to be interested in what was going on. The most of the men and women who
filled the broad promenade between the railing and the long tier of
private boxes paid little or no attention to the arena; they gave
themselves up to staring at the very gayly dressed ladies in the boxes.
It struck the New England college professor that the most of those
present made no pretence of caring for the horses, as though horses
could be seen any day; while they frankly devoted themselves to gazing
at the people of fashion penned side by side in the boxes, and not often
placing themselves so plainly on exhibition. Some of those who were
playing their parts on this narrow and elevated stage had the
self-consciousness of the amateur, and some had the ease that comes of
long practice. These latter looked as though they were accustomed to be
stared at, as though they expected it of right, as though they were
there on purpose to be seen. They seemed to know one another; and it
struck Morton that they were apparently all members of a secret
fraternity of fashion, with their own signs and passwords and their own
system of private grips; and they wholly ignored the people who had not
been initiated and who were not members of their society. They nodded
and smiled brightly to belated arrivals of their own set. They kept up a
continual chatter among themselves, the women leaning across to talk to
acquaintances in the adjoining compartments, and the men paying visits
to the boxes of their friends. Now and again some one in a box would
recognize some one in the circling throng below; but for the most part
there was no communication between the two classes.
[Illustration: EXPLANATIONS]
To Morton the spectacle had the attraction of novelty; it was so novel,
indeed, that he did not quite know what to make of it. It
disconcerted him not a little to see people, of position presumably, and
obviously of wealth, willing thus to show themselves off, dressed, many
of them, as though with special intent to attract attention. As a
student of sociology, he found this inspection of Society--in the
narrowest sense of the word--almost as instructive as it was
interesting. At times the vulgarity of the whole thing shocked him, more
especially once when he could not but hear the loud voices of one
over-dressed group of women, who were discussing the characteristics of
one "Willie."
"He's a wretched little beast!" cried one of these ladies.
"You mustn't say that," rejoined another, a tall woman with gray hair;
"you know he's my corespondent." And at this stroke of wit the rest of
the party laughed repeatedly.
But few of those on exhibition were as common as the members of this
group. Indeed, Morton was struck with the fact that the most of the men
and women who were being stared out of countenance were apparently
people of breeding, and he wondered that they were willing to place
themselves in what seemed to him so false a position. Many of the girls,
for example, who wore striking costumes and extravagant hats, were
themselves refined in face and retiring in bearing; they were stylish,
no doubt, but they were well bred also. It seemed to Morton that style
was perhaps the chief characteristic of these New York girls--style
rather than beauty.
The average of good looks was high, and yet, as it happened, he was able
to walk half around the huge building without seeing half a dozen women
whom he was prepared to declare handsome. The girls appeared to be
strong, healthy, lively, quick-witted, and charming, but rarely
beautiful. They seemed to him, moreover, to be emphatically superior to
the men who accompanied them, superior not only in looks, but in manners
and intelligence.
Morton noted, to his surprise, that some of these men were quite as
conscious of their clothes as any of the women were; and he caught also
more than one remark showing that the appreciation of the women's
clothes was not confined to the women themselves.
As he was nearing the Fourth Avenue end of the edifice he saw in a box
just above him--for he found himself staring like the rest--a lady of
striking beauty, with a look of sadness on her face, that gave place to
a factitious smile when she spoke to one or another of the three or four
young men who stood on the steps at the side of her chair. The face
interested Morton, and it was recognized by two young men just behind
him.
"Hello!" said one of them, "there's Mrs. Cyrus Poole. Smart gown, hasn't
she?"
"Always has," answered the other. "Best-groomed woman in New York."
"She is pretty well turned out generally, for a fact," the first speaker
responded. "But Cyrus Poole's made money enough out of the widow and the
orphan this summer to pay for all the gowns his wife can wear this
winter, at any rate."
It was only when Merrymount Morton had threaded his way half around the
horse-show that he first saw a horse there. As he came to the Fourth
Avenue end the crowd before him fell away, and a gate in the railing
swung back across the promenade, while grooms led out of the arena five
or six beautiful stallions. The New England college professor had a
healthy liking for a fine horse, and his eyes followed these superb
creatures till they were out of sight. Then in the clear space at the
far end of the building he saw three coaches, one of them already
equipped with its four-in-hand, while the horses were being harnessed to
the others.
He stood there for a minute or two looking at them with interest. Then
he turned his back, and once more began circling about the arena in the
thick of the crowd, with no chance of seeing a horse again until he
could get to the seat to which his ticket entitled him. He took out the
bit of pasteboard and examined it again, and he saw that his place was
very near the entrance, only he had gone to the right when he came in
instead of to the left. By this time the men and women on exhibition in
the boxes had begun to lose the attraction of novelty; and Morton
walked on as swiftly as he could make his way through the crowd,
wishing to get his seat in time to see the competition of the coaches.
He had come almost to the foot of the little flight of steps by which he
could reach his seat when he happened to look up, and he caught sight of
a familiar face. In a box only a score of feet before him there sat a
lady about whose high-bred beauty there could hardly be two opinions.
She was probably nearly thirty years old, but she looked fresher than
either of the girls by her side. She wore a costume combining studied
simplicity and marked individuality; and yet no one who saw her took
thought of her attire, for her beauty subdued all things, and made any
adornment she might adopt seem as though it were necessary and
inevitable.
There was a suggestion of stiffness in her carriage, and perhaps a hint
of haughtiness; but when she smiled she was as charming as she was
handsome.
As his eyes first fell upon her Morton's heart gave a sudden thump, and
then beat swiftly for a minute or two. Although he had not seen her for
nearly ten years, he recognized her instantly. She had changed but
little since they had met for the last time. He would have known her
anywhere and at once.
And if he had been in any doubt as to her identity, it would have been
dispelled by the conversation of the two young men who had been walking
around the arena just behind him.
"Devilish pretty Mrs. Jimmy Suydam looks to-night, doesn't she?" asked
one of them.
"She's had a good summer's rest," the other answered. "She was at St.
Moritz with her mother while Jimmy was off with Lord Stanyhurst."
"Drove from Paris to Vienna, didn't he?" the first speaker queried. "I'd
rather do it in a sleeper--wouldn't you?"
"I don't know," the second responded. "It's very swagger to drive your
own coach all over Europe with a man like Stanyhurst, who knows
everybody. I guess Jimmy thought it was cheap at the price. Besides,
_Punch_ called him the 'Wandering Jehu,' and they thought that was a
great joke over there."
"The joke was at Jimmy's expense, of course," was the next remark. "They
say Lord Stanyhurst never pays a bill himself when he can get an
American to do it."
"Well, Jimmy made by the bargain," the other rejoined, "and he can
afford it. Old man Suydam left a good business, and Jimmy knows enough
to let it alone."
There had been a congestion of the crowd in front of Morton, but now
there was a path opened before him. He drew back and let the two young
men pass. He could not look away from the beautiful woman in the box
before him. He wondered if he had courage to go up and speak to her. He
remembered her so sharply, he recognized every turn of her head and
every dainty gesture of her hands, he recalled so distinctly every word
of their conversation the last time they met that it did not seem
possible to him that she might have forgotten him. And yet it was not
impossible. Why should she remember what he could not forget?
While he was hesitating, the party in her box broke up. One of the young
ladies who were sitting with her arose and came down the steps, escorted
by two young men, and as they passed Morton he caught from their
conversation that they were going to the stables below to see a certain
famous horse in his stall. The other young lady had changed her seat to
the back of the box, where she was deep in conversation with a young man
who had taken the chair beside hers. Mrs. Suydam was left alone in the
front of the box.
She sat there apparently not bored with her own society, and obviously
indifferent to the frank staring of the men and women who passed along
the promenade a few feet below her. She sat there calm in her cold
beauty, unmoved and uninterested, almost as though her thoughts were far
away.
Morton made up his mind, and pressed forward again.
When he was within a yard or two of the steps leading to her box she
happened to glance down, and she caught his eye fixed upon hers. She was
about to glance away, when she looked again, and then a smile of
recognition lighted her face, followed by the faintest of blushes.
She bowed as Morton raised his hat, and she held out her hand cordially
when he climbed the steps to her box.
"I hardly dared to hope that you would remember me, Mrs. Suydam," he
said, as he shook hands gently. "It is so long since I saw you last."
"How could you think I should ever forget the pleasant month I spent in
your mother's house?" she returned. "We do not have so many pleasant
months in life, do we, that we can afford to let any one of them slip
out of memory? You haven't forgotten me, have you? Well, then, why
should I forget you and your mother and the lovely little college town?"
"That month I can't forget," he responded; "but it was a long while ago,
and my existence is uneventful always, while yours is full--and then so
many things have happened since."
"Yes," she admitted, "so many things have happened. I'm married, for one
thing. But that hasn't made me forget how kind you all were to me. Can't
you sit down here for a few minutes and give me all the news of the
college and the town?"
"I shall be only too glad," he said, taking the chair by her side.
"Where shall I begin?"
"Tell me about yourself," she commanded.
"That won't take me long," he returned. "Very little has happened to me.
I was going to Germany--perhaps you remember--that fall, after you left
us. Well, I went, and I stayed two years, and I took my Ph.D. there, and
I came back to the old college, and they gave me a professorship--and
that's all."
"That's enough, I think," she answered, looking at him frankly with her
dark eyes. "You have your work to do, and you do it. I don't believe
there is anything better in life than to be sure what you ought to work
at and to be able to work at it."
"I suppose you are right," Morton acknowledged. "I find hard labor is
often the best fun, after all. But I can get solid enjoyment out of
loafing, too. I don't recall that we worked very steadily that month
that you were with us, and we certainly had a very good time. At least I
did!"
"And so did I," she declared, unbending a little, and with a laugh of
pleasant recollection. "I enjoyed every minute of my visit. I wish I
could have such good times now!"
"Don't you?" he asked.
"Not often," she answered. "Perhaps never."
"You surprise me," he replied. "I supposed you were being entertained by
day and by night, week in and week out, from one year's end to
another."
"So we are," she explained. "But being entertained isn't always being
interested, is it?"
"That's the theory, isn't it?" he rejoined.
"It may be the theory," she confessed, "but I'm sure it isn't the
practice."
"I know that little college town of ours is remote from the path of
progress," he went on, "but sometimes we behold those messengers of
civilization, the New York Sunday newspapers. And whenever I do get one
I am certain to see that you have been to a dinner-dance here, to a _bal
poudre_ there. I should judge that you lived in an endless
merry-go-round of gayety."
She smiled again, and there was no sadness in her smile, only a vague,
detached weariness. "Dinner-dances are the fashion just now," she said;
"and if there is anything more absurd than the fashion it's to waste
one's strength struggling against it."
"That is very end-of-the-century philosophy," he commented.
"It's philosophical not to want to be left out of things, isn't it?" she
inquired. "Even if one doesn't care to go, one doesn't like not to be
asked, and so one goes often when one would rather stay at home."
"I should think that if many people had motives like that, your parties
here in New York might be rather dull," he retorted, with a little
laugh.
"They are dull," she returned, calmly. "Sometimes they are very dull.
But, of course, it doesn't do not to go."
"I suppose not," he agreed.
"But I find myself wondering sometimes," she continued, "where all the
dull people in society were dug up. Sometimes after a long month of
dinners I get desperate and almost wish I could renounce the world. Why,
at the end of last winter I told my husband that we had not spent a
single evening home since we got back from Florida, and we hadn't had a
single pleasant evening, not one. He didn't think it was as bad as that,
and perhaps it wasn't for him either, for I don't believe the women are
as stupid as the men. Of course now and then there was a dinner I
thought I should enjoy, but I never did. I'd see the clever man I'd have
liked to talk to; I'd see him far down at the other end of the table,
and that was all I did see of him. Some dreary old man would take me in,
and then after dinner I'd have perhaps two or three little boys come up
and try to pay compliments, and succeed in keeping away the men who
might possibly have had something to say."
"And yet yours is the set that so many people seem to be trying so hard
to enter," he suggested; "that is, if I understand aright what I read in
New York novels."
"Yes," she answered, "I suppose that's the chief satisfaction we
have--we know we are envied by the people who want to visit us, and to
have us visit them. I suppose the desire to get into Society fills the
emptiness in many a woman's life; it gives her something to live for."
"They don't seem to have much of the stern joy that foemen feel," Morton
commented. "They take life desperately hard. Over there in the other
corner I saw a handsome woman, and I overheard a man call her by
name--she's the wife of Cyrus Poole, the Wall Street operator. And when
I saw the unsatisfied aspiration in her face, I wondered whether she was
one of those social strugglers I had read about."
"Mrs. Poole?" echoed Mrs. Suydam, indifferently. "I don't know her: I've
met her, of course--one meets everybody--but I don't know her. She is
good-looking, and she is in the thick of the social struggle. Upward and
outward is her motto--Excelsior! They used to say that all last winter
you could positively hear her climb. But then they have said that of so
many people! She is clever, they say, and she entertains lavishly, so I
shouldn't wonder if she succeeded sooner or later; and then she will be
so disappointed."
Morton smiled. "From your account," he said, "the social struggle is
rather a tragedy than a comedy; and I confess it has hitherto struck me
as not without a suggestion of farce."
"It is absurd, isn't it?" she returned, smiling back. "And are we not a
very snobbish lot? Jimmy declares that society in New York is almost as
snobbish as it is in London even."
There was a moment of silence, and then Morton asked, a little stiffly,
"How is Mr. Suydam? You know I have never had the pleasure of meeting
him."
"Haven't you?" Mrs. Suydam responded. "You can see him soon. He's to
drive George Western's coach. There they come now!"
A trumpet sounded; a gate in the railing at the Fourth Avenue end of the
building was opened; and a coach was driven into the arena. A very stout
man sat on the box alone.
Mrs. Suydam raised her long-handled eye-glass and looked at the
approaching coachman.
"Oh, that's not Jimmy," she said, quickly; "of course not. That's the
man they call The Adipose Deposit."
The trumpet sounded again, and a second coach was turned into the arena.
The four horses were beautifully matched bays. The driver was a tall,
thin, youngish man, who sat impassible on the box, and gave no sign of
annoyance when a wheel of the vehicle rasped the gate-post.
"That's Mr. Suydam," said the lady to whom Morton was talking, as the
bays trotted briskly past them, the man on the box holding himself
rigidly and handling the ribbons skilfully.
"He is quite a professional," Morton remarked.
"Isn't he?" Mrs. Suydam replied. "You know he drove the Brighton coach
out of London for three years. He really does it very well, they all
say. I've told him that if we ever lost our money he would make a very
superior coachman."
"Those bays go together admirably," the college professor declared, "and
Mr. Suydam handles them superbly. But how pitiful it is to see their
tails docked!"
"Oh, they do that in England," she explained, "so it's fashionable. But
it is ugly, isn't it? Do you remember what a lovely long tail that
Kentucky mare had, the one I rode that day--"
Then Mrs. Suydam paused suddenly.
"Yes," answered Morton, not looking at her, "I remember it."
Mrs. Suydam conquered her slight embarrassment and gave a light little
laugh.
"How rude I have been!" she said. "Here I've been talking about myself
and about my husband, and I haven't asked about you. Are you married
yet?"
"No," he answered, and now he looked at her, and she blushed again; "and
I am not likely ever to marry, I think. There was only one woman in the
world for me, and I told her so, but she didn't care for me at all, and
she told me so--and then she touched up that Kentucky mare and rode away
with my heart hanging at her saddle-bow."
"You can find a better woman than she is," was her response; "a woman
who will make you a better wife than she would ever have done."
Before Morton could reply to this, the girl and the two young men who
had been in the box at first returned from their visit to the stables.
The trumpet sounded again, and the judges made the drivers of the four
coaches--for two more had entered after Mr. Suydam's--repeat their
evolutions around the arena. And then, after protracted consultation
together, the awards were made, and grooms ran to attach rosettes to the
leaders of the team driven by the stout gentleman, who took the first
prize, and then to the leaders of the team driven by Suydam, who took
the second prize. The numbers of the winning coaches were displayed on
the wide sign-boards at each end of the hall. The coaches were driven
around again, and then out. The trumpets were silent for a while; and
the brass band crashed forth again.
"Jimmy won't like not getting the first prize, will he?" asked the girl
who had just returned to the box.
"I don't think it will worry him," answered his wife, with a return of
her haughty manner.
She had not introduced Morton to any of the others in the box.
In the presence of so many it was impossible to resume their
conversation on the old friendly basis. It seemed to Morton that since
the girl and the young men had come back there was a difference in Mrs.
Suydam's manner towards him; he could not define it to himself, but he
felt it. Perhaps she was conscious of this herself.
When he made a movement preparatory to going, she said: "Must you go? I
wanted you to meet my husband. Can't you drop in and lunch with us
to-morrow?"
Morton thanked her and regretted that he might have to take a midnight
train, and expressed his pleasure at having met her again. Then she held
out her hand once more; and a minute later he was again in the thick of
the throng circling along the promenade.
Before he reached the entrance the music was checked suddenly and the
trumpet blared out, and then the voice of a man in the centre of the
building was heard, intermittently, hopelessly endeavoring to inform the
thousands packed in the splendid edifice that the fastest trotter in the
world would now be shown. The crowd which was staring steadily at the
men and women in the boxes paid little attention to this proclamation;
to it the men and women in the boxes were far more interesting than any
horses could be, even if any one of these could trot a mile in two
minutes without a running mate.
(1895.)
IN THE WATCHES OF THE NIGHT
It was still snowing solidly as the carriage swung out of the side
street and went heavily on its way up the avenue; the large flakes soon
thickened again upon the huge fur collars of the two men who sat on the
box bolt-upright; the flat crystals frosted the windows of the landau so
that the trained nurse could see out only on one side. She sat back in
the luxurious vehicle. She had on the seat beside her the bag containing
her change of raiment; and she wondered, as she always did when she was
called unexpectedly to take charge of an unknown case, what manner of
house it might be that she was going to enter, and what kind of people
she would be forced to associate with in the swift intimacy of the
sick-room and for an unknown period. That the patient was wealthy and
willing to spend his wealth was obvious--the carriage, the horses, the
liveried servants, were evidence enough of this. That his name was Swank
she also knew; and she thought that perhaps she had heard about the
marriage of a rich old man named Swank to a pretty young wife a year or
two ago. That he had been taken sick suddenly, and that the case might
be serious, she had gathered from the note which the doctor had sent to
summon her, and which had been brought by the carriage that was now
returning with her.
She had ample time for speculation as they drove up the avenue in the
early darkness of the last day of the year. The Christmas wreaths still
decked the windows of the hotels, although through the steady snow she
could see little more than a blur of reddish-yellow light as she sped
past. There were few people in the avenue, except as they crossed the
broader side streets, now beginning to be filled with the throng of
workers returning home after the day's labor. They passed St. Patrick's
Cathedral, already encrusted with snow whiter than its stone. They came
to Central Park, and they kept on, with its broad meadows on their left
gray in the descending darkness. At last the carriage drew up before a
house on a corner--a very large house it seemed to the trained nurse;
and its marble front struck her as cold, not to call it gloomy. Workmen
were hastily erecting the frame of an awning down the marble steps, and
a path had been made across the snowy sidewalk.
The footman carried her bag up the stoop and rang the bell for her.
The door was opened promptly by a very British butler.
"This is the nurse for Mr. Swank," said the footman. "Is he any
better?"
"'E's about the same, I'm thinkin'," the butler responded. "This way,
please," he said to the owner of the bag, which the footman deposited
just inside the door. "I'll take you up to Mr. Swank's room, and I'll
send your bag up to you afterwards."
The trained nurse followed the butler up the massive wooden stairs,
heavy with dark carving. She noticed that the house was now dimly
lighted, and that there was a going and a coming of servants, as though
in preparation for an entertainment of some sort.
"We 'ave a dinner on this evening," the butler explained; "only
twenty-four; but it's 'ard Mr. Swank ain't goin' to be able to come
down. We're keepin' the 'ouse dark now, so it won't get too 'ot at
dinner-time."
Whatever the reason for the absence of adequate illumination, it made
the upper hall even more dismal than the one below--so the trained nurse
thought.
"That's Mr. Swank's room there; and 'ere's 'is dressin'-room, that
you're to 'ave--so the doctor said," the butler declared, leading the
stranger into a small room with a lofty ceiling, and with one window
overlooking Central Park. The shades had not been drawn; the single
gas-jet was burning dimly; there was no fireplace; and a sofa on one
side had had sheets and blankets put on it to serve as her bed.
She almost shivered, the place seemed to her so cheerless. But her
training taught her not to think of her own comfort.
"This will do very well," she asserted.
"I'll tell them to fetch up your bag," the butler said, as he was about
to withdraw. "Would you be wantin' any dinner later?"
"Yes," she answered, "I would like something to eat later--whenever it
is convenient."
The butler left the room, only to reappear almost immediately.
"'Ere's the doctor now," he announced, holding the door open.
A tall, handsome man, with a masterful mouth, walked in with a soft,
firm tread.
"So this is the nurse," he began. "Miss Clement, isn't it? I'm glad you
were able to follow my note so quickly. If you will come into the next
room, where the patient is, as soon as you have changed your dress, I'll
tell you what I wish you to do."