"Say, Court, do you know this Ambulance feller that"s coming to visit Alix next week?" asked the editor, with interest.
"You mean Addison Blythe? He was up at Pont-a-Mousson for a while, I believe, but it was after I had left for the Vosges section. I"ve heard of him. Harvard man."
"You two ought to have a good time when you get together," said Doc Simpson.
"I"ve got an item in the Sun about him this week, and next week we"ll have an interview with him."
The usually loquacious Mr. Webster had been silent since Courtney"s arrival. Now he lifted his voice to put a question to Miss Angie Miller, across the table.
"Did you write that letter I spoke about the other day, Angie?"
"Yes,--but there hasn"t been time for an answer yet."
"Speaking about David Strong," remarked Mr. Pollock, "I"ll never forget what he did when Mr. Windom gave him a silver watch for his twelfth birthday. Shows what a bright, progressive, enterprising feller he was even at that age. You remember, Miss Molly? I mean about his setting his watch fifteen minutes ahead the very day he got it."
Miss Molly smiled. "It WAS cute of him, wasn"t it?"
"What was the idea?" inquired Mr. Hatch.
"So"s he would know what time it was fifteen minutes sooner than anybody else in town," said Mr. Pollock.
"My, what a handsome boy he was," said Miss Angie Miller.
"Do you really think so?" cried Mrs. Pollock. "I never could see anything good looking about him,--except his physique. He has a splendid physique, but I never liked his face. It"s so--so--well, so, raw-boned and all. I like smooth, regular features in a man.
I--"
"Like mine," interjected the pudgy Mr. Webster, with a very serious face.
"David Strong has what I call a very rugged face," said Miss Miller.
"I didn"t say it was pretty, Maude."
"He takes a very good photograph," remarked Mr. Hatch. "Specially a side-view. I"ve got one side-view of him over at the gallery that makes me think of an Indian every time I look at it."
"Perhaps he has Indian blood in him," suggested Courtney, who was tired of David Strong.
"Well, every drop of blood he"s got in him is red," said Charlie Webster; "so maybe you"re right."
"The most interesting item in the Sun tomorrow," said Mr. Pollock, "is the word that young Cale Vick, across the river, has enlisted in the navy. He leaves on Monday for Chicago to join some sort of a training school, preparatory to taking a job on one of Uncle Sam"s newest battleships,--the biggest in the world, according to his grandfather, who was in to see me a day or two ago. I have promised to send young Cale the Sun for a year without charging him a cent. Old man Brown says Amos Vick"s daughter Rosabel isn"t at all well. Something like walking typhoid, he says,--mopes a good deal and don"t sleep well."
"Oh, I"m sorry to hear that," exclaimed Courtney, real concern in his voice. "She was such a lively, light-hearted girl when I was over there. I can"t imagine her moping. I hope Amos Vick isn"t too close-fisted to consult a doctor. He"s an awful tight-wad--believe me."
"Doctor can"t seem to find anything really the matter ter with her, so old Cale Brown told me," said Mr. Pollock. "But don"t you think it"s fine of young Cale to join the navy, Court? Maybe your tales about the war put it into his head."
"It"s more likely that he"d got fed up with life on a farm," said Courtney. "He"ll find himself longing for the farm and mother a good many times before he"s through with the navy."
Instead of going up to his room immediately after supper, as was his custom of late, Courtney joined the company in the "lounging room," so named by Mr. Webster who contended that no first-cla.s.s hotel ever had such a thing as a parlour any more. The Misses Dowd, of course, called it the parlour, but as they continued to refer to the fireplace as the "chimney corner," one may readily forgive their reluctance to progress. Smoking was permitted in the "lounging room" during the fall and winter months only.
A steady rain was beating against the windows, and a rising wind made itself heard in feeble wails as it turned the dark corners of the Tavern. Presently it was to howl and shriek, and, as the rain ceased, to rattle the window shutters and the ancient, creaking sign that hung out over the porch,--for on the wind tonight came the first chill touch of winter.
"A fine night to be indoors," remarked Courtney in his most genial manner as he moved a rocking chair up to the fireplace and gallantly indicated to old Mrs. Nichols that it was intended for her.
"Ain"t you going out tonight, Court?" inquired Mr. Hatch.
"Iron horses couldn"t drag me out tonight," he replied. "Sit here, Mrs. Pollock. Doc, pull up that sofa for Miss Grady and Miss Miller.
Let"s have a chimney-corner symposium. Is symposium the right word, Miss Miller? Ah, I see it isn"t. Well, I did my best. I could have got away with it in New York, but no chance here. And speaking of New York reminds me that at this very instant the curtains are going up and the lights are going down in half a hundred theatres,--and I don"t mind confessing I"d like to be in one of them."
"That"s one thing I envy New York for," said Mrs. Pollock. "Hand me my knitting off the table, Lincoln, please. I love the theatre.
I could go every night--"
"You get tired of them after a little while, Maude," said Flora Grady, a trifle languidly. "Isn"t that so, Mr. Thane?"
"Quite," agreed Courtney. "You get fed up with "em."
"I remember once when I was in New York going six nights in succession, seeing all the best things on the boards at that time, and I give you my word," said Miss Grady, "they DID feed me up terribly."
"I know just what you mean, Miss Grady," said Courtney, without cracking a smile. "One gets so bored with the best plays in town.
What one really ought to do, you know, is to go to the worst ones."
"I"ve always wanted to see "The Blue Bird,"" said Miss Miller wistfully. "It"s by Maeterlinck, Mr. Nichols."
Old Mr. Nichols looked interested. "You don"t say so," he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.
"Give me a good minstrel show,--that"s what I like. Haverly"s or Barlow, Wilson, Primrose & West, or Billy Emerson"s or--say, did you ever see Luke Schoolcraft? Well, sir, there was the funniest end man I ever see. There used to be another minstrel man named,--er--lemme see,--now what was that feller"s name? It begin with L, I think--or maybe it was W. Now--lemme--think. Go on talkin", the rest of you. I"ll think of his name before bedtime."
Whereupon the ancient Mr. Nichols relapsed into a profound state of thought from which he did not emerge until Mr. Webster shook his shoulder some fifteen or twenty minutes later and informed him that if he got any worse Mrs. Nichols would be able to hear him, and then she couldn"t go "round telling people that he slept just like a baby.
Courtney was in his element. He liked talking about the stage, and stage people. And on this night,--of all nights,--he wanted to talk, he wanted company. The clock on the mantel-piece struck ten and half-past and was close to striking eleven before any one made a move toward retiring,--excepting Mr. and Mrs. Nichols who had gone off to bed at eight-thirty. The Misses Dowd had joined the little company in the "parlour." He discussed books with Mrs. Pollock and Miss Miller, fashions with Miss Grady, politics with Mr.
Pollock,--(agreeing with the latter on President Wilson),--art with Mr. Hatch and the erudite Miss Miller, the drama with every one.
Now, Courtney Thane knew almost nothing about books, and even less about pictures. He possessed, however, a remarkable facility when it came to discussing them. He belonged to that rather extensive cla.s.s of people who thrive on ignorance. If you wanted to talk about Keats or Sh.e.l.ley, he managed to give you the impression that he was thoroughly familiar with both,--though lamenting a certain rustiness of memory at times. He could talk intelligently about Joseph Conrad, Arnold Bennet, Bernard Shaw, Galsworthy, Walpole, Mackenzie, Wells and others of the modern English school of novelists,--that is to say, he could differ or agree with you on almost anything they had written, notwithstanding the fact that he had never read a line by any one of them. He professed not to care for Thomas Hardy"s "Jude the Obscure," though nothing could have been more obscure to him than the book itself or the author thereof, and agreed with the delightful Mrs. Pollock that "The Mayor of Casterbridge" was an infinitely better piece of work than "Tess of the D"Urbervilles." As for the American writers, he admitted a shameful ignorance about them.
"Of course, I read Scott when I was a boy,--I was compelled to do so, by the way,--but as for the others I am shockingly unfamiliar with them. Ever since I grew up I"ve preferred the English novelists and poets, so I fear I--"
"I thought Scott was an English writer," put in Charlie Webster quietly.
"What Scott are you referring to, Charlie?" he asked indulgently.
"Why, Sir Walter Scott,--he wrote "Ivanhoe," you know."
"Well, I happen to be speaking of William Scott, the American novelist,--no doubt unknown to most of you. He was one of the old-timers, and I fancy has dropped out of the running altogether."
"Never heard of him," said Mr. Pollock, scratching his ear reflectively.
"Indigenous to New England, I fancy,--like the estimable codfish,"
drawled Courtney, and was rewarded by a wholesome Middle West laugh.
"What are those cabarets like?" inquired Mr. Hatch. He p.r.o.nounced it as if he were saying cigarettes.
"Pretty rotten," said Thane.
"Are you fond of dancing, Mr. Thane?" inquired Mrs. Pollock. "I used to love to trip the light fantastic."