Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories Part 30

"That is the only piece of your professional advice I ever cared to follow. But how?"

"Any way you can--use force if necessary--only marry her. Otherwise I predict all sorts of complications for you--melancholia, brain-f.a.g, bankruptcy--"

Austin laughed. "Could you write me a prescription?"

"Oh, she'll have you, Bob. You don't seem to realize that you are a good catch."

Austin finished buckling his puttee before rising to his full height.

"That doesn't mean anything to her. She doesn't need to make a catch."

"Nonsense! She's just like all the others, only richer and nicer. Go at her as if she were the corn-market; she won't be half so hard to corner. You have made a name for yourself, and a blamed sight more money than you deserve; you are young--comparatively, I mean."

The elder man stroked his shock of iron-gray hair for answer.

"Well, at any rate you are a picturesque personage, even if you can't wear riding-clothes."

"Doesn't a man look like the devil in these togs?" Austin posed awkwardly in front of a mirror.

"There's only one person who can look worse in riding-clothes than a man--that's a woman."

"What heresy, particularly in a society doctor! But I agree with you.

I learned to ride on her account, you know. As a matter of fact, I hate it. The sight of a horse fills me with terror."

Doctor Suydam laughed outright at this. "She tells me that you have a very good seat."

"Really!" Austin's eyes gleamed suddenly. "You know I never had a chance to ride when I was a youngster--in fact, I never had an opportunity to do anything except work. That's what makes me so crude and awkward. What I know I have picked up during the last few years."

"You make me tired!" declared the former. "You aren't--"

"Oh, I don't skate on waxed floors nor spill tea, nor clutch at my chauffeur in a tight place, but you know what I mean. I feel lonesome in a dress-suit, a butler fills me with gloom, and--Well, I'm not one of you, that's all."

"Perhaps that's what makes a hit with Marmion. She's used to the other kind."

"It seems to me that I have always worked," ruminated the former speaker. "I don't remember that I ever had time to play, even after I came to the city. It's a mighty sad thing to rob a boy of his childhood; it makes him a dull, unattractive sort when he grows up.

I used to read about people like Miss Moore, but I never expected to know them until I met you. Of course, that corn deal rather changed things."

"Well, I should rather say it did!" Suydam agreed, with emphasis.

"The result is that when I am with her I forget the few things I have done that are worth while, and I become the farm-hand again. I'm naturally rough and angular, and she sees it."

"Oh, you're too sensitive! You have a heart like a girl underneath that saturnine front of yours, and while you look like the Sphinx, you are really as much of a kid at heart as I am. Where do you ride to-day?"

"Riverside Drive."

"What horse is she riding?"

"Pointer."

The doctor shook his head. "Too many automobiles on the Drive. He's a rotten nag for a woman, anyhow. His mouth is as tough as a stirrup, and he has the disposition of a tarantula. Why doesn't she stick to the Park?"

"You know Marmion."

"Say, wouldn't it be great if Pointer bolted and you saved her life?

She couldn't refuse you then."

Austin laughed. "That's not exactly the way I'd care to win her.

However, if Pointer bolted I'd probably get rattled and fall off my own horse. I don't like the brutes. Come on, I'm late."

"That's right," grumbled the other, "leave me here while you make love to the nicest girl in New York. I'm going down to the office and amputate somebody."

They descended the single flight to the street, where Austin's groom was struggling with a huge black.

"It's coming pretty soft for you brokers," the doctor growled, as his companion swung himself into the saddle. "The next time I get a friend I'll keep him to myself."

Austin leaned forward with a look of grave anxiety upon his rugged features and said: "Wish me luck, Doc. I'm going to ask her to-day."

"Good for you, old fellow." There was great fondness in the younger man's eyes as he wrung the rider's hand and waved him adieu, then watched him disappear around the corner.

"She'll take him," he mused, half aloud. "She's a sensible girl even if all New York has done its best to spoil her." He hailed a taxicab and was hurried to his office.

It was perhaps two hours later that he was called on the telephone.

"h.e.l.lo! Yes, yes! What is it?" he cried, irritably. "Mercy Hospital!

_What_?" The young physician started. "Hurt, you say? Run-away? Go on, quick!" He listened with whitening face, then broke in abruptly: "Of course he sent for me. I'll be right up."

He slammed the receiver upon its hook and, seizing his hat, bolted out through a waiting-room full of patients. His car was in readiness, and he called to his chauffeur in such tones that the fellow vaulted to his seat.

"Go up Madison Avenue; there's less traffic there. And for G.o.d's sake _hurry_!"

During two years' service with New York's most fashionable physician the driver had never received a command like this, and he opened up his machine. A policeman warned him at Thirty-third Street and the car slowed down, at which Suydam leaned forward, crying, roughly:

"To h.e.l.l with regulations! There's a man dying!"

The last word was jerked from him as he was snapped back into his seat. Regardless of admonitory shouts from patrolmen, the French car sang its growing song, while truck-drivers bellowed curses and pedestrians fled from crossings at the scream of its siren. A cross-town car blocked them, and the brakes screeched in agony, while Doctor Suydam was well-nigh catapulted into the street; then they were under way again, with the car leaping from speed to speed. It was the first time the driver had ever dared to disregard those upraised, white-gloved hands, and it filled his joy-riding soul with exultation.

A street repair loomed ahead, whereupon, with a sickening skid, they swung into a side street; the gears clashed again, and an instant later they shot out upon Fifth Avenue. At the next corner they lay motionless in a blockade, while the motor shuddered; then they dodged through an opening where the mud-guards missed by an inch and were whirling west toward Broadway. At 109th Street a bicycle officer stared in amazement at the dwindling number beneath the rear axle, then ducked his head and began to pedal. He overhauled the speeding machine as it throbbed before the doors of Mercy Hospital, to be greeted by a grinning chauffeur who waved him toward the building and told of a doctor's urgency.

Inside, Doctor Suydam, pallid of face and shaking in a most unprofessional manner, was bending over a figure in riding-clothes, the figure of a tall, muscular man who lay silent, deaf to his words of greeting.

They told him all there was to tell in the deadly, impersonal way of hospitals, while he nodded swift comprehension. There had been a runaway--a woman on a big, white-eyed bay, that had taken fright at an automobile; a swift rush up the Driveway, a lunge over the neck of the pursuing horse, then a man wrenched from his saddle and dragged beneath cruel, murderous hoofs. The bay had gone down, and the woman was senseless when the ambulance arrived, but she had revived and had been hurried to her home. In the man's hand they had found the fragment of a bridle rein gripped with such desperation that they could not remove it until he regained consciousness. He had asked regarding the girl's safety, then sighed himself into oblivion again.

They told Suydam that he would die.

With sick heart the listener cursed all high-spirited women and high-strung horses, declaring them to be works of the devil, like automobiles; then he went back to the side of his friend, where other hands less unsteady were at work.

"Poor lonely old Bob!" he murmured. "Not a soul to care except Marmion and me, and G.o.d knows whether she cares or not."

But Robert Austin did not die, although the attending surgeons said he would, said he should, in fact, unless all the teachings of their science were at fault. He even offended the traditions of the hospital by being removed to his own apartments in a week. There Suydam, who had watched him night and day, told him that Miss Moore had a broken shoulder and hence could not come to see him.