Another month passed before I heard from him again, and Christmas had gone and the new year had almost come. The contents of this letter, written on Christmas eve, when the frog that played the trombone had been sitting on the corner of my desk for just a year, was as startling as its manner was strange. He told me that his engagement was broken off irrevocably.
If my own affairs had permitted it, I should have taken the first train to Denver to discover what had happened. As it was I went again to call on the landlady’s daughter. But she refused to see me again. Word was brought me that she was engaged, and begged to be excused.
About a fortnight later I chanced to meet on a street corner the classmate who had got my friend the Denver appointment. I asked if there was any news.
“Isn’t there!” was the response. “I should think there was, and lots of it! You know our friend in Denver? Well, we have a telegram this morning: his health is shaky, and so he has resigned his position.”
“Resigned his position!” I echoed. “What does that mean?”
“That’s what we wanted to know,” replied my classmate, “so we telegraphed to our local manager, and he gave us an explanation right off the reel. The manager has a sister who is the widow of a California millionaire, and she has been in Denver for the winter, and she has met our friend; and for all she is a good ten years older than he is, she has been fascinated by him—you know what a handsome fellow he is—and she’s going to marry him next week, and take him to Egypt for his health.”
“He’s going to marry the California widow?” I asked, in astonishment. “Why, he’s enga—” Then I suddenly held my peace.
“He’s going to marry the California widow,” was the answer,—“or she’s going to marry him; it’s all the same, I suppose.”
Two days later I had a letter from Denver confirming this report. He wrote that he was to be married in ten days to a most estimable lady, and that they were to leave his mother in New York as they passed through. Fortunately he had been able to make arrangements whereby his mother would be able to live hereafter where she pleased, and in comfort. He invited me to come out to Colorado for the wedding, but hardly hoped to persuade me, he said, knowing how pressing my engagements were. But as their steamer sailed on Saturday week they would be at a New York hotel on the Friday night, and he counted on seeing me then.
I went to see him then, and I was shocked by his appearance. He was thin, and his chest was hollower than ever. There were dark lines below his liquid eyes, brighter then than I had ever seen them before. There were two blazing spots on his high cheek-bones. He coughed oftener than I had ever known him, and the spasms were longer and more violent. His hand was feverishly hot. His manner, too, was restless. To my surprise, he seemed to try to avoid being alone with me. He introduced me to his wife, a dignified, matronly woman with a full figure and a cheerful smile. She had a most motherly manner of looking after him and of anticipating his wants; twice she jumped up to close a door which had been left open behind him. He accepted her devotion as a matter of course, apparently. Once, when she was telling me of their projects—how they were going direct to Egypt to remain till late in the spring, and then to return to Paris for the summer, with a possible run over to London before the season was over—he interrupted her to say that it mattered little where he went or what he did—one place was as good as another.