since I had that fall an hour ago. It knocked more out of me than
wind. I was thinking Pat M'Can here could get me a job, but he cant
for fear of the civil service. So its time I quit for good and all.
Ime going to put up my watch and get a gun. Then Ime going up to
Jacks. Mary cant refuse me a bite. Its little enough to give me Ime
thinking and its the last time Ile ask it too. The kids are going
out to a party--a sunday school party it is. Ile see them all once
more, and Ile say good-by to them. After supper when the kids are
gone I will get out the pistol and I will put the bullet where it
will do most good. May be Jack will be sorry when its too late may
be Mary will too. I dont know. If they had treated me white first
off, I woodent need to buy no gun now.
"Good-by now, Terry, and God Bless you all. Its time I was going
along to Marys if I want to see the kids again.
"Your old friend
"DAN MALONE."
When he had made an end of the letter he had a pull or two at his pipe,
and then he finished his beer. He took up what he had written and read
it over carefully to see if he had said all that needed to be said.
Satisfied, he folded it and tucked it inside the envelope. After four or
five whiffs more his pipe was smoked out. He emptied it on the table
with a sharp rap, and methodically put it back in the breast-pocket of
his coat.
Then he raised himself to his feet slowly and carefully, not knowing
just what bruised muscle he might chance to stretch by an inadvertent
gesture. He shuffled across to the bar and paid for his drinks, and
asked the barkeeper if there was a stamp to be had. As it happened, Tom
was able to give him one, which he stuck on the corner of the envelope.
"Say, Mr. Malone," asked the barkeeper, "ye don't want no tickets for
the Lady Dazzlers' Coterie Mask and Civic Ball, to-night, do ye? It's
goin' to be the most high-toned blow-out they ever had."
"I'm not goin' to balls any more," Malone answered, "I'm too old now."
Buttoning his thin overcoat tightly across the chest, he held out his
hand to Tom, to the barkeeper's great surprise.
"Good-bye," he said, "Good-bye. Maybe I won't see you again, Tom."
"Good-bye, Mr. Malone," Tom answered. "But ye'll be better in the
mornin,' I'm thinkin'."
"Yes," the elder man repeated, "I'll be better in the mornin'. Yes; I'm
goin' to make sure of that, to-night."
When he opened the outer door of the saloon the damp moisture suddenly
filled his lungs and he choked, but he dared not cough, as the strained
muscles of his side warned him.
Two doors above the saloon was a pawnbroker's office, with the three
golden balls hanging over the door, and with the unredeemed pledges
offered for sale in the broad window. Into this store Malone made his
way, glad to get out of the dank air, if only for a moment.
In perhaps five minutes he came forth holding in his hand the envelope
addressed to the Honorable Terence O'Donnell. He paused on the threshold
of the pawnshop and, by the light of the gas-jets in its window, he put
the pawn-ticket into the letter and then closed it. In the large
right-hand pocket of his thin overcoat there was something that had not
been there when he entered the pawnbroker's--something irregular in
shape; it was the revolver he had bought with the money advanced on his
watch.
He turned down the avenue again, for there was a letter-box on the
lamp-post at the corner occupied by M'Cann's saloon. The store between
the pawnbroker's and the barroom was an undertaker's; and Malone,
walking slowly past, saw in the window a little coffin, lined with white
satin.
"It'll take a bigger one than that for me," he said. "To-night's
Friday--they'll be havin' the funeral on Sunday."
At the corner he dropped the letter into the box on the lamp-post, just
as there came a weird shriek from an impatient tug in the river far
behind him. While he was waiting for a cable-car a lame newsboy limped
up to him and proffered the evening papers with a beseeching look.
Malone felt in his pocket and found only two coins, a nickel and a
quarter. He gave the quarter to the newsboy. Then he lifted himself
painfully on the rear platform of a cable-car, and handed the nickel to
the impatient conductor. The car clanged forward again; and soon the
halo about its colored lamp faded away in the murky distance.
(1895.)
A GLIMPSE OF THE UNDER WORLD
It was a little dinner indeed, a dinner for eight only; and it was given
one evening in March, in a spacious and handsome dwelling in Madison
Avenue, high up on the slope of Murray Hill. The wide dining-room was at
the rear of the house, and it had a broad butler's-pantry extending into
the yard behind. The large kitchen was under the dining-room; and under
the butler's-pantry was a room of the same size which the servants used
as a parlor. In one corner of this sitting-room for the domestics was
the dumb-waiter which connected with the pantry above, and in another
corner was a spiral staircase which allowed the butler to descend
swiftly to the kitchen in case of emergency. There was a table near the
window of this servants' parlor, with a battered student-lamp on it; and
around the table were grouped three or four chairs.
A whistle sounded gently in the kitchen, and the Swedish cook walked
leisurely to the speaking-tube and whistled back. Then she listened, and
heard the butler say, "They're all here now; I've got the oysters on the
table, and I'm a-goin' in now to announce dinner to the madam. So you
get that soup ready--do you hear?"
The cook did not deign to make any direct reply, but, as she left the
speaking-tube and went back to the range, she said, loud enough to be
heard by the servants in the sitting-room adjoining, "As though I did
not know anything! I will never have another place if a black man is
butler."
In the room under the pantry a sharp, wiry boy was grinning. "They're
allus havin' spats, ain't they, them two? If I was Cato I wouldn't let
no Dutch cook sass me, even if I was a nigger, would you?"
"Who is this young cub, when he's at 'ome?" asked the clean-shaven,
trim-looking young British valet.
"He's Tim," answered the Irish laundress.
"I'm Tim," said the boy, indignantly, "that's who I am, and I'm as good
as you are, too, for all you belong to a lord! And you needn't put on no
frills with me, neither, for when I'm a year or two older I can lick
ye!--see?"
"Don't ye mind the boy, Mr. Parsons," the Irish girl intervened. "He's
no call here at all, at all. He'd run of an errand belike in the mornin'
and does be sthrivin' to make himself useful. That's why they kept him
here the night."
"I've got just as good a right here as he has," the boy declared, "and
he doesn't come here after you either, Maggie--you're not his steady.
It's that French Elise he is sparkin'."
"An' greatly I care if he is! Sparkin', in truth! Bad cess to yer
impidence," said the pleasant-faced laundress, drawing herself up. "A
man, is it? It's lashins and lavins of men I could have if I'd a mind."
Fortunately the cook called Tim at this juncture and gave him a chore to
do; and so left the Irish girl and the young Englishman alone.
The valet had been standing until then with his hat and cane in his hand
and his overcoat across his arm. Now he laid these things on the table
and took his seat by the side of the comely Irishwoman.
"Mam'zelle," he began, "is a French girl, of course, and I never could
abide a foreign lingo. Now it's a pleasure for me to hear you talk, Miss
Maggie."
"Ah, do be aisy, now, Mr. Parsons," she returned, coquettishly.
"It's gospel truth," he rejoined. "I enjoy talkin' to you. You keep your
eyes wide open and can always tell me what's goin' on!"
"Troth, can I?" replied the laundress. "I know which ind of the egg the
chicken'll be after chippin'--every time."
"Then tell me who's dinin' 'ere to-night," the valet asked.
Before she could answer the whistle sounded faintly again, and the cook
immediately brought in the green-turtle soup in the handsome silver
tureen, and sent it up on the dumb-waiter. Then she returned at once to
the kitchen.
"It's not a big dinner," the Irishwoman explained. "There's only eight
of them. There's us three, isn't there?--Mr. and Mrs. Van Allen and Miss
Ethel. Then there's your lord--and I'll go bail it's Miss Ethel he's
after now? He'll be the lucky man if he gets her, too; it's a sweet
angel she is."
"She won't be so unlucky to 'ave 'im neither," the Englishman returned,
"mark that! She'll be Lady Stanyhurst, won't she? And my lord is a fine
figure of a man, too!"
"Sure it isn't under the skin of any man that ever stepped to be worthy
the likes of Miss Ethel!" said Maggie, looking at Parsons out of the
corner of her eye.
"There ain't any girl in the States 'ere that wouldn't be proud to 'ave
my lord," the valet retorted. "There's lots of 'em settin' their caps
for 'im now. He can 'ave 'is pick, 'e can."
"The sorra cap Miss Ethel'll set for him or any man," the laundress
declared. "The boy that wants her'll have to court her."
"I 'ave reason to believe that the marriage is arranged," Parsons
asserted. "I 'ope--" then he paused, and with an effort he went on
again: "I hope that 'er father is a warm man? He's good to give the girl
a plum at least, I 'ope? We couldn't throw ourselves away on a girl who
'adn't a plum, you know."
"An' what might a plum be?" asked Maggie.
"A plum," the young Englishman explained, "is a 'undred thousand
pounds--'alf a million dollars, isn't it?"
"It's a whole million Mr. Van Allen can give Miss Ethel," Maggie said,
"and more, too, if he wanted to. By the same token, they do be after
tellin' me he has one big building down-town somewhere--I don't
know--where the tenants pay him a hundred thousand dollars a year; an'
they pay it, too, regular, an' nivver an eviction from one year's end to
the other."
The whistle shrilled out again, and the cook made haste to place on the
dumb-waiter the dish containing the fillets of sea-bass.
A few minutes later Mlle. Elise, the French maid of Miss Van Allen,
entered the servants' sitting-room, and was cordially greeted by Mr.
Parsons. It appeared that the Frenchwoman had been detained in Mrs. Van
Allen's room relieving the guests of their wraps.
"Zat ole maid, Miss Marlenspuyk--what devil of name it is--" said Elise,
"she is a true grande dame; but that Mistress Playfair--oh! I cannot
suffer her! She is--how you say--made up? stuck up?"
"It's both stuck up and med up she is," the Irish laundress declared.
"She's that painted her own mother wouldn't know her. An' as for stuck
up, her manners is that bad there isn't none of her girls will stay in
her house the second month; they gets their bit of money and they goes.
Sure my brother is coachman there, and it's seven years he's had the
place."
"How can he rest zere," asked the French maid, "if she is so stuck up?"
"Ah, my brother is a steady lad, and they get on very well," Maggie
returned. "He knows his place, and she knows her place, too. She never
says nothin' to him, and he never says nothin' to her. An' it's a good
job he has, an' he don't mean to let go of it. He keeps a still tongue
in his head, Danny does; but there's months when, with his wages and
with his board-wages and with what he makes on the feed, the place is
worth more than a hundred dollars to him."
"It's as much as a man's place is worth sometimes to accept the
commission you're entitled to," the valet remarked.
"Ah, but Danny's the boy!" the laundress responded, shrewdly. "It's too
much he knows about Mrs. Playfair for him to lose the job; trust him for
that! As long as he wants that place he can have it an' welcome; she
won't never say nothin' to him."
"Is she a widow or is she divorced, zis Mistress Playfair?" asked the
French maid.
"She's the wan an' the other," said the laundress, with a laugh. "Mr.
Playfair, he took and died a week after the trial, barrin' a day."
"What's this I 'ear about your Mr. Van Allen and Mrs. Playfair?" Parsons
inquired.
"Is there anything between them, do you think?"
The whistle was heard again, and the cook passed before them with a
saddle of mutton; and for the moment the valet's question remained
unanswered.
"Who is it they have to dinner, after all?" the laundress inquired.
"There's our three and your lord and Miss Marlenspuyk and Mrs.
Playfair--but that's sure only six. There was to be eight all out, I'm
thinkin'. It's two more men they must have."
"I heard his lordship say that he expected to meet the Lord Bishop of
Tuxedo," the Englishman remarked.
"And madame say zat ze judge would be here," said the French maid.
"Judge Gillespie?" asked the valet, with a certain interest.
"Yes," the Frenchwoman answered, "the Judge Gillespie. What does that
make to you zat you jump like zat?"
"Oh, nothin', nothin' at all," returned Parsons, settling himself back
in his chair with a snigger.
"Out with it!" cried the Irish girl. "Don't be grinnin' all night there
like a stuck pig! Out with it--I see it's on the end of your tongue."
"But yes--but yes," urged the maid, "what is it you have to laugh?"
"Really," the valet began, "I don't know that I ought to say anything
'ere in this 'ouse, you know--house, I mean. But I 'ave been told that
this 'ere Judge Gillespie is a very great friend of Mrs. Van Allen's.
Mind, I don't say there's anything wrong in it, you know. I only tell
you what I 'ave 'eard tell myself in society 'ere and there. You see
this ain't the only 'ouse I visit in New York, not by a long shot it
ain't. And knowin' I visit 'ere, why, naturally, you see, my other
friends tell me the news, you know--the news about the goin's on 'ere,
you know."
The Irish laundress and the French maid looked at each other for a
moment, and then both laughed.
"It's not outside they get the first news, is it?" the laundress
inquired.
Apparently the maid was also going to make a remark, but she changed her
mind as the cook again came to the dumb-waiter with the dish of little
silver saucepans containing terrapin.
The valet was somewhat puzzled by the failure of his two attempts to
open the family cupboard of the host and hostess for an inspection of
the skeletons it might contain.
"I don't know how she has them seated at the table," Maggie declared.
"Of course, his lordship took her in," the Englishman declared. "A earl
'as precedence of a judge or a bishop."
"I'd like to have a look at that lordship of yours," the Irishwoman
said, as she rose to her feet. "I'll slip up the stairs there, and maybe
I can get a glimpse of 'em through the door an' no one a ha'p'orth the
wiser. Is it a young man your lordship is?"
"His lordship is a young man yet," the valet replied.
"I know what that means," the laundress answered. "If he's a young man
yet, I'll go bail he hasn't a hair between him an' heaven. An' to think
that our Miss Ethel here is to take up with a poor hairless cratur like
that. Well, well, there's no accountin' for tastes! Maybe I'll marry a
Dutchman myself one of these days."
And with that she began to climb the spiral staircase in the corner of
the room.
"What sort of a man is he, your milord?" asked the Frenchwoman.
"He is not a bad sort at all," the Englishman answered. "Your young lady
might do worse than 'ave 'im, you know--have him, I mean. I won't say
but that 'e's been a bit fast in 'is time, you know; but that's nothin'
to her now, is it? 'E's sowed his wild oats long ago, and 'e's ready to
marry now and settle down."
"He is zen--_defraichi_--how you say--worn? your milord?" the
Frenchwoman went on. "And mademoiselle is an angel of candor. Zey would
give her _le bon Dieu_ wizout confession."
"Angel or no angel," returned Mr. Parsons, "there isn't any better catch
in the three kingdoms than 'is lordship to-day. 'E's a earl, isn't 'e?
And then there's the castle! Your young lady wouldn't be in a 'urry to
let 'im go if she'd only seen the castle, now!"
"Mademoiselle has seen ze castle," was the answer.
"Well, I'll be damned!" said the valet.
"But yes," the French maid explained. "Last summer, in London, your
milord was presented to mademoiselle, and he began to make his court.
Fifteen days after, when we were at Leamington, mademoiselle and I, we
go see your castle."
"It's a tip-topper now, ain't it?" he asked. "There's sometimes twenty
and thirty of us in the servants' 'all, and there's goin's on, and
larks, and all manner of sport. If this match comes off, now, between
'is lordship and your young lady, will you come with her or stay here
with her mother?"
"Never of the life do I quit mademoiselle," the Frenchwoman responded.
"Then I'll 'ope to 'ave the honor of introducin' you into the best
society at the castle whenever you come over," urged Mr. Parsons.
The Irish laundress now began to descend the spiral stairs. The cook
also came into the room and went towards the dumb-waiter, carrying a
silver platter, on which shook and shone a dozen little jellied cones.
"An' what might that be in thrimbles like that?" asked the Irishwoman,
with curiosity.
"_Pate de foie gras en aspic_," the cook responded, curtly, sending up
the dish and then returning silently to the kitchen.
"Patti's photograph?" repeated the laundress. "Do ye mind the impidence
of her, tellin' me a lie like that?"
The English valet looked at the French maid and laughed. Then he
explained, patronizingly:
"Patty de four grass, as we call it in French--not Patti's photograph.
It's a delicacy, and it's made of goose livers."
"Then why couldn't that Dutch cook have said so?" the laundress asked,
indignantly. "I've as good a right to know about a goose as ever she
has. I misdoubt she was that poor where she came from they had never the
grass of a goose to their cabin."
"Did you see 'is lordship?" asked the valet.
"I did that," the Irish girl replied, "an' what did I tell you about
him? His head has grown through his hair! There's been good and bad
harvests since he was young, I'm thinkin'--and it's mighty quare he
looks about his eyes, too. It'll be a poor day for Miss Ethel when she
marries a bald-headed ould runt like that, for all he's a lord!"
"Oh, I say, Miss Maggie; you must not speak so disrespectful of his
lordship," Parsons insisted; "really, now, you mustn't."
"It's that Mrs. Playfair 'ud be the match for him, I'm thinkin'," said
Maggie. "It's a bold-faced creature she is, an' no more clothes on her
than ain't decent anyway. And then, how she looked at Mr. Van Allen and
then at the bishop; and how she talked--I'd no patience with her. Do ye
mind what it was I heard her say now?"
"How could we know what you 'eard her say?" the valet responded,
impatiently.
"Sure, amn't I tellin' ye?" the Irish girl returned. "She was talkin' to
the bishop, and she says, says she. 'The judge is a better man than you,
bishop,' she says, 'leastwise he makes more people happy,' she says.
'How so?' says the bishop, says he. 'This way,' she says; 'when you
marry a couple you make two people happy,' she says, 'an' when the judge
divorces a couple he makes four people happy,' she says. Miss Ethel and
the old lady with the white hair, they said nothin', but the rest of
them laughed."
What further fragments of the conversation at the dinner-table up-stairs
Maggie had been able to gather during her brief visit to the
butler's-pantry could not then be made known to the other domestics, for
Tim came slouching into the sitting-room.
"Say, Maggie," he began, "didn't you hear that ring at the bell? That's
your feller--I seen him. He's out at the gate now."
"Is it the letter-man you mean?" asked Maggie, adjusting her hair as she
passed the looking-glass.
"Ah, go on," returned Tim, impatiently, "what t'ell are you givin' us?
How many fellers do you want, say?"
After Maggie had chased Tim out of the room, the Swedish cook went to
the dumb-waiter once more to send up the four smoking canvas-backs that
lay luxuriously on their cushions of fried hominy.
The French maid and the English valet continued to chat, discussing
chiefly the personal peculiarities of the members of the households in
which they had served. His former masters Parsons was willing enough to
find fault with, but Lord Stanyhurst he seemed to think it a point of
honor to defend. Mrs. Van Allen the Frenchwoman had no high opinion of,
nor of Mr. Kortright Van Allen; but of their daughter, Miss Ethel Van
Allen, she could not say too much in praise.
"I told that wild Irish girl that the marriage was arranged," said
Parsons, "and I'm sure I 'ope so with all my heart, for 'is lordship
needs money badly--I don't mind tellin' you, mam'zelle, 'e 'asn't paid
me my wages this six months, not that I'd demean myself by askin' for
them. But is it really settled, after all?--that's what I'd like to
know."
"I zink so," the Frenchwoman responded; "you see, mademoiselle is not
happy here. Monsieur and madame are at drawn knives. Zey have not spoken
since two years."
"Mr. and Mrs. Van Allen don't speak to each other?" asked Parsons, with
great interest. "But they must be speaking to each other there at dinner
now."
"Oh, at dinner, yes," the French maid explained; "in the world, yes, zey
talk zemselves. But at ze house, never a word. Zat is so sad for
mademoiselle, is it not? It is not remarkable zat she marry herself with
anybody to get out of ze house."
"Oh, ho!" rejoined the valet, "I see, I see! But if that's the way she's
been brought up, you know, I don't believe she will 'it it off with 'is
lordship."
"If he makes her not happy, your milord--" began the maid, forcibly,
"but he must. He must render her happy, for she will have nobody to go
to after ze marriage except her husband."
"Whatever do you mean by that?" asked Parsons, a little suspiciously.
"I know what I mean," she responded. "Monsieur and madame only attend
till mademoiselle is married, and zen zey are divorced. Zey don't tell
me zat, no--but I know."
"Yes," the valet admitted, "it ain't so very 'ard to find out a thing
like that."
"And I know more yet," added the French maid. "I am not blind, am I? I
can see that two and two make four, is it not? Zen, I tell you zat after
ze marriage of mademoiselle, monsieur and madame are divorced, zat is
one zing. Zen madame will marry zat Judge Gillespie, and monsieur will
marry zat Madame Playfair--you see!"
"That would be a rum start, now, wouldn't it?" was the only comment of
Parsons.
At this moment the portly form of Cato, the black butler, was seen
descending the staircase in the corner of the room.
As soon as the aged negro's white head was visible he paused, and
leaning over the light iron railing he addressed himself to the young
Englishman.
"Misto' Parsons," he said, solemnly, "yo' lord knows a good thing when
he gets it, sah! He tasted my celery salad, and he said to Mrs. Van
Allen that he hadn't never eaten no better salad than that, sah, and I
don't believe he never did, neither!"
So saying he slowly withdrew up-stairs again, as the cook advanced to
the dumb-waiter carrying the Nesselrode pudding.
(1896.)
A WALL STREET WOOING
It had poured all the night before, and even now, at three o'clock in
the afternoon, the air had the washed clearness that follows a warm
rain. Fortunately the sun had shone forth before the church bells
summoned the worshippers to kneel in front of the marble altars, banked
high with scentless white flowers. It was Easter, and the first of April
also; and, furthermore, the first warm Sunday of the spring. So the
young men and maidens who clustered about the doors of the churches that
afternoon were decked out in fresh apparel--the young men in light
overcoats, and the maidens in all the bravery of their new bonnets.
In the corner of one of the cable-cars which were sliding along under
the skeleton of the elevated railroad there sat a young man looking at
his neighbors with begrudging interest, and pulling at the ends of an
aggressive black mustache. Filson Shelby was not yet at home in the
great city, and he knew it, and he silently protested against it. He was
forever on the watch for a chance to resent the complacent attitude of
city folks towards country people. Yet the metropolis had so far
conquered him that his hat and his shoes and his clothes were city
made.
It was six months now since the young Southwesterner had left his native
village, and already he thought that he knew New York pretty well, from
Harlem where he boarded to Wall Street where he worked. He was sure that
he was well informed as to the customs of New-Yorkers, although the
New-Yorkers changed their customs so rapidly that it was not so easy to
be certain about this.
There were white flowers blossoming in the parlor windows of many of the
houses in Fifty-third Street, through which the cable-car was passing,
and as the car clanged around the curve and started on its way down
Seventh Avenue it grazed the tail of a florist's wagon, the box of which
was piled high with palms. Filson Shelby was aware that it was now a
practice of New-Yorkers to give one another potted plants at Easter.