Desboro arrived in town on a late train. It was raining, so he drove to
his rooms, exchanged his overcoat for a raincoat, and went out into the
downpour again, undisturbed, disdaining an umbrella.
In a quarter of an hour's vigorous walking he came to the celebrated
antique shop of Louis Nevers, and entered, letting in a gust of wind and
rain at his heels.
Everywhere in the semi-gloom of the place objects loomed mysteriously,
their outlines lost in shadow except where, here and there, a gleam of
wintry daylight touched a jewel or fell across some gilded god,
lotus-throned, brooding alone.
When Desboro's eyes became accustomed to the obscurity, he saw that
there was armour there, complete suits, Spanish and Milanese, and an odd
Morion or two; and there were jewels in old-time settings, tapestries,
silver, ivories, Hispano-Moresque lustre, jades, crystals.
The subdued splendour of Chinese and Japanese armour, lacquered in
turquoise, and scarlet and gold, glimmered on lay figures masked by
grotesque helmets; an Ispahan rug, softly luminous, trailed across a
table beside him, and on it lay a dead Sultan's scimitar, curved like
the new moon, its slim blade inset with magic characters, the hilt
wrought as delicately as the folded frond of a fern, graceful,
exquisite, gem-incrusted.
There were a few people about the shop, customers and clerks, moving
shapes in the dull light. Presently a little old salesman wearing a
skull cap approached him.
"Rainy weather for Christmas week, sir. Can I be of service?"
"Thanks," said Desboro. "I came here by appointment on a matter of
private business."
"Certainly, sir. I think Miss Nevers is not engaged. Kindly give me your
card and I will find out."
"But I wish to see Mr. Nevers himself."
"Mr. Nevers is dead, sir."
"Oh! I didn't know----"
"Yes, sir. Mr. Nevers died two years ago." And, as Desboro remained
silent and thoughtful: "Perhaps you might wish to see Miss Nevers? She
has charge of everything now, including all our confidential affairs."
"No doubt," said Desboro pleasantly, "but this is an affair requiring
personal judgment and expert advice----"
"I understand, sir. The gentlemen who came to see Mr. Nevers about
matters requiring expert opinions now consult Miss Nevers personally."
"Who is _Miss_ Nevers?"
"His daughter, sir." He added, with quaint pride: "The great jewelers of
Fifth Avenue consult her; experts in our business often seek her advice.
The Museum authorities have been pleased to speak highly of her
monograph on Hurtado de Mendoza."
Desboro hesitated for a moment, then gave his card to the old salesman,
who trotted away with it down the unlighted vista of the shop.
The young man's pleasantly indifferent glance rested on one object after
another, not unintelligently, but without particular interest. Yet
there were some very wonderful and very rare and beautiful things to be
seen in the celebrated shop of the late Jean Louis Nevers.
So he stood, leaning on his walking stick, the upturned collar of his
raincoat framing a face which was too colourless and worn for a man of
his age; and presently the little old salesman came trotting back, the
tassel on his neat silk cap bobbing with every step.
"Miss Nevers will be very glad to see you in her private office. This
way, if you please, sir."
Desboro followed to the rear of the long, dusky shop, turned to the left
through two more rooms full of shadowy objects dimly discerned, then
traversed a tiled passage to where electric lights burned over a
doorway.
The old man opened the door; Desboro entered and found himself in a
square picture gallery, lighted from above, and hung all around with
dark velvet curtains to protect the pictures on sale. As he closed the
door behind him a woman at a distant desk turned her head, but remained
seated, pen poised, looking across the room at him as he advanced. Her
black gown blended so deceptively with the hangings that at first he
could distinguish only the white face and throat and hands against the
shadows behind her.
"Will you kindly announce me to Miss Nevers?" he said, looking around
for a chair.
"I am Miss Nevers."
She closed the ledger in which she had been writing, laid aside her pen
and rose. As she came forward he found himself looking at a tall girl,
slim to thinness, except for the rounded oval of her face under a loose
crown of yellow hair, from which a stray lock sagged untidily, curling
across her cheek.
He thought: "A blue-stocking prodigy of learning, with her hair in a
mess, and painted at that." But he said politely, yet with that hint of
idle amusement in his voice which often sounded through his speech with
women:
"Are you the Miss Nevers who has taken over this antique business, and
who writes monographs on Hurtado de Mendoza?"
"Yes."
"You appear to be very young to succeed such a distinguished authority
as your father, Miss Nevers."
His observation did not seem to disturb her, nor did the faintest hint
of mockery in his pleasant voice. She waited quietly for him to state
his business.
He said: "I came here to ask somebody's advice about engaging an expert
to appraise and catalogue my collection."
And even while he was speaking he was conscious that never before had he
seen such a white skin and such red lips--if they were natural. And he
began to think that they might be.
He said, noticing the bright lock astray on her cheek once more:
"I suppose that I may speak to you in confidence--just as I would have
spoken to your father."
She was still looking at him with the charm of youthful inquiry in her
eyes.
"Certainly," she said.
She glanced down at his card which still lay on her blotter, stood a
moment with her hand resting on the desk, then indicated a chair at her
elbow and seated herself.
He took the chair.
"I wrote you that I'd drop in sometime this week. The note was directed
to your father. I did not know he was not living."
"You are the Mr. Desboro who owns the collection of armour?" she asked.
"I am that James Philip Desboro who lives at Silverwood," he said.
"Evidently you have heard of the Desboro collection of arms and armour."
"Everybody has, I think."
He said, carelessly: "Museums, amateur collectors, and students know it,
and I suppose most dealers in antiques have heard of it."
"Yes, all of them, I believe."
"My house," he went on, "Silverwood, is in darkest Westchester, and my
recent grandfather, who made the collection, built a wing to contain it.
It's there as he left it. My father made no additions to it. Nor," he
added, "have I. Now I want to ask you whether a lot of those things have
not increased in value since my grandfather's day?"
"No doubt."
"And the collection is valuable?"
"I think it must be--very."
"And to determine its value I ought to have an expert go there and
catalogue it and appraise it?"
"Certainly."
"Who? That's what I've come here to find out."
"Perhaps you might wish us to do it."
"Is that still part of your business?"
"It is."
"Well," he said, after a moment's thought, "I am going to sell the
Desboro collection."
"Oh, I'm sorry!" she exclaimed, under her breath; and looked up to find
him surprised and beginning to be amused again.
"Your attitude is not very professional--for a dealer in antiques," he
said quizzically.
"I am something else, too, Mr. Desboro." She had flushed a little, not
responding to his lighter tone.
"I am very sure you are," he said. "Those who really know about and care
for such collections must feel sorry to see them dispersed."
"I had hoped that the Museum might have the Desboro collection some
day," she said, in a low voice.
He said: "I am sorry it is not to be so," and had the grace to redden a
trifle.
She played with her pen, waiting for him to continue; and she was so
young, and fresh, and pretty that he was in no hurry to finish. Besides,
there was something about her face that had been interesting him--an
expression which made him think sometimes that she was smiling, or on
the verge of it. But the slightly upcurled corners of her mouth had been
fashioned so by her Maker, or perhaps had become so from some inborn
gaiety of heart, leaving a faint, sweet imprint on her lips.
To watch her was becoming a pleasure. He wondered what her smile might
be like--all the while pretending an absent-minded air which cloaked his
idle curiosity.
She waited, undisturbed, for him to come to some conclusion. And all the
while he was thinking that her lips were perhaps just a trifle too
full--that there was more of Aphrodite in her face than of any saint he
remembered; but her figure was thin enough for any saint. Perhaps a
course of banquets--perhaps a régime under a diet list warranted to
improve----
"Did you ever see the Desboro collection, Miss Nevers?" he asked
vaguely.
"No."
"What expert will you send to catalogue and appraise it?"
"_I_ could go."
"You!" he said, surprised and smiling.
"That is my profession."
"I knew, of course, that it was your father's. But I never supposed that
you----"
"Did you wish to have an appraisement made, Mr. Desboro?" she
interrupted dryly.
"Why, yes, I suppose so. Otherwise, I wouldn't know what to ask for
anything."
"Have you really decided to sell that superb collection?" she demanded.
"What else can I do?" he inquired gayly. "I suppose the Museum ought to
have it, but I can't afford to give it away or to keep it. In other
words--and brutal ones--I need money."
She said gravely: "I am sorry."
And he knew she didn't mean that she was sorry because he needed money,
but because the Museum was not to have the arms, armour, jades, and
ivories. Yet, somehow, her "I am sorry" sounded rather sweet to him.
For a while he sat silent, one knee crossed over the other, twisting the
silver crook of his stick. From moment to moment she raised her eyes
from the blotter to let them rest inquiringly on him, then went on
tracing arabesques over her blotter with an inkless pen. One slender
hand was bracketed on her hip, and he noticed the fingers, smooth and
rounded as a child's. Nor could he keep his eyes from her profile, with
its delicate, short nose, ever so slightly arched, and its lips, just a
trifle too sensuous--and that soft lock astray again against her cheek.
No, her hair was not dyed, either. And it was as though she divined his
thought, for she looked up suddenly from her blotter and he instantly
gazed elsewhere, feeling guilty and impertinent--sentiments not often
experienced by that young man.
"I'll tell you what I'll do, Miss Nevers," he concluded, "I'll write you
a letter to my housekeeper, Mrs. Quant. Shall I? And you'll go up and
look over the collection and let me know what you think of it!"
"Do you not expect to be there?"
"Ought I to be?"
"I really can't answer you, but it seems to me rather important that the
owner of a collection should be present when the appraiser begins work."
"The fact is," he said, "I'm booked for a silly shooting trip. I'm
supposed to start to-morrow."
"Then perhaps you had better write the letter. My full name is
Jacqueline Nevers--if you require it. You may use my desk."
She rose; he thanked her, seated himself, and began a letter to Mrs.
Quant, charging her to admit, entertain, and otherwise particularly
cherish one Miss Jacqueline Nevers, and give her the keys to the
armoury.
While he was busy, Jacqueline Nevers paced the room backward and
forward, her pretty head thoughtfully bent, hands clasped behind her,
moving leisurely, absorbed in her cogitations.
Desboro ended his letter and sat for a moment watching her until,
happening to glance at him, she discovered his idleness.
"Have you finished?" she asked.
A trifle out of countenance he rose and explained that he had, and laid
the letter on her blotter. Realising that she was expecting him to take
his leave, he also realised that he didn't want to. And he began to spar
with Destiny for time.
"I suppose this matter will require several visits from you," he
inquired.
"Yes, several."
"It takes some time to catalogue and appraise such a collection, doesn't
it?"
"Yes."
She answered him very sweetly but impersonally, and there seemed to be
in her brief replies no encouragement for him to linger. So he started
to pick up his hat, thinking as fast as he could all the while; and his
facile wits saved him at the last moment.
"Well, upon my word!" he exclaimed. "Do you know that you and I have not
yet discussed terms?"
"We make our usual charges," she said.
"And what are those?"
She explained briefly.
"That is for cataloguing and appraising only?"
"Yes."
"And if you sell the collection?"
"We take our usual commission."
"And you think you _can_ sell it for me?"
"I'll have to--won't I?"
He laughed. "But _can_ you?"
"Yes."
As the curt affirmative fell from her lips, suddenly, under all her
delicate, youthful charm, Desboro divined the note of hidden strength,
the self-confidence of capability--oddly at variance with her allure of
lovely immaturity. Yet he might have surmised it, for though her figure
was that of a girl, her face, for all its soft, fresh beauty, was a
woman's, and already firmly moulded in noble lines which even the
scarlet fulness of the lips could not deny. For if she had the mouth of
Aphrodite, she had her brow, also.
He had not been able to make her smile, although the upcurled corners of
her mouth seemed always to promise something. He wondered what her
expression might be like when animated--even annoyed. And his idle
curiosity led him on to the edges of impertinence.
"May I say something that I have in mind and not offend you?" he asked.
"Yes--if you wish." She lifted her eyes.
"Do you think you are old enough and experienced enough to catalogue and
appraise such an important collection as this one? I thought perhaps you
might prefer not to take such a responsibility upon yourself, but would
rather choose to employ some veteran expert."
She was silent.
"Have I offended you?"
She walked slowly to the end of the room, turned, and, passing him a
third time, looked up at him and laughed--a most enchanting little
laugh--a revelation as delightful as it was unexpected.
"I believe you really _want_ to do it yourself!" he exclaimed.
"_Want_ to? I'm dying to! I don't think there is anything in the world I
had rather try!" she said, with a sudden flush and sparkle of
recklessness that transfigured her. "Do you suppose anybody in my
business would willingly miss the chance of personally handling such a
transaction? Of _course_ I want to. Not only because it would be a most
creditable transaction for this house--not only because it would be a
profitable business undertaking, but"--and the swift, engaging smile
parted her lips once more--"in a way I feel as though my own ability had
been questioned----"
"By me?" he protested. "Did I actually dare question your ability?"
"Something very like it. So, naturally, I would seize an opportunity to
vindicate myself--if you offer it----"
"I do offer it," he said.
"I accept."
There was a moment's indecisive silence. He picked up his hat and stick,
lingering still; then:
"Good-bye, Miss Nevers. When are you going up to Silverwood?"
"To-morrow, if it is quite convenient."
"Entirely. I may be there. Perhaps I can fix it--put off that shooting
party for a day or two."
"I hope so."
"I hope so, too."
He walked reluctantly toward the door, turned and came all the way back.
"Perhaps you had rather I remained away from Silverwood."
"Why?"
"But, of course," he said, "there is a nice old housekeeper there, and a
lot of servants----"
She laughed. "Thank you very much, Mr. Desboro. It is very nice of you,
but I had not considered that at all. Business women must disregard such
conventions, if they're to compete with men. I'd like you to be there,
because I may have questions to ask."
"Certainly--it's very good of you. I--I'll try to be there----"
"Because I might have some very important questions to ask you," she
repeated.
"Of course. I've got to be there. Haven't I?"
"It might be better for your interests."
"Then I'll be there. Well, good-bye, Miss Nevers."
"Good-bye, Mr. Desboro."
"And thank you for undertaking it," he said cordially.
"Thank _you_ for asking me."
"Oh, I'm--I'm really delighted. It's most kind of _you_. _Good_-bye,
Miss Nevers."
"_Good_-bye, Mr. Desboro."
He had to go that time; and he went still retaining a confused vision of
blue eyes and vivid lips, and of a single lock of hair astray once more
across a smooth, white cheek.
When he had gone, Jacqueline seated herself at her desk and picked up
her pen. She remained so for a while, then emerged abruptly from a fit
of abstraction and sorted some papers unnecessarily. When she had
arranged them to her fancy, she rearranged them. Then the little Louis
XVI desk interested her, and she examined the inset placques of flowered
Sèvres in detail, as though the little desk of tulip, satinwood and
walnut had not stood there since she was a child.
Later she noticed his card on her blotter; and, face framed in her
hands, she studied it so long that the card became a glimmering white
patch and vanished; and before her remote gaze his phantom grew out of
space, seated there in the empty chair beside her--the loosened collar
of his raincoat revealing to her the most attractive face of any man she
had ever looked upon in her twenty-two years of life.
Toward evening the electric lamps were lighted in the shop; rain fell
more heavily outside; few people entered. She was busy with ledgers and
files of old catalogues recording auction sales, the name of the
purchaser and the prices pencilled on the margins in her father's
curious handwriting. Also her card index aided her. Under the head of
"Desboro" she was able to note what objects of interest or of art her
father had bought for her recent visitor's grandfather, and the prices
paid--little, indeed, in those days, compared with what the same objects
would now bring. And, continuing her search, she finally came upon an
uncompleted catalogue of the Desboro collection. It was in
manuscript--her father's peculiar French chirography--neat and accurate
as far as it went.
Everything bearing upon the Desboro collection she bundled together and
strapped with rubber bands; then, one by one, the clerks and salesmen
came to report to her before closing up. She locked the safe, shut her
desk, and went out to the shop, where she remained until the shutters
were clamped and the last salesman had bade her a cheery good night.
Then, bolting the door and double-locking it, she went back along the
passage and up the stairs, where she had the two upper floors to
herself, and a cook and chambermaid to keep house for her.
In the gaslight of the upper apartment she seemed even more slender than
by daylight--her eyes bluer, her lips more scarlet. She glanced into the
mirror of her dresser as she passed, pausing to twist up the unruly lock
that had defied her since childhood.
Everywhere in the room Christmas was still in evidence--a tiny tree,
with frivolous, glittering things still twisted and suspended among the
branches, calendars, sachets, handkerchiefs still gaily tied in ribbons,
flowering shrubs swathed in tissue and bows of tulle--these from her
salesmen, and she had carefully but pleasantly maintained the line of
demarcation by presenting each with a gold piece.
But there were other gifts--gloves and stockings, and bon-bons, and
books, from the friends who were girls when she too was a child at
school; and a set of volumes from Cary Clydesdale whose collection of
jades she was cataloguing. The volumes were very beautiful and
expensive. The gift had surprised her.
Among her childhood friends was her social niche; the circumference of
their circle the limits of her social environment. They came to her and
she went to them; their pastimes and pleasures were hers; and if there
was not, perhaps, among them her intellectual equal, she had not yet
felt the need of such companionship, but had been satisfied to have them
hold her as a good companion who otherwise possessed much strange and
perhaps useless knowledge quite beyond their compass. And she was shyly
content with her intellectual isolation.
So, amid these people, she had found a place prepared for her when she
emerged from childhood. What lay outside of this circle she surmised
with the intermittent curiosity of ignorance, or of a bystander who
watches a pageant for a moment and hastens on, preoccupied with matters
more familiar.
All young girls think of pleasures; she had thought of them always when
the day's task was ended, and she had sought them with all the ardour of
youth, with a desire unwearied, and a thirst unquenched.
In her, mental and physical pleasure were wholesomely balanced; the keen
delight of intellectual experience, the happiness of research and
attainment, went hand in hand with a rather fastidious appetite for
having the best time that circumstances permitted.
She danced when she had a chance, went to theatres and restaurants with
her friends, bathed at Manhattan in summer, when gay parties were
organised, and did the thousand innocent things that thousands of young
business girls do whose lines are cast in the metropolis.
Since her father's death she had been intensely lonely; only a desperate
and steady application to business had pulled her through the first year
without a breakdown.
The second year she rejoined her friends and went about again with them.
Now, the third year since her father's death was already dawning; and
her last prayer as the old year died had been that the new one would
bring her friends and happiness.
Seated before the wood fire in her bedroom, leisurely undressing, she
thought of Desboro and the business that concerned him. He was so very
good looking--in the out-world manner--the manner of those who dwelt
outside her orbit.
She had not been very friendly with him at first. She had wanted to be;
instinct counselled reserve, and she had listened--until the very last.
He had a way of laughing at her in every word--in even an ordinary
business conversation. She had been conscious all the while of his
half-listless interest in her, of an idle curiosity, which, before it
had grown offensive, had become friendly and at times almost boyish in
its naïve self-disclosure. And it made her smile to remember how very
long it took him to take his leave.
But--a man of that kind--a man of the out-world--with the _something_ in
his face that betrays shadows which she had never seen cast--and never
would see--_he_ was no boy. For in his face was the faint imprint of
that pallid wisdom which warned. Women in his own world might ignore the
warning; perhaps it did not menace them. But instinct told her that it
might be different outside that world.
She nestled into her fire-warmed bath-robe and sat pensively fitting and
refitting her bare feet into her slippers.
Men were odd; alike and unalike. Since her father's death, she had had
to be careful. Wealthy gentlemen, old and young, amateurs of armour,
ivories, porcelains, jewels, all clients of her father, had sometimes
sent for her too many times on too many pretexts; and sometimes their
paternal manner toward her had made her uncomfortable. Desboro was of
that same caste. Perhaps he was not like them otherwise.
* * * * *
When she had bathed and dressed, she dined alone, not having any
invitation for the evening. After dinner she talked on the telephone to
her little friend, Cynthia Lessler, whose late father's business had
been to set jewels and repair antique watches and clocks. Incidentally,
he drank and chased his daughter about with a hatchet until she fled for
good one evening, which afforded him an opportunity to drink himself
very comfortably to death in six months.
"Hello, Cynthia!" called Jacqueline, softly.
"Hello! Is it you, Jacqueline, dear?"
"Yes. Don't you want to come over and eat chocolates and gossip?"
"Can't do it. I'm just starting for the hall."
"I thought you'd finished rehearsing."
"I've got to be on hand all the same. How are you, sweetness, anyway?"
"Blooming, my dear. I'm crazy to tell you about my good luck. I have a
splendid commission with which to begin the new year."
"Good for you! What is it?"
"I can't tell you yet"--laughingly--"it's confidential business----"
"Oh, I know. Some old, fat man wants you to catalogue his collection."
"No! He isn't fat, either. You _are_ the limit, Cynthia!"
"All the same, look out for him," retorted Cynthia. "_I_ know man and
his kind. Office experience is a liberal education; the theatre a
post-graduate course. Are you coming to the dance to-morrow night?"
"Yes. I suppose the usual people will be there?"
"Some new ones. There's an awfully good-looking newspaper man from
Yonkers. He has a car in town, too."
Something--some new and unaccustomed impatience--she did not understand
exactly what--prompted Jacqueline to say scornfully:
"His name is Eddie, isn't it?"
"No. Why do you ask?"
A sudden vision of Desboro, laughing at her under every word of an
unsmiling and commonplace conversation, annoyed her.
"Oh, Cynthia, dear, every good-looking man we meet is usually named Ed
and comes from places like Yonkers."
Cynthia, slightly perplexed, said slangily that she didn't "get" her;
and Jacqueline admitted that she herself didn't know what she had meant.
They gossiped for a while, then Cynthia ended:
"I'll see you to-morrow night, won't I? And listen, you little white
mouse, I get what you mean by 'Eddie'."
"Do you?"
"Yes. Shall I see you at the dance?"
"Yes, and 'Eddie,' too. Good-bye."
Jacqueline laughed again, then shivered slightly and hung up the
receiver.
Back before her bedroom fire once more, Grenville's volume on ancient
armour across her knees, she turned the illuminated pages absently, and
gazed into the flames. What she saw among them apparently did not amuse
her, for after a while she frowned, shrugged her shoulders, and resumed
her reading.
But the XV century knights, in their gilded or silvered harness, had
Desboro's lithe figure, and the lifted vizors of their helmets always
disclosed his face. Shields emblazoned with quarterings, plumed armets,
the golden morions, banner, pennon, embroidered surtout, and the
brilliant trappings of battle horse and palfry, became only a confused
blur of colour under her eyes, framing a face that looked back at her
out of youthful eyes, marred by the shadow of a wisdom she knew
about--alas--but did not know.
* * * * *
The man of whom she was thinking had walked back to the club through a
driving rain, still under the fascination of the interview, still
excited by its novelty and by her unusual beauty. He could not quite
account for his exhilaration either, because, in New York, beauty is
anything but unusual among the hundreds of thousands of young women who
work for a living--for that is one of the seven wonders of the city--and
it is the rule rather than the exception that, in this new race which is
evolving itself out of an unknown amalgam, there is scarcely a young
face in which some trace of it is not apparent at a glance.
Which is why, perhaps, he regarded his present exhilaration humorously,
or meant to; perhaps why he chose to think of her as "Stray Lock,"
instead of Miss Nevers, and why he repeated confidently to himself:
"She's thin as a Virgin by the 'Master of the Death of Mary'." And yet
that haunting expression of her face--the sweetness of the lips upcurled
at the corners--the surprising and lovely revelation of her
laughter--these impressions persisted as he swung on through the rain,
through the hurrying throngs just released from shops and great
department stores, and onward up the wet and glimmering avenue to his
destination, which was the Olympian Club.
In the cloak room there were men he knew, being divested of wet hats and
coats; in reading room, card room, lounge, billiard hall, squash court,
and gymnasium, men greeted him with that friendly punctiliousness which
indicates popularity; from the splashed edge of the great swimming pool
men hailed him; clerks and club servants saluted him smilingly as he
sauntered about through the place, still driven into motion by an
inexplicable and unaccustomed restlessness. Cairns discovered him coming
out of the billiard room:
"Have a snifter?" he suggested affably. "I'll find Ledyard and play you
'nigger' or 'rabbit' afterward, if you like."
Desboro laid a hand on his friend's shoulder:
"Jack, I've a business engagement at Silverwood to-morrow, and I believe
I'd better go home to-night."
"Heavens! You've just been there! And what about the shooting trip?"
"I can join you day after to-morrow."
"Oh, come, Jim, are you going to spoil our card quartette on the train?
Reggie Ledyard will kill you."
"He might, at that," said Desboro pleasantly. "But I've got to be at
Silverwood to-morrow. It's a matter of business, Jack."
"_You_ and business! Lord! The amazing alliance! What are you going to
do--sell a few superannuated Westchester hens at auction? By heck!
You're a fake farmer and a pitiable piker, that's what _you_ are. And
Stuyve Van Alstyne had a wire to-night that the ducks and geese are
coming in to the guns by millions----"
"Go ahead and shoot 'em, then! I'll probably be along in time to pick up
the game for you."
"You won't go with us?"
"Not to-morrow. A man can't neglect his own business _every_ day in the
year."
"Then you won't be in Baltimore for the Assembly, and you won't go to
Georgia, and you won't do a thing that you expected to. Oh, you're the
gay, quick-change artist! And don't tell me it's business, either," he
added suspiciously.
"I _do_ tell you exactly that."
"You mean to say that nothing except sheer, dry business keeps you
here?"
The colour slowly settled under Desboro's cheek bones:
"It's a matter with enough serious business in it to keep me busy
to-morrow----"
"Selecting pearls? In which show and which row does she cavort, dear
friend--speaking in an exquisitely colloquial metaphor!"
Desboro shrugged: "I'll play you a dozen games of rabbit before we dress
for dinner. Come on, you suspicious sport!"
"Which show?" repeated Cairns obstinately. He did not mean it literally,
footlight affairs being unfashionable. But Desboro's easy popularity
with women originated continual gossip, friendly and otherwise; and his
name was often connected harmlessly with that of some attractive woman
in his own class--like Mrs. Clydesdale, for instance--and sometimes with
some pretty unknown in some class not specified. But the surmise was
idle, and the gossip vague, and neither the one nor the other disturbed
Desboro, who continued to saunter through life keeping his personal
affairs pleasantly to himself.
He linked his arm in Cairns's and guided him toward the billiard room.
But there were no tables vacant for rabbit, which absurd game, being
hard on the cloth, was limited to two decrepit pool tables.
So Cairns again suggested his celebrated "snifter," and then the young
men separated, Desboro to go across the street to his elaborate rooms
and dress, already a little less interested in his business trip to
Silverwood, already regretting the gay party bound South for two weeks
of pleasure.
And when he had emerged from a cold shower which, with the exception of
sleep, is the wisest counsellor in the world, now that he stood in fresh
linen and evening dress on the threshold of another night, he began to
wonder at his late exhilaration.
To him the approach of every night was always fraught with mysterious
possibilities, and with a belief in Chance forever new. Adventure dawned
with the electric lights; opportunity awoke with the evening whistles
warning all labourers to rest. Opportunity for what? He did not know; he
had not even surmised; but perhaps it was that _something_, that subtle,
evanescent, volatile _something_ for which the world itself waits
instinctively, and has been waiting since the first day dawned. Maybe it
is happiness for which the world has waited with patient instinct
uneradicated; maybe it is death; and after all, the two may be
inseparable.
* * * * *
Desboro, looking into the coals of a dying fire, heard the clock
striking the hour. The night was before him--those strange hours in
which anything could happen before another sun gilded the sky pinnacles
of the earth.
Another hour sounded and found him listless, absent-eyed, still gazing
into a dying fire.