Sherrington accompanied Miss Marvin through the door behind the proscenium box into the dark auditorium.
"You will play that scene very well," he said, "but you've got to have confidence."
"It is a beautiful part, isn't it?" she responded, with enthusiasm. "I never had a part I could enjoy playing so much."
Carpenter was about to leave the stage to tell Mary what a delight it was to him to hear her speak the words he had written, when his collaborator tapped him on the shoulder. As he turned Harry Brackett whispered in his ear:
"Look out for the Stellar Attraction. I'm afraid she has just dropped on Marvin's part. If she once suspects that the little girl may get that scene away from her, she can make herself mightily disagreeable all round. I guess we had better go up and tell her she is a greater actress than Charlotte Cushman."
Carpenter laughingly answered: "Take care she doesn't drop on you! It would be worse if she thought you were guying her."
"There's no danger of that," Harry Brackett returned. "That Stellar Attraction of ours is a boa-constrictor for flattery—there isn't anything she won't swallow."
The two dramatic authors found Miss Daisy Fostelle standing in the wings and discussing with Dresser the personal peculiarities of another member of the dramatic profession.
As Carpenter and Brackett came up the actress was saying: "Why, she had the cheek actually to tell me I was more amusing off the stage than on—the cat! But I got even with her. I told her I was sorry I couldn't return the compliment, for she was even less amusing on the stage than off!"
The two dramatists joined in the laugh, and then Harry Brackett began.
"Is it your hated rival you are having fun with?" he asked. "Well, if she comes to see you in this play to-morrow they'll have to put a waterproof carpet into the private box, for she will weep bitter tears of despair while she's watching you in this second act of ours."
Miss Daisy Fostelle snapped her big black eyes at him and smiled with pleasure.
"Yes," she admitted. "I don't believe she will really enjoy that scene—and yet she'll have to give me a hand at the end of the act."
"She'll go through the motions, perhaps," Brackett returned, "but she won't burst a hole in her gloves." Then he slyly nudged his collaborator.
"The fact is," began Carpenter, thus admonished, "I was just going to tell Harry Brackett here that maybe we have made a mistake in writing you a high-comedy part like this—"
The actress flashed a suspicious glance at him, but he went on as if unconscious of this.
"We can see now," he continued, "that you are going to play this part so well that you will make a great hit in it, and then the critics will all be after you to play Lady Teazle and Rosalind. They'll tell you that you are only wasting your talents in modern plays and that you ought to devote yourself to the legitimate."
The suspicion faded from Miss Daisy Fostelle's face and the smile of pleasure reappeared.
"That's so," Harry Brackett declared. "You will make such a hit in this part, I'm afraid, that Sheridan and Shakespeare will be good enough for you next season. Now that would be taking the bread out of our mouths!"
The actress laughed easily. "I don't think you would starve," she returned; "and I might, maybe—if I took to the legitimate. Not that it would be my first attempt, either, for I played Ariel in the 'Tempest' when I was a mere child. And it wasn't easy, I can tell you. Ariel's a real hard part, I think; there's a certain swing to the words, too, and you can't make up a line of your own if you get stuck, as I could in this piece of yours."
"No," Brackett confessed, solemnly, "the dialogue of 'Touch and Go' is not as rhythmic as the dialogue of the 'Tempest.'"
"And I've played François in 'Richelieu,' too," continued Miss Fostelle. "But I don't think I really like any of those Shakespearian parts."
"No," Brackett confessed again, with fearless gravity, "François is not one of Shakespeare's best parts. It wasn't worthy of you, no matter how inexperienced you were. But Rosalind, now, as Carpenter suggests, and Beatrice—"
Carpenter here guessed from Dresser's spasmodic manner that the actor was about to intervene in the conversation, and not knowing what might be the result, the younger of the dramatists dropped out of the group and managed to draw Dresser away with him.
After they had exchanged a few words Carpenter looked into the auditorium to discover where Mary Marvin might be. He saw that she was by the side of her mother, and that Mrs. Loraine and Sherrington were still engaged in an earnest conversation. He made a movement as if to leave Dresser, whereupon the comedian begged him for a moment's interview.
"It's about that speech of mine in the third act that I want to make a suggestion," said the actor. "It's a very good speech, too, and I think I can get three laughs out of it, easy. You know the speech. I mean the one about the three old maids: 'There were three old maids in our town; one was as plain as a pikestaff, and the other was as homely as a hedge fence, and the third was as ugly as sin; and whenever they all three walked out together every clock in the place stopped short. Their parents had christened them Faith and Hope and Charity; but the boys always called them Battle and Murder and Sudden Death.' Now, don't you think it would help to ring out the point more if the orchestra was to play 'Grandfather's Clock' very gently just as I say that 'every clock in the place stopped short'? What do you think? That's my own idea!"
The dramatist said nothing for a second or two, and then told the actor to consult the stage-manager, who was just returning to begin the rehearsal of the third act.
The new scene had been set swiftly and the furniture was already in place. The first of the actors to enter was the cadaverous and irritable Stark. He began glibly enough, but soon hesitated for a word, and then broke out impatiently, regardless of the presence of the two authors: "Oh, I can't get that line into my head! And I don't know what it means, either! How can you expect a man to speak such rubbish?"
As before, nobody paid any attention to this petulance, and the actor went on with his part without further comment.
Dresser then entered, and the two men proceeded to misunderstand each other in the most elaborate fashion. The character which Stark represented had reason to believe that the character that Dresser represented was the uncle of the character that Daisy Fostelle represented and was also a soldier. In like manner Dresser had reason to believe that Stark was the lady's uncle and also a sailor. They addressed each other, therefore, in sailor talk and in soldier talk; and the fun waxed fast and furious. At the height of the misunderstanding Daisy Fostelle entered unexpectedly and found herself instantly immeshed in the humorous complication, with no possibility of plausible explanation.
Once the stage-manager reminded Dresser that he had omitted a phrase. "You left out 'Confound it, man!'" he said.
"I know it," the actor explained, "but I wanted to save it to use in my next speech. It goes better there—you see if it does not."
And Sherrington decided that "Confound it, man!" was more effective in the later speech; so the transposition was authorized, to Dresser's satisfaction.
The stage-manager had this important scene of mutual misunderstanding between Stark and Dresser and Daisy Fostelle repeated twice, until every word fell glibly and every gesture seemed automatic. And so the rehearsal went to the end, Sherrington applying the finishing touches, and seeming at last to be fairly well satisfied with the result of his labors.
The final lines of the comedy were, of course, to be delivered by the star; but when the cue was given to her Miss Fostelle simply said "Tag!" everybody being aware that it is very unlucky to speak the last speech of a play at a rehearsal—as unlucky as it is to put up an umbrella on the stage, or to quote from "Macbeth."
"That will do," said the stage-manager; "I think it will be all right to-morrow night."
And with that the rehearsal concluded and the company began to disperse.
"I hope it is all right," Harry Brackett remarked to Carpenter, "and I think it is. But I shall have a great deal more confidence after the man in the box-office shakes hands with me cordially, say, next Wednesday or Thursday, and inquires about my health. He'll know by that time whether we've got a good thing or not!"
Carpenter helped Miss Marvin to put on her light cape. Then, after her mother had joined them, they said good-night to the others and left the theatre together.
When they came out into the warm night the street was quieter than it had been when Carpenter entered the theatre. There were fewer cable-cars passing the door, and the trains on the elevated road in the avenue were now infrequent. The lights had been turned out in front of the variety show across the way, and evidently the grand sacred concert was over. The moon had sunk, and before they had gone a block the bell of the church tolled the hour of midnight.
The young man who was walking by the side of Mrs. Loraine broke the silence at last.
"Well," he asked, "what do you think of the play now?"
"I think it is a good piece of its kind," the elder actress answered—"a very good piece of its kind; and it is well staged; and it will be well acted, too. Sherrington knows how to get his best work out of everybody. Yes, it will be a success."
"Is it good for three months here now?" the young author asked, "and for the rest of the season on the road?"
"Oh yes, indeed," replied Mrs. Loraine; "yes, indeed. It's safe for a hundred nights here at least!"
They paused at the corner to wait for a cable-car, and Sherrington joined them.
This gave Carpenter a chance to lead the daughter away from the mother half a dozen steps.
"I'm so glad mother thinks the play will go," the girl began. "And mother is a very good judge, too. You ought to make a lot out of it."
The young dramatist felt that he had his chance at last.
"I've wanted to make money mainly for one reason," he returned; "I wanted to ask you to take half of it."
"Half of it?" she echoed, as though she did not understand.
"Oh, well—all of it," he responded, swiftly; "and me with it."
"Mr. Carpenter!" she cried, and her blushes made her look even lovelier than before.
"Won't you marry me?" he asked, ardently.
"Oh, I suppose I've got to say yes," she answered, "or else you'll go down on your knees here in the street!"
(1895.)
LITTLE Miss Peters had given a last look to the dinner-table with its effective decoration of autumn leaves, and she had made sure that the cards were in their proper places. She had glanced at herself in the mirror of the music-room as she passed through, and she had smiled to see the little spot of color burning in her cheek. She had taken her place modestly behind her employer, the portly hostess, and she had seen the guests arrive one by one. She had remarked the cheerful eagerness of the young Irishman for whose sake the company had gathered, and she had frankly admired his good looks. Now she was sitting silently in her seat at the table, and she was wondering what the stranger would think of them all.
It would not be quite fair to the worthy widow to say that Mrs. Canton's dinners were always ponderous; but it might be admitted that, although the cooking was ever excellent and the guests were selected from the innermost circle of Society, the bill of fare was monotonous and the conversation often lacked variety. That evening, however, there were several present who had not before been honored with invitations to dine in that exclusive mansion. Few people of fashion were back in town so early in October, and it had not been easy for Mrs. Canton to make up her complement of guests when she found that she had suddenly to honor a letter of introduction Lord Mannington had given to the Honorable Gilbert Barry, brother of Lord Punchestown. She had heard that the handsome Irishman had been a great success at Lenox, and that all the girls were wild about him. In Mannington's letter she was informed that the young man went in for slumming and all that sort of thing, and that he had been living in Toynbee Hall; she was besought, therefore, to make him acquainted with the people in New York most interested in the elevation of the lower classes.
This sentence of Lord Mannington's letter it was that had caused Mrs. Canton to invite Rupert de Ruyter, the novelist, for she happened to have read one of his stories about the wretched creatures living down in the Italian quarter, and she was sure he would be able to tell Mr. Barry all that the young Irishman might want to know about the slums of New York. She had been fortunate enough to get the Jimmy Suydams, too; and she knew that Mrs. Jimmy took such an interest in the poor, acting as patroness so often, and all that. Then when little Miss Peters had come in to write the invitations and to balance the check-book and to answer the accumulated notes, Mrs. Canton, having gone over the list, looked at the pretty young secretary for a minute without speaking, and then said, "It won't be easy to get just the people one wants. Why shouldn't you come, Miss Peters? You belong to one of those things, you know, what do you call them—Working Girls' Clubs—don't you?"
"I'm a working girl myself, am I not?" Miss Peters answered. "And I reckon I'm very glad I've gotten the work to do."
"Then you can tell him anything Mr. de Ruyter doesn't know about these sort of people. How absurd for the younger brother of a peer to bother himself about such things over here, isn't it?" Mrs. Canton had returned. "Then that's settled."
Although the Southern girl had not relished the way the invitation had been proffered, she had not declined it, glad to get a glimpse again of the life of luxury to which she had been a stranger since she had been earning her own living; and thus it was that she was sitting silently in her seat at the dinner-table that evening in October, with Gilbert Barry and Rupert de Ruyter opposite to her. She did not seem to notice how the young Irishman glanced across the table at her more than once with obvious admiration, or how he tried to lure her into the conversation.
It irritated Miss Peters to have Rupert de Ruyter monopolize the talk. His rather rasping voice sawed her nerves, and she detested the way he thrust forward his square chin. She listened while he chattered along, not boasting exactly, yet managing to convey the impression that he knew more than any one else. Now and again he did bring forth a picturesque fact, for which he had the kodak eye of a reporter. He had the happy-go-lucky facility of the newspaper man, and he rattled away with more than one absurd misapprehension of the reality, until he reminded her of a singer with a fine voice but unable to avoid false notes.
"I don't pretend to know New York inside-out and upsidedown," he was saying; "but it is a most fascinating study, this polyglot city of ours, and the more you push your investigations the more likely you are to make surprising discoveries. You know we have an Italian quarter here?"
This was addressed, perhaps, to the British guest, but it was Mrs. Jimmy Suydam who answered it.
"Of course we do," she said; "haven't we all read that thrilling story you wrote about it?—the story with the startling title—A Vision of Black Despair."
The author flushed with pride that so handsome a woman and so exclusive a leader of Society should thus praise one of his writings.
Mr. Jimmy Suydam leaned over to Mrs. Canton, at whose left he was sitting, and said, "I don't see how my wife does it, do you? She keeps up with everything, you know—reads all the books—and all that."
"I didn't mean to remind you of that little thing of mine," continued De Ruyter, with a self-satisfied air that made little Miss Peters feel as though she would like to stick a pin in him. "That's neither here nor there, though I spent two days down in the Italian quarter getting up the local color for it. But what you didn't know, any of you, I am certain, is that part of the soil of this city was imported from Italy."
"Really, now," commented the British guest, "that is very interesting, indeed. It would be from a religious motive, I suppose—just as some of the mediæval cemeteries had earth brought from the Holy Land?"
"That would be a more romantic reason, no doubt," the story-teller explained. "But the real one is very prosaic, I fear. The Italian soil here in New York was brought over as ballast by the ships that were going to take back our bread-stuffs. There is lot after lot upon the Harlem that has been filled in with this ballast—stones mostly, but some of it is earth."
"Genoa the superb providing a foundation for imperial New York," said the young Irishman, with a little flourish—and Miss Peters guessed that De Ruyter made a mental note of the figure for future elaboration. "And has New York a volcano under the city like Naples, now?—like every great town in Europe for the matter of that. Have you a seething mass of want and misery and discontent, such as boiled over in Paris under the Commune? That's what I'm wanting to find out."
"We have a devil's cauldron of our own, if that's what you mean," responded De Ruyter; "and we have people from every corner of the globe here now helping to keep the pot a-boiling. We have Russian Jews by the thousand, living just as they did in the Pale. We have Chinese enough to support a Chinese theatre. We have so many Syrians now that they are pre-empting certain blocks for themselves. We have Irish peasants so timid and suspicious that they won't go to the hospital when they are almost dying, because they believe the doctors keep a Black Bottle to be administered to troublesome patients."
"I should think they would be ever so much more comfortable in a roomy hospital than in their stuffy little tenement-house rooms," said Mrs. Jimmy; "and they can't get decent nursing in their own homes, can they?"
"The poor are a most unreasonable lot—and ungrateful, too," added Mr. Suydam; "that's what I think."
"They are not so badly off in their tenement-houses as you might think," explained De Ruyter. "They help each other with the children when there's sickness."
"The universal freemasonry of motherhood," commented Gilbert Barry; and again Miss Peters suspected the story-teller of making a mental record of the phrase.
"They are impossible to understand," De Ruyter declared.
"Why?" asked Miss Peters, suddenly, across the table, to the surprise of everybody. The young Irishman smiled encouragingly, as though he had been regretting that this pretty girl refused to talk.
"Why are they impossible to understand?" repeated the American story-teller. "I don't know, I'm sure. They are conundrums, all of them, and I am ready to give them up."
"Isn't it because you persist in approaching them as though they were strange, wild beasts?" the young woman went on. "You speak of them just as if they were different from us. But they are not, are they? They have their feelings just like we have; they fall in love and they get married and they quarrel and they die, just like we do. There is not more crime in the tenement-houses than there is in the rest of the city—not if you remember how many more people live in the tenement-houses. There isn't less joy there, or less sorrow either. There is quite as much happiness, I reckon, and a good deal more fun. They are not the lower animals; and it just makes me mad all over when I hear them spoken of in that way. They are human beings, after all—and if you can't understand them it's because you're not ready to go to them as your equals."
"That's what I say," the Irishman agreed; "we must approach them on the plane of human sympathy—that's the only way to get them to open their hearts."
"Why should we expect them to open their hearts to us?" Miss Peters continued. "We don't open ours to strangers, do we?"
"That's quite true," admitted Barry. "Sometimes I wonder if it isn't impertinent we are when we thrust ourselves into a poor man's room. I doubt we should like him to thrust himself into ours."
"I think that is a most amusing suggestion of yours," Mrs. Jimmy declared. "I shall look forward with delight to the day when the Five Points send missionaries up to Fifth Avenue."
"What an absurd idea!" cried Mrs. Canton, in disgust.
"Come now," the Irishman returned, "I deny that the suggestion is mine; but it is not so absurd—really, it isn't. There's lots of things they can teach us. I don't know but what we have more to learn from them than they have from us—really I don't. Christianity, now—practical Christianity—'inasmuch as ye did it to one of the least of these,' and all that sort of thing—well, there's more of that among the poor than there is among the rich, I'm thinking."
"If you want to pick up picturesque bits of low life in New York," broke in De Ruyter, "you must get a chance to see a candle in the plate."
"A candle in the plate?" echoed Barry. "I've never heard of it."
"It sounds like the title of a tale of superstition transplanted from Europe and surviving here in America," said Mrs. Jimmy.
"It's not a superstition, it's only a custom," De Ruyter explained; "and whether it's a transplanted survival or not I can't say. You see I've never seen the thing myself, but I've been told about it. I hear that down in the tenement-house region, when a family can't pay the rent and the landlord puts their scant furniture out on the sidewalk, and they don't know where to lay their heads that night, then one of the neighbors takes a candle and lights it and sticks it up on a plate, and takes his stand on the sidewalk; and this is a sign to everybody that there is a family in sore distress, and so the passers-by drop in a penny or two until there is enough to pay the arrears of rent and let the poor mother and children go back."
Mrs. Jimmy Suydam laughed a little bitterly. "That sort of thing may be possible on Cherry Hill," she said, "but it would never do on Murray Hill, would it? Just imagine how absurd a broken millionaire would look standing at a street corner with a little electric light on a silver salver, expecting the multi-millionaires going by to drop in a check or two to pay his rent for him!"
"I thought I had a quaint little silhouette of metropolitan life for you," De Ruyter responded, smiling back; "but you spoil the picture if you guy it like that."
"Very curious it is," said Barry—"very curious, indeed. 'How far a little candle throws its beams.' I don't think that the custom was exported from Ireland or from England—at least, I do not recall anything analogous."
"I've heard an old Irishwoman complain that the law was harder here on the tenant than it was in the old country," Miss Peters asserted; and then she appended an imitation of the old Irishwoman's speech: "'Sure, they'd boycott the landlord there, that's what they'd do, or they'd shoot the agent, maybe; but here ye can't—there's the police, bad cess to 'em!'"
"Have you ever seen the candle in the plate?" Barry asked her, across the table.
"Never," she answered.
"But you have heard of it?" De Ruyter inquired.
"Never before to-night," was her reply.
"You don't mean to say you don't believe that there is any such custom?" Mrs. Jimmy asked. "Thus all our illusions are shattered one by one."
"Of course, I don't know," the girl responded; "I haven't been working down there very long—only since last February. But it sounds like it was a fake, as we used to say in the newspaper office when I was a reporter."
Mrs. Jimmy Suydam had never met Miss Peters before, and now she examined the girl curiously, wondering what sort of being a woman was who had been a reporter and was now living among the poor, and who happened also to be dining at Mrs. Canton's.
The hostess was just then explaining to Mr. Suydam in a whisper that Miss Peters was a Southern girl of excellent family, who used to write those "Polly Perkins" articles for the Dial on Sunday, but who had given it up last winter, and now acted as her secretary.
"A fake?" repeated the Irishman, gleefully; "that's one of your Americanisms, isn't it? I must remember that. A fake—what does it mean exactly?"
"It means the thing that is not," De Ruyter explained, with a trace of acerbity in his voice. "Miss Peters disbelieves in the existence of the candle in the plate, and she was too polite to call my story a lie, so she said it was a fake."
"Oh, Mr. De Ruyter," was her retort, "and you used to be a newspaper man yourself once!"
"Your newspapers, now," Barry broke in, "I confess they puzzle me. They are so clever, you know, and so up-to-date, and all that; but you never know what to believe in them, do you? And then they do such dreadful things."
"I fear you will find few Americans prepared to defend our newspapers," said the story-teller, always a little ashamed that he had once been a reporter. "But what sort of a dreadful thing have you in mind just now?"
"Things quite inconceivable, you know," the Irishman explained; "a thing like this, for example. A year or two ago a man gave me a copy of one of your New York papers—the Dial, I think it was. I read it with great interest, as one would the writing of some strange tribe of savages, don't you know? It was so very extraordinary."
As the guest made this plain statement, little Miss Peters happened to catch the eye of the handsome Mrs. Jimmy Suydam, and they exchanged an imperceptible smile.
"What shocked me the most," Barry continued, "was a long article from some special commissioner, with headings in huge letters—"
"Scare-heads they call them," explained De Ruyter.
"Scare-heads?" repeated the Irishman. "That's the very name for them. Scare-heads—delicious! This article, then, had scare-heads galore, and it described how a suicide had been identified. It seems some poor girl of the working-class had got into trouble, and sooner than bring disgrace on her family she had jumped into the river here—Hudson's River, isn't it? She had carefully arranged so that there was no clew by which she could be traced. But she had not counted on the devilish ingenuity of the special commissioner, a woman, too—at least I suppose it was a woman, since the thing was signed 'Polly Perkins.'"
Mrs. Jimmy saw the blood rise in the cheeks of Miss Peters, until the little Southern girl was as red as any of the maple-leaves that decked the cloth between the two women. She noticed that Rupert De Ruyter was staring into his plate with ill-concealed embarrassment, and that Mrs. Canton seemed a little uneasy.
"It seems that the poor creature's body was sent to the Morgue," Barry continued, "and no one claimed it, so it was buried at the cost of the county. And there's where the diabolical cunning of this reporter was exercised. She guessed that the girl's family would want to see the body laid away in holy ground, and so she went to the burying. And she hit it, for there were two women there in deep black, the mother of the poor wretch and the sister, not afraid to show their bitter grief when they thought they were unknown and unwatched. The spy tracked them to their house and she found out their names, and she put the whole story in the paper! I suppose it broke the mother's heart, and the sister's, to see the dead girl's shame brought home to her and to them when they thought it was buried in the grave with her body. I don't deny that the female detective showed a deal of skill; but what a pitiful thing! To risk breaking two loving hearts—and for what purpose?"
There was a moment's silence when the Irishman asked this unanswerable question. Then Miss Peters raised her head and looked him in the eye.
"That was what is called a 'beat.' No other paper had the news," she said; "and the reporter who wrote that story got a raise of five dollars a week."
"Faith, she deserved it," Barry returned. "It was blood-money she was taking, I'm thinking."
"That's what I think now," Miss Peters replied. "I wish I had thought so then. I wrote that article, and that is one reason why I am living down there among the poor, to try and make it up to them. Of course, I can't undo the wrong I did; but I mean to do my best."
Then there was another silence, broken by Mrs. Jimmy, who turned to Mrs. Canton and asked if she was going to take a box at the horse-show.
When the ladies left the dining-room Barry took the chair by the side of Suydam.
"What's the name of that pretty little girl?" he asked. "Peters, isn't it? I say, it was awfully plucky of her to tell us that she was 'Polly Perkins,' wasn't it, now? I like her; she's a trump! And that fair hair of hers is very fetching, isn't it?"
(1897.)
MERRYMOUNT MORTON walked briskly down Madison Avenue that warm November evening, when there was never a foretaste of winter in the intermittent breezes that blew gently across the city from river to river; and as he crossed the side streets one after another he saw the full moon in the east, low and large and mellow. On the brow of Murray Hill he checked his pace for a moment in frank enjoyment of the vista before him, differing in so many ways from the scenes which met his vision in the little college town of New England where he earned his living, and where he had spent the most of his life. The glow of the great town filled the air, and the roar of the city arose all about him. It seemed to him almost as though he could feel the heart of the metropolis throbbing before him. He caught himself wondering again whether he had not erred in accepting the professorship he had been so glad to get when he came back from Germany, and whether his life would not have been fuller and far richer had he come to New York, as once he thought of doing, and had he resolutely struck out for himself in the welter and chaos of the commercial capital of the country.
Down at the foot of the slope a cluster of electric lights spelled out the name of a trivial extravaganza then nearing its hundredth performance in the lovely Garden Theatre, and the avenue hereabouts had a strange, unnatural brilliance. High up in the pure dark blue the beautiful tower rose in air, its grace made visible by many lights of its own. The avenue was clogged with carriages, and the arcade before the theatre and under the tower was thick with men who carried under their arms folded card-board plans of the great amphitheatre, and who vociferously proffered tickets for the horse-show. So far remote from the current of fashion was Merrymount Morton that he had not been aware that the horse-show week was about to come to a glorious end. But he was familiar enough with New York to know that the horse-show was also an exhibition of men and women, and that the human entries were quite as important as the equine, and rather more interesting. He had never happened to be in the city at this season of the year; and although he had intended to spend the evening at the College Club, he seized the occasion to see a metropolitan spectacle which chanced to be novel to him.
From one of the shouting and insistent venders he bought a ticket, and he walked through the broad entrance-hall, the floor of which slanted upwards. He passed the door of a restaurant on his right, and he glanced down a staircase which led to the semi-subterranean stalls where the horses were tethered. A pungent, acrid, stable odor filled his nostrils. Then he found himself inside the immense amphitheatre, under the skeleton ribs of its roof picked out with long lines of tiny electric bulbs. Morton had a first impression of glittering hugeness, and a second of restless bustle. From a gallery behind him there came the blare and crash of a brass band playing an Oriental march; but even this did not drown the buzz and murmur of many thousand voices. The vast building seemed to Morton to be filled with men and women, all of them talking and many of them in motion. He found himself swept along slowly in the dense crowd that circled steadily around the high fence which guarded the arena wherein the horses were exhibited. This crowd was too compact for him to approach the railing, and he could not discover for himself whether or not anything was to be seen.
A thin line of more or less horsy fellows fringed the fence, and seemed to be interested in what was going on. The most of the men and women who filled the broad promenade between the railing and the long tier of private boxes paid little or no attention to the arena; they gave themselves up to staring at the very gayly dressed ladies in the boxes. It struck the New England college professor that the most of those present made no pretence of caring for the horses, as though horses could be seen any day; while they frankly devoted themselves to gazing at the people of fashion penned side by side in the boxes, and not often placing themselves so plainly on exhibition. Some of those who were playing their parts on this narrow and elevated stage had the self-consciousness of the amateur, and some had the ease that comes of long practice. These latter looked as though they were accustomed to be stared at, as though they expected it of right, as though they were there on purpose to be seen. They seemed to know one another; and it struck Morton that they were apparently all members of a secret fraternity of fashion, with their own signs and passwords and their own system of private grips; and they wholly ignored the people who had not been initiated and who were not members of their society. They nodded and smiled brightly to belated arrivals of their own set. They kept up a continual chatter among themselves, the women leaning across to talk to acquaintances in the adjoining compartments, and the men paying visits to the boxes of their friends. Now and again some one in a box would recognize some one in the circling throng below; but for the most part there was no communication between the two classes.
EXPLANATIONS
EXPLANATIONS
To Morton the spectacle had the attraction of novelty; it was so novel, indeed, that he did not quite know what to make of it. It disconcerted him not a little to see people, of position presumably, and obviously of wealth, willing thus to show themselves off, dressed, many of them, as though with special intent to attract attention. As a student of sociology, he found this inspection of Society—in the narrowest sense of the word—almost as instructive as it was interesting. At times the vulgarity of the whole thing shocked him, more especially once when he could not but hear the loud voices of one over-dressed group of women, who were discussing the characteristics of one "Willie."
"He's a wretched little beast!" cried one of these ladies.
"You mustn't say that," rejoined another, a tall woman with gray hair; "you know he's my corespondent." And at this stroke of wit the rest of the party laughed repeatedly.
But few of those on exhibition were as common as the members of this group. Indeed, Morton was struck with the fact that the most of the men and women who were being stared out of countenance were apparently people of breeding, and he wondered that they were willing to place themselves in what seemed to him so false a position. Many of the girls, for example, who wore striking costumes and extravagant hats, were themselves refined in face and retiring in bearing; they were stylish, no doubt, but they were well bred also. It seemed to Morton that style was perhaps the chief characteristic of these New York girls—style rather than beauty.
The average of good looks was high, and yet, as it happened, he was able to walk half around the huge building without seeing half a dozen women whom he was prepared to declare handsome. The girls appeared to be strong, healthy, lively, quick-witted, and charming, but rarely beautiful. They seemed to him, moreover, to be emphatically superior to the men who accompanied them, superior not only in looks, but in manners and intelligence.
Morton noted, to his surprise, that some of these men were quite as conscious of their clothes as any of the women were; and he caught also more than one remark showing that the appreciation of the women's clothes was not confined to the women themselves.
As he was nearing the Fourth Avenue end of the edifice he saw in a box just above him—for he found himself staring like the rest—a lady of striking beauty, with a look of sadness on her face, that gave place to a factitious smile when she spoke to one or another of the three or four young men who stood on the steps at the side of her chair. The face interested Morton, and it was recognized by two young men just behind him.
"Hello!" said one of them, "there's Mrs. Cyrus Poole. Smart gown, hasn't she?"
"Always has," answered the other. "Best-groomed woman in New York."
"She is pretty well turned out generally, for a fact," the first speaker responded. "But Cyrus Poole's made money enough out of the widow and the orphan this summer to pay for all the gowns his wife can wear this winter, at any rate."
It was only when Merrymount Morton had threaded his way half around the horse-show that he first saw a horse there. As he came to the Fourth Avenue end the crowd before him fell away, and a gate in the railing swung back across the promenade, while grooms led out of the arena five or six beautiful stallions. The New England college professor had a healthy liking for a fine horse, and his eyes followed these superb creatures till they were out of sight. Then in the clear space at the far end of the building he saw three coaches, one of them already equipped with its four-in-hand, while the horses were being harnessed to the others.
He stood there for a minute or two looking at them with interest. Then he turned his back, and once more began circling about the arena in the thick of the crowd, with no chance of seeing a horse again until he could get to the seat to which his ticket entitled him. He took out the bit of pasteboard and examined it again, and he saw that his place was very near the entrance, only he had gone to the right when he came in instead of to the left. By this time the men and women on exhibition in the boxes had begun to lose the attraction of novelty; and Morton walked on as swiftly as he could make his way through the crowd, wishing to get his seat in time to see the competition of the coaches.
He had come almost to the foot of the little flight of steps by which he could reach his seat when he happened to look up, and he caught sight of a familiar face. In a box only a score of feet before him there sat a lady about whose high-bred beauty there could hardly be two opinions. She was probably nearly thirty years old, but she looked fresher than either of the girls by her side. She wore a costume combining studied simplicity and marked individuality; and yet no one who saw her took thought of her attire, for her beauty subdued all things, and made any adornment she might adopt seem as though it were necessary and inevitable.
There was a suggestion of stiffness in her carriage, and perhaps a hint of haughtiness; but when she smiled she was as charming as she was handsome.
As his eyes first fell upon her Morton's heart gave a sudden thump, and then beat swiftly for a minute or two. Although he had not seen her for nearly ten years, he recognized her instantly. She had changed but little since they had met for the last time. He would have known her anywhere and at once.
And if he had been in any doubt as to her identity, it would have been dispelled by the conversation of the two young men who had been walking around the arena just behind him.
"Devilish pretty Mrs. Jimmy Suydam looks to-night, doesn't she?" asked one of them.
"She's had a good summer's rest," the other answered. "She was at St. Moritz with her mother while Jimmy was off with Lord Stanyhurst."
"Drove from Paris to Vienna, didn't he?" the first speaker queried. "I'd rather do it in a sleeper—wouldn't you?"
"I don't know," the second responded. "It's very swagger to drive your own coach all over Europe with a man like Stanyhurst, who knows everybody. I guess Jimmy thought it was cheap at the price. Besides, Punch called him the 'Wandering Jehu,' and they thought that was a great joke over there."
"The joke was at Jimmy's expense, of course," was the next remark. "They say Lord Stanyhurst never pays a bill himself when he can get an American to do it."
"Well, Jimmy made by the bargain," the other rejoined, "and he can afford it. Old man Suydam left a good business, and Jimmy knows enough to let it alone."
There had been a congestion of the crowd in front of Morton, but now there was a path opened before him. He drew back and let the two young men pass. He could not look away from the beautiful woman in the box before him. He wondered if he had courage to go up and speak to her. He remembered her so sharply, he recognized every turn of her head and every dainty gesture of her hands, he recalled so distinctly every word of their conversation the last time they met that it did not seem possible to him that she might have forgotten him. And yet it was not impossible. Why should she remember what he could not forget?
While he was hesitating, the party in her box broke up. One of the young ladies who were sitting with her arose and came down the steps, escorted by two young men, and as they passed Morton he caught from their conversation that they were going to the stables below to see a certain famous horse in his stall. The other young lady had changed her seat to the back of the box, where she was deep in conversation with a young man who had taken the chair beside hers. Mrs. Suydam was left alone in the front of the box.
She sat there apparently not bored with her own society, and obviously indifferent to the frank staring of the men and women who passed along the promenade a few feet below her. She sat there calm in her cold beauty, unmoved and uninterested, almost as though her thoughts were far away.
Morton made up his mind, and pressed forward again.
When he was within a yard or two of the steps leading to her box she happened to glance down, and she caught his eye fixed upon hers. She was about to glance away, when she looked again, and then a smile of recognition lighted her face, followed by the faintest of blushes.
She bowed as Morton raised his hat, and she held out her hand cordially when he climbed the steps to her box.
"I hardly dared to hope that you would remember me, Mrs. Suydam," he said, as he shook hands gently. "It is so long since I saw you last."
"How could you think I should ever forget the pleasant month I spent in your mother's house?" she returned. "We do not have so many pleasant months in life, do we, that we can afford to let any one of them slip out of memory? You haven't forgotten me, have you? Well, then, why should I forget you and your mother and the lovely little college town?"
"That month I can't forget," he responded; "but it was a long while ago, and my existence is uneventful always, while yours is full—and then so many things have happened since."
"Yes," she admitted, "so many things have happened. I'm married, for one thing. But that hasn't made me forget how kind you all were to me. Can't you sit down here for a few minutes and give me all the news of the college and the town?"
"I shall be only too glad," he said, taking the chair by her side. "Where shall I begin?"
"Tell me about yourself," she commanded.
"That won't take me long," he returned. "Very little has happened to me. I was going to Germany—perhaps you remember—that fall, after you left us. Well, I went, and I stayed two years, and I took my Ph.D. there, and I came back to the old college, and they gave me a professorship—and that's all."
"That's enough, I think," she answered, looking at him frankly with her dark eyes. "You have your work to do, and you do it. I don't believe there is anything better in life than to be sure what you ought to work at and to be able to work at it."
"I suppose you are right," Morton acknowledged. "I find hard labor is often the best fun, after all. But I can get solid enjoyment out of loafing, too. I don't recall that we worked very steadily that month that you were with us, and we certainly had a very good time. At least I did!"
"And so did I," she declared, unbending a little, and with a laugh of pleasant recollection. "I enjoyed every minute of my visit. I wish I could have such good times now!"
"Don't you?" he asked.
"Not often," she answered. "Perhaps never."
"You surprise me," he replied. "I supposed you were being entertained by day and by night, week in and week out, from one year's end to another."
"So we are," she explained. "But being entertained isn't always being interested, is it?"
"That's the theory, isn't it?" he rejoined.
"It may be the theory," she confessed, "but I'm sure it isn't the practice."
"I know that little college town of ours is remote from the path of progress," he went on, "but sometimes we behold those messengers of civilization, the New York Sunday newspapers. And whenever I do get one I am certain to see that you have been to a dinner-dance here, to a bal poudré there. I should judge that you lived in an endless merry-go-round of gayety."
She smiled again, and there was no sadness in her smile, only a vague, detached weariness. "Dinner-dances are the fashion just now," she said; "and if there is anything more absurd than the fashion it's to waste one's strength struggling against it."
"That is very end-of-the-century philosophy," he commented.
"It's philosophical not to want to be left out of things, isn't it?" she inquired. "Even if one doesn't care to go, one doesn't like not to be asked, and so one goes often when one would rather stay at home."
"I should think that if many people had motives like that, your parties here in New York might be rather dull," he retorted, with a little laugh.
"They are dull," she returned, calmly. "Sometimes they are very dull. But, of course, it doesn't do not to go."
"I suppose not," he agreed.
"But I find myself wondering sometimes," she continued, "where all the dull people in society were dug up. Sometimes after a long month of dinners I get desperate and almost wish I could renounce the world. Why, at the end of last winter I told my husband that we had not spent a single evening home since we got back from Florida, and we hadn't had a single pleasant evening, not one. He didn't think it was as bad as that, and perhaps it wasn't for him either, for I don't believe the women are as stupid as the men. Of course now and then there was a dinner I thought I should enjoy, but I never did. I'd see the clever man I'd have liked to talk to; I'd see him far down at the other end of the table, and that was all I did see of him. Some dreary old man would take me in, and then after dinner I'd have perhaps two or three little boys come up and try to pay compliments, and succeed in keeping away the men who might possibly have had something to say."
"And yet yours is the set that so many people seem to be trying so hard to enter," he suggested; "that is, if I understand aright what I read in New York novels."
"Yes," she answered, "I suppose that's the chief satisfaction we have—we know we are envied by the people who want to visit us, and to have us visit them. I suppose the desire to get into Society fills the emptiness in many a woman's life; it gives her something to live for."
"They don't seem to have much of the stern joy that foemen feel," Morton commented. "They take life desperately hard. Over there in the other corner I saw a handsome woman, and I overheard a man call her by name—she's the wife of Cyrus Poole, the Wall Street operator. And when I saw the unsatisfied aspiration in her face, I wondered whether she was one of those social strugglers I had read about."
"Mrs. Poole?" echoed Mrs. Suydam, indifferently. "I don't know her: I've met her, of course—one meets everybody—but I don't know her. She is good-looking, and she is in the thick of the social struggle. Upward and outward is her motto—Excelsior! They used to say that all last winter you could positively hear her climb. But then they have said that of so many people! She is clever, they say, and she entertains lavishly, so I shouldn't wonder if she succeeded sooner or later; and then she will be so disappointed."
Morton smiled. "From your account," he said, "the social struggle is rather a tragedy than a comedy; and I confess it has hitherto struck me as not without a suggestion of farce."
"It is absurd, isn't it?" she returned, smiling back. "And are we not a very snobbish lot? Jimmy declares that society in New York is almost as snobbish as it is in London even."
There was a moment of silence, and then Morton asked, a little stiffly, "How is Mr. Suydam? You know I have never had the pleasure of meeting him."
"Haven't you?" Mrs. Suydam responded. "You can see him soon. He's to drive George Western's coach. There they come now!"
A trumpet sounded; a gate in the railing at the Fourth Avenue end of the building was opened; and a coach was driven into the arena. A very stout man sat on the box alone.
Mrs. Suydam raised her long-handled eye-glass and looked at the approaching coachman.
"Oh, that's not Jimmy," she said, quickly; "of course not. That's the man they call The Adipose Deposit."
The trumpet sounded again, and a second coach was turned into the arena. The four horses were beautifully matched bays. The driver was a tall, thin, youngish man, who sat impassible on the box, and gave no sign of annoyance when a wheel of the vehicle rasped the gate-post.
"That's Mr. Suydam," said the lady to whom Morton was talking, as the bays trotted briskly past them, the man on the box holding himself rigidly and handling the ribbons skilfully.
"He is quite a professional," Morton remarked.
"Isn't he?" Mrs. Suydam replied. "You know he drove the Brighton coach out of London for three years. He really does it very well, they all say. I've told him that if we ever lost our money he would make a very superior coachman."
"Those bays go together admirably," the college professor declared, "and Mr. Suydam handles them superbly. But how pitiful it is to see their tails docked!"
"Oh, they do that in England," she explained, "so it's fashionable. But it is ugly, isn't it? Do you remember what a lovely long tail that Kentucky mare had, the one I rode that day—"
Then Mrs. Suydam paused suddenly.
"Yes," answered Morton, not looking at her, "I remember it."
Mrs. Suydam conquered her slight embarrassment and gave a light little laugh.
"How rude I have been!" she said. "Here I've been talking about myself and about my husband, and I haven't asked about you. Are you married yet?"
"No," he answered, and now he looked at her, and she blushed again; "and I am not likely ever to marry, I think. There was only one woman in the world for me, and I told her so, but she didn't care for me at all, and she told me so—and then she touched up that Kentucky mare and rode away with my heart hanging at her saddle-bow."
"You can find a better woman than she is," was her response; "a woman who will make you a better wife than she would ever have done."
Before Morton could reply to this, the girl and the two young men who had been in the box at first returned from their visit to the stables. The trumpet sounded again, and the judges made the drivers of the four coaches—for two more had entered after Mr. Suydam's—repeat their evolutions around the arena. And then, after protracted consultation together, the awards were made, and grooms ran to attach rosettes to the leaders of the team driven by the stout gentleman, who took the first prize, and then to the leaders of the team driven by Suydam, who took the second prize. The numbers of the winning coaches were displayed on the wide sign-boards at each end of the hall. The coaches were driven around again, and then out. The trumpets were silent for a while; and the brass band crashed forth again.
"Jimmy won't like not getting the first prize, will he?" asked the girl who had just returned to the box.
"I don't think it will worry him," answered his wife, with a return of her haughty manner.
She had not introduced Morton to any of the others in the box.
In the presence of so many it was impossible to resume their conversation on the old friendly basis. It seemed to Morton that since the girl and the young men had come back there was a difference in Mrs. Suydam's manner towards him; he could not define it to himself, but he felt it. Perhaps she was conscious of this herself.
When he made a movement preparatory to going, she said: "Must you go? I wanted you to meet my husband. Can't you drop in and lunch with us to-morrow?"
Morton thanked her and regretted that he might have to take a midnight train, and expressed his pleasure at having met her again. Then she held out her hand once more; and a minute later he was again in the thick of the throng circling along the promenade.
Before he reached the entrance the music was checked suddenly and the trumpet blared out, and then the voice of a man in the centre of the building was heard, intermittently, hopelessly endeavoring to inform the thousands packed in the splendid edifice that the fastest trotter in the world would now be shown. The crowd which was staring steadily at the men and women in the boxes paid little attention to this proclamation; to it the men and women in the boxes were far more interesting than any horses could be, even if any one of these could trot a mile in two minutes without a running mate.
(1895.)
IT was still snowing solidly as the carriage swung out of the side street and went heavily on its way up the avenue; the large flakes soon thickened again upon the huge fur collars of the two men who sat on the box bolt-upright; the flat crystals frosted the windows of the landau so that the trained nurse could see out only on one side. She sat back in the luxurious vehicle. She had on the seat beside her the bag containing her change of raiment; and she wondered, as she always did when she was called unexpectedly to take charge of an unknown case, what manner of house it might be that she was going to enter, and what kind of people she would be forced to associate with in the swift intimacy of the sick-room and for an unknown period. That the patient was wealthy and willing to spend his wealth was obvious—the carriage, the horses, the liveried servants, were evidence enough of this. That his name was Swank she also knew; and she thought that perhaps she had heard about the marriage of a rich old man named Swank to a pretty young wife a year or two ago. That he had been taken sick suddenly, and that the case might be serious, she had gathered from the note which the doctor had sent to summon her, and which had been brought by the carriage that was now returning with her.
She had ample time for speculation as they drove up the avenue in the early darkness of the last day of the year. The Christmas wreaths still decked the windows of the hotels, although through the steady snow she could see little more than a blur of reddish-yellow light as she sped past. There were few people in the avenue, except as they crossed the broader side streets, now beginning to be filled with the throng of workers returning home after the day's labor. They passed St. Patrick's Cathedral, already encrusted with snow whiter than its stone. They came to Central Park, and they kept on, with its broad meadows on their left gray in the descending darkness. At last the carriage drew up before a house on a corner—a very large house it seemed to the trained nurse; and its marble front struck her as cold, not to call it gloomy. Workmen were hastily erecting the frame of an awning down the marble steps, and a path had been made across the snowy sidewalk.
The footman carried her bag up the stoop and rang the bell for her.
The door was opened promptly by a very British butler.
"This is the nurse for Mr. Swank," said the footman. "Is he any better?"
"'E's about the same, I'm thinkin'," the butler responded. "This way, please," he said to the owner of the bag, which the footman deposited just inside the door. "I'll take you up to Mr. Swank's room, and I'll send your bag up to you afterwards."
The trained nurse followed the butler up the massive wooden stairs, heavy with dark carving. She noticed that the house was now dimly lighted, and that there was a going and a coming of servants, as though in preparation for an entertainment of some sort.
"We 'ave a dinner on this evening," the butler explained; "only twenty-four; but it's 'ard Mr. Swank ain't goin' to be able to come down. We're keepin' the 'ouse dark now, so it won't get too 'ot at dinner-time."
Whatever the reason for the absence of adequate illumination, it made the upper hall even more dismal than the one below—so the trained nurse thought.
"That's Mr. Swank's room there; and 'ere's 'is dressin'-room, that you're to 'ave—so the doctor said," the butler declared, leading the stranger into a small room with a lofty ceiling, and with one window overlooking Central Park. The shades had not been drawn; the single gas-jet was burning dimly; there was no fireplace; and a sofa on one side had had sheets and blankets put on it to serve as her bed.
She almost shivered, the place seemed to her so cheerless. But her training taught her not to think of her own comfort.
"This will do very well," she asserted.
"I'll tell them to fetch up your bag," the butler said, as he was about to withdraw. "Would you be wantin' any dinner later?"
"Yes," she answered, "I would like something to eat later—whenever it is convenient."
The butler left the room, only to reappear almost immediately.
"'Ere's the doctor now," he announced, holding the door open.
A tall, handsome man, with a masterful mouth, walked in with a soft, firm tread.
"So this is the nurse," he began. "Miss Clement, isn't it? I'm glad you were able to follow my note so quickly. If you will come into the next room, where the patient is, as soon as you have changed your dress, I'll tell you what I wish you to do."
With that he left her; and in less than ten minutes she followed him into the large bedroom on the corner of the house. It was an unusually spacious room, with a high ceiling and four tall windows.
There was a dull-red fire, which seemed insufficient to warm even the elaborate marble mantel. Almost in one corner stood a large bed, with thick curtains draped back from a canopy.
The doctor was sitting by the side of the bed as the nurse came into the room.
"SHE ALMOST SHIVERED, THE PLACE SEEMED TO HER SO CHEERLESS"
"SHE ALMOST SHIVERED, THE PLACE SEEMED TO HER SO
CHEERLESS"
"This is Miss Clement, Mr. Swank," he said, in a cheerful voice, to the old man, who lay in the bed motionless. "She will look after you during the night."
Mr. Swank made no answer, but he opened his eyes and looked at the woman who had come to nurse him. She used to say afterwards that she had never felt before so penetrating a gaze.
The doctor turned to her, and in the same professionally cheery tones he said: "I sent for you, nurse, because Mrs. Swank has an important dinner to-night, and it might therefore be difficult for her to give Mr. Swank the attention he may require."
The physician was addressing the nurse, but it seemed to her that his words were really intended for the patient, whose eyes were still fixed on her.
All at once the sick man sat up in bed and began to cough violently. When the paroxysm had passed he sank back on the pillow again and closed his eyes wearily.
"I think that was not as severe as the last one," the doctor remarked; "I can leave you in Miss Clement's hands now. Perhaps, if I happen to be up this way about midnight, I may drop in again just to see that you are getting on all right. In the mean time, nurse, you will see that he takes these capsules every two hours—he had the last at half-past five. And you will take his temperature every hour if he is awake."
He said good-night to Mr. Swank in the same cheering tone, and then he went to the door. The nurse knew that she was to follow him.
When they stood alone in the hall, the doctor said to her: "If there is any change in the pulse or the temperature, send for me at once. Ring for the butler, and tell him I am to be sent for; he will know what to do. Mr. Swank has influenza only, but his heart is weak, and he needs careful attention. I shall be here again the last thing to-night."
When the nurse returned to the corner room the patient had fallen into a heavy doze, and she took advantage of this to prepare for the long vigil. She arranged her own belongings ready to her hand in the dressing-room set aside for her use. In that room she did not lower the shade, and she even stood at the window for a minute, trying to look out over Central Park, hidden from her by a swaying veil of swirling snow. The workmen had completed the canvas tunnel down the stoop to the edge of the sidewalk, and the lanterns hung inside the frame-work revealed grotesquely its striped contortions. As the nurse gazed down on it an old man without any overcoat sought a temporary shelter from the storm in the mouth of the awning, only to be ordered away almost immediately by the servant in charge.
The nurse went back into the larger room. She looked at her patient asleep in the warm bed. She wondered why life was so unequal; why the one man should spend the night in the snowy street, while the other had all that money could buy—shelter, warmth, food, attendance. She recalled how her father used to declare that the inequalities we see all around us are superficial only, and that there are compensations, did we but know them, for all deprivations, and that all apparent advantages are to be paid for, somehow, sooner or later. More than ever to-night she doubted the wisdom of her father's saying. How could there be anything but inequality between the old man in the street there below and the old man here in the bed? The thing seemed to her impossible.
As she became accustomed to the dim light of the room she was able to note that the furniture was heavy and black, that the carpet was unusually thick, that the walls had large paintings hanging on them, that the ceiling was frescoed in sombre tints. On all sides of her she saw the evidences of wealth and of the willingness to spend it; and yet the room and the house seemed to her strangely uninviting, and almost repellent. She asked herself why the sick man lying there asleep in the huge bed had not used his money to better advantage, and had not at least made cheerful his own sick-room. Then she smiled at her own foolishness. Of course the owner of the room had not expected to be stricken down; of course he had no thought of illness when he had furnished.
She moved gently about the room and tried to look at the pictures, but the illumination was insufficient. All that she could make out clearly were the names of the artists carved on tiny tablets attached to the broad frames; and although she knew little about painting, she had read the newspapers enough to be aware that pictures by these artists must have cost a great deal of money—thousands of dollars each, very likely. If she had thousands to spend, she believed that she could lay them out to better advantage than the owner of the house had done here. It struck her again as though the sick man had more than his share of the good things of life. She had not yet heard him speak, and she had not really had a good look at him; but she could not help thinking that a man who had so much, who had the means of doing so much, who was absolutely his own master, and who could spend a large fortune just as he pleased—she could not help thinking that he ought to be happy. It was true that he was ill now, but the influenza wears itself out at last; and when he was well he had so much money that he must be happier than other men—far happier than poor men, certainly.
When she came to this conclusion she was standing near the foot of the bed, looking at the man lying there asleep. It was on the stroke of half-past seven, and she had come to let him have his medicine again. Then she noticed that his eyelids were parted, and that he was looking at her.
"It is time to take one of these capsules now," she said, gently moving to his side and offering it to him.
He took it without a word, and gulped it down with a swallow of water. Then he sank back on the pillow, only to raise himself at once, as he was again shaken by a severe fit of coughing.
At last he lay back on the bed once more, still breathing heavily.
A fresh, young voice was heard at the door leading to the hall, saying, "May I come in, John?" and then a graceful young figure floated into the room with a birdlike motion.
The sick man opened his eyes wide as his wife came near him, and a smile illumined his face.
"How beautiful you are!" he said, faintly, but proudly.
"Am I?" she answered, laughing a little. "I tried to be to-night, because there will be the smartest women in New York at Mrs. Jimmy Suydam's dance, and I wanted to be as good as any of them."
The nurse had withdrawn towards the window as the wife came forward, and she did not believe that any woman at Mrs. Jimmy Suydam's, wherever that might be, could well look more beautiful than the one who now stood smiling by the side of the sick husband.
She was a blonde, this young wife of an old man, a mere girl, and the vaporous blue dress was cut low on a slender neck girt about by a single strand of large pearls, while a diamond tiara high on her shapely head flashed light into every corner of the darkened sick-room.
"I thought I'd just run in and see how you were before anybody came," she said, lightly. "Dinner is at quarter to eight, you know. I do wish you could be down. We shall miss you dreadfully. Of course I sent out at the last minute and got a man to fill your place, so we shall sit down with twenty-four all right; but then—"
Here she broke off, having caught sight of the third person in the room.
"So this is the nurse Dr. Cheever sent for?" she went on. "I'm sure she'll take good care of you, John—the doctor is always so careful. And if you hadn't had somebody with you I shouldn't have liked to leave you all alone—really I shouldn't!"
With that she circled about the bed again, turning towards the door.
"I must be off now," she explained. "I can't be wasting my time on you in this way. I really ought to be down in the drawing-room now; and first, I've got to see if the flowers are all right on the table."
Her husband's eyes had followed her wistfully about the room, watching every one of her easy and graceful movements; and when at last she slipped out of the door, it was a moment before he turned an inquiring glance on the nurse, as though to discover what she thought of the brilliant vision.
The nurse came to the side of the bed with her clinical thermometer in her hand.
"You are awake now," she said, with a pleasant smile. "May I take your temperature?"
Five minutes later, when she was entering in her note-book the high degree shown by the thermometer, and when the patient had again dropped off to sleep, the first guests began to arrive for the wife's dinner party.
The thick snow made the wheels inaudible, but the nurse heard the doors of the carriages slam as those who had been invited passed through the canvas tunnel one after another. In the room next to the dressing-room assigned to her for her own use there was a rustling of silken stuffs, and there were fragments of conversation now and again so loudly pitched as to reach the ear of the young woman who sat silent in the sick-chamber. Then, when all the guests were come, the house sank again into silence, and a tall clock in a corner of the stairs chimed forth the hour of eight.
So long as her patient slept the nurse had little or nothing to do; but though her body was motionless, her thoughts were busy. She was country-bred herself; she had left her home in a little New England village by the sea to make her way in the world. She had now been a trained nurse for nearly two years; and yet, as it happened, her work had been either in hotels or in families of only moderate means. This was the first time she had been in so handsome a house or with people of so much wealth. She could not help being conscious of her surroundings, and she caught herself wishing that she too were rich. She confessed that she would like to be a guest at the dinner below. She wondered what a dinner-table for twenty-four must be. To be able to entertain as lavishly as that, and not to have to worry about the arrangement, or the cost, or anything—well, that would be an existence any woman must delight in. She felt herself capable of expanding, and of being equal to the enjoyment of any degree of luxury. She liked her occupation, for she had chosen her own calling. She had been successful in it too; and yet she was beginning to be a little afraid that she had miscalculated her strength. The work was very laborious and confining, and more than once of late she had felt overtaxed. It might be that in a year or two her reserve force would be exhausted, and she would have to give up the struggle and go back home, where she would be welcome, of course, but where she would add to the burdens her mother was already laden with.