“We mean to have you live to hear the Grillage Engineering Company called the squarest contracting firm in the business; to see the time when its bid will be the highest one made on a job, and yet will be the bid that is accepted. That is how we shall try to pay some part of the big debt. You’ll let us try for it, won’t you?”
For a full minute the fierce eyes were closed and the massive figure outlined under the bed-clothes lay motionless and rigid. When the eyes were unclosed the king of the contractors was himself again, in curt decision and terseness of speech, at least.
“Have your way, both of you,” he growled. “It isn’t my way, and you can’t hope to teach an old dog new tricks. Find Oswald, and we’ll draw up some kind of a document that will put you in the saddle and give you the authority to make the deal with Ford and his lawyers. And say: tell Oswald to bring me a cigar—the blackest one he can find.... No, I don’t care a damn what the doctor says!”
There was a double wedding in the Inn club-room a week later, the Grillage private car having been sent all the way to Brewster to bring the officiating clergyman. Contrary to all precedent—at least in Virginia Grillage’s world—there was no formality. The Inn guests were invited in a body; and on David’s side there was a crowding of engineers in working clothes, of grade foremen and subcontractors, of all and sundry who could be spared from the big job.
Eben Grillage, his great body propped in a wheel-chair, gave one of the brides away; but the chief interest for the onlookers centered in the slender, sylph-like figure of the other bride, whose face, almost other-worldly in its delicate, rose-leaf beauty, was as the face of an innocent child, and whose eyes, seeing neither the throng nor the morning sunlight streaming through the windows of the transformed lounging-room, were yet shining with happiness ineffable.
“I—I simply can’t believe she is blind!” whispered one white-haired mother of daughters among the witnesses; and there were others, also, to wink away the quick-springing tears of sympathy.
Again, contrary to all precedent, there was no wedding journey to follow the simple ceremony in the hotel club-room. Almost immediately the Oswalds went across to the cottage they were to occupy; and a short half-hour after her marriage, Virginia Vallory, clad in serviceable khaki, forthfared with her husband to make a round over the job.
The sun was setting crimson fires alight in Qojogo’s cloud cap when they returned to a late dinner. The summerers were thickly clustered on the Inn porches, and the two who had just reached the summit of the steep ridge path turned their backs upon the conventions and their faces toward the western effulgences.
“You’ve had the better part of a day to think about it; are you sorry for that little minute of confessions in the tunnel, Vinnie?” David asked, as one still unable to realize his blessings and the full magnitude of them.