(1895)
(1895)
On the Steps of the City Hall
Athin inch of dusty snow littered the frozen grass-plots surrounding the municipal buildings, and frequent scurries of wind kept swirling it again over the concrete walks whence it had been swept. The February sun—although it was within an hour of noon—could not break through the ashen clouds that shut out the sky.
It was a depressing day, and yet there was no relaxation of energy in the men who were darting here and there eagerly, each intent on his errand, with eyes fixed on the goal and with lips set in stern determination. As Curtis Van Dyne thrust himself through the throng on the Broadway sidewalk, leaving the frowning Post-office behind him, and passing before the blithe effigy of Nathan Hale, he almost laughed aloud as it suddenly struck him how incongruous it was that a statue of a man who had gladly died for his country should be stuck there between two buildings filled with men who were looking to their country, to the nation or to the city, to provide them with a living. But he was in no mood for laughter, even saturnine; and if anything could have aroused his satire, it would have been not a graven image, but himself.
He was in the habit of having a good opinion of himself, and he clung to his habits, especially to this one. Yet he was then divided between self-pity and self-contempt. For a good reason, so it seemed to him—and he was pleased to be able to think that it was an unselfish reason—he was going to take a step he did not quite approve of. He went all over the terms of the situation again as he turned from Broadway toward the City Hall; and the pressure of circumstances as he saw them brought him again to the same conclusion. Then he resolved not to let himself be worried by his own decision; if it was for the best, then there was no sense in not making the best of it.
So intent was he on his own thought that he did not observe the expectant smile of an older man who was walking across the park in front of the City Hall, and who slackened his gait, supposing that the young lawyer would greet him.
When Van Dyne passed on unseeing, the other man waited for a second and then called, “Curtis!”
The young man had already begun to mount the steps. He turned sharply, as though any conversation would then be unwelcome, but when he saw who had hailed him he smiled cheerfully and held out his hand cordially.
“Why, Judge,” he began, “I didn’t know you were home again! I’m glad you are better. Theytold me you might have to go away for the rest of the winter.”
“That’s what they told me, too,” answered Judge Jerningham; “and I told them I wouldn’t go. I’m paid for doing my work here, and I don’t intend to shirk it. I expect to take my seat again next week.”
There was a striking contrast between the two men as they stood there on the steps of the City Hall. Judge Jerningham was nearly sixty; he had a stalwart frame, almost to be called stocky; his black hair was grizzled only, and his full beard was only streaked with white. He had large, dark eyes, deep-set under cavernous brows. His clothes fitted him loosely, and, although not exactly out of style, they were not to be called modish in either cut or material. Curtis Van Dyne was full thirty years younger; he was fair and slight, and he wore a drooping mustache. He was dressed with obvious care, and his garments suited him. He looked rather like a man of fashion than like a young fellow who had his way to make at the bar.
“By the way,” said the Judge, after a little pause, which gave Van Dyne time to wonder why it was that the elder man had called him—“by the way, how is your sister? I saw her in church on Sunday, and she looked a little pale and peaked, I thought.”
“Oh, Martha’s all right,” the young man answered, briskly. “Aunt Mary attends to that.”
“Do you know what struck me on Sunday as Ilooked at Martha?” asked the Judge. “It was her likeness to her mother at the same age.”
“Yes,” Van Dyne replied, “Aunt Mary says Martha’s very like mother as a girl.”
“And your mother was never very hearty,” pursued the Judge. “Don’t you think it might be well to get the girl out of town for a little while next month? March is very hard on those whose bronchial tubes are weakened.”
“I guess Martha can stand another March in New York,” the young man responded. “She’s all right enough. I don’t say it wouldn’t be good for her to go South for a few weeks, but—Well, you know I can’t telephone for my steam-yacht to be brought round to the foot of Twenty-third Street, and I don’t own any stock in Jekyll Island.”
The Judge made no immediate answer, and again there was an awkward silence.
The younger man broke it. He held out his hand once more. “It’s pleasant to see you looking so fit,” he said, cordially.
The other took his hand and held it. “Curtis,” he began, “it isn’t any of my business, I suppose, and yet I don’t know. Who is to speak if I don’t?”
“Speak about what?” asked Van Dyne, as the Judge released his hand.
The elder man did not answer this question. Apparently he found it difficult to say what he wished.
“I happened to see a paragraph in the politicalgossip in theDialthis morning,” he began again; “I don’t often read that sort of stuff, but your name caught my eye. It said that the organization was enlisting recruits from society as an answer to the slanderous attacks that had been made on it, and that people could see how much there was in these malignant assaults when they found the better element eager to be enrolled. And then it gave half a dozen names of men who had just joined, including yours and Jimmy Suydam’s. I suppose there is no truth in it?”
“It’s about as near to the truth as a newspaper ever gets, I fancy,” Van Dyne answered. His color had risen a little, and his speech had become a little more precise. “I haven’t joined yet, but I’m going to join this week. Pat McCann is to take us in hand, Jimmy and me; he’s our district leader.”
“Pat McCann!” and the Judge spoke the name with horrified contempt.
“Yes,” responded the young man. “Pat McCann has taken quite a shine to Jimmy and me. He gives us the glad hand and never the marble heart.”
“It’s no matter about Suydam,” said the Judge, with an impatient gesture; “he’s a foolish young fellow and he doesn’t know any better. I suppose he expects to be a colonel on the staff of the first governor they elect. But you—”
It was with a hint of bravado that Van Dyne returned: “I don’t see that I’m any better than Jimmy. He hasn’t committed any crime that Iknow of—except the deadly sin of inheriting a fortune. And as far as that goes, I wish old man Suydam had adopted me and divided his money between us. Then I could have that steam-yacht and take Martha down to Jekyll Island next month.”
The Judge hesitated again, and then he said: “Curtis, I suppose you think I have no right to speak to you about this, and perhaps I haven’t. But I have known you since you were born, and I went to school with your father. We were classmates in college, and I was his best man when he married your mother. You know his record in the war, and you are proud of it, of course. He left you—you will excuse my putting it plainly?—he left you an honorable name.”
“And that was about all he did leave me!” the young man returned. “I want to leave my children something more.”
“If you join the organization, if you are a hail-fellow-well-met with all the Pat McCanns of the city,” retorted the Judge, sternly—“if you sink to that level, you would certainly leave your children something very different from what your father left you. If you do, I doubt whether the organization will go out of its way to offer inducements to your son. It will expect to get him cheap.”
The young lawyer flushed again, and then he laughed uneasily.
“You are hard on me, Judge,” he said at last.
“I want you to be hard on yourself now,” the older man returned. “I know you, Curtis; I know the stock you come of, and I am sure you will be hard enough on yourself—when it is too late.”
“I’m not going to rob a bank, am I?” urged the younger man.
“You are going to rob yourself,” was the swift answer. “You are going to rob your children, if you ever have any, of what your father left you—the priceless heritage of an honored name.”
“Come, now, Judge,” said Van Dyne, “is that quite fair? You speak as if I were going to enroll in the Forty Thieves.”
“If I thought you capable of doing that I should not be speaking to you at all,” was the reply.
“Pat McCann isn’t a bad fellow really,” the young man declared. “He means well enough. And the rest of them are not rascals, either; they are not the crew of pirates the papers call them. They are giving the city as good a government now as our mixed population will stand. They have their ambition to do right; and I sincerely believe that they mean to do the best they know how.”
“That’s it precisely,” the Judge asserted. “They mean to do the best they know how. But how much do they know?”
“Well, they are not exactly fools, are they?” was the evasive answer.
“Don’t misunderstand me,” the elder man continued.“I am perfectly aware that the organization is not so black as it is painted. The men at the head of it are not a crew of pirates, as you say—of course not; if they were they would have been made to walk the plank long ago. Probably they mean well, as you say again. I should be sorry to believe that they do not.”
“Well, then—” returned Van Dyne.
But the Judge went on, regardless of what the young lawyer was going to say:
“They may mean well, but what of it if the result is what we see? The fact is that the men at the head of the organization are of an arrested type of civilization. They are two or three hundred years behind the age. They have retained the methods—perhaps not of Claude Duval, as their enemies allege, but of Sir Robert Walpole, as their friends could not deny. Here in America to-day they are anachronisms. They stand athwart our advance. I have no wish to call them names or to think them worse than they are; but I know that association with them is not good for you or for me. It is our duty—your duty and mine, and the duty of all who have a little enlightenment—to arouse the public against these survivals of a lower stage, and to fight them incessantly, and now and then to beat them, so that they may be made to respect our views. You say they are giving the city as good a government as our mixed population will stand. Well, that may betrue; I don’t think it is quite true; but even if it is, what of it? Are we to be satisfied with that? The best way to educate our mixed population to stand a better government is to fight these fellows steadily. Nothing educates them more than an election, followed by an object lesson.”
“That’s all very well,” responded Van Dyne, when the Judge had made an end of his long speech. “But I don’t believe the organization leaders are really so far behind other people, or so much worse. They’re not hypocrites, that’s all. They know what they want, and they take it the easiest way they can.”
“If that is the best defense you can make for them, they are worse than I thought,” retorted the Judge. “Sometimes the easiest way to take what you want is to steal it.”
“I don’t claim that they are perfect, all of them,” the younger man declared. “I suppose they are all sorts—good, bad, and indifferent. But we are all miserable sinners, you know—at least we say so every Sunday. And I have known bad men in the church.”
“Come, come, Curtis,” the Judge replied, “that’s unworthy of you, isn’t it? You would not be apologizing to me for joining the church, would you?”
Van Dyne was about to answer hastily, but he checked the words on his lips. He looked away and across the frozen park to the pushing crowd on Broadway; but he did not really see the huge wagonsrumbling in and out of Mail Street, nor did he hear the insistent clang of the cable-car.
His tone was deprecatory when he spoke at last.
“I suppose you are right,” he began, “and I don’t quite see myself in that company. I’ll be frank, Judge, for you are an old friend, and I know you wish me well, and I’d be glad to stand well in your eyes. I don’t really want to join the organization; I don’t like the men in it any more than you do; and I don’t know that I approve of their ways much more than you do. But I’ve got to do it.”
“Got to?” echoed the Judge, in surprise. “Why have you got to? They can’t force you to join if you don’t wish it.”
“I’ve got to do it because I’ve got to have money,” was the young man’s explanation.
“Do you mean that you are to be paid for associating with these people?” the Judge asked.
“That’s about it,” was the answer. “I wouldn’t do it if I wasn’t going to make something out of it, would I? Not that there is any bargain, of course; but Pat McCann has dropped hints, and I know how easy it will be for them to throw things my way.”
“I didn’t know you needed money so badly,” said the Judge. “I thought you were doing well at the bar.”
“I’m doing well enough, I suppose,” Van Dyne explained; “but I could do better. In fact, I must do better. I must have money. There’s—well,there’s Martha. She came out last fall, and I gave her a coming-out tea, of course. Well, I want her to have a good time. Mother had a good time when she was a girl, and why shouldn’t Martha? She won’t be nineteen again.”
“Yes,” said the Judge, “your mother had a good time when she was a girl. Your father and I saw to that.”
“Martha’s just got her first invitation to the Assembly,” Van Dyne went on. “You should have seen how delighted she was, too; it did me good to see it. Mrs. Jimmy Suydam sent it to her. But all that will cost money; of course, she’s got to have a new gown and gloves and flowers and a carriage and so on. I don’t begrudge it to her. I’m only too glad to give it to her. But I’m in debt now for that coming-out tea and for other things. I ran behind last year, and this year I shall spend more. That’s why I’ve got to join the organization and pick up a reference now and then, and maybe a receivership by and by; and perhaps they’ll elect me to an office, sooner or later. I know I’m too young yet, but I’d like to be a judge, too.”
“So it is for your sister you are selling yourself, is it?” asked the elder man. “Do you think she would be willing if she knew?”
“I’m not selling myself!” declared the young man, laughing a little nervously. “I haven’t signed any compact with my own blood amid a blaze of red fire.”
“Do you think your sister would approve if she knew?” persisted the Judge.
“Oh, but she won’t know!” was the answer. “I’ll admit she wouldn’t like it overmuch. She takes after father, and she has very strict ideas. You ought to hear her talk about the corruption of our politics!”
“Curtis,” said the Judge, earnestly, “ifyoutake after your father, you ought to be able to look things in the face. That’s what I want you to do now. Have you any right to sacrifice yourself for your sister’s sake in a way she would not like?”
“I’m not sacrificing myself at all,” the young man declared. “I want some of the good things of life for myself. Besides, what do girls know about politics? They are always dreamy and impracticable. If they had their noses down to the grindstone of life for a little while it would sharpen their eyes, and they would see things differently.”
“It will be a sad world when women like your sister and your mother see things differently, as you put it,” the elder man retorted.
“If I want more money, I don’t admit that it is any of Martha’s business how I make it,” Van Dyne asserted. “I’ll let her have the spending of some of it—that will be her duty. I want her to have a summer in Europe, too. She knows that mother was abroad a whole year when she was eighteen.”
“I know that, too,” said the Judge. “It was inVenice that your father and I first met her; she was feeding the pigeons in front of St. Mark’s, and—”
The Judge paused a moment, and then he laid his hand on Van Dyne’s shoulder.
“Curtis,” he continued, “if a thousand dollars now will help you out, or two thousand, or even five, if you need it, I shall be glad to let you have the money.”
“Thank you, Judge,” was the prompt reply. “I can’t take your money, because I don’t know how or when I could pay you back.”
“What matter about that?” returned the other. “I have nobody to leave it to.”
“You were my father’s friend and my mother’s,” said Van Dyne. “I would take money from you if I could take it from anybody. But I can’t do that. You wouldn’t in my place, would you?”
The Judge did not answer this directly. “It is not easy to say what we should do if one were to stand in the other’s place,” he declared. “And if you change your mind, the money is ready for you whenever you want it.”
“You are very good to me, Judge,” said the young man, “and I appreciate your kindness—”
“Then don’t say anything more about it,” the elder man interrupted. “And you must forgive me for my plain speaking about that other matter.”
“About my joining the organization?” said Van Dyne. “Well, I’ll think over what you have said.I don’t want you to believe that I don’t understand the kindness that prompted you to say what you did. I haven’t really decided absolutely what I had best do.”
“It is a decision you must make for yourself, after all,” the Judge declared. “I will not urge you further.”
He held out his hand once more, and the young man grasped it heartily.
“Perhaps you and Martha and ‘Aunt Mary’ could come and dine with me some night next week,” the Judge suggested. “I should like to hear about your sister’s first experience in society.”
“Of course we will all come, with pleasure,” said Van Dyne.
As the elder man walked away, the younger followed him with his eyes. Then he turned and went up the steps of the City Hall.
Almost at the top of the flight stood two men, who parted company as Van Dyne drew near. One of them waited for him to come up. The other started down, smiling at the young lawyer as they met, and saying: “Good morning, Mr. Van Dyne. It’s rain we’re going to have, I’m thinking.”
“Good morning, Mr. O’Donnell,” returned Van Dyne, roused from his reverie.
“There’s Mr. McCann waiting to have a word with you,” cried O’Donnell over his shoulder, as he passed.
The young lawyer looked up and saw the other man at the top of the steps. He wanted time to think over his conversation with Judge Jerningham, and he had no desire for a talk just then with the district leader. Perhaps he unconsciously revealed this feeling in the coolness with which he returned the other’s greeting, courteous as he always was, especially toward those whom he did not consider his equal.
“It’s glad I am to see you, Mr. Van Dyne,” said the politician, patting the young man on the shoulder as they shook hands.
Van Dyne drew back instinctively. Never before had Pat McCann’s high hat seemed so very shiny to him, or Pat McCann’s fur overcoat so very furry. The big diamond in Pat McCann’s shirt-front was concealed by the tightly buttoned coat; but Van Dyne knew that it was there all the same, and he detested it more than ever before.
“It’s a dark morning it is,” said McCann. “Will we take a little drop of something warm?”
“Thank you,” returned the young lawyer, somewhat stiffly; “I never drink in the morning.”
“No more do I,” declared the other; “but it’s a chill day this is. Well, and when are you coming round to see the boys? Terry O’Donnell and me, we was just talking about you and Mr. Suydam.”
Van Dyne did not see why it should annoy him to know that he had been the subject of conversationbetween Pat McCann and Terry O’Donnell, but he was instantly aware of the annoyance. If he intended to throw in his lot with these people, he must look forward to many intimacies not quite to his liking.
“Oh, you were talking about me, were you?” he said.
“We was that,” continued the district leader. “We want you to meet the boys and let them know you, don’t you see? We want you to give them the glad hand.”
When Van Dyne had used this slang phrase to the Judge, it had seemed to him amusing; now it struck him as vulgar.
“We want you to jolly them up a bit,” McCann went on. “The boys will be glad to know you better.”
“Yes,” was the monosyllabic response to this invitation.
The district leader looked at the young lawyer, and his manner changed.
“We’d like to get acquainted with you, Mr. Van Dyne,” he said, “if you’re going to be one of us.”
“If I’m going to be one of you,” Van Dyne repeated. “That’s just the question. Am I going to be one of you?”
“I thought we had settled all that last week,” cried McCann.
“I don’t think I told you that I would join you,” Van Dyne declared, wondering just how far he had committed himself at that last interview.
“You told me you thought you would,” McCann declared.
“Oh, maybe I thought so then,” Van Dyne answered.
The district leader was generally wary and tactful. Among people of his own class he was a good judge of men; and he owed his position largely to his persuasive powers. But on this occasion he made a mistake, due perhaps in some measure to his perception of the other’s assumption of superiority.
“And now you don’t think so?” he retorted, swiftly. “Is that what it is? Well, it’s for you to say, not me. I’m not begging any man to come into the organization if they don’t want. But I can’t waste my time any more on them that don’t want. It’s for you to say the word, and it’s now or never.”
“Since you put it that way, Mr. McCann,” said Van Dyne, “it’s never.”
“Then you don’t want to join the organization?” asked the district leader, a little taken aback by the other’s sudden change of determination.
“No,” Van Dyne replied, “I don’t.”
And when he was left alone on the top of the City Hall steps, the young lawyer was puzzled to know whether it was Judge Jerningham or Pat McCann that had most influenced his decision.
(1898)
(1898)
"Sisters Under Their Skins"
THE light March rain, which had been intermittent all the morning, ceased falling before Minnie Henryson and her mother had reached Sixth Avenue. The keen wind sprang up again, and a patch of blue sky appeared here and there down the vista of Twenty-third Street, as they were walking westward. There was even a suggestion of sunshine far away over the Jersey hills.
The two ladies closed their umbrellas, which the west wind had made it hard for them to hold.
“I believe we are going to have a pleasant afternoon, after all,” said Mrs. Henryson. “Perhaps we had better lunch down here and get all our shopping done to-day.”
“Just as you say, mamma,” the daughter answered, a little listlessly, accustomed to accept all her mother’s sudden changes of plans.
They turned the corner and went a little way down the avenue, as the brakes of an up-town train scraped and squeaked when it stopped at the station high above their heads.
Mrs. Henryson paused to look into one of the broad windows of a gigantic store.
“Minnie,” she said, solemnly, “I don’t believe hats are going to be any smaller this summer, in spite of all they say in the papers.”
“It doesn’t seem like it,” responded her daughter, perfunctorily. She had already bought her own hat for the spring, and just then her mind was wandering far afield. She was dutifully accompanying her mother for a morning’s shopping, although she would rather have had the time to herself, so that she could think out the question that was puzzling her.
Her mother continued to peer into the window, comparing the hats with one another, and Minnie’s attention was arrested by a little girl of eight who stopped almost at her side and stamped three times on the iron cover of an opening in the sidewalk, nearly in front of the window where the two ladies were standing. After giving this signal the child drew back; and in less than a minute the covers opened wide, and then an elevator began to rise, bringing up a middle-aged man begrimed with oil and coal-dust.
“Hello, dad,” cried the child.
“Hello, kid!” he answered. “How’s mother?”
“She’s better,” the girl answered. “Not so much pain.”
“That’s good,” the man responded.
“An’ the doctor’s been, an’ he says she’s doin' fine,” the child continued. “Maybe she can get up for good next week.”
“That’ll be a sight for sore eyes, won’t it, kid?” the father asked. “What you got for me to-day?”
Minnie was listening, although she was apparently gazing intently at the shop-window. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the child hand a tin dinner-pail to the man who had risen from the depths below. Then she heard the young voice particularize its contents.
“There’s roast-beef sandwiches—I made 'em myself—and pie, apple pie—I got that at the bakery—and coffee.”
“Coffee, eh?” said the man. “That’s what I want most of all. My throat’s all dried up with the dust. Guess I’d better begin on that now.” He opened the dinner-pail and took a long drink out of it. “That’s pretty good, that coffee. That went right to the spot!”
“I made it,” the child explained, proudly.
“Did you now?” he answered. “Well, it’s as good as your mother’s.” Then a bell rang down below; he pulled on one of the chains and the elevator began to go down slowly.
“So-long, kid,” he called, as his head sank to the level of the sidewalk.
“Good-by, dad,” she answered, leaning forward; “come home as early as you can. Mother’ll be so glad to see you.”
The child waited until the covers had again closed over her father, and then she started away. MinnieHenryson turned and watched her as she slipped across the avenue, avoiding the cars and the carts with the skill born of long experience.
At last Mrs. Henryson tore herself away from the window with its flamboyant head-gear. “No,” she said, emphatically, “I don’t believe really they’re going to be any smaller.”
The daughter did not answer. She was thinking of the little domestic episode she had just witnessed; and her sympathy went out to the sick woman, laid up in some dark tenement and waiting through the long hours for her husband’s return. Her case was sad; and yet she had a husband and a child and a home of her own; her life was fuller than the empty existence of a girl who had nothing to do but to go shopping with her mother and to gad about to teas, with now and then a dinner or a dance or the theater. A home of her own and a husband!—what was a woman’s life without them? And so it was that what Minnie had just seen tied itself at once into the subject of her thoughts as she walked silently down the avenue by the side of her mother.
The trains rattled and ground on the Elevated almost over their heads; the clouds scattered and a faint gleam of pale March sunshine at last illumined the grayness of the day. The noon-hour rush was at its height, and the sidewalks were often so thronged that mother and daughter were separated for a moment as they tried to pick their way through the crowd.
When they came to the huge department-store they were seeking, Mrs. Henryson stood inside the vestibule as though deciding on her plan of campaign.
“Minnie,” she promulgated at last, “you had better try and match those ribbons, and I’ll go and pick out the rug for your father.”
“Shall I wait for you at the ribbon-counter?” the daughter asked.
“Just sit down, and I’ll come back as soon as I can. You look a little tired this morning, anyhow.”
“I’m not the least tired, I assure you—but I didn’t sleep well last night,” she answered, as she went with her mother to the nearest elevator.
When she was left alone, she had a little sigh of relief, as though she was glad to be able to let her thoughts run where they would without interruption. She walked slowly to the ribbon-counter in a far corner of the store, unconscious of the persons upon whom her eyes rested. She was thinking of herself and of her own future. She wondered whether that future was then hanging in the balance.
She had early discovered that she was not very pretty, although her mother was always telling her that she had a good figure; and she had reached the age of twenty-two without having had any particular attention from any man. She had begun to ask herself whether any man ever would single her out and make her interested in him and implore her to be his wife. And now in the past few months itseemed to her as if this dream might come true. There was no doubt that Addison Wyngard had been attentive all through the winter. Other girls had noticed it, too, and had teased her about it. He had been her partner three times at the dances of the Cotillion of One Hundred. And when some of the men of that wide circle had got up the Thursday Theater Club, he had joined only after he had found out that she was going to be a member. She recalled that he had told her that he did not care for the theater, and that he was so busy he felt he had no right to go out in the evening. The managing clerk of a pushing law firm could not control his own time even after office hours; and there had been one night when he was to be her escort at the Theater Club a box of flowers had come at six o’clock, with a note explaining that unexpected business forced him to break the engagement. And the seat beside her had been vacant all the evening.
Even when she came to the ribbon-counter she did what she had to do mechanically, with her thoughts ever straying from her duty of matching widths and tints. Her mind kept escaping from the task in hand and persisted in recalling the incidents of her intimacy with him.
After she had made her purchases she took a seat at the end of the counter, which happened to be more or less deserted just then. Three shop-girls, who had gathered to gossip during the noon lull in trade,looked at her casually as she sat down, and then went on with their own conversation, which was pitched in so shrill a key that she could not help hearing it.
“She says to him, she says, ‘Willy, I’ll report you every time I catch you, see?’ and she’s reported him three times this morning already. That ain’t what a real lady ought to do, I don’t think.”
“Who’d she report him to?” one of the other salesladies asked.
“Twice to Mr. Maguire. Once she reported him to Mr. Smith, and he didn’t take no notice. He just laughed. But Mr. Maguire, he talked to Willy somethin' fierce. And you know Willy’s got to stand it, for he’s got that cross old mother of his to keep; he has to get her four quarts of paralyzed milk every day, Sundays too.”
Then the third of the group broke in: “Mr. Maguire tried it on me once, but I gave it to him back, straight from the shoulder. I ain’t going to have him call me down; not much. I know my business, don’t I? I don’t need no little snip of a red-headed Irishman to tell me what to do. I was born here, I was, and I’m not taking any back talk from him, even if he has a front like the court-house!”
The second girl, whose voice was gentler, then remarked: “Well, I wouldn’t be too hard on Mr. Maguire to-day. I guess he’s got troubles of his own.”
“What’s that?” cried the first of the three, whosevoice was the sharpest. “Has Sadie Jones thrown him down again?”
“I didn’t know a thing about it till this mornin’, when I saw the ring on her other finger,” the second saleslady explained, delighted to be the purveyor of important information. “Mazie says Sadie didn’t break it off again till last night after he’d brought her back from the Lady Dazzlers’ Mask and Civic. And she waited till they got into the trolley comin’ home. An’ he’d taken her in to supper, too.”
“That’s so,” the third girl said, “and Mr. Maguire’s takin’ it terrible. He came across the street this morning just before me, and he had his skates on. I was waitin’ to see him go in the mud-gutter. Then he saw the copper on the beat, and he made an awful brace. Gee, but I thought he was pinched sure!”
“Mr. Smith caught on to him,” said the first, with her sharp voice, “and Willy heard him say he’d be all right again, and he had only the fill of a pitcher.”
“And Sadie’s going to keep the ring, too. She says she earned it trying to keep him straight,” the third girl went on. “It’s a dead ringer for a diamond, even if it ain’t the real thing. He says it is.”
Two customers came up at this juncture, and the group of salesladies had to dissolve. A series of shrill whistles came in swift succession and a fire-engine rushed down the avenue, followed by a hook-and-ladder truck; and the girl with the kindly voicewent over toward the door to look at them, leaving Minnie Henryson again to her own thoughts.
She asked herself if she was really getting interested in Addison Wyngard. And she could not answer her own question. Of course it had been very pleasant to feel that he was interested in her. And she thought he really was interested. He had told her that he did not like his position with Smyth, Mackellar & Hubbard, and a classmate at Columbia had offered him a place with a railroad company down in Texas. But he had said that he hated to give up the law and to leave New York—and all his friends. And as he said that, he looked at her. She had felt that he was implying that she was the reason why he was unwilling to go. She remembered that she had laughed lightly as she rejoined that she would feel homesick herself if she went out of sight of the Madison Square Tower. He had answered that there were other things in New York besides the Diana, things just as distant and just as unattainable. And to that she had made no response.
Then he had told her that he had another classmate in the office of the Corporation Counsel, Judge McKinley; there was a vacancy there, and his name had been suggested to the judge. She had smiled and expressed the hope that he might get the appointment. And now, as she sat there alone, with the stir and bustle of the department-store all about her, she felt certain as never before that if he did get theplace he would be assured that he had at last money enough to marry on, and that he would ask her to be his wife. If she accepted him she would have a husband and a home of her own. She would have her chance for the fuller life that can come to a woman only when she is able to fulfil her destiny.
Later he had found a chance to say that he was going to stick it out in New York a little longer—and then, if the Texas offer was still open, he’d have to take it. He had paused to hear what she would say to that. And all she had said was that Texas did seem a long way off. She had given him no encouragement; she had been polite—nothing more. If he did ever propose, and if she should refuse him, he could never reproach her for having lured him on.
Suddenly it seemed to her that this chilly attitude of hers was contemptible. The man wanted her—and for the first time she began to suspect that all the woman in her wanted him to want her. She hated herself for having been so unresponsive, so discouraging, so cold. She knew that he was a man of character and of ability, a clean man, a man his wife might be proud of. And she had looked ahead sharply and realized how desolate the Cotillion of One Hundred and the Thursday Theater Club would be for her if Addison Wyngard should go to Texas, after all. She began to fear that, if he did decide to leave New York, he would never dare to ask her to marry him.
Then she looked around her and began to wonderwhat could be keeping her mother so long. She happened to see the door of the store open, as a tall girl came in with a high pompadour and an immense black hat adorned with three aggressive silver feathers.
The new-comer advanced toward the ribbon-counter, where she was greeted effusively by two of the salesladies.
“For pity’s sake,” cried one of them, “I ain’t seen you for a month of Sundays!”
“Addie Brown!” said the other. “And you haven’t been back here to see us old friends since I don’t know when.”
“Addie Cameron now, if you please,” and the new-comer bridled a little as she gave herself her married name. “An’ I was comin’ in last Saturday, but I had to have my teeth fixed first, and I went to dentist after dentist and they were all full, and I was tired out.”
“Well, it’s Addie, any way you fix it,” responded one of the salesladies, “and we’re glad to see you back, even if we did think you’d shook us for keeps. Is this gettin’ married all it’s cracked up to be?”
“It’s fine,” the bride replied, “an’ I wouldn’t never come back here on no account. Not but what things ain’t what I’d like altogether. I went to the Girls’ Friendly last night, and there was that Miss Van Antwerp that runs our class, and she was so interested, for all she’s one of the Four Hundred.An’ she wanted to know about Sam, an’ I told her he was a good man an’ none better, an’ I was perfectly satisfied. ‘But, Miss Van Antwerp,’ I says to her, I says, ‘don’t you never marry a policeman—their hours are so inconvenient. You can’t never tell when he’s comin’ home.’s That’s what I told her, for she’s always interested.”
The other two salesladies laughed, and one of them asked, “What did Miss Van Antwerp say to that?”
“She just said that she wasn’t thinkin’ of gettin' married, but she’d remember my advice.”
“I ain’t thinkin’ of gettin’ married, either,” said one of the salesladies, the one with the gentler voice, “but I’ve had a dream an’ it may come true. I dreamed there was a young feller, handsome he was, too, and the son of a charge customer. You’ve seen her, the old stiff with those furs and the big diamond ear-rings, that’s so fussy always and so partic’lar, for all she belongs to the Consumers’ League.”
“I know who you mean; horrid old thing she is, too,” interrupted the other; “but I didn’t know she had a son.”
“I don’t know it, either,” was the reply. “But that’s what I dreamed—and I dreamed it three nights runnin’, too. Fierce, wasn’t it? An’ he kept hangin’ round and wantin’ to make a date to take me to the opera. Said he could talk French an’ he’d tell me what it was all about. An'—”
Just then the floor-walker called “Forward!” asa customer came to the other end of the counter; and the girl with the gentle voice moved away.
Minnie Henryson wondered whether this floor-walker was Mr. Maguire or Mr. Smith. Under the suggestion of his stare, whichever he was, Addie Cameron and the other shop-girl moved away toward the door, and the rest of their conversation was lost to the listener.
She did not know how long she continued to sit there, while customers loitered before the ribbon-counter and fingered the stock and asked questions. She heard the fire-engines come slowly back; and above the murmur which arose all over the store she caught again the harsh grinding of the brakes on the Elevated in the avenue. Then she rose, as she saw her mother looking for her.
“I didn’t mean to keep you waiting so long,” Mrs. Henryson explained; “but I couldn’t seem to find just the rug I wanted for your father. You know he’s always satisfied with anything, so I have to be particular to get something he’ll really like. And then I met Mrs. McKinley, and we had to have a little chat.”
Minnie looked at her mother. She had forgotten that the wife of the Corporation Counsel was a friend of her mother’s; and she wondered whether she could get her mother to say a good word for Addison Wyngard.
Mother and daughter threaded their way throughthe swarm of shoppers toward the door of the store.
“By the way, Minnie,” said her mother, just as they came to the entrance, “didn’t you tell me that young Mr. Wyngard sat next you at the theater the other night at that Thursday Club of yours? That’s his name, isn’t it?”
“Mr. Wyngard did sit next to me one evening,” the daughter answered, not looking up.
“Well, Mrs. McKinley saw you, and so did the Judge. He says that this young Wyngard is a clever lawyer—and he’s going to take him into his office.”
And then they passed out into the avenue flooded with spring sunshine.
Minnie took a long breath of fresh air and she raised her head. It seemed to her almost as though she could already feel a new ring on the third finger of her left hand.