[CHAPTER II]
TWO LOVELY LADIES
I am trying to give you this story as it opened up step by step before me and around me, not merely as I came to see it afterwards, looking backward. But of course I shall have to select my scenes. The story ran sometimes, like a cryptogram, through other events that seemed at the time to mean something entirely different, and I also did some living and working and thinking along other lines through those days. But these matters I eliminate in telling the tale. They were equally important to me at the time but now they are forgotten, and the links of the story are the only things that stand out in my memory.
Mrs. Whyte's dinner was an important link, but before that there came another incident most significant, as I saw afterwards,--or, rather, two related incidents.
There was an old beggar on the street-corner right across from my office for whom I had an especial affection. Of course he made a show of being a merchant rather than a beggar, by having a tray of cut flowers in summer and hot peanuts in winter and newspapers at all seasons, on a tripod arrangement beside him; and the police knew better than to see if he sometimes held up a wayfarer for more than the price of his wares. I was fond of him because he was so imperturbably cheerful, rain or shine, and so picturesque and resourceful in flattery. He was an old soldier; and one leg that had danced in days agone, and that had most heedlessly carried him to the firing line in half a dozen battles of our own Civil War was buried at Gettysburg. Barney seemed to regard this as a peculiarly fortunate circumstance, since it had made it possible for him to use a crutch. That crutch was a rare and wonderful possession, according to Barney. Hearing him dilate on its convenience and comfortableness, you might almost come to believe that he meant it all.
Well, you'll understand from this that I not only liked but respected Barney, and I usually stopped to get a flower when I passed his stand on leaving my office. On that Monday,--that eventful and ever-to-be-remembered Monday,--I saw as I approached that Barney was holding forth in the spell-binding manner I knew, to another listener,--a young fellow, I thought at first. But as I came up, his listener emptied a chatelaine purse upon Barney's tray, and my surprised glance from the jingling shower of silver to the face of the impetuous donor showed me that it was a young girl,--a gallant, boyish-faced girl, whose eyes were shining into Barney's with the enthusiasm of a hero-worshipper.
"I'll never forget that,--never!" she cried, in a voice thrilled with emotion. "It was great." And on the instant she turned on her heel like a boy and marched off down the street.
I looked at Barney with suspended disapproval, and for once, to do him credit, he looked abashed.
"Faith, and who'd think the chit would have all that money about her and her that reckless in shcattering it about!" he exclaimed. Then, recovering himself, he thrust the coins carelessly in his pocket (perhaps to get them out of my accusing sight) and ran on, confidentially,--
"It's the Lord's own providince that she turned it over to me, instead of carrying it about to the shops where temptation besets a young girl on all sides. It's too full their pretty heads are of follolls and such, for it's light-headed they are at that age, and that's the Lord's truth."