It is well known that power lies in a saltatorial ensemble of white lace skirts, pale blue hose, lustrous naked arms, undulating bodice, magnetic eyes, flying hair, and an unchanging smile, to focus the perceptions of a man, to absorb his consciousness, aided by a tune which seems to close out from him all the rest of the world.

And there, while this plump little girl danced and the frivolous, stupid crowd looked eagerly on, from all parts of the overheated theatre, began the tragedy of Billy Folsom.

He gazed in rapture, and when she had finished and stood panting and kissing her hands in response to applause, he heaved an eloquent sigh.

"I'd like to meet that girl," he whispered to me, assuming a tone of carelessness.

Thereafter he kept his eye fixed upon the wings until she reappeared. And the rest of the performance interested him only when she was in view.

I knew the symptoms, but I did not think the malady would become chronic.

He managed to have himself introduced to her a week later in New York by Ted Clarke, the artist, who made newspaper sketches of her in some of her dances. Folsom saw her going up the steps to an elevated railway station. He ran after her, in order to be near her. He followed her into a car, where Ted Clarke, recognizing her, rose to give her his seat. She rewarded the artist by opening a conversation with him, and Folsom availed himself of his acquaintance with Clarke to salute the latter with surprising cordiality. She looked a few years older and less girlish without her blond wig but she was still quite pretty in brown hair. She treated Folsom with her wonted offhand amiability. He left the train when she left it, and he walked a block with her. With pardonable shrewdness she inspected his visage, attire, and manner, for indications of his pecuniary and social standing, while he was indulging in silly commonplaces. When they parted at the quiet hotel where she lived she said lightly:

"Come and see me sometime."

To her surprise, perhaps, he came the next day, preceded by several dozen roses and a few pounds of bonbons.

Every night thereafter he was at the theatre where she was appearing, watching her dance from the front row or from the lobby, agitated with mingled pleasure and jealousy when she received loud applause, angry at the audience when the plaudits were not enthusiastic. When their acquaintance was two weeks old, she allowed him to wait for her at the stage door, and at last he was permitted to take her to supper.

There was a second supper, at which four composed the party. We had a room to ourselves, with a piano in the corner. The event lasted long, and near the end, while the other soubrette played the tune on the piano, and Folsom kept time by clinking the champagne glass against the bottle, the little Tyrrell, continually laughing, did her skirt dance, "La Gitana."

Thus with that waltz tune ever sounding in his ears, he fell in love with her; strangely enough, really in love. She, having her own affairs to mind, gave him no thought when he was not with her, and when they were together she deemed him quite a good-natured, bearable fellow, as long as he did not bore her.

He made several declarations of love to her. She smiled at them, and said, "You're like the rest; you'll get over it. Meanwhile, don't look like that; be cheerful." At certain times, when circumstances were auspicious, when there was night and electric light and a starry sky with a moon in it, she was half-sentimental, but such moods were only superficial and short-lived, and she invariably brought an end to them with flippant laughter or some matter-of-fact speech that came with a shock to Billy, although it did not cool his adoration.

Billy became quite gloomy. He was the veritable sighing lover. Although for a month he was admittedly the chief of her admirers and saw her every day, he seemed to make no progress toward securing a hospitable reception for and a response to his love.

One day, as they were walking together on Broadway, she said:

"You're always in the dumps nowadays. Really you must not be that way. Doleful people make me tired."

And thereafter Billy, possessed by a horrible fear that his mournful demeanour might cause his banishment from her, kept making desperate efforts to be lively, which were a dismal failure. It was ludicrous. The gayer he affected to be, the more emphatic was his manifest depression. So she wearied of his company. One day he called at her hotel, and, as was his custom, went immediately to her sitting-room without sending in his card. Before he knocked at the door, he heard the notes of her piano; some one was playing the air of "La Gitana" with one finger. After two or three bars, the instrument was silent. Then a man's voice was heard. Billy knocked angrily. Miss Tyrrell opened the door, looked annoyed when she saw him, and introduced him to the tenor of a comic opera company of which she recently had been engaged as leading soubrette. Billy's call was a short one.

At eight o'clock that evening he sent this note to her from the cafe where he was dining:

"Will be at stage door with carriage at eleven, as before."

He was there at eleven. So was the tenor. The little Tyrrell came out and looked from one to the other. Billy pointed to his waiting carriage. The dancer took the tenor's arm and said:

"I'm sorry I can't accept your invitation, Mr. Folsom. Really I'm very much obliged to you, but I have an engagement."

She went off with the tenor, and Billy went off with the cab and made himself drunker than he had ever been in his life. At dawn his feet were seen protruding from the window of a coupe that was being driven up Broadway, and he was bawling forth, as best he could, the tune which had served indirectly to bring the little Tyrrell into his life.

After that night, it was the old story, a woman ridding herself of a man for whom she had never cared, and who indeed was not worth caring for. But the operation was just as hard upon Folsom as if he had been. You know the stages of the process. She began by being not at home or just about to go out. He wrote pleading notes to her, in boyish phraseology, and she laughed over these with the tenor. He made the breaking off the more painful by going nightly to see her dance that fatal melody. He watched her from afar upon the street, and almost invariably saw the tenor by her side. He drank continually, and he begged Ted Clarke to tell her, in a casual way, that he was going to the dogs on account of her treatment of him. Whereupon she laughed and then looked scornful, saying: "If he's fool enough to drink himself to death because a woman didn't happen to fall in love with him, the sooner he finishes the work the better. I have no use for such a man."

No one has, and I told Billy so. But he kept up his pace toward the goal of confirmed drunkenness. He ceased his attendance at the theatre where she danced, only after he learned that the tenor had married her. But that dance of hers had become a part of his life. Its accompanying tune was now as necessary to his aural sensibilities as food to his stomach. He therefore spent his evenings going to theatres and concert-halls where "La Gitana" was likely to be sung or played. He rarely sought in vain. The melody was to be found serving some purpose or other at almost every theatre that winter. It was the "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay" of its time.

Some men who drink themselves to death require years and wit to complete the task. Others save time by catching pneumonia through exposure due to drink. Billy Folsom was one of the pneumonia class. He "slept off" the effects of a long lark in an area-way belonging to a total stranger. A policeman took him to his lodgings by way of the station house, and a day later his landlord sent for a doctor. Five days after that I went over to see him. He was in bed, and one of his friends, a man of his own kind, but of stronger fibre, was keeping him company. Billy told us how it had come about:

"I wouldn't have gone on that racket if it hadn't been for one thing. I'd made up my mind to turn over a new leaf, and I was walking along full of plans for reformation. Suddenly I heard the sound of a banjo, coming from an up-stairs window, playing a certain tune I've got somewhat attached to. I saw the place was a kind of a dive and I went in. I got the banjo-player to strum the piece over again, and I bought drinks for the crowd. Then I made him play once more, and there were other rounds of drinks, and the last I remember is that I was waltzing around the place to that air. Two days after that the officer found me trespassing on some one's property by sleeping on it. I dropped my overcoat and hat somewhere, and it seemed there must have been a draft around, for I caught this cold."

I told Folsom to stop talking, as he was manifestly much weaker than he or his friend supposed him to be. There ensued a few seconds of silence. A loud noise broke upon the stillness with a shocking suddenness. It was the clamour of a band-piano in the street beneath Folsom's window, and of all the tunes in the world the tune that it shrieked out was "La Gitana." I looked at Folsom.

He rose in his bed and, clenching his teeth, he propelled through their interstices the word:

"Damn!"

He remained sitting for a time, his hair tumbled about, his eyes wide open but expressive of meditation as the notes continued to be thumped upward by the turbulent instrument. Presently he said, in a husky voice:

"How that thing pursues me! It's like a fiend. It has no let-up. It follows me even into the next world."

He sat for a moment more, intently listening. Then, with a quick, peevish sigh, he fell back from weakness. We by his side did not know it at the instant, but we discovered in a short time what had taken place when his head had touched the pillow, for he remained so still.

And that was the last of Billy Folsom, and up from the murmuring street below came the notes of the band-piano playing "La Gitana."



XVIII

TRANSITION

Three of us sat upon an upper deck, sailing to an island. The day was sunlit, the wind was gentle, and the faintest ripple passed over the sea.

"Do you see the tremulous old man sitting over there by the pilot-house absorbing the sunshine? He reminds me of another old man, one whom I watched for six years, while he faded and died. He never knew me, but he walked by my house daily and I walked by his. It was an interesting study. The conclusion of the process was so inevitable. The time came when he did not pass my house. Then he took the sunlight in a bow-window on the second floor of his residence. So closely had I watched his decadence during the six years that I was able to say to myself one morning, 'There will be crape on his door before the day is out.' And so there was."

The bon-vivant laughed rather mechanically, but the other, he who makes verses so dainty that the world does not heed them, smiled softly and sympathetically to me and said:

"You are right. Nothing is so fascinating as the study of a progress—a development or a decline. The inevitability of the end makes it more engrossing, for it relieves it of the undue eagerness of curiosity, the feverishness of uncertainty."

"Well, I am content rather to live than to contemplate life," said the bon-vivant. "It's true I have given myself up to observing anxiously such an advancement as you describe—a vulgar one you will say. When I was a very young man I was a very thin man. I determined to amplify my dimensions. I followed with careful interest my daily increase toward my present—let us not say obesity, but call it portliness."

"You are inclined to be easy upon yourself," I commented.

"Indeed I am—in all matters."

After a pause the verse-maker, throwing away his cigarette, took up again the theme that I had introduced.

"Yes, it is an engaging occupation to note any progression, even when it is toward a fatal or a horrible culmination. But when it is to some beautiful and happy outcome, this advancement is an ineffably charming spectacle. Such it is when it is the unfolding of a flower or the filling out of a poetic thought.

"But no growth nor transformation in the material world is more entrancing to observe than that by which a young girl becomes a lovely woman.

"This transition seems to be sudden. It is not so. It is rapid, perhaps, as life goes, but each stage is distinctly marked. All men have not time to watch the change, however, and so most men awaken to its occurrence only when it is completed. Such was the case of the young and lowborn lover of Consuelo in George Sand's romance. Do you remember that incomparable scene in which he suddenly begins to notice that some feature of Consuelo is handsome, and, with surprise, calls her attention to its comeliness? She, equally astonished and delighted, joins him in the visual examination of her charms, and the two pass from one attraction to the other, finally completing the discovery that she is a beautiful woman.

"The Italian gamin was not the sort of man to have anticipated this transfiguration and to have watched its stages.

"You may argue that his delight at suddenly opening his eyes to the finished work was greater than would have been his pleasure at contemplating the alteration in process. Doubtless his was. As to whether yours would be in such a case, depends upon your temperament.

"I have experienced both of these pleasures. Perhaps it may be due to certain special circumstances that I cherish the memory of the more lasting delight, even though it was tempered by occasional doubts as to the end, more tenderly than I do the more sudden and keen awakening.

"There is a woman who first came under my observations when she was thirteen years old. She was then agreeable enough to the eye, more by reason of the gentleness of her expression than for any noteworthy attractions of face and figure. Her face, indeed, was plain and uninteresting; her figure unformed and too slim. Her hair, however, was charming, being soft and extremely light in colour. She seemed awkward, too, and timid, through fear of offending or making a bad impression.

"For a reason I was particularly interested in her. I knew, young as I then was, that plain girls, in many cases, develop into handsome women.

"At fourteen her hair showed indications of changing its tint. Its tendency was unmistakably toward brown. This was temporarily unfavourable, but a brightening of the blue eyes and a newly acquired poise of the head, with a step toward self-confidence in manner, were compensating alterations.

"At fifteen there came an emancipation of mind and speech from schoolgirl habits. A defensive assumption of impertinent reserve, varied by fits of superficial garrulity, gave way to real thoughtfulness, to natural amiability. Then came, too, an emboldenment of the facial outline, a constancy to the colour of the cheeks, a certainty of gait, and the first perceptible roundness of contour beneath the neck.

"At sixteen she had adorable hands, and she could wear short sleeves with impunity. A rational, unforced, and coherent vivacity had now revealed itself as a characteristic of her mode and conversation. Her ankles had long before that grown too sightly to be exhibited. Such is so-called civilization! Her hair seemed to darken before one's eyes. The oval of her face attracted the attention of more than one of my artist friends.

"At seventeen she had learned what styles of attire, what arrangements of her hair, were best suited to display effectively her comeliness.

"This was one of the greatest steps of all.

"The simplest draperies, she found, the least complicated headgear, were most advantageous to her appearance.

"A taste for reading the most ideal and artistic of books, as well as her liking for poetry, the theatre, music, and pictures had implanted that exalted something in her face which cannot be otherwise acquired.

"When she was eighteen people on the street turned to look at her as she passed.

"At nineteen her figure was unsurpassable. Indeed, I think there cannot be a more beautiful and charming woman in America. She is now twenty.

"It was my privilege to view closely the bursting of this bud into bloom."

The fin de siecle versewright became silent and lighted a fresh cigarette.

"Will you permit me to ask," said I, "what were the especial facilities that you had for observing this evolution?"

"Yes," he answered, softly, a tender look coming into his eyes. "She is my wife. She was thirteen when I married her. Suddenly placed without means of subsistence, knowing nothing of the world, she came to me. I could see no other way. We are very happy together."

The pretty narrative of the rhymer put each of us in a delectable mood. The notes of a harp and violins came from the lower deck in the form of a seductive Italian melody. White sails dotted the far-reaching sea.



XIX

A MAN WHO WAS NO GOOD

Hearken to the tale of how fortune fell to the widow of Busted Blake.

The outcome has shown that "Busted" was not radically bad. But he was wretchedly weak of will to reject an opportunity of having another drink with the boys—or with the girls—or with anybody or with nobody.

In the days of his ascendancy, when he was a young and newly married architect, he was a buyer of drinks for others. Waiters in cafes vied with each other in showing readiness to take his orders. He was rated a jolly good fellow then. No one would have supposed it destined that some fine night a leering barroom wit should reply to his whispered application for a small loan by pouring a half-glass of whiskey upon his head and saying:

"I hereby christen thee 'Busted.'"

The title stuck. Blake, through continued impecuniosity, lost all shame of it in time; lost, too, his self-respect and his wife. Mrs. Blake, a gentle and pretty little brunette, had wedded him against the will of her parents. She had trusted, for his safety, to the allurements of his future, which everybody said was bright, and to his love for her.

The years of tearful nights, the pleadings, the reproaches, the seesaw of hope and despair, need not here be dwelt upon. They would make an old story, and some of the details might be shocking to the young person. They reached a culmination one day when she said to him:

"You love drink better than you love me. I have done with you."

She was a woman and took a woman's view of the case.

When he came back to their rooms that night, she was not there. Then he knew how much he loved her and how much he had underestimated his love.

She did not go to her parents. There was a very musty proverb that she knew would meet her on the threshold. "You made your bed, now lie on it." Her father was a man of no originality, hence he would have put it in that way.

She got employment in a photograph gallery, where she made herself useful by being ornamental, sitting behind a desk in the anteroom.

I know not what duties devolve upon the woman who occupies that post in the average photographer's service; whatever they are she performed them. But within a very short time after she had left the "bed and board" of Busted Blake, she had to ask for a vacation. She spent it in a hospital and Busted became a father. She resumed her chair behind the photographer's desk in due time, found a boarding-house where infants were not tabooed, and managed to subsist, and to care for her child—a girl.

Somebody lived in that boarding-house who knew Busted Blake, and it was through inquiries resulting from, this somebody's jocularly calling him "papa" one night in a saloon that Busted was made aware of his accession to the paternal relation.

When the poor wretch heard the news, he made a prodigious effort to keep his face composed. But the muscles would not be resisted. He burst out crying, and he laid his head upon his arm upon a beer-flooded table and wept copiously, causing a sudden hush to fall upon the crowd of topers and a group to gather around his table and stare at him,—some mystified, some grinning, none understanding.

The next day he made a herculean effort to pull himself together. He obtained a position as draughtsman from one who had known him in his respectable period, and he went tremblingly and sheepishly to call upon his wife and child.

The consequence of his visit was a reunion, which endured for two whole weeks. At the end of that time she cast him off in utter scorn.

How he lived for the next two years can be only known to those who are familiar through experience with the existence of people who ask other people on the street for a few cents toward a night's lodging. By those who knew him he was said to be "no good to himself or any one else." He acquired the raggedness, the impudence, the phraseology of the vagabond class. He would hang on the edge of a party of men drinking together in front of a bar, on the slim chance of being "counted in" when the question went round, "What'll you have?" He was perpetually being impelled out of saloons at foot-race speed by the officials whose function it is, in barrooms, to substitute an objectionable person's room for his company.

One winter Sunday morning he slept late on a bench in a public square. Awakened by an officer, he arose to go. Hazy in head and stiff at joints, he slightly staggered. He heard behind him the cooing laugh of a child. He looked around. It was himself that had awakened the infant's mirth—or that strange something which precedes the dawn of a sense of humour in children. The smiling babe was in a child's carriage which a plainly dressed woman was pushing. He looked at the woman. It was his wife and the pretty child was his own.

He walked rapidly from the place, and on the same day he decided to leave the city. He had herded with vagrants of the touring class. The methods of free transportation by means of freight-trains and free living, by means of beggary and small thievery in country towns, were no secret to him. He walked to the suburbs, and at nightfall he scrambled up the side of a coal-car in a train slowly moving westward.

What hunger he suffered, what cold he endured, what bread he begged, what police station cells he passed nights in, what human scum he associated with, what thirst he quenched, and with what incredibly bad whiskey, are particulars not for this unobjectionable narrative, for do they not belong to low life? And who nowadays can tolerate low life in print unless it be redeemed by a rustic environment and a laboured exposition of clodhopper English and primitive expletives? Low life outside of a dialect story and a dreary village? Never!

Mrs. Blake and the child lived in a fair degree of comfort upon the mother's wages, but often the mother shuddered at thought of what might happen should she ever lose her position at the photographer's.

Consumption had its hold on Busted Blake when he arrived in the mining-town called Get-there City, in Kansas, one evening. Get-there City had not gotten there beyond a single straggling street of shanties. But it had acquired a saloon, although liquor-selling had already been forbidden in Kansas.

Busted Blake, with ten cents in his clothes, entered the saloon and asked in an asthmatic voice for as much whiskey as that sum was good for.

While awaiting a response, his eyes turned toward the only other persons in the saloon,—three burly, bearded miners of the conventional big-hatted, big-booted, and big-voiced type. Above their heads and against the wall was this sign, lettered roughly with charcoal, under a crudely drawn death's head:

"Five thousand dollars will be paid by the undersigned to the widow of the sneaking hound that informs on this saloon. This is no meer bluf. P. GIBBS."

Blake, after a brief coughing fit, looked up at the man behind the bar,—a great thick-necked fellow with a mien of authority, and yet with a certain bluff honesty expressed about his eyes and lips. This man, whose air of proprietorship convinced Blake that he could be none other than P. Gibbs, had first looked sneeringly at the ten cents, but had shown some small sign of pity on hearing the ominous cough of the attenuated vagrant. He set forth a bottle and glass.

"Help yerself," said P. Gibbs. While Blake was doing so, Mr. Gibbs went on:

"Bad cough o' yourn. Y' mightn't guess it, but that same cough runs in my fam'ly. It took off a brother, but it skipped me."

Here was a bond of sympathy between the big, law-defying saloon-keeper and the frail toper from the East. Busted Blake drained his glass and presently coughed again. P. Gibbs again set forth the bottle, and this time he drank with Blake. Before long, by dint of repeated fits of coughing on the part of Blake, the sympathy of P. Gibbs was so worked upon that he invited the three miners in the saloon to join him and the stranger.

Blake slept in a corner of the saloon that night. He left the next morning, a curious expression of resolution on his face.

During the next three weeks he was now and then alluded to in P. Gibbs's saloon as the "coughing stranger."

In the middle of the third week, at nine o'clock in the evening, when the lamps in P. Gibbs's saloon were exerting their smallest degree of dimness and the bar was doing a good business, the door opened and in staggered Busted Blake. His staggering on this occasion was manifestly not due to drink. His face had the hideous concavities of a starved man and the uncertainty of his gait was the token of a mortal feebleness. His emaciation was painful to behold. His eyes glowed like huge gems.

The crowd of miners looked at him with surprise as he entered.

"The coughing stranger!" cried one.

"The coffin stranger, you mean," said another.

Busted Blake lurched over to the bar. His eyes met those of P. Gibbs on the other side, and the latter reached for a whiskey-bottle.

Blake fumbled in his pocket and brought forth a piece of soiled paper, which he laid on the bar under the glance of P. Gibbs.

"Keep that!" said Blake, in a husky voice, whose service he compelled with much effort. "And keep your word, too! That's where you'll find her."

P. Gibbs picked up the paper.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"That woman's name there. It's the name of my widow; the address, too, of a photograph man who will tell you where she is. Get the money to her quick, before the governor and the troops comes down on you to close you up. And don't let her know how it comes about. Pick a man to take it to her,—let him pay his expenses out of it,—a man you can trust, and make him tell her I made it somehow, mining or something, so she'll take it. You know."

P. Gibbs, who had listened with increasing amazement, opened wide his eyes and drew his revolver. He spoke in a strangely low, repressed voice:

"Stranger, do you mean to say—"

"Yes, that's it," shrieked Busted Blake, turning toward the crowd of intensely interested onlookers. "And I call on all you here to witness and to hold him to his word. That's no mere bluff he says in his notice there, and I'm the sneaking hound that informed. My widow is entitled to $5,000. I did it in Topeka, and for proof, see this newspaper."

P. Gibbs fired a shot from his revolver through the newspaper that Blake pulled from his shirt. Then the saloon-keeper brought his weapon on a level with Blake's face.

"It's good your boots is on!" said P. Gibbs, ironically.

But he did not fire. Blake stood perfectly still, awaiting the shot, and feebly laughing.

So the two remained for some moments, until Blake suddenly sank to the floor, quite exhausted. He died within a half-hour on the saloon floor, his head resting in the palm of P. Gibbs, who knelt by his side and tried to revive him.

At the next dawn, a man whom they called Big Andy started East, and the piece of paper that Blake handed to P. Gibbs was not all that he took with him. The United States marshal arrived and duly closed Gibbs's saloon, which reopened very shortly afterward, minus the $5,000 offer.

And Big Andy found the widow of Busted Blake, to whom he told a bit of fiction in accounting for the legacy conveyed by him to her that would have imposed upon the most incredulous legatee. When she had recovered from the surprise of finding herself and her child provided with the means of surviving the possible loss of her situation, she forgave the late Busted, and there was a flow of tears unusual to a boarding-house parlour and unnerving to Big Andy.

Presently she asked Andy whether he knew what her husband's last words had been.

"Yep," said Andy. "I heard'm plain and clear. Pete Gibbs,—the other executor of the will, you know,—Pete says, 'It's all right, pardner, me and Andy'll see to it,' and then your husband says, 'Thank Gawd I've been some good to her and the child at last.'"

Which account was entirely correct. When Big Andy had returned to Get-there City, and related how he had performed his mission, he added:

"I'd been such a lovely liar all through, it's a shame I had to go an' spoil the story by puttin' in some truth at the finish."

They put up a wooden grave-mark where Blake was buried, and after his name they cut in the wood this testimonial:

"A tenderfoot that was some good to his folks at last."



XX

MR. THORNBERRY'S ELDORADO

Near the uneven road among the hills a small field of stony ground lay between woods and cultivated land. Nothing grew upon it and no house could be seen from it. The sun beat upon it and crows flew over it to and from the woods.

Along the road trudged a thin old negro with stooping back and gray wool. His knees were bent and his cumbrously shod feet pointed far outward from his line of progress. He wore an aged frock coat and a battered stiff hat, although the month was June. His small face, beginning with a smoothly curved forehead and ending with a cleanly cut chin, was mild and conciliating, shiny, and of the colour of light chocolate. He carried a tin bucket full of cherries. Pop Thornberry was returning to the town.

Pop, whose proper name was Moses, and who was a deacon in the African Methodist Church, made his living this way and that way. He did odd jobs for people, and he fished and hunted when fishing and hunting were in season.

On this June day he had risen early and walked three miles to pick cherries "on shares." He had picked ten quarts and left four of them with the farmer whose trees had produced them. At six cents a quart he would profit thirty-six cents by his walk of six miles and his work of a half-day.

The sun was scorching and Pop was tired. He decided to rest in the barren field, at its very edge in shade of the woods. He climbed the zigzag fence with some labour and at the expense of a few of his cherries. He sat down upon a little knob of earth, took off his hat, drew a red handkerchief from the inside thereof, and slowly wiped his perspiring brow.

He looked up at the sky, which was so brightly blue that it made his eyes blink. He sought optical relief in the dark green of the woods. Then, in steadying his pail of cherries between his legs, he turned his glance to the ground in front of him.

His attention was caught by a lump of earth that sparkled at points In the sun's rays, a mere clod composed of clay and mica, lying In the dry bed of a bygone streamlet. Because it glittered he picked it up and examined it. After a time he bethought him that he was yet two and a half miles from town and very hungry. He arose, somewhat stiff, and put the shining clod in his coat-tail pocket. On his way back to the road he noticed other little earth lumps that shone. He resumed his walk townward, his knees shaking regularly at every step, as was their wont.

At three o'clock in the afternoon he had reached home, sold his cherries, and dined on dried beef and bread in his little unpainted wooden house on the edge of the creek at the back of the town.

He owned his house and a small lot upon which it stood. Near it was a flour-mill, whose owner held a mortgage upon Pop's house and lot. The old negro had been compelled to borrow $200 to pay bills incurred during the illness and subsequent funeral of the late Mrs. Thornberry, and thus to avoid a sheriff's sale. Hence came the mortgage. It would expire on the 10th of September. Pop was almost ready to meet that date. He already had $192 hidden in his cellar, unknown to any one.

He had heard rumours of the mill-owner's desire to build an addition to his mill. To do this would necessitate the acquisition of contiguous property. But Pop had not suspected any ulterior motive when the miller had offered to lend him the money.

"I kin soon lay by 'nuff t' pay off d' mohgage, w'en I ain't got no one but m'se'f t' puvvide foh no moah," he had said, after the loan had been made.

And, having dined on this June day, he took twenty cents from the amount received for cherries and placed it in a cigar-box to be added to the $192. He kept that sixteen cents with which to purchase provisions for to-morrow, and then he walked down the quiet street to the railway station. He often made a dime by carrying some one's satchel from the station to the hotel.

The railroad division superintendent, a well-fed and easy-going man, came down from his office on the second floor of the station building and saw Pop sitting on a baggage-truck. The old negro, forgetful of the clod in his coat-tail pocket, had felt it when he sat down. He had taken it out of his pocket and was now casually looking at it as he held it in his hand.

"Hello, Pop!" said the division superintendent, upon whose hand time was hanging heavily. "What have you there?"

"Doan' know, Mistah Monroe. Doan' know, sah. Looks like jes' a chunk o' mud."

He held out the clod to Mr. Monroe.

The spectacle of the division superintendent talking to the old negro attracted a group of lazy fellows,—the driver of an express wagon, the man who hauls the mail to the post-office, a boy who sold fruit to passengers on the train, two porters, with tin signs upon their hats, who solicited patronage from the hotels.

"Why, Pop," said the superintendent, winking to the expressman, "this lump looks as though it contained gold."

"Yes," put in the expressman, "that's how gold comes in a mine. I've often handled it. That's the stuff, sure."

The fruit-selling boy and the mail-man grinned. Pop Thornberry opened wide his mouth and eyes and softly repeated the word:

"Goal!"

"I'd be careful of it," advised Mr. Monroe, handing the clod back to the negro.

Pop took it with a trembling hand and looked at it. Presently he asked:

"W'at'll you give me foh dat air goal, Mistah Monroe."

"Oh, a piece like that would be no use to me. It has to be washed and it wouldn't be worth while putting just one piece through the whole process of cleaning. Now. If you have a lot of it, we might go into partnership in the gold business."

Before the old man could answer to this pleasantry a whistle was heard up the track, and Pop was forgotten in the excitement attending the arrival of the train.

Dislodged from the baggage-truck, the old man looked around for Mr. Monroe, but the superintendent had disappeared. Pop did not seek to carry any satchels that day. His mind was full of other matters. He went behind the station and sat down beside the river.

"Goal!" That meant proper tombstones for the graves of his wife and children, a new pulpit for the African Methodist Church, equal to that of the African Baptist Church, future ease for his somewhat weary legs and arms and back.

The next afternoon the division superintendent found himself awaited at his office door by Pop Thornberry, who was very dusty and who carried a basket heavy with clods of clay and mica. He had been out to the arid field that morning.

"H-sh!" whispered Pop. "Doan' say a word, Mistah Monroe! Hyah's a lot o' dem air goal lumps, and I know weah dey's bushels moah,—plenty 'nuff to go into pahtnehship on."

The superintendent, looked bewildered, then amused, then ashamed. Embarrassed for a reply, he finally said:

"I haven't time to talk to you now, Pop. Besides, I've made up my mind not to go into the gold business. You see, I'm rich enough already. Good day."

Thereafter Pop lay in wait for Mr. Monroe daily, but the superintendent always avoided him. Pop neglected to earn his living and spent his time going about town with his basket of clods in search of the superintendent. Finally being openly ignored by Mr. Monroe when the two met face to face, Pop became angry and took his secret to a jeweller on Main Street. The jeweller laughed and told Pop that the gold in the basket must be worth at least a thousand dollars, but he was not in a position to buy crude gold. Then the jeweller made known to many that Pop Thornberry was crazy over some lumps of mud and mica that he mistook for gold.

After that, people would stop Pop on the street and say:

"Let's see a piece of the gold in your basket."

Pop, astonished that his secret was out, but somewhat proud at being thought the possessor of a treasure, would hesitate and then comply. The small boys soon recognized in Pop's delusion a new means of fun. Observing the solicitude with which he watched his clod while out of his own hands, they would innocently ask for a glimpse into his basket. This granted, they would grasp a piece of his treasure and run away, greatly annoying the old man, who was in a state of keen distress until he recovered the abstracted clod. These affairs between Pop and the boys were of hourly recurrence. They diverted barroom loungers and passers-by.

Pop called on one local capitalist after another, seeking one who would buy his gold or aid into preparing it for the market. All laughed at his delusion, deeming it harmless, and all gave him good reason for not accepting his offer of business partnership. So he went from the bank president to the baker, from the member of congress for whom he had voted to the barber, from the hotel proprietor to the bartender. The negroes of the town, feeling that their race was humiliated in Pop, began to hold aloof from him. No serious-minded person who learned of his delusion gave it a second thought.

"Say Pop, where do you get this gold, anyhow?" asked a tobacco-chewing gamin at the railroad station one day.

"Dat's my business," replied Thornberry, with some dignity.

"Oh," said his questioner, "I know. Tobe McStenger followed you out the other day and saw where you got it. He'd a brung some in hisself, but it wasn't on his property."

"Yes, Pop, you better look out," put in a telegraph operator, "or you'll be taken up for trespassing. 'Tisn't your land, you know, where you find your gold."

There was no truth in the assertion of the gamin. No one had taken the trouble to follow Pop in his semiweekly excursions to the barren field. But the old man knew that the field was not his. A ludicrous expression of overwhelming fright came over his face.

Three days afterward, the farmer who owned the worthless field was astonished when Pop offered to buy it.

"But what on earth do you want that land fer?" asked the farmer, sitting on his barnyard fence.

Pop made a guilty attempt to appear guileless, and told the farmer that he wished to build a shanty and raise potatoes. He was tired of living in town and sought the quietude of the hills.

"Bein' as dat ere fiel' ain't good foh much, I thought you might be willin' to paht with it," explained Pop.

The farmer eventually agreed to build a shanty on the field and sell it to Pop for $180. Pop desired immediate occupancy. There was a legal hitch, owing to the badness of the land and the questionable condition of Pop's mind. But the transfer of the property was finally recorded.

Pop no longer had to fear arrest for trespass. His gold field was now legally his. But he was still kept uneasy by his inability to make his gold marketable. His uneasiness increased as September approached. He had applied to the purchase of the field the sum saved to cancel the mortgage upon his house at the rear end of the town.

The three days before the foreclosure of the mortgage were days of exquisite anguish to Pop. When the foreclosure came and he and his goods were turned out on the banks of the creek to make room for the mill-owner's improvements, his mental turmoil ended. He took the crisis calmly.

"Jes' wait," he said to a neighbour who had stopped at sight of the moving-out. "Wait till I get dat ere goal on de mahket. I'll bull' a mill dat'll drive dis yer mill out o' d' business. Den I'll done buy back dis yer ol' home."

But the next day, when the unexpected happened,—when builders began to tear down his house,—the enormity of his deed dawned upon him. After a day of moaning and staring, as he sat amidst his household goods on the bank of the creek, he became animated by a deep rage against the mill-owner. Now more than ever had he a special purpose for enriching himself by means of his treasure across the hill.

The coming of two circuses in succession had taken the interest of the boys away from Pop during August and part of September. Now they turned again to him for amusement. First they besieged the abandoned stable to which he had conveyed his goods, and in which he slept,—for he had not found will to betake himself from the town he had so long inhabited, and his shanty in the field remained unoccupied. His purchase of the land had betrayed to general knowledge the location of his treasure, of which he continued to bring in new specimens.

One October day he had just come from vainly attempting to induce the postmaster to join him in the enterprise of exploiting his gold-field. In front of the post-office, he was met by some boys coming noisily from school. They surrounded him and demanded to see the gold in his basket. As the town policeman was sauntering up the street, Pop felt safe in refusing. The boys, also observing the officer of the law, contented themselves with retaliating in words only,

"Say, Pop," cried one of them, "you'd better keep an eye on your gold-field. Nick Hennessey knows where it is, and he's gittin' up a diggin' party to take a wagon out some night and bring away all your gold."

The boys, laughing at this quickly invented announcement, ran off after a hand-organ. The old man stood perfectly still, or as nearly so as the feebleness of his legs would permit.

That evening Pop was missing from the town. And when Abraham Wesley, who had often lent his shotgun to the old man, went to look for that weapon, intending to shoot glass balls in the fairgrounds across the river, the fowling-piece too was missing.

Pop had gone out to protect his possession. Three nights passed and three days. The few country folk and others who travelled that way during this time saw the old man walking about in his field or sitting in front of his shanty, his shotgun on his shoulders, his eyes fixed suspiciously on all who might become intruders. Night and day he patrolled his little domain.

At dusk of the third day a lively party was returning to the town in a wagon from a search for nuts. The full moon was rising and the merrymakers were singing. One of the girls was thirsty. When she saw the shanty in the rugged field, she asked a young man to get her a glass of water at the hut. The wagon stopped and the youth climbed astride the rail fence. Suddenly an unnaturally shrill and excited voice was heard:

"Hyah, you, doan' come no farder! Dese yer's my premises!"

From behind the empty shanty appeared the thin old negro, bareheaded, his shotgun at his shoulder, a striking figure against the rising moon.

The young man descended from the fence into the field. There came a flash and a crack from Pop Thornberry's gun. The youth felt the sting of a piece of birdshot in his leg. Howling and limping, he turned quickly over the fence into the wagon, which made a hasty flight.

The next morning some idlers went out from the town to the scene of the adventure. They found the old man lying hatless in the middle of the field, face downwards, upon the shotgun. He had died of sheer exhaustion, on guard—and on his own land, as befit an honest citizen who had never intruded upon the peace of other men.



XXI

AT THE STAGE DOOR [Footnote: Courtesy of Lippincott's Magazine. Copyright, 1892, by J. B. Lippincott Company.]

First let me explain how I came to be sitting in so unsavoury a place as Gorson's "fifteen cent oyster and chop house" that night. Most newspaper men—the rank and file—receive remuneration by the week. Those not given over to domesticity, those who enjoy that alluring regularity identical with liberty, fare sumptuously, as a rule, on "pay-day." Thereafter the quantity and quality of the good things of life that they enjoy diminish daily until the next pay-day.

Pay-day with us was Friday. This was Thursday night. I having gone to unusual lengths of good cheer in the early part of that week, had now fallen low, and was duly thankful for what I could get—even at Gorson's.

As my glance wandered over my table, over the beer-bottles and the oysters, beyond the crowd of ravenous and vulgar eaters and hurrying waiters, to the street door, some one opened that door from the outside and entered. An odd looking personage this some one.

A person very tall and conspicuously thin. These peculiarities were accentuated by the dilapidated frock coat that reached to his knees, and thus concealed the greater portion of his gray summer trousers, which "bagged" exceedingly and were picturesquely frayed at the bottom edges, as I could see when he came nearer to me. He wore a faded straw hat, which looked forlorn, as the month was January. His face, despite its angularity of outline and its wanness, had that expression of complacency which often relieves from pathos the countenances of harmlessly demented people. His hair was gray, but his somewhat formidable looking moustache was still dark. He carried an unadorned walking-stick and under his left arm was what a journalistic eye immediately recognized as manuscript. From the man's aspect of extreme poverty, I deduced that his manuscripts were never accepted.

As he passed the cashier's desk, he stopped, lowered his body, not by stooping in the usual way, but by bending his knees, and with a quick sweep of his eyes by way of informing himself whether or not he was observed, he picked up a cigar stump that some one had dropped there.

Then he walked with a rather shambling but self-important gait to the table next mine, carefully placed his manuscript upon a chair, and sat down upon it. He was soon lost in a prolonged contemplation of the limited bill of fare posted on the wall, a study which resulted in his ordering, through a hustling, pugnacious-looking waiter, a bowl of oatmeal.

A bowl of oatmeal is the least expensive item on the bill of fare at Gorson's. When I hear a man ordering oatmeal in a cheap eating-house, my heart aches for him. I had just the money and the intention to procure another bottle of beer and another box of cigarettes. The sum required to obtain these necessaries of life is exactly the price of a bowl of oatmeal and a steak at Gorson's. So I hastily arose to go, and on my way out I had a brief conversation with the bellicose-appearing waiter, which resulted in my unknown friend's being overwhelmed with amazement later when the waiter brought him a warm steak with his oatmeal and said that some one else had already paid his bill. I did not wait to witness this result, for the man looked one of the sort to put forth a show of indignation at being made an object of charity.

An hour later I saw him walking with an air of consequence up Broadway, smoking what was probably the bit of cigar he had picked up in the restaurant. He still carried his manuscript, which was wrapped in a soiled blue paper. As I was hurrying up-town on an assignment for the newspaper, I could not observe his movements further than to see that when he reached Fourteenth Street he made for one of the benches in Union Square.

It was by the size, shape, and blue cover that I recognized that manuscript two days later upon the desk of the editor of the Sunday supplementary pages of the paper, as I was submitting to that personage a "special" I had written upon the fertile theme, "Producing a Burlesque."

"May I ask what that stuff is wrapped in blue?"

"Certainly. A crank in the last stages of alcoholism and mental depression brought it in yesterday. It's an idiotic jumble about Beautiful Women of History, part in prose and part in doggerel."

"Of course you'll reject it?"

"Naturally. I'll ease his mind by telling him the subject lacks contemporaneousness. Have a cigarette? By the way, have you any special interest in the rubbish?"

"No; I only think I've seen it before somewhere. What's the writer's name and address?"

"It's to be called for. He didn't leave any address. From that fact and his appearance, I infer that he doesn't have any permanent abode. Here's his name,—Ernest Ruddle. Not half as much individuality in the name as in the man. I remember him because he had a straw hat on."

The burlesque production which had served as material for my Sunday article saw the light for the first time on the following Monday night. There being no other theatrical novelty in New York that night, the town—represented by the critics and the sporting and self-styled Bohemian elements—was there. The performance was to have a popular comedian as the central figure, and was to serve, also, to reintroduce a once favourite comic-opera prima donna, who had been abroad for some years. This stage queen had once beheld the town at her feet. She had abdicated her throne in the height of her glory, having made the greatest success of her career on a certain Monday night, and having disappeared from New York on Tuesday, shortly afterward materializing in Paris.

There was abundant curiosity awaiting the appearance of Louise Moran, as the playbills called her. It was whispered, to be sure, by some who had seen her in burlesque in London, after her flight from America, that she had grown a bit passee; but this was refuted by the interviewers who had met her on her return and had duly chronicled that she looked "as rosy and youthful as ever." Brokers, gilded youth, all that curious lot of masculinity classified under the general head of "men about town," crowded into the theatre that night, and when, after being heralded at length by the chorus, the returned prima donna appeared, in shining drab tights, she had a long and noisy reception.

My friendly acquaintance with the leading comedian and the stage manager had served to obtain for me an unusual privilege,—that of witnessing the first night's performance from the wings. As I looked out across the stage and the footlights, and saw the sea of faces in the yellowish haze, a familiar visage held my eye. It was in the front row of the top gallery, and was projected far over the railing, putting its owner in some risk of decapitation. An intent look on the pale countenance at once distinguished it from the terrace of uninteresting, monotonous faces that rose back of it. The face was that of my man of the restaurant and of the blue-covered manuscript.

I stood, somewhat in the way of the light man, where my eye could command most of the stage, and a brief section of the auditorium, from parquet to roof. The star of the evening, having rattled off, with much sang-froid and a London intonation, a few lines of thinly humourous dialogue, came toward the footlights to sing. While the conductor of the orchestra poised his baton and cast an apprehensive look at her, she began:

"I'm one of the swells Whose accent tells That we've done the Contenong."

When she had sung only to this point, people in the audience were exchanging significant smiles. There was no doubt of it; Louise Moran's voice had lost its beauty. The years and joys of life abroad had done their work. We now knew why she had given up comic opera and had gone into burlesque. The house was so taken by surprise that at the end of her second stanza, where applause should have come, none came. There was no occasion for her to draw upon her supply of "encore verses."

Unprepared for the chilling silence that followed her song, she bestowed upon the audience a look of mingled astonishment, pain, and resentment. But she recovered self-possession promptly and delivered the few spoken lines preceding her exit gaily enough. Her face clouded as soon as she was off the stage. She abused her maid in her dressing-room and sent the comedian's "dresser" out for some troches. The state of her mind was not improved by the sound of a hail-storm-like sound that came from the direction of the stage shortly after,—the applause at the leading comedian's entrance.

As the newspapers said the next day, the only honours of that performance were with the comedian. The star of Louise Moran had set. Not only was her singing-voice a ruin, but the actress had grown coarse in visage. The once willowy outlines of her figure had rounded vulgarly. On the face, audacity had taken place of piquancy. Even the dark gray eyes, which somehow seemed black across the footlights, had lost some lustre.

Why had the once lovely creature come back from Europe to disturb the memories of her other radiant self, and to turn those dainty photographs of her earlier person into lies?

Every man in the house was thinking this question at the end of the first act.

She had another solo to sing in the second act. It was while she was attempting this that my glance strayed to the man in the gallery. His face this time surprised me.

It wore a look of ineffable sympathy and sorrow. Surely tears were falling from the sad eyes.

This pity touched me. It was so solitary. The feeling of the rest of the audience was plainly one of resentful derision at being disappointed.

After the performance I waited for the comedian. He was called before the curtain and a speech was extorted from him. There were but a few faint cries for the actress, to which she did not respond. She had summoned the manager to her dressing-room. While she hastily assumed her wraps for the street, she was excitedly complaining of the musical director "for not knowing his business," the comedian for "interfering" in her scenes, the composer for writing the music too high, and the librettist for supplying such "beastly rubbish" in the way of dialogue.

"Very well; I'll call a rehearsal to-morrow at ten," the conciliatory manager replied. "You talk to Myers" (the musical director) "yourself about it. And you can introduce those two songs you speak of. Myers will fix the other music to suit your voice."

"And you start Elliott to write over the libretto at once," she commanded, "and see that that song and dance clown" (the comedian) "never comes on the stage when I'm on, if it can be helped, or I won't go on at all. That's settled!"

The comedian and I left the stage door together. The actress's cab was waiting at the opposite side of the dark alley-like street upon which the stage door opened. This street or court, stretching its gloomy way from a main street, is a place of tall warehouses, rear walls, and bad paving. The electric light at its point of junction with the main street does not penetrate half-way to the stage entrance, and the blackness thereabout is diluted with the rays of the lonely, indifferent gas-lamp that projects above the old wooden door. Farther on, an old-fashioned street-lamp marks the place where the alley turns to wind about until it eventually reaches another main street.

This dark region, the feeble lamp above the stage door, the shadows opposite, have a peculiar charm, especially at night. One would not think that within that door is a short corridor leading to the mystic realm which the people "in front" idealize into a wonderful inaccessible country, the playworld. Back here, especially on a rainy night and before the playworld's inhabitants begin to sally forth to partake of terrestrial beer and sandwiches, one seems millions of miles away from the crowds of men and women in the theatre and from the illumined street in front.

The ordinary world, when passing this strange place, peers in curiously from the main street. Sometimes folks wait at the corner of the street to see the stage people come out. If the piece is a burlesque or a comic opera, much life moves in the darkness back here. Light comes from the up-stairs windows of the theatre, the dressing rooms of the subordinate players being up there. Snatches of song from feminine throats, mere trills sometimes, isolated fragments of melody, break into the silence. These are always numerous during the half-hour after the performance and before the actors have left the theatre. Chorus girls in ulsters emerge in troops, usually by twos, from the door beneath the light, and it is constantly opening and shutting. In the gloom opposite the door hover a few bold youths, suddenly become timid, smoking cigarettes and trying to look like men of the world. As the comedian and I came forth, one of these young men struck a match to light a cigarette. The momentary flash attracted my eye, and I saw in the farthest shadow, with his gaze upon the stage door, my man of the restaurant, and the manuscript, and the gallery. If possible, he looked more haggard than before, and, as it was cold, he shivered perceptibly.

"Whom can he be waiting for, I wonder?" I said, aloud.

The comedian, thinking that I alluded to the cabman, half-asleep upon his seat, replied, as he turned up the collar of his overcoat:

"Oh, he's waiting for Miss Moran. She didn't always go home from the theatre in a cab. She acquired the habit abroad, I suppose. How she's changed. I knew her in other days."

"Really? I didn't know that. Tell me about her."

"It's a common story. She's the result of a mercenary mother's schemes. She's not as old as people think, you know. Her career has been eventful, which makes it seem long. But I was in the cast, playing a small part in the first play she ever appeared in, and that was only twelve years ago. She was about twenty-one then. She waited on customers in her mother's little stationery store, until one day she eloped with a poor young fellow whom she loved, in order to escape a rich old man whom her mother had selected for a son-in-law. She could have endured poverty well enough, if the mother hadn't done the 'I—forgive—and—Heaven— bless—you—my—children' act, after which she succeeded in making the girl quarrel with her husband continually. She was a schemer, that mother. A theatrical manager, whom she knew, was introduced to the girl, who was more beautiful then than ever afterward. The mother managed to have the girl's husband discharged from the bank where he was employed on the same day that the manager made the girl an offer to go on the stage. The boy naturally wanted to keep his wife with him, but the mother told him he was a fool.

"'I'll travel with her,' she said, 'and you stay here and get another situation.' The wife, intoxicated at the prospects of stage triumphs, urged, and the boy gave in.

"A year or so after that, the girl had drifted completely out of the husband's life, as they say in society plays, the mother managed to bring about the estrangement so promptly.

"The husband stayed at home and got work in a railroad office or somewhere, so as to earn money with which to drink himself to death—I say, let's go in here and eat. If we go to the club, I'll be bored to death with congratulations."

We turned into a lighted vestibule and mounted the stairs to a modest little cafe over a Broadway saloon. There, over the cigars and Pilsner presently the comedian continued the story:

"When the husband learned that to his charming mother-in-law's machinations he owed the loss of his position and his wife, he bided his time, like a sensible fellow, and one day he called upon the old lady at her flat. Without a word, he proceeded to pull out much of her hair and otherwise to disfigure her permanently, which, as she was a vain woman, made her miserable the rest of her days. Then he disappeared, and has not been heard of since. It seems strange the thing never got into the newspapers. By the way, you won't print this story, my boy, until she or I leave the profession."

"Why not? Are you the only man who knows it?"

"No; it was general gossip in the profession at that time."

"How did you get it so straight?"

"She told me. I knew her well in those days. Oh, use the story if you like, only don't credit it to me. She's very mad because I made a hit to-night and she didn't."

"But what was the name of her husband?"

"Poor devil!—his name was—what was it, anyhow? By Jove, I can't think of it! It'll come back to me, though, and I'll let you know later. He had literary aspirations, by the way. She used to laugh at the poetry he had written about her. Poor boy!"

The next night, radical changes having been effected in the burlesque, the prima donna made a more creditable showing. I happened to be at the stage door again when she came out with her maid after the performance, as I had under my guidance one of the newspaper's artists, who had been making some sketches of life behind the scenes. She was in a gayer mood than that in which she had been on the previous night.

As she was entering the cab, I heard a muffled exclamation, which came from the shadow opposite the stage door. Dimly in that shadow could be seen a form with arms outstretched toward the woman, as in an involuntary gesture. The cab rolled away. The form emerged from the darkness and wearily strode by. It was that of my manuscript man. He had the same straw hat, stick, and frock coat.

"That queer old chap must be really in love with her," I thought, smiling. Such things often happen. I knew a gallery god—but that will keep. Evidently here was an amusing case, not without its aspect of pathos.

Being in that vicinity on the following night, I strolled up to the stage door, merely to see whether the straw hat would be there again. There it was, patiently waiting, scourged by the most ferocious of January winds.

Doubtless the man came here every night to catch a glimpse of his divinity. He was quite unobtrusive, and I was probably the only one who noticed his constant attendance. I learned at the newspaper office that he had called for the rejected manuscript bearing his name,—Ernest Ruddle. Then for a time I neither saw nor thought of him.

One night, in the last of January,—the coldest of that savage winter,—I happened again to be in the corridor leading to the stage door, having come from within the theatre in advance of my friend the comedian, with whom I was to have supper at the Actors' Athletic Club. The actress's cab was waiting. The dark little portion of the world back there was deserted.

Along the corridor, through which the sound of chorus girls' laughter came, strolled the comedian, his cigar already lighted and behind it his cheerful, hearty, smooth-shaven visage appearing ruddy from the recent washing off of "make-up."

"Hello!" he began, thrusting his hand into his overcoat pockets. "By the way, while I think of it, I just passed Miss Moran coming from the dressing-room, and suddenly that name came back to me, the name of her husband. It was a peculiar name,—Ernest Ruddle."

Ernest Ruddle! the name on the manuscript! The man of the restaurant and the gallery, the tears, the waiting at the stage door, were explained now. Ere we reached the stage door, the actress herself appeared in the corridor, on the arm of her maid. She was laughing, rather coarsely. We stepped aside to let her pass out into the night.

"So the manager said he'd give me $50 more on the road," she was saying, "and I said he would have to make it $75 more—gracious! what's this?"

She had stumbled over something just outside the threshold of the stage door. Her companion stooped, while the actress jumped aside and looked down at the large black object with both fright and curiosity.

"It's a man," said the maid; "drunk, or asleep, or dead. He looks frozen. He's a tramp, I guess; hurry away! We'll tell the policeman on the corner."

The actress passed on, with a final look of half-aversion, half-pity, at the prostrate body. The comedian and I were both by that body within two seconds.

"Frozen or starved, sure!" said the comedian. "Poor beggar! Look at his straw hat. Observe his death-clutch on the cane."

From down the alley came two sounds: one was a policeman's approaching footsteps; the other, of a woman's laughter. What, to be sure, was the dead or drunken body of an unknown vagabond to her?

And it seems strange that I, who never exchanged speech with either the woman or the man, was the only one in the world who might recognize in the momentary contact of the living with the dead, a dramatic situation.



XXII

"POOR YORICK" [Footnote: Courtesy of Lippincott's Magazine. Copyright, 1892, by J.B. Lippincott Company.]

The name by which he was indicated on the playbills was Overfield. His real name was buried in the far past. By several members of the company to which he belonged he was often called "Poor Yorick."

I asked the leading juvenile of the company—young Bridges, who was supposed to attract women to the theatre, and for whose glorification "The Lady of Lyons" was sometimes revived at matinees—how the old man had acquired the nickname.

"I gave it to him myself last season," replied Bridges, loftily. "Can't you guess why? You remember the graveyard scene in 'Hamlet.' The skull of Yorick, you know, had lain in the earth three and twenty years. Yorick had been dead that long. Well, the old man had been dead for about the same length of time,—professionally dead, I mean. See?"

It was true that, so far as being known by the world went, the old man was as good, or as bad, as dead. He no longer played other than quite unimportant parts.

It was said by some one that he was the poorest actor and the noblest man in the country; a statement commended by Jennison, an Englishman who usually played villains, to this, that his were the worst art and best heart in the profession.

Poor Yorick was a thin man, with a smooth, gentle face, lamblike blue eyes, and curling gray locks that receded gracefully from his forehead. He had just an individualizing amount of the pomposity characteristic of many old-time actors. He was not known to have any living kin. He permitted himself one weakness, a liking for whiskey, an indulgence which was never noticed to have brought appreciable harm upon him.

Once I asked him when he had made his debut. He answered, "When Joe Jefferson was still young and before Billie Crane was heard of."

"In what role?"

"As four soldiers," he replied.

"How could that be?"

He explained that he had first appeared as a super in a military drama, marching as a soldier. The procession, in order to create an illusion of length, had passed across the stage and back, the return being made behind the scenes four times continuously in the same direction.

The old man took uncomplainingly to the name applied to him by Bridges. He must have known what it implied, for surely he could not have mistaken himself for "a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy." His non-resentment was but an evidence of his good nature, for he was aware that it was not a very general custom of actors to give each other nicknames, and that his case was an exception.

When he was playing the insignificant part of the old family servant of a New York banker, in the most successful comedy of that season, he came to know Bridges better than ever before. Poor Yorick had little more to do in the play than to come on and turn up some light, arrange some papers on a desk, go off, and afterward return and lower the light. Bridges was doing the role of the bank clerk in love with the banker's daughter. Yorick and Bridges, through some set of circumstances or other, were sharers of the same dressing-room.

Upon a certain Wednesday, and after a matinee, the two were in their dressing-room, hastily washing up their faces and putting on their street clothes. Said the old man:

"Did you notice the pretty little girl in the upper box? She reminds me of—" here his voice fell and took on suddenly a tone of sadness—"of some one I knew once, long ago."

Bridges, drying his face with a towel before the big mirror, did not observe the old man's change of voice, nor did he heed the last part of the sentence.

"Notice her?" he answered, with a touch of triumphant vanity in his manner of speech. "I should say I did. She was there on my account. I'm going to make a date with her for supper after the performance to-night."

Old Overfield, sitting on a trunk, stared at Bridges in surprise.

"Do you know her?" he asked.

"No," replied the leading juvenile. "That is, I have never met her, but she's been writing me mash notes lately, asking for a meeting. In the last one she said she could get away from her house this evening, as her father's out of town and her mother is going over to Philadelphia this afternoon. So she invited me to have supper with her to-night, and was good enough to say she'd occupy that box this afternoon, so I could see what she was like. Didn't you observe her embarrassment when I came on the stage? I paid no attention to her first letter. But, having seen her, you bet I'll answer the last one right away. Don't you wish you were me, old fellow?"

The old fellow stood up and looked at Bridges severely.

"Yes, I do wish I were you,—just long enough to see that you don't answer that girl's letter. Surely you don't mean to!"

"Hello! What have you got to do with it? Do you know the young woman?"

"No, I don't. But I can easily guess all about her. She's some romantic little girl, still pure and good, afflicted with one of those idiotic infatuations for an actor, which is sure to bring trouble to her if you don't behave like a white man. You want to show her the idiocy of writing those letters, by ignoring them. You know that actors who care to do themselves and the profession credit make it a rule never to answer a letter from a girl like that, unless to give her a word of advice. Come, my boy, don't disgrace yourself and profession. Don't spoil the life of a pretty but foolish girl who, if you do the right thing, will soon repent her silliness, and make some square young fellow a good wife."

Bridges had continued to dress himself during this long speech, assuming a show of contemptuous indignation as it progressed. When Overfield, astonished at his own eloquence, had subsided, the young man replied, in a quiet but rather insolent tone:

"Look here, old man, don't try to work the Polonius racket on me. I don't like advice, and I'm going to meet that girl, see? She arranged the whole thing herself; she's to be at a certain spot at eleven-thirty P.M. with a cab. All I've got to do is to signify my assent in a single line, which I'm going to write and send by messenger as soon as I get out of here. Of course, if the girl was a friend of yours, it would be different, but she isn't, and if you want to remain on good terms with me, you won't put in your oar. Now that's all settled."

"Is it? Well, young man, I don't want to remain on good terms with anybody I can't respect. I can't respect a man who would take advantage of a love-struck girl's ignorance of life. If you meet her, you will simply be obtaining favours on false pretences, anyhow, for you know you're not really half the fascinating, romantic, clever youth that you seem when you're on the stage speaking another man's thoughts. That girl is probably good, and she looks like some one I used to know. If I can save her, I will, by thunder!"

"Really, old man, you're quite worked up. If you could act half that well on the stage, you'd be doing lead, instead of dusting furniture while the audience gets settled in its seats."

Old Yorick stood for a moment speechless, stung by the insult. Then he took up his hat, excitedly, and left the dressing-room without a word.

Some of the other members of the company wondered at the angry, flushed look on his face when he hurried through the corridor to the stage door. A few minutes later he was seen walking down the street, apparently much heated in mind. When he reached a certain cafe he went in, sat down, and called for whiskey. He remained alone in deep thought, mechanically and unconsciously answering the salutations bestowed upon him by two or three acquaintances who strolled in. Suddenly he nodded thrice, as if denoting the acquiescence of his judgment in some plan of action formed by his inventive faculty. He rose quickly, paid his bill at the cashier's desk, and moved rapidly across the street to the —— Hotel. Passing in through a broad entrance, he turned aside to a writing-room, where, without removing his soft hat, he sat down at a desk.

He was soon immersed in the composition of a letter, which caused him many contractions of the brow, many lapses during which he abstractedly stared at vacancy, many fresh beginnings, and the whole of the two hours allowed him before the evening's performance for dinner.

When he had finished the letter, he carefully read it, and made a few corrections. Then he folded it up, put it in an envelope, and placed it unsealed in his inside coat pocket. He arose with an expression of resolution about his eyes that was quite new there.

Ascertaining by the clock in the thronged main corridor that the time was ten minutes after seven, the old man rushed into the cafe, where he devoured hastily a chicken croquette, and swallowed a cup of coffee and a glass of whiskey before starting to the theatre. He was in his dressing-room and in his shirt-sleeves, touching up his eyebrows, when Bridges arrived. A cool greeting passed between the two.

"You sent the note?" asked the old man.

"What note?" gruffly queried Bridges, taking off his coat.

"To that girl."

"Most certainly."

A curious look, unobserved by Bridges, shot from Poor Yorick's eyes. It seemed to say, "Wait, things may happen that you're not looking for."

At about the time when Bridges and Yorick were dressing for the performance, a newspaper reporter, wishing to make a few notes of an interview that had been accorded him by a politician staying in the hotel at which the old man had written his long letter, went into the writing-room and made use of the desk where the actor had sat earlier in the evening. Several sheets of blank paper were scattered over it. One of them contained almost a page of writing. Yorick had negligently left it there. It was a beginning made by him before he had succeeded in obtaining a satisfactory wording for his thoughts. This rejected opening read:

"My DEAR, FOOLISH YOUNG LADY:—Something has happened which prevents Mr. Bridges from keeping the appointment with you, and you're much better off on that account, for nothing but unhappiness can come to you if you allow yourself to be carried out of your senses by your infatuation for a man who has neither the brains nor the manliness which he seems to have when playing parts that call for the mere simulation of these gifts. Never make an appointment with a man you do not know, especially a young and vain actor who has once got the worst of it in a divorce suit. You'll be thankful some day for this advice, for I know what I speak of. I was once, years ago, just such an actor. The woman got into all sorts of trouble because she wrote me such letters as you have written Bridges, and brought to an early end a life that might have been very happy and youthful. Looked like you, and it is a memory of what she lost and suffered that makes me wish to save you. My dear young ——"

There were yet two lines to spare at the foot of the page. The newspaper man, interested by the fragment, thrust it into his pocket.

When Poor Yorick had finished his final scene in the comedy at the —— Theatre that night, he made haste to dress and to leave the playhouse. But he loitered near the stage entrance, keeping in the shadow on the other side of the alley, out of the range of the light from the incandescent globe over the door.

Bridges was slightly surprised, on returning to his dressing-room, to find that Yorick had already gone. But he attributed this to the ill feeling that had arisen on account of the intended meeting with the girl of the letters and the box.

The leading juvenile attired himself for the conquest carefully but rapidly. When he was ready he surveyed his reflection complacently in the long mirror, assuming the slightly languid look that he intended to maintain during the first half-hour of the supper. He retained the dress suit which he wore in the second and third act of the play, and which he rarely displayed outside of the theatre. He flattered himself that he was quite irresistible, and wondered whether she would take him to Delmonico's or to some quiet little place. He indulged, too, in some vague speculation as to what the supper might result in. The girl was evidently of a rich family, but her people would doubtless never hear of her making a match with him, that divorce affair being in recent memory. A marriage was probably out of the question. However, the girl was a beauty and this meeting was at least worth the trouble. So he donned his coat and hat and swaggered out of the theatre. He had no sooner turned from the alley upon which the stage door opened than Yorick, unnoticed by him, darted out in pursuit. Ten minutes' walking brought the leading juvenile near the spot where he was to be awaited by the girl in the cab. Yorick, whose only means of ascertaining the place of meeting was to follow Bridges, kept as near the young actor as was compatible with safety from discovery by the latter. Bridges, strutting along unconscious of Yorick's presence a few yards behind, had half-traversed the deserted block of tall brown stone residences, when he saw a cab standing at the corner ahead of him. He quickened his pace in such a way as to warn the old man that the eventful moment was at hand. The cab stood under an electric light before an ivy-grown church.

Yorick, with noiseless steps, accelerated his gait. Bridges, as he neared the cab, deflected his course toward the curbstone and threw his head back impressively. This little action, interpreted rightly by the pursuer, was the old man's cue. Yorick suddenly rushed forward with surprising agility.

Before Bridges could be seen by the occupant of the cab for which he was making, he was dazed by a blow on the side of the head, just beneath the ear, and knocked off his feet by a sound thump on the same spot. He reeled, clutched at the air, and fell heavily upon the sidewalk. There he lay stunned and silent.

Yorick, not waiting to see what became of the man whom he had felled, dashed forward to the cab. Opening the door, he caught a momentary vision of a white, round face, with big, scared eyes, above a palpitating mass of soft silk and fur, and against a black background. He thrust toward her the letter, which he had quickly drawn from his pocket, and whispered, huskily:

"Mr. Bridges couldn't come. Here's a note."

Then he slammed the cab door, and called out in a commanding tone:

"Drive on there! Quick!"

The cabman, who had evidently received directions in advance from the girl, jerked his reins, and the cab moved forward, turned, and rattled away, the horse at a brisk trot.

Yorick speedily left the scene. At the next corner he met a policeman, to whom he said:

"There's a man lying on the sidewalk back there by the church. I don't know whether he's drunk or not."

He was off before the officer could detain him.

Bridges spent the night in a station-house, recovering from the effects of a fall, which the police attributed to drunkenness. Assuming that he had received his blows from some masculine relative or admirer of the girl, he gave a false account of the bruises when the next night he asked the manager for a few nights of rest and enabled his understudy to obtain a chance long coveted.

The leading juvenile manifestly thought best not to attempt a renewal of a flirtation with a young woman who had so formidable a protector; and the girl herself, whatever became of her, addressed him no more epistles of adoration, or of any sort whatever.

Yorick got from the stage manager permission to change his dressing-room. Thereafter he and Bridges maintained a mutual coolness, until one day the leading juvenile, warmed by cocktails, melted, and addressed the old man familiarly by his nickname.

"Old fellow," said Bridges, over a cafe table, "when I come to play Hamlet, I'll send for you to act Poor Yorick. You'd do it well. You're always best, you know, in parts that don't require you to come on the stage at all."

The old man smiled grimly and then shrugged his shoulders at this pleasantry. When he died the other day, he left a curious will, in which, after naming several insignificant legacies, he bequeathed his skull "to a so-called actor, one Charles Bridges, to be used by him in the graveyard scene when he shall have become able to play Hamlet,—if the skull be not disintegrated by that time."



XXIII

COINCIDENCE

Max took us down into a German place into the bowels of the earth. It was a bit of Berlin transplanted to Philadelphia and thriving beneath a Teutonic eating-house. Imagine a great cellar, with stone floor, ornamented ceiling, massive rectangular pillars of brown wood, substantial tables, heavy mediaeval chairs, crossbeams bearing pictures of peasant girls and lettered with sentiments of good cheer in German, and walls covered with beer-mugs of every size and device.

Scores of men sat talking at the tables, smoking, devouring sandwiches, upturning their mugs of beer over the capacious receptacles provided by nature.

The mediaeval chairs appealed to the romanticism that lies beneath Breffny's satirical exterior; and when Max called our attention to the fact that the mugs of beer came through apertures from caves beneath the street, we were content.

For the hour, the problem of human happiness was solved for us three by three foaming mugs, three sandwiches, and tobacco.

Here communed we three, blown from various winds, to this local Bohemia: Max, native of the free German City of Frankfort, operatic manager in Rio Janeiro, musician in New York, Denver resident by adoption, Philadelphia newspaperman by preference; Breffny, born in a Spanish village, reared in Continental countries, professedly an Irishman, but more than half-Latin in temperament and appearance, a cyclopedia for the benefit of his friends, and myself.

The talk ran to the imposture recently attempted by young Mr. Herdling, who claimed that the dead body found at Tarrytown was that of his wife.

"A very touching fake," said Max.

"Yes; thanks to the skill of the reporters who wrote up his story," cried Breffny.

"We visited many morgues in search of her, Louise and I," said I, quoting the most effective passage of the narrative.

"I did know of one case of a husband starting off at random to find his runaway wife," observed Breffny.