Mr. Gilbert with true masculine impassivity disregarded
the awe he had excited in his wife. He turned
to the two young men and triumphantly routed them
on the subject of the weather. Richard Caramel
was called on to remember the month of November in
Kansas. No sooner had the theme been pushed toward
him, however, than it was violently fished back to
be lingered over, pawed over, elongated, and generally
devitalized by its sponsor.
The immemorial thesis that the days somewhere were
warm but the nights very pleasant was successfully
propounded and they decided the exact distance on
an obscure railroad between two points that Dick had
inadvertently mentioned. Anthony fixed Mr. Gilbert
with a steady stare and went into a trance through
which, after a moment, Mrs. Gilbert’s smiling
voice penetrated:
“It seems as though the cold were damper here—it
seems to eat into my bones.”
As this remark, adequately yessed, had been on the
tip of Mr. Gilbert’s tongue, he could not be
blamed for rather abruptly changing the subject.
“Where’s Gloria?”
“She ought to be here any minute.”
“Have you met my daughter, Mr.——?”
“Haven’t had the pleasure. I’ve
heard Dick speak of her often.”
“She and Richard are cousins.”
“Yes?” Anthony smiled with some effort.
He was not used to the society of his seniors, and
his mouth was stiff from superfluous cheerfulness.
It was such a pleasant thought about Gloria and Dick
being cousins. He managed within the next minute
to throw an agonized glance at his friend.
Richard Caramel was afraid they’d have to toddle
off.
Mrs. Gilbert was tremendously sorry.
Mr. Gilbert thought it was too bad.
Mrs. Gilbert had a further idea—something
about being glad they’d come, anyhow, even if
they’d only seen an old lady ’way too old
to flirt with them. Anthony and Dick evidently
considered this a sly sally, for they laughed one
bar in three-four time.
Would they come again soon?
“Oh, yes.”
Gloria would be awfully sorry!
“Good-by——”
“Good-by——”
Smiles!
Smiles!
Bang!
Two disconsolate young men walking down the tenth-floor
corridor of the
Plaza in the direction of the elevator.
Behind Maury Noble’s attractive indolence, his
irrelevance and his easy mockery, lay a surprising
and relentless maturity of purpose. His intention,
as he stated it in college, had been to use three years
in travel, three years in utter leisure—and
then to become immensely rich as quickly as possible.
His three years of travel were over. He had accomplished
the globe with an intensity and curiosity that in
any one else would have seemed pedantic, without redeeming
spontaneity, almost the self-editing of a human Baedeker;
but, in this case, it assumed an air of mysterious
purpose and significant design—as though
Maury Noble were some predestined anti-Christ, urged
by a preordination to go everywhere there was to go
along the earth and to see all the billions of humans
who bred and wept and slew each other here and there
upon it.
