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[Illustration: In her dainty bathing-dress, Miss Allison's wings were
discarded.
Page 8.]
A
TAME SURRENDER
_A STORY OF THE CHICAGO STRIKE_
By
CAPTAIN CHARLES KING, U.S.A.
AUTHOR OF "THE COLONEL'S DAUGHTER," "MARION'S
FAITH," "CAPTAIN BLAKE," "A SOLDIER'S
SECRET," "SERGEANT CROESUS,"
"CAPTAIN CLOSE," ETC.
_ILLUSTRATED_
PHILADELPHIA
J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1896
COPYRIGHT, 1895 AND 1896,
BY
J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.
PRINTED BY J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA, U.S.A.
ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
In her dainty bathing-dress, Miss Allison's wings
were discarded _Frontispiece_.
"May I trouble you for those despatches, Mr.
Elmendorf?" 176
"All that space in there will be needed in five
minutes from this time." 207
"Is it potent--only at Christmas?" 277
[Illustration]
A TAME SURRENDER.
CHAPTER I.
She had met him the previous summer on the Rhine, and now "if they
aren't engaged they might as well be," said her friends, "for he is her
shadow wherever she goes." There was something characteristically
inaccurate about that statement, for Miss Allison was rather undersized
in one way and oversized in another; at least that, too, is what her
friends said. She was not more than five feet in height nor less than
five feet in breadth "measured from tip to tip of her wings," as her
brother said. Miss Allison had wings, not because she was an angel, but
because it was the fashion,--wings that sprouted at her fair, plump,
shapely shoulders and billowed out like balloons. Her brother Cary,
above referred to, a sixteen-year-old specimen of Young American
impudence and independence, said further of her, in the spring of '94,
that if Floy's sleeves were only inflated with gas she could float on
air as easily as she did on water, and on water Miss Allison was
buoyancy personified. On water, too, and in her dainty bathing-dress,
Miss Allison's wings were discarded and her true proportions more
accurately defined. She was anything but slender. She was simply
deliciously, exquisitely rounded _now_; but the question which so
disturbed her feminine friends as to call for perennial repetition was,
What _would_ she be a few years hence? This, however, was a matter that
seemed to give the lady in question no uneasiness whatever. Certainly it
resulted in no loss of flesh. Perhaps it might have been better for her
future figure if it had. With her perfect health, digestion, and
disposition, there was absolutely no way of worrying off a pound or two
a week. She was the soul of good nature and content. She had an
indulgent father, a luxurious home, abundant wealth, an unimpeachable
complexion, character, and social position. She had a swarm of enviously
devoted girl friends on the one hand and selfishly devoted male admirers
on the other, or on both if she chose. She was absolutely without a mean
or unkind thought of anybody. She was full of every generous impulse.
She was lazy and energetic by turns, had been a romping idler in her
earlier school-days, and had been polished off and finished in an
expensive Eastern establishment without finishing anything herself. She
had lived an almost unshadowed life, had laughed off a dozen lovers
when she went abroad in '93, and had then fallen in with her fate across
the water.
There was really no excuse for her falling in love with Mr. Floyd
Forrest. An utter dissimilarity to her other admirers, a romantic and
somewhat absurd adventure, and, above all, proximity, were what did it.
He must have been over ten years her senior; she was barely twenty when
they met. He was tall, slender, and strong, with deep burning brown eyes
and heavy brows and lashes. She was short and plump and distractingly
fair and fresh and blue-eyed,--big melting blue eyes, too, they were.
His lips were well-nigh hidden by a heavy moustache; hers were well-nigh
faultless in their sweet, warm, rosy curves, faultless as the white,
even teeth that gleamed in her merry laughter. He was reserved and
taciturn, even gloomy at times, facts which, through no fault or
connivance of hers, were presently explained and only served to heighten
the interest she had begun to feel in him. She was frankness, almost
loquacity itself,--a girl who could no more keep a secret than she could
harbor a grudge. He was studious, thoughtful, forever reading. She loved
air, sunshine, action, travel, tennis, dancing, music (of the waltz
variety), and, beyond her Bible and her Baedeker, read nothing at all,
and not too much of them! She was with her aunt and some American
friends when first she met him. It was the morning they hove in sight
of England, and the steamer was pitching through a head sea. Her party
were wretchedly ill; she was aggressively well. She had risen early and
gone up to the promenade deck in hopes of getting the first glimpse of
Bishop's Rock, and found the spray dashing high over the bows, drenching
her accustomed perch on the forward deck and keeping people
within-doors.
It was too early for those who had been her beaux and gallants on the
swift spring run; a late session in the smoking-room the night before
had kept them below. Only one man was visible at the rail under the
bridge,--the tall, dark, military-looking American who seemed to divide
his time between reading and tramping on the promenade deck, pacing the
planks with long, swinging stride and never seeming to care for other
society than his own thoughts. He was on deck and keenly enjoying the
strong, salt wind and its whistling load of spray; and, clinging to the
stanchions at the saloon door, wistfully did Miss Allison regard him,
but only as the means to an end. She wanted to get there, and did not
see a way without a helping hand, and just here old Neptune seemed to
tender it. A huge, foam-crested billow came sweeping straight from the
invisible shores of Albion, burst in magnificent deluge upon the port
bow, lifted high in air one instant the heaving black mass of the stem,
then let it down with stomach-stirring swish deep into the hollow
beyond,--deep, deep into the green mountain that followed, careening
the laboring steamer far over to starboard, and shooting Miss Allison,
as plump and pleasing a projectile as was ever catapulted, straight from
the brass-bound door-way, across the slippery deck and into the
stranger's welcoming arms. Springing suddenly back from under the bridge
to avoid the coming torrent, Mr. Forrest was spun along the rail until
nearly opposite the companion-way, and just in the nick of time.
"I think I'd have gone overboard if it hadn't been for you," said Miss
Allison, all smiles and salt water, as she clung to the rail a moment
later, while Mr. Forrest's steamer-cap, bumped off in the collision,
rode helplessly astern on the crest of the hissing wave. "But I couldn't
swim like your cap. Do take my Tam," she cried, tearing off her knitted
head-gear and letting her soft, fair curls whip out into so many briny
strings.
"I'll use this," he shouted, turning up the capote of his ulster, while
the cape thrashed furiously in the wind. "Will you pardon my saying you
are a trifle venturesome?"
"Oh, I love the ocean and the wind and the sea," she cried,
enthusiastically. "Don't you pity people who are too ill or too lazy to
get up and see this?" And she stretched forward one white, dimpled,
dainty hand over the seething waters. "Dare we get over on the other
side?"
"You couldn't stand there," he said, briefly, "and would be drenched if
you could. Best stay here."
And stay they did until breakfast, by which time she had told him a
great deal about herself and learned next to nothing about him.
"Remember," she said, "you are to give me your address, and I'm to send
you a new steamer-cap to replace the one I knocked overboard." And he
merely smiled, thanked her, said it was entirely unnecessary, but did
not present the expected card at all. "Perhaps he hadn't any," suggested
Aunt Lawrence, after they got into sheltered waters off the Start Point.
"He doesn't look like a society man. There are so many of these
commercial people travelling now."
"Oh, he didn't talk at all like a drummer," said Miss Allison in prompt
defence of her new protector. "In fact, I don't think he talked at all."
"Not if you had first innings, Flo," drawled Master Cary, from the
shelter of his steamer-rug. "He ain't a drummer, but like's not he's
been one. He's an army officer. Hubbard said so." Hubbard was one of the
belated admirers.
Whether soldier or not, however, Mr. Forrest did not prosecute the
chance acquaintance. He lifted the successor to the shipwrecked cap on
passing Miss Allison's party later in the day, but never approached them
nearer, never seemed to see the invitation in Miss Allison's shining
blue eyes. "Really, Cary," said she, as they neared Southampton, "you
must go and get his address and the size of the steamer-cap." But Cary
was the type of the traditional younger brother, a spoiled one at that,
and Cary wouldn't. It was Mr. Hubbard who went on the mission and came
back with the man.
"Pray don't think of getting me a cap," said Mr. Forrest, bowing and
smiling rather gravely. "I'd much rather you did not. Indeed, it
wouldn't find me, as I make no stay in England at all. I--I wish you a
very pleasant sojourn," he finished, somewhat abruptly, and with a
comprehensive bow to the party backed away.
But just two months later they ran upon him on the Rhine. The express
steamer had picked them up at Bonn and paddled them up the crowded
stream to Coblentz, and there at the dock, chatting with two immensely
swell Prussian officers, was Mr. Forrest.
"Here's your drummer again, Flo," said Cary, turning disdainfully from
the contemplation of the battlements of Ehrenbreitstein. "Just catch on
to the cut of those Dutch trousers, will you?" indicating by a nod of
his sapient head the tight-fitting, creaseless garments in which were
encased the martial lower limbs visible below the long, voluminous
skirts of their double-breasted frock-coats. Flo gazed with frank
animation in her eyes, but Forrest never saw her until after he had
waved adieu to his German friends, standing in statuesque and superb
precision at the salute beyond the foaming wake of the Deutscher Kaiser.
"I knew we'd see you again," said Miss Allison, smiling sunshine up into
his face, "and I've brought your cap. It's in one of those trunks now,"
she concluded, indicating the pile of luggage on the deck abaft the
wheel. Hubbard and other admirers, who had besieged her on the steamer,
were no longer in attendance. In their stead was a well-groomed, sedate,
prosperous-looking man referred to as "my father" when Mr. Forrest was
presented a moment later, and with him, conversing eagerly and fluently
in a high-pitched, querulous voice, was a younger man whose English was
as pure as his accent was foreign. "Mr. Elmendorf," said Miss Allison,
but she did not explain, as perhaps she might have done, "Cary's tutor."
Forrest bowed civilly to both, but looked hard at the latter, and Miss
Allison presently went on to explain. "Father joined us nearly a week
ago. He couldn't come before. I wish I could have stayed to see the
World's Fair, but auntie was so miserable the doctor said she must get
away from Chicago at once, and so we had to come. Then Cary's a perfect
hoodlum at home,--one scrape after another as fast as he can get in and
father can get him out. They sent him with us," she continued, in the
flow of her boundless confidences.
"Herr Max is a very highly educated young man, but I don't think he's
doing Cary any good."
That night at Mainz there was an episode. Mr. Allison senior, fatigued,
had gone to bed as soon as they reached their hotel. Mrs.
Lawrence,--"auntie," that is,--Miss Allison, and their maid were
billeted in very comfortable rooms under Herr Schnorr's hospitable roof.
Elmendorf stepped in to write letters, and Cary sneaked out for a smoke.
It was after ten. The shops were closed. Cigarettes had been strictly
forbidden, and the boy's small stock of contraband had been discovered
and seized that morning at Bonn. Herr Max wrote _currente calamo_, and
as he turned off page after page he lost all thought of his charge.
Among Cary's treasured possessions was a calibre 32 Smith & Wesson, and
with this pellet-propeller in his hip-pocket the boy fancied himself as
dangerous as an anarchist. Twice had it been captured by paterfamilias
and twice recovered, the last time at Cologne. Carrying concealed
weapons was as much against the law in Cologne as it is in Chicago, and
much more of an offence, but nothing had there occurred to impel him to
draw it. The boat-landing was not five hundred yards away. There under
the arching lights of its beautiful bridge, sparkling with the
reflection of myriad stars, silently flowed the Rhine, and there lay the
Deutscher Kaiser, with her well-stocked larder and wine-room. Thither
went the boy in quest of forbidden fruit. A waiter to whom he had
confided his desire had promised to have the cigarettes on hand, and
kept his promise. For one small package he demanded a four-mark
piece,--a silver coin of about the size and rather more than the value
of the American dollar. Cary responded with "What you giving us?" which
the Teutonic kellner couldn't understand. The boy proffered a mark, the
German equivalent for the American quarter, and sought vainly through
the misty memories of his lessons for the German equivalent of "Size me
up for a chump?" The waiter had friends and fellow-conspirators, the boy
had none, and when a grab was made for his portemonnaie he backed
against the stone wall and whipped out his pygmy six-shooter. Miss
Allison, looking out from her casement over the moonlit beauty of the
scene before her, had recognized her brother's form and later his
uplifted voice. She knew there was trouble, and felt that worse would
follow unless prompt measures were taken. She was not dressed for
promenade, being already in _peignoir_, slippers, and dishevelled hair;
but the sudden sound of a shot and a scream banished her scruples. She
darted into the corridor and on towards the head of the stairs just in
time to collide once again with her Atlantic protector, but was not
received with open arms. Forrest bade her run back to her room while he
sped on to the boy. German police are slow, if sure, but the waiter's
associates were quick enough. They had scattered before the police could
converge, and Forrest was first at the scene. Just as he supposed, the
boy had peppered himself.
It was only a flesh-wound, something to scare and distress and confine
Young America to his bed for ten days, and so to be bragged about
prodigiously later on. But the injury to German institutions, the
affront to the majesty of German law, was not so slight. It took some
days of consular and diplomatic correspondence and a week of official
espionage to satisfy the local authorities that no deep-rooted
conspiracy was at the bottom of this discovery of murderous weapons in
the hands of the Amerikaner. In the care of the patient and in all the
formalities attendant upon the case, Mr. Forrest proved of infinitely
more value than the accomplished tutor. The former, an officer reared
with deep regard for established law and order, accepted the situation
as a fact, the laws as incontrovertible, and considered himself and
friends, although involuntarily, as the offenders. The German-American
scholar, on the contrary, spent fruitless hours in striving to argue the
officials out of their stand and in preaching a crusade against the laws
they were sworn to obey. Forrest won their regard and Elmendorf their
distrust, if not disgust, and from the moment Forrest reappeared bearing
the limp and lamenting Cary in his arms, Miss Allison had chosen to
look upon him as in some sense the family's good angel. They were much
together for a week about young Cary's bedside, and the boy swore that
if he had "a feller like him for a toot" he wouldn't mind trying to
obey. Then, when Forrest had to go his way, she found that she missed
him as she never before had missed mortal man. It was the first shadow
on her life since her mother's death, five years before.
In September, most unexpectedly, they met him again at Geneva. Cary had
been feeding the swans in the blue waters about the little isle of J.J.
Rousseau, and was figuring how much he'd have to pay in costs and fines
if he yielded to his consuming desire to "drop a donick" on the head of
one of them that had spit at him, when Flo suddenly gasped, "Oh!
there's----" and stopped short. Loungers and passers-by looked up and
shrugged their Gallic shoulders and exchanged glances of commiseration
at sight of a sixteen-year-old boy rushing yelling after a cab. But the
boy was fleet, despite his recent flesh-wound, and presently reappeared,
dragging a man by the arm, who bared his brown head and bowed low over a
frankly extended hand. He looked a trifle dusty and travel-stained to
Cary's critical eye, and the boy meant to comment on the foreign cut of
his Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, provided a chance were afforded
him to enter a remark edgewise, but Florence, with glowing cheeks and
sparkling eyes, was pouring forth a volume of welcome and explanation
all in one. Forrest was on his way to the station _en route_ to
Montreux.
"Oh, don't go by rail! Wait and take the boat with us; it's so much
lovelier!"
Over at the quay lay moored the Major Davel, and thither Forrest bade
the cabman take his luggage. It was indeed lovelier,--the evening voyage
up that beautiful Alp-locked lake,--and while auntie, fatigued with her
day's shopping and sight-seeing, snoozed placidly in the salon, and
Cary, on honor not to smoke cigarettes again until his next birthday,
was puffing a Swiss "penny-grab" at the bow, Mr. Forrest and this fair,
joyous girl sat and talked while the sun went down over the Jura and
turned to purple and gold and crimson the dazzling summits of Mont Blanc
and the far-away peaks up the valley of the Rhone. Elmendorf was
enjoying a week's leave, Mr. Allison was sampling the waters at
Carlsbad, and auntie and Florence had Cary on their hands. The boy
adored Forrest by this time. Couldn't Forrest spend a day or two? They
would take him to Chillon and up to the Rochers de Naye. _There_ was a
view worth seeing! "I can stand on that point up yonder," said Cary, "a
mile and a quarter high, and fire a stone down the chimney of the hotel
at Territet." And they did take him, for Forrest remained four days. Mr.
Elmendorf wrote that, on the advice of his physician, he had asked for
a week more to spend in quiet at his home in the shades of his alma
mater in a placid old German town. Stopping at Berne a few hours after
leaving his friends on Lac Leman, Mr. Forrest found the quaint old
capital crowded. A congress of Socialists had been called, and from all
over Europe the exponents of the Order were gathered, and almost the
first voice to catch his ear as Forrest strolled through the throng in
the open platz near the station was high-pitched, querulous, and oddly
familiar. Turning sharply the officer came face to face with Mr.
Elmendorf, still presumably recuperating in the shades of the university
at Jena; and that night Mr. Elmendorf called upon him at his hotel.
"I found myself so much better," said he, "that I decided to push ahead,
and, still availing myself of my leave, to stop and see some of these
most interesting old Helvetic cities. My coming here to-day was
fortuitous, yet possibly unfortunate. Mr. Allison has a deep-rooted
prejudice against anything of this kind,--against anything, I may say,
that has a tendency to improve the condition of the laboring man,--and,
while I have nothing to shrink from in the matter, I prefer not to
offend the sensibilities, whether right or wrong, of my employer, and
therefore should, on his account, ask that you make no mention, should
you write, of having seen me here." And Elmendorf waited a moment.
"I shall not be apt to write," said Forrest, coldly, after a pause.
"Well--in case you--you see any of the family again. If it's all the
same to you----"
"I shall not volunteer any information, Mr. Elmendorf; but should I ever
be asked the direct question, since you have nothing to shrink from in
the matter, there need be, I presume, no hesitancy in my saying that I
saw you here."
"Oh, not at all,--not at all," was the answer, though in tone by no means
cheery or confident; and Elmendorf departed with the conviction that
Forrest did not like him,--which was simply a case of reciprocity.
There was yet another meeting, as unexpected as its predecessors,
between the Allisons and Mr. Forrest, and this was of all perhaps the
most decisive. Forrest's leave was soon to expire. He was returning from
Vienna to Paris, and met Allison senior at Basle. The Bohemian waters,
or the rest and regimen, or both combined, had greatly benefited the
merchant. His manner was brisk and buoyant, his face shone with health
and content. He was cordiality itself to the man whom he had greeted
with but cool civility on the Rhine. "I feel ready for anything," said
he, "and am going back at once. Cary and Elmendorf go with me, but Flo
and her aunt want to stay awhile in Paris. Look them up, will you, if
you go there?--Hôtel Lafond." Forrest promised. He was going to Metz
and Luxembourg on the way, and purposed spending only a few days in the
capital. He found the ladies packing and almost ready to start. Once
again he crossed the Atlantic in Miss Allison's company, and this time,
though there might have been Hubbards and other gallants aboard, she had
no use for them. It was Mr. Forrest's figure her eye sought the moment
she came on deck, Forrest's arm on which she leaned in the joyous,
exhilarating tramps on the breezy promenade. Every woman on board except
Aunt Lawrence believed her engaged to him before they were half-way
over, and would have sworn to it at Sandy Hook. Anything more blissful,
gladsome, confident than her manner at first could hardly be described,
but when it presently began to give way to something half shy, half
appealing, almost tender,--when long silences and down-drooping lashes
replaced the ceaseless prattle and frankly uplifted eyes,--then there
was little room for doubt in Aunt Lawrence's mind that Flo had flung
herself away.
"Well, I wash my hands of it," said the pious lady. "It was Fate and her
father. He deliberately threw them together again after my warning. Now
I suppose he'll have to do something for him, for if Flo loves the man
she'll marry him if he hasn't a penny beyond his pay,--which he probably
hasn't. There ought to be a law against such things."
But never a confession or confidence did Flo have to offer. The ladies
spent a week in New York before going West. Mr. Forrest went on about
his business. It was when he met them at Chicago and calmly escorted
them from their state-room on the Limited to their waiting carriage that
Aunt Lawrence felt the time had come for her to speak; and speak she did
the moment Mr. Forrest had closed the carriage door, raised his hat, and
was left behind.
"Has that young man asked you to marry him, Florence?"
And Florence burst into tears.
From having been a bitter opponent of the possibility, Mrs. Lawrence
from this moment veered squarely around. A month agone she would have
resented his daring to speak of such a thing. Now she raged at his
daring not to. Here they were home again at Chicago with all Florence's
friends crowding about and rejoicing in her return, and here, said Aunt
Lawrence, was this extraordinary young man detained on some mysterious
duty on the staff of the general commanding, working in his office at
the Pullman building by day and meeting Flo at dinners, dances,
theatres, and operas by night, coming occasionally to the house,
welcomed by her brother, the millionaire, with whom the young man often
sat now and had long talks about the questions of the hour, welcomed
shyly but unmistakably by Florence, adored by Cary, who took to paying
long visits to the lieutenant's workshop and meeting those swells his
brother officers, and looked upon with distrust only by Elmendorf and
herself. Never before had the lady fancied the tutor or shown a
disposition to listen to his dissertations, which were long. Now she
rejoiced his soul by encouraging him. It was an easy step to discreet
confidences with Forrest as the subject. Mr. Elmendorf became a seeker
for truth. Other officers whom Florence met in society came to the house
to call, and presently to dine. Mr. Elmendorf and his pupil were seldom
absent from the table, and Mr. Elmendorf made martial acquaintances
which, as a member of the Allison household, he was welcome to
cultivate. One day he came in big with news, and that evening, after a
long conference with Elmendorf, Mrs. Lawrence decided on another warning
talk with her charming niece.
"Florence," she said, finally, "I am the last woman on earth to pry into
any one else's affairs" (a conviction with regard to herself which is
cherished by almost every woman), "but I have felt it my duty to learn
something about Mr. Forrest's past life. I own I did object to him as a
possible suitor, but better that than a man insincere in his intentions.
What would you say were I to tell you what I have heard recently?"
Miss Allison turned and faced her aunt unflinchingly, "That he was
engaged to Miss Hosmer,--now Mrs. Stuyvesant,--that she broke it off,
and that he has never cared for any one since? I know all about it,
auntie,--mainly from his own lips."
"Then all I've got to say is, you are the most extraordinary persons I
ever met,--_both_ of you."
[Illustration]
[Illustration]