Chapter 2

But before this purpose was accomplished, another view of the situation came into his mind. "I don't see why I shouldn't go," he thought. "I've been muddling all day with this wretched wool man--which is a bore, even if I have made a pretty good bargain with him for next season's clip; and Ned hasn't come to time, which is another bore, for now I'll have to eat my dinner alone. And this Dicky Smith writes like a gentleman, even if he is cheeky; and he certainly seems to be in a peck of troubles about his missing man, and his thirteen at table, and the rest of it. Why, it's a regular adventure! And to think of having an adventure in Philadelphia, of all places in the world! By Jove, I'll go!"

V.

"How very, very good of you, Mr. Livingstone, to come to our rescue!" It was Mrs. Rittenhouse Smith who spoke, and she spoke in a guarded tone; for Livingstone was among the last to arrive, and she had no desire to publish among her guests the catastrophe that so nearly had overtaken her.

"And I know," she continued: "that you will understand how sorry I am that this first visit of Mr. Smith's old friend to our house should be under such peculiar circumstances. But you will have your reward, for you are to take out the very prettiest and the very brightest girl here. Come and be rewarded!" And Mrs. Smith slipped her hand upon her benefactor's arm, and piloted him across the room.

"Miss Winthrop, permit me to present Mr. Livingstone. Miss Winthrop is half Boston and half European, Mr. Livingstone; and as you, after these ten years abroad, must be wholly European, you can cheer each other as fellow foreigners in the midst of Philadelphia barbarism"--with which pleasant speech the hostess turned quickly to receive the last arrival (a man, of course; only a man would dare to be even near to late at one of Mrs. Rittenhouse Smith's dinners), and then, standing beside the doorway, with Mr. Hutchinson Port, marshalled her company in to dinner. It was a comfort to her to know that for once in his fault-finding life Mr. Port would be compelled, since he was to be seated beside his hostess, to eat his food without abusing it.

Just at this time two things struck Mrs. Smith as odd. One was that as she presented her handsome guest to Miss Grace Winthrop she certainly had felt him start, while his arm had trembled curiously beneath her hand. The other was that as Mr. Rittenhouse Smith left the drawing-room, passing close beside her with Miss Winthrop upon his arm, he made a face at her. The first of these phenomena struck her as curious. The second struck her as ominous. Had it been possible she would have investigated the cause of Mr. Smith's facial demonstration. But it was not possible. She only could breathe a silent prayer that all would go well--and the while sniff anxiously to discover if perchance there were a smell of scorching duck.

Mrs. Smith would have been still more mystified could she have been cognizant at this juncture of her husband's and of Miss Grace Winthrop's and of Mr. Livingstone's thoughts.

The first of these was thinking: "It isn't Van Rensselaer Livingstone, any more than I am; though he certainly looks like him. And I'm sure that he knows that he don't know me. And I think that we've managed to get into a blank idiotic mess!"

And the second of these was thinking: "If he's been in Europe for the past ten years, there's not one chance in fifty that I ever have laid eyes on him. But I know I have!"

And the third of these was thinking: "There isn't man in the room who looks enough like Dicky Smith to be his tenth cousin. But if ever the goodness of heaven was shown in the affairs of men it is shown here to me to-night!"

VI.

Even as the sun triumphs over the darkness of night and the gloom of the tempest, so did Mrs. Rittenhouse Smith's dinner-party emerge radiantly from the sombre perils which had beset it. It was a brilliant, unqualified success.

Miss Winthrop was good enough to say, when the evening was ended--saying it in that assured, unconscious way that gives to the utterances of Boston people so peculiar a charm--"Really, Mrs. Smith, you have given me not only a delightful dinner, but a delightful surprise; I would not have believed, had I not seen it myself, that outside of Boston so many clever people could be brought together!"

And Mr. Hutchinson Port, upsetting all his traditions, had kept up a running fire of laudatory comment upon the dinner that had filled Mrs. Smith's soul with joy. She had expected him, being cut off by her presence from engaging in his accustomed grumbling, to maintain a moody silence. She had not expected praise: and she valued his praise the more because she knew that he spoke out of the fulness of his wisdom; and because in a matter of such vital moment as eating she knew that she could trust him to be sincere. His only approach to invidious comment was in regard to the terrapin.

With the grave solemnity that marks the serving of this delicacy in Philadelphia; in the midst of a holy calm befitting a sacred rite, the silver vessels were carried around the board, and in hushed rapture (a little puzzling to the Bostonians) the precious mixture was ladled out upon the fourteen plates; and Mr. Hutchinson Port, as the result of many years of soulful practice, was able to secure to himself at one dexterous scoop more eggs than fell to the lot of any other two men.

It was while rapturously eating these eggs that he spake: "My dear Mrs. Smith, will you forgive me if I venture to suggest, even to you--for what I have seen this night has convinced me that you are one of the very few people who know what a dinner ought to be--that the Madeira used in dressing terrapin cannot possibly be _too_ old?"

VII.

Proceeding in accordance with the cue that Mrs. Smith had given her, Miss Grace Winthrop engaged Mr. Livingstone in conversation upon European topics; and was somewhat astonished to find, in view of his past ten years in Europe, that they evidently had very little interest for him. And all the while that she talked with him she was haunted by the conviction that she had seen him somewhere; and all the while she was aware of something in his manner, she could not tell what, that seemed to imply that she ought to know who he was.

What Miss Grace Winthrop did feel entirely certain about, however, was that this was one of the cleverest and one of the manliest men she had ever come across. His well-shaped hands were big and brown, and his face was brown, and the set of his head and the range of his broad shoulders gave him an alert look and a certain air of command. There was that about him which suggested a vigorous life in the open air. There was nothing to suggest ten years in Europe, unless it were the charm of his manner, and his neat way of saying bright things.

As for Livingstone, he was as one who at the same time is both entranced and inspired. He knew that he never had been happier in his life; he knew that he never had said so many clever things in so short a time. Therefore it was that these young people always thereafter were most harmoniously agreed that this was the very happiest dinner that they had eaten in all their lives.

It came to an end much too soon for either of them. The ladies left the room, and cigars were invoked to fill their place. This was the moment that Livingstone had looked forward to as affording the first practicable opportunity for taking his host apart and explaining that his, Livingstone's, presence at that particular feast certainly must be owing to some mistake. And this was the moment that Mr. Smith, also, had looked forward to as available for clearing up the mystery--of which his wife still was blissfully ignorant--as to who their stranger guest really was. But the moment now being come, Livingstone weakly but deliberately evaded it by engaging in an animated conversation with Mr. Hutchinson Port in regard to the precise number of minutes and seconds that a duck ought to remain before the fire; and Mr. Smith--having partaken of his own excellent wines and meats until his whole being was aglow with a benevolent friendliness--contented himself with thinking that, no matter who his guest was, he certainly was a capital fellow; and that to cross-question him as to his name, at least until the evening was at an end, would be a gross outrage upon the laws of hospitality.

Livingstone, however, had the grace to feel a good deal ashamed of himself as they returned to the drawing-room. In all that had gone before, he had been a victim of circumstances. He had an uncomfortable conviction that his position now was not wholly unlike that of an impostor. But as he pushed aside the portiere he beheld a pair of blue eyes which, he flattered himself, betrayed an expression of pleased expectancy--and his compunctions vanished.

There was only a little time left to them, for the evening was almost at an end. Their talk came back to travel. Did she like travelling in America? he asked. Yes, she liked it very much indeed, "only "--as a sudden memory of a past experience flashed into her mind--"one does sometimes meet such dreadfully horrid people!"

They were sitting, as they talked, in a narrow space between a table and the wall, made narrower by the presence of an unused chair. Just as this memory was aroused, some one tried to push by them, and Livingstone, rising, lifted the obstructing chair away. To find a clear space in which to put it down, he lifted it across the table; and for a moment he stood erect, holding the chair out before him at arm's-length.

When he seated himself and turned again to speak to Grace, he was startled to find that her face and shoulders, and even her arms--her arms and shoulders were delectable--were crimson; and in her eyes he found at last the look of recognition that he had hoped for earlier in the evening, but that now he had ceased to expect. Recognition of this emphatic sort he certainly had not expected at all.

"You--you see," she said, "I al--always have thought that you were a robber and a murderer, and shocking things like that. And I didn't really see you that day, except as you walked away, holding up that horrid little man, kicking--just as you held up the chair. Can you ever, ever forgive me for thinking such wicked things about you, and for being so ungrateful as not to know you at the very first?"

And Livingstone, then and later, succeeded in convincing her that he could.

VIII.

By an emphatic whisper Miss Grace Winthrop succeeded in impressing upon her aunt the necessity--at no matter what sacrifice of the social conventions--of being the last to go. In the matter of keeping Livingstone, she experienced no difficulty at all. And when the unnecessary eight had departed, she presented to her aunt and uncle her deliverer, and--in a delightfully hesitating way--told to Mr. and Mrs. Smith the story of her deliverance.

It was when this matter had been explained that Livingstone, who felt that his position now was absolutely secure, brought up the delicate question of his own identity.

"You can understand, I am sure, Mrs. Smith," he said, "how very grateful I am to you for this evening; but, indeed, I don't think that I am the person you meant to ask. And it has occurred to me, from something that you said about my having been in Europe for a good while, that Mr. Smith might have meant his invitation for Van Rensselaer Livingstone. He's my cousin, you know; and he has spent the last ten years in Europe, and is there yet, I fancy. But I am Van Ruyter Livingstone, and if I can be said to have a home anywhere--except the old home in New York, of course--it is on my sheep range in New Mexico.

"But you won't be cruel enough, Mrs. Smith, after letting me into Paradise--even if I did get in by mistake--to turn me out again; will you?"

And Mrs. Rittenhouse Smith, who was a clever woman, as well as a remarkably clear-sighted one, replied that even if she wanted to turn Mr. Van Ruyter Livingstone out of Paradise she believed that it was now too late.