“Ah, but it’s a telegraph, mind!” she insisted, while her eyes keenly studied her boarder’s face as he tore it open and began reading. She preserved silence until he had finished, but her curiosity kept her standing, huge and peering, by the open door. She noticed his blue eyes scan the message hurriedly, then again several times more slowly. Finally he looked up over the edge of the paper with wide, blank eyes. He was conscious of her enormous body beside him and was irked by it.
“It’s nothing much, after all, Mrs. Hudson,” he said in a low tone, starting once more to read it.
“Imogine, now!” she replied, “Indade, but sure, I t’ought it would be afther bein’ a—”
Mauney, ignoring her presence, went to the window and stood looking out on the street. Mrs. Hudson, after a final assertion that “a telegraph” was never a very welcome kind of missive, left and closed the door angrily.
“Patient failed to regain consciousness; died quietly six this morning.” That, with the nurse’s signature, was the whole message. Mauney stood pensively by the window wondering why he received the news so apathetically. It was unreal. It was unquestionably true. But the external objects of this bright, Friday noon wore a casual appearance that denied the occurrence of death. Church Street was just the same innocent, familiar thoroughfare. There were the groups of collegiate students hurrying along with books in their arms, laughing and talking. There was the doubled old man, white-bearded and feeble, plodding down the walk, rapping the cement sharply with his metal-headed stick, and nearby, in the shade of a maple, lay the neighbor’s familiar Airedale, mouth open and tongue protruding, as he panted in the heat.
Turning back into the room he slowly walked to his trunk and opened it. Then he folded the telegram quickly and put it in one of the compartments of the tray. As he closed the lid slowly he cleared his throat, and then set to work shaving. He tried, as faithfully as possible, to take an interest in his personal toilet, but found it quite a boring procedure. There was a new grey suit, hanging on the back of the door, to be worn for the first time to-day, and although it was very becoming, he took no pleasure in it. He was going down to the MacDowell’s this afternoon to hear some expert piano music. Freda had telephoned him before school that Betty Doran, home from New York, was going to give a private recital to a few friends. Just who Betty Doran was he neither knew nor cared. What she was going to play he had not heard, nor was he in the least curious.
In fact, only one thing mattered—to-day, to-morrow or at any time—that he could conceive. That particular, important thing was a long talk with Freda, a talk which would have consequences. It would definitely end all misunderstandings, and rob her, once and for all, of any doubt about his love.
When he arrived at the MacDowell’s he found himself a neglected member of a gathering of thirty. Betty Doran, a spoiled young person of eighteen with Dutch-cut hair, sat at the piano rendering Chopin brilliantly and smiling affectedly at the frequent applause of the audience who filled the drawing-room. There was cake and coffee to be served afterwards, but Freda, who had taken a vow never to assist her mother with afternoon refreshments, stubbornly refused now, much to the remarked surprise of guests who saw her talking quietly with Mauney just outside in the hallway.
“This is about the last place I should have wished to come to-day,” he was saying to her in a low tone. “Get me out of it, Freda. And, if you can get away this evening, I’m crazy to take you for a long drive out in the country. Are you free?”
She gladly agreed.