章节正文
"Why not?" said the girl.
The young man laughed with pleasure.
"I am unpardonable," he said. "I live so much alone--that I
forget." Like one who, issuing from a close room, encounters
the morning air, he drew a deep, happy breath. "It has been
three years since a woman has been in this house," he said
simply. "And I have not even thanked you," he went on, "nor
asked you if you are cold," he cried remorsefully, "or hungry.
How nice it would be if you would say you are hungry."
The girl walked beside him, laughing lightly, and, as they
disappeared into the greater hall beyond, Winthrop heard her
cry: "You never robbed your own ice-chest? How have you kept
from starving? Show me it, and we'll rob it together."
The voice of their host rang through the empty house with a
laugh like that of an eager, happy child.
"Heavens!" said the owner of the car, "isn't she wonderful!"
But neither the prostrate burglars, nor the servants, intent
on strapping their wrists together, gave him any answer.
As they were finishing the supper filched from the ice-chest,
Fred was brought before them from the kitchen. The blow the
burglar had given him was covered with a piece of cold
beef-steak, and the water thrown on him to revive him was
thawing from his leather breeches. Mr. Carey expressed his
gratitude, and rewarded him beyond the avaricious dreams even
of a chauffeur.
As the three trespassers left the house, accompanied by many
pails of water, the girl turned to the lonely figure in the
doorway and waved her hand.
"May we come again?" she called.
But young Mr. Carey did not trust his voice to answer.
Standing erect, with folded arms, in dark silhouette in the
light of the hall, he bowed his head.
Deaf to alarm bells, to pistol shots, to cries for help, they
found her brother and Ernest Peabody sleeping soundly.
"Sam is a charming chaperon," said the owner of the car.
With the girl beside him, with Fred crouched, shivering, on
the step, he threw in the clutch; the servants from the house
waved the emptied buckets in salute, and the great car sprang
forward into the awakening day toward the golden dome over the
Boston Common. In the rear seat Peabody shivered and yawned,
and then sat erect.
"Did you get the water?" he demanded, anxiously.
There was a grim silence.
"Yes," said the owner of the car patiently. "You needn't
worry any longer. We got the water."
III
THE KIDNAPPERS
During the last two weeks of the "whirlwind" campaign,
automobiles had carried the rival candidates to every election
district in Greater New York.
During these two weeks, at the disposal of Ernest Peabody--on
the Reform Ticket, "the people's choice for
Lieutenant-Governor--" Winthrop had placed his Scarlet Car,
and, as its chauffeur, himself.
Not that Winthrop greatly cared for Reform, or Ernest Peabody.
The "whirlwind" part of the campaign was what attracted him;
the crowds, the bands, the fireworks, the rush by night from
hall to hall, from Fordham to Tompkinsville. And, while
inside the different Lyceums, Peabody lashed the Tammany
Tiger, outside in his car, Winthrop was making friends with
Tammany policemen, and his natural enemies, the bicycle cops.
To Winthrop, the day in which he did not increase his
acquaintance with the traffic squad, was a day lost.
But the real reason for his efforts in the cause of Reform,
was one he could not declare. And it was a reason that was
guessed perhaps by only one person. On some nights Beatrice
Forbes and her brother Sam accompanied Peabody. And while
Peabody sat in the rear of the car, mumbling the speech he
would next deliver, Winthrop was given the chance to talk with
her. These chances were growing cruelly few. In one month
after election day Miss Forbes and Peabody would be man and
wife. Once before the day of their marriage had been fixed,
but, when the Reform Party offered Peabody a high place on its
ticket, he asked, in order that he might bear his part in the
cause of reform, that the wedding be postponed. To the
postponement Miss Forbes made no objection. To one less
self-centred than Peabody, it might have appeared that she
almost too readily consented.
"I knew I could count upon your seeing my duty as I saw it,"
said Peabody much pleased, "it always will be a satisfaction
to both of us to remember you never stood between me and my
work for reform."
"What do you think my brother-in-law-to-be has done now?"
demanded Sam of Winthrop, as the Scarlet Car swept into Jerome
Avenue. "He's postponed his marriage with Trix just because he
has a chance to be Lieutenant-Governor. What is a
Lieutenant-Governor anyway, do you know? I don't like to ask
Peabody."
"It Is not his own election he's working for," said Winthrop.
He was conscious of an effort to assume a point of view both
noble and magnanimous.
"He probably feels the `cause' calls him. But, good Heavens!"
"Look out!" shrieked Sam, "where you going?"
Winthrop swung the car back into the avenue.
"To think," he cried, "that a man who could marry--a girl, and
then would ask her to wait two months. Or, two days! Two
months lost out of his life, and she might die; he might lose
her, she might change her mind. Any number of men can be
Lieutenant-Governors; only one man can be----"
He broke off suddenly, coughed and fixed his eyes miserably on
the road. After a brief pause, Brother Sam covertly looked at
him. Could it be that "Billie" Winthrop, the man liked of all
men, should love his sister, and--that she should prefer
Ernest Peabody? He was deeply, loyally indignant. He
determined to demand of his sister an immediate and abject
apology.
At eight o'clock on the morning of election day, Peabody, in
the Scarlet Car, was on his way to vote. He lived at
Riverside Drive, and the polling-booth was only a few blocks
distant. During the rest of the day he intended to use the
car to visit other election districts, and to keep him in
touch with the Reformers at the Gilsey House. Winthrop was
acting as his chauffeur, and in the rear seat was Miss Forbes.
Peabody had asked her to accompany him to the polling-booth,
because he thought women who believed in reform should show
their interest in it in public, before all men. Miss Forbes
disagreed with him, chiefly because whenever she sat in a box
at any of the public meetings the artists from the newspapers,
instead of immortalizing the candidate, made pictures of her
and her hat. After she had seen her future lord and master
cast his vote for reform and himself, she was to depart by
train to Tarrytown. The Forbes's country place was there, and
for election day her brother Sam had invited out some of his
friends to play tennis.
As the car darted and dodged up Eighth Avenue, a man who had
been hidden by the stairs to the Elevated, stepped in front of
it. It caught him, and hurled him, like a mail-bag tossed
from a train, against one of the pillars that support the
overhead tracks. Winthrop gave a cry and fell upon the
brakes. The cry was as full of pain as though he himself had
been mangled. Miss Forbes saw only the man appear, and then
disappear, but, Winthrop's shout of warning, and the wrench as
the brakes locked, told her what had happened. She shut her
eyes, and for an instant covered them with her hands. On the
front seat Peabody clutched helplessly at the cushions. In
horror his eyes were fastened on the motionless mass jammed
against the pillar. Winthrop scrambled over him, and ran to
where the man lay. So, apparently, did every other inhabitant
of Eighth Avenue; but Winthrop was the first to reach him and
kneeling in the car tracks, he tried to place the head and
shoulders of the body against the iron pillar. He had seen
very few dead men; and to him, this weight in his arms, this
bundle of limp flesh and muddy clothes, and the purple-bloated
face with blood trickling down it, looked like a dead man.
Once or twice when in his car, Death had reached for Winthrop,
and only by the scantiest grace had he escaped. Then the
nearness of it had only sobered him. Now that he believed he
had brought it to a fellow man, even though he knew he was in
no degree to blame, the thought sickened and shocked him. His
brain trembled with remorse and horror.
But voices assailing him on every side brought him to the
necessity of the moment. Men were pressing close upon him,
jostling, abusing him, shaking fists in his face. Another
crowd of men, as though fearing the car would escape of its
own volition, were clinging to the steps and running boards.
Winthrop saw Miss Forbes standing above them, talking eagerly
to Peabody, and pointing at him. He heard children's shrill
voices calling to new arrivals that an automobile had killed a
man; that it had killed him on purpose. On the outer edge of
the crowd men shouted: "Ah, soak him," "Kill him," "Lynch
him."
A soiled giant without a collar stooped over the purple,
blood-stained face, and then leaped upright, and shouted:
"It's Jerry Gaylor, he's killed old man Gaylor."
The response was instant. Every one seemed to know Jerry
Gaylor.
Winthrop took the soiled person by the arm.
"You help me lift him into my car," he ordered. "Take him by
the shoulders. We must get him to a hospital."
"To a hospital? To the Morgue!" roared the man. "And the
police station for yours. You don't do no get-away."
Winthrop answered him by turning to the crowd. "If this man
has any friends here, they'll please help me put him in my
car, and we'll take him to Roosevelt Hospital."
The soiled person shoved a fist and a bad cigar under
Winthrop's nose.
"Has he got any friends?" he mocked. "Sure, he's got friends,
and they'll fix you, all right."
"Sure!" echoed the crowd.
The man was encouraged.
"Don't you go away thinking you can come up here with your
buzz wagon and murder better men nor you'll ever be and----"
"Oh, shut up!" said Winthrop.
He turned his back on the soiled man, and again appealed to
the crowd.
"Don't stand there doing nothing," he commanded. "Do you want
this man to die? Some of you ring for an ambulance and get a
policeman, or tell me where is the nearest drug store."
No one moved, but every one shouted to every one else to do as
Winthrop suggested.
Winthrop felt something pulling at his sleeve, and turning,
found Peabody at his shoulder peering fearfully at the figure
in the street. He had drawn his cap over his eyes and hidden
the lower part of his face in the high collar of his motor
coat. "I can't do anything, can I?" he asked.
"I'm afraid not," whispered Winthrop. "Go back to the car and
don't leave Beatrice. I'll attend to this."
"That's what I thought," whispered Peabody eagerly. "I
thought she and I had better keep out of it."
"Right!" exclaimed Winthrop. "Go back and get Beatrice away."
Peabody looked his relief, but still hesitated.
The young man laughed with pleasure.
"I am unpardonable," he said. "I live so much alone--that I
forget." Like one who, issuing from a close room, encounters
the morning air, he drew a deep, happy breath. "It has been
three years since a woman has been in this house," he said
simply. "And I have not even thanked you," he went on, "nor
asked you if you are cold," he cried remorsefully, "or hungry.
How nice it would be if you would say you are hungry."
The girl walked beside him, laughing lightly, and, as they
disappeared into the greater hall beyond, Winthrop heard her
cry: "You never robbed your own ice-chest? How have you kept
from starving? Show me it, and we'll rob it together."
The voice of their host rang through the empty house with a
laugh like that of an eager, happy child.
"Heavens!" said the owner of the car, "isn't she wonderful!"
But neither the prostrate burglars, nor the servants, intent
on strapping their wrists together, gave him any answer.
As they were finishing the supper filched from the ice-chest,
Fred was brought before them from the kitchen. The blow the
burglar had given him was covered with a piece of cold
beef-steak, and the water thrown on him to revive him was
thawing from his leather breeches. Mr. Carey expressed his
gratitude, and rewarded him beyond the avaricious dreams even
of a chauffeur.
As the three trespassers left the house, accompanied by many
pails of water, the girl turned to the lonely figure in the
doorway and waved her hand.
"May we come again?" she called.
But young Mr. Carey did not trust his voice to answer.
Standing erect, with folded arms, in dark silhouette in the
light of the hall, he bowed his head.
Deaf to alarm bells, to pistol shots, to cries for help, they
found her brother and Ernest Peabody sleeping soundly.
"Sam is a charming chaperon," said the owner of the car.
With the girl beside him, with Fred crouched, shivering, on
the step, he threw in the clutch; the servants from the house
waved the emptied buckets in salute, and the great car sprang
forward into the awakening day toward the golden dome over the
Boston Common. In the rear seat Peabody shivered and yawned,
and then sat erect.
"Did you get the water?" he demanded, anxiously.
There was a grim silence.
"Yes," said the owner of the car patiently. "You needn't
worry any longer. We got the water."
III
THE KIDNAPPERS
During the last two weeks of the "whirlwind" campaign,
automobiles had carried the rival candidates to every election
district in Greater New York.
During these two weeks, at the disposal of Ernest Peabody--on
the Reform Ticket, "the people's choice for
Lieutenant-Governor--" Winthrop had placed his Scarlet Car,
and, as its chauffeur, himself.
Not that Winthrop greatly cared for Reform, or Ernest Peabody.
The "whirlwind" part of the campaign was what attracted him;
the crowds, the bands, the fireworks, the rush by night from
hall to hall, from Fordham to Tompkinsville. And, while
inside the different Lyceums, Peabody lashed the Tammany
Tiger, outside in his car, Winthrop was making friends with
Tammany policemen, and his natural enemies, the bicycle cops.
To Winthrop, the day in which he did not increase his
acquaintance with the traffic squad, was a day lost.
But the real reason for his efforts in the cause of Reform,
was one he could not declare. And it was a reason that was
guessed perhaps by only one person. On some nights Beatrice
Forbes and her brother Sam accompanied Peabody. And while
Peabody sat in the rear of the car, mumbling the speech he
would next deliver, Winthrop was given the chance to talk with
her. These chances were growing cruelly few. In one month
after election day Miss Forbes and Peabody would be man and
wife. Once before the day of their marriage had been fixed,
but, when the Reform Party offered Peabody a high place on its
ticket, he asked, in order that he might bear his part in the
cause of reform, that the wedding be postponed. To the
postponement Miss Forbes made no objection. To one less
self-centred than Peabody, it might have appeared that she
almost too readily consented.
"I knew I could count upon your seeing my duty as I saw it,"
said Peabody much pleased, "it always will be a satisfaction
to both of us to remember you never stood between me and my
work for reform."
"What do you think my brother-in-law-to-be has done now?"
demanded Sam of Winthrop, as the Scarlet Car swept into Jerome
Avenue. "He's postponed his marriage with Trix just because he
has a chance to be Lieutenant-Governor. What is a
Lieutenant-Governor anyway, do you know? I don't like to ask
Peabody."
"It Is not his own election he's working for," said Winthrop.
He was conscious of an effort to assume a point of view both
noble and magnanimous.
"He probably feels the `cause' calls him. But, good Heavens!"
"Look out!" shrieked Sam, "where you going?"
Winthrop swung the car back into the avenue.
"To think," he cried, "that a man who could marry--a girl, and
then would ask her to wait two months. Or, two days! Two
months lost out of his life, and she might die; he might lose
her, she might change her mind. Any number of men can be
Lieutenant-Governors; only one man can be----"
He broke off suddenly, coughed and fixed his eyes miserably on
the road. After a brief pause, Brother Sam covertly looked at
him. Could it be that "Billie" Winthrop, the man liked of all
men, should love his sister, and--that she should prefer
Ernest Peabody? He was deeply, loyally indignant. He
determined to demand of his sister an immediate and abject
apology.
At eight o'clock on the morning of election day, Peabody, in
the Scarlet Car, was on his way to vote. He lived at
Riverside Drive, and the polling-booth was only a few blocks
distant. During the rest of the day he intended to use the
car to visit other election districts, and to keep him in
touch with the Reformers at the Gilsey House. Winthrop was
acting as his chauffeur, and in the rear seat was Miss Forbes.
Peabody had asked her to accompany him to the polling-booth,
because he thought women who believed in reform should show
their interest in it in public, before all men. Miss Forbes
disagreed with him, chiefly because whenever she sat in a box
at any of the public meetings the artists from the newspapers,
instead of immortalizing the candidate, made pictures of her
and her hat. After she had seen her future lord and master
cast his vote for reform and himself, she was to depart by
train to Tarrytown. The Forbes's country place was there, and
for election day her brother Sam had invited out some of his
friends to play tennis.
As the car darted and dodged up Eighth Avenue, a man who had
been hidden by the stairs to the Elevated, stepped in front of
it. It caught him, and hurled him, like a mail-bag tossed
from a train, against one of the pillars that support the
overhead tracks. Winthrop gave a cry and fell upon the
brakes. The cry was as full of pain as though he himself had
been mangled. Miss Forbes saw only the man appear, and then
disappear, but, Winthrop's shout of warning, and the wrench as
the brakes locked, told her what had happened. She shut her
eyes, and for an instant covered them with her hands. On the
front seat Peabody clutched helplessly at the cushions. In
horror his eyes were fastened on the motionless mass jammed
against the pillar. Winthrop scrambled over him, and ran to
where the man lay. So, apparently, did every other inhabitant
of Eighth Avenue; but Winthrop was the first to reach him and
kneeling in the car tracks, he tried to place the head and
shoulders of the body against the iron pillar. He had seen
very few dead men; and to him, this weight in his arms, this
bundle of limp flesh and muddy clothes, and the purple-bloated
face with blood trickling down it, looked like a dead man.
Once or twice when in his car, Death had reached for Winthrop,
and only by the scantiest grace had he escaped. Then the
nearness of it had only sobered him. Now that he believed he
had brought it to a fellow man, even though he knew he was in
no degree to blame, the thought sickened and shocked him. His
brain trembled with remorse and horror.
But voices assailing him on every side brought him to the
necessity of the moment. Men were pressing close upon him,
jostling, abusing him, shaking fists in his face. Another
crowd of men, as though fearing the car would escape of its
own volition, were clinging to the steps and running boards.
Winthrop saw Miss Forbes standing above them, talking eagerly
to Peabody, and pointing at him. He heard children's shrill
voices calling to new arrivals that an automobile had killed a
man; that it had killed him on purpose. On the outer edge of
the crowd men shouted: "Ah, soak him," "Kill him," "Lynch
him."
A soiled giant without a collar stooped over the purple,
blood-stained face, and then leaped upright, and shouted:
"It's Jerry Gaylor, he's killed old man Gaylor."
The response was instant. Every one seemed to know Jerry
Gaylor.
Winthrop took the soiled person by the arm.
"You help me lift him into my car," he ordered. "Take him by
the shoulders. We must get him to a hospital."
"To a hospital? To the Morgue!" roared the man. "And the
police station for yours. You don't do no get-away."
Winthrop answered him by turning to the crowd. "If this man
has any friends here, they'll please help me put him in my
car, and we'll take him to Roosevelt Hospital."
The soiled person shoved a fist and a bad cigar under
Winthrop's nose.
"Has he got any friends?" he mocked. "Sure, he's got friends,
and they'll fix you, all right."
"Sure!" echoed the crowd.
The man was encouraged.
"Don't you go away thinking you can come up here with your
buzz wagon and murder better men nor you'll ever be and----"
"Oh, shut up!" said Winthrop.
He turned his back on the soiled man, and again appealed to
the crowd.
"Don't stand there doing nothing," he commanded. "Do you want
this man to die? Some of you ring for an ambulance and get a
policeman, or tell me where is the nearest drug store."
No one moved, but every one shouted to every one else to do as
Winthrop suggested.
Winthrop felt something pulling at his sleeve, and turning,
found Peabody at his shoulder peering fearfully at the figure
in the street. He had drawn his cap over his eyes and hidden
the lower part of his face in the high collar of his motor
coat. "I can't do anything, can I?" he asked.
"I'm afraid not," whispered Winthrop. "Go back to the car and
don't leave Beatrice. I'll attend to this."
"That's what I thought," whispered Peabody eagerly. "I
thought she and I had better keep out of it."
"Right!" exclaimed Winthrop. "Go back and get Beatrice away."
Peabody looked his relief, but still hesitated.
- breath [breθ]
n.呼吸；气息 (初中英语单词) - lightly [´laitli] ad.轻微地，稍微 (初中英语单词)
- lonely [´ləunli] a.孤独的；无人烟的 (初中英语单词)
- pistol [´pistl] n.手枪 vt.用手枪射击 (初中英语单词)
- sleeping [´sli:piŋ] n.&a.睡着(的) (初中英语单词)
- charming [´tʃɑ:miŋ] a.可爱的；极好的 (初中英语单词)
- clutch [klʌtʃ] v.抓住 n.爪子；控制 (初中英语单词)
- salute [sə´lu:t] n.&v.招呼；行礼；敬礼 (初中英语单词)
- reform [ri´fɔ:m] v.&n.改革；改良；革除 (初中英语单词)
- scarlet [´skɑ:lit] n.猩红色 a.猩红的 (初中英语单词)
- traffic [´træfik] n.交通，运输 (初中英语单词)
- election [i´lekʃən] n.选举；选择 (初中英语单词)
- wedding [´wediŋ] n.婚礼，结婚 (初中英语单词)
- objection [əb´dʒekʃən] n.反对；异议；缺点 (初中英语单词)
- readily [´redili] ad.乐意地；容易地 (初中英语单词)
- working [´wə:kiŋ] a.工人的；劳动的 (初中英语单词)
- conscious [´kɔnʃəs] a.意识的；自觉的 (初中英语单词)
- chiefly [´tʃi:fli] ad.主要地；尤其 (初中英语单词)
- whenever [wen´evə] conj.&ad.无论何时 (初中英语单词)
- candidate [´kændideit] n.候选人；投考者 (初中英语单词)
- hidden [´hid(ə)n] hide 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- instant [´instənt] a.立即的 n.紧迫；瞬间 (初中英语单词)
- running [´rʌniŋ] a.奔跑的；流动的 (初中英语单词)
- standing [´stændiŋ] n.持续 a.直立的 (初中英语单词)
- collar [´kɔlə] n.衣领；(狗等的)项圈 (初中英语单词)
- sleeve [sli:v] n.袖子；袖套 (初中英语单词)
- eagerly [´i:gəli] ad.渴望地，急切地 (初中英语单词)
- relief [ri´li:f] n.救济；援救；减轻 (初中英语单词)
- revive [ri´vaiv] v.(使)苏醒；(使)振奋 (高中英语单词)
- patiently [´peiʃəntli] ad.有耐心地；坚韧地 (高中英语单词)
- disposal [di´spəuzəl] n.处理；支配 (高中英语单词)
- campaign [kæm´pein] n.战役；行动 vi.从军 (高中英语单词)
- bicycle [´baisik(ə)l] n.自行车 (高中英语单词)
- seeing [si:iŋ] see的现在分词 n.视觉 (高中英语单词)
- motionless [´məuʃənləs] a.静止的；固定的 (高中英语单词)
- pillar [´pilə] n.支柱 vt.用柱支持 (高中英语单词)
- apparently [ə´pærəntli] ad.显然，表面上地 (高中英语单词)
- upright [´ʌprait] a.直立的 ad.直立地 (高中英语单词)
- response [ri´spɔns] n.回答；响应 (高中英语单词)
- prostrate [´prɔstreit, prɔ´streit] a.俯伏的 vt.弄倒 (英语四级单词)
- breeches [´britʃiz] n.裤子；马裤 (英语四级单词)
- chauffeur [´ʃəufə,ʃeu´fə:] n.(汽车)司机 (英语四级单词)
- cruelly [´kruəli] ad.残酷地；极，非常 (英语四级单词)
- indignant [in´dignənt] a.义愤的，愤慨的 (英语四级单词)
- warning [´wɔ:niŋ] n.警告；前兆 a.预告的 (英语四级单词)
- wrench [rentʃ] n.&vt.拧；急拉；猛推 (英语四级单词)
- remorse [ri´mɔ:s] n.懊悔；自责；同情 (英语四级单词)
- ambulance [´æmbjuləns] n.救护车(船，飞机) (英语四级单词)
- silhouette [,silu:´et] n.剪影 vt.使出轮廓 (英语六级单词)
- awakening [ə´weikəniŋ] n.&a.觉醒(中的) (英语六级单词)
- fireworks [´faiəwə:ks] n.爆竹，焰火 (英语六级单词)
- miserably [´mizərəbli] ad.悲惨地；糟糕地 (英语六级单词)
- helplessly [´helplisli] ad.无能为力地 (英语六级单词)
- calling [´kɔ:liŋ] n.点名；职业；欲望 (英语六级单词)
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