The Four Million
waking registers of the earth.
And through the window came a wandering—perhaps a lost—odour—a
delicate, sweet odour of lilac that fixed the broker for a moment
immovable. For this odour belonged to Miss Leslie; it was her own, and
hers only.
The odour brought her vividly, almost tangibly before him. The world of
finance dwindled suddenly to a speck. And she was in the next
room—twenty steps away.
“By George, I’ll do it now,” said Maxwell, half aloud. “I’ll ask her
now. I wonder I didn’t do it long ago.”
He dashed into the inner office with the haste of a short trying to
cover. He charged upon the desk of the stenographer.
She looked up at him with a smile. A soft pink crept over her cheek,
and her eyes were kind and frank. Maxwell leaned one elbow on her desk.
He still clutched fluttering papers with both hands and the pen was
above his ear.
“Miss Leslie,” he began hurriedly, “I have but a moment to spare. I
want to say something in that moment. Will you be my wife? I haven’t
had time to make love to you in the ordinary way, but I really do love
you. Talk quick, please—those fellows are clubbing the stuffing out of
Union Pacific.”
“Oh, what are you talking about?” exclaimed the young lady. She rose to
her feet and gazed upon him, round-eyed.
“Don’t you understand?” said Maxwell, restively. “I want you to marry
me. I love you, Miss Leslie. I wanted to tell you, and I snatched a
minute when things had slackened up a bit. They’re calling me for the
’phone now. Tell ’em to wait a minute, Pitcher. Won’t you, Miss
Leslie?”
The stenographer acted very queerly. At first she seemed overcome with
amazement; then tears flowed from her wondering eyes; and then she
smiled sunnily through them, and one of her arms slid tenderly about
the broker’s neck.
“I know now,” she said, softly. “It’s this old business that has driven
everything else out of your head for the time. I was frightened at
first. Don’t you remember, Harvey? We were married last evening at 8
o’clock in the Little Church Around the Corner.”
AFTER TWENTY YEARS
The policeman on the beat moved up the avenue impressively. The
impressiveness was habitual and not for show, for spectators were few.
The time was barely 10 o’clock at night, but chilly gusts of wind with
a taste of rain in them had well nigh de-peopled the streets.
Trying doors as he went, twirling his club with many intricate and
artful movements, turning now and then to cast his watchful eye adown
the pacific thoroughfare, the officer, with his stalwart form and
slight swagger, made a fine picture of a guardian of the peace. The
vicinity was one that kept early hours. Now and then you might see the
lights of a cigar store or of an all-night lunch counter; but the
majority of the doors belonged to business places that had long since
been closed.
When about midway of a certain block the policeman suddenly slowed his
walk. In the doorway of a darkened hardware store a man leaned, with an
unlighted cigar in his mouth. As the policeman walked up to him the man
spoke up quickly.
“It’s all right, officer,” he said, reassuringly. “I’m just waiting for
a friend. It’s an appointment made twenty years ago. Sounds a little
funny to you, doesn’t it? Well, I’ll explain if you’d like to make
certain it’s all straight. About that long ago there used to be a
restaurant where this store stands—‘Big Joe’ Brady’s restaurant.”
“Until five years ago,” said the policeman. “It was torn down then.”
The man in the doorway struck a match and lit his cigar. The light
showed a pale, square-jawed face with keen eyes, and a little white
scar near his right eyebrow. His scarfpin was a large diamond, oddly
set.
“Twenty years ago to-night,” said the man, “I dined here at ‘Big Joe’
Brady’s with Jimmy Wells, my best chum, and the finest chap in the
world. He and I were raised here in New York, just like two brothers,
together. I was eighteen and Jimmy was twenty. The next morning I was
to start for the West to make my fortune. You couldn’t have dragged
Jimmy out of New York; he thought it was the only place on earth. Well,
we agreed that night that we would meet here again exactly twenty years
from that date and time, no matter what our conditions might be or from
what distance we might have to come. We figured that in twenty years
each of us ought to have our destiny worked out and our fortunes made,
whatever they were going to be.”
“It sounds pretty interesting,” said the policeman. “Rather a long time
between meets, though, it seems to me. Haven’t you heard from your
friend since you left?”
“Well, yes, for a time we corresponded,” said the other. “But after a
year or two we lost track of each other. You see, the West is a pretty
big proposition, and I kept hustling around over it pretty lively. But
I know Jimmy will meet me here if he’s alive, for he always was the
truest, stanchest old chap in the world. He’ll never forget. I came a
thousand miles to stand in this door to-night, and it’s worth it if my
old partner turns up.”
The waiting man pulled out a handsome watch, the lids of it set with
small diamonds.
“Three minutes to ten,” he announced. “It was exactly ten o’clock when
we parted here at the restaurant door.”
“Did pretty well out West, didn’t you?” asked the policeman.
“You bet! I hope Jimmy has done half as well. He was a kind of plodder,
though, good fellow as he was. I’ve had to compete with some of the
sharpest wits going to get my pile. A man gets in a groove in New York.
It takes the West to put a razor-edge on him.”
The policeman twirled his club and took a step or two.
“I’ll be on my way. Hope your friend comes around all right. Going to
call time on him sharp?”
“I should say not!” said the other. “I’ll give him half an hour at
least. If Jimmy is alive on earth he’ll be here by that time. So long,
officer.”
“Good-night, sir,” said the policeman, passing on along his beat,
trying doors as he went.
There was now a fine, cold drizzle falling, and the wind had risen from
its uncertain puffs into a steady blow. The few foot passengers astir
in that quarter hurried dismally and silently along with coat collars
turned high and pocketed hands. And in the door of the hardware store
the man who had come a thousand miles to fill an appointment, uncertain
almost to absurdity, with the friend of his youth, smoked his cigar and
waited.
About twenty minutes he waited, and then a tall man in a long overcoat,
with collar turned up to his ears, hurried across from the opposite
side of the street. He went directly to the waiting man.
“Is that you, Bob?” he asked, doubtfully.
“Is that you, Jimmy Wells?” cried the man in the door.
“Bless my heart!” exclaimed the new arrival, grasping both the other’s
hands with his own. “It’s Bob, sure as fate. I was certain I’d find you
here if you were still in existence. Well, well, well!—twenty years is
a long time. The old restaurant’s gone, Bob; I wish it had lasted, so
we could have had another dinner there. How has the West treated you,
old man?”
“Bully; it has given me everything I asked it for. You’ve changed lots,
Jimmy. I never thought you were so tall by two or three inches.”
“Oh, I grew a bit after I was twenty.”
“Doing well in New York, Jimmy?”
“Moderately. I have a position in one of the city departments. Come on,
Bob; we’ll go around to a place I know of, and have a good long talk
about old times.”
The two men started up the street, arm in arm. The man from the West,
his egotism enlarged by success, was beginning to outline the history
of his career. The other, submerged in his overcoat, listened with
interest.
At the corner stood a drug store, brilliant with electric lights. When
they came into this glare each of them turned simultaneously to gaze
upon the other’s face.
The man from the West stopped suddenly and released his arm.
“You’re not Jimmy Wells,” he snapped. “Twenty years is a long time, but
not long enough to change a man’s nose from a Roman to a pug.”
“It sometimes changes a good man into a bad one,” said the tall man.
“You’ve been under arrest for ten minutes, ‘Silky’ Bob. Chicago thinks
you may have dropped over our way and wires us she wants to have a chat
with you. Going quietly, are you? That’s sensible. Now, before we go on
to the station here’s a note I was asked to hand you. You may read it
here at the window. It’s from Patrolman Wells.”
The man from the West unfolded the little piece of paper handed him.
His hand was steady when he began to read, but it trembled a little by
the time he had finished. The note was rather short.
_Bob: I was at the appointed place on time. When you struck the match
to light your cigar I saw it was the face of the man wanted in Chicago.
Somehow I couldn’t do it myself, so I went around and got a plain
clothes man to do the job.
JIMMY._
LOST ON DRESS PARADE
Mr. Towers Chandler was pressing his evening suit in his hall bedroom.
One iron was heating on a small gas stove; the other was being pushed
vigorously back and forth to make the desirable crease that would be
seen later on extending in straight lines from Mr. Chandler’s patent
leather shoes to the edge of his low-cut vest. So much of the hero’s
toilet may be intrusted to our confidence. The remainder may be guessed
by those whom genteel poverty has driven to ignoble expedient. Our next
view of him shall be as he descends the steps of his lodging-house
immaculately and correctly clothed; calm, assured, handsome—in
appearance the typical New York young clubman setting out, slightly
bored, to inaugurate the pleasures of the evening.
Chandler’s honorarium was $18 per week. He was employed in the office
of an architect. He was twenty-two years old; he considered
architecture to be truly an art; and he honestly believed—though he
would not have dared to admit it in New York—that the Flatiron Building
was inferior in design to the great cathedral in Milan.
Out of each week’s earnings Chandler set aside $1. At the end of each
ten weeks with the extra capital thus accumulated, he purchased one
gentleman’s evening from the bargain counter of stingy old Father Time.
He arrayed himself in the regalia of millionaires and presidents; he
took himself to the quarter where life is brightest and showiest, and
there dined with taste and luxury. With ten dollars a man may, for a
few hours, play the wealthy idler to perfection. The sum is ample for a
well-considered meal, a bottle bearing a respectable label,
commensurate tips, a smoke, cab fare and the ordinary etceteras.
This one delectable evening culled from each dull seventy was to
Chandler a source of renascent bliss. To the society bud comes but one
début; it stands alone sweet in her memory when her hair has whitened;
but to Chandler each ten weeks brought a joy as keen, as thrilling, as
new as the first had been. To sit among _bon vivants_ under palms in
the swirl of concealed music, to look upon the _habitués_ of such a
paradise and to be looked upon by them—what is a girl’s first dance and
short-sleeved tulle compared with this?
Up Broadway Chandler moved with the vespertine dress parade. For this
evening he was an exhibit as well as a gazer. For the next sixty-nine
evenings he would be dining in cheviot and worsted at dubious _table
d’hôtes_, at whirlwind lunch counters, on sandwiches and beer in his
hall-bedroom. He was willing to do that, for he was a true son of the
great city of razzle-dazzle, and to him one evening in the limelight
made up for many dark ones.
Chandler protracted his walk until the Forties began to intersect the
great and glittering primrose way, for the evening was yet young, and
when one is of the _beau monde_ only one day in seventy, one loves to