CHAPTER XXI

LITTLE ARCADY IS GRIEVOUSLY SHAKEN

Mrs. Potts had written.  I had Solon’s word for it; but that which followed the writing will not cease within this generation or the next to be an affair of the most baffling mystery to our town folk.  Me, also, it amazed; though my emotion was chiefly concerned with those gracious effects which the gods continued to manage from that apparently meaningless sojourn of J. Rodney Potts among us.

Superficially it was a thing of utter fortuity.  Actually it was a masterpiece of cunning calculation, a thing which clear-visioned persons might see to bristle with intention on every side.

Years after that innocent encounter between an adventurous negro and an amiable human derelict in the streets of a far city,—­those two atoms shaken into contact while the gods affected to be engaged with weightier matters,—­the cultured widow of that derelict recalled the name of a gentleman in the East who was accustomed to buy tall clocks and fiddle-backed chairs, in her native New England, paying prices therefor to make one, in that conservative locality, rich beyond the dreams of avarice, almost.

Such was the cleverly devised circumstance that now intervened between my neighbor and an indigence distressing to think about.  It was as if, in the game, a red four which one had neglected to “play up” should actually permit victory after an intricate series of disasters, by providing a temporary resting-place for a black trey, otherwise fatally obstructive, causing the player to marvel afresh at that last fateful but apparently chance shuffle.

A week after Mrs. Potts had written, the gentleman who received her letter registered as “Hyman Cohen, New York, N.Y.,” at the City Hotel.  From his manner of speech when he inquired for the Lansdale home it was seen that he seemed to be a German.

When Miss Caroline received him a little later, he asked abruptly about furniture, and she, in some astonishment, showed him what she had, even to that crowded into dark rooms and out of use.

He examined it carelessly and remarked that it was the worst lot that he had ever seen.

This did not surprise Miss Caroline in the least, though she thought the gentleman’s candor exceptional.  Little Arcady’s opinion, which she knew to tally with his, had always come to her more circuitously.

The strange gentleman then asked Miss Caroline, not too urbanely, if she had expected him to come all the way from New York to look at such cheap stuff.  Miss Caroline assured him quite honestly that she had expected nothing of the sort, and intimated that her regret for his coming surpassed his own, even if it must remain more obscurely worded.  She indicated that the interview was at an end.

The strange gentleman arose also, but as Clem was about to close the door after him, he offered Miss Caroline one hundred and fifty dollars for “the lot,” observing again that it was worthless stuff, but that in “this business” a man had to take chances.  Miss Caroline declined to notice this, having found that there was something in the gentleman’s manner which she did not like, and he went down the path revealing annoyance in the shrug of his shoulders and the sidewise tilt of his head.