The Wit and Humor of America Volume VIII Part 17

"You?" she cried, stepping back, one hand at her throat and the other against the jamb of the door.

Dumb as ever was Lot's wife (after the turning-point in her career), I stood and stared and admired. A woman would instantly have noticed the beauty of her sables, but I was a man to whom such details were inconsequent.

"I did not expect ... that is, only the number of the apartment was given," she stammered. "I ..." Then her slender figure straightened, and with an effort she subdued the fright and dismay which had evidently seized her. "Have you Mr. Chittenden's hat?"

"Mr. Chittenden's hat?" I repeated, with a tingling in my throat similar to that when you hit your elbow smartly on a corner. "Mr. Chittenden's hat?"

"Yes; he is so thoughtless that I dared not trust him to search for it alone. Have _you_ got it?"

Heavens! how my heart beat at the sight of this beautiful being, as she stood there, palpitating between shame and anxiety! She _was_ beautiful; and I knew instantly that I loved her better than anything else on earth.

"Mr. Chittenden's hat," I continued, as lucid as a trained parrot and in tones not wholly dissimilar.

"Can't you say anything more than that?"--impatiently.

How much more easily a woman recovers her poise than a man, especially when that man gives himself over as tamely as I did!

"Was it _your_ letter he was seeking?" I cried, all eagerness and excitement as this one sane thought entered my head.

"Did he tell you that there was a letter in it?"--scornfully.

"Yes,"--guiltily. Heaven only knows why I should have had any sense of guilt.

"Give it to me at once,"--imperatively.

"The hat or the letter?" Truly, I did not know what I was about. Only one thing was plain to my confused mind, and that was the knowledge that I wanted to put my arms around her and carry her far, far away from Toddy-One-Boy.

"Are you mad, to anger me in this fas.h.i.+on?" she said, balling her little gloved hands wrathfully. Had there been real lightning in her eyes I'd have been dead this long while. "Do you dare believe that I knew you lived in this apartment?"

"I ... haven't the hat."

"You dared to search it?"--drawing herself up to a supreme height, which was something less than five-feet-two.

I became angry, and somehow found myself.

"I never pry into other people's affairs. You are the last person I expected to see this night."

"Will you answer a single question? I promise not to intrude further upon your time, which, doubtless, is very valuable. Have you either the hat or the letter?"

"Neither. I knew nothing about any letter till Mr. Chittenden came. But he came too late."

"Too late?"--in an agonized whisper.

"Yes, too late. I had, unfortunately, given his hat to another gentleman who made a trifling mistake in thinking it to be his own." Suddenly my manners returned to me. "Will you come in?"

"Come in? No! You have given the hat to another man? A trifling mistake!

He calls it a trifling mistake!"--addressing the heavens, obscured though they were by the thickness of several ceilings. "Oh, what _shall_ I do?" She began to wring her hands, and when a woman does that what earthly hope is there for the man who looks on?

"Don't do that!" I implored. "I'll find the hat." At a word from her, for all she had trampled on me, I would gladly have gone to Honolulu in search of a hat-pin. "The gentleman left me his card. With your permission I will go at once in search of him."

"I have a cab outside. Give me the address."

"I refuse to permit you to go alone."

"You have absolutely nothing to say in regard to where I shall or shall not go."

"In this one instance. I shall withhold the address."

How her eyes blazed!

"Oh, it is easily to be seen that you do not trust me." I was utterly discouraged.

"I did not imply that," with the least bit of softening. "Certainly I would trust you. But ..."

"Well?"--as laughingly as I could.

"I must be the one to take out that letter,"--decidedly.

"I offer to bring you the hat untouched," I replied.

"I insist on going."

"Very well; we shall go together; under no other circ.u.mstances. This is a common courtesy that I would show to a perfect stranger."

I put on my hat, took up the Frenchman's card and tile, and bowed her gravely into the main hallway. We did not speak on the way down to the street. We entered the cab in silence, and went rumbling off southwest.

When the monotony became positively unbearable I spoke.

"I regret to force myself upon you."

No reply.

"It must be a very important letter."

"To no one but myself,"--with extreme frigidity.

"His father ought to wring his neck,"--thinking of Toddy-One-Boy.

"Sir, he is my brother!"

"I beg your pardon." It seemed that I wasn't getting on very well.

We b.u.mped across the Broadway tracks. Once or twice our shoulders touched, and the thrill I experienced was as painful as it was rapturous. What was in a letter that she should go to this extreme to recall it? A heat-flash of jealousy went over me. She had written to some other fellow; for there always is some other fellow, hang him!...

And then a grand idea came into my erstwhile stupid head. Here she was, alone with me in a cab. It was the opportunity of a lifetime. I could force her to listen to my explanation.

"I received your note," I began. "It was cruel and without justice."

Her chin went up a degree.