LOST-A BACHELOR.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 48, 28 November 1891, Page 626

LOST-A BACHELOR.

VOL'NG Aspinwall - Jones was angry and he stalked into the club-house and ordered something to quiet his nerves. He was in love with the glorious Miss Paulson, and there was a lover who was more favoured than he. He would not have minded so much if it had not been so mysterious. He did not know who the favoured lover was. It was only that morning that he knew any one else was in the field. He had called on Miss Paulson at her cottage and was ushered unceremoniously into the library. When the footman announced his name he entered and found to his utter dismay that there was tobacco smoke in the air, a door was slammed and a pair of masculine boots were just disappearing. It was very ill-bred in the man, whoever he was, to smoke in a lady’s library, but that was not exactly what troubled young Aspinwall-Jones. He did not like the idea that a man was on sufficient terms of intimacy to smoke in Miss Paulson's library. And so his morning call on that young lady was not particularly pleasant, although as he now recalled it she was very nice to him and all that, and treated him in a delightfully frank manner. That was what charmed him so much—her frankness. There was a candour in her large innocent blue eyes and a truthfulness in the tones of her voice that seemed to young Aspinwall-Jones very attractive. Then she was so very tall and so very graceful and so very clever that he quite fell in love with her, though she had been in Lenox scarcely a week. She was a very handsome woman and attracted a good deal of attention, but very few people appeared to know her. It was odd, too, considering her beauty and evident good breeding. * She seems very nice,’ Mrs Leland remarked to one of her friends at a tennis party, as she watched the graceful figure of rhe girl flitting about the tennis court, ‘ but I don’t think I shall allow my son Archie to have much to say to her. She may be very fascinating and all that, but we know so little about her, and I think at times her manner is too bold, to say the least.’ But young Aspinwall-Jones didn’t think so at all. She was an agreeable girl and a new girl. If she didn’t know many people it wasn’t her fault. And if she wasn’t exactly in the swim how could her people manage to get a cottage in Lenox and how could she manage to get invited everywhere Nevertheless, at many dances, although Miss Paulson seemed to be invited, she received very little attention. She knew very few men, and so young Aspinwall-Jones had her pretty much to himself. ‘ Do you know, he said to her one night after a waltz, ‘ I think you are awfully pretty.’ She merely answered this remark by a shake of her head, and acknowledged the compliment by a dazzling smile that showed a set of creamy teeth. * Yes,' be continued boldly, ‘I do really. And I like you ver J- much.’ He might have got further if his particular friend ‘ Cholly ’ Peabody hail not looked across the room at him in a warning way and started to come to him. He noticed Peabody, nodded slightly to Miss Paulson, and then locking arms with him they strolled into a conservatory. ‘ You’re very young,’ began Peabody, ‘and very simple,’ he added. Aspinwall-Jones was so wildly happy that he did not deny either of these assertions. He still remembered a woman’s smile and he broke away from his companion and started away’. - ‘ Where are you going?’ asked Peabody. * Oh, in here ! < >h, I say, Cholly, old boy, do you know what it is to be in love ?’ ‘ Idiot,’ exclaimed Peabody. ‘ You’re in a land of dreams. People never are in love nowadays ; they merely get married.' ‘ But I’m in love,’ remarked the other. ‘ With yourself,’ put in Peabody, cynically. ‘ No, sir, by Jove ! With the prettiest girl you ever laid your eyes on. If you had been here this morning, and seen mew ith her before, you wouldn’t talk that way. But I’m glad you have come, for you may presently congratulate me —that is, I hope so.’ • Foolish boy !’ ‘ You are quite fight, old fellow, but she's adorable—she’s an angel ! She’s too good for me.’ * Don't be too sure of that. You don’t want to get married anyhow. I shouldn’t advise it. You’re an idiot to think of such a thing. Look at me, old fellow.’ Aspinwall did look at him, and was duly impressed with bis single eyeglass, his hair parted accurately in the middle, and his snub nose. * Look at me. Do you think you will ever go to my wedding? I think not. I’m a bachelor, and you remember, old fellow, you are with me, as they say at the Bowery. We are “init ” together. You remember our compact. I marry, you marry. I remain single, you remain single. Don't break your word.’ ‘ < >h, that was such a silly compact,’ broke in AspinwallJones. • I was a small child when we made it. I didn’t know any better. I hadn't met Miss Paulson then.’ ‘ Miss Paulson ? So she’s the charmer. Why, my dear fellow, you don’t want to many her. She isn’t very well known about here. She’s not in society much, and she evidently hasn't much money. I wouldn’t marry a girl I didn't know anything about, and liesides I don't see what t here is aliout her to attract a man of your good taste." Young Aspinwall Jones pulled the straggling ends of his charming moustache and glared savagely at Peabody. ‘ i >h, she’s a heavenly creature,’ he said with fervour. * Such eyes, so handsome, and you know, old fellow, I always adored handsome girls. And then she treats me so nicely ; she doesn’t think lam a little boy. And she isn’t a bit haughty’; and, well, she is perfection.’ But after that morning call young Aspinwall-Jones changed his mind. He wondered how a girl cared to entertain callers who were ashamed to be seen.

He loved her just as much, to be sure. Perhaps he was misjudging her. It might be a long-lost brother, or some-

thing of that sort. But why should this * brother ’be afraid to meet him ?

Nothing particularly odd happened until one night at a german at the pretty assembly rooms near Curtiss’. Aspin-wall-Jones had good luck that night and plucked up courage enough to ask his divinity to marry him. His mother had warned him if he did anything of the sort she would never forgive him, and his sister had strongly advised him not to do it, but Miss Paulson looked so beautiful in a charming toilet of white, with a faint colour in her cheeks and a shining light in her eyes, that he quite forgot all his mother had threatened.

And presently he burst into his fiiend’s room at the hotel and embraced him«ffusively. ‘ Congtatulate me, old fellow !’ * Er—what ?’ gasped Peabody, unclasping his friend’s arms from his neck, and taking off a ruffled collar and looking at it regretfully. ‘ I’m the happiest man in the world !’ * That’s a pretty strong statement.’ ‘ But I am, you know.’ * Has she accepted you !’ ‘ Well, not exactly that, you know. She said I might call on her to-morrow morning, anyhow.’ * What is there so wildly happy in that?’ * Oh, I hinted at something, and the way she looked at me I know she means to accept me. ’ ‘ Seems to me you are taking a good deal for granted.’ Then Peabody went on to induce his friend to give up Miss Paulson. He reiterated their agreement, made long ago, to remain bachelors, and finally said that he thought Aspinwall-Jones was a man of his word. ‘ You seem to take a good deal of interest in this thing,’ said that young man, presently. ‘lf I want to get married I will, and that foolish compact that we made when just out of college doesn’t bother me in the least. lam going to marry Miss Paulson. ’ ‘ The devil you are !’ exclaimed Peabody with vigour. At this young Aspinwall-Jones left the room abruptly, slamming the door behind him. ‘ I thought Cholly was a fellow who could sympathize with a man,’ he muttered, as he went to his own room. ‘ But something is the matter with him, and I wonder what.’ Young Aspin wall-Jones was more perplexed than ever when he went out of the hotel the next morning to get into his carriage to drive to the Paulsons as he saw Peabody’s cob waiting there.’ He had driven but a short distance when Peabody came tearing past him, his horse going like mad. ‘ What’s the rush, old fellow ?’ he shouted to him. But Peabody only turned a very white face at him and smiled as he waved a hand containing a cigarette he was smoking. The smoke was wafted back by the wind, and AspinwallJones wondered where he had smelt that particular odour before. It was an odd brand of cigarettes Peabody smoked, and the odour from them was particularly pungent. Then Aspinwall-Jones gathered the reins in his handsand jerked them decisively. The mysterious man who had disappeared so suddenly from Miss Paulson's library smoked the same kind of cigarettes ! Aspinwall-Jones urged his horse on faster, and the minutes that elapsed before he reached the pretty cottage of the Paulsons were occupied by him in thinking over everything that had happened the past four weeks. His mind was racked with alternate hopes and fears. Could it be that Peabody had known Miss Paulson before she came to Lenox ? But what if he had ? He knew very many girls, and it was not at all unlikely. And then young Aspinwall Jones thought of the beautiful girl herself with her guileless blue eyes and her baby-like features. And would she sometime be his ? He was so occupied in a blissful dream of future happiness that he narrowly escaped taking a wheel off as he turned in at the gateway, and the carriage so tipped that the groom behind jumped to the ground in affright. He got out of his carriage a short distance from the house to walk across a path he well knew to the house. Many times he and his beautiful Miss Paulson had strolled along it, and he thought if he went to the house that way it would be an omen of good luck. He reached the house and was told that Miss Paulson was in the library. He started off quickly to find her, and the servant again announced his name and again found her there. This time she was alone, and there was no odour of cigarette smoke in the air. Outside, up and down the driveway, a groom was walking a badly blown chestnut cob. But Aspinwall-Jones did not see this. He was aware only that Miss Paulson had taken his hand cordially and asked him to sit down. He took a small square bon from his pocket and joyfully it down on the table and pulled away nervously at the glove on his left hand.’ * ICXvas very good of you to let me come here this morning,’ he began. * Oh, not at all,’ was the answer. •I am always glad to see my friends.' He thought she put an accent on the last word, and was thus cast down several degrees. He thought of saying something about wishing to be more than a friend, but somehow he could not. He looked longingly at the square box he had laid on the table and then at Miss Paulson. There was a far-away look in her eyes, and she was glancing towards a door nervously. Young Aspinwall-Jones thought she looked bored, and he began clearing his throat. ‘ I—er—Miss Paulson—oh, I don’t like that, it sounds too formal ’ —and he floundered on helplessly until a noise by the door arrested him, and, happy and smiling, in burs’t Peabody. * Hello, old fellow !' he said to the bewildered AspinwallJones. ‘ Where did you drop from ?' he managed to stammer. * I have been in the drawing room talking with Mrs Paulson for a few moments,’ was the answer. * And,’ he continued, nodding to the girl, * it’s all right.’ Aspinwall-Jones scarcely knew what was going on. It seemed odd that Peabody should have the run of the house in such a familiar way and talk so confidentially to Miss Paulson. There was an aggressive air of happiness alxmt his friend that he did not like, and that struck him with a chill of coming ill-luck.

• We needn't stand on ceremony with Aspinwall Jones,’ continued Peabody in answer to a warning look from the girl. * He’s an old friend of both of us. ’ • I don’t think I quite understand,’ said Aspinwall-Jones, looking from the smiling face of Peabody to the contented countenance of Miss Paulson. • It's very simple,’ answered the man. * Miss Paulson and I have been engaged to be married for the past three months. ’ For an instant Aspinwall-Jones could scarcely believe his ears. Then he knew why Peabody had advised him not to have much to do with the girl ; then he knew how she had played with him when engaged to another man. And he was so much occupied in thinking of how his trusted friend had played him false and how a woman had deceived him that he did not hear Peabody’s uneasy excuses : ‘ I thought I would cure you, old fellow, of flirting with every pretty girl that comes along. And you musn’t blame her, for she couldn’t help it if you did like her, and you must forgive her and me and give us your congratulations.’ He wrung his friend’s hand, but it fell limp to his side. Young Aspinwall Jones looked from one to the other. ‘ I wish you joy,’ he said. Then, with a gesture that was pathetic in its dignity, he picked up the little square box from the table and put it sadly away in his pocket, and without looking back he left them alone in the room.