A gate-legged mahogany table had arrested Miss Utterbourne’s notice.
She calculated its fineness with an eye accurate from long and loving
experience. She became enthusiastic, and finally, smiling excitedly at
the impresario, whispered: “I’m going to _bid_ on it!”
Of course Mr. Curry at once took a step and cleared his throat, gallantly
ready to do the actual bidding for her; but he was surprised to find
himself wonderfully eclipsed by the lady herself, who pressed resolutely
up through the crowd toward the auctioneer, her manner all at once
proclaiming her an adept at this sort of thing.
“Fifty!” she tendered firmly.
“Fifty-five,” countered a man with cold eyes and shiny elbows.
“Sixty!”
She was serene and undaunted, and the opponent withdrew at seventy-five.
“I _got_ it!” she exulted, giving her head a small toss. “And of
course an absurd ‘bargain,’ considering its unusual _size_, though a
less expensive one would have served my _purpose_, if it weren’t that
‘gate-legged’ tables are my special _weakness_!”
He couldn’t conceal his astonishment. “You went after it as though you
made a real business of such things.” And she had another of his fine
smiles.
“Well, you see I _do_—in a _way_!”
“What! A business of bidding at auctions?”
“Oh, no,” she laughed, “my ‘business’ is _apartments_!”
“Apartments!”
She had put on her gold-rimmed nippers, and they straddled her nose in
a humorous, faintly pompous manner. “It’s the only way I can gratify my
_craving_ for rare and ‘intriguing’ _possessions_! You see I take an
apartment, furnish it with all the lovely ‘things’ I couldn’t afford for
_myself_, and then turn the key over to a tenant who will pay me the
_difference_!” Her face displayed tokens of the anxiety which belonged
to an at length pretty involved background of sub-leased domiciles. “Of
_course_,” she confessed, speaking now slowly, almost cosily, “it’s
always a pang to move out, though there’s the new apartment to begin
‘planning,’ and then,” her voice dropping a little and her eyes smiling
in a deliciously sly way behind their friendly nippers, “I sometimes
just _have_ to slip a few things _along_ with me—my tendency is to
‘over-furnish’ anyhow.”
He by no means missed the note of pathos in her brave little scheme; yet
she had assured him, too: “You’d be _surprised_ how settled I manage to
_feel_ in the midst of what, of course, in one sense, doesn’t really
_belong_ to me!”
“That’s the only home you have, then—the home that only lasts until it’s
furnished?”
“Yes,” she slowly admitted, “I’m _afraid_ so. Sometimes there _does_ seem
a good deal of ‘irony’ deep down _underneath_ everything!”
“Ah!” sighed the impresario, though a radiant smile broke through in
spite of him, “no one understands such things better than I. Life’s just
full of irony, isn’t it?—whichever way you turn!”
“My brother, Captain Utterbourne,” she observed, “has all _sorts_ of
subtle theories about it, though I never can remember just how they go
_afterward_, since, you see, he has a way of ‘conveying’ so much and yet
really saying so _little_!”
There was a breath of musing silence between them, and then Mr. Curry’s
eyes lighted suddenly. “You mean—a sea captain?”
“Yes,” she told him, “although I often feel it’s more a _hobby_ with him
than exactly a _profession_.” Her smile was full of humour and a kind of
furtive family loyalty.
“I wonder,” ventured the impresario impulsively, “if your brother would
be willing to help me—that is, give me a little advice....”
“Oh, I _see_!” she cried, quickly catching the drift behind his
eagerness. “About the ‘world tour’! Of course,” she hesitated,
“Christopher is sometimes a trifle _set_ in his ‘ideas’ about how things
ought to be _managed_: but he knows _hundreds_ of ‘seafaring’ men—some
of them really quite _remarkable_; and unless he should get swept _away_
from us on one of his whims of ‘perversity’, I’m _sure_ he could get your
schooner equipped with something more than a coat!”
Curry’s delight was almost speechless. He ardently scribbled his San
Francisco address on one of his cards, and she put it carefully away
inside her bag—a large and complex bag, which the beholder could not but
assume entered conspicuously into the manipulation of a complex existence.