The Sherrods Part 24

"Say, would you mind letting me have the letter for publication?" cried Roscoe, quickly. "It would make great reading for his friends here.

He's an awfully bright fellow, and his letter would be a corker. Won't you please send it up to me?"

"Oh, I'm sure it wouldn't be good reading, Mr. Boswell," cried Justine, flus.h.i.+ng with pleasure. "They are mostly personal, you know, and would sound very silly to other people."

"I'll cut out the love part," he grinned, "and use nothing but the description of Paris or whatever he says about the old country."

"I don't believe he would like it, Mr. Boswell," said she, but in her mind she was wis.h.i.+ng that one of his interesting letters could be given to the public. She wanted the people to know how splendidly he was doing.

"We'll risk that," said Roscoe conclusively. "He won't mind, and besides, he won't see it. He don't take the paper, you know. I haven't many subscribers in Chicago just now," he added, reflectively.

"He will come to see me just as soon as he gets back to Chicago and then I'll ask him about it," she said.

"Is he coming down soon?" asked the editor, going to his original object.

"Oh, yes. He will be down in a week or two, I am sure."

"Are you--er--do you expect to go to Chicago to live?" he asked, rather nervously for him.

"Yes--quite soon, I think. Mr. Sherrod is making arrangements to have me come up very shortly. He says he is getting a home ready for us on the North Side. Do you know much about the North Side?"

"Er--I--well, not much," murmured Roscoe Boswell, who had been in Chicago but once in his life--he had spent two days at the World's Fair. "I'm pretty much acquainted on the South Side and the East Side, though. Great old city, ain't she?"

"I have not been there since I was a small baby, but Jud says it is wonderful."

"It'll be mighty nice for you both when Jud takes you up," said he, not knowing how to proceed. He could not bring himself to ask her if she had heard of that strange similarity in names in connection with the Chicago wedding.

"It will, indeed, and I'll be so happy. Jud wants me so much, and he'll be earning enough, soon to keep us both very nicely," she said, simply. Roscoe Boswell not only believed in the integrity of Jud Sherrod as she went away smiling, but he swore to himself that the stories about her and 'Gene Crawley were "infernal lies."

He saw her from time to time in the course of the evening, and she seemed so blithe and happy that he knew there was no shadow in her young heart.

"I'm glad of it," he mused, forgetting to respond to Mrs. Harbaugh's question. "It would have been a thundering good story for the _Tomahawk_ if it had been our Jud, old as the story is by this time, but I'm darned glad there's nothing in it." Then aloud, with a jerk: "What's that, Mrs. Harbaugh?"

Nevertheless, he could not help saying to Parson Marks, just before the party came to an end:

"Mrs. Sherrod is having the time of her young life, ain't she? She's a mighty pretty thing. Jud ought to be mighty proud of her. Every man here's half or dead in love with her."

"We all admire her very much," said Mr. Marks, with great dignity. He did not like the free and easy speech of the editor.

"I noticed a curious thing in a Chicago paper not long ago," said Boswell, whose eyes were following the girl. "Fellow with the same name as Jud's was married up there. Funny, wasn't it?"

"Not at all, Mr. Boswell," said Mr. Marks, stiffly. "There are hundreds of Sherrods in Chicago; the name is a common one. I saw the same article, I presume. It so impressed me, I confess, that I took the liberty of writing to Jud Sherrod to inquire if he knew anything about it."

"You did?" cried the editor, his eyes snapping eagerly. "And did he answer?"

"He did, most a.s.suredly."

"Well?" asked Boswell, as the pastor paused. "What did he say?"

"He said that he knew nothing about it except what he had seen in the papers, that's all."

"That's just what I thought," said the editor, emphatically. "I knew it wasn't our Jud."

"How could it be our Jud? He has a wife," said the minister, severely.

"Well, such things do happen, parson," said Boswell, somewhat defiantly. "You hear of them every day; papers are full of them."

"You may rest a.s.sured that Jud Sherrod is not that sort of a boy. I married him and Justine Van, and I know them both," said Mr. Marks, with final scorn, and went away.

"These darn-fool preachers think they know everything," muttered Boswell.

When the Grimeses set Justine down at her gate just before midnight, 'Gene Crawley, who stood unseen in the shadow of the lilac bush, waited breathlessly for the sign that might tell him how she had fared among the Philistines.

All the evening he had been anxious. He could not put away the fear that she might be mistreated or slighted in some way up at Harbaugh's.

But his heart jumped with joy when he heard her voice.

"Good-night," called Justine, as she sprang lightly to the ground.

"I've had such a good time, Mrs. Grimes. And it was good of you to take me over with you."

There was no mistaking the ring in her voice. Crawley's deep breath of relief seemed to himself almost audible.

"I thought you was having a right good time, Justine," said Martin Grimes, with a laugh. "You cut in pretty free."

"Well, it was an awfully nice party," said Mrs. Grimes. "Everybody seemed to enjoy it."

"I'm so glad I went. Thank you, ever so much," Justine said, and there was a song in her voice.

Her step was light and full of life as she sped up the path to the door of the cottage.

"Thank the Lord," thought 'Gene, as he strode off into the night, "I guess it was all right for her, after all. She's been happy to-night."

CHAPTER XXI.

THE COMING IN THE NIGHT.

Soon after their return to Chicago, Celeste began to observe changes in her husband's manner. He gave up newspaper ill.u.s.trating and went in for water colors and began to take lessons in oil painting. The cleverness of Jud Sherrod, the boy, was not wanting in the man. In a short time the born artist in him was mastering the difficulties of color and he was painting in a manner that surprised not only his critical friends but himself. He toiled hard and faithfully; his little studio on the top floor of their home was always a place of activity.

Feverishly he began these first attempts at coloring, Celeste his only critic. With loving yet honest eyes she saw the faults, the virtues and the improvement. He worked day and night, despite her expostulations. The bright eyes he turned to her when he took them from the canvas were not the gray, hungry ones that dulled into reverie when he was alone with his pigments. His eyes saw two dancing faces in the colors as he spread them: one dark, distressed, and weary, the other fair, bright, and happy.

There came to him a powerful desire to see Justine, but with it the fear that he could not leave her if he again felt her presence touching his. For an hour at a time, day after day, he would hold Celeste in his arms, uttering no word, stroking her hair, caressing her face, gloomily repentant. The enormity of his mistake--he would not call it crime--had come full upon him. It was not that he had broken the laws of the land, but that he had deceived--deceived.

Men about town remarked the change and wondered. Dougla.s.s Converse, in anxiety, sought to ascertain the cause, fearing to find Celeste unhappy. She was, beyond doubt, blissfully happy, and he fell back upon the old solution: Sherrod was not well. The latter, in response to blunt questioning, told him he was not sick, not tired, not worried, but his heart quaked with the discovery that the eyes of his friends were upon him and always questioning.

"Dudley, dear, let us go to Florida next month," said Celeste one night as they drove home from the theatre. He had drooped moodily through the play and had been silent as they whirled along in the carriage. In casting about for the cause of his apparent weariness, she ascribed it to overwork.

"Do you really want to go, Celeste?" he asked, tenderly. "Will the stay down there do you good?"