The Black Bag, Louis Joseph Vance [some good books to read .txt] 📗
- Author: Louis Joseph Vance
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“_Kirkwood, Pless, London. Stay where you are no good coming back
everything gone no insurance letter follows vanderlip_.”
“When I got the news in Paris,” Kirkwood volunteered, “I tried the banks;
they refused to honor my drafts. I had a little money in hand,—enough
to see me home,—so closed the studio and came across. I’m booked on the
Minneapolis, sailing from Tilbury at daybreak; the boat-train leaves at
eleven-thirty. I had hoped you might be able to dine with me and see me
off.”
In silence Brentwick returned the cable message. Then, with a thoughtful
look, “You are sure this is wise?” he queried.
“It’s the only thing I can see.”
“But your partner says—”
“Naturally he thinks that by this time I should have learned to paint well
enough to support myself for a few months, until he can get things running
again. Perhaps I might.” Brentwick supported the presumption with a decided
gesture. “But have I a right to leave Vanderlip to fight it out alone? For
Vanderlip has a wife and kiddies to support; I—”
“Your genius!”
“My ability, such as it is—and that only. It can wait…. No; this means
simply that I must come down from the clouds, plant my feet on solid earth,
and get to work.”
“The sentiment is sound,” admitted Brentwick, “the practice of it, folly.
Have you stopped to think what part a rising young portrait-painter can
contribute toward the rebuilding of a devastated city?”
“The painting can wait,” reiterated Kirkwood. “I can work like other men.”
“You can do yourself and your genius grave injustice. And I fear me you
will, dear boy. It’s in keeping with your heritage of American obstinacy.
Now if it were a question of money—”
“Mr. Brentwick!” Kirkwood protested vehemently. “I’ve ample for my present
needs,” he added.
“Of course,” conceded Brentwick with a sigh. “I didn’t really hope you
would avail yourself of our friendship. Now there’s my home in Aspen
Villas…. You have seen it?”
“In your absence this afternoon your estimable butler, with commendable
discretion, kept me without the doors,” laughed the young man.
“It’s a comfortable home. You would not consent to share it with me
until—?”
“You are more than good; but honestly, I must sail to-night. I wanted only
this chance to see you before I left. You’ll dine with me, won’t you?”
“If you would stay in London, Philip, we would dine together not once but
many times; as it is, I myself am booked for Munich, to be gone a week,
on business. I have many affairs needing attention between now and the
nine-ten train from Victoria. If you will be my guest at Aspen Villas—”
“Please!” begged Kirkwood, with a little laugh of pleasure because of the
other’s insistence. “I only wish I could. Another day—”
“Oh, you will make your million in a year, and return scandalously
independent. It’s in your American blood.” Frail white fingers tapped an
arm of the chair as their owner stared gravely into the fire. “I confess I
envy you,” he observed.
“The opportunity to make a million in a year?” chuckled Kirkwood.
“No. I envy you your Romance.”
“The Romance of a Poor Young Man went out of fashion years ago…. No, my
dear friend; my Romance died a natural death half an hour since.”
“There spoke Youth—blind, enviable Youth!… On the contrary, you are but
turning the leaves of the first chapter of your Romance, Philip.”
“Romance is dead,” contended the young man stubbornly.
“Long live the King!” Brentwick laughed quietly, still attentive to the
fire. “Myself when young,” he said softly, “did seek Romance, but never
knew it till its day was done. I’m quite sure that is a poor paraphrase of
something I have read. In age, one’s sight is sharpened—to see Romance in
another’s life, at least. I say I envy you. You have Youth, unconquerable
Youth, and the world before you…. I must go.”
He rose stiffly, as though suddenly made conscious of his age. The old eyes
peered more than a trifle wistfully, now, into Kirkwood’s. “You will not
fail to call on me by cable, dear boy, if you need—anything? I ask it as
a favor…. I’m glad you wished to see me before going out of my life. One
learns to value the friendship of Youth, Philip. Good-by, and good luck
attend you.”
Alone once more, Kirkwood returned to his window. The disappointment he
felt at being robbed of his anticipated pleasure in Brentwick’s company at
dinner, colored his mood unpleasantly. His musings merged into vacuity,
into a dull gray mist of hopelessness comparable only to the dismal skies
then lowering over London-town.
Brentwick was good, but Brentwick was mistaken. There was really nothing
for Kirkwood to do but to go ahead. But one steamer-trunk remained to be
packed; the boat-train would leave before midnight, the steamer with the
morning tide; by the morrow’s noon he would be upon the high seas, within
ten days in New York and among friends; and then …
The problem of that afterwards perplexed Kirkwood more than he cared to
own. Brentwick had opened his eyes to the fact that he would be practically
useless in San Francisco; he could not harbor the thought of going
back, only to become a charge upon Vanderlip. No; he was resolved that
thenceforward he must rely upon himself, carve out his own destiny.
But—would the art that he had cultivated with such assiduity, yield him a
livelihood if sincerely practised with that end in view? Would the mental
and physical equipment of a painter, heretofore dilettante, enable him to
become self-supporting?
Knotting his brows in concentration of effort to divine the future, he
doubted himself, darkly questioning alike his abilities and his temper
under trial; neither ere now had ever been put to the test. His eyes became
somberly wistful, his heart sore with regret of Yesterday—his Yesterday of
care-free youth and courage, gilded with the ineffable, evanescent glamour
of Romance—of such Romance, thrice refined of dross, as only he knows who
has wooed his Art with passion passing the love of woman.
Far away, above the acres of huddled roofs and chimney-pots, the
storm-mists thinned, lifting transiently; through them, gray, fairy-like,
the towers of Westminster and the Houses of Parliament bulked monstrous
and unreal, fading when again the fugitive dun vapors closed down upon the
city.
Nearer at hand the Shade of Care nudged Kirkwood’s elbow, whispering
subtly. Romance was indeed dead; the world was cold and cruel.
The gloom deepened.
In the cant of modern metaphysics, the moment was psychological.
There came a rapping at the door.
Kirkwood removed the pipe from between his teeth long enough to say “Come
in!” pleasantly.
The knob was turned, the door opened. Kirkwood, turning on one heel, beheld
hesitant upon the threshold a diminutive figure in the livery of the Pless
pages.
“Mr. Kirkwood?”
Kirkwood nodded.
“Gentleman to see you, sir.”
Kirkwood nodded again, smiling if somewhat perplexed. Encouraged, the child
advanced, proffering a silver card-tray at the end of an unnaturally rigid
forearm. Kirkwood took the card dubiously between thumb and forefinger and
inspected it without prejudice.
“‘George B. Calendar,’” he read. “‘George B. Calendar!’ But I know no such
person. Sure there’s no mistake, young man?”
The close-cropped, bullet-shaped, British head was agitated in vigorous
negation, and “Card for Mister Kirkwood!” was mumbled in dispassionate
accents appropriate to a recitation by rote.
“Very well. But before you show him up, ask this Mr. Calendar if he is
quite sure he wants to see Philip Kirkwood.”
“Yessir.”
The child marched out, punctiliously closing the door. Kirkwood tamped
down the tobacco in his pipe and puffed energetically, dismissing the
interruption to his reverie as a matter of no consequence—an obvious
mistake to be rectified by two words with this Mr. Calendar whom he did not
know. At the knock he had almost hoped it might be Brentwick, returning
with a changed mind about the bid to dinner.
He regretted Brentwick sincerely. Theirs was a curious sort of
friendship—extraordinarily close in view of the meagerness of either’s
information about the other, to say nothing of the disparity between their
ages. Concerning the elder man Kirkwood knew little more than that they had
met on shipboard, “coming over”; that Brentwick had spent some years in
America; that he was an Englishman by birth, a cosmopolitan by habit, by
profession a gentleman (employing that term in its most uncompromisingly
British significance), and by inclination a collector of “articles of
virtue and bigotry,” in pursuit of which he made frequent excursions to the
Continent from his residence in a quaint quiet street of Old Brompton. It
had been during his not infrequent, but ordinarily abbreviated, sojourns in
Paris that their steamer acquaintance had ripened into an affection almost
filial on the one hand, almost paternal on the other….
There came a rapping at the door.
Kirkwood removed the pipe from between his teeth long enough to say “Come
in!” pleasantly.
The knob was turned, the door opened. Kirkwood, swinging on one heel,
beheld hesitant upon the threshold a rather rotund figure of medium height,
clad in an expressionless gray lounge suit, with a brown “bowler” hat held
tentatively in one hand, an umbrella weeping in the other. A voice, which
was unctuous and insinuative, emanated from the figure.
“Mr. Kirkwood?”
Kirkwood nodded, with some effort recalling the name, so detached had been
his thoughts since the disappearance of the page.
“Yes, Mr. Calendar—?”
“Are you—ah—busy, Mr. Kirkwood?”
“Are you, Mr. Calendar?” Kirkwood’s smile robbed the retort of any flavor
of incivility.
Encouraged, the man entered, premising that he would detain his host but a
moment, and readily surrendering hat and umbrella. Kirkwood, putting the
latter aside, invited his caller to the easy chair which Brentwick had
occupied by the fireplace.
“It takes the edge off the dampness,” Kirkwood explained in deference to
the other’s look of pleased surprise at the cheerful bed of coals. “I’m
afraid I could never get acclimated to life in a cold, damp room—or a damp
cold room—such as you Britishers prefer.”
“It is grateful,” Mr. Calendar agreed, spreading plump and well cared-for
hands to the warmth. “But you are mistaken; I am as much an American as
yourself.”
“Yes?” Kirkwood looked the man over with more interest, less
matter-of-course courtesy.
He proved not unprepossessing, this unclassifiable Mr. Calendar; he was
dressed with some care, his complexion was good, and the fullness of his
girth, emphasized as it was by a notable lack of inches, bespoke a nature
genial, easy-going and sybaritic. His dark eyes, heavy-lidded, were
active—curiously, at times, with a subdued glitter—in a face large,
round, pink, of which the other most remarkable features were a mustache,
close-trimmed and showing streaks of gray, a chubby nose, and duplicate
chins. Mr. Calendar was furthermore possessed of a polished bald spot,
girdled with a tonsure of silvered hair—circumstances which lent some
factitious distinction to a personality otherwise commonplace.
His manner might be best described as uneasy with assurance; as though he
frequently found it necessary to make up for his unimpressive stature by
assuming an unnatural habit of authority. And there you have him; beyond
these points, Kirkwood was conscious of no impressions; the man was
apparently neutral-tinted of mind as well as of body.
“So you knew I was an American, Mr. Calendar?” suggested Kirkwood.
“‘Saw your name on the register; we both hail from the same neck of the
woods, you know.”
“I didn’t know it, and—”
“Yes; I’m
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