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The facts of the unfortunate separation were like this: Van Bibber gave a great many dinners during the course of the season at Delmonico's, dinners hardly formal enough to require a private room, and yet too important to allow of his running the risk of keeping his guests standing in the hall waiting for a vacant table.
I happened to read again the other day the little collection of stories his first, I think which commences with "Gallegher" and includes "The Other Woman" and one or more of the Van Bibber tales. His first stories were not his best. He increased in skill and was stronger at the finish than at the start.
There is a winding staircase, that the uninitiated could never find, leading into the rooms of the Evening Sun, where Richard Harding Davis "reported," and where he conceived some of the Van Bibber stories.
He was far from certain of this errand, and nervous with doubt, but he reassured himself that he was acting on impulse, and that his impulses were so often good. The hall-boy at the Berkeley said, yes, Mr. Caruthers was in, and Van Bibber gave a quick sigh of relief. He took this as an omen that his impulse was a good one. The young English servant who opened the hall door to Mr.
Such nights as these try men's souls; but Van Bibber passed the stage-door man with as calmly polite a nod as though the piece had been running a hundred nights, and the manager was thinking up souvenirs for the one hundred and fiftieth, and the prima donna had, as usual, began to hint for a new set of costumes.
"Well, never mind what you were doing," said one of the men, soothingly; "you weren't in it, as you say. Return to the libretto." "Well," continued Travers, meekly, "let me see; where was I?" "You were in a red-silk box," suggested one of the men, reaching for the coffee. "Go on, Travers," said the first man. "The two men were kicking Van Bibber." "Oh, yes," cried Travers.
"I gave you," said Van Bibber, slowly, "seventy-five cents with which to buy a breakfast. This check calls for eighty-five cents, and extremely cheap it is," he added, with a bow to the fat proprietor. "Several other gentlemen, on your representation that you were starving, gave you other sums to be expended on a breakfast. You have the money with you now.
The costumes of the gentlemen varied from the clothes they wore nightly when waiting on the table, to cutaway coats with white satin ties, and the regular blue and brass-buttoned uniform of the hotel. "I am going to dance," said Van Bibber, "if Mr. Pierrot will present me to one of the ladies."
"Oh, yes," said Van Bibber, "do the decent thing now, or I'll " The Object dropped the dime in the waiter's hand, and Van Bibber, smiling and easy, made his way through the admiring crowd and out into the street. "I suspect," said Mr.
"Go back where?" asked Van Bibber, gently, and greatly interested; "to prison?" "To prison, yes!" cried the man, hoarsely: "to a grave. That's where. Look at my face," he said, "and look at my hair. That ought to tell you where I've been. With all the color gone out of my skin, and all the life out of my legs. You needn't be afraid of me. I couldn't hurt you if I wanted to.
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