181
Then, as she inserted the harmless, unnecessary pin, she whispered in the shell-like ear:
“Don’tscold me, loved one! Indeed, I wasnotflirting. I only came out here to keep him from the—champagne punch!”
Blanche made no reply to this whispered confidence; nor did she seem especially grateful for the grace done to her toilette. She never so much as glanced at Andy Browne. He, also, had risen, after picking up the dropped fan, with not effortless grace; and now stood smiling, with rather meaningless, if measureless, good nature upon the invaders.
And Van Morris was all pose andsavoir faireonce more. He might have been examining Blanche on her progress in algebra, for all the consciousness in his manner as he complimented Miss Wood on her peculiarly deft management of that dangerous weapon, the pin. But there was no little annoyance in the whispered aside to his friend:
“Don’t drink any more to-night, Andy.Don’t!”
“All right, Van; I promise,” responded the other, with the most beaming of smiles. “Tell you the truth, don’t think I need it. Heat of the room, you know—”
“And the second pint ofChambertinat dinner,” finished Morris, as Miss Wood—the toilette andherconfidence both completed—slipped her perfectly gloved hand into Andy’s arm again.
Precisely, then, three sharp notes of the cornet cut through the stillness under the flowers. It was followed by the indescribable sound, made only by the rush of many female trains towards one spot. Like the chronicled war-horse, Andy shook his mane at the first note; Miss Wood nodded beamingly over her shoulder at the second; and the pair were hastening off by the time the third died away.
Blanche showed no disposition to take the vacated seat.
“The German is forming,” she said, “and I am engaged to that colt-like Mr. Upton.”
Only at the door of the conservatory she paused.
“Does Mr. Browne ever drink too much wine?” she asked abruptly.
Van never hesitated one second. He lied loyally. “Why,never, of course,” he deprecated, in the most natural tone. “With rare exceptions. But what deucedly sharp eyes she has,” he added, mentally, as Mr. Upton informed them that “the bell had tapped,” and took Blanche off.
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Almost at the same moment, a waiter rushed by with a wine-cooler and glasses; and he heard the pompous butler direct:
“Set it by Mr. Browne’s chair. He leads inler curtillyun!”
Morris half started to countermand the order. Then he reconsidered and leaned against the doorway.
“He can’t mean to drink it, after his promise to me,” he thought. “Anyway, he might get something worse. Besides, I am not his guardian; and,” he added very slowly, a strange smile hovering about his lips, “I can scarcely keep my own head to-night.”
Somehow he, best dancer in town as he was, had no partner to-night. The sight before him had no novelty; and Mr. Trotter Upton’s vivacious prancing somewhat irritated him, in spite of the amusement at himself he felt at the sensation.
“Didn’t think I was so far gone as to be jealous of Trotter,” he muttered.
Then he slipped into the hat-room and was quickly capped and cloaked for that precious boon to the bored, the exitsans adieu.
It was a raw, searching Christmas morning into which Van Morris stepped, as he softly closed the door of the Allmand mansion and turned up his fur collar against “a nipping and an eager air.”
Even in that fashionable section the streets already showed somewhat of the bustle of the busy to-morrow. Belated caterers’ carts spun by; early butchers’ and milk-wagons rumbled along, making their best speed towards distant patrons. Here and there, gleams from gas-lit windows slanted athwart the frosty darkness, punctuated by ever-recurrent flaring of street lamps. Not infrequent groups of muffled men—some jovial with reminiscent scenes of pleasure left behind, and some hilarious from what they brought along with them—passed him, as he strode rapidly along the echoing flags, too intent on his own thoughts to notice any of them.
Suddenly, from beneath one of the gloom punctuators opposite, a woman’s voice cut the air sharply:
“Pleaselet me pass!”
Morris, alert in a second, had crossed the street and joined the group of four intuitively, before he knew it himself. Three young men, whose evening dress told that they were of society, and whose unsteady hold of their own legs, that they had had just a little too much of it, barred the way of a young girl. Tall, slight, and with183a mass of blonde hair escaping from the rough shawl she drew closer about her head as she shrank back, there was something showing through her womanly terror that spoke convincingly the gentlewoman. The trio chuckled inanely, making elaborate bows; and the girl shivered as she shrank further into the shadow, and repeated piteously:
“Do,please, let me pass!won’tyou?”
“Certainly they will,” Van answered, stepping up on the pavement and taking her in at a glance. “Am I not right, gentlemen?” he added urbanely to the unsteady trio.
“Not by a damned sight!”
“Who the devil are you?” were the prompt and simultaneous rejoinders.
“That doesn’t matter,” Van answered quietly; “but you are obstructing the public streets and frightening this evident stranger.”
“We don’t know any stranger at two o’clock in the morning,” was the illogical rejoinder of the third youth, who clung to the lamp-post.
“What about it, anyway?” said the stoutest of the three, advancing towards Morris. “Doyouknow her?”
“Youevidently do not,” Van replied; then he turned to the girl with the deference he would scarce have used to the leader of his set. “If you will take my arm, I will see you safely to the nearest policeman.”
The girl hesitated and shrunk back a second; then, with that instinctive trust which—fortunately, perhaps—is peculiarly feminine, slipped her red, ungloved little hand into his arm.
The leader of the trio staggered a step nearer. “You’re a nice masher,” he said thickly; “but if it’s a row you’re looking for, you can find one pretty quick!”
Morris glanced at the man with genuine pity.
“You look as though you might be a gentlemen when you are sober,” he said. “Iam not looking for a row; and if you boys make one, you’ll only be more ashamed of yourselves on Christmas day than you should be already. And now I wish to pass.”
“I’ll give you a pass,” the other answered; and, with a lurch, he fronted Morris and put up his hands in most approved fighting form. At the same moment, the girl—with the inopportune logic of all girls in such cases—clung heavily to Morris’s arm and cried piteously:
“Oh, no! You mustn’t! Not for me!” and, as she did so the184man lunged a vicious blow with his right hand, full at Morris’s face.
But, though like J. Fitz-James, “taught abroad his arms to wield,” Van Morris had likewise used his legs to wrestle in England, and had moreover seenla savattein France. With a quick turn of his head, the blow passed heavily, but harmlessly, by his cheek. At the same instant his foot shot swiftly out, close to the ground, and with a sharp sweep from right to left, cut his opponent’s heels from under him, as a sickle cuts weeds, sprawling him backwards upon the pavement.
Drawing the girl swiftly through the breach thus made, Morris placed her behind him and turned to face the men again. They made no rush, as he had expected; so he spoke quickly:
“You’d better pick up your friend and be off. You don’t look like boys who would care to sleep in the station,” he said, “and here comes the patrol wagon.”
They needed no second warning, nor stood upon the order of their going. The downed man was on his feet; and it was devil take the hind-most to the first corner. For the rumbling of heavy wheels and the clang of heavy hoofs upon the Belgian blocks were drawing nearer.
To Van’s relief, for he hated a scene, it proved to be only a “night-liner” cab, though with rattle enough for a field battery; but to his tipsy antagonists it had more terror than a park of Parrot guns.
“Can I do anything more for you?” he asked the girl; then suddenly: “You’re not the sort to be out alone at this hour of the night. Are you in trouble?”
“Oh, indeed I am!” she answered, with a sob; again illogical, and breaking down when the danger was over. “Whatmustyou think of me? But mother was suddenlysoill, and father and sister were at a ball, and the servants slipped away, too. I dared not wait, so I ran out alone to fetch Doctor Mordant.Pleasebelieve me, for—”
“Hello, Cab!” broke in Van. “Certainly I believe you,” he answered the girl, as the cab pulled up with that eager jerk of the driver’s elbows, eloquent of fare scented afar off. “I’ll go with you for Doctor Mordant, and then see you home.”
“Why, is thatyou, Mr. Morris?” cried Cabby, with a salute of his whipà la militaire;but he muttered to himself, “Well, Inever!” as he jumped from the box and held the door wide.
“That’s enough, Murphy,” Van said shortly. “Now, jump in,185Miss, and I’ll—” But the girl shrank back, and drew the shawl closer round her face. “No, I won’t either. Pardon my thoughtlessness; for it isn’t exactly the hour to be driving alone with a fellow, I know. But you can trust Murphy perfectly. Dennis, drive this lady to Dr. Mordant’s and then home again, just as fast as your team can carry her!” And he half lifted the girl into the carriage.
“That I will, Mr. Van,” Murphy replied cheerily, as he clambered to his seat.
The girl stretched out two cold, red little hands, and clasped his fur-gloved one frankly.
“Oh! thank you a thousand times,” she said. “Iknewyou were a gentleman at the first word to those cowards; but I never dreamed you were Mr. Van Morris. I’ve heard sister speak of yousooften!”
“Yoursister?” Van stared at the cheaply-clad night wanderer, as thoughhehad had too much Regent’s punch.
“Yes, sister Rose—Rose Wood,” she said, with the confidence of acquaintance. “I’m her sister, you know—Blanche.”
“Blanche? Your name is Blanche? I cannot tell you how happy I am to have chanced along just now, Miss Wood;” and Van bared his head in the cutting night wind to the blanket-shawled girl in the night-liner, as he would not have done at high noon to a duchess in her chariot. “But I’m wasting your time from your mother; so good-morning; and may your Christmas be happier than its eve.”
“Good-by! And oh,howI thank you!” the girl said, again extending her hand over the cab door. “I’ll tell Rose, andsheshall thank you, better than I can!”
“Good-night! But don’t troubleher,” Van said, releasing the girl’s hand. “One minute, Murphy,” he added aside to the driver; “here’s your Christmas-gift!”
A bright gold piece glinted in the dirty fur glove, in which Dennis Murphy looked to find a shilling under the next gas-lamp.
“Blanche! and the same golden hair, too!” Van muttered to himself, as the cab rocked and ricketted down the street. “Well, I suppose that is what the poet means by ‘the magic of a name’!” and he suddenly recalled that he was still standing bareheaded in the blast. “And Rose Wood’s sister looks like that! Well, verily one half the world doesnotknow how the other half lives!”
Then he turned and strode rapidly homeward; pulling hard, as186he thought many strange thoughts, on the dead cigar between his lips.
Once in his own parlor, Van Morris walked straight to the mirror over the mantel, and looked long and steadily at himself. Then he tossed Mr. Allmand’s half-smoked cigar contemptuously into the grate, lit one he selected carefully from the carved stand near, and threw himself into a smoking-chair before the ruddy glow of coals.
“I must be getting old,” he soliloquized. “I didn’t use to get bored so easily by these things. Either balls are not what they were, orIam not. Now, ‘there’s no place like home!’ Not much of a box to call home, either!” And he glanced round the really elegant apartment in half-disgust. “There’ssomethinglacking! Andy’s the best fellow in the world, but he’s so wanting in order. Poor old boy! Wonder if hewilldrink anything more? I surely must blow him up to-morrow morning. How deucedly sharpsheis!” and he smiled to himself. “She saw through Rose Wood’s game at a glance. Wonder if she saw throughme?”
He looked steadily into the glowing coals, as though castles were building there. Once or twice his lips moved soundlessly; and suddenly he reached over to the escritoire near by, and taking an oval case from it, opened it, and gazed long and earnestly at the picture in it. The face was the average one of a young girl, with stiff plaits of hair stiffly tossed over the shoulder, in futile chase after grace; but the wide blue eyes were a glory of purity and trust, and they were the eyes of Blanche Allmand.
Then he rose abruptly, walked to the sideboard, and filled a glass with water. Then he placed carefully in it the cactus flower and camelia bud, which had never left his hand since he plucked them in the conservatory. As he did so, Morris’ face grew serious, and looked down wistfully into the fire.
When he raised his eyes they were full of hopeful light, and they rested long and steadily upon the flowers.
“Yes! Itisbetter!” he exclaimed aloud, as though continuing a train of thought. “Some ofthatfamily bloom only once in a century. I cannot look for miracles, and many a hand may reach formyflower. Yes, to-morrow shall settle it! The Italian was even more philosopher than poet when he said, ‘Amare e no essere amato e tiempo perduto’!”
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When Mr. Andrew Browne tumbled into the cosy parlor of that bachelor’s box at 4A.M.on Christmas morning, he was by all odds the happiest man of his acquaintance, even if he knew himself, which was more than doubtful.
He slammed the door, slung his fur-lined overcoat across the sofa, turned up the gas until it whistled merrily, and poked the fire until it roared again. Then he hunted the boot-jack, and drew off one boot; changed his mind, and flung himself into the smoking-chair, and stretched booted and unbooted foot to the blaze. Thus posed, he trolled out, “Il segreto per esser felice,” in a rich baritone; only interrupting histempoto spit out superfluous ends, bitten from his cigar, in the effort to phrase neatly and smoke at the same time.
“Why the deuce don’t you get to bed?” growled Van Morris from the next room. He was aroused from dreams of Blanche Allmand, music, diamond solitaires, and orange-blossoms, mixed into one sweet confusion. “Stop your row, can’t you? and go to bed!”
“You go to bed yo’sef!” responded the illogical Andy, rising, not too steadily, on his one boot, and throwing wide the folding-door. “Who wants to go to bed?Isha’n’t.”
“You’re an idiot!” muttered Mr. Morris; and he turned his face to the wall.
“Guess am an idiot,” responded Andy, blandly. “But I ain’t tight,—only happy! I’m the happiest idiot—Il segreto per ess—Say, Van! I’m sodevilishhappy, ol’ boy!”
Morris turned over with a groan, and pulled the covering over his head. The strong, small word he uttered as he did so is not to be found in the church service. But Andy was not to be snubbed in that style. He stepped forward; attempted to sit on the bed’s edge; miscalculated his momentum, and succeeded in landing plump on the centre of his friend’s person.
“Confound you!” gasped the latter, breathless. “You’re as drunk as—as a fool!”
“No, I ain’t,” chuckled Andy, imperturbably happy. Then he laughed till the bed shook; composing himself suddenly into gravity, with a fierce snort—“No, I ain’t: you’re sober!”
“And whensheasked, I said you never drank,” reproached the irate and still gasping Morris. “Iliedfor you!”
“Tha’s nothing. I’ll lie for you; lie for you to-morrow—see’f188I don’t! Say, Van, ol’ boy, I ain’t tight; only happy—sohappy! Van!Van!” and he shook the pretended sleeper heavily. “I’m goin’ to reform! I’m goin’ to be married!”
“What? Rose Wood?”
Van Morris sat bolt upright in bed now. The tone of voice in which he invoked Miss Wood might have brought response from that wise virgin, disrobing for triumphant rest full ten blocks away.
But he found it vain to argue with Andy’s mixed Burgundy and champagne punch. Contradiction but made him insist more strongly that hewasengaged to the old campaigner, whom Morris had so manœuvred to outflank. Finally, in a miscellaneous outfit of evening pants, night-gown, and smoking-cap, he succeeded in getting the jubilant groomin futurointo bed, where he still hummed at the much-sought secret of happiness, until he collapsed with a sudden snore, and slept like the Swiss.
Then Morris walked the floor rapidly, wrapped in thought and a cloud of fragrant cigar-smoke. Then he threw himself once more into the smoking-chair, and gazed long and earnestly into the coals, a heavy frown resting on his face. Suddenly it cleared off; the sunshine of a broad smile took its place; and Van tossed the end of his cigar exultingly into the fire. Then he rose and stretched himself like a veritable son of Anak, when
“Stalwart they court the rapture of the fight.”
“I have it, by George!” he cried. “I’ll get the poor fellow out of this box, if the old girl did induce him to pop, and accepted him out of hand! Andy! I say, Andy, wake up!” and he ran into his chum’s room, dragged him out of bed, and had him at the fire, before he was well awake.
Mr. Andrew Browne was no longer in a mood even approaching the jubilant. He had utterly forgotten the secretper esser felice, during his two hours’ nap. He confessed to a consuming desire for Congress-water, and made use of improper words upon finding only empty bottles, aggravating in reminiscence of it, in the carved ebony sideboard.
Finally he sat down, with his head in his hands, and told his story dismally enough.
Miss Rose Wood’s carriage had been dismissed, as per programme. Andy had led the German with her, and a bottle of champagne at his side. He had walked home with her; had told her—in what189wild words he knew not—that he loved her; and had been, as Van had surmised, “accepted out of hand.”
“And, Van, I’m bound, as a man of honor, to marry her!” finished the now thoroughly dejectedfiancé. “Yes, I know what you’d say; itisa pretty rum thing to do; but then she mustn’t suffer for my cursed folly!”
“Suffer? Rose Woodsufferfor missing fire one time more?”
Surprise struggled with contempt in the exclamation Morris shot out by impulse.
“But, if she loves me well enough to engage—” Andy began, rather faintly; but his mentor cut him short.
“Love the d—deuce!” he retorted. “Why, she’s a beggar and a husband-trap!”
“But her family? What willtheythink?” pleaded Andy, but with very little soul in the plea.
“Poor little Blanche!” muttered Morris, half to himself. “Bah! the girlhasno heart!”
“Blanche?” echoed Van, in a dazed sort of way. “Why, you don’t suppose Blanche will know it! I never thought ofher!” and he rose feebly, and stood shivering in his ghostly attire.
“Why, of course, Rose Wood couldn’t keep such great news. Why, man, you’re the capital prize in the matrimonial lottery; but hang me if Miss Wood shan’t draw another blank this time!”
There was a compound of deadly nausea and effortful dignity in the elbows Mr. Andrew Browne leaned upon the mantel, which hinted volumes for what his face might have said, had it been visible through the fingers latticed over it.
“I am a gentleman,” he half gasped. “Itmaybe a trap; but I’ll keep my word, and—marryher, unless—unless, Van, you get me out of it!”
“Go to bed, you spoon!” laughed his friend. “I have the whole plan cut and dried. I’ll teach you your lesson as soon as you sleep yourself sober.”
Morris stood many minutes by the bedside of his quickly-sleeping friend; but, when he turned into the parlor again, his face was pale and stern.
“The way of the world, always,” he said aloud. “One inanely eager, another stupidly backward. ‘Fools rush in where angels fear to tread!’ Poor boy! he’d give as much to-morrow to unsay his words as I would to have spoken those I nearly said last night!”
The chill gray dawn outside was wrestling at the windows for190entrance with the sickly glaring gas-light within. Morris drew aside the heavy curtains and pressed his forehead against the frost-laced pane. Long he looked out into the gray haze with eyes that saw nothing beyond his own thoughts. Then he turned to the fire again. The gray ash was hiding the glow of the spent coals. Then he took up the glass once more and looked earnestly at the contrasted flowers it held. He replaced it almost tenderly, and walked slowly to his own room.
“Yes, I knowmyself,” he said; “I think I knowher. I’ll hesitate no longer; some fool may ‘rush in.’ To-morrow shall settle it. The tough old Scotchman was right:
‘He either fears his fate too much,Or his deserts are small,That dares not put it to the touchTo gain or lose it all!’”
That same afternoon, at two o’clock, Mr. Vanderbilt Morris’s stylish dog-cart, drawn by his high-spirited bays, drew up at Miss Rose Wood’s domicile. Holding the reins sat Mr. Andrew Browne, beaming as thoughChambertinhad never been pressed from the grape; seemingly as fresh as though headache had never slipped with the rest out of Pandora’s box.
But it may have been only seemingly; for, faultlessly attired from scarf-pin to glove tips, Andy was still a trifle more uneasy than the dancing of his restless team might warrant in so noted a whip as he. A queer expression swept over his handsome face from time to time; and, as he came to a halt, he glanced furtively over his shoulder, as though fearing something in pursuit.
“Ask Miss Rose if she will drive with me,” he said hurriedly to the servant. “Say I can’t get down to come in; the horses are too fresh.”
Then the off-horse danced a polka in space, responsive to deft tickling with the whip.
Miss Wood did not stand upon ceremony, nor upon the order of her going, but went at once to get her wraps.
“Better late than never,” she said to herself, as she dived into a drawer and upset her mouchoir case in search for a particular handkerchief. “I really couldn’t comprehend his absence and silence all day—but, poor boy! he’ssoyoung!” And then Miss Rose, as191she tied a becoming cardinal bow under her chin, hummed two bars of “The Wedding March” through the pins in her mouth.
Two minutes later saw her seated on the high box beside her future lordin posse; the bays plunging like mad and Andy swinging to the reins as if for life. For, before she could speak one word—and for no reason to her apparent—he had let the limber lash drop stingingly across their backs.
Very keen was the winter wind that swept by her tingling ears; and Miss Wood raised her seal-skin muff and hid her modest blushes from it. For that gentle virgin had ever a familiar demon at her elbow. His name was Experience; and now he whispered to her: “A red nose never reflects sentiment!”
“Andheis so particular how one looks,” Miss Rose whispered back to the familiar; and her tip-tilted feature sought deeper protection in the furs.
At length, when well off the paved streets, the mad rush of the brutes cooled down to a swinging trot—ten miles an hour; Browne’s tense arms relaxed a trifle; and he drew a long, deep breath—whether of relief, or anxiety, no listener could have guessed. But he kept his eyes still rooted to that off-horse’s right ear as though destiny herself sat upon its tip.
Then, for the first time, he spoke; and he spoke with unpunctuated rapidity, in a hard, mechanical tone, as though he were a bad model of Edison’s latest triumph, and some tyro hand was grinding at the cylinder.
“Miss Rose,” he began, “we are old friends—never so old; but I can never sufficiently regret—last night!”
He felt, rather than saw, the muff come sharply down and the face turn full to him; regardless now of the biting wind.
“No! don’t interrupt me,” he went on, straight at the off-horse’s right ear. “Iknowyour goodness of heart;knowhow it pained you; but you could have done nothing else but—refuse me!”
Miss Rose Wood’s mouth opened quickly; but a providential gutter jolted her nearly from the seat; and the wind drove her first word back into her throat like a sob.
The inexorable machine beside her ground on relentless.
“Yes, I understand what you would say: that you refused mefirmlyandfinallybecause I—deserved it!” Had Andy Browne’s soul really been the tin-foil of the phonograph, it could not have shown more utter disregard of moral responsibility. “You knew I was under the influence of wine; that I would never have dared192to address you had I been myself! I repeat, I deserve my—decisive rejection!It was proper and just in you to say ‘No!’”
Woman’s will conquered for one brief second. Spite of wind and spite of him, Miss Wood began:
“‘No?’ I—”
“Yes, ‘no!’” broke in the relentless machinery. It ground on implacable, though great beads stood on Andy’s brow from sheer terror lest he run down before the end. “No!as firmly, as emphatically as you said it to me last night. Indeed, I honor you the more for flatly refusing the man who, in forgetting his self-respect, forgot his respect—for you!But, Miss Rose, while I pledge you my honor never,neverto speak to you againof love, I may still be—your friend!”
The bays were bowling down the street again by this time; when anotherkismet, in small and ugly canine form, flew at their heads with yelp and snarl. Rearing with one impulse, the spirited pair lunged forward and flew past the now twinkling lamps in a wild gallop. Andy pulled them down at last; their swinging trot replacing the dangerous rush. The Wood mansion was almost in sight; but the Ancient Mariner was a tyro to Andy Browne in the way he fixed that off-horse’s right ear with stony stare.
He might have looked round in perfect safety. The lithe figure by him sat gracefully erect. The face a trifle pale; the lips set tight against each other, with the blood pressed out of them, were not unnatural in that cutting wind. The eyes, fixed straight ahead, as his own, gleamed gray and cold; only a half-closing of the lids, once or twice, hiding an ugly light reflecting through them from the busy brain behind. But Andy never turned once until he brought up the bays stock still and leaped down to offer his hand to the lady at her own door.
She took it, naturally; springing to the ground as lightly as anydébutanteof the season. Not one trace of annoyance, even, showed on that best educated face.
“Andy, weareold friends,” she said, offering her hand frankly.
He took it mechanically, with a dazed soft of feeling that he must be even a bigger fool than he felt himself.
“Real friends,” Miss Wood went on, pleasantly, “and I’ll prove it to you now.Youhave acted like a man of honor to me;Iwill betray one little confidence, and make two people happy!”
The man still stood dumb; and his eye furtively wandered to the pawing off-horse, as if to takehisconfidence as to what it meant.193The woman’s next words came slowly, and she smiled; a strange smile the lips alone made, but in which the glinting gray eyes took no share.
“For Van Morris is your best friend, after all. He will remember that I told him, last night, ‘One cannot be too careful’!”
She rose on tiptoe, whispered three words, and was gone before he could frame one in reply.
Once more those ill-used bays got the whip fiercely; and they turned the corner so short that Mr. Trotter Upton looked over his shoulder with a grin, and remarked to the blaze-faced companion in his sulky shafts:
“Nine hundred dollars’ worth of horse risked with nine dollars’ worth of man! Van Morris better drive his own stock. G’long!”
It was two o’clock when Mr. Andrew Browne had ridden forth to recapture his plighted troth.
The shades of Christmas evening had now wrapped the city completely, and the gilt clock upon his parlor mantel now pointed to six. Still he had not returned; and still Van Morris’s eagerness to test the issue of his own tactics was too keen to let him leave their rooms. He had even resisted the temptations of a gossip at the club, and was smoking his fifth cigar—a thought-amused smile wreathing his lips—when the chime of six startled him suddenly to his feet.
“How time flies!” he exclaimed. “And we are to dine at the Allmand’s at seven.”
He tossed away his cigar, turned into his own apartment, and made an unusually careful toilet. Then he looked into Browne’s still vacant room once more.
“Wherecanhe be?” he muttered. “By George! he must have bungled fearfully if he did not pull through. He certainly had his lesson by heart! Butshemust not be kept waiting,” and his face softened greatly, and the deep, strong light came back into his eyes. “How ceaselessly that old verse comes back to me! And now ‘to put it to the test’ myself.”
He turned to his escritoire, and took a small Russia case from the drawer; then to the mantel, and carefully shook the dampness from the two flowers he had placed there that morning. Putting case and flowers carefully in his vest pocket, Van paused at the door,194gave a long, sweeping glance—with a sort of farewell in it—to the rooms; then shut himself outside, still repeatingsotto voce,
“He either fears his fate too much,Or his deserts are small.”
Metropolitan Christmas was abroad in the streets. Young and old, grandsire and maiden, beggar and parvenu jostled one another on the pavements. Rough men, laden with loosely-wrapped, brown-papered packages, strode happily homeward; wan women skurried along leading eager children from unwonted shopping for dainties; carriages rolled by, with the gas-light glimpsing on occupants in evening dress, driven Christmas dinnerward.
Van Morris recked little of all this, as he strode rapidly over the very spot where his coolness had saved an ugly misadventure twelve hours before. His brain was going faster than his body; one goal only had he in view; one refrain ever sounded in his memory: “To gain, or lose, it all!”
A quick turn of the corner, and he stood at the door he had quietly escaped from during the ball. The servant replied to his inquiry that Miss Blanche was in the library; and thither he turned, with the freedom of long intimacy.
Only the warm glow of fire-light filled the room; there was a rustle, as of a retreating silk dress. There was also a man’s figure, backed by the fire, with that not infrequent expression all over it that tells he would really be at his ease if he only knew how.
“Why, Andy! And in your driving suit!”
“Van, dearest old boy,” cried the other, irrelevantly, “congratulate me! I’m the luckiest dog alive!”
“With all my heart,” Van answered, shaking the proffered hand heartily. “I was sure it would come out all right.”
“You were?” Andy fairly beamed. “She said so!”
“What?shesaid so? Did Rose Wood expect you to break off, then?”
“No, no! Notthat. She said she knew you’d be glad of the match.”
“Glad of—the match!” Van stared at his friend, with growing suspicion in his mind.
“Yes, you dear old Van! I’m engaged, and just the happiest of—”
“Engaged?” and Van seized Andy by the shoulders with both hands.
195
“Yes, all fixed! And Rose Wood is just the dearest, best girl after all! I’d never have known happiness but for her!”
Van Morris turned the speaker full to the firelight, and stared hard in his face.
“I wouldn’t have believed it, Andy,” he said, contemptuously. “You have comeheredrunk again!”
“No, indeed! I have pledged my word tohernever to touch a drop!” protested Andy, withimperturbablegood nature. “And, Van,she has accepted me.”
“She?”
“Yes. Rose said, ‘Morris has his heart set on the match;’ I went straight on that hint, and Blanche Allmand will be Mrs. Andrew Browne next Easter.”
Morris answered no word.
With a deep, hard breath, he turned abruptly, strode to the alcove window, and peered through the curtains into the black night beyond. A great surge of regret swept over him that shook the strong man with pain pitiful to see. He pressed his forehead against the cold glass; and the contrast, so strong, to the hope with which he had looked out thus at the gray dawn, sickened him with its weight. There was a boom in his ears, as of the distant surf; and his brain mechanically groped after a lost refrain, finding only the fragment: “To lose it all!lose it all!”
But heart-sickness, like sea-sickness, is never mortal, and it has the inestimable call over the latter of being far less tenacious. And Van Morris was mentally as healthy as he was physically sound. He made a strong effort of a strong will; and turned to face his friend and his—fate. In his hand he held a wilted camellia bud and a crushed cactus flower.
Moving quickly to the fire, he tossed them on the glowing coals; watching as they curled, shrivelled, and disappeared in the heat’s maw. Then he moved quietly to the window and looked into the night once more.
Wholly wrapped up in his new-found joy, Andy Browne saw nothing odd in his friend’s manner or actions. He moved softly about the room, and once more hummed, “Il segreto per esser felice;” very low and very tenderly this time.
Suddenly the rustle of silk again sounded on Morris’s ear.
He turned quickly, and looked long, but steadily, into the beautiful face. It was very quiet and gentle; glorified by the deeper content in the eyes and the modest flush upon the cheek. His face,196too, was very quiet; but it was pale and grave. His manner was gentle; but he retained the little hand Blanche held out to him, in fingers that were steadier than her own.
“I reminded you last night,” he said, very gravely, “how long we had been friends, Blanche. It is meet, then, that I should be the first to wish you that perfect happiness which only a pure girl’s heart may know.”
Then, without a pause, he turned to Andy, and placed the little Russia case in his hand. As it opened, the eye of a dazzling solitaire flashed from its satin pillow.
“Andy, old friend,” he added, “Rose Wood told you only the truth. Ihadset my heart on Blanche’s happiness; and only this morning I got that for her engagement ring. Put it on her finger with the feeling that Van Morris loves you both—better than a nature like Rose Wood’s can ever comprehend.”
T. C. De Leon.
FROM THE WINDOWS OF A GREAT LIBRARY.
“The dead alive and busy.”—Henry Vaughan.Without, wind-lifted, lo! a little rose(From the great Summer’s heart its life-blood flows),For some fond spirit to reach and kiss and bless,Climbs to the casement, brings the joyous wraithOf the sun’s quick world, without, of joyousnessInto this still world of enchanted breath.And, far away, behold the dust arise,From streets white-hot, into the sunny skies!The city murmurs: in the sunshine beats,Through all its giant veins of throbbing streets,The heart of Business, on whose sweltering browThe dew shall sleep to-night (forgotten now).There rush the many, toiling as but one;There swarm the living myriads in the sun;There all the mighty troubled day is loud(Business, the god whose voice is of the crowd).And, far above the sea-horizon blue,Like sea-birds, sails are hovering into view.There move the living; here the dead that move:Within the book-world rests the noiseless leverThat moves the noisy, throngèd world forever.Below the living move, the dead above.
John James Piatt.
197“GOING, GOING, GONE.”
“Take it to Rumble. He will give you twice as much on it as any other pawnbroker.”
The speaker was a seedy actor, and the person he addressed was also a follower of the histrionic muses. The latter held before him an ulster which he surveyed with a rueful countenance.
It was not the thought of having to go to the pawnbroker’s that made him rueful, for he would have parted with a watch, if he had possessed one, with indifference; but the wind that whistled without and the snow that beat against the window-pane made him shiver at the thought of surrendering his ulster. However, he had to do it. Both he and his friend were without money, and it was New Year’s eve, which they did not mean to let pass without a little jollification. Therefore they had drawn lots to determine which should hypothecate his overcoat in order to raise funds. The victim was preparing to go to the sacrifice.
“Yes,” continued his friend, “take it to Rumble. He is the Prince of Pawnbrokers. Last week I took a set of gold shirt studs to him. He asked me at what I valued them. I named a slightly larger sum than I paid for them, and the old man gave me fully what they cost me.”
“Let us go at once to Rumble’s,” said the other, seizing his hat, and the two sallied forth into the night and the storm.
Down the street they went before the wind-driven snow. Fortunately they did not have far to go.
When they opened the door of Rumble’s shop, the old pawnbroker looked up in surprise. The tempest seemed to have blown his visitors in. The windows rattled; the lights flared; fantastic garments, made in the style of by-gone centuries, swayed to and fro where they hung, as though the shapes that might have worn them haunted the place; a set of armor, that stood in one corner, clanked as though the spirit of some dead paladin had entered it and was striving to stalk forth and do battle with the demons of the storm; while the gust that had occasioned all this commotion in the little shop went careering through the rooms at the rear, causing papers to fly, doors to slam, and a sweet voice to exclaim:
198
“Why, father, what is the matter?”
“Nothing, my dear, it is only the wind,” answered the old man, as he advanced to receive his visitors.
The one with whom he was acquainted nodded familiarly to the pawnbroker, while he of the rueful countenance pulled off his ulster and threw it on the counter, saying:
“How much will you give me on that?”
Rumble, who was a large man, rather fleshy and slow of movement, started toward the back of the shop with a lazy roll, like a ship under half sail. He made a tack around the end of the counter and hove to behind it, opposite the men who had just come in. He pulled his spectacles down from the top of his bald head, where they had been resting, drew the coat toward him, looked at it for an instant, then raised his eyes till they met those of his customer.
“How much do you think it is worth?” he said, uttering the words slowly and casting a commiserating glance at the thinly-clad form of the man before him.
“I paid twenty dollars for it,” said the young man. “It is worth ten dollars, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes!” returned the pawnbroker. “Shall I loan you ten dollars on it?”
“If you please,” answered his customer, whose face brightened when he heard the pawnbroker’s words. He had thought he might get five dollars on the ulster. The prospect of getting ten made him feel like a man of affluence.
The pawnbroker opened a book and began to fill the blanks in one of the many printed slips it contained. One of the blanks he filled with his customer’s name, James Teague. That was his real name, not the one by which he was known to the stage and to fame. That was far more aristocratical.
As Rumble handed Teague the ticket and the ten dollars, he took a stealthy survey of his slender and poorly-clad form, then glanced toward the window on which great flakes of snow were constantly beating, driven against it by the wind that howled fiendishly as it went through the street, playing havoc with shutters and making the swinging sign-boards creak uncannily.
“Mr. Dixon,” said the pawnbroker, turning to Teague’s companion, “will not you and your friend wait awhile until the storm slackens? It is pleasanter here by the fire than it is outside.”
His visitors agreed with him and accepted his invitation. They seated themselves beside the stove which stood in the center of the199room, and from which, through little plates of isinglass, shone cheerful light from a bed of fiery coals. Both leaned back in their chairs; both turned the palms of their hands toward the stove, to receive the grateful heat; and when the old pawnbroker joined them, smiling genially as he sank into his great arm-chair, which seemed to have been made expressly for his capacious form, the same thought came to both of his guests. To this thought Dixon gave expression.
“Mr. Rumble,” he asked, “how happened it that you became a pawnbroker?”
“Well, I might say that it was by chance,” replied Rumble. “I was not bred to the business.”
“I thought not,” answered Dixon, as he and his friend exchanged knowing glances.
“I was a weaver by trade,” continued Rumble, “and until two years ago worked at that calling in England, where I was born. But I made little money at it, and when an aunt, at her death, left me five hundred pounds, I decided to come to this country and go into a new business.”
“But what put it into your head to choose that of a pawnbroker?” asked Dixon.
“Because everybody told me that larger profits were made in it than in any other. You see I am getting on in years, and I have a daughter for whom I must provide. When I die I want to leave her enough to make her comfortable.”
The street door was opened and for a moment the room was made decidedly uncomfortable by a cold blast accompanied by driving snow. Again the windows rattled, the armor clanked, and the hanging suits swung and shook their armless sleeves in the air.
A tall, slight young man, clad in well-worn black clothes, stood by the door. Although his beardless pale face was the face of youth, it was not free from the marks of care, and in his large lustrous dark eyes there was a yearning look that spoke, as plainly as words, of desires unfulfilled.
Dixon and Teague exchanged glances which as much as said, “here’s another customer for the pawnbroker.”
“Is Miss Rumble in?” said the newcomer in a hesitating manner, as he turned toward the old pawnbroker.
“You wouldn’t have her out on such a night, would you, Mr. Maxwell?” said Rumble, laughing. “She is in the sitting-room,” he added, pointing to the rear; “go right in.”