Dear Orville:
Miss Badeau sails unexpectedly for Paris on the day after Christmas, her aunt Madge having cabled for her to come and visit her. Won’t you come to Christmas dinner? I’ve invited the Joe Burtons, and of course Mr. Marten will be there, but no others—except Miss Badeau.
Dinner will be at sharp seven. Don’t be late, although I know you won’t, you human timetable.
I do hope that Annette will not fall in love in Paris. I wish that she would marry some nice New-Yorker and settle near me.
I’ve always thought that you have neglected marriage shamefully.
Remember to-morrow night, and Annette sails on Thursday. Wishing you a Merry Christmas, I am,
Your old friend,
Henrietta Marten
Annette Badeau had come across the line of Orville’s vision three months before. She was Mrs. Marten’s niece, and had come from the West to live with her aunt at just about the time that the success of Thornton’s book made him think of marriage.
She was pretty and bright and expansive in a Western way, and when Thornton met her at one of the few afternoon teas that he ever attended he fell in love with her. When he learned that she was the niece of his lifelong friend Mrs. Marten, he suddenly discovered various reasons why he should call at the Marten house once or twice a week.
But a strange habit he had of putting off delightful moments in order to enjoy anticipation to its fullest extent had caused him to refrain from disclosing the state of his heart to Miss Badeau, and so that young woman, who had fallen in love with him even before she knew that he was the gifted author of “Thoughts for Non-Thinkers,” often wished to herself that she could in some way give him a hint of the state of her heart.
Orville received Mrs. Marten’s letter on Christmas eve, and its contents made him plan a schedule for the next evening’s running. No power on earth could keep him away from that dinner, and he immediately sent a telegram of regret to the Bellwether of the Wolves’ Club, although he had been anticipating the Christmas gorge for a month.
He also sent a messenger with a note of acceptance to Mrs. Marten.
Then he joined the crowd of persons who always wait until Christmas eve before buying the presents that stern and unpleasant duty makes it necessary to get.
It would impart a characteristic Christmas flavor if it were possible to cover the ground with snow and to make the air merry with the sound of flashing belts of silvery sleigh bells on prancing horses; but although Christmases in stories are always snowy and frosty, and sparkling with ice-crystals, Christmases in real life are apt to be damp and humid. Let us be thankful that this Christmas was merely such a one as would not give a ghost of a reason for a trip to Florida. The mercury stood at 58, and even light overcoats were not things to be put on without thought.
Orville knew what he wished to get and where it was sold, and so he had an advantage over ninety-nine out of a hundred of the anxious-looking shoppers who were scuttling from shop to shop, burdened with bundles, and making the evening the worst in the year for tired sales -girls and -men. Orville’s present was not exactly Christmassy, but he hoped that Miss Badeau would like it, and it was certainly the finest one on the velvet tray. Orville, it will be seen, was of a sanguine disposition.
He did not hang up his stocking; he had not done that for several years; but he did dream that Santa Claus brought him a beautiful doll from Paris, and just as he was saying, “There must be some mistake,” the doll turned into Miss Badeau, and said: “No, I’m for you. Merry Christmas!” Then he woke up and thought how foolish and yet how fascinating dreams are.
Christmas morning was spent in polishing up an old essay on “The Value of the Summer as an Invigorator.” It had long been a habit of his to work over old stuff on his holidays, and if he was about to marry he would need to sell everything he had—of a literary-marketable nature. But this morning a vision of a lovely girl who on the morrow was going to sail thousands of miles away came between him and the page, and at last he tossed the manuscript into a drawer and went out for a walk.
It was the draggiest Christmas he had ever known, and the warmest. He dropped in at the club, but there was hardly any one there; still, he did manage to play a few games of billiards, and at last the clock announced that it was time to go home and dress for the Christmas dinner.
It was half-past five when be left the club. It was twenty minutes to six when he slipped on a piece of orange-peel and measured his length on the sidewalk. He was able to rise and hobble up the steps on one foot, but the hall-boy had to help him to the elevator and thence to his room. He dropped upon his bed, feeling white about the gills.
Orville was a most methodical man. He planned his doings days ahead and seldom changed his schedule. But it seemed likely that unless he was built of sterner stuff than most of the machines called men, he would not run out of the round-house to-night. His fall had given his foot a nasty wrench.
Some engineers, to change the simile, would have argued that the engine was off the track and that therefore the train was not in running condition; but Orville merely changed engines. His own steam having been cut off, he ordered an automobile for twenty minutes to seven; and after he had bathed and bandaged his ankle he determined, with a grit worthy of the cause that brought it forth, to attend that dinner even if he paid for it in the hospital, with Annette as special nurse.
Old Mr. Nickerson, who lived across the hall, had heard of his misfortune, and called to proffer his services.
“Shall I help you get to bed?” said he.
“I am not due in bed, Mr. Nickerson, for many hours; but if you will give me a few fingers of your excellent old Scotch, with the bouquet of smoked herring, I will go on dressing for dinner.”
“Dear boy,” said the old gentleman, almost tearfully, “it is impossible for you to venture on your foot with such a sprain. It is badly swollen.”
Mr. Nickerson, my heart has received a worse wrench than my foot has, therefore I go out to dine.” At sound of which enigmatical declaration Mr. Nickerson hurried off for the old Scotch, and in a few minutes Orville’s faintness had passed off, and with help from the amiable old man he got into his evening clothes—with the exception of his left foot, which was incased in a flowered slipper of sunset red.
“Now, my dear Mr. Nickerson, I’m a thousand times obliged to you, and if I can get you to help me hop downstairs I will wait for the automobile on the front stoop.” (Orville had been born in Brooklyn, where they still have “stoops.”) “I’m on time so far.”
But if Orville was on time, the automobile was not, the driver not being a methodical man; and when it did come, it was all the motorman could do to stop it. It seemed restive.
“You ought to shut off on the oats,” said Orville, gaily, from his seat on the lowest step of the “stoop.”
The picture of a gentleman in immaculate evening clothes, with the exception of a somewhat rococo carpet slipper, seemed to amuse some street children who were passing. If they could have followed the “auto” they would have been even more diverted, but such was not to be their fortune. Mr. Nickerson helped his friend into the vehicle, and the driver started at a lively rate for Fifth Avenue.
Orville lived in Seventeenth Street, near Fifth Avenue; Mrs. Marten lived on Fifth Avenue, near Forty-first Street. Thirty-ninth Street and Fortieth Street were reached and passed without further incident than the fact that Orville’s ankle pained him almost beyond the bearing-point; but, as it is not the history of a sprained ankle that I am writing, if the vehicle had stopped at Mrs. Marten’s my pen would not have been set to paper.
But the motor-wagon did not even pause. It kept on as if the Harlem River were to be its next stop.
Orville had stated the number of his destination with distinctness, and he now rang the annunciator and asked the driver why he did not stop.
Calmly, in the even tones that clear-headed persons