Whether or not Jones was a good sailor is a matter of small moment. In any event he tacked at once.
“Bah! I am speaking in the first person. I don’t believe in matrimony myself, I am too poor. And besides, I never heard of but one happy marriage, and that was between a blind man and a deaf-mute. Though even then it must have been difficult to know what the woman thought. Now, in regard to Miss Raritan, half the men in the city are after her, pour le bon motif, s’entend; but when a girl has had the dessus du panier at her feet, no fellow can afford to ask her to take a promenade with him down the aisle of Grace Church, unless he has the Chemical Bank in one pocket and the United States Trust Company in the other. Et avec ça!” And Jones waved his head as though not over-sure that the coffers of those institutions would suffice.
“I don’t see what that has to do with it,” Tristrem indignantly interjected.
“Isn’t that odd now?” was Jones’ sarcastic reply. “Dr. Holmes says that no fellow can be a thoroughgoing swell unless he has three generations in oil. And mind you, daguerreotypes won’t do. There are any number of your ancestors strung along the walls of the Historical Society, and how many more you may have in that crypt of yours in Waverley Place, heaven only knows. Imprimis, if you accept Dr. Holmes as an authority, you are a thoroughgoing swell. In the second place, you look like a Greek shepherd. Third, you are the biggest catch in polite society. Certainly it’s odd that with such possibilities you should see no reason for not marrying a girl who will want higher-stepping horses than Elisha’s, and who, while there is a bandit of a dressmaker in Paris, will decline to imitate the lilies of the field. Certainly—”
“I never said anything about it, I never said anything about marrying or not marrying—”
“Oh, didn’t you? I thought you did.” And Jones leaned back in his chair and summoned a waiter with an upward movement of the chin. “Bring another pint of this, will you.”
“I think I won’t take anything more,” said Tristrem, rising from the table as he spoke. “It’s hot in here. I may see you downstairs.” And with that he left the room.
Mr. Alphabet Jones looked after him a second and nodded sagaciously to himself. “Another man overboard,” he muttered, as he toyed with his empty glass. “Ah! jeunesse, jeunesse!”
V
Tristrem descended the stair and hesitated a moment at the door of the smoking room. Nearby, at a small table, two men were drinking brandy. He caught a fragment of their speech: it was about a woman. Beyond, another group was listening to that story of the eternal feminine which is everlastingly the same. Within, the air was lifeless and heavy with the odor of cigars, but in the hall there came through the wide portals of the entrance the irresistible breath of a night in May.
Tristrem turned and presently sauntered aimlessly out of the club and up the avenue. Before him, a man was loitering with a girl; his arm was in hers, and he was whispering in her ear. A cab passed, bearing a couple that sat waist-encircled devouring each other with insatiate eyes. And at Twenty-third Street, a few shop-girls, young and very pretty, that were laughing conspicuously together, were joined by some clerks, with whom they paired off and disappeared. At the corner, through the intersecting thoroughfares came couple after couple, silent for the most part, as though oppressed by the invitations of the night. Beyond, in the shadows of the Square, the benches were filled with youths and maidens, who sat hand-in-hand, oblivious to the crowd that circled in indolent coils about them. The moon had not yet risen, but a leash of stars that night had loosed glowed and trembled with desire. The air was sentient with murmurs, redolent with promise. The avenues and the adjacent streets seemed to have forgotten their toil and to swoon unhushed in the bewitchments of a dream of love.
Tristrem found himself straying through its mazes and convolutions. Whichever way he turned there was some monition of its presence. From a streetcar which had stayed his passage he saw the conductor blow a kiss to a hurrying form, and through an open window of Delmonico’s he saw a girl with summer in her eyes reach across the table at which she sat and give her companion’s hand an abrupt yet deliberate caress.
Tristrem continued his way, oppressed. He was beset by an insidious dyscholia. He felt as one does who witnesses a festival in which there is no part for him. The town reeked with love as a brewery reeks with beer. The stars, the air, the very pavements told of it. It was omnipresent, and yet there was none for him.
He tried to put it from him and think of other things. Of Jones, for instance. Why had he spoken of Viola? And then, in the flight of fancies which surged through his mind, there was one that he stayed and detained. It was that he must see her again before she left town. He looked at his watch: it lacked twenty minutes to ten, and on the impulse of the moment he hailed a passing bus. It was inexplicable to him that the night before she should have let him go without a word as to her movements. It seemed to be understood that he was to come again to wish her a pleasant journey. And when was he to come if not that very evening? Surely at the time she had forgotten this engagement with the Wainwarings, and some note had been left for him at the door. And if no note had been left, then why should he not ask for her mother
