A Desperate Youth

The second act of “William Tell” had ended at the Grand Opera House. The incandescent lights of ceiling and proscenium flashed up, showering radiance upon the vast surface of summer costumes and gay faces in the auditorium. The audience, relieved of the stress of attention, became audible in a great composite of chatter. A host streamed along the aisles into the wide lobbies, and thence its larger part jostled through the front doors to the brilliantly illuminated vestibule. Many passed on into the wide sidewalk, where the electric light poured its rays upon countless promenaders whose footfalls incessantly beat upon the aural sense. Scores of bicyclists of both sexes sped over the asphalt up and down, some now and then deviating to make way for a lumbering yellow 'bus or a hurrying carriage.

Men and women, young people composing the majority, strolled to and fro in the roomy lobby that environs the auditorium on all sides save that of the stage. A group of enthusiasts stood between the rear door of the box-office and the wide entrance to the long middle aisle.

“How magnificently Guille held that last note!”

“What good taste and artistic sense Madame Kronold has!”

“Del Puente hasn't been in better voice in years.”

“But you know, Mademoiselle Islar is decidedly a lyric soprano.”

These were some of the scraps of the conversation of that group. A lithe, athletic-looking man of thirty stood mechanically listening to them, as he stroked his black moustache. He was in summer attire, evidently disdaining conventionalities, preferring comfort.

Suddenly losing interest in the conversation in his vicinity, he started toward the Montgomery Avenue side of the lobby, with the apparent intention of breathing some outside air at one of the wide-barred exits, where children stood looking in from the sidewalk, and catching what glimpses they could of the audience through the doorways in the glass partition bounding the auditorium.

He by chance cast his glance up the unused staircase leading to the balcony from the northern part of the lobby. He saw upon the third step a young woman in a dark flannel outing-dress, her face concealed by a veil. She seemed to be watching some one among those who stood or moved near the Montgomery Avenue exits, which had wire barriers.

“By Jove!” he said, within himself, “surely I know that figure! But I thought she had gone to the Catskills, and I never supposed her capable of wearing negligee clothes at the theatre. There can be no mistaking that wrist, though, or that turn of the shoulders.”

He stepped softly to her side and lightly touched one of the admired shoulders.

She turned quickly and suppressed an exclamation ere it was half-uttered.

“Why, Harry—Doctor Haslam, I mean! How did you know it was I?”

“Why, Amy—that is to say, Miss Winnett! What on earth are you doing here? Pardon the question, but I thought you were on the mountains. I'm all the more glad to see you.”

While he pressed her hand she looked searchingly into his eyes, a fact of which he was conscious despite her veil.

“I'm not here—as far as my people may know. I'm at the Catskills with my cousins—except to my cousins themselves. To them I've come back home for a week's conference with my dressmaker. Our house isn't entirely closed up, you know. Aunt Rachel likes the hot weather of Philadelphia all summer through, and she's still here. When I arrived here this morning, I told her the dressmaker story. She retires at eight and she thinks I'm in bed too. But I'm here, and nobody suspects it but you and Mary, the servant at home, who knows where I've come, and who's to stay up for me till I return to-night. That's all of it, and now, as you're a friend of mine, you mustn't tell any one, will you?”

“But I know nothing to tell,” said the bewildered doctor. “What does all this subterfuge, this mystery mean?”

Amy Winnett considered silently for a moment, while Doctor Haslam mentally admired the slim, well-rounded figure, the graceful poise of the little head with its mass of brown hair beneath a sailor hat of the style that “came in” with this summer.

“I may as well tell you all,” she answered, presently. “I may need your assistance, too. I can rely upon you?”

“Through fire and water.”

“I've come to Philadelphia to prevent a suicide.”

“Good gracious!”

“Yes. You see, I've broken the engagement between me and Tom Appleton.”

“What! You don't mean it?”

There was a striking note of jubilation in the doctor's interruption. Miss Winnett made no comment thereupon, but continued:

“I finally decided that I didn't care as much for Tom as I'd thought I did, and then I had a suspicion—but I won't mention that—”

“No, you needn't. Your fortune—pardon me, I simply took the privilege of an old friend who had himself been rejected by you. Go on.”

“Don't interrupt again. As I said, I concluded that I couldn't be Tom's wife, and I told him so. He went to the Catskills when we went, you know, as he thought he could keep up his law studies as well there as here. You can't imagine how he took it. I'd never before known how much he—he really wished to marry me. But I was unflinching, and at last he left me, vowing that he would return to Philadelphia and commit suicide. He swore a terrible oath that my next message from him would be found in his hands after his death. And he set to-night as the time for the deed.”

“But why couldn't he have done it there and then?”

“How hard-hearted you are! Probably because he wanted to put his affairs in order before putting an end to his life.”

She spoke in all seriousness. Doctor Haslam succeeded with difficulty in restraining a smile.

“You don't imagine for a moment,” he said, “that the young man intended keeping his oath.”

“Don't I? You should have seen the look on his face when he spoke it.”

“Well?”

“Well, I couldn't sleep with the thought that a man was going to kill himself on my account. It makes me shudder. I'd see his face in my dreams every night of my life. Then if a note were really found in his hands, addressed to me, the whole thing would come out in the newspapers, and wouldn't that be horrible? Of course I couldn't tell my cousins anything about his threat, so I invented my excuse quickly, packed a small handbag, disguised myself with Cousin Laura's hat and veil, and took the same train that Tom took. I've kept my eye on him ever since, and he has no idea I'm on his track. The only time I lost was in hurrying home with my handbag to see my aunt, but I didn't even do that until I'd followed him on Chestnut Street to the down-town box-office of this theatre and seen him buy a seat, which I later found out from the ticket-seller was for to-night. So here I am, and there he is.”

“Where?”

“Standing over there by that wire thing like a fence next the street.”

The doctor looked over as she motioned. He soon recognized the slender figure, the indolent attitude of Tom Appleton, the blasÉ young man whom he was so accustomed to meeting at billiard-tables, in clubs, or hotels. A tolerant, amiable expression saved the youth's smooth, handsome face from vacuity. He was dressed with careful nicety.

“But,” said Haslam, “a man about to take leave of this life doesn't ordinarily waste time going to the opera.”

“Why not? He probably came here to think. One can do that well at the opera.”

“Tom Appleton think?—I beg pardon again. But see, he's talking to a girl now, Miss Estabrook, of North Broad Street. His smile to her is not the kind of a smile that commonly lights up a man's face on his way to death.”

“You don't suppose he would conceal his intentions from people by putting on his usual gaiety, do you?” she replied, ironically; adding, rather stiffly, “He has at least sufficiently good manners to do that, if not sufficient duplicity.”

“I didn't mean to offend you. My motive was to comfort you with the probability that he has changed his mind about shuffling off his mortal coil.”

“You're not very complimentary, Doctor Haslam. Perhaps you don't think that being jilted by me is sufficient to make a man commit suicide.”

“Frankly I don't. If I had thought so three years ago, I'd be dust or ashes at this present moment. It can't be that you would feel hurt if Tom Appleton there should fail to keep his oath and should continue to live in spite of your renunciation of him?”

“How dare you think me so vain and cruel, when I've taken all this trouble and come all this distance simply to prevent him from keeping his oath?”

“But how in the world would you prevent him if he were honestly bent on getting rid of himself?”

“By watching him until the moment he makes the attempt, and then rushing up and telling him that I'd renew our engagement. That would stop him, and gain time for me to manage so that he'd fall in love with some other girl and release me of his own accord.”

“But think a moment. You can watch him until the opera is out and perhaps for some time later. But if he means to die he certainly has a sufficient share of good manners to induce him to die quietly in his own home. So he'll eventually go home. When his door is locked, how are you going to keep your eye on him, and how can you rush to him at the proper moment?”

“I never thought of that.”

“No, you're a woman.”

She proceeded to do some thinking there upon the stairs.

“Oh,” she said, finally, “I know what to do. I'll follow him until he does go home, to make sure he doesn't attempt anything before that time, and then I'll tell the police. They'll watch him.”

“You'll probably get Mr. Tom Appleton into some very embarrassing complications by so doing.”

“What if I do,” she said, heroically, “if I save his life? Now, will you assist me to watch him? I'll need an escort in the street, of course.”

“I put myself at your command from now henceforth, if only for the joy of the time that I am thus privileged to pass with you.”

She smiled pleasantly, and with pleasure, trusting to her veil to hide the facial indication of her feelings. But Haslam's trained gray eye noted the smile, and also what kind of smile it was, and the discovery had a potent effect upon him. It deprived him momentarily of the power of speech, and he looked vacantly at her while colour came and went in his face.

Then he regained control of himself and he sighed audibly, while she dropped her eyes.

They were still standing upon the stairs, heedless of the confusion of vocal sounds that arose from the lobby strollers, from the boys selling librettos, from the people returning from the vestibule in a thick stream, from the musicians afar in the orchestra, tuning their instruments, from the many sources that provide the delightful hubbub of the entr'acte.

“Hush!” said Amy to Haslam. “Stand in front of me, so that Tom won't see me if he looks up here as he passes. He's coming this way.”

Young Appleton, chaffing with the persons whom he had met at the exit, was sharing in the general movement from the byways of the lobby to the middle entrance of the parquet. The electric bell in the vestibule had sounded the signal that the third act was to begin. Mr. Hinrichs had returned to the director's stand in the orchestra and was raising his baton.

Arrived at the middle entrance, Appleton raised his hat to those with whom he had been talking, as if not intending to go in just then.

Mr. Hinrichs's baton tapped upon the stand, the music began, and the curtain rose.

“Why doesn't he go in?” whispered Amy, alluding to Appleton.

But the young man yawned, looked at his watch, and departed from the lobby—not to the auditorium, but out to the vestibule.

“He's going to leave the theatre,” said Miss Winnett, excitedly. “We must follow.”

And she tripped hastily down the stairs, Haslam after her.

II

A Triangular Chase

Tom Appleton sauntered out through the great vestibule, turning his eyes casually from the marble floor up to the balconies that look down from aloft upon this outer lobby. He was whistling an air from “Apollo” which he had heard a few weeks before at the New York Casino.

He hastened his steps when he saw a 'bus passing down Broad Street. A leap down the Grand Opera House steps and a lively run enabled him to catch the 'bus before it reached Columbia Avenue. He clambered up to the top and was soon being well shaken as he enjoyed the breeze and the changing view of the handsome residences on North Broad Street.

Haslam's sharp eyes took note of Appleton's action.

“He's on that 'bus,” said the doctor to Amy as she took his arm on the sidewalk. “Shall we take the next one?”

“No; for then we can't see where he gets off. Can't we find a cab?”

“There's none in sight. We can have one called here, but we'll have to wait for it at least ten minutes.”

“That will never do. To think he could elude us so easily, without even knowing that we're after him!”

Vexation was stamped upon the dainty face, with its soft brown eyes, as she raised her veil.

“Ah! I have it,” said Haslam, who would have gone to great lengths to drive that vexation away.

“A bicycle! This section teems with bicycle shops. We can hire a tandem. It's a good thing we're both expert bicyclists.”

“And that I'm suitably dressed for this kind of a race,” replied Amy, as the two hurried down the block.

She stood outside the bicycle store and kept her gaze upon the 'bus, which was growing less and less distinct to the eye as it rolled down the street, while Haslam hastily engaged a two-seated machine.

The 'bus had not yet disappeared in the darkness when the pursuers, Amy upon the front seat, glided out from the sidewalk and down over the asphalt. The passage became rough below Columbia Avenue, where the asphalt gives away to Belgian block paving. Haslam's athletic training and the acquaintance of both with the bicycle served to minimize this disadvantage.

The frequent stoppages of the 'bus made it less difficult for them to keep in close sight of it. Conversation was not easy between them. Both kept silence, therefore, their eyes fixed upon the 'bus ahead, and carefully watching its every stop.

“You're sure he hasn't gotten off yet?” she asked, at Girard Avenue.

“Certain.”

“He's probably going to his rooms down-town.”

“Or to his club.”

So they pressed southward. Before them stretched the lone vista of electric lights away down Broad Street to the City Hall invisible in the night.

The difficulty of talking made thinking more involuntary. Haslam's mind turned back three years. Was it, as he had dared sometimes to fancy, a juvenile capriciousness that had impelled this girl in front of him to reject him when she was seventeen, after having manifested an unmistakable tenderness for him? And now that she was twenty, and had in the meantime rejected several others, and broken one engagement, was it too late to attempt to revive the old spark?

His meditations were suddenly interrupted by an exclamation from the girl herself.

“Look! He's left the 'bus. He's going into the Park Theatre.”

So he was. His slim person was easily distinguishable in the wealth of electric light that flooded the street upon which looked the broad doorways and the allegorical facades of the Park.

The second act of “La Belle Helene” was not yet over when Appleton entered and stood at the rear of the parquet circle. He indifferently watched the finale, made some mental comments upon the white flowing gown of Pauline Hall, the make-up of Fred Solomon, and the grotesqueness of the five Hellenic kings. Then he scanned the audience.

Haslam and Amy dismounted near the theatre and entrusted the bicycle to a small boy's care. When they had bought admission tickets and reached the lobby, the gay finale of the second act was being given. The curtain fell, was called up three times, and then people began to pour forth from the entrance to drink, smoke, or enjoy the air in the entr'acte.

Appleton was involved in the movement of those who resorted to the little garden with flowers and fountain and asphalt paving, accessible through the northern exits. He paused for a time by the fountain, not sufficiently curious to join the crowd that stood gaping at the apertures through which the members of the chorus could be seen ascending the stairs to the upper dressing-rooms, many of them carolling scraps of song from the opera as they went.

Appleton soon reËntered the lobby and again surveyed the audience closely. Haslam caught sight of him just in time to avoid him. Amy had resumed the concealment of her veil.

To the surprise of his watchers, Appleton left the theatre before the third act opened. Again he jumped upon a 'bus, but this time it was upon one moving northward.

“It looks as if he were going back to the Grand Opera House,” suggested Amy, as she and her companion started to repossess the bicycle.

“His movements are a trifle unaccountable,” said Haslam, thoughtfully.

“Ah! Now you admit he is acting queerly. Perhaps you'll see I was quite right.”

Again mounted upon the bicycle, the doctor and the young woman returned to the chase. They were soon brought to a second stop by Appleton's departure from the 'bus at Girard Avenue.

“Where can he be going to now?” queried Amy.

“He's going to take that east-bound Girard Avenue car.”

“So he is. What can he mean to do in that part of town?”

They turned down Girard Avenue. The car was half a block in advance of them.

“You're energetic enough in this pursuit,” Amy shouted back to the doctor as the machine fled over the stones, “even if you don't believe in it.”

“Energetic in your service, now and always.”

She made no answer.

This time her reflections were abruptly checked—as his had been on Broad Street—by the cry of the other.

“See! He's getting off at the Girard Avenue Theatre.”

Again they found a custodian for their bicycle and followed Appleton into a theatre.

The young man stopped at the box-office in the long vestibule, bought a ticket, and had a call made for a coupÉ. Then he passed through the luxurious little foyer, beautiful with flowers and soft colours, and stood behind the parquet circle railing.

Adelaide Randall's embodiment of “The Grand Duchess” held his attention for a time. Haslam and Miss Winnett, to avoid the risk of being discovered by him, sought the seclusion of the balcony stairs.

“We had a few bars of Offenbach at the Park, and here we have Offenbach again,” commented the doctor.

“And again, only a few bars, for there goes our man.”

Appleton, having given as much attention to the few spectators as to the players, left the theatre and got into the cab that had been ordered for him.

Haslam, behind the pillar at the entrance to the theatre, overheard Appleton's direction to the driver. It was:

“To the Grand Opera House. Hurry! The opera will soon be over.”

The cab rumbled away.

“It's well we heard his order,” observed Haslam to Amy. “We couldn't have hoped to keep up with a cab. He'll probably wait at the Grand Opera House till we get there.”

“But we mustn't lose any time, for, as he said, the performance will soon be over.”

“Oh, 'Tell' is a long opera and Guille will have an encore for the aria in the last act. That will give us a few minutes more.”

III

A Telegraphic Revelation

A boy walking down Girard Avenue, as Appleton got into the cab, had been whistling the tune of “They're After Me,”—a thing that was new to the variety stage last fall, but is dead this summer. The air, whistled by the boy, clung to Appleton's sense, and he unconsciously hummed it to himself as his cab went on its grinding way over the stones.

The cabman was considerate of his horse, and he coolly ignored Appleton's occasional shouts of, “Get along there, won't you?”

It was, therefore, not impossible for the bicyclists to keep in sight of the coupÉ.

“All this concern about a man you say you don't care for,” said Haslam to Amy, as the bicycle turned up Broad Street. “It's unprecedented.”

“It's only humanity.”

“You didn't bother about following me around like this when you threw me over.”

“You didn't threaten to kill yourself.”

“No; if I had, I'd have carried out my threat. But for months I endured a living death—or worse.”

“Really? Did you, though?”

Eager inquiry and sudden elation were expressed in this speech.

“Of course I did. Why do you ask in that way?”

“Oh—you took me by surprise. Why did you never tell me it affected you so? I thought—I thought—”

“What did you think?”

“That if you really cared for me you would have—tried again.”

“What? Then I was fatally ignorant! I thought that when you said a thing, you meant it.”

“I didn't know what I meant until it was too late.”

“But is it too late—ah! see, he's getting out of the cab at the Grand Opera House.”

They quickly switched the bicycle from the street to the sidewalk, and both dismounted.

They were checked at the entrance to the theatre by the appearance of Appleton. He was coming from within the building, and with him were two women, one elderly and unattractive, the other a plump young person with bright blue eyes in a saucy face that had more claim to piquant effrontery than to beauty. She was simply dressed and was all smiles to Appleton.

Amy and Haslam quickly turned their backs, thus avoiding recognition, and while they seemed to be looking through the glass front into the vestibule, they overheard the following conversation between the blue-eyed girl and Appleton.

“I'm glad you found us at last, Tom. Three acts of grand opera are about enough for me, thanks, and we'd have left sooner if your telegram that you'd be in town to-night hadn't made me expect to see you.”

“Well, I've been hunting for you in every open theatre in town where there's grand opera. In your answer to my telegram from the Catskills, you said merely you were going to the opera this evening. You didn't say what opera, but I supposed it was this one, so I bought a ticket as soon as I arrived in town at the down-town office. I got here after the first act, and spent all the second act looking around for you.”

“It's strange you didn't see us. We were in the middle of row K, right.”

“Well, I missed you, that's all, and I kept a watch on the lobby after the act, thinking you'd perhaps come out between the acts. Then I went to the Park Theatre, and then to the Girard Avenue.”

Amy and Haslam went into the vestibule. Amy was crimson with anger. Haslam quietly said:

“Do you wish to continue the pursuit?”

Before she found time to answer, another matter distracted her attention.

“Look! There's Mary, the housemaid, who was to stay up for me till I got home. She has come here for me.”

The servant stood by the door leading into the lobby, in a position enabling her to scan the faces of people coming out from the auditorium.

“Oh, Miss Amy, are you here? I was waiting for you to come out. Here's a telegram that came about a half-hour ago. I thought it might be important.”

Amy tore open the envelope.

“Why,” she said to Haslam, “this was sent to-day from Philadelphia to me at the Catskills, and my cousins have had it repeated back to me. And look—it's signed by you.”

“I surely didn't send it.”

But there was the name beyond doubt, “Henry Haslam, M.D.”

“This is a mystery to me, I assure you,” reiterated the doctor.

“But not to me,” cried Amy. “Read the message and you'll understand.”

He read these words:

“Mr. Appleton is very ill. His life depends upon his will-power. He tells me that you alone can say the word that will save him. Henry Haslam, M.D.”

Haslam smiled.

“A clever invention to make you think he tried to execute his threat. Now you know what he was doing while you were taking your handbag home. He probably concocted the scheme on his journey. But why did he sign my name, I wonder?”

She dropped her eyes and answered in a low tone:

“Because he knew that I would believe anything said by you.”

“Would you believe that I love you still more than I did three years ago?”

“Yes; if it came from your own lips—not by telegraph.”

She lifted her eyes now, and her lips, too; Mary the housemaid sensibly looked another way.

THE END.