A Collection of Stories, Reviews and EssaysCather, Willa
General
A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays
Cather, Willa
Essays; Short stories; United States -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
Cavenaugh put out his hand detainingly and started to say something;
but Eastman rudely turned his back and went down the hall and out of
the door. He had never felt anything shady about Cavenaugh before,
and he was sorry he had gone down for the dictionary. In five
minutes he was deep in his papers; but in the half hour when he was
loafing before he dressed to go out, the young man's curious
behavior came into his mind again.
Eastman had merely a neighborly acquaintance with Cavenaugh. He had
been to a supper at the young man's rooms once, but he didn't
particularly like Cavenaugh's friends; so the next time he was
asked, he had another engagement. He liked Cavenaugh himself, if for
nothing else than because he was so cheerful and trim and ruddy. A
good complexion is always at a premium in New York, especially when
it shines reassuringly on a man who does everything in the world to
lose it. It encourages fellow mortals as to the inherent vigor of
the human organism and the amount of bad treatment it will stand
for. "Footprints that perhaps another," etc.
Cavenaugh, he knew, had plenty of money. He was the son of a
Pennsylvania preacher, who died soon after he discovered that his
ancestral acres were full of petroleum, and Kier had come to New
York to burn some of the oil. He was thirty-two and was still at it;
spent his life, literally, among the breakers. His motor hit the
Park every morning as if it were the first time ever. He took people
out to supper every night. He went from restaurant to restaurant,
sometimes to half-a-dozen in an evening. The head waiters were his
hosts and their cordiality made him happy. They made a life-line for
him up Broadway and down Fifth Avenue. Cavenaugh was still fresh and
smooth, round and plump, with a lustre to his hair and white teeth
and a clear look in his round eyes. He seemed absolutely unwearied
and unimpaired; never bored and never carried away.
Eastman always smiled when he met Cavenaugh in the entrance hall,
serenely going forth to or returning from gladiatorial combats with
joy, or when he saw him rolling smoothly up to the door in his car
in the morning after a restful night in one of the remarkable new
roadhouses he was always finding. Eastman had seen a good many young
men disappear on Cavenaugh's route, and he admired this young man's
endurance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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