The Black Bag | Page 4

have Youth, unconquerable Youth, and the world before you.... I must go."
He rose stiffly, as though suddenly made conscious of his age. The old eyes peered more than a trifle wistfully, now, into Kirkwood's. "You will not fail to call on me by cable, dear boy, if you need--anything? I ask it as a favor.... I'm glad you wished to see me before going out of my life. One learns to value the friendship of Youth, Philip. Good-by, and good luck attend you."
Alone once more, Kirkwood returned to his window. The disappointment he felt at being robbed of his anticipated pleasure in Brentwick's company at dinner, colored his mood unpleasantly. His musings merged into vacuity, into a dull gray mist of hopelessness comparable only to the dismal skies then lowering over London-town.
Brentwick was good, but Brentwick was mistaken. There was really nothing for Kirkwood to do but to go ahead. But one steamer-trunk remained to be packed; the boat-train would leave before midnight, the steamer with the morning tide; by the morrow's noon he would be upon the high seas, within ten days in New York and among friends; and then ...
The problem of that afterwards perplexed Kirkwood more than he cared to own. Brentwick had opened his eyes to the fact that he would be practically useless in San Francisco; he could not harbor the thought of going back, only to become a charge upon Vanderlip. No; he was resolved that thenceforward he must rely upon himself, carve out his own destiny. But--would the art that he had cultivated with such assiduity, yield him a livelihood if sincerely practised with that end in view? Would the mental and physical equipment of a painter, heretofore dilettante, enable him to become self-supporting?
Knotting his brows in concentration of effort to divine the future, he doubted himself, darkly questioning alike his abilities and his temper under trial; neither ere now had ever been put to the test. His eyes became somberly wistful, his heart sore with regret of Yesterday--his Yesterday of care-free youth and courage, gilded with the ineffable, evanescent glamour of Romance--of such Romance, thrice refined of dross, as only he knows who has wooed his Art with passion passing the love of woman.
Far away, above the acres of huddled roofs and chimney-pots, the storm-mists thinned, lifting transiently; through them, gray, fairy-like, the towers of Westminster and the Houses of Parliament bulked monstrous and unreal, fading when again the fugitive dun vapors closed down upon the city.
Nearer at hand the Shade of Care nudged Kirkwood's elbow, whispering subtly. Romance was indeed dead; the world was cold and cruel.
The gloom deepened.
In the cant of modern metaphysics, the moment was psychological.
There came a rapping at the door.
Kirkwood removed the pipe from between his teeth long enough to say "Come in!" pleasantly.
The knob was turned, the door opened. Kirkwood, turning on one heel, beheld hesitant upon the threshold a diminutive figure in the livery of the Pless pages.
"Mr. Kirkwood?"
Kirkwood nodded.
"Gentleman to see you, sir."
Kirkwood nodded again, smiling if somewhat perplexed. Encouraged, the child advanced, proffering a silver card-tray at the end of an unnaturally rigid forearm. Kirkwood took the card dubiously between thumb and forefinger and inspected it without prejudice.
"'George B. Calendar,'" he read. "'George B. Calendar!' But I know no such person. Sure there's no mistake, young man?"
The close-cropped, bullet-shaped, British head was agitated in vigorous negation, and "Card for Mister Kirkwood!" was mumbled in dispassionate accents appropriate to a recitation by rote.
"Very well. But before you show him up, ask this Mr. Calendar if he is quite sure he wants to see Philip Kirkwood."
"Yessir."
The child marched out, punctiliously closing the door. Kirkwood tamped down the tobacco in his pipe and puffed energetically, dismissing the interruption to his reverie as a matter of no consequence--an obvious mistake to be rectified by two words with this Mr. Calendar whom he did not know. At the knock he had almost hoped it might be Brentwick, returning with a changed mind about the bid to dinner.
He regretted Brentwick sincerely. Theirs was a curious sort of friendship--extraordinarily close in view of the meagerness of either's information about the other, to say nothing of the disparity between their ages. Concerning the elder man Kirkwood knew little more than that they had met on shipboard, "coming over"; that Brentwick had spent some years in America; that he was an Englishman by birth, a cosmopolitan by habit, by profession a gentleman (employing that term in its most uncompromisingly British significance), and by inclination a collector of "articles of virtue and bigotry," in pursuit of which he made frequent excursions to the Continent from his residence in a quaint quiet street of Old Brompton. It had been during his not infrequent, but ordinarily abbreviated, sojourns in Paris that their steamer acquaintance had