In a quiet corner of the club veranda Fanny Copeland and John Cecil Eaton had been conscious of the noisy gayety of Mrs. Kinney’s party, and they observed Nan Farley’s hurried exit and disappearance.
“Nan doesn’t seem to be responding to encores,” Eaton remarked. “She’s gone off to sulk—bored, probably; prefers to be alone, poor kid! It’s outrageous the way those people use her.”
“They have to be amused,” replied Mrs. Copeland, “and I’ve heard that Nan can be very funny.”
“There are all kinds of fun,” Eaton assented dryly. “She’s been taking off Uncle Tim again. I don’t see that he’s getting anything for his money—that is, assuming that she gets his money.”
“If she doesn’t,” said Mrs. Copeland quickly, “she won’t be the only person that’s disappointed.”
Eaton lifted his eyes toward a stretch of woodland beyond the river and regarded it fixedly. Then his gaze reverted to her.
“You think Billy wants to get back the money he paid Farley for the drug business?” he asked, in a colorless, indifferent tone that was habitual.
John Cecil Eaton was nearing the end of his thirties—tall, lean, with a closely trimmed black beard. He was dressed for the links, and his waiting caddy was guarding his bag in the distance and incidentally experimenting at clock golf. Eaton’s long fingers were clasped round his head in such manner as to set his cap awry. One was conscious of the deliberate gaze of his eyes; his drawling voice and dry humor suggested a man of leisurely habits. He specialized in patent law—that is to say, having a small but certain income, he was able to discriminate in his choice of cases, and he accepted only those that particularly interested him. He had been educated as a mechanical engineer, and the law was an afterthought. His years at Exeter and the Tech, prolonged by his law course at Harvard, had quickened his speech and modified its Hoosier flavor. He passed for an Eastern man with strangers. He was the fourth of his name in the community, and it was a name, distinguished in war and peace, that was well sprinkled through the pages of Indiana history. Though the Eatons had rendered public service in conspicuous instances they had never been money-makers, and when John heard of the high prices attained by Washington Street property in the early years of the twentieth century he reflected that if his father and grandfather had been a little more sanguine as to the city’s future he might have been the richest man in town.
Eaton’s interests were not all confined to his profession. He read prodigiously in many fields; he observed politics closely and was president of a club that debated economic and social questions; he was the best fly-fisherman in the State. His occasional efforts to improve the tone of local politics greatly amused his friends, who could not see why a man who might have been pardoned for looking enviously upon a seat in the United States Senate should subject himself to the indignity of a defeat for the city council. To the men he lunched with daily at the University Club his interest in municipal affairs was only another of his eccentricities. He had never married, but was still carried hopefully on the list of eligibles. By general consent he was the best dinner man in town—a guest who could be relied upon to keep the talk going and make a favorable impression on pilgrims from abroad.
Mrs. Copeland’s ironic smile at his last remark had lingered. Their eyes met glancingly; then the gaze of both fell upon the distant treetops. Theirs was an old friendship that rendered unnecessary the filling in of gaps. Eaton was thinking less concretely of her reference to Billy Copeland’s designs upon the Farley money than of the abstract fact that a divorced woman might sit upon a club veranda and hear her former spouse’s voice raised in joyous exclamation within, and even revert without visible emotion to the possibility of his remarrying.