It was a day in the latter part of March. The winter had been unusually severe, and lingered into spring with a heart-sickening tenacity, occasional hints of clemency and promise being followed by recurrences which were as irritating as a personal affront.
John had held to his work in the office, if not with positive enthusiasm, at least with industry, and thought that he had made some progress. On the day in question the managing clerk commented briefly but favorably on something of his which was satisfactory, and, such experiences being rare, he was conscious of a feeling of mild elation. He was also cherishing the anticipation of a call at Sixty-ninth Street, where, for reasons unnecessary to recount, he had not been for a week. At dinner that night his father seemed more inclined than for a long time to keep up a conversation which, though of no special import, was cheerful in comparison with the silence which had grown to be almost the rule, and the two men sat for a while over the coffee and cigars. Presently, however, the elder rose from the table, saying pleasantly, “I suppose you are going out tonight.”
“Not if you’d like me to stay in,” was the reply. “I have no definite engagement.”
“Oh, no,” said Mr. Lenox, “not at all, not at all,” and as he passed his son on the way out of the room he put out his hand and taking John’s, said, “Good night.”
As John stood for a moment rather taken aback, he heard his father mount the stairs to his room. He was puzzled by the unexpected and unusual occurrence, but finally concluded that his father, realizing how taciturn they had become of late, wished to resume their former status, and this view was confirmed to his mind by the fact that they had been more companionable than usual that evening, albeit that nothing of any special significance had been said.
As has been stated, a longer interval than usual had elapsed since John’s last visit to Sixty-ninth Street, a fact which had been commented on by Mr. Carling, but not mentioned between the ladies. When he found himself at that hospitable house on that evening, he was greeted by Miss Blake alone.
“Julius did not come down tonight, and my sister is with him,” she said, “so you will have to put up with my society—unless you’d like me to send up for Alice. Julius is strictly en retraite, I should say.”
“Don’t disturb her, I beg,” protested John, laughing, and wondering a bit at the touch of coquetry in her speech, something unprecedented in his experience of her, “if you are willing to put up with my society. I hope Mr. Carling is not ill?”
They seated themselves as she replied: “No, nothing serious, I should say. A bit of a cold, I fancy; and for a fortnight he has been more nervous than usual. The changes in the weather have been so great and so abrupt that they have worn upon his nerves. He is getting very uneasy again. Now, after spending the winter, and when spring is almost at hand, I believe that if he could make up his mind where to go he would be for setting off tomorrow.”
“Really?” said John, in a tone of dismay.
“Quite so,” she replied with a nod.
“But,” he objected, “it seems too late or too early. Spring may drop in upon us any day. Isn’t this something very recent?”
“It has been developing for a week or ten days,” she answered, “and symptoms have indicated a crisis for some time. In fact,” she added, with a little vexed laugh, “we have talked of nothing for a week but the advantages and disadvantages of Florida, California, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia at large; besides St. Augustine, Monterey, Santa Barbara, Aiken, Asheville, Hot Springs, Old Point Comfort, Bermuda, and I don’t know how many other places, not forgetting Atlantic City and Lakewood, and only not Barbados and the Sandwich Islands because nobody happened to think of them. Julius,” remarked Miss Blake, “would have given a forenoon to the discussion of the two latter places as readily as to any of the others.”
“Can’t you talk him along into warm weather?” suggested John, with rather a mirthless laugh. “Don’t you think that if the weather were to change for good, as it’s likely to do almost any time now, he might put off going till the usual summer flitting?”
“The change in his mind will have to come pretty soon if I am to retain my mental faculties,” she declared. “He might possibly, but I am afraid not,” she said, shaking her head. “He has the idea fixed in his mind, and considerations of the weather here, while they got him started, are not now so much the question. He has the moving fever, and I am afraid it will have to run its course. I think,” she said, after a moment, “that if I were to formulate a special anathema, it would be, ‘May traveling seize you!’ ”
“Or restlessness,” suggested John.
“Yes,” she said, “that’s more accurate, perhaps, but it doesn’t sound quite so smart. Julius is in that state of mind when the only place that seems desirable is somewhere else.”
“Of course you will have to go,” said John mournfully.
“Oh, yes,” she replied, with an air of compulsory resignation. “I shall not only have to go, of course, but I shall probably have to decide where in order to save my mind. But it will certainly be somewhere, so I might as well be packing my trunks.”
“And you will be away indefinitely, I
