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diff --git a/38918.txt b/38918.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3b3362e --- /dev/null +++ b/38918.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10199 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Vignettes of Manhattan; Outlines in Local +Color, by Brander Matthews + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Vignettes of Manhattan; Outlines in Local Color + +Author: Brander Matthews + +Illustrator: W.T. Smedley + +Release Date: February 18, 2012 [EBook #38918] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN *** + + + + +Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was +produced from scanned images of public domain material +from the Google Print project.) + + + + + + + + + + +VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN + +OUTLINES IN LOCAL COLOR + +_Books by Brander Matthews_ + +These Many Years, Recollections of a New Yorker + + +BIOGRAPHIES + +Shakspere as a Playwright + +Moliere, His Life and His Works + + +ESSAYS AND CRITICISMS + +The Principles of Playmaking + +French Dramatists of the 19th Century + +Pen and Ink, Essays on subjects of more or less +Importance + +Aspects of Fiction, and other Essays + +The Historical Novel, and other Essays + +Parts of Speech, Essays on English + +The Development of the Drama + +Inquiries and Opinions + +The American of the Future, and other Essays + +Gateways to Literature, and other Essays + +On Acting + +A Book About the Theater + +Essays on English + + +Vignettes of Manhattan; Outlines in Local Color + +[Illustration: "PEOPLE WHO THRONGED THE FLOOR WERE WELLNIGH AS VARIOUS +AS THE PAINTINGS"] + + + + +VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN: + +OUTLINES IN LOCAL COLOR + +BY + +BRANDER MATTHEWS + +WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY + +W. C. BROWNELL + +ILLUSTRATED BY + +W. T. SMEDLEY + +NEW YORK + +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + +1921 + +COPYRIGHT 1894, 1897, BY + +BRANDER MATTHEWS + +COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY + +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + +THE SCRIBNER PRESS + + + + +TO + +THEODORE ROOSEVELT + + +_My dear Theodore,--You know--for we have talked it over often +enough--that I do not hold you to be a typical New-Yorker, since you +come of Dutch stock, and first saw the light here on Manhattan Island, +whereas the typical New-Yorker is born of New England parents, perhaps +somewhere west of the Alleghanies. You know, also, that often the +typical New-Yorker is not proud of the city of his choice, and not so +loyal to it as we could wish. He has no abiding concern for this +maligned and misunderstood town of ours; he does not thrill with pride +at the sight of its powerful and irregular profile as he comes back to +it across the broad river; nor is his heart lifted up with joy at the +sound of its increasing roar, so suggestive and so stimulating. But we +have a firm affection for New York, you and I, and a few besides; we +like it for what it is; and we love it for what we hope to see it._ + +_It is because of this common regard for our strange and many-sided city +that I am giving myself the pleasure of proffering to you this little +volume of vignettes. They are not stories really, I am afraid--not +sketches even, nor studies; they are, I think, just what I have called +them--vignettes. And then there are a dozen of them, one for every month in +the year, an urban calendar of times and seasons. Such as they are, I +beg that you will accept them in token of my friendship and esteem; and +that you will believe me, always,_ + +_Yours truly,_ + +BRANDER MATTHEWS + +New York, _May_, 1894 + + _"When I came to my chamber I writ down these minutes; but was at a + loss what instruction I should propose to my readers from the + enumeration of so many insignificant matters and occurrences; and I + thought it of great use, if they could learn with me to keep their + minds open to gratification, and ready to receive it from anything + it meets with."_ + + --STEELE, _in "The Spectator," August 11, 1712_. + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +Few volumes of short stories published a generation ago remain in print +to-day and fewer still either merit or would repay reprinting. But the +case is different with the two volumes published by Mr. Matthews in the +early nineties under respectively the title and subtitle now given to +their contents combined in one and made once more accessible to the +reading public. Whatever may be said of the progress made by current +literature in the interval, the public for it has augmented at least +correspondingly with the census, and it is permitted to hope that the +interest of this wider public in work of such exceptional authorship, +subject and quality has similarly increased. Mr. Matthews has himself a +wider public, amply earned, and I should say that interest in New York +has probably increased in pretty nearly equal measure with the change in +its character. Its cosmopolitanism has grown prodigiously, yet its +self-consciousness far from diminishing has distinctly deepened--if one +may properly speak of depth in connection with it. No doubt the +chameleon's changes, even shallower, quicken its sense of self. +Vignettes of Manhattan should therefore appeal to such actual local +pride and public spirit as we have, as well as to a historic interest +in a previous epoch of their subject's evolution--as the pace of the day +requires us to consider the aspect, character and manners of twenty-five +years ago, when Mr. Matthews had the idea of fixing these in the +framework of the short story. Besides, a good deal of the scent of those +roses survives. + +So far as I know it was a unique idea. It was certainly a happy one. +Would it not be a pleasant thing if we had such series of analogous +authorship systematically celebrating London, Paris, not to say +Florence, Rome, Athens itself? Perhaps it was never attempted by any one +before because it was too difficult of execution. To the pure fictionist +it would necessitate irksome notation; the mere observer would hardly +perceive its fictional value. Mr. Matthews fortunately was at home in +both departments of writing. The result was that almost every essential +phase of New York life and character, belonging to every quarter of the +city, is veraciously pictured in these twenty-four proficient and +polished stories. Each is composed with attentive art to illustrate its +two-fold motive of interest as fiction and as portraiture. And the +whole, the collection, constitutes a dramatic panorama of the metropolis +a generation ago of great variety and point. "Little old New York" has +never had so thorough-going and so diverting a historiographer. Are +there any New York "types" omitted? I think of none. How did the author +come across some of them? How get some of them to sit for him? Unlike a +writer with a reporter's record he has never been, as it were, a prowler +among the precincts and purlieus of the town; yet clearly he knows his +Mulberry Bend material as well as that of Fifth Avenue, the studios as +well as the stage, the now extinct saloon as well as the still +flourishing Salvation Army barracks, and portrays Lazarus and Dives with +equal familiarity--our kind, too, of each and all. I suppose a writer +must have been born in New Orleans to have such a sharp sense of New +York, but it is true that he immigrated early. + +Rich enough in material for plots and characters--in the right +hands--Mr. Matthews shows the metropolis to be in these twenty-four +stories, (though I wish he had also republished a volume of Manhattan +"Vistas" containing twelve more tales belonging to the same period). But +obviously to have forced the fictional note would have been to diminish +that of portraiture and accordingly to have minimized the motive of the +stories. In order to keep New York itself in the foreground the author's +personages are of necessity types--not individuals to be found anywhere. +And their stories are such as might have happened, since their author's +design is to convey an impression of what does happen. Their +representative qualities and circumstances and adventures are therefore +those that are emphasized. They are not for this reason less definitely +depicted, though they may be less elaborately realized. If they were +more highly complicated, however, their typical function would be +frustrated. New York itself would recede too far into the background. As +it is, Miss Marlenspuyk, for example, though a personally charming +silhouette, is chiefly differentiated for us by the characteristic +perfume of genuine Knickerbocker idiosyncrasy. Similarly of homely and +low-life figures for supplying which the author never seems to be at a +loss, any more than he is for supplying them with appropriate Manhattan +adventure--drama and dramatis personae, indeed, Manhattan to the core. +Among them all they certainly create the illusion of a very palpable +environment. + +It was to be sure a little different from that which now surrounds us, +and furnished a different theme for treatment different from current +practice. Probably if ecstasies and excess, "psychoanalysis" and +external melodrama had in the nineties been invented, or been deemed +normal, Mr. Matthews would have picked his way through them, but in any +case to be veridical the Manhattan "picture" of those days had to be, by +contrast with ours, placidity itself. The crime-wave was unknown, the +daylight holdup unprecedented. There was an occasional murder mystery, +always more than a nine days' wonder; the public had not yet grown +callous. One of the stories records an assault with murderous intent. +There were more fires. Our author has a fire story. Suicide has always +been with us and we have here a rather notably well handled one--minus +the horror, which the fastidious artist must generally, one would think, +doubt his capacity to dwell on to advantage, just as the sensitive +painter leaves Niagaras and volcanic convulsions to Nature. But +incontestably the life here mirrored was quieter than ours and, being +"slower," was correspondingly fuller. People had time to devote to +living. + +It is furthermore incidentally to be pointed out that the Vignettes have +a technical interest quite apart from that of their substance. Every one +nowadays is enormously interested in process. One might almost say there +was a "popular movement" of concern with the philosophy of technic. If +so, it could hardly be denied that Mr. Matthews was one of its pioneers. +Certainly of the philosophy of the short story he was the first analytic +and explicit exponent. Each of these tales is his theory in action, so +to say. Nor is it to be doubted, in the case of so ardently systematic a +temperament and such a talent for argument and organization, that this +was in each case definitely his design. He was not content to contend +but desired to demonstrate and we have here his "philosophy teaching by +example." Accordingly the skeleton, the structure, the framework and the +filling of each little tale produce an effect that at least is bound to +have the merit of having been intended. The hap-hazard and the +desultory are avoided not only altogether, but, to analysis, quite +obviously. For this reason indeed the Vignettes have also, I should +think, a certain text-book or "collateral reading" value in the populous +courses now offered by the Universities for the elevation of the +short-story-writing masses. Nothing, one would say, could better +inculcate by explicit example the measured and disciplined practice, the +ship-shape and organic result which--plus, of course, literary +talent--are the elementary excellences of this prevalent form of +literary expression. + +"Introductions," too, I may add, are in fashion, and fashion is, as is +well known, inexorable. Otherwise I should not have been asked to write +one about the lighter work of an author who in virtue of a shelf-full of +books comprehending all varieties of literary activity--novels and +tales, biography, autobiography, history, linguistics, literary and +social criticism, the drama, versification and verse as well as prose, +even juvenile fiction--is widely recognized both at home and abroad as +one of the particularly representative men of letters of our time. + +W. C. BROWNELL. + + + + +CONTENTS + +VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN + + PAGE + +IN THE LITTLE CHURCH DOWN THE STREET 3 + +THE TWENTY-NINTH OF FEBRUARY 11 + +AT A PRIVATE VIEW 21 + +SPRING IN A SIDE STREET 35 + +A DECORATION-DAY REVERY 45 + +IN SEARCH OF LOCAL COLOR 57 + +BEFORE THE BREAK OF DAY 73 + +A MIDSUMMER MIDNIGHT 87 + +A VISTA IN CENTRAL PARK 107 + +THE SPEECH OF THE EVENING 117 + +A THANKSGIVING-DAY DINNER 131 + +IN THE MIDST OF LIFE 145 + + +OUTLINES IN LOCAL COLOR + +AN INTERVIEW WITH MISS MARLENSPUYK 161 + +A LETTER OF FAREWELL 175 + +A GLIMPSE OF THE UNDER WORLD 189 + +A WALL STREET WOOING 205 + +A SPRING FLOOD IN BROADWAY 225 + +THE VIGIL OF MCDOWELL SUTRO 241 + +AN IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT 263 + +THE SOLO ORCHESTRA 277 + +THE REHEARSAL OF THE NEW PLAY 295 + +A CANDLE IN THE PLATE 323 + +MEN AND WOMEN AND HORSES 337 + +IN THE WATCHES OF THE NIGHT 357 + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + +People who thronged the floor were wellnigh as various +as the paintings _Frontispiece_ + +FACING PAGE + +Distracted by the crossing shouts of loud-voiced +men 48 + +Two slim Japanese gentlemen 108 + +Coming from church 134 + +"Winifred!" he cried 234 + +"The air was thick and heavy" 278 + +Explanations 340 + +She almost shivered, the place seemed to her so +cheerless 360 + + + + +VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN + + + + +IN THE LITTLE CHURCH DOWN THE STREET + + +The little church stands back from the street, with a scrap of lawn on +either side of the path that winds from the iron gate to the church +door. On this chill January morning the snow lay a foot deep on the +grass-plots, with the water frozen out of it by the midnight wind. The +small fountain on one side was sheathed with ice; and where its tiny +spirtle fell a glittering stalagmite was rising rapidly, so the rotund +sparrows had difficulty in getting at their usual drinking-trough. The +sky was ashen, yet there was a hope that the sun might break out later +in the morning. A sharp breeze blew down the street from the river, +bearing with it, now and again, the tinkle of sleigh-bells from the +Avenue, only fifty yards away. + +There was the customary crowd of curious idlers gathered about the gate +as the hearse drew up before it. The pall-bearers alighted from the +carriages which followed, and took up their positions on the sidewalk, +while the undertaker's assistants were lifting out the coffin. Then the +bareheaded and gray-haired rector came from out the church porch, and +went down to the gate to meet the funeral procession. He held the +prayer-book open in his hand, and when he came to the coffin he began to +read the solemn words of the order for the burial of the dead: + +"I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth +in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and +believeth in me, shall never die." + +Preceding the pall-bearers the rector led the way to the church, which +was already filled with the dead actor's comrades and with his friends, +and with mere strangers who had come out of curiosity, and to see +actresses by daylight and off the stage. The interior was dusky, +although the gas had been lighted here and there. The Christmas greens +still twined about the pillars, and still hung in heavy festoons from +the low arched roof. As the coffin passed slowly through the porch, the +rector spoke again: + +"We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry +nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the +Name of the Lord." + +Throughout the church there was a stir, and all heads were turned +towards the entrance. There were tears in the eyes of more than one man, +for the actor had been a favorite, and not a few women were weeping +silently. In a pew near the door were two young actresses who had been +in the same company with the dead man when he had made his first +appearance on the stage, only three years before; and now, possessed by +the emotion of the moment, these two sobbed aloud. By their side stood a +tall, handsome, fair-haired woman, evidently not an actress; she was +clad in simple black; she gave but a single glance at the coffin as it +passed up the aisle, half hidden by the heaped-up wreaths of flowers, +and then she stared straight before her, with a rigid face, but without +a tear in her eye. + +Slowly the rector preceded the pall-bearers up the central aisle of the +church, while the vestured choir began the stately anthem: + +"Lord, let me know my end, and the number of my days; that I may be +certified how long I have to live. + +"Behold, thou hast made my days as it were a span long, and mine age is +even as nothing in respect of thee; and verily every man living is +altogether vanity." + +It was for a young man that this solemn anthem was being sung--for a man +who had died in his twenty-fifth year, at the moment of his first +success, and when life opened temptingly before him. He bore a name +known in American history, and his friends had supposed that he would be +called to the bar, like his father and his grandfather before him. He +was a handsome young fellow, with a speaking eye and a rich, alluring +voice; and his father's friends saw in him a moving advocate. But the +year he was graduated from college his father had died, and his mother +also, and he was left alone in the world. As it happened, his father's +investments were ill-advised, and there was little or no income to be +hoped from them for years. In college he had been the foremost member of +the dramatic club, and in the summer vacations he had taken part in many +private theatricals. Perhaps it had always been his secret wish to +abandon the bar for the stage. While he was debating the course he +should take, chance threw in his way the offer of an engagement in the +company which supported a distinguished tragedian. He had accepted what +opportunity proffered, and it was not as a lawyer but as an actor that +he had made his living; it was as an actor that his funeral was now +being held at "the little church down the street." + +While the choir had been singing the anthem, the coffin had been borne +to the chancel and set down before the rail, which was almost concealed +from sight by the flowers scattered about the steps and clustering at +the foot of the pulpit and in front of the reading-desk. The thick and +cloying perfume of the lilies was diffused throughout the church. + +The rector had taken his place at the desk in the chancel to read the +appointed lesson, with its message of faith and love. There were sobs to +be heard when he declared that this mortal shall put on immortality. + +"Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is +swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is +thy victory?" + +There were those present--old friends of his boyhood, come from afar to +give the dead man the last greeting of affection--who knew how high had +been his hopes when he went upon the stage; and they knew also how hard +that first year had been, with the wearisome drudgery of his +apprenticeship, with the incessant travelling, with ambition baffled by +lack of opportunity. Some of them were aware how the second year of his +career in the theatre had seen a change in his fortunes, and how +discouragement had given place to confidence. There had been dissensions +in the company to which he belonged, and the tragedian had parted with +the actor who played the second parts. Here was a chance for the young +man, and he proved himself worthy of the good-fortune. No more youthful +and fiery Laertes had been seen for years, no more passionate Macduff, +no more artful and persuasive Mark Antony. He had the gifts of +nature--youth, and manly beauty, and the histrionic temperament; and he +had also the artistic intelligence which made the utmost out of his +endowment. Before the end of his second season on the stage he was +recognized as the most promising actor of his years. He had played Mark +Antony for the first time only twelve months before; and now he lay +there in his coffin, and the little church was filled with the actors +and actresses of New York who had come to bid him farewell. + +When the rector had finished the reading of the lesson there was a hush +throughout the church. A faint jingle of sleigh-bells came floating down +from the Avenue. + +A few straggling rays of sunshine filtered through the windows on the +right side of the little church, and stained with molten colors the +wood-work of the pews on the left. There was a movement among the +members of the vestured choir, and a large and stately woman took her +stand before the organ; she was the contralto of a great opera company, +and it was with skill and power and feeling that she sang "Rock of +Ages." + +In a pew between the organ and the pulpit sat a slight, graceful, +dark-eyed and dark-haired woman, young still and charming always, +although the freshness had faded from her face. This was the celebrated +actress with whom the dead man had been acting only a week before. She +was the ideal Juliet--so the theatre-goers thought--and never before had +she been aided by so gallant and so ardent a Romeo. Never before had the +tragedy been produced with so much splendor, and with dramatic effect so +certain and so abundant. Never before had "Romeo and Juliet" been +performed for a hundred and fifty nights without interruption. And for +once the critics had been in accord with the public, so potent was the +glamour of youth and beauty and passion. It was a joy to all discerning +lovers of the drama to see characters so difficult interpreted so +adequately. Thus it was that the tragedy had been played for five months +to overflowing audiences; and its prosperity had been cut short only by +the death of the fiery wooer--of the Romeo who lay now in the coffin +before the chancel, while the Juliet, with the tears gliding down her +cheeks, sat there by the side of the middle-aged merchant she was soon +to marry. The young actor, to catch a glimpse of whom silly school-girls +would watch the stage door, and to whom foolish women sent baskets of +flowers, now lay cold in death, with lilies and lilacs in a heap over +his silent heart. + +When the final notes of the contralto's rich and noble voice had died +away, the rector went on with the ritual: + +"Man, that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live, and is +full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth +as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay." + +The dead man had been the last of his line, and there were no near +kindred at the funeral. There was no mother there, no sister, no wife. +Friends there were, but none of his blood, none who bore his name. Yet +there was a shiver of sympathy as the tiny clods of clay rattled down +upon the coffin lid, and as the rector said "earth to earth, ashes to +ashes, dust to dust." + +Then the service drew to an end swiftly, and the pall-bearers formed in +order once again, and the coffin was lifted and carried slowly down the +aisle. + +As the sorrowful procession drew near to the open door and passed before +the pew where the tall fair-haired woman stood, stolid, with averted +head, and a stare fixed on the floor, one of the bearers stumbled, but +recovered himself at once. The woman had raised her hand, and she had +checked a cry of warning; but the coffin was borne before her steadily; +and they who bore it little guessed that they were carrying it past the +dry-eyed mother of the dead man's unborn child. + +(1893.) + + + + +THE TWENTY-NINTH OF FEBRUARY + + +The Governor of the State and his secretary had just finished their +lunch in one of the private parlors of the hotel. The Governor lighted +his cigar and leaned back in his chair as the secretary went to the door +and admitted an old man who had been patrolling the corridor +impatiently. + +"The Governor will see you now, Mr. Baxter," said the secretary. + +The old man, tall, thin, and impetuous, strode past the secretary +without a word of thanks, and came straight to where the Governor was +sitting. + +"At last!" he cried--"at last I've got a chance to talk to you face to +face. If you only knew how I have longed for this, you would have let me +in before." + +"Take a seat, Mr. Baxter," said the Governor, kindly. + +"Thank you, but I'd rather stand," replied the old man. "In fact, I'd +rather walk. I don't seem to be able to sit nor to stand when I get +a-talking about the boy. You know why I wanted to see you, I suppose?" +he inquired, suddenly, fixing the Governor with a penetrating stare. + +"You wish to urge your son's pardon, I take it," the Governor answered; +"and I am ready to listen to you. I have all the papers here," and he +indicated a bundle of documents at his elbow. "I have just been reading +them." + +"But the men who wrote those papers didn't know my boy as I know him, +and they can't tell you about him as I can tell you. He's in jail, and +he's been there nearly three years, and he's twenty-four years old +to-day--for to-day's his birthday--but he's only a boy for all that. He +isn't a man yet, to be judged as a man, and to take a man's punishment. +I can't tell you that he didn't shoot the fellow, for he did; but he did +it in his anger, and he was sorely tempted; and what's more, he did it +in self-defence. Oh, I know that wasn't brought out on the trial, but +just you read this," and he tore open his coat and pulled out a package +of papers; selecting one of them, he thrust it into the Governor's +hands. "That's from the man who sold Bowles a pistol and a knife on the +28th of February, the day before the fight. Then you read this too," and +he picked out a second letter, and gave that to the Governor with the +same impatient and imperious gesture. "That's from one of Bowles's +friends, the fellow who was with him just before the shot was fired. He +kept quiet at the trial, and said as little as he could. He knew that I +was sick a-bed, and so he held his peace. But I've been at him ever +since I got about again, and now I've pinned him down. And there's the +result; the truth must prevail in the end always. There, in that letter, +he says that Bowles had that pistol on his person on the morning of the +29th; and that if it wasn't found on the body, it was because Bowles +dropped it as he fell. The pistol was picked up that night under a plank +in the sidewalk. It was this same friend of Bowles's who found it then, +and he said nothing--the cur! Even at the trial he said nothing! But I +knew he had something to say, and at last I made him speak. He's telling +the truth now, and the whole truth. Read the letter and see if it isn't. +He hated my boy; and he said he wanted to see him swing; but I made him +write that letter. And if that isn't enough, I'll put him on the stand, +and I'll make him swear to every word of it." + +The Governor adjusted his glasses, and began to read the letters thus +forcibly placed in his hands. + +In his eagerness to be heard, the old man could not brook even this +delay, and as the Governor laid down the first letter, he broke forth +again: "To-day's his birthday, the first he's had since the shooting, +the first that he's ever spent away from me. He was born on the 29th of +February, and he has a birthday only once in four years; and it was just +four years ago to-day that he got into this scrape, and fired the shot +that caused us all this trouble. He was twenty years old that morning, +for he was born in 1864; that was the year when General Grant was +getting ready to smash Jeff Davis and the rebels; that's why we called +him Grant--out of gratitude for the saving of the country. Sometimes I +think it's a pity he hadn't been born twenty years before, so that he +could have died at Cold Harbor like a man, without ever having seen the +inside of a jail. But it was to be, I suppose. Our lives are laid out +for us, I suppose. Maybe a boy born on the 29th of February is different +from other boys; I don't know. He was loved more than most boys; I know +that well enough. I was raised on Cape Cod, and my father never gave me +a caress; though I guess he loved me, too, in his way. But I moved out +to Lake Erie when I was married, and out by the edge of the lake we +waited, my wife and I, for a man-child to be born to us. And we waited a +score of years and more; and when Grant came at last, he was our only +child. Both his sisters had died in their cradles. So he was the son of +our old age. Maybe we spoiled him. Surely we spared the rod. Why, we +loved him too much ever to say a hard word to him. In the main he was a +good boy, too--wild at times, and skittish--but always loving and easily +led. His mother had only to look, and he'd jump to serve her. So we let +him do as he pleased, and most generally he pleased us. Perhaps I gave +him too much rope; I've often thought so, now I see how near he came to +hanging himself. But he was a good boy, and devoted to his mother +always. And she loved him--oh! how she loved him!--more than she loved +her husband, I know, fond as she was of me." + +Here the old man paused in his vehement speech, and turned away +abruptly. + +"Is Mrs. Baxter with you here in the city?" the Governor asked, gently. + +"Here--in the city?" cried the old man, facing about sharply. "She's at +home--in the cemetery! That's where she is. She drooped as soon as ever +he was arrested, but she bore up till the trial was over, hoping that he +might get off somehow, not believing that her boy could be found guilty. +But when he was sent off to Auburn to serve fifteen years for +manslaughter, why, then there wasn't anything left for her to live for +any longer, with all the joy of her life locked up in a stone cell. So +she took to her bed, and she died. She faded away; she had lost her +interest in life, and so she gave up. Now the boy's all I have, and I +want you to give him back to me. That's what I've come down here for. +That's what I've been pursuing you for these six months. The boy is all +I have. I want to see him back at the old home on the lake before I +die--and I can't live much longer, I guess. I'm seventy now, and for all +I look hale and hearty, there's something the matter with my heart, the +doctors say, and I may go out any time, like a candle in a gale of wind. +Well, give me back the boy, and I'm ready to die. Let me see him at home +once more, a free man, and I'll carry the good news to the old woman +whenever the call comes, and gladly." + +He paused for a moment, and his impassioned speech had lost a little of +its fierce fire. + +The Governor took up the second letter and began to read it. The +movement of the Governor's hand as he raised the paper aroused the old +man again. + +"If the District Attorney had done his duty by the people of the State +it wouldn't have been left for me to wring the truth out of that coward +whose letter you are reading. Sometimes I half think this cur was at the +bottom of the whole thing. It was he who introduced Grant to the woman. +You know that the wedding was to have taken place that very night--the +night of the shooting? Yes, it all came out on the trial. Grant only had +one birthday in four years, as I've been telling you, and so he +persuaded the girl to set it as the wedding-day too. And he was just +twenty--a mere boy. It was no wonder they took advantage of him. If +you've read the report you can see how she deceived him. Even the +District Attorney admitted that, bitter as he was against the boy. Ah! +if I could only have been in court at the trial! If I had only been in +town the day when the boy discovered the truth, he wouldn't have shot +that villain, for I'd have done it myself." + +"Then who would have come to me to ask for your pardon?" inquired the +Governor, smiling kindly. "I have read these letters, but they contain +nothing that is new to me, and--" + +"Nothing new?" interrupted the old man, violently. "That letter shows +that Grant fired in self-defence, since the fellow had a pistol in his +hand. Isn't that something new?" + +"Not to me, for the District Attorney--against whom you seem to have a +prejudice, Mr. Baxter--had already informed me of this." + +"If you've been listening to him, I suppose there isn't much hope of my +getting what I'm after," the old man returned, hotly; "for no man ever +spoke more unfairly against another than that man did against my boy." + +"You do him injustice," the Governor said, firmly. "He did his duty at +the trial in pressing for sentence, and he has done his duty now in +laying before me this newly discovered evidence. He has even gone +further; he has urged me to accede to your request for your son's +pardon." + +"The District Attorney?" cried the old man in surprise. + +"Yes," the Governor replied. + +"Then his conscience has pricked him at last." + +"And it is chiefly in consequence of his recommendation that I have +decided to pardon your son," the Governor continued. + +"I don't care on whose urging it is, so long as it's done," the old man +rejoined. "When can the boy come out?" he asked, eagerly. + +"I will let you bear the pardon to him," said the Governor, and he +unfolded one of the papers which lay on the table by his side and signed +it. "Here it is." + +The old man seized the paper with a convulsive clutch. His knees +trembled as his eyes read the pardon swiftly. + +The door of the parlor opened, and the secretary returned. + +The old man grasped his hat. "Do you know when the next train leaves for +Auburn?" he inquired, hastily. + +"There's one at four o'clock, I think," the secretary answered. + +"I shall be in time," said the old man; and then, the pardon in his +twitching fingers, he left the parlor without another word. He passed +quickly through the corridors of the hotel, down the stairs, and out +into the street. When he reached the pavement he stood still for a +moment and bared his head, quite unconscious of the rain-storm which had +broken but a minute before. + +A small boy came running to him across the street, crying, "Evening +papers--four o'clock _Gazette_!" + +Seemingly the old man did not hear him. + +"Terrible loss of life!" the newsboy shrilled out, as he moved away. +"Riot at Auburn! Attempted escape of the prisoners!" + +Then a clutch of iron was fastened on the newsboy's arm, and the old man +towered above him, asking hoarsely: "What's that you say? A loss of +life in the prison at Auburn? Give me the paper!" + +He seized it. On the first page was a despatch from Auburn stating that +there had been a rising of the convicts at the State-prison, which the +wardens had been able to repress after it had gained headway. The +prisoners had yielded and gone back to their cells only after the +wardens had fired on them, wounding half a dozen and killing the +ringleader, who had fought desperately. He was a young man from one of +the lake villages, sentenced to fifteen years for manslaughter; his name +was Grant Baxter. + +As the old man read this, the paper slipped from his fingers, and he +fell on the sidewalk dead, still tightly grasping the pardon. + +(1889.) + + + + +AT A PRIVATE VIEW + + +When the Spring Exhibition opened, March had thrown off its lion's skin, +and stood revealed as a lamb. There was no tang to the wind that swept +the swirling dust down the broad street; and the moonlight which +silvered the Renascence front of the building had no longer a wintry +chill. Flitting clouds were thickening, and threatened rain; but the +carriages, rolling up to the canvas tunnel which had been extemporized +across the sidewalk, brought many a pretty woman who had risked a spring +bonnet. Not a few of the ladies who had been bidden to the Private View +were in evening dress; and it was a brilliant throng which pressed down +the broad corridor, past the dressing-rooms, and into the first gallery, +where the President of the Society, surrounded by other artists of +renown, stood ready to receive them. + +Beyond the first gallery, and up half a dozen steps, was a smaller +saloon, with a square room yet smaller to its right and to its left. +Still farther beyond, and up a few more steps, was the main gallery, a +splendid and stately hall, lofty and well proportioned, and worthy of +the many fine paintings which lined its walls two and three deep. In +the place of honor, facing the entrance, was Mr. Frederick Olyphant's +startling picture, "The Question of the Sphinx," which bore on its +simple frame the bit of paper declaring that it had received a silver +medal at the Salon of the summer before. In a corner was another +painting by the same artist, a portrait of his friend Mr. Laurence +Laughton; and balancing this, on the other side of a landscape called "A +Sunset at Onteora," was a portrait of Mr. Rupert de Ruyter, the poet, by +a young artist named Renwick Brashleigh, painted vigorously yet +sympathetically, and quite extinguishing the impressionistic "Girl in a +Hammock," which hung next to it. Here and there throughout the spacious +room there were statuettes and busts; one of the latter represented +Astroyd, the amusing comedian. Landscapes drenched with sunshine hung by +the side of wintry marines; and delicate studies of still life set off +purely decorative compositions painted almost in monochrome. + +The people who thronged the floor were wellnigh as various as the +paintings which covered the walls. There were artists in plenty, men of +letters and men about town, women who lived for art and women who lived +for society, visitors of both sexes who came to see the exhibition, and +visitors of both sexes who came to be seen themselves. There were +art-students and art-critics, picture-buyers and picture-dealers, poets +and novelists, stock-brokers and clergymen. Among them were Mr. Robert +White, of the _Gotham Gazette_, and Mr. Harry Brackett, formerly +attached to that journal; Mr. Rupert de Ruyter, who could not be kept +away from his own portrait; Mr. Delancey Jones, the architect, with his +pretty wife; Mr. J. Warren Payn, the composer; Mr. and Mrs. Martin, of +Washington Square; and Miss Marlenspuyk, an old maid, who seemed to know +everybody and to be liked by everybody. + +Miss Marlenspuyk lingered before Olyphant's portrait of Laurence +Laughton, whom she had known for years. She liked the picture until she +overheard two young art-students discussing it. + +"It's a pity Olyphant hasn't any idea of color, isn't it?" observed one. + +"Yes," assented the other; "and the head is hopelessly out of drawing." + +"The man has a paintable face, too," the first rejoined. "I'd like to do +him myself." + +"Olyphant's well enough for composition," the second returned, "but when +it comes to portraits, he simply isn't in it with Brashleigh. Seen his +two yet?" + +"Whose?" inquired the first speaker. + +"Brashleigh's," was the answer. "Biggest things here. And as different +as they make 'em. Best is a Wall Street man--Poole, I think, his name +is." + +"I know," the first interrupted. "Cyrus Poole; he's president of a big +railroad somewhere out West. Lots of money. I wonder how Brashleigh got +the job?" + +"Guess he did Rupert de Ruyter for nothing. You know De Ruyter wrote him +up in one of the magazines." + +The two young art-students stood before the portrait a few seconds +longer, looking at it intently. Then they moved off, the first speaker +saying, "That head's out of drawing too." + +It gave Miss Marlenspuyk something of a shock to learn that the heads of +two of her friends were out of drawing; she wondered how serious the +deformity might be; she felt for a moment almost as though she were +acquainted with two of the startlingly abnormal specimens of humanity +who are to be seen in dime museums. As these suggestions came to her one +after the other, she smiled gently. + +"I don't wonder that you are laughing at that picture, Miss +Marlenspuyk," said a voice at her right. "It's no better than the +regulation 'Sunset on the Lake of Chromo,' that you can buy on Liberty +Street for five dollars, with a frame worth twice the money." + +Miss Marlenspuyk turned, and recognized Mr. Robert White. She held out +her hand cordially. + +"Is your wife here?" she asked. + +"Harry Brackett is explaining the pictures to her," White answered. "He +doesn't know anything about art, but he is just as amusing as if he +did." + +"I like Mr. Brackett," the old maid rejoined. "He's a little--well, a +little common, I fear; but then he is so quaint and so individual in his +views. And at my time of life I like to be amused." + +"I know your fondness for a new sensation," White returned. "I believe +you wouldn't object to having the devil take you in to dinner." + +"Why should I object?" responded Miss Marlenspuyk, bravely. "The devil +is a gentleman, they say; and besides, I should be so glad to get the +latest news of lots of my friends." + +"Speaking of the gentleman who is not as black as he is painted," said +White, "have you seen the portrait of Cyrus Poole yet? It is the best +thing here. I didn't know Brashleigh had it in him to do anything so +good." + +"Where is it?" asked Miss Marlenspuyk. "I've been looking at this Mr. +Brashleigh's portrait of Mr. De Ruyter, and--" + +"Pretty little thing, isn't it?" White interrupted. "Perhaps a trifle +too sentimental and saccharine. But it hits off the poet to the life." + +"And life is just what I don't find in so many of these portraits," the +lady remarked. "Some of them look as though the artist had first made a +wax model of his sitter and then painted that." + +They moved slowly through the throng towards the other end of the +gallery. + +"Charley Vaughn, now, has another trick," said White, indicating a +picture before them with a slight gesture. "Since he has been to Paris +and studied under Carolus he translates all his sitters into French, +and then puts the translation on canvas." + +The picture White had drawn attention to represented a lady dressed for +a ball, and standing before a mirror adjusting a feather in her hair. It +was a portrait of Mrs. Delancey Jones, the wife of the architect. + +Miss Marlenspuyk raised her glasses, and looked at it for a moment +critically. Then she smiled. "It is the usual thing, now, I see," she +said--"intimations of immorality." + +White laughed, as they resumed their march around the hall. + +"If you say that of Charley Vaughn's picture," he commented, "I wonder +what you will say of Renwick Brashleigh's. Here it is." + +And they came to a halt before the painting which had the place of honor +in the centre of the wall on that side of the gallery. + +"That is Cyrus Poole," White continued. "President of the Niobrara +Central, one of the rising men of the Street, and now away in Europe on +his honeymoon." + +The picture bore the number 13, and the catalogue declared it to be a +"Portrait of a Gentleman." It was a large canvas, and the figure was +life size. It represented a man of barely forty years of age, seated at +his desk in his private office. On the wall beyond him hung a map of the +Niobrara Central Railroad with its branches. The light came from the +window on the left, against which the desk was placed. The pose was that +of a man who had been interrupted in his work, and who had swung around +in his chair to talk to a visitor. He was a man to be picked out of a +crowd as unlike other men, rather spare, rather below medium height, +rather wiry than muscular. Beyond all question he was energetic, +untiring, determined, and powerful. The way he sat indicated the +consciousness of strength. So did his expression, although there was no +trace of conceit to be detected on his features. His hair was dark and +thick and straight, with scarce a touch of gray. He had a sharp nose and +piercing eyes, while his lips were thin and his jaw massive. + +Miss Marlenspuyk looked at the picture with interest. "Yes," she said, +"I don't wonder this has made a hit. There is something striking about +it--something novel. It's a new note; that's what it is. And the man is +interesting too. He has a masterful chin. Not a man to be henpecked, I +take it. And he's a good provider, too, judging by the eyes and the +mouth; I don't believe that his wife will ever have to turn her best +black silk. There's something fascinating about the face, but I don't +see how--" + +She interrupted herself, and gazed at the picture again. + +"Is it a good likeness?" she asked at last, with her eyes still fixed on +the portrait. + +"It's so like him that I wouldn't speak to it," White answered. + +"I see what you mean," the old lady responded. "Yes, if the man really +looks like that, nobody would want to speak to him. I wouldn't have this +artist--what's his name?--Mr. Brashleigh?--I wouldn't have him paint my +portrait for the world. Why, if he did, and my friends once saw it, +there isn't one of them who would ever dare to ask me to dinner again." + +White smiled, and quickly responded, "As I said before, you know, even +the gentleman you wanted to take you in to dinner is probably not as +black as he is painted." + +"But I wouldn't want that man to take me in to dinner," returned Miss +Marlenspuyk, promptly, indicating the portrait with a wave of her hand. +"Paint is all very well; besides, it is only on the outside, and women +don't mind it; but it is that man's _heart_ that is black. It is his +inner man that is so terrible. He fascinates me--yes--but he frightens +me too. Who is he?" + +"I told you," White answered. "He is Mr. Cyrus Poole, the president of +the Niobrara Central Railroad, and one of the coming men in the Street. +He turned up in Denver ten years ago, and when he had learned all that +Denver had to teach him he went to Chicago. He graduated from the Board +of Trade there, and then came to New York; he has been here two years +now, and already he has made himself felt. He has engineered two or +three of the biggest things yet seen in the Street. As a result there +are now two opinions about him." + +"If this portrait is true," said the old maid, "I don't see how there +can be more than one opinion about him." + +"There were three at first," White rejoined. "At first they thought he +was a lamb; now they know better. But they are still in doubt whether he +is square or not. They say that the deal by which he captured the stock +of the Niobrara Central and made himself president had this little +peculiarity, that if it hadn't succeeded, instead of being in Europe on +his honeymoon, Cyrus Poole would now be in Sing Sing. Why, if half they +said about him at the time _is_ true--instead of hanging here on the +line, he ought to have been hanged at the end of a rope. But then I +don't believe half that I hear." + +"I could believe anything of a man who looks like that," Miss +Marlenspuyk said. "I don't think I ever saw a face so evil, for all it +appears frank and almost friendly." + +"But I have told you only one side," White went on. "Poole has partisans +who deny all the charges against him. They say that his only crime is +his success. They declare that he has got into trouble more than once +trying to help friends out. While his enemies call him unscrupulous and +vindictive, his friends say that he is loyal and lucky." + +Miss Marlenspuyk said nothing for a minute or more. She was studying the +portrait with an interest which showed no sign of flagging. Suddenly she +looked up at White and asked, "Do you suppose he knows how this picture +affects us?" + +"Poole?" queried White. "No, I imagine not. He is a better judge of +values as they are understood in Wall Street than as they are +interpreted at the Art Students' League. Besides, I've heard that he was +married and went to Europe before the picture was quite finished. +Brashleigh had to paint in the background afterwards." + +"The poor girl!" said Miss Marlenspuyk. "Who was she?" + +"What poor girl?" asked the man. "Oh, you mean the new Mrs. Cyrus +Poole?" + +"Yes," responded the old lady. + +"She was a Miss Cameron," White answered; "Eunice Cameron, I think her +name was. I believe that she is a cousin of Brashleigh's. By-the-way, I +suppose that's how it happened he was asked to paint this portrait. He +is one of the progressive painters a Wall Street man wouldn't be likely +to appreciate off-hand. But it couldn't have been given to a better man, +could it?" + +Miss Marlenspuyk smiled. + +"Well," said White, "Brashleigh has a marvellous insight into character; +you can see that for yourself. Or at least he paints portraits as if he +had; it's hard to tell about these artists, of course, and it's easy to +credit them with more than they have. They see so much more than they +understand; they have the gift, you know, but they can't explain; and +half the time they don't know what it is they have done." + +The old lady looked up and laughed a little. + +"I think the man who painted that," she said, "knew what he was about." + +"Yes," White admitted, "it seems as though no one could do a thing with +the astounding vigor of this, unconsciously. But, as like as not, what +Brashleigh thought about chiefly was his drawing and his brush-work and +his values; probably the revelation of the sitter's soul was an +accident. He did it because he couldn't help it." + +"I don't agree with you, for once," Miss Marlenspuyk replied. "I find in +this portrait such an appreciation of the possibilities of human +villany. Oh, the man _must_ have seen it before he painted it!" + +"It's lucky I'm not a painter by trade," returned White, "or I should +feel it my duty to annihilate you on the spot by the retort that laymen +always look at painting from the literary side." + +Miss Marlenspuyk did not respond for a minute. She was looking at the +portrait with curious interest. She glanced aside, and then she gazed at +it again. + +"Poor girl!" she said at last, with a gentle sigh. + +"Meaning Mrs. Poole?" White inquired. + +"Yes," the old lady answered. "I'm sorry for her, but I think I +understand how she had to give in. I can feel the sinister fascination +of that face myself." + +Above the babble of many tongues which filled the gallery there was to +be heard a rumble of thunder, and then the sharp patter of rain on the +huge skylight above them. + +"Excuse me, Miss Marlenspuyk," said White, hastily, "but my wife is +always a little nervous about thunder now. I must look her up. I'll send +you Harry Brackett." + +"You needn't mind about me," she answered, as he moved away. "I've taken +care of myself for a good many years now, and I think I'm still equal to +the task." + +The hall was densely crowded by this time, and it was becoming more and +more difficult to make one's way in any given direction. The rain fell +heavily on the roof, and dominated the rising murmur of the throng, and +even the shrill voices now and again heard above it. + +Miss Marlenspuyk drifted aimlessly with the crowd, looking at the +pictures occasionally, and listening with interest to the comments and +the fragmentary criticisms she could not help hearing on all sides of +her. She found herself standing before Mr. Charles Vaughn's "Judgment of +Paris," when she was accosted by Harry Brackett. + +"I've been looking for you everywhere, Miss Marlenspuyk," he began. +"White said you were here or hereabouts, and I haven't seen you for many +moons." + +They chatted for a few minutes about their last meeting, and the friends +at whose house they had dined. + +Then Harry Brackett, looking up, saw the huge painting before them. + +"So Charley Vaughn's 'Judgment of Paris' is a Salon picture, is it?" he +asked. "It looks to me better fitted for a saloon. It's one of those +nudes that Renwick Brashleigh says are offensive alike to the artist, +the moralist, and the voluptuary." + +Miss Marlenspuyk smiled; and her smile was one of her greatest charms. + +"Do you know Mr. Brashleigh?" she asked. + +"I've known him ever since he came back from Paris," Brackett answered. +"And he's a painter, he is. He isn't one of those young dudes who teach +society girls how to foreshorten the moon. You don't catch him going +round to afternoon teas and talking about the Spontaneity of Art." + +"Have you seen his portrait of this Mr. Poole?" she inquired. + +"Not yet," he replied, "but they tell me it's a dandy. I've never met +Poole, but I used to know his wife. She was Eunice Cameron, and she's a +cousin of Brashleigh's. Come to think of it, his first hit was a +portrait of her at the Academy three years ago." + +"What sort of a girl is she?" Miss Marlenspuyk asked. + +"For one thing, she's a good-looker," he responded, "although they say +she's gone off a little lately; I haven't seen her this year. But when +Brashleigh introduced me to her she was a mighty pretty girl, I can tell +you." + +The pressure of the crowd had carried them along, and now Miss +Marlenspuyk found herself once more in front of the "Portrait of a +Gentleman," and once more she was seized by the power and by the evil +which the artist had painted on the face of Cyrus Poole. + +"They used to say," Harry Brackett went on, not looking at the picture, +"that Brashleigh was in love with her. I think somebody or other once +told me that they were engaged." + +There was a sudden gleam of intelligence in Miss Marlenspuyk's eyes. + +"But of course there wasn't any truth in it," he continued. + +The smile came back to the old maid's mouth as she gazed steadily at the +portrait before her and answered, "Of course not." + +(1893.) + + + + +SPRING IN A SIDE STREET + + +In the city the spring comes earlier than it does in the country, and +the horse-chestnuts in the sheltered squares sometimes break into +blossom a fortnight before their brethren in the open fields. That year +the spring came earlier than usual, both in the country and in the city, +for March, going out like a lion, made an April-fool of the following +month, and the huge banks of snow heaped high by the sidewalks vanished +in three or four days, leaving the gutters only a little thicker with +mud than they are accustomed to be. Very trying to the convalescent was +the uncertain weather, with its obvious inability to know its own mind, +with its dark fog one morning and its brisk wind in the afternoon, with +its mid-day as bright as June and its sudden chill descending before +nightfall. + +Yet when the last week of April came, and the grass in the little square +around the corner was green again, and the shrubs were beginning to +flower out, the sick man also felt his vigor returning. His strength +came back with the spring, and restored health sent fresh blood coursing +through his veins as the sap was rising in the branches of the tree +before his window. He had had a hard struggle, he knew, although he did +not suspect that more than once he had wrestled with death itself. Now +his appetite had awakened again, and he had more force to withstand the +brooding sadness which sought to master him. + +The tree before his window was but a shabby sycamore, and the window +belonged to a hall bedroom in a shabby boarding-house down a side +street. The young man himself lay back in the steamer chair lent him by +one of the few friends he had in town, and his overcoat was thrown over +his knees. His hands, shrunken yet sinewy, lay crossed upon a book in +his lap. His body was wasted by sickness, but the frame was well knit +and solid. His face was still white and thin, although the yellow pallor +of the sick-bed had gone already. His scanty boyish beard that curled +about his chin had not been trimmed for two months, and his uncut brown +hair fell thickly on the collar of his coat. His dark eyes bore the mark +of recent suffering, but they revealed also a steadfast soul, strong to +withstand misfortune. + +His room was on the north side of the street, and the morning sun was +reflected into his window, as he lay back in the chair, grateful for the +warmth. A heavy cart lumbered along slowly over the worn and irregular +pavement; it came to a stand at the corner, and a gang of workmen +swiftly emptied it of the steel rails it contained, dropping them on +the sidewalk one by one with a loud clang which reverberated harshly far +down the street. From the little knot of men who were relaying the +horse-car track came cries of command, and then a rail would drop into +position, and be spiked swiftly to its place. Then the laborers would +draw aside while an arrested horse-car urged forward again, with the +regular footfall of its one horse, as audible above the mighty roar of +the metropolis as the jingle of the little bell on the horse's collar. +At last there came from over the house-tops a loud whistle of escaping +steam, followed shortly by a dozen similar signals, proclaiming the +mid-day rest. A rail or two more clanged down on the others, and then +the cart rumbled away. The workmen relaying the track had already seated +themselves on the curb to eat their dinner, while one of them had gone +to the saloon at the corner for a large can of the new beer advertised +in the window by the gaudy lithograph of a frisky young goat bearing a +plump young goddess on his back. + +The invalid was glad of the respite from the more violent noises of +track-layers, for his head was not yet as clear as it might be, and his +nerves were strained by pain. He leaned forward and looked down at the +street below, catching the eye of a young man who was bawling +"Straw-b'rees! straw-b'rees!" at the top of an unmelodious voice. The +invalid smiled, for he knew that the street venders of strawberries were +an infallible sign of spring--an indication of its arrival as +indisputable as the small square labels announcing that three of the +houses opposite to him were "To Let." The first of May was at hand. He +wondered whether the flower-market in Union Square had already opened; +and he recalled the early mornings of the preceding spring, when the +girl he loved, the girl who had promised to marry him, had gone with him +to Union Square to pick out young roses and full-blown geraniums worthy +to bloom in the windows of her parlor looking out on Central Park. + +He thought of her often that morning, and without bitterness, though +their engagement had been broken in the fall, three months or more +before he was taken sick. He had not seen her since Christmas, and he +found himself wondering how she would look that afternoon, and whether +she was happy. His revery was broken by the jangling notes of an +ill-tuned piano in the next house, separated from his little room only +by a thin party-wall. Some one was trying to pick out the simple tune of +"Wait till the Clouds roll by." Seemingly it was the practice hour for +one of the children next door, whose playful voices he had often heard. +Seemingly also the task was unpleasant, for the piano and the tune and +the hearer suffered from the ill-will of the childish performer. + +A sudden hammering of a street rail in the street below notified him the +nooning was over, and that the workmen had gone back to their labors. +Somehow he had failed to hear the stroke of one from the steeple of the +church at the corner of the Avenue, a short block away. Now he became +conscious of a permeating odor, and he knew that the luncheon hour of +the boarding-house had arrived. He had waked early, and his breakfast +had been very light. He felt ready for food, and he was glad when the +servant brought him up a plate of cold beef and a saucer of prunes. His +appetite was excellent, and he ate with relish and enjoyment. + +When he had made an end of his unpretending meal, he leaned back again +in his chair. A turbulent wind blew the dust of the street high in the +air and set swinging the budding branches of the sycamore before the +window. As he looked at the tender green of the young leaves dancing +before him in the sunlight he felt the spring-time stir his blood; he +was strong again with the strength of youth; he was able to cope with +all morbid fancies, and to cast away all repining. He wished himself in +the country--somewhere where there were brooks and groves and +grass--somewhere where there were quiet and rest and surcease of +noise--somewhere where there were time and space to think out the past +and to plan out the future resolutely--somewhere where there were not +two hand-organs at opposite ends of the block vying which should be the +more violent, one playing "Annie Laurie" and the other "Annie Rooney." +He winced as the struggle between the two organs attained its height, +while the child next door pounded the piano more viciously than before. +Then he smiled. + +With returning health, why should he mind petty annoyances? In a week or +so he would be able to go back to the store and to begin again to earn +his own living. No doubt the work would be hard at first, but hard work +was what he needed now. For the sake of its results in the future, and +for its own sake also, he needed severe labor. Other young men there +were a plenty in the thick of the struggle, but he knew himself as stout +of heart as any in the whole city, and why might not fortune favor him +too? With money and power and position he could hold his own in New +York; and perhaps some of those who thought little of him now would then +be glad to know him. + +While he lay back in the steamer chair in his hall room the shadows +began to lengthen a little, and the long day drew nearer to its end. +When next he roused himself the hand-organs had both gone away, and the +child next door had given over her practising, and the street was quiet +again, save for the high notes of a soprano voice singing a florid aria +by an open window in the Conservatory of Music in the next block, and +save also for an unusual rattle of vehicles drawing up almost in front +of the door of the boarding-house. With an effort he raised himself, and +saw a line of carriages on the other side of the way, moving slowly +towards the corner. A swirling sand-storm sprang up again in the street +below, and a simoom of dust almost hid from him the faces of those who +sat in the carriages--young girls dressed in light colors, and young men +with buttoned frock-coats. They were chatting easily; now and again a +gay laugh rang out. + +He wondered if it were time for the wedding. With difficulty he twisted +himself in his chair and took from the bureau behind him an envelope +containing the wedding-cards. The ceremony was fixed for three. He +looked at his watch, and he saw that it lacked but a few minutes of that +hour. His hand trembled a little as he put the watch back in his pocket; +and he gazed steadily into space until the bell in the steeple of the +church at the corner of the Avenue struck three times. The hour +appointed for the wedding had arrived. There were still carriages +driving up swiftly to deposit belated guests. + +The convalescent young man in the little hall bedroom of the shabby +boarding-house in the side street was not yet strong enough to venture +out in the spring sunshine and to be present at the ceremony. But as he +lay there in the rickety steamer chair with the old overcoat across his +knees, he had no difficulty in evoking the scene in the church. He saw +the middle-aged groom standing at the rail awaiting the bride. He heard +the solemn and yet joyous strains of the wedding-march. He saw the bride +pass slowly up the aisle on the arm of her father, with the lace veil +scarcely lighter or fairer than her own filmy hair. He wondered whether +she would be pale, and whether her conscience would reproach her as she +stood at the altar. He heard the clergyman ask the questions and +pronounce the benediction. He saw the new-made wife go down the aisle +again on the arm of her husband. He sighed wearily, and lay back in his +chair with his eyes closed, as though to keep out the unwelcome vision. +He did not move when the carriages again crowded past his door, and went +up to the church porch one after another in answer to hoarse calls from +conflicting voices. + +He lay there for a long while motionless and silent. He was thinking +about himself, about his hopes, which had been as bright as the sunshine +of spring, about his bitter disappointment. He was pondering on the +mysteries of the universe, and asking himself whether he could be of any +use to the world--for he still had high ambitions. He was wondering what +might be the value of any one man's labor for his fellow-men, and he +thought harshly of the order of things. He said to himself that we all +slip out of sight when we die, and the waters close over us, for the +best of us are soon forgotten, and so are the worst, since it makes +little difference whether the coin you throw into the pool is gold or +copper--the rarer metal does not make the more ripples. Then, as he saw +the long shafts of almost level sunshine sifting through the tiny +leaves of the tree before his window, he took heart again as he recalled +the great things accomplished by one man. He gave over his mood of +self-pity; and he even smiled at the unconscious conceit of his attitude +towards himself. + +He was recalled from his long revery by the thundering of a heavy +fire-engine, which crashed its way down the street, with its rattling +hose-reel tearing along after it. In the stillness that followed, broken +only by the warning whistles of the engine as it crossed avenue after +avenue farther and farther east, he found time to remember that every +man's struggle forward helps along the advance of mankind at large; the +humble fireman who does his duty and dies serves the cause of humanity. + +The swift twilight of New York was almost upon him when he was next +distracted from his thoughts by the crossing shouts of loud-voiced men +bawling forth a catchpenny extra of a third-rate evening paper. The +cries arose from both sides of the street at once, and they ceased while +the fellows sold a paper here and there to the householders whose +curiosity called them to the door-step. + +The sky was clear, and a single star shone out sharply. The air was +fresh, and yet balmy. The clanging of rails had ceased an hour before, +and the gang of men who were spiking the iron into place had dispersed +each to his own home. The day was drawing to an end. Again there was an +odor of cooking diffused through the house, heralding the dinner-hour. + +But the young man who lay back in the steamer chair in the hall bedroom +of the boarding-house was unconscious of all except his own thoughts. +Before him was a picture of a train of cars speeding along moonlit +valleys, and casting a hurrying shadow. In this train, as he saw it, was +the bride of that afternoon, borne away by the side of her husband. But +it was the bride he saw, and not the husband. He saw her pale face and +her luminous eyes and her ashen-gold hair; and he wondered whether in +the years to come she would be as happy as if she had kept her promise +to marry him. + +(1896.) + + + + +A DECORATION-DAY REVERY + + +There had been a late spring, set off by frequent rain; and when +Decoration Day dawned there was a fresh fairness of foliage, as though +Nature were making ready her garlands for our honored dead. When at +length the march began, the sunshine sifted through the timid verdure of +the trees in the square, and fell softly on the swaying ranks that +passed beneath. The golden beams glinted from the slanting bayonets, and +seemed to keep time with the valiant old war-tunes as they swelled up +from the frequent bands. There was a contagion of military ardor in the +air, and even the small boy who had climbed up into the safe eyry of a +dismantled lamp-post had within him inarticulate stirrings of warlike +ambition. In the pauses of the music fifes shrilled out, and the roll +and rattle of drums covered the rhythmic tramping of the soldiers. I +lingered for a while near the noble statue of the great admiral, who +stood there firm on his feet, with the sea-breeze blowing back the skirt +of his coat, and so presented by the art of the sculptor that the +motionless bronze seemed more alive than most of the ordinary men and +women who clustered about its base. Here, I thought, was the fit +memorial of the man who had done his duty in the long struggle, to the +heroes of which the day was sacred; and I was glad that the marching +thousands should pass in review before that mute image of the best and +bravest our country can bring forth. At that moment a detachment of +sailors swung into view, and cheers of hearty greeting broke forth on +all sides. + +As I loitered, musing, a battalion of our little army strode by us in +turn, with soldierly bearing, clad in no gaudy garb, but ready for their +bloody work; ready with cold steel to give a cold welcome to the +invading foreigner, ready with a prompt volley to put an end to lawless +strife at home. After an interval came the first ranks of the citizen +soldiery, trim in their workmanlike uniforms, with stretchers, with +ambulances, with Gatling-guns. One after another advanced the regiments +of the city militia, and no man need doubt that they would be as swift +now to go forward to battle as were their former fellow-members whose +deeds gave them the right to bear flags emblazoned with more than one +battle as hard fought as Marathon or Philippi, Fontenoy or Waterloo. As +they swept on down the Avenue in the morning sunlight, with the strident +music veiled now and again by ringing cheers, my thoughts went back to +the many other thousands I had seen go down that Avenue, now more than +a quarter of a century ago, coming from the pine forests and the granite +hills of New England, and going to the silent swamps and the dark bayous +of the South. In those drear days of doubt I had watched the ceaseless +tramp of the troops down that Avenue, a thousand at a time--young, +earnest, ardent; and I remembered that I had seen them return but a +scant hundred or two, it may be, worn and ragged, foot-sore and +heart-sick, but resolute yet and full of grit. Death, like the maddened +peasants in the strife of the Jacquerie, fights with a scythe; and for +four long years Time held a slow glass and Death mowed a broad swath. +There is many a house now where an old woman cannot hear the trivial +notes of "Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching," without a sharp +pain in the throat and a sudden vision of the prison-pen at +Andersonville. No doubt there is many another woman south of that Mason +and Dixon's line which was washed out in the blood of the war where the +sentimental strains of "My Maryland" have an equal poignancy and an +equal tenderness. Shiloh and Malvern Hill and Gettysburg are names made +sacred forever by the deeds done there, and by the dead who lie there +side by side in a common grave, where the gray cloth and the blue have +faded into dust alike, and there is now naught to tell them apart. It is +well that a spring day, fresh after rain and fair with blossoms, should +help to keep their memory sweet. + +Down the Avenue regiment after regiment went on briskly, with the easy +pace of health and enjoyment. After the young men of the militia came +the veterans, with flowers for their fallen comrades. Some of the older +men were in carriages, with here and there a crutch across the seat; but +for the most part they walked, keeping time, no doubt, though with a +shorter stride. As a handful of brave men filed before us, bearing aloft +the tattered remnant of a battle-flag, I raised my hat with instinctive +reverence. For a moment the gesture shielded my eyes from the rays of +the sun, and I caught sight of a group in the window of a house +opposite. A lady, tall and stately, wearing a widow's cap above her gray +hair as though it were a crown, stood in the centre with her hands on +the shoulders of two young men--her sons, beyond all question--stalwart +young fellows, with features at once fine and strong, bearing themselves +with manly grace. I looked, and I recognized. When I lowered my eyes +again to the procession I saw another set of faces that I knew by sight. +In a carriage sat a man of some fifty years, stout, vulgar, with a cigar +alight in the coarse hand which rested on the door of the vehicle. He +had a shock of hair, once reddish and now grizzling to an unclean white. +He wore in his button-hole the button of the Grand Army of the Republic. +In the open barouche with him were three youngish men, noisy in +laughter--apparently professional politicians of the baser sort. + +[Illustration: "DISTRACTED BY THE CROSSING SHOUTS OF LOUD-VOICED MEN"] + +The man bowed effusively, with a broad and unctuous smile, when he saw a +friend on the sidewalk; and the crowd about me recognized him, and +called him by name one to another; and a little knot of young fellows on +the corner raised a cheer. + +I knew both groups, the unclean creature in the carriage and the noble +lady in the window above him. I knew that both were survivals of the +war. + +As the procession passed on, I could hear an occasional cheer run along +the line of spectators when one or another recognized the politician. I +was not surprised, for the man's popularity with a portion of the people +is patent to all of us. He was a soldier who had never fired a shot, a +colonel who had never seen the enemy. His tactical skill had been shown +in the securing of a detail for himself where there was chance of profit +with no risk of danger. His strategy had been to secure the good word of +those who dispensed the good things of life. + +While others were battling for the country he was looking out for +himself. When the war was over he presented his claims for recognition, +and he was sent as consul to the Orient. In due time there came across +the ocean rumors of scandals, and an investigation was ordered; +whereupon he resigned, and the matter was never probed. Then he went +into politics: he was ready of speech and loud-mouthed; he flattered the +mob, believing that in politics the blarney-stone is the stepping-stone +to success. He never paused to weigh his words when he assailed an +opponent, believing that in politics billingsgate is the gate of +success. He was prompt to set people by the ears that he might lead them +by the nose the more readily. As though to make up for his delinquencies +during the struggle, he was now untiring in his abuse of the Southern +people, and his denunciation of them was always violent and virulent. In +every election he besought his fellow-citizens to vote as they had shot. +He was unfailingly bitter in his abuse of those who had fought for the +cause of the South. He was, in short, a specimen of the scum which may +float on the surface whenever there is an upheaval of the deep. + +Brutal in political debate and brazen in political chicanery, he was a +fit leader for the band of hirelings he had organized with no small +skill. His position was not unlike that of the _condottieri_ of the +foreign mercenaries in the mediaeval quarrels of the Italian republics. +Like them, he led a compact body, prompt to obey orders so long as it +received the pay and had hopes of the plunder for which it was +organized. Although he belonged nominally to one of the two great +parties which contended for the control of the nation, he was always +ready to turn his forces against it if his pay and his proportion of the +spoils of office failed to satisfy himself and his men-at-arms; or even +in revenge for a slight, and in hope of higher remuneration from the +other side. + +For me, as I stood on the corner under Farragut's statue and watched the +veterans file past, the knowledge of this man's career, and the sight of +his presence among those who had fought a good fight for a high motive, +seemed to tarnish the sacred occasion and to stain the glory of the +morning. Again I looked up at the window where I had seen the lady with +her two sons. She was still there, leaning forward a little, as though +in involuntary excitement, and one hand clinched the arm of the +soldierly young fellow at her right. The sight of those three refreshed +me, for I knew who they were, and what they stood for in the history of +our country--a shining example in the past and a beacon of hope for the +future. The widow's cap which crowns the brow of that mother brought up +before me the memory of a deed as noble as it was simple. + +A fife-and-drum corps of boys dressed as sailors preceded a model of a +monitor mounted on wheels and artfully adorned with flowers and wreaths. +Behind this came the scanty score of old sailors who had formed +themselves into Post Rodman R. Hardy. When they came abreast of the +window where the lady stood with her two sons, they looked up and +cheered. The eyes of Captain Hardy's widow had filled with tears when +she caught sight of his old comrades; and when they cheered her and her +boys her face flushed and the arm which rested on her son's trembled. +She bowed, the two young men raised their hats, and the Post passed on +down the Avenue to perform their sad office; though they might not deck +with flowers the grave of their old commander, for he lies buried at the +bottom of the sea, and great guns were firing many a salute with shot +and shell when his body was lowered into its everlasting resting-place. + +I have heard it said that a soldier's trade is learning how to kill and +how to die, and that how he lives is little matter. Captain Hardy lived +like a man, like a gentleman, like a Christian; and he died like a hero. +He came of a generation of sailors. His great-grandfather had sailed +with the fleet under Amherst when Louisburg was taken in 1758. His +grandfather had been a midshipman with Paul Jones in the _Bonhomme +Richard_. His father served on "Old Ironsides" when the _Constitution_ +captured the _Guerriere_. He himself had gone to sea in time to take +part in the siege of Vera Cruz. When the war broke out he had been +married but three years. He was on the _Cumberland_ when the _Merrimac_ +sank her. While the new monitors were building he had a few brief weeks +with his wife and his two baby boys. When the _Onteora_ was finished he +was a captain, and he was appointed to take command. + +And there was no monitor which did better service or had more hard work +than the _Onteora_. Just before the grand attack on Fort Davis he ran +under the guns of a Confederate battery to shell a cruiser which had +retreated up the river behind the strip of land on which the earthworks +stood. Regardless of the fire from the battery, which bade fair to +hammer his ship till it might become unmanageable, he trained his guns +on the cruiser. He had no more than got the range when a fog settled +down and hid the combatants from each other. The battery ceased firing +or aimed wildly a few chance shots. The monitor, relying on the accuracy +of its gunners, continued to send shell after shell through the thick +wall of fog to the invisible place where the enemy's ship lay. When the +fog lifted, the cruiser was on fire; and then the monitor fell back out +of the range of the guns of the battery, having done the work Captain +Hardy had set it to do. + +The next day came the grand assault on Fort Davis. The admiral ordered +the _Onteora_ to follow the flag-ship in the attack. The channel was +defended not only by the cannon of the fort itself and of its supporting +earthworks and by a flotilla of gunboats, but also by hidden torpedoes, +the position of which was wholly unknown even to the pilots, Union men +of the port who had volunteered to guide our vessels through the +tortuous windings of the entrance. The iron ship was made ready for +battle; its deck was sunk level with the surface of the sea; and nothing +projected but the revolving turret, with its two huge guns. In the +little box of a pilot-house Captain Hardy took his place with the pilot. +The admiral gave the signal to advance, and the _Onteora_ followed in +the wake of the flag-ship. + +The first turning of the channel was made safely, and the monitor was at +last full under the fire of the fort. The turret revolved slowly, and +both guns were discharged against a pert gunboat which had ventured out +beyond the protection of the fort. The second shot struck the +steam-chest of the gunboat, and it blew up and drifted at the mercy of +the current. Still the admiral advanced, and the _Onteora_ followed. +Then a sudden shock was felt, there was a dull roar, the monitor +shivered from stem to stern, and began to settle. A torpedo had blown a +hole in the bottom of the boat, and the _Onteora_ was sinking. Almost at +the same time a shot from Fort Davis struck the turret, and a fragment +smote Captain Hardy and tore off his right arm. In the scant seconds +after the explosion of the torpedo, before the shuddering ship lurched +down, half a score of men escaped from the turret and flung themselves +into the river. The captain had barely time to climb into the open air +when his ship went down beneath him. When he arose from the vortex of +whirling waters his unwounded hand grasped a chance fragment of wood, +which served to sustain him despite the weakness from his open wound. He +found himself by the side of the pilot, who was struggling vainly with +the waves, his strength almost spent. + +"Can't you swim?" asked Captain Hardy. + +"Only a little," answered the pilot; "and I am almost gone now, I fear." + +"Take this bit of wood," said the sailor. + +The pilot reached out his arm and with despairing fingers gripped the +broken plank. It was too small to support two men, and Captain Hardy +released his hold. He sought to sustain himself with one hand, and for a +little he succeeded. Then his strength failed him, and at last he went +under almost where the _Onteora_ had sunk beneath him. The battle raged +above; shell from ship after ship answered shell from the fort and the +batteries; another ironclad took up the work of the _Onteora_; brave +hearts and quick heads were at work on sea and on shore; but Rodman +Hardy was dead at the bottom of the river, leaving to his widow and his +sons the heritage of a manly death. + +The widow's cap which the young wife took that night she has never +discarded to this day. His sons she has brought up to follow in their +father's footsteps. One has already begun to make his mark in the navy, +having been graduated from Annapolis, high up in his class. The other is +a lawyer, who is solving for himself the problem of the scholar in +politics. Although not yet thirty, he has spent two terms in the +Legislature of the State, where he has done yeoman service for the city. + +The parade was over at last--for the Rodman R. Hardy Post had been one +of the latest in line--and I turned away across the square. The sight +of the widow with her two sons had cleansed the atmosphere from the +miasma that trailed behind the politician as he rode by me in his vulgar +barouche. The memory of a great deed is an oasis in the vista of life, +and the recollection of Captain Hardy's death made the day seem fairer. +The sunshine flooded the streets with molten gold. A pair of young +sparrows flitted across the park before me and alighted on a bough above +my head. From over the house-tops came floating echoes of "John Brown's +Body" and "Marching through Georgia." + +(1890.) + + + + +IN SEARCH OF LOCAL COLOR + + +The novelist stood at the corner of Rivington Street and the Bowery, +trying to find fit words to formulate his impression of the most +characteristic of New York streets as it appeared on a humid morning in +June. The elevated trains clattered past over his head and he gave no +heed to them, so intent was he in making a mental record of the types +which passed before him. Suddenly he was almost thrown off his feet. A +young man, slipping on the peel of a banana cast away carelessly upon +the sidewalk, had stumbled heavily against him. + +"I beg your pardon," cried the young man as he recovered himself. +"I--why, Mr. De Ruyter!" he exclaimed, recognizing the author. + +"John Suydam!" returned Rupert de Ruyter, holding out his hand +cordially. "Well, this is good-fortune! Do you know, I was on my way to +the University Settlement to look you up." + +"You would have found me there in ten minutes," Suydam answered. "This +is my week to be in residence; in fact, I think I shall be here for the +summer now. You see, I passed my A.M. examination at Columbia last +week--" + +"So they examine you for it now, eh?" the novelist queried. "In my time +we got it almost for the asking--at least, I did--and that was only +twenty years ago. What are you going to do with it, now you've got it? I +heard you were to study for the ministry." + +"I had thought of the Church," answered Suydam. He was a tall, spare +young fellow, with straight brown hair and a resolute chin. "But I don't +know now what I shall do. I have a little money, you know--enough to +live on, if I choose. So I may stay here at the Settlement; the work is +very interesting." + +"No doubt," the novelist responded, readily; "you must see many curious +cases. I wish I could cut loose for a while, and spend a month with you +here." + +"Why don't you?" suggested Suydam, eagerly. + +"Oh, I have too much on hand," De Ruyter replied. "I've got to read the +Phi Beta Kappa poem at Harvard next week; and besides, I've promised to +finish a series of New York stories for the _Metropolis_. That is why I +was on my way to find you this morning. I want you to help me." + +"But I never wrote a story in my life," said the young man, promptly. + +"I don't want you to write the stories," De Ruyter retorted. "Of course +I can do that for myself. But I thought that you could help me to a +little local color." + +"Local color?" echoed Suydam, doubtfully. + +"Yes," the novelist went on, "local color--that's what I want--fresh +impressions." + +"I don't quite see--" the young man began, hesitatingly. + +"Oh, I can explain what I want," Rupert de Ruyter interrupted. "You see, +I'm a New-Yorker born, as you are, and I've lived here all my life, and +I know the city pretty well--that is, I know certain aspects of it +thoroughly. I can do the Patriarchs, or a Claremont tea, or any other +function of the smart set; I know the way men talk in clubs; I've +studied the painters and the literary men and the journalists; I can +describe a first night at the theatre or a panic in the Street; but I've +pretty nearly exhausted the people I know, and I thought I would come +down here and get introduced to a set I didn't know." + +"I shall be glad to take you to the Settlement," Suydam responded, +"and--" + +"It isn't the Settlement I want, thank you," De Ruyter interrupted. "The +people in the Settlement are variants of types I know already. The +people I want to meet are people I don't know anything about--the very +poor people, the tenement-house people, the people who work for the +sweaters. Do you know any of those?" + +"Yes," Suydam answered, "I know many of them. But they are not half so +picturesque and so pathetic as the sensational newspapers make them +out. Wouldn't you rather go and see the Chinese quarter?" + +"That isn't what I want," the novelist made answer. "The Chinese quarter +is barbarous; it is exotic; it is extraneous; it is a mere accidental +excrescence on New York. But the tenement-house people have come to +stay; they are an integral and a vital part of the city. I don't care +about Chinatown, and I do care about Mulberry Bend. Now, Suydam, you +know Mulberry Bend, don't you?" + +"Yes," Suydam returned. "I know Mulberry Bend." + +"Do you know any tenement-house in the Bend, or near it, which is +characteristic--which is typical of the worst that the Bend has to +show?" De Ruyter asked. + +"Yes," Suydam responded again. "I think I could find a tenement of that +kind." + +"Then take me there now, if you can spare me an hour or two," said the +novelist. + +"I can put off my errand till this afternoon," the young man answered. +"I think I can show you what you want. Come with me." + +They had been standing where they had met, at the corner of the Bowery +and Rivington Street. Now, under John Suydam's guidance, they walked a +little way up the Bowery, beneath the single track of the elevated +railroad. Then they turned into a side street, and pushed their way +westward. + +Whenever they came to a crossing De Ruyter remarked that three of the +corners always, and four of them sometimes, were saloons. The broad gilt +signs over the open doors of these bar-rooms bore names either German or +Irish, until they came to a corner where one of the saloons called +itself the Caffe Cristoforo Colombo. A wooden stand, down the side +street, and taking up a third of the width of the walk, had a sign +announcing ice-cold soda-water at two cents a glass with fruit syrups; +with chocolate and cream, the price was three cents. Right on the corner +of the curb stood a large wash-tub half filled with water, in which +soaked doubtful young cabbages and sprouts; its guardian was a thin slip +of a girl with a red handkerchief knotted over her head. + +At this corner Suydam turned out of the side street, and went down a +street no wider perhaps, but extending north and south in a devious and +hesitating way not common in the streets of New York. The sidewalks of +this sinuous street were inconveniently narrow for its crowded +population, and they were made still narrower by tolerated encroachments +of one kind or another. Here, for instance, from the side of a small +shop projected a stand on which unshelled pease wilted under the strong +rays of the young June sun. There, for example, were steps down to the +low basement, and in a corner of the hollow at the foot of these stairs +there might be a pail with dingy ice packed about a can of alleged +ice-cream, or else a board bore half a dozen tough brown loaves, also +proffered for sale to the chance customer. Here and there, again, the +dwellers in the tall tenements had brought chairs to the common door, +and were seated, comfortably conversing with their neighbors, regardless +of the fact that they thus blocked the sidewalk, and compelled the +passer-by to go out into the street itself. + +And the street was as densely packed as the sidewalk. In front of Suydam +and De Ruyter as they picked their way along was a swarthy young fellow +with his flannel shirt open at the throat and rolled up on his tawny +arms; he was pushing before him a hand-cart heaped with gayly colored +calicoes. Other hand-carts there were, from which other men, young and +old, were vending other wares--fruit more often than not; fruit of a +most untempting frowziness. Now and then a huge wagon came lumbering +through the street, heaped high with lofty cases of furniture from a +rumbling and clattering factory near the corner. And before the heavy +horses of this wagon the children scattered, waiting till the last +moment of possible escape. There were countless children, and they were +forever swarming out of the houses and up from the cellars and over the +sidewalks and up and down the street. They were of all ages, from the +babe in the arms of its dumpy, thick-set mother to the sweet-faced and +dark-eyed girl of ten or twelve really, though she might seem a +precocious fourteen. They ran wild in the street; they played about the +knees of their mothers, who sat gossiping in the doorways; they hung +over the railing of the fire-escapes, which gridironed the front of +every tall house. + +Everywhere had the Italians treated the balcony of the fire-escape as an +out-door room added to their scant accommodation. They adorned it with +flowers growing in broken wooden boxes; they used its railings to dry +their parti-colored flannel shirts; they sat out on it as though it were +the loggia of a villa in their native land. + +Everywhere, also, were noises and smells. The roar of the metropolis was +here sharpened by the rattle of near machinery heard through open +windows, and by the incessant clatter and shrill cries of the multitude +in the street. The rancid odor of ill-kept kitchens mingled with the +mitigated effluvium of decaying fruits and vegetables. + +But over and beyond the noises and the smells and the bustling business +of the throng, Rupert de Ruyter felt as though he were receiving an +impression of life itself. It was as if he had caught a glimpse of the +mighty movement of existence, incessant and inevitable. What he saw did +not strike him as pitiful; it did not weigh him down with despondency. +The spectacle before him was not beautiful; it was not even picturesque; +but never for a moment, even, did it strike him as pathetic. Interesting +it was, of a certainty--unfailingly interesting. + +"I haven't found anything so Italian as this for years," he said to his +guide, as they picked their way through a tangle of babies sprawling out +of a doorway. "I remember seeing nothing more Italian in my first walk +in Italy--up the hill-side at Menaggio, after we landed from the boat to +Como. Some of the faces here are of a purer Greek type than any you meet +in northern Italy. Did you see that young mother we passed just now?" + +"The one nursing the infant?" Suydam returned. + +"Yes," De Ruyter went on. "She had the oval face and the olive +complexion the Greeks left behind them in Sicily. She was not pretty, if +you like, but she had the calm beauty of a race of sculptors. Her +profile might have come off a Syracusan coin. And to see such a face +here, in the city that was New Amsterdam and is New York!" + +"We haven't time down here to think of Syracuse and New Amsterdam," said +Suydam; "we are too busy thinking about New York. And if we ever do +think of Sicily it is only to remember that the Sicilians we have here +are the hottest tempered of all the Italians, the most revengeful and +vindictive." + +"If I didn't know," the novelist remarked, "that the Italians had +developed their mercantile faculty at the expense of all their artistic +impulses, I should wonder how it was that scions of the race of Michael +Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci and Raffael of Urbino could now be willing +to live in a house as hideous as that!" and with a sweep of his hand he +indicated a lofty double tenement, made uglier by much misplaced +ornament. "It isn't even picturesque by decay. In fact, this whole +region is in better repair than I had expected." + +"Look at the house behind you," answered his companion. + +The house behind them was one of the oldest tenements in the street. The +balconies of its fire-escape were as cluttered as those of the +neighboring dwellings; and every window gave signs that the room behind +was inhabited. Yet the building, as a whole, seemed neglected. + +"This house does seem out at elbows and dishevelled," De Ruyter +admitted. "It looks like a tramp, doesn't it?" + +"It does not look very clean," said Suydam. "And the back building is +dirtier yet. That's where we are going, if you like." + +"Well," De Ruyter answered, "if there is local color to be found +anywhere round here, I guess we shall find a fair share of it in this +place." + +"This way, then," Suydam said, plunging into a covered alleyway, which +extended under the house, and led into a small yard paved with uneven +flag-stones, and shut in on all four sides by the surrounding buildings. +Even on that sunny pure morning there was a dank chill in the air, and +there were patches of moisture here and there on the pavement. + +"The new building laws don't allow back buildings of this sort," Suydam +explained. "But there are thousands of them in the city, put up before +the new laws went into effect. Perhaps we had better try the basement +first." + +In one corner of the yard half a dozen steps led down into the basement +of the back building. Followed by the novelist, the young man from the +University Settlement went down these steps and into the cellarlike +room, which occupied about half the space under the back building. + +The air in this room was so foul that De Ruyter held his breath for a +moment. The room was not more than twelve feet square; its walls were +unplastered, showing the coarse foundation-stones; its floor was of +earth, trodden to hardness, except where the drippings from the +beer-cans had moistened it; the beams of the floor above seemed rotten. +In the damp heat of this room ten or a dozen men and boys were seated on +old chairs and on broken boxes, smoking, playing cards by the light of a +single foul and flaring kerosene-lamp, and drinking the dregs of +beer-kegs collected in old cans. + +The inhabitants of the cellar looked up as Suydam and De Ruyter entered, +and then they resumed their previous occupations, with no further +attention to the intruders. + +The man nearest to the door was a powerfully built fellow of fifty, +with gray hair cropped close to his head. He was playing cards. He had a +knife thrust in his leathern belt. + +"Good-morning, Giacomo," said Suydam to this grizzled brute. "I haven't +heard of you for a long while now. When did you get off the Island?" + +"Las' week," was the gruff answer. + +"And where is your wife now?" the young man asked. + +"She work," answered Giacomo. + +Suydam did not pursue the conversation further. Judging that the +novelist had seen enough, he turned and went up the rickety steps again, +followed by his friend. + +"Ouf!" said De Ruyter, drawing a long breath, as they stood again in the +cramped yard. "I don't see how they can breathe that air and live." + +"They don't live," answered Suydam--"at least, the weaker are soon +pushed to the wall and die, leaving only the tougher specimens you saw. +Now we will go up-stairs, if you like." + +"I'm ready," De Ruyter responded. "This is exactly what I came to see." + +In the centre of the back building there was an entry. The door was off +its hinges. Just inside the passage were the stairs, with the railing +broken, and many of the steps dangerously decayed. There was little +light as they went up, and a rank odor of decaying fish accompanied +them. + +At the head of the stairs there was a door on either hand. Suydam +knocked at them in turn, and then tried to open them; but they were +locked, and there was no response to the repeated hammerings. + +"I say," remarked the novelist, as they went up to the floor above, "do +these people like to have us intrude on them in this way?" + +"Some don't," Suydam answered, promptly, "and of course I try never to +intrude. But most of them don't mind. Most of them have no sense of +home. Most of them don't know what privacy means. How could they?" + +"True," echoed the novelist. "How could they?" + +"Here is an exemplification of what I mean," said the young man from the +Settlement as they came to the next landing. + +The door leading into the room on the right was open. The room was +perhaps ten feet square; it contained two beds. On one of the beds a man +sat cross-legged sewing; he glanced up for a moment only as the two +visitors darkened the doorway, and then he went on with his work. On the +other bed were two little children, half naked and asleep; one was a boy +of three, the other a girl of nearly two. On the edge of this bed sat a +tall boy of seventeen, also sewing. In the narrow alley between the two +beds were two sewing-machines, one tended by a girl of fifteen or +sixteen perhaps, a thin, stunted child, with bent shoulders. The other +machine was operated by the mother of these children, a large-framed +woman of forty, with the noble head so often seen among the +Trasteverines. + +She knew Suydam, and she smiled. + +"Good-mornin'," she said. + +"Good-morning," responded Suydam. "I am showing a friend over the +building. You seem a little crowded here." + +"Not crowd' now," she answered. "Only one boarder now," and she +indicated the man seated cross-legged on the bed. "Last week two." + +"Where is your husband?" asked the young man. + +"Oh, he got another girl," she replied, with a vague gesture, apparently +of disapproval. + +Suydam and De Ruyter went a floor higher, glancing into the rooms which +were open. Suydam knew most of the inhabitants, and they seemed glad to +see him. Evidently they looked on him as a friend. + +On the top floor, under the steps which led to the roof, was a den +scarce six feet by eight. Small as it was, this room had better +furniture than most of those De Ruyter had seen; it contained evidences +of a desire to make a home. There were violent chromos pinned to the +wall. The bed had a parti-colored coverlet. The sole inhabitant was a +tall, dark Italian with fiery eyes. He was cooking macaroni with ropy +cheese over an oil-lamp. His door was ajar only. + +"Good-morning, Pietro," said Suydam, cheerfully. + +Pietro obeyed his first impulse, and shut the door swiftly. Then he +changed his mind, for he opened the door and peered out suspiciously. +Recognizing Suydam, he was about to throw it wide, when he caught sight +of De Ruyter. There was a moment of hesitancy, and then he took his hand +from the knob of the door and went on with his cooking. + +"I am showing my friend over the building," explained Suydam. + +The Italian said nothing. Apparently his cooking absorbed all his +attention. But he gave De Ruyter a searching glance. + +Suydam turned to the novelist. "This is Pietro Barretti," he said; "he +is one of the most expert layers of mosaic in America. He is from +Naples; that's the reason he cooks macaroni so well, I suppose." + +"Certainly I haven't seen macaroni cooked that way since I was in Naples +last," the novelist remarked, for the sake of talk, not knowing just +what to make of the Italian's manner. + +"Your wife not here?" asked Suydam. + +"No," the Italian answered, abruptly. + +"Where is she?" persisted the young man. + +"She mort," responded Barretti. + +"Dead?" Suydam cried. "That is very sad. When did she die?" + +"Ten days," the Italian replied. + +When Suydam and De Ruyter had made an end of their visit, and were going +down the stairs cautiously, the young man from the University Settlement +asked the novelist if he had seen anything interesting. + +"Oh yes," was the answer. "I've got lots of color; just what I wanted. +And that Italian whose wife was mort--he's copy, I'm sure." + +"Copy?" queried Suydam. + +"I mean I can use him in one of my sketches for the _Metropolis_," the +novelist explained. "I wish I knew what his wife was like." + +"She was a pretty girl--dark-haired, dark-eyed, with a lively smile," +Suydam said. "He was very jealous of her. I've been told they used to +quarrel bitterly." + +"I shouldn't like to have that fellow for an enemy," De Ruyter declared, +as they passed through the alleyway and came out in the open air. "He +has an eye like a glass stiletto." + +The novelist and the young man from the University Settlement walked up +the street together. As they drew near to a police-station, jealously +guarded by its green lamps, three officers came out and turned down the +street. + +When the policemen were abreast of the two friends, one of them stepped +aside and accosted the young man from the Settlement. + +"Mr. Suydam," he said, "you gentlemen from the Settlement sometimes know +what's going on better than we do. Have you seen Pietro Barretti +lately--the one they call Italian Pete?" + +"I saw him not ten minutes ago--in his own room," Suydam answered. + +"He's all right, boys," cried the policeman. "He's there." + +"Do you want him?" asked Suydam. + +"Don't we?" the policeman replied, promptly. "We've got to bring him +in." + +"What has he done?" De Ruyter inquired. + +"Oh, he's done enough!" responded the officer. "He murdered his wife +last week, that's what he's done." + +Suydam looked at De Ruyter. + +"Yes," said De Ruyter, "that completes the picture. I can get a good +_mot de la fin_ now." + +(1893.) + + + + +BEFORE THE BREAK OF DAY + + +She lived in a little wooden house on the corner of the street huddled +in the shadow of two towering tenements. There are a few frail buildings +of this sort still left in that part of the city, half a mile east of +the Bowery and half a mile south of Tompkins Square, where the +architecture is as irregular, as crowded, and as little cared for as the +population. Amid the old private houses erected for a single family, and +now violently altered to accommodate eight or ten--amid the tall new +tenements, stark and ugly--here and there one can still find wooden +houses built before the city expanded, half a century old now, worn and +shabby and needlessly ashamed in the presence of every new edifice no +better than they. With the peak of their shingled roofs they are +pathetic survivals of a time when New York still remembered that it had +been New Amsterdam, and when it did not build its dwellings in imitation +of the polyglot loftiness of the Tower of Babel. It was in one of these +little houses with white clapboarded walls, ashen gray in the paling +moonlight, that Maggie O'Donnell lay fast asleep, when the bell in a +far-off steeple tolled three in the morning of the day that was to be +the Fourth of July. + +She was asleep in the larger of the two little rooms over the saloon. In +that part of the city there are saloons on every corner almost, and +sometimes two and three in a block. The signs over the doors of most of +these saloons and over the doors of the groceries and of the bakeries +and of the other shops bear strangely foreign names. The German quarter +of the city is not far off, nor is the Italian, nor the Chinese; but +hereabouts the houses are packed with Poles chiefly, and chiefly +Jews--industrious, docile, and saving. Not until midnight had the whir +of the sewing-machines ceased in the tenements which occupied the three +other corners. The sign over the door of the saloon above which Maggie +lay fast asleep bore an Irish name, the name of her husband, Terence +O'Donnell. But the modest boards which displayed his name were overawed +by the huge signs that flanked them, filling a goodly share of the wall +on either street and proclaiming the "McGown's Pass Brewery, Kelly & +Company." + +These brewer's signs were so large that they made the little house seem +even smaller than it was--and it was not more than twenty feet square. +The doors of the saloon were right at the corner, of course, to catch +trade. On one street there were two windows, and on the other one window +and a door over which was the sign "Family Entrance." This door opened +into a little passage, from which access could be had to the saloon, and +from which also arose the narrow stairs leading to the home of Terence +O'Donnell and Maggie, his wife, on the floor above. The saloon filled +the whole ground-floor except the space taken up by this entry and the +stairs. A single jet of gas had burned dimly over the bar ever since +Terry had locked up a little after midnight. The bar curved across the +saloon, and behind it the sideboard with its bevelled-edge mirrors lined +the two inner walls. The sideboard glittered with glasses built up in +tiers, and a lemon lay yellow at the top of every pyramid. The +beer-pumps were in the centre under the bar; at one end was the small +iron safe where Terence kept his money; and at the other end, against +the wall, just behind the door which opened into the Family Entrance, +was a telephone. + +Up-stairs there were two little rooms and a closet or two. The smaller +of the rooms Maggie had turned into a kitchen and dining-room. The +larger--the one on the corner--was their bedroom, and here Maggie lay +asleep. The night was close and warm, and though the windows were open, +the little white curtains hung limp and motionless. The day before had +been hot and cloudless, so the brick buildings on the three other +corners had stored up heat for fifteen hours, and had been giving it out +ever since the sun had set. Stifling as it was, Maggie O'Donnell slept +heavily. It was after midnight when Terry had kissed her at the door, +and she had been asleep for three hours. Already there were faint hints +of the coming day, for here in New York the sun rises early on the +Fourth of July--at half-past four. A breeze began to blow lazily up from +the East River and fluttered the curtains feebly. Maggie tossed +uneasily, reached out her hand, and said "Terry." + +Suddenly she was wide awake. For a moment she looked stupidly at the +empty place beside her, and then she remembered that Terry would be gone +all night, working hard on the boat and the barges making ready for the +picnic. She turned again, but sleep had left her. She lay quietly in bed +listening; she could catch nothing but the heavy rumble of a brewery +wagon in the next street and the hesitating toot of a Sound steamer. +Then she heard afar off three or four shots of a revolver, and she knew +that some young fellow was up early, and had already begun to celebrate +the Fourth on the roof of the tenement where he lived. + +She tried to go to sleep, but the effort was hopeless. She was awakened +fully, and she knew that there was small chance of her dropping off into +slumber again. More than once she had wakened like this in the middle of +the night, an hour or so before daybreak, and then she had to lie there +in bed quietly listening to Terry's regular breathing. She lay there now +alone, thinking of Terry, grateful for his goodness to her, and happy in +his love. She lay there alone, wondering where she would be now if Terry +had not taken pity on her. + +Then all at once she raised herself in bed, and held her breath and +listened. For a second she thought she heard a noise in the saloon below +her. She was not nervous in the least, but she wished Terry had not left +so much money in the safe; and this was the first night he had been away +from her since they had been married--nearly two years ago. She strained +her ears, but the sound was not repeated. She sank back on the pillow +again, making sure that it was a rat dropping down from the bar, where +he had been picking up the crumbs of cheese. There were many rats in the +cellar, and sometimes they ventured up even to the bedroom and the +kitchen next door. + +Time was when it would have taken a loud noise to wake the girl who was +now Terence O'Donnell's wife out of a sound sleep. After her mother +died, when Maggie was not five years old, her father had moved into one +of the worst tenements in the city, a ram-shackle old barrack just at +the edge of Hell's Kitchen; and there was never any quiet there, day or +night, in the house or in the street. There was always a row of some +sort going on, whatever the hour of the day; if profanity and riot could +keep a girl awake she would never have had any sleep there. But Maggie +did not recall that she had been a wakeful child; indeed, she remembered +that she could sleep at any time and anywhere. On the hot summer nights, +when her father came home intoxicated, she would steal away and climb +up to the roof and lie down there, slumbering as healthily as though she +were in their only room. + +Even then her father used to get drunk often, on Saturday night always, +and frequently once or twice in the middle of the week. And when he had +taken too much he was mad always. If he found her at home he beat her. +She could recall distinctly the first time her father had knocked her +down, but the oaths that had accompanied the blow she had forgotten. He +had not knocked her down often, but he had sworn at her every day of her +life. The vocabulary of profanity was the first that her infant ears had +learned to distinguish. + +Her father quit drinking for a month after he married again. They moved +away from Hell's Kitchen to a better house near the East River. All went +well for a little while, and her step-mother was good to her. But her +father went back to his old ways again, and soon his new wife turned out +to be no better. When the fit was on they quarrelled with each other, +and they took turns in beating Maggie, if she were not quick to make her +escape. It was when aiming a blow at Maggie one Saturday night that her +father pitched forward and fell down a flight of the tenement-house +stairs, and was picked up dead. The neighbors carried him up to the room +where his wife lay in a liquorish stupor. + +Maggie was nearly fourteen then. She went on living with her +step-mother, who got her a place in a box-factory. The first days of +work were the happiest of Maggie's girlhood. She remembered the joy +which she felt at her ability to earn money; it gave her a sense of +being her own mistress, of being able to hold her own in the world. And +she made friends among the other girls. One of them, Sadie McDermott, +had a brother Jim, who used to come around on Saturday night and tease +his sister for money. Jim belonged to a gang, and he never worked if he +could help it. He had no trade. Maggie remembered the Saturday night +when she and Sadie had walked home together, and when Jim got mad +because his sister would not divide her wages with him. He snatched her +pocket-book and started to run. When Maggie reproved him with an oath +and caught him by one arm, he threw her off so roughly that she fell and +struck her head on a lamp-post so hard that she fainted. + +As Maggie lay in her bed that Fourth of July morning, while her past +life unrolled itself before her like a panorama, she knew that the scar +on the side of her head was not the worst wound Jim McDermott had dealt +her. As she looked back, she wondered how she had ever been friendly +with him; how she had let him follow her about; how she had allowed him +to make love to her. It was on Jim McDermott's account that she had had +the quarrel with her step-mother. Having robbed a drunken man of five +dollars, Jim had invited Maggie to a picnic; and the step-mother, a +little drunker than usual that evening, had said that if Maggie went +with him she would not be received again. Maggie was not one to take a +dare, and she told Jim she would go with him in the morning. The +step-mother cursed her for an ungrateful girl; and when Maggie returned +with him from the picnic late the next night, and came to the door of +the room where she and her step-mother lived, they found it locked +against her, and all Maggie's possessions tied in a bundle, and +scornfully left outside on the landing. + +It had not taken Jim long that night to persuade Maggie to go away with +him; and she had not seen her step-mother since. A week later, but not +before he and Maggie had quarrelled, Jim was arrested for robbing the +drunken man; he was sent up to the Island. Since the picnic Maggie had +not been back to the factory. Jim had taken her with him one night to a +dance-hall, and there she went without him when she was left alone in +the world. There she had met Terry a month later. When she first saw +Terry the thing plainest before her was the Morgue; she was on the way +there, and she was going fast, and she knew it. Although winter had not +yet come, she had already a cough that racked her day and night. + +And as she lay there in her comfortable bed, and thought of the chill of +the Morgue from which Terry had saved her, she closed her eyes to keep +out the dreadful picture, and she clinched her fists across her +forehead. Then she smiled as she remembered the way Terry had thrashed +Jim, who had got off the Island somehow before his time was up. Jim said +he had a pull with the police, and he came to her for money, and he +threatened to have her taken up. It was then Terry had the scrap with +him, and did him up. Terry had had a day off, for his boss kept closed +on Sundays; at that time Terry was keeping bar at a high-toned cafe near +Gramercy Park. + +When he thrashed Jim that was not the first time Terry had been good to +her. Nor was it the last. A fortnight later he took her away from the +dance-hall, and as soon as he could get a day off he married her. They +went down to the Tombs, and the judge married them. The judge knew +Terry, and when he had kissed the bride he congratulated Terry, and said +that the new-made husband was a lucky man, and that he had got a good +wife. + +A good wife Maggie knew she had been, and she was sure she brought Terry +luck. When the man who had been running the house which now bore the +name of Terence O'Donnell over its door got into trouble and had to skip +the country, the boss had put Terry in charge, and had let Maggie go to +house-keeping in the little rooms over the saloon; and when the boss +died suddenly, his widow knew Terry was honest, and sold out the place +to him, cheap, on the instalment plan. That was a year and a half ago, +and all the instalments had been paid except the last, which was not +due for a week yet, though the money for it lay all ready in the safe +down-stairs. And Terry was doing well; he was popular; his friends would +come two blocks out of the way to get a drink at his place; and he had +just had a chance to go into a picnic speculation. He was sure to make +money; and perhaps in two or three years they might be able to pay off +the mortgage on the fixtures. Then they would be rich; and perhaps Terry +would get into politics. + +Suddenly the current of Maggie's thoughts was arrested. From the floor +below there came sounds, confused and muffled, and yet unmistakable. +Maggie listened, motionless, and then she got out of bed quickly. She +knew that there was some one in the saloon down-stairs; and at that hour +no one could be there for a good purpose. Whoever was there was a thief. +Perhaps it was some one of the toughs of the neighborhood, who knew that +Terry was away. + +She had no weapon of any kind, but she was not in the least afraid. She +stepped cautiously to the head of the stairs, and crept stealthily down, +not delaying to put on her stockings. The sounds in the saloon +continued; they were few and slight, but Maggie could interpret them +plainly enough; they told her that a man having got into the house +somehow, had now gone behind the bar. Probably he was trying to steal +the change in the cash-drawer; she was glad that Terry had locked all +his money in the safe just before he went off. + +When Maggie had slipped down the stairs gently, and stood in the little +passageway with the door into the saloon ajar before her, she felt a +slight draught, and she knew that the thief had entered through a +window, and had left it open. Yet there was no use in her calling for +assistance. The only people within reach of her voice were the poor +Poles, who were too poor-spirited to protest even if they saw her robbed +in broad daylight; they were cowardly creatures all of them; and she +could not hope for help from them as she would if they were only white +men. The policeman might be within reach of her cry; but he had a long +beat, and there was only a slim chance that he was near. + +Her head was clear, and she thought swiftly. The thing to do, the only +thing, was to make use of the telephone to summon assistance. The +instrument was within two feet of her as she stood in the passage, but +it was on the other side of the door at the end of the bar, and +therefore in full view of any one who might be in the saloon. And it +would not be possible to ring up the central office and call for help +without being heard by the robber. + +Having made up her mind what it was best for her to do, Maggie did not +hesitate a moment; she pushed the door gently before her and stepped +silently into the saloon. As the faint light from the single dim jet of +gas burning over the bar fell upon her, she looked almost pretty, with +the aureole of her reddish hair, and with her firm young figure draped +in the coarse white gown. She glanced around her, and for a second she +saw no one. The window before her was open, but the man who had broken +in was not in sight. + +As she peered about she heard a scratching, grating noise, and then she +saw the top of a man's head just appearing above the edge of the bar +behind which his body was concealed. She knew then that the thief was +trying to get into the safe where Terry's money was locked up. + +Leaving the door wide open behind her, Maggie took the two steps that +brought her to the telephone, and rapidly turned the handle. Then she +faced about swiftly to see what the man would do. + +The first thing he did was to bob his head suddenly under the bar, +disappearing wholly. Then he slowly raised his face above the edge of +the bar, and Maggie found herself staring into the shifty eyes of Jim +McDermott. + +"Hello, Maggie!" he said, as he stood up. "Is that you?" + +She saw that he had a revolver in his right hand. But she put up her +hand again and repeated the telephone call. + +"Drop that!" he cried, as he raised the revolver. "You try to squeal and +I'll shoot--see?" + +"Where did you steal that pistol, Jim McDermott?" was all she answered. + +"None o' your business where I got it," he retorted. "I got it good and +ready for you now. I kin use it too, and don't you forget it! You quit +that telephone or you'll see how quick I can shoot. You hear me?" + +She did not reply. She was waiting for the central office to acknowledge +her call. She looked Jim McDermott square in the eyes, and it was he who +was uncomfortable and not she. + +Then the bell of the telephone rang, and she turned and spoke into the +instrument clearly and rapidly and yet without flurry. "This is 31 +Chatham. There's a burglar here. It's Jim McDermott. Send the police +quick." + +This was her message; and then she faced about sharply and cried to him, +"Now shoot, and be damned!" + +He took her at her word, and fired. The bullet bored a hole in the +wooden box of the telephone. + +Maggie laughed tauntingly, and slipped swiftly out of the door, but not +swiftly enough to avoid the second bullet. + +Five minutes later when the police arrived, just as the day was +beginning to break, they found Jim McDermott fled, the window open, the +safe uninjured, and Maggie O'Donnell lying in the passageway at the foot +of the stairs, her night-gown stained with blood from a flesh wound in +her arm. + +(1893.) + + + + +A MIDSUMMER MIDNIGHT + + +After three years' service at sea on the flag-ship of the White +Squadron, Lieutenant John Stone had a long leave of absence. It was late +in the afternoon of one of the hottest days of August when he left the +navy-yard and took the ferry to New York. The street-car in which he +rode across town crawled along, the horses seeming to be exhausted by +the wearing weather of the preceding fortnight, and the driver had no +energy to keep them up to their work. + +It mattered little to John Stone how slowly they went; he was in no +hurry; he had nothing to do; he had nobody waiting for him. At forty he +was alone in the world, without a blood-relation anywhere or any nearer +than a second cousin, without a home, without an address, except "Care +of the Navy Department, Washington, D.C." He was almost without ambition +even in the service now, for he had not yet had a command, and he would +not get his step for three or four years more. He was fond of his +profession, and of late he had been working lovingly at its early +history. He had come to New York now to look up in the libraries a few +missing links in an account of the rise and fall of Carthage as a sea +power. To be near the books he had to consult, he was going to stay at a +hotel within two or three blocks of Washington Square. + +When he had registered at the hotel, the clerk, reading his name +upsidedown, said, courteously: "I'm sorry we can't do better for you, +Mr. Stone, but I shall have to put you on the sixth floor. You see, we +are overrun with our Southern and Western trade now; they have found out +that New York is the finest summer resort in the country. The best I can +do for you is to give you a room on the Avenue, with a bath-room +attached." + +"That will do very well," Stone answered. + +"Front!" called the clerk. "Show Mr. Stone up to 313." + +When the naval officer reached room 313 it was nearly six o'clock. He +threw open the window and looked down at the street below. Even at that +height the heat welled up from the stone sidewalks and from the brick +walls opposite. To his ear it seemed almost as though the mighty roar of +the metropolis rose to him muffled and made more remote by the heat. He +lighted a cigar and leaned out of the window, and wondered how many +people there were in all the city whom he knew by sight, and how very +few there were who could call him by name. + +A sweltering wind from the west swayed the thick and dusty branches of +the trees which lined the curb far down below him. He threw his cigar +away half smoked. Then he took a cold bath, and went down to the +dining-room somewhat refreshed. + +At the table to which the head waiter waved him there was already one +man sitting, a tall, handsome young fellow of twenty-five, perhaps. +Stone liked the man's face, and he liked the way the flannel shirt was +cut so as to leave the full throat free. The manner in which the simple +scarf was knotted and its ends tucked into the shirt he noticed also; +and he saw that the young fellow had insisted on bringing his black +slouch hat with him into the dining-room, having hung it on the back of +the next chair. When this seat was given to Stone, the hat was promptly +transferred to the chair on the other side of the owner. Stone made up +his mind that his neighbor was a ranchman of some sort, who had come +East on business. + +It does not take long for two lonely men to get acquainted; and before +he had eaten his green corn, Stone knew all about his neighbor at table, +and the neighbor knew something about him. + +"I sized you up when you come in," the young fellow said, "an' I took +stock in you from the start. Somehow I kind o' thought you was one of +Uncle Sam's boys, though o' course I didn't 'low you was a sailor. I +never see a sailor till this mornin', when I went down on the dock to +get news of this _Touraine_ steamer, an' the sailor down there was a +Frenchman, an' not like you, not by a jugful. I suppose, now, Uncle +Sam's sailors are like his other boys I've seen at home often. There's +Dutchmen that ain't bad men, an' I've seen Dagoes you could tie to, and +sometimes a greaser, now and then--not but what they's powerful skase, +greasers you can trust--but Uncle Sam's boys are white men every time." + +The young fellow was Clay Magruder. He was a cowboy, as Stone had +supposed, and he was in New York on a mission of the highest importance +to himself. He was waiting for the girl he wanted to marry, and she was +expected to arrive the next morning on the French steamer. + +"The grub here ain't so bad, is it?" Magruder said, as the repast drew +to an end. "O' course it ain't like what we get at home. I don't find +nowhere no beef that's equal to the beef we've been gettin' right along +now for two years, ever since I've been with Old Man Pettigrew. The +Hash-knife Outfit always has the best cookin' on the trail. It's jest +notorious for it. Things here in New York is good enough, but the flavor +don't take hold of you like it does at home; an' their coffee East is +poor stuff, ain't it? It don't bite you like coffee should." + +After dinner they went into the smoking-room of the hotel, and Stone +offered a cigar to his new friend. + +"No, thank you," he responded, taking a small brier-wood pipe out of +his trousers-pocket. "I don't go much on cigars; I can git more solid +comfort out of a pipe, I reckon." After he had filled his pipe and +pulled at it half a dozen times, he said to Stone, suddenly: "Say! is +there any show in town to-night? I've got a night off, you know, and +I've allus heerd that for shows New York could lay over everything in +sight. You've been to this town before, haven't you?" + +Stone admitted that this was not his first visit to New York. + +"I reckoned so," was Clay Magruder's comment. "An' so you know your way +here, an' I don't; there's too many trails crossin' for me to keep to +the road. Suppose we go to the show together--ef there is a show in +town?" + +Stone bought an evening paper, and looked over the list of amusements. +He wondered what would best suit the tastes of his new friend. + +"There's Deadwood Dick's Wild Western Exhibition at Niblo's--" he began. + +"Deadwood Dick?" interrupted the cowboy, in great contempt; "he's a holy +show, he is. He's a fraud; that's what he is. An' is he the only thing +we can take in to-night?" + +"Oh no," the sailor replied. "There are half a dozen other things to +see. There's a comic opera at the Garden Theatre, with a variety show up +in the roof garden afterwards." + +"A comic opera--singing, and funny business, and pretty girls, I +suppose?" said the Westerner. "I reckon we'd might as well go +there--unless you'd rather go somewhere else." + +"The comic opera and the roof garden will just suit me," Stone +responded. + +They were fortunate in getting good seats at the theatre, where they +arrived as the curtain was rising on the first act of "Patience." Even +in midsummer the attire of Stone's new friend attracted some attention, +and a group of pretty girls in the row behind them nudged each other as +he came in and giggled. In their hearts they were glad to look at so +handsome a man. + +During the first act Magruder's face was a study for Stone. It was +evident that the cowboy failed wholly to understand the narrow and +insular satire of "Patience." When the curtain fell at last, he could +contain himself no longer. + +"I never see such a fool play," he said. "There ain't no sense in makin' +believe that one fellow could round up a bunch of girls that way. It's +the plumb-stupidest show I've seen for years and years. It's bad as +Deadwood Dick 'most. 'Patience' they call it? Well, I 'ain't got none to +see no more of it. What's this roof garden you told me about?" + +So Stone took him up to the roof garden, and they were glad to get again +into the open air, baked as the atmosphere was even at the top of the +building. They had a drink and a smoke while they listened to the music. + +When the variety show began on the little stage, Stone went forward in +time to secure advantageous positions for Magruder and himself. Early on +the programme was a French song by a highly-colored young lady wearing +an enormous hat. + +"That's a good enough song," the cowboy declared, "but what sort of a +lingo is it she's singin' it in? Why isn't plain United States good +enough for songs? Not but what she's a pretty girl, too, and lively on +her feet." + +The part of the performance which excited Clay Magruder's warmest +appreciation was the serpentine dance of Mademoiselle Eloise. When he +beheld the coiling draperies of that graceful young woman curving about +in picturesque and unexpected convolutions, and heightened in effect by +the changing colors of the lime-lights directed upon the stage, his +enthusiasm rose to a height. + +"That's _some_!" he cried. "It reminds me of an Eyetalian gal I saw +dance once in Cheyenne. She was a daisy, too; but this is bigger. They's +no doubt about it, this is a heap bigger." + +Magruder joined in accomplishing the inevitable recall and the +repetition of a part of the dance. Perhaps this was the reason why the +next two or three numbers of the programme seemed to him to be less +interesting. At all events, both the cowboy and the sailor tired of the +entertainment. So they made their way through the crowd and down to the +street. + +As they walked back to the hotel Magruder told Stone what had brought +him to New York. It was to meet the _Touraine_ on her expected arrival +in the morning, and to persuade one of the passengers to marry him. + +"She's jest got to marry me," he said, earnestly. "I can't get along +without her any longer. She's a sort of governess to Old Man Pettigrew's +sister's kids--learns them to read and play the pianner. They was all in +Miles City last winter, and that was when I first see her. I made up my +mind right off on the spot that there was Mrs. Clay Magruder if I could +get her. And I'm here now to get her if I can. She's as pretty as a +picture--better'n that, too, for I never see no chromo half as +good-lookin' as her. Once last winter they was 'most a blizzard; +leastways the wind set back on its hind-legs and howled. You ought to +have seen her then, with the color in her cheeks! An' everything was +froze stiff, and she was skeered of fallin'. Why, she teetered along +jest like a chicken with a jag." And he laughed out loud at the +recollection. "She'll be here in the mornin', and you shall see her. I'm +goin' to be down on that dock good an' early to-morrow, and no French +sailor ain't goin' to stand me off." + +As they drew near to the hotel, Magruder remarked: "Say! ain't they a +jag-factory somewheres round here? Come in and have one with me." + +Stone went with him, and they drank the young lady's health, Magruder +expatiating on her charms and on the happiness that awaited him when he +should marry her. Then they crossed the street to the hotel and went up +to their rooms. + +As it happened, the room of Clay Magruder was exactly opposite John +Stone's, so it was at their own doors that they parted for the night +with a hearty grasp of the hand. + +The sailor found the air of his room stifling. He threw wide the window +and stood for a while looking out over the heated city as it lay around +him in the darkness. He wondered what the girl was like whom Magruder +had come East to meet, and he caught himself almost envying the cowboy. +Then he sighed unconsciously and made ready for bed. As he wound up his +watch he saw that it was nearly half-past eleven. Five minutes +afterwards he was asleep. + +He had been asleep but five minutes, as it seemed to him, when he was +waked slowly with a slight difficulty in breathing, and with the feeling +that all was not well. While he was still drowsy, he was conscious of a +crackling sound like the snapping of dry twigs. When he opened his eyes +he found that they smarted. The first long breath that he drew filled +his lungs with thin smoke. In an instant he was wide awake. The meaning +of the crackling and the snapping was not doubtful. The hotel was on +fire. + +He sprang out of bed and opened the door of his room. The corridor was +full of smoke, and the sound of the flames was louder. At the bend in +the hall where the stairs were, sharp tongues of flame were licking +around the corner. Stone saw that his retreat that way was cut off, and +that he must rely on the windows for escape. He crossed to the door +opposite, pounded at it heavily, and cried "Fire! Fire! Get up at once!" +till Clay Magruder answered. The floor of the corridor was hot beneath +his feet as he went back to his own room, closed the door, and dressed +himself as swiftly as he could, the murmur of the fire growing nearer +and nearer. + +When he was still in his shirt-sleeves he stepped again to the corridor +and called across to Magruder. + +The door opposite opened, and the cowboy appeared in it, half-dressed. + +"The stairs are on fire," cried Stone; "we can't get out that way. We +must try the windows. Take your sheets and your blankets and come in +here." + +"I wish I'd a couple of lariats here," said Magruder, as he went back +for the bed-linen. + +The air in the hall was now thick and suffocating, and the stairs at the +corner were a furnace of fierce flames. Here and there thin threads of +smoke were rising from the floor of the corridor. + +The cowboy reappeared in his doorway, with his arms full of bedclothes. + +"Come in here quick, so that I can get this door shut and keep out the +smoke," said the sailor, standing back to leave the doorway open. + +As Magruder stepped out of his room, the floor of the corridor gave way +with a crash, and a red-hot gulf yawned between the two rooms. Stone +leaned far forward to try and save his new friend. But the falling of +the floor was too sudden, and Magruder went down into the roaring +furnace below, from which the flames sprang up fiercely. In a moment he +was lost to sight in the seething fire. Stone stood stock-still for a +second, bent over the blazing opening, with his arm out-stretched until +the heat scorched it. Then he rose to his feet swiftly and shut the door +behind him. + +His own room was now full of smoke, and he knew that the door would be +on fire in less than a minute. He threw open the window and looked down, +seeing at once that his bedding alone would be useless, as it would take +him down two stories at the most, while the fire had already broken out +at the front of the building. He discovered that there was a ledge or +narrow cornice running around the house just on the end of his floor. He +stepped out upon this, and closed the window behind him. As he did so, +the flames burst through from the corridor into his room. + +Standing outside of his window on the narrow ledge, which gave him a +scant foothold, he saw in front of him on his right what he had not +before observed--a tall tower with an illuminated clock face. The hands +pointed to four minutes past midnight. From the street below there +arose a confused murmur of noises--shouts and cries of command, the +rattle of heavy wheels as the engines rushed up, the regular rhythmic +beat of the pumps as they got into play, the hissing of steam as a dozen +streams of water curved upward and smote the burning building. The +foliage of the trees which lined the curb was so thick that Stone could +not see the sidewalk just below him, and apparently those in charge of +operations had not seen him. + +The sailor had faced death before--he had weathered many a fierce gale +at sea; he had been at Samoa during the hurricane; he had been overboard +for an hour once in the Bay of Biscay--and he was not afraid to die. He +recalled his sensations when he believed himself to be drowning, and he +remembered that his dominant thought had been that such a death then and +there was needless and served no purpose. On that occasion he was more +or less passive, being spent with the struggle against the waves; at +present he was strong and ready to make a fight for his life. Then he +had to contend with water, and now he knew that water was his chief +hope. + +At that moment there came a louder roar from far down in the street +below: the water-tower had arrived. It was speedily erected and in +service, and from its long trunk a thick stream of water was forced into +the blazing hotel perhaps fifty feet from where Stone was standing. He +watched it at work, and then he raised his eyes and again caught sight +of the illuminated dial, whereon the hands now pointed to seven minutes +after midnight. + +Stone wondered whether the firemen would be able to get the better of +the flames. He doubted it, but he wished that he could take part in the +fight. It was rather the helplessness of his position than its +fearfulness that he felt most keenly. He was in danger, and the danger +was deepening with every minute of delay, but he could do nothing. The +ledge on which he was standing was barely a foot wide, and it was +perhaps ten feet long. Its length measured the width of his room, which +projected a yard or more beyond the main line of the building. Stone +moved cautiously to the right till he came to the end of the ledge, in +the hope that it continued around the side, and that by following it he +might pass along the whole front of the hotel, and perhaps find some way +to escape to the roof of the house next door. + +But the hope was futile, for the slight cornice shrank away as it turned +back till it was barely an inch wide. The sailor was used to an insecure +footing at a great height, and his nerves were steady; but he knew that +it was certain destruction for him to try to advance in that direction. +With his back pressed tight to the wall, he glided along to the window, +now lighted up by the flames which filled his room. He pushed past it to +the left until he came to the end of the ledge on that side, finding +that the projection ceased on the one hand as it had on the other. He +felt himself a prisoner, held fast, with little hope of rescue; neither +to the right nor to the left could he move; behind him was the wall of +the blazing hotel, and before him was a sheer drop of sixty feet to the +street below. He glanced down for an instant, and then raised his head +again. To the right, in the distance, was the clock-tower, and it was +now nine minutes past twelve. He wondered if the clock had stopped +suddenly, for it seemed to him nearly an hour since he had awaked to +find himself in peril of his life. + +He thought of Magruder, and he wondered why the man who had hopes and +joys before him should be cut off, while the man who had little to live +for should be given a chance for his life. That the cowboy had perished +in the flames he had no doubt; and in a flash his imagination bore him +outside of the exigencies of the moment, and he had a vision of the +_Touraine_ making her way past Sandy Hook, and drawing near to Staten +Island and anchoring there, too far from the city for its passengers to +see the glare of the conflagration. Yet the fire was one to be seen from +afar, for there was a sullen roar, and the roof of a wing of the hotel +fell in. A myriad of sparks was blasted upward, and the crowd in the +street raised a loud shout of warning. Stone looked down, and he saw a +woman at a window of the floor below him; she was shrieking with terror, +and at last she gave a wild spring forward. He beheld her crash through +the branches of the trees, and he heard her body strike the sidewalk. +There was a yell of horror from the crowd, and then silence. A few +seconds later Stone caught the quick clang of an ambulance bell in the +side street. He counted the strokes automatically until they died away +in the distance. His ear was so strained to catch this sound that he +heard the rattle of a train stopping at the station of the elevated +railroad only a block away, and he seized even the shrill squeak of the +brakes as they grated against the wheels. Then he aroused himself, and +wondered why he had noted such trifles. Turning his head, he found the +single eye of the clock-tower still beaming at him. He blinked stupidly +before he saw that it was now thirteen minutes after twelve. + +More engines had arrived in the street below, and another +hook-and-ladder truck. Several small ladders had been put up to the +lower windows, and women and children had been carried down in safety. +Stone watched while the firemen tried to raise one of the taller ladders +which might reach to the third or fourth floor. The branches of the +trees were so close that the men found it impossible to get this longer +ladder into position. A man was sent up into the tree, and he was +cutting away the branches, when flames burst out of the nearest window. +A torrent of water was at once directed into the window, while a second +stream splashed down upon the tree and made a watery shield for the +fireman, who went on lopping off the limbs. He labored swiftly, but the +fire was swifter still. At almost the same time the flames burst forth +from three or four other of the lower windows. + +Stone had been noting every effort of the men below. At first he had not +been seen. But after the man had cut away a few of the branches of the +tree, two or three of the firemen caught sight of the sailor. They +shouted to him, but in the roar of the fire behind him and below him he +could not make out their words. A captain gave a sudden command, and two +men sprang forward with short scaling-ladders, which they succeeded in +hooking to the second-story window immediately below the ledge on which +he was standing. Looking down, he could see the heads of these men as +they climbed the ladders, their bodies being foreshortened into +invisibility. The men could not get above the second story, for the fire +was gushing forth as though the window were the mouth of hell. The smoke +rose black and dense, enshrouding Stone. + +He saw that it was useless to hope that they could now get a ladder up +to him; the flames would not give them time. The wall behind him was +becoming hotter, and the heat had broken the glass of the window of his +room. The fire was creeping along the roof above his head, and every now +and again it peered over the edge at him, as though seeing how far it +had still to go before it could grasp him. The smoke from below was +thickening, and threatened to choke him. Through its haze he could see +the cyclops eye of the clock-tower gloating over his inevitable fate. +The hands on the illuminated dial had slowly crept forward, and it was +now nearly twenty minutes past twelve. + +Stone knew that his position was untenable for many seconds longer. At +any moment the wall might fall back and bury him in the blazing ruins. +To remain was impossible; and there seemed no way of escape. A crash +shook the building, and then another; and he guessed that two of the +floors had fallen in. He slid along again to the end of the narrow ledge +and tried to peer around the corner, in the vague hope that there might +be some possible means of escape. He found that he could not twist his +head far enough to see anything while his back was flat against the +wall. To turn was to risk a fall to the pavement below. He looked down +fearlessly, and calculated his chances if he missed his footing. +Immediately beneath him the tree was taller than its fellows, and its +foliage was thicker; it was barely possible that the branches might +break his fall; but the chance was slim. The smoke poured heavily from +the window three feet from him. He hesitated no longer, but turned +slowly and steadily. His nerves were unshaken, and he executed the +manoeuvre in safety. Standing with his face to the wall--which rose +sheer above him, and which gave him no hold for his hands--he was able +to thrust out his head sideways and to look around the corner. What he +saw gave him a thrill of hope. + +His room projected perhaps a yard beyond the main line of the building, +forming what might be termed a square bay-window. From his position on +the narrow shelf of marble, which ran around the front of the hotel on +every floor, he thought he could reach forward and touch the main wall +of the building. And here was his one possible chance of escape. In the +corner formed by the junction of the projection and the main line there +was the leader which conducted the rain-water from the roof. It was of +tin only, and in the eyes of the sailor gazing at it with upspringing +hope it seemed frail, insecurely fastened, perhaps rotten. But it +offered a chance, and the only chance, of life, and therefore it was +welcome. Stone prepared to make the best of it. + +He gave a final glance around before he made the irrevocable move. He +caught sight of the clock, and he saw that it was twenty-two minutes +after midnight. He reached forward, and he found that the space was +wider than he had thought. It was with the tips of his fingers only that +he could touch the tin pipe; it was beyond the reach of his grasp. Yet +to seize it was the one way to the street below. He did not hesitate. He +stood on his left foot on the very end of the ledge, with his right foot +dangling in space. He made a carefully measured plunge forward, and he +gripped the leader with his left hand and then instantly with his right. +It yielded under the sudden strain, but it did not part. With the habit +of a sailor, he clasped his legs about it, and so eased the pressure. +Then he began slowly to slide down, gaining velocity as he descended. + +At every floor there was a shelf of stone like that on which he had +stood outside his window, and through which the tin tube passed. Stone +had therefore to release his feet, and by his hands alone to cling to +the pipe, which spread from the wall with the weight of his body. Then +he clasped his legs again below the ledge and let go one hand after the +other. The tin was broken and jagged here and there, and Stone's flesh +was cut to the bone. But he did not notice this in the tension of his +swift descent. + +When he came to the first floor and tried to take a fresh grip with his +legs, he found nothing to clasp with his knees. From there to its +connection with the gutter the pipe went inside the building. Stone hung +from the ledge by his hands, not knowing how far he was above the +sidewalk. The smoke was pouring up from the cellar grating beneath him, +and in a minute he would have suffocated. So he let go. + +The drop was ten feet or more, and he came down on a trunk which had +been thrown out of a window. From this he pitched to the sidewalk with +a broken leg and a dislocated shoulder. He was dimly conscious of being +lifted gently, and of a brief but painful ride. The sharp clang of the +ambulance bell he felt as though it were a physical blow. + +When he came to himself again it was morning, and he was in bed in a +long room with a row of cots on both sides of it, under the slanting +sunbeams. + +He lay still, wondering. + +The occupant of the next bed was unfolding a newspaper, and Stone heard +him say to the nurse, with an Alsacian accent: "Ve're goin' have nodder +hot day; I vonder how dhose people yust back from Paris on dhe +_Douraine_ vill like dot?" + +(1892.) + + + + +A VISTA IN CENTRAL PARK + + +It was the last Sunday in September, and the blue sky arched above the +Park, clear, cloudless, unfathomable. The afternoon sun was hot, and +high overhead. Now and then a wandering breeze came without warning and +lingered only for a moment, fluttering the broad leaves of the aquatic +plants in the fountain below the Terrace. At the Casino, on the hill +above the Mall, men and women were eating and drinking, some of them +inside the dingy and sprawling building, and some of them out-doors at +little tables set in curving lines under the gayly colored awnings, +which covered the broad walk bending away from the door of the +restaurant. From the bandstand in the thick of the throng below came the +brassy staccato of a cornet, rendering "The Last Rose of Summer." Even +the Ramble was full of people; and the young couples, seeking +sequestered nooks under the russet trees, were often forced to share +their benches with strangers. Beneath the reddening maples lonely men +lounged on the grass by themselves, or sat solitary and silent in the +midst of chattering family groups. + +The crowd was cosmopolitan and unhurried. For the most part it was +good-natured and well-to-do. There was not a beggar to be seen; there +was no appealing poverty. Fathers of families there were in abundance, +well-fed and well-clad, with their wives and with their sons' wives and +with their sons' children. Maids in black dresses and white aprons +pushed baby-carriages. Young girls in groups of three and four giggled +and gossiped. Young men in couples leaned over the bridge of the Lake, +smoking and exchanging opinions. There was a general air of prosperity +gladly displaying itself in the sunshine; the misery and the want and +the despair of the great city were left behind and thrust out of mind. + +[Illustration: "TWO SLIM JAPANESE GENTLEMEN"] + +Two or three yards after a portly German with a little boy holding each +of his hands while a third son still younger rode ahead astride of his +father's solid cane, there came two slim Japanese gentlemen, small and +sallow, in their neatly cut coats and trousers. A knot of laughing +mulatto-girls followed, arm in arm; they, too, seemed ill-dressed in the +accepted costume of civilization, especially when contrasted with half a +dozen Italians who passed slowly, looking about them with curious +glances; the men in worn olive velveteens and with gold rings in their +ears, the women with bright colors in their skirts and with embroidery +on their neckerchiefs. Where the foot-path touched the carriage-drive +there stood a plain but comfortably plump Irishwoman, perhaps thirty +years of age; she had a baby in her arms, and a little girl of scant +three held fast to her patched calico dress; with her left hand she was +proffering a basket containing apples, bananas, and grapes; two other +children, both under six, played about her skirts; and two more, a boy +and a girl, kept within sight of her--the girl, about ten years old, +having a basket of her own filled with thin round brown cakes; and the +boy, certainly not yet thirteen, holding out a wooden box packed with +rolls of lozenges, put up in red and yellow and green papers. Now and +again the mother or one of the children made a sale to a pedestrian on +his way to the music. The younger children watched, with noisy glee, the +light leaps of a gray squirrel bounding along over the grass behind the +path and balancing himself with his horizontal tail. + +The broad carriage-drive was as crowded as any of the foot-paths. +Bicyclists in white sweaters and black stockings toiled along in groups +of three and four, bent forward over the bars of their machines. +Politicians with cigars in the corners of their mouths held in impatient +trotters. Park omnibuses heavily laden with women and children drew up +for an instant before the Terrace, and then went on again to skirt the +Lake. Old-fashioned and shabby landaus lumbered along with strangers +from the hotels. Now and then there came in sight a hansom cab with a +young couple framed in the front of it, or a jolting dog-cart, on the +high seat of which a British-looking young man was driving tandem. Here +and there were other private carriages--coupes and phaetons, for the +most part, with once and again a four-in-hand coach rumbling heavily on +the firmly packed road. + +A stylish victoria sped along, spick and span, with its glistening +harness and its jingling steel chains, with its stalwart pair of +iron-gray steppers and with two men on the box, correct and impassive. +Suddenly, as it passed close to the walk at the end of the Terrace, the +coachman drew up sharply, pulling his horses back on their haunches and +swearing inaudibly at the plump Irishwoman who had dropped her basket of +fruit just in time to rescue one of her children from being run over. + +"It's more careful ye ought to be!" cried the mother, as she stood again +on the walk with her daughter clasped to her waist. + +"We are very sorry, indeed," said the lady in the victoria, leaning +forward. "It was an accident." + +"An accident, was it?" returned the Irishwoman. "An' it's an accident, +then, ye wouldn't like if it was yer own children ye were runnin' over +like that." + +The childless couple in the carriage looked at each other for a moment +only; and then the husband said, swiftly, "Drive on, John!" + +He was a man of fifty, spare in frame and round-shouldered; he had a +keen glance, and a weary smile came and went on his lips, not hidden by +his sparse gray moustache. His wife was a woman of perhaps thirty, tall, +dark, with passionate eyes and a full figure. + +She was still leaning forward, clinching the side of the carriage as it +turned northward and rolled along by the side of the Lake. Her voice +showed that her excitement had not subsided, as she faced her husband +again and said: "John is getting very careless. That is the third time +this week he has nearly run over a child!" + +"He has not quite run over one yet. It will be time enough to discharge +him when he does," her husband answered, calmly. "That little girl there +is none the worse for her fright. She seemed a pretty little thing, and +she has been saved to grow up in a tenement-house and to go to the devil +ten years from now. So her mother has cause to be thankful." + +His wife looked at him indignantly. "I suppose," she said, "you mean +that it is a pity that John didn't run over the child and kill her." + +"I didn't mean that exactly," he responded. "But perhaps it is true +enough. Death is not the worst thing in this world, you know." + +"You are always talking of dying," returned his young wife, impatiently. +"I wonder you don't commit suicide." + +"I have thought of it," he answered, looking at her with a tolerant +smile. "But life amuses me still--I have so much curiosity, you know. +But I might do it, if I were sure I could have the privilege of coming +back to see what you will be up to when I'm gone." + +She looked straight before her and made no answer, keeping her lips +firmly compressed. + +There was a touch of tenderness in his tone as he went on, a curious +cynical tenderness, quite characteristic of him. "Don't let some rascal +marry you for my money. That would annoy me, I confess. And yet, I don't +know why I should suggest the possibility of such a thing, for you will +be a most fascinating widow." + +She gazed ahead steadily and said nothing, but she had joined her hands +together, and her fingers kept moving. + +"Still," he continued, "I'm afraid I'm good for ten years more. We're a +hardy stock, you know. My father lived to be eighty, and he was fifty +when I was born. Besides, you take such good care of me always." + +He held out his hand to her, and she took it and clasped it tight in +both of hers, while the tears brimmed her eyes. + +"But perhaps you are letting me stay out too long this afternoon," he +said. "It is balmy, I know, but I'm getting tired already." + +"John," she cried, hastily, "you may turn now, and go home." + +"I don't want you to lose this lovely September afternoon," her husband +declared. "Take me home, and come back to the Park here for an hour, +while I have a nap, if I can." + +Just then there was a break in the stream of vehicles, and the coachman +took advantage of it and turned the horses' heads southward. In five +minutes the victoria swerved to the westward, leaving the Lake behind, +and making for the Riverside Drive. + +The Lake was gay with boats. Black gondolas with white canopies and +brilliant American flags were propelled adroitly by their standing +boat-men. Light canoes were paddled briskly in and out of the bays and +channels, where the ducks and swans swam lazily about. Young fellows in +their shirt-sleeves tugged inexpertly at the oars of row-boats laden +down with young women. By regular and easy strokes the Park watermen +rowed the capacious barges, with their striped awnings, in the +prescribed course around the Lake. The oars flashed in the flickering +sunlight, and the sunshine gilded the prows of the distant canoes as +they shot across the vista. The yellow leaves of the maples high on the +bank over the opposite shore fluttered loosely away on the doubtful +breeze, and at last fell languidly into the water. To the west a +towering apartment-house lifted itself aloft over the edge of the Park, +and seemed to shorten the space between. To the east the gilded dome of +a new synagogue rose over the tree-tops. Above all was the blue concave +of the calm and illimitable sky. + +When the victoria, with its two men on the box and with its pair of +high-stepping horses, returned to the Park, and skirted the Lake again, +and approached the Terrace, the lady sat in it alone. As she came in +sight of the Mall she bent forward, eagerly looking for the little girl +whom they had almost run over half an hour earlier. + +Near the Terrace she saw the pleasant-faced Irishwoman, with her basket +of fruit in one hand and the baby in the other arm; the three little +children were playing about their mother's feet, while the elder boy and +girl were only a few yards away. + +The lonely woman in the victoria bade the coachman draw up. + +Seeing the carriage stop at the side of the road the Irishwoman came +forward, proffering her fruit. Then she recognized the lady and checked +her approach, hesitating. + +The handsome woman in the carriage smiled, and said, "Which is the +little girl we almost ran over?" + +"That's the one," answered the mother, indicating the slip of a child +who was now clasping the edge of the fruit-basket while staring at the +strange lady with wide-open eyes. + +"What a pretty child she is!" said the lady. "I hope she is none the +worse for her fright?" + +"Ye didn't break any bones, if that's what ye mean," the mother +responded. + +"And how old is she?" was the next question. + +"She'll be three years old come Christmas," was the answer. + +The lady in the carriage felt in her pocket, and brought out her purse +and looked through it. + +"Here," she said at last, as she took out a five-dollar gold-piece; +"here is something I wish you would give her on Christmas morning as a +present from me. Will you?" + +"I will that," the mother replied, taking the money, "and gladly too. +It's richer than her sisters she'll be now." + +"How many children have you?" the lady inquired. + +"Six; thank ye, ma'am, for askin'," was the response, "an' all well and +hearty." + +"Six?" echoed the woman in the victoria, with a hungry gleam in her +eyes. "You have six children?" + +"It's six I have," the mother answered; "and it's a fine lot they are +altogether, though I say it that shouldn't." + +The lady put her hand in her purse again. + +"Buy something with this for the others," she said, placing a bank-note +in the Irishwoman's hands. Then she raised her voice and added, "You may +drive on, John!" + +As the victoria rolled away to the westward the fruit-vender courtesied, +and the children all looked after the carriage with interest. + +"That lady must be very rich," said the eldest boy, the one who had the +lozenges for sale. "I shouldn't wonder if she had two millions of +dollars!" + +"She must be very happy," the eldest girl added. "I suppose she can have +ice-cream every day, and go to the Seaside Home for two weeks whenever +she wants." + +"It's a kind heart she has anyway, for all her money," was the mother's +comment, as she unfolded the bank-note and saw the X in the corner of +it. + +Meanwhile the lady in the victoria was eaten with bitter thoughts as the +carriage rattled along in the brilliant sunshine beneath the unclouded +sky. + +"Six children!" she was saying to herself. "That Irishwoman has six +children! Why is it that some women have so much luck?" + +(1893.) + + + + +THE SPEECH OF THE EVENING + + +The more immaterial part of the banquet was about to begin. The guests +had made an end of eating, and the waiters were filling the small cups +with black coffee, and passing boxes of cigars and cigarettes. At the +five long tables which gridironed the great room the hum of conversation +rose higher and higher; while at the shorter table, raised on the +platform at the western end of the hall, there was almost silence, as +the men who were to make speeches saw the oratorical moment approaching. +The musicians, hidden behind a screen of greenery, were playing a medley +of the latest popular airs; and here and there, at the tables below, a +little group of the diners now and again took up a chorus, with +intermittent energy, to the amusement of the ladies who were arriving +and filling rapidly the broad boxes in the galleries. + +The organizers of the dinner had felt that it was a great occasion, and +they had sought to make it memorable artistically. The severe white of +the beautifully proportioned concert-hall was relieved by foliage +plants, massed and scattered with a delicate understanding of decorative +effect; against the absolutely colorless walls, with their carved +caryatides, were palms in pots; gayly colored silken banners floated +down from the ceiling; and everywhere, on the ceiling and the walls and +the balconies and the platforms, the electric lights glowed and +twinkled, illuminating the lofty hall with steady brilliancy. + +Near the eastern end of one of the long tables there sat a young man--at +least, he was barely thirty. He was so placed that he had before him the +whole scene. He had an uninterrupted view of the raised table, where the +speakers were absorbed in self-communion. He commanded the entrance to +the gallery opposite, and he could see the ladies as they arrived in +little groups, eager for the unwonted pleasure of attendance at a great +public dinner. He could hear the feminine chatter rising shrill above +the masculine babble below. He gazed at the boxes curiously, as though +he did not know any of the ladies in them; and he remained quiet while +the diners about him at that end of the table exchanged salutations with +the occupants of one box or another. Apparently he had few if any +acquaintances even on the floor of the hall, the men on each side of him +being generally engaged in conversation with their neighbors. + +Seemingly his solitude was lightly borne, and he found solace for it in +amused observation of the gathering. He lighted his own cigar, and was +soon helping to make the blue haze which hung over the tables, rising +in time almost to the level of the boxes in the long balconies. + +Yet he was not averse to conversation, and when his right-hand neighbor +turned back to pick up a fresh cigarette, he took occasion to say, "It +isn't usual to let ladies in at dinners here in New York, is it?" + +"No," his right-hand neighbor responded, with a slight but obvious +German accent, "I don't think it is. I've been lifing in New York for a +long vile now--'most eleven years--and I never saw it before." + +Then the right-hand neighbor, having lighted his cigarette, sat back in +his chair again and resumed his interrupted talk with the man on the +other side of him. + +The young man who was apparently a stranger was allowed to keep silence +only for a minute or two, however, as his left-hand neighbor, to whom he +had hardly spoken during the dinner, now engaged him in conversation. + +"I thought it was about time they did that," said the neighbor, +indicating the waiters who were removing the potted orange-trees and the +sugar-trophies from the upper table. "Now we can see who's who." + +"I suppose those are the more distinguished guests?" the young man +suggested. + +"Most of the men who are going to make speeches are up there," the +neighbor responded. "Hello, hello! there's Alexander Macgregor down at +that end there, the one with the full red beard. He's the President of +the St. Andrew's Society. He's a first-rate American, too, for all he +was born in Edinburgh. You know, he's the man they call the +'Star-spangled Scotchman.'" + +"And who is that clean-shaved, clean-looking, fair-haired man next to +him?" asked the young man. + +"That?" the neighbor replied, "that's--oh, I forget his name--but he's +the President of the St. George's Society, I think. He's an +Englishman--that is, he was; I suppose he's been naturalized--but then +you can never tell about Englishmen, can you? They will live in a place +for years, and they will be Britons to the backbone all the time." + +"Who is the presiding officer?" was the next question. + +"Don't you know _him_?" the neighbor retorted. "Why, that's +Crowninshield Eliot, the lawyer. He used to be President of the New +England Society. He's a clever man and he makes a rattling good speech +sometimes, but then he's mighty uncertain. He may speak well or he may +make a bad break. A speech from him is a regular grab-bag--you never +know what you are going to have. But things don't get rusty when he is +around, I tell you. You can rely on him to wake all the other speakers +up. And I guess we shall have some fun before we get through; it isn't +often you see so many representative New-Yorkers together; it's really +a typical gathering." + +The young man made no response to this, being for the moment busy with +his own ironic thoughts. + +"Now there's a man who will make the fur fly if he gets a chance," +continued the loquacious neighbor, "that tall, thin, dignified-looking +man, with the black goatee and mustache; that's Colonel Fairfax. He's +Secretary of the Southern Society--all rebels, you know, but +reconstructed by this time, most of them. He's District Attorney for the +second term now, and you ought to hear him talk to a jury. He could get +a verdict against the angel Gabriel for stealing the silver trumpet. +When I was on the grand jury last year he--" + +Here the young man's neighbor interrupted himself to say, "Hello, hello! +that is odd, isn't it? Right next to Colonel Fairfax is the man who was +foreman of our grand jury; I didn't catch sight of him till that waiter +took away that candy Statue of Liberty. See him? The bald one with the +scar on his jaw; it's a bullet wound he got at Shiloh. That's S. Colfax +Morrison; he was major of the 200th Ohio, but he's been living in New +York for ten years now at least. That's 'the Ohio idea' they talk about: +to come to New York to live as soon as they can. I was born in Ohio +myself." + +And the talker let his loquacity taper off into a laugh, in which the +young man joined courteously. + +There was a sudden diminution of the roar of talk as the gentleman +sitting in the middle of the raised table rose to his feet and rapped +for silence. Even in the boxes, now filled to overflowing with ladies, +the chatter ceased as the man who had been selected to preside over the +dinner began his remarks by recalling the event they had met to +commemorate. In felicitous phrases and with neatly turned strokes of +humor he declared the reason why they were assembled together. And when +he had made an end of this, he announced that the first toast of the +evening would be "New York, the Empire City, sitting at the gates of +commerce, and holding the highways of trade." + +There was a burst of applause and a pushing back of chairs as all the +guests rose with their glasses in their hands. + +Then the presiding officer prepared to introduce the speaker who was to +make the response to this important toast. + +"I saw only this morning," he began again, "the report of some remarks +made by a Senator from Nevada, in which New York was called a 'city of +kites and crows.' There are Congressmen who cannot open their mouths +without disseminating miscellaneous misinformation; and the only +appropriate retort would be with the plain-spoken bowie of the +mining-camp or with the unambiguous derringer of Nevada. No adequate +answer is possible in the sterilized vocabulary permitted to us by the +conventions of modern society. And yet it is well that once in a while +New York should assert herself--that she should celebrate herself--that +she should rest from her mighty labors, if only for a moment, to +contemplate her own great work. We are fortunate in having with us here +to-night a man who can do justice to this imposing theme, a man who +loves New York as we all love her, who is proud of New York as we are +all proud of her--a man whom there is no need for me to introduce to an +assembly of New-Yorkers. Works of supererogation are discountenanced, +and who is there here who does not know Horace Chauncy?" + +As the chairman ceased the gentleman who had been sitting at his right +rose, and immediately there was great applause from all parts of the +hall. Men clapped their hands and rapped upon the table with the handles +of their fruit-knives. Even the ladies in the boxes waved their +handkerchiefs. + +Then, as the chairman, having done his duty, took his seat, there was +the customary hum of anticipated enjoyment, dying away swiftly as Mr. +Chauncy prepared to speak. + +The left-hand neighbor of the young man down at the far end of the long +table turned to him again, and said, "Now you keep your eyes open. I +shouldn't wonder if this was the speech of the evening." + +The young man looked at the new speaker and liked his face, at once +masterful and intelligent. Mr. Chauncy's attitude was one of conscious +strength and of perfect ease. He was a man of fifty, perhaps, with gray +hair and a curling gray mustache. + +"Upon a mellow October night like this," the speaker began, and his +voice was rich and firm, while his delivery was as clear as a line +engraving--"upon a mellow October night like this, possible in no other +city in this country or in Europe, I think, and illustrative of the fact +that here in New York we have really a climate, while most of the other +great towns of the world have only weather--upon a night like this, and +under this graceful tower, uplifting its loveliness into the azure air +and topped by a Diana fairer than that of the Ephesians smiling down +upon gardens more beautiful than any ever hanging in Babylon, there is +no need for me to present any defence of the Empire City, or to proffer +any apology for her. If you seek for proof of her superiority, look +about you here to-night, and remember that nowhere else in the United +States could any such company as this be gathered together; nowhere else +in the United States is there a banquet-hall so beautiful; nowhere else +in the United States would a feast like this be graced by the presence +of so many lovely women. Yet I feel that I should be derelict to my +duty--that I should let slip a precious occasion--if I did not dwell for +a while upon a few of the many things in the history of this city which +give her proud pre-eminence; which make her what she is--the mighty and +magnificent metropolis of a great people." + +Again the applause broke forth. After a pause the speaker continued, +having the attention of every man and woman in the hall. Even as he +warmed to his subject he preserved the perfection of his delivery, and +he poured forth facts, figures, illustrations, one after the other, with +never a broken accent or a blurred syllable. + +"I will not detain you by detailing the many natural advantages of New +York--the noble river which sweeps by on one side and the arm of the +ocean which embraces the other, and the spacious and beautiful bay, with +its harborage ample for all the fleets of all the nations of the earth. +It is not my purpose to-night to linger long over the works of art which +make this island of ours distinguished as the works of nature have made +possible her prosperity; and therefore I shall say nothing of the Statue +of Liberty, of the Brooklyn Bridge, of the Riverside Drive, of the +libraries and the museums and the colleges and the churches; I shall +even say nothing of Central Park, truly the finest single work of art +yet produced by any American, and, simply as a work of art, unequalled +by any pleasure-ground of Europe." + +There was another burst of applause, but the speaker scarcely waited for +it to die down before he began again. + +"Passing by these works of God and man, ever present before our eyes, I +am going to call your attention to things less material--to things which +do not cling to our remembrance as they ought. Secure in our material +prosperity, we New-Yorkers do not always recall those incidents in the +history of the city which deserve to be forever memorable. We are not +often accused of modesty--but we are over-modest, are we not?--when we +allow our children to be taught that the first bloodshed of the +Revolution was in the Boston Massacre, forgetting that the Liberty Pole +fight took place in New York six weeks earlier. It was here in New York +that the Stamp Act Congress met, the forerunner of the federation of the +American colonies which cast off the British yoke. And in the long and +weary war of the Revolution only one of the thirteen colonies furnished +its full quota of men, money, and supplies--and that colony was the +colony of New York!" + +Once more was the speaker interrupted by a tumult of approval; and once +more he went on again as soon as he could make himself heard. + +"When the critical period in the history of this country came--that is, +when the need of a new constitution was felt by all--no men had a larger +share in the making of that constitution than two New-Yorkers, Alexander +Hamilton and John Jay, while the nervous English of that great +instrument was due to a third New-Yorker, Gouverneur Morris. It was in +New York that the foundations of American literature were laid, by the +publication of _Knickerbocker's History_, the earliest book to be +printed in America which keeps its popularity to-day--and more than +fourscore years have not yet tarnished its humor. To the author of this +immortal book, to Washington Irving, was due the first work of American +authorship which won acceptance outside of the boundaries of the United +States. And as it was the _Sketch-Book_ of Washington Irving which was +the first American book to win its way in England, so it was the _Spy_ +of another citizen of New York, Fenimore Cooper, which was the first +American book to achieve fame outside of the English language. It was +here in New York that our American literature was first fostered, as it +is here in New York that our American authors are most abundant, most +highly honored, and most richly rewarded." + +The speaker paused again, but only for a moment. + +"As in letters, so in the arts. Here in New York the National Academy of +Design was founded, and later the Society of American Artists; and to +two painters of New York, to Robert Fulton and to Samuel F. B. Morse, we +owe the steamboat and the telegraph. Here in New York was founded the +Children's Aid Society--than which no city in the world has a nobler +charity--the first of the kind and the most successful. Here in New +York, also, Peter Cooper established the first institution intended to +provide instruction to all ambitious youth--an institution that has +been imitated in almost every city of the Union, although no city of the +Union has ever had a citizen more esteemed or better beloved than was +Peter Cooper here in New York. It is not in 'a city of kites and crows' +that men of Peter Cooper's character choose to dwell; it is not in 'a +city of kites and crows' that men of Peter Cooper's character are +cherished and revered." + +Here the speech was again broken into by prolonged applause. Men rose to +their feet and cheered, waving their napkins over their heads. + +When there was quiet once more the speaker went on: + +"After years of peace and of prosperity, the people of the United States +suddenly found themselves face to face with armed rebellion, and war +loomed before us inevitable. New York was ready then as always. The +first regiment to reach the capital of the country--to secure it against +traitors--was a regiment of New York City militia. Nor was there ever +after any lack of men here in this city who despised the snares of death +and defied the pains of hell, and who went into battle bravely, and +gayly, and glad that--in the words of one of them--glad that 'there is +lots of good fighting along the whole line.' I have been told--I confess +I have not been able to verify the figures--but I have been told, that +the number of men who enlisted into the army and the navy of the United +States from this city of ours during those four long years of doubt and +anxiety exceeded the number of the male inhabitants of fighting age in +the year when the rebellion broke out. And not content with furnishing +men to fight, the city of New York saw to it that the wounded were duly +attended to and their anguish lightened as far as might be--for it was +here that the United States Sanitary Commission was organized." + +There were cheers once more and yet again, and it was not for a full +minute that the speaker was enabled to continue. + +"Your applause tells me that I need say no more," he began. "A +successful city is the spoiled child of fortune, and perhaps, like other +spoiled children, it is all the better for a sound thrashing now and +then. But what has New York done amiss now, that she should be scourged +with scorpions? In the welter of politics it may be considered adroit to +suggest that your opponent is either a wolf in sheep's clothing or an +ass in a lion's skin; but it is more adroit still, it seems to me, to +avoid personality altogether. The louder the report of the gun, the more +violent the kick is. When a New-Yorker hears his beloved town called 'a +city of kites and crows' his first impulse is to laugh; his second is to +inquire as to the man who said it; and his third is to laugh again and +louder when he discovers that the author of this assertion is from +Nevada, a state where even Santa Claus on Christmas Eve does not dare +go his rounds for fear of being held up by road-agents!" + +This time a burst of hearty laughter mingled with the abundant applause +as the speaker sat down. + +"That's a very good speech," the young man who seemed to be a stranger +said to his left-hand neighbor. + +"Good speech?" echoed the other enthusiastically; "I should think so. +It's the speech of the evening, sure! There's not one of them can beat +that." + +"I've been in Japan for the past five years, and I seem to have lost +track of people here in the city," said the young man. "What is the name +of the gentleman who made the speech?" + +"Horace Chauncy," was the answer. "I thought everybody knew him. His +father was United States Senator from West Virginia, and his mother was +a famous Kentucky belle in her day. He himself used to be the leader of +the California bar before he moved here a few years ago. He caught on at +once in New York; he's one of the most popular speakers we have now; +some fellows call him 'Our Horace.' Haven't you ever heard about him, +really?" + +"Well," the young man retorted, "you mustn't expect me to know all these +people. You see, I was born in New York." + +(1894.) + + + + +A THANKSGIVING-DAY DINNER + + +Thanksgiving Day had dawned clear and cold, an ideal day for the +foot-ball game. Soon after breakfast the side-streets had been made +hideous by small bands of boys, strangely disguised as girls some of +them, or as Indians and as negroes, with improvised costumes and with +staring masks; they blew fish-horns, and besought coppers. A little +later in the day groups of fantasticals paraded on horseback or in +carriages; and straggling target companies--some of them in the uniforms +worn during the political campaign which had culminated in the election +three weeks earlier--marched irregularly up the avenues under the +elevated railroads, preceded by thin lines of pioneers, and by slim +bands of music that played spasmodically before the many adjacent +saloons, at the doors of which the companies came to a halt willingly. + +The sun shone out and warmed one side of the street as people came from +church; and the wind blew gently down the avenues, and fluttered the +petals of the yellow chrysanthemums which expanded themselves in many +button-holes. Little groups of young people passed, the girls with +knots of blue at their throats or with mufflers of orange and black, the +young men with college-buttons or with protruding handkerchiefs of the +college colors. The fashionable dealers in men's goods had arranged +their windows with impartial regard for future custom--one with blue +flannels and scarfs, shirts and socks, and the other all orange and +black. Coaches began to go by, draped with one set of colors or the +other, and filled with young men who split the air with explosive +cheers, while waving blue pennants with white letters, or yellow +pennants with black. The sun shone brightly, and the brisk breeze +shivered the bare branches of the trees. It rippled the flags which +projected from the vehicles gathering at Madison Square and streaming up +the avenue in thick succession--coaches, private carriages, omnibuses, +road-wagons of one kind or another. + +Towards nightfall the tide turned and the coaches began to come back, +the young men hoarse with incessant shouting of their staccato college +cries. Some of them, wild with joy at the victory of their own team, had +voice still for exulting yells. Others were saddened into silence by the +defeat of their side. Most of those who had gone out to see the game +belonged neither to the college of the blue nor to the college of the +black and orange, but they were all stimulated by the struggle they had +just seen--a struggle of strength and of skill, of gumption and of grit. +The sun had gone down at last, and the bracing breeze of noon had now a +touch of dampness which chilled the flesh. But the hearty young fellows +paid no heed to it; they cheered and they sang and they cried aloud one +to the other as though the season were spring, and they were alone on +the sea-shore. + +Robert White caught the fever like the rest, and as he walked down the +avenue to the College Club he was conscious of an excitement he had not +felt for years. He was alone in the city for a week, as it happened, his +wife having taken the children into the country for a long-promised +visit; and he had been spending his evenings at the College Club. So it +was that he had joined in chartering a coach, and for the first time in +a dozen years he had seen the foot-ball game. He had been made happy by +the success of his own college, and by meeting classmates whom he had +not laid eyes on since their Commencement in the heat of the Centennial +summer. One of them was now the young governor of a new Western State, +and another was likely to be a member of the new President's cabinet. + +On the way out to the game White had sat beside a third classmate, now a +professor in the old college, and they had talked over their four years +and their fellow-students. They recalled the young men of promise who +had failed to sustain the hopes of the class; the steady, hard-working +fellows, who were steady and hard-working still; the quiet, shy man who +had known little Latin and less Greek, but was fond of science, and who +was now developing into one of the foremost novelists of the country; +the best base-ball player of the class, now the pastor of one of the +leading churches of Chicago; and others who had done well for themselves +in the different walks of life. They talked over the black sheep of the +class--some dead, some worse than dead, some dropped out of sight. + +"What has become of Johnny Carroll?" asked the professor. + +"I have not seen him since class-day. There was some wretched scandal +before Commencement, you know, and I doubt if Johnny ever got his +degree," White answered. + +"I know he didn't," the professor returned. "He never dared to apply for +it." + +"They managed to keep the trouble very quiet, whatever it was," White +went on. "I never knew just what the facts were." + +"I didn't know then," responded the professor; "I have been told since. +But there is no need to go into that now. The girl is dead long ago, and +Johnny too, for all I have heard." + +"Poor Johnny Carroll," White said; "I can remember how handsome he +looked that last night, the night of class-day. But he was always +handsome and always well dressed. He was not very clever or very +anything, was he? Yet we all liked him." + +[Illustration: COMING FROM CHURCH] + +"I remember that he tried to get on the Freshman crew," the professor +remarked, after a pause, "but the temptations of high living were too +much for him. He wouldn't train." + +"Training was just what he needed most," White added; "moral and mental +as well as physical. Fact is, he always had more money than was good for +him. His father was in Wall Street then, and making money hand over +fist." + +"It wasn't till the year after we were graduated that old Carroll +committed suicide, was it?" the professor inquired. "Blew out his brains +in the bath-tub, didn't he?" + +"And didn't leave enough money to pay for his funeral," White answered. +"Johnny was in hard luck always: he had too much money at first, and +none at all when he needed it most." + +"His great misfortune," said the professor, "was that his father was +'one of the boys.'" + +"Yes," White agreed, "that is pretty rough on a fellow. I wonder where +Johnny is, if he is alive? Out West, perhaps, prospecting on a grub +stake, or else stoker on an ocean steamer, or perhaps he's a member of +the Broadway squad, earning a living by elbowing ladies over the +crossing." + +"I hope he has as good a berth as that," the professor answered; "but I +don't believe that Johnny Carroll would stay on the force long, even if +he got the appointment. Do you remember how well he sang 'The Son of a +Gamboleer'?" + +It was this question of the professor's which Robert White remembered +after he had got off the coach and was walking towards Madison Square. +Three young fellows, mere boys two of them, were staggering on just in +front of him. They were arm in arm, in hope of a triplicate stability +quite unattainable without more ballast than they carried, and they were +singing the song Johnny Carroll had made his own in college. The wind +was still sharpening, and the wooden signs which projected across the +sidewalk here and there swung heavily as they felt its force. There were +knots of eager young men and boys going to and fro before the +brilliantly lighted porticos of the hotels. + +As White stepped aside to get out of the way of one of these groups, +rather more hilarious than the others, he knocked into a man who was +standing up against the glaring window of a restaurant. The man was thin +and pinched; his face was clean-shaven and blue; his clothes were +threadbare; his attitude was as though he were pressing close to the +glass in the hope of a reflected warmth. + +"I beg your pardon," cried White. + +The man turned stiffly. "It's of no con--" he began, then he saw White's +face in the bright light which streamed across the sidewalk. He stopped, +hesitated for a moment, and then turned away. + +The moment had been enough for White to recognize him. "Johnny Carroll!" +he called. + +The man continued to move away. + +White overtook him in two strides, and laid a hand on his shoulder. +"Johnny!" he said again. + +The man faced about and answered doubtfully, "Well, what do you want?" + +"Is this really you, Johnny Carroll?" asked White, as he held out his +hand. + +"Oh yes," said the other, "it's Johnny Carroll--and you are Bob White." + +White's hand was still extended. After a long pause his classmate took +it. White was shocked at the chill of Carroll's fingers. "Why, man," he +cried, "you are cold." + +"Well," the other answered, simply, "why not? It isn't the first time." +Then, after a swift glance at White's face, he turned his own away and +said, "I'm hungry, too, if you want to know." + +"So am I," said White, cordially. "I was going to have my Thanksgiving +dinner alone. Will you join me, Johnny?" + +"Do you mean it?" asked the other. + +"Why shouldn't we dine together?" White responded, setting off briskly +and putting his arm through his classmate's. "Our team has won to-day, +you know--eighteen to nothing; we'll celebrate the victory." + +"Where are you taking me?" inquired Johnny, uneasily. + +"To the College Club, of course," answered White. "We'll--" + +"I mustn't go there," said Johnny, stopping short. "I couldn't face them +now. I--oh, I couldn't!" + +"Very well, then," White agreed. "Where shall we go? What do you say to +Delmonico's?" + +Again Johnny asked: "Do you mean it? Honest?" + +"Of course I mean it, Johnny," he replied. + +"I haven't been in Delmonico's for ten years and more," said the other. +"I'd like to have just another dinner there. But you can't take me +there. Look at me!" + +White looked at him. The thin coat was buttoned tight; it was very worn, +and yet it was not ragged; it was in better condition than the hat or +the boots. + +As the two men stood there facing each other on the corner of the street +there was a foretaste of winter in the wind which smote them and ate +into their marrow. + +White linked his arm again in his classmate's. "I've seen you look +sweller, Johnny, I confess," he said; "but I haven't dressed for dinner +myself to-night." + +"So it's Delmonico's?" Johnny asked. + +"It's Delmonico's," White responded. + +"Then take me into the cafe," said the other. "I can stand the men, I +think, but I'm not in shape to go into the restaurant where the women +are." + +"Very well," agreed White. "We'll try the cafe." + +When they entered the cafe it was crowded with young men. There was +already a blue haze of smoke over the heads of the noisy throng. Boys +drinking champagne at adjacent tables were calling across to each other +with boisterous merriment. + +White was able to secure a small table near the corner on the Broadway +side. As he walked over to it he nodded to half a score of +acquaintances, some of whom looked askant at his companion, and +exchanged whispered comments after he had passed. + +Apparently Johnny neither saw the looks nor heard the whispers. He +followed White as if in a dream; and White had noticed that when they +had entered the heated room Carroll had drawn a long breath as though to +warm himself. + +"I don't need an overcoat in here," he said, as he took the chair +opposite White's with the little marble-topped table between them. + +When the waiter had deftly laid the cloth, Johnny fingered its fair +softness, as with a cat-like enjoyment of its cleanness. + +"Now, what shall we have?" asked White, as the waiter handed him the +bill of fare in its narrow frame. "What would you like?" + +"I?" the guest responded; "oh, anything--whatever you want--some roast +beef." + +"Then your taste has changed since you left college," White declared. "I +asked you what you would _like_." + +"What _I'd_ like?" echoed Johnny. "Do you mean it? Honest?" + +White smiled as the old college phrase dropped again from the lips of +his classmate. + +"Of course I mean it," he said; "honest. There's the bill of fare. Order +what you please. And remember that it is Thanksgiving, and that I'm +hungry, and that I want a good dinner." + +"Very well, then," said Johnny, as he took the bill of fare. He was +already warmer, and now he seemed to expand a little with the unwonted +luxury of the occasion. + +He looked over the bill of fare carefully. + +"Blue Points on the half-shell, of course," he began, adding to the +waiter, "be sure that they are on the deep shell. Green turtle soup--the +green turtle here used to be very good fifteen years ago. _Filet de +sole, a la Mornay_--the sole is flounder, I suppose, but _a la Mornay_ a +man could eat a Hebrew manuscript. Then a canvas-back apiece--two +canvas-back, you understand, real canvas-back, not red-head or +mallard--with samp, of course, and a mayonnaise of celery. Then a bit of +Chedder cheese and a cup of coffee. How will that suit you, White?" + +"That will suit me," White responded. "And now what wine?" + +"Wine, too?" Johnny queried. + +White smiled and nodded. + +"Well, I'll go you," the guest went on. "I might as well see the thing +through, if you are bound to do it in style." He turned over the bill of +fare and scanned the wine list on the under side. "Yquem '74 with the +oysters; and they tell me there is a Silver Seal Special '84 _brut_ that +is better than anything one has tasted before. Give us a quart of that +with the duck. And let us have it as soon as you can." + +He handed the bill of fare to the waiter, and then, for the first time, +he ventured to glance about the room. + +The oysters were brought very soon, and when Johnny had eaten them and +part of a roll, and when he had drunk two glasses of the Yquem, White +said to him: "Tell me something about yourself. What have you been doing +all these years?" + +Johnny's face fell a little. "I've done pretty nearly everything," he +answered, "from driving a Fifth Avenue stage to keeping books for a +Third Avenue pawnbroker. I've been a waiter at a Coney Island chowder +saloon. Two summers ago I waited on the man who has just taken our +order--I waited on him more than once. I've dealt faro, too." + +The waiter brought the soup and served them. + +When he left them alone again, White asked: "Can't some of your old +friends help you out of this--give you a start and set you up again?" + +"It's no good trying," Johnny replied. "You can't pull me up now. It's +too late. I guess it was too late from the start." + +"Why don't you drop this place?" White queried, "and go out West, +and--" + +"What's the use of talking about that?" Johnny interrupted. "I can't +live away from New York. If I got out of sight of that tower over there +I'd die." + +"You will die here soon enough at this rate," White answered. + +"That's so, too," admitted Johnny; "but it can't be helped now." He was +eating steadily, sturdily, but not ravenously. + +After the waiter had served the fish, White asked again, "What can we do +for you?" + +"Nothing," Johnny answered--"nothing at all. Yes, you can give me a +five, if you like, or a ten; but don't give me your address, or the +first time I'm down again I'd look you up and strike you for ten more." + +A band of undergraduates, twenty of them or more, four abreast, arm in +arm, went tramping down Broadway, yelling forth the chorus of a college +song. + +"You used to sing that song, Johnny," said White. + +"I used to do lots of things," he answered, as the waiter opened the +champagne. + +"I never heard anybody get as much out of 'The Son of a Gamboleer' as +you did," White continued. + +"I joined a negro-minstrel troupe as second tenor twelve years ago, but +we got stranded in Hartford, and I had to walk home. I've tried to do a +song and dance in the Bowery dime museums since then, more than once. +But it's no use." + +When they had made an end of the canvas-backs and the _brut_ '84, Johnny +sat back in his chair and smiled, and said, "Well, this was worth +while." + +Then the coffee came, and White said, "You forgot to order the liqueur, +Johnny." + +"You see what it is to be out of practice," he replied. "I'd like some +orange curacoa." + +"And I will take a little green mint," said White to the waiter. "And +bring some cigars--Henry Clays." + +"That's right," Johnny declared. "My father was always a Henry Clay man, +and I suppose that's why I like those cigars." + +After the cigars were lighted White looked his companion square in the +face. "Are you sure," he asked, "that we can do nothing for you?" + +"Dead sure," was the answer. + +"Nothing?" + +"You have given me a good dinner," said Johnny. "That's enough. That's +more than most of my old friends would give me. And there's nothing more +to be done." + +White held his peace for the moment. + +Johnny took a long sip of his coffee, and drew three or four times at +his cigar. "That's a first-rate cigar," he said. "I haven't smoked a +Henry Clay for nearly two years, and then I picked up one a man had +lighted, between the acts, outside of Daly's." + +He puffed at it again with voluptuous appreciation, and then leaned +across the table to White and remarked, confidentially, "Do you know, +Bob, 'most everything I've cared for in this world has been immoral, or +expensive, or indigestible." + +"Yes," White admitted; "I suppose that's the cause of your bad luck." + +"I've had lots of luck in my life," was the response, "good and +bad--better than I deserved, most of it--this dinner, for example; I +should remember it even without to-morrow's dyspepsia. But what's the +use of anticipating evil? I'll let the next day take care of itself, and +make the best of this one. There are several hours of it left--where +shall we go now?" + +(1892.) + + + + +IN THE MIDST OF LIFE + + +It was late in the afternoon when John Suydam turned into Twenty-third +Street, and he remarked the absence of the gleam of color generally +visible far away to the westward beyond the end of the street and across +the river. There was no red vista that Christmas Eve, for the sky was +overcast and lowering, and there was a damp chill in the air, a +premonition of approaching snow. It was about the edge of dusk as he +skirted Madison Square and saw the electric-lights twinkle out suddenly +up and down Fifth Avenue, and in the square here and there. + +The young man crossed Broadway, skilfully avoiding a huge express wagon, +and springing lightly out of the path of a clanging cable-car. He +crossed Fifth Avenue, threading his way through the carriages and the +carts piled high with paper-covered packages. The white walls of the +hotel on the opposite side of Twenty-third Street were dingy under the +leaden sky as the haze of the swift twilight settled down. The wind died +away altogether, and yet the atmosphere was raw and dank. Suydam bought +an evening paper from the crippled newsboy who sat in his +rolling-chair, warmly wrapped against the weather, and seemingly +cheerful and contented with his takings. + +A few steps farther the young man passed an old French sailor standing +on the curb-stone, and using his single hand to wind the machinery of a +glazed box, wherein a ship was to be seen tossing on the regular waves +while a train of cars kept crossing a bridge which spanned an estuary. +Almost under the sailor's feet there was an old woman huddled in a dirty +heap over a tiny hand-organ, from which she was slowly grinding a +doubtful and dolorous tune. By her side, but a little beyond, two boys +were offering for sale green wreaths and stars and ropes of greenery, to +be used in festooning. Close to the broad windows of a dry-goods store, +whence a yellow light streamed forth, a tall, thin man had a board on a +trestle, and on this portable table he was showing off the antics of a +toy clown who tumbled artlessly down a steep flight of steps. The people +who hurried past, with parcels under their arms, rarely stopped to look +at the ship tossing on the waves, or to listen to the hesitating tune of +the wheezy organ, or to buy a bit of green or a performing clown. Yet +the open-air bazaar, as it might plainly be called, the out-door fair, +extended all the way along the street, and on both edges of the sidewalk +the fakirs were trying to gather in their scanty Christmas harvest. + +Before John Suydam came to the corner of Sixth Avenue the snow began at +last to fall; the first flakes descended hesitatingly, scurried by a +brief wind that sprang up for a minute or two, and then died away +absolutely. After a while the snow thickened and fell faster, sifting +down softly and silently, but filling the air under the electric-lights +which were clustered at the corner, and reddening under the glare of the +engines on the elevated railroad overhead, as the cars rushed along girt +with swirling clouds of steam. The snow clustered upon the boughs of the +unsold Christmas-trees which stood irregularly along the sidewalk before +a florist's a few doors down Sixth Avenue, and by the time Suydam had +turned the corner, they looked like the shrouded ghosts of balsam pines. + +All along the avenue he had to make his way through the same crowds of +belated Christmas shoppers, hurrying in and out of the overgrown stores, +availing themselves of their last chance to buy gifts for the morrow; +but as he advanced, the throng thinned a little, driven home perhaps by +the snow-storm. Yet though the purchasers were fewer, the peddlers +persisted. Suydam noted one old man, bent and shrivelled, and with a +long gray beard, who had a tray before him hung on a strap over his +shoulders, and on the narrow board were plaster figures of Santa Claus +carrying aloft a branching Christmas-tree besprinkled with glittering +crystalline flakes. Under the hood of the staircase of the station of +the elevated railroad he saw a little blind woman wrapped in a scant +shawl, silently proffering half a dozen lead-pencils. And high over the +centre of the roadway the snow-clad trains thundered up and down, with +white plumes of steam trailing from the engines. + +As Suydam neared Fourteenth Street he found the crowds compacting again; +and at the corner there was a chaos of carriages, carts, and +street-cars. The flights of stairs leading to the elevated railroad +station were packed with people bearing bundles and boxes, most of them, +ascending and descending with difficulty, jostling one another +good-naturedly. Long lines of children of all ages spread along the wide +plate-glass windows at the corner of one huge store, gazing wonderingly +at a caravan of toy animals in gorgeous trappings, with chariots and +palanquins, which kept circling around in front of painted palm-trees +and gayly-decorated tents. The snow was now falling fast, but still the +young ones looked admiringly and waited willingly, though their hats +were whitened, and though the soft flakes melted on their capes and on +their coats. + +The mass of humanity clustering about these windows forced Suydam almost +to the edge of the sidewalk; but this was the last crowd he had to make +his way through. Lower down there were no solid groups, although the +avenue was still thronged. He was able to quicken his pace. So he sped +along, passing the butchers', where carcasses of sheep and of beeves +hung in line garlanded with ropes of evergreen; passing the grocers', +where the shelves were battlemented with cans of food; passing the +bakers', where bread and cakes, pies and crullers, were displayed in +trays and in baskets. He glanced into the yellow windows of +candy-stores, and saw the parti-colored sweetmeats temptingly spread +out. He caught a glimpse of more than one dealer in _delicatessen_ whose +display of silver-clad sausage and heavy pasty and wicker-work flask was +enough to stimulate the appetite of a jaded epicure. He saw the signs of +a time of plenty, but no one knew better than John Suydam that just then +there was truly a season of want. + +Night had fallen before he reached the court-house, with its high roof +and its lofty turret, before he came to the market, with its yawning +baskets of vegetables and its long rows of pendent turkeys beneath the +flaring jets of gas. He crossed the avenue and turned into a small +street--not here at right angles to the thoroughfare, as are the most of +the side streets of New York. At last he stopped before a little house, +an old two-story building, worn with long use, and yet dignified in its +decay. The tiny dwelling had a Dutch roof, with two dormer-windows; and +it had been built when the Dutch traditions of New Amsterdam were +stronger than they are to-day. + +The young man mounted the high stoop, on which the snow was now nearly +half an inch thick. He rang the bell twice with a measured interval +between. The flying step of a girl was heard, and then the door was +thrown open, and Suydam disappeared within the little old house. + +As the door closed, the young man took the young woman in his arms and +kissed her. + +"Oh, John," she said, "it is so good of you to come on Christmas Eve. +How did you manage to get away?" + +"I've only two hours," he answered, "and I had to get something to eat, +so I thought that perhaps you--" + +"Of course we can," the girl interrupted. "And mother will be delighted. +She has made one of her old-fashioned chicken pies, and it's ever so +much too much for us two. It will be ready at six." + +"Then I know where I'm going to get my dinner," her lover returned, as +he followed her into the little parlor. "But I shall have to go back as +soon as I've had it. I've told them that I think the office ought to be +kept open till midnight, and I said I'd stay. It would be a sorrowful +thing, wouldn't it, if any one who wants help couldn't get it on +Christmas Eve?" + +"And there must be many who want help this hard winter," said the girl. +"I went as far as Broadway this afternoon, on an errand for mother, and +I passed six beggars--" + +"Oh, beggars--" he began. + +"Yes, I know," she interrupted again. "I did not give them anything, +though it seemed so cruel not to. I knew what you thought about +indiscriminate charity, and so I steeled my heart. And I suffered for +it, too. I know I should have felt happier if I had given something to +one or two of them." + +"I suppose you did deprive yourself of the virtuous glow of +self-satisfaction," Suydam admitted. "But that virtuous glow is too +cheap to be valuable. If we want to help our neighbor really, we must +practise self-sacrifice, and not purchase an inexpensive +self-gratification at the cost of his self-respect." + +"I should feel as though I wasn't spending Christmas if I didn't give +away something," she protested. + +"Exactly," he returned. "You haven't yet freed yourself from the +pestilent influence of Dickens, though you have much more sense, too, +than nine women out of ten. You have blindly followed the belief that +you ought to give for your own sake, without thinking whether it was +best for the beggar to receive. Dickens's Christmas stories are now +breeding their third generation of paupers; and I doubt if we can +convince the broad public of the absurdity of his sociology in another +half-century. It takes science to solve problems; hysteric emotionalism +won't do it." + +"You don't think all the beggars I saw to-day were humbugs, do you?" she +asked. + +"There isn't one chance in ten that any one of the half-dozen is really +in need," he answered; "and probably five out of the six have taken to +begging partly out of laziness, and partly because they can beg larger +wages than they can earn honestly." + +"But there was one old man; he must have been forty, at least," urged +the girl, "who was positively starving. Why, just as I turned out of +Broadway, I saw him spring down to the gutter and pick up a crust of +bread and begin to eat it greedily. I felt in my pocket for my purse, of +course, but a gentleman had seen it, too, and he went up to the man and +talked to him and gave him a five-dollar bill. Now, there was a real +case of distress, wasn't it?" + +Suydam smiled, sadly. "The starving man was about forty, you say? Tall +and thin, wasn't he, with a thin, pointed beard, and a mark on his right +cheek?" + +The girl looked at him in wonder. "Why, how did you know?" she cried. + +"That's Scar-faced Charley," he answered. + +"And is he a humbug, too?" she asked. + +"I followed him for two hours one afternoon last week," he explained, +"and I saw him pick up that bit of bread and pretend to eat it at least +twenty times. When I had him arrested he had more than ten dollars in +his pockets." + +"Well," the young woman declared, "I shall never believe in anybody +again." + +"But I don't see how it is Scar-faced Charley is out to-day," Suydam +went on. "We had him sent up for a month only, for the judge was easy +with him. If he's out again so soon, I suppose he must have a pull of +some sort. Those fellows often have more influence than you would +think." + +"He took me in completely," the girl admitted. "If Scar-faced Charley, +as you call him, can act so well, why doesn't he go on the stage and +earn an honest living?" + +"That's the first thing that astonished me when I went to live in the +University Settlement last spring, and began to study out these things +for myself. I found beggars who were fond of their profession, and who +prided themselves on their skill. What are you to do with them? And if +you let them ply their trade, how are you going to distinguish them from +those who are really in need?" + +"It is all very puzzling to me," the girl confessed. "Since I've heard +you talk, charity doesn't seem half as simple as it used to." + +"No," said Suydam, "it isn't simple. In fact, it is about as complicated +and complex a problem as the twentieth century will have to solve. But +I'm coming to one conclusion fast, and that is that the way to tell +those who need help from those who don't need it is, that the latter ask +for it, and the former won't. New York is rich and generous, and there's +never any difficulty about getting money enough to relieve every case of +distress in the city limits--none whatever. The real difficulty is in +getting the money to the people who really need it, and in keeping it +from the people who ought not to have it. You see that those who ask for +assistance don't deserve it--not once in fifty times; and those who +deserve it won't ask for it. There are men and women--women +especially--who will starve before they will face the pity of their +fellows. Every day I hear of cases of suffering borne silently, and +discovered only by accident." + +"I've been wondering for a week if we haven't one of those cases in this +house now," said the girl. + +"In this house?" the young man repeated. + +"I've been meaning to tell you all about it every day," she went on, +"but I've seen so little of you, and when you do come we have so many +things to talk about, you know." + +"I know," Suydam repeated. He was seated by her side on the sofa, and +his arm was around her waist. He drew her closer to him and kissed her. +"Now tell me about your case of distress," he said. + +"Well," the girl began, "this house is too big for mother and me alone, +so we let one room on the top floor to two old ladies. They have been +here since before Thanksgiving. They are foreigners--Cubans, I think. +The mother must be seventy, and I can see she has been very handsome. +The daughter is nearly fifty, I'm sure; and a more devoted daughter you +never saw. She waits on her mother hand and foot. They didn't bring any +baggage to speak of--no trunk, only just a little bag--and we saw at +once that they were very, very poor. They paid two weeks' rent in +advance, and since then they've paid two weeks' more. A fortnight ago +the daughter told mother that they would be obliged if she would let +them defer paying the rent for a little while, as a letter they were +expecting had not come. And I suppose that was so, for the postman never +whistled but the daughter came running down stairs to see if there +wasn't something for them. But it hasn't come yet, and I don't believe +they've got enough money to get things to eat, hardly. The daughter used +to go out every morning, and come back with a tiny little parcel. You +see, there's a gas-stove in their room, and they do their own cooking. +But she hasn't been out of the house for two days, and we haven't seen +either of them since the day before yesterday, when the daughter came to +the head of the stairs and asked if there was a letter for her mother. +We can hear them moving about overhead gently, but we haven't seen them. +And now we don't really know what to do. I'm so glad you've come, for I +told mother I was going to ask you about them." + +"Do you think they have no money?" Suydam asked. + +"I'm afraid it's all gone," she answered. "And they have no friends at +all so far as we know." + +"You say they are Cubans?" + +"I think they are. Their name is De los Rios--Senora de los Rios, I +heard the daughter call her mother when she asked the postman about a +letter." + +"If it wasn't so late," said the young man, looking at his watch, "I +would go to the Spanish Consulate. But it's nearly six now, and the +consulate is certain to be closed. If there is any reason to think that +they are actually suffering for want of food, can't you find some +feminine reason for intruding on them." + +"I'm afraid we can't," she answered. "We did try yesterday morning. When +we found that the daughter didn't go out for something to cook, we +misdoubted they might be hungry, and so we talked it over and over, and +did our best to hit on some way of helping them. At last mother had an +idea, and she made a sort of Spanish stew--what they call an _olla +podrida_, you know. She got the receipt out of the cook-book, and she +took it up and knocked at the door. They asked who it was, and they +didn't open the door but a little. Mother told the daughter that she had +been trying to make a Spanish dish, and she didn't know as she'd got it +right, and so she'd come up to ask them as a favor if they wouldn't +taste it, and tell her if it was all right. You see that was mother's +idea. She thought she might get them to eat it that way, and save their +pride. But it wouldn't do. The daughter said that she was sorry, but she +couldn't taste it then, she couldn't, nor her mother either. They had no +appetite then, and so they couldn't judge of the _olla podrida_. She +said they had just been cooking some chops and steaks." + +"Chops and steaks?" echoed Suydam. + +"That's what she said," the girl continued. "But of course that was only +her excuse for refusing. That was her way of impressing on mother that +they didn't need anything. So mother had to give it up, and bring the +stew down-stairs again. Mother doesn't feel so badly about them, +however, because they had been cooking something yesterday. She smelt +fish--yesterday was Friday, you know." + +"I know," repeated the young man; "but still I--" + +Just then the shrill whistle of the postman was heard, and a sharp ring +at the bell. + +The girl jumped up, and went to the door. As she opened it there came in +the faint melody of distant sleigh-bells, and the roar of the street +already muffled by the snow. + +She returned to the parlor with a long blue envelope in her hand. + +"Here is the letter at last," she said. + +"What letter?" asked Suydam. + +"The letter the old ladies are waiting for," she answered, handing it to +him. + +He held it up nearer the single gas-jet of the parlor and read the +address aloud, "'Marquisa de los Rios,' and it's registered." + +"Yes," the girl returned, "and the postman is waiting to have the +receipt signed. He said he guessed it was money or a Christmas present +of some sort, since it had so many seals on it. I wanted you to know +about it; but I'll take it right up now." + +She tripped lightly up-stairs, and John Suydam heard her knocking at the +door of the room the two old ladies occupied. After an interval she +rapped again, apparently without response. Then he heard her try the +door gently. + +Two seconds later her voice rang out in a cry of alarm: "Mother! mother! +Oh, John!" + +Suydam sprang up-stairs, and found her just outside of the door of the +old ladies' room. She was trembling, and she gripped his hand. + +"Oh, John," she said, "something terrible has happened! It was even +worse than I thought! They really were starving!" + +Then she led him silently into the room, where her mother joined them +almost immediately. + +After waiting five minutes the postman at the front door below became +impatient. He rang the bell sharply and whistled again. He was kicking +the snow off his boots and swinging his arms to keep warm, when at last +the door opened and John Suydam appeared, with the long blue envelope in +his hand. + +"I'm afraid that you will have to take this letter away again," Suydam +said to the postman. "There is no one here now to sign for it. The +Marquisa de los Rios is dead!" + + + + +OUTLINES IN LOCAL COLOR + + + + +AN INTERVIEW WITH MISS MARLENSPUYK + + +It was a chill day early in January, and at four in the afternoon a gray +sky shut in the city, like the cylindrical background of a cyclorama. +Now and then a wreath of steam chalked itself on the slate-colored +horizon; and across the river, far over to the westward, there was a +splash of pink, sole evidence of the existence of the sun, which no one +had seen for twenty-four hours. + +As Miss Marlenspuyk turned the corner of the side street she stood still +for a moment, looking down on the long Riverside Drive and on the mighty +Hudson below, flowing sluggishly beneath its shield of ice. She had long +passed the limit of threescore years and ten, and she had been an +indefatigable traveller; and as she gazed, absorbing the noble beauty of +the splendid scene, unsurpassable in any other city she had ever +visited, she was glad that she was a New-Yorker born and bred, and that +it was her privilege to dwell where a vision like this was to be had for +the asking. But while she looked lovingly up and down the solemn stream +the wind sprang up again, and fluttered her gray curls and blew her +wrappings about her. + +Two doors above the corner where Miss Marlenspuyk was standing a striped +awning stretched its convolutions across the sidewalk and up the +irregular stone steps, and thrust itself into the door-way at the top of +the stoop. A pretty young girl, with a pleasantly plump figure and with +a dash of gold in her fair hair, passed through this twisting canvas +tunnel just ahead of Miss Marlenspuyk; and when the door of the house +was opened to admit them they entered together, the old maid and the +young girl. + +The house was illuminated as though it were already night; the curtains +were drawn, and the lamps, with their fantastically extravagant shades +of fringed silk, were all alight. The atmosphere was heavy with the +perfume of flowers, which were banked up high on the mantel-pieces and +the tables, while thick festoons of smilax were pendent from all the +gas-fixtures and over all the mirrors. Palms stood in the corners and in +the fireplaces; and at one end of the hall they were massed as a screen, +through which glimpses could be caught of the bright uniforms of the +Hungarian band. + +In the front parlor, before a broad table on which there were a dozen or +more beautiful bouquets tied with bows of ribbon, and under a bower of +solid ropes of smilax, stood the lady of the house with the daughter she +was that afternoon introducing to society. The hostess was a handsome, +kindly woman, with scarce a gray hair in her thick dark braids. The +daughter was, like her mother, kindly also, and also handsome; she was +better looking, really, than any of the six or seven pretty girls she +had asked to aid her in receiving her mother's friends and +acquaintances. + +The young woman who had preceded Miss Marlenspuyk into the house +happened also to precede her in entering the parlor. The hostess, +holding her bunch of orchids in the left hand, greeted the girl +pleasantly, but perhaps with a vague hint of condescension. + +"Miss Peters, isn't it?" said the lady of the house, pitching her voice +low, but with an effort, as though the habit had been acquired late in +life. "So good of you to come on such a nasty day. Mildred, you know +Miss Peters?" + +Then the daughter stepped forward and smiled and shook hands with Miss +Peters, thus leaving the mother at liberty to greet Miss Marlenspuyk; +and this time there was no trace of condescension in her manner, but +rather a faint suggestion of satisfaction. + +"Oh, Miss Marlenspuyk," she said, cordially, "this is a pleasure. So +good of you to come on such a nasty day." + +"It did blow as I came to the top of your hill here," Miss Marlenspuyk +returned, "and I'm not as strong as I was once upon a time. I suppose +that few of us are as frisky at seventy-five as we were at seventeen." + +"I protest," said the hostess; "you don't look a day older now than +when I first met you." + +"That's not so very long ago," the old maid answered. "I don't think +I've known you more than five or ten years, have I? And five or ten +years are nothing to me now. I don't feel any older than I did half a +century ago; but as for my looks--well, the least said about them is +soonest mended. I never was a good-looker, you know." + +"How can you say so?" responded the hostess, absently noting a group of +new-comers gathering in the door-way. "Mildred, you know Miss +Marlenspuyk?" + +"Oh yes, indeed I do," the girl said, heartily, shaking hands with the +vivacious old maid. + +The young woman with the touch of gold in her light hair was still +standing by Mildred's side. Noting this, and seeing the group of +new-comers breaking from the door-way and coming towards her, the +hostess spoke hastily again. + +"Do you know Miss Peters, Miss Marlenspuyk?" she asked. "Well, at all +events, Miss Peters ought to know you." + +Then she had just time to greet the group of new-comers and to lower her +voice again, and to tell them it was so good of them to come on such a +nasty day. + +The daughter was left talking to Miss Marlenspuyk and Miss Peters, but +within a minute her mother called her--"Mildred, you know Mrs. +Hitchcock?" + +As the group of new-comers pressed forward the old maid with the bright +blue eyes, and the young woman with the pleasantly plump figure, fell +back a little. + +"I've heard so much of you, Miss Marlenspuyk, from my grandfather," +began the younger woman. + +"Your grandfather!" echoed the elder lady. "Then your father must be a +son of Bishop Peters?" + +Little Miss Peters nodded. + +"Then your grandfather was a great friend of my younger brother's," Miss +Marlenspuyk continued. "They went to school together. I remember the +first time I saw the Bishop--it must be sixty years ago--it was the day +he was put into trousers for the first time! And wasn't he proud of +them!" + +Miss Peters joined Miss Marlenspuyk in laughing at this amusing memory. + +Then the old maid asked, "Your father married in the South after the +war, didn't he? Wasn't your mother from Atlanta?" + +"He lived there till mother died; I was bo'n there," said the girl. +"I've been No'th only two years now this Christmas." + +"I don't suppose you found many of your grandfather's friends left. +Nowadays people die so absurdly young," the old maid remarked. "Is your +father here this afternoon?" + +"Oh dear no," responded Miss Peters; "he has to live in Southe'n +Califo'nia for his health. I'm in New Yo'k all alone." + +"I'm sorry for you, my child," said the elder woman, taking the girl's +hand. "I've been alone myself a great deal, and I know what it means. +But you must do as I did--make friends with yourself, and cultivate a +liking for your own society." + +The younger woman laughed lightly, and answered, "But I haven't as +cha'ming a companion as you had." + +Miss Marlenspuyk smiled back. "Yes, you have, my child. I'm not an +ill-looking old woman now, I know, but I was a very plain girl; and I +know it isn't good for any one's character to be conscious that she's +almost ugly. But I set out to make the best of it, and I did. I thought +it likely I should have a good deal of my own society, and so I made +friends with this forced acquaintance. Now, I'm very good company for +myself. I'm rarely dull, for I find myself an amusing companion, and we +have lots of interests in common. And if you choose you can also +cultivate a friendship for yourself. But it won't be as necessary for +you as for me, because you are a pretty girl, you see. That glint of +gold in your fair hair is really very fetching. And what are you doing +here in New York all alone?" + +"I'm writing," Miss Peters replied. + +"Writing?" echoed Miss Marlenspuyk. + +"My father's in ve'y bad health, as I told you," the younger woman +explained, "and I have to suppo't myself. So I write." + +"But I don't think I've seen anything signed Peters in the magazines, +have I?" asked the old maid. + +"Oh, the magazines!" Miss Peters returned--"the magazines! I'm not old +enough to have anything in the magazines yet. You have to wait so long +for them to publish an article, even if they do accept it. But I get +things into the weeklies sometimes. The first time I have a piece +printed that I think you'd like, I'll send it to you, if I may." + +"I will read it at once and with pleasure," Miss Marlenspuyk declared, +cordially. + +"I don't sign my own name yet," continued Miss Peters; "I use a +pen-name. So perhaps you have read something of mine without knowing +it." + +"Perhaps I have, my child," said Miss Marlenspuyk. "I shall be on the +lookout for you now. It must be delightful to be able to put your +thoughts down in black and white, and send them forth to help make the +world brighter and better." + +Little Miss Peters laughed again, disclosing a fascinating dimple. + +"I don't believe I shall ever write anything that will make the world +better," she said; "and if I did, I don't believe the editor would take +it. I don't think that is just what editors are after nowadays--do you? +They're on the lookout for stuff that'll sell the paper." + +"Sad stuff it is, too, most of it," the old maid declared. "When I was a +girl the newspapers were violent enough, and the editors abused each +other like pickpockets, and sometimes they called each other out, and +sometimes somebody else horsewhipped them. But the papers then weren't +as silly and as cheap and as trivial as the papers are now. It seems as +though the editors to-day had a profound contempt for their readers, and +thought anything was good enough for them. Why, I had a letter from a +newspaper last week--a printed form it was, too--stating that they were +'desirous of obtaining full and correct information on Society Matters, +and would appreciate the kindness if Miss Marlenspuyk would forward to +the Society Editor any information regarding entertainments she may +purpose giving during the coming winter, and the Society Editor will +also be happy to arrange for a full report when desired.' Was there ever +such impudence? To ask me to describe my own dinners, and to give a list +of my guests! As though any lady would do a thing like that!" + +"There are ladies who do," ventured Miss Peters. + +"Then they are not what you and I would call ladies, my child," returned +Miss Marlenspuyk. + +The face of the Southern girl flushed suddenly, and she bit her lip in +embarrassment. Then she mustered up courage to ask, "I suppose you do +not read the _Daily Dial_, Miss Marlenspuyk?" + +"I tried it for a fortnight once," the old maid answered. "They told me +it had the most news, and all that. But I had to give it up. Nobody that +I knew ever died in the _Dial_. My friends all died in the _Gotham +Gazette_." + +"The _Gazette_ has a larger family circulation," admitted the younger +woman. + +"Besides," Miss Marlenspuyk continued, "I could not stand the vulgarity +of the _Dial_. I'm an old woman now, and I've seen a great deal of the +world, but the _Dial_ was too much for me. It seemed to be written down +to the taste of the half-naked inhabitants of an African kraal." + +"Oh," protested the other, "do you really think it is as bad as that?" + +"Indeed I do," the old maid affirmed. "It's worse than that, because the +poor negroes wouldn't know better. And what was most offensive, perhaps, +in the _Dial_ was the unwholesome knowingness of it." + +"I see what you mean," said Miss Peters, and again the color rose in her +cheeks. + +"There was that Lightfoot divorce case," Miss Marlenspuyk went on. "The +way the _Dial_ dwelt on that was unspeakable. I'm willing to allow that +Mrs. Lightfoot was not exactly a nice person; I'll admit that she may +have been divorced more times than she had been married--" + +"That's admitting a good deal!" said the young woman, as the elder +paused. + +"But it is going altogether too far to say that, like Cleopatra, she had +the manners of a kitten and the morals of a cat--isn't it?" + +Miss Peters made no response. Her eyes were fixed on the carpet, and her +face was redder than ever. + +"Of course it isn't likely you saw the article I mean," the old maid +continued. + +"Yes," the younger responded, "I saw it." + +"I'm sorry for that," said Miss Marlenspuyk. "I may be old-fashioned--I +suppose I must be at my age--but I don't think that is the kind of thing +a nice girl like you should read." + +Again Miss Peters made no response. + +"I happen to remember that phrase," Miss Marlenspuyk continued, "because +the article was signed 'Polly Perkins.' Very likely it was a man who +wrote it, after all, but it may have been a woman. And if it was I felt +ashamed for her as I read it. How could one woman write of another in +that way?" + +"Perhaps the writer was very poor," pleaded Miss Peters. + +"That would not be a good reason, and it is a bad excuse," the old maid +declared. "Of course I don't know what I should do if I were desperately +poor--one never knows. But I think I'd live on cold water and a dry +crust sooner than earn my bread and butter that way--wouldn't you?" + +Miss Peters did not answer this direct question. For a moment she said +nothing. Then she raised her head, and there was a hint of high resolve +in the emphasis with which she said, "It is a mean way to make a +living." + +Before Miss Marlenspuyk could continue the conversation she was greeted +by two ladies who had just arrived. Miss Peters drew back and stood by +herself in a corner for a few minutes as the throng in front of her +thickened. She was gazing straight before her, but she was not conscious +of the people who encompassed her about. Then she aroused herself, and +went into the dining-room and had a cup of tea and a thin slice of +buttered bread, rolled up and tied with a tiny ribbon. And perhaps +fifteen minutes later she found herself in front of the hostess. + +She told the hostess that she had had such a very good time, that she +didn't know when she had met such very agreeable people, and that she +was specially delighted with an old friend of her grandfather's, Miss +Marlenspuyk. "Such a very delightful old maid, with none of the flavor +of desiccated spinsterhood. She does her own thinking, too. She gave me +some of her ideas about modern journalism." + +"She is a brilliant conversationalist," said the hostess. "You might +have interviewed her." + +"Oh, she talked freely enough," Miss Peters responded. "But I could +never write her up properly. Besides, I'm thinking of giving up +newspaper wo'k." + +Three ladies here came towards the hostess, who stepped forward with +extended hand, saying, "So good of you to come on such a nasty day." +Miss Peters availed herself of the opportunity, and made her escape. + +It might be half an hour afterwards when Miss Marlenspuyk, having had +her cup of tea and her roll of bread-and-butter, returned to the front +parlor in time to overhear a bashful young man take leave of the +hostess, and wish the hostess's daughter "many happy returns of the +day." + +As it happened, there was a momentary stagnation of the flood of guests +when Miss Marlenspuyk went up to say farewell, and she had a chance to +congratulate the daughter of the house on the success of her coming-out +tea. + +"Then I must tell you, Miss Marlenspuyk," said the hostess, "that you +completely fascinated little Miss Peters." + +"She's a pretty little thing," the old maid returned, "with excellent +manners. That comes with the blood, I suppose; she told me she was a +granddaughter of the Bishop, you know. She isn't like so many of the +girls here, who take what manners they have out of a book. They get them +up overnight, but she was born with them. And she has the final sign of +breeding, which is so rare nowadays--she listens when her elders are +talking." + +"Yes," the hostess replied, "Pauline Peters has pleasant manners, for +all she is working on a newspaper now." + +"On a newspaper?" repeated Miss Marlenspuyk. "She told me she was +writing for her living, but she didn't say she was on a newspaper." + +"She said something about giving it up as she went out," the hostess +remarked; "but I shouldn't think she would, for she has been doing very +well. Some of her articles have made quite a hit. You know she is the +'Polly Perkins' of the _Daily Dial_?" + +"No," said Miss Marlenspuyk--"no, I didn't know that." + + + + +A LETTER OF FAREWELL + + +There had been a hesitating fall of snow in the morning, but before noon +it had turned to a mild and fitful rain that had finally modified itself +into a clinging mist as evening drew near. The heavy snow-storm of the +last week in January had left the streets high on both sides with banks +that thawed swiftly whenever the sun came out again, the water running +from them into the broad gutters, and then freezing hard at night, when +the cold wind swept across the city. Now, at nightfall, after a muggy +day, a sickening slush had spread itself treacherously over all the +crossings. The shop-girls going home had to pick their way cautiously +from corner to corner under the iron pillars supporting the station of +the elevated railroad. Train followed train overhead, each close on the +other's heels; and clouds of steam swirled down as the engines came to a +full stop with a shrill grinding of the brakes. From the skeleton spans +of the elevated road moisture dripped on the cable-cars below, as they +rumbled along with their bells clanging sharply when they neared the +crossings. The atmosphere was thick with a damp haze; and there was a +halo about every yellow globe in the windows of the bar-rooms at the +four corners of the avenue. More frequent, as the dismal day wore to an +end, was the hoarse and lugubrious tooting of the ferryboats in the East +River. + +Under the steps of the stairs leading up to the aerial station of the +railroad overhead, an Italian street vender had wheeled the barrow +whereon he proffered for sale bananas and apples and nuts. At one end of +this stand was the cylinder in which he was roasting peanuts, and which +he ground as conscientiously as though he were turning a hand-organ. A +scant quarter past six o'clock it might have been, when he opened his +fire-box to throw in a stick or two more of fuel and to warm his +stiffened fingers in the flame. The sudden red glare, glowing through +the drizzle, caught the eye of a middle-aged man who was crossing the +avenue. So insecure was his footing that this momentary relaxation of +his attention was sufficient cause for a false step. His feet slipped +from under him and he fell flat on his back, striking just below the +right shoulder-blade upon a compact mass of snow, hardened by the chilly +breeze, and yet softer than the stone pavement. + +The concussion knocked the breath out of him; and he lay there for a +minute almost, gasping again and again, wholly unable to raise himself. +As he struggled to get to his feet and to refill his lungs with air, he +heard a shop-girl cry, "Oh, Liz, did you see him fall? Wasn't it +awful?" And then he heard her companion respond, "I say, Mame, you ask +him if he's hurt bad." Then two men stepped from the sidewalk and lifted +him to his feet, while a boy picked up his hat and handed it to him. + +"That's all right," said one of the men; "there ain't no bones broke, is +there?" + +The man who had fallen was getting his breath back slowly. "No," he +panted, "there's nothing broke"--and he cautiously moved his limbs to +make sure. + +"Ye've knocked the wind out of ye," the other man returned, "but ye'll +get it again in a jiffy. Come into Pat M'Cann's here and have a drink; +that'll put the life into ye again." + +"That's it," agreed the man who had been helped to his feet--"that's it; +get me into Pat M'Cann's--they know me there--I can rest a bit--then +I'll be all right again in a little." He broke his sentences short, but +even thus he was able to speak only with effort. + +Taking him each by one arm, the two men helped him into the saloon +almost at the door of which he had slipped. They led him straight up to +the bar. + +"Good-evenin', Mr. Malone," was the barkeeper's greeting. "The boss was +after askin' for ye." Then seeing the ashen face of the new-comer, he +added, "It's not well ye're lookin'. What can I give ye?" + +The man addressed as Malone was plainly attired; his clothes were tidy +but shiny; his overcoat was thin, and it was now thickly stained down +the back by the slush into which he had fallen. The bronze button of the +Grand Army was in the buttonhole of his threadbare coat. + +He steadied himself by the railing before the bar. "Ye may give me--a +little whiskey, Tom," he said, still gasping, "and ask these +gentlemen--what they'll take." + +These gentlemen joined him in taking whiskey. Then they again assured +him he would be all right in a jiffy; and with that they left him +standing before the bar, and went their several ways. + +There was nobody else in the saloon, for the moment, as it chanced; and +Tom, the barkeeper, was able to give undivided attention to Mr. Malone. + +"It's sorry the boss'll be to hear of yer fallin' here at his door, an' +he not there to pick ye up," he remarked. "But ye'd better bide till he +comes in again. Ye'll not get your breath back so easy either--I've been +knocked out myself, an' I know--though it wa'n't no ice that downed me." + +"So Pat M'Cann wanted to see me, did he?" asked Malone, trying to draw a +long breath and finding it impossible, as the bruised muscles of his +back refused to yield. "Oh--well, then I'll sit me down here and wait." + +"There's yer old place in the corner," Tom responded. + +"I'll smoke a pipe," said Malone, moving away, "if I haven't broke it in +my fall. No; I've got it right enough," he added, taking the brier-wood +from the breast-pocket of his coat. + +As Malone was shuffling slowly forward towards a table in a corner of +the saloon, the street-door was pushed open and the owner of the barroom +entered--a tall man, with a high hat and a fur-trimmed overcoat. M'Cann +went straight to the bar. + +"Tom," he asked, "how many of those labor-tickets have I now in the +glass there?" + +Tom looked in a tumbler on the top shelf of a rack against the wall +behind him. "There's five of 'em left," he answered. + +"Barry M'Cormack will be in before we close and he'll ask ye for them, +and ye'll give him three of them," said the owner of the saloon. "Tell +him it's all I have. An' if Jerry O'Connor is here again wantin' me to +go bail for his brother in the Tombs, ye must stand him off. I don't +want to do it, ye see, an' I don't want neither to tell him I don't want +to." + +"An' what will I tell him, then?" asked the barkeeper. "Hadn't I better +say ye've gone to Washington to see the Sinator?" + +"Tell him what you please," responded M'Cann, "but be easy with him." + +"I'll do what I can," Tom promised. "Ye was askin' for Danny Malone +before ye went out. That's him now in the corner. It's a bad fall he had +out there on the ice. The drop knocked him out--but there's no bones +broken." + +"What I've got to tell him won't make him feel easier," returned M'Cann. +"But I'll get it over as soon as I can." And with that he crossed the +saloon to the farther corner, where Malone had taken his seat before a +little table. + +Looking up as M'Cann came towards him, Malone recognized the owner of +the saloon and tried to rise to his feet; but the suddenness of his +movement was swiftly resented by the strained muscles of his back, and +he dropped sharply on the seat, his face wincing with the pain, which +also took his breath away again. + +"Well, Dan, old man," said M'Cann, "so ye've had a bad fall, sure. I'm +sorry for that. Don't get up!--rest yerself there, and brace up." + +The tall frame of the saloon-keeper towered stiffly beside the bent +figure of the man who had had the fall, and who now looked up in the +face of the other in the hope of seeing good news written there. + +"Well, Pat," he began, getting his breath again, "I've had a fall--but +it's nothin'--I'll be over it--in an hour or two. I'm strong enough +yet--for any place ye can get me--" + +He had fixed his gaze hungrily on the eyes of the other, and he was +waiting eagerly for a word of hope. + +The saloon-keeper lowered his glance and then cleared his throat. He had +unbuttoned his overcoat and the large diamond in his shirt-front was now +exposed. + +Before he made answer to this appeal the elder man spoke again, +overmastered by anxiety. + +"Did ye see him?" he asked. + +"Yes," was the response, "I saw him." + +"An' will he do it for ye?" was the next passing question. + +"He'd do it for me if he could, but he can't," returned M'Cann. + +"He can't?" asked Malone. "An' why not?" + +"Because the appointment isn't his, he says," the saloon-keeper +explained. "He'd be glad to give the place to a friend of mine if he +could, he told me--but there's the civil-service. He's got to follow +that, he says, more by token that they raised such a row the last time +he tried to beat the law." + +"But I'm a veteran," pleaded the other, "I served my three years. The +civil-service has got to count that, hasn't it?" + +"Ye might be on the list this very minute, and it wouldn't do any good," +the saloon-keeper responded; "there's veterans to burn on the list now!" + +"My post will recommend me, if I ask 'em--won't that help?" + +"Nothing will help, he says," M'Cann explained. "It isn't a pull +that'll do ye any good, or I could get ye the job myself, couldn't I?" + +"There ain't no influence that'll help me, then?" was the elder man's +next question. + +"As I'm tellin' ye, I done what I could, and I don't believe any man in +the district couldn't do more," the saloon-keeper answered. "He says +he'd rather give ye the job than not, but he can't. He's got to take the +civil-service man." + +"Then there ain't nothin' else you can do?" asked Malone, hopelessly. + +"I'd do anythin' I could," M'Cann replied. "But I don't see nothin' more +to be done. That dog won't fight, that's all. The jig's up, there ain't +no two ways about it. Of course, if I hear of anythin' else I'll tell +ye--and I'll get it for ye, if I can. But it's been a pretty cold winter +for the boys, so far; you know that well enough." + +The other said nothing; his head had fallen, and his eyes were staring +vacantly at a box of sand across the saloon. + +The saloon-keeper drew a breath of relief that the interview was over. + +"Well," he said, turning away, "I must be goin' now. I've got to see the +new man who's got that contract for fillin' in up on the Harlem." + +"Don't think I ain't beholden to you, Pat," Malone declared, raising his +head again. "Ye know I am that, and I know ye've done yer best for me." + +"I did that," M'Cann admitted, taking the hand the other held out; "an' +it's better I hope I can do some other time, maybe." + +With that he shook Malone's hand gently and left the saloon, calling to +the barkeeper as he passed, "I'll be back in an hour, if there's anybody +wants me. An' make Danny Malone as comfortable as ye can. It's a bad +shock he's had." + +As the owner of the saloon left it three customers came in, and were +served, and tossed off their drinks standing, and went out again; and +the dank night-air was blown in as they swung open the outer door. + +Then the barkeeper went down to the corner where Malone was sitting, +with his pipe in his fingers, unlighted and unfilled, gazing fixedly at +vacancy. + +"Mr. Malone," he said, "is it better ye're feelin' now? Have ye got yer +breath again?" + +"Yes, yes," answered Malone, rousing himself, "I'm better now." And he +tried to rise again; and again he sat down suddenly, seized with +muscular pangs. "I'm better--but I'd best--stay here a while yet--I'm +thinking." + +"That's it," responded Tom, cheerfully, "get a rest here. Let me fill +yer pipe for ye. There ain't nothin' so soothin' as a pipe, I don't +think. An' I don't believe a drop of old ale would hurt ye, would it +now?" + +Five minutes later Dan Malone had his pipe alight in his mouth and a +glass of ale before him on the table. He drank the liquid slowly, +barely a mouthful at a time; and he smoked irregularly also, scarcely +keeping the pipe alight. He sat there by himself, limp on the seat, with +his last hope washed out of him. + +Half an hour afterwards the saloon happened again to be empty, and +seeing the barkeeper at liberty, Malone asked for the loan of an +inkstand and a pen, and for a sheet of paper and an envelope. When the +table had been wiped off, and these things were placed on it before him, +he ordered another glass of ale, and he filled his pipe again. + +After he had taken a sip or two of the ale and pulled four or five times +at the pipe, he squared himself painfully to the task of writing. + +First, he addressed the envelope to "Hon. Terence O'Donnell, Assembly, +Albany"; then he thrust this on one side to dry, and began on the letter +itself. His handwriting was more irregular than usual; it had always +been cramped and straggling, but now it was shaky also. + + + "FRIEND TERRY,--Ime writing you this at Pat M'Canns, and its the + last letter you will ever have from me. I slipped at the corner + here and I fell flat on my shoulders and I knocked all the wind out + of me like I was a shut bellows. I aint got it back yet. I will + never have any strength again. Ime only fifty, but I had three + years in the Army of the Potomac; and fighting and sleeping in the + swamp and laying out all day and all night with a wound in your + leg--thats fun you got to pay for sooner or later. Ime paying for + mine now. Ime feeling very old to-night and old men ain't no good. + If Ide been younger I doubt Mary would have shook me for Jack. Your + young yet Terry and you got a good wife, God Bless her, and youll + thrive, for your square and a good friend. But you wont never know + what it is to have the woman you loved shake you. That hurts and it + hurts just as hard even if it is your brother she marries. Jacks + only my half brother you know but it hurt all the same. Mary + married him and hes never forgive me for the wrong he did me then. + And Mary she sides with him. Thats natural enough I suppose--hes + the father of her children--but that hurts too. Hes been doing me + dirt all this winter. I know it but I aint never let on. Now I + caught him setting the kids against me too. And theyve been + friendly, both of Marys kids have. The one named for me is a good + boy and, Terry, if you can give him a helping hand any day do it + for my sake. Ime going to pawn my watch when I leave here to buy a + pistol with. But Ill put the ticket in the envelope with this, and + some day when your feeling flush I wish you would take it out and + give it to little Danny. I always meant him to have it. + + "I ask you now for this is the last letter I will write you and I + wont never see you again. Ime smoking the last pipe I will ever + smoke and Ive drunk half of my last glass of beer. I shall think of + you when I finish it, and it will be drinking your health and + Maggies and the baby boy your expecting. + + "Ime going to quit. Ime tired, and I aint never felt so old as I do + since I had that fall an hour ago. It knocked more out of me than + wind. I was thinking Pat M'Can here could get me a job, but he cant + for fear of the civil service. So its time I quit for good and all. + Ime going to put up my watch and get a gun. Then Ime going up to + Jacks. Mary cant refuse me a bite. Its little enough to give me Ime + thinking and its the last time Ile ask it too. The kids are going + out to a party--a sunday school party it is. Ile see them all once + more, and Ile say good-by to them. After supper when the kids are + gone I will get out the pistol and I will put the bullet where it + will do most good. May be Jack will be sorry when its too late may + be Mary will too. I dont know. If they had treated me white first + off, I woodent need to buy no gun now. + + "Good-by now, Terry, and God Bless you all. Its time I was going + along to Marys if I want to see the kids again. + +"Your old friend + +"DAN MALONE." + + + +When he had made an end of the letter he had a pull or two at his pipe, +and then he finished his beer. He took up what he had written and read +it over carefully to see if he had said all that needed to be said. +Satisfied, he folded it and tucked it inside the envelope. After four or +five whiffs more his pipe was smoked out. He emptied it on the table +with a sharp rap, and methodically put it back in the breast-pocket of +his coat. + +Then he raised himself to his feet slowly and carefully, not knowing +just what bruised muscle he might chance to stretch by an inadvertent +gesture. He shuffled across to the bar and paid for his drinks, and +asked the barkeeper if there was a stamp to be had. As it happened, Tom +was able to give him one, which he stuck on the corner of the envelope. + +"Say, Mr. Malone," asked the barkeeper, "ye don't want no tickets for +the Lady Dazzlers' Coterie Mask and Civic Ball, to-night, do ye? It's +goin' to be the most high-toned blow-out they ever had." + +"I'm not goin' to balls any more," Malone answered, "I'm too old now." + +Buttoning his thin overcoat tightly across the chest, he held out his +hand to Tom, to the barkeeper's great surprise. + +"Good-bye," he said, "Good-bye. Maybe I won't see you again, Tom." + +"Good-bye, Mr. Malone," Tom answered. "But ye'll be better in the +mornin,' I'm thinkin'." + +"Yes," the elder man repeated, "I'll be better in the mornin'. Yes; I'm +goin' to make sure of that, to-night." + +When he opened the outer door of the saloon the damp moisture suddenly +filled his lungs and he choked, but he dared not cough, as the strained +muscles of his side warned him. + +Two doors above the saloon was a pawnbroker's office, with the three +golden balls hanging over the door, and with the unredeemed pledges +offered for sale in the broad window. Into this store Malone made his +way, glad to get out of the dank air, if only for a moment. + +In perhaps five minutes he came forth holding in his hand the envelope +addressed to the Honorable Terence O'Donnell. He paused on the threshold +of the pawnshop and, by the light of the gas-jets in its window, he put +the pawn-ticket into the letter and then closed it. In the large +right-hand pocket of his thin overcoat there was something that had not +been there when he entered the pawnbroker's--something irregular in +shape; it was the revolver he had bought with the money advanced on his +watch. + +He turned down the avenue again, for there was a letter-box on the +lamp-post at the corner occupied by M'Cann's saloon. The store between +the pawnbroker's and the barroom was an undertaker's; and Malone, +walking slowly past, saw in the window a little coffin, lined with white +satin. + +"It'll take a bigger one than that for me," he said. "To-night's +Friday--they'll be havin' the funeral on Sunday." + +At the corner he dropped the letter into the box on the lamp-post, just +as there came a weird shriek from an impatient tug in the river far +behind him. While he was waiting for a cable-car a lame newsboy limped +up to him and proffered the evening papers with a beseeching look. +Malone felt in his pocket and found only two coins, a nickel and a +quarter. He gave the quarter to the newsboy. Then he lifted himself +painfully on the rear platform of a cable-car, and handed the nickel to +the impatient conductor. The car clanged forward again; and soon the +halo about its colored lamp faded away in the murky distance. + +(1895.) + + + + +A GLIMPSE OF THE UNDER WORLD + + +It was a little dinner indeed, a dinner for eight only; and it was given +one evening in March, in a spacious and handsome dwelling in Madison +Avenue, high up on the slope of Murray Hill. The wide dining-room was at +the rear of the house, and it had a broad butler's-pantry extending into +the yard behind. The large kitchen was under the dining-room; and under +the butler's-pantry was a room of the same size which the servants used +as a parlor. In one corner of this sitting-room for the domestics was +the dumb-waiter which connected with the pantry above, and in another +corner was a spiral staircase which allowed the butler to descend +swiftly to the kitchen in case of emergency. There was a table near the +window of this servants' parlor, with a battered student-lamp on it; and +around the table were grouped three or four chairs. + +A whistle sounded gently in the kitchen, and the Swedish cook walked +leisurely to the speaking-tube and whistled back. Then she listened, and +heard the butler say, "They're all here now; I've got the oysters on the +table, and I'm a-goin' in now to announce dinner to the madam. So you +get that soup ready--do you hear?" + +The cook did not deign to make any direct reply, but, as she left the +speaking-tube and went back to the range, she said, loud enough to be +heard by the servants in the sitting-room adjoining, "As though I did +not know anything! I will never have another place if a black man is +butler." + +In the room under the pantry a sharp, wiry boy was grinning. "They're +allus havin' spats, ain't they, them two? If I was Cato I wouldn't let +no Dutch cook sass me, even if I was a nigger, would you?" + +"Who is this young cub, when he's at 'ome?" asked the clean-shaven, +trim-looking young British valet. + +"He's Tim," answered the Irish laundress. + +"I'm Tim," said the boy, indignantly, "that's who I am, and I'm as good +as you are, too, for all you belong to a lord! And you needn't put on no +frills with me, neither, for when I'm a year or two older I can lick +ye!--see?" + +"Don't ye mind the boy, Mr. Parsons," the Irish girl intervened. "He's +no call here at all, at all. He'd run of an errand belike in the mornin' +and does be sthrivin' to make himself useful. That's why they kept him +here the night." + +"I've got just as good a right here as he has," the boy declared, "and +he doesn't come here after you either, Maggie--you're not his steady. +It's that French Elise he is sparkin'." + +"An' greatly I care if he is! Sparkin', in truth! Bad cess to yer +impidence," said the pleasant-faced laundress, drawing herself up. "A +man, is it? It's lashins and lavins of men I could have if I'd a mind." + +Fortunately the cook called Tim at this juncture and gave him a chore to +do; and so left the Irish girl and the young Englishman alone. + +The valet had been standing until then with his hat and cane in his hand +and his overcoat across his arm. Now he laid these things on the table +and took his seat by the side of the comely Irishwoman. + +"Mam'zelle," he began, "is a French girl, of course, and I never could +abide a foreign lingo. Now it's a pleasure for me to hear you talk, Miss +Maggie." + +"Ah, do be aisy, now, Mr. Parsons," she returned, coquettishly. + +"It's gospel truth," he rejoined. "I enjoy talkin' to you. You keep your +eyes wide open and can always tell me what's goin' on!" + +"Troth, can I?" replied the laundress. "I know which ind of the egg the +chicken'll be after chippin'--every time." + +"Then tell me who's dinin' 'ere to-night," the valet asked. + +Before she could answer the whistle sounded faintly again, and the cook +immediately brought in the green-turtle soup in the handsome silver +tureen, and sent it up on the dumb-waiter. Then she returned at once to +the kitchen. + +"It's not a big dinner," the Irishwoman explained. "There's only eight +of them. There's us three, isn't there?--Mr. and Mrs. Van Allen and Miss +Ethel. Then there's your lord--and I'll go bail it's Miss Ethel he's +after now? He'll be the lucky man if he gets her, too; it's a sweet +angel she is." + +"She won't be so unlucky to 'ave 'im neither," the Englishman returned, +"mark that! She'll be Lady Stanyhurst, won't she? And my lord is a fine +figure of a man, too!" + +"Sure it isn't under the skin of any man that ever stepped to be worthy +the likes of Miss Ethel!" said Maggie, looking at Parsons out of the +corner of her eye. + +"There ain't any girl in the States 'ere that wouldn't be proud to 'ave +my lord," the valet retorted. "There's lots of 'em settin' their caps +for 'im now. He can 'ave 'is pick, 'e can." + +"The sorra cap Miss Ethel'll set for him or any man," the laundress +declared. "The boy that wants her'll have to court her." + +"I 'ave reason to believe that the marriage is arranged," Parsons +asserted. "I 'ope--" then he paused, and with an effort he went on +again: "I hope that 'er father is a warm man? He's good to give the girl +a plum at least, I 'ope? We couldn't throw ourselves away on a girl who +'adn't a plum, you know." + +"An' what might a plum be?" asked Maggie. + +"A plum," the young Englishman explained, "is a 'undred thousand +pounds--'alf a million dollars, isn't it?" + +"It's a whole million Mr. Van Allen can give Miss Ethel," Maggie said, +"and more, too, if he wanted to. By the same token, they do be after +tellin' me he has one big building down-town somewhere--I don't +know--where the tenants pay him a hundred thousand dollars a year; an' +they pay it, too, regular, an' nivver an eviction from one year's end to +the other." + +The whistle shrilled out again, and the cook made haste to place on the +dumb-waiter the dish containing the fillets of sea-bass. + +A few minutes later Mlle. Elise, the French maid of Miss Van Allen, +entered the servants' sitting-room, and was cordially greeted by Mr. +Parsons. It appeared that the Frenchwoman had been detained in Mrs. Van +Allen's room relieving the guests of their wraps. + +"Zat ole maid, Miss Marlenspuyk--what devil of name it is--" said Elise, +"she is a true grande dame; but that Mistress Playfair--oh! I cannot +suffer her! She is--how you say--made up? stuck up?" + +"It's both stuck up and med up she is," the Irish laundress declared. +"She's that painted her own mother wouldn't know her. An' as for stuck +up, her manners is that bad there isn't none of her girls will stay in +her house the second month; they gets their bit of money and they goes. +Sure my brother is coachman there, and it's seven years he's had the +place." + +"How can he rest zere," asked the French maid, "if she is so stuck up?" + +"Ah, my brother is a steady lad, and they get on very well," Maggie +returned. "He knows his place, and she knows her place, too. She never +says nothin' to him, and he never says nothin' to her. An' it's a good +job he has, an' he don't mean to let go of it. He keeps a still tongue +in his head, Danny does; but there's months when, with his wages and +with his board-wages and with what he makes on the feed, the place is +worth more than a hundred dollars to him." + +"It's as much as a man's place is worth sometimes to accept the +commission you're entitled to," the valet remarked. + +"Ah, but Danny's the boy!" the laundress responded, shrewdly. "It's too +much he knows about Mrs. Playfair for him to lose the job; trust him for +that! As long as he wants that place he can have it an' welcome; she +won't never say nothin' to him." + +"Is she a widow or is she divorced, zis Mistress Playfair?" asked the +French maid. + +"She's the wan an' the other," said the laundress, with a laugh. "Mr. +Playfair, he took and died a week after the trial, barrin' a day." + +"What's this I 'ear about your Mr. Van Allen and Mrs. Playfair?" Parsons +inquired. + +"Is there anything between them, do you think?" + +The whistle was heard again, and the cook passed before them with a +saddle of mutton; and for the moment the valet's question remained +unanswered. + +"Who is it they have to dinner, after all?" the laundress inquired. +"There's our three and your lord and Miss Marlenspuyk and Mrs. +Playfair--but that's sure only six. There was to be eight all out, I'm +thinkin'. It's two more men they must have." + +"I heard his lordship say that he expected to meet the Lord Bishop of +Tuxedo," the Englishman remarked. + +"And madame say zat ze judge would be here," said the French maid. + +"Judge Gillespie?" asked the valet, with a certain interest. + +"Yes," the Frenchwoman answered, "the Judge Gillespie. What does that +make to you zat you jump like zat?" + +"Oh, nothin', nothin' at all," returned Parsons, settling himself back +in his chair with a snigger. + +"Out with it!" cried the Irish girl. "Don't be grinnin' all night there +like a stuck pig! Out with it--I see it's on the end of your tongue." + +"But yes--but yes," urged the maid, "what is it you have to laugh?" + +"Really," the valet began, "I don't know that I ought to say anything +'ere in this 'ouse, you know--house, I mean. But I 'ave been told that +this 'ere Judge Gillespie is a very great friend of Mrs. Van Allen's. +Mind, I don't say there's anything wrong in it, you know. I only tell +you what I 'ave 'eard tell myself in society 'ere and there. You see +this ain't the only 'ouse I visit in New York, not by a long shot it +ain't. And knowin' I visit 'ere, why, naturally, you see, my other +friends tell me the news, you know--the news about the goin's on 'ere, +you know." + +The Irish laundress and the French maid looked at each other for a +moment, and then both laughed. + +"It's not outside they get the first news, is it?" the laundress +inquired. + +Apparently the maid was also going to make a remark, but she changed her +mind as the cook again came to the dumb-waiter with the dish of little +silver saucepans containing terrapin. + +The valet was somewhat puzzled by the failure of his two attempts to +open the family cupboard of the host and hostess for an inspection of +the skeletons it might contain. + +"I don't know how she has them seated at the table," Maggie declared. + +"Of course, his lordship took her in," the Englishman declared. "A earl +'as precedence of a judge or a bishop." + +"I'd like to have a look at that lordship of yours," the Irishwoman +said, as she rose to her feet. "I'll slip up the stairs there, and maybe +I can get a glimpse of 'em through the door an' no one a ha'p'orth the +wiser. Is it a young man your lordship is?" + +"His lordship is a young man yet," the valet replied. + +"I know what that means," the laundress answered. "If he's a young man +yet, I'll go bail he hasn't a hair between him an' heaven. An' to think +that our Miss Ethel here is to take up with a poor hairless cratur like +that. Well, well, there's no accountin' for tastes! Maybe I'll marry a +Dutchman myself one of these days." + +And with that she began to climb the spiral staircase in the corner of +the room. + +"What sort of a man is he, your milord?" asked the Frenchwoman. + +"He is not a bad sort at all," the Englishman answered. "Your young lady +might do worse than 'ave 'im, you know--have him, I mean. I won't say +but that 'e's been a bit fast in 'is time, you know; but that's nothin' +to her now, is it? 'E's sowed his wild oats long ago, and 'e's ready to +marry now and settle down." + +"He is zen--_defraichi_--how you say--worn? your milord?" the +Frenchwoman went on. "And mademoiselle is an angel of candor. Zey would +give her _le bon Dieu_ wizout confession." + +"Angel or no angel," returned Mr. Parsons, "there isn't any better catch +in the three kingdoms than 'is lordship to-day. 'E's a earl, isn't 'e? +And then there's the castle! Your young lady wouldn't be in a 'urry to +let 'im go if she'd only seen the castle, now!" + +"Mademoiselle has seen ze castle," was the answer. + +"Well, I'll be damned!" said the valet. + +"But yes," the French maid explained. "Last summer, in London, your +milord was presented to mademoiselle, and he began to make his court. +Fifteen days after, when we were at Leamington, mademoiselle and I, we +go see your castle." + +"It's a tip-topper now, ain't it?" he asked. "There's sometimes twenty +and thirty of us in the servants' 'all, and there's goin's on, and +larks, and all manner of sport. If this match comes off, now, between +'is lordship and your young lady, will you come with her or stay here +with her mother?" + +"Never of the life do I quit mademoiselle," the Frenchwoman responded. + +"Then I'll 'ope to 'ave the honor of introducin' you into the best +society at the castle whenever you come over," urged Mr. Parsons. + +The Irish laundress now began to descend the spiral stairs. The cook +also came into the room and went towards the dumb-waiter, carrying a +silver platter, on which shook and shone a dozen little jellied cones. + +"An' what might that be in thrimbles like that?" asked the Irishwoman, +with curiosity. + +"_Pate de foie gras en aspic_," the cook responded, curtly, sending up +the dish and then returning silently to the kitchen. + +"Patti's photograph?" repeated the laundress. "Do ye mind the impidence +of her, tellin' me a lie like that?" + +The English valet looked at the French maid and laughed. Then he +explained, patronizingly: + +"Patty de four grass, as we call it in French--not Patti's photograph. +It's a delicacy, and it's made of goose livers." + +"Then why couldn't that Dutch cook have said so?" the laundress asked, +indignantly. "I've as good a right to know about a goose as ever she +has. I misdoubt she was that poor where she came from they had never the +grass of a goose to their cabin." + +"Did you see 'is lordship?" asked the valet. + +"I did that," the Irish girl replied, "an' what did I tell you about +him? His head has grown through his hair! There's been good and bad +harvests since he was young, I'm thinkin'--and it's mighty quare he +looks about his eyes, too. It'll be a poor day for Miss Ethel when she +marries a bald-headed ould runt like that, for all he's a lord!" + +"Oh, I say, Miss Maggie; you must not speak so disrespectful of his +lordship," Parsons insisted; "really, now, you mustn't." + +"It's that Mrs. Playfair 'ud be the match for him, I'm thinkin'," said +Maggie. "It's a bold-faced creature she is, an' no more clothes on her +than ain't decent anyway. And then, how she looked at Mr. Van Allen and +then at the bishop; and how she talked--I'd no patience with her. Do ye +mind what it was I heard her say now?" + +"How could we know what you 'eard her say?" the valet responded, +impatiently. + +"Sure, amn't I tellin' ye?" the Irish girl returned. "She was talkin' to +the bishop, and she says, says she. 'The judge is a better man than you, +bishop,' she says, 'leastwise he makes more people happy,' she says. +'How so?' says the bishop, says he. 'This way,' she says; 'when you +marry a couple you make two people happy,' she says, 'an' when the judge +divorces a couple he makes four people happy,' she says. Miss Ethel and +the old lady with the white hair, they said nothin', but the rest of +them laughed." + +What further fragments of the conversation at the dinner-table up-stairs +Maggie had been able to gather during her brief visit to the +butler's-pantry could not then be made known to the other domestics, for +Tim came slouching into the sitting-room. + +"Say, Maggie," he began, "didn't you hear that ring at the bell? That's +your feller--I seen him. He's out at the gate now." + +"Is it the letter-man you mean?" asked Maggie, adjusting her hair as she +passed the looking-glass. + +"Ah, go on," returned Tim, impatiently, "what t'ell are you givin' us? +How many fellers do you want, say?" + +After Maggie had chased Tim out of the room, the Swedish cook went to +the dumb-waiter once more to send up the four smoking canvas-backs that +lay luxuriously on their cushions of fried hominy. + +The French maid and the English valet continued to chat, discussing +chiefly the personal peculiarities of the members of the households in +which they had served. His former masters Parsons was willing enough to +find fault with, but Lord Stanyhurst he seemed to think it a point of +honor to defend. Mrs. Van Allen the Frenchwoman had no high opinion of, +nor of Mr. Kortright Van Allen; but of their daughter, Miss Ethel Van +Allen, she could not say too much in praise. + +"I told that wild Irish girl that the marriage was arranged," said +Parsons, "and I'm sure I 'ope so with all my heart, for 'is lordship +needs money badly--I don't mind tellin' you, mam'zelle, 'e 'asn't paid +me my wages this six months, not that I'd demean myself by askin' for +them. But is it really settled, after all?--that's what I'd like to +know." + +"I zink so," the Frenchwoman responded; "you see, mademoiselle is not +happy here. Monsieur and madame are at drawn knives. Zey have not spoken +since two years." + +"Mr. and Mrs. Van Allen don't speak to each other?" asked Parsons, with +great interest. "But they must be speaking to each other there at dinner +now." + +"Oh, at dinner, yes," the French maid explained; "in the world, yes, zey +talk zemselves. But at ze house, never a word. Zat is so sad for +mademoiselle, is it not? It is not remarkable zat she marry herself with +anybody to get out of ze house." + +"Oh, ho!" rejoined the valet, "I see, I see! But if that's the way she's +been brought up, you know, I don't believe she will 'it it off with 'is +lordship." + +"If he makes her not happy, your milord--" began the maid, forcibly, +"but he must. He must render her happy, for she will have nobody to go +to after ze marriage except her husband." + +"Whatever do you mean by that?" asked Parsons, a little suspiciously. + +"I know what I mean," she responded. "Monsieur and madame only attend +till mademoiselle is married, and zen zey are divorced. Zey don't tell +me zat, no--but I know." + +"Yes," the valet admitted, "it ain't so very 'ard to find out a thing +like that." + +"And I know more yet," added the French maid. "I am not blind, am I? I +can see that two and two make four, is it not? Zen, I tell you zat after +ze marriage of mademoiselle, monsieur and madame are divorced, zat is +one zing. Zen madame will marry zat Judge Gillespie, and monsieur will +marry zat Madame Playfair--you see!" + +"That would be a rum start, now, wouldn't it?" was the only comment of +Parsons. + +At this moment the portly form of Cato, the black butler, was seen +descending the staircase in the corner of the room. + +As soon as the aged negro's white head was visible he paused, and +leaning over the light iron railing he addressed himself to the young +Englishman. + +"Misto' Parsons," he said, solemnly, "yo' lord knows a good thing when +he gets it, sah! He tasted my celery salad, and he said to Mrs. Van +Allen that he hadn't never eaten no better salad than that, sah, and I +don't believe he never did, neither!" + +So saying he slowly withdrew up-stairs again, as the cook advanced to +the dumb-waiter carrying the Nesselrode pudding. + +(1896.) + + + + +A WALL STREET WOOING + + +It had poured all the night before, and even now, at three o'clock in +the afternoon, the air had the washed clearness that follows a warm +rain. Fortunately the sun had shone forth before the church bells +summoned the worshippers to kneel in front of the marble altars, banked +high with scentless white flowers. It was Easter, and the first of April +also; and, furthermore, the first warm Sunday of the spring. So the +young men and maidens who clustered about the doors of the churches that +afternoon were decked out in fresh apparel--the young men in light +overcoats, and the maidens in all the bravery of their new bonnets. + +In the corner of one of the cable-cars which were sliding along under +the skeleton of the elevated railroad there sat a young man looking at +his neighbors with begrudging interest, and pulling at the ends of an +aggressive black mustache. Filson Shelby was not yet at home in the +great city, and he knew it, and he silently protested against it. He was +forever on the watch for a chance to resent the complacent attitude of +city folks towards country people. Yet the metropolis had so far +conquered him that his hat and his shoes and his clothes were city +made. + +It was six months now since the young Southwesterner had left his native +village, and already he thought that he knew New York pretty well, from +Harlem where he boarded to Wall Street where he worked. He was sure that +he was well informed as to the customs of New-Yorkers, although the +New-Yorkers changed their customs so rapidly that it was not so easy to +be certain about this. + +There were white flowers blossoming in the parlor windows of many of the +houses in Fifty-third Street, through which the cable-car was passing, +and as the car clanged around the curve and started on its way down +Seventh Avenue it grazed the tail of a florist's wagon, the box of which +was piled high with palms. Filson Shelby was aware that it was now a +practice of New-Yorkers to give one another potted plants at Easter. + +He had been told also that the habit no longer obtained of paying calls +on Sunday afternoon; and none the less was he on his way down to Wall +Street to take out for a walk the one girl in New York who seemed to him +to have the unpretending simplicity of the girls of the Southwest. What +did he care, he asked himself, whether or not it was fashionable to call +on girls Sunday afternoon? What right had the New-Yorkers, anyhow, to +assume that their way of doing things was the only right and proper +way? + +Having propounded these questions to himself, he answered them with a +smile, for he had a saving sense of humor, and even a tendency towards +self-analysis, and he had long ago detected his own pride in living in +New York. In his earliest letters home he had expressed his delight in +that he was now at the headquarters of the whole country; and he had +written these letters on broad sheets of paper bought in the German +quarter, and adorned with outline views of the sights of the city, +picked out in the primary colors. He had sent missives thus decorated +not only to his family and to his old friends, but even to mere +acquaintances of his boyhood, for whom he cared little or nothing, +except that they should know him to be settled in the metropolis. He +could not but suspect that if he were now to go back to the village of +his birth, he would seem as stuck-up to the natives as the New-Yorkers +had seemed to him the first few weeks he was in the city. + +The car slipped down Seventh Avenue, and stumbled into Broadway, and +sped along sometimes with a smooth swiftness and again with a jerky +hesitation. Gayly dressed family groups got on and got off, and the car +had almost emptied itself by the time it came to Madison Square. Filson +Shelby was greatly interested in the manners of two handsomely gowned +girls who sat opposite to him, and who did not know each other very +well. It struck him that one of them--the prettier of the two, as it +happened--was a little uneasy in the other's company, and yet pleased to +be seen with her. To his regret, both of them alighted at Grace Church, +leaving only half a dozen people in the long car as it started again on +its journey down-town. + +He set down the plainer of the two as a member of the strange society +known as the "Four Hundred," about which he had heard so much since he +had been reading the Sunday papers. If he were right in this ascription, +and if he were to judge by this sample, the girls of the Four Hundred +were not a very good-looking lot, for all they were so stylishly +dressed. It struck him, too, that this girl's manners were somehow +offensive, although he could not state precisely where the offence lay. + +He was glad that the one girl in New York whom he knew at all well had +the easy good manners which spring from a naturally good heart. She was +as well educated as the two girls who had just left the car; perhaps +better, for she was going to graduate from the Normal College in two or +three months; and yet she was unaffected and unassuming. As he phrased +it in his mind, "she didn't put on any frills." He could chat with her +just as easily as he used to talk to the girls who had gone to school +with him at home. And yet when he considered how unlike she was really +to these friends of his childhood he wondered why it was he and she had +got along so well, and his thoughts went back to the occasion of his +first meeting with her. + +The car was now speeding swiftly down Broadway, obstructed by no +carriages, no carts, no tracks, no wagons, and no drays. Below Astor +Place the sidewalks were as bare as the street itself was empty. The +shades were down in the windows of the many-storied buildings which +towered above the deserted thoroughfare, and the flamboyant signs made +their incessant appeals in vain. For a mile or more it was almost as +though he were being carried through the avenues of an abandoned city. +The one evidence of life, other than the cars themselves, was an +infrequent bicyclist "riding the cable slot" up from the South Ferry. If +only he had first arrived in New York in the restful quiet of a Sunday, +so the young Southwesterner found himself thinking, perhaps the +metropolis might not have seemed to him so overwhelming. As it was, it +had been a shock to him to be plunged suddenly into the vortex of the +immense city. + +A telegrapher in the little town near which he was born, Filson Shelby +had gone beyond his duty to oblige a New-Yorker who had chanced to be +detained there for a fortnight, and the New-Yorker had repaid his +courtesy by the proffer of a position as private operator in the office +of a Wall Street friend. The young man had accepted eagerly, having no +ties to bind him to his home; and yet he had felt desperately homesick +more than once during his first three months in New York. Indeed, it was +not until he had come to know Edna Leisler that he had reconciled +himself to the great town, which was so crowded, and in which he was so +alone. He was slow to form friendships, but he had made a few +acquaintances. + +It was one of these casual acquaintances who had taken him one day to +the top of an old office building not far from the Stock Exchange. Here +the janitor lived, and was allowed to use one of the rooms allotted to +him as a lunch-room. The janitor's wife was a good cook, and Filson +Shelby returned there again and again. One Saturday, when the room +happened to be more crowded than usual, the rawboned and ruddy Irish +girl was unable to serve everybody, and some time after he had given his +order Filson Shelby was waited upon by a young lady in a neat brown +dress. He was observant, and he saw a red spot burning on each cheek, +and he noted that the lips were tightly set. It seemed to him that she +was acting as waitress unwillingly, and yet at the same time that she +was doing it of her own accord. He did not like to stare at her, and yet +he could hardly take his eyes from her while she was in the room. She +was not beautiful exactly, for she was but a slim slip of a girl, and +she had coppery hair; and he had always been taught that red hair was +ugly. Yet something about her took his fancy; perhaps it was her +independent manner, perhaps it was rather her perky self-possession; +perhaps, after all, it was the humorous expression which lurked in her +eyes and at the corner of her mouth. + +He had lingered over his luncheon that noon as long as he could, and +then he was rewarded. The man who had first brought him there entered +and took a seat beside him. When the young lady in brown came for his +order the new-comer shook hands with her cordially, and called her "Miss +Edna." + +"She used to go to school with my sister," he explained to the young +Southwesterner. "She's up at the Normal College now, and I've never seen +her here in the dining-room before. But she has a holiday, and I suppose +she thought she ought to help her mother out. It's her mother who cooks, +you know--and boss cooking it is, too, isn't it?--real home sort of +flavor about it." + +Filson Shelby had still delayed his departure; and as Edna Leisler +brought bread and butter, and went back again to the kitchen, his +friend's chatter had streamed along. + +"Red-hot hair, hasn't she?" was the next remark. "If there was half a +dozen more of her you'd think it was a torchlight procession, wouldn't +you? But it suits her style, don't it? Fact is, she's the only +red-haired girl I ever saw I didn't hate at sight." + +It seemed as though he had expected Filson to respond to this, and so +the young Southwesterner hesitated, and cleared his throat, and +admitted that her hair was red. + +"Well, it _is_ just," the other returned. "I guess her barber has to +wear asbestos gloves, eh? But she's a good girl, Edna is, if she is a +brand from the burning. My sister used to be very fond of her, and I +like her myself, though she isn't in our set exactly. I'll introduce +you, if you like?" + +The cable-car now came to a halt sharply to set down passengers for +Brooklyn by way of the bridge, but Filson Shelby was wholly unconscious +of this. He was busy with the recollection of that winter day when he +had stood up with bashful awkwardness and had heard Edna Leisler say +that she was pleased to meet him. He had the memory also of the next +Saturday, when he had gone back to the little low eating-room under the +roof in the hope of seeing her again, and of the unaffected frankness of +her manner towards him when he met her on the stairway. + +He remembered how simply she had accepted his invitation to go to +Central Park to lunch on Washington's Birthday, the first holiday when +they were both free, and he remembered, too, what a good time they had +up there. It was on that Washington's Birthday that he had first found +out that in the eyes of some people red hair was not a blemish, but a +beauty. The omnibus in which they came down-town had been so crowded +that they were separated, and he heard one well-dressed man say to his +companion: "Did you ever see such stunning hair as that girl has? It is +like burnished copper--except when the sun glints on it, and then it's +like spun gold." + +Hitherto he had been willing to overlook her aggressive locks in +consideration of her good qualities, but thereafter he came rapidly to +accept the view of the well-dressed man in the omnibus, and to look upon +her red hair as a crown of glory. She did not seem any more attractive +to him than she did at first meeting, but he knew now that other men +might be attracted also. He wondered whether there were any other men +whom she knew as well as she knew him. It seemed to him that they had +taken to each other at the start, and they were now very good friends +indeed. But there was no reason why she should not have other friends +also. + +The current of his retrospection was not so sweeping that he could not +follow the course of the cable-car in which he was seated, and just then +he saw the brown spire of Trinity Church and heard the clock strike +three. He signalled to the conductor, and the car stopped before the +church door and at the head of Wall Street. + +As he stood looking down the crooked street, washed white by the rain +and looking clean in the April sunshine, he asked himself why he was +going to meet Edna Leisler--and especially why it was his heart had +slowed up at the suggestion that perhaps other men were as attentive to +her as he was. He was not in love with her, was he? That she had made +New York tolerable to him he was ready to admit, and also that he liked +her better than any girl he had ever met. But if he was jealous of her, +did not that prove that he loved her? + +These were the questions he propounded as he walked from Broadway to the +old building on the top floor of which the Leislers lived. When Edna +Leisler came down-stairs to meet him, with her new Easter hat, he knew +the answers to these questions; he knew that he would be miserable if he +were to lose the privilege of her society; he knew furthermore that he +had loved her since the first day he had seen her, even though he had +not hitherto suspected it. He knew also that he would never have a +better chance to tell her that he loved her than he would have that +afternoon; and while they were shaking hands he made up his mind that +before he took her back to her mother's he would get her promise to +marry him. + +With this resolve fixed, he took refuge in the commonplace. + +"Am I late?" he asked. + +"Five minutes," she answered. "I didn't know but what you were going to +April-fool me." + +"Oh, Miss Edna," he cried, "you know I wouldn't do that!" + +"I didn't think you would really," she laughed back. "And I felt sure I +could get even with you if you did." + +Thus lightly chatting, they came to the corner of Broad Street. + +"Shall we go down to the Battery?" he suggested, thinking that he might +find a chance there to say what was in his heart. + +"Yes," she assented; "it'll be first-rate to get a whiff of the salt +breeze. It's as warm as spring to-day, isn't it?" + +In front of the Stock Exchange, and for two or three blocks below, Broad +Street was absolutely bare, except for a little knot of men working over +a man-hole of the electrical conduit. The ten-story buildings lifted +themselves aloft on both sides of the street, without any evidence of +life from window or doorway; they were as silent and seemingly empty as +though they belonged to a deserted city of the plains. Bar-rooms in +cellars had bock-beer placards before their closed portals. On the glass +panel of the swing-door which admitted the week-day passer-by to the +Business Men's Quick Lunch there was wafered the bill of fare of the day +before, but the door itself was closed tight. So were the entrances to +more pretentious restaurants. + +But as Filson Shelby and Edna Leisler went on farther down-town, Broad +Street slowly changed its character. There were not so many office +buildings and more retail shops; there were a few wholesale warehouses; +there were even cheap flat-houses; and there were more signs of life. +Children began to fill the roadway and the sidewalks. There were boys on +tri-cycles, and there were Little Mothers pushing perambulators in which +babies lay asleep. There were girls on roller-skates; and one of these, +a tall, lanky child, had a frolicsome black poodle, which pulled her +quickly along the sidewalk. + +Seeing some of these things, and not seeing others, and being taken up +wholly by their own talk, the young Southwesterner and the New York girl +passed through Whitehall Street and came out on the Battery. They walked +to the edge of the water, and looked across the waves to the Statue of +Liberty holding her torch aloft. An Italian steamer full of immigrants +was just coming up from Quarantine. The afternoon was clear, after the +rain of the night before, and yet there was a haze on the horizon. The +huge grain-elevators over on the Jersey shore stood out against the sky +defiantly. + +A fringe of men and women sat on the seats around the grass-plots and +along the sea-wall. Many of the women had children in their arms or at +their skirts. Most of the men were reading the gaudily illustrated +Sunday newspapers; some of them were smoking. The sea-breeze blew +mildly, with a foretaste of warm weather. The grass-plots were +brownish-gray, with but the barest touch of green at the edges, and +there was never a bud yet on any of the skeleton trees. None the less +did every one know that the winter was gone for good, and that any day +almost the spring might come in with a rush. + +As Filson Shelby looked about him he saw more than one young couple +sitting side by side on the benches or sauntering languidly along the +winding walks, and he knew that he was not the only young fellow who +felt the stirring of the season. No one of the other girls was as +good-looking as Edna, nor as stylish; he saw this at half a glance. With +every minute his desire grew to tell her how dear she was to him, and +still he put it off and put it off. Once or twice when she spoke to him +he left her remark unanswered, and then hastily begged her pardon for +his rudeness. He did not quite know what he was saying, and he feared +that she must think him a fool. He was restless, too, and it seemed to +him quite impossible to ask her to marry him in such an exposed place as +the Battery. + +"Suppose we go up to Trinity Church?" he suggested. "It's always quiet +enough in the graveyard there." + +"Isn't it quiet enough here?" she asked, as they turned their footsteps +away from Castle Garden. + +"It isn't really noisy, I'll admit," he responded; "but I get mighty +tired of those elevated trains snorting along over the back of my head, +don't you?" + +She gave him a queer little look out of the corner of her eye, and then +she laughed lightly. + +"Oh, well," she replied, "if you think Trinity Church Yard is a better +place, I don't mind." + +Then her cheeks suddenly flamed crimson, and she turned away her head. + +They were now crossing the barren space under the elevated railroad, +and, as it happened, the young man did not see her swift blush. + +As they skirted the oval of Bowling Green the girl nodded to a +gray-coated policeman on guard over the little park. + +"Who's that?" asked the young man, acutely jealous, although he saw that +the officer was not less than fifty years old. + +"That's Mr. O'Rourke," she explained. "He's Rose O'Rourke's father. She +was graduated from the Normal College only two years ago, and then she +went on the stage. She's getting on splendidly, too. She played Queen +Elizabeth last year--and didn't she look it? I'm sure she's a great deal +handsomer than that old Queen was." + +"But that old Queen," he returned, "wasn't the daughter of a +sparrow-cop--that's what you call them, don't you?" + +"I don't call them so," she responded, "for I think it's vulgar to talk +slang." + +"But the boys do call a park policeman a sparrow-cop, don't they?" he +persisted. + +"The little boys do," she answered, "but I know Mr. O'Rourke doesn't +like it." + +"I can understand that," he replied. "If I had Queen Elizabeth for a +daughter, I think I should want to be a king myself." + +"Well," the girl went on to explain, "Rose did want him to give up his +appointment. She said she was earning enough for her father not to work. +But he wouldn't, for all she urged him. She's a kind girl, is Rose, and +not a bit stuck-up. She came up to the college last year and recited for +us. You should have heard her do 'Curfew shall not ring to-night'; I +tell you she was splendid." + +"I don't believe she did it any better than you could," he declared. + +"Oh, don't you?" she returned, heartily; "that's only because you didn't +hear her. And she was very nice to me, too. She complimented me on my +piece." + +"What did you speak?" he asked. + +"Oh, I always choose something fiery and patriotic. I spoke 'Sheridan's +Ride' first, and then, when the girls encored me, I spoke 'Old +Ironsides'--but I like 'Sheridan's Ride' best; and Rose O'Rourke said I +got more out of it than anybody she had ever heard. But then she always +was so complimentary." + +"I reckon she knows it's lucky for her you don't go on the stage," the +lover asserted. "It would be a cold day for her if you did. I haven't +seen her, but I'm sure she isn't such a good looker as you are!" + +"Thank you for the compliment," the girl answered. "If we weren't here +in Broadway, in front of Trinity Church, I'd drop you a courtesy. But +you wouldn't say that if you had seen her, for she's as pretty as a +picture." + +"Do you mean that she is as fresh as paint?" he asked. + +"That's real mean of you," she retorted, "for Rose doesn't need to paint +at all, even on the stage; she has just the loveliest complexion." + +"She's not the only girl in New York who has a lovely complexion," he +declared; and again the color rose swiftly on her cheek, and then as +swiftly faded. + +They had now come to the gates of Trinity Church, and they saw a little +stream of men and women pouring in to attend the afternoon service. + +"You must not be down on Rose," the girl said, as they turned away from +Broadway and began to ramble slowly amid the tombstones. "She's a good +friend of mine. She said she'd get me an engagement if I'd go on the +stage--" + +"But you are not going to?" he broke in, earnestly. + +"I'd love to," she answered, calmly. "But I'm too big a coward. I'd +never dare stand up before the people in a great big theatre and feel +they were all looking at me." + +"I'm glad you're not going to," he declared. + +"It would be too delightful for anything!" she asserted; "but I'd never +have the courage. I know I wouldn't, so I've given up the idea. I'll +finish my course at the college, and get my diploma, and then I'll be a +teacher--that is, if I can get an appointment. But it isn't easy if you +haven't any influence; and father doesn't take any interest in politics, +and he doesn't know any of the trustees of this district, and I can't +see how I'm ever to get into a school. Now Mr. O'Rourke could help me if +he wanted--" + +"The sparrow-cop?" interrupted the young Southwesterner. "Why, what has +he got to do with the public schools?" + +"Mr. O'Rourke has a great deal of influence in this ward, I can tell you +that," she returned. "He has a pull on more than one of the trustees. If +he were to back me, I'd get my position sure! And maybe I had better go +to Rose and ask her for her father's influence." + +They were now almost in the centre of that part of the church-yard which +lies above the church, and behind the monument to the American prisoners +who died during the British occupancy of New York. The afternoon service +was about to begin, and the solemn tones of the organ were audible where +they stood. + +It seemed to Filson Shelby that the time had come for him to speak. + +He swallowed a lump in his throat, and began. + +"Miss Edna," he said, hesitatingly, "why do you want to be a +school-teacher?" + +"To earn my living, to be sure!" she answered, calmly enough, although +the color was rising again on her cheeks. + +"But you don't need ever so many scholars to earn your living, do you?" +he asked, gaining courage slowly. + +"What do you mean?" she returned, forcing herself to look him in the +face. + +"I mean," he responded, "that I don't see why you couldn't earn your +living just as well by having only one scholar--" + +"Only one scholar?" she echoed. + +"Yes--only one scholar," he declared; "but you could take him for life. +And you could teach him everything that was good and true and +beautiful--and he would work hard for you, and try and make you happy." + +The color ebbed from her cheeks, but she said nothing. The low notes of +the organ were dying away, and on the elevated railroad just behind the +young couple a train came hissing along wreathed in swirling steam. + +"I'm not worthy of you, Edna; I know that only too well; but you can +make me ever so much better if you'll only try," he urged. "I love you +with my whole heart--that's what I've been trying to say. Will you marry +me?" + +She raised her eyes to his and simply answered, + +"Yes." + +An hour later, as they were going through the dropping twilight down +Wall Street to the old office building, on the top floor of which she +lived with her parents, they were still talking of each other, of their +united future, and of their separate past. + +When they came to the door and stood at the foot of the five flights of +stairs that led up to the janitor's apartment, they had still many +things to say to each other. + +What seemed to Filson Shelby most astonishing was that he should now be +engaged to be married, when that very morning he was not even aware of +his love for her. And being a very young fellow, and, moreover, being +very much in love, he could not keep this astonishing thing to himself, +but must needs tell her. + +"Do you know, Edna," he began, "that I must have been in love with you a +long while without knowing it? Isn't that most extraordinary? And it was +only this morning that I found it out!" + +Standing on the stairs above him, and just out of his reach, she broke +into a merry little laugh, and the tendrils of red hair quivered around +her broad brow. + +"What are you laughing at?" he asked. + +"Oh, nothing," she answered, and then she laughed again. "At least, not +much. It is only because men are so much slower to see things than women +are." + +"What do you mean?" he asked again. + +"Well," she returned, laughing once more, and retreating two or three +steps higher up the stairs, "I mean that you say you only found out this +morning that you were in love with me--" + +"Yes?" + +"Well," she continued, making ready for flight, "I found it out more +than two months ago." + +(1895.) + + + + +A SPRING FLOOD IN BROADWAY + + +As he came down the steps of his sister's little house, that first +Saturday in May, he saw before him the fresh greenery of the grass in +Stuyvesant Square and the delicate blossoms on its sparse bushes and the +young leaves on its trees; and he felt in himself also the subtle +influences of the spring-tide. The sky was cloudless, serene, and +unfathomably blue. The sun shone clearly, and the shadows it cast were +already lengthening along the street. The gentle breeze blew +hesitatingly. He heard the inarticulate shriek of the hawker bearing a +tray containing a dozen square boxes of strawberries and walking near a +cart piled high with crates. When he crossed Third Avenue he noticed +that a white umbrella had flowered out over the raised chair of the +Italian boot-black at the corner. A butcher-boy, with basket on arm, was +lingering at a basement door in lively banter with a good-looking Irish +cook. A country wagon, full of growing plants, crawled down the street +while the vender bawled forth the cheapness of his wares. + +There were other signs of the season at Union Square--the dingy landaus +with their tops half open, the flowers bedded out in bright profusion, +the aquatic plants adorning the broad basin of the fountain, the pigeons +wooing and cooing languidly, the sparrows energetically flirting and +fighting, the young men and maidens walking slowly along the curving +paths and smiling in each other's faces. To Harry Grant, just home from +a long winter in the bleak Northwest, it seemed as though man and nature +were alike rejoicing in the rising of the sap and the bourgeoning of +spring. It was as though the pulse of the strong city were beating more +swiftly and with renewed youth. Harry Grant felt his own heart rejoice +that he was back again amid the sights he loved, within a stone's-throw +of the house where he was born, within pistol-shot of the residence of +the girl he was now going at last to ask to marry him. + +It was nearly a year since he had last seen her, but he knew she would +greet him as cordially as she had always done. That Winifred was a good +friend of his he knew well enough; what he did not know at all was +whether or not the friendship had changed to love on her part also. He +could hardly recall the time when he had not known her. He could +distinctly remember the occasion when he had first told her that he +intended to marry her when he was grown up--that was on a spring day +like this, and he was seven and she was five, and they were playing +together in Gramercy Park while their nurses followed them slowly +around the enclosure. Now he was twenty-three and she was twenty-one; +and in all these sixteen years there had been no day when he had not +looked forward to their marriage. Of course, when he had grown to be a +big boy and had been sent away to boarding-school, he had been ashamed +to talk about such things. But when he went to college he had gazed +ahead four years and almost fixed on the day he intended to propose. + +Then his father had died, and the family affairs were left in +inexplicable confusion. His uncle had offered to pay Harry's way through +Columbia, but he was in a haste to be independent, to make his own path, +to have a position which he could ask Winifred to share. He found a +place at once in the office of a great dry-goods house; and he had been +so successful there that one of their customers had offered him +inducements to go out to a swiftly growing city in the new Northwest. +Two years had Harry Grant spent out there--two years of hard work amid +men who were all toiling mightily and who were capable of appreciating +his youthful energy. Now he was back again in New York to act as the +Eastern representative of the chief capitalist of the Northwestern city, +an old man, who liked Harry, and who saw how useful his address and his +character might be. The position was onerous for a man so young; but it +was honorable also, and the salary was liberal even from a New York +standpoint. At last he was again able to look at life from the point of +view of a New-Yorker. At last he was ready to ask her to share his life. + +He was in no hurry for the moment, as he could not make sure of finding +her at home until nearly five o'clock, and it was now barely four by the +transparent dial which Atlas bore on his back in the jeweller's upper +window on the opposite side of the square. He crossed Broadway at +Fourteenth Street, and there he was caught up at once and swept along by +the spring-flood rolling up from down-town that beautiful afternoon in +May. The windows of the florists' were lovely with Easter lilies and +fragrant with branches of lilac. The windows of the confectioners' were +gay with gaudy Easter eggs and with elaborate chocolate rabbits. Young +girls pressed giggling through the doors to stand packed beside the +soda-water fountains. Elderly men lingered at the street corners to +stare at the young women. + +Within an hour or two at the most Harry Grant intended to ask Winifred +to be his wife, and as he saw the dread question so close before him he +could not but wonder what the answer would be. Winifred liked him--that +much he felt sure about. Whether she loved him, even a little, that he +could not venture to guess. She had sturdy common-sense and she was +self-reliant, he knew well, and yet he could not help fearing that +perhaps the influence of her grandmother had been more powerful than he +wished. It was possible, of course, that the restless and ambitious old +lady had inoculated her young granddaughter with some of her own +dissatisfaction. + +As Harry's circumstances had changed since they were boy and girl +together, so had Winifred's. Her father had died also, and then her +grandfather, leaving a very large fortune to his widow, and Winifred had +gone to live with her grandmother, Mrs. Winston-Smith. (It was her +grandmother who had put the hyphen into the name, and who had insisted +on its adoption by the son and the granddaughter.) That Mrs. +Winston-Smith did not like him, Harry Grant knew only too well, or, at +least, that she did not approve of him as a possible suitor for the hand +of Miss Winston-Smith. She thought that her granddaughter ought to make +a brilliant marriage. She had been heard to say that in England Winifred +would have no difficulty in marrying a title. She had taken her +granddaughter to London the season before, and they had been presented +at court, to go afterwards on a round of country-house visits, returning +late to finish the summer at Lenox. + +All this Harry knew from the newspapers; but what Winifred had thought +of it all he did not know, for he had not seen her since the day before +her departure for England. And that interview itself had been in the +presence of the grandmother and of two or three casual callers. Really +he had not had chance of speech with the woman he had loved for three +years--ever since Mrs. Winston-Smith had asked him to dinner one night, +only to take him into the library and to tell him that she saw that he +was attracted by Winifred, and no wonder, but that he must give up the +hope of winning her. Mrs. Winston-Smith was some sixty-years old at the +time of this talk with Harry Grant, and she was a very stately dame, +with no lack of manner, but she could, if she chose, express herself +with absolute frankness and directness. On that occasion she had seen +fit to be perfectly plain-spoken. She had told him that Winifred had +been used to luxury and could not do without it, and that if Winifred +married against her wishes she would give all her money to the new +cathedral, cutting the girl off without a cent. She asked Harry if he +did not think it would be very selfish of him to press his suit when its +success would mean the misery of the woman he pretended to love. She +reminded him that his own income was meagre, and that he had no +prospects. If, then, Winifred had no money, how could she as his wife +have all the luxuries to which she was accustomed, and which had now +become necessities? Of course she did not admit that Winifred was in any +way interested in him. In fact, she hoped and trusted that the girl's +affections were in no way engaged; and she relied on Mr. Grant's good +sense and on his unwillingness to be so brutally selfish. After all, +Winifred was a mere child, and had seen nothing of the world as yet. + +Harry Grant had made no promises to Mrs. Winston-Smith, but he had felt +the force of some of her arguments. Plainly he had no right to ask the +woman he loved to give up everything for his sake; and as plainly he had +no wish to live on any money her grandmother might give her. He meant, +more than ever, to win her for his wife; but he saw clearly that he must +make himself independent first. To be able to give her a home not +unworthy of her he had worked hard all these years. At last he had +succeeded, and he was in a position to ask her to marry him without at +the same time asking her to surrender the most of the little comforts +which made her life easy. With the salary he had now he could make her +comfortable, even if her grandmother chose to take offence and cut her +off without a cent. There was no false pride about the young fellow, and +he did not pretend to himself that he did not care whether or not the +grandmother carried out her threat. He was well aware that life would be +very much pleasanter if Mrs. Winston-Smith should accept the situation +and make the best of it, and give her granddaughter an adequate +allowance. + +Then, as these thoughts ran through his head, he smiled at his own +fatuity in taking Winifred's consent for granted in this summary +fashion. What Mrs. Winston-Smith said or did mattered little. What was +of vital importance was Winifred's own answer to his question. He could +not but recognize that to call on a young lady after a year's separation +and to ask her in marriage, suddenly, without warning, was an unusual +proceeding. And yet that was just what he was going to do; and he found +himself musing over schemes for getting her away from her grandmother +and from any chance visitors. He tried to devise a means of luring her +into the library or of coaxing her into the conservatory. He cared not +how soon they might be interrupted; he knew what he had to say, and he +was prepared to say it briefly. Five minutes would be time enough--five +minutes, if he could but have them clear. When a man has been wanting +for years to be able to put a simple question, it ought not to take him +long to say the needful words; and he knew that Winifred would not keep +him waiting for his answer. Whether it was to be yes or no, she would +know her own mind, and be ready and willing to accept him at once or to +reject him with as little hesitation. + +He had been keeping pace with the throng that was sweeping massively +up-town, but as the fear seized him that, after all, he had little right +to think she might love him, he lengthened his stride in futile +impatience to get his answer sooner. He glanced up at Tiffany's clock, +then almost over his head, and he slackened his speed as he saw that it +was not yet five minutes past four. He had at least half an hour to wait +before he could hope to find her at home. + +Then, most unexpectedly, he was favored with fortune. The foremost of +the carriages drawn up in Fifteenth Street alongside the jeweller's was +a handsome coupe, in which a young lady was sitting alone. As Harry +Grant drew near to the corner his glance fell on this coupe, and at that +moment the young lady looked up. He saw that it was Winifred. As their +eyes met a swift blush bloomed in her face, and faded as speedily. She +smiled and held out her hand and laughed happily as he sprang to the +door of the carriage. + +"Winifred!" he cried. + +"Harry!" she answered. + +"I didn't expect to see you here!" he declared. + +"Is that the reason you are here, then?" she returned. + +He made no reply. He could not take his eyes from her. In his delight at +seeing her again he had nothing to say. + +"Well?" she asked, when she thought he had stared enough. + +"Well," he answered, "I couldn't help it. You are prettier than ever." + +Again a flush flitted across her face, fainter this time, and fleeting +sooner. + +"That's a very direct compliment, don't you think?" she retorted, +withdrawing her hand, which he had kept clasped in his own. "And you are +looking well, too. Your life out West there is good for you. I don't +wonder you prefer it to this noisy old New York of ours." + +"But I don't prefer it," he declared, hotly. "A week of New York is +worth a year of the whole wide West put together. And I've done with all +that now. I've come back here for good now--" + +"Have you really?" she responded, as he hesitated, having so much to say +that he did not know where to begin. + +"I got back this morning," he explained, "and I was coming to see you +this afternoon. I've--I've so many things to tell you." + +She looked at him for a second, and then she glanced away, as she said: +"You will have to talk very fast, then, if you have so many things to +tell me. We are going to sail on Tuesday morning, and this afternoon we +are off to Tuxedo for over Sunday." + +"You sail on Tuesday?" he cried, despairingly. "Just when I have come +back on purpose to see you again!" + +"You didn't telegraph grandma that you were coming, or she might have +made other arrangements," the young woman retorted, with a little laugh. + +[Illustration: "'WINIFRED!' HE CRIED"] + +"And if you are going to Tuxedo to-night," he continued, paying no +heed to this ironic suggestion, "then you won't be at home this +afternoon?" + +"No," she answered; "we shall be back just in time to dress and get away +to the train. Grandma has two or three errands to do first--she's inside +there arranging about some silver things she wants to take over with +us." + +"But I must see you to-day," he pleaded. + +"Aren't you seeing me now?" she returned, as the blush rose again and +fell. + +"But I've got something I want to say to you!" he urged. + +"Won't it keep till Monday afternoon?" she asked, with another light +laugh; but beneath the levity there was more than a hint of feeling. + +"No," he declared; "it won't keep an hour longer, for it's been kept too +many years already. I've come here on purpose to tell you something--and +I must do it to-day!" + +"If it's something you want to tell grand-ma--" she began, as if to gain +time. + +"But it isn't," he returned, leaning his head almost inside the open +window of the carriage. "It's you I want to talk to--not to your +grandmother." + +"Then," said she, with a subtle change of manner, "if it is something +you don't want grandma to hear, don't try to say it now, for here she +comes." + +Harry Grant gave a hasty glance behind him, and he recognized the +stately figure of Mrs. Winston-Smith in conversation with one of the +salesmen just inside the door of the great store. + +"Winifred," he said, pleadingly, taking her hand again, "where can I see +you again, if only for a minute--only a minute? That's enough for what I +want!" + +Winifred looked at him and then down at her fingers. She hesitated, and +finally she answered: + +"I think I heard grandma say she was going to the florist's before she +went home--that florist in Broadway near Daly's, you know. She has a lot +of things to order there, and I shall sit in the carriage." + +"I'll take the cable-car and be there waiting for you," he responded. + +"Don't let grandma see you," she cried; "that is--well--" + +Then she sank back on the cushions of the carriage, for Mrs. +Winston-Smith was about to leave the store. + +Harry Grant had caught sight of the old lady in time. He stepped away +from the carriage, and, passing behind it, crossed to the other side of +the street without giving Winifred's grandmother a chance to recognize +him. + +He waited on the opposite corner until Mrs. Winston-Smith took her place +in the coupe beside her granddaughter, and until the carriage was turned +and had started towards Fifth Avenue. + +Then he crossed the broad space nearly to the edge of the park and +jumped on the first car that came rushing around the curve. The platform +was crowded, but he took no heed of the men who were pressed against +him. + +His thoughts were elsewhere and his heart was full of hope; it was +attuned to the gladness of the spring-time. He did not see the young men +and maidens who flocked thickly up Broadway; he saw Winifred only; he +saw her face, her eyes, her smile of welcome. He was to see her again, +at once almost, and he could tell her then how he loved her, and he +could ask her if she would not try to love him. What if the only chance +he should have was in the street itself? Only the proposal itself was of +importance, the place mattered nothing. Perhaps the unconventionality of +the proceeding even added zest to it. There was unconventionality in the +frankness with which she had made the appointment. It was this frankness +partly which made his heart leap with hope, and partly it was the +welcome he thought he had read in her eyes when their glances met first. + +The car sped on its way, stopping at almost every corner to take on and +to let off men and women, who brushed against Harry Grant and whom he +did not see, so absorbed was he in going over every word of his brief +dialogue with the girl he loved. On the sidewalks were thick throngs of +brightly dressed women looking into the windows of the shops, where were +displayed brilliant parasols and trim yachting costumes and summer +stuffs in lightsome colors. + +As the car crossed Fifth Avenue he saw the carriage of Mrs. +Winston-Smith only a block away. He recognized the coachman upright on +the box, and then all at once he wondered what the coachman must have +thought of his talk through the open window, and of his abrupt +appearance. He smiled--indeed he laughed gently--for what did he care +what the coachman might think, or anybody else? It was what she thought +which was of importance, and nothing else mattered at all. And again he +was seized with impatience to see her once and to tell her that he loved +her, and to get her answer. The car was going swiftly, but it seemed to +him to crawl. The coachman on the avenue was driving briskly, but Harry +Grant was ready to rebuke the man for his sluggishness. + +At last the car passed the door of the florist's Winifred had described. +Its window was filled with azaleas massed with an artistic instinct +almost Japanese. Harry Grant rode to the corner above and walked back +very slowly, loitering before a shop window, but wholly unconscious of +the spring neck-wear therein displayed. Two minutes later he saw Mrs. +Winston-Smith's carriage coming down Twenty-ninth Street. It turned into +Broadway and stopped before the florist's wide window. Mrs. +Winston-Smith got out and ordered the coachman to wait at the corner. + +She had disappeared inside the florist's before the coupe drew up in the +side street. + +As the coachman reined in his horses Harry Grant stepped up to the open +window. + +"Winifred--" he began. + +"Oh!" she cried, "you are here already?" and again the blush crossed her +face. + +"Winifred," he repeated, leaning his head inside the carriage, "I may +have only a minute to say what I have to say, and I know this isn't the +right place to say it, either, but I have no choice, for I may not have +another chance. I have waited so long that I simply must speak now." + +He paused for a moment. She said nothing, but she rubbed the back of her +glove as though to wear away a speck of dirt. + +"Winnie," he went on, "what I want to say is simple enough. I love you. +Surely you must know that?" + +"Yes," she answered, raising her eyes to his, "I know that." + +"Then it's easier for me to go on. You know me; you know all about me; +you know all my faults, or most of them anyway; you know I love you. Do +you think you could ever love me a little in return? I will try so hard +to deserve it. I've been working ever since I was seventeen to make +money enough to be able to ask you to marry me. I've got a good position +now, one that I'm not ashamed to ask you to share. Will you? Will you +marry me, Winnie?" + +Before she could make any answer, Harry Grant heard the voice of Mrs. +Winston-Smith behind him saying to the coachman, "Home!" + +He stepped back and found himself face to face with her. + +"It's Mr. Grant, isn't it?" she said, with a haughty inclination of her +head. "It's very good of you to amuse Winifred while I was in the shop. +I'd ask you to come and have a cup of tea with us, but we are off to +Tuxedo. And we sail on Tuesday; perhaps Winifred told you." + +She stood there, expecting him to open the carriage door for her. It was +the least he could do, and he did it. But he could find no words to +respond to her conventional conversation. He looked at Winifred, and he +saw that the color was deepening on her cheeks, and that her eyes were +very bright. + +"Grandma," she said, when at last Mrs. Winston-Smith was seated beside +her--"Grandma," she repeated, loud enough for the young man to hear as +he stood by the open window, "Harry has asked me to marry him--and you +came out just before I had time to tell him that I would!" + +(1895.) + + + + +THE VIGIL OF McDOWELL SUTRO + + +For the third time that afternoon the young man stood before the window +of the post-office to ask the same question and to receive the same +answer: + +"Has any letter come for McDowell Sutro?" + +"No." + +This time he persisted, for he could not take no for an answer at that +late hour of the day. + +"Are you sure?" he asked, urgently. + +"Certain sure," was the answer that came through the window. + +"Will there be another mail from California to-night?" he inquired, +clutching a last hope. + +"Not to-night," responded the clerk. + +The young man stood there for a second, staring unconsciously into the +window, and not seeing anybody or anything. Then he turned slowly to go. + +The clerk knew that look on the face of men who asked for letters, and +he had a movement of kindness. + +"Say, young feller!" he called, brusquely. + +McDowell Sutro faced about instantly, with a swift flash of hope. + +"If you're expecting money in that letter, maybe it's registered," +suggested the clerk. "Ask over there in the corner." + +"Thank you," the young man answered, gratefully; and he walked to the +window in the corner with expectation again lighting his face. + +But there was no registered letter for McDowell Sutro, and there could +none arrive before the next morning. And as the handsome young +Californian left the post-office he knew that he had hardly a right even +to hope that the letter he was asking for should ever arrive. + +He stepped out on Fifth Avenue; and though a warm June wind blew balmily +up from Washington Square, his heart was chill within him. He shivered +as he wondered what he was to do now. He knew no one in New York, and he +had not a cent in his pocket. + +In his youth he had expected to inherit a fortune, and so he learned no +trade and studied no profession. He had taught himself how to be idle +elegantly; he had never planned how to earn his own living. Perhaps this +was the reason why he had failed to find any work to do during the two +gliding weeks since he had suddenly been brought face to face with his +final ten-dollar bill. + +He had no more resources than he had friends. His trunk, with the little +clothing he owned, was still at the boarding-house he had left ten days +before; it was held by the landlady till he paid her what he owed. His +modest jewelry had been pawned, bit by bit. + +It was now about seven in the evening, and he had had no food since the +coffee and cakes taken perhaps twelve hours earlier, and bought with the +last dime left him after he had paid for his night's lodging. Having +walked all day, he was weary and hungry, and he had no idea how he could +get a roof over his head once again or fill his stomach once more. He +had heard of men and women starving to death in the streets of New York, +and he found himself inquiring if that were to be his fate. + +Not guiding his steps consciously, he went up Fifth Avenue to the corner +of Fourteenth Street, and then turned towards Broadway. The long June +day was drawing to an end. Behind his back the red sun was settling down +slowly. The street was crowded with cars and with carts; and people +hurried along, eager to be with their families, and giving no attention +to the homeless young man they brushed against. + +When he came to Broadway it seemed to him as though the rush and the +tumult redoubled, and as though the men and the women who passed him +were being tossed to and fro by invisible breakers. The roar of the city +rose all about him; it smote on his tired ears like the deafening crash +of the surf after a northeaster. He likened himself to a spent swimmer +about to have the life beaten out of him by the pounding of the waves, +and certain sooner or later to be cast up on the beach, a stripped and +bruised corpse. + +So vividly did he picture this that involuntarily he straightened +himself and drew a long breath. He was a good-looking young fellow, with +a graceful brown mustache curling over his weak mouth. As he stood +there, erect as though ready to fight for his life, more than one woman +passing briskly along the street let his figure fill her eye with +pleasure. + +The cable-cars whisked around the curves before him, and beyond them he +beheld the green fairness of Union Square. The freshness of its foliage +as he saw it through the darksome twilight attracted him. He crossed +cautiously, keeping a sharp lookout for the cars, and smiling as he +noted how careful he was of his life, now he did not know how he was to +sustain it. + +As he stood at last in the verdant oasis in the centre of the square, +suddenly the electric light whitewashed the pavement, and his unexpected +shadow lay black and sprawling under his feet. He looked up, startled, +and he saw the infinite arch of the sky curving over him--clear, +cloudless, and illimitable. The faint sickle of the new moon hung low on +the horizon. A towering building thrust its thin height into the air, +and the yellow lights in its upper windows seemed like square panels +inlaid in the deep blue of the sky. The beauty of the moment lifted him +out of his present misery, and he was glad to be alive. The plash of the +fountain fell on his ears and charmed them. The broad leaves of the +aquatic plants swayed languidly as a gentle breeze blew across the +surface of the water. + +With a sigh of relief, McDowell Sutro dropped upon one of the park +benches. Until he sat down he did not know how tired he was. His feet +ached, and his stomach cried for food. And yet he was stout of heart. +"If I've got to spend a night _a la belle etoile_," he said to himself, +"I could have no better luck. There are beautiful stars a-plenty this +evening. It's like that night in Venice when Tom Pixley and I took the +two Morton girls out in our gondolas, and their aunt couldn't find us. I +remember we had had a good dinner at Florian's, with an immense dish of +_risotto milanese_--so big we had to leave some. I wish I had the chance +again. I could finish it now if it was twice as much." + +Over on Fourth Avenue, behind the equestrian statue of George +Washington, there was a Hungarian restaurant, and from his bench at the +edge of the grass McDowell Sutro could see the table right in the window +at which an old man and a young woman were having dinner. He could +follow every movement of their hands; he could count every mouthful they +ate. At last he could bear it no longer, and he changed his seat to a +bench nearer Broadway. Here he found himself facing another eating-room, +in the broad windows of which many kinds of food were alluringly +displayed. Men came out and lingered in the door-way long enough to +light a cigarette. + +When McDowell Sutro noted this, the craving for tobacco seized him. A +smoke would not stay his stomach, but it would be a solace none the +less. He rose to his feet and felt in all his pockets, in the vain hope +that his fingers might touch some overlooked fragment of a cigar. There +was something at the bottom of one of the pockets of his coat, but it +mocked him by revealing itself as a match. He sank down on the bench and +turned his eyes away from the restaurant, for he could not bear to gaze +on the cakes and pies piled up behind the plate-glass, or to observe the +smoke curling up from the lips of men who had eaten and drunk +abundantly. + +There was a bar-room under the hotel on the corner of Broadway, and +every now and then two or three men pushed inside the swinging doors, to +reappear five or ten minutes later. Farther down Broadway stood a +theatre, and there was now a throng about its broad door-way. Another +theatre faced the square, gay with prismatic signs and besprinkled with +electric lights. McDowell Sutro watched men and women step up to the +box-office of this place of amusement and buy their tickets and +disappear within. He wondered why these men and women should have money +to spare on a show, when he had not enough to pay for a meal and a +night's lodging. + +Perhaps it was the fatigue of his useless day, and perhaps it was the +hypnotic influence of the revolving lights before the variety theatre, +which caused the lonely young man to fall asleep. How long he slept he +did not know, nor what waked him at last. But he had a doubtful memory +of a human touch upon his body, and three of his pockets were turned +inside out. When he discovered this, he laughed outright. The attempt to +rob him then struck him as the funniest thing that had ever happened. + +He must have slept for two or three hours at least, for the appearance +of the square had changed. It was no longer evening; it was now night. +While he looked about him he saw the doors of the theatre in Broadway +pushed open, and the audience began to pour forth. A few moments later +little knots of the play-goers passed him, still laughing with +remembrance of the farce they had been witnessing. In another quarter of +an hour the people began to come out of the other theatre, the variety +show on the square, and the lights that flared above the door-way went +out, all at once. + +It was nearly midnight when two men sat down on the bench of which +McDowell Sutro had been the sole occupant hitherto. They were tall and +thin, both of them; they were clean-shaven; their clothes were shabby; +and yet they carried themselves with an indescribable air, as though +they were accustomed to brave the gaze of the world. + +"No," said the elder of the two, continuing their conversation, "she's +no good. She has a figure like a flat-iron and a voice like a fog-horn, +hasn't she? Well, there's no draft in that, is there? She's a Jonah, +that's what she is, and she'd hoo-doo any show. Why, the last time I was +on the road she tried to queer my act. I called her down right there and +then, and when the star backed her up, I was going to give my two weeks' +notice; and I'd have done it, too, but I was playing cases then, and I +didn't want to come back here walking on my uppers. But if I had quit, +they'd have closed in a month, I tell you! They didn't know who was +drawing the money to their old show; but I did! You ought to have been +in the one-night towns on the oil circuit and heard me do Shamus +O'Brien. That used to fetch 'em every night--I tell you it did! And it +used to make her tired!" + +"Did you ever see me play Laertes?" asked the younger. "I did it first +in 'Frisco in '72, when Larry Barrett came out there. Well, while I was +on the stage with him, Hamlet didn't get a hand. I've got a notice here +now that said I was the Greatest Living Laertes." + +"I played Iago once with Larry Barrett," said the first speaker, "and I +gave them such a realistic impersonation they used to hiss me off the +stage almost." + +"Have a cigarette?" asked the other, holding out a package. + +"Don't care if I do," was the answer. "I've got a match." + +"That's lucky, for I haven't," said the owner of the cigarettes. + +"Well, I haven't, after all," the elder actor had to confess, after a +vain search in his pockets. + +"Let me provide the match," broke in McDowell Sutro. "I've only one, but +it's at your service." + +"Thank you," was the response. "Can I not offer you a cigarette?" + +"I don't care if I do," the young man answered, involuntarily repeating +the phrase he had just heard, as he thrust out his hand eagerly. + +The first whiff of the smoke was like meat and drink to him; and in the +sensuous enjoyment of the luxury he almost neglected to respond to the +remark addressed to him. But in a minute he found himself chatting with +the two actors pleasantly. Although they had been to California more +than once, they knew none of his friends; but it cheered merely to hear +again the names of familiar landmarks. There was more than a suggestion +of haughtiness in the way they both condescended to him; but he did not +resent this, even if he remarked it. Human companionship was sweet to +him; and to drop into a chat with casual strangers on a bench in Union +Square at midnight, even this diminished the desolation of his +loneliness. + +The talk lasted perhaps a quarter of an hour, and then the two other +men rose to go. McDowell Sutro stood up also, as though he were at home +and they were his guests. + +"Come over and have a drink," said the elder of the two. + +And again the young man answered, "I don't care if I do." + +He would rather have had food than drink, but he could not tell two +strangers that he was hungry. + +As they passed before the statue of Lafayette and crossed the car +tracks, he wondered whether the saloon where they were going to was one +of those which set out a free lunch. + +When they entered the bar-room his eyes swept it wolfishly, and then +fixed themselves at the end of the counter, where there were broad +dishes with cheese and crackers and sandwiches. He could hardly control +himself; he wanted to rush there and snatch the food and devour it. But +shame kept him standing near the door with the two actors, though his +gaze was fastened on the dishes only a few feet from him. + +The barkeeper set the bottle before them, and they poured out the +liquor. Then they looked at each other and said, "How!" + +The elder actor half finished his drink at a single gulp. As he set down +his glass he caught McDowell Sutro staring at the free lunch. + +"That's not a bad idea," he said, moving along the bar--"not half bad. +I'll take a sandwich myself. I feel a bit hollow to-night. I got three +encores after I gave them the 'Pride of Battery B,' and I need something +to build me up. Have a sandwich?" + +"I don't care if I do," responded the hungry man, as his fingers closed +on the bread. Yet when he took the first mouthful it almost choked him. + +Five minutes later he had said good-night to his two chance +acquaintances and he was again back in the square. The scant food he had +been able to take lay hard in his stomach, and the liquor he had drunk, +little as that was also, was yet enough to make his head whirl. He did +not walk unsteadily, although he was conscious that it took an effort +for him to carry himself without swerving. + +The bench on which he had been sitting was now occupied by four very +young men in evening dress, who were gravely smoking pipes, as though +they were trying to acquire a taste for this novel pastime. So he went +to the centre of the square, where he stood for a while looking at the +aquatic plants and listening to the spurtle of the fountain. + +All the seats around the fountain were occupied by men and women, most +of whom seemed to have settled themselves for the night, as though they +were used to sleeping there. McDowell Sutro found himself speculating +whether he, too, would soon be accustomed to spending his nights in the +open air, without a roof over him. + +One solid German had fallen into a slumber so heavy that his snore +became a loud snort. Then a gray-coated policeman waked the sleeper by +smiting the soles of his feet with the club. + +"This park ain't no bedroom," said the policeman, "and I ain't goin' to +have you fellows goin' to sleep here either! See?" + +After walking three or four times around on the outer circle of the +little park, the young man found a vacant seat on a bench near the +corner of Broadway and Seventeenth Street. The brilliantly lighted +cable-cars still glided swiftly up and down Broadway with their +insistent gongs, but they were now fewer and fewer; and the cross-town +horse-cars passed only two or three an hour. The long day of the city +was nearly over at last, and for the two or three hours before dawn +there would be peace and a cessation of the struggle. + +As he sat back on the bench, sick with weariness, the occupant of the +seat next to him aroused herself. She was an elderly woman, with +grizzled hair. + +"I beg your pardon--if I waked you up?" said the young man. + +"You did wake me up," she answered, "but I forgive you. It's only +cat-naps I get anyway nowadays. I haven't stretched my legs out between +the sheets and had my fill of sleep for a month of Sundays. And I'm a +glutton for sleeping if I've the chance. But I'm getting used to +sitting up late," and she laughed without bitterness. "What time is it +now?" she asked. + +McDowell Sutro involuntarily lifted his hand to the pocket of his +waistcoat, and then he dropped it quickly. Blushing, he answered, "I +don't know--I--" + +"Time's up, isn't it?" she returned, with a laugh of understanding. "I +haven't got my watch with me either; I left it in my other clothes at my +uncle's. But Mr. Tiffany is a kind-hearted man, and he keeps a clock all +lighted up for us to see. Your eyes are younger than mine--what time is +it now?" + +McDowell Sutro looked intently for half a minute before he could make +out the hour. At last he answered, "It's almost half-past one, I think." + +"Then I've a couple of hours for another nap before the sparrows wake us +all up," she returned. "Is it the first night you have come to this +hotel of ours?" + +"Yes," he replied. + +"I thought so," she continued, "by your feeling for your watch. You'll +get out of the way of doing that soon." + +His face blanched with fear that she might be predicting the truth. +Would the time ever come when he should be used to sleeping in the open +air? + +The old woman turned a little, so that she could look at him. + +"It's a handsome young fellow you are," she went on; "there's more than +one house in town where they'd take you in on your looks--and tuck you +up in bed, too, and keep you warm." + +"Perhaps I'm better off here," he remarked, feeling that he was expected +to say something. + +"This isn't a bad hotel of ours, this isn't," she returned; "it's well +ventilated, for one thing. Of course you can go to the station-house if +you want. I don't. I've tried it, and I'd sooner sleep in the snow than +in the station-house, with the creatures you meet there. This hotel of +ours here keeps open all night; and it's on the European plan, I'm +thinking--leastwise you can have anything you can pay for. When the +owl-wagon is here, you can get a late supper--if you have the price of +it. I haven't." + +"Neither have I," he answered. + +"Then there's two of us ready for an invite to breakfast," she +responded, cheerily. "If any one asks us, it's no previous engagement +will make us decline, I'm thinking." + +He made no answer, for his heart sank as he looked into the future. + +"Are you hungry now?" she asked. + +"Yes," he answered, simply. + +"So am I," she replied, "and I can't get used to it. Hunger is like +pain, isn't it? It don't let go of you; it don't get tired and let up on +you. It's a stayer, that's what it is, and it keeps right on attending +strictly to business. Sometimes, when I'm very hungry, I feel like +committing suicide, don't you?" + +"No," he responded--"at least, not yet; I haven't had enough of life to +be tired of it so soon." + +"Neither have I," was her answer. "Sometimes I'm ready to quit, but +somehow I don't do it. But it would be so easy; you throw yourself in +front of one of those cable-cars coming down Broadway now--and you'll +get rapid transit to kingdom come. But they don't sell excursion +tickets. Besides, being crunched by a cable-car is a dreadful mussy way +of dying, don't you think? And to-day's Friday, too--and I don't believe +I'd ever have any luck in the next world if I was to commit suicide on a +Friday." + +"This isn't Friday any longer," he suggested; "it's Saturday morning." + +"So it is now," she rejoined; "then we'd better be getting our +beauty-sleep as soon as we can, for the flower-market here will wake us +up soon enough, seeing it's Saturday. And so, good-night to you!" + +"Good-night!" he responded. + +"And may you dream you've found a million dollars in gold, and then wake +up and find it true!" she continued. + +"Thank you," he replied, wondering what manner of woman his neighbor +might be. + +She said nothing more, but settled herself again and closed her eyes. +She was dressed in rusty black, and she had a thin black shawl over her +head. She had been a very handsome woman--so she impressed the young man +by her side--and he was wholly at a loss to guess how she came to be +here, in the street, at night, without money and alone. She seemed out +of place there; for her manner, though independent, was not defiant. +There was no rasping harshness in her tones; indeed, her talk was dashed +with joviality. Her speech even puzzled him, although he thought that +showed her to be Irish. + +Turning these things over in his mind, he fell asleep. He dreamed the +same dream again and again--a dream of a barbaric banquet, where huge +outlandish dishes were placed on the table before him. The savor of them +was strange to his nostrils, but it brought the water to his mouth. +Then, when he made as though to help himself and stay his appetite, the +whole feast slid away beyond his reach, and finally faded into nothing. +The dream differed in detail every time he dreamed it; and the last time +the only dish on the board before him was a gigantic pasty, which he +succeeded in cutting open, only to behold four-and-twenty blackbirds fly +forth. The birds circled about his head, and then returned to the empty +shell of the pasty, and perched there, and sang derisively. + +So loudly did they sing that McDowell Sutro awoke, and he heard in the +trees above him and behind him the chirping and twittering of countless +sparrows. + +He recalled what the old woman had said--that the birds would wake them +up. Probably they had aroused her first, for the place on the bench next +to him was empty. + +He rose to his feet and looked about him. It was almost daybreak, and +already there were rosy streaks in the eastern sky. A squirrel was +running up and down a large tree in the middle of the grass-plot behind +the bench on which he had been sleeping. In the open space at the +northern end of the square there were a dozen or more gardeners' wagons, +thick with growing flowers in pots, and men were arranging these plants +in rows upon the pavement. Another heavy wagon, loaded with roses only, +rolled across the car track and disturbed a flock of pigeons that +swirled aloft for a moment and then settled down again. A moist breeze +blew up from the bay, and brought a warning of rain to come later in the +day. + +The sleepers on the other benches here and there throughout the square +were waking, one by one. McDowell Sutro saw one of them go to the +drinking-fountain and wash his hands and face. He followed this example +as best he could. When he had made an end of this his eye fell on +Tiffany's clock, which told the hour of half-past four. A few minutes +later the first rays of the sun began to gild the cornices of the tall +buildings which towered above the Lincoln statue. + +Within the next hour and a half the cable-cars began to pass down-town +more frequently, and the cross-town cars from the ferries also came +closer together. The gardeners' wagons and the plants taken from them +filled the broad space at the upper end of the square. Milk-carts +rattled across the car tracks that bounded the square on all four sides. +The signs of the coming day multiplied, and McDowell Sutro noted them +all, one after another, with unfailing interest, despite the gnawing +pain in his stomach. It was the first time he had ever seen the +awakening of a great city. + +He walked away from Union Square as far as Fifth Avenue and Twenty-third +Street, and again as far as Third Avenue and Fourteenth Street; but he +found himself always returning to the flower-market. At last a hope +sprang up within him. Among the purchasers were ladies not strong enough +to carry home the heavy pots, and perhaps he might pick up a job. This +was not the way he wanted to earn his daily bread, but never before had +he felt the want of the daily bread so keenly. + +When he came back to the line of gardeners' wagons he found other men +out of work also hanging about in the hope of making an honest penny; +and more than once he saw one or another of these others sent away, +burdened with tall plants. + +At last he took his courage in his hand, and went up to a little old +lady whom he had seen going from row to row. She had bright eyes and a +gentle manner and a kindly smile. He asked her, if she bought anything, +to let him carry it home for her. She looked at the handsome young +fellow, and her glance was as shrewd as it seemed to him sympathetic. + +"Yes," she answered, "I think I can trust you." + +A minute or two later she bargained with a Scotch gardener for two +azaleas in full bloom. Then she turned to McDowell Sutro: + +"Will you take those to the Post-Graduate Hospital, corner of Second +Avenue and Twentieth Street, for half a dollar?" + +"Yes," he answered, eagerly. + +"Very well," she responded. "They are for the Babies' Wards. Say that +they are from Miss Van Dyne. The Babies' Wards, you understand? And here +is your money. I've got to trust you; but you have an honest face, and I +don't believe that you would rob sick children of the sight and smell of +the flowers they love." + +"No," said McDowell Sutro, "I wouldn't." He picked up the heavy pots, +and held one in the hollow of each arm. "The Babies' Wards of the +Post-Graduate Hospital, from Miss Van Dyne? Is that it?" + +"That's it," she answered, with her illuminating smile. + +He walked off with the plants. Having the money in his pocket to break +his fast, it seemed as though he could not get to the hospital swiftly +enough. But when he had handed in the flowers, and was on his way back +again to the square, he remembered suddenly the woman who had sat by him +on the bench, and who had been hungry also. He had fifty cents in his +pocket now, and in the window of an eating-house on Fourth Avenue he saw +the sign, "Regular Breakfast, 25 cts." He had money enough to buy two +regular breakfasts, one for himself and one for her. + +He made the circle of the little park three times, besides traversing it +in every direction, and then he had to confess that she was beyond his +reach. + +So he went to the restaurant alone, and had a regular breakfast all to +himself. + +When he came forth he felt refreshed, and the people who were now +hurrying along the streets struck him as happier than those he had seen +in the gray dawn. The long sunbeams were lighting the side streets. The +workmen with their dinner-pails were giving place to the shop-girls with +their luncheons tied up in paper. + +The roar of the great city arose once more as the mighty tide of +humanity again swept through its thoroughfares. + +He went back to the gardeners' wagons, believing that he might earn +another half-dollar. But when he saw other men waiting there hungrily, +he turned away, thinking it only fair to give them a chance too. + +He found a seat in the sun, and looked on while the flower-market was +stripped by later purchasers. He wondered where the plants were all +going, and then he remembered that the same flowers serve for the +funeral and for the wedding. For the first time it struck him as strange +that the plant which dresses a dinner-table to-day may gladden a +sick-room to-morrow, and be bedded on a grave the day after. + +At last he thought the hour had come when the post-office would be open +again, and he set off for Fifth Avenue and Thirteenth Street. + +When he reached the station he checked his walk. He did not dare go in, +although the doors were open, and he could see other men and women +asking questions at the little square windows. What if his questions +should meet with the same answer as yesterday? What if he should have to +spend another night in Union Square? + +He nerved himself at last and entered. As he approached the window the +clerk looked at him with a glance of recognition. + +"McDowell Sutro, isn't it? Yes--there is a letter for you. Overweight, +too--there's four cents extra postage to pay." + +The young man's hand trembled as he put down the quarter left after +paying for his regular breakfast. He seized the envelope swiftly, and +almost forgot to pick up his change, till the clerk reminded him of it. + +He tore the letter open. It was from Tom Pixley; it contained a +post-office order for fifty dollars; and it began: + + "MY DEAR MAC,--Go and see Sam Sargent, 78 Broadway, and he will get + you a place on the surveyor's staff for the new line of the + Barataria Central. I'm writing to him by this mail, and--" + +But for a minute McDowell Sutro could read no further. His eyes had +filled with tears. + +(1895.) + + + + +AN IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT + + +The summer sun had blazed down all day on the low wooden roof of the old +shed lately used as an ice-cream saloon, and now hastily altered to +accommodate a post of the Salvation Army. Placards at the wide doorway +proclaimed that All were Welcome, and besought the stranger to Come in +and be Saved. The tall tenements that lined the side-streets east and +west had emptied their hundreds of inhabitants out into the avenue that +evening, and the sidewalks were thronged with men and women languid from +the heat of the day, and longing for the lazy breeze that sometimes +creeps into the city with nightfall; but few of them cared to enter the +stifling hall where the song-service was about to begin, and that night +especially there were many counter-attractions out-doors. Already were +the rockets beginning to burst far above the square where the fireworks +were to be displayed; and now and again a boy (who had more than boyish +self-control) produced a reserve pack of fire-crackers, and dropped them +into a barrel, and capered away with delight as the owner of the barrel +was called to his door by the rattle of their explosion. + +A pale and thin young woman, in the uniform of the Salvation Army, +stood wearily in the entrance, proffering the _War Cry_ to all those who +came near. She looked as though she had been pretty when she was a girl. +Now she was obviously worn and weak, like one recovering from a long +illness. High up over her head appeared a shower of colored stars shot +forth from a bomb; and then she remembered how she had seen the +fireworks on the last Fourth of July, only a year before, lying on her +bed which Jim had pulled to the window before he went down to conduct +the meeting. She had lain there peacefully with her two-weeks-old baby +in her arms, and it had seemed to her as though the glowing wheels that +revolved in the air, and the curving lines of fire that rose and fell +again, were but a prefiguration of a golden future where all would be +splendor and glory. How that vision had faded into blackness in the +months that followed!--when the baby sickened because they had not +proper food for him, and when Jim broke down also; and she had had to +get up, feeble as she was, and nurse them both until they died, one +after another. When she let herself think of those days of despair, she +had always to make a resolute effort if she did not wish to give way and +go into a fit of sobbing that left her exhausted for the next +twenty-four hours. + +She mastered her rising emotion and turned for relief to the duty of the +moment. For five minutes no one had bought a paper from her, and the +time had come to go into the hall to take part in the service of song. + +She pushed inside the swinging-door and found that perhaps a score of +visitors had gathered, and that already half a dozen members of the +Salvation Army had taken their seats at the edge of the low platform at +the end of the shallow hall. Captain Quigley was standing there, with +his shiny black hair carefully curled and his pointed beard carefully +combed. He was waiting, ready to begin, with his accordion in his hands. + +She wondered why it was that she was always sorry to have Captain +Quigley lead the service. She would not deny that he led well, giving a +swing to the tunes he played that carried all the people off their feet; +he sang sweetly and he spoke feelingly. But she did not altogether like +his manner, which was almost patronizing; and then he had a way of +bringing her suddenly into his remarks and of calling her forward +needlessly. Even after her two years' service she shrank from +personalities and from self-exhibition. Yet there was no doubt that he +meant to be kind to her, and she knew that he had allowed her special +privileges more than once. With motherly kindness Adjutant Willetts had +asked her only a week before if she really liked Captain Quigley, +telling her that if she did not like him, she ought to be careful not to +encourage him, and since that talk with the adjutant her distaste for +the captain had been intensified. + +It was as though Captain Quigley had been waiting for her to appear, for +he began to speak as soon as he saw her. In a high nasal voice and with +an occasional elided aspirate, he welcomed those present and told them +he was glad that they had come. He asked them all to take part in +singing the grand old hymn, "There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood." He +set the tune with his accordion, and lined out the first stanza and led +in the singing. Only three or four of the chance visitors joined in the +song, the burden of which was borne by the members of the Salvation +Army. + +Then the captain told his hearers that there was a new _War Cry_ +published that very morning full of interesting things, and containing +the words of the songs they would all sing later, so he wanted everybody +in the hall to buy one, that they could all follow the music. + +The thin young woman with the saddened face began to move down the +aisles offering her papers right and left. + +"That's the way, Sister Miller," called out the captain, as though to +encourage her; but she winced as she heard her name thus thrown to the +public. "I want you all to buy Sister Miller's papers, so that she can +come up here and join us in the singing. You don't know what a sweet +voice Sister Miller has--but we know." + +He continued to talk thus familiarly as she made the circuit of the +seats. When she had taken her place on the platform by the side of +Adjutant Willetts, who smiled at her with maternal affection in her eye, +then suddenly the captain changed his tone. "Now we will ask the Lord to +bless us--to bless us all, to bless this meeting. I don't know why any +of you have come here to-night, but I do know this: if you have come +here for God's blessing, you will get it. If you have come here for +something else, I don't know whether you will get it; but if you have +come here for that you will surely get it. God always gives His blessing +to all who ask for it. Brother Higginson, will you lead us in prayer?" + +The men and women on the platform fell on their knees, and the most of +those scattered about the hall bowed their heads reverently, while +Brother Higginson prayed that the blessing of God might descend upon +them that night. Sister Miller had heard Brother Higginson lead in +prayer many times and she knew almost to a word what he was likely to +say, for the range of his appeal was limited; but she always thrilled a +little at the simple fervor of the man. It annoyed her, as usual, to +have the captain punctuate the appeal of Brother Higginson with an +occasional "Amen! Amen!" or "Hallelujah!" + +After the prayer there was another gospel song, and then the captain +laid aside his accordion and took up a Bible. He read a passage from the +Old Testament describing the advance of the Children of Israel into the +desert, guided by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by +night. He held the book in his hand while he expounded his text. The +Children of Israel had their loins girded to fight the good fight, he +said. That is what every people has to do; the Israelites had to do it, +the English had to do it, the Americans had to do it. They all knew what +the Fourth of July stood for and how well Americans fought then, more +than a hundred years ago; and so saying he seized the flag which had +been leaning against the wall behind him, by the side of the blood-red +banner of the Salvation Army. + +As he was waving the Stars and Stripes Sister Miller felt her dislike +accentuated, for she knew that the captain was an Englishman who had +been here but a few years, and it seemed to her mean of him to be taking +sides against his native land. She wondered if he was really ignorant +enough to think that one of the great battles of the Revolution had been +fought on the Fourth of July. + +Then her mind went back to her girlhood, and she recalled the last +celebration of the Fourth that had taken place in the old school-house +at home the summer before she graduated. She remembered how old Judge +Standish read the Declaration of Independence with a magnificent air of +proprietorship, as though he had just dashed it off. Other incidents of +that day came floating back to her memory as she sat there in the thick +air of the little hall, and she ceased to hear Captain Quigley calling +urgently on all those present to be Soldiers of God. In her ears there +echoed, instead, the pleading words of young Dexter Standish, telling +her that he was going to the Naval Academy and that he wanted her to +wait for him till he should come back. She had given her promise, and +why had she not kept her word? Why had she been foolishly jealous when +she heard that he was the best dancer in his class at Annapolis, and +that all the Baltimore girls were wild to dance with him. She had long +ago discovered that her reason for breaking off the engagement was +wholly inadequate; and, in her folly, she had not foreseen that Dexter +could not leave the Academy and come to her and explain. If only he had +presented himself and told her he loved her she would have forgiven him, +even if he had really deserved punishment. But he was a cadet, and he +would not have a leave of absence for another year. Before that year was +out, she had married James Miller, a theological student, who soon threw +up all his studies in his religious zeal to join the Salvation Army, as +though craving martyrdom. Jim had loved her, and he had thought she +loved him. It was with a swift pang of reproach that she found herself +asking whether it was not better for Jim that he had died before he +found out that his wife did not love him as he loved her. + +With the ingenuity that came of long experience, Captain Quigley had +ended his address with a quotation from "Onward, Christian Soldiers," +and Sister Miller was roused from her reverie to take part in the +chorus. When they had sung three stanzas the captain stopped abruptly +and turned to the gray-haired woman who sat beside Sister Miller, and +called on Adjutant Willetts to say a few words of loving greeting to the +souls waiting to be saved. + +To Sister Miller it was a constant delight to be with the adjutant, to +be comforted by her motherly smile and to be sustained by her cheerful +faith. There was a Quaker simplicity about Sister Willetts, and a Quaker +strength of character that the wan and worn Sister Miller had found she +could always rely upon. And another characteristic of the elder woman's +endeared her also to the younger: her religious fervor was as fresh as +it was sincere, and she gave her testimony night after night with the +same force and the same feeling that she had given it the first time. +Too many of the others had reduced what they had to say to a mere +formula, modified but little and delivered at last in almost mechanical +fashion. But Sister Willetts stood forward on the platform and bore +witness to her possession of the peace of God which passeth all +understanding; and she did this most modestly, with neither shyness nor +timidity, merely as though she were doing her duty gladly in declaring +what God had done for her. + +When the adjutant had made an end of speaking and had taken her seat by +the side of the pale young woman, who smiled back at her again, Captain +Quigley grasped his accordion once more. + +"Now you shall have a solo," he said. "Sister Miller will sing that +splendid old hymn, 'Rock of Ages.' Come, Sister Miller." + +Her voice had no great power, but it sufficed for that little hall. She +did not like to stand forward conspicuously, but the singing itself she +always enjoyed. Sometimes she was almost able to forget herself as she +poured out her soul in song. + +On that Fourth of July evening she had not more than begun when she +became conscious that somebody was staring at her with an intensity +quite different from the ordinary gaze of curiosity to which she was +accustomed. She obeyed the impulse, and looked down into the eyes of +Dexter Standish fixed upon her as though he had come to claim possession +of her at once. + +So unexpected was this vision, and so enfeebled was her self-control, +that her voice faltered, and she almost broke off in the middle of a +line. But she stiffened herself, and though she felt the blood dyeing +her face, she sang on sturdily. Her first thought was to run away--to +run away at once and hide herself, somewhere, anywhere, so that she were +only out of his sight. He had not seen her for six years and more, and +in those weary years she had lost her youth and her looks. She knew +that she was no longer the pretty girl he had loved, and she shrank from +his scrutiny of her faded features and of her shrunken figure. + +She could not run away and she could not hide; she had to stand there +and let him gaze at her and discover how old she looked and how worn. +She met his eyes again--he never took them from her--and it seemed to +her that they were full of pity. She resented this. What right had he to +compassionate her? She drew her thin frame up and sang the louder in +mere bravado. Yet she was glad when she came to the end, and was able to +sink back into the seat by the side of Sister Willetts. + +The captain spoke up at once, and said that the time had come to take up +a collection. Let every man give a little, in proportion to his means, +no more and no less. Would Sister Willetts and Sister Miller go about +among the people to collect the offerings? + +As she picked up her tambourine she turned impulsively to the elder +woman. + +"Let me go to those near the platform, please," she begged. "Won't you +take the outside rows?" + +The adjutant looked down on her a little surprised, but agreed at once. + +The younger woman went only a few steps down the aisles, keeping as far +away from him as possible. Whenever she glanced towards him she found +his eyes fixed upon her, following her everywhere; and now it was not +pity she thought she saw in his look, but love--the same love she had +seen in those eyes the last time they two had stood face to face. + +When the tambourines had been extended towards everybody in the hall, +the two women went back to the platform and the adjutant counted up the +money--coppers and nickels, most of it, and not two dollars in all. + +The captain kept on steadfastly. He gave out another hymn. When that had +been sung, he turned to a portly man who had come in late and who was +sitting on the platform behind Brother Higginson. + +"Brother Jackman," he asked, with unction, "how is your soul to-night? +Can't you tell us about it?" + +While the portly man, standing uneasily with his hands on the chair +before him, was briskly setting forth the circumstances of his assured +salvation, Sister Miller was silent on the platform. + +She could not help seeing Dexter Standish, who was straight in front of +her. She noted how erect he was, and how resolutely his shoulders were +squared. She saw that he was older, too; and she observed that his face +had a masterful look, wanting there the last time she had seen him. + +He had always been a fine-looking fellow, and the training at Annapolis +had done him good. He was no mere youth now, but a man, bronzed and +bearded, and bearing himself like one who knew what he wanted and meant +to get it. She realized that the woman he chose to guard from the world +would be well shielded. A weary woman might find rest under the shelter +of his stalwart protection. Involuntarily she contrasted the man she had +promised to marry with the man she had married--the manly strength of +the one with the gentle weakness of the other. Then she blushed again, +for this seemed to her disloyalty to the dead. Jim had been very good to +her always; he was the father of her child; he never did any wrong. But +the thought returned again--perhaps if he had had more force of +character the child need not have died as it did. + +Brother Jackman was rattling along glibly, but Sister Miller did not +heed him. She did not hear him even. She did not hear anything +distinctly during the rest of the service. She rose to her feet with the +rest of them, and she sat down again automatically, and she knelt like +one in a trance. When the meeting was over and the people began to +disperse she saw that he did not move. He stood there silently, waiting +for her to come to him, ready to bear her away. Without a word Sister +Miller knew what it was her old lover wanted; he wanted to pick up their +love-story where it had been broken off four years before. + +When the hall was nearly empty he started towards her. + +She turned to the gray-haired woman by her side. + +"Tell me what to do," she cried. "He is coming to take me away with +him." + +Sister Willetts saw the young man advancing slowly, as those last to go +made a path for him. + +"Is he in love with you, too?" she asked. + +"Yes," the younger woman answered. + +"And do you love him?" + +"Yes--at least, I think so. Oh yes!" + +"And is he a good man?" was the last question. + +"Yes, indeed," came the prompt reply, "the best man I ever knew!" + +The sturdy figure was drawing nearer and the elder woman rose. + +"If you love him better than you love your work with us, go to him, in +God's name," she said. "We seek no unwilling workers here. If you cannot +give yourself to the service joyfully, putting all else behind you, go +in peace--and may the blessing of God be with you!" + +She bent forward and kissed the younger woman and left her, as Dexter +Standish came and stood before her. + +"Margaret," he said, firmly, "I have come for you." + +Without a word she stepped down from the platform and went with him. + +When they came to the door a hansom happened to pass and he called it. + +"Where are you taking me?" she asked, glad to be under the shelter of +his devotion and ready to relinquish all right to decide upon her future +for herself. + +"To my mother," he answered, as he lifted her into the vehicle. "She's +at a hotel here. She'll be glad to see you." + +"Will she?" the girl asked, doubtfully. + +"Yes," was the authoritative answer, "she knows that I have always loved +you." + +(1897.) + + + + +THE SOLO ORCHESTRA + + +The air was thick and heavy, as it sometimes is in the great city +towards nightfall after a hot spell has lasted for ten days. There were +sponges tied to the foreheads of the horses that wearily tugged at the +overladen cross-town cars. The shop-girls going home fanned themselves +limply. The men released from work walked languidly, often with their +coats over their arms. The setting sun burned fiery red as it sank +behind the hills on the other side of the Hudson. But the night seemed +likely to be as hot as the day had been, for the leaves on the trees +were motionless now, as they had been all the afternoon. + +We had been kept in town all through July by the slow convalescence of +our invalid, and with even the coming of August we could not hope to get +away for another ten days yet. The excessive heat had retarded the +recovery of our patient by making it almost impossible for her to sleep. +That evening, as it happened, she had dropped off into an uneasy slumber +a little after six o'clock, and we had left her room gently in the +doubtful hope that her rest might be prolonged for at least an hour. + +I had slipped down-stairs and was standing on the stoop, with the door +open behind me, when I heard the shrill notes of the Pan-pipes, +accompanied by the jingling of a set of bells and the dull thumping of a +drum. I understood at once that some sort of wandering musician was +about to perform, and I knew that with the first few bars the needful +slumber of our invalid would be interrupted violently. + +I closed the door behind me softly and sprang down the steps, and sped +swiftly to the corner around which the sounds seemed to proceed. If the +fellow is a foreigner, I thought, I must give him a quarter and so bribe +him to go away, and then he will return every evening to be bought off +again, and I shall become a subscriber by the week to the concerts I do +not wish to hear. But if the itinerant musician is an American, of +course I can appeal to him, as one gentleman to another, and we shall +not be troubled with him again. + +[Illustration: "THE AIR WAS THICK AND HEAVY"] + +When I turned the corner I saw a strange figure only a few yards +distant--a strange figure most strangely accoutred--a tall, thin, +loose-jointed man, who had made himself appear taller still by wearing a +high-peaked hat, the pinnacle of which was surmounted by a wire +framework, in which half a dozen bells were suspended, ringing with +every motion of the head. He had on a long linen duster, which flapped +about his gaunt shanks encased in tight, black trousers. Between his +legs he had a pair of cymbals, fastened one to each knee. Upon his back +was strapped a small bass-drum, on which there was painted the +announcement that the performer was "Prof. Theophilus Briggs, the Solo +Orchestra." A drumstick was attached to each side of the drum and +connected with a cord that ran down his legs to his feet, so that by +beating time with his toes he could make the drum take part in his +concert. The Pan-pipes that I had heard were fastened to his breast just +at the height of his chin, so that he could easily blow into them by the +slightest inclination of his head. In his left hand he held a fiddle, +and in his right hand he had a fiddle-bow. Just as I came in sight, he +tapped the fiddle with the bow, as though to call the attention of the +orchestra. Then he raised the fiddle; not to his chin, for the Pan-pipes +made this impossible, but to the other position, not infrequent among +street musicians, just below the shoulder. Evidently I had just arrived +in time. + +He was not a foreigner, obviously enough. It needed only one glance at +the elongated visage, with its good-natured eyes and its gentle mouth, +to show that here was a native American whose parents and grandparents +also had been born on this side of the Atlantic. + +"I beg your pardon for interrupting you before you begin," I said, +hastily, "but I shall be very much obliged indeed if you would kindly +consent to give your performance a little farther down this street--a +little farther away from this corner." + +I saw at once that I had not chosen my words adroitly, for the kindly +smile faded from his lips, and there was more than a hint of stiffness +in his manner as he responded, slowly: + +"I don't know as I quite catch your meaning," he began. "I ain't--" + +"I'm sorry to have to ask you to go away," I interrupted, wishing to +explain; "I'd like to hear your concert myself; but the fact is, there's +a member of my family slowly recovering from a long sickness, and she's +only just fallen asleep now for the first time since midnight." + +"Why didn't you say so at first?" was Professor Briggs's immediate +response, and the genial smile returned to his thin face. "Of course, I +don't want to worry no one with my music. And I'd just as lief as not go +over the other side of the city if it will be any more agreeable to a +sick person. I know myself what it is to have sickness in the house; +there ain't no one knows what that is better than I do--no one don't." + +"It is very kind of you, I'm sure," I said, as he walked back with me to +the corner. + +"Oh, that's all right," he returned. "It don't make any differ to me. +Now you just show me which house it is, so I can keep away from it." + +I pointed out the door to him. + +"The third one from the corner, is it?" he repeated. "Well, that's all +right. And I am much obliged to you for telling me about it, for I +should have hated to wake up a sick person; and these pipes and this +drum ain't exactly soothing to the sick, are they?" + +Then the smile ripened to a laugh, and after I had thanked him once more +and shaken hands, he turned back and walked away, accompanied by the +bevy of children who had encircled us expectantly ever since I had first +spoken to him. + + * * * * * + +Before daybreak the next morning a storm broke over the city, and the +heavy rain kept up all day, cooling the streets at last and washing the +atmosphere. With the passing of the hot wave sleep became easier for us +all. Men walked to their offices in the morning with a brisker step, and +the shop-girls were no longer listless as they went to their work. Our +invalid improved rapidly, and we could count the days before we should +be able to take her out of the city. + +The rain-storm had brought this relief on a Thursday, and the skies did +not clear till Friday evening. The air kept its freshness over Saturday +and Sunday. + +On the latter day, towards nightfall, I had taken my seat on the stoop, +as is the custom of New-Yorkers kept in town during the summer months. I +had brought out a cushion or two, and I was smoking my second +after-supper cigar. I felt at peace with the world, and for the moment +I had even dispensed with the necessity of thinking. It satisfied me to +watch the rings of tobacco-smoke as they curled softly above my head. + +Although I was thus detached from earth, I became at last vaguely +conscious that a man had passed before the house for two or three times, +and that as he passed he had stared at me as though he expected +recognition. With his next return my attention was aroused. I saw that +he was a tall, thin man, of perhaps fifty years of age, with a lean face +clean-shaven, plainly dressed in black, and in what was obviously a +Sunday suit, so revealing itself by its odd wrinkles and creases. As he +came abreast of me, he slackened his gait and looked up. When he caught +my eye he smiled. And then I recognized him at once. It was Professor +Theophilus Briggs, the Solo Orchestra. + +When he discovered that I knew him again he stood still. I rose to my +feet and greeted him. + +"I thought this was the house," he began, "but I wa'n't sure for +certain. You see, my memory ain't any longer than a toad's tail. Still, +I allowed I hadn't ought to disremember anything as big as a house--now +had I?" and he laughed pleasantly. "And I thought that was you, too, +setting up there on the porch," he went on, cheerfully. "And I'm glad it +is, because I wanted to see you again to ask after the lady's health. +Did she have her sleep out that evening? And how is she getting on now?" + +I thanked him again for his considerate action the first time we had +met, as well as for his kindly inquiries now, and I was glad to give him +good news of our patient. Then I recognized the duties of hospitality, +and I asked my visitor if he would not "take something." + +"No, thank you," he returned--"that is, if there ain't no offence. Fact +is, I've quit. I don't look on the wine when it is red now, for it +biteth like an adder and it stingeth like a serpent, and I don't want +any more snakes in mine. I've had enough of them, I have. Croton extra +dry is good enough for me now, I guess; and I ain't no use now for a +happy family of blue mice and green rats and yellow monkeys. I've had +whole menageries of them, too, in my time--regular Greatest Show on +Earth, you know, and me with a season ticket. But it's like all these +continuous performances, you get tired of it pretty soon--leastways, I +did, and so I quit, and I don't touch a drop now." + +"Sworn off?" I suggested, as I made room for him on the cushion by my +side. + +"Oh no," he said, simply, as he sat down; "I hadn't no need to swear +off. I just quit; that's all there was to it." + +"Some men do not find it so very easy to give up drinking," I remarked. + +"That's so, too," he answered, "and I didn't either, for a fact. But I +just had to do it, that's all. You see, I'd given drinking a fair show, +and I'd found it didn't pay. Well, I don't like no trade where you're +bound to lose in the long-run--seems a pretty poor way to do business, +don't it? So I quit." + +This seemed to call for a commonplace from me, and I was equal to the +occasion. "It's easier to get into the way of taking a drop now and then +than it is to get out of it." + +"I got into it easy enough, I know that," he returned, smiling genially. +"It was when I was in the army. After a man has been laying out in the +swamp for a week or so, a little rum ain't such a bad thing to have in +the house." + +Then it was that for the first time I noticed the bronze button in his +coat. + +"So you were in the army?" I said, with the ever-rising envy felt by so +many of my generation who lived through the long years of the Civil War +mere boys, too young to take part in the struggle. + +"I was a drummer-boy at Gettysburg," he answered; "and it warn't mighty +easy for me, either." + +"How so?" I asked. + +"Well, it was this way," he explained. "Father, he was a Maine man, and +he was a sea-captain. And when mother died, after a spell father he up +and married again. Now that second wife of father's she didn't like me; +and I didn't like her either, not overmuch. I guess there warn't no +love lost between us. She liked to make a voyage with father now and +then, and so did I. We was both with him on a voyage he made about the +time the war broke out. We cleared for Cowes and a market, and along in +the summer of '62 we was in the Mediterranean. It was towards the end of +that summer we come into Genoa, and there we got a chance at the papers, +all filled chock-full of battles. And it didn't seem as though things +was going any too well over here, either, and so I felt I'd like to come +home and lend a hand in putting down the rebellion. You see, I was past +fourteen then, and I was tall for my age--'most as tall as I am now, I +guess. I was doing a man's work on the ship, and I didn't see why I +couldn't do a man's work in helping Uncle Sam, seeing he seemed to be +having a hard time of it. And I don't mind telling you, too, that she +had been making me have considerable of a hard time of it, too; and +there warn't no way of contenting her, she was so all-fired pernicketty. +There was another ship in the harbor near us, and the captain was a sort +of a kind of a cousin of mother's, and so I shipped with him and we come +straight home from Genoa to Portsmouth. And when I wanted to enlist they +wouldn't have me, saying I was too young, which was all foolishness. So +I went for a drummer-boy, and I was in the Army of the Potomac from +Gettysburg to Appomattox." + +"You were only a boy even when the war was over," I commented. + +"Well, I was seventeen, and I felt old enough to be seventy," he +returned, as a smile wrinkled his lean features. "At any rate, I was old +enough to get married the year after Lee surrendered, and my daughter +was born the year after that--she'd be nearly thirty now if she was +living to-day." + +"Did you stay in one of the bands of the regulars after the war?" I +asked, wondering how the sailor-lad who had become a drummer-boy had +finally developed into a solo orchestra. + +"No," he answered. "Not but what I did think of it some. But after being +at sea so long and in the army, camping here and there and always moving +on, I was restless, and I didn't want to settle down nowhere for long. +So I went into the show business. I'd always been fond of music, and I +could play on 'most anything, from a fine-tooth comb to a church-organ +with all the stops you please. So I went out with the side-show of a +circus, playing on the tumbleronicon." + +"The tumbleronicon?" I repeated, in doubt. + +"It's a tray with a lot of wineglasses on it and goblets and tumblers, +partly filled with water, you know, so as to give different notes. Why, +I've had one tumbleronicon of seven octaves that I used to play the +'Anvil Chorus' on, and always got a double encore for it. I believe it's +what they used to call the 'musical glasses'--but tumbleronicon is what +it's called now in the profession." + +I admitted that I had heard of the musical glasses. + +"It was while I was playing the tumbleronicon in that side-show that I +met the lady I married," he went on. "She was a Circassian girl then. +Most Circassian girls are Irish, you know, but she wasn't. She was from +the White Mountains. Well, I made up to her from the start, and when the +circus went into winter-quarters we had a lot of money saved up and we +got married. My wife hadn't a bad ear for music, so that winter we +worked up a double act, and in the spring we went on the road as Swiss +Bellringers. We dressed up just as I had seen the I-talians dress in +Naples." + +Again I asked for an explanation. + +"Oh, you must have seen that act?" he urged, "though it has somehow gone +out of style lately. It's to have a fine set of bells, three or four +octaves, laying out on a table before you, and then you play tunes on +them, just as you do on the tumbleronicon. There's some tunes go better +on the bells than on anything else--'Yankee Doodle' and 'Pop Goes the +Weasel.' It's quick tunes like them that folks like to have you pick out +on the bells. Why, Mrs. Briggs and I used to do a patriotic medley, +ending up with 'Rally Round the Flag,' that just made the soldiers' +widows cry. If we could only have gone on, we'd have been sure of our +everlasting fortunes. But Mrs. Briggs went and lost her health after our +daughter was born the next summer. We kept thinking all the time she'd +get better soon, and so I took an engagement here in New York, at +Barnum's old museum in Broadway, to play the drum in the orchestra. You +remember Barnum's old museum, don't you?" + +I was able to say that I did remember Barnum's old museum in Broadway. + +"I didn't really like it there; for the animals were smelly, you know, +and the work was very confining, what with two and three performances a +day. But I had to stay here in New York somehow, for my wife wa'n't able +to get away. The long and short of it is, she was sick a-bed nigh on to +thirty years--not suffering really all the time, of course, but puny and +ailing, and getting no comfort from her food. There was times I thought +she never would get well or anything. But two years ago she up and died +suddenly, just when I'd most got used to her being sick. Women's +dreadful uncertain, ain't they?" + +I had to confess that the course of the female of our species was more +or less incalculable. + +"My daughter, she died the year before her mother; and she'd never been +sick a day in her life--took after me, she did," Professor Briggs went +on. "She and her husband used to do Yankee Girl and Irish Boy duets in +the vaudevilles, as they call them now." + +I remarked that variety show, the old name for entertainments of that +type, seemed to me more appropriate. + +"That's what I think myself," he returned, "and that's what I'm always +telling them. But they say vaudeville is more up to date--and that's +what they want now, everything up to date. Now I think there's lots of +the old-fashioned things that's heaps better than some of these +new-fangled things they're so proud of. Take a three-ringed circus, for +instance--what good is a three-ringed circus to anybody, except the boss +of it? The public has only two eyes apiece, that's all--and even a man +who squints can't see more than two rings at once, can he? And three +rings don't give a real artist a show; they discourage him by +distracting folk's attention away from him. How is he to do his best if +he can't never be certain sure that the public is looking at him?" + +Here again I was able to express my full agreement with the professor. + +"I'd never do in a three-ring show, no matter what they was to give me," +he continued. "And I've got an act nearly ready now that there's lots of +these shows will be wanting just as soon as they hear of it. I"--here he +interrupted himself and looked up and down the street, as though to make +sure that there were no concealed listeners lying in wait to overhear +what he was about to say--"I don't mind telling you about it, if you'd +like to know." + +I declared that I was much interested, and that I desired above all +things to learn all about this new act of his. + +"Well," he began, "I think I told you awhile ago that my granddaughter's +all the family I got left now? She's nearly eight years old, and as +cunning a little thing as ever you see anywhere--and healthy, too, like +her mother. She favors me, just as her mother did. And she takes to +music naturally--can't keep her hands off my instruments when I put them +down--plays 'Jerusalem the Golden' on the pipes now so it would draw +tears from a graven image. And she sings too--just as if she couldn't +help it. She's a voice like an angel--oh, she'll be a primy donny one of +these days. And it was her singing gave me the idea of this new act of +mine. It's _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ arranged just for her and me. I do Uncle +Tom and play the fiddle, and she doubles Little Eva and Topsy with a +lightning change. As Little Eva, of course, she'll sing a hymn--'Wait +Till the Clouds Roll By,' or the 'Sweet By-and-By,' or something of that +sort; and as Topsy she'll do a banjo solo first, and then for the encore +she'll do a song and dance, while I play the fiddle for her. It's a +great scheme, isn't it? It's bound to be a go!" + +I expressed the opinion that it seemed to me a most attractive +suggestion. + +"But I've made up my mind," he went on, "not to bring her out at all +until I can get the right opening. I don't care about terms first off, +because when we make our hit we can get our own terms quick enough. But +there's everything in opening right. So I shall wait till fall, or maybe +even till New Year's, before I begin to worry about it. And in the +meantime my own act in the street goes. The Solo Orchestra is safe for +pretty good money all summer. You didn't hear me the other evening, and +I'm sorry--but there's no doubt it's a go. I don't suppose it's as +legitimate as the tumbleronicon, maybe, or as the Swiss bells--I don't +know for sure. But it isn't bad, either; and in summer, wherever there's +children around, it's a certain winner. Sometimes when I do the 'Turkish +Patrol,' or things like that, there's a hundred or more all round me." + +"From the way the little ones looked at me the other evening, when I +asked you to move on," I said, "it was obvious enough that they were +very anxious to hear you. And I regret that I was forced to deprive +myself also of the pleasure." + +He rose to his feet slowly, his loose-jointed frame seeming to unfold +itself link by link. + +"I tell you what I'll do," he responded, cordially; "isn't your lady +getting better?" + +I was able to say that our invalid was improving steadily. + +"Well, then," he suggested, "what do you say to my coming round here +some evening next week? I'll give a concert for her and you, and any of +your friends you like to invite? And you can tell her there isn't any of +the new songs or waltzes or marches or selections from operas she wants +I can't do. She's only got to give it a name and the Solo Orchestra will +play it." + +Of course I accepted this proffered entertainment; and with that +Professor Briggs took his leave, bidding me farewell with a slightly +conscious air as though he were accustomed to have the eyes of a +multitude centred upon him. + +And one evening, in the middle of the week, the Solo Orchestra appeared +on the sidewalk in front of our house and gave a concert for our special +benefit. + +Our invalid had so far regained her strength that she was able to sit at +the window to watch the performance of Professor Briggs. But her +attention was soon distracted from the Solo Orchestra itself to the +swarm of children which encompassed him about, and which took the +sharpest interest in his strange performance. + +"Just look at that lovely little girl on the stoop opposite, sitting all +alone by herself, as though she didn't know any of the others," cried +our convalescent. "She's the most elfinlike little beauty I've ever +seen. And she is as _blasee_ about this Solo Orchestra of yours as +though it was _Tannhaeuser_ we were listening to, and she was the owner +of a box at the Metropolitan." + +When the concert came to an end at last, as the brief twilight was +waning, when the Solo Orchestra had played the "Anvil Chorus" as a final +encore after the "Turkish Patrol," when Professor Theophilus Briggs, +after taking up the collection himself, had shaken hands with me when I +went down to convey to him our thanks, when it was so plainly evident +that the performance was over at last that even the children accepted +the inevitable and began to scatter--then the self-possessed little girl +on the opposite side of the way rose to her feet with dignity. When the +tall musician, with the bells jingling in his peaked hat, crossed the +street, she took his hand as though he belonged to her. As he walked +away she trotted along by his side, smiling up at him. + +"I see now," I said; "that must be his granddaughter, the future +impersonator of the great dual character, Little Eva and Topsy." + +(1896.) + + + + +THE REHEARSAL OF THE NEW PLAY + + +When Wilson Carpenter came to the junction of the two great +thoroughfares he stood still for a moment and looked at his watch, not +wishing to arrive at the rehearsal too early. He found that it was then +almost eight o'clock, and he began at once to pick his way across the +car-tracks that were here twisted in every direction. A cloud of steam +swirled down as a train on the elevated railroad clattered along over +his head; the Cyclops eye of a cable-car glared at him as it came +rushing down-town; from the steeple of a church on the corner, around +which the mellow harvest-moon peered down on the noisy streets, there +came the melodious call to the evening service; over the entrance to a +variety show a block above a gaudy cluster of electric lights +illuminated the posters which proclaimed for that evening a Grand Sacred +Concert, at which Queenie Dougherty, the Irish Empress, would sing her +new song, "He's an Illigant Man in a Scrap, My Boys." As the young +dramatist sped along he noted that people were still straggling by twos +and threes into the house of worship and into the place of +entertainment; and he could not but contrast swiftly this Sunday +evening in a great city with the Sunday evenings of his boyhood in the +little village of his birth. + +He wondered what his quiet parents would think of him now were they +alive, and did they know that he was then going to the final rehearsal +of a play of which he was half author. It was not his first piece, for +he had been lucky enough the winter before to win a prize offered by an +enterprising newspaper for the best one-act comedy; but it was the first +play of his to be produced at an important New York house. When he came +to the closed but brilliantly lighted entrance of this theatre, he stood +still again to read with keen pleasure the three-sheet posters on each +side of the doorway. These parti-colored advertisements announced the +first appearance at that theatre of the young American actress, Miss +Daisy Fostelle, in a new American comedy, "Touch and Go," written +expressly for her by Harry Brackett and Wilson Carpenter, and produced +under the immediate direction of Z. Kilburn. + +When the author of the new American comedy had read this poster twice, +he took out his watch again and saw that it was just eight. He threw +away his cigarette and walked swiftly around the corner. Entering a +small door, he went down a long, ill-lighted passage. At the end of this +was a small square hall, which might almost be called the landing-stage +of a flight of stairs leading to the dressing-rooms above and to the +property-room below. This hall was cut off from the stage by a large +swinging-door. + +As Carpenter entered the room this door swung open and a nervous young +man rushed in. Catching sight of the dramatist, he checked his speed, +held out his hand, and smiled wearily, saying, "That's you, is it? I'm +so glad you've come!" + +"The rehearsal hasn't begun, has it?" Carpenter asked, eagerly. + +"Star isn't here yet," answered the actor, "and she's never in a hurry, +you know. She takes her own time always, Daisy does. I know all her +little tricks. I've told you already that I never would have accepted +this engagement at all if I hadn't been out since January. I don't see +myself in this part of yours. I'll do my best with it, of course, and it +isn't such a bad part, maybe; but I don't see myself in it." + +Carpenter tapped the other on the back heartily and cried: "Don't you be +afraid, Dresser; you will be all right! Why, I shouldn't wonder if you +made the hit of the whole piece!" + +And with that he started to open the door that led to the stage. + +But Dresser made a sudden appeal: "Don't go away just as I've found you. +I've been wanting to see you all day. I've got to have your advice, and +it's important." + +"Well?" the dramatist responded. + +"Well," repeated the young actor, "you know that bit of mine in the +third act, where I have the scene with Jimmy Stark? He has to say to +me, 'I think my wife's mind is breaking,' and I say, 'Are you afraid she +is going to give you a piece of it?' Now, how would you read that?" + +After the author had explained to the actor what seemed to him the +obvious distribution of the emphasis in this speech, he was able to +escape and at last to make his way upon the stage. + +The scene of the first act of "Touch and Go" was set, and the stage +itself was brilliantly lighted, while the auditorium was in absolute +darkness. It was at least a minute before Carpenter was able to discern +the circle of the balcony, shrouded in the linen draperies that +protected its velvet and its gilding from the dust. Here and there in +the orchestra chairs were little knots of three or four persons, perhaps +twenty or thirty in all. The proscenium boxes yawned blackly. Although +it was a warm evening in the early fall, the house struck Carpenter as +chill and forbidding. He peered into the darkness to discover the face +he was longing to see again. + +Two men were talking earnestly, seated at a table in the centre of the +stage near the footlights. One of these was a short man, with grizzled +hair and a masterful manner. This was Sherrington, the stage-manager who +had been engaged to produce the play. The other was Harry Brackett, +Carpenter's collaborator in its authorship. + +Just as the new-comer had made out in the dark house the group he was +seeking and had bowed to the two ladies comprising it, Harry Brackett +caught sight of him. + +"Well, Will," he cried, "the Stellar Attraction is late, as usual--and +we've got lots of work before us to-night, too. Sherrington isn't at all +satisfied with the way they do either of the big scenes in the second +act; and we've got to look out and keep them all up to their work if we +want this to be anything more than a mere 'artistic success.'" + +"'Artistic success!'" said Sherrington, emphatically; "why, there's +money in this thing of yours--big money, too, if we can get all the +laughs out of those two scenes of Daisy's in the second act. But it will +take good work to get out all the laughs there ought to be, +legitimately--and we've got to do it! Every laugh is worth a dollar and +a half; that's what I say." + +"The two scenes in the second act?" inquired Carpenter. "The one with +Stark and the one with Miss Marvin, you mean?" + +"The one with Marvin will be all right, I think," said the +stage-manager. + +"I'm not so sure of that," Harry Brackett interjected; "you insisted on +her being engaged, Will, but she is very inexperienced, and I don't know +how she'll get through that long scene." + +"Miss Marvin is very clever," Carpenter declared, eager to defend the +girl he was in love with; "and she will look the part to perfection!" + +"Looking is all very well," Brackett responded, "but it is acting she +will have to do in that scene in the second act." + +"And she will do it too," asserted the stage-manager. "You see, she's +got her mother here to-night, and there isn't a sharper old stager +anywhere than Kate Shannon Loraine." + +"That's so," Harry Brackett admitted; "I suppose Loraine can show her +daughter how to get out of that scene all there is in it." + +"Shannon'll see the whole play to-night," said Sherrington, "and she'll +be able to give Marvin lots of pointers to-morrow. The little girl will +be all right; it's Daisy I'm more afraid of in that scene. It ought to +be played high comedy, 'Lady Teazle,' way up in G--and high comedy isn't +altogether in Daisy's line." + +"That can't be helped now," Brackett replied; "and if the Stellar +Attraction can't reach that scene it's the Stellar Attraction's own +fault, isn't it? You remember, Will, how she kept telling us all the +time we were writing the play that she wanted as high-toned a part as we +could give her. We gave it to her, and now she's just got to stretch up +to it, if she can." + +"I am not afraid of that scene," Carpenter declared, "for I've always +doubted whether she could really do high comedy, and that scene is +written so that it will go almost as well if it's played broadly. You +know there are two ways of doing Lady Teazle." + +"There are no two ways about Daisy's being a great favorite," said the +stage-manager. "She's accepted, and that's enough. After all, I don't +suppose it matters much how she takes that scene; high or broad, the +public will accept her. The part fits her like a glove, and all we've +got to do is to keep everybody up to concert-pitch and get all the +laughs we can. You took my advice and cut that talky scene in the third +act, and now the whole act will go off like hot cakes--see if it don't. +I tell you what it is, I'll teach you two boys how to write a real farce +before I've done with you!" + +Harry Brackett was standing almost behind Sherrington as the +stage-manager made this speech. He winked at Carpenter. + +"Yes," he said, a moment later, "I think it is a pretty good piece of +the kind, and I hope it will fetch them. At any rate, I don't believe +even our worst enemies will praise it for its 'literary merit.'" + +Carpenter laughed a little bitterly. "No," he assented, "we've got it +into shape now, and I doubt if anybody insults us by saying that 'Touch +and Go' is 'well written.'" + +"Do you remember our joke while we were working on it last winter, +Will?" asked Harry Brackett. Then turning to Sherrington he explained: +"We used to say that the managers wouldn't 'touch' it, so the people +couldn't 'go.'" + +"It's harder to touch the manager than it is to make the public go," +added Carpenter. "I believe that any fool can write a play, but that +only a man of great genius ever succeeds in getting his play produced." + +A handsome young woman with snapping black eyes walked on the stage +briskly. + +"Here's the Stellar Attraction at last," said Harry Brackett; "now we +can get down to business." + +"Am I late?" the handsome young woman asked, as she came forward. +"Everybody waiting for me?" + +"You are just twenty minutes late, my dear," said the stage-manager, +looking at his watch, "and we are all waiting for you." + +"That's all right, then," she replied, laughing lightly; "we've got all +night before us, haven't we?" + +The prompter clapped his hands and called out "First act!" Two +clean-shaven men of indefinite age who had been sitting in the wings +rose and came forward. Mr. Dresser joined them, and his manner suggested +a certain increase of his ordinary nervous tension. A well-preserved +elderly lady left her seat on one side of the aisles under the +proscenium box and came through the door which led from the auditorium +to the stage. She was followed by a slight, graceful girl, a blonde with +clear gray eyes. + +"Mrs. Castleman--Miss Marvin," said the prompter, seeing them; "now we +are all ready." + +And then the serious business of the rehearsal began. Mrs. Castleman +came down to the centre of the stage and took up a newspaper and read +the date of it aloud, and remarked that it was just five years since +master and mistress had parted in anger, adding that neither of them had +put foot inside the old house in all the five years, and yet it was not +an hour from New York. Then one of the minor actors, an awkward young +fellow, one of the two who had been standing in the wings, entered with +a telegram, which he gave to Mrs. Castleman. She tore it open and read +it aloud; the master would arrive early that evening. Then Miss Marvin, +the girl with the clear blue eyes, came forward with an open letter in +her hand and told Mrs. Castleman that the mistress of the house would be +home again at last late that afternoon. And thus the rehearsal went on +gravely, every one intent upon the business in hand. The speeches of the +actors were interrupted now and then by the stage-manager. "Take the +last scene over again," he might command, whereupon the performers would +resume their places as before and begin again. "Don't cross till he +takes the stage, my dear. And when he says, 'What is the meaning of +this?' don't be in a hurry. Wait, and then say your aside, 'Can he +suspect?' in a hoarse whisper. See?" + +Finally there was a jingle of sleigh-bells, and the orchestra, beginning +faintly and slowly, soon worked up to a swift _forte_, and then Miss +Daisy Fostelle made her first appearance through the broad door at the +back of the stage. Finding that she had taken everybody by surprise, she +smiled sweetly, and said, "You didn't expect me, I see--but I hope you +are all glad to see me once more." + +A thin, cadaverous man with a heavy, black mustache here stepped forward +to face the wife he had not seen for five years. "We are all glad to see +you once more," he had to say, "very glad indeed, and we are gladder +still to see that you seem to be in such excellent health and such high +spirits! The separation has not dimmed the brightness of your eyes, +nor--" Here the tall, gaunt actor stopped and hesitated. "I don't know +what's the matter with that speech," he said, impatiently, "but I can't +get it into my head. I never had such tricky lines!" + +The prompter gave him the word he needed, and no one else paid any +attention to this out-break. + +The two authors were seated at the table in the centre of the +footlights, and Harry Brackett whispered to Carpenter: "Stark is getting +the big head, isn't he? The idea of a mere cuff-shooter like that taking +himself seriously!" + +Then there followed an important scene in which the wife gave her +husband a witty and vivacious account of all her doings during the five +years of their separation, ending with the startling announcement that +she had spent six weeks in South Dakota and had there procured a divorce +from him! But there is no need to disclose here in detail the plot of +"Touch and Go," as the new American comedy unfolded itself scene by +scene. As the end of the act approached Sherrington pressed the actors +to play more briskly so as to bring the curtain down swiftly on an +unexpected but carefully prepared tableau. + +When the act was over the stage manager had the final passages repeated +twice, to make sure of its going smoothly at the first performance; and +then the stage was cleared so that the scene might be set for the second +act. + +Carpenter watched the graceful, gray-eyed girl go back into the dim +auditorium and take a seat beside her mother; and his heart thumped +suddenly as he found himself wondering when he would dare to tell her +that he loved her and to ask her to be his wife. Then he also left the +stage and dropped into the chair behind mother and daughter. + +"It was very good of you to come this evening, Mrs. Loraine," he began. +"I feel as if having your daughter act in this play of mine will bring +me luck somehow." + +"The idea!" said Miss Marvin, smilingly. + +"Mary had told me how clever the piece was," the elder actress +responded, "but it is really better than she said. The dialogue is very +brilliant at times, and the characters are excellently contrasted--and, +what is more important, the whole thing will act! The parts carry the +actors; they've got something to do which is worth while doing. It will +go all right to-morrow night!" + +"It's a beautiful piece," Mary Marvin declared, "and I think my part is +just lovely!" + +And before he could say anything in fit acknowledgment, Mrs. Loraine +went on: "Yes, Mary's part is charming. And I think she will play it +very well, too!" + +"I'm sure of it!" he cried, unhesitatingly. + +"I think there is more in it than I thought at first," said Mary's +mother, "now I've seen the play, and I'll go over Mary's part with her +to-night and show her what can be done with it. I'm waiting for that +scene in the second act with Fostelle. I think that Mary ought to share +the call after that. In fact, I'm not sure that she can't take the scene +away from Fostelle." + +"Oh, mother," the daughter broke in, "that would never do! I should get +my two weeks' notice the next morning, shouldn't I? And I don't want to +be out of an engagement just at the beginning of the season when all the +companies are made up." + +"Are you sure that the ghost will walk every week with this Fostelle +company, if you strike bad business for a month or so?" asked Mrs. +Loraine, with a suggestion of anxiety in her voice. + +"I think Zeke Kilburn is all right," the dramatic author responded; "he +made a pile of money last year on that imported melodrama, the 'Doctor's +Daughter'; and, besides, he has a backer." + +Mrs. Loraine laughed gently, showing her beautifully regular teeth. She +was still a handsome woman, with a fine figure and a crown of silver +hair. + +"A backer?" she rejoined; "but who backs the backer? I've heard your +friend, Mr. Brackett, there, say that a jay and his money are soon +parted." + +Carpenter answered her earnestly. "I really think Kilburn is pretty +solid, but I suppose that a great deal does depend on the way that the +play draws. They've got open time here in New York, and if 'Touch and +Go' catches on they can stay here till Christmas. So it comes down to +this, that if our piece is a go the ghost will walk regularly." + +"I hope it will make a hit," Mrs. Loraine answered, "for your sake, too. +You haven't sold it outright, have you?" + +"No, indeed," the young dramatist replied. "Harry Brackett is too old in +the business for that. We've got a nightly royalty, with a percentage on +the gross whenever it plays to more than four thousand dollars a week. +We stand to make a lot of money--if it makes a hit. What do you think of +its chances, Mrs. Loraine?" + +"The first act is all right," she responded. "That's the most I can say +now. But come and ask me after I've seen the third act and I'll tell you +what I think, and I believe I can then prophesy its fate pretty well." + +By this time the scene of the second act had been set. It represented a +stone summer-house on the top of a hill overlooking the Hudson just +below West Point. It was picturesque in itself, and it was ingeniously +arranged to provide opportunities for effective stage business. + +Carpenter accompanied Miss Marvin back to the stage when the time drew +nigh for the second act to begin. + +As he was passing through the door between the auditorium and the stage, +he found himself face to face with Dresser, who was fidgeting to and +fro. + +"Oh, Mr. Carpenter," he cried, "I'm so glad to see you! I want to ask +your opinion about this. After all, you know, you wrote the play, and +you ought to be able to decide. In my scene with Marvin in this act, am +I really in love with her then, or ain't I? Sherrington says I am, but I +think it's a great deal funnier if I'm not in love with her then--it +helps to work up the last act better. Now what do you think? Sherrington +insists that his way of playing it is more dramatic. Well, I don't say +it ain't, but it isn't half as funny, is it?" + +After Carpenter had given his opinion upon this question, Dresser +allowed him to escape. But he had not advanced ten yards before he was +claimed by Mrs. Castleman. + +"Mr. Carpenter," the elderly actress began, in her usual haughtily +dignified manner, "how do you think I ought to dress this part in the +first act? She's a house-keeper, isn't she? So I suppose I ought to wear +an apron." + +The young dramatist expressed his belief that perhaps an apron would be +a proper thing for the house-keeper to wear in the first act. + +"But not a cap, I hope?" urged Mrs. Castleman. + +Carpenter doubted if a cap would be necessary. + +"Thank you," said Mrs. Castleman. "You see, I have always hitherto been +associated with the legitimate, and I really don't quite know what to do +with this sort of thing." Then she suddenly paused, only to break out +again impetuously: "Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Carpenter, really I did +not mean to imply that this charming play of yours is not legitimate--" + +The dramatic author laughed. "You needn't apologize," he declared; "I'm +inclined to think that 'Touch and Go' is so illegitimate now that its +own parents can't recognize it!" + +At last the rehearsal of the second act began, the two authors sitting +at the little table with the stage-manager. + +Sherrington consulted them once or twice in regard to the omission of a +line here and there. + +"Cut it down to the bone when you can--that's what I say," he +explained; "what you cut out can't make people yawn." + +But once he stopped the rehearsal to suggest that a speech be written +in. "You've got to make that complication mighty clear," he declared, +"and this is the place to do it, I think. If you want them to understand +that Dresser here is going to mistake Marvin for Fostelle in the next +scene, you had better give him another line now to lead up to it." + +The two authors consulted hastily, and Carpenter, drawing out a +note-book and a pencil, hurriedly wrote a sentence, which he showed to +Brackett. + +"That'll do it," said Sherrington; and he read it aloud to Dresser, who +borrowed Carpenter's pencil and wrote in the line on the manuscript of +his part, wondering aloud whether he should ever remember it on the +first night. + +A few minutes later Sherrington again interrupted the actors to insist +that the sunset effect should be adjusted carefully to accompany the +spoken dialogue. + +"I want a soft, rosy tinge on Fostelle in this scene," he explained. + +"Quite right," laughed the black-eyed star; "that ought to be becoming +to my style of beauty." + +"And I want it to contrast with the blue moonlight in the scene with +Marvin," said the stage-manager. + +"Quite right again," Miss Daisy Fostelle commented. "I'll take the +centre of the stage, and you will order calciums for one!" + +"We had better go back to your entrance, I think," Sherrington decided, +"and take the whole scene over." + +The actors and actresses obediently resumed the positions they had +occupied when Miss Daisy Fostelle made her first appearance in that act. +The cue for her entrance was given, and she came forward with a burst of +artificial laughter. + +"That laugh was very good," Sherrington declared--"better than it was +last time; but you must make it as hollow as you can. Remember the +situation: your best young man has gone back on you and you are trying +to keep a stiff upper-lip--but your heart is breaking all the same. +See?" + +The star repeated the laugh, and it was more obviously artificial. + +"That's it, my dear," said the stage-manager. "Now keep it up till you +cross, and then drop into that chair there, and then you let the laugh +die away into a sob." + +The star went back to the rustic gate by which she had entered, laughed +again, and came forward; then she crossed the stage, sank upon a seat, +and choked with a sob. + +Carpenter stepped forward and whispered into Sherrington's ear, +whereupon Miss Fostelle sat upright instantly and very suspiciously +asked, "What's that? I'd rather have you say it out loud than whisper +it!" + +The young dramatist explained at once. + +"I was only suggesting to Sherrington that perhaps it would be better if +that seat were turned a little so that you were not so sideways: then +the audience would get a full view of your face here." + +"It would be a pity to deprive them of that, I'll admit," said the +mollified actress, as she and the stage-manager slightly turned the +rustic chair. + +Then she dropped into the seat and repeated her sob. + +Miss Marvin stepped upon the stage, and remarked to space, "What a +lovely evening, and how glorious the sunset!" Then she stood silently +watching. + +Miss Daisy Fostelle sobbed again, and, in tones heavy-laden with tears, +she said, "What have I to live for now?" Looking back at the other +actress she remarked, in her ordinary voice, "You will give me time to +pick myself up here, won't you?" Then she went on, in the former +tear-stained accents, "What have I left to live for now? My heart is +broken! My heart is broken!" Again she resumed her every-day tones to +ask the stage-manager: "Is that all right? Am I far enough around now?" + +Thus they came to perhaps the most important scene of the play--that +between the Stellar Attraction (as Brackett liked to call her) and the +girl Carpenter was in love with. Both actresses were well fitted to the +characters they had to perform. Carpenter, who had no liking for Daisy +Fostelle, was a little surprised at the judgment and skill with which +she carried off the _bravura_ passages of her part; and he was not a +little charmed with the delicate force the gentle Mary Marvin revealed +in the contrasting character. + +And so the rehearsal proceeded laboriously, Sherrington directing it +autocratically, ordering certain scenes to be played more rapidly and +seeing that others were taken more slowly, so that the spectators might +have time to understand the situation. Now and then either Carpenter or +Brackett made a suggestion or a criticism, but both yielded to +Sherrington, if he was insistent. The stage-manager kept the whole +company of actors up to their work, and imposed on them his +understanding of that work, much as the conductor of an orchestra leads +his musicians at the performance of a symphony. + +When the whole act had been rehearsed, and the final scene was repeated +three or four times until it ran like well-oiled clockwork, the stage +was cleared so that the scenery of the third act might be set. + +Sherrington accompanied Miss Marvin through the door behind the +proscenium box into the dark auditorium. + +"You will play that scene very well," he said, "but you've got to have +confidence." + +"It is a beautiful part, isn't it?" she responded, with enthusiasm. "I +never had a part I could enjoy playing so much." + +Carpenter was about to leave the stage to tell Mary what a delight it +was to him to hear her speak the words he had written, when his +collaborator tapped him on the shoulder. As he turned Harry Brackett +whispered in his ear: + +"Look out for the Stellar Attraction. I'm afraid she has just dropped on +Marvin's part. If she once suspects that the little girl may get that +scene away from her, she can make herself mightily disagreeable all +round. I guess we had better go up and tell her she is a greater actress +than Charlotte Cushman." + +Carpenter laughingly answered: "Take care she doesn't drop on you! It +would be worse if she thought you were guying her." + +"There's no danger of that," Harry Brackett returned. "That Stellar +Attraction of ours is a boa-constrictor for flattery--there isn't +anything she won't swallow." + +The two dramatic authors found Miss Daisy Fostelle standing in the wings +and discussing with Dresser the personal peculiarities of another member +of the dramatic profession. + +As Carpenter and Brackett came up the actress was saying: "Why, she had +the cheek actually to tell me I was more amusing off the stage than +on--the cat! But I got even with her. I told her I was sorry I couldn't +return the compliment, for she was even less amusing on the stage than +off!" + +The two dramatists joined in the laugh, and then Harry Brackett began. + +"Is it your hated rival you are having fun with?" he asked. "Well, if +she comes to see you in this play to-morrow they'll have to put a +waterproof carpet into the private box, for she will weep bitter tears +of despair while she's watching you in this second act of ours." + +Miss Daisy Fostelle snapped her big black eyes at him and smiled with +pleasure. + +"Yes," she admitted. "I don't believe she will really enjoy that +scene--and yet she'll have to give me a hand at the end of the act." + +"She'll go through the motions, perhaps," Brackett returned, "but she +won't burst a hole in her gloves." Then he slyly nudged his +collaborator. + +"The fact is," began Carpenter, thus admonished, "I was just going to +tell Harry Brackett here that maybe we have made a mistake in writing +you a high-comedy part like this--" + +The actress flashed a suspicious glance at him, but he went on as if +unconscious of this. + +"We can see now," he continued, "that you are going to play this part so +well that you will make a great hit in it, and then the critics will all +be after you to play Lady Teazle and Rosalind. They'll tell you that +you are only wasting your talents in modern plays and that you ought to +devote yourself to the legitimate." + +The suspicion faded from Miss Daisy Fostelle's face and the smile of +pleasure reappeared. + +"That's so," Harry Brackett declared. "You will make such a hit in this +part, I'm afraid, that Sheridan and Shakespeare will be good enough for +you next season. Now that would be taking the bread out of our mouths!" + +The actress laughed easily. "I don't think you would starve," she +returned; "and I might, maybe--if I took to the legitimate. Not that it +would be my first attempt, either, for I played Ariel in the 'Tempest' +when I was a mere child. And it wasn't easy, I can tell you. Ariel's a +real hard part, I think; there's a certain swing to the words, too, and +you can't make up a line of your own if you get stuck, as I could in +this piece of yours." + +"No," Brackett confessed, solemnly, "the dialogue of 'Touch and Go' is +not as rhythmic as the dialogue of the 'Tempest.'" + +"And I've played Francois in 'Richelieu,' too," continued Miss Fostelle. +"But I don't think I really like any of those Shakespearian parts." + +"No," Brackett confessed again, with fearless gravity, "Francois is not +one of Shakespeare's best parts. It wasn't worthy of you, no matter how +inexperienced you were. But Rosalind, now, as Carpenter suggests, and +Beatrice--" + +Carpenter here guessed from Dresser's spasmodic manner that the actor +was about to intervene in the conversation, and not knowing what might +be the result, the younger of the dramatists dropped out of the group +and managed to draw Dresser away with him. + +After they had exchanged a few words Carpenter looked into the +auditorium to discover where Mary Marvin might be. He saw that she was +by the side of her mother, and that Mrs. Loraine and Sherrington were +still engaged in an earnest conversation. He made a movement as if to +leave Dresser, whereupon the comedian begged him for a moment's +interview. + +"It's about that speech of mine in the third act that I want to make a +suggestion," said the actor. "It's a very good speech, too, and I think +I can get three laughs out of it, easy. You know the speech. I mean the +one about the three old maids: 'There were three old maids in our town; +one was as plain as a pikestaff, and the other was as homely as a hedge +fence, and the third was as ugly as sin; and whenever they all three +walked out together every clock in the place stopped short. Their +parents had christened them Faith and Hope and Charity; but the boys +always called them Battle and Murder and Sudden Death.' Now, don't you +think it would help to ring out the point more if the orchestra was to +play 'Grandfather's Clock' very gently just as I say that 'every clock +in the place stopped short'? What do you think? That's my own idea!" + +The dramatist said nothing for a second or two, and then told the actor +to consult the stage-manager, who was just returning to begin the +rehearsal of the third act. + +The new scene had been set swiftly and the furniture was already in +place. The first of the actors to enter was the cadaverous and irritable +Stark. He began glibly enough, but soon hesitated for a word, and then +broke out impatiently, regardless of the presence of the two authors: +"Oh, I can't get that line into my head! And I don't know what it means, +either! How can you expect a man to speak such rubbish?" + +As before, nobody paid any attention to this petulance, and the actor +went on with his part without further comment. + +Dresser then entered, and the two men proceeded to misunderstand each +other in the most elaborate fashion. The character which Stark +represented had reason to believe that the character that Dresser +represented was the uncle of the character that Daisy Fostelle +represented and was also a soldier. In like manner Dresser had reason to +believe that Stark was the lady's uncle and also a sailor. They +addressed each other, therefore, in sailor talk and in soldier talk; and +the fun waxed fast and furious. At the height of the misunderstanding +Daisy Fostelle entered unexpectedly and found herself instantly +immeshed in the humorous complication, with no possibility of plausible +explanation. + +Once the stage-manager reminded Dresser that he had omitted a phrase. +"You left out 'Confound it, man!'" he said. + +"I know it," the actor explained, "but I wanted to save it to use in my +next speech. It goes better there--you see if it does not." + +And Sherrington decided that "Confound it, man!" was more effective in +the later speech; so the transposition was authorized, to Dresser's +satisfaction. + +The stage-manager had this important scene of mutual misunderstanding +between Stark and Dresser and Daisy Fostelle repeated twice, until every +word fell glibly and every gesture seemed automatic. And so the +rehearsal went to the end, Sherrington applying the finishing touches, +and seeming at last to be fairly well satisfied with the result of his +labors. + +The final lines of the comedy were, of course, to be delivered by the +star; but when the cue was given to her Miss Fostelle simply said "Tag!" +everybody being aware that it is very unlucky to speak the last speech +of a play at a rehearsal--as unlucky as it is to put up an umbrella on +the stage, or to quote from "Macbeth." + +"That will do," said the stage-manager; "I think it will be all right +to-morrow night." + +And with that the rehearsal concluded and the company began to +disperse. + +"I hope it is all right," Harry Brackett remarked to Carpenter, "and I +think it is. But I shall have a great deal more confidence after the man +in the box-office shakes hands with me cordially, say, next Wednesday or +Thursday, and inquires about my health. He'll know by that time whether +we've got a good thing or not!" + +Carpenter helped Miss Marvin to put on her light cape. Then, after her +mother had joined them, they said good-night to the others and left the +theatre together. + +When they came out into the warm night the street was quieter than it +had been when Carpenter entered the theatre. There were fewer cable-cars +passing the door, and the trains on the elevated road in the avenue were +now infrequent. The lights had been turned out in front of the variety +show across the way, and evidently the grand sacred concert was over. +The moon had sunk, and before they had gone a block the bell of the +church tolled the hour of midnight. + +The young man who was walking by the side of Mrs. Loraine broke the +silence at last. + +"Well," he asked, "what do you think of the play now?" + +"I think it is a good piece of its kind," the elder actress answered--"a +very good piece of its kind; and it is well staged; and it will be well +acted, too. Sherrington knows how to get his best work out of everybody. +Yes, it will be a success." + +"Is it good for three months here now?" the young author asked, "and for +the rest of the season on the road?" + +"Oh yes, indeed," replied Mrs. Loraine; "yes, indeed. It's safe for a +hundred nights here at least!" + +They paused at the corner to wait for a cable-car, and Sherrington +joined them. + +This gave Carpenter a chance to lead the daughter away from the mother +half a dozen steps. + +"I'm so glad mother thinks the play will go," the girl began. "And +mother is a very good judge, too. You ought to make a lot out of it." + +The young dramatist felt that he had his chance at last. + +"I've wanted to make money mainly for one reason," he returned; "I +wanted to ask you to take half of it." + +"Half of it?" she echoed, as though she did not understand. + +"Oh, well--all of it," he responded, swiftly; "and me with it." + +"Mr. Carpenter!" she cried, and her blushes made her look even lovelier +than before. + +"Won't you marry me?" he asked, ardently. + +"Oh, I suppose I've got to say yes," she answered, "or else you'll go +down on your knees here in the street!" + +(1895.) + + + + +A CANDLE IN THE PLATE + + +Little Miss Peters had given a last look to the dinner-table with its +effective decoration of autumn leaves, and she had made sure that the +cards were in their proper places. She had glanced at herself in the +mirror of the music-room as she passed through, and she had smiled to +see the little spot of color burning in her cheek. She had taken her +place modestly behind her employer, the portly hostess, and she had seen +the guests arrive one by one. She had remarked the cheerful eagerness of +the young Irishman for whose sake the company had gathered, and she had +frankly admired his good looks. Now she was sitting silently in her seat +at the table, and she was wondering what the stranger would think of +them all. + +It would not be quite fair to the worthy widow to say that Mrs. Canton's +dinners were always ponderous; but it might be admitted that, although +the cooking was ever excellent and the guests were selected from the +innermost circle of Society, the bill of fare was monotonous and the +conversation often lacked variety. That evening, however, there were +several present who had not before been honored with invitations to dine +in that exclusive mansion. Few people of fashion were back in town so +early in October, and it had not been easy for Mrs. Canton to make up +her complement of guests when she found that she had suddenly to honor a +letter of introduction Lord Mannington had given to the Honorable +Gilbert Barry, brother of Lord Punchestown. She had heard that the +handsome Irishman had been a great success at Lenox, and that all the +girls were wild about him. In Mannington's letter she was informed that +the young man went in for slumming and all that sort of thing, and that +he had been living in Toynbee Hall; she was besought, therefore, to make +him acquainted with the people in New York most interested in the +elevation of the lower classes. + +This sentence of Lord Mannington's letter it was that had caused Mrs. +Canton to invite Rupert de Ruyter, the novelist, for she happened to +have read one of his stories about the wretched creatures living down in +the Italian quarter, and she was sure he would be able to tell Mr. Barry +all that the young Irishman might want to know about the slums of New +York. She had been fortunate enough to get the Jimmy Suydams, too; and +she knew that Mrs. Jimmy took such an interest in the poor, acting as +patroness so often, and all that. Then when little Miss Peters had come +in to write the invitations and to balance the check-book and to answer +the accumulated notes, Mrs. Canton, having gone over the list, looked +at the pretty young secretary for a minute without speaking, and then +said, "It won't be easy to get just the people one wants. Why shouldn't +you come, Miss Peters? You belong to one of those things, you know, what +do you call them--Working Girls' Clubs--don't you?" + +"I'm a working girl myself, am I not?" Miss Peters answered. "And I +reckon I'm very glad I've gotten the work to do." + +"Then you can tell him anything Mr. de Ruyter doesn't know about these +sort of people. How absurd for the younger brother of a peer to bother +himself about such things over here, isn't it?" Mrs. Canton had +returned. "Then that's settled." + +Although the Southern girl had not relished the way the invitation had +been proffered, she had not declined it, glad to get a glimpse again of +the life of luxury to which she had been a stranger since she had been +earning her own living; and thus it was that she was sitting silently in +her seat at the dinner-table that evening in October, with Gilbert Barry +and Rupert de Ruyter opposite to her. She did not seem to notice how the +young Irishman glanced across the table at her more than once with +obvious admiration, or how he tried to lure her into the conversation. + +It irritated Miss Peters to have Rupert de Ruyter monopolize the talk. +His rather rasping voice sawed her nerves, and she detested the way he +thrust forward his square chin. She listened while he chattered along, +not boasting exactly, yet managing to convey the impression that he knew +more than any one else. Now and again he did bring forth a picturesque +fact, for which he had the kodak eye of a reporter. He had the +happy-go-lucky facility of the newspaper man, and he rattled away with +more than one absurd misapprehension of the reality, until he reminded +her of a singer with a fine voice but unable to avoid false notes. + +"I don't pretend to know New York inside-out and upsidedown," he was +saying; "but it is a most fascinating study, this polyglot city of ours, +and the more you push your investigations the more likely you are to +make surprising discoveries. You know we have an Italian quarter here?" + +This was addressed, perhaps, to the British guest, but it was Mrs. Jimmy +Suydam who answered it. + +"Of course we do," she said; "haven't we all read that thrilling story +you wrote about it?--the story with the startling title--_A Vision of +Black Despair_." + +The author flushed with pride that so handsome a woman and so exclusive +a leader of Society should thus praise one of his writings. + +Mr. Jimmy Suydam leaned over to Mrs. Canton, at whose left he was +sitting, and said, "I don't see how my wife does it, do you? She keeps +up with everything, you know--reads all the books--and all that." + +"I didn't mean to remind you of that little thing of mine," continued De +Ruyter, with a self-satisfied air that made little Miss Peters feel as +though she would like to stick a pin in him. "That's neither here nor +there, though I spent two days down in the Italian quarter getting up +the local color for it. But what you didn't know, any of you, I am +certain, is that part of the soil of this city was imported from Italy." + +"Really, now," commented the British guest, "that is very interesting, +indeed. It would be from a religious motive, I suppose--just as some of +the mediaeval cemeteries had earth brought from the Holy Land?" + +"That would be a more romantic reason, no doubt," the story-teller +explained. "But the real one is very prosaic, I fear. The Italian soil +here in New York was brought over as ballast by the ships that were +going to take back our bread-stuffs. There is lot after lot upon the +Harlem that has been filled in with this ballast--stones mostly, but +some of it is earth." + +"Genoa the superb providing a foundation for imperial New York," said +the young Irishman, with a little flourish--and Miss Peters guessed that +De Ruyter made a mental note of the figure for future elaboration. "And +has New York a volcano under the city like Naples, now?--like every +great town in Europe for the matter of that. Have you a seething mass of +want and misery and discontent, such as boiled over in Paris under the +Commune? That's what I'm wanting to find out." + +"We have a devil's cauldron of our own, if that's what you mean," +responded De Ruyter; "and we have people from every corner of the globe +here now helping to keep the pot a-boiling. We have Russian Jews by the +thousand, living just as they did in the Pale. We have Chinese enough to +support a Chinese theatre. We have so many Syrians now that they are +pre-empting certain blocks for themselves. We have Irish peasants so +timid and suspicious that they won't go to the hospital when they are +almost dying, because they believe the doctors keep a Black Bottle to be +administered to troublesome patients." + +"I should think they would be ever so much more comfortable in a roomy +hospital than in their stuffy little tenement-house rooms," said Mrs. +Jimmy; "and they can't get decent nursing in their own homes, can they?" + +"The poor are a most unreasonable lot--and ungrateful, too," added Mr. +Suydam; "that's what I think." + +"They are not so badly off in their tenement-houses as you might think," +explained De Ruyter. "They help each other with the children when +there's sickness." + +"The universal freemasonry of motherhood," commented Gilbert Barry; and +again Miss Peters suspected the story-teller of making a mental record +of the phrase. + +"They are impossible to understand," De Ruyter declared. + +"Why?" asked Miss Peters, suddenly, across the table, to the surprise of +everybody. The young Irishman smiled encouragingly, as though he had +been regretting that this pretty girl refused to talk. + +"Why are they impossible to understand?" repeated the American +story-teller. "I don't know, I'm sure. They are conundrums, all of them, +and I am ready to give them up." + +"Isn't it because you persist in approaching them as though they were +strange, wild beasts?" the young woman went on. "You speak of them just +as if they were different from us. But they are not, are they? They have +their feelings just like we have; they fall in love and they get married +and they quarrel and they die, just like we do. There is not more crime +in the tenement-houses than there is in the rest of the city--not if you +remember how many more people live in the tenement-houses. There isn't +less joy there, or less sorrow either. There is quite as much happiness, +I reckon, and a good deal more fun. They are not the lower animals; and +it just makes me mad all over when I hear them spoken of in that way. +They are human beings, after all--and if you can't understand them it's +because you're not ready to go to them as your equals." + +"That's what I say," the Irishman agreed; "we must approach them on the +plane of human sympathy--that's the only way to get them to open their +hearts." + +"Why should we expect them to open their hearts to us?" Miss Peters +continued. "We don't open ours to strangers, do we?" + +"That's quite true," admitted Barry. "Sometimes I wonder if it isn't +impertinent we are when we thrust ourselves into a poor man's room. I +doubt we should like him to thrust himself into ours." + +"I think that is a most amusing suggestion of yours," Mrs. Jimmy +declared. "I shall look forward with delight to the day when the Five +Points send missionaries up to Fifth Avenue." + +"What an absurd idea!" cried Mrs. Canton, in disgust. + +"Come now," the Irishman returned, "I deny that the suggestion is mine; +but it is not so absurd--really, it isn't. There's lots of things they +can teach us. I don't know but what we have more to learn from them than +they have from us--really I don't. Christianity, now--practical +Christianity--'inasmuch as ye did it to one of the least of these,' and +all that sort of thing--well, there's more of that among the poor than +there is among the rich, I'm thinking." + +"If you want to pick up picturesque bits of low life in New York," broke +in De Ruyter, "you must get a chance to see a candle in the plate." + +"A candle in the plate?" echoed Barry. "I've never heard of it." + +"It sounds like the title of a tale of superstition transplanted from +Europe and surviving here in America," said Mrs. Jimmy. + +"It's not a superstition, it's only a custom," De Ruyter explained; "and +whether it's a transplanted survival or not I can't say. You see I've +never seen the thing myself, but I've been told about it. I hear that +down in the tenement-house region, when a family can't pay the rent and +the landlord puts their scant furniture out on the sidewalk, and they +don't know where to lay their heads that night, then one of the +neighbors takes a candle and lights it and sticks it up on a plate, and +takes his stand on the sidewalk; and this is a sign to everybody that +there is a family in sore distress, and so the passers-by drop in a +penny or two until there is enough to pay the arrears of rent and let +the poor mother and children go back." + +Mrs. Jimmy Suydam laughed a little bitterly. "That sort of thing may be +possible on Cherry Hill," she said, "but it would never do on Murray +Hill, would it? Just imagine how absurd a broken millionaire would look +standing at a street corner with a little electric light on a silver +salver, expecting the multi-millionaires going by to drop in a check or +two to pay his rent for him!" + +"I thought I had a quaint little silhouette of metropolitan life for +you," De Ruyter responded, smiling back; "but you spoil the picture if +you guy it like that." + +"Very curious it is," said Barry--"very curious, indeed. 'How far a +little candle throws its beams.' I don't think that the custom was +exported from Ireland or from England--at least, I do not recall +anything analogous." + +"I've heard an old Irishwoman complain that the law was harder here on +the tenant than it was in the old country," Miss Peters asserted; and +then she appended an imitation of the old Irishwoman's speech: "'Sure, +they'd boycott the landlord there, that's what they'd do, or they'd +shoot the agent, maybe; but here ye can't--there's the police, bad cess +to 'em!'" + +"Have you ever seen the candle in the plate?" Barry asked her, across +the table. + +"Never," she answered. + +"But you have heard of it?" De Ruyter inquired. + +"Never before to-night," was her reply. + +"You don't mean to say you don't believe that there is any such custom?" +Mrs. Jimmy asked. "Thus all our illusions are shattered one by one." + +"Of course, I don't know," the girl responded; "I haven't been working +down there very long--only since last February. But it sounds like it +was a fake, as we used to say in the newspaper office when I was a +reporter." + +Mrs. Jimmy Suydam had never met Miss Peters before, and now she examined +the girl curiously, wondering what sort of being a woman was who had +been a reporter and was now living among the poor, and who happened also +to be dining at Mrs. Canton's. + +The hostess was just then explaining to Mr. Suydam in a whisper that +Miss Peters was a Southern girl of excellent family, who used to write +those "Polly Perkins" articles for the _Dial_ on Sunday, but who had +given it up last winter, and now acted as her secretary. + +"A fake?" repeated the Irishman, gleefully; "that's one of your +Americanisms, isn't it? I must remember that. A fake--what does it mean +exactly?" + +"It means the thing that is not," De Ruyter explained, with a trace of +acerbity in his voice. "Miss Peters disbelieves in the existence of the +candle in the plate, and she was too polite to call my story a lie, so +she said it was a fake." + +"Oh, Mr. De Ruyter," was her retort, "and you used to be a newspaper man +yourself once!" + +"Your newspapers, now," Barry broke in, "I confess they puzzle me. They +are so clever, you know, and so up-to-date, and all that; but you never +know what to believe in them, do you? And then they do such dreadful +things." + +"I fear you will find few Americans prepared to defend our newspapers," +said the story-teller, always a little ashamed that he had once been a +reporter. "But what sort of a dreadful thing have you in mind just now?" + +"Things quite inconceivable, you know," the Irishman explained; "a thing +like this, for example. A year or two ago a man gave me a copy of one of +your New York papers--the _Dial_, I think it was. I read it with great +interest, as one would the writing of some strange tribe of savages, +don't you know? It was so very extraordinary." + +As the guest made this plain statement, little Miss Peters happened to +catch the eye of the handsome Mrs. Jimmy Suydam, and they exchanged an +imperceptible smile. + +"What shocked me the most," Barry continued, "was a long article from +some special commissioner, with headings in huge letters--" + +"Scare-heads they call them," explained De Ruyter. + +"Scare-heads?" repeated the Irishman. "That's the very name for them. +Scare-heads--delicious! This article, then, had scare-heads galore, and +it described how a suicide had been identified. It seems some poor girl +of the working-class had got into trouble, and sooner than bring +disgrace on her family she had jumped into the river here--Hudson's +River, isn't it? She had carefully arranged so that there was no clew +by which she could be traced. But she had not counted on the devilish +ingenuity of the special commissioner, a woman, too--at least I suppose +it was a woman, since the thing was signed 'Polly Perkins.'" + +Mrs. Jimmy saw the blood rise in the cheeks of Miss Peters, until the +little Southern girl was as red as any of the maple-leaves that decked +the cloth between the two women. She noticed that Rupert De Ruyter was +staring into his plate with ill-concealed embarrassment, and that Mrs. +Canton seemed a little uneasy. + +"It seems that the poor creature's body was sent to the Morgue," Barry +continued, "and no one claimed it, so it was buried at the cost of the +county. And there's where the diabolical cunning of this reporter was +exercised. She guessed that the girl's family would want to see the body +laid away in holy ground, and so she went to the burying. And she hit +it, for there were two women there in deep black, the mother of the poor +wretch and the sister, not afraid to show their bitter grief when they +thought they were unknown and unwatched. The spy tracked them to their +house and she found out their names, and she put the whole story in the +paper! I suppose it broke the mother's heart, and the sister's, to see +the dead girl's shame brought home to her and to them when they thought +it was buried in the grave with her body. I don't deny that the female +detective showed a deal of skill; but what a pitiful thing! To risk +breaking two loving hearts--and for what purpose?" + +There was a moment's silence when the Irishman asked this unanswerable +question. Then Miss Peters raised her head and looked him in the eye. + +"That was what is called a 'beat.' No other paper had the news," she +said; "and the reporter who wrote that story got a raise of five dollars +a week." + +"Faith, she deserved it," Barry returned. "It was blood-money she was +taking, I'm thinking." + +"That's what I think now," Miss Peters replied. "I wish I had thought so +then. I wrote that article, and that is one reason why I am living down +there among the poor, to try and make it up to them. Of course, I can't +undo the wrong I did; but I mean to do my best." + +Then there was another silence, broken by Mrs. Jimmy, who turned to Mrs. +Canton and asked if she was going to take a box at the horse-show. + +When the ladies left the dining-room Barry took the chair by the side of +Suydam. + +"What's the name of that pretty little girl?" he asked. "Peters, isn't +it? I say, it was awfully plucky of her to tell us that she was 'Polly +Perkins,' wasn't it, now? I like her; she's a trump! And that fair hair +of hers is very fetching, isn't it?" + +(1897.) + + + + +MEN AND WOMEN AND HORSES + + +Merrymount Morton walked briskly down Madison Avenue that warm November +evening, when there was never a foretaste of winter in the intermittent +breezes that blew gently across the city from river to river; and as he +crossed the side streets one after another he saw the full moon in the +east, low and large and mellow. On the brow of Murray Hill he checked +his pace for a moment in frank enjoyment of the vista before him, +differing in so many ways from the scenes which met his vision in the +little college town of New England where he earned his living, and where +he had spent the most of his life. The glow of the great town filled the +air, and the roar of the city arose all about him. It seemed to him +almost as though he could feel the heart of the metropolis throbbing +before him. He caught himself wondering again whether he had not erred +in accepting the professorship he had been so glad to get when he came +back from Germany, and whether his life would not have been fuller and +far richer had he come to New York, as once he thought of doing, and had +he resolutely struck out for himself in the welter and chaos of the +commercial capital of the country. + +Down at the foot of the slope a cluster of electric lights spelled out +the name of a trivial extravaganza then nearing its hundredth +performance in the lovely Garden Theatre, and the avenue hereabouts had +a strange, unnatural brilliance. High up in the pure dark blue the +beautiful tower rose in air, its grace made visible by many lights of +its own. The avenue was clogged with carriages, and the arcade before +the theatre and under the tower was thick with men who carried under +their arms folded card-board plans of the great amphitheatre, and who +vociferously proffered tickets for the horse-show. So far remote from +the current of fashion was Merrymount Morton that he had not been aware +that the horse-show week was about to come to a glorious end. But he was +familiar enough with New York to know that the horse-show was also an +exhibition of men and women, and that the human entries were quite as +important as the equine, and rather more interesting. He had never +happened to be in the city at this season of the year; and although he +had intended to spend the evening at the College Club, he seized the +occasion to see a metropolitan spectacle which chanced to be novel to +him. + +From one of the shouting and insistent venders he bought a ticket, and +he walked through the broad entrance-hall, the floor of which slanted +upwards. He passed the door of a restaurant on his right, and he +glanced down a staircase which led to the semi-subterranean stalls where +the horses were tethered. A pungent, acrid, stable odor filled his +nostrils. Then he found himself inside the immense amphitheatre, under +the skeleton ribs of its roof picked out with long lines of tiny +electric bulbs. Morton had a first impression of glittering hugeness, +and a second of restless bustle. From a gallery behind him there came +the blare and crash of a brass band playing an Oriental march; but even +this did not drown the buzz and murmur of many thousand voices. The vast +building seemed to Morton to be filled with men and women, all of them +talking and many of them in motion. He found himself swept along slowly +in the dense crowd that circled steadily around the high fence which +guarded the arena wherein the horses were exhibited. This crowd was too +compact for him to approach the railing, and he could not discover for +himself whether or not anything was to be seen. + +A thin line of more or less horsy fellows fringed the fence, and seemed +to be interested in what was going on. The most of the men and women who +filled the broad promenade between the railing and the long tier of +private boxes paid little or no attention to the arena; they gave +themselves up to staring at the very gayly dressed ladies in the boxes. +It struck the New England college professor that the most of those +present made no pretence of caring for the horses, as though horses +could be seen any day; while they frankly devoted themselves to gazing +at the people of fashion penned side by side in the boxes, and not often +placing themselves so plainly on exhibition. Some of those who were +playing their parts on this narrow and elevated stage had the +self-consciousness of the amateur, and some had the ease that comes of +long practice. These latter looked as though they were accustomed to be +stared at, as though they expected it of right, as though they were +there on purpose to be seen. They seemed to know one another; and it +struck Morton that they were apparently all members of a secret +fraternity of fashion, with their own signs and passwords and their own +system of private grips; and they wholly ignored the people who had not +been initiated and who were not members of their society. They nodded +and smiled brightly to belated arrivals of their own set. They kept up a +continual chatter among themselves, the women leaning across to talk to +acquaintances in the adjoining compartments, and the men paying visits +to the boxes of their friends. Now and again some one in a box would +recognize some one in the circling throng below; but for the most part +there was no communication between the two classes. + +[Illustration: EXPLANATIONS] + +To Morton the spectacle had the attraction of novelty; it was so novel, +indeed, that he did not quite know what to make of it. It +disconcerted him not a little to see people, of position presumably, and +obviously of wealth, willing thus to show themselves off, dressed, many +of them, as though with special intent to attract attention. As a +student of sociology, he found this inspection of Society--in the +narrowest sense of the word--almost as instructive as it was +interesting. At times the vulgarity of the whole thing shocked him, more +especially once when he could not but hear the loud voices of one +over-dressed group of women, who were discussing the characteristics of +one "Willie." + +"He's a wretched little beast!" cried one of these ladies. + +"You mustn't say that," rejoined another, a tall woman with gray hair; +"you know he's my corespondent." And at this stroke of wit the rest of +the party laughed repeatedly. + +But few of those on exhibition were as common as the members of this +group. Indeed, Morton was struck with the fact that the most of the men +and women who were being stared out of countenance were apparently +people of breeding, and he wondered that they were willing to place +themselves in what seemed to him so false a position. Many of the girls, +for example, who wore striking costumes and extravagant hats, were +themselves refined in face and retiring in bearing; they were stylish, +no doubt, but they were well bred also. It seemed to Morton that style +was perhaps the chief characteristic of these New York girls--style +rather than beauty. + +The average of good looks was high, and yet, as it happened, he was able +to walk half around the huge building without seeing half a dozen women +whom he was prepared to declare handsome. The girls appeared to be +strong, healthy, lively, quick-witted, and charming, but rarely +beautiful. They seemed to him, moreover, to be emphatically superior to +the men who accompanied them, superior not only in looks, but in manners +and intelligence. + +Morton noted, to his surprise, that some of these men were quite as +conscious of their clothes as any of the women were; and he caught also +more than one remark showing that the appreciation of the women's +clothes was not confined to the women themselves. + +As he was nearing the Fourth Avenue end of the edifice he saw in a box +just above him--for he found himself staring like the rest--a lady of +striking beauty, with a look of sadness on her face, that gave place to +a factitious smile when she spoke to one or another of the three or four +young men who stood on the steps at the side of her chair. The face +interested Morton, and it was recognized by two young men just behind +him. + +"Hello!" said one of them, "there's Mrs. Cyrus Poole. Smart gown, hasn't +she?" + +"Always has," answered the other. "Best-groomed woman in New York." + +"She is pretty well turned out generally, for a fact," the first speaker +responded. "But Cyrus Poole's made money enough out of the widow and the +orphan this summer to pay for all the gowns his wife can wear this +winter, at any rate." + +It was only when Merrymount Morton had threaded his way half around the +horse-show that he first saw a horse there. As he came to the Fourth +Avenue end the crowd before him fell away, and a gate in the railing +swung back across the promenade, while grooms led out of the arena five +or six beautiful stallions. The New England college professor had a +healthy liking for a fine horse, and his eyes followed these superb +creatures till they were out of sight. Then in the clear space at the +far end of the building he saw three coaches, one of them already +equipped with its four-in-hand, while the horses were being harnessed to +the others. + +He stood there for a minute or two looking at them with interest. Then +he turned his back, and once more began circling about the arena in the +thick of the crowd, with no chance of seeing a horse again until he +could get to the seat to which his ticket entitled him. He took out the +bit of pasteboard and examined it again, and he saw that his place was +very near the entrance, only he had gone to the right when he came in +instead of to the left. By this time the men and women on exhibition in +the boxes had begun to lose the attraction of novelty; and Morton +walked on as swiftly as he could make his way through the crowd, +wishing to get his seat in time to see the competition of the coaches. + +He had come almost to the foot of the little flight of steps by which he +could reach his seat when he happened to look up, and he caught sight of +a familiar face. In a box only a score of feet before him there sat a +lady about whose high-bred beauty there could hardly be two opinions. +She was probably nearly thirty years old, but she looked fresher than +either of the girls by her side. She wore a costume combining studied +simplicity and marked individuality; and yet no one who saw her took +thought of her attire, for her beauty subdued all things, and made any +adornment she might adopt seem as though it were necessary and +inevitable. + +There was a suggestion of stiffness in her carriage, and perhaps a hint +of haughtiness; but when she smiled she was as charming as she was +handsome. + +As his eyes first fell upon her Morton's heart gave a sudden thump, and +then beat swiftly for a minute or two. Although he had not seen her for +nearly ten years, he recognized her instantly. She had changed but +little since they had met for the last time. He would have known her +anywhere and at once. + +And if he had been in any doubt as to her identity, it would have been +dispelled by the conversation of the two young men who had been walking +around the arena just behind him. + +"Devilish pretty Mrs. Jimmy Suydam looks to-night, doesn't she?" asked +one of them. + +"She's had a good summer's rest," the other answered. "She was at St. +Moritz with her mother while Jimmy was off with Lord Stanyhurst." + +"Drove from Paris to Vienna, didn't he?" the first speaker queried. "I'd +rather do it in a sleeper--wouldn't you?" + +"I don't know," the second responded. "It's very swagger to drive your +own coach all over Europe with a man like Stanyhurst, who knows +everybody. I guess Jimmy thought it was cheap at the price. Besides, +_Punch_ called him the 'Wandering Jehu,' and they thought that was a +great joke over there." + +"The joke was at Jimmy's expense, of course," was the next remark. "They +say Lord Stanyhurst never pays a bill himself when he can get an +American to do it." + +"Well, Jimmy made by the bargain," the other rejoined, "and he can +afford it. Old man Suydam left a good business, and Jimmy knows enough +to let it alone." + +There had been a congestion of the crowd in front of Morton, but now +there was a path opened before him. He drew back and let the two young +men pass. He could not look away from the beautiful woman in the box +before him. He wondered if he had courage to go up and speak to her. He +remembered her so sharply, he recognized every turn of her head and +every dainty gesture of her hands, he recalled so distinctly every word +of their conversation the last time they met that it did not seem +possible to him that she might have forgotten him. And yet it was not +impossible. Why should she remember what he could not forget? + +While he was hesitating, the party in her box broke up. One of the young +ladies who were sitting with her arose and came down the steps, escorted +by two young men, and as they passed Morton he caught from their +conversation that they were going to the stables below to see a certain +famous horse in his stall. The other young lady had changed her seat to +the back of the box, where she was deep in conversation with a young man +who had taken the chair beside hers. Mrs. Suydam was left alone in the +front of the box. + +She sat there apparently not bored with her own society, and obviously +indifferent to the frank staring of the men and women who passed along +the promenade a few feet below her. She sat there calm in her cold +beauty, unmoved and uninterested, almost as though her thoughts were far +away. + +Morton made up his mind, and pressed forward again. + +When he was within a yard or two of the steps leading to her box she +happened to glance down, and she caught his eye fixed upon hers. She was +about to glance away, when she looked again, and then a smile of +recognition lighted her face, followed by the faintest of blushes. + +She bowed as Morton raised his hat, and she held out her hand cordially +when he climbed the steps to her box. + +"I hardly dared to hope that you would remember me, Mrs. Suydam," he +said, as he shook hands gently. "It is so long since I saw you last." + +"How could you think I should ever forget the pleasant month I spent in +your mother's house?" she returned. "We do not have so many pleasant +months in life, do we, that we can afford to let any one of them slip +out of memory? You haven't forgotten me, have you? Well, then, why +should I forget you and your mother and the lovely little college town?" + +"That month I can't forget," he responded; "but it was a long while ago, +and my existence is uneventful always, while yours is full--and then so +many things have happened since." + +"Yes," she admitted, "so many things have happened. I'm married, for one +thing. But that hasn't made me forget how kind you all were to me. Can't +you sit down here for a few minutes and give me all the news of the +college and the town?" + +"I shall be only too glad," he said, taking the chair by her side. +"Where shall I begin?" + +"Tell me about yourself," she commanded. + +"That won't take me long," he returned. "Very little has happened to me. +I was going to Germany--perhaps you remember--that fall, after you left +us. Well, I went, and I stayed two years, and I took my Ph.D. there, and +I came back to the old college, and they gave me a professorship--and +that's all." + +"That's enough, I think," she answered, looking at him frankly with her +dark eyes. "You have your work to do, and you do it. I don't believe +there is anything better in life than to be sure what you ought to work +at and to be able to work at it." + +"I suppose you are right," Morton acknowledged. "I find hard labor is +often the best fun, after all. But I can get solid enjoyment out of +loafing, too. I don't recall that we worked very steadily that month +that you were with us, and we certainly had a very good time. At least I +did!" + +"And so did I," she declared, unbending a little, and with a laugh of +pleasant recollection. "I enjoyed every minute of my visit. I wish I +could have such good times now!" + +"Don't you?" he asked. + +"Not often," she answered. "Perhaps never." + +"You surprise me," he replied. "I supposed you were being entertained by +day and by night, week in and week out, from one year's end to +another." + +"So we are," she explained. "But being entertained isn't always being +interested, is it?" + +"That's the theory, isn't it?" he rejoined. + +"It may be the theory," she confessed, "but I'm sure it isn't the +practice." + +"I know that little college town of ours is remote from the path of +progress," he went on, "but sometimes we behold those messengers of +civilization, the New York Sunday newspapers. And whenever I do get one +I am certain to see that you have been to a dinner-dance here, to a _bal +poudre_ there. I should judge that you lived in an endless +merry-go-round of gayety." + +She smiled again, and there was no sadness in her smile, only a vague, +detached weariness. "Dinner-dances are the fashion just now," she said; +"and if there is anything more absurd than the fashion it's to waste +one's strength struggling against it." + +"That is very end-of-the-century philosophy," he commented. + +"It's philosophical not to want to be left out of things, isn't it?" she +inquired. "Even if one doesn't care to go, one doesn't like not to be +asked, and so one goes often when one would rather stay at home." + +"I should think that if many people had motives like that, your parties +here in New York might be rather dull," he retorted, with a little +laugh. + +"They are dull," she returned, calmly. "Sometimes they are very dull. +But, of course, it doesn't do not to go." + +"I suppose not," he agreed. + +"But I find myself wondering sometimes," she continued, "where all the +dull people in society were dug up. Sometimes after a long month of +dinners I get desperate and almost wish I could renounce the world. Why, +at the end of last winter I told my husband that we had not spent a +single evening home since we got back from Florida, and we hadn't had a +single pleasant evening, not one. He didn't think it was as bad as that, +and perhaps it wasn't for him either, for I don't believe the women are +as stupid as the men. Of course now and then there was a dinner I +thought I should enjoy, but I never did. I'd see the clever man I'd have +liked to talk to; I'd see him far down at the other end of the table, +and that was all I did see of him. Some dreary old man would take me in, +and then after dinner I'd have perhaps two or three little boys come up +and try to pay compliments, and succeed in keeping away the men who +might possibly have had something to say." + +"And yet yours is the set that so many people seem to be trying so hard +to enter," he suggested; "that is, if I understand aright what I read in +New York novels." + +"Yes," she answered, "I suppose that's the chief satisfaction we +have--we know we are envied by the people who want to visit us, and to +have us visit them. I suppose the desire to get into Society fills the +emptiness in many a woman's life; it gives her something to live for." + +"They don't seem to have much of the stern joy that foemen feel," Morton +commented. "They take life desperately hard. Over there in the other +corner I saw a handsome woman, and I overheard a man call her by +name--she's the wife of Cyrus Poole, the Wall Street operator. And when +I saw the unsatisfied aspiration in her face, I wondered whether she was +one of those social strugglers I had read about." + +"Mrs. Poole?" echoed Mrs. Suydam, indifferently. "I don't know her: I've +met her, of course--one meets everybody--but I don't know her. She is +good-looking, and she is in the thick of the social struggle. Upward and +outward is her motto--Excelsior! They used to say that all last winter +you could positively hear her climb. But then they have said that of so +many people! She is clever, they say, and she entertains lavishly, so I +shouldn't wonder if she succeeded sooner or later; and then she will be +so disappointed." + +Morton smiled. "From your account," he said, "the social struggle is +rather a tragedy than a comedy; and I confess it has hitherto struck me +as not without a suggestion of farce." + +"It is absurd, isn't it?" she returned, smiling back. "And are we not a +very snobbish lot? Jimmy declares that society in New York is almost as +snobbish as it is in London even." + +There was a moment of silence, and then Morton asked, a little stiffly, +"How is Mr. Suydam? You know I have never had the pleasure of meeting +him." + +"Haven't you?" Mrs. Suydam responded. "You can see him soon. He's to +drive George Western's coach. There they come now!" + +A trumpet sounded; a gate in the railing at the Fourth Avenue end of the +building was opened; and a coach was driven into the arena. A very stout +man sat on the box alone. + +Mrs. Suydam raised her long-handled eye-glass and looked at the +approaching coachman. + +"Oh, that's not Jimmy," she said, quickly; "of course not. That's the +man they call The Adipose Deposit." + +The trumpet sounded again, and a second coach was turned into the arena. +The four horses were beautifully matched bays. The driver was a tall, +thin, youngish man, who sat impassible on the box, and gave no sign of +annoyance when a wheel of the vehicle rasped the gate-post. + +"That's Mr. Suydam," said the lady to whom Morton was talking, as the +bays trotted briskly past them, the man on the box holding himself +rigidly and handling the ribbons skilfully. + +"He is quite a professional," Morton remarked. + +"Isn't he?" Mrs. Suydam replied. "You know he drove the Brighton coach +out of London for three years. He really does it very well, they all +say. I've told him that if we ever lost our money he would make a very +superior coachman." + +"Those bays go together admirably," the college professor declared, "and +Mr. Suydam handles them superbly. But how pitiful it is to see their +tails docked!" + +"Oh, they do that in England," she explained, "so it's fashionable. But +it is ugly, isn't it? Do you remember what a lovely long tail that +Kentucky mare had, the one I rode that day--" + +Then Mrs. Suydam paused suddenly. + +"Yes," answered Morton, not looking at her, "I remember it." + +Mrs. Suydam conquered her slight embarrassment and gave a light little +laugh. + +"How rude I have been!" she said. "Here I've been talking about myself +and about my husband, and I haven't asked about you. Are you married +yet?" + +"No," he answered, and now he looked at her, and she blushed again; "and +I am not likely ever to marry, I think. There was only one woman in the +world for me, and I told her so, but she didn't care for me at all, and +she told me so--and then she touched up that Kentucky mare and rode away +with my heart hanging at her saddle-bow." + +"You can find a better woman than she is," was her response; "a woman +who will make you a better wife than she would ever have done." + +Before Morton could reply to this, the girl and the two young men who +had been in the box at first returned from their visit to the stables. +The trumpet sounded again, and the judges made the drivers of the four +coaches--for two more had entered after Mr. Suydam's--repeat their +evolutions around the arena. And then, after protracted consultation +together, the awards were made, and grooms ran to attach rosettes to the +leaders of the team driven by the stout gentleman, who took the first +prize, and then to the leaders of the team driven by Suydam, who took +the second prize. The numbers of the winning coaches were displayed on +the wide sign-boards at each end of the hall. The coaches were driven +around again, and then out. The trumpets were silent for a while; and +the brass band crashed forth again. + +"Jimmy won't like not getting the first prize, will he?" asked the girl +who had just returned to the box. + +"I don't think it will worry him," answered his wife, with a return of +her haughty manner. + +She had not introduced Morton to any of the others in the box. + +In the presence of so many it was impossible to resume their +conversation on the old friendly basis. It seemed to Morton that since +the girl and the young men had come back there was a difference in Mrs. +Suydam's manner towards him; he could not define it to himself, but he +felt it. Perhaps she was conscious of this herself. + +When he made a movement preparatory to going, she said: "Must you go? I +wanted you to meet my husband. Can't you drop in and lunch with us +to-morrow?" + +Morton thanked her and regretted that he might have to take a midnight +train, and expressed his pleasure at having met her again. Then she held +out her hand once more; and a minute later he was again in the thick of +the throng circling along the promenade. + +Before he reached the entrance the music was checked suddenly and the +trumpet blared out, and then the voice of a man in the centre of the +building was heard, intermittently, hopelessly endeavoring to inform the +thousands packed in the splendid edifice that the fastest trotter in the +world would now be shown. The crowd which was staring steadily at the +men and women in the boxes paid little attention to this proclamation; +to it the men and women in the boxes were far more interesting than any +horses could be, even if any one of these could trot a mile in two +minutes without a running mate. + +(1895.) + + + + +IN THE WATCHES OF THE NIGHT + + +It was still snowing solidly as the carriage swung out of the side +street and went heavily on its way up the avenue; the large flakes soon +thickened again upon the huge fur collars of the two men who sat on the +box bolt-upright; the flat crystals frosted the windows of the landau so +that the trained nurse could see out only on one side. She sat back in +the luxurious vehicle. She had on the seat beside her the bag containing +her change of raiment; and she wondered, as she always did when she was +called unexpectedly to take charge of an unknown case, what manner of +house it might be that she was going to enter, and what kind of people +she would be forced to associate with in the swift intimacy of the +sick-room and for an unknown period. That the patient was wealthy and +willing to spend his wealth was obvious--the carriage, the horses, the +liveried servants, were evidence enough of this. That his name was Swank +she also knew; and she thought that perhaps she had heard about the +marriage of a rich old man named Swank to a pretty young wife a year or +two ago. That he had been taken sick suddenly, and that the case might +be serious, she had gathered from the note which the doctor had sent to +summon her, and which had been brought by the carriage that was now +returning with her. + +She had ample time for speculation as they drove up the avenue in the +early darkness of the last day of the year. The Christmas wreaths still +decked the windows of the hotels, although through the steady snow she +could see little more than a blur of reddish-yellow light as she sped +past. There were few people in the avenue, except as they crossed the +broader side streets, now beginning to be filled with the throng of +workers returning home after the day's labor. They passed St. Patrick's +Cathedral, already encrusted with snow whiter than its stone. They came +to Central Park, and they kept on, with its broad meadows on their left +gray in the descending darkness. At last the carriage drew up before a +house on a corner--a very large house it seemed to the trained nurse; +and its marble front struck her as cold, not to call it gloomy. Workmen +were hastily erecting the frame of an awning down the marble steps, and +a path had been made across the snowy sidewalk. + +The footman carried her bag up the stoop and rang the bell for her. + +The door was opened promptly by a very British butler. + +"This is the nurse for Mr. Swank," said the footman. "Is he any +better?" + +"'E's about the same, I'm thinkin'," the butler responded. "This way, +please," he said to the owner of the bag, which the footman deposited +just inside the door. "I'll take you up to Mr. Swank's room, and I'll +send your bag up to you afterwards." + +The trained nurse followed the butler up the massive wooden stairs, +heavy with dark carving. She noticed that the house was now dimly +lighted, and that there was a going and a coming of servants, as though +in preparation for an entertainment of some sort. + +"We 'ave a dinner on this evening," the butler explained; "only +twenty-four; but it's 'ard Mr. Swank ain't goin' to be able to come +down. We're keepin' the 'ouse dark now, so it won't get too 'ot at +dinner-time." + +Whatever the reason for the absence of adequate illumination, it made +the upper hall even more dismal than the one below--so the trained nurse +thought. + +"That's Mr. Swank's room there; and 'ere's 'is dressin'-room, that +you're to 'ave--so the doctor said," the butler declared, leading the +stranger into a small room with a lofty ceiling, and with one window +overlooking Central Park. The shades had not been drawn; the single +gas-jet was burning dimly; there was no fireplace; and a sofa on one +side had had sheets and blankets put on it to serve as her bed. + +She almost shivered, the place seemed to her so cheerless. But her +training taught her not to think of her own comfort. + +"This will do very well," she asserted. + +"I'll tell them to fetch up your bag," the butler said, as he was about +to withdraw. "Would you be wantin' any dinner later?" + +"Yes," she answered, "I would like something to eat later--whenever it +is convenient." + +The butler left the room, only to reappear almost immediately. + +"'Ere's the doctor now," he announced, holding the door open. + +A tall, handsome man, with a masterful mouth, walked in with a soft, +firm tread. + +"So this is the nurse," he began. "Miss Clement, isn't it? I'm glad you +were able to follow my note so quickly. If you will come into the next +room, where the patient is, as soon as you have changed your dress, I'll +tell you what I wish you to do." + +With that he left her; and in less than ten minutes she followed him +into the large bedroom on the corner of the house. It was an unusually +spacious room, with a high ceiling and four tall windows. + +There was a dull-red fire, which seemed insufficient to warm even the +elaborate marble mantel. Almost in one corner stood a large bed, with +thick curtains draped back from a canopy. + +The doctor was sitting by the side of the bed as the nurse came into the +room. + +[Illustration: "SHE ALMOST SHIVERED, THE PLACE SEEMED TO HER SO +CHEERLESS"] + +"This is Miss Clement, Mr. Swank," he said, in a cheerful voice, to the +old man, who lay in the bed motionless. "She will look after you during +the night." + +Mr. Swank made no answer, but he opened his eyes and looked at the woman +who had come to nurse him. She used to say afterwards that she had never +felt before so penetrating a gaze. + +The doctor turned to her, and in the same professionally cheery tones he +said: "I sent for you, nurse, because Mrs. Swank has an important dinner +to-night, and it might therefore be difficult for her to give Mr. Swank +the attention he may require." + +The physician was addressing the nurse, but it seemed to her that his +words were really intended for the patient, whose eyes were still fixed +on her. + +All at once the sick man sat up in bed and began to cough violently. +When the paroxysm had passed he sank back on the pillow again and closed +his eyes wearily. + +"I think that was not as severe as the last one," the doctor remarked; +"I can leave you in Miss Clement's hands now. Perhaps, if I happen to be +up this way about midnight, I may drop in again just to see that you are +getting on all right. In the mean time, nurse, you will see that he +takes these capsules every two hours--he had the last at half-past five. +And you will take his temperature every hour if he is awake." + +He said good-night to Mr. Swank in the same cheering tone, and then he +went to the door. The nurse knew that she was to follow him. + +When they stood alone in the hall, the doctor said to her: "If there is +any change in the pulse or the temperature, send for me at once. Ring +for the butler, and tell him I am to be sent for; he will know what to +do. Mr. Swank has influenza only, but his heart is weak, and he needs +careful attention. I shall be here again the last thing to-night." + +When the nurse returned to the corner room the patient had fallen into a +heavy doze, and she took advantage of this to prepare for the long +vigil. She arranged her own belongings ready to her hand in the +dressing-room set aside for her use. In that room she did not lower the +shade, and she even stood at the window for a minute, trying to look out +over Central Park, hidden from her by a swaying veil of swirling snow. +The workmen had completed the canvas tunnel down the stoop to the edge +of the sidewalk, and the lanterns hung inside the frame-work revealed +grotesquely its striped contortions. As the nurse gazed down on it an +old man without any overcoat sought a temporary shelter from the storm +in the mouth of the awning, only to be ordered away almost immediately +by the servant in charge. + +The nurse went back into the larger room. She looked at her patient +asleep in the warm bed. She wondered why life was so unequal; why the +one man should spend the night in the snowy street, while the other had +all that money could buy--shelter, warmth, food, attendance. She +recalled how her father used to declare that the inequalities we see all +around us are superficial only, and that there are compensations, did we +but know them, for all deprivations, and that all apparent advantages +are to be paid for, somehow, sooner or later. More than ever to-night +she doubted the wisdom of her father's saying. How could there be +anything but inequality between the old man in the street there below +and the old man here in the bed? The thing seemed to her impossible. + +As she became accustomed to the dim light of the room she was able to +note that the furniture was heavy and black, that the carpet was +unusually thick, that the walls had large paintings hanging on them, +that the ceiling was frescoed in sombre tints. On all sides of her she +saw the evidences of wealth and of the willingness to spend it; and yet +the room and the house seemed to her strangely uninviting, and almost +repellent. She asked herself why the sick man lying there asleep in the +huge bed had not used his money to better advantage, and had not at +least made cheerful his own sick-room. Then she smiled at her own +foolishness. Of course the owner of the room had not expected to be +stricken down; of course he had no thought of illness when he had +furnished. + +She moved gently about the room and tried to look at the pictures, but +the illumination was insufficient. All that she could make out clearly +were the names of the artists carved on tiny tablets attached to the +broad frames; and although she knew little about painting, she had read +the newspapers enough to be aware that pictures by these artists must +have cost a great deal of money--thousands of dollars each, very likely. +If she had thousands to spend, she believed that she could lay them out +to better advantage than the owner of the house had done here. It struck +her again as though the sick man had more than his share of the good +things of life. She had not yet heard him speak, and she had not really +had a good look at him; but she could not help thinking that a man who +had so much, who had the means of doing so much, who was absolutely his +own master, and who could spend a large fortune just as he pleased--she +could not help thinking that he ought to be happy. It was true that he +was ill now, but the influenza wears itself out at last; and when he was +well he had so much money that he must be happier than other men--far +happier than poor men, certainly. + +When she came to this conclusion she was standing near the foot of the +bed, looking at the man lying there asleep. It was on the stroke of +half-past seven, and she had come to let him have his medicine again. +Then she noticed that his eyelids were parted, and that he was looking +at her. + +"It is time to take one of these capsules now," she said, gently moving +to his side and offering it to him. + +He took it without a word, and gulped it down with a swallow of water. +Then he sank back on the pillow, only to raise himself at once, as he +was again shaken by a severe fit of coughing. + +At last he lay back on the bed once more, still breathing heavily. + +A fresh, young voice was heard at the door leading to the hall, saying, +"May I come in, John?" and then a graceful young figure floated into the +room with a birdlike motion. + +The sick man opened his eyes wide as his wife came near him, and a smile +illumined his face. + +"How beautiful you are!" he said, faintly, but proudly. + +"Am I?" she answered, laughing a little. "I _tried_ to be to-night, +because there will be the smartest women in New York at Mrs. Jimmy +Suydam's dance, and I wanted to be as good as any of them." + +The nurse had withdrawn towards the window as the wife came forward, and +she did not believe that any woman at Mrs. Jimmy Suydam's, wherever that +might be, could well look more beautiful than the one who now stood +smiling by the side of the sick husband. + +She was a blonde, this young wife of an old man, a mere girl, and the +vaporous blue dress was cut low on a slender neck girt about by a single +strand of large pearls, while a diamond tiara high on her shapely head +flashed light into every corner of the darkened sick-room. + +"I thought I'd just run in and see how you were before anybody came," +she said, lightly. "Dinner is at quarter to eight, you know. I do _wish_ +you could be down. We shall miss you _dreadfully_. Of course I sent out +at the last minute and got a man to fill your place, so we shall sit +down with twenty-four all right; but then--" + +Here she broke off, having caught sight of the third person in the room. + +"So this is the nurse Dr. Cheever sent for?" she went on. "I'm sure +she'll take good care of you, John--the doctor is always so careful. And +if you hadn't had somebody with you I shouldn't have liked to leave you +all alone--really I shouldn't!" + +With that she circled about the bed again, turning towards the door. + +"I must be off now," she explained. "I can't be _wasting_ my time on you +in this way. I really ought to be down in the drawing-room _now_; and +first, I've got to see if the flowers are all right on the table." + +Her husband's eyes had followed her wistfully about the room, watching +every one of her easy and graceful movements; and when at last she +slipped out of the door, it was a moment before he turned an inquiring +glance on the nurse, as though to discover what she thought of the +brilliant vision. + +The nurse came to the side of the bed with her clinical thermometer in +her hand. + +"You are awake now," she said, with a pleasant smile. "May I take your +temperature?" + +Five minutes later, when she was entering in her note-book the high +degree shown by the thermometer, and when the patient had again dropped +off to sleep, the first guests began to arrive for the wife's dinner +party. + +The thick snow made the wheels inaudible, but the nurse heard the doors +of the carriages slam as those who had been invited passed through the +canvas tunnel one after another. In the room next to the dressing-room +assigned to her for her own use there was a rustling of silken stuffs, +and there were fragments of conversation now and again so loudly pitched +as to reach the ear of the young woman who sat silent in the +sick-chamber. Then, when all the guests were come, the house sank again +into silence, and a tall clock in a corner of the stairs chimed forth +the hour of eight. + +So long as her patient slept the nurse had little or nothing to do; but +though her body was motionless, her thoughts were busy. She was +country-bred herself; she had left her home in a little New England +village by the sea to make her way in the world. She had now been a +trained nurse for nearly two years; and yet, as it happened, her work +had been either in hotels or in families of only moderate means. This +was the first time she had been in so handsome a house or with people of +so much wealth. She could not help being conscious of her surroundings, +and she caught herself wishing that she too were rich. She confessed +that she would like to be a guest at the dinner below. She wondered what +a dinner-table for twenty-four must be. To be able to entertain as +lavishly as that, and not to have to worry about the arrangement, or the +cost, or anything--well, that would be an existence any woman must +delight in. She felt herself capable of expanding, and of being equal to +the enjoyment of any degree of luxury. She liked her occupation, for she +had chosen her own calling. She had been successful in it too; and yet +she was beginning to be a little afraid that she had miscalculated her +strength. The work was very laborious and confining, and more than once +of late she had felt overtaxed. It might be that in a year or two her +reserve force would be exhausted, and she would have to give up the +struggle and go back home, where she would be welcome, of course, but +where she would add to the burdens her mother was already laden with. + +There was an alternative, and never before had it seemed to her so +tempting as when she was sitting there alone with the sick man in the +darkened corner room of his great house. She might marry. More than +once she had been asked in marriage; and one man had asked her more than +once. He was persistent, and he still declined to accept her refusal as +final. He was not an old man yet, although he was twice her age. He was +a rich man, even if he was not as wealthy as the owner of the splendid +but depressing home where she now sat silently musing. She did not love +him, that was true, and there was no doubt about it; but she did respect +him, and she had heard that sometimes love comes after marriage. He +could let her have all she longed for, and he was ready to give her +everything he had. If she married him she too could have dinners of +twenty-four, and wear a rope of pearls and a diamond tiara; and then, +too, she could do so much good with money if she had it. + +In the course of her services in the hospital, and afterwards among the +poor, she had seen many a case of sore distress which she had been +unable to relieve. If she had riches she could accomplish much that was +now impossible; she could do good in many ways; she could relieve +suffering and aid the impoverished and help the feeble far more adroitly +and skilfully than could any woman who had always been wealthy, and who +had not had her experience of life and of its misfortunes and its +miseries. She thought that she knew her own character, and she believed +that she had strength to withstand the temptations which beset the +rich. Thinking herself unselfish, she held herself incapable of keeping +for herself alone any good fortune that might come to her. And she made +a solemn resolve that if she should marry the man who stood ready to +take her to wife she would devote to good works the greater part of her +money and of her time. She would dress as became her station, of course, +and she would entertain sumptuously too; but no old man should ever be +turned shivering from her door when she was giving a dinner of +twenty-four. + +Her revery was interrupted half a dozen times by the fits of coughing +which shook her patient, and which seemed to her to become more and more +frequent and more violent. At half-past nine she gave him his medicine +again, and took his temperature once more. Then she made up the fire, +which burned badly; and she straightened the sheets on his bed, and +turned the pillows. + +He soon sank to slumber again, breathing heavily and turning uneasily in +his sleep. The house was singularly still, and no sound of the dinner +party below reached the nurse in the corner room above. When she +happened to go into the dressing-room she found there awaiting her a +tray with several dishes from the dinner table. She was glad to have +something to eat, and she sat down by the window to enjoy it. The thick, +soft snow had silenced nearly all the usual street sounds. The +carriages that went up and down the avenue were as inaudible as though +they were rolling on felt. But sleighing parties became more frequent, +and she found a suggestion of pleasant companionship and of human +activity in the jingle of the bells. Once a fire-engine sped swiftly +past the house, its usual roar deadened by the heavy snow, and its +whistle shrilling forth as it neared the side streets, one after +another; ten minutes later it came slowly back. The nurse was glad that +there was only a false alarm, for she knew how terrible a fire would be +in a crowded tenement-house on such a night. + +She finished her belated dinner a few minutes after the deep tones of +the clock in the hall had told her that it was ten, and that there were +left of the old year but two hours more. Except when the sick man waked +with a cough, the next hour was wholly eventless. + +And yet, when it had drawn to an end, the nurse thought that it would +count in her life as important beyond most others, for it was between +ten and eleven that she made up her mind to marry the rich man who +wanted her for his wife, and whom she did not love. The resolution once +determined, she let her mind play about the possibilities of the future. +She would not be married till the spring, of course, and they would go +to Europe for their wedding-trip. Then, in the fall, she would persuade +him to move to New York. He was fond of his own town, but he would get +used to the city in time; and they could buy a new house, overlooking +Central Park--perhaps in the same neighborhood as the one where she was +sitting in the hazy light of the sick-room. She smiled unconsciously as +she found herself wondering whether her patient's beautiful young wife +would call on her if she purchased the house next door. + +It was a little after eleven o'clock when she again heard a rustling of +silken stuffs in the room by the side of hers, followed shortly by the +voice of the servant in the street below calling the carriages of the +departing guests. But some of the diners still lingered, for it was +nearly half an hour later before the door of the sick-room opened and +the sick man's wife came gliding in again with her languorous grace. + +He fixed his eyes upon her at once, and smiled with contentment as she +came towards him. + +"You've been asleep, haven't you?" she began. "I'm so glad, for of +course that's so good for you. We all missed you down-stairs, and +everybody asked about you and said they were _so_ sorry you were not +there. You must hurry up and get well; and I'll give another dinner like +this, for it was a _great_ success. The flowers were superb--and I don't +think any of the women had a handsomer gown than I did. And I know all +of them together hadn't as elegant diamonds. I don't believe _anybody_ +at the dance will have as many either." + +"Sit down by me here and tell me all about the dinner," said the sick +husband. + +"Oh, I can't wait now," the young wife answered. "I _must_ be off at +once. I've simply _got_ to be there in time to see the old year out and +the new year in. They say Mrs. Jimmy has a surprise for us, and nobody +at dinner had the slightest idea what it _could_ possibly be!" + +"Are you going to the dance to-night?" asked the man in the bed; and the +nurse saw the pleading look in his eyes, even if his wife failed to +perceive it. + +"Of course I am," was the wife's reply. "I wouldn't miss it for +_anything_. I think it's a lovely idea to have a dance on New-Year's +Eve, don't you? I _do_ wish you were well enough to go, and I'm certain +sure Mrs. Jimmy will ask about you--she's always _so_ polite. You won't +miss me--you will be asleep again in five minutes, won't you?" + +"Perhaps," he answered, still clinging to her fingers. "I'll try to +sleep." + +"That's right," she responded, withdrawing her hand and going towards +the door. "I'll trust you to the nurse. She'll take better care of you +than I should, I'm afraid. I never was _any_ good when people were sick. +Now good-bye. I _do_ hope you'll be better when I get back. I'll come in +and say good-night, of course. I sha'n't be late, either--I'll be home +by three--or before four, _anyway_." + +And with that she glided away, smiling back at her husband as she left +the room. He followed her with his eyes, and he gazed at the door +fixedly after she had gone. There was a hungry look in his face, so it +seemed to the nurse, as of one starving in the midst of plenty. With the +vain hope that the vision of beauty might yet return, he lay silent, but +listening intently, until he heard the sharp slam of the carriage doors. +Then he relaxed and turned restlessly in bed. + +It was then half-past eleven, and the nurse took his temperature and +administered another capsule, as the doctor had ordered. It seemed to +her that he was more feverish and that he was coughing more frequently; +and even as she saw the patient sink into a broken sleep, she wished +that the physician would come soon. + +The arrival of the doctor was delayed till a few minutes before +midnight, and the nurse had time to reconsider, once and forever, her +decision to marry for money and without love. Her mind had been made up +slowly and with great deliberation; it was unmade suddenly and +unhesitatingly and irrevocably. It was the sight of the mute pleading in +the sick man's eyes which made her change her mind. After seeing that +look she felt that it would be impossible for her to make a loveless +marriage--not for her own sake only, but also for the sake of the man +she should marry. If he loved her and she did not love him, there would +be no fair exchange; she would be cheating him. When she beheld clearly +the meaning of the transaction her honesty revolted. She had refused to +marry him more than once, and now her refusal was final. + +She stood for a moment at the window and looked out. The snow had ceased +falling, and there was already a clearing of the clouds, which let the +moonlight pierce them fitfully. The wind blew steadily across the broad +meadows of the Park, bending the whitened skeletons of the trees. + +Three immense sleighs filled with a joyous and laughing party went down +the avenue, bandying songs from one sleigh to the other. A horn was +tooted repeatedly in one of the side streets, and there were louder and +more frequent whistles from the river craft on both sides of the city. A +pistol-shot rang out now and again. It was almost midnight on the last +day of the old year; and the new year was to be greeted with the +customary chorus of wild noises. + +As the nurse turned from the window the doctor entered the room. She +made her report briefly, and she told him that the old man's cough was +worse, and that he seemed weaker. + +While they were standing at the foot of the bed, the patient was seized +with another paroxysm. He sat up, shaken by the violent effort--far more +violent than any that had preceded it. He seemed to struggle vainly for +relief, and then he dropped back limply on the pillows. The physician +was at his side instantly, and laid a hand on his heart. There was a +moment of silence, and the clock on the stairs began to strike twelve, +its chimes mingling with the uproar made by the pistols and the horns +and the steam-whistles out-doors. + +"That's what I was afraid of," said the doctor at last. "I suspected +that he had fatty degeneration of the heart." + +"Is he--is he dead?" asked the nurse. + +"Yes, he is dead." + +But it was not for five or ten minutes that the shrill noises outside +ceased. + + * * * * * + + +The following typographical errors were corrected by the etext +transcriber: + +perfume of geniune=> perfume of genuine + +he griped the leader=> he gripped the leader + +There where cheers=> There were cheers + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Vignettes of Manhattan; Outlines in +Local Color, by Brander Matthews + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN *** + +***** This file should be named 38918.txt or 38918.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/8/9/1/38918/ + +Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was +produced from scanned images of public domain material +from the Google Print project.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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