Kendricks

“ If such a thing had been reasonable at all, I should have said that it was an offer invented on the spur of the moment by Herr Freudenberg, to get me out of Paris."
"Really, Julien," declared Kendricks, "I am beginning to have hopes of you. There are times when you are almost bright."
"What are you here for?" Julien asked. "Is there anything wrong in
London?"
"Anything wrong!" Kendricks growled. "You and your foolish letters, Julien! You left the way open for that little bounder Carraby and he'll do for us. Lord, how they love him in Berlin!" ”

“ The two men were seated opposite one another at a long table in a huge popular restaurant in the heart of the city. It was Kendricks' plan—Kendricks, in fact, had insisted upon it.
"You know, my dear Julien," he continued, "a certain education is necessary for you. If only I had a little more time I should be invaluable. You have taken all your life too narrow a view. That wretched Eton training! You would have been better off at a board-school. We all should." ”

“ Julien invited, "or I will come to you; not to breakfast, though—I am engaged."
"To Herr Freudenberg?" Kendricks asked quickly.
"To the lady whom your little friend, the manicurist, sent me to visit," Julien replied. "Perhaps now you will tell me that she is an ambassadress in disguise?"
"I'll tell you nothing about her this morning," Kendricks said. "I'll tell you nothing which you ought not to find out for yourself."
"Do you think I may breakfast with her safely?" Julien inquired.
"Heaven knows—I don't!" Kendricks replied. "No man is safe with such a woman as Madame Christophor. ”

“ Kendricks declared. "There are plenty of bigger tragedies than yours loose in the world. Watch the people, Julien—the people whom such men as you glance over or through as of no account, the common people, the units of life. Strip them bare and they aren't so very different, you know. Try and feel for a moment what they feel. Look at the little dressmaker there, going over to Paris to buy models, hanging on to her husband's arm. ”

“ Kendricks replied. "Four hundred people, mostly Germans, when they eat are never silent. The service of four hundred dinners continues at the same time. Listen to them. Close your eyes and you will appreciate the true music of crockery."
"If that infernal little band would keep quiet," Julien grumbled, "one might hear oneself talk!"
"Let us have no more criticisms," Kendricks begged. "To-night you are of the working class. You may perhaps be a small manufacturer, the agent of a manufacturing firm in the country, a clerk with a moderate salary, or a mechanic in his best clothes. ”

“ Hjalmar roared with laughter and informed him that the center place on a 3-man rope was always reserved for weaklings, novices and amateurs. I expected Kendricks' temper to flare up: the burly Spaceforce man and the Darkovan giant glared at one another, then Kendricks only shrugged and knotted the line through his belt. Kyla warned Kendricks and Lerrys about looking down from ledges, and we started. ”

“ It was at the angle of the house farthest from our peculiar corner of the piazza, whither I had the belief that the girl had withdrawn when she left me to her father. I was sure that Kendricks would seek her there, far enough beyond eyeshot or earshot of us, and I had no doubt that she was expecting him.
“You are Mr. Kendricks’s friend—”
“I have tried much more to be Miss Gage’s friend; and Mrs. March—” It came into my mind that she was most selfishly and shamelessly keeping out of the way, and I could not go on and celebrate her magnanimous impartiality, her eager and sleepless vigilance. ”

“ It’s Kendricks too that I care for. I don’t know that I care for her at all.”
“Oh, then I think we may fairly leave Kendricks to his own devices; and I’m not alarmed for Miss Gage either, though I do care for her a great deal.”
“I don’t understand how you can be so heartless about it, Basil,” said Mrs. March, plaintively. “She is a young girl, and she has never seen anything of the world, and of course if he keeps on paying her attention in this way she can’t help thinking that he is interested in her. Men never can see such things as women do. ”

“ We must have time to think whether we shall use Mr. Kendricks with them. I suppose it will do no harm to introduce him. If he stays we can’t very well avoid it; and I confess I should like to see how she impresses him! Of course we shall introduce him! But I insist I shall just do it merely as one human being to another; and don’t you come in with any of your romantic nonsense, Basil, about her social disappointment. ”

“ Julien glanced once more around his sitting-room. The little bunch of violets was smouldering upon the hearth. In a sense they seemed to him symbolical.
"Kendricks is right," he muttered. "It is the women who play the devil with our lives!"
CHAPTER V A SENTIMENTAL EPISODE Kendricks was waiting below in the taxicab, leaning back in the corner with his feet upon the opposite seat, and smoking his very disreputable pipe with an air of serene content. ”

“ Kendricks made no reply except a non-committal grunt. I held myself back by main force from touching Kyla, remembering what she was, and finally said, "We'd better quit talking. The others want to sleep, if we don't."
After a time I heard Kendricks snoring, and Kyla's quiet even breaths. I wondered drowsily how Jay would have felt about this situation—he who hated Darkover and avoided contact with every other human being, crowded between a Darkovan free-Amazon and half a dozen assorted roughnecks. ”

“ He rather fancied that this was the part of a gentleman, and he could not have penetrated to that aesthetic and moral complexity which formed the consciousness of a nature like Beaton's and was chiefly a torment to itself; he could not have conceived of the wayward impulses indulged at every moment in little things till the straight highway was traversed and well-nigh lost under their tangle. To do whatever one likes is finally to do nothing that one likes, even though one continues to do what one will; but Kendricks, though a sage of twenty-seven, was still too young to understand this. ”

“ Kendricks remarked.
Julien shook his head.
"There was trouble about the manicurist," he said, "and she had to leave the country. She's in South Africa now."
"I can't say that I like the appearance of the fellow," Kendricks declared. "Don't funk the soup, Julien—it's better than it looks. He's a slimy-looking sort of chap. I have a theory that the modern sort of Secret Service agent ought to be a person like myself—breezy and obvious. Julien, if that girl doesn't stop gazing at you sideways, you'll be in trouble with your late employee." ”

“ Julien declared lightly, as he took his place in the taxicab. "Really, it is astonishing how much a man can get through in a day if he sets his mind to it. Is there any place where we could get a drink, do you think, Kendricks? I have just passed through a trying and affecting interview. I have said farewell to the lady who was to have been my wife. That sort of thing upsets one."
"You are behaving, my dear Julien," Kendricks admitted, "like a man of sense. In a moment or two we shall pass Véry's, on our way to the restaurant where I am going to entertain you at dinner. ”

“ You would pretend that I, David Kendricks, of the Post, don't know that Herr Freudenberg and the Prince von Falkenberg, ruler of Germany, are one and the same person? Maker of toys, he calls himself! Maker of fools' palaces, if you like, builder of prison houses, if you will. No man was ever born with less of a conscience, more solely and wholly ambitious both for his country and for himself, than the man with whom you talked to-night. You knew him?"
"Naturally," Julien answered. "We met at Berlin."
"The man is a great genius," Kendricks continued. "No one will deny him that. ”

“ I don’t see why Miss Gage isn’t quite as good as Kendricks. I believe she’s taller, and though he’s pretty good-looking, I prefer her style of beauty. I dare say his family is better, but I fancy she’s richer; and his family isn’t good beyond New York city, and her money will go anywhere. ”

“ March?”
“Bless me, no!” I said in great relief; “we are not so swell as that.” And I tried to give him some notion of Kendricks’s local quality, repeating a list of agglutinated New York surnames to which his was more or less affiliated. They always amuse me, those names, which more than any in the world give the notion of social straining; but I doubt if they affected the imagination of Mr. Gage, either in this way or in the way I meanly meant them to affect him. ”

“ In the windbreak we doubled up, sharing blankets and body warmth: I took a last look around the close space before crawling in beside Kendricks, and saw the girl bedding down slightly apart from the others. I started to say something, but Kendricks spoke, first. Voicing my thoughts.
"Better crawl in with us, girl." He added, coldly but not unkindly, "you needn't worry about any funny stuff."
Kyla gave me just the flicker of a grin, and I realized she was including me on the Darkovan side of a joke against this big man who was so unaware of Darkovan etiquette. ”

“ Kendricks. Come there, and presently Mademoiselle Ixe will sing to us, mademoiselle with the yellow hair there will dance, the orchestra shall play their maddest music. This is Paris and we are young. Ah, my friends, it comes to us but seldom to live like this!"
They all sat down together. Herr Freudenberg gave reckless orders for more wine. The chef d'orchestre was at his elbow, Albert hovered in the background. Kendricks leaned over and whispered in his friend's ear.
"Julien, who is our friend?"
"A manufacturer of toys from Leipzig," Julien answered grimly.
"The toys that giants play with!" ”

“ Kendricks paid their bill and they descended into the street a few minutes later. The commissionaire called a taxi for them and they drove toward Charing-Cross.
"My friend," Kendricks said, "if I had you here for another week, cut off from your old life, I'd show you some things that would astonish you. It's good fortune and these well-ordered ways that keep a man a prig, even after he's finished with Oxford. The man who lives in the clouds of Mayfair knows nothing of the real life of this city."
"Some day I'll come back and be your pupil," Julien promised. "You're a good fellow, David. ”

“ March, who, in the airy detachment with which she responded to his attentions, gave me the impression that she had absolutely dismissed her suspicions of the night before, or else had heartlessly abandoned the affair to me altogether. If she had really done this, then I saw no way out of it for me but by an accident which should reveal them to each other. Perhaps some one might insult Miss Gage—some ruffian—and Kendricks might strike the fellow; but this seemed too squalid. There might be a terrible jam, and he interpose his person between her and the danger of her being crushed to death ”

“ Kendricks said her cookin’ warn’t up to the mark, an’ if he has to go on the town this comin’ winter he shouldn’t go to Mis’ Cobbles.
“The selectmen may be driv’ to open the poorfarm ag’in, an’ to gittin’ somebody ter do for Mr. Kendricks proper.
“Maybe it’s a sort of lesson to the folks of Pleasant Cove,” sighed Mrs. Bobster, “for bein’ sort o’ proud-like through reason of not havin’ no town poor for endurin’ of ten years. I view it that way myself.
“Mr. Kendricks says he feels as if he was meant ter be a notice to ’em; ter be ready an’ waitin’ ter help people in a proper way ”

“ If I could be master, no one should have my girl without them. But they do not constitute a livelihood. From what you tell me of Mr. Kendricks’s prospects, I am not prepared to say that I think the outlook is brilliant. If he has counted upon my supplying a deficiency—”
“Oh, excuse me, Mr. Gage! Your insinuation—”
“Excuse me!” he retorted. “I am making no insinuation. I merely wish to say that, while my means are such as to enable me to live in comfort at De Witt Point, I am well aware that much more would be needed in New York to enable my daughter to live in the same comfort. ”

“ Kendricks himself, Manhattan cockney as he was, with scarcely more out look into the average American nature than if he had been kept a prisoner in New York society all his days, perceived a property in her which forbade him as a man of conscience to trifle with her ”

“ They finished their vermouth and left the café. Kendricks knocked out the ashes from his pipe and leaned a little forward in the taxicab.
"We go now," he continued, "into a foreign land—foreign, at least, to you, my young Exquisite—the land of journalists, of foreigners, of hairdressers and anarchists, and cutthroats of every description. Nevertheless, we shall dine well, and if you will only drink enough of the chianti which I shall order, I can promise you a nap on your way to Dover. You look as though you could do with it." ”

“ Kendricks inquired presently. "Of course, you would have to resign office, but don't you think there might be a chance of living it down?"
"Not a chance on earth," Julien replied. "As to what I am going to do, don't ask me. For the immediate present I am going to lose myself in Normandy or somewhere. Afterwards I think I shall move on to my old quarters in Paris. There's always a little excitement to be got out of life there." ”