The Man on the Box | Page 8

must be paid for once again; and here another, who clenched
her fists (do women have fists?) and if looks could have killed there
would have been a vacancy in customs forthwith. All her choicest linen
strewn about on the dirty boards, all soiled and rumpled and useless!
When the colonel's turn came, Warburton moved within hearing
distance. How glorious she looked in that smart gray traveling habit!
With what well-bred indifference she gazed upon the scene! Calmly her
glance passed among the circles of strange faces, and ever and anon
returned to the great ship which had safely brought her back to her
native land. There were other women who were just as well-bred and
indifferent, only Warburton had but one pair of eyes. Sighs in the
doloroso again. Ha! if only one of these meddling jackasses would
show her some disrespect and give him the opportunity of avenging the

affront!
(Come, now; let me be your confessor. Have you never thought and
acted like this hero of mine? Haven't you been just as melodramatic and
ridiculous? It is nothing to be ashamed of. For my part, I should
confess to it with the same equanimity as I should to the mumps or the
measles. It comes with, and is part and parcel of, all that strange
medley we find in the Pandora box of life. Love has no diagnosis, so
the doctors say. 'Tis all in the angle of vision.)
But nothing happened. Colonel Annesley and his daughter were old
hands; they had gone through all this before. Scarce an article in their
trunks was disturbed. There was a slight duty of some twelve dollars
(Warburton's memory is marvelous), and their luggage was free. But
alas, for the perspicacity of the inspectors! I can very well imagine the
god of irony in no better or more fitting place than in the United States
Customs House.
Once outside, the colonel caught the eye of a cabby, and he and his
daughter stepped in.
"Holland House, sir, did you say?" asked the cabby.
The colonel nodded. The cabby cracked his whip, and away they rolled
over the pavement.
Warburton's heart gave a great bound. She had actually leaned out of
the cab, and for one brief moment their glances had met. Scarce
knowing what he did, he jumped into another cab and went pounding
after. It was easily ten blocks from the pier when the cabby raised the
lid and peered down at his fare.
"Do you want t' folly them ahead?" he cried.
"No, no!" Warburton was startled out of his wild dream. "Drive to the
Holland House--no--to the Waldorf. Yes, the Waldorf; and keep your
nag going."

"Waldorf it is, sir!" The lid above closed.
Clouds had gathered in the heavens. It was beginning to rain. But
Warburton neither saw the clouds nor felt the first few drops of rain.
All the way up-town he planned and planned--as many plans as there
were drops of rain; the rain wet him, but the plans drowned him--he
became submerged. If I were an expert at analysis, which I am not, I
should say that Mr. Robert was not violently in love; rather I should
observe that he was fascinated with the first really fine face he had seen
in several years. Let him never see Miss Annesley again, and in two
weeks he would entirely forget her. I know enough of the race to be
able to put forward this statement. Of course, it is understood that he
would have to mingle for the time among other handsome women.
Now, strive as he would, he could not think out a feasible plan. One
plan might have given him light, but the thousand that came to him
simply overwhelmed him fathoms deep. If he could find some one he
knew at the Holland House, some one who would strike up a
smoking-room acquaintance with the colonel, the rest would be simple
enough. Annesley--Annesley; he couldn't place the name. Was he a
regular, retired, or a veteran of the Civil War? And yet, the name was
not totally unfamiliar. Certainly, he was a fine-looking old fellow, with
his white hair and Alexandrian nose. And here he was, he, Robert
Warburton, in New York, simply because he happened to be in the
booking office of the Gare du Nord one morning and overheard a very
beautiful girl say: "Then we shall sail from Southampton day after
to-morrow." Of a truth, it is the infinitesimal things that count heaviest.
So deep was he in the maze of his tentative romance that when the cab
finally stopped abruptly, he was totally unaware of the transition from
activity to passivity.
"Hotel, sir!"
"Ah, yes!" Warburton leaped out, fumbled in his pocket, and brought
forth a five-dollar note, which