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THAT afternoon, as John and I were smoking on the hotel piazza, who should turn up but Ned Randall. We used to see a good deal of Ned at the Pow-wow and elsewhere, but after he went West we lost track of him. It was mighty pleasant to run across him in this way, and when he said there was tennis to be had at the Club grounds, and proposed our going up, I thought I had never liked him so well. As for John, he declined the invitation on the score of a previous engagement so cheerfully that I was disgusted with him.
"Can't you cut your engagement?" Ned urged. "We've got some pretty good players up there."
"I should like to have a whack at them some other time," John said, "but I can't come this afternoon."
"All right," said Ned. "We have tennis all the year round in Colorado, so you are not likely to lose your chance."
"What are you going in for out here, Ned?" I asked, as we walked up the avenue.
"Tennis and real-estate."
"Which do you make the most money at?"
"Not at tennis," said he. "I own some pretty good property out here. That, for instance," he added, as we passed Mrs. Ellerton's gate.
"The deuce you do!" said I, with undisguised astonishment. In old times Ned did not enjoy the reputation of being a financial genius. "How did you do it?"
"I didn't do it. The town did it. It has been growing like a mushroom ever since I came out, five years ago, and I had the luck to chip in just in time."
"You know Miss Lamb then."
"Of course I do. But how did you come to know her? She is a Connecticut girl to begin with, and she hasn't lived in the East since she left school."
"I wonder what makes them stay on here?" I queried, after having explained our acquaintance after a fashion. "Mr. Ellerton died here, did he not? I should think the associations might be painful."
"I don't think Mrs. Ellerton is enterprising enough to go away. All the enterprise she possesses goes into genealogy. And by the way, Dick, you had better look out how you let her know that you are a Rhode Island Dickson. If once she gets hold of that fact you will wish you had been born a 'mick.'"
Ned does not belong to the swell Randall family. I suppose he had been forced to confess as much in response to Mrs. Ellerton's investigations. Perhaps that was why he spoke with such asperity.
"Nice girl, Miss Lamb seems to be," said I, tentatively.
"Nice girl! Irather guess! I never saw any one nicer. I say, Dick, neither of you fellows are going to carry her off, I hope."
"Not that I know of. But I should think there might have been plenty to try for it before now."
"Might have been. Only I don't believe any one ever screwed up his courage to ask her. I never did!"—this with a profound sigh.
"Is she so stiff?" I asked, ignoring the implied confidence.
"Not so much stiff as—" he paused for the word,—"let us say lucid. A fellow would have to be a bigger fool than I am to imagine that he had a chance."
"And you don't think she ever cared for anybody?"
"Well, of course I can't say. There hasn't been any one out here that she would be likely to fancy, and she was a mere chicken when she came. Why do you ask?"
"I was only trying to get some clue to her lucidity. It isn't so common."
At this moment our arrival at the Club grounds put an end to confidences.
I have sometimes wished that people were not so inclined to make a confidant of me. They arealways telling me their love affairs. Yet perhaps it is a safeguard. For just as soon as I make the acquaintance of a nice girl some fellow is sure to tell me, under the seal of secrecy, that he adores her, so that my own feelings don't get a chance to spring up. But, as I say, that is perhaps just as well, for I am not a marrying man, and it might be awkward to get stirred up over somebody for nothing. Though possibly if I happened to like a girl as much as all that comes to, my views might change. That however wouldn't fill the exchequer. If I had come out West to be sure, as Ned wanted me to, I might have owned houses and things too. But I think, on the whole, I prefer New York, and as long as a few of the Pow-wow escape the ravages of matrimony, life must still be pleasant.
I was interested in Ned's confessions, fragmentary as they were. I rather hoped he would tell me some more sometime. I never pry into other people's affairs however, but John says that is the very reason they all want to tell me their secrets. John has noticed it, and he once said some very kind things about it. John is such a good fellow! He would give the very Devil his dues!
The tennis was pretty fair, though Ned started me off with some young ladies and so I didn't go it quite so hard as I should have liked to.
When I got home I found John reading a New York paper in the office.
"How was the business talk?" I asked, as we stepped out into the deserted piazza. It was the dark end of twilight, and a few scattered stars were pricking through.
"First rate," said he.
"Did you get any light on the great subject?"
"Not a ray."
"Did you discuss the poems?'"
"Some of them."
"What did she have to say about the sonnets of Constance?"
"Nothing."
"Didn't they come up?"
"No. She didn't mention them, and I hadn't the cheek."
"Oh, I say, Jack; you might have got something out of her. Couldn't you tell whether she took your observations in a personal spirit? Women are always so personal, don't you know? Atleast that is what you literary fellows say about them, though I don't myself see how they could be much more personal than the rest of us! But come, now, you're an observer of human nature. Couldn't you detect 'the personal element'?"
"Stuff, Dick! of course it was personal to her! Whether she wrote the poems or not, their publication is all her doing. I wish you could have seen her face, though, when I told her that Nelson Guild liked the poems and was going to notice them."
"How did it look?"
He pointed to a bouncing great planet that was shining away in the west.
"It looked like that star," said he.
I ventured to quote in a sentimental tone. He did not object to the amendment and I wished I had not said it.
As I look back upon that time the situation seems to me more than ever preposterous. For two grown men to leave New York in the height of the season and travel two thousand miles, merely for the sake of giving one of them an opportunity to fall in love with a girl neither of them had ever seen, and one who, unless all signs failed, was already the unfortunate possessor ofa broken heart! But geniuses are erratic, and if you allow yourself to get entangled with a genius you never know what you may be led into.
Yet I may as well say, right here, that I, for my part, had a rousing good time of it, with tennis and riding, and lots of nice people, and weather fit for a king. One scarcely missed the Pow-wow and the German opera, and as for clients, one forgot that one had so few to forget.