These devotees of curiosity swarm, like flies, in a moment in
a struggling, breathless circle about the scene of an unusual
occurrence. If a workman opens a manhole, if a street car runs over
a man from North Tarrytown, if a little boy drops an egg on his
way home from the grocery, if a casual house or two drops into the
subway, if a lady loses a nickel through a hole in the lisle thread,
if the police drag a telephone and a racing chart forth from an Ibsen
Society reading-room, if Senator Depew or Mr. Chuck Connors walks out
to take the air - if any of these incidents or accidents takes place,
you will see the mad, irresistible rush of the "rubber" tribe to the
spot.
The importance of the event does not count. They gaze with equal
interest and absorption at a chorus girl or at a man painting a
liver pill sign. They will form as deep a cordon around a man with
a club-foot as they will around a balked automobile. They have the
furor rubberendi. They are optical gluttons, feasting and fattening
on the misfortunes of their fellow beings. They gloat and pore and
glare and squint and stare with their fishy eyes like goggle-eyed
perch at the book baited with calamity.
It would seem that Cupid would find these ocular vampires too cold
game for his calorific shafts, but have we not yet to discover an
immune even among the Protozoa? Yes, beautiful Romance descended upon
two of this tribe, and love came into their hearts as they crowded
about the prostrate form of a man who had been run over by a brewery
wagon.
William Pry was the first on the spot. He was an expert at such
gatherings. With an expression of intense happiness on his features,
he stood over the victim of the accident, listening to his groans as
if to the sweetest music. When the crowd of spectators had swelled to
a closely packed circle William saw a violent commotion in the crowd
opposite him. Men were hurled aside like ninepins by the impact of
some moving body that clove them like the rush of a tornado. With
elbows, umbrella, hat-pin, tongue, and fingernails doing their duty,
Violet Seymour forced her way through the mob of onlookers to the
first row. Strong men who even had been able to secure a seat on
the 5.30 Harlem express staggered back like children as she bucked
centre. Two large lady spectators who had seen the Duke of Roxburgh
married and had often blocked traffic on Twenty-third Street fell
back into the second row with ripped shirtwaists when Violet had
finished with them. William Pry loved her at first sight.
The ambulance removed the unconscious agent of Cupid. William and
Violet remained after the crowd had dispersed. They were true
Rubberers. People who leave the scene of an accident with the
ambulance have not genuine caoutchouc in the cosmogony of their
necks. The delicate, fine flavour of the affair is to be had only
in the after-taste - in gloating over the spot, in gazing fixedly at
the houses opposite, in hovering there in a dream more exquisite
than the opium-eater's ecstasy. William Pry and Violet Seymour were
connoisseurs in casualties. They knew how to extract full enjoyment
from every incident.
Presently they looked at each other. Violet had a brown birthmark on
her neck as large as a silver half-dollar. William fixed his eyes
upon it. William Pry had inordinately bowed legs. Violet allowed her
gaze to linger unswervingly upon them. Face to face they stood thus
for moments, each staring at the other. Etiquette would not allow
them to speak; but in the Caoutchouc City it is permitted to gaze
without stint at the trees in the parks and at the physical blemishes
of a fellow creature.
At length with a sigh they parted. But Cupid had been the driver of
the brewery wagon, and the wheel that broke a leg united two fond
hearts.
The next meeting of the hero and heroine was in front of a board
fence near Broadway. The day had been a disappointing one. There had
been no fights on the street, children had kept from under the wheels
of the street cars, cripples and fat men in negligée shirts were
scarce; nobody seemed to be inclined to slip on banana peels or fall
down with heart disease. Even the sport from Kokomo, Ind., who claims
to be a cousin of ex-Mayor Low and scatters nickels from a cab
window, had not put in his appearance. There was nothing to stare at,
and William Pry had premonitions of ennui.
But he saw a large crowd scrambling and pushing excitedly in front
of a billboard. Sprinting for it, he knocked down an old woman and a
child carrying a bottle of milk, and fought his way like a demon
into the mass of spectators. Already in the inner line stood Violet
Seymour with one sleeve and two gold fillings gone, a corset steel
puncture and a sprained wrist, but happy. She was looking at what
there was to see. A man was painting upon the fence: "Eat Bricklets
- They Fill Your Face."
Violet blushed when she saw William Pry. William jabbed a lady in a
black silk raglan in the ribs, kicked a boy in the shin, bit an old
gentleman on the left ear and managed to crowd nearer to Violet.
They stood for an hour looking at the man paint the letters. Then
William's love could be repressed no longer. He touched her on the
arm.
"Come with me," he said. "I know where there is a bootblack without
an Adam's apple."
She looked up at him shyly, yet with unmistakable love transfiguring
her countenance.
"And you have saved it for me?" she asked, trembling with the first
dim ecstasy of a woman beloved.
Together they hurried to the bootblack's stand. An hour they spent
there gazing at the malformed youth.
A window-cleaner fell from the fifth story to the sidewalk beside
them. As the ambulance came clanging up William pressed her hand
joyously. "Four ribs at least and a compound fracture," he whispered,
swiftly. "You are not sorry that you met me, are you, dearest?
"Me?" said Violet, returning the pressure. "Sure not. I could stand
all day rubbering with you."
The climax of the romance occurred a few days later. Perhaps the
reader will remember the intense excitement into which the city was
thrown when Eliza Jane, a colored woman, was served with a subpoena.
The Rubber Tribe encamped on the spot. With his own hands William Pry
placed a board upon two beer kegs in the street opposite Eliza Jane's
residence. He and Violet sat there for three days and nights. Then it
occurred to a detective to open the door and serve the subpoena. He
sent for a kinetoscope and did so.
Two souls with such congenial tastes could not long remain apart. As
a policeman drove them away with his night stick that evening they
plighted their troth. The seeds of love had been well sown, and had
grown up, hardy and vigorous, into a - let us call it a rubber plant.
The wedding of William Pry and Violet Seymour was set for June 10.
The Big Church in the Middle of the Block was banked high with
flowers. The populous tribe of Rubberers the world over is rampant
over weddings. They are the pessimists of the pews. They are the
guyers of the groom and the banterers of the bride. They come to
laugh at your marriage, and should you escape from Hymen's tower on
the back of death's pale steed they will come to the funeral and sit
in the same pew and cry over your luck. Rubber will stretch.
The church was lighted. A grosgrain carpet lay over the asphalt to
the edge of the sidewalk. Bridesmaids were patting one another's
sashes awry and speaking of the Bride's freckles. Coachmen tied white
ribbons on their whips and bewailed the space of time between drinks.
The minister was musing over his possible fee, essaying conjecture
whether it would suffice to purchase a new broadcloth suit for
himself and a photograph of Laura Jane Libbey for his wife. Yea,
Cupid was in the air.
And outside the church, oh, my brothers, surged and heaved the rank
and file of the tribe of Rubberers. In two bodies they were, with
the grosgrain carpet and cops with clubs between. They crowded like
cattle, they fought, they pressed and surged and swayed and trampled
one another to see a bit of a girl in a white veil acquire license to
go through a man's pockets while he sleeps.
But the hour for the wedding came and went, and the bride and
bridegroom came not. And impatience gave way to alarm and alarm
brought about search, and they were not found. And then two big
policemen took a hand and dragged out of the furious mob of onlookers
a crushed and trampled thing, with a wedding ring in its vest pocket
and a shredded and hysterical woman beating her way to the carpet's
edge, ragged, bruised and obstreperous.
William Pry and Violet Seymour, creatures of habit, had joined in the
seething game of the spectators, unable to resist the overwhelming
desire to gaze upon themselves entering, as bride and bridegroom, the
rose-decked church.
Rubber will out.
IX
ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS
"One thousand dollars," repeated Lawyer Tolman, solemnly and
severely, "and here is the money."
Young Gillian gave a decidedly amused laugh as he fingered the thin
package of new fifty-dollar notes.
"It's such a confoundedly awkward amount," he explained, genially, to
the lawyer. "If it had been ten thousand a fellow might wind up with
a lot of fireworks and do himself credit. Even fifty dollars would
have been less trouble."
"You heard the reading of your uncle's will," continued Lawyer
Tolman, professionally dry in his tones. "I do not know if you paid
much attention to its details. I must remind you of one. You are
required to render to us an account of the manner of expenditure of
this $1,000 as soon as you have disposed of it. The will stipulates
that. I trust that you will so far comply with the late Mr. Gillian's
wishes."
"You may depend upon it," said the young man.% politely, "in spite of
the extra expense it will entail. I may have to engage a secretary. I
was never good at accounts."
Gillian went to his club. There he hunted out one whom he called Old
Bryson.
Old Bryson was calm and forty and sequestered. He was in a corner
reading a book, and when he saw Gillian approaching he sighed, laid
down his book and took off his glasses.
"Old Bryson, wake up," said Gillian. "I've a funny story to tell
you."
"I wish you would tell it to some one in the billiard room," said Old
Bryson. "You know how I hate your stories."
"This is a better one than usual," said Gillian, rolling a cigarette;
"and I'm glad to tell it to you. It's too sad and funny to go with
the rattling of billiard balls. I've just come from my late uncle's
firm of legal corsairs. He leaves me an even thousand dollars. Now,
what can a man possibly do with a thousand dollars?"
"I thought," said Old Bryson, showing as much interest as a bee
shows in a vinegar cruet, "that the late Septimus Gillian was worth
something like half a million."
"He was," assented Gillian, joyously, "and that's where the joke
comes in. He's left his whole cargo of doubloons to a microbe. That
is, part of it goes to the man who invents a new bacillus and the
rest to establish a hospital for doing away with it again. There
are one or two trifling bequests on the side. The butler and the
housekeeper get a seal ring and $10 each. His nephew gets $1,000."
"You've always had plenty of money to spend," observed Old Bryson.
"Tons," said Gillian. "Uncle was the fairy godmother as far as an
allowance was concerned."
"Any other heirs?" asked Old Bryson.
"None." Gillian frowned at his cigarette and kicked the upholstered
leather of a divan uneasily. "There is a Miss Hayden, a ward of my
uncle, who lived in his house. She's a quiet thing - musical - the
daughter of somebody who was unlucky enough to be his friend. I
forgot to say that she was in on the seal ring and $10 joke, too. I
wish I had been. Then I could have had two bottles of brut, tipped
the waiter with the ring and had the whole business off my hands.
Don't be superior and insulting, Old Bryson - tell me what a fellow
can do with a thousand dollars."
Old Bryson rubbed his glasses and smiled. And when Old Bryson smiled,
Gillian knew that he intended to be more offensive than ever.
"A thousand dollars," he said, "means much or little. One man may buy
a happy home with it and laugh at Rockefeller. Another could send
his wife South with it and save her life. A thousand dollars would
buy pure milk for one hundred babies during June, July, and August
and save fifty of their lives. You could count upon a half hour's
diversion with it at faro in one of the fortified art galleries.
It would furnish an education to an ambitious boy. I am told
that a genuine Corot was secured for that amount in an auction
room yesterday. You could move to a New Hampshire town and live
respectably two years on it. You could rent Madison Square Garden for
one evening with it, and lecture your audience, if you should have
one, on the precariousness of the profession of heir presumptive."
"People might like you, Old Bryson," said Gillian, always unruffled,
"if you wouldn't moralize. I asked you to tell me what I could do
with a thousand dollars."
"You?" said Bryson, with a gentle laugh. "Why, Bobby Gillian, there's
only one logical thing you could do. You can go buy Miss Lotta
Lauriere a diamond pendant with the money, and then take yourself off
to Idaho and inflict your presence upon a ranch. I advise a sheep
ranch, as I have a particular dislike for sheep."
"Thanks," said Gillian, rising, "I thought I could depend upon you,
Old Bryson. You've hit on the very scheme. I wanted to chuck the
money in a lump, for I've got to turn in an account for it, and I
hate itemizing."
Gillian phoned for a cab and said to the driver:
"The stage entrance of the Columbine Theatre."
Miss Lotta Lauriere was assisting nature with a powder puff, almost
ready for her call at a crowded matinée, when her dresser mentioned
the name of Mr. Gillian.
"Let it in," said Miss Lauriere. "Now, what is it, Bobby? I'm going
on in two minutes."
"Rabbit-foot your right ear a little," suggested Gillian, critically.
"That's better. It won't take two minutes for me. What do you say to
a little thing in the pendant line? I can stand three ciphers with a
figure one in front of 'em."
"Oh, just as you say," carolled Miss Lauriere. "My right glove,
Adams. Say, Bobby, did you see that necklace Della Stacey had on the
other night? Twenty-two hundred dollars it cost at Tiffany's. But, of
course - pull my sash a little to the left, Adams."
"Miss Lauriere for the opening chorus!" cried the call boy without.
Gillian strolled out to where his cab was waiting.
"What would you do with a thousand dollars if you had it?" he asked
the driver.
"Open a s'loon," said the cabby, promptly and huskily. "I know a
place I could take money in with both hands. It's a four-story
brick on a corner. I've got it figured out. Second story - Chinks
and chop suey; third floor - manicures and foreign missions; fourth
floor - poolroom. If you was thinking of putting up the cap - "
"Oh, no," said Gillian, "I merely asked from curiosity. I take you
by the hour. Drive 'til I tell you to stop."
Eight blocks down Broadway Gillian poked up the trap with his cane
and got out. A blind man sat upon a stool on the sidewalk selling
pencils. Gillian went out and stood before him.
"Excuse me," he said, "but would you mind telling me what you would
do if you had a thousand dollars?"
"You got out of that cab that just drove up, didn't you?" asked the
blind man.
"I did," said Gillian.
"I guess you are all right," said the pencil dealer, "to ride in a
cab by daylight. Take a look at that, if you like."
He drew a small book from his coat pocket and held it out. Gillian
opened it and saw that it was a bank deposit book. It showed a
balance of $1,785 to the blind man's credit.
Gillian returned the book and got into the cab.
"I forgot something," he said. "You may drive to the law offices of
Tolman & Sharp, at - - Broadway."
Lawyer Tolman looked at him hostilely and inquiringly through his
gold-rimmed glasses.
"I beg your pardon," said Gillian, cheerfully, "but may I ask you a
question? It is not an impertinent one, I hope. Was Miss Hayden left
anything by my uncle's will besides the ring and the $10?"
"Nothing," said Mr. Tolman.
"I thank you very much, sir," said Gillian, and on he went to his
cab. He gave the driver the address of his late uncle's home.
Miss Hayden was writing letters in the library. She was small and
slender and clothed in black. But you would have noticed her eyes.
Gillian drifted in with his air of regarding the world as
inconsequent.
"I've just come from old Tolman's," he explained. "They've been
going over the papers down there. They found a - Gillian searched his
memory for a legal term - they found an amendment or a post-script
or something to the will. It seemed that the old boy loosened up a
little on second thoughts and willed you a thousand dollars. I was
driving up this way and Tolman asked me to bring you the money. Here
it is. You'd better count it to see if it's right." Gillian laid the
money beside her hand on the desk.
Miss Hayden turned white. "Oh!" she said, and again "Oh!"
Gillian half turned and looked out the window.
"I suppose, of course," he said, in a low voice, "that you know I
love you."
"I am sorry," said Miss Hayden, taking up her money.
"There is no use?" asked Gillian, almost light-heartedly.
"I am sorry," she said again.
"May I write a note?" asked Gillian, with a smile, He seated himself
at the big library table. She supplied him with paper and pen, and
then went back to her secrétaire.
Gillian made out his account of his expenditure of the thousand
dollars in these words:
"Paid by the black sheep, Robert Gillian, $1,000 on account of the
eternal happiness, owed by Heaven to the best and dearest woman on
earth."
Gillian slipped his writing into an envelope, bowed and went his way.
His cab stopped again at the offices of Tolman & Sharp.
"I have expended the thousand dollars," he said cheerily, to Tolman
of the gold glasses, "and I have come to render account of it, as I
agreed. There is quite a feeling of summer in the air - do you not
think so, Mr. Tolman?" He tossed a white envelope on the lawyer's
table. "You will find there a memorandum, sir, of the _modus
operandi_ of the vanishing of the dollars."
Without touching the envelope, Mr. Tolman went to a door and called
his partner, Sharp. Together they explored the caverns of an immense
safe. Forth they dragged, as trophy of their search a big envelope
sealed with wax. This they forcibly invaded, and wagged their
venerable heads together over its contents. Then Tolman became
spokesman.
"Mr. Gillian," he said, formally, "there was a codicil to your
uncle's will. It was intrusted to us privately, with instructions
that it be not opened until you had furnished us with a full account
of your handling of the $1,000 bequest in the will. As you have
fulfilled the conditions, my partner and I have read the codicil.
I do not wish to encumber your understanding with its legal
phraseology, but I will acquaint you with the spirit of its contents.
"In the event that your disposition of the $1,000 demonstrates that
you possess any of the qualifications that deserve reward, much
benefit will accrue to you. Mr. Sharp and I are named as the judges,
and I assure you that we will do our duty strictly according to
justice - with liberality. We are not at all unfavorably disposed
toward you, Mr. Gillian. But let us return to the letter of the
codicil. If your disposal of the money in question has been prudent,
wise, or unselfish, it is in our power to hand you over bonds to
the value of $50,000, which have been placed in our hands for that
purpose. But if - as our client, the late Mr. Gillian, explicitly
provides - you have used this money as you have money in the past,
I quote the late Mr. Gillian - in reprehensible dissipation among
disreputable associates - the $50,000 is to be paid to Miriam
Hayden, ward of the late Mr. Gillian, without delay. Now, Mr.
Gillian, Mr. Sharp and I will examine your account in regard to the
$1,000. You submit it in writing, I believe. I hope you will repose
confidence in our decision."
Mr. Tolman reached for the envelope. Gillian was a little the quicker
in taking it up. He tore the account and its cover leisurely into
strips and dropped them into his pocket.
"It's all right," he said, smilingly. "There isn't a bit of need to
bother you with this. I don't suppose you'd understand these itemized
bets, anyway. I lost the thousand dollars on the races. Good-day to
you, gentlemen."
Tolman & Sharp shook their heads mournfully at each other when
Gillian left, for they heard him whistling gayly in the hallway as he
waited for the elevator.
X
THE DEFEAT OF THE CITY
Robert Walmsley's descent upon the city resulted in a Kilkenny
struggle. He came out of the fight victor by a fortune and a
reputation. On the other hand, he was swallowed up by the city. The
city gave him what he demanded and then branded him with its brand.
It remodelled, cut, trimmed and stamped him to the pattern it
approves. It opened its social gates to him and shut him in on a
close-cropped, formal lawn with the select herd of ruminants. In
dress, habits, manners, provincialism, routine and narrowness he
acquired that charming insolence, that irritating completeness, that
sophisticated crassness, that overbalanced poise that makes the
Manhattan gentleman so delightfully small in his greatness.
One of the up-state rural counties pointed with pride to the
successful young metropolitan lawyer as a product of its soil. Six
years earlier this county had removed the wheat straw from between
its huckleberry-stained teeth and emitted a derisive and bucolic
laugh as old man Walmsley's freckle-faced "Bob" abandoned the certain
three-per-diem meals of the one-horse farm for the discontinuous
quick lunch counters of the three-ringed metropolis. At the end of
the six years no murder trial, coaching party, automobile accident or
cotillion was complete in which the name of Robert Walmsley did not
figure. Tailors waylaid him in the street to get a new wrinkle from
the cut of his unwrinkled trousers. Hyphenated fellows in the clubs
and members of the oldest subpoenaed families were glad to clap him
on the back and allow him three letters of his name.
But the Matterhorn of Robert Walmsley's success was not scaled until
he married Alicia Van Der Pool. I cite the Matterhorn, for just so
high and cool and white and inaccessible was this daughter of the
old burghers. The social Alps that ranged about her over whose bleak
passes a thousand climbers struggled - reached only to her knees. She
towered in her own atmosphere, serene, chaste, prideful, wading in no
fountains, dining no monkeys, breeding no dogs for bench shows. She
was a Van Der Pool. Fountains were made to play for her; monkeys were
made for other people's ancestors; dogs, she understood, were created
to be companions of blind persons and objectionable characters who
smoked pipes.
This was the Matterhorn that Robert Walmsley accomplished. If he
found, with the good poet with the game foot and artificially curled
hair, that he who ascends to mountain tops will find the loftiest
peaks most wrapped in clouds and snow, he concealed his chilblains
beneath a brave and smiling exterior. He was a lucky man and knew
it, even though he were imitating the Spartan boy with an ice-cream
freezer beneath his doublet frappéeing the region of his heart.
After a brief wedding tour abroad, the couple returned to create a
decided ripple in the calm cistern (so placid and cool and sunless
it is) of the best society. They entertained at their red brick
mausoleum of ancient greatness in an old square that is a cemetery of
crumbled glory. And Robert Walmsley was proud of his wife; although
while one of his hands shook his guests' the other held tightly to
his alpenstock and thermometer.
One day Alicia found a letter written to Robert by his mother. It was
an unerudite letter, full of crops and motherly love and farm notes.
It chronicled the health of the pig and the recent red calf, and
asked concerning Robert's in return. It was a letter direct from
the soil, straight from home, full of biographies of bees, tales of
turnips, pæans of new-laid eggs, neglected parents and the slump in
dried apples.
"Why have I not been shown your mother's letters?" asked Alicia.
There was always something in her voice that made you think of
lorgnettes, of accounts at Tiffany's, of sledges smoothly gliding
on the trail from Dawson to Forty Mile, of the tinkling of pendant
prisms on your grandmothers' chandeliers, of snow lying on a convent
roof; of a police sergeant refusing bail. "Your mother," continued
Alicia, "invites us to make a visit to the farm. I have never seen a
farm. We will go there for a week or two, Robert."
"We will," said Robert, with the grand air of an associate Supreme
Justice concurring in an opinion. "I did not lay the invitation
before you because I thought you would not care to go. I am much
pleased at your decision."
"I will write to her myself," answered Alicia, with a faint
foreshadowing of enthusiasm. "Félice shall pack my trunks at once.
Seven, I think, will be enough. I do not suppose that your mother
entertains a great deal. Does she give many house parties?"
Robert arose, and as attorney for rural places filed a demurrer
against six of the seven trunks. He endeavored to define, picture,
elucidate, set forth and describe a farm. His own words sounded
strange in his ears. He had not realized how thoroughly urbsidized
he had become.
A week passed and found them landed at the little country station
five hours out from the city. A grinning, stentorian, sarcastic youth
driving a mule to a spring wagon hailed Robert savagely.
"Hallo, Mr. Walmsley. Found your way back at last, have you? Sorry
I couldn't bring in the automobile for you, but dad's bull-tonguing
the ten-acre clover patch with it to-day. Guess you'll excuse my not
wearing a dress suit over to meet you - it ain't six o'clock yet, you
know."
"I'm glad to see you, Tom," said Robert, grasping his brother's hand.
"Yes, I've found my way at last. You've a right to say 'at last.'
It's been over two years since the last time. But it will be oftener
after this, my boy."
Alicia, cool in the summer heat as an Arctic wraith, white as a
Norse snow maiden in her flimsy muslin and fluttering lace parasol,
came round the corner of the station; and Tom was stripped of his
assurance. He became chiefly eyesight clothed in blue jeans, and on
the homeward drive to the mule alone did he confide in language the
inwardness of his thoughts.
They drove homeward. The low sun dropped a spendthrift flood of gold
upon the fortunate fields of wheat. The cities were far away. The
road lay curling around wood and dale and hill like a ribbon lost
from the robe of careless summer. The wind followed like a whinnying
colt in the track of Phoebus's steeds.
By and by the farmhouse peeped gray out of its faithful grove; they
saw the long lane with its convoy of walnut trees running from the
road to the house; they smelled the wild rose and the breath of cool,
damp willows in the creek's bed. And then in unison all the voices of
the soil began a chant addressed to the soul of Robert Walmsley. Out
of the tilted aisles of the dim wood they came hollowly; they chirped
and buzzed from the parched grass; they trilled from the ripples
of the creek ford; they floated up in clear Pan's pipe notes from
the dimming meadows; the whippoorwills joined in as they pursued
midges in the upper air; slow-going cow-bells struck out a homely
accompaniment - and this was what each one said: "You've found your
way back at last, have you?"
The old voices of the soil spoke to him. Leaf and bud and blossom
conversed with him in the old vocabulary of his careless youth - the
inanimate things, the familiar stones and rails, the gates and
furrows and roofs and turns of the road had an eloquence, too, and a
power in the transformation. The country had smiled and he had felt
the breath of it, and his heart was drawn as if in a moment back to
his old love. The city was far away.
This rural atavism, then, seized Robert Walmsley and possessed him. A
queer thing he noticed in connection with it was that Alicia, sitting
at his side, suddenly seemed to him a stranger. She did not belong
to this recurrent phase. Never before had she seemed so remote, so
colorless and high - so intangible and unreal. And yet he had never
admired her more than when she sat there by him in the rickety spring
wagon, chiming no more with his mood and with her environment than
the Matterhorn chimes with a peasant's cabbage garden.
That night when the greetings and the supper were over, the entire
family, including Buff, the yellow dog, bestrewed itself upon the
front porch. Alicia, not haughty but silent, sat in the shadow
dressed in an exquisite pale-gray tea gown. Robert's mother
discoursed to her happily concerning marmalade and lumbago. Tom sat
on the top step; Sisters Millie and Pam on the lowest step to catch
the lightning bugs. Mother had the willow rocker. Father sat in the
big armchair with one of its arms gone. Buff sprawled in the middle
of the porch in everybody's way. The twilight pixies and pucks stole
forth unseen and plunged other poignant shafts of memory into the
heart of Robert. A rural madness entered his soul. The city was far
away.
Father sat without his pipe, writhing in his heavy boots, a sacrifice
to rigid courtesy. Robert shouted: "No, you don't!" He fetched the
pipe and lit it; he seized the old gentleman's boots and tore them
off. The last one slipped suddenly, and Mr. Robert Walmsley, of
Washington Square, tumbled off the porch backward with Buff on top of
him, howling fearfully. Tom laughed sarcastically.
Robert tore off his coat and vest and hurled them into a lilac bush.
"Come out here, you landlubber," he cried to Tom, "and I'll put grass
seed on your back. I think you called me a 'dude' a while ago. Come
along and cut your capers."
Tom understood the invitation and accepted it with delight. Three
times they wrestled on the grass, "side holds," even as the giants of
the mat. And twice was Tom forced to bite grass at the hands of the
distinguished lawyer. Dishevelled, panting, each still boasting of
his own prowess, they stumbled back to the porch. Millie cast a pert
reflection upon the qualities of a city brother. In an instant Robert
had secured a horrid katydid in his fingers and bore down upon her.
Screaming wildly, she fled up the lane, pursued by the avenging glass
of form. A quarter of a mile and they returned, she full of apology
to the victorious "dude." The rustic mania possessed him unabatedly.
"I can do up a cowpenful of you slow hayseeds," he proclaimed,
vaingloriously. "Bring on your bulldogs, your hired men and your
log-rollers."
He turned handsprings on the grass that prodded Tom to envious
sarcasm. And then, with a whoop, he clattered to the rear and brought
back Uncle Ike, a battered colored retainer of the family, with his
banjo, and strewed sand on the porch and danced "Chicken in the
Bread Tray" and did buck-and-wing wonders for half an hour longer.
Incredibly, wild and boisterous things he did. He sang, he told
stories that set all but one shrieking, he played the yokel, the
humorous clodhopper; he was mad, mad with the revival of the old life
in his blood.
He became so extravagant that once his mother sought gently to
reprove him. Then Alicia moved as though she were about to speak, but
she did not. Through it all she sat immovable, a slim, white spirit
in the dusk that no man might question or read.
By and by she asked permission to ascend to her room, saying that she
was tired. On her way she passed Robert. He was standing in the door,
the figure of vulgar comedy, with ruffled hair, reddened face and
unpardonable confusion of attire - no trace there of the immaculate
Robert Walmsley, the courted clubman and ornament of select circles.
He was doing a conjuring trick with some household utensils, and the
family, now won over to him without exception, was beholding him with
worshipful admiration.
As Alicia passed in Robert started suddenly. He had forgotten for
the moment that she was present. Without a glance at him she went on
upstairs.
After that the fun grew quiet. An hour passed in talk, and then
Robert went up himself.
She was standing by the window when he entered their room. She was
still clothed as when they were on the porch. Outside and crowding
against the window was a giant apple tree, full blossomed.
Robert sighed and went near the window. He was ready to meet his
fate. A confessed vulgarian, he foresaw the verdict of justice in
the shape of that whiteclad form. He knew the rigid lines that a Van
Der Pool would draw. He was a peasant gambolling indecorously in the
valley, and the pure, cold, white, unthawed summit of the Matterhorn
could not but frown on him. He had been unmasked by his own actions.
All the polish, the poise, the form that the city had given him had
fallen from him like an ill-fitting mantle at the first breath of a
country breeze. Dully he awaited the approaching condemnation.
"Robert," said the calm, cool voice of his judge, "I thought I
married a gentleman."
Yes, it was coming. And yet, in the face of it, Robert Walmsley was
eagerly regarding a certain branch of the apple tree upon which
he used to climb out of that very window. He believed he could do
it now. He wondered how many blossoms there were on the tree - ten
millions? But here was some one speaking again:
"I thought I married a gentleman," the voice went on, "but - "
Why had she come and was standing so close by his side?
"But I find that I have married" - was this Alicia
talking? - "something better - a man - Bob, dear, kiss me, won't you?"
The city was far away.
XI
THE SHOCKS OF DOOM
There is an aristocracy of the public parks and even of the vagabonds
who use them for their private apartments. Vallance felt rather than
knew this, but when he stepped down out of his world into chaos his
feet brought him directly to Madison Square.
Raw and astringent as a schoolgirl - of the old order - young May
breathed austerely among the budding trees. Vallance buttoned his
coat, lighted his last cigarette and took his seat upon a bench.
For three minutes he mildly regretted the last hundred of his last
thousand that it had cost him when the bicycle cop put an end to
his last automobile ride. Then he felt in every pocket and found
not a single penny. He had given up his apartment that morning. His
furniture had gone toward certain debts. His clothes, save what were
upon him, had descended to his man-servant for back wages. As he sat
there was not in the whole city for him a bed or a broiled lobster
or a street-car fare or a carnation for buttonhole unless he should
obtain them by sponging on his friends or by false pretenses.
Therefore he had chosen the park.
And all this was because an uncle had disinherited him, and cut down
his allowance from liberality to nothing. And all that was because
his nephew had disobeyed him concerning a certain girl, who comes not
into this story - therefore, all readers who brush their hair toward
its roots may be warned to read no further. There was another nephew,
of a different branch, who had once been the prospective heir and
favorite. Being without grace or hope, he had long ago disappeared in
the mire. Now dragnets were out for him; he was to be rehabilitated
and restored. And so Vallance fell grandly as Lucifer to the lowest
pit, joining the tattered ghosts in the little park.
Sitting there, he leaned far back on the hard bench and laughed a
jet of cigarette smoke up to the lowest tree branches. The sudden
severing of all his life's ties had brought him a free, thrilling,
almost joyous elation. He felt precisely the sensation of the
aeronaut when he cuts loose his parachute and lets his balloon drift
away.
The hour was nearly ten. Not many loungers were on the benches. The
park-dweller, though a stubborn fighter against autumnal coolness, is
slow to attack the advance line of spring's chilly cohorts.
Then arose one from a seat near the leaping fountain, and came and
sat himself at Vallance's side. He was either young or old; cheap
lodging-houses had flavoured him mustily; razors and combs had passed
him by; in him drink had been bottled and sealed in the devil's bond.
He begged a match, which is the form of introduction among park
benchers, and then he began to talk.
"You're not one of the regulars," he said to Vallance. "I know
tailored clothes when I see 'em. You just stopped for a moment on
your way through the park. Don't mind my talking to you for a while?
I've got to be with somebody. I'm afraid - I'm afraid. I've told
two or three of those bummers over about it. They think I'm crazy.
Say - let me tell you - all I've had to eat to-day was a couple
pretzels and an apple. To-morrow I'll stand in line to inherit three
millions; and that restaurant you see over there with the autos
around it will be too cheap for me to eat in. Don't believe it, do
you?
"Without the slightest trouble," said Vallance, with a laugh. "I
lunched there yesterday. To-night I couldn't buy a five-cent cup of
coffee."
"You don't look like one of us. Well, I guess those things happen. I
used to be a high-flyer myself - some years ago. What knocked you out
of the game?"
"I - oh, I lost my job," said Vallance.
"It's undiluted Hades, this city," went on the other. "One day you're
eating from china; the next you are eating in China - a chop-suey
joint. I've had more than my share of hard luck. For five years
I've been little better than a panhandler. I was raised up to live
expensively and do nothing. Say - I don't mind telling you - I've
got to talk to somebody, you see, because I'm afraid - I'm afraid.
My name's Ide. You wouldn't think that old Paulding, one of the
millionaires on Riverside Drive, was my uncle, would you? Well, he
is. I lived in his house once, and had all the money I wanted. Say,
haven't you got the price of a couple of drinks about you - er - what's
your name - "
"Dawson," said Vallance. "No; I'm sorry to say that I'm all in,
financially."
"I've been living for a week in a coal cellar on Division Street,"
went on Ide, "with a crook they called 'Blinky' Morris. I didn't have
anywhere else to go. While I was out to-day a chap with some papers
in his pocket was there, asking for me. I didn't know but what he was
a fly cop, so I didn't go around again till after dark. There was
a letter there he had left for me. Say - Dawson, it was from a big
downtown lawyer, Mead. I've seen his sign on Ann Street. Paulding
wants me to play the prodigal nephew - wants me to come back and be
his heir again and blow in his money. I'm to call at the lawyer's
office at ten to-morrow and step into my old shoes again - heir to
three million, Dawson, and $10,000 a year pocket money. And - I'm
afraid - I'm afraid."
The vagrant leaped to his feet and raised both trembling arms above
his head. He caught his breath and moaned hysterically.