“I wish she was as sure as I am,” he said. “I wish she was as sure of me as I am of myself—and as I am of her.” He laughed the short, confident laugh again. “I wish she was as sure as I am of us both. We're all right. I've got to get through this, and find out what it's best to do, and I've got to show her. When I've had my chance good and plenty, us two for little old New York! Gee! won't it be fine!” he exclaimed imaginatively. “Her going over her bills, looking like a peach of a baby that's trying to knit its brows, and adding up, and thinking she ought to economize. She'd do it if we had ten million.” He laughed outright joyfully. “Good Lord! I should kiss her to death!”
The simplest process of ratiocination would lead to a realization of the fact that though he was lonely and uncomfortable, he was not in the least pathetic or sorry for himself. His normal mental and physical structure kept him steady on his feet, and his practical and unsentimental training, combining itself with a touch of iron which centuries ago had expressed itself through some fighting Temple Barholm and a medium of battle-axes, crossbows, and spears, did the rest.
“It'd take more than this to get me where I'd be down and out. I'm feeling fine,” he said. “I believe I'll go and 'take a walk,' as Palford says.”
The fog-wreaths in the park were floating away, and he went out grinning and whistling, giving Burrill and the footman a nod as he passed them with a springing young stride. He got the door open so quickly that he left them behind him frustrated and staring at each other.
“It wasn't our fault,” said Burrill, gloomily. “He's never had a door opened for him in his life. This won't do for me.”
He was away for about an hour, and came back in the best of spirits. He had found out that there was something in “taking a walk” if a fellow had nothing else to do. The park was “fine,” and he had never seen anything like it. When there were leaves on the trees and the grass and things were green, it would be better than Central Park itself. You could have base-ball matches in it. What a cinch it would be if you charged gate-money! But he supposed you couldn't if it belonged to you and you had three hundred and fifty thousand a year. You had to get used to that. But it did seem a fool business to have all that land and not make a cent out of it. If it was just outside New York and you cut it up into lots, you'd just pile it up. He was quite innocent—calamitously innocent and commercial and awful in his views. Thoughts such as these had been crammed into his brain by life ever since he had gone down the staircase of the Brooklyn tenement with his twenty-five cents in his ten-year-old hand.
The stillness of the house seemed to have accentuated itself when he returned to it. His sense of it let him down a little as he entered. The library was like a tomb—a comfortable luxurious tomb with a bright fire in it. A new Punch and the morning papers had been laid upon a table earlier in the day, and he sat down to look at them.
“I guess about fifty-seven or eight of the hundred and thirty-six hours have gone by,” he said. “But, gee! ain't it lonesome!”
He sat so still trying to interest himself in “London Day by Day” in the morning paper that the combination of his exercise in the fresh air and the warmth of the fire made him drowsy. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes without being aware that he did so. He was on the verge of a doze.
He remained upon the verge for a few minutes, and then a soft, rustling sound made him open his eyes.