And I thought extremely well of myself and of my pistols that June afternoon, as I was hurrying up town the moment the day's settlement on 'Change was finished. I had sent out my daily letter to investors, and its tone of confidence was genuine—I knew that hundreds of customers of a better class would soon be flocking in to take the places of those I had been compelled to teach a lesson in the vicissitudes of gambling. With a light heart and the physical feeling of a football player in training, I sped toward home.
Home! For the first time since I was a squat little slip of a shaver the word had a personal meaning for me. Perhaps, if the only other home of mine had been less uninviting, I should not have looked forward with such high beating of the heart to that cold home Anita was making for me. No, I withdraw that. It is fellows like me, to whom kindly looks and unsought attentions are as unfamiliar as flowers to the Arctic—it is men like me that appreciate and treasure and warm up under the faintest show or shadowy suggestion of the sunshine of sentiment. I'd be a little ashamed to say how much money I handed out to beggars and street gamins that day. I had a home to go to!
As my electric drew up at the Willoughby, a carriage backed to make room for it. I recognized the horses and the coachman and the crest.
“How long has Mrs. Ellersly been with my wife?” I asked the elevator boy, as he was taking me up.
“About half an hour, sir,” he answered. “But Mr. Ellersly—I took up his card before lunch, and he's still there.”
Instead of using my key, I rang the bell, and when Sanders opened, I said: “Is Mrs. Blacklock in?” in a voice loud enough to penetrate to the drawing-room.
As I had hoped, Anita appeared. Her dress told me that her trunks had come—she had sent for her trunks! “Mother and father are here,” said she, without looking at me.
I followed her into the drawing-room and, for the benefit of the servants, Mr. and Mrs. Ellersly and I greeted each other courteously, though Mrs. Ellersly's eyes and mine met in a glance like the flash of steel on steel. “We were just going,” said she, and then I felt that I had arrived in the midst of a tempest of uncommon fury.
“You must stop and make me a visit,” protested I, with elaborate politeness. To myself I was assuming that they had come to “make up and be friends”—and resume their places at the trough.
She was moving toward the door, the old man in her wake. Neither of them offered to shake hands with me; neither made pretense of saying good-by to Anita, standing by the window like a pillar of ice. I had closed the drawing-room door behind me, as I entered. I was about to open it for them when I was restrained by what I saw working in the old woman's face. She had set her will on escaping from my loathed presence without a “scene;” but her rage at having been outgeneraled was too fractious for her will.