Richard Harding Davis

“ The moonlight showed the girl’s eyes shining through the veil, and regarding him steadily.
“If you don’t stop this car quick,” she said, “the world will end for all of us.”
He shot a look ahead, and so suddenly threw on the brake that Sam and the chauffeur tumbled awake. Across the road stretched the great bulk of a touring-car, its lamps burning dully in the brilliance of the moon. Around it, for greater warmth, a half-dozen figures stamped upon the frozen ground, and beat themselves with their arms. Sam and the chauffeur vaulted into the road, and went toward them. ”

“ The chauffeur limped in front of the lamps, appearing suddenly, like an actor stepping into the lime-light.
“No, ma’am,” he said. In the rays of the lamp, he unfolded a road map and scowled at it. He shook his head aggrievedly.
“There ought to be a house just about here,” he explained.
“There ought to be a hotel and a garage, and a cold supper, just about here,” said the girl cheerfully.
“That’s the way with those houses,” complained the owner. “They never stay where they’re put. At night they go around and visit each other. Where do you think you are, Fred?” ”

“ Winthrop swung the car back into the avenue.
“To think,” he cried, “that a man who could marry—a girl, and then would ask her to wait two months. Or two days! Two months lost out of his life, and she might die; he might lose her; she might change her mind. Any number of men can be Lieutenant-Governors; only one man can be——”
He broke off suddenly, coughed, and fixed his eyes miserably on the road. After a brief pause, Brother Sam covertly looked at him. Could it be that “Billie” Winthrop, the man liked of all men, should love his sister, and that she should prefer Ernest Peabody? ”

“ Only I don’t see,” she added, “what her being a Princess has to do with it.”
“You don’t?” laughed Carlton easily. “That’s the best part of it—that’s the plot. The beauty of being in love with a Princess, Miss Morris,” he said, “lies in the fact that you can’t marry her; that you can love her deeply and forever, and nobody will ever come to you and ask your intentions, or hint that after such a display of affection you ought to do something. ”

“ Carlton continued, meditatively, “it is not so very remarkable. Men go all the way to Cuba and Mexico, and even to India, after orchids, after a nasty flower that grows in an absurd way on the top of a tree. Why shouldn’t a young man go as far as Germany after a beautiful Princess, who walks on the ground, and who can talk and think and feel? She is much more worth while than an orchid.”
Miss Morris laughed indulgently. ”

“ One who had drawn over his night-clothes a serge suit, and who, in even that garb, carried an air of authority; and one, tall, stooping, weak of face and light-haired, with eyes that blinked and trembled behind great spectacles, and who, for comfort, hugged about him a gorgeous kimono. For an instant the new-comers stared stupidly through the smoke at the bodies on the floor breathing stertorously, at the young man with the lust of battle still in his face, at the girl shrinking against the wall. It was the young man in the serge suit who was the first to move. ”

“ Schwab, fearing bodily injury, backed precipitately behind the policeman.
“Come here,” commanded Winthrop softly. Mr. Schwab warily approached. “That story,” said Winthrop, dropping his voice to a low whisper, “is worth a damn sight more to you than twenty thousand votes. You take a spin with me up Riverside Drive where we can talk. Maybe you and I can ‘make a little business.’”
At the words, the face of Mr. Schwab first darkened angrily, and then lit with such exultation that it appeared as though Winthrop’s efforts had only placed Peabody deeper in Mr. Schwab’s power. ”

“ I know no better antidote than Athens for a siege of cable-cars and muddy asphalt pavements and a course of ‘Robert Elsmeres’ and the ‘Heavenly Twins.’ Wait until you see the statues of the young athletes in the Museum,” he cried, enthusiastically, “and get a glimpse of the blue sky back of Mount Hymettus, and the moonlight some evening on the Acropolis, and you’ll be convinced that nothing counts for much in this world but health and straight limbs, and tall marble pillars, and eyes trained to see only what is beautiful. ”

“ Downs was ascending the steps, and before the second muffled figure had left the shadow of the carriage and stepped into the moonlight, the Princess Aline saw Carlton draw her suddenly back and kiss her lightly on the cheek, and heard a protesting gasp, and saw Miss Morris pull her cloak over her head and run up the steps. ”

“ In his indignation, Judge Allen rose to reply, and as, the better to hear him, the crowd pushed forward, Fred gave way before it, until he was left standing in sullen gloom upon its outer edge. In imitation of the real firemen of the great cities, the vamps of Fairport had cut a circular hole in the floor of their club-room, and from the engine-room below had reared a sliding pole of shining brass. When leaving their club-room, it was always their pleasure to scorn the stairs and, like real firemen, slide down this pole. ”

“ He was in consequence somewhat annoyed and surprised to see another young man dodging in and out among the pillars of the Parthenon immediately ahead of him, and to find that this young man also had his attention centred on the young girl, who sat unconsciously sketching in the foreground.
“Now what the devil can he want?” muttered Carlton, his imagination taking alarm at once.
207“If it would only prove to be some one who meant harm to her,” he thought—“a brigand, or a beggar, who might be obligingly insolent, or even a tipsy man, what a chance it would afford for heroic action!” ”

“ In the mind of the young man the one thought uppermost was that he must gain time, but, with a revolver in his face, he found his desire to gain time swiftly diminishing. Still, when he spoke, it was with deliberation.
“My chauffeur—” he began slowly.
The burglar snapped at him like a dog. “To hell with your chauffeur!” he cried. “Your chauffeur has run away. You’ll drive that car yourself, or I’ll leave you here with the top of your head off.”
The face of the young man suddenly flashed with pleasure. His eyes, looking past the burglar to the door, lit with relief. ”

“ Then Carlton would go to the club and complain bitterly to one of his friends.
“How unfair married women are!” he would say. “The idea of thinking a man could have no eyes but for one woman! Suppose I had never heard a note of music until I was twenty-five years of age, and was then given my hearing. Do you suppose my pleasure in music would make me lose my pleasure in everything else? Suppose I met and married a girl at twenty-five. ”

“ THE KIDNAPPERS During the last two weeks of the “whirlwind” campaign, automobiles had carried the rival candidates to every election district in Greater New York.
During these two weeks, at the disposal of Ernest Peabody—on the Reform Ticket “the people’s choice for Lieutenant-Governor”—Winthrop had placed his Scarlet Car, and, as its chauffeur, himself.
Not that Winthrop greatly cared for Reform or Ernest Peabody. The “whirlwind” part of the campaign was what attracted him; the crowds, the bands, the fireworks, the rush by night from hall to hall, from Fordham to Tompkinsville. ”

“ Then I always like to go to a place where you are as much of a curiosity to the people as they are to you. It seems to excuse your staring about you.”
“A curiosity!” exclaimed Carlton; “I should say so! The last time I was here I tried to wear a pair of knickerbockers around the city, and the people stared so that I had to go back to the hotel and change them. I shouldn’t have minded it so much in any other country, but I thought men who wore Jaeger underclothing and women’s petticoats for a national costume might have excused so slight an eccentricity as knickerbockers. ”

“ Carlton always felt as though some day some one would surely come along and say: “Look here, young man, this talent doesn’t belong to you; it’s mine. What do you mean by pretending that such an idle good-natured youth as yourself is entitled to such a gift of genius?” ”

“ I have met her brother, and he has asked me to dine with them on Thursday night; that’s the day before they leave for Athens; and he particularly mentioned that his sisters would be at the dinner, and that it would be a pleasure to present me. It seems that the eldest paints, and all of them love art for art’s sake, as their father taught them to do; and, for all we know, he may make me court painter, and I shall spend the rest of my life at Grasse painting portraits of the Princess Aline, at the age of twenty-two, and at all future ages. ”

“ Winthrop brought the car to a quick halt.
“We’re in a police trap!” he said. Fred leaned forward and whispered to his employer. His voice also vibrated with the joy of the chase.
“This’ll be our third arrest,” he said. “That means——”
“I know what it means,” snapped Winthrop. “Tell me how we can get out of here.”
“We can’t get out of here, sir, unless we go back. Going south, the bridge is the only way out.”
“The bridge!” Winthrop struck the wheel savagely with his knuckles. “I forgot their confounded bridge!” He turned to Miss Forbes. “Fairport is a sort of island,” he explained. ”

“ Schwab, the Tammany henchman, with a secret worth twenty thousand votes, sat a prisoner, in a wicker chair, with a drink and a cigar, guarded by four young men in flannels, who played tennis violently at five dollars a corner.
It was always a great day in the life of “Izzy” Schwab. After a luncheon, which, as he later informed his friends, could not have cost less than “two dollars a plate and drink all you like,” Sam Forbes took him on at pool. Mr. Schwab had learned the game in the cellars of Eighth Avenue at two and a half cents a cue, and now, even in Columbus Circle he was a star. ”

“ Men were pressing close upon him, jostling, abusing him, shaking fists in his face. Another crowd of men, as though fearing the car would escape of its own volition, were clinging to the steps and running boards.
Winthrop saw Miss Forbes standing above them, talking eagerly to Peabody, and pointing at him. He heard children’s shrill voices calling to new arrivals that an automobile had killed a man ”

“ A hundred years from now there will be no more kings and queens, and the writers of that day will envy us, just as the writers of this day envy the men who wrote of chivalry and tournaments, and they will have to choose their heroes from bank presidents, and their heroines from lady lawyers and girl politicians and type-writers. What a stupid world it will be then!”
The next day brought the reception to the Hohenwalds; and Carlton, entering the reading-room of the hotel on the same afternoon, found Miss Morris and her aunt there together taking tea. ”

“ I don’t see how she can help but be impressed a little bit. It isn’t every day a man hurries around the globe on account of a girl’s photograph; and she is beautiful, isn’t she?”
Miss Morris nodded her head encouragingly.
“Do you know, sometimes,” said Carlton, glancing over his shoulders to see if the waiters were out of hearing, “I fancy she has noticed me. Once or twice I have turned my head in her direction without meaning to, and found her looking—well, looking my way, at least. Don’t you think that is a good sign?” ”

“ Even Peabody, who pictured himself and Miss Forbes in the back of the car, with her brother and Winthrop in front, condescended to approve. It was necessary to invite Peabody because it was his great good fortune to be engaged to Miss Forbes. Her brother Sam had been invited, not only because he could act as chaperon for his sister, but because since they were at St. Paul’s, Winthrop and he, either as participants or spectators, had never missed going together to the Yale-Harvard game. And Beatrice Forbes herself had been invited because she was herself. ”

“ Winthrop said briskly to Miss Forbes, “I think we have done all we can. And we’ll get away from this place a little faster than the law allows.”
Miss Forbes had seated herself in the car, and Winthrop was cranking up, when the same policeman, wearing an anxious countenance, touched him on the arm. “There is a gentleman here,” he said, “wants to speak to you.” He placed himself between the gentleman and Winthrop and whispered: “He’s ‘Izzy’ Schwab, he’s a Harlem police-court lawyer and a Tammany man. He’s after something, look out for him.” ”

“ I have walked miles to get a glimpse of a beautiful woman in a suburban window, and time and time again when I have seen a face in a passing brougham I have pursued it in a hansom, and learned where the owner of the face lived, and spent weeks in finding some one to present me, only to discover that she was self-conscious or uninteresting or engaged. ”

“ We have been told what the mother duck felt when her ugly duckling turned into a swan, but we have never considered how much the ugly duckling must have marvelled also.
“Carlton is probably the only living artist,” a brother artist had said of him, “who fails to appreciate how great his work is.” And on this being repeated to Carlton by a good-natured friend, he had replied cheerfully, “Well, I’m sorry, but it is certainly better to be the only one who doesn’t appreciate it than to be the only one who does.” ”

“ You spoiled that plate.”
“I’ll spoil your camera if you annoy that young lady any longer,” said Carlton, in a low voice.
The photographer was rapidly rewinding his roll, and the fire of pursuit was still in his eye.
“She’s a Princess,” he explained, in an excited whisper.
“Well,” said Carlton, “even a Princess is entitled to some consideration. Besides,” he said, in a more amicable tone, “you haven’t a permit to photograph on the Acropolis. You know you haven’t.” Carlton was quite sure of this, because there were no such permits. ”