“Ah!� said Daymond, who had had a passing glimpse of alien cord gaiters reposing before his hall-fire. “Tell him I have taken the answer to his mistress myself.�
And as he spoke he scattered a handful of torn-up squares of paper—the fragments of a letter—in largesse to the night and the gusty weather.
AN ORDEAL BY FIRE
MR. LANTER was bookkeeping clerk in a New York dry-goods store. For his services he was remunerated at the rate of fifteen dollars per week. His bedroom at the boarding house with daily breakfast and three meals on the Sunday, cost him ten dollars; the remaining five supplied all other necessities—fed him at cheap restaurants, dressed him from cheap clothing stores, and allowed him to send a cash bill now and then to his mother, who lived in a New Hampshire village on tea, bread and sauce, wore her hair in looped bell-ropes on either side of her forehead and a rosette behind, and thought her son the most splendid man in the world. But despite heroic efforts, Mr. Lanter had not succeeded in putting by anything against a rainy day. As to marriage, it was not to be dreamt of, which is probably the reason why Mr. Lanter dreamed of it so frequently. But the feminine form that figured in those dreams was not that of a typist, or a sales-lady, or even a chorus-girl or variety artist. Mr. Lanter was a young man with a turn for reading, who regularly spent his Sundays at the Cooper Institute, and he did not feel that he could undertake to do his duty as a husband by anything short of a heroine of romantic classical fiction. He had had imaginary love passages with several of these, both ancient and modern. The Faëry Queen had given him Britomart, and the Volsunga Saga had supplied him with Brunhild. Hypatia’s erudition made her a little alarming, but the affair was pleasant while it lasted; and Iseult was too dark for Mr. Lanter’s taste, but he changed the color of her locks as expeditiously as a French hairdresser, and roamed the forest ways with her more appreciatively than Prosper. Theaters Mr. Lanter did not frequent, because Mrs. Lanter regarded such places as pitfalls dug by the devil for the capture of unwary young America, and he had promised his mother he would not visit them. Indeed, had he been inclined to go back on his word, he could not have afforded to do so. But neither concert-halls, museums, nor circuses figured on Mrs. Lanter’s black list, because she had forgotten to specify them; and one half-holiday Mr. Lanter found himself entering Kneeman’s Star Musée with an order.
The Kneeman Musée is a big, opulent building, with a central dome of colored glass, a gorgeous façade ornamented with groups of sculptured figures and a gilded vestibule where are displayed an array of life-sized photographs and gigantic colored posters illustrating the wonders to be seen within; promising upon this occasion, among other exquisite novelties, the unique whistling entertainment of Madame Smithers, the Kentucky Mocking Bird; the Celebrated Centaur Family, in their feats of Equitation; the Balancing Bonellis, in their electrifying plank-and-ladder interlude; Madame la Comtesse Püspök Ladany, the Beautiful Hungarian (heroine of one of the most sensational European elopements) in her Elegant Effects of Equestrianism upon the highly-trained Arab Maimoun, assisted by Rurik the Gitano, who had the honor, upon the sensational occasion above alluded to, of eloping with Madame la Comtesse. Then came the Mermaids in a Tank Act, and three-inch notes of exclamation clamorously invited attention to the American Girl Giantess, Mademoiselle Minota, nineteen years of age, nine feet in height, weighing four hundred and twenty-six pounds, able to lift a weight of one hundred and forty pounds with one hand.... The remainder of the bill was filled with dwarfs, performing lions, snake-charmers, and ventriloquists.
Mr. Lanter presented nothing remarkable to the ordinary observation. He was fair, undersized, and short-sighted, and the necktie he had chosen was of a vivid salmon-pink, trying to his complexion, which had been injured by overwork and close confinement in a glass counting-hutch lighted by electricity, and heated by steam. He followed his companion, who was a smart, bustling young salesman with a lady-killing reputation, and sporting proclivities; and as he went he smiled a little vaguely, and his mouth was not quite shut, a negligence which deprives the expression of intellectuality. They had fauteuil seats so close to the Ring that their knees rubbed against the low velvet-cushioned barrier that enclosed the sand-strewn space, which seemed to Mr. Lanter to be a brown central-patch, in a gorgeous, multi-colored dream. The dome above, all glass and gilding, the pretty women in the boxes, the perambulating vendors of candy and ices, the orchestra tuning up in a gilded balcony on the left of the stage, the whiffs of menagerie, gas, and stabling which escaped from the coulisses, the people who pushed past into their places, Madame Smithers trilling and piping in emulation of the feathered songsters of American groves, the Centaur Family upon their gaily-trapped steeds, the bursts of applause, the shouts of laughter, were all made of dream-stuff.... But when heavy tableau-curtains rose upon a scene representing a mediæval banqueting-hall, and revealed the American Girl Giantess, throned upon a high seat, arrayed in gilded chain-mail and flowing purple draperies, a sword in her large white right hand, a crimson cloak upon her shoulders and a dragon-crested helm upon her large fair head, the start Mr. Lanter gave would have awakened any ordinary sleeper. But the dream closed in again, as Miss Minota rose, and, bowing to the right, to the left, to the middle, descended the baize-covered staircase which led from the stage to the Ring.... Other spectators saw a young woman monstrously overgrown, with tow-colored hairplaits as thick as coir-cable, and blue eyes as round as silver dollars, who was well-proportioned in her huge way, and who, if looked at through the wrong end of an opera-glass, when divested of her tawdry theatrical trappings, might have appeared an honest, ordinary young person of average good looks. But Mr. Lanter saw a golden roof-ridge and a ring of magic fire roaring up, and the Brunhild of his visions; and breathed hard, and felt a clammy sensation about the palms of the hands, while his heart drummed heavily against the lining of his ready-made waistcoat. He must have been very pale or very purple in the face, for his companion nudged him.
“Guess you’re feeling off color!... Like to get out into the air?... If so, I’ll keep your seat,� he whispered; but Mr. Lanter shook his head.
The band struck up a march, Miss Minota descended into the arena, a voluble gentleman in evening dress, who acted as showman, and, when necessary, as interpreter, walking in the shadow of her elbow. She seemed, indeed, an overwhelming example of feminine physical development as she gravely performed her round, replying in monosyllables to the remarks that were made to her by members of the audience, complying with their expressed desire to shake her enormous hand. Mr. Lanter was hot and cold by turns as her monumental proportions drew nearer; he meant to rise in his place and boldly engage her in conversation; he got as far as getting on his legs. It seemed that the large blue eyes of the giantess dropped upon him inquiringly; he almost fancied her about to pause. But his tongue refused to utter the word which would have arrested her progress.... She swept past, and it was as though the mainsail of a yacht had gone over on the starboard tack, emptying a whole breeze out of an acre of canvas. Another moment and she had ascended to the stage, her draperies of crimson and purple trailing as she went; she had lifted her weights, respectively guaranteed at one hundred and one hundred and forty pounds avoirdupois; she had made her three bows, and the tableau-curtains had descended and closed. Thenceforward Mr. Lanter took no interest in the entertainment. With fishy eyes he sat, retrospective, unobservant; and his companion, the lively Mr. Goter, found him mighty dull.
“Oh, look here!... Say now! what’s up with you?� he protested, as they walked home together through the crowded streets.
The clang of street-car gongs, the intermittent roar and rattle of the elevated railway, mingled with the blare of tin horns, and the clamor of voices. It was hot May weather, and there was a smell upon the languid air that seemed to combine in itself the flavor of rotten fruit, the musky odor of African skins, the pungent acridity of frying oil, and the rankness of coarse tobacco.