Vistas of New York Part 14

"I don't want to see you throw yourself away," she returned. "A pretty kind of a friend I should be if I encouraged you to marry your Virgie Chubb and your Widow Poole!"

"That's it, precisely," he a.s.serted; "that's why I've come to you. Of course, I don't want to throw myself away. Your advice has been invaluable to me--simply invaluable. But so far you have only shown me how it is that none of these girls will suit. That brings me no nearer my object. I've simply got to have a wife."

"I don't see why you need be in such a hurry," she replied.

"I must, I must!" he retorted. "And there's one more girl I haven't mentioned so far--"

"You've kept her to the last!" she snapped.

"Yes, I've kept her to the last, because I haven't any right even to hope that she would have me. She is not a widow, and she hasn't a cast in her eye, and she is neither fat nor scrawny; she is just a lovely young girl--"

"You speak of her with more enthusiasm than you did of any of the others," she broke in. "Do I know her?"

"You ought to know her," he answered; "but I doubt if you think as well of her as I do."

"Who is she?" was her swift question.

"You won't be offended?" he asked.

"Of course not! How absurd! Why should I be offended?" she responded.

"Who is she? Who is she?"

The Doctor answered seriously, and with a quaver of emotion in his voice, "She is the girl I have loved for a long time, and her name is Minnie Contoit!"

The girl did not say anything. Her face was as pale as ever, but there was a light in the depths of her cool gray eyes.

"Listen to me once more, Minnie!" implored the young fellow by her side.

"You say that none of these other girls will suit me, and I knew that before you said it. I knew that you are the only girl I ever wanted. You promised me your friendship the last time we talked this over, and now I've had a chance to tell you how much I need a wife I have hoped you would look at the matter in a clearer light."

She said nothing. He gave a hasty glance backward and he saw that her father and her grandfather were only a hundred yards or so behind them.

The reddening sunset on their right cast lengthening shadows across the road. The spring day was drawing to an end, and the hour had come when he was to learn his fate forever.

"Minnie," he urged once more, "don't you think it is your duty--as a friend, you know--to give me the wife I ought to have?"

She looked at him, and laughed nervously, and then dropped her eyes.

"Oh, _well_," she said at last, "if I must!"

(1900)

[Ill.u.s.tration: In a Hansom]

There were two men in the cab as it turned into Fifth Avenue and began to skirt the Park on its way down-town. One of them was perhaps fifty; he had grizzled hair, cold, gray eyes, and a square jaw. The other appeared to be scant thirty; he had soft brown eyes, and a soft brown mustache drooped over his rather irresolute mouth. The younger man was the better-looking of the two, and the better dressed; and he seemed also to be more at home in New York, while the elder was probably a stranger in the city--very likely a Westerner, if the black slouch hat was a true witness.

They sat side by side in silence, having nothing to say, the one to the other. The shadows that were slowly stretching themselves across the broad walk on the Park side of the Avenue shivered as the spring breeze played with the tender foliage of the trees that spread their ample branches almost over the wall. The languid scent of blossoming bushes was borne fitfully beyond the border of the Park. To the eyes of the younger of the two men in the hansom the quivering play of light and shade brought no pleasure; and he had no delight in the fragrance of the springtime--although in former years he had been wont to thrill with unspoken joy at the promise of summer.

The elder of the two took no thought of such things; it was as though he had no time to waste. Of course, he was aware that winter followed the fall, and that summer had come in its turn; but this was all in the day's work. He had the reputation of being a good man in his business; and although the spring had brought no smile to his firm lips, he was satisfied with his success in the latest task intrusted to him. He had in his pocket a folded paper, signed by the Governor of a State in the Mississippi Valley, and sealed with the seal of that commonwealth; and in the little bag on his knees he carried a pair of handcuffs.

As the hansom approached the Plaza at the entrance to the Park, the gray-eyed Westerner caught sight of the thickening crowd, and of the apparent confusion in which men and women and children were mixed, bicycles and electric cabs, carriages and cross-town cars, all weltering together; and he wondered for a moment whether he had done wisely in allowing so much apparent freedom to his prisoner. He looked right and left swiftly, as though sizing up the chances of escape, and then he glanced down at the bag on his knees.

"You needn't be afraid of my trying to run," said the younger man. "What good would it do me? You've caught me once, and I don't doubt you could do it again."

"That's so," returned the other, with just a tinge of self-satisfaction in his chilly smile. "I shouldn't wonder if I could."

"Besides, I don't want to get away now," insisted the first speaker.

"I've got to face the music sooner or later, and I don't care how quick the bra.s.s band strikes up. I want to take my punishment and have it over. That's what I want. I'm going to plead guilty and save the State the trouble of trying me, and the expense, too. That ought to count in cutting down the sentence, oughtn't it? And then I shall study the rules of--of that place, and I mean to learn them by heart. There won't be anybody there in a greater hurry to get out than I, and so I'm going to be a model of good conduct."

"It ain't every fellow that talks like that who's able to keep it up,"

commented the officer of the law.

"I guess I can, anyhow," replied his prisoner. "I've made up my mind to get this thing over as soon as possible, and to have a little life left for me when I'm let out."

The elder man made no answer. He thought that his companion was sincere and that there would be no attempt to escape, whatever the opportunity.

But his experience trained him to take no chances, and he did not relax his vigilance.

A horn sounded behind him; and a minute later a four-in-hand pa.s.sed with tinkling chains and rumbling wheels. The top of the coach was filled with elaborately attired men and with girls in all the gayety of their spring gowns; and they seemed to be having a good time. They did not mean to hurt the younger of the two men in the hansom; they did not know, of course; but just then their mirth smote him to the heart.

Fifth Avenue is an alluring spectacle late in the afternoon of the first Sat.u.r.day in June; and when the hansom-cab topped the crest of a hill, the two men could see far down the vista of the broad street. The roadway was a solid ma.s.s of vehicles in ceaseless motion; and the sidewalks were filled with humanity. To the man who was being taken to his trial the bright color and the brisk joyousness of the scene were actually painful. Of the countless men and women scattered up and down the Avenue in the glaring sunshine, how many knew him to call him by name and to take him by the hand? More than a hundred, no doubt, for he had been popular. And how many of them would give him a second thought after they had read of his arrest and of his trial and his sentence?

How many of them would miss him?--would be conscious even of his absence? And he recalled the disgust of a friend who had gone around the world, and had come back after a year or more with picturesque stories of his wanderings in far countries, only to have the first man he met in his club ask him casually where he'd been "for the last week or so."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THIS YEAR THE GIRLS WERE PRETTIER THAN USUAL]

And now he, too, was going to a strange land; and he foresaw that when he returned--if he ever got back alive!--he would not know what to answer if any one should inquire where he had been for the last week or so. The world was a bitterly selfish place where men had no time to think except of themselves. If a fellow could not keep up with the procession, he had to drop out of the ranks and be glad if the rest of them did not tramp over him. He knew how hard he had tried not to be left behind, and how little the effort had profited him.

With an aggressive movement that made his companion even more alert than usual, the brown-eyed young man shook himself erect, as though to cast behind him these evil thoughts. It was a beautiful day, and flowers blazed in the broad windows of the florists--roses and carnations and lilacs. There were lilacs also in the arbitrary hats the women were wearing, and the same tint was often echoed in their costumes. He had always been attentive to the changes of fashion--always subject to the charm of woman. As he was borne down the Avenue by the side of the man in whose custody he was, it struck him that this year the girls were prettier than usual--younger, more graceful, more fascinating, more desirable. He followed with his eyes first one and then another, noting the sweep of the skirt, the curve of the bodice, the grace of gesture, the straggling tendril of hair that had escaped upon the neck. For a brief moment the pleasure of his eye took his thoughts away from his future; and then swiftly his mind leaped forward to the next spring, when no woman's face would chance within the range of his vision, and when the unseen blossoming of nature would bring only impotent desire.

What zest could there be in life when life was bounded in a whitewashed cell?

At Thirty-fourth Street the hansom was halted to let a funeral cross the current of the Avenue. An open carriage came first, its seats covered with flowers, tortured into stiff set pieces; the white hea.r.s.e followed, with a satin-covered coffin visible through its plate-gla.s.s sides; and then half a dozen carriages trailed after. The prisoner in the hansom noticed that the shades were drawn in the one that followed the hea.r.s.e; it bore a grief too sacred for observation--a mother's, no doubt. He was suddenly glad that his parents had both died when he was yet a boy. To be alone in the world, with no family to keep him warm with tolerant affection--this had often saddened him; now at last he rejoiced at it.

When a man is on his way to prison to serve a term of years, the fewer those who cherish him, the luckier for them. That he loved a woman--that, indeed, he was going to jail because of his love for her--this might add poignancy to his pain; but he felt himself manly for once in trying to believe it was better now that she did not love him, that she did not even know of his love for her.

In time the hansom turned from Fifth Avenue into Broadway; it went on down-town past Union Square, with its broad trees, and past Grace Church, with its grateful greenery; but the younger of the two men was no longer taking note of what sped before his gaze. He was wondering what the woman he loved would think when she would hear of his going to prison--whether she would care very much--whether she would suspect that his crime was due to his pa.s.sion for her. That, of course, she could not guess--that he had yielded to the temptation to lay hands on what was not his, solely because he wanted more money to place at her feet. For himself, he had been making enough; but for her he must have more. He could not have ventured to invite her to give up anything for his sake.

He wanted to be able to offer her all she had been accustomed to have--and more too, were that possible. He was conceited enough ordinarily, he feared; and yet when he thought of her he felt so humble that he had never dared to dream of going to her empty-handed--of asking her to make any sacrifice in loving him. He had never told her of his love, and perhaps she did not even guess it; and yet women are swift to discover a thing like that. It might be that she had seen it; and that when others should speak of him as he knew he deserved to be spoken of, she might come to his defence and find some word of extenuation for his misdeed. This possibility, remote as it was, gave him pleasure; and he smiled at the suggestion as it came to him.

From this day-dream he was aroused as the driver of the hansom jerked the horse back on his haunches to avoid running down a little old woman who was trying to cross Broadway with a bundle of sticks balanced on her head. As the animal almost touched her she looked up, and her glance crossed that of the prisoner. He perceived instantly that she was an Italian, that she was not so old as she looked, and that she had been beautiful not so long ago. Then he wondered whether any man had done wrong for her sake--whether or not two of her lovers had fought in the soft Sicilian moonlight and one had done the other to death. Well, why not? There were worse things than death, after all.

As they went on farther and farther down-town, Broadway began to seem emptier. It was the first Sat.u.r.day in June, and most of the stores were closed. When they drew near to the City Hall, the great street, although not so desolate as it is on a Sunday, lacked not a little of its week-day activity. It was as though a truce had been proclaimed in the battle of business; but the forts were guarded, and the fight would begin again on the Monday morning.

After the hansom pa.s.sed the Post Office the buildings on the right and the left raised themselves higher and higher, until the cab was at last rolling along what might be the bottom of a canyon. And it seemed to him that the cliff-dwellers who inhabited the terraces of this man-made gorge, and who spent the best part of their lives a hundred feet above the level of the sidewalk, were no peaceable folk withdrawn from the strife of the plains; they were relentless savages ever on the war-path, and always eager to torture every chance captive. Wars may be less frequent than they were and less cruel, but the struggle for existence is bitterer than ever, and as meanly waged as any Apache raid.

The young man in the hansom felt his hatred hot within him for those with whom he had meant to match himself. He had been beaten in the first skirmish, and yet--but for the one thing--he could hold himself as good as the best of them. How many of the men under the shadow of Trinity were more honest than he? Some of them, no doubt--but how many? How many names now honorable would be disgraced if the truth were suddenly made known? How many of those who thought themselves honest, and who were honest now, had in the past yielded to a temptation once, as he had done, and having been luckier than he in escaping detection then, had never again risked it? That was what he had intended to do; he knew himself not to be dishonest, although the alluring opportunity had been too much for him. If only he could have held on for another day, all would have been well--no one would have had cause ever to suspect him; and never again would he have stepped aside from the narrow path of rect.i.tude.

There was no use in repining. Luck had been against him, that was all.

Some men had been guilty of what he had done, and they had been able to bluff it out. His bluff had been called, and he was now going to jail to pay his debt of honor. Perhaps the copy-book was right when it declared honesty to be the best policy. And yet he could not help feeling that fate had played him a mean trick. To put in his possession at the same moment a large sum of money and the information that the most powerful group of capitalists in America had determined to take hold of a certain railroad and re-establish it, and to have thus the possibility put before him at the very hour when he had discovered that perhaps he had a chance to win the woman he loved, if only he could approach her on an equality of fortune--this temptation just then was too great to withstand. He had yielded, and for a little while it had seemed as though he was about to succeed. Twenty-four hours more and he could have put back the money he had borrowed--for so he liked to look on his act.