The Wheel of Life | Page 7

have sacrificed for you the society of the most
interesting man I know."
"What! Is it possible that Perry has been forsaken?" enquired Adams in
his voice of quiet humor. In the midst of her flippant laughter, Gerty
turned on him the open cynicism of her smile.
"Now is it possible that Perry has that effect on you?" she asked with
curiosity. "For I find him decidedly depressing."
"Then if it isn't Perry I demand the name," persisted Adams gayly,
"though I'm perfectly ready to wager that it's Arnold Kemper."
"Kemper," repeated Laura curiously, as if the name arrested her almost
against her will. "Wasn't there a little novel once by an Arnold
Kemper--a slight but striking thing with very little grammar and a great
deal of audacity?"
"Oh, that was done in his early days," replied Adams, "as a kind of
outlet to the energy he now expends in racing motors. I asked Funsten,
who does our literary notices, if there was any chance for him again in
fiction, and he answered that the only favourable thing he could say of
him was to say nothing."
"But he's gone in for automobiles now," said Gerty, "they're so much
bigger, after all, he thinks, than books."
"I haven't seen him for fifteen years," remarked Adams, "but I

recognise his speech."
"One always recognises his speeches," admitted Gerty, "there's a stamp
on them, I suppose, for somehow he himself is great even if his career
isn't--and, after all," she concluded seriously, "it is--what shall I call
it--the personal quantity that he insists on."
"The personal quantity," repeated Laura laughing, and, as if the
description of Kemper had failed to interest her, she turned the
conversation upon the subject of Trent's play.
CHAPTER II
TREATS OF AN ECCENTRIC FAMILY
When the last caller had gone Laura slid back the folding doors which
opened into the library and spoke to a little old gentleman, with a very
bald head, who sat in a big armchair holding a flute in his wrinkled and
trembling hand. He had a simple, moonlike face, to which his baldness
lent a deceptive appearance of intellect, and his expression was of such
bland and smiling goodness that it was impossible to resent the tedious
garrulity of his conversation. In the midst of his shrivelled countenance
his eyes looked like little round blue buttons which had been set there
in order to keep his features from entirely slipping away. He was the
oldest member of the Wilde family, and he had lived in the house in
Gramercy Park since it was built by his father some sixty years or more
ago.
"Tired waiting, Uncle Percival?" asked Laura, raising her voice a little
that it might penetrate his deafened hearing.
As he turned upon her his smile of perfect patience the old gentleman
nodded his head quickly several times in succession. "I waited to play
until after the people went," he responded in a voice that sounded like a
cracked silver bell. "Your Aunt Angela has a headache, so she couldn't
stand the noise. I went out to get her some flowers and offered to sit
with her, but this is one of her bad days, poor girl." He fell silent for a
minute and then added, wistfully, "I'm wondering if you would like to

hear 'Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon'? It used to be your mother's
favourite air."
Though he was an inoffensively amiable and eagerly obliging old man,
by some ironic contradiction of his intentions his life had become a
series of blunders through which he endeavoured to add his share to the
general happiness. His soul was overflowing with humanity, and he
spent sleepless nights evolving innocent pleasures for those about him,
but his excess of goodness invariably resulted in producing petty
annoyances if not serious inconveniences. So his virtues had come to
be regarded with timidity, and there was an ever present anxiety in the
air as to what Uncle Percival was "doing" in his mind. The fear of
inopportune benefits was in its way as oppressive as the dread of
unmerited misfortune.
Laura shook her head impatiently as she threw herself into a chair on
the other side of the tall bronze lamp upon the writing table. On the
stem of an eccentric family tree she was felt to be the perfect flower of
artistic impulses, and her enclosed life in the sombre old house had not
succeeded in cultivating in her the slightest resemblance to an artificial
variety. She was obviously, inevitably, impulsively the original product,
and Uncle Percival never realised this more hopelessly than in that
unresponsive headshake of dismissal. Laura could be kind, he knew,
but she was kind, as she was a poet, when the mood prompted.
"Presently--not now," she said, "I