It was the usual scene at College theatricals. There was the inevitable
six-foot tenor in a white muslin dress, abnormally long blond plaits,
and a high falsetto which _would_ descend every now and then into a
barytone; and there was the German bass-villain who took unpardonable
liberties with the tenor-maiden, considering the latter’s muscular
superiority; and there was the wicked and beautiful maid with very much
blackened eyebrows and very much rouged cheeks, who forgot every now and
then and winked knowingly at some particular chum in the audience; and
there were the usual hitches in the curtain, and the heat and lights,
and crowds of students and rapt young women from neighboring
institutions of learning, who were gazing with mingled admiration and
pity at the wonderfully large hands and feet of the prima-donna and
soubrette.
Every now and then, chinks of daylight came in from lifted blinds,
damaging the looks of the tenor’s complexion considerably, and the
German villain was getting hoarse, and the ballet refused to repeat the
“butterfly” dance, and the student enthusiasm was beginning to flag. At
last, however, the _finale_ came. The tenor fell happily, if a trifle
heavily, into the arms of the barytone, whose operatic _raison-d’être_
had up to that moment been rather obscure, the German villain gave a
last gasp, and the chorus came out firm and strong on the pretty
refrain, and then everybody got up and walked about, and the men
introduced their friends to the young women with them, and everybody
said it was a great success, if a trifle warm, and then they all went
home and said it wasn’t as good as “last year’s.”
Miss Elise Ronald and her chaperon and party stood near the door,
talking to several men, and waiting for the tenor, who was a particular
friend and who had invited them over. It seemed to them that he was a
great while making his appearance, and they were very anxious to know
what he was doing. They would have been much shocked if they had known.
Mr. Perry Cunningham was swearing. In his frantic hurry to get out of
the extraordinary muslin dress and blond wig, and wash the paint and
mongolian and pearl powder off his face, everything seemed to have gone
wrong. To add to the excitement and worry his “dresser” had misplaced
some of his things, and the stage-manager was trying to buttonhole him
to talk business.
The chaperon, who was tired standing, said she would walk on with the
rest, and that Miss Ronald would please follow the moment Mr. Cunningham
arrived. So the girl said “yes” very obediently, and was left standing,
talking with her brother and a youthful freshman who had asked to be
presented. As time passed and no Mr. Perry Cunningham appeared, Miss
Ronald delicately hinted to her brother that he had best hunt him up and
tell him that she was waiting; but that amiable youth, with delightful
optimism, assured his sister warmly that “Cunningham would soon be out
of his fancy togs and would turn up all right,” and disappeared in the
direction of Hemenway.
It was only a short while later that Mr. Cunningham did come up,
breathless and profusely apologetic, and the freshman with rare
discreetness, divining that his presence was not absolutely necessary,
bowed and moved off.
“Awfully sorry, Miss Ronald,” gasped Cunningham, “’spect I kept you
waitin’ an awful time. That--that ‘dresser’ of mine put half my things
with another fellow’s and I had a time getting them straight.”
Miss Ronald said it did not matter and that the chaperon had gone on
with the rest, and that they were to catch up.
“You know we must get that 5.50 train back to the College,” she
explained. So they strolled up Harvard Square, and Miss Ronald assured
Cunningham that his solo in the second act was the gem of the operetta,
and Cunningham was saying impressively that he was glad _she_ liked it,
when it occurred to both of them that the chaperon and the rest of the
party had somehow disappeared.
“Did they intend getting the train in Boston or going over to Allston
for it?” asked Cunningham.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” replied Miss Ronald, helplessly. “How stupid of
me--I never thought to ask!”
Cunningham said it would be rather easier, he thought, to get over to
Allston, and that they had probably gone that way. So they boarded a car
and got to Allston at ten minutes of six--“excellent time,” as
Cunningham remarked walking inside the station to buy the tickets. He
was gone so long that Miss Ronald started in after him, fearing every
minute to hear the train come thundering up. When she saw him she knew
by his face that something was the matter.
“The ticket-man has just told me this confounded train doesn’t stop at
Allston,” he said, coming quickly toward her. “It’s an outrage--the
company oughtn’t to run its trains so irregularly. It’s a beastly shame!
How’s a person going to remember where a train stops and where it
doesn’t?” he added excitedly, and a trifle vaguely.
Miss Ronald was very much disturbed and a little indignant. Cunningham
felt very sorry for the girl and inclined to blame himself for the
mistake, but Miss Ronald assured him that it was not his fault, and that
what he had to do now was to think how best they could get back to the
College. It was while they were standing on the platform “thinking,”
that the 5.50 from Boston rushed by and they caught sight of the anxious
face of the chaperon at the window.
“Nice people to go off and leave me this way,” soliloquized Miss Ronald,
indignantly. Cunningham walked inside to scrutinize the time-table. When
he came out his face wore so hopeful an expression that Miss Ronald
brightened visibly. “I have a scheme,” he declared. “There’s a train
into Boston that comes along in fifteen minutes and that will get us in
there at 6.25--too late to get the 6.22 out; but we can go to the
Thorndyke and have a little dinner, and catch the 7.30 which will get
you to ‘the College’ at 8.17. You see it would take us at least two
hours to drive over, so that by my plan we shall have our dinner and get
back as soon as if we started now with a trap. And if you will wait here
a minute, I’ll telegraph your chaperon that we will be out on the 7.30,
so she won’t be uneasy about you.”
He was so evidently pleased and relieved with his arrangement that Miss
Ronald hadn’t the heart to offer any objections. They got up to the
Thorndyke and secured a delightful table by an open window, and by the
time they had ordered a rather elaborate dinner, Miss Ronald’s righteous
indignation at her abandonment by the chaperon had stifled any feelings
of remorse at her consent to Cunningham’s “scheme.” So they ate in peace
and talked about the operetta and their friends, and she was enjoying it
all immensely, and had quite forgotten her anxiety to get back to
College and her keen doubts about the propriety of the adventure, when
her eyes happened to fall upon a bronze clock on the mantel at the other
end of the room, and she gave a little cry of dismay. Cunningham
followed the direction of her gaze and said “by Jove” under his breath
in a very forcible sort of way. He pulled out his watch and found it
tallied uncompromisingly with the clock. He beckoned sharply to the
waiter.
“Is that clock _exactly_ right?” he demanded, excitedly. The waiter
assured him that the clock’s record was unimpeachable.
“There is simply no use trying to make that 7.30 in three minutes, Miss
Ronald,” remarked the youth, mournfully. “It’s all my fault. I was
enjoying myself so much that I never noticed how late it was,” he went
on, remorsefully. “Now I suppose you’ll be in no end of a scrape. What
do they do to you when you come in late? Send you to the dean?”
His evident anxiety and utter ignorance of the rules of the College
would have amused Miss Ronald if she had not been so hopelessly
dejected. As it was, she made an heroic effort to brighten up and smiled
sadly at Cunningham. “No--they only put us on bread and water for a
week,” she said, at which feeble attempt at a joke they both laughed
miserably.
Cunningham called the waiter again.
“Bring me a Boston and Albany time-table,” he said. When the man came
back with the precious bit of paper, the girl and the youth bent
anxiously over it.
“There’s a train at nine o’clock and one at nine-thirty,” he said. “The
nine o’clock is a slow train, stops everywhere, and only gets you to
the College ten minutes sooner than the other.”
Miss Ronald looked so miserable that Cunningham began to feel very
desperate indeed. He determined to do something to lighten her despair.
“Suppose we go up-town and see Sothern in ‘Sheridan?’” he suggested. “We
can get down to the station for the nine-thirty, and we can see the
first two acts. It’s a charming play--ever seen it?”
Miss Ronald said “No--o,” and was not sure that they had better go to
the theatre, but she did not wish to go to any of her friends and tell
them of her rather ridiculous predicament, and there was nothing for it
but to consent to the theatre plan. So Cunningham called for the bill
and they strolled slowly up to the theatre to kill time. They took seats
far back so as to be able to escape easily. “Sheridan” is a very pretty
play, as everyone knows, but Cunningham felt so responsible for the girl
that he was much too nervous properly to appreciate it. He saw, however,
that Miss Ronald was enjoying herself very much, and he decided to stay
till the last moment, but kept his watch open in his hand for fear of
running over the time. He knew they could get to Kneeland Street in
seven or eight minutes with a cab, and so, at exactly fifteen minutes
after nine, he arose and told Miss Ronald it was time to go. They wasted
a few moments getting out, and then Cunningham called a cab and told the
driver to go to the Boston and Albany station as fast as he could.
It may have been these unfortunate directions, or it may have been
Fate--at any rate, at the corner of Washington and Essex Streets there
was a sudden commotion and noise; Cunningham and Miss Ronald felt a
terrible jolt, and a great many people seemed to have sprung suddenly
out of the earth and to be asking them if they were hurt. As they were
not at all hurt they were rather indignant, and Cunningham jumped
impatiently out of the cab to see what all the fuss was about. He was
not long in ignorance. The horse lay on its side with a broken shaft
sticking up and the harness half off him. The coachman was swearing
impartially at the people about him, and an ice-wagon with which the cab
had collided stood by unhurt, the driver of it in a hopeless state of
intoxication and wrath. Cunningham looked anxiously around him, and to
his consternation not another cab was in sight. There seemed to be a
lull in the traffic of the street, and very few people or vehicles were
to be seen except those collected around the scene of the accident. The
two drivers were wrangling and swearing at each other, so that nothing
was to be got out of them. Cunningham made use of some strong language
for his private satisfaction. He looked at his watch. It was twenty-five
minutes after nine, and they would have been at the station if the
break-down had not occurred. He went quickly back to the cab.
“Miss Ronald,” he said, “the horse has fallen down and broken the shaft.
There isn’t another cab in sight, and we mustn’t waste any time getting
away, or the police may detain us to tell what we know of the accident.
I don’t see anything to do but to run for it,” he added, with a frantic
attempt to speak cheerfully.
The girl got quickly out of the cab. “This is terrible, Mr. Cunningham,”
she gasped. “We _must_ catch that nine-thirty train. The College is
locked at ten o’clock, and I am _obliged_ to be there by that time.”
Cunningham grabbed her hand firmly in his. “Now run!” he said. There
were a great many people who stopped to look at the two figures tearing
down Washington Street, and they particularly enlisted the sympathetic
attention of a great many small boys along the way. One policeman,
thinking it was a case of abduction, started after them but gave up the
chase before long, having never gone in much for sprinting, and it being
an unusually warm night in May. It was indeed a rather uncommon sight.
The girl’s clothes and correct air made her particularly noticeable,
while Cunningham in a silk hat, Bond Street coat, and patent leathers,
was a conspicuous object as he swung lightly down the street under the
lamps and electric lights.
When they turned into Kneeland Street, the girl’s courage and strength
failed her. Kneeland Street itself is a disgrace to Boston. It is not by
any means the street a young man would choose to walk on with a young
lady in the evening--indeed it is not the street one would choose to
walk on in broad daylight with a policeman in hailing distance.
Cunningham could have cursed himself for the whole thing. He drew the
girl closer to him and walked swiftly on. When they got in sight of the
station he glanced fearfully at the big clock. It stood at exactly half
after nine, but he comforted himself with the thought that the outside
clock is always fast, though he was not sure just how much.
“Can you run any more?” he asked anxiously of the girl. For answer she
started ahead feverishly.
The man was locking the gate. “Can’t open it--train just pulled out.”
Cunningham looked viciously at the official.
“Can’t you whistle her back?” he demanded, furiously. The man smiled
derisively, and commenced talking to a trainman who sauntered up just
then with an oil-can and hammer in his hand. Cunningham went back to
where Miss Ronald was standing. The girl burst out laughing somewhat
hysterically.
“We need a chaperon badly, Mr. Cunningham,” she said, nervously. “We
don’t seem able to take care of ourselves at all.”
“Yes,” assented Cunningham, gloomily. “It seems easy enough in the
abstract to catch a train, but some way we don’t seem to understand
quite how it’s done,” he added, ironically. “I will go and find out when
the next train leaves, and may be if we are careful and start for it an
hour before time, and if the station doesn’t burn up, or all the cab
horses fall down dead, or the trains stop running, we may be able to
make it.”
Cunningham walked up to the ticket-agent. “When is the next train out?”
he demanded, sternly.
The man glanced up impatiently from a calculation he was making and
said, shortly--“11.10.”
Cunningham strolled back to the girl. “It is obviously impossible to
wait here an hour and forty minutes,” he said. “Suppose we go back to
the theatre and see the last act. We’ve only missed one act at most, and
the last is the prettiest of all.”
Miss Ronald was too miserable to object or make any suggestions, so they
got into a cab and Cunningham gave minute instructions to the driver not
to fall off the box and kill himself, or let the horse walk out of the
harness, and to be particularly careful about the wheels coming off, and
not to try to demolish any ice-wagons that might be harmlessly roving
the streets. The driver took these remarks good-humoredly, but was
naturally much mystified, and after thinking it over concluded that
Cunningham was either very drunk or very crazy.
They got back to the theatre in a short time and saw the success of “The
Rivals,” and the duel and the just exposure of the infamous Matthews,
and wished heartily that their affairs were as happily wound up as those
of the fair Miss Linley and Sheridan.
It was just ten minutes of eleven when they started back for the Boston
and Albany station. Cunningham had retained the cab they had come in and
had given still further and more minute directions to the driver, so
that as they settled themselves back on the stuffy cushions, they
thought they could reasonably hope to get the train in time and safety.
When they entered the waiting-room Miss Ronald saw with a sigh of relief
that it was just eleven o’clock. There was plenty of time, and it was
with a somewhat triumphant air of having conquered immense difficulties,
of having fought bravely a hard fight, that Cunningham walked up once
more to the ticket-office.
“Two tickets, please,” he said briskly as he handed out a dollar bill.
The man looked at him for a moment as if making an effort to remember
where he had seen him before.
“This is the through express to New York. You’ll need more stuff than
that to get two tickets,” he said, jocosely.
“You told me”--gasped Cunningham.
“Yes,” asserted the man. “You asked me when the next train went out and
I told you. Of course I thought you knew where you were going,” he
added, derisively.
Cunningham began to feel very desperate indeed.
“Well,” said he, slowly and carefully. “If there is a train that leaves
any time to-night for Wellesley, break the news to me gently, and then
come and put me on it half an hour before it starts, and tie my ticket
to my coat, and put me in charge of the conductor. Otherwise--” he went
on impressively, “I may get lost, or wreck the train, or stop the
locomotive.”
Then he went back to Miss Ronald and told her the news. She had had a
very pronounced liking for Mr. Perry Cunningham up to that time, but it
occurred to her that he seemed terribly lacking in practicality, and
that she was very much disappointed in him. She decided firmly what her
answer would be to him if ever he should propose--though it is but fair
to state that Mr. Cunningham had no thought of proposing, unless it was
proposing how best to get back to College.
At 11.25 the last accommodation train pulled out with a very miserable
young woman and a very remorseful young man on it.
At exactly 12.9 it left them standing on the platform of a pretty
station, with not a cab to be seen, wondering how they could get up to
“the College.” Miss Ronald said she thought they had better walk, by all
means; that they had not had any excitement or fatigue all evening, and
that a mile walk at midnight would be just the thing for them; that they
might run part of the way if they found walking too slow, and that she
often went out and ran around a while in the middle of the night just
for the fun of the thing. (Miss Ronald was getting sarcastic--misfortune
had embittered her naturally sweet disposition.)
Mr. Cunningham said hotly that he understood what she meant, and that no
one could possibly be more sorry about the whole thing than himself, and
that if necessary he would come over in person the next day and explain
it to the President herself. But Miss Ronald said haughtily that, owing
to the telegram they had sent, everyone probably thought her safe at the
College, and that there would be no need of explanations. If any were to
be made she preferred to make them herself.
After that they walked swiftly and quietly up the long shaded paths. The
fresh, earthy smell of the sward and early spring flowers, and the cry
of the night birds, and the big College buildings standing out every now
and then sharply defined in the moonlight, or shadowed by the great
trees, with here and there a solitary light shining at some professor’s
window, made it a very beautiful and impressive scene. But Miss Ronald
was too unhappy to think much about it and walked haughtily and silently
on, and Cunningham could not enjoy it for the remorse he felt and the
knowledge that Miss Ronald--however, unreasonably--was angry with him.
Besides, he was wondering what on earth was to become of him for the
rest of the night. It was three miles to the nearest hotel, he thought
gloomily, and he would have to take the first train into Boston in order
to get over to Cambridge in time for a lecture which he did not wish to
miss.
* * * * *
Miss Clara Arnold awoke very suddenly and very thoroughly. Her heart
gave an awful bound and then stood quite still in a most uncomfortable
sort of way. There was no doubt about it--there were people on the
piazza just outside her room and they were talking in low but excited
tones. All the horror of her situation came upon her, and in one instant
she wished more fervently than she ever thought she could wish for
anything, that she had taken her friends’ advice and had not decided on
a room on the ground floor opening on a piazza. All their warnings and
talk of burglars and tramps came vividly to her as she lay there quaking
with fear. She could hear quite distinctly the tread of feet outside,
and the gentle but firm shaking of the big doors that opened from the
broad corridor on the piazza. A sickening sense of fear possessed her
and a suffocating pressure was on her lungs. She wondered with all her
soul where the night-watchman was, and whether she had better scream or
lie quite still. She was trying to decide this when she thought she
heard her name called. She sat up, listening intently. And then she
heard quite distinctly a girl’s voice saying, hopelessly:
“It’s no use--you can’t get that door open and I can’t make Clara hear!”
Miss Arnold gave a gasp and then jumped out of bed and into a tea-gown
and Turkish slippers. She went quickly into her study and called softly
to the girl outside.
“Elise, is that you? Just wait a minute!” and then there was more
muffled talk outside and a man’s voice in a relieved way saying:
“Oh, it’s all right now--how glad I am! I--I wish I could begin to tell
you, Miss Ronald, how awfully cut up I am about it”--but the girl
stopped him.
“I quite understand, Mr. Cunningham,” she said, stiffly. “You had better
go now. I am sorry there is no hotel nearer.” And then Miss Arnold heard
a muttered good-night and the crunch of footsteps on the gravel, and as
she opened the doors a moment later Miss Ronald fell limply into her
arms.
They sat up and talked it all over for an hour, and Miss Ronald said she
was intensely disappointed in Perry Cunningham, and that she could
never, never forgive him. Miss Arnold contended that she did not quite
see what there was to forgive; it had all been unfortunate, and she
thought that Mr. Cunningham had done all he could--that he hadn’t kept
the train from stopping at Allston, nor did he make the cab run into the
ice-wagon, nor could he compel the New York express to stop for them,
and that if he forgot to look at his watch at the Thorndyke--why, she
did so too. And she told Miss Ronald frankly that she might have been
more civil to him, considering that he had had all the trouble on her
account and was now walking three miles in order to get a place in which
to sleep for three hours. And she added that she thought if anyone was
to be angry about the affair it was herself, since she had taken Miss
Ronald for a burglar and had been frightened nearly to death. And
finally Miss Ronald grew rather remorseful at the thought of how she had
sent the boy off, and of how truly considerate he had been through the
whole affair, and of what good friends they had once been, and she went
to sleep with the good resolution to write him a very nice note the next
day. And on the following morning, when an immense box of roses came
with Mr. Perry Cunningham’s card tucked humbly in one corner and almost
out of sight, Miss Ronald restored him to full favor and wrote him a
charming letter inviting him out for the next week to Float-Day.