Part 21 (1/2)
CHAPTER XII
”Nothing,” said Gatewood firmly, ”can make me believe that Kerns ought not to marry somebody; and I'm never going to let up on him until he does. I'll bet I could fix him for life if I called in the Tracer to help me. Isn't it extraordinary how Kerns has kept out of it all these years?”
The attractive girl beside him turned her face once more so that her clear, sweet eyes were directly in line with his.
”It _is_ extraordinary,” she said seriously. ”I think you ought to drop in at the club some day when you can corner him and bully him.”
”I don't want to go to the club,” said the infatuated man.
”Why, dear?”
He looked straight at her and she flushed prettily, while a tint of color touched his own face. Which was very nice of him. So she didn't say what she was going to say--that it would be perhaps better for them both if he practiced on her an artistic absence now and then. Younger in years, she was more mature than he. She knew. But she was too much in love with him to salt their ambrosia with common sense or suggest economy in their use of the nectar bottle.
However, the G.o.ds attend to that, and she knew they would, and she let them. So one balmy evening late in May, when the new moon's ghost floated through the upper haze, and the golden Diana above Manhattan turned flame color, and the electric lights began to glimmer along Fifth Avenue, and the first faint scent of the young summer freshened the foliage in square and park, Kerns, stopping at the club for a moment, found Gatewood seated at the same window they both were wont to haunt in earlier and more flippant days.
”Are you dining here?” inquired Kerns, pus.h.i.+ng the electric b.u.t.ton with enthusiasm. ”Well, that's the first glimmer of common sense you've betrayed since you've been married!”
”Dining _here_!” repeated Gatewood. ”I should hope not! I am just going home--”
”He's thoroughly cowed,” commented Kerns; ”every married man you meet at the club is just going home.” But he continued to push the b.u.t.ton, nevertheless.
Gatewood leaned back in his chair and gazed about him, nose in the air.
”What a life!” he observed virtuously. ”It's all I can do to stand it for ten minutes. You're here for the evening, I suppose?” he added pityingly.
”No,” said Kerns; ”I'm going uptown to Billy Lee's house to get my suit case. His family are out of town, and he is at Seabright, so he let me camp there until the workmen finish papering my rooms upstairs. I'm to lock up the house and send the key to the Burglar Alarm Company to-night. Then I go to Boston on the 12.10. Want to come? There'll be a few doing.”
”To Boston! What for?”
”Contracts! We can go out to Cambridge when I've finished my business.
There'll be _etwas_ doing.”
”_Can't_ you ever recover from being an undergraduate?” asked Gatewood, disgusted.
”Well--is there anything the matter with a man getting next to a little amus.e.m.e.nt in life?” asked Kerns. ”Do you object to my being happy?”
”Amus.e.m.e.nt? You don't know how to amuse yourself. You don't know how to be happy. Here you sit, day after day, swallowing Martinis--” He paused to finish his own, then resumed: ”Here you sit, day after day, intellectually stultified, unemotionally ignorant of the higher and better life--”
”No, I don't. I've a book upstairs that tells all about that. I read it when I have holdovers--”
”Kerns, I wish to speak seriously. I've had it on my mind ever since I married. May I speak frankly?”
”Well, when I come back from Boston--”
”Because I know a girl,” interrupted Gatewood--”wait a moment, Tommy!”--as Kerns rose and sauntered toward the door--”you've plenty of time to catch your train and be civil, too! I mean to tell you about that girl, if you'll listen.”
Kerns halted and turned upon his friend a pair of eyes, unwinking in their placid intelligence.
”I was going to say that I know a girl,” continued Gatewood, ”who is just the sort of a girl you--”