Part 10

But his joy in his house was counterbalanced by his grief for the loss of his “orfice.” He had taken the ground–rent of the city lot, and had erected the “orfice” at his own cost. Three hundred and twenty–seven dollars he had spent on that modest structure. No, he had not insured it. And now the bakery had caught fire, and his “orfice” was burned to the ground, and his best suit of street–clothes with it—his only suit, as he owned after a second’s hesitation.

In ten minutes’ walk they arrived at Zozo’s house. It was quite the sort of house that might have come out of a dollar book, with a great deal of scroll–work about it, and with a tiny tower, adorned with fantastically carved shingles. As they stood on the porch—nothing would content Zozo but that his new friend should come in and warm himself—Mr. Brant looked at the name on the door–plate.

“Zozo’s only my name in the Science,” the astrologer explained. “My real name—my born name—is Simmons. But I took Zozo for my business name. ‘Zs’ seem to kinder go with the astrology business, somehow—I don’t know why. There’s Zadkiel, and Zoroaster, and—oh, I don’t know—they’re ‘Zs’ or ‘Xs’, most of ’em; and it goes with the populace. I don’t no more like humoring their superstition than you would; but a man’s got to live; and the world ain’t up to the Science yet. Oh, that’s you, Mommer, is it?” he concluded, as the door was opened by a bright, buxom, rather pretty woman. “Mother ain’t to bed yet, is she? Say, Mommer, the orfice is burnt down!”

“Oh, Popper!” cried the poor woman; “you don’t reelly say!”

“True’s I live,” said the astrologer, “and my street–clo’es, too.”

“Oh, Popper!” his wife cried, “what’ll we do?”

“I don’t know, Mommer, I don’t know. We’ll have to think. Jes’ let this here gentleman in, though. I’d most ’a’ froze if he hadn’t lent me the loan of his overcoat. My sakes!” he broke out, as he looked at the garment in the light of the hall–lamp, “but that cost money. Mommer, this here’s Mr.—— I ain’t caught your name, sir.”

“Brant,” said the owner of the name.

“Band. And a reel elegant gentleman he is, Mommer. I’d ‘a’ froze stiff in my science clo’es if’t hadn’t been for this coat. My sakes!” he exclaimed, reverently, “never _see_ the like! That’d keep a corpse warm. Shut the door, Mommer, an’ take the gentleman into the dining–room. He must be right cold himself. Is Mother there?”

“Yes,” said Zozo’s wife, “and so’s Mamie. You was so late we all got a kinder worried, and Mamie come right down in her nighty, just before you come in. ‘Where’s Popper?’ sez she; ‘ain’t he came in yet to kiss me good night? ’Tain’t mornin’, is it?’ sez she. _And_ the orfice burned down! Oh, my, Popper! I thought our troubles was at an end. Come right in, Mr.—Mr.—I ain’t rightly got your name; but thank you kindly for looking after Popper, and if you had an _i_dee how easy he takes cold on his chist, you’d know how thankful I am. Come right into the dinin’–room. Mother, this is Mr. Band, and he lent Simmons the loan of his coat to come home with. Wa’n’t it awful?”

“What’s that?” croaked a very old woman in the corner of the dining–room. It was a small dining–room, with a small extension–table covered with a cheap red damask cloth.

“Simmons’s orfice is burned up, and his best suit with it,” explained Mrs. Simmons. “Ain’t it awful!”

“It’s a jedgement,” said the old lady, solemnly. She was a depressing old lady. And yet she evidently was much revered in the family. A four–year–old child hung back in a corner, regarding her grandmother with awe. But when her father entered, she slipped up to his knee, and took his kisses silently, but with sparkling eyes.

“Only one we’ve got,” said Zozo, as he sat down and took her on his knee. “Born under Mercury and Jupiter—if that don’t mean that she’ll be on top of the real–estate boom in this neighborhood, I ain’t no astrologer. Yes, Ma,” he went on, addressing the old woman, who gave no slightest sign of interest, “the orfice burned down, and I had to get home quick. Wouldn’t ’a’ done for them Rapelyea Street folks to see me, scuttin’ off in my orfice clo’es.”

He had shed Brant’s huge overcoat, and his wife was passing her hand over his thin flannel suit.

“Law, Simmons!” she said, “you’re all wet!”

“I’ll dry all right in these flannels,” said Zozo. “Don’t you bother to get no other clo’es.”

He had forgotten that he had told Brant that the suit in his office was his only suit. Or perhaps he wished to spare his wife the humiliation of such an admission.

“I’m dryin’ off first–rate,” he said, cheerfully; “Mamie, Popper ain’t wet where you’re settin’, is he? No. Well, now, Mommer, you get out the whiskey and give Mr.—Mr. Band—a glass, with some hot water, and then he won’t get no chill. We’re all pro’bitionists here,” he said, addressing Brant, “but we b’lieve in spirits for medicinal use. Yes, Mother, you’d oughter’ve seen that place burn. Why, the flames was on me before I know’d where I was, and I jist thought to myself, thinks I, if these here people see me a–runnin’ away from a fire, I won’t cast no horoscope in Rapelyea Street after _this_; and I tell _you_, the way I got outer the back window and over the back fence was a caution! There’s your whiskey, sir: you’ll excuse me if I don’t take none myself. We ain’t in the habit here.”

Brant did not greatly wonder at their not being in the habit when he tasted the whiskey. It was bad enough to wean a toper on. But he sipped it, and made overtures to the baby. And after a while she showed an inclination to come and look at his wonderful watch, that struck the hour when you told it to. Before long she was sitting on his knee. Her father was telling the female members of the family about the fire, and she felt both sleepy and shut out. She played with Brant’s watch for a while, and then fell asleep on his breast. He held her tenderly, and listened to the astrologer as he told his pitiful tale over and over again, trying to fix the first second when he had smelled smoke.

He was full of the excitement of the affair: too full of the consciousness of his own achievement to realize the extent of the disaster. But his wife suddenly broke down, crying out:

“Oh, Simmons! where’ll you get three hundred dollars to build a new orfice?”

Brant spoke up, but very softly, lest he might wake the baby, who was sleeping with her head on his shoulder.

“I’ll be happy to—to advance the money,” he said.

Zozo looked at him almost sourly.

“I ain’t got no security to give you. This is a Building Society house, and there’s all the mortgage on it that it’s worth. I couldn’t do no better,” he concluded, sullenly.

Brant had been poor enough himself to understand the quick suspicion of the poor. “Your note will do, Mr. Simmons,” he said; “I think you will pay me back. I sha’n’t worry about it.”

But it was some time before the Simmons family could understand that a loan of the magnitude of three hundred dollars could be made so easily. When the glorious possibility did dawn upon them, nothing would do but that Mr. Brant should take another drink of whiskey. It was not for medicinal purposes this time; it was for pure conviviality; and Brant was expected, not being a prohibitionist, to revel vicariously for the whole family. He drank, wondering what he had at home to take the taste out of his mouth.

Then he handed the baby to her mother, and started to go. But Simmons suddenly and unexpectedly turned into Zozo, and insisted on casting his benefactor’s horoscope. His benefactor told him the day of his birth, and guessed at the hour. Zozo figured on a slate, drawing astronomical characters very neatly indeed, and at last began to read off the meaning of his stellar stenography, in a hushed, important voice.

He told Brant everything that had happened to him, (only none of it _had_ happened; but Brant did not say him nay.) Then he told him various things that were to happen to him; and Zozo cheered up greatly when his impassive and sleepy guest sighed as he spoke of a blonde woman who was troubling his heart, and who would be his, some day. There was a blonde woman troubling Brant’s heart; but there was small probability of her being his some day or any day. And then Zozo went on to talk about a dark woman who would disturb the course of true love; but only temporarily and as a side issue, so to speak.

“She ain’t serious,” he said. “She may make a muss; but she ain’t reel serious.”

“Good night!” said Brant.

“You don’t b’lieve in the Science,” said Zozo, in a voice of genuine regret. “But you jist see if it don’t come true. Good night. Look out you don’t trip over the scraper.”

* * * * *

The blonde woman in Mr. Brant’s case was Madame la Comtesse de Renette. No, she was not a French woman: she was a loyal American. She was the daughter of an American millionaire; she had lived for many years in France, and her parents had married her, at the age of eighteen, to a title. The title was owned by a disagreeable and highly immoral old spendthrift, who had led her a wretched life for two weary years, and then had had the unusual courtesy and consideration to die. Then she took what he had left of her millions, went home to the town of her birth, bought a fine estate on its outskirts, and settled down to enjoy a life wherein she could awake each morning to feel that the days would never more bring her suffering and humiliation.

Then Mr. Richard Brant disturbed her peace of mind by falling in love with her, and what was worse, asking her to marry him. That, she said, she could not do. He was her best, her dearest friend: she admired and esteemed him more than any man in the world. If she ever _could_ marry a man, she would marry him. But she never, never could. He must not ask her.

Of course, he did ask her. And he asked her more than once. And there matters stood, and there they seemed likely to stay.

But Richard Brant was a man who, when he wanted a thing, wanted it with his whole heart and his whole soul, and to the exclusion of every other idea from his mind. After eighteen months of waiting, he began to find the situation intolerable. He had no heart in his business—which, for the matter of that, took care of itself—and he found it, as he said to himself, “a chore to exist.” And what with dwelling on the unattainable, and what with calling on the unattainable once or twice every week, he found that he was getting into a morbid state of mind that was the next thing to a mild mania.

“This has got to stop,” said Richard Brant. “I will put an end to it. I will wait till an even two years is up, and then I will go away somewhere where I _can’t_ get back until—until I’ve got over it.”

Opportunity is never lacking to a man in this mood. Some scientific idiot was getting up an Antarctic expedition, to start in the coming June. Brant applied for a berth.

“That settles it,” he said.

Of course, it didn’t settle it. He moped as much as ever and found it just as hard as ever to occupy his mind. If it had not been for the astrologer, he would hardly have known what to do.

It amused him to interest himself in Zozo and his affairs. He watched the building of the new “orfice”, and discussed with Zozo the color of the paint and the style of the signs. Zozo tried to convert him to astrology, and that amused him. The little man’s earnest faith in this “science” was an edifying study.

Then, when the “orfice” was completed, and Zozo began business again, he took great pleasure in sitting hid in Zozo’s back room, listening to Zozo’s clients, who were often as odd as Zozo himself. He had many clients now. Had he not miraculously evanished from a burning building, and come back unscathed?

* * * * *

But there are two sides to every friendship. Brant took an amused interest in Zozo. Zozo worshiped Brant as his preserver and benefactor. Zozo’s affairs entertained Brant. Brant’s affairs were a matter of absorbing concern to Zozo. Zozo would have died for Brant.

So it came about that Zozo found out all about the blonde lady in Brant’s case. How? Well, one is not an astrologer for nothing. Brant’s coachman and Mme. de Renette’s maid were among Zozo’s clients. No society gossip knew so much about the Brant–Renette affair as Zozo knew, inside of two months.

* * * * *

“It’s perfectly ridiculous, Annette! I _can’t_ see the man!”

“Madame knows best,” said Annette, wiping away a ready tear. “It is only that I love Madame. And it is not well to anger those who have the power of magic. If they can bring good luck, they can bring bad. And he is certainly a great magician. Fire can not burn him.”

Mme. de Renette toyed with a gorgeously–printed card that read:

“Well,” she said at last, “show him in, Annette. But it’s perfectly absurd!”

Zozo, in a very ready–made suit, with no earthly idea what to do with his hat, profuse of bows and painfully flustered, did not inspire awe.

“You wish to see me?” inquired Mme. de Renette, somewhat sternly.

“Madam,” began her visitor, in a tremulous voice, “I come with a message from the stars.”

“Very well,” said Mme. de Renette, “will you kindly deliver your message? I do not wish to detain you—from your stars.”

* * * * *

It was a flushed, but a self–complacent, beaming, happy Zozo who stopped Richard Brant on the street an hour later.

“If you please, Mr. Brant, sir,” he said; “I’d like a few minutes of your time.”

“Certainly,” said Mr. Brant, wondering if Zozo wanted to borrow any more money.

“You’ve been a great good friend to me, Mr. Brant,” Zozo began, “and I hope you b’lieve, sir, that me and Mommer and Ma Simmons and Mamie are jist as grateful as—well, as anything.”

“Oh, that’s all right, Simmons—“

“Yes, sir. Well, now you’ll pardon me for seeming to interfere, like, in your business. But knowin’ as I done how your affairs with the blonde lady was hangin’ fire, so to speak—“

“‘The blonde lady!’” broke in Brant.

“Madam dee Rennet,” explained Zozo.

“The devil!” said Brant.

“Well, sir, knowin’ that, as I done, and knowin’ that there couldn’t be nothin’ _to_ it—no lady would chuck you over her shoulder, Mr. Brant, sir—but only jist that her mind wasn’t at ease with regard to the dark lady—whereas the stars show clear as ever they showed _any thin’_ that the dark lady was only temporary and threatened, and nothin’ reel serious—why, I made so free as jist to go right straight to Madam dee Rennet and ease her mind on that point—and I did.”

“Great heavens!” Brant yelled. “You infernal meddler! what have you done? I don’t know a dark woman in the world! What have you said?—oh, curse it!” he cried, as he realized, from the pain of its extinction, that hope had been alive in his heart, “what _have_ you done?—you devil!”

He turned on his heel and rushed off toward Madame de Renette’s house.

“This _does_ settle it,” he thought. “There’s no getting an idea like that out of a woman’s head.”

* * * * *

“I understand,” he said, as he hurriedly presented himself to the lady of his love, “that a madman has been here—“

“Yes,” said Mme. de Renette, severely.

“You didn’t pay any attention to his nonsense?”

“About the dark woman?” inquired Mme. de Renette.

“Why, there’s no other woman dark or light—“

“I don’t know whether there is or not, Richard,” said Mme. de Renette, with icy distinctness; “but I know that there won’t be, after—well, sir, could you break your June engagement for—me?”

And Zozo was justified.

AN OLD, OLD STORY.

AN OLD, OLD STORY.

I suppose the Tullingworth–Gordons were good Americans at heart; but the Tullingworth–Gordons were of English extraction, and, as somebody once said, the extraction had not been completely successful—a great deal of the English soil clung to the roots of the family tree.

They lived on Long Island, in a very English way, in a manor–house which was as English as they could make it, among surroundings quite respectably English for Americans of the third or fourth generation.

They had two English servants and some other American “help”; but they called the Americans by their last names, which anglified them to some extent. They had a servants’ hall, and a butler’s pantry, and a page in buttons, and they were unreasonably proud of the fact that one of their Tory ancestors had been obliged to leave New York for Halifax, in 1784, having only the alternative of a more tropical place of residence. I do not know whether they really held that the signers of the Declaration of Independence committed a grave error; but I do know that when they had occasion to speak of Queen Victoria, they always referred to her as “Her Majesty.”

“I see by the _Mail_ to–night,” Mr. Tullingworth–Gordon would say to his wife, “that Her Majesty has presented the poor bricklayer who saved seventeen lives and lost both arms at the Chillingham–on–Frees disaster with an India shawl and a copy of the Life of the Prince Consort.”

“Her Majesty is always _so_ generous!” Mrs. Tullingworth–Gordon would sigh; “and _so_ considerate of the common people!”

Mr. Tullingworth–Gordon was a rich man, and he was free to indulge the fancy of his life, and to be as English as his name; and he engaged those two English servants to keep up the illusion.

It is the tale of the menials that I have to tell—the tale of the loves of Samuel Bilson, butler, and Sophronia Huckins, “which ’Uckins it ever was an’ so it were allays called, and which ’Uckins is good enough for me, like it was good enough for my parents now departed, and there is ’ope for ’eaven for chapel–goers, though a Church–of–England woman I am myself.”

Sophronia Huckins was lady’s maid to Mrs. Tullingworth–Gordon, housekeeper to Mr. and Mrs. Tullingworth–Gordon, and, in a way, autocrat and supreme ruler over the whole house of Tullingworth–Gordon. There were other servants, as I have said, but, in their several departments, Bilson and Sophronia were king and queen. Of course, at the first, there was some friction between these two potentates. For ten years they scratched and sparred and jostled; for ten years after that they lived in comfortable amity, relieving their feelings by establishing a reign of terror over the other servants; and then—ah, then—began the dawn of another day. Bilson was careless about the wine; Sophronia took to the wearing of gowns unbefitting a maid of forty years. It broke upon the Tullingworth–Gordon mind that something was in the wind, and that the conservative quiet of their domestic service was likely to be troubled.

Meanwhile, Nature, unconscious of the proprieties of the situation, was having her own way in the little passage back of the butler’s pantry.

“You say”—the housekeeper spoke with a certain sternness—“as how you have loved me for ten long years. But I say as how it would ’ave been more to your credit, Samuel Bilson, to ’ave found it out afore this, when, if I do say it myself, there was more occasion.”

“It’s none the wuss, Sophronia, for a–bein’ found out now,” rejoined the butler, sturdily: “what you was, you is to me, an’ I don’t noways regret that you ain’t what you was, in point of beauty, to ’ave young men an’ sich a–comin’ between us, as an engaged pair.”

“‘Oo’s an engaged pair?” demanded Sophronia, with profound dignity.

“Us,” said Mr. Bilson, placidly: “or to be considered as sich.”

“I ain’t considered us as sich,” said Sophronia, coquettishly: “not as yet.”

Mr. Bilson was stacking up dishes on the shelves in the passageway. He paused in his labors; put his hands on his hips, and faced his tormenting charmer with determination in his eye.

“Sophronia ’Uckins!” he said: “you’re forty, this day week; that much I know. Forty’s forty. You’ve kep’ your looks wonderful, an’ you ’ave your teeth which Providence give you. But forty’s forty. If you mean Bilson, you mean Bilson now, ’ere in this ’ere cupboard–extension, your ’and an’ your ’art, to love, honor, an’ obey, so ’elp you. Now, ’ow goes it?”

It went Mr. Bilson’s way. Sophronia demurred, and for a space of some few weeks she was doubtful; then she said “No”—but in the end she consented.

Why should she not? Bilson had been a saving man. No luxurious furniture beautified his little room over the stables. His character was above reproach. He allowed himself one glass of port each day from Mr. Tullingworth–Gordon’s stock; but there he drew the line. Such as it was, the master of the house had his own wine, every drop, except that solitary glass of port—save on one occasion.

And Sophronia Huckins was the occasion of that occasion. Smooth and decorous ran the course of true love for four months on end. Mrs. Tullingworth–Gordon had been made acquainted with the state of affairs; had raged, had cooled, and had got to that point where the natural woman arose within her, and she began to think about laying out a trousseau for the bride. Fair was the horizon; cloudless the sky. Then came the heavy blow of Fate.

When Cupid comes to you at forty years, he is likely to be something wrinkled, more or less fat and pursy, a trifle stiff in the joints. You must humor him a little; you must make believe, and play that he is young and fair. It takes imagination to do this, and in imagination Sophronia was deficient. Her betrothal was not two months old when she suddenly realized that there was something grotesque and absurd about it. How did she get the idea? Was it an echo of the gossip of the other servants? Did she see the shop–keepers, quick to catch all the local gossip, smiling at her as she went about the little town on her domestic errands? Was there something in Bilson’s manners that told her that he felt, in his inmost heart, that he had got to the point where he had to take what he could get, and that he held her lucky to have been conveniently accessible at that critical juncture?

We can not know. Perhaps Bilson was to blame. A man may be in love—over head and ears in love—and yet the little red feather of his vanity will stick out of the depths, and proclaim that his self–conceit is not yet dead.

Perhaps it was Bilson: perhaps it was some other cause. It matters not. One dull November day, Sophronia Huckins told Samuel Bilson that she could not and would not marry him.

“It was my intent, Samuel; but I ’ave seen it was not the thing for neither of us. If you had ’a’ seen your way clear five or ten or may befifteen years ago, I don’t say as it wouldn’t ’a’ been different. But as to sich a thing _now_, I may ’ave been foolish a–listenin’ to you last July; but what brains I ’ave is about me now, an’ I tell you plain, Samuel Bilson, it can’t never be.”

To Bilson this came like a clap of thunder out of the clearest and sunniest of skies. If the Cupid within him had grown old and awkward, he was unaware of it. To his dull and heavily British apprehension, it was the same Cupid that he had known in earlier years. The defection of his betrothed was a blow from which he could not recover.

“Them women,” he said, “is worse’n the measles. You don’t know when they’re comin’ out, an’ you don’t know when they’re goin’ in.”

The blow fell upon him late one evening, long after dinner; when everything had been put to rights. He was sitting in the butler’s pantry, sipping his one glass of port, when Sophronia entered and delivered her dictum.