“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.
To Van’s relief, for he hated a scene, it proved to be only a “night-liner” cab, though with rattle enough for a field battery; but to his tipsy antagonists it had more terror than a park of Parrot guns.
“Can I do anything more for you?” he asked the girl; then suddenly: “You’re not the sort to be out alone at this hour of the night. Are you in trouble?”
“Oh, indeed I am!” she answered, with a sob; again illogical, and breaking down when the danger was over. “What must you think of me? But mother was suddenly so ill, and father and sister were at a ball, and the servants slipped away, too. I dared not wait, so I ran out alone to fetch Doctor Mordant. Please believe me, for – ”
“Hello, Cab!” broke in Van. “Certainly I believe you,” he answered the girl, as the cab pulled up with that eager jerk of the driver’s elbows, eloquent of fare scented afar off. “I’ll go with you for Doctor Mordant, and then see you home.”
“Why, is that you, Mr. Morris?” cried Cabby, with a salute of his whip à la militaire; but he muttered to himself, “Well, I never!” as he jumped from the box and held the door wide.
“That’s enough, Murphy,” Van said shortly. “Now, jump in, Miss, and I’ll – ” But the girl shrank back, and drew the shawl closer round her face. “No, I won’t either. Pardon my thoughtlessness; for it isn’t exactly the hour to be driving alone with a fellow, I know. But you can trust Murphy perfectly. Dennis, drive this lady to Dr. Mordant’s and then home again, just as fast as your team can carry her!” And he half lifted the girl into the carriage.
“That I will, Mr. Van,” Murphy replied cheerily, as he clambered to his seat.
The girl stretched out two cold, red little hands, and clasped his fur-gloved one frankly.
“Oh! thank you a thousand times,” she said. “I knew you were a gentleman at the first word to those cowards; but I never dreamed you were Mr. Van Morris. I’ve heard sister speak of you so often!”
“Your sister?” Van stared at the cheaply-clad night wanderer, as though he had had too much Regent’s punch.
“Yes, sister Rose – Rose Wood,” she said, with the confidence of acquaintance. “I’m her sister, you know – Blanche.”
“Blanche? Your name is Blanche? I cannot tell you how happy I am to have chanced along just now, Miss Wood;” and Van bared his head in the cutting night wind to the blanket-shawled girl in the night-liner, as he would not have done at high noon to a duchess in her chariot. “But I’m wasting your time from your mother; so good-morning; and may your Christmas be happier than its eve.”
“Good-by! And oh, how I thank you!” the girl said, again extending her hand over the cab door. “I’ll tell Rose, and she shall thank you, better than I can!”
“Good-night! But don’t trouble her,” Van said, releasing the girl’s hand. “One minute, Murphy,” he added aside to the driver; “here’s your Christmas-gift!”
A bright gold piece glinted in the dirty fur glove, in which Dennis Murphy looked to find a shilling under the next gas-lamp.
“Blanche! and the same golden hair, too!” Van muttered to himself, as the cab rocked and ricketted down the street. “Well, I suppose that is what the poet means by ‘the magic of a name’!” and he suddenly recalled that he was still standing bareheaded in the blast. “And Rose Wood’s sister looks like that! Well, verily one half the world does not know how the other half lives!”
Then he turned and strode rapidly homeward; pulling hard, as he thought many strange thoughts, on the dead cigar between his lips.
Once in his own parlor, Van Morris walked straight to the mirror over the mantel, and looked long and steadily at himself. Then he tossed Mr. Allmand’s half-smoked cigar contemptuously into the grate, lit one he selected carefully from the carved stand near, and threw himself into a smoking-chair before the ruddy glow of coals.
“I must be getting old,” he soliloquized. “I didn’t use to get bored so easily by these things. Either balls are not what they were, or I am not. Now, ‘there’s no place like home!’ Not much of a box to call home, either!” And he glanced round the really elegant apartment in half-disgust. “There’s something lacking! Andy’s the best fellow in the world, but he’s so wanting in order. Poor old boy! Wonder if he will drink anything more? I surely must blow him up to-morrow