"All right," and springing from the four-wheeler he is interviewing the clerk.
"Has Mr. Babbington-Cole, from Ottawa, Canada, arrived?"
"No, sir; are you Mr. C. Babbington-Cole?"
"Yes."
"Then here is a cablegram for you, sir."
It was from his father, and ran thus:
"St. Lawrence Hall,
"Montreal, Sept. 20th."To C. Babbington-Cole, Esq.,
"Morley's Hotel, London, England."Your father has been very ill—typhoid fever; called me in; is improving; asks me to cablegram you to return by way of Montreal. Longs to see you and your wife, which will be a panacea for him.
"John Peake, M.D."
"My father ill! Oh that I could have foreseen all this," exclaimed Cole, flinging himself into a chair in the privacy of the bedroom assigned him. "To have to face my fate alone," he thought, "and yet I have been aware for some time that this was hanging over me; but the truth is, I thought the girl would never claim me, that they would arbitrate, divide, have a grab game among themselves, anything other than rope me in. Had I been gifted with Scotch second-sight, or even caution, I should not be in this fix now; but I have been made of wax, and so absorbed in my loved inventions, filling in an emotional half hour with an occasional flirtation, with my nose to the grindstone the rest of my time, that this possible 'game of barter,' in which some one says 'the devil always has the best of it,' rarely occurred to me; but this will never do in action, only shall I now find repose. I must go out to Bayswater, and I must wed this girl, unless Heaven works a miracle—no, unless I act the coward's part, cut and run, I am in for it. If I could only moralize on the pantheon of ugly horrors half of our marriages are, and that one might imagine most of them were perpetrated in the dark, or on sight, as mine, then I might console myself by thinking that I have as good a chance of happiness as most. My brain is on fire; if I only had one friend in this vanity fair, wherein to me is no merriment, the babel of sounds seeming to me the guns of the enemy warning me to retreat; talk of delirium tremens, I have all the blue devils rolled in one; a stimulant is what I want, to be able to face the music."
And making his way to the bar, in a short time his spirits, with the aid of John Barleycorn, arise; though he knows in the reaction they will be below zero.
"And now for Bayswater and my shrinking young bride," he thought. "I declare," he said, half aloud, with a forced laugh, "I can sympathize, for the first time, with the fly who had a bid from the spider to walk into his parlor. Is there a roaring farce on anywhere?" he asked the bar-tender.