CHAPTER XIII

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TEN MINUTES AT A COSTUMER'S--HOW TOM LESLIE GREW SUDDENLY OLD--JOE HARRIS' SPECULATION ON "THOSE EYES"--ANOTHER SURPRISE, AND WHAT FOLLOWED.

Mr. Tom Leslie's visit was _not_ to the Police headquarters in Broome Street, albeit he turned down that street from Broadway when he reached it after leaving the two ladies at Taylor's. He took the other or upper side of the street, and stopped immediately opposite the Police building, at a two-story brick house whereon appeared the name of "R. Williams" in gilt letters, and a little lower, "Ball Costumer," and in the two first floor windows of which, over a basement set apart for the use of persons in need of bad servants and servants in search of worse places--appeared such a collection of distorted human faces that a general execution by the guillotine seemed to have been going on, with all the heads hung up against the glass to dry. The ghastly faces were, in fact, those of papier-mache masks, waiting for customers desirous of a certain amount of personal disfigurement, whether on the stage or in the masked ball; and behind one row of them could be seen the glitter of an imitation coat of mail which looked very much like the real article at a distance, but would have been of about as much use to keep out sword-point or lance-head in the tourneys of the olden time, as so much cobweb or blotting paper.

Within the inner door of the costumer's, which Leslie entered hurriedly, might have been gathered the spoils of all ages and all kingdoms, taking tinsel for gold and stuff for brocade. The robes and mantles of queens hung suspended from the walls, blended here and there with suits of beaded and fringed Indian leather, odd coats and trousers for exaggerated Jonathans, and diamonded garments of motley for clowns. Around on the floor, on two sides of the apartment, lay heaps of garments of all incongruous descriptions, from the court dress of King Charles' time to the tow and homespun of the Southern darkey, as if just tumbled over for examination. A few stage swords and spears and two or three suits of armor of suspicious likeness to block-tin, occupied one of the back corners; while suspended from pegs and arranged upon shelves were false beards, wigs and eyebrows, preposterous noses, Indian head-dresses of feathers, hats of Italian bandits wreathed with greasy ribbons, and crowns and coronets of all apparent values, from that flashing with light which Isabella might have worn when all the gold and gems of Columbus' new world lay at her disposal, to the thin band of gold with one gem in the centre of the front, which some virgin princess might modestly have blushed under on her wedding day. Through the half-open door leading to the adjoining apartment in the rear, still other treasures of costume run mad were discoverable; until the thought was likely to strike the observer that "R. Williams, Costumer," had been the happy recipient of all the cast-off clothes, hirsute as well as sartorial, dropped by half a dozen generations ranging from king to clod-hopper.

A short, dark-whiskered, sallow man came forward as Leslie entered, addressing him by name, with an inquiry after his wishes.

"I want a disguise," said Leslie--"particularly a disguise of the face, and one that can deceive the sharpest of eyes."

The costumer looked at his face for a moment. "I can make you up," he said, "so that your best friend--or what is of more difficulty, the woman who loved you best or hated you worst--wouldn't know you."

"That is it," said Leslie. "Now be quick, like a good fellow, for I have only five minutes."

"You will not need to change your pants, I think," said the costumer. "Throw off your coat--here is one that will button close and hide your vest, and I think you will find it about your size. Yours is a gray--this is a dark brown and rather a genteel garment, and will suit the gray pants."

Leslie threw off his coat and put on the brown substitute, which fitted him very respectably.

"That is enough in the way of clothes, I should think," remarked the costumer, "unless you should be dodging a _very_ sharp woman, or one of Kennedy's men."

"It _is_ a sharp woman I am trying to dodge," said Leslie, with a laugh, "but I think she will know very little about my clothes. The face--the face is the thing! Make me up so that you don't know me--so that I won't know myself--so that my wife, if I had one, would scream for a policeman if I attempted to kiss her."

"Yes, the face--that is what we are coming to," replied the costumer. "You have a moustache already. That we cannot very well cut off, I suppose."

"Not if I know it!" graphically but somewhat inelegantly said Tom, who had one of his many prides hidden away somewhere in the flowing sweep of that ornament to the upper lip.

"Then we must gray it!" said the costumer. "No objection to looking a little older?"

"Make me as old as Dr. Parr or old Galen's head, if you like," was the answer. "Only be quick, for the sauciest and best-looking girl in New York is waiting for me."

"To run away and be married? eh?" asked the costumer, as he went to a shelf and took down a cup of some preparation very like paint, and with it a brush. "None of my business, though! Hold still, and never mind the smell. It will be dry in two minutes, and water will not touch it, but you can clean it out at once with turpentine." He applied the mixture to Leslie's moustache, the member over it being drawn up considerably at times as if the bouquet of one of Hackley's summer gutters was rising; but in less than two minutes, as the costumer had said, the smell ceased, the mixture was dry, and Tom Leslie had a moustache grayish-white enough to have belonged to Sulpizio.

"Beautiful!" said the costumer, handing the subject a small mirror from the wall. "The hair and beard directly. Now for a complexion old enough to suit such a facial ornament." In a moment, he had a small cup of brown paint, with a camel's-hair brush, and was operating on Leslie's forehead and cheeks, artistically throwing in a few wrinkles on the former and neatly executed crows-feet under the eyes, in water-colors that dried as soon as applied. Leslie, by the aid of a glass, saw himself getting old, a little more plainly than most of us recognize the ravages made on our faces by time.

"By George!" he said. "Stop!--hold on!--don't make those crows-feet any plainer, or I shall begin to get weak in the back and shaky in the knees, and you will need to supply me with a cane."

"They will come off easier than the next ones painted there, probably!" commented the philosophical costumer, as he finished painting up his human sign. "And now for the finishing stroke!" He stepped to a drawer, took out a gray full-bottom beard, fitted it neatly to the chin, clasped the springs back of the ears, added to it a gray wig, made easy-fitting by the short hair on the head, and once more handed Leslie the glass.

The young man looked. The last vestige of youth had departed, and he appeared as he might have expected to do thirty years later when he had touched sixty and gone on downward.

"Capital!" he said--"capital! If any man, or woman, knows me behind this disguise, there is some reason beyond nature for their doing so. There--throw me a hat--anything unlike my own--for I have already remained too long. I will see you again some time this evening." Handing the costumer a bill, with the air of one who had taken such accommodations before and knew what they cost, Leslie put on a respectable looking speckled Leghorn hat brought from the back room, took one more glance at his metamorphosis in the glass, and passed hurriedly out into the street and down Broadway towards Taylor's.

To return to that place for a few moments, after Tom Leslie had left it and before he was again heard from.

Josephine Harris sat for perhaps five minutes after the chocolate was brought, toying with the spoon and the cup, a little consciously red in face, and saying never a word--an amount of reticence quite as unusual for her, as ice in summer. Bell Crawford made two or three remarks, and she answered them with "Ah!" and "Humph!" till the other pouted a little sullenly and said no more.

At length the wayward girl shoved aside her cup, stopped nibbling a bon-bon, planted one elbow on the table, leaned her chin on her hand, and looked her companion full in the face with a comic earnestness that was very laughable.

"Bell," she said, "I am gone!"

"Gone?" asked the other. "What do you mean?"

"Sent for--done up--wilted--caved in--and any other descriptive words that may happen to be in the language!" was the reply.

"What ails you? Are you crazy?" was the not unnatural inquiry of Bell.

"Crazy? No!" answered the wild girl. "I wonder if I ever shall be!" and for the instant her eyes were very sad, as if some painful thought had been touched. But the instant after sunshine broke into them again, as she said, making a motion of her hand towards the door:--

"That's _he_!"

Bell Crawford looked, but did not see any one, and the fact rather added to her impression that Miss Josey had suddenly taken leave of her senses. "Who's _he_? I don't see him!" she replied.

"Pshaw! how stupid you are!" said Josey, pettishly. "See here. Let me tell you something. Do you remember one day, five or six weeks ago, when I came into your house a little in a hurry, with a bunch of violets for Dick?"

"Yes," said Bell, "I remember it, by the fact that you nearly pulled off the bell-handle because the door was not opened quick enough."

"Right," said Joe, as if she had been complimented by the observation. "That's me. If Betty doesn't answer the bell a little quicker, some of these times, you will find that piece of silver-plating at a junk-shop, sold for old iron. Well, do you happen to remember what I told you and Dick on that occasion?"

"Oh, good gracious, no!" exclaimed Bell provokingly. "Surely you can't expect me to keep any account of what _you_ say in the course of a month. Stop, though--I _do_ remember something. You said, I believe, that coming up Madison Avenue you found the bunch of violets carrying a small boy--or the other way; and that at the same time you found a hat--wasn't it a hat?"

"Bah!" said Joe. "You have kept hold of the wrong end of the story, of course. I said that just as I met the small boy with the violets and their perfume began to set me crazy and make me think of being out in the country among the laughing brooks and the singing birds and the--yes, the cows and the chickens--that just then some one else met the small boy and the violets. That was the proprietor of the eyes, and if it had not been for that outrageous hat I should have had a full view of them. As it was, they nearly spoiled my peace of mind altogether, and I have been sighing ever since--Heigho!--haven't you heard me sighing all around in odd corners?"

"What a goose!" was the complimentary reply of Bell. "If you _have_ sighed, the sound was very much like that of loud talking and laughter. But what has all that to do with to-day, and why were you pointing towards the door?"

"Why, you ninny," cried Joe, in response to the "goose" compliment just passed--"that man who has just left us--that man who is coming back in a moment--is the owner of the eyes; and those eyes are my destiny!"

"Pshaw!" said Bell, "I did not see anything remarkable about the eyes, or the man."

"Didn't you, now!" said Josephine, with the least bit in the world of pique in her voice. "Well, that is the fault of _your_ eyes, and not of _his_. I tell you those eyes are my destiny--I feel it and know it. I have not seen a pair before in a long while, that looked as if they could laugh and make love at the same time, and still have a little lightning in reserve for somebody they hated. Mr. Tom Leslie--well, it is a rather pretty name, and I think I must take him."

"For shame, Joe!" said Miss Bell, her propriety really shocked at the idea of a young girl declaring herself, even in jest, in love with a man who had said nothing to justify the preference.

"Yes, I suppose it is all wrong!" said Joe, between a sigh and a laugh. "You know I have been doing wrong things all my life, and anything else would not be natural. Do you remember, Bell," and her dark eyes had an expression of demure fun in them that was irresistibly droll--"do you remember how I left all my trunks unlocked and my room door open, at the Philadelphia hotel when we were stopping there one winter on our way from Washington,--and how I left my purse on the bureau in my room and grabbed a gentleman by the arm in the street, accusing him of picking my pocket?"

"I _do_ remember," said Bell, a little with the air of a very proper Mentor who was not in the habit of making corresponding blunders. "And I should think, Joe, that now that you are a little older you would be a little more careful!"

"Yes, I daresay you do," answered Miss Josey, "but you know that I am myself and nobody else. I should stagnate and die in a week, if I was either one of those 'wealthy curled darlings' kept in exact position by the possession of too many thousands, or so hemmed by more confined worldly circumstances that I dared not take one step without stopping to consider the consequences. Hang propriety!--I _hate_ propriety! Now you have it, and you may eat it with that last wafer!"

"How you do run on!" merely remarked Bell, who probably enjoyed the wild girl's conversation quite as much as she was capable of enjoying anything.

"Yes," said Joe, "and I should like to know any reason for stopping, at least before our impressed beau comes back. Has he gone off to make arrangements with the fortune-teller, I wonder, so as to play a trick upon us when we get there?"

"Eh," said Bell, a little startled, "could such a trick be possible!"

"Very possible, my dear!" said Joe. "I'll warrant such things have been done, and my gentleman looks just mischievous enough. But no--he would not _dare_ do such a thing, for he could see with half an eye that if he did I should one day pay him for it!"

"If you ever had a chance!" remarked Bell with some approach to a sneer.

"Oh," said Joe. "Trust me for that! Didn't I just tell you that I had half made up my mind to take him? and if I should, you know, I should have plenty of time to bring him into the proper subjection."

"How do you know but he may be married?" asked Bell, who had a little more forethought than Miss Joe in certain directions.

"Humph!" said Joe, "that _would_ be awkward, especially as I am not quite ready, yet, for an elopement and the subsequent flattering paragraphs in the papers, about 'the beautiful and accomplished Miss J.H.' having left for Europe on the last steamer from Boston, in company with 'the popular journalist but sad Lothario, Mr. T.L., who has left an interesting wife and two children to deplore the departure of the husband and father from the paths of rectitude.'"

"Well, you _are_ incorrigible!" laughed Miss Crawford, fairly carried away by the irresistible current of the wild girl's humor. "How can you talk so flippantly of things so deplorable?"

"I scarcely know, myself!" was the answer. "But there is really a dash of romance about such things, which almost makes them endurable. Poor Mrs. Brannan made a mess of it, to be sure, coming out at last with a ruined character and the widow of a man several ranks lower in the army than the husband from whom she had run away; but was there not something chivalrous in Wyman coming back at once at the breaking out of the war, and sending an offer to the man he had injured, to afford him any satisfaction he might think proper to demand?"

"And was there not something sublimely cutting," asked Bell, "in the reply of General Brannan that he demanded no satisfaction whatever, as Colonel Wyman had only relieved him of a woman unworthy of his love or confidence?"

"Yes, that _was_ a little lowering to the dignity of the woman, if she had any left," said Joe. "But the Kearney elopement--was not _that_ romantic without any drawback? There was something of the wicked old Paladin, that rattle-heads like myself cannot help admiring, in the one-armed man whose other limb slept in an honored grave in Mexico, invading the charmed circle of New York moneyed-respectability, carrying off the daughter of one of its first lawyers and an ex-Collector--then submitting to a divorce, marrying the woman who had trusted all to his honor, and plunging into the fights of Magenta and Solferino with the same spirit which had led him into the thick of the conflicts at Chapultepec and the Garita de Belen. Poor Wyman has already expiated his errors with his life, but I do hope that Kearney may carry his remaining arm through this miserable war and live to be so honored that even his one great fault may be forgotten!"

The young girl's eyes flashed, her cheeks were flushed, and any one who looked upon her at that moment would have believed her almost brave enough for an Amazon and more than a little warped in her perceptions of what constituted the right and the wrong of domestic relations. How little, meanwhile, they would have known her! Ninety-nine out of one hundred of the women unwilling to confess that they had ever read a page of the Wyman or the Kearney scandal, and saying "hush!" and "tut! tut!" to any one who pretended to make the least defence of either--would have been found infinitely more approachable for any purpose of actual wrong or vice, than rattling, out-spoken and irrepressible Joe Harris!

Wyman was dead, as she had said--having expiated, with his life, so much as could be expiated of all past wrong, and having partially hidden the memory of his crime by his brave offer of satisfaction to the wronged husband and his unflinching conduct before the enemies of his country in battle. But how little she thought, at the moment of speaking, that the bullet was already billeted for the breast of Kearney, and that he was to fall, but a few weeks after, a sacrifice to his own rashness and the incapacity of others! Does war indeed have a mission beyond the national good or evil for which it is instituted? And are its missiles of death and the diseases to which its exposures give rise, especially commissioned to repay past crimes and by-gone errors? Not so, inevitably!--or many a worthless incapable and many a dishonest trader in his country's blood and treasure would before this have bitten the dust,--and Baker, Lyon, Lander, Winthrop and fifty other prominent martyrs to the cause of the Union would yet have been alive and battling for the right!

Suddenly, the conversation between Josephine Harris and Bell Crawford came to a conclusion, and the former sprung to her feet with a frightened and angry "ough!" while the latter leaned back in her chair in a state of stupefied vexation not easy to describe. The cause of this excitement may be briefly given. Both at the same instant discovered a face thrust down to the level of their own and immediately between them, with a familiarity most inexcusable in a stranger. Yet the face was certainly that of an entire stranger--a respectably dressed elderly man, with full gray hair and beard, and holding a speckled Leghorn hat in his hand.

"Ough! get out! who are you and what do you want here?" broke out the excited girl, with a propensity, meanwhile, to repay this second impudence of the day by such a sound boxing of the ears as would make the event one to be remembered; while Miss Crawford took a rather more practical view of the matter, with the single word "Impertinence" and a supplementary call of "Waiter!"

"Ladies! ladies! what is the matter?" asked the elderly intruder, as he saw the movements of the two girls, and the waiter hurrying up with his towel over his arm, in obedience to the call.

"Anything wanted, Miss?" asked the waiter.

"Yes," said Miss Bell Crawford. "Take that man away from this table. He must be either a wretch or a madman, to intrude in this way where he is not known or wanted."

"Yes," echoed Joe, remembering the scene in the street, only an hour or two before--"take him away, and if you can find any one to do it, have him caned soundly."

"Come, sir, you must go to another table--these ladies are strangers and complain of you," said the waiter, taking the strange man by the arm, and disposed to relieve two ladies from impertinence, though not, as suggested, to lose a customer for the house.

"Why, ladies, this treatment is really very strange!" said the man complained of, all gravity and surprise. "Just as if I was really a stranger---just as if--"

But here he was broken in upon by Joe Harris absolutely screaming with laughter and dropping into her chair as abruptly as she had quitted it the moment before.

"Well?" queried Bell; and "Well?" though he did not give the query words, looked the puzzled waiter.

"Oh! oh! oh! that is too good!" broke out the laughing girl. "Oh! oh! oh! why don't you recognize him, Bell? That is Mr. Leslie!"

Whether Miss Joe had recognized him by the voice, the second time he spoke, or whether something in the undisguiseable eyes (were her own the keen eyes of love, already awakened, that saw more clearly than others could do?) had betrayed him--certain it was that the masquerade was over, so far as she was concerned, and our friend Tom Leslie stood fully discovered. The waiter saw that his interference was no longer needed, and moved away at once; and Bell Crawford, at length fully aware of the trick, joined less noisily in the laugh which convulsed her friend.

"And what does the masquerade mean?" finally asked the soberer of the two girls, as they were leaving the saloon,--while the other, who wished to know much worse, was considerably more ashamed to ask.

"Humph!" answered Tom Leslie. "You have a right to ask, ladies, but if you will excuse me I should prefer not to answer until the visit is paid. You will remember that I told you I had a reason something like your own for leaving the carriage; and if for the present you will accept the explanation that I wish to test the accuracy of the fortune-teller without her being at all indebted to any observation of my face or any possible previous recollection of me, I shall be your debtor to the extent of a full explanation afterwards, should you think proper to demand it."

It is not impossible that Joe Harris, who had just been congratulating herself upon a promenade with a man not only good-looking but comparatively _young_, may have had her personal objections to the even temporary substitution of sixty-five or seventy; but if so, her red lip only pouted a little, and she said nothing more on the subject as the three took their way up Broadway and down Prince Street to the place where all the secrets of the past, present and future were to be revealed.

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