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"Well," said Faxon philosophically, "I suppose that's one of the reasons why she needs a secretary. And I've always the inn at Northridge," he concluded. The youth laughed again. He was at the age when predicaments are food for gaiety. "Oh, but you haven't, though! It burned down last week." "The deuce it did!" said Faxon; but the humor of the situation struck him also before its inconvenience.
He had changed the subject not abruptly but firmly when the young men entered, but Faxon perceived that it still possessed the thoughts of the two elderly visitors, and Mr. Balch presently observed, in a voice that seemed to come from the last survivor down a mine- shaft: "If it does come, it will be the biggest crash since '93." Mr. Lavington looked bored but polite.
Some one, no doubt, was coming to see how he was to urge him, if he felt better, to go down and join the smokers. Cautiously he opened his door; yes, it was young Rainer's step. Faxon looked down the passage, remembered the other stairway and darted to it. All he wanted was to get out of the house. Not another instant would he breathe its abominable air! What business was it of his, in God's name?
"You've had a bad shake-up, and it'll do you no end of good to get away from things." When the doctor came the next day it turned out that he knew of the plan and approved it. "You ought to be quiet for a year. Just loaf and look at the landscape," he advised. Faxon felt the first faint stirrings of curiosity. "What's been the matter with me, anyhow?" "Well, over-work, I suppose.
Faxon, upon whose active sympathies they relied for shelter and assistance; and they went with the more confidence, because Uncle Nathan had heard from Emily the interest he took in her affairs. The litter was borne by Uncle Nathan and Pat, while Dalhousie walked by its side, to cheer the heart of his wife by promises of future joy, which the uncertain future might never redeem. Mr.
Lavington went on conversationally; and still the other face watched Rainer. "It was... a mistake... a confusion of memory...." Faxon heard himself stammer. Mr. Lavington pushed back his chair, and as he did so Mr. Grisben suddenly leaned forward. "Lavington! What have, we been thinking of? We haven't drunk Frank's health!" Mr. Lavington reseated himself.
Faxon caught him by the arm and drew him in. "It WAS cold out there," he sighed; and then, abruptly, as if invisible shears at a single stroke had cut every muscle in his body, he swerved, drooped on Faxon's arm, and seemed to sink into nothing at his feet. The lodge-keeper and Faxon bent over him, and somehow, between them, lifted him into the kitchen and laid him on a sofa by the stove.
"Well, we'll go into the details presently," he heard Mr. Lavington say, still on the question of his nephew's future. "Let's have a cigar first. No not here, Peters." He turned his smile on Faxon. "When we've had coffee I want to show you my pictures." "Oh, by the way, Uncle Jack Mr. Faxon wants to know if you've got a double?" "A double?" Mr.
Balch meticulously inscribing his name at the foot of the document, Mr. Lavington his eyes no longer on his nephew examining a strange white-winged orchid in the vase at his elbow. Everything suddenly seemed to have grown natural and simple again, and Faxon found himself responding with a smile to the affable gesture with which his host declared: "And now, Mr. Faxon, we'll dine."
The flowers themselves, their quality, selection and arrangement, attested on some one's part and on whose but John Lavington's? a solicitous and sensitive passion for that particular embodiment of beauty. Well, it simply made the man, as he had appeared to Faxon, all the harder to understand!
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