IS friends held that Cunningham was at least fifty years old when he was born. According to that very plausible theory he was now about eighty-five; good looking, with that sort of impersonal attractiveness which inspires respect long before it arouses admiration; and possessed of enough intelligence to make him feared not only in courts of law and equity, but also at the modest club where his chief delight lay in spoiling, by utter and relentless logic, the other fellow's epigram.
He had an astonishingly large income; he lived in a couple of barren rooms near Gramercy Park; his daily routine was as measured and monotonous and dignified as that of an interned animal in the cages of the menagerie.
Those who thought of him as an intellectual machine, efficient, colorless, built solely for automatic precision, didn't realize that he hadn't kissed a woman since his ninth birthday, that he had been orphaned at fourteen, and that in the seclusion of his penal-appearing quarters he divided his time, after dinner, between the Institutes of Justinian and the fairy-stories of Andrew Lang. They didn't know that his austerity was concentrated shyness. They didn't remotely suspect that when Cunningham's brain was apparently occupied by the inconsistencies of the Federal reports, his heart was secretly a-maying over in the License Bureau. They never once surmised this; and if they had, Cunningham would naturally have denied it—while his soul continued to atrophy in loneliness—and buried his embarrassment under an avalanche of pure reason. Somewhat as follows:
Promptly at half past noon, Cunningham's unswerving custom brought him to the dingy but distinctive club where he lunched regularly at the same hour, at the same table, every week-day of the year. First, he unlocked the only letter-box which ever required a key; next he read carefully each typewritten notice on the bulletin-board; after that he inspected with conscientious gravity the candidates' book; then, in the familiar attitude of Lee Shubert counting the house, he stood for a moment at the entrance to the dining-room, bowing to all the members he recognized; finally, having accomplished those formalities, without which the best of food would have proved tasteless, he went over to the round table in the window, and took his usual seat.
The men who had preceded him were already deep in conversation; they acknowledged his arrival by sundry inclinations of the head, and resumed.
“I don't admit that it's a question of personality,” said Stephenson, who described himself to strangers as an inferior decorator. “I don't think it's even a question of compatibility. My point is that after a man's lived around places like this for a few years, associating with a lot of ribald loafers—present company especially—the change is bound to benefit him.”
“Meaning, of course,” said Currier, “that no matter which way you figure it, Rayburn's in luck.”
“Exactly,” agreed Stephenson, acquiring the last of the horseshoe rolls, and buttering it unctuously. “I mean that a man who's free-lanced around lower New York for eight or ten years is going to be uplifted and improved by any woman. And if it happens to be the sort of partner Ned Rayburn's managed to find—that's velvet!”
Cunningham turned abruptly to his neighbor, a handsome youth who played pool much better than he acted. “Jimmy!” he said, in characteristically repressed amazement. “Jimmy! Ned Rayburn isn't being married, is he? Married?”
The young actor nodded vigorously. “Says he is, anyway. Don't see why he'd want to lie about it.”
“Rayburn married!” said Cunningham, staring across the table. He exhaled gently, and summoned a mental picture of Rayburn—a middle-aged editor with no hair to mention, and mighty little romance in his cosmos. “Poor … old … Rayburn,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “Well, I certainly am astounded. I shouldn't have dreamed of it. I certainly never thought he'd desert us. And while we're enjoying ourselves in what's left of Bohemia, poor old Ned Rayburn—of all men in the world—has got the sun in his eyes, and he's going off to live in Arcady!”
“Tuckahoe,” corrected Currier. “They're taking a furnished bungalow.” He helped himself plenteously to the strawberry-jam long since charged on another check.