letters for David, if he ever comes looking them up, as he said he would. Well, God bless 'em. I—I 'ates to think wot the show will be without 'em. Come on; let's get back to bed."
And so it was, many days afterward, that David Jenison came "looking them up," only to find that they were gone and that no one could tell him whither they had fled. It was significant that Colonel Bob Grand was not with the show; he had gone away in a great rage when the discovery of the flight became known to him. Tom Braddock, strangely sobered and bleached out by a tardy remorse, went about mechanically in the management of the show which he no longer owned.
Joey Grinaldi delivered two precious, carefully preserved missives into the hands of the distracted Virginian.
One of these letters said that the writer would wait for him to the end of time, loving him always with all her heart. The other, much longer, came to its conclusion with these words, written by a wise, far-seeing woman whose heart was breaking:
"... And now, David, good-by. We love you. Be content to let us go temporarily out of your life, if not from your thoughts or your heart. Always think of us with love and tenderness, my dear boy, as we shall never cease to think of you. You are young. Christine is young. You are not so wise now as you will be five years hence. I shall try to mold Christine into the kind of woman you could take as a wife to Jenison Hall. In five years, God willing, the circus ring and its spangles will be so remotely removed from her that no one can find the trace of them. In five years, David. That may seem ages to you and to her, who have youth and all of life ahead of you. When five years have gone by, David, I shall let you know where we are to be found. If you still care for her then, and she for you, no matter what the circumstances of either may be, no human power can keep you apart. You will come to her and say it all over again, and you will be happier because of this brief probation. If you should find, through the mature workings of a man's heart, that you have grown to love another, then you will both see for yourselves that my present course is right, and that your ways must continue, as now, along absolutely separate paths. Do not attempt to find us. Your own futile efforts, dear David, in that direction might be the means of bringing other and unkind searchers to our place of refuge. I know you would not bring greater trial and tribulation to us, who love you, than you have seen us suffer in the past."