AS Miss Emsdale and Thomas Trotter got down from the taxi, into a huge unbroken snowdrift in front of a house in one of the cross-town streets just off upper Fifth Avenue, a second taxi drew up behind them and barked a raucous command to pull up out of the way. But the first taxi was unable to do anything of the sort, being temporarily though explosively stalled in the drift along the curb. Whereupon the fare in the second taxi threw open the door and, with an audible imprecation, plunged into the drift, just in time to witness the interesting spectacle of a lady being borne across the snow-piled sidewalk in the arms of a stalwart man; and, as he gazed in amazement, the man and his burden ascended the half-dozen steps leading to the storm-vestibule of the very house to which he himself was bound.
His first shock of apprehension was dissipated almost instantly. The man's burden giggled quite audibly as he set her down inside the storm doors. That giggle was proof positive that she was neither dead nor injured. She was very much alive, there could be no doubt about it. But who was she?
The newcomer swore softly as he fumbled in his trousers' pocket for a coin for the driver who had run him up from the club. After an exasperating but seemingly necessary delay he hurried up the steps. He met thestalwart burden-bearer coming down. A servant had opened the door and the late burden was passing into the hall.
He peered sharply into the face of the man who was leaving, and recognized him.
"Hello," he said. "Some one ill, Trotter?"
"No, Mr. Smith-Parvis," replied Trotter in some confusion. "Disagreeable night, isn't it?"
"In some respects," said young Mr. Smith-Parvis, and dashed into the vestibule before the footman could close the door.
Miss Emsdale turned at the foot of the broad stairway as she heard the servant greet the young master. A swift flush mounted to her cheeks. Her heart beat a little faster, notwithstanding the fact that it had been beating with unusual rapidity ever since Thomas Trotter disregarded her protests and picked her up in his strong arms.
"Hello," he said, lowering his voice.
There was a light in the library beyond. His father was there, taking advantage, no doubt, of the midnight lull to read the evening newspapers. The social activities of the Smith-Parvises gave him but little opportunity to read the evening papers prior to the appearance of the morning papers.
"What is the bally rush?" went on the young man, slipping out of his fur-lined overcoat and leaving it pendant in the hands of the footman. Miss Emsdale, after responding to his hushed "hello" in an equally subdued tone, had started up the stairs.
"It is very late, Mr. Smith-Parvis. Good night."
"Never too late to mend," he said, and was supremelywell-satisfied with what a superior intelligence might have recorded as a cryptic remark but what, to him, was an awfully clever "come-back." He had spent three years at Oxford. No beastly American college for him, by Jove!
Overcoming a cultivated antipathy to haste,—which he considered the lowest form of ignorance,—he bounded up the steps, three at a time, and overtook her midway to the top.
"I say, Miss Emsdale, I saw you come in, don't you know. I couldn't believe my eyes. What the deuce were you doing out with that common—er—chauffeur? D'you mean to say that you are running about with a chap of that sort, and letting him—"
"If youplease, Mr. Smith-Parvis!" interrupted Miss Emsdale coldly. "Good night!"
"I don't mean to say you haven't therightto go about with any one you please," he persisted, planting himself in front of her at the top of the steps. "But a common chauffeur—Well, now, 'pon my word, Miss Emsdale, really you might just as well be seen with Peasley down there."
"Peasley is out of the question," said she, affecting a wry little smile, as of self-pity. "He is tooken, as you say in America. He walks out with Bessie, the parlour-maid."
"Walks out? Good Lord, you don't mean to say you'd—but, of course, you're spoofing me. One never knows how to take you English, no matter how long one may have lived in England. But I am serious. You cannot afford to be seen running around nights with fellows of that stripe. Rotten bounders, that'swhat I call 'em. Ever been out with him before?"
"Often, Mr. Smith-Parvis," she replied calmly. "I am sure you would like him if you knew him better. He is really a very—"
"Nonsense! He is a good chauffeur, I've no doubt,—Lawrie Carpenter says he's a treasure, but I've no desire to know him any better. And I don't like to think of you knowing him quite as well as you do, Miss Emsdale. See what I mean?"
"Perfectly. You mean that you will go to your mother with the report that I am not a fit person to be with the children. Isn't that what you mean?"
"Not at all. I'm not thinking of the kids. I'm thinking of myself. I'm pretty keen about you, and—"
"Aren't you forgetting yourself, Mr. Smith-Parvis?" she demanded curtly.
"Oh, I know there'd be a devil of a row if the mater ever dreamed that I—Oh, I say! Don't rush off in a huff. Wait a—"
But she had brushed past him and was swiftly ascending the second flight of stairs.
He stared after her in astonishment. He couldn't understand such stupidity, not even in a governess. There wasn't another girl in New York City, so far as he knew, who wouldn't have been pleased out of her boots to receive the significant mark of interest he was bestowing upon this lowly governess,—and here was she turning her back upon,—Why, what was the matter with her? He passed his hand over his brow and blinked a couple of times. And she only a paid governess! It was incredible.
He went slowly downstairs and, still in a sort of daze, found himself a few minutes later pouring out a large drink of whiskey in the dining-room. It was his habit to take a bottle of soda with his whiskey, but on this occasion he overcame it and gulped the liquor "neat." It appeared to be rather uplifting, so he had another. Then he went up to his own room and sulked for an hour before even preparing for bed. The more he thought of it, the graver her unseemly affront became.
"And to have her insultmelike that," he said to himself over and over again, "when not three minutes before she had let that bally bounder carry her up—By gad, I'll give her something to think about in the morning. She sha'n't do that sort of thing to me. She'll find herself out of a job and with a damned poor reference in her pocket if she gets gay with me. She'll come down from her high horse, all right, all right. Positions like this one don't grow in the park. She's got to understand that. She can't go running around with chauffeurs and all—My God, to think that he had her in his arms! The one girl in all the world who has ever really made me sit up and take notice! Gad, I—I can't stand it—I can't bear to think of her cuddling up to that—The damned bounder!"
He sprang to his feet and bolted out into the hall. He was a spoiled young man with an aversion: an aversion to being denied anything that he wanted.
In the brief history of the Smith-Parvis family he occupied many full and far from prosaic pages. Smith-Parvis, Senior, was not a prodigal sort of person, and yet he had squandered a great many thousands of dollars in his time on Smith-Parvis, Junior. It costsmoney to bring up young men like Smith-Parvis, Junior; and by the same token it costs money to hold them down. The family history, if truthfully written, would contain passages in which the unbridled ambitions of Smith-Parvis, Junior, overwhelmed everything else. There would be the chapters excoriating the two chorus-girls who, in not widely separated instances, consented to release the young man from matrimonial pledges in return for so much cash; and there would be numerous paragraphs pertaining to auction-bridge, and others devoted entirely to tailors; to say nothing of uncompromising café and restaurant keepers who preferred the Smith-Parvis money to the Smith-Parvis trade.
The young man, having come to the conclusion that he wanted Miss Emsdale, ruthlessly decided to settle the matter at once. He would not wait till morning. He would go up to her room and tell her that if she knew what was good for her she'd listen to what he had to say. She was too nice a girl to throw herself away on a rotter like Trotter.
Then, as he came to the foot of the steps, he remembered the expression in her eyes as she swept past him an hour earlier. It suddenly occurred to him to pause and reflect. The look she gave him, now that he thought of it, was not that of a timid, frightened menial. Far from it! There was something imperious about it; he recalled the subtle, fleeting and hitherto unfamiliar chill it gave him.
Somewhat to his own amazement, he returned to his room and closed the door with surprising care. He usually slammed it.
"Dammit all," he said, half aloud, scowling at hisreflection in the mirror across the room, "I—I wonder if she thinks she can put on airs with me." Later on he regained his self-assurance sufficiently to utter an ultimatum to the invisible offender: "You'll be eating out of my hand before you're two days older, my fine lady, or I'll know the reason why."
Smith-Parvis, Junior, wore the mask of a gentleman. As a matter-of-fact, the entire Smith-Parvis family went about masked by a similar air of gentility.
The hyphen had a good deal to do with it.
The head of the family, up to the time he came of age, was William Philander Smith, commonly called Bill by the young fellows in Yonkers. A maternal uncle, name of Parvis, being without wife or child at the age of seventy-eight, indicated a desire to perpetuate his name by hitching it to the sturdiest patronymic in the English language, and forthwith made a will, leaving all that he possessed to his only nephew, on condition that the said nephew and all his descendants should bear, henceforth and for ever, the name of Smith-Parvis.
That is how it all came about. William Philander, shortly after the fusion of names, fell heir to a great deal of money and in due time forsook Yonkers for Manhattan, where he took unto himself a wife in the person of Miss Angela Potts, only child of the late Simeon Potts, Esq., and Mrs. Potts, neither of whom, it would seem, had the slightest desire to perpetuate the family name. Indeed, as Angela was getting along pretty well toward thirty, they rather made a point of abolishing it before it was too late.
The first-born of William Philander and Angela was christened Stuyvesant Van Sturdevant Smith-Parvis,after one of the Pottses who came over at a time when the very best families in Holland, according to the infant's grandparents, were engaged in establishing an aristocracy at the foot of Manhattan Island.
After Stuyvesant,—ten years after, in fact,—came Regina Angela, who languished a while in the laps of the Pottses and the Smith-Parvis nurses, and died expectedly. When Stuyvie was fourteen the twins, Lucille and Eudora, came, and at that the Smith-Parvises packed up and went to England to live. Stuyvie managed in some way to make his way through Eton and part of the way through Oxford. He was sent down in his third year. It wasn't so easy to have his own way there. Moreover, he did not like Oxford because the rest of the boys persisted in calling him an American. He didn't mind being called a New Yorker, but they were rather obstinate about it.
Miss Emsdale was the new governess. The redoubtable Mrs. Sparflight had recommended her to Mrs. Smith-Parvis. Since her advent into the home in Fifth Avenue, some three or four months prior to the opening of this narrative, a marked change had come over Stuyvesant Van Sturdevant. It was principally noticeable in a recently formed habit of getting down to breakfast early. The twins and the governess had breakfast at half-past eight. Up to this time he had detested the twins. Of late, however, he appeared to have discovered that they were his sisters and rather interesting little beggars at that.
They were very much surprised by his altered behaviour. To the new governess they confided the somewhat startling suspicion that Stuyvie must be havingsoftening of the brain, just as "grandpa" had when "papa" discovered that he was giving diamond rings to the servants and smiling at strangers in the street. It must be that, said they, for never before had Stuyvie kissed them or brought them expensive candies or smiled at them as he was doing in these wonderful days.
Stranger still, he never had been polite or agreeable to governesses—before. He always had called them frumps, or cats, or freaks, or something like that. Surely something must be the matter with him, or he wouldn't be so nice to Miss Emsdale. Up to now he positively had refused to look at her predecessors, much less to sit at the same table with them. He said they took away his appetite.
The twins adored Miss Emsdale.
"We love you because you are so awfuly good," they were wont to say. "And so beautiful," they invariably added, as if it were not quite the proper thing to say.
It was obvious to Miss Emsdale that Stuyvesant endorsed the supplemental tribute of the twins. He made it very plain to the new governess that he thought more of her beauty than he did of her goodness. He ogled her in a manner which, for want of a better expression, may be described as possessive. Instead of being complimented by his surreptitious admiration, she was distinctly annoyed. She disliked him intensely.
He was twenty-five. There were bags under his eyes. More than this need not be said in describing him, unless one is interested in the tiny black moustache that looked as though it might have been pasted, with great precision, in the centre of his long upper lip,—directly beneaththe spreading nostrils of a broad and far from aristocratic nose. His lips were thick and coarse, his chin a trifle undershot. Physically, he was a well set-up fellow, tall and powerful.
For reasons best known to himself, and approved by his parents, he affected a distinctly English manner of speech. In that particular, he frequently out-Englished the English themselves.
As for Miss Emsdale, she was a long time going to sleep. The encounter with the scion of the house had left her in a disturbed frame of mind. She laid awake for hours wondering what the morrow would produce for her. Dismissal, no doubt, and with it a stinging rebuke for what Mrs. Smith-Parvis would consider herself justified in characterizing as unpardonable misconduct in one employed to teach innocent and impressionable young girls. Mingled with these dire thoughts were occasional thrills of delight. They were, however, of short duration and had to do with a pair of strong arms and a gentle, laughing voice.
In addition to these shifting fears and thrills, there were even more disquieting sensations growing out of the unwelcome attentions of Smith-Parvis, Junior. They were, so to speak, getting on her nerves. And now he had not only expressed himself in words, but had actually threatened her. There could be no mistake about that.
Her heart was heavy. She did not want to lose her position. The monthly checks she received from Mrs. Smith-Parvis meant a great deal to her. At least half of her pay went to England, and sometimes more than half. A friendly solicitor in London obtained themoney on these drafts and forwarded it, without fee, to the sick young brother who would never walk again, the adored young brother who had fallen prey to the most cruel of all enemies: infantile paralysis.
Jane Thorne was the only daughter of the Earl of Wexham, who shot himself in London when the girl was but twelve years old. He left a penniless widow and two children. Wexham Manor, with all its fields and forests, had been sacrificed beforehand by the reckless, ill-advised nobleman. The police found a half-crown in his pocket when they took charge of the body. It was the last of a once imposing fortune. The widow and children subsisted on the charity of a niggardly relative. With the death of the former, after ten unhappy years as a dependent, Jane resolutely refused to accept help from the obnoxious relative. She set out to earn a living for herself and the crippled boy. We find her, after two years of struggle and privation, installed as Miss Emsdale in the Smith-Parvis mansion, earning one hundred dollars a month.
It is safe to say that if the Smith-Parvises had known that she was the daughter of an Earl, and that her brother was an Earl, there would have been great rejoicing among them; for it isn't everybody who can boast an Earl's daughter as governess.
One night in each week she was free to do as she pleased. It was, in plain words, her night out. She invariably spent it with the Marchioness and the coterie of unmasked spirits from lands across the seas.
What was she to say to Mrs. Smith-Parvis if called upon to account for her unconventional return of the night before? How could she explain? Her lips wereclosed by the seal of honour so far as the meetings above "Deborah's" were concerned. A law unwritten but steadfastly observed by every member of that remarkable, heterogeneous court, made it impossible for her to divulge her whereabouts or actions on this and other agreeable "nights out." No man or woman in that company would have violated, even under the gravest pressure, the compact under which so many well-preserved secrets were rendered secure from exposure.
Stuyvesant, in his rancour, would draw an ugly picture of her midnight adventure. He would, no doubt, feel inspired to add a few conclusions of his own. Her word, opposed to his, would have no effect on the verdict of the indulgent mother. She would stand accused and convicted of conduct unbecoming a governess! For, after all, Thomas Trotter was a chauffeur, and she couldn't make anything nobler out of him without saying that he wasn't Thomas Trotter at all.
She arose the next morning with a splitting headache, and the fear of Stuyvesant in her soul.
He was waiting for her in the hall below. The twins were accorded an unusually affectionate greeting by their big brother. He went so far as to implant a random kiss on the features of each of the "brats," as he called them in secret. Then he roughly shoved them ahead into the breakfast-room.
Fastening his gaze upon the pale, unsmiling face of Miss Emsdale, he whispered:
"Don't worry, my dear. Mum's the word."
He winked significantly. Revolted, she drew herself up and hurried after the children, unpleasantly consciousof the leer of admiration that rested upon her from behind.
He was very gay at breakfast.
"Mum's the word," he repeated in an undertone, as he drew back her chair at the conclusion of the meal. His lips were close to her ear, his hot breath on her cheek, as he bent forward to utter this reassuring remark.
TWO days later Thomas Trotter turned up at the old book shop of J. Bramble, in Lexington Avenue.
"Well," he said, as he took his pipe out of his pocket and began to stuff tobacco into it, "I've got the sack."
"Got the sack?" exclaimed Mr. Bramble, blinking through his horn-rimmed spectacles. "You can't be serious."
"It's the gospel truth," affirmed Mr. Trotter, depositing his long, graceful body in a rocking chair facing the sheet-iron stove at the back of the shop. "Got my walking papers last night, Bramby."
"What's wrong? I thought you were a fixture on the job. What have you been up to?"
"I'm blessed if I know," said the young man, shaking his head slowly. "Kicked out without notice, that's all I know about it. Two weeks' pay handed me; and a simple statement that he was putting some one on in my place today."
"Not even a reference?"
"He offered me a good one," said Trotter ironically. "Said he would give me the best send-off a chauffeur ever had. I told him I couldn't accept a reference and a discharge from the same employer."
"Rather foolish, don't you think?"
"That's just what he said. I said I'd rather have an explanation than a reference, under the circumstances."
"Um! What did he say to that?"
"Said I'd better take what he was willing to give."
Mr. Bramble drew up a chair and sat down. He was a small, sharp-featured man of sixty, bookish from head to foot.
"Well, well," he mused sympathetically. "Too bad, too bad, my boy. Still, you ought to thank goodness it comes at a time when the streets are in the shape they're in now. Almost impossible to get about with an automobile in all this snow, isn't it? Rather a good time to be discharged, I should say."
"Oh, I say, thatisoptimism. 'Pon my soul, I believe you'd find something cheerful about going to hell," broke in Trotter, grinning.
"Best way I know of to escape blizzards and snow-drifts," said Mr. Bramble, brightly.
The front door opened. A cold wind blew the length of the book-littered room.
"This Bramble's?" piped a thin voice.
"Yes. Come in and shut the door."
An even smaller and older man than himself obeyed the command. He wore the cap of a district messenger boy.
"Mr. J. Bramble here?" he quaked, advancing.
"Yes. What is it? A telegram?" demanded the owner of the shop, in some excitement.
"I should say not. Wires down everywheres. Gee, that fire looks good. I gotta letter for you, Mr. Bramble." He drew off his red mittens and producedfrom the pocket of his thin overcoat, an envelope and receipt book. "Sign here," he said, pointing.
Mr. Bramble signed and then studied the handwriting on the envelope, his lips pursed, one eye speculatively cocked.
"I've never seen the writing before. Must be a new one," he reflected aloud, and sighed. "Poor things!"
"That establishes the writer as a woman," said Trotter, removing his pipe. "Otherwise you would have said 'poor devils.' Now what do you mean by trifling with the women, you old rogue?" The loss of his position did not appear to have affected the nonchalant disposition of the good-looking Mr. Trotter.
"God bless my soul," said Mr. Bramble, staring hard at the envelope, "I don't believe it is from one of them, after all. By 'one of them,' my lad, I mean the poor gentlewomen who find themselves obliged to sell their books in order to obtain food and clothing. They always write before they call, you see. Saves 'em not only trouble but humiliation. The other kind simply burst in with a parcel of rubbish and ask how much I'll give for the lot. But this,—Well, well, I wonder who it can be from? Doesn't seem like the sort of writing—"
"Why don't you open it and see?" suggested his visitor.
"A good idea," said Mr. Bramble; "a very clever thought. Thereisa way to find out, isn't there?" His gaze fell upon the aged messenger, who warmed his bony hands at the stove. He paused, the tip of his forefinger inserted under the flap. "Sit down andwarm yourself, my friend," he said. "Get your long legs out of the way, Tom, and make room for him. That's right! Must be pretty rough going outside for an old codger like you."
The messenger "boy" sat down. "Yes, sir, it sure is. Takes 'em forever in this 'ere town to clean the snow off'n the streets. 'Twasn't that way in my day."
"What do you mean by your 'day'?"
"Haven't you ever heard about me?" demanded the old man, eyeing Mr. Bramble with interest.
"Can't say that I have."
"Well, can you beat that? There's a big, long street named after me way down town. My name is Canal, Jotham W. Canal." He winked and showed his toothless gums in an amiable grin. "I used to be purty close to old Boss Tweed; kind of a lieutenant, you might say. Things were so hot in the old town in those days that we used to charge a nickel apiece for snowballs. Five cents apiece, right off the griddle. That's how hot it was in my day."
"My word!" exclaimed Mr. Bramble.
"He's spoofing you," said young Mr. Trotter.
"My God," groaned the messenger, "if I'd only knowed you was English I'd have saved my breath. Well, I guess I'll be on my way. Is there an answer, Mr. Bramble?"
"Um—aw—I quite forgot the—" He tore open the envelope and held the missive to the light. "'Pon my soul!" he cried, after reading the first few lines and then jumping ahead to the signature. "This is most extraordinary." He was plainly agitated as he felt inhis pocket for a coin. "No answer,—that is to say,—none at present. Ahem! That's all, boy. Goodbye."
Mr. Canal shuffled out of the shop,—and out of this narrative as well.
"This will interest you," said Mr. Bramble, lowering his voice as he edged his chair closer to the young man. "It is from Lady Jane Thorne—I should say, Miss Emsdale. Bless my soul!"
Mr. Trotter's British complacency was disturbed. He abandoned his careless sprawl in the chair and sat up very abruptly.
"What's that? From Lady Jane? Don't tell me it's anything serious. One would think she was on her deathbed, judging by the face you're—"
"Read it for yourself," said the other, thrusting the letter into Trotter's hand. "It explains everything,—the whole blooming business. Read it aloud. Don't be uneasy," he added, noting the young man's glance toward the door. "No customers on a day like this. Some one may drop in to get warm, but—aha, I see you are interested."
An angry flush darkened Trotter's face as his eyes ran down the page.
"'Dear Mr. Bramble: (she wrote) I am sending this to you by special messenger, hoping it may reach you before Mr. Trotter drops in. He has told me that he spends a good deal of his spare time in your dear old shop, browsing among the books. In the light of what may already have happened, I am quite sure you will see him today. I feel that I may write freely to you,for you are his friend and mine, and you will understand. I am greatly distressed. Yesterday I was informed that he is to be summarily dismissed by Mr. Carpenter. I prefer not to reveal the source of information. All I may say is that I am, in a way, responsible for his misfortune. If the blow has fallen, he is doubtless perplexed and puzzled, and, I fear, very unhappy. Influence has been brought to bear upon Mr. Carpenter, who, you may not be by way of knowing, is a close personal friend of the people in whose home I am employed. Indeed, notwithstanding the difference in their ages, I may say that he is especially the friend of young Mr. S-P. Mr. Trotter probably knows something about the nature of this friendship, having been kept out till all hours of the morning in his capacity as chauffeur. My object in writing to you is two-fold: first, to ask you to prevail upon him to act with discretion for the present, at least, as I have reason to believe that there may be an attempt to carry out a threat to "run him out of town"; secondly, to advise him that I shall stop at your place at five o'clock this afternoon in quest of a little book that now is out of print. Please explain to him also that my uncertainty as to where a letter would reach him under these new conditions accounts for this message to you. Sincerely your friend,"Jane Emsdale.'"
"'Dear Mr. Bramble: (she wrote) I am sending this to you by special messenger, hoping it may reach you before Mr. Trotter drops in. He has told me that he spends a good deal of his spare time in your dear old shop, browsing among the books. In the light of what may already have happened, I am quite sure you will see him today. I feel that I may write freely to you,for you are his friend and mine, and you will understand. I am greatly distressed. Yesterday I was informed that he is to be summarily dismissed by Mr. Carpenter. I prefer not to reveal the source of information. All I may say is that I am, in a way, responsible for his misfortune. If the blow has fallen, he is doubtless perplexed and puzzled, and, I fear, very unhappy. Influence has been brought to bear upon Mr. Carpenter, who, you may not be by way of knowing, is a close personal friend of the people in whose home I am employed. Indeed, notwithstanding the difference in their ages, I may say that he is especially the friend of young Mr. S-P. Mr. Trotter probably knows something about the nature of this friendship, having been kept out till all hours of the morning in his capacity as chauffeur. My object in writing to you is two-fold: first, to ask you to prevail upon him to act with discretion for the present, at least, as I have reason to believe that there may be an attempt to carry out a threat to "run him out of town"; secondly, to advise him that I shall stop at your place at five o'clock this afternoon in quest of a little book that now is out of print. Please explain to him also that my uncertainty as to where a letter would reach him under these new conditions accounts for this message to you. Sincerely your friend,
"Jane Emsdale.'"
"Read it again, slowly," said Mr. Bramble, blinking harder than ever.
"What time is it now?" demanded Trotter, thrusting the letter into his own pocket. A quick glance at the watch on his wrist brought a groan of dismay fromhis lips. "Good Lord! A few minutes past ten. Seven hours! Hold on! I can almost see the words on your lips. I'll be discreet, so don't begin prevailing, there's a good chap. There's nothing to be said or done till I see her. But,—seven hours!"
"Stop here and have a bite of lunch with me," said Mr. Bramble, soothingly.
"Nothing could be more discreet than that," said Trotter, getting up to pace the floor. He was frowning.
"It's quite cosy in our little dining-room upstairs. If you prefer, I'll ask Mirabeau to clear out and let us have the place to ourselves while—"
"Not at all. I'll stop with you, but I will not have poor old Mirabeau evicted. We will show the letter to him. He is a Frenchman and he can read between the lines far better than either of us."
At twelve-thirty, Mr. Bramble stuck a long-used card in the front door and locked it from the inside. The world was informed, in bold type, that he had gone to lunch and would not return until one-thirty.
In the rear of the floor above the book-shop were the meagrely furnished bedrooms and kitchen shared by J. Bramble and Pierre Mirabeau, clock-maker and repairer. The kitchen was more than a kitchen. It was also a dining-room, a sitting-room and a scullery, and it was as clean and as neat as the proverbial pin. At the front was the work-shop of M. Mirabeau, filled with clocks of all sizes, shapes and ages. Back of this, as a sort of buffer between the quiet bedrooms and the busy resting-place of a hundred sleepless chimes, was located the combination store-room, utilized by both merchants:a musty, dingy place crowded with intellectual rubbish and a lapse of Time.
Mirabeau, in response to a shout from the fat Irishwoman who came in by the day to cook, wash and clean up for the tenants, strode briskly into the kitchen, drying his hands on a towel. He was a tall, spare old man with uncommonly bright eyes and a long grey beard.
His joy on beholding the young guest at their board was surpassed only by the dejection communicated to his sensitive understanding by the dismal expression on the faces of J. Bramble and Thomas Trotter.
He broke off in the middle of a sentence, and, still grasping the hand of the guest, allowed his gaze to dart from one to the other.
"Mon dieu!" he exclaimed, swiftly altering his tone to one of the deepest concern. "What has happened? Has some one died? Don't tell me it is your grandfather, my boy. Don't tell me that the old villain has died at last and you will have to go back and step into his misguided boots. Nothing else can—"
"Worse than that," interrupted Trotter, smiling. "I've lost my situation."
M. Mirabeau heaved a sigh of relief. "Ah! My heart beats again. Still," with a vastly different sigh, "he cannot go on living for ever. The time is bound to come when you—"
An admonitory cough from Mr. Bramble, and a significant jerk of the head in the direction of the kitchen-range, which was almost completely obscured by the person of Mrs. O'Leary, caused M. Mirabeau to bring his remarks to an abrupt close.
When he was twenty-five years younger, MonsieurMirabeau, known to every one of consequence in Paris by his true and lawful name, Count André Drouillard, as handsome and as high-bred a gentleman as there was in all France, shot and killed, with all the necessary ceremony, a prominent though bourgeoise general in the French Army, satisfactorily ending a liaison in which the Countess and the aforesaid general were the principal characters. Notwithstanding the fact that the duel had been fought in the most approved French fashion, which almost invariably (except, in case of accident) provides for a few well-scattered shots and subsequent embraces on the part of the uninjured adversaries, the general fell with a bullet through his heart.
So great was the consternation of the Republic, and so unpardonable the accuracy of the Count, that the authorities deemed it advisable to make an example of the unfortunate nobleman. He was court-martialled by the army and sentenced to be shot. On the eve of the execution he escaped and, with the aid of friends, made his way into Switzerland, where he found refuge in the home of a sequestered citizen who made antique clocks for a living. A price was put upon his head, and so relentless were the efforts to apprehend him that for months he did not dare show it outside the house of his protector.
He repaid the clockmaker with honest toil. In course of time he became an expert repairer. With the confiscation of his estates in France, he resigned himself to the inevitable. He became a man without a country. One morning the newspapers in Paris announced the death, by suicide, of the long-soughtpariah. A few days later he was on his way to the United States. His widow promptly re-married and, sad to relate, from all reports lived happily ever afterwards.
The bourgeoise general, in his tomb in France, was not more completely dead to the world than Count André Drouillard; on the other hand, no livelier, sprightlier person ever lived than Pierre Mirabeau, repairer of clocks in Lexington Avenue.
And so if you will look at it in quite the proper spirit, there is but one really morbid note in the story of M. Mirabeau: the melancholy snuffing-out of the poor general,—and even that was brightened to some extent by the most sumptuous military funeral in years.
"What do you make of it?" demanded Mr. Trotter, half-an-hour later in the crowded work-shop of the clockmaker.
M. Mirabeau held Miss Emsdale's letter off at arm's length, and squinted at it with great intensity, as if actually trying to read between the lines.
"I have an opinion," said M. Mirabeau, frowning. Whereupon he rendered his deductions into words, and of his two listeners Thomas Trotter was the most dumbfounded.
"But I don't know the blooming bounder," he exclaimed,—"except by sight and reputation. And I have reason to know that Lady Jane loathes and detests him."
"Aha! There we have it! Why does she loathe and detest him?" cried M. Mirabeau. "Because, my stupid friend, he has been annoying her with his attentions. It is not an uncommon thing for rich young mento lose their heads over pretty young maids and nurses, and even governesses."
"'Gad, if I thought he was annoying her I'd—I'd—"
"There you go!" cried Mr. Bramble, nervously. "Just as she feared. She knew what she was about when she asked me to see that you did not do anything—"
"Hang it all, Bramble, I'm notdoinganything, am I? I'm onlysayingthings. Wait till I begin to do things before you preach."
"That's just it!" cried Mr. Bramble. "You invariably do things when you get that look in your eyes. I knew you long before you knew yourself. You looked like that when you were five years old and wanted to thump Bobby Morgan, who was thirteen. You—"
M. Mirabeau interrupted. He had not been following the discussion. Leaning forward, he eyed the young man keenly, even disconcertingly.
"What is back of all this? Admitting that young Mr. S.-P. is enamoured of our lovely friend, what cause have you given him for jealousy? Have you—"
"Great Scot!" exclaimed Trotter, fairly bouncing off the work-bench on which he sat with his long legs dangling. "Why,—why, ifthat'sthe way he feels toward her he must have had a horrible jolt the other night. Good Lord!" A low whistle followed the exclamation.
"Aha! Now we are getting at the cause. We already have the effect. Out with it," cried M. Mirabeau, eager as a boy. His fine eyes danced with excitement.
"Now that I think of it, he saw me carry her up the steps the other night after we'd all been to the Marchioness's. The night of the blizzard, you know. Oh, I say! It's worse than I thought." He looked blankly from one to the other of the two old men.
"Carried her up the steps, eh? In your good strong arms, eh? And you say 'nowthat I think of it.' Bless your heart, you scalawag, you've been thinking of nothing else since it happened. Ah!" sighed M. Mirabeau, "how wonderful it must have been! The feel of her in your arms, and the breath of her on your cheek, and—Ah! It is a sad thing not to grow old. I am not growing old despite my seventy years. If I could but grow old, and deaf, and feeble, perhaps I should then be able to command the blood that thrills now with the thought of—But, alas! I shall never be so old as that! You say he witnessed this remarkable—ah—exhibition of strength on your part?" He spoke briskly again.
"The snow was a couple of feet deep, you see," explained Trotter, who had turned a bright crimson. "Dreadful night, wasn't it, Bramble?"
"I know what kind of a night it was," said the old Frenchman, delightedly. "My warmest congratulations, my friend. She is the loveliest, the noblest, the truest—"
"I beg your pardon," interrupted Trotter, stiffly. "It hasn't gone as far as all that."
"It has gone farther than you think," said M. Mirabeau shrewdly. "And that is why you were discharged without—"
"By gad! The worst of it all is, she will probablyget her walking papers too,—if she hasn't already got them," groaned the young man. "Don't you see what has happened? The rotter has kicked up a rumpus about that innocent,—and if I do say it,—gallant act of mine the other night. They've had her on the carpet to explain. It looks bad for her. They're the sort of people you can't explain things to. What rotten luck! She needs the money and—"
"Nothing of the kind has happened," said M. Mirabeau with conviction. "It isn't in young Mr. S.-P.'s plans to have her dismissed. That would be—ah, what is it you say?—spilling the beans, eh? The instant she relinquishes her place in that household all hope is lost, so far as he is concerned. He is shrewd enough to realize that, my friend. You are the fly in his ointment. It is necessary to the success of his enterprise to be well rid of you. He doesn't want to lose sight of her, however. He—"
"Run me out of town, eh?" grated Trotter, his thoughts leaping back to the passage in Lady Jane's letter. "Easier said than done, he'll find."
Mr. Bramble coughed. "Are we not going it rather blindly? All this is pure speculation. The young man may not have a hand in the business at all."
"He'll discover he's put his foot in it if he tries any game on me," said Mr. Trotter.
M. Mirabeau beamed. "There is always a way to checkmate the villain in the story. You see it exemplified in every melodrama on the stage and in every shilling shocker. The hero,—and you are our hero,—puts him to rout by marrying the heroine and living happily to a hale old age. What could be more beautifulthan the marriage of Lady Jane Thorne and Lord Eric Carruthers Ethelbert Temple? Mon dieu! It is—"
"Rubbish!" exclaimed Mr. Trotter, suddenly looking down at his foot, which was employed in the laudable but unnecessary act of removing a tiny shaving from a crack in the floor. "Besides," he went on an instant later, acknowledging an interval of mental consideration, "she wouldn't have me."
"It is my time to say 'rubbish,'" said the old Frenchman. "Why wouldn't she have you?"
"Because she doesn't care for me in that way, if you must know," blurted out the young man.
"Has she said so?"
"Of course not. She wouldn't be likely to volunteer the information, would she?" with fine irony.
"Then how do you know she doesn't care for you in that way?"
"Well, I—I just simply know it, that's all."
"I see. You are the smartest man of all time if you know a woman's heart without probing into it, or her mind without tricking it. She permitted you to carry her up the steps, didn't she?"
"She had to," said Trotter forcibly. "That doesn't prove anything. And what's more, she objected to being carried."
"Um! What did she say?"
"Said she didn't in the least mind getting her feet wet. She'd have her boots off as soon as she got into the house."
"Is that all?"
"She said she was awfully heavy, and—Oh, thereis no use talking to me. I know how to take a hint. She just didn't want me to—er—carry her, that's the long and the short of it."
"Did she struggle violently?"
"What?"
"You heard me. Did she?"
"Certainly not. She gave in when I insisted. What else could she do?" He whirled suddenly upon Mr. Bramble. "What are you grinning about, Bramby?"
"Who's grinning?" demanded Mr. Bramble indignantly, after the lapse of thirty or forty seconds.
"Youwere, confound you. I don't see anything to laugh at in—"
"My advice to you," broke in M. Mirabeau, still detached, "is to ask her."
"Ask her? Ask her what?"
"To marry you. As I was saying—"
"My God!" gasped Trotter.
"That is my advice also," put in Mr. Bramble, fumbling with his glasses and trying to suppress a smile,—for fear it would be misinterpreted. "I can't think of anything more admirable than the union of the Temple and Wexham families in—"
"But, good Lord," cried Trotter, "even if she'd have me, how on earth could I take care of her on a chauffeur's pay? And I'm not getting that now. I wish to call your attention to the fact that your little hero has less than fifty pounds,—a good deal less than fifty,—laid by for a rainy day."
"I've known a great many people who were married on rainy days," said M. Mirabeau brightly, "and nothing unlucky came of it."
"Moreover, when your grandfather passes away," urged Mr. Bramble, "you will be a very rich man,—provided, of course, he doesn't remain obstinate and leave his money to some one else. In any event, you would come in for sufficient to—"
"You forget," began Trotter, gravely and with a dignity that chilled the eager old man, "that I will not go back to England, nor will I claim anything that isinEngland, until a certain injustice is rectified and I am set straight in the eyes of the unbelievers."
Mr. Bramble cleared his throat. "Time will clear up everything, my lad. God knows you never did the—"
"God knows it all right enough, but God isn't a member of the Brunswick Club, and His voice is never heard there in counsel. He may lend a helping hand to those who are trying to clear my name, because they believe in me, but the whole business is beginning to look pretty dark to me."
"Ahem! What does Miss—ah, Lady Jane think about the—ah, unfortunate affair?" stammered Mr. Bramble.
"She doesn't believe a damn' word of it," exploded Trotter, his face lighting up.
"Good!" cried M. Mirabeau. "Proof that she pities you, and what more could you ask for a beginning? She believes you were unjustly accused of cheating at cards, that there was a plot to ruin you and to drive you out of the Army, and that your grandfather ought to be hung to a lamp post for believing what she doesn't believe. Good! Now we are on solid, substantial ground. What time is it, Bramble?"
Mr. Bramble looked at a half-dozen clocks in succession.
"I'm blessed if I know," he said. "They range from ten o'clock to half-past six."
"Just three hours and twenty-two minutes to wait," said Thomas Trotter.
PRINCE WALDEMAR DE BOSKY, confronted by the prospect of continued cold weather, decided to make an appeal to Mrs. Moses Jacobs, sometime Princess Mariana di Pavesi. She had his overcoat, the precious one with the fur collar and the leather lining,—the one, indeed, that the friendly safe-blower who lodged across the hall from him had left behind at the outset of a journey up-state.
"More than likely," said the safe-blower, who was not only surprised but gratified when the "little dago" came to visit him in the Tombs, "more than likely I sha'n't be needin' an overcoat for the next twelve or fourteen year, kid, so you ain't robbin' me,—no, sir, not a bit of it. I make you a present of it, with my compliments. Winter is comin' on an' I can't seem to think of anybody it would fit better'n it does you. You don't need to mention as havin' received it from me. The feller who owned it before I did might accidentally hear of it and—but I guess it ain't likely, come to think of it. To the best of my recollection, he lives 'way out West somewhere,—Toledo, I think, or maybe Omaha,—and he's probably got a new one by this time. Much obliged fer droppin' in here to see me, kid. So long,—and cut it out. Don't try to come any of that thanks guff on me. You might as well be usin' that coat as the moths. Besides, I owe you something forstorage, don't forget that. I was in such a hurry the last time I left town I didn't have a chance to explain. You didn't know it then,—and I guess if you had knowed it you wouldn't have been so nice about lookin' out for my coat durin' the summer,—but I was makin' a mighty quick getaway. Thanks fer stoppin' in to remind me I left the coat in your room that night. I clean forgot it, I was in such a hurry. But lemme tell you one thing, kid, I'll never ferget the way you c'n make that fiddle talk. I don't know as you'd 'a' played fer me as you used to once in awhile if you'd knowed I was what I am, but it makes no difference now. I just loved hearin' you play. I used to have a hard time holdin' in the tears. And say, kid, keep straight. Keep on fiddlin'! So long! I may see you along about 1926 or 8. And say, you needn't be ashamed to wear that coat. I didn't steal it. It was a clean case of mistaken identity, if there ever was one. It happened in a restaurant." He winked.
And that is how the little violinist came to be the possessor of an overcoat with a sable collar and a soft leather lining.
He needed it now, not only when he ventured upon the chilly streets but when he remained indoors. In truth, he found it much warmer walking the streets than sitting in his fireless room, or even in going to bed.
It was a far cry from the dapper, dreamy-eyed courtier who kissed the chapped knuckles of the Princess Mariana on Wednesday night to the shrinking, pinched individual who threaded his way on Friday through the cramped lanes that led to the rear of the pawn-shop presided over by Mrs. Jacobs.
And an incredibly vast gulf lay between the Princess Mariana and the female Shylock who peered at him over a glass show-case filled with material pledges in the shape of watches, chains, rings, bracelets, and other gaudy tributes left by a shifting constituency.
"Well?" she demanded, fixing him with a cold, offensive stare. "What do you want?"
He turned down the collar of his thin coat, and straightened his slight figure in response to this unfriendly greeting.
"I came to see if you would allow me to take my overcoat for a few days,—until this cold spell is over,—with the understanding—"
"Nothing doing," said she curtly. "Six dollars due on it."
"But I have not the six dollars, madam. Surely you may trust me."
"Why didn't you bring your fiddle along? You could leave it in place of the coat. Go and get it and I'll see what I can do."
"I am to play tonight at the house of a Mr. Carpenter. He has heard of me through our friend Mr. Trotter, his chauffeur. You know Mr. Trotter, of course."
"Sure I know him, and I don't like him. He insulted me once."
"Ah, but you do not understand him, madam. He is an Englishman and he may have tried to be facetious or even pleasant in the way the English—"
"Say, don't you suppose I know when I'm insulted? When a cheap guy like that comes in here with a customer of mine and tells me I'm so damned mean theywon't even let me into hell when I die,—well, if you don't call that an insult, I'd like to know what it is. Don't talk to me about that bum!"
"Isthatall he said?" involuntarily fell from the lips of the violinist, as if, to his way of thinking, Mr. Trotter's remark was an out-and-out compliment. "Surely you have no desire to go to hell when you die."
"No, I haven't, but I don't want anybody coming in here telling me to my face that there'd be a revolution down there if Itriedto get in. I've got as much right there as anybody, I'd have him know. Cough up six or get out. That's all I've got to say to you, my little man."
"It is freezing cold in my room. I—"
"Don't blame me for that. I don't make the weather. And say, I'm busy. Cough up or—clear out."
"You will not let me have it for a few days if I—"
"Say, do you think I'm in business for my health? I haven't that much use—" she snapped her fingers—"for a fiddler anyhow. It's not a man's job. That's what I think of long-haired guys like—Beat it! I'm busy."
With head erect the little violinist turned away. He was half way to the door when she called out to him.
"Hey! Come back here! Now, see here, you little squirt, you needn't go turning up your nose at me and acting like that. I've got the goods on you and a lot more of those rummies up there. I looked 'em over theother night and I said to myself, says I: 'Gee whiz, couldn't I start something if I let out what I know about this gang!' Talk about earthquakes! They'd—Here! What are you doing? Get out from behind this counter! I'll call a cop if you—"
The pallid, impassioned face of Prince Waldemar de Bosky was close to hers; his dark eyes were blazing not a foot from her nose.
"If I thought you were that kind of a snake I'd kill you," he said quietly, levelly.
"Are—are you threatening me?" sputtered Mrs. Jacobs, trying in vain to look away from those compelling eyes. She could not believe her senses.
"No. I am merely telling you what I would do if you were that kind of a snake."
"See here, don't you get gay! Don't you forget who you are addressing, young man. I am—"
"I am addressing a second-hand junk dealer, madam. You are at home now, not sitting in the big chair up at—at—you know where. Please bear that in mind."
"I'll call some one from out front and have you chucked into—"
"Do you eventhinkof violating the confidence we repose in you?" he demanded. "The thought must have been in your mind or you would not have uttered that remark a moment ago. You are one of us, and we've treated you as a—a queen. I want to know just where you stand, Mrs. Jacobs."
"You can't come in here and bawl me out like this, you little shrimp! I'll—"
"Keep still! Now, listen to me. If I should go toour friends and repeat what you have just said, you would never see the inside of that room again. You would never have the opportunity to exchange a word with a single person you have met there. You would be stripped of the last vestige of glory that clings to you. Oh, you may sneer! But down in your heart you love that bit of glory,—and you would curse yourself if you lost it."
"It's—it's all poppy-cock, the whole silly business," she blurted out. But it was not anger that caused her voice to tremble.
"You know better than that," said he, coldly.
"I don't care a rap about all that foolishness up there. It makes me sick," she muttered.
"You may lie to me but you cannot lie to yourself, madam. Under that filthy, greasy skin of yours runs the blood that will not be denied. Pawn-broker, miser,—whatever you may be to the world, to yourself you are a princess royal. God knows we all despise you. You have not a friend among us. But we can no more overlook the fact that you are a princess of the blood than we can ignore the light of day. The blood that is in you demands its tribute. You have no control over the mysterious spark that fires your blood. It burns in spite of all you may do to quench it. It is there to stay. We despise you, even as you would despise us. Am I to carry your words to those who exalt you despite your calling, despite your meanness, despite all that is base and sordid in this rotten business of yours? Am I to let them know that you are the only—the only—what is the name of the animal I've heard Trotter mention?—ah, I have it,—the onlyskunk in our precious little circle? Tell me, madam, are you a skunk?"
Her face was brick red; she was having difficulty with her breathing. The pale, white face of the little musician dazzled her in a most inexplicable way. Never before had she felt just like this.
"Am I a—what?" she gasped, her eyes popping.
"It is an animal that has an odour which—"
"Good God, you don't have to tell me what it is," she cried, but in suppressed tones. Her gaze swept the rear part of the shop. "It's a good thing for you, young fellow, that nobody heard you call me that name. Thank the good Lord, it isn't a busy day here. If anybodyhadheard you, I'd have you skinned alive."
"A profitless undertaking," he said, smiling without mirth, "but quite in your line, if reports are true. You are an expert at skinning people, alive or dead. But we are digressing. Are you going to turn against us?"
"I haven't said I was going to, have I?"
"Not in so many words."
"Well, then, what's all the fuss about? You come in here and shoot off your mouth as if—And say, who are you, anyhow? Tell me that! No, wait a minute. Don't tell me. I'll tell myself. When a man is kicked out of his own family because he'd sooner play a fiddle than carry a sword, I don't think he's got any right to come blatting to me about—"
"The cruelest monster the world has ever known, madam," he interrupted, stiffening, "fiddled while Rome was burning. Fiddlers are not always gentle. You may not have heard of one very small and unimportant incident in my own life. It was I who fiddled,—badly,I must confess,—while the Opera House in Poltna was burning. A panic was averted. Not a life was lost. And when it was all over some one remembered the fiddler who remained upon the stage and finished the aria he was playing when the cry of fire went up from the audience. Brave men,—far braver men than he,—rushed back through the smoke and found him lying at the footlights, unconscious. But why waste words? Good morning, madam. I shall not trouble you again about the overcoat. Be good enough to remember that I have kissed your hand only because you are a princess and not because you have lent me five dollars on the wretched thing."
The angry light in his brown eyes gave way to the dreamy look once more. He bowed stiffly and edged his way out from behind the counter into the clogged area that lay between him and the distant doorway. Towering above him on all sides were heaps of nondescript objects, classified under the generic name of furniture. The proprietress of this sordid, ill-smelling crib stared after him as he strode away, and into her eyes there stole a look of apprehension.
She followed him to the front door, overtaking him as his hand was on the latch.
"Hold on," she said, nervously glancing at the shifty-eyed, cringing assistant who toiled not in vain,—no one ever toiled in vain in the establishment of M. Jacobs, Inc.,—behind a clump of chairs;—"hold on a second. I don't want you to say a word to—to them about—about all this. You are right, de Bosky. I—I have not lost all that once was mine. You understand, don't you?"
He smiled. "Perfectly. You can never lose it, no matter how low you may sink."
"Well," she went on, hesitatingly, "suppose we forget it."
He eyed her for a moment in silence, shaking his head reflectively. "It is most astonishing," he said at last.
"What's astonishing?" she demanded sharply.
"I was merely thinking of your perfect, your exquisite French, madam!"
"French? Are you nutty? I've been talkin' to you in English all the time."
He nodded his head slowly. "Perhaps that is why your French is so astonishing," he said, and let it go at that.
"Look at me," she exclaimed, suddenly breaking into French as she spread out her thick arms and surveyed with disgust as much of her ample person as came within range of an obstructed vision, "just look at me. No one on earth would takemefor a princess, would he? And yet that is just what I am. Ithinkof myself as a princess, and always will, de Bosky. I think of myself,—of my most unlovely, unregal self,—as the superior of every other woman who treads the streets of New York, all of these base born women. I cannot help it. I cannot think of them as equals, not even the richest and the most arrogant of them. You say it is the blood, but you are wrong. Some of these women have a strain of royal blood in them—a far-off, remote strain, of course,—but they do notknowit. That's the point, my friend. It is theknowingthat makes us what we are. It isn't the blood itself. If we weredeprived of the power tothink, we could have the blood of every royal family in Europe in our veins, and that is all the good it would do us. Wethinkwe are nobler, better than all the rest of creation, and we would keep on thinking it if we slept in the gutter and begged for a crust of bread. And the proof of all this is to be found in the fact that the rest of creation will not allow us to forget. They think as we do, in spite of themselves, and there you have the secret of the supremacy we feel, in spite of everything."
Her brilliant, black eyes were flashing with something more than excitement. The joy, the realization of power glowed in their depths, welling up from fires that would never die. Waldemar de Bosky nodded his head in the most matter-of-fact way. He was not enthralled. All this was very simple and quite undebatable to him.
"I take it, therefore, that you retract all that you said about its being poppycock," he said, turning up his coat collar and fastening it close to his throat with a long and formidable looking safety pin.
"It may be poppycock," she said, "but we can't help liking it—not to save our lives."
"And I shall not have to kill you as if you were a snake, eh?"
"Not on your life," said Mrs. Moses Jacobs in English, opening the door for him.
He passed out into the cold and windy street and she went back to her dingy nook at the end of the store, pausing on the way to inform an assistant that she was not to be disturbed, no matter who came in to see her.
While she sat behind her glittering show-case andgazed pensively at the ceiling of her ugly storehouse, Waldemar de Bosky went shivering through the streets to his cold little backroom many blocks away. While she was for the moment living in the dim but unforgotten past, a kindly memory leading her out of the maze of other people's poverty and her own avarice into broad marble halls and vaulted rooms, he was thinking only of the bitter present with its foodless noon and of pockets that were empty. While maudlin tears ran down her oily cheeks and spilled aimlessly upon a greasy sweater with the spur of memory behind them, tears wrought by the sharp winds of the street glistened in his squinting eyes.
Memory carried him back no farther than the week before and he was distressed only by its exceeding frailty. He could not, for the life of him, remember the address of J. Bramble, bookseller,—a most exasperating lapse in view of the fact that J. Bramble himself had urged him to come up some evening soon and have dinner with him, and to bring his Stradivarius along if he didn't mind. Mind? Why, he would have played his heart out for a good square meal. The more he tried to remember J. Bramble's address, the less he thought of the overcoat with the fur collar and the soft leather lining. He couldn't eat that, you know.
In his bleak little room in the hall of the whistling winds, he took from its case with cold-benumbed fingers the cherished violin. Presently, as he played, the shivering flesh of him grew warm with the heat of an inward fire; the stiff, red fingers became limp and pliable; the misty eyes grew bright and feverish. Fire,—the fires of love and genius and hope combined,—burntaway the chill of despair; he was as warm as toast!
And hours after the foodless noon had passed, he put the treasure back into its case and wiped the sweat from his marble brow. Something flashed across his mind. He shouted aloud as he caught at what the flash of memory revealed.
"Lexington Avenue! Three hundred and something, Lexington Avenue! J. Bramble, bookseller! Ha! Come! Come! Let us be off!"
He spoke to the violin as if it were a living companion. Grabbing up his hat and mittens, he dashed out of the room and went clattering down the hall with the black leather case clasped tightly under his arm.
It was a long, long walk to three hundred and something Lexington Avenue, but in due time he arrived there and read the sign above the door. Ah, what a great thing it is to have a good, unfailing memory!
And so it came to pass that Prince Waldemar de Bosky and Lady Jane Thorne met at the door of J. Bramble, bookseller, at five of the clock, and entered the shop together.