consented to Betty’s request that he would see him, partly because he was inclined to like what he had heard, and partly for a reason which Betty did not suspect. By extraordinary chance G. Selden had seen Mount Dunstan and his surroundings at close range. Mr. Vanderpoel had liked what he had gathered of Mount Dunstan’s attitude towards a personality so singularly exotic to himself. Crude, uneducated, and slangy, the junior salesman was not in any degree a fool. To an American father with a daughter like Betty, the summing-up of a normal, nice-natured, common young denizen of the United States, fresh from contact with the effete, might be subtly instructive, and well worth hearing, if it was unconsciously expressed. Mr. Vanderpoel thought he knew how, after he had overcome his visitor’s first awkwardness—if he chanced to be self-conscious—he could lead him to talk. What he hoped to do was to make him forget himself and begin to talk to him as he had talked to Betty, to ingenuously reveal impressions and points of view. Young men of his clean, rudimentary type were very definite about the things they liked and disliked, and could be trusted to reveal admiration, or lack of it, without absolute intention or actual statement. Being elemental and undismayed, they saw things cleared of the mists of social prejudice and modification. Yes, he felt he should be glad to hear of Lord Mount Dunstan and the Mount Dunstan estate from G. Selden in a happy moment of unawareness.
Why was it that it happened to be Mount Dunstan he was desirous to hear of? Well, the absolute reason for that he could not have explained, either. He had asked himself questions on the subject more than once. There was no well-founded reason, perhaps. If Betty’s letters had spoken of Mount Dunstan and his home, they had also described Lord Westholt and Dunholm Castle. Of these two men she had certainly spoken more fully than of others. Of Mount Dunstan she had had more to relate through the incident of G. Selden. He smiled as he realised the importance of the figure of G. Selden. It was Selden and his broken leg the two men had ridden over from Mount Dunstan to visit. But for Selden, Betty might not have met Mount Dunstan again. He was reason enough for all she had said. And yet–-! Perhaps, between Betty and himself there existed the thing which impresses and communicates without words. Perhaps, because their affection was unusual, they realised each other’s emotions. The half-defined anxiety he felt now was not a new thing, but he confessed to himself that it had been spurred a little by the letter the last steamer had brought him. It was NOT Lord Westholt, it definitely appeared. He had asked her to be his wife, and she had declined his proposal.
“I could not have LIKED a man any more without being in love with him,” she wrote. “I LIKE him more than I can say —so much, indeed, that I feel a little depressed by my certainty that I do not love him.”
If she had loved him, the whole matter would have been simplified. If the other man had drawn her, the thing would not be simple. Her father foresaw all the complications—and he did not want complications for Betty. Yet emotions were perverse and irresistible things, and the stronger the creature swayed by them, the more enormous their power. But, as he sat in his easy chair and thought over it all, the one feeling predominant in his mind was that nothing mattered but Betty—nothing really mattered but Betty.
In the meantime G. Selden was walking up Fifth Avenue, at once touched and exhilarated by the stir about him and his sense of home-coming. It was pretty good to be in little old New York again. The hurried pace of the life about him stimulated his young blood. There were no street cars in Fifth Avenue, but there were carriages, waggons, carts, motors, all pantingly hurried, and fretting and struggling when the crowded state of the thoroughfare held them back. The beautifully dressed women in the carriages wore no light air of being at leisure. It was evident that they were going to keep engagements, to do things, to achieve objects.
“Something doing. Something doing,” was his cheerful self-congratulatory thought. He had spent his life in the midst of it, he liked it, and it welcomed him back.
The appointment he was on his way to keep thrilled him into an uplifted mood. Once or twice a half-nervous chuckle broke from him as he tried to realise that he had been given the chance which a year ago had seemed so impossible that its mere incredibleness had made it a natural subject for jokes. He was going to call on Reuben S. Vanderpoel, and he was going because Reuben S. had made an appointment with him.
He wore his London suit of clothes and he felt that he looked pretty decent. He could only do his best in the matter of bearing. He always thought that, so long as a fellow didn’t get “chesty” and kept his head from swelling, he was all right. Of course he had never been in one of these swell Fifth Avenue houses, and he felt a bit nervous —but Miss Vanderpoel would have told her father what sort of fellow he was, and her father was likely to be something like herself. The house, which had been built since Lady Anstruthers’ marriage, was well “up-town,” and was big and imposing. When a manservant opened the front door, the square hall looked very splendid to Selden. It was full of light, and of rich furniture, which was like the stuff he had seen in one or two special shop windows in Fifth Avenue—places where they sold magnificent gilded or carven coffers and vases, pieces of tapestry and marvellous embroideries, antiquities from foreign palaces. Though it was quite different, it was as swell in its way as the house at Mount Dunstan, and there were gleams of pictures on the walls that looked fine, and no mistake.
He was expected. The man led him across the hall to Mr. Vanderpoel’s room. After he had announced his name he closed the door quietly and went away. Mr. Vanderpoel rose from an armchair to come forward to meet his visitor. He was tall and straight—Betty had inherited her slender height from him. His well-balanced face suggested the relationship between them. He had a steady mouth, and eyes which looked as if they saw much and far.
“I am glad to see you, Mr. Selden,” he said, shaking hands with him. “You have seen my daughters, and can tell me how they are. Miss Vanderpoel has written to me of you several times.”
He asked him to sit down, and as he took his chair Selden felt that he had been right in telling himself that Reuben S. Vanderpoel would be somehow like his girl. She was a girl, and he was an elderly man of business, but they were like each other. There was the same kind of straight way of doing things, and the same straight-seeing look in both of them.
It was queer how natural things seemed, when they really happened to a fellow. Here he was sitting in a big leather chair and opposite to him in its fellow sat Reuben S. Vanderpoel, looking at him with friendly eyes. And it seemed all right, too—not as if he had managed to “butt in,” and would find himself politely fired out directly. He might have been one of the Four Hundred making a call. Reuben S. knew how to make a man feel easy, and no mistake. This G. Selden observed at once, though he had, in fact, no knowledge of the practical tact which dealt with him. He found himself answering questions about Lady Anstruthers and her sister, which led to the opening up of other subjects. He did not realise that he began to express ingenuous opinions and describe things. His listener’s interest led him on, a question here, a rather pleased laugh there, were encouraging. He had enjoyed himself so much during his stay in England, and had felt his experiences so greatly to be rejoiced over, that they were easy to talk of at any time—in fact, it was even a trifle difficult not to talk of them—but, stimulated by the look which rested on him, by the deft word and ready smile, words flowed readily and without the restraint of self- consciousness.
“When you think that all of it sort of began with a robin, it’s queer enough,” he said. “But for that robin I shouldn’t be here, sir,” with a boyish laugh. “And he was an English robin—a little fellow not half the size of the kind that hops about Central Park.”
“Let me hear about that,” said Mr. Vanderpoel.
It was a good story, and he told it well, though in his own junior salesman phrasing. He began with his bicycle ride into the green country, his spin over the fine roads, his rest under the hedge during the shower, and then the song of the robin perched among the fresh wet leafage, his feathers puffed out, his red young satin-glossed breast
