by Unknown
IV.
Miss MAY GREGORY, the heiress into whose possession the shoes passed, was a lovely creature on a somewhat large scale, and having only lately left school, she was desperately anxious to be married. So anxious was she, that matrimony was the first consideration, and the man only the second. She had two lovers, whom she called Jack and Tom, and she was so fond of both that she would have married either. Her papa, who knew her pretty well, said she was a sentimental goose, and he was so feared by both Jack and Tom, that when they heard his voice in the stilly night asking who that was playing the guitar beneath his daughter’s window, they leaped the orchard wall and ran.
“You can’t marry both,” Mr. Gregory explained to Miss May; “and as they would only make a man between them, it is obvious that you marry neither. No tears, please, and let me hear less nonsense about love; whoever heard of a girl’s loving two men at once?”
Miss May thought her papa very unfeeling, and pointed out that, of course she only loved one of them. Her tragedy was that she could not decide which one.
My own idea is that they were so very much alike that a lady could not be indifferent to the one and love the other. But I am a bachelor, and often wonder how young ladies can choose a young man out of so many young men of the same pattern and hold him higher than the rest. Financially Jack and Tom were easily distinguished, however. Jack had ready money but no prospects; Tom had prospects (he said) but no ready money. You may be sure that Miss May considered this no difference at all. She had sufficient money and prospects for both herself and her husband, whichever one he should prove to be.
Though it was in London that Miss May bought the shoes, it was in a provincial town that she first tried to get into them, the town where she and her severe papa lived. She was going to the theatre that night, and to Gretna Green afterward, if the fates proved friendly. It was her father who was to take her to the theatre, and Jack who was to take her to Gretna Green. The arrangements had been made cleverly, as you will see.
For nearly half an hour did the carriage wait at the door before Miss May was ready to step into it. When she at last joined her father, who was fuming, for he detested being late for the play, her face was red. I wish I could say that this was because she was blushing or had been crying over the impropriety of the contemplated runaway marriage. But it was not. Miss May was merely red in the face because her fight with the shoes had been protracted.
She had gained a momentary triumph, however, for, in her own words, she had “got into them.” True they pinched and made her stumble in her walk, but she had only to walk a few yards to the carriage and another few yards from the playhouse door to a box.
I have forgotten what the play was; it was, probably, one of the dull comedies that are now esteemed and edited because they are old. Many people were crowding into the house, and in the vestibule stood Jack, who made a sign to his lady that all was well. Then he disappeared without being seen by the father he was hoodwinking. Tom was less fortunate. That is to say, the father did see him. He was also more fortunate, however, for he had a few moments’ talk with Miss May. That lady ought not, perhaps, to have let Tom know that she was coming to the play tonight. She was really Jack’s now, or about to be, if the plot did not miscarry. But was it not natural that she should feel sorry for Tom? That day she had sent him back his letters (he used to slip them into her hands, and she kept them in a box beside Jack’s letters), with an intimation that all was now over between them. She had also added that she was going to the play that night, and I suppose her reason for this injudicious act was that she looked forward to a delightfully sad parting with him. But Miss May had not quite understood Tom. In the crush at the theatre she held out her hand (the one further from her papa) that Tom might squeeze it surreptitiously. Thus did she hope to break the blow. But frantic Tom would have none of her hand. He stalked after her into the box, and in the presence of her father demanded an explanation. Miss May, who was already beginning to wish that she had never seen those lovely little bronze shoes — they were hurting her so much — wept at Tom’s grief and admired him for his vehemence. As for the father, he was first amazed, secondly delighted, and thirdly afraid. It was pleasant to him to hear that his daughter was determined to be done with the youth, but disquieting to observe that the whole house was listening to Tom’s declamation. Tom promising to lower his voice, papa consented to leave the box for five minutes that the farewells might take place in privacy.
In that five minutes the second last act of a tragedy was played in the back of the box. Tom announced that his prospects were now death by his own pistol. Miss May, in terror, put her hands on his shoulders; and then, remembering Jack, withdrew them. She had promised Jack not to say a word of the conspiracy to Tom, but now it all came out. At half-past nine a written note was to be handed in to Miss May, purporting to come from an aunt of hers who was in a box beneath. The note was to ask her and her papa to join the aunt. Papa loathed the aunt, and was therefore certain to refuse; but he would let Miss May go. In the lobby she was to be joined by Jack, whisked into a carriage that was already waiting near the theatre door, and borne off in the direction of Gretna Green. There was quite a chance of the runaways being twenty miles off before the chase began.
“So farewell, Tom, dear Tom,” said Miss May. But dear Tom, forgetting his promise to papa, began to stamp, calling her the most horrid names, and thus delighting her.
“You know how I could love you,” she said, picking her tenses carefully. “But am I to blame if you are so poor?”
“You could wait for me. My prospects—”
“I can’t wait, Tom; good-by. Kiss me, Tom, for the last time.”
“I won’t. You are a heartless coquette. May, if that carriage had been mine, would you have come with me?”
“I — I don’t know.”
Men should not distress women with such difficult questions.
“Kiss me, Tom, for the last time.”
“I won’t.”
Then, like a sensible man, Tom changed his mind, and kissed her passionately.
“It is not for the last time,” he said, fiercely. “May, you love me, and me alone, and Jack shall not have you; he shall not. I have an idea; quick, tell me how I shall know Jack’s carriage?”
Miss May, wondering, had just began to answer him, when papa reappeared. Tom departed, but not with the look of a hopeless man on his face. As for the young lady, having treated dear Tom so kindly, she naturally began to think lovingly of dear Jack.
V.
THE ruse with the letter succeeded. Miss May was trembling a little when she left the box. Had her papa flung her a kind word just then she might have postponed the elopement; but he asked her grumpily why she was looking at him so sentimentally, and, of course, after that she hesitated no longer. He little thought as the door closed on her that the next time they met she would be a married woman.
Miss May always maintained afterward that from the moment when she left her father’s box until she realized that she was in a carriage beside Jack, all was a blank to her. The theatre attendant, however, who saw the carriage drive off, and described the scene subsequently to the infuriated father, declared that she was less agitated than her lover.
“I suppose Jack carried me down that dark street to the carriage,” was Miss May’s surmise.
“The gentleman was a little excited-like, but the lady she were wonderful cool,” was the attendant’s declaration. His story ended thus:
“They had started, when the lady she gave a scream, and the carriage stopped, and the gentleman he jumped out and looked for something in the street. He got it, too, and then he jumps in beside her again, and off they go at a spanking rate. I don’t know what it was; something she had dropped, most likely.” —
To his dying day this man was denied the small pleasure of knowing what Jack jumped out of the carriage to pick up. It was one of the shoes. Miss May’s feet had been protesting so vigorously in the theatre against fur
ther confinement in their narrow prison house that with one foot she had pressed the shoe half off the other. In the street the shoe fell off and Jack had to find it, for although in Scotland one may marry in a hurry, one’s feet must be properly shod. So Miss May thought then, but she was presently to discover that a pair of shoes are a convenient possession rather than indispensable.
Through the greater part of the night the carriage rolled northward, but at last an inn (now, I believe, a private house) was reached, where they had to wait three hours for fresh horses. Miss May had a bedroom, but did not sleep a wink (she said), while the nervous Jack paced up and down in front of the inn, listening for horses in pursuit, and thinking he heard them every five minutes.
If a man can be too gentlemanly, that man seems to have been Jack throughout this escapade. Until he could claim her as his wife, he would not take even what she called formal liberties. He sat on the seat opposite her. He paid her no compliments; he addressed her as Miss Gregory, which had not been his custom. Of course, she admired this delicacy, but still —
The journey was resumed with early light, and now, as they stepped once more into their carriage, both of the runaways looked hard at one of the postilions.
“Surely, you are not the man I engaged yesterday?” Jack said to him.
“No, my lord,” answered the fellow, composedly; “he were took ill, and offered me his place. No offence intended, my lord. I have been on this here kind of job before.”
“You have been to Gretna Green before? “Rayther.”
“You will do as well as another. Drive on.”
Miss May said nothing to the man, but she thought a good deal about him. Despite his dark hair and sallow complexion, despite his boorish manners, she thought him very like Tom. It was Tom in disguise. He had bribed the real postilion, and here he was on his way to Scotland with the woman he wanted to marry, but by no means certain how he was to get her.
Within twenty miles of the border there is a hillock which commands an extensive view. It is close to the old high road, and many a man bound for Gretna Green has run up it to see whether his pursuers were in sight. Jack was one of the number. He was not gone many minutes, but in the meantime Tom had found an opportunity of revealing himself to the lady.
“May,” he said, appearing so suddenly by her side that she screamed, “don’t you know me? I am Tom. May, dearest, you said you would marry me if I could take you to Scotland. I am doing it.”
“Oh, Tom!” wailed Miss May, all in a tremble (as she said afterwards), “I never made any such promise. I am to marry Jack.”
“Never!” cried Tom. “May, darling May—”
“Tom, Tom!” said Miss May, reproachfully, “why did you come to disturb my peace of mind, when everything was going on so nicely?”
“Love of my life!” began Tom, then kissed her hand and resumed his seat beside the other postilion. He had seen Jack running back.
“We are pursued,” Jack said, as he drew near, panting, “by two men on horseback, and one of them, I am convinced, is your father.”
The carriage rolled on more quickly now than ever, and for the next half-hour Miss May thought little of which of her lovers she should marry. Her new fear was that she would not be able to marry at all. Jack was as polite as ever. Certainly Tom had been less delicate. He had called her his darling, he had kissed her hand. He should not have taken these liberties, but still —
In vain were the jaded horses of the runaways whipped up. The pursuers gained on the carriage until, when the latter was within half a mile of the border, they were not four hundred yards behind.
“There is only one chance for us, May,” said poor Jack, forgetting in his excitement that she was not May, but Miss Gregory; “we must leave the carriage at the next turn of the road which hides us from view.”
“And be overtaken in a moment!” cried Miss May, aghast.
“I hope not,” said Jack. “Listen, dear, to what I propose. At the next turn I will stop the carriage, and you will at once jump out with me. I will tell our fellows to drive on as fast as they can, and you and I will conceal ourselves until your father and his companion have galloped past. They will pursue the carriage. In the meantime you and I will cross these fields to the village, whose lights I see plainly, and there the blacksmith will marry us.”
“They will overtake the carriage in a few minutes,” the lady said, “and finding it empty, hurry on to Gretna Green. Why, we shall find them waiting for us there.” ——
“We shall not,” answered Jack, triumphantly, with his head out at the window. “I see two roads before us, of which the one evidently leads to Gretna Green, and the other to the right. I will tell our fellows to take the latter; that will give us a good start.”
Jack stopped the carriage and assisted his lady out, at the same time shouting directions to the two men. “Stop!” he cried to them, as they were driving off. “One of you come with me; we may need a witness.” Tom jumped down. The carriage drove on. The two men and the woman hid. The horsemen, of whom Mr. Gregory was purple with passion, raced by them.
“And now for Gretna Green on foot!” said Jack, giving Miss May his arm.
They hurried on, but — the shoe! Miss May had this time no maid to help her, and the shoe was but half on. She was sliding her foot along the ground, rather than lifting it. By and by, when they were not a hundred yards from the old toll-house, which is just on the other side of the border, Miss May sank to the ground, crying, “I can go no further; I have lost one of my shoes!”
There was no time to look for the shoe in the twilight.
“Assist her to that cottage,” said Jack to the supposed postilion, pointing to the toll-house, “and I will hasten on to the village and bring the blacksmith back with me. Ask them to hide her, if need be. You will be well paid.”
So saying, Jack ran on, while Tom obeyed his injunctions to the letter. With Miss May’s assistance he explained the position to the toll-keeper, who grinned when he heard that the bridegroom was running to Gretna Green for the blacksmith.
“You English,” he said, “think that there is but one man in broad Scotland who can make a couple one in a hurry, and you call him the blacksmith, though he is no blacksmith at all. If your lover, honey, had stopped here, I should have had you spliced by this time.”
“Is that true?” cried Tom, while Miss May stared.
“I have married scores in my time,” the old man answered. “Why, I married half-a-dozen this week.”
“But is it legal?” asked May.
The toll-keeper smiled.
“Try it, honey,” he suggested.
Then it was Tom’s turn to speak.
“May,” he said, in a tone of conviction, “this is providential. Old gentleman, marry us as quickly as you can. Get your family as witnesses, if witnesses are necessary.”
The toll-keeper looked at the lady.
“No, no,” she said, “I promised Jack. Oh, Tom, how I wish there had been only one of you!”
For half an hour did Miss May refuse to listen to what Tom called reason. Then she started up, for she was sure she heard the gallop of horses.
“Tom!” she cried.
So she and Tom were married. Jack and Mr. Gregory arrived at the toll-house five minutes afterward, but it was all over by that time.
VI.
THUS my friend ended his story, adding that his grandfather had come out of the affair victorious.
“So that your grandfather was Tom?” I said.
“If,” he replied, coolly, “you think Tom was the victor.”
“Well, he got her.”
“And Jack did not. But perhaps Jack was the luckier man of the two.”
“Then was Jack your grandfather?”
“I won’t say. I leave it to you to decide which was victorious, the one who got her or the one who lost her.”
“It must have been Tom. You told me that your grandfather’s marriage was entirely arranged by a shoe.”
“At least,” I said, “Tell me which, of the two shoes this is.”
“That would be telling all,” he replied, “for Tom retained possession of the shoe in which Miss May was married, and Jack found the other one next morning. To tell you which shoe this is would be to tell you which man was my grandfather. Can’t you guess? I have told you he was the one who had reason to be thankful that the lady became Mrs. Tom. Now, which one was that?”
Header, which do you think?
WAS IT A WATCH?
EVEN before my trouble with it, Farquhar’s was no ordinary watch. Cumming expressed the general opinion when he said it was a watch that would make any man thoughtful. Without going into its history, I may say that Farquhar got it originally from a deputation of another man’s admirers, who presented it to him by mistake. From the first it seems to have required a good deal of study.
Although he had a pride in it that would have been beautiful had the object been more worthy, Farquhar was not given to ostentatious boasting about his watch. Until it became the subject of common talk, he never knew, I am convinced, that it was different from other people’s watches. He had owned it for some time before I became cognizant of its remarkable properties. One day Farquhar and I took such a long walk that we had to remain in a village all night. We had a double-bedded room. Some time after midnight I was awakened by strange noises, and thought at first that Farquhar was groaning in his sleep. I shouted out to him to sleep like a Christian or leave the room. He made no answer, but the noise stopped, and I fell over again. In a short time I was again wide awake. There was no noise, but I was sure that something in the room had wakened me. Instead of addressing Farquhar once more I lay very still, and by and by the noises were resumed. They resembled the distant creaking of chains, and came in jerks with intervals of half a minute between them. The room was in the blackness of night, but I still felt sure that Farquhar was the offender, and from the noise I thought I could calculate the place where he was lying. I reached my arm down to the floor and at last my groping fingers touched a slipper. This I flung, as I believed, at Farquhar as hard as I could. Then I listened. The slipper hit some hard object and fell on the floor, but Farquhar did not waken. The noise had ceased. As I lay listening I gradually became aware of another sound from the opposite side of the room. Undoubtedly it was Farquhar breathing heavily. This made me sit up. Evidently Farquhar’s bed was not where I thought. As a consequence Farquhar was not responsible for these maddening sounds; No cat could have made them. While I sat pondering the creaking began again. I became nervous, but jumped out of bed and made my way to Farquhar’s head. I shook him awake, and then told him to listen. He listened. The noise stopped, began again, stopped, began again. “I don’t hear anything,” said Farquhar, but he spoke sulkily, and I had to think that either I was a fool or he was shamming. I preferred to disbelieve Farquhar. However, he insisted that he heard nothing, and as neither of us had any matches, I had to grope my way back to bed. I thought I might stifle the noise by burying my head in the blankets, but I was too wide awake for that. Every few minutes I uncovered my head to listen, and soon again I heard the creak, creak. Farquhar was either asleep again, or pretended to be so, for I spoke to him in vain. At last I got up, put one foot into the remaining slipper, and, with the other foot bare, began to search for the culprit. The room was mostly carpeted with waxcloth, but my wrath kept me warm. I felt my way to the spot from which the noise seemed to proceed, and soon I was passing my fingers over a chest of drawers. It was a fearsome hunt, but I was not in the mood to be alarmed. Putting my ear to the drawers I listened, and in this way I came in time to the conclusion that the noise proceeded from a top drawer. I pulled it out and heard a very loud creak, creak. For a moment I hesitated about putting in my hand, but courage came to me. The drawer was empty except for one object. I took a firm grip of it. It was a watch. It must be Farquhar’s watch. Soon I was at Farquhar’s bed, shaking him again, and now he confessed. “I put it into the drawer to deaden the sound,” he said, “because I thought it might disturb you. I never hear it myself, but other men have been disturbed by it in the night.”