Part 16

“Ill? You mean sick? No, I wasn’t sick; I was stabbed, and I got it good, too. I was cut from here to here,” and her right forefinger described across the front of her dress a line that went from her shoulder to the center of her breast bone. “At first I thought I was going to croak because I lost a lot of blood, but I’m pretty strong and I came out all right. You see, it was this way: A guy I knew got stuck on me and I couldn’t shake him, and he followed me around like a shadow. I didn’t like him because he wasn’t in my class, and besides he had another girl and I never took a girl’s fellow away in my life. If they split up then that’s different, but as long as they’re together I keep out of it. Every time I’d talk to anybody or go anywhere he’d be there. One night he followed me and a fellow I had that wanted to buy wine into Sharkey’s and when he tried to start a fight with my friend one of the waiters threw him out. Of course that made him sore, and he said that he’d get even. He did, all right, for one night as I was going upstairs he was in the top hall waiting for me, and the first thing I knew he had the knife into me.

“‘If you won’t have me, take this,’ he said, and then I felt an awful pain and when I put my hand up the blood was coming through my dress.

“‘You killed me, Jimmy,’ I said, ‘and I never done anything to you.’ But there wasn’t any answer to that, for he was running down the stairs as fast as he could.

“I was afraid to go up to my room all alone with the blood running out all over me so I went down to the street to look for my pal, Annie. You don’t know her but she’s all right. It was two o’clock in the morning and there was no one around so I thought I’d walk over to Third avenue and see if I could find any of the girls there and get help. There was an electric light up on the corner and I hadn’t taken more than a few steps before it began to move up and down and I got afraid and began to run. When I got up to the avenue all the lights were going up and down as if they were crazy and a man on the other side of the street looked as if he was upside down.

“Then I began to get frightened and I thought to myself that I’d sit down on a doorstep for a minute till I got over that queer feeling and that maybe Annie would come along. So I picked the first one I saw and flopped down. When I looked up it made me dizzy and so I looked down at the stone, and as I leaned over I watched the little red drops falling, one after the other, and always hitting the same spot, and then they began to spread out and the pool almost reached the sole of my shoe. I was wondering how long it would take before my foot got wet from it, and where it all came from, anyhow. It all seemed very funny to me; then I felt tired and shut my eyes.

“The next thing I knew I was in bed and there was a nurse there. A cop was there, too, and when I looked at him he says, ‘Ha, nurse, she’s out of it.’

“‘What place is this?’ I asked.

“‘You’re in Bellevue Hospital,’ he said, and he was right. I had been there two days before I knew it. What do you think of that?”

“You were unconscious,” remarked the young man.

“Sure I was unconscious,” she responded, “and they asked me all kinds of questions, who did it and all that, and----”

“And did you tell them who it was that stabbed you?”

“Did I tell them? Nix; not on your life. I never rapped on anybody and I wasn’t going to rap on him, for it wouldn’t do me any good and it wouldn’t take that stab away, would it? I thought I’d get square myself some day when I got out of the hospital and was strong again. That’s the only way. Him going up the river for a couple of years wouldn’t have done me any good, and maybe he’d have croaked me when he came out. What’s the good of taking chances? So I hocked all my rings and other stuff, and got togged up when I came out. I’ll get them all out in a month, maybe before. I got one now; see,” and she held up a finger on which was a very big turquoise, surrounded by very small diamonds. “I’ll get them one at a time, and then if I ever get up against it again I’ve got them to fall back on. It’s just as good as money, only the interest is awful. Now if I only had a good friend who would----”

“Want the waiter?” broke in a hoarse voice like the croak of a mammoth raven.

“Give me a claret lemonade, Harry.”

“And what’ll the gent have?”

“A Martini cocktail.”

“Right you are.”

“As I was saying, if I only had a friend who would be on the level I’d be square with him, too. I ain’t got no pals, only Annie, and she’s been pretty good to me. Say, you ain’t married, are you?”

“No, not yet”; he laughed nervously as he said it. “I don’t believe in fellows getting married until they’re twenty-five, anyhow.”

“Neither do I.”

He noticed that her teeth were very white and even, and that her eyebrows and hair were jet black. The color on her cheeks had been put there with a skilled hand, and so deftly done that it passed for the real thing--in nature, not in art. Her hands were shapely, her nails manicured carefully and she had a trim figure. It was all stock in trade, but he wasn’t figuring it that way. Half a dozen of the kind of drinks they had given him had torn down the barrier, so far as he was concerned, that had been raised by society between it and the Scarlet Woman, and the pathos of her story had set him thinking and had roused all of his sympathies. She had played her part with all of the subtleness of the finished actress and had told her story with such simplicity and naivette that many an older man would have been deceived by the recital. She was working up to the climax as carefully and cautiously as the hunter works up into the wind after the unsuspecting deer, or the soft-footed cat ambushes the bird singing in the hedge. The emotional breed of her race helped to make her realistic, and her vivacity was contagious. Put her on the stage and she would be a success with proper training.

“If,” she laid her hand caressingly on the sleeve of his coat, “if I could find someone who would get my rings out and give me a chance I would be willing to do anything for him. I don’t like this life, always hustling, chased by the police and treated like a thief. But once in it’s hard to get out, for no one wants to give you a chance.”

He was looking over her head and watching the man with the cornet rubbing up the brass with his handkerchief.

“You are not listening to me.”

“Yes, I am; I heard every word you said. How much would it cost to get your jewels out?”

“Only $125. It might not be much for you, but it’s a lot for me.”

Here was the climax, so far as her story was concerned. She could have repeated those three figures long before, but she wasn’t ready. She was waiting for the psychological moment and it had arrived. The picture was made and the hand was ready.

And now your attention is respectfully called to Fate, the intruder; the upsetter of carefully laid plans; the wrecker; sometimes the promoter, because it does as many things for good as it does for bad. In this case, however, it was good and bad, according to the viewpoint.

“If you wouldn’t mind I’ll get them out for you. Let’s go now,” he said.

She leaned back in her chair and smiled at him--a smile of happiness and success; the smile of a child when it gets its first Christmas doll; and then she drew a deep breath. Still smiling, her eyes half closed, she looked at him through the narrow slits and contemplated the possibilities of the future. There was no hurry and she could afford to wait, for she had won out.

A woman, coarse of feature and with fright depicted on her face, came hurrying in. She saw the girl at one end of the room and ran to her.

“Jennie, for God’s sake, come quick; your Billy’s just been pinched on the corner.”

“Billy pinched; what for?” The jubilation in her black eyes turned to terror.

“For swiping a bloke’s leather. They got it on him; hurry up.”

The boy stared wide-eyed at them for a moment, then pushing his chair back he arose unsteadily to his feet.

“Seventy-five cents for the drinks.”

It was the waiter’s voice.

He fumbled in his pocket, brought forth a handful of change, deposited it in the outstretched palm, and began to weave his way among the tables toward the door in the wake of the hurrying women.

“He’s a swell kid, all right,” remarked the waiter, as he counted the $3.25 in change, “and I hope he comes back.”

AFTER THE WEDDING BELLS

There was a big crowd on the ferryboat from Jersey when she bumped her nose into the pier at New York that morning, but when the gates were thrown open there wasn’t the usual scurry and rush to land that marked the morning arrival. At the front, hugging the rail on the woman’s side was a nice little blonde dressed all in white, even down to her shoes and stockings, and with a complexion of the kind known as peachy, if you have any idea what that is. Fastened to her with a strong arm hold was a fellow of about twenty-three--years, not skiddoo, you understand--and he was togged out like a hot sport after a winning fight, or one who had picked the 20 to 1 shot at Sheepshead for the first time in his life. Top hat, frock coat, white vest, patent leather shoes, pearl tie and gray gloves completed the picture, and it was the surest case of orange blossoms and wedding cake that ever happened.

That was what held the crowd and made a few of them whistle what sounded very much like that old familiar tune of “Here Comes the Bride.”

Arm in arm, entirely oblivious of anything in the world except themselves and their own happiness, the couple marched off the boat, heads up in the air and trailed by the grinning bunch, and if ever a case of love’s young dream went around on legs this was surely it.

They knew as much about New York as a Shrewsbury River clam knows about cigarettes, and it didn’t require the services of a head-grabber or a hand-holder to know that they were hunting a honeymoon hostelry.

They had come from the fertile fields of Freehold to the land where there are real bathtubs with hot and cold water, and where a chunk of plain calf is soused with gravy, called fricandeau of veal, and charged for at the rate of a dollar a portion.

What was money made for except to spend, especially on occasions of this kind? You’re young but once, and then a little makes you feel like a millionaire and you get value received and five times over for every dollar you peel off the roll. But when Time, who is the most wonderful artist in the world, does a few stunts, makes brown hair turn gray and deftly paints in the wrinkles, then the joy of spending goes and pleasure becomes as soggy as a wet sponge. Years are the frosts which kill the flowers of hope and ambition, and there are thousands of men who would give millions of dollars if they could but stand off, if only for a brief while, the gray-haired patriarch with the scythe.

Just think of the sight of a young bride and groom holding in leash, as it were, a couple of hundred business men who were as anxious to get on the job of making money as a dog is to get a bone, and all of these hard-headed fellows smiling as if each one of them were in the same position as the young fellow who was fast to her arm.

Up the street to Broadway, where they turned north, and then they were lost to all but two men, and these two were trailing.

Begins to sound like one of Old Sleuth’s detective stories, doesn’t it? Where the villains are always on the job and always being foiled. Where it is either a case of murder the child and get the papers or kidnap the girl and marry her so as to get the old man’s fortune. Doesn’t that take you back a few years when you used to have those yellow-covered books in your inside pocket and believe every word you read, or are you so unfortunate as to have never lived the life of a real boy, with all its castle building and romancing? You know there are men in this world who still dream of those days, and it doesn’t do them any harm, either.

The two men who were brought into this story a moment ago are still in the game, but they are neither burglars nor kidnappers. They are simply a pair of good fellows with enough money on the side to get anything within reason, and a belief that there are happy days and good people in this world if you only take the trouble to look for them.

“I’ll bet,” said one, “that that kid hasn’t more than a hundred in his clothes, and that he feels as if the world was his to do with as he likes.”

“The world is his if he has as much as a hundred,” returned the other. “That will give him the time of his life for three weeks, and he wouldn’t go back broke, either, unless his home is in London, which it isn’t.”

“She’s a nice-looking girl all right, and from the way they’re heading I should say it would be Niagara for theirs.”

“Niagara nothing,” retorted his friend, “that is a spot that belongs to the past. Our mothers and fathers made it fashionable, but the present generation takes to big cities as naturally as a duck takes to water, for they want the busy life and the theatres. The billing and cooing of the newly wed is all done under cover now and they mix with the crowd. You’ll find them taking in the big cafes along The Line getting a good look at things they never expect to see again, and these are the things they will be talking about twenty or thirty years from now. Make a picture of that couple ahead there in 1926, for instance. He’ll be telling his friends about this day, and the night they went to see Joe Weber, and he’ll tell how the buildings first impressed him, and then she’ll butt in with:

“‘Say, Henry, what was the name of the restaurant in New York we went to after we saw that funny show--you know, the place where we had that lobster a la Newburg?’

“As long as she lives she’ll talk about lobster a la Newburg because it sounds different, you see, and that’s the woman of it.

“Then Henry will stroke his whiskers and take his corncob pipe out of his mouth and say, as if he had known the place all his life, ‘Why, that was Shanley’s.’”

“Cut it out, for you’re talking like one of Denman Thompson’s home-made rural drammers,” put in his friend, as he pulled out his cigar case. “You’re always looking for the unusual and the sentimental, so I’ll make you a proposition. Let’s get next to this pair of turtle doves and give them the send-off of their lives. We’ll start off with a lunch, then a matinee, after that dinner, from there to a show and then a windup in a blaze of glory with wine and all the trimmings of a wedding feast. You’ve nothing to do, neither have I, and maybe if we do the thing up right she’ll name it--if it is a boy--after one of us or both of us, just think of that. There’s fame for you.”

That is how it happened that an hour later a newly-married young couple, under the escort of two young men who were pretty well known around town, were lunching at the Waldorf just as if they had known each other for years.

“You see,” one of the hosts was explaining, “we had an invitation to a wedding out of town to-day and we missed the train. We felt as if we wanted to entertain some one in honor of the event and we thought we would ask you. We want you to be our guests from now until 1 o’clock to-morrow morning----”

The young husband glanced uneasily at his wife and she smiled back reassuringly.

The woman, with that unerring female instinct which is born with all females of the human tribe, understood the situation at a glance and was ready for the lark. Besides, both hosts were good looking and well dressed and her vanity was touched. She was young enough to be natural and old enough to be appreciative. Besides, there were a few healthy drops of sporting blood in her veins, and that tells a good part of the story.

There are cases where details are uninteresting, and while the time from luncheon to near the hour of midnight seemed to the honeymooners one wild carouse yet it was really nothing to those who are familiar with the ways of the world. They had sampled everything within reason from soda to hock, and the happy Freehold boy with the silk lid was willing to walk on his hands if anyone had dared him. He had told everyone he met all he knew and all he ever expected to know. As for the little lady who had been toasted many times as the “blushing bride,” she had suddenly developed sporting proclivities of a rare character, and she squeezed the hands of both of her hosts with equal impartiality.

Confidentially it was rather a dangerous situation, for if the bridegroom had been helped to a few more drinks he wouldn’t have cared whether the place where he was laid away was a bridal couch or the soft side of a board. That was the state of affairs when, calling each other by their first names, so friendly had they become, that they all went up to the apartment of one of the hosts for the wind-up banquet.

“How are you feeling, little sport, getting a head yet?”

“I’m just right, and I’d like to have you for a brother,” she retorted.

“Only a brother?”

“Perhaps I should have said father.”

Which showed that she had a pretty wit, too, as well as a head.

At the table the hosts had multiplied by two and so there were six. The first flash of cocktails set the groom’s head to buzzing a bit and his speech began to be a trifle thick. At the sauterne he had a job to keep his head up straight, and he had no sooner finished his first glass of wine than he excused himself to get a handkerchief. He dropped on a friendly couch in the next room and promptly forgot that he was alive. His wife was no such miserable failure, for she clinked glasses with the rest of them and was entertained so well that it seemed as if she forgot she had ever been married.

As the clock on the mantel struck two she was dancing a hornpipe on that end of the table which had been cleared by the soft-footed Japanese butler, and what was more she was dancing it well, too. The four hosts were applauding and drinking her health as the best little thoroughbred they had ever met, and in each brain there was a wish that she was anything but a bride, for each of these men, from the oldest to the youngest, was in love.

It was a most curious and remarkable state of affairs, and there was a chance here for a break that might spell ruin to someone. Then the patter of the little feet on the tablecloth ceased and she stepped daintily down to chair and floor. The man nearest helped her, and as she alighted he leaned over and kissed her squarely on the lips. The color in her cheeks was accentuated just a trifle as he glanced suddenly around.

“Where’s my husband?” she asked.

“With his toes turned up on the couch in the next room and dead to the world. If he was half the sport and good fellow you are he’d be an ace. You ought to have been born in New York, Chappie, for you belong there.”

“I think I will go and see him, if you will excuse me,” she said very demurely, and then she went out.

The four hosts drank and talked and smoked and all the talk was of the bride, and it was all complimentary, too. When an hour had passed the butler was sent to see if she would return.

She came back all right, smiling, but there was a change.

“I think we ought to go now, but I can’t get him up. He’s not used to this sort of thing, you see, and I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Why, stay right here, of course. We’re all going now and Jim, the gorilla who owns the place, is going, too. The shack is yours until you get ready to leave, for you’re all right. How about that, Jim?”

“Just as you say--she owns it and us, too. Give your orders to Saki there, and we’ll call and take dinner with you every evening. We hope the boy will be all right in the morning. Good-night.”

That’s all.

It seems as if there ought to be more, but there really isn’t.

With one large high absinthe I could make a hair-raising finish, but I have made up my mind to tell only the truth for a change and give my imagination a much needed rest, and this is a truthful story and it happened just as it is put down here.

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs and outside quotations. In versions of this eBook that support hyperlinks, the page references in the List of Illustrations lead to the corresponding illustrations.