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Other young men passing, vaulting lightly over the wooden rail that enclosed the common, wore flowing whiskers, crisply black or brown like a tobacco leaf; their luxuriant waistcoats were draped with a profusion of chains and seals; but Elim's face was austerely shaved, he wore neither brocade nor gold, and he kept seriously to the path.
His bony face, the deep pits of his temples, were the dry spongy black of charcoal, and behind steel-rimmed glasses his eyes rolled like yellow agates. He glanced about, furtive and startled, when Elim Meikeljohn entered, but he was immediately reassured by Elim's disordered uniform. He made a solemn obeisance. "Colonel," he said, "will you make one of a little informal repast?
In reality Harry Kaperton was three years older than Elim; and Kaperton had been pleasantly at college, racing horses, for seven years; many others were Elim's age, but the maturity of the latter's responsibility separated them. In his room he took off his formal coat and nankeen waistcoat and hung them on a pegged board.
"Dressed like a soldier," she proceeded scornfully, "and scaring us out of our wits. What did you want to come here for anyhow calling out names?" Elim's head rolled forward and back. The hall seemed full of flaming arrows, and he collapsed slowly on the polished floor.
It will serve us best to see Elim Meikeljohn first as he walked across Winthrop Common. It was very early in April and should have been cool, but it was warm already there were some vermilion buds on the maples and Elim's worn shad-belly coat was uncomfortably heavy.
Kaperton was unsuccessful in hiding his surprise at the other's unexpected appearance and direct question. "Why why, nothing when I left;" then more cordially: "Come in, find a chair. Bottle on the table oh, I didn't think." He offered an implied apology to Elim's scruples. But Elim advanced to the table, where, selecting a decanter at random, he poured out a considerable drink of pale spirits.
Elim Meikeljohn laid before him a small docket of foolscap folded lengthwise, each section separately indorsed in pale flowery ink, with a feminine name, a class number and date. They were the weekly themes of a polite Young Ladies' Academy in Richmond, sent regularly north for the impressive opinion of a member of Elim's college faculty.
She glanced at him momentarily when he took his place he saw that her under lip was capable of an extremely human and annoying expression and returned to her veiled scrutiny of the sliding banks. An unfamiliar emotion stirred at Elim's heart; and in his painstaking introspective manner he exposed it.
Elim's face, expressing little of the tumult within, harsh and dark and dogged, was entirely appropriate to his somber greenish-black dress. Kaperton gestured toward the bottle, and they took a second drink, then a third. Kaperton's face flushed, he grew increasingly voluble, but Elim Meikeljohn was silent; the liquor made no apparent impression upon him.
Elim Meikeljohn spoke mechanically: "I'll be responsible for her." The war was over; he had been ordered from the column when his wound had broken afresh, and in a maze of fever he had been irresistibly impelled toward Linden Row. "I'll take her to Bramant's Wharf." Haxall regarded suspiciously the disordered blue uniform; then his gaze shifted to Elim's somber lined countenance.
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