“Oh, really,” said the vicar. The air of constraint lightened a little, but it was too heavy to vanish at once. “I am glad to meet you.”
“Let me give you a card.” The new neighbor suddenly dived into a hidden recess of a light gray frock coat, and whipped out a small case.
Mr. Perry-Hennington with a leisureliness half reluctant, and in almost comic contrast to the stranger’s freedom of gesture, accepted the card, disentangled his eyeglasses from his pectoral cross, and read it carefully. It bore the inscription: Mr. Gazelee Payne Murdwell, 94 Fifth Avenue, New York.
“Glad to meet you, Mr. Murdwell,” said the vicar, with a note of reassurance coming into his tone. “Allow me to welcome you among us.” The voice, in its grave sonority, rose almost to a point. It didn’t quite achieve it, but the fact that the man was an American and also the new tenant of Longwood accounted for much. For the vicar was already quite sure that he didn’t belong to the island. The native article could not have had that particular manner, nor could it have dressed in that particular way, nor could it have shown that extraordinary, half quizzical self-security. A new man from the city might have achieved the white hat (with modifications), the gray frock coat, the white waistcoat, the white spats, the wonderful checked cravat, but he could not have delivered a frontal attack on an obviously reverend and honorable gentleman, for long generations indigenous to the soil of the county, on the threshold of his own parish church.
“Now look here, vicar,” said Gazelee Payne Murdwell, with an easy note of intimacy, “you and I have got to know one another. And it has got to be soon. This is all new to me.” Mr. Murdwell waved a jeweled and romantic hand, a fine gesture, which included a part of Kent, a part of Sussex, a suggestion of Surrey, and even a suspicion of Hampshire. “And I’m new to you. As I figure you out at the moment, even allowing a liberal discount for the state of Europe, you are rather like a comic opera”—the vicar drew in his lips primly—“and as you figure me out, if looks mean anything, I’m fit for a Mappin Terrace at the Zoo. But that’s a wrong attitude. We’ve got to come together. And the sooner the better, because you are going to find me a pretty good neighbor.”
“I have not the least doubt of that, Mr.—er—Murdwell,” said the vicar, glancing deliberately and augustly at the card in his hand.
“Well, as a guaranty of good intentions on both sides, suppose you and your daughter dine at Longwood on Wednesday? I am a bachelor at the moment, but Juley—my wife—and Bud—my daughter—will be down by then.”
“Wednesday!” The vicar’s left eyebrow was mobilized in the form of a slight frown. But the invitation had come so entirely unawares that unless he pleaded an engagement which didn’t exist, and his conscience therefore would not have sanctioned, there really seemed no way of escape.
“You will? Wednesday. A quarter to eight. That’s bully.” And in order to clinch the matter, Mr. Murdwell slipped an arm through the vicar’s, and slowly accompanied him as far as the vicarage gate.