An Ambitious Woman Part 5

"Pshaw!" flatly objected Josie; "you look fust rate. That ain't _no_ sort of reason.... Do! Now, _do_!"

Claire laughed nervously. She was thinking how pleasant it would be to hear an orchestra play, to see a curtain rise, to watch a drama roll its story out, behind vivid footlights, between painted scenes.

"I am sure Mr. MacNab wouldn't like," she said. And then she thought of how her father would soon come home and miss her, and have to be told, when they next met, that she had been to the theatre over in New York with the girl who brought them vegetables thrice a week. She seemed quite to have made up her mind, presently. She withdrew her hand from Josie's with a good deal of placid force.

"No, Josie, I can't," she said.

"Yes, you _can_!" was the fervid reply. "Yes, you just _shall_, Miss Twining; now _there_! I ain't goin' t' let you _off_! When I get my mind set right _onto_ anything, I'm as stubb'n as ever I can _be_! An' I'm sure you'd _like_ to come. There ain't no doubt of 't--not one single _grain_!"

Josie was laughing while she thus spoke, and had again caught Claire's unwilling hand with more of entreaty than boldness.

"What makes you sure?" Claire asked. She smiled now, though the smile was sad.

Josie's laughter became a high treble ripple. She put both feet, visible beneath her short skirt, suddenly very close together, and curved her lithe body in an abrupt burlesque bow. The trick was graceful, though vulgar; it savored of the cheaper variety entertainments, where Josie had no doubt found it. She still held Claire's hand, and she was looking straight into the eyes of her companion with her own dark, brisk eyes.

"What _makes_ me sure you'd like to go?" she said. "Why, sakes alive, Miss Twining, I can see the need of a little fun oozin' right out of your _face_--now, 'pon my word and sacred honor I just _can_! Oh, pshaw!

We'll be home early 'nough. It won't be _much_ more'n quarter past 'leven, I guess. B'sides, who'll _know_? 'Tain't anybody's business but _ours_."

'Father would know. It would be his business,' Claire thought. But she did not answer aloud, as yet. She permitted Josie to retain her hand, while she turned and gave another glance toward the city across the river.

The rapid darkness had thickened. Where New York had lain, dim as a mirage, hundreds of lights had cl.u.s.tered; their yellow galaxy more than rivaled the pale specks of fire now crowding with silent speed into the heavens domed so remotely above them.

She faced Josie again. She trembled, though imperceptibly. Drooping her eyes, at first, she then raised them. "Well," she said, "I will let you persuade me. I will go with you, Josie."

It was the first time she had ever made a resolve whose fulfillment she felt sure would displease her father. The certainty that he would not sanction her going in companions.h.i.+p of this proposed sort made Claire's decision a sacrilege to herself, even while she perversely took it. She trampled on her own filial loyalty, and she seemed to feel it tremble in pained protest under the outrage. It was in vain that a troop of self-excusing pleas sprang to battle against her shamed afterthought.

She knew that remorse was already whetting for her its poniard. The gloom of her father's future rebuke had already made itself a part of the increasing nightfall.

"Oh, ain't I glad, though!" Josie broke forth, gleefully. Her triumph was one of pure good-natured impulse, but at the same time she had a flattered sense that her evening's amus.e.m.e.nt would now gain a stamp of distinction. One or two girls in Greenpoint had derided her for encouraging Mr. MacNab as a devotee. She herself secretly derided the young man in that same tender office. For this reason she had arranged that they should meet here to-night at the foot of the little hillock near the river, and invest their purposed trip with enough clandestine a.s.sociation to defeat the couchant raillery of certain unsparing neighbors.

Almost immediately Mr. MacNab made his appearance below, and Josie tripped lightly down toward him, followed by Claire at a much more sober pace. The introduction promptly followed, and Josie's glib, matter-of-course explanation soon succeeded that. The reason of Claire's presence was given Mr. MacNab by Josie with a handsome, off-hand patronage. "It's awful nice o' Miss Twining to _consent_ to go along with us," she ended. "_Aint_ it, now?"

"Oh, yes, indeed," said Mr. MacNab.

The young man was inwardly tortured by this abrupt announcement. He was very much in love with Josie, and he had felt deeper and deeper thrills of antic.i.p.ation all day long, as the hour of their rendezvous drew near.

He was a youth of about two-and-twenty. His stature was so low as to be almost dwarfish; both Claire's and Josie's well overtopped it. He was very stout, however; the breadth of his shoulders and the solid girth of his limbs might have suited six feet of clean height. He had a large, smooth, moon-like face, a pair of little black eyes, and a pair of huge red ears. He was immoderately ugly, but with an expression so simply amiable as quite to escape repulsiveness. You felt that his ready smile possessed vast hidden funds of geniality; there was no telling what supple resources that long slit of big-lipped mouth might draw upon, at a really mirthful emergency. One glance at his abnormal hands, where every joint was an uncouth protuberance and every nail a line of inky darkness, left it certain that they held no dainty share of the world's manual requirements. Mr. James MacNab was an oyster-opener for about eight months in the year, and a clam-opener through the remaining four.

The narrow window of his employer's shop looked upon Greenpoint Avenue, wedged between the stores of a butcher and a candy-seller. Like Josie Morley, James was of Irish parentage; like her, he abjured the accent of his ancestors, having been born here, and having breathed into his being at an early age that peculiar shame of Celtic origin which belongs among our curiosities of immigration. His wages were meagre, and his hours of work numerous. To-night was a precious interval of relaxation. He had been released at three o'clock that afternoon, and had gone heavy-lidded to a tiny cot in a garret-room, where he had slept the exhausted sleep of one who is always in arrears to the drowsy G.o.d. Not long ago he had waked, highly refreshed, and pierced with the expectation of soon meeting his beloved Josie. He had four dollars and seventy-five cents in his pocket, and the possession of this sum gave him a firm sense of pecuniary security. The strong faith that he was finely dressed, too, increased his confidence. He had a little low hat of black felt, tipped sideways on his ungainly head; an overcoat of muddy cinnamon-brown, with broad black binding along its lappels and edges; and a pair of boots so capably polished that their l.u.s.tre dissuaded you from too close scrutiny of the toe-joint bulging from either clumsy foot. He was entirely satisfied with his general effect. He knew that nature had not made him comely, but he felt complete repose of conscience in the matter of having atoned artistically for this personal slight.

Josie's tidings left him almost speechless. In a trice his glowing hopes had crumbled to ashes. He had long known Claire by sight. He had, in a way, admired her. But she was not of his _monde_, and he saw with woe and dismay that for this reason her company would prove all the more burdensome. As a matter of expense, too, it presented the most painful objections. New drafts must be made upon his limited capital. All his past calculations were suddenly rendered null. Who could say what financial disaster might overtake him, if he should now aspire to three oyster-stews after three seats at the theatre? Would his four dollars and seventy-five cents not pa.s.s its powers of elasticity if subjected to this unforeseen stretching-process? Claire, meanwhile, was wholly unconscious of his distress. It was not till they had embarked on the ferry-boat that the thought of her escort's possible poverty occurred to her flurried mind. "Oh, Josie," she soon found a chance to whisper, "I am afraid I shall be a great expense to your friend! I would have thought of it sooner if you had not pressed me so, without any warning beforehand. And I have only a little change in my pocket, so I can't"--

But here Josie interrupted her with a magnificent murmured fiction to the effect that they were under the protection of a young man who "jus'

made money hand over fist"; and Claire, believing this handsome falsehood, let Josie talk with her gallant while she relapsed into silence.

They were all on the forward deck of the steamboat, close against its wooden railing. Claire was a little apart from her companions; she had instinctively withdrawn from them. The night had now woven its web to the full. Overhead the stars beamed more richly; below, the black river s.h.i.+mmered with gla.s.sy l.u.s.tre where it met the sides of the speeding vessel, and then rolled off again into darkness with great swollen waves. Long points of light pierced the gloom below the opposite sh.o.r.e, like golden plummets that were slowly fathoming its opaque tide. Here and there scarlet or green lights moved over the waters, given by the viewless barks that bore them the look of weird, wandering jack-o'-lanterns. These were simply fantastic; they held no human a.n.a.logies. A sloop, thus brilliantly decked, hove on a sudden into sight, not many yards from Claire's peering gaze. Its expanse of canvas, tense in the sharp breeze, caught a momentary unearthly pallor; it slipped into view like a monstrous phantom, and like a phantom it vanished again. This, too, was a merely elfin and quaint apparition; no sense of vital reality lay behind it. But the journeying ferry-boats, that voyaged to their several goals on either side the river, took, with their curved lines of small, keen-lit windows and their illuminations at various other points, the likeness of stately galleys gliding after nightfall to some opulent port. All their horrors of nautical architecture were deadened by merciful shadow. Claire felt the quiet splendor of the suggestion. Her varied educational past made this fully possible. But the whole effect of transformation, of magic, of mystery, and of beauty, which follows the advent of night along all the watery environs of our great metropolis, appealed to her with deep force.

She had a fancy that the hard prose had left her life forever; that she was now being softly swept into luxurious and romantic surroundings; that the festal and poetic look of city and river symbolized a fairer and kindlier future. The indulgence of this fancy thrilled her delightfully; it was a sort of intoxication; she no longer felt culpable, unfilial; she leaned her graceful young head far over the boat-rail, as though to gain by this act a stronger intimacy with the sweet, drowsy sorceries that encompa.s.sed her.

"_My_! ain't it _reel_ chilly out here, though?" said Josie. "We'd ought to 'a stayed inside, _hadn't_ we, Miss Twining?"

This half broke the spell with Claire. "I like it so much better out here," she answered. "The air isn't too sharp for me, and then everything is so beautiful and strange." She slightly waved one hand toward the brilliant city as she spoke.

Josie did not understand at all. How could there be anything beautiful in a lot of boats screaming to each other after dark with steam-whistles? But she said "yes," and cast a glance at Mr. MacNab, which was meant to veto in him the first symptom of surprise. Claire's superiority must not have the least slight cast upon it. It would never do to encourage Mr. MacNab in undervaluing the compliment of her companions.h.i.+p.

The boat soon landed, and all Claire's lovely illusions fled. Still, here was the city, noisy, populous, alluring. After disembarking at the ferry they were yet far away from Niblo's, and a long ride ensued, in a car crowded and of ill odor. Then came a walk of considerable length, fleetly taken, for they were a little late by Mr. MacNab's silver time-piece, which afterward proved to be fast.

Mr. MacNab was meanwhile in a sort of nervous trance. He had made what for him was a _tour de force_ in mental arithmetic, though he still remained insecure about the exact.i.tude of his calculation. However, he felt confident of one thing: three seats, of a certain kind, would cost three dollars. A dollar would solidly remain to him, though the precise amount of surplus change now in his pocket defied all his mathematical modes of discovery. Pride forbade that he should take out the silver bits and count them. But his residual dollar could at least pay the homeward fares. Cold as this comfort may have been, it took, no doubt, a certain relative warmth when contrasted with dire pecuniary exposure.

They at length reached the theatre, and easily procured upstairs seats that commanded an excellent view of the stage. The curtain had not yet risen. Claire was glad of that; she had the desire not to miss a single detail of the coming performance. She was intently examining her play-bill, when, on a sudden, a man's voice, close at her right, spoke to this effect:--

"h.e.l.lo, Jimmy, is that yerself?"

The next moment Claire perceived a hand and arm to have been unceremoniously thrust in front of her, while a young man leaned his body very much sideways indeed. She receded, herself, not without annoyance.

Josie sat next to her, and then came Mr. MacNab, who now permitted himself to be shaken hands with across the laps of the two girls.

"h.e.l.lo, Jack," he responded, at the same time. "What you doin' here?"

"Come t' see the show," said the person called Jack.

"Is that so?"

"'Course. Nuthin' strange 'bout it, is there?"

"That's all right."

"S'pose you're on the same racket yerself. Hey?"

"You bet, ole boy."

All these utterances were exchanged in tones of the most easy cordiality. The two young men had ceased to shake hands, but were leaning each toward the other, apparently quite unconscious of the inconvenience which they inflicted upon both Josie and Claire.

"I got sold t'night," Jack continued, with a blended wink and giggle.

"How's that?"

Jack gave a demonstrative jerk of the elbow, meant to indicate a vacant seat on his further side. "Me an' my gal was comin' t'gether, but she gimme the slip after I'd got mer seats. Sent word she had the headache.

Well, I dunno how 'tis, but I reckon I'll have to punch some feller's head, 'fore long. Hey, Jimmy?"

This hostile prophecy was hailed by Jimmy with a laugh whose repressed enjoyment took the semblance of a goose's hiss, except that its tone was more guttural and its volume more ma.s.sive.

"I guess that's 'bout the size of it, Jack," he replied. The next moment he straightened himself in his seat, having received an exasperated nudge from Josie.

Mr. MacNab's friend followed his example. Claire felt relieved. She examined her programme again. She had already managed to see quite as much as she wished of the person seated next her.

His name was Sloc.u.mb. He had a cousin in Greenpoint, an undertaker's son, whom he would occasionally visit of a Sunday, bringing across the river to the doleful quarters of his kinsfolk a demeanor of high condescension and patronage. He was in reality a loafer of very vicious sort, feeding his idleness upon the alms of an infatuated woman, whose devotion he did not repay with even the saving grace of fidelity. He had contrived to hide his real badness of life and lowness of repute from both uncle and cousin, and had won the latter to believe him a superior kind of metropolitan product. Together MacNab and he had partaken of refreshment at the shop of the former's employer, and from such events had sprung an intimacy with the oyster-opener which had found its most active development in a near drinking-shop. Mr. John Sloc.u.mb had a dull, brownish complexion, a light-brown eye, and a faint brown mustache. His face was not ugly, judged by line and feature, but it had a hardness that resembled bronze; you fancied that you might touch its cheek and meet no resistance. There was a look of vice and depravity about it that was not to be explained; the repulsive element was there, but it eluded direct proof; it was no more in eyelid than in nostril, but it was as much in forehead and chin as in either. Claire felt the repelling force almost instantly. Mr. Sloc.u.mb's dress was not designed in a fas.h.i.+on to decrease its effect. He wore a suit of green-and-blue plaid, each tint being happily moderated, like evil that prefers to lurk in ambush. The collar of his s.h.i.+rt sloped down at the breast, leaving an unwonted glimpse of his neck visible. But you saw a good deal of his cravat, which was green, barred with broad yellow stripes, and pierced by a pin that appeared to be a hand of pink coral clutching a golden dumb-bell.

His figure was slender almost to litheness, but his shoulders outspread two such long and bulky ridges that you at once placed their athletic proportions among the most courageous frauds of tailoring.

The orchestra had now begun to play a lively and rather clangorous prelude. And meanwhile Claire was gradually made to learn that Mr. John Sloc.u.mb was keeping up a cool, persistent stare at her half-averted face. She soon became troubled by this unrelaxing scrutiny, as minutes slipped by. Mr. Sloc.u.mb had a slim black cane that looked like a polished and rounded whalebone and ended in the head of a bull-dog, with two white specks of ivory for its eyes. Holding this between his knees, he flung it from one hand to another in nervous oscillation, while continuing his stare.

He had decided that Claire was a d.a.m.ned good-looking girl. He had a secret contempt for her escort, Mr. MacNab. He judged all men by the capabilities of their muscle, and he had practical reasons for feeling sure that his own wiry frame held easy resources for the annihilation of "poor little Jimmy." 'She looks putty high-toned,' he was reflecting, 'but I guess that's on'y a put-up job to tease a feller. She can't be much if she's along with that young un. I'll say somepn.'