III
Having nothing of larger consequence to attend upon, that week, Amos took a mighty trip to Boston to interview the “brat from the Orphanage” on behalf of his beloved offspring.
Madelaine, strange as the statement may appear, had never met Amos Ruggles. Rising hastily now from her book-littered desk, she beheld her maid admit to her outer sitting room a very carefully groomed, white-faced, fastidiously caned and perfectly spatted elderly man who wore a red carnation in his buttonhole and a Facial Expression prepared for the worst.
But Madelaine’s interest was not to be compared with old “Am’s” stunned surprise when he raised his owlish eyes and saw “the brat from the Orphanage” confronting him from the opposite doorway. Subconsciously Amos had failed to conceive of that brat as anything but a brat. Certainly not a woman grown to maturity. Up to the moment of admittance he had looked vaguely forward to interviewing a knock-kneed child in pigtails and a gingham apron. He had once visited an orphanage while on a legislative committee. He had come away impressed that the crying need of the institution at the moment was to have its individual and collective nose wiped.
Instead of such a mite of parentless humanity whom he might pat on the head and suggest peanuts to, the man confronted a tall, perfectly poised, athletic young woman whose calm eyes made him wonder if he had rumpled himself anywhere in that hectic two-hour trip on the Boston and Albany.
For an instant Amos felt petulant. Persons unknown had tricked him. For Madge Theddon was grown into a “goddess.” The metaphor is Amos’s. And she “had a way with her.” Yes, she had very much of a way with her. One of her fellow students had described her: “Calm as a mountain thinking aloud; ineligible for analysis as moonlight playing on a nocturnal waterfall.”
“I am Madelaine, yes!” she announced in response to “Am’s” suggestion that there was a mistake somewhere. “You are my mother’s brother-in-law. I am very glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Ruggles.” She moved forward, extending a lithe, cool, capable hand.
Amos took the hand and kissed it, or he believed he kissed it, at the same time annoyed that she had called him her mother’s brother-in-law instead of her own uncle.
“Madam, charmed!” And Amos made another bow. But he was not charmed. He was bumped. He was badly bumped! There was not a doubt about it.
With an amused smile, Madelaine’s maid withdrew. Amos produced a billowy silk handkerchief and began patting various exposed portions of his anatomy. He ran out of exposed portions and then accepted the chair Madelaine indicated, still in his imbecilic daze.
“Y-Y-You may think it strange that I have called, Miss Madel—Miss Madel—Miss Theddon—it is about my son. You two have become quite well acquainted in the past, I understand.”
“Quite,” returned the girl. Her tone was a trifle ironic.
Amos was at a loss.
“Yes, yes! True, true—very true.” Came another distressing pause while Amos considered. “You see, it’s like this, Miss Madel—Miss Madel—Miss Theddon—getting along famously, are we not?—nothing could please his mother and myself just now more than the knowledge that he is married and—safely in the hands of some good and firm-willed woman. And so—beautiful apartment you have here!—I decided I would come down and talk it over with you.”
“I see,” Madelaine responded. “You’ve come to enlist my aid, perhaps, in finding a wife for Gordon. Or my advice as to how to proceed; which is it?”
“Well—er—in fact, a little of both and none of either.” Amos was happily growing more at ease. He stored his handkerchief in his outside breast pocket, left a couple of inches exposed, put his pink, manicured finger tips precisely together between his knees.
“The idea is this, Miss Madelaine. The boy is—well—the boy is—deeply impressed by yourself and—purely as a father—with a father’s paternal interest, understand—I have called to appraise for myself the extent of the gulf between you and—get you to consider the matter for—er—early negotiation.”
“What matter? Just what do you mean?”
“The matter, Miss Madelaine, of—er—becoming his—wife!”
Amos breathed once more. The worst was over.
Madelaine could not control the flush that crept toward her temples.
“Did Gordon ask that you do this?” she demanded.
“Not at all! Not at all! The idea is my own entirely—absolutely my own!” Amos inferred that as an idea it certainly had its points and on the whole he was rather proud of it.
“Then Gordon knows nothing of it?”
“Not a whittle, Miss Madelaine, not a whittle.”
The girl sat for a time in silence. Her emotions were resentful. They wanted to riot. Her lips twitched once or twice. Then came a saving sense of humor.
“Just why should I consider a marriage with your son, Mr. Ruggles? On what basis do you rear that contention?”
“I—er—I——”
Madelaine pitied his sudden distress. For the first time in his life Amos Ruggles appreciated that any reference to the Ruggles wealth would be crude and insulting, before such a woman as he confronted now.
“He’s a—he’s a—mighty fine boy, Miss Madelaine!” was the father’s compromise.
“I apologize if I seem rude, Mr. Ruggles. But that must remain a matter of opinion.”
“You mean—he isn’t a mighty fine boy?”
“Must we discuss him—his good points and his bad?”
“But he has no bad points, my dear lady. Of course, during adolescence he has been virile and erratic and perhaps indulged himself in some few indiscretions common to all boys. Why, I have even passed through such a stage myself. But there’s nothing really bad about him—nothing but what a characterful wife could eventually eradicate.”
“Mr. Ruggles, has Gordon ever recounted how very ungentlemanly—in fact, grossly insulting—his conduct toward myself has been consistently—from the moment of our first meeting?”
Incredulity, a flick of exasperation, now passed over Amos Ruggles’s features. There was a certain trick of intonation in Madelaine’s voice which quashed irrevocably any argument that Gordon had not been ungentlemanly and insulting. And yet Amos was not quite willing to subscribe to that. And argument was cheapening.
“Just how has he acted—what has he done?”
“You really wish me to tell you?”
“I should consider it in the light of a very great favor, my dear lady.”
Madelaine considered. She leaned back in the chair and put two slender fingers of each hand at a temple, her dark eyes fixed appraisingly upon her foster-uncle.
Then she told him.
She began with Gordon’s conduct and language the day ten years before, when he had violated the privacy of her bedroom. That was insipid, however, beside the later indignities she had suffered. She gave a truthful account of each situation when he had taken her at a disadvantage, forced himself upon her, defiled her lips or tried to compromise her still more seriously. The night of the bogus auto accident became but an incident in that sordid recount. The most brazen piece of insult and effrontery had been a night in a Boston hotel when Gordon had followed her, secured a room next to her own and bought a mercenary night clerk to let him scratch the girl’s name from the register and substitute “Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Ruggles” instead. He then added the consecutive room numbers as a suite. Cheap witnesses had been procured to substantiate that Madelaine had apparently gone to Boston, met Gordon clandestinely and shared an apartment with him for a night. With his citadel of crazy folly thus garrisoned, the foster-nephew had brazenly offered the girl the alternative of marriage or exposure, and only an astute lawyer had contrived to squelch the scandal without publicity.
Amos was dumbfounded. She waited for him to comment. But he held his peace. Then Madelaine laughed good-naturedly.
“And after such persecution—I hope you’ll permit me to call it that, Mr. Ruggles—ten or twelve years of it!—you come to me and suggest I marry your son because he’s really ‘not such a bad fellow, after all!’”
“Don’t you believe—a good woman—can reform a man?” Amos demanded quickly.
“That all depends on the man. In some cases, absolutely not. The material must first be there to work upon. As a general proposition, I consider it thankless nonsense. There may be some good men who have been bruised and buffeted and almost wrecked by life’s cruellest vicissitudes. They may have lost their moorings and their faith in human nature. All they require is kind and loving care, and tenderness and proper ministration to bring them back to normal. In so far as that is ‘reform’, I believe it possible and admirable and well worth the effort. But taking a man who has never had a care or worry and whose career has been one long fling in self-indulgence, and endeavoring to make a man of him—the woman who will waste her time trying it displays evidences of imbecility.”
“Then I take it—there’s no hope—for Gordon?”
“I haven’t said so. I’ve said that Gordon, or any man who wants my respect and ministration, must prove to me first that, in popular language, he’s ‘got the stuff in him.’ I’ll say this much: When your son Gordon has proved to me he’s sincerely penitent and made of the material that perhaps hasn’t had a fair chance to develop, he stands as good a chance to gain my favor as any man. That’s all the ‘encouragement’ I can give. Just now I’ve too much to occupy my time to think of matrimony, anyway. It doesn’t enter into my plans. I’m studying to be a physician.”
“Yes, yes, I know! Very commendable. I wish Gordon had some interest in life—some——”
“I’ll even go further, Mr. Ruggles. I’ll say that all the vulgarity and insult which I’ve suffered consistently from your son will not handicap him if he turns over a new leaf and shows he’s really made of stuff worth while. In fact, I’d be inclined to count it in his favor, strange as it may sound. For it will be a criterion of what he has overcome.”
“Thank you,” said Amos. “Thank you very much!”