“Listen! I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’m going to get together all the directors of the Company, and we’ll pull off a little dinner at the Williston—in the Gold Room. How’ll that do, my Christian friend?” said he, grinning at Joslin as he stepped to the hall table and picked up his own hat and gloves.
“Of course, I can’t do that right away,” he continued, turning back, his stick over his arm, his well-brushed hat now on his head. “Maybe a couple of days. I’ll be busy. Maybe I’ll have to stay down at the club to-night, Marcia. I’ll check up about dinner time.”
He did not call up at about dinner time, nor at all until past noon the next day, when he explained that he had been crowded at the office and unable to get his own apartments by phone—explanations with which his wife was fairly familiar.
As for Joslin, he passed the two days in what seemed to him a continual kaleidoscope of madhouse change. Now in charge of one of the chauffeurs, sometimes in the more gracious company of his hostess, he spun up and down the streets of the great city, looking at the untold thousands of its inhabitants, wondering at its stately buildings, wondering at the beauty of its parks, so like and yet so unlike the woods he had always known. In the evening, in his own room, he read steadily, as best he might, spelling out the complex, stern theology of old John Calvin. Now and again he raised his eyes and wondered what Calvin would have done had he been here.
They brought to him now certain other clothing of Jimmy Haddon’s, a trifle short, a trifle large, but serving better than anything he yet had had. He was not happy in all this—no man ever was more unhappy in all his life than David Joslin now. Moreover, there came to his heart, every moment of the day and night, the most exquisite of pain—nostalgia—the actual illness of homesickness. He longed unspeakably for the sight of the mountains, for the smell of the wood-smoke of the fires, the look of the stars at night, the pink of the dawn when morning came. Life here was a fearsome thing, and long and hard seemed the unknown road that lay before him.
Haddon came home after his second night away and announced that all was in readiness for the great banquet of the men whom he represented in his business affiliations.
“I’m going to give you your first chance in public speaking now, Joslin,” said he. “Believe me, you’ll have an attentive audience for once, if you never do again—weren’t you talking of being a preacher, or something? Talk business, son, straight business—that’s all we want to hear. If you make good, you’ll have the time of your life. Help us, and we’ll help you—see?”
“How about clothes?” He turned questioningly to his wife, who was in the room at the time. “Of course it’s evening dress—is there a spare suit of mine around anywhere?”
Marcia Haddon looked at the two for a moment “Perhaps Mr. Joslin would not prefer it,” said she.
Joslin shook his head. “No,” said he. “I hain’t a-goin’ to change from these clothes I’ve got on now. I’m used to ‘em a little.”