During the ensuing hour, marked by the arrival of our luggage and the unpacking of boxes, I meditated profoundly over the difficulties of my situation. In a wilderness, beyond the confines of civilization, I would undoubtedly be compelled to endure the hardships of the pioneer; yet for the present I resolved to let no inkling of my dismay escape.
The evening meal over—dinner in but the barest technical sense—I sat alone in my own room, meditating thus darkly. Nor was I at all cheered by the voice of Cousin Egbert, who sang in his own room adjoining. I had found this to be a habit of his, and his songs are always dolorous to the last degree. Now, for example, while life seemed all too black to me, he sang a favourite of his, the pathetic ballad of two small children evidently begging in a business thoroughfare:
“Lone and weary through the streets we wander,
For we have no place to lay our head;
Not a friend is left on earth to shelter us,
For both our parents now are dead.”
It was a fair crumpler in my then mood. It made me wish to be out of North America—made me long for London; London with a yellow fog and its greasy pavements, where one knew what to apprehend. I wanted him to stop, but still he atrociously sang in his high, cracked voice:
“Dear mother died when we were both young,
And father built for us a home,
But now he’s killed by falling timbers,
And we are left here all alone.”
I dare say I should have rushed madly into the night had there been another verse, but now he was still. A moment later, however, he entered my room with the suggestion that I stroll about the village streets with him, he having a mission to perform for Mrs. Effie. I had already heard her confide this to him. He was to proceed to the office of their newspaper and there leave with the press chap a notice of our arrival which from day to day she had been composing on the train.
“I just got to leave this here piece for the Recorder,” he said; “then we can sasshay up and down for a while and meet some of the boys.”
How profoundly may our whole destiny be affected by the mood of an idle moment; by some superficial indecision, mere fruit of a transient unrest. We lightly debate, we hesitate, we yawn, unconscious of the brink. We half-heartedly decline a suggested course, then lightly accept from sheer ennui, and “life,” as I have read in a quite meritorious poem, “is never the same again.” It was thus I now toyed there with my fate in my hands, as might a child have toyed with a bauble. I mean to say, I was looking for nothing thick.
“She’s wrote a very fancy piece for that newspaper,” Cousin Egbert went on, handing me the sheets of manuscript. Idly I glanced down the pages.
“Yesterday saw the return to Red Gap of Mrs. Senator James Knox Floud and Egbert G. Floud from their extensive European tour,” it began. Farther I caught vagrant lines, salient phrases: “—the well-known social leader of our North Side set ... planning a series of entertainments for the approaching social season that promise to eclipse all previous gayeties of Red Gap’s smart set ... holding the reins of social leadership with a firm grasp ... distinguished for her social graces and tact as a hostess ... their palatial home on Ophir Avenue, the scene of so much of the smart social life that has distinguished our beautiful city.”