On his return from the Christmas holidays of his second year at Oxford, he found a book in the mail which was waiting him. It was a novel—The Other Solution, by Beatrice Maynard. It had been sent to his old New York address. On the fly-leaf she had written, "Merry Xmas." It was an unexpected pleasure to have some one remember him at this holiday season. He had not received a Christmas present in years.
He hurried through his supper to begin it. Beyond occasionally filling his pipe he did not stop until the end.
It was, he decided, just such a book as he would have expected her to write! There was the patience of real art in the way it was done. Not a great book, but packed full of keen observation, and its finish was like a cameo.
It was a simple story of a very rich girl in New York. One hardly realized that it was about the Smart Set. Beatrice knew her people too well to have any illusion about their nobility or their special depravity. The men changed their clothes rather too often, but were on the whole a kindly meaning lot. The women were a bit burdened with their jewellery, but very human, nevertheless. They were all bored by their uselessness. There was a cynical old bachelor uncle, who gave the Girl epigrammatical advice about the virtue of frivolity and the danger of taking things seriously. There was a maiden aunt—the romance of whose life had been shot to pieces at Gettysburg—who had sought solace in a morbid religious intensity. She was always warning the Girl, in the phraseology of Lamentations, against light-mindedness and the Wrath to Come. The "Other Solution" proved to be a very modern kind of nerve specialist, whose own nerves were going to pieces because of overwork and the cooking of an absinthe-drinking Frenchwoman. He was just on the point of beginning to take cocaine, when Beatrice persuaded him to take the Girl, instead.
"Good work," Walter said as he closed it.
For some moments he sat there wondering what sort of an anchorage Beatrice had found. Such a book could not have been written in a hurry nor in unpleasant surroundings. He had never heard from her. At first he had been too heavy of heart to care. But as the months, growing into years, had somewhat healed his hurts, he had often thought of her. But not knowing exactly what sort of memories she held of him, he had felt that if the long silence was to be broken, it should be done by her.
He was glad she had cared enough to do it. He swung his chair around to the table and wrote to her. There was praise of the book and thanks for the remembrance. In a few paragraphs he gave a whimsical description of his bachelor establishment and of his work, and asked news of her. He addressed it in care of her publishers, a London house.
A few days later her answer came to him at breakfast-time. His letter had caught her in London, where she had come over from Normandy to arrange about her new novel. Could he not come up to town during the few days she would be there? If he wired, she would let everything else slip to keep the appointment.
He sent the gardener out with a telegram and went up on an afternoon train. It was tea time when he found her in the parlor of her hotel.
"I hope I haven't begun to show my age, as you have," she greeted him.