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Page 7
The next day was Sunday; hence it brought no Mail. Slowly it
dragged along. At a ridiculously early hour Monday morning
Geoffrey West was on the street, seeking his favorite newspaper.
He found it, found the Agony Column--and nothing else. Tuesday
morning again he rose early, still hopeful. Then and there hope
died. The lady at the Carlton deigned no reply.
Well, he had lost, he told himself. He had staked all on this
one bold throw; no use. Probably if she thought of him at all it
was to label him a cheap joker, a mountebank of the halfpenny
press. Richly he deserved her scorn.
On Wednesday he slept late. He was in no haste to look into the
Daily Mail; his disappointments of the previous days had been too
keen. At last, while he was shaving, he summoned Walters, the
caretaker of the building, and sent him out to procure a certain
morning paper.
Walters came back bearing rich treasure, for in the Agony Column
of that day West, his face white with lather, read joyously:
STRAWBERRY MAN: Only the grapefruit lady's kind heart and her great
fondness for mystery and romance move her to answer. The
strawberry-mad one may write one letter a day for seven days--to
prove that he is an interesting person, worth knowing. Then--we
shall see. Address: M. A. L., care Sadie Haight, Carlton Hotel.
All day West walked on air, but with the evening came the problem
of those letters, on which depended, he felt, his entire future
happiness. Returning from dinner, he sat down at his desk near
the windows that looked out on his wonderful courtyard. The weather
was still torrid, but with the night had come a breeze to fan the
hot cheek of London. It gently stirred his curtains; rustled the
papers on his desk.
He considered. Should he at once make known the eminently
respectable person he was, the hopelessly respectable people he
knew? Hardly! For then, on the instant, like a bubble bursting,
would go for good all mystery and romance, and the lady of the
grapefruit would lose all interest and listen to him no more. He
spoke solemnly to his rustling curtains.
"No," he said. "We must have mystery and romance. But where--where
shall we find them?"
On the floor above he heard the solid tramp of military boots
belonging to his neighbor, Captain Stephen Fraser-Freer, of the
Twelfth Cavalry, Indian Army, home on furlough from that colony
beyond the seas. It was from that room overhead that romance and
mystery were to come in mighty store; but Geoffrey West little
suspected it at the moment. Hardly knowing what to say, but gaining
inspiration as he went along, he wrote the first of seven letters
to the lady at the Carlton. And the epistle he dropped in the post
box at midnight follows here:
DEAR LADY OF THE GRAPEFRUIT: You are very kind. Also, you are wise.
Wise, because into my clumsy little Personal you read nothing that
was not there. You knew it immediately for what it was--the timid
tentative clutch of a shy man at the skirts of Romance in passing.
Believe me, old Conservatism was with me when I wrote that message.
He was fighting hard. He followed me, struggling, shrieking,
protesting, to the post box itself. But I whipped him. Glory
be! I did for him.
We are young but once, I told him. After that, what use to signal
to Romance? The lady at least, I said, will understand. He sneered
at that. He shook his silly gray head. I will admit he had me
worried. But now you have justified my faith in you. Thank you a
million times for that!
Three weeks I have been in this huge, ungainly, indifferent city,
longing for the States. Three weeks the Agony Column has been my
sole diversion. And then--through the doorway of the Carlton
restaurant--you came--
It is of myself that I must write, I know. I will not, then, tell
you what is in my mind--the picture of you I carry. It would mean
little to you. Many Texan gallants, no doubt, have told you the
same while the moon was bright above you and the breeze was softly
whispering through the branches of--the branches of the--of the--
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