Japonette — Story, Setting & Ideas

t, who was not only old in years, but also old in fashion—so obsolete, in fact, were the fashions he clung to that he had used his last cent in a matter which he regarded as involving his personal honor.

The ethically laudable but materially ruinous integrity of old Henry Tennant had made matters rather awkward for his orphaned nieces. Similar traditions in the Edgerton family—of which there now remained only a single representative, James Edgerton 3d—devastated that young man’s inheritance so completely that he came back to the United States, via Boston, on a cattle steamer and arrived in New York the following day with two dollars in loose silver and a confused determination to see the affair through without borrowing.

He walked from the station to the nearest of his clubs. It was very early, and the few club servants on duty gazed at him with friendly and respectful sympathy.

In the visitors’ room he sat down, wrote out his resignation, drew up similar valedictories to seven other expensive and fashionable clubs, and then picked up his two suit cases again, declining with a smile the offered assistance from Read, the doorman who had been in service there as long as the club had existed.

"Mr. Edgerton," murmured the old man, "Mr. Inwood is in the Long Room, sir."

Edgerton thought a moment, then walked to the doorway of the Long Room and looked in. At the same time Inwood glanced up from his newspaper.

"Hello!" he exclaimed; "is that you, Edgerton?"

"Who the devil do you think it is?" replied Edgerton amiably.

They shook hands. Inwood said:

"What’s the trouble—a grouch, a hangover, or a lady?"

Edgerton laughed, placed his suit cases on the floor, and seated himself in a corner of the club window for the first time in six months—and for the last time in many, many months to come.

"It’s hot in town," he observed. "How are you, Billy?"

"Blooming. Accept from me a long, cold one with a permanent fizz to it. Yes? No? A Riding Club cocktail, then? What? Nix for the rose-wreathed bowl?"

Edgerton shook his head. "Nix for the bowl, thanks."

"Well, you won’t mind if I ring for first-aid materials, will you?"

The other politely waved his gloved hand.

A servant arrived and departed with the emergency order. Inwood pushed an unpleasant and polychromatic mess of Sunday newspapers aside and reseated himself in the leather chair.

"I’m terribly sorry about what happened to you, Jim," he said. "So is everybody. We all thought it was to be another gay year of that dear Paris for you——"

"I thought so, too," nodded Edgerton; "but what a fellow thinks hasn’t anything to do with anything. I’ve found out that."

Inwood emptied his glass and gazed at the frost on it, sentimentally.

"The main thing," he said, "is for your friends to stand by you——"

"No; the main thing is for them to stand aside—kindly, Billy—while I pass down and out for a while."

"While I pass _out_," repeated Edgerton. "I may return; but that will be up to me—and not up to them."

"Well, what good is friendship?"

"Good to believe in—no good otherwise. Let it alone and it’s the finest thing in the world; use it, and you will have to find another name for it."

"Friendship must remain always the happiest and most comforting of all—theories," he said. "Let it alone; it has a value inestimable in its own place—no value otherwise."

Inwood began to laugh.

"Your notion concerning friends and friendship isn’t the popular one."

"But my friends will sleep the sounder for knowing what are my views concerning friendship."

"That’s cynical and unfair," began the other, reddening.

"No, it’s honest; and you notice that even my honesty puts a certain strain on our friendship," retorted Edgerton, still laughing.

"You’re only partly in earnest, aren’t you?"

"Oh, I’m never really in earnest about anything. That’s why Fate extended an unerring and iron hand, grasped me by the slack of my pants, shook me until all my pockets turned inside out, and set me down hard on the trolley tracks of Destiny. Just now I’m crawling for the sidewalk and the skirts of Chance."

He laughed again without the slightest bitterness, and looked out of the window.

The view from the club window was soothing: Fifth Avenue lay silent and deserted in the sunshine of an early summer morning.

Inwood said: "The papers—everybody—spoke most glowingly of the way your firm settled with its creditors."