it?"
"I ain't certain sure," the fellow replied. "I ain't as sure as I was
first off. But I think it's Mr. Carroll. Leastways, if it ain't, it
looks like him!"
It was with much dissatisfaction at this doubtfulness of his guide that
the doctor helped the driver slide out the stretcher.
Then the side door of the saloon under the landing of the outside stairs
opened and a stocky little German came out.
"What's this? What's this?" he asked.
The young surgeon began his explanation again. "This is where Mr.
Carroll lived, isn't it? Well, I am sorry to say there has been an
accident, and--"
"Is that Martin there?" interrupted the German.
"Yes," the Southerner replied, "and I'm afraid it is a serious case--a
pretty serious case--"
"Is he dead?" broke in the saloon-keeper again.
"He is dead," the doctor answered.
"Then why didn't you say so?" asked the short man harshly. "Why waste
all that time talking if he's dead?"
The Southerner was inclined to resent this rudeness, but he checked
himself.
"I understand that you are Mr. Carroll's brother-in-law," he began
again, "so I suppose I can leave the body in your charge--"
The German went over to the stretcher and turned down the blanket.
"No, you don't leave him here," he declared. "I'm not going to take him.
This ain't my sister's husband!"
"This is not Mr. Carroll?" and this time the doctor looked around for
the boy who had misinformed him. "I was told it was."
"The man who told you was a liar, that's all. This ain't Martin Carroll,
and the sooner you take him away the better. That's what I say,"
declared the saloon-keeper, going back to his work.
The doctor looked around in disgust. What he had to do now was to take
the body to the morgue, and that revolted him. It seemed to him an
insult to the dead and an outrage toward the dead man's family. Yet he
had no other course of action open to him, and he was beginning to be
impatient to have done with the thing. The week of hot weather had worn
on his nerves also, and he wanted to be back again in the cool hospital
out of the oven of the streets.
As he and the driver were about to lift up the stretcher again, a man in
overalls stepped up to the body and looked at it attentively.
"It's Dick O'Donough!" he said at once. "Poor old Dick! It's a sad day
for her--and her that excitable!"
"Do you know him?" asked the doctor.
"Don't I?" returned the man in overalls, a thin, elderly man, with wisps
of hair beneath his chin and a shrewd, weazened face. "It's Dick
O'Donough!"
"But are you sure of it?" the young surgeon insisted. "We've had two
mistakes already."
"Sure of it?" repeated the other. "Of course I'm sure of it! Didn't I
work alongside of him for five years? And isn't that the scar on him he
got when the wheel broke?" And he lifted the dead man's hair and showed
a cicatrix on the temple.
"Very well," said the doctor. "If you are sure, where did he live?"
"It's only a little way."
"I'm glad of that. Can you show us?"
"I can that," replied the man in overalls.
"Then jump in front," said the doctor.
As they started again, the driver grumbled once more. "Begorra, April
Day's a fool to ye," he began. "Them parvarse gossoons, now, if I got
howld of 'em, they'd know what it was hurt 'em, I'm thinkin'."
The man in overalls directed them to a shabby double tenement in a side
street swarming with children. There was a Chinese laundry on one side
of the doorway, and on the other side a bakery. The door stood open, and
the hallway was dark and dirty.
"It's a sad day it'll be for Mrs. O'Donough," sighed the man in
overalls. "I don't know what it is she's got, but she's very queer, now,
very queer."
He went into the bakery and got a man to help the driver carry up the
stretcher. Women came out of the shops on both sides of the street, and
leaned out of their windows with babies in their arms, and stepped out
on the fire-escapes. There were banana peelings and crumpled newspapers
and rubbish of one sort or another scattered in the street, and the
savor of it all was unpleasant even to a man who was no stranger to the
casual ward of a hospital.
The man in overalls went up-stairs with the doctor, warning him where a
step was broken or where a bit of the hand-rail was missing. They groped
their way along the passage on the first floor and knocked.
The door opened suddenly, and they saw an ill-furnished room, glaring
with the sun reflected from its white walls. Two women stood just within
the door. One was tall and spare, with gray streaks in her coal-black
hair, and with piercing black eyes; the other was a comfortable body
with a cheerful smile.
"That's Mrs. O'Donough," said the doctor's guide--"the tall one. See the
eyes of her now! The other's a neighbor woman, who's with her a good
deal, she's that excitable."
The doctor stepped into the room, and began once more to break the news.
"This is Mrs. O'Donough, is it not?" he said. "I'm a doctor, and I am
sorry to have to say there has been an accident, and Mr. O'Donough
is--is under treatment."
Here the driver and the man from the bakery brought in the stretcher.
When the tall woman saw this she gripped the arm of the other and hissed
out, "Is it _it_?" Then she turned her back on the body and sank her
head on her friend's shoulder.
The other woman made signs to the doctor to say little or nothing.
The driver and the baker took a thin counterpane off the bed, which
stood against the wall. Then they lifted the body from the stretcher to
the bed, and covered it with the counterpane.
The doctor did not know what to say in the face of the signals he was
receiving from the widow's friend.
"In case I can be of any assistance at any time," he suggested--and then
Mrs. O'Donough lifted her head and looked at him with her burning
eyes--"if I can be of service, do not hesitate to call on me. Here is my
card."
As he felt his way down-stairs again he heard a hand-organ break out
suddenly into a strident waltz.
When he came out into the street a few little children were dancing in
couples, although most of them stood around the ambulance, gazing with
morbid curiosity at the driver as he replaced the stretcher. At the door
of the baker's shop stood a knot of women talking it over; but in the
Chinese laundry the irons went back and forth steadily, with no interest
in what might happen in the street outside.
As the doctor took his seat in the vehicle a shriek came from the room
he had just left--a shuddering, heartrending wail--then another--and
then there was silence.
The ambulance started forward, the bell clanged to clear the way, the
horse broke into a trot, and in a minute or two they turned into the
broad avenue.
Then the driver looked at the doctor. "The widdy's takin' it harrd, I'm
thinkin', but she'll get over it before the wake," he said. "An' it's
good lungs she has, ennyhow."
(1898)
[Illustration: In a Bob-tail Car]
It was about noon of a dark day late in September, and a long-threatened
drizzle of hail chilled the air, as Harry Brackett came out of the
Apollo House and stood on the corner of Fourth Avenue, waiting for a
cross-town car. He was going down-town to the office of the _Gotham
Gazette_ to write up an interview he had just had with the latest
British invader of these United States, Lady Smith-Smith, the fair
authoress of the very popular novel _Smile and be a Villain Still_, five
rival editions of which were then for sale everywhere in New York. Harry
Brackett intended to ride past Union Square to Sixth Avenue in the
cross-town car, and then to go to the _Gotham Gazette_ by the elevated
railway, so he transferred ten cents for the fare of the latter and five
cents for the fare of the former from his waistcoat pocket to a little
pocket in his overcoat. Then he buttoned the overcoat tightly about him,
as the raw wind blew harshly across the city from river to river. He
looked down the street for the car; it was afar off, on the other side
of Third Avenue, and he was standing on the corner of Fourth Avenue.
"A bob-tail car," said Harry Brackett to himself, "is like a policeman:
it is never here just when it is wanted. And yet it is a necessary
evil--like the policeman again. Perhaps there is here a philosophical
thought that might be worked up as a comic editorial article for the
fifth column. 'The Bob-tail Car'--why, the very name is humorous. And
there are lots of things to be said about it. For instance, I can get
something out of the suggestion that the heart of a coquette is like a
bob-tail car, there is always room for one more; but I suppose I must
not venture on any pun about 'ringing the belle.' Then I can say that
the bob-tail car is a one-horse concern, and is therefore a victim of
the healthy American hatred of one-horse concerns. It has no past; no
gentleman of the road ever robbed its passengers; no road-agent nowadays
would think of 'holding it up.' Perhaps that's why there is no poetry
about a bob-tail car, as there is about a stage-coach. Even Rudolph
Vernon, the most modern of professional poets, wouldn't dream of writing
verses on 'Riding in a Bob-tail Car.' Wasn't it Heine who said that the
monks of the Middle Ages thought that Greek was a personal invention of
the devil, and that he agreed with them? That's what the bob-tail car
is--a personal invention of the devil. The stove-pipe hat, the
frying-pan, the tenement-house, and the bob-tail car--these are the
choicest and the chief of the devil's gifts to New York. Why doesn't
that car come? confound it! Although it cannot swear itself, it is the
cause of much swearing!"
Just then the car came lumbering along and bumping with a repeated jar
as its track crossed the tracks on Fourth Avenue. Harry Brackett jumped
on it as it passed the corner where he stood. His example was followed
by a stranger, who took the seat opposite to him.
As the car sped along toward Broadway, Harry Brackett mechanically read,
as he had read a dozen times before, the printed request to place the
exact fare in the box. "Suppose I don't put it in?" he mused; "what will
happen? The driver will ask for it--if he has time and happens to think
of it. This is very tempting to a man who wants to try the Virginian
plan of readjusting his debts. Here is just the opportunity for any one
addicted to petty larceny. I think I shall call that article 'The
Bob-tail Car as a Demoralizer.' It is most demoralizing for a man to
feel that he can probably evade the payment of his fare, since there is
no conductor to ask for it. However, I suppose the main reliance of the
company is on the honesty of the individual citizen who would rather pay
his debts than not. I doubt if there is any need to dun the average
American for five cents."
Harry Brackett lowered his eyes from the printed notice at which he had
been staring unconsciously for a minute, and they fell on the man
sitting opposite to him--the man who had entered the car as he did.
"I wonder if he is the average American?" thought Brackett. "He hasn't
paid his fare yet. I wonder if he will? It isn't my business to dun him
for it, and yet I'd like to know whether his intentions are honorable or
not."
The car turned sharply into Broadway, and then came to a halt to allow
two young ladies to enter. A third young lady escorted them to the car,
and kissed them affectionately, and said:
"Good-by! You will be _sure_ to come again! I have enjoyed your visit so
much."
Then the two young ladies kissed her, and they said, both speaking at
once, and very rapidly:
"Oh yes. We've had _such_ a good time! We'll write you! And you _must_
come out to Orange and see us soon! Good-by! Good-by! Remember us to
your mother! _Good-by!_"
At last the sweet sorrow of this parting was over; the third young lady
withdrew to the sidewalk; the two young ladies came inside the car; the
other passengers breathed more freely; the man opposite to Harry
Brackett winked at him slyly, and the car went on again.
There was a vacant seat on the side of the car opposite to Harry
Brackett--or, at least, there would have been one if the ladies on that
side had not, with characteristic coolness, spread out their skirts so
as to occupy the whole space. The two young ladies stood for a moment
after they had entered the car; they looked for a seat, but no one of
the other ladies made a sign of moving to make room for them. The man
opposite to Harry Brackett rose and proffered his seat. They did not
thank him, or even so much as look at him.
"_You_ take it, Nelly," said one.
"I sha'n't do anything of the sort. I'm not a bit tired!" returned the
other. "I _insist_ on your sitting down!"
"But I'm not tired _now_."
"Louise Valeria Munson," her friend declared, with humorous emphasis,
"if you don't sit right down, I'll call a _policeman!_"
"Well, I guess there's room for us both," said Louise Valeria Munson;
"I'm sure there ought to be."
By this time some of the other ladies on the seat had discovered that
they were perhaps taking up a little more than their fair share of
space, and there was a readjustment of frontier. The vacancy was
slightly broadened, and both young ladies sat down.
The man who had got in just after Harry Brackett and who had given up
his seat stood in the center of the car with his hand through a strap.
But he made no effort to pay his fare. The driver rang his bell, the
passengers looked at each other inquiringly, and one of the two young
ladies who had just seated themselves produced a dime, which was passed
along and dropped into the fare-box in accordance with the printed
instructions of the company.
Three ladies left the car just before it turned into Fourteenth Street;
and after it had rounded the curve two elderly gentlemen entered and sat
down by the side of Harry Brackett. The man who had not paid his fare
kindly volunteered to drop their money into the box, but did not put in
any of his own. Harry Brackett was certain of this, for he had watched
him closely.
The two elderly gentlemen continued a conversation began before they
entered the car. "I'll tell you," said one of them, so loudly that Harry
Brackett could not help overhearing, "the most remarkable thing that man
Skinner ever did. One day he got caught in one of his amusing little
swindles; by some slip-up of his ingenuity he did not allow himself
quite rope enough, and so he was brought up with a round turn in the
Tombs. He got two years in Sing Sing, but he never went up at all--he
served his time by substitute!"
"What?" cried his companion, in surprise.
"He did!" answered the first speaker. "That's just what he did! He had a
substitute to go to State's Prison for him, while he went up to Albany
to work for his own pardon!"
"How did he manage that?" asked the other, in involuntary admiration
before so splendid an audacity.
"You've no idea how fertile Skinner was in devices of all kinds,"
replied the gentleman who was telling the story. "He got out on bail,
and he arranged for a light sentence if he pleaded guilty. Then one
day, suddenly, a man came into court, giving himself up as Skinner,
pleading guilty, and asking for immediate sentence. Of course, nobody
inquired too curiously into the identity of a self-surrendered prisoner
who wanted to go to Sing Sing. Well--"
The car stopped at the corner of Fifth Avenue, several passengers
alighted, and a party of three ladies came in. There were two vacant
seats by the side of Harry Brackett, and as he thought these three
ladies wished to sit together, he gave up his place and took another
farther down the car. Here he found himself again opposite the man who
had entered the car almost simultaneously with him, and who had not yet
paid his fare. Harry Brackett wondered whether this attempt to steal a
ride was intentional or whether it was merely inadvertent. His
consideration of this metaphysical problem was interrupted by another
conversation. His right-hand neighbor, who was apparently a physician,
was telling the friend next to him of the strange desires of
convalescents.
"I think," said he, "that the queerest request I ever heard was down in
Connecticut. There was a man there, a day-laborer, but a fine young
fellow, who had a crowbar driven clean through his head by a forgotten
blast. Well, I happened to be the first doctor on the spot, and it was
nip-and-tuck whether anything could be done for him; it was a most
interesting case. But he was in glorious condition physically. I found
out afterward that he was the champion sprint-runner of the place. I got
him into the nearest hotel, and in time I managed to patch him up as
best I could. At last we pulled him through, and the day came when I was
able to tell him that I thought he would recover, and that he was quite
out of danger, and that all he had to do was to get his strength back
again as fast as he could, and he would be all right again soon. He was
lying in bed, emaciated and speechless, when I said this, and when I
added that he could have anything to eat he might fancy, his eyes
brightened and his lips moved. 'Is there anything in particular you
would prefer?' I asked him, and his lips moved again as though he had a
wish to express. You see, he hadn't spoken once since the accident, but
he seemed to be trying to find his tongue; so I bent over the bed and
put my head over his mouth, and finally I heard a faint voice saying,
'Quail on toast!' and as I drew back in surprise, he gave me a wink.
Feeble as his tones were, there was infinite gusto in the way he said
the words. I suppose he had never had quail on toast in all his life;
probably he had dreamed of it as an unattainable luxury."
"Did he get it?" asked the doctor's friend.
"He got it every day," answered the doctor, "until he said he didn't
want any more. I remember another man who--"
But now, with many a jolt and jar, the car was rattling noisily across
Sixth Avenue under the dripping shadow of the station of the elevated
railway. Harry Brackett rose to his feet, and as he did so he glanced
again at the man opposite to him, to see if, even then, at the eleventh
hour, he did intend to pay his fare. But the man caught Harry Brackett's
eye hardily, and looked him in the face, with a curiously knowing smile.
There was something very odd about the expression of the man's face, so
Harry Brackett thought, as he left the car and began to mount the steps
which led to the station of the elevated railroad. He could not help
thinking that there was a queer suggestion in that smile--a suggestion
of a certain complicity on his part: it was as though the owner of the
smile had ventured to hint that they were birds of a feather.
"Confound his impudence!" said Harry Brackett to himself, as he stood
before the window of the ticket-agent.
Then he put his fingers into the little pocket in his overcoat and took
from it a ten-cent piece and a five-cent piece. And he knew at once why
the man opposite had smiled so impertinently--it was the smile of the
pot at the kettle.
(1886)
[Illustration: In the Small Hours]
Suddenly he found himself wide awake. He had been lost in sleep,
dreamless and spaceless; and now, without warning, his slumber had left
him abruptly and for no reason that he could guess. Although he strained
his ear, he caught the echo of no unusual sound. He listened in vague
doubt whether there might not be some one moving about in the apartment;
but he could hear nothing except the shrill creak of the brakes of a
train on the elevated railroad nearly a block away. Wilson Carpenter was
in the habit of observing his own feelings, and he was surprised to note
that he did not really expect to detect any physical cause for his
unexpected awakening. Sleep had left him as inexplicably as it had
swiftly.
He lay there in bed with no restlessness; he heard the regular breathing
of his wife, who was sleeping at his side; he saw the faint illumination
from the door open into the next room where the baby was also asleep. He
looked toward the window, but no ray of light was yet visible; and he
guessed it to be about four o'clock in the morning, perhaps a little
earlier. In that case he had not been in bed more than two or three
hours at the most. He wondered why he had waked thus unexpectedly,
since he had had a fatiguing day. Perhaps it was the excitement--there
was no doubt that he had had his full share of excitement that
evening--and he thrilled again as he recalled the delicious sensation of
dull dread yielding at last to the certainty of success.
He had played for a heavy stake and he had won. That was just what he
had been doing--gambling with fate, throwing dice with fortune itself.
That was what every dramatic author had to do every time he brought out
a new play. The production of a piece at an important New York theater
was a venture as aleatory almost as cutting a pack of cards, and the
odds were always against the dramatist. And as the young man quietly
recalled the events of the evening it seemed to him that the excitement
of those who engineer corners in Wall Street must be like his own
anxiety while the future of his drama hung in the balance, only theirs
could not but be less keen than his, less poignant, for he was playing
his game with men and women, while what they touched were but inanimate
stocks. His winning depended upon the actors and actresses who had
bodied forth his conception. A single lapse of memory or a single slip
of the tongue, and the very sceptical audience of the first night might
laugh in the wrong place, and so cut themselves off from sympathy; and
all his labor would shrivel before his eyes. Of a truth it is the ordeal
by fire that the dramatist must undergo; and there had been moments
that long, swift evening when he had felt as though he were tied to the
stake and awaiting only the haggard squaw who was to apply the torch.
Now the trial was over and the cause was gained. There had been too many
war-pieces of late, so the croakers urged, and the public would not
stand another drama of the Rebellion. But he had not been greatly
discouraged, for in his play the military scenes were but the setting
for a story of everyday heroism, of human conflict, of man's conquest of
himself. It was the simple strength of this story that had caught the
spectators before the first act was half over and held them breathless
as situation followed situation. At the adroitly spaced comic scenes the
audience had gladly relaxed, joyously relieving the emotional strain
with welcome laughter. The future of the play was beyond all question;
of that the author felt assured, judging not so much by the mere
applause as by the tensity of the interest aroused, and by the
long-drawn sigh of suspense he had heard so often in the course of the
evening. He did not dread the acrid criticisms he knew he should find in
some of the morning papers, the writers of which would be bitterer than
usual, since the writer of the new play had been a newspaper man
himself.
The author of _A Bold Stroke_ knew what its success meant to him. It
meant a fortune. The play would perhaps run the season out in New York,
and this was only the middle of October. With matinees on Wednesday as
well as on Saturday, two hundred performances in the city were not
impossible. Then next season there would be at least two companies on
the road. He ought to make $25,000 by the piece, and perhaps more. The
long struggle just to keep his head above water, just to get his daily
bread, just to make both ends meet--that was over forever. He could move
out of the little Harlem flat to which he had brought his bride two
years before; and he could soon get her the house she was longing for
somewhere in the country, near New York, where the baby could grow up
under the trees.
The success of the play meant more than mere money, so the ambitious
young author was thinking as he lay there sleepless. It meant praise,
too--and praise was pleasant. It meant recognition--and recognition was
better than praise, for it would open other opportunities. The money he
made by the play would give him a home, and also leisure for thought and
for adequate preparation before he began his next piece. He had done his
best in writing the war-drama; he had spared no pains and neglected no
possibility of improvement; it was as good as he could make it. But
there were other plays he had in mind, making a different appeal,
quieter than his military piece, subtler; and these he could now risk
writing, since the managers would believe in him after the triumph of A
Bold Stroke.