A great deal of feeble sympathy was expressed for the Foljambes
when it became known they had lost their money. But regret for
that sort of misfortune to one’s neighbors is always tempered when
they have previously shone before the world as the dispensers of
extravagant hospitality. Thrifty, self-centered people who have been
inconspicuous because of their objection to amusing society at the
expense of their own purses, are apt, under similar circumstances, to
receive much more hearty condolence. The Foljambes, father, mother,
sons, and daughters, invitations to whose parties had been scrambled
for in New York and Newport, during several seasons past, were now
reaping the harvest of over-abundant giving.
It was generally agreed that Mrs. Foljambe, a weak, silly woman with
a bee in her bonnet for fashionable life, had quite long enough
enjoyed her place in the fierce light that beats upon the throne
of American plutocracy. The father, a clever financier, with the
one social accomplishment of effacing himself when the strain of
recognizing his individuality became too great upon the frequenters
of his house, was dismissed with even scanter consideration. The
sons--one recently started in business, the other but just out of
college--were very little known except to their cronies. The real
stars of the Foljambe family, those whose effulgence or eclipse
was likely to be of consequence in the social firmament, were the
daughters, Lilian and Olive.
Of Lilian, the elder, it had been customary to say that in a
matrimonial point of view she might be expected to do “anything.”
Beautiful, accomplished, fine of grain, cradled and bred in polished
luxury, she was the traditional princess who could not sleep for
the crumpled roseleaf in her couch of down. Since she had made her
appearance before the world her friends had watched, open-mouthed,
to see who would carry off the prize. Of the half a dozen men
prominently in her train, none could be adjudged exactly fit for her.
“Dancing men and dips”--meaning diplomats--was the way they were
summed up. Of course it was not to be expected that a mere diner-out
and frequenter of cotillons--a man whose boast it was not to have
missed a ball or banquet during the season--could presume to mate
with this very choice specimen of the leading set in Manhattan’s
aristocracy. Lilian Foljambe was destined to high place, name, fame,
and representative position. She was of the stuff--declared some
enthusiasts--of which the wives of our ambassadors to foreign courts
should be made. Though if ever there was a head for which nature
intended a tiara--inherited, not bought--it was Lilian Foljambe’s.
But Lilian had come to be four-and-twenty--an age in woman when
the insolence of youth must needs begin to curb itself and look
about to reckon the comparative values of its chances for actual
establishment in life, without realizing any of the hopes fixed upon
her. She had, needless to say, her full complement of unemotional
offers from the kind of young men whom she met nightly wearing
evening dress with white waistcoats, who talked afterward at the
club together concerning their ill-luck with her, and wondered “what
the deuce the girl was waitin’ for.” She went abroad year after year
with her family, was presented at various courts, made many titled
acquaintances, was extolled for her good looks, and reputed to have
twice her actual fortune. And still there was no hint of the “great
match,” or of any kind of a match, for the fair Miss Foljambe.
Olive, on the contrary, with not half Lilian’s beauty or style or
grand air, had at twenty-one her quiver full of admirers who would
have liked to be something more. Olive’s chief possessions were a
brown skin, a pair of laughing hazel eyes, a bewitching mouth and
teeth, plenty of common sense, a merry nature, and a nimble wit.
During her first winter “out” she had announced to her family her
intention to marry Stephen Luttridge, a clever young architect, who
had nothing in particular a year. Mrs. Foljambe--ranking the outcome
of Luttridge’s profession, together with those of art and literature,
as in some way connected with food cooked in chafing-dishes and
a maid-servant receiving cards between thumb and finger--looked
honestly alarmed. She induced her husband to declare that he would
give nothing “down” with either daughter unless she should marry to
please her parents.
Olive smilingly declared that she could very well afford to wait
until Luttridge should have three thousand a year, at which time she
meant to take the matter into her own hands. Mr. Foljambe, egged on
by his wife, had stipulated that the affair should not be called an
engagement. And Olive had answered, laughing, that she did not care
what they called it, provided no other girl got Stephen Luttridge.
Now a crash had come. Foljambe’s name, hitherto most familiar to a
set of men who had confidence in his probity and were dazzled by his
schemes, had been seen of late in every newspaper in connection with
the story of his stupendous, over-confident, and rash speculations.
And such a tremendous failure had not been chronicled in years! It
was a curious fact that the men who commented on it said generally,
in conclusion, “If he could only have gone on for one week longer, by
George, he’d have been safe!”
Foljambe was not afraid to meet his creditors. He had chosen a trusty
and capable friend to be his assignee for their benefit, and was sure
he could more than pay his debts--though his remaining assets were
not all of a kind to be immediately turned into cash, and he could
hardly expect much of a surplus for himself. Indeed, nobody else
expected his assignee to be even able to satisfy the creditors; and
so his credit, even with his friends, was entirely gone. He had given
to his sons good educations with which to fight the world on their
own account--for most young Americans a more fatherly benefaction
than a balance at a bank and leisure to haunt clubs. And they were
manly young fellows. It was, in plain words, his womenkind of whom
Martin Foljambe was afraid.
His wife, with whom he had begun life in the narrowest fashion--who
had helped herself with both hands to the accretions of his
successful business career--would never, he knew, be able to forgive
the folly of his downfall. With women of her type, to have is to
forget all previous deficiencies, to claim prosperity as a right, to
resent reverses as a personal wrong. Sweet, beautiful Lilian, who was
the poetry of his prosy existence, she would be gentle and forbearing
with him. But Lilian, deprived of her luxuries, was an image he could
not bear to contemplate. He knew her to be so utterly unfitted for
the world of work-a-day. Olive, now, was in some way different. She,
like her sister, had been an extravagant little puss. But Olive had
a way of pulling herself together and facing contingencies that gave
him more hope for her endurance of the change.
Those were sad days in the great stately house off the Park, and so
well known to the world of fashion, following the Foljambe failure.
The large staff of servants was prompt to desert the sinking ship.
A buxom kitchen-maid officiated over the copper stew-pans of the
departed chef. Mrs. Foljambe, in her bed with nervous prostration, in
charge of a trained nurse, complained that she could not get a cup of
bouillon fit to eat since Lenormand had left. Next the stables were
depopulated. Then the pictures and curios and ceramics were sold at
auction, and the house was offered for sale by the assignee, to whom
everything had been surrendered. As there is always in the great
metropolis some family stepping up to replace one that chances to
step down, the agents effected a prompt “arrangement” by which the
Foljambe mansion, furniture and all, passed into other ownership.
In less than two months after his misfortune Mr. Foljambe stepped
out alone into the street, and looked back upon a dwelling in which
he had no belongings save a couple of modest trunks and several
portmanteaux to be called for by an expressman later on.
Who shall say that Martin Foljambe did not feel a lump of bitterness
in his throat as he gave his final instructions to a care-taker and
walked hurriedly away into the avenue whence he could no longer see
his home? It had been at his wife’s instigation that he had built it;
she had devised, superintended, ordered everything on a scale that
outshone most of his predecessors in such constructions in their
neighborhood. The only things she had not concerned herself about
were the bills. Enormous as they were, he had paid them without a
hint to her that she must have been cheated in various quarters.
But it had been many a long year since Mrs. Foljambe had concerned
herself about the sum total of a bill!
All--all--the fruits of his manhood’s work had been lavished at her
feet, and here, when he was wounded to the quick by the jilt Fortune,
his wife, where was she? Sailing eastward in the best rooms of a
crack ocean liner, in company with her lovely Lilian, without whose
society she had declared it would be impossible to recover the tone
of her shattered nerves!
It was really the only thing for her to do, so had said Mrs.
Foljambe to her doctor, reminding him of the tremendous help she
had previously derived from certain baths in Germany. The doctor,
wise in his generation and well aware of what was expected of him,
had suavely acquiesced. Mr. Foljambe was informed by his wife that
her sole chance of recovery lay in the jaunt in question--and as to
expense, it was a real economy, he knew. The money she was to have at
her disposal was a sum of a few thousand dollars which had been given
to her years before by her husband--which he had invested for her in
her own name--and which had chanced to have been never as yet spent
by her. So the state-room on the ship had been taken within a day or
two after she had announced to him her intention of going abroad.
Lilian, clinging to her father’s neck with tears and caresses,
assured him that she did not want to go; that it would be dull as
ditchwater for her, and that she should always be thinking of him
left behind. But Lilian was overpowered, and in due time yielded to
her mother’s decree that her first duty was to her.
Not so Olive. Without protestation, without gush over her father, she
had calmly said she had no idea of going abroad that summer. With the
help of her friend Luttridge she had picked out a little flat on the
west side of the Park, where there were tree-tops for the trouble of
going to the window and a delightful sense of being out-of-doors. The
sale of her pearl necklace had paid for the furniture. She retained
as cook the kitchen-maid who had been trained under M. Lenormand, and
then, when all was done, announced to her father that they--he, she,
and the brother recently come home from college--were going there to
live, the other brother having resigned his place in New York and
gone to the West to grow up with the country.
The evening of the day that found Martin Foljambe creeping dejectedly
out of his former mansion, with a heart in his bosom heavy as the
iron that had seared it, brought him uptown to see for the first time
Miss Olive’s new arrangements for his comfort.
To Martin, past the age for picnics, the whole thing appeared but a
mournful makeshift. But Olive and Luttridge, who came in to dine upon
a grilled fowl and a can of mock-turtle soup, and Tom, the recent
graduate, who was charged by Olive “to help to cheer papa,” laughed
and chaffed and made merry with the glorious unconcern of youth.
After dinner, when the two young men went out into the Park to smoke
their pipes, Olive sat with her father upon a sofa pinched between
two doorways of their narrow sitting-room.
“And now tell me, papa,” she said with alarming briskness, “just what
I may expect as an allowance to keep house upon.”
He explained that for the present he would have nothing he could
call his own except the sum the assignee was paying him weekly for
his services in assisting to wind up the assigned estate to the best
possible advantage, and that, even from that, certain amounts would
have to be deducted for use for things other than mere housekeeping.
“Oh, well,” said she, “we shall be able to live. And do you know,
I already love this. It is like a honeymoon without the bother of
a husband. You will have an excellent draught of air through your
bedroom. I forgot to tell you that I got a note to-day from Mrs.
Louis Rushmore offering me the work on her husband’s notes of that
expedition they made last year to Mexico. Mrs. Rushmore started in
herself to put them in shape for publication, but seems to have got
into a hole. You know, it is to be a sort of ‘In Memoriam’ for Mr.
Rushmore, published on the most lavish scale, with illustrations and
all that. She recalled that when we all met in Mexico Mr. Rushmore
took rather a fancy to me principally because I was the only person
of the party who could read his handwriting. You remember, he got me
to copy out in his note-book certain of his own memoranda that he
couldn’t decipher to save himself?”
“And how, pray,” said Mr. Foljambe, writhing upon the hard little
sofa Olive and Luttridge had thought so artistic in design, “did Mrs.
Rushmore come to suppose you were in need of employment?”
“Because, daddy dear, I’ve been foraging around for something to do,
for a month past,” said the girl, frankly. “You know I am nothing if
not up to date. I expected to be somebody’s secretary, thanks to my
good, clear handwriting. But the blessing of Mrs. Rushmore’s work
is that I can do most of it just here, and at the same time ‘boss’
the maid, who might get tired and bolt if she were left too much to
herself.”
“Poor Rushmore died just while he was deciding to go into San
Miguel with me,” remarked Mr. Foljambe. “He was one of the careful,
conservative kind--while I--”
“Don’t be ashamed of your spirit of daring--don’t, papa; you share it
liberally with me!” said Olive, gayly. “I haven’t the vaguest idea of
what San Miguel was or is, but I’m perfectly sure I’d have gone into
it and left Mr. Rushmore trembling on the brink.”
“It was one of my failures, dear--a mining speculation that promised
everything, and flattened out in a year or two. If I had the money
now that my holdings in that stock represent to me, it wouldn’t
be long before I should be out of this pit, I tell you. Until I
was failing, I hardly counted the cost of it. What it has cost me
amounted to a fortune in itself; and I hold--or rather my assignee
for the benefit of my creditors now holds--a strong majority of the
whole capital stock. But within the last few years there has been no
work done in the mine except what the sale of ore extracted would
pay for--which has not been much--and the stock cannot now be sold
for even a penny a share. Indeed I advised the assignee to-day to
sell the shares to anybody who will offer anything whatever for them,
and to do it quickly, before the chap can change his mind. Olive,
my child, whether you succeed or not in your Rushmore business, I’m
proud of you for taking up the first work that comes to hand. But
there’s one thing I ought to ask--how long is Luttridge going to be
satisfied to do without you?”
“Of course, papa, he was deadly foolish,” said Olive, crimsoning. “He
wanted to be married right away, and come in here, the saucy fellow.
But I’ve stuck to my ultimatum of last autumn. When he gets enough to
keep us without my being a drag on him, I’ll say ‘yes.’ Just now I
wouldn’t leave you for all the world. Every minute of this day I’ve
been thinking of your getting home and finding everything so nice.”
Foljambe’s heart reproached him for his contempt of her poor
devisings. He caught his brave little woman in his arms and kissed
her as he had not done in years.
Olive’s interest in deciphering the Rushmore hieroglyphics grew
with the continuance of her work, which daily opened out into new
channels of discovery and information. Mrs. Rushmore, rejoiced to
find she had not misplaced her confidence in the girl’s ability, went
off to Europe, leaving the whole charge of the book in Miss Olive’s
hands, together with a very liberal sum to be paid her in weekly
installments in remuneration, and the promise of more to follow when
the work should be finished. Foljambe himself, in better health and
spirits for his daughter’s guardian care, found that, on the whole,
his enjoyment of life was rather increased than diminished. His
younger son rejoiced his family by finding employment as secretary to
one of his father’s old friends, who was primarily to take him off
for a summer of travel through the wonders of the far West. Letters
from Mrs. Foljambe, while giving gratifying assurance of her physical
improvement and of the usual impression made by Lilian’s beauty upon
casual grandees, did not now touch a sore spot in Martin’s heart, for
the simple reason that the wound was healing under Olive’s influence.
Summer came, and Olive, at her desk heaped with dictionaries,
encyclopedias, and works of reference, transferred from Mrs.
Rushmore’s library, had hardly time to wonder if she were herself.
While all the other young women of her acquaintance were preparing
gowns for their holiday campaign, going off to lovely country homes
with keen zest for the outdoor life that had previously been her
greatest joy, or taking wing for Europe, she in her trim cotton gown
sat down by nine o’clock to spend all the morning hours in close
devotion to her task in hand.
With her mental energies thus healthily astir, her faculties bent
upon elucidating and compiling interesting facts, she was really
happy and at her best. She could truly say that she envied no one in
the world.
“After all, it’s no more than you, and Stephen Luttridge, and lots
of nice, clever men who deserve just as much of the pleasure of
life as I do, are doing every day,” she said one evening, when her
father told her she was a chip off the old block as far as working
was concerned. “And while you are endowing me with your attributes,
daddy, give me your pluck and--something higher, please. Even if
I weren’t getting paid for it at the best market rates, I’d never
begrudge this summer, that’s brought me to know my own dear father
as he is. Thank goodness, there comes Stephen to take me for a walk.
All this bottled-up energy of mine is fearful if I get no physical
outlet in the day. Daddy, I forgot to tell you, I’ve been brushing
up my Spanish latterly. I’ve had two lessons a week from a cheap and
solemn little don Stephen found for me. So many of my Mexican letters
are in Spanish I found it almost necessary to know their language
better. To-day my little professor made me his farewell, and we had a
conversation in his own tongue that would have startled you--I really
think I talked faster than he did--if not so grammatically.”
“I don’t doubt it,” replied her father, looking at her admiringly. If
Olive had told him she had taken a prize for an essay in any branch
of science after two months of study he would hardly have doubted her.
It was harder work when the heat of July struck the city. Olive,
yielding to her father’s solicitation, went off then for a week to
a friend in the country, but came back determined not to try the
experiment again. She was out of all touch with the people she met
at the Claverings’ house party. Kind as they meant to be to her,
she had lost the shibboleth, the habit of thought and speech, that
could make her one of their circle. And if, on her return to town,
thoughts would intrude of wide, smooth-shaven emerald lawns, great
forest trees parting to reveal vistas of hill and lake, flower-beds
blazoning the turf, rides on horseback, days on the golf links, and
long, delightful country walks, she had courage to put them aside.
But all this happened to be at the time of Luttridge’s holiday; when,
seeing how much he needed change from office work, Olive had, in her
own bright, imperious way, insisted that her lover should go off to
the Maine woods for a fortnight’s fishing, without regard to her.
And Stephen, albeit reluctantly, had acquiesced. One morning, as she
sat down to her desk, the ancient Aztecs seemed for a while to be
more than ever distressingly remote and uninteresting; then the maid
came in with a long chapter of complaints about the iniquities of the
janitor and butcher boy. When that was over, Olive’s eye fell upon
her calendar. It was the day when, the year before, the Foljambes
had been giving their great ball at Newport, accounts of which
were cabled over sea, and had filled the atmosphere of the Western
Hemisphere. Of what consequence were the Foljambes now to the world
that had courted them?
“Evidently,” thought Olive, dashing into her papers, with an heroic
attempt to fix her mind upon them, “it does me no good to go
a-junketing. Between me and my other life a gulf is fixed that I
should be wiser not to attempt to bridge.”
A ring at the gong-bell of the flat! So sharp a ring as to make her
start like a guilty creature. This interruption brought her to the
discovery that, for the first time since her change of abode and
habit, she had been crying over “things.” Katrina’s arrival with a
dingy card revealed the name of a Mexican, an ex-journalist, employed
by Mrs. Rushmore to make certain researches of which the result was
to be reported to Olive herself. In her capacity of editor, the
latter had already received several communications from this Mr.
Ramirez.
“But there are two,” whispered Olive, who, from her little study
divided by curtains from their only reception-room, could distinctly
hear voices and footsteps.
“Yes, m’m; but one of the gentlemen didn’t give a card. He’s a--a
person, m’m--not a caller, and he’s jabbering away for dear life in
French or Eyetalian or Rooshan, or some o’ them desperate tongues,
to the other one, m’m. Shall I say you’ll be out directly, Miss
Foljambe?”
“Yes, Katrina, and bring me a glass of water,” said Olive, meekly.
She was glad to remain alone for a little while, subduing her
nervous fit, and swabbing the marks of tears around her eyes. In her
present unwonted resentment against existing circumstances she was
even inclined to eschew the ancient Aztecs and the whole splendid
inheritance they have left to posterity in the New World.
“It is really the heat that has got the better of me,” she thought.
“But how much worse for poor Katrina in that little burning-glass of
a kitchen! I am ashamed of myself. I will, positively, never do so
any more.”
The voices of her waiting visitors, at first subdued to the ordinary
pitch of a stranger’s tones upon entering an unfamiliar place, here
forced themselves upon her aural consciousness. The men were speaking
in Spanish, and certainly not of the matters Olive was expected to
hold in common interest with Ramirez.
“It is not the first time, Juan, that you have tempted me with
ventures; and they have always come to nothing. I haven’t the money
to spare, I tell you; and that’s flat.”
“There is no mistake this time, Ramirez. If I could only make you
believe me! If you do not accept, I go to Señor Mores, who, when he
knows the facts, will take me up quickly. Think of it! A beggarly sum
in hand, we buy out the San Miguel stock from a man who does not know
its value, and our fortunes are made forever.”
San Miguel stock! In a flash it came to Olive that her father was the
chief owner of San Miguel stock.
“Why do you think I came to New York?” went on the eager speaker.
“For the pleasure of that long, bone-breaking journey across the
continent, eh? Or to pass a month in this city, where a poor man is
ruined by charges if he demands to eat or drink? Why did I fasten
myself to you to-day, and follow you here, when you showed no desire
for my company? Because I wanted to get ahead of another man who will
arrive to-morrow morning. Am I to fail because you, my oldest friend,
will not help me to raise the money? It is not a ‘fake,’ as you call
it in English. I swear to you that I speak the truth. San Miguel is
up, up--on the top of the wave. In two days the newspapers will have
the news of their rich find. Here is a telegram I received on arrival
at my hotel, a few hours since. The secret was to be kept only till
Latimer, the clever man of their syndicate, should have had time to
reach New York and visit Mr. Foljambe.”
“Foljambe! Caramba! Hold your tongue!” hissed Ramirez.
There was a sudden hush. The conversation passed into whispers.
Olive, trembling with excitement, slipped back into her bedroom, put
on her hat, seized gloves and parasol, and darted out to the rear of
the flat to interview Katrina.
“I cannot receive those men now, Katrina,” said the young lady,
breathlessly. “Give me full time to get out of their way, and
then--but not until they call you--tell them I am not at home.”
“It’s not sneak-thieves they’d be, Miss Foljambe, and you goin’ to
call up the police?” the maid asked with natural emotion.
“No, no, Katrina. They will do no harm. But I cannot stop to see
them. It is a matter of important business for me to attend to.
Something I have found out that I must see my father about, without
delay. Mind, you are on no account to give these men, if they ask for
it, Mr. Foljambe’s address downtown.”
“Trust me, miss,” said the woman, importantly. “They’d never be
gettin’ me to let on where they’d find the master, poor gentleman,
after all the troubles he’s had already.”
Olive, considering every moment’s delay of the men a clear gain, and
reckless of the evident belief of her honest handmaiden that she
was going to warn her father to flee from the myrmidons of justice,
hurried out of the front door.
Katrina, anxious to fulfill the trust imposed in her, tarried
inconceivably long; when Ramirez, his patience exhausted, rang
her up for the fourth or fifth time, the woman sauntered into the
room wearing an air of defiance blended with cunning. Between
Ramirez’s scant supply of colloquial English and Katrina’s voluble
mystifications the two men were fairly routed. The Mexican, putting
his papers upon the table, finally beat a retreat.
But he reckoned without his enemy.
“Maybe it’s me you think would be serving yer dirty summonses upon
the master!” cried she, as, exploding with wrath, she picked up the
envelope and thrust it back on him.
“Come away, Ramirez; the creature is certainly mad,” said the other,
nervously. To his mind this delay about trivialities, when he had a
fortune in his grasp, was insanity on Ramirez’s part as well.
* * * * *
Fleet of foot and full of courage, Olive sped upon her way. Reaching
the nearest station of the elevated railway she boarded a car and
fell into a seat, looking back in actual fear of finding herself
overtaken by the two Mexicans whom she had eluded. After all, was it
not a will-o’-the-wisp she was pursuing? As it often happened to her
in acting upon impulse, the first cool moment--though that did not
come until the train was well on the way downtown--brought its pangs
of self-distrust.
But nothing could go wrong about visiting her own dear father and
confiding in him her--A sudden jarring of the wheels upon the rails,
a shock--what was it? Olive, together with the other passengers in
her end of the car, was shot forward violently, all falling in a
heap. Then came a crash, a sound of shivered glass, some screams from
frightened women, and at last a full stop--after which people picked
themselves up and wondered whether or not they were badly hurt.
Coming around a curve they had run into the rear end of a train
stopped unexpectedly ahead of them because of a breakdown of its
engine. There were no serious bodily injuries, but there was much
agitation and every prospect of a long delay before the track could
be cleared and the train could proceed. Olive, the worse only for a
badly battered hat, a broken sunshade, some damage to her clothes,
and a scratch across her brow, had her hands full for a time with
pacifying other more nervous women and crying children, who could not
be persuaded they were not doomed to fall into the street below.
When at last she had succeeded in getting to the plank-walk along the
side of the railway track, and had thus, with the assistance of a
train hand, reached the next station, she descended to the level of
Mother Earth with her feelings somewhat dashed. In her forlorn plight
she was not fit to be seen on the streets, and indeed the condition
of her hat was so shocking as to make her hesitate to enter a public
vehicle. There was not a cab in sight, but after a rapid walk to
Broadway she discovered a great wholesale warehouse where, when she
had explained that she had just been in a collision on the railway,
they allowed her to purchase a cheap straw hat that was at least
better than the one she discarded.
More delays! The cable-car, into which she finally got, ran along
peacefully enough to just below Canal Street, where a block occurred,
necessitating an attempt at possession of her soul in patience until
the moments grew to feel like hours.
Unable to endure it longer, she sprang to the ground, crossing
through a jam of vehicles to the sidewalk, then stood looking up
and down for a cab. Everybody stared at her, until she was afraid
she might be arrested upon a charge of drunkenness, because of her
excitement and of her battered appearance.
Her face flamed with heat and exertion. The wound in her forehead
streaked her handkerchief with blood. It was very near mid-day.
Lacking a parasol, the sun’s ardor seemed to her more oppressive than
it had ever been before. And, as ill-luck would have it, the passing
cabs at that hour, in midsummer, and in that portion of the town,
were so few and far between, that not one, not already occupied, came
along until she was ready to cry with anxiety. It was the first time
she had ever been there alone.
Poor Olive felt her courage oozing out at her finger tips. After all,
would not she be laughed at by her father as a mistaken busybody,
concerning herself with affairs of which she had no knowledge? And as
the sun beat upon a pavement swarming with alien folk who jostled and
stared at her, she almost gave up in despair.
“You make some mistakes, my impetuous little Olive,” had
Stephen Luttridge said to her a few days before they parted,
“and--perhaps--commit some follies. But your intuitions are the
keenest, your pluck the best, I have ever seen in a woman. And I
promise you now, I am going to stand by them both, so long as we both
shall live.”
How Olive had glowed with pride at her lover’s eulogy! As it here
came to her memory, she turned bravely around facing the Battery,
and started to walk.
The pain in her head was growing; she felt a sensation of dizziness.
In all that crowd, pressing her onward or coming to meet her, there
was not a familiar face, or one to whom she could appeal.
At this moment, a blue-coated officer crossed the line of her
uncertain vision. Olive ran forward, laying her hand upon his arm,
and besought him to get a carriage for her. The man, scrutinizing
her closely, ended--to his eternal credit, be it said--by speaking
civilly.
“There’s one coming now, Miss, if you think you’d be fit to drive
alone. Perhaps you’d better step into a drug store till your head
cools down a bit.”
“Oh! no, no. I am all right, officer; I only want to get to my
father’s office, No. -- Wall Street, please. Tell the driver to take
me quickly, and I’ll thank you very, very much.”
Once inside the friendly hansom, Olive’s courage flowed back in
a full stream. For half a mile or more she lay at ease upon the
cushions, fanned herself, arranged her hat and veil anew, thought of
her father’s kind pity for her mischances, and rejoiced in finding
him--when, presto! the horse was down upon his knees and badly
damaged, the passenger shooting forward, her wrist twisted in the
attempt to prevent herself from falling further.
A crowd gathered about them. Olive, assisted to alight, protested
that she was not hurt; and a good Samaritan, who saw the girl’s
pallid cheeks, led her into a neighboring doorway, summoning another
cab.
“You must let me take you to your destination, though,” said the
gentleman who had aided her. “I happen to have daughters of my own
about your age, and should be very sorry to have one of them left to
shift for herself under these circumstances.”
“It can’t be so very far now to my father’s office in Wall Street,”
replied Olive, suppressing the pain of her injured wrist. “I am
dreadfully anxious to get to my father’s place of business.”
She mentioned his name, and the gentleman took off his hat--but was
evidently puzzled by her forlorn appearance.
“I have good reason to know Martin Foljambe,” he said, courteously.
“But for his generous action a few months ago--something he need not
have done, but chose to do--I should have been hard hit. My name is
Whitwell, and I beg you to give yourself no further concern, Miss
Foljambe. I shall surrender you safely to your father’s keeping in a
very little while.”
“Oh, if it is not too late!” exclaimed she, for the first time losing
her self-control.
“You are late for luncheon, if that’s what you mean; but I dare say
Mr. Foljambe will look out for you. It is always a treat to my young
women to descend upon me for their mid-day meal, and I am well broken
in to supplying them.”
When they stopped before the desired building and Olive offered him
her purse to pay the cab, her kind friend declined, of course, to
receive it, but observed that her cheeks had again grown very white.
In crossing the hall to the elevator he made her lean upon his arm,
and as they shot up to the floor upon which Martin Foljambe now
transacted his affairs, in the office of his assignee, her escort
felt that she was trembling painfully.
“I am growing weaker,” thought poor Olive to herself. “How wretched
to frighten papa like this. Oh, I must not, I will not faint! I will
hold out till I tell him about San Miguel.”
“Courage, my child,” said Mr. Whitwell. “In one moment you’ll be
there.”
At the end of a long corridor they saw the names they had come in
search of.
“He is in, Miss Foljambe,” said the young man to whom she had put the
query, “but I am sorry to say our orders are that Mr. Foljambe is
not to be interrupted. He is receiving some gentlemen on important
business.”
“Two foreigners?” asked the girl, forcing herself to speak calmly.
“I think so, Miss Foljambe. I was out at lunch when they called, but
I understood they are Spanish gentlemen, and Mr. Foljambe’s orders
were most explicit that he is not to be disturbed.”
Olive never knew how her strength held out to march past the
astonished clerk, tap at the door of her father’s room, and follow
this up by entering the forbidden portal. Quite two hours had passed
since she had quitted her home upon her mission of warning. There
had been full time for “Juan” to induce Ramirez to decide upon their
plan of action, find out Mr. Foljambe’s habitat downtown, and proceed
without interruption to the spot.
As already stated, Foljambe had decided that the mine was worthless,
and had advised his assignee to sell the San Miguel stock at
whatever price it would fetch. When, therefore, the two Mexicans
had appeared--offering for it a merely nominal sum, to be sure, but
accompanying their proposition with the guileless explanation that,
as Juan lived near the mine and had a little money, he was willing
to risk something on the venture of becoming part owner of the
property, though it seemed to be of no real value--Martin considered
himself in luck. He thought that here was a windfall, though
certainly not a large one.
While Ramirez, interpreting for his friend Juan, was in the very act
of urging an immediate acceptance, so that a matter of so little
importance might be closed without further bother, and while Foljambe
was holding back with an attempt to prove his indifference, making
excuse that the assignee would arrive presently and they could then
decide the matter, Olive had burst into the room.
“I beg your pardon, papa,” she said, frightened and faltering; “there
has been a little accident, and I must speak to you alone.”
Foljambe, much startled, put his arm around his daughter’s shoulders,
placed her in a chair, and requested his visitors to wait in another
room until the return of the gentleman through whose hands the matter
must pass. As they went out Ramirez darted upon the almost fainting
girl a look of suspicion and resentment.
“What is it, my dear?” asked the father, anxiously. “What in the
world has brought you down here alone, and in this condition?”
“Your friend, Mr. Whitwell, papa. He is waiting outside, I think; but
never mind him or my appearance or anything, till I ask you if you
have sold your San Miguel stock.”
“Good heavens!” cried Martin; “and what do you know, you kitten,
about San Miguel stock?”
“Only that it’s up--up--on the top of the wave,” she cried,
breathlessly, repeating what Juan had told in her hearing to Ramirez.
“That they have made a rich strike of ore. This man I saw here just
now has crossed the continent at top speed to buy you out; and
another person--somebody called Latimer, who, he says, is the clever
man of the syndicate--will be in New York to-morrow morning for the
same purpose. Oh, papa, if you have sold San Miguel it will break my
heart!”
“By George, I haven’t; but you were just in time!” cried Foljambe,
greatly excited. “It’s the closest call I ever had in all my business
life. How on earth you found out, Olive, beats me. But if it’s
true--good heavens, child, how did you find it out?”
“They were at our house this morning--talking together in Spanish,”
she said, her voice beginning to sound to her further and further
away--“and I remembered what you had told me about San Miguel. I
started without waiting a minute to find you, but the elevated train
broke down, and there was a block on the cable cars--it was very
hot--then my hansom horse fell down, and I hurt my wrist--I’m afraid,
papa, it’s beginning to make me feel--a little weak.”
She could articulate no longer. Her words trailed off into
incoherency. The long strain had been too much for her. For the first
time in her life, Olive fainted dead away.
Juan and Ramirez knew their game was up--knew it before a message
came to them from the room where Mr. Foljambe was occupied in
restoring his daughter to consciousness, where Mr. Whitwell, summoned
to come in, was explaining the circumstances of his encounter with
the little heroine.
For the visit and proposition of Mr. Latimer, which occurred the
morning following that of Ramirez and his friend, Mr. Foljambe was
sufficiently prepared. Latimer’s surprise when his offer to buy was
declined outright, as was also his rapid increase of the amount first
suggested as a fair equivalent for worthless stock, all this is
written on the tablets of Martin Foljambe’s memory. He will probably
never cease chuckling over it as a pendant to his daughter’s clever
interference.
Olive went on with the Rushmore memorial (which in due time appeared
in print, with great credit to the editor) until her father, coming
in one unbearably hot evening, gave her the welcome tidings that San
Miguel had set him on his feet again.
“We shall be rich again, my girl, thanks to your grit and
common-sense,” he added, bending over the sofa, where she reclined,
rather languid and overdone and trembling with excitement. “And about
the first use I shall make of spare funds will be to set up you and
Stephen. I take it, from what your mother writes, Lilian will marry
that Captain Ramsdell. I don’t care a hang about his being next in
succession to a baronet, but I do like his asking her when he thought
she had lost her money.”
“The bell!” cried Olive, springing to her feet as the welcome
annunciator sounded. “Glad as I am of your splendid news, papa, I am
gladder still that to-night has brought Stephen back.”
“I had quite forgotten that little circumstance,” remarked Martin, as
she flew by him like a whirlwind to meet her lover in the hall.