A Man and His Money Part 3

"If ever you go to a moving-picture palace of amus.e.m.e.nt, Madam, and see a streak in the air, you might reasonably conclude you are"--he bowed--"beholding me. I went once; it seemed funny. I hardly recognized myself in the part. I certainly seemed to be 'going some'," he murmured seriously. "Is there anything else, Madam, you would care to question me about?"

"I think," she said significantly, "what I have learned is quite sufficient. If the occupations you have told me about are so disreputable--what were those you have kept so carefully concealed? For example, where were you and what were you doing four--five--six--years ago? You have already refused to answer. You relate only a few inconsequential and outre trifles. To cover up--What? What?" she repeated.

Then she transfixed him with her eye; the dogs transfixed him with their eyes. Accusingly? Not all of them. Naughty's glance expressed approval; his tail underwent a friendly agitation.

"Naughty!" said the lady sharply. Naughty gamboled around Horatio.

"How odd!" murmured the mistress, more to herself than the other. "How very extraordinary!"

"What, Madam?" he ventured.

"That Naughty, who so seldom takes to strangers, should--" she found herself saying.

"Perhaps it's the scent of the gasolene," he suggested.

"It's _in spite of_ the gasolene," she retorted sharply.

And for some moments ruminated. It was not until afterward Mr.

Heatherbloom learned that her confidence in Naughty's instinct amounted to a hobby. Only once had she thought him at fault in his likes or dislikes of people; when he had showed a predilection for the a.s.sistant rector's shapely calves. But after that gentleman's elopement with a lady of the choir and his desertion of wife and children, Naughty's erstwhile disrespect for the cloth, which Miss Van Rolsen had grieved over, became illumined with force and significance. Thereafter she had never doubted him; he had barked at all twelve of Mr. Heatherbloom's predecessors--the dozen other answers to the advertis.e.m.e.nt; but here he was sedulous for fondlings from Horatio. Extraordinary truly! The lady hesitated.

"I suppose we shall all be murdered in our beds," she said half to herself, "but," with sudden decision, "I've concluded to engage you."

"And my duties?" ventured Mr. Heatherbloom. "The advertis.e.m.e.nt did not say."

"You are to exercise the darlings every day in the park."

"Ah!" Horatio's exclamation was noncommittal. What he might have added was interrupted by a light footstep in the hall and the voice of some one who stopped in pa.s.sing before the door.

"I am going now, Aunt," said a voice.

Mr. Heatherbloom started; his hand tightened on the back of a chair; from where he stood he could see but the rim of a wonderful hat. He gazed at a few waving roses, fitting notes of color as it were, for the lovely face behind, concealed from him by the curtain.

The elderly lady answered; Mr. Heatherbloom heard a Prince Someone's name mentioned; then the roses were whisked back; the voice--musical as silver bells--receded, and the front door closed. Mr. Heatherbloom gazed around him--at the furnishings in the room--she who stood before him. He seemed bewildered.

"And now as to your wages," said a voice--not silver bells!--sharply.

"I hardly think I should prove suitable--" he began in somewhat panic-stricken tones, when--

"Nonsense!" The word, or the energy imparted to it, appeared to crush for the moment further opposition on his part; his faculties became concentrated on a sound without, of a big car gathering headway in front of the door. Mr. Heatherbloom listened; perhaps he would have liked to retreat then and there from that house; but it was too late! Fate had precipitated him here. A mad tragic jest! He did not catch the amount of his proposed stipend that was mentioned; he even forgot for the moment he was hungry. He could no longer hear the car. It had gone; but, it would return. Return! And then--? His head whirled at the thought.

CHAPTER III

AN ENCOUNTER

Mr. Heatherbloom, a few days later, sat one morning in Central Park. His canine charges were tied to the bench and while they chafed at restraint and tried vainly to get away and chase squirrels, he scrutinized one of the pages of a newspaper some person had left there. What the young man read seemed to give him no great pleasure. He put down the paper; then picked it up again and regarded a snap-shot ill.u.s.tration occupying a conspicuous position on the society page.

"Prince Boris Strogareff, riding in the park," the picture was labeled.

The newspaper photographer had caught for his sensational sheet an excellent likeness of a foreign visitor in whom New York was at the time greatly interested. A picturesque personality--the prince--half distinguished gentleman, half bold brigand in appearance, was depicted on a superb bay, and looked every inch a horseman. Mr. Heatherbloom continued to stare at the likeness; the features, dark, rather wild-looking, as if a trace of his ancient Tartar ancestry had survived the cultivating touch of time. Then the young man on the bench once more turned his attention to the text accompanying the cut.

"Reported engagement of Miss Elizabeth Dalrymple to Prince Boris Strogareff ... the prince has vast estates in Russia and Russia-Asia ...

his forbears were prominent in the days when Crakow was building and the Cossacks and the Poles were engaged in constant strife on the steppe ...

Miss Dalrymple, with whom this stalwart romantic personage is said to be deeply enamored, is niece and heiress of the eccentric Miss Van Rolsen, the third richest woman in New York, and, probably, in the world ...

Miss Dalrymple is the only surviving daughter of Charles Dalrymple of San Francisco, who made his fortune with Martin Ferguson of the same place, at the time--"

The paper fell from Mr. Heatherbloom's hand; for several moments he sat motionless; then he got up, unloosened his charges and moved on. They naturally became once more wild with joy, but he heeded not their exuberances; even Naughty's demonstrations brought no answering touch of his hand, that now lifted to his breast and took something from his pocket--an article wrapped in a pink tissue-paper. Mr. Heatherbloom unfolded the warm-tinted covering with light sedulous fingers and looked steadily and earnestly at a miniature. But only for a brief interval; by this time Curly et al. had become an incomprehensible tangle of dog and leading strings about Mr. Heatherbloom's legs. So much so, indeed, that in the effort to extricate himself he dropped the tiny picture; with a sudden pa.s.sionate exclamation he stooped for it. The anger that transformed his usually mild visage seemed about to vent itself on his charges but almost at once subsided.

Carefully brushing the picture on his coat, he replaced it in his pocket and quietly started to disentangle his charges from himself. This was at length accomplished; he knew, however, that the unraveling would have to be done all over again ere long; it const.i.tuted an important part of his duties. The promenade was punctuated by about so many "mix-ups"; Mr. Heatherbloom accepted them philosophically, or absent-mindedly. At any rate, while untying knots or disengaging things, he usually exhibited much patience.

It might have been noticed some time later that Mr. Heatherbloom, retracing his footsteps to Miss Van Rolsen's, betrayed a rather vacillating and uncertain manner, as if he were somewhat reluctant to go into, or to approach too near the old-fashioned stiff and stately house.

For fear of meeting some one, or a dread of some sudden encounter? With Miss Van Rolsen's niece? So far he had not seen her since that first day. Perhaps he congratulated himself on his good fortune in this respect. If so, he reckoned without his host.

It is possible for two people to frequent the same house for quite a while without meeting when one of them lives on the avenue side and flits back and forth via the front steps, while the other comes and goes only by the subterranean route; but, sooner or later, though belonging to widely different worlds, these two are bound to come face to face, even in spite of the determination of one of the persons to avert such a contingency!

Mr. Heatherbloom always peered carefully about before venturing from the house with his pampered charges; he was no less watchfully alert when he returned. He could not, however, having only five senses, tell when the front door might be suddenly opened at an inopportune moment. It was opened, this very morning, on the third day of his probation at such a moment. And he had been planning, after reading the newspaper article in the park, to tender his resignation that very afternoon!

It availed him nothing now to regret indecision, his being partly coerced by the masterful mistress of the house into remaining as long as he had remained; or to lament that other sentiment, conspiring to this end--the desire or determination, not to flee from what he most feared. Empty bravado! If he could but flee now! But there was no fleeing, turning, retreating, or evading. The issue had to be met.

Miss Dalrymple, gowned in a filmy material which lent an evanescent charm to her slender figure, came down the front steps as he was about to enter the area way below. The girl looked at him and her eyes suddenly widened; she stopped. Mr. Heatherbloom, quite pale, bowed and would have gone on, when something in her look, or the first word that fell from her lips, held him.

"You!" she said, as if she did not at all comprehend.

He repaid her regard with less steady look; he had to say something and he didn't wish to. Why couldn't people just meet and pa.s.s on, the way dumb creatures do? The gift of speech has its disadvantages--on occasions; it forces one to insufficient answer or superfluous explanation. "Yes," he said, "your--Miss Van Rolsen engaged me. I didn't really want to stay, but it came about. Some things do, you know.

You see," he added, "I didn't know she was your aunt when I answered the advertis.e.m.e.nt."

She bent her gaze down upon him as if she hardly heard; beneath the bright adornment of tints, the lovely face--it was a very proud face--had become icy cold; the violet eyes were hard as shining crystal.

To Mr. Heatherbloom that slender figure, tensely poised, seemed at once overwhelmingly near and inexpressibly remote. He started to lean on an iron picket but changed his mind and stood rather too stiffly, without support. Before his eyes the flowers in her hat waved and waved; he tried to keep his eyes on them.

"I had been intending," he observed in tones he endeavored to make light, "to tell Miss Van Rolsen she must find some one else to take my place. It would not be very difficult. It is not a position that requires a trained man."

"Difficult?" She seemed to have difficulty in speaking the word; her cold eyes suddenly lighted with unutterable scorn. If any one in this world ever experienced thorough disdain for any one else, her expression implied it was she that experienced it for him. "Valet for dogs!"

Mr. Heatherbloom flushed. "They are very nice dogs," he murmured.

"Indeed, they are exceptional."

She gave an abrupt, frozen little laugh; then bent down her face slightly. "And do you wash and curl and perfume them?" she asked, her small white teeth setting tightly after she spoke.

"Well, I don't perfume them," answered Mr. Heatherbloom. "Miss Van Rolsen attends to that herself. She knows the particular essences better than I." A slightly strained smile struggled about his lips. "You see Beauty has one kind, and Naughty another. At least, I think so. While Sardanapolis isn't given any at all."

Can violet eyes shine fiercely? Hers certainly seemed to. "How," she said, examining him as one would study something very remote and impersonal, "did my aunt happen to employ--you? I know she is very particular--about recommendations. What ones did you have? Were they forged ones," suddenly, "or stolen ones?" The red lips like rosebuds had become straightly drawn now.

"No," answered Mr. Heatherbloom. "I didn't have any. I just came, and--"

"Saw and conquered!" said the girl. But there was no levity in her tone.

She continued to gaze at him and yet through him; at something beyond--afar--"I don't understand why she should have taken you--"