_In Which a Young Man Arrives at His Last Ditch and a Young Girl Jumps
Over It_
Utterly unequipped for anything except to ornament his environment, the
crash in Steel stunned him. Dazed but polite, he remained a passive
observer of the sale which followed and which apparently realized
sufficient to satisfy every creditor, but not enough for an income to
continue a harmlessly idle career which he had supposed was to continue
indefinitely.
He had never earned a penny; he had not the vaguest idea of how people
made money. To do something, however, was absolutely necessary.
He wasted some time in finding out just how much aid he might expect from
his late father's friends, but when he understood the attitude of society
toward a knocked-out gentleman he wisely ceased to annoy society, and
turned to the business world.
Here he wasted some more time. Perhaps the time was not absolutely
wasted, for during that period he learned that he could use nobody who
could not use him; and as he appeared to be perfectly useless, except for
ornament, and as a business house is not a kindergarten, and furthermore,
as he had neither time nor money to attend any school where anybody could
teach him anything, it occurred to him to take a day off for minute and
thorough self-examination concerning his qualifications and even his
right to occupy a few feet of space upon the earth's surface.
Four years at Harvard, two more in postgraduate courses, two more in
Europe to perfect himself in electrical engineering, and a year at home
attempting to invent a wireless apparatus for intercepting and
transmitting psychical waves had left him pitifully unfit for wage
earning.
There remained his accomplishments; but the market was overstocked with
assorted time-killers.
His last asset was a trivial though unusual talent--a natural manual
dexterity cultivated since childhood to amuse himself--something he never
took seriously. This, and a curious control over animals, had, as the
pleasant years flowed by, become an astonishing skill which was much more
than sleight of hand; and he, always as good-humored as well-bred, had
never refused to amuse the frivolous, of which he was also one, by
picking silver dollars out of space and causing the proper card to fall
fluttering from the ceiling.
Day by day, as the little money left him melted away, he continued his
vigorous mental examination, until the alarming shrinkage in his funds
left him staring fixedly at his last asset. Could he use it? Was it an
asset, after all? How clever was he? Could he face an audience and
perform the usual magician tricks without bungling? A slip by a careless,
laughing, fashionable young amateur amusing his social equals at a house
party is excusable; a bungle by a hired professional meant an end to hope
in that direction.
So he rented a suite of two rooms on Central Park West, furnished them
with what remained from better days, bought the necessary paraphernalia
of his profession, and immured himself for practice before entering upon
his contemplated invasion of Newport, Lenox, and Bar Harbor. And one very
lovely afternoon in May, when the Park from his windows looked like a
green forest, and puff on puff of perfumed air fluttered the curtains at
his opened windows, he picked up his gloves and stick, put on his hat,
and went out to walk in the Park; and when he had walked sufficiently he
sat down on a bench in a flowery, bushy nook on the edge of a bridle
path.
Few people disturbed the leafy privacy; a policeman sauntering southward
noted him, perhaps for future identification. The spectacle of a well-
built, well-groomed, and fashionable young man sitting moodily upon a
park bench was certainly to be noted. It is not the fashion for
fashionable people to sit on park benches unless they contemplate self,
as well as social, destruction.
So the policeman lingered for a while in the vicinity, but not hearing
any revolver shot, presently sauntered on, buck-skinned fist clasped
behind his broad back, squinting at a distant social gathering composed
entirely of the most exclusive nursemaids.
The young man looked up into the pleasant blue above, then his
preoccupied gaze wandered from woodland to thicket, where the scarlet
glow of Japanese quince mocked the colors of the fluttering scarlet
tanagers; where orange-tinted orioles flashed amid tangles of golden
Forsythia; and past the shrubbery to an azure corner of water, shimmering
under the wooded slope below.
That sense of languor and unrest, of despondency threaded by hope which
fair skies and sunshine and new leaves bring with the young year to the
young, he felt. Yet there was no bitterness in his brooding, for he was a
singularly generous young man, and there was no vindictiveness mixed with
the memories of his failures among those whose cordial respect for his
father had been balanced between that blameless gentleman's wealth and
position.
A gray squirrel came crawling and nosing through the fresh grass; he
caught its eyes, and, though the little animal was plainly bound
elsewhere on important business, the young man soon had it curled up on
his knee, asleep.
For a while he amused himself by using his curious power, alternately
waking the squirrel and allowing it to bound off, tail twitching, and
then calling it back, slowly but inexorably to climb his trousers and
curl up on his knee and sleep an uncanny and deep sleep which might end
only at the young man's pleasure.
He, too, began to feel the subtle stillness of the drowsing woodland;
musing there, caressing his short, crisp mustache, he watched the purple
grackle walking about in iridescent solitude, the sun spots waning and
glowing on the grass; he heard the soft, garrulous whimper of waterfowl
along the water's edge, the stir of leaves above.
He thought of various personal matters: his poverty, the low ebb of his
balance at the bank, his present profession, his approaching début as an
entertainer, the chances of his failure. He thought, too, of the
astounding change in his life, the future, vacant of promise, devoid of
meaning, a future so utterly new and blank that he could find in it
nothing to speculate upon. He thought also, and perfectly impersonally,
of a girl whom he had met now and then upon the stairs of the apartment
house which he now inhabited.
Evidently there had been an ebb in her prosperity; the tumble of a New
Yorker's fortune leads from the Avenue to the Eighties, from thence
through Morristown, Staten Island, to the West Side. Besides, she painted
pictures; he knew the aroma of fixitive, siccative, and burnt sienna; and
her studio adjoined his sky drawing-room.
He thought of this girl quite impersonally; she resembled a youthful
beauty he had known--might still know if he chose; for a man who can pay
for his evening clothes need never deny himself the society he was bred
to.
She certainly did resemble that girl--she had the same bluish violet
eyes, the same white and deeply fringed lids, the same free grace of
carriage, a trifle too boyish at times--the same firmly rounded, yet
slender, figure.
"Now, as a matter of fact," he mused aloud, stroking the sleeping
squirrel on his knee, "I could have fallen in love with either of those
girls--before Copper blew up."
Pursuing his innocuous meditation he nodded to himself: "I rather like
the poor one better than any girl I ever saw. Doubtless she paints
portraits over solar prints. That's all right; she's doing more than I
have done yet.... I approve of those eyes of hers; they're like the eyes
of that waking Aphrodite in the Luxembourg. If she would only just look
at me once instead of looking through me when we pass one another in the
hall----"
The deadened gallop of a horse on the bridle path caught his ear. The
horse was coming fast--almost too fast. He laid the sleeping squirrel on
the bench, listened, then instinctively stood up and walked to the
thicket's edge.
What happened was too quick for him to comprehend; he had a vision of a
big black horse, mane and tail in the wind, tearing madly, straight at
him--a glimpse of a white face, desperate and set, a flutter of loosened
hair; then a storm of wind and sand roared in his ears; he was hurled,
jerked, and flung forward, dragged, shaken, and left half senseless,
hanging to nose and bit of a horse whose rider was picking herself out of
a bush covered with white flowers.
Half senseless still, he tightened his grip on the bit, released the
grasp on the creature's nose, and, laying his hand full on the forelock,
brought it down twice and twice across the eyes, talking to the horse in
halting, broken whispers.
When he had the trembling animal under control he looked around; the girl
stood on the grass, dusty, dirty, disheveled, bleeding from a cut on the
cheek bone; the most bewildered and astonished creature he had ever
looked upon.
"It will be all right in a few minutes," he said, motioning her to the
bench on the asphalt walk. She nodded, turned, picked up his hat, and,
seating herself, began to smooth the furred nap with her sleeve, watching
him intently all the while. That he already had the confidence of a horse
that he had never before seen was perfectly apparent. Little by little
the sweating, quivering limbs were stilled, the tense muscles in the neck
relaxed, the head sank, dusty velvet lips nibbled at his hand, his
shoulder; the heaving, sunken flanks filled and grew quiet.
Bareheaded, his attire in disorder and covered with slaver and sand, the
young man laid the bridle on the horse's neck, held out his hand, and,
saying "Come," turned his back and walked down the bridle path. The horse
stretched a sweating neck, sniffed, pricked forward both small ears, and
slowly followed, turning as the man turned, up and down, crowding at heel
like a trained dog, finally stopping on the edge of the walk.
The young man looped the bridle over a low maple limb, and leaving the
horse standing sauntered over to the bench.
"That horse," he said pleasantly, "is all right now; but the question is,
are you all right?"
She rose, handing him his hat, and began to twist up her bright hair. For
a few moments' silence they were frankly occupied in restoring order to
raiment, dusting off gravel and examining rents.
"I'm tremendously grateful," she said abruptly.
"I am, too," he said in that attractive manner which sets people of
similar caste at ease with one another.
"Thank you; it's a generous compliment, considering your hat and
clothing."
He looked up; she stood twisting her hair and doing her best with the few
remaining hair pegs.
"I'm a sight for little fishes," she said, coloring. "Did that wretched
beast bruise you?"
"Oh, no----"
"You limped!"
"Did I?" he said vaguely. "How do you feel?"
"There is," she said, "a curious, breathless flutter all over me; if that
is fright, I suppose I'm frightened, but I don't mind mounting at once--
if you would put me up----"
"Better wait a bit," he said; "it would not do to have that horse feel a
fluttering pulse, telegraphing along the snaffle. Tell me, are you
spurred?"
She lifted the hem of her habit; two small spurs glittered on her
polished boot heels.
"That's it, you see," he observed; "you probably have not ridden cross
saddle very long. When your mount swerved you spurred, and he bolted, bit
in teeth."
"That's exactly it," she admitted, looking ruefully at her spurs. Then
she dropped her skirt, glanced interrogatively at him, and, obeying his
grave gesture, seated herself again upon the bench.
"Don't stand," she said civilly. He took the other end of the seat,
lifting the still slumbering squirrel to his knee.
"I--I haven't said very much," she began; "I'm impulsive enough to be
overgrateful and say too much. I hope you understand me; do you?"
"Of course; you're very good. It was nothing; you could have stopped your
horse yourself. People do that sort of thing for one another as a matter
of course."
"But not at the risk you took----"
"No risk at all," he said hastily.
She thought otherwise, and thought it so fervently that, afraid of
emotion, she turned her cold, white profile to him and studied her horse,
haughty lids adroop. The same insolent sweetness was in her eyes when
they again reverted to him. He knew the look; he had encountered it often
enough in the hallway and on the stairs. He knew, too, that she must
recognize him; yet, under the circumstances, it was for her to speak
first; and she did not, for she was at that age when horror of overdoing
anything chokes back the scarcely extinguished childish instinct to say
too much. In other words, she was eighteen and had had her first season
the winter past--the winter when he had not been visible among the
gatherings of his own kind.
[Illustration: "'Those squirrels are very tame,' she observed calmly."]
"Those squirrels are very tame," she observed calmly.
"Not always," he said. "Try to hold this one, for example."
She raised her pretty eyebrows, then accepted the lump of fluffy fur from
his hands. Instantly an electric shock seemed to set the squirrel
frantic, there was a struggle, a streak of gray and white, and the
squirrel leaped from her lap and fairly flew down the asphalt path.
"Gracious!" she exclaimed faintly; "what was the matter?"
"Some squirrels are very wild," he said innocently.
"I know--but you held him--he was asleep on your knee. Why didn't he stay
with me?"
"Oh, perhaps because I have a way with animals."
"With horses, too," she added gayly. And the smile breaking from her
violet eyes silenced him in the magic of a beauty he had never dreamed
of. At first she mistook his silence for modesty; then--because even as
young a maid as she is quick to divine and fine of instinct--she too fell
silent and serious, the while the shuttles of her reason flew like
lightning, weaving the picture of him she had conceived--a gentleman, a
man of her own sort, rather splendid and wise and bewildering. The
portrait completed, there was no room for the hint of presumption she had
half sensed in the brown eyes' glance that had set her alert; and she
looked up at him again, frankly, a trifle curiously.
"I am going to thank you once more," she said, "and ask you to put me up.
There is not a flutter of fear in my pulse now."
"Are you quite sure?"
"Perfectly."
They arose; he untied the horse and beckoned it to the walk's edge.
"I forgot," she said, laughing, "that I am riding cross saddle. I can
mount without troubling you--" She set her toe to the stirrup which he
held, and swung herself up into the saddle with a breezy "Thanks,
awfully," and sat there gathering her bridle.
Had she said enough? How coldly her own thanks rang in her ears--for
perhaps he had saved her neck--and perhaps not. Busy with curb and
snaffle reins, head bent, into her oval face a tint of color crept. Did
he think she treated lightly, flippantly, the courage which became him
so? Or was he already bored by her acknowledgment of it? Sensitive,
dreading to expose youth and inexperience to the amused smile of this
attractive young man of the world, she sat fumbling with her bridle,
conscious that he stood beside her, hat in hand, looking up at her. She
could delay no longer; the bridle had been shifted and reshifted to the
last second of procrastination. She must say something or go.
Meeting his eyes, she smiled and leaned a little forward in her saddle as
though to speak, but his brown eyes troubled her, and all she could say
was "Thank you--good-by," and galloped off down the vista through dim,
leafy depths heavy with the incense of lilac and syringa.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]