The Brass Bowl

by Louis Joseph Vance

At ten-twenty-two, or in the midst of his admonitions to the janitor, he changed his mind and decided to stay in New York; and instructed the Irishman to bring him a suit-case containing a few necessaries; his intention being to stay out the night at the club, and so avoid the matutinal siege of his lodgings by reporters and detectives.

At ten-forty-five a club servant handed him the card of a representative of the Evening Journal. Maitland directed that the gentleman be shown into the reception-room.

At ten-forty-six he skulked out of the club by a side entrance, jumped into a cab and had himself driven to the East Thirty-fourth Street ferry, arriving there just in time to miss the last train for Greenfields.

Denied the shelter alike of his lodgings, his club, and his country home, the young man in despair caused himself to be conveyed to the Bartholdi Hotel, where, possessed of a devil of folly, he preserved his incognito by registering under the name of "M. Daniels." And straightway retired to his room.

But not to rest. The portion of the mentally harassed, sleeplessness, was his; and for an hour or more he tossed upon his bed (upon which he had thrown himself without troubling to undress), pondering, to no profit of his, the hundred problems, difficulties, and disadvantages suggested or created by the events of the past twenty-four hours.

The grey girl, Anisty, the jewels, himself: unflagging, his thoughts circumnavigated the world of his romance, touching only at these four ports, and returning always to linger longest in the harbor of sentiment.

The grey girl: strange that her personality should have come to dominate his thoughts in a space of time so brief! and upon grounds of intimacy so slender!… Who and what was she? What cruel rigor of circumstance had impelled her to seek a livelihood in ways so sinister? At whose door must the blame be laid, against what flaw in the body social should the indictment be drawn, that she should have been forced into the ranks of the powers that prey—a girl of her youth and rare fiber, of her cultivation, her charm, and beauty?

The sheer loveliness of her, her grace and gentleness, her ingenuous sensitiveness, her wit: they combined to make the thought of her, to him, at least, at once terrible and a delight. Remembering that once he had held her in his arms, had gazed into her starlit eyes, and inhaled the impalpable fragrance of her, he trembled, was both glad and afraid.

And her ways so hedged about with perils! While he must stand aside, impotent, a pillar of the social order secure in its shelter, and see her hounded and driven by the forces of the Law, harried and worried like an unclean thing, forced, as it might be, to resort to stratagems and expedients unthinkable, to preserve her liberty….

It was altogether intolerable. He could not stand it. And yet—it was written that their paths had crossed and parted and were never again to touch. Or was it?… It must be so written: they would never meet again. After all, her concern with, her interest in, him, could have been nothing permanent. They had encountered under strange auspices, and he had treated her with common decency, for which she had repaid him in good measure by permitting him to retain his own property. Their account was even, and she for ever done with him. That must be her attitude. Why should it be anything else?