Part 19 (1/2)

According to Frances, he is worried and nervous. How can this be? She must surely be mistaken. He has captured and safely holds the bubble of reputation, his work commands a reward that seems fabulous to such as I, and now he is to marry beauty and wealth. Can there be any hitch in his plans?

After I had finished my business with my agent, I strolled out with a commission to write a five thousand word story. My way then led me up Fifth Avenue, to the place where I get the tea Frieda and Frances so greatly appreciate. At the Forty-Second Street crossing my arm was seized from behind.

”Hold on, old boy. Those motors are splas.h.i.+ng dreadfully,” said Gordon, rescuing me from a spattering of liquid mud. ”Come with me to the club.”

I followed him with the sheeplike acquiescence that is part of my nature, feeling rather glad of the opportunity to talk with him and perhaps congratulate him. As usual, he was most spick and span. His fur coat had a collar of Alaska seal and the black pearl in his necktie was probably worth a couple of square feet of his painting, though the general effect was quiet and un.o.btrusive.

We sat down in the most deserted corner he could find and looked at one another in silence, for a few moments. It is to be presumed that my patience outlasted his.

”You're the dullest old curmudgeon ever permitted to come into polite society,” he declared, looking aggrieved.

”I was serenely waiting for your announcement,” I replied.

”Oh! So you've seen that thing also!” he retorted, with evident annoyance.

”Well, my dear fellow, I wanted to know whether to congratulate you or whether the information was somewhat premature. Come, Gordon, I used to think that we were a replica of Damon and Pythias! Won't it do you a bit of good to talk it over? Do you never feel the need of confiding in a friend, nowadays?”

For a moment he looked down at his boots, after which he deliberately placed both elbows on the little table that separated us and stared at me.

”The announcement is all right. Bought a solitaire for her last week. I suppose that she is wearing it. There is to be a reception soon, and you'll get a card to it.”

I pushed my hand over to him and he took it, rather lukewarmly.

”Oh! That's all right! I know you wish me happiness. Well, I'm getting it, am I not? I'm just as merry as a grig. Here, boy!”

The lad in b.u.t.tons took his order for whiskies and soda, after which Gordon glared at the portrait of the club's distinguished first president.

”Rotten piece of work, I call it. Chap who did it used a lot of beastly bitumen too, and it's cracking all over. Awful rubbishy stuff.”

”I suppose so,” I a.s.sented, on faith.

”Ben Franklin was a shrewd old fellow,” he continued, with one of his habitual lightning changes. ”Tells us that a man without a woman is like half a pair of scissors. I'm to be the complete thing, now. Stunning girl, Miss Van Rossum, isn't she? She talks of having a studio built at Southampton, for effect, I presume. How the deuce could a fellow expect to paint with a parcel of chattering women around him?”

”Oh! I daresay you might get used to it,” I told him, soothingly.

”I won't! She is going to read books about painting. Told me she wanted to be able to talk intelligently about it, and I advised against it.

People don't talk intelligently about painting, they only pretend to.

They must insist on airing their views about futurists, or the influence of Botticelli or such truck. They make me yawn, and I try to turn the conversation, but it's a tough job. Why the deuce are you looking at me like that?”

He snapped the question out so quickly that I was somewhat taken aback, and he began again, without waiting for an answer.

”Oh! It's no use trying to make a practical man of the world out of a sentimental writer of impossible love stories. You're staring at me because I don't answer to your preconceived ideas of a fellow contemplating the joys of matrimony. Why the deuce should I?”

”I don't know, old fellow,” I confessed. ”I acknowledge that I have always regarded wedded life in the abstract, but I must say that my----”

”I know. Your ideal is a freckled youth with a left shoulder upholding the head of a pug-nosed girl, who weeps tears of joy in his bosom, the while he gazes up at the heavens in thankfulness. I'm all right, Dave!

I've accomplished all that I was aiming at, and there are no problems left to solve. Where's that devilish boy with those drinks?”