Van Bibber and Others Part 8

"I haven't thanked you, Mr. Van Bibber," said Miss Cuyler. "It was really fine of you, and most exciting. You must be very strong. I can't imagine how you happened to be there, but it was most fortunate for me that you were. If you had not, I--"

"Oh, that's all right," said Van Bibber, hurriedly. "I haven't had so much fun without paying for it for a long time. Fun," he added, meditatively, "costs so much."

"And you will be so good, then, as not to speak of it," she said, as she gave him her hand at the door.

"Of course not. Why should I?" said Van Bibber, and then his face beamed and clouded again instantly. "But, oh," he begged, "I'm afraid I'll have to tell Travers! Oh, please let me tell Travers! I'll make him promise not to mention it, but it's too good a joke on him, when you think what he missed. You see," he added, hastily, "we were to have gone out together, and he forgot, as usual, and missed the whole thing, and he wasn't _in it_, and it will just about break his heart.

He's always getting grinds on me," he went on, persuasively, "and now I've got this on him. You will really have to let me tell Travers."

Miss Cuyler looked puzzled and said "Certainly," though she failed to see why Mr. Travers should want his head broken, and then she thanked Van Bibber again and nodded to the officer and went in-doors.

The policeman, who had listened to the closing speeches, looked at Van Bibber with dawning admiration.

"Now then, officer," said Van Bibber, briskly, "which of the saloons around here break the law by keeping open after one? You probably know, and if you don't I'll have to take your number." And peace being in this way restored, the two disappeared together into the darkness to break the law.

Van Bibber told Travers about it the next morning, and Travers forgot he was not to mention it, and told the next man he met. By one o'clock the story had grown in his telling, and Van Bibber's reputation had grown with it.

Travers found three men breakfasting together at the club, and drew up a chair. "Have you heard the joke Van Bibber's got on me?" he asked, sadly, by way of introduction.

Wainwright was sitting at the next table with his back to them. He had just left the customs officers, and his wonder at the dirtiness of the streets and height of the buildings had given way to the pleasure of being home again, and before the knowledge that "old friends are best." He had meant to return again immediately as soon as he had arranged for the production of his play in New York; his second play was to be brought out in London in a month. But the heartiness of his friends' greetings, and the anxiety of men to be recognized who had been mere acquaintances. .h.i.therto, had touched and amused him. He was too young to be cynical over it, and he was glad, on the whole, that he had come back.

His mind was wide awake, and s.h.i.+fting from one pleasant thought to another, when he heard Travers's voice behind him raised impressively.

"And they both went at Van hammer and tongs," he heard Travers say, "one in front and the other behind, kicking and striking all over the shop. And," continued Travers, interrupting himself suddenly with a shrill and anxious tone of interrogation, "where was I while this was going on? That's the pathetic part of it--where was I?" His voice rose to almost a shriek of disappointment. "_I_ was sitting in a red-silk box listening to a red-silk opera with a lot of _girls_--that's what _I_ was doing. I wasn't in it; I wasn't. I--"

"Well, never mind what you were doing," said one of the men, soothingly; "you weren't in it, as you say. Return to the libretto."

"Well," continued Travers, meekly, "let me see; where was I?"

"You were in a red-silk box," suggested one of the men, reaching for the coffee.

"Go on, Travers," said the first man. "The two men were kicking Van Bibber."

"Oh, yes," cried Travers. "Well, Van just threw the first fellow over his head, and threw him _hard_. He must have broken his ribs, for the second fellow tried to get away, and begged off, but Van wouldn't have it, and rushed him. He got the tough's head under his arm, and pummelled it till his arm ached, and then he threw him into the street, and asked if any other gentleman would like to try his luck.

That's what Van did, and he told me not to tell any one, so I hope you will not mention it. But I had to tell you, because I want to know if you have ever met a harder case of hard luck than that. Think of it, will you? Think of me sitting there in a red-silk box listening to a--"

"What did the girl do?" interrupted one of the men.

"Oh, yes," said Travers, hastily; "that's the best part of it; that's the plot--the girl. Now, who do you think the girl was?" He looked around the table proudly, with the air of a man who is sure of his climax.

"How should I know?" one man said. "Some actress going home from the theatre, maybe--"

"No," said Travers. "It's a girl you all know." He paused impressively. "What would you say now," he went on, dropping his voice, "if I was to tell you it was Eleanore Cuyler?"

The three men looked up suddenly and at each other with serious concern. There was a moment's silence. "Well," said one of them, softly, "that _is_ rather nasty."

"Now, what I want to know is," Travers ran on, elated at the sensation his narrative had made--"what I want to know is, where is that girl's mother, or sister, or brother? Have they anything to say? Has any one anything to say? Why, one of Eleanore Cuyler's little fingers is worth more than all the East and West Side put together; and she is to be allowed to run risks like--"

Wainwright pushed his chair back, and walked out of the room.

"See that fellow, quick," said Travers; "that's Wainwright who writes plays and things. He's a thoroughbred sport, too, and he just got back from London. It's in the afternoon papers."

Miss Cuyler was reading to Mrs. Lockmuller, who was old and bedridden and cross. Under the influence of Eleanore's low voice she frequently went to sleep, only to wake and demand ungratefully why the reading had stopped.

Miss Cuyler was very tired. It was close and hot, and her head ached a little, and the prospect across the roofs of the other tenements was not cheerful. Neither was the thought that she was to spend her summer making working-girls happy on a farm on Long Island.

She had grown sceptical as to working-girls, and of the good she did them--or any one else. It was all terribly dreary and forlorn, and she wished she could end it by putting her head on some broad shoulder and by being told that it didn't matter, and that she was not to blame if the world would be wicked and its people unrepentant and ungrateful.

Corrigan, on the third floor, was drunk again and promised trouble.

His voice ascended to the room in which she sat, and made her nervous, for she was feeling the reaction from the excitement of the night before. There were heavy footsteps on the stairs, and a child's shrill voice cried, "She's in there," and, suspecting it might be Corrigan, she looked up fearfully, and then the door opened and she saw the most magnificent and the handsomest being in the world. His magnificence was due to a Bond Street tailor, who had shown how very small a waist will go with very broad shoulders, and if he was handsome, that was the tan of a week at sea. But it was not the tan, nor the unusual length of his coat, that Eleanore saw, but the eager, confident look in his face--and all she could say was, "Oh, Mr. Wainwright," feebly.

Wainwright waved away all such trifling barriers as "Mister" and "Miss." He came towards her with his face stern and determined.

"Eleanore," he said, "I have a hansom at the door, and I want you to come down and get into it."

Was this the young man she had been used to scold and advise and criticise? She looked at him wondering and happy. It seemed to rest her eyes just to see him, and she loved his ordering her so, until a flash of miserable doubt came over her that if he was confident, it was because he was not only sure of himself, but of some one else on the other side of the sea.

And all her pride came to her, and thankfulness that she had not shown him what his coming meant, and she said, "Did my mother send you? How did you come? Is anything wrong?"

He took her hand in one of his and put his other on top of it firmly.

"Yes," he said. "Everything is wrong. But we'll fix all that."

He did not seem able to go on immediately, but just looked at her.

"Eleanore," he said, "I have been a fool, all sorts of a fool. I came over here to go back again at once, and I am going back, but not alone. I have been alone too long. I had begun to fancy there was only one woman in the world until I came back, and then--something some man said proved to me there was another one, and that she was the only one, and that I--had come near losing her. I had tried to forget about her. I had tried to harden myself to her by thinking she had been hard to me. I said--she does not care for you as the woman you love must care for you, but it doesn't matter now whether she cares or not, for I love _her_ so. I want her to come to me and scold me again, and tell me how unworthy I am, and make me good and true like herself, and happy. The rest doesn't count without her, it means nothing to me unless she takes it and keeps it in trust for me, and shares it with me." He had both her hands now, and was pressing them against the flowers in the breast of the long coat.

"Eleanore," he said, "I tried to tell you once of the one thing that would bring me back and you stopped me. Will you stop me now?"

She tried to look up at him, but she would not let him see the happiness in her face just then, and lowered it and gently said, "No, no."

It must have taken him a long time to tell it, for after he had driven them twice around the Park the driver of the hansom decided that he could ask eight dollars at the regular rates, and might even venture on ten, and the result showed that as a judge of human nature he was a success.

They were married in May, and Lord Lowes acted as best man, and his sister sent her warmest congratulations and a pair of silver candlesticks for the dinner-table, which Wainwright thought were very handsome indeed, but which Miss Cuyler considered a little showy. Van Bibber and Travers were ushers, and, indeed, it was Van Bibber himself who closed the door of the carriage upon them as they were starting forth after the wedding. Mrs. Wainwright said something to her husband, and he laughed and said, "Van, Mrs. Wainwright says she's much obliged."

"Yes?" said Van Bibber, pleased and eager, putting his head through the window of the carriage. "What for, Mrs. Wainwright--the chafing-dish? Travers gave half, you know."

And then Mrs. Wainwright said, "No; not for the chafing-dish."

And they drove off, laughing.

"Look at 'em," said Travers, morosely. "_They_ don't think the wheels are going around, do they? _They_ think it is just the earth revolving with them on top of it, and n.o.body else. We don't have to say 'please'

to no one, not much! We can do just what we jolly well please, and dine when we please and wherever we please. You say to me, Travers, let's go to Pastor's to-night, and I say, I won't, and you say I won't go to the Casino, because I don't want to, and there you are, and all we have to do is to agree to go somewhere else."

"I wonder," said Van Bibber, dreamily, as he watched the carriage disappear down the avenue, "what brings a man to the proposing point?"

"Some other man," said Travers, promptly. "Some man he thinks has more to do for the girl than he likes."

"Who," persisted Van Bibber, innocently, "do you think was the man in that case?"

"How should I know?" exclaimed Travers, impatiently, waving away such unprofitable discussion with a sweep of his stick, and coming down to the serious affairs of life. "What I want to know is to what theatre we are going--that's what I want to know."