Читать книгу Caleb West, Master Diver - Francis Hopkinson Smith - Страница 4

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Sanford dropped into a brown leather chair, and Sam, with the fawning droop of a water-spaniel, placed the morning paper before him, moved a small table nearer, on which his master could lay the morning’s mail as it was opened, adjusted the curtains so as to keep the glare from his paper, and with noiseless tread withdrew to the kitchen. Whatever the faults of this product of reconstruction might have been,—and Sam had many,—neglect of Sanford’s comfort was not one of them.

According to his lights he was scrupulously honest. Although he dressed with more care on Sunday afternoons than his master,—generally in that gentleman’s cast-off clothes, and always in his discarded neckties and gloves,—smoked his tobacco, purloined his cigars, and occasionally drank his wine, whenever the demands of his social life made such inroads on Sanford’s private stock necessary to maintain a certain prestige among his ebonized brethren, he invariably drew the line at his master’s loose change and his shirt-studs. This was due, doubtless, to some drops of blood, trickling through his veins and inherited from an old family butler of an ancestor, which, while they permitted him the free use of everything his master ate, drank, and wore,—a common privilege of the slave days,—debarred him completely from greater crimes.

His delinquencies—all of them perfectly well known to Sanford—never lost him his master’s confidence: he knew the race, and never expected the impossible. Not only did he place Sam in charge of his household expenditures, but he gave him entire supervision as well of his rooms and their contents.

In these apartments Sam took the greatest pride. They were at the top of one of those old-fashioned, hip-roofed, dormer-windowed houses still to be found on Washington Square, and consisted of five rooms, with dining-room and salon.

Against the walls of the salon stood low bookcases, their tops covered with curios and the hundred and one knickknacks that encumber a bachelor’s apartment. Above these again hung a collection of etchings and sketches in and out of frames, many of them signed by fellow members of the Buzzards, a small Bohemian club of ten who often held their meetings here.

Under a broad frieze ran a continuous shelf, holding samples of half the pots of the universe, from a Heidelberg beer-mug to an East Indian water-jar; and over the doors were grouped bunches of African arrows, spears, and clubs, and curious barbaric shields; while the centre of the room was occupied by a square table covered with books and magazines, ashtrays, Japanese ivories, and the like. Set in among them was an umbrella-lamp with a shade of sealing-wax red. At intervals about the room were smaller tables, convenient for decanters and crushed ice, and against the walls, facing the piano, were wide divans piled high with silk cushions, and near the window which opened on a balcony overlooking the square stood a carved Venetian wedding-chest, which Sanford had picked up on one of his trips abroad.

Within easy reach of reading-lamp and chair rested a four-sided bookcase on rollers, filled with works on engineering and books of reference; while a high, narrow case between two doors was packed with photographs and engravings of the principal marine structures of our own and other coasts. It was at once the room of a man of leisure and a man of work.

Late as was the season, a little wood fire smouldered in the open fireplace,—one of the sentiments to which Sanford clung,—while before it stood the brown leather chair in which he sat.

“I forgot to say that Captain Bell will not be here to breakfast, Sam, but Mr. Hardy is coming,” said Sanford, suddenly recollecting himself.

“Yaas, sah; everything’s ready, sah,” replied Sam, who, now that the telegram had been dispatched and the morning papers and letters delivered, had slipped into his white jacket again.

Sanford picked up the package of letters, a dozen or more, and began cutting the envelopes. Most of them were read rapidly, marked in the margin, and laid in a pile beside him. There were two which he had placed by themselves without opening: one from his friend Mrs. Morgan Leroy, and the other from Major Tom Slocomb, of Pocomoke, Maryland.

Major Slocomb wrote to inform him of his approaching visit to New York, accompanied by his niece, Miss Helen Shirley, of Kent County,—“a daughter, sir, of Colonel Talbot Shirley, one of our foremost citizens, whom I believe you had the honor of meeting during your never-to-be-forgotten visit among us.”

The never-to-be-forgotten visit was one that Sanford had made the major the winter before, when he was inspecting the site for a stone and brush jetty he was about to build for the government, in the Chesapeake, near those famous estates which the Pocomokian inherited from his wife, “the widow of Major Talbot, suh.”

During this visit the major had greatly endeared himself to the young engineer. Under all the Pocomokian’s veneer of delightful mendacity, utter shiftlessness, and luxurious extravagance, Sanford had discovered certain qualities of true loyalty to those whom he loved, and a very tender sympathy for the many in the world worse off than himself. He had become convinced too that the major’s conversion from a vagabond with gentlemanly instincts to a gentleman with strong Bohemian tendencies might easily be accomplished were a little more money placed at the Pocomokian’s disposal. With an endless check-book and unlimited overdrafts, settlements to be made every hundred years, the major would be a prince among men.

The niece to whom the major referred in his letter lived in an adjoining county with a relative much nearer of kin. Like many other possessions of this acclimated Marylander, she was really not his niece at all, but another heritage from his deceased wife. The major first saw her on horseback, in a neat-fitting riding-habit which she had made out of some blue army kersey bought at the country store. One glance at her lovely face, the poise of her head, the easy grace of her seat, and her admirable horsemanship decided him at once. Henceforward her name was to be emblazoned on the scroll of his family tree!

It was not until Sanford had finished the major’s letter that he turned to that from Mrs. Leroy. He looked first at the circular postmark to see the exact hour at which it had been mailed; then he rose from the big chair, threw himself on the divan, tucked a pillow under his head, and slowly broke the seal. The envelope was large and square, decorated with the crest of the Leroys in violet wax, and addressed in a clear, round, almost masculine hand. “My dear Henry,” it began, “if you are going to the Ledge, please stop at Medford and see how my new dining-room is getting on. Be sure to come to luncheon to-morrow, so we can talk it over,” etc., and ended with the hope that he had not taken cold when he left her house the night before.

It had contained but half a dozen lines, and was as direct as most of her communications; yet Sanford held it for a long time in his hands, read and re-read it, looked at the heading, examined the signature, turned it over carefully, and, placing it in its envelope, thrust it under the sofa-pillow. With his hands behind his head he lay for some time in thought. Then taking Mrs. Leroy’s letter from under the pillow, he read it again, put it in his pocket, and began pacing the room.

The letter had evidently made him restless. He threw wide the sashes of the French window which opened on the iron balcony, and looked for a moment over the square below, where the hard, pen-line drawing of its trees was blurred by the yellow-green bloom of the early spring. He turned back into the room, rearranged a photograph or two on the mantel, and, picking up a vase filled with roses, inhaled their fragrance and placed them in the centre of the dainty breakfast-table, with its snowy linen and polished silver, that Sam had just been setting near him. Reseating himself in his chair, he called again to the ever watchful darky, who had been following his movements through the crack of the pantry door.

“Sam.”

“Yaas ’r,” came a voice apparently from the far end of the pantry; “comin’, sah.”

“Look over the balcony again and see if Mr. Hardy is on his way across the square. Why! what’s become of the fellow?” he said to himself, consulting the empire clock with broken columns which decorated the mantel. “It’s after ten now. I’ll wager Helen wrote him by the same mail. No wonder he’s late. Let me see! She gets here in three days. Jack will be out of his head.” And Sanford sighed.

“I ’spec’s dat’s him a-comin’ up now, sah,” Sam called. “I yeared de downstairs do’ click a minute ago. Here he is, sah,” drawing aside the curtain that hid the entrance to the outer hall.

“Sorry, old man,” came a voice increasing in distinctness as the speaker approached, “but I couldn’t help it, I had a lot of letters to answer this morning, or I should have been on time. It don’t make any difference to you; it’s your day off.”

“My day off, is it? I was out of bed this morning at six o’clock. Captain Joe stopped here on his way from the train; he has just left; and if you had stayed away a minute more, I’d have breakfasted without you. And that isn’t all. That sloop I’ve been looking for has arrived, and I go to Keyport to-night.”

“The devil you do!” said Jack, a shade of disappointment crossing his face. “That means, I suppose, you won’t be back this spring. How long are you going to be building that lighthouse, anyhow, Henry?”

“Two years more, I’m afraid,” said Sanford thoughtfully. “Breakfast right away, Sam. Take the seat by the window, Jack. I thought we’d breakfast here instead of in the dining-room; the air’s fresher.”

Jack opened his coat, took a rose from the vase, adjusted it in his buttonhole, and spread his napkin over his knees.

He was much the younger of the two men, and his lot in life had been far easier. Junior partner in a large banking-house down town, founded and still sustained by the energy and business tact of his father, with plenty of time for all the sports and pastimes popular with men of his class, he had not found it a difficult task to sail easily through life without a jar.

“What do you hear from Crab Island, Jack?” asked Sanford, a sly twinkle in his eye, as he passed him the muffins.

“They’ve started the new club-house,” said Jack, with absolute composure. “We are going to run out that extension you suggested when you were down there last winter.” He clipped his egg lightly, without a change of countenance.

“Anything from Helen Shirley?”

“Just a line, thanking me for the magazines,” Jack answered in a casual tone, not the faintest interest betraying itself in the inflections of his voice. Sanford thought he detected a slight increase of color on his young friend’s always rosy cheeks, but he said nothing.

“Did she say anything about coming to New York?” Sanford asked, looking at Jack quizzically out of the corner of his eye.

“Yes; now I come to think of it, I believe she did say something about the major’s coming, but nothing very definite.”

Jack spoke as if he had been aroused from some reverie entirely foreign to the subject under discussion. He continued to play with his egg, flecking off the broken bits of shell with the point of his spoon. With all his pretended composure, however, he could not raise his eyes to those of his host.

“What a first-class fraud you are, Jack!” said Sanford, laughing at last. He leaned back in his chair and looked at Hardy good-humoredly from under his eyebrows. “I would have read you Slocomb’s letter, lying right before you, if I hadn’t been sure you knew everything in it. Helen and the major will be here next week, and you know the very hour she’ll arrive, and you have staked out every moment of her time. Now don’t try any of your high-daddy tricks on me. What are you going to do next Tuesday night?”

Jack laughed, but made no attempt to parry a word of Sanford’s thrust. He looked up at last inquiringly over his plate and said, “Why?”

“Because I want you to dine here with them. I’ll ask Mrs. Leroy to chaperon Helen. Leroy is still abroad, and she can come. We’ll get Bock, too, with his ’cello. What other ladies are in town?”

Jack’s face was aglow in an instant. The possibility of dining in Sanford’s room, with its background of rich color and with all its pretty things that Helen he knew would love so well, lent instant interest to Sanford’s proposition. He looked about him. He made up his mind just where he would seat her after dinner: the divan nearest the curtains was the best. How happy she would be, and how new it would all be to her! He could have planned nothing more delightful. Then remembering that Sanford had asked him a question, he recovered himself and nonchalantly gave the names of several young women he knew who might be agreeable guests. But after a moment’s reflection he suggested as a second thought that Sanford leave these details to Mrs. Leroy. Jack knew her tact, and he knew to a nicety just how many young girls Mrs. Leroy would bring. The success of bachelor dinners, from Hardy’s present standpoint, was not dependent upon the attendance of half a dozen extra young women and two men; quite the reverse.

The date for the dinner arranged, and the wisdom of leaving the list of guests to Mrs. Leroy agreed upon, the talk drifted into other channels: the Whistler pastels at Klein’s; the garden-party to be given at Mrs. Leroy’s country-seat near Medford when the new dining-room was finished and the roses were in bloom; the opportunity Sanford might now enjoy of combining business with pleasure, Medford being a short run from Shark Ledge; the success of Smearly’s last portrait at the Academy, a photograph of which lay on the table; the probable change in Slocomb’s fortunes, now that, with the consent of the insurance company who held the mortgage, he had rented what was left of the Widow Talbot’s estate to a strawberry planter from the North, in order to live in New York; and finally, under Jack’s guidance, back to Helen Shirley’s visit.

When the two men, an hour later, passed into the corridor, Sanford held two letters in his hand ready to mail: one addressed to Major Slocomb, with an inclosure to Miss Shirley, the other to Mrs. Morgan Leroy.

Sam watched them over the balcony until they crossed the square, cut a double shuffle with both feet, admired his black grinning face in the mirror, took a corncob pipe from the shelf in the pantry, filled it with some of Sanford’s best tobacco, and began packing his master’s bag for the night train to Keyport.