The Black Bag | Page 2

peculiarly.
"Very well," he accepted the irremediable with grim humor; "what must be, must. I don't pretend to be glad to see you, but--you're free to stay as long as you find the climate agreeable. I warn you I shan't whine. Lots of men, hundreds and hundreds of 'em, have slept tight o' nights with you for bedfellow; if they could grin and bear you, I believe I can."
Now Care mocked him with a sardonic laugh, and sought to tighten upon his shoulders its bony grasp; but Kirkwood resolutely shrugged it off and went in search of man's most faithful dumb friend, to wit, his pipe; the which, when found and filled, he lighted with a spill twisted from the envelope of a cable message which had been vicariously responsible for his introduction to the Shade of Care.
"It's about time," he announced, watching the paper blacken and burn in the grate fire, "that I was doing something to prove my title to a living." And this was all his valedictory to a vanished competence. "Anyway," he added hastily, as if fearful lest Care, overhearing, might have read into his tone a trace of vain repining, "anyway, I'm a sight better off than those poor devils over there! I really have a great deal to be thankful for, now that my attention's drawn to it."
For the ensuing few minutes he thought it all over, soberly but with a stout heart; standing at a window of his bedroom in the Hotel Pless, hands deep in trouser pockets, pipe fuming voluminously, his gaze wandering out over a blurred infinitude of wet shining roofs and sooty chimney-pots: all of London that a lowering drizzle would let him see, and withal by no means a cheering prospect, nor yet one calculated to offset the disheartening influence of the indomitable Shade of Care. But the truth is that Kirkwood's brain comprehended little that his eyes perceived; his thoughts were with his heart, and that was half a world away and sick with pity for another and a fairer city, stricken in the flower of her loveliness, writhing in Promethean agony upon her storied hills.
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, swinging on one heel, beheld hesitant upon the threshold a diminutive figure in the livery of the Pless pages.
"Mister Kirkwood?"
Kirkwood nodded.
"Gentleman to see you, sir."
Kirkwood nodded again, smiling. "Show him up, please," he said. But before the words were fairly out of his mouth a footfall sounded in the corridor, a hand was placed upon the shoulder of the page, gently but with decision swinging him out of the way, and a man stepped into the room.
"Mr. Brentwick!" Kirkwood almost shouted, jumping forward to seize his visitor's hand.
"My dear boy!" replied the latter. "I'm delighted to see you. 'Got your note not an hour ago, and came at once--you see!"
"It was mighty good of you. Sit down, please. Here are cigars.... Why, a moment ago I was the most miserable and lonely mortal on the footstool!"
"I can fancy." The elder man looked up, smiling at Kirkwood from the depths of his arm-chair, as the latter stood above him, resting an elbow on the mantel. "The management knows me," he offered explanation of his unceremonious appearance; "so I took the liberty of following on the heels of the bellhop, dear boy. And how are you? Why are you in London, enjoying our abominable spring weather? And why the anxious undertone I detected in your note?"
He continued to stare curiously into Kirkwood's face. At a glance, this Mr. Brentwick was a man of tallish figure and rather slender; with a countenance thin and flushed a sensitive pink, out of which his eyes shone, keen, alert, humorous, and a trace wistful behind his glasses. His years were indeterminate; with the aspect of fifty, the spirit and the verve of thirty assorted oddly. But his hands were old, delicate, fine and fragile; and the lips beneath the drooping white mustache at times trembled, almost imperceptibly, with the generous sentiments that come with mellow age. He held his back straight and his head with an air--an air that was not a swagger but the sign-token of seasoned experience in the world. The most carping could have found no flaw in the quiet taste of his attire. To sum up, Kirkwood's very good friend--and his only one then in London--Mr. Brentwick looked and was an English gentleman.
"Why?" he persisted, as the younger man hesitated. "I am here to find out. To-night I leave for the Continent. In the meantime ..."
"And at midnight I sail for the States," added Kirkwood. "That is mainly why I wished to see you--to say good-by, for the