Belford's Magazine, Volume II, No. 8, January, 1889

Even in that fashionable section the streets already showed somewhat of the bustle of the busy to-morrow. Belated caterers’ carts spun by; early butchers’ and milk-wagons rumbled along, making their best speed towards distant patrons. Here and there, gleams from gas-lit windows slanted athwart the frosty darkness, punctuated by ever-recurrent flaring of street lamps. Not infrequent groups of muffled men – some jovial with reminiscent scenes of pleasure left behind, and some hilarious from what they brought along with them – passed him, as he strode rapidly along the echoing flags, too intent on his own thoughts to notice any of them.

Suddenly, from beneath one of the gloom punctuators opposite, a woman’s voice cut the air sharply:

“Please let me pass!”

Morris, alert in a second, had crossed the street and joined the group of four intuitively, before he knew it himself. Three young men, whose evening dress told that they were of society, and whose unsteady hold of their own legs, that they had had just a little too much of it, barred the way of a young girl. Tall, slight, and with a mass of blonde hair escaping from the rough shawl she drew closer about her head as she shrank back, there was something showing through her womanly terror that spoke convincingly the gentlewoman. The trio chuckled inanely, making elaborate bows; and the girl shivered as she shrank further into the shadow, and repeated piteously:

“Do, please, let me pass! won’t you?”

“Certainly they will,” Van answered, stepping up on the pavement and taking her in at a glance. “Am I not right, gentlemen?” he added urbanely to the unsteady trio.

“Not by a damned sight!”

“Who the devil are you?” were the prompt and simultaneous rejoinders.

“That doesn’t matter,” Van answered quietly; “but you are obstructing the public streets and frightening this evident stranger.”

“We don’t know any stranger at two o’clock in the morning,” was the illogical rejoinder of the third youth, who clung to the lamp-post.

“What about it, anyway?” said the stoutest of the three, advancing towards Morris. “Do you know her?”

“You evidently do not,” Van replied; then he turned to the girl with the deference he would scarce have used to the leader of his set. “If you will take my arm, I will see you safely to the nearest policeman.”

The girl hesitated and shrunk back a second; then, with that instinctive trust which – fortunately, perhaps – is peculiarly feminine, slipped her red, ungloved little hand into his arm.

The leader of the trio staggered a step nearer. “You’re a nice masher,” he said thickly; “but if it’s a row you’re looking for, you can find one pretty quick!”

Morris glanced at the man with genuine pity.

“You look as though you might be a gentlemen when you are sober,” he said. “I am not looking for a row; and if you boys make one, you’ll only be more ashamed of yourselves on Christmas day than you should be already. And now I wish to pass.”

“I’ll give you a pass,” the other answered; and, with a lurch, he fronted Morris and put up his hands in most approved fighting form. At the same moment, the girl – with the inopportune logic of all girls in such cases – clung heavily to Morris’s arm and cried piteously:

“Oh, no! You mustn’t! Not for me!” and, as she did so the man lunged a vicious blow with his right hand, full at Morris’s face.

But, though like J. Fitz-James, “taught abroad his arms to wield,” Van Morris had likewise used his legs to wrestle in England, and had moreover seen la savatte in France. With a quick turn of his head, the blow passed heavily, but harmlessly, by his cheek. At the same instant his foot shot swiftly out, close to the ground, and with a sharp sweep from right to left, cut his opponent’s heels from under him, as a sickle cuts weeds, sprawling him backwards upon the pavement.

Drawing the girl swiftly through the breach thus made, Morris placed her behind him and turned to face the men again. They made no rush, as he had expected; so he spoke quickly:

“You’d better pick up your friend and be off. You don’t look like boys who would care to sleep in the station,” he said, “and here comes the patrol wagon.”

They needed no second warning, nor stood upon the order of their going. The downed man was on his feet; and it was devil take the hind-most to the first corner. For the rumbling of heavy wheels and the clang of heavy hoofs upon the Belgian blocks were drawing nearer.

To Van’s relief, for he hated a scene, it proved to be only a “night-liner” cab, though with rattle enough for a field battery; but to his tipsy antagonists it had more terror than a park of Parrot guns.

“Can I do anything more for you?” he asked the girl; then suddenly: “You’re not the sort to be out alone at this hour of the night. Are you in trouble?”

“Oh, indeed I am!” she answered, with a sob; again illogical, and breaking down when the danger was over. “What must you think of me? But mother was suddenly so ill, and father and sister were at a ball, and the servants slipped away, too. I dared not wait, so I ran out alone to fetch Doctor Mordant. Please believe me, for – ”

“Hello, Cab!” broke in Van. “Certainly I believe you,” he answered the girl, as the cab pulled up with that eager jerk of the driver’s elbows, eloquent of fare scented afar off. “I’ll go with you for Doctor Mordant, and then see you home.”

“Why, is that you, Mr. Morris?” cried Cabby, with a salute of his whip à la militaire; but he muttered to himself, “Well, I never!” as he jumped from the box and held the door wide.

“That’s enough, Murphy,” Van said shortly. “Now, jump in, Miss, and I’ll – ” But the girl shrank back, and drew the shawl closer round her face. “No, I won’t either. Pardon my thoughtlessness; for it isn’t exactly the hour to be driving alone with a fellow, I know. But you can trust Murphy perfectly. Dennis, drive this lady to Dr. Mordant’s and then home again, just as fast as your team can carry her!” And he half lifted the girl into the carriage.

“That I will, Mr. Van,” Murphy replied cheerily, as he clambered to his seat.

The girl stretched out two cold, red little hands, and clasped his fur-gloved one frankly.

“Oh! thank you a thousand times,” she said. “I knew you were a gentleman at the first word to those cowards; but I never dreamed you were Mr. Van Morris. I’ve heard sister speak of you so often!”

“Your sister?” Van stared at the cheaply-clad night wanderer, as though he had had too much Regent’s punch.

“Yes, sister Rose – Rose Wood,” she said, with the confidence of acquaintance. “I’m her sister, you know – Blanche.”

“Blanche? Your name is Blanche? I cannot tell you how happy I am to have chanced along just now, Miss Wood;” and Van bared his head in the cutting night wind to the blanket-shawled girl in the night-liner, as he would not have done at high noon to a duchess in her chariot. “But I’m wasting your time from your mother; so good-morning; and may your Christmas be happier than its eve.”

“Good-by! And oh, how I thank you!” the girl said, again extending her hand over the cab door. “I’ll tell Rose, and she shall thank you, better than I can!”

“Good-night! But don’t trouble her,” Van said, releasing the girl’s hand. “One minute, Murphy,” he added aside to the driver; “here’s your Christmas-gift!”

A bright gold piece glinted in the dirty fur glove, in which Dennis Murphy looked to find a shilling under the next gas-lamp.

“Blanche! and the same golden hair, too!” Van muttered to himself, as the cab rocked and ricketted down the street. “Well, I suppose that is what the poet means by ‘the magic of a name’!” and he suddenly recalled that he was still standing bareheaded in the blast. “And Rose Wood’s sister looks like that! Well, verily one half the world does not know how the other half lives!”

Then he turned and strode rapidly homeward; pulling hard, as he thought many strange thoughts, on the dead cigar between his lips.

Once in his own parlor, Van Morris walked straight to the mirror over the mantel, and looked long and steadily at himself. Then he tossed Mr. Allmand’s half-smoked cigar contemptuously into the grate, lit one he selected carefully from the carved stand near, and threw himself into a smoking-chair before the ruddy glow of coals.

“I must be getting old,” he soliloquized. “I didn’t use to get bored so easily by these things. Either balls are not what they were, or I am not. Now, ‘there’s no place like home!’ Not much of a box to call home, either!” And he glanced round the really elegant apartment in half-disgust. “There’s something lacking! Andy’s the best fellow in the world, but he’s so wanting in order. Poor old boy! Wonder if he will drink anything more? I surely must blow him up to-morrow morning. How deucedly sharp she is!” and he smiled to himself. “She saw through Rose Wood’s game at a glance. Wonder if she saw through me?”

He looked steadily into the glowing coals, as though castles were building there. Once or twice his lips moved soundlessly; and suddenly he reached over to the escritoire near by, and taking an oval case from it, opened it, and gazed long and earnestly at the picture in it. The face was the average one of a young girl, with stiff plaits of hair stiffly tossed over the shoulder, in futile chase after grace; but the wide blue eyes were a glory of purity and trust, and they were the eyes of Blanche Allmand.

Then he rose abruptly, walked to the sideboard, and filled a glass with water. Then he placed carefully in it the cactus flower and camelia bud, which had never left his hand since he plucked them in the conservatory. As he did so, Morris’ face grew serious, and looked down wistfully into the fire.

When he raised his eyes they were full of hopeful light, and they rested long and steadily upon the flowers.

“Yes! It is better!” he exclaimed aloud, as though continuing a train of thought. “Some of that family bloom only once in a century. I cannot look for miracles, and many a hand may reach for my flower. Yes, to-morrow shall settle it! The Italian was even more philosopher than poet when he said, ‘Amare e no essere amato e tiempo perduto’!”

VI

When Mr. Andrew Browne tumbled into the cosy parlor of that bachelor’s box at 4 A.M. on Christmas morning, he was by all odds the happiest man of his acquaintance, even if he knew himself, which was more than doubtful.

He slammed the door, slung his fur-lined overcoat across the sofa, turned up the gas until it whistled merrily, and poked the fire until it roared again. Then he hunted the boot-jack, and drew off one boot; changed his mind, and flung himself into the smoking-chair, and stretched booted and unbooted foot to the blaze. Thus posed, he trolled out, “Il segreto per esser felice,” in a rich baritone; only interrupting his tempo to spit out superfluous ends, bitten from his cigar, in the effort to phrase neatly and smoke at the same time.

“Why the deuce don’t you get to bed?” growled Van Morris from the next room. He was aroused from dreams of Blanche Allmand, music, diamond solitaires, and orange-blossoms, mixed into one sweet confusion. “Stop your row, can’t you? and go to bed!”

“You go to bed yo’sef!” responded the illogical Andy, rising, not too steadily, on his one boot, and throwing wide the folding-door. “Who wants to go to bed? I sha’n’t.”

“You’re an idiot!” muttered Mr. Morris; and he turned his face to the wall.

“Guess am an idiot,” responded Andy, blandly. “But I ain’t tight, – only happy! I’m the happiest idiot —Il segreto per ess– Say, Van! I’m so devilish happy, ol’ boy!”

Morris turned over with a groan, and pulled the covering over his head. The strong, small word he uttered as he did so is not to be found in the church service. But Andy was not to be snubbed in that style. He stepped forward; attempted to sit on the bed’s edge; miscalculated his momentum, and succeeded in landing plump on the centre of his friend’s person.

“Confound you!” gasped the latter, breathless. “You’re as drunk as – as a fool!”

“No, I ain’t,” chuckled Andy, imperturbably happy. Then he laughed till the bed shook; composing himself suddenly into gravity, with a fierce snort – “No, I ain’t: you’re sober!”

“And when she asked, I said you never drank,” reproached the irate and still gasping Morris. “I lied for you!”

“Tha’s nothing. I’ll lie for you; lie for you to-morrow – see’f I don’t! Say, Van, ol’ boy, I ain’t tight; only happy —so happy! Van! Van!” and he shook the pretended sleeper heavily. “I’m goin’ to reform! I’m goin’ to be married!”

“What? Rose Wood?”

Van Morris sat bolt upright in bed now. The tone of voice in which he invoked Miss Wood might have brought response from that wise virgin, disrobing for triumphant rest full ten blocks away.

But he found it vain to argue with Andy’s mixed Burgundy and champagne punch. Contradiction but made him insist more strongly that he was engaged to the old campaigner, whom Morris had so manœuvred to outflank. Finally, in a miscellaneous outfit of evening pants, night-gown, and smoking-cap, he succeeded in getting the jubilant groom in futuro into bed, where he still hummed at the much-sought secret of happiness, until he collapsed with a sudden snore, and slept like the Swiss.

Then Morris walked the floor rapidly, wrapped in thought and a cloud of fragrant cigar-smoke. Then he threw himself once more into the smoking-chair, and gazed long and earnestly into the coals, a heavy frown resting on his face. Suddenly it cleared off; the sunshine of a broad smile took its place; and Van tossed the end of his cigar exultingly into the fire. Then he rose and stretched himself like a veritable son of Anak, when

“Stalwart they court the rapture of the fight.”

“I have it, by George!” he cried. “I’ll get the poor fellow out of this box, if the old girl did induce him to pop, and accepted him out of hand! Andy! I say, Andy, wake up!” and he ran into his chum’s room, dragged him out of bed, and had him at the fire, before he was well awake.

Mr. Andrew Browne was no longer in a mood even approaching the jubilant. He had utterly forgotten the secret per esser felice, during his two hours’ nap. He confessed to a consuming desire for Congress-water, and made use of improper words upon finding only empty bottles, aggravating in reminiscence of it, in the carved ebony sideboard.

Finally he sat down, with his head in his hands, and told his story dismally enough.

Miss Rose Wood’s carriage had been dismissed, as per programme. Andy had led the German with her, and a bottle of champagne at his side. He had walked home with her; had told her – in what wild words he knew not – that he loved her; and had been, as Van had surmised, “accepted out of hand.”

“And, Van, I’m bound, as a man of honor, to marry her!” finished the now thoroughly dejected fiancé. “Yes, I know what you’d say; it is a pretty rum thing to do; but then she mustn’t suffer for my cursed folly!”

“Suffer? Rose Wood suffer for missing fire one time more?”

Surprise struggled with contempt in the exclamation Morris shot out by impulse.

“But, if she loves me well enough to engage – ” Andy began, rather faintly; but his mentor cut him short.

“Love the d —deuce!” he retorted. “Why, she’s a beggar and a husband-trap!”

“But her family? What will they think?” pleaded Andy, but with very little soul in the plea.

“Poor little Blanche!” muttered Morris, half to himself. “Bah! the girl has no heart!”

“Blanche?” echoed Van, in a dazed sort of way. “Why, you don’t suppose Blanche will know it! I never thought of her!” and he rose feebly, and stood shivering in his ghostly attire.

“Why, of course, Rose Wood couldn’t keep such great news. Why, man, you’re the capital prize in the matrimonial lottery; but hang me if Miss Wood shan’t draw another blank this time!”

There was a compound of deadly nausea and effortful dignity in the elbows Mr. Andrew Browne leaned upon the mantel, which hinted volumes for what his face might have said, had it been visible through the fingers latticed over it.

“I am a gentleman,” he half gasped. “It may be a trap; but I’ll keep my word, and —marry her, unless – unless, Van, you get me out of it!”

“Go to bed, you spoon!” laughed his friend. “I have the whole plan cut and dried. I’ll teach you your lesson as soon as you sleep yourself sober.”

Morris stood many minutes by the bedside of his quickly-sleeping friend; but, when he turned into the parlor again, his face was pale and stern.

“The way of the world, always,” he said aloud. “One inanely eager, another stupidly backward. ‘Fools rush in where angels fear to tread!’ Poor boy! he’d give as much to-morrow to unsay his words as I would to have spoken those I nearly said last night!”

The chill gray dawn outside was wrestling at the windows for entrance with the sickly glaring gas-light within. Morris drew aside the heavy curtains and pressed his forehead against the frost-laced pane. Long he looked out into the gray haze with eyes that saw nothing beyond his own thoughts. Then he turned to the fire again. The gray ash was hiding the glow of the spent coals. Then he took up the glass once more and looked earnestly at the contrasted flowers it held. He replaced it almost tenderly, and walked slowly to his own room.

“Yes, I know myself,” he said; “I think I know her. I’ll hesitate no longer; some fool may ‘rush in.’ To-morrow shall settle it. The tough old Scotchman was right:

‘He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small,That dares not put it to the touch To gain or lose it all!’”VII

That same afternoon, at two o’clock, Mr. Vanderbilt Morris’s stylish dog-cart, drawn by his high-spirited bays, drew up at Miss Rose Wood’s domicile. Holding the reins sat Mr. Andrew Browne, beaming as though Chambertin had never been pressed from the grape; seemingly as fresh as though headache had never slipped with the rest out of Pandora’s box.

But it may have been only seemingly; for, faultlessly attired from scarf-pin to glove tips, Andy was still a trifle more uneasy than the dancing of his restless team might warrant in so noted a whip as he. A queer expression swept over his handsome face from time to time; and, as he came to a halt, he glanced furtively over his shoulder, as though fearing something in pursuit.

“Ask Miss Rose if she will drive with me,” he said hurriedly to the servant. “Say I can’t get down to come in; the horses are too fresh.”

Then the off-horse danced a polka in space, responsive to deft tickling with the whip.

Miss Wood did not stand upon ceremony, nor upon the order of her going, but went at once to get her wraps.

“Better late than never,” she said to herself, as she dived into a drawer and upset her mouchoir case in search for a particular handkerchief. “I really couldn’t comprehend his absence and silence all day – but, poor boy! he’s so young!” And then Miss Rose, as she tied a becoming cardinal bow under her chin, hummed two bars of “The Wedding March” through the pins in her mouth.

Two minutes later saw her seated on the high box beside her future lord in posse; the bays plunging like mad and Andy swinging to the reins as if for life. For, before she could speak one word – and for no reason to her apparent – he had let the limber lash drop stingingly across their backs.

Very keen was the winter wind that swept by her tingling ears; and Miss Wood raised her seal-skin muff and hid her modest blushes from it. For that gentle virgin had ever a familiar demon at her elbow. His name was Experience; and now he whispered to her: “A red nose never reflects sentiment!”

“And he is so particular how one looks,” Miss Rose whispered back to the familiar; and her tip-tilted feature sought deeper protection in the furs.

At length, when well off the paved streets, the mad rush of the brutes cooled down to a swinging trot – ten miles an hour; Browne’s tense arms relaxed a trifle; and he drew a long, deep breath – whether of relief, or anxiety, no listener could have guessed. But he kept his eyes still rooted to that off-horse’s right ear as though destiny herself sat upon its tip.

Then, for the first time, he spoke; and he spoke with unpunctuated rapidity, in a hard, mechanical tone, as though he were a bad model of Edison’s latest triumph, and some tyro hand was grinding at the cylinder.

“Miss Rose,” he began, “we are old friends – never so old; but I can never sufficiently regret – last night!”

He felt, rather than saw, the muff come sharply down and the face turn full to him; regardless now of the biting wind.

“No! don’t interrupt me,” he went on, straight at the off-horse’s right ear. “I know your goodness of heart; know how it pained you; but you could have done nothing else but —refuse me!”

Miss Rose Wood’s mouth opened quickly; but a providential gutter jolted her nearly from the seat; and the wind drove her first word back into her throat like a sob.

The inexorable machine beside her ground on relentless.

“Yes, I understand what you would say: that you refused me firmly and finally because I —deserved it!” Had Andy Browne’s soul really been the tin-foil of the phonograph, it could not have shown more utter disregard of moral responsibility. “You knew I was under the influence of wine; that I would never have dared to address you had I been myself! I repeat, I deserve my —decisive rejection! It was proper and just in you to say ‘No!’”

Woman’s will conquered for one brief second. Spite of wind and spite of him, Miss Wood began:

“‘No?’ I – ”

“Yes, ‘no!’” broke in the relentless machinery. It ground on implacable, though great beads stood on Andy’s brow from sheer terror lest he run down before the end. “No! as firmly, as emphatically as you said it to me last night. Indeed, I honor you the more for flatly refusing the man who, in forgetting his self-respect, forgot his respect —for you! But, Miss Rose, while I pledge you my honor never, never to speak to you again of love, I may still be —your friend!”

The bays were bowling down the street again by this time; when another kismet, in small and ugly canine form, flew at their heads with yelp and snarl. Rearing with one impulse, the spirited pair lunged forward and flew past the now twinkling lamps in a wild gallop. Andy pulled them down at last; their swinging trot replacing the dangerous rush. The Wood mansion was almost in sight; but the Ancient Mariner was a tyro to Andy Browne in the way he fixed that off-horse’s right ear with stony stare.

He might have looked round in perfect safety. The lithe figure by him sat gracefully erect. The face a trifle pale; the lips set tight against each other, with the blood pressed out of them, were not unnatural in that cutting wind. The eyes, fixed straight ahead, as his own, gleamed gray and cold; only a half-closing of the lids, once or twice, hiding an ugly light reflecting through them from the busy brain behind. But Andy never turned once until he brought up the bays stock still and leaped down to offer his hand to the lady at her own door.

She took it, naturally; springing to the ground as lightly as any débutante of the season. Not one trace of annoyance, even, showed on that best educated face.

“Andy, we are old friends,” she said, offering her hand frankly.

He took it mechanically, with a dazed soft of feeling that he must be even a bigger fool than he felt himself.

“Real friends,” Miss Wood went on, pleasantly, “and I’ll prove it to you now. You have acted like a man of honor to me; I will betray one little confidence, and make two people happy!”

The man still stood dumb; and his eye furtively wandered to the pawing off-horse, as if to take his confidence as to what it meant. The woman’s next words came slowly, and she smiled; a strange smile the lips alone made, but in which the glinting gray eyes took no share.