“It must be lovely for you having Bill,” said little Mrs. Bailey wistfully. “I wish—”
She stopped. There was a corner of her mind into which she could not admit anyone, even Ruth.
“Having him ought to have been enough for any woman.” Ruth’s voice was serious. “It was enough for me in the old days when we were at the studio. What fools women are sometimes! I suppose I lost my head, coming suddenly into all that money—I don’t know why; for it was not as if I had not had plenty of time, when father was alive, to get used to the idea of being rich. I think it must have been the unexpectedness of it. I certainly did behave as if I had gone mad. Goodness! I’m glad it’s over and that we can make a fresh start.”
“What is it like being poor, Ruth? Of course, we were never very well off at home, but we weren’t really poor.”
“It’s heaven if you’re with the right man.”
Mrs. Bailey sighed.
“Bailey’s the right man, as far as I’m concerned. But I’m wondering how he will bear it, poor dear.”
Ruth was feeling too happy herself to allow anyone else to be unhappy if she could help it.
“Why, of course he will be splendid about it,” she said. “You’re letting your imagination run away with you. You have got the idea of Bailey and yourself as two broken creatures begging in the streets. I don’t know how badly Bailey will be off after this smash, but I do know that he will have all his brains and his energy left.”
Ruth was conscious of a momentary feeling of surprise that she should be eulogizing Bailey in this fashion, and—stranger still—that she should be really sincere in what she said. But today seemed to have changed everything, and she was regarding her brother with a newborn respect. She could still see Sybil’s face as it had appeared in that memorable moment of self-revelation. It had made a deep impression upon her.
“A man like Bailey is worth a large salary to anyone, even if he may not be able to start out for himself again immediately. I’m not worrying about you and Bailey. You will have forgotten all about this crash this time next year.” Sybil brightened up. She was by nature easily moved, and Ruth’s words had stimulated her imagination.
“He is awfully clever,” she said, her eyes shining.
“Why, this sort of thing happens every six months to anybody who has anything to do with Wall Street,” proceeded Ruth, fired by her own optimism. “You read about it in the papers every day. Nobody thinks anything of it.”
Sybil, though anxious to look on the bright side, could not quite rise to these heights of scorn for the earthquake which had shaken her world.
“I hope not. It would be awful to go through a time like this again.”
Ruth reassured her, though it entailed a certain inconsistency on her part. She had a true woman’s contempt for consistency.
“Of course you won’t have to go through it again. Bailey will be careful in future not to—not to do whatever it is that he has done.”
She felt that the end of her inspiring speech was a little weak, but she did not see how she could mend it. Her talk with Mr. Meadows on the telephone had left her as vague as before as to the actual details of what had been happening that day in Wall Street. She remembered stray remarks of his about bulls, and she had gathered that something had happened to something which Mr. Meadows called G.R.D.’s, which had evidently been at the root of the trouble; but there her grasp of high finance ended.
Sybil, however, was not exigent. She brightened at Ruth’s words as if they had been an authoritative pronouncement from an expert.
“Bailey is sure to do right,” she said. “I think I’ll creep in and see if he’s still asleep.”
Ruth, left alone on the porch, fell into a pleasant train of thought. There was something in her mental attitude which amused her. She wondered if anybody had ever received the announcement of financial ruin in quite the same way before. Yet to her this attitude seemed the only one possible.
How simple everything was now! She could go to Kirk and, as she had said to Sybil, start again. The golden barrier between them had vanished. One day had wiped out all the wretchedness of the last year. They were back where they had started, with all the accumulated experience of those twelve months to help them steer their little ship clear of the rocks on its new voyage.
She was roused from her dream by the sound of an automobile drawing up at the door. A voice that she recognised called her name. She went quickly down the steps.
“Is that you, Aunt Lora?”
Mrs. Porter, masterly woman, never wasted time in useless chatter.
“Jump in, my dear,” she said crisply. “Your husband has stolen William and eloped with that girl Mamie (whom I never trusted) to Connecticut.”
XIII
Pastures New
Steve had arrived at the Connecticut shack in the early dawn of the day which had been so eventful to most of his friends and acquaintances. William Bannister’s interest in the drive, at first acute, had ceased after the first five miles, and he had passed the remainder of the journey in a sound sleep from which the stopping of the car did not awaken him.
Steve jumped down and stretched himself. There was a wonderful freshness in the air which made him forget for a moment his desire for repose. He looked about him, breathing deep draughts of its coolness. The robins which, though not so well advertised, rise just as punctually as the lark, were beginning to sing as they made
