"`CAN I SIT UP
HERE BESIDE YOU?'" . . .Frontispiece
"BUT HE KNEW THAT
WAS NOT THE REASON. . . . . Facing p.18
"`YOU HAVE TRIED
ME VERY SORELY'" . . . . . . . ."40
It was at the end of
the first act of the first night of "The Sultana," and every member
of the Lester Comic Opera Company, from Lester himself down to the wardrobe
woman's son, who would have had to work if his mother lost her place, was sick
with anxiety.
There is perhaps only
one other place as feverish as it is behind the scenes on the first night of a
comic opera, and that is a newspaper office on the last night of a Presidential
campaign, when the returns are being flashed on the canvas outside, and the mob
is howling, and the editor-in-chief is expecting to go to the Court of St.
James if the election comes his way, and the office-boy is betting his wages
that it won't.
Such nights as these
try men's souls; but Van Bibber passed the stage-door man with as calmly polite
a nod as though the piece had been running a hundred nights, and the manager
was thinking up souvenirs for the one hundred and fiftieth, and the prima donna
had, as usual, begun to hint for a new set of costumes. The stage-door keeper
hesitated and was lost, and Van Bibber stepped into the unsuppressed excitement
of the place with a pleased sniff at the familiar smell of paint and burning
gas, and the dusty odor that came from the scene-lofts above.
For a moment he
hesitated in the cross-lights and confusion about him, failing to recognize in
their new costumes his old acquaintances of the company; but he saw Kripps, the
stage-manager, in the centre of the stage, perspiring and in his shirtsleeves
as always, wildly waving an arm to some one in the flies, and beckoning with
the other to the gasman in the front entrance. The stage hands were striking
the scene for the first act, and fighting with the set for the second, and
dragging out a canvas floor of tessellated marble, and running a throne and a
practical pair of steps over it, and aiming the high quaking walls of a palace
and abuse at whoever came in their way.
"Now then, Van
Bibber," shouted Kripps, with a wild glance of recognition, as the
white-and-black figure came towards him, "you know you're the only man in
New York who gets behind here to-night. But you can't stay. Lower it, lower it,
can't you?" This to the man in the flies. "Any other night goes, but
not this night. I can't have it. I-- Where is the backing for the centre
entrance? Didn't I tell you men--"
Van Bibber dodged two
stage hands who were steering a scene at him, stepped over the carpet as it
unrolled, and brushed through a group of anxious, whispering chorus people into
the quiet of the star's dressing-room.
The star saw him in the
long mirror before which he sat, while his dresser tugged at his boots, and
threw up his hands, desperately.
"Well," he
cried, in mock resignation, "are we in it or are we not? Are they in their
seats still or have they fled?"
"How are you,
John?" said Van Bibber to the dresser. Then he dropped into a big
arm-chair in the corner, and got up again with a protesting sigh to light his
cigar between the wires around the gas-burner. "Oh, it's going very well.
I wouldn't have come around if it wasn't. If the rest of it is as good as the
first act, you needn't worry."
Van Bibber's
unchallenged freedom behind the scenes had been a source of much comment and
perplexity to the members of the Lester Comic Opera Company. He had made his
first appearance there during one hot night of the long run of the previous
summer, and had continued to be an almost nightly visitor for several weeks. At
first it was supposed that he was backing the piece, that he was the
"Angel," as those weak and wealthy individuals are called who allow
themselves to be led into supplying the finances for theatrical experiments.
But as he never peered through the curtain-hole to count the house, nor made
frequent trips to the front of it to look at the box sheet, but was, on the
contrary, just as undisturbed on a rainy night as on those when the
"standing room only" sign blocked the front entrance, this
supposition was discarded as untenable. Nor did he show the least interest in
the prima donna, or in any of the other pretty women of the company; he did not
know them, nor did he make any effort to know them, and it was not until they
inquired concerning him outside of the theatre that they learned what a figure
in the social life of the city he really was. He spent most of his time in
Lester's dressing-room smoking, listening to the reminiscences of Lester's
dresser when Lester was on the stage; and this seclusion and his clerical
attire of evening dress led the second comedian to call him Lester's father
confessor, and to suggest that he came to the theatre only to take the star to
task for his sins. And in this the second comedian was unknowingly not so very
far wrong. Lester, the comedian, and young Van Bibher had known each other at
the university, when Lester's voice and gift of mimicry had made him the leader
in the college theatricals; and later, when he had gone upon the stage, and had
been cut off by his family even after he had become famous, or on account of
it, Van Bibber had gone to visit him, and had found him as simple and sincere
and boyish as he had been in the days of his Hasty-Pudding successes. And
Lester, for his part, had found Van Bibber as likable as did every one else, and
welcomed his quiet voice and youthful knowledge of the world as a grateful
relief to the boisterous camaraderie of his professional acquaintances. And he
allowed Van Bibber to scold him, and to remind him of what he owed to himself,
and to touch, even whether it hurt or not, upon his better side. And in time he
admitted to finding his friend's occasional comments on stage matters of value
as coming from the point of view of those who look on at the game; and even
Kripps, the veteran, regarded him with respect after he had told him that he
could turn a set of purple costumes black by throwing a red light on them. To
the company, after he came to know them, he was gravely polite, and, to those
who knew him if they had overheard, amusingly commonplace in his conversation.
He understood them better than they did themselves, and made no mistakes. The
women smiled on him, but the men were suspicious and shy of him until they saw
that he was quite as shy of the women; and then they made him a confidant, and
told him all their woes and troubles, and exhibited all their little jealousies
and ambitions, in the innocent hope that he would repeat what they said to
Lester. They were simple, unconventional, light-hearted folk, and Van Bibber
found them vastly more entertaining and preferable to the silence of the
deserted club, where the matting was down, and from whence the regular habitues
had departed to the other side or to Newport. He liked the swing of the light,
bright music as it came to him through the open door of the dressing-room, and
the glimpse he got of the chorus people crowding and pushing for a quick charge
up the iron stairway, and the feverish smell of oxygen in the air, and the
picturesque disorder of Lester's wardrobe, and the wigs and swords, and the mysterious
articles of make-up, all mixed together on a tray with half-finished cigars and
autograph books and newspaper notices."
And he often wished he
was clever enough to be an artist with the talent to paint the unconsciously
graceful groups in the sharply divided light and shadow of the wings as he saw
them. The brilliantly colored, fantastically clothed girls leaning against the
bare brick wall of the theatre, or whispering together in circles, with their
arms close about one another, or reading apart and solitary, or working at some
piece of fancy-work as soberly as though they were in a rocking-chair in their
own flat, and not leaning against a scene brace, with the glare of the stage
and the applause of the house just behind them. He liked to watch them
coquetting with the big fireman detailed from the precinct engine-house, and
clinging desperately to the curtain wire, or with one of the chorus men on the
stairs, or teasing the phlegmatic scene-shifters as they tried to catch a
minute's sleep on a pile of canvas. He even forgave the prima donna's smiling
at him from the stage, as he stood watching her from the wings, and smiled back
at her with polite cynicism, as though he did not know and she did not know
that her smiles were not for him, but to disturb some more interested one in
the front row. And so, in time, the company became so well accustomed to him
that he moved in and about as unnoticed as the stage-manager himself, who
prowled around hissing "hush" on principle, even though he was the only
person who could fairly be said to be making a noise.
The second act was on,
and Lester came off the stage and ran to the dressing-room and beckoned
violently. "Come here," he said; "you ought to see this; the
children are doing their turn. You want to hear them. They're great!"
Van Bibber put his
cigar into a tumbler and stepped out into the wings. They were crowded on both
sides of the stage with the members of the company; the girls were tiptoeing,
with their hands on the shoulders of the men, and making futile little leaps
into the air to get a better view, and others were resting on one knee that
those behind might see over their shoulders. There were over a dozen children
before the footlights, with the prima donna in the centre. She was singing the
verses of a song, and they were following her movements, and joining in the
chorus with high piping voices. They seemed entirely too much at home and too
self-conscious to please Van Bibber; but there was one exception. The one
exception was the smallest of them, a very, very little girl, with long auburn
hair and black eyes; such a very little girl that every one in the house looked
at her first, and then looked at no one else. She was apparently as unconcerned
to all about her, excepting the pretty prima donna, as though she were by a
piano at home practising a singing lesson. She seemed to think it was some new
sort of a game. When the prima donna raised her arms, the child raised hers;
when the prima donna courtesied, she stumbled into one, and straightened
herself just in time to get the curls out of her eyes, and to see that the
prima donna was laughing at her, and to smile cheerfully back as if to say,
"We are doing our best anyway, aren't we?" She had big, gentle eyes
and two wonderful dimples, and in the excitement of the dancing and the singing
her eyes laughed and flashed, and the dimples deepened and disappeared and
reappeared again. She was as happy and innocent looking as though it were nine
in the morning and she were playing school at a kindergarten. From all over the
house the women were murmuring their delight, and the men were laughing and
pulling their mustaches and nudging each other to "look at the littlest
one."
The girls in the wings
were rapturous in their enthusiasm, and were calling her absurdly extravagant
titles of endearment, and making so much noise that Kripps stopped grinning at
her from the entrance, and looked back over his shoulder as he looked when he
threatened fines and calls for early rehearsal. And when she had finished
finally, and the prima donna and the children ran off together, there was a
roar from the house that went to Lester's head like wine, and seemed to leap
clear across the footlights and drag the children back again.
"That settles
it!" cried Lester, in a suppressed roar of triumph. "I knew that
child would catch them."
There were four
encores, and then the children and Elise Broughten, the pretty prima donna,
came off jubilant and happy, with the Littlest Girl's arms full of flowers,
which the management had with kindly forethought prepared for the prima donna,
but which that delightful young person and the delighted leader of the
orchestra had passed over to the little girl.
"Well,"
gasped Miss Broughten, as she came up to Van Bibber laughing, and with one hand
on her side and breathing very quickly, "will you kindly tell me who is
the leading woman now? Am I the prima donna, or am I not? I wasn't in it, was
I?"
"You were
not," said Van Bibber.
He turned from the
pretty prima donna and hunted up the wardrobe woman, and told her he wanted to
meet the Littlest Girl. And the wardrobe woman, who was fluttering wildly
about, and as delighted as though they were all her own children, told him to
come into the property-room, where the children were, and which had been
changed into a dressing-room that they might be by themselves. The six little
girls were in six different states of dishabille, but they were too little to
mind that, and Van Bibber was too polite to observe it.
"This is the
little girl, sir," said the wardrobe woman, excitedly, proud at being the
means of bringing together two such prominent people. "Her name is
Madeline. Speak to the gentleman, Madeline; he wants to tell you what a great
big hit youse made."
The little girl was
seated on one of the cushions of a double throne so high from the ground that
the young woman who was pulling off the child's silk stockings and putting
woollen ones on in their place did so without stooping. The young woman looked
at Van Bibber and nodded somewhat doubtfully and ungraciously, and Van Bibber
turned to the little girl in preference. The young woman's face was one of a
type that was too familiar to be pleasant.
He took the Littlest
Girl's small hand in his and shook it solemnly, and said, "I am very glad
to know you. Can I sit up here beside you, or do you rule alone?"
"Yes, ma'am--yes,
sir," answered the little girl.
Van Bibber put his
hands on the arms of the throne and vaulted up beside the girl, and pulled out
the flower in his button-hole and gave it to her.
"Now,"
prompted the wardrobe woman, "what do you say to the gentleman?"
"Thank you,
sir," stammered the little girl.
"She is not much
used to gentlemen's society," explained the woman who was pulling on the
stockings.
"I see," said
Van Bibber. He did not know exactly what to say next. And yet he wanted to talk
to the child very much, so much more than he generally wanted to talk to most
young women, who showed no hesitation in talking to him. With them he had no
difficulty whatsoever. There was a doll lying on the top of a chest near them,
and he picked this up and surveyed it critically. "Is this your doll he
asked.
"No," said
Madeline, pointing to one of the children, who was much taller than herself;
"it 's 'at 'ittle durl's. My doll he's dead."
"Dear me!"
said Van Bibber. He made a mental note to get a live one in the morning, and
then he said: "That's very sad. But dead dolls do come to life."
The little girl looked
up at him, and surveyed him intently and critically, and then smiled, with the
dimples showing, as much as to say that she understood him and approved of him
entirely. Van Bibber answered this sign language by taking Madeline's hand in
his and asking her how she liked being a great actress, and how soon she would
begin to storm because that photographer hadn't sent the proofs. The young
woman understood this, and deigned to smile at it, but Madeline yawned a very
polite and sleepy yawn, and closed her eyes. Van Bibber moved up closer, and
she leaned over until her bare shoulder touched his arm, and while the woman
buttoned on her absurdly small shoes, she let her curly head fall on his elbow
and rest there. Any number of people had shown confidence in Van Bibber--not in
that form exactly, but in the same spirit--and though he was used to being
trusted, he felt a sharp thrill of pleasure at the touch of the child's head on
his arm, and in the warm clasp of her fingers around his. And he was conscious
of a keen sense of pity and sorrow for her rising in him, which he crushed by
thinking that it was entirely wasted, and that the child was probably perfectly
and ignorantly happy.
"Look at that,
now," said the wardrobe woman, catching sight of the child's closed
eyelids; "just look at the rest of the little dears, all that excited they
can't stand still to get their hats on, and she just as unconcerned as you
please, and after making the hit of the piece, too."
"She's not used to
it, you see," said the young woman, knowingly; "she don't know what
it means. It's just that much play to her."
This last was said with
a questioning glance at Van Bibber, in whom she still feared to find the disguised
agent of a Children's Aid Society. Van Bibber only nodded in reply, and did not
answer her, because he found he could not very well, for he was looking a long
way ahead at what the future was to bring to the confiding little being at his
side, and thinking of the evil knowledge and temptations that would mar the
beauty of her quaintly sweet face, and its strange mark of gentleness and
refinement. Outside he could hear his friend Lester shouting the refrain of his
new topical song, and the laughter and the hand-clapping came in through the
wings and open door, broken but tumultuous.
"Does she come of
professional people?" Van Bibber asked, dropping into the vernacular. He
spoke softly, not so much that he might not disturb the child, but that she
might not understand what he said.
"Yes," the
woman answered, shortly, and bent her head to smooth out the child's stage
dress across her knees.
Van Bibber touched the
little girl's head with his hand and found that she was asleep, and so let his
hand rest there, with the curls between his fingers. "Are--are you her
mother?" he asked, with a slight inclination of his head. He felt quite
confident she was not; at least, he hoped not.
The woman shook her
head. "No," she said.
"Who is her mother
?
The woman looked at the
sleeping child and then up at him almost defiantly. "Ida Clare was her
mother," she said.
Van Bibber's protecting
hand left the child as suddenly as though something had burned it, and he drew
back so quickly that her head slipped from his arm, and she awoke and raised
her eyes and looked up at him questioningly. He looked back at her with a
glance of the strangest concern and of the deepest pity. Then he stooped and
drew her towards him very tenderly, put her head back in the corner of his arm,
and watched her in silence while she smiled drowsily and went to sleep again.
"And who takes
care of her now?" he asked.
The woman straightened
herself and seemed relieved. She saw that the stranger had recognized the
child's pedigree and knew her story, and that he was not going to comment on
it. "I do," she said. "After the divorce Ida came to me,"
she said, speaking more freely. "I used to be in her company when she was
doing `Aladdin,' and then when I left the stage and started to keep an actors'
boarding-house, she came to me. She lived on with us a year, until she died,
and she made me the guardian of the child. I train children for the stage, you
know, me and my sister, Ada Dyer; you've heard of her, I guess. The courts pay
us for her keep, but it isn't much, and I'm expecting to get what I spent on
her from what she makes on the stage. Two of them other children are my pupils;
but they can't touch Madie. She is a better dancer an' singer than any of them.
If it hadn't been for the Society keeping her back, she would have been on the
stage two years ago. She's great, she is. She'll be just as good as her mother
was.
Van Bibber gave a
little start, and winced visibly, but turned it off into a cough. "And her
father," he said hesitatingly, "does he--"
" Her
father," said the woman, tossing back her head, "he looks after
himself, he does. We don't ask no favors of him. She'll get along without him
or his folks, thank you. Call him a gentleman? Nice gentleman he is!" Then
she stopped abruptly. "I guess, though, you know him," she added.
Perhaps he's a friend of yourn?"
"I just know
him," said Van Bibber, wearily.
He sat with the child
asleep beside him while the woman turned to the others and dressed them for the
third act. She explained that Madie would not appear in the last act, only the
two larger girls, so she let her sleep, with the cape of Van Bibber's cloak
around her.
Van Bibber sat there
for several long minutes thinking, and then looked up quickly, and dropped his
eyes again as quickly, and said, with an effort to speak quietly and
unconcernedly: "If the little girl is not on in this act, would you mind
if I took her home? I have a cab at the stage door, and she's so sleepy it
seems a pity to keep her up. The sister you spoke of or some one could put her
to bed."
"Yes," the
woman said, doubtfully, "Ada's home. Yes, you can take her around, if you
want to."
She gave him the
address, and he sprang down to the floor, and gathered the child up in his arms
and stepped out on the stage. The prima donna had the centre of it to herself
at that moment, and all the rest of the company were waiting to go on; but when
they saw the little girl in Van Bibber's arms they made a rush at her, and the
girls leaned over and kissed her with a great show of rapture and with many
gasps of delight.
"Don't," said
Van Bibber, he could not tell just why. "Don't." "
"Why not?"
asked one of the girls, looking up at him sharply.
"She was asleep;
you've wakened her," he said, gently.
But he knew that was
not the reason. He stepped into the cab at the stage entrance, and put the
child carefully down in one corner. Then he looked back over his shoulder to
see that there was no one near enough to hear him, and said to the driver,
"To the Berkeley Flats, on Fifth Avenue." He picked the child up
gently in his arms as the carriage started, and sat looking out thoughtfully
and anxiously as they flashed past the lighted shop-windows on Broadway. He was
far from certain of this errand, and nervous with doubt, but he reassured
himself that he was acting on impulse, and that his impulses were so often
good. The hall-boy at the Berkeley said, yes, Mr. Caruthers was in, and Van
Bibber gave a quick sigh of relief. He took this as an omen that his impulse
was a good one. The young English servant who opened the hall door to Mr.
Caruthers's apartment suppressed his surprise with an effort, and watched Van
Bibber with alarm as he laid the child on the divan in the hall, and pulled a
covert coat from the rack to throw over her.
"Just say Mr. Van
Bibber would like to see him," he said, "and you need not speak of
the little girl having come with me"
She was still sleeping,
and Van Bibber turned down the light in the hall, and stood looking down at her
gravely while the servant went to speak to his master.
"Will you come
this way, please, sir?" he said.
"You had better
stay out here," said Van Bibber, "and come and tell me if she
wakes."
Mr. Caruthers was
standing by the mantel over the empty fireplace, wrapped in a long, loose
dressing-gown which he was tying around him as Van Bibber entered. He was
partly undressed, and had been just on the point of getting into bed. Mr.
Caruthers was a tall, handsome man, with dark reddish hair, turning below the temples
into gray; his mustache was quite white, and his eyes and face showed the signs
of either dissipation or of great trouble, or of both. But even in the formless
dressing-gown he had the look and the confident bearing of a gentleman, or, at
least, of the man of the world. The room was very rich-looking, and was filled
with the medley of a man's choice of good paintings and fine china, and papered
with irregular rows of original drawings and signed etchings. The windows were
open, and the lights were turned very low, so that Van Bibber could see the
many gas lamps and the dark roofs of Broadway and the Avenue where they crossed
a few blocks off, and the bunches of light on the Madison Square Garden, and to
the lights on the boats of the East River. From below in the streets came the
rattle of hurrying omnibuses and the rush of the hansom cabs. If Mr. Caruthers
was surprised at this late visit, he hid it, and came forward to receive his
caller as if his presence were expected.
"Excuse my
costume, will you?" he said. "I turned in rather early to-night, it
was so hot." He pointed to a decanter and some soda bottles on the table
and a bowl of ice, and asked, "Will you have some of this?" And while
he opened one of the bottles, he watched Van Bibber's face as though he were
curious to have him explain the object of his visit.
"No, I think not,
thank you," said the younger man. He touched his forehead with his
handkerchief nervously. "Yes, it is hot," he said.
Mr. Caruthers filled a
glass with ice and brandy and soda, and walked back to his place by the mantel,
on which he rested his arm, while he clinked the ice in the glass and looked
down into it.
"I was at the
first night of `The Sultana' this evening," said Van Bibber, slowly and
uncertainly.
"Oh, yes,"
assented the elder man, politely, and tasting his drink. "Lester's new
piece. Was it any good?"
"I don't
know," said Van Bibber.
Yes, I think it was. I
didn't see it from the front. There were a lot of children in it--little ones;
they danced and sang, and made a great hit. One of them had never been on the
stage before. It was her first appearance."
He was turning one of
the glasses around between his fingers as he spoke. He stopped, and poured out
some of the soda, and drank it down in a gulp, and then continued turning the
empty glass between the tips of his fingers.
"It seems to
me," he said, "that it is a great pity." He looked up
interrogatively at the other, but Mr. Caruthers met his glance without any
returning show of interest. "I say," repeated Van Bibber-- "I
say it seems a pity that a child like that should be allowed to go on in that
business. A grown woman can go into it with her eyes open, or a girl who has
had decent training can too. But it's different with a child. She has no choice
in the matter; they don't ask her permission; and she isn't old enough to know
what it means; and she gets used to it and fond of it before she grows to know
what the danger is. And then it's too late. It seemed to me that if there was
any one who had a right to stop it, it would be a very good thing to let that
person know about her--about this child, I mean; the one who made the
hit--before it was too late. It seems to me a responsibility I wouldn't care to
take myself. I wouldn't care to think that I had the chance to stop it, and had
let the chance go by. You know what the life is, and what the temptation a
woman--" Van Bibber stopped with a gasp of concern, and added, hurriedly,
"I mean we all know--every man knows."
Mr. Caruthers was
looking at him with his lips pressed closely together, and his eyebrows drawn
into the shape of the letter V. He leaned forward, and looked at Van Bibber
intently.
"What is all this
about?" he asked. "Did you come here, Mr. Van Bibber, simply to tell
me this? What have you to do with it? What have I to do with it? Why did you
come?
"Because of the
child."
"What child?"
"Your child,"
said Van Bibber.
Young Van Bibber was
quite prepared for an outbreak of some sort, and mentally braced himself to
receive it. He rapidly assured himself that this man had every reason to be
angry, and that he, if he meant to accomplish anything, had every reason to be
considerate and patient. So he faced Mr. Caruthers with shoulders squared, as
though it were a physical shock he had had to stand against, and in consequence
he was quite unprepared for what followed. For Mr. Caruthers raised his face
without a trace of feeling in it, and, with his eyes still fixed on the glass
in his hand, set it carefully down on the mantel beside him, and girded himself
about with the rope of his robe. When he spoke, it was in a tone of quiet
politeness.
"Mr. Van
Bibber," he began, you are a very brave young man. You have dared to say
to me what those who are my best friends--what even my own family--would not
care to say. They are afraid it might hurt me, I suppose. They have some absurd
regard for my feelings; they hesitate to touch upon a subject which in no way
concerns them and which they know must be very painful to me. But you have the
courage of your convictions; you have no compunctions about tearing open old
wounds; and you come here, unasked and uninvited, to let me know what you think
of my conduct, to let me understand that it does not agree with your own ideas
of what I ought to do, and to tell me how I, who am old enough to be your
father, should behave. You have rushed in where angels fear to tread, Mr. Van
Bibber, to show me the error of my ways. I suppose I ought to thank you for it;
but I have always said that it is not the wicked people who are to be feared in
this world, or who do the most harm. We know them; we can prepare for them, and
checkmate them. It is the well-meaning fool who makes all the trouble. For no
one knows him until he discloses himself, and the mischief is done before he
can be stopped. I think, if you will allow me to say so, that you have
demonstrated my theory pretty thoroughly, and have done about as much needless
harm for one evening as you can possibly wish. And so, if you will excuse
me," he continued, sternly, and moving from his place, "I will ask to
say good-night, and will request of you that you grow older and wiser and much
more considerate before you come to see me again."
Van Bibber had flushed
at Mr. Caruthers's first words, and had then grown somewhat pale, and
straightened himself visibly. He did not move when the elder man had finished,
but cleared his throat, and then spoke with some little difficulty. "It is
very easy to call a man a fool," he said, slowly, "but it is much
harder to be called a fool and not to throw the other man out of the window.
But that, you see, would not do any good, and I have something to say to you
first. I am quite clear in my own mind as to my position, and I am not going to
allow anything you have said or can say to annoy me much until I am through.
There will be time enough to resent it then. I am quite well aware that I did
an unconventional thing in coming here--a bold thing or a foolish thing, as you
choose--but the situation is pretty bad, and I did as I would have wished to be
done by if I had had a child going to the devil and didn't know it. I should
have been glad to learn of it even from a stranger. However," he said,
smiling grimly, and pulling his cape about him, "there are other kindly
disposed people in the world besides fathers. There is an aunt, perhaps, or an
uncle or two; and sometimes, even to-day, there is the chance Samaritan."
Van Bibber picked up
his high hat from the table, looked into it critically, and settled it on his
head. "Good-night," he said, and walked slowly towards the door. He
had his hand on the knob, when Mr. Caruthers raised his head.
"Wait just one
minute, please, Mr. Van Bibber?" asked Mr. Caruthers.
Van Bibber stopped with
a prompt obedience which would have led one to conclude that he might have put
on his hat only to precipitate matters.
"Before you
go," said Mr. Caruthers, grudgingly, "I want to say--I want you to
understand my position."
"Oh, that's all
right," said Van Bibber, lightly, opening the door.
"No, it is not all
right. One moment, please. I do not intend that you shall go away from here
with the idea that you have tried to do a service, and that I have been unable
to appreciate it, and that you are a much-abused and much-misunderstood young
man. Since you have done me the honor to make my affairs your business, I would
prefer that you should understand them fully. I do not care to have you discuss
my conduct at clubs and afternoon teas with young women until you--"
Van Bibber drew in his
breath sharply, with a peculiar whistling sound, and opened and shut his hands.
"Oh, I wouldn't say that if I were you," he said, simply.
"I beg your
pardon," the older man said, quickly. "That was a mistake. I was
wrong. I beg your pardon. But you have tried me very sorely. You have intruded
upon a private trouble that you ought to know must be very painful to me. But I
believe you meant well. I know you to be a gentleman, and I am willing think
you acted on impulse, and that you will see to-morrow what a mistake you have
made. It is not a thing I talk about; I do not speak of it to my friends, and
they are far too considerate to speak of it to me. But you have put me on the
defensive. You have made me out more or less of a brute, and I don't intend to
be so far misunderstood. There are two sides to every story, and there is
something to be said about this, even for me."
He walked back to his
place beside the mantel, and put his shoulders against it, and faced Van
Bibber, with his fingers twisted in the cord around his waist.
"When I
married," said Mr. Caruthers, "I did so against the wishes of my
people and the advice of all my friends. You know all about that. God help us!
who doesn't?" he added, bitterly. "It was very rich, rare reading for
you and for everyone else who saw the daily papers, and we gave them all they
wanted of it. I took her out of that life and married her because I believed
she was as good a woman as any of those who had never had to work for their
living, and I was bound that my friends and your friends should recognize her
and respect her as my wife had a right to be respected; and I took her abroad
that I might give all you sensitive, fine people a chance to get used to the
idea of being polite to a woman who had once been a burlesque actress. It began
over there in Paris. What I went through then no one knows; but when I came
back--and I would never have come back if she had not made me--it was my
friends I had to consider, and not her. It was in the blood; it was in the life
she had led, and in the life men like you and me had taught her to live. And it
had to come out."
The muscles of Mr.
Caruthers's face were moving, and beyond his control; but Van Bibber did not
see this, for he was looking intently out of the window, over the roofs of the
city.
"She had every
chance when she married me that a woman ever had," continued the older
man. "It only depended on herself. I didn't try to make a housewife of her
or a drudge. She had all the healthy excitement and all the money she wanted, and
she had a home here ready for her when ever she was tired of travelling about
and wished to settle down. And I was -- and a husband that loved her as--she
had everything--everything that a man's whole thought and love and money could
bring to her. And you know what she did."
He looked at Van
Bibber, but Van Bibber's eyes were still turned towards the open window and the
night.
And after the
divorce--and she was free to go where she pleased, and to live as she pleased
and with whom she pleased, without bringing disgrace on a husband who honestly
loved her--I swore to my God that I would never see her nor her child again.
And I never saw her again, not even when she died. I loved the mother, and she
deceived me and disgraced me and broke my heart, and I only wish she had killed
me; and I was beginning to love her child, and I vowed she should not live to
trick me too. I had suffered as no man I know had suffered; in a way a boy like
you cannot understand, and that no one can understand who has not gone to hell
and been forced to live after it. And was I to go through that again? Was I to
love and care for and worship this child, and have her grow up with all her
mother's vanity and animal nature, and have her turn on me some day and show me
that what is bred in the bone must tell, and that I was a fool again--a pitiful
fond fool? I could not trust her. I can never trust any woman or child again,
and least of all that woman's child. She is as dead to me as though she were
buried with her mother, and it is nothing to me what she is or what her life
is. I know in time what it will be. She has begun earlier than I had supposed,
that is all; but she is nothing to me." The man stopped and turned his
back to Van Bibber, and hid his head in his hands, with his elbows on the
mantelpiece. "I care too much," he said. "I cannot let it mean
anything to me; when I do care, it means so much more to me than to other men.
They may pretend to laugh and to forget and to, outgrow it, but it is not so
with me. It means too much." He took a quick stride towards one of the
arm-chairs, and threw himself into it.
Why, man," he
cried, "I loved that child's mother to the day of her death. I loved that
woman then, and, God help me! I love that woman still."
He covered his face
with his hands, and sat leaning forward and breathing heavily as he rocked
himself to and fro. Van Bibber still stood looking gravely out at the lights
that picketed the black surface of the city. He was to all appearances as
unmoved by the outburst of feeling into which the older man had been surprised
as though it had been something in a play. There was an unbroken silence for a
moment, and then it was Van Bibber who was the first to speak.
"I came here, as
you say, on impulse," he said; "but I am glad I came, for I have your
decisive answer now about the little girl. I have been thinking," he
continued, slowly, "since you have been speaking, and before, when I first
saw her dancing in front of the footlights, when I did not know who she was,
that I could give up a horse or two, if necessary, and support this child
instead. Children are worth more than horses, and a man who saves a soul, as it
says"--he flushed slightly, and looked up with a hesitating, deprecatory
smile--"somewhere, wipes out a multitude of sins. And it may be I'd like
to try and get rid of some of mine. I know just where to send her; I know the
very place. It's down in Evergreen Bay, on Long Island. They are tenants of
mine there, and very nice farm sort of people, who will be very good to her.
They wouldn't know anything about her, and she'd forget what little she knows
of this present life very soon, and grow up with the other children to be one
of them; and then, when she gets older and becomes a young lady, she could go
to some school--but that's a bit too far ahead to plan for the present; but
that's what I am going to do, though," said the young man, confidently,
and as though speaking to himself. "That theatrical boarding-house person
could be bought off easily enough," he went on, quickly, "and Lester
won't mind letting her go if I ask it,--and--and that's what I'II do. As you
say, it's a good deal of an experiment, but I think I'II run the risk."
He walked quickly to
the door and disappeared in the hall, and then came back, kicking the door open
as he returned, and holding the child in his arms.
"This is
she," he said, quietly. He did not look at or notice the father, but
stood, with the child asleep in the bend of his left arm, gazing down at her.
"This is she," he repeated; "this is your child."
There was something
cold and satisfied in Van Bibber's tone and manner, as though he were
congratulating himself upon the engaging of a new groom; something that placed
the father entirely outside of it. He might have been a disinterested looker-on.
"She will need to
be fed a bit," Van Bibber ran on, cheerfully. "They did not treat her
very well, I fancy. She is thin and peaked and tired-looking." He drew up
the loose sleeve of her jacket, and showed the bare forearm to the light. He
put his thumb and little finger about it, and closed them on it gently.
"It is very thin," he said. "And under her eyes, if it were not
for the paint," he went on, mercilessly, "you could see how deep the
lines are. This red spot on her cheek," he said, gravely, "is where
Mary Vane kissed her to-night, and this is where Alma Stantley kissed her, and
that Lee girl. You have heard of them, perhaps. They will never kiss her again.
She is going to grow up a sweet, fine, beautiful woman--are you not?" he
said, gently drawing the child higher up on his shoulder, until her face
touched his, and still keeping his eyes from the face of the older man.
"She does not look like her mother," he said; "she has her
father's auburn hair and straight nose and finer-cut lips and chin. She looks
very much like her father. It seems a pity," he added, abruptly.
She will grow up,"
he went on, without knowing him, or who he is--or was, if he should die. She
will never speak with him, or see him, or take his hand. She may pass him some
day on the street and will not know him, and he will not know her, but she will
grow to be very fond and to be very grateful to the simple, kindhearted old
people who will have cared for her when she was a little girl."
The child in his arms
stirred, shivered slightly, and awoke. The two men watched her breathlessly,
with silent intentness. She raised her head and stared around the unfamiliar
room doubtfully, then turned to where her father stood, looking at him a
moment, and passed him by; and then, looking up into Van Bibber's face,
recognized him, and gave a gentle, sleepy smile, and, with a sigh of content
and confidence, drew her arm up closer around his neck, and let her head fall
back upon his breast.
The father sprang to
his feet with a quick, jealous gasp of pain. "Give her to me!" he
said, fiercely, under his breath, snatching her out of Van Bibber's arms.
"She is mine; give her to me!"
Van Bibber closed the
door gently behind him, and went jumping down the winding stairs of the
Berkeley three steps at a time.
And an hour later, when
the English servant came to his master's door, he found him still awake and
sitting in the dark by the open window, holding something in his arms and
looking out over the sleeping city.
"James, he said,
"you can make up a place for me here on the lounge. Miss Caruthers, my
daughter, will sleep in my room to-night.
THE END