what Miss Cushing will say!”
“Caroline,” said Angelica, “you don’t know anything about horses, so
you hush.” And then she added under her breath, “If I can only get
started before Jim sees me!”
* * * * *
In the Everett box they were waiting for the five-foot-six class to
begin. They called it the five-foot-six class because there were
four jumps that were five feet six inches high; the others were an
even five feet. It was the “sensational event” of the evening. Thus
far the show had been dull.
“Those saddle-horses were an ordinary lot,” observed Reggie.
“This isn’t opening very well, either,” said Palfrey. The first
horse had started out by refusing. Then he floundered into the jump
and fell.
“Let’s not wait,” said Mrs. Everett. But the words were hardly
spoken when, with a quick movement, she turned her glasses on the
ring. Something unusual was going on at the farther end. A ripple of
applause came down the sides of the Garden, and then she saw a black
horse, ridden by a girl, come cantering toward the starting-place.
“It’s that child on Hermione! You must stop it, Reggie!” she
exclaimed excitedly.
Before any one could move, Angelica had turned the horse toward the
first jump. It looked terribly high to Mrs. Everett. It was almost
even with the head of the man who was standing on the farther side
ready to replace the bars if they should be knocked down.
Tossing her head playfully, the black mare galloped steadily for the
wings, took off in her stride, and swept over the jump in a long
curve. She landed noiselessly on the tan-bark, and was on again.
Around the great ring went the horse and the girl, steadily, not too
fast, and taking each jump without a mistake. The great crowd
remained breathless and expectant. Horse and rider finished in front
of the Everett box, and pulled up to a trot, the mare breathing hard
with excitement, but well-mannered.
Then a storm of cheers and hand-clapping burst, the like of which
was never heard at a New York horse show before.
As the applause died away, Reggie rose and hurried out. “Let’s all
go,” said Mrs. Everett.
Before they got through the crowd the judges had awarded the
ribbons. There were only three other horses that went over all the
jumps, and none of them made a clean score. There was no question
about which was first. The judges ran their hands down the mare’s
legs in a vain search for lumps. She was short-coupled, with a
beautiful shoulder and powerful quarters. She had four crosses of
thoroughbred, and showed it.
“She’s a picture mare,” said one of the judges, and he tied the blue
rosette to her bridle himself. Then the great crowd cheered and
clapped again, and Angelica rode down to the entrance as calmly as
if she were in the habit of taking blue ribbons daily. But inside
she was not calm.
“I’ve got to cry or something,” she thought.
At the gate some one came out of the crowd and took the mare by the
head. Angelica looked down, and there were her brother and Reggie
and Mrs. Everett’s party. The Garden began to swim.
“Oh, Jim!” she murmured, “help me down. It’s Lady Washington.” Then
she threw her arms around his neck and wept.
* * * * *
They were at supper in the old Waldorf Palm Room before Angelica was
quite certain whether actual facts had been taking place or whether
she had been dreaming. It seemed rather too extraordinary and too
pleasant to be true. Still, she was sure that she was there, because
the people stared at her when she came in dressed in her habit, and
whispered to each other about her. Furthermore, a party of judges
came over and asked Mrs. Everett to present them.
There never before was quite such an evening. It was after twelve,
at least, and nobody had suggested that she ought to be in bed. One
pleasant thing followed another in quick succession, and there
seemed no end to them. She was absorbed in an edible rapture which
Mrs. Everett called a “café parfait” when she became aware that
Reggie’s friend, Mr. Palfrey, had started to address the party. She
only half listened, because she was wondering why every one except
Mrs. Everett and herself had denied himself this delightful sweet.
Grown-up people had strange tastes.
Mr. Palfrey began by saying that he thought it was time to propose a
toast in honor of Miss Stanton, which might also rechristen Reggie’s
mare by her first and true name, “Lady Washington.” He said that it
was plain to him that the mare had resented a strange name out of
Greek mythology, and in future would go kindly, particularly if
Reggie never tried to ride her again.
He went on with his remarks, and from time to time the people
interrupted with laughter; but it was only a meaningless sound in
Angelica’s ears. The words “Reggie’s mare” had come like a blow in
the face. She had forgotten about that. Her knees grew weak and a
lump swelled in her throat. It was true, of course, but for the time
being it had passed out of her mind. And now that Lady Washington
had won the five-foot-six class and was so much admired, probably
Jim could not afford to buy her back. It was doubtful if Mr.
Haughton would sell her at any price.
Presently she was aroused by a remark addressed directly to her.
“I think that’s a good idea,” said Reggie. “Don’t you?”
She nodded; but she did not know what the idea was, and she did not
trust her voice to ask.
“Only,” he continued, turning to Palfrey, “it isn’t my mare any
more; it’s Miss Stanton’s. Put that in, Palfrey.”
Angelica’s mouth opened in wonderment and her heart stood still. She
looked about the table blankly.
“It’s so,” said Reggie; “she’s yours.”
“But I can’t take her,” she said falteringly. “She’s too valuable.
Can I, Jim?”
“But Jim’s bought her,” said Reggie, hurriedly.
Angelica’s eyes settled on her brother’s face; he said nothing, but
began to smile; Reggie was kicking him under the table.
“Yes,” said Reggie; “when I saw you ride Lady Washington, that
settled it with me. I’m too proud to stand being beaten by a girl;
so I made Jim buy her back and promise to give her to you.”
“Do you mean it?” said Angelica. “Is Lady Washington really mine?”
“Yes,” he said.
She dropped her hands in her lap and sighed wearily. “It doesn’t
seem possible,” she murmured. She paused and seemed to be running
over the situation in her mind. Presently she spoke as if unaware
that the others were listening. “I knew it would happen, though,”
she said. “I knew it. I reckon I prayed enough.” She smiled as a
great thrill of happiness ran through her, and glancing up, saw that
all the rest were smiling, too.
“I’m so happy,” she said apologetically. Then she bethought herself,
and furtively reached down and tapped the frame of her chair with
her knuckles.
“Well, here’s the toast,” said Mr. Palfrey, rising. “To the lady and
Lady Washington.” And they all rose and drank it standing.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MY HUSBAND’S BOOK[7]
By James Matthew Barrie
Footnote 7:
From _Two of Them_. Copyright, 1893, by the United States Book Co.
LONG before I married George I knew that he was dreadfully
ambitious. We were not yet engaged when he took me into his
confidence about his forthcoming great book, which was to take the
form of an inquiry into the Metaphysics of Ethics. “I have not begun
it yet,” he always said, “but I shall be at it every night once the
winter sets in.” In the daytime George is only a clerk, though a
much-valued one, so that he has to give the best hours of his life
to a ledger.
“If you only had more time at your disposal,” I used to say, when he
told me of the book that was to make his name.
“I don’t complain,” he said, heartily, like the true hero he always
is, except when he has to take medicine. “Indeed, you will find that
the great books have nearly always been written by busy men. I am
firmly of opinion that if a man has original stuff in him it will
come out.”
He glowed with enthusiasm while he spoke in this inspiriting strain,
and some of his ardor passed into me. When we met we talked of
nothing but his future; at least he talked while I listened with
clasped hands. It was thus that we became engaged. George was no
ordinary lover. He did not waste his time telling me that I was
beautiful, or saying “Beloved!” at short intervals. No, when we were
alone he gave me his hand to hold, and spoke fervently of the
Metaphysics of Ethics.
Our engagement was not of a very long duration, for George coaxed me
into marriage thus—“I cannot settle down to my book,” he said,
“until we are married.”
His heart was so set on that book that I yielded. We wandered all
over London together buying the furniture. There was a settee that I
particularly wanted, but George, with his usual thoughtfulness,
said:
“Let us rather buy a study table. It will help me at my work, and
once the book is out we shall be able to afford half a dozen
settees.”
Another time he went alone to buy some pictures for the
drawing-room.
“I got a study chair instead,” he told me in the evening. “I knew
you would not mind, my darling, for the chair is the very thing for
writing a big book in.”
He even gave thought to the ink-bottle.
“In my room,” he said, “I am constantly discovering that my
ink-bottle is empty, and it puts me out of temper to write with
water and soot. I therefore think we ought to buy one of those large
ink-stands with two bottles.”
“We shall,” I replied, with the rapture of youth, “and mine will be
the pleasant task of seeing that the bottles are kept full.”
“Dearest!” he said, fondly, for this was the sort of remark that
touched him most.
“Every evening,” I continued, encouraged by his caressing tones,
“you will find your manuscripts lying on the table waiting for you,
and a pen with a new nib in it.”
“What a wife you will make!” he exclaimed.
“But you mustn’t write too much,” I said. “You must have fixed
hours, and at a certain time, say at ten o’clock, I shall insist on
your ceasing to write for the night.”
“That seems a wise arrangement. But sometimes I shall be too
entranced in the work, I fancy, to leave it without an effort.”
“Ah,” I said, “I shall come behind you, and snatch the pen from your
hand!”
“Every Saturday night,” he said, “I shall read to you what I have
written during the week.”
No wonder I loved him.
We were married on a September day, and the honeymoon passed
delightfully in talk about the book. Nothing proved to me the depth
of George’s affection so much as his not beginning the great work
before the honeymoon was over. So I often told him, and he smiled
fondly in reply. The more, indeed, I praised him the better pleased
he seemed to be. The name for this is sympathy.
Conceive us at home in our dear little house in Clapham.
“Will you begin the book at once?” I asked George the day after we
arrived.
“I have been thinking that over,” he said. “I needn’t tell you that
there is nothing I should like so much, but, on the whole, it might
be better to wait a week.”
“Don’t make the sacrifice for my sake,” I said, anxiously.
“Of course it is for your sake,” he replied.
“But it is such a pity to waste any more time,” I said.
“There is no such hurry,” he answered, rather testily.
I looked at him in surprise.
“What I mean,” he said, “is that I can be thinking the arrangement
of the book over.”
We had, of course, a good many callers at this time, and I told most
of them about the book. For reasons to be seen by and by I regret
this now.
When the week had become a fortnight, I insisted on leaving George
alone in the study after dinner. He looked rather gloomy, but I
filled the ink-bottles, and put the paper on the desk, and handed
him his new pen. He took it, but did not say “thank you.”
An hour afterward I took him a cup of tea. He was still sitting by
the fire, but the pen had fallen from his hands.
“You are not sleeping, George?” I asked.
“Sleeping!” he cried, as indignantly as if I had charged him with
crime. “No, I’m thinking.”
“You haven’t written any yet?”
“I was just going to begin when you came in. I’ll begin as soon as
I’ve drunk this tea.”
“Then I’ll leave you to your work, dear.”
I returned to the study at nine o’clock. He was still in the same
attitude.
“I wish you would bring me a cup of tea,” he said.
“I brought you one hours ago.”
“Eh? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Oh, George! I talked with you about it. Why, here it is on the
table, untouched.”
“I declare you never mentioned it to me. I must have been thinking
so deeply that I never noticed you. You should have spoken to me.”
“But I did speak, and you answered.”
“My dear, I assure you I did nothing of the sort. This is very
vexing, for it has spoiled my evening’s work.”
The next evening George said that he did not feel in the mood for
writing, and I suppose I looked disappointed, for he flared up.
“I can’t be eternally writing,” he growled.
“But you haven’t done anything at all yet.”
“That is a rather ungenerous way of expressing it.”
“But you spoke as if the work would be a pleasure.”
“Have I said that it is not a pleasure? If you knew anything of
literary history, you would be aware that there are occasions when
the most industrious writers cannot pen a line.”
“They must make a beginning some time, though!”
“Well, I shall make a beginning to-morrow.”
Next evening he seemed in no hurry to go into the study.
“I’ll hang the bedroom pictures,” he said.
“No, no, you must get begone to your book.”
“You are in a desperate hurry to see me at that book.”
“You spoke as if you were so anxious to begin it.”
“So I am. Did I say I wasn’t?”
He marched off to the study, banging the drawing-room door. An hour
or so afterward I took him his tea. He had left his study door open
so that I could see him on the couch before I entered the room. When
he heard the rattle of the tea-things he jumped up and strode to the
study table, where, when I entered, he pretended to be busy writing.
“How are you getting on, dear?” I asked, with a sinking at the
heart.
“Excellently, my love, excellently.”
I looked at him so reproachfully that he blushed.
“I think,” said he, when he had drunk the tea, “that I have done
enough for one night. I mustn’t overdo it.”
“Won’t you let me hear what you have written?”
He blushed again.
“Wait till Saturday,” he said.
“Then let me put your papers away,” I said, for I was anxious to see
whether he had written anything at all.
“I couldn’t think of it,” he replied, covering the paper with his
elbows.
Next morning I counted the clean sheets of paper. They were just as
I had put them on the table. So it went on for a fortnight or more,
with this difference. He either suspected that I counted the sheets,
or thought that I might take it into my head to do so. To allay my
suspicions, therefore, he put away what he called his manuscript in
a drawer, which he took care to lock. I discovered that one of my
own keys opened this drawer, and one day I examined the manuscripts.
They consisted of twenty-four pages of paper, without a word written
on them. Every evening he added two more clean pages to the contents
of the drawer. This discovery made me so scornful that I taxed him
with the deceit. At first he tried to brazen it out, but I was
merciless, and then he said:
“The fact is that I can’t write by gas-light. I fear I shall have to
defer beginning the work until spring.”
“But you used to say that the winter was the best season for
writing.”
“I thought so at the time, but I find I was wrong. It will be a
great blow to me to give up the work for the present, but there is
no help for it.”
When spring came I reminded him that now was his opportunity to
begin the book.
“You are eternally talking about that book,” he snarled.
“I haven’t mentioned it for a month.”
“Well, you are always looking at me as if I should be at it.”
“Because you used to speak so enthusiastically about it.”
“I am as enthusiastic as ever, but I can’t be forever writing at the
book.”
“We have now been married seven months, and you haven’t written a
line yet.”
He banged the doors again, and a week afterward he said that spring
was a bad time for writing a book.
“One likes to be out-of-doors,” he said, “in spring, watching the
trees become green again. Wait till July, when one is glad to be
indoors. Then I’ll give four hours to the work every evening.”
Summer came, and then he said:
“It is too hot to write books. Get me another bottle of iced
soda-water. I’ll tackle the book in the autumn.”
We have now been married more than five years, but the book is not
begun yet. As a rule, we now shun the subject, but there are times
when he still talks hopefully of beginning. I wonder if there are
any other husbands like mine.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
WAR
By JACK LONDON
HE was a young man, not more than twenty-four or five, and he might
have sat his horse with the careless grace of his youth had he not
been so catlike and tense. His black eyes roved everywhere, catching
the movements of twigs and branches where small birds hopped,
questing ever onward through the changing vistas of trees and brush,
and returning always to the clumps of undergrowth on either side.
And as he watched, so did he listen, though he rode on in silence,
save for the boom of heavy guns from far to the west. This had been
sounding monotonously in his ears for hours, and only its cessation
would have aroused his notice. For he had business closer to hand.
Across his saddle-bow was balanced a carbine.
So tensely was he strung, that a bunch of quail, exploding into
flight from under his horse’s nose, startled him to such an extent
that automatically, instantly, he had reined in and fetched the
carbine half-way to his shoulder. He grinned sheepishly, recovered
himself, and rode on. So tense was he, so bent upon the work he had
to do, that the sweat stung his eyes unwiped, and unheeded rolled
down his nose and spattered his saddle pommel. The band of his
cavalryman’s hat was fresh-stained with sweat. The roan horse under
him was likewise wet. It was high noon of a breathless day of heat.
Even the birds and squirrels did not dare the sun, but sheltered in
shady hiding places among the trees.
Man and horse were littered with leaves and dusted with yellow
pollen, for the open was ventured no more than was compulsory. They
kept to the brush and trees, and invariably the man halted and
peered out before crossing a dry glade or naked stretch of upland
pasturage. He worked always to the north, though his way was
devious, and it was from the north that he seemed most to apprehend
that for which he was looking. He was no coward, but his courage was
only that of the average civilized man, and he was looking to live,
not die.
Up a small hillside he followed a cowpath through such dense scrub
that he was forced to dismount and lead his horse. But when the path
swung around to the west, he abandoned it and headed to the north
again along the oak-covered top of the ridge.
The ridge ended in a steep descent—so steep that he zigzagged back
and forth across the face of the slope, sliding and stumbling among
the dead leaves and matted vines and keeping a watchful eye on the
horse above that threatened to fall down upon him. The sweat ran
from him, and the pollen-dust, settling pungently in mouth and
nostrils, increased his thirst. Try as he would, nevertheless the
descent was noisy, and frequently he stopped, panting in the dry
heat and listening for any warning from beneath.
At the bottom he came out on a flat, so densely forested that he
could not make out its extent. Here the character of the woods
changed, and he was able to remount. Instead of the twisted hillside
oaks, tall straight trees, big-trunked and prosperous, rose from the
damp fat soil. Only here and there were thickets, easily avoided,
while he encountered winding, park-like glades where the cattle had
pastured in the days before war had run them off.
His progress was more rapid now, as he came down into the valley,
and at the end of half an hour he halted at an ancient rail fence on
the edge of a clearing. He did not like the openness of it, yet his
path lay across to the fringe of trees that marked the banks of the
stream. It was a mere quarter of a mile across that open, but the
thought of venturing out in it was repugnant. A rifle, a score of
them, a thousand, might lurk in that fringe by the stream.
Twice he essayed to start, and twice he paused. He was appalled by
his own loneliness. The pulse of war that beat from the west
suggested the companionship of battling thousands; here was naught
but silence, and himself, and possible death-dealing bullets from a
myriad ambushes. And yet his task was to find what he feared to
find. He must go on, and on, till somewhere, some time, he
encountered another man, or other men, from the other side,
scouting, as he was scouting, to make report, as he must make
report, of having come in touch.
Changing his mind, he skirted inside the woods for a distance, and
again peeped forth. This time, in the middle of the clearing, he saw
a small farmhouse. There were no signs of life. No smoke curled from
the chimney, not a barnyard fowl clucked and strutted. The kitchen
door stood open, and he gazed so long and hard into the black
aperture that it seemed almost that a farmer’s wife must emerge at
any moment.
He licked the pollen and dust from his dry lips, stiffened himself,
mind and body, and rode out into the blazing sunshine. Nothing
stirred. He went on past the house, and approached the wall of trees
and bushes by the river’s bank. One thought persisted maddeningly.
It was of the crash into his body of a high-velocity bullet. It made
him feel very fragile and defenseless, and he crouched lower in the
saddle.
Tethering his horse in the edge of the wood, he continued a hundred
yards on foot till he came to the stream. Twenty feet wide it was,
without perceptible current, cool and inviting, and he was very
thirsty. But he waited inside his screen of leafage, his eyes fixed
on the screen on the opposite side. To make the wait endurable, he
sat down, his carbine resting on his knees. The minutes passed, and
slowly his tenseness relaxed. At last he decided there was no
danger; but just as he prepared to part the bushes and bend down to
the water, a movement among the opposite bushes caught his eye.
It might be a bird. But he waited. Again there was an agitation of
the bushes, and then, so suddenly that it almost startled a cry from
him, the bushes parted and a face peered out. It was a face covered
with several weeks’ growth of ginger-colored beard. The eyes were
blue and wide apart, with laughter-wrinkles in the corners that
showed despite the tired and anxious expression of the whole face.
All this he could see with microscopic clearness, for the distance
was no more than twenty feet. And all this he saw in such brief
time, that he saw it as he lifted his carbine to his shoulder. He
glanced along the sights, and knew that he was gazing upon a man who
was as good as dead. It was impossible to miss at such point blank
range.
But he did not shoot. Slowly he lowered the carbine and watched. A
hand, clutching a water-bottle, became visible and the ginger beard
bent downward to fill the bottle. He could hear the gurgle of the
water. Then arm and bottle and ginger beard disappeared behind the
closing bushes. A long time he waited, when, with thirst unslaked,
he crept back to his horse, rode slowly across the sun-washed
clearing, and passed into the shelter of the woods beyond.
II
Another day, hot and breathless. A deserted farmhouse, large, with
many outbuildings and an orchard, standing in a clearing. From the
woods, on a roan horse, carbine across pommel, rode the young man
with the quick black eyes. He breathed with relief as he gained the
house. That a fight had taken place here earlier in the season was
evident. Clips and empty cartridges, tarnished with verdigris, lay
on the ground, which, while wet, had been torn up by the hoofs of
horses. Hard by the kitchen garden were graves, tagged and numbered.
From the oak tree by the kitchen door, in tattered, weather-beaten
garments, hung the bodies of two men. The faces, shriveled and
defaced, bore no likeness to the faces of men. The roan horse
snorted beneath them, and the rider caressed and soothed it and tied
it farther away.