II
he hot September day was ten hours old. The office of the St. Christopher Club was still deserted but for a clerk who looked warm and sleepy. The postman had just left a heap of letters on his desk, and he was sorting them for their various pigeonholes. A young man entered, and the clerk began to turn over the letters more rapidly. The newcomer, tall, thin, with sharp features and shrewd American face, had an extremely nervous manner. As he passed through the vestibule a clerk at a table put a mark opposite the name “Mr. Clarence Trent,” to indicate that he was in the Club.
“Any letters?” he demanded of the office clerk.
The man handed him two, and he darted into the morning-room and tore one open, letting the other fall to the floor. He read as follows:—
“Mon ami!—I have but this moment received your letter, which seems to have been delayed. [“Of course! Why did I not think of that?”] I say nothing here of the happiness which its contents have given me. Come at once.
“Jessica Pendleton.
“Our engagement must be a profound secret until the year of my mourning is over.”
Trent’s drab and scanty whiskers seemed to curl into hard knots over the nervous facial contortion in which he indulged. Nature being out of material when at work upon him had seemingly constructed his muscles from stout twine. An inch of it joining his nose to the upper lip, the former’s pointed tip was wont to punctuate his conversation and emotions with the direct downward movement of a machine needle puncturing cloth. He crumpled the letter in his bony nervous fingers, and his pale sharp grey eyes opened and shut with sudden rapidity.
“I knew I could not be mistaken,” he thought triumphantly. “She is mine!”
In the vestibule another name was checked off,—“Mr. Norton Boswell,”—and its owner made eagerly for the desk. His dark intellectual face was flushed, and his sensitive mouth twitched suddenly as the clerk handed him a roll of Mss.
“Never mind that,” he said hastily. “Give me my letters.”
The clerk handed him several, and, whisking them from left to right through his impatient hands, he thrust all but one into his pocket and walked rapidly to the morning-room. Seating himself before a table, he looked at the envelope as if not daring to solve its mystery, then hastily tore it apart.
“Mon ami! [Boswell, despite his ardour, threw a glance down a certain corridor in his memory and thought with kindling eyes: “Oh! with what divine sweetness did she use to utter those two little words!” Then he fixed his eyes greedily on the page once more.] I have but this moment received your letter, which seems to have been delayed.” [“Ah!” rapturously, the paper dancing before his eyes, “that accounts for it. I knew she was the most tender-hearted creature on earth.”] “I say nothing here of the happiness which its contents have given me. Come at once.
“Jessica Pendleton.
“Our engagement must be a profound secret until the year of my mourning is over.”
Boswell, with quivering nostrils, plunged a pen into the ink-well, and in that quiet room two hearts thumped so loudly that only passion and scratching pens averted mutual and withering contempt.
As Boswell left the office a very young man entered it. He possessed that nondescript blond complexion which seems to be the uniform of the New York youth of fashion. The ciphers of the Four Hundred have achieved the well-scrubbed appearance of the Anglo-Saxon more successfully than his accent. Mr. Dedham might have been put through a clothes-wringer. Even his minute and recent moustache looked as if each hair had its particular nurse, and his pink and chubby face defied conscientious dissipation. He sauntered up to the clerk’s desk with an elaborate affectation of indifference, and drawled a demand for his mail.
The clerk handed him a dainty note sealed with a crest. He accepted it with an absent air, although a look of genuine boyish delight thrust its way through the fishy inertness of his average expression.
It took him a minute and a half to get into the morning-room and read these fateful lines:—
“Mon ami,—[“Enchanting phrase! I can hear her say it.”] I have but this moment received your letter, which seems to have been delayed. [“Ah! this perfume! this perfume!”] I say nothing here of the happiness which its contents have given me. Come at once.
“Jessica Pendleton.
“Our engagement must be a profound secret until the year of my mourning is over.”
A rosy tide wandered to the roots of Mr. Dedham’s ashen locks, and he made a wild uncertain dab at his upper lip. Again there was no sound in the morning-room of the St. Christopher Club but the furious dashing of pens, the rending of parchment paper, the sudden scraping of a nervous foot.
A tall broad-shouldered young man, with much repose of face and manner, entered the office from the avenue, glanced at the pigeon-holes above the clerk’s desk, then sauntered deliberately into the morning-room and looked out of the window. A slight rigidity of the nostrils alone betokened the impatience within, and his uneasy thoughts ran somewhat as follows:—
“What a fool I have been! After all my experience with women to make such an ass of myself over the veriest coquette that ever breathed; but her preference for me last winter was so pointed—oh, damnation!”
He stood gnawing his underlip at the lumbering ’bus, but turned suddenly as a man approached from behind and presented several letters on a tray. The first and only one he opened ran thus:—
“Mon ami!—I have but this moment received your letter, which seems to have been delayed. I say nothing here of the happiness which its contents have given me. Come at once.
“Jessica Pendleton.
“Our engagement must be a profound secret until the year of my mourning is over.”
Severance folded the note, his face paling a little.
“Well, well, she is true after all. What a brute I was to misjudge her!” He strolled back to the office. “I will go home and write to her, and to-morrow I shall see her! Great Heaven! Were six months ever so long before?”
As he turned from the coat-room Boswell entered the office by the opposite door.
“The fellow looks as gay as a lark,” he thought. “He hasn’t looked like that for six months. I believe I’ll make it up with him—particularly as I’ve come out ahead!”
“Give me that package,” demanded Boswell dreamily of the clerk. Then he caught sight of Severance. “Why, Jack, old fellow!” he cried, “how are you? Haven’t seen you looking so well for an age. Don’t go out. It’s too hot.”
“Oh, hang it! I’ve got to. I’m off for Newport to-morrow. It’s so infernally dull in town.”
“Going to Newport to-morrow! So am I. My aunt is quite ill and has sent for me. I’m her heir, you know.”
“No? Didn’t know you had an aunt. I congratulate you. Hope she’ll go off, I’m sure.”
“Hope so. Here comes Teddy,—looks like an elongated rubber ball. It’s some time since I’ve seen him so buoyant. How are you, Teddy?”
“How are you, Norton, old boy?” explained Dedham, rapturously. “How glad I am to hear the old name once more! You’ve given me the cold shoulder of late.”
“Oh, well, my boy, you know men will be fools occasionally. But give by-gones the go-by. I’m going to Newport to-morrow. Can I take any messages to your numerous—”
“Dear boy! I’m going to Newport to-morrow. Sea-bathing ordered by my physician.”
“Jove! I am in luck! Severance is going over, too. We’ll have a jolly time of it.”
“I should say so!” murmured Teddy. “Heaven! Hello, Sev, how are you? Didn’t see you. As long as we are all going the same way we might as well bury our hatchet. What do you say, dear boy?”
“Only too happy,” said Severance, heartily. “And may we never unearth it again. Here comes Trent. He looks as if he had just been returned for the Senate.”
“How are you?” demanded Trent, peremptorily. “You have made it up? Don’t leave me out in the cold.”
Dedham made a final lunge for his deserting dignity, then sent it on its way. “I should think not,” he cried, with dancing eyes. “Give me your fist.”
In a moment they were all shaking each other’s hand off, and good-fellowship was streaming from every eye.
“Come over to my rooms, all of you,” gurgled Teddy, “and have a drink.”
“With pleasure, my boy,” said Trent. “But native rudeness will compel me to drink and run. I am off for Newport—”
“Newport!” cried three voices.
“Yes; anything strange in that? I’m going on vital business connected with the coming election.”
“This is a coincidence!” exclaimed Boswell, with the appreciation of the romanticist. “Why, we are all going to Newport. Dedham in search of health, Severance of pleasure, and I of a fortune—only the old mummy is always making out her cheques, but never passes them in. Well, I hope we’ll see a lot of each other when we get there.”
“Oh, of course,” said Severance, hastily. “We will have many another game of polo together.”
“Well,” said Dedham, “come over to my rooms now and drink to the success of our separate quests.”
