第30章

Did you speak?"

"No," said the lady, with her bright eyes fixed upon him.

"Well, that was all well and good, and I'd liked to have carried out my part of the contract, and was willing, and am still. But you see, Kelly, after she'd landed Reddy on firm ground, got a little tired, I reckon, gal-like, of the thing she'd worked so easily, and when she went East she looked around for some other wreck to try her hand on, and she found it on the steamer coming back. And who do you think it was? Why, our friend Louis Sylvester!"Mrs. Merrydew smiled slightly, with her bright eyes still on the speaker.

"Well, you know he IS fast at times--if he is a friend of mine--and she reg'larly tackled him; and as my old woman says, it was a sight to see her go for him. But then HE didn't tumble to it. No!

Reformin' ain't in HIS line I'm afeard. And what was the result?

Why, Kelly only got all the more keen when she found she couldn't manage him like Reddy,--and, between you and me, she'd have liked Reddy more if he hadn't been so easy,--and it's ended, I reckon, in her now falling dead in love with Sylvester. She swears she won't marry any one else, and wants to devote her whole life to him!

Now, what's to be done! Reddy don't know it yet, and I don't know how to tell him. Kelly says her mission was ended when she made a new man of him, and he oughter be thankful for that. Couldn't you kinder break the news to him and tell him there ain't any show for him?""Does he love the girl so much, then?" said the lady gently.

"Yes; but I am afraid there is no hope for Reddy as long as she thinks there's a chance of her capturing Sylvester."The lady rose and went to the writing-table. "Would it be any comfort to you, Mr. Woodridge, if you were told that she had not the slightest chance with Sylvester?""Yes."

She wrote a few lines on a card, put it in an envelope, and handed it to Woodridge. "Find out where Sylvester is in San Francisco, and give him that card. I think it will satisfy you. And now as Ihave to catch the return coach in ten minutes, I must ask you to excuse me while I put my things together.""And you won't first break the news to Reddy for me?""No; and I advise you to keep the whole matter to yourself for the present. Good-by!"She smiled again, fascinatingly as usual, but, as it seemed to him, a trifle wearily, and then passed into the inner room. Years after, in his practical, matter of fact recollections of this strange woman, he always remembered her by this smile.

But she had sufficiently impressed him by her parting adjuration to cause him to answer Reddy's eager inquiries with the statement that Kelly and her mother were greatly preoccupied with some friends in San Francisco, and to speedily escape further questioning. Reddy's disappointment was somewhat mitigated by the simultaneous announcement of Mrs. Merrydew's departure. But he was still more relieved and gratified to hear, a few days later, of the marriage of Mrs. Merrydew with Louis Sylvester. If, to the general surprise and comment it excited, he contributed only a smile of cynical toleration and superior self-complacency, the reader will understand and not blame him. Nor did the public, who knew the austere completeness of his reform. Nor did Mr. Woodridge, who failed to understand the only actor in this little comedy who might perhaps have differed from them all.

A month later James Reddy married Kelly Woodridge, in the chilly little church at Oakdale. Perhaps by that time it might have occurred to him that although the freshness and fruition of summer were everywhere, the building seemed to be still unwarmed. And when he stepped forth with his bride, and glanced across the prosperous landscape toward the distant bay and headlands of San Francisco, he shivered slightly at the dryly practical kiss of the keen northwestern Trades.

But he was prosperous and comfortable thereafter, as the respectable owner of broad lands and paying shares. It was said that Mrs. Reddy contributed much to the popularity of the hotel by her charming freedom from prejudice and sympathy with mankind; but this was perhaps only due to the contrast to her more serious and at times abstracted husband. At least this was the charitable opinion of the proverbially tolerant and kind-hearted Baroness Streichholzer (nee Merrydew, and relict of the late lamented Louis Sylvester, Esq.), whom I recently had the pleasure of meeting at Wiesbaden, where the waters and reposeful surroundings strongly reminded her of Oakdale.