I agreed to try the experiment.  Leaving the surgeon to caution Mrs. Fairbank on the subject of Leap Year, I went to the stables to see Mr. Raven.

XV

The poor fellow was full of forebodings of the fate in store for him on the ominous first of March.  He eagerly entreated me to order one of the men servants to sit up with him on the birthday morning.  In granting his request, I asked him to tell me on which day of the week his birthday fell.  He reckoned the days on his fingers; and proved his innocence of all suspicion that it was Leap Year, by fixing on the twenty-ninth of February, in the full persuasion that it was the first of March.  Pledged to try the surgeon’s experiment, I left his error uncorrected, of course.  In so doing, I took my first step blindfold toward the last act in the drama of the Hostler’s Dream.

The next day brought with it a little domestic difficulty, which indirectly and strangely associated itself with the coming end.

My wife received a letter, inviting us to assist in celebrating the “Silver Wedding” of two worthy German neighbors of ours—­Mr. and Mrs. Beldheimer.  Mr. Beldheimer was a large wine grower on the banks of the Moselle.  His house was situated on the frontier line of France and Germany; and the distance from our house was sufficiently considerable to make it necessary for us to sleep under our host’s roof.  Under these circumstances, if we accepted the invitation, a comparison of dates showed that we should be away from home on the morning of the first of March.  Mrs. Fairbank—­holding to her absurd resolution to see with her own eyes what might, or might not, happen to Francis Raven on his birthday—­flatly declined to leave Maison Rouge.  “It’s easy to send an excuse,” she said, in her off-hand manner.

I failed, for my part, to see any easy way out of the difficulty.  The celebration of a “Silver Wedding” in Germany is the celebration of twenty-five years of happy married life; and the host’s claim upon the consideration of his friends on such an occasion is something in the nature of a royal “command.”  After considerable discussion, finding my wife’s obstinacy invincible, and feeling that the absence of both of us from the festival would certainly offend our friends, I left Mrs. Fairbank to make her excuses for herself, and directed her to accept the invitation so far as I was concerned.  In so doing, I took my second step, blindfold, toward the last act in the drama of the Hostler’s Dream.

A week elapsed; the last days of February were at hand.  Another domestic difficulty happened; and, again, this event also proved to be strangely associated with the coming end.