Van Bibber, and others
Van r p-^ J<r'/ "CAN I SIT UP HERE BESIDE YOU, OR DO YOU RULE ALONE?"* [See page 12.] VAN BIBBER AND OTHERS BY RICHARD HARDING DAVIS AUTHOR OP "GALLEGHER, AND OTHER STORIES" "STORIES FOR BOYS" ETC. NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 1 892 J I JAN18197J \ I 229217 Copyright, 1892, by HARPER & BROTHERS. All rights reserved. TO MY FATHER L. CLARKE DAVIS WHO HAS BEEN MY KINDEST AND MY SEVEREST CRITIC CONTENTS PAGE HER FIRST APPEARANCE 3 VAN BIBBER'S MAN-SERVANT 37 THE HUNGRY MAN WAS FED 47 VAN BIBBER AT THE RACES 57 AN EXPERIMENT IN ECONOMY 67 MR. TRAVERS'S FIRST HUNT 77 LOVE ME, LOVE MY DOG 85 ELEANORE CUYLER 95 A RECRUIT AT CHRISTMAS 133 A PATRON OF ART 145 ANDY M'GEE'S CHORUS GIRL 159 A LEANDER OF THE EAST RIVER .... 169 HOW HEFTY BURKE GOT EVEN 183 OUTSIDE THE PRISON 197 AN UNFINISHED STORY 223 ILLUSTRATIONS " l CAN I SIT UP HERE BESIDE YOU, OR DO YOU RULE ALONE ?' ". . . . Frontispiece. "BUT HE KNEW THAT WAS NOT THE REASON" Facing p. 18 " 26 "'ARE YOU READY, ELEANORE?' SHE ASKED, BRISKLY" " 106 HER FIEST APPEARANCE HEE FIRST APPEARANCE 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 fever- ish as it is behind the scenes on the first night of a comic opera, and that is a newspaper ottice on the last night of a Presidential campaign, when the returns are being flashed on the canvas out- side, 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, began to hint for a new set of costumes. The stage-door keeper hesi- tated and was lost, and Van Bibber stepped into 4 HEK FIRST APPEARANCE 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-mana- ger, in the centre of the stage, perspiring and in his shirt-sleeves as always, wildly waving an arm to some one in the flies, and beckoning with the other to the gas-man 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 be- hind 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 HER FIRST APPEARANCE 5 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 ?" 11 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 ap- pearance 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 them- selves 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 6 HER FIKST APPEARANCE undisturbed on a rainy night as on those when the " standing room only" sign blocked the front entrance, this supposition was discarded as untena- ble. 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 so- cial 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 con- fessor, 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 Bibber had known each other at the univer- sity, 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 sim- ple and sincere and boyish as he had been in the days of his Hasty-Pudding successes. And Les- ter, 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 HER FIRST APPEARANCE 7 grateful relief to the boisterous camaraderie of his professional acquaintances. And he allowed Yan 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 occa- sional 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 com- pany, after he came to know them, he was gravely polite, and, to those who knew him if they had overheard, amusingly commonplace in his conver- sation. 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 con- fidant, and told him all their woes and troubles, and exhibited all their little jealousies and ambi- tions, in the innocent hope that he would repeat what they said to Lester. They were simple, un- conventional, light-hearted folk, and Van Bibber found them vastly more entertaining and prefera- ble 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 New- port. He liked the swing of the light, bright mu- sic as it came to him through the open door of 8 HER FIRST APPEARANCE 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 un- consciously graceful groups in the sharply di- vided light and shadow of the wings as he saw 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 teas- ing 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 HER FIRST APPEARANCE 9 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 fol- lowing 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 10 HEK FIKST APPEARANCE 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 cheer- fully 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 excite- ment 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. " 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 manage- ment 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 ward- robe woman, who was fluttering wildly about, and as delighted as though they were all her own chil- dren, 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 12 HER FIRST APPEARANCE by themselves. The six little girls were in six dif- ferent 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 gentle- man, Madeline ; he wants to tell you what a great big hit youse made." The little girl was seated on one of the cush- ions 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 some- what doubtfully and ungraciously, and Van Bib- ber 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 ?" HER FIRST APPEARANCE 13 " Thank you, sir," stammered the little girl. u 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 men- tal 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 under- stood this, and deigned to smile at it, but Made- line yawned a very polite and sleepy yawn, and 14 HER FIRST APPEARANCE 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 num- ber of people had shown confidence in Van Bib- ber— 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 mak- ing 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 HER FIRST APPEARANCE 15 his side, and of the evil knowledge and tempta- tions that would mar the beauty of her quaintly sweet face, and its strange mark of gentleness and refinement. Outside he could hear his friend Les- ter 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 tu- multuous. "Does she come of professional people?" Van Bibber asked, dropping into the vernacular. He spoke softly, not so much that he might not dis- turb 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 16 HER FIRST APPEARANCE 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 con- cern 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 re- lieved. 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 c Aladdin,' and then when I left the stage and started to keep an act- ors' 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 bet- ter 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 HER FIRST APPEARANCE 17 Van Bibber gave a little start, and winced vis- ibly, 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 gentle- man ? 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 lit- tle 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 2 18 HER FIRST APPEARANCE 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 carefulty 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 Ave- nue." 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 011 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 ser- vant who opened the hall door to Mr. Caruthers's BUT HE KNEW THAT WAS NOT THE REASON. HER FIRST APPEARANCE 19 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 Bib- ber, " 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 moustache was quite white, and his eyes and face showed the signs of either dissipa- tion 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 pa- pered with irregular rows of original drawings and signed etchings. The windows were open, 20 HER FIRST APPEARANCE 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. Caruth- ers was surprised at this late visit, he hid it, and came forward to receive his caller as if his pres- ence 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 wTere 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 handker- chief 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 uncer- tainly. " Oh, yes," assented the elder man, politely, and HER FIRST APPEARANCE 21 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 be- tween 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 man, but Mr. Caruthers met his glance without any returning show of interest. " I say," repeat- ed 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 train- ing 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 22 HER FIRST APPEARANCE 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 for- ward, 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 him- self 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 to stand against, and in consequence he was quite unpre- pared 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 HER FIRST APPEARANCE 23 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 ine 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 hesi- tate 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 pre- pare 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, 24 HER FIEST APPEARANCE 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. Cam there'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 win- dow. 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, HER FIRST APPEARANCE 25 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 Bib- ber ?" 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, grudg- ingly, "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 me a ser- vice, and that I have been unable to appreciate it, and that you are a much-abused and much-misun- derstood 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 con- duct at clubs and afternoon teas with young wom- en until you — " Van Bibber drew in his breath sharply, with a peculiar whistling sound, and opened and shut his 26 HER FIRST APPEARANCE hands. "Oh, I wouldn't say that if I were you," he said, simply. " I beg your pardon," the older man said, quick- ly. " 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 to think you acted on impulse, and that yon 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 every one 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 EVEN TO-DAY, THERE IS THE CHANCE SAMA.BTTAN. HER FIEST APPEARANCE 27 to work for their living, and I was bound that ray friends and your friends should recognize her and respect her as my wife had a right to be re- spected ; 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 wrere mov- ing, 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 whenever she was tired of travelling about and wished to settle down. And I was — and a hus- band that loved her as — she had everything. Ev- erything that a man's whole thought and love and money could bring to her. And you know what she did." 28 HER FIRST APPEARANCE 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 un- derstand, 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 an- imal 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 wom- an 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 Bib- HER FIRST APPEARANCE 29 ber, and hid his head in his hands, with his elbows on the mantel-piece. " 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 \vith me. It means too much." He took a quick stride tow- ards 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 wom- an 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 pick- eted 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 sur- prised 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. 