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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tales From Bohemia, by Robert Neilson Stephens
+
+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: Tales From Bohemia
+
+Author: Robert Neilson Stephens
+
+
+Release Date: September, 2005 [EBook #8869]
+This file was first posted on August 17, 2003
+Last Updated: May 18, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES FROM BOHEMIA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TALES FROM BOHEMIA
+
+
+By Robert Neilson Stephens
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT NEILSON STEPHENS--A MEMORY
+
+One crisp evening early in March, 1887, I climbed the three flights of
+rickety stairs to the fourth floor of the old "Press" building to begin
+work on the "news desk." Important as the telegraph department was
+in making the newspaper, the desk was a crude piece of carpentry. My
+companions of the blue pencil irreverently termed it "the shelf." This
+was my second night in the novel dignity of editorship. Though my rank
+was the humblest, I appreciated the importance of a first step from "the
+street." An older man, the senior on the news desk, had preceded me. He
+was engaged in a bantering conversation with a youth who lolled at such
+ease as a well-worn, cane-bottomed screw-chair afforded. The older man
+made an informal introduction, and I learned that the youth with pale
+face and serene smile was "Mr. Stephens, private secretary to the
+managing editor." That information scarcely impressed me any more
+than it would now after more than twenty years' experience of managing
+editors and their private secretaries.
+
+The bantering continued, and I learned that the youth cherished literary
+aspirations, and that he performed certain work in connection with the
+dramatic department for the managing editor, who kept theatrical news
+and criticisms within his personal control.
+
+Suddenly a chance remark broke the ice for a friendship between the
+young man and me which was to last unbroken until his untimely death.
+Stephens wrote the Isaac Pitman phonography! Here had I been for more
+than three years wondering to find the shorthand writers of wide-awake
+and progressive America floundering in what I conceived to be the
+Serbonian bog of an archaic system of stenography. Unexpectedly a
+most superior young man came within my ken who was a disciple of Isaac
+Pitman. Furthermore, like myself, he was entirely self taught. No old
+shorthand writer who can look back a quarter of a century on his own
+youthful enthusiasm for the art can fail to appreciate what a bond of
+sympathy this discovery constituted. From that night forward we were
+chosen friends, confiding our ambitions to each other, discussing the
+grave issues of life and death, settling the problems of literature.
+Notwithstanding his more youthful appearance, my seniority in age
+was but slight. Gradually "Bob," as all his friends called him with
+affectionate informality, was given opportunities to advance himself,
+under the kindly yet firm guidance of the managing editor, Mr. Bradford
+Merrill. That gentleman appreciated the distinct gifts of his young
+protege, journalistic and literary, and he fostered them wisely and
+well. I remember perfectly the first criticism of an important play
+which "Bob" was permitted to write unaided. It was Richard Mansfield's
+initial appearance in Philadelphia as "Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde," at the
+Chestnut Street Theatre on Monday, October 3, 1887.
+
+After the paper had gone to press, and while Mr. Merrill and a few of
+the telegraph editors were partaking of a light lunch, the night editor,
+the late R.E.A. Dorr, asked Mr. Merrill "how Stephens had made out."
+
+"He has written a very clever and very interesting criticism," Mr.
+Merrill replied. "I had to edit it somewhat, because he was inclined to
+be Hugoesque and melodramatic in describing the action with very short
+sentences. But I am very much pleased, indeed."
+
+That was the beginning of Bob's career as a dramatic critic, a career
+in which he gained authority and in which his literary faculties, his
+felicity of expression and soundness of judgment found adequate scope.
+
+In the following two or three years the cultivation of the field of
+dramatic criticism occupied his time to the temporary exclusion of his
+ambition for creative work. He and I read independently; but our
+tastes had much in common, though his preference was for imaginative
+literature. Meanwhile I was writing short stories with plenty of plot,
+some of which found their way into various magazines; but his taste lay
+more in the line of the French short story writers who made an
+incident the medium for portraying a character. Historical romance had
+fascinations for me, but Alphonse Daudet attracted both of us to the
+artistic possibilities that lay in selecting the romance of real life
+for treatment in fiction as against the crude and repellent naturalism
+of Zola and his school. This fact is not a little significant in view of
+the turn toward historical romance which exercised all the activities of
+Robert Neilson Stephens after the production of his play, "An Enemy to
+the King," by E.H. Sothern.
+
+Still our intimacy had prepared me for the change. Through many a long
+night after working hours we had wandered through the moonlit streets
+until daybreak exchanging views freely and sturdily on historical
+characters on the philosophy of history, on the character of Henry of
+Navarre and his followers, and on the worthies of Elizabethan England,
+in the literature of which we had immersed ourselves. Kipling had
+recently burst meteor-like on the world, and Barrie raised his head with
+a whimsical smile closely chasing a tear. Thomas Hardy was in the saddle
+writing "Tess," and in France Daudet was yet active though his prime was
+past. Guy de Maupassant continued the production of his marvellous
+short stories. These were the contemporary prose writers who engaged our
+attention. A little later we hailed the appearance of Stanley J. Weyman
+with "A Gentleman of France," and the Conan Doyle of "The White
+Company" and "Micah Clarke" rather than the creator of "Sherlock Holmes"
+commended our admiration. We were by no means in accord on the younger
+authors. Diversity of opinion stimulates critical discussion, however. I
+had not yet become reconciled to Kipling, who provoked my resentment
+by certain coarse flings at the Irish, but "Bob" hailed him with
+whole-hearted enthusiasm.
+
+We were not the only members of the staff with literary aspirations.
+Others, like the late Andrew E. Watrous, had achievements of no mean
+order in prose and verse. Still others were sustaining the traditions of
+"The Press" as a newspaper office which throughout its history had
+been a stepping stone to magazine work and other forms of literary
+employment. Richard Harding Davis was on the paper and "Bob" Stephens
+was one of the two men most intimately in his confidence regarding his
+ambitions.
+
+Finally Bob told me that "Dick" had taken him to his house and read to
+him "A bully short story," adding, "It's a corker."
+
+I inquired the nature of the story.
+
+"Just about the 'Press' office," Bob replied,
+
+Among other particulars I asked the title.
+
+"'Gallegher,'" said Bob.
+
+Three years elapsed after our first acquaintance before Bob Stephens
+began writing stories and sketches. The "Tales from Bohemia" collected
+in this volume represent his early creative work. We were in the better
+sense a small band of Bohemians, the few friends and companions who will
+be found figuring in the tales under one guise or another. Many a merry
+prank and many a jest is recalled by these pages. Of criticism I have no
+word to say. Let the reader understand how they came into being and they
+will explain themselves. "Bob" Stephens took his own environment, the
+anecdotes he heard, the persons whom he met and the friends whom he
+knew, and he treated them as the writers of short stories in France
+twenty years ago treated their own Parisian environment. He made an
+incident the means of illustrating a portrayal of character. Later he
+was to construct elaborate plots for dramas and historical novels.
+
+"Bohemianism" was but a brief episode in the life of "R. N. S." It
+ceased after his marriage. But his natural gaiety remained. Seldom was
+his joyous disposition overcast, or his winning smile eclipsed. For six
+months I was privileged to live in the house with his mother. If he
+had inherited his literary predilections from his father,--a highly
+respected educator of Huntington, Pa. from whose academy many eminent
+professional men were graduated,--his gentleness, his cheerfulness, his
+winning smile and the ingratiating qualities to which it was the key, as
+surely came from his mother.
+
+I remember a time when he was inordinately grave for several days
+and pursued a tireless course of special reading through the office
+encyclopaedias and some books he had borrowed. At last he drew aside the
+veil of reserve which concealed his family affairs from even his closest
+friends and inquired if I could direct him to any recent authority on
+cancer. I divined the sad truth that his tenderly beloved mother was
+suffering from the dread disease. That was the day before serums, and
+nothing that he found to read in books or periodicals gave him a faint
+hope that his dear one could be cured. Thenceforward, mother and
+son awaited the inevitable end with uncomplaining patience which was
+characteristic of both. His cheerful smile returned, and while the blow
+of bereavement was impending practically all these "Tales from Bohemia"
+were written.
+
+To follow the career of "R.N.S." and trace his development after he gave
+up newspaper work in the fall of 1893 is not required in this place.
+"Tales from Bohemia" will be found interesting in themselves, apart from
+the fact that they illustrate another phase of the literary gift of
+a young writer who contributed so materially to the entertainment of
+playgoers and novel readers for a period of ten years after the work in
+this book was all done.
+
+J.O.G.D.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+I. THE ONLY GIRL HE EVER LOVED
+
+II. A BIT OF MELODY
+
+III. ON THE BRIDGE
+
+IV. THE TRIUMPH OF MOGLEY
+
+V. OUT OF HIS PAST
+
+VI. THE NEW SIDE PARTNER
+
+VII. THE NEEDY OUTSIDER
+
+VIII. TIME AND THE TOMBSTONE
+
+IX. HE BELIEVED THEM
+
+X. A VAGRANT
+
+XI. UNDER AN AWNING
+
+XII. SHANDY'S REVENGE
+
+XIII. THE WHISTLE
+
+XIV. WHISKERS
+
+XV. THE BAD BREAK OF TOBIT MCSTENGER
+
+XVI. THE SCARS
+
+XVII. "LA GITANA"
+
+XVIII. TRANSITION
+
+XIX. A MAN WHO WAS NO GOOD
+
+XX. MR. THORNBERRY'S ELDORADO
+
+XXI. AT THE STAGE DOOR
+
+XXII. "POOR YORICK"
+
+XXIII. COINCIDENCE
+
+XXIV. NEWGAG THE COMEDIAN
+
+XXV. AN OPERATIC EVENING
+
+
+
+
+TALES FROM BOHEMIA
+
+
+
+
+
+I. -- THE ONLY GIRL HE EVER LOVED
+
+When Jack Morrow returned from the World's Fair, he found Philadelphia
+thermometers registering 95. The next afternoon he boarded a Chestnut
+Street car, got out at Front Street, hurried to the ferry station, and
+caught a just departing boat for Camden, and on arriving at the other
+side of the Delaware, made haste to find a seat in the well-filled
+express train bound for Atlantic City.
+
+While he was being whirled across the level surface of New Jersey, past
+the cornfields and short stretches of green trees and restful cottage
+towns, he thought of the pleasure in store for him--the meeting with the
+young person whom he had gradually come to consider the loveliest girl
+in the world. Having neglected to read the list of "arrivals" in the
+newspapers, he knew not at what hotel she and her aunt were staying. But
+he would soon make the rounds of the large beach hotels, at one of which
+she was likely to be found.
+
+She did not expect to see him. Therefore her first expression on
+beholding him would betray her feelings toward him, whatever they were.
+Should the indication be favourable, he would propose to her at the
+first opportunity, on beach, boardwalk, hotel piazza, pavilion, yacht
+or in the surf. Such were the meditations of Jack Morrow while the train
+roared across New Jersey to the sea.
+
+The first sign of the flat green meadows, the smooth waters of the
+thoroughfare, the sails afar at the inlet and the long side of the
+sea-city stretching out against the sky at the very end of the earth is
+refreshing and exhilarating to any one. It gave a doubly keen enjoyment
+to Jack Morrow.
+
+"Within an hour, perhaps," he mused, as the reviving odour of the salt
+water touched his nostrils, "I shall see Edith."
+
+When with the crowd he had made his way out of the train, and traversed
+the long platform at the Atlantic City station, ignoring the stentorian
+solicitations of the 'bus drivers, he started walking toward the ocean
+promenade, invited by the glimpse of sea at the far end of the avenue.
+Thus he crossed that wide thoroughfare--Atlantic Avenue--with its
+shops and trolley-cars; passed picturesque hotels and cottages; crossed
+Pacific Avenue where carriages and dog-carts were being driven rapidly
+between the rows of pretty summer edifices, and traversed the famously
+long block that ends at the boardwalk and the strand.
+
+He succeeded in getting a third-floor room on the ocean side of the
+first hotel where he applied. He learned from the clerk that Edith was
+not at this house. Sea air having revived his appetite, he decided to
+dine before setting out in search of her.
+
+When, after his meal, he reached the boardwalk, the electric lights had
+already been turned on and the regular evening crowd of promenaders was
+beginning to form. He strolled along now looking at the beach and the
+sea, now at the boardwalk crowd where he might perhaps at any moment
+behold the face of "the loveliest girl in the world." He beheld instead,
+as he approached the Tennessee pier, the face of his friend George
+Haddon.
+
+"Hello, old boy!" exclaimed Morrow, grasping his friend's hand. "What
+are you doing here? I thought your affairs would keep you in New York
+all summer."
+
+"So they would," replied Haddon, in a tone and with a look whose
+distress he made little effort to conceal. "But something happened."
+
+"Why, what on earth's the matter? You seem horribly downcast."
+
+Haddon was silent for a moment; then he said suddenly:
+
+"I'll tell you all about it. I have to tell somebody or it will split
+my head. But come out on the pier, away from the noise of that
+merry-go-round organ."
+
+Neither spoke as the two young men passed through the concert pavilion
+and dancing hall out to a quieter part of the long pier. They sat near
+the railing and looked out over the sea, on which, as evening fell, the
+rippling band of moonlight grew more and more luminous. They could see,
+at the right, the long line of brilliant lights on the boardwalk, and
+the increasing army of promenaders. Detached from the furthest end of
+the line of boardwalk lights, shone those of distant Longport. Above
+these, the sky had turned from heliotrope to hues dark and indefinable,
+but indescribably beautiful. Down on the beach were only a few people,
+strolling near the tide line, a carriage, a man on horseback, and three
+frolicking dogs.
+
+"It's simply this," abruptly began Haddon. "Six weeks ago I was married
+to--"
+
+"Why, I never heard of it. Let me congrat--"
+
+"No, don't, I was married to a comic opera singer, named Lulu Ray.
+I don't suppose you've ever heard of her, for she was only recently
+promoted from the chorus to fill small parts. We took a flat, and lived
+happily on the whole, for a month, although with such small quarrels
+as might be expected. Two weeks ago she went out and didn't come back.
+Since then I haven't been able to find her in New York or at any of the
+resorts along the Jersey coast. I suppose she was offended at something
+I said during a quarrel that grew out of my insisting on our staying
+in New York all summer. Knowing her liking for Atlantic City--she was a
+Philadelphia girl before she went on the stage--I came here at once to
+hunt her up and apologize and agree to her terms."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, I haven't found her. She's not at any hotel in Atlantic City. I'm
+going back to New York to-morrow to get some clue as to where she is."
+
+"I suppose you're very fond of her still?"
+
+"Yes; that's the trouble. And then, of course, a man doesn't like to
+have a woman who bears his name going around the country alone, her
+whereabouts unknown."
+
+Morrow was on the point of saying: "Or perhaps with some other man,"
+but he checked himself. He was sufficiently mundane to refrain from
+attempting to reason Haddon out of his affection for the fugitive, or
+to advise him as to what to do. He knew that in merely letting Haddon
+unburden on him the cause of anxiety, he had done all that Haddon would
+expect from any friend.
+
+He limited himself, therefore, to reminding Haddon that all men have
+their annoyances in this life; to treating the woman's offence as light
+and commonplace, and to cheering him up by making him join in seeing the
+sights of the boardwalk.
+
+They looked on at the pier hop, while Professor Willard's musicians
+played popular tunes; returned to the boardwalk and watched the pretty
+girls leaning against the wooden beasts on the merry-go-round while the
+organ screamed forth, "Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Bow Wow;" experienced
+that not very illusive illusion known as "The Trip to Chicago;" were
+borne aloft on an observation wheel; made the rapid transit of the
+toboggan slide, visited the phonographs and heard a shrill reproduction
+of "Molly and I and the Baby;" tried the slow and monotonous ride on
+the "Figure Eight," and the swift and varied one on the switchback. They
+bought saltwater taffy and ate it as they passed down the boardwalk and
+looked at the moonlight. Down on the Bowery-like part of the boardwalk
+they devoured hot sausages, and in a long pavilion drank passable beer
+and saw a fair variety show. Thence they left the boardwalk, walked to
+Atlantic Avenue and mounted a car that bore them to Shauffler's, where
+among light-hearted beer drinkers they heard the band play "Sousa's
+Cadet March" and "After the Ball," and so they arrived at midnight.
+
+All this was beneficial to Haddon and pleasant enough in itself, but
+it prevented Morrow that night from prosecuting his search for the
+loveliest girl in the world. He postponed the search to the next day.
+And when that time came, after Haddon had started for New York, occurred
+an event that caused Morrow to postpone the search still further.
+
+He had decided to go up the boardwalk on the chance of seeing Edith in
+a pavilion or on the beach. If he should reach the vicinity of the
+lighthouse without finding her, he would turn back and inquire at every
+hotel near the beach until he should obtain news of her.
+
+He had reached Pennsylvania Avenue when he was attracted by the white
+tents that here dotted the wide beach. He went down the high flight
+of steps from the boardwalk to rest awhile in the shade of one of the
+tents.
+
+Although it was not yet 11 o'clock, several people in bathing suits were
+making for the sea. A little goat wagon with children aboard was passing
+the tents, and after it came the cart of the "hokey-pokey" peddler,
+drawn by a donkey that wore without complaint a decorated straw
+bathing hat. Morrow, looking at the feet of the donkey, saw in the sand
+something that shone in the sunlight. He picked it up and found that it
+was a gold bracelet studded with diamonds.
+
+He questioned every near-by person without finding the owner. He
+therefore put the bracelet in his pocket, intending to advertise it.
+Then he resumed his stroll up the boardwalk. He went past the lighthouse
+and turned back.
+
+He had reached the Tennessee Avenue pier without having found the
+loveliest girl in the world. His eye caught a small card that had just
+been tacked up at the pier entrance. Approaching it he read:
+
+"Lost--On the beach between Virginia and South Carolina Avenues, a gold
+bracelet with seven diamonds. A liberal reward will be paid for its
+recovery at the ---- Hotel."
+
+The hotel named was the one at which Morrow was staying. He hurried
+thither.
+
+"Who lost the diamond bracelet?" he asked the clerk.
+
+"That young lady standing near the elevator. Miss Hunt, I think her name
+is," said the clerk consulting the register. "Yes, that's it, she only
+arrived last night."
+
+Morrow saw standing near the elevator door, a lithe, well-rounded girl
+with brown hair and great gray eyes that were fixed on him. She was
+in the regulation summer-girl attire--blue Eton suit, pink shirtwaist,
+sailor hat, and russet shoes. He hastened to her.
+
+"Miss Hunt, I have the honour to return your bracelet."
+
+She opened her lips and eyes with pleasurable surprise and reached
+somewhat eagerly for the piece of jewelry.
+
+"Thank you ever so much. I took a walk on the beach just after breakfast
+and dropped it somewhere. It's too large."
+
+"I picked it up near Pennsylvania Avenue. It's a curious coincidence
+that it should be found by some one stopping at the same hotel. But,
+pardon me, you're going away without mentioning the reward."
+
+She looked at him with some surprise, until she discovered that he
+was jesting. Then she smiled a smile that gave Morrow quite a pleasant
+thrill, and said, with some tenderness of tone:
+
+"Let the reward be what you please."
+
+"And that will be to do what you shall please to have me do."
+
+"Ah, that's nice. Then I accept your services at once. I am quite alone
+here; haven't any acquaintances in the hotel. I want to go bathing and
+I'm rather timid about going alone, although I'd made up my mind to do
+so and was just going up after my bathing suit."
+
+"Then I am to have the happiness of escorting you into the surf."
+
+They went bathing together not far from where he had found the bracelet.
+He discovered that she could swim as well as he; also that in her dark
+blue bathing costume, with sailor collar and narrow white braid, she was
+a most shapely person.
+
+She laughed frequently while they were breasting the breakers; and
+afterwards, as in their street attire they were returning on the
+boardwalk, she chatted brightly with him, revealing a certain cleverness
+in off-hand persiflage.
+
+He took her into the tent behind the observation wheel to see the
+Egyptian exhibition, and she was good enough to laugh at his jokes about
+the mummies, although the mummies did not seem to interest her. Further
+down the boardwalk they stopped at the Japanese exhibition, and on the
+way out he caught himself saying that if it were possible, he would take
+great pleasure in hauling her in a jinrikisha.
+
+"I'll remember that promise and make you push me in a wheel-chair," she
+answered.
+
+When they were back at the hotel, she turned suddenly and said:
+
+"By the way, what's your name? Mine's Clara Hunt."
+
+He told her, and while she went up the elevator with her bathing suit,
+he arranged with the head waiter to have himself seated at her table.
+
+He learned from the clerk that she had arrived alone with a letter of
+introduction from a former guest of the house, and intended to stay at
+least a fortnight.
+
+At luncheon he proposed that they should take a sail in the afternoon.
+She said, with a smile:
+
+"As it is you who invites me, I'll give up my nap and go."
+
+They rode in a 'bus to the Inlet, and after spending half an hour
+drinking beer and listening to the band on the pavilion, they hired a
+skipper to take them out in his catboat. Six miles out the boat pitched
+considerably and Miss Hunt increased her hold on Morrow's admiration
+by not becoming seasick. At his suggestion they cast out lines for
+bluefish. She borrowed mittens from the captain and pulled in four fish
+in quick succession.
+
+"What an athletic woman you are," said Morrow.
+
+"Yes, indeed."
+
+"In fact, everything that's charming," he continued.
+
+She replied softly: "Don't say that unless you mean it. It pleases me
+too much, coming from you."
+
+Morrow mused: "Here's a girl who is frank enough to say so when she
+likes a fellow. It makes her all the more fascinating, too. Some women
+would make me very tired throwing themselves at me this way. But it is
+different with her."
+
+They gave the fish to the captain and returned from the Inlet by the
+Atlantic Avenue trolley, just in time for dinner. She did not lament
+her lack of opportunity to change her clothes for dinner, nor did she
+complain about the coat of sunburn she had acquired.
+
+In the evening, they sat together for a time on the pier, took a turn
+together at one of the waltzes, although neither cared much for dancing
+at this time of year, walked up the boardwalk and compared the moon with
+the high beacon light of the lighthouse.
+
+He bought her marshmallows at a confectioner's booth, a fan at a
+Japanese store, and a queer oriental paper cutter at a Turkish bazaar.
+They took two switchback rides, during which he was compelled to put his
+arm around her. Finally, reluctant to end the evening, they stood for
+some minutes leaning against the boardwalk railing, listening to the
+moan of the sea and watching the shaft of moonlight stretching from
+beach to horizon.
+
+It was not until he was alone in his room that Morrow bethought of his
+neglect of the loveliest girl in the world. And remorseful as he was, he
+did not form any distinct intention of resuming his search for her the
+next day. He rather congratulated himself on not having met her while he
+was with this enchanting Clara Hunt.
+
+And he passed next day also with the enchanting Clara Hunt. They sat on
+the piazza together reading different parts of the same newspaper for
+an hour after breakfast; went to the boardwalk and turned in at a
+shuffle-board hall, where they spent another hour making the weights
+slide along the sanded board and then took another ocean bath.
+
+After luncheon they walked up the boardwalk to the iron pier.
+
+Seeing the lifeboat there, rising and falling in the waves, Clara asked:
+
+"Would the lifeguard take us in his boat for a while, I wonder?"
+
+Morrow went down to the beach and shouted to the lifeguard, who was none
+other than the robust and stentorian Captain Clark. The captain brought
+the boat ashore and as there were no bathers in the water at this point,
+he agreed to row the young people out to the end of the pier.
+
+"This is a great place for brides and grooms this summer," remarked the
+captain in his frank and jocular way.
+
+Clara looked at Morrow with a blush and a laugh. Morrow was pleased at
+seeing that she seemed not displeased.
+
+"We're not married," said Morrow to the captain.
+
+"Not yet, mebbe," said the captain with one of his significant winks,
+and then he gave vent to loud and long laughter.
+
+That evening Morrow and Clara took the steamer trip from the Inlet
+to Brigantine and the ride on the electric car along flat and sandy
+Brigantine beach. On the return, they became very sentimental. They
+decided to walk all the way from the Inlet down the boardwalk. He found
+himself quite oblivious to the crowd of promenaders. The loveliest girl
+in the world might have passed him a dozen times without attracting his
+attention. He had eyes and ears for none but Clara Hunt.
+
+And that night, far from reproaching himself for his conduct toward
+the loveliest girl, etc., he hardly thought of her at all, more than
+to wonder by what good fortune he had avoided meeting her. Some of the
+people at their hotel made the same mistake regarding Morrow and Clara
+as Captain Clark had made; the two were seen constantly together. Others
+thought they were engaged.
+
+Morrow spoke of this to her next morning as they were being whirled down
+to Longport on a trolley car along miles of smooth beach and stunted
+distorted pine trees. "I heard a woman on the piazza whisper that I was
+your fiance," he said.
+
+"Well, what if you were--I mean what if she did?"
+
+At Longport they took the steamer for Ocean City. They rode through that
+quiet place of trees and cottages on the electric car, returning to the
+landing just in time to miss the 11.50 boat for Longport. They had to
+wait an hour and a half and they were the only people there who were not
+bored by the delay. They returned by way of Somers' Point.
+
+While the boat was gliding through the sunlit waters of Great Egg
+Harbour Inlet, Clara's hand happened to fall on Morrow's, which was
+resting on the gunwale. She let her hand remain there. Morrow looked at
+it, and then at her face. She smiled. When the Italian violin player on
+the boat came that way, Morrow gave him a dollar. Alas for the loveliest
+girl in the world!
+
+They passed most of that evening in a boardwalk pavilion, ostensibly
+watching the sea and the crowd. They went up the thoroughfare in a
+catboat the next morning, and, strange as it seemed to them, were the
+only people out who caught no fish. The captain winked at his mate, who
+grinned.
+
+In the afternoon, while Morrow and Clara stood on the boardwalk looking
+down at the Salvation Army tent, along came that innocent eccentric
+"Professor" Walters in bathing costume and with his swimming machine.
+The tall, lean whiskered, loquacious "Professor" had made Morrow's
+acquaintance in a former summer and now greeted him politely.
+
+"How d'ye do?" said the "Professor." "Glad to see you here. You turn up
+every year."
+
+"You're still given to rhyming," commented Morrow.
+
+"Yes, I have a rhyme for every time, in pleasure or sorrow. Is this Mrs.
+Morrow?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You ought to be sorry she isn't," remarked the "Professor," taking his
+departure.
+
+Morrow and Clara walked on in silence. At last he said somewhat
+nervously:
+
+"Everybody thinks we're married. Why shouldn't we be?"
+
+She answered softly, with downcast eyes:
+
+"I would be willing if I were sure of one thing."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"That you have never loved any other woman. Have you?"
+
+"How can you ask? Believe me, you are the only girl I have ever loved."
+
+That evening, after dinner, Morrow and Clara, the newly affianced, about
+starting from the hotel to the boardwalk, were at the top of the hotel
+steps when a man appeared at the bottom.
+
+Morrow uttered a cry of recognition.
+
+"Why, Haddon, old boy, I'm glad to see you. Let me introduce you to my
+wife that is to be."
+
+Haddon stood still and stared. Clara, too, remained motionless. After a
+moment, Haddon said very quietly:
+
+"You're mistaken. Let me introduce you to my wife that is."
+
+Morrow looked at Clara. She turned her gray eyes fearlessly on Haddon.
+
+"You, too, are mistaken," she said. "I had a husband before you married
+me. He's my husband still. He's doing a song and dance act in a variety
+theatre in Chicago. I'm sorry about all this, Mr. Morrow. I really like
+you. Good-bye."
+
+She ran back into the hotel and arranged to make her departure on an
+early train next morning.
+
+Haddon turned toward the boardwalk, and Morrow, quite dazed,
+involuntarily followed him. After a period of silence, Morrow said:
+
+"This is astonishing. A bigamist, and a would-be trigamist. She came
+here the night before you left. How did you find out she was here?"
+
+"I read it in the Atlantic City letter of _The Philadelphia Press_ that
+one of the Comic Opera singers daily seen on the boardwalk is Miss Clara
+Hunt, who is known to theatre-goers by her stage name, Lulu Ray. These
+newspaper correspondents know some of the obscurest people. If I had
+told you her real name, you would have known who she was in time to have
+avoided being taken in by her."
+
+"Her having another husband lets you out."
+
+"Yes. I'm glad and sorry, for damn it, I was fond of the girl. Excuse me
+awhile, old fellow. I want to go on the pier and think awhile."
+
+Haddon went out on the pier and looked down on the incoming waves and
+thought awhile. He found it a disconsolate occupation, even with a cigar
+to sweeten it. So he came back and mingled with the gay crowd on the
+boardwalk and tried to forget her.
+
+Morrow had no sooner left Haddon than he felt his arm touched. Looking
+around, he saw the smiling face of the loveliest girl in the world.
+
+"Well, by Jove, Edith," he said. "At last I've found you!"
+
+"Yes. I heard you were down here. You see, I've been up in town for the
+last week. Gracious, but Philadelphia is hot! Here's Aunt Laura."
+
+Morrow spent the evening with Edith. One night a week later, he proposed
+to her on the pier.
+
+"I will say yes," she replied, "if you can give me your assurance that
+you've never been in love with any one else."
+
+"That's easily given. You know very well you're the only girl I've ever
+loved."
+
+
+
+
+II. -- A BIT OF MELODY
+
+
+[Footnote: Copyrighted by J. Brisbane Walker, and used by the courtesy
+of the _Cosmopolitan Magazine_.]
+
+It was twelve o'clock that Sunday night when, leaving the lodging-house
+for a breath of winter air before going to bed, I met the two musicians
+coming in, carrying under their arms their violins in cases. They
+belonged to the orchestra at the ---- Theatre, and were returning from a
+dress rehearsal of the new comic opera that was to be produced there on
+the following night.
+
+Schaaf, who entered the hallway in advance of the professor, responded
+to my greeting in his customary gruff, almost suspicious manner, and
+passed on, turning down the collar of his overcoat. His heavily bearded
+face was as gloomy-looking as ever in the light of the single flickering
+gaslight.
+
+The professor, although by birth a compatriot of the other, was in
+disposition his opposite. In his courteous, almost affectionate way, he
+stopped to have a word with me about the coldness of the weather and the
+danger of the icy pavements. "I'm t'ankful to be at last home," he said,
+showing his teeth with a cordial smile, as he removed the muffler from
+his neck, which I thought nature had sufficiently protected with an
+ample red beard. "Take my advice, my frient, tempt not de wedder. Stay
+warm in de house and I play for you de music of de new opera."
+
+"Thanks for your solicitude," I said, "but I must have my walk. Play
+to your sombre friend, Schaaf, and see if you can soften him into
+geniality. Good night."
+
+The professor, with his usual kindliness, deprecated my thrust at the
+taciturnity of his countryman and confrere, with a gesture and a look
+of reproach in his soft gray eyes, and we parted. I watched him until he
+disappeared at the first turn of the dingy stairs.
+
+As I passed up the street, where I was in constant peril of losing my
+footing, I saw his windows grow feebly alight. He had ignited the gas in
+his room, which was that of the professor's sinister friend Schaaf.
+
+My regard for the professor was born of his invariable goodness of
+heart. Never did I know him to speak an uncharitable word of any one,
+while his practical generosity was far greater than expected of a second
+violinist. When I commended his magnanimity he would say, with a smile:
+
+"My frient, you mistake altogedder. I am de most selfish man. Charity
+cofers a multitude of sins. I haf so many sins to cofer."
+
+We called him the professor because besides fulfilling his nightly and
+matinee duties at the theatre, he gave piano lessons to a few pupils,
+and because those of us who could remember his long German surname could
+not pronounce it.
+
+One proof of the professor's beneficence had been his rescue of his
+friend Schaaf on a bench in Madison Square one day, a recent arrival
+from Germany, muttering despondently to himself. The professor learned
+that he had been unable to secure employment, and that his last cent had
+departed the day before. The professor took him home, clothed him and
+cared for him until eventually another second violin was needed in the
+---- Theatre orchestra.
+
+Schaaf was now on his feet, for he was apt at the making of tunes,
+and he picked up a few dollars now and then as a composer of songs and
+waltzes.
+
+All of which has little to do, apparently, with my post-midnight walk
+in that freezing weather. As I turned into Broadway, I was surprised to
+collide with my friend the doctor.
+
+"I came out for a stroll and a bit to eat," I said. "Won't you join
+me? I know a snug little place that keeps open till two o'clock, where
+devilled crabs are as good as the broiled oyster."
+
+"With pleasure," he replied, cordially, still holding my hand; "not for
+your food, but for your society. But do you know what you did when you
+ran against me at the corner? For a long time I've been trying to recall
+a certain tune that I heard once. Three minutes ago, as I was walking
+along, it came back to me, and I was whistling it when you came up. You
+knocked it quite out of mind. I'm sorry, for interesting circumstances
+connected with my first hearing of it make it desirable that I should
+remember it."
+
+"I can never express my regret," I said. "But you may be able to catch
+it again. Where were you when it came back to you three minutes ago?"
+
+"Two blocks away, passing a church. I think it was the shining of the
+electric light upon the stained glass window that brought it back to
+me, for on the night of the day when I first heard it in Paris a strong
+light was falling upon the stained glass windows of the church opposite
+the house in which I had apartments."
+
+"Perhaps, then," I suggested, "the law of association may operate again
+if you take the trouble to walk back and repass the church in the same
+manner and the same state of mind, as nearly as you can resume them."
+
+"By Jove," said the doctor, who likes experiments of this kind, "I'll
+try it. Wait for me here."
+
+I stood at the corner while the doctor briskly retraced his steps. His
+firmly built, comfortable-looking form passed rapidly away. Within five
+minutes he was back, a triumphant smile lighting his face.
+
+"Success!" he said. "I have it, although whether from chance or as a
+result of repeating my impression of light falling on a church window
+I can't say. Certainly, after all these years, the tune is again mine.
+Listen."
+
+As we proceeded up the street the doctor whistled a few measures
+composing a rather peculiar melody, expressive, it seemed to me, of
+unrest. I never forget a tune I have once heard, and this one was soon
+fixed in my memory.
+
+"And the interesting circumstances under which you heard it?" I
+interrogated. "Surely after the concern I've shown in the matter, you're
+not going to deprive me of the story that goes with the tune?"
+
+"There is no reason why I should. But I hope you will not circulate the
+melody. It is the music that accompanies a tragedy."
+
+"Indeed? You have written one, then? It must be brief, as there isn't
+much of the music."
+
+"I refer to a tragedy which actually occurred. Tragedies in real life
+are not, as a rule, accompanied by music, and, to be accurate, in this
+case music preceded the tragedy. Ten years ago, when I was living in
+Paris, apartments adjoining mine were taken by a musician and his wife.
+His name, as I learned afterward, was Heinrich Spellerberg, and he
+came from Breslau. The wife, a very young and pretty creature, showed
+herself, by her attire and manners, to be frivolous and vain, and
+without having more than the slightest acquaintance with the pair, I
+soon learned that she had no knowledge of or taste for music. He had
+married her, I suppose, for her beauty, and had too late discovered the
+incompatibility of their temperaments. But he loved her passionately
+and jealously. One day I heard loud words between them, from which I
+gathered unintentionally that something had aroused his jealousy. She
+replied with laughter and taunts to his threats. The quarrel ended with
+her abrupt departure from the room and from the house.
+
+"He did not follow her, but sat down at the piano and began to play
+in the manner of one who improvises. Correcting the melody that
+first responded to his touch, modifying it at several repetitions, he
+eventually gave out the form that I have just whistled.
+
+"Evening came and the wife did not return. He continued to play that
+strain over and over, into the night. I dropped my book, turned down my
+lamp light, and stood at the window, looking at the church across the
+way. Suddenly the music ceased. The wife had returned. 'Where did you
+dine?' I heard him ask. I could not hear her reply, but the next speech
+was plainly distinguished. 'You lie!' he said, in vehement tone of rage;
+'you were with----.' I did not catch the name he mentioned, nor did I
+know what she said in answer, or actually what happened. I heard only
+a confused sound, which did not impress me at the time as indicating a
+struggle, and which was followed by silence. I imagined that harmony or
+a sullen truce had been restored in the household, and thought no more
+about the affair. The next morning the wife was found dead, strangled.
+The husband had disappeared, and has never, I believe, been heard of to
+this day."
+
+We reached the restaurant as the doctor finished his story. How the
+account had impressed me I need not tell. Seated in the warm cafe, with
+appetizing viands and a bottle before us, I asked the doctor to tell me
+again the husband's name.
+
+"Heinrich Spellerberg."
+
+"And who had the woman been?"
+
+"I never ascertained. She was a vain, insignificant, shallow little
+blonde. The Paris newspapers could learn nothing as to her antecedents.
+She, too, was German, but slight and delicate in physique."
+
+"You didn't save any of the newspapers giving accounts of the affair?"
+
+"No. My evidence was printed, but they spelled my name wrong."
+
+"Do you remember the exact date of the murder?"
+
+"Yes, because it was the birthday of a friend of mine. It was February
+17, 187-. Twelve years ago! And that tune has been with me, off and
+on, ever since--forgotten, most of the time; a few times recalled--as
+to-night."
+
+"And the man, what did he look like?"
+
+"Slim and of medium height. Very light complexion and eyes. His face
+was entirely smooth. His hair, a bit flaxen in colour, was curly and
+plentiful, especially about the back of his neck."
+
+"In your evidence did you say anything about the strain of music, which
+was manifestly of the murderer's own composition?"
+
+"No, it did not recur to me until later."
+
+"And nothing was said about it by anybody?"
+
+"No one but myself knew anything about it--except the murderer; and
+unless he afterward circulated it, he and you and I are the only men in
+the world who have heard it."
+
+"But if he continued, wherever he went, to exercise his profession, he
+doubtless made some use of that bit of melody. The tune is so odd--quite
+too good for him to have wasted."
+
+"Still, neither of us has ever heard it, or anything like it. And if you
+ever should come upon it, it would be interesting to trace the thing,
+wouldn't it?"
+
+"Rather."
+
+I began to whistle the air softly. Presently two handsome girls, with
+jimp raiment and fearless demeanour, came in and took possession of an
+adjacent table.
+
+"What'll it be, Nell?"
+
+"I'll take a dozen panned. I'm hungry enough to eat all the oysters that
+ever came out of the sea. A rehearsal like that gives one an appetite."
+
+"A dozen panned, and lobster salad for me, and two bottles of beer," was
+the order of the first speaker to the waiter.
+
+I recognized the faces as pertaining to the chorus of the opera company
+at the ---- Theatre. I stopped whistling while I watched them.
+
+Suddenly, like a delayed and multiplied echo of my own whistling, came
+in a soft hum from one of the girls the notes of the doctor's tragically
+associated strain of music.
+
+The doctor and I exchanged glances. The girl stopped humming.
+
+"I think that's the prettiest thing in the piece, Maude," said she.
+
+Undoubtedly it was the comic opera to be produced at the ---- Theatre to
+which she alluded as "the piece."
+
+"Amazing," I said to the doctor. "Millocker composed the piece she's
+talking about. Millocker never killed a wife in Paris. Nor would he
+steal bodily from another. Perhaps the thing has been interpolated by
+the local producer. It doesn't sound quite like Millocker, anyhow. I
+must see about this."
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"To the Actors' Club, or a dozen other places, until I find Harry
+Griffiths. He's one of the comedians in the company at the ---- Theatre,
+and he has a leading part in that piece to-morrow night. He'll know
+where that tune came from."
+
+"As you please," said the amiable doctor. "But I must go home. You
+can tell me the result of your investigation to-morrow. It may lead to
+nothing, but it will be interesting pastime."
+
+"And again," I said, putting on my overcoat, "it may lead to something.
+I'll see you to-morrow. Good night."
+
+I found Griffiths at the Actors' Club, telling stories over a
+mutton-chop and a bottle of champagne. When the opportunity came I drew
+him aside.
+
+"I have bet with a man about a certain air in the new piece. He says
+it's in the original score, and I say it's introduced, because I don't
+think Millocker did it. This is it," and I whistled it.
+
+"Quite right, my boy. It's not in the original. Miss Elton's part was
+so small that she refused to play until the manager agreed to let her
+fatten it up. So Weinmann composed that and put--"
+
+"This Weinmann," I interrupted, abruptly, "what do you know about him?
+Who is he?"
+
+"He's Gustav Weinmann, the new musical director. I don't know anything
+about him. He's not been long in the country. The manager found him in
+some small place in Germany last summer."
+
+"How old is he? Where does he live?"
+
+"Somewhat in forty, I should say. I don't know where he stays. If you
+want to see him, why don't you come to the theatre when he's there?"
+
+"Good idea, this. Good night."
+
+I would look up this German musician who had come from an obscure German
+town. I would go to him and bluntly say:
+
+"Mr. Weinmann, I beg your pardon, but is it true, as some people say it
+is, that your real name is Heinrich Spellerberg?"
+
+Meanwhile there was nothing to do but go to bed.
+
+All the way home the tune rang in my head. I whistled it softly as I
+began to undress, until I heard the sound of the piano in the parlour
+down-stairs. Few of us ever touched that superannuated instrument. The
+only ones who ever did so intelligently were Schaaf and the professor.
+The latter was wont to visit the piano at any hour of the night. We
+all were used to his way, and we liked the subdued melodies, the dreamy
+caprices, the vague, trembling harmonies that stole through the silent
+house.
+
+I never see moonlight stretching its soft glory athwart a darkened room
+but I hear in fancy the infinitely gentle yet often thrilling strains
+that used to float through the still night from the piano as its keys
+took touch from the delicate white fingers of the professor.
+
+Suddenly the musical summonings of the player assumed a familiar
+aspect,--that of the tune which I had been singing in my own brain for
+the past hour.
+
+Then it occurred to me that the professor, being a second violin in
+the orchestra at the ---- Theatre, would doubtless know more about the
+antecedents of the new musical director than Griffiths had been able to
+tell me. This was the more probable as the professor himself had come
+from Germany.
+
+I descended the stairs softly, traversed the hallway, and, looking
+through the open door, beheld the professor at the piano.
+
+The curtains of a window were drawn aside, and the moonlight swept
+grandly in. It passed over a part of the piano, bathed the professor's
+head in soft radiance, fell upon the carpet, and touched the base of
+the opposite wall. Upon a sofa, half in light, half in shadow, reclined
+Schaaf, who had fallen asleep listening while the professor played.
+
+The professor's face was uplifted and calm. Rapture and pain--so often
+mutual companions--were depicted upon it. I hesitated to break the
+spell which he had woven for himself. After watching for some seconds,
+however, I began quietly:
+
+"Professor."
+
+The tune broke off with a jangling discord, and the player turned to
+face me, smiling pleasantly.
+
+"Pardon me," I went on, advancing into the room and standing in the
+moonshine that he might recognize me, "but I was attracted by the
+air you were playing. They tell me that it isn't Millocker's, but was
+composed by your new conductor at the ----"
+
+The professor answered with a laugh:
+
+"Ja! He got de honour of it. Honour is sheap. He buy dat. It doesn't
+matter."
+
+"Ah, then it isn't his own. And he bought the tune? From whom?"
+
+"Me."
+
+"You?"
+
+"Ja. And I have many oder to gif sheap, too."
+
+"But where did you get it?"
+
+"I make it."
+
+"When?"
+
+"Long 'go. I forget. I have make so many. Dey go away from my mindt an'
+come again back long time after."
+
+"Professor, what would you give me to tell you where and when you
+composed that tune?"
+
+He looked at me with a slightly bewildered expression. It was with an
+effort that I continued, as I looked straight into his eyes:
+
+"I will hazard a guess. Could it have been in Paris--one day twelve
+years ago--"
+
+"I neffer be in Paris," he interrupted, with a start which shocked and
+convinced me, slight evidence though it may seem. So I spoke on:
+
+"What, never? Not even just that night--that 17th of February? Try to
+recall it, Heinrich Spellerberg. You remember she came in late, and--who
+would think that those soft white fingers had been strong enough?"
+
+"Hush, my friendt! I not touch her! She kill herself--she try to hang
+and she shoke her neck. No, no, to you I vill not lie! You speak all
+true! Mein Gott! Vat vill you do?"
+
+The man was on his knees. I thought of the circumstances, the persons
+concerned, the high-strung, sensitive lover of music, the coarse,
+derisive, perhaps faithless woman, and I replied quickly:
+
+"What will I do? Nothing to-night. It's none of my business, anyhow.
+I'll sleep over it and tell you in the morning."
+
+I left him alone.
+
+In the morning the professor's door stood ajar. I looked in. Man,
+clothes, violin case, and valise had gone. Whither I have not tried to
+ascertain.
+
+When the new opera was produced that evening the ---- Theatre
+orchestra was unexpectedly minus two of its second violins, for Schaaf,
+half-distracted, was wandering the cold streets in search of his friend.
+
+
+
+
+III. -- ON THE BRIDGE
+
+When I tell you, my only friend, to whom I so rarely write and whom
+I more rarely see, that my lonely life has not been without love for
+woman, you will perhaps laugh or doubt.
+
+"What," you will say, "that gaunt old spectre in his attic with his
+books, his tobacco, and his three flower-pots! He would not know that
+there is such a word as love, did he not encounter it now and then in
+his reading."
+
+True, I have divided my days between the books in a rich man's
+counting-room and those in my attic. True, again, I have never been more
+than merely passable to look at, even in my best days.
+
+Yet I have loved a woman.
+
+During the five years when my elder brother lay in a hospital across
+the river, where he died, it was my custom to visit him every Sunday.
+I enjoyed the afternoon walk to the suburbs, when the air has more of
+nature in it, especially that portion of the walk which lay upon the
+bridge. More life than was usual upon the bridge moved there on Sunday.
+Then the cars were crowded with people seeking the parks. Many crossed
+on foot, stopping to look idly down at the dark and sluggish water.
+
+One afternoon, as I stood thus leaning over the parapet, the sound of
+woman's gentle laugh caused me to turn and ocularly inquire its source.
+The woman and a man were approaching. At the side of the woman walked
+soberly a handsome dog, a collie. There was that in their appearance
+and manner which plainly told me that here were husband and wife, of
+the middle class, intelligent but poor, out for a stroll. That they were
+quite devoted to each other was easily discoverable.
+
+The man looked about thirty years of age, was tall, slender, and was
+neither strong nor handsome, but had an amiable face. He was doubtless a
+clerk fit to be something better. The woman was perhaps twenty-four. She
+was not quite beautiful, yet she was more than pretty. She was of good
+size and figure, and the short plush coat that she wore, and the manner
+in which she kept her hands thrust in the pockets thereof, gave to her
+a dauntless air which the quiet and affectionate expression of her face
+softened.
+
+She was a brunette, her eyes being large and distinctly dark brown, her
+face having a peculiar complexion which is most quickly affected by any
+change in health.
+
+The colour of her cheek, the dark rim under her eyes, and the other
+indefinable signs, indicated some radical ailment. In the quick glance
+that I had of that pair, while the woman was smiling, a feeling of pity
+came over me. I have never detected the exact cause of that emotion.
+Perhaps in the woman's face I read the trace of past bodily and mental
+suffering; perhaps a subtle mark that death had already set there.
+
+Neither the woman nor her husband noticed me as they passed. The dog
+regarded me cautiously with the corner of his eye. I probably would
+never have thought of the three again had I not seen them upon the
+bridge, under exactly the same circumstances, on the next Sunday.
+
+So these young and then happy people walked here every Sunday, I
+thought. This, perhaps, was an event looked forward to throughout the
+week. The husband, doubtless, was kept a prisoner and slave at his desk
+from Monday morning until Saturday night, with respite only for eating
+and sleeping. Such cases are common, even with people who can think
+and have some taste for luxury, and who are not devoid of love for the
+beautiful.
+
+The sight of happiness which exists despite the cruelty of fate and
+man, and which is temporarily unconscious of its own liabilities to
+interruption and extinction, invariably fills me with sadness, and the
+sadness which arose at the contemplation of these two beings begat in me
+a strange sympathy for an interest in them.
+
+On Sundays thereafter I would go early to the bridge and wait until
+they passed, for it proved that this was their habitual Sunday walk.
+Sometimes they would pause and join those who gazed down at the black
+river. I would, now and again, resume my journey toward the hospital
+while they thus stood, and I would look back from a distance. The bridge
+would then appear to me an abrupt ascent, rising to the dense city, and
+their figures would stand out clearly against the background.
+
+It became a matter of care to me to observe each Sunday whether the
+health of either had varied during the previous week. The husband,
+always pale and slight, showed little change and that infrequently.
+But the fluctuations of the woman as indicated by complexion, gait,
+expression and otherwise, were numerous and pronounced. Often she looked
+brighter and more robust than on the preceding Sunday. Her face would be
+then rounded out, and the dark crescents beneath her eyes would be less
+marked. Then I found myself elated.
+
+But on the next Sunday the cheeks had receded slightly, the healthy
+lustre of the eyes had given way to an ominous glow, the warning of
+death had returned. Then my heart would sink, and, sighing, I would
+murmur inaudibly:
+
+"This is one of the bad Sundays."
+
+There came a time when every Sunday was a bad one.
+
+What made me love this woman? Simply the unmistakable completeness and
+constancy of her devotion to her husband,--the absorption of the woman
+in the wife. Had the strange ways of chance ever made known to her my
+feelings, and had she swerved from that devotion even to render me back
+love for love, then my own adoration for her would surely have departed.
+
+Yes, I loved her,--if to fill one's life with thoughts of a woman, if in
+fancy to see her face by day and night, if to have the will to die for
+her or to bear pain for her, if those and many more things mean love.
+
+My richest joy was to see her content with her husband, and the darkest
+woe of my life was to anticipate the termination of their happiness.
+
+So the Sundays passed. One afternoon I waited until almost dusk, yet the
+couple did not appear.
+
+For seven Sundays in succession I did not meet them upon their wonted
+walk.
+
+On the eighth Sunday I saw the dog first, then the man. The latter was
+looking over the railing. The woman was not with him. Apprehensively I
+sought with my eyes his face. Much grief and loneliness were depicted
+there.
+
+Was he or I the greater mourner? I wondered.
+
+I suppose two years passed after that day ere I again beheld the
+widower--whose name I did not and probably never shall know--upon
+the bridge. The dog was not with him this time. It was a fine, sunny
+afternoon in May. Grief was no longer in his face. By his side was a
+very pretty, animated, rosy little woman whom I had never seen before.
+They walked close to each other, and she looked with the utmost
+tenderness into his face. She evidently was not yet entirely accustomed
+to the wedding-ring which I observed on her finger.
+
+I think that tears came to my eyes at this sight. Those great brown
+eyes, the plush sack, the lovely face that had borne the impress of
+sorrow so speedily, had felt death--those might never have existed, so
+soon had they been forgotten by the one being in the world for whom that
+face had worn the aspect of a perfect love.
+
+Yet one upon whom those eyes never rested has remembered. And surely the
+memory of her is mine to wed, since he, whose right was to cherish it,
+has allowed himself to be divorced from it in so brief a time.
+
+The memory of her is with me always, fills my soul, beautifies my life,
+makes green and radiant this existence which all who know me think cold,
+bleak, empty, repellent.
+
+You will not laugh, then, my friend, when I tell you that love is not to
+me a thing unknown.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So runs a part of the last letter to my father that the old bookkeeper
+ever wrote.
+
+
+
+
+IV. -- THE TRIUMPH OF MOGLEY
+
+
+[Footnote: Courtesy of _Lippincott's Magazine_.Copyright, 1892, by J.B.
+Lippincott Company.]
+
+Mr. Mogley was an actor of what he termed the "old school." He railed
+against the prevalence of travelling theatrical troupes, and when he
+attitudinized in the barroom, his left elbow upon the brass rail, his
+right hand encircling a glass of foaming beer, he often clamoured for
+a return of the system of permanently located dramatic companies, and
+sighed at the departure of the "palmy days."
+
+A picturesque figure, typical of an almost bygone race of such figures,
+was Mogley at these moments, his form being long and attenuated,
+his visage smooth and of angular contour, his facial mildness really
+enhanced by the severity which he attempted to impart to his countenance
+when he conversed with such of his fellow men as were not of "the
+profession."
+
+Like Mogley's style of acting, his coat was old. But, although neither
+he nor any of his acquaintances suspected it, his heart was young. He
+still waited and hoped.
+
+For Mogley's long professional career had not once been brightened by
+a distinct success. He had never made what the men and women of his
+occupation designate a hit, or even what the dramatic critics wearily
+describe as a "favourable impression." This he ascribed to lack of
+opportunity, as he was merely human. Mr. and Mrs. Mogley eagerly sent
+for the newspapers on the morning after each opening night and sought
+the notices of the performance. These records never contained a word of
+either praise or censure for Mogley.
+
+Mrs. Mogley had first met Mogley when she was a soubrette and he a
+"walking gentleman." It was his Guildenstern (or it may have been his
+Rosencrantz) that had won her. Shortly after their marriage there came
+to her that life-ailment which made it impossible for her to continue
+acting. She had swallowed her aspirations, shedding a few tears. She
+lived in the hope of his triumph, and, as she had more time to think
+than he had, she suffered more keenly the agony of yearning unsatisfied.
+
+She was a little, fragile being, with large pale blue eyes, and a face
+from which the roses had fled when she was twenty. But she was very much
+to Mogley: she did his planning, his thinking, the greater part of his
+aspiring. She always accompanied him upon tours, undergoing cheerfully
+the hard life that a player at "one-night stands" must endure in the
+interest of art.
+
+This continued through the years until last season. Then when Mogley was
+about to start "on the road" with the "Two Lives for One" Company,
+the doctor said that Mrs. Mogley would have to stay in New York or
+die,--perhaps die in any event. So Mogley went alone, playing the
+melodramatic father in the first act, and later the secondary villain,
+who in the end drowns the principal villain in the tank of real water,
+while his heart was with the pain-racked little woman pining away in the
+small room at the top of the dingy theatrical boarding-house on Eleventh
+Street.
+
+The "Two Lives for One" Company "collapsed," as the newspapers say,
+in Ohio, three months after its departure from New York; this
+notwithstanding the tank of real water. Mogley and the leading actress
+overtook the manager at the railway station, as he was about to flee,
+and extorted enough money from him to take them back to New York.
+
+Mogley had not returned too soon to the small room at the top of the
+house on Eleventh Street. He turned paler than his wife when he saw her
+lying on the bed. She smiled through her tears,--a really heartrending
+smile.
+
+"Yes, Tom, I've changed much since you left, and not for the better. I
+don't know whether I can live out the season."
+
+"Don't say that, Alice, for God's sake!"
+
+"I would be resigned, Tom, if only--if only you would make a success
+before I go."
+
+"If only I could get the chance, Alice!"
+
+As the days went by, Mrs. Mogley rapidly grew worse. She seemed to fail
+perceptibly. But Mogley had to seek an engagement. They could not live
+on nothing. Mrs. Jones would wait with the daily increasing board-bill,
+but medicine required cash. Each evening, when Mogley returned from his
+tour of the theatrical agencies of Fourteenth Street and of Broadway,
+the ill woman put the question, almost before he opened the door:
+
+"Anything yet?"
+
+"Not yet. You see this is the bad part of the season. Ah, the profession
+is overcrowded!"
+
+But one Monday afternoon he rushed up the stairs, his face aglow. In the
+dark, narrow hallway on the top floor he met the doctor.
+
+"Mrs. Mogley has had a sudden turn for the worse," said the physician,
+abruptly. "I'm afraid she won't live until midnight."
+
+Doctors need not give themselves the trouble to "break news gently" in
+cases where they stand small chances of remuneration.
+
+Mogley staggered. It was cruel that this should occur just when he had
+such good news. But an idea occurred to him. Perhaps the good news would
+reanimate her.
+
+"Alice," he cried, as he threw open the door, "you must get well! My
+chance has come. The tide, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune,
+is here."
+
+She sat up in bed, trembling. "What is it, Tom?"
+
+"This. Young Hopkins asked me to have a drink at the Hoffman this
+afternoon, and, while I was in there, Hexter, who managed the 'Silver
+King' Company the season I played Coombe, came in all rattled. 'Why this
+extravagant wrath?' Hopkins asked, in his picturesque way. Then Hexter
+explained that his revival of Wilkins' old burlesque on 'Faust' couldn't
+be put on to-night, because Renshaw, who was to be the Mephisto, was too
+sick to walk. 'No one else knows the part,' Hexter said. Then I told him
+I knew the part; how I'd played Valentine to Wilkins' Mephisto when the
+piece was first produced before these Gaiety people brought their 'Faust
+up-to-date' from London. You remember how, as Wilkins was given to late
+dinners and too much ale, he made me understudy his Mephisto, and if the
+piece had run more'n two weeks, I'd probably had a chance to play it.
+Well, Hexter said, as everything was ready to put on the piece, if
+I thought I was up in the part, he'd let me try it. So we went to
+Renshaw's room and got the part and here it is."
+
+"But, Tom, burlesque isn't in your line."
+
+"Isn't it? Anything's in my line. 'Versatility is the touchstone
+of power.' That's where we of the old stock days come in! Besides,
+burlesque is the thing now. Look at Leslie, and Wilson, and Hopper, and
+Powers. They're the men who draw the salaries nowadays. If I make a hit
+in this part, my fortune is sure."
+
+"But Hexter's Theatre is on the Bowery."
+
+"That doesn't matter. Hexter pays salaries."
+
+Objections like this last one had often been made, and as often overcome
+in the same words.
+
+"And then besides--why, Alice, what's the matter?"
+
+She had fallen back on the bed with a feeble moan. He leaned over her.
+Slowly she opened her eyes.
+
+"Tom, I'm afraid I'm dying."
+
+Then Mogley remembered the doctor's words. Alice dying! Life was hard
+enough even when he had her to sustain his courage. What would it be
+without her?
+
+The typewritten part had fallen on the bed. He pushed it aside.
+
+"Hexter and his Mephisto be d----d!" said Mogley. "I shall stay at home
+with you to-night."
+
+"No, no, Tom: your one chance, remember! If you should make a hit before
+I die, I could go easier. It would brighten the next world for me until
+you come to join me."
+
+Mogley's weaker will succumbed to hers. So, with his right hand around
+Mrs. Mogley's wrist, turning his eyes now and then to the clock in the
+steeple which was visible through the narrow window, that he might know
+when to administer her medicine, he held his "part" in his left hand and
+refreshed his recollection of the lines.
+
+At seven o'clock, with a last pressure of her thin fingers, a kiss upon
+her cheek where a tear lay, he left her. He had thought she was asleep,
+but she murmured:
+
+"May God help you to-night, Tom! My thoughts will be at the theatre with
+you. Good-bye."
+
+Mrs. Jones's daughter had promised to look in at Mrs. Mogley now and
+then during the evening, and to give her the medicine at the proper
+intervals.
+
+Mogley reported to the stage manager, who showed him Renshaw's
+dressing-room and gave him Renshaw's costume for the part. His mind ever
+turning back to the little room at the top of the house and then to the
+words and "business" of his part, he got into Renshaw's red tights and
+crimson cape. Then he donned the scarlet cap and plume and pasted the
+exaggerated eyebrows upon his forehead, while the stage manager stood
+by, giving him hints as to new "business" invented by Renshaw.
+
+"You have the stage to yourself, you know, at that time, for a
+specialty."
+
+"Yes, I'll sing the song Wilkins did there. I see it's marked in the
+part and the orchestra must be 'up' in it. In the second act I'll do
+some imitations of actors."
+
+At eight he was ready to go on the stage.
+
+"May God be with you!" reechoed in his ear,--the echo of a weak voice
+put forth with an effort.
+
+He heard the stage manager in front of the curtain announcing that,
+"owing to Mr. Renshaw's sudden illness, the talented comedian, Mr.
+Thomas Mogley, had kindly consented to play Mephisto, at short notice,
+without a rehearsal."
+
+He had never heard himself called a talented comedian before, and
+he involuntarily held his head a trifle higher as the startling and
+delicious words reached his ears.
+
+The opening chorus, the witless dialogue of secondary personages, then
+an almost empty stage, old Faust alone remaining, and the entrance of
+Mephisto.
+
+Some applause that came from people that had not heard the preliminary
+announcement, and whose demonstration was intended for Renshaw, rather
+disconcerted Mogley. Then, ere he had spoken a word, or his eyes
+had ranged over the hazy lighted theatre on the other side of the
+footlights, there sounded in the depths of his brain:
+
+"My thoughts will be at the theatre with you!"
+
+There were many vacant seats in the house. He singled out one of them on
+the front row and imagined she was in it. He would play to that vacant
+seat throughout the evening.
+
+In all burlesques of "Faust" the role of Mephisto is the leading comic
+figure. The actor who assumes it undertakes to make people laugh.
+
+Mogley made people laugh that night, but it was not his intentional
+humourous efforts that excited their hilarity. It was the man himself.
+They began by jeering him quietly. Then the gallery grew bold.
+
+"Ah there, Edwin Booth!" sarcastically yelled an urchin aloft.
+
+"Oh, what a funny little man he is!" ironically quoted another from
+a song in one of Mr. Hoyt's farces, alluding to Mogley's spare if
+elongated frame.
+
+"He t'inks dis is a tragedy," suggested a Bowery youth.
+
+But Mogley tried not to heed.
+
+In the second act some one threw an apple at him. Mogley laboured
+zealously. The ribald gallery had often been his foe. Wait until such
+and such a scene! He would show them how a pupil of the old stock
+companies could play burlesque! Song and dance men from the varieties
+had too long enjoyed undisputed possession of that form of drama.
+
+But, one by one, he passed his opportunities without capturing the
+house. Nearer came the end of the piece. Slimmer grew his chance
+of making the longed-for impression. The derision of the audience
+increased. Now the gallery made comments upon his personal appearance.
+
+"He could get between raindrops," yelled one, applying a recent speech
+of Edwin Stevens, the comic opera comedian.
+
+And at home Mogley's wife was dying--holding to life by sheer power of
+will, that she might rejoice with him over his triumph. Tears blinded
+his eyes. Even the other members of the company were laughing at his
+discomfiture.
+
+Only a little brunette in pink tights who played Siebel, and whom he had
+never met before, had a look of sympathy for him.
+
+"It's a tough audience. Don't mind them," she whispered.
+
+Mogley has never seen or heard of the little brunette since. But he
+anticipates eventually to behold her ranking first after Alice among the
+angels of heaven.
+
+The curtain fell and Mogley, somewhat dazed in mind, mechanically
+removed his apparel, washed off his "make-up," donned his worn street
+attire and his haughty demeanour, and started for home.
+
+Home! Behind him failure and derision. Before him, Alice, dying, waiting
+impatiently his return, the news of his triumph.
+
+"We won't need you to-morrow night, Mr. Mogley," said the stage manager
+as he reached the stage door. "Mr. Hexter told me to pay you for
+to-night. Here's your money now."
+
+Mogley took the envelope as in a dream, answered not a word, and
+hastened homeward. He thought only:
+
+"To tell her the truth will kill her at once."
+
+Mrs. Mogley was awake and in a fever of anticipation when Mogley entered
+the little room. She was sitting up in bed, staring at him with shining
+eyes.
+
+"Well, how was it?" she asked, quickly.
+
+Mogley's face wore a look of jubilant joy.
+
+"Success!" he cried. "Tremendous hit! The house roared! Called before
+the curtain four times and had to make a speech!"
+
+Mogley's ecstasy was admirably simulated. It was a fine bit of acting.
+Never before or since did Mogley rise to such a height of dramatic
+illusion.
+
+"Ah, Tom, at last, at last! And, now, I must live till morning, to read
+about it in the papers!"
+
+Mogley's heart fell. If the papers would mention the performance at all,
+they would dismiss it in three or four lines, bestowing perhaps a word
+of ridicule upon him. She was sure to see one paper, the one that the
+landlady's daughter lent her every day.
+
+Mogley looked at the illuminated clock on the steeple across the way. A
+quarter to twelve.
+
+"My love," he said, "I promised Hexter I would meet him to-night at the
+Five A's Club, to arrange about salary and so forth. I'll be gone only
+an hour. Can you do without me that long?"
+
+"Yes, go; and don't let him have you for less than fifty dollars a
+week."
+
+Shortly after midnight the dramatic editor of that newspaper Miss Jones
+daily lent to Mrs. Mogley, having sent up the last page of his notice of
+the new play at Palmer's, was confronted by the office-boy ushering
+to the side of his desk a tall, spare, smooth-faced man with a sober
+countenance, an ill-concealed manner of being somewhat over-awed by his
+surroundings, and a coat frayed at the edges.
+
+"I'm Mr. Thomas Mogley," said this apparition.
+
+"Ah! Have a cigarette, Mr. Mogley?" replied the dramatic editor,
+absently, lighting one himself.
+
+"Thank you, sir. I was this evening, but am not now, the leading
+comedian of the company that played Wilkins's 'Faust' at the ----
+Theatre. I played Mephisto." (He had begun his speech in a dignified
+manner, but now he spoke quickly and in a quivering voice.) "I was a
+failure--a very great failure. My wife is extremely ill. If she knew I
+was a failure, it would kill her, so I told her I made a success. I have
+really never made a success in my life. She is sure to read your paper
+to-morrow. Will you kindly not speak of my failure in your criticism
+of the performance? She cannot live later than to-morrow morning, and I
+should not like--you see--I have never deigned to solicit favours from
+the press before, sir, and--"
+
+"I understand, Mr. Mogley. It's very late, but I'll see what I can do."
+
+Mogley passed out, walking down the five flights of stairs to the
+street, forgetful of the elevator.
+
+The dramatic editor looked at his watch. "Half-past twelve," he said;
+then, to a man at another desk:
+
+"Jack, I can't come just yet. I'll meet you at the club. Order devilled
+crabs and a bottle of Bass for me."
+
+He ran up-stairs to the night editor. "Mr. Dorney, have you the theatre
+proofs? I'd like to make a change in one of the theatre notices."
+
+"Too late for the first edition, my boy. Is it important?"
+
+"Yes, an exceptional case. I'll deem it a personal favour."
+
+"All right. I'll get it in the city edition. Here are the proofs."
+
+"Let's see," mused the dramatic editor, looking over the wet proofs.
+"Who covered the ---- Theatre to-night? Some one in the city department.
+I suppose he 'roasted' Gugley, or whatever his name is. Ah, here it is."
+
+And he read on the proof:
+
+"The revival of an ancient burlesque on 'Faust' at the ---- Theatre last
+night was without any noteworthy feature save the pitiful performance
+of the part of Mephisto by a doleful gentleman named Thomas Mogley, who
+showed not the faintest of humour and who was tremendously guyed by
+a turbulent audience. Mr. Mogley was temporarily taking the place of
+William Renshaw, a funmaker of more advanced methods, who will appear in
+the role to-night. There are some pretty girls and agile dancers in the
+company."
+
+Which the dramatic editor changed to read as follows:
+
+"The revival of a familiar burlesque on 'Faust' at the ---- Theatre last
+night was distinguished by a decidedly novel and original embodiment
+of Mephisto by Thomas Mogley, a trained and painstaking comedian. His
+performance created an abundance of merriment, and it was the manifest
+thought of the audience that a new type of burlesque comedian had been
+discovered."
+
+All of which was literally true. And the dramatic editor laughed over it
+later over his bottle of white label at the club.
+
+By what power Mrs. Mogley managed to keep alive until morning I do not
+know. The dull gray light was stealing into the little room through the
+window as Mogley, leaning over the bed, held a fresh newspaper close
+to her face. Her head was propped up by means of pillows. She laughed
+through her tears. Her face was all gladness.
+
+"A new--comedian--discovered," she repeated. "Ah, Tom, at last! That is
+what I lived for! I can die happy now. We've made a--great--hit--Tom--"
+
+The voice ceased. There was a convulsion at her throat. Nothing stirred
+in the room. From the street below came the sound of a passing car and a
+boy's voice, "Morning papers." Mogley was weeping.
+
+The dead woman's hand clutched the paper. Her face wore a smile.
+
+
+
+
+V. -- OUT OF HIS PAST
+
+This is no fable; it is the hardest kind of fact. I met Craddock not
+more than a week ago. His inebriety prevented his recognizing me.
+
+What a joyous, hopeful man he was upon the day of his marriage! He
+looked toward the future as upon a cloudless spring dawn one looks
+forward to the day.
+
+He had sown his wild oats and had already reaped a crop of knowledge.
+"I have put the past behind me," he said. And he thought it would stay
+there.
+
+He married one of the sweetest and best of women. The match was an ideal
+one--exceptionally so. His wife's mother objected to it and moved away
+on account of it. "That's a detail," said Craddock.
+
+There are details and details. The importance of any one of them depends
+on circumstances.
+
+Craddock had all the qualities and attributes requisite to make him a
+son-in-law to the liking of his mother-in-law--lack of money.
+
+So she went to live in Boston, maintained a chilly correspondence with
+her daughter, and bided her time.
+
+Craddock had had his old loves, a fact that he did not attempt to
+conceal from his wife. She insisted upon his telling her about them,
+although the narration put her into manifest vexation of mind. Such is
+the way of young wives.
+
+There was one love about which Craddock said less than about any of the
+others, because it had encroached more upon his life than any of them.
+It had nearly approached being a serious affair. He had a delicacy
+concerning the mention of it, too, for he flattered himself that the
+flame, although entirely extinguished upon his own side, yet smouldered
+deep in the heart of the woman. Therefore, he spoke of that episode in
+vague and general terms.
+
+Strange as it seemed to Craddock, clear as it is to any student of men
+and women, it was this amour that excited the most curiosity in the mind
+of his wife.
+
+"What was her name?" asked the latter.
+
+"Agnes Darrell."
+
+"I don't think she has a pretty name, at all events."
+
+"Oh, that was only her stage name. I really don't remember what her real
+name was."
+
+This was a judicious falsehood.
+
+"Well, I'm sorry that you ever made love to actresses. I'm afraid I
+can't think as much of you after knowing--"
+
+"After knowing that the first sight of you drove the memory of all
+actresses and other women in the world out of my head," cried Craddock,
+with a merry fervour that made his speech irresistible.
+
+So they persisted in being extremely happy together for three years, to
+the grinding chagrin of Craddock's mother-in-law in Boston.
+
+One July Friday, Craddock's wife was at the seashore, while Craddock,
+who ran down each Saturday to remain with her until Monday, was battling
+with his work and the heat and the summer insects, in his office in the
+city. Mrs. Craddock received her mail, two letters addressed to her at
+the seaside, two forwarded from the city whither they had first come.
+
+Of the latter one was a milliner's announcement of removal. The other
+was in a large envelope, and the address was in a chirography unknown to
+her. The large envelope contained a smaller one.
+
+This second envelope was addressed to Miss Agnes Darrell, ---- Hotel,
+Chicago, in the handwriting of Craddock.
+
+The feelings of Craddock's wife are imaginable. She took from this
+already opened second envelope the letter that it contained. It also was
+in Craddock's penmanship. She succeeded in a semistupefied condition in
+reading it to the end.
+
+"May 13.
+
+"My Dearest Agnes:--I have just a moment in which to tell you the old
+story that one heart, thousands of miles east of you, beats for you
+alone. With what joy do I anticipate the early ending of the season,
+when, like young Lochinvar, you will come out of the West. I shall
+contrive to be with you as often as possible this summer. With renewed
+vows of my unalterable devotion, I must hastily say good night.
+
+"Yours always,
+
+"Jack."
+
+Any who seek a new emotion would ask for nothing more than Craddock's
+wife then experienced. It was not until the first shock had given away
+to a calm, stupendous indignation that she began to comment upon the
+epistle in detail.
+
+"May 13th--at that very time Jack was sighing at the thought of my being
+away from him during the hot weather and telling me how he would miss
+me. All deception! His heart at that very time was beating for her
+alone. And he would contrive to see her as often as possible this
+summer--during my absence!"
+
+It was then that Craddock's wife learned the great value of pride
+and anger as a compound antidote to overwhelming grief in certain
+circumstances.
+
+When Craddock, quite unarmed, rushed to meet her at the seashore upon
+the next evening, she was en route for Boston.
+
+In several ensuing years, Craddock's wife's mother took care that every
+communication from him, every demand for an explanation, every piteous
+plea for enlightenment, for one interview, should be ignored. The mother
+sent the girl to relatives in Europe; and after Craddock had spent three
+years and all the money that he had saved toward the buying of a house
+for his wife and himself, in trying to cross her path that he might have
+a moment's hearing, he came back home and went to the dogs.
+
+He would have killed himself had not hope remained--the hope that some
+chance turn of events would bring him face to face with her, that he
+might know wherefore his punishment. He would have proudly resolved to
+forget her, and he would have striven day and night to make a name that
+some day would reach her ears whereever she might go, had he not felt
+that some terrible mistake had taken her from him; time would eventually
+rectify matters. As hope bade him live and as his inability to forget
+her made it impossible for him to put his thoughts upon work, he became
+a drunkard.
+
+He might not have done so had he been you or I; but he was only
+Craddock, and whether or not you find his offence beyond the extent of
+palliation, the fact is that he drank himself penniless and entirely
+beyond the power of his own will to resume respectability.
+
+Naturally his friends abandoned him.
+
+"Craddock is making a beast of himself," said one who had formerly sat
+at his table. "To give him money merely accelerates the process."
+
+"When a man loses all self-respect, how can he expect to retain the
+sympathy of other people?" queried a second.
+
+"I never thought much of a man who would go to the gutter on account of
+a woman. It shows a lack of stamina," observed a third.
+
+All of which was true. But particular cases have exceptionally
+aggravating circumstances. Special combinations may produce results
+which, although seemingly under human control, are almost, if not quite,
+inevitable.
+
+One day Craddock's wife came back to him. In Paris she had made a
+discovery. She had kept the letter from Jack to the actress in a box
+that always accompanied her. Opening this box suddenly, her eye fell
+upon the postmark, stamped upon the envelope. She had never noticed
+this before. She knew that the date written above the letter itself was
+incomplete, the year not being indicated. According to the postmark, the
+year was 1875.
+
+That was four years before Jack married her; two years before he first
+saw her.
+
+She had always supposed the sending of the letter to her to be the act
+of some jealous rival of Jack's for the actress's affection. Now she
+knew not to what it might have been attributable.
+
+When she arrived at the hospital where Craddock was recovering from the
+effects of an unconscious attempt at suicide, she was ten years older,
+in fact, than when she had left him; twenty years older in appearance.
+She took him home and has been trying to make a man of him. She
+manifests toward him limitless patience and tenderness, and she
+tolerates uncomplainingly his bi-weekly carousals. But she can afford
+to, having come into possession of a small fortune at her mother's
+recent death.
+
+Craddock is amiably content with her. He cannot bring himself to regard
+her as the beautiful young bride of his youth. So little remains of her
+former charm, her former vivacity and girlishness, that it seems as if
+Craddock's wife of other times had died.
+
+A few days ago, I met at the Sheepshead Races a _passee_ actress who was
+telling about the conquests of her early career.
+
+"There was one young fellow awfully infatuated with me," she said, "who
+used to write me the sweetest letters. I kept them long after he stopped
+caring for me, until he was married; then I destroyed them. I found one
+short one, though, in an old handbag some years after, and, just for a
+joke I mailed it to his wife at his old address. I don't suppose it ever
+reached her, though, or he would have acknowledged it, for the sake of
+old times. I wonder whatever became of Jack Craddock. People used to say
+he had a bright future--I say, tell that messenger-boy to come here! I'm
+going to put five on Tenny for this next race. And you'll lend me the
+five, won't you?"
+
+
+
+
+VI. -- THE NEW SIDE PARTNER
+
+A chance in life is like worldly greatness--to which, indeed, it is
+commonly a requisite preliminary. Some are born with it, some achieve
+it, and some have it thrust upon them.
+
+There is a youth who has had it thrust upon him. What he will do with it
+remains to be seen. Know the story, which is true in every detail save
+in two proper names:
+
+The midnight train from New York, which crawls out of the Jersey City
+ferry station at 12:25, is usually doleful, especially in the ordinary
+cars. One who cannot sleep easily therein has a weary two or three
+hours' time to Philadelphia. Almost any equally wakeful companion is
+then a source of joy.
+
+A girl of medium size, wearing a veil, and being rather carelessly
+attired in dark clothes which fitted a charming figure, walked jauntily
+up the aisle, saw that no seat was entirely vacant, and therefore, after
+a hasty glance at me, sat down beside me.
+
+Had not the two very young men in the seat behind us drunk too much
+wine that night in New York, the girl and I might never have exchanged a
+word. But the conversation of the youths was such as to cause between us
+the intercommunication of smiles, and eventually of speeches.
+
+Then casual observations about the fulness of the car, the time of the
+train, and our respective destinations,--mine being Philadelphia,
+hers being Baltimore, led to the revelation that she was a constant
+traveller, because she was an actress. She had been a soubrette in
+musical farce, but lately she had belonged to a variety and burlesque
+company. She had gone upon the stage when she was thirteen, and she was
+now twenty.
+
+"What kind of an act do you do?" I asked, in the language of the variety
+"profession."
+
+"Oh, I can do almost anything," she said, in a tone of a self-possessed,
+careless, and vivacious woman. "I sing well enough, and I can dance
+anything, a skirt dance, a clog, a Mexican fandango, a Carmencita kind
+of step, anything at all. I don't know when I ever learned to dance. I
+didn't learn, it just came to me; but the best thing I do is whistling.
+I'm not afraid of any man in the business when it's a case of whistling.
+There's no fake about my whistle; it's the real thing. I can whistle any
+sort of music that goes."
+
+"Your company appears in Baltimore this week?"
+
+"Oh, no! I've left the company. You see, I've been off for six weeks on
+account of illness, and now I'm going over to Baltimore to my father's
+funeral. He is to be buried to-morrow. See, here's the telegram. I've
+been having hard lines lately. I've not had any sleep for three days,
+and I won't get to Baltimore till daylight. I want to start back to New
+York to-morrow night, if I can raise the stuff. I had just enough money
+to get a ticket to Baltimore, and now I'm dead broke."
+
+Then she laughed and got me to untie her veil. When it was removed, I
+saw a frank young face with an abundance of soft brown hair. About the
+light blue eyes were the marks of fatigue, and the colour of the cheeks
+further confirmed her account of loss of sleep.
+
+Her feet pattered softly upon the floor of the car.
+
+"I'm doing a single shuffle," she said, in explanation of the movement
+of her feet. "If you could do one too, we might do a double."
+
+"Do you do your act alone on the stage?" I asked, "or are you one of a
+team?"
+
+"We're a team. My side partner's a man. It pays better that way. We
+get $40 a week and transportation. I used to get only $12 except when
+I stood around and posed, then I got $35 and had to pay my own railroad
+fare. You can bet I have a good figure, when I get $35 for that alone!
+I handle the money of the team and I divide it even between us. I don't
+believe in the man getting nine-tenths of the stuff, do you? Besides,
+I'm older than my partner is. I put him in the business."
+
+"How was that?"
+
+"Oh, I picked him up on the street in New York. I saw that he had a good
+voice and was a bright kid, so I took him for my partner."
+
+"But tell me how it came about."
+
+She was quite willing to do so. And the rumbling of the wheels, the rush
+of the train over the night-swathed plains of New Jersey, accompanied
+her voice. All the other passengers were sleeping. To the following
+effect was her narrative:
+
+At evening a crowd of boys had gathered at the corner of Broadway and
+a down-town street. One of them--ragged, unkempt, but handsome--was
+singing and dancing for the diversion of the others. That way came the
+variety actress, then out of an engagement. She stopped, heard the boy
+sing, and saw him dance. She pushed through the crowd to him.
+
+"How did you learn to dance?" she asked.
+
+"Didn't ever learn," he said, with impudent sullenness.
+
+"Who taught you to sing?"
+
+"None o' yer business."
+
+"But who did teach you?"
+
+"Nobody."
+
+"What's your name?"
+
+"None of your business."
+
+"Will you come along with me into the restaurant over there?"
+
+"No."
+
+But presently he was induced to go, although he continued to answer her
+questions in the savage, distrustful manner of his class. They went into
+a cheap eating-house and saloon, through the "Ladies' Entrance," and
+while they sat at a table there, she learned by means of resolute and
+patient questions that the boy earned his living by blacking shoes now
+and then, and that he did not know who his parents were, as he had been
+"put" with a family whose ill-usage he had fled from to live in the
+street. He began to melt under her manifestations of interest in him,
+and with pretended reluctance he gave his promise to wash his face and
+hands and to call upon her that evening at the theatrical boarding-house
+on Twenty-seventh Street where she was living. Then she left him.
+
+When he called, she took him to her room and induced him to allow her to
+comb his hair. A deal of persuasion was necessary to this. Then she
+took him out and bought him a cheap suit of clothes on the Bowery. A
+half-hour later he was standing with her in the wings at Miner's Variety
+Theatre. A man and woman were doing a song and dance upon the stage.
+
+"Watch that man," the actress said to the boy of the streets. "I want
+you to do that sort of an act with me one of these days."
+
+When he had thus received his first lesson, she led him back to the
+theatrical boarding-house, and in her room he showed her what ability he
+had picked up as a singer and dancer. She secured a room for him in the
+house, and she had the precaution to lock him in lest he should take
+fright at his novel change of surroundings and flee in the night. When
+she released him on the next morning she found him docile and cheerful.
+
+She escorted him into the big dining-room to breakfast.
+
+"Who's your friend, Lil?" asked a certain actor whose name is known from
+Portland to Portland.
+
+"He's my new side partner," she said, looking at the boy, who was not in
+the least abashed at the bold gaze of the negligently dressed soubrettes
+and the chaffing comedians who sat at the tables.
+
+Everybody laughed. "What can he do?" was the general question.
+
+"Get out there and show them, young one," she said, pointing to the
+centre of the dining-room.
+
+The boy obeyed without timidity. When he had sung and danced, there was
+hilarious applause.
+
+"Good for the kid," said the well-known actor. "What are you going to do
+with him, Lil?"
+
+"I'm going to try to get an engagement for us together in Rose St.
+Clair's Burlesque Company."
+
+"I'll help you," said the actor. "I know Rose. I'll go and see her right
+away, and you come there with the kid about 11 o'clock."
+
+When the girl and her protege arrived at the boarding-house of the fat
+manageress they found that the actor had so far kept his promise as to
+have inveigled her into a condition of alcoholic amiability. She asked
+them what they could do. Each one sang and danced, and the girl, who
+also whistled, outlined to the manageress her idea of an "act" in which
+the two should appear. There was a hitch when the question of salary
+arose. The girl fixed upon $40. Rose thought that amount was too large.
+Lil adhered to her terms, and was about to leave without having made
+an agreement, when the manageress called her back, and a contract for a
+three weeks' engagement was signed at once.
+
+The period between that day and the beginning of the engagement,
+which subsequently opened at Miner's Theatre, was spent by the girl
+in coaching her protege. He was a year younger than she, a fact which
+tended to increase the influence that she promptly obtained over him.
+His sullenness having been overcome, he became a devoted and apt
+pupil. Having beheld himself in neat clothes and acquired habits
+of cleanliness, he speedily developed into a handsome youth of soft
+disposition and good behaviour.
+
+The new song and dance "team" was successful. The boy quickly gained
+applause, and especially did he easily win the liking of such women as
+he met or appeared before. A new world was open to him. Naturally he
+enjoyed the easy conquests that he made in the curious, careless circle
+into which he had been brought.
+
+He is still having his "fling." But he has been from the first most
+obedient and unquestioning to his benefactress. He goes nowhere, does
+nothing, without previously obtaining permission from her.
+
+She is proud of the advancement that he has accomplished already, and
+she is determined to make him a conspicuous figure upon the stage.
+
+What is it that actuates this girl in her endeavour to elevate this boy
+in the world? What the mystery that brought to the gamin this guardian
+angel in the form of a variety actress who mingles bright sayings with
+lack of grammar, who tells Rabelaisian anecdotes in one minute and
+philosophizes in slang about the issues of life the next?
+
+"You're in love with him, aren't you?" I said, as the train plunged on
+through the darkness.
+
+"I don't know whether I am or not. He's just a kid, you know. I suppose
+the proper end of such a romance is that we should marry. But then I
+wouldn't be married to a man that I couldn't look up to."
+
+"But women don't invariably love that way. I'm sure you're in love with
+the boy. Have you never thought as to whether you were or not?"
+
+"Have I? I should smile! I thought of it even on the first night,
+after I picked him up, when I locked him in his room. But I have always
+regarded him in a sort of motherly way, although only a year older. It
+seems kind of unnatural for me to love him as a woman loves a man. If he
+was only older!"
+
+"Ah, that wish is sure evidence that you love him!"
+
+"One thing I do know is that, though he always obeys me, he doesn't care
+as much for me as I do for him."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"He wouldn't think so much of other girls if he did. He doesn't look
+upon me as a woman for him to fall in love with. He regards me as
+an older sister. Why, he never even takes a girl to supper after the
+performance without asking my permission."
+
+"And you give it?"
+
+"Yes; but he never knows how I feel when I do."
+
+"And how do you feel then?"
+
+"The first time he asked me, it was like a knife going through me. I
+haven't got used to it yet."
+
+She paused for a time before adding:
+
+"But, anyhow, he's going to make a name for himself some day. He has it
+in him. I'm not the only one that thinks so. I'm trying now to get him
+to go to a school of acting, but he thinks variety is good enough for
+him. He'll get over that, though."
+
+She spoke so tenderly and yet so proudly of him, that I could not
+without a pang of pity meditate upon the probable outcome of this
+attachment, which, according to the logic of realists, will be the boy's
+eventual success in life, long after he will have forgotten the hand
+that lifted him out of the depth in which he first opened his eyes.
+
+He knows nothing of his parentage. His benefactress once sought, by
+means of Inspector Byrnes's penetrating eye, to pierce the clouds
+surrounding his origin, but the inspector smiled at the hopelessness of
+the attempt.
+
+"Where is he now?" I asked.
+
+"I left him in New York," she said. "I suppose he'll blow in all his
+money as soon as he can possibly manage to do so."
+
+And she laughed and did another "shuffle" with her feet upon the floor
+of the car.
+
+
+
+
+VII. -- THE NEEDY OUTSIDER
+
+There was animation at the Nocturnal Club at three o'clock in the
+morning. The city reporters who had been dropping in since midnight were
+now reinforced by telegraph editors, for the country editions of the
+big dailies were already being rushed in light wagons over the sounding
+stones to the railroad stations.
+
+The cheery and urbane African--naturally called Delmonico by the
+habitues of the Nocturnal Club--found his time crowded in serving
+bottled beer, sandwiches, or boiled eggs to the groups around the
+tables.
+
+To a large group in the back room Fetterson related how he had once
+missed the last car at the distant extremity of West Philadelphia, and,
+failing to find a cab west of Broad Street, had walked fifty blocks
+after midnight and had still succeeded in getting his report in the
+second edition and thus making a "beat on the town."
+
+Then spoke up a needy outsider whom Fetterson had brought in at one
+o'clock.
+
+I neglected to mention Fetterson's penchant for queer company. It is
+quite right that reporters know policemen, are on chaffing terms with
+night cabmen, and have large acquaintance with pugilists and even
+with "crooks." But Fetterson picks up the most remarkable and
+out-of-the-way--not to speak of out-at-elbows--specimens of mankind,
+craft in distress on the sea of humanity. The needy outsider was his
+latest acquisition.
+
+It is enough to say of this destitute acquaintance of Fetterson's that
+he was a ragged man needing a shave. In daylight, in the country, you
+would have termed him a tramp. Hitherto he had sat in our group in
+silence. When he opened his mouth to discourse, it was natural that he
+should have a prompt and somewhat curious hearing.
+
+"Speaking of walking," he said, "I have walked a bit in my time. Mostly,
+though, I've rode--on freight-cars. The longest straight tramp I ever
+made was from Harrisburg to Philadelphia once when the trains weren't
+running. The cold weather made walking unpleasant. But what do you think
+of a woman--no tramp woman, either--starting from Pittsburg to walk to
+Philadelphia?"
+
+"Oh, there is a so-called actress who recently walked from San Francisco
+to New York," put in some one.
+
+"Yes, but she took her time, and had all the necessaries of life on the
+way. She walked for an advertisement. The woman I speak of walked in
+order to get there. She walked because she hadn't the money to pay her
+fare. Her husband was with her, to be sure. He was a pal o' mine.
+You see, it was a hard winter, years ago, and work was so scarce in
+Pittsburg that the husband had to remain idle until the two had begun
+to starve. He had some education, and had been an office clerk. At that
+time of his life he couldn't have stood manual labour. Still he tried to
+get it, for he was willing to do anything to keep a lining to his skin.
+If you've never been in his predicament, you can't realize how it is
+and you won't believe it possible. But I've known more than one man to
+starve because he couldn't get work and wouldn't take public charity.
+Starvation was the prospect of this young fellow and his wife. So they
+decided to leave Pittsburg and come to Philadelphia, where they thought
+it would be easier for the husband to get work.
+
+"'But how can we get there?' the husband asked.
+
+"She was a plucky girl and had known hardship, although she was frail to
+look at.
+
+"'Walk,' she replied.
+
+"And two days later they started."
+
+The outsider paused and lighted a forbidding-looking pipe.
+
+When he resumed his narrative he spoke in a lower tone. The
+recollections that he called up seemed to stir him within, although he
+was calm enough of exterior.
+
+"I won't describe the experience of my pal on that trip. It was his
+first tramp. He knew nothing of the art of vagabondage. Of course they
+had to beg. That was tough, although he got used to it and to many
+tricks in the trade. They slept in barns and they ate when and where
+they could. It cut him to the heart to see his wife in such hunger
+and fatigue. But her spirits kept up better than his--or at least they
+seemed to. Often he repented of having started upon such a trip. But he
+kept that to himself.
+
+"When the wife did at last give in to the cold, the hunger, and the
+weariness, it was to collapse all at once. It happened in the mountain
+country. In the evening of a cold, dull day they were trudging along on
+the railroad ties, keeping on the west-bound track so they could face
+approaching trains and get off the track in time to avoid being run
+down.
+
+"'We'll stop in the town ahead,' the husband said. 'We can get warm in
+the station, and you shall have supper if we have to knock at every door
+in the town.'
+
+"And the wife said:
+
+"'Yes, we'll stop, for I feel, Harry, as if--as if I couldn't--go any
+fur--Harry, where are you?'
+
+"She fell forward on the track. When the man picked her up she was
+unconscious. Clasping her in his arms, he set his teeth and fixed his
+eyes on the lights of the town ahead and hurried forward.
+
+"But before he reached the town, he found it was a dead body he was
+carrying.
+
+"You see she had kept up until the very last moment, in the hope of
+reaching the town before dark.
+
+"What the man did, how he felt when he discovered that her heart had
+ceased to beat, there in the solitude upon the mountains, with the town
+in sight at the foot of the slope in the gathering night, I can leave to
+the vivid imaginations of you newspaper men. For four hours he mourned
+over her body by the side of the track, and those in the train that
+passed could not see him for the darkness.
+
+"Then my pal took the body in his arms and started up the mountain, for
+the track at that point passed through what they call a cut, and the
+hills rise steep on each side of it. He had his prejudices against
+pauper burial, my pal had, and he shrunk from going to the town and
+begging a grave for her. He didn't need a doctor's certificate to tell
+him that life had gone for ever from her fragile body. He knew that she
+had died of cold and exhaustion.
+
+"As he turned the base of the hill to begin to descend it, he saw in the
+clouded moonlight a deserted railroad tool-house by the track. In front
+of it lay a broken, rusty spade. He shouldered this and proceeded up the
+mountain. It was a long walk, and he had to stop more than once to rest,
+but he got to the top at last. There was a little clearing in the woods
+here, where some one had camped. The ruins of a shanty still remained.
+
+"My pal laid down the body of her who had been his wife, with the dead
+face turned toward the sky, which was beginning to be cleared of its
+clouds. Then he started to dig.
+
+"It was a longer job than he had expected it to be, for my pal was tired
+and numb. But the grave was made at last, upon the very summit of the
+mountain.
+
+"He lifted up the body of that brave girl, he kissed the cold lips, and
+he took off his coat and wrapped it carefully about the head, so that
+the face would be protected from the earth. He stooped and laid the body
+in the shallow grave, and he knelt down there and prayed.
+
+"He filled the grave up with earth with the broken spade that he had
+used in digging it. All these things required a long time. He didn't
+observe how the night was passing, nor that the sky became clear and the
+stars shone and the moon crossed the zenith and began to descend in the
+west. He didn't notice that the stars began to pale. But he worked on
+until he had finished, and then he stopped and prayed again.
+
+"When he arose, his face was toward the east, and over the distant
+hilltops he saw the purple of the dawn."
+
+The outsider ceased to speak.
+
+"What then?"
+
+"That's all. My pal walked down the mountain, jumped upon the first
+freight-train that passed, and has been a wanderer on the face of the
+earth ever since."
+
+There were various opinions expressed of this narrative. I quietly asked
+the needy outsider as we left the club at sunrise:
+
+"Will you tell me who your pal was--the man who buried his wife on the
+mountain-top?"
+
+There was contemptuous pity in the outsider's look as it dwelt a moment
+upon me before he replied: "The man was myself."
+
+And then he condescended to borrow a quarter from me.
+
+
+
+
+VIII. -- TIME AND THE TOMBSTONE
+
+Tommy McGuffy was growing old. The skin of his attenuated face was so
+shrunk and so stretched from wrinkle to wrinkle that it seemed narrowly
+to escape breaking. About the pointed chin and the cheekbones it had the
+colour of faded brick.
+
+Old Tommy had become so thin that he dared not venture to the top of the
+hill above his native village of Rearward on a windy day.
+
+His knees bent comically when he walked.
+
+For some years the villagers had been counting the nephews and nieces to
+whom the savings of the old retired dealer in dry-goods would eventually
+descend.
+
+Ten thousand dollars and a house and lot constituted a heritage worth
+anticipating in Rearward.
+
+The innocent old man was not upon terms of intimacy with his prospective
+heirs. Having remained unmarried, his only close associates were two
+who had been his companions in that remote period which had been his
+boyhood. One of these, Jerry Hurley, was a childless widower, a very
+estimable and highly respected man who owned two farms. The other, like
+himself a bachelor, was Billy Skidmore, the sexton of the church, and,
+therefore, the regulator of the town clock upon the steeple.
+
+There came a great shock to Tommy one day. As old Mrs. Sparks said,
+Jerry Hurley, "all sudden-like, just took a notion and died."
+
+The wealth and standing of Jerry Hurley insured him an imposing funeral.
+They laid his body beside that which had once been his wife in Rearward
+cemetery. His heirs possessed his farm, and time went on--slowly as it
+always does at Rearward. Tommy went frequently to Hurley's grave and
+wondered when his heirs would erect a monument to his memory. It is
+necessary that your grave be marked with a monument if you would stand
+high in that still society that holds eternal assembly beneath the pines
+and willows, where only the breezes speak, and they in subdued voices.
+
+Years passed, and the grave of Tommy's old friend, Jerry, remained
+unmarked. Jerry's relatives had postponed the duty so long that they
+had grown callous to public opinion. Besides, they had other purposes to
+which to apply Jerry's money. It was easy enough to avoid reproach; they
+had only to refrain from visiting the graveyard.
+
+"Jerry never deserved such treatment," Tommy would say to Billy the
+sexton, as the two met to talk it over every sunny afternoon.
+
+"It's an outrage, that's what it is!" Billy would reply, for the
+hundredth time.
+
+It was, in their eyes, an omission almost equal to that of baptism or
+that of the funeral service.
+
+One day, as Tommy was aiding himself along the main street of Rearward
+by means of a hickory stick, a frightful thought came to him. He turned
+cold.
+
+What if his own heirs should neglect to mark his own grave?
+
+"I'll hurry home at once, and put the money for it in a stocking foot,"
+thought Tommy, and his knees bent more than usually as he accelerated
+his pace.
+
+But as he tied a knot in the stocking, came the fear that even this
+money might be misapplied; even his will might be ignored, through
+repeated postponement and the law's indifference.
+
+Who, save old Billy Skidmore, would care whether old Tommy McGuffy's
+last resting-place were designated or not? Once let the worms begin
+operations upon this antique morsel, what would it matter to Rearward
+folks where the banquet was taking place?
+
+Tommy now underwent a second attack of horror, from which he came
+victorious, a gleeful smile momentarily lifting the dimness from his
+excessively lachrymal eyes.
+
+"I'll fix 'em," he said to himself. "I'll go to-day to Ricketts, the
+marble-cutter, and order my own tombstone."
+
+Three months thereafter, Ricketts, the marble-cutter, untied the knot
+in the stocking that had been Billy's and deposited the contents in the
+local savings-bank.
+
+In the cemetery stood a monument very lofty and elaborate. Around it was
+an iron fence. Within the enclosure there was no grave as yet.
+
+"Here," said the monument, in deep-cut-letters, but bad English, "lies
+all that remains of Thomas McGuffy, born in Rearward, November 11, 1820;
+died----. Gone whither the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are
+at rest."
+
+This supplementary information was framed in the words of Tommy's
+favourite passage in his favourite hymn. His liking for this was mainly
+on account of its tune.
+
+He had left the date of his death to be inserted by the marble cutter
+after its occurrence.
+
+Rearward folks were amused at sight of the monument, and they ascribed
+the placing of it there to the eccentricity of a taciturn old man.
+
+Tommy seemed to derive much pleasure from visiting his tombstone on
+mild days. He spent many hours contemplating it. He would enter the iron
+enclosure, lock the gate after him, and sit upon the ground that was
+intended some day to cover his body.
+
+He was a familiar sight to people riding or walking past the
+graveyard,--this thin old man leaning upon his cane, contentedly
+pondering over the inscription on his own tombstone.
+
+He undoubtedly found much innocent pleasure in it.
+
+One afternoon, as he was so engaged, he was assailed by a new
+apprehension.
+
+Suppose that Ricketts, the marble-cutter, should fail to inscribe the
+date of his death in the space left vacant for it!
+
+There was almost no likelihood of such an omission, but there was at
+least a possibility of it.
+
+He glanced across the cemetery to Jerry Hurley's unmarked mound, and
+shuddered.
+
+Then he thought laboriously.
+
+When he left the cemetery in such time as to avoid a delay of his
+evening meal and a consequent outburst of anger on the part of his old
+housekeeper, he had taken a resolution.
+
+"Threescore years and ten, says the Bible," he muttered to himself as he
+walked homeward. "The scriptural lifetime'll do for me."
+
+A week thereafter old Tommy gazed proudly upon the finished inscription.
+
+"Died November 11, 1890," was the newest bit of biography there
+engraved.
+
+"But it's two years and more till November 11, 1890," said a voice at
+his side.
+
+Tommy merely cast an indifferent look upon the speaker and walked off
+without a word.
+
+The whole village now thought that Tommy had become a monomaniac upon
+the subject of his tombstone. Perhaps he had. No one has been able
+to learn from his friend, Billy Skidmore, what thoughts he may have
+communicated to the latter upon the matter.
+
+Tommy now lived for no other apparent purpose than to visit his
+tombstone daily. He no longer confined his walks thither to the pleasant
+days. He went in weather most perilous to so old and frail a man.
+
+One of his prospective heirs took sufficient interest in him to advise
+more care of his health.
+
+"I can easily keep alive till the time comes," returned the antique;
+"there's only a year left."
+
+Rapidly his hold upon life relaxed. A week before November 11, 1890, he
+went to bed and stayed there. People began to speculate as to whether
+his unique prediction--or I should say, his decree--would be fulfilled
+to the very day.
+
+Upon the fifth day of his illness Death threatened to come before the
+time that had been set for receiving him.
+
+"Isn't this the tenth?" the old man mumbled.
+
+"No," said his housekeeper, who with one of his nieces, the doctor, and
+Billy Skidmore, attended the ill man, "it's only the 9th."
+
+"Then I must fight for two days more; the tombstone must not lie."
+
+And he rallied so well that it seemed as if the tombstone would lie,
+nevertheless, for Tommy was still alive at eleven-thirty on the night
+of November 11. Moreover he had been in his senses when last awake, and
+there was every likelihood that he would look at the clock whenever his
+eyes should next open.
+
+"He can't live till morning, that's sure," said the doctor.
+
+"But, good Lord! you don't mean to say that he'll hold out till after
+twelve o'clock," said Billy Skidmore, whose anxiety only had sustained
+him in his grief at the approaching dissolution of his friend.
+
+"Quite probably," replied the doctor.
+
+"Good heavens! Tommy won't rest easy in his grave if he don't die on the
+11th. The monument will be wrong."
+
+"Oh, that won't matter," said the niece.
+
+Billy looked at her in amazement. Was his old friend's sacred wish to
+miscarry thus?
+
+"Yes, 'twill matter," he said, in a loud whisper. "And if time won't
+wait for Tommy of its own accord, we'll make it. When did he last see
+the clock?"
+
+"Half-past nine," said the housekeeper.
+
+"Then we'll turn it back to ten," said Skidmore, acting as he spoke.
+
+"But he may hear the town clock strike."
+
+Billy said never a word, but plunged into his overcoat, threw on his
+hat, and hurried on into the cold night.
+
+"Ten minutes to midnight," he said, as he looked up at the town clock
+upon the church steeple. "Can I skin up them ladders in time?"
+
+Tommy awoke once before the last slumber. Billy was by his bedside,
+as were the doctor, the housekeeper, and the niece. The old man's eyes
+sought the clock.
+
+"Eleven," he murmured. Then he was silent, for the town clock had begun
+to strike. He counted the strokes--eleven. Then he smiled and tried to
+speak again.
+
+"Almost--live out--birthday--seventy--tombstone--all right."
+
+He closed his eyes, and, inasmuch as the town clock furnishes the
+official time for Rearward, the published report of Tommy McGuffy's
+going records that he passed at twenty-five minutes after eleven P.M.,
+November 11, 1890.
+
+Very few people know that time turned back one hour and a half in order
+that the reputation of Tommy McGuffy's tombstone for veracity might be
+spotless in the eyes of future generations.
+
+Billy Skidmore, the sexton, arranged to have Rearward time ready for the
+sun when it rose upon the following morning.
+
+
+
+
+IX. -- HE BELIEVED THEM
+
+He was a bachelor, and he owned a little tobacco store in the suburbs.
+All the labour, manual and mental, requisite to the continuance of the
+establishment, however, was done by the ex-newsboy, to whom the old
+soldier paid $4 per week and allowed free tobacco.
+
+He had come into the neighbourhood from the interior of the state
+shortly after the war, and for a time there were not ten houses within
+a block of his shop. The shop is now the one architectural blemish in a
+long row of handsome stores. Miles of streets have been built up around
+it.
+
+The old soldier used to sit in an antique armchair in the rear of his
+shop, smoking, from meal to meal.
+
+"I l'arnt the habit in the army," he would say. "I never teched tobacker
+till I went to the war."
+
+People would look inquiringly at his empty sleeve.
+
+"I got that at Gettysburg in the second day's fight," he would explain,
+complacently.
+
+He was often asked whether he was a member of the Grand Army of the
+Republic.
+
+"No; 'tain't worth while. I done my fightin' in '63 and '64--them times.
+I don't care about doin' it over again in talk. Talk's cheap."
+
+This made folks smile, for he was continually fighting his battles over
+again in conversation. Every regular customer had been made acquainted
+with the part that he had taken in each contest, where he had stood when
+he received his wound, what regiment had the honour of possessing him,
+and how promptly he had enlisted against the wishes of parents and
+sweetheart.
+
+"Of course you get a pension," many would observe.
+
+He would shake his head and answer, in a mild tone of a man consciously
+repressing a pardonable pride.
+
+"I never 'plied, and as long as the retail tobacker trade keeps up like
+this, I reckon I won't make no pull on the gover'ment treash'ry."
+
+And he would puff at his cigar vigorously, beam upon the group
+that surrounded his chair, and start on one of his long trains of
+reminiscences.
+
+He was an amiable old fellow, with gray hair carefully combed back from
+his curved forehead, a florid countenance, boyish blue eyes, puffed
+cheeks, a smooth chin, and very military-looking gray moustache. He was
+manifestly a man who ate ample dinners and amply digested them. He would
+glance contentedly downward at his broad, round body, and smilingly
+remark:
+
+"I didn't have that girth in my fightin' days. I got it after the war
+was over."
+
+All who knew him admired him. He would tell with simple frankness how,
+after distinguishing himself at Antietam, he chose to remain a private
+rather than take the lieutenancy that was placed within his reach. He
+would frequently say:
+
+"I ain't none o' them that thinks the country belongs to the soldiers
+because they saved it. No, sir! If they want the country as a reward,
+where's the credit in savin' it?"
+
+How could one help exclaiming: "What a really noble old man!"
+
+Finally some of the young men who received daily inspiration from his
+autobiographical narratives arranged a surprise for the old soldier.
+They presented him with a finely framed picture of the battle of
+Gettysburg, under which was the inscription:
+
+"To a True Patriot. Who Fought and Suffered Not for Self-Interest or
+Glory, but for Love of His Country."
+
+This hung in his shop until the day of his death. Then his brother came
+from his native village to attend to his burial. The brother stared at
+the picture, inquired as to the meaning of the inscription, and then
+laughed vociferously.
+
+In the old soldier's trunk was found a faded newspaper that had been
+published in his village in 1865. It contained an account of an accident
+by which a grocer's clerk had lost his arm in a thrashing-machine. The
+grocer's clerk and the old soldier were one person.
+
+He had never seen a battle, but so often had he told his war stories
+that in his last days he believed them.
+
+
+
+
+X. -- A VAGRANT
+
+On a July evening at dusk, two boys sat near the crest of a grass-grown
+embankment by the railroad at the western side of a Pennsylvania town.
+They talked in low tones of the sky's glow above where the sun had set
+beyond the low hills across the river, and also of the stars, and of the
+moon, which was over the housetop behind them. Then there was noise of
+insects chirping in the grass and of steam escaping from the locomotive
+boilers in the engine shed.
+
+A rumble sounded as from the north, and in that direction a locomotive
+headlight came into view. It neared as the rumble grew louder, and
+soon a freight-train appeared. This rolled past at the foot of the
+embankment.
+
+From between two grain cars leaped a man, and after him another. So
+rapidly was the train moving that they seemed to be hurled from it.
+Both alighted upon their feet. One tall and lithe, led the way up the
+embankment, followed by the other, who was short and stocky.
+
+"Bums," whispered one of the boys at the top of the embankment.
+
+The tramps stood still when they reached the top. Even in the half-light
+it could be seen that their clothes were ill-fitting, frayed, and torn.
+They wore cast-off hats. The tall man, whose face was clean-cut and
+made a pretence of being smooth-shaven, had a pliable one; the other was
+capped by a dented derby.
+
+"Here's yer town at last! And it looks like a very jay place at that,"
+said the short tramp to the tall one, casting his eyes toward the house
+roofs eastward.
+
+The boys sitting twenty feet away became silent and cautiously watched
+the newcomers.
+
+"Yep," replied the tall tramp, in a deep but serious and quiet voice,
+"and right about here is the spot where I jumped on a freight-train
+fifteen years ago, the night I ran away from home. That seems like
+yesterday, though I've not been here since."
+
+"Skipped a good home because the old lady brought you a new dad! You
+wouldn't catch me being run out by no stepfather. Billy, you was rash."
+
+"Mebby I was. But, on the dead, Pete, it was mostly jealousy. I thought
+my mother couldn't care for me any more if she could take a second
+husband. My sister thought so too, but she wasn't able to get away like
+me. Of course I was strong. It was boyish pique that drove me away. I
+didn't fancy having another man in my dead father's place, either. And
+I wanted to get around and see the world a bit. After I'd gone I often
+wished I hadn't. I'd never imagined how much I loved mother and sis.
+But I was tougher and prouder in some ways than most kids. You can't
+understand that sort of thing, Pete. And you can't guess how I feel,
+bein' back here for the first time in fifteen years. Think of it, I was
+just fifteen when I came away. Why, I spent half my life here, Petie!"
+
+"Oh, I've read somewhere about that,--the way great men feel when they
+visit their native town."
+
+The short tramp took a clay pipe from his coat pocket and stuffed into
+it a cigar-end fished from another pocket. Then he inquired:
+
+"And now you're here, Billy, what are you go'n to do?"
+
+"Only ask around what's become o' my folks, then go away. It won't take
+me long."
+
+"There'll be a through coal-train along in about an hour, 'cordin' to
+what the flagmen told us at that last town. Will you be back in time to
+bounce that?"
+
+"Yes. We needn't stay here. There's little to be picked up in a place
+like this."
+
+"Then skin along and make your investigations. I'll sit here and smoke
+till you come back. If you could pinch a bit of bread and meat, by the
+way, it wouldn't hurt."
+
+"I'll try," answered the tall tramp. "I'm goin' to ask the kids yonder,
+first, if any o' my people still live here."
+
+The tall tramp strode over to the two boys. His companion shambled down
+the embankment to obtain, at the turntable near the locomotive shed
+across the railroad, a red-hot cinder with which to light his pipe.
+
+"Do you youngsters know people here by the name of Kershaw?" began the
+tall tramp, standing beside the two boys.
+
+Both remained sitting on the grass. One shook his head. The other said,
+"No."
+
+The tramp was silent for a moment. Then it occurred to him that his
+mother had taken his stepfather's name and his sister might be married.
+Therefore he asked:
+
+"How about a family named Coates?"
+
+"None here," replied one of the boys.
+
+But the other said, "Coates? That's the name of Tommy Hackett's
+grandmother."
+
+The tramp drew and expelled a quick, audible breath.
+
+"Then," he said, "this Mrs. Coates must be the mother of Tommy's mother.
+Do you know what Tommy's mother's first name is?"
+
+"I heard Tom call her Alice once."
+
+The tramp's eyes glistened.
+
+"And Mr. Coates?" he inquired.
+
+"Oh, I never heard of him. I guess he died long ago."
+
+"And Tommy Hackett's father, who's he?"
+
+"He's the boss down at the freight station. Agent, I think they call
+him."
+
+"Where does this Mrs. Coates live?"
+
+"She lives with the Hacketts. Would you like to see the house? Me and
+Dick has to go past it on the way home. We'll show you."
+
+"Yes, I would like to see the house."
+
+The boys arose, one of them rather sleepily. They led the way across the
+railway company's lot, then along a sparsely built up street, and around
+the corner into a more populous but quiet highway. At the corner was a
+grocery and dry-goods store; beyond that were neat and airy two-story
+houses, fronted by a yard closed in by iron fences. One of these houses
+had a little piazza, on which sat two children. From the open half-door
+and from two windows came light.
+
+"That's Hackett's house," said one of the boys.
+
+"Thanks, very much," replied the tramp, continuing to walk with them.
+
+The boys looked surprised at his not stopping at the house, but they
+said nothing.
+
+At the next corner the tramp spoke up:
+
+"I think I'll go back now. Good night, youngsters."
+
+The boys trudged on, and the tramp retraced his steps. When he reached
+the Hacketts' house, he paused at the gate. The children, a boy of eight
+and a girl of six, looked at him curiously from the piazza.
+
+"Are you Mr. Hackett's little boy and girl?" he asked.
+
+The girl stepped back to the hall door and stood there. The boy looked
+up at the tramp and answered, "Yes, sir."
+
+"Is your mother in?"
+
+"No, she's across the street at Mrs. Johnson's."
+
+"Grandmother's in, though," continued the boy. "Would you like to see
+her?"
+
+"No, no! Don't call her. I just wanted to see your mother."
+
+"Do you know mamma?" inquired the girl.
+
+"Well--no. I knew her brother, your uncle."
+
+"We haven't any uncle--except Uncle George, and he's papa's brother,"
+said the boy.
+
+"What! Not an uncle Will--Uncle Will Kershaw?"
+
+"O--h, yes," assented the boy. "Did you know him before he died? That
+was a long time ago."
+
+The tramp made no other outward manifestation of his surprise than to
+be silent and motionless for a time. Presently he said, in a trembling
+voice:
+
+"Yes, before he died. Do you remember when he died?"
+
+"Oh, no. That was when mamma was a girl. She and grandmother often talk
+about it, though. Uncle Will started West, you know, when he was fifteen
+years old. He was standing on a bridge out near Pittsburg one day, and
+he saw a little girl fall into the river. He jumped in to save her, but
+he was drowned, 'cause his head hit a stone and that stunned him. They
+didn't know it was Uncle Will or who it was, at first, but mamma read
+about it in the papers and Grandpa Coates went out to see if it wasn't
+Uncle Will. Grandpa 'dentified him and they brought him back here, but,
+what do you think, the doctor wouldn't allow them to open his coffin,
+and so grandma and mamma couldn't see him. He's buried up in the
+graveyard next Grandpa Kershaw, and there's a little monument there that
+tells all about how he died trying to save a little girl from drownin'.
+I can read it, but Mamie can't. She's my little sister there."
+
+The tramp had seated himself on the piazza step. He was looking vacantly
+before him. He remained so until the boy, frightened at his silence,
+moved further from him, toward the door. Then the tramp arose suddenly.
+
+"Well," he said, huskily, "I won't wait to see your mamma. You needn't
+tell her about me bein' here. But, say--could I just get a look at--at
+your grandma, without her knowing anythin about it?"
+
+The boy took his sister's hand and withdrew into the doorway. Then he
+said, "Why, of course. You can see her through the window."
+
+The tramp stood against the edge of the piazza upon his toes, and craned
+his neck to see through one of the lighted windows. So he remained
+for several seconds. Once during that time he closed his eyes, and the
+muscles of his face contracted. Then he opened his eyes again. They were
+moist.
+
+He could see a gentle old lady, with smooth gray hair, and an expression
+of calm and not unhappy melancholy. She was sitting in a rocking-chair,
+her hands resting on the arms, her look fixed unconsciously on the paper
+on the wall. She was thinking, and evidently her thoughts, though sad,
+perhaps, were not keenly painful.
+
+The tramp read that much upon her face. Presently, without a word, he
+turned quickly about and hurried away, closing the gate after him.
+
+When the two children told about their visitor later, their mother said:
+
+"You mustn't talk to strange men, Tommy. You and Mamie should have come
+right in to grandma."
+
+Their father said: "He was probably looking for a chance to steal
+something. I'll let the dog out in the yard to-night."
+
+And their grandmother: "I suppose he was only a man who likes to hear
+children talk, and perhaps, poor fellow, he has no little ones of his
+own."
+
+The tramp knew the way to the cemetery. But first he found the
+house where he had lived as a boy. It looked painfully rickety and
+surprisingly small. So he hastened from before it and went up by a
+back street across the town creek and up a hill, where at last he stood
+before the cemetery gate. It was locked; so he climbed over the wall. He
+went still further up the hill, past tombstones that looked very white,
+and trees that looked very green in the moonlight. At the top of the
+hill he found his father's grave. Beside it was another mound, and at
+the head of this, a plain little pillar. The moon was high now and the
+tramp was used to seeing in the night. Word by word he could slowly read
+upon the marble this inscription:
+
+"William Albert, beloved son of the late Thomas Kershaw and his wife
+Rachel; born in Brickville, August 2, 1862; drowned in the Allegheny
+River near Pittsburg, July 27, 1877, while heroically endeavouring to
+save the life of a child."
+
+The tramp laughed, and then uttered a sigh.
+
+"I wonder," he said, aloud, "what poor bloke it is that's doin' duty for
+me under the ground here."
+
+And at the thought that he owed an excellent posthumous reputation to
+the unknown who had happened to resemble him fifteen years before, he
+laughed louder. Having no one near to share his mirth, he looked up at
+the amiable moon, and nodded knowingly thereat, as if to say:
+
+"This is a fine joke we're enjoying between ourselves, isn't it?"
+
+And by and by he remembered that he was being waited for, and he strode
+from the grave and from the cemetery.
+
+By the railroad the short tramp, having smoked all the refuse tobacco in
+his possession, was growing impatient. Already the expected coal-train
+had heralded its advent by whistle and puff and roar when his associate
+had joined him.
+
+"Found out all you wanted to know?" queried the stout little vagabond,
+starting down the embankment to mount the train.
+
+"Yep," answered the tall vagrant, contentedly.
+
+The small man grasped the iron rod attached to the side of one of the
+moving coal-cars and swung his foot into the iron stirrup beneath. His
+companion mounted the next car in the same way.
+
+"Are you all right, Kersh?" shouted back the small tramp, standing safe
+above the "bumpers."
+
+"All right," replied the tall tramp, climbing upon the end of a car.
+"But don't ever call me Kersh any more. After this I'm always Bill
+the Bum. Bill Kershaw's dead--" and he added to himself, "and decently
+buried on the hill over there under the moon."
+
+
+
+
+XI. -- UNDER AN AWNING
+
+For ten minutes we had been standing under the awning, driven there at
+two o'clock at night by a shower that had arisen suddenly.
+
+"A pocket umbrella is one of the unsupplied necessities of the age,"
+said my companion.
+
+"Yes, and the peculiarity of the age is that while such luxuries as
+the phonograph and the kinetograph multiply day by day, important
+necessities remain unsupplied."
+
+My friend mused for a time, while he watched the reflection of the
+electric light in the little street pools that were agitated by the
+falling fine drops of rain.
+
+He looked from the reflection to the light itself, and thus his eyes
+turned upward.
+
+An expression of surprise changed to mirth, and then dropping his glance
+until it met mine, he said:
+
+"Have you noticed anything peculiar about this awning?"
+
+"No, what is it?"
+
+"Simply that there is no awning. Look up and see. Here are the posts
+and there is the framework, but only the sky is above, and we've been
+getting rained upon for the past ten minutes in blissful ignorance."
+
+It was as he said, so we ran to the next awning, which was a fact, not a
+figment of fancy.
+
+"That reminds me," resumed my friend, "of Simpkins. He was a young man
+who used to catch cold at the slightest dampness. His being out in the
+rain without an umbrella never failed to result in his remaining in the
+house for two or three subsequent days.
+
+"One night, Simpkins, surprised by an unexpected shower, took refuge
+beneath the framework of an awning, which framework lacked the awning
+itself. He waited for an hour, until the shower had passed, and then
+joyously took up again his homeward way, without having observed his
+mistake. He told me on the next day of his narrow escape from the rain.
+I happened to know that the awning to which he alluded had been removed
+a few weeks before. But I did not tell him so until there no longer
+seemed to exist any likelihood of his catching cold from that wetting.
+You see, his imagination had saved him."
+
+"That tale is singularly reminiscent of those dear old stories about the
+man who took cold through sitting at a window that was composed of one
+solid sheet of glass, so clean that he thought it was no glass at all;
+and the men who, awaking in the night, stifling for want of fresh air,
+broke open the door of a bookcase which they took to be a window, and
+immediately noticed a pleasant draught of pure outside air."
+
+"There is a likeness, which simply goes toward proving the truth of all
+three accounts. But the remarkable thing about Simpkins' case is that
+when he once learned that there had been nothing over his head during
+that rain, he immediately caught cold, although two weeks had passed
+since the night of the shower. Wonderful, wasn't it?"
+
+"Astonishing, indeed."
+
+Silence ensued and we meditated for awhile. Evidently the same thought
+came simultaneously into the minds of both of us, for while I was
+mentally commenting upon the deserted and lonely condition of the city
+streets at two o'clock on a rainy night, my friend spoke:
+
+"A man is alone with his conscience, the electric lights, the shadows
+of the houses, and the sound of the rain at a time and place like this,
+isn't he? Standing as we stand now, under an awning, during a persistent
+rainfall, at this hour, with no other human being in sight, a man is for
+the time upon a desert island. Which reminds me:
+
+"One night, at a later hour than this, when the rain was heavier than
+this, I was alone under an awning that was smaller than this. Being
+without umbrella and overcoat, I saw at least a quarter of an hour
+waiting for me. The thought was dismal.
+
+"Happy idea! I would smoke. I had a cigar in my mouth in an instant.
+
+"Horrors! I had no matches.
+
+"The desire to smoke instantly increased tenfold. I puffed despairingly
+at my unlit cigar. No miracle occurred to ignite it. I looked longingly
+at the electric lights and the gas-lamps in the distance.
+
+"Like a sailor cast upon an island and straining his eyes on the lookout
+for a ship, I stood there scanning the prospect in search of a man with
+a light. I was Enoch Arden; the awning was my palm-tree.
+
+"Ten minutes passed. No craft hove in sight.
+
+"Suddenly uncertain footsteps were heard. I looked. Some one came
+that way. It was a squalid-looking personage--a professional beggar,
+half-drunk. He landed upon my island, beneath my awning.
+
+"'For charity's sake, give me a match!' I cried.
+
+"He looked at me--'sized me up,' in the technical terminology of his
+trade. Intelligence began to illumine his countenance. He saw that the
+opportunity of his life had come. He held out a match.
+
+"'I'll sell it to you for fifty cents,' he said, with a grin.
+
+"I had erred in revealing the depth of my want, the extent of my
+distress.
+
+"I compromised by promising to give him a half-dollar if I should
+succeed in lighting my cigar with his solitary match. We did succeed. He
+took the fifty and started back for the saloon from whence he had come.
+
+"Oh, my boy, the irony of fate--that same old oft-quoted irony!
+
+"I hadn't blown three mouthfuls of smoke from that cigar when a friend
+came along with a lighted cigar, an umbrella, and a box full of matches.
+
+"The whole effect of this story lies in the value that fifty cents
+possessed for me at that time. It was my last fifty cents, and two days
+stood between that night and salary day.
+
+"I had another experience--"
+
+But a night car came in view from around a corner, my friend ran for it,
+and his third tale remains untold.
+
+
+
+
+XII. -- SHANDY'S REVENGE
+
+He was old enough to know better, and a superficial observer might have
+thought that he did. But a severe and haughty manner in repose is not
+any indication of knowledge, nor is a well-kept beard, even when it is
+turning gray. Melrose Welty, the possessor of these and other ways and
+features symbolical of wisdom, had no higher occupation in life than
+to sit in club-houses and cafes, telling of conquests won by him over
+women, chiefly over soubrettes and chorus girls.
+
+Of his means of livelihood, no one had certain knowledge. He always
+dressed well, but he abode in a lodging-house, to which he never invited
+any of his associates. He affected the society of newspaper men, some of
+whom pronounced him a good fellow until they discovered that he was an
+ass; and he never refused an invitation to have a drink.
+
+When he had you at a table in a quiet corner of a cafe, or in front of
+a bar, or in the lobby of a theatre between the acts, no matter how the
+conversation began, he would invariably turn it into that realm to which
+his thoughts were confined.
+
+"I've got a supper on hand to-night after the performance," he would
+probably say, "with a blonde in the ---- Company. A lovely girl, too!
+It's curious, old man, how I happened to meet her. I've talked to her
+only twice, but I made a hit with her in the first five minutes. I'll
+tell you how it was--"
+
+Whereupon, if you were polite, and did not know Welty sufficiently to
+flee on a pretext, he would tell you how it was, inflicting upon you the
+wearisome minute details of the most commonplace thing in the world, the
+birth and growth of an acquaintance between a man about town and a silly
+young woman, not fastidious as to who pays for her food and drink as
+long as the food and drink are adequate.
+
+If you were a newspaper man, Welty was apt to supplement his story with
+something like this:
+
+"By the way, old fellow, if you have any pull with your dramatic editor,
+can't you give her a line or two? She hasn't much to do in the piece,
+but she does it well, and she's clever. She may get a good part one of
+these days. Have something nice said about her, won't you?"
+
+And if you ever gave another thought to this plea, you determined to use
+whatever influence you had with the dramatic editor to this effect, that
+the young woman would have to exhibit very decided cleverness indeed ere
+she should have "something nice" said about her in the paper.
+
+Welty was not wont to retain one divinity on the altar of his
+conversation longer than a week. But he did so once. He talked about the
+same girl every day for a month. And thereby came his undoing.
+
+She was a slender little girl who was singing badly a small role in a
+certain comic opera at the time of these occurrences. She had a babyish
+manner across the footlights, and she was thought to be a blonde, for
+she was wearing a yellow wig over her own short black hair that season.
+Her first name was Emily.
+
+Welty managed to be introduced to her by thrusting himself upon a little
+party of which she was a member, and in which was one acquaintance of
+his, at a restaurant one night. He called upon her at her boarding house
+the next day, where she received him with some surprise, and left most
+of the conversation to him. When he visited there again, she caused him
+to be told that she was out, and this took place a half dozen times.
+Their real acquaintance never went any further, but an imaginary
+acquaintance between them, growing from Welty's wish, made great
+progress in his fancy and in the stories told by him at his club to
+groups of men, some of whom doubted and looked bored, while others
+believed and grinned and envied.
+
+It was at the point where Emily had quite forgotten Welty, and Welty's
+stories portrayed her as recklessly adoring him and seeking him in cabs
+at all hours, that Barry McGettigan, a despised young reporter, "doing
+police," heard one of Welty's accounts of an alleged interview with
+Emily; and Barry, who had a way of knowing human nature and observing
+people, suspected.
+
+Now Barry cherished a deep-rooted grudge against Welty, all the more
+dangerous because Welty was unaware of it. Its exact cause has never
+been torn from Barry's breast. Some have ascribed it to Welty's having
+mimicked Barry's brogue before a crowd in a saloon one night. Others
+have laid it to the following passage of words, which is now a part of
+the ancient history of the Nocturnal Club.
+
+"Spakin' of ancestors," Barry began, "I'd loike to bet--"
+
+"I'd like to bet," broke in Welty, "that your own ancestry leads
+directly to the Shandy family."
+
+There was a general laugh, which Barry, whose nose was as flat as
+any Shandy's could have been but who had never read Sterne, did not
+understand.
+
+"What did he mane?" Barry asked a friend. The friend told him to read
+"Tristram Shandy." He spent two hours in a public library next day and
+learned how his facial peculiarity had been used by Welty to create a
+laugh and incidentally to insult him.
+
+This he never forgave. And he bided his time.
+
+Now, having heard Welty boast of being the object of this Emily's
+infatuation, Barry McGettigan deflected his mind from the contemplation
+of murders, infanticides, fires, and other matters of general interest,
+and gave his best thoughts and skill to investigating this talked-of
+love affair of Welty's.
+
+He discovered the true situation within three days. He found that Emily
+was engaged to be married to a college football player who came to the
+city once a week to see her.
+
+He borrowed money, made himself very agreeable to Welty, and also got
+himself introduced to the football player. The latter was a tall, lithe,
+heavy-shouldered, brown-faced, thick-knuckled youth, who practiced all
+kinds of athletic diversions.
+
+Barry McGettigan sounded the football man in one brief interview one
+night, between the acts of the comic opera, at the saloon next door. He
+found a means of fastening himself upon the football player's esteem.
+The collegian expressed a mild desire to see something of police-station
+life. Barry invited him to spend an evening with him on duty at Central
+Station. The collegian accepted. Barry appointed a time and named a
+certain cafe as a meeting place.
+
+Then Barry invited Welty to dine with him at the same cafe on the
+same evening at the same hour. By means of his borrowed money, he had
+lavished costly drinks upon Welty of late, and Welty had reason to
+anticipate a dinner worth the accepting. Barry told Welty nothing of the
+collegian and he told the collegian nothing more of Welty.
+
+When the evening came, Barry found Welty awaiting him at the cafe. The
+two sat down at a table. The preliminary cocktail had only arrived when
+in walked the collegian. Barry saluted him as if the meeting had only
+occurred by chance. He made the collegian and Welty known to each other
+by name only. And then he ordered dinner.
+
+When a bottle had been drunk, Barry innocently turned the current of the
+conversation to women. He spoke modestly of a mythical conquest he
+had recently made. The football player listened without showing much
+interest. Presently Barry paused.
+
+Welty took a drink and began:
+
+"No, my boy," said he to Barry, "you're wrong there. It's like you
+youngsters to think you know all about the sex, but the older you grow
+the less you think you know about them, until you get to my age."
+
+Barry made no answer, but looked at Welty with becoming deference.
+
+The football man's eyes were wandering about the cafe, showing him to be
+indifferent to the theme of discussion.
+
+"I know," continued Welty, "that many more or less writers have said,
+as you say, that women must be sought and pursued to be won. They deduce
+that theory from the habits of lower animals and of barbarous nations,
+in which the man obtains the woman by chase and force. But it's all
+a theory, and simply shows that the learned writers study their books
+instead of their fellow men and women."
+
+The collegian looked restless, as if the conversation had gotten beyond
+his depth.
+
+Barry remained silent, and with a flattering aspect of great interest in
+Welty's observations.
+
+"Now," went on Welty, striking the table with the bottom of his glass,
+"I've had a little experience of this sort of thing in my time, and
+I can say that in nine cases out of ten, once you've attracted the
+attention of your game, let it alone and it will chase you. That's how
+to win women."
+
+The collegian looked bored.
+
+"Just to illustrate," said Welty, "I'll tell of a little conquest of my
+own. I use it because it is the first that comes to my mind, not that
+I'm given to bragging about my success in these matters. I suppose
+you've seen the opera at the ---- Theatre?"
+
+The collegian ceased looking bored. Barry McGettigan sat perfectly,
+unnaturally still.
+
+"And," pursued Welty, "you've doubtless noticed the three girls who
+appear as the queen's maids of honour?"
+
+The collegian looked somewhat concerned. Barry stopped breathing.
+
+"Well," continued Welty, "you mayn't believe it, for we've kept it
+really quiet, one of them girls is really dead gone on me."
+
+The collegian opened his mouth wide, and Barry began to nervously tap
+his hand upon the table.
+
+"It's the one," said Welty, "who wears the big blond wig. Her name's
+Emi--"
+
+There was the noise of upsetting plates, bottles, and glasses, of
+a man's feet rapping up against the bottom of a table and his head
+thumping down against the floor. There was the sight of an agile youth
+leaping across an overturned table and alighting with one foot at each
+side of the prostrate form of an astonished man, whose gray whiskers
+were spattered with blood. There was the quick gathering of a crowd, an
+excited explanation on the part of the collegian, a slow recovery on
+the part of the man on the floor, and Barry McGettigan's vengeance was
+complete.
+
+For, by one of those incredible coincidences that have the semblance of
+fatality, the football player's fist had reduced Melrose Welty's nose to
+a flatness which the nose of no imaginable Shandy ever has surpassed.
+
+
+
+
+XIII. -- THE WHISTLE
+
+She was the wife of a railway locomotive engineer, and the two lived
+in the newly built house to which he had taken her as a bride a year
+before.
+
+Many other people in the country railroad town used to laugh at a thing
+which she had once said to a gossiping neighbour:
+
+"I can tell the sound of the whistle on Tom's engine from all other
+whistles. Every afternoon when his train gets to the crossing at the
+planing-mill, I hear that whistle, and then I know it's time to get
+Tom's supper."
+
+The gossips found something humourous in the fact that the engineer's
+wife recognized the whistle of her husband's engine and knew by it when
+to begin to prepare his supper. So are the small manifestations of love
+and devotion regarded by coarse minds. You frequently observe this in
+the conduct of certain people at the theatre when tender sentiments are
+uttered upon the stage.
+
+Perhaps the men were envious of the engineer. He had a prettier wife,
+they said, when he was not present, than was deserved by a mere freight
+engineer, very recently elevated from the post of fireman. Perhaps,
+also, the petty malevolence of the women was due to the wife's superior
+comeliness. Be that as it may, each afternoon at half-past four or
+thereabouts, when Tom's whistle was blown at the crossing by the
+planing-mill, loungers in the grocery store and wives in their kitchens
+smiled knowingly and said:
+
+"Time to begin to get Tom's supper, now."
+
+But the engineer was careless and his wife was disdainful of their
+neighbours. She loved the sound of that whistle. In the earliest days of
+their married life it even sent the crimson to her cheeks. The engineer
+could make it as expressive as music. It began like a sudden glad cry;
+it died away lingeringly, tenderly. Virtually it said to one pair of
+ears:
+
+"My darling, I have come back to you."
+
+Whenever the engineer pulled the rope for that particular signal, he
+pictured his wife arising from her work-basket in their little parlour
+with a thrill of pleasure and affection, and passing out to the kitchen.
+
+She, likewise, at the signal, made a mental image of Tom, seated in the
+engine cab, his one hand fixed upon the shining lever, his eyes fixed
+upon the glistening tracks ahead.
+
+At six o'clock, usually, supper was hot, and Tom arrived through
+the front gateway, glancing at the flower-bed in the centre of the
+diminutive grass plot, carrying his dinner-pail, having divested himself
+of his grimy, greasy blouse and overalls at the great repair shops,
+where his engine had already begun, with much panting, to spend the
+night.
+
+In a small railroad town on the main line, one is continually hearing
+locomotive whistles. All the inhabitants know that one long moan of
+the steam is the signal of the train's swift approach; that two short
+shrieks of the whistle direct the trainmen to tighten the brakes; that
+four, given when the train is still, are intended for the flagman, who
+has gone away to the rear to warn back the next train, and that they
+tell him to return to his own train as it is about to start; that
+five whistles in succession announce a wreck and command the immediate
+attendance of the wreck crew.
+
+In the town many cheeks blanch when those five long, ominous wails of
+the escaping steam cleave the air. A husband, a son, a father who has
+gone forth blithely in the morning, with his dinner-pail full, may be
+brought out of the wreck, mangled or dead. And until complete details
+are known there is a tremor in the whole community. Some hearts beat
+faster, others seem to stand still. People speak in hushed tones.
+
+One afternoon, the engineer's wife, observing the altitude of the sun,
+looked at the clock and saw that the time was a few minutes before five.
+
+Tom's whistle had not yet blown.
+
+At five-fifteen came the sound of another whistle. It was prolonged and
+then repeated. The engineer's wife stood still and counted.
+
+Five!
+
+The most docile and apparently cheerful patient in the ---- Asylum for
+the Insane is a widow, still young, who spends the greater time of each
+day sewing and humming tunes softly to herself. Every afternoon at
+about half-past four she assumes a listening attitude, suddenly hears
+an inaudible whistle, smiles tenderly, starts up and places invisible
+dishes and impalpable viands upon an imaginary table, and then loses
+herself in a reverie which ends in slumber.
+
+No striking clock is allowed within her hearing. It was long ago noticed
+that the stroke of five or any series of five similar sounds would cause
+her to moan piteously.
+
+The people afar in the country town do not laugh now when they talk
+of Tom and the whistle which was shrieking madly as he and his engine
+plunged down the bank together on that day when the huge boulder rolled
+from the hillside stone quarry and lay upon the tracks, just on this
+side of the curve above the town.
+
+
+
+
+XIV. -- WHISKERS
+
+The facts about the man we called "Whiskers" linger in my mind, asking
+to be recorded, and though they do not make much of a story, I am
+tempted to unburden myself by putting them on paper. It was mentally
+noted as a sure thing by everybody who saw him go into the managing
+editor's room, to ask for a position on the staff of the paper, that if
+he should obtain a place and become a fixture in the office, he would
+be generally known as Whiskers within twenty-four hours after his
+instalment.
+
+What tale he told the managing editor no one knew, but every one in the
+editorial rooms deduced later that it must have been something a trifle
+out of the common, for the managing editor, who had gone through the
+form of taking the names of three previous applicants that afternoon and
+telling them that he would let them know when a vacancy should occur on
+the staff, told the man whom we eventually christened Whiskers that he
+might come around the next day and write whatever he might choose to in
+the way of Sunday "specials," comic verses, or editorial paragraphs, on
+the chance of their being accepted.
+
+The next day the hairy-faced man took possession of a desk in the room
+occupied by the exchange editor and one of the editorial writers, and
+began to grind out "copy."
+
+He was a slim, figure, with what is commonly denominated a "slight
+stoop." His trousers were none too long for his thin legs, his tightly
+fitting frock coat, threadbare, shiny, and unduly creased, was hardly of
+a fit for his slender body and his long arms. It was his face, however,
+that mostly individualized his appearance.
+
+The face was pale, the outlines symmetrical, but rather feeble, and the
+countenance would have seemed rather lamblike but for the fact that it
+was framed with thick, long hair and a luxuriant beard, which caressed
+his waistcoat.
+
+These made him impressive at first sight.
+
+On the first day of his presence, he said little to the men with whom he
+shared his room in the office. On the second day he grew communicative
+and talked rather pompously to the exchange editor. He prated of his
+past achievements as a newspaper man in other cities. He had a cheerful
+way of talking in a voice that was high but not loud. His undaunted
+manner of uttering self-praise caused the exchange editor to wink at the
+editorial writer. It engendered, too, a small degree of dislike on the
+part of these worthies; and the exchange editor made it a point to watch
+for some of the new man's work in the paper, that he might be certain
+whether the new man's ability was equal to the new man's opinion of it.
+
+The exchange editor found that it was not. The new man had been in the
+office four days before any of his contributions had gone through the
+process of creation, acceptance, and publication. Some verses and some
+alleged jokes were his first matter printed. They were below mediocrity.
+The exchange editor ceased to dislike the whiskered man and thereafter
+regarded him as quite harmless and mildly amusing.
+
+This view of him was eventually accepted by every one who came to know
+him, and he was made the object of a good deal of gentle chaffing.
+
+He earned probably $15 or $20 at space rates, a lamentably small amount
+for so intellectual looking a man, but a very large amount considering
+the quality of work turned out by him.
+
+Doubtless he would not have made nearly so much had not the managing
+editor whispered something in the ears of the assistant editor-in-chief,
+whose duty it was to judge of the acceptability of editorial matter
+offered, the editor of the Sunday's supplement, and other members of
+the staff who might have occasion to "turn down" the new man's
+contributions, or to wink at the deficiencies in his work.
+
+One day Whiskers, with many apologies and much embarrassment, asked
+the exchange editor to lend him a quarter, which request having been
+complied with, he put on his much rubbed high hat and hurried from the
+room.
+
+"It's funny the old man's hard up so soon," the exchange editor said
+to the editorial writer at the next desk, "It's only two days since
+pay-day."
+
+"Where does he sink his money?" asked the editorial writer. "His
+sleeping-room costs him only $3 a week, and, eating the way he does, at
+the cheapest hash-houses, his whole expenses can't be more than $8. No
+one ever sees him spend a cent. He must sink it away in a bank."
+
+"Hasn't he any relatives?"
+
+"He never spoke of any, and he lives alone. Wotherspoon, who lodges
+where he does, says no one ever comes to see him."
+
+"He certainly doesn't spend money on clothes."
+
+"No; and he never drinks at his own expense."
+
+"He's probably leading a double life," said the exchange editor,
+jestingly, as he plunged his scissors into a Western paper, to cut out a
+poem by James Whitcomb Riley.
+
+Without making many acquaintances, Whiskers, by reason of his hirsute
+peculiarity, became known throughout the building, from the business
+office on the ground floor to the composing-room on the top. When he
+went into the latter one day and passed down the long aisle between the
+long row of cases and type-setting machines, with a corrected proof
+in his hand, a certain printer, who was "setting" up a clothing-house
+advertisement, could not resist the temptation to give labial imitation
+of the blowing of wind. The bygone joke concerning whiskers and the wind
+was then current, and a score of compositors took up the whistle, so
+that all varieties of breeze were soon being simulated simultaneously.
+Whiskers coloured sightly, but, save a dignified straightening of his
+shoulders, he showed no other sign that he was conscious of the rude
+allusion to his copious beard.
+
+Whiskers chose Tuesday for his day off.
+
+It was on a certain Tuesday evening that one of the reporters came into
+the exchange editor's room and casually remarked:
+
+"I saw your anti-shaving friend, who sits at that desk, riding out to
+the suburbs on a car to-day. He was all crushed up and carried a bouquet
+of roses."
+
+"That settles it," cried the editorial writer to the exchange editor,
+with mock jubilation. "There can be no doubt the old man was leading a
+double life. The bouquet means a woman in the case."
+
+"And his money goes for flowers and presents," added the exchange
+editor.
+
+"Some of it, of course," went on the editorial writer, "and the rest
+he's saving to get married on. Who'd have thought it at his age?"
+
+"Why, he's not over forty. It's only his whiskers that make him look
+old. One can easily detect a sentimental vein in his composition."
+
+"That accounts for his fits of abstraction, too. So he's found favour in
+some fair one's eyes. I wonder what she's like."
+
+"Young and pretty, I'll bet," said the exchange editor. "He's impressed
+her by his dignified aspect. No doubt she thinks he's nothing less than
+an editor-in-chief."
+
+The next day Whiskers was taciturn, as his office associates now
+recalled that he was wont to be after "his day off." Doubtless his
+thoughts dwelt upon his visits to his divinity. He did not respond to
+their efforts to involve him in conversation.
+
+He was observed upon his next day off to take a car for the suburbs and
+to have a bouquet in his hand and a package under his arm. The theory
+originated by the editorial writer had general acceptance. It was passed
+from man to man in the office.
+
+"Have you heard about the queer old duck with the whiskers, who writes
+in the exchange room? He's engaged to a young and pretty girl up-town,
+and eats at fifteen-cent soup-shops so that he can buy her flowers and
+wine and things."
+
+"What! Old Whiskers in love! That's a good one!"
+
+One day while Whiskers' pen was busily gliding across the paper, the
+exchange editor broke the silence by asking him, in a careless tone:
+
+"How was she, yesterday, Mr. Croydon?"
+
+Whiskers looked up almost quickly, an expression of almost pained
+surprise on his face.
+
+"Who?" he inquired.
+
+"Ah, you thought because you didn't tell us, it wouldn't out. But you've
+been caught. I mean the lady to whom you take roses every week, of
+course."
+
+Whiskers simply stared at the exchange editor, as if quite bewildered.
+
+"Oh, pardon me," said the exchange editor, somewhat abashed. "I didn't
+mean to offend you. One's affairs of the heart are sacred, I know. But
+we all guy each other about each other's amours here. We're hardened to
+that sort of pleasantry."
+
+A look of enlightenment, a blush, a deep sigh, and an "Oh, I'm not
+offended," were the only manifestations made by Whiskers after the
+exchange editor's apology.
+
+It was inferred from his manner that he did not wish to make confidences
+or receive jests about his love-affairs.
+
+A time came when Whiskers seemed to have something constantly on his
+mind. Not content with one day's vacation each week, he would go off for
+periods of three or four hours on other days.
+
+"Do you notice how queerly the old man behaves?" said the editorial
+writer to the exchange editor thereupon. "Things are coming to a
+crisis."
+
+"What do you mean by that?"
+
+"Why, the wedding, of course."
+
+This inference received a show of confirmation afterward when Whiskers
+had a private interview with the managing editor, received an order on
+the cashier for all the money due him, and for a part of the managing
+editor's salary as a loan, and quietly said to the exchange editor that
+he would be away for a week or so. The editorial writer happened to be
+at the cashier's window when Whiskers had his order cashed. So when the
+editorial writer and the exchange editor compared notes a few minutes
+later, the latter complimented the former upon the correctness of his
+prediction that Whiskers' marriage was imminent.
+
+"He didn't invite us," said the exchange editor, "but then I suppose the
+affair is to be a very quiet one, and we can't take offence at that. The
+old man's not a bad lot, by any means. Let's do something to please him
+and to flatter his bride. What do you say to raising a fund to buy them
+a present, in the name of the staff?"
+
+"I'm in for it," said the editorial writer, producing a half-dollar.
+
+They canvassed the office and found everybody willing to contribute. The
+managing editor and the assistant editor-in-chief had gone home, but as
+they had shown kindness to Whiskers, and were, in fact, the only two men
+on the staff who knew anything about his private affairs, the exchange
+editor took his chances and put in a dollar for each of them.
+
+"And now, what shall we get--and where shall we send it?" said the
+exchange editor.
+
+"Not to his lodging-house, certainly. He'll probably be married at the
+residence of his bride's parents, as the notices say. We'd better get it
+quick, and rush it up there--wherever that is--somewhere up-town."
+
+"But say," interposed the city editor, who was present at this
+consultation, "maybe the ceremony has already come off. I saw the old
+man giving in a notice for advertisement across the counter at the
+business office an hour ago."
+
+"Well, we may be able to learn from that where the bride lives, anyhow,
+and some one can go there and find out something definite about the
+happy pair's present and future whereabouts," suggested the editorial
+writer.
+
+"That's so," said the city editor. "The notice is in the composing-room
+by this time. I'll run up and find it."
+
+The city editor left the editorial writer and the exchange editor alone
+together in the room, each sitting at their own desk.
+
+"What shall we get with this money?" queried the former, touching the
+bills and silver dumped upon his desk.
+
+"Something to please the woman. That'll give Whiskers the most pleasure.
+He evidently loves her deeply. These constant visits and gifts speak the
+greatest devotion."
+
+"Of course, but what shall it be?"
+
+The two were battling with this question when the city editor returned.
+He came in and said quietly:
+
+"I found the notice. At least, I suppose this is it. What is the old
+man's full name?"
+
+"Horace W. Croydon."
+
+"This is it, then," said the city editor, standing with his back to the
+door. "The notice reads: 'On March 3d, at the Arlington Hospital for
+Incurables, Rachel, widow of the late Horace W. Croydon, Sr., in her
+59th year. Funeral services at the residence of Charles--'"
+
+"Why," interrupted the editorial writer, in a hushed voice, "that is a
+death notice."
+
+"His mother," said the exchange editor. "The Hospital for
+Incurables--that is where the flowers went."
+
+The editorial writer's glance dropped to the desk, where the money lay
+for the intended gift. The exchange editor sat perfectly still, gazing
+straight in front of him. The city editor walked softly to the window
+and looked out.
+
+
+
+
+XV. -- THE BAD BREAK OF TOBIT MCSTENGER
+
+"I'm a bad man," said Tobit McStenger, after three glasses of whiskey.
+And he was. In making the declaration, he echoed the expression of the
+community.
+
+He looked it. Not only in the sneering mouth above the half-formed chin,
+and in the lowering eyes of undecided colour beneath the receding brow,
+but also in every shiftless attitude and movement of his great gaunt
+body, and even in the torn coat and shapeless felt hat--both once black,
+but both now a dirty gray--his aspect proclaimed him the preeminent
+rowdy of his town.
+
+When out of jail he was engaged in oyster opening at Couch's saloon, or
+selling fresh fish, caught in the river, or vagrancy in the streets
+of Brickville. He lived in a log house containing two rooms, by Muddy
+Creek, an intermittent stream that flowed--sometimes--through a corner
+of the town. He was a widower and had a son nine years old, little Tobe,
+who went to school occasionally, but gave most of his day to carrying a
+paper flour-sack around the town and begging cold victuals, in obedience
+to paternal commands, and throwing stones at other boys, who called him
+"Patches," a nickname descended from his father.
+
+Little Tobe's face was always black, from the dust of the bituminous
+coal that he was compelled to steal at night from the railroad
+companies' yard. His attire was in miniature what his father's was in
+the large, as his character was in embryo what the elder Tobit's was in
+complete development. With long, entangled hair, a thin, crafty face,
+and stealthy eyes, he was a true type of malevolent gamin, all the more
+uncanny for the crudity due to his semirustic environments.
+
+Such were Tobit and little Tobe, the most conspicuous of the village
+"characters" of Brickville, a Pennsylvania town deriving sustenance from
+its brick-kiln, its railroads, and its contiguous farming interests.
+
+It was town talk that Tobit McStenger was a hard father; drunk or sober,
+he chastised little Tobe upon the slightest occasion.
+
+"But," said Tobit McStenger, after admitting his severity as a parent
+before the bar in Couch's saloon, "let any one else lay a finger on that
+kid! Just let 'em! They'll find out, jail or no jail, I'm ugly!" And he
+went on to repeat for the thousandth time that when he was ugly he was a
+bad man.
+
+Whereupon the other loungers in Couch's saloon, "Honesty Tom Yerkes,"
+the hauler, Sam Hatch, the bill-poster, and the rest, agreed that a
+man's manner of governing his household was his own business.
+
+Tobit McStenger had his word to say upon all village topics. When
+in Couch's saloon one night he learned that the school directors had
+decided to take the primary school from the tutorship of a woman and
+to put a man over it as teacher, Tobit pricked up his ears and had many
+words to say. He was working at the time, and he spoke in loud, coarse
+tones, as he wielded his oyster-knife, having for an audience the usual
+dozen barroom tarriers.
+
+"I know what that means," cried Tobit McStenger. "It means they ain't
+satisfied with having our children ruled with kindness. It means Miss
+Wiggins, who's kep' a good school, which I know all about, fer my son's
+one of her scholars--it means she don't use the rod enough. They've made
+up their minds to control the kids by force, and they went and hired a
+man to lick book learnin' into 'em. Who is the feller, anyway?"
+
+"Pap" Buckwalder read the answer to Tobit's question from the current
+number of the Brickville _Weekly Gazette_.
+
+"The new teacher is Aubrey Pilling, the adopted son of farmer Josiah
+Pilling, of Blair Township. He has taught the school of that township
+for three winters, and is a graduate of the Brickville Academy."
+
+Sam Hatch, standing by the stove, remembered him.
+
+"Why, that's the backward fellow," said he, "that the girls used to guy.
+His hair and eyebrows is as white as tow, and when he'd blush his face
+used to turn pink. He always walked in from the country, four miles,
+every morning to school and back again at night. There ain't much
+use getting him take a woman's place. He's about the same as a woman
+hisself. He hardly talks above a whisper, and he's afraid to look a girl
+in the face."
+
+"Ain't he the boy Josiah Pilling took out o' the Orphans' Home, here
+about twenty years ago?" queried Pap Buckwalder.
+
+"Yep," replied Hatch. "I heerd somethin' about that when he went to the
+'cademy here. He was took out of a home by a farmer, who gave him his
+name 'cause the boy didn't know his own, nor no one else did, and so he
+was brought up on the farm."
+
+"So that's the sort o' people they've put the education of our children
+into the hands uv!" exclaimed Tobit McStenger. "Well, all I got to say
+is, let him keep his hands off my boy Tobe, or he'll find out the kind
+of a tough customer I am."
+
+Tobit McStenger, in the few weeks immediately following this change in
+the primary school, remained continuously industrious, to the surprise
+of all who knew him. As Tobit was an expeditious oyster-opener, Tony
+Couch, the saloon-keeper who employed him, was much rejoiced. Tobit
+toiled at oyster-opening and little Tobe became regular in his
+attendance at school.
+
+The new school-teacher, a broad, awkward, bashful youth, painfully
+blond, came to town and accomplished that for which he had been called.
+He brought discipline to the primary school, an achievement none
+easier for the fact that many of his pupils were in their teens, and
+incidentally he suspended Tobit McStenger the younger.
+
+When little Tobe, glad of the enforced return to the liberties of his
+begging days, brought home his soiled first reader and told his father
+that the teacher had sent him from school with orders not to return
+until he could learn to keep his face clean, the father became swollen
+with an overflowing wrath. He swore frightfully, and started off,
+vowing that he would "show the white-faced foundling how to treat decent
+people's children."
+
+And he had two tall drinks of whiskey put on the slate against him at
+Couch's and proceeded to carry out his threat.
+
+It was a cold day in December. Pilling, the teacher, sat near the stove
+in the little square school-room, listening to the irrepressible hum of
+his restless pupils and the predominating monotonous sound of a small
+girl's voice reciting multiplication tables.
+
+"Three times three are nine," she whined, drawlingly; "three times four
+are twelve, three times--"
+
+The little girl with the braided hair stopped short. A loud knock fell
+upon the door.
+
+A boy looked through the window, evidently saw the one who had knocked,
+then cast a curious look at Pilling, the teacher. Pilling observed this,
+and asked the boy:
+
+"Who is it?"
+
+After a moment of hesitation, the boy replied:
+
+"It's old Patchy--I mean, Tobe McStenger's father."
+
+Pilling, whose bashfulness was manifest only in the presence of women,
+had the utmost calmness before his pupils. He walked quietly to the door
+and locked it.
+
+McStenger, furious without, heard the sound of the bolt being thrust
+into place, whereupon he began to kick at the door. Pilling turned
+the chair facing his class and told the girl with the braided hair to
+continue.
+
+"Three times five are fifteen, three times six--"
+
+A crashing sound was heard. McStenger had broken a window. Pilling
+looked around, as if seeking some impromptu weapon. While he was doing
+so, McStenger broke another window-pane with a club. Then McStenger went
+away.
+
+That evening, Pilling had Tobit McStenger arrested for malicious
+mischief. The oyster-opener was held pending trial until January court.
+He was then sentenced to thirty days more in the county jail. Meanwhile
+little Tobe mounted a freight-train one day to steal a ride, and
+Brickville has not seen or heard of him since. He enlisted in the great
+army of vagabonds, doubtless. Perhaps some city swallowed him.
+
+Tobit McStenger felt at home in jail. It was not a bad place of
+residence during the coldest months. But for one defect, jail life would
+have been quite enviable; it forced upon him abstinence from alcoholic
+liquor.
+
+Every period of thirty days has its termination, and Tobit McStenger
+became a free man. He returned to his old life, opening oysters during
+part of the time, idling and drinking during the other part. He made no
+attempt to spoil the peace of Aubrey Pilling, and he only laughed when
+he heard of the disappearance of Little Tobe.
+
+Pilling, by his success in conducting the primary school, had won
+the esteem of Brickville's citizens. His timidity had diminished, or,
+rather, it had been discovered to be merely quietness, self-communion,
+instead of timidity. He had shown himself less prudish than he had been
+thought. Occasionally he drank whiskey or beer, which was looked upon as
+a good sign in a man of his kind.
+
+Tobit McStenger did not know this. He invariably evaded mention of
+Pilling. People wondered what would happen when the two should meet.
+For Tobit was known to be revengeful, and he was now, more than ever, in
+speech and look, a bad man.
+
+The expected and yet the unexpected happened one night in Couch's
+saloon,--the scene of most of the eventful incidents in Tobit
+McStenger's life since he had dawned upon Brickville. Tobit and Honesty
+Yerkes, Pap Buckwalder, old Tony Couch himself, and half a score others
+were making a conversational hubbub before the bar.
+
+In walked Aubrey Pilling. He came quietly to an unoccupied spot at the
+end of the bar and ordered a glass of beer, without looking at the
+other drinkers. Some one nudged Tobit McStenger and pointed toward the
+white-haired young pedagogue. The noise of talk broke off abruptly.
+
+McStenger placed his back against the bar, resting his elbows upon it,
+and turned a scornful gaze toward Pilling, who had taken one draught
+from his glass of beer.
+
+"Say, Tony," began McStenger, in his big, growling voice, "who's your
+ladylike customer? Oh, it's him, is it? Well, he needn't be skeered of
+me. I don't mix up with folks o' his sort. You see, people could only
+expect to be insulted through their children by fellows of his birth--"
+
+"Hush, Mack!" whispered Tony Couch, whose sense of deportment advised
+him that McStenger was treading forbidden ground. Pilling had not looked
+up. He stood quietly at some distance from the others, intent upon his
+glass of beer on the bar before him, perfectly still.
+
+But McStenger went on, more loudly than before:
+
+"By fellows, as I said, who came from orphans' homes, and never knew who
+their parents was, and whose mothers may have been God knows what--"
+
+Pilling, without turning, had lifted his glass. With an easy motion
+he had tossed its remaining contents of beer into the face of Tobit
+McStenger. The latter drew back from the splash of the liquid as if
+stung. Then, with a loud cry of rage, he leaped toward Pilling. The
+teacher turned and faced him.
+
+McStenger clapped one huge hand against Pilling's neck, and in an
+instant thereafter his long, bony fingers were pressing upon the
+teacher's throat, in what had the looks of a fatal clutch. But Pilling,
+with both his arms, violently forced McStenger from him. The teacher
+took breath and McStenger reached for a whiskey decanter. The others in
+the saloon looked on with eager interest, fearing to come between such
+formidable combatants. Tony Couch ran out in search of the town's only
+policeman. McStenger advanced toward the teacher.
+
+Pilling was farm bred. He had chopped down trees with his right
+arm alone in his time. Pilling thrust forth his arm with unexpected
+suddenness. Upon the floor, six feet behind his antagonist, was a
+cuspidor with jagged edges.
+
+And Tobit McStenger slept with his fathers.
+
+The jury acquitted the teacher on the plea of self-defense. The loungers
+in Couch's saloon judiciously said that it was a very bad break for
+Tobit McStenger to have made.
+
+
+
+
+XVI. -- THE SCARS
+
+My friend the tune-maker has often unintentionally amused his
+acquaintances by the gravity with which he attributes significance to
+the most trivial occurrences.
+
+He turns the most thoughtless speeches, uttered in jest, into
+prophecies.
+
+"Very well," he used to say to us at a cafe table, "you may laugh. But
+it's astonishing how things turn out sometimes."
+
+"As for instance?" some one would inquire.
+
+"Never mind. But I could give an instance if I wished to do so."
+
+One evening, over a third bottle, he grew unusually communicative.
+
+"Just to illustrate how things happen," he began, speaking so as to be
+audible above the din of the cafe to the rest of us around the table,
+"I'll tell you about a man I know. One February morning, about eight
+years ago, he was hurrying to catch a train. There was ice on the
+sidewalks and people had to walk cautiously or ride. As he was turning a
+corner he saw by a clock that he had only five minutes in which to reach
+the station, three blocks away. An instant later he saw a shapely figure
+in soft furs suddenly describe a forward movement and drop in a heap to
+the sidewalk, ten feet in front of him. A melodious light soprano scream
+arose from the heap. A divinely turned ankle in a quite human black
+stocking was momentarily visible. He was by the side of the mass of furs
+and skirts in three steps.
+
+"He caught the pretty girl under the arms and elevated her to a standing
+posture. She recovered her breath and her self-possession promptly and
+glowed upon him with the brightest of smiles. He had never before seen
+her.
+
+"'Oh, thank you,' she said; adding, with the unconscious exaggeration of
+a schoolgirl, 'You've saved my life.'
+
+"Realizing the absurdity of this speech, she blushed. Whereupon her
+rescuer, feeling that the situation warranted him in turning the matter
+to jest, replied:
+
+"'That being the case, according to the rules of romance, I ought to
+marry you, like all the men who rescue the heroines in stories.'
+
+"'Oh,' she answered, quickly, 'this isn't in a novel; it's real life.'
+
+"'Yes; besides which, I see by the clock over there I have only four
+minutes in which to catch a train. Good morning.'
+
+"And he ran off without taking a second glance at her. He arrived at the
+station in due time.
+
+"Three years after that he married the most charming woman in the world,
+after an acquaintance of only six months.
+
+"This woman is as beautiful as she is amiable. Nature has not been
+guilty of a single defect in her construction. A tiny scar upon her knee
+is all the more noticeable because of its solitude.
+
+"It is a peculiarity of scars that each has a history. The history of
+this one has thus far, for no adequate reason, remained a family secret.
+
+"Another noteworthy fact about scars is that they may be, and in many
+cases they are, useful for purposes of identification.
+
+"Of course you anticipate the dramatic climax of my story, gentlemen.
+Nevertheless, let me give it, for the sake of completeness, in the form
+of a dialogue between the husband and the wife.
+
+"'How came the wound there?'
+
+"'Oh, I fell against the corner of a paving-stone one icy morning three
+years ago.'
+
+"'And to think that I was not there to help you up!'
+
+"'True; but another young man served the purpose, and I'm afraid he
+missed a train on my account.'
+
+"'What! It wasn't on the corner of ---- and ---- Streets?'
+
+"'It was just there. How did you know?'
+
+"So you see, as they completely proved by comparing recollections, the
+little speech uttered in merriment had been prophetic, a fact that they
+probably would never have learned had it not been for the identifying
+service of the scar."
+
+"But if this has been kept a family secret, how do you happen to know
+it, and by what right do you divulge it?" one of us asked.
+
+The ballad composer blushed and clouded his face with tobacco smoke; and
+then it recurred to us all that "the most charming woman in the world"
+is his wife.
+
+
+
+
+XVII. -- "LA GITANA"
+
+This is not an attempt to palliate the foolishness of Billy Folsom. It
+is not an essay in the emotional or the pathetic. You may pity him or
+reproach him, if you like, but my purpose is not to evoke any feeling
+toward or opinion of him. I do not seek to play upon your sympathies or
+to put you into a mood, or to delineate a character. I simply tell the
+story of how certain critical points in a man's life were accompanied
+by music; how a destiny was affected by a tune. Anything aside from
+mere narrative in this account will be incidental and accidental. The
+manifestations of love, of wounded vanity, of recklessness; of even
+the death itself, are here subsidiary in interest to the train of
+circumstance. He who underwent them is not the hero of the recital; she
+who caused them is not the heroine. The heroine is a melody, the waltz
+tune of "La Gitana."
+
+Everybody remembers when the tune was regnant. Its notes leaped gaily
+from the strings of every theatre orchestra; soubrettes in fluffy
+raiment and silk stockings yelled it singly and in chorus; hand-organs
+blared it forth; dancers kicked up their toes to it; it monopolized the
+atmosphere for its dwelling-place; it was everywhere.
+
+Until one night, however, it did not touch the ear of Billy Folsom. He
+had stayed late in the country, under the delusion that he was hunting.
+It seems there are a few shootable things yet in certain parts of
+Pennsylvania, and Folsom had the time and money to linger in search of
+them. He came back to town in fine, exhilarating November weather, and
+on one of these evenings when the joy of living is keenest, he and I
+strolled with the crowd. Why I strolled with Folsom I do not know,
+for he was not a man of ideas. He was even so bad as to be vain of his
+personal appearance, especially upon having resumed the dress of the
+city after months of outing.
+
+We passed one of these theatres whose stages are near the street. A
+musical farce was current there. From an open window came the tune,
+waylaying us as we walked. The orchestra was playing it fortissimo. You
+could hear it above the footfalls, the laughter, and the conversation of
+the promenaders.
+
+Folsom stopped. "Listen to that."
+
+"Yes, 'La Gitana.' It's all around. It's a catchy thing, and suits this
+intoxicating weather."
+
+"It goes to the spot. Let's go inside. What's the play?"
+
+He turned at once toward the main entrance of the theatre.
+
+"A farce called 'Three Cheers and a Tiger,'--a Hoyt sort of a piece. The
+little Tyrrell is doing her tambourine dance to the music."
+
+"Never heard of the lady," he said to me. And then to the youth on the
+other side of the box-office window, "Have you any seats left in the
+front row?"
+
+Folsom always asked for seats in the front row. This time it was fatal.
+As we walked up the aisle, Folsom ahead, the little Tyrrell shot one
+casual glance of her gray eyes at him, as almost any dancer would have
+done at a front row newcomer entering while she was on the stage. In the
+next instant her eyes were following her toe in its swift flight upward
+to the centre of the tambourine that her hand brought downward to meet
+it. But the one glance across the footlights had been productive. Folsom
+sat staring over the heads of the musicians, his gaze fastened upon the
+little Tyrrell, who was leaping about on the stage to the tune of "La
+Gitana." His lips opened slightly and remained so. His eyes feasted
+upon the flying dancer in the rippling blond wig, his ears drank in the
+buoyant notes.
+
+It is well known that power lies in a saltatorial ensemble of white lace
+skirts, pale blue hose, lustrous naked arms, undulating bodice, magnetic
+eyes, flying hair, and an unchanging smile, to focus the perceptions of
+a man, to absorb his consciousness, aided by a tune which seems to close
+out from him all the rest of the world.
+
+And there, while this plump little girl danced and the frivolous, stupid
+crowd looked eagerly on, from all parts of the overheated theatre, began
+the tragedy of Billy Folsom.
+
+He gazed in rapture, and when she had finished and stood panting and
+kissing her hands in response to applause, he heaved an eloquent sigh.
+
+"I'd like to meet that girl," he whispered to me, assuming a tone of
+carelessness.
+
+Thereafter he kept his eye fixed upon the wings until she reappeared.
+And the rest of the performance interested him only when she was in
+view.
+
+I knew the symptoms, but I did not think the malady would become
+chronic.
+
+He managed to have himself introduced to her a week later in New York
+by Ted Clarke, the artist, who made newspaper sketches of her in some
+of her dances. Folsom saw her going up the steps to an elevated railway
+station. He ran after her, in order to be near her. He followed her into
+a car, where Ted Clarke, recognizing her, rose to give her his seat.
+She rewarded the artist by opening a conversation with him, and Folsom
+availed himself of his acquaintance with Clarke to salute the latter
+with surprising cordiality. She looked a few years older and less
+girlish without her blond wig but she was still quite pretty in brown
+hair. She treated Folsom with her wonted offhand amiability. He left the
+train when she left it, and he walked a block with her. With pardonable
+shrewdness she inspected his visage, attire, and manner, for indications
+of his pecuniary and social standing, while he was indulging in silly
+commonplaces. When they parted at the quiet hotel where she lived she
+said lightly:
+
+"Come and see me sometime."
+
+To her surprise, perhaps, he came the next day, preceded by several
+dozen roses and a few pounds of bonbons.
+
+Every night thereafter he was at the theatre where she was appearing,
+watching her dance from the front row or from the lobby, agitated with
+mingled pleasure and jealousy when she received loud applause, angry
+at the audience when the plaudits were not enthusiastic. When their
+acquaintance was two weeks old, she allowed him to wait for her at the
+stage door, and at last he was permitted to take her to supper.
+
+There was a second supper, at which four composed the party. We had a
+room to ourselves, with a piano in the corner. The event lasted long,
+and near the end, while the other soubrette played the tune on the
+piano, and Folsom kept time by clinking the champagne glass against the
+bottle, the little Tyrrell, continually laughing, did her skirt dance,
+"La Gitana."
+
+Thus with that waltz tune ever sounding in his ears, he fell in love
+with her; strangely enough, really in love. She, having her own affairs
+to mind, gave him no thought when he was not with her, and when they
+were together she deemed him quite a good-natured, bearable fellow, as
+long as he did not bore her.
+
+He made several declarations of love to her. She smiled at them, and
+said, "You're like the rest; you'll get over it. Meanwhile, don't look
+like that; be cheerful." At certain times, when circumstances were
+auspicious, when there was night and electric light and a starry sky
+with a moon in it, she was half-sentimental, but such moods were only
+superficial and short-lived, and she invariably brought an end to them
+with flippant laughter or some matter-of-fact speech that came with a
+shock to Billy, although it did not cool his adoration.
+
+Billy became quite gloomy. He was the veritable sighing lover. Although
+for a month he was admittedly the chief of her admirers and saw her
+every day, he seemed to make no progress toward securing a hospitable
+reception for and a response to his love.
+
+One day, as they were walking together on Broadway, she said:
+
+"You're always in the dumps nowadays. Really you must not be that way.
+Doleful people make me tired."
+
+And thereafter Billy, possessed by a horrible fear that his mournful
+demeanour might cause his banishment from her, kept making desperate
+efforts to be lively, which were a dismal failure. It was ludicrous. The
+gayer he affected to be, the more emphatic was his manifest depression.
+So she wearied of his company. One day he called at her hotel, and, as
+was his custom, went immediately to her sitting-room without sending
+in his card. Before he knocked at the door, he heard the notes of her
+piano; some one was playing the air of "La Gitana" with one finger.
+After two or three bars, the instrument was silent. Then a man's voice
+was heard. Billy knocked angrily. Miss Tyrrell opened the door, looked
+annoyed when she saw him, and introduced him to the tenor of a comic
+opera company of which she recently had been engaged as leading
+soubrette. Billy's call was a short one.
+
+At eight o'clock that evening he sent this note to her from the cafe
+where he was dining:
+
+"Will be at stage door with carriage at eleven, as before."
+
+He was there at eleven. So was the tenor. The little Tyrrell came out
+and looked from one to the other. Billy pointed to his waiting carriage.
+The dancer took the tenor's arm and said:
+
+"I'm sorry I can't accept your invitation, Mr. Folsom. Really I'm very
+much obliged to you, but I have an engagement."
+
+She went off with the tenor, and Billy went off with the cab and made
+himself drunker than he had ever been in his life. At dawn his feet
+were seen protruding from the window of a coupe that was being driven up
+Broadway, and he was bawling forth, as best he could, the tune which had
+served indirectly to bring the little Tyrrell into his life.
+
+After that night, it was the old story, a woman ridding herself of a man
+for whom she had never cared, and who indeed was not worth caring for.
+But the operation was just as hard upon Folsom as if he had been. You
+know the stages of the process. She began by being not at home or just
+about to go out. He wrote pleading notes to her, in boyish phraseology,
+and she laughed over these with the tenor. He made the breaking off the
+more painful by going nightly to see her dance that fatal melody. He
+watched her from afar upon the street, and almost invariably saw the
+tenor by her side. He drank continually, and he begged Ted Clarke to
+tell her, in a casual way, that he was going to the dogs on account of
+her treatment of him. Whereupon she laughed and then looked scornful,
+saying: "If he's fool enough to drink himself to death because a woman
+didn't happen to fall in love with him, the sooner he finishes the work
+the better. I have no use for such a man."
+
+No one has, and I told Billy so. But he kept up his pace toward the goal
+of confirmed drunkenness. He ceased his attendance at the theatre where
+she danced, only after he learned that the tenor had married her. But
+that dance of hers had become a part of his life. Its accompanying tune
+was now as necessary to his aural sensibilities as food to his stomach.
+He therefore spent his evenings going to theatres and concert-halls
+where "La Gitana" was likely to be sung or played. He rarely sought in
+vain. The melody was to be found serving some purpose or other at almost
+every theatre that winter. It was the "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay" of its time.
+
+Some men who drink themselves to death require years and wit to complete
+the task. Others save time by catching pneumonia through exposure due to
+drink. Billy Folsom was one of the pneumonia class. He "slept off" the
+effects of a long lark in an area-way belonging to a total stranger. A
+policeman took him to his lodgings by way of the station house, and a
+day later his landlord sent for a doctor. Five days after that I went
+over to see him. He was in bed, and one of his friends, a man of his own
+kind, but of stronger fibre, was keeping him company. Billy told us how
+it had come about:
+
+"I wouldn't have gone on that racket if it hadn't been for one thing.
+I'd made up my mind to turn over a new leaf, and I was walking along
+full of plans for reformation. Suddenly I heard the sound of a banjo,
+coming from an up-stairs window, playing a certain tune I've got
+somewhat attached to. I saw the place was a kind of a dive and I went
+in. I got the banjo-player to strum the piece over again, and I bought
+drinks for the crowd. Then I made him play once more, and there were
+other rounds of drinks, and the last I remember is that I was waltzing
+around the place to that air. Two days after that the officer found
+me trespassing on some one's property by sleeping on it. I dropped my
+overcoat and hat somewhere, and it seemed there must have been a draft
+around, for I caught this cold."
+
+I told Folsom to stop talking, as he was manifestly much weaker than he
+or his friend supposed him to be. There ensued a few seconds of silence.
+A loud noise broke upon the stillness with a shocking suddenness. It was
+the clamour of a band-piano in the street beneath Folsom's window, and
+of all the tunes in the world the tune that it shrieked out was "La
+Gitana." I looked at Folsom.
+
+He rose in his bed and, clenching his teeth, he propelled through their
+interstices the word:
+
+"Damn!"
+
+He remained sitting for a time, his hair tumbled about, his eyes wide
+open but expressive of meditation as the notes continued to be thumped
+upward by the turbulent instrument. Presently he said, in a husky voice:
+
+"How that thing pursues me! It's like a fiend. It has no let-up. It
+follows me even into the next world."
+
+He sat for a moment more, intently listening. Then, with a quick,
+peevish sigh, he fell back from weakness. We by his side did not know it
+at the instant, but we discovered in a short time what had taken place
+when his head had touched the pillow, for he remained so still.
+
+And that was the last of Billy Folsom, and up from the murmuring street
+below came the notes of the band-piano playing "La Gitana."
+
+
+
+
+XVIII. -- TRANSITION
+
+Three of us sat upon an upper deck, sailing to an island. The day was
+sunlit, the wind was gentle, and the faintest ripple passed over the
+sea.
+
+"Do you see the tremulous old man sitting over there by the pilot-house
+absorbing the sunshine? He reminds me of another old man, one whom I
+watched for six years, while he faded and died. He never knew me, but
+he walked by my house daily and I walked by his. It was an interesting
+study. The conclusion of the process was so inevitable. The time came
+when he did not pass my house. Then he took the sunlight in a bow-window
+on the second floor of his residence. So closely had I watched his
+decadence during the six years that I was able to say to myself one
+morning, 'There will be crape on his door before the day is out.' And so
+there was."
+
+The bon-vivant laughed rather mechanically, but the other, he who makes
+verses so dainty that the world does not heed them, smiled softly and
+sympathetically to me and said:
+
+"You are right. Nothing is so fascinating as the study of a progress--a
+development or a decline. The inevitability of the end makes it more
+engrossing, for it relieves it of the undue eagerness of curiosity, the
+feverishness of uncertainty."
+
+"Well, I am content rather to live than to contemplate life," said the
+bon-vivant. "It's true I have given myself up to observing anxiously
+such an advancement as you describe--a vulgar one you will say. When I
+was a very young man I was a very thin man. I determined to amplify my
+dimensions. I followed with careful interest my daily increase toward my
+present--let us not say obesity, but call it portliness."
+
+"You are inclined to be easy upon yourself," I commented.
+
+"Indeed I am--in all matters."
+
+After a pause the verse-maker, throwing away his cigarette, took up
+again the theme that I had introduced.
+
+"Yes, it is an engaging occupation to note any progression, even when
+it is toward a fatal or a horrible culmination. But when it is to some
+beautiful and happy outcome, this advancement is an ineffably charming
+spectacle. Such it is when it is the unfolding of a flower or the
+filling out of a poetic thought.
+
+"But no growth nor transformation in the material world is more
+entrancing to observe than that by which a young girl becomes a lovely
+woman.
+
+"This transition seems to be sudden. It is not so. It is rapid, perhaps,
+as life goes, but each stage is distinctly marked. All men have not time
+to watch the change, however, and so most men awaken to its occurrence
+only when it is completed. Such was the case of the young and lowborn
+lover of Consuelo in George Sand's romance. Do you remember that
+incomparable scene in which he suddenly begins to notice that some
+feature of Consuelo is handsome, and, with surprise, calls her attention
+to its comeliness? She, equally astonished and delighted, joins him
+in the visual examination of her charms, and the two pass from one
+attraction to the other, finally completing the discovery that she is a
+beautiful woman.
+
+"The Italian gamin was not the sort of man to have anticipated this
+transfiguration and to have watched its stages.
+
+"You may argue that his delight at suddenly opening his eyes to
+the finished work was greater than would have been his pleasure at
+contemplating the alteration in process. Doubtless his was. As to
+whether yours would be in such a case, depends upon your temperament.
+
+"I have experienced both of these pleasures. Perhaps it may be due to
+certain special circumstances that I cherish the memory of the more
+lasting delight, even though it was tempered by occasional doubts as to
+the end, more tenderly than I do the more sudden and keen awakening.
+
+"There is a woman who first came under my observations when she was
+thirteen years old. She was then agreeable enough to the eye, more
+by reason of the gentleness of her expression than for any noteworthy
+attractions of face and figure. Her face, indeed, was plain and
+uninteresting; her figure unformed and too slim. Her hair, however, was
+charming, being soft and extremely light in colour. She seemed awkward,
+too, and timid, through fear of offending or making a bad impression.
+
+"For a reason I was particularly interested in her. I knew, young as I
+then was, that plain girls, in many cases, develop into handsome women.
+
+"At fourteen her hair showed indications of changing its tint.
+Its tendency was unmistakably toward brown. This was temporarily
+unfavourable, but a brightening of the blue eyes and a newly acquired
+poise of the head, with a step toward self-confidence in manner, were
+compensating alterations.
+
+"At fifteen there came an emancipation of mind and speech from
+schoolgirl habits. A defensive assumption of impertinent reserve, varied
+by fits of superficial garrulity, gave way to real thoughtfulness,
+to natural amiability. Then came, too, an emboldenment of the facial
+outline, a constancy to the colour of the cheeks, a certainty of gait,
+and the first perceptible roundness of contour beneath the neck.
+
+"At sixteen she had adorable hands, and she could wear short sleeves
+with impunity. A rational, unforced, and coherent vivacity had now
+revealed itself as a characteristic of her mode and conversation. Her
+ankles had long before that grown too sightly to be exhibited. Such is
+so-called civilization! Her hair seemed to darken before one's eyes. The
+oval of her face attracted the attention of more than one of my artist
+friends.
+
+"At seventeen she had learned what styles of attire, what arrangements
+of her hair, were best suited to display effectively her comeliness.
+
+"This was one of the greatest steps of all.
+
+"The simplest draperies, she found, the least complicated headgear, were
+most advantageous to her appearance.
+
+"A taste for reading the most ideal and artistic of books, as well as
+her liking for poetry, the theatre, music, and pictures had implanted
+that exalted something in her face which cannot be otherwise acquired.
+
+"When she was eighteen people on the street turned to look at her as she
+passed.
+
+"At nineteen her figure was unsurpassable. Indeed, I think there cannot
+be a more beautiful and charming woman in America. She is now twenty.
+
+"It was my privilege to view closely the bursting of this bud into
+bloom."
+
+The fin de siecle versewright became silent and lighted a fresh
+cigarette.
+
+"Will you permit me to ask," said I, "what were the especial facilities
+that you had for observing this evolution?"
+
+"Yes," he answered, softly, a tender look coming into his eyes. "She is
+my wife. She was thirteen when I married her. Suddenly placed without
+means of subsistence, knowing nothing of the world, she came to me. I
+could see no other way. We are very happy together."
+
+The pretty narrative of the rhymer put each of us in a delectable mood.
+The notes of a harp and violins came from the lower deck in the form of
+a seductive Italian melody. White sails dotted the far-reaching sea.
+
+
+
+
+XIX. -- A MAN WHO WAS NO GOOD
+
+Hearken to the tale of how fortune fell to the widow of Busted Blake.
+
+The outcome has shown that "Busted" was not radically bad. But he was
+wretchedly weak of will to reject an opportunity of having another drink
+with the boys--or with the girls--or with anybody or with nobody.
+
+In the days of his ascendancy, when he was a young and newly married
+architect, he was a buyer of drinks for others. Waiters in cafes vied
+with each other in showing readiness to take his orders. He was rated a
+jolly good fellow then. No one would have supposed it destined that
+some fine night a leering barroom wit should reply to his whispered
+application for a small loan by pouring a half-glass of whiskey upon his
+head and saying:
+
+"I hereby christen thee 'Busted.'"
+
+The title stuck. Blake, through continued impecuniosity, lost all shame
+of it in time; lost, too, his self-respect and his wife. Mrs. Blake, a
+gentle and pretty little brunette, had wedded him against the will of
+her parents. She had trusted, for his safety, to the allurements of his
+future, which everybody said was bright, and to his love for her.
+
+The years of tearful nights, the pleadings, the reproaches, the seesaw
+of hope and despair, need not here be dwelt upon. They would make an old
+story, and some of the details might be shocking to the young person.
+They reached a culmination one day when she said to him:
+
+"You love drink better than you love me. I have done with you."
+
+She was a woman and took a woman's view of the case.
+
+When he came back to their rooms that night, she was not there. Then he
+knew how much he loved her and how much he had underestimated his love.
+
+She did not go to her parents. There was a very musty proverb that she
+knew would meet her on the threshold. "You made your bed, now lie on
+it." Her father was a man of no originality, hence he would have put it
+in that way.
+
+She got employment in a photograph gallery, where she made herself
+useful by being ornamental, sitting behind a desk in the anteroom.
+
+I know not what duties devolve upon the woman who occupies that post
+in the average photographer's service; whatever they are she performed
+them. But within a very short time after she had left the "bed and
+board" of Busted Blake, she had to ask for a vacation. She spent it in
+a hospital and Busted became a father. She resumed her chair behind the
+photographer's desk in due time, found a boarding-house where infants
+were not tabooed, and managed to subsist, and to care for her child--a
+girl.
+
+Somebody lived in that boarding-house who knew Busted Blake, and it was
+through inquiries resulting from, this somebody's jocularly calling him
+"papa" one night in a saloon that Busted was made aware of his accession
+to the paternal relation.
+
+When the poor wretch heard the news, he made a prodigious effort to keep
+his face composed. But the muscles would not be resisted. He burst out
+crying, and he laid his head upon his arm upon a beer-flooded table and
+wept copiously, causing a sudden hush to fall upon the crowd of
+topers and a group to gather around his table and stare at him,--some
+mystified, some grinning, none understanding.
+
+The next day he made a herculean effort to pull himself together. He
+obtained a position as draughtsman from one who had known him in his
+respectable period, and he went tremblingly and sheepishly to call upon
+his wife and child.
+
+The consequence of his visit was a reunion, which endured for two whole
+weeks. At the end of that time she cast him off in utter scorn.
+
+How he lived for the next two years can be only known to those who are
+familiar through experience with the existence of people who ask other
+people on the street for a few cents toward a night's lodging. By those
+who knew him he was said to be "no good to himself or any one else." He
+acquired the raggedness, the impudence, the phraseology of the vagabond
+class. He would hang on the edge of a party of men drinking together
+in front of a bar, on the slim chance of being "counted in" when the
+question went round, "What'll you have?" He was perpetually being
+impelled out of saloons at foot-race speed by the officials whose
+function it is, in barrooms, to substitute an objectionable person's
+room for his company.
+
+One winter Sunday morning he slept late on a bench in a public square.
+Awakened by an officer, he arose to go. Hazy in head and stiff at
+joints, he slightly staggered. He heard behind him the cooing laugh of
+a child. He looked around. It was himself that had awakened the infant's
+mirth--or that strange something which precedes the dawn of a sense of
+humour in children. The smiling babe was in a child's carriage which a
+plainly dressed woman was pushing. He looked at the woman. It was his
+wife and the pretty child was his own.
+
+He walked rapidly from the place, and on the same day he decided to
+leave the city. He had herded with vagrants of the touring class. The
+methods of free transportation by means of freight-trains and free
+living, by means of beggary and small thievery in country towns, were no
+secret to him. He walked to the suburbs, and at nightfall he scrambled
+up the side of a coal-car in a train slowly moving westward.
+
+What hunger he suffered, what cold he endured, what bread he begged,
+what police station cells he passed nights in, what human scum he
+associated with, what thirst he quenched, and with what incredibly bad
+whiskey, are particulars not for this unobjectionable narrative, for do
+they not belong to low life? And who nowadays can tolerate low life
+in print unless it be redeemed by a rustic environment and a laboured
+exposition of clodhopper English and primitive expletives? Low life
+outside of a dialect story and a dreary village? Never!
+
+Mrs. Blake and the child lived in a fair degree of comfort upon the
+mother's wages, but often the mother shuddered at thought of what might
+happen should she ever lose her position at the photographer's.
+
+Consumption had its hold on Busted Blake when he arrived in the
+mining-town called Get-there City, in Kansas, one evening. Get-there
+City had not gotten there beyond a single straggling street of shanties.
+But it had acquired a saloon, although liquor-selling had already been
+forbidden in Kansas.
+
+Busted Blake, with ten cents in his clothes, entered the saloon and
+asked in an asthmatic voice for as much whiskey as that sum was good
+for.
+
+While awaiting a response, his eyes turned toward the only other
+persons in the saloon,--three burly, bearded miners of the conventional
+big-hatted, big-booted, and big-voiced type. Above their heads and
+against the wall was this sign, lettered roughly with charcoal, under a
+crudely drawn death's head:
+
+"Five thousand dollars will be paid by the undersigned to the widow of
+the sneaking hound that informs on this saloon. This is no meer bluf. P.
+GIBBS."
+
+Blake, after a brief coughing fit, looked up at the man behind the
+bar,--a great thick-necked fellow with a mien of authority, and yet with
+a certain bluff honesty expressed about his eyes and lips. This man,
+whose air of proprietorship convinced Blake that he could be none other
+than P. Gibbs, had first looked sneeringly at the ten cents, but had
+shown some small sign of pity on hearing the ominous cough of the
+attenuated vagrant. He set forth a bottle and glass.
+
+"Help yerself," said P. Gibbs. While Blake was doing so, Mr. Gibbs went
+on:
+
+"Bad cough o' yourn. Y' mightn't guess it, but that same cough runs in
+my fam'ly. It took off a brother, but it skipped me."
+
+Here was a bond of sympathy between the big, law-defying saloon-keeper
+and the frail toper from the East. Busted Blake drained his glass and
+presently coughed again. P. Gibbs again set forth the bottle, and this
+time he drank with Blake. Before long, by dint of repeated fits of
+coughing on the part of Blake, the sympathy of P. Gibbs was so worked
+upon that he invited the three miners in the saloon to join him and the
+stranger.
+
+Blake slept in a corner of the saloon that night. He left the next
+morning, a curious expression of resolution on his face.
+
+During the next three weeks he was now and then alluded to in P. Gibbs's
+saloon as the "coughing stranger."
+
+In the middle of the third week, at nine o'clock in the evening, when
+the lamps in P. Gibbs's saloon were exerting their smallest degree of
+dimness and the bar was doing a good business, the door opened and in
+staggered Busted Blake. His staggering on this occasion was manifestly
+not due to drink. His face had the hideous concavities of a starved man
+and the uncertainty of his gait was the token of a mortal feebleness.
+His emaciation was painful to behold. His eyes glowed like huge gems.
+
+The crowd of miners looked at him with surprise as he entered.
+
+"The coughing stranger!" cried one.
+
+"The coffin stranger, you mean," said another.
+
+Busted Blake lurched over to the bar. His eyes met those of P. Gibbs on
+the other side, and the latter reached for a whiskey-bottle.
+
+Blake fumbled in his pocket and brought forth a piece of soiled paper,
+which he laid on the bar under the glance of P. Gibbs.
+
+"Keep that!" said Blake, in a husky voice, whose service he compelled
+with much effort. "And keep your word, too! That's where you'll find
+her."
+
+P. Gibbs picked up the paper.
+
+"What do you mean?" he asked.
+
+"That woman's name there. It's the name of my widow; the address, too,
+of a photograph man who will tell you where she is. Get the money to her
+quick, before the governor and the troops comes down on you to close you
+up. And don't let her know how it comes about. Pick a man to take it to
+her,--let him pay his expenses out of it,--a man you can trust, and make
+him tell her I made it somehow, mining or something, so she'll take it.
+You know."
+
+P. Gibbs, who had listened with increasing amazement, opened wide his
+eyes and drew his revolver. He spoke in a strangely low, repressed
+voice:
+
+"Stranger, do you mean to say--"
+
+"Yes, that's it," shrieked Busted Blake, turning toward the crowd of
+intensely interested onlookers. "And I call on all you here to witness
+and to hold him to his word. That's no mere bluff he says in his notice
+there, and I'm the sneaking hound that informed. My widow is entitled to
+$5,000. I did it in Topeka, and for proof, see this newspaper."
+
+P. Gibbs fired a shot from his revolver through the newspaper that Blake
+pulled from his shirt. Then the saloon-keeper brought his weapon on a
+level with Blake's face.
+
+"It's good your boots is on!" said P. Gibbs, ironically.
+
+But he did not fire. Blake stood perfectly still, awaiting the shot, and
+feebly laughing.
+
+So the two remained for some moments, until Blake suddenly sank to the
+floor, quite exhausted. He died within a half-hour on the saloon floor,
+his head resting in the palm of P. Gibbs, who knelt by his side and
+tried to revive him.
+
+At the next dawn, a man whom they called Big Andy started East, and the
+piece of paper that Blake handed to P. Gibbs was not all that he took
+with him. The United States marshal arrived and duly closed Gibbs's
+saloon, which reopened very shortly afterward, minus the $5,000 offer.
+
+And Big Andy found the widow of Busted Blake, to whom he told a bit of
+fiction in accounting for the legacy conveyed by him to her that would
+have imposed upon the most incredulous legatee. When she had recovered
+from the surprise of finding herself and her child provided with the
+means of surviving the possible loss of her situation, she forgave the
+late Busted, and there was a flow of tears unusual to a boarding-house
+parlour and unnerving to Big Andy.
+
+Presently she asked Andy whether he knew what her husband's last words
+had been.
+
+"Yep," said Andy. "I heard'm plain and clear. Pete Gibbs,--the other
+executor of the will, you know,--Pete says, 'It's all right, pardner,
+me and Andy'll see to it,' and then your husband says, 'Thank Gawd I've
+been some good to her and the child at last.'"
+
+Which account was entirely correct. When Big Andy had returned to
+Get-there City, and related how he had performed his mission, he added:
+
+"I'd been such a lovely liar all through, it's a shame I had to go an'
+spoil the story by puttin' in some truth at the finish."
+
+They put up a wooden grave-mark where Blake was buried, and after his
+name they cut in the wood this testimonial:
+
+"A tenderfoot that was some good to his folks at last."
+
+
+
+
+XX. -- MR. THORNBERRY'S ELDORADO
+
+Near the uneven road among the hills a small field of stony ground lay
+between woods and cultivated land. Nothing grew upon it and no house
+could be seen from it. The sun beat upon it and crows flew over it to
+and from the woods.
+
+Along the road trudged a thin old negro with stooping back and gray
+wool. His knees were bent and his cumbrously shod feet pointed far
+outward from his line of progress. He wore an aged frock coat and
+a battered stiff hat, although the month was June. His small face,
+beginning with a smoothly curved forehead and ending with a cleanly
+cut chin, was mild and conciliating, shiny, and of the colour of light
+chocolate. He carried a tin bucket full of cherries. Pop Thornberry was
+returning to the town.
+
+Pop, whose proper name was Moses, and who was a deacon in the African
+Methodist Church, made his living this way and that way. He did odd jobs
+for people, and he fished and hunted when fishing and hunting were in
+season.
+
+On this June day he had risen early and walked three miles to pick
+cherries "on shares." He had picked ten quarts and left four of them
+with the farmer whose trees had produced them. At six cents a quart he
+would profit thirty-six cents by his walk of six miles and his work of a
+half-day.
+
+The sun was scorching and Pop was tired. He decided to rest in the
+barren field, at its very edge in shade of the woods. He climbed
+the zigzag fence with some labour and at the expense of a few of his
+cherries. He sat down upon a little knob of earth, took off his hat,
+drew a red handkerchief from the inside thereof, and slowly wiped his
+perspiring brow.
+
+He looked up at the sky, which was so brightly blue that it made his
+eyes blink. He sought optical relief in the dark green of the woods.
+Then, in steadying his pail of cherries between his legs, he turned his
+glance to the ground in front of him.
+
+His attention was caught by a lump of earth that sparkled at points In
+the sun's rays, a mere clod composed of clay and mica, lying In the
+dry bed of a bygone streamlet. Because it glittered he picked it up and
+examined it. After a time he bethought him that he was yet two and a
+half miles from town and very hungry. He arose, somewhat stiff, and put
+the shining clod in his coat-tail pocket. On his way back to the road
+he noticed other little earth lumps that shone. He resumed his walk
+townward, his knees shaking regularly at every step, as was their wont.
+
+At three o'clock in the afternoon he had reached home, sold his
+cherries, and dined on dried beef and bread in his little unpainted
+wooden house on the edge of the creek at the back of the town.
+
+He owned his house and a small lot upon which it stood. Near it was a
+flour-mill, whose owner held a mortgage upon Pop's house and lot. The
+old negro had been compelled to borrow $200 to pay bills incurred during
+the illness and subsequent funeral of the late Mrs. Thornberry, and thus
+to avoid a sheriff's sale. Hence came the mortgage. It would expire
+on the 10th of September. Pop was almost ready to meet that date. He
+already had $192 hidden in his cellar, unknown to any one.
+
+He had heard rumours of the mill-owner's desire to build an addition
+to his mill. To do this would necessitate the acquisition of contiguous
+property. But Pop had not suspected any ulterior motive when the miller
+had offered to lend him the money.
+
+"I kin soon lay by 'nuff t' pay off d' mohgage, w'en I ain't got no one
+but m'se'f t' puvvide foh no moah," he had said, after the loan had been
+made.
+
+And, having dined on this June day, he took twenty cents from the amount
+received for cherries and placed it in a cigar-box to be added to the
+$192. He kept that sixteen cents with which to purchase provisions
+for to-morrow, and then he walked down the quiet street to the railway
+station. He often made a dime by carrying some one's satchel from the
+station to the hotel.
+
+The railroad division superintendent, a well-fed and easy-going man,
+came down from his office on the second floor of the station building
+and saw Pop sitting on a baggage-truck. The old negro, forgetful of the
+clod in his coat-tail pocket, had felt it when he sat down. He had taken
+it out of his pocket and was now casually looking at it as he held it in
+his hand.
+
+"Hello, Pop!" said the division superintendent, upon whose hand time was
+hanging heavily. "What have you there?"
+
+"Doan' know, Mistah Monroe. Doan' know, sah. Looks like jes' a chunk o'
+mud."
+
+He held out the clod to Mr. Monroe.
+
+The spectacle of the division superintendent talking to the old negro
+attracted a group of lazy fellows,--the driver of an express wagon,
+the man who hauls the mail to the post-office, a boy who sold fruit to
+passengers on the train, two porters, with tin signs upon their hats,
+who solicited patronage from the hotels.
+
+"Why, Pop," said the superintendent, winking to the expressman, "this
+lump looks as though it contained gold."
+
+"Yes," put in the expressman, "that's how gold comes in a mine. I've
+often handled it. That's the stuff, sure."
+
+The fruit-selling boy and the mail-man grinned. Pop Thornberry opened
+wide his mouth and eyes and softly repeated the word:
+
+"Goal!"
+
+"I'd be careful of it," advised Mr. Monroe, handing the clod back to the
+negro.
+
+Pop took it with a trembling hand and looked at it. Presently he asked:
+
+"W'at'll you give me foh dat air goal, Mistah Monroe."
+
+"Oh, a piece like that would be no use to me. It has to be washed and it
+wouldn't be worth while putting just one piece through the whole process
+of cleaning. Now. If you have a lot of it, we might go into partnership
+in the gold business."
+
+Before the old man could answer to this pleasantry a whistle was heard
+up the track, and Pop was forgotten in the excitement attending the
+arrival of the train.
+
+Dislodged from the baggage-truck, the old man looked around for Mr.
+Monroe, but the superintendent had disappeared. Pop did not seek to
+carry any satchels that day. His mind was full of other matters. He went
+behind the station and sat down beside the river.
+
+"Goal!" That meant proper tombstones for the graves of his wife and
+children, a new pulpit for the African Methodist Church, equal to that
+of the African Baptist Church, future ease for his somewhat weary legs
+and arms and back.
+
+The next afternoon the division superintendent found himself awaited at
+his office door by Pop Thornberry, who was very dusty and who carried
+a basket heavy with clods of clay and mica. He had been out to the arid
+field that morning.
+
+"H-sh!" whispered Pop. "Doan' say a word, Mistah Monroe! Hyah's a lot o'
+dem air goal lumps, and I know weah dey's bushels moah,--plenty 'nuff to
+go into pahtnehship on."
+
+The superintendent, looked bewildered, then amused, then ashamed.
+Embarrassed for a reply, he finally said:
+
+"I haven't time to talk to you now, Pop. Besides, I've made up my mind
+not to go into the gold business. You see, I'm rich enough already. Good
+day."
+
+Thereafter Pop lay in wait for Mr. Monroe daily, but the superintendent
+always avoided him. Pop neglected to earn his living and spent his
+time going about town with his basket of clods in search of the
+superintendent. Finally being openly ignored by Mr. Monroe when the two
+met face to face, Pop became angry and took his secret to a jeweller
+on Main Street. The jeweller laughed and told Pop that the gold in the
+basket must be worth at least a thousand dollars, but he was not in a
+position to buy crude gold. Then the jeweller made known to many that
+Pop Thornberry was crazy over some lumps of mud and mica that he mistook
+for gold.
+
+After that, people would stop Pop on the street and say:
+
+"Let's see a piece of the gold in your basket."
+
+Pop, astonished that his secret was out, but somewhat proud at being
+thought the possessor of a treasure, would hesitate and then comply.
+The small boys soon recognized in Pop's delusion a new means of fun.
+Observing the solicitude with which he watched his clod while out of his
+own hands, they would innocently ask for a glimpse into his basket. This
+granted, they would grasp a piece of his treasure and run away, greatly
+annoying the old man, who was in a state of keen distress until he
+recovered the abstracted clod. These affairs between Pop and the
+boys were of hourly recurrence. They diverted barroom loungers and
+passers-by.
+
+Pop called on one local capitalist after another, seeking one who would
+buy his gold or aid into preparing it for the market. All laughed at
+his delusion, deeming it harmless, and all gave him good reason for not
+accepting his offer of business partnership. So he went from the bank
+president to the baker, from the member of congress for whom he had
+voted to the barber, from the hotel proprietor to the bartender. The
+negroes of the town, feeling that their race was humiliated in Pop,
+began to hold aloof from him. No serious-minded person who learned of
+his delusion gave it a second thought.
+
+"Say Pop, where do you get this gold, anyhow?" asked a tobacco-chewing
+gamin at the railroad station one day.
+
+"Dat's my business," replied Thornberry, with some dignity.
+
+"Oh," said his questioner, "I know. Tobe McStenger followed you out the
+other day and saw where you got it. He'd a brung some in hisself, but it
+wasn't on his property."
+
+"Yes, Pop, you better look out," put in a telegraph operator, "or you'll
+be taken up for trespassing. 'Tisn't your land, you know, where you find
+your gold."
+
+There was no truth in the assertion of the gamin. No one had taken the
+trouble to follow Pop in his semiweekly excursions to the barren field.
+But the old man knew that the field was not his. A ludicrous expression
+of overwhelming fright came over his face.
+
+Three days afterward, the farmer who owned the worthless field was
+astonished when Pop offered to buy it.
+
+"But what on earth do you want that land fer?" asked the farmer, sitting
+on his barnyard fence.
+
+Pop made a guilty attempt to appear guileless, and told the farmer that
+he wished to build a shanty and raise potatoes. He was tired of living
+in town and sought the quietude of the hills.
+
+"Bein' as dat ere fiel' ain't good foh much, I thought you might be
+willin' to paht with it," explained Pop.
+
+The farmer eventually agreed to build a shanty on the field and sell
+it to Pop for $180. Pop desired immediate occupancy. There was a legal
+hitch, owing to the badness of the land and the questionable condition
+of Pop's mind. But the transfer of the property was finally recorded.
+
+Pop no longer had to fear arrest for trespass. His gold field was now
+legally his. But he was still kept uneasy by his inability to make his
+gold marketable. His uneasiness increased as September approached. He
+had applied to the purchase of the field the sum saved to cancel the
+mortgage upon his house at the rear end of the town.
+
+The three days before the foreclosure of the mortgage were days of
+exquisite anguish to Pop. When the foreclosure came and he and his
+goods were turned out on the banks of the creek to make room for the
+mill-owner's improvements, his mental turmoil ended. He took the crisis
+calmly.
+
+"Jes' wait," he said to a neighbour who had stopped at sight of the
+moving-out. "Wait till I get dat ere goal on de mahket. I'll bull' a
+mill dat'll drive dis yer mill out o' d' business. Den I'll done buy
+back dis yer ol' home."
+
+But the next day, when the unexpected happened,--when builders began to
+tear down his house,--the enormity of his deed dawned upon him. After a
+day of moaning and staring, as he sat amidst his household goods on
+the bank of the creek, he became animated by a deep rage against the
+mill-owner. Now more than ever had he a special purpose for enriching
+himself by means of his treasure across the hill.
+
+The coming of two circuses in succession had taken the interest of the
+boys away from Pop during August and part of September. Now they turned
+again to him for amusement. First they besieged the abandoned stable to
+which he had conveyed his goods, and in which he slept,--for he had not
+found will to betake himself from the town he had so long inhabited, and
+his shanty in the field remained unoccupied. His purchase of the land
+had betrayed to general knowledge the location of his treasure, of which
+he continued to bring in new specimens.
+
+One October day he had just come from vainly attempting to induce the
+postmaster to join him in the enterprise of exploiting his gold-field.
+In front of the post-office, he was met by some boys coming noisily from
+school. They surrounded him and demanded to see the gold in his basket.
+As the town policeman was sauntering up the street, Pop felt safe in
+refusing. The boys, also observing the officer of the law, contented
+themselves with retaliating in words only,
+
+"Say, Pop," cried one of them, "you'd better keep an eye on your
+gold-field. Nick Hennessey knows where it is, and he's gittin' up a
+diggin' party to take a wagon out some night and bring away all your
+gold."
+
+The boys, laughing at this quickly invented announcement, ran off after
+a hand-organ. The old man stood perfectly still, or as nearly so as the
+feebleness of his legs would permit.
+
+That evening Pop was missing from the town. And when Abraham Wesley, who
+had often lent his shotgun to the old man, went to look for that weapon,
+intending to shoot glass balls in the fairgrounds across the river, the
+fowling-piece too was missing.
+
+Pop had gone out to protect his possession. Three nights passed and
+three days. The few country folk and others who travelled that way
+during this time saw the old man walking about in his field or sitting
+in front of his shanty, his shotgun on his shoulders, his eyes fixed
+suspiciously on all who might become intruders. Night and day he
+patrolled his little domain.
+
+At dusk of the third day a lively party was returning to the town in
+a wagon from a search for nuts. The full moon was rising and the
+merrymakers were singing. One of the girls was thirsty. When she saw the
+shanty in the rugged field, she asked a young man to get her a glass of
+water at the hut. The wagon stopped and the youth climbed astride the
+rail fence. Suddenly an unnaturally shrill and excited voice was heard:
+
+"Hyah, you, doan' come no farder! Dese yer's my premises!"
+
+From behind the empty shanty appeared the thin old negro, bareheaded,
+his shotgun at his shoulder, a striking figure against the rising moon.
+
+The young man descended from the fence into the field. There came a
+flash and a crack from Pop Thornberry's gun. The youth felt the sting of
+a piece of birdshot in his leg. Howling and limping, he turned quickly
+over the fence into the wagon, which made a hasty flight.
+
+The next morning some idlers went out from the town to the scene of the
+adventure. They found the old man lying hatless in the middle of
+the field, face downwards, upon the shotgun. He had died of sheer
+exhaustion, on guard--and on his own land, as befit an honest citizen
+who had never intruded upon the peace of other men.
+
+
+
+
+XXI. -- AT THE STAGE DOOR
+
+
+[Footnote: Courtesy of _Lippincott's Magazine_.Copyright, 1892, by J. B.
+Lippincott Company.]
+
+First let me explain how I came to be sitting in so unsavoury a place as
+Gorson's "fifteen cent oyster and chop house" that night. Most newspaper
+men--the rank and file--receive remuneration by the week. Those not
+given over to domesticity, those who enjoy that alluring regularity
+identical with liberty, fare sumptuously, as a rule, on "pay-day."
+Thereafter the quantity and quality of the good things of life that they
+enjoy diminish daily until the next pay-day.
+
+Pay-day with us was Friday. This was Thursday night. I having gone to
+unusual lengths of good cheer in the early part of that week, had
+now fallen low, and was duly thankful for what I could get--even at
+Gorson's.
+
+As my glance wandered over my table, over the beer-bottles and the
+oysters, beyond the crowd of ravenous and vulgar eaters and hurrying
+waiters, to the street door, some one opened that door from the outside
+and entered. An odd looking personage this some one.
+
+A person very tall and conspicuously thin. These peculiarities were
+accentuated by the dilapidated frock coat that reached to his knees, and
+thus concealed the greater portion of his gray summer trousers, which
+"bagged" exceedingly and were picturesquely frayed at the bottom edges,
+as I could see when he came nearer to me. He wore a faded straw hat,
+which looked forlorn, as the month was January. His face, despite
+its angularity of outline and its wanness, had that expression of
+complacency which often relieves from pathos the countenances of
+harmlessly demented people. His hair was gray, but his somewhat
+formidable looking moustache was still dark. He carried an unadorned
+walking-stick and under his left arm was what a journalistic eye
+immediately recognized as manuscript. From the man's aspect of extreme
+poverty, I deduced that his manuscripts were never accepted.
+
+As he passed the cashier's desk, he stopped, lowered his body, not by
+stooping in the usual way, but by bending his knees, and with a quick
+sweep of his eyes by way of informing himself whether or not he was
+observed, he picked up a cigar stump that some one had dropped there.
+
+Then he walked with a rather shambling but self-important gait to the
+table next mine, carefully placed his manuscript upon a chair, and
+sat down upon it. He was soon lost in a prolonged contemplation of the
+limited bill of fare posted on the wall, a study which resulted in
+his ordering, through a hustling, pugnacious-looking waiter, a bowl of
+oatmeal.
+
+A bowl of oatmeal is the least expensive item on the bill of fare at
+Gorson's. When I hear a man ordering oatmeal in a cheap eating-house, my
+heart aches for him. I had just the money and the intention to procure
+another bottle of beer and another box of cigarettes. The sum required
+to obtain these necessaries of life is exactly the price of a bowl of
+oatmeal and a steak at Gorson's. So I hastily arose to go, and on my
+way out I had a brief conversation with the bellicose-appearing waiter,
+which resulted in my unknown friend's being overwhelmed with amazement
+later when the waiter brought him a warm steak with his oatmeal and said
+that some one else had already paid his bill. I did not wait to witness
+this result, for the man looked one of the sort to put forth a show of
+indignation at being made an object of charity.
+
+An hour later I saw him walking with an air of consequence up Broadway,
+smoking what was probably the bit of cigar he had picked up in the
+restaurant. He still carried his manuscript, which was wrapped in a
+soiled blue paper. As I was hurrying up-town on an assignment for the
+newspaper, I could not observe his movements further than to see that
+when he reached Fourteenth Street he made for one of the benches in
+Union Square.
+
+It was by the size, shape, and blue cover that I recognized that
+manuscript two days later upon the desk of the editor of the Sunday
+supplementary pages of the paper, as I was submitting to that personage
+a "special" I had written upon the fertile theme, "Producing a
+Burlesque."
+
+"May I ask what that stuff is wrapped in blue?"
+
+"Certainly. A crank in the last stages of alcoholism and mental
+depression brought it in yesterday. It's an idiotic jumble about
+Beautiful Women of History, part in prose and part in doggerel."
+
+"Of course you'll reject it?"
+
+"Naturally. I'll ease his mind by telling him the subject lacks
+contemporaneousness. Have a cigarette? By the way, have you any special
+interest in the rubbish?"
+
+"No; I only think I've seen it before somewhere. What's the writer's
+name and address?"
+
+"It's to be called for. He didn't leave any address. From that fact and
+his appearance, I infer that he doesn't have any permanent abode. Here's
+his name,--Ernest Ruddle. Not half as much individuality in the name as
+in the man. I remember him because he had a straw hat on."
+
+The burlesque production which had served as material for my Sunday
+article saw the light for the first time on the following Monday night.
+There being no other theatrical novelty in New York that night, the
+town--represented by the critics and the sporting and self-styled
+Bohemian elements--was there. The performance was to have a popular
+comedian as the central figure, and was to serve, also, to reintroduce
+a once favourite comic-opera prima donna, who had been abroad for some
+years. This stage queen had once beheld the town at her feet. She
+had abdicated her throne in the height of her glory, having made the
+greatest success of her career on a certain Monday night, and having
+disappeared from New York on Tuesday, shortly afterward materializing in
+Paris.
+
+There was abundant curiosity awaiting the appearance of Louise Moran, as
+the playbills called her. It was whispered, to be sure, by some who had
+seen her in burlesque in London, after her flight from America, that she
+had grown a bit passee; but this was refuted by the interviewers who had
+met her on her return and had duly chronicled that she looked "as rosy
+and youthful as ever." Brokers, gilded youth, all that curious lot
+of masculinity classified under the general head of "men about town,"
+crowded into the theatre that night, and when, after being heralded at
+length by the chorus, the returned prima donna appeared, in shining drab
+tights, she had a long and noisy reception.
+
+My friendly acquaintance with the leading comedian and the stage manager
+had served to obtain for me an unusual privilege,--that of witnessing
+the first night's performance from the wings. As I looked out across
+the stage and the footlights, and saw the sea of faces in the yellowish
+haze, a familiar visage held my eye. It was in the front row of the top
+gallery, and was projected far over the railing, putting its owner in
+some risk of decapitation. An intent look on the pale countenance at
+once distinguished it from the terrace of uninteresting, monotonous
+faces that rose back of it. The face was that of my man of the
+restaurant and of the blue-covered manuscript.
+
+I stood, somewhat in the way of the light man, where my eye could
+command most of the stage, and a brief section of the auditorium, from
+parquet to roof. The star of the evening, having rattled off, with much
+sang-froid and a London intonation, a few lines of thinly humourous
+dialogue, came toward the footlights to sing. While the conductor of
+the orchestra poised his baton and cast an apprehensive look at her, she
+began:
+
+  "I'm one of the swells
+  Whose accent tells
+  That we've done the Contenong."
+
+When she had sung only to this point, people in the audience were
+exchanging significant smiles. There was no doubt of it; Louise Moran's
+voice had lost its beauty. The years and joys of life abroad had done
+their work. We now knew why she had given up comic opera and had gone
+into burlesque. The house was so taken by surprise that at the end of
+her second stanza, where applause should have come, none came. There was
+no occasion for her to draw upon her supply of "encore verses."
+
+Unprepared for the chilling silence that followed her song, she bestowed
+upon the audience a look of mingled astonishment, pain, and resentment.
+But she recovered self-possession promptly and delivered the few spoken
+lines preceding her exit gaily enough. Her face clouded as soon as she
+was off the stage. She abused her maid in her dressing-room and sent the
+comedian's "dresser" out for some troches. The state of her mind was
+not improved by the sound of a hail-storm-like sound that came from
+the direction of the stage shortly after,--the applause at the leading
+comedian's entrance.
+
+As the newspapers said the next day, the only honours of that
+performance were with the comedian. The star of Louise Moran had set.
+Not only was her singing-voice a ruin, but the actress had grown coarse
+in visage. The once willowy outlines of her figure had rounded vulgarly.
+On the face, audacity had taken place of piquancy. Even the dark gray
+eyes, which somehow seemed black across the footlights, had lost some
+lustre.
+
+Why had the once lovely creature come back from Europe to disturb the
+memories of her other radiant self, and to turn those dainty photographs
+of her earlier person into lies?
+
+Every man in the house was thinking this question at the end of the
+first act.
+
+She had another solo to sing in the second act. It was while she was
+attempting this that my glance strayed to the man in the gallery. His
+face this time surprised me.
+
+It wore a look of ineffable sympathy and sorrow. Surely tears were
+falling from the sad eyes.
+
+This pity touched me. It was so solitary. The feeling of the rest of the
+audience was plainly one of resentful derision at being disappointed.
+
+After the performance I waited for the comedian. He was called before
+the curtain and a speech was extorted from him. There were but a few
+faint cries for the actress, to which she did not respond. She had
+summoned the manager to her dressing-room. While she hastily assumed
+her wraps for the street, she was excitedly complaining of the musical
+director "for not knowing his business," the comedian for "interfering"
+in her scenes, the composer for writing the music too high, and the
+librettist for supplying such "beastly rubbish" in the way of dialogue.
+
+"Very well; I'll call a rehearsal to-morrow at ten," the conciliatory
+manager replied. "You talk to Myers" (the musical director) "yourself
+about it. And you can introduce those two songs you speak of. Myers will
+fix the other music to suit your voice."
+
+"And you start Elliott to write over the libretto at once," she
+commanded, "and see that that song and dance clown" (the comedian)
+"never comes on the stage when I'm on, if it can be helped, or I won't
+go on at all. That's settled!"
+
+The comedian and I left the stage door together. The actress's cab was
+waiting at the opposite side of the dark alley-like street upon which
+the stage door opened. This street or court, stretching its gloomy way
+from a main street, is a place of tall warehouses, rear walls, and bad
+paving. The electric light at its point of junction with the main street
+does not penetrate half-way to the stage entrance, and the blackness
+thereabout is diluted with the rays of the lonely, indifferent gas-lamp
+that projects above the old wooden door. Farther on, an old-fashioned
+street-lamp marks the place where the alley turns to wind about until it
+eventually reaches another main street.
+
+This dark region, the feeble lamp above the stage door, the shadows
+opposite, have a peculiar charm, especially at night. One would not
+think that within that door is a short corridor leading to the mystic
+realm which the people "in front" idealize into a wonderful inaccessible
+country, the playworld. Back here, especially on a rainy night and
+before the playworld's inhabitants begin to sally forth to partake of
+terrestrial beer and sandwiches, one seems millions of miles away from
+the crowds of men and women in the theatre and from the illumined street
+in front.
+
+The ordinary world, when passing this strange place, peers in curiously
+from the main street. Sometimes folks wait at the corner of the street
+to see the stage people come out. If the piece is a burlesque or a comic
+opera, much life moves in the darkness back here. Light comes from the
+up-stairs windows of the theatre, the dressing rooms of the subordinate
+players being up there. Snatches of song from feminine throats, mere
+trills sometimes, isolated fragments of melody, break into the silence.
+These are always numerous during the half-hour after the performance and
+before the actors have left the theatre. Chorus girls in ulsters emerge
+in troops, usually by twos, from the door beneath the light, and it is
+constantly opening and shutting. In the gloom opposite the door hover a
+few bold youths, suddenly become timid, smoking cigarettes and trying
+to look like men of the world. As the comedian and I came forth, one of
+these young men struck a match to light a cigarette. The momentary flash
+attracted my eye, and I saw in the farthest shadow, with his gaze upon
+the stage door, my man of the restaurant, and the manuscript, and the
+gallery. If possible, he looked more haggard than before, and, as it was
+cold, he shivered perceptibly.
+
+"Whom can he be waiting for, I wonder?" I said, aloud.
+
+The comedian, thinking that I alluded to the cabman, half-asleep upon
+his seat, replied, as he turned up the collar of his overcoat:
+
+"Oh, he's waiting for Miss Moran. She didn't always go home from the
+theatre in a cab. She acquired the habit abroad, I suppose. How she's
+changed. I knew her in other days."
+
+"Really? I didn't know that. Tell me about her."
+
+"It's a common story. She's the result of a mercenary mother's schemes.
+She's not as old as people think, you know. Her career has been
+eventful, which makes it seem long. But I was in the cast, playing a
+small part in the first play she ever appeared in, and that was only
+twelve years ago. She was about twenty-one then. She waited on customers
+in her mother's little stationery store, until one day she eloped with a
+poor young fellow whom she loved, in order to escape a rich old man whom
+her mother had selected for a son-in-law. She could have endured
+poverty well enough, if the mother hadn't done the
+'I--forgive--and--Heaven--bless--you--my--children' act, after which she
+succeeded in making the girl quarrel with her husband continually. She
+was a schemer, that mother. A theatrical manager, whom she knew, was
+introduced to the girl, who was more beautiful then than ever afterward.
+The mother managed to have the girl's husband discharged from the bank
+where he was employed on the same day that the manager made the girl an
+offer to go on the stage. The boy naturally wanted to keep his wife with
+him, but the mother told him he was a fool.
+
+"'I'll travel with her,' she said, 'and you stay here and get another
+situation.' The wife, intoxicated at the prospects of stage triumphs,
+urged, and the boy gave in.
+
+"A year or so after that, the girl had drifted completely out of the
+husband's life, as they say in society plays, the mother managed to
+bring about the estrangement so promptly.
+
+"The husband stayed at home and got work in a railroad office or
+somewhere, so as to earn money with which to drink himself to death--I
+say, let's go in here and eat. If we go to the club, I'll be bored to
+death with congratulations."
+
+We turned into a lighted vestibule and mounted the stairs to a modest
+little cafe over a Broadway saloon. There, over the cigars and Pilsner
+presently the comedian continued the story:
+
+"When the husband learned that to his charming mother-in-law's
+machinations he owed the loss of his position and his wife, he bided his
+time, like a sensible fellow, and one day he called upon the old lady at
+her flat. Without a word, he proceeded to pull out much of her hair and
+otherwise to disfigure her permanently, which, as she was a vain woman,
+made her miserable the rest of her days. Then he disappeared, and has
+not been heard of since. It seems strange the thing never got into the
+newspapers. By the way, you won't print this story, my boy, until she or
+I leave the profession."
+
+"Why not? Are you the only man who knows it?"
+
+"No; it was general gossip in the profession at that time."
+
+"How did you get it so straight?"
+
+"She told me. I knew her well in those days. Oh, use the story if you
+like, only don't credit it to me. She's very mad because I made a hit
+to-night and she didn't."
+
+"But what was the name of her husband?"
+
+"Poor devil!--his name was--what was it, anyhow? By Jove, I can't think
+of it! It'll come back to me, though, and I'll let you know later. He
+had literary aspirations, by the way. She used to laugh at the poetry he
+had written about her. Poor boy!"
+
+The next night, radical changes having been effected in the burlesque,
+the prima donna made a more creditable showing. I happened to be at the
+stage door again when she came out with her maid after the performance,
+as I had under my guidance one of the newspaper's artists, who had been
+making some sketches of life behind the scenes. She was in a gayer mood
+than that in which she had been on the previous night.
+
+As she was entering the cab, I heard a muffled exclamation, which came
+from the shadow opposite the stage door. Dimly in that shadow could
+be seen a form with arms outstretched toward the woman, as in an
+involuntary gesture. The cab rolled away. The form emerged from the
+darkness and wearily strode by. It was that of my manuscript man. He had
+the same straw hat, stick, and frock coat.
+
+"That queer old chap must be really in love with her," I thought,
+smiling. Such things often happen. I knew a gallery god--but that will
+keep. Evidently here was an amusing case, not without its aspect of
+pathos.
+
+Being in that vicinity on the following night, I strolled up to the
+stage door, merely to see whether the straw hat would be there again.
+There it was, patiently waiting, scourged by the most ferocious of
+January winds.
+
+Doubtless the man came here every night to catch a glimpse of his
+divinity. He was quite unobtrusive, and I was probably the only one who
+noticed his constant attendance. I learned at the newspaper office that
+he had called for the rejected manuscript bearing his name,--Ernest
+Ruddle. Then for a time I neither saw nor thought of him.
+
+One night, in the last of January,--the coldest of that savage
+winter,--I happened again to be in the corridor leading to the stage
+door, having come from within the theatre in advance of my friend the
+comedian, with whom I was to have supper at the Actors' Athletic Club.
+The actress's cab was waiting. The dark little portion of the world back
+there was deserted.
+
+Along the corridor, through which the sound of chorus girls' laughter
+came, strolled the comedian, his cigar already lighted and behind it his
+cheerful, hearty, smooth-shaven visage appearing ruddy from the recent
+washing off of "make-up."
+
+"Hello!" he began, thrusting his hand into his overcoat pockets. "By
+the way, while I think of it, I just passed Miss Moran coming from the
+dressing-room, and suddenly that name came back to me, the name of her
+husband. It was a peculiar name,--Ernest Ruddle."
+
+Ernest Ruddle! the name on the manuscript! The man of the restaurant and
+the gallery, the tears, the waiting at the stage door, were explained
+now. Ere we reached the stage door, the actress herself appeared in the
+corridor, on the arm of her maid. She was laughing, rather coarsely. We
+stepped aside to let her pass out into the night.
+
+"So the manager said he'd give me $50 more on the road," she was saying,
+"and I said he would have to make it $75 more--gracious! what's this?"
+
+She had stumbled over something just outside the threshold of the stage
+door. Her companion stooped, while the actress jumped aside and looked
+down at the large black object with both fright and curiosity.
+
+"It's a man," said the maid; "drunk, or asleep, or dead. He looks
+frozen. He's a tramp, I guess; hurry away! We'll tell the policeman on
+the corner."
+
+The actress passed on, with a final look of half-aversion, half-pity, at
+the prostrate body. The comedian and I were both by that body within two
+seconds.
+
+"Frozen or starved, sure!" said the comedian. "Poor beggar! Look at his
+straw hat. Observe his death-clutch on the cane."
+
+From down the alley came two sounds: one was a policeman's approaching
+footsteps; the other, of a woman's laughter. What, to be sure, was the
+dead or drunken body of an unknown vagabond to her?
+
+And it seems strange that I, who never exchanged speech with either the
+woman or the man, was the only one in the world who might recognize in
+the momentary contact of the living with the dead, a dramatic situation.
+
+
+
+
+XXII. -- "POOR YORICK"
+
+
+[Footnote: Courtesy of _Lippincott's Magazine_. Copyright, 1892, by J.B.
+Lippincott Company.]
+
+The name by which he was indicated on the playbills was Overfield. His
+real name was buried in the far past. By several members of the company
+to which he belonged he was often called "Poor Yorick."
+
+I asked the leading juvenile of the company--young Bridges, who was
+supposed to attract women to the theatre, and for whose glorification
+"The Lady of Lyons" was sometimes revived at matinees--how the old man
+had acquired the nickname.
+
+"I gave it to him myself last season," replied Bridges, loftily. "Can't
+you guess why? You remember the graveyard scene in 'Hamlet.' The skull
+of Yorick, you know, had lain in the earth three and twenty years.
+Yorick had been dead that long. Well, the old man had been dead for
+about the same length of time,--professionally dead, I mean. See?"
+
+It was true that, so far as being known by the world went, the old man
+was as good, or as bad, as dead. He no longer played other than quite
+unimportant parts.
+
+It was said by some one that he was the poorest actor and the noblest
+man in the country; a statement commended by Jennison, an Englishman who
+usually played villains, to this, that his were the worst art and best
+heart in the profession.
+
+Poor Yorick was a thin man, with a smooth, gentle face, lamblike blue
+eyes, and curling gray locks that receded gracefully from his forehead.
+He had just an individualizing amount of the pomposity characteristic
+of many old-time actors. He was not known to have any living kin. He
+permitted himself one weakness, a liking for whiskey, an indulgence
+which was never noticed to have brought appreciable harm upon him.
+
+Once I asked him when he had made his debut. He answered, "When Joe
+Jefferson was still young and before Billie Crane was heard of."
+
+"In what role?"
+
+"As four soldiers," he replied.
+
+"How could that be?"
+
+He explained that he had first appeared as a super in a military drama,
+marching as a soldier. The procession, in order to create an illusion
+of length, had passed across the stage and back, the return being made
+behind the scenes four times continuously in the same direction.
+
+The old man took uncomplainingly to the name applied to him by Bridges.
+He must have known what it implied, for surely he could not have
+mistaken himself for "a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent
+fancy." His non-resentment was but an evidence of his good nature, for
+he was aware that it was not a very general custom of actors to give
+each other nicknames, and that his case was an exception.
+
+When he was playing the insignificant part of the old family servant of
+a New York banker, in the most successful comedy of that season, he came
+to know Bridges better than ever before. Poor Yorick had little more
+to do in the play than to come on and turn up some light, arrange some
+papers on a desk, go off, and afterward return and lower the light.
+Bridges was doing the role of the bank clerk in love with the banker's
+daughter. Yorick and Bridges, through some set of circumstances or
+other, were sharers of the same dressing-room.
+
+Upon a certain Wednesday, and after a matinee, the two were in their
+dressing-room, hastily washing up their faces and putting on their
+street clothes. Said the old man:
+
+"Did you notice the pretty little girl in the upper box? She reminds me
+of--" here his voice fell and took on suddenly a tone of sadness--"of
+some one I knew once, long ago."
+
+Bridges, drying his face with a towel before the big mirror, did not
+observe the old man's change of voice, nor did he heed the last part of
+the sentence.
+
+"Notice her?" he answered, with a touch of triumphant vanity in his
+manner of speech. "I should say I did. She was there on my account.
+I'm going to make a date with her for supper after the performance
+to-night."
+
+Old Overfield, sitting on a trunk, stared at Bridges in surprise.
+
+"Do you know her?" he asked.
+
+"No," replied the leading juvenile. "That is, I have never met her, but
+she's been writing me mash notes lately, asking for a meeting. In the
+last one she said she could get away from her house this evening, as her
+father's out of town and her mother is going over to Philadelphia this
+afternoon. So she invited me to have supper with her to-night, and was
+good enough to say she'd occupy that box this afternoon, so I could see
+what she was like. Didn't you observe her embarrassment when I came on
+the stage? I paid no attention to her first letter. But, having seen
+her, you bet I'll answer the last one right away. Don't you wish you
+were me, old fellow?"
+
+The old fellow stood up and looked at Bridges severely.
+
+"Yes, I do wish I were you,--just long enough to see that you don't
+answer that girl's letter. Surely you don't mean to!"
+
+"Hello! What have you got to do with it? Do you know the young woman?"
+
+"No, I don't. But I can easily guess all about her. She's some romantic
+little girl, still pure and good, afflicted with one of those idiotic
+infatuations for an actor, which is sure to bring trouble to her if
+you don't behave like a white man. You want to show her the idiocy of
+writing those letters, by ignoring them. You know that actors who care
+to do themselves and the profession credit make it a rule never to
+answer a letter from a girl like that, unless to give her a word of
+advice. Come, my boy, don't disgrace yourself and profession. Don't
+spoil the life of a pretty but foolish girl who, if you do the right
+thing, will soon repent her silliness, and make some square young fellow
+a good wife."
+
+Bridges had continued to dress himself during this long speech, assuming
+a show of contemptuous indignation as it progressed. When Overfield,
+astonished at his own eloquence, had subsided, the young man replied, in
+a quiet but rather insolent tone:
+
+"Look here, old man, don't try to work the Polonius racket on me. I
+don't like advice, and I'm going to meet that girl, see? She arranged
+the whole thing herself; she's to be at a certain spot at eleven-thirty
+P.M. with a cab. All I've got to do is to signify my assent in a single
+line, which I'm going to write and send by messenger as soon as I get
+out of here. Of course, if the girl was a friend of yours, it would be
+different, but she isn't, and if you want to remain on good terms with
+me, you won't put in your oar. Now that's all settled."
+
+"Is it? Well, young man, I don't want to remain on good terms with
+anybody I can't respect. I can't respect a man who would take advantage
+of a love-struck girl's ignorance of life. If you meet her, you will
+simply be obtaining favours on false pretences, anyhow, for you know
+you're not really half the fascinating, romantic, clever youth that you
+seem when you're on the stage speaking another man's thoughts. That girl
+is probably good, and she looks like some one I used to know. If I can
+save her, I will, by thunder!"
+
+"Really, old man, you're quite worked up. If you could act half that
+well on the stage, you'd be doing lead, instead of dusting furniture
+while the audience gets settled in its seats."
+
+Old Yorick stood for a moment speechless, stung by the insult. Then he
+took up his hat, excitedly, and left the dressing-room without a word.
+
+Some of the other members of the company wondered at the angry, flushed
+look on his face when he hurried through the corridor to the stage door.
+A few minutes later he was seen walking down the street, apparently much
+heated in mind. When he reached a certain cafe he went in, sat down, and
+called for whiskey. He remained alone in deep thought, mechanically
+and unconsciously answering the salutations bestowed upon him by two or
+three acquaintances who strolled in. Suddenly he nodded thrice, as if
+denoting the acquiescence of his judgment in some plan of action
+formed by his inventive faculty. He rose quickly, paid his bill at the
+cashier's desk, and moved rapidly across the street to the ---- Hotel.
+Passing in through a broad entrance, he turned aside to a writing-room,
+where, without removing his soft hat, he sat down at a desk.
+
+He was soon immersed in the composition of a letter, which caused him
+many contractions of the brow, many lapses during which he abstractedly
+stared at vacancy, many fresh beginnings, and the whole of the two hours
+allowed him before the evening's performance for dinner.
+
+When he had finished the letter, he carefully read it, and made a few
+corrections. Then he folded it up, put it in an envelope, and placed
+it unsealed in his inside coat pocket. He arose with an expression of
+resolution about his eyes that was quite new there.
+
+Ascertaining by the clock in the thronged main corridor that the time
+was ten minutes after seven, the old man rushed into the cafe, where he
+devoured hastily a chicken croquette, and swallowed a cup of coffee
+and a glass of whiskey before starting to the theatre. He was in his
+dressing-room and in his shirt-sleeves, touching up his eyebrows, when
+Bridges arrived. A cool greeting passed between the two.
+
+"You sent the note?" asked the old man.
+
+"What note?" gruffly queried Bridges, taking off his coat.
+
+"To that girl."
+
+"Most certainly."
+
+A curious look, unobserved by Bridges, shot from Poor Yorick's eyes. It
+seemed to say, "Wait, things may happen that you're not looking for."
+
+At about the time when Bridges and Yorick were dressing for the
+performance, a newspaper reporter, wishing to make a few notes of an
+interview that had been accorded him by a politician staying in the
+hotel at which the old man had written his long letter, went into the
+writing-room and made use of the desk where the actor had sat earlier in
+the evening. Several sheets of blank paper were scattered over it. One
+of them contained almost a page of writing. Yorick had negligently left
+it there. It was a beginning made by him before he had succeeded in
+obtaining a satisfactory wording for his thoughts. This rejected opening
+read:
+
+"My DEAR, FOOLISH YOUNG LADY:--Something has happened which prevents Mr.
+Bridges from keeping the appointment with you, and you're much better
+off on that account, for nothing but unhappiness can come to you if you
+allow yourself to be carried out of your senses by your infatuation for
+a man who has neither the brains nor the manliness which he seems to
+have when playing parts that call for the mere simulation of these
+gifts. Never make an appointment with a man you do not know, especially
+a young and vain actor who has once got the worst of it in a divorce
+suit. You'll be thankful some day for this advice, for I know what I
+speak of. I was once, years ago, just such an actor. The woman got
+into all sorts of trouble because she wrote me such letters as you have
+written Bridges, and brought to an early end a life that might have been
+very happy and youthful. Looked like you, and it is a memory of what she
+lost and suffered that makes me wish to save you. My dear young ----"
+
+There were yet two lines to spare at the foot of the page. The newspaper
+man, interested by the fragment, thrust it into his pocket.
+
+When Poor Yorick had finished his final scene in the comedy at the
+----Theatre that night, he made haste to dress and to leave the
+playhouse. But he loitered near the stage entrance, keeping in the
+shadow on the other side of the alley, out of the range of the light
+from the incandescent globe over the door.
+
+Bridges was slightly surprised, on returning to his dressing-room, to
+find that Yorick had already gone. But he attributed this to the ill
+feeling that had arisen on account of the intended meeting with the girl
+of the letters and the box.
+
+The leading juvenile attired himself for the conquest carefully but
+rapidly. When he was ready he surveyed his reflection complacently in
+the long mirror, assuming the slightly languid look that he intended to
+maintain during the first half-hour of the supper. He retained the dress
+suit which he wore in the second and third act of the play, and which
+he rarely displayed outside of the theatre. He flattered himself that
+he was quite irresistible, and wondered whether she would take him to
+Delmonico's or to some quiet little place. He indulged, too, in some
+vague speculation as to what the supper might result in. The girl was
+evidently of a rich family, but her people would doubtless never hear of
+her making a match with him, that divorce affair being in recent memory.
+A marriage was probably out of the question. However, the girl was a
+beauty and this meeting was at least worth the trouble. So he donned his
+coat and hat and swaggered out of the theatre. He had no sooner turned
+from the alley upon which the stage door opened than Yorick, unnoticed
+by him, darted out in pursuit. Ten minutes' walking brought the leading
+juvenile near the spot where he was to be awaited by the girl in the
+cab. Yorick, whose only means of ascertaining the place of meeting was
+to follow Bridges, kept as near the young actor as was compatible
+with safety from discovery by the latter. Bridges, strutting along
+unconscious of Yorick's presence a few yards behind, had half-traversed
+the deserted block of tall brown stone residences, when he saw a cab
+standing at the corner ahead of him. He quickened his pace in such a
+way as to warn the old man that the eventful moment was at hand. The cab
+stood under an electric light before an ivy-grown church.
+
+Yorick, with noiseless steps, accelerated his gait. Bridges, as he
+neared the cab, deflected his course toward the curbstone and threw his
+head back impressively. This little action, interpreted rightly by the
+pursuer, was the old man's cue. Yorick suddenly rushed forward with
+surprising agility.
+
+Before Bridges could be seen by the occupant of the cab for which he was
+making, he was dazed by a blow on the side of the head, just beneath
+the ear, and knocked off his feet by a sound thump on the same spot. He
+reeled, clutched at the air, and fell heavily upon the sidewalk. There
+he lay stunned and silent.
+
+Yorick, not waiting to see what became of the man whom he had felled,
+dashed forward to the cab. Opening the door, he caught a momentary
+vision of a white, round face, with big, scared eyes, above a
+palpitating mass of soft silk and fur, and against a black background.
+He thrust toward her the letter, which he had quickly drawn from his
+pocket, and whispered, huskily:
+
+"Mr. Bridges couldn't come. Here's a note."
+
+Then he slammed the cab door, and called out in a commanding tone:
+
+"Drive on there! Quick!"
+
+The cabman, who had evidently received directions in advance from the
+girl, jerked his reins, and the cab moved forward, turned, and rattled
+away, the horse at a brisk trot.
+
+Yorick speedily left the scene. At the next corner he met a policeman,
+to whom he said:
+
+"There's a man lying on the sidewalk back there by the church. I don't
+know whether he's drunk or not."
+
+He was off before the officer could detain him.
+
+Bridges spent the night in a station-house, recovering from the effects
+of a fall, which the police attributed to drunkenness. Assuming that he
+had received his blows from some masculine relative or admirer of the
+girl, he gave a false account of the bruises when the next night he
+asked the manager for a few nights of rest and enabled his understudy to
+obtain a chance long coveted.
+
+The leading juvenile manifestly thought best not to attempt a renewal of
+a flirtation with a young woman who had so formidable a protector; and
+the girl herself, whatever became of her, addressed him no more epistles
+of adoration, or of any sort whatever.
+
+Yorick got from the stage manager permission to change his
+dressing-room. Thereafter he and Bridges maintained a mutual coolness,
+until one day the leading juvenile, warmed by cocktails, melted, and
+addressed the old man familiarly by his nickname.
+
+"Old fellow," said Bridges, over a cafe table, "when I come to play
+Hamlet, I'll send for you to act Poor Yorick. You'd do it well. You're
+always best, you know, in parts that don't require you to come on the
+stage at all."
+
+The old man smiled grimly and then shrugged his shoulders at this
+pleasantry. When he died the other day, he left a curious will, in
+which, after naming several insignificant legacies, he bequeathed his
+skull "to a so-called actor, one Charles Bridges, to be used by him in
+the graveyard scene when he shall have become able to play Hamlet,--if
+the skull be not disintegrated by that time."
+
+
+
+
+XXIII. -- COINCIDENCE
+
+Max took us down into a German place into the bowels of the earth. It
+was a bit of Berlin transplanted to Philadelphia and thriving beneath
+a Teutonic eating-house. Imagine a great cellar, with stone floor,
+ornamented ceiling, massive rectangular pillars of brown wood,
+substantial tables, heavy mediaeval chairs, crossbeams bearing pictures
+of peasant girls and lettered with sentiments of good cheer in German,
+and walls covered with beer-mugs of every size and device.
+
+Scores of men sat talking at the tables, smoking, devouring sandwiches,
+upturning their mugs of beer over the capacious receptacles provided by
+nature.
+
+The mediaeval chairs appealed to the romanticism that lies beneath
+Breffny's satirical exterior; and when Max called our attention to the
+fact that the mugs of beer came through apertures from caves beneath the
+street, we were content.
+
+For the hour, the problem of human happiness was solved for us three by
+three foaming mugs, three sandwiches, and tobacco.
+
+Here communed we three, blown from various winds, to this local Bohemia:
+Max, native of the free German City of Frankfort, operatic manager
+in Rio Janeiro, musician in New York, Denver resident by adoption,
+Philadelphia newspaperman by preference; Breffny, born in a Spanish
+village, reared in Continental countries, professedly an Irishman, but
+more than half-Latin in temperament and appearance, a cyclopedia for the
+benefit of his friends, and myself.
+
+The talk ran to the imposture recently attempted by young Mr. Herdling,
+who claimed that the dead body found at Tarrytown was that of his wife.
+
+"A very touching fake," said Max.
+
+"Yes; thanks to the skill of the reporters who wrote up his story,"
+cried Breffny.
+
+"We visited many morgues in search of her, Louise and I," said I,
+quoting the most effective passage of the narrative.
+
+"I did know of one case of a husband starting off at random to find his
+runaway wife," observed Breffny.
+
+"As there's yet an hour to midnight, we have time for one of your
+stories."
+
+"I can tell this in five minutes. All I know of the story is the
+beginning. No one ever heard of the end. It was like this:
+
+"When I lived in Glasgow, I knew a young fellow there who was timekeeper
+in a shipyard. He was a very quiet, pleasant boy, so bashful that I used
+to wonder how he had ever summoned the courage to propose to the pretty
+Scotch girl who was his wife. As I got to know more of the pair, I
+divined the secret. Although poor, he was of good Glasgow parentage,
+while the wife had been a country girl so eager to get to the city that
+she had courted him while he was on a visit to the village in which she
+had lived. She had merely used him as a means for finding the life for
+which she had longed.
+
+"How much he really loved her was never suspected until he came home one
+evening and found that she had run away with the youngest son of one of
+the proprietors of the shipyard.
+
+"He learned within a week that they had sailed for America. He packed a
+valise, took the money that he had saved, and started out.
+
+"'But where are you going to look for them?' I asked him.
+
+"'To America,' he said, turning toward me, his face drawn and gaunt with
+the grief that he had survived.
+
+"'But America is a vast country.'
+
+"'I will hunt till I find her.'
+
+"'And when you find her--you will not kill her, surely!'
+
+"'I will try to get her to come back to me.'
+
+"He took passage in the steerage, and I do not know what happened to him
+after that."
+
+Each of us hid his emotions in his beer-mug. Then Max ordered fresh
+mugs, and said that Breffny's story recalled a somewhat similar thing
+that he had witnessed in Denver.
+
+"When I was a reporter out there, I was standing one evening in front
+of a hotel. A crowd collected to see the body of a guest brought out and
+placed upon an ambulance.
+
+"'Where are you taking him, and what is it?' I asked the driver.
+
+"'To the lazaretto. Smallpox.'"
+
+For a moment, while he was being lifted into the ambulance, the victim's
+face was visible. A loud cry was heard in the crowd. It came from a
+ragged, wild-looking man, whose unkempt beard made him look much older
+than I afterward found him to be. As the ambulance hurried off, he ran
+after it, shouting:
+
+"'I must see that man! Stop! I must ask him something!'
+
+"But he tripped upon a horse-car track, and when he had staggered to his
+feet, the ambulance was out of sight.
+
+"I ran into the hotel and asked the clerk about the lazaretto patient.
+He was a young European--an Englishman--they thought, who had
+arrived from the East two days ago, and whose condition had just been
+discovered.
+
+"Coming out, I went to the tramp who had cried out at the sight of the
+ill man. I found him seated on the curbstone, weeping like a child.
+I asked him why he wished to see the smallpox victim, and said that I
+could get him admission to the lazaretto, if he would tell me what he
+knew, and wouldn't let any other reporter have the story.
+
+"He jumped up eagerly.
+
+"'It's this,' he said. 'That man ran away with my wife, and I've hunted
+them over sea and land. This is the first sight I've had of him.'
+
+"'Then,' I said, 'if you mean to harm him, I'm afraid I can't bring you
+to him.'
+
+"'Him!' said the ragged man, disdainfully. 'I don't want to hurt him.
+I only want to find out where she is. I swear I wouldn't harm either of
+them.'
+
+"I accompanied him to the city physician, with whom he had a long talk.
+That official finally promised to take him to the lazaretto. The doctor
+led the man to the side of the iron bed where the smallpox patient lay.
+The latter started like a frightened child at sight of his pursuer.
+
+"'Remember,' said the doctor to the sick man, 'you have scarcely a
+chance for life. You would do well to tell the truth.'
+
+"'Only tell me where she is,' pleaded the husband, 'and I'll forgive you
+all.'
+
+"The sick man gasped:
+
+"'I left her in Philadelphia--at the station. She had smallpox. It was
+from her I got it. I was a coward--a cur. I left her to save myself. The
+money I had brought from home was nearly all gone. Ask her to forgive
+me.'
+
+"He was dead that evening. The husband was then upon an east-bound
+freight-train. The newspaper telegraphed to Philadelphia, but nothing
+could be found out about the woman. I've often wondered what became of
+the man."
+
+The loud hubbub of conversation,--nearly all in German,--the shouts
+of the waiters, the noise of their footfalls upon the stone floor, the
+sound of mugs being placed upon tables and of Max draining his "stein"
+of beer, bridged the hiatus between the ending of Max's narrative and
+the beginning of my own:
+
+"Your story reminds me of one to which the city editor assigned me on
+one of my 'late nights.' I took a cab and went to the station-house. The
+case had been reported by a policeman at Ninth and Locust Streets, who
+had called for a patrol-wagon. From him I got the story. He had seen the
+thing happen.
+
+"He was walking down Locust at half-past twelve that night, and was
+opposite the Midnight Mission, when his attention was attracted to
+the only two persons who were at that moment on the other side of the
+street. One was a man of the appearance of a vagabond, coming from Ninth
+Street. The other was a woman, who had come from Tenth Street, and who
+seemed to walk with great difficulty, as if ready to sink at every step
+from weakness.
+
+"The woman dropped her head as she neared the man. The man peered into
+her face, in the manner of one who had acquired the habit of examining
+the countenances of passers-by.
+
+"The two met under the gas-lamp that is so conspicuous a night feature
+of the north side of Locust Street, between Ninth and Tenth.
+
+"The woman gave no attention to the man. So exhausted was she that she
+leaned helplessly against the fence. The man ran forward, shrieking like
+a lunatic.
+
+"'Jeannie!'
+
+"The woman lifted her eyes in a dull kind of amazement and whispered:
+
+"'Donald!'
+
+"She fell back, but he caught her in his arms and kissed her lips
+a dozen times, with a half-savage gladness, crying and laughing
+hysterically, as women do.
+
+"When the policeman had reached the pair, the woman had seen the last of
+this world.
+
+"Afterward we found that she had been discharged from the municipal
+hospital, where she had been in the smallpox ward two weeks before; and
+we surmised that she had virtually had nothing to eat since then.
+
+"At the station-house the man explained that the woman was his runaway
+wife. He had started in search of her two years before, with no other
+clue as to her whereabouts than the knowledge that she had sailed for
+America with a man named Ferriss--"
+
+"What?" cried Max. "Was the name Archibald Ferriss? That was the name of
+the man who died in the Denver lazaretto--"
+
+But Max was stopped by Breffny, who almost shouted in excitement:
+
+"And the name of the son of McKeown & Ferriss, of Glasgow, in whose
+shipyard was employed as timekeeper the Donald Wilson--"
+
+"Donald Wilson was the name of the man who met his wife that night in
+front of the Midnight Mission," said I, in further confirmation.
+
+It was remarkable. One of the three chapters of this tragic story had
+entered into the experience of each of us three who sat there emptying
+stone mugs. Now, for the first time, was the story complete to each of
+us.
+
+"But what became of the man?" asked Breffny.
+
+"When the police lieutenant spoke of having her body interred in
+Potter's Field, the husband spoke up indignantly. He brought forth two
+gold pieces, saying:
+
+"'I have the money for her grave. I saved this through all my
+wanderings, because I thought that when I should find her she might be
+homeless and hungry and in need.'
+
+"So he had her buried respectably in the suburbs somewhere, and I was
+too busy at that time to follow up his subsequent movements. It is
+enough for the story that he found his wife."
+
+
+
+
+XXIV. -- NEWGAG THE COMEDIAN
+
+It was not his real name or his stage name, but it was the one under
+which he was best known by those who best knew him. It had been thrown
+at him in a cafe one night by a newspaper man after the performance,
+and had clung to him. Its significance lay in the fact that his
+"gags"--supposedly comic things said by presumably comic men in nominal
+opera or burlesque--invariably were old. The man who bestowed the title
+upon him thought it a fine bit of irony.
+
+Newgag received it without expressed resentment, but without mirth, and
+he bore its repetition patiently as seasons went by. He was accustomed
+to enduring calmly the jests, the indignities that were elicited by
+his peculiar appearance, his doleful expression, his slow and bungling
+speech and movement, his diffident manner.
+
+He was one of the forbearing men, the many who are doomed to continual
+suffering of a kind that their sensitiveness and timidity make it the
+more difficult for them to bear.
+
+Undying ambition burned beneath his undemonstrative surface; dauntless
+courage lay under his lack of ability.
+
+He was an extremely spare man, of extraordinary height, and the bend of
+his shoulders gave to his small head a comical thrust forward. His black
+hair was without curl, and it would tolerate no other arrangement than
+being combed back straight. It was allowed to grow downward until
+it scraped the back of Newgag's collar, a device for concealing the
+meagreness of his neck.
+
+He had a smooth, pale face, slanting from ears to nose like a wedge,
+and the dimness of the blue eyes added to its introspective cast. He
+blushed, as a rule, when he met new acquaintances or was addressed
+suddenly. He had a gloomy look and a hesitating way of speech. An
+amusing spectacle was his mechanical-looking smile, which, when he
+became conscious of it, passed through several stages expressive of
+embarrassment until his normal mournful aspect was reached.
+
+As he usually appeared in a sack coat when off the stage, the length of
+his legs was divertingly emphasized. After the fashion of great actors
+of a bygone generation, he wore a soft black felt hat, dinged in the
+crown from front to rear.
+
+He had entered "the profession" from the amateur stage, by way of the
+comic opera chorus, and to that chance was due his being located in
+the comic opera wing of the great histrionic edifice. He had originally
+preferred tragedy, but the first consideration was the getting upon
+the stage by any means. Having industriously worked his way out of the
+chorus, he had been reconciled by habit to his environment, and had
+come to aspire to eminence therein. He had reached the standing of a
+secondary comedian,--that is to say, a man playing secondary comic roles
+in the pieces for which he is cast. He was useful in such companies as
+were directly or indirectly controlled by their leading comedians,
+for there never could be any fears of his outshining those autocratic
+personages. Only in his wildest hopes did he ever look upon the centre
+of the stage as a spot possible for him to attain.
+
+His means of evoking laughter upon the stage were laborious on his part
+and mystifying to the thoughtful observer. He took noticeable means to
+change from his real self. It mattered not what was the nature of the
+part he filled, he invariably assumed an unnatural, rasping voice; he
+stretched his mouth to its utmost reach and lowered the extremities of
+his lips; he turned his toes inward (naturally his feet described an
+abnormal angle) and bowed his arms. Brought up in the school which
+teaches that to make others laugh one must never smile one's self,
+he wore a grotesquely lugubrious and changeless countenance. Such was
+Newgag in his every impersonation. When he thought he was funniest, he
+appeared to be in most pain and was most depressing.
+
+"My methods are legitimate," he would say, when he had enlisted one's
+attention and apparent admiration across a table bearing beer-bottles
+and sandwiches. "The people want horse-play nowadays. But when I've got
+to descend to that sort of thing, I'll go to the variety stage or circus
+ring at once--or quit."
+
+"That's a happy thought, old man," said a comedian of the younger
+school, one night, when Newgag had uttered his wonted speech. "Why don't
+you quit?"
+
+Such a speech sufficed to rob Newgag of his self-possession and to
+reduce him to silence. He could not cope with easy, offhand,
+impromptu jesters. In truth, no one tried more than Newgag to excel in
+"horse-play," but his temperament or his training did not equip him for
+excelling in it; he defended the monotony, emptiness, and toilsomeness
+of his humour on the ground that it was "legitimate."
+
+One night Newgag drank two glasses of beer in rapid succession and
+looked at me with a touching countenance.
+
+"Old boy," he said, in his homely drawl, "I'm discouraged! I begin to
+think I'm not in it!"
+
+"Why, what's wrong?"
+
+"Well, I've dropped to the fact that, after all these years in the
+business, I can't make them laugh."
+
+I was just about to say, "So you've just awakened to that?" but pity and
+politeness deterred me. Every one else had known it, all these years.
+Newgag, to be sure, should naturally have been, as he was, the last to
+discover it.
+
+Newgag thus went one step further than any comedian I have ever known.
+Having detected his inability to amuse audiences, he confessed it.
+
+People who know actors and read this will already have said that it is
+a fiction, and that Newgag's admission is false to life. Not so; I am
+writing not about comedians in general, but about Newgag.
+
+That he had come to so exceptional a concession marked the depth of his
+despair. I tried to cheer him.
+
+"Nonsense, my boy! They give you bad parts. Go out of comic opera. Try
+tragedy."
+
+I had spoken innocently and sincerely, but Newgag thought I was jesting.
+Instead of his usual attempt at lofty callousness, however, he smiled
+that dismal, marionette-like smile of his. That gave me an idea, of
+which I said nothing at the time.
+
+Several months afterward, a manager, who is a friend of mine, was
+suddenly plunged in distress because of the serious illness of an actor
+who was to fill a part in a new American comedy that the manager was to
+produce on the next night.
+
+"What on earth shall I do?" he asked.
+
+"Play the part yourself, as Hoyt does in such an emergency--or get
+Newgag."
+
+"Who's Newgag?"
+
+"He's a friend of mine, out of a position. I met him to-day very much
+frayed."
+
+"Bring him to me."
+
+Newgag was overwhelmed when I told him of the opportunity.
+
+"I never acted in straight comedy," he said. "I can't do it. I might as
+well try to play Juliet."
+
+"He wants you only to speak the lines, that's all. You're a quick study,
+you know. Come on!"
+
+I had almost to drag the man to the manager. He allowed himself, in a
+semistupefied condition, to be engaged. He took the part, sat up all
+night in his boarding-house and learned it, went to rehearsal almost
+letter-perfect in the morning, and nervously prepared to face the ordeal
+of the evening.
+
+At six o'clock, he wished to go to the manager and give up the part.
+
+"I can never do it," he wailed to me. "I haven't had time to form
+a conception of it and to get up byplay. You see, it's an eccentric
+character part,--a man from the country whom everybody takes for a fool,
+but who shows up strong at the last. I can't--"
+
+"Oh, don't act it. You're only engaged in the emergency, you know.
+Simply go on and say your lines and come off."
+
+"That's all I can do," he said, with a dubious shake of the head. "If
+only I'd had time to study it!"
+
+American plays had taken foothold, and this premier of a new one by an
+author of two previous successes drew a "typical first night audience."
+Newgag, having abandoned all idea of making a hit, or of acting the part
+any further than the mere delivery of the speeches went, was no longer
+inordinately nervous. When he first entered he was a trifle frightened,
+and his unavoidable lack of prepared stage business made him awkward and
+embarrassed for a time. The awkwardness remained, but the embarrassment
+eventually passed away. He spoke in his natural voice and retained
+his actual manner. When the action required him to laugh, he did so,
+exhibiting his characteristic perfunctory smile.
+
+He received a special call before the curtain after the third act. He
+had no thought that it was meant for him until the stage manager pushed
+him out from the wings. He came back looking distressed.
+
+"Are they guying me?" he asked the stage manager.
+
+The papers agreed the next day that one of the hits of the performance
+was made by Newgag "in an odd part which he had conceived in a
+strikingly original way, and impersonated with wonderful finish and
+subtle drollery."
+
+"What does it mean?" he gasped.
+
+I enlightened him.
+
+"My boy, you simply played yourself. Did it never occur to you that
+in your own person you're unconsciously one of the drollest men I ever
+saw?"
+
+"But I didn't act!"
+
+"You didn't. And take my advice--don't!"
+
+And he doesn't. Upon the reputation of his success in that comedy he
+arranged with another manager to appear in a play especially written for
+him. He is a prosperous star now. Whatever his play or part he always
+presents the same personality on the stage and he has made that
+personality dear to many theatre-goers. He does not appear too
+frequently or too long in any one place; hence he is warmly welcomed
+wherever and whenever he returns. He is classed among leading actors,
+and the ordinary person does not stop sufficiently long to observe that
+he is no actor at all.
+
+"This isn't exactly art," he said to me, the other night, with a tinge
+of self-rebuke. "But it's success."
+
+And the history of Newgag is the history of many.
+
+
+
+
+XXV. -- AN OPERATIC EVENING
+
+I
+
+_A Desperate Youth_
+
+The second act of "William Tell" had ended at the Grand Opera House.
+The incandescent lights of ceiling and proscenium flashed up, showering
+radiance upon the vast surface of summer costumes and gay faces in the
+auditorium. The audience, relieved of the stress of attention, became
+audible in a great composite of chatter. A host streamed along the
+aisles into the wide lobbies, and thence its larger part jostled through
+the front doors to the brilliantly illuminated vestibule. Many passed
+on into the wide sidewalk, where the electric light poured its rays upon
+countless promenaders whose footfalls incessantly beat upon the aural
+sense. Scores of bicyclists of both sexes sped over the asphalt up and
+down, some now and then deviating to make way for a lumbering yellow
+'bus or a hurrying carriage.
+
+Men and women, young people composing the majority, strolled to and fro
+in the roomy lobby that environs the auditorium on all sides save that
+of the stage. A group of enthusiasts stood between the rear door of the
+box-office and the wide entrance to the long middle aisle.
+
+"How magnificently Guille held that last note!"
+
+"What good taste and artistic sense Madame Kronold has!"
+
+"Del Puente hasn't been in better voice in years."
+
+"But you know, Mademoiselle Islar is decidedly a lyric soprano."
+
+These were some of the scraps of the conversation of that group. A
+lithe, athletic-looking man of thirty stood mechanically listening
+to them, as he stroked his black moustache. He was in summer attire,
+evidently disdaining conventionalities, preferring comfort.
+
+Suddenly losing interest in the conversation in his vicinity, he started
+toward the Montgomery Avenue side of the lobby, with the apparent
+intention of breathing some outside air at one of the wide-barred exits,
+where children stood looking in from the sidewalk, and catching what
+glimpses they could of the audience through the doorways in the glass
+partition bounding the auditorium.
+
+He by chance cast his glance up the unused staircase leading to the
+balcony from the northern part of the lobby. He saw upon the third step
+a young woman in a dark flannel outing-dress, her face concealed by a
+veil. She seemed to be watching some one among those who stood or moved
+near the Montgomery Avenue exits, which had wire barriers.
+
+"By Jove!" he said, within himself, "surely I know that figure! But I
+thought she had gone to the Catskills, and I never supposed her capable
+of wearing negligee clothes at the theatre. There can be no mistaking
+that wrist, though, or that turn of the shoulders."
+
+He stepped softly to her side and lightly touched one of the admired
+shoulders.
+
+She turned quickly and suppressed an exclamation ere it was
+half-uttered.
+
+"Why, Harry--Doctor Haslam, I mean! How did you know it was I?"
+
+"Why, Amy--that is to say, Miss Winnett! What on earth are you doing
+here? Pardon the question, but I thought you were on the mountains. I'm
+all the more glad to see you."
+
+While he pressed her hand she looked searchingly into his eyes, a fact
+of which he was conscious despite her veil.
+
+"I'm not here--as far as my people may know. I'm at the Catskills with
+my cousins--except to my cousins themselves. To them I've come back home
+for a week's conference with my dressmaker. Our house isn't entirely
+closed up, you know. Aunt Rachel likes the hot weather of Philadelphia
+all summer through, and she's still here. When I arrived here this
+morning, I told her the dressmaker story. She retires at eight and she
+thinks I'm in bed too. But I'm here, and nobody suspects it but you and
+Mary, the servant at home, who knows where I've come, and who's to stay
+up for me till I return to-night. That's all of it, and now, as you're a
+friend of mine, you mustn't tell any one, will you?"
+
+"But I know nothing to tell," said the bewildered doctor. "What does all
+this subterfuge, this mystery mean?"
+
+Amy Winnett considered silently for a moment, while Doctor Haslam
+mentally admired the slim, well-rounded figure, the graceful poise of
+the little head with its mass of brown hair beneath a sailor hat of the
+style that "came in" with this summer.
+
+"I may as well tell you all," she answered, presently. "I may need your
+assistance, too. I can rely upon you?"
+
+"Through fire and water."
+
+"I've come to Philadelphia to prevent a suicide."
+
+"Good gracious!"
+
+"Yes. You see, I've broken the engagement between me and Tom Appleton."
+
+"What! You don't mean it?"
+
+There was a striking note of jubilation in the doctor's interruption.
+Miss Winnett made no comment thereupon, but continued:
+
+"I finally decided that I didn't care as much for Tom as I'd thought I
+did, and then I had a suspicion--but I won't mention that--"
+
+"No, you needn't. Your fortune--pardon me, I simply took the privilege
+of an old friend who had himself been rejected by you. Go on."
+
+"Don't interrupt again. As I said, I concluded that I couldn't be Tom's
+wife, and I told him so. He went to the Catskills when we went, you
+know, as he thought he could keep up his law studies as well there as
+here. You can't imagine how he took it. I'd never before known how much
+he--he really wished to marry me. But I was unflinching, and at last he
+left me, vowing that he would return to Philadelphia and commit suicide.
+He swore a terrible oath that my next message from him would be found
+in his hands after his death. And he set to-night as the time for the
+deed."
+
+"But why couldn't he have done it there and then?"
+
+"How hard-hearted you are! Probably because he wanted to put his affairs
+in order before putting an end to his life."
+
+She spoke in all seriousness. Doctor Haslam succeeded with difficulty in
+restraining a smile.
+
+"You don't imagine for a moment," he said, "that the young man intended
+keeping his oath."
+
+"Don't I? You should have seen the look on his face when he spoke it."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, I couldn't sleep with the thought that a man was going to kill
+himself on my account. It makes me shudder. I'd see his face in my
+dreams every night of my life. Then if a note were really found in
+his hands, addressed to me, the whole thing would come out in the
+newspapers, and wouldn't that be horrible? Of course I couldn't tell
+my cousins anything about his threat, so I invented my excuse quickly,
+packed a small handbag, disguised myself with Cousin Laura's hat and
+veil, and took the same train that Tom took. I've kept my eye on him
+ever since, and he has no idea I'm on his track. The only time I lost
+was in hurrying home with my handbag to see my aunt, but I didn't even
+do that until I'd followed him on Chestnut Street to the down-town
+box-office of this theatre and seen him buy a seat, which I later found
+out from the ticket-seller was for to-night. So here I am, and there he
+is."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Standing over there by that wire thing like a fence next the street."
+
+The doctor looked over as she motioned. He soon recognized the slender
+figure, the indolent attitude of Tom Appleton, the blase young man whom
+he was so accustomed to meeting at billiard-tables, in clubs, or hotels.
+A tolerant, amiable expression saved the youth's smooth, handsome face
+from vacuity. He was dressed with careful nicety.
+
+"But," said Haslam, "a man about to take leave of this life doesn't
+ordinarily waste time going to the opera."
+
+"Why not? He probably came here to think. One can do that well at the
+opera."
+
+"Tom Appleton think?--I beg pardon again. But see, he's talking to a
+girl now, Miss Estabrook, of North Broad Street. His smile to her is not
+the kind of a smile that commonly lights up a man's face on his way to
+death."
+
+"You don't suppose he would conceal his intentions from people by
+putting on his usual gaiety, do you?" she replied, ironically; adding,
+rather stiffly, "He has at least sufficiently good manners to do that,
+if not sufficient duplicity."
+
+"I didn't mean to offend you. My motive was to comfort you with the
+probability that he has changed his mind about shuffling off his mortal
+coil."
+
+"You're not very complimentary, Doctor Haslam. Perhaps you don't think
+that being jilted by me is sufficient to make a man commit suicide."
+
+"Frankly I don't. If I had thought so three years ago, I'd be dust or
+ashes at this present moment. It can't be that you would feel hurt if
+Tom Appleton there should fail to keep his oath and should continue to
+live in spite of your renunciation of him?"
+
+"How dare you think me so vain and cruel, when I've taken all this
+trouble and come all this distance simply to prevent him from keeping
+his oath?"
+
+"But how in the world would you prevent him if he were honestly bent on
+getting rid of himself?"
+
+"By watching him until the moment he makes the attempt, and then rushing
+up and telling him that I'd renew our engagement. That would stop him,
+and gain time for me to manage so that he'd fall in love with some other
+girl and release me of his own accord."
+
+"But think a moment. You can watch him until the opera is out and
+perhaps for some time later. But if he means to die he certainly has a
+sufficient share of good manners to induce him to die quietly in his own
+home. So he'll eventually go home. When his door is locked, how are you
+going to keep your eye on him, and how can you rush to him at the proper
+moment?"
+
+"I never thought of that."
+
+"No, you're a woman."
+
+She proceeded to do some thinking there upon the stairs.
+
+"Oh," she said, finally, "I know what to do. I'll follow him until he
+does go home, to make sure he doesn't attempt anything before that time,
+and then I'll tell the police. They'll watch him."
+
+"You'll probably get Mr. Tom Appleton into some very embarrassing
+complications by so doing."
+
+"What if I do," she said, heroically, "if I save his life? Now, will you
+assist me to watch him? I'll need an escort in the street, of course."
+
+"I put myself at your command from now henceforth, if only for the joy
+of the time that I am thus privileged to pass with you."
+
+She smiled pleasantly, and with pleasure, trusting to her veil to hide
+the facial indication of her feelings. But Haslam's trained gray eye
+noted the smile, and also what kind of smile it was, and the discovery
+had a potent effect upon him. It deprived him momentarily of the power
+of speech, and he looked vacantly at her while colour came and went in
+his face.
+
+Then he regained control of himself and he sighed audibly, while she
+dropped her eyes.
+
+They were still standing upon the stairs, heedless of the confusion of
+vocal sounds that arose from the lobby strollers, from the boys selling
+librettos, from the people returning from the vestibule in a thick
+stream, from the musicians afar in the orchestra, tuning their
+instruments, from the many sources that provide the delightful hubbub of
+the entr'acte.
+
+"Hush!" said Amy to Haslam. "Stand in front of me, so that Tom won't see
+me if he looks up here as he passes. He's coming this way."
+
+Young Appleton, chaffing with the persons whom he had met at the exit,
+was sharing in the general movement from the byways of the lobby to the
+middle entrance of the parquet. The electric bell in the vestibule had
+sounded the signal that the third act was to begin. Mr. Hinrichs had
+returned to the director's stand in the orchestra and was raising his
+baton.
+
+Arrived at the middle entrance, Appleton raised his hat to those with
+whom he had been talking, as if not intending to go in just then.
+
+Mr. Hinrichs's baton tapped upon the stand, the music began, and the
+curtain rose.
+
+"Why doesn't he go in?" whispered Amy, alluding to Appleton.
+
+But the young man yawned, looked at his watch, and departed from the
+lobby--not to the auditorium, but out to the vestibule.
+
+"He's going to leave the theatre," said Miss Winnett, excitedly. "We
+must follow."
+
+And she tripped hastily down the stairs, Haslam after her.
+
+
+II
+
+_A Triangular Chase_
+
+Tom Appleton sauntered out through the great vestibule, turning his eyes
+casually from the marble floor up to the balconies that look down from
+aloft upon this outer lobby. He was whistling an air from "Apollo" which
+he had heard a few weeks before at the New York Casino.
+
+He hastened his steps when he saw a 'bus passing down Broad Street. A
+leap down the Grand Opera House steps and a lively run enabled him to
+catch the 'bus before it reached Columbia Avenue. He clambered up to
+the top and was soon being well shaken as he enjoyed the breeze and the
+changing view of the handsome residences on North Broad Street.
+
+Haslam's sharp eyes took note of Appleton's action.
+
+"He's on that 'bus," said the doctor to Amy as she took his arm on the
+sidewalk. "Shall we take the next one?"
+
+"No; for then we can't see where he gets off. Can't we find a cab?"
+
+"There's none in sight. We can have one called here, but we'll have to
+wait for it at least ten minutes."
+
+"That will never do. To think he could elude us so easily, without even
+knowing that we're after him!"
+
+Vexation was stamped upon the dainty face, with its soft brown eyes, as
+she raised her veil.
+
+"Ah! I have it," said Haslam, who would have gone to great lengths to
+drive that vexation away.
+
+"A bicycle! This section teems with bicycle shops. We can hire a tandem.
+It's a good thing we're both expert bicyclists."
+
+"And that I'm suitably dressed for this kind of a race," replied Amy, as
+the two hurried down the block.
+
+She stood outside the bicycle store and kept her gaze upon the 'bus,
+which was growing less and less distinct to the eye as it rolled down
+the street, while Haslam hastily engaged a two-seated machine.
+
+The 'bus had not yet disappeared in the darkness when the pursuers,
+Amy upon the front seat, glided out from the sidewalk and down over
+the asphalt. The passage became rough below Columbia Avenue, where the
+asphalt gives away to Belgian block paving. Haslam's athletic training
+and the acquaintance of both with the bicycle served to minimize this
+disadvantage.
+
+The frequent stoppages of the 'bus made it less difficult for them to
+keep in close sight of it. Conversation was not easy between them.
+Both kept silence, therefore, their eyes fixed upon the 'bus ahead, and
+carefully watching its every stop.
+
+"You're sure he hasn't gotten off yet?" she asked, at Girard Avenue.
+
+"Certain."
+
+"He's probably going to his rooms down-town."
+
+"Or to his club."
+
+So they pressed southward. Before them stretched the lone vista of
+electric lights away down Broad Street to the City Hall invisible in the
+night.
+
+The difficulty of talking made thinking more involuntary. Haslam's mind
+turned back three years. Was it, as he had dared sometimes to fancy, a
+juvenile capriciousness that had impelled this girl in front of him
+to reject him when she was seventeen, after having manifested an
+unmistakable tenderness for him? And now that she was twenty, and had in
+the meantime rejected several others, and broken one engagement, was it
+too late to attempt to revive the old spark?
+
+His meditations were suddenly interrupted by an exclamation from the
+girl herself.
+
+"Look! He's left the 'bus. He's going into the Park Theatre."
+
+So he was. His slim person was easily distinguishable in the wealth
+of electric light that flooded the street upon which looked the broad
+doorways and the allegorical facades of the Park.
+
+The second act of "La Belle Helene" was not yet over when Appleton
+entered and stood at the rear of the parquet circle. He indifferently
+watched the finale, made some mental comments upon the white flowing
+gown of Pauline Hall, the make-up of Fred Solomon, and the grotesqueness
+of the five Hellenic kings. Then he scanned the audience.
+
+Haslam and Amy dismounted near the theatre and entrusted the bicycle to
+a small boy's care. When they had bought admission tickets and reached
+the lobby, the gay finale of the second act was being given. The curtain
+fell, was called up three times, and then people began to pour forth
+from the entrance to drink, smoke, or enjoy the air in the entr'acte.
+
+Appleton was involved in the movement of those who resorted to the
+little garden with flowers and fountain and asphalt paving, accessible
+through the northern exits. He paused for a time by the fountain,
+not sufficiently curious to join the crowd that stood gaping at
+the apertures through which the members of the chorus could be seen
+ascending the stairs to the upper dressing-rooms, many of them carolling
+scraps of song from the opera as they went.
+
+Appleton soon reentered the lobby and again surveyed the audience
+closely. Haslam caught sight of him just in time to avoid him. Amy had
+resumed the concealment of her veil.
+
+To the surprise of his watchers, Appleton left the theatre before the
+third act opened. Again he jumped upon a 'bus, but this time it was upon
+one moving northward.
+
+"It looks as if he were going back to the Grand Opera House," suggested
+Amy, as she and her companion started to repossess the bicycle.
+
+"His movements are a trifle unaccountable," said Haslam, thoughtfully.
+
+"Ah! Now you admit he is acting queerly. Perhaps you'll see I was quite
+right."
+
+Again mounted upon the bicycle, the doctor and the young woman returned
+to the chase. They were soon brought to a second stop by Appleton's
+departure from the 'bus at Girard Avenue.
+
+"Where can he be going to now?" queried Amy.
+
+"He's going to take that east-bound Girard Avenue car."
+
+"So he is. What can he mean to do in that part of town?"
+
+They turned down Girard Avenue. The car was half a block in advance of
+them.
+
+"You're energetic enough in this pursuit," Amy shouted back to the
+doctor as the machine fled over the stones, "even if you don't believe
+in it."
+
+"Energetic in your service, now and always."
+
+She made no answer.
+
+This time her reflections were abruptly checked--as his had been on
+Broad Street--by the cry of the other.
+
+"See! He's getting off at the Girard Avenue Theatre."
+
+Again they found a custodian for their bicycle and followed Appleton
+into a theatre.
+
+The young man stopped at the box-office in the long vestibule, bought
+a ticket, and had a call made for a coupe. Then he passed through the
+luxurious little foyer, beautiful with flowers and soft colours, and
+stood behind the parquet circle railing.
+
+Adelaide Randall's embodiment of "The Grand Duchess" held his attention
+for a time. Haslam and Miss Winnett, to avoid the risk of being
+discovered by him, sought the seclusion of the balcony stairs.
+
+"We had a few bars of Offenbach at the Park, and here we have Offenbach
+again," commented the doctor.
+
+"And again, only a few bars, for there goes our man."
+
+Appleton, having given as much attention to the few spectators as to the
+players, left the theatre and got into the cab that had been ordered for
+him.
+
+Haslam, behind the pillar at the entrance to the theatre, overheard
+Appleton's direction to the driver. It was:
+
+"To the Grand Opera House. Hurry! The opera will soon be over."
+
+The cab rumbled away.
+
+"It's well we heard his order," observed Haslam to Amy. "We couldn't
+have hoped to keep up with a cab. He'll probably wait at the Grand Opera
+House till we get there."
+
+"But we mustn't lose any time, for, as he said, the performance will
+soon be over."
+
+"Oh, 'Tell' is a long opera and Guille will have an encore for the aria
+in the last act. That will give us a few minutes more."
+
+
+III
+
+_A Telegraphic Revelation_
+
+A boy walking down Girard Avenue, as Appleton got into the cab, had been
+whistling the tune of "They're After Me,"--a thing that was new to the
+variety stage last fall, but is dead this summer. The air, whistled by
+the boy, clung to Appleton's sense, and he unconsciously hummed it to
+himself as his cab went on its grinding way over the stones.
+
+The cabman was considerate of his horse, and he coolly ignored
+Appleton's occasional shouts of, "Get along there, won't you?"
+
+It was, therefore, not impossible for the bicyclists to keep in sight of
+the coupe.
+
+"All this concern about a man you say you don't care for," said Haslam
+to Amy, as the bicycle turned up Broad Street. "It's unprecedented."
+
+"It's only humanity."
+
+"You didn't bother about following me around like this when you threw me
+over."
+
+"You didn't threaten to kill yourself."
+
+"No; if I had, I'd have carried out my threat. But for months I endured
+a living death--or worse."
+
+"Really? Did you, though?"
+
+Eager inquiry and sudden elation were expressed in this speech.
+
+"Of course I did. Why do you ask in that way?"
+
+"Oh--you took me by surprise. Why did you never tell me it affected you
+so? I thought--I thought--"
+
+"What did you think?"
+
+"That if you really cared for me you would have--tried again."
+
+"What? Then I was fatally ignorant! I thought that when you said a
+thing, you meant it."
+
+"I didn't know what I meant until it was too late."
+
+"But is it too late--ah! see, he's getting out of the cab at the Grand
+Opera House."
+
+They quickly switched the bicycle from the street to the sidewalk, and
+both dismounted.
+
+They were checked at the entrance to the theatre by the appearance of
+Appleton. He was coming from within the building, and with him were two
+women, one elderly and unattractive, the other a plump young person
+with bright blue eyes in a saucy face that had more claim to piquant
+effrontery than to beauty. She was simply dressed and was all smiles to
+Appleton.
+
+Amy and Haslam quickly turned their backs, thus avoiding recognition,
+and while they seemed to be looking through the glass front into
+the vestibule, they overheard the following conversation between the
+blue-eyed girl and Appleton.
+
+"I'm glad you found us at last, Tom. Three acts of grand opera are about
+enough for me, thanks, and we'd have left sooner if your telegram that
+you'd be in town to-night hadn't made me expect to see you."
+
+"Well, I've been hunting for you in every open theatre in town where
+there's grand opera. In your answer to my telegram from the Catskills,
+you said merely you were going to the opera this evening. You didn't say
+what opera, but I supposed it was this one, so I bought a ticket as soon
+as I arrived in town at the down-town office. I got here after the first
+act, and spent all the second act looking around for you."
+
+"It's strange you didn't see us. We were in the middle of row K, right."
+
+"Well, I missed you, that's all, and I kept a watch on the lobby after
+the act, thinking you'd perhaps come out between the acts. Then I went
+to the Park Theatre, and then to the Girard Avenue."
+
+Amy and Haslam went into the vestibule. Amy was crimson with anger.
+Haslam quietly said:
+
+"Do you wish to continue the pursuit?"
+
+Before she found time to answer, another matter distracted her
+attention.
+
+"Look! There's Mary, the housemaid, who was to stay up for me till I got
+home. She has come here for me."
+
+The servant stood by the door leading into the lobby, in a position
+enabling her to scan the faces of people coming out from the auditorium.
+
+"Oh, Miss Amy, are you here? I was waiting for you to come out. Here's
+a telegram that came about a half-hour ago. I thought it might be
+important."
+
+Amy tore open the envelope.
+
+"Why," she said to Haslam, "this was sent to-day from Philadelphia to
+me at the Catskills, and my cousins have had it repeated back to me. And
+look--it's signed by you."
+
+"I surely didn't send it."
+
+But there was the name beyond doubt, "Henry Haslam, M.D."
+
+"This is a mystery to me, I assure you," reiterated the doctor.
+
+"But not to me," cried Amy. "Read the message and you'll understand."
+
+He read these words:
+
+"Mr. Appleton is very ill. His life depends upon his will-power. He
+tells me that you alone can say the word that will save him. Henry
+Haslam, M.D."
+
+Haslam smiled.
+
+"A clever invention to make you think he tried to execute his threat.
+Now you know what he was doing while you were taking your handbag home.
+He probably concocted the scheme on his journey. But why did he sign my
+name, I wonder?"
+
+She dropped her eyes and answered in a low tone:
+
+"Because he knew that I would believe anything said by you."
+
+"Would you believe that I love you still more than I did three years
+ago?"
+
+"Yes; if it came from your own lips--not by telegraph."
+
+She lifted her eyes now, and her lips, too; Mary the housemaid sensibly
+looked another way.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Tales From Bohemia, by Robert Neilson Stephens
+
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