you dear old Van! I’m engaged, and just the happiest of – ”
“Engaged?” and Van seized Andy by the shoulders with both hands.
“Yes, all fixed! And Rose Wood is just the dearest, best girl after all! I’d never have known happiness but for her!”
Van Morris turned the speaker full to the firelight, and stared hard in his face.
“I wouldn’t have believed it, Andy,” he said, contemptuously. “You have come here drunk again!”
“No, indeed! I have pledged my word to her never to touch a drop!” protested Andy, with imperturbable good nature. “And, Van, she has accepted me.”
“She?”
“Yes. Rose said, ‘Morris has his heart set on the match;’ I went straight on that hint, and Blanche Allmand will be Mrs. Andrew Browne next Easter.”
Morris answered no word.
With a deep, hard breath, he turned abruptly, strode to the alcove window, and peered through the curtains into the black night beyond. A great surge of regret swept over him that shook the strong man with pain pitiful to see. He pressed his forehead against the cold glass; and the contrast, so strong, to the hope with which he had looked out thus at the gray dawn, sickened him with its weight. There was a boom in his ears, as of the distant surf; and his brain mechanically groped after a lost refrain, finding only the fragment: “To lose it all! lose it all!”
But heart-sickness, like sea-sickness, is never mortal, and it has the inestimable call over the latter of being far less tenacious. And Van Morris was mentally as healthy as he was physically sound. He made a strong effort of a strong will; and turned to face his friend and his – fate. In his hand he held a wilted camellia bud and a crushed cactus flower.
Moving quickly to the fire, he tossed them on the glowing coals; watching as they curled, shrivelled, and disappeared in the heat’s maw. Then he moved quietly to the window and looked into the night once more.
Wholly wrapped up in his new-found joy, Andy Browne saw nothing odd in his friend’s manner or actions. He moved softly about the room, and once more hummed, “Il segreto per esser felice;” very low and very tenderly this time.
Suddenly the rustle of silk again sounded on Morris’s ear.
He turned quickly, and looked long, but steadily, into the beautiful face. It was very quiet and gentle; glorified by the deeper content in the eyes and the modest flush upon the cheek. His face, too, was very quiet; but it was pale and grave. His manner was gentle; but he retained the little hand Blanche held out to him, in fingers that were steadier than her own.
“I reminded you last night,” he said, very gravely, “how long we had been friends, Blanche. It is meet, then, that I should be the first to wish you that perfect happiness which only a pure girl’s heart may know.”
Then, without a pause, he turned to Andy, and placed the little Russia case in his hand. As it opened, the eye of a dazzling solitaire flashed from its satin pillow.
“Andy, old friend,” he added, “Rose Wood told you only the truth. I had set my heart on Blanche’s happiness; and only this morning I got that for her engagement ring. Put it on her finger with the feeling that Van Morris loves you both – better than a nature like Rose Wood’s can ever comprehend.”
FROM THE WINDOWS OF A GREAT LIBRARY
“The dead alive and busy.” – Henry Vaughan.
Without, wind-lifted, lo! a little rose
(From the great Summer’s heart its life-blood flows),
For some fond spirit to reach and kiss and bless,
Climbs to the casement, brings the joyous wraith
Of the sun’s quick world, without, of joyousness
Into this still world of enchanted breath.
And, far away, behold the dust arise,
From streets white-hot, into the sunny skies!
The city murmurs: in the sunshine beats,
Through all its giant veins of throbbing streets,
The heart of Business, on whose sweltering brow
The dew shall sleep to-night (forgotten now).
There rush the many, toiling as but one;
There swarm the living myriads in the sun;
There all the mighty troubled day is loud
(Business, the god whose voice is of the crowd).
And, far above the sea-horizon blue,
Like sea-birds, sails are hovering into view.
There move the living; here the dead that move:
Within the book-world rests the noiseless lever
That moves the noisy, throngèd world forever.
Below the living move, the dead above.
“GOING, GOING, GONE.”
“Take it to Rumble. He will give you twice as much on it as any other pawnbroker.”
The speaker was a seedy actor, and the person he addressed was also a follower of the histrionic muses. The latter held before him an ulster which he surveyed with a rueful countenance.
It was not the thought of having to go to the pawnbroker’s that made him rueful, for he would have parted with a watch, if he had possessed one, with indifference; but the wind that whistled without and the snow that beat against the window-pane made him shiver at the thought of surrendering his ulster. However, he had to do it. Both he and his friend were without money, and it was New Year’s eve, which they did not mean to let pass without a little jollification. Therefore they had drawn lots to determine which should hypothecate his overcoat in order to raise funds. The victim was preparing to go to the sacrifice.
“Yes,” continued his friend, “take it to Rumble. He is the Prince of Pawnbrokers. Last week I took a set of gold shirt studs to him. He asked me at what I valued them. I named a slightly larger sum than I paid for them, and the old man gave me fully what they cost me.”
“Let us go at once to Rumble’s,” said the other, seizing his hat, and the two sallied forth into the night and the storm.
Down the street they went before the wind-driven snow. Fortunately they did not have far to go.
When they opened the door of Rumble’s shop, the old pawnbroker looked up in surprise. The tempest seemed to have blown his visitors in. The windows rattled; the lights flared; fantastic garments, made in the style of by-gone centuries, swayed to and fro where they hung, as though the shapes that might have worn them haunted the place; a set of armor, that stood in one corner, clanked as though the spirit of some dead paladin had entered it and was striving to stalk forth and do battle with the demons of the storm; while the gust that had occasioned all this commotion in the little shop went careering through the rooms at the rear, causing papers to fly, doors to slam, and a sweet voice to exclaim:
“Why, father, what is the matter?”
“Nothing, my dear, it is only the wind,”
