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Page 29
"Damn the Ticket!" exclaimed Winthrop. "The man's dead!"
Peabody, burying his face still deeper in his collar, backed
into the crowd. In the present and past campaigns, from
carts and automobiles he had made many speeches in Harlem, and
on the West Side, lithographs of his stern, resolute features
hung in every delicatessen shop, and that he might be
recognized, was extremely likely.
He whispered to Miss Forbes what he had said, and what
Winthrop had said.
"But you DON'T mean to leave him," remarked Miss Forbes.
"I must," returned Peabody. "I can do nothing for the man,
and you know how Tammany will use this--They'll have it on the
street by ten. They'll say I was driving recklessly; without
regard for human life. And, besides, they're waiting for me
at headquarters. Please hurry. I am late now."
Miss Forbes gave an exclamation of surprise.
"Why, I'm not going," she said.
"You must go! _I_ must go. You can't remain here alone."
Peabody spoke in the quick, assured tone that at the first had
convinced Miss Forbes his was a most masterful manner.
"Winthrop, too," he added, "wants you to go away."
Miss Forbes made no reply. But she looked at Peabody
inquiringly, steadily, as though she were puzzled as to his
identity, as though he had just been introduced to her. It
made him uncomfortable.
"Are you coming?" he asked.
Her answer was a question.
"Are you going?"
"I am!" returned Peabody. He added sharply: "I must."
"Good-by," said Miss Forbes.
As he ran up the steps to the station of the elevated, it
seemed to Peabody that the tone of her "good-by" had been most
unpleasant. It was severe, disapproving. It had a final,
fateful sound. He was conscious of a feeling of
self-dissatisfaction. In not seeing the political importance
of his not being mixed up with this accident, Winthrop had
been peculiarly obtuse, and Beatrice, unsympathetic.
Until he had cast his vote for Reform, he felt distinctly
ill-used.
For a moment Beatrice Forbes sat in the car motionless,
staring unseeingly at the iron steps by which Peabody had
disappeared. For a few moments her brows were tightly drawn.
Then, having apparently quickly arrived at some conclusion,
she opened the door of the car and pushed into the crowd.
Winthrop received her most rudely.
"You mustn't come here!" he cried.
"I thought," she stammered, "you might want some one?"
"I told--" began Winthrop, and then stopped, and added--"to
take you away. Where is he?"
Miss Forbes flushed slightly.
"He's gone," she said.
In trying not to look at Winthrop, she saw the fallen figure,
motionless against the pillar, and with an exclamation, bent
fearfully toward it.
"Can I do anything?" she asked.
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