JIM CARLYON.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4407, 13 July 1901, Page 2 (Supplement)

JIM CARLYON.

(By Ella Hepworth Dixon.)

There are winter evenings in New York when it is not good to be out of doors, nights when tno icy wind cuts the face like a razor, tears at your chest, and chills you t c , the bone. On such winter evenings all who can do sq make haste to reach their own homes, where, closing the outer storm-door, which gives sheer on the street, they find themselves in a warm, steam-heated house which gives no hint of the Arctic cold outside.

Young Carlyon stepped out of th e office of the “New York Eagle”—the tallest building in New York—and pulled up his shabby fur collar with a shiver. A* handsome young man enough, ivith square shoulders and a curiously humorous expression, who wore his clothes like an Englishman, with the air of one who belongs, as Mr Kipling -would say, to the Ruling Race. Nevertheless, on this particular evening, young James Carlyon did not feel specially uplifted or conscious of any Imperial obligations. He was tired, disspirited, and empty of pocket. His post on the “New York Eagle,” that of society reporter (for he was supposed to be, and indeoed was, to a certain extent, in touch with the famous Four Hundred) bored and disgusted him. Yet it was by means of these scribblings that he paid his board at an up-town boarding-house, contrived to make an occasional and not ineffective appearance at the dinners of the wealthy and the great, and even to send a modest floral offering now and again to the lady of his heart. He was only 26, yet how long ago it seemed since he had left th e old home in Virginia. He had graduated, to he sure, 'at Harvard, but since then what changes had occurred! His last week at that famous University had been shortened by a telegram from home, and he had reached the little Southern city only to find a darkened house, weeping negro servants, and the undertakers busy with the arrangements for his father’s funeral.' The little that was left sufficed barely for his mother’s needs, and Jim Carlyon, with American optimism and scorn of dependence on others, started for New York to seek his fortune. That had__been four years ago.

Ugh! How Aid it was! The young man pulled up his collar, stuffed his hands into his pockets, end walked as briskly as possible towards an up-tpwn tram. On his way t c , the corner of the street where the tram stopped, his eye was caught by a blaze of gorgeous tints. There were masses of opaque cerisecolour, a flutter of transparent white, a mound of pensive purple, and points of rosy amethyst. It was a florist’s window, brilliantly lighted by shaded electric lights, which fell on beautifully disposed groups of pink camellias, white azaleas, violets, which ran the gamut of mauve from pale lavender > Jeep pansy-colour, and flaunting above all, a great vase full of Cattleya orchids.

His eye fell on a sheaf of American Beauty roses, serenely pink on their long stems. Jim turned and went back. “Hang it all!” he muttered. “I must send Gt a Ce (some pf those; she’s just crazy about roses. And. of course, she’s going to the Astcrbilt’s fancy dress supper tc-night. Perhaps she’ll stick one in lieu belt. I shan’t, be there, and perhaps it’ll make her Think pf ipe,- at any rate, for a moment.” Inside the shop, there was waiunth, brillian'cy, colour. “How muolUare the roses ?” be asked, tentatively.

“One dojlar each,” said the languid young lady Jbehind the counter. Jim felt in the recesses of his pocket. There were two dollar and a few cents. “Well, I guess I’ll take two,” said the youug man. • . “Will two be sufficient W said the languid young person, with some disdain.

“Why, yes.” • He paid the eight shillings over the counter, ahd took'the two long-stalked roses. The languid young lady was not to he cajoled into sending them. Fifth Avenue was “entirely too far.’’ The gentleman might hire a messenger boy to do it —that would be half a dollar more. In the end he get them packed in a damaged oardbord box, and started with his parcel oh a tram which went to . Maddison Square. From there he could reach fetho Hartmann mansion in Fifth Avenue on foot.

Jim pushed on doggedly against the icy wind, hugging his parcel as a pro* faction against the furious blast. It occurred to him that this was\one of the pains and penalties of being in love with the most exquisite girl in New York. Not so long ago, nothing would have induced him to carry a cardboard box—a bqx which was lapjge enough to contain some ridiculous frippery of womankind. A fellow always looks a fool carrying a parcel, , . , Jfe felt like a married mqn, he told himself, with a smile; and yet nothing was more unlikely—short of a social cataclysm—than that he should ever he the accepted suitor pf Miss Grace Hartmann, the ultimate possessor of fantastic millions, such millions as only the New Woild can produce.

I(e touched the electric button of the Hartmann mansion, and the pink visage of an English footman, with yellow livery, powdered hair, and resplendent calves appeared through the heavy curtains and discreet lamps. “Miss Grace is away, sir,” said the man, in his strictly non-committal voice. “Gone to Washington for a couple of dinner-parties. No, sir, will not be bock till Monday.” , :It was all in vain, then I Jim’s face fell, and he hesitated, not knowing what to do with those ridiculous roses. . , . I'll leave these flowers, anyway,” he said. “Give them to Miss Hartmann when sfle comes back,” “Very good, sir.”

It seemed colder than ever when he turned away from the ostentatious ahcde of the Hartmanns* and faced the street again. Somehow this slight disappointment assumed the aspect of a tragedy. • . He had "been sure, on this terrible day, of finding Grace at home. Could it he by the machinations of ■ Mrs Hartmann—for he was aware that that lady was his most determined opponent—that she had been spirited away to Washington P Yet he thought he remembered • now some balk of a dinner-party to be given by one of the Cabinet.

"I may as well get home and do some more work,” he muttered. Home was represented, temporarily, by an ' inexpensive _ boarding-house, where he owned a minute bed sitting* room—an apartment which _ afforded him, at any rate, an opportunity of escape from the other' borders. The other' boarders Jiad endless curiosities to satisfy about Jim Carlyon. Did he not write for the newspapers, and, moreover, was he not known as a well-born Southerner to associate with persons of modish life? * A terrible glamour hung about his youthful person for these simple folks. It was as much as ha could do to get away from them, to elude their vigilance, to escape from their inquiries. An ha entered the narrow passage.

an odour cf burnt meat and boiling coffee assailed his nostrils. The sharp, shrill voices of squabbling children issued from, the “parlour,” and a tired voice, with a nasal accent, querulously reproved them. . . Hie felt tired and cold. . . He would go up to his

room, and beg the landlady to send him up a plate of food. . . Then he would finish the elaborate “story” he had concocted for the “Eagle” around the recent divorce among the Four Hundred.

It must b e admitted that this was the lowest hour of our hero s fortunes. Try as he would, Jim Carlyon could not make the intermittent stipend which he earned on the “Lagle” do. He owed small sums in many quarters ; he wanted a new dress suit, and he couldn t cet it. Heaven knew how much he owed for his board! Yet in spite of his recent disappointment, his fatigue, his sense of professional milure, there was always with him in a vision of a gracious eirl with radiant face and upstanding figure, the new type of American woman—a Gibson girl without her arrogance. And this exquisite creature, this Grace Hartmann, wjio reigned supremo over her social set with a beneficent sway, was, he was aware, by no means indifferent to him. It was the landlady herself who presently appeared, with a covered dish containing his dinner, and a letter in her hand.' She was a person of apologetic manners, dressed always in frayed glace silk, and was afflicted with weak eyelids. “Sit down, Mrs Fisk,” said Jim. springing up from his note-book, and gallantly placing a chair. • But Mrs Fisk declined to be seated. For the next seven minutes an interminable stream of talk flowed from her. lips. . . Out of the torrent, Jim listening fitfully, plucked one or two significant phrases. . . The little bed-sitting-room, it appeared, which represented his home, would be wanted for another guest very shortly. . . He owed Mrs Fisk some hundred dollars—and he.had just parted with his last two for American Beauty roses. . And the roses were withering in their box, what tim© Miss Grace Hartmann was dining with the Secretary of the Navy in distant Washington. “Very well, Mrs Fisk,” said Jim, as pleasantly as h© could. “Is that a letter P” he added. “Lpohs like a bill?” “Why, yes, Mr Carlyon,” said Mrs Fisk, who was by this time quite overcome by her varying emotions, apd was dabbing her pink eyelids with a cheap lace pocket handkerchief. Jim took the letter without piuch interest and broke the seal. For a moment or two there was complete silence in the little room. The young man stood up and his tired face grew pink all over. “Great Scott!” he cried, his voice trembling with excitement. “It can’t be true! . . Yes. . . it’s all

right. They’ve gob the facts, the dates. ’Rah! ’Rah! ’Bah!” he shouted boyishly, bursting into the college cry of his youth. And, seizing the astonished Mrs ,Fisk, h e waltzed her tenderly on to the landing. . “I keep on my room for a fortnight,” he said, loftily. “You shall be paid, my dear lady, to-morrow.” 11. A fortnight later Mrs Haftipann and her daughter sat in the Empire morn* ing-room writing invitations for a party. It was a sumptuous chamber the walls hung with purple satin powdered with golden bees, and containing a superfluity of massive chairs, cabinets and clocks, all crowned with the Imperial eagle. Mrs Hartmann, who inclined to Legitimate Monarchies, would have preferred pure Louis XV,, hut the fashionable de_ corator who had invented the Hartmann mansion some seven years ago had insisted on the period of Napoleon I. as being thelast wprd in furniture and and upholstery, And Mrs Hartmann herself, with her vague, bourgeois, obliterated' features, surmounted by ah auburn “front,” was as much out of the picture as the girl at the gilt writing-desk, with her mod* ern, alert, intellectual face and her very modem amplitude of stature. Mrs Hartmann paused in her careful perusal of her visiting-hook (she was trying to see wiho she could leave out of the proposed festivity with any show of decency), and gazed tenderly, vet a shade regretfully, at the beautiful girl opposite. Why, she wondered, had Grace never made that dazzling match which she had dreamt of for her? There was no place in Europe in which, during the last three years, they nad not cut ascertain dash, and been received with that particular fervour which falls to the lot of the American millionaire. She had been presented at a Drawing-Room, danced at the best balls in town, and had reeeiyed, with astonishing composure, the bandinage of the Prince at Homburg. The Hartmanns had hired a shooting in Scotland, had passed a win/ ter in Paris, had dope a season in Rome. Other American girls, she argued, far Igss beautiful thau Grace, had married Dukes or the heirs of Earls. One was a Vice-Reins —a Vice-Reins who made English ladies stand while she was seated. . . Mrs Hartmann sighed as she thought 01 such a pinnacle of human splendour, a pinnacle which might .easily be ascended by her daughter. . . Only, as her mother put it; Grace was “queer,” She wasn’t like a properly brought up American girl. She didn’t care a cent for titles. It made Mrs Hartmann mad to think of it. Why, she had heard Grace spy she despised young girls who sold themselves for position, to call themselves Lady This or the Countess of That. And deep in her heart Mrs Hartmann cherished the conviction that her daughter, sole heiress of ' all the Hartmann millions, would prefer to call herself Mrs Jim Carlyon to anything else. It was more than distressing. It was mortifying. And, moreover, Mrs Hartmann was perfectly determined that this social catastrophe should never occur.

Grace was in the act of slipping the uundred and fortieth card-of invitation into its envelope when the pink-faced footman, in morning mufti, entered with a huge basket of orchids and American Beauty roses. “With Mr Carlyon’s compliments,” said the footman, bis non-committal voice.

The gift was magnificent. Mrs Hartmann fairly gasped, while Grace flushed up with pleasure. “O, why did he—silly boy!” she murmured, tendenly, but with the repressed delight of a young woman who receives an expensive offering from a man who cannot afford it, And just as Mrs Hart, mapn went out of the room to answer a call on the telephone from her hnsr band’s office, a messenger boy arrived with a note,

“Dear Grace,” it ran, “I am coming to see you this afternoon at four. Do try- and be at home—and alpne.—Yours ever, Jim Carlyon.”' At lunch, her mother appeared fidgety and distracted. “I’ve ordered the carriage at once, ’’“ she announced, “and I must* just go down _to Wail street to your father’s office right away. I can’t think what he wants me for. It’s just oerfectly mean of him to worry me with his affairs when we had two musicales on in Maddison Avenue this afternoon. You’ll go, anyway, Grace?”

“I’ll see. I don’t think I can,” said Brace, blushing. She was not going to risk a scene by telling her mother that young James Carlyon, reporter on the “New York Eagle,” had regally announced his intention to come and call, and that he expected her to be at home. And so Brace, who would not have stayed at nome for a peer of the realm unless she chose, was guilty of a certain amount of disingenuousness. Jim, punctual to the minute and dressed with uncommon smartness, pre" sented a radiant appearance. Grace, fearful of untoward happenings, edged away shyly as he stepped forward, seized both hands and kissed them.

“Jim—you—you’ve got an all-con-quering air which I’ve never seen before. You look like a Pasha!” “A Pasha, indeed? I feel like a Sultan! Grace, dear, I’ve been down to the old man, and he says I may speak to you.” “Father—said—that?” demanded the girl, in blank amazement. “Does he know we’ve—we’ve been fond of each other for thousands of years ?” “I didn’t tell him that. I thought it might make him mad.” “Well, then, what has happened?”

They sat down facing each other, with eyes alight and hot cheeks. There was a pause.

“Well, I’ve had a rise, Grace,” he said at last, tracing a pattern thoughtfully on the carpet with his cane. “I’m —l’m going in for something else. Not so much to do and fetter pay,” he added, gleefully. “Is that so?” said the girl, wonderingly. “Some relations have found me out, and taken me up, you, see.” “Well, I seem a rather superfluous quantity in the new arrangements.” “Oh, rubbish! You’ve just got to marry me,” ho said, superbly. The girl sat and gazed, bewildered, It was curious how she bad changed—this humble adorer who had never yet done aught but kiss her hands, or occasionally, when she had felt more than usually tender, her blue-veined, slender wrists. Secretly Grace Hartmann was delightfully intimidated by this new masterfulness in the man she loved. His boyish assurance gaye her the most queer thrills all over.

“Say you will. Say you will,” he repeated, holding her greyeyes imperiously with his own.

The Voung lady always declares that sh e never "did give her consent, for from that moment speech was impossible. The winter evening had closed in, and the majestic footman had appeared with tea ’ and lamps ■ by the time these two young persons had begun to hold rational converse again. Grace essayed to' assume her most motherly patronising air as she poured him out his tea. “And now 'ted mp what yqu’vo been doing,” she said. “ What have you beep writing? You know,” she added, laughing, “that mbther won’t have the “New York Eagle” in the h ol ) so - Evpr sfnce WO came hack frorp Europe she pays it’s so shppJnpgly 4w e ?i c an, It’s pply now and again, with good luck; that I’m aWp tq smuggle a oopy ipto my bedroom.” “Oh, nothing much,” said the i’opng man. “Just finishing up iny’ ment on the ‘Eagle.’ By the way,” he added, looking at the alert, eager face of th© girl on the soft opposite, f T’lI read you my latest article. It will appear to-morrow.-” “Is it one of those ridiculous, workedup things ?” demanded Grace, laughing; ‘‘all headlines and scandal, with a pound of sensation and an ounce of truth

“You’ll see,!’ replied Jim, pulling seine type-written sheets out of his pocket. “Startling Romance in the Peerage of Great Britain.”

“That’s in enormous type, I suppose ?’!. inquired Grace, mildly amused. “Whacking!” the young man announc. ed, with just professional pride. “Now, listen: ‘George Sackville Dunbar, twelfth Barpn' Dunbar, ope of whose ancestors commanded, the Parliamentary army at the battle of Naseby, while another went tp Yjrgiuia, married a young, American lady, and founded a family, has just died at Jus ranohe, near Monterey, California. The deceased peer, who was' 69 years pf age, leaves no children. He never married, and topk no steps to prove or assume pis title. He is understood to have amassed a considerable fortune. Has favourite hobby was fruit farming.- Jjofd Dunbar—who was known only as Mr Dunbar—was one of the pioneers in California- Emigrating to ’Frisco in' *49, be ah once saw thp vast future" connected with the City of the Golden Gate, and bought) land, which has since been covered with palatial mansions. Has relations in America are very few, for his youngeF 'brother —wheo would have inherited the peerage had he survived him—had only one child of his marriage. This brother practised for many years as a doctor of medicine in Easthamptom, Virginia. It is understood that the two brothers, the late peer and the doctor of medicine, were not on good terms, owing to differences of political opinion during the American Civil War. The late Baron Dunbar, who was a noted Democrat and Abolitionist, gave his services to the Federal cause, while Dr Dunbar; of Easthampton, naturally sided with other English-descended families in the South, and was attached for more than a year,till exposure and hardships brought on a severe illness, tp one of General Stonewall Jackson’s ambulances. It is a specially romantic feature of the case that the heir to the title and the accumulated wealth of his uncle .it at present in New York earning his living in a somewhat humble capacity. “In a humble capacity—that will be in big, black; leaded type, won’t it, Jim?” said Grace, laughing. “Extra big,” said Jim. ‘The public just loves a contrast. Something exaggerated.” “And who’s the lucky young inan?” said Grace, indifferently, who felt she ought to take a polite interest in Jim’s article for the “Eagle.” But just as she was diving for the plate of cucumber sandwiches on the lowest rung of the tea table, the door opened and a stout figure, adorned with much ermine and crowned by. a French bonnet, appeared. For an instant Jim and his prospective mothei-in-law faced each other. Grace trembled. Such-moments were terrible.

“My dear Lord Dunbar!” cried the lady, who was now wreathed in smiles. “My dear boy. . . My warmest congratulations. You deserve it all. So young, so clever, and, oh—you know it you naughty boy-—so attractive!” “Mother—-what do you mean ?” gasped the girl. “Are you all as mad as hatters? What do you mean by calling Jim Dunbar? And, by-the-byc, I may as well tell you I’m going to—in fact, we’re engaged.”

"It’s quite true, Grace,” said the young man, blushing. “I dropped the Dunbar when I began to write. Carlyon is my mother’s name; and, someSlow, I thought it prettier. You’re such a fiery little democrat that I thought y<su might hate the title.—and that’s why I didn’t tell you before I asked yon to marry me.” Lord Dunbar’s tone was so contrite and humble, and so different to anything that the girl had ever associated with the impecunious aristocrats whom she had met in Eu-

rope, that she fairly laughed outright. Jim laughed too, and in that moment their future was settled. “Dear James,” announced Mrs Hart* mann, “will stay and share our humble pot-luck. My precious child must have some opportunity of seeing her future husband.”

“Well, I don’t want to he Lady Dunbar the least bit in the world,” grumbled Grace in the Empire-room after dinner. ‘lf you knew the awful little men I refused over there, jiist because I said I wouldn’t sell myself! Mother and father haven’t the least idea. I always kept it dark.” “You’re neb selling yourself, as it happens,” said Jim, loftily. “The coronet’s thrown in. It’s a sort pf ornar mental extra, on your becoming Mrs James Carlyou.” “Oh, well, if we think of it like that,” said Grace, with melting eyes and ador* able, lifted lips. Meanwhile, downstairs, Mrs Hermann Hartmann was haranguing her husband. “I always said,” argued the lady, “that we’d spent far too much time and money running Grace round Europe.” “Did you, my fiear? I—l—hardly remember that.”

“Hermann, give me America all the time. What’s the matter with a city like New York, where a young map on on e of the papers turns opt to be a Scotch peer? And when I think of it, how sick at my stomach 1 always am on the sea! What I say, is the matter with New York?’’

“What, indeed!” meekly replied her spouse. '