The Tracer of Lost Persons | Page 3

disappointed, you need only
shake your head and murmur: 'Not the same!' And it's for them to find
another."
"I won't do it!" said Gatewood hotly.
"Why not? At least, it would be amusing. You haven't many mental
resources, and it might occupy you for a week or two."
Gatewood glared.
"You have a pleasant way of putting things this morning, haven't you?"
"I don't want to be pleasant: I want to jar you. Don't I care enough
about you to breakfast with you? Then I've a right to be pleasantly
unpleasant. I can't bear to watch your mental and spiritual
dissolution--a man like you, with all your latent ability and capacity for
being nobody in particular--which is the sort of man this nation needs.
Do you want to turn into a club-window gazer like Van Bronk? Do you
want to become another Courtlandt Allerton and go rocking down the
avenue--a grimacing, tailor-made sepulcher?--the pompous obsequies
of a dead intellect?--a funeral on two wavering legs, carrying the corpse
of all that should be deathless in a man? Why, Jack, I'd rather see you
in bankruptcy--I'd rather see you trying to lead a double life in a single
flat on seven dollars and a half a week--I'd almost rather see you every
day at breakfast than have it come to that!
"Wake up and get jocund with life! Why, you could have all good
citizens stung to death if you chose. It isn't that I want you to make
money; but I want you to worry over somebody besides yourself--not
in Wall Street--a pool and its money are soon parted. But in your own
home, where a beautiful wife and seven angel children have you dippy
and close to the ropes; where the housekeeper gets a rake off, and the
cook is red-headed and comes from Sligo, and the butler's cousin will

bear watching, and the chauffeur is a Frenchman, and the coachman's
uncle is a Harlem vet, and every scullion in the establishment lies,
drinks, steals, and supports twenty satiated relatives at your expense.
That would mean the making of you; for, after all, Jack, you are no
genius--you're a plain, non-partisan, uninspired, clean-built, wholesome
citizen, thank God!--the sort whose unimaginative mission is to pitch in
with eighty-odd millions of us and, like the busy coral creatures,
multiply with all your might, and make this little old Republic the
greatest, biggest, finest article that an overworked world has ever yet
put up! . . . Now you can call for help if you choose."
Gatewood's breath returned slowly. In an intimacy of many years he
had never suspected that sort of thing from Kerns. That is why, no
doubt, the opinions expressed by Kerns stirred him to an astonishment
too innocent to harbor anger or chagrin.
And when Kerns stood up with an unembarrassed laugh, saying, "I'm
going to the office; see you this evening?" Gatewood replied rather
vacantly: "Oh, yes; I'm dining here. Good-by, Tommy."
Kerns glanced at his watch, lingering. "Was there anything you wished
to ask me, Jack?" he inquired guilelessly.
"Ask you? No, I don't think so."
"Oh; I had an idea you might care to know where Keen & Co. were to
be found."
"That," said Gatewood firmly, "is foolish."
"I'll write the address for you, anyway," rejoined Kerns, scribbling it
and handing the card to his friend.
Then he went down the stairs, several at a time, eased in conscience,
satisfied that he had done his duty by a friend he cared enough for to
breakfast with.
"Of course," he ruminated as he crawled into a hansom and lay back

buried in meditation--"of course there may be nothing in this Keen &
Co. business. But it will stir him up and set him thinking; and the
longer Keen & Co. take to hunt up an imaginary lady that doesn't exist,
the more anxious and impatient poor old Jack Gatewood will become,
until he'll catch the fever and go cantering about with that one fixed
idea in his head. And," added Kerns softly, "no New Yorker in his right
mind can go galloping through these five boroughs very long before
he's roped, tied, and marked by the 'only girl in the world'--the only
girl--if you don't care to turn around and look at another million girls
precisely like her. O Lord!--precisely like her!"
Here was a nice exhorter to incite others to matrimony.
CHAPTER II
Meanwhile, Gatewood was walking along Fifth Avenue, more or less
soothed by the May sunshine. First, he went to his hatters, looked at
straw hats, didn't like them, protested, and bought one, wishing he had
strength of mind enough to wear it home. But he hadn't. Then he
entered the huge white marble palace of his jeweler, left his watch to be