Part 13 (1/2)
CHAPTER IX.
OAKHURST.
On a Sat.u.r.day morning in early June, about five months after Duncan's visit to Chicago, Rennsler Van Vort, attired in tweeds and carrying a bag in one hand and a bundle of coats and sticks in the other, pushed rapidly past the ticket collector of a Jersey City ferry. He was on his way to spend Sunday with the Osgoods at their place near Morristown, and his haste was inspired by the knowledge that if he missed the next boat he would be left to wander about the most unattractive portion of New York for at least another half-hour. He managed, however, to reach the ferry-boat just before she started, and was congratulating himself on his good fortune, when he observed a man with a bag in each hand, running in hot haste down the incline leading to the boat. The iron gates were closed; the windla.s.ses were clicking rapidly as the mooring hawsers were being wound around, and the great paddle wheels had begun to stir the waters of the slip to seething foam. The man at the windla.s.s tried to restrain the tardy pa.s.senger's efforts to reach the boat, but he brushed past him and leapt onto her deck, just as she had begun to move out from the slip.
”Great Scot! Duncan, did you drop from the clouds?” said Van Vort, as the breathless runner, aided by a deck hand, clambered over the iron gate.
”No, I beat the gate-keeper,” replied Duncan, as he came to a stop beside Rennsler and deposited his bags on the deck. ”He was just shutting the stile, and called to me to stop, but I didn't care to bask on the docks for an hour, so I gave him the slip and here I am.”
”That explains your flying leap on the boat, but did you jump across the pond also?” asked Van Vort. ”The last time I saw you, you were going to Chicago; then I heard you were in London, and now you make an amazing appearance on a Jersey ferry. You must have taken up jugglery, old chap.”
”An old loafer like you doesn't know anything about business; if you did you might appreciate my flights.”
”Never mind if I don't,” answered Van Vort, resting his arm on the rail and gazing into the water as it surged under the paddle wheels. ”Tell me what took you to London and what brought you back.”
”Well, I went to Chicago, as you know,” answered Duncan, ”to look after an elevator syndicate. I was there a week, got things straightened up, took the 'Limited' on Thursday, reached New York Friday night, spent Sat.u.r.day morning at the office, and sailed that afternoon, on the Umbria, to look after the London end of the scheme.”
”That was last January. How have you been eluding your friends ever since?”
”I was in London until two weeks ago. I came in on the Etruria this morning; we should have landed Sunday, but we broke our shaft and had to be towed in.”
”Well, Duncan, I am glad to see you back; but you must give an account of yourself. What did you do in London besides business?”
”During February and March I was groping about in the fog after Britons to invest in Chicago elevators, or following the hounds in the s.h.i.+res.
London in winter is the beastliest place in Christendom, and when I could get away I was in the country.”
”Yes; I know London in the winter,” put in Van Vort. ”Fogs and suffocation, rain and muddy boots, slush and colds, sleet and influenza, all combine to make a dreary mackintosh and umbrella existence, which you can vary in-doors by s.h.i.+vering before fires that won't burn.”
”I see you've been there,” answered Duncan; ”but you want to add something about empty theatres and clubs, and say it is a city deserted by every person who can buy, borrow, or steal a railway ticket to the country. But for one guardian angel, I should not be here to tell this tale.”
”I can name that angel,” said Van Vort; ”it is Scotch whiskey.”
”Right!” answered Duncan.
”I thought so. All sufferers seek the same cure; but April and May were better, weren't they?”
”I should think so.”
”Did you meet many people?”
”Plenty. I fell in with Lady Brock on the steamer, and she came in handy. I knew some people when I was there before, and took out some good letters; and then there is the American colony.”
”Yes, the American colony,” said Van Vort; ”who are they?”
”Some of them are people one doesn't know at home, but the English don't mind that, so why should we? You remember Mrs. Raynor, that pretty woman who used to be about New York, and afterward so scandalized the prudes by an affair with a Russian Grand Duke that no one received her when she came home?”
”Of course; did you run across her?”
”Yes; she is in London now, the smartest of the smart; the friend of the prince and the envy of American turf hunters. They wouldn't have her in New York, but now they flock to her house because she is in the London smart set, and she is clever enough to receive them and forget the malarious past.”
”I suppose you went there; the malarious past didn't frighten you away.”