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The Voice of the City
by O Henry
September, 1998 [Etext #1444]
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The Voice of the City
by O Henry
THE VOICE OF THE CITY
Twenty-five years ago the school children used to chant their lessons. The manner of their delivery was a singsong recitative between the utterance of an Episcopal minister and the drone of a tired sawmill. I mean no disrespect. We must have lumber and sawdust.
I remember one beautiful and instructive little lyric that emanated from the physiology class. The most striking line of it was this:
"The shin-bone is the long-est bone in the hu-man bod-y."
What an inestimable boon it would have been if all the corporeal and spiritual facts pertaining to man bad thus been tunefully and logically inculcated in our youthful minds! But what we gained in anatomy, music and philosophy was meagre.
The other day I became confused. I needed a ray of light. I turned back to those school days for aid. But in all the nasal harmonies we whined forth from those bard benches I could not recall one that treated of the voice of agglomerated mankind.
In other words, of the composite vocal message of massed humanity.
In other words, of the Voice of a Big City.
Now, the individual voice is not lacking. We can understand the song of the poet, the ripple of the brook, the meaning of the man who wants $5 until next Monday, the inscriptions on the tombs of the Pharaohs, the language of flowers, the "step lively" of the conductor, and the prelude of the milk cans at 4 A. M. Certain large-eared ones even assert that they are wise to the vibrations of the tympanum proneed by concussion of the air emanating from Mr. H. James. But who can comprehend the meaning of the voice of the city?
I went out for to see.
First, I asked Aurelia. She wore white Swiss and a bat with flowers on it, and ribbons and ends of things fluttered here and there.
"Tell me," I said, stammeringly, for I have no voice of my own, "what does this big - er - enormous - er - whopping city say? It must have a voice of some kind. Does it ever speak to you? How do you interpret its meaning? It is a tremendous mass, but it must have a key:'
"Like a Saratoga trunk?" asked Aurelia.
"No," said I. "Please do not refer to the lid. I have a fancy that every city has a voice. Each one has something to say to the one who can hear it. What does the big one say to you? "
"All cities," said Aurelia, judicially, "say the same thing. When they get through saying it there is an echo from Philadelphia. So, they are unanimous."
"Here are 4,000,000 people," said I, scholastically, "compressed upon an island, which is mostly lamb surrounded by Wall Street water. The conjunction of so many units into so small a space must result in an identity - or, or rather a homogeneity that finds its oral expression through a common channel. It is, as you might say, a consensus of translation, concentrating in a crystallized, general idea which reveals itself in what may be termed the Voice of the City. Can you tell me what it is?
Aurelia smiled wonderfully. She sat on the high stoop. A spray of insolent ivy bobbed against her right ear. A ray of impudent moonlight flickered upon her nose. But I was adamant, nickelplated.
"I must go and find out," I said, "what is the Voice of this city. Other cities have voices. It is an assignment. I must have it. New York," I continned, in a rising tone, "had better not hand me a cigar and say: ' Old man, I can't talk for publication.' No other city acts in that way. Chicago says, unhesitatingly, 'I will;' I Philadelphia says, 'I should;' New Orleans says, ' I used to;' Louisville says, 'Don't care if I do;' St. Louis says, 'Excuse me;' Pittsburg says, 'Smoke up.' Now, New York - "
Aurelia smiled.
"Very well," said I, "I must go elsewhere and find out."
I went into a palace, tile-floored, cherub-ceilinged and square with the cop. I put my foot on the brass rail and said to Billy Magnus, the best bartender in the diocese:
Billy, you've lived in New York a long time what kind of a song-and-dance does this old town give you? What I mean is, doesn't the gab of it seem to kind of bunch up and slide over the bar to you in a sort of amalgamated tip that bits off the burg in a kind of an epigram with a dash of bitters and a slice of - "
"Excuse me a minute," said Billy, "somebody's punching the button at the side door."
He went away; came back with an empty tin bucket; again vanished with it full; returned and said to me:
"That was Mame. She rings twice. She likes a glass of beer for supper. Her and the kid. If you ever saw that little skeesicks of mine brace up in his high chair and take his beer and - But, say, what was yours? I get kind of excited when I bear them two rings -was it the baseball score or gin fizz you asked for?"
"Ginger ale," I answered.
I walked up to Broadway. I saw a cop on the corner. The cops take kids up, women across, and men in. I went up to him.
If I'm not exceeding the spiel limit," I said, "let me ask you. You see New York during its vocative hours. It is the function of you and your brother cops to preserve the acoustics of the city. There must be a civic voice that is intelligible to you. At night during your lonely rounds you must have beard it. What is the epitome of its turmoil and shouting? What does the city say to you?
"Friend," said the policeman, spinning his club, "it don't say nothing. I get my orders from the man higher up. Say, I guess you're all right. Stand here for a few minutes and keep an eye open for the roundsman."
The cop melted into the darkness of the side street. In ten minutes be had returned.
"Married last Tuesday," be said, half gruffly. "You know bow they are. She comes to that corner at nine every night for a - comes to say ' hello! ' I generally manage to be there. Say, what was it you asked me a bit ago - what's doing in the city? Oh, there's a roof-garden or two just opened, twelve blocks up."
I crossed a crow's-foot of street-car tracks, and
skirted the edge of an umbrageous park. An
artificial Diana, gilded, heroic, poised, wind-ruled,
on the tower, shimmered in the clear light of her
namesake in the sky. Along came my poet, hurrying,
hatted, haired, emitting dactyls, spondees and
dactylis. I seized him.
"Bill," said I (in the magazine he is Cleon), "give
me a lift. I am on an assignment to find out the
Voice of the city. You see, it's a special order. Ordinarily
a symposium comprising the views of Henry
Clews, John L. Sullivan, Edwin Markham, May Irwin
and Charles Schwab would be about all. But this
is a different matter. We want a broad, poetic,
mystic vocalization of the city's soul and meaning.
You are the very chap to give me a hint. Some years
ago a man got at the Niagara Falls and gave us its
pitch. The note was about two feet below the lowest
G on the piano. Now, you can't put New York into
a note unless it's better indorsed than that. But give
me an idea of what it would say if it should speak. It
is bound to be a mighty and far-reaching utterance.
To arrive at it we must take the tremendous crash of
the chords of the day's traffic, the laughter and music
of the night, the solemn tones of Dr. Parkhurst, the
rag-time, the weeping, the stealthy bum of cab-wbeels,
the shout of the press agent, the tinkle of fountains
on the roof gardens, the hullabaloo of the strawberry
vender and the covers of Everybody's Magazine, the
whispers of the lovers in the parks - all these sounds,
must go into your Voice - not combined, but mixed,
and of the mixture an essence made; and of the essence
an extract - an audible extract, of which one
drop shall form the thing we seek."
"Do you remember," asked the poet, with a chuckle, "that California girl we met at Stiver's studio last week? Well, I'm on my way to see her. She repeated that poem of mine, ' The Tribute of Spring,' word for word. She's the smartest proposition in this town just at present. Say, how does this confounded tie look? I spoiled four before I got one to set right."
"And the Voice that I asked you about?" I inquired.
"Oh, she doesn't sing," said Cleon. "But you ought to bear her recite my 'Angel of the Inshore Wind.'"
I passed on. I cornered a newsboy and be flashed at me prophetic pink papers that outstripped the news by two revolutions of the clock's longest hand.
"Son," I said, while I pretended to chase coins in my penny pocket, "doesn't it sometimes seem to you as if the city ought to be able to talk? All these ups and downs and funny business and queer things happening every daywhat would it say, do you think, if it could speak?
"Quit yer kiddin'," said the boy. "Wot paper yer want? I got no time to waste. It's Mag's birthday, and I want thirty cents to git her a present."
Here was no interpreter of the city's mouthpiece. I bought a paper, and consigned its undeclared treaties, its premeditated murders and unfought battles to an ash can.
Again I repaired to the park and sat in the moon shade. I thought and thought, and wondered why none could tell me what I asked for.
And then, as swift as light from a fixed star, the answer came to me. I arose and hurried - hurried as so many reasoners must, back around my circle. I knew the answer and I bugged it in my breast as I flew, fearing lest some one would stop me and demand my secret.
Aurelia was still on the stoop. The moon was higher and the ivy shadows were deeper. I sat at her side and we watched a little cloud tilt at the drifting moon and go asunder, quite pale and discomfited.
And then, wonder of wonders and delight of delights ! our hands somehow touched, and our fingers closed together and did not part.
After half an hour Aurelia said, with that smile of hers:
"Do you know, you haven't spoken a word since you came back! "
"That," said I, nodding wisely, "is the Voice of the City."
THE COMPLETE LIFE OF JOHN HOPKINS
There is a saying that no man has tasted the full flavor of life until he has known poverty, love and war. The justness of this reflection commends it to the lover of condensed philosophy. The three conditions embrace about all there is in life worth knowing. A surface thinker might deem that wealth should be added to the list. Not so. When a poor man finds a long-bidden quarter-dollar that has slipped through a rip into his vest lining, be sounds the pleasure of life with a deeper plummet than any millionaire can hope to cast.
It seems that the wise executive power that rules life has thought best to drill man in these three conditions; and none may escape all three. In rural places the terms do not mean so much. Poverty is less pinching; love is temperate; war shrinks to contests about boundary lines and the neighbors' hens. It is in the cities that our epigram gains in truth and vigor; and it has remained for one John Hopkins to crowd the experience into a rather small space of time.
The Hopkins flat was like a thousand others. There was a rubber plant in one window; a fleabitten terrier sat in the other, wondering when he was to have his day.
John Hopkins was like a thousand others. He worked at $20 per week in a nine-story, red-brick building at either Insurance, Buckle's Hoisting Engines, Chiropody, Loans, Pulleys, Boas Renovated, Waltz Guaranteed in Five Lessons, or Artificial Limbs. It is not for us to wring Mr. Hopkins's avocation from these outward signs that be.
Mrs. Hopkins was like a thousand others. The auriferous tooth, the sedentary disposition, the Sunday afternoon wanderlust, the draught upon the delicatessen store for home-made comforts, the furor for department store marked-down sales, the feeling of superiority to the lady in the third-floor front who wore genuine ostrich tips and had two names over her bell, the mucilaginous hours during which she remained glued to the window sill, the vigilant avoidance of the instalment man, the tireless patronage of the acoustics of the dumb-waiter shaft - all the attributes of the Gotham flat-dweller were hers.
One moment yet of sententiousness and the story moves.
In the Big City large and sudden things happen. You round a corner and thrust the rib of your umbrella into the eye of your old friend from Kootenai Falls. You stroll out to pluck a Sweet William in the park - and lo! bandits attack you - you are ambulanced to the hospital - you marry your nurse; are divorced - get squeezed while short on U. P. S. and D. 0. W. N. S. - stand in the bread line - marry an heiress, take out your laundry and pay your club dues - seemingly all in the wink of an eye. You travel the streets, and a finger beckons to you, a handkerchief is dropped for you, a brick is dropped upon you, the elevator cable or your bank breaks, a table d'hote or your wife disagrees with you, and Fate tosses you about like cork crumbs in wine opened by an un-feed waiter. The City is a sprightly youngster, and you are red paint upon its toy, and you get licked off.
John Hopkins sat, after a compressed dinner, in his glove-fitting straight-front flat. He sat upon a hornblende couch and gazed, with satiated eyes, at Art Brought Home to the People in the shape of "The Storm " tacked against the wall. Mrs. Hopkins discoursed droningly of the dinner smells from the flat across the ball. The flea-bitten terrier gave Hopkins a look of disgust, and showed a man-hating tooth.
Here was neither poverty, love, nor war; but upon such barren stems may be grafted those essentials of a complete life.
John Hopkins sought to inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence.
"Putting a new elevator in at the office," he said, discarding the nominative noun, "and the boss has turned out his whiskers."
"You don't mean it! commented Mrs. Hopkins.
"Mr. Whipples," continued John, "wore his new spring suit down to-day. I liked it fine It's a gray with - " He stopped, suddenly stricken by a need that made itself known to him. "I believe I'll walk down to the corner and get a five-cent cigar,"he concluded.
John Hopkins took his bat aid picked his way down the musty halls and stairs of the flat-house
The evening air was mild, and the streets shrill with the careless cries of children playing games controlled by mysterious rhythms and phrases. Their elders held the doorways and steps with leisurely pipe and gossip. Paradoxically, the fire-escapes supported lovers in couples who made no attempt to fly the mounting conflagration they were there to fan. The corner cigar store aimed at by John Hopkins was kept by a man named Freshmayer, who looked upon the earth as a sterile promontory.
Hopkins, unknown in the store, entered and called genially for his "bunch of spinach, car-fare grade." This imputation deepened the pessimism of Freshmayer; but be set out a brand that came perilously near to filling the order. Hopkins bit off the roots of his purchase, and lighted up at the swinging gas jet. Feeling in his pockets to make payment, he found not a penny there.
"Say, my friend," he explained, frankly, "I've come out without any change. Hand you that nickel first time I pass."
Joy surged in Freshmayer's heart. Here was corroboration of his belief that the world was rotten and man a peripatetic evil. Without a word he rounded the end of his counter and made earnest onslaught upon his customer. Hopkins was no man to serve as a punching-bag for a pessimistic tobacconist. He quickly bestowed upon Freshmayer a Coloradomaduro eye in return for the ardent kick that be received from that dealer in goods for cash only.
The impetus of the enemy's attack forced the Hopkins line back to the sidewalk. There the conflict raged; the pacific wooden Indian, with his carven smile, was overturned, and those of the street who delighted in carnage pressed round to view the zealous joust.
But then came the inevitable cop and imminent convenience for both the attacker and attacked. John Hopkins was a peaceful citizen, who worked at rebuses of nights in a flat, but be was not without the fundamental spirit of resistance that comes with the battle-rage. He knocked the policeman into a grocer' s sidewalk display of goods and gave Freshmayer a punch that caused him temporarily to regret that he had not made it a rule to extend a five-cent line of credit to certain customers. Then Hopkins took spiritedly to his heels down the sidewalk, closely followed by the cigar-dealer and the policeman, whose uniform testified to the reason in the grocer's sign that read: "Eggs cheaper than anywhere else in the city."
As Hopkins ran he became aware of a big, low, red, racing automobile that kept abreast of him in the street. This auto steered in to the side of the sidewalk, and the man guiding it motioned to Hopkins to jump into it. He did so without slackening his speed, and fell into the turkey-red upholstered seat beside the chauffeur. The big machine, with a diminuendo cough, flew away like an albatross down the avenue into which the street emptied.
The driver of the auto sped his machine without a word. He was masked beyond guess in the goggles and diabolic garb of the chauffeur.
"Much obliged, old man," called Hopkins, gratefully. "I guess you've got sporting blood in you, all right, and don't admire the sight of two men trying to soak one. Little more and I'd have been pinched."
The chauffeur made no sign that he had heard. Hopkins shrugged a shoulder and chewed at his cigar, to which his teeth had clung grimly throughout the melee.
Ten minutes and the auto turned into the open carriage entrance of a noble mansion of brown stone, and stood still. The chauffeur leaped out, and said: "Come quick. The lady, she will explain. It is the great honor you will have, monsieur. Ah, that milady could call upon Armand to do this thing! But, no, I am only one chauffeur."
With vehement gestures the chauffeur conducted Hopkins into the house. He was ushered into a small but luxurious reception chamber. A lady, young, and possessing the beauty of visions, rose from a chair. In her eyes smouldered a becoming anger. Her higharched, threadlike brows were ruffled into a delicious frown.
"Milady," said the chauffeur, bowing low, "I have the honor to relate to you that I went to the house of Monsieur Long and found him to be not at home. As I came back I see this gentleman in combat against bow you say - greatest odds. He is fighting with five - ten - thirty men - gendarmes, aussi. Yes, milady, he what you call 'swat' one - three - eight policemans. If that Monsieur Long is out I say to myself this Gentleman be will serve milady so well, and I bring him here."
"Very well, Armand," said the lady, "you may go." She turned to Hopkins.
"I sent my chauffeur," she said, "to bring my cousin, Walter Long. There is a man in this house who has treated me with insult and abuse. I have complained to my aunt, and she laughs at me. Armand says you are brave. In these prosaic days men who are both brave and chivalrous are few. May I count upon your assistance?"
John Hopkins thrust the remains of his cigar into his coat pocket. He looked upon this winning creature and felt his first thrill of romance. It was a knightly love, and contained no disloyalty to the flat with the flea-bitten terrier and the lady of his choice. He bad married her after a picnic of the Lady Label Stickers' Union, Lodge No. 2, on a dare and a bet of new hats and chowder all around with his friend, Billy McManus. This angel who was begging him to come to her rescue was something too heavenly for chowder, and as for hats - golden, jewelled crowns for her!
"Say," said John Hopkins, "just show me the guy that you've got the grouch at. I've neglected my talents as a scrapper heretofore, but this is my busy night."
"He is in there," said the lady, pointing to a closed door. "Come. Are you sure that you do not falter or fear?"
"Me?" said John Hopkins. "Just give me one of those roses in the bunch you are wearing, will you?"
The lady gave him a red, red rose. John Hopkins kissed it, stuffed it into his vest pocket, opened the door and walked into the room. It was a handsome library, softly but brightly lighted. A young man was there, reading.
"Books on etiquette is what you want to study," said John Hopkins, abruptly. "Get up here, and I'll give you some lessors. Be rude to a lady, will you?"
The young man looked mildly surprised. Then he arose languidly, dextrously caught the arms of John Hopkins and conducted him irresistibly to the front door of the house.
"Beware, Ralph Branscombe," cried the lady, who had followed, "what you do to the gallant man who has tried to protect me."
The young man shoved John Hopkins gently out the door and then closed it.
"Bess," he said calmly, "I wish you would quit reading historical novels. How in the world did that fellow get in here?"
"Armand brought him," said the young lady. "I think you are awfully mean not to let me have that St. Bernard. I sent Armand for Walter. I was so angry with you."
"Be sensible, Bess," said the young man, taking her arm. "That dog isn't safe. He has bitten two or three people around the kennels. Come now, let's go tell auntie we are in good humor again."
Arm in arm, they moved away.
John Hopkins walked to his flat. The janitor's five-year-old daughter was playing on the steps' Hopkins gave her a nice, red rose and walked upstairs.
Mrs. Hopkins was philandering with curl-papers.
"Get your cigar?" she asked, disinterestedly.
"Sure," said Hopkins, "and I knocked around a while outside. It's a nice night."
He sat upon the hornblende sofa, took out the stump of his cigar, lighted it, and gazed at the graceful figures in "The Storm" on the opposite wall.
"I was telling you," said he, "about Mr. Whipple's suit. It's a gray, with an invisible check, and it looks fine."
A LICKPENNY LOVER
There, were 3,000 girls in the Biggest Store. Masie was one of them. She was eighteen and a selleslady in the gents' gloves. Here she became versed in two varieties of human beings - the kind of gents who buy their gloves in department stores and the kind of women who buy gloves for unfortunate gents. Besides this wide knowledge of the human species, Masie had acquired other information. She had listened to the promulgated wisdom of the 2,999 other girls and had stored it in a brain that was as secretive and wary as that of a Maltese cat. Perhaps nature, foreseeing that she would lack wise counsellors, had mingled the saving ingredient of shrewdness along with her beauty, as she has endowed the silver fox of the priceless fur above the other animals with cunning.
For Masie was beautiful. She was a deep-tinted blonde, with the calm poise of a lady who cooks butter cakes in a window. She stood behind her counter in the Biggest Store; and as you closed your band over the tape-line for your glove measure you thought of Hebe; and as you looked again you wondered how she had come by Minerva's eyes.
When the floorwalker was not looking Masie chewed tutti frutti; when he was looking she gazed up as if at the clouds and smiled wistfully.
That is the shopgirl smile, and I enjoin you to shun it unless you are well fortified with callosity of the heart, caramels and a congeniality for the capers of Cupid. This smile belonged to Masie's recreation hours and not to the store; but the floorwalker must have his own. He is the Shylock of the stores. When be comes nosing around the bridge of his nose is a toll-bridge. It is goo-goo eyes or "git" when be looks toward a pretty girl. Of course not all floorwalkers are thus. Only a few days ago the papers printed news of one over eighty years of age.
One day Irving Carter, painter, millionaire, traveller, poet, automobilist, happened to enter the Biggest Store. It is due to him to add that his visit was not voluntary. Filial duty took him by the collar and dragged him inside, while his mother philandered among the bronze and terra-cotta statuettes.
Carter strolled across to the glove counter in order to shoot a few minutes on the wing. His need for gloves was genuine; be had forgotten to bring a pair with him. But his action hardly calls for apology, because be had never heard of glove-counter flirtations.
As he neared the vicinity of his fate be hesitated, suddenly conscious of this unknown phase of Cupid's less worthy profession.
Three or four cheap fellows, sonorously garbed, were leaning over the counters, wrestling with the mediatorial hand-coverings, while giggling girls played vivacious seconds to their lead upon the strident string of coquetry. Carter would have retreated, but he had gone too far. Masie confronted him behind her counter with a questioning look in eyes as coldly, beautifully, warmly blue as the glint of summer sunshine on an iceberg drifting in Southern seas.
And then Irving Carter, painter, millionaire, etc., felt a warm flush rise to his aristocratically pale face. But not from diffidence. The blush was intellectual in origin. He knew in a moment that he stood in the ranks of the ready-made youths who wooed the giggling girls at other counters. Himself leaned against the oaken trysting place of a cockney Cupid with a desire in his heart for the favor of a glove salesgirl. He was no more than Bill and Jack and Mickey. And then be felt a sudden tolerance for them, and an elating, courageous contempt for the conventions upon which he had fed, and an unhesitating determination to have this perfect creature for his own.
When the gloves were paid for and wrapped the Carter lingered for a moment. The dimples at corners of Masie's damask mouth deepened. All gentlemen who bought gloves lingered in just that way. She curved an arm, showing like Psyche's through her shirt-waist sleeve, and rested an elbow upon the show-case edge.
Carter had never before encountered a situation of which he had not been perfect master. But now he stood far more awkward than Bill or Jack or Mickey. He had no chance of meeting this beautiful girl socially. His mind struggled to recall the nature and habits of shopgirls as be had read or heard of them. Somehow be had received the idea that they sometimes did not insist too strictly upon the regular channels of introduction. His heart beat loudly at the thought of proposing an unconventional meeting with this lovely and virginal being. But the tumult in his heart gave him courage.
After a few friendly and well-received remarks on general subjects, he laid his card by her hand on the counter.
"Will you please pardon me," he said, "if I seem too bold; but I earnestly hope you will allow me the pleasure of seeing you again. There is my name; I assure you that it is with the greatest respect that I ask the favor of becoming one of your -- acquaintances. May I not hope for the privilege?"
Masie knew men - especially men who buy gloves. Without hesitation she looked him frankly and smilingly in the eyes, and said:
"Sure. I guess you're all right. I don't usually go out with strange gentlemen, though. It ain't quite ladylike. When should you want to see me again?"
"As soon as I may," said Carter. "If you would allow me to call at your home, I -- "
Masie laughed musically. "Oh, gee, no!" she said, emphatically. "If you could see our flat once! There's five of us in three rooms. I'd just like to see ma's face if I was to bring a gentleman friend there!"
"Anywhere, then," said the enamored Carter, "that will be convenient to you."
"Say," suggested Masie, with a bright-idea look
in her peach-blow face; "I guess Thursday night will
about suit me. Suppose you come to the corner of
Eighth Avenue and Forty-eighth Street at 7:30. I
live right near the corner. But I've got to be back
home by eleven. Ma never lets me stay out after
eleven."
Carter promised gratefully to keep the tryst, and
then hastened to his mother, who was looking about
for him to ratify her purchase of a bronze Diana.
A salesgirl, with small eyes and an obtuse nose, strolled near Masie, with a friendly leer.
"Did you make a hit with his nobs, Mase?" she asked, familiarly.
"The gentleman asked permission to call." answered Masie, with the grand air, as she slipped Carter' s card into the bosom of her waist.
"Permission to call!" echoed small eyes, with a snigger. "Did he say anything about dinner in the Waldorf and a spin in his auto afterward?"
"Oh, cheese it!" said Masie, wearily. "You've been used to swell things, I don't think. You've had a swelled bead ever since that hose-cart driver took you out to a chop suey joint. No, be never mentioned the Waldorf; but there's a Fifth Avenue address on his card, and if be buys the supper you can bet your life there won't be no pigtail on the waiter what takes the order."
As Carter glided away from the Biggest Store with his mother in his electric runabout, he bit his lip with a dull pain at his heart. He knew that love had come to him for the first time in all the twenty-nine years of his life. And that the object of it should make so readily an appointment with him at a street corner, though it was a step toward his desires, tortured him with misgivings.
Carter did not know the shopgirl. He did not know that her home is often either a scarcely habitable tiny room or a domicile filled to overflowing with kith and kin. The street-corner is her parlor, the park is her drawing-room; the avenue is her garden walk; yet for the most part she is as inviolate mistress of herself in them as is my lady inside her tapestried chamber.
One evening at dusk, two weeks after their first meeting, Carter and Masie strolled arm-in-arm into a little, dimly-lit park. They found a bench, treeshadowed and secluded, and sat there.
For the first time his arm stole gently around her. Her golden-bronze head slid restfully against his shoulder.
"Gee!" sighed Masie, thankfully. "Why didn't you ever think of that before?"
"Masie," said Carter, earnestly, "you surely know that I love you. I ask you sincerely to marry me. You know me well enough by this time to have no doubts of me. I want you, and I must have you. I care nothing for the difference in our stations."
"What is the difference?" asked Masie, curiously.
"Well, there isn't any," said Carter, quickly, "except in the minds of foolish people. It is in my power to give you a life of luxury. My social position is beyond dispute, and my means are ample."
"They all say that," remarked Masie. "It's the kid they all give you. I suppose you really work in a delicatessen or follow the races. I ain't as green as I look."
"I can furnish you all the proofs you want," said Carter, gently. "And I want you, Masie. I loved you the first day I saw you."
"They all do," said Masie, with an amused laugh, "to hear 'em talk. If I could meet a man that got stuck on me the third time he'd seen me I think I'd get mashed on him."
"Please don't say such things," pleaded Carter. "Listen to me, dear. Ever since I first looked into your eyes you have been the only woman in the world for me."
"Oh, ain't you the kidder!" smiled Masie. "How many other girls did you ever tell that?"
But Carter persisted. And at length be reached the flimsy, fluttering little soul of the shopgirl that existed somewhere deep down in her lovely bosom.
His words penetrated the heart whose very lightness was its safest armor. She looked up at him with eyes that saw. And a warm glow visited her cool cheeks. Tremblingly, awfully, her moth wings closed, and she seemed about to settle upon the flower of love. Some faint glimmer of life and its possibilities on the other side of her glove counter dawned upon her. Carter felt the change and crowded the opportunity.
"Marry me, Masie," be whispered softly, "and we will go away from this ugly city to beautiful ones. We will forget work and business, and life will be one long holiday. I know where I should take you - I have been there often. Just think of a shore where summer is eternal, where the waves are always rippling on the lovely beach and the people are happy and free as children. We will sail to those shores and remain there as long as you please. In one of those far-away cities there are grand and lovely palaces and towers full of beautiful pictures and statues. The streets of the city are water, and one travels about in --"
"I know," said Masie, sitting up suddenly. "Gondolas."
"Yes," smiled Carter.
"I thought so," said Masie.
"And then," continued Carter, "we will travel on and see whatever we wish in the world. After the European cities we will visit India and the ancient cities there, and ride on elephants and see the wonderful temples of the Hindoos and Brahmins and the Japanese gardens and the camel trains and chariot races in Persia, and all the queer sights of foreign countries. Don't you think you would like it, Masie?
Masie rose to her feet.
"I think we had better be going home," she said, coolly. "It's getting late."
Carter humored her. He had come to know her varying, thistle-down moods, and that it was useless to combat them. But he felt a certain happy triumph. He had held for a moment, though but by a silken thread, the soul of his wild Psyche, and hope was stronger within him. Once she had folded her wings and her cool band bad closed about his own.
At the Biggest Store the next day Masie's chum, Lulu, waylaid her in an angle of the counter.
"How are you and your swell friend making it? she asked.
"Oh, him?" said Masie, patting her side curls. "He ain't in it any more. Say, Lu, what do you think that fellow wanted me to do?"
"Go on the stage?" guessed Lulu, breathlessly.
"Nit; he's too cheap a guy for that. He wanted me to marry him and go down to Coney Island for a wedding tour!"
DOUGHERTY'S EYE-OPENER
Big Jim Dougherty was a sport. He belonged to that race of men. In Manhattan it is a distinct race. They are the Caribs of the North -- strong, artful, self-sufficient, clannish, honorable within the laws of their race, holding in lenient contempt neighboring tribes who bow to the measure of Society's tapeline. I refer, of course, to the titled nobility of sportdom. There is a class which bears as a qualifying adjective the substantive belonging to a wind instrument made of a cheap and base metal. But the tin mines of Cornwall never produced the material for manufacturing descriptive nomenclature for "Big Jim" Dougherty.
The habitat of the sport is the lobby or the outside corner of certain -hotels and combination restaurants and cafes. They are mostly men of different sizes, running from small to large; but they are unanimous in the possession of a recently shaven, blue-black cheek and chin and dark overcoats (in season) with black velvet collars.
Of the domestic life of the sport little is known. It has been said that Cupid and Hymen sometimes take a band in the game and copper the queen of hearts to lose. Daring theorists have averred - not content with simply saying - that a sport often contracts a spouse, and even incurs descendants. Sometimes he. sits in the game of politics; and then at chowder picnics there is a revelation of a Mrs. Sport and little Sports in glazed hats with tin pails.
But mostly the sport is Oriental. He believes his women-folk should not be too patent. Somewhere bebind grilles or flower-ornamented fire escapes they await him. There, no doubt, they tread on rugs from Teheran and are diverted by the bulbul and play upon the dulcimer and feed upon sweetmeats. But away from his home the sport is an integer. He does not, as men of other races in Manhattan do, become the convoy in his unoccupied hours of fluttering laces and high heels that tick off delectably the happy seconds of the evening parade. He herds with his own race at corners, and delivers a commentary in his Carib lingo upon the passing show.
"Big Jim" Dougherty had a wife, but be did not wear a button portrait of her upon his lapel. He bad a home in one of those brown-stone, iron-railed streets on the west side that look like a recently excavated bowling alley of Pompeii.
To this home of his Mr. Dougherty repaired each night when the hour was so late as to promise no further diversion in the arch domains of sport. By that time the occupant of the monogamistic harem would be in dreamland, the bulbul silenced and the hour propitious for slumber.
"Big Jim" always arose at twelve, meridian, for breakfast, and soon afterward he would return to the rendezvous of his "crowd."
He was always vaguely conscious that there was a Mrs. Dougherty. He would have received without denial the charge that the quiet, neat, comfortable little woman across the table at home was his wife. In fact, he remembered pretty well that they bad been married for nearly four years. She would often tell him about the cute tricks of Spot, the canary, and the light-haired lady that lived in the window of the flat across the street.
"Big Jim" Dougherty even listened to this conversation of hers sometimes. He knew that she would have a nice dinner ready for him every evening at seven when he came for it. She sometimes went to matinees, and she bad a talking machine with six dozen records. Once when her Uncle Amos blew in on a wind from up-state, she went with him to the Eden Musee. Surely these things were diversions enough for any woman.
One afternoon Mr. Dougherty finished his breakfast, put on his bat and got away fairly for the door. When his hand was on the knob be heard his wife's voice.
"Jim," she said, firmly, "I wish you would take me out to dinner this evening. It has been three years since you have been outside the door with me."
"Big Jim" was astounded. She bad never asked anything like this before. It had the flavor of a totally new proposition. But he was a game sport.
"All right," be said. "You be ready when I come at seven. None of this 'wait two minutes till I primp an hour or two' kind of business, now, Dele."
"I'll be ready," said his wife, calmly.
At seven she descended the stone steps in the Pompeian bowling alley at the side of "Big Jim" Dougherty. She wore a dinner gown made of a stuff that the spiders must have woven, and of a color that a twilight sky must have contributed. A light coat with many admirably unnecessary capes and adorably inutile ribbons floated downward from her shoulders. Fine feathers do make fine birds; and the only reproach in the saying is for the man who refuses to give up his earnings to the ostrich-tip industry.
"Big Jim" Dougherty was troubled. There was a being at his side whom be did not know. He thought of the sober-hued plumage that this bird of paradise was accustomed to wear in her cage, and this winged revelation puzzled him. In some way she reminded him of the Delia Cullen that be had married four years before. Shyly and rather awkwardly he stalked at her right band.
"After dinner I'll take you back home, Dele," said Mr. Dougherty, "and then I'll drop back up to Seltzer' s with the boys. You can have swell chuck tonight if you want it. I made a winning on Anaconda yesterday; so you can go as far as you like."
Mr. Dougherty had intended to make the outing with his unwonted wife an inconspicuous one. Uxoriousness was a weakness that the precepts of the Caribs did not countenance. If any of his friends of the track, the billiard cloth or the square circle had wives they had never complained of the fact in public. There were a number of table d'hote places on the cross streets near the broad and shining way; and to one of these he had purposed to escort her, so that the bushel might not be removed from the light of his domesticity.
But while on the way Mr. Dougherty altered those intentions. He had been casting stealthy glances at his attractive companion and he was seized with the conviction that she was no selling plater. He resolved to parade with his wife past Seltzer's cafe, where at this time a number of his tribe would be gathered to view the daily evening procession. Yes; and he would take her to dine at Hoogley's, the swellest slow-lunch warehouse on the line, he said to himself.
The congregation of smooth-faced tribal gentlemen were on watch at Seltzer's. As Mr. Dougherty and his reorganized Delia passed they stared, momentarily petrified, and then removed their hats - a performance as unusual to them as was the astonishing innovation presented to their gaze by "Big Jim". On the latter gentleman's impassive face there appeared a slight flicker of triumph - a faint flicker, no more to be observed than the expression called there by the draft of little casino to a four-card spade flush.
Hoogley's was animated. Electric lights shone as, indeed, they were expected to do. And the napery, the glassware and the flowers also meritoriously performed the spectacular duties required of them. The guests were numerous, well-dressed and gay.
A waiter - not necessarily obsequious - conducted "Big Jim" Dougherty and his wife to a table.
"Play that menu straight across for what you like, Dele," said "Big Jim." "It's you for a trough of the gilded oats to-night. It strikes me that maybe we've been sticking too fast to home fodder."
"Big Jim's" wife gave her order. He looked at her with respect. She had mentioned truffles; and be bad not known that she knew what truffles were. From the wine list she designated an appropriate and desirable brand. He looked at her with some admiration.
She was beaming with the innocent excitement that woman derives from the exercise of her gregariousness. She was talking to him about a hundred things with animation and delight. And as the meal progressed her cheeks, colorless from a life indoors, took on a delicate flush. "Big Jim" looked around the room and saw that none of the women there had her charm. And then he thought of the three years she had suffered immurement, uncomplaining, and a flush of shame warmed him, for he carried fair play as an item in his creed.
But when the Honorable Patrick Corrigan, leader in Dougherty's district and a friend of his, saw them and came over to the table, matters got to the threequarter stretch. The Honorable Patrick was a gallant man, both in deeds and words. As for the Blarney stone, his previous actions toward it must have been pronounced. Heavy damages for breach of promise could surely have been obtained had the Blarney stone seen fit to sue the Honorable Patrick.
"Jimmy, old man!" he called; he clapped Dougherty on the back; be shone like a midday sun upon Delia.
"Honorable Mr. Corrigan - Mrs. Dougherty," said "Big Jim."
The Honorable Patrick became a fountain of entertainment
and admiration. The waiter had to
fetch a third chair for him; he made another at the
table, and the wineglasses were refilled.
"You selfish old rascal!" he exclaimed, shaking an
arch finger at "Big Jim," "to have kept Mrs.
Dougherty a secret from us."
And then "Big Jim" Dougherty, who was no
talker, sat dumb, and saw the wife who had dined
every evening for three years at home, blossom like
a fairy flower. Quick, witty, charming, full of light
and ready talk, she received the experienced attack
of the Honorable Patrick on the field of repartee and
surprised, vanquished, delighted him. She unfolded
her long-closed petals and around her the room
became a garden. They tried to include "Big
Jim" in the conversation, but he was without a
vocabulary.
And then a stray bunch of politicians and good fellows who lived for sport came into the room. They saw "Big Jim" and the leader, and over they came and were made acquainted with Mrs. Dougherty. And in a few minutes she was holding a salon. Half a dozen men surrounded her, courtiers all, and six found her capable of charming. "Big Jim" sat, grim, and kept saying to himself: "Three years, three years!"
The dinner came to an end. The Honorable Patrick reached for Mrs. Dougherty's cloak; but that was a matter of action instead of words, and Dougherty' s big band got it first by two seconds.
While the farewells were being said at the door the Honorable Patrick smote Dougherty mightily between the shoulders.
"Jimmy, me boy," he declared, in a giant whisper, "the madam is a jewel of the first water. Ye're a lucky dog."
"Big Jim" walked homeward with his wife. She seemed quite as pleased with the lights and show windows in the streets as with the admiration of the men in Hoogley's. As they passed Seltzer's they heard the sound of many voices in the cafe. The boys would be starting the drinks around now and discussing past performances.
At the door of their home Delia paused. The pleasure of the outing radiated softly from her countenance. She could not hope for Jim of evenings, but the glory of this one would Tighten her lonely hours for a long time.
"Thank you for taking me out, Jim," she said, gratefully. "You'll be going back up to Seltzer's now, of course."
"To -- with Seltzer's," said "Big Jim," ememphatically.
"And d-- Pat Corrigan! Does
he think I haven't got any eyes?
And the door closed behind both of them.
LITTLE SPECK IN GARNERED FRUIT
The honeymoon was at its full. There was a flat with the reddest of new carpets, tasselled portieres and six steins with pewter lids arranged on a ledge above the wainscoting of the dining-room. The wonder of it was yet upon them. Neither of them had ever seen a yellow primrose by the river's brim; but if such a sight had met their eyes at that time it would have seemed like - well, whatever the poet expected the right kind of people to see in it besides a primrose.
The bride sat in the rocker with her feet resting upon the world. She was wrapt in rosy dreams and a kimono of the same hue. She wondered what the people in Greenland and Tasmania and Beloochistan were saying one to another about her marriage to Kid McGarry. Not that it made any difference. There was no welter-weight from London to the Southern Cross that could stand up four hours - no; four rounds - with her bridegroom. And he had been hers for three weeks; and the crook of her little finger could sway him more than the fist of any 142- pounder in the world.
Love, when it is ours, is the other name for selfabnegation and sacrifice. When it belongs to people across the airshaft it means arrogance and self-conceit.
The bride crossed her oxfords and looked thoughtfully at the distemper Cupids on the ceiling.
"Precious," said she, with the air of Cleopatra asking Antony for Rome done up in tissue paper and delivered at residence, "I think I would like a peach."
Kid McGarry arose and put on his coat and hat. He was serious, shaven, sentimental, and spry.
"All right," said he, as coolly as though be were only agreeing to sign articles to fight the champion of England. "I'll step down and cop one out for you see?"
"Don't be long," said the bride. "I'll be lonesome without my naughty boy. Get a nice, ripe one." After a series of farewells that would have befitted an imminent voyage to foreign parts, the Kid went down to the street.
Here he not unreasonably hesitated, for the season was yet early spring, and there seemed small chance of wresting anywhere from those chill streets and stores the coveted luscious guerdon of summer's golden prime.
At the Italian's fruit-stand on the corner be stopped and cast a contemptuous eye over the display of papered oranges, highly polished apples and wan, sun-hungry bananas.
"Gotta da peach?" asked the Kid in the tongue of Dante, the lover of lovers.
"Ah, no, - " sighed the vender. "Not for one mont com-a da peach. Too soon. Gotta da nice-a orange. Like-a da orange?"
Scornful, the Kid pursued his quest. He entered the all-night chop-house, cafe, and bowling-alley of his friend and admirer, Justus O'Callahan. The O'Callahan was about in his institution, looking for leaks.
"I want it straight," said the Kid to him. "The old woman has got a hunch that she wants a peach. Now, if you've got a peach, Cal, get it out quick. I want it and others like it if you've got 'em in plural quantities."
"The house is yours," said O'Callahan. "But there's no peach in it. It's too soon. I don't suppose you could even find 'em at one of the Broadway joints. That's too bad. When a lady fixes her mouth for a certain kind of fruit nothing else won't do. It's too late now to find any of the first-class fruiterers open. But if you think the missis would like some nice oranges I've just got a box of fine ones in that she might."
"Much obliged, Cal. It's a peach proposition right from the ring of the gong. I'll try further."
The time was nearly midnight as the Kid walked down the West-Side avenue. Few stores were open and such as were practically hooted at the idea of a peach.
But in her moated flat the bride confidently awaited her Persian fruit. A champion welter-weight not find a peach? - not stride triumphantly over the seasons and the zodiac and the almanac to fetch an Amsden's June or a Georgia cling to his owny-own?
The Kid's eye caught sight of a window that was lighted and gorgeous with nature's most entrancing colors. The light suddenly went out. The Kid sprinted and caught the fruiterer locking his door.
"Peaches?" said he, with extreme deliberation.
"Well, no, Sir. Not for three or four weeks yet. I haven't any idea where you might find some. There may be a few in town from under the glass, but they'd be bard to locate. Maybe at one of the more expensive hotels - some place where there's plenty of money to waste. I've got some very fine oranges, though - from a shipload that came in to-day."
The Kid lingered on the corner for a moment, and then set out briskly toward a pair of green lights that flanked the steps of a building down a dark side street.
"Captain around anywhere?" he asked of the desk sergeant of the police station.
At that moment the captain came briskly forward from the rear. He was in plain clothes and had a busy air.
"Hello, Kid," he said to the pugilist. "Thought you were bridal-touring?
"Got back yesterday. I'm a solid citizen now. Think I'll take an interest in municipal doings. How would it suit you to get into Denver Dick's place tonight, Cap?
"Past performances," said the captain, twisting his moustache. "Denver was closed up two months ago."
"Correct," said the Kid. "Rafferty chased him out of the Forty-third. He's running in your precinct now, and his game's bigger than ever. I'm down on this gambling business. I can put you against his game."
"In my precinct?" growled the captain. "Are you sure, Kid? I'll take it as a favor. Have you got the entree? How is it to be done?"
"Hammers," said the Kid. "They haven't got any steel on the doors yet. You'll need ten men. No, they won't let me in the place. Denver has been trying to do me. He thought I tipped him off for the other raid. I didn't, though. You want to hurry. I've got to get back home. The house is only three blocks from here."
Before ten minutes had sped the captain with a dozen men stole with their guide into the hallway of a dark and virtuous-looking building in which many businesses were conducted by day.
"Third floor, rear," said the Kid, softly. "I'll lead the way."
Two axemen faced the door that he pointed out to them.
"It seems all quiet," said the captain, doubtfully.
"Are you sure your tip is straight?"
"Cut away!" said the Kid. "It's on me if it ain't."
The axes crashed through the as yet unprotected door. A blaze of light from within poured through the smashed panels. The door fell, and the raiders rang into the room with their guns handy.
The big room was furnished with the gaudy magnificence dear to Denver Dick's western ideas. Various well-patronized games were in progress. About fifty men who were in the room rushed upon the police in a grand break for personal liberty. The plainclothes men had to do a little club-swinging. More than half the patrons escaped.
Denver Dick had graced his game with his own presence that night. He led the rush that was intended to sweep away the smaller body of raiders, But when be saw the Kid his manner became personal. Being in the heavyweight class be cast himself joyfully upon his slighter enemy, and they rolled down a flight of stairs in each others arms. On the landing they separated and arose, and then the Kid was able to use some of his professional tactics, which had been useless to him while in the excited clutch of a 200-pound sporting gentleman who was about to lose $20,000 worth of paraphernalia.
After vanquishing his adversary the Kid hurried upstairs and through the gambling-room into a smaller apartment connecting by an arched doorway.
Here was a long table set with choicest chinaware and silver, and lavishly furnished with food of that expensive and spectacular sort of which the devotees of sport are supposed to be fond. Here again was to be perceived the liberal and florid taste of the gentleman with the urban cognomenal prefix.
A No. 10 patent leather shoe protruded a few of its inches outside the tablecloth along the floor. The Kid seized this and plucked forth a black man in a white tie and the garb of a servitor.
"Get up!" commanded the Kid. "Are you in charge of this free lunch?"
"Yes, sah, I was. Has they done pinched us ag'in, boss?"
"Looks that way. Listen to me. Are there any peaches in this layout? If there ain't I'll have to throw up the sponge."
"There was three dozen, sah, when the game opened this evenin'; but I reckon the gentlemen done eat 'em all up. If you'd like to eat a fust-rate orange, sah, I kin find you some."
"Get busy," ordered the Kid, sternly, and move whatever peach crop you've got quick or there'll be trouble. If anybody oranges me again to-night, I'll knock his face off."
The raid on Denver Dick's high-priced and prodigal
luncheon revealed one lone, last peach that had
escaped the epicurean jaws of the followers of
chance. Into the Kid's pocket it went, and that indefatigable
forager departed immediately with his
prize. With scarcely a glance at the scene on the
sidewalk below, where the officers were loading their
prisoners into the patrol wagons, be moved homeward
with long, swift strides.
His heart was light as be went. So rode the knights back to Camelot after perils and high deeds done for their ladies fair. The Kid's lady had commanded him and be had obeyed. True, it was but a peach that she had craved; but it had been no small deed to glean a peach at midnight from that wintry city where yet the February snows lay like iron. She had asked for a peach; she was his bride; in his pocket the peach was warming in his band that held it for fear that it might fall out and be lost.
On the way the Kid turned in at an all-night drug store and said to the spectacled clerk:
"Say, sport, I wish you'd size up this rib of mine and see if it's broke. I was in a little scrap and bumped down a flight or two of stairs."
The druggist made an examination.
"It isn't broken," was his diagnosis, "but you have
a bruise there that looks like you'd fallen off the
Flatiron twice."
"That's all right," said the Kid. "Let's have your clothesbrush, please."
The bride waited in the rosy glow of the pink lamp shade. The miracles were not all passed away. By breathing a desire for some slight thing - a flower, a pomegranate, a - oh, yes, a peach - she could send forth her man into the night, into the world which could not withstand him, and he would do her bidding.
And now be stood by her chair and laid the peach in her band.
"Naughty boy!" she said, fondly. "Did I say a peach? I think I would much rather have had an orange."
Blest be the bride.
THE HARBINGER
Long before the springtide is felt in the dull bosom of the yokel does the city man know that the grassgreen goddess is upon her throne. He sits at his breakfast eggs and toast, begirt by stone walls, opens his morning paper and sees journalism leave vernalism at the post.
For, whereas, spring's couriers were once the evidence of our finer senses, now the Associated Press does the trick.
The warble of the first robin in Hackensack, the stirring of the maple sap in Bennington, the budding of the pussy willows along Main Street in Syracuse, the first chirp of the bluebird, the swan song of the Blue Point, the annual tornado in St. Louis, the plaint of the peach pessimist from Pompton, N. J., the regular visit of the tame wild goose with a broken leg to the pond near Bilgewater Junction, the base attempt of the Drug Trust to boost the price of quinine foiled in the House by Congressman Jinks, the first tall poplar struck by lightning and the usual stunned picknickers who had taken refuge, the first crack of the ice jam in the Allegheny River, the finding of a violet in its mossy bed by the correspondent at Round Corners - these are the advance signs of the burgeoning season that are wired into the wise city, while the farmer sees nothing but winter upon his dreary fields.
But these be mere externals. The true harbinger is the heart. When Strephon seeks his Chloe and Mike his Maggie, then only is spring arrived and the newspaper report of the five-foot rattler killed in Squire Pettigrew's pasture confirmed.
Ere the first violet blew, Mr. Peters, Mr. Ragsdale and Mr. Kidd sat together on a bench in Union Square and conspired. Mr. Peters was the D'Artagnan of the loafers there. He was the dingiest, the laziest, the sorriest brown blot against the green background of any bench in the park. But just then he was the most important of the trio.
Mr. Peters had a wife. This had not heretofore affected his standing with Ragsy and Kidd. But today it invested him with a peculiar interest. His friends, having escaped matrimony, had shown a disposition to deride Mr. Peters for his venture on that troubled sea. But at last they had been forced to acknowledge that either he had been gifted with a large foresight or that he was one of Fortune's lucky sons.
For, Mrs. Peters had a dollar. A whole dollar bill, good and receivable by the Government for customs, taxes and all public dues. How to get possession of that dollar was the question up for discussion by the three musty musketeers.
"How do you know it was a dollar?" asked Ragsy, the immensity of the sum inclining him to scepticism.
"The coalman seen her have it," said Mr. Peters. "She went out and done some washing yesterday. And look what she give me for breakfast - the heel of a loaf and a cup of coffee, and her with a dollar!"
"It's fierce," said Ragsy.
"Say we go up and punch 'er and stick a towel in 'er mouth and cop the coin" suggested Kidd, Viciously. "Y' ain't afraid of a woman, are you?"
"She might holler and have us pinched," demurred Ragsy. "I don't believe in slugging no woman in a houseful of people."
"Gent'men," said Mr. Peters, severely, through his russet stubble, "remember that you are speaking of my wife. A man who would lift his hand to a lady except in the way of -- "
"Maguire," said Ragsy, pointedly, "has got his bock beer sign out. If we had a dollar we could -- "
"Hush up!" said Mr. Peters, licking his lips. "We got to get that case note somehow, boys. Ain't what's a man's wife's his? Leave it to me. I'll go over to the house and get it. Wait here for me."
"I've seen 'em give up quick, and tell you where it's hid if you kick 'em in the ribs," said Kidd.
"No man would kick a woman," said Peters, virtuously. "A little choking - just a touch on the windpipe - that gets away with 'em - and no marks left. Wait for me. I'll bring back that dollar, boys."
High up in a tenement-house between Second Avenue and the river lived the Peterses in a back room so gloomy that the landlord blushed to take the rent for it. Mrs. Peters worked at sundry times, doing odd jobs of scrubbing and washing. Mr. Peters had a pure, unbroken record of five years without having earned a penny. And yet they clung together, sharing each other's hatred and misery, being creatures of habit. Of habit, the power that keeps the earth from flying to pieces; though there is some silly theory of gravitation.
Mrs. Peters reposed her 200 pounds on the safer of the two chairs and gazed stolidly out the one window at the brick wall opposite. Her eyes were red and damp. The furniture could have been carried away on a pushcart, but no pushcart man would have removed it as a gift.
The door opened to admit Mr. Peters. His foxterrier eyes expressed a wish. His wife's diagnosis located correctly the seat of it, but misread it hunger instead of thirst.
"You'll get nothing more to eat till night," she said, looking out of the window again. Take your hound-dog's face out of the room."
Mr. Peters's eye calculated the distance between them. By taking her by surprise it might be possible to spring upon her, overthrow her, and apply the throttling tactics of which he had boasted to his waiting comrades. True, it had been only a boast; never yet had be dared to lay violent bands upon her; but with the thoughts of the delicious, cool bock or Culmbacher bracing his nerves, he was near to upsetting his own theories of the treatment due by a gentleman to a lady. But, with his loafer's love for the more artistic and less strenuous way, he chose diplomacy first, the high card in the game -- the assumed attitude of success already attained.
"You have a dollar," he said, loftily, but significantly in the tone that goes with the lighting of a cigar - when the properties are at hand."
"I have," said Mrs. Peters, producing the bill from her bosom and crackling it, teasingly.
"I am offered a position in a -- in a tea store," said Mr. Peters. "I am to begin work to-morrow. But it will be necessary for me to buy a pair of --"
"You are a liar," said Mrs. Peters, reinterring the note. "No tea store, nor no A B C store, nor no junk shop would have you. I rubbed the skin off both me hands washin' jumpers and overalls to make that dollar. Do you think it come out of them suds to buy the kind you put into you? Skiddoo! Get your mind off of money."
Evidently the poses of Talleyrand were not worth one hundred cents on that dollar. But diplomacy is dexterous. The artistic temperament of Mr. Peters lifted him by the straps of his congress gaiters and set him on new ground. He called up a look of desperate melancholy to his eyes.
"Clara," he said, hollowly, "to struggle further
is useless. You have always misunderstood me.
Heaven knows I have striven with all my might to
keep my head above the waves of misfortune,
but - "
"Cut out the rainbow of hope and that stuff about
walkin' one by one through the narrow isles of
Spain," said Mrs. Peters, with a sigh. "I've heard
it so often. There's an ounce bottle of carbolic on the
shelf behind the empty coffee can. Drink hearty."
Mr. Peters reflected. What next! The old expedients had failed. The two musty musketeers were awaiting him hard by the ruined chateau -- that is to say, on a park bench with rickety cast-iron legs. His honor was at stake. He had engaged to storm the castle single-handed and bring back the treasure that was to furnish them wassail and solace. And all that stood between him and the coveted dollar was his wife, once a little girl whom he could -- aha! -- why not again? Once with soft words he could, as they say, twist her around his little finger. Why not again? Not for years had he tried it. Grim poverty and mutual hatred had killed all that. But Ragsy and Kidd were waiting for him to bring the dollar!
Mr. Peters took a surreptitiously keen look at his wife. Her formless bulk overflowed the chair. She kept her eyes fixed out the window in a strange kind of trance. Her eyes showed that she had been recently weeping.
"I wonder," said Mr. Peters to himself, "if there'd be anything in it."
The window was open upon its outlook of brick walls and drab, barren back yards. Except for the mildness of the air that entered it might have been midwinter yet in the city that turns such a frowning face to besieging spring. But spring doesn't come with the thunder of cannon. She is a sapper and a miner, and you must capitulate.
"I'll try it," said Mr. Peters to himself, making a wry face.
He went up to his wife and put his arm across her shoulders.
"Clara, darling," he said in tones that shouldn't have fooled a baby seal, "why should we have hard words? Ain't you my own tootsum wootsums?
"A black mark against you, Mr. Peters, in the sared ledger of Cupid. Charges of attempted graft are filed against you, and of forgery and utterance of two of Love's holiest of appellations.
But the miracle of spring was wrought. Into the back room over the back alley between the black walls had crept the Harbinger. It was ridiculous, and yet - Well, it is a rat trap, and you, madam and sir and all of us, are in it.
Red and fat and crying like Niobe or Niagara, Mrs. Peters threw her arms around her lord and dissolved upon him. Mr. Peters would have striven to extricate the dollar bill from its deposit vault, but his arms were bound to his sides.
"Do you love me, James?" asked Mrs. Peters.
"Madly," said James, "but -- "
"You are ill! " exclaimed Mrs. Peters. "Why are you so pale and tired looking?"
"I feel weak," said Mr. Peters. "I -- "
"Oh, wait; I know what it is. Wait, James. I'll be back in a minutes''
With a parting bug that revived in Mr. Peters recollections of the Terrible Turk, his wife hurried out of the room and down the stairs.
Mr. Peters hitched his thumbs under his suspenders.
"All right," he confided to the ceiling. "I've got her going. I hadn't any idea the old girl was soft any more under the foolish rib. Well, sir; ain't I the Claude Melnotte of the lower East Side? What? It's a 100 to 1 shot that I get the dollar. I wonder what she went out for. I guess she's gone to tell Mrs. Muldoon on the second floor, that we're reconciled. I'll remember this. Soft soap! And Ragsy was talking about slugging her!
Mrs. Peters came back with a bottle of sarsaparilla.
"I'm glad I happened to have that dollar," she said. "You're all run down, boney."
Mr. Peters had a tablespoonful of the stuff inserted into him. Then Mrs. Peters sat on his lap and murmured:
"Call me tootsum wootsums again, James."
He sat still, held there by his materialized goddess of spring.
Spring had come.
On the bench in Union Square Mr. Ragsdale and Mr. Kidd squirmed, tongue-parched, awaiting D'Artagnan and his dollar.
"I wish I had choked her at first," said Mr. Peters to himself.
WHILE THE AUTO WAITS
Promptly at the beginning of twilight, came again to that quiet corner of that quiet, small park the girl in gray. She sat upon a bench and read a book, for there was yet to come a half hour in which print could be accomplished.
To repeat: Her dress was gray, and plain enough to mask its impeccancy of style and fit. A largemeshed veil imprisoned her turban hat and a face that shone through it with a calm and unconscious beauty. She had come there at the same hour on the day previous, and on the day before that; and there was one who knew it.
The young man who knew it hovered near, relying upon burnt sacrifices to the great joss, Luck. His piety was rewarded, for, in turning a page, her book slipped from her fingers and bounded from the bench a full yard away.
The young man pounced upon it with instant avidity,
returning it to its owner with that air that seems
to flourish in parks and public places - a compound
of gallantry and hope, tempered with respect for the
policeman on the beat. In a pleasant voice, be risked
an inconsequent remark upon the weather that introductory
topic responsible for so much of the
world's unhappiness-and stood poised for a moment,
awaiting his fate.
The girl looked him over leisurely; at his ordinary, neat dress and his features distinguished by nothing particular in the way of expression.
"You may sit down, if you like," she said, in a full, deliberate contralto. "Really, I would like to have you do so. The light is too bad for reading. I would prefer to talk."
The vassal of Luck slid upon the seat by her side with complaisance.
"Do you know," be said, speaking the formula with which park chairmen open their meetings, "that you are quite the stunningest girl I have seen in a long time? I had my eye on you yesterday. Didn't know somebody was bowled over by those pretty lamps of yours, did you, honeysuckle?"
"Whoever you are," said the girl, in icy tones, "you must remember that I am a lady. I will excuse the remark you have just made because the mistake was, doubtless, not an unnatural one -- in your circle. I asked you to sit down; if the invitation must constitute me your honeysuckle, consider it withdrawn."
"I earnestly beg your pardon," pleaded the young ran. His expression of satisfaction had changed to one of penitence and humility. It was my fault, you know -I mean, there are girls in parks, you know - that is, of course, you don't know, but -- "
"Abandon the subject, if you please. Of course I know. Now, tell me about these people passing and crowding, each way, along these paths. Where are they going? Why do they hurry so? Are they happy?"
The young man had promptly abandoned his air of coquetry. His cue was now for a waiting part; he could not guess the role be would be expected to play.
"It is interesting to watch them," he replied, postulating her mood. "It is the wonderful drama of life. Some are going to supper and some to -- er -- other places. One wonders what their histories are."
"I do not," said the girl; "I am not so inquisitive. I come here to sit because here, only, can I be tear the great, common, throbbing heart of humanity. My part in life is cast where its beats are never felt. Can you surmise why I spoke to you, Mr. -- ?"
"Parkenstacker," supplied the young man. Then be looked eager and hopeful.
"No," said the girl, holding up a slender finger, and smiling slightly. "You would recognize it immediately. It is impossible to keep one's name out of print. Or even one's portrait. This veil and this hat of my maid furnish me with an incog. You should have seen the chauffeur stare at it when he thought I did not see. Candidly, there are five or six names that belong in the holy of holies, and mine, by the accident of birth, is one of them. I spoke to you, Mr. Stackenpot -- "
"Parkenstacker," corrected the young man, modestly.
" -- Mr. Parkenstacker, because I wanted to talk,
for once, with a natural man -- one unspoiled by the
despicable gloss of wealth and supposed social superiority.
Oh! you do not know how weary I am of
it -- money, money, money! And of the men who
surround me, dancing like little marionettes all cut by
the same pattern. I am sick of pleasure, of jewels,
of travel, of society, of luxuries of all kinds."
"I always had an idea," ventured the young man, hesitatingly, "that money must be a pretty good thing."
"A competence is to be desired. But when you leave so many millions that -- !" She concluded the sentence with a gesture of despair. "It is the mootony of it" she continued, "that palls. Drives, dinners, theatres, balls, suppers, with the gilding of superfluous wealth over it all. Sometimes the very tinkle of the ice in my champagne glass nearly drives me mad."
Mr. Parkenstacker looked ingenuously interested.
"I have always liked," he said, "to read and hear about the ways of wealthy and fashionable folks. I suppose I am a bit of a snob. But I like to have my information accurate. Now, I had formed the opinion that champagne is cooled in the bottle and not by placing ice in the glass."
The girl gave a musical laugh of genuine amusement.
"You should know," she explained, in an indulgent tone, "that we of the non-useful class depend for our amusement upon departure from precedent. Just now it is a fad to put ice in champagne. The idea was originated by a visiting Prince of Tartary while dining at the Waldorf. It will soon give way to some other whim. Just as at a dinner party this week on Madison Avenue a green kid glove was laid by the plate of each guest to be put on and used while eating olives."
"I see," admitted the young man, humbly.
"These special diversions of the inner circle do not become familiar to the common public."
"Sometimes," continued the girl, acknowledging his confession of error by a slight bow, "I have thought that if I ever should love a man it would be one of lowly station. One who is a worker and not a drone. But, doubtless, the claims of caste and wealth will prove stronger than my inclination. Just now I am besieged by two. One is a Grand Duke of a German principality. I think he has, or has bad, a wife, somewhere, driven mad by his intemperance and cruelty. The other is an English Marquis, so cold and mercenary that I even prefer the diabolism of the Duke. What is it that impels me to tell you these things, Mr. Packenstacker?
"Parkenstacker," breathed the young man. "Indeed, you cannot know how much I appreciate your confidences."
The girl contemplated him with the calm, impersonal regard that befitted the difference in their stations.
"What is your line of business, Mr. Parkenstacker ?" she asked.
"A very humble one. But I hope to rise in the world. Were you really in earnest when you said that you could love a man of lowly position?"
"Indeed I was. But I said 'might.' There is the Grand Duke and the Marquis, you know. Yes; no calling could be too humble were the man what I would wish him to be."
"I work," declared Mr. Parkenstacker, "in a restaurant."
The girl shrank slightly.
"Not as a waiter?" she said, a little imploringly. "Labor is noble, but personal attendance, you know -- valets and -- "
"I am not a waiter. I am cashier in" -- on the street they faced that bounded the opposite side of the park was the brilliant electric sign "RESTAURANT" -- "I am cashier in that restaurant you am there."
The girl consulted a tiny watch set in a bracelet of rich design upon her left wrist, and rose, hurriedly. She thrust her book into a glittering reticule suspended from her waist, for which, however, the book was too large.
"Why are you not at work?" she asked.
"I am on the night turn," said the young man; it is yet an hour before my period begins. May I not hope to see you again?"
"I do not know. Perhaps - but the whim may not seize me again. I must go quickly now. There is a dinner, and a box at the play -- and, oh! the same old round. Perhaps you noticed an automobile at the upper corner of the park as you came. One with a white body
"And red running gear?" asked the young man, knitting his brows reflectively.
"Yes. I always come in that. Pierre waits for me there. He supposes me to be shopping in the department store across the square. Conceive of the bondage of the life wherein we must deceive even our chauffeurs. Good-night."
"But it is dark now," said Mr. Parkenstacker, "and the park is full of rude men. May I not walk -- "
"If you have the slightest regard for my wishes," said the girl, firmly, "you will remain at this bench for ten minutes after I have left. I do not mean to accuse you, but you are probably aware that autos generally bear the monogram of their owner. Again, good-night"
Swift and stately she moved away through the dusk. The young man watched her graceful form as she reached the pavement at the park's edge, and turned up along it toward the corner where stood the automobile. Then he treacherously and unhesitatingly began to dodge and skim among the park trees and shrubbery in a course parallel to her route, keeping her well in sight
When she reached the corner she turned her head to glance at the motor car, and then passed it, con tinuing on across the street. Sheltered behind a convenient standing cab, the young man followed her movements closely with his eyes. Passing down the sidewalk of the street opposite the park, she entered the restaurant with the blazing sign. The place was one of those frankly glaring establishments, all white, paint and glass, where one may dine cheaply and conspicuously. The girl penetrated the restaurant to some retreat at its rear, whence she quickly emerged without her bat and veil.
The cashier's desk was well to the front. A redhead girl an the stool climbed down, glancing pointedly at the clock as she did so. The girl in gray mounted in her place.
The young man thrust his hands into his pockets and walked slowly back along the sidewalk. At the corner his foot struck a small, paper-covered volume lying there, sending it sliding to the edge of the turf. By its picturesque cover he recognized it as the book the girl had been reading. He picked it up carelessly, and saw that its title was "New Arabian Nights," the author being of the name of Stevenson. He dropped it again upon the grass, and lounged, irresolute, for a minute. Then he stepped into the automobile, reclined upon the cushions, and said two words to the chauffeur:
"Club, Henri."
A COMEDY IN RUBBER
One may hope, in spite of the metaphorists, to avoid the breath of the deadly upas tree; one may, by great good fortune, succeed in blacking the eye of the basilisk; one might even dodge the attentions of Cerberus and Argus, but no man, alive or dead, can escape the gaze of the Rubberer.
New York is the Caoutchouc City. There are many, of course, who go their ways, making money, without turning to the right or the left, but there is a tribe abroad wonderfully composed, like the Martians, solely of eyes and means of locomotion.
These devotees of curiosity swarm, like flies, in a moment in a struggling, breathless circle about the scene of an unusual occurrence. If a workman opens a manhole, if a street car runs over a man from North Tarrytown, if a little boy drops an egg on his way home from the grocery, if a casual house or two drops into the subway, if a lady loses a nickel through a hole in the lisle thread, if the police drag a telephone and a racing chart forth from an Ibsen Society reading-room, if Senator Depew or Mr. Chuck Connors walks out to take the air - if any of these incidents or accidents takes place, you will see the mad, irresistible rush of the "rubber" tribe to the spot.
The importance of the event does not count. They gaze with equal interest and absorption at a chorus girl or at a man painting a liver pill sign. They will form as deep a cordon around a man with a clubfoot as they will around a balked automobile. They have the furor rubberendi. They are optical gluttons, feasting and fattening on the misfortunes of their fellow beings. They gloat and pore and glare and squint and stare with their fishy eyes like goggleeyed perch at the book baited with calamity.
It would seem that Cupid would find these ocular vampires too cold game for his calorific shafts, but have we not yet to discover an immune even among the Protozoa? Yes, beautiful Romance descended upon two of this tribe, and love came into their hearts as they crowded about the prostrate form of a man who had been run over by a brewery wagon.
William Pry was the first on the spot. He was an expert at such gatherings. With an expression of intense happiness on his features, be stood over the victim of the accident, listening to his groans as if to the sweetest music. When the crowd of spectators had swelled to a closely packed circle William saw a violent commotion in the crowd opposite him. Men were hurled aside like ninepins by the impact of some moving body that clove them like the rush of a tornado. With elbows, umbrella, hat-pin, tongue, and fingernails doing their duty, Violet Seymour forced her way through the mob of onlookers to the first row. Strong men who even had been able to secure a seat on the 5.30 Harlem express staggered back like children as she bucked centre. Two large lady spectators who bad seen the Duke of Roxburgh married and had often blocked traffic on Twenty-third Street fell back into the second row with ripped shirtwaists when Violet had finished with them. William Pry loved her at first sight.
The ambulance removed the unconscious agent of Cupid. William and Violet remained after the crowd had dispersed. They were true Rubberers. People who leave the scene of an accident with the ambulance have not genuine caoutchouc in the cosmogony of their necks. The delicate, fine flavor of the affair is to be bad only in the after-taste - in gloating over the spot, in gazing fixedly at the houses opposite, in hovering there in a dream more exquisite than the opium-eater's ecstasy. William Pry and Violet Seymour were connoisseurs in casualties. They knew bow to extract full enjoyment from every incident.
Presently they looked at each other. Violet had a
brown birthmark on her neck as large as a silver
half-dollar. William fixed his eyes upon it. William
Pry had inordinately bowed legs. Violet allowed her
gaze to linger unswervingly upon them. Face to face
they stood thus for moments, each staring at the
other. Etiquette would not allow them to speak; but
in the Caoutchouc City it is permitted to gaze without
stint at the trees in the parks and at the physical
blemishes of a fellow creature.
At length with a sigh they parted. But Cupid had
been the driver of the brewery wagon, and the wheel
that broke a leg united two fond hearts.
The next meeting of the hero and heroine was in front of a board fence near Broadway. The day had been a disappointing one. There had been no fights on the street, children had kept from under the wheels of the street cars, cripples and fat men in negligee shirts were scarce; nobody seemed to be inclined to slip on banana peels or fall down with heart disease. Even the sport from Kokomo, Ind., who claims to be a cousin of ex-Mayor Low and scatters nickels from a cab window, had not put in his appearance. There was nothing to stare at, and William Pry had premonitions of ennui.
But he saw a large crowd scrambling and pushing excitedly in front of a billboard. Sprinting for it, he knocked down an old woman and a child carrying a bottle of milk, and fought his way like a demon into the mass of spectators. Already in the inner line stood Violet Seymour with one sleeve and two gold fillings gone, a corset steel puncture and a sprained wrist, but happy. She was looking at what there was to see. A man was painting upon the fence:
"Eat Bricklets - They Fill Your Face."
Violet blushed when she saw William Pry. William jabbed a lady in a black silk raglan in the ribs, kicked a boy in the shin, bit an old gentleman on the left ear and managed to crowd nearer to Violet. They stood for an hour looking at the man paint the letters. Then William's love could be repressed no longer. He touched her on the arm.
"Come with me," he said. "I know where there is a bootblack without an Adam's apple."
She looked up at him shyly, yet with unmistakable love transfiguring her countenance.
"And you have saved it for me?" she asked, trembling with the first dim ecstasy of a woman beloved.
Together they hurried to the bootblack's stand. An hour they spent there gazing at the malformed youth.
A window-cleaner fell from the fifth story to the sidewalk beside them. As the ambulance came clanging up William pressed her hand joyously. "Four ribs at least and a compound fracture," he whispered, swiftly. "You are not sorry that you met me, are you, dearest?
"Me?" said Violet, returning the pressure. "Sure not. I could stand all day rubbering with you."
The climax of the romance occurred a few days later. Perhaps the reader will remember the intense excitement into which the city was thrown when Eliza Jane, a colored woman, was served with a subpoena. The Rubber Tribe encamped on the spot. With his own hands William Pry placed a board upon two beer kegs in the street opposite Eliza Jane's residence. He and Violet sat there for three days and nights. Then it occurred to a detective to open the door and serve the subpoena. He sent for a kinetoscope and did so.
Two souls with such congenial tastes could not long remain apart. As a policeman drove them away with his night stick that evening they plighted their troth. The seeds of love bad been well sown, and had grown up, hardy and vigorous, into a - let us call it a rubber plant.
The wedding of William Pry and Violet Seymour was set for June 10. The Big Church in the Middle of the Block was banked high with flowers. The populous tribe of Rubberers the world over is rampant over weddings. They are the pessimists of the pews. They are the guyers of the groom and the banterers of the bride. They come to laugh at your marriage, and should you escape from Hymen's tower on the back of death's pale steed they will come to the funeral and sit in the same pew and cry over your luck. Rubber will stretch.
The church was lighted. A grosgrain carpet lay over the asphalt to the edge of the sidewalk. Bridesmaids were patting one another's sashes awry and speaking of the Bride's freckles. Coachmen tied white ribbons on their whips and bewailed the space of time between drinks. The minister was musing over his possible fee, essaying conjecture whether it would suffice to purchase a new broadcloth suit for himself and a photograph of Laura Jane Libbey for his wife. Yea, Cupid was in the air.
And outside the church, oh, my brothers, surged
and heaved the rank and file of the tribe of Rubberers.
in two bodies they were, with the grosgrain carpet
and cops with clubs between. They crowded like
cattle, they fought, they pressed and surged and
swayed and trampled one another to see a bit of a
girl in a white veil acquire license to go through a
man's pockets while be sleeps.
But the hour for the wedding came and went, and
the bride and bridegroom came not. And impatience
gave way to alarm and alarm brought about search,
and they were not found. And then two big policemen
took a band and dragged out of the furious mob
of onlookers a crushed and trampled thing, with a
wedding ring in its vest pocket and a shredded and
hysterical woman beating her way to the carpet's
edge, ragged, bruised and obstreperous.
William Pry and Violet Seymour, creatures of habit, had joined in the seething game of the spectators, unable to resist the overwhelming desire to gaze upon themselves entering, as bride and bridegroom, the rose-decked church.
Rubber will out.
ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS
"One thousand dollars," repeated Lawyer Tolman, solemnly and severely, "and here is the money."
Young Gillian gave a decidedly amused laugh as he fingered the thin package of new fifty-dollar notes.
"It's such a confoundedly awkward amount," he explained, genially, to the lawyer. "If it had been ten thousand a fellow might wind up with a lot of fireworks and do himself credit. Even fifty dollars would have been less trouble."
"You heard the reading of your uncle's will," continued Lawyer Tolman, professionally dry in his tones. "I do not know if you paid much attention to its details. I must remind you of one. You are required to render to us an account of the manner of expenditure of this $1,000 as soon as you have disposed of it. The will stipulates that. I trust that you will so far comply with the late Mr. Gillian's wishes."
"You may depend upon it," said the young man.% politely, "in spite of the extra expense it will entail. I may have to engage a secretary. I was never good at accounts."
Gillian went to his club. There be hunted out one whom he called Old Bryson.
Old Bryson was calm and forty and sequestered. He was in a corner reading a book, and when he saw Gillian approaching he sighed, laid down his book and took off his glasses.
"Old Bryson, wake up," said Gillian. "I've a funny story to tell you."
" I wish you would tell it to some one in the billiard room," said Old Bryson. "You know how I hate your stories."
" This is a better one than usual," said Gillian, rolling a cigarette; " and I'm glad to tell it to you. It's too sad and funny to go with the rattling of billiard bars. I've just come from my late uncle's firm of legal corsairs. He leaves me an even thousand dollars. Now, what can a man possibly do with a thousand dollars? "
"I thought," said Old Bryson, showing as much interest as a bee shows in a vinegar cruet, "that the late Septimus Gillian was worth something like half a million."
" He was," assented Gillian, joyously, " and that's where the joke comes in. He's left his whole cargo of doubloons to a microbe. That is, part of it goes to the man who invents a new bacillus and the rest to establish a hospital for doing away with it again.
There are one or two trifling bequests on the side. - the butler and the housekeeper get a seal ring and $10 each. His nephew gets $1,000."
"You've always had plenty of money to spend," observed Old Bryson.
"Tons," said Gillian. "Uncle was the fairygodmother as far as an allowance was concerned."
"Any other heirs? " asked Old Bryson.
"None." Gillian frowned at his cigarette and kicked the upholstered leather of a divan uneasily.
There is a Miss Hayden, a ward of my uncle, who
lived in his house. She's a quiet thing - musical -
the daughter of somebody who was unlucky enough to
be his friend. I forgot to say that she was in on the
seal ring and $10 joke, too. I wish I had been.
Then I could have had two bottles of brut, tipped the
waiter with the ring and had the whole business off
my bands. Don't be superior and insulting, Old Bryson
- tell me what a fellow can do with a thousand
dollars."
Old Bryson rubbed his glasses and smiled. And
when Old Bryson smiled, Gillian knew that be intended
to be more offensive than ever.
"A thousand dollars," lie said, "means much or little. One man may buy a happy home with it and laugh at Rockefeller. Another could send his wife South with it and save her life. A thousand dollars would buy pure milk for one hundred babies during June, July, and August and save fifty of their lives. You could count upon a half hour's diversion with it at faro in one of the fortified art galleries. It would furnish an education to an ambitious boy. I am told that a genuine Corot was secured for that amount in an auction room yesterday. You could move to a New Hampshire town and live respectably two years on it. You could rent Madison Square Garden for one evening with it, and lecture your audience, if you should have one, on the precariousness of the profession of heir presumptive."
"People might like you, Old Bryson," said Gillian, always unruffled, "if you wouldn't moralize. I asked you to tell me what I could do with a thousand dollars."
"You?" said Bryson, with a gentle laugh. "Why, Bobby Gillian, there's only one logical thing you could do. You can go buy Miss Lotta Lauriere a diamond pendant with the money, and then take yourself off to Idaho and inflict, your presence upon a ranch. I advise a sheep ranch, as I have a particular dislike for sheep."
"Thanks," said Gillian, rising, "I thought I could depend upon you, Old Bryson. You've hit on the very scheme. I wanted to chuck the money in a lump, for I've got to turn in an account for it, and I hate itemizing."
Gillian phoned for a cab and said to the driver: "The stage entrance of the Columbine Theatre."- Miss Lotta Lauriere was assisting nature with a powder puff, almost ready for her call at a crowded Matinee, when her dresser mentioned the name of Mr. Gillian.
"Let it in," said Miss Lauriere. " Now, what is it, Bobby? I'm going on in two minutes."
"Rabbit-foot your right ear a little," suggested Gillian, critically. " That's better. It won't take two minutes for me. What do you say to a little thing in the pendant line? I can stand three ciphers with a figure one in front of 'em."
"Oh, just as you say," carolled Miss Lauriere. my right glove, Adams. Say, Bobby, did you see that necklace Della Stacey had on the other night? Twenty-two hundred dollars it cost at Tiffany's. But, of course -pull my sash a little to the left, Adams."
"Miss Lauriere for the opening chorus!" cried the call boy without.
Gillian strolled out to where his cab was waiting.
"What would you do with a thousand dollars if you had it?" be asked the driver.
"Open a s'loon," said the cabby, promptly and huskily. " I know a place I could take money in with both hands. It's a four-story brick on a corner. I've got it figured out. Second story - Chinks and chop suey; third floor -manicures and foreign missions; fourth floor -poolroom. If you was thinkof putting up the capital.
"Oh, no," said Gillian, I merely asked from curiosity. I take you by the hour. Drive 'til I tell you to stop."
Eight blocks down Broadway Gillian poked up the trap with his cane and got out. A blind man sat upon a stool on the sidewalk selling pencils. Gillian went out and stood before him.
"Excuse me," he said, " but would you mind telling me what you would do if you bad a thousand dollars?"
"You got out of that cab that just drove up, didn't you? " asked the blind man.
"I did," said Gillian.
" guess you are all right," said the pencil dealer, "to ride in a cab by daylight. Take a look at that, if you like."
He drew a small book from his coat pocket and held it out. Gillian opened it and saw that it was a bank deposit book. It showed a balance of $1,785 to the blind man's credit.
Gillian returned the book and got into the cab.
"I forgot something," be said. "You may drive to the law offices of Tolman & Sharp, at - Broadway."
Lawyer Tolman looked at him hostilely and inquiringly through his gold-rimmed glasses.
" I beg your pardon," said Gillian, cheerfully, "but may I ask you a question? It is not an impertinent one, I hope. Was Miss Hayden left anything by my uncle's will besides the ring and the $10?"
" Nothing," said Mr. Tolman.
" I thank you very much, sir," said Gillian, and on he went to his cab. He gave the driver the address of his late uncle's home.
Miss Hayden was writing letters in the library. She was small and slender and clothed in black. But you would have noticed her eyes. Gillian drifted in with his air of regarding the world as inconsequent.
I've just come from old Tolman's," he explained. They've been going over the papers down there. They found a - Gillian searched his memory for a legal term - they found an amendment or a postscript or something to the will. It seemed that the old boy loosened up a little on second thoughts and willed you a thousand dollars. I was driving up this way and Tolman asked me to bring you the money. Here it is. You'd better count it to see if it's right."
Gillian laid the money beside her hand on the desk. Miss Hayden turned white. "Oh! " she said, and again "Oh !"
Gillian half turned and looked out the window. "I suppose, of course," be said, in a low voice, that you know I love you."
"I am sorry," said Miss Hayden, taking up her money.
" There is no use? " asked Gillian, almost lightheartedly.
" I am sorry," she said again.
" May I write a note? " asked Gillian, with a smile, I-re seated himself at the big library table. She supplied him with paper and pen, and then went back to her secretaire.
Gillian made out his account of his expenditure of the thousand dollars i;i these words:
Paid by the black sheep, Robert Gillian, $1,000 on account of the eternal happiness, owed by Heaven to the best and dearest woman on earth."
Gillian slipped his writing into an envelope, bowed and went his way.
His cab stopped again at the offices of Tolman & Sharp.
"I have expended the thousand dollars," he said cheerily, to Tolman of the gold glasses, " and I have come to render account of it, as I agreed. There is quite a feeling of summer in the air - do you not think so, Mr. Tolman?" He tossed a white envelope on the lawyer's table. You will find there a memorandum, sir, of the modus operandi of the vanishing of the dollars."
Without touching the envelope, Mr. Tolman went to a door and called his partner, Sharp. Together they explored the caverns of an immense safe. Forth they dragged, as trophy of their search a big envelope sealed with wax. This they forcibly invaded, and wagged their venerable heads together over its contents. Then Tolman became spokesman.
"Mr. Gillian," he said, formally, "there was a codicil to your uncle's will. It was intrusted to us privately, with instructions that it be not opened until you had furnished us with a full account of your handling of the $1,000 bequest in the will. As you have fulfilled the conditions, my partner and I have read the codicil. I do not wish to encumber your understanding with its legal phraseology, but I will acquaint you with the spirit of its contents.
In the event that your disposition of the $1,000
demonstrates that you possess any of the qualifications
that deserve reward, much benefit will
accrue to you. Mr. Sharp and I are named
as the judges, and I assure you that we will do our
duty strictly according to justice-with liberality.
We are not at all unfavorably disposed toward you,
Mr. Gillian. But let us return to the letter of the
codicil. If your disposal of the money in question has
been prudent, wise, or unselflish, it is in our power to
hand you over bonds to the value of $50,000, which
have been placed in our hands for that purpose. But
if - as our client, the late Mr. Gillian, explicitly
provides - you have used this money as you have
money in the past, I quote the late Mr. Gillian
- in reprehensible dissipation among disreputable
associates - the $50,000 is to be paid to Miriam
Hayden, ward of the late Mr. Gillian, without delay.
Now, Mr. Gillian, Mr. Sharp and I will examine your
account in regard to the $1,000. You submit it in
writing, I believe. I hope you will repose confidence
in our decision."
Mr. Tolman reached for the envelope. Gillian was a little the quicker in taking it up. He tore the account and its cover leisurely into strips and dropped them into his pocket.
"It's all right," he said, smilingly. "There isn't a bit of need to bother you with this. I don't suppose you'd understand these itemized bets, anyway. I lost the thousand dollars on the races. Good-day to you, gentlemen."
Tolman & Sharp shook their beads mournfully at each other when Gillian left, for they heard him whistling gayly in the hallway as he waited for the elevator.
THE DEFEAT OF THE CITY
Robert Walmsley's descent upon the city resulted in a Kilkenny struggle. He came out of the fight victor by a fortune and a reputation. On the other band, he was swallowed up by the city. The city gave him what he demanded and then branded him with its brand. It remodelled, cut, trimmed and stamped him to the pattern it approves. It opened its social gates to him and shut him in on a closecropped, formal lawn with the select herd of ruminants. In dress, habits, manners, provincialism, routine and narrowness he acquired that charming insolence, that irritating completeness, that sophisticated crassness, that overbalanced poise that makes the Manhattan gentleman so delightfully small in his greatness.
One of the up-state rural counties pointed with pride to the successful young metropolitan lawyer as a product of its soil. Six years earlier this county had removed the wheat straw from between its huckleberry -stained teeth and emitted a derisive and bucolic laugh as old man Walmsley's freckle-faced " Bob abandoned the certain three-per-diem meals of the one-horse farm for the discontinuous quick lunch counters of the three-ringed metropolis. At the end of the six years no murder trial, coaching party, automobile accident or cotillion was complete in which the name of Robert Walmsley did not figure. Tailors waylaid him in the street to get a new wrinkle from the cut of his unwrinkled trousers. Hyphenated fellows in the clubs and members of the oldest subpoenaed families were glad to clap him on the back and allow him three letters of his name.
But the Matterhorn of Robert Walmsley's success was not scaled until be married Alicia Van Der Pool. I cite the Matterhorn, for just so high and cool and white and inaccessible was this daughter of the old burghers. The social Alps that ranged about her over whose bleak passes a thousand climbers struggled -- reached only to her knees. She towered in her own atmosphere, serene, chaste, prideful, wading in no fountains, dining no monkeys, breeding no dogs for bench shows. She was a Van Der Pool. Fountains were made to play for her; monkeys were made for other people's ancestors; dogs, she understood, were created to be companions of blind persons and objectionable characters who smoked pipes.
This was the Matterhorn that Robert Walmsley accomplished. If he found, with the good poet with the game foot and artificially curled hair, that he who ascends to mountain tops will find the loftiest peaks most wrapped in clouds and snow, he concealed his chilblains beneath a brave and smiling exterior. He was a lucky man and knew it, even though he were imitating the Spartan boy with an ice-cream freezer beneath his doublet frappeeing the region of his heart.
After a brief wedding tour abroad, the couple returned to create a decided ripple in the calm cistern (so placid and cool and sunless it is) of the best society. They entertained at their red brick mausoleum of ancient greatness in an old square that is a cemetery of crumbled glory. And Robert Walmsley was proud of his wife; although while one of his hands shook his guests' the other held tightly to his alpenstock and thermometer.
One day Alicia found a letter written to Robert by his mother. It was an unerudite letter, full of crops and motherly love and farm notes. It chronicled the health of the pig and the recent red calf, and asked concerning Robert's in return. It was a letter direct from the soil, straight from home, full of biographies of bees, tales of turnips, peaans of new-laid eggs, neglected parents and the slump in dried apples.
"Why have I not been shown your mother's letters ?" asked Alicia. There was always something in her voice that made you think of lorgnettes, of accounts at Tiffany's, of sledges smoothly gliding on the trail from Dawson to Forty Mile, of the tinkling of pendant prisms on your grandmothers' chandeliers, of snow lying on a convent roof; of a police sergeant refusing bail. "Your mother," continued Alicia, "invites us to make a visit to the farm. I have never seen a farm. We will go there for a week or two, Robert."
"We will," said Robert, with the grand air of an associate Supreme Justice concurring in an opinion. "I did not lay the invitation before you because I thought you would not care to go. I am much pleased at your decision."
"I will write to her myself," answered Alicia, with a faint foreshadowing of enthusiasm. " Felice shall pack my trunks at once. Seven, I think, will be enough. I do not suppose that your mother entertains a great deal. Does she give many house parties?"
Robert arose, and as attorney for rural places filed a demurrer against six of the seven trunks. He endeavored to define, picture, elucidate, set forth and describe a farm. His own words sounded strange in his ears. He had not realized how thoroughly urbsidized he had become.
A week passed and found them landed at the little country station five hours out from the city. A grinning, stentorian, sarcastic youth driving a mule to a spring wagon hailed Robert savagely.
"Hallo, Mr. Walmsley. Found your way back at last, have you? Sorry I couldn't bring in the automobile for you, but dad's bull-tonguing the ten-acre clover patch with it to-day. Guess you'll excuse my, not wearing a dress suit over to meet you -- it ain't six o'clock yet, you know."
"I'm glad to see you, Tom," said Robert, grasping his brother's band. "Yes, I've found my way at last. You've a right to say 'at last.' It's been over two years since the last time. But it will be oftener after this, my boy."
Alicia, cool in the summer beat as an Arctic wraith, white as a Norse snow maiden in her flimsy muslin and fluttering lace parasol, came round the corner of the station; and Tom was stripped of his assurance. He became chiefly eyesight clothed in blue jeans, and on the homeward drive to the mule alone did he confide in language the inwardness of his thoughts.
They drove homeward. The low sun dropped a spendthrift flood of gold upon the fortunate fields of wheat. The cities were far away. The road lay curling around wood and dale and bill like a ribbon lost from the robe of careless summer. The wind followed like a whinnying colt in the track of Phoebus's steeds.
By and by the farmhouse peeped gray out of its faithful grove; they saw the long lane with its convoy of walnut trees running from the road to the house; they smelled the wild rose and the breath of cool, damp willows in the creek's bed. And then in unison all the voices of the soil began a chant addressed to the soul of Robert Walmsley. Out of the tilted aisles of the dim wood they came hollowly; they chirped and buzzed from the parched grass; they trilled from the ripples of the creek ford; they floated up in clear Pan's pipe notes from the dimming meadows; the whippoorwills joined in as they pursued midges in the upper air; slow-going cow-bells struck out a homely accompaniment -- and this was what each one said: "You've found your way back at last, have you?"
The old voices of the soil spoke to him. Leaf and bud and blossom conversed with him in the old vocabulary of his careless youth - the inanimate things, the familiar stones and rails, the gates and furrows and roofs and turns of the road had an eloquence, too, and a power in the transformation. The country had smiled and he had felt the breath of it, and his heart was drawn as if in a moment back to his old love. The city was far away.
This rural atavism, then, seized Robert Walmsley and possessed him. A queer thing he noticed in connection with it was that Alicia, sitting at his side, suddenly seemed to him a stranger. She did not belong to this recurrent phase. Never before had she seemed so remote, so colorless and high - so intangible and unreal. And yet he had never admired her more than when she sat there by him in the rickety spring wagon, chiming no more with his mood and with her environment than the Matterhorn chimes with a peasant's cabbage garden.
That night when the greetings and the supper were over, the entire family, including Buff, the yellow dog, bestrewed itself upon the front porch. Alicia, not haughty but silent, sat in the shadow dressed in an exquisite pale-gray tea gown. Robert's mother discoursed to her happily concerning marmalade and lumbago. Tom sat on the top step; Sisters Millie and Pam on the lowest step to catch the lightning bugs. Mother had the willow rocker. Father sat in the big armchair with one of its arms gone. Buff sprawled in the middle of the porch in everybody's way. The twilight pixies and pucks stole forth unseen and plunged other poignant shafts of memory into the heart of Robert. A rural madness entered his soul. The city was far away.
Father sat without his pipe, writhing in his heavy boots, a sacrifice to rigid courtesy. Robert shouted: "No, you don't!" He fetched the pipe and lit it; he seized the old gentleman's boots and tore them off. The last one slipped suddenly, and Mr. Robert Walmsley, of Washington Square, tumbled off the porch backward with Buff on top of him, bowling fearfully. Tom laughed sarcastically.
Robert tore off his coat and vest and hurled them into a lilac bush.
"Come out here, you landlubber," be cried to Tom, and I'll put grass seed on your back. I think you called me a 'dude' a while ago. Come along and cut your capers."
Tom understood the invitation and accepted it with delight. Three times they wrestled on the grass, "side holds," even as the giants of the mat. And twice was Tom forced to bite grass at the hands of the distinguished lawyer. Dishevelled, panting, each still boasting of his own prowess, they stumbled back to the porch. Millie cast a pert reflection upon the qualities of a city brother. In an instant Robert had secured a horrid katydid in his fingers and bore down upon her. Screaming wildly, she fled up the lane, pursued by the avenging glass of form. A quarter of a mile and they returned, she full of apology to the victorious " dude." The rustic mania possessed him unabatedly.
I can do up a cowpenful of you slow hayseeds," he proclaimed, vaingloriously. "Bring on your bulldogs, your hired men and your log-rollers."
He turned handsprings on the grass that prodded Tom to envious sarcasm. And then, with a whoop, he clattered to the rear and brought back Uncle like, a battered colored retainer of the family, with his banjo, and strewed sand on the porch and danced "Chicken in the Bread Tray" and did buck-andwing wonders for half an hour longer. Incredibly, wild and boisterous things he did. He sang, he told stories that set all but one shrieking, he played the yokel, the humorous clodhopper; he was mad, and with the revival of the old life in his blood. He became so extravagant that once his mother sought gently to reprove him. Then Alicia moved as though she were about to speak, but she did not. Through it all she sat immovable, a slim, white spirit in the dusk that no man might question or read.
By and by she asked permission to ascend to her room, saying that she was tired. On her way she passed Robert. He was standing in the door, the figure of vulgar comedy, with ruffled hair, reddened face and unpardonable confusion of attire -- no trace there of the immaculate Robert Walmsley, the courted clubman and ornament of select circles. He was doing a conjuring trick with some household utensils, and the family, now won over to him without exception, was beholding him with worshipful admiration.
As Alicia passed in Robert started suddenly. He had forgotten for the moment that she was present.
Without a glance at him she went on upstairs.
After that the fun grew quiet. An hour passed in talk, and then Robert went up himself.
She was standing by the window when he entered their room. She was still clothed as when they were on the porch. Outside and crowding against the window was a giant apple tree, full blossomed.
Robert sighed and went near the window. He was ready to meet his fate. A confessed vulgarian, he foresaw the verdict of justice in the shape of that whiteclad form. He knew the rigid lines that a Van Der Pool would draw. He was a peasant gambolling indecorously in the valley, and the pure, cold, white, unthawed summit of the Matterhorn could not but frown on him. He had been unmasked by his own actions. All the polish, the poise, the form that the city had given him had fallen from him like an ill-fitting mantle at the first breath of a country breeze. Dully be awaited the approaching condemnation.
"Robert," said the calm, cool voice of his judge, "I thought I married a gentleman."
Yes, it was coming. And yet, in the face of it, Robert Walmsley was eagerly regarding a certain branch of the apple tree upon which be used to climb out of that very window. He believed he could do it now. He wondered bow many blossoms there were on the tree -- ten millions? But here was some one speaking again:
"I thought I married a gentleman," the voice went on, "but -- "
Why had she come and was standing so close by his side?
"But I find that I have married" -- was this Alicia talking? -- "something better -- a man -- Bob, dear, kiss me, won't you?"
The city was far away.
THE SHOCKS OF DOOM
Here is an aristocracy of the public parks and even of the vagabonds who use them for their private apartments. Vallance felt rather than knew this, but when he stepped down out of his world into chaos his feet brought him directly to Madison Square.
Raw and astringent as a schoolgirl -- of the old order -- young May breathed austerely among the budding trees. Vallance buttoned his coat, lighted his last cigarette and took his seat upon a bench. For three minutes be mildly regretted the last hundred of his last thousand that it had cost him when the bicycle cop put an end to his last automobile ride. Then he felt in every pocket and found not a single penny. He had given up his apartment that morning. His furniture had gone toward certain debts. His clothes, save what were upon him, had descended to his man-servant for back wages. As he sat there was not in the whole city for him a bed or a broiled lobster or a street-car fare or a carnation for buttonhole unless be should obtain them by spongon his friends or by false pretenses. Therefore lie had chosen the park.
And all this was because an uncle had disinherited him, and cut down his allowance from liberality to nothing. And all that was because his nephew had disobeyed him concerning a certain girl, who comes not into this story -- therefore, all readers who brush their hair toward its roots may be warned to read no further. There was another nephew, of a different branch, who had once been the prospective heir and favorite. Being without grace or hope, he had long ago disappeared in the mire. Now dragnets were out for him; he was to be rehabilitated and restored. And so Vallance fell grandly as Lucifer to the lowest pit, joining the tattered ghosts in the little park.
Sitting there, he leaned far back on the hard bench and laughed a jet of cigarette smoke up to the lowest tree branches. The sudden severing of all his life's ties had brought him a free, thrilling, almost joyous elation. He felt precisely the sensation of the aeronaut when he cuts loose his parachute and lets his balloon drift away.
The hour was nearly ten. Not many lounger