ARSON, frowning, tore the note into tiny pieces with slow movements of his long, muscular fingers, tossed the fragments upon the marble counter and walked thoughtfully out of the office. For two cents, he told himself, he would go up to his room, prepare for bed and read himself to sleep with the evening papers; and the theatre might go to the dickens!
Out in the onyx-walled corridor he paused irresolutely, observed solicitously—for it was Christmas Eve—by the door-porter. But, after all, it was silly to waste two tickets. On second thoughts he would walk down to the theatre and return them; the exercise would do him good. At the check-room, with the help of an eager attendant, he slipped into his long, fur-lined coat, fixed his silk hat on a well-shaped head, tucked his stick under his arm, tipped the attendant and received a perfunctory “Thank ’e, sir,” and edged his way through the revolving-door. The door-porter grunted his disappointment.
Outside the hotel the sidewalks were two inches deep in snow and slush, and the flakes were still falling softly and deliberately like tiny feathers scattered from one of the hundreds of lighted windows which flared tier on tier up into the darkness. The crosstown cars passed with their rumbling jar curiously muffled, and the clanging gongs sounded as though wrapped in felt. At the corner of the Avenue the arc-light chattered and blinked, and the falling flakes caught the rays and made a purple halo about it.
Carson, drawing on his gloves, turned southward and strode briskly. The cold, moist air felt good against his face, and he was deaf to the soft blandishments of the hansom-drivers who steered their clumsy craft up to the curb along the block. By the time he had reached the second corner his resentment against Maitland, who had failed him at the last moment, had vanished. After all, an evening in Jack’s company would not have been especially enlivening; a man who is still in the first year of matrimony is scarcely an ideal companion for a bachelor, he reflected; another year, with a pessimistic smile into his upturned collar, and Jack Maitland would probably hesitate long before disappointing a lifelong friend in order to enjoy the society of his wife!
Hansoms and broughams rolled noiselessly over the snow-carpeted asphalt. Clubs and hotels were brilliantly lighted. Against the drawn curtains of the residences along the way wreaths of holly and evergreen were darkly silhouetted. There was an intangible something in the air, an unwonted briskness and cheerfulness in the faces of the passers-by, that before long had their effect on Carson. Christmas does not, as a rule, mean much to a man of forty whose home is a club or hotel, and to whom the word relative stands only for a few widely scattered and barely known cousins. But tonight, for the first time in several years, the Christmas elixir was getting into Carson’s blood. He threw his head back farther, swung his stick jauntily, viewed his fellow-mortals with a spark of interest and hummed a song as he turned toward Broadway. He even began to look forward with distaste to the evening spent in his room with only numerous strong cigars and the newspapers for companions.
It was a few minutes after the hour when he crossed Broadway and reached the entrance of Daly’s. Carriages were drawing up in a steady stream to empty their occupants into the throng that passed from sidewalk to lobby. Umbrellas bobbed here and there above jeweled heads and costly furs. The electric lights sizzled, merry voices called, the passing cars glided by with softened clamor or paused and went on again with harsh grinding of brakes; the cries of ticket-speculators and newsboys supplied a presto in sharp contrast to the unceasing largo of shuffling footsteps and slowly crunching wheels.