Miss Eleanore Cuyler had dined alone with her mother that night, and
she was now sitting in the drawing-room, near the open fire, with her
gloves and fan on the divan beside her, for she was going out later to
a dance.
She was reading a somewhat weighty German review, and the contrast
which the smartness of her gown presented to the seriousness of her
occupation made her smile slightly as she paused for a moment to cut
the leaves.
And when the bell sounded in the hall she put the book away from her
altogether, and wondered who it might be.
It might be young Wainwright, with the proof-sheets of the new story
he had promised to let her see, or flowers for the dance from
Bruce-Brice, of the English Legation at Washington, who for the time
being was practising diplomatic moves in New York, or some of her
working-girls with a new perplexity for her to unravel, or only one of
the men from the stable to tell her how her hunter was getting on
after his fall. It might be any of these and more. The possibilities
were diverse and all of interest, and she acknowledged this to
herself, with a little sigh of content that it was so. For she found
her pleasure in doing many things, and in the fact that there were so
many. She rejoiced daily that she was free, and her own mistress in
everything; free to do these many things denied to other young women,
and that she had the health and position and cleverness to carry them
on and through to success. She did them all, and equally well and
gracefully, whether it was the rejection of a too ambitious devotee
who dared to want to have her all to himself, or the planning of a
woman's luncheon, or the pushing of a bill to provide kindergartens in
the public schools. But it was rather a relief when the man opened the
curtains and said, "Mr. Wainwright," and Wainwright walked quickly
towards her, tugging at his glove.
"You are very good to see me so late," he said, speaking as he
entered, "but I had to see you to-night, and I wasn't asked to that
dance. I'm going away," he went on, taking his place by the fire, with
his arm resting on the mantel. He had a trick of standing there when
he had something of interest to say, and he was tall and well-looking
enough to appear best in that position, and she was used to it. He was
the most frequent of her visitors.
"Going away," she repeated, smiling up at him; "not for long, I hope.
Where are you going now?"
"I'm going to London," he said. "They cabled me this morning. It
seems they've taken the play, and are going to put it on at once." He
smiled, and blushed slightly at her exclamation of pleasure. "Yes, it
is rather nice. It seems 'Jilted' was a failure, and they've taken it
off, and are going to put on 'School,' with the old cast, until they
can get my play rehearsed, and they want me to come over and suggest
things."
She stopped him with another little cry of delight that was very sweet
to him, and full of moment.
"Oh, how glad I am!" she said. "How proud you must be! Now, why do you
pretend you are not? And I suppose Tree and the rest of them will be
in the cast, and all that dreadful American colony in the stalls, and
you will make a speech--and I won't be there to hear it." She rose
suddenly with a quick, graceful movement, and held out her hand to
him, which he took, laughing and conscious-looking with pleasure.
She sank back on the divan, and shook her head doubtfully at him.
"When will you stop?" she said. "Don't tell me you mean to be an
Admirable Crichton. You are too fine for that."
He looked down at the fire, and said, slowly, "It is not as if I were
trying my hand at an entirely different kind of work. No, I don't
think I did wrong in dramatizing it. The papers all said, when the
book first came out, that it would make a good play; and then so many
men wrote to me for permission to dramatize it that I thought I might
as well try to do it myself. No, I think it is in line with my other
work. I don't think I am straying after strange gods."
"You should not," she said, softly. "The old ones have been so kind to
you. But you took me too seriously," she added.
"I am afraid sometimes," he answered, "that you do not know how
seriously I do take you."
"Yes, I do," she said, quickly. "And when I am serious, that is all
very well; but to-night I only want to laugh. I am very happy, it is
such good news. And after the New York managers refusing it, too. They
will _have_ to take it _now_, now that it is a London success."
"Well, it isn't a London success yet," he said, dryly. "The books went
well over there because the kind of Western things I wrote about met
their ideas of this country--cowboys and prairies and Indian maidens
and all that. And so I rather hope the play will suit them for the
same reason."
"And you will go out a great deal, I hope," she said. "Oh, you will
have to! You will find so many people to like, almost friends already.
They were talking about you even when I was there, and I used to shine
in reflected glory because I knew you."
"Yes, I can fancy it," he said. "But I should like to see something of
them if I have time. Lowes wants me to stay with them, and I suppose I
will. He would feel hurt if I didn't. He has a most absurd idea of
what I did for him on the ranche when he had the fever that time, and
ever since he went back to enjoy his ill-gotten gains and his title
and all that, he has kept writing to me to come out. Yes, I suppose I
will stay with them. They are in town now."
Miss Cuyler's face was still lit with pleasure at his good fortune,
but her smile was less spontaneous than it had been. "That will be
very nice. I quite envy you," she said. "I suppose you know about his
sister?"
"The Honorable Evelyn?" he asked. "Yes; he used to have a photograph
of her, and I saw some others the other day in a shop-window on
Broadway."
"She is a very nice girl," Miss Cuyler said, thoughtfully. "I wonder
how you two will get along?" and then she added, as if with sudden
compunction, "but I am sure you will like her very much. She is very
clever, besides."
"I don't know how a professional beauty will wear if one sees her
every day at breakfast," he said. "One always associates them with
functions and varnishing days and lawn-parties. You will write to me,
will you not?" he added.
"That sounds," she said, "as though you meant to be gone such a very
long time."
He turned one of the ornaments on the mantel with his fingers, and
looked at it curiously. "It depends," he said, slowly--"it depends on
so many things. No," he went on, looking at her; "it does not depend
on many things; just on one."
Miss Cuyler looked up at him questioningly, and then down again very
quickly, and reached meaninglessly for the book beside her. She saw
something in his face and in the rigidity of his position that made
her breathe more rapidly. She had not been afraid of this from him,
because she had always taken the attitude towards him of a very dear
friend and of one who was older, not in years, but in experience of
the world, for she had lived abroad while he had gone from the
university to the West, which he had made his own, in books. They were
both very young.
She did not want him to say anything. She could only answer him in one
way, and in a way that would hurt and give pain to them both. She had
hoped he could remain just as he was, a very dear friend, with a
suggestion sometimes in the background of his becoming something more.
She was, of course, too experienced to believe in a long platonic
friendship.
Uppermost in her mind was the thought that, no matter what he urged,
she must remember that she wanted to be free, to live her own life, to
fill her own sphere of usefulness, and she must not let him tempt her
to forget this. She had next to consider him, and that she must be
hard and keep him from speaking at all; and this was very difficult,
for she cared for him very dearly. She strengthened her determination
by thinking of his going away, and of how glad she would be when he
had gone that she had committed herself to nothing. This absence would
be a test for both of them; it could not have been better had it been
arranged on purpose. She had ideas of what she could best do for those
around her, and she must not be controlled and curbed, no matter how
strongly she might think she wished it. She must not give way to the
temptation of the moment, or to a passing mood. And then there were
other men. She had their photographs on her dressing-table, and liked
each for some qualities the others did not possess in such a degree;
but she liked them all because no one of them had the right to say
"must" or even "you might" to her, and she fancied that the moment she
gave one of them this right she would hate him cordially, and would
fly to the others for sympathy; and she was not a young woman who
thought that matrimony meant freedom to fly to any one but her husband
for that. But this one of the men was a little the worst; he made it
harder for her to be quite herself. She noticed that when she was with
him she talked more about her feelings than with the other men, with
whom she was satisfied to discuss the play, or what girl they wanted
to take into dinner. She had touches of remorse after these
confidences to Wainwright, and wrote him brisk, friendly notes the
next morning, in which the words "your friend" were always sure to
appear, either markedly at the beginning or at the end, or tucked
away in the middle. She thought by this to unravel the web she might
have woven the day before. But she had apparently failed. She stood up
suddenly from pure nervousness, and crossed the room as though she
meant to go to the piano, which was a very unfortunate move, as she
seldom played, and never for him. She sat down before it,
nevertheless, rather hopelessly, and crossed her hands in front of
her. He had turned, and followed her with his eyes; they were very
bright and eager, and her own faltered as she looked at them.
"You do not show much interest in the one thing that will bring me
back," he said. He spoke reproachfully and yet a little haughtily, as
though he had already half suspected she had guessed what he meant to
say.
"Ah, you cannot tell how long you will be there," she said, lightly.
"You will like it much more than you think. I--" she stopped
hopelessly, and glanced, without meaning to do so, at the clock-face
on the mantel beside him.
"Oh," he said, with quick misunderstanding, "I beg your pardon, I am
keeping you, I forgot how late it was, and you are going out." He came
towards her as though he meant to go. She stood up and made a quick,
impatient gesture with her hands. He was making it very hard for her.
"Fancy!" she said. "You know I want to talk to you; what does the
dance matter? Why are you so unlike yourself?" she went on, gently.
"And it is our last night, too."
The tone of her words seemed to reassure him, for he came nearer and
rested his elbow beside her on the piano and said, "Then you are sorry
that I am going?"
It was very hard to be unyielding to him when he spoke and looked as
he did then; but she repeated to herself, "He will be gone to-morrow,
and then I shall be so thankful that I did not bind myself--that I am
still free. He will be gone, and I shall be so glad. It will only be a
minute now before he goes, and if I am strong I will rejoice at
leisure." So she looked up at him without a sign of the effort it cost
her, frankly and openly, and said, "Sorry? Of course I am sorry. One
does not have so many friends that one can spare them for long, even
to have them grow famous. I think it is very selfish of you to go, for
you are famous enough already."
As he looked at her and heard her words running on smoothly and
meaninglessly, he knew that it was quite useless to speak, and he grew
suddenly colder, and sick, and furious at once with a confused anger
and bitterness. And then, for he was quite young, so young that he
thought it was the manly thing to do to carry his grief off lightly
instead of rather being proud of his love, however she might hold
it,--he drew himself up and began pulling carefully at his glove.
"Yes," he said, slowly, "I fancy the change will be very pleasant."
He was not thinking of his words or of how thoughtless they must
sound. He was only anxious to get away without showing how deeply he
was hurt. If he had not done this; if he had let her see how miserable
he was, and that plays and books and such things were nothing to him
now, and that she was just all there was in the whole world to him, it
might have ended differently. But he was untried, and young. So he
buttoned the left glove with careful scrutiny and said, "They always
start those boats at such absurd hours; the tides never seem to suit
one; you have to go on board without breakfast, or else stay on board
the night before, and that's so unpleasant. Well, I hope you will
enjoy the dance, and tell them I was very much hurt that I wasn't
asked."
He held out his hand quite steadily. "I will write you if you will let
me," he went on, "and send you word where I am as soon as I know." She
took his hand and said, "Good-by, and I hope it will be a grand
success: I know it will. And come back soon; and, yes, do write to me.
I hope you will have a very pleasant voyage."
He had reached the door and stopped uncertainly at the curtains.
"Thank you," he said; and "Oh," he added, politely, "will you say
good-by to your mother for me, please?"
She nodded her head and smiled and said, "Yes; I will not forget.
Good-by."
She did not move until she heard the door close upon him, and then
she turned towards the window as though she could still follow him
through the closed blinds, and then she walked over to the divan and
picked up her fan and gloves and remained looking down at them in her
hand. The room seemed very empty. She glanced at the place where he
had stood and at the darkened windows again, and sank down very slowly
against the cushions of the divan, and pressed her hands against her
cheeks.
She did not hear the rustle of her mother's dress as she came down the
stairs and parted the curtains.
"Are you ready, Eleanore?" she said, briskly. "Tell me, how does this
lace look? I think there is entirely too much of it."
* * * * *
It was a month after this, simultaneously with the announcements by
cable of the instant success in London of "A Western Idyl," that Miss
Cuyler retired from the world she knew, and disappeared into darkest
New York by the way of Rivington Street. She had discovered one
morning that she was not ill nor run down nor overtaxed, but just
mentally tired of all things, and that what she needed was change of
air and environment, and unselfish work for the good of others, and
less thought of herself. Her mother's physician suggested to her,
after a secret and hasty interview with Mrs. Cuyler, that change of
air was good, but that the air of Rivington Street was not of the
best; and her friends, both men and women, assured her that they
appreciated her much more than the people of the east side possibly
could do, and that they were much more worthy of her consideration,
and in a fair way of improvement yet if she would only continue to
shine upon and before them. But she was determined in her purpose, and
regarded the College Settlement as the one opening and refuge for the
energies which had too long been given to the arrangement of paper
chases across country, and the routine of society, and dilettante
interest in kindergartens. Life had become for her real and earnest,
and she rejected Bruce-Brice of the British Legation with the sad and
hopeless kindness of one who almost contemplates taking the veil, and
to whom the things of this world outside of tenements are hollow and
unprofitable. She found a cruel disappointment at first, for the women
of the College Settlement had rules and ideas of their own, and had
seen enthusiasts like herself come into Rivington Street before, and
depart again. She had thought she would nurse the sick and visit the
prisoners on the Island, and bring cleanliness and hope into miserable
lives, but she found that this was the work of women tried in the
service, who understood it, and who made her first serve her
apprenticeship by reading the German Bible to old women whose eyes
were dim, but who were as hopelessly clean and quite as
self-respecting in their way as herself. The heroism and the
self-sacrifice of a Father Damien or a Florence Nightingale were not
for her; older and wiser young women saw to that work with a quiet
matter-of-fact cheerfulness and a common-sense that bewildered her.
And they treated her kindly, but indulgently, as an outsider. It took
her some time to understand this, and she did not confess to herself
without a struggle that she was disappointed in her own usefulness;
but she brought herself to confess it to her friends "uptown," when
she visited that delightful country from which she was self-exiled.
She went there occasionally for an afternoon's rest or to a luncheon
or a particularly attractive dinner, but she always returned to the
Settlement at night, and this threw an additional interest about her
to her friends--an interest of which she was ashamed, for she knew how
little she was really doing, and that her sacrifice was one of
discomfort merely. The good she did now, it was humiliating to
acknowledge, was in no way proportionate to that which her influence
had wrought among people of her own class.
And what made it very hard was that wherever she went they seemed to
talk of him. Now it would be a girl just from the other side who had
met him on the terrace of the Lower House, "where he seemed to know
every one," and another had driven with him to Ascot, where he had
held the reins, and had shown them what a man who had guided a
mail-coach one whole winter over the mountains for a living could do
with a coach for pleasure. And many of the men had met him at the
clubs and at house parties in the country, and they declared with
enthusiastic envy that he was no end of a success. Her English friends
all wrote of him, and wanted to know all manner of little things
concerning him, and hinted that they understood they were very great
friends. The papers seemed to be always having him doing something,
and there was apparently no one else in London who could so properly
respond to the toasts of America at all the public dinners. She had
had letters from him herself--of course bright, clever ones--that
suggested what a wonderfully full and happy life his was, but with no
reference to his return. He was living with his young friend Lord
Lowes, and went everywhere with him and his people; and then as a
final touch, which she had already anticipated, people began to speak
of him and the Honorable Evelyn. What could be more natural? they
said. He had saved her brother's life while out West half a dozen
times at least, from all accounts; and he was rich, and well-looking,
and well-born, and rapidly becoming famous.
A young married woman announced it at a girls' luncheon. She had it
from her friend the Marchioness of Pelby, who was Evelyn's
first-cousin. So far, only the family had been told; but all London
knew it, and it was said that Lord Lowes was very much pleased. One
of the girls at the table said you never could tell about those
things; she had no doubt the Marchioness of Pelby was an authority,
but she would wait until she got their wedding-cards before she
believed it. For some reason this girl did not look at Miss Cuyler,
and Miss Cuyler felt grateful to her, and thought she was a nice,
bright little thing; and then another girl said it was only turn
about. The Englishmen had taken all the attractive American girls,
and it was only fair that the English girls should get some of the
nice American men. This girl was an old friend of Eleanore's; but she
was surprised at her making such a speech, and wondered why she had
not noticed in her before similar exhibitions of bad taste. She walked
back to Rivington Street from the luncheon; composing the letter she
would write to him, congratulating him on his engagement. She composed
several. Some of them were very short and cheery, and others rather
longer and full of reminiscences. She wondered with sudden fierce
bitterness how he could so soon forget certain walks and afternoons
they had spent together; and the last note, which she composed in bed,
was a very sad and scornful one, and so pathetic as a work of
composition that she cried a little over it, and went to sleep full of
indignation that she had cried.
She told herself the next morning that she had cried because she was
frankly sorry to lose the companionship of so old and good a friend,
and because now that she had been given much more important work to
do, she was naturally saddened by the life she saw around her, and
weakened by the foul air of the courts and streets, and the dreary
environments of the tenements. As for him, she was happy in his
happiness; and she pictured how some day, when he proudly brought his
young bride to this country to show her to his friends, he would ask
after her. And they would say: "Who! Eleanore Cuyler? Why, don't you
know? While you were on your honeymoon she was in the slums, where she
took typhoid fever nursing a child, and died!" Or else some day, when
she had grown into a beautiful sweet-faced old lady, with white hair,
his wife would die, and he would return to her, never having been very
happy with his first wife, but having nobly hidden from her and from
the world his true feelings. He would find her working among the poor,
and would ask her forgiveness, and she could not quite determine
whether she would forgive him or not. These pictures comforted her
even while they saddened her, and she went about her work, feeling
that it was now her life's work, and that she was in reality an old,
old woman. The rest, she was sure, was but a weary waiting for the
end.
* * * * *
It was about six months after this, in the early spring, while Miss
Cuyler was still in Rivington Street, that young Van Bibber invited
his friend Travers to dine with him, and go on later to the People's
Theatre, on the Bowery, where Irving Willis, the Boy Actor, was
playing "Nick of the Woods." Travers despatched a hasty and joyous
note in reply to this to the effect that he would be on hand. He then
went off with a man to try a horse at a riding academy, and easily and
promptly forgot all about it. He did remember, as he was dressing for
dinner, that he had an appointment somewhere, and took some
consolation out of this fact, for he considered it a decided step in
advance when he could remember that he had an engagement, even if he
could not recall what it was. The stern mental discipline necessary to
do this latter would, he hoped, come in time. So he dined unwarily at
home, and was, in consequence, seized upon by his father, who sent him
to the opera, as a substitute for himself, with his mother and
sisters, while he went off delightedly to his club to play whist.
Travers did not care for the opera, and sat in the back of the box and
dozed, and wondered moodily what so many nice men saw in his sisters
to make them want to talk to them. It was midnight, and just as he had
tumbled into bed, when the nature of his original engagement came back
to him, and his anger and disappointment were so intense that he
kicked the clothes over the foot of his bedstead.
As for Van Bibber, he knew his friend too well to wait for him, and
occupied a box at the People's Theatre in solitary state, and from its
depths gurgled with delight whenever the Boy Actor escaped being run
over by a real locomotive, or in turn rescued the stout heroine from
six red shirted cowboys. There were quite as many sudden deaths and
lofty sentiments as he had expected, and he left the theatre with the
pleased satisfaction of an evening well spent and with a pitying
sympathy for Travers who had missed it. The night was pleasant and
filled with the softness of early spring, and Van Bibber turned down
the Bowery with a cigar between his teeth and no determined purpose
except the one that he did not intend to go to bed. The streets were
still crowded, and the lights showed the many types of this "Thieves'
Highway" with which Van Bibber, in his many excursions in search of
mild adventure, had become familiar. They were so familiar that the
unfamiliarity of the hurrying figure of a girl of his own class who
passed in front of him down Grand Street brought him, abruptly
wondering, to a halt. She had passed directly under an electric light,
and her dress, and walk, and bearing he seemed to recognize, but as
belonging to another place. What a girl, well-born and well-dressed,
could be doing at such an hour in such a neighborhood aroused his
curiosity; but it was rather with a feeling of _noblesse oblige_, and
a hope of being of use to one of his own people, that he crossed to
the opposite side of the street and followed her. She was evidently
going somewhere; that was written in every movement of her regular
quick walk and her steadfast look ahead. Her veil hid the upper part
of her face, and the passing crowd shut her sometimes entirely from
view; but Van Bibber, himself unnoticed, succeeded in keeping her in
sight, while he speculated as to the nature of her errand and her
personality. At Eldridge Street she turned sharply to the north, and,
without a change in her hurrying gait, passed on quickly, and turned
again at Rivington. "Oh," said Van Bibber, with relieved curiosity,
"one of the College Settlement," and stopped satisfied. But the street
had now become deserted, and though he disliked the idea of following
a woman, even though she might not be aware of his doing so, he
disliked even more the idea of leaving her to make her way in such a
place alone. And so he started on again, and as there was now more
likelihood of her seeing him in the empty street, he dropped farther
to the rear and kept in the shadow; and as he did so, he saw a man,
whom he had before noticed on the opposite side of the street, quicken
his pace and draw nearer to the girl. It seemed impossible to Van
Bibber that any man could mistake the standing of this woman and the
evident purpose of her haste; but the man was apparently settling his
pace to match hers, as if only waiting an opportunity to approach her.
Van Bibber tucked his stick under his arm and moved forward more
quickly. It was midnight, and the street was utterly strange to him.
From the light of the lamps he could see signs in Hebrew and the
double eagle of Russia painted on the windows of the saloons. Long
rows of trucks and drays stood ranged along the pavements for the
night, and on some of the stoops and fire-escapes of the tenements a
few dwarfish specimens of the Polish Jew sat squabbling in their
native tongue.
But it was not until they had reached Orchard Street, and when
Rivington Street was quite empty, that the man drew up uncertainly
beside the girl, and, bending over, stared up in her face, and then,
walking on at her side, surveyed her deliberately from head to foot.
For a few steps the girl moved on as apparently unmindful of his near
presence as though he were a stray dog running at her side; but when
he stepped directly in front of her, she stopped and backed away from
him fearfully. The man hesitated for an instant, and then came on
after her, laughing.
Van Bibber had been some distance in the rear. He reached the curb
beside them just as the girl turned back, with the man still following
her, and stepped in between them. He had come so suddenly from out of
the darkness that they both started. Van Bibber did not look at the
man. He turned to the girl, and raised his hat slightly, and
recognized Eleanore Cuyler instantly as he did so; but as she did not
seem to remember him he did not call her by name, but simply said,
with a jerk of his head, "Is this man annoying you?"
Miss Cuyler seemed to wish before everything else to avoid a scene.
"He--he just spoke to me, that is all," she said. "I live only a
block below here; if you will please let me go on alone, I would be
very much obliged."
"Certainly, do go on," said Van Bibber, "but I shall have to follow
you until you get in-doors. You needn't be alarmed, no one will speak
to you." Then he turned to the man, and said, in a lower tone, "You
wait here till I get back, will you? I want to talk to you."
The man paid no attention to him whatsoever. He was so far misled by
Van Bibber's appearance as to misunderstand the situation entirely.
"Oh, come now," he said, smiling knowingly at the girl, "you can't
shake me for no dude."
He put out his hand as he spoke as though he meant to touch her. Van
Bibber pulled his stick from under his arm and tossed it out of his
way, and struck the man twice heavily in the face. He was very cool
and determined about it, and punished him, in consequence, much more
effectively than if his indignation had made him excited. The man gave
a howl of pain, and stumbled backwards over one of the stoops, where
he dropped moaning and swearing, with his fingers pressed against his
face.
"_Please_, now," begged Van Bibber, quickly turning to Miss Cuyler, "I
am very sorry, but if you had _only_ gone when I asked you to." He
motioned impatiently with his hand. "Will you please go?"
But the girl, to his surprise, stood still and looked past him over
his shoulder. Van Bibber motioned again for her to pass on, and then,
as she still hesitated, turned and glanced behind him. The street had
the blue-black look of a New York street at night. There was not a
lighted window in the block. It seemed to have grown suddenly more
silent and dirty and desolate-looking. He could see the glow of the
elevated station at Allen Street, and it seemed fully a half-mile
away. Save for the girl and the groaning fool on the stoop, and the
three figures closing in on him, he was quite alone. The foremost of
the three men stopped running, and came up briskly with his finger
held interrogatively in front of him. He stopped when it was within a
foot of Van Bibber's face.
"Are you looking for a fight?" he asked.
There was enough of the element of the sport in Van Bibber to enable
him to recognize the same element in the young man before him. He knew
that this was no whimpering blackguard who followed women into side
streets to insult them; this was one of the purest specimens of the
tough of the East-Side water-front, and he and his companions would
fight as readily as Van Bibber would smoke--and they would not fight
fair. The adventure had taken on a grim and serious turn, and Van
Bibber gave an imperceptible shrug and a barely audible exclamation of
disgust as he accepted it.
"Because," continued his new opponent with business-like briskness,
"if you're looking for a fight, you can set right to me. You needn't
think you can come down here and run things--you--" He followed this
with an easy roll of oaths, intended to goad his victim into action.
A reformed prize-fighter had once told Van Bibber that there were six
rules to observe in a street fight. He said he had forgotten the first
five, but the sixth one was to strike first. Van Bibber turned his
head towards Miss Cuyler. "You had better run," he said, over his
shoulder; and then, turning quickly, he brought his left fist, with
all the strength and weight of his arm and body back of it, against
the end of the new-comer's chin.
This is a most effective blow. This is so because the lower jaw is
anatomically loose; and when it is struck heavily, it turns and jars
the brain, and the man who is struck feels as though the man who
struck him had opened the top of his skull and taken his brains in his
hand and wrenched them as a brakeman wrenches a brake. If you shut
your teeth hard, and rap the tip of your chin sharply with your
knuckles, you can get an idea of how effective this is when multiplied
by an arm and all the muscles of a shoulder.
The man threw up his arms and went over backwards, groping blindly
with his hands.
Van Bibber heard a sharp rapping behind him frequently repeated; he
could not turn to see what it was, for one of the remaining men was
engaging him in front, and the other was kicking at his knee-cap, and
striking at his head from behind. He was no longer cool; he was
grandly and viciously excited; and, rushing past his opponent, he
caught him over his hip with his left arm across his breast, and so
tossed him, using his hip for a lever.
A man in this position can be thrown so that he will either fall as
lightly as a baby falls from his pillow to the bed, or with sufficient
force to break his ribs. Van Bibber, being excited, threw him the
latter way. Seeing this, the second man, who had so far failed to find
Van Bibber's knee-cap, backed rapidly away, with his hands in front of
him.
"Here," he cried, "lem'me alone; I'm not in this."
"Oh yes, you are," cried Van Bibber, gasping, but with fierce
politeness. "Excuse me, but you are. Put up your hands; I'm going to
kill _you_."
He had a throbbing feeling in the back of his head, and his breathing
was difficult. He could still hear the heavy, irregular rapping behind
him, but it had become confused with the throbbing in his head. "Put
up your hands," he panted.
The third man, still backing away, placed his arms in a position of
defence, and Van Bibber beat them down savagely, and caught him by the
throat and pounded him until his arm was tired, and he had to drop him
at his feet.
As he turned dizzily, he heard a sharp answering rap down the street,
and saw coming towards him the burly figure of a policeman running
heavily and throwing his night-stick in front of him by its leather
thong, so that it struck reverberating echoes out of the pavement.
And then he saw to his amazement that Miss Cuyler was still with him,
standing by the curb and beating it with his heavy walking-stick as
calmly as though she were playing golf, and looking keenly up and down
the street for possible aid. Van Bibber gazed at her with breathless
admiration.
"Good heavens!" he panted, "didn't I ask you _please_ to go home?"
The policeman passed them and dived uncertainly down a dark area-way
as one departing figure disappeared into the open doorway of a
tenement, on his way to the roof, and the legs of another dodged
between the line of drays.
"Where'd them fellows go?" gasped the officer, instantly reappearing
up the steps of the basement.
"How should I know?" answered Van Bibber, and added, with ill-timed
lightness, "they didn't leave any address." The officer stared at him
with severe suspicion, and then disappeared again under one of the
trucks.
"I am very, very much obliged to you, Miss Cuyler," Van Bibber said.
He tried to raise his hat, but the efforts of the gentleman who had
struck him from behind had been successful and the hat came off only
after a wrench that made him wince.
"You were very brave," he went on. "And it was very good of you to
stand by me. You won't mind my saying so, now, will you? But you gave
the wrong rap. I hadn't time to tell you to change it." He mopped the
back of his head tenderly with his handkerchief, and tried to smile
cheerfully. "You see, you were giving the rap," he explained politely,
"for a fire-engine; but it's of no consequence." Miss Cuyler came
closer to him, and he saw that her face showed sudden anxiety.
"Mr. Van Bibber!" she exclaimed. "Oh, I didn't know it was you! I
didn't know it was any one who knew me. What will you think?"
"I beg your pardon," said Van Bibber, blankly.
"You must not believe," she went on, quickly, "that I am subject to
this sort of thing. Please do not imagine I am annoyed down here like
this. It has never happened before. I was nursing a woman, and her
son, who generally goes home with me, was kept at the works, and I
thought I could risk getting back alone. You see," she explained, as
Van Bibber's face showed he was still puzzled, "my people do not fancy
my living down here; and if they should hear of this they would never
consent to my remaining another day, and it means so much to me now."
"They need not hear of it," Van Bibber answered, sympathetically.
"They certainly won't from me, if that's what you mean."
The officer had returned, and interrupted them brusquely. It seemed
to him that he was not receiving proper attention.
"Say, what's wrong here?" he demanded. "Did that gang take anything
off'n you."
"They did not," said Van Bibber. "They held me up, but they didn't
take nothin' off'n of me."
The officer flushed uncomfortably, and was certain now that he was
being undervalued. He surveyed the blood running down over Van
Bibber's collar with a smile of malicious satisfaction.
"They done you up, any way," he suggested.
"Yes, they done me up," assented Van Bibber, cheerfully, "and if you'd
come a little sooner they'd done you up too."
He stepped to Miss Cuyler's side, and they walked on down the street
to the College Settlement in silence, the policeman following
uncertainly in the rear.
"I haven't thanked you, Mr. Van Bibber," said Miss Cuyler. "It was
really fine of you, and most exciting. You must be very strong. I
can't imagine how you happened to be there, but it was most fortunate
for me that you were. If you had not, I--"
"Oh, that's all right," said Van Bibber, hurriedly. "I haven't had so
much fun without paying for it for a long time. Fun," he added,
meditatively, "costs so much."
"And you will be so good, then, as not to speak of it," she said, as
she gave him her hand at the door.
"Of course not. Why should I?" said Van Bibber, and then his face
beamed and clouded again instantly. "But, oh," he begged, "I'm afraid
I'll have to tell Travers! Oh, please let me tell Travers! I'll make
him promise not to mention it, but it's too good a joke on him, when
you think what he missed. You see," he added, hastily, "we were to
have gone out together, and he forgot, as usual, and missed the whole
thing, and he wasn't _in it_, and it will just about break his heart.
He's always getting grinds on me," he went on, persuasively, "and now
I've got this on him. You will really have to let me tell Travers."
Miss Cuyler looked puzzled and said "Certainly," though she failed to
see why Mr. Travers should want his head broken, and then she thanked
Van Bibber again and nodded to the officer and went in-doors.
The policeman, who had listened to the closing speeches, looked at Van
Bibber with dawning admiration.
"Now then, officer," said Van Bibber, briskly, "which of the saloons
around here break the law by keeping open after one? You probably
know, and if you don't I'll have to take your number." And peace being
in this way restored, the two disappeared together into the darkness
to break the law.
Van Bibber told Travers about it the next morning, and Travers forgot
he was not to mention it, and told the next man he met. By one o'clock
the story had grown in his telling, and Van Bibber's reputation had
grown with it.
Travers found three men breakfasting together at the club, and drew up
a chair. "Have you heard the joke Van Bibber's got on me?" he asked,
sadly, by way of introduction.
Wainwright was sitting at the next table with his back to them. He had
just left the customs officers, and his wonder at the dirtiness of the
streets and height of the buildings had given way to the pleasure of
being home again, and before the knowledge that "old friends are
best." He had meant to return again immediately as soon as he had
arranged for the production of his play in New York; his second play
was to be brought out in London in a month. But the heartiness of his
friends' greetings, and the anxiety of men to be recognized who had
been mere acquaintances hitherto, had touched and amused him. He was
too young to be cynical over it, and he was glad, on the whole, that
he had come back.
His mind was wide awake, and shifting from one pleasant thought to
another, when he heard Travers's voice behind him raised impressively.
"And they both went at Van hammer and tongs," he heard Travers say,
"one in front and the other behind, kicking and striking all over the
shop. And," continued Travers, interrupting himself suddenly with a
shrill and anxious tone of interrogation, "where was I while this was
going on? That's the pathetic part of it--where was I?" His voice rose
to almost a shriek of disappointment. "_I_ was sitting in a red-silk
box listening to a red-silk opera with a lot of _girls_--that's what
_I_ was doing. I wasn't in it; I wasn't. I--"
"Well, never mind what you were doing," said one of the men,
soothingly; "you weren't in it, as you say. Return to the libretto."
"Well," continued Travers, meekly, "let me see; where was I?"
"You were in a red-silk box," suggested one of the men, reaching for
the coffee.
"Go on, Travers," said the first man. "The two men were kicking Van
Bibber."
"Oh, yes," cried Travers. "Well, Van just threw the first fellow over
his head, and threw him _hard_. He must have broken his ribs, for the
second fellow tried to get away, and begged off, but Van wouldn't have
it, and rushed him. He got the tough's head under his arm, and
pummelled it till his arm ached, and then he threw him into the
street, and asked if any other gentleman would like to try his luck.
That's what Van did, and he told me not to tell any one, so I hope you
will not mention it. But I had to tell you, because I want to know if
you have ever met a harder case of hard luck than that. Think of it,
will you? Think of me sitting there in a red-silk box listening to
a--"
"What did the girl do?" interrupted one of the men.
"Oh, yes," said Travers, hastily; "that's the best part of it; that's
the plot--the girl. Now, who do you think the girl was?" He looked
around the table proudly, with the air of a man who is sure of his
climax.
"How should I know?" one man said. "Some actress going home from the
theatre, maybe--"
"No," said Travers. "It's a girl you all know." He paused
impressively. "What would you say now," he went on, dropping his
voice, "if I was to tell you it was Eleanore Cuyler?"
The three men looked up suddenly and at each other with serious
concern. There was a moment's silence. "Well," said one of them,
softly, "that _is_ rather nasty."
"Now, what I want to know is," Travers ran on, elated at the sensation
his narrative had made--"what I want to know is, where is that girl's
mother, or sister, or brother? Have they anything to say? Has any one
anything to say? Why, one of Eleanore Cuyler's little fingers is worth
more than all the East and West Side put together; and she is to be
allowed to run risks like--"
Wainwright pushed his chair back, and walked out of the room.
"See that fellow, quick," said Travers; "that's Wainwright who writes
plays and things. He's a thoroughbred sport, too, and he just got back
from London. It's in the afternoon papers."
Miss Cuyler was reading to Mrs. Lockmuller, who was old and bedridden
and cross. Under the influence of Eleanore's low voice she frequently
went to sleep, only to wake and demand ungratefully why the reading
had stopped.
Miss Cuyler was very tired. It was close and hot, and her head ached a
little, and the prospect across the roofs of the other tenements was
not cheerful. Neither was the thought that she was to spend her summer
making working-girls happy on a farm on Long Island.
She had grown sceptical as to working-girls, and of the good she did
them--or any one else. It was all terribly dreary and forlorn, and she
wished she could end it by putting her head on some broad shoulder and
by being told that it didn't matter, and that she was not to blame if
the world would be wicked and its people unrepentant and ungrateful.
Corrigan, on the third floor, was drunk again and promised trouble.
His voice ascended to the room in which she sat, and made her nervous,
for she was feeling the reaction from the excitement of the night
before. There were heavy footsteps on the stairs, and a child's shrill
voice cried, "She's in there," and, suspecting it might be Corrigan,
she looked up fearfully, and then the door opened and she saw the most
magnificent and the handsomest being in the world. His magnificence
was due to a Bond Street tailor, who had shown how very small a waist
will go with very broad shoulders, and if he was handsome, that was
the tan of a week at sea. But it was not the tan, nor the unusual
length of his coat, that Eleanore saw, but the eager, confident look
in his face--and all she could say was, "Oh, Mr. Wainwright," feebly.
Wainwright waved away all such trifling barriers as "Mister" and
"Miss." He came towards her with his face stern and determined.
"Eleanore," he said, "I have a hansom at the door, and I want you to
come down and get into it."
Was this the young man she had been used to scold and advise and
criticise? She looked at him wondering and happy. It seemed to rest
her eyes just to see him, and she loved his ordering her so, until a
flash of miserable doubt came over her that if he was confident, it
was because he was not only sure of himself, but of some one else on
the other side of the sea.
And all her pride came to her, and thankfulness that she had not shown
him what his coming meant, and she said, "Did my mother send you? How
did you come? Is anything wrong?"
He took her hand in one of his and put his other on top of it firmly.
"Yes," he said. "Everything is wrong. But we'll fix all that."
He did not seem able to go on immediately, but just looked at her.
"Eleanore," he said, "I have been a fool, all sorts of a fool. I came
over here to go back again at once, and I am going back, but not
alone. I have been alone too long. I had begun to fancy there was only
one woman in the world until I came back, and then--something some
man said proved to me there was another one, and that she was the only
one, and that I--had come near losing her. I had tried to forget
about her. I had tried to harden myself to her by thinking she had
been hard to me. I said--she does not care for you as the woman you
love must care for you, but it doesn't matter now whether she cares or
not, for I love _her_ so. I want her to come to me and scold me again,
and tell me how unworthy I am, and make me good and true like herself,
and happy. The rest doesn't count without her, it means nothing to me
unless she takes it and keeps it in trust for me, and shares it with
me." He had both her hands now, and was pressing them against the
flowers in the breast of the long coat.
"Eleanore," he said, "I tried to tell you once of the one thing that
would bring me back and you stopped me. Will you stop me now?"
She tried to look up at him, but she would not let him see the
happiness in her face just then, and lowered it and gently said, "No,
no."
It must have taken him a long time to tell it, for after he had driven
them twice around the Park the driver of the hansom decided that he
could ask eight dollars at the regular rates, and might even venture
on ten, and the result showed that as a judge of human nature he was a
success.
They were married in May, and Lord Lowes acted as best man, and his
sister sent her warmest congratulations and a pair of silver
candlesticks for the dinner-table, which Wainwright thought were very
handsome indeed, but which Miss Cuyler considered a little showy. Van
Bibber and Travers were ushers, and, indeed, it was Van Bibber himself
who closed the door of the carriage upon them as they were starting
forth after the wedding. Mrs. Wainwright said something to her
husband, and he laughed and said, "Van, Mrs. Wainwright says she's
much obliged."
"Yes?" said Van Bibber, pleased and eager, putting his head through
the window of the carriage. "What for, Mrs. Wainwright--the
chafing-dish? Travers gave half, you know."