He shook his bald head.
“They’re dead to me. I’m dead to them. If we was to see each other now ’twouldn’t be nothink but diggin’ up a corpse.”
“Nothink but diggin’ up a corpse,” I repeated to myself as I turned east from Fifth Avenue, leaving the brown trees of the Park behind me, and took the few steps necessary to reach my uncle Van Elstine’s door. He had married my mother’s sister, and during the lifetime of my aunt the families had been fairly intimate. Of late years they had drifted apart, as families will, though touch-and-go relations were still maintained.
I have to admit that while waiting for Annette in the library up-stairs I was nervous. I was coming back to that family life in which I should have interests, affections, cares, responsibilities. For the past three years I had had no one to think of but myself; and if in that freedom there were heartaches, there were no complexities.
Though it was not yet dark, the curtains were drawn and the room was lighted not only by a shaded lamp, but by the flicker of a fire. When Annette, wearing a tea-gown, appeared at last in the doorway she stood for a second to examine me.
“Why, Jack!” she exclaimed, then. “I didn’t know you were in New York. Have you brought Frank with you?”
“I am Frank,” I laughed, going forward to offer my hand. “I didn’t know Jack and I were so much alike. But you’re the second person who has said it within a few days.”
“It’s your mustache, I think,” she explained as we shook hands. “I never saw you wear one before.”
“I never did.”
“Do sit down. They’ll bring tea in a minute. I’m so glad to see you. But if it’s not a rude question, tell me why you’ve been here all this time and never let me know.”