Part 10

"That's what she said," the girl continued. "But of course that was only her excuse for refusing. That was her way of impressing on mother that they didn't need anything. So mother had to give it up, and bring the stew down-stairs again. Mother doesn't feel so badly about them, however, because they had been cooking something yesterday. She smelt fish--yesterday was Friday, you know."

"I know," repeated the young man; "but still I--"

Just then the shrill whistle of the postman was heard, and a sharp ring at the bell.

The girl jumped up, and went to the door. As she opened it there came in the faint melody of distant sleigh-bells, and the roar of the street already muffled by the snow.

She returned to the parlor with a long blue envelope in her hand.

"Here is the letter at last," she said.

"What letter?" asked Suydam.

"The letter the old ladies are waiting for," she answered, handing it to him.

He held it up nearer the single gas-jet of the parlor and read the address aloud, "'Marquisa de los Rios,' and it's registered."

"Yes," the girl returned, "and the postman is waiting to have the receipt signed. He said he guessed it was money or a Christmas present of some sort, since it had so many seals on it. I wanted you to know about it; but I'll take it right up now."

She tripped lightly up-stairs, and John Suydam heard her knocking at the door of the room the two old ladies occupied. After an interval she rapped again, apparently without response. Then he heard her try the door gently.

Two seconds later her voice rang out in a cry of alarm: "Mother! mother! Oh, John!"

Suydam sprang up-stairs, and found her just outside of the door of the old ladies' room. She was trembling, and she gripped his hand.

"Oh, John," she said, "something terrible has happened! It was even worse than I thought! They really were starving!"

Then she led him silently into the room, where her mother joined them almost immediately.

After waiting five minutes the postman at the front door below became impatient. He rang the bell sharply and whistled again. He was kicking the snow off his boots and swinging his arms to keep warm, when at last the door opened and John Suydam appeared, with the long blue envelope in his hand.

"I'm afraid that you will have to take this letter away again," Suydam said to the postman. "There is no one here now to sign for it. The Marquisa de los Rios is dead!"

OUTLINES IN LOCAL COLOR

AN INTERVIEW WITH MISS MARLENSPUYK

It was a chill day early in January, and at four in the afternoon a gray sky shut in the city, like the cylindrical background of a cyclorama. Now and then a wreath of steam chalked itself on the slate-colored horizon; and across the river, far over to the westward, there was a splash of pink, sole evidence of the existence of the sun, which no one had seen for twenty-four hours.

As Miss Marlenspuyk turned the corner of the side street she stood still for a moment, looking down on the long Riverside Drive and on the mighty Hudson below, flowing sluggishly beneath its shield of ice. She had long passed the limit of threescore years and ten, and she had been an indefatigable traveller; and as she gazed, absorbing the noble beauty of the splendid scene, unsurpassable in any other city she had ever visited, she was glad that she was a New-Yorker born and bred, and that it was her privilege to dwell where a vision like this was to be had for the asking. But while she looked lovingly up and down the solemn stream the wind sprang up again, and fluttered her gray curls and blew her wrappings about her.

Two doors above the corner where Miss Marlenspuyk was standing a striped awning stretched its convolutions across the sidewalk and up the irregular stone steps, and thrust itself into the door-way at the top of the stoop. A pretty young girl, with a pleasantly plump figure and with a dash of gold in her fair hair, passed through this twisting canvas tunnel just ahead of Miss Marlenspuyk; and when the door of the house was opened to admit them they entered together, the old maid and the young girl.

The house was illuminated as though it were already night; the curtains were drawn, and the lamps, with their fantastically extravagant shades of fringed silk, were all alight. The atmosphere was heavy with the perfume of flowers, which were banked up high on the mantel-pieces and the tables, while thick festoons of smilax were pendent from all the gas-fixtures and over all the mirrors. Palms stood in the corners and in the fireplaces; and at one end of the hall they were massed as a screen, through which glimpses could be caught of the bright uniforms of the Hungarian band.

In the front parlor, before a broad table on which there were a dozen or more beautiful bouquets tied with bows of ribbon, and under a bower of solid ropes of smilax, stood the lady of the house with the daughter she was that afternoon introducing to society. The hostess was a handsome, kindly woman, with scarce a gray hair in her thick dark braids. The daughter was, like her mother, kindly also, and also handsome; she was better looking, really, than any of the six or seven pretty girls she had asked to aid her in receiving her mother's friends and acquaintances.

The young woman who had preceded Miss Marlenspuyk into the house happened also to precede her in entering the parlor. The hostess, holding her bunch of orchids in the left hand, greeted the girl pleasantly, but perhaps with a vague hint of condescension.

"Miss Peters, isn't it?" said the lady of the house, pitching her voice low, but with an effort, as though the habit had been acquired late in life. "So good of you to come on such a nasty day. Mildred, you know Miss Peters?"

Then the daughter stepped forward and smiled and shook hands with Miss Peters, thus leaving the mother at liberty to greet Miss Marlenspuyk; and this time there was no trace of condescension in her manner, but rather a faint suggestion of satisfaction.

"Oh, Miss Marlenspuyk," she said, cordially, "this is a pleasure. So good of you to come on such a nasty day."

"It did blow as I came to the top of your hill here," Miss Marlenspuyk returned, "and I'm not as strong as I was once upon a time. I suppose that few of us are as frisky at seventy-five as we were at seventeen."

"I protest," said the hostess; "you don't look a day older now than when I first met you."

"That's not so very long ago," the old maid answered. "I don't think I've known you more than five or ten years, have I? And five or ten years are nothing to me now. I don't feel any older than I did half a century ago; but as for my looks--well, the least said about them is soonest mended. I never was a good-looker, you know."

"How can you say so?" responded the hostess, absently noting a group of new-comers gathering in the door-way. "Mildred, you know Miss Marlenspuyk?"

"Oh yes, indeed I do," the girl said, heartily, shaking hands with the vivacious old maid.

The young woman with the touch of gold in her light hair was still standing by Mildred's side. Noting this, and seeing the group of new-comers breaking from the door-way and coming towards her, the hostess spoke hastily again.

"Do you know Miss Peters, Miss Marlenspuyk?" she asked. "Well, at all events, Miss Peters ought to know you."

Then she had just time to greet the group of new-comers and to lower her voice again, and to tell them it was so good of them to come on such a nasty day.

The daughter was left talking to Miss Marlenspuyk and Miss Peters, but within a minute her mother called her--"Mildred, you know Mrs. Hitchcock?"

As the group of new-comers pressed forward the old maid with the bright blue eyes, and the young woman with the pleasantly plump figure, fell back a little.

"I've heard so much of you, Miss Marlenspuyk, from my grandfather," began the younger woman.

"Your grandfather!" echoed the elder lady. "Then your father must be a son of Bishop Peters?"

Little Miss Peters nodded.

"Then your grandfather was a great friend of my younger brother's," Miss Marlenspuyk continued. "They went to school together. I remember the first time I saw the Bishop--it must be sixty years ago--it was the day he was put into trousers for the first time! And wasn't he proud of them!"

Miss Peters joined Miss Marlenspuyk in laughing at this amusing memory.

Then the old maid asked, "Your father married in the South after the war, didn't he? Wasn't your mother from Atlanta?"

"He lived there till mother died; I was bo'n there," said the girl. "I've been No'th only two years now this Christmas."

"I don't suppose you found many of your grandfather's friends left. Nowadays people die so absurdly young," the old maid remarked. "Is your father here this afternoon?"

"Oh dear no," responded Miss Peters; "he has to live in Southe'n Califo'nia for his health. I'm in New Yo'k all alone."

"I'm sorry for you, my child," said the elder woman, taking the girl's hand. "I've been alone myself a great deal, and I know what it means. But you must do as I did--make friends with yourself, and cultivate a liking for your own society."

The younger woman laughed lightly, and answered, "But I haven't as cha'ming a companion as you had."

Miss Marlenspuyk smiled back. "Yes, you have, my child. I'm not an ill-looking old woman now, I know, but I was a very plain girl; and I know it isn't good for any one's character to be conscious that she's almost ugly. But I set out to make the best of it, and I did. I thought it likely I should have a good deal of my own society, and so I made friends with this forced acquaintance. Now, I'm very good company for myself. I'm rarely dull, for I find myself an amusing companion, and we have lots of interests in common. And if you choose you can also cultivate a friendship for yourself. But it won't be as necessary for you as for me, because you are a pretty girl, you see. That glint of gold in your fair hair is really very fetching. And what are you doing here in New York all alone?"

"I'm writing," Miss Peters replied.

"Writing?" echoed Miss Marlenspuyk.

"My father's in ve'y bad health, as I told you," the younger woman explained, "and I have to suppo't myself. So I write."

"But I don't think I've seen anything signed Peters in the magazines, have I?" asked the old maid.

"Oh, the magazines!" Miss Peters returned--"the magazines! I'm not old enough to have anything in the magazines yet. You have to wait so long for them to publish an article, even if they do accept it. But I get things into the weeklies sometimes. The first time I have a piece printed that I think you'd like, I'll send it to you, if I may."

"I will read it at once and with pleasure," Miss Marlenspuyk declared, cordially.

"I don't sign my own name yet," continued Miss Peters; "I use a pen-name. So perhaps you have read something of mine without knowing it."

"Perhaps I have, my child," said Miss Marlenspuyk. "I shall be on the lookout for you now. It must be delightful to be able to put your thoughts down in black and white, and send them forth to help make the world brighter and better."

Little Miss Peters laughed again, disclosing a fascinating dimple.

"I don't believe I shall ever write anything that will make the world better," she said; "and if I did, I don't believe the editor would take it. I don't think that is just what editors are after nowadays--do you? They're on the lookout for stuff that'll sell the paper."

"Sad stuff it is, too, most of it," the old maid declared. "When I was a girl the newspapers were violent enough, and the editors abused each other like pickpockets, and sometimes they called each other out, and sometimes somebody else horsewhipped them. But the papers then weren't as silly and as cheap and as trivial as the papers are now. It seems as though the editors to-day had a profound contempt for their readers, and thought anything was good enough for them. Why, I had a letter from a newspaper last week--a printed form it was, too--stating that they were 'desirous of obtaining full and correct information on Society Matters, and would appreciate the kindness if Miss Marlenspuyk would forward to the Society Editor any information regarding entertainments she may purpose giving during the coming winter, and the Society Editor will also be happy to arrange for a full report when desired.' Was there ever such impudence? To ask me to describe my own dinners, and to give a list of my guests! As though any lady would do a thing like that!"

"There are ladies who do," ventured Miss Peters.

"Then they are not what you and I would call ladies, my child," returned Miss Marlenspuyk.

The face of the Southern girl flushed suddenly, and she bit her lip in embarrassment. Then she mustered up courage to ask, "I suppose you do not read the _Daily Dial_, Miss Marlenspuyk?"

"I tried it for a fortnight once," the old maid answered. "They told me it had the most news, and all that. But I had to give it up. Nobody that I knew ever died in the _Dial_. My friends all died in the _Gotham Gazette_."

"The _Gazette_ has a larger family circulation," admitted the younger woman.

"Besides," Miss Marlenspuyk continued, "I could not stand the vulgarity of the _Dial_. I'm an old woman now, and I've seen a great deal of the world, but the _Dial_ was too much for me. It seemed to be written down to the taste of the half-naked inhabitants of an African kraal."

"Oh," protested the other, "do you really think it is as bad as that?"

"Indeed I do," the old maid affirmed. "It's worse than that, because the poor negroes wouldn't know better. And what was most offensive, perhaps, in the _Dial_ was the unwholesome knowingness of it."

"I see what you mean," said Miss Peters, and again the color rose in her cheeks.

"There was that Lightfoot divorce case," Miss Marlenspuyk went on. "The way the _Dial_ dwelt on that was unspeakable. I'm willing to allow that Mrs. Lightfoot was not exactly a nice person; I'll admit that she may have been divorced more times than she had been married--"

"That's admitting a good deal!" said the young woman, as the elder paused.

"But it is going altogether too far to say that, like Cleopatra, she had the manners of a kitten and the morals of a cat--isn't it?"

Miss Peters made no response. Her eyes were fixed on the carpet, and her face was redder than ever.

"Of course it isn't likely you saw the article I mean," the old maid continued.

"Yes," the younger responded, "I saw it."

"I'm sorry for that," said Miss Marlenspuyk. "I may be old-fashioned--I suppose I must be at my age--but I don't think that is the kind of thing a nice girl like you should read."

Again Miss Peters made no response.

"I happen to remember that phrase," Miss Marlenspuyk continued, "because the article was signed 'Polly Perkins.' Very likely it was a man who wrote it, after all, but it may have been a woman. And if it was I felt ashamed for her as I read it. How could one woman write of another in that way?"

"Perhaps the writer was very poor," pleaded Miss Peters.

"That would not be a good reason, and it is a bad excuse," the old maid declared. "Of course I don't know what I should do if I were desperately poor--one never knows. But I think I'd live on cold water and a dry crust sooner than earn my bread and butter that way--wouldn't you?"

Miss Peters did not answer this direct question. For a moment she said nothing. Then she raised her head, and there was a hint of high resolve in the emphasis with which she said, "It is a mean way to make a living."

Before Miss Marlenspuyk could continue the conversation she was greeted by two ladies who had just arrived. Miss Peters drew back and stood by herself in a corner for a few minutes as the throng in front of her thickened. She was gazing straight before her, but she was not conscious of the people who encompassed her about. Then she aroused herself, and went into the dining-room and had a cup of tea and a thin slice of buttered bread, rolled up and tied with a tiny ribbon. And perhaps fifteen minutes later she found herself in front of the hostess.

She told the hostess that she had had such a very good time, that she didn't know when she had met such very agreeable people, and that she was specially delighted with an old friend of her grandfather's, Miss Marlenspuyk. "Such a very delightful old maid, with none of the flavor of desiccated spinsterhood. She does her own thinking, too. She gave me some of her ideas about modern journalism."

"She is a brilliant conversationalist," said the hostess. "You might have interviewed her."

"Oh, she talked freely enough," Miss Peters responded. "But I could never write her up properly. Besides, I'm thinking of giving up newspaper wo'k."

Three ladies here came towards the hostess, who stepped forward with extended hand, saying, "So good of you to come on such a nasty day." Miss Peters availed herself of the opportunity, and made her escape.

It might be half an hour afterwards when Miss Marlenspuyk, having had her cup of tea and her roll of bread-and-butter, returned to the front parlor in time to overhear a bashful young man take leave of the hostess, and wish the hostess's daughter "many happy returns of the day."

As it happened, there was a momentary stagnation of the flood of guests when Miss Marlenspuyk went up to say farewell, and she had a chance to congratulate the daughter of the house on the success of her coming-out tea.

"Then I must tell you, Miss Marlenspuyk," said the hostess, "that you completely fascinated little Miss Peters."

"She's a pretty little thing," the old maid returned, "with excellent manners. That comes with the blood, I suppose; she told me she was a granddaughter of the Bishop, you know. She isn't like so many of the girls here, who take what manners they have out of a book. They get them up overnight, but she was born with them. And she has the final sign of breeding, which is so rare nowadays--she listens when her elders are talking."

"Yes," the hostess replied, "Pauline Peters has pleasant manners, for all she is working on a newspaper now."

"On a newspaper?" repeated Miss Marlenspuyk. "She told me she was writing for her living, but she didn't say she was on a newspaper."

"She said something about giving it up as she went out," the hostess remarked; "but I shouldn't think she would, for she has been doing very well. Some of her articles have made quite a hit. You know she is the 'Polly Perkins' of the _Daily Dial_?"

"No," said Miss Marlenspuyk--"no, I didn't know that."

A LETTER OF FAREWELL

There had been a hesitating fall of snow in the morning, but before noon it had turned to a mild and fitful rain that had finally modified itself into a clinging mist as evening drew near. The heavy snow-storm of the last week in January had left the streets high on both sides with banks that thawed swiftly whenever the sun came out again, the water running from them into the broad gutters, and then freezing hard at night, when the cold wind swept across the city. Now, at nightfall, after a muggy day, a sickening slush had spread itself treacherously over all the crossings. The shop-girls going home had to pick their way cautiously from corner to corner under the iron pillars supporting the station of the elevated railroad. Train followed train overhead, each close on the other's heels; and clouds of steam swirled down as the engines came to a full stop with a shrill grinding of the brakes. From the skeleton spans of the elevated road moisture dripped on the cable-cars below, as they rumbled along with their bells clanging sharply when they neared the crossings. The atmosphere was thick with a damp haze; and there was a halo about every yellow globe in the windows of the bar-rooms at the four corners of the avenue. More frequent, as the dismal day wore to an end, was the hoarse and lugubrious tooting of the ferryboats in the East River.

Under the steps of the stairs leading up to the aerial station of the railroad overhead, an Italian street vender had wheeled the barrow whereon he proffered for sale bananas and apples and nuts. At one end of this stand was the cylinder in which he was roasting peanuts, and which he ground as conscientiously as though he were turning a hand-organ. A scant quarter past six o'clock it might have been, when he opened his fire-box to throw in a stick or two more of fuel and to warm his stiffened fingers in the flame. The sudden red glare, glowing through the drizzle, caught the eye of a middle-aged man who was crossing the avenue. So insecure was his footing that this momentary relaxation of his attention was sufficient cause for a false step. His feet slipped from under him and he fell flat on his back, striking just below the right shoulder-blade upon a compact mass of snow, hardened by the chilly breeze, and yet softer than the stone pavement.

The concussion knocked the breath out of him; and he lay there for a minute almost, gasping again and again, wholly unable to raise himself. As he struggled to get to his feet and to refill his lungs with air, he heard a shop-girl cry, "Oh, Liz, did you see him fall? Wasn't it awful?" And then he heard her companion respond, "I say, Mame, you ask him if he's hurt bad." Then two men stepped from the sidewalk and lifted him to his feet, while a boy picked up his hat and handed it to him.

"That's all right," said one of the men; "there ain't no bones broke, is there?"

The man who had fallen was getting his breath back slowly. "No," he panted, "there's nothing broke"--and he cautiously moved his limbs to make sure.

"Ye've knocked the wind out of ye," the other man returned, "but ye'll get it again in a jiffy. Come into Pat M'Cann's here and have a drink; that'll put the life into ye again."

"That's it," agreed the man who had been helped to his feet--"that's it; get me into Pat M'Cann's--they know me there--I can rest a bit--then I'll be all right again in a little." He broke his sentences short, but even thus he was able to speak only with effort.

Taking him each by one arm, the two men helped him into the saloon almost at the door of which he had slipped. They led him straight up to the bar.

"Good-evenin', Mr. Malone," was the barkeeper's greeting. "The boss was after askin' for ye." Then seeing the ashen face of the new-comer, he added, "It's not well ye're lookin'. What can I give ye?"

The man addressed as Malone was plainly attired; his clothes were tidy but shiny; his overcoat was thin, and it was now thickly stained down the back by the slush into which he had fallen. The bronze button of the Grand Army was in the buttonhole of his threadbare coat.

He steadied himself by the railing before the bar. "Ye may give me--a little whiskey, Tom," he said, still gasping, "and ask these gentlemen--what they'll take."

These gentlemen joined him in taking whiskey. Then they again assured him he would be all right in a jiffy; and with that they left him standing before the bar, and went their several ways.

There was nobody else in the saloon, for the moment, as it chanced; and Tom, the barkeeper, was able to give undivided attention to Mr. Malone.

"It's sorry the boss'll be to hear of yer fallin' here at his door, an' he not there to pick ye up," he remarked. "But ye'd better bide till he comes in again. Ye'll not get your breath back so easy either--I've been knocked out myself, an' I know--though it wa'n't no ice that downed me."

"So Pat M'Cann wanted to see me, did he?" asked Malone, trying to draw a long breath and finding it impossible, as the bruised muscles of his back refused to yield. "Oh--well, then I'll sit me down here and wait."

"There's yer old place in the corner," Tom responded.

"I'll smoke a pipe," said Malone, moving away, "if I haven't broke it in my fall. No; I've got it right enough," he added, taking the brier-wood from the breast-pocket of his coat.