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Page 27
"I knew I could count upon your seeing my duty as I saw it,"
said Peabody much pleased, "it always will be a satisfaction
to both of us to remember you never stood between me and my
work for reform."
"What do you think my brother-in-law-to-be has done now?"
demanded Sam of Winthrop, as the Scarlet Car swept into Jerome
Avenue. "He's postponed his marriage with Trix just because he
has a chance to be Lieutenant-Governor. What is a
Lieutenant-Governor anyway, do you know? I don't like to ask
Peabody."
"It is not his own election he's working for," said Winthrop.
He was conscious of an effort to assume a point of view both
noble and magnanimous.
"He probably feels the `cause' calls him. But, good Heavens!"
"Look out!" shrieked Sam, "where you going?"
Winthrop swung the car back into the avenue.
"To think," he cried, "that a man who could marry--a girl, and
then would ask her to wait two months. Or, two days! Two
months lost out of his life, and she might die; he might lose
her, she might change her mind. Any number of men can be
Lieutenant-Governors; only one man can be----"
He broke off suddenly, coughed and fixed his eyes miserably on
the road. After a brief pause, Brother Sam covertly looked at
him. Could it be that "Billie" Winthrop, the man liked of all
men, should love his sister, and--that she should prefer
Ernest Peabody? He was deeply, loyally indignant. He
determined to demand of his sister an immediate and abject
apology.
At eight o'clock on the morning of election day, Peabody, in
the Scarlet Car, was on his way to vote. He lived at
Riverside Drive, and the polling-booth was only a few blocks
distant. During the rest of the day he intended to use the
car to visit other election districts, and to keep him in
touch with the Reformers at the Gilsey House. Winthrop was
acting as his chauffeur, and in the rear seat was Miss Forbes.
Peabody had asked her to accompany him to the polling-booth,
because he thought women who believed in reform should show
their interest in it in public, before all men. Miss Forbes
disagreed with him, chiefly because whenever she sat in a box
at any of the public meetings the artists from the newspapers,
instead of immortalizing the candidate, made pictures of her
and her hat. After she had seen her future lord and master
cast his vote for reform and himself, she was to depart by
train to Tarrytown. The Forbes's country place was there, and
for election day her brother Sam had invited out some of his
friends to play tennis.
As the car darted and dodged up Eighth Avenue, a man who had
been hidden by the stairs to the Elevated, stepped in front of
it. It caught him, and hurled him, like a mail-bag tossed
from a train, against one of the pillars that support the
overhead tracks. Winthrop gave a cry and fell upon the
brakes. The cry was as full of pain as though he himself had
been mangled. Miss Forbes saw only the man appear, and then
disappear, but, Winthrop's shout of warning, and the wrench as
the brakes locked, told her what had happened. She shut her
eyes, and for an instant covered them with her hands. On the
front seat Peabody clutched helplessly at the cushions. In
horror his eyes were fastened on the motionless mass jammed
against the pillar. Winthrop scrambled over him, and ran to
where the man lay. So, apparently, did every other inhabitant
of Eighth Avenue; but Winthrop was the first to reach him and
kneeling in the car tracks, he tried to place the head and
shoulders of the body against the iron pillar. He had seen
very few dead men; and to him, this weight in his arms, this
bundle of limp flesh and muddy clothes, and the purple-bloated
face with blood trickling down it, looked like a dead man.
Once or twice when in his car, Death had reached for Winthrop,
and only by the scantiest grace had he escaped. Then the
nearness of it had only sobered him. Now that he believed he
had brought it to a fellow man, even though he knew he was in
no degree to blame, the thought sickened and shocked him. His
brain trembled with remorse and horror.
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