Chapter 7

The week she had spent in New York was a riotous round of dissipation. May's fiancé had prepared a whirlwind of pleasures, and Miss Lucinda was caught up and revolved at a pace that made her dizzy. Dances, dinners, plays, roof-gardens, coaching parties, were all held together by a line of candy, telegrams, and roses.

There was only one time in the day when Miss Lucinda came down to earth. Every evening, no matter how exhausted she might he from the frivolities of the day, she conscientiously penned an affectionate letter to her celestial affinity, expressing her undying devotion, and incidentally mentioning the health and doings of her brother's family. These she sent under separate cover to her brother to be mailed.

Her conscience assured her that the reckoning would come, that sooner or later she would face the bar of justice and receive the verdict of guilty; but while one day of grace remained, she would still "in the fire of spring, her winter garments of repentance fling."

As the manicure put the finishing touch to her nails, Floss came rushing in:

"Hurry up, Miss Lucy dear! Dick Benson has just 'phoned that he is going to take us for a farewell frolic. We leave here at five, have dinner somewhere, then do all sorts of stunts. You are going to wear my tan coat-suit and light blue waist. Yes, you are, too! That's all foolishness; everybody wears elbow-sleeves. Blue's your color, and I've got the hat to match. May says she'll fix your hair, and you can wear her French-heel Oxfords again. They pitch you over? Oh, nonsense! you just tripped along the other day like a nice little jay-bird. Hurry, hurry!"

Even Miss Lucinda's week of strenuous living had not prepared her for what followed. First, there was a short trip on the train, during which she conscientiously studied a map. Then followed a dinner at a large and ostentatious hotel. The decorations were more brilliant, the music louder, and the dresses gayer, than at any place Miss Lucinda had yet been. She viewed the passing show through her glasses, and experienced a pleasant thrill of sophistication. This, she assured herself, was society; henceforth she was in a position to rail at its follies as one having authority.

In the midst of these complacent reflections she choked on a crumb, and, after groping with closed eyes for her tumbler, gulped down the contents. A strange, delicious tingle filled her mouth; she forgot she was choking, and opened her eyes. To her horror, she found that she had emptied her glass of champagne.

"Spirituous liquor!" she thought in dismay, as the shade of Miss Joe Hill rose before her.

Total abstinence was such a firm plank in the platform of the celestial affinity that, even in the chafing-dish, alcohol had been tabooed. The utter iniquity of having deliberately swallowed a glass of champagne was appalling to Miss Lucinda. She sat silent during the rest of the dinner, eating little, and plucking nervously at the ruffles about her elbows. The fear of rheumatism in her wrists which had assailed her earlier in the evening gave way to a deeper and more disturbing discomfort.

When the dinner was over, the party started forth on a hilarious round of sight-seeing. Miss Lucinda limped after them, vaguely aware that she was in a giant electric cage filled with swarming humanity, that bands were playing, drums beating, and that at every turn disagreeable men with loud voices were imploring her to "step this way."

"Come on!" cried Dick. "We are going on the scenic railway."

But the worm turned. "I--I'm not going," she protested. "I will wait here. All of you go; I will wait right here."

With a sigh of relief she slipped into a vacant corner, and gave herself up to the luxury of being miserable. She longed for solitude in which to face the full enormity of her misdeed, and to plan an immediate reformation. She would throw herself bodily upon the mercy of Miss Joe Hill, she would spare herself nothing; penance of any kind would be welcome, bodily pain even--

She shifted her weight to the slender support of one high-heeled shoe while she rested the other foot. Her hair, unused to its new arrangement, pulled cruelly upon every restraining hair-pin, and her head was beginning to ache.

"I deny the slavery of sense. I repudiate the bondage of matter. I affirm spirit and freedom," she quoted to herself, but the thought failed to have any effect.

A two-ringed circus was in progress at her right while at her left a procession of camels and Egyptians was followed by a noisy crowd of urchins. People were thronging in every direction, and she realized that she was occasionally the recipient of a curious glance. She began to watch rather anxiously for the return of her party. Ten minutes passed, and still they did not come.

Suddenly the awful possibility presented itself that they might have lost her. She had no money, and even with it, she knew she could not find her way back to the hotel alone. Anxiety gained upon her in leaps. In bitter remorse she upbraided herself for ever having strayed from the blessed protection of Miss Joe Hill's authority. Gulfs of hideous possibility yawned at her feet; imagination faltered at the things that might befall a lone and unprotected lady in this bedlam of frivolity.

Just as her fear was turning to terror the party returned.

"Oh, here you are!" cried Floss. "We thought we had lost you. It was just dandy, Miss Lucy; you ought to have gone. It makes you feel like your feet are growing right out of the top of your head. Come on; we are going to have our tintypes taken."

Strengthened by the fear of being left alone again, Miss Lucinda rallied her courage, and once more followed in their wake. She was faint and exhausted, but the one grain of comfort she extracted from the situation was that through her present suffering she was atoning for her sins.

At midnight Dick said: "There's only one other thing to do. It's more fun than all the rest put together. Come this way."

Miss Lucinda followed blindly. She had ceased to think; there were only two realities left in the world, French-heels and hair-pins.

At the foot of a flight of steps the party paused to buy tickets.

"You can wait for us here, Miss Lucy," said Floss.

Miss Lucinda protested eagerly that she was not too tired to go with them. The prospect of being left alone again nerved her to climb to any height.

"But," cried Floss, "if you get up there, there's only one way to come down. You have to--"

"Let her come!" interrupted the others in laughing chorus, and, to Miss Lucinda's great relief, she was allowed to pass through the little gate.

When she reached the top of the long stairs, she looked about for the attraction. A wide inclined plane slanted down to the ground floor, and on it were bumps of various sizes and shapes, all of a shining smoothness. She had a vague idea that it was a mammoth map for the blind, until she saw Dick and Floss sit down at the top and go sliding to the bottom.

"Come on, Miss Lucinda!" cried May. "You can't get down any other way, you know. Look out! Here I go!"

One by one the others followed, and Miss Lucinda could not distinguish them as they merged in the laughing crowd at the base.

Delay was fatal; they would lose her again if she hesitated. In desperation she gathered her skirts about her, and let herself cautiously down on the floor. For one awful moment terror paralyzed her, then, grasping her skirts with one hand and her hat with the other and closing her eyes, she slid.

Miss Lucinda did not "hump the bumps"; she slid gracefully around them, describing fanciful curves and loops in her airy flight. When she arrived in a confused bunch on the cushioned platform below, she was greeted with a burst of applause.

"Ain't it great?" cried Floss, straightening Miss Lucinda's hat and trying to get her to open her eyes. "Dick says you are the gamest chaperon he ever saw. Sit up and let me pin your collar straight."

But Miss Lucinda's sense of direction had evidently been disturbed, for she did not yet know which was up, and which was down. She leaned limply against Floss and tried to get her breath.

"Excuse me," said a man's voice above her, "but are either of you ladies Mrs. Lura Doring?"

The effect was electrical. Miss Lucinda sat bolt upright and stared madly about. Tom Speckert had told her to be sure to answer to that name. It would get him into trouble if she failed to do so.

"Yes, yes," she gasped; "I am Mrs. Lura Doring."

The members of her little party looked at her anxiously and ceased to laugh. The slide had evidently unsettled her mind.

"Why, this is Miss Perkins--Miss Lucinda Perkins of Locustwood, Ohio," explained Dick Benson to the officer, "She's rather upset by her tobogganing, and didn't understand you."

"I did," declared Miss Lucinda, making mysterious signs to Dick to be silent. "It's all right; I am Mrs. Doring."

The officer looked suspiciously from one to the other, then consulted his memorandum: "Small, slender woman, yellow hair, gray eyes, answers to name of Mrs. Lura Doring. Left Chicago on June 10."

"When did she get to New York?" asked the officer.

"A week ago to-morrow, on the eleventh," said Floss.

"Then I guess I'll have to take her up," said the officer; "she answers all the requirements. I've got a warrant for her arrest."

"Arrest!" gasped Benson. "What for?"

"For forging her husband's name, and defrauding two hotels in Chicago."

"My husband--" Miss Lucinda staggered to her feet, then, catching sight of the crowd that had collected, she gave a fluttering cry and fainted away in the arms of the law.

* * * * *

When Miss Joe Hill arrived in New York, in answer to an urgent telegram, she went directly to work with her usual executive ability to unravel the mystery. After obtaining the full facts in the case, she was able to make a satisfactory explanation to the officers at headquarters. Then she sent the girls to their respective homes, and turned her full attention upon Miss Lucinda.

"The barber will be here in half an hour to cut your hair," she announced on the eve of their departure for the Catskills.

"You ought not to be so good to me!" sobbed Miss Lucinda, who was lying limply on a couch.

Miss Joe Hill took her hand firmly and said: "Lucinda, error and illness and disorder are man-made perversions. Let the past week be wiped from our memories. Once we are in the mountains we will turn the formative power of our thoughts upon things invisible, and yield ourselves to the higher harmonies."

The next morning, Miss Lucinda, shorn and penitent, was led forth from the scene of her recent profligacy. It was her final exit from a world which for a little space she had loved not wisely but too well.

CUPID GOES SLUMMING

It is a debatable question whether love is a cause or an effect, whether Adam discovered a heart in the recesses of his anatomy before or after the appearance of Eve. In the case of Joe Ridder it was distinctly the former.

At nineteen his knowledge of the tender passion consisted of dynamic impressions received across the footlights at an angle of forty-five degrees. Love was something that hovered with the calcium light about beauty in distress, something that brought the hero from the uttermost parts of the earth to hurl defiance at the villain and clasp the swooning maiden in his arms; it was something that sent a fellow down from his perch in the peanut gallery with his head hot and his hands cold, and a sort of blissful misery rioting in his soul.

Joe lived in what was known by courtesy as Rear Ninth Street. "Rear Ninth Street" has a sound of exclusive aristocracy, and the name was a matter of some pride to the dwellers in the narrow, unpaved alley that writhed its watery way between two rows of tumble-down cottages, Joe's family consisted of his father, whose vocation was plumbing, and whose avocation was driving either in the ambulance or the patrol wagon; his mother, who had discharged her entire debt to society when she bestowed nine healthy young citizens upon it; eight young Ridders, and Joe himself, who had stopped school at twelve to assume the financial responsibilities of a rapidly increasing family.

Lack of time and the limited opportunities of Rear Ninth Street, together with an uncontrollable shyness, had brought Joe to his nineteenth year of broad-shouldered, muscular manhood, with no acquaintance whatever among the girls. But where a shrine is built for Cupid and the tapers are kept burning, the devotee is seldom disappointed.

One morning in October, as Joe was guiding his rickety wheel around the mud puddles on his way to the cooper shops, he saw a new sign on the first cottage after he left the alley--"Mrs. R. Beaver, Modiste & Dress Maker." In the yard and on the steps were a confusion of household effects, and in their midst a girl with a pink shawl over her head.

So absorbed was Joe in open-mouthed wonder over the "Modiste," that he failed to see the girl, until a laughing exclamation made him look up.

"Watch out!"

"What's the matter?" asked Joe, coming to a halt.

"I thought maybe you didn't know your wheels was going 'round!" the girl said audaciously, then fled into the house and slammed the door.

All day at the shops Joe worked as in a trance. Every iron rivet that he drove into a wooden hoop was duly informed of the romantic occurrence of the morning, and as some four thousand rivets are fastened into four thousand hoops in the course of one day, it will be seen that the matter was duly considered. The stray spark from a feminine eye had kindled such a fierce fire in his heart that by the time the six o'clock whistle blew the conflagration threw a rosy glow over the entire landscape.

As he rode home, the girl was sitting on the steps, but she would not look at him. Joe had formulated a definite course of action, and though the utter boldness of it nearly cost him his balance, he adhered to it strictly. When just opposite her gate, without turning his head or his eyes, he lifted his hat, then rode at a furious pace around the corner.

"What you tidying up so fer, Joe?" asked his mother that night; "you goin' out?"

"No," said Joe evasively, as he endeavoured in vain to coax back the shine to an old pair of shoes.

"Well, I'm right glad you ain't. Berney and Dick ain't got up the coal, and there's all them dishes to wash, and the baby she's got a misery in her year."

"Has paw turned up?" asked Joe.

"Yes," answered Mrs. Ridder indifferently. "He looked in 'bout three o'clock. He was tolerable full then, and I 'spec he's been took up by now. He said he was goin' to buy me a bird-cage with a bird in it, but I surely hope he won't. Them white mice he brought me on his last spree chewed a hole in Berney's stocking; besides, I never did care much for birds. Good lands! what are you goin' to wash yer head for?"

Joe was substituting a basin of water for a small girl in the nearest kitchen chair, and a howl ensued.

"Shut up, Lottie!" admonished Mrs. Ridder, "you ain't any too good to set on the floor. It's a good thing this is pay-day, Joe, for the rent's due and four of the children's got their feet on the ground. You paid up the grocery last week, didn't you!"

Joe nodded a dripping head.

"Well, I'll jes' git yer money out of yer coat while I think about it," she went on as she rummaged in his pocket and brought out nine dollars.

"Leave me a quarter," demanded Joe, gasping beneath his soap-suds.

"All right," said Mrs. Ridder accommodatingly; "now that Bob and Ike are gitting fifty cents a day, it ain't so hard to make out. I'll be gittin' a new dress first thing, you know."

"I seen one up at the corner!" said Joe.

"A new dress?"

"Naw, a dressmaker. She's got out her sign."

"What's her name?" asked Mrs. Ridder, keen with interest.

"Mrs. R. Beaver, Modiste," repeated Joe from the sign that floated in letters of gold in his memory.

"I knowed a Mrs. Beaver wunst, up on Eleventh Street--a big, fat woman that got in a fuss with the preacher and smacked his jaws."

"Did she have any children?" asked Joe.

"Seems like there was one, a pretty little tow-headed girl."

"That's her," announced Joe conclusively. "What was her name?"

"Lawsee, I don't know. I never would 'a' ricollected Mrs. Beaver 'cepten she was such a tarnashious woman, always a-tearin' up stumps, and never happy unless she was rippitin' 'bout somethin'. _What_ you want? A needle and thread to mend your coat? Why, what struck you? You been wearin' it that a-way for a month. You better leave it be 'til I git time to fix it."

But Joe had determined to work out the salvation of his own wardrobe. Late in the evening after the family had retired, he sat before the stove with back humped and knees drawn up trying to coax a coarse thread through a small needle. Surely no rich man need have any fear about entering the kingdom of heaven since Joe Ridder managed to get that particular thread through the eye of that particular needle!

But when a boy is put at a work-bench at twelve years of age and does the same thing day in and day out for seven long years, he may have lost all of the things that youth holds dear, but one thing he is apt to have learned, a dogged, plodding, unquestioning patience that shoves silently along at the appointed task until the work is done.

By midnight all the rents were mended and a large new patch adorned each elbow. The patches, to be sure, were blue, and the coat was black, but the stitches were set with mechanical regularity. Joe straightened his aching shoulders and held the garment at arm's length with a smile. It was his first votive offering at the shrine of love.

The effect of Joe's efforts were prompt and satisfactory. The next day being Sunday, he spent the major part of it in passing and repassing the house on the corner, only going home between times to remove the mud from his shoes and give an extra brush to his hair. The girl, meanwhile, was devoting her day to sweeping off the front pavement, a scant three feet of pathway from her steps to the wooden gate. Every time Joe passed she looked up and smiled, and every time she smiled Joe suffered all the symptoms of locomotor ataxia!

By afternoon his emotional nature had reached the saturation point. Without any conscious volition on his part, his feet carried him to the gate and refused to carry him farther. His voice then decided to speak for itself, and in strange, hollow tones he heard himself saying--

"Say, do you wanter go to the show with me?"

"Sure," said the pink fascinator. "When?"

"I don't care," said Joe, too much embarrassed to remember the days of the week.

"To-morrer night?" prompted the girl.

"I don't care," said Joe, and the conversation seeming to lauguish, he moved on.

After countless eons of time the next night arrived. It found Joe and his girl cosily squeezed in between two fat women in the gallery of the People's Theatre. Joe had to sit sideways and double his feet up, but he would willingly have endured a rack of torture for the privilege of looking down on that fluffy, blond pompadour under its large bow, and of receiving the sparkling glances that were flashed up at him from time to time.

"I ain't ever gone with a feller that I didn't know his name before!" she confided before the curtain rose.

"It's Joe," he said, "Joe Ridder, What's your front name?"

"Miss Beaver," she said mischievously. "What do you think it is?"

Joe could not guess.

"Say," she went on, "I knew who you was all right even if I didn't know yer name. I seen you over to the hall when they had the boxin' match."

"The last one?"

"Yes, when you and Ben Schenk was fightin'. Say, you didn't do a thing to him!"

The surest of all antidotes to masculine shyness was not without its immediate effect. Joe straightened his shoulders and smiled complacently.

"Didn't I massacre him?" he said. "That there was a half-Nelson holt I give him. It put him out of business all right, all right. Say, I never knowed you was there!"

"You bet I was," said his companion in honest admiration; "that was when I got stuck on you!"

Before he could fully comprehend the significance of this confession, the curtain rose, and love itself had to make way for the tragic and absorbing career of "The Widowed Bride." By the end of the third act Joe's emotions were so wrought upon by the unhappy fate of the heroine, that he rose abruptly and, muttering something about "gittin' some gum," fled to the rear. When he returned and squeezed his way back to his seat he found "Miss Beaver" with red eyes and a dejected mien.

"What's the matter with you?" he asked banteringly.

"My shoe hurts me," said Miss Beaver evasively.

"What you givin' me?" asked Joe, with fine superiority. "These here kinds of play never hurts my feelin's none. Catch me cryin' at a show!"

But Miss Beaver was too much moved to recover herself at once. She sat in limp dejection and surreptitiously dabbed her eyes with her moist ball of a handkerchief.

Joe was at a loss to know how to meet the situation until his hand, quite by chance, touched hers as it lay on the arm of her chair. He withdrew it as quickly as if he had received an electric shock, but the next moment, like a lodestone following a magnet, it traveled slowly back to hers.

From that time on Joe sat staring straight ahead of him in embarrassed ecstasy, while Miss Beaver, thus comforted, was able to pass through the tragic finale of the last act with remarkable composure.

When the time came to say "Good night" at the Beavers' door, all Joe's reticence and awkwardness returned. He watched her let herself in and waited until she lit a candle. Then he found himself out on the pavement in the dark feeling as if the curtain had gone down on the best show be had ever seen. Suddenly a side window was raised cautiously and he heard his name called softly. He had turned the corner, but he went back to the fence.

"Say!" whispered the voice at the window, "I forgot to tell you--It's Mittie."

The course of true love thus auspiciously started might have flowed on to blissful fulfilment had it not encountered the inevitable barrier in the formidable person of Mrs. Beaver. Not that she disapproved of Mittie receiving attention; on the contrary, it was her oft-repeated boast that "Mittie had been keepin' company with the boys ever since she was six, and she 'spected she'd keep right on till she was sixty." It was not attention in the abstract that she objected to, it was rather the threatening of "a steady," and that steady, the big, awkward, shy Joe Ridder. With serpentine wisdom she instituted a counter-attraction.

Under her skilful manipulation, Ben Schenk, the son of the saloon-keeper, soon developed into a rival suitor. Ben was engaged at a down-town pool-room, and wore collars on a weekday without any apparent discomfort. The style of his garments, together with his easy air of sophistication, entirely captivated Mrs. Beaver, while Ben on his part found it increasingly pleasant to lounge in the Beavers' best parlour chair and recount to a credulous audience the prominent part which he was taking in all the affairs of the day.

Matters reached a climax one night when, after some close financing, Joe Ridder took Mittie to the Skating Rink. An unexpected run on the tin savings bank at the Ridders' had caused a temporary embarrassment, and by the closest calculation Joe could do no better than pay for two entrance-tickets and hire one pair of skates. He therefore found it necessary to develop a sprained ankle, which grew rapidly worse as they neared the rink.

"I don't think you orter skate on it, Joe!" said Mittie sympathetically.

"Oh, I reckon I kin manage it all O.K.," said Joe.

"But I ain't agoin' to let you!" she declared with divine authority. "We can just set down and rubber at the rest of them."