Ewing rose, glad of the exit thus provided. It was kind of people to concern themselves about his affairs, but he wished they could be less peculiar. He bowed to Mrs. Lowndes and shook hands with the doctor. He, at least, was understandable.
When they had gone the old lady faced her friend with a calmness that surprised him.
"Fred, what sorry, what terrible things can make us young again! I feel now as I felt that other night--just at this hour so many years ago--when I knew she"d gone--knew she"d gone."
"He"s Kitty"s boy." The big man fronted her as if for a feat of persuasion.
"Don"t, Fred! I"ve just weathered that point. I was weak, but Randall--Randall saved me. He"s dreadful, Fred, unnatural, impossible--oh, terribly impossible!" She faced him dauntlessly, her cheeks glowing with faint spots of color.
"I liked him, Kitty. He seems----"
"You"re a physician, accustomed to monstrosities. He"s something we don"t speak of, my friend. And see--you _must_ see--what he would suffer if he knew."
CHAPTER XVI
TEEVAN AS SPECIAL PROVIDENCE
Ewing was delighted by an invitation from the little man to dine. They had reached the avenue after walking in silence through a side street.
Such moments were rare with Teevan. Not often did he fail of speech, even in his periods of calculation. But this was a moment requiring nice adjustments. The suggestion about dinner came as they paused at the corner.
"If you"d like to have me I"d be mighty glad," responded Ewing.
They turned toward Ninth Street, and Ewing told of his hour at Mrs.
Lowndes", scarce conscious of Teevan"s questioning, for the little man probed with an air of discreet condolence that would have won a far more reticent talker. Ewing was gratified by this attention from a man who knew the world of cities, and whose mind must usually be occupied with affairs of importance. He felt himself drawn to Teevan by bonds of sympathy that tightened momentarily.
"My dear mother-in-law is a sentimental thing," the little man confessed with a delicate intimation of apology. "She makes any sad tale her own.
The theater affects her, the woes of stage creatures, quite as you tell me your own very human little story did. My arrival must have saved you from one of her rather absurd manifestations. She"s a dear old soul, with quant.i.ties of temperament, but she recovers with amazing facility, I"m bound to say. If you met her to-morrow she"d likely freeze you with a nod."
Ewing was not sorry to hear this, though he thought it hardly polite to say so.
When they reached the house in Ninth Street Teevan ushered in his guest with a charming hospitality.
"Come to the library. The man will bring you an _aperitif_ while I escape from this accursed frock coat. Not a word about your own dress! I took you as you were--but a jacket for me, if you"ll pardon it." A servant entered in answer to his ring.
"Sherry and bitters, Farrish, and Mr. Ewing will dine with us. Is my son in?"
"Mr. Alden is dining out, sir."
"All the better, my boy. We shall be the chummier for Alden"s absence.
Make the house yours while I change. There are the evening papers; or perhaps you"ll be interested by those cabinet bits--jades and scarabs and junk of that sort; a few fairish pieces of Greek gla.s.s--that Tanagra isn"t bad, nor those Limoges enamels. The netsukes and sword guards are rather good j.a.panese bits, and there are one or two exquisite etchings on ivory--_un instant, n"est-ce pas?_"
Ewing lay back in his chair and sipped the sherry when it came. His enjoyment of the room"s ensemble was too nearly satisfying to require examination of it by detail. It was a room of discreet and mellowed luxury, with an air of jaunty ripeness that distinguished its composer.
The chairs solicited, the walls soothed, the broken light illumined perfectly without dazzling. He was thrilling agreeably to his host"s evident interest in him when the latter returned, beaming with a smile of rare good-fellowship.
They were presently at table in a dining room whose plain old mahogany and thin silver produced, like the library, an impression of finished luxury without flaunt. The dinner itself possessed an atmosphere of sophistication, a temperament, even. It sated the exigent appet.i.te of Ewing--his luncheon with Sydenham had been a mere adventure in meagerness--and sated without cloying, but it was more than food to him.
As he ate, and drank of a burgundy whose merit he was ill qualified to appraise, he was conscious of a real fascination growing within him for the man who favored him with so distinguished a notice; who talked, seemingly, with the same nice care to please him that he would have exercised for a tableful of more difficult guests.
Nor did Teevan lack the parts of a listener. Ewing found himself talking much and enjoyably. With so tactful a listener, so good a friend, it was no longer necessary to remember that he was new in this land and unknowing of its smaller ways. It occurred to him, indeed, as he reviewed this memorable evening, that he had talked more than his host.
But he was spared the youthful blush at this by remembering that he had been questioned persistently--"toled," as Ben would have said, with baits of inquiry. Incredible as it seemed, Teevan wished him to talk and had neatly made him do so. He felt that the little man must know him through and through. He had been, of course, a book in large print and short words, but he was flattered to believe that Teevan had found him worth opening.
And now he was certain he had discovered the longed-for friend; one soul had come from the oblivious throng to touch his own, to call him out and speak him fair. He was companioned by one as likable as he was learned, by one who meant, it was intimated, to seek every opportunity to befriend him.
And the need of such a friend became more and more apparent to Ewing as they sat in the library after dinner over coffee and liqueurs. It was brought upon him that he had never known his own rashness in braving so difficult a world with so modest an equipment. The tragedy of failure was a commonplace in the little man"s experience. So many young dreamers like his guest were rejected after bitter trials. It was an inconsequential world, whose denizens chased b.u.t.terflies and too often permitted sober worth to perish by the wayside.
At times during the evening Ewing had feared a return of that distressing malady to which his host was subject, but this he was happily spared.
When he took a reluctant leave it was with two emotions: a fervent liking for the wise man who had so generously befriended him, and doubt of himself, the first he had known. It came like an icy blast out of summer warmth and shine.
Teevan listened for the door to close on his guest. When he heard this he sank into his chair and chuckled gaspingly. Presently he drank a gla.s.s of brandy, smiled in remembering pleasure, lighted a cigarette, and took his post on the hearth rug, his eyes dancing elfishly, his lips moving.
His son found him so an hour later, for the little man was tireless even when, lacking an audience, he merely dramatized his own reflections.
Seeing him to be familiarly engaged, Alden Teevan would have withdrawn with a careless, half-contemptuous nod, but his father detained him with a gesture, and a sudden setting of his face into purposeful hardness.
"Sit down." He looked into the hall, then closed the door and faced his son. The latter regarded him with coolly impertinent interest.
"You"d make a ripping conspirator in a melodrama, Randy. What you going to do now--steal the will?"
Teevan laughed grimly. He crossed back to the hearth rug and took a fresh cigarette, which he lighted with studious deliberation. His words followed swiftly upon the first exhalation of smoke, and his eyes fastened venomously on his son"s.
"I"ll give you a morsel to jest with--conspirator, indeed!--yes, and a will. See if that facile wit of yours is up to it, my bonny stripling."
He played with his moment, drawing on the cigarette with leisurely relish, and gazing into the smoke with eyes of an absorbed visionary.
"Well?" The young man yawned ostentatiously.
"You missed dining with your brother this evening. He was good enough to break bread at my table."
The young man took a cigarette from the lacquered bowl at his side and lighted it with the same deliberation his father had shown.
"Really? I didn"t know you had another son."
"Thank G.o.d I haven"t--but your mother had, and that precious sniveling grandmother of yours has another grandson. You might recall that when you chatter of melodrama--and wills. I believe her estate is not one you"d care to divide."
"What rot are you gibbering with those monkey airs of yours?"
"Delicate as ever in your raillery! Perhaps you think I"m drunk. Perhaps I am. But I dropped in on your grandmother this afternoon in time to prevent her clasping that nameless whelp to her breast. A lovely bit I spoiled, my merry-andrew!--tears and fondlings to-night, a codicil to-morrow. I"m none too sure there"d have been a codicil, though.
Likelier a new will--"give, devise, and bequeath the sum of one dollar to my grandson Alden Teevan, who has already wheedled me out of more than was good for him, and the residue of my estate, both real and personal, to my beloved grandson, Gilbert Denham Ewing----""
"Ewing! That chap Nell Laithe brought back with her--that rustic lout----"
"Have I won your attention, lad? Another item I chance to recall--permit me, since you"ve mentioned the lady"s name--have you caught the look of her eye as it rests upon the creature--how it follows him, runs to him, hangs upon him with sweet tenacity? Have you felt the glow in her voice as she speaks to him? A woman of the world, young, tender, romantic, stormed by this Galahad of the hills, who first wins her solicitude by his helplessness, and then, before the lady quite knows it, coerces her whole being by sheer masculine dominance. Ah, you haven"t read that--only enough of it to puzzle you, perhaps enrage you. You haven"t your father"s eyes. I read it all in three glances: one at him and two at her. Decidedly, you"ve not your father"s eyes."
"Nor his love of many words. So that"s the son of my mother, of the woman who failed to adore you after a brief but heroic effort?"
"Likewise, I dare say, the lover of a woman who will henceforth fail to appraise you at anything like your extraordinary worth. Such blind things they are, eh, my boy? She regards the two of you superficially, _bien entendu_, and hence to your prejudice. There"s a likeness between you, the same cast of face, even a likeness of voice, and your noses are identical--the nose of that woman--but the differences are all in his favor. You have grace of a drawing-room sort, a certain boudoir polish of manner, but his face is fresher, kinder, quicker of sympathy, more compelling, and there"s that out-of-doors look in his eye, the look of readiness and power. You know what that sort of strength means with the pretty animals."