Miss Nobody of Nowhere : a novel

Front matter

MISS NOBODY

OF NOW by the: author u

'MB BARNES OF NEW YORK j*

Book I. A College Cowboy

PAGB

Chapter I. — The Last Kick of the Harvard- Yale Foot-ball Match, 7 " II. — Pete, the Cowboy, - - - 21 " III. — The Little Girl from England, - 33 " IV. — The Lone Ranch by the San

Francisco, 44

" V.— The Box Canon of the Gila, - 56

" VI. — Brick Garvey's Inquest, 66

Book II. A Denver Belle

Chapter VII. — Diary of a Western Debutante, 84

" VIII.— Mrs. Marvin, of New York, - 88

IX.— The " Baby " Mine, - - 95

" X. — A Bursted Speculation, - 107

" XI. — An Evening on Fifth Avenue, 115 s XII. — Madame Lamere's Academy for

Young Ladies, - '• 123

" XIII. — An American Lord, - • - 139

" XIV — Pete Enters Society, > - :•->,' 3

* XV.— Little Gussr'e'£ Razzle-dazzle, « 767

VI CONTENTS.

Book III. Miss Somebody Of Somewhere

PAGE

Chapter XVI.— Lord Avonmere's Ghost, - 181

" XVII.— ' : Darn me if it ab/i Pete ! " 192

XVIII. — An Episode of the Patriarchs, 203

" XIX.— The Bogus Eassington, - 215

" XX.—" Dear Gal— do Something for

her Some Day," - - - 227 " XXI. — She shall Remember ! - 239

" XXII.—" Not till I have a Name ! " - 247

" XXIII.— Mrs. Warburton's Circus, - 260

" XXIV. — An International Bride, - 276

H XXV -Happy Cowboy ! - - .288

BOOK I. A College Cowboy, chapter I

THE LAST KICK OF THE HARVARD-YALE FOOT-BALL

MATCH.

The game is drawing to a close !

It is the contest of the season, the foot-ball match between Yale and Harvard.

The shivering spectators are trying to keep themselves warm with enthusiasm. There are only some seven hundred of them, for the day is a miserable one, and every undergraduate of Harvard who looks on this game and sports the crimson does so despite the frowns of his faculty ; and every student from Yale who has come to Boston to wear his cherished blue and cry his college cry has hanging over his head the promise of suspension from the authorities of the old Connecticut seat of learning.

Besides, in 1878, college foot-ball had not reached the popularity that has come to it with advancing years. The dons of the universities frowned upon the sport, the public gazed on it with partial indifference ; and there were no crowded ovals and but little of the attendant beauty and fashion that give to great college games the brilliancy and excitement that have come upon them in the last few yearg,

But every man-jack of these foot-ball pioneers, spectators or players, are devotees of the sport and their colleges.

They have come from Harvard to the Boston base-ball grounds in omnibuses, street-cars, and private turn^ outs, singing their time-worn ditties, in spite of their faculty, who have prevented their playing this match on their own college field, because one of their team is sus. pended and cannot step on university soil.

They have come from Yale by train, singing that old-time glee with which the Sophs used to taunt the Freshes into the annual class foot-ball scrimmages that called the beauties of New Haven to the State House steps, Chapel Street, and the hotel balcony to see the great class contests that have now degenerated into class rushes.

This ditty half the undergraduates now suppose applies to their professors, and consequently sing this year with additional fervor :

" Let them come on, the b^se-born crew, Each soil-stained churl, alack !

What gain they but a splitten skull, A sod for their base back ! "

Only the distance from New Haven to the Boston base-ball grounds being much greater than the distance from Cambridge to that point, the Harvard partisans greatly exceed in numbers the Yale delegation. So it is with the girls, who, being Boston ones, wear crimson in some aggressive form and shout Harvard Rahs ! — all save one, a little maiden of about twelve, who has a blue ribbon in her hat, and enthusiastically swings a blue parasol over her pretty head whenever Yale makes a telling play.

All through the long game that is even now drawing to a close she has kept her eyes on one of the blue half-backs ; in every scrimmage and every rush her gaze has followed him, as if upon his prowess alone depended the fate of the contest.

Were she older, one might suppose her his sweetheart, for her blue eyes have love in them of some kind, and the figure she is gazing on might well inspire admiration, even passion ; for its physical development is superb both as regards its graceful activity and direct strength.

and it is surmounted by a head and face which are not only beautiful but intellectual. While playing, though his great muscles work his lithe limbs like those of an animated giant, his bright eyes also flash with excited idea — he fights his college battle not alone with his body but with his head ; and head is the only thing that will settle this contest now, for both sides have tried brute strength time and again without avail.

The little lady's relationship to the Yale half-baok is not long undetermined. Whenever Harvard makes a telling play and Cambridge cries fill the air, and the crimson color is flaunted on high, she gives a Yale yell with all the power of youthful lungs, and waving her blue parasol in the faces of the lovers of magenta, shouts out : " Just you wait and see my brother kick ! "

This aggressiveness angers a Harvard girl, who whispers to her next neighbor : " Who is that little blue fiend ? " •

"Fiend!" answers the other. "She's worse, she's a traitor ! She's Bessie Everett, and lives on Beacon Street."

" A Boston girl a vale girl ? " whispers the first, overcome by this awful thought.

" Yes, and her brother's that nasty Yale creature who scrimmages so fearfully — the one who's just downed Blanchard. Ain't he horrid ? "

" Yes, and he's downed another one ! " cries Bessie, whose pretty ears have caught this conversation. " And he'll down some more— Y ! A ! L ! E !— YALE ! "

But here her voice is drowned by the tumult of the grand stand. Aided by the wind that is blowing with them, the blues have got the ball well into the crimson territory, and are now fighting like giants for goal or touch-down, while their opponents are struggling with equal will and vigor to get the ball out of bounds and so gain time, for in two short minutes the second three-quarters of an hour will have passed and the game will be over.

So far neither college has gained a point, though by a wedge rush Yale had made a touch-down in the first half, which had not been allowed, as it had been gained twenty seconds or so after the forty-five minutes for play had expired.

ro MISS NOBODY OF NOWHH'IXE,

That half the wind had been against them. This half it is in their favor ; and now, thinking themselves vobbed by the umpire's watch, and remembering that the blue this year has been beaten both at base-ball and regatta by the crimson, they are desperately fighting to make the slight advantage they have productive of a football victory ; — with only two short minutes in which to do it.

But now a mighty though discordant noise comes from the upholders of the blue.

Some cry : " Kick it ! kick it quick J''

Others yell : " Run, Everett, run ! " for the little girl's brother has caught the ball from a fair kick by one of the Harvard backs.

This, though apparently an accident, is really the result of thought quick as instinct.

He had noted the leather sphere going to one of the Harvard half-backs, celebrated for his long kicks, and therefore judged he would propel the ball with his foot ; not run with it, and attempt to dodge the rushers waiting to tackle and down him. Consequently Everett had sprung for the territory where he thought a good drop kick would plant the ball, and guessing correctly, has made a fair catch of the sphere and so holds it, the Harvard goal-posts right in front of him, but many a long yard away.

He doesn't wait for the advice of the grand stand whether he shall kick the ball or run with it. To win this game he knows he must do both, for no human being can drive that ball over the Harvard goal at the distance he is from it.

As the crowd is yc'ling he is running swiftly forward, the crimson rushers and half-backs hurrying to tackle and down him.

Can he get near enough and kick sure enough and strong enough to send the sphere between those two distant goal-posts and over their cross-bar before he is overwhelmed ?

It looks impossible !

On one side comes Blanchard, the Harvard half-back, to seize and throw him ; on the other, Perry, the rusher, to tackle hirn round body or limb — low if he can, high if he must, but savage any way. Behind these, others

MISS NOBODY OF NOWHERE. II

of the crimson are hurrying ; while Wetherby, one of the Harvard backs (they had three in those days), is almost in front of him, well down by the goal, but charging like a locomotive ; for they mean to roll Phil Everett in the mud and pile half a dozen rushers on top of him, to slug him, crush the wind out of his body, and leave him battered and bruised, weak and windless, rather than he shall get a fair kick at Harvard goal on this last minute of a game that may be drawn.

There is only one Yale rusher to aid him. Lamb is on his right and will tackle Blanchard. Noting this, Everett runs more to the right, and so farther from Perry, and dodging him, speeds on with the Harvard rusher at his heels.

He has gained ten yards ; a herculean kick may now reach goal. "Will he have time to make it ?

Even now he feels the breath of the Harvard rusher on the back of his neck and dare not stay, so speeds on.

But suddenly he hears a Yale yell — the Mercury of their rush line has come up with winged feet at a sprinting pace, and springing on Perry, has thrown an arm around his neck ; then jumping back, has thus jerked the crimson rusher to the earth with his head half wrung off his body.

Then Everett knows he has just time to kick before Wetherby, the Harvard back, will be upon him.

He drops the ball, and kicking rather high to give the favoring wind time to do its work, and also to avoid any chance of catch from Wetherby, smites the ball with his foot, giving it every pound of weight and ounce of power in his mighty body.

The sphere flies from the ground, the Harvard back makes a wild spring for it, but it is eight inches above his grasp and sailing over his head as it gradually rises in the air.

Then both teams and spectators gaze upon it, and there is silence.

The ball goes straight as an arrow for the goal-posts, but making its curve, seems to falter and have scarce strength enough to reach, the distance is so great ; then, caught, perhaps, by a stronger gust of wind, it gains new power and shoots over the cross-bar and between the goal-posts, while up to Heaven goes a Yale yell that might wake the seven sleepers, and the air becomes azure with banners, while the little girl waves her blue parasol and cries : " Didn't I tell you just to wait and see my big brother kick ! "

But no one answered her taunts— the Harvard maidens are crushed lilies now.

The ball is put in play again, but before any effort of the crimsons can retrieve their fortunes, time is called, and Harvard stands beaten by a single goal.

So they all turn to leave the grounds, little Bessie Everett humming a Yale ditty and gazing contemptuously at the crushed young ladies who wear the crimson.

She has not made half a dozen steps from her seat on the grand staad when she cries out suddenly : "Why, Mr. Van Beekman, have you come to take me to my brother ? Wasn't Phil's kick lovely ? " and holds out her little hand to a Yale undergraduate who is pressing toward her in the crush.

"Lovely? It was real agitating — I actually clapped my hands ! " cries this creature, who is very, little, and is arrayed most strikingly in azure shirt, collar, and cuffs, with a blue scarf around his neck, a blue flower in his buttonhole, and exquisite blue gloves on his dainty hands. Curiously enough, he sports a single eyeglass and knickerbockers, for in the year 1378 American gentlemen still thought they might be considered gentlemen without affecting the fads of English costume or manner. " I'm so excited I think I shall go in for athletics myself ! " he babbles on.

" Yes, they would improve you awfully ! " remarks Bessie, with the frankness of childhood, taking a sly but scornful glance at Van Beekman's diminutive calves, that are ludicrously exhibited by his knickerbockers.

" Awh, glad you agree with me. And what do you think of my Yale get-up ? My tailor was excited over it. You see I'm blue all over."

" It would be simply perfect if you only had an eyeglass to match," cries Bessie.

" An eyeglass to match ? "

" Yes, a blue one."

" A blue eyeglass ! Oh ! by Jove, that is a fetching idea. That will be an eye-opener. I'll order one for the Princeton affair next week. A blue eyeglass ! By George, you're a genius, Miss Bessie ! " he ejaculates, producing a diminutive pocket-book and jotting down the article under discussion.

He has scarcely time to finish this when Miss Everett, who is of an impetuous disposition, grabs his arm and shouts, for the hum of the grand stand is still very loud : " Why don't you take me to my brother, as you said you would, Mr. Augustus de Punster Van Beekman ? "

A minute or two after this they are both gazing on the Yale half-back, who, having got into citizen's dress, is nursing a very black eye, for the slugging and scrimmaging, according to the custom of that day, had been something awful.

He is standing up, like a stag at bay, surrounded by a crowd of Yale undergraduates, who every now and again make frantic rushes at him and embrace and squeeze him as if they loved him — which they do, for Phil Everett has this day made one of those phenomenal plays that put a man's name high up in college annals, and are told of, around the campus, by students long after their hero has passed from university life, till they become as college household words.

Notwithstanding the boisterous attentions of his surrounders, the young man is looking very proud and happy, for the captain of his team, another giant like himself, has just given him an awful squeeze and whispered : " You've done a great thing for Yale foot-ball this day, old fellow ! "

And so he has, for from that time to this, when the blue has met the crimson or the black and orange, and the scrimmage has been most savage, and the charging most furious, many a Yale rusher has tackled a little harder, and many a Yale back has kicked a ■iitle longer, as the memory of Everett's winning goal has come into his mind to fire his heart, amid the cries of foot-ball partisans and dust of foot-ball battle.

For Everett's kick was the first of those extraordinary exhibitions of strength and skill that, followed up by " Lamar's run " and the phenomenal playing of Camp and Moffat, and later on, Beecher and Bull, and Ames and Poe, have made college foot-ball what it now is, when beauty, wealth, and fashion by thousands crowd college fields and ovals to see Yale, Harvard, and Prince. ton fight like students and demons to carry the crimson or blue or black and orange to victory and glory.

There is no such crowd on this day of Everett's kick, though the Yale men about him make up for lack of numbers by abundance of enthusiasm. He puts them off, however, by saying : '• Look out, fellows, here's a lady."

"A lady ! " they cry, all giving back.

Then one suddenly says, rather contemptuously : « Why, it's a child ! "

But another laughs: "Ey George! she was the only Yale girl on the ground. I saw her wave that blue parasol every time we downed the magenta."

Then one of the team suddenly cries : " Why, she's Phil's sister ! " for the little lady has visited her brother at Yale the preceding term, and has been petted and made much of by most of the athletic set, having had the supreme honor and bliss of feeling the muscle of the stroke of the Yale boat, among the crew of which Everett pulled the bow oar.

So the crowd make way for her, and in a moment she is in her brother's arms, kissing him and telling him how proud she is of him, and how she has cried out for him and taunted the Harvard girls with him ; and that she loves him and is sure he can kick further than any man in the world.

This probably makes the giant happy, for he loves his little sister very dearly, and there is a smile on his face as he kisses her. But suddenly the look becomes a troubled one as she whispers in his ear : " If mother were only here for me to tell her all about it."

A moment after his face grows even more serious as she babbles on: " Phil, you must see father before you go back to Yale. He's awfully angry at you about something."

" About what ? " asks the young man, uneasily.

" I don't know exactly ; but he got a letter this morning — I think it was from England, because the butler said it was foreign — and when he read it he went on awful about you and forbid my coming to see you play."

" So you've disobeyed father and got yourself into trouble on my account ? " mutters Everett with a slight sigh.

" Oh ! I'd do it over again every time to see you kick," returns the little girl, giving her brother another hug.

But this interview is suddenly broken in upon. With a kind of simultaneous emotion, the crowd of Yale men, that has gradually been growing larger about Phil, make a rush at him, and though he struggles good-humoredly and cries out he won't have it, they pick him up, and singing a wild college glee, carry him in triumph out cf the place and deposit him on the sidewalk.

Whereupon the Irish door-keeper of the base-Dall grounds, becoming inspired by Yale sentiment and Yale victory, and getting his colors mixed, joins in with " The Green above the Red," and calls out : " Down with the Hairvards and the English, and all who float that bloody color ! "

This raises a laugh, and taking advantage of it Phil hurries his sister into her carriage, that has been waiting for the little lady ; then, stepping in himself, says to the coachman : " Home ! "

As he drives off, the crowd cheer him and give a Yale yell ; and even as he smiles back at them and calls out he's going to New Haven with them on the evening train his face becomes so gloomy and disturbed that his sister cries at him : " What are you so black about, Phil ? " then suddenly whispers : " Is it mother ? " and clings to him.

But he only answers her by a caress that is half a sigh, and goes into silent meditation till the brougham draws up in front of one of the handsomest residences on Beacon Street, both as regards house and location. It is a spacious brown-stone facing and overlooking the beautiful botanical gardens, from which, in the autumn, it receives the perfumes of myriad flowers and shrubs.

Telling his sister to run upstairs and he'll see her before he goes, he turns to the servant who has opened the door and says : " Father in, Thomas ? "

"Yes, sir," answers the man. " He's been asking for you ever since he heard you'd ccme from New Haven to-day."

" Very well, I'll see him now," mutters the young man, and steps into the library with a very so?emn face to meet his father, Robert Everett, one of Boston's financial magnates.

This gentleman is as unlike hfe son as a nervous gray fox-terrier is to a mastiff ; his manner is quick, snappy, fidgety, save at sundry intervals, when he draws himself up and assumes the old-fashioned dignity of a past generation. He is evidently in a fearful humor, and greets his son with no more kindly words of welcome than a savage " So you've got a black eye, eh ? Been fighting again, sir ? "

To this Phil answers respectfully, though his other eye becomes red with passion and his lips tremble, showing a struggle for self-control : " I've not been fighting again, for I never fight. This black eye is a souvenir of the foot-ball match of to-day."

" And what's that but fighting — a mere excuse to punch each other's heads off in sections ? The faculty think so also ; they forbade this match, I'm told, and threatened suspension to all who played ! " cries the old man.

"Yes, sir."

" And yet you performed in it ? "

"The faculty '11 come round all right."

" But 7" won't ! " says the father, grimly. Then he suddenly cries out : " Who won ? "

" Yale ! "

" And you helped them ? "

"I did my best, and, I think, my share."

" Ah ! came here to disgrace your native town, Boston, by beating its college, Harvard, and holding it up to ridicule. For this you defy your own professors and risk expulsion and disgrace to my name — do you hear me, sir ? — my name ! " And the old gentleman, working himself up to a sexagenarian fury, goes into a long rigmarole of invective, pacing the floor with rapid footsteps, while the young man gazes at him with a little sneer of contempt, though he is nervously chewing the end of his brown mustache.

At last from want of brea !->_ the elder man gives the younger one a chance to spea.'. Then Phil Everett says quietly: "This attack on me a-d foot-ball and my college is not the reason of your anger. Suppose you give me the true cause, father."

"Then, if you will have it," cries the senior Everett, as if he had been anxious to save his son and is only forced to revelation by the young man's importunity, " here it is — from England." And opening a drawer in his desk, he produces a letter.

The document is from London, and signed by Messrs.

Shamerstein, Abrahamoff & Co. , Bankers. It briefly asks for payment of a bill endorsed by Philip E. T. Everett, the paper having gone to protest ; and states that it has been placed in their correspondent's hands in Boston for collection.

" I took up that note to-day — look at it ! " cries the father, producing from his pocket-book an I. O. U. for ^400, dated some three months previous, signed by one John Cc'cuhoun Heather, and endorsed by Philip E. T. Everett.

Then he remarks savagely : " What do you say to that?"

" I say," cries Phil, " that I never received one farthing of that money. I had met Lord John Heather, and found him a perfect gentleman. I endorsed simply as a matter of accommodation. Heather has suddenly been called to India and must have forgotten the matter in the hurry of departure. He is an officer in the Scotch Fusileer Guards, and probably — like most men of his class — careless as regards business. I was notified of the protest and sent five hundred dollars on account. I have written to Heather, and know that paper will ultimately be paid by him."

" All right ; inform me when his lordship is ready to honor his signature and I'll be very happy to transfer the note," remarks the elder Everett grimly. " At present I have charged it to your account ; and this with other drafts gives you only five hundred dollars to go through your senior year."

" I'll get along with that," remarks Phil with a «vince. Then he says hopefully : " But Heather will doubtless make it good before long ; I'm confident of his being an honorable gentleman."

"You're welcome to your belief in your lord," sneers the father. But here he comes to the true gist of the matter ; his face gets white with rage, and he cries out : " How did you come to be in London this summer ? and where did you pick up your aristocrat ? "

" Lord John Heather," says the young man rapidly, " is a friend of my moth — " Here he suddenly bites ti-'iS word in two and swallows the latter part of it.

" A friend of your mother's ! Don't try to dodge ttu word ! " yells the old man. growing livid. " Then it is l8 MISS NOBODY OF NOWHERE.

as I guessed the instant I saw this cursed paper. When I thought you salmon-fishing in Labrador last summer you had gone over to England to see your mother."

" You guessed right," says the son, with a pale face but determined voice. " I went by the Allen line from Quebec."

" Despite my orders not to visit that wo "

" I'll trouble you not to say anything against my mother," whispers the young man. "If you do, I'll — " But he says no more, for his father cries out : " And you, Phil, my son, have turned your back on me ! You — yon — you ! " i..nd sinks down with tears of mixed rage and agony in i .s old eyes.

Looking at him, the son turns over in his mind the following facts : His father, an old man of sixty-five, made irritable by the strange combination of sensitive nerves and Puritanical nature ; his mother, still young at forty, who loves fashion, pleasure, and gayety, and, worst of all in her husband's eyes, does not hesitate to lavish his large fortune on the same. These two gradually drawing apart, until they have reached a practical separation. They have no grounds for divorce, save incompatibility of temper and uncongenial dispositions.

The mother spending a great portion of her time in Europe, the father striving to make his two children take his part in the family quarrel — to alienate their affections from their mother.

It is this thought that makes the son gaze at his father sternly ; but as he looks, the tears in the old man's eyes softei him. lie says quietly : " You can never turn my face from my mother's love. You know that, father ! Best give it up ; let me honor you and her together. I shall do the best I can this year with my allowance. Good-by." And leaving the room, he goes upstairs to make some preparations for his return to New Haven.

The old gentleman looks after his departing son, and after a time sighs out : " Yes, I know that ; Phil '11 never give up his mother for me ; but he still honors me, loves me as his father. I'll — I'll — make up what money to him he loses by his boyish endorsement of that lordling's paper."

A softer and more paternal feeling comes into his heart, and all would be well did not at this moment

Bessie come running in, crying : "Where's Phil, papa ? " and then looking round, whimpers : " Oh, he can't have gone without bidding me good-by ! "

" You knew he was here ? " says the senior Everett, surprised.

" Of course ; I came home with him from the match." Here remembering her father's command, she stops very suddenly and her pretty face gets red.

" So — you — went against my orders ! Are all my children to disobey me ? " cries the old man, looking in away that would frighten Bessie had she not been petted and spoiled and is now about to show it.

" Oh," she says airily, thinking to carry off this situation as she has done a dozen similar ones, and not knowing her father's present nervous irritation, " I didn't suppose you meant what you said."