shipwreck of his scheme. What should he tell the boys? What would the
boys say? Why had he not thought to write before he came? Why on earth
had Bailey taken it into his head to die?
After supper, he resolved to call as he had promised. Mrs. Bailey,
he knew, had died a year after the appearance of her ninth daughter.
But, he thought, with reviving hope, there might be a male head to the
family—an uncle, perhaps.
The door was opened by Clytie, the youngest of the nine. She ushered
him at once into a bright little parlor, hung around with dainty things
in artistic needlework and decorative painting. A big lamp glowed on a
centre–table, and around it sat seven of the sisters, each one engaged
in some sort of work, sewing, embroidering or designing. Nearest, the
lamp sat Euphrosyne, reading Macaulay aloud. She stopped as he entered,
and welcomed him in a half–timid but wholly friendly fashion.
[Illustration]
Dick sat down, very much embarrassed, in spite of the greeting. It was
many years since he had talked to nine ladies at once. And, in truth,
a much less embarrassed man might have found himself more or less
troubled to carry on a conversation with nine young women who looked
exactly like each other, except for the delicate distinctions of age
which a masculine stranger might well be afraid to note. Dick looked
from one to the other of the placid classic faces, and could not help
having an uneasy idea that each new girl that he addressed was only the
last one who had slipped around the table and made herself look a year
or two older or younger.
But after a while the pleasant, genial, social atmosphere of the room,
sweet with a delicate, winning virginity, thawed out his awkward
reserve, and Dick began to talk of the West and Western life until the
nine pairs of blue eyes, stretched to their widest, fixed upon him as a
common focus. It was eleven when he left, with many apologies for his
long call. He found the night and the street uncommonly dark, empty and
depressing.
“Just the outfit!” he observed to himself. “And old Bailey dead and the
whole scheme busted.”
For he had learned that the Nine Cent–Girls had not a relative in the
world. Under these circumstances, it was clearly his duty to take the
morning train for the West. And yet, the next evening, he presented
himself, shamefaced and apologetic, at the Bailey’s door.
He thought that he wanted to make some sort of explanation to Miss
Euphrosyne. But what explanation could he make? There was no earthly
reason for his appearance in Tusculum. He talked of the West until
eleven o’clock, and then he took a hesitating leave.
[Illustration]
The next day he made a weak pretense of casually passing by when he
knew that Miss Euphrosyne was working in the garden; but he found it
no easier to explain across the front fence. The explanation never
would have been made if it had not been for Miss Euphrosyne. A curious
nervousness had come over her, too, and suddenly she spoke out.
“Mr. Cutter—excuse me—but what has brought you here? I mean is it any
thing that concerns us—or—or—Papa’s affairs! I thought everything was
settled—I had hoped—“
There was nothing for it now but to tell the whole story, and Dick told
it.
“I suppose you’ll think we’re a pack of barbarians,” he said, when he
had come to the end, “and, of course, it’s all impracticable _now_.”
But Miss Euphrosyne did not seem to be offended—only thoughtful.
“Can you call here to–morrow at this time, Mr. Cutter?” she inquired.
* * * * *
Miss Euphrosyne blushed faintly when Dick presented himself to hear
judgement pronounced.
“I suppose you will think it strange,” she said, “but if your plan
is feasible, I should wish to carry it out. Frankly, I _do_ want to
see the girls married. Clelia and Lydia and I are past the time when
women think about such things—but Clytie—and the rest. And, you know, I
can remember how Papa and Mama lived together, and sometimes it seems
cruelly hard that those dear girls should lose all that happiness—I’m
sure it’s the best happiness in the world. And it can never be, _here_.
Now, if I could get occupation—you know that I’m teaching school, I
suppose—and if the rest of the girls could keep up their work for the
New York people—why—don’t you know, if I didn’t tell—if I put it on
business grounds, you know—I think they would feel that it was best,
after all, to leave Tusculum....”
Her voice was choked when she recommenced.
[Illustration]
“It seems awful for me to talk to you in this cold–blooded way about
such a thing; but—what _can_ we do, Mr. Cutter? You don’t know how
poor we are. There’s nothing for my little Clytie to do but to be a
dressmaker—and you know what _that_ means, in Tusculum. Oh, _do_ you
think I could teach school out in Star—Star—Starbuckle?”
Miss Euphrosyne was crying.
Dick’s census of possible pupils in the neighborhood of Starbuck
satisfied Miss Euphrosyne. It troubled Dick’s conscience a bit, as he
walked back to the hotel. “But they’ll all be married off before she
finds it out, so I guess it’s all right,” he reflected.
* * * * *
The next week Dick went to New York. This was in pursuance of an idea
which he had confided to Winfield, on the eve of his forth–setting.
“Why,” Winfield had said to him, “you are clean left out of this deal,
aren’t you?”
“Of course I am,” said Dick. “How am I going to marry a poor girl on a
hundred dollars a month?”
“I might set you up for yourself—” began his employer.
“Hold on!” broke in Dick Cutter, with emphasis. “You wouldn’t talk that
way if you’d ever been hungry yourself. I ’most starved that last time
I tried for myself; and I’d starve next trip, sure. You’ve been a good
friend to me, Jack Winfield. Don’t you make a damn fool of yourself and
spoil it all.”
“But,” he added, after a pause, “I _have_ a little racket of my own.
There’s a widow in New York who smiled on yours affectionately once,
ere she wed Mammon. I’m going just to see if she feels inclined to
divide the late lamented’s pile with a blonde husband.”
So, the business at Tusculum being determined, and preparations for the
hegira well under way, Dick went to look after his own speculation.
He reached New York on Tuesday morning, and called on the lady of his
hopes that afternoon. She was out. He wrote to her in the evening,
asking when he might see her. On Thursday her wedding–cards came to his
hotel by special messenger. He cursed his luck, and went cheerfully
about attending to a commission which Miss Euphrosyne, after much
urging, had given him, trembling at her own audacity. The size of
it had somewhat staggered him. She asked him to take an order to a
certain large dry–goods house for nine traveling ulsters, (ladies’,
medium weight, measurements enclosed,) for which he was to select the
materials.
“Men have so much taste,” said Miss Euphrosyne. “Papa _always_ knew
when we were well dressed.”
Dick had to wait while another customer was served. He stared at her in
humble admiration. It was a British actress, recently imported.
* * * * *
When Mr. Richard Cutter sat on the platform of Tusculum station and saw
his nine charges approach, ready for the long trip to the Far West,
it struck him that the pinky–dun ulsters with the six–inch–square
checks of pale red and blue did not look, on these nine virgins, as
they looked on the British actress. It struck him, moreover, that the
nine “fore–and–aft,” or “deer–stalker” caps which he had thrown in as
Friendship’s Offering only served to more accentuate a costume already
accentuated.
But it was too late for retreat. The Baileys had burned their bridges
behind them. The old house was sold. Their lot was cast in Montana.
He had his misgivings; but he handed them gallantly into the train—it
was not a vestibule express, for economy forbade—and they began their
journey.
He had an uneasy feeling that they were noticed; that the nine ladies
in the ulsters of one pattern—and of the pattern of his choosing—were
attracting more attention than any ladies not thus uniformed would
have attracted; but he was not seriously disturbed until a loquacious
countryman sat down beside him.
“Runnin’ a lady base–ball nine, be ye?” he inquired. “I seen one,
wunst, down to Ne’ York. They can’t play ball not to speak of; but it’s
kinder fun lookin’ at ’em. Couldn’t ye interdooce me to the pitcher?”
[Illustration]
Mr. Cutter made a dignified reply, and withdrew to the smoking–car.
There a fat and affable stranger tapped him on the back and talked in
his ear from the seat behind.
“It don’t pay, young man,” he said. “I’ve handled ’em. Female minstrels
sounds first rate; but they don’t give the show that catches the
people. You’ve gotter have reel talent kinder mixed in with them if you
want to draw.”
“Them ladies in your comp’ny, where do they show?” inquired the
Conductor, as he examined the ten tickets that Dick presented.
“What do you mean?” asked the irritated pioneer.
“If they show in Cleveland, I’d like to go, first rate,” the Conductor
explained.
“Those ladies,” Dick thundered, at the end of his patience, “are not
actresses!”
“Hmf! What be they then?” asked the Conductor.
* * * * *
They had arrived at Buffalo. They had gone to the Niagara Hotel, and
had been told that there were no rooms for them; and to the Tifft
House, where there were no rooms; and to the Genesee, where every room
was occupied. Finally they had found quarters in a very queer hotel,
where the clerk, as he dealt out the keys, said:
“One for Lily, and one for Daisy and one for Rosie—here, Boss, sort out
the flower–bed yourself,” as he handed over the bunch.
Dick was taking a drink in the dingy bar–room, and trying to forget the
queer looks that had been cast at his innocent caravan all the day,
when the solitary hall–boy brought a message summoning him to Miss
Euphrosyne’s room. He went, with his moral tail between his mental legs.
“Mr. Cutter,” said Miss Euphrosyne, firmly, “we have made a mistake.”
“It looks that way,” replied Dick, feebly; “but may be it’s only
the—the ulsters.”
“No,” said Miss Euphrosyne. “The ulsters are a part of it; but the
whole thing is wrong, Mr. Cutter; and I see it all now. I didn’t
realize what it meant. But my eyes have been opened. Nine young
unmarried women can not go West with a young man—if you had heard what
people were saying all around us in the cars—you don’t know. We’ve got
to give up the idea. Oh, but it was awful!”
Miss Euphrosyne, trembling, hid her face in her hands. Her tears
trickled out through her thin fingers.
“And the old house is sold! _What_ shall we do? _Where_ shall we go?”
she cried, forgetting Dick utterly, lost and helpless.
Dick was stalking up and down the room.
“It would be all right,” he demanded, “if there was a married woman to
lead the gang, and if—if—if we caught on to something new in the ulster
line?”
“It might be different,” Miss Euphrosyne admitted, with a sob. Speaking
came hard to her. She was tired: well nigh worn out.
“_THEN_,” said Dick, with tremendous emphasis, “what’s the matter with
my marrying one of you?”
“_Why_, Mr. Cutter!” Miss Euphrosyne cried, “I had no idea that
you—you—ever—thought of—is it Clytie?”
“No,” said Mr. Cutter, “it isn’t Clytie.”
“Is it—is it—” Miss Euphrosyne’s eyes lit up with hope long since
extinguished, “is it Aurora?”
“No!”
Dick Cutter could have been heard three rooms off.
“No!” he said, with all his lungs. “It ain’t Clytie, nor it ain’t
Aurora, nor it ain’t Flora, nor Melpomene nor Cybele nor Alveolar
Aureole nor none of ’em. It’s _YOU_—Y–O–U! I want to marry _you_, and
what’s more, I’m going to!”
“Oh! oh! oh! oh!” said poor Miss Euphrosyne, and hid her face in her
hands. She had never thought to be happy, and now she was happy for one
moment. That seemed quite enough for her modest soul. And yet more was
to come.
For once in his life, Dick Cutter seized the right moment to do the
right thing. One hour later, Miss Euphrosyne Bailey was Mrs. Richard
Cutter. She did not know quite how it happened. Clytie told her she had
been bullied into it. But oh! such sweet bullying!
* * * * *
“No,” said Mr. Richard Cutter one morning in September of the next
year, to Mr. Jack Winfield and his wife, (Miss Aurora Bailey that was,)
“I can’t stop a minute. We’re too busy up at the ranch. The Wife has
just bought out Wilkinson; and I’ve got to round up all his stock. I’ll
see you next month, at Clytie’s wedding. Queer, she should have gone
off the last, ain’t it? Euphrosyne and I are going down to Butte City
Monday, to buy her a present. Know anybody who wants to pay six per
cent. for a thousand?”
[Illustration]
THE NICE PEOPLE.
[Illustration: “_We looked off from the brow of the mountain over
fifteen miles of billowing green._”]
THE NICE PEOPLE.
“They certainly are nice people,” I assented to my wife’s observation,
using the colloquial phrase with a consciousness that it was any thing
but “nice” English, “and I’ll bet that their three children are better
brought up than most of—“
“_Two_ children,” corrected my wife.
“Three, he told me.”
“My dear, she said there were _two_.”
“He said three.”
“You’ve simply forgotten. I’m _sure_ she told me they had only two—a
boy and a girl.”
“Well, I didn’t enter into particulars.”
“No, dear, and you couldn’t have understood him. Two children.”
“All right,” I said; but I did not think it was all right. As a
near–sighted man learns by enforced observation to recognize persons at
a distance when the face is not visible to the normal eye, so the man
with a bad memory learns, almost unconsciously, to listen carefully and
report accurately. My memory is bad; but I had not had time to forget
that Mr. Brewster Brede had told me that afternoon that he had three
children, at present left in the care of his mother–in–law, while he
and Mrs. Brede took their Summer vacation.
“Two children,” repeated my wife; “and they are staying with his aunt
Jenny.”
“He told me with his mother–in–law,” I put in. My wife looked at me
with a serious expression. Men may not remember much of what they are
told about children; but any man knows the difference between an aunt
and a mother–in–law.
“But don’t you think they’re nice people?” asked my wife.
“Oh, certainly,” I replied. “Only they seem to be a little mixed up
about their children.”
“That isn’t a nice thing to say,” returned my wife.
I could not deny it.
* * * * *
And yet, the next morning, when the Bredes came down and seated
themselves opposite us at table, beaming and smiling in their natural,
pleasant, well–bred fashion, I knew, to a social certainty, that
they _were_ “nice” people. He was a fine–looking fellow in his neat
tennis–flannels, slim, graceful, twenty–eight or thirty years old, with
a Frenchy pointed beard. She was “nice” in all her pretty clothes, and
she herself was pretty with that type of prettiness which outwears most
other types—the prettiness that lies in a rounded figure, a dusky skin,
plump, rosy cheeks, white teeth and black eyes. She might have been
twenty–five; you guessed that she was prettier than she was at twenty,
and that she would be prettier still at forty.
[Illustration]
And nice people were all we wanted to make us happy in Mr. Jacobus’s
Summer boarding–house on top of Orange Mountain. For a week we had come
down to breakfast each morning, wondering why we wasted the precious
days of idleness with the company gathered around the Jacobus board.
What joy of human companionship was to be had out of Mrs. Tabb and
Miss Hoogencamp, the two middle–aged gossips from Scranton, Pa.—out
of Mr. and Mrs. Biggle, an indurated head–bookkeeper and his prim and
censorious wife—out of old Major Halkit, a retired business man, who,
having once sold a few shares on commission, wrote for circulars of
every stock company that was started, and tried to induce every one to
invest who would listen to him? We looked around at those dull faces,
the truthful indices of mean and barren minds, and decided that we
would leave that morning. Then we ate Mrs. Jacobus’s biscuit, light
as Aurora’s cloudlets, drank her honest coffee, inhaled the perfume
of the late azaleas with which she decked her table, and decided to
postpone our departure one more day. And then we wandered out to take
our morning glance at what we called “our view;” and it seemed to us as
if Tabb and Hoogencamp and Halkit and the Biggleses could not drive us
away in a year.
I was not surprised when, after breakfast, my wife invited the Bredes
to walk with us to “our view.” The Hoogencamp–Biggle–Tabb–Halkit
contingent never stirred off Jacobus’s verandah; but we both felt that
the Bredes would not profane that sacred scene. We strolled slowly
across the fields, passed through the little belt of woods, and as I
heard Mrs. Brede’s little cry of startled rapture, I motioned to Brede
to look up.
“By Jove!” he cried, “heavenly!”
We looked off from the brow of the mountain over fifteen miles of
billowing green, to where, far across a far stretch of pale blue lay
a dim purple line that we knew was Staten Island. Towns and villages
lay before us and under us; there were ridges and hills, uplands and
lowlands, woods and plains, all massed and mingled in that great
silent sea of sunlit green. For silent it was to us, standing in the
silence of a high place—silent with a Sunday stillness that made us
listen, without taking thought, for the sound of bells coming up from
the spires that rose above the tree–tops—the tree–tops that lay as far
beneath us as the light clouds were above us that dropped great shadows
upon our heads and faint specks of shade upon the broad sweep of land
at the mountain’s foot.
“And so that is _your_ view?” asked Mrs. Brede, after a moment; “you
are very generous to make it ours, too.”
Then we lay down on the grass, and Brede began to talk, in a gentle
voice, as if he felt the influence of the place. He had paddled a
canoe, in his earlier days, he said, and he knew every river and creek
in that vast stretch of landscape. He found his landmarks, and pointed
out to us where the Passaic and the Hackensack flowed, invisible to us,
hidden behind great ridges that in our sight were but combings of the
green waves upon which we looked down. And yet, on the further side of
those broad ridges and rises were scores of villages—a little world of
country life, lying unseen under our eyes.
“A good deal like looking at humanity,” he said: “there is such a thing
as getting so far above our fellow–men that we see only one side of
them.”
Ah, how much better was this sort of talk than the chatter and gossip
of the Tabb and the Hoogencamp—than the Major’s dissertations upon his
everlasting circulars! My wife and I exchanged glances.
“Now, when I went up the Matterhorn,” Mr. Brede began.
“Why, dear,” interrupted his wife; “I didn’t know you ever went up the
Matterhorn.”
“It—it was five years ago,” said Mr. Brede, hurriedly. “I—I didn’t
tell you—when I was on the other side, you know—it was rather
dangerous—well, as I was saying—it looked—oh, it didn’t look at all
like this.”
A cloud floated overhead, throwing its great shadow over the field
where we lay. The shadow passed over the mountain’s brow and reappeared
far below, a rapidly decreasing blot, flying eastward over the golden
green. My wife and I exchanged glances once more.
Somehow, the shadow lingered over us all. As we went home, the Bredes
went side by side along the narrow path, and my wife and I walked
together.
“_Should you think_,” she asked me, “that a man would climb the
Matterhorn the very first year he was married?”
“I don’t know, my dear,” I answered, evasively; “this isn’t the first
year I have been married, not by a good many, and I wouldn’t climb
it—for a farm.”
“You know what I mean,” she said.
I did.
* * * * *
[Illustration]
When we reached the boarding–house, Mr. Jacobus took me aside.
“You know,” he began his discourse, “my wife, she used to live in N’
York!”
I didn’t know; but I said “Yes.”
“She says the numbers on the streets runs criss–cross like.
Thirty–four’s on one side o’ the street an’ thirty–five on t’ other.
How’s that?”
“That is the invariable rule, I believe.”
“Then—I say—these here new folk that you ’n’ your wife seem so mighty
taken up with—d’ ye know any thing about ’em?”
“I know nothing about the character of your boarders, Mr. Jacobus,” I
replied, conscious of some irritability. “If I choose to associate
with any of them—“
“Jess so—jess so!” broke in Jacobus. “I hain’t nothin’ to say ag’inst
yer sosherbil’ty. But do ye _know_ them?”
“Why, certainly not,” I replied.
“Well—that was all I wuz askin’ ye. Ye see, when _he_ come here to take
the rooms—you wasn’t here then—he told my wife that he lived at number
thirty–four in his street. An’ yistiddy _she_ told her that they lived
at number thirty–five. He said he lived in an apartment–house. Now
there can’t be no apartment–house on two sides of the same street, kin
they?”
“What street was it?” I inquired, wearily.
“Hunderd ’n’ twenty–first street.”
“May be,” I replied, still more wearily. “That’s Harlem. Nobody knows
what people will do in Harlem.”
I went up to my wife’s room.
“Don’t you think it’s queer?” she asked me.
“I think I’ll have a talk with that young man to–night,” I said, “and
see if he can give some account of himself.”
“But, my dear,” my wife said, gravely, “_she_ doesn’t know whether
they’ve had the measles or not.”
“Why, Great Scott!” I exclaimed, “they must have had them when they
were children.”
“Please don’t be stupid,” said my wife. “I meant _their_ children.”
* * * * *
After dinner that night—or rather, after supper, for we had dinner in
the middle of the day at Jacobus’s—I walked down the long verandah to
ask Brede, who was placidly smoking at the other end, to accompany me
on a twilight stroll. Half way down I met Major Halkit.
[Illustration]
“That friend of yours,” he said, indicating the unconscious figure at
the further end of the house, “seems to be a queer sort of a Dick.
He told me that he was out of business, and just looking round for
a chance to invest his capital. And I’ve been telling him what an
everlasting big show he had to take stock in the Capitoline Trust
Company—starts next month—four million capital—I told you all about
it. ‘Oh, well,’ he says, ‘let’s wait and think about it.’ ‘Wait!’ says
I, ‘the Capitoline Trust Company won’t wait for _you_, my boy. This is
letting you in on the ground floor,’ says I ‘and it’s now or never.’
‘Oh, let it wait,’ says he. I don’t know what’s in–_to_ the man.”
“I don’t know how well he knows his own business, Major,” I said as I
started again for Brede’s end of the verandah. But I was troubled none
the less. The Major could not have influenced the sale of one share of
stock in the Capitoline Company. But that stock was a great investment;
a rare chance for a purchaser with a few thousand dollars. Perhaps
it was no more remarkable that Brede should not invest than that I
should not—and yet, it seemed to add one circumstance more to the other
suspicious circumstances.
* * * * *
When I went upstairs that evening, I found my wife putting her hair to
bed—I don’t know how I can better describe an operation familiar to
every married man. I waited until the last tress was coiled up, and
then I spoke.
[Illustration]
“I’ve talked with Brede,” I said, “and I didn’t have to catechize him.
He seemed to feel that some sort of explanation was looked for, and he
was very out–spoken. You were right about the children—that is, I must
have misunderstood him. There are only two. But the Matterhorn episode
was simple enough. He didn’t realize how dangerous it was until he had
got so far into it that he couldn’t back out; and he didn’t tell her,
because he’d left her here, you see, and under the circumstances—“
“Left her here!” cried my wife. “I’ve been sitting with her the whole
afternoon, sewing, and she told me that he left her at Geneva, and came
back and took her to Basle, and the baby was born there—now I’m sure,
dear, because I asked her.”
“Perhaps I was mistaken when I thought he said she was on this side of
the water,” I suggested, with bitter, biting irony.
“You poor dear, did I abuse you?” said my wife. “But, do you know, Mrs.
Tabb said that _she_ didn’t know how many lumps of sugar he took in his
coffee. Now that seems queer, doesn’t it.”
It did. It was a small thing. But it looked queer. Very queer.
* * * * *