A Literary Courtship/Chapter 13
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THE days went pleasantly by, and it began to seem so natural to be in Colorado that I could almost understand Ned Randall's preferring opulence there to penury in New York. Almost, but not quite. Every little while a Pow-wow letter would strike a chord, or an item in a New York paper would break the spell, and I would find my thoughts reverting fondly to a certain dingy old den in the midst of the hubbub, and I knew that I should be ready enough to return to my native pavingstones when the time came.
Among the letters arriving for me and my Lilian, I had almost forgotten to look for that fateful one which had caused us such embarrassment. But one evening when John and I came up from playing billiards, we found it in my room, staring us in the face. John had evidently been less oblivious of the impending crisis than I, for he was prepared for it.
"And now what are you going to do with it?" I asked, feeling that he must be quite up a tree.
"There is only one thing to do," said he, eying it distrustfully, as though he expected it to break its own seal and unfold itself to his unwilling sight; and he pulled a match out of his pocket.
"Isn't that rather a high-handed proceeding?" I asked, in some trepidation.
"Better be high-handed than underhanded," he declared, and forthwith he struck a match, lighted a corner of the envelope and put it into the empty grate. The paper turned brown and curled up a little and then the flame went out.
"Try again, Jack," said I; "the evidences of crime are not so easily disposed of."
This time the flame licked its way overto the sealing wax, which sizzled and blazed up for a moment, and then out she went again, leaving an ugly smutch in the grate.
"I say, Jack, this is grewsome. It reminds a fellow of all the detective stories he ever read. I'll bet a dime you won't succeed in burning that all up. The infallible clue will be found lurking in a swallow's nest in the chimney, and your crime will be proclaimed from the housetops—literally."
"It isn't the right shape to burn," he muttered, without a flicker of a smile at my little sally. John has such a way of getting absorbed in what he is about that he loses a good deal! He had taken out his pocket-knife and was now gravely cutting the envelope with its contents into strips an inch wide, which he placed crosswise on top of each other in the grate. This proved a more successful arrangement and a miniature conflagration took place. We were watching it with mingled emotions, when a rap at the door made us start like conspirators, and in walked Ned Randall.
"Good for you, fellows!" he sang out. "I thought you wouldn't have turned in yet. It takes an Eastern man to sit up till bedtime"; and he settled himself comfortably beneath the genial rays of the gas burner. We had: up some lager, lighted our pipes, and got things quite comfortable and homelike.
Ned was turning over some books and papers on the table, when suddenly he remarked, à propos of nothing:
"By the way, Brunt, Mrs. Ellerton tells me that you know her niece's namesake, the author of Spoils."
"Yes, worse luck to it" John blurted out, "I know her."
"I suppose people bore you to death about her."
"Yes. It is an everlasting nuisance to be the confidant of a celebrity."
"I haven't much of a fancy for strong-minded women myself," Ned said soothingly, "but according to Mrs. Ellerton's account, this one must be a charmer."
"They're all alike," growled John. Then, recovering himself: "I never knew a literary fiend who wasn't more or less of a crank."
After that we got out of the breakers, and sailed away into a long talk, quite in Pow-wow style. Somewhere about midnight Ned departed, and John was about to go too, when I caught sight of a narrow strip of paper which the draught from the open door had sent fluttering across the carpet.
"The clue!" I cried, giving chase, and, as I picked it up, my eye fell upon a couple of lines written in the handwriting we had so much admired.
"Oh, I say, John! That's pretty rough on you!"
John flung his scruples to the winds, snatched the paper, and read the following blood-curdling fragment—"not but admire his beautiful self-confidence, though it"
"Now don't you wish you hadn't burned it up?" I cried, much tickled.
"Pooh!" said he, with pretended indifference. "Nobody knows whom she was writing about"; and without reading what was written on the other side of the strip, he tore the paper up into microscopic fractions.
"Perhaps it was Benny Mortimer," I suggested.
Benny was a meek little man, who blushed when he was spoken to.
"There are worse things than self-confidence," John declared, as he held the door-handle, "I wish I had a little more myself." And with this rash and startling assertion, he went off down the corridor, to his own roost.
John has his faults like the rest of us, but I had never suspected him of being self-distrustful. No reason why he should be, as far as that goes. He has always carried everything before him. The only wonder is, that he keeps his relish for life when it goes so easily. I never realized how unspoiled he was by his invariable good luck, until I witnessed the boyish and headlong way in which he fell in love. Poor old Jack! He never does anything by halves, and much as I regretted the catastrophe I felt that I never should forgive Miss Lamb if she disappointed him.
I remember asking John once, a year or two before this, how it happened that he had never been in love.
"Bless you, Dick," he said, with that patronizing air he occasionally takes on, "what a babe you are! I've been in love lots of times." Then settling back in his leathern arm-chair, and stretching his legs comfortably, he added: "Only I could never manage to stay in long enough to make it necessary to give myself away."
I knew, however, from the beginning that this was a different matter altogether. Poor old Jack! I could hardly sleep for thinking of the look in his eyes when he stood there with the door-handle in his hand.