CHAPTER VIII

THE BRIDAL NIGHT

The excitement among the guests had now spread to the floors above. Too, there was a noticeable dearth of serving people. In the parlor on this second floor into which Ryder glanced curiously on his way to his own rooms, was a crowd of women with a sprinkling of husbands, discussing the situation in varying degrees of anxiety.

The corridors and parlor were ablaze with electric lights, and Ryder saw the great picture, covering half the further end-wall of the room, about which Mr. Cudger was making such a row at the clerk's desk.

An especially arranged string of lights over the picture cast the proper glow upon it. It really was the work of a master of color, but that its owner should consider it in danger of suffering the fate of some of the great paintings that have been stolen, rather amused John Ryder.

While he stood for a moment looking at the picture he realized that a sudden hush had fallen upon the several groups in the parlor, and he saw that the majority of the guests there assembled were staring at him. Whether their interest was aroused because he was a bridegroom or because he had cornered the lighting and heating supplies of the village, the man of business did not know--nor did he care. He shrugged his shoulders and passed on.

A bridegroom! Well, this did not seem a very fortunate beginning for one's honeymoon. Another man might have easily slipped from under the duties that had settled on John Ryder's shoulders. But it was his way, when he saw things going wrong, to step in and right them.

He had given his mind to this business of trying to bring some order out of the chaotic condition of affairs in the hotel with as much zest as he ever gave to business matters. Now, as he approached the apartment in which he and Ruth had expected to be so happy in each other's society for the next few weeks, he tried to throw off all the anxieties that had recently accumulated in his mind.

This was his bridal night. He had fallen in love with the most beautiful and charming woman he had ever met, and had married her offhand. Were it not for this troublesome matter of the hotel closing, he would be the happiest man alive.

Indeed, he was the happiest man alive in any case. Had he not just been married to the loveliest and sweetest girl in the world? Was not _his wife_ (John Ryder almost strutted) waiting for him in their rooms at this very moment?

Then a feeling of humility, unusual humility in this successful business man who was accustomed to getting what he wanted, overcame him. What was he to have won this jewel of a woman in so short a time? Seven days, and she had consented to become his wife! Men sometimes strove and worked for the love of a woman for months--for years! But no--that could not be real love! When two people loved as he and Ruth loved, there was no waiting in uncertainty. They knew it--they must know it--at once.

In spite of his thirty-five years and his somewhat ruthless business career, John Ryder was undoubtedly still very much of a boy. And indeed, in love matters, he was but a boy, inasmuch as never before had he even imagined himself in love.

"Confound this old ranch, anyway!" John Ryder muttered. "Why should I bother my head about it--or about these silly folks in it? I declare! we'll find some way of getting out of the pickle ourselves tomorrow morning and go to some place where we can enjoy our honeymoon undisturbed."

Then he remembered that Ruth had chosen Pinewood particularly. It might be only a whim on her part; but he was in a mind just then to satisfy even her whims, if it could be done.

"This man, Giddings, will show up, and things will probably be running all right before tomorrow night. And Ruth--God bless that sweet name!--has taken all the trouble to unpack. By thunder!" he added, "it's funny about those dresses of hers. I must ask her----"

He had come to the door and opened it softly--so softly indeed that the occupant of the room did not hear him. His heart throbbed and his eyes actually smarted with unshed drops as he looked down the long apartment and saw his wife sitting reading in the radiance of the drop-light at the table.

She was alone. The other lights had been extinguished, and she sat awaiting his return, evidently with her mind not wholly upon the book in her lap, for she turned no leaves while Ryder watched her.

In her attitude and in the loosely flowing gown she had donned since dinner, she made a delightful picture. Ryder drank in the details as he stood, shrinking from breaking the spell of her reverie.

It was by no means a sad mood which held her, for her lips slowly parted in a most ravishing smile. He could see this, though it was her profile only he watched from his station at the door.

He was about to close the latter softly when she dropped her book and her fingers fluttered about her throat for a moment. She loosened her gown there, thrust one hand within the laces, and drew forth a tiny object attached to a thin gold chain which he had already noticed about her throat. The ornament she held for a moment in her palm was a locket.

When she snapped it open and gazed upon what it contained she turned a little so that he saw her expression of countenance more clearly. It startled him.

He was a sane and level-headed man. He was thirty-five, and the foolish emotions of adolescence should not have ruffled his calm. Yet aboard the steamship he had felt an unrecognized pang of jealousy whenever he saw Miss Mont talking with Marks, the theatrical man. A similar pang smote him now.

No human being ever looked as Ruth looked unless the object of such gaze was a dearly loved one, or the memento of a loved one! While Ryder watched, his wife raised the locket reverently and pressed her lips to the object it contained.

He must have uttered some sound, or moved, or the door latch clicked as he closed it. She started, saw him, and hastily concealed the locket in her bosom, rising in some confusion to greet him.

The arrow of suspicion first driven into his mind when he had seen that stranger at their door and Ruth had seemed so frightened, was barbed. Now that he sought to cast it out of his thought, it rankled.

What! was he of a low, suspicious, jealous nature? Was he the kind of cur to make himself and his wife miserable by a jealousy that was insulting to them both?

This woman and he had known each other but a short time before their hasty marriage, but Ryder flattered himself that he had drawn from her a rather full and connected story of her life up to the day she had stepped aboard the _Minnequago_.

There had been nothing in her story, he was positive, of which she needed to be ashamed. There had been no man but him. She had told him that frankly.

She might possess some keepsake; but only such as an honorable wife might have. He knew it--he would stake his life upon it!

Perhaps it was some dear reminder of the mother she had scarcely known. He had carried his mother's wedding ring all these years until he had given it to the clergyman to slip on Ruth's finger. He saw the glint of that ring now as she advanced to meet him with hands outstretched and the same light in her eyes that he had seen just now while she bent above the locket.

"I am a fool!" bethought. "A wicked fool."

He hurried down the room and clasped her yielding body within the circle of his arms. There was a passion in his embrace which he had scarcely expressed before, and she seemed to feel it.

"Dearest!" she whispered. "I am glad you have come back, I was getting lonesome again," and she gave him her lips of her own accord.

The heart of John Ryder beat higher. He remembered what he had told her aboard ship:

"I'll never bring tears to your eyes, but always laughter to your heart!"

"And a villain I'd be to break my word. Now is not the time to ask an explanation of such a simple act. It might show her how mean and vile a thought I had," was his thought.

"I sent a message up to you a while ago, but the boy seemed unable to find you," he said.

"Why, I never saw such stupid boys as they have at this hotel! Another knocked on our door while Mrs. Judson was here and asked for somebody else."

"Oh, the guests are all around, visiting in each other's rooms, I presume," he observed. "The whole household is upset. And you never saw such a lot of cranks as there are here in your life. A circus sideshow has no more freaks, I guess, than a hotel like this Pinewood Inn."

Ryder, laughing, told of old Mr. Cudger and his picture, and sketched the character of Colonel Aurelius Brack. Incidentally he told her something of what had been done, though in an impersonal way, to make the guests comfortable and to keep the employees of the hotel on their jobs.

"Dear me, John!" she cried, leading him to a couch where they could sit side by side, "I thought this was to be a vacation for both of us," looking at him roguishly. "A honeymoon! It should begin pretty soon, don't you think?"

"Do you want to pack those trunks again and leave in the morning?"

"No-o. I want to stay here if we can. But can't some of the other men attend to all these things?"

"They are attending to them. They are discussing them to beat the band! But nobody seemed to have any really practical ideas--not when it touched their pocketbooks," and Ryder laughed grimly.

"I'm going down once more to see about something particular. The dining-room is still open. It will be late before we get to bed, and you only pecked at your dinner, I noticed. Don't you want to come down for a bite--or will it be too much trouble?"

"Ah-ha!" she said shaking a finger at him, "you have the late-supper habit. I believe you are a gay boy. I certainly shall not let my hubby go out alone to suppers. And--whisper it!--I am hungry. I was so excited when we arrived. And people stared so at us down there----"

"They'll stare now," he said smiling.

"Especially if I should go down in this robe?" and she blushed as she sprang up from the couch. "I will put on one of my nicest and," looking at him from across the room with sparkling eyes, "bridiest gowns!"

She disappeared within the curtains of the bedchamber. Ryder started up.

"Oh, by the way, about those gowns--" he began awkwardly, when a summons at the door terminated his proposed speech abruptly. The steward had sent up for him to come down in haste. The supplies from the store had arrived, and the guests were clamoring at the storeroom door for a distribution of the lamps and candles.

Ryder stepped back to the door of the inner room.

"I've got to run down again, Ruth," he said.

She uttered a little scream when he appeared in the doorway; but then she came to kiss him without affectation. Her white shoulders and arms, bared for the moment, almost dazzled him. Ryder smiled down into her eyes and saw in their depths what he wished to see.

"Come below when you are ready. There is a little waiting room at the foot of the main stairway and you can see all over the office from there. I'll probably see you come down; but if I'm not in sight, go to the dining-room, if you like, and select a table."

He said this, kissed her again, and hastened after the steward's messenger. Descending in the elevator he found a crowd about the little office in which the steward made up his accounts, just back of the café.

Colonel Brack was foremost in the disturbance, and when Ryder appeared the old campaigner turned upon him wrathfully.

"See here, Ryder!" he exclaimed, "you can't do this. You must have some of the instincts of a gentleman about you, and you should remember the women----"

"I can excuse a man who has been drinking," interposed Ryder sharply; "and I cannot strike a cripple. But I advise you to have a care how you address me."

Brack threw himself forward at him; but two of his friends held back the unsteady old fire-eater. "By gad, suh, I'd call you out for that if you were not such a dog, suh!"

"I am not dog enough to run at every fool's call," responded Ryder. And then he ignored the sputtering Brack, turning to the remainder of the party: "Gentlemen, I shall see that you make no raid on these supplies I have secured. They are my private property and I shall do with them as I see fit."

"My goodness, man! you don't intend to freeze us out completely, do you?" gasped Jimson, whose wife was an invalid.

"I shall distribute them as I choose and under such terms as I see fit," Ryder repeated calmly. "The steward is to have direct control of them. Within the next hour, and before the electric lights are put out, the matter will all be arranged.

"None of you at first wished to take any financial responsibility for the good of the general herd. I took that responsibility. Why should I not reap my proper reward?" and he smiled at them grimly.

Then he shut the door of the office in their faces and consulted with the steward again.

"How many of the help will stay?" he asked.

"Perhaps half, sir. Some of the guests' private servants--the maids and valets--have gone already with the others on that train. There are drafts being made on George and me for some of the maids and waiters----"

"Cut that off. Refuse everybody," advised Ryder. "These people will have to get along without such personal service for the present. They should know that without explanation. You need every man and woman you've got on your roster, don't you?"

"Why, sir, I don't see how we shall get along at all with so few in the morning."

"So I thought. Now, follow out my instructions to the letter in the matter of the placing of the oil lamps. Send the porters around through the corridors to screw up the brackets for the bracket lamps. There are more than four dozen of those. We'll decide about the stoves later. It is not getting very cold out of doors, and nobody will suffer much before bedtime."

He left the steward's room and went back to the office, ignoring the men who stood about and looked at him as though he were a dog in a strange town. As he walked down the long corridor and came in sight of the stairway he observed Ruth standing at the foot of the flight. Half the men in the foyer had turned to look at her, and Ryder saw her color and shrink toward the curtained entrance of the dining-room.

Ryder did not wonder that the other guests stared at her. This did not fan any foolish jealousy into flame. It was because she was so very, very beautiful that she attracted attention.

If she had been attractive in the traveling dress she had worn at dinner, this gray and pink costume enhanced her beauty marvelously.

The wonder of it smote Ryder again. How came his wife by such gowns? When did she get them? What did it mean?

And then something occurred to draw his mind from this thought. He saw Ruth whisper to a passing bellboy and then she disappeared into the dining-room.

Ryder walked slowly forward expecting the boy would come directly to him. But to his amazement the messenger did not glance in his direction. Instead the boy approached a group in one corner and Ryder saw that the man calling himself "John B. White" was a member of that group.

The bellboy said something. Ryder was watching White's face. He saw the man pale, then color, and with quick steps he crossed the foyer and entered the dining-room as though directly in answer to the summons from Mrs. Ryder!

The half-stunned bridegroom caught at the sleeve of the bellboy as he came back.

"See here!" he whispered, fiercely, in the ear of the startled messenger, "who did the lady send for?"

"Mr. White," was the answer of the boy, and looked at Ryder in wonder.