PAGE 10
The Last Asset
by
V
IF Mr. Newell read in the papers the announcement of his daughter’s marriage it did not cause him to lift the veil of seclusion in which his wife represented him as shrouded.
A round of the American banks in Paris failed to give Garnett his address, and it was only in chance talk with one of the young secretaries of the Embassy that he was put on Mr. Newell’s track. The secretary’s father, it appeared, had known the Newells some twenty years earlier. He had had business relations with Mr. Newell, who was then a man of property, with factories or something of the kind, the narrator thought, somewhere in Western New York. There had been at this period, for Mrs. Newell, a phase of large hospitality and showy carriages in Washington and at Narragansett. Then her husband had had reverses, had lost heavily in Wall Street, and had finally drifted abroad and been lost to sight. The young man did not know at what point in his financial decline Mr. Newell had parted company with his wife and daughter; “though you may bet your hat,” he philosophically concluded, “that the old girl hung on as long as there were any pickings.” He did not himself know Mr. Newell’s address, but opined that it might be extracted from a certain official at the Consulate, if Garnett could give a sufficiently good reason for the request; and here in fact Mrs. Newell’s emissary learned that her husband was to be found in an obscure street of the Luxembourg quarter.
In order to be near the scene of action, Garnett went to breakfast at his usual haunt, determined to despatch his business as early in the day as politeness allowed. The head waiter welcomed him to a table near that of the transatlantic sage, who sat in his customary corner, his head tilted back against the blistered mirror at an angle suggesting that in a freer civilization his feet would have sought the same level. He greeted Garnett affably and the two exchanged their usual generalizations on life till the sage rose to go; whereupon it occurred to Garnett to accompany him. His friend took the offer in good part, merely remarking that he was going to the Luxembourg gardens, where it was his invariable habit, on good days, to feed the sparrows with the remains of his breakfast roll; and Garnett replied that, as it happened, his own business lay in the same direction.
“Perhaps, by the way,” he added, “you can tell me how to find the rue Panonceaux where I must go presently. I thought I knew this quarter fairly well, but I have never heard of it.”
His companion came to a sudden halt on the narrow sidewalk, to the confusion of the dense and desultory traffic which marks the old streets of the Latin quarter. He fixed his mild eye on Garnett and gave a twist to the cigar which lingered in the corner of his mouth.
“The rue Panonceaux? It is an out of the way hole, but I can tell you how to find it,” he answered.
He made no motion to do so, however, but continued to bend on the young man the full force of his interrogative gaze; then he added abruptly: “Would you mind telling me your object in going there?”
Garnett looked at him with surprise: a question so unblushingly personal was strangely out of keeping with his friend’s usual attitude of detachment. Before he could reply, however, the other had quietly continued: “Do you happen to be in search of Samuel C. Newell?”
“Why, yes, I am,” said Garnett with a start of conjecture.
His companion uttered a sigh. “I supposed so,” he said resignedly; “and in that case,” he added, “we may as well have the matter out in the Luxembourg.”
Garnett had halted before him with deepening astonishment. “But you don’t mean to tell me–?” he stammered.
The little man made a motion of assent. “I am Samuel C. Newell,” he said drily; “and if you have no objection, I prefer not to break through my habit of feeding the sparrows. We are five minutes late as it is.”