Kentucky--Lady Ross was Miss Patricia Ellison, of Louisville, and Mrs.
Chauncey belongs to the ever-growing class of American women who have
created a deep impression on London society by making the very most of
some particular talent or taste or feature.
Society in these days, like the professions of war, law or medicine,
is in the hands of the specialists; and I think that the American
women who came over to carve out their own social way saw this
opportunity at once and have developed it in a quite remarkable
fashion.
The arbiters of social place are not handing out any of the big prizes
to the women who are just agreeable in a commonplace style. Do the
striking thing in London, and do it well, is the rule for success at
this time, and the energetic, quickly perceiving American woman loses
not a week nor a day after her arrival in proving to us that she is a
definite person indeed.
London society is made up of as many as ten different sets, all
independent and powerful, each one in its own way, and the skill of
the woman from New York or Chicago is displayed by her promptness in
deciding on just the set into which she prefers to enter.
Mrs. Bradley Martin, Lady Deerhurst, Lady Bagot; Cora, Lady
Strafford--now known by her new married title as Mrs. Kennard--Lady
Newborough and a score of others one could mention, are to be included
among the Americans who have devoted their talents entirely to the
conquering of the smartest of smart sets. Most of these have married
titles, it is true, but titles are not essential, after all, where
natural social gifts are possessed; Mrs. Sam Chauncey, for instance,
is a case in point.
Mrs. Chauncey is an American widow and a beauty, with a most agreeable
manner and lively intelligence; she presides in a bewitching bijou of
a little house in Hertford Street, and drives one of the smartest
miniature victorias that appear in the park. But London's first and
most striking impression concerning this delightful acquisition from
the States was derived from her wonderful and lovely gowns--her French
frocks are, for taste and becomingness, quite paralyzing to even a
breath of criticism, and from the first moment of her debut in London
they excited only the most whole-souled enthusiasm in the hearts of
all beholders of both sexes.
To say that she is rather particularly famous as the best dressed
woman in our great city is, perhaps, to make a pretty strong
assertion, in the face of very serious competition offered by women
notable for the perfection of their wardrobe, but this claim really
stands on good grounds. Even among her compatriots, she seems always
astonishingly well gowned, and really, if we are going to honestly
give honor where honor is due, we must put natural pride and sentiment
aside and agree that the presence of the American woman in London has
had a marked and salutary influence on the whole dress problem as
English women look at it.
Not to mince matters, we may as well confess that _les Americaines_ do
gown themselves with superlative taste. Our peeresses and visitors
from the States know what to wear and how to wear it; they show so
much tact in their choice of colors, they put on their gay gowns and
hats with such a completeness of touch, and display so much instinct
for style in the choice and use of small etceteras, that it is idle to
say we English have not been compelled to notice and admire.
If imitation is truly the sincerest flattery, as some ancient wiseacre
said years ago, then there is pretty clear evidence daily afforded to
prove that we are complimenting our American sisters by slowly
adopting their ideas of dress.
More and more each season does Paris send us the sort of gown and
hatpin, belt and handkerchief and hair ornament, that goes to New
York, and more and more is the saying, "She dresses quite like an
American woman," accepted as a kindly comment, wherever it is offered.
A general impression, also, is prevailing to the effect that one
reason why our American cousins wear their fine frocks with such good
results is because they hold their heads high and their backs flat and
straight. There is even now, in London, a vastly popular _corsetiere_
who does not hesitate to recommend herself as the only artiste in town
who can persuade any form, stout or lean, to assume at once the exact
outlines of the admired American figure.
The Duchess of Roxburghe, Mrs. Kennard and the Countess of Suffolk are
all very fair examples, in our eyes, of the high perfection of line to
which the feminine form divine can and does attain in America; for all
these women hold themselves with the most superlative grace, wear
gowns that would make Solomon in all his glory feel envious, and help
to maintain the now fixed belief in England that all Americans are
tall, straight, slender and born with a capacity for wearing diamond
tiaras with as much ease as straw hats.
It would not be fair, though, to lay too much of the social success of
King Edward's fair new subjects and visitors wholly at their wardrobe
doors, for the two most influential and prominent American women just
now in London are neither of them titled, nor do they place too much
stress on the gorgeousness of their frocks and frills.
Both Mrs. Arthur Paget--who was Miss Minnie Stevens, of New York--and
Mrs. Ronalds are listed everywhere among the most popular of our
hostesses, and Mrs. Ronalds, especially, is a distinct power in the
musical world. Scarcely a famous artist comes to town but sooner or
later he hears, to his advantage, of this wealthy American.
Her red and white music room--by far the most artistic and completely
equipped private salon of its kind in London--has sheltered
distinguished companies of the very fashionable and intellectual
English music lovers; she has made her Sunday afternoons of something
more than mere frivolous importance, and won for them, indeed, a
decided and enviable celebrity, for Mrs. Ronalds is one of those
American women who possess a genius for hospitality.
Mrs. Paget, it is true, takes due rank in the same category, and both
these women have all the truly American tastes for featuring their
entertainments most delightfully. To continue in the commonplace round
of quite conventional functions, as approved by society, is not to be
borne by these energetic and novelty-loving ladies, and a dinner, a
supper party or a dance at Mrs. Paget's is sure to develop some
unexpected and charming phase.
It is to Mrs. Paget, for example, that we are indebted for the
introduction of that purely American festivity, "The Ladies'
Luncheon." "The Ladies' Luncheon" is now quite acclimatized here; we
have accepted it as we have also accepted "The Ladies' Dinner-party,"
which was wholly unknown previous to the American invasion. Whether
Mrs. Paget was instrumental or not in making for the last-mentioned
form of entertainment a place among our conservative hostesses is not
quite proven, but it is safe to say that this tall, vivacious,
energetic lady, who skates as well as she dances, golfs and drives a
motor car, carries almost more social power in her small right hand
than any other untitled woman in London.
She is heartily admired by our present king and queen, who find in her
sparkling talk very much the same mental stimulus that one derives
from the Duchess Consuelo's gay epigrams, and, above everything else,
the court and its circle of society reverence the charms of the woman
whose brain bubbles over with ideas.
If a dance, a dinner, a bazaar or a picnic is on foot, Mrs. Paget can
map out and put through the enterprise with amazing skill and
readiness, and she shows all the American's shrewd business instinct
for profitably pleasing a ticket-purchasing public when a charity fund
must be swelled or a hospital assisted.
With her vigor, high spirits and infinite variety of charm, she is
enormously sought after and courted and feted, but it is noticeable,
and none the less admirable, in English eyes, that the American woman
established in a foreign land rarely or never fails in either her
admiration or her affection for her country across the sea.
At the time of the Spanish-American War, this extreme loyalty to their
native home and the land of their birth was made evident in not one
but a dozen ways that never escaped the notice of English eyes.
Expatriated though in a measure she is, the Anglicized American woman
scarcely ever loses her sense of pride and profound satisfaction in
being an American, after all, and so strong is this feeling in these
delightful women that it is accepted quite as a matter of course, both
by them and by their English friends, that their sons should
frequently go back to the mothers' land in order to find their wives.
Two notable instances of the son's love for his mother's country and
his instinctive interest in her countrywomen have been supplied in the
marriages of the young Duke of Manchester and the son of Sir William
and Lady Vernon-Harcourt.
It seems scarcely more than natural that Mr. Lewis Vernon-Harcourt
should marry pretty Miss Burns, of New York, though, through his
mother as well as his father, all his interests and sympathies are
naturally centered in England.
Yet it is safe to say that when the average Englishman marries an
American he does not feel in the least as though he was marrying, so
to speak, outside the family circle.
The marvelous adaptability of the American woman robs the situation of
any difficulty, and in no way, so far, has the American wife of the
Englishman showed more astonishing adaptability than in the cordial
interest with which she often identifies herself with her husband's
political interests, if he is in Parliament.
Three of the keenest politicians in petticoats that England possesses
are American women by birth; and the first and leading spirit among
them is the American wife of Mr. Chamberlain.
Mrs. Chamberlain cares little or nothing for society, and beyond the
obligatory functions at which she has been obliged to preside or
attend, she shows small taste for the frivolities of that special
world of men and women where the main task and occupation of every day
is to amuse one's self. But in the affairs of state she feels a very
burning interest indeed.
She is one of the two women in the British empire who are admitted by
men to understand the mysterious and, to the average feminine mind,
inexplicable fiscal problem; she knows all about tariff reform; she is
her husband's first secretary, confidante and adviser; she is said to
be the most discreet lady in speech, where her husband's political
interests are concerned, and when he speaks in public Mrs. Chamberlain
sits so near to him that, in case of a lapse of memory, she can play
the part of stage prompter.
Every one of his speeches she commits to memory, and can, therefore,
give him any missing word at any critical moment, and in this way she
is even more helpful than the capable and intellectual Lady
Vernon-Harcourt was to her distinguished husband.
There is still a third American woman to whose abilities her English
husband is deeply indebted. This is Lady Curzon, who has very clearly
defined diplomatic gifts, who is naturally highly ambitious, and who
has, in her zeal to help her husband, learned to speak more East
Indian dialects and Oriental tongues than any white woman in India.
Fourth, perhaps, of this list should be mentioned Lady Cheylesmore,
who was in her girlhood, spent at Newport and New York, so well known
and admired, especially for her wonderful red hair, which Whistler
loved to paint.
Lady Cheylesmore was Miss Elizabeth French in those days, and now she
is proud to be known as the wife of the mayor of Westminster, for her
husband has lately been chosen for that very dignified position. As
one of London's lady mayoresses, she will dispense delightful
hospitality in her handsome house in Upper Grosvenor Street, which is
famous for its three wonderful drawing rooms, decorated by the
Brothers Adam, and regarded by connoisseurs as one of the most perfect
examples of their art and taste.
At her dinner parties Lady Cheylesmore entertains many politicians of
note, and in one way or another, by her infinite tact and good sense,
does much to aid and abet her husband's well-known aspirations to a
brilliant parliamentary place.
She is one of the ardently ambitious American women of whose very real
and deserved triumphs we hear so much artistically as well as
socially, these days. And let it be said here and now, to London's
credit, that there is no city in the world that gives to its resident
daughters of Uncle Sam a heartier measure of praise and encouragement
in all their accomplishments.
We may, some of us, cherish high tariff principles and believe in
restricting the immigration. None of us, however, is ready to vote for
any measures that will bar out or discourage one class of fair and
accomplished aliens who cross the ocean bent on conquering London, and
who in the end are so often conquered in turn by London's charm, and
who settle down to form an element in our society that is fast
becoming as familiar and as welcome as it is admirable and
indispensable.
THE BLOOD OF BLINK BONNY
By MARTHA MCCULLOCH-WILLIAMS
Miss Allys Rhett stood upon the clubhouse lawn, a vision in filmy
white, smiling her softest, most enchanting smile. There was a reason
for the smile--a reason strictly feminine, yet doubly masculine. She
had walked down the steps that led from the _piazza_ betwixt Rich
Hilary and Jack Adair, the catches of the season, in full view of the
Hammond girl, who was left to waste her sweetness upon prosy old Van
Ammerer.
The Hammond girl had been rather nasty all summer--she was, moreover,
well known to be in hot pursuit of Rich Hilary. Until Allys came on
the scene it had seemed the pursuit must be successful. They had gone
abroad on the same steamer the year before, dawdled through a London
season, and come home simultaneously--he rather bored and languid, she
of a demure and downcast, but withal possessive, air. She had said
they were not engaged--"oh, dear no, only excellent friends," but
looking all the while a contradiction of the words. Then unwisely she
had taken Hilary to that tiresome tea for the little Rhett girl--and
behold! the mischief was done.
The little Rhett girl was not little; instead, she was divinely tall,
and lithe as a young ash. No child, either. What with inclination and
mother-wisdom, her coming out had waited for her to find herself. At
nineteen she had found herself--a woman, well poised and charming as
she was beautiful. Notwithstanding Hilary had not instantly
surrendered--horse, foot and dragoons. Rather he had held out for
terms--the full honors of war, as became a man rising thirty, and
prospective heir to more millions than he well knew what to do with.
Two or three of the millions had taken shape in the Bay Park, the
newest and finest of metropolitan courses. Hilary's father, a power
alike on the turf and in the street, had built it, and controlled it
absolutely--of course through the figment of an obedient jockey club.
A trace of sentiment, conjoined to a deal of pride, had made him
revive an old-time stake--the Far and Near. It dated back to that
limbo of racing things--"before the war." Banker Hilary's grandfather,
a leader among gentlemen horsemen of that good day, had been of those
who instituted it--a fact upon which no turf scribe had failed to
dilate when telling the glories of the course. The event was, of
course, set down a classic--as well it might be, all things
considered. The founders had framed it so liberally as to admit the
best in training--hence the name. The refounders made conditions
something narrower, but offset that by quadrupling the value.
This was Far and Near day--with a record crowd, and hot, bright summer
weather. The track was well known to be lightning fast, and the entry
list was so big and puzzling that the Far and Near might well prove
anybody's race. There were favorites, of course, also rank outsiders.
One heard their names everywhere in the massed throng that had
overflowed the big stand, the lawn, the free field, and broken in
human waves upon the green velvet of the infield. This by President
Hilary's own order. He had come to the track early, and looked to
everything--with a result that there was no trouble anywhere.
The crowd had been gayly demonstrative through the first two races. It
had watched the third in tense silence--except that moiety of it
ebbing and flowing through the clubhouse. It was the silence of edged
patience. Albeit the early races were fair betting propositions, the
most of those who watched them had come to lay wagers on some Far and
Near candidate--and the Far and Near candidates had been getting their
preliminaries.
They numbered just nineteen. Seventeen had been out when Allys and her
squires stopped under the shade of a tree. Notwithstanding the shadow,
she put up her white parasol, tilting it at just the angle to make it
throw her head and shoulders in high relief. Adair glanced at her,
caught a hard breath, nipped it, then looked steadily down the course
a minute.
Hilary smiled--a smile that got no further than the corners of his red
lips--his eyes, indeed, gloomed the more for it--then turned upon
Allys with: "Pick the winner for us, won't you? You are so delightful
feminine you know nothing of horses, therefore ought to bring us luck.
Say, now, what shall we back?"
"It depends," Allys said, twirling her parasol ever so lightly. "Do
you want to lose? Or do you really care to win?"
"To win, please, O oracle, if it's all the same to you," Hilary said,
supplication in his voice, although his eyes danced.
Allys gave him a long look. "Then you must take Heathflower," she
said. "I have the Wickliffe boy's word for it--he wrote me only
yesterday: 'Miss Allys, if you want to get wealthy, bet all your real
money on that Heathflower thing.'"
"H'm! Who is the Wickliffe boy? Tell us that before we play his tip,"
Adair demanded. Hilary could not speak for laughing.
Allys smiled entrancingly. "The Wickliffe boy--is a knight-errant born
out of time," she said. "I'm wondering if it will last. We came to
know him last summer--mother and I--down at Hollymount, my uncle's
place in Virginia. The Wickliffe boy, Billy by name, lives at
Lyonesse, which is Hollymount's next neighbor. It belongs to Billy's
uncle, the dearest old bachelor--maybe that is the reason the boy has
such reverence for womankind. I don't know which he comes nearest
worshiping--women or horses. Whenever we rode out--he was my steadfast
gallant--he managed somehow to pass through or by or around Haw Bush,
where the Heathflower thing was bred. Old Major Mediwether, her owner,
is Billy's best chum. They match beautifully--though the major is
nearly eighty, and Billy just my age--rising nineteen."
"They must have made it interesting for you. I'm sure you couldn't
tell half so much about either of us," Adair said, with a deeply
injured air.
Allys shook her head at him. "They are dears," she said, emphatically.
"And they taught me a lot I should never have known--about horses and
men."
"Anything specific--as about the Heathflower thing?" Hilary asked,
affecting to speak with awe.
Allys nodded. "A heap," she said. "I can hear Billy now, as we watched
her on the training track, saying: 'She hasn't got any looks--but legs
are better for winnin'. And she must win; she's bound to--whenever she
feels like it, and the track and the weights suit her. She can't help
it--she's got eight full crosses of Blink Bonny blood.'"
"Blink Bonny! H'm! Who was he? What did he do?" Hilary asked.
Allys looked at him severely. "'He' happens to have been 'she,'" she
said. "As for the doing, it was only winning the Derby, with the Oaks
right on top of it. Mighty few mares have ever done that--as you would
know if you had grown up in Virginia, with time to know everything.
Billy does know everything about pedigrees--he can reel them off at
least a hundred years back. Remember, now, I'm strictly quoting him:
'Blink Bonny is really ancient history--she won the year poor old Dick
Ten Broek tried so hard to have his American-bred ones carry off the
blue ribbon of the turf. He didn't win it--no American did--until one
of them had luck enough to try for it with something of Blink Bonny's
blood. Iroquois went back to her through his sire, Bonnie
Scotland-Iroquois, who wasn't really a great horse, but a good one
that happened on a great chance.'"
"Why, Allys darling, I can hardly believe my ears! Here you are
talking horse like a veteran, when I always thought you didn't know a
fetlock from a wishbone," the Hammond girl cooed, swimming up behind
them on old Van Ammerer's arm. They were headed for the paddock,
although it was not quite time for the saddling bell. The Heathflower
thing was still invisible--Allys searched the course for her through
Hilary's glass, saying the while over her shoulder, with her most
infantine smile: "You thought right, Camilla dear. I don't really
_know_ anything--have only a parrot faculty of repeating what I hear."
The Hammond girl flushed--that was what she had said of Allys when
people laughed over the Rhett _mots_. But before she could counter,
Allys cried joyously: "At last! The Heathflower thing! Really, she
hasn't any looks--but see her run, will you?"
"She does move like a winner--but it's impossible she can stay,"
Hilary said, almost arrogantly. "Pedigree is all very well--until it
runs up against performance----"
"Right you are! Quite mighty right, Rich, me boy," old Van Ammerer
interrupted. "But I didn't know they let dark horses run in the Far
and Near----"
"Lucky you are young, Van--you have such a lot to learn," Adair said,
brusquely, as they went toward the paddock. It was thronged, but
somehow at sight of Hilary the human masses fell respectfully
apart--albeit the men and women there had forgotten themselves, even
forgotten each other for the time being, in their poignant eagerness
over the big race.
They were hardly through the gate and well established in an eddy when
the bell brought the racers pacing or scurrying in. The Heathflower
thing came straight off the course, and stood spiritlessly, drooping
her head and blinking her eyes. Clear eyes, matching the loose, satiny
skin, beneath which whipcord muscles stood out, or played at each
least motion, they told the eye initiate that she was in the pink of
condition. Like her so-famous ancestors, a bay with black points,
neither under nor over size, with a fine, lean head, a long neck, and
four splendid legs, it was a marvel that she could so utterly lack any
trace of equine comeliness. Her chest was noticeably narrow, her
barrel out of proportion to shoulders and quarters. Still, against
those patent blemishes, a judge of conformation would have set the
splendid sloping shoulders, the reaching forearm, the bunches of massy
muscle in the long loin, the quarters well let down into perfect
houghs, the fine, clean bone of knees and ankles, the firm,
close-grained hoofs spreading faintly from coronet to base.
Clean-limbed throughout, with ears that, if they drooped, had no trace
of coarseness and were set wide apart above a basin face, the mare
showed race indisputably, notwithstanding the white in her forehead
was too smudgy to be called a star, or that, though her muzzle tapered
finely, the lower lip habitually protruded a bit. A four-year-old, she
was still a maiden--consequently had but a feather on her back in the
Far and Near. The handicapper had laughed, half wearily, half
compassionately as he allotted it, muttering something about the
jockey club robbing the cradle and the grave--that poor old Major
Meriwether, it was well known, hadn't any money to spare; what he did
have was the gambler's instinct to sit into any game where the stakes
were big.
The race was open to three-year-olds and upward, and run over a
distance--two miles and a half. The distance kept out the sprinters--it
also, now and again, played hob with racing idols. To win a horse must
be able to go--also to stay. With twenty thousand of added money,
there was sure to be always a long list of entries. The conditions
held one curious survival from the original fixture--namely, that,
horses brought over three hundred miles to run in it got a three-pound
allowance if they reached the course less than a week before the day
of the race.
Major Meriwether had chuckled whenever he thought of that. He knew
"the weight of a stable key may win or lose a race." And the
Heathflower thing was a splendid traveler, coming out of her padded
stall as ready to run as when she went into it. She had got to the Bay
Park only two days back, in charge of her rubber, Amos, and Black Tim,
her jockey. Tim stood at her head, Amos was giving her lank sides
their last polish, as Allys and her train swept down upon them.
Allys nodded to them gayly, as she asked: "Tim, have you come up to
break New York? I hear your stable will need a special car to take
home its money--after the Far and Near."
"Yessum, dat's so!" Tim said.
Amos scowled at him, but said to Allys, respectfully: "Please'um,
don't ax dat dar fool boy no mo' 'bout de Flower--hit's mighty bad
luck sayin' whut you _gwine_ do, ontwel you is done done it."
"Dar come Marse Billy Wickliffe--you kin ax him all you wanter." Tim
giggled, then clapped his hand over his mouth. Tim was
lathy--long-legged, long-armed, with an ashy-black complexion and very
big eyes. As he stood fondling the Flower's nose, he glared disdain of
all the other candidates, or, rather, of the knots of folk gathered
admiringly about them.
Allys turned half about--for two breaths at least she had a snobbish
impulse to overlook Billy and hurry away. Billy was tall, with a face
like a young Greek god--but how greet him there with the Hammond girl
to see, in a checked suit, patently ready-made, with the noisiest of
shirts, a flowing bright red tie, and a sunburned straw hat? If it
were only Adair, she would not mind--Hilary was, she knew, very much
more critical. She might have run away, but that she caught the
Hammond girl's look--amusement and satisfaction struggled through it,
although the young lady tried hard to mask them.
Allys turned wholly, holding out both hands, and saying: "Billy, by
all that's delightful! I've just been telling these people about you.
Come, show them I kept well within the truth."
Billy caught the outstretched hands, his heart so openly in his eyes
Hilary wanted to strangle him on the spot. The Hammond girl laughed,
and turned to whisper in Van Ammerer's ear. Adair, alone of the group,
shook hands. Although the others gave him civil, if formal, greeting,
Billy felt their hostility intuitively, and flung up his head like a
stag at bay.
"You got my note--have you done it yet?" he asked, bending over Allys
in a fashion that made Hilary's teeth set hard.
She laughed back at him: "Have you done it yet? Bet your whole fortune
on the Heathflower thing at a hundred to one?"
Billy nodded confidently. "That's just what I have done. Unc' Robert
was willin'--he thought as I did, such a little bit o' money was
better risked than kept."
"H'm! I hope you kept the price of a return ticket," Hilary said,
trying to speak jocularly. "Really, Mr. Wickliffe, you can't think
that ugly brute has a chance to be even in the money."
"My money's talkin' for me," Billy said, facing Hilary. "'Tain't
much--only a thousand. Lordy! if I could, wouldn't I burn up these
ringsters! You ought to a-heard 'em, Miss Allys, when I went at 'em.
'The Heathflower thing, did you say?' the first one asked me. 'Oh,
say! do you want to rob us poor fellows? Couldn't think of layin' you
less'n a thousand to one on that proposition.' But he cut it mighty
quick to a hundred to one when I said: 'I'd take you for a hundred,
only I know you couldn't pay.' Tell you he rubbed his slate in a hurry
after I got down fifty. The next one tried to be smart as he was--sang
out to some o' the rest: 'Here's the wild man from Borneo, come to
skin us alive!' Then made out he was skeered to death when I offered
him one little pitiful rag of a ten. But when they saw me keep on
right down the line, some of 'em shut up and looked a little anxious,
some cut the price, and some got sassier than ever. They called me
Rube, and Johnny-on-the-spot-of-wealth, and Shekels, and a heap of
other things. But I didn't mind. Still, next time I'll send my money
by one of those commissioner fellows. To-day I couldn't risk it."
"What makes you so suddenly avaricious, Billy?" Allys asked. "Last
summer you cared less for money than anything. There must be a
reason--tell me, does it wear frocks?"
"Not the special reason," Billy said, with an adoring look; then in
her ear: "I know you don't care for money any more'n I do. But I'm
bound to have some--if there's any chance--it's--it's because of the
major. I'll tell you all about it, after the race."
The parade was nearly over when Allys and her three swains came again
to the lawn. By some odd chance, the long shots had been well toward
the head of it, leaving the two favorites and the three second choices
to bring up the rear. The Heathflower thing was immediately in front
of them. She had moved so soberly, plodding with low head and sleepy
eyes, the watchers had given her an ironic cheer, mingled with cat
calls. All the others had got a welcome more or less enthusiastic, but
it was only when Aramis, even-money favorite, came through the paddock
gate that the crowd got to its feet.
All up and down, and round about, roaring cheers greeted him, followed
him--men flung up their hats for him, women in shrill falsetto cried
his name. Nobody could fail to understand that he carried the hopes
and the fortunes of a great multitude. Nobody could fail to understand
either that Aldegonde, who followed right on his heels, would win or
lose for as many. The pair were blood-brothers, sons of the great
Hamburg, but one out of an imported dam, the other from a mare tracing
to Lexington, and richly inbred to that great sire.
Still the line of cleavage was not patriotic nor even international.
Folk had picked one or the other to win freakishly--on hunches of all
sorts, tips of all manners, pure fancy, or "inside information" of the
hollowest sort. As to looks, pedigree, or performance, there was
hardly a pin to choose between the pair. Both were three-year-olds,
tried in the fire of spring racing; both held able to go the distance
and stay the route, in that they had won from everything except from
each other.
By some curious chance they had not met before that season--in their
two-year-old form they had won and lost to each other.
Thus to many onlookers the Far and Near held out a promise of such an
equine duel as would make it the race of the century. And certainly
two handsomer or gallanter beasts than the pair of raking chestnuts,
long-striding, racelike, with white-starred faces and single white
hind feet, never looked through a bridle.
Notwithstanding, the second choices were far from friendless, albeit
their greatest support was for the place or to show. The greeting they
got was tame compared to that of the favorites, but still a volleying
cheer, rising and falling along the quarter-mile of humanity banked
and massed either side the course. Shrewd form players and the plainer
sort had taken liberal fliers on them--that was evident by the way the
shouting mounted in the free field, and the jam in front of the
betting ring.
Not a few of the professional layers had turned their slates and were
out on watch for the event that would mean thousands in or out of
their pockets. Among the second choices Artillery, the black Meddler
mare, was held a shade the best. Next to her came Tay Ho, a son of
Hastings, five years old, who might have divided honors with the
favorites but for being an arrant rogue. To-day he ran in blinkers,
and nodded the least bit in his stride, whereas his stable mate,
Petrel, the last of the second choices, went as free as ever water
ran.
Billy watched the parade, scarcely conscious that Allys clung to his
arm. Hilary stood at her other hand, frowning blackly. The finish line
was almost in front of them.
Hilary moved back a pace. "We can see better here," he said, trying to
draw Allys along with him. She shook her head obstinately, but said
nothing; in her heart she was resolved that Billy should have the
comfort of her presence in his hour of defeat.
Since she was very far from being a model young person, Hilary's
manifest anger was not displeasing. She was going to marry him--but
only at her own time, and upon her own conditions. So far, there was
no engagement--she had fenced and played with him beautifully all
through the last three months. He had no right whatever to be nasty
about Billy; of course, if it were some grown-up body, Adair for
example, there might be a color of reason for his wrath. He ought to
understand that Billy was, in a way, her guest--also a person to whom
she owed something in the way of hospitality. What provoked her most
was knowing that Hilary was less jealous than ashamed--ashamed to have
her thus openly countenance anybody who wore Billy's clothes. She was
all the angrier for her own moment of snobbishness--men ought to be
above such paltry things, she reasoned; anyway, she was bound to stand
by Billy to the inevitably bitter end.
The start was tedious. Again and again the line of rainbow jackets
drew taut across the course, only to break and tangle, and at last
dissolve into its original gaudy units. Billy sighed as he watched it,
then smiled shyly, and drew a long breath, saying in Allys' ear: "I
hate to win except right square out."
"I don't understand," Allys returned.
Billy looked at her in surprise.
"Don't you see--the favorites have got so much on their backs, the
longer they wheel and turn, the more they take out of themselves?" he
asked. "I'll bet they are frettin' like everything, too. See there!
One of them chestnut-sorrels--can't tell whether it's Aramis or
Aldegonde--is cuttin' up high didoes. And the Heathflower thing
standin' like a little lamb----"
"She may be standing there when the race is over," Hilary interrupted.
Billy did not put down his glass, but said over his shoulder: "Oh, I
reckon Tim can stop her before she gets that far around. Don't know,
though--if she feels like runnin' she's a handful. And this is one of
the days--I know, because she looks as though she couldn't beat a
funeral."
Allys pressed Billy's arm--it was all she could do to show her
enjoyment of the way he had turned things. Hilary bent toward her,
saying, with a hard smile: "You seem to be on Mr. Wickliffe's side--I
wonder will you back his judgment?"
"Maybe so," Allys said, without turning her head. "That is, if you
care to make it anything worth while. I'm not quite sure which I'd
like best--a winter in Paris or a pearl necklace--and I know I shan't
ever get them at bridge--I have no luck at all."
"Give you millions against--just one word," Hilary whispered; then
aloud: "Is it a bet?"
"Say yes, Miss Allys," Billy entreated. "You ain't trustin' to my
judgment--remember that--but to the blood of Blink Bonny."
"I take you up," Allys said, nodding to Hilary. As well this way as
any other, she thought--besides, she could hold him off as long as she
chose. Her father would stand by her loyally--he was in no haste to
see her established. Besides, this was what she had always craved--to
watch a race with a heartrending wager on its event.
"Here they come!" Billy shouted, dropping his glass, and flinging up
his head.
Up course the rainbow line had at last held steady, then, as the tape
flew up, bellied out like a sail in gusty wind, and been rent into
flecks and tatters. The lightweights, of course, were in the foremost
of the flecks and tatters--all, that is, save the Heathflower thing,
who came absolutely last. Tim's orange jacket and scarlet sash were
dust-dimmed by the time he came to the stand. But right in front of
him were Aldegonde's tiger stripes, black and yellow, and the blue and
white in the saddle of Aramis.
"Last all the way--eh, Miss Allys?" Adair said, leaning across Billy,
who would have given back but that Allys clung to him in silence, her
eyes glued to the glass, flushing and paling, her breath coming
quicker even thus early in the race.
There were open lengths all along--the lightweights were bent on
making it a runaway race. Billy knew they could never do it. A
horseman born and made, he marked their stride, and understood even
better than their jockeys how much the killing pace was taking out of
them. It did not astonish him that in the outstretch, before a mile
had been run, three of the first flight chucked it up, falling back,
back, till even the Heathflower thing showed them her heels. At the
mile there were more counterfeits proven--as the race swept down upon
the stand the second time there were but seven of the original
contenders really in it. The rest were tailing hopelessly. One or two
even pulled up. But the Heathflower thing was among the seven, and
keeping place right behind the favorites.
Allys clutched Billy's arm so hard her fingers half buried in it. She
was getting the thrills she had pined for with a vengeance, now that
her freedom, her future, were to be colored by the issue of the race.
The Heathflower thing could not win, of course; still, it was pure
delight to have her so far redeem herself. If she was even near the
real contenders at the finish, Billy's faith would be justified. So
many, at shorter odds, had already fallen out, there would be
distinction in staying all the way.
If the impossible happened, the Heathflower thing won, then she would
have Hilary in a very proper frame of mind. Losing always hurt him
dreadfully--it would be gall and wormwood to have lost to such a
winner. She felt this rather than thought it--connected thought indeed
was impossible in view of what was happening out on the course.
In the outstretch, for the second time, Aramis shot forward like the
arrow from a bended bow. He had been running under wraps--now thus far
from home, his jockey, the most famous of them all, gave him his head,
evidently thinking there would be but one horse in the race. All in a
breath two open lengths showed between Aramis and the others; then
Aldegonde with a mighty burst lapped the leader's flank. Tay Ho was
right behind--so close his backers set up a breathless shout. The
Flower was still last, but strive, strain, stretch as the flying
leaders might, they got no further away from her.
Billy flung up his hat, then clapped his hand over his mouth and said,
smotheredly:
"See that, Miss Allys! Let her come into the stretch with just one
breath more'n those fine fellows, and it's all over but the cashin'
in."
"Billy, you're an angel! I thought we were hopelessly beaten," Allys
breathed rather than said.
Hilary's mouth set. Adair, watching him narrowly, saw it also whiten
when, at the second mile post, the three leaders swept the turn barely
heads apart, with the Heathflower thing right on their heels. More
than that, she was running strongly, easily, clearly not distressed,
although Aramis, still leading, rolled the least bit.
Could that leggy bay really stay the route? Was there any reason for
the Wickliffe boy's unreason? Was there also any chance for
him?--there Adair stopped short, smiling a thought grimly to see how
all unconsciously, all femininely, Allys drooped to Billy's upright,
youthful strength.
Hilary likewise noted it--with a thumping heart that sent the color
surging over his face. Habitually he held himself well in hand--it
amazed and angered him to find himself thus swept beyond himself. To
all of us come moments when instinct masters reason--the primal
masculine instinct of possession told him he would win or lose his
quicksilver sweetheart on the issue of this race.
Now she had no thought of him--her eyes were only for the course,
where four horses ran like a team as never any of them had run before.
All through the first quarter of this fateful last half, they held
each other safe, running side by side, stride for stride.
At the furlong pole beyond, Tay Ho's hooded head for the first time
showed in front--only to be instantly eclipsed by the white star of
Aldegonde. Aramis began to hang--the angry roar of his backers told he
was out of it. Simultaneously, the jockeys sat down to ride--there was
the cruel swish of catgut, the crueler prodding of steel. In the crowd
a great hushed breath, like the sigh of a forest before the storm,
told of tense heartstrings.
Almost instantly the sigh changed to a shouted roar as Tay Ho dropped
back level with Aramis, leaving Aldegonde and the Heathflower thing
half a length to the good. But next breath the falterers came
again--together they held their place, their way, four mighty masses
of blood and bone, of breath and fire and stay, fighting it out every
inch of the way, with a living sea roaring, shouting, cursing, crying
encouragement on either hand.
How they lay down to it! How they came up!
Stretch and gather! Stretch and gather, the game and gallant foursome
held to it. Now, for the first time, the Heathflower thing showed all
that was in her. Even those who stood to lose fortunes felt that her
whirlwind rush deserved to win.
A hundred yards from the wire, whips still flying, rowels plowing
furrows in satin coats, Aramis staggered, half stumbled, then fell
back an open length.
Tim flung away his whip, and leaned far over, lying almost flat upon
the Flower's neck to shout in her ear: "You see dat dar Mister
Aldergown! Dee calls him bulldawg! Tote yosef, gal! Show 'im you's
bulldawg, too." Perhaps the Flower resented the caution. Certainly,
she hung a bit in the next stride. Tay Ho and Aldegonde, running
either side of her, almost let in daylight between.
The cheers, the roars, mounted in deafening volume. The Heathflower
thing answered them by going down, down, till it seemed she lay quite
flat on earth. And then she came up, up, with a leap so long, so
lancelike, it recovered all she had lost. Again she thrust herself
forward--the horses either side of her thrust as far.
Twenty yards from home not one of the three was an inch to the good or
the bad. Aldegonde's jockey slashed his mount savagely--somehow, one
blow of the whip fell on the Flower's quarter--fell and won the race.
With a sweep as of the wind she went away from it, and got her nose
across the finish line three inches in front!
A near thing. Anybody must admit that. So near the tumult died to a
breathless hush. Hilary half turned about. "I'm going to the judges'
stand to see what won," he said. "I saw Aldegonde first."
"I don't know about that--but I reckon you won't go," Billy said,
laying his hand upon Hilary's arm.
Hilary was furious. "Why not?" he demanded. He was no weakling, but
somehow he could not get free of that impertinent young cub's grip.
"Oh, because you are--your father's son," Billy said, nonchalantly,
then steadfastly, the lightness dying from face and voice: "I mean no
disrespect, Mr. Hilary, but all of us have got to take account of
human nature. We may think we know what won--you and me--but it's the
judges' business to say so--and ours to be satisfied with the sayin'.
That's only fair----"
"Let go my arm!" Hilary said, in a hoarse whisper, his eyes murderous.
Billy held him fast. "Not until you give me a gentleman's word you
won't interfere," he said.
Allys looked at him amazed, enchanted. Here was no boy to be played
with, petted and coaxed from his beliefs--rather a man standing for
what he held the right with the fire and strength of youth.
Adair caught Hilary on the other side, saying under breath: "Hold
still, Rich! You must! The wild man from Borneo is right this time. It
would be horribly bad form if you said a questioning word--and,
anyway, the judges saw--what we did."
Hilary turned upon Billy a look that made Allys hide her eyes, but
nodded shortly, and strode away, not toward the stand. Billy turned to
shield Allys, until by the stunned silence falling on the course, he
knew the boards were going up--with the Flower's number at the top of
them.
Then he took the fence in front at a flying leap, and came to himself
only when he had both arms about the Flower's neck, his face pressed
to it, and tears raining, as he whispered: "You won, lady! You had to!
You wouldn't let Haw Bush be sold over the major's head. Hang the
mortgages now--we'll save him, you and I! And you shall never, never
run another race!"
As the Flower was led away to receive other flowers, the hideous
horseshoe penalty of victory, the crowd was astounded to see in the
middle of the course a tall youngster in loud plaids, leaping,
shouting, hugging himself, laughing and crying in the same breath.
And this was what he shouted: "The blood of Blink Bonny! Hurrah!
hurrah! Beat it if you can! Hurrah for Haw Bush! For Major Meriwether!
For Tim! For Blink Bonny! Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!"
Allys watched him, smiling roguishly. "Billy is ridiculously young,"
she said to the constant Adair.
Adair looked glum. He knew, and knew she knew, that the boy they had
welcomed was of full man's age--quite old enough, in fact, to be
married.
MONOTONY
Love, does my love with weary burden fall
Daily upon thy too accustomed ear
With words so oft repeated that the dear,
Sweet tones of early joy begin to pall?
What gift of loving may I give to call
Again to your deep eyes of brown the tear
Of welling, full delight and love, the clear,
Rose-petaled blush that holds my heart in thrall?
Not all the homage of the bees that wing
Laden with honey through the clover days
Wearies the tiny queen with heavy tune!
Not all the rapture of the birds that fling
Love melodies adrift through leafy ways
Burdens the mothers on their nests in June!
PHILIP GERRY.
"PLUG" IVORY AND "PLUG" AVERY
By HOLMAN F. DAY
It was the queerest turnout that ever invaded Smyrna Corner.
Even the frogs of Smyrna swamp at the edge of the village gulped back
their pipings, climbed the bank for a nearer view, and goggled in
astonished silence as it passed, groaning, in the soft and early dusk.
'Twas a sort of van--almost a little house on wheels, with an elbow of
stove funnel sticking out of one side. An old chaise top was fastened
by strings and wire over a seat in front. Dust and mud covered
everything with striated coatings, mask eloquent of wanderings over
many soils. A cadaverous horse, knee-sprung and wheezy, dragged the
van at the gait of a caterpillar.
Under the chaise top was hunched an old man, gaunt but huge of frame,
his knees almost to his chin. Long, white hair fluffed over his bent
shoulders, and little puffs of white whiskers stood out from his
tanned cheeks. A fuzzy beaver hat barely covered the bald spot on his
head. The reins were looped around his neck. Between his hands, huge
as hams, moaned and sucked and suffled and droned a much-patched
accordion. The instrument lamented like a tortured animal as he pulled
it out and squatted it together. To its accompaniment, the old man
sang over and over some words that he had fitted to the tune of "Old
Dog Tray,"
"Plug" Ivory Buck sat outside the door of his "emporium" in Smyrna
Corner, his chair tipped back comfortably, ankle roosting across his
knee, his fuzzy stovepipe hat on the back of his head.
The end of his cigar, red in the May dusk, was cocked up close to his
left eye with the arrogant tilt that signified the general temperament
of "Plug" Ivory. For almost fifty years a circus man, he felt a bland
and yet contemptuous superiority to those who had passed their lives
in Smyrna Corner. However, when his father had died at the ripe age of
ninety-three--died in the harness, even while gingerly and thriftily
knuckling along a weight into the eighth notch of the bar of the scoop
scales--Ivory had come back as sole heir to store, stock and stand, a
seventy-two-year-old black sheep bringing a most amazing tail behind
him--no less than a band chariot, a half dozen animal cages, a tent
loaded on a great cart, and various impedimenta of "Buck's Leviathan
Circus and Menagerie."
He trundled the array through the village's single street, stored the
gilded glories in the big barn on the old home place, with the
euphemism of circus terminology changed the sign "A. Buck, General
Store," to "I. Buck, Commercial Emporium," and there he had lived five
years, keeping "bachelor's hall" in the big house adjoining the store.
Sometimes he dropped vague hints that he might start on the road
again, displaying as much assurance of long years ahead as though he
were twenty-one. It was a general saying in Smyrna Corner that a Buck
didn't think he was getting old until after he had turned ninety. The
townspeople accepted Ivory as a sort of a wild goose of passage,
called him "Plug" on account of his never varying style of headgear,
and deferred to him because he had fifty thousand dollars tucked away
in the savings bank at the shire.
The May dusk became tawny in the west, and he gazed out into it
discontentedly.
"I wish them blamenation tadpoles shed their voices along with their
tails," he grumbled, with an ear to the frogs in the marsh. "They
ain't quite so bad when they get big enough to trill, but that
everlasting yipping makes me lonesome. I'm a good mind to toss up this
tenpenny nail and salt codfish business and get back to the sawdust
once more."
There was a stir in a cage above his head, a parrot waddled down the
bars, stood on his beak and yawped hoarsely:
"Crack 'em down, gents! The old army game!"
"If it wasn't for you, Elkanah, I swear I should die of listening to
nothing but frogs tuning up and swallows twittering and old fools
swapping guff," he went on, sourly, and then he suddenly cocked his
ear, for a new note sounded faintly from the marsh.
"I never knew a bullfrog to get his bass as early as this," he mused,
and as he listened and peered, the old horse's head came slowly
bobbing around the alders at the bend of the road. Above the wailing
of the distant accordion he caught a few words as the cart wabbled up
the rise on its dished wheels:
Old horse Joe is ever faithful,
O-o-o, o-o-o--ever true.
We've been--o-o-o--wide world over,
O-o-o, o-o-o, toodle-oodle--through.
Then a medley of dronings, and finally these words were lustily
trolled with the confidence of one who safely reaches the last line:
A bet-tur friend than old horse Joe.
"Whoa, there! Whup!" screamed the parrot, swinging by one foot.
"Ain't you kind of working a friend to the limit and a little plus?"
inquired Buck, sarcastically. The old horse had stopped before the
emporium, legs spraddled, head down and sending the dust up in little
puffs as he breathed.
"Joachim loves music," replied the stranger, mildly. "He'll travel all
day if I'll only play and sing to him."
"Love of music will be the death of friend Joachim, then," commented
Buck.
"Is there a hostelry near by?" asked the other, lifting his old hat
politely. With satirical courtesy Buck lifted his--and at that
psychological moment the only plug hats in the whole town of Smyrna
saluted each other.
"There's a hossery down the road a ways, and a mannery, too, all run
by old Sam Fyles."
"Crack 'em down, gents," rasped the parrot. "Twenty can play as well
as one."
The man under the chaise top pricked up his ears and cast a
significant look at the plug hat on the platform. Plug hat on the
platform seemed to recognize some affinity in plug hat on the van, and
there was an acceleration of mutual interest when the parrot croaked
his sentence again.
Buck tipped forward with a clatter of his chair legs and trudged down
to the roadside. He walked around the outfit with an inquisitive
sniffing of his nose and a crinkling of eyebrows, and at last set
himself before the man of the chaise top, his knuckles on his hips.
"Who be I?" he demanded.
The stranger surveyed him for some time, huggling his head down in
cowering fashion, so it seemed in the dusk.
"You," he huskily ventured, "are Buck's Leviathan Circus and
Menagerie; Ivory Buck, Proprietor."
"And you," declared Buck, "are Brick Avery, inventor of the dancing
turkey and captor of the celebrated infant anaconda--side-show graft
with me for eight years."
He put up his hand, and the stranger took it for a solemn shake,
flinching at the same time.
"How long since?" pursued Buck.
"Thirty years for certain."
"Yes, all of that. Let's see! If I remember right, you threw up your
side-show privilege with me pretty sudden, didn't you?" His teeth were
set hard into his cigar.
The man on the van scratched a trembling forefinger through a cheek
tuft.
"I don't exactly recollect how the--the change came about," he
faltered.
"Well, _I_ do! You ducked out across country the night of the punkin
freshet, when I was mud bound and the elephant was afraid of the
bridges. You and your dancin' turkey and infant anaconda and a cage of
monkeys that wasn't yours and--_Her!_" He shouted the word. "What
become of Her, Brick Avery?"
He seized a spoke of the forewheel and shook the old vehicle angrily.
The spoke came away in his hand.
"Never mind it," quavered the man. "We're all coming to pieces, me and
the whole caboodle. Don't hit me with it, though!"
He was eying the spoke in Buck's clutch.
"What did you steal her for, Brick Avery?"
"There isn't anything sure about her going away with me," the other
protested.
Buck yanked away another spoke in his vehemence.
"Don't you lie to me," he bawled. "There wasn't telegraphs and
telephones and railroads handy in them days, so that I could stop you
or catch you, but I didn't need any telegraphs to tell me she had gone
away with handsome Mounseer Hercules, of the curly hair." He snorted
the sobriquet with bitter spite. "A girl I'd took off'n the streets
and made the champion lady rider of--and was going to marry, and
thought more of, damn yeh, than I did of all the rest of the world!
What did ye do with her?"
"Well, she wanted to go along, and so I took her aboard. She seemed to
want to get away from your show, near as I could find out." The giant
hugged his knees together and blinked appealingly.
"It must be a bang-up living you're giving her," sneered Buck, running
his eye over the equipage. In his passion he forgot the lapse of the
years and the possibility of changes.
"Seems as if you hadn't heard the latest news," broke in Avery, his
face suddenly clearing of the puckers of apprehension. "She never
stuck to me no time. She didn't intend to. She just made believe that
she was going to marry me so that I would take her along. She run away
with the sixteen hundred dollars I had saved up and Signor
Dellabunko--or something like that--who was waiting for her on the
road, and I haven't seen hide nor hair of 'em since, nor I don't want
to, and I've still got the letter that she left me, so that I can
prove what I say. She was going to do the same thing to you, she said
in it, but she had made up her mind that she couldn't work you so
easy. It's all in that letter! Kind of a kick-you-and-run letter!"
In his agitation Buck broke another spoke from the crumbling wheel.
The parrot cracked his beak against the cage's bars and yawled:
"It's the old army game, gents!"
"Hadn't you just as soon tear pickets off'n the fence there, or
something like that?" wistfully queried Avery. "This is all I've got
left, and I haven't any money, and I haven't had very much courage to
do anything since she took that sixteen hundred dollars away from me."
He scruffed his raspy palms on his upcocked knees. "I didn't really
want to run away with her, Ivory, but she bossed me into it. I never
was no hand to stand up for my rights. Any one, almost, could talk me
'round. I wish she'd stuck to you and let me alone." His big hands
trembled on his knees, and his weak face, with its flabby chaps, had
the wistful look one sees on a foxhound's visage. "When did you give
up the road?" he asked.
"Haven't given it up!" The tone was curt and the scowl deepened. "I've
stored my wagons and the round-top and the seats, but I'm liable to
buy an elephant and a lemon and start out again 'most any time."
The eyes of the old men softened with a glint of appreciation as they
looked at each other.
"I don't suppose you have to," suggested Avery, with a glance at the
store.
"Fifty thousand in the bank and the stand of buildings here," replied
Buck, with the careless ease of the "well-fixed." "How do you get your
three squares nowadays?"
"Lecture on Lost Arts and Free Love and cure stuttering in one secret
lesson, pay in advance," Avery replied, listlessly. "But there ain't
the three squares in it. I wish I'd been as sharp as you are, and
never let a woman whiffle me into a scrape."
"Nobody ever come it over me," declared Buck, pride slowly replacing
his ire, but he added, gloomily; "excepting her, and I've never
stopped thinking about it, and I've never seen another woman worth
looking at--not for me, even if she did come it over me."
"But she didn't come it over you," insisted Avery. "I'm the one she
come it over, and look at me!" He made a despairing gesture that
embraced all his pathetic appanage. "You are the one that's come out
'unrivaled, stupendous and triumphant,' as your full sheeters used to
say. If I was any help in steering her away I'm humbly glad of it, for
I always liked you, Ivory."
This gradual shifting to the ground of the benefactor, even of the
servile sort, was not entirely placating, as Ivory Buck's corrugated
brow still hinted, but the constant iteration of admiration for his
marvelous shrewdness and good fortune was having its effect. The old
grudge and sorrow that had gnawed at his heart during so many years
suddenly shooed away. The pain was assuaged. It was like opodeldoc
stuffed into an aching tooth. He felt as though he would like to
listen to a lot more of that comforting talk.
"Avery," he cried, with a heartiness that surprised even himself,
"you're a poor old devil that's been abused, and you seem to be all
in." He surveyed the wheezing horse and kicked another spoke from the
yawning wheel.
"Crack 'em down, crack 'em down, gents!" squalled the parrot.
"If it wasn't for Elkanah, there, to holler that to me, with an
occasional 'Hey, Rube!' I couldn't stay in this Godforsaken place
fifteen minutes. There's no one here that can talk about anything
except ensilage and new-milk cows. Now what say? Store your old traps
along o' mine, squat down and take it comfortable. I reckon that you
and me can find a few things to talk about that really amount to
something!"
"I should hate to feel I was a burden on you, Ivory," stammered Avery,
gasping at the amazing generosity of this invitation. "If there's any
stutterers around here I might earn a little something on the side,
perhaps."
"Me with fifty thousand in the bank and letting a guest of mine graft
for a living? Not by a blame sight!" snorted Buck. "You just climb out
and shut up and help me unharness old Pollyponeezus here."
Ten minutes afterward they had the canvas off the chariots and were
inspecting them by lantern light, chattering old reminiscences and
seeming almost to hear the "roomp-roomp" of the elephant and the snap
of the ringmaster's whip.
To the astonishment of Smyrna Corner, two plug hats, around which
wreaths of cigar smoke were cozily curling, blossomed on the platform
of the emporium next morning, instead of one. The old men had thirty
years of mutual confidences to impart, and set busily at it, the
parrot waddling the monotonous round of his cage overhead and rasping:
"Crack 'em down, gents! The old army game!"
In two weeks "Plug" Ivory and "Plug" Avery were as much fixtures in
the Smyrna scenery as the town pump. Occasionally of an evening the
wail of the snuffling accordion wavered out over the village. Buck,
his head thrown back and his eyes closed, seemed to get consoling
echoes of the past even from this lugubrious assault on Melody, and
loungers hovered at a respectful distance. No one dared to ask
questions, and in this respect the old men differed from the town pump
as features in the scenery.
Before a month had passed the two had so thoroughly renewed their
youth that they were discussing the expense of fitting out a
"hit-the-grit" circus, and were writing to the big shows for prices on
superannuated or "shopworn" animals.
It was voted that the dancing turkey and infant anaconda grafts were
no longer feasible. Once on a time the crowds would watch a turkey
hopping about on a hot tin to the rig-a-jig of a fiddle and would come
out satisfied that they had received their money's worth. A man could
even exhibit an angleworm in a bottle and call it the infant anaconda,
and escape being lynched. Brick Avery sadly testified to the passing
of those glorious days.
However, it was decided that a cage of white leghorn fowls, colored
with aniline dyes, could be shown even in these barren times as "Royal
South American Witherlicks"; that Joachim could be converted into a
passable zebra, and "Plug" Avery still had in his van the celluloid
lemon peel as well as the glass cube that created the illusion of ice
in the pink lemonade. The village painter was set at work on the new
gilding of the chariots in the big barn.
"Even if we don't really get away," explained Buck, "it's a good idea
to keep the property from running down."
But the appearance of the new gilt inflamed their showmen's hearts. An
irresistible hankering to get a nearer sniff of the sawdust, to mix
with the old crowd, induced Buck to send a card to a sporting paper,
advertising for correspondence from bareback riders, tumblers,
specialty people and privilege speculators, who wanted to join a
"one-ring, chase-the-fairs road show--no first-raters." He emphasized
the fact that all personal interviews would be arranged later in New
York City.
"We don't want anyone tracking down here," he confided to Avery. "That
would call the bluff. But we can get some letters that maybe will perk
us up a little."
The letters came in bundles--letters long, short, earnest and
witty--whiffs from the good old world of the dressing tent. And they
were read and discussed on the emporium's platform, and some were
answered in non-committal style so as to draw out further
correspondence, and all in all it was voted by both "Plugs" that a
small amount of money invested in advertising certainly did produce
its full worth of entertainment.
But in the midst of these innocent attempts to alleviate _ennui_
something else came along beside letters. It was a woman--a slim,
wiry, alert woman. She clambered down from the stage one day, advanced
trippingly to the platform and courtesied low before the two plug
hats, her long, draggly plume bobbing against her rouged cheek. The
two plug hats arose and were doffed. Then the three faced each other.
"You don't hold your ages as well as I do, boys," she commented, after
her sharp scrutiny.
"It's the old army game, gents!" screamed the parrot, excited by this
new arrival, gay with her colors and her ribbons.
"It's Her!" gasped Plug Avery.
"It's Signory Rosy-elly!" choked Plug Avery.
She came up and sat down between them on one of the platform chairs.
"It was the longest time before I could place those names," she
chattered. "'Buck & Avery, Consolidated Aggregation,' says I to
myself. 'Buck & Avery,' I says. And, thinks I, them two old codgers
must have gone to Kingdom Come, for I'm--let's see--I'm twenty, or
something like that, years younger than either of you, as I remember."
She poked each one jovially with her parasol.
"'Buck & Avery,' says I," she went on, cheerfully oblivious of their
grimness. "'It's their boys,' I says, and so I came right along, for I
need the job, and I couldn't explain the romantic part in a letter. I
was thinking I'd surely be taken on when I told Buck and Avery's sons
the romance. But I don't have to tell _you_, boys."
She jocosely poked them again.
"'A little old!' you say?"--they hadn't said anything, by the way, but
stood there with gaping, toothless mouths. "Not a bit of it for a
jay-town circuit. Of course, it isn't a Forepaugh job for me now or
else I wouldn't be down here talking to Buck & Avery. But I'm still
good for it all--rings, banners, hurdles, rump-cling gallop and the
blazing hoop for the wind-up. You know what I can do, boys. Remember
old times. Give me an engagement for old-times' sake." She flashed at
them the arch looks of a faded coquette.
Buck, the poignancy of his ancient regret having been modified by his
long course of consolation from the lips of Avery, was the first to
recover. This faded woman, trying to stay time's ravages by her rouge,
displaced the beauteous image he had cherished so long in his memory.
"Ain't you ashamed to face us two?" he demanded. "You that run away
and broke your promise to me! You that ruined me!" He patted his
breast dramatically and shot a thumb out at Avery.
"My sakes!" she cried. "You ain't so unprofessional as to remember all
that silliness against me, are you? I was only a girl, and you
couldn't expect me to love you--either of you. I'm a poor widow now,"
she sighed, "and I need work. And here you have been laying up grudges
against me--the two of you--all these years! What would your wives
have said?"
"We never got married," replied the two, in mournful duet.
But she wasn't in a consoling mood. "You're lucky!" she snapped. "I
married a cheap, worthless renegade, who stole my money and ran away.
He fell off a trapeze and broke his neck, and I was glad of it."
The look that passed between Plug Ivory and Plug Avery carried all the
pith of the quotation: "The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they
grind exceeding small."
"So am I," grunted Buck, surlily. "No, I'm sorry he didn't live to
torment you. No, the only thing I'm really sorry about is that 'twas
Brick Avery's money he got away with."
Avery sighed.
"But I want to say to you, Signory Rosy-elly," continued Buck, with a
burst of pride quite excusable, tipping his hat to one side and
hooking his thumb into the armhole of his vest, "it wasn't my money
you got, and it never will be my money you'll get. You just made the
mistake of your life when you run away from me."
"He's got fifty thousand dollars in the bank," hoarsely whispered
Avery, vicariously sharing in this pride of prosperity--the prosperity
beyond her reach.
"Uh-huh! Correct!" corroborated Buck, surveying her in increasing
triumph. This moment was really worth waiting through the years for,
he reflected.
"Twenty can play as well as one," croaked the parrot, his beady eye
pressed between the bars of his cage.
The signora glanced up at this new speaker, eyed Elkanah with a sage
look that he returned, and then, after a moment's reflection, said:
"Thanks for the suggestion, old chap. That is to say, three can play
as well as two, when there's fifty thousand in the bank. Buck, you
know I'm always outspoken and straight to the point. No underhanded
bluff for me. I'm going to sue you for ten thousand."
"Crack 'em down, gents!" remarked Elkanah, grimly.
Buck cast a malevolent look at the bird, and then, his cigar
tip-tilted and the corner of his mouth sarcastically askew, suggested
with an air as though the idea were the limit of satiric
impossibility:
"I want to know! Breach of promise, I per-sume!"
"Good aim! You've rung the bell," rejoined the lady, coolly.
The unconscionable impudence of the bare suggestion fetched a gasp
from both men. Plug Ivory's assumption of dignity crumbled
immediately. The years rolled back. He felt one of those old-time fits
of rage come bristling up the back of his head, the fury of old when
he had tried to wither that giddy creature in his spasms of jealousy.
But now, as in the past, her calm assurance put him out of countenance
and his wild anathemas died away in sputterings.
"I know all that, Ivory Buck," she said, icily. "But how are you going
to prove I was married? Where are you going to hunt for witnesses?
Professional people are like wild geese--roosting on air and moulting
their names like feathers. What proof of anything are you going to
find after all these thirty years? While I--I've got your letters,
every one--all your promises. Observe how I take my cue! Jury
a-listening! I've been hunting the world over for you. You hid here.
Here I find you--this poor, deserted woman, whose life has been
wrecked by your faithlessness, finds you. Me, with a crape veil, a
sniff in my nose, a crushed-creature face make-up, a tremolo in my
voice and a smart lawyer such as I know about! What can you two old
fools say to a country jury to block my bluff? Why, you can save money
by handing me your bank book!"
In his fury Buck grabbed her chair and tipped it forward violently in
order to dump her off his sacred platform. She fled out into space
with a flutter of skirts, landed lightly as a cat and pirouetted on
one toe, crooking her arms in the professional pose that appeals for
applause.
"This is the first time Signora Rosyelli, champion bareback rider,
ever tried to ride a mule," she chirped, "but you see she can do it
and make her graceful dismount to the music of the band."
Several villagers across the road were gaping at the scene. She
inquired the way to the tavern, one of them took her valise, and she
went down the road, tossing a kiss from her finger tips toward the two
plug hats. Plug hats watched her out of sight and then turned toward
each other with simultaneous jerk.
"Don't that beat tophet and repeat?" they inquired, in exact unison.
"What are you going to do?" asked Plug Avery.
"Fight her! Fight her clear to the high, consolidated supreme court
aggregation of the United States, or whatever they call it!" roared
Plug Ivory.
"Nobody has ever beat her yet, except Dellybunko, and we ain't in his
class," sighed Avery, despondently.
"You don't think, do you, that I'm going to lap my thumb and finger
and peel her off ten thousand dollars?"
"Why don't you and she get married and we'll all live here, happy,
hereafter?" wistfully suggested Avery. "If it was in a book it would
end off like that--sure pop."
"This ain't no book," replied Buck, elbows on his knees, eyes moodily
on the dusty planks.
"So you're bound to go to court?"
"Low court--high court--clear to the ridgepole--clear to the cupoly,
and then I'll shin the weather vane with the star spangled banner of
justice between my teeth."
"I heard a breach of promise trial once," related Avery, half closing
his eyes in reminiscence, "and it was the funniest thing I ever
listened to. 'Twas twenty years ago, and I'll bet that the people down
there laugh yet when they see that fellow walk along the street. Them
letters he wrote was certainly the squashiest--why, every one of them
seemed to woggle like a tumbler of jelly--sweet and sloppy, as you
might say! It being so long ago, when you was having your spell, I
don't suppose you remember just what you wrote to her, do you?"
Avery still gazed at the same knothole, but a hot flush was crawling
up from under his collar. He took off his plug hat and scuffed his
wrist across his steaming forehead.
"I remember that he called her 'Ittikins, Pittikins, Popsy-sweet.'
Thought I'd die laughing at that trial! Did you sling in any names
like that, Ivory? You being so prominent now and settled down and
having money in the bank, them kind of names, if you wrote mushy like
that, will certainly tickle folks something tremendous."
A student in physiognomy might have read that memory was playing havoc
with Buck's resolution. Avery was knitting his brows in deep
reflection, knuckling his forehead.
"Seems as if," he went on, slowly, "she told me you called her
something like 'Sweety-tweety,' or 'Tweeny-weeny Girlikins'--something
like that. How them newspapers do like to string out things--funny
kind of things, when a man is prominent and well known, and has got
money in the bank! Folks can't help laughing--they just naturally
can't, Ive! You'll be setting there in court, looking ugly as a gibcat
and her lawyer reading them things out. Them cussed lawyers have a
sassy way of----"
Buck got up, kicked his chair off onto the ground, and in choler
uncontrollable, clacked his fists under Avery's nose and barked:
"Twit me another word--just one other word--and I'll drive that old
nose of yourn clear up into the roof of your head!"
Then he locked his store door and stumped away across the field to the
big barn, where the remains of Buck's Leviathan Circus reposed in
isolated state.
No one knows by just what course of agonized reasoning he arrived at
his final decision, but at dusk he came back to the store. With the
dumb placidity of some ruminant, Avery was sitting in his same place
on the platform of the emporium.
"Brick," said Ivory, humbly, "I've been thinking back and remembering
what I wrote to her--and it's all of it pretty clear in my mind,
'cause I never wrote love letters to anyone else. And I can't face it.
I couldn't sit in court and hear it. I couldn't sit here on this
platform in my own home place and face the people afterward. I
couldn't start on the road with a circus and have the face to stand
before the big tent after it and bark like I used to. They'd grin me
out of business. I'd be backed into the stall. No, I can't do it. Go
down and see what she'll compromise on."
Avery came back after two hours and loomed in the dusk before the
platform. He fixed his eyes on the plug hat that was still lowered in
the attitude of despondency.
"I wrassled with her, Ivory, just the same as if I was handling my own
money, and I beat her down to sixty-six hundred. She won't take a cent
less."
"I'll tell you what that sounds like to me," snarled Buck, after a
moment of meditation. "It sounds as if she was going to get five
thousand and you was looking after your little old sixteen hundred."
A couple of tears squeezed out and down over Avery's flabby cheeks.
"This ain't the first time you've misjudged me, when I've been doing
you a favor," said he. "And it's all on account of the same mis'able
woman that I'm misjudged--and we was living so happy here, me and you.
I wish she was in----" His voice broke.
"I ain't responsible for what I'm saying, Avery," pleaded Buck,
contritely. "You know what things have happened to stir me up the last
few hours--yes, all my life, for that matter. I ain't been comfortable
in mind for thirty years till you come here and cheered me up and
showed me what's what. I appreciate it and I'll prove that to you
before we're done. We'll get along together all right after this. All
is, you must see me through."
Then the two plug hats bent together in earnest conference.
The next morning Avery, armed with an order on the savings bank at the
shire for six thousand six hundred dollars, and with Buck's bank book
in his inside pocket, drove up to the door of Fyles' tavern in Buck's
best carriage, and Signora Rosyelli flipped lightly up beside the
peace commissioner.
He was to pay over the money on the neutral ground at the shire,
receive the letters, put her aboard a train and then come back
triumphantly into that interrupted _otium cum dignitate_ of Smyrna
Corner.
For two days a solitary and bereaved plug hat on the emporium's
platform turned its fuzzy gloss toward the bend in the road at the
clump of alders. But the sleek black nose of Buck's "reader" did not
appear.
On the third day the bank book arrived by mail, its account minus six
thousand six hundred dollars, and between its leaves a letter. It was
an apologetic letter, and yet it was flavored with a note of
complaint. Brick Avery stated that after thinking it all over he felt
that, having been misjudged cruelly twice, it might happen again, and
being old, he could not endure griefs of that kind. He had supported
the first two, but being naturally tender-hearted and easily
influenced, the third might be fatal. Moreover, the conscience of
Signora Rosyelli had troubled her, so he believed, ever since the
affair of the one thousand six hundred dollars. So he had decided that
he would quiet her remorse by marrying her and taking entire charge of
her improved finances. In fact, so certain was he that she would waste
the money--being a woman fickle and vain--that he had insisted on the
marriage, and she, realizing her dependence on his aid in cashing in,
assented, and now he assured her that as her husband he was entitled
to full control of their affairs--all of which, so the letter
delicately hinted, was serving as retribution and bringing her into a
proper frame of mind to realize her past enormities. The writer hoped
that his own personal self-sacrifice in thus becoming the instrument
of flagellation would be appreciated by one whom he esteemed highly.
They would be known at the fairs as Moseer and Madame Bottotte, and
would do the genteel and compact gift-sale graft from the
buggy--having the necessary capital now--and would accept the buggy
and horse as a wedding present, knowing that an old friend with
forty-three thousand four hundred dollars still left in the bank would
not begrudge this small gift to a couple just starting out in life,
and with deep regard for him and all inquiring friends, they were,
etc.
In the more crucial moments of his life Buck had frequently refrained
from anathema as a method of relief. Some situations were made vulgar
and matter-of-fact by sulphurous ejaculation. It dulled the edge of
rancor brutally, as a rock dulls a razor.
Now he merely turned the paper over, took out a stubby lead pencil,
licked it and began to write on the blank side, flattening the paper
on his bank book.
FOR SALE--1 Band Wagon, 1 Swan Chariot, 3 Lion Cages.
He paused here in his laborious scrawl and, despite his resolution of
silence, muttered:
"It's going to be a clean sale. I don't never in all my life want to
hear of a circus, see a circus, talk circus, see a circus man----"
"Crack 'em down, gents!" squalled the parrot. It was the first time
for many hours that he had heard his master's voice, and the sound
cheered him. He hooked his beak around a wire and rattled away
jovially. He seemed to be relieved by the absence of the other plug
hat that had been absorbing so much of the familiar, beloved and
original plug hat's attention.
Ivory looked up at Elkanah vindictively and then resumed his
soliloquy.
"No, sir, never! Half of circusing is a skin game all through--and
I've done my share of the skinning. But to be skinned twice--me, I.
Buck, proprietor--and the last time the worst, but----"
"Twenty can play it as well as one!" the parrot yelled, cocking his
eye over the edge of the cage.
It was an evil scowl that flashed up from under the plug hat, but
Elkanah in his new joy was oblivious.
"Me a man that's been all through it from A to Z--my affections trod
on, all confidence in females destroyed and nothing ahead of me all
the rest of my life! No, sir, I never want to hear of a circus again.
Bit by the mouths I fed--and they thumbing their noses at me. That
trick----"
"It's the old army game!" squealed the parrot, in nerve-racking rasp.
Ivory Buck arose, yanked the bottom off the cage, caught the squawking
bird, wrung his neck, tossed him into the middle of the road, and
then, sucking his bleeding finger, went on writing the copy for his
advertisement.
SUPPER WITH NATICA
By ROBERT E. MACALARNEY
It isn't at all pleasant to burn one's fingers, but it's worth while
burning them now and then, if you have to be scorched to be near a
particularly attractive fire; at least I've found it that way. All of
which leads me to Natica Drayton--Melsford that was.
I think I'm the only one of the crew she dragged at her heels who
hasn't forgot about things and gone off after other game; some of them
have been lashed to the burning stake of pretty uncomfortable
domesticity, too. As for me--well, I've simply gone on caring, and I
think I shall always go on.
Does she know it? Of course she knows it; always has known it, ever
since that first summer at Sacandaga. Not that I've been ass enough to
say anything after the first time. I'm only an ordinary sort of chap
when it comes to intuition, but somehow I've never plucked up the
cheek to do any talking about my own miserable self; not since she let
me down as gently as she could, while I paddled her back from Birch
Point to the canoe house, with Elephant Mountain ragged-backed in the
moon-haze. For the life of me I couldn't tell you what it was she
said. There was the drip of water from the paddle as I lifted it,
stroke after stroke; the tiny hiss of smother at the prow, and twisted
through it all, like a gathering string, Natica Melsford's voice,
letting me down easy--as easily as she could.
After I had made fast, I remember feeling that somehow the moonlight
had turned things extremely cold; and I reached for my sweater that
lay in the stern. I also laughed a great deal too much around the logs
at the bungalow fire, and then drank a deal more than too much at the
clubhouse before turning in. Maybe it was cowardly to sneak back to
town a couple of days later, "on business," of course--a shabby excuse
for a chap that doesn't dabble in business more than I do. But I
honestly needed to go to get back my equilibrium. I got it, though,
and I've kept it pretty continuously. And this much is enough for
that. Natica Melsford is the only interesting bit about this story,
and let's get back to her.
That winter she married Jack Drayton. The afternoon we rehearsed for
the wedding I looked at her, before we pranced down the aisle and
endured the endless silly giggles of the bridesmaids, and the usher
louts who would fall out of step, and grew more peevish by the minute.
I looked her over then, and I said to myself: "You feeble paranoiac,
imagine that girl tying up with _you_." Well, I couldn't very well
imagine it, although I tried. But I was extremely noisy, and I heard
two or three of the bridesmaids, to say nothing of the maid of honor
and the bridegroom's mamma, tapping their gentle hammers, at my
expense, at the breakfast. It was a year afterward that I began to fag
regularly for the Drayton establishment.
Jack Drayton, by rights, ought to have been poisoned. He'd be the
first to acknowledge it now. Perhaps if he'd married a girl who
insisted on having things out the moment they began, the things
wouldn't have happened. But Natica Melsford wasn't that sort. She was
the kind that simply looked scorn into and clear through you, when she
thought you were acting low down. This, with a man strung like Jack
was, simply put the fat into the fire. It would have been different
with me. I'd--well--I'd have made an abject crawl, to be sure. You
see, her knowing this was the thing that must have always queered me
with her. A woman prefers a man she can get furious at and who'll
stick it out a bit, to one who caves in at the first sign of a frown.
But Jack carried things too far.
No, he didn't mind my frequenting the house. He liked me and I liked
him. But, all the same, I knew he didn't regard me as a foeman worthy
of his steel. And, although the knowledge made me raw now and then,
when he's come in with his easy, careless way, still I swallowed the
mean feeling because it gave me a chance to see her. And don't imagine
I went around hunting for trouble. It was at the club one night--I'd
just come from the Draytons, and Jack hadn't been home to dinner--that
I heard Rawlins Richardson and Horace Trevano chattering about Maisie
Hartopp. The "Jo-Jo" song had made the biggest kind of a hit that
winter at the Gaiety, and the hit had been made by the Hartopp singing
it to a stage box which the Johnnies scrambled to bid in nightly.
It seemed like small game for Jack Drayton to be trailing along with
the ruck--the ruck meaning Tony Criswold and the rest of that
just-out-of-college crew--but I didn't need signed affidavits, after
five minutes of club chatter, to know that he was pretty well tied to
an avenue window at Cherry's after the show. The Ruinart, too, that
kept spouting from the bucket beside it, was a pet vintage of the
Hartopp.
There was a lot of that silly chuckle, and I recalled reading
somewhere that there was a husband belonging to the Hartopp, a medium
good welterweight, who picked up a living flooring easy marks for
private clubs at Paterson, N. J., and the like, and occasionally
serving as a punching bag for the good uns before a championship mill.
What the devil was there to do? I couldn't answer the riddle.
It sounds like old women's chatter, the meddlesome way I scribble this
down. It would take a real thing in the line of literature to paint me
right, anyway, I fancy. When a third party keeps mixing in with
husband and wife, he deserves all the slanging that's coming to him;
which same is my last squeal for mercy.
A month went by--two of them. Natica Drayton wasn't the strain that
needs spectacles to see through things. Then, too, I guessed the
loving friend sympathy racket was being worked by some of the bridge
whist aggregation which met up with her every fortnight. She laughed
more than she ought to have done. This was a bad sign with her. Once
or twice, when the three of us dined together, and she was almost
noisy over the benedictine, I could have choked Jack Drayton, for he
didn't see. It's not a pretty thing for an outsider to sit _a trois_,
and see things in a wife's manner that the husband doesn't or won't
see; and worse than that, to know that the wife knows you see it and
that he doesn't. Speak to Jack? I wouldn't have done it for worlds. As
I said, I'm willing to burn my fingers and even cuddle the hurt; but I
don't meddle with giant firecrackers except on the Fourth of July, and
that didn't come until afterward.
I was to take her to the opera one night--Drayton had the habit of
dropping in for an act or two and then disappearing--but on her own
doorstep she tossed off her carriage wrap and sent Martin back to the
stables.
"Let's talk, instead," she said, and she made me coffee in the
library, with one of those French pots that gurgle conveniently when
you don't exactly know what to say. That pot did a heap of gurgling
before we began to talk. When she spoke, what she said almost took me
off my chair.
"Percy, have you seen the show at the Gaiety?" she asked.
I had seen it more than once, and I said so.
"They tell me there's a song there----" she went on.
"There are a lot of songs," said I.
"There's one in particular."
There wasn't any use in fencing, so I answered: "You mean the 'Jo-Jo'
song. It's a silly little ditty, and it's sung by----"
"A girl named Hartopp--Maisie Hartopp." She was speaking as if she
were trying to remember where she'd heard the name.
Of course, me for the clumsy speech. "She's a winner," I cut in.
She got up at that, and walked over to the fireplace. "She seems to
be," she said, picking at a bit of bronze, a wedding present, I think.
Then she came over to where I was sitting and put a hand on my
shoulder. I'd have got to my feet if I hadn't been afraid to face her.
"Percy----" she began, and I felt the fingers on my shoulder quiver. I
don't think the Apaches handed out anything much worse in the torture
line than the quiver of a woman's ringers upon your shoulder, when you
know that those fingers aren't quivering on your account. Maybe that
occurred to her, for a second later she took her hand away. "You once
said something foolish to me, Percy," she said.
I nodded my head, my eyes upon an edge of the Royal Bokhara. "It was
in a canoe, wasn't it?" I replied. "There was a moon, of course, and
the paddle blades went drip, drip."
"You meant what you said then, didn't you?"
My gaze was wavering from the rug by now. Little wonder, was it? "I
meant it all right," I got out after a while. "Do you want to hear me
say my little speech over again?" Was it possible that, after all,
Natica Drayton had really decided to toss Jack over, and take on a
fag, warranted kind and gentle, able to be driven by any lady? But I
forgot that foolish notion pretty nearly right off.
"There is a husband," she went on, as if taking account of stock.
"There always is," I rejoined. "Some of 'em are good and the others
are bad." I chuckled despite me, as I put in my mean little hack.
"I mean the Hartopp's husband," she explained.
"There is," I said. "'Boiler-plate' Hartopp. His given name is James,
and he prize-fights fair to middling." All this wasn't quite good
billiards, but we'd begun wrong that night, and we might as well keep
it up, thought I.
Natica Drayton was tapping her foot upon the fender. "H'm," she mused.
"Some of those horrid names sound interesting." Then she turned to me
abruptly. "I think, perhaps, you ought to go now," she suggested.
"I think so, too," I agreed, rising very hastily, and taking my leave.
"Have you Friday evening disengaged?" She flung this after me before I
had got to the hall.
"Yes," said I, all unthinking.
"Then we'll do it Friday," she said.
"We'll do what?" I asked, coming back to her. For once I felt
rebellious, and showed it, whereat she smiled.
"Supper after the theater at Cherry's."
"Oh, well, I don't mind that," I volunteered.
"With 'Boiler-plate' Hartopp," she added.
The searchlight dawned upon me. It swung around the room once or
twice, and that was enough. I knew in the flood of sudden illumination
that the girl had planned this thing in advance, with the daring of
despair--and a wife's despair, a very young wife's despair, is a more
desperate thing than the anger of any other woman. Natica had planned
it all in advance; had figured it, and the chances of it. And in the
balance she had confidently thrown the asset of my assisting her.
The right sort of a man, I suppose, would have become enraged because
of her taking things for granted. But I--I had been chained to her
chariot too long a time to experience the mild sensation of
resentment.
Natica wished to face her husband in a crowded restaurant after the
play. More than that, she wished to face him in company with a man not
of her sort, even as he--Drayton--was escorting a woman whose lane of
living did not rightly cross his. The coincidence of Natica's
means-to-an-end being the Hartopp's husband, was simply a gift of
fate; an opportunity of administering poetic justice, which could not
be denied. Had the Hartopp not possessed a convenient husband, Natica
would have arranged for another companion. But even she had not dared
to plan her _coup_ alone, with her chosen instrument of wifely
retaliation. Through it all, she had confidently counted on me, a
discreet background, a pliant puppet.
She could not know what Drayton might do, after they had eyed one
another from different tables. She did not much care. But she would at
least have the painful joy of the Brahmin woman's hope, who trusts by
some fresh incantation to secure a blessing, formerly vouchsafed her
by the gods, but which now old-time petitions fail to renew. It seemed
cold-blooded, the entire arrangement, and yet I knew it was not. She
was far braver than I could have been, even to win her caring. But I
understood.
I must have been rough as I took her hand. "Look here," I said. "It's
a desperate game, Natica. You wouldn't have dared to say that to any
other man than me. You've got used to seeing me fag for you. And I'm
going to do it this time, too. But if you weaken, by Heaven, you'll
deserve to lose for good. It's crazy, it's the act of a pair of
paretics, but I'm going to see it through."
She was crying when I left her. "Percy, my dear," she said; then she
began to laugh--that after dinner benedictine laugh of hers. "If there
weren't Jack, that speech of yours just now might make me want to kiss
you."
On the sidewalk I tried to figure out if there had been knockout drops
in the coffee Natica had brewed for me. In any one of the forty-eight
hours ensuing, I might have rung up the Draytons' on the telephone,
and told her that I had come to my senses. But I didn't do anything of
the sort. Instead, I hunted up a newspaper chap I knew, and he put me
next to "Boiler-plate" Hartopp at the Metropole.
The bruiser wasn't as bad sort as I had fancied him. He was an
Englishman all right--a cut below middle class; you could tell that by
the way he clipped his initial h's off and on. I tried the ice at
first--it's always best when you don't know the exact thickness of
your frozen water. The way I tried it was to toss a flower or two at
Maisie Hartopp and her "Jo-Jo" song.
He rose sure enough, and it didn't take me a quarter hour to see that
the pug was really bowled out by the parcel of stage skirts who wore
his name on the Gaiety bills. This made it a warmer game than it might
have been otherwise, but I was in for it now, and I made the date.
No, I didn't mention Natica. Even a broken-to-harness shawl carrier
has a shred of cautious decency about him. But I gabbled lightly about
a certain feminine party who was keen on exemplars of the genuine
thing in the line of the manly art. Whereupon "Boilerplate" acquired a
pouter-pigeon chest, which fairly bulged over the bar railing, and
gave me his word of honor he'd be waiting at Forty-fourth Street about
eleven on Friday. He intimated, ere I left, that he'd bring his
festive accouterments with him. And he did.
We were a bit late--Natica and I. It must have been a quarter past the
hour when we drove up to Cherry's. I felt reasonably certain that if
Jack Drayton were guarding a champagne bucket by the corner table that
night, he was located then. In the offing, miserably self-conscious, a
crush hat on the back of his really fine head, and two or three small
locomotive headlights glinting from his broad expanse of evening
shirt, was "Boiler-plate" Hartopp. The flunkeys were regarding him
curiously, and once a waiter-captain came out and gave him what seemed
to be an unsatisfactory report.
I think the man was just about to take the count from sheer nerves,
when he made me out in the doorway. Natica winked--actually winked at
me--as he floundered over his share of the introduction. Looking at
her, and faintly divining her mood that night, I felt sorry for Jack,
for "Boiler-plate" and for myself. I left them for a moment and went
in to see about my table. Two minutes later I emerged, to face Drayton
and the Hartopp unloading from an electric hansom. The under-toned
remark of one of the footman came to me: "A bit behind schedule time
to-night, eh, Charley?"
There wasn't anything to do then, for they were fair inside.
"Boiler-plate" was finishing some elephantine pleasantry to Natica,
when he saw what I saw. A foolish grin rippled across his wide face.
"Hullo!" he said to the Hartopp, who looked properly peevish, and then
waspish, as she let her glance travel to Natica, who stood perfectly
poised and, I fancied, a trifle expectant. Drayton eyed them together
and in particular. The color streaked his forehead and faded out. Then
he saw me, and, although he never may have murder in his eyes again,
it was there at that choice moment. We weren't at all spectacular, you
mustn't think that. It was all very quick, and there were a lot of
people coming and going.
She was in instant command of the situation. Why shouldn't she have
been, having created it? And unexpectedly, suddenly as she had
encountered her quarry, equally suddenly she shifted her position,
without the time to take me into her confidence.
"Don't bother about our table, Percy," she said. "Now that we've met
friends, it will be jollier to dine _en famille_. It will be ever so
much nicer than eating in a stuffy restaurant, and the butler won't
have gone to bed yet. Run out and get us a theater wagon."
I went out to the carriage man in a trance. The gods, of a deed, were
fighting furiously on Natica's side--for she could not have foreseen
this vantage, readily as she swung her attack by its aid. Exquisite
torture, truly, to flaunt a husband's folly in his own face, over his
own mahogany, with the source of that folly looking on. Drayton's
bounden civility to his wife, and to the other woman, must make him
present himself as a target. He knew it, his wife knew it; as yet the
other woman but dimly suspected it--not being over subtle--and it
smote me in the face continuously. The puppet always feels the most
cut up at times like these. In a way, it is because his vanity is
being seared. Mine fairly crackled.
So we rattled off up the avenue. The only comfortable ones among us
were Natica and Hartopp. He seemed to think the occurrence a pleasant
bit of chance, and he wasn't in the least jealous, not he. I suppose
the wife had him schooled to her stage ways of doing things.
Once he turned to Jack with a chuckle and said: "This is a jossy bit
of luck, ain't it, each of us out with the other man's better?"
Natica laughed shamelessly. "You've such a keen appreciation of the
ridiculous, Mr. Hartopp," she said. And when "Boiler-plate" tried to
deny the insinuation, his wife nudged him on the arm and whispered:
"Shut up, Jim."
There isn't any use in stringing out the amateur theatricals the five
of us indulged in that night. The Drayton servants were too well
chosen to show any surprise at being told to put on a champagne supper
at midnight, and then go to bed before it was served. We sat at that
mahogany table until the candelabra were guttering, and each of us had
toyed more than he ought to have done with his glass. Natica acted as
if she were entertaining in earnest, and for the time being I actually
think she felt that she was. She got the Hartopp to sing her "Jo-Jo"
song, and the Hartopp actually did it as if she enjoyed it. Afterward
Natica induced "Boiler-plate" to tell about the time he mixed it up
with Fitzsimmons for ten rounds.
"It was a lucky punch that put me out," he kept repeating, almost
pathetically. "You know Fitz's lucky punch."
I might have seen what was in the wind if I hadn't been thick-headed,
what with the champagne and the rattles. "Boiler-plate" once started
on the ring, it was an easy transition.
"You've boxing gloves, haven't you, Jack?" asked Natica. "Get them for
Mr. Hartopp. Let's see him demonstrate Mr. Fitzsimmons' lucky punch."
Drayton turned without a word, and made as if to go upstairs. At the
door he turned. "Come on, Hartopp," he said. "I'll lend you a rowing
jersey."
"You clear a place in the drawing room, Percy," said Natica, briskly.
"Be sure that the shades are drawn. It would be awful to be raided by
the police." And I obediently piled the gilt parlor furniture in
corners.
The Hartopp fluttered anxiously around Natica the while. She was a
woman, and she was beginning to half understand. "Please," she said,
touching Natica's arm. "Jim's been drinking, and he's very rough when
he's been drinking. We've all been foolish, but only foolish,
remember. Jim and I sail for London next week. Just let us slip away
now, and forget all about it."
Natica laughed. Her eyes were on the door. "Remember, we've only been
foolish," repeated the Hartopp. "Only foolish, that's all." She went
to Natica and shook her arm roughly; there were feet upon the stairs.
"You silly," she snapped. "You ought to be glad you're married to a
gentleman. He's different from all the others. I can tell you that,
and I know. And I tell you that Jim's been drinking. Jack will----"
Natica's pose stiffened, but she did not look around. "Yes, _Jack_
will what?" she said, coldly.
The Hartopp flushed. "He'll be hurt," she finished, weakly. Then, as
the two from upstairs entered, she whispered: "He'll be hurt worse
than you are now."
The "Boiler-plate" looked very foolish in an old Yale rowing shirt,
with the "Y" stretched taut across his ponderous chest. He had a pair
of arms like a blacksmith. Jack Drayton had taken off his coat and was
in his shirt sleeves. He never looked at Natica, nor at the Hartopp;
but he tossed me a stopwatch and told me to keep time.
"We'll box five rounds, Percy," he said.
Natica clapped her hands. "What fun!" she cried. "Jack, you're boxing
against my champion."
The "Boiler-plate," who had been regarding the work at hand with much
gravity, again allowed his countenance to be relaxed by the old,
foolish grin. "Oh, I say," he interposed. "That's all right, but so
long as Maisie is in the room I'm fighting for her--she's my wife, you
know."
The Hartopp went to Natica with a softened gleam in her eyes; "I saw a
telephone in the hall," she said. "I'm going out to call a cab." I
heard her at the lever as they began to spar.
I don't believe I could get a job at timekeeping in a real mill. My
rounds must have been wonderfully and fearfully made. For I forgot all
about the stop-watch now and then, while I learned the truth of the
Hartopp's caution that "Boiler-plate" grew rough after he'd been
drinking a bit.
I knew that Jack had been a pretty fair boxer at the university, but,
after I had called time for the first round, the thing was to all
intents and purposes a genuine fight, and he was all in several times
over. The "Boiler-plate's" fists made a noise like a woodchopper.
Natica stood watching it with a queer, queer smile. But I saw--and I
saw it with a sinking at the heart, for I realized that I'd cherished
the guilty hope that things were not really going to be straightened
out--that with every mark of the "Boiler-plate's" glove, her husband
was coming back into his own.
She half sprang toward them when Jack went down with a crash, after I
had got them started on the last go. Drayton arose warily, the blood
spurting from a nasty cut over the eye, where the heel of the other's
glove had scraped. The "Boiler-plate" lumbered dangerously near just
then, and Natica, despite her, uttered a cry of warning.
I saw Jack turn away from the mountain in the Yale rowing shirt, and
his eyes met Natica's squarely for the first time since Cherry's.
Something he read in them made him laugh. This was only for the
fraction of a second, however, for a glove, with the _n_th power
behind it, lifted him a clear three feet into a stack of gilt chairs
near his own corner.
He didn't move, and the "Boilerplate" stared at him stupidly.
"Say, _you_ made him look at you," he said to Natica. "I didn't mean
to land on him blind."
But she did not heed him. She was among the gilt chairs, with Jack
Drayton's head upon her lap. The wheels of a cab stopped outside, and
the Hartopp was seizing her dazed lord and master. She had his coat
and bediamonded linen in her hands, and she clutched the
"Boiler-plate" firmly, leading him to the door.
"Say, Maisie, wait a minute," he protested. "I've got the swell's
college shirt on, and I didn't mean to land on him blind."
I opened the door, for she signaled with her eyes. "Come on, Jim,
there's a dear," she said. Between us we cajoled him into the coupe.
As I shut the door, she leaned to me and whispered: "Tell her for me
she's a cat--a cruel cat."
I handed the driver a bill. "You've a very bad memory, cabby, haven't
you?" I asked.
"Extremely bad, sir," said he, touching his hat.
"But, Maisie, I've got the swell's college shirt on," I heard
"Boiler-plate" insist. Then the wheels moved.
The Draytons were both upon their feet when I stole back into the
hall. I needed my hat and coat, or I shouldn't have set foot within
the house again that night. Jack, a bit staggery and holding to the
back of a chair, mopped the cut on his temple with a handkerchief, his
wife's handkerchief, in his free hand. Natica, a smear of red on the
front of her frock, stood beside him, with a strangely happy
expression in her face and pose. A great many things had been pushed
over the precipice which leads to forgetfulness, in the time I had
been out on the sidewalk busy with the cabby.
"Good-night, Percy," Jack called out.
"Good-night," said I, going to him to take his hand, for he was too
wobbly to have met me halfway.
"It's been a nightmare," said he. "We'll wake up to-morrow morning and
know that we've only been asleep."
"Yes," I agreed, but looking at the puffiness in his face, I thought
this was coming it a bit strong.
"Good-night, Percy," said Natica. And gently as she spoke the words,
it came to me with a sudden rush of conviction that I had ceased
fagging for the Drayton establishment for good--now.
"It was coming to me," said Jack. I was fiddling on the threshold
uncertainly.
"Hush, you foolish boy," whispered Natica, touching the cut on his
forehead, just once, with a very tender finger.
"Yes, it was coming to you," said I. I was glad that they perceived
the conviction in my speech.
And that is how I had my last supper with Natica.
BY THE FOUNTAIN
BY MARGARET HOUSTON
There was nothing in the aspect of the white brick mansion to indicate
that a tragedy was going on inside. A woman quietly dressed, her face
showing delicately above her dark furs, came lightly down the steps.
She paused a half second at the gateway and looked back, but there was
no hesitation in the glance.
"Jules," she said to the coachman, "you may drive to the park."
She did not look back as they drove away.
There should be no gossiping among the servants. Everything should be
done decently. From the park she could take the suburban and go
quietly into town. From there--the world was wide. There was a note on
his dresser, he would read it to-night and understand--no, not
understand, she had ceased to expect that of him--but he would
know--in some dull, stern way he would see--he would see. She caught
sight of her face in the little mirror of the brougham and lowered her
veil. Ah, it was a bitter, barren thing, this striving, striving,
endlessly striving to be understood. She had endured it for four years
and she was worn heartsick with the strain. Her soul cried out for
warmth, for life, for breathing room; was not one's first duty to
one's self after all? She turned suddenly--Jules stood by the open
door.
"Jules," she said, summoning a little severity of manner to
counterbalance the tremor in her voice, "you need not come back for
me. Jules," she added, turning again, "good-by--you have--you have
been very faithful."
The man touched his hat gravely and stood like a sentinel till she had
passed from sight among the trees.
It was late in November, and the maple boughs were a riot of red and
gold. The sky beyond them looked pale and far away, as though a white
veil had been drawn across its tender southern blue. She rejoiced now
that she had elected to spend this last hour in the frosty outdoor
gladness. With a little impulse of relief, she flung back her veil and
drew a deep breath. Then she locked her hands inside her muff and
began to walk briskly.