Produced by Ted Garvin, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the PG Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
NEW FACES
BY
MYRA KELLY
AUTHOR OF "LITTLE CITIZENS" "WARDS OF LIBERTY" "THE ISLE OF DREAMS"
"ROSNAH" "THE GOLDEN SEASON" "LITTLE ALIENS"
[Illustration: Printers Mark]
_Illustrations by_
CHARLES F. NEAGLE
G.W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
_Copyright, 1910, By_ G.W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
NEW FACES
[Illustration: "THERE'S NO QUESTION ABOUT IT," HE RETORTED. "SHE KNOWS
THAT I SHALL MARRY HER."]
"Oh give me new faces, new faces, new faces
I have seen those about me a fortnight or more.
Some people grow weary of names or of places
But faces to me are a much greater bore."
_Andrew Lang._
CONTENTS
THE PLAY'S THE THING 17
THERE'S DANGER IN NUMBERS 57
MISERY LOVES COMPANY 83
THE CHRISTMAS GUEST 115
WHO IS SYLVIA? 147
THE SPIRIT OF CECELIA ANNE 187
THEODORA, GIFT OF GOD 219
GREAT OAKS FROM LITTLE ACORNS 263
ILLUSTRATIONS
"There's no question about it," he retorted. "She knows that I shall
marry her."
Burgess gained an interest and an occupation more absorbing than he had
found for many years
Uncle Richard's face, as he met John's eyes, was a study
She swooped under the large center table, dragging Patty with her
The changeless smile and the drooping plumes made three complete
revolutions, and nestled confidingly upon the shoulder of the law
Celia Anne shut her eyes tightly and fired the rifle into the air
NEW FACES
"THE PLAY'S THE THING"
A business meeting of the Lady Hyacinths Shirt-Waist Club was in
progress. The roll had been called. The twenty members were all present
and the Secretary had read the minutes of the last meeting. These
formalities had consumed only a few moments and the club was ready to
fall upon its shirt waists. The sewing-machines were oiled and
uncovered, the cutting-table was cleared, every Hyacinth had her box of
sewing paraphernalia in her lap; and Miss Masters who had been half
cajoled and half forced into the management of this branch of the St.
Martha's Settlement Mission was congratulating herself upon the ease and
expedition with which her charges were learning to transact their
affairs, when the President drew a pencil from her pompadour and rapped
professionally on the table. In her daytime capacity of saleslady in a
Grand Street shoe store she would have called "cash," but as President
of the Lady Hyacinths her speech was:
"If none of you goils ain't got no more business to lay before the
meetin' a movement to adjoin is in order."
"I move we adjoin an git to woik," said Mamie Kidansky promptly. Only
three buttonholes and the whalebones which would keep the collar well up
behind the ears lay between her and the triumphant rearing of her shirt
waist. Hence her zeal.
Susie Meyer was preparing to second the motion. As secretary she
disapproved of much discussion. She was always threatening to resign her
portfolio vowing, with some show of reason, "I never would 'a' joined
your old Hyacinths Shirt-Waists if I'd a' known I was goin' to have to
write down all the foolish talk you goils felt like givin' up."
It seemed therefore that the business meeting was closed, when a voice
from the opposite side of the table broke in with:
"Say, Rosie, why can't us goils give a play?"
"Ah Jennie, you make me tired," protested the Secretary.
"An' you're out of order anyway," was the President's dictum.
"Where?" cried Jennie wildly, clutching her pompadour with one hand and
the back of her belt with the other, "where, what's the matter with me?"
"Go 'way back an' sit down," was the Secretary's advice, "Rosie meant
you're out of parliamentry order. We got a motion on the table an' it's
too late for you to butt in on it. This meetin' is goin' to adjoin."
But Jennie was the spokesman of a newly-born party and her supporters
were not going to allow her to be silenced. Even those Lady Hyacinths
who had not been admitted to earlier consultations took kindly to the
suggestion when they heard it.
"I don't care whether she's out of order or not," one ambitious Hyacinth
declared, "I think it would be just too lovely for anything to have a
play. They have 'em all the time over to Rivington Street an' down to
the Educational Alliance."
"Rebecca Einstein," said the Secretary darkly, "if you're goin' to fire
off your face about plays an' the Educational Alliances you can keep
your own minnits, that's all! Do ye think I'm goin' to write down your
foolishness? Well, I ain't."
Again the President plied her gavel. "Goils," she remonstrated, "this
ain't no way to act. Say, Miss Masters," she went on, "I guess the whole
lot of us is out of order now. What would you do about it if you was me?"
"I should suggest," Miss Masters answered, "that the motion to adjourn
be carried and that the whole club go into committee on the question
raised by Miss Meyer."
"I move that we take our woik into committee with us," cried Miss
Kidansky, not to be deflected from her buttonholes. And from such humble
beginnings the production of Hamlet by the Lady Hyacinths sprang.
Hamlet was not their first choice. It was not even their tenth and to
the end it was not the unanimous choice. During the preliminary stages
of the dramatic fever Miss Masters preserved that strict neutrality
which marks the successful Settlement worker. She would help--oh, surely
she would help--the Hyacinths, but she would not lead them. She had
never questioned their taste in the shape and color of their shirt
waists. Some horrid garments had resulted but to her they represented
"self expression," and as such gave her more pleasure than any servile
following of her advice could have done. She soon discovered that the
latitude in the shirt waist field is far exceeded by that in the
dramatic and she discovered too, that the Lady Hyacinths, though they
seldom visited the theatre had strong digestions where plays were
concerned.
"East Lynne" was warmly advocated until some one discovered a
grandmother who had seen it in her youth. Then:
"Ah gee!" remarked the Lady Hyacinths, "we ain't no grave snatchers. We
ain't goin' to dig up no dead ones. Say Miss Masters, ain't there no new
plays we could give?"
Miss Masters referred them to the public library, but not many plays are
obtainable in book form, and the next two meetings were devoted to the
plays of Ibsen, Bernard Shaw, Vaughan Moody. When Miss Masters descried
this literature in the hands of the now openly mutinous Secretary she
felt the time had come to interfere with the "self activity" of her
charges. She promptly confiscated the second volume of "G.B.S." "For,"
she explained "we don't want to do anything unpleasant and the writer of
these plays himself describes them as that."
"Guess we don't," the President agreed. "We got to live up to our name,
ain't we? An' what could be pleasanter than a Hyacinth?"
"Nothing, of course," agreed Miss Masters unsteadily.
"There's one in this Ibsen book might do," Jennie suggested. "It's
called 'A Dolls' House,' that's a real sweet name."
"I am afraid it wouldn't do," said Miss Masters hastily.
"What's the matter with it?" demanded Susie Meyer.
"Well, in the first place, there are children in it--"
"Cut it! 'Nough said," pronounced the President. "Them plays wid kids in
'em is all out of style. We giv' 'East Lynne' the turn down an' there
was only one kid in that. What else have you got in that Gibson book?
Have you got the play with the Gibson goils in it? We could do that all
right, all right. Ain't most of us got Gibson pleats in our shirt
waists?"
"I don't see nothin' about goils," the Secretary made answer, "but
there's one here about ghosts. How would that do?"
"Not at all," said Miss Masters firmly.
"What's the matter with it?" asked one of the girls abandoning her
sewing-machine and coming over to the table. "I seen posters of it last
year. They are givin' it in Broadway. The costoomes would be real easy,
just a sheet you know and your hair hanging down."
"It's not about that kind of ghost," Miss Masters explained, "and I
don't think it would do for us as there are very few people in the cast
and one of them is a minister."
"Cut it," said the President briefly, "we ain't goin' to have no hymn
singin' in ours. We couldn't, you know," she explained to Miss Masters,
"the most of us is Jewesses."
"Katie McGuire ain't no Jewess," asserted the Secretary. "She could be
the minister if that's all you've got against this Gibson play. I wish
we _could_ give it. It's about the only up-to-date Broadway success we
can find. The librarian says you can't never buy copies of Julia
Marlowe's an' Ethel Barrymore's an' Maude Adams' plays. I guess they're
just scared somebody like us will come along an' do 'em better than they
do an' bust their market. Actresses," she went on, "is all jest et up
with jealousy of one another. Is there anythin' except the minister the
matter with 'Ghosts?'"
"Everything else is the matter with it," said Miss Masters. "To begin
with, I might as well tell you, it never was a Broadway success. It's a
play that is read oftener than it's acted and last year, Jennie, when
you saw the posters, it only ran for a week."
"Cut it," said the President. "We ain't huntin' frosts."
The brows of the Hyacinths grew furrowed and their eyes haggard in the
search. Everyone could tell them of plays but no one knew where they
could be found in printed form and whenever the librarian found
something which might be suitable Miss Masters was sure to know of
something to its disadvantage.
And then the real stage, the legitimate Broadway stage intervened.
Albert Marsden produced Hamlet and the Lady Hyacinths determined to
follow suit.
"It's kind of old," the President admitted, "but there must be some
style left to it. They're playin' it on Broadway right now. An' we'll
give it on East Broadway just as soon as we can git ready. Me and Mamie
went round to the library last night an' got it out. It's got a dandy
lot of parts in it: more than this club will ever need. An' it's got
lots of murders an' scraps, an' court ladies an' soldiers an' kings.
It's our play all right!"
The sea of troubles into which the Lady Hyacinths plunged with so much
enthusiasm swallowed them so completely that Miss Masters could only
stand on its shore, looking across to Denmark and wringing her hands
over the awful things that were happening in that unhappy land.
Fortunately she had a friend to whom she could appeal for succour for
the lost but still valiant Hyacinths. He was the sort of person to whom
appeals came as naturally as honors come to some men and, since he had
nothing to do and ample time and money with which to do it, he was
generally helpful and resourceful. That he had once loved Miss Masters
has nothing to do with this story. She was now engaged to be married to
a poorer and busier man, but it was to Jack Burgess that she appealed.
"Of course I know," said he when he had responded to her message and she
had anchored him with a tea-cup and disarmed him with a smile, "of
course I know what you want to say to me. Every girl who has refused me
has said it sooner or later. You are saying it later--much later--than
they generally do, but it always comes. 'You have found a wife for me.'"
"I have done much better than that," she answered, "I have found work
for you." And she sketched the distress of the Hyacinths in Denmark and
urged him to go to their assistance.
"But, my dear Margaret," he remonstrated, "What can I do? You have
always known that 'something is rotten in the state of Denmark,' and
yet you have let these poor innocents stir it up. I have often thought
that poor Shakespeare added that line after the first performance. I
intend to write that hint to Furniss one of these days."
"You will write it," said Margaret Masters, "with more conviction after
you have seen _my_ Denmark."
"Very well," said he, "I'll visit Elsinore to-night, but I insist upon a
return ticket."
"You will be begging for a season ticket," she laughed. "They have
reduced me to such a condition that I don't know whether they are
amusing me or breaking my heart. Tell me, come, which is it? Did you
ever hear blank verse recited with tense and reverent earnestness and a
Bowery accent?"
"I never did," said he.
* * * * *
"Shakespeare was right," whispered Burgess to Miss Masters. "There is
something rotten in Denmark. I've located it. It's the Prince." They
were sitting together in a corner of the kindergarten room of the
settlement: a large and spacious room all decked and bright with the
paper and cardboard masterpieces of the babies who played and learned
there in the mornings. Casts and pictures and green growing things added
to its charm and the Lady Hyacinths so trim and neat and earnest did not
detract from it.
The sewing-machines and the cutting-table had been cast into corners and
well in the glare of the electric light the President was exclaiming in
a voice which would have disgraced an early phonograph, "Oh that this
too too solid flesh would melt."
It was not a dress rehearsal but the too solid Prince wore his hair low
on his neck and a golden fillet bound his brows. Silent, he was noble.
His walk as he came in at the end of a procession of court ladies and
gentlemen was magnificent--slow, dejected, imperious, aloof. But
Wittenberg had a great deal to answer for, if he had contracted his
accent there.
Gertrude, Queen of Denmark, was a Hyacinth who worked daily at hooks and
buttonholes for an East Broadway tailor. On this night she wore none of
her regalia save her crown and the King had done nothing at all to
differentiate himself from Susie Lacov who officiated as waitress in a
Jewish lunchroom.
The Hyacinths had wisely decided to edit Hamlet. In this they followed
an almost universal principle and their method was also time-honored.
All the scenes in which unimportant members of the club or cast "came
out strong," were eliminated. So far the Hyacinths were orthodox, but
Rosie Rosenbaum, Prince, President and Censor, went a step further.
"Git busy. Mix her up, why don't you!" she commanded later from the
wings. The other players were laboriously wading through persiflage and
conversation. "You folks ain't _done_ nothin' the last ten minutes only
stand there and gas. Is that actin'? Maybe it's wrote in the book. What
I want to know is--is it actin'?" Burgess sat suddenly erect and his
eyes glowed. Miss Masters half rose to assume authority but he
restrained her.
"You shut up and leave me be," Polonius cried. "Ain't I got a right to
say good-bye to my son?"
"You can say good-bye all right," Rosie reminded her, "without puttin'
up that game of talk. Give him a 'I'll be a sister to you' on the cheek
an' git through sometime before to-morrow. Cut it, I tell you."
This "off with his head" attitude on the President's part delighted
Burgess. But the caste enjoyed it less and when the ghost was docked of
a whole scene it grew rebellious.
"If you give me any more of your lip," said the princely stage manager,
"I'll trow you out altogether. There's lots of people wouldn't believe
in ghosts anyway. Me grandfather seen this play in Chermany and he told
me they didn't use the ghost at all. Nothin' but a green light with a
voice comin' out of it."
"Well, I could be the voice, couldn't I?" the ghost argued; and it was
at this point that Miss Masters took charge of the meeting and
introduced Mr. Burgess.
"Who has offered," she went on in spite of his energetic pantomime of
disclaimer, "to help us with our play."
"That's real sweet of you, Mr. Burgess," said the President graciously.
"Not at all--not at all," he answered. "It will be a pleasure, I assure
you."
"You'll excuse me, I'm sure," the Secretary broke in, "if we go right on
with our woik while you're here. We're makin' our own costoomes, as
much as we can. That was one reason us young ladies chose Hamlet. It's a
play what everyone wears skoits in. It's easier for us and it ain't so
embarrassing, and I guess our folks will like it better. You _have_ to
think of your folks sometimes. Even if they are old-fashioned. Miss
Masters got us pictures of Mr. Marsden's production an' every last one
of the characters has skoits on. Hamlet's ain't no longer than a bathin'
suit, but anyway it's there. I don't think it's real refined, myself,
for young ladies to wear gents' suits on the stage."
"And of course," a gentle-eyed little girl looked up from her sewing to
remark,--"of course this club ain't formed just for makin' shirt waists.
We've got a culture-an'-refinement clause in the club constitution, so
we wouldn't want to do nothin' that wasn't real refined."
[Illustration: BURGESS GAINED AN INTEREST AND AN OCCUPATION MORE
ABSORBING THAN HE HAD FOUND FOR MANY YEARS.]
"I understand," said Burgess more at a loss than a conversation had
ever found him, "And what may I ask, is your part of the play?"
"Mamie Conners is too nervous," the lady President explained "to come
right out and act. She's 'A flourish of trumpets within an' a voice
without an' a lady of the court an' a soldier an' a choir boy at the
funeral.'"
"Ah, Miss Conners," Burgess assured this timid but versatile Hyacinth,
"that's only stage fright, all great actresses suffer from it at one
time or another."
* * * * *
During the weeks that followed, order gradually gained sway in Denmark
and Burgess gained an interest and an occupation more absorbing than he
had found for many years.
"My dear Margaret," he was wont to assure Miss Masters, when she
remonstrated with him upon his generosity, "Why shouldn't I order
supper to be sent in for them? and why shouldn't I ask them up to the
house for rehearsals? There's the big music room going to waste and
those lazy beggars of servants with nothing to do, and you saw yourself
how it brightened up poor old Aunt Priscilla. She likes it--they like
it--I like it--you ought to like it. And you certainly can't object to
my having taken them _en masse_ to see Marsden in the play. By George!
I'll drag him to theirs. We'll show him an Ophelia! that Mary Conners is
a little genius."
"She is wonderful," agreed Miss Masters. "The grace of her! The dignity!
What she herself would call the culture-an'-refinement!"
"All my discovery. That tyrant of a Rosie Rosenbaum had cast her as a
quick change, general utility woman. And in the day-time you tell me
she's a miserable little shop-girl in a Grand Street rookery!"
"That is what she used to be. But I went to the shop a day or two ago
to ask her to come up to my house to rehearse with the new Hamlet. I
watched her for a few moments before she noticed me. She was Ophelia to
the life. She conversed in blank verse. She walked about with that
little queenly air you have taught her. She was delicious, adorable. At
first she said that she could not rehearse that night, but I told her
you wished it and she came like a lamb. I often wonder if I did a wise
thing in introducing them to you. Your sort of culture-an'-refinement'
may rather upset them when the play is over and we all settle back to
the humdrum."
"You did a great kindness to me," said he, "and the best stroke of
missionary work you'll do in a dog's age. I'm going to work."
"You are not," she laughed.
"I am. Shamed into it by the Lady Hyacinths."
"Then perhaps the balance will be maintained. If you turn them against
labor they will have turned you toward it."
But Miss Masters' fears were groundless: the Lady Hyacinths though
dedicated to a flower of spring were old and wise in social
distinctions. The story of King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid would have
drawn only a contemptuous "cut it out" from the lady President. Every
Hyacinth of them knew her exact place in nature's garden--all except
Mary Conners--now Ophelia--and she knew herself to be a foundling with
no place at all. The lonely woman who had adopted her was now dead and
Mary was quite alone in her little two-room tenement, free to dream and
play Ophelia to her heart's content and to an imaginary Hamlet who was
always Burgess. To her he was indeed, "The expectancy and rose of the
fair state." "The glass of fashion and the mould of form." He was "her
honoured lord"--"her most dear lord." But in Monroe Street she never
deceived him. Never handed his letters over to interfering relatives.
She could quite easily go mad and tuneful when she knew that each
rehearsal--each lesson taught by him and so quickly learned by
her--brought the days when she would never see him so close that she
could almost feel their emptiness.
It was well that she played to an idealized Hamlet for the real Hamlets
came and went bewilderingly. One of Burgess's first triumphs of tact had
been to pry the part away from the lady President and give it to the
sturdy Secretary. There followed two other claimants to the throne in
quick succession and then the lot fell to Rebecca Einstein and stayed
there. Each change in the principal role necessitated readjustment
throughout the cast and at every change the lady President was persuaded
not to over exert herself.
And still Burgess in the seclusion of the homeward bound hansom railed
and swore.
"I tell you, Margaret, that girl will ruin us. All the rest are funny.
Overwhelmingly, incredibly funny! And pathetic! Could anything be more
pathetic! But that awful President strikes a wrong note: Vulgarity. Take
her out of it and we'll have a thing the like of which New York had
never seen, for Ophelia is a genius or I miss my guess and all the rest
are darlings."
"But we can't throw out the President of the club. She must have a part.
You have moved her down from Hamlet to Laertes--to the King--"
"I did," groaned Burgess. "Will you ever forget her rendering of the
line, "Now I could do it, Pat," and then her storming up to me to know
"Who Pat was anyway?""
"I do," laughed Margaret, "and then how you moved her on to Guildenstern
and now you have got her down to Bernardo with all her part cut out and
nothing except that opening line, "Who's there?" and the other: "'Tis
now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francisco.""
"Yes, and she ruins them. I've drilled her and drilled her till my
throat is sore and still she says it straight through her nose just as
though she were delivering an order of 'ham and' at her hash battery.
Just the same truculent 'Don't you dare to answer back' attitude. She's
impossible. She must be removed."
Meanwhile the Lady Hyacinths scattering to their different homes
discussed their mentor. Ophelia and Horatio and Hamlet were going
through Clinton Street together. Ophelia was still at Elsinore but
Horatio was approaching common ground again.
"I suppose he's Miss Masters' steady," said he to Hamlet. "He wouldn't
come down here every other night just to help us goils out."
But Ophelia was better informed. She knew Miss Masters to be engaged to
quite another person.
"Then I know," cried Horatio triumphantly. "He's stuck on Rosie
Rosenbaum. It's her brings him."
Ophelia said nothing, and Horatio having experienced an inspiration, set
about strengthening it with proof.
"It's Rosie sure enough. Ain't he learned her about every part in the
play? Don't he keep takin' her off in corners an' goin' 'Who's there,
'Tis now struck twelve' for about an hour every night? I wouldn't have
nothin' to do with a feller that kept company that way, but I s'pose
it's the style on Fifth Avenue. You know how I tell you, Ham, in the
play that there's lots of things goin' on what you ain't on to. Well
it's so. None of you was on to Rosie an' his nibs. You didn't ever guess
it did you 'Pheleir?"
"No," admitted Ophelia. "No, I never did."
"Well it's so. You watch 'em. The style in wives is changin'. Actresses
is goin' out an' the 'poor but honest workin' goil' is comin' in. One of
our salesladies has a book about it. "The Bowery Bride" its name is. All
about a shop goil what married a rich fellow and used to come back to
the store and take her old friends carriage ridin'. If Rosie Rosenbaum
tries it on me, I'll break her face. If she comes round me," cried the
Prince's fellow student: "with carriages and a benevolent smile, I'll
claw the smile off of her if I have to take the skin with it!"
When Horatio and Hamlet left her, she wandered disconsolate, down to the
river. But no willow grows aslant that brook, no flowers were there with
which to weave fantastic garlands.
"I've gone crazy all right," said poor Ophelia as she watched the lights
of the great bridge, "but I don't drown myself until Scene VII. And I'm
goin' up to his house to-morrow night to learn to act crazy. I guess I
don't need much learning."
* * * * *
The performance of Hamlet by the Lady Hyacinths is still remembered by
those who saw it as the most bewildering entertainment of their
theatrical experience. The play had been cut down to its absolute
essentials and the players, though drilled and coached in their lines
and business, had been left quite free in the matters of interpretation
and accent. The result was so unique that the daily press fell upon it
with whoops of joy and published portraits of and interviews with the
leading characters. People who had thought that only ferries and docks
lay south of Twenty-third Street penetrated to the heart of the great
East Side and went home again full of an altruism which lasted three
days. And on the last night of the "run" of three nights, Jack Burgess
brought Albert Marsden to witness it. Other spectators had always
emerged dumb or inarticulate from the ordeal but the great actor was not
one of them. He was blusterous and garrulous and, to Burgess' amazement,
not at all amused.
"Who is that girl who played Ophelia? Is she an East Side working girl
or one of the mission people?"
"She's a shop-girl," answered Burgess. "There's no good in your asking
me to introduce you to her for I won't. That's been one of our rules
from the beginning. We don't want the children to be upset and
patronized."
"Who taught her to act?"
"Well, I coached them all as you know, but she never seemed to require
any special teaching. Pretty good, isn't she?"
"Pretty good! She is a genius--a wonder. This is all rot about my not
meeting her. I am going to meet her and train her. I suppose you have
noticed that she is a beauty too."
"But she's only a child," Burgess urged. "She's only eighteen. She
couldn't stand the life and the work and she couldn't stand the people.
You have no idea what high ideals these girls have, and Mary
Conners--that's the girl's name--seems to be exceptional even amongst
them."
"Too good for us, eh?" asked the actor.
"Entirely too good," answered Burgess steadily.
"And do you feel justified in deciding her future for her! In condemning
her to an obscure life in the slums instead of a successful career on
the stage?"
"I do not," answered Burgess, "she must decide that for herself. I'll
ask her and let you know."
To this end he sought Miss Masters. "I want you," said he, "to ask Mary
Conners to tea with you to-morrow afternoon. It will be Sunday so she
can manage. And then I want you to leave us alone. I have something very
serious to say to her."
Margaret looked at him and laughed. "Then you were right," said she,
"and I was wrong; I had found a wife for you."
"For absolute inane, insensate romanticism," said he, "I recommend you
to the recently engaged. You used to have some sense. You were clever
enough to refuse me and now you go and forever ruin my opinion of you by
making a remark like that."
"It is not romanticism at all," she maintained. "It is the best of
common sense. You will never be satisfied with anyone you haven't
trained and formed to suit your own ideals. And you will never find such
a 'quick study' as Mary."
It was the earliest peep of spring and Burgess stopped on his way to
Miss Masters' house and bought a sheaf of white hyacinths and pale
maiden hair for the little Lady Hyacinth who was waiting for him.
As soon as he was alone with her he managed to distract her attention
from her flowers and to make her listen to Marsden's message. He set the
case before her plainly. Without exaggeration and without extenuation.
"And we don't expect you," he ended, "to make up your mind at once. You
must consult your relatives and friends."
"I have no relatives," she answered.
"Your friends then."
"I don't think I have many. Some of the girls in the club perhaps. The
old book-keeper in the store where I work, perhaps Miss Masters."
"And you have me," he interrupted. But she smiled at him and shook her
head. "You were real kind about the play," said she, "but the play's all
over now. I guess you'd better tell your friend that I'll take the
position. I have been getting pretty tired of work in the store and I'd
like to try this if he don't mind."
"Oh, but you mustn't go into it like that," Burgess protested, "just for
the want of something better. Acting is an art--a great art--you must be
glad and proud."
"I'll try it," she said without enthusiasm. "If you feel that way about
it I'll try it. It can't be worse than the store. The store is just
horrible. Oh! Mr. Burgess you can't think what it is to be Ophelia in
the evening with princes loving you and then to be a cashier in the
day-time that any fresh customer thinks he can get gay with. Maybe if I
was an actress I could be Ophelia oftener. I'd do anything, Mr. Burgess,
to get away from the store."
Burgess did not answer immediately. Her earnestness had rather overcome
her and he waited silently while she walked to the window, surreptitiously
pressed her handkerchief against her eyes and conquered
the sobs that threatened to choke her. Burgess watched her. The trimness
of her figure, the absolute neatness and propriety of her dress, the
poise and restraint of her manner. Then she turned and he rose to meet her.
"Mary," said he, "you never in all the time I've known you have failed
to do what I asked you. Will you do something for me now?"
"Yes, sir," she answered simply.
"Then sit down in that chair and take this watch of mine in your hand
and don't say one single, solitary, lonely word for five minutes. No
matter what happens: no matter what anyone says or does. Will you
promise?"
"Yes, sir," she answered again.
"Well then," he began, "I know another man who wants you--this stage
idea is not the only way out of the store. Remember you're not to
speak--this other man wants to marry you."
A scarlet flush sprang to Mary's face and slowly ebbed away again leaving
her deadly pale. She kept her word in letter but hardly in spirit for
she looked at him through tear-filled eyes, and shook her head.
"Of course you can't be expected to take to the idea just at first,"
said he, as if she had spoken, "but I want you to think it over. The man
is a well-off, gentlemanly sort of chap. Miles too old for you of
course--for you're not twenty and he's nearly forty--but I think he
would make you happy. I know he'd try with all the strength that's in him."
Blank incredulity was on Mary's face. She glanced at the watch and up at
him and again she shook her head.
"This man," Burgess went on, "is a friend of Miss Masters and it was
through her that he first heard of the Lady Hyacinths. He was an idler
then. A shiftless, worthless loafer, but the Lady Hyacinths made a man
of him and he's gone out and got a job."
Comprehension overwhelming, overmastering, flashed into Mary's eyes. But
her promise held her silent and in her chair. Again it was as though she
had spoken.
"Yes, I see you understand--you probably think of me as an old man past
the time of love and yet I love you."
"Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love."
"That's all I have to offer you, sweetheart. Just love and my life," and
he in turn went to the window and looked out into the gathering dusk.
Mary sat absolutely still. She knew now that she was dreaming. Just so
the dream had always run and when the five minutes were past, she rose
and went to him: a true Ophelia, her arms all full of hyacinths.
"My honored Lord," said she. He turned, and the dream held.
THERE'S DANGER IN NUMBERS
The Pennsylvania Limited was approaching Jersey City and the afternoon
was approaching three o'clock when Mr. John Blake turned to Mrs. John
Blake, née Marjorie Underwood, a bride of about three hours, and
precipitated the first discussion of their hitherto happy married life.
"Your Uncle Richard Underwood," said he--the earlier discussions in the
wedded state are usually founded upon relations--"is as stupid as he is
kind. It was very good of him to arrange that I should meet old
Nicholson. Any young fellow in the country would give his eyes for the
chance. But to make an appointment for a fellow at four o'clock in the
afternoon of his wedding day is a thing of which no one, except your
Uncle Richard, would be capable. He might have known that I couldn't go."
"But you must go," urged the bride, "it's the chance of a lifetime.
Besides which," she added with a pretty little air of practicality, "we
can't afford to throw away an opportunity like this. We may never get
another one, and if you don't go how are you to explain it to Uncle
Richard when we dine there to-morrow night?--you know we promised to,
when he was last at West Hills."
"But what," suggested her husband--"what if, in grasping at the shadow,
I lose the reality? I'd rather lose twenty opportunities than my only
wife, and what's to become of you while I go down to Broad Street? Do
you propose to sit in the station?"
"I propose nothing of the kind," she laughed. "I shall go straight to
the Ruissillard and wait for you. Dick and Gladys may be there already."
Although Mr. John Blake received this suggestion with elaborate
disfavor and disclaimer it was clear to the pretty eyes of Mrs. John
Blake that he hailed it with delight, and she was full of theories upon
marital co-operation and of eagerness to put them into practice. None of
her husband's objections could daunt her, and before he had adjusted
himself to the situation he had packed his wife into a hansom, given the
cabman careful instructions and a careless tip, and was standing on the
step admonishing his bride:
"Be sure to tell them that we must have out-side rooms. Have the baggage
sent up, but don't touch it. If you open a trunk or lift a tray before I
arrive I shall instantly send you home to your mother as incorrigible."
"Very well," she agreed; "I'll be good."
"And then, if Gladys is there--it's only an off-chance that they come
before to-morrow--get her to sit with you. But don't go wandering about
the hotel by yourself. And, above all, don't go out."
"Goosie," said she, "of course I shan't go out. Where should I go?"
"And you're sure, sure, sure that you don't mind?" he asked for the
dozenth time.
"Goosie," said she again, "I am quite, quite sure of it. Now go or you
will surely miss your appointment and disappoint your uncle."
After two or three more questions of his and assurances of hers the cab
was allowed to swing out into the current. John had given the driver
careful navigation orders, and Marjorie leaned back contentedly enough
and watched the busy people, all hot and haggard, as New York's people
sometimes are in the first warm days of May. Her collection of
illustrated post-cards had prepared her to identify many of the places
she passed, but once or twice she felt, a little ruefully the difference
between this, her actual first glimpse of New York and the same first
glimpse as she and John had planned it before the benign, but hardly
felicitous, interference of Uncle Richard. This feeling of loneliness
was strongly in the ascendent when the cab stopped under an ornate
portico and two large male creatures, in powdered wigs and white silk
stockings, emerged before her astonished eyes. Open flew her little
door, down jumped the cabman, out rushed other menials and laid hands
upon her baggage. Horses fretted, pedestrians risked their lives, motors
snorted and newsboys clamored as an enormous police-appearing person
assisted her to alight. He had such an air of having been expecting and
longing for her arrival that she wondered innocently whether John had
telephoned about her. This thought persisted with her until she and her
following of baggage-laden pages drew up before the desk, but it fell
from her with a crash when she encountered the aloof, impersonal,
world-weary regard of the presiding clerk. In all Marjorie's happy life
she had never met anything but welcome. The belle of a fast-growing town
is rather a sheltered person, and not even the most confiding of
ingénues could detect a spark of greeting in the lackadaisical regard of
this highly-manicured young man.
Marjorie began her story, began to recite her lesson: "Outside rooms,
not lower than the fourth nor higher than the eighth floor; the Fifth
Avenue side if possible--and was Mrs. Robert Blake in?"
The lackadaisical young man consulted the register with a disparaging eye.
"Not staying here," Marjorie understood him to remark.
"Oh, it doesn't matter--but about the rooms?"
"Front!" drawled the young man, and several blue-clad bellboys ceased
from lolling on a bench and approached the desk.
"Register here," commanded the clerk, twirling the big book on its
turn-table toward Marjorie so suddenly that she jumped, and laying his
pink-tinted finger on its first blank line.
"No, thank you," she stammered, "I was not to register until my
husband--" and her heart cried out within her for that she was saying
these new, dear words for the first time to so unresponsive a
stranger--"told me not to register until he should come and see that the
rooms were satisfactory. He will be here presently."
"We have no unsatisfactory rooms," was the answer, followed by: "Front
625 and 6," and fresh pages and bellboys fell upon the yellow baggage,
and Marjorie, in a hot confusion of counting her property and wondering
how to resent the young man's impertinence, turned to follow them.
"One moment, madam," the clerk murmured; "name and address, please." The
pages were escaping with the bags, and Mrs. Blake hardly turned as she
answered, according to the habit of her lifetime:
"Underwood, West Hills, N.J.," and flew to the elevator, which had
already swallowed her baggage and the boys. Up to suite Number 625 and 6
she was conducted by her blue-clad attendants, who opened the windows,
pushed the furniture about--then waited; who fetched ice water, drew
down shades--and waited; who closed the windows, drew up the shades,
shifted the baggage from sofa to armchair, unbuckled the straps of a
suitcase, indicated the telephone--and waited; who put the bags on the
bed, opened the windows, pushed the furniture back against the wall--and
waited. Marjorie viewed all these manoeuvres with amused but
unsophisticated eyes. She smiled serenely at the smiling bellboys--while
they waited. She thanked them prettily for their assistance--and they
waited. She dismissed them still prettily, and it is to be regretted
that, in the privacy of the hall, they swore.
She then took possession of her little domain. The clerk, however
unbearably, had spoken the truth, and the rooms were charming. There
could be no question, she decided, of going farther. She spread her
pretty wedding silver on the dressing-table, she hung her negligée with
her hat and coat in the closet. She went down on her knees and
investigated the slide which was to lead shoes to the bootblack; she
tested, with her bridal glove-stretcher, the electrical device in the
bathroom for the heating of curling irons. She studied all the pictures,
drew out all the drawers, examined the furniture and bric-a-brac, and
then she looked at her watch. Only half an hour was gone.
She went to the window and watched the hats of the passing multitude,
noting how short and fore-shortened all the figures seemed and how
queerly the horses passed along beneath her, without visible legs to
move them. Still an hour before John could be expected.
And then their trunks, hers large and his small, made their thumping
entrance. The porter crossed to the window and raised the shade, crossed
to her trunk and undid its straps, dried his moistened brow--and waited.
Marjorie thanked him and smiled. He smiled and waited, drying his brow
industriously the while. No village black-smith ever had so damp a brow
as he. She sympathized with him in the matter of the heat; he
agreed--and waited. He undid the straps of John's trunk; he moved her
trunk into greater proximity to the window and the light; he carried
John's trunk into the sitting-room; he performed innumerable feats of
prowess before her. But she only smiled and commended in an unfinancial
way. Finally he laid violent hands upon his truck and retreated into the
hall, swearing, as became his age, more luridly than the bellboys.
Once more Marjorie looked out into the street for a while and began to
plan the exact form of greeting with which she should meet John. It
already seemed an eternity since she had parted with him. She drew the
pretty evening dress which she had chosen for this and most important
evening from its tissue-paper nest in the upper tray of her trunk. Its
daintiness comforted and cheered her, as a friend's face might have
done, and under its impetus she found calm enough to rearrange her hair,
and, with many a shy recoil and shy caress, to lay out John's evening
things for him, as she had often laid out her father's. How surprised,
she smiled, he would be. How delighted, when he came, to find everything
so comfy and domestic. Surely it was time for him to come. Presently it
was late, and yet he did not come. She evolved another form of greeting:
he did not deserve comfort and domesticity when he did not set more
store on them than on a stupid interview in a stuffy office. He should
see that an appointment with old Nicholson could not be allowed to
interfere with their home life; that, simply because they were married
now, he could not neglect her with impunity.
She practised the detached, casual sort of smile with which she would
greet him, and the patient, uninterested silence with which she would
listen to his apologies. Then, realizing that these histrionics would be
somewhat marred by a pink negligée, she struggled into her dinner dress.
It was then seven o'clock and time to practise some more vehement reception
for the laggard. It went well--very well. Any man would have been
annihilated by it, but there was still no man when half-past seven came.
Quite suddenly she fell into a panic. John was dead! She had heard and
read of the perils of New York. She had seen a hundred potential
accidents on her drive from the ferry. Trolley, anarchist, elevated
railroad, collapsed buildings, frightened horses, runaway automobiles.
Her dear John! Her mangled husband! Passing out of the world, even while
she, his widowed bride, was dressing in hideous colors, and thinking so
falsely of him!
He must be brought to her. Some one should go and say something to
somebody! Telephone Uncle Richard! She flew to the directory, which had
interested her so little when the polite bellboy of the itching palm had
pointed it out to her, and presently she had startled a respectable old
stockbroker, so thoroughly and so hastily that he burst into his wife's
presence with the news that John Blake had met with a frightful accident
and was being carried to the hotel in the automobile of some rich
gentleman from Paterson, New Jersey.
"Hurry down there at once," commanded Aunt Richard, who was as staid
and practical as the wife of a stockbroker ought to be, "and bring the
two poor lambs here in your car. Take the big one. They'll want plenty
of room to lay him flat. I'll have the nurse and the doctor here and a
room ready. Get there if possible before he does, so as not to move him
about too often."
Meanwhile Mrs. John Blake, bride now of nearly eight hours, lay in a
stricken heap upon the bed, bedewing with hot tears the shirt she had so
dutifully laid ready for Mr. John Blake, and which now he was never more
to wear. And Mr. John Blake, in a hurricane of fear, exasperation and
bewilderment, a taxicab, and the swift-falling darkness, fared from
hotel to hotel and demanded speech with Mrs. John Blake, a young lady in
blue with several handbags and some heavy luggage, who had arrived at
some hotel early that afternoon.
His interview with old Nicholson had been short and satisfactory, and
at about five-thirty o'clock he was at the Ruissillard inquiring for Mrs.
J. Blake's number and floor with a confidence he was soon to lose. There
was no such person. No such name. Then could the clerk tell him whether,
and why, she had gone elsewhere. A slim and tall young lady in blue.
The clerk really couldn't say. He had been on duty for only half an
hour. There was no person of the name of Blake in the hotel. Sometimes
guests who failed to find just the accommodation they wanted went over
to the Blinheim, just across the avenue. So the bridegroom set out upon
his quest and the clerk, less world-weary than his predecessor, turned
back to the telephone-girl.
Presently there approached the desk a brisk, business-like person who
asked a few business-like questions and then registered in a bold and
flowing hand, "Mr. and Mrs. Robert Blake, Boston."
"My husband," she announced, "will be here presently."
"He was here ten minutes ago," said the clerk, and added particulars.
"Oh, that's all right," replied the slightly-puzzled but quite unexcited
lady; "he'll be back." And then, accompanied by bags and suitcases, she
vanished aloft.
"Missed connections, somehow," commented the clerk to the stenographer,
and gave himself to the contemplation of "Past Performances" in the
_Evening Telegram_, and to ordinary routine of a hotel office for an
hour or so, when, to prove the wisdom of the lady's calm, the excited
Mr. John Blake returned.
"There must be some mistake," he began darkly, "I've been to every
hotel--"
"Lady came ten minutes after you left," said the genial clerk. "Front,
show the gentleman to 450." And, presently, John was explaining his
dilemma to Gladys, the pretty wife of his cousin Bob. "She is somewhere
in this hotel," he fumed, "and I'll find her if I have to search it room
by room."
The office was hardly quiet after the appearance and disappearance of
Mr. John Blake, when the clerk and the telephone-girl were again
interrupted by an excited gentleman. His white whiskers framed an
anxious, kindly face, his white waistcoat bound a true and tender heart.
"Has Mr. Blake arrived?" he demanded with some haste.
"Just a minute ago," the clerk replied, and was surprised at the
disappointment his answer caused.
"I must see him," cried the old gentleman. "You needn't announce me.
I'll go right up. I'm his wife's uncle, and she telephoned me to come."
"Front!" called the clerk. "This gentleman to 450."
At the door of 450 he dismissed his guide with suitable _largesse_, and
softly entered the room. It was brightly illuminated, and Uncle Richard
was able clearly to contemplate his nephew of eight hours in animated
converse with a handsome woman in evening dress.
"I think, sir," said the woman, "that there is some mistake."
"I agree with you, madam," said Uncle Richard, "and I'm sorry for it."
"But you are exactly the man to help us," cried the nephew; "we are in
an awful state."
"I agree with you, sir," repeated Uncle Richard.
"You _must_ know how to help us," urged the nephew. "I've lost
Marjorie."
"So I should have inferred. But she had already thrown herself away."
"She's _lost_!" stormed the bridegroom. "Don't you understand? Lost,
lost, lost!"
"I rather think he misunderstands," the handsome woman interrupted.
"You've not told him, John, who I am."
"You are mistaken," replied Uncle Richard with a horrible suavity; "I
understand enough. That poor child telephoned to me not twenty minutes
ago that her husband was injured, perhaps mortally, and implored my
help. I left my dinner to come to his assistance and I find
him--here--and thus."
"Twenty minutes ago?" yelled John, leaping upon his new relative and
quite disregarding that gentleman's last words. "Where was she? Did she
tell you where to look for her?"
"So, sir," stormed Uncle Richard, "the poor, deluded child has left you
and turned to her faithful old uncle! Allow me to say that you're a
blackguard, sir, and to wish you good-bye."