Wheaton was finding himself much at ease at Mabel's party, though he questioned its propriety; he had a great respect for conventions. He was well aware that there were differences between Evelyn Porter and her friends, and Miss Margrave and those whom he knew to be her intimates. Miss Porter was much finer in her instincts and her intelligence; he would have been puzzled for an explanation of the points of variance, buthe knew that they existed. The young man from Keokuk had moved away and left him with Evelyn, and it was certainly very pleasant to be sitting in a quiet corner with a girl whom everybody admired, and who was, he felt sure, easily the most distinguished girl in town. He had arrived late, to be sure, in the first social circle of Clarkson, but he had found the gate open, and he was suffered to enter and make himself at home just as thoroughly as any other man might—as completely so, for instance, as Warrick Raridan, who had wealth and the prestige of an old family behind him.
"I'm sure we shall all get much pleasure out of the Country Club," said Evelyn, who sat on the low bench between him and the fire.
"Yes, and the house is pretty good, considering the small amount of money that was put into it."
"Another case where good taste is better than money. We Americans have been so slow about such things; but now there seems to be widespread interest in outdoor life." Wheaton knew only vaguely that there was, but he was learning that it was not necessary to know much about things to be able to talk of them; so he acquiesced, and they fell to discussing golf, or at least Evelyn did, with the zeal of the fresh convert.
"I think I'll have to take it up. You make it sound very attractive."
"The Scotch owed us something good," said Evelyn; "they gave us oatmeal for breakfast, and made life unendurable to that extent. But we can forgive them if they take us out of doors and get us away from offices and houses. Our western business men areincorrigible, though. The farther west you go, the more hours a day men put into business."
Evelyn soon sent Wheaton to bring Mrs. Whipple and Annie Warren, who were stranded in a corner, and they became spectators of the pranks of some of the others, who had now gathered about the piano, where Captain Wheelock had undertaken to lead in the singing of popular airs. The singers were not taking their efforts very seriously. All knew some of the words of "Annie Carroll," but none knew all, so that their efforts were marked by scattering good-will rather than by unanimity of knowledge. When one lost the words and broke down, they all laughed in derision. Mabel and Raridan had joined the circle, and Warry entered into the tentative singing with the spirit he always brought to any occasion. Mabel, who imported all the new songs from New York, gave "Don't Throw Snowballs at the Soda-water Man" as a solo, and did it well—almost too well. Occasionally one of the group at the piano turned to demand that those who lingered by the fireside join in the singing, but Wheaton was shy of this hilarity, and was comfortable in his belief that Evelyn was showing a preference for him in electing to remain aloof. He did not understand that her evident preference was due to a feeling that he was older than the rest and too stiff and formal for their frivolity.
Mrs. Whipple made little effort to talk to Wheaton, though she occasionally threw out some comment on the singers to Evelyn. Wheaton did not amuse Mrs. Whipple. He had only lately dawned on her horizon, and she had already appraised him and filed her impression away in her memory. He was not, shehad determined, a complex character; she knew, as perfectly as if he had made a full confession of himself to her, his new ambitions, his increasing conceit and belief in himself. She had been more successful in preventing marriages than in effecting them, and she sat watching him with a quizzical expression in her eyes; for there might be danger in him for this girl, though it had not appeared. But when her eyes rested on Evelyn she seemed to find an answer that allayed her fears; Evelyn was hardly a girl that would need guardianship. As the noise from the group at the piano rose to the crescendo at which it broke into laughing discord, Evelyn met suddenly the gaze with which this old friend had been regarding her, and gave back a nod and smile that were in themselves unconsciously reassuring.
Some one suggested presently that if they were to drive home in the moonlight they should be going; and the coach soon swung away from the door into the moon's floodtide. The wind was still, as if in awe of the lighted world. The town lay far below in a white pool. Mabel again took the reins, and as the coach rumbled and crunched over the road, light hearts had recourse to song; but even the singing was subdued, and the trumpeter's note failed miserably when the horses' hoofs struck smartly on the streets of the town.
The afternoon invited the eyes to far, blue horizons, and as Evelyn stood up and shook loosely in her hand the sand she had taken from the box, she contemplated the hazy distances with satisfaction before bending to make her tee. Her visitors had left; Grant had gone east to school, and she was driven in upon herself for amusement. Her movements were lithe and swift, and when once the ball had been placed in position there were only two points of interest for her in the landscape—the ball itself and the first green. The driver was a part of herself, and she stepped back and swung it to freshen her memory of its characteristics. The caddy watched her in silent joy; these were not the fussy preliminaries that he had been used to in young ladies who played on the Country Club links; he kept one eye on the player and backed off down the course. The sleeves of her crimson flannel shirt-waist were turned up at the wrists; the loose end of her cravat fluttered in the soft wind, that was like a breath of mid-May. She addressed the ball, standing but slightly bent above it and glancing swiftly from tee to target, then swung with the certainty and ease of the natural golf player. Her first ball was a slice, but itfell seventy-five yards down the course; she altered her position slightly and tried again, but she did not hit the ball squarely, and it went bounding over the grass. At the third attempt her ball was caught fairly and sped straight down the course at a level not higher than her head. The caddy trotted to where it lay; it was on a line with the one hundred and fifty yard mark. The player motioned him to get the other balls. She had begun her game.
The fever was as yet in its incipient stage in Clarkson; players were few; the greens were poorly kept, and there were bramble patches along the course which were of material benefit to the golf ball makers. But it was better than nothing, John Saxton said to himself this bright October afternoon, as he stood at the first tee, listening to the cheerful discourse of his caddy, who lingered to study the equipment of a visitor whom he had not served before.
"Anybody out?" asked John, trying the weight of several drivers.
"Lady," said the boy succinctly. He pointed across the links to where Evelyn was distinguishable as she doubled back on the course.
"Good player?"
"Great—for a girl," the boy declared. "She's the best lady player here."
"Maybe we can pick up some points from her game," said Saxton, smiling at the boy's enthusiasm. He had been very busy and much away from town, and this was his first day of golf since he had come to Clarkson. Raridan had declined to accompany him; Raridan was, in fact, at work just now, having been for a monthconstant in attendance upon his office; and Saxton had left him barricaded behind a pile of law books. Saxton was slow in his golf, as in all things, and he gave a good deal of study to his form. He played steadily down the course, noting from time to time the girl that was the only other occupant of the links. She was playing toward him on the parallel course home, and while he had not recognized her, he could see that she was a player of skill, and he paused several times to watch the freedom of her swing and to admire the pretty picture she made as she followed her ball rapidly and with evident absorption.
He was taking careful measurement for a difficult approach shot from the highest grass on the course, when he heard men calling and shouting in the road which ran by one of the boundary fences of the club property. A drove of cattle was coming along the road, driven, as Saxton saw, by several men on horseback. It was a small bunch bound for the city. Several obstreperous steers showed an inclination to bolt at the crossroads, but the horsemen brought them back with much yelling and a great shuffling of hoofs which sent a cloud of dust into the quiet air. Saxton bent again with his lofter, when his caddy gave a cry.
"Hi! He's making for the gate!"
One of the steers had bolted and plunged down the side road toward the gate of the club grounds, which stood open through the daytime.
"You'd better trot over there and close the gate," said Saxton, seeing that the cattle were excited.
The boy ran for the gate, which lay not more than a hundred yards distant, and the steer which had brokenaway and been reclaimed with so much difficulty in the roadway bolted for it at almost the same moment. Saxton, seeing that a collision was imminent, began trotting toward the gate himself. The steer could not see the boy who was racing for the gate from the inside, and boy and beast plunged on toward it.
"Run for the fence," called Saxton.
The boy gained the fence and clambered to the top of it. The steer reached the gate, and, seeing open fields beyond, bounded in and made across the golf course at full speed. He dashed past Saxton, who stopped and watched him, his club still in his hand. The steer seemed pleased to have gained access to an ampler area, and loped leisurely across the links. Evelyn, manœuvering to escape a bunker that lay formidably before her, had not yet seen the animal and was not aware of the invasion of the course until her caddy, who, expecting one of her long plays, had posted himself far ahead, came plunging over the bunker's ridge with a clatter of bag and clubs. The steer, following him with an amiable show of interest, paused at the bunker and viewed the boy and the young woman in the red shirt-waist uneasily. One of the drovers was in hot pursuit, galloping across the course toward the runaway member of his herd, lariat in hand. Hearing an enemy in the rear, the steer broke over the lightly packed barricade, and Evelyn's red shirt-waist proving the most brilliant object on the horizon, he made toward it at a lively pace.
The caddy was now in full flight, pulling the strap of Evelyn's bag over his head and scattering the clubs as he fled. A moment later he had joined Saxton's caddy on top of the fence and the two boys viewed currenthistory from that point with absorption. Meanwhile Evelyn was making no valiant stand. She gave a gasp of dismay and turned and ran, for the drover was pushing the steer rapidly now, and was getting ready to cast his lariat. He made a botch of it, however, and at the instant of the rope's flight, his pony, poorly trained to the business, bucked and tried to unseat his rider; and the drover swore volubly as he tried to control him. The pony backed upon a putting green and bucked again, this time dislodging his rider. Before the dazed drover could recover, Saxton, who had run up behind him, sprang to the pony's head, and as the animal settled on all fours again, leaped into the saddle and gathered up bridle and lariat. The pony suddenly grew tired of making trouble, in the whimsical way of his kind, and Saxton impelled him at a rapid lope toward the steer. John was bareheaded and the sleeves of his outing shirt were rolled to the elbows; he looked more like a polo player than a cowboy.
Meanwhile Evelyn was running toward a bunker which stood across her path; it was the only break in the level of the course that offered any hope of refuge. She could hear the pounding of the steer's hoofs, and less distinctly the pattering hoofbeat of the pony. She had had a long run and was breathing hard. The bunker seemed the remotest thing in the world as she ran down the course; then suddenly it rose a mile high, and as she scaled its rough slope and sank breathlessly into the sand, Saxton cast the lariat. With mathematical nicety the looped rope cut the air and the noose fell about the broad horns of the Texan as his fore feet struck the bunker. The pony stood with firmly plantedhoofs, supporting the taut rope as steadfastly as a rock. The owner of the pony came panting up, and another of the drovers who had ridden into the arena joined them.
"Here's your cow," said Saxton. The steer was, indeed, any one's for the taking, as he was winded and the spirit had gone out of him. "You won't need another rope on him; he'll follow the pony."
"You threw that rope all right," said the dismounted drover.
"An old woman taught me with a clothes line," said John, kicking his feet out of the stirrups; "take your pony."
"Where's that girl?" asked one of the men.
"I guess she's all right," answered Saxton, walking toward the bunker. "You'd better get your cow out of here; this isn't free range, you know."
He mounted the bunker with a jump and looked anxiously down into the sand-pit.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Saxton. You see I'm bunkered. Is it safe to come out?"
"Is it you, Miss Porter?" said Saxton, jumping down into the sand. "Are you hurt?"
"No; but I'll not say that I'm not scared." She was still panting from her long run, and her cheeks were scarlet. She put up her hands to her hair, which had tumbled loose. "This is really the wild West, after all; and that was a very pretty throw you made."
"It seemed necessary to do something. But you couldn't have seen it?"
"Another case of woman's curiosity. Perhaps I ought to turn into a pillar of salt. I peeped! I suppose it was in the hope that I might play hide and seek with thatwild beast as he came over after me, but you stopped his flight just in time." She had restored her hair as she talked. "Where is that caddy of mine?"
"Oh, the boys took to the fence to get a better view of the show. They're coming up now."
Evelyn stood up quickly, and shook her skirt free of sand.
"I need hardly say that I'm greatly obliged to you," she said, giving him her hand.
Saxton was relieved to find that she took the incident so coolly.
She was laughing; her color was very becoming, and John beamed upon her. His face was of that blond type which radiates light and flushes into a kind of sunburn with excitement. There was something very boyish about John Saxton. The curves of his face were still those of youth; he had never dared to encourage a mustache or beard, owing to a disinclination to produce more than was necessary of the soft, silky hair which covered his head abundantly. He had a straight nose, a firm chin and a brave showing of square, white teeth. His mouth was his best feature, for it expressed his good nature and a wish to be pleased,—a wish that shone also in his blue eyes. John Saxton was determined to like life and people; and he liked both just now.
"Are you entirely sound? Won't you have witch-hazel, arnica, brandy?"
"Oh, thanks; nothing. I've got my breath again and am all right."
"But they always sprain their ankles."
"Yes, but I'm not a romantic young person. I'll be sorry if that caddy has lost my best driver."
"He's out on the battlefield now looking for it," said John, indicating their two caddies, who were gathering up the lost implements.
"I think you're away," John added, musingly.
"Yes; for the club house."
"That's poor golf, to give up just because you're bunkered. And yet my caddy said you were the greatest."
They walked over the course toward the club house, discussing their encounter.
"What hole were you playing when the meek-eyed kine invaded the field?"
"Oh, I was doing very badly. I was only at the fourth, and breaking all my records," said John. "I was glad of a diversion. The gentle footprints of that steer didn't improve the quality of this course," he added, looking about. The ground was soft from recent rains, and the hoofs of the animal had dug into it and marred the turf.
"It's a rule of the club," said Evelyn, "that players must replace their own divots. That can hardly be enforced against that ferocious beast."
"Hardly; but he was easily master of the game while he remained with us." The caddies had recovered the scattered equipment of the players, and were following, discussing the incidents of the busiest quarter of an hour they had known in their golfing experience.
Evelyn turned suddenly upon John.
"Did I look very foolish?" she demanded.
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean."
"Yes, you do, Mr. Saxton. A woman always looks ridiculous when she runs." She laughed. "I'm sure I must have looked so. But you couldn't have seen me; you were pretty busy yourself just then."
"Well, of course, if I'm asked about it, I'll have to tell of your sprinting powers; I'm not sure that you didn't lower a record."
"Oh, you're the hero of the occasion! I cut a sorry figure in it. I suppose, though, that as the maiden in distress I'll get a little glory—just a little."
"And your picture in the Sunday papers."
"Horrors, no! But you will appear on your fiery steed swinging the lasso."
He threw up his hands.
"That would never do! It would ruin my social reputation."
"In Boston?"
"No; down there they'd like it. It would be proof positive of the woolliness of the West. Golf playing interrupted by a herd of wild cattle—cowboys, lassoes—Buffalo Bill effects. Down East they're always looking for Western atmosphere."
"You don't dislike the West very much, do you?" asked Evelyn. "We aren't so bad, do you think?"
"Dislike it?" John looked at her. He had never liked anything so much as this place and hour. "I altogether love it," he declared; and then he was conscious of having used a verb not usual in his vocabulary.
"And so you learned how to do all the cowboy tricks up in Wyoming?" Evelyn went on. "I wish AnnieWarren had seen that!" and she laughed; it seemed to John that she was always laughing.
"I wasn't very much of a cowboy," John said. "That is, I wasn't very good at it." He was an honest soul and did not want Evelyn Porter to think that he was posing as a dramatic and cocksure character. "Roping a cow is the easiest thing in the business, and then a tame, foolish, domestic co-bos like that one!"
"Co-bos! If this is likely to happen again they ought to provide a box of salt at every tee."
When Evelyn had gone into the club house, John gathered the caddies into a corner and bestowed a dollar on each of them and promised them other bounty if they maintained silence touching the events of the afternoon in which he had participated. They and the drovers were the only witnesses besides the more active participants, and he would have to take chances with the drovers. Then, having bribed the boys, he also threatened them. He was walking across the veranda when he met Evelyn, whose horse he had already called for.
"If you're not driving, I'd be glad to have you share my cart."
"Thanks, very much," said John. "The street car would be rather a heavy slump after this afternoon's gaiety."
"I spoiled your game and endangered your social reputation; I can hardly do less."
John thought that she could hardly do more. He had known men whom girls drove in their traps, but he had never expected to be enrolled in their class. It waspleasant, just once, not to be walking in the highway and taking the dust of other people's wheels—pleasant to find himself tolerated by a pretty girl. She was prettier than any he had ever seen at class day, or in the grand stands at football games, or on the observation trains at New London, when he had gone alone, or with a sober college classmate, to see the boat races.
Deep currents of happiness coursed through him which were not all because of the October sunlight and the laughing talk of Evelyn Porter. He had that sensation of pleasure, always a joy to a man of conscience, which is his self-approval for labor well performed. He had worked faithfully ever since he had come to Clarkson; he had traveled much, visiting the properties which the Neponset Trust Company had confided to his care; and he had already so adjusted them that they earned enough to pay taxes and expenses. He had effected a few sales, at prices which the Neponset's clients were glad to accept. He had never been so happy in his work. He had rather grudgingly taken this afternoon off; but here he was, laughing with Evelyn Porter over an amusing adventure that had befallen them, and which, as they talked of it and kept referring to it, seemed to establish between them a real comradeship. He wondered what Raridan would say, and he resolved that he would not tell him of the hasty termination of his golfing; probably Miss Porter would prefer not to have the incident mentioned. He even thought that he would not tell Raridan that she had driven him to town. It was not for him to interpose between Warry Raridan, a man who had brought himthe sweetest friendship he had ever known, and the girl whom fate had clearly appointed Warry to marry.
As they turned into the main highway leading townward, a trap came rapidly toward them.
"Miss Margrave's trap," said Evelyn, as they espied it.
The figures were not yet distinguishable, though Mabel's belongings were always unmistakable.
"Then that must be one of 'The Men'?"
John was angry at himself the moment he had spoken, for as the trap came nearer there was no doubt of the identity of Mabel's companion. It was Warry. Evelyn bowed and smiled as they passed. Mabel gave the quick nod that she was introducing in Clarkson; Saxton and Raridan lifted their hats.
"Miss Margrave has a lot of style; don't you think so, Mr. Saxton?"
"Apparently, yes; but I don't know her, you know;" and he wondered.
Warry Raridan's days were not all lucky. He had been keeping his office with great fidelity of late. He had even found a client or two; and he had determined to rebuke his critics by giving proof of his possession of those staying qualities which they were always denying him. He had been hard at work in his office this afternoon, when a note came to him from Mabel, who begged that he would drive with her to the Country Club. He had already thought of telephoning to Evelyn to ask her if she would not go with him, but had dropped the idea when he remembered his new resolutions; it was for Evelyn that he was at work now. But Mabel was a friendly soul, and perfectly harmless.It certainly looked very pleasant outside; the next citation in the authorities he was consulting,—Sweetbriarvs.O'Neill, 84 N. Y., 26,—would lead him over to the law library, which was a gloomy hole with wretched ventilation. So he had given himself a vacation, with the best grace and excuse in the world.
Saxton dined alone at the Clarkson Club, as he usually did, and went afterward to his office, which he still maintained in the Clarkson National Building. He had been studying the report of an engineering expert on a Colorado irrigation scheme and he was trying to master and correct its weaknesses. As he hung over the blue-prints and the pages of figures that lay before him, the flashing red wheels of Mabel Margrave's trap kept interfering; he wished Warry had not turned up just as he had. He thought he understood why his friend had been so occupied in his office of late; but whether Warry and Evelyn Porter were engaged or not, Warry ought to find better use for his talents than in amusing Mabel Margrave. John lighted his pipe to help with the blue-prints, and while he drew it into cozy accord with himself, the elevator outside discharged a passenger; he heard the click of the wire door as the cage receded, followed by Raridan's quick step in the hall, and Warry broke in on him. "Well, you're the limit! I'd like to know what you mean by roosting up here and not staying in your room where a white man can find you." He stood with his hands thrust into the pockets of his top-coat, andglared at Saxton, who lay back in his chair and bit his pipe. "I wish by all the gods I could rattle you once and shake you out of your damned Harvard aplomb!" Raridan did not usually invoke the gods, and he rarely damned anything or anybody.
"That's a very pretty coat you have on, Mr. Raridan. It must be nice to be a plutocrat and wear clothes like that."
"The beastly thing doesn't fit," growled Raridan, throwing himself into a chair. "I don't fit, and my clothes don't fit, and—"
"And you're having a fit. You'd better see a nerve specialist." Warry was pounding a cigarette on the back of his case.
"I say, Saxton," he said calmly.
"Well! Has Vesuvius subsided?" Saxton sat up in his chair and watched Raridan breaking matches wastefully in a nervous effort to strike a light.
"John Saxton, what a beastly ass I am! What a merry-go-round of a fool I make of myself!" Warry blew a cloud of smoke into the air.
"Yes," said John, pulling away at his pipe.
"As I'm a living man, I had no more intention of driving with that girl than I had of going up in a balloon and walking back. You know I never knew her well; I don't want to know her, for that matter; not on your life!"
"Is this a guessing contest? I suppose I'm the goat. Well, you didn't care for Miss Margrave's society; is that what you're driving at? She shan't hear this from me; I'm as safe as a tomb. Moreover, I don't enjoy her acquaintance. Go ahead now, full speed."
"And it was just my infernal hard luck that I got caught this afternoon," continued Warry, ignoring him. "Sometimes it seems to me that I'm predestined and foreordained to do fool things. I've been working like blue blazes on that washerwoman's suit against the Transcontinental,—running their switch through her back yard,—and I had put away all kinds of temptation and was feeling particularly virtuous; but here came the Margrave nigger with that girl's note, and I went up the street in long jumps to meet her, and let her drive me all over town and all over the country, and order me a highball on the Country Club porch, and generally make an ass of me. I wish you'd do something to me; hit me with a club, or throw me down the elevator, or do something equally brutal and coarse that would jar a little of the folly out of me. Why," he continued, with utter self-contempt, through which his humor glimmered, "I ought to have turned down Mabel's invitation as soon as I saw the monogram on her note paper. Three colors, and letters as big as your hand! My instinctive good taste falters, old man; it needs restoring and chastening."
"I quite agree with you, sir. But it's more gallant to abuse yourself than Miss Margrave's stationery—that is, if I am correctly gathering up the crumbs of your thought. I believe you had reached the highball incident in your recital. Was it rye or Scotch? This is the day of realism, and if I'm to give you counsel, or sympathy, or whatever it is you want, I must know all the petty details."
"Don't be foolish," said Raridan, staring abstractedly; then he bent his eyes sharply on Saxton.
"See here, John," he said quietly, folding his arms. He had never before called Saxton by his first name; and the change marked a further advance of intimacy.
"Yes."
"You know I'm a good deal of a fool and all that sort of thing—"
"Chuck that and go ahead."
"But she means a whole lot to me. You know whom I mean." Saxton knew he did not mean Mabel Margrave. "You know," Raridan went on, "we were kids together up there on those hills. We both had our dancing lessons at her house, and did such stunts as that together."
"Yes," said Saxton.
"I want to work and show that I'm some good. I want to make myself worthy of her." He got up and walked the floor, while Saxton sat and watched him.
"I can't talk about it; you understand what I want to do. It has seemed to me lately that I have more to overcome than I can ever manage. I made a lot of fuss about that Knights of Midas rot. I ought to have helped her about that; it was hard for her, but I was too big a fool to know it, and I made myself ridiculous lecturing her. I forgot that she'd grown up, and I didn't know she felt as she did about it. I acted as if I thought she was crazy to pose in that fool show, when I might have known better. It was downright low of me." He stood at the window playing with the cord of the shade and looking out over the town. Saxton walked to the window and stood by him, saying nothing; and after a moment he put his hand on Raridan's shoulder and turned him round andgrasped Warry's slender fingers in his broad, strong hand.
"I understand how it is, old man. It isn't so bad as you think it is, I'm sure. It will all come out right, and while we're making confessions I want to make one too. I feel rather foolish doing it—as if I were in the game—" and he smiled in the way he had, which brought his humility and patience and desire to be on good terms with the world into his face,—"but I want you to know about this afternoon—that—that just happened—my being with her. You see, I didn't know she was there, and she had—I guess she had broken her driver or something, and quit, and I was coming in and she picked me up, and I'm sorry, and—"
Raridan wheeled on him as if he had just caught the drift of his talk.
"Oh, come off! You howling idiot! Don't you talk that way to me again. Get your hat now and let's get out of this."
"I'm glad you're feeling better," said Saxton, and laughed with real relief.
John turned out the light, and while they waited for the elevator to come up for them Warry jingled the coins and keys in his pockets before he blurted:
"I say, John, I'm an underbred, low person, and am not worthy to be called thy friend, and you may hate me all you like, but one thing I'd like to know. Did she say anything about me when you passed us this afternoon—make any comment or anything? You know I despise myself for asking, but—"
Saxton laughed quietly.
"Yes, she did; but I don't know that I ought to tell you. It was really encouraging."
"Well, hurry up."
"She said, 'Miss Margrave has a lot of style; don't you think so?'"
"Is that all?" demanded Raridan, stepping into the car.
"That's all. It wasn't very much; but it was the way she said it; and as she said it she brushed a fly from the horse with the whip, and she did it very carefully."
In the corridor below they met Wheaton coming out of the side door of the bank. He had been at work, he said. Raridan asked him to go with them to the club for a game of billiards, but he pleaded weariness and said he was going to bed.
The three men walked up Varney Street together. Those spirits that order our lives for us must have viewed them with interest as they tramped through the street. They were men of widely different antecedents and qualities. Circumstances, in themselves natural and harmless, had brought them together. The lives of all three were to be influenced by the weakness of one, and one woman's life was to be profoundly affected by contact with all of them. It is not ordained for us to know whether those we touch hands with, and even break bread with, from day to day, are to bring us good or evil. The electric light reveals nothing in the sibyl's book which was not disclosed of old to those who pondered the mysteries by starlight and rushlight.
Wheaton left them at the club door and went on toThe Bachelors', which, was only a step farther up the street.
"How do you like Wheaton by this time?" asked Raridan, as they entered the club.
"I hardly know how to answer that," Saxton answered. "He's treated me well enough. It seems to me I'm always trying to find some reason for not liking him, but I can't put my hand on anything tangible."
"That's the way I feel," said Raridan, hanging up his coat in the billiard room. "He's a rigid devil, some way. There's no let-go in him. I guess the law allows us to dislike some people just on general principles, and Jim likes himself so well that you and I don't matter. It's your shot."
The winds of January had no better luck in shaking down the leaves of the scrub oaks on the Porter hillside than their predecessors of November and December. The snows came and went on the dull slopes, and the canna beds were little blots of ruin in the gray stubble. The house was a place of light and life once more, for Evelyn had obeyed her father's wish rather than her own inclination in opening its doors for frequent teas and dinners and once for a large ball. Many people had entertained for her; she had never been introduced formally, but her mother's friends made up for this omission; she went out a great deal, and enjoyed it. Many young men climbed the hill to see her, and many went to the theater or to dances with her at least once. The number who came to call diminished by Christmas; but those who still came, and were identified as frequenters of the house, came oftener.
Warry Raridan had raged at the mob, as he called it, which he seemed always to find installed in the Porter drawing-room; but he raged inwardly these days, save as he went explosively to Saxton for comfort; he had stopped raging at Evelyn. He was at work more steadily than he had ever been before, and wished the creditfor it which people denied him, to his secret disgust. He had idled too long, or he had too often before given fitful allegiance to labor. Young women and old, who expected him to pass tea for them in the afternoons, refused to believe that he had experienced a change of heart. Those who had bragged of him abroad, and who now lured the eternal visiting girl to town to behold him, were chagrined to find that he was difficult to produce, and mollified their guests by declaring that Warry was getting more fickle and uncertain as he grew older, or took vengeance by encouraging the rumor that he and Evelyn Porter were engaged.
Wheaton called at the Porters' often, but he did not go now with Warry Raridan; he even took some pains to go when Raridan did not. He knew just how much time to allow himself between The Bachelors' and the Porter door bell in order to reach the drawing-room at five minutes past eight. He was now considered one of the men that went out a good deal in Clarkson; he was invited to many houses, and began to wonder that social enjoyment was so easy. It seemed long ago that he had been a leading figure in the ball of the Knights of Midas. Looking back at that incident he was sensible of its poverty and tawdriness; he had sacrificed himself for the public good, and the community shared in the joke of it.
Porter had an amiable way of darting out of the library in the evenings when he and Evelyn were both at home, to see who came in; not that he was abnormally curious as to who rang the door bell, though he enjoyed occasionally a colloquy with a tramp; but hewas always on the lookout for telegrams, of which he received a great many at home, and he declared in his chaffing note of complaint that the people in the house were forever hiding them from him. He sometimes brought home bundles of papers and spent whole evenings digesting them and making computations. Without realizing that Wheaton was in his house pretty often, he was glad to know that his cashier came. When he found that Wheaton was in the drawing-room he usually went over to talk to him in the interim before Evelyn came down. Sometimes a bit of news in the evening paper gave him a text.
"I see that they've had a shaking up over at St. Joe. Well, Wigglesworth never was any good. They ought to have had more sense than to get caught by him. Well, sir, you remember he was offering his paper up here. We could have had a barrel of it; but when a man of his credit peddles his paper away from home, it's a good thing to let alone. When they figure up Wigglesworth's liabilities they will find that he has paper scattered all over the Missouri Valley, and I'll bet the Second's stuck. The last time I saw Wigglesworth he was up at the club one day with Buskirk. He'd been in to see me the day before. I guessed then that he was looking for help which they didn't think he was worth at home." And then, with a chuckle: "Our people," meaning his directors, "think sometimes we're too conservative, and I reckon I do lose a lot of business for them that other fellows would take and get out of all right; but I guess we make more in the long run by being careful. Banking ain't exactlystove polish or vitalized barley, to put up in pretty packages and advertise on the billboards."
Wheaton was honestly sympathetic and responsive along these lines. He admired Porter, although he often felt that the president made mistakes; yet he, too, believed in conservatism; it was a matter of temperament rather than principle. This mingling of social and business elements pleased and flattered Wheaton. He felt that his position in the Porter bank gave him a double footing in the Porter house. Porter usually ignored Evelyn's presence while he finished whatever he was saying. Then he would go back to his chair in the library, where he could hear the voices across the hall; but he never remained after he had concluded his own talk with Wheaton.
Sometimes, however, when there were other men in the house, Porter would come and stand in the door and regard them good-humoredly, and nod to them amiably, usually with his cigar in his mouth and the evening newspaper in his hand. When there was a good deal of laughing he would go over and gaze upon them questioningly and quiz them; but they usually felt the restraint of his presence. If they repeated to him some story which had prompted their mirth, he was wont to rebuke them with affected seriousness, or he would tell them a story of his own. He expected Evelyn to receive a great deal of attention. He liked to know who her callers were and where she herself visited, and it pleased him that she had called on all her mother's old friends, whether they had been to see her or not. He had a sense of the dignities and proprieties of life, and he felt his own prestige as a founder of the town; it wouldhave been a source of grief to him if Evelyn had not taken a leading place among its young people.
The theater was the one diversion that appealed to him, and he liked to take Evelyn with him, and wanted her to sit in a box so that he might show her off to better advantage. He could not understand why she preferred seats in the orchestra; Timothy Margrave and his daughter always sat in a box, and young men were forever running in to talk to Mabel between the acts. Porter thought that this showed a special deference to the Margrave girl, as he called her, and for her father too, by implication, and he resented anything that looked like a slight upon Evelyn. He was afraid that she did not entertain enough, and since the girls who visited them in the fall had left, he had been insisting that she must have others come to see her. He had made her tell him about all the girls she had known in college; his curiosity in such directions was almost insatiable. He always demanded to know what their fathers did for a livelihood, and he had been surprised to find that so many of Evelyn's classmates had been daughters of inconspicuous families, and that the young women were in many cases fitting themselves to teach. He had pretty thoroughly catalogued all of Evelyn's college friends, and he suggested about once a week that she have some of them out.
Sometimes, after Evelyn's callers had gone, she and her father sat and talked in the library.
"I don't see what you young people can find to say so much about," he would say; or: "What was Warry gabbling about so long?"
She always told him what had been talked about,with a careful frankness, lest he might imagine that the visits of Wheaton or Warry, or any one else, had a special intention. She crossed over to the library one night after several callers had left, and found her father more absorbed than usual in a mass of papers which lay on the large table before him. He put down his glasses and lay back in his chair wearily.
"Well, girl, is it time to go to bed? Sit down there and tell me the news."
"There isn't anything worth telling; you know there isn't much information in the average caller." He yawned and rubbed his eyes and paid no attention to her answer. He had asked a few days before whether she cared to go to Chicago to hear the opera, and she had said that she would go if he would; and he now wished to talk this out with her.
"The Whipples are going over to Chicago for the opera," he ventured.
"But you're not getting ready to back out! You ought to be ashamed of yourself." She rose and went toward him menacingly, and he put up his hands as if to ward off her attack.
"But you can have just as much fun with the general as you could with me."
"No, I can't; and for another thing you need a rest. You never go away except on business; the fact is, you never get business out of your mind. Now, let me gather up these things for you." She reached for the array of balance sheets on his table, and he threw his arms over them protectingly.
"Please go away! I've spent all eveningstraightening these things out." She retreated to her chair, and he began rolling up his papers.
"You'd better go with the Whipples, and Mrs. Whipple will help you do your shopping. It doesn't seem to me that you have many clothes. You'd better get some more."
"You can't buy me off that way, father. Either you go or I don't." He turned toward her again when he had rolled his papers into a packet and fixed a rubber band around them. She knew, as she usually did after such approaches, that he wanted to say something in particular.
"You mustn't settle down too soon. You can't always be young, and you can easily get into a rut here."
"Yes, but I haven't had time yet; I've hardly got settled. I want to get acquainted at home before I go away. I'm afraid they still look on me as a pilgrim and a stranger here."
"But they're all nice to you, ain't they?" he demanded sharply.
"They are certainly as kind as can be," she answered. "I haven't a single complaint. I'm having just the time I wanted to have when I came home."
"I don't want to lose you too soon, girl." It was half a question. She wondered whether this could be what he had been leading up to.
"And I don't want you to lose me at all! I didn't come home after all these years to have you lose me."
"Oh, I don't mean right away," he said. "But sometime—sometime you will have to go, I suppose."
"I'm certainly not thinking of it." She was laughing and trying to break his mood; but he was veryserious, and took a cigar from his pocket and put it in his mouth.
"You'll have to go sometime; and when you do, I want the right kind of a man to have you."
"So do I, father."
"You are old enough to understand that a girl in your position is likely to be sought by men who may—who may—well, who may be swayed somewhat by worldly considerations."
"Isn't that a trifle hard on me? I hoped I was a little more attractive than that, father."
"You know what I mean," he went on. "I guess we can tell that sort when they come around. I've had an idea that you might choose to marry away from here; you've been away a good deal; you must have met a good many young men, brothers of your friends—"
"Yes, I met them, father, and that was all there was to it."
"I shouldn't like you to marry away from here. I've been afraid you wouldn't like our old town. I guess we fellows that started it like it better than anybody else does; but I can see how you might not care so much for it." He waited, and she knew that he wanted her to disavow any such feeling.
"Why, I've never had any idea of wanting to live anywhere else! I don't believe I'd be happy away from here. It's home, and it always will be home. I hope we can stay and keep the old house here—"
She sat forward with her arms on the curved sides of the chair. He did not heed what she said. Older people have this way with youth when they are intenton the impression they wish to make and count upon acquiescence.
"I don't want you to sacrifice yourself for me out of any sense of duty; the time will come when it will be all right for you to go, and when it comes I want you to go to a man who's decent and square—" He paused as if trying to think of desirable attributes. "I don't care whether he's got much or not, but I like young men who know how to work for a living and who've got a little common sense. I guess we don't need any dukes or counts in our family; we've all been honest and decent as far as I know, and I reckon Americans are good enough for us. I don't know that what I've got would support one of those French counts more than a week or two." His eyes brightened as they met hers. The idea of a titled son-in-law amused him, and Evelyn laughed out merrily. She did not altogether like the turn of the talk, but she was curious to know what he was driving at.
"You understand I don't want to appear to dictate," he went on magnanimously. "I don't believe in that. Nobody knows as well as a girl whom she wants to marry. Sometimes girls make pretty bad breaks; but I guess most marriages are happy. Men are not all good, and there are some mighty foolish women, besides the downright wicked ones. I guess our young men in Clarkson are as good as there are anywhere. Most of them have to work, and that's good for them. I guess I appreciate family and that kind of thing as well as the next man, but it ain't everything." He was speaking slowly, and when he made a long pause here, Evelyn rose and went over to the open grate and poked in theashes for the few remaining coals. He watched her as she stooped, noting, half consciously, the fine line of her profile, the ripple of light in her hair, the girlishness of her slim figure.
"No use of fooling with that fire," he said. She knew that he wished to say more, and she put the poker in its brass rack and rose and stood by the mantel.
"At my age, life gets more uncertain every day; I seem to be pretty sound, but I was sixty-four my last birthday, and if I'd been in the army they would have kicked me out of my job; but so long as I work for myself I suppose I'll hang on until I can't stand up in the harness any more."
"But that's a mistake, father," she put in. "Why shouldn't you take some rest now? If there's no other way, why not close out your interest in the bank and take things easier? You ought to travel; you've never been out of the country, and there are lots of things in Europe that you'd enjoy; the rest and change would do you a world of good. Can't we go this summer, and take Grant? It would be nice for us all to go together."
He shook his head with the deprecating air which men of Porter's type have for such suggestions. "It would be mighty nice, but I can't do it. Here's Thompson away, and no telling when he'll be back, and I have other things besides the bank to look after; more than you know about." She knew only vaguely what his interests were, for he never mentioned them to her; he believed that women are incapable of comprehending such things; and his natural secretiveness was always on guard. He even entertained a kind ofsuperstition that if he told of anything he was planning he jeopardized his chances of success.
"No, I guess there ain't going to be any Europe for me just now. But I'd be glad to have you and Grant go." He had been side-tracked in his talk, and chewed his cigar while trying to find the way back to the main line. Then he broke out irrelevantly:
"Warry doesn't seem to settle down. We used to think Warry had great things in him, but they're mighty slow coming out."
"Well, he's still young," said Evelyn. "It takes a young man a long time to get a start these days in the professions." Her father looked at her keenly.
"I'm afraid it isn't lack of opportunity with Warry. If he'd ever get after anything in real earnest he could make it go; but he seems to fool away his time." He said this as if he expected Evelyn to continue her defense, but she said merely:
"It's too bad if he's doing that when he has ability." She walked back to her chair and sat down. She knew that Warry was really at work, but she was afraid to show any particular knowledge of him.
"It's one of the queer things to me that young fellows who have every chance don't seem to get on as well as others who haven't any backing. Now, all Warry had to do was to stay in his office and attend to business—or that's all he needed to do three or four years ago, when he set up to practise; but now everybody's given him up. A man who doesn't want an opportunity in this world doesn't have to kick it very hard to get rid of it. Other fellows, who never had any chance, are watching for the luckier ones to slipback. There are never any lonesome places on the ladder. Now, there's Wheaton—" He again examined Evelyn's face in one of those tranquil stares with which he made his most minute scrutiny of people. "Wheaton ain't a showy fellow like Warry, but he's one of the sort that make their way because they keep an eye open to the main chance. Jim came into the bank as a messenger, and I guess he's had pretty much every job we've got, and he's done them well." He had lighted his cigar and was talking volubly. "When Thompson played out and had to go away, we looked around for somebody on the inside who knew the run of our business to put in there to help me. None of the directors wanted to come in, and so we pulled Jim out of the paying teller's cage, and he's just about saved my back. Now, Jim's not so smart, but he's steady and safe, and that's what counts in business."
He leaned back in his chair and wobbled the cigar in his mouth.
"These young Napoleons of finance are forever chasing off to Canada with other folks' money; they're too brilliant. I tell 'em down town that it ain't genius we want in business, it's just ordinary, plain, every-day talent for getting down early and staying at your job. That's what I say. There was Smith over at the Drovers' National; he was a clear case of genius. They thought over there that he was making business by chasing around the country attending banquets and speaking at bankers' conventions. I guess Smith's essays were financially sound too, for Smith knew finance, scientific finance, like a college professor, and used to come to the clearing-housemeetings and talk to beat the band about what Bagehot said and how the Bank of England did; but all the time he was spending his Sundays over in Kansas City, drumming up banking business by playing poker with the gentlemen he expected to get for his customers. He's running a laundry now on the wrong side of the Canadian border. Over at the Drovers' they ain't so terribly scientific now, and their cashier don't have an expense fund to carry him around the country making connections. Making connections!" he repeated, and chuckled. He had the conceit of his own wisdom, and while he was always generous in his dealings with his rivals, and had several times helped them out of difficulties, he rejoiced in their errors and congratulated himself on his foresight and caution.
"You oughtn't to laugh at the downfall of other people," said Evelyn; "it's wicked of you." But she was laughing herself at his enjoyment of his own joke, and was proud of the qualities which she knew had contributed to his success. He felt baffled that he had not fully concluded all he had intended to say about Wheaton and his merits, but he did not see his way back to the subject, and he rose yawning.
"I guess it's time to go to bed," he said, and he went about turning off the electric lights by the buttons in the hall. Evelyn went upstairs ahead of him, and kissed him good night at his door.
"You'd better go to the opera with the Whipples," he called to her over his shoulder, as he waited for her to reach her own door before turning off the upper hall light.
"Not a bit of it," she answered through the dark.
The novel with which Evelyn tried to read herself to sleep that night did not hold her attention, and after her memory had teased her into impatience, she threw the book down and for a long time lay thinking. She knew her father so well that she had no doubt of the current of his thought and his wish to praise James Wheaton and disparage Warry Raridan, and it troubled her; not because she herself had any well-defined preferences as between them or in their favor as against all other men she knew; but it seemed to her that her father had disclosed his own feeling rather unnecessarily and pointedly.
Suddenly, as she lay thinking and staring at the walls, life took on new and serious aspects, and she did not want it to be so. Because she had been so much away from home the provincial idea that every man that calls on a girl, or takes her to a theater in our free, unchaperoned way, is a serious suitor had not impressed her. She had expected to come home and enjoy herself indefinitely, and had idealized a situation in which she should be the stay of her father through his old age, and the chum and guide of her brother, in whom the repetition of her mother's characteristics strongly appealed to her. There had been little trouble or grief in her life, and now for the first time she saw uncertainties ahead where a few hours before everything had seemed simple and clear. She had felt no offense when her father spoke slightingly of Warry Raridan; she knew that her father really liked him, as every one did, and she would not have hesitated to say that she admired him greatly, even in his possession of those traits which betrayed theweaknesses of his character. She certainly had no thought of him save as a whimsical and amusing friend, a playmate who had never grown up.
It was true that he had made love to her, or had tried to; but she had no faith in his sincerity. She had first felt amused, and then a little sorry, when he had gone to work so earnestly. He took the trouble to remind her frequently that it was all for her, and she laughed at him and at the love-making which he was always attempting and which she always thwarted. Saxton did not come often to the house, but when he came he exercised his ingenuity to bring Raridan into the talk in the rare times that they were alone together. She knew why Saxton praised her friend to her, and it increased her liking for him. It is curious how a woman's pity goes out to a man; any suggestion of misfortune makes an excuse for her to clothe him with her compassion. It is as though Nature, in denying gifts or inflicting punishment, hastened to throw in compensations. Saxton asked so little, and beamed so radiantly when given so little; he received kindnesses so shyly, as if, of course, they could not be meant for him, but it was all right anyway, and he would move on just as soon as the other fellow came.
As for Wheaton, he was certainly not frivolous, and her father's respect for him and dependence on him had communicated itself to her. He was so much older than she; and at twenty-two, thirty-five savors of antiquity; but he was steady, and steadiness was a trait that she respected. He was terribly formal, but he was kind and thoughtful; he was even handsome, or at least so every one said.
She lay dreaming until the clock on the mantel chimed midnight, when she reached for the novel that had fallen on the coverlet, to put it on the stand beside her bed. A card which she had been using as a mark fell from the book; she picked it up and turned it over to see whose it was. It was John Saxton's.
"Father didn't say anything about him," she said aloud. She thrust the card back into the book and reached up and snapped out the light.
There was a cup of tea at the Whipples' for any one that dropped in at five o'clock. The general kept a syphon in the icebox, and his wife's tea, which he loathed, gave him his excuse. He was fond of saying that an exacting government made it impossible for an army officer to get acquainted with his wife until after his retirement, and then, he declared, there was nothing to discuss but the opportunities in life which they had missed. They talked a great deal to each other about their neighbors, and about their friends in the army whose lives they were able to follow through the daily list of transfers in the newspapers, and the ampler current history of the military establishment in the Army and Navy Journal. Few men in Clarkson had time for the general. He found the club an unsocial place, and he preferred his own battered copies of "Pendennis" and "Henry Esmond" to anything in the club library. Occasionally when Mrs. Whipple was out for luncheon he went to the club for midday sustenance, but the other men who hurried through their forty cents' worth of table d'hôte, talked of matters that were as alien to him as marine law. It would have suited the general much better to live in Washington, where others with equallylittle to do assembled in force; but his wife would not hear to it. She would not have her husband, she said, becoming a professional pall bearer, and this was the occupation of retired officers of the army and navy at the capital. He submitted to her superior authority, as he always did, and settled in Clarkson, where one could get much more for one's money than in Washington.
The general usually remained in the Indian room at the tea hour, particularly if he liked the talk of the women who appeared, or if they were good to look at; otherwise he carried his syphon to the dining-room, where there was a bottle of the same brand of rye whisky which he kept back of "The Life of Peter the Great" in a book case in the Indian room. He and Mrs. Whipple had gone to the opera without Evelyn, and the general was now settling himself to his domestic routine. He had dodged a woman whose prattle vexed him and whose call had been prolonged, and having heard the door close upon her, he was returning to his own preserve with the intention of getting some hot water from Mrs. Whipple's tea kettle for use in compounding a punch, when Bishop Delafield came in, bringing a great draft of cold air with his huge figure. The bishop was a friend of many years' standing. His sonorous voice filled the room and aided the fire in promoting cheeriness. Mrs. Whipple brewed her tea, and the general made his punch,—for two—for it was certainly snowing somewhere in the Diocese of Clarkson, the bishop said, and he had established his joke with the general that he might allow himself spirits in bad weather, as a preventive of the rheumatism which he never had. The three made acozy picture as they grouped themselves about the bright hearth. They were discussing the marriage of an old officer whom they all knew, a man of Whipple's own age, who had just married a woman much his junior.
"It's easy for us all to philosophize adversely about such things," said the general, sitting up straight in his camp chair. "I have a good deal of sympathy with Bixby. He was lonely and his children were all married and scattered to the four winds. I suppose there's nothing worse than loneliness."
His wife frowned at him; their friend's long sorrow and his fidelity to his memories appealed to all the romance in her.
"It's very different," Mrs. Whipple made haste to say, "where there are children at home. Now there's Mr. Porter; he has Evelyn and Grant."
"But that probably won't last long," said the bishop. "Girls have a way of leaving home."
"Well, there's nothing imminent?" asked Mrs. Whipple, anxiously.
"Oh, no! And girls that have been educated as she has been are likely to choose warily, aren't they?"
"Nothing in it," said the general, stirring his glass. "They all go when they get ready, without notice. Education doesn't change that."
"It strikes me that there aren't many eligible men here," said the bishop. "To be explicit, just whom shall a girl like Evelyn Porter marry?" He did not intend this for the general, who was refilling the glasses, but the general refused to be ignored.
"It's my observation," he began, with an air of having much to impart, if they would only let him alone, "thatin every town the size of this there are people who are predestined to marry. They fight it as hard as they can, and dodge their destinies wherever possible; but it's a pretty sure thing that ultimately they'll hit it off."
"That sounds like a sort of social presbyterianism to me," said the bishop dryly, "and therefore heretical." He was really interested in knowing what Mrs. Whipple knew or felt on this subject as it affected Evelyn Porter. "Now you've been better trained, Mrs. Whipple," he said.
"Well, so far as Evelyn's concerned," she answered, knowing that this was what the bishop wanted, "I'm not worrying about her. She's a sensible girl and will take care of herself. I'm not half so much afraid of destiny as of propinquity. We all know how the bachelor captain goes down before the sister, or the in-law of some kind, of the colonel of the regiment."
"That's not propinquity," said the general; "that's ordinary Christian charity on the captain's part."
"Suppose," said the bishop slowly, "the commandant so to speak, is really a banker, with a trusted officer, a kind of adjutant at his elbow; and also a handsome daughter. Assume such a hypothetical case, and what are you going to do about it?" He drained his glass and put it down carefully.
"This looks like the appeal direct," answered Mrs. Whipple, laughing and looking at her husband, who was meditating another punch and feeling for the scent blindly.
"I don't know about that Mr. Wheaton," said Mrs. Whipple, meeting the issue squarely. "He doesn't seem amusing to me, but then—I don't know him!"
"Must one be amusing?" asked the bishop.
"Oh, I mean more than that!" exclaimed Mrs. Whipple. "Don't we always mean intelligent when we say amusing?"
"Definitions certainly change. We are growing terribly exacting these days. But," he added, serious again, "Wheaton's a success; he's pointed to as one of Clarkson's rising men; one of the really self-made."
"Yes; I fancy he never knew Evelyn before the Knights of Midas ball;" and she sighed, wondering whether she was culpable. She knew that the bishop meant more than he had said and that this was a kind of warning to her. She felt guilty, remembering the ball, and the appeal Evelyn had made to her beforehand. A woman that has enjoyed a long career of fancied infallibility experiences sorrow when she suddenly questions the wisdom of her own judgments.
"What's the matter with Warry Raridan?" demanded the general. "He's got to marry somebody some day; he and Evelyn would make a very proper match. Wouldn't they?" he pleaded, when his wife and their visitor did not respond promptly.
"Oh, Warry's well enough," the bishop answered. "But Warry's an uncertain quantity. He's a fine, clean fellow, with all kinds of possibilities; but—they're possibilities!"
"Warry's certainly bright enough," said General Whipple.
"His sense of humor is a trifle too keen for every-day use," said the bishop.
"What's he been up to now?" asked the general.
The bishop laughed quietly to himself.
"It was this way. You know Warry's interest in church matters is abnormal. The boy really knows a lot of theology for one who has never studied it. He has, he says, a neat taste in bishops, whatever that means—" the bishop chuckled softly,—"and whenever one of my brethren visits me, Warry always lays himself out to give us what he calls a warm little time. A few days ago I had a letter from the Patriarch of Alexandria, whom I don't know, in which he set forth that Doctor Warrick Raridan, of my diocese, had written him proposing a great reunion of Christendom, based on the Coptic rite. As neither the Roman, the Greek, nor the Anglican Church afforded a common meeting ground, owing to many difficulties, the American gentleman had suggested that all might meet at Alexandria. The Patriarch was delighted. Doctor Raridan had suggested me as a reference, hence the venerable prelate wished to know my opinion of the extent of the movement. I suppose Warry did that as a joke on me, or to get the Patriarch's autograph, I don't know which. I haven't seen Warry since, but I'm disposed to dust his jacket for him in a fatherly way when I get hold of him. I don't know why the Patriarch should call Warry 'Doctor.' He probably assumed that a man who could write as good a letter as Warry is capable of must be a person of distinction."
"Warry's a gentleman, at any rate," said Mrs. Whipple.
"Which Wheaton isn't; is that the idea?" demanded the general; and then added: "This Wheaton strikes me as being a wooden kind of fellow. He acts as if he hadn't been used to things."
"Sh-h! be careful! That's no test of worth on the banks of the Missouri," said his wife warningly.
"Do you mean to say that Evelyn Porter's chances have been fully covered?" demanded the general. He liked gossip and hoped the subject would prove more fruitful.
"There's Mr. Saxton," said his wife. "He seems altogether possible."
"He's the new man, isn't he? He always lifts his hat to me in the street; an unusual attention in this ill-mannered age."
"Doesheact as if he had been used to things?" asked the bishop. He was still seriously interested in canvassing Evelyn's case.