CHAPTER X
J. LEDYARD SYMINGTON
A LONELY abode near the opening of a ravine, about four miles from Sipes’s hut, bore the scars of many winters. It was not over twelve feet square. It had two small windows, a narrow door and a “lean to” roof. On the door was the roughly carved inscription—“J. Ledyard Symington, Tuesdays and Thursdays.” Near this was nailed an old cigar box, with a slit in the cover. Lettered on the box was a request to “Please leave card.”
I often passed this mysterious dwelling without seeing any indications of life, but one chilly rainy day I saw smoke issuing from the bent piece of stove-pipe, protruding through the roof. The fact that it happened to be Thursday helped to overcome my reluctance to disturb the occupant.
A cordial and cheery call to “come in” was the response to my gentle knock.
I found a rather tall, pleasant faced, watery eyed old man, with a gray beard, aquiline nose, and shaggy eyebrows, who rose from a box on which he had been sitting before a small table. There was an unmistakable air of noblesse oblige in his polite offer of another box. His clothes bespoke the “shabby genteel,” which was accentuated by a somewhat battered and much worn plug hat, that hung on a peg near the window back of the table.
I apologized for my intrusion, told him that I had had rather a long walk, and would be glad to rest awhile before his fire. He seemed interested in some sketches made during the morning, which he asked to see. His courtly air did not desert him when he confessed that he “hadn’t had a smoke for a week.” I handed him some tobacco. He fished a disreputable looking big black pipe out of some rubbish on a shelf, and was soon enveloped in the comforting fumes.
I was made to feel much at home, and his conversation soon lost its tinge of formality. He looked at me curiously and asked where I was from. When I told him, his eyes brightened, and he wanted to know what the principal society events had been during the winter. He said he had only seen half a dozen papers in five or six months, and had lost all track of what had been going on.
Along one of the shelves at the end of the room were ranged several books on etiquette, and thirty or forty much worn novels, of the variety usually absorbed by very young ladies in hammocks, scattered around the shaded lawns of white flannel summer resorts, where the most intense intellectual occupations are tennis and dancing—books in which are recorded the “dashing devilish beauty of Cyril,” With his “corking and perfectly ripping” ideas, and the bewildering charms of willowy Geraldine, the violet eyed heiress, with the long lashes, her many stunning costumes and clinging gowns. Flashing glances, nonchalantly twirled canes, faintly perfumed stationery, and softly tearful moods adorn the pages.