Shoulder-Straps: A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862

by Henry Morford

  CHAPTER XIII.

  TEN MINUTES AT A COSTUMER'S--HOW TOM LESLIE GREW SUDDENLY OLD--JOEHARRIS' SPECULATION ON "THOSE EYES"--ANOTHER SURPRISE, AND WHATFOLLOWED.

  Mr. Tom Leslie's visit was _not_ to the Police headquarters in BroomeStreet, albeit he turned down that street from Broadway when he reachedit after leaving the two ladies at Taylor's. He took the other or upperside of the street, and stopped immediately opposite the Policebuilding, at a two-story brick house whereon appeared the name of "R.Williams" in gilt letters, and a little lower, "Ball Costumer," and inthe two first floor windows of which, over a basement set apart for theuse of persons in need of bad servants and servants in search of worseplaces--appeared such a collection of distorted human faces that ageneral execution by the guillotine seemed to have been going on, withall the heads hung up against the glass to dry. The ghastly faces were,in fact, those of papier-mache masks, waiting for customers desirous ofa certain amount of personal disfigurement, whether on the stage or inthe masked ball; and behind one row of them could be seen the glitter ofan imitation coat of mail which looked very much like the real articleat a distance, but would have been of about as much use to keep outsword-point or lance-head in the tourneys of the olden time, as so muchcobweb or blotting paper.

  Within the inner door of the costumer's, which Leslie entered hurriedly,might have been gathered the spoils of all ages and all kingdoms, takingtinsel for gold and stuff for brocade. The robes and mantles of queenshung suspended from the walls, blended here and there with suits ofbeaded and fringed Indian leather, odd coats and trousers forexaggerated Jonathans, and diamonded garments of motley for clowns.Around on the floor, on two sides of the apartment, lay heaps ofgarments of all incongruous descriptions, from the court dress of KingCharles' time to the tow and homespun of the Southern darkey, as if justtumbled over for examination. A few stage swords and spears and two orthree suits of armor of suspicious likeness to block-tin, occupied oneof the back corners; while suspended from pegs and arranged upon shelveswere false beards, wigs and eyebrows, preposterous noses, Indianhead-dresses of feathers, hats of Italian bandits wreathed with greasyribbons, and crowns and coronets of all apparent values, from thatflashing with light which Isabella might have worn when all the gold andgems of Columbus' new world lay at her disposal, to the thin band ofgold with one gem in the centre of the front, which some virgin princessmight modestly have blushed under on her wedding day. Through thehalf-open door leading to the adjoining apartment in the rear, stillother treasures of costume run mad were discoverable; until the thoughtwas likely to strike the observer that "R. Williams, Costumer," had beenthe happy recipient of all the cast-off clothes, hirsute as well assartorial, dropped by half a dozen generations ranging from king toclod-hopper.

  A short, dark-whiskered, sallow man came forward as Leslie entered,addressing him by name, with an inquiry after his wishes.

  "I want a disguise," said Leslie--"particularly a disguise of the face,and one that can deceive the sharpest of eyes."

  The costumer looked at his face for a moment. "I can make you up," hesaid, "so that your best friend--or what is of more difficulty, thewoman who loved you best or hated you worst--wouldn't know you."

  "That is it," said Leslie. "Now be quick, like a good fellow, for I haveonly five minutes."

  "You will not need to change your pants, I think," said the costumer."Throw off your coat--here is one that will button close and hide yourvest, and I think you will find it about your size. Yours is agray--this is a dark brown and rather a genteel garment, and will suitthe gray pants."

  Leslie threw off his coat and put on the brown substitute, which fittedhim very respectably.

  "That is enough in the way of clothes, I should think," remarked thecostumer, "unless you should be dodging a _very_ sharp woman, or one ofKennedy's men."

  "It _is_ a sharp woman I am trying to dodge," said Leslie, with a laugh,"but I think she will know very little about my clothes. The face--theface is the thing! Make me up so that you don't know me--so that I won'tknow myself--so that my wife, if I had one, would scream for a policemanif I attempted to kiss her."

  "Yes, the face--that is what we are coming to," replied the costumer."You have a moustache already. That we cannot very well cut off, Isuppose."

  "Not if I know it!" graphically but somewhat inelegantly said Tom, whohad one of his many prides hidden away somewhere in the flowing sweep ofthat ornament to the upper lip.

  "Then we must gray it!" said the costumer. "No objection to looking alittle older?"

  "Make me as old as Dr. Parr or old Galen's head, if you like," was theanswer. "Only be quick, for the sauciest and best-looking girl in NewYork is waiting for me."

  "To run away and be married? eh?" asked the costumer, as he went to ashelf and took down a cup of some preparation very like paint, and withit a brush. "None of my business, though! Hold still, and never mind thesmell. It will be dry in two minutes, and water will not touch it, butyou can clean it out at once with turpentine." He applied the mixture toLeslie's moustache, the member over it being drawn up considerably attimes as if the bouquet of one of Hackley's summer gutters was rising;but in less than two minutes, as the costumer had said, the smellceased, the mixture was dry, and Tom Leslie had a moustachegrayish-white enough to have belonged to Sulpizio.

  "Beautiful!" said the costumer, handing the subject a small mirror fromthe wall. "The hair and beard directly. Now for a complexion old enoughto suit such a facial ornament." In a moment, he had a small cup ofbrown paint, with a camel's-hair brush, and was operating on Leslie'sforehead and cheeks, artistically throwing in a few wrinkles on theformer and neatly executed crows-feet under the eyes, in water-colorsthat dried as soon as applied. Leslie, by the aid of a glass, sawhimself getting old, a little more plainly than most of us recognizethe ravages made on our faces by time.

  "By George!" he said. "Stop!--hold on!--don't make those crows-feet anyplainer, or I shall begin to get weak in the back and shaky in theknees, and you will need to supply me with a cane."

  "They will come off easier than the next ones painted there, probably!"commented the philosophical costumer, as he finished painting up hishuman sign. "And now for the finishing stroke!" He stepped to a drawer,took out a gray full-bottom beard, fitted it neatly to the chin, claspedthe springs back of the ears, added to it a gray wig, made easy-fittingby the short hair on the head, and once more handed Leslie the glass.

  The young man looked. The last vestige of youth had departed, and heappeared as he might have expected to do thirty years later when he hadtouched sixty and gone on downward.

  "Capital!" he said--"capital! If any man, or woman, knows me behind thisdisguise, there is some reason beyond nature for their doing so.There--throw me a hat--anything unlike my own--for I have alreadyremained too long. I will see you again some time this evening." Handingthe costumer a bill, with the air of one who had taken suchaccommodations before and knew what they cost, Leslie put on arespectable looking speckled Leghorn hat brought from the back room,took one more glance at his metamorphosis in the glass, and passedhurriedly out into the street and down Broadway towards Taylor's.

  To return to that place for a few moments, after Tom Leslie had left itand before he was again heard from.

  Josephine Harris sat for perhaps five minutes after the chocolate wasbrought, toying with the spoon and the cup, a little consciously red inface, and saying never a word--an amount of reticence quite as unusualfor her, as ice in summer. Bell Crawford made two or three remarks, andshe answered them with "Ah!" and "Humph!" till the other pouted a littlesullenly and said no more.

  At length the wayward girl shoved aside her cup, stopped nibbling abon-bon, planted one elbow on the table, leaned her chin on her hand,and looked her companion full in the face with a comic earnestness thatwas very laughable.

  "Bell," she said, "I am gone!"

  "Gone?" asked the other. "What do you mean?"

  "Sent for--done up--wilted--caved in--and any other descriptive
wordsthat may happen to be in the language!" was the reply.

  "What ails you? Are you crazy?" was the not unnatural inquiry of Bell.

  "Crazy? No!" answered the wild girl. "I wonder if I ever shall be!" andfor the instant her eyes were very sad, as if some painful thought hadbeen touched. But the instant after sunshine broke into them again, asshe said, making a motion of her hand towards the door:--

  "That's _he_!"

  Bell Crawford looked, but did not see any one, and the fact rather addedto her impression that Miss Josey had suddenly taken leave of hersenses. "Who's _he_? I don't see him!" she replied.

  "Pshaw! how stupid you are!" said Josey, pettishly. "See here. Let metell you something. Do you remember one day, five or six weeks ago, whenI came into your house a little in a hurry, with a bunch of violets forDick?"

  "Yes," said Bell, "I remember it, by the fact that you nearly pulled offthe bell-handle because the door was not opened quick enough."

  "Right," said Joe, as if she had been complimented by the observation."That's me. If Betty doesn't answer the bell a little quicker, some ofthese times, you will find that piece of silver-plating at a junk-shop,sold for old iron. Well, do you happen to remember what I told you andDick on that occasion?"

  "Oh, good gracious, no!" exclaimed Bell provokingly. "Surely you can'texpect me to keep any account of what _you_ say in the course of amonth. Stop, though--I _do_ remember something. You said, I believe,that coming up Madison Avenue you found the bunch of violets carrying asmall boy--or the other way; and that at the same time you found ahat--wasn't it a hat?"

  "Bah!" said Joe. "You have kept hold of the wrong end of the story, ofcourse. I said that just as I met the small boy with the violets andtheir perfume began to set me crazy and make me think of being out inthe country among the laughing brooks and the singing birds andthe--yes, the cows and the chickens--that just then some one else metthe small boy and the violets. That was the proprietor of the eyes, andif it had not been for that outrageous hat I should have had a full viewof them. As it was, they nearly spoiled my peace of mind altogether, andI have been sighing ever since--Heigho!--haven't you heard me sighingall around in odd corners?"

  "What a goose!" was the complimentary reply of Bell. "If you _have_sighed, the sound was very much like that of loud talking and laughter.But what has all that to do with to-day, and why were you pointingtowards the door?"

  "Why, you ninny," cried Joe, in response to the "goose" compliment justpassed--"that man who has just left us--that man who is coming back in amoment--is the owner of the eyes; and those eyes are my destiny!"

  "Pshaw!" said Bell, "I did not see anything remarkable about the eyes,or the man."

  "Didn't you, now!" said Josephine, with the least bit in the world ofpique in her voice. "Well, that is the fault of _your_ eyes, and not of_his_. I tell you those eyes are my destiny--I feel it and know it. Ihave not seen a pair before in a long while, that looked as if theycould laugh and make love at the same time, and still have a littlelightning in reserve for somebody they hated. Mr. Tom Leslie--well, itis a rather pretty name, and I think I must take him."

  "For shame, Joe!" said Miss Bell, her propriety really shocked at theidea of a young girl declaring herself, even in jest, in love with a manwho had said nothing to justify the preference.

  "Yes, I suppose it is all wrong!" said Joe, between a sigh and a laugh."You know I have been doing wrong things all my life, and anything elsewould not be natural. Do you remember, Bell," and her dark eyes had anexpression of demure fun in them that was irresistibly droll--"do youremember how I left all my trunks unlocked and my room door open, at thePhiladelphia hotel when we were stopping there one winter on our wayfrom Washington,--and how I left my purse on the bureau in my room andgrabbed a gentleman by the arm in the street, accusing him of picking mypocket?"

  "I _do_ remember," said Bell, a little with the air of a very properMentor who was not in the habit of making corresponding blunders. "And Ishould think, Joe, that now that you are a little older you would be alittle more careful!"

  "Yes, I daresay you do," answered Miss Josey, "but you know that I ammyself and nobody else. I should stagnate and die in a week, if I waseither one of those 'wealthy curled darlings' kept in exact position bythe possession of too many thousands, or so hemmed by more confinedworldly circumstances that I dared not take one step without stopping toconsider the consequences. Hang propriety!--I _hate_ propriety! Now youhave it, and you may eat it with that last wafer!"

  "How you do run on!" merely remarked Bell, who probably enjoyed the wildgirl's conversation quite as much as she was capable of enjoyinganything.

  "Yes," said Joe, "and I should like to know any reason for stopping, atleast before our impressed beau comes back. Has he gone off to makearrangements with the fortune-teller, I wonder, so as to play a trickupon us when we get there?"

  "Eh," said Bell, a little startled, "could such a trick be possible!"

  "Very possible, my dear!" said Joe. "I'll warrant such things have beendone, and my gentleman looks just mischievous enough. But no--he wouldnot _dare_ do such a thing, for he could see with half an eye that if hedid I should one day pay him for it!"

  "If you ever had a chance!" remarked Bell with some approach to a sneer.

  "Oh," said Joe. "Trust me for that! Didn't I just tell you that I hadhalf made up my mind to take him? and if I should, you know, I shouldhave plenty of time to bring him into the proper subjection."

  "How do you know but he may be married?" asked Bell, who had a littlemore forethought than Miss Joe in certain directions.

  "Humph!" said Joe, "that _would_ be awkward, especially as I am notquite ready, yet, for an elopement and the subsequent flatteringparagraphs in the papers, about 'the beautiful and accomplished MissJ.H.' having left for Europe on the last steamer from Boston, in companywith 'the popular journalist but sad Lothario, Mr. T.L., who has left aninteresting wife and two children to deplore the departure of thehusband and father from the paths of rectitude.'"

  "Well, you _are_ incorrigible!" laughed Miss Crawford, fairly carriedaway by the irresistible current of the wild girl's humor. "How can youtalk so flippantly of things so deplorable?"

  "I scarcely know, myself!" was the answer. "But there is really a dashof romance about such things, which almost makes them endurable. PoorMrs. Brannan made a mess of it, to be sure, coming out at last with aruined character and the widow of a man several ranks lower in the armythan the husband from whom she had run away; but was there not somethingchivalrous in Wyman coming back at once at the breaking out of the war,and sending an offer to the man he had injured, to afford him anysatisfaction he might think proper to demand?"

  "And was there not something sublimely cutting," asked Bell, "in thereply of General Brannan that he demanded no satisfaction whatever, asColonel Wyman had only relieved him of a woman unworthy of his love orconfidence?"

  "Yes, that _was_ a little lowering to the dignity of the woman, if shehad any left," said Joe. "But the Kearney elopement--was not _that_romantic without any drawback? There was something of the wicked oldPaladin, that rattle-heads like myself cannot help admiring, in theone-armed man whose other limb slept in an honored grave in Mexico,invading the charmed circle of New York moneyed-respectability,carrying off the daughter of one of its first lawyers and anex-Collector--then submitting to a divorce, marrying the woman who hadtrusted all to his honor, and plunging into the fights of Magenta andSolferino with the same spirit which had led him into the thick of theconflicts at Chapultepec and the Garita de Belen. Poor Wyman has alreadyexpiated his errors with his life, but I do hope that Kearney may carryhis remaining arm through this miserable war and live to be so honoredthat even his one great fault may be forgotten!"

  The young girl's eyes flashed, her cheeks were flushed, and any one wholooked upon her at that moment would have believed her almost braveenough for an Amazon and more than a little warped in her perceptions ofwhat constituted the right and the wrong of domestic relations. How
little, meanwhile, they would have known her! Ninety-nine out of onehundred of the women unwilling to confess that they had ever read a pageof the Wyman or the Kearney scandal, and saying "hush!" and "tut! tut!"to any one who pretended to make the least defence of either--would havebeen found infinitely more approachable for any purpose of actual wrongor vice, than rattling, out-spoken and irrepressible Joe Harris!

  Wyman was dead, as she had said--having expiated, with his life, so muchas could be expiated of all past wrong, and having partially hidden thememory of his crime by his brave offer of satisfaction to the wrongedhusband and his unflinching conduct before the enemies of his country inbattle. But how little she thought, at the moment of speaking, that thebullet was already billeted for the breast of Kearney, and that he wasto fall, but a few weeks after, a sacrifice to his own rashness and theincapacity of others! Does war indeed have a mission beyond the nationalgood or evil for which it is instituted? And are its missiles of deathand the diseases to which its exposures give rise, especiallycommissioned to repay past crimes and by-gone errors? Not so,inevitably!--or many a worthless incapable and many a dishonest traderin his country's blood and treasure would before this have bitten thedust,--and Baker, Lyon, Lander, Winthrop and fifty other prominentmartyrs to the cause of the Union would yet have been alive and battlingfor the right!

  Suddenly, the conversation between Josephine Harris and Bell Crawfordcame to a conclusion, and the former sprung to her feet with afrightened and angry "ough!" while the latter leaned back in her chairin a state of stupefied vexation not easy to describe. The cause of thisexcitement may be briefly given. Both at the same instant discovered aface thrust down to the level of their own and immediately between them,with a familiarity most inexcusable in a stranger. Yet the face wascertainly that of an entire stranger--a respectably dressed elderly man,with full gray hair and beard, and holding a speckled Leghorn hat in hishand.

  "Ough! get out! who are you and what do you want here?" broke out theexcited girl, with a propensity, meanwhile, to repay this secondimpudence of the day by such a sound boxing of the ears as would makethe event one to be remembered; while Miss Crawford took a rather morepractical view of the matter, with the single word "Impertinence" and asupplementary call of "Waiter!"

  "Ladies! ladies! what is the matter?" asked the elderly intruder, as hesaw the movements of the two girls, and the waiter hurrying up with histowel over his arm, in obedience to the call.

  "Anything wanted, Miss?" asked the waiter.

  "Yes," said Miss Bell Crawford. "Take that man away from this table. Hemust be either a wretch or a madman, to intrude in this way where he isnot known or wanted."

  "Yes," echoed Joe, remembering the scene in the street, only an hour ortwo before--"take him away, and if you can find any one to do it, havehim caned soundly."

  "Come, sir, you must go to another table--these ladies are strangers andcomplain of you," said the waiter, taking the strange man by the arm,and disposed to relieve two ladies from impertinence, though not, assuggested, to lose a customer for the house.

  "Why, ladies, this treatment is really very strange!" said the mancomplained of, all gravity and surprise. "Just as if I was really astranger---just as if--"

  But here he was broken in upon by Joe Harris absolutely screaming withlaughter and dropping into her chair as abruptly as she had quitted itthe moment before.

  "Well?" queried Bell; and "Well?" though he did not give the querywords, looked the puzzled waiter.

  "Oh! oh! oh! that is too good!" broke out the laughing girl. "Oh! oh!oh! why don't you recognize him, Bell? That is Mr. Leslie!"

  Whether Miss Joe had recognized him by the voice, the second time hespoke, or whether something in the undisguiseable eyes (were her own thekeen eyes of love, already awakened, that saw more clearly than otherscould do?) had betrayed him--certain it was that the masquerade wasover, so far as she was concerned, and our friend Tom Leslie stood fullydiscovered. The waiter saw that his interference was no longer needed,and moved away at once; and Bell Crawford, at length fully aware of thetrick, joined less noisily in the laugh which convulsed her friend.

  "And what does the masquerade mean?" finally asked the soberer of thetwo girls, as they were leaving the saloon,--while the other, who wishedto know much worse, was considerably more ashamed to ask.

  "Humph!" answered Tom Leslie. "You have a right to ask, ladies, but ifyou will excuse me I should prefer not to answer until the visit ispaid. You will remember that I told you I had a reason something likeyour own for leaving the carriage; and if for the present you willaccept the explanation that I wish to test the accuracy of thefortune-teller without her being at all indebted to any observation ofmy face or any possible previous recollection of me, I shall be yourdebtor to the extent of a full explanation afterwards, should you thinkproper to demand it."

  It is not impossible that Joe Harris, who had just been congratulatingherself upon a promenade with a man not only good-looking butcomparatively _young_, may have had her personal objections to the eventemporary substitution of sixty-five or seventy; but if so, her red liponly pouted a little, and she said nothing more on the subject as thethree took their way up Broadway and down Prince Street to the placewhere all the secrets of the past, present and future were to berevealed.