he went on, straight at the off-horse’s right ear. “I know your goodness of heart; know how it pained you; but you could have done nothing else but —refuse me!”
Miss Rose Wood’s mouth opened quickly; but a providential gutter jolted her nearly from the seat; and the wind drove her first word back into her throat like a sob.
The inexorable machine beside her ground on relentless.
“Yes, I understand what you would say: that you refused me firmly and finally because I —deserved it!” Had Andy Browne’s soul really been the tin-foil of the phonograph, it could not have shown more utter disregard of moral responsibility. “You knew I was under the influence of wine; that I would never have dared to address you had I been myself! I repeat, I deserve my —decisive rejection! It was proper and just in you to say ‘No!’”
Woman’s will conquered for one brief second. Spite of wind and spite of him, Miss Wood began:
“‘No?’ I – ”
“Yes, ‘no!’” broke in the relentless machinery. It ground on implacable, though great beads stood on Andy’s brow from sheer terror lest he run down before the end. “No! as firmly, as emphatically as you said it to me last night. Indeed, I honor you the more for flatly refusing the man who, in forgetting his self-respect, forgot his respect —for you! But, Miss Rose, while I pledge you my honor never, never to speak to you again of love, I may still be —your friend!”
The bays were bowling down the street again by this time; when another kismet, in small and ugly canine form, flew at their heads with yelp and snarl. Rearing with one impulse, the spirited pair lunged forward and flew past the now twinkling lamps in a wild gallop. Andy pulled them down at last; their swinging trot replacing the dangerous rush. The Wood mansion was almost in sight; but the Ancient Mariner was a tyro to Andy Browne in the way he fixed that off-horse’s right ear with stony stare.
He might have looked round in perfect safety. The lithe figure by him sat gracefully erect. The face a trifle pale; the lips set tight against each other, with the blood pressed out of them, were not unnatural in that cutting wind. The eyes, fixed straight ahead, as his own, gleamed gray and cold; only a half-closing of the lids, once or twice, hiding an ugly light reflecting through them from the busy brain behind. But Andy never turned once until he brought up the bays stock still and leaped down to offer his hand to the lady at her own door.
She took it, naturally; springing to the ground as lightly as any débutante of the season. Not one trace of annoyance, even, showed on that best educated face.
“Andy, we are old friends,” she said, offering her hand frankly.
He took it mechanically, with a dazed soft of feeling that he must be even a bigger fool than he felt himself.
“Real friends,” Miss Wood went on, pleasantly, “and I’ll prove it to you now. You have acted like a man of honor to me; I will betray one little confidence, and make two people happy!”
The man still stood dumb; and his eye furtively wandered to the pawing off-horse, as if to take his confidence as to what it meant. The woman’s next words came slowly, and she smiled; a strange smile the lips alone made, but in which the glinting gray eyes took no share.
“For Van Morris is your best friend, after all. He will remember that I told him, last night, ‘One cannot be too careful’!”
She rose on tiptoe, whispered three words, and was gone before he could frame one in reply.
Once more those ill-used bays got the whip fiercely; and they turned the corner so short that Mr. Trotter Upton looked over his shoulder with a grin, and remarked to the blaze-faced companion in his sulky shafts:
“Nine hundred dollars’ worth of horse risked with nine dollars’ worth of man! Van Morris better drive his own stock. G’long!”
It was two o’clock when Mr. Andrew Browne had ridden forth to recapture his plighted troth.
The shades of Christmas evening had now wrapped the city completely, and the gilt clock upon his parlor mantel now pointed to six. Still he had not returned; and still Van Morris’s eagerness to test the issue of his own tactics was too keen to let him leave their rooms. He had even resisted the temptations of a gossip at the club, and was smoking his fifth cigar – a thought-amused smile wreathing his lips – when the chime of six startled him suddenly to his feet.
“How time flies!” he exclaimed. “And we are to dine at the Allmand’s at seven.”
He tossed away his cigar, turned into his own apartment, and made an unusually careful toilet. Then he looked into Browne’s still vacant room once more.
“Where can he be?” he muttered. “By George! he must have bungled fearfully if he did not pull through. He certainly had his lesson by heart! But she must not be kept waiting,” and his face softened greatly, and the deep, strong light came back into his eyes. “How ceaselessly that old verse comes back to me! And now ‘to put it to the test’ myself.”
He turned to his escritoire, and took a small Russia case from the drawer; then to the mantel, and carefully shook the dampness from the two flowers he had placed there that morning. Putting case and flowers carefully in his vest pocket, Van paused at the door, gave a long, sweeping glance – with a sort of farewell in it – to the rooms; then shut himself outside, still repeating sotto voce,
“He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small.”
Metropolitan Christmas was abroad in the streets. Young and old, grandsire and maiden, beggar and parvenu jostled one another on the pavements. Rough men, laden with loosely-wrapped, brown-papered packages, strode happily homeward; wan women skurried along leading eager children from unwonted shopping for dainties; carriages rolled by, with the gas-light glimpsing on occupants in evening dress, driven Christmas dinnerward.
Van Morris recked little of all this, as he strode rapidly over the very spot where his coolness had saved an ugly misadventure twelve hours before. His brain was going faster than his body; one goal only had he in view; one refrain ever sounded in his memory: “To gain, or lose, it all!”
A quick turn of the corner, and he stood at the door he had quietly escaped from during the ball. The servant replied to his inquiry that Miss Blanche was in the library; and thither he turned, with the freedom of long intimacy.
Only the warm glow of fire-light filled the room; there was a rustle, as of a retreating silk dress. There was also a man’s figure, backed by the fire, with that not infrequent expression all over it that tells he would really be at his ease if he only knew how.
“Why, Andy! And in your driving suit!”
“Van, dearest old boy,” cried the other, irrelevantly, “congratulate me! I’m the luckiest dog alive!”
“With all my heart,” Van answered, shaking the proffered hand heartily. “I was sure it would come out all right.”
“You were?” Andy fairly beamed. “She said so!”
“What? she said so? Did Rose Wood expect you to break off, then?”
“No, no! Not that. She said she knew you’d be glad of the match.”
“Glad
