He was thirty-three, agreeable to look at, equipped with as much culture
and intelligence as is tolerated east of Fifth Avenue and west of
Madison. He had a couple of elaborate rooms at the Lenox Club, a larger
income than seemed to be good for him, and no profession. It follows
that he was a pessimist before breakfast. Besides, it's a bad thing for
a man at thirty-three to come to the conclusion that he has seen all the
most attractive girls in the world and that they have been vastly
overrated. So, when a club servant with gilt buttons on his coat tails
knocked at the door, the invitation to enter was not very cordial. He of
the buttons knocked again to take the edge off before he entered; then
opened the door and unburdened himself as follows:
"Mr. Gatewood, sir, Mr. Kerns's compliments, and wishes to know if 'e
may 'ave 'is coffee served at your tyble, sir."
Gatewood, before the mirror, gave a vicious twist to his tie, inserted a
pearl scarf pin, and regarded the effect with gloomy approval.
"Say to Mr. Kerns that I am--flattered," he replied morosely; "and tell
Henry I want him."
"'Enry, sir? Yes, sir."
The servant left; one of the sleek club valets came in, softly sidling.
"Henry!"
"Sir?"
"I'll wear a white waistcoat, if you don't object."
The valet laid out half a dozen.
"Which one do you usually wear when I'm away, Henry? Which is _your_
favorite?"
"Sir?"
"Pick it out and don't look injured, and _don't_ roll up your eyes. I
merely desire to borrow it for one day."
"Very good, sir."
"And, Henry, hereafter always help yourself to my _best_ cigars. Those I
smoke may injure you. I've attempted to conceal the keys, but you will,
of course, eventually discover them under that loose tile on the
hearth."
"Yes, sir; thanky', sir," returned the valet gravely.
"And--Henry!"
"Sir?" with martyred dignity.
"When you are tired of searching for my olivine and opal pin, just find
it, for a change. I'd like to wear that pin for a day or two if it would
not inconvenience you."
"Very good, sir; I will 'unt it hup, sir."
Gatewood put on his coat, took hat and gloves from the unabashed valet,
and sauntered down to the sunny breakfast room, where he found Kerns
inspecting a morning paper and leisurely consuming grapefruit with a
cocktail on the side.
"Hullo," observed Kerns briefly.
"I'm not on the telephone," snapped Gatewood.
"I beg your pardon; how are you, dear friend?"
"_I_ don't know how I am," retorted Gatewood irritably; "how the devil
should a man know how he is?"
"Everything going to the bowwows, _as_ usual, dear friend?"
"_As_ usual. Oh, read your paper, Tommy! You know well enough I'm not
one of those tail-wagging imbeciles who wakes up in the morning singing
like a half-witted lark. Why should I, with this taste in my mouth, and
the laundress using vitriol, and Henry sneering at my cigars?" He yawned
and cast his eyes toward the ceiling. "Besides, there's too much gilt
all over this club! There's too much everywhere. Half the world is
stucco, the rest rococo. Where's that Martini I bid for?"
Kerns, undisturbed, applied himself to cocoa and toasted muffins.
Grapefruit and an amber-tinted accessory were brought for the other and
sampled without mirth. However, a little later Gatewood said: "Well, are
you going to read your paper all day?"
"What you need," said Kerns, laying the paper aside, "is a job--any old
kind would do, dear friend."
"I don't want to make any more money."
"I don't want you to. I mean a job where you'd lose a lot and be scared
into thanking Heaven for carfare. _You're_ a nice object for the
breakfast table!"
"Bridge. I will be amiable enough by noon time."
"Yes, you're endurable by noon time, as a rule. When you're forty you
may be tolerated after five o'clock; when you're fifty your wife and
children might even venture to emerge from the cellar after dinner--"
"Wife!"
"I said wife," replied Kerns, as he calmly watched his man.
He had managed it well, so far, and he was wise enough not to overdo it.
An interval of silence was what the situation required.
"I wish I _had_ a wife," muttered Gatewood after a long pause.
"Oh, haven't you said that every day for five years? Wife! Look at the
willing assortment of dreams playing Sally Waters around town. Isn't
this borough a bower of beauty--a flowery thicket where the prettiest
kind in all the world grow under glass or outdoors? And what do you do?
You used to pretend to prowl about inspecting the yearly crop of posies,
growling, cynical, dissatisfied; but you've even given that up. Now you
only point your nose skyward and squall for a mate, and yowl mournfully
that you never have seen your ideal. _I_ know _you_."
"I never have seen my ideal," retorted Gatewood sulkily, "but I know she
exists--somewhere between heaven and Hoboken."
"You're sure, are you?"
"Oh, _I'm_ sure. And, rich or poor, good or bad, she was fashioned for
me alone. That's a theory of mine; _you_ needn't accept it; in fact,
it's none of your business, Tommy."
"All the same," insisted Kerns, "did you ever consider that if your
ideal does exist somewhere, it is morally up to you to find her?"
"Haven't I inspected every débutante for ten years? You don't expect me
to advertise for an ideal, do you--object, matrimony?"
Kerns regarded him intently. "Now, I'm going to make a vivid suggestion,
Jack. In fact, that's why I subjected myself to the ordeal of
breakfasting with you. It's none of my business, as you so kindly put
it, but--_shall_ I suggest something?"
"Go ahead," replied Gatewood, tranquilly lighting a cigarette. "I know
what you'll say."
"No, you don't. Firstly, you are having such a good time in this world
that you don't really enjoy yourself--isn't that so?"
"I--well I--well, let it go at that."
"Secondly, with all your crimes and felonies, you have one decent trait
left: you really would like to fall in love. And I suspect you'd even
marry."
"There are grounds," said Gatewood guardedly, "for your suspicions. _Et
après?_"
"Good. Then there's a way! I know--"
"Oh, don't tell me you 'know a girl,' or anything like that!" began
Gatewood sullenly. "I've heard that before, and I won't meet her."
"I don't want you to; I don't know anybody. All I desire to say is this:
I do know a way. The other day I noticed a sign on Fifth Avenue:
KEEN & CO.
TRACERS OF LOST PERSONS
It was a most extraordinary sign; and having a little unemployed
imagination I began to speculate on how Keen & Co. might operate, and I
wondered a little, too, that, the conditions of life in this city could
enable a firm to make a living by devoting itself exclusively to the
business of hunting up missing people."
Kerns paused, partly to light a cigarette, partly for diplomatic
reasons.
"What has all this to do with me?" inquired Gatewood curiously; and
diplomacy scored one.
"Why not try Keen & Co.?"
"Try them? Why? I haven't lost anybody, have I?"
"You haven't, precisely _lost anybody_, but the fact remains that you
can't _find somebody_," returned Kerns coolly. "Why not employ Keen &
Co. to look for her?"
"Look for whom, in Heaven's name?"
"Your ideal."
"Look for--for my ideal! Kerns, you're crazy. How the mischief can
anybody hunt for somebody who doesn't exist?"
"You _say_ that she _does_ exist."
"But I can't prove it, man."
"You don't have to; it's up to Keen & Co. to prove it. That's why you
employ them."
"What wild nonsense you talk! Keen & Co. might, perhaps, be able to
trace the concrete, but how are they going to trace and find the
abstract?"
"She isn't abstract; she is a lovely, healthy, and youthful concrete
object--if, as you say, she _does_ exist."
"How can I _prove_ she exists?"
"You don't have to; they do that."
"Look here," said Gatewood almost angrily, "do you suppose that if I
were ass enough to go to these people and tell them that I wanted to
find my ideal--"
"_Don't_ tell them _that_!"
"But how--"
"There is no necessity for going into such trivial details. All you
need say is: 'I am very anxious to find a young lady'--and then describe
her as minutely as you please. Then, when they locate a girl of that
description they'll notify you; you will go, judge for yourself whether
she is the one woman on earth--and, if disappointed, you need only shake
your head and murmur: 'Not _the_ same!' And it's for them to find
another."
"I won't do it!" said Gatewood hotly.
"Why not? At least, it would be amusing. You haven't many mental
resources, and it might occupy you for a week or two."
Gatewood glared.
"You have a pleasant way of putting things this morning, haven't you?"
"I don't want to be pleasant: I want to jar you. Don't I care enough
about you to breakfast with you? Then I've a right to be pleasantly
unpleasant. I can't bear to watch your mental and spiritual
dissolution--a man like you, with all your latent ability and capacity
for being nobody in particular--which is the sort of man this nation
needs. Do you want to turn into a club-window gazer like Van Bronk? Do
you want to become another Courtlandt Allerton and go rocking down the
avenue--a grimacing, tailor-made sepulcher?--the pompous obsequies of a
dead intellect?--a funeral on two wavering legs, carrying the corpse of
all that should be deathless in a man? Why, Jack, I'd rather see you in
bankruptcy--I'd rather see you trying to lead a double life in a single
flat on seven dollars and a half a week--I'd almost rather see you every
day at breakfast than have it come to that!
"Wake up and get jocund with life! Why, you could have all good citizens
stung to death if you chose. It isn't that I want you to make money; but
I want you to worry over somebody besides yourself--not in Wall
Street--a fool and its money are soon parted. But in your own home,
where a beautiful wife and seven angel children have you dippy and close
to the ropes; where the housekeeper gets a rake off, and the cook is
red-headed and comes from Sligo, and the butler's cousin will bear
watching, and the chauffeur is a Frenchman, and the coachman's uncle is
a Harlem vet, and every scullion in the establishment lies, drinks,
steals, and supports twenty satiated relatives at your expense. That
would mean the making of you; for, after all, Jack, you are no
genius--you're a plain, non-partisan, uninspired, clean-built, wholesome
citizen, thank God!--the sort whose unimaginative mission is to pitch in
with eighty-odd millions of us and, like the busy coral creatures,
multiply with all your might, and make this little old Republic the
greatest, biggest, finest article that an overworked world has ever yet
put up! . . . Now you can call for help if you choose."
Gatewood's breath returned slowly. In an intimacy of many years he had
never suspected that sort of thing from Kerns. That is why, no doubt,
the opinions expressed by Kerns stirred him to an astonishment too
innocent to harbor anger or chagrin.
And when Kerns stood up with an unembarrassed laugh, saying, "I'm going
to the office; see you this evening?" Gatewood replied rather vacantly:
"Oh, yes; I'm dining here. Good-by, Tommy."
Kerns glanced at his watch, lingering. "Was there anything you wished to
ask me, Jack?" he inquired guilelessly.
"Ask you? No, I don't think so."
"Oh; I had an idea you might care to know where Keen & Co. were to be
found."
"_That_," said Gatewood firmly, "is foolish."
"I'll write the address for you, anyway," rejoined Kerns, scribbling it
and handing the card to his friend.
Then he went down the stairs, several at a time, eased in conscience,
satisfied that he had done his duty by a friend he cared enough for to
breakfast with.
"Of course," he ruminated as he crawled into a hansom and lay back
buried in meditation--"of course there may be nothing in this Keen & Co.
business. But it will stir him up and set him thinking; and the longer
Keen & Co. take to hunt up an imaginary lady that doesn't exist, the
more anxious and impatient poor old Jack Gatewood will become, until
he'll catch the fever and go cantering about with that one fixed idea in
his head. And," added Kerns softly, "no New Yorker in his right mind can
go galloping through these five boroughs very long before he's roped,
tied, and marked by the 'only girl in the world'--the _only_ girl--if
you don't care to turn around and look at another million girls
precisely like her. O Lord!--precisely like her!"
Here was a nice exhorter to incite others to matrimony.