PLOT AND COUNTER-PLOT
Mr. Heatherbloom drifted; not "looking for a way", one was forced upon
him. It came to him unexpectedly; chance served him. He would have
thrust it from him but could not. During his more or less eccentric
peregrinations in Central Park he had formed visual acquaintances with
sundry folk; pictures of some of them were very dimly impressed on his
consciousness, others--and the major part--on his subconsciousness.
Flat faces, big faces, red faces, pale faces! One countenance in the
last class made itself a trifle more insistent than the others. Its
possessor had watched with interest his progress, interrupted with
entanglements, and had listened to the music of his march, the canine
fantasia, staccato, affettuoso! Mr. Heatherbloom's halting footsteps
in the park generally led him to the heights; it wasn't a very high
point, but it was the highest he could find, and he could look off on
something--a lake, or reservoir of water, he didn't know just which, and
a jagged sky-line.
The person that exhibited casual curiosity in his movements and his
coming thither was a woman. She seemed slight and sinuous, sitting there
against the stone parapet, and deep dark eyes accentuated the pallor of
her face. He did not think it strange she should always be at this spot
when he came; in fact, it was quite a while before he noticed the almost
daily coincidence of their mutual presence at the same place, at about
the same time. After her first half-sly, half-sedulous regard of him,
she would look away; her face then wore a soft and melancholy
expression; she appeared very sad.
It took quite a while for this fact to be communicated to Mr.
Heatherbloom. Though she shifted her figure often, as if to call
attention to the pale profile of her face against a leaden sky, his
thoughts remained introspective. Only the sky-line seemed to interest
him. But one day something white came dancing in the breeze to his feet.
Absorbed in deep neutral tones afar, he did not see it; his four-footed
charges, however, were quick to perceive the object.
"Oh!" said the lady.
Mr. Heatherbloom looked. "Is--is it yours?" he asked.
"It--was," she remarked with a slight accent on the last word.
He got up; there seemed little use endeavoring to rescue the
handkerchief now.
"I'm afraid I've been rather slow," he remarked. "Quite stupid, I'm
sure."
She may have had her own opinion but maintained a discreet silence. Mr.
Heatherbloom stooped and gathered in the remnants. "You will permit me,"
he observed, "to replace it, of course."
"But it was not your fault."
"It was that of my charges, then."
"No; the wind. Let's blame it on the wind." She laughed, her dark eyes
full on his, though Mr. Heatherbloom seemed hardly to see them.
After that when they met on this little elevation, she bowed to him and
sometimes ventured a remark or two. He did not seem over-anxious to talk
but he met her troubled face with calm and unvarying, though somewhat
absent-minded courtesy. He replied to her questions perfunctorily, told
her whom he served, betraying, however, in turn, no inquisitiveness
concerning her. For him she was just some one who came and went, and
incidentally interfered with his study of the sky-line.
By degrees she confided in him; as one so alone she was glad of almost
any one to confide in. She wanted, indeed, needed badly, a situation as
lady's maid or second maid. She had tried and tried for a position;
unfortunately her recommendations were mostly foreign--from Milan,
Moscow, Paris. People either scrutinized them suspiciously, or _mon
Dieu_! couldn't read them. It was hard on her; she had had such a time!
She, a Viennese, with all her experience in France, Italy, Russia,
found herself at her wits' end in this golden America. Wasn't it odd,
_très drôle?_ She had laughed and laughed when she hadn't cried about
it.
She had even tried singing in a little music-hall, a horribly common
place, but her voice had failed her. Perhaps there was a vacancy at Miss
Van--what was her name? There _was_ a place vacant; the maid with the
saucy nose, Mr. Heatherbloom indifferently vouchsafed, had just left to
marry out of service.
"How fortunate!" the fair questioner cried; then sighed. Miss Van
Rolsen, being a maiden lady, would probably be most particular about
recommendations; that they should be of the home-made, intelligible
brand, from people you could call up by telephone and interrogate. Had
she been very particular in his case? Mr. Heatherbloom said "no"--not
joyfully, and explained. Though she drew words from him, he talked to
the sky-line. She listened; seemed thinking deeply.
"You are not pleased to be there?" Keenly.
"I?--Oh, of course!" Quickly.
She did not appear to note his changed manner. "This Miss
Van Rolsen,--isn't she the one whose niece--Miss Elizabeth
Dalrymple--recently refused the hand and heart of a Russian prince?" she
said musingly.
"Refused?" he cried suddenly. "You mean--" He stopped; the words had
been surprised from him.
"Accepted?" She looked at him closer. "Of course; I remember now seeing
it in the paper; I was thinking of some one else. One of the other
lords, dukes, or noblemen the town is so full of just now."
He got up rather suddenly, bowed and went. With narrowing eyes she
watched him walk away, but when he had gone all melancholy disappeared
from her face; she stretched herself and laughed. "_Voila!_ Sonia
Turgeinov, comédienne!"
Mr. Heatherbloom did not repair to the point of elevation the next day,
nor the day after; but she met him the third day near the Seventy-second
Street entrance. More than that, she insinuated herself at his side; at
first rather to his discomfort. Later he forgot the constraint her
presence occasioned him, when something she said caused him to look upon
her with new favor. Beauty had momentarily escaped his vigilance and
enjoyed a mad romp after a squirrel before she was captured.
What, his companion laughingly suggested, would have happened if Beauty
had really escaped, and he, Mr. Heatherbloom, had been forced to return
to the house without her? What? Mr. Heatherbloom started. He might lose
his position, _n'est-cepas?_ He did not answer.
The idea was born; why _not_ lose Beauty? No, better still, Naughty; the
prime favorite, Naughty. He looked into Naughty's eyes, and they seemed
full of liquid reproach. Naughty had been his friend--supposititiously,
and to abandon him now to the world, a cold place devoid of French lamb
chops? A hard place for homeless dogs and men, alike! About to waive the
temptation, Mr. Heatherbloom paused; the idea was capable of
modification or expansion. Most ideas are.
But he shortly afterward dismissed the entire matter from his mind; it
would, at best, be but a compromise, an evasion of the pact he had made
with himself. It was not to be thought of. At this moment his companion
swayed and Mr. Heatherbloom had just time to put out his arm; then
helped her to a bench.
She partly recovered; it was nothing, she remarked bravely. One gets
sometimes a little faint when--it was the old, old story of privation
and want that now fell with seeming reluctance from her lips. Mr.
Heatherbloom had become all attention. More than that he seemed greatly
distressed. A woman actually in need, starving--no use mincing
words!--in Central Park, the playground of the most opulent metropolis
of the world. It was monstrous; he tendered her his purse, with several
weeks' pay in it. Her reply had a spirited ring; he felt abashed and
returned the money to his pocket. She sat back with eyes half-closed; he
saw now that her face looked drawn and paler than usual.
He, thought and thought; had he not himself found out how difficult it
was to get a position, to procure employment without friends and
helpers? He, a man, had walked in search of it, day after day and felt
the griping pangs of hunger; had wished for night, and, later, wished
for the morn, only to find both equally barren.
Suddenly he spoke--slowly, like a man stating a proposition he has
argued carefully in his own mind. She listened, approved, while hope
already transfigured her face. She would have thanked him profusely but
he did not remain to hear her. In fact, he seemed hardly to see her now;
his features had become once more reserved and introspective.
He reappeared at the Van Rolsen house that day without Naughty. Miss Van
Rolsen, when she heard the news, burst into tears; then became furious.
She was sure he had sold Naughty, winner of three blue ribbons, and "out
of the contest" no end of times because superior to all competition!
A broken leash! Fiddlesticks! She penned advertisements wildly and
summoned her niece. That young lady responded to protestations and
questions with a slightly indifferent expression on her proud languid
features. What did she think of it? She didn't really know; her manner
said she really didn't care.
Mr. Heatherbloom, standing with the light of the window falling
pensively upon him, she didn't seem to see at all; he had once more
become a nullity. He rather preferred that rôle, however; perhaps he
felt it was easier to impersonate annihilation, in the inception, than
to have it, or a wish for it, thrust later too strongly upon him.
"I adhere to my opinion that he sold Naughty. I should never have
employed this man," asserted Miss Van Rolsen, fastening her fiery eyes
on Mr. Heatherbloom. "Why don't you speak, my dear, and give me your
opinion?" To her niece.
"I haven't any, Aunt."
"You are discerning; you have judgment." Miss Van Rolsen spoke almost
hysterically. "Remember he"--pointing a finger--"came without our
knowing anything about him."
Miss Dalrymple did not stir; a bunch of bizarre-looking orchids on her
gown moved to her even rhythmical breathing. "What was he? Who was he?
Maybe, nothing more than--" She paused for want of breath, not of words,
to characterize her opinion of Mr. Heatherbloom.
He readjusted his posture. It was very bright outdoors; people went by
briskly, full of life and importance; children whirled along on roller
skates.
"When I asked your opinion, my dear, as to the wisdom of having employed
this person in the first place, under the circumstances, why did you
keep silent?" Was Miss Van Rolsen still talking, or rambling on to the
impervious beautiful girl? "You should have called me foolish,
eccentric; yes, that's what I was, to have taken him in as I did."
Miss Dalrymple raised her brows and moved to a piano to adjust the
flowers in a vase; she smiled at them with soft enigmatic lips.
"If I may venture an opinion, Madam," observed Mr. Heatherbloom in a
far-away voice, "I should say Naughty will surely return, or be
returned."
"You venture an opinion!" said Miss Van Rolsen. "You!"
Miss Dalrymple breathed the fragrance of the flowers; she apparently
liked it.
"You are discharged!" said Miss Van Rolsen violently to Mr.
Heatherbloom. "I give you the two-weeks' notice agreed upon."
"I'll waive the notice," suggested the young man at the window quickly.
"You'll do nothing of the sort." Sharply. "It'll take me that time to
find another incompetent keeper for them. And, meanwhile, you may be
sure," grimly, "you will be very well watched."
"Under the circumstances, I should prefer--since you _have_ discharged
me--to leave at once."
"Your preferences are a matter of utter indifference. You were employed
with a definite understanding in this regard."
Mr. Heatherbloom gazed rather wildly out of the window; two weeks.--that
much longer! He was about to say he would not be well watched; he would
take himself off--that she couldn't keep him; but paused. A contract was
a contract, though orally made; she could hold him yet a little. But why
did she wish to? He had not calculated upon this; he tried to think but
could not. He looked from the elder to the younger woman. The latter did
not look at him.
Miss Dalrymple had seated herself at the piano; her fingers--light as
spirit touches--now swept the keys; a Debussey fantasy, almost as
pianissimo as one could play it, vibrated around them. Outside the whir!
whir! of the skates went on. A little girl tumbled. Mr. Heatherbloom
regarded her; ribbons awry; fat legs in the air. The music continued.
"You may go," said a severe voice.
He aroused himself to belated action, but at the door he looked back.
"I'm sure it will be all right," he repeated to Miss Van Rolsen. "On my
word"--more impetuously.
At the piano some one laughed, and Mr. Heatherbloom went.
"Why on earth, Aunt, did you want to keep him two weeks longer?" he
heard the girl's now passionate tones ask as he walked away.
"For a number of reasons, my dear," came the response. "One, because he
wanted to leave me in the lurch. Another--it will be easier to keep an
eye on him until Naughty is returned, or"--her voice had the vindictive
ring of a Roman matron's--"this person's culpability is proven. Naughty
is a valuable dog and--"
Mr. Heatherbloom's footsteps hastened; he had caught quite enough, but
as he disappeared to the rear, the dream chords on the piano, now
louder, continued to follow him.