V. V.s Eyes | Page 7

one who confides, counting upon a delicate understanding. But Sam O'Neill, though perfectly willing to be delicate, could only say, after an anti-climacteric pause: "Is that right? Well, that bunch needed to grovel all right"--which was a little vague, say what you would of it, chilling somewhat....
"Well, what's your coryphees' ball but life?" muttered Vivian, knocking the ashes from the dead pipe he had been holding....
And then, turning away with the fire gone out of him, he added:
"All I say about these people is they'd be so much happier with their shells hammered off. What's getting rich but building a wall between yourself and the great common?... Seems to me God meant us all to be citizens of the world ..."
"That's right," said Sam, reassuringly. And then, as the two men walked toward the door: "Oh, I don't say that letter there'll do any harm, V.V. Maybe a little stirring 'em up's just as well ..."
At the door, O'Neill recollected, and spoke again: "Oh, say, V.V.! Saw your gay young friend Dalhousie just now. Had a pretty nice little load of bananas too ..."
V.V. halted dead, his look changing abruptly. Trouble gathered on his brow.
"Where?"
"Driving down Centre Street in a hack, looking sober as a judge, but--"
"What sort of hack?" demanded Vivian, as if a good deal might depend on that.
"Reg'lar sea-going," answered the Commissioner, confirming the worst. "Kind with the fold-back top, like you see principally at nigger funerals and aldermen's parades...."
But it was evidently no merry matter to V.V.
"Then he's off," said he, slowly, and glanced at his watch.... "He seemed all right when I saw him last night. Only you never can tell, with him.... I wonder if I could catch him...."
The Commissioner thought not. "He was headed straight for Centre Street Station, and that was a half-hour ago. Had a bag out front in the sea-going, too. Oh, thunder, he's all right. Little trip'll do him good...."
Left alone in his office, V. Vivian stood still, staring intently into space.
New-returned to his old home town, this young man was deep in love with twenty gallant schemes, from the general reform of the world, by his own system, to the repairment of the stomachic equipment of Tubby Miggs, aged six. But O'Neill's tidings of the vehicular lad knocked them all from his mind. He forgot the Huns; forgot John the Baptist; forgot even his sick, till one of the weller of them (as we may assume) knocked memorially upon his door....
What trouble was brewing for his frail friend Dal?
* * * * *
Upon this matter, now and henceforward, the other House was to have information first. Dusk of that day had fallen before the word came to the deserted hotel. But when it did come, the lame doctor broke his evening office-hour without notice, and caught a train by thirty seconds.

II
Two Persons of More Importance, and why they went to the Beach in October; Miss Carlisle Heth, and how she met an unwelcome swain at Sea; how this Swain could swim enough for one.
Mr. Heth perused the Severe Arraignment of himself about nine o'clock, over his second cup of coffee. He perused with indignation; but, being long since trained to keep a neat partition between downtown and uptown, he did not divulge his sentiments to the breakfast-table, and even carried the paper off with him to the office. By such demeanor, he abdicates our present notice. Mrs. Heth, hours later, bought a copy of the "Post" from a uniformed newsboy, to see what they had to say of the Associated Charities meeting on the evening preceding, and of her remarks in accepting the office of First Vice-President. Absorbed by this particular piece-in-the-paper,--for so the good lady named all journalistic efforts, from dry-goods advertisements to leading editorials on Trouble in the Balkans,--it was past three-thirty o'clock, post-meridian, or well after luncheon, before her eye chanced to alight on the Dabney House's winged words.
At this hour the ladies sat at ease in their private sitting-room on the seventh floor of the great handsome caravansary by the sea. For to-day, as it falls out, the House of Heth, just as we have it so firmly fixed on Washington Street, had split and transplanted itself; all that mattered of it, the soul and genius of the House, having flitted off seventy miles to the Beach for an over-Sunday rest.
It was the 29th of October, which should have meant grate-fires. On the contrary, two windows in the rented sitting-room were open, and Miss Carlisle Heth, laying down "Pickwick Papers," by Dickens, the well-known writer, now rose and flung wide the third.
"Whew!" said she, just as an ordinary person might have done. "It's stifling!"
Her mother, a lifelong conservative, presently replied:
"It isn't the heat, it's the humidity."
Carlisle looked out over the sunny sea, and wondered