TEEVAN AS SPECIAL PROVIDENCE
Ewing was delighted by an invitation from the little man to dine. They
had reached the avenue after walking in silence through a side street.
Such moments were rare with Teevan. Not often did he fail of speech,
even in his periods of calculation. But this was a moment requiring nice
adjustments. The suggestion about dinner came as they paused at the
corner.
"If you'd like to have me I'd be mighty glad," responded Ewing.
They turned toward Ninth Street, and Ewing told of his hour at Mrs.
Lowndes', scarce conscious of Teevan's questioning, for the little man
probed with an air of discreet condolence that would have won a far more
reticent talker. Ewing was gratified by this attention from a man who
knew the world of cities, and whose mind must usually be occupied with
affairs of importance. He felt himself drawn to Teevan by bonds of
sympathy that tightened momentarily.
"My dear mother-in-law is a sentimental thing," the little man confessed
with a delicate intimation of apology. "She makes any sad tale her own.
The theater affects her, the woes of stage creatures, quite as you tell
me your own very human little story did. My arrival must have saved you
from one of her rather absurd manifestations. She's a dear old soul,
with quantities of temperament, but she recovers with amazing facility,
I'm bound to say. If you met her to-morrow she'd likely freeze you with
a nod."
Ewing was not sorry to hear this, though he thought it hardly polite to
say so.
When they reached the house in Ninth Street Teevan ushered in his guest
with a charming hospitality.
"Come to the library. The man will bring you an _aperitif_ while I
escape from this accursed frock coat. Not a word about your own dress! I
took you as you were--but a jacket for me, if you'll pardon it." A
servant entered in answer to his ring.
"Sherry and bitters, Farrish, and Mr. Ewing will dine with us. Is my son
in?"
"Mr. Alden is dining out, sir."
"All the better, my boy. We shall be the chummier for Alden's absence.
Make the house yours while I change. There are the evening papers; or
perhaps you'll be interested by those cabinet bits--jades and scarabs
and junk of that sort; a few fairish pieces of Greek glass--that Tanagra
isn't bad, nor those Limoges enamels. The netsukes and sword guards are
rather good Japanese bits, and there are one or two exquisite etchings
on ivory--_un instant, n'est-ce pas?_"
Ewing lay back in his chair and sipped the sherry when it came. His
enjoyment of the room's ensemble was too nearly satisfying to require
examination of it by detail. It was a room of discreet and mellowed
luxury, with an air of jaunty ripeness that distinguished its composer.
The chairs solicited, the walls soothed, the broken light illumined
perfectly without dazzling. He was thrilling agreeably to his host's
evident interest in him when the latter returned, beaming with a smile
of rare good-fellowship.
They were presently at table in a dining room whose plain old mahogany
and thin silver produced, like the library, an impression of finished
luxury without flaunt. The dinner itself possessed an atmosphere of
sophistication, a temperament, even. It sated the exigent appetite of
Ewing--his luncheon with Sydenham had been a mere adventure in
meagerness--and sated without cloying, but it was more than food to him.
As he ate, and drank of a burgundy whose merit he was ill qualified to
appraise, he was conscious of a real fascination growing within him for
the man who favored him with so distinguished a notice; who talked,
seemingly, with the same nice care to please him that he would have
exercised for a tableful of more difficult guests.
Nor did Teevan lack the parts of a listener. Ewing found himself talking
much and enjoyably. With so tactful a listener, so good a friend, it was
no longer necessary to remember that he was new in this land and
unknowing of its smaller ways. It occurred to him, indeed, as he
reviewed this memorable evening, that he had talked more than his host.
But he was spared the youthful blush at this by remembering that he had
been questioned persistently--"toled," as Ben would have said, with
baits of inquiry. Incredible as it seemed, Teevan wished him to talk and
had neatly made him do so. He felt that the little man must know him
through and through. He had been, of course, a book in large print and
short words, but he was flattered to believe that Teevan had found him
worth opening.
And now he was certain he had discovered the longed-for friend; one soul
had come from the oblivious throng to touch his own, to call him out and
speak him fair. He was companioned by one as likable as he was learned,
by one who meant, it was intimated, to seek every opportunity to
befriend him.
And the need of such a friend became more and more apparent to Ewing as
they sat in the library after dinner over coffee and liqueurs. It was
brought upon him that he had never known his own rashness in braving so
difficult a world with so modest an equipment. The tragedy of failure
was a commonplace in the little man's experience. So many young dreamers
like his guest were rejected after bitter trials. It was an
inconsequential world, whose denizens chased butterflies and too often
permitted sober worth to perish by the wayside.
At times during the evening Ewing had feared a return of that
distressing malady to which his host was subject, but this he was
happily spared.
When he took a reluctant leave it was with two emotions: a fervent
liking for the wise man who had so generously befriended him, and doubt
of himself, the first he had known. It came like an icy blast out of
summer warmth and shine.
Teevan listened for the door to close on his guest. When he heard this
he sank into his chair and chuckled gaspingly. Presently he drank a
glass of brandy, smiled in remembering pleasure, lighted a cigarette,
and took his post on the hearth rug, his eyes dancing elfishly, his lips
moving.
His son found him so an hour later, for the little man was tireless even
when, lacking an audience, he merely dramatized his own reflections.
Seeing him to be familiarly engaged, Alden Teevan would have withdrawn
with a careless, half-contemptuous nod, but his father detained him with
a gesture, and a sudden setting of his face into purposeful hardness.
"Sit down." He looked into the hall, then closed the door and faced his
son. The latter regarded him with coolly impertinent interest.
"You'd make a ripping conspirator in a melodrama, Randy. What you going
to do now--steal the will?"
Teevan laughed grimly. He crossed back to the hearth rug and took a
fresh cigarette, which he lighted with studious deliberation. His words
followed swiftly upon the first exhalation of smoke, and his eyes
fastened venomously on his son's.
"I'll give you a morsel to jest with--conspirator, indeed!--yes, and a
will. See if that facile wit of yours is up to it, my bonny stripling."
He played with his moment, drawing on the cigarette with leisurely
relish, and gazing into the smoke with eyes of an absorbed visionary.
"Well?" The young man yawned ostentatiously.
"You missed dining with your brother this evening. He was good enough to
break bread at my table."
The young man took a cigarette from the lacquered bowl at his side and
lighted it with the same deliberation his father had shown.
"Really? I didn't know you had another son."
"Thank God I haven't--but your mother had, and that precious sniveling
grandmother of yours has another grandson. You might recall that when
you chatter of melodrama--and wills. I believe her estate is not one
you'd care to divide."
"What rot are you gibbering with those monkey airs of yours?"
"Delicate as ever in your raillery! Perhaps you think I'm drunk. Perhaps
I am. But I dropped in on your grandmother this afternoon in time to
prevent her clasping that nameless whelp to her breast. A lovely bit I
spoiled, my merry-andrew!--tears and fondlings to-night, a codicil
to-morrow. I'm none too sure there'd have been a codicil, though.
Likelier a new will--'give, devise, and bequeath the sum of one dollar
to my grandson Alden Teevan, who has already wheedled me out of more
than was good for him, and the residue of my estate, both real and
personal, to my beloved grandson, Gilbert Denham Ewing----'"
"Ewing! That chap Nell Laithe brought back with her--that rustic
lout----"
"Have I won your attention, lad? Another item I chance to recall--permit
me, since you've mentioned the lady's name--have you caught the look of
her eye as it rests upon the creature--how it follows him, runs to him,
hangs upon him with sweet tenacity? Have you felt the glow in her voice
as she speaks to him? A woman of the world, young, tender, romantic,
stormed by this Galahad of the hills, who first wins her solicitude by
his helplessness, and then, before the lady quite knows it, coerces her
whole being by sheer masculine dominance. Ah, you haven't read
that--only enough of it to puzzle you, perhaps enrage you. You haven't
your father's eyes. I read it all in three glances: one at him and two
at her. Decidedly, you've not your father's eyes."
"Nor his love of many words. So that's the son of my mother, of the
woman who failed to adore you after a brief but heroic effort?"
"Likewise, I dare say, the lover of a woman who will henceforth fail to
appraise you at anything like your extraordinary worth. Such blind
things they are, eh, my boy? She regards the two of you superficially,
_bien entendu_, and hence to your prejudice. There's a likeness between
you, the same cast of face, even a likeness of voice, and your noses are
identical--the nose of that woman--but the differences are all in his
favor. You have grace of a drawing-room sort, a certain boudoir polish
of manner, but his face is fresher, kinder, quicker of sympathy, more
compelling, and there's that out-of-doors look in his eye, the look of
readiness and power. You know what that sort of strength means with the
pretty animals."
"You speak bitterly--but then, you've competed with that sort."
"My unhappy infant! You'd at least have found a barren sort of dignity
in actual competition. As it is----"
"You got her by a trick, I've heard, from the man who took her away from
you when she'd found you out."
"Tell that to your grandmother--it may help you out of some money."
"Stop it, governor! I'll quit if you will. Come!" He spoke with a drop
of the voice, and lifted a hand in appeal.
"When you like--I've wasted no words."
"It's true, all you've said? Grandmother knows?"
"Thirty seconds later and I'd have had to bless the pair."
"And now?"
"It's safe for the present. She forgot. She'll remember to-morrow. I'd
trust him back there then. She'd see only an obscene excrescence."
"It's a pleasant situation!"
"It's hellish! Can you imagine _my_ feelings? You've touched on them
with your graceful, filial banter."
"What will you do?"
"'What will you do?'" He mimicked the other with a snarl. "Well, I begin
by having him to dine. I study him, I win him. I have him now. He will
dine with me other times. I'm not so sure he won't come to reverence me.
Oh, it's an ideal situation! Damn it! How they fall! _We_ couldn't
contrive them half so cunningly. The fool hath said in his heart 'There
is no God'--a fool, indeed! There is a God, and He has a devil in Him,
or He couldn't have given me this to play out. I have him, I tell you,
her son and his son, think of it--her lover's son that they both
loved--served up to me!"
"What can you do with him?"
"_Do_ with him?" The elder man eyed his son for a long minute, then
dropped into a chair, and for an interval the young man pursued his
rather uncomfortable reflections in silence. At last he broke this with
another query. As there was no response, and his father's face was
turned away, he rose and sauntered in front of him. The eyes met his
musingly, and he saw that the mouth was fixed in a rather hideous
smile.