The Essential Booth Tarkington Collection. Booth Tarkington
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with eager hopefulness. "You've broken with him?"
"Oh, Lord, no! Nothing like that." Cora leaned to her confidentially. "He told me, once, he'd be at the feet of any woman that could help put through an affair like his oil scheme, and I decided I'd just show him what I could do. He'd talk about it to me; then he'd laugh at me. That very Sunday when I got papa to go in----"
"But he didn't," said Laura helplessly. "He only said he'd try to----when he gets well."
"It's all the same--and it'll be a great thing for him, too," said Cora, gayly. "Well, that very afternoon before Val left, he practically told me I was no good. Of course he didn't use just those words--that isn't his way--but he laughed at me. And haven't I shown him! I sent Richard a note that very night saying papa had consented to be secretary of the company, and Richard had said he'd go in if papa did that, and he couldn't break his word----"
"I know," said Laura, sighing. "I know."
"Laura"--Cora spoke with sudden gravity--"did you ever know anybody like me? I'm almost getting superstitious about it, because it seems to me I _always_ get just what I set out to get. I believe I could have anything in the world if I tried for it."
"I hope so, if you tried for something good for you," said Laura sadly. "Cora, dear, you will--you will be a little easy on Hedrick, won't you?"
Cora leaned against the newel and laughed till she was exhausted.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Mr. Trumble's offices were heralded by a neat blazon upon the principal door, "Wade J. Trumble, Mortgages and Loans"; and the gentleman thus comfortably, proclaimed, emerging from that door upon a September noontide, burlesqued a start of surprise at sight of a figure unlocking an opposite door which exhibited the name, "Ray Vilas," and below it, the cryptic phrase, "Probate Law."
"Water!" murmured Mr. Trumble, affecting to faint. "You ain't going in _there_, are you, Ray?" He followed the other into the office, and stood leaning against a bookcase, with his hands in his pockets, while Vilas raised the two windows, which were obscured by a film of smoke-deposit: there was a thin coat of fine sifted dust over everything. "Better not sit down, Ray," continued Trumble, warningly. "You'll spoil your clothes and you might get a client. That word `Probate' on the door ain't going to keep 'em out forever. You recognize the old place, I s'pose? You must have been here at least twice since you moved in. What's the matter? Dick Lindley hasn't missionaried you into any idea of _working_, has he? Oh, no, _I_ see: the Richfield Hotel bar has closed--you've managed to drink it all at last!"
"Have you heard how old man Madison is to-day?" asked Ray, dusting his fingers with a handkerchief.
"Somebody told me yesterday he was about the same. He's not going to get well."
"How do you know?" Ray spoke quickly.
"Stroke too severe. People never recover----"
"Oh, yes, they do, too."
Trumble began hotly: "I beg to dif----" but checked himself, manifesting a slight confusion. "That is, I know they don't. Old Madison may live a while, if you call that getting well; but he'll never be the same man he was. Doctor Sloane says it was a bad stroke. Says it was `induced by heat prostration and excitement.' `Excitement!'" he repeated with a sour laugh. "Yep, I expect a man could get all the excitement he wanted in _that_ house, especially if he was her daddy. Poor old man, I don't believe he's got five thousand dollars in the world, and look how she dresses!"
Ray opened a compartment beneath one of the bookcases, and found a bottle and some glasses. "Aha," he muttered, "our janitor doesn't drink, I perceive. Join me?" Mr. Trumble accepted, and Ray explained, cheerfully: "Richard Lindley's got me so cowed I'm afraid to go near any of my old joints. You see, he trails me; the scoundrel has kept me sober for whole days at a time, and I've been mortified, having old friends see me in that condition; so I have to sneak up here to my own office to drink to Cora, now and then. You mustn't tell him. What's she been doing to _you_, lately?"
The little man addressed grew red with the sharp, resentful memory. "Oh, nothing! Just struck me in the face with her parasol on the public street, that's all!" He gave an account of his walk to church with Cora. "I'm through with that girl!" he exclaimed vindictively, in conclusion. "It was the damnedest thing you ever saw in your life: right in broad daylight, in front of the church. And she laughed when she did it; you'd have thought she was knocking a puppy out of her way. She can't do that to me twice, I tell you. What the devil do you see to laugh at?"
"You'll be around," returned his companion, refilling the glasses, "asking for more, the first chance she gives you. Here's her health!"
"I don't drink it!" cried Mr. Trumble angrily.
"And I'm through with her for good, I tell you! I'm not your kind: I don't let a girl like that upset me till I can't think of anything else, and go making such an ass of myself that the whole town gabbles about it. Cora Madison's seen the last of me, I'll thank you to notice. She's never been half-decent to me; cut dances with me all last winter; kept me hanging round the outskirts of every crowd she was in; stuck me with Laura and her mother every time she had a chance; then has the nerve to try to use me, so's she can make a bigger hit with a new man! You can bet your head I'm through! She'll get paid though! Oh, she'll get paid for it!"
"How?" laughed Ray.
It was a difficult question. "You wait and see," responded the threatener, feebly. "Just wait and see. She's wild about this Corliss, I tell you," he continued, with renewed vehemence. "She's crazy about him; she's lost her head at last----"
"You mean he's going to avenge you?"
"No, I don't, though he might, if she decided to marry him."
"Do you know," said Ray slowly, glancing over his glass at his nervous companion, "it doesn't strike me that Mr. Valentine Corliss has much the air of a marrying man."
"He has the air to _me_," observed Mr. Trumble, "of a darned bad lot! But I have to hand it to him: he's a wizard. He's got something besides his good looks--a man that could get Cora Madison interested in `business'! In _oil_! Cora Madison! How do you suppose----"
His companion began to laugh again. "You don't really suppose he talked his oil business to her, do you, Trumble?"
"He must have. Else how could she----"
"Oh, no, Cora herself never talks upon any subject but one; she never listens to any other either."
"Then how in thunder did he----"
"If Cora asks you if you think it will rain," interrupted Vilas, "doesn't she really seem to be asking: `Do you love me? How much?' Suppose Mr. Corliss is an expert in the same line. Of course he can talk about oil!"
"He strikes me," said Trumble, "as just about the slickest customer that ever hit this town. I like Richard Lindley, and I hope he'll see his fifty thousand dollars again. _I_ wouldn't have given Corliss thirty cents."
"Why do you think he's a crook?"
"I don't say that," returned Trumble. "All _I_ know about him is that he's done some of the finest work to get fifty thousand dollars put in his hands that I ever heard of. And all anybody knows about him is that he lived here seventeen years ago, and comes back claiming to know where there's oil in Italy. He shows some maps and papers and gets cablegrams signed `Moliterno.' Then he talks about selling the old Corliss house here, where the Madisons live, and putting the money into his oil company: he does that to sound plausible, but I have good reason to know that house was mortgaged to its full value within a month after his aunt left it to him. He'll not get a cent if it's sold. That's all. And he's got Cora Madison so crazy over him that she makes life a hell for poor old Lindley until he puts all he's saved into the bubble. The scheme may be all right. How do _I_ know? There's no way to tell, without going over there, and Corliss won't let anybody do that--oh, he's got a plausible excuse