Kitabı oku: «Belford's Magazine, Volume II, No. 8, January, 1889», sayfa 2
THE HONOR OF AN ELECTION
(President Cleveland’s Defeat, 1888.)
Whose is the honor? Once again
The million-drifted shower is spent
Of votes that into power have whirled two men: —
One man, defeated; one, made President.
Whose is the honor? His who wins
The people’s wreath of favor, cast
At venture? – Lo, his thraldom just begins! —
Or is it his who, losing, yet stands fast?
The first takes power, in mockery grave
Of freedom – made, by writ unsigned,
The people’s servant, whom a few enslave.
The other is master of an honest mind.
From venomed spite that stung and ceased,
From slander’s petty craft set free,
This man – the bonds of formal power released —
Moves higher, dowered with large integrity.
Though stabs of cynic hypocrites
And festering malice of false friends
Have won their noisome way, unmoved he fits
His patriot purpose still to lofty ends.
Whose is the honor? Freemen – yours,
Who found him faithful to the right,
Clean-handed, true, yet turned him from your doors
And bartered daybreak for corruption’s night?
Weak-shouldered nation, that endures
So painfully an upright sway,
Four little years, then yields to lies and lures,
And slips back into greed’s familiar way!
For now the light bank-note outweighs
The ballot of the unbought mind;
And all the air is filled with falsehood’s praise —
Shams, for sham victory artfully designed.
Is theirs the honor, then, who roared
Against our leader’s wise-laid plan,
Yet now have seized his plan, his flag, his sword,
And stolen all of him – except the man?
No! His the honor, for he keeps
His manhood firm, intact, unsoiled
By base deceit. – Not dead, the nation sleeps:
Pray Heaven it waken ere it be despoiled!
George Parsons Lathrop.November, 1888.
ANDY’S GIFT
HOW HE GOT IN AND HOW HE WAS GOTTEN OUT
An Episode of Any Day
I
“Well, Age is beautiful!”
“Then she is a joy forever!”
“Wonderful staying power for a filly of her age, anyhow!”
From a typical, if not very remarkable, group of alleged men of the world, surrounding the quaint and capacious punch-bowl at a brilliant society event, came this small-shot of repartee. None of the speakers had been very long out of their teens; all of them were familiar ingredients of that cream-nougat compound, called society.
Mr. de Silva Street was of the harmless blonde and immaculate linen type. He was invited everywhere for his present boots, and well-received for his expectant bonds; his sole and responsible ancestor having “fought in his corner” with success, in more than one of the market battles for the belt.
Mr. Wetherly Gage had glory enough with very young belles and tenacious marriageable possibilities, in being society editor of Our Planet; while Mr. Trotter Upton had owned more horses and been more of a boon to sharp traders than any man of his years in the metropolis. A brief young man, with ruddy, if adolescent, moustache apparently essaying the ascent of a nose turned up in sympathetic hue, his red hair was cut in aggressive erectile fashion, which emphasized the soubriquet of “Indian Summer,” given him by the present unconscious subject of the critical trilogy.
“But remember, Trotter, she is my pet partner,” simpered Mr. Street at the shapely back disappearing down the hallway; and he caressed where his blond moustache was to be.
“And might have been of your – mother’s,” added Mr. Gage, with the lonesome titter that illustrated all of his acidulous jokelets.
“Remember she is a lady, and a guest of your host besides,” chimed in a tall, dark man, as he joined the group. The voice was perfectly quiet; but there seemed discomforting magnetism in the glance he rested on one after the other, as he filled a glass and raised it to handsome, but firm-set lips.
The three typical beaux of an abnormal civilization shifted position uneasily. Trotter Upton pulled down his cuffs, and laboriously admired the horse-shoe and snaffle ornamenting their buttons, as he answered:
“Sorry we shocked you, Van. Forgot it was your lecture season! But I’ll taut the curb on the boys, so socket your whip, old fel!”
“If your tact kept pace with your slang, Upton, what a success you’d be!” Van Morris answered, carelessly. “’Tis a real pity you let the stable monopolize so much of the time that would make you an ornament to society.” Then he set down his unfinished glass, sauntered into the hall, and approached the subject of discussion.
Miss Rose Wood was scarcely a beauty; nor was she the youngest belle of that ball by perhaps fifteen seasons of German cotillion. But she had tact to her manicured finger-tips, delicate acid on her tongue’s tip, and that dangerous erudition, a brief biography of every girl in the set, was handily stored in her capacious memory. She had, moreover, a staunch following of gilt-plated youths who, being really afraid of her, made her a belle as a sort of social Peter’s pence.
Miss Wood had just finished a rapid “glide,” when she came under fire of the punch-room light-fighters; but, though Mr. Upton had once judged her “a trifle touched in the wind,” her complexion and her tasteful drapery had come equally smooth out of that trying ordeal. Even that critic finished with a nod towards her as their mentor moved away:
“She does keep her pace well! Hasn’t turned a hair.” And he was right in the fact so peculiarly stated; for it was less the warmth of the dancing-room than of her partner’s urgence, that brought Miss Rose Wood into the hall, for what Mr. Upton called “a breather.”
The visible members of the Wood family were two, Miss Rose and her father, Colonel Westchester Wood. “The Colonel” was an equally familiar figure at the clubs and on the quarter-stretch; nor was he chary of acceptance of the cards to dinners, balls, and opera-boxes, which his daughter’s facile management brought to the twain in showers. He had a certain military air, and a nebulous military history; boasted of his Virginia-Kentucky origin, and more than hinted at his Blue Grass stock-farm. Late at night, he would mistily mention “My regiment at Shiloh, sah!” But, as he was reputed even more expert with the pistol than most knew him to be with cards, geography and chronology were never insisted on in detail. But the Colonel was undisputed possessor of a thirst, marvellous in its depth and continuity; and he had also a cast-iron head that turned the flanks of the most direct assaults of alcohol, and scattered them to flaunt the red flag on his pendulous nose, or to skirmish over his scrupulously shaven cheeks.
Of the invisible members of “the Colonel’s” household, fleecy rumors only pervaded society at intervals. The social Stanleys and Livingstons who had essayed the sources of the Wood family stream in its dark continent of brown-faced brick, on a quiet avenue, sent back vague stories of a lovely and patient invalid, and a more lovely and equally patient young girl, mother and sister to Miss Rose. There was a misty legend sometimes floating around the clubs, that “the Colonel,” after the method of Cleopatra, had dissolved his wife’s fortune in a posset, and swallowed it years before. But again the reputation of a dead shot cramped curiosity.
And a similar mist sometimes pervaded five o’clock teas and reunions chez la modiste, to the effect that the younger sister was but as a Midianite to the elder, while the mother was dying of neglect. But as neither subject of this gossip was in society, the mist never condensed into direction.
Society found Miss Rose Wood a peculiarly useful and pleasant person; and it took her – as “the Colonel” took many of his pleasures – on trust.
II
The ball was a crowded one; but was, perhaps, the most brilliant and select of that season, combining a Christmas-eve festivity with the début party of the acknowledged beauty and prize-heiress of the entire set.
Blanche Allmand had been finally finishing abroad for some years, after having won her blue-ribboned diploma from Mde. de Cancanière, on Murray Hill. Rumors of her perfections of face and form and character had come across the seas, in those thousand-and-one letters, for which a fostering government makes postal unions. And ever mingled with these rumors, came praises of those thousand-and-one accomplishments, which society is equally apt to admire as to envy, even while it does not appreciate.
But what most inspired with noble ambition the gilded youth of that particular coterie, was the universally accepted fact that old Jack Allmand was master of the warmest fortune that any papa thereabouts might add to the blessing he bestowed upon his son-in-law.
And, like Jeptha of old, he “had one fair daughter and no more.” A widower – not only “warm,” but very safe – he had weathered all the shoals and quicksands of “the street,” and had brought his golden argosy safe into the port of investment. Then he had retired from business, which theretofore had engrossed his whole heart and soul, and lavished both upon the fair young girl, to bring whom from final finishing at the Sacre Cœur, he had just made himself so hideously sea-sick.
It was very late in the season when the delayed return of the pair was announced, with numerous adjectives, in the society columns; but Mr. Allmand’s impatience to expose his golden fleece to the expectant Jasons would brook no delay. Blanche was allowed scarcely time to unpack her many trunks; to exhibit her goodly share of the chefs d’œuvres of Pengat and Worth to the admiring elect; and to receive gushing embraces, only measured by their envy, when the début ball was announced for Christmas-eve.
His best Christmas gift had come to the doting father; and what more fitting season to show his joy and pride in it, and to have their little world share both?
When Blanche, backed by Miss Rose Wood, had hinted that it was rather an unusual occasion, he had promptly settled that by declaring that she was a peculiarly unusual sort of girl. So the invitations went forth; the Allmand mansion was first turned inside out, and then illuminated, and flower-hidden for the début ball.
That it would be the affair of the season none doubted. Already, many a paternal pocket had twinged responsive to extra appeals from marketable daughters; and as to beaux, they had responded nem. con., when bidden to the event promising so much in present feast, and which might possibly so tend to prevent future famine. For already the clubs had discounted the chances of one favorite or another for winning the marital prize of the year.
Foremost among those who had hastened to welcome Blanche back to her new home was Miss Rose Wood. She had the mysterious knack of “coming out” gracefully with every fresh set; of perfectly adapting herself to its fads, and especially to its beaux. Set might come and set might go, but she came out forever; and some nameless tact implied to every débutante, what Micawber forced upon Copperfield with the brutality of words, that she was the “friend of her youth.”
So, already, Miss Wood was prime favorite and prime minister at the home-court of the confiding Blanche, who, spite of brave heart and strong will of her own, fluttered not unnaturally in the unwonted buzz and glare of her new life. But most particularly had Rose Wood warned her against the flirts and “unsafe men” of their set; including, of course, Vanderbilt Morris and her present partner of the ball in the ranks of both.
That partner, Andrew Browne, was avowedly the best parti of the entire set. Handsome, fun-loving, and well-cultivated, he was that rara avis among society beaux, a thorough gentlemen by instinct; but he was lazily given to self-indulgence, and had the prime weakness of being utterly incapable of saying “no,” to man or woman. The intimate friend and room-mate of Van Morris for many years, Browne had never lost a sort of reverence for the superior force and decision of the other’s character; and, though but a few years his junior, in all serious social matters he literally sat at his feet.
And Morris had always grown restive when Miss Rose Wood made one of her “dead sets” at Andy’s face and fortune; for a far-away experience of his own, in that quarter, had taught him how small an objection to that maiden would be a fortune with the man whom she blessed with her affection.
“And that brand of the wine of the heart,” he had once cautioned Andy, “does not improve with age.”
Doubtful of that young gentleman’s confident response, that “he was not to be caught with chaff,” Van still kept watch and ward. So, leaving the elegant book-room of the elegant avenue mansion – converted, for the nonce, into an elegant bar-room for Mr. Trotter Upton and his friends – Morris sauntered through knots of pretty women and of pretty vacuous-looking men, resting on seats half-hidden in potted plants, and approached the pair interesting him most.
Neither glowed with delight at his advent, although Andy seemed only to be rattling off common-places, in peculiarly voluble style. Morris asked for the next waltz; Miss Wood glanced shyly up at her companion, dropped her eyes demurely, and believed she would rest until the cotillon. Then, after a few more small necessaries of social life about the beauty of the girls, the heat of the rooms, and the elegance of the flowers, she permitted Andy to drift easily towards the door that opened on the dim-lit coolness of the conservatory.
As they turned away, Rose Wood sent one sharp glance of her gray eyes glinting into Morris’s; then hers fell, and even he could find only bare common-place in her words:
“So many little dangers, you know, Mr. Morris – at a ball. One cannot be too prudent.”
He did not answer; but the look that followed her graceful figure had very little of flattery in it.
“Curse that Chambertin!” he muttered in his moustache. “I warned him against the second pint at dinner. Andy couldn’t be fool enough, though,” he added, with a shrug, and moved slowly towards the dancing-room.
The critical group, still around the big punch-bowl, looked after him curiously.
“He’s not soft on the old girl, is he?” queried Mr. de Silva Street.
“Never!” chuckled Mr. Wetherly Gage. “Morris is too well up in Bible lore to marry his grandmother!”
“And he don’t have to,” put in Mr. Trotter Upton, with a sage wink. “I’d back Van against the field to win the Allmand purse, hands down, if he’d only enter. But he won’t; so you’re safe, Silvey, if you’ve got the go in you. But Lord! Van’s too smart to carry weight for age! Why, you may land me over the tail-board, if the woman that hitches him double won’t have to throw him down and sit on him, Rarey fashion!”
And the speaker, remarking sotto voce, that here was luck to the winner, drained his glass with a smack, set it down, and lounged into the smoking-room. There he lazily lit one of Mr. Allmand’s full-flavored Havanas, and thoughtfully stored his breast pocket with several more.
III
Meanwhile, the horsey pundit’s offered odds seemed not so wisely laid.
In the great room a crowded waltz was in progress; and Morris saw Blanche Allmand standing on the opposite edge of the whirling circle. Her head and her dainty slipper were keeping time to the softly accented music; while a comical expression – half anger, half mischief – emphasized the nothing she was saying to her companion.
Van caught her eye and, adept that he was in the social signal-service, took in the situation at a glance. He slightly raised his eyebrows and barely moved his lips; she assented with the smallest of nods and a happy flush; and, a moment later, he had edged around the masses of bumping humanity and offered his arm.
“My waltz, I believe,” he said, with the ease of the heir-apparent of Ananias. “I was unlucky enough, in losing the first turn, not to grudge Major Bouncey the rest.”
“You deserve to lose the whole for coming late,” the girl answered, drawing her arm from her partner’s with that pretty reluctance which makes society’s stage-business seem born in woman. “It was just too good of Major Bouncey to take your place and save my being a wall-flower.” And, not pausing for that gallant soldier’s labored disclaimer, the graceful pair glided away to the graceful time of ‘La Gitana’ waltz.
“Horrid bore, that Bouncey,” Blanche panted in the first pause. “Don’t stop near him! He does all his dancing on my insteps; and I dare not stop for fear of his still more dreadful spooning.”
“You would not have me blame him? A better balanced brain might well lose its poise, with such temptation!” And the man looked down on her with very eloquent eyes.
There was a pause. Then Van Morris bent his head, and the eyes still more strongly emphasized the words:
“Blanche, do you know how dangerously lovely you are?”
The girl’s frank eyes dropped beneath the strong light in his; but there was not a shade of consciousness in the soft laugh that prefaced her reply:
“Ah! I’ve a cheval-glass and this is my first ball. So I suppose I know how ‘dangerous’ I am! Then, too, that awful Bouncey called me a lily of the valley!”
“It is the purest flower made by God’s hand,” were Morris’s simple words; but the vibrant tone came from deeper than the lips, now close pressed together.
“But I know I’m not,” Blanche retorted, merrily, “for they drink only dew, and I am quite wild for Regent’s punch!”
They were at the refreshment room, now nearly deserted. Once more the man’s eyes grew darker and deeper, as they met the girl’s frank blue ones.
“And yet, not purer,” he said, unheeding the interruption, “than the heart you, little girl, will soon give to some – ”
He stopped abruptly; but the eyes added more than the words left unsaid.
Again Blanche dropped her eyes quickly; but her color never heightened, nor did the soft laces nestling over the graceful bust move at all quicker than the waltz might warrant. Van’s face still bent over her with earnest expression, as she sipped the glass of punch he handed her; but neither spoke until they had crossed the corridor and passed another door into the conservatory.
IV
The soft, warm air, heavy with the breath of the “Grand Duke” and of orange blossoms; the tremulous half-light from colored lamps hung amid the leaves; the dead stillness of the place, broken only by the plash of the fountain falling back into its moss-covered basin, all contrasted deliciously with the hot, dusty atmosphere and giddy buzzing under the flaring gas-jets left behind.
They strolled slowly down the gravelled walk, between rows of huge tubs, moist and flower-laden with the products of almost every clime. Here gleamed the glossy leaves of the Southern grandiflora; the rare wax plant crept along the wall beyond, its pink, starry blooms gleaming delicately among the thick, artificial-seeming leaves; while, as though in honor of the happily-timed birthnight of the fair young mistress of all, a gorgeous century plant had opened its bud in a glory of form and color, magnificent as rare.
“Blanche, do you remember how long I have known you?” Morris asked, suddenly breaking the silence. “Ever since you were like this; a close, callow bud, giving but vague promise of the glorious flowering of your womanhood! I watched the opening of every petal of your mind and tried to peer through them into the heart of the flower. But they sent you away; and now your return dazzles me with the brilliance and beauty of the full bloom. This was the past —this is the present!”
And reaching up, the man suddenly snapped off the glowing blossom from the cactus and held it before the girl, close to the pale camellia bud he had plucked before.
She raised her beautiful face, crowned with its halo-like glory of hair, full to him; and the expression it took was graver and more womanly than before. But still no agitation reflected in the candid eyes that looked steadily into his, and the voice, more softly pitched, had no tremor in it, as she answered:
“Please think of me, then, as the child you used to know; never as the débutante who must be fed, à la Bouncey, on the sweets of sentiment.”
“Take sentiment – I mean the higher sentiment, that lifts us sometimes above our baser worldly nature – out of life, and it is not worth the living,” Morris said earnestly. “That man could not understand it any more than he could understand you!”
“Perhaps you are right,” she answered, quietly. “We are too old friends to talk society at each other; and you are so different from him.”
Perhaps Morris was luckier for not replying.
It may be that the Destiny, which, we are told, shapes our ends, did not leave his so rough-hewn as it might have.
He himself could scarcely have told what thoughts were framing themselves in his mind; what words had almost formed themselves on his tongue. There are moments in life, when we live at the rate of hours; and Van Morris was certainly going the pace, mentally, for those ten seconds of silence, before the echo of the girl’s voice ceased vibrating on his ear. He was vaguely conscious, some ten seconds later still, that rarely had a calm, well-posed man of the world found himself quite so dizzy, from combined effects of a quick waltz, a flower-laden atmosphere, and a rounded arm pressing only restfully upon his own.
Suddenly that pressure grew sharp and decided. They stopped abruptly at a sharp turn of the walk.
On a somewhat too small rustic seat, under the fruit-laden boughs of an orange tree, and comfortably screened thereby from the gleam of the tinted lantern, sat Miss Rose Wood and Mr. Andrew Browne.
Their two heads were rather close together; their two hands were suspiciously distant, as though by sudden movement; and the lady’s fan had fallen at her feet, most à propos to the crunch of the gravel, under approaching feet.
But only Blanche – less preoccupied with her thoughts than her companion – had caught the words, “Dismiss carriage – escort home,” before Miss Wood’s fan had happened to drop at her feet.
What there might be in those words to drop the color out of rosy cheeks, or to clench white little teeth hard together, it might well puzzle one to guess. But the face that had not changed under the strong music of Van Morris’s voice, now grew deadly white an instant; then flooded again with surging rush of color.
But very quickly, though with perfect self-possession, Miss Wood had risen and advanced one step, to arrange Blanche’s lace, with the words:
“Your berthé is loose, darling!”
Then, as she inserted the harmless, unnecessary pin, she whispered in the shell-like ear:
“Don’t scold me, loved one! Indeed, I was not flirting. I only came out here to keep him from the —champagne punch!”
Blanche made no reply to this whispered confidence; nor did she seem especially grateful for the grace done to her toilette. She never so much as glanced at Andy Browne. He, also, had risen, after picking up the dropped fan, with not effortless grace; and now stood smiling, with rather meaningless, if measureless, good nature upon the invaders.
And Van Morris was all pose and savoir faire once more. He might have been examining Blanche on her progress in algebra, for all the consciousness in his manner as he complimented Miss Wood on her peculiarly deft management of that dangerous weapon, the pin. But there was no little annoyance in the whispered aside to his friend:
“Don’t drink any more to-night, Andy. Don’t!”
“All right, Van; I promise,” responded the other, with the most beaming of smiles. “Tell you the truth, don’t think I need it. Heat of the room, you know – ”
“And the second pint of Chambertin at dinner,” finished Morris, as Miss Wood – the toilette and her confidence both completed – slipped her perfectly gloved hand into Andy’s arm again.
Precisely, then, three sharp notes of the cornet cut through the stillness under the flowers. It was followed by the indescribable sound, made only by the rush of many female trains towards one spot. Like the chronicled war-horse, Andy shook his mane at the first note; Miss Wood nodded beamingly over her shoulder at the second; and the pair were hastening off by the time the third died away.
Blanche showed no disposition to take the vacated seat.
“The German is forming,” she said, “and I am engaged to that colt-like Mr. Upton.”
Only at the door of the conservatory she paused.
“Does Mr. Browne ever drink too much wine?” she asked abruptly.
Van never hesitated one second. He lied loyally. “Why, never, of course,” he deprecated, in the most natural tone. “With rare exceptions. But what deucedly sharp eyes she has,” he added, mentally, as Mr. Upton informed them that “the bell had tapped,” and took Blanche off.
Almost at the same moment, a waiter rushed by with a wine-cooler and glasses; and he heard the pompous butler direct:
“Set it by Mr. Browne’s chair. He leads in ler curtillyun!”
Morris half started to countermand the order. Then he reconsidered and leaned against the doorway.
“He can’t mean to drink it, after his promise to me,” he thought. “Anyway, he might get something worse. Besides, I am not his guardian; and,” he added very slowly, a strange smile hovering about his lips, “I can scarcely keep my own head to-night.”
Somehow he, best dancer in town as he was, had no partner to-night. The sight before him had no novelty; and Mr. Trotter Upton’s vivacious prancing somewhat irritated him, in spite of the amusement at himself he felt at the sensation.
“Didn’t think I was so far gone as to be jealous of Trotter,” he muttered.
Then he slipped into the hat-room and was quickly capped and cloaked for that precious boon to the bored, the exit sans adieu.
V
It was a raw, searching Christmas morning into which Van Morris stepped, as he softly closed the door of the Allmand mansion and turned up his fur collar against “a nipping and an eager air.”
Even in that fashionable section the streets already showed somewhat of the bustle of the busy to-morrow. Belated caterers’ carts spun by; early butchers’ and milk-wagons rumbled along, making their best speed towards distant patrons. Here and there, gleams from gas-lit windows slanted athwart the frosty darkness, punctuated by ever-recurrent flaring of street lamps. Not infrequent groups of muffled men – some jovial with reminiscent scenes of pleasure left behind, and some hilarious from what they brought along with them – passed him, as he strode rapidly along the echoing flags, too intent on his own thoughts to notice any of them.
Suddenly, from beneath one of the gloom punctuators opposite, a woman’s voice cut the air sharply:
“Please let me pass!”
Morris, alert in a second, had crossed the street and joined the group of four intuitively, before he knew it himself. Three young men, whose evening dress told that they were of society, and whose unsteady hold of their own legs, that they had had just a little too much of it, barred the way of a young girl. Tall, slight, and with a mass of blonde hair escaping from the rough shawl she drew closer about her head as she shrank back, there was something showing through her womanly terror that spoke convincingly the gentlewoman. The trio chuckled inanely, making elaborate bows; and the girl shivered as she shrank further into the shadow, and repeated piteously:
“Do, please, let me pass! won’t you?”
“Certainly they will,” Van answered, stepping up on the pavement and taking her in at a glance. “Am I not right, gentlemen?” he added urbanely to the unsteady trio.
“Not by a damned sight!”
“Who the devil are you?” were the prompt and simultaneous rejoinders.
“That doesn’t matter,” Van answered quietly; “but you are obstructing the public streets and frightening this evident stranger.”
“We don’t know any stranger at two o’clock in the morning,” was the illogical rejoinder of the third youth, who clung to the lamp-post.
“What about it, anyway?” said the stoutest of the three, advancing towards Morris. “Do you know her?”
“You evidently do not,” Van replied; then he turned to the girl with the deference he would scarce have used to the leader of his set. “If you will take my arm, I will see you safely to the nearest policeman.”
The girl hesitated and shrunk back a second; then, with that instinctive trust which – fortunately, perhaps – is peculiarly feminine, slipped her red, ungloved little hand into his arm.
The leader of the trio staggered a step nearer. “You’re a nice masher,” he said thickly; “but if it’s a row you’re looking for, you can find one pretty quick!”
Morris glanced at the man with genuine pity.
“You look as though you might be a gentlemen when you are sober,” he said. “I am not looking for a row; and if you boys make one, you’ll only be more ashamed of yourselves on Christmas day than you should be already. And now I wish to pass.”
“I’ll give you a pass,” the other answered; and, with a lurch, he fronted Morris and put up his hands in most approved fighting form. At the same moment, the girl – with the inopportune logic of all girls in such cases – clung heavily to Morris’s arm and cried piteously:
“Oh, no! You mustn’t! Not for me!” and, as she did so the man lunged a vicious blow with his right hand, full at Morris’s face.
But, though like J. Fitz-James, “taught abroad his arms to wield,” Van Morris had likewise used his legs to wrestle in England, and had moreover seen la savatte in France. With a quick turn of his head, the blow passed heavily, but harmlessly, by his cheek. At the same instant his foot shot swiftly out, close to the ground, and with a sharp sweep from right to left, cut his opponent’s heels from under him, as a sickle cuts weeds, sprawling him backwards upon the pavement.
Drawing the girl swiftly through the breach thus made, Morris placed her behind him and turned to face the men again. They made no rush, as he had expected; so he spoke quickly:
“You’d better pick up your friend and be off. You don’t look like boys who would care to sleep in the station,” he said, “and here comes the patrol wagon.”
They needed no second warning, nor stood upon the order of their going. The downed man was on his feet; and it was devil take the hind-most to the first corner. For the rumbling of heavy wheels and the clang of heavy hoofs upon the Belgian blocks were drawing nearer.
