MR. INCOUL GOES OVER THE ACCOUNTS.
There is a saying to the effect that any one who walks long enough in
front of the Grand Hôtel will, in the course of time, encounter all his
acquaintances, past, present and to be. On the second day after the
dinner in the Parc Monceau, Mr. Blydenburg crossed the boulevard. It
was an unpleasant afternoon of the kind which is frequent in the early
winter: the air was damp and penetrating, and the sky presented that
unrelieved and cheerless pallor of which Paris is believed to be the
unique possessor. Mr. Blydenburg’s spirits were affected; he was ill at
ease and inclined to attribute his depression to the rawness of the air
and the blanched sky above him. He was to leave Paris on the morrow,
and he felt that he would be glad to shake its mud from his feet. He
was then on the way to his banker’s to close an account, and as he
trudged along, with an umbrella under his arm and his trousers turned
up, in spite of the prospect of departure he was not in a contented or
satisfied frame of mind.
For many hours previous he had cross-questioned himself in regard
to Incoul. He knew that in speaking out his mind he had done right,
yet he could not help perceiving that right-doing and outspokenness
are not always synonymous with the best breeding. Truth certainly
is attractive, particularly to him who tells it, but one has to be
hospitably inclined to receive it at all times as a welcome guest.
Beside, he told himself, Incoul was a man to whom remonstrance was
irksome, he chafed at it no matter what its supporting truths might
be. Perhaps then it would have been better had he held his tongue.
Incoul was his oldest friend, he could not afford to lose him; at his
time of life the making of new ones was difficult. And yet did he seek
him in a conciliatory mood it would be tantamount to acknowledging
that Incoul had been in the right, and the more he thought the matter
over the more convinced he became that Incoul was in the wrong. Leigh,
he could have sworn, was innocent. The charge that had been brought
against him was enough to make a mad dog blush. It was preposterous on
the face of it. Then, too, the young man had been given no opportunity
to defend himself. The honest-hearted gentleman did not make it plain
to his own mind how Leigh could have defended himself even had the
opportunity been offered, but he waived objections; his faith was firm.
He was enough of a logician to understand that circumstantial evidence,
however strong, is not unrebuttable proof, and he assured himself,
unless the young man confessed his guilt, that he at least would never
believe it.
He was not, therefore, in a contented or satisfied frame of mind; he
was irresolute how to act to Incoul; he did not wish to lose an old
friend and he was physically unable to be unjust to a new one. After
crossing the boulevard he passed the Grand Hôtel and just as he left
the wide portals behind him he saw Mr. Wainwaring with whom two days
before he had dined in the Parc Monceau. He bowed and would have
continued his way, but Mr. Wainwaring stopped him.
“You have heard, have you not?” he asked excitedly, “you have heard
about Mrs. Incoul?”
“Heard what?”
“It appears that on going to bed on Sunday night she turned the gas on
instead of turning it off. They smelled the gas in the hall and tried
to get into the room, but the door was locked; finally they broke it
down. They found her unconscious though still breathing; they worked
over her for five hours, but it was no use.”
Blydenburg grounded his umbrella on the pavement for support. “Good
God!” he muttered. “Good God!”
“Yes,” Mr. Wainwaring continued, “it is terrible! A sweeter girl
never lived. My daughter knew her intimately; she went there this
morning to see her and learned of it at the door. I have just been up
there myself. I thought Incoul might see me, but he couldn’t. Utterly
prostrated I suppose. I can understand that. We all know how devoted he
was. He will never get over it--never.”
Blydenburg still held to his umbrella for support.
“I must go there,” he said.
“Yes, go by all means; he will see you, of course. Poor Incoul! I am
heartily sorry for him. After all, wealth is not happiness, is it?”
At this platitude Blydenburg would have gone, but Mr. Wainwaring had
more news to impart. “You know about young Leigh, Mrs. Manhattan’s
brother, don’t you?” he continued.
Blydenburg looked down at his umbrella in a weary way.
“Yes, I was there,” he answered, “but I don’t believe it.”
“Oh, you mean that affair at the club. Well, it appears that it
is true. From what I make out of the papers, he went to his hotel
afterwards, and took a dose of morphine. It was his only way out of it.
I couldn’t bear him, could you?”
Blydenburg nodded vacantly. “He must have been guilty.”
“As to that there is no doubt. De la Dèche says it is a wonder he was
not caught before. Well, good day; tell Incoul how profoundly grieved
we all are. Good day.”
Presently Blydenburg found himself in a cab. He was a trifle dazed at
what he had heard. He was not brilliant; he was very tiresome at times,
the sort of a man that likes big words and small dictionaries, yet
somehow he was lovable and more human than many far cleverer than he.
To his own misfortune he had a heart, and in disasters like these it
bled. He would have crossed the Continent to bring a moment’s pleasure
to the girl that had been asphyxiated in her bed, and he would have
given his daughter to the man who had been choked down to the grave.
Then, too, as nearly as he could see, he had wronged Incoul and Incoul
was in great grief. As the Urbaine rolled on, his thoughts did not grow
nimbler. In his head was a full, aching sensation; he felt benumbed,
and raised the collar of his coat. Soon the cab stopped before the
house in the Parc Monceau. He had no little set speech prepared; he
wanted merely to take his friend by the hand and let him feel his
sympathy unspoken, but when the footman came in answer to his ring, he
was told that Mr. Incoul could see no one. He went back to his cab. It
had begun to rain, but he did not notice it, and left the window open.
As the cab rolled down the street again, Mr. Incoul, who had been
occupied with the morning paper, sent for the courier.
“Karl,” he said, when the man appeared, “I will go over your accounts.”
THE END.
PARIS, _January-March, 1887_.
[Illustration]
PUBLICATIONS
OF
BENJAMIN & BELL
NO. 744 BROADWAY
NEW YORK
_SUMMER READING._
MR. INCOUL’S MISADVENTURE.
BY EDGAR SALTUS,
_Author of “Balzac: A Study,” “The Anatomy of Negation,”
“The Philosophy of Disenchantment,” etc._
12mo, cloth. Finely printed by Gilliss Brothers & Turnure.
Price, $1.00.
A novel which is sure to be condemned by every one who prefers
platitude to paradox, or tea and toast to truffles and red pepper.
SOCIETY VERSE
BY
AMERICAN WRITERS.
Edited by ERNEST DE LANCEY PIERSON.
12mo, cloth, uncut edges, gilt tops, with ornamental and unique design
on front cover. Elegantly printed on fine paper by the De Vinne Press.
Price, $1.25.
This collection of about eighty poems represents the best _vers de
société_ and dainty lyrics which have appeared in this country. It is
virtually the first representative collection of _vers de société_
by American writers ever published. Some of the contributions appear
for the first time in this volume, and among the forty-three writers
represented are Thomas Bailey Aldrich, H. C. Bunner, Helen Gray Cone,
Robert Grant, Clinton Scollard, Oscar Fay Adams, Walter Learned, Bessie
Chandler, Harrison Robertson, Charles Henry Lüders, Ruth Hall, A. E.
Watrous, Samuel Minturn Peck, and Louise Imogene Guiney.
FIRST EDITION OF AN ORIGINAL WORK BY LEIGH HUNT.
THE BOOK OF THE SONNET.
Comprising an Essay on the Cultivation, History and Varieties of the
species of poem called the Sonnet, with a selection of English Sonnets,
with copious notes, now first published from the original MSS. of Leigh
Hunt. An Essay on American Sonnets and Sonneteers, with a Selection of
Sonnets, by S. Adams Lee.
LARGE PAPER EDITION OF ONE HUNDRED NUMBERED
COPIES, PRINTED FROM TYPE IN 1867, BUT
NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.
_Illustrated with Two Finely Etched Portraits from Rare Prints._
Two Vols., 8vo, Boards, Uncut Edges, $6.00
_Mr. R. H. Stoddard_ says:
“As a collection of Sonnets, it is not only the fullest ever made, but
by far the best, even excelling the dainty little collection by Dyce,
... and Hunt’s exhaustive and every way admirable introductory essay
is, after all, much the best part of the work. Its pages are steeped in
thoughtful scholarship on this special theme, and sparkle with genial
and veracious criticism.”
_Mr. W. D. Howells_ says:
“The Essay is printed for the first time, and it was written in Hunt’s
old age; but it is full of light-heartedness, and belongs in feeling
to a period at least as early as that which produced the ‘Stories from
the Italian Poets.’ It is one of those studies in which he was always
happy, for it keeps him chiefly in Italy; and when it takes him from
Italy, it only brings him into the Italian air of English sonnetry,--a
sort of soft Devonshire coast, bordering the ruggeder native poetry of
the south.”
_The London Saturday Review_ says:
“The genuine aroma of literature abounds In every page of Leigh Hunt’s
delicious Essay on the Sonnet. His mind shows itself imbued with a rich
knowledge of his subject, and this, illuminated by the evidence of a
thorough and unaffected liking for it, makes him irresistible.”
=> The above work was published by William Evarts Benjamin before the
formation of the present firm. As the edition is almost exhausted the
price has been advanced from $5.00 to $6.00.
_SHAKESPEARE IN FACT AND IN CRITICISM._
BY
APPLETON MORGAN, A.M., LL.B.,
_President of the New York Shakesperean Society; Author of
“The Law of Literature,” “The Shakespearean Myth,”
“Some Shakespearean Commentators,” “Venus
and Adonis,” “A Study of Warwickshire
Dialect,” etc., etc._
12mo, cloth, uncut edges. Ornately printed on fine paper
by the De Vinne Press. Price, $1.50.
The work consists of nine essays under the following titles:
I.--Shakespeare and his Esthetic Critics.
II.--Much Ado about Sonnets.
III.--Whose Sonnets?
IV.--Something touching the Lord Hamlet.
V.--Sir William D’Avenant and the First Shakespearean Revival.
VI.--Law and Medicine in the Plays.
VII.--Queen Elizabeth’s Share in the Merry Wives Of Windsor.
VIII.--The Growth and Vicissitudes of a Shakespearean Play.
IX.--Have we a Shakespeare among us?
Mr. Morgan’s line of Shakespeare study being out of the beaten track of
commentary and comment, and his “The Shakespearean Myth” or “William
Shakespeare and Circumstantial Evidence,” having attracted unusual
attention, as well in England as in the United States and Germany--in
which last-named countries two editions have been exhausted--the
publishers feel that a new volume from the same pen, and embodying the
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standpoint, but with better lights, will be welcomed with interest by
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_Messrs. BENJAMIN & BELL beg to announce that by special arrangement
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THE BOOK-LOVER’S ENCHIRIDION;
OR, THOUGHTS ON
_The Solace and Companionship of Books_,
Selected from Writers of every age, from Solomon and Cicero to Carlyle,
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_Author of “Memoir and Recollections of Ralph Waldo Emerson,” &c._
12mo, pp. 512, cloth, gilt tops, uncut edges. Price, $1.50.
The sale, within ten months, of two editions of this work encouraged
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readers.
_This, the Fourth Edition, bound in this country, from English sheets
and with English publishers’ imprint, contains almost double the matter
of any previous edition sold in America, the Third Edition having been
sold exclusively in England. A descriptive circular, containing sample
page, fac-simile of title page, and opinions of the Press and Men of
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THE LONGFELLOW COLLECTORS’ HAND-BOOK.
A Bibliography of First Editions.
ONLY 250 COPIES PRINTED.
12mo, half parchment, $1.50.
This little manual contains exact transcripts of the titles,
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LONGFELLOW was a professor at Bowdoin College.
“_Book collectors have recently devoted increased attention
to making up sets of the first editions of leading American
authors. Hawthorne, Longfellow, Poe, Lowell, Irving, Whittier,
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offered._”--EXTRACT FROM PREFACE.
=> This book was first published by WILLIAM EVARTS BENJAMIN before the
formation of the present firm.
THE POETS AND POETRY OF AMERICA.
A Satire by “LAVANTE,” reprinted from the original, published in
Philadelphia in 1847. With an introductory argument by GEOFFREY
QUARLES, to show that it was written
BY
EDGAR ALLAN POE.
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The publishers submit this little brochure as a literary curiosity,
believing it will prove of interest to the admirers of POE.
In Preparation--to be Issued in the Fall.
A SELECTION FROM THE POETRY OF LEIGH HUNT.
With a prefatory sketch and a reproduction of a portrait in water colors
BY SIR DAVID WILKIE.
Hitherto unpublished and now in the possession of the publishers.
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Transcriber’s Notes:
--Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
--Obvious punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently
corrected.
--Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
--Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.
--Inconsistencies in formatting and punctuation of individual
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End of Project Gutenberg's Mr. Incoul's Misadventure, by Edgar Saltus