jjm Ip 
 

 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 EDWIN CORLE 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 JEAN CORLE 

 
 

 
 ramerc\> path 
 
 A STORY OF NEW YORK 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN SEYMOUR WOOD 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 1892
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1892, 
 BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 
 
 PRINTED AT THE 
 APPLETON PRESS, U. S. A.
 
 " Separate what comes ? Fust it s like the 
 circulation of your blood a-stoppin all goes 
 wrong. Then there s misunderstandin sye ve 
 both lost the key. Then, behold ye, there s birds 
 o prey hoverin over each on ye, an it s which II 
 be snapped itp fust. Then, oh dear ! oh dear ! 
 it be like the devil come into the world again." 
 MRS. BERRY, IN RICHARD FEVEREL.
 
 GRAMERCY PARK. 
 
 i. 
 
 ACK DE FORD wandered along 
 the sunny side of Irving Place, 
 northward, until he found him 
 self presently in the maze of 
 Gramercy Park. He was quite early, this 
 bright May morning, and, as he was not 
 required to be at his office before half -past 
 nine, he had determined to take the ele 
 vated at Twenty-third, instead of Fourteenth 
 Street, as was his wont. The high iron 
 fence around the pretty square, and the 
 apparent absence of any entrance or gateway, 
 gave the solitary couple whom he saw walk 
 ing within the enclosure the air of prisoners. 
 He stood a moment gazing absently at the 
 white, pretty fountain in the centre, which 
 gave forth a pleasant musical sound. On 
 either side of the fountain were beds of
 
 ramercg ftarfc. 
 
 brilliant vari-colored tulips. There were 
 comfortable benches along the gravel walks, 
 and the shade-trees were already leaved in a 
 luxuriant green. He quickly made up his 
 mind, so charming was the prison, that he 
 was barred out, rather than that the two 
 people, walking at a distance within, were 
 prisoners in the little park. He divined that 
 the absence of gateways was but a sign of 
 aristocratic exclusiveness. It was too early 
 for nurse-maids and children, too early for 
 the usual policeman. The proinenaders had 
 the place entirely to themselves. They ap 
 proached, around a turn in the gravel-path, 
 the spot where he stood looking through the 
 bars. It appeared that a very handsome 
 young girl was taking her constitutional on 
 the arm of a robust, stout little old gentle 
 man in gray side-whiskers. They walked 
 rapidly, the young girl talking and talking 
 in a high key, very much out of breath, and 
 with cheeks very much flushed. 
 
 De Ford was on his way down town, but he 
 was willing to be late this mild May morn 
 ing, if it cost him a " dock" in his salary. 
 Within the green enclosure of the pretty 
 park was the girl the one girl he loved. 
 He would wait and speak to them. As they
 
 GramercE 
 
 came nearer he could overhear the girl speak 
 in breathless tones : 
 
 "Papa papa! not so fast," she was say 
 ing; "I cannot tell you all I want to say. 
 He he is a connection of the Archibalds, 
 you know, and he 
 
 But they raced past and he could learn no 
 more of what Florence Heath was saying 
 and saying about him, evidently; she Flor 
 ence Heath who had told him so demurely, 
 last evening, at Mrs. Canfield s dancing- 
 class, that she could only be a sister to him. 
 For a moment he meditated how delight 
 ful it would be, if it were possible ! a brave 
 rescue of the charming Florence, and, espe 
 cially of her obdurate papa from their im 
 prisonment. He longed to put that stolid, 
 stout little man under a sense of obligation. 
 He longed to recommend himself in some 
 way to show himself worthy of the girl on 
 the little man s arm ; for he felt assured that 
 it was her father, whose hard heart and sus 
 picious business nature had been the funda 
 mental cause of Florence s forbidding him to 
 " hope." 
 
 He had met the old gentleman at dancing- 
 classes, at balls, at parties; Florence had 
 introduced him when he came, dragon-like,
 
 ramercg parfe. 
 
 at ridiculously early hours to carry her off, 
 protesting and pouting, home. He admitted, 
 however, that her Puritan father was able to 
 preserve thereby in his daughter s face a cer 
 tain sweet grace of health, and a dewy fresh 
 ness of eye, which seemed to be denied to the 
 late stayers. If there was anything that 
 could mitigate his unbearable conduct, it 
 was his quiet, intense love of this same daugh 
 ter which De Ford, very laudably, wished 
 to share with him. 
 
 In the mean time, Florence and her papa 
 had spurted around the little park*, again 
 with marvellous celerity. He fancied they 
 would not see him, as he stood gazing between 
 the iron pickets, in dumb admiration. How 
 sweet she looked! Her large hat with its 
 bright flowers, her dress of pale gray, her 
 indescribable air of fashion foretelling all 
 the glories of summer. She was excited, 
 brilliant, spirituette, and dear to him as her 
 father was repugnant. 
 
 " Confound him!" muttered De Ford, " he 
 doesn t begin to know how lovely she is!" 
 
 And they were still talking of him. It 
 was difficult for him to hide himself; he 
 secretly longed to sink into the earth, and 
 disappear ; but on they came.
 
 " Keally, papa, you do him injustice; he is 
 very well connected the Albany De Fords, 
 you know," cried Florence, her chin in the 
 air. But the rest was silence; Florence s 
 quick eye caught his own; he was conscious 
 of a bow, which he returned, and of a pretty 
 blush, which gave him enormous secret 
 pleasure. He had been but a few months in 
 New York, but he fancied he had been in the 
 city long enough to select the most charm 
 ing girl in it or in the world to whom to 
 pay his devotions. He had met and danced 
 three uimes with her at one of the Patri 
 archs balls, and since that night had found 
 it quite impossible to think of any one else. 
 He had calmly bankrupted his finances in 
 sending her "Jacks." He was prepared to 
 do any foolish thing. As he saw her and 
 her father approach the park-gate, his heart 
 gave a leap of pleasure; something, he knew 
 not what, told him it was to be his lucky 
 day. 
 
 The old gentleman fumbled in one pocket 
 after another his park-key was gone! Flor 
 ence had not seen it. Florence knew noth 
 ing about it. The old gentleman was getting 
 angry. It was De Ford s opportunity. 
 
 However, De Ford may have scrimped and
 
 saved in other ways, he dressed very well in 
 deed ; having his clothes over from London 
 twice a year, by a mysterious tailor s man, 
 who appeared at his office down town, and 
 delivered him his "goods" with a truly 
 romantic smuggler manner. His scarf was 
 dark and in very good tone, and his hat was 
 ever fresh and new. On this sunny May 
 morning, he was particularly well-groomed; 
 he had the consciousness, as he stood there 
 which Emerson tells ns some women have 
 that well-fitting clothes afford, at times, a 
 greater consolation than religion. 
 
 " I must have dropped the key somewhere," 
 cried papa, very much annoyed; "I ll go 
 back and look along the path for it." 
 
 He turned to go as he spoke, but he was 
 by no means intending to leave Florence en 
 tete-a-tete with that good-looking young 
 scapegrace, De Ford of all men and so he 
 added : 
 
 " You go one way, my dear, and I ll go 
 the other; we shall soon find it." 
 
 " Can I be of any assistance?" said De 
 Ford, lifting his hat, and pulling nervously 
 at his long mustache; "I beg of you, let 
 me go and get you a key somewhere 
 
 He was aware that his offer was somewhat
 
 fcarfc. 
 
 vague, but it was the best he could make 
 under the circumstances. 
 
 "Oh, don t trouble yourself, Mr.De Ford; 
 it is it must be in the park some 
 where " 
 
 This was vague, too. But Florence, in 
 spite of the painful dismissal of the evening 
 before, had given De Ford a very charming 
 smile, lie fancied it was a smile of encour 
 agement. It was, indeed, his belief that 
 every woman s "no" meant "yes." He 
 walked slowly along outside the fence, as she 
 walked within it, searching for the lost key, 
 and keeping pace with her. They soon, by 
 this ingenious but simple device, were the 
 entire distance of the park away from papa. 
 
 "Florence! Forgive me but I can t 
 believe that what you said last night on the 
 stairs was final." De Ford spoke in a low 
 voice, and Florence gave an agitated ex 
 clamation. 
 
 " Papa will hear you!" she cried; then she 
 sighed and looked down. 
 
 As papa was at the moment at the other 
 end of the square, he took her words figura 
 tively, as he hoped she intended. 
 
 " Then he shall hear me at once ! I shall 
 go to him now!"
 
 Gramercg iparfc. 
 
 "Mr. De Ford wait!" she said sedately. 
 
 " Come closer the fence, pray do and 
 and let me swear that you are all the world 
 to me ; I did not take for granted what you 
 said last night 
 
 Their eyes met, and all the love in the 
 whole world then seemed to be in them. 
 
 " You know that I cannot live without you 
 that I have been wandering about all night 
 in my mind, I mean hoping expecting 
 to catch sight of you somehow, somewhere. 
 Do, Florence, at least come up to the fence!" 
 
 " I dare not; papa is watching." 
 
 Yet Florence, in spite of the little sign at 
 her feet, "Keep off the Grass," and in spite 
 of all the civil city authorities, with a quick 
 glance papa-ward, and a fluttering of the 
 heart, advanced close very close to the 
 high iron fence, and took his extended hand. 
 
 " Stone walls do not a prison make 
 Nor iron bars a cage !" 
 
 he quoted laughingly. So it s papa, is it, 
 who is so cruel so unkind? Ah, my dar 
 ling, I knew it couldn t be you!" 
 
 He had drawn her gloved hand through 
 the bars, and kissed it. There was no one 
 to be seen not a soul in the street.
 
 (Sramercg 
 
 She tried to withdraw her hand, but he 
 would not let it go. 
 
 " And if you do not love me what do I 
 care what becomes of me? I I will join the 
 army the Salvation Army!" 
 
 "Jack!" It was the first time she had 
 spoken his name, and he said rapturously : 
 
 " Ah ! Then may I not hope?" 
 
 " Oh, it s only papa, it isn t I. He 
 doesn t quite trust you there! I ve said it. 
 Oh, he s looking he s coming!" Her high 
 color was charming just then. She hurried 
 into the gravel path quickly, and began 
 looking for the key. Papa, with what they 
 felt to be a determined, angry stride, was 
 bearing down upon them at a brisk pace. 
 Florence stooped suddenly. 
 
 " Here it is!" she cried; " I ve found it!" 
 
 "Quick! give it to me; I have a plan," 
 De Ford called eagerly. " Quick, before he 
 comes!" 
 
 " I I can t; he will see me." 
 
 "Throw it!" 
 
 She gave one of those tentative, awkward 
 girl throws, so amusing to a man, so exas 
 perating to a woman, and the key fell a few 
 feet within the fence. 
 
 " Go on pretending to search for it, dear,"
 
 10 <3ramercg 
 
 he whispered hoarsely; "I will get it with 
 my stick." 
 
 Florence did as she was told. Just as the 
 old gentleman came up, a few moments later, 
 the key was safe in Jack s waistcoat pocket, 
 and he was soberly giving directions to Flor 
 ence where he believed the little article 
 would be most likely to be found in the 
 path. 
 
 "Very awkward!" exclaimed Mr. Heath, 
 full of vexation and heat. " Here it is 
 nearly ten o clock! I must be going down 
 town. Of course, there isn t a policeman 
 in sight. I wonder where I dropped it. It 
 is abominably provoking. I don t know 
 what to do how to get out!" 
 
 " Can t I be of some assistance now?" Do 
 Ford lifted his hat again with exaggerated 
 civility. 
 
 " Oh er really locked in prisoners, 
 you see!" laughed papa dismally, and trying 
 his best to pass it off as a joke. 
 
 " I am fortunately acquainted with several 
 people in the neighborhood who have keys, 
 and, while I go in search of one, permit me 
 to offer you a cigar, sir." De Ford boldly 
 reached his hand through the fence. " And 
 here s the morning paper, sir ; I was just read-
 
 <3ramercB parfe. 
 
 ing an interesting article about the public 
 necessity of raising the tariff still higher on 
 Russian leather ; let me advise you to take a 
 seat on a bench, and wait for me." 
 
 "Ah, yes, thanks very much. I m sure 
 you re very kind, indeed." 
 
 The old gentleman looked a trifle sur 
 prised, but took the paper and cigar, and 
 sauntered off to a bench. 
 
 " I shan t be long," said De Ford. lie 
 hurried away, really for the purpose of inter 
 cepting the park policeman, who was com 
 ing up the street with an apple and orange 
 in either hand, and a gate-key, of course, in 
 his pocket. 
 
 " Here s a dollar for you, officer, if you 
 will kindly walk once more around the 
 block." 
 
 "What s up?" 
 
 "Xothing; only as a favor to me that s 
 all;" and lie crammed the crisp note into the 
 policeman s hand. Florence, whose quick 
 eyes discovered the stratagem, kept her 
 father in conversation. 
 
 " Oh ! he admires you so much, papa he s 
 heard so much about you! And you don t 
 know how hard-working he is; but he says 
 he hasn t your capacity and he s a connec-
 
 12 OramercB frarfc. 
 
 tion of the Archibalds, you know, and he 
 says it is true, papa that when his grand 
 father dies " 
 
 " Florence, I ve told you a dozen times he 
 hasn t a dollar in the world no, nor a cent 
 but I must say he can be very civil. Most 
 young men nowadays don t know how to 
 be polite to their elders. Ahem ! Yes, very 
 interesting article on Russia-leather." And 
 the old gentleman adjusted his spectacles on 
 his nose and fell to reading. 
 
 " Mr. De Ford is so interested in leather," 
 said Florence in a small half-whisper. Her 
 father paid no attention to her ; he had lit 
 the cigar (a far better one than he ever 
 afforded), and was feeling very comfortable, 
 indeed, in the cool, delicious morning air of 
 the park, amid the tulips. 
 
 " He says he is very lonely in New York ; 
 he has no place to go to no house he can 
 call his home;" and she sighed. 
 
 "Let him join a club," said the old gen 
 tleman gruffly. 
 
 " Oh, yes, but he says they drink wine in 
 clubs;" and Florence Heath looked down to 
 hide her guilty smile. 
 
 "Hum! hum! so they do," muttered her 
 father; "let him join a church, then."
 
 ramercp jparfe. 13 
 
 " But he says there are so many 
 churches 
 
 " Many humbugs ! Every one knows Dr. 
 Surplice is the only real orthodox preacher 
 in New York. Let him go there." 
 
 "He does go there now he s so devout; 
 but he says his mother died when he was but 
 a year old, and his religious instruction has 
 been wofully neglected. Papa, shall I ask 
 him to come home with us?" She looked 
 away. Where was Jack? 
 
 " Certainly not ! The idea ! This time 
 of day!" 
 
 " But it s so kind of him to get the key 
 for us 
 
 " Yes, but he s slow enough getting it, in 
 all conscience!" 
 
 Although her back was turned, she knew 
 Jack had appeared again. 
 
 "Oh, here he is at last!" she cried, and 
 rose briskly. Do Ford, who had been hiding 
 around the corner, now hastened forward on 
 u run. (He was a clever amateur actor, much 
 admired as Romeo in the burlesque at 
 Harvard, in the Pudding, in 84.) He pre 
 sented the outward aspect of a man who has 
 nearly run a desperate race for twenty blocks. 
 
 "Oh, no trouble at all," he cried breath- 
 2
 
 14 (Sramercg parfc. 
 
 lessly; "very glad to be of service;" and he 
 swung the iron gate open with a flourish, 
 and Florence and her papa passed out into 
 the street. Florence gave him a sweet little 
 glance. "Ah, del! I am free once more," 
 she laughed; and De Ford replied, under the 
 very nose of papa : 
 
 " You know you never said a wickeder fib 
 in your life!" 
 
 Papa looked mystified. The badinage of 
 young people, nowadays! 
 
 " But isn t there such a thing in law as 
 duress?" she laughed; "you had me under 
 lock and key!" 
 
 Papa looked more mystified than ever; he 
 sailed away with Florence on his arm, then 
 turned : 
 
 "Oh! De Ford, come around some night 
 and smoke a cigar with me; do you play 
 bezique?" 
 
 And Jack went down town with a light 
 heart. It was his lucky day.
 
 II. 
 
 FORTNIGHT later and John 
 Shermerhorn De Ford was sol 
 emnly, truly, unalterably, and 
 for all time engaged. He bor 
 rowed some money of a friend, and bought an 
 expensive ring at Sparcus ; a pretty thing in 
 diamonds and rubies. They were engaged; 
 but papa, who was a stern old Puritan New 
 Englander, made conditions. He was obdu 
 rate ; he was relentless ; he drew up a long 
 paper, which De Ford gladly signed. Poor 
 fool ! he was happy enough to sign a prom 
 issory note! The conditions were many. 
 The engagement was not to be announced ; 
 there was always to be a " discreet" third 
 person in the room. He might call Monday, 
 and Thursdays from 8 to 10 P.M. Florence 
 could only wear the ring in private. Papa 
 reserved the right to break the affair sharp 
 off at any time. Papa reserved a great many 
 other things; they must not call each other 
 by their first names ; if they went to parties 
 15
 
 16 (Sramercp parfc. 
 
 they could only dunce twice together, etc., 
 etc. 
 
 They each signed the formal " terms " of 
 the engagement, and secretly swore to be 
 true, even if papa should put the world be 
 tween them. Ah, there never were before 
 or since such lovers as these ! 
 
 Mrs. Heath was a mild, sweet-natured lit 
 tle woman, of highest family connections, 
 wh was completely under her husband s 
 and every one else s thumb. She signified 
 her " discreetness" by regularly going to sleep 
 on Monday and Thursday evenings, when 
 De Ford, with his usual bunch of jack-roses, 
 called upon his fiancee in rigid accordance 
 with the "terms." It may be said that, at 
 those times, some of papa s rules were un 
 doubtedly infringed ; but, when he happened 
 in, Jack was always reading aloud, in a sol 
 emn, dreary tone of voice, that dullest of 
 all dull tales, " Tlilliard s History of the 
 United States." Papa began to believe that 
 he had made a most desirable choice of a 
 son-in-law. 
 
 Meanwhile De Ford worked very hard 
 down-town, in the large banking and brok 
 ers office he was in, on Wall Street. lie 
 added columns of uninteresting figures, ran
 
 (Bramercg ipmrfc. 17 
 
 with messages over to the Stock Exchange, 
 and made himself generally useful in talking 
 to customers over the "tape." No one can 
 ever know, or begin to know, of the life 
 dramas of these myriad pale, hard-worked, 
 well-dressed, sad young men on Wall Street. 
 De Ford had gone through his four years 
 at Harvard sublimely indifferent to what 
 his circumstances were to be afterward. He 
 had belonged to the Banjo Club, the Varsity 
 Nine, the "Dicky," and the Pudding, and 
 that was enough. Just a year after he had 
 left college, and was in Paris he had been 
 at the opera with some friends, one night 
 he received a telegram from his father to 
 return home at once. When he arrived at 
 New York, he found that ho would be 
 obliged to work for a living, that his 
 father s fortune had melted away. Shortly 
 after, his father died, overwhelmed by his 
 disastrous failure. Poor Jack, as unfit for 
 battling with fate and earning his own 
 living as the pleasant, easy, social life of a 
 great university could make him, came down 
 to Wall Street very blue and miserable to 
 begin work. As time went on, however, he 
 got over the feeling. His naturally light 
 and buoyant nature asserted itself. He went
 
 18 6ramerc ftarfc. 
 
 a little into society. He met the pretty 
 Miss Heath there were many contretemps; 
 and now, as we have seen, he was " condi 
 tionally" engaged. 
 
 He had a bright, quick mind, and he 
 " took" very well in Branscomb, Beach, & 
 Catherly s. The patrons of the firm con 
 ceived a fancy for " young De Ford." " He 
 had most admirable manners." They said: 
 " Poor chap he had been brought up like 
 a prince!" They rather petted him, took 
 him out to expensive lunches at Del s and 
 Saverin s, where he amused them with his 
 capital stories; they gave him fine cigars, 
 asked his advice about " C. K., and K. C.," 
 and other mysterious western railways, and 
 urged him to set up an office for himself. 
 He felt himself constantly touching millions, 
 and in debt to his landlady at his boarding- 
 house. It was a most peculiar life he began 
 to lead: a life of unsubstantial brilliancy, 
 dining with some rich friends at Delmonico s, 
 sending the charming Florence a box of 
 roses, and, next day, walking up and down 
 town to save car-fare, or bargaining with 
 his landlady to let his bill run over a week 
 longer. His mind was full of gorgeous vis 
 ions of enormous wealth, and his happiest
 
 10 
 
 moments with Florence were spent in plan 
 ning a rational outlay of their expected ten 
 thousand a year. 
 
 But at last, after a time, his prospects act 
 ually began to change for the better. Brans- 
 comb died went off in a sudden apoplexy 
 one day, on the floor of the Stock Exchange, 
 and there was a change in the firm. Every 
 one in the office moved up a peg; the firm 
 became, "Beach, Catherly, & De Ford." 
 In honor of the event, Florence was allowed 
 to give a dinner and theatre-party, at which 
 their engagement was announced. Catherly, 
 a fat, good-natured millionaire, swore that 
 his junior should be married at once, and 
 made it a personal matter to see papa and 
 talk him over. Mr. Heath was obstinate, 
 however. 
 
 "Wait, "he said, cautiously, "you Wall 
 Street men have many ups and clowns; it 
 isn t a legitimate business; it isn t leather; 
 it isn t even coffee or flour or sugar. It s bet 
 ting and gambling that s what it is; if you 
 bet right, you win, that s all. My future 
 son-in-law is a gentleman I don t say he 
 isn t; but he and Florry are both young; 
 they can wait a year or two. See how kind 
 I am! I have removed several conditions;
 
 frarfc. 
 
 De Ford can now call on either of the fol 
 lowing nights, to wit (and he took out a 
 small memorandum-book) : in addition to 
 Mondays and Thursdays, he may now call 
 Wednesdays and Fridays; he may also come 
 to Sunday-night tea; he may see Florry on 
 Mondays, alone a great concession, Mr. 
 Catherly for it means, Mr. Catherly, as 
 you and I know, for we are both married 
 men, and went through, I dare say, the ex 
 periences of courtship it means, I fear, a 
 respectful kiss." 
 
 " Why, of course it does!" roared jolly old 
 Catherly. " Why shouldn t they? A hand 
 some young chap, and the sweetest girl in 
 the world! By heaven, sir, she s exquisite 
 she s a beauty!" 
 
 " But it s all very well but 
 
 "I don t want to hear of any buts and 
 concessions ; I want you to let them get mar 
 ried; we shall see that De Ford will have 
 five thousand a year; he s worth it; he s a 
 valuable man; he makes friends easily; he 
 brings them into the office 
 
 "I wish he was in leather," grumbled the 
 crusty old merchant thoughtfully. " It is 
 so much steadier." 
 
 " Well, he isn t; he s going to be a wealthy
 
 ramercs fcarfe. 21 
 
 banker; he s going to be a man you ll be 
 proud to call your son-in-law!" And Cath- 
 erly, with the utmost good-nature, talked at 
 the old gentleman so cleverly and so well 
 that he got him to say they should be mar 
 ried a year from that day " conditionally."
 
 Ill, 
 
 YEAR from that day rolled quick 
 ly round. It was again one of 
 those bright, sunny mornings in 
 May. The tulips were out once 
 more in Gramercy Park. It was now two 
 years since De Ford had so gallantly rescued 
 his lovely fiancee and her father from their 
 dire imprisonment. The pretty little en 
 closure, with its high iron fence the bright 
 est spot in all the great dull Xew York 
 seemed to gleam with unusual lustre. It 
 was high noon; there were sounds of wed 
 ding-bells in the air, coming high and clear 
 from the city spires of old St. George s; 
 there was happiness and jollity in all the 
 faces one saw; the park policeman had 
 donned new white gloves, and wore a white 
 favor; there was an awning stretching out 
 to the curb from the wide, old-fashioned 
 brown-stone house of Mr. Heath. There 
 were crowds of children and nurses, and 
 street-gamins; and, best of all, there was poor 
 22
 
 0ramerc fcarfc. 23 
 
 old Mrs. Jones, whom Florence had time to 
 be so kind to, and old Mrs. Murphy from her 
 " district," too, all standing there in the sun 
 shine, looking for the bride to return from 
 church. 
 
 Presently the carriages. The children 
 gave a shout. The first drove up to the 
 curb. 
 
 "Be careful, Jack my train!" and out 
 stepped De Ford, hale and handsome; and 
 see how tenderly he helped his young wife 
 alight! Then oh, dreadful fate of these 
 two young people out stepped papa! For 
 some reason papa looked unhappy and dis 
 turbed. He hurried up after the bride and 
 groom, and then the carriages, one after the 
 other, deposited the guests for the wedding- 
 breakfast. 
 
 There was Catherly, resplendent in his 
 English morning-suit, and Beach, the head 
 of the firm, with a gorgeous button-hole bou 
 quet; there were loads of pretty girls, for 
 Florence was extremely popular; crowds of 
 Jack s Harvard classmates, for he was fond 
 of his friends; and the music from out the- 
 open windows made the park policeman 
 guess as they d be dancin ." 
 
 Bid papa looked on askance I He was now
 
 24 ramercg fcarfc. 
 
 a father-in-law; true, but did his preroga 
 tives cease from this day? Must he, for 
 sooth, now hand over his sceptre? Mind 
 you, it was his only daughter his only child 
 whom he had just given away " condition 
 ally ; " and he loved her as the apple of his 
 eye! Yes, " conditionally!" He had under 
 stood that Jack would come, after a reasonable 
 wedding-journey, and live with them on 
 Gramercy Park with his wife; it was under 
 stood, but not agreed, for no words had 
 passed. 
 
 But now Jack his son-in-law, had put 
 his foot down. It came like a thunder-bolt! 
 Mr. and Mrs. De Ford intended to live in 
 an apartment paid for out of Jack s own 
 income; they had actually picked it out 
 up-town, on the West side! 
 
 Papa realized that this was simply flat re 
 bellion, and something must needs be done 
 about it at once. There was the great broad 
 house on Gramercy Park, with its bay-win 
 dows, its comfortable old-fashioned belong 
 ings, which would simply be empty without 
 Florence and her friends. Why, he would 
 never have thought of giving his consent had 
 the idea entered his head that his daughter 
 his only daughter meditated such unfilial
 
 <3ramerc parfe. 25 
 
 conduct. Go away from the family roof-tree, 
 and live alone with her husband? Prepos 
 terous ridiculous! He would put his foot 
 down, too. 
 
 After the elaborate wedding-breakfast 
 there came a crowded reception; and when 
 the bride, in her dainty gray travelling-dress 
 and little hat trimmed with flowers, went 
 out the door on Jack s arm the old shoes 
 and showers of rice, and " God bless you s," 
 and hurrahs, were enough to set the whole 
 park agog. "Ah, God bliss her!" cried old 
 Mrs. Murphy. " The prettiest bride the sun 
 ever shone on so she is ! God bliss her, f er 
 she s twict as good as she s purty so she 
 is!"
 
 IV. 
 
 were not obliged to actually 
 engage their apartment until the 
 fall, and they made up their 
 minds to spend the summer at 
 some quiet little place in close proximity to 
 10 o clock at Wall Street. They would be 
 gin their married life, not in conformity 
 with the general rule for the summer months 
 which prevailed among most of their friends, 
 i. <?., a limited divorce they would never be 
 separated ; and, indeed, they all spent a very 
 pleasant summer together in a cottage at 
 Sea Bright, and papa was as mild and reason 
 able as possible ; for, so far, all went as papa 
 wished. 
 
 But, unfortunately, late September came, 
 and September fogs, and with them the ne 
 cessity of coming back to town. 
 
 His father-in-law was a man of resources, 
 and, for that matter, so was De Ford. Each 
 had quietly gone about his plans. Papa se 
 cretly redecorated the interior of the Gram- 
 26
 
 ff>arfc. 27 
 
 ercy Park house in most sumptuous style. 
 The third floor was hung in satin and tapes 
 try and embossed in stamped leather from 
 his own tanneries. Florry s sitting-room 
 was made a charming, fascinating chamber, 
 all in ivory white, with an exquisite old fau- 
 teuil in imitation of one in an old French 
 chateau, and in yellow tiles from Holland. 
 The windows were changed into little dia- 
 mond-paned casements, and looked out on 
 the greenery of the pretty park as from some 
 lordly castle upon its demesne. There were 
 rugs from Samarcand and furniture from 
 Gerter s. He gave his decorator carte blanche. 
 Poor man, he was not the first to be cap 
 tured by a decorator ! The whole house was 
 changed into the most artistic and delightful 
 interior. He spent a fortune on his oak 
 dining-room, with tall gothic chairs from 
 old Provence. Jack, on the other hand, 
 made secret visits to the twelve-storied apart 
 ment, the" Senegambia," on upper Broadway 
 and Central Park. He met Florence, as it 
 were, by stealth, and they had the most 
 delightful days in town together in hot 
 August (when nobody but poor lonely club 
 and business men remained in New York), 
 purchasing cheap furniture on Fourteenth
 
 28 <3ramercg iparfc. 
 
 Street. In a Aveek or two the little flat 
 was furnished from parlor to kitchen ; 
 brand new beds, brand new chairs, new 
 carpets, new brooms, new frying-pans. 
 What fun it was to cheapen flat-irons, 
 and get ice picks at a reduction too, be 
 cause they took a dozen of them ! If papa 
 went up to town by boat they went by rail, 
 and vice versa. He never found them out. 
 They were too busy to discover what he was 
 about. They bought a most remarkable din 
 ner-set, and decorated their parlor with the 
 pictures Jack had in his rooms at Harvard ; 
 and when everything Avas done and all was 
 ready, they said : " Of course when papa sees 
 how lovely it is, he will yield." 
 
 And papa, at Gramercy Park, surveying 
 his (decorator s) superb exhibition of art and 
 taste, said: 
 
 " Oh, of course there will be no trouble 
 about it when they see what I have done for 
 them." 
 
 And so the eventful day came at last when 
 they moved back to town.
 
 V. 
 
 IS father-in-law was even willing to 
 make great concessions. He had 
 pondered the matter long, and he 
 was even prepared, de minimis 
 non curat, to yield the head of the table. 
 They came up to town by the Long Branch 
 boat that last day of their vacation and, 
 as they sat out on deck, and the goddess of 
 Libert} r hove in sight on the port bow, he 
 said, after a little cough, and laying down 
 his morning paper: 
 
 " Jack, I feel I am getting old 
 " Oh, not at all, sir not at all," said De 
 Ford quickly. 
 
 " Y-a-as I m getting old. I ve seen my 
 best days, Jack ; I want you to sit at the head 
 
 of the table 
 
 Florence was breathless with agitation; 
 was Jack going to be "firm" noio, or what? 
 Would there be a scene? 
 
 " I will not permit it sir," said Jack; then 
 he added, " There shall be two tables yours 
 and mine." 
 
 3 29
 
 30 (Sramercg 
 
 " Oh, no we shall live together ; but you 
 must carve." 
 
 De Ford s face grew pale with decision: 
 
 " Father we I -- " But Florence, sit 
 ting behind her papa, gave a gesture, and 
 he paused. 
 
 ""Women are so indirect!" he thought 
 vexedly. She got him away by himself. 
 
 " Oh, not yet, Jack dear wait let us go 
 home at first then we can break it to them 
 gently after a day or tAvo Jack -- She 
 hesitated a moment ; then began again," Dear, 
 home means so much to them ! It is every 
 thing. Somehow, Jack, even the Senegam- 
 bia doesn t seem like home. There are peo 
 ple playing a piano overhead, and there is a 
 lady who sings just beneath. It s very pretty 
 and nice but it s like being in some public 
 building --- " 
 
 " But isn t it home where 7 am?" 
 
 "Yes but -- " 
 
 " But what? How are homes ever made? 
 A man and wife should be pioneers should 
 begin life alone, together on their own plan 
 tation." 
 
 " But the Senegambia isn t even a planta 
 tion it seems like a great hotel." 
 
 Then she added, after a little pause:
 
 (BramercE fcarfc. 31 
 
 "It isn t quite home!" 
 
 And his wife pleaded so sweetly, that De 
 Ford merely muttered, "Oh, hang it!" and 
 then smiled. 
 
 Now the old lady, though a very quiet and 
 oft-times sleepy old lady, was the dearest old 
 lady in the world and no fool. De Ford 
 led Florence away to the bow of the boat, to 
 talk the affair over, and mamma leaned over 
 her husband. 
 
 "Mr. Heath James!" 
 
 " Well, Matilda, what is it?" 
 
 Mrs. Heath looked very wise. " I know 
 their secret." 
 
 Papa began to have delightful visions. 
 He turned a cheerful lobster red in con 
 sequence. 
 
 " No not that 
 
 " Well, what is it?" 
 
 " They have taken a flat and they ve fur 
 nished it!" 
 
 Papa rose to his feet, astounded. 
 
 "No, I ll not believe it of them! That 
 would be treason !" He could think of no 
 other more appropriate term. 
 
 " They have, and I know where it is in 
 the Senegambia. I found a bill of their fur 
 niture!"
 
 32 <3ramerc parfc. 
 
 "Well well well!" said the old gentle 
 man unsteadily; " can it be possible? Florry 
 leave her home? I ll not believe it and 
 / // not have it!" He struck his fist heavily 
 on the handrail of the steamer. 
 
 " James, you must ! I was born in the old 
 house iu Second Avenue, and you took me 
 away, James yes, you did." 
 
 " But there were three of you Florry is 
 our only one. I ve set my heart on her liv 
 ing in the old house on the Park; and when 
 the children come, Matilda, and we grow 
 old, we can sit and watch them at play from 
 our window." 
 
 He fairly trembled with disappointment; 
 his wife was all excitement too. To these 
 two old people, their daughter was ever a 
 young child. 
 
 " I have a plan," said mamma; " they shall 
 live in the old house, and you shall see." 
 But as Jack returned with Florence just 
 then, her voice sank into a whisper which 
 papa alone could hear.
 
 VI. 
 
 ;E FORD agreed with his wife to 
 postpone actually going to the 
 Senegamhia until the next day. 
 He went to his office from the 
 boat, and as the market was exceedingly 
 active it generally is in September, when 
 the brokers are only too anxious to be in the 
 country the smart office-boy had some reason 
 for hoisting above his desk in the outer office 
 the placard, 
 
 "THIS is OUR BUSY DAY!" 
 De Ford was kept very late over his books, 
 and did not arrive at the old house in Gram- 
 ercy Park until six o clock. He took the 
 elevated train at Hanover Square, and came 
 up town, crushed and jammed amid a band 
 of Italian brigands and German peasants, and 
 holding on for dear life to the strap. When 
 he arrived at Twenty-third Street, he was in 
 no very enviable frame of mind. He wished 
 he had decided the matter in the morning, 
 and had it over with. He wished, too, that 
 8 33
 
 34 (Sramercg f>arfc. 
 
 Florry had more decision of character. Of 
 course it was best for them to live independ 
 ently in their own apartment, with their 
 own things around them. De Ford had a 
 great fund of honest pride, and he did not 
 want to have it said on Wall Street that he 
 was living, as the saying is, " on the old 
 man." During the summer he had seen 
 more of his father-in-law than ever before; 
 and, to tell the truth, he admitted to him 
 self that the old gentleman was at heart a 
 good fellow. It began to dawn on the clever 
 young man that the intensest love of their 
 daughter animated almost everything that 
 the old couple said and did. Jack and his 
 father-in-law often sat out late, while the 
 moon danced over the sea, and every one else 
 had gone in, smoking and talking of Florry. 
 They both loved the sweet young girl-wife, 
 and they could talk over what she said and 
 did without a jealous pang. She was blithe, 
 gay, impulsive, charming. Papa told of what 
 she said as a two-year-old; of her running 
 away when only three, escaping out of the 
 open front-door, carelessly left ajar, and how 
 after hours of the most terrible anxiety, she 
 was brought back to the old house, chatter 
 ing and laughing in the arms of a Park
 
 ramercg parfe. 35 
 
 policeman. De Ford thought of this as he 
 mounted the steps and groped for the usual 
 door-bell. He was rather surprised to note 
 the new and elaborate oaken door, and the 
 half-windows of rich stained glass. He 
 pressed the button and the servant opened 
 the door, and ushered him into a most gor 
 geous hallway. It certainly was not his 
 father-in-law s. 
 
 " I I must have made a mistake in the 
 number; is this is this Mr. Heath s?" He 
 believed he had gone up the wrong high 
 stoop. " No, this is Mr. De Ford s, sir," and 
 the man, dressed in subdued livery, bowed re 
 spectfully. He did not catch the name dis 
 tinctly, and turned to go. Just then he 
 heard ringing laughter, and his wife came 
 running out of the reception room; she 
 threw herself into his arms tumultuously and 
 kissed him. 
 
 " It is all a surprise and papa has done 
 it all for us from garret to cellar it has 
 all been done by Gerter and now" (she be 
 came suddenly serious) " we, must leave it 
 all 1 
 
 "Yes, "he said. She looked down and 
 her face fell. 
 
 " And Jack Jack ! you should see the
 
 36 <3ramercB 
 
 dearest little sitting-room for me upstairs 
 and everything!" 
 
 It only made De Ford the more deter 
 mined. The very lavishness of the display 
 of wealth on either hand affected him dis 
 agreeably. Ha hadn t paid for it. He 
 hadn t any right to live in it. His father s 
 failure and his struggle for independence 
 had eaten its way into his character, and 
 made him rather hard and insistent upon 
 certain things. He resolved to take his wife 
 away at once; he wished she did not have 
 a cent in the world. 
 
 " Come, Florry, let us go now imme 
 diately, before we have to have a scene ; I am 
 tired I don t feel like a row just now. 
 Let s go off to the Senegambia , and leave 
 a note for them. Come, dear, let us slip 
 away; it s all very kind, no doubt, to do all 
 this for us; and, I must say, the old house 
 looks like a palace ; but we must not yield 
 we ve talked the matter over again and again, 
 and every time come to the same conclusion ; 
 we ve bought our furniture; everything is 
 awaiting us -- " 
 
 " But Jack, dear, the china is all Sevres," 
 she whimpered. 
 
 " I don t care if it s gold."
 
 (Bramercg fl>arfc. 37 
 
 " But the dinner is waiting papa and 
 mamma are both out. Wait till they come 
 in, dear, won t you? Don t let us be rude." 
 Florence was fluttering about like some wild 
 wood bird caught in his hand, and held 
 against her will. 
 
 " No, darling. " He gave her a determined 
 look, and she wilted beneath it and grew 
 docile. But presently she fell to crying on 
 his shoulder. 
 
 " Jack Jack," she said, " they love me so !" 
 
 Poor De Ford was touched ; there was an 
 other aspect of the case which, indeed, was 
 rather pathetic. The old house, with its 
 modern luxury and grandeur, would be 
 empty and dull enough now without its 
 brightest jewel. The exquisite young bride 
 was more fitted to Gramercy Park than to 
 the modest flat in the Senegambia. Had 
 he, after all, the right to take the jewel out 
 of its setting? But he put these ideas far 
 from him as "sentimental." 
 
 " Come, Florry, let us hasten think what 
 jolly fun it will be (by Jove! what a mag 
 nificent portiere!) Get your hat, dearest; 
 and remember, if we make a stand now it 
 will make us feel so much more er more 
 well, noble ; we shall be independent."
 
 38 GramercE fcarfc. 
 
 " But I don t want to be independent of 
 mamma." 
 
 However, in a moment more Florence, 
 tearful, yet appreciating the highly credit 
 able instinct of her husband, clung to his 
 arm, and they were quickly on their way to 
 their own little home. She felt that what 
 they were doing was splendidly heroic. 
 
 "After all," whispered Jack, "it s only 
 giving up the unearned increment! 
 
 "What s that, Jack?" she asked inno 
 cently; but he only kissed her, and they 
 closed the fine glass door tragically behind 
 them.
 
 VII. 
 
 was heroic, and, too, it was such 
 fun! It was an escapade, an 
 elopement. They stopped and 
 had a little dinner at a famous 
 restaurant to emphasize it, before going on 
 to the Senegambia. Jack was so jolly! 
 Florence dried her tears in very dry cham 
 pagne, and drowned her filial repentance in 
 Jack s proud sense of honor. If she felt 
 guilty it was just enough to add a spice 
 and tinge the affair with interest. Thoughts 
 of poor papa and mamma coming home and 
 expecting to find them admiring the new 
 interior, and only pleading to be allowed to 
 remain there always did occasionally flit 
 across her mind; she knew it was very, very 
 unkind. But, then, going up in the hansom 
 about the southwest corner of Fortieth Street, 
 on the avenue, just past the dull lamp-post, 
 Jack took her in his arms and kissed her 
 and she she forgot it! 
 
 The Senegambia rose like an enormous 
 39
 
 40 Oramercg 
 
 tower full twelve stories into the air, front 
 ing on upper Broadway. The entrance was 
 very ornate and elegant, with a variety of 
 stained glass, and polished granite. The 
 hallway was brilliant with electric lights. 
 The door stood open, and the elevator-boy 
 leaned wearily against the side of the car as 
 they entered and requested to be lifted to 
 the tenth story. 
 
 " They s two folks gone up there already," 
 said the boy drowsily. 
 
 "Why, who can they be?" queried Flor 
 ence. 
 
 " Old lady and old gent. Tween you n 
 me, mum, they seemed to want to keep it on 
 the dead quiet, too." 
 
 " Why, it can t be papa?" she glanced at 
 her husband. 
 
 The elevator rose to the floor, and they got 
 out. They softly let themselves in their flat. 
 Here and there in the cosey little parlor were 
 pieces of new furniture done up in gunny 
 cloth. They heard voices in the dining- 
 room, and tiptoed out along the narrow hall 
 way, and hid behind the door, peeping in. 
 There was papa, his coat off, bustling about, 
 and making a salad; and there was mamma, 
 her skirt pinned up to her waist, running in
 
 park. 41 
 
 and out of the snug little kitchen, laughing 
 and going on like a young girl. She was 
 broiling a steak herself and making coffee. 
 They seemed as happy as two children, and 
 what? Papa actually caught hold of mamma, 
 and gave her a hearty kiss on her ruddy 
 cheek. They were a picture of a modern 
 Darby and Joan. 
 
 " Oh, it is so like old times!" said mamma, 
 thinking of her girlhood when Mr. Heath 
 and she first set up housekeeping. " And if 
 they do not want us, James, then why should 
 we keep the great old house, now so grand and 
 fine, for us old folk?" 
 
 "Old folk! I like that!" cried papa, "I 
 feel as young as as -- " 
 
 Papa could think of no adequate simile, 
 but finally admitted that it was a daisy, or 
 perhaps a sunflower of some kind. 
 
 " And when they find that we have stolen 
 a march on them, and that we mean to give 
 them the old house on Gramercy Park for 
 them alone and that we won t live there, 
 and we won t go there often except once in 
 a while James, I must I must see Florry 
 once a week then how glad they ll be!" 
 
 "Yes, how glad they ll be," echoed papa, 
 rather dolefully. " The old house is too big
 
 42 (Bramercg 
 
 for us entirely. We don t need so much 
 room; they do they must entertain. I want 
 Jack, as he grows older, to be the biggest 
 magnate on Wall Street, and he will be in 
 time. Oh, how pleased they will be when 
 they see all I ve done for them, and how I ve 
 fixed up the old place and all ; and, Matilda, 
 Jack s right quite right. It s better to 
 live alone we like it, don t we? only only! 
 But there! now your steak is burning!" 
 
 Mamma gave a cry and ran out into the 
 kitchen, and then soon reappeared, laughing, 
 with the steak and colfee, and Darby and 
 Joan sat down to their dinner. They talked 
 of the old days, so long ago in Second Ave 
 nue; they talked of Florence of her sweet 
 babyhood and childhood ; they spoke of their 
 son who died that Jack had taken his place. 
 They seemed to think only of their children 
 their two children. 
 
 Florence stood leaning against the door 
 way ; she was perfectly motionless, only the 
 tears rolled down one by one. Jack had 
 hold of her soft, warm hand. 
 
 "Come, dear," he whispered, fearing she 
 was about to speak ; " leave them alone, bless 
 them ! They are so happy and papa has 
 
 won!
 
 (BramercE fl>arft, 43 
 
 She gave him a quick, bright glance. 
 
 " Oh, there is but one thing now to be 
 done," he whispered and nodded. 
 
 On their way out he gave the elevator-boy 
 a dollar bill not to speak of their going 
 there. 
 
 " It s all right, is it?" asked the boy; " he 
 said as he was your father, so I let him up. 
 Well, I m queered if them tenth-floor-east- 
 flat folks ain t a mighty bad lot counter 
 feiters, sure!" he muttered, and afterward 
 confided the same to the engineer, who oc 
 casionally emerged from the subterranean 
 cellars of the Senegambia, as far as his 
 head and shoulders went, and passed the 
 time of day. 
 
 On their way back to Gramercy Park they 
 stopped at a telegraph-office, and sent a mes 
 senger-boy back to the Senegambia with 
 one of Jack s visiting-cards, on which he 
 had scribbled a few words, which gave the 
 old people endless amusement and delight. 
 It obviated all further explanations, and 
 resulted in four very happy people sitting 
 down to a late supper that night in the old 
 home, at which Jack, under protest, did the 
 honors at the head of the table.
 
 44 ramercB parfc. 
 
 Here is the card: 
 
 Jlfr. &* J\frs. John Schermerhorn De Ford, 
 At Home, 
 
 Every Day in the Week 
 
 FOREVER ! No. Gramercy Park.
 
 VIII. 
 
 [HE THIRD winter came and went 
 in Gramercy Park a winter of 
 quiet domestic happiness, of 
 gentle family-life. 
 May came again, and the crocuses, tulips 
 and the budding trees, and brought another 
 little baby-life into the old house, but left 
 the sweet young mother for days at death s 
 door. 
 
 One night Florence lay very low. She 
 scarcely seemed to breathe. Jack De Ford 
 paced the long room below, his hands behind 
 him, his face drawn and haggard. All night 
 he had restlessly moved about from room to 
 room, catching now and then a brief sweet 
 glance from her tired eyes; meeting her 
 mother in the hallway, and saying nothing, 
 going out in the dull midnight hours on the 
 high stoop and gazing at the dreary lamps 
 down the street and across the park for com 
 fort; hearing as he stood there the gentle 
 soughing of the wind in the trees within the 
 4 45
 
 46 Gramercg 
 
 high iron fence; fancying spirits were whis 
 pering Florence s fate to him in words audi 
 ble but incomprehensible. All the currents 
 of his being seemed for the time stagnant 
 and motionless. There had been long days 
 of suspense, when his nature seemed to grow 
 hard and cold. He had had his surfeit of 
 sorrow, which is as fatal as a surfeit of joy. 
 Long afterward he shuddered at such despair 
 ing emotion, and would have none of it. lie 
 had learned to avoid sorrow to escape it. 
 
 It was five o clock in the morning now, 
 and the city s roar had not yet begun. The 
 light came in slowly through the gilded 
 blinds, and the heavy dark-green velvet cur 
 tains did their best to shut it out. What 
 were night and day to him? He wandered 
 about the great house, occasionally passing on 
 the stair his elderly father-in-law, who was 
 more bowed down and depressed than he, Avith 
 his youth and health, could ever be. He was 
 glad the doctors persisted in their cold pro 
 fessionalism ; that the nurses were indiffer 
 ent, but keenly alert. Science was battling 
 against the destroyer Death, and Science 
 must needs be well armed. The days and 
 months of winter had been so happy in the old 
 house in Gramercy Park! Life had moved
 
 Gramercg iparfc. 47 
 
 along in the smoothest orbit. How easy it 
 was, now, to make money in the street! 
 Luck favored every turn he made. His 
 keen, quick brain had detected and turned 
 to his firm s advantage a great " deal" among 
 the magnates in grain. Luck had been with 
 him in everything so far. Was it to turn 
 now, and punish him more deeply, more 
 severely than if it had let him alone and 
 given him no happiness whatever? 
 
 Then, along with his thoughts of self, 
 came the crushing, despairing remorse of his 
 own self being the cause of Florence s death. 
 No amount of argument could turn his mind 
 from this morbid self-accusation. " I am 
 her murderer," he thought in agony. " Her 
 love for me has been her death." The feeble 
 red, wailing little mite of humanity which 
 they had let him hold a moment on a dainty 
 lace-trimmed pillow, and told him was his 
 daughter, he regarded with absolute aver 
 sion; the child was he himself a murderer. 
 " Good God ! Almighty God ! do not let her 
 die!" he cried, sobbing and throwing himself 
 on a sofa. " She has always been so gentle, 
 so sweet! She has been so good, God! 
 so tender to all who came within the radi 
 ance of her beauty. Must she die? Is she
 
 48 (BramercE parfc, 
 
 too pure, too exquisite?" Then he sat up 
 a moment. He knew there was some extra 
 excitement in the sick-room upstairs. A 
 cab had rattled up. A learned physician 
 one of the profoundest of medical men in 
 America had been summoned from his bed. 
 Tie saw him make his way upstairs a strong- 
 featured, silent man accompanied by the 
 two regular doctors. There was a long inter 
 val. He looked up suddenly. It was lighter, 
 but the gas was still burning in the daylight, 
 and his mother-in-law s face looked almost 
 yellow as she came to the door timidly. lie 
 sat up and looked at her inquiringly. " She 
 would say," he thought rapidly before she 
 could say anything at all, " She is dead," or 
 " There is no hope," or " She said Good-by, 
 Jack, " or she would merely sit down and 
 cry. But Mrs. Heath said or did none of 
 these things. She said, " She wishes to see 
 you." De Ford rose quickly, and passed out, 
 patting her shoulder, and saying nothing. 
 He had a way of patting her, which she had 
 grown to expect and like. It meant very 
 much more to her just then than words. 
 
 A sense of his own unworthiness over 
 burdened him again as he climbed the stairs 
 heavily. He felt he had too much dross.
 
 (Bramerct? f>arfc. 49 
 
 He was of the earth earthy. His soul said 
 to his inner soul, "Am I worthy?" and 
 received a distant and hesitating nega 
 tive. He was entering into the presence 
 of a pure young saint, who already had 
 lived in the other world who had been 
 for days hardly confined in that white, pure, 
 exquisitely moulded shell her body. The 
 doctors were talking together in the smaller 
 ante-room, below a gas-burner turned on full 
 as he entered. One was laughing. It jarred 
 on his feelings and he nervously muttered 
 an oath below his breath ; then waited again 
 a moment, turned, went into another room 
 and knelt down alone, praying God, whatever 
 happened whatever happened, to change 
 him. It was only about himself that he felt 
 concern just then. His own shortcomings, 
 not deep and desperate then, poor Jack, but 
 felt overwhelmingly. He prayed like a little 
 child, begging God, with streaming eyes, to 
 change him for the better and concretely to 
 change him so that he would never swear 
 again. Poor Jack! 
 
 It is only human nature to cry out aloud 
 
 at such times to this Higher Force, Power, 
 
 God, or what you will. It is nature s cry, 
 
 felt, instinctive, and based upon our ever- 
 
 4
 
 r >o <3ramerc 
 
 lasting need. Then he arose from his knees, 
 calmer, but still timid and fearful. It had 
 all taken but two or three moments, yet 
 Florence said softly as he bent over her : 
 
 " I thought you were never coming, Jack 
 and, Jack, I have so much to say, dear. It 
 worries me about those poor people of mine, 
 Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Murphy and their chil 
 dren. When I go I can t bear to leave them 
 to their fate. Dear, you won t let them 
 suffer?" 
 
 "Not as long as I live, and if you go I 
 want to go too, dear, very soon." 
 
 He was entirely sincere. 
 
 "Jack, the baby she needs you. A girl 
 needs her father. I don t want you to think 
 of following me. It s perfectly absurd, it s 
 ridiculous. I shall be provoked. Now, I 
 won t have it! There!" 
 
 He felt her beauty as she lay there white 
 on her white pillows, her dark hair caught 
 by a diamond pin in a dainty Frenchy little 
 cap of expensive lace. She had passed the 
 point of regretting not a difficult point with 
 those many women whose lives are self-abne 
 gating from childhood in all their daily, in 
 finitely small details. Her own life what 
 was it? How cheaply she valued it! All the
 
 <Bramerc parft. 51 
 
 fuller, the entire life, the absolute certainty 
 of a hereafter, was in her every glance, in 
 her smile, so sweet that he too, as his hand 
 ran lightly over her hair, and the tears, 
 wrenched from his heart, suffused his eyes, 
 dreamed that he heard music and felt him 
 self raised up in a divine ecstasy. A man 
 rarely reaches these divine heights, my mas 
 ters. He felt silenced, humbled, quiet be 
 fore this pure spirit, which he saw radiant 
 with holy light, yet which he heard talking 
 impulsively, lightly, as she always talked. 
 It was not incongruous to him. He felt the 
 spirit beneath her words. He listened and 
 nodded, holding her hand as she spoke pressed 
 against her breast beneath the cool linen 
 and light eider-down bedclothes. He could 
 not control his mind s wandering into the 
 past and future. He did not sob now; the 
 days of wild regret and tears were over. He 
 sat and listened at her bedside, nodding and 
 saying, " Yes, yes, "while she quickly ran on, 
 "as though she were really alive," he kept 
 saying to himself, "as though she were really 
 alive!" 
 
 " And, Jack, about the funeral. I wish 
 you would not let papa put in the notice, 
 No flowers. I think it s horrid. I want
 
 52 
 
 every one to send a flower every one I care 
 for, and I care for so many, Jack! , As I lie 
 here I keep counting them np, faces so 
 many faces I am perfectly astonished to 
 see how many people I like I love. They 
 come to me of their own accord, Jack, dear, 
 and they say Good-by. Well, I want every 
 one to send a few flowers. Just a few. I 
 don t want any floral tributes. " She smiled. 
 " But you know, Jack, it s April now and 
 violets are plenty. Last fall mamma and I 
 went to such a sweet, dear funeral of a little 
 girl on Fifty-eighth Street Mrs. Bidding s, 
 you know. It was very simple, but so tender. 
 And do do not look too sad, too solemn 
 
 Jack, it s nothing Jack I I feel so 
 
 faint -- " 
 
 "She s going!" he cried aghast, and the 
 nurses called in the doctors hurriedly. 
 
 With blanched faces papa and mamma en 
 tered together. Poor mamma, hysterical 
 now and sobbing out, " Florry, my baby, my 
 little Florry!" and kneeling at her bedside. 
 It was the baby Florence of whom she was 
 thinking the Florence of long ago. 
 
 His wife lay there dead-white, her eyes 
 closed, motionless, a smile on her lips, her 
 curly dark hair escaping from the dainty lit-
 
 i-amercg park. 53 
 
 tie French cap and flowing out on the pil 
 low. The doctors pressed to her bedside, 
 the consulting physician, a rather stern, 
 tall, older man, standing a little back. 
 There was a flash of an hypodermic syringe. 
 A moment and she opened her eyes slowly. 
 " Ah let me go " She sighed so wearily. 
 The scientist a man profounder than he 
 looked was never made turned to the poor 
 broken old couple. "Two years ago," he 
 said in a whisper, " I lost my daughter by 
 not remaining in the room at a crisis like 
 this. I learned a lesson. Calm yourselves. 
 I shall not leave the room to-day until I am 
 able to assure you that she will live. I am 
 satisfied what I say is true." The great man 
 then coolly took off his coat as if to wrestle 
 with death more easily. Somehow this act 
 of his sent Jack out of the room and down 
 stairs with a revulsion of exuberant joy. 
 The morning was sunny, and the tulips and 
 crocuses were nodding and calling to him 
 from the little park. He ordered let out the 
 two brown-haired setters in the basement, and 
 went out for a romp in the delicious fresh 
 ness of the morning. Ah, the pretty park 
 never looked so beautiful as then ! She would 
 live! She would live !
 
 IX. 
 
 LOWLY, by degrees, she came back 
 to earth. The little baby clung 
 to her and drew her down from 
 the regions, 
 
 "Where the human spirit seeks for Peace." 
 
 Death hid away, then slunk away wholly 
 overcome. Life had come baby-life, jolly 
 and smiling. Now with the spring came 
 soft, balmy little airs from the tree-tops of 
 the park, and every twittering, noisy Eng 
 lish sparrow seemed to have a word for the 
 sweet girl-wife of love and good cheer and 
 good hope. 
 
 The warm, sunny day came when Florence 
 could sit up and look out upon the world. I 
 don t suppose her father or her mother 
 thought at all about her beauty. If she had 
 been a plain, homely-faced daughter (but 
 with such a tender soul how could she have 
 been anything but beautiful ?), the two jeal 
 ous, doting old people would have acted just 
 54
 
 <5ramerc iparfc. 55 
 
 the same. Papa said very little, but he did 
 the queerest things during her illness. He 
 slipped out one day and went himself to see 
 about Mrs. Murphy and her children, of 
 whom " Florry" was always speaking. The 
 old gentleman did not leave them till he had 
 spoiled the children with candy and left a 
 twenty-dollar bill in Mrs. Murphy s hands. 
 
 We all go down once or twice in our lives 
 into the Valley of the Shadow, stay there for 
 a period, then come out again smiling, with 
 somehow a new callousness born of a period 
 of too great mental suffering. All three had 
 a reaction now into a liking for pure rough 
 nonsense and amusement. Night after night 
 papa, mamma, and Jack sought out comic 
 minstrel-shows, coarse, farce-like plays; the 
 theatres did not furnish much else anything 
 pour amuser. The circus came in the mid 
 dle of May, and no children enjoyed it more 
 than these three. Night after night, after 
 kissing Florence good-by and seeing her 
 safe in bed with the baby within arm s reach, 
 they drove to the circus and saw the fright 
 ful leaps of Monsieur Frascati and the bril 
 liant bareback riding of Mile. Trois-Etoiles, 
 with an amused complacency. 
 
 It came to be the middle of June. Flop-
 
 56 ramercE fmrfc. 
 
 ence rode out now, but riding on the rough 
 pavements tired her. She came to prefer 
 rolling out in her wheel-chair beneath the 
 trees in the little park; so every morning 
 now, before the sun got very hot, a little 
 procession started from the old house. First 
 came the little princess in her carriage with 
 attendant waiting- women; then the queen, 
 her mamma, in her throne-chair and foot 
 men; then Jack, the king, who seemed to 
 take a trifle more notice now of the little 
 red princess with dark eyes, who said noth 
 ing, but whose smiles were worth untold 
 efforts in the way of baby-talk and shaking 
 rattles. Later grandpa, the dethroned mon 
 arch, would come out into the park with his 
 cigar and morning paper. It was curious 
 how everything these people did was tinged 
 with a hidden, ill-concealed hilarity. With 
 the heart merry, what trifles please ! Little 
 sweet glances of the eye from Florence to 
 Jack. Little laughing jokes on his enor 
 mous parental gravity ! Grandpapa s heavy 
 solemn jests, too, went very well now. He 
 liked to appear over-brusque, over-rude, to 
 say the roughest and toughest things of the 
 Democratic party to say them brutally, 
 out of his very jollity and content. As for
 
 <3ramercg iparft, 57 
 
 the city he was going to buy a house in 
 Dublin there were some English there! He 
 prophesied catastrophe to the country with a 
 smiling of the lip; ruin to everybody high 
 and low, big and little they then realized 
 how happy he was! He was not sure but 
 that the prophet Jeremiah or Isaiah, Mother 
 Shipton, or somebody was right, and the end 
 of the world was at hand. " I have never 
 known your father in such high spirits," 
 said his good wife at each appalling an 
 nouncement. 
 
 And it was papa, with Jack s aid, who 
 played the remarkable practical joke on both 
 the good mother and daughter and the little 
 grand-daughter too, though she was so quick 
 and smart that she caught on to it at the 
 outset, but promised not to tell, at least until 
 she could talk. They hired Sundown, the 
 artist, to surreptitiously " do" the mother and 
 child in a madonna-like portrait without 
 their knowing it. Sundown entered into 
 the spirit of the thing. He pretended to 
 be making a " study" of the park for a large 
 painting, and so Florence unconsciously 
 posed every morning for him there. One 
 morning he had two very successful hours 
 of Florence innocently holding little Dor-
 
 58 (Sramercg f>arfc. 
 
 othy nestled in her arms right before him. 
 He caught a perfect likeness of the madonna 
 and child, for his soul responded to hers, and 
 the rare beauty of her eyes he felt and painted 
 as only a true artist can. " Why, pray, Mr. 
 Sundown, do you keep looking at us so?" 
 With Florence it was always " we" and " us" 
 now. 
 
 "Er you happen to be sitting just before 
 a tree I am sketching." And Sundown, 
 nothing abashed, brought forward the land 
 scape and pointed out the identical tree. 
 Florence was quite satisfied. She liked Sun 
 down; he had frank, fine eyes; she enjoyed 
 his conversation about Italy. He was a lit 
 tle bit " free" about Paris, where he had 
 studied two years under the great Gerome. 
 He told many stories of Meissouier, Bougue- 
 reau, of Dupre, Millet, and others. 
 
 " Such lives those wretched French artists 
 live!" she sighed. " But about Italy what 
 he said was so reverent, so full of feel 
 ing!" 
 
 " I feel that we must buy Mr. Sundown s 
 pretty picture of the park," said Florence 
 one day. " He has entertained us delight 
 fully. I usually have my chair wheeled near 
 where he is painting. The only thing I
 
 ramercg parfc. 59 
 
 don t believe he means to be rude but lie 
 keeps staring so 
 
 "Let him stare," said Jack laiighing, in 
 which odd sentiment grandpapa precipitately 
 concurred. " He s a gentleman, and one of 
 the best of the younger artists of the day. 
 He likes to look at beautiful things, doesn t 
 he?" 
 
 " He is very fond of babies; I suppose it s 
 Dorothy he looks at," said grandpapa, with 
 a guilty conscience. 
 
 "Let him stare," added Jack; "I shall 
 invite him to the house. I like him. I m 
 going to buy some of his pictures, two Ve 
 netian studies good work, they say. Oh, let 
 him stare!" 
 
 So Sundown stared on and Florence gently 
 forgave him, and believed it was the way with 
 all artists to use their eyes. Sundown used 
 his to a good purpose. Florence walked on 
 her husband s arm into the drawing-room 
 one evening; and there, lit up by a dozen 
 candles, in a gorgeous Florentine frame as 
 if above an altar and making an altar-piece 
 she first saw the result of Sundown s Avork. 
 Curious odd folk these wives of ours! 
 Florence stamped her little foot; she was 
 quite provoked.
 
 60 (Bramercg 
 
 "If I had died," she said, much agitated, 
 " such a thing might have done. It is too 
 high too divine. I I am only your little 
 Florry, Jack." 
 
 Jack said nothing, but put his arm around 
 the sweet girl at his side. His thoughts 
 flew back to that dreadful morning when all 
 that was dear in life seemed slipping from 
 his grasp. The artist had caught the divine, 
 unselfish, unworldly " motherhood" in Flor 
 ence s lovely eyes. The portrait meant a 
 great deal to him. It was Florence s higher 
 self the self she kept back out of the way, 
 afraid to expose not the self she felt she 
 could always day by day live up to. 
 
 "It is to me everything," he muttered. 
 " It helps me so," and he was silent. 
 
 " Shall I ever dare to frivol with that 
 thing in the house?" she whispered. "Shall 
 I ever dare to laugh, to romp about? Jack, 
 I don t want to be very good; I don t want 
 to be better than you!" 
 
 He laughed and kissed her. 
 
 " I mean I you are you don t want me 
 to be like that?" 
 
 He blew out the candles one by one. When 
 they were all out and they stood in the semi- 
 darkness holding each other s hands, he whis-
 
 iparfc. 61 
 
 pered : " I want always to remember that you 
 are my good angel ; lots of times I forget. I 
 am cross. I am tired. I am worried with 
 business. I am forgetful of you. Long be 
 fore those dreadful days when Dorothy came, 
 and after, I had not thought of you to love 
 you as I did suddenly that morning we 
 thought you were gone. Then then it was 
 different. A man s wife should sink into 
 him for all time and simply be him his 
 higher soul. High, high up, I enshrine you, 
 dear." 
 
 "Jack I I just won t!" 
 
 She threw herself, happy, into his arms. 
 It was a moment of sublime unselfish love on 
 both sides a moment of supreme exaltation 
 of spirit, when the earthly dross has, as it 
 seemed, wholly fallen away. She kissed her 
 husband, and said that the portrait should 
 after all be a pattern for her to live up to. 
 "For us both and Dorothy," she said. 
 
 Ah, the world the world! Would that 
 these two could have gone together into Ely 
 sium then ! The world became cruel to them 
 later on, and the portrait was destined to 
 look down on much sorrow and many tears.
 
 X. 
 
 ,11, Jack, I can t go away and 
 leave you alone all summer." 
 " It is best." 
 
 " But it has never happened 
 before." 
 
 "No you have Dorothy now to love." 
 She gazed at him reproachfully. 
 "And I have the portrait," he laughed. 
 Suddenly she sprang upon him, seizing 
 him almost fiercely by the arm. Loving 
 women occasionally do these things. 
 
 " Do you love me now, Jack?" she panted. 
 
 He burst out laughing. " Seriously," he 
 
 added soothingly, " Dorothy must get up into 
 
 the mountains at once. Here it is almost 
 
 July. What are we thinking of. Ourselves 
 
 our love? We must think of Dorothy." 
 
 " Well, then, I shall go to Lawrence or 
 
 Seabright or where it will be near you 
 
 " No, the doctors say the mountains. 
 They are right, dear. We must be content 
 to be separated for the child s sake. I have 
 62
 
 ramercg fcarfc. 63 
 
 taken a cottage in Franconia. Everything 
 is arranged. I can come up Sundays 
 
 " Tell me, Jack, is this the way all mar 
 ried people in New York who have children 
 have to do? Oh, I hate our horrid climate, 
 which compels us to do this!" 
 
 " They call it the Annual Divorce at the 
 club," he laughed. 
 
 " It s wrong, it s wicked !" she kept saying, 
 feeling instinctively that she could not bear 
 to allow anything to come in and prevent her 
 sharing her husband s daily life. 
 
 But after a day or so of unusual heat, 
 Florence yielded to persuasion, and July was 
 spent in the mountains in keenest fresh air, 
 the best of food, the best of Alderney milk, 
 the best of care for mother and child. Flor 
 ence, during the long summer days while 
 Jack was in the city, to amuse herself, took 
 up French again. She read Gasparin, Pas 
 cal, Du Guerin. She spent days lying on 
 the grass under the trees with Dorothy near 
 by. The blue skies and white dreamy clouds 
 floated above her. She had little social 
 gayety. She was at peace. 
 
 Their cottage, not far from the hotel, sur 
 mounted a knoll from which was a distant 
 view of Bethlehem and the Franconia Moun-
 
 64 Gramercg parfc. 
 
 tains. The summer wind came to them from 
 across a wide stretch of valley, laden with 
 the sweet clover perfumes and the musky 
 smell of hay. The world the whole earth 
 seemed far distant, far below. Unconsciously 
 Florence grew in appearance in certain ways 
 more and more like her portrait. Her 
 mother remarked it. 
 
 " When Jack comes up next Sunday 
 
 " Three whole days off, mamma 
 
 " He will say that Mr. Sundown has not 
 overdone the " dreamy" look, Florry. You 
 are too lonely here. You are very pensive." 
 She meant, poor soul, it was becoming stupid 
 for her there with so little social life. " You 
 are so content; but remember, Florry, you 
 are still in the world, my child. There were 
 Mr. and Mrs. Chutney at the hotel last week. 
 We should have called." 
 
 " I have been selfish. \Ye will have a tea- 
 party." 
 
 Mrs. Heath could not conceal her pleasure. 
 She took the baby up and " clucked" and 
 "guggled" to it. 
 
 " I did not want to be the one to suggest 
 it," she said, " but I think it would be a good 
 idea an excellent idea. There are the 
 Eichmouds, the Lockerts, the Bradleys, at
 
 Oramercg fcarfc. 65 
 
 the hotel; and I m very fond of Mrs. Brad 
 ley, who has a new crochet-stitch." 
 
 Florence gave a little sigh. " Dorothy is 
 so all in all to me, that I am forgetful," she 
 said ; " I live in the new world of babyland. 
 Of course we must invite them; as for men, 
 Mrs. Chutney said that Mr. Sundown was 
 expected." 
 
 " No one expects men to be away from 
 business, but Mr. Sundown shall be made 
 to do double duty. Is he really coming 
 up to the mountains? That will be so 
 nice! I am fond of Mr. Sundown. We 
 must make him talk about Italy. We must 
 shut him off about Paris. But there must 
 be some more men? Mamma, pray go and 
 run your eye over the hotel register to-day. 
 Certainly we must have a tea, and we can 
 have it Saturday night, when Jack and papa 
 are here." 
 
 " Friday would be better. Your father 
 does not enjoy teas. Friday it must be, Flor 
 ence. Do you think after riding in the cars 
 all day they will enjoy talking to ladies?" 
 
 Florence pondered a moment. "Mr. Sun 
 down will be our only man, then?" she said. 
 
 " He is enough. He is very talkative. 
 He will be a belle. But Mrs. Locker is quite
 
 66 <3ramerc park. 
 
 manlike too. She has such a deep voice! 
 Besides, there is old Colonel Bradley." 
 
 " We could telegraph that we intended to 
 have the tea, and if they could tear them 
 selves away from business they could come 
 up." 
 
 " Oh, yes, we can do that; but they won t 
 come. Your father never likes to leave be 
 fore Saturday, and Jack is very much like 
 your father." 
 
 Mrs. Heath fanned herself gently. She 
 had paid Jack the highest compliment she 
 was capable of. Florence had not noticed 
 it. Suddenly the elder sprang up. " I for 
 got that we fare at the mercy of our ser 
 vants up here," she said; "I must go and 
 ask them." 
 
 Florence gazed after her mother as she 
 busily trotted off into the house. Some one 
 entered the gate. It was Sundown, looking 
 bronzed and very handsome in his artistic 
 velveteens and knickerbockers. He bowed, 
 praised the baby in a few commonplaces, 
 and at once entered into conversation abciit 
 Italy. It was an Italian sky, an Italian haze, 
 an Italian sunset last night. He had ob 
 served, too, a number of Italian gentlemen 
 at work upon the railroad that morning.
 
 (Sramercg park. 67 
 
 "Ah, and how is Minima?" he asked, lean 
 ing over Dorothy s basket-carriage, while 
 Florence laughed. " And how is Madonna?" 
 he added. 
 
 " That is the bone I have to pick with 
 you, Mr. Sundown; you have actually can 
 onized me." 
 
 " I I am no ecumenical council rolled 
 into one," he laughed. 
 
 " But the portrait how can I ever live up 
 io it?" She made an expressive grimace. 
 
 He looked clown on her upturned face a 
 moment and said nothing. " Is it too 
 good?" he asked at length. "Can it be? 
 Ah, well, it is you, Mrs. De Ford, as you 
 seem to me." Then he added to himself: 
 " If you were not so pure and high I should 
 dare love you. I should taint you by daring 
 to love you ; as it is, I may only worship 
 with the throng!" 
 
 " You must come to our tea Friday, Mr. 
 Sundown," said she. "It is a very formal 
 affair, you must understand, and you must 
 expect to make yourself very entertaining. 
 You and Colonel Bradley will be the only 
 men." 
 
 "Colonel Bradley!" 
 
 " He is available, and I admire his white
 
 68 ramercg parfe. 
 
 hair and white mnstachios; therefore, he 
 shall come to our tea." 
 
 " Ah, yes, certainly. But I am rather 
 timid. You will let me devote myself to 
 you and Dorothy?" 
 
 " We will not do anything of the sort. We 
 shall expect him to make himself especially 
 agreeable to our guests shan t we, Dorothy, 
 dear?" 
 
 Dorothy gave an amiable little coo as her 
 mother kissed her fat cheeks. 
 
 " And he mustn t say that teas disagree 
 with him, as papa does." 
 
 " Oh, I am perfectly willing to be teased 
 by teas," laughed Sundown, lazily throwing 
 himself on the close-cut grass. " Now isn t 
 that a perfect Venetian blue sky across the 
 valley beyond the mountains? I remember 
 once in a gondola Miss Franscioli was very 
 handsome, but I despise a woman who flirts 
 don t you, Mrs. De Ford? I mean who 
 openly, unguardedly flirts; uses her eyes, 
 smiles don t you, Mrs. De Ford?" 
 
 "How unkind of you to ask; let my por 
 trait speak," she replied sedately. 
 
 " Miss Franscioli had been a Mrs. Frans 
 cioli, of New Orleans (a rich banker) ; then 
 a Mrs. Miles, of Chicago."
 
 (SramercE 
 
 " How odd! I don t understand." 
 " The divorce courts had turned her back 
 into a Miss a Miss is as good as a mile, you 
 know. She is as young and as handsome, 
 and flirtatious as ever; and in Venice, two 
 years ago her party was at my hotel on the 
 Grand Canal she and I struck up, or 
 rather, renewed our acquaintance made in 
 Washington a few years ago. She was not 
 then the facinating divorcee she is now. She 
 was rather quiet and fond of her child, who 
 since died suddenly in Paris." 
 " Oh, she had a child, and she 
 " Oh, well, she was too handsome and too 
 fond of the world, don t you know, to leave 
 it permanently. She has mourned a year 
 after the little girl s death; but a friend told 
 me she was gayer than ever in Washington 
 last season, and that illustrates my idea." 
 
 " What dreadful idea is that, Mr. Sun 
 down?" 
 
 Florence was always interested in what the 
 young artist had to say. She leaned forward 
 now, and glanced at him with an amused 
 smile. He stared at her as frankly as ever 
 he had done in Gramercy Park. It was a 
 sudden influx of the world Mr. Sundown had 
 brought with him the great world she had
 
 70 Gramercs iparfe. 
 
 so lostsightof amid the hills and clover-fields 
 of the high Hampshire uplands with her 
 little Dorothy. 
 
 "My idea is," he said, "that people are 
 sometimes made harder by sorrows are more 
 stolid by going through severe crises. One 
 is always reading the opposite of this in the 
 novels. But trials are not good for some 
 men. They do not come out from them 
 stronger, but harder." 
 
 " Well, about this Miss or Mrs. Franscioli?" 
 
 " Her child s death I think it has not 
 done her any good." 
 
 " She must be a wretch." 
 
 " On the contrary, I wish she could meet 
 you, you would say she was very charming. 
 She is, in fact, a gorgeous woman. She has 
 dark reddish hair, such as Kubens loved to 
 paint ; eyes literally flashing. Indeed, Mrs. 
 De Ford, they seemed, as I remember, to 
 throw out a certain light." 
 
 Mrs. Heath came out on the lawn under 
 the apple trees just then, and Sundown arose 
 and saluted her politely. 
 
 "You are coming, of course, Friday?" she 
 asked, as she smiled upon him with her calm, 
 patient eyes. He murmured an assent, and 
 a half-hour later sauntered leisurely away
 
 0ramerc fftarh. 71 
 
 down the hill, thinking how lovely the young 
 mother looked in her pretty white morning 
 robe against the clover green. His artist eye 
 did not altogether relish the Queen Anne 
 cottage with the washing hanging out, in 
 dicative of Mary Ann in the rear; but he for 
 gave much in the presence of the woman he 
 had begun to worship as from afar.
 
 XL 
 
 JJIJNDOWX carried the picture of 
 the thick-leaved, shady apple tree 
 in the grassy meadow, the sweet 
 young wife propped up on pil 
 lows beneath it, the baby lying in her lap, the 
 amiable kindly grandmother standing behind 
 her for many a day. It remained after 
 many other pictures had come to his mental 
 vision in after days. There was a " round 
 ness" in all of Florence s attitudes which 
 caught his artist eye. Her dark hair filled 
 in the delicious little hollow of her neck in 
 a most charming way. The white dress be 
 came her; the pillows of damask silk, the 
 high-colored rugs on the grass, the tree 
 above, "thick-leaved, ambrosial," her little 
 feet showing their dainty-slippered tips. She 
 would have sat to a better portrait in the 
 mountains, he thought, than the one which 
 hung in the old house in Gramercy Park. 
 She was still ill, then; she was paler; she 
 looked more like some happy saint. It was 
 a good piece of work, the portrait, however.
 
 <3ramercB parfc. 73 
 
 His artist friends spoke in highest praise of 
 it. All, how he would have loved to paint 
 her now a woman, not a saint, with heart 
 and feeling and human life speaking in her 
 face ! 
 
 Pretending he wished to sketch a bit of 
 mountain from just exactly that spot, he 
 came to spend his days there, talking and 
 chatting to the mother and daughter, four 
 days until Friday night came, and with it 
 their eventful tea. 
 
 Only very foolish people may connect Fri 
 day, hangman s day, the 13th of the month, 
 the night of their tea, with any superstitious 
 feeling. The night of the day before papa 
 had received a telegram at the house in Gra- 
 mercy Park, announcing their little func 
 tion, and begging him to come up a day 
 ahead. He had hastily answered it : " Can 
 not leave biz. Very sorry." 
 
 When Jack came home later from business 
 he read their telegram and said, " I believe 
 I ll go up and surprise them." 
 
 " Go, by all means," said his father-in-law; 
 " I can t get away. It s my busy time, you 
 know, in leather. Buy a lot of knick-knacks 
 at Dourbley sand take up; they ll like them 
 for their tea."
 
 74 ramercg parft. 
 
 " I can go just as well as not. The market 
 is very dull," yawned De Ford. "But I 
 know this; if I do go something is sure 
 to happen in the street, and I shall be 
 needed, as Mr. Beach and Mr. Catherly 
 are away now. However," and he thought 
 of his wife and of Dorothy under the shady 
 apple trees on the sloping lawn, " I guess I ll 
 chance it." 
 
 The day was hot when he started. There 
 was a great deal of unnecessary delay over a 
 freight train which had been thrown off the 
 track at Springfield. His train was an hour 
 and a half late. The dinner he got at a rail 
 way station was anything but satisfactory. 
 When he arrived at last at Franconia, he 
 jumped into a hack and drove home rapidly 
 in the sweet early evening, regretting now 
 the fact of the tea and strangers and the need 
 of being polite, when he hungered and 
 thirsted only to see his wife and his child. 
 There was a moon above the horizon, and 
 near it a star, Venus. The moon hung like 
 a lamp above the mountains in the pinkish 
 light left from the sunset. The mountains 
 were a deep rich violet. High up above him, 
 across an upland field, he saw his cottage 
 lights twinkling, and thought he heard
 
 (SramercE park. 75 
 
 music. He only heard the krick-krick of 
 the locusts, the chirp of the crickets, the 
 whistle of the locomotive of his fast receding 
 train; but the whole scene filled him with 
 unutterable longing to clasp his wife in his 
 arms gave him a lover s fear that she might 
 be ill 
 
 " A sense of dread, lest she be dead. " 
 
 He hastily paid the driver his fare, jumped 
 out, and struck out on a run cross-lots to 
 his house. 
 
 " That ere man s in a hurry, I guess," 
 said Mr. Higgins, the driver, looking vaguely 
 after him ; " most o them husbands like to 
 hang around the tavern a leetle while afore 
 goin home, but he don t. Wai, Mr. De 
 Ford, he s jest married, an he ain t ben up 
 for two weeks. Wai, that caounts f er it," 
 and he slowly turned his old horse around. 
 
 At the side of the cottage was a garden 
 and small summer-house, covered with vines 
 and clematis and honeysuckle; leading out 
 to it was a path through the garden, lined 
 with currant-bushes. 
 
 De Ford was obliged to clamber up a sharp 
 ascent over rocks and to dodge around 
 boulders, but he knew the path and he had
 
 76 
 
 no serious difficulty in picking it out. lie 
 cared not, then, for bruised shins! He 
 neared the house, saw people on the wide 
 veranda, heard the jingly piano played while 
 a lady sang. There were two people standing 
 in the summer-house, a woman and a tall 
 man. He crept close enough to see it was 
 his wife. She was standing near the 
 man in the pale moonlight, and they were 
 laughing together and looking at the beau 
 tiful moon and the star. 
 
 De Ford felt a sadden strange revulsion of 
 feeling. He paused and stood still, where 
 just before he felt like shouting a joyous 
 view-hallo; he hid behind some bushes, then 
 made a circuit and came up in front of the 
 cottage on the gravel path. The first one he 
 saw was his mother-in-law, but for some rea 
 son he would not kiss her. Inside the draw 
 ing-room came out to him the " infernal 
 buzz" of conversation; he refused to enter. 
 When Florence, radiant with love and happy 
 laughter, came hurrying in, he just barely 
 touched her forehead with his lips. 
 
 "Mr. Sundown is here, Jack," she said; 
 " isn t it nice?" 
 
 He turned away and frowned. He felt 
 that he was angry because she was not watch-
 
 Gramercx? iparfe. 
 
 ing and waiting for Mm, and thinking of 
 him alone, just as he felt her portrait in the 
 old city house kept its eyes always for him 
 alone whenever he came home. " Some 
 day," he said, "I ll punish her for this! 
 Ah, how tanned she is; she is not quite the 
 same she is changed!" 
 
 Florence stood looking at him in surprise. 
 Absence had but made her heart grow fonder.
 
 XII. 
 
 Y the time that every one was 
 gone Jack recovered himself. It 
 seemed to the girl s discerning 
 instinct that he was fiercer, wilder 
 in his demonstrativeness than ever before. 
 She felt that something had happened. His 
 kisses burned like fire. He frightened her. 
 " I know, I know," she kept saying. "I 
 hate surprises, and they always end badly. 
 I was not here when you came in. I was 
 not the first one you saw. It was too bad, 
 Jack; but really, under the circum 
 stances " 
 
 " Oh, don t apologize," he laughed. " Does 
 Mr. Sundown stare as much as ever? If 
 he does, I shall tell him to his face that now 
 the portrait is done it is a decided imperti 
 nence. Pray, how long has he been here? 
 These artists, they can tolly-diddle all sum 
 mer over the rocks and the hills and never a 
 question asked!" 
 
 Then he saw his wife looked pained, and he 
 stopped abruptly. 
 
 78
 
 <3ramercg iparfc. 79 
 
 " I hope Mr. Heath is well, and will be 
 up to-morrow," ventured his mother-in-law, 
 placidly. 
 
 " Yes, he will he- 
 Jack seemed to be thinking of something. 
 He was absent-minded, distrait. But Flor 
 ence was too happy now to notice it. She 
 went at him now after the manner of wives 
 whom fate compels to be absent from hus 
 band and city shops through the long vacation 
 of summer. " Did you bring up the lilac 
 silk I ordered?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Did you see about the brown holland 
 covers for the furniture?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Did you get baby s little silk shirts?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Did you remember to bring the medicine 
 from Dr. Chesney?" 
 
 " Yes. " 
 
 " Did you see to the moths in the top bureau 
 drawers in the rear chamber? Oh, Jack!" 
 
 " No I I I forgot that. " 
 
 Florence got up and walked out of the 
 room, saying: "Jack, dear, how could you be 
 so forgetful? All baby s winter undercloth 
 ing will be eaten up."
 
 so ramercg parfe. 
 
 He heard his wife go into the little parlor 
 and run over a few provoked little bars on 
 the piano. He took out a cigar, lit it, and 
 went out into the calm moonlit night. For 
 the first time in many days he said below his 
 breath, "Damn!" and then he burst out 
 laughing.
 
 XIII. 
 
 UT the next day brought the rich 
 peace and calm of the mountains 
 into his heart. He lay, his head 
 in Florence s lap, his hair fondly 
 patted by her white hand, while she read 
 him a charming story, just then out, of 
 Howells. The child, Dorothy, doubled her 
 little fists into her puckery little mouth near 
 at hand, while her French nou-nou in all the 
 glorious nurse habiliments of Paris the 
 long cap-ribbons and the long purple cloak 
 sat near by on the grass with a cow-like 
 placidity, gazing at the distant hills. Flor 
 ence was fortunate in being able" to nurse 
 the child herself. The French girl, a huge 
 creature with the jolliest laugh in the world, 
 had now very little to do; but her smile, for 
 provoking contentment, was worth her wage. 
 Presently Florence put down her book and 
 gazed calmly off at the mountains. 
 
 "Mrs. Locker was saying last night," she 
 said, " that this annual separation for the 
 81
 
 82 (Bramercg 
 
 summer, of husbands and wives, was such a 
 blessing. " 
 
 "Humph, I don t know," said Jack 
 drowsily. 
 
 " I think it makes us appreciate each other 
 all the more, Jack don t you think?" 
 
 Jack sat up. The subject interested 
 him. 
 
 He scratched his head. Then he laid 
 down, vehemently, this formula: 
 
 " A man and wife ought never to be separated 
 a day." 
 
 Florence looked at him wonder ingly. 
 "Necessity," she murmured, "Dorothy." 
 
 " Every day, every hour, we grow, change, 
 we look at things differently. We have fads 
 and fancies. Temporary separation is called 
 a short death; so it is apt to be of con 
 stancy." 
 
 He was thinking of the picture Sundown 
 and she made together in the vine-clad arbor. 
 The picture was framed in his mind to stay, 
 as it seemed. Poor Jack ! 
 
 "Constancy!" she cried half-surprised, 
 and applying his words personally. " Must I 
 be always in New York, Jack, to keep your 
 love for me up to the scratch? Oh, Jack!" 
 
 " Men are apt to be even less tempted than
 
 fcarh. 83 
 
 their wives, I think, because they are busy." 
 He said this nonchalantly, in an easy tone. 
 
 "As if I were not busy!" laughed Florence, 
 showing all her white, pretty teeth. " From 
 morning to night I am just as busy with 
 baby as I can be, and I sing lullabies about 
 Father will come to thee soon, don t I, 
 baby? And I I Jack, I think you are 
 just as cruel as you can be!" 
 
 There was a suspicion of tears in her 
 pretty eyes. 
 
 He could not bring himself then to 
 mention Sundown s name. It is needless 
 to say it did not enter the mind of the 
 beautiful girl-wife at his side. He got up, 
 yawned, and stretched himself, as a man 
 will do when, he comes out from the city 
 and breathes anew the sweet perfume of 
 the fields, ripening now for the harvest. He 
 caught up the baby and tossed it, and said a 
 great quantity of nonsense to it. He told it 
 a great deal about the loneliness of New 
 York, the dulness of life in the "metrop 
 olis," and the nobility of man toiling to 
 bedizen his wife and child with precious 
 stones through the torrid, infernal heats of 
 a cloudless August. 
 
 Florence caught the little belaced and be-
 
 84 (Sramercg fi>arft. 
 
 flounced bit of humanity from him, and kiss 
 ing it again and again, and told it of the 
 delights of club-life, the theatres, the sea 
 bathing for a city man, and solemoly called its 
 attention to the " poky " stupidity of life on 
 a hill, where one was only to be stared at by 
 an occasional cow. 
 
 The use of the words " stared at" was un 
 fortunate. It brought an unpleasant train of 
 thought to De Ford s quick, supersensitive 
 mind. He turned away, and without a word 
 strolled down and out the road toward the 
 hotel. 
 
 "Jack, where are you going?" called out 
 Florence after him. 
 
 "I m going in search of that cow," he 
 called back without smiling. 
 
 She turned slowly and went back into the 
 house. Our Othello walked with his hands 
 thrust into his pockets, his brows knit, say 
 ing and muttering to himself: "What a 
 stupid fool I am to question the sincerity 
 and love of that dearest girl on earth ! Can t 
 I see her talking with another man without 
 being an ass?" 
 
 His anti-conscience for men have two 
 voices spoke up and said: "Ah, but you 
 would have liked it better if there had not
 
 Oramercg frarfe. 85 
 
 been that other man. Of course you don t 
 doubt her heart. It is yours; but she has 
 listened to the ideas of another than you." 
 
 Himself: "So she may in books." 
 
 His Anti-conscience : " No, but it is the 
 man that she first feels behind his ideas. 
 Such is woman s nature. She is especially 
 susceptible." 
 
 His Conscience : " She is noble and good. 
 She loves me wholly, utterly. I may not 
 question her. Go back now to her, thou! 
 Take her in my arms and love her." 
 
 He went to the side of the road and took 
 out his knife to cut an alder stick. While 
 he was hidden in the bushes an open car 
 riage passed. There were some ladies: Mrs. 
 Locker, Mrs. Colonel Bradley, and another. 
 As they went by, he heard one of them say 
 in a loud, masculine voice : 
 
 " Why, he is there every day, all day long." 
 
 " I didn t think Mr. Sundown was that 
 sort of a man," replied another, and the car 
 riage passed on. 
 
 Jack did not cut the alder. He sat 
 drearily on the fence a few moments, while 
 his conscience said : 
 
 " You are doing wrong to distrust her 
 slightest thought."
 
 (Bramercg ftarfc. 
 
 He returned home, inwardly in a state of 
 keenest sadness, outwardly a little pale and 
 looking rather old. Florence had gone up 
 stairs with Dorothy. Presently he heard her 
 singing softly : 
 
 " Sweet and low, 
 Sweet and low. 
 Father will come to thee soon. " 
 
 " Idiot that I am to torment myself for 
 nothing, "he said so savagely that Mrs. Heath 
 looked up from her paper surprised. 
 
 " What is the matter, Jack?" she asked. 
 
 "People are not stationary," he insisted 
 vaguely. 
 
 " I have heard your father say that there 
 were a great many paper men in the world." 
 She looked up and caught his amused smile. 
 It was an innocent little trick of hers to 
 speak to him of her husband as " your father. " 
 
 "People fluctuate change," he said. 
 " Nothing remains long the same We Amer 
 icans crave new pleasures, new excitements, 
 and with women of course it must be so. 
 I m an idiot, that s all, mother." 
 
 She looked at him with an expression of 
 utter lack of comprehension. 
 
 He ran his eye over the shelf of books
 
 ramercg fcarfe. 87 
 
 above the wide brick mantel, and took down 
 one, "Taylor s Holy Living and Dying." 
 She looked up very much reassured, as he 
 added inconsequently, " Sundown is very 
 much of a gentleman: let s have him dine 
 with us to-morrow, by all means."
 
 XIV. 
 
 ^N September De Ford gave himself 
 a vacation of a few weeks, and 
 he persuaded Florence to take 
 the baby and its paraphernalia 
 down to the seaside. He proposed going to 
 Eye Beach, which was not so many miles 
 away, and going by carriage in easy stages. 
 As he would be with her now it mattered not 
 where they went seaward, and so they had 
 determined upon the wide level shore of 
 Eye. Florence put against the plan all 
 her mother s, all her woman s fears. The 
 dangers to baby were recounted again and 
 again. The dangers of storms, of crossing 
 railway tracks, the dangers of bridges, of 
 swollen streams, and oh if Dorothy were to 
 be kidnapped! 
 
 " Who would want such a little red 
 Indian?" he laughed. 
 
 " Who would want her?" cried Florence, 
 flying at her child and snatching it to her 
 bosom. " The whole world wants her ! The
 
 ramercg park. 89 
 
 naughty, horrid everybody!" And she fell 
 to kissing the little mite with great unction. 
 
 Dorothy set up a wail of protest. No 
 young and jealous parent is ever so pleased 
 as when the infant cries proceed from some 
 indiscretion on the part of the other parent. 
 
 " Let me take her," laughed Jack, reaching 
 out his hands. " You don t know how to 
 treat her with the dignity she deserves." 
 
 Florence bridled a little. It was quite 
 true that the fickle Dorothy was always will 
 ing to leave her mamma for her papa s strong 
 arms. She stretched out her arms now, and 
 ceased her wails at once. 
 
 " Yes, she doesn t see you every day and 
 night; she doesn t get tired of you as she 
 does of me." 
 
 " As if any one could ever get tired of you, 
 my sweetheart," he said impulsively, with a 
 sudden accession of kindness. 
 
 Florence smiled very sweetly. She was a 
 woman who seemed to grow and shine like a 
 rare flower in happiness. Gentle thoughts 
 always pervaded her; but they rose to the 
 surface oftener when she felt her husband s 
 love and bathed in its glory, as it were. 
 
 " It is these long absences from you and 
 Dorothy that I dislike so much," he said.
 
 90 6ramerce parfc, 
 
 " Ah, Florry, we ought never to be away 
 from each other an instant, not an instant." 
 
 "When do we start for the seashore?" she 
 asked, for her opposition had now melted 
 away. 
 
 "Day after to-morrow." 
 
 "So soon?" 
 
 Her nervous, restless husband gave her the 
 baby to hold and lit a cigarette. " Why 
 not?" he said. " I want to get on the move. 
 I mean to take three days in going a hundred 
 miles. It will be a grand cavalcade, a sort 
 of royal progress, a caravan. There will be 
 our carriage, the baggage- wagon, and the old 
 folks carriage. I ve arranged it all where 
 we stop each night, and where we picnic 
 along the road, for lunch, under the trees. 
 It will be great fun." 
 
 She saw that he was delighted with his 
 plans, and she entered into them with a ficti 
 tious glee. Inwardly she feared all manner 
 of things, animate and inanimate, from run 
 away horses down to mad dogs. 
 
 Yet when the " day after to-morrow" came 
 and the cavalcade started (the older couple 
 were great enthusiasts for this carriage jour 
 ney), Florence put on a brave countenance. 
 In the first place she held Dorothy close in
 
 0ramerc parfe. 91 
 
 her arms, and a woman with her child is 
 afraid of nothing concrete that actually con 
 fronts her. In the second place she looked 
 at the slow old horses, at faithful old Mr. 
 Higgins, their driver, and was reassured when 
 he said solemnly: 
 
 " Them brutes d rayther lay daownan roll 
 n draw five folks the hull way ter Eye." 
 
 "Five folks four folks," said Florence 
 quickly. 
 
 "Me an you, the nuss, Mr. De Ford, an 
 the babbyisjest five," he maintained stoutly. 
 
 "Oh, the baby!" she laughed, very much 
 pleased. Little things made her happy in 
 these days. 
 
 " Why them harses is mos old s I be," he 
 added. "Don t hev no fears, mum; I m 
 a-drivin this ere barooch. I m a-drivin it 
 slow a puppus. We ain t goin fer to race 
 daown. We re goin ter take it easy so 
 g long!" 
 
 Papa and mamma drove their own team, a 
 comfortable wide buggy with a pair of young 
 and lively horses. It was not considered by 
 Mr. Higgins as stylish a turn-out as their 
 own, for " barooches" were a rarity in the 
 mountains. The lively young horses carried 
 the old people along at a rapid gait, and Mr.
 
 92 ramercg parft. 
 
 Heath, who was always a stickler for prompt 
 ness, was always " ready and waitin " for 
 them at the end of the day s trip. 
 
 Days of great happiness they were, " a 
 royal progress," Jack called it a progress 
 diversified by many halts, by lunches nuder 
 the sheltering forest trees, by little baths 
 au pieds in the cool mountain-brooks. They 
 slowly drew by the many clean little farms, 
 the full barns, the wide pastures containing 
 dainty, sleek cattle. They slept in comfort 
 able country inns on feather beds, and even 
 ate the tough country fried steaks with 
 relish. 
 
 Nearly every one passed them on the road 
 and smiled, but they were a little rolling 
 world in themselves and cared not. They 
 were happy then. 
 
 They never felt afterward quite such 
 happiness, such isolation. The third day 
 they drew within sight and smell of the sea, 
 and the cool, salty breath coming across the 
 wide flats raised Dorothy s thin little curls 
 and cooled their own brows. 
 
 " del!" cried the French nou-nou, " la belle 
 mer /" It was almost the first word she had 
 spoken. She loved the sea, as all Normandy 
 French paasant women do. They had not
 
 (Bramercg ff>arfc. 93 
 
 regarded lier presence especially on the front 
 seat before them. They believed their affec 
 tion was untranslatable in the French. 
 Happy days, indeed, when their stolid, smil 
 ing, staring nurse did not prevent a hasty 
 occasional kiss. 
 
 So they accomplished their descent from 
 the mountains, and came out upon the sandy 
 shores of Eye. 
 
 They were not, however, to be entirely 
 without adventure. As they approached the 
 little village on the sea a horse carrying a 
 lady came dashing madly down the road 
 toward them. Jack quickly jumped out be 
 fore his wife could detain him, and, seizing 
 a rail of the fence, held it across the run 
 away s path. It brought the horse to a stand 
 still in short order. 
 
 The lady merely thanked De Ford coolly 
 and rather disdainfully, and, whipping her 
 steed again into a furious canter, passed on 
 as if she had not been running away at 
 all. 
 
 Afterward they knew the young lady as a 
 " Miss Franscioli." 
 
 " She s either a mad woman or she s 
 utterly tired of life," was Jack s comment 
 at the time. 
 7
 
 94 
 
 Florence, whose heart had been in her 
 throat, cried on his shoulder. " Jack, Jack ! 
 would you have killed yourself for her, dear? 
 Did you not think of us?"
 
 XV. 
 
 [HE hotel where they had taken a 
 suite of rooms was a large one 
 recently built, and there was a 
 ball every night. It was now 
 well filled with guests returning from the 
 mountain resorts, and from the numerous 
 watering-places along the northern Maine 
 coast. The warm weather continued late, 
 and detained many a family from returning 
 to their city home. 
 
 One morning Jack did not go down on the 
 sands with them, as usual. Florence looked 
 back inquiringly and observed him sitting 
 in a group of fashionably-dressed ladies and 
 gentlemen on the piazza. Presently a tall 
 lady arose and came down the steps, and he 
 followed her. They caught up with Flor 
 ence as she and the nurse, carrying Dorothy, 
 were slowly meandering to the shore. The 
 tall young lady was very handsome, and had 
 the patrician air of a grand dame. She was 
 dressed elegantly in a morning gown of white 
 95
 
 96 (Sramercg fcarfc. 
 
 crepe; she wore a large hat, covered with 
 ilowers. 
 
 "Miss Franscioli, I want you to know my 
 wife," said Jack. 
 
 "I m delighted to meet you," said Miss 
 Franscioli, grasping Florence s hand with 
 the high elbow shake. " After what Mr. 
 Sundown has said of you, I feel I have 
 already half-made your acquaintance. lie 
 came down here, as you have done, from 
 the mountains, and he could talk of no one 
 but his Madonna. 
 
 As she spoke Miss Franscioli turned and 
 smiled at De Ford, who flushed a little and 
 twirled his mustachios. She had a sinuous, 
 wasp waist, and she held herself very erect, 
 inclining her head to one side, which oddly 
 gave her a slightly deprecatory air. She 
 smiled and let her white sun-umbrella fall on 
 her shoulder tentatively. 
 
 " I have heard Mr. Sundown speak of you, 
 Mrs. Franscioli." 
 
 " It is Miss Franscioli," muttered De Ford 
 correctingly, and coughing a little. 
 
 " Oh," she laughed, " it is a matter of com 
 plete indifference to me what I am called. 
 Every one knows my history. It has been in 
 the newspapers. It is public property both
 
 (Bramercg jparfe. 97 
 
 in Chicago and elsewhere. I am a divorcee, 
 Mrs. De Ford, and I am yet but twenty-two." 
 The frankness of the young woman had its 
 vast embarrassment for Florence. 
 
 " I am very sorry," she murmured. 
 
 " Oh, you need not be sorry," she laughed 
 gayly, making sport of it. " My divorce was 
 a happier event than my marriage. But I 
 did not come out in the sun here to talk 
 about myself. I came out to see that beau 
 tiful baby. Do let us walk on and catch up 
 with it!" 
 
 No one spoke then of the incident of the 
 runaway horse the morning of their arrival. 
 De Ford had spoken of it, but found he was 
 considered a fool for his pains, as Miss 
 Franscioli hud a way of racing her thorough 
 bred along the level sandy roads at top 
 speed. 
 
 "Dorothy is hardly six months," said 
 Florence apologetically, " it s but a wee little 
 thing." But she was pleased to have Doro 
 thy made much of. 
 
 "Oh, it s such a little pretty sing!" cooed 
 Miss Franscioli, as the smiling nou-nou 
 stopped and held Dorothy out at arm s- 
 length, for the lady to admire. 
 
 If there was anything artificial in Miss
 
 98 GramercE parfc. 
 
 Franscioli s raptures they did not perceive 
 it. Florence said afterward that she did not 
 offer to take it in her arms. 
 
 "But what of that?" replied Jack; "it 
 does not always bespeak insincerity in a 
 woman not to grab and tumble up a baby?" 
 He was jealous for Dorothy, too; but did half 
 the women at the hotel who raved over her 
 offer to take her? Nonsense! 
 
 Florence was not strong enough to walk 
 very far on the sands that morning, but Jack 
 wanted some exercise, and he looked around 
 to Miss Franscioli, asking her if she cared to 
 walk. 
 
 "Yes," she said decidedly," and I bathe at 
 twelve o clock. I don t care how cold the 
 water is. I plunge in and plunge out again. 
 It gives me a splendid glow from my neck to 
 my heels. I could run you a race then, 
 though you do look like an athlete, Mr. De 
 Ford." She scanned him critically. 
 
 "He was at college," said Florence 
 proudly. "What was your record, Jack? 
 A hundred feet in eleven seconds?" 
 
 "Just about," said De Ford sarcastically, 
 making a grimace. 
 
 Miss Franscioli laughed. " Oh, you fine 
 athletic young Americans and Englishmen !
 
 (Bramercg ff>arh. 99 
 
 I wish I were a man! I d like to beat you 
 all in a foot-race." 
 
 Florence looked somewhat startled, while 
 Jack laughed. She amused him very much. 
 She seemed such a good fellow ! She seemed 
 so healthy also. It was a relief to be with a 
 woman who required no assistance every step 
 or two. How she swung off with him on the 
 smooth shore, leaving her sun-umbrella stick 
 ing in the sands ! What a glow in her pas 
 sionate, handsome face ! What an intoxica 
 tion in her voice! Her eyes had a flash in 
 them. He made her walk very fast, too out 
 of a spirit of mischief. When they were at 
 the farthest point from the hotel and quite 
 out of sight from Florence, she flung herself 
 on the white, dry sands in the sun. 
 
 "Sit here a moment," she begged him 
 laughingly, "you have winded me." . . . 
 After a little quick breathing-pause: "Tell 
 me, that is a beautiful wife of yours. She 
 has distinction. But I see she does not 
 like me." 
 
 "I think you wrong her; every one must 
 like you." 
 
 "She doesn t like the Miss, " and Miss 
 Franscioli made a pretty pout, as if it were 
 but a small matter.
 
 loo OramercE path. 
 
 " That is where I beg leave to differ with 
 her, then. I think the Miss is very piquant ; 
 it is very brave." 
 
 She looked at him carefully. Y"es, he de 
 liberately meant it. He intended to make 
 her a compliment. 
 
 " Oh, if you knew what I have suffered 
 what my life has been! It is a fancy of 
 mine to keep my former husband s name, 
 yet just Miss it." 
 
 "You will not keep it long," he laughed. 
 
 Another compliment ! " There is some 
 thing to this handsome young Benedict, after 
 all, who so bravely stopped my horse," she 
 said to herself. 
 
 " Wild horses could not drag me into an 
 other such mesalliance. No! I will now live 
 and die an old maid!" 
 
 De Ford was amused. " She is free and 
 outspoken with me," he thought, " because 
 lam an old married man, and because she is 
 so Western. She can say what she likes." 
 He enjoyed her confidences, begun so soon, 
 although he had only met her the night be 
 fore, and spoken with her a brief half-hour 
 in company with a number of New York 
 people he knew at the hotel, on the wide 
 veranda. After a little she rose abruptly
 
 Oramercp iparfe. 101 
 
 and sauntered back, talking all the while 
 rapidly, and telling him so many things 
 about herself as if he cared. When they 
 reached the little group (the old people had 
 now joined them) she was talking to him 
 about stocks, and asking his advice about in 
 vestments. She had just had twenty-five 
 thousand dollars come in from a paid-up 
 mortgage. What should she do with it 
 how invest it? She had heard of his Wall 
 Street firm it was well known all over the 
 country. 
 
 " If you will wait till I get back to town, 
 I can take care of it," he said immensely 
 flattered. 
 
 "Oh, will you?" She fairly clapped her 
 hands until her rings jingled. She had 
 pretty hands, very long and ladylike, and 
 she made much use of them. Altogether she 
 was a woman of ton and beauty. In fact, all 
 the men at Rye were fascinated by Miss 
 Franscioli. All the women viewed her with 
 a faint suspicion. 
 
 " She is so brave and frank, she s so hon 
 est," said the men. 
 
 " It s bravado," said the women. 
 
 " She is no hypocrite," said the husbands. 
 
 " She is artfully artless," said the wives.
 
 102 ramercg parfe. 
 
 To begin with, Miss Franscioli played 
 billiards, and had been seen at a late hour in 
 a quiet corner to smoke a cigarette. The 
 women at once pronounced her terribly 
 risque. She followed this up by being a 
 dashing rider and a daring swimmer. She 
 announced that she was an athlete, and that 
 she believed in nothing aufin du siecle. The 
 women at this were in consternation. But 
 at this juncture Mrs. Berrian Deland, of 
 New York, arrived from Mt. Desert. Mrs. 
 Berrien Deland was a noted woman in 
 society, and she openly patronized and ap 
 plauded Miss Franscioli. So after that she 
 was tolerated, and even admired. They be 
 gan to say of her that this wild creature de 
 lighted in showing her worst side, in putting 
 always her worst foot foremost that she 
 was not really so bad. Mrs. Deland had 
 known her very well in Washington. She 
 had much to say of her heroic conduct toward 
 young Picton, the senator s son. The lad 
 was wildly in love with her, but she had sent 
 him flying. 
 
 Indeed, she had sent many men flying. It 
 was true she admitted it she never in 
 tended to marry again. But she was to be a 
 personage, fascinating, intellectual, brilliant,
 
 ramercg frarfc. 103 
 
 overpowering! Florence was instinctively 
 afraid of her. After a week she longed to get 
 away from Rye. She was ready to go back to 
 New York. Jack seemed so odd, so different 
 there. He was always laughing and joking 
 with Miss Franscioli. Once or twice she 
 went upstairs to bed and cried herself to 
 sleep. She said nothing to her mother, to 
 any one except to Dorothy. Jack was so 
 thoughtless! The passionate outbursts she 
 poured into the baby s little pink ears ! Poor, 
 astonished little Dorothy, she often wailed 
 in protesting response ! 
 
 They had been so happy in the high, pure, 
 sweet air of the mountains; and now, if Jack 
 would only stay by her side a minute, they 
 would be so happy here! She loved the sea; 
 the surf in the moonlight was simply grand 
 at Eye. What reproachful glances she 
 looked at him ! 
 
 One day he laughed : " Now be amiable, 
 Florry; let me have a good time. It s my 
 outing. I like to have a little freedom. 
 Must I sit and read to you all day? Ee- 
 member, I am going back to work soon. I 
 want all the exercise and riding I can get. 
 Eemember, dear, I love you, always always. 
 But remember, too, my darling, that I am
 
 104 GramercE ffmrfc. 
 
 still half a boy. Lot me play and amuse my 
 self a little." 
 
 Miss Franscioli confided in her too, and 
 Florence could not help pitying her. Her 
 gayety was largely fictitious. She had had 
 an unhappy, unsatisfied life. " Do you 
 know what it is to have had so much despair 
 that your whole soul is scorched into a dull, 
 hard shell?" she asked. "That is the way 
 with me. What do I care for anything or 
 anybody now? The world s mine oyster, 
 which I with my wit will open. If I was a 
 man I would have said sword. I wish I 
 were a man! I would like to fight." 
 
 To Florence it was all incomprehensible. 
 Miss Franscioli was so outside all her reckon 
 ing! Still she found an excuse to pity her 
 in it all. She was evidently far from being 
 happy. She was just a little too hectic, too 
 excitable. She was very rich, however, and 
 made a display of her Paris toilets, which 
 attracted immense feminine attention. Her 
 figure was excellent. She was a graceful 
 dancer. She was still young and at times 
 could cleverly act the ingenue. She had lived 
 in the rich, plastic society of Chicago, and had 
 danced till morning in the gay carnival balls 
 of St. Louis and New Orleans. At seventeen
 
 (Bramercg E>ar&. 105 
 
 she rode on a car as " Venus" in the Mardi 
 Gras. She was " old " then. She knew the 
 rich, rough, passionate Western world. It is 
 presumable that she led the staid French 
 banker, Franscioli, a merry dance for two 
 years. The men knew all about her at Eye. 
 There was one thing about the Franscioli 
 she concealed nothing. She was altogether 
 too frank. She was so gay, charming, full 
 oiespieylerie, chic, bravado. She loved to be 
 advertised. She said herself that she was 
 going back to Paris ; she had already spent a 
 season there as the beautiful bride of M. 
 Franscioli, of New Orleans. She was going 
 back to Paris to make one of the true aufin 
 du siecle set. She was taking her farewell 
 of America. But finally, one day, Louise 
 Franscioli took a sudden fancy for Tuxedo 
 it was a letter from a dear friend of hers, 
 who had written describing all the glories 
 of the coming fall season. She went away 
 impulsively with hardly any announcement, 
 alone, with her maid. She liked to do these 
 things. 
 
 After she was gone Florence had no fur 
 ther reason to shed tears alone with Dorothy 
 as a confidante. Jack became very devoted, 
 but Eye soon became an intolerable bore to
 
 106 OramercE parfc. 
 
 him. A week later they arrived, for good 
 and all, in Gramercy Park. 
 
 The old house never looked dearer to her. 
 "Ah," she exclaimed, as she entered, "I 
 wish things were different in New York! 
 Why is the climate so wicked? Why do we 
 ever have to go away and be homeless? The 
 park is prettier yes, than Franconia ! The 
 trees are quite as green, and it would not be 
 dull here with you, Jack." She looked at 
 her husband wistfully. 
 
 "See it in August," he laughed. "See 
 the sun baking the brown stone into a dingy 
 yellow ; feel the heavy hot air surging out of 
 the dense over-populated east side ; note the 
 pungent and deadly odor of the ailanthus 
 trees. But it s a pity, though, that we can t 
 move the house bodily away to some spot 
 where we could live summer and winter. As 
 I have often said, we ought never to be 
 separated never!" And he kissed her.
 
 XVI. 
 
 MEAN never to go away from him 
 never again, no matter how hot 
 it may be ; no matter how Doro 
 thy may need a change. We will 
 take a cottage near the city. If it is nec 
 essary, the house here may be sold, and we 
 can all go where it is possible to live in 
 one s own home the year around." 
 
 Mamma was getting used to these little 
 confidences from Florence. She paid little 
 attention to them generally. Now she said : 
 " It was not the way in my time. I never 
 left your father to melt alone through July 
 and August never! In September we 
 usually went for two or three weeks on a 
 trip out West or to Boston, where your fa 
 ther s family were." 
 
 " Oh, mamma, if it were only so in these 
 days ! Is New York hotter than then ? Why 
 do wives desert their husbands as they do? 
 It is wrong! It is wrong!" she cried pas 
 sionately; "Jack used to say so himself." 
 107
 
 108 CJramercE parfc. 
 
 "It isn t the heat," said mamma. "It s 
 cool enough country-houses are never quite 
 so cool in summer but it is so debilitating. 
 Men move about go down to their offices; 
 it doesn t affect them especially, but women 
 who are forced to stay grow thin and pale 
 indoors." 
 
 The question came up at dinner a night 
 or two later. 
 
 " Stay in town all summer!" cried papa in 
 sarcastic glee. " It would be un-American ; 
 a family must split up nowadays, separate, 
 husband from wife; daughters must go 
 visiting about among other families; sons 
 must push out alone into the fishing-camps 
 of Canada; it s the correct thing. Isn t a 
 long winter-time enough for those whom 
 God has joined together to endure one an 
 other? And even in winter must not the 
 wife depart for Florida or Virginia?" 
 
 " A man and wife ought never, except un 
 der the gravest necessity, be separated," 
 said Jack, carving the turkey solemnly. It 
 was one of his finest truisms. 
 
 "Ah, Jack!" cried Florence, gladly echo 
 ing him, and nodding at the same time to 
 mamma. Jack seemed to speak from the 
 heart.
 
 <5ramerc iparfc. 109 
 
 As the season .advanced there was every 
 indication of its being very gay. Florence 
 returned to the city, felt the bracing October 
 air with increasing health and strength. 
 She realized that she had given her husband 
 a year of invalidism, and she determined to 
 make amends. She planned many dinners. 
 She determined to have a ball in Christmas 
 Aveek. Thanksgiving Day they dined their 
 college foot-ball team crestfallen with its 
 defeat by Yale and gave them a reassuring 
 dance afterward, the wide drawing-room be 
 ing elaborately done in crimson for the occa 
 sion. They held two grand receptions. 
 They entertained celebrities. Papa became 
 a great talker; he had shrewd, keen, level 
 headed ideas of things in spite of his amus 
 ing pessimism ; it being once admitted that 
 we were the worst-managed, most ill-admin 
 istered government in the world, he acknowl 
 edged we were doing very well. Grant him 
 the fact that the city was managed by a den 
 of thieves, and it was a capital place to live. 
 He loved dearly to growl, but he never cared 
 personally to participate in an effort of re 
 form. He had the usual New York business 
 man s penny-wise and pound-foolish attitude. 
 He never could leave his business long enough
 
 no GJramercg 
 
 to more than vote, and " this complicated, 
 new-fangled system of registration and voting 
 in vogue was beginning to take a great 
 quantity of time, don t you know," even for 
 that! 
 
 One night it was in the middle of Febru 
 ary, and many things were crowding in be 
 fore Lent they had been to a dance and 
 cotillion at a large fashionable house on 
 North Washington Square. Florence, as 
 was her wont, went first, before removing 
 her wraps, to the baby s crib. She stooped 
 and leaned over. Dorothy was flushed and 
 feverish. Her little blue eyes were wide 
 open, yet she was not making a sound. She 
 seemed to enjoy the vision of her beautiful 
 mamma as she knelt at her crib-side, in her 
 soft fur-lined opera cloak falling half-down 
 her lovely shoulders. She liked to see the 
 glittering diamonds in her ears, in the neck 
 lace at her throat, for she laughed and 
 gurgled. Then she began to cough a little. 
 
 "Jack, come here!" called Florence. 
 
 He was smoking a cigarette just before 
 going to bed. He laid it down on the man 
 tel and crossed the room. 
 
 "It s the grip! See how feverish she is! 
 It may be scarlet fever."
 
 (Sramercg fcarfc. ill 
 
 " Oh, ridiculous!" 
 
 He raised the little mite of human life in 
 his arms and brought it to the light. Flor 
 ence clasped her hands tragically. 
 
 " This comes of my going out night after 
 night, and neglecting her. Oh, Jack if 
 she should die!" 
 
 "It s nothing. She has a cold," he said. 
 
 But the next morning Dorothy was worse. 
 
 They sent post-haste for Dr. Chesney, and 
 in two or three days the fever was gone, the 
 little throat was better. Florence sat up 
 two nights with the child, while her husband 
 slept. She grew pale with worriment and 
 watching. At the end of a week, Dr. Chesney 
 said gravely : " I must send you at once to 
 Florida both you and the baby." Dr. 
 Chesney was a finished, polished, skilful little 
 man, with a bald shiny crown. He had a 
 way of ordering people to Florida as he 
 would order them to take a walk or ride. 
 He never especially recommended the hotel 
 in which he had an interest. People found 
 out for themselves which his hotel was, and 
 went to it for the especial treatment. In 
 winter he prescribed Florida, in summer the 
 Adirondacks. As he had recently bought a 
 tract in Ontario, where he was putting up
 
 112 (Bramercg 
 
 a large hotel, lie was already beginning to 
 speak of the " ozone of the Canadian forests. " 
 This little doctor, the arbiter of fate of 
 many families, never hesitated a moment to 
 split them up divide husband and wife; he 
 cared not an atom, apparently, for their 
 moral well-being. lie had effected some 
 remarkable physical cures. And one thing 
 can be said of the intelligent little man he 
 often sent some poor patient to his Southern 
 hotel free of expense. When he did these 
 generous things all the world knew it and 
 liked him for it, and he prescribed for them 
 as a consequence. 
 
 " It s for Dorothy s sake only, Jack," said 
 Florence, distressed. 
 
 " Why, of course you must go," he in 
 sisted, half-attentively, for he was perusing 
 the paper. " You must go at once. " 
 
 How good Jack was! Papa openly pro 
 tested. " Of course Florence must have her 
 mother with her. Their family-life was to 
 be completely broken up, then. I don t be 
 lieve it s necessary," he said; "Dr. Chesney 
 is always sending people to his hotels. I 
 don t believe in sitting about and watch 
 ing every turn of the thermometer. Our 
 climate so trying? Why, it s not so! It
 
 <3ramercg fcarfe. 113 
 
 used to be severe, but it s changed; it s the 
 finest climate in the world to-day. There is 
 no place that has so much sunshine, so many 
 fine days as New York. If they go to Florida 
 it will be warm and moist, and if they get 
 rid of the grip they ll catch malaria in place 
 of it." 
 
 Women, in questions decided for them by 
 their doctor, have a way of ignoring opposi 
 tion. They talked in low voices now, moth 
 er and daughter, of their necessary prep 
 arations and of the day they should start, 
 while the old gentleman went on: 
 
 " What are Jack and I to do? Don t you 
 owe us any allegiance?" It s lonely living in 
 this great house without you. We ll have 
 to take to drink." 
 
 Even this threat was unheeded. Jack, in 
 evening-dress, was reading the Post., prepar 
 atory to going over to his club. It was his 
 whist-night. He had already many times 
 cheerfully advised going to Florida, " if it 
 was best." Florence only thought of Dor 
 othy. 
 
 At the moment in his dress-coat pocket 
 was a letter, the writing of which was in the 
 fashionable " long" style. The address nearly 
 covered the entire envelope. Miss Franscioli
 
 114 GramercE parh. 
 
 had written him a business letter from New 
 Orleans. She informed him that she was to 
 be in New York permanently after the fol 
 lowing week. She intended buying a "nice 
 little house, "and setting up an establishment 
 somewhere. She also planned a small invest 
 ment in stocks. 
 
 It was not worth while to show Florence a 
 business letter. It was not worth while to 
 speak of Miss Franscioli. He had reason to 
 believe his Avife disliked her. Why, he 
 couldn t imagine,
 
 XVII. 
 
 the days of Florence s ab 
 sence in the South, Jack saw very 
 little of his father-in-law. The 
 old gentleman did not care very 
 much for his club had not been brought up 
 to regard it as a necessity. Clubs came into 
 prominence in New York after the war, and 
 his young manhood was passed in ante 
 bellum days. Down town he lunched at 
 Parrish son John Street, and met there most 
 of his old business friends; it was " club " 
 enough for him. He preferred to pass his 
 evenings at home, and very often he went to 
 bed early, having nothing to do. Very often, 
 too, an old friend dropped in, and they sat 
 and talked of the old days and the changes 
 that were going on, and he frequently read 
 aloud Florry s last letter. Mr. Heath loved 
 to revile the modern life and to say all man 
 ner of harsh things about it. " This idea of 
 going away South after the first of January," 
 he said, " was mere doctor s rubbish. Can t 
 115
 
 116 (Sramercg iparfc. 
 
 the women ever stay at home with their hus 
 bands and mind their business?" The favor 
 able reports about Dorothy, however, recon 
 ciled him a little to his wife s and daughter s 
 absence. 
 
 Jack got in the habit of dining at the 
 club. He knew it was dismal enough for his 
 father-in-law at home, but it was a terrible 
 ordeal to have to sit through a long perfunc 
 tory dinner and listen to the old gentleman s 
 diatribes, delivered in a most lugubrious, 
 harsh, rasping tone of voice, and levelled at 
 everything Jack particularly affected. They 
 came to see very little of each other, meeting 
 only at breakfast and exchanging news about 
 Dorothy and their wives at St. Augustine. 
 
 One morning the old gentleman said : " I 
 think of running down to see them. You ll 
 go, Jack? I ll engage two compartments; 
 it shan t cost you a cent." 
 
 " N no I can t get away. We have a 
 big deal on." 
 
 " To tell the truth, I m getting lonely," 
 said the elder, as he lit a small cigar. 
 
 Jack looked at him half pityingly. 
 " That s just where clubs come in to lonely 
 husbands." 
 
 " I don t believe in it," and the old gentle-
 
 ramercg frarfe. 117 
 
 man beat his fist on the table savagely. " Our 
 family should not be broken up in this way. 
 I admit that Dorothy s health is paramount 
 just now, but should we all go off in so many 
 different directions just because the baby has 
 a sore throat? Family-life is the right life, 
 my boy. Now here is a pretty state of 
 affairs: it s only March, and yet they are 
 in Florida, you at your club the house is 
 empty. I don t like it. It s wrong; it s 
 abominable!" 
 
 " Why, how are we going to help it, sir?" 
 said De Ford amused, standing, legs wide 
 apart, before the low fire of soft coal which 
 was crackling up the chimney. " It s better 
 for the baby, it s better for Florry. Do you 
 remember a year ago? Did you like those 
 days when we went about fearing to breathe 
 while she hung between life and death? I 
 am glad we are able to send them to Florida." 
 
 " Yes, and as soon as they do come home 
 we shall have to send them away again, 
 North, to separate for the summer." 
 
 " That s the climate s fault." 
 
 " The climate ! What did Florry s mother 
 do in the old days? At that time people 
 could not procure these temporary divorces 
 so easily."
 
 118 <3ramcrc fcarfc. 
 
 Jack laughed, and his irate father-in-law 
 went on : " Xo, no, I m not talking for fun 
 I mean it! It s wrong that a man should be 
 left alone among all these city temptations, 
 his wife off enjoying herself somewhere. 
 She is no helpmeet to him. lie doesn t 
 protect licr. Now, Jack, I m an old city 
 man, and I know the world pretty well, and 
 I hear a good deal of talk here and there. 
 I pick up a good deal. I know what s going 
 on, what with the pretty type-writers, and 
 the pretty sales-ladies, and the working- 
 girl whose head is turned by a little flattery, 
 and who is fond of finery and a new bonnet 
 and cloak." 
 
 Jack became very serious. " There is a lot 
 of that sort of thing going on," he said. 
 " It s true, but I don t quite see the connec 
 tion." 
 
 " Why, I m told it s the married men that 
 do the most of that sort of thing." 
 
 Jack nodded. " So I hear," he said ; " but 
 I guess if a man is selfish and bad, he is 
 so even if his wife is here with him." 
 
 " Not so apt to be. We are poor, erring 
 human critters, Jack. As my good old 
 dominie said last Sunday I wish you d been 
 to church instead of driving we are devilish
 
 119 
 
 prone to sin, as the sparks are to fly upward. 
 But if we are left idle, our family-life upset 
 and broken up, how much more likely we are 
 to fall ! Take a poor girl and deprive her of 
 family home-life and protection, and she s 
 half-lost already. She has to be devilish 
 strong-headed to keep straight in this vast 
 city. Take a man and deprive him of his 
 wife, his home; send him off to a club, where 
 he meets the very worst sort of characters, as 
 far as women go. Egad! he s got to be 
 strong-headed not to get into the current and 
 go down the stream as the rest do." 
 
 Jack acknowledged that everything he said 
 was true. 
 
 "This modern American life," he said 
 slowly, " it is strange ; it is wrong ! There I 
 meet Tom Challinor, Archibald, Harry Tal- 
 madge, Disbrow all married men, with their 
 wives in Europe or somewhere. There is a 
 regular married man s set at the club. I 
 don t pretend to know all that they do." 
 
 He did not tell his father-in-law that he 
 had accepted an invitation from Challinor 
 to dine at Delmonico s the Saturday night 
 following, and that there were to be several 
 rather risque, " swagger" young married 
 women present, and at which the champagne
 
 120 ramcrcE path. 
 
 and the liqueurs were to be ad lib., and the 
 women were expected to smoke the dainty 
 little Egyptian cigarettes by the dozen. 
 
 He put on a solemn face, for it suddenly 
 occurred to him that it was as a philosopher 
 he was examining the question of temporary 
 divorce, and that it was as a philosophic 
 observer of modern life and manners that 
 he would attend Challinor s rather rapid 
 petit diner at DePs. 
 
 His father-in-law had often spoken against 
 clubs and club-life. This morning, deep in 
 his heart, he acknowledged that all he said 
 was simply true. His father-in-law knew 
 what he was talking about! 
 
 He put on his hat and coat and walked 
 downtown meditating upon the dangers and 
 temptations which beset other people in mar 
 ried life. He felt very strong, very secure 
 in himself. He made no personal applica 
 tion of the words he had heard. He was in 
 love with his wife, devoted to Dorothy he 
 was simply adamant. But only the day be 
 fore a friend had told him that Sundown, 
 the artist, was canoeing it in Florida. The 
 fact irritated him. 
 
 " Florry is one of those women who takes 
 a lot of enjoyment in the present," he said
 
 Gramercg parfc. 121 
 
 to himself. " She likes best the man who is 
 with her. When I think of last summer, 
 I admire my own forbearance; it s because 
 I believe in her, I trust her, I love her." 
 
 This little speech to himself, attuned to 
 his own ear so perfectly, gave him a warm 
 pleasant glow, as he marched down Broadway 
 on the left side, with his silk hat so well 
 brushed, his walking-coat with a bachelor s 
 button so cJiic, his stick so light and fashion 
 able. The pretty shop-girls stared and half- 
 furtively smiled; he was handsome as an 
 Apollo. He swung along with a fine air of 
 aplomb, of success. He was liked. He was 
 "square," he was ambitious. Nothing so 
 fired his ambition, so poised his flight up 
 ward as this walk down Broadway of a sunny 
 winter s morning. The bustle, the noise, 
 the crowd, the roar, filled his heart and 
 nerves like the music of battle. He passed 
 by the towering business houses feeling 
 keenly the motive of the time, of the hour 
 commerce. He regretted not that the Jews 
 had plastered their names from Grace to 
 Trinity Church, or that the Irish flag floated 
 on the City Hall; he had a fine democratic 
 feeling of " letting the best man win." The 
 grand life of action, of fighting for money and
 
 122 (Bramercg fl>arfe. 
 
 supremacy filled him, surging through his 
 veins like fire. He felt he was a part of the 
 true "great world" of New York, and that 
 the little silly world of fashion uptown was 
 but a puny thing. Vive Vhomme d affaires !
 
 XVIII. 
 
 HEN he presented himself at Del- 
 monico s for Challinor s dinner 
 he was still filled with his enthu 
 siasm for business success and 
 power. It seemed to be the all in all for 
 him. He had passed through the youthful 
 love-period that was over. Women could 
 no longer especially charm him. He would 
 be rich, powerful, a man of business. That 
 very day he had made ten thousand dollars 
 by a fortunate turn; it intoxicated him. A 
 foreigner might think it strange that this 
 man of business cared nothing for his city s 
 political welfare. It was nothing to him. 
 He cared not what Irishman held the reins. 
 Like his father-in-law, Jack occasionally 
 condemned city politics as " corrupt; " but 
 he never thought of giving his attention to 
 the matter. Which of his friends did? 
 Politics in Xew York, forsooth, were hardly 
 the occupation of a gentleman ! 
 
 They already asked him to take a respon- 
 123
 
 124 <3ramerc ftarfc. 
 
 sible position on an important committee of 
 the Stock Exchange i.e., he was a coming 
 man. Every one knew he was the " brains" 
 of " Beach, Catherly & De Ford." Women 
 played a small part in his future. His wife, 
 to be sure, would always second him finely. 
 He was proud of her beauty. But even his 
 Avife he noticed the same phenomenon the 
 summer previous when she was away so long 
 did not now often enter into his dreams. 
 She seemed now to be always looking at him, 
 as it were, from the outside, now discrimin 
 atingly, and not, as formerly, from the in 
 side, enthusiastically. 
 
 Challinor greeted him cordially. He was 
 a pale, modest-looking little man, of the finest 
 manners and the most stoical countenance. 
 He came of most excellent family, and his 
 wife and children were spending the winter 
 on the Riviera. 
 
 Archibald, a handsome New York dandy, 
 was a well-known swell, who, in a fit of ab 
 sent-mindedness, had married a poor but 
 pretty artist. He was a good fellow, and 
 his wife and children were somewhere in 
 Georgia enjoying the pleasant June-like 
 weather. Jack shook him by the hand. 
 
 Disbrow, celebrated as a "lady killer, "not
 
 <3ramerc iparfc. 125 
 
 at all a handsome man, but a prodigious 
 talker; a nervous, irritable man who had 
 written a series of unsuccessful novels, stood 
 taking off his gloves. He was a well-mean 
 ing man among men, and his wife was at 
 present in Sioux City for purposes other than 
 health. 
 
 Harry Talmadge " much-married Harry," 
 they called him at the club. He was a short, 
 fat, exceeding popular man, with a wife who 
 rarely left the city summer or winter while 
 business kept him there. Harry Talmadge 
 had long been an operator on Wall Street, 
 and knew Jack very well. He completed the 
 list of male guests at the dinner. His wife 
 had gone for a temporary stay in the 
 country. 
 
 When they entered the little drawing-room 
 out of the dining-room, Jack was surprised 
 to see Miss Franscioli standing before the long 
 cheval glass in a superb Paris gown of black 
 satin. He went up and spoke to her at once. 
 They met now as old intimes. Near her 
 stood several handsome women, to whom 
 Challinor introduced him. 
 
 Mrs. Bronson, whose husband was forever 
 shooting on the Chesapeake; Mrs. Berrian 
 Deland, who played the part of indulgent 
 9
 
 126 (SramercB parfc. 
 
 chaperon, and complained that her husband 
 was still detained in London on business, 
 beamed on him. Mrs. Bronx, whose husband 
 was spending his time yachting among the 
 West Indian Islands, said to him: "You 
 know I can t endure the water" (here she 
 sighed plaintively), " and my husband is pas 
 sionately fond of his yacht. What can one 
 do? Quevoila? We separate, and I try to 
 worry along without him by means of my 
 many friends." 
 
 Mrs. Bronx made an upward movement of 
 the eyelids that was positively saint-like. 
 
 Jack took in Miss Franscioli, and was 
 placed next her at table. It was an expen 
 sive, elaborate dinner, and there was but one 
 wine from oysters to coffee, after the latest 
 club fad. 
 
 " I have been very ill," Miss Franscioli said 
 "the grip; but I am well again. I have 
 bought a little house here, Mr. De Ford. A 
 new little house, far up on the west side, and 
 it is filled with everything I could find and 
 scrape together in Europe, lots of rare curi 
 osities. Come up and see it." 
 
 He had already seen and been in the house, 
 but she said this for effect. She never looked 
 so beautiful to him. The poise of her head,
 
 (Sramercs parfc. 127 
 
 her fluffy, pretty hair, her smile fascinated 
 him. Her shoulders were superb. What 
 style, what verve she had! In his then feel 
 ing of business conquest he felt he would love 
 to conquer her, and trail her, as it were, in 
 his triumphant procession behind his chariot- 
 wheel. They had had several business con 
 sultations together, had lunched twice at 
 Savarin s. He felt himself pleased to know 
 of her social success, to learn that she was 
 " positively flooded with the swellest invita 
 tions." 
 
 Challinor said it was a consolation dinner. 
 Every one present must be deemed in the 
 depths of woe. Then he thought of Miss 
 Franscioli and stammered : " Some of us 
 have escaped " 
 
 She burst out laughing, saying, " You are 
 making matters worse!" And Disbrow 
 quoted, sot to voce : 
 
 "My heart still hovering round about you, 
 I thought I could not live without you ; 
 But &ince we ve been three months asunder, 
 How I lived with you is the wonder !" 
 
 "Out of sight, out of mind," said Mrs. 
 Bronx, with a laugh, quoting in her turn:
 
 128 ramercB parfe. 
 
 " That friends, however friends they were, 
 Still deal with things as things occur, 
 And that, excepting for the blind, 
 What s out of sight, is out of mind." 
 
 Archibald repudiated this sentiment with 
 great vim. Jack remained silent. 
 
 Every one else seemed to be pervaded with 
 the idea that marriage was a capital thing 
 to make game of. Wit is fond of her sister, 
 Irreverence. Wit insists on perfect freedom ; 
 it admires nothing, it respects nothing. 
 Marriage was but a joke, after all! 
 
 The dinner was soon, without losing its 
 decorous character, full of laughter and 
 point. There were several piquant little 
 stories of a worldly turn. American gentle 
 men are never very " free" in their cups with 
 their women, even with those they do not en 
 tirely respect, and the conversation never 
 verged on the " impossible." Challinor had 
 in, at the end of it, the pretty Spanish dan- 
 seuse, then attracting much interest in New 
 York. She was pretty and graceful, and, 
 when she finished her pas seul, the men filled 
 her slipper with champagne and drank out 
 of it. It was considered a gallant act. Do 
 Ford preferred his in his glass. The room 
 was brilliant with light, the table a mass of
 
 ramercs iparfe. 129 
 
 roses, the music of the Spanish guitars was 
 soft and sensuous. There was a luxurious 
 air of splendor over all. Archibald, who was 
 an exceedingly proper, if a somewhat dull 
 young man, leaned his elbows on the table 
 he was smoking a cigarette and looked 
 across at Jack. Apparently he was having, 
 at the instant, a momentary bad half-minute 
 of self-reproach. " Our poor wives in the 
 South," he said to Jack, " may they soon be 
 well enough to come home again!" and he 
 drank a bumper to them. 
 
 " Yes, here s to Dorothy," said Miss Fran- 
 scioli quickly. " And here s to " Madonna" 
 also, as Mr. Sundown has rightly named Mrs. 
 De Ford." 
 
 " My wife writes he is in Florida; she saw 
 him," said Archibald. "Now Sundown is 
 a true artist; he feels. I always wished I d 
 studied art, don t you know?" 
 
 " Do you think you can feel?" asked Miss 
 Franscioli, admiring his smooth, fat aristo 
 cratic face with its drooping mustachios. 
 
 " Ah, how can you ask me?" And Archi 
 bald put on a most adorable smile. 
 
 "Oh, you men! You can never under 
 stand what it is really to feel!" And Miss 
 Franscioli sighed. Immediately after she
 
 130 (SramercE parfc. 
 
 lit a cigarette and entered into a pitched 
 battle with Disbrow over Gilbert and Sulli 
 van s operas, which she detested. When they 
 rose from the table Jack sought out Archi 
 bald. 
 
 "Is Sundown in St. Augustine?" 
 
 " I believe he is, at the Alhambra yes." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 " A d d handsome fellow, too, De Ford ; 
 has a frightful reputation as a lady-killer. 
 Is a good shot, lived four years in Paris, and 
 was always fighting duels at unearthly hours 
 in the morning in the Bois de Boulogne. 
 Oh, I used to know him very well, but I 
 didn t care to have him call; I prefer him 
 at the club." 
 
 " Is he so disreputable?" 
 
 " Now see here, De Ford, you and I are 
 married men, by God! We look on these 
 things in a different light from most men, of 
 course. We re particular, egad! We both 
 have deuced handsome wives, and they re 
 away alone." 
 
 Jack tried to push him away; but Archi 
 bald, who was affected by the wine, insisted 
 in a louder voice. 
 
 " I I say, they re both handsome, and of 
 course they re both strictly there s notli-
 
 <3ramerc fcarft. 131 
 
 ing they dislike more than flirting, of course. 
 But at the same time they re human, De 
 Ford old man " 
 
 He could have knocked Archibald down, 
 he was so angry at his stupidity. 
 
 Miss Fraiiscioli sought to interfere to lead 
 him away, and it made De Ford only the 
 angrier to have her bestow this mistaken 
 kindness. 
 
 "Some men are born idiots," she whis 
 pered. " Don t mind what he says." 
 
 De Ford was pale and silent. He had not 
 really the slightest cause for anger against 
 poor Archibald, as he had led him on, yet he 
 was dreadfully irritated. 
 
 "Ah, you can feel," whispered the tall 
 beauty, scrutinizing him narrowly, with a 
 half-smile through her lorgnette. 
 
 "Well, I m not a blockhead, anyway," he 
 said shortly, turning away from her. 
 
 He went away soon after this, and re 
 turned home in the rain. His own cab had 
 not come for him as ordered, and he did not 
 wait for another to be called. He was too 
 nervous, too feverish. At the house-door he 
 found, to his intense disgust, that he had 
 forgotten his latch-key, and he rang and 
 rang in the pouring rain, waiting for a
 
 132 (BramercB parfc. 
 
 servant to open the richly decorated door. 
 Presently he heard a rattling of chains and 
 saw a light. The door opened slowly, and 
 his father-in-law pat his head out. 
 
 " Oh, it s you, is it? Do you realize what 
 time it is? It s nearly two." 
 
 The old gentleman never looked so gro 
 tesquely cross, so ludicrously peevish. Jack s 
 good-humor returned. 
 
 " Then it s high time you were in hed, sir," 
 he laughed. 
 
 Mr. Heath looked at him furiously, but 
 said nothing. 
 
 "Poor papa!" Jack continued. "Life is 
 not half so pleasant now without them, is 
 it?" 
 
 Papa softened a little. " Why, the house 
 is like a graveyard," he replied, and went 
 back upstairs in his dressing-gown, looking 
 very much like old Gargantua himself.
 
 XIX. 
 
 [HE representatives of the old New 
 York life and the new life, the 
 home-loving gentleman of a past 
 day, and the young man of the 
 present, who must needs be somewhat in the 
 fashion, and who merely used the old house 
 in Gramercy Park for his brief lodgment, 
 saw little of one another now for some time. 
 Mr. Heath went South to find a home, if he 
 could, in a sultry hotel-parlor or the dull 
 discomfort of his wife s hotel bedroom. lie 
 was not silent in the midst of his misfort 
 unes, lie protested against the horrible 
 publicity of hotels and the stupidity of 
 colored waiters, the need of being agreeable 
 to a horde of strangers, the elevators, and the 
 numberless children who tumbled against one 
 and drove so recklessly into one s legs and 
 corporation. He had travelled in Florida 
 before, and they had nothing new to show 
 him now but their " palatial " hotels. He 
 was soon tired of the "splendor" of these 
 133
 
 134 Gramercg parfc. 
 
 affairs, of the crowd and the music, and the 
 continual feeling that he must be at Sara 
 toga on a muggy day in August ! After two 
 weeks of it he fell into a settled melancholy 
 and pleaded for a speedy return North. Dr. 
 Chesney had run down for a few days, and 
 as Florence was still rather languid from the 
 warm dulness of the weather, he advocated 
 their going on to his hotel in the Pines 
 farther south. 
 
 " There is a very comfortable watering- 
 place on a pretty bit of green, with some 
 capital trees," said Mr. Heath grimly. "It 
 is located in a spot they call Gramercy Park. 
 There are very comfortable beds there, and 
 one gets capital coffee and the morning 
 papers as soon as he s up. It is also called 
 Home. Do these well-dressed people we see 
 careering about here know what such a place 
 is?" Mrs. Heath, who secretly sided with 
 him, said nothing. 
 
 " I want to go home, papa, quite as much 
 as you do," said Florence, who had been 
 holding the plump little Dorothy on her 
 knee. " Indeed, indeed, papa, if it were 
 not for baby I would not wish to stay away 
 from Jack a minute. But what does Dr. 
 Chesney say: That it would be suicidal to
 
 GramercE iparfe. 135 
 
 go to New York for a month yet. Don t 
 yon know how sorry I am for poor Jack, sit 
 ting there alone night after night in the great 
 house, thinking of me and of Dorothy? I 
 write to him every day and tell him every 
 thing we do. I wanted to tell him about 
 Mr. Sundown s reading to us yesterday, at 
 the old fort ; but 1 kept myself from it, as 
 he s begun Dorothy s portrait, and it s to be 
 a secret. I wish he could leave business and 
 come down here. But he can t, and it s 
 providential that we came, for Dorothy is 
 perfectly well now." 
 
 " Well, Jack isn t !" burst out the old gen 
 tleman. " That is, he s not happy. He s 
 not himself. He s out at his club till all 
 hours every night, and it s doing him no 
 good." 
 
 " Well, I m very glad he does go to a club," 
 rejoined Florence, resolved to applaud in 
 public everything her husband did. " It 
 amuses him. He enjoys billiards and whist. 
 I like to have him go to the City Club, the 
 men are all so swell and so aristocratic. 
 I like to get his letters with the club seal." 
 
 Her father held up his hands in protest. 
 " Club seal ! He ought never to date or re 
 ceive a letter except at Gramercy Park! Ah,
 
 136 
 
 how balmy and pleasant it must be there 
 now ! I can see the tulips springing up in 
 the flower-beds. Spring always gets into the 
 enclosure before it appears anywhere else. 
 The grass was already green before I came 
 away." 
 
 "Poor papa!" said Florence with a pity 
 ing smile. 
 
 Dr. Chesney happened up just then with 
 a telegram in his hand. He looked especially 
 smooth, round, shiny, and well-groomed. 
 "See what you are escaping," he laughed. 
 A terrible blizzard has set in, thermometer 
 at zero, wires all down, snow three feet in 
 Broadway. Now, do you want to return 
 North? The dispatches say there never was 
 anything like it not for fifty years ! New 
 York is completely snowed under! Trains 
 can t get through. It s something terrible!" 
 
 "And Jack!" cried Florence alarmed. 
 
 " Now, don t worry about your husband," 
 said the doctor. " He is safely ensconced in 
 that beautiful old house on Gramercy Park. 
 Perhaps for a day he won t get down to busi 
 ness ; well, it will do him good. He will have 
 time to write us a long letter, describing this 
 terrible case of weather. Ah, my dear, I m 
 very glad this little life is not subjected to
 
 <3ramercg f>arft. 137 
 
 it ;" and the good doctor bent down and kissed 
 the little cooing mite, with a vast show of 
 affection. 
 
 Florence turned to her father in triumph. 
 " So this is your mild spring, New York 
 climate, papa, the most salubrious in the 
 world?" she laughed. 
 
 The old gentleman for once had nothing 
 to say. Papa, it must be confessed, looked 
 rather put out. When the doctor was out 
 of hearing, however, he said, with a shrug : 
 "It s another of his whoppers to keep 
 people down here, now he s got em here. 
 Blizzard or no blizzard, the old house is 
 warm enough with the new patent furnaces ; 
 they re sufficient to heat a church. I d 
 rather be there than here, blizzard or no 
 blizzard. It s sure to affect hides. I m 
 going North as soon as I can just as soon 
 as I can." 
 
 But they persuaded him two days later to 
 see them comfortably settled at the Pines, 
 before he left them to go North. Sundown 
 had commenced a very charming portrait 
 of little Miss Dorothy, held in the arms 
 of Clarisse, the jolly-faced nou-nou. He 
 worked very leisurely at it, claiming that he 
 could only paint for an hour in the morning
 
 138 Gramercg ffiarfc. 
 
 on Dorothy s account. Florence designed 
 the portrait as a surprise to Jack. For this 
 reason she had suppressed the fact of Sun 
 down s presence in St. Augustine, and had 
 cautioned papa and mamma against making 
 any reference to it. Sundown was especially 
 clever in his young children s portraits. 
 
 He painted them in pretty attitudes, 
 caught, as it were, in a momentary swift 
 evanishment. He painted Dorothy pulling 
 apart the petals of a red rose. And if we 
 were inclined to give a Hawthorne - like 
 meaning to Dorothy s act, the red rose might 
 represent in our minds the marriage of the 
 little maid s parents; for was this Southern 
 flight not entirely due to her? And the 
 Northern flights afterward?
 
 came up from the South to 
 remain only a few weeks at home 
 before it became necessary again 
 to seek out an abiding-place for 
 Dorothy through the period of her second 
 "dangerous" summer. Little by little 
 Florence s life, and the entire family life, 
 began to centre about this remarkable lit 
 tle child, whose dainty curls and chubby 
 fingers meant so much to both generations. 
 Florence proposed a cottage near the sea, 
 where all could be together, and papa and 
 Jack go and come from business every morn 
 ing and night. 
 
 Jack was not averse to this, but he was 
 not especially enthusiastic for the plan. In 
 sensibly he had grown used to separation. 
 The freedom of bohemianism is very attractive 
 to some men; it had its attraction for him. 
 He had met several actors and one or 
 two famous actresses who knew the world, 
 and whose wit and brilliancy amused him. 
 139
 
 140 ramercg fcarfc. 
 
 During the month of May, when the 
 home-life began again, he often came home 
 tired from business and ready to laugh 
 and be amused, and found his wife wear 
 ied out by a "headache." There seemed 
 to be no response to his buoyant protesta 
 tions. Florence, he found, was seldom able 
 or willing to " do " anything. She did not 
 care to go out. He could not persuade her 
 to go to the theatre. The evenings seemed 
 long, and, he was forced to confess, dull, 
 passed in long discourses upon Dorothy, and 
 in telling him what she had seen and done in 
 St. Augustine. But her sweet girlish beauty 
 remained. He still worshipped her, still 
 reverenced her wishes. If he yawned as he 
 sat in the dimly lighted drawing-room as 
 she lay in some soft white dress upon the 
 sofa, he concealed it admirably. She never 
 dreamed he was bored not by her, but by 
 the dull inaction. 
 
 For a week he did not go out in the even 
 ing himself. He read aloud from Dickens, 
 from Mark Twain. He wondered why he 
 was so unsatisfied. Had he not had suffi 
 cient excitement on change all day? The 
 long, solemn home dinner, the long, dim 
 evenings Florence never liked much light
 
 CH-amercg park. 141 
 
 in the room Came to be almost unendurable 
 to him. Ho longed for something to com 
 bat, to conquer, at least to stimulate him. 
 
 He contrasted the gay social life at the 
 pretty little jewel-box of Miss Franscioli on 
 Riverside Drive. It was always gay there. 
 The very fact that Florence felt so sure of 
 him annoyed him. Her trust in him was 
 almost too perfect, too implicit. In her 
 sweet presence, a delicate flower, so pure, so 
 good that in his better moments he almost 
 heard seraphic voices singing around her as 
 she lay, her jewelled hand in his at such 
 times his queer jealousy of Sundown floated 
 out of his mind and disappeared. They 
 never mentioned his name. 
 
 It was not always dull, and Florence was 
 at times lively enough and like his recollec 
 tion of her before marriage. But these were 
 occasions when he brought a friend or two 
 in to dine. She thought Disbrow immensely 
 entertaining, and she was sorry for poor Mr. 
 Challinor, whose wife was always away. She 
 brightened up when they were present. She 
 was herself. Why did she not appear as 
 gay and as charming for him alone? 
 
 Sometimes he teased her about it. " You 
 never saltl so many good things in your life, 
 10
 
 142 ramercg 
 
 Florry, " he said one evening after his friends 
 had gone, as you did to-night. You were 
 like your old self. You laughed and chatted 
 with Disbrow until I began to feel a bit 
 jealous. You were amusing, and those odd 
 stories about the alligator and the ne 
 
 groes 
 
 "Those I cribbed from Mr. Sundown," 
 she laughed. " He had so many of them. 
 You know we met him at St. Augustine and 
 afterward at the Pines." Jack nodded but 
 said nothing. " Don t you want me to be 
 amusing, Jack?" 
 
 " But when we are alone." 
 
 " Jack, I love you. It s enough to have 
 you near me. We need not feel we ve got to 
 entertain each other, need we? The idea of 
 married people setting out to entertain each 
 other ! How ridiculous it would look ! Papa 
 calls us a pair of spoons as it is. Isn t love 
 enough, Jack? It s because I m so contented 
 and so happy that I am satisfied. I want 
 nothing further. What are theatres, din 
 ners, dances, receptions which I always 
 hate, anyway what are they compared with 
 Dorothy and you? Ah, Jack, I have reached 
 my goal it is happiness; you may call it 
 dulness."
 
 <5ramerc E>arfe. 143 
 
 He kissed her gently, then he lit a cigar. 
 Yes, it was "happiness." 
 
 The next night, after sitting in the semi- 
 darkness with his wife for an hour after din 
 ner, he grew restless and walked to and fro 
 across the wide room. They had been silent 
 for many minutes he feeling that somehow 
 he was half-unconsciously drawing away from 
 her, and constantly endeavoring to repress 
 his sense of ennui. It is true the young 
 man had few resources outside his business. 
 He had come to the time when every day he 
 closed his desk it was with a feeling, " Now 
 my work is over, I can play." He came up 
 town with a vague desire for amusement. 
 Other men he knew were the same. Tom, 
 Dick, and Harry were always telling him of 
 some lark they had been on the night before. 
 He was young, too, and vigorous. He was 
 not averse to a little fun, but this coming 
 home to read aloud, or to sit in the semi- 
 darkness Well, for Florence s sake he would 
 submit and endure a good deal ; but it became 
 a dreadful bore. 
 
 There came a ring at the electric door-bell 
 and Sundown was announced. Instantly 
 there was a great change in Florence. She 
 sat up, fluttered across to a little oval mirror
 
 144 (Bramercg 
 
 beneath a gas-jet, turned up the gas, di 
 rected the heavy cut-glass chandelier to be 
 lighted. 
 
 " Oh, I wish I had put on my pink crepe 
 gown," she exclaimed vexedly to Jack, " I m 
 so particular with Mr. Sundown. He notices 
 everything." 
 
 Jack pulled at his mustache, watching 
 her, and backing up awkwardly near the 
 mantel as Sundown, in the affected Paris 
 pointed beard, long hair, a lock negligently 
 falling into his eyes over his high forehead, 
 entered. 
 
 It is the latest fad among some of our swell 
 young artists and litterateurs to be mistaken 
 for exiled Parisians. 
 
 Florence greeted him warmly; Jack nod 
 ded without extending his hand. Immedi 
 ately they plunged into talk about Florida 
 and Florida people. Jack, without a word, 
 went into the library, where his father-in-law 
 was asleep in his comfortable leathern arm 
 chair, and grand-mamma was quietly reading 
 her religious weekly. They heard Florence 
 bubbling over with laughter. " Go in and 
 see Mr. Sundown," said Jack. " I guess I ll 
 run over to the club for a few minu tes. Mrs. 
 Heath, much pleased, took off her spectacles,
 
 ramercs fcarft. 145 
 
 rose, and went into the drawing-room with 
 out a word. 
 
 " Even she prefers that Paris lackadaisical 
 dandy to me," he said to himself grudgingly. 
 As he went out through the hallway, all three 
 were laughing at one of Sundown s enter 
 taining negro stories he had picked up in the 
 swamps of Florida. 
 
 Jack went out into the calm, clear night 
 and saw the moon rising above the trees of 
 the little park. It seemed to him a soft and 
 sensuous May moon, full of a wicked delight 
 of invitation to a voluptuous flight from 
 everything that was considered particularly 
 respectable. Around the square loomed up 
 in dark outline the uneven line of brown-stone 
 houses. Across the way rose an apartment 
 building striking the starry sky at an enor 
 mous height. There were many people pass 
 ing in the street. There were crude east- 
 side lovers lingering along on the outside of 
 the high iron fence. The fountain was play 
 ing in the moonlight. Inside the park were 
 many little family-groups, sitting at ease and 
 secure from intrusion. He was somewhat 
 startled to hear the shrill voice of a boy cry 
 out to those within:
 
 146 (Bramercg parfc. 
 
 " Say, ye s think cause we s can t git in, 
 ye sowns the earth, don t ye s?" 
 
 He hailed a passing hansom, lit a cigar, 
 and getting in, directed the driver to go to 
 the City Club. Here he found Challinor, 
 who had been having a rather " heavy " din 
 ner with a few friends invited to meet Lord 
 Sandbury, a young English nobleman who 
 was in New York for the first time. 
 
 Challinor grasped his hand and beamed 
 all over. " Just the man we want, De Ford. 
 Wife gone out of town again? Still here? 
 How is it you re out? Ha, ha, old man 
 been dining, you know forgive all I say. 
 Now, I ve got Lord Sandbury on my hands 
 this evening. He hates theatres, and s after 
 nine, most ten anyway. I ve been telling 
 him about the Franscioli, typical fin du 
 siecle, eh? "We re going up there. She has 
 a musicale to-night. Come along with us?" 
 
 At first Jack refused. There is nothing 
 so unpleasant usually for a man who hasn t 
 dined and wined to any extent to have to do 
 with men who are somewhat under the " in- 
 flooence." 
 
 Wine of any kind, even the cheap and 
 harmless California clarets, were rarely seen
 
 ramercg frarfc. 147 
 
 on Mr. Heath s table. Occasionally with 
 great pomp, on a birthday or a holiday, the 
 butler opened a bottle of champagne. Jack, 
 although he sat at the head of the table and 
 carved, was quite unable to alter this wine- 
 less rule. It was the rule of Mr. Heath s 
 youth in New England. 
 
 Challinor dragged Jack into the elegant 
 cafe of the club, where round the little tables 
 groups of men were sitting, and ordered an 
 other bottle. In the midst of a group who 
 were listening to a rather broad story by Dis- 
 brow, he observed a " leggy " blond youth 
 with the faintest suspicion of a mus 
 tache. It was Lord Sandbury. He was very 
 handsome, very British, and wore a white 
 vest cut rather high. He had already 
 achieved a reputation in London by figuring 
 in what may be termed a " coming out " 
 divorce scandal. Many young noblemen had 
 made their debut in that way. It gave them 
 a social eclat , as was said. 
 
 Jack soon warmed up with the wine and 
 told a good story of his own. He told a story 
 very well, and was already beginning to be 
 in demand. Amid the laughter at the con 
 clusion of his tale Lord Sandbury slapped
 
 148 GrametcB fcarfc. 
 
 him on the back, and swore he must run over 
 to London with him and tell that story to 
 H. R. H! 
 
 "Come," said Challinor, looking at his 
 watch, " go with us, old man ; we will make 
 a night of it!" 
 
 Jack thought of Sundown and his pointed 
 beard, and nonchalantly lit a fresh cigar and 
 went with them. Lord Sandbury called him 
 a " thoroughbred. " It occurred to him to 
 give a dinner: Lord Sandbury was a great 
 card. Then he thought: " Under the same 
 roof with her?" And his vague fancy of a 
 dinner fell into absurdity.
 
 !IIE new little house in Riverside 
 Drive was one of a row of new 
 little houses very stony staring 
 little houses they were, looking 
 like dry, rocky chasms over which a river 
 formerly used to flow. The stone stoops 
 were universally built out ruggedly into the 
 street and architecturally made much of. 
 Occasionally the stone stoop seemed to be 
 larger than the house itself, to catch the eye 
 first and to prevent the eye from going any 
 farther. Nor did the little houses look 
 particularly habitable. They were too " at 
 tractive" to be comfortable, too "rocky" to 
 be lovable, too fussy to become homes. A 
 very " bridey " bride might have moved into 
 one of them, but before very long she would 
 have been willing to move out again, and 
 into a plainer, more domestic-looking house. 
 The groom, were he a man, would soon grow 
 tired of rocky and bricky gingerbread-work, 
 and consign the smart contractor who built 
 miles of these enormities, and the smart 
 149
 
 150 GramercE iparfc. 
 
 dealer who sold him one at an exorbitant 
 price, to everlasting perdition. 
 
 It was before one of these rocky affairs, 
 No. 2871, that their carriage stopped that 
 gorgeous May night, with the full luxuri 
 ous moon pouring its Avhite light upon 
 the irregular fa9ade, and shining from 
 the plate-glass windows. There were 
 one or two other carriages standing op 
 posite in the shadow, and they heard 
 music coming out of the half-open win 
 dows. 
 
 TKej mounted the winding stoop. They 
 pressed a. button and waited. 
 
 " Er ers a typical New York modern 
 house, Lord Sandbury," said Challinor, 
 pointing to the facade with his cane. 
 
 "And very dangerous, I m sure." 
 
 "How so?" 
 
 "Why, for children; if I was a lad, don t 
 yon know, I wouldn t be quiet without 
 climbing up that granite front, don t y 
 know?" 
 
 They laughed. " What ll he say to the 
 typical woman inside?" said Challinor. 
 
 " Is she also of this extraordinary stony 
 character?" asked his lordship. 
 
 "Yes, adamant," said Jack quietly.
 
 ftarfc. 151 
 
 Presently the door was opened by a tall 
 beautiful woman whose face was full of color 
 and whose eyes flashed in the moonlight. 
 It was Miss Franscioli herself. 
 
 " Oh, so glad to see you Mr. De Ford 
 of all men and Mr. Challinor!" 
 
 "Lord Sandbury," said Challinor gravely, 
 "the last importation." 
 
 Lord Sandbury bowed : " Another Ameri 
 can custom, I presume?" 
 
 " For a hostess to receive her guests on the 
 door-step? Yes," interposed Miss Franscioli 
 quickly. " Especially as we have such a 
 gorgeous front-stoop. Yes, Lord Sandbury. 
 But I ll tell you something dreadful has 
 happened in my household, Mr. De Ford." 
 She seemed to add his name as if he were 
 responsible for it. 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " A strike. My butler and all my servants 
 have suddenly up and left me. Did you ever 
 hear of such a thing?" 
 
 "Perfectly astounding," said Challinor, 
 amused, " that any one should ever want to 
 leave you!" 
 
 Lord Sandbury was much interested. 
 "It s very odd, don t you know," he said, 
 "quite American."
 
 152 ramercE ftarfc. 
 
 " Yes, it s true too. Come in and let me 
 tell you about it. They knew I was going to 
 have a party. They waited until six o clock. 
 Wasn t it abominable of them? All except 
 my French maid, who would have struck 
 too she s fully wicked enough only she 
 can t speak 1 Anglais and couldn t under 
 stand a word of what they said. I was at 
 my wit s end, but I sent to Lelanne s, and 
 the house is full of stupid waiters. Thus 
 we shall be taken care of for a few days." 
 
 "Very extraordinary!" laughed the Eng 
 lishman. " Very American!" 
 
 They entered the square hall, and found the 
 house in dazzling brilliancy from the many 
 electric lights of different colors. 
 
 " They waited till they thought they could 
 do what they wished with me," said the 
 Franscioli, laughing. " The wretches ! But 
 luckily I was not alone. I had Miss Brown, 
 and my aunt, Mrs. Stead. Look at my 
 hands; aren t they like beets? They have 
 been up to the elbows in hot dish-water." 
 
 She looked very charming as she spoke. 
 She had so much life, such high color. The 
 necklace of pearls she wore showed against 
 her white skin, like clots of country cream 
 on milk.
 
 C5ramerc 
 
 In the highly decorated, richly furnished 
 drawing-room were a dozen or so people, 
 chiefly of the "smart" set. Mrs. Berrian 
 Delaud was fanning herself in a corner and 
 talking languidly with Mrs. Bronx. They 
 all looked astonished to see De Ford enter, 
 and delighted to see Lord Sandbury, whose 
 "story" had preceded him. A Herr Pro 
 fessor Volinski or Hair Professor, as Chal- 
 linor called him was about to play some 
 thing of Liszt s on the grand piano, which 
 had its top raised to give a louder effect. He 
 was high-priced, and the drawing card of 
 the evening. Miss Franscioli took Lord 
 Sundbury in, in triumph, and presented him 
 to her aunt, Mrs. Stead, Mrs. Deland, and 
 half a dozen ladies in order, paying no at 
 tention whatever to the Herr Volinski. 
 
 " Lord Sandbury is writing a book on 
 America," she laughed, "and he is here to 
 learn how we put down strikes. I don t 
 suppose he cares two straws for music, but 
 he must be kept quiet and listen." She 
 turned to him and whispered Herr Volinski s 
 outrageous prix pour deux heures. 
 
 Herr Volinski immediately commenced to 
 bang, and every one in the drawing-room 
 and the library, which opened out of it,
 
 154 (Uramercg parfe. 
 
 relapsed into attitudes of deepest interest, 
 one might almost say, concern. After a half 
 hour had glided away Miss Franscioli went 
 back to De Ford, as he stood in the doorway 
 looking rather bored. " Give me your arm," 
 she said, " and we will go where we can talk, 
 and where we can hear the music quite as 
 well as here."
 
 XXII. 
 
 [HEY passed through the hall, out 
 on a deep, covered piazza at a 
 tower on the side of the house, 
 lit with many pretty Chinese 
 lanterns. The night was warm. There was 
 a cosey divan covered with rugs, above it a 
 large Japanese umbrella. The next lot was 
 not built upon, and the view was open to the 
 river, which, below the Drive, floated dark 
 beneath the moon, and was dotted here and 
 there with boats and brilliant lights. For 
 New York, the scene was sufficiently ro 
 mantic. 
 
 Miss Franscioli threw herself upon the 
 cushions into a corner of the divan, and De 
 Ford seated himself near her. 
 
 " I reserve this for my friends," she said ; 
 " I alone may come out here before the music 
 is over. Isn t it quite delicious? Now, tell 
 me why you are here alone?" 
 
 He looked confused. " I wish you would 
 not ask me," he said. " You sent our invita- 
 155
 
 156 GramercE 
 
 tion to my office. I did not mention it to 
 Mrs. De Ford I forgot it." 
 
 " It would have given me the greatest 
 pleasure to have seen her here with yon. She 
 is beautiful, and she is sweet and good. " She 
 spoke rather coldly. 
 
 There was a little silence. Herr Volinski 
 had come to an andante passage, very tender, 
 passionate, and much in keeping with the 
 moonlight outside. 
 
 "You can smoke here it is permitted," 
 she said. 
 
 He lit a cigar thoughtfully, listening at 
 tentively. 
 
 The pink light of the lantern fell upon her 
 oval face and gave it a becoming richness of 
 color. His guilty feeling passed away 
 quickly. The desire to pacify and to please 
 the beautiful woman near him predominated. 
 He would even make love a little ; she always 
 seemed to expect it. 
 
 " I could tell you why I forgot," he said, 
 " but you would not believe me. I forgot 
 intentionally. I couldn t bring Florence 
 here. You know why. Shall I tell you?" 
 
 The music moaned out a passionate, de 
 spairing cadence; it was the Moonlight 
 Sonata. Their eyes met.
 
 <3ramerc park. 157 
 
 " I don t think I ought to listen to you, 
 Mr. De Ford." Miss Franscioli put on her 
 demure, young-girl manner. " I think I I 
 ought to listen to the music." 
 
 " You will laugh at my funeral, you will 
 joke over my grave," he said solemnly. 
 
 "I will if you put on your tombstone any 
 of those absurd epitaphs I used to discover 
 at Pye: 
 
 "Davy died of eatin pickles, 
 Sammy died of eatin sickles ; 
 Both are dead, dear little twins, 
 Cut off afore they had no sins !" 
 
 " There was one I remember in an old buryin - 
 ground in Alabama, not that it quite hits 
 off your character," and she laughed. 
 
 "Here lies Rufus, lyin still, 
 For where lyin s not allowed 
 Surely Rufus s lyin still 
 Up bey ant the gold ing cloud !" 
 
 Herr Yolinski had come to his loud for 
 tissimo passages again. 
 
 " I could tell you," persisted De Ford 
 gloomily, " but I won t." 
 
 " I will tell you one thing that is certain : 
 I am sure that Northern men never know 
 how to make love!" 
 11
 
 158 <3ramerc park. 
 
 She pronounced her i sdeliciously, turning 
 them, in Southern fashion, into ahs. 
 
 " How should it be made?" 
 
 "This way," and she gazed passionately 
 into his eyes: "Jack Jack, do you remem 
 ber the day you stopped my horse in the 
 road? You were corning to Rye. In the car 
 riage behind you were all you held precious 
 in the world, yet you leaped out and risked 
 your life to save mine! Jack, from that 
 day to this, you have never spoken of it and I 
 never have. I never dared. From that day 
 you won me to do with me as you will. I 
 love you ! You have my secret. That is why 
 I came to New York to live. Jack ! I love 
 you madly ! There, is not that pretty good?" 
 
 He rose, trembling, and walked unsteadily 
 to the railing of the wide piazza. " It s 
 true," he muttered; " I wish it were not." 
 
 She followed him laughing. " Am I not a 
 fair actress, now? Did I not do that well? 
 Oh, I ve been a good deal on the amateur 
 stage in New Orleans." 
 
 " Where have you not been, and what have 
 you not done!" 
 
 "Everything, everything! The world s 
 a squeezed orange to me, Mr. De Ford or 
 should one say squoze?"
 
 parfe. 159 
 
 She looked up into his eyes with a subtle, 
 inquiring glance. She was always amusing 
 to him, and he burst out laughing. Then 
 he said : " At least, you are never in ear 
 nest. " 
 
 " I dare not be." 
 
 "You would dare anything!" 
 
 " A fine compliment you would pay your 
 hostess!" Her chin went up in the air. 
 " Know, then, that I am one of the most timid 
 of my sex; that most of all I need some 
 strong, good person to cling to. I have dis 
 covered a truth a woman cannot stand alone. 
 The war has taught us Southerners some fine 
 facts: it s united we stand." 
 
 " It taught you not to struggle for inde 
 pendence." 
 
 " But how can the myriad, in-rushing tem 
 pests of men be kept at bay? I say it is war 
 always between the man and the woman. 
 There are no half-way measures. It is war 
 or love," and her eyes fell. 
 
 "Yes, Plato, thou reasonest falsely." 
 
 The young maidenhood of Louise Fran- 
 scioli must have been a short, boisterous 
 period, he pondered. Unlike most Northern 
 women, she seemed to spring like a man out 
 of a sensuous, not an icy, innocence.
 
 160 (Bramercg fcarft. 
 
 As they stood by the rail in the moonlight, 
 she whispered: " Must it be war, then?" 
 
 He turned abruptly, caught her in his 
 arms, and covered her lips with passionate 
 kisses. She seemed half-bewildered that he 
 had read her aright. She hung her lily head 
 in sudden terror. 
 
 " I must never see you again never 
 never!" cried Jack huskily. 
 
 In a moment he was gone. Thus in him 
 had loyalty won the day ! He nobly fled from 
 temptation, and virtue triumphed ! 
 
 Miss Frauscioli, after he had gone, threw 
 herself on the divan and sobbed all the way 
 through a lively little song by a professional 
 soprano, concerning amour, concours, deplore. 
 At the end of it she rose, wiped her eyes, 
 then clenched her two pretty hands fiercely. 
 
 " He shall come back!" she cried angrily. 
 " He shall grant me the opportunity, at least, 
 to send him flying!" 
 
 A few moments later Challinor came out 
 where she was sitting beneath the red glow 
 of the lamp. 
 
 "Alone?" he exclaimed. "Then may I 
 talk to you? My yacht Calypso will be in 
 commission next week. Does your aunt en 
 joy sailing?"
 
 <3ramercg parfc. 161 
 
 " Oh, she just dotes on it!" laughed Miss 
 Franscioli, recovered now, and fanning her 
 self leisurely. " But tell me, why did you 
 bring that Englishman here?" 
 
 " To marry you," said Challinor unflinch 
 ingly. " He s after an American girl. He s 
 rich, too." 
 
 She rose and walked into the house. " I ll 
 take another look at him, then !" she laughed. 
 " For I am feeling very poor just now, in 
 purse, in feeling everything!" 
 
 " I wonder where my other friend I brought 
 here is?" said Challinor, looking around 
 vaguely as they entered the house. He 
 seems to have vanished " 
 
 " Mr. De Ford has a magnificent con 
 science," she laughed. "He has gone to 
 consult it!"
 
 XXIII. 
 
 [E FORD, to do him justice, tried 
 very hard the week following to 
 prevent Dr. Chesney from carry 
 ing off Florence and the baby 
 into the wilds of the Adirondacks for the 
 summer. But it seemed that Dorothy s 
 throat could not endure the salt air of the 
 sea. The fact once being admitted, there 
 was no place where they could receive so 
 much attention and care as in Dr. Chesney s 
 comfortable hotel on Moon Lake. Dorothy 
 began to sneeze the first week in June. 
 They left, Jack accompanying them, for the 
 North, three days after the sad event of the 
 first sneeze. 
 
 They dismissed the servants from the 
 house in Gramercy Park, and installed a 
 care-taker s family a queer, hopeless couple, 
 with a crippled son, who rarely emerged 
 from the basement into the upper stories, 
 save by way of a gentle aroma of onions, or 
 a suspicion of rank tobacco-smoke. The 
 162
 
 iparfc. 163 
 
 old house was closed the front door boarded 
 up, except a small opening at the side. The 
 blinds were shut, the shades pulled down. 
 Jack s father-in-law arranged his business for 
 a long absence. He was driven to it, he said, 
 in self-defence. Another summer alone in 
 the deserted mansion in Gramercy Park 
 would drive him into Bloomingdale ! It was 
 an odd circumstance that in rummaging for 
 his pistol the first night after his return to the 
 city the strange noises in the vacant house 
 gave him some uneasiness De Ford found 
 the card which Florence had always treas 
 ured, the card which announced to the old 
 couple in the Senegambia that they would 
 always live together. He took it out and 
 looked at it with a smile of sardonic gravity, 
 and read : 
 
 J/> . &* Afrs. Schermerliorn De Ford, 
 At Home, 
 
 Every Day in the Week 
 
 FOREVER ! Xo. Gramercy Park. 
 
 "Forever!" he repeated slowly, twisting 
 the card in his fingers and throwing it back
 
 ramercs 
 
 in the drawer. He walked to the open win 
 dow, and looked out over the trees of the 
 park. Everything was silent; not even a 
 belated cab rattled in the stony street. He 
 had an intense spasm of loneliness ; even the 
 crusty old gentleman and the servants were 
 gone now. He thought next day he would 
 try living in one of the noisy little upper 
 rooms at the club which they let out for 
 transients at exorbitant figures. He slept 
 there two nights, and that was all he was able 
 to endure in the close, hot, little chamber. 
 At least, he could have the whole floor to 
 himself in his own house, with the windows 
 open, and a cool breeze blowing through 
 from across the park. The heat had come 
 on to stay, and he was very glad of the cool 
 rooms and the cold shower-bath night and 
 morning. He had promised to remain in 
 the house and look after things, and he felt 
 a little more comfortable even in his loneli 
 ness in doing so. He had a sense of virtuous 
 reaction. He immersed himself now in busi 
 ness, running out of town for Sunday to 
 some friend s cottage. After all, it was the 
 old bachelor life over again only pleasant- 
 er. He recalled the days of his boarding- 
 house existence, when he sweltered through
 
 fcarfe. 165 
 
 two torrid summers in an attic-hall bed 
 room in Thirty-sixth Street. Life was very 
 hard then after his father s failure and 
 death. But he recalled that he was very 
 hopeful then, and now all his hopes were 
 realized. Was he any the happier? He 
 was rich ; he had married a beautiful, dutiful 
 girl, he was the father of the dearest baby in 
 the world yet yet 
 
 Occasionally he stopped on the way down 
 stairs and out in the morning and glanced at 
 Florence s portrait. The face was so pure, 
 so calm, so noble ! Did he deserve that sweet 
 girl s love? How had he behaved that night 
 in May, on Riverside Drive? The fire of 
 that stolen kiss still burned on his lips. 
 Something whispered to him that he would 
 never, were he her husband, have to separate 
 a day from her side. Would she consider 
 the daughter before the husband? Would 
 he go home to her, to silence, to dim light, 
 and stupidity? He realized that life with 
 Louise Franscioli would not all be smooth 
 sailing. There would be terrible rows, but 
 the rows themselves would excite him, stimu 
 late him. He would glory in subduing her 
 or in being conquered by her. 
 
 But all that was over now. He had trans-
 
 166 <3ramerc park. 
 
 ferred her affairs to another banker, after 
 having the satisfaction of increasing her ac 
 count to a good figure. lie wrote her a kind 
 note, confessing much of his weakness and 
 asking her forgiveness. This he afterward 
 cautiously destroyed. He got Challinor, 
 who was a good fellow, to see her and tell 
 her that all, even distant friendship, must 
 be considered at an end between them. Do 
 Ford was a man of the world, and he knew 
 well enough that the affair must either end 
 then or it must end in disaster. Challinor 
 respected his feelings and pitied him. He 
 was not one of those who have much patience 
 with the doctrine that a husband and a wife 
 stand on an equal footing in such matters. 
 It was not a doctrine that was openly scouted 
 at the club. It was only tolerated, when 
 advanced, with amused smiles. The very 
 young married men, who were stranded in 
 town for the summer without their wives, 
 adopted it; but as the years went on all 
 the rich married set very often bought 
 diamonds and silver-ware at Tiffany s, which 
 never appeared afterward to adorn the home 
 circle, or the dinner - table. Challinor 
 bought Rhine-stones. Some men were not 
 even as generous as that !
 
 lonely days went on, and the 
 dreary, unremitting heat of Aug 
 ust descended upon the avenues 
 and the cross streets, making life 
 unendurable. AYith the heat and the general 
 desertion of the city by the better class of 
 its inhabitants, a strange, uncouth, vulgar 
 set of people seemed to take possession of 
 things. The real "lady" disappeared. In 
 her place came a loud, over-dressed creature, 
 who seemed to be possessed of only one idea 
 effrontery. In the elevated trains, the 
 horse-cars, the theatres, this creature not 
 necessarily the demi-mondaine was omnipres 
 ent. Her jewelry was extremely prominent 
 and prevalent. She it was who applauded 
 the great "Buck," a base-ball divinity, as 
 he " slid to second" in the ball-game with 
 the Chicagos. She was on every Coney 
 Island boat with her "lady friend." She 
 dominated the bathing-beaches; she was al 
 ways on the move. She never minded the 
 167
 
 168 Gramercg iparfc. 
 
 heat. She chewed gum in public. If ever 
 addressed by accident, she was very apt to 
 draw back with a loud hiss and a "Sir!" 
 which made the unlucky male wither 
 under her outraged scorn. On the whole, 
 the extreme virtue of this creature seemed 
 to be always over-prominent, and to be car 
 ried as it were upon her sleeve for daws to 
 peck at. 
 
 He did not allow his nerves to be half so 
 much upset by the enormous activity of the 
 evening newspapers, with their racing edi 
 tions, and their base-ball editions, and their 
 extrys bawled by multitudinous boys; but 
 the feeling as he went up and down town in 
 the crowded elevated trains, that only the 
 vulgar herd were left with him to toil in 
 town, was hardly an agreeable one. At the 
 club there were men enough. It was 
 crowded, except Saturday and Sunday. 
 There was a good deal of quiet gambling, 
 contrary to club rules, and a good many 
 men came up to town for it. There was a 
 great deal of quiet drinking, too. Fat men 
 and thin men, old and young men, sat, 
 smoked, fanned themselves, and drank enor 
 mous numbers of Remsen "coolers," getting 
 up the courage, presumably, to roll home in
 
 ramercp iparfc. 169 
 
 a cab, and let themselves into dark, gloomy, 
 deserted houses, which they called their 
 "homes." 
 
 " Ah, men must work that their women 
 may play," said Harry Talmadge one night 
 at the club. " We are all sweltering here on 
 Change every day, and our wives arc having 
 a pleasant summer of it. Should they be 
 here at work, too or should wo not work so 
 hard or so long, and go out into the country 
 and be with them? It s a difficult problem 
 to solve off-hand. I have just spent a week at 
 Narragansett Pier with my wife. It amused 
 us to see that pretty Mrs. Breezey kiss her 
 husband with so much abandon the Saturday 
 night he arrived. The little wretch had been 
 flirting outrageously with Lord Sandbury, 
 who was there on a yacht all the week. 
 Breezey is a sober, hard-working lawyer, very 
 conscientious, and very devoted to his pretty 
 wife. He was sweating and grinding at his 
 desk all those hot days. What was she 
 doing? He wrote her every day from Nassau 
 Street; she wrote him just once. Thank the 
 Lord ! all wives are not like Mrs. Breezey 
 eh, De Ford?" 
 
 "Which lord?" queried Disbrow in a dry 
 tone.
 
 170 <3ramercg park. 
 
 To keep up appearances, De Ford said, 
 with an air of interest, ignoring Disbrow, 
 "No, indeed!" Generally Jack paid no at 
 tention to what was said about wives. 
 Florence was a very faithful correspondent; 
 her letters generally gave a monotonous and 
 strictly accurate account of what was done on 
 Moon Lake every day from breakfast to bed 
 time. There were always little commissions, 
 numbered 1, 2, 3, etc., for him to attend to, 
 which he turned over to the office-boy to 
 execute. They were not, somehow, letters 
 which he opened with any Avild avidity. He 
 knew what they contained. Dorothy was 
 learning to talk. She had now got beyond 
 "ga ga" and "goo goo." This was inter 
 esting enough. But from what appeared 
 in this correspondence, life at Moon Lake 
 was extraordinarily monotonous. Florence 
 quoted to him a great deal that a certain 
 Mrs. Mitchell said, who, it seemed, lived 
 near them, on Twenty-second Street. She 
 had struck up an intimacy with this Mrs. 
 Mitchell, who appeared to be one of the 
 wise, religious, motherly sort of persons, 
 for whom he had an especial aversion. 
 Florence wrote that she was a pillar of St. 
 Pancras Church in Eighteenth Street. He
 
 ftarfc. 171 
 
 really could not complain of the letters, but 
 sometimes he felt he would like to resent 
 Mrs. Mitchell s oft -quoted advice. He 
 mildly expostulated once or twice, but the 
 cold tone of Florry s subsequent letters 
 caused him to hesitate. Women of the Mrs. 
 De Ford kind the simple, good wives, who 
 were " sure " of their husbands have lit 
 tle perspective, and sometimes " bank " too 
 strongly, as it were, upon simple-mindedness 
 in their worser halves. The story of poor 
 Breezey getting only one letter from his wife 
 at Narragansett half lost its point for De 
 Ford. So runs the world. What we have 
 too surely we despise. What we have not we 
 strive for. What we achieve appears en 
 tirely insignificant. The French say that 
 marriage is a long, hard highway, without 
 a turning. At the end of the road is a sim 
 ple, chaste tomb, surrounded by respectable 
 weeping-willows. One sees this respectable 
 finale painfully clear from the beginning of 
 the dual journey. There are no episodes; 
 there are no halts by the wayside to halt is 
 not respectable! It is plain sailing. Is it 
 not an enjoyable prospect ? What ! you doubt 
 it? My dear sir, you are not respectable! 
 De Ford left the club for " home " early
 
 172 OramercE fl>arfc. 
 
 that night. As he was going out Challinor, 
 wearing a yachting-cap, entered. 
 
 "Oh, I say, the very man I m after!" he 
 laughed. " It is Thursday. To-morrow 
 afternoon we leave Larchmont for Newport, 
 arriving there next Tuesday. It only means 
 one full business day, Jack that is, Mon 
 day and we want you." 
 
 " I wrote the Catherlys I would spend Sun 
 day with them " 
 
 " Do you wish to bore yourself to death? 
 We are going to have Disbrow, Mrs. Bronx, 
 Miss 1 won t tell you." 
 
 He knew well enough. 
 
 " There will be a full moon. If you like 
 the boat, I ll sell her. You know the 
 Calypso? So it will be a business trip!" 
 
 " Challinor, I have turned my back on the 
 Franscioli forever, as you know." 
 
 " Do you fear her? She is said to be en 
 gaged to Lord Sandbury, who is now at New 
 port every one says so. She is quiet and sad 
 enough of late, at all events. She hardly 
 ever smiles; she is pensive. It is an oppor 
 tunity for you to show your goodness of 
 heart." 
 
 De Ford was firm, however. It really 
 would not do. He did not fear for himself.
 
 (Bramercg parfc. 173 
 
 Like the average American that he was, he 
 had the utmost trust in his own integrity. 
 He believed in himself. Young man that 
 he was not twenty-seven he had the 
 " worldly " innocence. He thought he had 
 sown his wild-oats when he lived at Cam 
 bridge in the "fast set." He relied a good 
 deal on that worldly adage, an adage which 
 time may show to be more universal than 
 was suspected. For why should there be 
 "sex" in proverbs? And why should not a 
 gay girl sow her wild-oats and ever after be 
 good? The theory of the repentant sinner 
 is Christian; the wild-oats theory pagan 
 enough, but the pagans knew human life 
 pretty well. 
 
 De Ford had, besides, ambition, and the 
 Franscioli could not help him. She would 
 delay him. He would sacrifice a good deal 
 for "success." A respect for marital vows 
 still won credit on the street. It helped to 
 procure loans; it oiled the wheels of specu 
 lation for steady men, and assisted in 
 strengthening the great idea of trust.
 
 XXV. 
 
 next morning at the office he 
 found that Catherly s wife had 
 suddenly been taken ill, and that 
 his visit there would have to be 
 given up. He would, then, be obliged to 
 pass another lonely and miserable Sunday at 
 the club, looking over the daily illustrated 
 papers? Rather than that he had about 
 made up his mind to run down to Long 
 Branch, and put up with the Jews, infidels, 
 and Turks of the large caravansaries at that 
 resort, when Challinor came into the office 
 and renewed his invitation. 
 
 " You must give up that visit to old 
 Catherly s. We want you, Jack. You need 
 have little to do with the Franscioli. I 
 intend to devote myself to that pretty 
 
 baggage " 
 
 "Oh, no," said Jackj "it would be im 
 possible, quite 
 
 But Catherly happened in just then, and 
 Challinor appealed to him. " Why, it dove- 
 174
 
 ramercg iparfc. 175 
 
 tails in perfectly!" said the former in his 
 hearty manner. " Go, Jack, by all means. 
 The market s dull; you can stay a week. 
 My wife will be all right by next Sunday, 
 and we ll expect you then. Go, my boy, 
 and have a little out-door fun. You re too 
 serious of late. Mr. Challinor, introduce 
 him to a few pretty girls and get him to 
 flirt. He used to be a good hand at that 
 sort of thing. Jack, go along and have a 
 good time and flirt!" 
 
 " Yes, but I fancy it s just that sort of 
 thing he s most afraid of," said Challinor 
 dryly. 
 
 Afraid? He? Why, he s getting to be 
 an old maid ! Take him with you, Challinor, 
 and set some of your pretty widows after 
 him. Ha, ha! Stir him up! He s too 
 much married. If he talks stocks, throw 
 him overboard. Let him frivol gad! He 
 was a gay boy once. He could drink us all 
 under the table, but now bah! He s too 
 staid too much married and he s getting 
 to think he s a coming Little Wizard. Off 
 with you both, boys, and have a good time!" 
 
 The good-natured, jolly Catherly almost 
 pushed them out of the door in his eager 
 ness.
 
 176 (Sramercg parfc. 
 
 De Ford yielded at last to Challinor s im 
 portunity. They went out and had a pleas 
 ant little lunch together at Del s, on Beaver 
 Street, and the pint of champagne frappe 
 helped to quiet his conscience very well. 
 When Challinor left him, he promised to 
 meet them at Larchmont, where the Calypso 
 lay at anchor, that afternoon. 
 
 He ran up town to pack his valise, and 
 the old Gramercy Park house seemed to him 
 actually to frown with dismal prophecy. 
 A ray of light fell across Florence s portrait, 
 and he could see her counterfeit present 
 ment, her face so pure and noble, from the 
 stairs as he mounted them. He paused a 
 moment. 
 
 "It is as if Florence were dead!" he said 
 aloud, realizing sadly that the old, perfect, 
 intertwined life and love had departed. He 
 found a flask containing brandy in his room, 
 and took a long pull at it. " Hang it!" he 
 said, "as Catherly says, I m getting to be 
 an old maid! I never wanted to come here 
 into this great house. It s never seemed 
 quite like home to me. I wish, I wish 
 Florry and I were poor as church-mice, but 
 living, happy and always together, in a cheap 
 Harlem flat! Married! It s a joke! I
 
 <3ramerc fcarfc. 177 
 
 hardly see as much of my wife as Sundown 
 does!" 
 
 He was delayed in finding his flannels and 
 his yachting-shirts. Everything vexed him. 
 He missed the right train, and when he ar 
 rived at Larchmont he had to persuade a small 
 boy to row him out to the Calypso, which he 
 saw was rapidly weighing anchor, prepara 
 tory to starting. When he reached the 
 yacht, he found they had almost departed 
 without him. As the struggling small boy 
 rowed him alongside, Challinor called out to 
 him : 
 
 " \Ve almost gave you up. Miss Franscioli 
 persuaded us to wait five minutes longer. If 
 it were not for her, we would have taken 
 advantage of this western breeze and started 
 eastward. We would have left word we 
 would pick you up at New London." 
 
 Miss Franscioli leaned over the gunwale, 
 bowing and smiling serenely. She was in 
 a charming white yachting-suit, her cap 
 trimmed with gold lace. Challinor stood be 
 hind her, in comfortable white flannels. Dis- 
 brow was sitting in a wicker-chair, talking 
 with Mrs. Bronx. There was an elderly lady, 
 dressed in black Miss Franscioli s aunt in 
 the background, who was known as Mrs. Stead.
 
 178 (SramercE park. 
 
 The yacht was large and roomy, being built 
 for comfort rather than speed. Jack quickly 
 mounted the companionway. Miss Franscioli 
 gave him her hand. He felt a strange joy 
 in reading her eyes again. She had not 
 changed. It was almost as if an interval of 
 months had not elapsed since the night of the 
 miisicale on Riverside Drive. 
 
 " I knew you would come back to me," said 
 her dark, welcoming eyes, full upon his. 
 But there was, too, a fine innocence in them, 
 he thought. 
 
 There followed dreamy, cloudless days, in 
 which for the first time in his life De Ford 
 felt himself grappled in the secret, passionate 
 love of a reckless woman " who dares." It 
 Avas new to him to be courted in this way. 
 He felt its subtle power. It was not over- 
 delicate, over-refined ; but it was powerful 
 and genuine. It was not the calm, peaceful 
 love of his wife condensed into a sudden ex 
 cess; it was a new, wild, absorbing passion 
 of the soul. He felt himself nearing the 
 brink of the precipice, and drew back and 
 hesitated. There were kisses lingering on 
 her ripe lips for him; there were languid, 
 soft glances which told him much. After a
 
 (Bramercg f>arfc. 179 
 
 day or so, her feeling was almost undisguised ; 
 it was like an open engagement. Every one 
 smiled ; but no one, even the silent quondam 
 aunt, made any objection to this innocent 
 pastime of devotion. Finally, they were al 
 ways getting into quiet corners by themselves. 
 He read to her Dickens and Mark Twain, as 
 he had done to his wife. Did this bore him? 
 He did not think of the books. Her hand, 
 warm and soft, lay in his beneath the 
 shawls. . . . Presently he began to be 
 lost, as well, in the bewildering passion she 
 developed in him. He sailed smilingly down 
 the stream with her. He could resist no 
 longer. He loved her. . . . 
 
 Challinor used to sit and coolly observe 
 them over his cigar for half a hour at a 
 time, as they sat laughing and chatting be 
 neath her white sun-umbrella, on the deck 
 by themselves. It amused this young man 
 of the world to see his friend Hercules play 
 ing with Omphale. " Half the fun of the 
 trip would be gone without De Ford," he 
 kept saying, enigmatically, the afternoon of 
 their start. 
 
 " Yes," said Disbrow, " I think she will cap 
 ture him, unless her own sincerity will make 
 her aim less sure. She is a madcap ; passion
 
 180 <3ramerc park. 
 
 her element. Bali ! if all young women were 
 like her there d be no business done. Men 
 must have less love and more peace and com 
 fort at home than she would grant. What 
 is her place?" 
 
 Challinor replied: " Our civilization, with 
 all its devotion to home life, leaves a poor, 
 mean, little niche for her and her passion. 
 They call it wicked, I believe, because it is 
 not meant for home consumption." 
 
 " But is not our home-life largely coming 
 to an untimely end? A new club is formed 
 every day. Men are never at home now. 
 Women are always away somewhere recu 
 perating. I say our home-life is over. 
 Rightly, because it is narrowing, depressing, 
 unprofitable 
 
 "Yes, yes," said Challinor. " It affords a 
 poor sort of happiness made out of dulness. 
 We want something better. We are crazy 
 for excitement, in this Jin du siecle." 
 
 " True, we live at white heat. That is, 
 more of us do. It is more universal than 
 formerly. Our best citizens now attend 
 the wicked French ball and the Arion each 
 year. Our churches are filled with penitent 
 women. All our old theological lines are 
 being broken down. To me it is delightful
 
 ramercg iparfc. 181 
 
 to live in the midst of this upheaval. I joy 
 in it, I participate iu it. For one thing, 
 there is an end of the thraldom of marriage!" 
 
 Both laughed. Challinor, at the thought 
 of Mrs. Disbrow at Sioux City; Bisbrow, at 
 the thought that Challinor would soon have 
 to follow suit. 
 
 " There are two separate courses in the 
 menu, or rather two dishes in one course 
 marriage and liaison," drawled Challinor. 
 " But of course the old marriage dish is best 
 for the State. But hang the State! That s 
 what we are saying now. We are after the 
 individual happiness. Just a hundred years 
 ago it was the opposite. We cared nothing 
 then for the individual, but only for the 
 State and we invented a fine one, which we 
 think we are going to stick to until 2000 ! I 
 make a guess, myself, that we will let the State 
 go and help along rather the individual free 
 dom. So a woman shall no longer need the 
 protection and the confinement of a home. 
 Home will be all abroad. I see it in our 
 city-life." 
 
 Mrs. Bronson, who sat near at hand, whis 
 pered, leaning forward and looking at De 
 Ford and Miss Franscioli, who were seated 
 in low chairs on the deck near the foremast :
 
 182 rameucE iparfc. 
 
 " Look at them! They are positively spoon 
 ing! There is home-life for you!" And 
 they all laughed. 
 
 They were accustomed to bathe every day 
 off the yacht those who could swim. Miss 
 Franscioli had a "stunning" bathing-suit, 
 and she never could persuade herself to miss 
 her daily dives overboard at rising and again 
 at noon. 
 
 One day the Calypso was becalmed in the 
 midst of the Sound. She hardly seemed to 
 move. Her great white sails flapped idly to 
 and fro, and the time seemed ripe for a 
 plunge. 
 
 Miss Franscioli disappeared in her cabin, 
 and reappeared in due time, having a white 
 bath-robe about her " stunning " bathing- 
 dress. Only Do Ford followed suit, and pres 
 ently the mermaid was swimming with the 
 merman far in their wake. 
 
 "See!" said Mrs. Bronson, "how they 
 want to be alone and get as far as possible 
 from the rest of us even in the water!" 
 
 But a little breeze rippled across the placid 
 blue water. 
 
 "Drop a boat there!" ordered Challinor 
 hurriedly. "Quick, men! This air is car-
 
 183 
 
 rying the yacht ahead fast." It was some 
 time before the boat was lowered, and the 
 swimmers observed the yacht calmly sailing 
 off, apparently without the slightest regard 
 for them. 
 
 Jack began to grow very tired. He turned 
 on his back to float. He was not a great 
 swimmer. The over-exertion had tired him 
 out. Miss Franscioli was fully able to swim 
 ahead and catch the yacht. Jack looked so 
 pale and fagged that she saw he was unable 
 to make much further effort. 
 
 " Put your hand on my shoulder," she 
 said. "Keep cool, Jack." It was the first 
 time she had directly called him Jack. 
 "Can t you trust me? Put your hand on 
 my shoulder. There that s it! Now they 
 are sending a boat!" she said encouragingly. 
 
 "I m tired out," Jack spluttered and 
 gasped. 
 
 Then his hand slipped from her shoulder, 
 and he quietly slipped out of sight beneath 
 the waves. 
 
 Miss Franscioli raised her hand and 
 shouted "Help, help!" and dived for him. 
 
 The boat was now coming fast. A sailor 
 leaped into the water, swift as a bird in 
 flight.
 
 1*1 Cramcrcp 
 
 ChaJlinor, observing them from the stern 
 of the Calypso with his opera-glass, cried: 
 " By Jove, he s gone under! And by Hea 
 ven she ? s dived after him!" 
 
 " Depend npon it, she will never let go of 
 him, wherever they are!" And Mrs. Broii- 
 son, who did not at all realize the danger of 
 the situation, gave a little laugh. 
 
 Mrs, Stead was below, asleep in the cabin. 
 It is probable she would have laughed also 
 had she been there. It was all so very amus 
 ing. But Challinor s face was a picture of 
 intensest agony. Had that mermaid twined 
 her arms about him also? He tore off his 
 coat, and prepared to leap overboard on* the 
 stern of the vacht.
 
 XXVI. 
 
 JIIE had saved his life. He was 
 hers now. She could do with 
 him as she pleased. 
 
 He had whispered these words 
 to her as he lay in the cabin propped up on 
 pillows that afternoon, and Louise Fran- 
 scioli sat near him on a pile of the thick rugs 
 of the floor. 
 
 " If I had not caught you and you had 
 risen, I meant to clasp my arms about you 
 and go down, down forever into those sun 
 less, awful depths." She said this lightly, 
 as if it were nothing. 
 
 " You will have found that it was bet 
 ter that," he said languidly, "better for 
 
 both " 
 
 " Drowning is an easy death; I don t fear 
 it. I was thinking not of myself nor of 
 you, but of La Madonna. " 
 
 "Ah, yes, so was I," he said half-apologet- 
 ically. 
 
 Challinor came down into the cabin, 
 185
 
 186 GramercB par??. 
 
 "It s a dangerous thing," he said, " to dive 
 off a yacht that is not anchored. A friend 
 of mine Colby was drowned that way. A 
 puff of wind comes, and you can t catch the 
 yacht again. You were lucky, Jack, and if 
 Miss Franscioli had not kept you afloat 
 
 De Ford, who was still sick and weak with 
 the salt water he had swallowed, nodded his 
 head and said nothing. 
 
 " This comes of modern athletics for our 
 girls," laughed Challinor. "Bravo! bravo! 
 You shall be presented with a medal of the 
 American Life-Saving Society as soon as we 
 reach Newport!" 
 
 "I shall make you carry out that state 
 ment," she laughed. "At Newport you say 
 you are also to present me with Lord Sand- 
 bury? Perhaps he will yield when he sees 
 the medal!" 
 
 Challinor was disposed to tease a little. 
 " Pray, now having saved him, what did you 
 save him for ?" he laughed. 
 
 " To send him at once to his wife and 
 child, wherever they are," said Miss Fran 
 scioli decisively. She spoke as if she were the 
 young man s guardian. She sat, her long 
 hair, still wet, hanging down her back, her 
 hands clasped about one knee, in school-girl
 
 (Sramercg iparfc. 187 
 
 fashion. Challinor thought he had never 
 seen so much soul, so much disinterestedness 
 in her face before. Odd man! He had been 
 long in love with her himself. Who could save 
 and help himself with such a beauty? She 
 was a siren to sing and draw men on the shoals 
 and rocks, to ensnare men s unwary hearts ; 
 always so gay, when he knew her heart was 
 in the depths; free with the freedom of 
 youth, looking always out of her beautiful 
 eyes for sympathy, and getting so often 
 only a gross form of love, of adoration, from 
 men. He knew her to be good, but careless 
 of her reputation as the wind. Had she been 
 poor she would have been a great actress a 
 second Adelaide Neilson. But now she had 
 too little incentive in life, and no self-direc 
 tion ; she was drifting. She knew and did 
 too much. She covered too much ground. 
 She read everything. Challinor mused 
 within himself, and thought how strange it 
 was that she should care to remain long away 
 from her Jin du siecle Paris which was her true 
 home. 
 
 " Is it this stupid, commonplace De Ford, 
 with his manners of a prince and his good- 
 looking mustaches, which holds her?" he 
 asked himself. " That strange affinity !
 
 188 Cramcrcg 
 
 Ah, why did she select him? It will bring 
 much sorrow to that lovely young madonna 
 of his -- " 
 
 De Ford did not go to Canada until Sep 
 tember; then he took his wife and Dorothy 
 and nurse on the trip down the St. Law 
 rence to Quebec and Montreal. He never 
 mentioned Miss Franscioli s name, although 
 he wrote her every few days letters full of 
 rhymes and nonsense, and containing here and 
 there a line of boyish passion. He was kind 
 and dutiful with his wife, for he never ques 
 tioned his own quiet, sincere love for her and 
 hers for him. She was always the same 
 always sweet, gentle, fond never rising to 
 great heights or depths. To be with her 
 gave him calm and peace. His conscience 
 did not prick him. Ho enjoyed everything 
 they saw with her eyes, placidly, with a mild 
 indifference. 
 
 The affair of the Franscioli was such a 
 different book from his book of marriage. 
 Perhaps he never would have turned to it 
 had not the loneliness of his life in town that 
 autumn Dr. Chesney thought the Lenox air 
 best for Dorothy driven him in self-defence 
 (his evenings were insupportable), to seeking
 
 fcarfc. 189 
 
 some amusement, some "relaxation." He 
 was not fond of whist ; and whist is a great 
 preventer of mischief for the idle, and a 
 strong support of the conventions. Billiards 
 was warm and monotonous work. He was 
 rather fond of driving, and the Riverside 
 Drive is one of the finest in the world. 
 
 When, after their visit at Lenox, they re 
 turned to Gramercy Park for the winter, in 
 late November, the change had come. . . 
 Miss Franscioli now sometimes wrote, in 
 her feverish, brilliant, hopeless letters, sent 
 to the club, " My husband in the sight of 
 God!" 
 
 13
 
 XXVII. 
 
 I HE remainder of this little story 
 is soon told. It is not pleasant 
 to tell, and Jack De Ford does 
 not figure quite as one would like 
 to have him. But he never was quite the 
 hero. Perhaps he s no better, no worse, 
 than a number of young married club-men 
 in New York to-day. There s a fashion in 
 these things. " Lead us not into temptation" 
 is a true prayer ; " Lead us out of temptation" 
 is also a true cry of the soul, and the man 
 who, largely through the loneliness of living, 
 largely through separation from his wife, 
 largely through the nervous overstrain of 
 daily business, which causes him to yearn 
 for continual excitement, falls into sin the 
 man who finally breaks away from it, and 
 triumphs over it, is at least deserving of 
 some credit. 
 
 This New York world of ours at present 
 appears to care little for its home-life. 
 People rent their houses with their furniture 
 190
 
 (SramercE park. 191 
 
 in them, and then go to live in another 
 house and use another s furniture. People 
 live in huge flats and hotels, and there ceases 
 to be any privacy. People never stay long 
 in one house or flat. Change, change, rest 
 less change is what is going on ! Harmonious, 
 tuneful dwellings change to shops and flats! 
 Neighborhoods alter year by year. Our wives 
 go to the country for long periods twice 
 thrice a year now. When we come " home" 
 we are very apt to dine for months with 
 our families in a good restaurant. We go 
 abroad, wander over Europe, and come back 
 with still greater abhorrence of " settling 
 down." Philadelphia sets us an example of 
 home-life, and we turn up our noses at that 
 staid town and poke fun at its " stupidity." 
 Our restlessness invades and pervades the 
 country round. The good folk in our smaller 
 cities must needs do as we do, and family 
 separation is the order of the day. We are 
 so full of energy, insistence, excitement. 
 We must enjoy, to the very utmost, every 
 thing that life affords. Our young men 
 want to be "in the swim," to be seen at 
 Delmonico s, or at fashionable clubs. It is 
 never their ambition, these dandies, to go 
 into politics, or to succeed in business (their
 
 192 <3ramercg park. 
 
 fathers only ambition), or to have a career. 
 It is rather to be seen and admired by men 
 and women. 
 
 Club-life has come to stay, in city and 
 country. A man may not see anything 
 whatever of his family, and yet not be 
 thought odd. Not at home, he s at the 
 club, or at business, or out of town. His 
 wife does all the visiting the receptions, the 
 dances. She carries his card. If he goes to a 
 watering-place with his family, separation 
 is even there the order of the day. He finds 
 a " Casino" there, where he may betake him 
 self. It is " uxorious " to be devoted to his 
 wife. It s " silly" to be too fond of his pretty 
 daughters, according to them. A manly 
 man is no longer self-respecting if he lingers 
 long with his family. Every one smiles and 
 says it is "old-fashioned." God grant that 
 this old fashion of the peaceful, family-home 
 may not utterly depart from our national life, 
 as it is rapidly doing in our greatest city! 
 
 As time went on, De Ford joined many 
 clubs. He rarely remained home now in the 
 evening. At his club he would drink a little, 
 gossip with his friends, then disappear. 
 Miss Franscioli, tiring of the rococo little 
 house on Riverside Drive, came down and
 
 ff>arfc. 193 
 
 took a charming apartment on lower Fifth 
 Avenue. Their liaison was still a secret. 
 She kept her place in society. She was a 
 wit; she was wanted. She refused many 
 advantageous offers. Many suspected the 
 reason ; but no one knew. 
 
 Meanwhile little Dorothy welcomed a little 
 brother " Jack," and the " madonna " denied 
 herself more and more to the world. She 
 pleaded family cares. It was odd that Sun 
 down, who had continued to be very devoted, 
 ceased his visits rather suddenly. Perhaps 
 he had ventured too far, and made an avowal, 
 and the sweet madonna had gently reproved 
 him. Sundown married, and after that he 
 and his wife were frequent guests at Gra- 
 mercy Park. He used to say at the club that 
 Florence Do Ford was the one noblest woman 
 in all the world, and then he would sigh and 
 hint darkly at her husband s conduct. To 
 do her justice, Florence pretended to be in 
 absolute ignorance of Miss Franscioli s exist 
 ence. She never suspected Jack. She 
 never knew nor cared to hear about men s 
 "dual lives.",, She still kept her husband s 
 image high as on a pedestal. She loved him 
 because he loved her, and the years rolled on 
 in quiet, domestic happiness. It was quite
 
 194 Gramercg frarfc. 
 
 true he loved and appreciated her more than 
 ever. 
 
 There were moments when De Ford felt 
 very content. But there were days when his 
 hollow eyes, and the little blue rings beneath 
 his eyes, gave signs that care and anxiety lay 
 heavy on his heart. Through the summer 
 months, when Florence and the children 
 went into the mountains Mr. Heath had 
 finally determined to build a handsome cot 
 tage in Franconia he felt his load lightened. 
 There was not that dreadful suspecting 
 father-in-law to confront him every day at 
 dinner. Grandpapa was getting older 
 now, and crotchety, and nervous. There 
 seemed to be a standing enmity between 
 Jack and him. They rarely spoke to each 
 other. In private, to his wife, the old gen 
 tleman was often very bitter against his son- 
 in-law. He was certain of nothing, but he 
 had heard vague rumors. Men downtown 
 love to gossip at lunch-time quite as much 
 as their wives uptown. " Why did Jack go 
 out every night so? "NVhy was he never at 
 home. And where did he go Sundays?" He 
 often said to his riding-club, or his fishing- 
 club down on Long Island, or " well, he al 
 ways had a d d ready excuse!" 
 
 Florence did not complain. She was not
 
 ramercg iparfe. 
 
 the complaining kind. Far better, ye 
 sweet young wives, to find endless fault and 
 have it out with your wayward husbands! 
 You are too delicate with these fellows; you 
 fear to offend. Besides, habit soon gets to 
 be second nature. Florence was not very 
 strong. Dr. Chesney recommended early 
 retiring and long night sleeps. It was nat 
 ural for Jack to run off to some of his clubs 
 of an evening. It was the thing to do. 
 Florence always had a Xew York girl s liking 
 to have her husband "in the swim." She 
 might be, as she said laughingly very often, 
 "a back number;" but Jack must go out, 
 must be in all the swellest clubs. In her 
 innocence she suspected no danger for him. 
 She never knew exactly at what hour his 
 coupe drove up in the early morning and he 
 let himself in. She never asked. She even 
 upbraided herself for her semi-invalidism. 
 " There is no home-life for poor Jack in the 
 evening," she said, and it was true. "He 
 has to go somewhere. The doctor makes me 
 go to bed at nine. So he goes to his club, 
 or the theatre, or he and his friends play 
 whist. I wish I was well and strong poor, 
 poor Jack!" 
 
 But the end came at last; a stroke of 
 lightning out of the clear sky.
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 ACK, indeed, had had many re 
 markable escapes. Once Flor 
 ence discovered a love-letter, 
 but he swore it was one a friend 
 had given him to laugh at. It was addressed 
 "Dearest Self," and signed "L." He 
 laughed it off, and confessed it was a note 
 his friend had stolen in joke out of Mr. 
 Challinor s pocket a letter from Challinor s 
 wife. She did not mistrust him; she had 
 not begun ! 
 
 The beautiful Miss Franscioli had her 
 seasons of despair, of harrowing remorse. 
 Like many women of great feeling, she 
 was moody and impressionable; she was al 
 ways at the greatest height of happiness or 
 in the depths of woe. She found it really 
 true that a woman to live, to exist, needs, 
 more than a man, the approval of every one 
 even of her own conscience ! The day of her 
 birthday came around, and brought with it 
 many sad reflections. She was alone in the 
 196
 
 fcarfc. 197 
 
 world; her father and mother were dead. 
 She was now twenty-four. Her future was 
 dark and sombre, yet she could not break 
 with De Ford. That would kill her. There 
 would then, she said, be nothing to live for. 
 Yet nearly all their joy now when together 
 came of champagne. She was not herself 
 until they had dined and she had had her 
 "pint." Again and again she had formally 
 dismissed him ; they had parted for weeks, 
 and again and again she had passionately 
 called him back. She had moments of exalte 
 feeling, when she would rush off to some 
 church and fall on her knees, praying God 
 to forgive her. She would lie awake all 
 night, praying for Jack s beautiful wife and 
 children, and then appear at Savarin s, down 
 town, at lunch next day, dressed to perfec 
 tion, send a note for him, and carry him 
 away for a grand frolic. 
 
 He often told her that she brought him no 
 good; that she was his evil spirit; that she 
 would be his ruin. And then she would 
 moan and cry on her knees, and swear she 
 would kill herself. It kept him at last in a 
 continual state of agitation, of excitement. 
 He never knew when she would send for him 
 cr, what in secret he most dreaded, when
 
 198 Gramercg 
 
 a telegram would come saying she had been 
 found dead of morphine, which she took 
 habitually. The day of her birthday came 
 to this poor, tempest-tossed young woman. It 
 was now two years since they nearly drowned 
 in mid-Sound, and Jack, to make her a little 
 happier, went to a diamond merchant in 
 upper Broadway and bought her a magnifi 
 cent diamond star. It cost him a pretty 
 penny. At the same time, as if to make 
 amends in his own mind, he bought his wife 
 a hairpin of Etruscan gold. He was in 
 somewhat of a hurry, being invited out to 
 dine, having just left the Franscioli in tears 
 and morbidly protesting that he no longer 
 loved or cared for her ; and he was hastening 
 home to dress for dinner. He gave direc 
 tions to the clerk to have the jewelry sent. 
 He took out two cards, on one of which he 
 scribbled: 
 
 For Louise F. 
 
 MR. JOHN SCHERMERHORN DE FORD. 
 " To the girl I lore best in the world. " 
 
 He slipped this in an envelope and gave 
 it to the salesman without directing it. He
 
 (Bramercg iparfc. 199 
 
 was going out to a little stag-dinner at the 
 Knickerbocker Club, given to his friends by 
 an apprehensive young man about to marry. 
 
 lie rejoiced that he had hit upon a plan 
 to make both women happy that night with 
 out him. 
 
 When he came home late from the dinner 
 he went directly to bed, not caring to dis 
 turb his wife, although he saw a light turned 
 low in her room, and thought once, as he 
 stood outside her door, he heard a sob. 
 
 The next morning he dressed rather late, 
 and hurried downtown to business without 
 seeing any one of the family. 
 
 In the afternoon, he received a curt note 
 from the Franscioli, thanking him for the 
 gold pin of a kind, she remarked, of which 
 she had "dozens." The joke about calling 
 her his" wife," she remarked, was rather stale. 
 
 De Ford jumped to his feet. " Good 
 God!" he exclaimed, " they ve sent my wife, 
 then, the diamond star and the card!" 
 
 He paced up and down the length of his 
 office, trying to think what to do. It had 
 all come of his haste and the clerk s stupidity. 
 Had he known of it before he went down 
 town, he might have in some way explained 
 it satisfactorily to his wife. He was prepared
 
 200 (Bramercg 
 
 to tell her that in the way of a joke, merely, 
 he had lost a bet to Miss Franscioli of a hair 
 pin against a box of cigars, and that the card 
 received by Florence addressed to " Louise 
 F. " was a mistake. It should have been 
 addressed to her. Then the sentiment, 
 " To the girl I love best in the world," was 
 perfectly proper. He would admit that he 
 had sent a plain card with the hairpin to 
 Miss Franscioli, but that in his haste he 
 had put the latter s name "Louise F. "- 
 on the card intended for Florence. To be 
 sure Florence would be surprised at receiving 
 such a gorgeous cluster of diamonds out of a 
 mere sudden whim ; but he would kiss her, 
 and explain that, by an easy subterfuge. 
 She believed his subterfuges! But Miss 
 Franscioli s note, thanking him for the pin. 
 "of which she had dozens," was mailed at 
 eleven A. M. It was now four. Had 
 Florence been to see the jeweler, or had she 
 gone to the Franscioli s apartments? Per 
 haps it was too late to lie now. Perhaps he 
 had broken the eleventh commandment: 
 Thou shalt not be found out! 
 
 He sat down and cursed his luck, and 
 himself for a fool. What an idiotic inspira 
 tion it was to try and satisfy his conscience by
 
 (Sramercg parfe. 201 
 
 making the small gift to his wife in repar 
 ation for the splendid present to " the girl 
 he loved best in the world!" 
 
 He was quick and skilful of trick and 
 fence, and he was soon hurrying up-town, 
 first to the apartment of Louise, in order to 
 formulate some plan of action. He found 
 that she had just gone out, leaving word that 
 she must see him immediately. She had 
 left a note for him, saying: 
 
 "Your wife has been here, and has left a mag 
 nificent diamond star, from Sparcus . I don t 
 know what it means. I have run out to Sparcus 
 to find out. LOUISE. " 
 
 "The devil!" he exclaimed, and walked 
 restlessly about the exquisitely furnished 
 drawing-room, in which he had passed so 
 many wildly happy hours. He observed a 
 silver tray containing cards nearly all were 
 from men. Challinor had called very 
 frequently of late. He wondered if he it 
 was who had caused Louise so much disquie 
 tude. She had said to him once : " He is 
 willing to divorce himself and marry me 
 you are not! " But he knew that she would 
 really never marry any one, and never felt any 
 particular jealousy on Challinor s account.
 
 202 6ramerc iparfc. 
 
 He waited half an hour, and Louise did 
 not return. Good Lord! what a mess he 
 had made of it! How would Florence act? 
 It would corne to her at last, like lightning 
 out of a clear sky. He worried, thinking 
 it would cause a break-down in her health. 
 Good God! it would kill her! He would 
 lie, periure himself, swear that Louise Fran- 
 scioli was nothing to him. There was an ex 
 quisite Parian marble statuette of the Venus 
 of the Capitol in a corner. His eye kept 
 falling on it. He would have been glad to 
 hurl it out of the window. The whole 
 female sex seemed horrible to him the 
 enemies of his wife! He put on his hat 
 restlessly, and took up his stick and went out 
 down the elevator. The boy seemed to smile 
 covertly and to be extra-deferential. Was 
 his disgrace noised abroad already? He 
 walked up Fourteenth Street, through the 
 crowds of shoppers. Ugh! the sex was in 
 tolerable! What coarse, ugly faces; whut 
 headgear; what monstrosities of dress! He 
 stopped at Sparcus , and he found that two 
 ladies had been there making inquiries. Ho 
 would go home and face the music. It was 
 nearly six o clock now. He hurried up to 
 Twentieth Street. He mounted the steps of
 
 (Sramercg iparfe. 203 
 
 the old Gramercy Park house, for the first 
 time sneakingly, with head down, feeling like 
 a truant school-boy returning to school for a 
 thrashing. The outer door was ominously 
 closed, not against the weather, for it had 
 cleared away and the air had grown cold. 
 He tried his latch-key, but the door was 
 bolted on the inside. He nervously rang 
 the electric bell, and stood looking furtively 
 about, across the little park with its thin 
 covering of snow. He wondered if the 
 neighbors were watching. He was glad there 
 were no houses directly opposite to spy upon 
 him he was grateful to the little park! 
 Presently the door opened. John the butler 
 cautiously looked out. " I m sorry, Mr. De 
 Ford," he said, " but the orders is not to ad 
 mit you." 
 
 The insult was so monstrous that it was 
 like a blow in the face. J3e Ford made a 
 sudden fierce grab at the fellow s collar, but 
 his hand slipped, and the door was closed in 
 his face. He swore and hurried away to the 
 club. Here a letter had come from his father- 
 in-law for him. He tore it open and read : 
 
 " No. GRAMERCY PARK, } 
 FEBRUARY 16TH, 189 f 
 
 "SlR: What has occurred to-day, and is now 
 known to Florence, has been the outcome of
 
 204 (BramercB parfc. 
 
 what I have known a long time. I know 
 everything. I have said nothing, but now 
 Florence knows all, too. I have laid before her 
 the plain facts, believing it best. She is natu 
 rally much crushed and overcome. I take it on 
 myself to say that we do not wish any scandal. I 
 propose taking my wife and daughter abroad at 
 once, first instituting proceedings quietly for 
 divorce. In what you have done I admit there 
 has been a certain respect for public opinion, 
 which I will try and keep up in these legal pro 
 ceedings. You will please name an address 
 where your effects may be sent at once, quietly 
 and without any publicity. 
 
 " I am, sir, regretfully yours, 
 
 "S. R. HEATH. 
 " P. S. New York is not thank God ! Paris. " 
 
 He crumpled the letter in his hand. He 
 knew the stern old Puritan well. He could 
 be depended on for a rigorous performance! 
 So Florence would get a divorce? His friends 
 in the club were eyeing him, and he must 
 preserve an outward calm. He had felt such 
 security! His love for Florence had never 
 faltered he thought he recognized the be 
 lief that he loved her in a finer, higher way 
 than ever before. The dross of his nature 
 had been give to Louise. Man had a com 
 posite nature: what did this old Puritan, 
 whose yea was yea and nay nay, know of these
 
 things? He went into the dining-room and 
 sat down alone, his head falling on his hands. 
 Some men at a table near by were laughing 
 and joking about him? He hardly knew 
 them. Said one his old truism : " A man 
 and his wife ought never to be separated for 
 a day." What mockery it seemed! 
 
 14
 
 XXIX. 
 
 IS friends who dined near him at 
 the club noticed his silence, his 
 uneasiness at dinner. 
 
 "It s the market," said one: 
 " I hear he has lost a deuced lot of money 
 lately." This was true enough, but it 
 did not affect him. He sat and stared at 
 a dismal portrait of an ex-President for ten 
 minutes, until some one spoke to him. Then 
 he started up with a smothered cry and 
 walked out of the room. He stood on the 
 brink of life, looking over the precipice. 
 Should he go to the beautiful, adorable wo 
 man he had so long passionately loved? 
 Somehow, even the drowning of his despair 
 in champagne and pleasure no longer tempted 
 him now. 
 
 "How is Mrs. De Ford?" he heard some 
 one say at his elbow. " Won t you tell her, 
 please, that I am coming to her reception to 
 morrow?" 
 
 Was it true that he had been ruthlessly 
 206
 
 <3ramercB ffmrfc. 207 
 
 thrust from the door of his own home? He 
 and his father-in-law had never got on well 
 since that first year. But not to permit him 
 to cross the threshold was positively cruel. 
 He had no idea the old gentleman was so 
 vindictive. He ordered a "pint," and it be 
 gan to make him feel very angry. He had 
 been too stunned to be angry hitherto. He 
 took another "pint," then had a cab called. 
 He drove at once furiously to Gramercy 
 Park. He rang at the door-bell, and, when 
 the servant opened it, pushed past him 
 fiercely. De Ford was a courageous fellow, 
 and he was now at a high nervous tension. 
 He was deadly pale, his eyes burned like coal ; 
 he was very handsome now; he looked like 
 a handsome devil ! 
 
 " Tell Mrs. De Ford I am waiting to speak 
 with her," he said sharply. The servant 
 cringed before him. 
 
 " She s not here, sir." 
 
 " Tell Mr. Heath I wish to speak with 
 him " 
 
 The servant noiselessly withdrew. He was 
 standing before his wife s portrait. He 
 glanced at it fascinated. The face hum 
 bled and quieted him. In the sweet holy 
 glance from her madonna-like eyes there
 
 208 (Sramercg park. 
 
 was, he thought, forgiveness and peace. He 
 turned to the other side of the room : there 
 on an easel was Sundown s new portrait of 
 Dorothy in the nurse s arms, which the ar 
 tist had only lately finished and he had not 
 seen. For two years it had been in the 
 artist s studio untouched. Tt was very pret 
 tily done. He walked over to it, studying it 
 critically. 
 
 "Divorce!" he said aloud. She would 
 get a divorce! Would she be so cruel to 
 Dorothy? Had he been cruel? He had 
 deceived her, but had he ever spoken an 
 unkind word, or done anything unkind ex 
 cept this one great thing? Was the catas 
 trophe to annihilate him then? Who was 
 directing this harsh policy of hostility? 
 Here was his home he was driven from it. 
 It was his no longer! How beautiful and 
 elegant it seemed! 
 
 He seemed to be kept waiting an uncon 
 scionable long time. He sat down, took out 
 his letter, and read it clear to the end. 
 
 " New York is not thank God ! Paris 
 
 He thought over a number of men who 
 sinned against their wives, he felt, far more 
 deeply than he. " Well, it s getting to be 
 like Paris," he muttered. At that moment
 
 <3ramerc ftarfc. 209 
 
 his father-in-law came downstairs and 
 entered the room. 
 
 The old gentleman s face was set and stern. 
 His Puritan origin showed itself in the hard 
 lines about his grim mouth. He was re 
 lentless. De Ford felt that, as for him, he 
 had committed the unpardonable sin. 
 
 " Well, what do you want?" asked the 
 elder huskily, as he pushed aside the por 
 tiere. 
 
 " I want to know by whose orders I am 
 shut out from my home," said De Ford hotly, 
 and rising. 
 
 " By mine! This is not your home. You 
 have chosen another " 
 
 "That affair is ended," he said, equivo 
 cating. 
 
 " Our decision is final." Papa compressed 
 his lips firmly. 
 
 " But my wife my children I have a 
 right to see them!" 
 
 " My daughter is ill. She is not here. 
 She has gone to the house of a friend. The 
 children are with her." 
 
 " Where are they? At whose house?" 
 
 " That I decline to state at present." 
 
 De Ford could not help admiring the old 
 gentleman s dignified bearing. It was that
 
 210 Gramercg parft. 
 
 of a righteous judge. There was no relent 
 ing. He turned to go. 
 
 " I beg of yon not to see my daughter for 
 the present. The shock has been too great. 
 The affair has nearly killed her. You see, 
 she didn t know you " 
 
 " But this this is cruel." 
 
 " The cruelty is only on your side." 
 
 " But this house " 
 
 " My dear sir, it is not a club ; and we do 
 not regard matters of this kind here as they 
 are regarded, probably, among your associ 
 ates. This is a Christian family, sir an 
 American family and we are not living in 
 Paris " 
 
 With that the old gentleman turned ab 
 ruptly and left the room. De Ford stood 
 a moment in the hallway, twirling his hat. 
 "So so," he muttered, "the end has 
 come " 
 
 As he got into the cab, he directed the 
 driver to go to No. Fifth Avenue. 
 
 Louise Franscioli received him with all 
 the compassionate tenderness of a sister. 
 She saw that his love was dead. She wept 
 in silence a long time. 
 
 " The end has not come until you have 
 seen the madonna," she cried. "And she
 
 <3ramerc fcarfc. 211 
 
 will forgive you! if I never see you again." 
 Jack bade her good-night shortly after, and 
 went out to a neighboring hotel. 
 
 " The end has come," he kept saying to 
 himself. He had not dared tell even her of 
 the bad state of his affairs in Wall Street. He 
 was a ruined man ! 
 
 As he sat up through that long night, 
 sleepless, the wistful, sad face of Louise came 
 to him. It seemed to him that she had 
 taken of him along farewell. Every one was 
 leaving him, then? The end had come.
 
 XXX. 
 
 E end had come to everything! 
 Jack De Ford went to his hotel 
 room that night fully realizing 
 that a chapter, if not the final 
 chapter, in his life was closed. Indeed, for 
 several hours, as he paced to and fro, he had 
 a mind to close it to make it final. The 
 firm of Beach, Catherly & De Ford would 
 fail next day, and be posted in the Stock Ex 
 change. His divorce would soon be public 
 news, and there would be a column or so in 
 the newspapers with a scare-head : " Another 
 Good Man Gone Wrong." Ah, it was all this 
 eleventh commandment, " Thou shalt not be 
 found out," which he had broken. He felt 
 no sorrow, no repentance, no remorse espe 
 cially; only, the end had come. 
 
 Such men as he need the sharp blows of 
 public contempt, of direct, manifest dislike, 
 to make them feel remorse. The " sin " of 
 loving two women did not present itself. 
 " Was it a sin at all?" he asked himself. It 
 was not in Utah. It was not in Bible times. 
 212
 
 <3ramerc iparfe, 213 
 
 It was now, only by convention. He had 
 never ceased loving his wife. He loved her 
 now. He would give up the other " illegal " 
 woman forever to satisfy this convention. 
 
 He had a small silver-mounted pistol, 
 which he had carried for some time. It lay 
 on the marble centre- table of his hotel room. 
 There were seven loaded cells in it. He 
 might easily discharge one of them into his 
 brain. The effect of his death on his wife 
 would be to make her regret her course; to 
 cause his father-in-law to lead the remaining 
 years of his life in bitter self-accusation. 
 But he had no heart for it. He was too old 
 for suicide. He had seen too much of the 
 world. He knew that his life had not 
 ended. There was still enough in him 
 to live and cry for "success" and final 
 triumph. He still hoped that he would be 
 forgiven for the children s sake. " There 
 will be," he said aloud, "still another chap 
 ter; perhaps several." He would wait and 
 see. 
 
 Weeks and months passed. His madonna- 
 wife made no sign of relenting, but she com 
 menced no legal proceedings. The failure 
 was not as bad as he had expected. Failures
 
 214 Gramercg 
 
 on Wall Street are queer affairs. Friendly 
 brokers rally and help the insolvents into a 
 few " good things ; " in a year or so the failure 
 is forgotten, and the firm is on a better basis 
 than before. So it was with Beach, Catherly 
 & De Ford. It came up again smiling. It was 
 known that De Ford had had some trouble at 
 home. But a man s private character or pri 
 vate family affairs are rarely inquired into 
 minutely on Change. His friends stood by 
 him. He was fortunate again and grew rich ; 
 so quickly do these ups and downs occur, 
 where " business " is gambling on a large 
 scale. 
 
 He did not break at once with Louise 
 Franscioli. But he saw her, afterward, never 
 alone. She seemed very much changed. 
 One evening, after an absence of four days, 
 he called at her apartment. She was gone. 
 She had taken the Wednesday s French 
 steamer, and French leave, the day before. 
 She left him a sad, passionate little note, 
 blotted with tears. In it she said, " If I go 
 away forever, she will take you back." 
 
 It was noticed at the club that Challinor 
 had suddenly sailed for Europe also. But 
 Challinor was a man who did things largely 
 from impulse, and he had the habit of going
 
 ramercg path. 215 
 
 away suddenly to the ends of the earth at a 
 moment s notice. Later on in the winter, 
 his yacht, Calypso, received orders to sail for 
 the Mediterranean. 
 
 De Ford, after that, became very cold and 
 hard and indifferent to everything except 
 business. His pride would never permit his 
 making overtures of reconciliation to his 
 wife, and his pride led him to the ambition 
 of bequeathing an enormous fortune to his 
 two children. To this, as the second year 
 of their separation began, he consecrated 
 himself with the devotion of an anchorite. 
 
 And what, then, is the end of this family 
 history? After a third year of separation, 
 did kindly intervening friends persuade the 
 young wife and husband to forgive and for 
 get? Did little Dorothy, as so often occurs 
 in the play, lead " papa " to " mamma," and 
 gently place " mamma s " hand in his for rec 
 onciliation? Or was a divorce obtained, 
 and did Jack marry again, and, Mrs. Sun 
 down dying, did Florence tearfully yield to 
 the artist at last? 
 
 In real life, dear reader, these definite if 
 not entirely satisfactory conclusions do not
 
 216 (Sramercs 
 
 generally happen. In real life, longer 
 periods of time seem to elapse before 
 anything is decided. The fact is, that \ve 
 would have to pry into the future to learn 
 the final denouement of this little domestic 
 tale. At present Florence is living very 
 quietly with the two children, Dorothy and 
 Jack, Jr., with the old folks in Gramercy 
 Park. She does not go out at all, but is 
 entirely absorbed in her children. Jack, Sr. , 
 never visits the old house on the Park, but 
 the nurse takes the children to see him in 
 his bachelor quarters on upper Broadway 
 every Sunday afternoon. They are pretty, 
 charming little things, and they ask poor 
 Jack many awkward questions. 
 
 The blow of his disgrace was so shocking 
 to Florence that it very nearly shattered 
 her life. She was ill at the house of her 
 friend, Mrs. Mitchell, a long time; but she 
 recovered, and as the time went on she 
 found consolation in religion and in charita 
 ble work, as well as in her children. 
 
 Once or twice, husband and wife have met 
 by accident in street-cars or in public 
 places. Mrs. Heath, who accompanied her 
 daughter, has always spoken to Jack at these 
 times. Once they mot face to face at the dog-
 
 (Bramercg park. 217 
 
 show. Mrs. Heath burst into tours, and 
 pressed Jack s hand very kindly. There 
 was never any doubt in his mind but that 
 his dear old mother-in-law had long since 
 forgiven him and that the reconciliation, if 
 it comes, will come through the mediation of 
 this sweet old lady. She was not a product 
 of New England ! Florence, at the times of 
 these accidental encounters, avoided his 
 glance and turned away. She has something 
 of her father s Puritan nature. He, stern 
 old New Englander, never was so contented 
 in his home-life before. There is no one 
 now to say him nay. He tyrannizes a little 
 over his household, and directs a good deal 
 in regard to the early religious training of 
 Dorothy and Jack whose name, by the way, 
 he is exceedingly desirous of changing to 
 Samuel after himself. It is rather a pleas 
 ant sign, however, that Florence herself de 
 cidedly refuses to permit this. It is curious 
 sometimes to see this sweet-faced mother 
 lavish the most tender caresses on the sturdy 
 youngster, her favorite, calling him again 
 and again by name, and crying over him too, 
 when she thinks no one is observing her. 
 
 As for Do Ford, it may be said that he 
 has once for all sown his wild-oats. He lives
 
 218 (BramercE parfc. 
 
 very quietly now at his club, dines out a 
 good deal with his intimates. He is very 
 reserved and rather silent. He has made, 
 and is making, a great deal of money. He 
 talks seriously of going to Denver or San 
 Francisco o live, is very silent concerning 
 his personal affairs, and is regarded as a ris 
 ing business man. He isn t forty yet, and 
 doesn t drink. Ah well, there are some 
 hopes for him! 
 
 "And further this deponent saith not." 
 
 END.
 
 T 
 
 D. APPLETON & CO. S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 APPLETONS SUMMER SERIES, 1891. 
 OURMALWS TIME CHEQUES. By F. ANSTEY, 
 author of "Vice Versa," " The Giant s Robe," etc. 
 
 " Its author has struck another rich vein of whimsicality and humor." 
 San Francisco A rgonaut. 
 
 " His special gift is in making the impossible appear probable." St. 
 Louis Republic. 
 
 "A curious conceit and very entertaining story." Boston Advertiser. 
 
 " Each cheque is good for several laughs." New York Herald. 
 
 "Certainly one of the most diverting books of the season." Brooklyn 
 Times 
 
 " Sets a handsome example for the Summer Series, with its neat and 
 portable style of half cloth binding and good paper and typography." 
 Brooklyn Ragle. 
 
 T^ROM SHADO W TO SUNLIGHT. By the MAR- 
 
 QUIS OF LORNE. 
 
 " In these days of princely criticism that is to say, criticism of princes 
 it is refreshing to meet a really good bit of aristocratic literary work, al 
 beit the author is only a princt-in-law. . . . The theme chosen by the 
 Marquis makes his story attractive to Americans." Chicago Tribune. 
 
 " A charming book." Cincinnati Enquirer. 
 
 ADOPTING AN ABANDONED FARM. By KATE 
 ^* SANBORN. 
 
 "It may be mythical, but it reads like a true narrative taken from a 
 strong memory that has been re-enforced by a diary and corrected by the 
 parish register. It is not only as natural as life, but, as Josh Billings used 
 to say, even more so. " New York Journal of Commerce. 
 
 "A sunny, pungent, humorous sketch. ... A bright, amusing book, 
 which is thoughtful as well as amusing, and may stimulate, somewhere, 
 thinking that shall bear fruit in some really effective remedial action." 
 Chicago 7imes 
 
 r\N THE LAKE OF LUCERNE, AND OTHER 
 ^ STORIES. By BEATRICE WHITBY. 
 
 " Six short stories carefully and conscientiously finished, and told with 
 the graceful ease of the practiced raconteur." Literary Digest. 
 
 "The stories are pleasantly told in light and delicate vein, and are sure 
 to be acceptable to the friends Miss Whitby has already made on this side 
 of the Atlantic." Philadelphia Bulletin. 
 
 " Very dainty, not only in mechanical workmanship but in matter and 
 manner." Boston Advertiser. 
 
 Each, i6mo, half cloth, with specially designed cover, 50 cents. 
 New York : D. APPLETON & CO., i, 3, & 5 Bond Street.
 
 O 
 
 D. APPLETON & CO. S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 N THE PLANTATION. By JOEL CHANDLER 
 HARRIS, author of " Uncle Remus." With 23 Illus 
 trations by E. W. KEMBLE, and Portrait of the Author. 
 I2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 "The book is in the characteristic vein which has mnde the author so 
 famous and popular as an interpreter of plantation character." Rochester 
 Union and A dvertiser. 
 
 "Those who never tire of Uncle Remus and his stories with whom we 
 would be accounted will delight in Joe Maxwell and his exploits." 
 London Saturday Review. 
 
 " Altogether a most charming book." Chicago Times. 
 
 " Really a valuable, if modest, contribution to the history of the civil 
 war within the Confederate lines, particularly on the eve of the catastrophe. 
 Two or three new animal fables are introduced with effect; but the history 
 of the plantation, the printing-office, the black runaways, and white de 
 serters, of whom the impending break-up made the community tolerant, the 
 coon and fox hunting, forms the serious purpose of the book, and holds the 
 reader s interest from beginning to end." New York Evening Post. 
 
 J J\ CLE REMUS: His Songs and his Sayings. The 
 * Folk-lore of the Old Plantation. By JOEL CHANDLER 
 HARRIS. Illustrated from Drawings by F. S. CHURCH 
 and J. H. MOSER, of Georgia. I2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 " The idea of preserving and publishing these legends, in the form in 
 which the old plantation negroes actually tell them, is altogether one of the 
 happiest literary conceptions of the day. And very admirably is the work 
 done. ... In such touches lies the charm of this fascinating little volume 
 of legends, which deserves to be placed on a level with Rciticke Fuchs for 
 its quaint humor, without reference to the ethnological interest possessed 
 by these stories, as indicating, perhaps, a common origin for very widely 
 severed races." London Spectator. 
 
 "We are just discovering what admirable literary material there is at 
 home, what a great mine there is to explore, and how quaint and peculiar 
 is the material which can be dug up. Mr. Harris s book may be looked on 
 in a double light either as a pleasant volume recounting the stories told by 
 a typical old colored man to a child, or as a valuable contribution to our 
 somewhat meager folk-lore. . . . To Northern readers the story of Brer 
 (Brother Brudder) Rabbit may be novel. To those familiar with planta 
 tion life, who have listened to these quaint old stories, who have still tender 
 reminiscences of some good old mauma who told these wondrous adventures 
 to them when they were children, Brer Rabbit, the Tar Baby, and Brer Fox 
 come back again with all the past pleasures of younger days." New York 
 Times. 
 
 " Uncle Remus s sayings on current happenings are very shrewd and 
 bright, and the plantation and revival songs are choice specimens of their 
 sort. " Boston Journal. 
 
 New York : D. APPLETON & CO., i, 3, & 5 Bond Street.

 
 
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