Just then Wooton gave a sudden exclamation. "This is Wednesday, isn't it? Well, that is her afternoon. You'd better shut up your desk for today; go up to your rooms and get an artistic twirl or two to your locks, and then come down to the smoking-room of the Cosmopolitan Club about quarter to four; I'll be there waiting for you. Then we'll go on down to Mrs. Stewart's together."
[CHAPTER III]
The days were getting very short now, and darkness was already hovering over the town as Dick passed through the portals of the Cosmopolitan. When they came out together, Wooton and he, it seemed to Dick that the town was in one of its most characteristic tempers. It was in the beginning of winter; the air was a little damp, and smoke hung in it so that it begrimed in an incredibly short space of time. The buildings, in the twilight that was half of the day's natural dusk and half the murkiness of the smoke, loomed against the hardly denned sky like some towering, threatening genii. The electric lights were beginning to peer through the gloom. The sidewalks were alive with a never-tiring throng, men and women jostling each other, never stopping to apologize; all intent not so much on the present as on something that was always just a little ahead. This, the onlooker mused, was what it meant to "get ahead," a blind physical rush in the dark, a callous indifference to others, a selfish brutality, a putting into effect the doctrine of the survival of the fittest. The streets clanged with the roll of wheels; carriages with monograms on the panels rolled by with clatter of chains and much spattering of mud; huge drays drawn by four, and sometimes six-horse teams, and blazening to the world the name of some mercantile genius whom soap or pork had enriched, thundered heavily over the granite blocks; the roar and underground buzz of the cable mingled with the deafening ringing of the bell that announced the approach of the cable trains; overhead was the thunderous noise of the Elevated. It was all like a huge cauldron of noise and dangers. Dick declared to himself that it was the modern Inferno. And yet, as he passed toward the station of the Elevated with Wooton, Dick began to understand something of the fascination that the place, even in its most noisome aspects, was able to exert. In the very rush and roar, in the ceaseless hum and murmur and groaning, there was epitomized the eager fever of life, its joys and its pains. Here, after all, was life. And it was life that Dick had come to taste.
There was a quick ride on the Elevated, Dick catching various glimpses of unsightly buildings that showed their undress uniform, of dim-lit back rooms where one caught hints of dismal poverty, of roofs that seemed to shudder under the banner of dirty clothes fluttering in the breeze. The town seemed, from this view, like the slattern who is all radiant at night, at the ball, but who, next morning, is an unkempt, untidy hag.
Mrs. Annie McCallum Stewart rose rather languidly as they were announced. Dick noticed that in some mysterious way she managed to give a peculiar grace to almost her every movement; there was something of a tigress in the way she walked. She gave her hand to Wooton—"Delightful of you to come so soon," she murmured.
"One of the things I live for, my dear Mrs. Stewart," said Wooton, "is to surprise people. Knew you didn't expect me, so I came. Brought a dear friend of mine, Mrs. Stewart, Mr. Lancaster. Want you to like him."
"My only prejudice against you, Mr. Lancaster," was Mrs. Stewart's smiling reply, "is that you come under Mr. Wooton's protection. I pretend I'm immensely fond of him, but I'm not; I'm only afraid of him; he's too clever." And, still laughing at Wooton in such a way as to show the exquisite perfection of her teeth, she presented young Lancaster to several of the others who were sitting about the room, chatting and sipping tea. He had a vague idea of several stiff young men bowing to him, of an equal number of splendidly appareled, but unhandsome girls, looking at him with supercilious nods, and of hearing names that faded as easily as they touched him. He found himself, presently, sitting on a low divan, opposite to a girl with dreamy blue eyes behind pince-nez eyeglasses. He hadn't caught her name; he knew no more of her tastes, of the things she was likely to converse about than did the Man in the Moon. But he instinctively opined that it was necessary to seem rather than to be, to skim rather than to dive.
"I've been 'round the circle," he said, trying a smile, "and I'm delivered up to you. I hope you'll treat me well."
The girl with the blue eyes looked at him a moment in silence. Then she said, abruptly: "This is the first time that you've been down here, isn't it? I knew it! Well, these things are not bad—when you get used to them. Now, you're not used to them. Confess, are you?"