As the carriage rattled across town he lay back, his blood singing in his ears, his heart racked with rage and pain. He had done no good, probably been very foolish. But as June’s face rose on his memory, he wished he had hit harder, and the recollection of Jerry groaning against the fence soothed his pain.
CHAPTER XIII
THE BREAKING POINT
In the middle of the December afternoon the Colonel had come in early to his rooms to change his coat and brush up a bit. He was going to call on the wife of a pioneer friend who had just returned from Europe. The Colonel was punctilious and called in a black coat, which he now stood brushing beside the window and anxiously surveying, for he had been a man who was careful of his dress, and the coat looked shiny.
It was a chill gray day and he looped back the lace curtains to see better. Outside, the fog was beginning to send in long advancing wisps which projected a cold breath into the warmest corners of the city. A mental picture rose on his mind of the sand dunes far out with the fleecy curls and clouds sifting noiselessly over them. The vision was not cheering and he put it out of his mind, and in order to enliven his spirits, which were low, he whistled softly as he brushed.
The room—the bare hotel parlor of that kind of suite which has a small windowless bedroom behind it—looked out on the life of one of the down-town streets. The Traveler’s Hotel had not yet quite fallen from grace, though the days of its prosperous prime were past. On the block opposite it a few old sheds of wood and corrugated iron (relics of the early fifties) toppled against one another and sheltered a swarming vagabond life. The hotel itself still preserved its dignity. The shops on its ground floor were respectable and clean. There was a good deal of Spanish and Italian spoken in them, which seemed to accord with their pink and blue door-frames, the Madeira vines growing in their windows, and the smell of garlic that they exhaled at midday.
The Colonel was giving the coat a last inspection when a knock made him start. His visitors were few, and his eyes were expectantly fixed on the door when in answer to his “come in” it slowly opened. A whiff of perfume and a rustle of silks heralded the entrance of June, who stood somewhat timidly on the threshold looking in.
“Junie!” cried the Colonel in delighted surprise. “My girl come to see the old man in his lair!”
And he took her by the hand and drew her in, kissing her as he shut the door, and rolling up his best arm-chair.
She did not sit down at once and he said, still holding her hand by the tips of the fingers and looking her over admiringly:
“Well, aren’t you a beautiful sight! And just the best girl in the world to come down here and see me.”