The funeral was over, and Mr. Reybold marveled much that the Judge had
not put in an appearance. The whole committee had attended the
obsequies of Crutch and acted as pall-bearers. Reybold had escorted the
page's sister to the Congressional cemetery, and had observed even old
Beau to come with a wreath of flowers and hobble to the grave and
deposit them there. But the Judge, remorseless in death as frivolous in
life, never came near his mourning wife and daughter in their severest
sorrow. Mrs. Tryphonia Basil, seeing that this singular want of
behavior on the Judge's part was making some ado, raised her voice
above the general din of meals.
"Jedge Basil," she exclaimed, "has been on his Tennessee purchase.
These Christmas times there's no getting through the snow in the
Cumberland Gap. He's stopped off thaw to shoot the--ahem!--the wild
torkey--a great passion with the Jedge. His half-uncle, Gineral
Johnson, of Awkinso, was a torkey-killer of high celebrity. He was a
Deshay on his Maw's side. I s'pose you haven't the torkey in the Dutch
country, Mr. Reybold?"
"Madame," said Reybold, in a quieter moment, "have you written to the
Judge the fact of his son's death?"
"Oh, yes--to Fawquear."
"Mrs. Basil," continued the Congressman, "I want you to be explicit
with me. Where is the Judge, your husband, at this moment?"
"Excuse me, Colonel Reybold, this is a little of a assumption, sir. The
Jedge might call you out, sir, for intruding upon his incog. He's very
fine on his incog., you air awair."
"Madame," exclaimed Reybold straightforwardly, "there are reasons why I
should communicate with your husband. My term in Congress is nearly
expired. I might arouse your interest, if I chose, by recalling to your
mind the memorandum of about seven hundred dollars in which you are my
debtor. That would be a reason for seeing your husband anywhere north
of the Potomac, but I do not intend to mention it. Is he aware--are
you?--that Joyce Basil is in love with some one in this city?"
Mrs. Basil drew a long breath, raised both hands, and ejaculated:
"Well, I declaw!"
"I have it from her own lips," continued Reybold. "She told me as a
secret, but all my suspicions, are awakened. If I can prevent it,
madame, that girl shall not follow the example of hundreds of her class
in Washington, and descend, through the boarding-house or the lodging
quarter, to be the wife of some common and unambitious clerk, whose
penury she must some day sustain by her labor. I love her myself, but I
will never take her until I know her heart to be free. Who is this
lover of your daughter?"
An expression of agitation and cunning passed over Mrs. Basil's face.
"Colonel Reybold," she whined, "I pity your blasted hopes. If I was a
widow, they should be comfoted. Alas! my daughter is in love with one
of the Fitz-chews of Fawqueeah. His parents is cousins of the Jedge,
and attached to the military."
The Congressman looked disappointed, but not yet satisfied.
"Give me at once the address of your husband," he spoke. "If you do
not, I shall ask your daughter for it, and she can not refuse me."
The mistress of the boarding-house was not without alarm, but she
dispelled it with an outbreak of anger.
"If my daughter disobeys her mother," she cried, "and betrays the
Jedge's incog., she is no Basil, Colonel Reybold. The Basils repudiate
her, and she may jine the Dutch and other foreigners at her pleasure."
"That is her only safety," exclaimed Reybold. "I hope to break every
string that holds her to yonder barren honor and exhausted soil."
He pointed toward Virginia, and hastened away to the Capitol. All the
way up the squalid and muddy avenue of that day he mused and wondered:
"Who is Fitzhugh? Is there such a person any more than a Judge Basil?
And yet there _is_ a Judge, for Joyce has told me so. _She_, at least,
can not lie to me. At last," he thought, "the dream of my happiness is
over. Invincible in her prejudice as all these Virginians, Joyce Basil
has made her bed among the starveling First Families, and there she
means to live and die. Five years hence she will have her brood around
her. In ten years she will keep a boarding-house and borrow money. As
her daughters grow up to the stature and grace of their mother, they
will be proud and poor again and breed in and out, until the race will
perish from the earth."
Slow to love, deeply interested, baffled but unsatisfied, Reybold made
up his mind to cut his perplexity short by leaving the city for the
county of Fauquier. As he passed down the avenue late that afternoon,
he turned into E Street, near the theatre, to engage a carriage for his
expedition. It was a street of livery stables, gambling dens, drinking
houses, and worse; murders had been committed along its sidewalks. The
more pretentious _canaille_ of the city harbored there to prey on the
hotels close at hand and aspire to the chance acquaintance of
gentlemen. As Reybold stood in an archway of this street, just as the
evening shadows deepened above the line of sunset, he saw something
pass which made his heart start to his throat and fastened him to the
spot. Veiled and walking fast, as if escaping detection or pursuit, the
figure of Joyce Basil flitted over the pavement and disappeared in a
door about at the middle of this Alsatian quarter of the capital.
"What house is that?" he asked of a constable passing by, pointing to
the door she entered.
"Gambling den," answered the officer. "It used to be old Phil
Pendleton's."
Reybold knew the reputation of the house: a resort for the scions of
the old tidewater families, where hospitality thinly veiled the
paramount design of plunder. The connection established the truth of
Mrs. Basil's statement. Here, perhaps, already married to the
dissipated heir of some unproductive estate, Joyce Basil's lot was cast
forever. It might even be that she had been tempted here by some wretch
whose villany she knew not of. Reybold's brain took fire at the
thought, and he pursued the fugitive into the doorway. A negro steward
unfastened a slide and peeped at Reybold knocking in the hall; and,
seeing him of respectable appearance, bowed ceremoniously as he let
down a chain and opened the door.
"Short cards in the front saloon," he said; "supper and faro back.
Chambers on the third floor. Walk up."
Reybold only tarried a moment at the gaming tables, where the silent,
monotonous deal from the tin box, the lazy stroke of the markers, and
the transfer of ivory "chips" from card to card of the sweat-cloth,
impressed him as the dullest form of vice he had ever found. Treading
softly up the stairs, he was attracted by the light of a door partly
ajar, and a deep groan, as of a dying person. He peeped through the
crack of the door and beheld Joyce Basil leaning over an old man, whose
brow she moistened with her handkerchief. "Dear father," he heard her
say, and it brought consolation to more than the sick man. Reybold
threw open the door and entered into the presence of Mrs. Basil and her
daughter. The former arose with surprise and shame, and cried:
"Jedge Basil, the Dutch have hunted you down. He's here--the Yankee
creditor."
Joyce Basil held up her hand in imploration, but Reybold did not heed
the woman's remark. He felt a weight rising from his heart, and the
blindness of many months lifted from his eyes. The dying mortal upon
the bed, over whose face the blue billow of death was rolling rapidly,
and whose eyes sought in his daughter's the promise of mercy from on
high, was the mysterious parent who had never arrived--the Judge from
Fauquier. In that old man's long waxed mustache, crimped hair, and
threadbare finery the Congressman recognized old Beau, the outcast
gamester and mendicant, and the father of Joyce and Uriel Basil.
"Colonel Reybold," faltered that old wreck of manly beauty and of
promise long departed, "old Beau's passing in his checks. The chant
coves will be telling to-morrow what they know of his life in the
papers, but I've dropped a cold deck on 'em these twenty years. Not one
knows old Beau, the Bloke, to be Tom Basil, cadet at West Point in the
last generation. I've kept nothing of my own but my children's good
names. My little boy never knew me to be his father. I tried to keep
the secret from my daughter, but her affection broke down my disguises.
Thank God! the old rounder's deal has run out at last. For his wife
he'll flash her diles no more, nor be taken on the vag."
"Basil," said Reybold, "what trust do you leave to me in your family?"
Mrs. Basil strove to interpose, but the dying man raised his voice:
"Tryphonee can go home to Fauquier. She was always welcome there--
without me. I was disinherited. But here, Colonel! My last drop of
blood is in the girl. She loves you."
A rattle arose in the sinner's throat. He made an effort, and
transferred his daughter's hand to the Congressman's. Not taking it
away, she knelt with her future husband at the bedside and raised her
voice:
"Lord, when Thou comest into Thy kingdom, remember him!"
IN EACH OTHER'S SHOES
-----------------------
BY GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP
_George Parsons Lathrop (born in Hawaii, August 25, 1851; died in 1898)
was literally wedded to American literature, in that he married Rose,
the second daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne. She had inspired his
youthful poems, and now collaborated with him in several prose works,
as well as helped him materially in his master work, a biographical
edition of the works of Hawthorne. The fantastic conception of the
present story is reminiscent of the imaginative tales of his
father-in-law, but there is lacking the glamour of mysticism that
Hawthorne would have thrown around it. However, in aiming directly at
the moral sense of his readers, instead of approaching this through the
aesthetic sense, the obvious treatment of Lathrop gains in human
interest more than it loses in literary quality._
IN FACH OTHER'S SHOES
BY GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP
[Footnote: By permission of the publishers. From "True and Other
Stories" copyright, 1884, by Punk & Wagnalls.]
I
John Crombie had taken a room at the new apartment building, The Lorne;
having advanced so far in his experience of New York as to be aware
that if he could once establish himself in a house associated by name
with foreign places and titles his chance of securing "position" would
be greatly increased. He did not, however, take his meals in the
expensive cafe of that establishment, finding it more economical to go
to an outlandish little French restaurant, some distance away, which
had been nicknamed among those of his acquaintance who resorted to it
"The Fried Cat." This designation, based on a supposed resemblance to
the name of the proprietor, Fricat, was also believed to have value as
a sarcasm.
It was with no pleasant sensations, therefore, that Crombie, waking on
a gray and drizzling morning of November, remembered that he must hie
him to "The Fried Cat" for an early breakfast. He was in a hurry that
day; he had a great deal to do. His room was very small and dark; he
bounced up and dressed himself, in an obscure sort of way,
surreptitiously opening the door and reaching vaguely for his shoes,
which stood just outside, ready blacked. Nor did it add to his comfort
to know that the shoes were very defective as to their soles, and would
admit the water freely from the accumulated puddles of the sidewalks.
In fact, he had been ashamed to expose their bad condition to the
porter when he put them out every night, as he was forced to do, since
they were his only pair. Drawing them on hastily, in order to conceal
his mortification from even his own mind, he sallied forth; and though
at the moment of putting them on a dim sense of something unfamiliar
crossed his mind, it was not until he reached "The Fried Cat" that he
became fully aware that he had carried off some one else's shoes. He
turned up the soles, privately, underneath the low-hanging tablecloth,
and by a brief examination convinced himself that the gaiters did not
belong to him. The test was simple: his feet were unaccountably dry,
and there were none of those breaks in the lower surface of their
leather covering which he had so often been obliged to contemplate.
He saw at once that the porter of The Lorne had made a mistake, and
must have deposited at another apartment his own very insufficient
foot-gear; but there was no chance now to remedy the confusion. Crombie
had barely time to reach the office where he was employed.
On an ordinary occasion he would perhaps have gone back to The Lorne
and effected an honorable exchange. This particular day, however, was
by no means an ordinary occasion. Crombie had made up his mind to take
a momentous step; and it was therefore essential that he should appear
at his desk exactly on time.
He was a clerk in an important engraving company. For several years he
had occupied that post, without any opportunity having presented itself
for a promotion. At the best, even should he rise, what could he
expect? To be cashier, perhaps, or possibly, under exceptional
circumstances, a confidential private secretary. This prospect did not
satisfy him; he was determined to strike for something higher.
It will naturally be inferred that he was ambitious. I am not in a
position to deny this; but all I can be certain of is, that he was in
love--which is often about the same thing.
Several times at The Lorne he had met in the hallways or in the
elevator a young lady, who was in no small degree beautiful, and
charmed him still more by her generous presence, which conveyed the
idea of a harmonious and lovely character. She had light hair and blue
eyes, but these outward attributes were joined with a serenity and
poise of manner that indicated greater stability than is attributed, as
a rule, to individuals of her type.
Once he happened to arrive at the main entrance just as this vision of
beauty emerged to take her place in a coupe which was waiting by the
curbstone. She dropped her card-case upon the sidewalk, and Crombie's
heart throbbed with delight as he picked it up, gave it to her, and
received her smiling thanks for his little service. Another time, as he
was descending in the elevator, a door opposite the shaft, on the
second floor, stood open, and he caught a glimpse of the apartment to
which it gave access. The room was finished in soft tints, and was full
of upholstery and hangings that lent it a dim golden atmosphere. In the
middle of it stood the young girl, clad in the palest blue, above which
her hair shone like a golden cloud on some dim evening sky.
Slight occurrences of this sort had affected him. He learned that she
was the daughter of Littimer, the rich, widowed banker: her name was
Blanche.