The Disappearance of Kimball Webb

BY ROWLAND WRIGHT
NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1920
Copyright, 1919 By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc.
VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK
Kimball Webb didn’t look at all like a man who would disappear mysteriously. Though I’m not sure mysteriously disappearing men, as a class, have physical characteristics in common. But one rather imagines them eerie looking, with deep, cavernous eyes and hollow cheeks.
Kimball Webb had nothing of the sort. He was a bit distinguished looking, but that was because he was a New Englander by birth, and a playwright by profession and had won the D. S. C. in the late war. Now, though a lame knee interfered slightly with his outdoor pursuits, his mind was alert and eager to return to work and his brain was fairly bursting with new ideas for his plays. First, however, he must needs attend to a certain business of getting married. A delightful business it seemed to Webb, for Elsie Powell was as lovely and desirable in the flesh as she had looked to him when seen in his troubled dreams in far off France.
There is a lot to be said about Elsie, but that properly comes in the next chapter.
Mrs. Webb and Miss Henrietta Webb sat at their pleasant breakfast table, and while they wait for the son and brother, I’ll describe them.
Every detail of their appearance and manner shrieked Boston,—so you don’t need much more surface description. A mental interior view would show hearts devotedly, even absurdly, fond of Kimball Webb, and minds which reasoned against showing fully that devotion.
The New England repression of feeling is not effaced by life in New York; indeed, the circumstance often accentuates the trait.
And the Webbs lived in New York. This condition crucified the souls of both women but they came cheerfully, because it was Kimball’s wish. He felt his dramatic talent was of a wing-spread too wide for the narrow opportunities of his native town, and there were other lures in the metropolis, especially Elsie.