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Page 52
And then comes the runaway.
That is a fine scene--the swaying victoria, the impetuous, daft horses
plunging through the line of scattering vehicles, the driver stupidly
holding his broken reins, and the ivory-white face of Amy Ffolliott, as
she clings desperately with each slender hand. Fear has come and gone:
it has left her expression pensive and just a little pleading, for life
is not so bitter.
And then the clatter and swoop of Mounted Policeman Van Sweller! Oh, it
was--but the story has not yet been printed. When it is you shall learn
bow he sent his bay like a bullet after the imperilled victoria. A
Crichton, a Croesus, and a Centaur in one, he hurls the invincible
combination into the chase.
When the story is printed you will admire the breathless scene where Van
Sweller checks the headlong team. And then he looks into Amy Ffolliott's
eyes and sees two things--the possibilities of a happiness he has long
sought, and a nascent promise of it. He is unknown to her; but he stands
in her sight illuminated by the hero's potent glory, she his and he hers
by all the golden, fond, unreasonable laws of love and light literature.
Ay, that is a rich moment. And it will stir you to find Van Sweller in
that fruitful nick of time thinking of his comrade O'Roon, who is
cursing his gyrating bed and incapable legs in an unsteady room in a
West Side hotel while Van Sweller holds his badge and his honor.
Van Sweller hears Miss Ffolliott's voice thrillingly asking the name of
her preserver. If Hudson Van Sweller, in policeman's uniform, has saved
the life of palpitating beauty in the park--where is Mounted Policeman
O'Roon, in whose territory the deed is done? How quickly by a word can
the hero reveal himself, thus discarding his masquerade of ineligibility
and doubling the romance! But there is his friend!
Van Sweller touches his cap. "It's nothing, Miss," he says, sturdily;
"that's what we are paid for--to do our duty." And away he rides. But
the story does not end there.
As I have said, Van Sweller carried off the park scene to my decided
satisfaction. Even to me he was a hero when he foreswore, for the sake
of his friend, the romantic promise of his adventure. It was later in
the day, amongst the more exacting conventions that encompass the
society hero, when we had our liveliest disagreement. At noon he went to
O'Roon's room and found him far enough recovered to return to his post,
which he at once did.
At about six o'clock in the afternoon Van Sweller fingered his watch,
and flashed at me a brief look full of such shrewd cunning that I
suspected him at once.
"Time to dress for dinner, old man," he said, with exaggerated
carelessness.
"Very well," I answered, without giving him a clew to my suspicions; "I
will go with you to your rooms and see that you do the thing properly. I
suppose that every author must be a valet to his own hero."
He affected cheerful acceptance of my somewhat officious proposal to
accompany him. I could see that he was annoyed by it, and that fact
fastened deeper in my mind the conviction that he was meditating some
act of treachery.
When he had reached his apartments he said to me, with a too patronizing
air: "There are, as you perhaps know, quite a number of little
distinguishing touches to be had out of the dressing process. Some
writers rely almost wholly upon them. I suppose that I am to ring for my
man, and that he is to enter noiselessly, with an expressionless
countenance."
"He may enter," I said, with decision, "and only enter. Valets do not
usually enter a room shouting college songs or with St. Vitus's dance in
their faces; so the contrary may be assumed without fatuous or
gratuitous asseveration."
"I must ask you to pardon me," continued Van Sweller, gracefully, "for
annoying you with questions, but some of your methods are a little new
to me. Shall I don a full-dress suit with an immaculate white tie--or
is there another tradition to be upset?"
"You will wear," I replied, "evening dress, such as a gentleman wears.
If it is full, your tailor should be responsible for its bagginess. And
I will leave it to whatever erudition you are supposed to possess
whether a white tie is rendered any whiter by being immaculate. And I
will leave it to the consciences of you and your man whether a tie that
is not white, and therefore not immaculate, could possibly form any part
of a gentleman's evening dress. If not, then the perfect tie is included
and understood in the term 'dress,' and its expressed addition
predicates either a redundancy of speech or the spectacle of a man
wearing two ties at once."
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