Romance Island | Page 2

colours at the thought of being addressed like that
before the staff; and St. George had recast the story and had received
for his diligence a New Jersey assignment which had kept him until
midnight. Haunting the homes of the club-women and the common
council of that little Jersey town, the trim white-and-brass craft slipping
down to the river's mouth had not ceased to lure him. He had found
himself estimating the value--in money--of the bric-à-brac of every
house, and the self-importance of every alderman, and reflecting that
these people, if they liked, might own yachts of white and brass; yet
they preferred to crouch among the bric-à-brac and to discourse to him
of one another's violations and interferences. By the time that he had
reached home that dripping night and had put captions upon the backs
of the unexpectant-looking photographs which were his trophies, he
was in that state of comparative anarchy to be effected only by
imaginative youth and a disagreeable task.
Next day, suddenly as its sun, had come the news which had
transformed him from a discontented grappler with social problems to
the owner of stocks and bonds and shares in a busy mine and other
things soothing to enumerate. The first thing which he had added unto
these, after the departure of his mother and the bishop, had been The
Aloha, which only that day had slipped to the river's mouth in the view
from his old window at the Sentinel office. St. George had the grace to
be ashamed to remember how smoothly the social ills had adjusted
themselves.
Now they were past, those days of feverish work and unexpected
triumph and unaccountable failure; and in the dreariest of them St.
George, dreaming wildly, had not dreamed all the unobvious joys
which his fortune had brought to him. For although he had accurately
painted, for example, the delight of a cruise in a sea-going yacht of his
own, yet to step into his dory in the sunset, to watch _The Aloha's_
sides shine in the late light as he was rowed ashore past the lesser crafts
in the harbour; to see the man touch his cap and put back to make the
yacht trim for the night, and then to turn his own face to his apartment

where virtually the entire day-staff of the Evening Sentinel was that
night to dine--these were among the pastimes of the lesser angels which
his fancy had never compassed.
A glow of firelight greeted St. George as he entered his apartment, and
the rooms wore a pleasant air of festivity. A table, with covers for
twelve, was spread in the living-room, a fire of cones was tossing on
the hearth, the curtains were drawn, and the sideboard was a thing of
intimation. Rollo, his man--St. George had easily fallen in all the habits
which he had longed to assume--was just closing the little ice-box sunk
behind a panel of the wall, and he came forward with dignified
deference.
"Everything is ready, Rollo?" St. George asked. "No one has
telephoned to beg off?"
"Yes, sir," answered Rollo, "and no, sir."
St. George had sometimes told himself that the man looked like an oval
grey stone with a face cut upon it.
"Is the claret warmed?" St. George demanded, handing his hat. "Did the
big glasses come for the liqueur--and the little ones will set inside
without tipping? Then take the cigars to the den--you'll have to get
some cigarettes for Mr. Provin. Keep up the fire. Light the candles in
ten minutes. I say, how jolly the table looks."
"Yes, sir," returned Rollo, "an' the candles 'll make a great difference,
sir. Candles do give out an air, sir."
One month of service had accustomed St. George to his valet's gift of
the Articulate Simplicity. Rollo's thoughts were doubtless contrived in
the cuticle and knew no deeper operance; but he always uttered his
impressions with, under his mask, an air of keen and seasoned personal
observation. In his first interview with St. George, Rollo had said: "I
always enjoy being kep' busy, sir. To me, the busy man is a grand
sight," and St. George had at once appreciated his possibilities. Rollo
was like the fine print in an almanac.

When the candles were burning and the lights had been turned on in the
little ochre den where the billiard-table stood, St. George emerged--a
well-made figure, his buoyant, clear-cut face accurately bespeaking
both health and cleverness. Of a family represented by the gentle old
bishop and his own exquisite mother, himself university-bred and fresh
from two years' hard, hand-to-hand fighting to earn an honourable
livelihood, St. George, of sound body and fine intelligence, had that
temper of stability within vast range which goes pleasantly into the
mind that meets it. A