The Dark Star
Page 58A breathless nod was her response. All around them repressed
excitement was breaking out; men stood up and shouted; women rose, and
the club house seemed suddenly to blossom like a magic garden of
wind-tossed flowers.
Through the increasing cheering Stull looked on without a sign of
emotion, although affluence or ruin, in the Sanford colours, sat
astride the golden roan.
Suddenly Ruhannah stood up, one hand pressed to the ill-fitting blue
serge over her wildly beating heart. Brandes rose beside her. Not a
muscle in his features moved.
* * * * *
"Gawd!" whispered Stull in his ear, as they were leaving.
heavy, round face was deeply flushed; Fortune, the noisy wanton, had
flung both arms around his neck. But his slow eyes were continually
turned on the slim young girl whom he was teaching to walk beside him
without taking his arm.
"Ain't she on to us?" Stull had enquired. And Brandes' reply was
correct; Ruhannah never dreamed that it made a penny's difference to
Brandes whether Nick Stoner won or whether it was Deborah Glenn which
the wild-voiced throng saluted.
* * * * *
They did not remain in Saratoga for dinner. They took Stull back to
his hotel on the rumble of the runabout, Brandes remarking that he
Stull look about Saratoga for a likely one.
Halted in the crush before the United States Hotel, Stull decided to
descend there. Several men in the passing crowds bowed to Brandes;
one, Norton Smawley, known to the fraternity as "Parson" Smawley, came
out to the curb to shake hands. Brandes introduced him to Rue as
"Parson" Smawley--whether with some sinister future purpose already
beginning to take shape in his round, heavy head, or whether a
perverted sense of humour prompted him to give Rue the idea that she
had been in godly company, it is difficult to determine.
He added that Miss Carew was the daughter of a clergyman and a
missionary. And the Parson took his cue. At any rate Rue, leaning from
Parson Smawley with pleasure, and found his sleek, graceful presence
and courtly manners most agreeable. There were no such persons in
Gayfield.
She hoped, shyly, that if he were in Gayfield he would call on her
father. Once in a very long while clergymen called on her father, and
their rare visits remained a pleasure to the lonely invalid for
months.
The Parson promised to call, very gravely. It would not have
embarrassed him to do so; it was his business in life to have a
sufficient knowledge of every man's business to enable him to converse
convincingly with anybody.