They could hear from far ahead a sound as of roaring waters.
"That," said Saterlee dryly, "will be Gila River. Mebbe we'll have to think about getting across that first. It's a river now, by the sound of it, if it never was before."
"Fortunately it's not dark yet," said Mrs. Kimbal.
"The last time I had trouble with a river," said Saterlee, "was when my first wife died. That was the American River in flood. I had to cross it to get a doctor. We'd gone prospectin'—just the old woman and me—more for a lark than profit."
"Yes?" said Mrs. Kimbal sympathetically.
"She took sick in an hour," he went on. "From what I've heard since, I guess it was appendicitis. Anyway, I rode off for help, hell for leather, and when I come to the river the whole thing was roaring and foaming like a waterfall. My horse, and he was a good one, couldn't make it. But I did. And when I come to it on the return trip with the doctor, he gave one look and folded his arms. 'Mark,' he said, 'I'm no boaster, but my life is not without value. I think it's my duty not to attempt this crossing.' 'Jim,' I said, 'if you don't your soul will be scotched. Don't you know it? Folks'll point at you as the doctor that didn't dare.' 'It's not the daring, Mark,' he says, 'it's wanting to be sure that I make the right choice.' I says: 'She was in terrible pain, Jim. Many a time she's done you a good turn; some you know of, some you don't.' That fetched him. He caught up his bridle and drove his spurs into his horse, and was swept down-stream like a leaf. I rode along the bank to help if I could. But he got across on a long diagonal—horse and all. I waved to him to go on and not mind about me. And he rode off at the gallop. But I was too heavy, I guess. I lost my second horse in that flood, and had to foot it into camp. I was too late. Pain had made her unconscious, and she was dead. But before givin' in she'd wrote me a letter." He broke off short. "And there's Gila River," he said.
"I hoped you were going to tell me what your poor wife said in her letter," said Mrs. Kimbal.
"Oh, Ma'am," he said, hesitated, cleared his throat, and became routed and confused.
"If you'd rather not—" said Mrs. Kimbal.
"It isn't that," he said. "It would seem like bragging."
"Surely not," she said.
Saterlee, with his eyes on the broad, brown flood which they were approaching, repeated like a lesson:
"'Mark—I'm dying. I want it to do good, not harm. Jenny always thought the world of you. You'll be lonely when I'm gone. I don't want you to be lonely. You gave me peace on earth. And you can't be happy unless you've got a woman to pet and pamper. That's your nature—'"
He paused.
"That was all," he said, and wiped his forehead with the palm of his hand. "It just stopped there."
"I'm glad you told me," said Mrs. Kimbal gently. "It will be a lesson to me not to spring to conclusions, and not to make up my mind about things I'm not familiar with."
When they came to where the road disappeared under the swift unbroken brown of Gila River, the old horse paused of her own accord, and, turning her bony and scarred head a half revolution, stared almost rudely at the occupants of the buggy.
"It all depends," said Saterlee, "how deep the water runs over the road, and whether we can keep to the road. You see, it comes out higher up than it goes in. Can you swim, Ma'am?"
Mrs. Kimbal admitted that, in clothes made to the purpose, and in very shallow water, she was not without proficiency.
"Would you rather we turned back?" he asked.
"I feel sure you'll get me over," said she.
"Then," said Saterlee, "let's put the hood down. In case we do capsize, we don't want to get caught under it."
Saterlee on his side, and Mrs. Kimbal, not without exclamations of annoyance, on hers, broke the toggle-joints that held the dilapidated hood in place, and thrust it backward and down. At once the air seemed to circulate with greater freshness.
For some moments Saterlee considered the river, up-stream, down-stream, and across, knitting his brows to see better, for the light was failing by leaps and bounds. Then, in an embarrassed voice:
"I'vegotto do it," he said. "It's only right."
"What?" said Mrs. Kimbal.
"I feel sure," he said, "that under the circumstances you'll make every allowance, Ma'am."
Without further hesitation—in fact, with almost desperate haste, as if wishing to dispose of a disagreeable duty—he ripped open the buttons of his waistcoat and removed it at the same time with his coat, as if the two had been but one garment. He tossed them into the bottom of the buggy in a disorderly heap. But Mrs. Kimbal rescued them, separated them, folded them neatly, and stowed them under the seat.
Saterlee made no comment. He was thinking of the state of a shirt that he had had on since early morning, and was wondering how, with his elbows pressed very tightly to his sides, he could possibly manage to unlace his boots. He made one or two tentative efforts. But Mrs. Kimbal seemed to divine the cause of his embarrassment.
"Please," she said, "don't mind anything—on my account."
He reached desperately, and regardlessly, for his boots, unlaced them, and took them off.
"Why," exclaimed Mrs. Kimbal, "bothyour heels need darning!"
Saterlee had tied his boots together, and was fastening them around his neck by the remainder of the laces.
"I haven't anybody to do my darning now," he said. "My girls are all at school, except two that's married. So—" He finished his knot, took the reins in his left hand and the whip in his right.
At first the old mare would not budge. Switching was of no avail. Saterlee brought down the whip upon her with a sound like that of small cannon. She sighed and walked gingerly into the river.
The water rose slowly (or the river bottom shelved very gradually), and they were half-way across before it had reached the hubs of the wheels. But the mare appeared to be in deeper. She refused to advance, and once more turned and stared with a kind of wistful rudeness. Then she saw the whip, before it fell, made a desperate plunge, and floundered forward into deep water—but without the buggy.
One rotten shaft had broken clean off, both rotten traces, and the reins, upon which hitherto there had been no warning pull, were jerked from Saterlee's loose fingers. The old mare reached the further shore presently, swimming and scrambling upon a descending diagonal, stalked sedately up the bank, and then stood still, only turning her head to look at the buggy stranded in mid-stream. The sight appeared to arouse whatever of youthful mischief remained in the feeble old heart. She seemed to gather herself for a tremendous effort, then snorted once, and kicked thrice—three feeble kicks of perhaps six inches in the perpendicular.
Mrs. Kimbal exploded into laughter.
"Wouldn't you know she was a woman?" she said.
But Saterlee was climbing out of the buggy.
"Now," said he, "if you'll just tie my coat round your neck by the sleeves—let the vest go hang—and then you'll have to let me carry you."
Mrs. Kimbal did as she was told. But the buggy, relieved at last of all weight, slid off sidewise with the current, turned turtle, and was carried swiftly down-stream. Saterlee staggering, for the footing was uncertain, and holding Mrs. Kimbal high in his arms, started for shore. The water rose above his waist, and kept rising. He halted, bracing himself against the current.
"Ma'am," he said in a discouraged voice, "it's no use. I've just got to let you get wet. We've got to swim to make it."
"All right," she said cheerfully.
"Some folks," he said, "likes to go overboard sudden; some likes to go in by degrees."
"Between the two for me," said Mrs. Kimbal. "Not suddenly, but firmly and without hesitation."
She gave a little shivery gasp.
"It's not really cold," she said. "How strong the current pulls. Will you have to swim and tow me?"
"Yes," he said.
"Then wait," she said. "Don't let me be carried away."
He steadied her while she drew the hat-pins from her hat and dropped it as carelessly on the water as if that had been her dressing-table. Then she took down her hair. It was in two great brown, shining braids. The ends disappeared in the water, listing down-stream.
Shorn of her hat and her elaborate hair-dressing, the lady was no longer showy, and Saterlee, out of the tail of an admiring eye, began to see real beauties about her that had hitherto eluded him. Whatever other good qualities and virtues she may have tossed overboard during a stormy and unhappy life, she had still her nerve with her. So Saterlee told himself.
"It will be easier, won't it," she said, "if you have my hair to hold by? I think I can manage to keep on my back."
"May I, Ma'am?" said Saterlee.
She laughed at his embarrassment. And half-thrust the two great braids into the keeping of his strong left hand.
A moment later Saterlee could no longer keep his footing.
"Now, Ma'am," he said, "just let yourself go."
And he swam to shallow water, not without great labor, towing Mrs. Kimbal by the hair. But here he picked her up in his arms, this time with no word spoken, and carried her ashore. Some moments passed.
"Well," she said, laughing, "aren't you going to put me down?"
"Oh!" said he, terribly confused, "I forgot. I was just casting an eye around for that horse. She's gone."
"Never mind—we'll walk."
"It'll be heavy going, wet as you are," said he.
"I'll soon be dry in this air," she said.
Saterlee managed to pull his boots on over his wet socks, and Mrs. Kimbal, having given him his wet coat from her neck, stooped and wrung as much water as she could from her clothes.
It was now nearly dark, but they found the road and went on.
"What time is it?" she asked.
"My watch was in my vest," said Saterlee.
"How far to Carcasonne House?"
"'Bout thirty miles."
She did not speak again for some time.
"Well," she said, a little hardness in her voice, "you'll hardly be in time to steer your boy away from my girl."
"No," said he, "I won't. An' you'll hardly be in time to steer your girl away from my boy."
"Oh," she said, "you misconceive me entirely, Mr. Saterlee. As far as I'm concerned, my only regretnowis that I shan't be in time to dance at the wedding."
"Ma'am?" he said, and there was something husky in his voice.
About midnight they saw a light, and, forsaking what they believed in hopeful moments to be the road, they made for it across country. Across open spaces of sand, into gullies and out of gullies, through stinging patches of yucca and prickly pear, through breast-high chaparral, meshed, knotted, and matted, like a clumsy weaving together of very tough ropes, some with thorns, and all with sharp points and elbows.
They had long since dispensed with all conversation except what bore on their situation. Earlier in the night the darkness and the stars had wormed a story of divorce out of Mrs. Kimbal, and Saterlee had found himself longing to have the man at hand and by the throat.
And she had prattled of her many failures on the stage and, latterly, of her more successful ventures, and of a baby boy that she had had, and how that while she was off playing "on the road" her husband had come in drunk and had given the baby the wrong medicine. And it was about then that she had left off conversing.
For in joy it is hard enough to find the way in the dark, while for those in sorrow it is not often that it can be found at all.
The light proved to be a lantern upon the little porch of a ramshackle shanty. An old man with immense horn-rimmed spectacles was reading by it out of a tattered magazine. When the couple came close, the old man looked up from his reading, and blessed his soul several times.
"It do beat the Dutch!" he exclaimed in whining nasal tones, "if here ain't two more."
"Two more what?" said Saterlee.
"It's the floods, I reckon," whined the old man. "There's three on the kitchen floor and there's two ladies in my bed. That's why I'm sittin' up. There wa'n't no bed for a man in his own house. But I found this here old copy of theMedical Revoo, 'n' I'm puttin' in the time with erysipelis."
"But," said Saterlee, "you must find some place for this lady to rest.She is worn out with walking and hunger."
"Stop!" whined the old man, smiting his thigh, "if there ain't that there mattress in the loft! And I clean forgot, and told the boys that I hadn't nothin' better than a rug or two 'n the kitchen floor."
"A mattress!" exclaimed Saterlee. "Splendid! I guess you can sleep some on anything near as good as a mattress. Can't you, ma'am?"
"Indeed I could!" she said. "But you have been through as much as I have—more. I won't take it."
The old man's whine interrupted.
"Ain't you two married?" he said.
"Nop," said Saterlee shortly.
"Now ain't that ridiculous?" meditated the old man; "I thought you was all along." His eyes brightened behind the spectacles. "It ain't for me to interfereincourse," he said, "but hereabouts I'm a Justice of the Peace." Neither spoke.
"I could rouse up the boys in the kitchen for witnesses," he insinuated.
Saterlee turned suddenly to Mrs. Kimbal, but his voice was very humble.
"Ma'am?" he suggested.
Mr. Holiday stepped upon the rear platform of his car, the Mishawaka, exactly two seconds before the express, with a series of faint, well-oiled jolts, began to crawl forward and issue from beneath the glass roof of the Grand Central into the damp, pelting snow. Mr. Holiday called the porter and told him for the good of his soul that fifty years ago travelling had not been the easy matter that it was to-day. This off his mind, he pulled anEvening Postfrom his pocket and dismissed the porter by beginning to read. He still wore his overcoat and high silk hat. These he would not remove until time had proved that the temperature of his car was properly regulated.
He became restless after a while and hurried to the forward compartment of the Mishawaka to see if all his trunks had been put on. He counted them over several times, and each time he came to the black trunk he sniffed and wrinkled up his nose indignantly. The black trunk was filled with the most ridiculous and expensive rubbish that he had ever been called upon to purchase. When his married daughters and his wife had learned, by "prying," that he was going to New York on business, they had gathered about him with lists as long as his arm, and they had badgered him and pestered him until he had flown into a passion and snatched the lists and thrown them on the floor. But at that the ladies had looked such indignant, heart-broken daggers at him that, very ungraciously, it is true, and with language that made their sensibilities hop like peas in a pan, he had felt obliged to relent. He had gathered up the lists and stuffed them into his pocket, and had turned away with one bitter and awful phrase.
"Waste not, want not!" he had said.
He now glared and sniffed at the black trunk, and called for the porter.
"Do you know what's in that trunk?" he said in a pettish, indignant voice. "It's full of Christmas presents for my grandchildren. It's got crocodiles in it and lions and Billy Possums and music-boxes and dolls and yachts and steam-engines and spiders and monkeys and doll's furniture and china. It cost me seven hundred and forty-two dollars and nine cents to fill that trunk. Do you know where I wish it was?"
The porter did not know.
"I wish it was in Jericho!" said Mr. Holiday.
He fingered the brass knob of the door that led forward to the regular coaches, turned it presently, and closed it behind him.
His progress through the train resembled that of a mongoose turned loose in new quarters. Nothing escaped his prying scrutiny or love of petty information. If he came to a smoking compartment, he would thrust aside the curtain and peer in. If it contained not more than three persons, he would then enter, seat himself, and proceed to ask them personal questions. It was curious that people so seldom resented being questioned by Mr. Holiday; perhaps his evident sincerity in seeking for information accounted for this; perhaps the fact that he was famous, and that nearly everybody in the country knew him by sight. Perhaps it is impossible for a little gentleman of eighty, very smartly dressed, with a carnation in his buttonhole, to be impertinent. And then he took such immense and childish pleasure in the answers that he got, and sometimes wrote them down in his note-book, with comments, as:
"Got into conversation with a lady with a flat face. She gave me her age as forty-two. I should have said nearer sixty.
"Man of fifty tells me has had wart on nose for twenty-five years; has had it removed by electrolysis twice, but it persists. Tell him that I have never had a wart."
Etc., etc.
He asked people their ages, whence they came, where they were going; what they did for a living; if they drank; if they smoked; if their parents were alive; what their beefsteak cost them a pound; what kind of underwear they wore; what church they attended; if they shaved themselves; if married; if single; the number of their children; why they did not have more children; how many trunks they had in the baggage-car; whether they had seen to it that their trunks were put on board, etc. Very young men sometimes gave him joking and sportive answers; but it did not take him long to catch such drifts, and he usually managed to crush their sponsors thoroughly. For he had the great white dignity of years upon his head; and the dignity of two or three hundred million dollars at his back.
During his peregrinations he came to a closed door which tempted him strangely. It was probably the door of a private state-room; it might be the door of a dust closet. He meditated, with his finger upon the knob. "I'll just open it slowly," he thought, "and if I make a mistake I'll say I thought it was a smoking compartment."
As the door opened a smell of roses came out. Huddled into the seat that rides forward was a beautiful girl, very much dishevelled and weeping bitterly, with her head upon one of those coarse white pillows which the Pullman Company provides. Her roses lay upon the seat opposite. She was so self-centred in her misery that she was not aware that the door had been opened, a head thrust in and withdrawn, and the door closed. But she was sure that a still, small voice had suddenly spoken in her mind, and said: "Brace up." Presently she stopped crying, as became one who had been made the subject of a manifestation, and began to put her hair in order at the narrow mirror between the two windows. Meanwhile, though Mr. Holiday was making himself scarce, as the saying is, he was consumed with interest to know why the beautiful girl was weeping.And he meant to find out.
But in the meantime another case provoked his interest. A handsome woman of thirty-five occupied Section 7 in Car 6. She was dressed in close-fitting black, with a touch of white at her throat and wrists.
Mr. Holiday had seen her from the extreme end of the car, and by the time he was opposite to where she sat it became necessary for him to have an answer to the questions that had presented themselves about her. Without any awkward preliminaries, he bent over and said:
"I've been wondering, ma'am, if you are dressed in black for your father or your husband."
She looked up, recognized the famous eccentric, and smiled.
"Won't you sit down, Mr. Holiday?" she said, and made room for him.
"I wear black," she said, when he had seated himself, "not because I am in mourning for anybody, but because I think it's becoming to me. You see, I have very light-colored hair."
"Does all that hair grow on your head?" Mr. Holiday asked, simply and without offence.
"Every bit of it," she said.
"I have a splendid head of hair, too," he commented. "But there's a young man in the car back of this who'll be twenty-two years of age in February, and he's got more dandruff than hair. Where are you going?"
"Cleveland."
"Is that your home?"
"No. I'm a bird of passage."
"What is your name?"
"I am Miss Hampton," she said, and she hoped that he might have heard of her. But he hadn't. And she explained herself. "I'm to play at the Euclid Theatre Christmas night."
"An actor?" he said.
"Well," she admitted, "some say so, and some won't hear of it."
"How much money do you earn?"
"Two hundred dollars a week."
Mr. Holiday wrote that in his note-book.
"I've got some little nieces and nephews in New York," she volunteered."Don't you think it's hard to be a genuine aunt and to have to spendChristmas alone in a strange place?"
"Not for two hundred dollars a week," said Mr. Holiday unsympathetically. "You ought to thank your stars and garters."
Presently, after patting her on the back with two fingers, he rose, bowed, and passed on down the aisle. On the right, in the end section, was a very old couple, with snow-white hair, and a great deal of old-fashioned luggage. Mr. Holiday greeted them cordially, and asked their ages. The old gentleman was seventy-six and proud of it; the old lady was seventy. Mr. Holiday informed them that he was eighty, but that they were probably the next oldest people on the train. Anyway, he would find out and let them know. They smiled good-naturedly, and the old lady cuddled a little against the old gentleman, for it was cold in that car. Mr. Holiday turned abruptly.
"I forgot to ask you where you are going?" he said.
They told him that they were going to spend Christmas with their daughter and son-in-law and the new baby in Cleveland. It was a long journey. But the season made them feel young and strong. Did Mr. Holiday think there was any danger of being delayed by the snow? It was coming down very fast. They could not remember ever to have been in a sleeping-car when it was snowing so hard outside. Mr. Holiday said that he would ask the conductor about the snow, and let them know.
In the smoking compartment of the next car forward sat a very young man, all alone. He looked at once sulky and frightened. He wasn't smoking, but was drumming on the window sill with his finger nails. He had a gardenia in his button-hole, and was dressed evidently in his very best suit—a handsome dark gray, over a malaga-grape-colored waistcoat. In his necktie was a diamond horseshoe pin.
"Young man," said Mr. Holiday, seating himself, "what makes you look so cross?"
The young man started to say, "None of your business," but perceived in time the eager face and snow-white hair of his questioner, and checked himself.
"Why," he said tolerantly, "do I look as savage as all that?"
"It isn't money troubles," said Mr. Holiday, "or you would have pawned that diamond pin."
"Wouldn't you be cross," said the young man, "if you had to look forward to sitting up all night in a cold smoking compartment?"
"Can't you get a berth?"
"I had a drawing-room," said the young man, "but at the last minute I had to give it up to a lady."
Mr. Holiday's eyes twinkled with benign interest. He had connected the gardenia in the young man's coat with the roses of the girl who was weeping.
"I know," he said, "drawing-room, Car 5. She was crying, but I told her to brace up, and I guess she's stopped."
The young man jumped to his feet.
"Oh!" he said.
Mr. Holiday chuckled.
"I was right," he said. "I've been right seven times out of the ten for twenty-five years. I've kept a record."
Upon an impulse the young man checked his headlong inclination to rush to the girl who was weeping.
"If you are right as often as that," he said, "for God's sake tell me what to do."
"Certainly," said Mr. Holiday, "and it won't cost you a cent. What's the matter?"
"She" said the young man with an accent, for there was but the one, "came to the station to see me off. She gave me this." He touched the gardenia gently. "I gave her some roses. Just as the train started to pull out I dared her to come with me … she came!"
"Tut—tut!" said Mr. Holiday.
"What are we to do?" cried the young man.
"Go back and sit with her," said Mr. Holiday, "and leave the door wide open. I'm going through the train now to see who's on board; so don't worry. Leave it all to me."
The last car forward before you came to the baggage-car and the express car was a common day coach. It was draughty. It had been used as a smoker in a period not so very remote. A dog must have passed an uncomfortable night in it.
Near the rear door sat a man in a new derby hat and a new black coat. Further forward on the same side three children had stuffed themselves into one seat. The middle child, a well-grown girl of thirteen or fourteen, seemed by her superior height to shelter the little tots at her side. Only the blue imitation sailor caps of these appeared above the top of the seat; and the top of each cap, including that worn by the older girl, had a centrepiece of white about the size of a gentleman's visiting card. Mr. Holiday promised himself the pleasure of investigating these later. In the meanwhile his interest was excited by the ears of the man in the new derby. They were not large, but they had an appearance of sticking out further than was necessary; and Mr. Holiday was about to ask their owner the reason why, when he noticed for himself that it was because the owner's hair had been cut so very, very short. Indeed, he had little gray eighth-inch bristles instead of hair. Mr. Holiday wondered why. He seated himself behind the man, and leaned forward. The man stirred uneasily.
"I should think you'd be afraid of catching cold in this draughty car with your hair cut so short," said Mr. Holiday.
"I am," said the man tersely.
"Why did you let them cut it so short then?"
"Let them!" grunted the man, with ineffable scorn. "Let them! You'd have let them!"
"I would not," retorted Mr. Holiday crisply. "My wife cuts my hair for me, just the way I tell her to."
The man turned a careworn, unhappy face.
"My wife used to cut mine," he said. "But then I—I got into the habit of having it done for me…. Ever been to Ohio Penitentiary, mister? … That's the finest tonsorial parlor in America—anything from a shave to the electric treatment."
"Ohio Penitentiary is a jail for felons," said Mr. Holiday severely.
"Quite so," said the man, "as I was telling you."
His voice had a plaintive, subdued note of defiance in it. It was that of a person who is tired of lying and beating about the bush.
"When did you get out?" asked Mr. Holiday simply.
"Eight days ago," said the man, "and when I get good and sick of looking for jobs and getting turned down—I guess I'll go back."
"First they make you work," said Mr. Holiday with a pleased chuckle, "and then they won't let you work. That's the law. But you take my advice—you fool 'em!"
"I never fooled anybody," said the man, and he ripped a holy name from the depths of his downheartedness.
Mr. Holiday had extracted his note-book, and under cover of the seat-back was preparing to take notes and make comments.
"What did you use to do for a living—before?" he asked.
"I was teller in a bank."
"And what happened?"
"Then," said the man, "the missus had twins, followed by typhoid fever." His admissions came with hopeless frankness. "And I couldn't pay for all that luxury. So I stole."
"What bank were you teller in?"
"The Painsville Bank—Painsville. I'm going to them now to—to see if they won't let up. The wife says that's the thing to do—go right to the boil of trouble and prick it."
"What did your wife do while you were away?" asked Mr. Holiday delicately.
"She did odd jobs, and brought the twins up healthy."
"I remember the Painsville business," said Mr. Holiday, "because I own stock in that bank. You only took about two hundred dollars."
"That was all I needed," said the man. "It saved the missus and the kids—so what's the odds?"
"But don't you intend to pay it back?"
"Not if the world won't let me earn any money. I tried for jobs all to-day, and yesterday, and the day before. I told my story straight. The missus wrote that was the thing to do. But I guess she's wrong for once. What would you do if you were a banker and I came to you and said: 'I'm just out of jail, where I went for stealing; but I mean to be honest. Won't you give me work?'"
Mr. Holiday wondered what he would do. He was beginning to like the ex-convict's frankness.
"Do you know who I am?" he asked.
"Everybody knows you by sight, Mr. Holiday."
"Then you know," said the little old gentleman, "that I've sent plenty of people to jail in my time—plenty of them."
"I've heard that said," said the man.
"But," said Mr. Holiday sharply, "nobody ever tells stories about the wrongdoers I have forgiven. Your case never came to me. I believe I would have shown mercy."
He closed his note-book and rose.
"Keep telling your story straight, my man, andaskingfor work."
He paused, as if waiting a reply; but the man only grunted, and he passed forward to the children. First he examined the visiting-card effects on the tops of their hats, and noticed that these were paper labels sewed down, and bearing the names and destinations of the little passengers. Freddie, Alice, and Euphemia Caldwell, reading from left to right, were consigned in the care of the conductor to Silas Caldwell, Painsville, Ohio.
Alice had her arms around Freddie and Euphemia, and her pretty head was bent first to one and then to the other. Mr. Holiday seated himself gently behind the trio, and listened for some time. He learned that "mother" was in the hospital, and "father" had to be with her, and that the children were going to "Uncle Silas" until sent for. And Uncle Silas was a very "grouchy" man, and one must mind one's P's and Q's, and never be naughty, or Uncle Silas would have the law of one. But she, Alice, would take care of them.
"Going to spend Christmas with Uncle, are you?" piped Mr. Holiday suddenly; "that's right!"
The little tots, very much interested and startled, faced about, butAlice looked like a little reproving angel.
"Oh!" she said, climbing out of the seat, "I must speak with you first,"
Mr. Holiday was actually surprised; but he went aside with the child, where the tots could not hear.
Absolutely without consciousness of doing so, Alice patted and rearranged the old gentleman's carnation, and talked to him in a gentle, reproving tone.
"I've done everything I could," she said, "to keep the idea of Christmas away from them. They didn't know when it came until you spoke. But now they know, and I don't know what I shall do … our uncle," she explained, "doesn't celebrate Christmas; he made father understand that before he agreed to take us until mother got well. So father and I agreed we'd keep putting Christmas off until mother was well and we were all together again. But now they'll want their Christmas—andIcan't give it to them."
"Well, well," said Mr. Holiday cheerfully. "Ihaveput my foot in it. And I suppose Freddie and Euphemia will carry on and raise Cain when they find there's no Santy Claus in Painsville?"
"Don't you fret, Alice," said Mr. Holiday. "When I get people in trouble I get 'em out. Your Uncle Silas is a friend of mine—he has to be. I'm going to send him a telegram." He smiled, and chucked her under the chin. "I'm not much on Christmas myself," he said, "but an obligation's an obligation." He shook hands with her, nodded in a friendly way to the ex-convict, and passed out of the car on his return journey, consulting his note-book as he went.
First he revisited the old couple, and told them that next to himself they were in fact the oldest persons on the train, and that they need not worry about the snow because he had asked the conductor about it, and the conductor had said that it was all right. Then he started to revisit Miss Hampton, but was turned from his purpose by a new face in the car. The new face rose, thin and white, on a long thin neck from a clerical collar, and its owner was busy with a pad and a pencil.
"Writing a sermon?" asked Mr. Holiday.
The clergyman looked up and smiled.
"No, sir," he said. "I'm doing a sum in addition, and making heavy work of it."
"I'll do it for you," said Mr. Holiday eagerly. He was a lightning adder, and not in the least averse to showing off. The clergyman, still smiling, yielded up the pad.
"I'm trying to make it come to two thousand dollars," he said, "and I can't."
"That's because," said Mr. Holiday, returning the pad after one swift glance up and down the columns, "it only comes to thirteen hundred and twenty-five dollars. You had the answer correct."
"It's for repairs to the church," said the clergyman dismally. "The contractor calls for two thousand; and I'm just about ready to give up."
"Well," said Mr. Holiday, "I'm going to get my dinner now, and maybe later I can give you some idea how to raise the balance. I've raised a good deal of money in my time." He chuckled.
"I know that, Mr. Holiday," said the clergyman, "and I should be glad of any—suggestion that you might care to make."
Mr. Holiday seated himself facing Miss Hampton. She smiled, and nodded, and laid aside the book she had been reading. Mr. Holiday's eyes twinkled.
"I'm going to turn you out of this section," he said.
"Why?" She smiled.
"Because there's a young friend of mine wants it," he said.
"Now,really!" said Miss Hampton, still smiling.
"You're going to carry your duds to the drawing-room, Car 5," he said. Then, the twinkle in his eyes becoming exceedingly gossipy and sportive, he told her about the young people who had eloped without exactly meaning to. Miss Hampton was delighted.
She and Mr. Holiday hurried to the drawing-room in Car 5, of which the door had been left wide open, according to Mr. Holiday's orders. The young people looked very happy and unhappy all at once, and as soon as Mr. Holiday had begun to state their situation to them without mincing, they assumed a tremendous pair of blushes, which they were not able to efface for a long time.
"And now," he finished, glaring at the uncomfortable young man, "you bring your duds and put them in Miss Hampton's section. And then you gather up Miss Hampton's duds and bring 'em in here." And he turned and shook his finger at the girl. "Mind you," he said, "don't you ever run away again without a chaperon. They don't grow on every bush."
Somehow, Mr. Holiday had overlooked the other drawing-room (B) in Car 5. Now he came suddenly upon it, and peered in, for the door was ajar. But he drew back with a sharp jerk as if he had seen a rattlesnake. All the kindness went out of the old gentleman's face, and between anger and hatred he turned white.
"Jolyff!" he muttered. And, all the elasticity gone from his gait, he stumbled back to his own car, revolving and muttering unchristian thoughts. For he and Jolyff had been meeting all their lives, it seemed, in court and out; sometimes with the right on one side, sometimes on the other. Each had cost the other a thousand wicked threats and a mint of money.
Mr. Holiday's wanderings through the train had aroused all the kindlier feelings in his nature. He was going home to his wife and family: expensive and foolish as it seemed, he had the trunk full of toys for the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren, and he was glad of it. He had put things right for two prepossessing young people who had made a wrong start; he had been gallant to an actress; he had determined to help the clergyman out with his repair fund; to find work for a convict, and to see to it that three children should have a pleasant visit with an uncle who was really crotchety, disagreeable, and mean.
But now he did not care about pleasant things any more. He could think of nothing but Jolyff; of nothing but old sores that rankled; of great deals that had gone wrong, through his enemy. And in that spirit he picked at his Christmas Eve dinner, and went to bed.
It seemed to Mr. Holiday every time he woke, which was often, that the train had just started to move, after standing still for a long time, and that the porter had never before allowed his car to grow so cold. He turned the current into the reading light at the head of his bed and consulted his watch.
Two o'clock. He got to wondering at exactly what hour all those hundreds of years ago Christ had been born. Had it been as cold as this in the old barn? Whew!
No, Bethlehem was in the semi-tropics or thereabout, but the common car in which the three children were passing the night was not. This thought came to Mr. Holiday without invitation, and, like all unwelcome guests, made a long stay. So persistent, indeed, was the thought, meeting his mind at every turn and dogging its footsteps, that he forgot all about Jolyff and all about everything else. Finally he rang for the porter, but had no answer. He rang again and again. Then the train jolted slowly to a standstill, and Mr. Holiday got up and dressed, and went forward once more through the narrow aisles of thick curtains to the common car. But the passengers in that car had amalgamated. Alice and the convict, blue with cold, were in the same seat, and Alice was hugging Freddie, who slept fitfully, to her breast, and the convict was hugging Euphemia, who cried gently and softly like a cold and hungry kitten, to his. The convict had taken off his overcoat and wrapped it as well as he could about all the children.
Mr. Holiday tapped the convict on the shoulder. "Merry Christmas!" he said cynically. The convict started and turned. "Bring these babies back to my car," said Mr. Holiday, "and help me put 'em to bed." "That's a good deed, Mr. Holiday," said the convict. He started to put on his overcoat. The undressing and putting to bed had not waked Freddie.
Euphemia had stopped crying. And Alice, when the two men had helped her with her dress, which buttoned down the back, had suddenly flung her arms first around one and then around the other, and given each a kiss good night.
The convict buttoned his coat and turned up his collar.
"Good-night, sir," he said, "and thank you."
Mr. Holiday waved the thanks aside and pointed to a door of shining mahogany.
"There's a bed for you, too," he said gently.
The convict hesitated.
Then—it may have been owing to the sudden starting of the train—he lurched against the door, and with a sound that was mighty like a sob thrust it open and slammed it shut behind him.
Mr. Holiday smiled and went back to his own bed. This time he slept soundly.
At seven o'clock the porter called him, according to orders. The train was standing still.
"Merry Christmas, Mistah Holiday, sah!" grinned the porter. "Seven o'clock, sah!"
"Merry Christmas," said Mr. Holiday. "Why are we stopping?"
"We's snowed in," grinned the porter.
"Snowed in!" exclaimed Mr. Holiday. "Where?"
"'Tween Albany and Buffalo, sah. Dey ain't any name to de place. Dey ain't any place."
"There are three children," said Mr. Holiday, "in the stateroom next to this and a gentleman in the other stateroom. You call 'em in about an hour and ask 'em what they'll take for breakfast. Bring me some coffee, and ask the conductor how late we're going to be."
With his coffee Mr. Holiday learned that the train might be twenty-four hours late in getting to Cleveland. The conductor supposed that ploughs were at work along the track; but the blizzard was still raging.
That he would be separated from his wife on Christmas Day for the first time in their married life did not amuse Mr. Holiday; and although too much of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren bored him to extinction, still he felt that any festive day on which they were not all with him was a festive day gone very wrong indeed. But it was not as a sop to his own feelings of disappointment that he decided to celebrate Christmas in the train. It was a mixture of good-nature and, I am afraid, of malice. He said to himself:
"I shall invite all the passengers to one-o'clock dinner and a Christmas tree afterward with games and punch. I shall invite the conductor and the brakeman; the porters shall come to serve dinner. I shall invite the engineer and the fireman and the express-man. I shall invite everybody except Jolyff."
The old gentleman sucked in his lips tightly and dwelt upon this thought with satisfaction. Jolyff loved a party; Jolyff loved to drink healths, and clap people on the back, and make little speeches, and exert himself generally to amuse less gifted persons and make them feel at home. And it was pleasant to think of him as sitting alone while a fine celebration was banging and roaring in the very next car—a celebration to which even an ex-convict had been invited.
First, Mr. Holiday summoned Miss Hampton and the girl who had run away to be his aides-de-camp. They decided that the party was really for the benefit of Freddie, Alice, and Euphemia, so these were packed off at once to the common car to be as far as possible from the scene of preparations. Then, with Mr. Holiday's porter, and his cook, and the ex-convict as men of all work, commenced the task of ordering the car for a crowd and decorating it, and improvising a Christmas tree. Miss Hampton set to work with a wooden bucket, sugar, rum, brandy, eggs, milk, and heaven knows what not, to brew a punch. Every now and then Mr. Holiday appeared, to see how she was getting on, and to taste the concoction, and to pay her pretty, old-fashioned compliments. The girl who had run away was helping the porter to lay the table and trying to write invitations to the passengers at the same time, Mr. Holiday having furnished her from his note-book with all of their names. Now and then there were hurried consultations as to what would be a suitable gift for a given person. The "next oldest" people in the train were to receive a pair of the silver candlesticks from the table. The train hands were to receive money, and suddenly Mr. Holiday discovered that he had only a few dollars in cash with him. He sought out the clergyman.
"Merry Christmas!" he said.
"Merry Christmas!" said the clergyman.
"Have you," said Mr. Holiday, "any of your rebuilding fund with you?"
"Why, yes," said the clergyman, smiling, "some two hundred dollars, andI cannot deny that it is agony to me to carry about so large a sum."
Mr. Holiday simply held out his hand, palm up.
"Why—what—" began the clergyman in embarrassment.
"I will give you my check for that sum," said Mr. Holiday, "and something over for your fund. I hope you will dine with me, in my car, at one o'clock."
He hurried away with the two hundred dollars. It was his intention to sample Miss Hampton's punch again; but he turned from this on a sudden impulse and sought out the young man who had been run away with. With this attractive person he talked very earnestly for half an hour, and asked him an infinite number of questions; just the kind of questions that he had asked the young men who had aspired to the hands of his own daughters. And these must have been satisfactorily answered, because at the end of the interview Mr. Holiday patted the young man on the back and said that he would see him later.
Next he came face to face with Mr. Jolyff, and the two old gentlemen stared at each other coldly, but without any sign of recognition. Once—ever so many years ago—they had been intimate friends. Mr. Holiday had never had any other friend of whom he had been so fond. He tried now to recall what their first difference had been, and because he could not he thought he must be growing infirm. And he began to think of his approaching party with less pleasure. He had let himself in for a good deal of bother, he thought.
But this time Miss Hampton made him take a whole teaspoonful of punch, and told him what a dear he was, and what a good time everybody was going to have, and that she would do anything in the world for him; she would even recite "The Night Before Christmas" for his company, if he asked her. And then they did a great deal of whispering, and finally Mr. Holiday said:
"But suppose they balk?"
"Nonsense," said Miss Hampton; "would you and I balk if we were in their places?"
The pretty actress and the old gentleman laughed and bowed to each other, and exchanged the most arch looks imaginable. And then Miss Hampton exclaimed:
"Good Lord—it's twelve-thirty."
Then there came to them a sudden dreadful smell of burning feathers. They dashed into the observation end of the car and found the ex-convict smothering an incipient conflagration of the Christmas tree, which was made of dusters, with his hands.
The girl who had run away was despatching the porter with the last batch of invitations. The ex-convict showed them his burned hands.
"You go and feel the champagne," said Mr. Holiday, "that'll cool'em."
Mr. Holiday himself went to fetch the children. In his pockets were the envelopes containing money for the train hands, the envelope containing a check for the two hundred dollars that he had borrowed from the clergyman, and enough over to complete the rebuilding fund which the clergyman had tried so hard to collect. And there was an envelope for the ex-convict—not with money in it, but with an I.O.U.
"I.O.U. A Good Job," Mr. Holiday had written on a card and signed his name. And he had taken out of his satchel and transferred to his waistcoat pocket a pair of wonderful black pearls that he sometimes wore at important dinners. And he was going to give one of these to Miss Hampton and one to the girl who had run away. And then there were all the wonderful toys and things for Alice, and Freddie, and Euphemia, and he was going to present them with the black trunk, too, so that they could take their gifts off the train when it eventually got to Painsville. And Mr. Holiday had thought of everybody, and had prepared a little speech to speak to his guests; and for two of his guests he had arranged one of the greatest surprises that can be sprung on two guests; and he ought to have been perfectly happy. But he wasn't.
When he passed the door of Mr. Jolyff's drawing-room he noted that it was tightly closed. And it ought to have pleased him to see how his enemy had taken his exclusion from the party to heart, and had shut himself away from any sign or sound of it. But, although he smiled cynically, he wasn't altogether pleased. And presently he made a wry mouth, as if he were taking something unpleasant; and he began to hustle Freddie and Euphemia so as to get away from that closed door as quickly as possible.
The girl who had run away was talking with Mr. Holiday when suddenly she began to grow conscious and uncomfortable. She gave one swift look about her, and saw that all the passengers, and all the train hands, and porters, and the express-man were looking at her and smiling, and she saw that they had ranged themselves against the sides of the car and were making themselves as small as possible. Then she saw the young man looking at her with a wonderful, nervous, radiant look. And then she saw that the clergyman was standing all by himself, in a space that the crowd had just managed to leave open for him, and that he had on his surplice, and that he was marking a place in his prayer-book with one finger. Then she understood.
Instinctively she caught Mr. Holiday's arm and clung to it, and Mr. Holiday, smiling, patted her hand and began to draw her gently toward the young man and the clergyman. It looked for a moment as if she were going to hang back, and protest, and make a scene. But just when everybody was beginning to fear the worst, and to look frightfully nervous and uncomfortable, a wonderful and beautiful expression came into her face, and her eyes lighted, and seemed to grow larger and darker all at the same time. And if there were any present who had regarded the impromptu wedding as something of a joke, these now had their minds changed for them in the quickest kind of a jiffy. And if there were any present who doubted of the beauty and dignity of love, these had their minds changed for them, too. And they knew that they were witnesses, not to a silly elopement, but to the great occasion in the lives of two very young people who were absolutely sure of their love for each other, and who would cherish each other in sickness and peril, in good times and bad, in merry times and in heart-breaking times, until death did them part.
And then suddenly, just when the clergyman was about to begin, just whenMiss Hampton had succeeded in righting herself from smothering a sob,Mr. Holiday, whose face, had you but noticed it, had been growing longerand longer, and drearier and drearier, gave a half-strangled cry:
"Wait!"
Wholly oblivious to everything and everybody but what was in his mind at the moment, he dropped the bride's hand as if it had been a red-hot horseshoe and started to bolt from the car. But, strangely enough, the old face that had grown so long and dreary was now wreathed in smiles, and he was heard to mutter as he went:
"Just a minute, while I get Jolyff!"
* * * * *
Mr. Jolyff and Mr. Holiday lifted their glasses. And Mr. Holiday said, so that all could hear:
"I drink to my old friends and to my new friends. And I drink to the lesson of Christmas. For Christmas," said he, and he smiled in a wonderful way, "teaches us that in all the world there is absolutely nothing that we cannot forgive…."
The two very old gentlemen clinked their glasses together, and, looking each other affectionately in the eyes, might have been heard to mutter, somewhat brokenly, each the other's Christian name.
My wife, said the Pole, was a long time recovering from the birth of our second child. She was a normal and healthy woman, but Nature has a way in these matters of introducing the unnatural; science, too, mistook the ABCs of the case for the XYZs; and our rooms were for many, many weary weeks like a cage in which the bird has ceased to sing. I did what I could. She was not without books, magazines, and delicacies; but I had to attend to my business; so that time hung about her much like a millstone, and she would say: "All's well with me, Michael, but I am bored—bored—bored."
Our baby was put out to nurse and our older boy, Casimir, who was seven, began, for lack of his mother's care, to come and go as he pleased. The assurance and cheek of street boys began to develop in him. He startled me by his knowledge and his naïveté. But at the same time he was a natural innocent—a little dreamer. In the matters of street life that arise among children he had, as a rule, the worst of it. He was a born believer of all that might be told him. Such children develop into artists or ne'er-do-wells. It was too soon to worry about him. But I was easiest in mind when I saw that he was fashioning anatomies with mud or drawing with chalk upon the sidewalk. "Wait a little," I would say to my wife, "and he will be old enough to go to school."
The happiest times were when it was dark and I had closed the store and could sit by my wife's bed with Casimir on my knee. Then we would talk over pleasant experiences, or I would tell them, who were both American-born, stories of Poland, of fairies, and sieges; or hum for them the tunes to which I had danced in my early youth. But oftenest my wife and I talked, for the child's benefit, of the wonderful city in whose slums we lived—upper central New York with its sables and its palaces. During our courtship and honeymoon we had made many excursions into those quarters of the city and the memory of them was dear. But if I remembered well and with happiness, my wife remembered photographically and with a kind of hectic eagerness in which, I fear, may have been bedded the roots of dissatisfaction. Details of wealth and luxury, and manners that had escaped me, even at the time, were as facile to her as terms of endearment to a lover. "And, oh—do you remember," she would say, "the ruby that the Fifth Avenue bride had at her throat, and how for many, many blocks we thought we could still hear the organ going? That was fun, Michael, wasn't it, when we stood in front of Sherry's and counted how many real sables went in and how many fakes, and noticed that the fake sables were as proudly carried as the real?"
One night she would not eat her supper. "Oh, Michael," she said, "I'm so bored with the same old soup—soup—soup, and the same old porridge—porridge—porridge, and I hate oranges, and apples, and please don't spend any more money on silly, silly, silly me."
"But you must eat," I said. "What would you like? Think of something. Think of something that tempts your appetite. You seem better to-night—almost well. Your cheeks are like cherries and you keep stirring restlessly as if you wanted to get up instead of lying still—still like a woman that has been drowned, all but her great, dear eyes…. Now, make some decision, and were it ambrosia I will get it for you if it is to be had in the city…. Else what are savings-banks for, and thrift, and a knowledge of furs?"
She answered me indirectly.
"Do you remember, Michael," she said, "the butcher shops uptown, the groceries, and the fruit stores, where the commonest articles, the chops, the preserved strawberries, the apples were perfect and beautiful, like works of art? In one window there was a great olive branch in a glass jar—do you remember? And in that fruit store near the Grand Central—do you remember?—we stood in the damp snow and looked in at great clean spaces flooded with white light—and there were baskets of strawberries—right there in January—and wonderful golden and red fruits that we did not know the names of, and many of the fruits peeped out from the bright-green leaves among which they had actually grown—"
"I remember the two prize bunches of grapes," I said.
And my wife said:
"I was coming to those … they must have been eighteen inches long, every grape great and perfect. I remember you said that such grapes looked immortal. It was impossible to believe they could ever rot—there was a kind of joyous frostiness—we went in and asked a little man what kind of grapes they were, and he answered like a phonograph, without looking or showing politeness: 'Black Hamburgs and White Muscats of Alexandria'—your old Sienkiewicz never said anything as beautiful as that, 'White Muscats of Alexandria—'"
"Dear little heart," I said. "Childkin, is it the memory of those white grapes that tempts your appetite?"
"Oh, Michael," she exclaimed, clasping her hands over those disappointed breasts into which the milk had not come in sufficiency. "Oh, Michael—they were two dollars and a half a pound—"
"Heart of my heart," I said, "Stag Eyes, it is now late, and there are no such grapes to be had in our part of the city—only the tasteless white grapes that are packed with sawdust into barrels—but in the morning I will go uptown and you shall have your White Muscats of Alexandria."
She put her arms about my neck with a sudden spasm of fervor, and drew my head, that was already gray, down to hers. I remember that in that moment I thought not of passion but of old age, parting, and the grave.
* * * * *
But she would not eat the grapes in my presence. There was to be an orgy, she said, a bacchanalian affair—she was going to place the grapes where she could look at them, and look at them until she could stand the sight no more, when she would fall on them like a wolf on the fold and devour them. She talked morbidly of the grapes—almost neurotically. But, though her fancies did not please my sense of fitness, I only laughed at her, or smiled—for she had been ill a long time.
"But, at least, eat one now," I said, "so that I may see you enjoy it."
"Not even one," she said. "The bunch must be perfect for me to look at until—until I can resist no more. Hang them there, on the foot of the bed by the crook of the stem—is it strong enough to hold them? and then—aren't you going to be very late to your business? And, Michael, I feel better—I do. I shouldn't wonder if you found me up and dressed when you come back."
In your telling American phrase, "there was nothing doing" in my business that morning. It was one of those peaceful, sunny days in January, not cold and no wind stirring. The cheap furs displayed in the window of my shop attracted no attention from the young women of the neighborhood. The young are shallow-minded, especially the women. If a warm day falls in winter they do not stop to think that the next may be cold. Only hats interest them all the year round, and men.
So I got out one of my Cicero books and, placing my chair in a pool of sunshine in the front of the shop, I began to read, for the hundredth time, his comfortable generalities upon old age. But it seemed to me, for the first time, that he was all wrong—that old age is only dreadful, only a shade better than death itself. And this, I suppose, was because I, myself, during those long months of my wife's illness, had turned the corner. The sudden passions of youth had retreated like dragons into their dens. It took more, now, than the worse end of a bargain or the touch of my wife's lips to bring them flaming forth. On our wedding day we had been of an age. Now, after nine years, my heart had changed from a lover's into a father's, while she remained, as it were, a bride. There remained to me, perhaps, many useful years of business, of managing and of saving—enjoyable years. But life—life as I count life—I had lived out. One moment must pass as the next. There could be no more halting—no more moments of bliss so exquisite as to resemble pain. I had reached that point in life when it is the sun alone that matters, and no more the moon.
A shadow fell upon my pool of sunshine and, looking up, I perceived a handsome, flashy young man of the clever, almost Satanic type that is so common below Fourteenth Street; and he stood looking cynically over the cheap furs in my window and working his thin jaws. Then I saw him take, with his right hand, from a bunch that he carried in his left, a great white grape and thrust it into his mouth. They were my grapes, those which I had gone uptown to fetch for my wife. By the fact that there were none such to be had in our neighborhood I might have known them. But the sure proof was a peculiar crook in the stem which I had noticed when I had hung them for my wife at the foot of her bed.
I rose and went quietly out of the shop.
"Happy to show you anything," I said, smiling.
"Don't need anything in the fur line to-day," said he; "much obliged."
"What fine grapes those are," I commented.
"Um," said he, "they call 'em white muskets of Alexander"; and he grimaced.
"Where are such to be had?" I asked.
"Well," he said, "I got these just round the corner; butyou'dhave to visit some uptown fruit emporium and pay the price."
"So you bought the last bunch?"
"Bought nothin'," he said, and he smiled in a knowing and leering way.
"They were given to me," he said, "by a married woman. I happened to drop in and she happened to have sent her husband uptown to fetch these grapes for her because she's playing sick and works him in more ways than one—but she said the grapes sickened her conscience, and she made me take 'em away."
"So she has a conscience?" I said.
"They all have," said the young man. "Have one?"
I took one of the grapes with a hand that shook, and ate it, and felt the red blood in my veins turn into acid.
There happened to be a man in the neighborhood who had been nibbling after my business for some time. I went to him now and made him a cheap sale for cash. This I deposited with my savings, keeping out a hundred dollars for myself, and put the whole in trust for my wife and children. Then I went away and, after many hardships, established myself in a new place. And, as is often the case with men who have nothing whatsoever to live for and who are sad, I prospered. God was ever presenting me with opportunities and the better ends of bargains.
When fifteen years had passed I returned once more to New York. I had reached a time of life when the possibility of death must be as steadily reckoned with as the processes of digestion. And I wished, before I lay down in the narrow house, to revisit the scenes of my former happiness. I took the same furnished lodging to which we had gone after our wedding. I lay all night, but did not sleep, in our nuptial bed. Alone, but rather in reverence and revery than sadness, I made all those little excursions upon which we had been so happy during the days of our honey-moon. I made a point of feeding the animals in the park, of dining at Claremont—I even stood for a long time before the fruit shop that is near the Grand Central. But I was too old to feel much. So it seemed.
One day I sat on the steps of the lodging-house in the sun. I had been for a long walk and I was very tired, very sick of my mortal coil, very sure that I did not care if the end were to be sleep or life everlasting. Then came, slowly around the corner of the shabby street and toward me, a hansom cab. Its occupant, an alert, very young, eager man, kept glancing here and there as if he were looking for something or some one; for the old East Side street had still its old look, as if all the inhabitants of its houses had rushed out to watch an eclipse of the sun or the approach of a procession—and were patiently and idly awaiting the event.
The children, and even many of the older people, mocked at the young man in the hansom and flung him good-natured insults. But he knew the language of the East Side and returned better than he received. My old heart warmed a little to his young, brightly colored face, his quick, flashing eyes, and his ready repartees. And it seemed to me a pity that, like all the pleasant moments I had known, he, too, must pass and be over.
But his great eyes flashed suddenly upon my face and rested; then he signalled to the driver to stop and, springing out, a big sketch-book under his arm, came toward me with long, frank strides.
"I know it's cheeky as the devil," he began in a quick, cheerful voice, while he had yet some distance to come, "but I can't help it. I've been looking for you for weeks, and—"
"What is it that I can do for you?" I asked pleasantly.
"You can give me your head." He said it with an appealing and delighted smile. "I'm a sort of artist—" he explained.
"Show me," I said, and held out my hands for the sketch-book.
"Nothing but notes in it," he said, but I looked, not swiftly, through all the pages and—for we Poles have an instinct in such matters—saw that the work was good.
"Do you wish to draw me,Master?" I said.
He perceived that I meant the term, and he looked troubled and pleased.