Some very interesting things happened right straight along after that night. I found out lots of things about my master. He was a regular public benefactor and he had the name of being one of the stingiest men on the Drive.
He did everything anonymously. Rich people are horribly preyed upon in New York. Some of his friends who were known to be generous used to get a mail that staggered the postman. They were stung and bothered by their benefactions as if they had been noxious insects.
Master’s beneficiaries couldn’t sting him, for they didn’t know who he was. He found many of them on the Drive, and at night. For such a quiet man, it was wonderful to see him make friends.
He would saunter along the Drive, stop to lean on the stone walls or bridge railings, or sit on one of the seats, and some other man would be pretty sure to engage him in conversation. It’s mostly always the sad who loiter. The happy walk quickly. Master always wore an old coat, and a cap pulled pretty well over his face. Many a man did he save from despair, either by a word of comfort, or by some assistance inbusiness. He had no home for men, but he had had his Bluebird Laundry for women, for some time.
All his reports from it he received at night. The director would join him on the Drive, usually at midnight, and they would walk to and fro and talk of more things they could do for the benefit of girls and women who were out of employment, and who hated restraint.
Master never visited the place, for he didn’t want to be recognised. He was astonishingly keen, however, in knowing all about it. One night, I heard him ask the director if a certain room didn’t want repapering.
The man looked at him in surprise. “It does, but how do you know?”
Master’s face glowed. “I see it all in my mind’s eye.” Then he added, “Refurnish the room too, and have the bluebirds larger than ever. Women need more and more happiness.”
One evening, as we were setting out earlier than usual, we walked down by the collie dog’s house, and met Miss Stanna coming out to exercise him.
I had got to love this young girl who often visited the Grantons. She was not so very young—twenty-two or thereabout. She had a brave, fine face, and it never grew weary, no matter how worried she was inside.
By things the servants said, I knew that Stanna and her brother lived with a grandmother, that they had been very rich, but the war had made them poor, and the grandmother was trying to find a rich husband for Stanna, and the girl wouldn’t help her.
“Hello! Wasp,” said my master, quite like a jollyyoung boy. His face always lighted up when he saw this pretty girl, and in common with all the persons in her set, he called her by her nickname.
I asked Walter Scott one day why his young mistress was called the Wasp, and he said it was on account of a costume she wore at a fancy ball, a short time ago. The dress was black and gold and had gauzy wings, and ever since that time her intimate friends had called her “Wasp” or “Waspie.”
Miss Stanna had very pretty manners, for much pains had been taken with her education. Naturally, she was very frank and mischievous, but she was always covering up this native gush and frolicsomeness by an assumed conventionality.
To-night she looked merry, and full of fun. She bowed very prettily, and gave a little skip as she held out her hand to my master.
“Grandmother is terribly shocked,” she said laughing all over her face, “but Walter Scott was pining for a run, and the maids are out, and brother Carty too. I promised to stay fifteen minutes only, and to walk up and down in sight of the house. I’m so glad you’ve come—scamper now, Sir Walter and Boy Dog.”
I didn’t want to scamper, I wanted to hear her talk, for I was very much interested in her. So I kept close to my master, and Sir Walter, after finding out that I did not care to accompany him, ran off alone. That dog always had such perfect manners—acquired abroad, for he had been born in a castle in Scotland, and rather looked down on everybody on the Drive,human beings and dogs too, because so few of us were perfectly aristocratic.
He claimed that it was impossible to acquire finish of manner and conventional elegance in a country as new as America. We used to have heated arguments about it, and his known opinions on the subject kept him from becoming a favourite among the dogs in our set.
He said I was an aristocro-democrat dog, while he was pure aristocrat. I said I was a good, American dog, and believed in our own institutions, George Washington and all that sort of thing; and I claimed that if one worked hard enough at it, one could obtain ease of manner and polish in this country as well as in any other.
Walter was never convinced. I used to say to him, “Don’t you call your own owner a perfect lady?”
“Yes,” he would say uneasily, “yet her manners in repose, haven’t the perfect repose that characterises the pose of women abroad.”
By abroad he meant “Europe,” which he never would say. Europe was “the continent” to him. England, Scotland and Ireland were “home.”
“But you never were in Ireland,” I used to say to him, “how can you call it ‘home’?”
“It is in the old country,” he would reply seriously.
To come back to the ladies. Walter or Sir Walter, as he preferred being called, liked a dull, dead stillness of manner—a kind of “I’ve-just-been-to-a-funeral,” or “I’m-just-going-to-one,” air.
Now I like liveliness in women. I’ve been abroad,and though I admire Englishwomen and Scotchwomen, you can’t have as much fun with them, nor can you tell what they’re thinking about as quickly as you can read an American or a Frenchwoman. However, every dog to his liking. Give me gaiety and fun—Sir Walter can keep his goddesses and statues.
Miss Stanna just suited me to-night. Her eyes were dancing, and her little black pumps could scarcely keep on the sidewalk.
“What is the matter with you?” asked my master uneasily.
He was one of the executors of her father’s estate, and took a business, as well as a friendly interest in the family.
She didn’t say “Nothing,” as most girls would have. She said, “Everything.”
Master gave her a queer, sidelong look and said, “I heard my wife remark to-day, that it is a long time since you have been to see her.”
“I’ve been busy,” said Stanna with a ripple of a laugh.
She had stopped, and was staring hard at a big, old-fashioned mansion standing on one corner of the street we were passing. It was gloomier than ever to-night in the electric lights. Even by daylight it looked forbidding, except in front where it faced the Drive, for it was surrounded by a semi-circle of huge apartment houses.
“Who has bought that old Sweeney house?” asked my Master, as he followed her glance. “I see workmen there every day.”
“A queer man,” she said with an odd little smile, “a saloon-keeper from the Bowery.”
Didn’t I prick up my ears! Something told me that was Gringo’s master. You know dogs are very quick at understanding. I can’t explain why it is, but something inside me tells me when to jump to a conclusion, and I jump, and nearly always land on my feet.
“The Bowery,” said my master wonderingly.
“You never saw such an odd man,” she went on in a musing way, and with her eyes fixed on the dark house standing so solemnly among its lighted neighbours. “He’s not like any one I ever saw.”
“He isn’t that fellow who is being lionised because he made the fortune out of the soft drink places, is he?” asked my master.
“The same—did you ever see him?”
“Haven’t had that pleasure,” said my master dryly.
“Mrs. van der Spyten took him up, and Grandmother followed suit. He’s handsome in a cold, quiet way and, wonderful to relate—the dead image of Napoleon.”
“Napoleon and the Bowery!” said my master disdainfully.
“Grandmother can make him talk more than any one,” continued Miss Stanna. “She’s unearthed the fact that his father belonged to a good, old English family, that he married a barmaid and ran away to America, that he lived in Chicago, and had this son who seems to have lived everywhere from Chicago to Rio Janeiro.”
“Is he a gentleman?” asked my master.
The girl turned on him quickly. “Now what do you mean by a gentleman?”
“You know,” he said doggedly.
“Well, he isn’t then. He knows how to read and write, and make money, but a drawing-room throws him into a bored agony, and a dinner table is an extended nightmare to his unaccustomed spirit.”
Master shook his head, and frowned terribly.
“But fancy the sensation, Rudolph,” continued Miss Stanna, “of meeting some one to whom our tiresome conventionalities are blank and unwished-for novelties. I sat beside him the other night at dinner. Something told me he didn’t know what to do with his forks and spoons.”
“‘I dare you to eat with your knife,’ I whispered.”
“And did he?” asked my master breathlessly.
“Every morsel. Oh! the sensation. How was Grandmother going to cover that up? She had excuses for everything. ‘Ah! the poor fellow,’ she said, ‘deprived of his father at an early age, cast on the cold world, obliged to eat when and where he could, then his noble qualities asserting themselves, and bringing him back to the sphere in which he was born, where he is amply prepared to shine as one of the leading philanthropists of the day.’”
“So—that’s his pose, is it?” asked my master.
“His pose,” said the girl bursting into a laugh, “his pose—my dear Rudolph—he affirms over and over again, ‘I didn’t sell temperance drinks to reform men,I did it to make money,’ and no one believes him. He’s a hero despite himself.”
“I believe you’re going to marry him,” said my master irritably.
“That’s what Grandmother says,” remarked Miss Stanna with an angelic smile.
“I shall look into this,” said my master firmly. “We are your oldest friends. Your Grandmother and Carty are coercing you, I believe.”
Stanna didn’t speak. “There he is,” she said softly.
We all looked across the street and there—I was going to say plodding, but that is too heavy a word—walking steadfastly along the pavement, was a man of medium-height, with a sour-looking bull-dog at his heels.
“Gringo, by all that’s wonderful,” I muttered.
“We didn’t know he was going to call this evening,” murmured Stanna. “Grandmother will be distracted. She will have to go to the door.”
“You would better go home,” said my master dryly.
“No hurry,” said the girl mischievously, and she watched the man go up the steps to her house which was another one of those big, old-fashioned, detached ones, which peer out from between sky-scraping apartment houses on the Drive, like Daniels in dens of lions.
Gringo did not follow his master, but went under the steps.
“Poor Grandmother,” said Stanna a few minutes later. “He is in the library. She has run the shadeaway up—a storm signal. But I’m not going in yet,” and she laughed as merrily as a child.
“Yes, you will, Stanna,” said my master decidedly, “and I’m going with you. Come along.”
She shrugged her shoulders, said something in French that I did not catch, and went across the street with him.
I ran first, and looked under the steps. “Hello! Gringo, old boy—a thousand welcomes to Riverside Drive.”
The old dog’s pleasure was lovely to see. He came out, wagged his short tail, even licked me. “I feel like a cat in a strange garret up here,” he growled. “It’s fine to meet a friend. How have you been? Why didn’t you call?”
“I was planning to come to-morrow,” I said. “I’ve been in attendance on the best master a dog ever had. He keeps me with him all the time.”
“He’s no better than mine,” said Gringo shortly.
“I’m dying to see your master,” I replied. “Come in to this house. This is a place where dogs are welcome.”
Gringo was just preparing to follow me up the steps, when Sir Walter Scott stood before us—his tail rigid with disapproval.
“Good land!” muttered Gringo in my ear, “another one of these fool ’ristocrats. Mister’s gone batty on the subject of swells. I wish he’d stayed on the Bowery.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Walter Scott in his mellifluousvoice. “I have not the pleasure of your acquaintance.”
“This dog is a friend of mine, Scott,” I said bluntly, “and I believe I have theentréeof your house. In insulting him, you insult me.”
Gringo was getting mad. “You high-toned dogs palaver too much. See the teeth in those jaws,” and he opened his gaping cavern of a mouth at Sir Walter Scott. “They’re my cards. I’m going in—I want to see master’s girl.”
Walter Scott stepped back with a sneer on his handsome face, and was going for a walk in a somewhat stiff-legged fashion, when Miss Stanna called, “Come in, Walter darling.”
Walter darling was in a rage, but still he remembered his manners, and stood back for Gringo and me to follow Miss Stanna into the library.