HOW many conquests Mabel Fewne had made since she had entered society no one was able to tell. Perhaps the conqueror herself kept some record of the havoc she had worked, but if she did, no one but herself ever saw it. Even such of her rivals as were envious admitted that Miss Fewne’s victims could be counted by dozens, while the men who came under the influence of that charming young lady were wont to compute their fellow-sufferers by the hundred. It mattered not where Miss Fewne spent her time: whether she enjoyed the season in New York or Washington, Baltimore or Boston, she found that climatic surroundings did not in the least change the conduct of men toward her. In what her attractions especially consisted, her critics and admirers were not all agreed. Palette, the artist, who was among her earliest victims, said she was the embodiment of all ideal harmonies; while old Coupon, who at sixty offered her himself and his property, declared in confidence to another unfortunate that what took him was her solid sense. At least one young man, who thought himself a poet, fell in love with her for what he called the golden foam of her hair; a theological student went into pious ecstasy (and subsequent dejection) over the spiritual light of her eyes. The habitual pose of her pretty fingers accounted for the awkward attentions of at least a score of young men, and the piquancy of her manner attracted, to their certain detriment, all the professional beaus who met her. And yet, a clear-headed literary Bostonian declared that she was better read than some of his distinguished confreres; while a member of Congress excused himself for monopolizing her for an entire half-hour, at an evening party, by saying that Miss Fewne talked politics so sensibly, that for the first time in his life he had learned how much he himself knew. As for the ladies, some said any one could get as much admiration as Mabel Fewne if they could dress as expensively; others said she was so skillful a flirt that no man could see through her wily ways; two or three inclined to the theory of personal magnetism; while a few brave women said that Mabel was so pretty and tasteful, and modest and sensible and sweet, that men would be idiots if they didn’t fall in love with her at sight.
But one season came in which those who envied and feared Mabel were left in peace, for that young lady determined to spend the Winter with her sister, who was the wife of a military officer stationed at Smithton, in the Far West. Smithton was a small town, but a pleasant one; it had a railroad and mines; a government land office was established there, as was the State Government also; trading was incessant, money was plenty, so men of wit and culture came there to pay their respects to the almighty dollar; and as there were nearly two-score of refined ladies in the town, society was delightful to the fullest extent of its existence. And Mabel Fewne enjoyed it intensely; the change of air and of scene gave stimulus to her spirits and new grace to her form and features, so that she soon had at her feet all the unmarried men in Smithton, while many sober Benedicts admired as much as they could safely do without transferring their allegiance.
Smithton was not inhabited exclusively by people of energy and culture. New settlements, like all other things new, powerfully attract incapables, and Smithton was no excuse to the rule. In one portion of it, yclept “the End,” were gathered many characters more odd than interesting. Their local habitations seemed to be the liquor-shops which fairly filled that portion of the town. About the doors of these shops the “Enders” were most frequently seen. If one of them chanced to stray into the business street of the town, he seemed as greatly confused and troubled as a lost boy. In his own quarter, however, and among his own kind, the Ender displayed a composure which was simply superb. No one could pass through the End by daylight without seeing many of the inhabitants thereof leaning against fences, trees, buildings, and such other objects as could sustain without assistance the weight of the human frame. From these points of support the Enders would contemplate whatever was transpiring about them, with that immobility of countenance which characterizes the finished tourist and the North American Indian. There were occasions when these self-possessed beings assumed erect positions and manifested ordinary human interest. One of these was the breaking out of a fight between either men or animals; another was the passing of a lady of either handsome face or showy dress. So it happened that, when pretty, well-dressed Mabel Fewne was enjoying a drive with one of her admirers, there was quite a stir among such Enders as chanced to see her. The venders of the beverages for which the Enders spent most of their money noticed that, upon that particular afternoon, an unusual proportion of their customers stood at the bar with no assistance from the bar itself, that some spirit was manifest in their walk and conversation, and yet they were less than usual inclined to be quarrelsome. So great was the excitement caused by Miss Fewne’s appearance, that one Ender was heard to ask another who she was—an exhibition of curiosity very unusual in that part of the town. Even more: One member of that apparently hopeless gang was known to wash his face and hands, purchase a suit of cheap—but new and clean—clothing, and take an eastern-bound train, presumably to appear among respectable people he had known during some earlier period of his existence.
On the evening of the next day a delightful little party was enjoyed by the well-to-do inhabitants of Smithton. New as was the town, the parlors of Mrs. General Wader (her husband was something for the railway company) were handsomely furnished, the ladies were elaborately dressed, the gentlemen lacked not one of the funereal garments which men elsewhere wear to evening parties, and stupid people were noticeably rarer than, in similar social gatherings, in older communities. Mabel Fewne was there, and as human nature is the same at Smithton as in the East, she was the belle of the evening. She entered the room on the arm of her brother-in-law, and that warrior’s height, breadth, bronzed countenance and severe uniform, made all the more striking the figure which, clad apparently in a pale blue cloud, edged with silver and crowned with gold, floated beside him. Men crowded about her at once, and the other ladies present had almost undisturbed opportunity in which to converse with each other.
At the End there was likewise a social gathering. The place was Drake’s saloon, and the guests were self-invited. Their toilets, though unusual, scarcely require description, and a list of their diversions would not interest people of taste. Refreshments were as plentiful as at Mrs. Wader’s, and, after the manner of refreshments everywhere, they caused a general unbending of spirits. Not all the effects were pleasing to contemplate. One of them was a pistol-shot, which, missing the man for whom it was intended, struck a person called Baggs, and remarkable only for general worthlessness. Baggs had a physical system of the conventional type, however, and the bullet caused some disarrangement so radical in its nature, that Baggs was soon stretched upon the floor of the saloon, with a face much whiter than he usually wore. The barkeeper poured out a glass of brandy, and passed it over the bar, but the wounded man declined it; he also rejected a box of pills which was proffered. An Ender, who claimed to have been a physician, stooped over the victim, felt his pulse, and remarked:
“Baggs, you’re a goner.”
“I know it,” said Baggs; “and I want to be prayed for.”
The barkeeper looked puzzled. He was a public-spirited man, whose heart and pocket were open to people in real trouble, but for prayers he had never been asked before, and, was entirely destitute of them. He felt relieved when one of his customers—a leaden-visaged man, with bulbous nose and a bad temper—advanced toward the wounded man, raised one hand, threw his head back a trifle, and exclaimed:
“Once in grace, always in grace. I’ve been there, I know. Let us pray.”
The victim waived his hand impatiently, and faintly exclaimed:
“You won’t do; somebody that’s better acquainted with God than you are must do it.”
“But, Baggs,” reasoned the barkeeper, “perhaps he’s been a preacher—you’d better not throw away a chance.”
“Don’t care if he has,” whispered Baggs; “he don’t look like any of the prayin’ people mother used to know.”
The would-be petitioner took his rebuff considerably to heart, and began, in a low and rapid voice, an argument with himself upon the duration of the state of grace. The Enders listened but indifferently, however; the dying man was more interesting to them than living questions, for he had no capacity for annoyance. The barkeeper scratched his head and pinched his brow, but, gaining no idea thereby, he asked:
“Do you know the right man, Baggs?”
“Not here, I don’t,” gasped the sufferer; “not the right man.”
The emphasis on the last word was not unheeded by the bystanders; they looked at each other with as much astonishment as Enders were capable of displaying, and thrust their hands deep into the pockets of their pantaloons, in token of their inability to handle the case. Baggs spoke again.
“I wish mother was here!” he said. “She’d know just what to say and how to say it.”
“She’s too far away; leastways, I suppose she is,” said the barkeeper.
“I know it,” whispered the wounded man; “an’ yet a woman——”
Baggs looked inquiringly, appealingly about him, but seemed unable to finish his sentence. His glance finally rested upon Brownie, a man as characteristic as himself, but at times displaying rather more heart than was common among Enders. Brownie obeyed the summons, and stooped beside Baggs. The bystanders noticed that there followed some whispering, at times shame-faced, and then in the agony of earnestness on the part of Baggs, and replied to by Brownie with averted face and eyes gazing into nowhere.
Finally Brownie arose with an un-Ender-like decision, and left the saloon. No one else said much, but there seemed to circulate an impression that Baggs was consuming more time than was customary at the End.
Very different was the scene in Mrs. Wader’s parlor; instead of a dying man surrounded by uncouth beings, there stood a beautiful woman, radiant with health and animation; while about her stood a throng of well-dressed gentlemen, some of them handsome, all of them smart, and each one craving a smile, a word, or a look. Suddenly the pompous voice of General Wader arose:
“Most astonishing thing I ever heard of,” said he. “An Ender has the impudence to ask to see Miss Fewne!”
“An Ender?” exclaimed the lady, her pretty lips parting with surprise.
“Yes, and he declares you could not have the heart to say no, if you knew his story.”
“Is it possible, Miss Fewne,” asked one admirer, “that your cruelty can have driven any one to have become an Ender?”
Mabel’s eyes seemed to glance inward, and she made no reply. She honestly believed she had never knowingly encouraged a man to become her victim; yet she had heard of men doing very silly things when they thought themselves disappointed in love. She cast a look of timid inquiry at her host.
“Oh, perfectly safe, if you like,” said the general. “The fellow is at the door, and several of our guests are in the hall.”
Miss Fewne looked serious, and hurried to the door. She saw a man in shabby clothing and with unkempt beard and hair, yet with a not unpleasing expression.
“Madame,” said he, “I’m a loafer, but I’ve been a gentleman, and I know better than to intrude without a good cause. The cause is a dying man. He’s as rough and worthless as I am, but all the roughness has gone out of him, just now, and he’s thinking about his mother and a sweetheart he used to have. He wants some one to pray for him—some one as unlike himself and his associates as possible. He cried for his mother—then he whispered to me that he had seen, here in Smithton, a lady that looked like an angel—seen her driving only to-day. He meant you. He isn’t pretty; but, when a dying man says a lady is an angel, he means what he says.”
Two or three moments later Miss Fewne, with a very pale face, and with her brother-in-law as escort, was following Brownie. The door of the saloon was thrown open, and when the Enders saw who was following Brownie they cowered and fell back as if a sheriff with his posse had appeared. The lady looked quickly about her, until her eye rested upon the figure of the wounded man; him she approached, and as she looked down her lip began to tremble.
“I didn’t mean it,” whispered Baggs, self-depreciation and pain striving for the possession of his face. “If I hadn’t have been a-goin’, I shouldn’t have thought of such a thing, but dyin’ takes away one’s reg’lar senses. It’s not my fault, ma’am, but when I thought about what mother used to say about heaven, you came into my mind. I felt as if I was insultin’ you just by thinkin’ about you—a feller such as me to be thinking about such a lady. I tried to see mother an’ Liz, my sweetheart that was, just as I’ve seen ’em when my eyes was shut, but I couldn’t see nothin’ but you, the way you looked goin’ along that road and makin’ the End look bright. I’d shoot myself for the imperdence of the thing if I was goin’ to get well again, but I ain’t. Ther needs to be a word said for me by somebody—somebody that don’t chaw, nor drink, nor swear—somebody that’ll catch God’s eye if He happens to be lookin’ down—and I never saw that kind of a person in Smithton till to-day.”
Mabel stood speechless, with a tear in each eye.
“Don’t, if you don’t think best,” continued Baggs. “I’d rather go to—to t’other place than bother a lady. Don’t speak a word, if you don’t want to; but mebbe you’ll think the least thing? God can’t refuse you. But if you think t’other place is best for me, all right.”
The fright, the sense of strangeness, were slowly departing from Mabel, and as she recovered herself her heart seemed to come into her face and eyes.
“Ev’rybody about here is rough, or dirty, or mean, or rich, or proud, or somethin’,” continued the dying man, in a thin yet earnest voice. “It’s all as good as I deserve; but my heart’s ached sometimes to look at somebody that would keep me from b’leevin’ that ev’rything was black an’ awful. And I’ve seen her. Can I just touch my finger to your dress? I’ve heard mother read how that somebody in the Old Country was once made all right by just touchin’ the clothes Christ had on.”
In his earnestness, the wretched man had raised himself upon one elbow, and out of his face had departed every expression but one of pitiful pleading. Still Mabel could not speak; but, bending slightly forward, she extended one of her slender, dainty hands toward the one which Baggs had raised in his appeal.
“White—shining—good—all right,” he murmured. Then all of Baggs which fell back upon the floor was clay.
With the prudence of a conqueror, who knows when the full extent of his powers has been reached, Mabel Fewne married within six months. The happy man was not a new conquest, but an old victim, who was willfully pardoned with such skill, that he never doubted that his acceptance to favor was the result of the renewal of his homage.
