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.
CHAPTER III—CAPTAIN BRANDT AT THE THROTTLE
The sun was an hour high when Sanford arrived at Keyport and turned quickly toward the road leading from the station to Captain Joe’s cottage, a spring and lightness in his step which indicated not only robust health, but an eagerness to reach at once the work absorbing his mind. When he gained the high ground overlooking the cottage and dock, he paused for a view that always charmed him with its play of light and color over sea and shore, and which seemed never so beautiful as in the early morning light.
Below him lay Keyport Village, built about a rocky half-moon of a harbor, its old wharves piled high with rotting oil-barrels and flanked by empty warehouses, behind which crouched low, gray-roofed cabins, squatting in a tangle of streets, with here and there a white church spire tipped with a restless weather-vane. Higher, on the hills, were nestled some old homesteads with sloping roofs and wide porches, and away up on the crest of the heights, overlooking the sea, stood the more costly structures with well-shaved lawns spotted with homesick trees from a warmer clime, their arms stretched appealingly toward the sea.
At his feet lay the brimming harbor itself, dotted with motionless yachts and various fishing-craft, all reflected upside down in the still sea, its glassy