VI
It was nearly eleven o'clock when Petronilla returned. She was accompanied by an errand boy and a fair-haired young man, who was not dressed with the elegance of the residents of the club-house. His feet were heavily shod. While waiting in the hall he waved a wet umbrella with his sinewy left hand and a worn felt hat with his right hand, whistled very skilfully, and paced noisily to and fro in long strides, as if entirely at home in the place.
Petronilla summoned Frederick. With an almost passionate outcry of welcome, the one of the two men ran up the stairs, two steps at a time, and the other down the stairs twice as fast. They kissed and shook hands vigorously.
Frederick's early visitor was Peter Schmidt, of whom he had dreamed on the Roland. He had read Frederick's name in the newspaper among the survivors and had come from his home in Meriden, several hours' ride from New York, to see his old friend. The paper also gave Frederick's address, the reporters having got hold of it through his connection with the celebrity, Ingigerd Hahlström.
The first question Frederick asked after the storm of greeting had subsided, was, "I say, old boy, do you believe in telepathy?"
"Telepathy? Not a bit," replied the Friesian, and laughed a mighty laugh. "I am scarcely thirty, and sound in mind and body. I'm not an idiot. I hope no Mr. Slade has turned your head like old Zöllner's in Leipzig. Have you come over to preside at a theosophical or spiritualistic meeting? Then good-bye to our friendship, old fellow."
This was the familiar tone to which the friends were accustomed from their university days. It was infinitely refreshing to both to hear it again. No conventions of any sort divided them. Their relations were free of everything that hampers association in later years.
"You've been through a thing or two," his friend said, when Frederick confirmed the newspaper account of his having witnessed the sinking of the Roland. "I believe you're a married man and have children and are living in Germany, and as an avocation are doing scientific work, while practising medicine as a vocation. You were thinking of everything else in the world but a trip to America, which never had any charms for you."
"Isn't it weird," said Frederick, "how one suddenly finds oneself in a place one never dreamt of, arriving there in ways most unforeseen and at a time most unforeseen? And doesn't it seem as if the life we lived eight years ago, which was so choke-full of actuality, of real living, had all of a sudden turned to nothing?"
Peter Schmidt proposed, since they were both peripatetic philosophers, to take a walk through the streets of New York. Frederick went to consult Ingigerd. He found that for the next few hours she would be completely taken up with dressmakers. All she said was that she hoped to see him again at luncheon. Soon after, the two friends were walking along the asphalt paths of Central Park, swept clean of snow, under the bare, snowy trees between snowy lawns, while the mad city around them filled the air with a hundred-tongued Dionysiac uproar.