BY MAXWELL STRUTHERS BURT
From Scribner's Magazine
Every afternoon at four o'clock, except when the weather was very bad--autumn, winter,
and spring--old Mr. Henry McCain drove up to the small, discreet, polished front door, in
the small, discreet, fashionable street in which lived fairly old Mrs. Thomas Denby; got
out, went up the white marble steps, rang the bell, and was admitted into the narrow but
charming hall--dim turquoise-blue velvet panelled into the walls, an etching or two:
Whistler, Brangwyn--by a trim parlour-maid. Ten generations, at least, of trim parlour-
maids had opened the door for Mr. McCain. They had seen the sparkling victoria change,
not too quickly, to a plum-coloured limousine; they had seen Mr. McCain become
perhaps a trifle thinner, the colour in his cheeks become a trifle more confined and fixed,
his white hair grow somewhat sparser, but beyond that they had seen very little indeed,
although, when they had left Mr. McCain in the drawing-room with the announcement
that Mrs. Denby would be down immediately, and were once again seeking the back of
the house, no doubt their eyebrows, blonde, brunette, or red, apexed to a questioning
angle.
In the manner of youth the parlour-maids had come, worked, fallen in love and departed,
but Mr. McCain, in the manner of increasing age, had if anything grown more faithful
and exact to the moment. If he were late the fraction of five minutes, one suspected that
he regretted it, that it came near to spoiling his entire afternoon. He was not articulate, but
occasionally he expressed an idea and the most common was that he "liked his things as
he liked them"; his eggs, in other words, boiled just so long, no more--after sixty years of
inner debate on the subject he had apparently arrived at the conclusion that boiled eggs
were the only kind of eggs permissible--his life punctual and serene. The smallest
manifestation of unexpectedness disturbed him. Obviously that was one reason why, after
a youth not altogether constant, he had become so utterly constant where Mrs. Denby was
concerned. She had a quality of perenniality, charming and assuring, even to each strand
of her delicate brown hair. Grayness should have been creeping upon her, but it was not.
It was doubtful if Mr. McCain permitted himself, even secretly, to wonder why. Effects,
fastidious and constant, were all he demanded from life.
This had been going on for twenty years--this afternoon call; this slow drive afterward in
the park; this return by dusk to the shining small house in the shining small street; the
good-by, reticently ardent, as if it were not fully Mr. McCain's intention to return again in
the evening. Mr. McCain would kiss Mrs. Denby's hand--slim, lovely, with a single
gorgeous sapphire upon the third finger. "Good-by, my dear," he would say, "you have
given me the most delightful afternoon of my life." For a moment Mrs. Denby's hand
would linger on the bowed head; then Mr. McCain would straighten up, smile, square his
shoulders in their smart, young-looking coat, and depart to his club, or the large, softly lit
house where he dwelt alone. At dinner he would drink two glasses of champagne. Before
