A MORNING’S MAIL
Sanford dropped into a brown leather chair, and Sam, with the fawning
droop of a water-spaniel, placed the morning paper before him, moved a
small table nearer, on which his master could lay the morning’s mail
as it was opened, adjusted the curtains so as to keep the glare from
his paper, and with noiseless tread withdrew to the kitchen. Whatever
the faults of this product of reconstruction might have been,—and Sam
had many,—neglect of Sanford’s comfort was not one of them.
According to his lights he was scrupulously honest. Although he
dressed with more care on Sunday afternoons than his master,—generally
in that gentleman’s cast-off clothes, and always in his discarded
neckties and gloves,—smoked his tobacco, purloined his cigars, and
occasionally drank his wine, whenever the demands of his social life
made such inroads on Sanford’s private stock necessary to maintain a
certain prestige among his ebonized brethren, he invariably drew the
line at his master’s loose change and his shirt-studs. This was due,
doubtless, to some drops of blood, trickling through his veins and
inherited from an old family butler of an ancestor, which, while they
permitted him the free use of everything his master ate, drank, and
wore,—a common privilege of the slave days,—debarred him completely
from greater crimes.
His delinquencies—all of them perfectly well known to Sanford—never
lost him his master’s confidence: he knew the race, and never expected
the impossible. Not only did he place Sam in charge of his household
expenditures, but he gave him entire supervision as well of his rooms
and their contents.
In these apartments Sam took the greatest pride. They were at the top
of one of those old-fashioned, hip-roofed, dormer-windowed houses
still to be found on Washington Square, and consisted of five rooms,
with dining-room and salon.
Against the walls of the salon stood low bookcases, their tops covered
with curios and the hundred and one knickknacks that encumber a
bachelor’s apartment. Above these again hung a collection of etchings
and sketches in and out of frames, many of them signed by fellow
members of the Buzzards, a small Bohemian club of ten who often held
their meetings here.
Under a broad frieze ran a continuous shelf, holding samples of half
the pots of the universe, from a Heidelberg beer-mug to an East Indian
water-jar; and over the doors were grouped bunches of African arrows,
spears, and clubs, and curious barbaric shields; while the centre of
the room was occupied by a square table covered with books and
magazines, ashtrays, Japanese ivories, and the like. Set in among them
was an umbrella-lamp with a shade of sealing-wax red. At intervals
about the room were smaller tables, convenient for decanters and
crushed ice, and against the walls, facing the piano, were wide divans
piled high with silk cushions, and near the window which opened on a
balcony overlooking the square stood a carved Venetian wedding-chest,
which Sanford had picked up on one of his trips abroad.
Within easy reach of reading-lamp and chair rested a four-sided
bookcase on rollers, filled with works on engineering and books of
reference; while a high, narrow case between two doors was packed with
photographs and engravings of the principal marine structures of our
own and other coasts. It was at once the room of a man of leisure and
a man of work.
Late as was the season, a little wood fire smouldered in the open
fireplace,—one of the sentiments to which Sanford clung,—while
before it stood the brown leather chair in which he sat.
“I forgot to say that Captain Bell will not be here to breakfast, Sam,
but Mr. Hardy is coming,” said Sanford, suddenly recollecting himself.
“Yaas, sah; everything’s ready, sah,” replied Sam, who, now that the
telegram had been dispatched and the morning papers and letters
delivered, had slipped into his white jacket again.
Sanford picked up the package of letters, a dozen or more, and began
cutting the envelopes. Most of them were read rapidly, marked in the
margin, and laid in a pile beside him. There were two which he had
placed by themselves without opening: one from his friend Mrs. Morgan
Leroy, and the other from Major Tom Slocomb, of Pocomoke, Maryland.
Major Slocomb wrote to inform him of his approaching visit to New
York, accompanied by his niece, Miss Helen Shirley, of Kent
County,—“a daughter, sir, of Colonel Talbot Shirley, one of our
foremost citizens, whom I believe you had the honor of meeting during
your never-to-be-forgotten visit among us.”
The never-to-be-forgotten visit was one that Sanford had made the
major the winter before, when he was inspecting the site for a stone
and brush jetty he was about to build for the government, in the
Chesapeake, near those famous estates which the Pocomokian inherited
from his wife, “the widow of Major Talbot, suh.”
During this visit the major had greatly endeared himself to the young
engineer. Under all the Pocomokian’s veneer of delightful mendacity,
utter shiftlessness, and luxurious extravagance, Sanford had
discovered certain qualities of true loyalty to those whom he loved,
and a very tender sympathy for the many in the world worse off than
himself. He had become convinced too that the major’s conversion from
a vagabond with gentlemanly instincts to a gentleman with strong
Bohemian tendencies might easily be accomplished were a little more
money placed at the Pocomokian’s disposal. With an endless check-book
and unlimited overdrafts, settlements to be made every hundred years,
the major would be a prince among men.
The niece to whom the major referred in his letter lived in an
adjoining county with a relative much nearer of kin. Like many other
possessions of this acclimated Marylander, she was really not his
niece at all, but another heritage from his deceased wife. The major
first saw her on horseback, in a neat-fitting riding-habit which she
had made out of some blue army kersey bought at the country store. One
glance at her lovely face, the poise of her head, the easy grace of
her seat, and her admirable horsemanship decided him at once.
Henceforward her name was to be emblazoned on the scroll of his family
tree!
It was not until Sanford had finished the major’s letter that he
turned to that from Mrs. Leroy. He looked first at the circular
postmark to see the exact hour at which it had been mailed; then he
rose from the big chair, threw himself on the divan, tucked a pillow
under his head, and slowly broke the seal. The envelope was large and
square, decorated with the crest of the Leroys in violet wax, and
addressed in a clear, round, almost masculine hand. “My dear Henry,”
it began, “if you are going to the Ledge, please stop at Medford and
see how my new dining-room is getting on. Be sure to come to luncheon
to-morrow, so we can talk it over,” etc., and ended with the hope that
he had not taken cold when he left her house the night before.
It had contained but half a dozen lines, and was as direct as most of
her communications; yet Sanford held it for a long time in his hands,
read and re-read it, looked at the heading, examined the signature,
turned it over carefully, and, placing it in its envelope, thrust it
under the sofa-pillow. With his hands behind his head he lay for some
time in thought. Then taking Mrs. Leroy’s letter from under the
pillow, he read it again, put it in his pocket, and began pacing the
room.
The letter had evidently made him restless. He threw wide the sashes
of the French window which opened on the iron balcony, and looked for
a moment over the square below, where the hard, pen-line drawing of
its trees was blurred by the yellow-green bloom of the early spring.
He turned back into the room, rearranged a photograph or two on the
mantel, and, picking up a vase filled with roses, inhaled their
fragrance and placed them in the centre of the dainty breakfast-table,
with its snowy linen and polished silver, that Sam had just been
setting near him. Reseating himself in his chair, he called again to
the ever watchful darky, who had been following his movements through
the crack of the pantry door.
“Sam.”
“Yaas ’r,” came a voice apparently from the far end of the pantry;
“comin’, sah.”
“Look over the balcony again and see if Mr. Hardy is on his way across
the square. Why! what’s become of the fellow?” he said to himself,
consulting the empire clock with broken columns which decorated the
mantel. “It’s after ten now. I’ll wager Helen wrote him by the same
mail. No wonder he’s late. Let me see! She gets here in three days.
Jack will be out of his head.” And Sanford sighed.
“I ’spec’s dat’s him a-comin’ up now, sah,” Sam called. “I yeared de
downstairs do’ click a minute ago. Here he is, sah,” drawing aside the
curtain that hid the entrance to the outer hall.
“Sorry, old man,” came a voice increasing in distinctness as the
speaker approached, “but I couldn’t help it, I had a lot of letters to
answer this morning, or I should have been on time. It don’t make any
difference to you; it’s your day off.”
“My day off, is it? I was out of bed this morning at six o’clock.
Captain Joe stopped here on his way from the train; he has just left;
and if you had stayed away a minute more, I’d have breakfasted without
you. And that isn’t all. That sloop I’ve been looking for has arrived,
and I go to Keyport to-night.”
“The devil you do!” said Jack, a shade of disappointment crossing his
face. “That means, I suppose, you won’t be back this spring. How long
are you going to be building that lighthouse, anyhow, Henry?”
“Two years more, I’m afraid,” said Sanford thoughtfully. “Breakfast
right away, Sam. Take the seat by the window, Jack. I thought we’d
breakfast here instead of in the dining-room; the air’s fresher.”
Jack opened his coat, took a rose from the vase, adjusted it in his
buttonhole, and spread his napkin over his knees.
He was much the younger of the two men, and his lot in life had been
far easier. Junior partner in a large banking-house down town, founded
and still sustained by the energy and business tact of his father,
with plenty of time for all the sports and pastimes popular with men
of his class, he had not found it a difficult task to sail easily
through life without a jar.
“What do you hear from Crab Island, Jack?” asked Sanford, a sly
twinkle in his eye, as he passed him the muffins.
“They’ve started the new club-house,” said Jack, with absolute
composure. “We are going to run out that extension you suggested when
you were down there last winter.” He clipped his egg lightly, without
a change of countenance.
“Anything from Helen Shirley?”
“Just a line, thanking me for the magazines,” Jack answered in a
casual tone, not the faintest interest betraying itself in the
inflections of his voice. Sanford thought he detected a slight
increase of color on his young friend’s always rosy cheeks, but he
said nothing.
“Did she say anything about coming to New York?” Sanford asked,
looking at Jack quizzically out of the corner of his eye.
“Yes; now I come to think of it, I believe she did say something about
the major’s coming, but nothing very definite.”
Jack spoke as if he had been aroused from some reverie entirely
foreign to the subject under discussion. He continued to play with his
egg, flecking off the broken bits of shell with the point of his
spoon. With all his pretended composure, however, he could not raise
his eyes to those of his host.
“What a first-class fraud you are, Jack!” said Sanford, laughing at
last. He leaned back in his chair and looked at Hardy good-humoredly
from under his eyebrows. “I would have read you Slocomb’s letter,
lying right before you, if I hadn’t been sure you knew everything in
it. Helen and the major will be here next week, and you know the very
hour she’ll arrive, and you have staked out every moment of her time.
Now don’t try any of your high-daddy tricks on me. What are you going
to do next Tuesday night?”
Jack laughed, but made no attempt to parry a word of Sanford’s thrust.
He looked up at last inquiringly over his plate and said, “Why?”
“Because I want you to dine here with them. I’ll ask Mrs. Leroy to
chaperon Helen. Leroy is still abroad, and she can come. We’ll get
Bock, too, with his ’cello. What other ladies are in town?”
Jack’s face was aglow in an instant. The possibility of dining in
Sanford’s room, with its background of rich color and with all its
pretty things that Helen he knew would love so well, lent instant
interest to Sanford’s proposition. He looked about him. He made up his
mind just where he would seat her after dinner: the divan nearest the
curtains was the best. How happy she would be, and how new it would
all be to her! He could have planned nothing more delightful. Then
remembering that Sanford had asked him a question, he recovered
himself and nonchalantly gave the names of several young women he knew
who might be agreeable guests. But after a moment’s reflection he
suggested as a second thought that Sanford leave these details to Mrs.
Leroy. Jack knew her tact, and he knew to a nicety just how many young
girls Mrs. Leroy would bring. The success of bachelor dinners, from
Hardy’s present standpoint, was not dependent upon the attendance of
half a dozen extra young women and _two_ men; quite the reverse.
The date for the dinner arranged, and the wisdom of leaving the list
of guests to Mrs. Leroy agreed upon, the talk drifted into other
channels: the Whistler pastels at Klein’s; the garden-party to be
given at Mrs. Leroy’s country-seat near Medford when the new
dining-room was finished and the roses were in bloom; the opportunity
Sanford might now enjoy of combining business with pleasure, Medford
being a short run from Shark Ledge; the success of Smearly’s last
portrait at the Academy, a photograph of which lay on the table; the
probable change in Slocomb’s fortunes, now that, with the consent of
the insurance company who held the mortgage, he had rented what was
left of the Widow Talbot’s estate to a strawberry planter from the
North, in order to live in New York; and finally, under Jack’s
guidance, back to Helen Shirley’s visit.
When the two men, an hour later, passed into the corridor, Sanford
held two letters in his hand ready to mail: one addressed to Major
Slocomb, with an inclosure to Miss Shirley, the other to Mrs. Morgan
Leroy.
Sam watched them over the balcony until they crossed the square, cut a
double shuffle with both feet, admired his black grinning face in the
mirror, took a corncob pipe from the shelf in the pantry, filled it
with some of Sanford’s best tobacco, and began packing his master’s
bag for the night train to Keyport.