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 Canton 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 -Confound it, I don't know! I have never been in Texas.It is a vice in me I hope soon to correct.All day I intended to look up Texas in the encyclopedia.But all day I have dwelt in the clouds.
And there are no reference books in the clouds.
Now I am down to earth in my quiet study.Pens, ink and paper are before me.I must prove myself a person worth knowing.
>From his rooms, they say, you can tell much about a man.But, alas!
these peaceful rooms in Adelphi Terrace - I shall not tell the number - were sublet furnished.So if you could see me now you would be judging me by the possessions left behind by one Anthony Bartholomew.There is much dust on them.Judge neither Anthony nor me by that.Judge rather Walters, the caretaker, who lives in the basement with his gray-haired wife.Walters was a gardener once, and his whole life is wrapped up in the courtyard on which my balcony looks down.There he spends his time, while up above the dust gathers in the corners -Does this picture distress you, my lady? You should see the courtyard! You would not blame Walters then.It is a sample of Paradise left at our door - that courtyard.As English as a hedge, as neat, as beautiful.London is a roar somewhere beyond; between our court and the great city is a magic gate, forever closed.It was the court that led me to take these rooms.
And, since you are one who loves mystery, I am going to relate to you the odd chain of circumstances that brought me here.
For the first link in that chain we must go back to Interlaken.
Have you been there yet? A quiet little town, lying beautiful between two shimmering lakes, with the great Jungfrau itself for scenery.From the dining-room of one lucky hotel you may look up at dinner and watch the old-rose afterglow light the snow-capped mountain.You would not say then of strawberries: "I hate them."Or of anything else in all the world.
