Address: Low Haven, RFD No. 1, Bucklin, W. Va.
Thus the clean-picked skeleton of a life history; yet it was no hard task to restore some of its tissues, even coax it to life. Son of a Southern aristocrat who was a soldier while young and a lawyer and writer when mature, orphaned of his Scotch mother in the first year of his existence—had she died in giving him life?—Keith Pursuivant was born, it seemed, to distinction. To graduate from Yale in 1908 he must have been one of the youngest men in his class, if not the youngest; yet, at seventeen, he was an honor student, an athlete, member of an exclusive senior society and an orator. After that, law school, practise and election to the bench of his native community at the unheard-of age of twenty-three.
Then the World War, that sunderer of career-chains and remolder of men. The elder Pursuivant had been a colonel at twenty-one, a major-general before twenty-five; Keith, his son, deserting his brilliant legal career, was a major at twenty-six, but in the corps of brain-soldiers that matched wits with an empire. That he came off well in the contest was witnessed by his decorations, earnest of valor and resource.
"Ret. legal practise, 1919." So he did not remain in his early profession, even though it promised so well. What then? Turn back for the answer. "Ph. D., Oxford, 1922." His new love was scholarship. He became an author and philosopher. His interests included the trencher—I had seen him eat and drink with hearty pleasure—the study hall, the steel blade.
What else? "Protestant"—religion was his, but not narrowly so, or he would have been specific about a single sect. "Independent"—his political adventures had not bound him to any party. "Unmarried"—he had lived too busily for love? Or had he known it, and lost? I, too, was unmarried, and I was well past thirty. "Address: Low Haven"—a country home, apparently pretentious enough to bear a name like a manor house. Probably comfortable, withdrawn, full of sturdy furniture and good books, with a well-stocked pantry and cellar.
I felt that I had learned something about the man, and I was desirous of learning more.
On the evening mail I received an envelope addressed in Jake Switz's jagged handwriting. Inside were half a dozen five-dollar bills and a railway ticket, on the back of which was scribbled in pencil: "Take the 9 a. m. train at Grand Central. I'll meet you at the Dillard Falls Junction with a car. J. Switz."
I blessed the friendly heart of Sigrid's little serf, and went home to pack. The room clerk seemed surprized and relieved when I checked out in the morning, paying him in full. I reached the station early and got on the train, securing a good seat in the smoking-car. Many were boarding the car, but none looked at me, not even the big fellow who seated himself into position at my side. Six years before I had been mobbed as I stepped off the Twentieth Century Limited in this very station—a hundred women had rent away my coat and shirt in rags for souvenirs——
"Would you let me have a match, Mr. Connatt?" asked a voice I had heard before. My companion's pale blue eyes were turned upon me, and he was tucking a trusty-looking pipe beneath his blond mustache.