The House of a Thousand Candles | Page 8

sat down for a leisurely dinner at Sherry's we were not, I modestly maintain, a forbidding pair. We--if I may drag myself into the matter--are both a trifle under the average height, sinewy, nervous, and, just then, trained fine. Our lean, clean-shaven faces were well-browned --mine wearing a fresh coat from my days on the steamer's deck.
Larry had never been in America before, and the scene had for both of us the charm of a gay and novel spectacle. I have always maintained, in talking to Larry of nations and races, that the Americans are the handsomest and best put-up people in the world, and I believe he was persuaded of it that night as we gazed with eyes long unaccustomed to splendor upon the great company assembled in the restaurant. The lights, the music, the variety and richness of the costumes of the women, the many unmistakably foreign faces, wrought a welcome spell on senses inured to hardship in the waste and dreary places of earth.
"Now tell me the story," I said. "Have you done murder? Is the offense treasonable?"
"It was a tenants' row in Galway, and I smashed a constable. I smashed him pretty hard, I dare say, from the row they kicked up in the newspapers. I lay low for a couple of weeks, caught a boat to Queenstown, and here I am, waiting for a chance to get back to The Sod without going in irons."
"You were certainly born to be hanged, Larry. You'd better stay in America. There's more room here than anywhere else, and it's not easy to kidnap a man in America and carry him off."
"Possibly not; and yet the situation isn't wholly tranquil," he said, transfixing a bit of pompano with his fork. "Kindly note the florid gentleman at your right --at the table with four--he's next the lady in pink. It may interest you to know that he's the British consul."
"Interesting, but not important. You don't for a moment suppose--"
"That he's looking for me? Not at all. But he undoubtedly has my name on his tablets. The detective that's here following me around is pretty dull. He lost me this morning while I was talking to you in the bank. Later on I had the pleasure of trailing him for an hour or so until he finally brought up at the British consul's office. Thanks; no more of the fish. Let us banish care. I wasn't born to be hanged; and as I'm a political offender, I doubt whether I can be deported if they lay hands on me."
He watched the bubbles in his glass dreamily, holding it up in his slim well-kept fingers.
"Tell me something of your own immediate present and future," he said.
I made the story of my Grandfather Glenarm's legacy as brief as possible, for brevity was a definite law of our intercourse.
"A year, you say, with nothing to do but fold your hands and wait. It doesn't sound awfully attractive to me. I'd rather do without the money."
"But I intend to do some work. I owe it to my grandfather's memory to make good, if there's any good in me."
"The sentiment is worthy of you, Glenarm," he said mockingly. "What do you see--a ghost?"
I must have started slightly at espying suddenly Arthur Pickering not twenty feet away. A party of half a dozen or more had risen, and Pickering and a girl were detached from the others for a moment.
She was young--quite the youngest in the group about Pickering's table. A certain girlishness of height and outline may have been emphasized by her juxtaposition to Pickering's heavy figure. She was in black, with white showing at neck and wrists--a somber contrast to the other women of the party, who were arrayed with a degree of splendor. She had dropped her fan, and Pickering stooped to pick it up. In the second that she waited she turned carelessly toward me, and our eyes met for an instant. Very likely she was Pickering's sister, and I tried to reconstruct his family, which I had known in my youth; but I could not place her. As she walked out before him my eyes followed her--the erect figure, free and graceful, but with a charming dignity and poise, and the gold of her fair hair glinting under her black toque.
Her eyes, as she turned them full upon me, were the saddest, loveliest eyes I had ever seen, and even in that brilliant, crowded room I felt their spell. They were fixed in my memory indelibly--mournful, dreamy and wistful. In my absorption I forgot Larry.
"You're taking unfair advantage," he observed quietly. "Friends of yours?"
"The big chap in the lead is my friend Pickering," I answered; and Larry turned his head slightly.
"Yes, I supposed you weren't looking at the women," he observed dryly.