In leaving his party headquarters up-town two hours later, Shelby trod
air. Accustomed to eschew a too nice scrutiny of means if the end
seemed meet, he merged every doubt and queasiness in the recurring tide
of hope. Everything ministered to his profound content--the great
leader's parting assurances, the flattering reception at headquarters
which followed, the leap from need to affluence. It was another
atmosphere, another sun, another city.
The afternoon gayety of the streets was wholly to his mood. One need
not be an atom here. To concede a little, to dare a little--that was
the Open Sesame. He held his head sturdily erect. He looked the
impudent city in the face, its equal. With the sense of equality
budded a tolerant liking, a Go-to-Old-Ant-Hill frame of mind, with
admixture of charity. He must study the Ant Hill, find out its
interests and its needs, since from the chrysalis of the country
legislator was shortly to evolve the statesman whose constituency was
the state. The thought was broadening--surely he had grown!--and
fertile of large sweeping views of things and men. Why be petty? A
human signboard advertising Bernard Graves's volume for ninety-eight
cents, with the privilege of return, evoked no unkind thought against
his rival; and from this loftier plane he could see even the morning's
rencounter with the reporters in an indulgent light. He bought later
editions of the afternoon papers that he might rehearse the episode
from his new point of view, and was disappointed to find that where
some fresh sensation had not crowded him from print altogether, he was
dismissed to out-of-the way corners which nobody read. Yet this, too,
he met with a statesman's broad philosophy.
"Lady in hansom wants to speak with you, sir."
Shelby had drifted into the shopping district with some vague notion of
visiting a wax-works museum, dear to the rural heart, and was loitering
among the novelty fakirs who lined the crowded thoroughfare. He turned
to confront the liveried carriage attendant of one of the great
department stores, who, indicating a cab at the curb, repeated his
message. With the hansom's doors thrown wide to display her gown, sat
Mrs. Hilliard, smiling.
The man strode to her side and caught her outstretched hand.
"Cora," he exclaimed, in undertone, "you're the handsomest woman on the
street!"
If there had been anything more remote from his purpose than this
meeting, it was this speech. He knew of her presence in the city, he
knew her address; but from prudential motives he did not precisely
formulate he had determined not to go to her.
"Get in," she murmured, her pleasing color heightening. "We mustn't
block the way."
Such superior tact in the face of urban conditions impressed him,--he
would have stood gossiping, as in New Babylon's sluggish streets,--and
almost without volition he obeyed.
"The Avenue," directed Mrs. Hilliard.
"Which?" asked cabby, his florid face filling the trap.
"Fifth, of course," said the lady, with annoyance.
It has been remarked that Mrs. Hilliard aimed to be cosmopolitan, and
it is pertinent to add that one of the chiefest delights of this, her
annual pilgrimage, was to ride the livelong day in hansom cabs. People
in the sort of fiction she was fondest of "called a hansom" at least
once a chapter.
"You never came to see me," she accused, as they drove on.
"You can't know how busy I've been." This was well within the truth, as
was his further statement that he knew no good could come of calling at
the Waldorf at this hour. "You have proved that I should have missed
you."
"But your card wouldn't. It would have had its silent message. Do you
realize that we haven't met since--"
"We've met now," he interposed hastily; "and I'm another man."
"Don't tell me the old one's wholly gone."
"Never fear. I forget nothing. I appreciate what you wanted to do for
me--what you have done; but the necessity is past, thank God! The load
is lifted--there's money to burn--I'm free, free!"
"Dear friend," said Mrs. Hilliard. "You make me so happy."
"And I've been honored," he exulted. "I lunched to-day with our great
leader--and, Cora, whatever they say against him, he is indeed
great--and he was more than kind." It was near his lips to hint of the
rosy future, but he spoke instead of a lesser, though nearer prize,
which the day had assured. "He believes in me, and he has asked me to
return home by the governor's own special train!"
"I knew it, I knew it. I was sure that they would appreciate you at
the last. I've seen the papers, too, and I'm so proud. I want the
people at home to know that the big outside world is awake to your
importance. Even New York journalism pays its tribute."
"Did you--er--read all the papers? One has to be Jekyll or Hyde, you
know," he added, appropriating the Boss's illustration without
compunction. "Some of them were--facetious."
"Indeed I did not. I only skimmed the horrid ones; but the others I
read through and through, and sent them home. I threw the spiteful
ones away. They were jealous of your success."
He smiled a little at this.
"Not rabidly jealous, I guess."
"The governor's train!" She made him as elaborate an obeisance as the
hansom's contracted limits would permit. "And yet you condescend to
take the air with humble me."
He laughed joyously.
"I feel like a boy with a holiday," he confessed. "I'm free--free!"
He kindled at her suggestion that they make it a holiday in truth, and
repeating, "I'm free," gave himself to the spectacle of the street.
Mrs. Hilliard suddenly remembered to be cosmopolitan, and bringing her
lorgnon into action, returned stare for stare as their driver threaded
his dexterous way through the clattering, glittering maze of four
o'clock Fifth Avenue.
With bewildering facility, she named the owners of the great
houses--usually striking amiss, though Shelby could not know--and from
some little experience with New York horse shows, could recognize an
occasional carriage occupant. Her adaptability abashed him, setting
her mysteriously apart from the woman whose past had been so intimately
linked with his, and not until they tacked across the plaza into the
wooded entrance of the park, which somehow suggested Tuscarora, did he
pluck up the old sense of comradeship. There were still glittering
equipages in plenty, and at every turn benches black with sightseers,
for the day was a bit of summer gone astray; but this and that
bright-liveried copse or shining pond or meadow cropped by sheep evoked
the familiar setting of their other rides without effacing the city
towering beyond.
"I guess you were born for this kind of thing, Cora," he broke the
silence.
The woman gave a flattered little laugh which tapered to a sigh.
"You, too, were meant for something wider than Tuscarora," she
returned; "and you will get it,--get it here, perhaps. The great New
Yorkers are usually country-born, you know. You'll find your niche--no
small one; find it and fill it; while I--? Ah, well; this isn't the
talk for your holiday."
He brushed her sleeve with a light pressure.
"Make it your holiday, too. Let yourself go."
"Our holiday, then," she assented; "no past, no future, just here and
now."
Copying nature's lead, the character of the park changed by and by; the
way rose from a sun-shot ravine and wound a wooded hill full of forest
scents and subdued surf-like echoings of the city's roar. Strange rock
upheavals with writhing strata flanked the by-paths, a mystery and an
invitation, and the man and woman left their hansom to shuffle, a pair
of children, in the fallen leaves. A squirrel, tame to familiarity,
pushed his nut-begging little nose fairly into their fingers.
"How perfectly Edenic," murmured Mrs. Hilliard. "I feel as if there
wasn't another human being besides you on earth."
Paradise before the Fall had its dinner problem to discuss, as witness
the apple affair, and so presently had Shelby and Mrs. Hilliard. But
it was the man, not Eve, who put the idea forward as the fitting climax
of a memorable day, as perhaps did Father Adam, though she it was who
ran the garden's resources through, and decided which to choose. The
talk had ranged from Sherry's and Delmonico's to Chinatown and the
Ghetto, when Mrs. Hilliard recollected a place ideally suited to the
occasion.
"It's on Riverside Drive, and overlooks the Hudson," she explained.
"I've heard Ruth Temple speak of it, though I can't remember the name.
The driver will know; it's historic."
The driver did know, and whipped them smartly out of a park exit where
the heights fell abruptly away and the elevated railroad far overhead
twisted a wriggling S into Harlem's sixth story. Then the land again
rose sheer on gray curtains of masonry, splashed red with October ivy,
lifting city on city. A cathedral's beginnings, looking a ruin, now
cut sharply against the sky, neighboring a hospital with the facade of
a chateau. Then they skirted a pink and gray university grouped about
a dome, and a great man's tomb which might have been a Titan's
pepper-box, flourishing presently between files of waiting hansoms and
automobiles to their destination.
The restaurant was crowded, but they luckily succeeded to a just
vacated table by a northern window which swept the valley. A sunset of
myriad tints and opalescent fires made molten copper of the river and a
carnival float of every craft.
"We have it clear to-night," said their waiter, as if the establishment
somehow deserved the credit. "You'd not think that big cliff to the
left was opposite Yonkers. That's Fort Washington nearer on the right.
A fight came off there up on the heights, you know. Washington had to
look on from the Palisades and see the Hessians bayonet his troops.
They say he wept."
Mrs. Hilliard considered him through her lorgnon, but the man was busy
with the napery and escaped punishment.
"The house is pretty famous, too," he went on. "Joseph Bonaparte lived
here for a while, you know, and when Fulton tried his steamboat--"
"Yes," interrupted Mrs. Hilliard, icily, "we know."
"Beg pardon," returned the servant, taking the order slip. "Out of
town people generally like to be told."
"It's no use, Cora," rallied Shelby, at the first opportunity. "You're
handicapped. You'll never pass for a native while I'm along." He
divined that she was vexed, and shifted instantly. "Thank you for
bringing me here. After this day of ours we couldn't have picked a
finer sundown."
"Sundown--and the end."
Shelby threw her a glance, and beckoning the waiter, added champagne to
his order.
"We'll not let the celebration peter out in the dumps," he declared.
She demurred faintly. She was unused to wine with her meals, she said;
Joe had old-fashioned ideas about women and wine, and so on; but in the
end they shared the bottle equally, and the holiday took a new lease of
life. Night set in before they finished. The river went black and
mysterious, the shipping lights winked forth like glow-worms, and the
illuminated walking beam of a ferry-boat minced a fantastic progress
from shore to shore. The sometime home of the ex-King of Spain
flowered within and without with electricity, and life simplified
itself to cakes and ale.
From the steps they watched their hansom detach itself from the long
line of yellow-eyed monsters waiting in the outer gloom.
"It must end now," sighed Mrs. Hilliard. "There's the theatre,--why
not? New York is so big."
"I must not."
"Nothing heavy. Say burlesque or vaudeville?"
"If I dared--"
Shelby put her in the hansom and gave the driver the name of a music
hall. The lights of the theatrical district charmed the last prudent
doubt away.
There was a moment's embarrassment at the ticket-office. The little
theatre they had chosen enjoyed a considerable vogue, and the man at
the window could offer nothing less than a box. Shelby was staggered,
but recalling his affluence, flirted a bill through the opening and
neglected to count his change. Not until the usher had brought them to
their box did Mrs. Hilliard comprehend the situation. She whispered,
"Oh, Ross!" hesitated an instant, then entering, laid aside her wraps
under the opera glass inquisition invited by her blond hair.
"How could you?" she murmured, as the house darkened.
"I wouldn't back down before that ticket-seller with you there behind
looking so handsome and swell."
"We should never have come."
Shelby caught her fingers in a reassuring squeeze.
"Don't you worry," he enjoined. "This isn't the Grand Opera House of
New Babylon."
Perceiving that other men smoked, Shelby lit a cigar, and as the
plotless play began to unfold its tuneful fooling Mrs. Hilliard forgot
to be apprehensive. She observed in the audience another woman with
blond hair sipping something from a glass, and wondered if she were
missing an opportunity to be cosmopolitan. If so, she deemed it the
part of wisdom to remain provincial, for it had not escaped her notice
that since dinner her mental processes had undergone some subtle
change. For one thing, her sense of humor had quickened. Joe had
often maintained she had none. If Joe could see her now! No; that was
not her meaning precisely; but at any rate, it had quickened. How
every antic of the comedians appealed to her! The excessively tall and
the excessively short Germans who talked into one another's teeth; the
young person who sang coon songs in a fashion not negro, but all her
own; the giant with a boutonniere which a midget mounted a step-ladder
to spray; the famous plump beauty whom Shelby whispered she
resembled--all the merry-andrew company won her laughter and applause.
Once Shelby laid a restraining hand upon her arm, but she laughed the
more. When the curtain fell on the first act and the lights went up,
she was laughing still. She wondered why New Yorkers stared so.
Perhaps they, like Shelby, who had oddly shrunk into the shadows of the
box, thought she resembled the plump beauty for whom cigars were named.
She stared back at them collectively, for somehow they seemed to wear
one face. It was a thin, clean-shaven face, with keen eyes behind
glittering glasses; a familiar face--the face of the editor of the
_Tuscarora County Whig_.