423CHAPTER XXXVII
IN WHICH WE WITNESS A CEREMONY IN THE TEMPLE OF LOVE
George Brotherton took the Captain to the street car that night. They rode face to face and all that the Captain had seen and more, outside the Vanderbilt House, and all that George Brotherton had seen within its portals, a street car load of Harvey people heard with much “’Y gorying” and “Well–saying,” as the car rattled through the fields and into Market Street. Amiable satisfaction with the night’s work beamed in the moon-face of Mr. Brotherton and the Captain was drunk with martial spirit. He shouldered his gun and marched down the full length of the car and off, dragging Brotherton at his chariot wheels like a spoil of battle.
“Come on, George,” called the Captain as the audience in the car smiled. “Young man, I need you to tell the girls that their pa ain’t gone stark, staring mad–eh? And I want to show ’em a hero!–What say? A genuine hee-ro!”
It was half an hour after the Captain bursting upon his hearthstone like a martial sky rocket, had exploded the last of his blue and green candles. The three girls, sitting around the cold base burner, beside and above which Mr. Brotherton stood in statuesque repose, heard the Captain’s tale and the protests of Mr. Brotherton much as Desdemona heard of Othello’s perils. And when the story was finished and retold and refinished and the Captain was rising with what the girls called the hash-look in his snappy little eyes, Martha saw Ruth swallow a vast yawn and Martha turned to Emma an appreciative smile at Ruth’s discomfiture.
But Emma’s eyes were fixed upon Mr. Brotherton and her face turned toward him with an aspect of tender adoration. Mr. Brotherton, who was not without appreciation of his own heroic caste, saw the yawn and the smile and then he saw the face of Emma Morton.
424It came over him in a flash of surprise that Ruth and Martha were young things, not of his world; and that Emma was of his world and very much for him in his world. It got to him through the busy guard of his outer consciousness with a great rush of tenderness that Emma really cared for the dangers he had faced and was proud of the part he had played. And Mr. Brotherton knew that, with Ruth and Martha, it was a tale that was told.
As he saw her standing among her sisters, his heart hid from him the little school teacher with crow’s feet at her eyes, but revealed instead the glowing heart of an exalted woman, who did not realize that she was uncovering her love, a woman who in the story she had heard was living for a moment in high romance. Her beloved, imperiled, was restored to her; the lost was found and the journey which ends so happily in lovers’ meetings was closing.
His eyes filled and his voice needed a cough to prime it. The fire, glowing in Emma Morton’s eyes, steamed up George Brotherton’s will–the will which had sent him crashing forward in life from a train peddler to a purveyor of literature and the arts in Harvey. Deeds followed impulses with him swiftly, so in an instant the floor of the Morton cottage was shaking under his tread and with rash indifference, high and heroic, ignoring with equal disdain two tittering girls, an astonished little old man and a cold base burner, the big man stalked across the room and cried:
“Well, say–why, Emma–my dear!” He had her hands in his and was putting his arm about her as he bellowed: “Girls–” his voice broke under its heavy emotional load. “Why, dammit all, I’m your long-lost brother George! Cap, kick me, kick me–me the prize jackass–the grand sweepstake prize all these years!”
“No, no, George,” protested the wriggling maiden. “Not–not here! Not–”