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Andy's Gift by T. C. De Leon

HOW HE GOT IN AND HOW HE WAS GOTTEN OUT.

An Episode of Any Day.

I.

“Well, Age is beautiful!”

“Then she is a joy forever!”

“Wonderful staying power for a filly of her age, anyhow!”

From a typical, if not very remarkable, group of alleged men of the world, surrounding the quaint and capacious punch-bowl at a brilliant society event, came this small-shot of repartee. None of the speakers had been very long out of their teens; all of them were familiar ingredients of that cream-nougat compound, called society.

Mr. de Silva Street was of the harmless blonde and immaculate linen type. He was invited everywhere for his present boots, and well-received for his expectant bonds; his sole and responsible ancestor having “fought in his corner” with success, in more than one of the market battles for the belt.

Mr. Wetherly Gage had glory enough with very young belles and tenacious marriageable possibilities, in being society editor of Our Planet; while Mr. Trotter Upton had owned more horses and been more of a boon to sharp traders than any man of his years in the metropolis. A brief young man, with ruddy, if adolescent, moustache apparently essaying the ascent of a nose turned up in sympathetic hue, his red hair was cut in aggressive erectile fashion, which emphasized the soubriquet of “Indian Summer,” given him by the present unconscious subject of the critical trilogy.

“But remember, Trotter, she is my pet partner,” simpered Mr. Street at the shapely back disappearing down the hallway; and he caressed where his blond moustache was to be.

“And might have been of your—mother’s,” added Mr. Gage, with the lonesome titter that illustrated all of his acidulous jokelets.

“Remember she is a lady, and a guest of your host besides,” chimed in a tall, dark man, as he joined the group. The voice was perfectly quiet; but there seemed discomforting magnetism in the glance he rested on one after the other, as he filled a glass and raised it to handsome, but firm-set lips.

The three typical beaux of an abnormal civilization shifted position uneasily. Trotter Upton pulled down his cuffs, and laboriously admired the horse-shoe and snaffle ornamenting their buttons, as he answered:

“Sorry we shocked you, Van. Forgot it was your lecture season! But I’ll taut the curb on the boys, so socket your whip, old fel!”

“If your tact kept pace with your slang, Upton, what a success you’d be!” Van Morris answered, carelessly. “’Tis a real pity you let the stable monopolize so much of the time that would make you an ornament to society.” Then he set down his unfinished glass, sauntered into the hall, and approached the subject of discussion.

Miss Rose Wood was scarcely a beauty; nor was she the youngest belle of that ball by perhaps fifteen seasons of German cotillion. But she had tact to her manicured finger-tips, delicate acid on her tongue’s tip, and that dangerous erudition, a brief biography of every girl in the set, was handily stored in her capacious memory. She had, moreover, a staunch following of gilt-plated youths who, being really afraid of her, made her a belle as a sort of social Peter’s pence.

Miss Wood had just finished a rapid “glide,” when she came under fire of the punch-room light-fighters; but, though Mr. Upton had once judged her “a trifle touched in the wind,” her complexion and her tasteful drapery had come equally smooth out of that trying ordeal. Even that critic finished with a nod towards her as their mentor moved away:

“She does keep her pace well! Hasn’t turned a hair.” And he was right in the fact so peculiarly stated; for it was less the warmth of the dancing-room than of her partner’s urgence, that brought Miss Rose Wood into the hall, for what Mr. Upton called “a breather.”

The visible members of the Wood family were two, Miss Rose and her father, Colonel Westchester Wood. “The Colonel” was an equally familiar figure at the clubs and on the quarter-stretch; nor was he chary of acceptance of the cards to dinners, balls, and opera-boxes, which his daughter’s facile management brought to the twain in showers. He had a certain military air, and a nebulous military history; boasted of his Virginia-Kentucky origin, and more than hinted at his Blue Grass stock-farm. Late at night, he would mistily mention “My regiment at Shiloh, sah!” But, as he was reputed even more expert with the pistol than most knew him to be with cards, geography and chronology were never insisted on in detail. But the Colonel was undisputed possessor of a thirst, marvellous in its depth and continuity; and he had also a cast-iron head that turned the flanks of the most direct assaults of alcohol, and scattered them to flaunt the red flag on his pendulous nose, or to skirmish over his scrupulously shaven cheeks.

Of the invisible members of “the Colonel’s” household, fleecy rumors only pervaded society at intervals. The social Stanleys and Livingstons who had essayed the sources of the Wood family stream in its dark continent of brown-faced brick, on a quiet avenue, sent back vague stories of a lovely and patient invalid, and a more lovely and equally patient young girl, mother and sister to Miss Rose. There was a misty legend sometimes floating around the clubs, that “the Colonel,” after the method of Cleopatra, had dissolved his wife’s fortune in a posset, and swallowed it years before. But again the reputation of a dead shot cramped curiosity.

And a similar mist sometimes pervaded five o’clock teas and reunions chez la modiste, to the effect that the younger sister was but as a Midianite to the elder, while the mother was dying of neglect. But as neither subject of this gossip was in society, the mist never condensed into direction.

Society found Miss Rose Wood a peculiarly useful and pleasant person; and it took her—as “the Colonel” took many of his pleasures—on trust.

II.

The ball was a crowded one; but was, perhaps, the most brilliant and select of that season, combining a Christmas-eve festivity with the début party of the acknowledged beauty and prize-heiress of the entire set.

Blanche Allmand had been finally finishing abroad for some years, after having won her blue-ribboned diploma from Mde. de Cancanière, on Murray Hill. Rumors of her perfections of face and form and character had come across the seas, in those thousand-and-one letters, for which a fostering government makes postal unions. And ever mingled with these rumors, came praises of those thousand-and-one accomplishments, which society is equally apt to admire as to envy, even while it does not appreciate.

But what most inspired with noble ambition the gilded youth of that particular coterie, was the universally accepted fact that old Jack Allmand was master of the warmest fortune that any papa  thereabouts might add to the blessing he bestowed upon his son-in-law.

And, like Jeptha of old, he “had one fair daughter and no more.” A widower—not only “warm,” but very safe—he had weathered all the shoals and quicksands of “the street,” and had brought his golden argosy safe into the port of investment. Then he had retired from business, which theretofore had engrossed his whole heart and soul, and lavished both upon the fair young girl, to bring whom from final finishing at the Sacre Cœur, he had just made himself so hideously sea-sick.

It was very late in the season when the delayed return of the pair was announced, with numerous adjectives, in the society columns; but Mr. Allmand’s impatience to expose his golden fleece to the expectant Jasons would brook no delay. Blanche was allowed scarcely time to unpack her many trunks; to exhibit her goodly share of the chefs d’œuvres of Pengat and Worth to the admiring elect; and to receive gushing embraces, only measured by their envy, when the début ball was announced for Christmas-eve.

His best Christmas gift had come to the doting father; and what more fitting season to show his joy and pride in it, and to have their little world share both?

When Blanche, backed by Miss Rose Wood, had hinted that it was rather an unusual occasion, he had promptly settled that by declaring that she was a peculiarly unusual sort of girl. So the invitations went forth; the Allmand mansion was first turned inside out, and then illuminated, and flower-hidden for the début ball.

That it would be the affair of the season none doubted. Already, many a paternal pocket had twinged responsive to extra appeals from marketable daughters; and as to beaux, they had responded nem. con., when bidden to the event promising so much in present feast, and which might possibly so tend to prevent future famine. For already the clubs had discounted the chances of one favorite or another for winning the marital prize of the year.

Foremost among those who had hastened to welcome Blanche back to her new home was Miss Rose Wood. She had the mysterious knack of “coming out” gracefully with every fresh set; of perfectly adapting herself to its fads, and especially to its beaux. Set might come and set might go, but she came out forever; and some nameless tact implied to every débutante, what Micawber forced upon Copperfield with the brutality of words, that she was the “friend of her youth.”

So, already, Miss Wood was prime favorite and prime minister at the home-court of the confiding Blanche, who, spite of brave heart and strong will of her own, fluttered not unnaturally in the unwonted buzz and glare of her new life. But most particularly had Rose Wood warned her against the flirts and “unsafe men” of their set; including, of course, Vanderbilt Morris and her present partner of the ball in the ranks of both.

That partner, Andrew Browne, was avowedly the best parti of the entire set. Handsome, fun-loving, and well-cultivated, he was that rara avis among society beaux, a thorough gentlemen by instinct; but he was lazily given to self-indulgence, and had the prime weakness of being utterly incapable of saying “no,” to man or woman. The intimate friend and room-mate of Van Morris for many years, Browne had never lost a sort of reverence for the superior force and decision of the other’s character; and, though but a few years his junior, in all serious social matters he literally sat at his feet.

And Morris had always grown restive when Miss Rose Wood made one of her “dead sets” at Andy’s face and fortune; for a far-away experience of his own, in that quarter, had taught him how small an objection to that maiden would be a fortune with the man whom she blessed with her affection.

“And that brand of the wine of the heart,” he had once cautioned Andy, “does not improve with age.”

Doubtful of that young gentleman’s confident response, that “he was not to be caught with chaff,” Van still kept watch and ward. So, leaving the elegant book-room of the elegant avenue mansion—converted, for the nonce, into an elegant bar-room for Mr. Trotter Upton and his friends—Morris sauntered through knots of pretty women and of pretty vacuous-looking men, resting on seats half-hidden in potted plants, and approached the pair interesting him most.

Neither glowed with delight at his advent, although Andy seemed only to be rattling off common-places, in peculiarly voluble style. Morris asked for the next waltz; Miss Wood glanced shyly up at her companion, dropped her eyes demurely, and believed she would rest until the cotillon. Then, after a few more small necessaries of social life about the beauty of the girls, the heat of the rooms, and the elegance of the flowers, she permitted Andy to drift easily towards the door that opened on the dim-lit coolness of the conservatory.

As they turned away, Rose Wood sent one sharp glance of her gray eyes glinting into Morris’s; then hers fell, and even he could find only bare common-place in her words:

“So many little dangers, you know, Mr. Morris—at a ball. One cannot be too prudent.”

He did not answer; but the look that followed her graceful figure had very little of flattery in it.

“Curse that Chambertin!” he muttered in his moustache. “I warned him against the second pint at dinner. Andy couldn’t be fool enough, though,” he added, with a shrug, and moved slowly towards the dancing-room.

The critical group, still around the big punch-bowl, looked after him curiously.

“He’s not soft on the old girl, is he?” queried Mr. de Silva Street.

“Never!” chuckled Mr. Wetherly Gage. “Morris is too well up in Bible lore to marry his grandmother!”

“And he don’t have to,” put in Mr. Trotter Upton, with a sage wink. “I’d back Van against the field to win the Allmand purse, hands down, if he’d only enter. But he won’t; so you’re safe, Silvey, if you’ve got the go in you. But Lord! Van’s too smart to carry weight for age! Why, you may land me over the tail-board, if the woman that hitches him double won’t have to throw him down and sit on him, Rarey fashion!”

And the speaker, remarking sotto voce, that here was luck to the winner, drained his glass with a smack, set it down, and lounged into the smoking-room. There he lazily lit one of Mr. Allmand’s full-flavored Havanas, and thoughtfully stored his breast pocket with several more.

III.

Meanwhile, the horsey pundit’s offered odds seemed not so wisely laid.

In the great room a crowded waltz was in progress; and Morris saw Blanche Allmand standing on the opposite edge of the whirling circle. Her head and her dainty slipper were keeping time to the softly accented music; while a comical expression—half anger, half mischief—emphasized the nothing she was saying to her companion.

Van caught her eye and, adept that he was in the social signal-service, took in the situation at a glance. He slightly raised his eyebrows and barely moved his lips; she assented with the smallest of nods and a happy flush; and, a moment later, he had edged around the masses of bumping humanity and offered his arm.

“My waltz, I believe,” he said, with the ease of the heir-apparent of Ananias. “I was unlucky enough, in losing the first turn, not to grudge Major Bouncey the rest.”

“You deserve to lose the whole for coming late,” the girl answered, drawing her arm from her partner’s with that pretty reluctance which makes society’s stage-business seem born in woman. “It was just too good of Major Bouncey to take your place and save my being a wall-flower.” And, not pausing for that gallant soldier’s labored disclaimer, the graceful pair glided away to the graceful time of ‘La Gitana’ waltz.

“Horrid bore, that Bouncey,” Blanche panted in the first pause. “Don’t stop near him! He does all his dancing on my insteps; and I dare not stop for fear of his still more dreadful spooning.”

“You would not have me blame him? A better balanced brain might well lose its poise, with such temptation!” And the man looked down on her with very eloquent eyes.

There was a pause. Then Van Morris bent his head, and the eyes still more strongly emphasized the words:

“Blanche, do you know how dangerously lovely you are?”

The girl’s frank eyes dropped beneath the strong light in his; but there was not a shade of consciousness in the soft laugh that prefaced her reply:

“Ah! I’ve a cheval-glass and this is my first ball. So I suppose I know how ‘dangerous’ I am! Then, too, that awful Bouncey called me a lily of the valley!”

“It is the purest flower made by God’s hand,” were Morris’s simple words; but the vibrant tone came from deeper than the lips, now close pressed together.

“But I know I’m not,” Blanche retorted, merrily, “for they drink only dew, and I am quite wild for Regent’s punch!”

They were at the refreshment room, now nearly deserted. Once more the man’s eyes grew darker and deeper, as they met the girl’s frank blue ones.

“And yet, not purer,” he said, unheeding the interruption, “than the heart you, little girl, will soon give to some——”

He stopped abruptly; but the eyes added more than the words left unsaid.

Again Blanche dropped her eyes quickly; but her color never heightened, nor did the soft laces nestling over the graceful bust move at all quicker than the waltz might warrant. Van’s face still bent over her with earnest expression, as she sipped the glass of punch he handed her; but neither spoke until they had crossed the corridor and passed another door into the conservatory.

IV.

The soft, warm air, heavy with the breath of the “Grand Duke” and of orange blossoms; the tremulous half-light from colored lamps hung amid the leaves; the dead stillness of the place, broken only by the plash of the fountain falling back into its moss-covered basin, all contrasted deliciously with the hot, dusty atmosphere and giddy buzzing under the flaring gas-jets left behind.

They strolled slowly down the gravelled walk, between rows of huge tubs, moist and flower-laden with the products of almost every clime. Here gleamed the glossy leaves of the Southern grandiflora; the rare wax plant crept along the wall beyond, its pink, starry blooms gleaming delicately among the thick, artificial-seeming leaves; while, as though in honor of the happily-timed birthnight of the fair young mistress of all, a gorgeous century plant had opened its bud in a glory of form and color, magnificent as rare.

“Blanche, do you remember how long I have known you?” Morris asked, suddenly breaking the silence. “Ever since you were like this; a close, callow bud, giving but vague promise of the glorious flowering of your womanhood! I watched the opening of every petal of your mind and tried to peer through them into the heart of the flower. But they sent you away; and now your return dazzles me with the brilliance and beauty of the full bloom. This was the past—this is the present!”

And reaching up, the man suddenly snapped off the glowing blossom from the cactus and held it before the girl, close to the pale camellia bud he had plucked before.

She raised her beautiful face, crowned with its halo-like glory of hair, full to him; and the expression it took was graver and more womanly than before. But still no agitation reflected in the candid eyes that looked steadily into his, and the voice, more softly pitched, had no tremor in it, as she answered:

“Please think of me, then, as the child you used to know; never as the débutante who must be fed, à la Bouncey, on the sweets of sentiment.”

“Take sentiment—I mean the higher sentiment, that lifts us sometimes above our baser worldly nature—out of life, and it is not worth the living,” Morris said earnestly. “That man could not understand it any more than he could understand you!”

“Perhaps you are right,” she answered, quietly. “We are too old friends to talk society at each other; and you are so different from him.”

Perhaps Morris was luckier for not replying.

It may be that the Destiny, which, we are told, shapes our ends, did not leave his so rough-hewn as it might have.

He himself could scarcely have told what thoughts were framing themselves in his mind; what words had almost formed themselves on his tongue. There are moments in life, when we live at the rate of hours; and Van Morris was certainly going the pace, mentally, for those ten seconds of silence, before the echo of the girl’s voice ceased vibrating on his ear. He was vaguely conscious, some ten seconds later still, that rarely had a calm, well-posed man of the world found himself quite so dizzy, from combined effects of a quick waltz, a flower-laden atmosphere, and a rounded arm pressing only restfully upon his own.

Suddenly that pressure grew sharp and decided. They stopped abruptly at a sharp turn of the walk.

On a somewhat too small rustic seat, under the fruit-laden boughs of an orange tree, and comfortably screened thereby from the gleam of the tinted lantern, sat Miss Rose Wood and Mr. Andrew Browne.

Their two heads were rather close together; their two hands were suspiciously distant, as though by sudden movement; and the lady’s fan had fallen at her feet, most à propos to the crunch of the gravel, under approaching feet.

But only Blanche—less preoccupied with her thoughts than her companion—had caught the words, “Dismiss carriage—escort home,” before Miss Wood’s fan had happened to drop at her feet.

What there might be in those words to drop the color out of rosy cheeks, or to clench white little teeth hard together, it might well puzzle one to guess. But the face that had not changed under the strong music of Van Morris’s voice, now grew deadly white an instant; then flooded again with surging rush of color.

But very quickly, though with perfect self-possession, Miss Wood had risen and advanced one step, to arrange Blanche’s lace, with the words:

“Your berthé is loose, darling!”

Then, as she inserted the harmless, unnecessary pin, she whispered in the shell-like ear:

“Don’t scold me, loved one! Indeed, I was not flirting. I only came out here to keep him from the—champagne punch!”

Blanche made no reply to this whispered confidence; nor did she seem especially grateful for the grace done to her toilette. She never so much as glanced at Andy Browne. He, also, had risen, after picking up the dropped fan, with not effortless grace; and now stood smiling, with rather meaningless, if measureless, good nature upon the invaders.

And Van Morris was all pose and savoir faire once more. He might have been examining Blanche on her progress in algebra, for all the consciousness in his manner as he complimented Miss Wood on her peculiarly deft management of that dangerous weapon, the pin. But there was no little annoyance in the whispered aside to his friend:

“Don’t drink any more to-night, Andy. Don’t!”

“All right, Van; I promise,” responded the other, with the most beaming of smiles. “Tell you the truth, don’t think I need it. Heat of the room, you know—”

“And the second pint of Chambertin at dinner,” finished Morris, as Miss Wood—the toilette and her confidence both completed—slipped her perfectly gloved hand into Andy’s arm again.

Precisely, then, three sharp notes of the cornet cut through the stillness under the flowers. It was followed by the indescribable sound, made only by the rush of many female trains towards one spot. Like the chronicled war-horse, Andy shook his mane at the first note; Miss Wood nodded beamingly over her shoulder at the second; and the pair were hastening off by the time the third died away.

Blanche showed no disposition to take the vacated seat.

“The German is forming,” she said, “and I am engaged to that colt-like Mr. Upton.”

Only at the door of the conservatory she paused.

“Does Mr. Browne ever drink too much wine?” she asked abruptly.

Van never hesitated one second. He lied loyally. “Why, never, of course,” he deprecated, in the most natural tone. “With rare exceptions. But what deucedly sharp eyes she has,” he added, mentally, as Mr. Upton informed them that “the bell had tapped,” and took Blanche off.

Almost at the same moment, a waiter rushed by with a wine-cooler and glasses; and he heard the pompous butler direct:

“Set it by Mr. Browne’s chair. He leads in ler curtillyun!”

Morris half started to countermand the order. Then he reconsidered and leaned against the doorway.

“He can’t mean to drink it, after his promise to me,” he thought. “Anyway, he might get something worse. Besides, I am not his guardian; and,” he added very slowly, a strange smile hovering about his lips, “I can scarcely keep my own head to-night.”

Somehow he, best dancer in town as he was, had no partner to-night. The sight before him had no novelty; and Mr. Trotter Upton’s vivacious prancing somewhat irritated him, in spite of the amusement at himself he felt at the sensation.

“Didn’t think I was so far gone as to be jealous of Trotter,” he muttered.

Then he slipped into the hat-room and was quickly capped and cloaked for that precious boon to the bored, the exit sans adieu.

V.

It was a raw, searching Christmas morning into which Van Morris stepped, as he softly closed the door of the Allmand mansion and turned up his fur collar against “a nipping and an eager air.”

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

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

“Please let me pass!”

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

“Do, please, let me pass! won’t you?”

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

“Not by a damned sight!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Morris glanced at the man with genuine pity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VI.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What? Rose Wood?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VII.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The inexorable machine beside her ground on relentless.

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

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

“‘No?’ I—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“For Van Morris is your best friend, after all. He will remember that I told him, last night, ‘One cannot be too careful’!”

She rose on tiptoe, whispered three words, and was gone before he could frame one in reply.

Once more those ill-used bays got the whip fiercely; and they turned the corner so short that Mr. Trotter Upton looked over his shoulder with a grin, and remarked to the blaze-faced companion in his sulky shafts:

“Nine hundred dollars’ worth of horse risked with nine dollars’ worth of man! Van Morris better drive his own stock. G’long!”

VIII.

It was two o’clock when Mr. Andrew Browne had ridden forth to recapture his plighted troth.

The shades of Christmas evening had now wrapped the city completely, and the gilt clock upon his parlor mantel now pointed to six. Still he had not returned; and still Van Morris’s eagerness to test the issue of his own tactics was too keen to let him leave their rooms. He had even resisted the temptations of a gossip at the club, and was smoking his fifth cigar—a thought-amused smile wreathing his lips—when the chime of six startled him suddenly to his feet.

“How time flies!” he exclaimed. “And we are to dine at the Allmand’s at seven.”

He tossed away his cigar, turned into his own apartment, and made an unusually careful toilet. Then he looked into Browne’s still vacant room once more.

“Where can he be?” he muttered. “By George! he must have bungled fearfully if he did not pull through. He certainly had his lesson by heart! But she must not be kept waiting,” and his face softened greatly, and the deep, strong light came back into his eyes. “How ceaselessly that old verse comes back to me! And now ‘to put it to the test’ myself.”

He turned to his escritoire, and took a small Russia case from the drawer; then to the mantel, and carefully shook the dampness from the two flowers he had placed there that morning. Putting case and flowers carefully in his vest pocket, Van paused at the door, gave a long, sweeping glance—with a sort of farewell in it—to the rooms; then shut himself outside, still repeating sotto voce,

Metropolitan Christmas was abroad in the streets. Young and old, grandsire and maiden, beggar and parvenu jostled one another on the pavements. Rough men, laden with loosely-wrapped, brown-papered packages, strode happily homeward; wan women skurried along leading eager children from unwonted shopping for dainties; carriages rolled by, with the gas-light glimpsing on occupants in evening dress, driven Christmas dinnerward.

Van Morris recked little of all this, as he strode rapidly over the very spot where his coolness had saved an ugly misadventure twelve hours before. His brain was going faster than his body; one goal only had he in view; one refrain ever sounded in his memory: “To gain, or lose, it all!”

A quick turn of the corner, and he stood at the door he had quietly escaped from during the ball. The servant replied to his inquiry that Miss Blanche was in the library; and thither he turned, with the freedom of long intimacy.

Only the warm glow of fire-light filled the room; there was a rustle, as of a retreating silk dress. There was also a man’s figure, backed by the fire, with that not infrequent expression all over it that tells he would really be at his ease if he only knew how.

“Why, Andy! And in your driving suit!”

“Van, dearest old boy,” cried the other, irrelevantly, “congratulate me! I’m the luckiest dog alive!”

“With all my heart,” Van answered, shaking the proffered hand heartily. “I was sure it would come out all right.”

“You were?” Andy fairly beamed. “She said so!”

“What? she said so? Did Rose Wood expect you to break off, then?”

“No, no! Not that. She said she knew you’d be glad of the match.”

“Glad of—the match!” Van stared at his friend, with growing suspicion in his mind.

“Yes, you dear old Van! I’m engaged, and just the happiest of—”

“Engaged?” and Van seized Andy by the shoulders with both hands.

“Yes, all fixed! And Rose Wood is just the dearest, best girl after all! I’d never have known happiness but for her!”

Van Morris turned the speaker full to the firelight, and stared hard in his face.

“I wouldn’t have believed it, Andy,” he said, contemptuously. “You have come here drunk again!”

“No, indeed! I have pledged my word to her never to touch a drop!” protested Andy, with imperturbable good nature. “And, Van, she has accepted me.”

“She?”

“Yes. Rose said, ‘Morris has his heart set on the match;’ I went straight on that hint, and Blanche Allmand will be Mrs. Andrew Browne next Easter.”

Morris answered no word.

With a deep, hard breath, he turned abruptly, strode to the alcove window, and peered through the curtains into the black night beyond. A great surge of regret swept over him that shook the strong man with pain pitiful to see. He pressed his forehead against the cold glass; and the contrast, so strong, to the hope with which he had looked out thus at the gray dawn, sickened him with its weight. There was a boom in his ears, as of the distant surf; and his brain mechanically groped after a lost refrain, finding only the fragment: “To lose it all! lose it all!”

But heart-sickness, like sea-sickness, is never mortal, and it has the inestimable call over the latter of being far less tenacious. And Van Morris was mentally as healthy as he was physically sound. He made a strong effort of a strong will; and turned to face his friend and his—fate. In his hand he held a wilted camellia bud and a crushed cactus flower.

Moving quickly to the fire, he tossed them on the glowing coals; watching as they curled, shrivelled, and disappeared in the heat’s maw. Then he moved quietly to the window and looked into the night once more.

Wholly wrapped up in his new-found joy, Andy Browne saw nothing odd in his friend’s manner or actions. He moved softly about the room, and once more hummed, “Il segreto per esser felice;” very low and very tenderly this time.

Suddenly the rustle of silk again sounded on Morris’s ear.

He turned quickly, and looked long, but steadily, into the beautiful face. It was very quiet and gentle; glorified by the deeper content in the eyes and the modest flush upon the cheek. His face, too, was very quiet; but it was pale and grave. His manner was gentle; but he retained the little hand Blanche held out to him, in fingers that were steadier than her own.

“I reminded you last night,” he said, very gravely, “how long we had been friends, Blanche. It is meet, then, that I should be the first to wish you that perfect happiness which only a pure girl’s heart may know.”

Then, without a pause, he turned to Andy, and placed the little Russia case in his hand. As it opened, the eye of a dazzling solitaire flashed from its satin pillow.

“Andy, old friend,” he added, “Rose Wood told you only the truth. I had set my heart on Blanche’s happiness; and only this morning I got that for her engagement ring. Put it on her finger with the feeling that Van Morris loves you both—better than a nature like Rose Wood’s can ever comprehend.”

T. C. De Leon.

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