In Search of the Unknown. Robert W. Chambers

IVToC

       Table of Contents

      I dined well—or, rather, I might have enjoyed my dinner if Mr. Halyard had been eliminated; and the feast consisted exclusively of a joint of beef, the pretty nurse, and myself. She was exceedingly attractive—with a disturbing fashion of lowering her head and raising her dark eyes when spoken to.

      As for Halyard, he was unspeakable, bundled up in his snuffy shawls, and making uncouth noises over his gruel. But it is only just to say that his table was worth sitting down to and his wine was sound as a bell.

      "Yah!" he snapped, "I'm sick of this cursed soup—and I'll trouble you to fill my glass—"

      "It is dangerous for you to touch claret," said the pretty nurse.

      "I might as well die at dinner as anywhere," he observed.

      "Certainly," said I, cheerfully passing the decanter, but he did not appear overpleased with the attention.

      "I can't smoke, either," he snarled, hitching the shawls around until he looked like Richard the Third.

      However, he was good enough to shove a box of cigars at me, and I took one and stood up, as the pretty nurse slipped past and vanished into the little parlor beyond.

      We sat there for a while without speaking. He picked irritably at the bread-crumbs on the cloth, never glancing in my direction; and I, tired from my long foot-tour, lay back in my chair, silently appreciating one of the best cigars I ever smoked.

      "Well," he rasped out at length, "what do you think of my auks—and my veracity?"

      I told him that both were unimpeachable.

      "Didn't they call me a swindler down there at your museum?" he demanded.

      I admitted that I had heard the term applied. Then I made a clean breast of the matter, telling him that it was I who had doubted; that my chief, Professor Farrago, had sent me against my will, and that I was ready and glad to admit that he, Mr. Halyard, was a benefactor of the human race.

      "Bosh!" he said. "What good does a confounded wobbly, bandy-toed bird do to the human race?"

      But he was pleased, nevertheless; and presently he asked me, not unamiably, to punish his claret again.

      "I'm done for," he said; "good things to eat and drink are no good to me. Some day I'll get mad enough to have a fit, and then—"

      He paused to yawn.

      "Then," he continued, "that little nurse of mine will drink up my claret and go back to civilization, where people are polite."

      Somehow or other, in spite of the fact that Halyard was an old pig, what he said touched me. There was certainly not much left in life for him—as he regarded life.

      "I'm going to leave her this house," he said, arranging his shawls. "She doesn't know it. I'm going to leave her my money, too. She doesn't know that. Good Lord! What kind of a woman can she be to stand my bad temper for a few dollars a month!"

      "I think," said I, "that it's partly because she's poor, partly because she's sorry for you."

      He looked up with a ghastly smile.

      "You think she really is sorry?"

      Before I could answer he went on: "I'm no mawkish sentimentalist, and I won't allow anybody to be sorry for me—do you hear?"

      "Oh, I'm not sorry for you!" I said, hastily, and, for the first time since I had seen him, he laughed heartily, without a sneer.

      We both seemed to feel better after that; I drank his wine and smoked his cigars, and he appeared to take a certain grim pleasure in watching me.

      "There's no fool like a young fool," he observed, presently.

      As I had no doubt he referred to me, I paid him no attention.

      After fidgeting with his shawls, he gave me an oblique scowl and asked me my age.

      "Twenty-four," I replied.

      "Sort of a tadpole, aren't you?" he said.

      As I took no offence, he repeated the remark.

      "Oh, come," said I, "there's no use in trying to irritate me. I see through you; a row acts like a cocktail on you—but you'll have to stick to gruel in my company."

      "I call that impudence!" he rasped out, wrathfully.

      "I don't care what you call it," I replied, undisturbed, "I am not going to be worried by you. Anyway," I ended, "it is my opinion that you could be very good company if you chose."

      The proposition appeared to take his breath away—at least, he said nothing more; and I finished my cigar in peace and tossed the stump into a saucer.

      "Now," said I, "what price do you set upon your birds, Mr. Halyard?"

      "Ten thousand dollars," he snapped, with an evil smile.

      "You will receive a certified check when the birds are delivered," I said, quietly.

      "You don't mean to say you agree to that outrageous bargain—and I won't take a cent less, either—Good Lord!—haven't you any spirit left?" he cried, half rising from his pile of shawls.

      His piteous eagerness for a dispute sent me into laughter impossible to control, and he eyed me, mouth open, animosity rising visibly.

      Then he seized the wheels of his invalid chair and trundled away, too mad to speak; and I strolled out into the parlor, still laughing.

      The pretty nurse was there, sewing under a hanging lamp.

      "If I am not indiscreet—" I began.

      "Indiscretion is the better part of valor," said she, dropping her head but raising her eyes.

      So I sat down with a frivolous smile peculiar to the appreciated.

      "Doubtless," said I, "you are hemming a 'kerchief."

      "Doubtless I am not," she said; "this is a night-cap for Mr. Halyard."

      A mental vision of Halyard in a night-cap, very mad, nearly set me laughing again.

      "Like the King of Yvetot, he wears his crown in bed," I said, flippantly.

      "The King of Yvetot might have made that remark," she observed, re-threading her needle.

      It is unpleasant to be reproved. How large and red and hot a man's ears feel.

      To cool them, I strolled out to the porch; and, after a while, the pretty nurse came out, too, and sat down in a chair not far away. She probably regretted her lost opportunity to be flirted with.

      "I have so little company—it is a great relief to see somebody from the world," she said. "If you can be agreeable, I wish you would."

      The idea that she had come out to see me was so agreeable that I remained speechless until she said: "Do tell me what people are doing in New York."

      So I seated myself on the steps and talked about the portion of the world inhabited by me, while she sat sewing in the dull light that straggled out from the parlor windows.

      She had a certain coquetry of her own, using the usual methods with an individuality that was certainly fetching. For instance, when she lost her needle—and, another time, when we both, on hands and knees, hunted for her thimble.

      However,