“I prefer the dark style, myself—like my cousin,” said John Ralston, thoughtfully.

“And you will therefore naturally marry a fair woman,” answered his companion, Hamilton Bright, stopping to look at the display in a florist’s window. Ralston stood still beside him.

“Queer things—orchids,” he observed.

“Why?” Nothing in the world seemed queer or unnatural to Bright, who was normally constituted in all respects, and had accepted the universe without comment.

“I am not sure why. I think the soul must look like an orchid.”

“You are as bad as a Boston girl,” laughed Bright. “Always thinking of your soul! Why should the soul be like an orchid, any more than like a banana or a turnip?”

“It must be like something,” said Ralston, in explanation.

“If it’s anything, it’s faith in a gaseous state, my dear man, and therefore even less visible and less like anything than the common or market faith, so to say—the kind you get at from ten cents to a dollar the seat’s worth, on Sundays, according to the charge at the particular place of worship your craving for salvation leads you to frequent.”

“I prefer to take mine in a more portable shape,” answered Ralston, grimly. “By the bottle—not by the seat—and very dry.”

“Yes—if you go on, you’ll get one sort of faith—the lively evidence of things unseen—snakes, for instance.”

Bright laughed again as he spoke, but he glanced at his friend with a look of interest which had some anxiety in it. John Ralston was said to drink, and Bright was his good angel, ever striving to be entertained unawares, and laughing when he was found out in his good intentions. But if Bright was a very normal being, Ralston was a very abnormal one, and was, to some extent, a weak man, though not easily influenced by strong men. A glance at his face would have convinced any one of that—a keen, nervous, dark face, with those deep lines from the nostrils to the corners of the mouth which denote uncertain, and even dangerous tempers—a square, bony jaw, aggressive rather than firm, but not coarse—the nose, aquiline but delicate—the eyes, brown, restless, and bright, the prominence of the temples concealing the eyelids entirely when raised—the forehead, broad, high, and visibly lean like all the features—the hair, black and straight—the cheek bones, moderately prominent. Possibly John Ralston had a dash of the Indian in his physical inheritance, which showed itself, as it almost always does, in a melancholic disposition, great endurance and an unnatural love of excitement in almost any shape, together with an inborn idleness which it was hard to overcome.

Nothing is more difficult than to convey by words what should be understood by actual seeing. There are about fifteen hundred million human beings alive to-day, no two of whom are exactly alike, and we have really but a few hundreds of words with which to describe any human being at all. The argument that a few octaves of notes furnish all the music there is, cannot be brought against us as a reproach. We cannot speak a dozen words at once and produce a single impression, any more than we can put the noun before the article as we may strike any one note before or after another. So I have made acknowledgment of inability to do the impossible, and apology for not being superhuman.

John Ralston was dark, good-looking, nervous, excitable, enduring, and decidedly dissipated, at the age of five and twenty years, which he had lately attained at the time of the present tale. Of his other gifts, peculiarities and failings, his speech, conversation and actions will give an account. As for his position in life, he was the only son of Katharine Ralston, widow of Admiral Ralston of the United States Navy, who had been dead several years.

Mrs. Ralston’s maiden name had been Lauderdale, and she was of Scotch descent. Her cousin, Alexander Lauderdale, married a Miss Camperdown, a Roman Catholic girl of a Kentucky family, and had two children, both daughters, the elder of whom was Mrs. Benjamin Slayback, wife of the well-known member of Congress. The younger was Katharine Lauderdale, named after her father’s cousin, Mrs. Ralston, and she was the dark cousin whom John admired.

Hamilton Bright was a distant relative to both of these persons. But by his father’s side he had not originally belonged to New York, as the others did, but had settled there after spending some years of his early youth in California and Nevada, and had gone into business. At four and thirty he was the junior partner in the important firm of Beman Brothers and Company, Bankers, who had a magnificent building of their own in Broad Street, and were very solidly prosperous, having shown themselves to be among the fittest to survive the financial storms of the last half century. Ralston’s friend was a strong, squarely built, very fair man, of what is generally called the Saxon type. At first sight, he inspired confidence, and his clear blue eyes were steady and true. He had that faculty of looking almost superhumanly neat and spotless under all circumstances, which is the prerogative of men with straight, flaxen hair, pink and white complexions, and perfect teeth. It was easy to predict that he would become too stout with advancing years, and he was already a heavy man, though not more than half an inch taller than his friend and distant cousin, John Ralston. But no one would have believed at first sight that he was nine years older than the latter.

The nature of friendship between men has been almost as much discussed as that of love between man and woman, but with very different results. He laughs at the idea of friendship who turns a little pale at the memory of love. At all events, most of us feel that friendship is generally a less certain and undeniable thing, inasmuch as it is harder to exclude from it the element of personal interest and advantage. The fact probably is, that no one person can possibly combine all the elements supposed to make up what every one means by friendship. It would be far more reasonable to construct one friendship out of many persons, securing in each of them one at least of the qualities necessary. For instance, the discreet man, to whom it is safe to tell secrets when they must be told at all, is not as a matter of course the man most capable of giving the best advice; nor, if a certain individual is extremely generous and ready to lend all he has to his friend, does it follow that he possesses the tough, manly nature that will face public scorn rather than abandon that friend in his hour of need. Some men, too, want sympathy in their troubles, and will have it, even at the cost of common sense. Others need encouragement; others, again, need most of all to be told the unpleasant truth about themselves in the most pleasant form practicable. Altogether it seems probable that the ideal friend must either be an altogether superhuman personage, or a failure in so far as his own life is concerned.

Hamilton Bright approached as nearly to that ideal as his humanity would allow. He did not in the least trouble himself to find out why he liked Ralston, and wished to be of service to him, and he wisely asked for nothing whatever in return for what he gave. But he was very far from looking up to him, and perhaps even from respecting him as he wished that he might. He simply liked him better than other men, and stood by him when he needed help, which often happened.

They left the florist’s window and walked slowly up Fifth Avenue. John Ralston was a born New Yorker and preferred his own city to any other place in the world with that solid, satisfactory, unreasoning prejudice which belongs especially to New Yorkers and Parisians, and of which it is useless to attempt any explanation. Hamilton Bright, on the contrary, often wished himself away, and in spite of his excessively correct appearance even the easy formality of American metropolitan life was irksome to him. He had loved the West, and in the midst of great interests and advantages, he regretted his former existence and daily longed for the clearer air and bolder breath of Nevada. The only objects about which he ever displayed much enthusiasm were silver and cattle, about which Ralston knew nothing and cared less.

“When is it to be?” asked Bright after a long silence.

Ralston looked at him quickly.

“What?” he asked in a short tone.

Bright did not answer at once, and when he spoke his voice was rather dull and low.

“When are you going to be married? Everybody knows that you are engaged.”

“Then everybody is wrong. I am not engaged.”

“Oh—I thought you were. All right.”

Another pause followed and they walked on.

“Alexander Junior said I was a failure,” observed Ralston at last. “That was some time ago.”

“Oh—was that the trouble?”

Bright did not seem to expect any reply to the question, but his tone was thoughtful.

“Yes,” answered Ralston, with a short, discontented laugh. “He said that I was of no use whatever, that I never did anything and never should.”

“That settled it, I suppose.”

“Yes. That settled it. There was nothing more to be said—on his side, at least.”

“And how about your side?”

“We shall see.”

Ralston shut his lips viciously and his clean-cut, prominent chin looked determined enough.

“The fact is,” said his friend, “that Alexander Junior was not so awfully far wrong—about the past, at all events. You never did anything in your life except make yourself agreeable. And you don’t seem to have succeeded in that with him.”

“Oh, he used to think me agreeable enough,” laughed the younger man. “He used to play billiards with me by the month for his liver, and then call me idle for playing with him. I suppose that if I had given up billiards he would have been impressed with the idea that I was about to reform. It wouldn’t have cost me much. I hated the stupid game and only played to amuse him.”

“All the same—I wish I had your chances—I mean, I wish I may have as good a chance as you, when I think of getting married.”

“My chances!” Ralston did not smile now, and his tone was harsh as he repeated the words. He glanced at his companion. “When will that be?” he asked after a moment’s pause. “Why don’t you get married, Ham? I’ve often wondered. But then—you’re so cursedly reasonable about everything! I suppose you’ll stick to the single ticket as long as you have strength to resist, and then you’ll marry a nurse. Wise man!”

“Thank you. You’re as encouraging as usual.”

“You don’t need encouragement a bit, old man. You’re so full of it anyhow, that you can spare a lot for other people. You have a deuced good effect on my liver, Ham. Do you know it? You ought to look pleased.”

“Oh, yes. I am. I only wish the encouragement might last a little longer.”

“I can’t help being gloomy sometimes—rather often, I ought to say. I fancy I’m a born undertaker, or something to do with funerals. I’ve tried a lot of other things for a few days and failed—I think I’ll try that. By the by, I’m very thirsty and here’s the Hoffman House.”

“It’s not far to the club, if you want to drink,” observed Bright, stopping on the pavement.

“You needn’t come in, if you think it’s damaging to your reputation,” answered Ralston.

“My reputation would stand a good deal of knocking about,” laughed Bright. “I think my character would bear three nights a week in a Bowery saloon and spare time put in now and then in a University Place bar, without any particular harm.”

“By Jove! I wish mine would!”

“It won’t,” said Bright. “But I wasn’t thinking of your reputation, nor of anything especial except that things are generally better at a club than at a hotel.”

“The Brut is good here. I’ve tried it—often. Come along.”

“I’ll wait for you outside. I’m not thirsty.”

“I told you so,” retorted Ralston. “You’re afraid somebody will see you.”

“You’re an idiot, Jack!”

Thereupon Bright led the way into the gorgeous bar, a place probably unique in the world. A number of pictures by great French masters hang on the walls—pictures unrivalled, perhaps, in beauty of execution and insolence of conception. The rest is a blaze of polished marble and woodwork and gleaming metal.

Ralston nodded to the bar-tender.

“What will you have?” he asked, turning to Bright.

“Nothing, thanks. I’m not thirsty.”

“Oh—all right,” answered Ralston discontentedly. “I’ll have a pint of Irroy Brut with a bit of lemon peel in it. Champagne isn’t wine—it’s

only a beverage,” he added, turning to Bright as though to explain his reasons for wanting so much.

“I quite agree with you,” said Bright, lighting a cigar. “Champagne isn’t wine, and it’s not fit to drink at the best. Either give me wine that is wine, or give me whiskey.”

“Whichever you like.”

“Did you say whiskey, sir?” enquired the bar-tender, who was in the act of rubbing the rim of a pint glass with a lemon peel.

“Nothing, thank you. I’m not thirsty,” answered Bright a third time.

“Hallo, Bright, my little man! What are you doing here? Oh—Jack Ralston—I see.”

The speaker was a very minute and cheerful specimen of human New York club life,—pink-cheeked, black-eyed, neat and brisk, not more than five feet six inches in height, round as a little barrel, with tiny hands and feet. He watched Ralston, as soon as he noticed him. The bar-tender had emptied the pint bottle of champagne into the glass and Ralston had set it to his lips with the evident intention of finishing it at a draught.

“Hold on, Jack!” cried Frank Miner, the small man. “I say—easy there! You’ll have apoplexy or something—I say—”

“Don’t speak to a man on his drink, Frank,” said Bright, calmly. “When I drove cattle in the Nacimiento Valley we used to shoot for that.”

“I shall avoid that place,” answered Miner.

Ralston drew a long breath as he set down the empty glass.

“I wanted that,” he said, half to himself. “Hallo, Frank—is that you? What will you have?”

“Nothing—now—thank you,” answered Miner. “I’ve satisfied my thirst and cured my tendency to vice by seeing you take that down. You’re a beautiful sight and an awful example for a thirsty man. Get photographed, Jack—they could sell lots of copies at temperance meetings. Heard the story about the temperance tracts? Stop me if you have. Man went out to sell teetotal tracts in Missouri. Came back and his friends were surprised to see him alive. ‘Never had such a good time in my life,’ said he. ‘Every man to whom I offered a tract pulled out a pistol and said, “Drink or I’ll shoot.” And here I am.’ There’s a chance for you, Jack, when you get stuck.”

Bright and Ralston laughed at the little man’s story and all three turned and left the bar-room together.

“Seen the old gentleman lately?” enquired Frank Miner, as they came out upon the pavement.

“Do you mean uncle Robert?” asked Bright.

“Yes—cousin Robert, as we call him.”

“It always amuses me to hear a little chap like you calling that old giant ‘cousin,’” said Bright.

“He likes it. It makes him feel frisky. Besides, he is a sort of cousin. My uncle Thompson married Margaret Lauderdale—”

“Oh, yes—I know all about the genealogy,” laughed Bright.

“Who was Robert Lauderdale’s own cousin,” continued Miner. “And as Robert Lauderdale is your great-uncle and Jack Ralston’s great-uncle, that makes you second cousins to each other and makes me your—let me see—both—”

“Shut up, Frank!” exclaimed Ralston. “You’ve got it all wrong again. Uncle Robert isn’t Bright’s great-uncle. He’s first cousin to your deceased aunt Margaret, who was Bright’s grandmother, and you’re first cousin to his mother and first cousin, once removed, to him; and he’s my third cousin and you’re no relation to me at all, except by your uncle’s marriage, and if you want to know anything more about it you have your choice between the family Bible and the Bloomingdale insane asylum—which is a quiet, healthy place, well situated.”

“Well then, what relation am I to my cousin Robert?” asked Miner, with a grin.

“An imaginary relation, my dear boy.”

“Oh, I say! And his being my very own aunt by marriage’s own cousin is not to count for anything, because you two are such big devils and I am only a light weight, and you could polish your boots with me if I made a fuss! It’s too bad! Upon my word, brute force rules society as much as it ever did in the middle ages. So there goes my long-cherished claim upon a rich relation. However, you’ve destroyed the illusion so often before that I know how to resurrect it.”

“For that matter,” said Bright, “the fact is about as illusory as the illusion itself. If you insist upon being considered as one of the Lauderdale tribe, we’re glad to have you on your own merits—but you’ll get nothing out of it but the glory—”

“I know. It gives me a fictitious air of respectability to be one of you. Besides, you should be proud to have a man of letters—”

“Say an author at once,” suggested Ralston.

“No. I’m honest, if I’m anything,—which is doubtful. A man of letters, I say, can be useful in a family. Suppose, for instance, that Jack invented an electric street-dog, or—”

“What?” enquired Ralston, with a show of interest. “An electric what?”

“I was only thinking of something new,” said Miner, thoughtfully.

“I thought you said, an electric street-dog—”

“I did—yes. Something of that sort, just for illustration. I believe they had one at Chicago, with an india-rubber puppy,—at least, if they didn’t, they ought to have had it,—but anything of the kind would do—self-drying champagne—anything! Suppose that Jack invented something useful like that, I could write it up in the papers, and get up advertisements for it, and help the family to get rich.”

“Is that the sort of literature you cultivate?” asked Bright.

“Oh, no! Much more flowery—quite like the flowers of the field in some ways, for it cometh up—to the editor’s office—in the morning, and in the evening, if not sooner, it is cut down—by the editor—dried up, and withered, or otherwise disposed of, so that it cannot be said to reach the general public.”

“Not very paying, I should think.”

“Well—not to me. But of course, if there were not so much of it offered to the magazines and papers, there wouldn’t be so many people employed by them to read and reject articles. So somebody gets a living out of it. I console myself with the certainty that my efforts help to keep at least one man in every office from starvation. I spoke to cousin Robert about it and he seemed rather pleased by the idea, and said that he would mention it to his brother, old Mr. Alexander, who’s a philanthropist—”

“Call him cousin Alexander,” suggested Ralston. “Why do you make any distinction?”

“Because he’s not the rich one,” answered Miner, imperturbably. “He’ll be promoted to be my cousin, if the fortune is left to him.”

“Then I’m afraid he’ll continue to languish among your non-cousin acquaintances.”

“Why shouldn’t he inherit the bulk of the property?” enquired Miner, speaking more seriously.

“Because he’s a philanthropist, and would spend it all on idiots and ‘fresh air funds,’ and things of that sort.”

“There is Alexander Junior,” suggested Miner. “He’s careful enough, I’m sure. I suppose it will go to him.”

“I doubt that, too,” said Bright. “Alexander Junior goes to the opposite extreme. However, Jack knows more about that than I do—and is a nearer relation, besides.”

“Ham is right,” answered John Ralston, thoughtfully. “Cousin Sandy is the most villainous, infernal, steel-trap-fingered, patent-locked old miser that ever sat down in a cellar chinking money bags.”

“There’s a certain force about your language,” observed Miner.

“I believe he’s not rich,” said Bright. “So he has an excuse.”

“Poor!” exclaimed Ralston, contemptuously. “I’m poor.”

“I wish I were, then—in your way,” returned Miner. “That was Irroy Brut, I noticed. It looked awfully good. It’s true that you haven’t two daughters, as your cousin Sandy has.”

“Nor a millionaire son-in-law—like Ben Slayback,—Slayback of Nevada he is, in the Congressional Record, because there’s another from somewhere else.”

“He wears a green tie,” said Miner, softly. “I saw him two years ago, before he and Charlotte were married.”

“I know,” answered Ralston. “Cousin Katharine hates him, I believe. Uncle Robert will probably leave the whole fortune in trust for Slayback’s children. There’s a little boy. They say he has red hair, like his father, and they have christened him Alexander—merely as an expression of hope. It would be just like uncle Robert.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Bright. “But as for Slayback, don’t abuse him till you know him better. I knew him out West, years ago. He’s a brick.”

“He is precisely the colour of one,” retorted Ralston.

“Don’t be spiteful, Jack.”

“I’m not spiteful. I daresay he’s full of virtue, as all horrid people are—inside. The outside of him is one of nature’s finest failures, and his manners are awful always—and worse when he tries to polish them for the evening. He’s a corker, a thing to scare sharks with—it doesn’t follow that he’s been a train-wrecker or a defaulting cashier, and I didn’t say it did. Oh, yes—I know—handsome is that puts its hand into its pocket, and that sort of thing. Give me some soda water with a proverb in it—that confounded Irroy wasn’t dry enough.”

Frank Miner looked up into Bright’s eyes and smiled surreptitiously. He was walking between his two taller companions. Bright glanced at Ralston’s lean, nervous face, and saw that the lines of ill-temper had deepened during the last quarter of an hour. It was not probable that a pint of wine could alone have any perceptible effect on the man’s head, but it was impossible to know what potations had preceded the draught.

“No,” said Bright. “Such speeches as that are not spiteful. They’re foolish. Besides, Slayback’s a friend of mine.”

Miner looked up again, but in surprise. Ralston turned sharply on Bright.

“I say, Ham—” he began.

“All right, Jack,” Bright interrupted, striding steadily along. “We’re not going to quarrel. Stand up for your friends, and I’ll stand up for mine. That’s all.”

“I haven’t any,” answered Ralston, growing suddenly gloomy again.

“Oh! Well—so much the better for you, then.”

For a few moments no one spoke again. Miner broke the silence. He was a cheerful little soul, and hated anything like an unpleasant situation.

“Heard about the cow and the collar-stud, Jack?” he enquired, by way of coming to the rescue.

“Chestnut!” growled Ralston.

“Of course,” answered Miner, who was nevertheless convinced that Ralston had not heard the joke. “I wasn’t going to tell it. It only struck me just then.”

“Why?” asked Bright, who failed to see any connection between a cow, a stud and Ralston’s bad humour.

“The trouble with you, Bright, is that you’re so painfully literal,” returned Miner, who had got himself into a conversational difficulty. “Now I was thinking of a figurative cow.”

“What has that to do with it?” enquired Bright, inexorably.

“It’s very simple, I’m sure. Isn’t it, Jack?”

“Perfectly,” answered Ralston, absently, as he watched a figure that attracted his attention fifty yards ahead of him.

“There!” exclaimed Miner, triumphantly. “Jack saw it at once. Of course, if you want me to explain anything so perfectly idiotic—”

“Oh, don’t bother, I’m stupid to-day,” said Bright, completely mystified.

“What’s the joke, anyhow?” asked Ralston, suddenly realizing that Miner had spoken to him. “I said I understood, but I didn’t, in the least. I was thinking about that—about Slayback—and then I saw somebody I knew, and I didn’t hear what you said.”

“You didn’t lose much,” answered Miner. “I should be sincerely grateful if you’d drop the subject, which is a painful one with me. If anything can touch me to the quick, it’s the horrible certainty that I’ve pulled the trigger and that the joke hasn’t gone off, not even flashed in the pan, or fizzled, or sputtered and petered out, or even raised itself to the level of a decent failure, fit for immediate burial if for nothing else.”

“You’re getting a little mixed in your similes, Frank,” observed Bright.

“The last one reminds me of what Bright and I were talking of before you joined us, Frank,” said Ralston.

“Burial?”

“The next thing before it—undertakers. I’m thinking of becoming one. Bright says it’s the only thing I’ve not tried, and that as I have the elements of success in my character, I must necessarily succeed in that. There’s a large establishment of the kind in Sixth Avenue, not far from here. I think I’ll call and see a member of the firm.”

“All right,” assented Miner, with a laugh. “Take me in with you as epitaph-writer. I’ll treat your bodies to a display of the English language that will make them sit up.”

“I believe you could!” exclaimed Bright, with a laugh.

Ralston turned to the left, into Thirty-second Street. His companions, quite indifferent as to the direction they took, followed his lead.

“I’m going to do it, Ham, you know,” said Ralston, as they walked along.

“What?”

“I’m going to the undertaker’s in Sixth Avenue.”

“All right—if you think it amusing.”

“We’ll all go. It’s appropriate to go as a body, if one goes there at all.”

“Frank,” said Bright, gravely, “be funny if you can. Be ghastly if you like. But if you make puns, make them at a man of your own size. It’s safer.”

The little man chirped pleasantly in answer, as he trotted along between the two. He believed, innocently enough, that Bright and Ralston had been at the point of a quarrel, and that he had saved the situation with his nonsense.

At the end of the street, where it makes a corner with Broadway, stands a big hotel. Ralston glanced at the door on Thirty-second Street, which is the ladies’ entrance, and stopped in his walk.

“I want to leave a card on some people at the Imperial,” he said. “I’ll be back in a moment.” And he disappeared within.

Bright and Miner stood waiting outside.

“Do you believe that—about leaving a card?” asked Miner, after a pause.

“I don’t know,” answered Bright.

“Because I think he’s got the beginning of a ‘jag’ on him now. He’s gone in for something short to settle that long drink. Pity, isn’t it?”

Bright did not answer at once.

“I say, Frank,” he said at last, “don’t talk about Jack’s drinking—there’s a good fellow. He’ll get over it all right, some day.”

“People do talk about it a good deal,” answered Miner. “I don’t think I’m worse than other people, and I’ll try to talk less. But it’s been pretty bad, lately. The trouble is, you can’t tell just how far gone he is. He has a strong head—up to a certain point, and then he’s a fiend, all at once. And he’s always quarrelsome, even when he’s sober, so that’s no sign.”

“Poor chap! He inherits it to some extent. His father could drink more than most men, and generally did.”

“Yes. I met a man the other day—a fellow in the Navy—who told me they had no end of stories of the old Admiral. But no one ever saw him the worse for it.”

“That’s true enough. But no nerves will last through two generations of whiskey.”

“I suppose not.” Miner paused. “You see,” he continued, presently, “he could have left his card in half the time he’s been in there. Come in. We shall find him at the bar.”

“No,” said Bright. “I won’t spy on him. I shouldn’t like it myself.”

“And he says he has no friends!” exclaimed Miner, not without admiration.

“Oh, that’s only his way when he’s cross. Not that his friends are of any use to him. He’ll have to work out his own salvation alone—or his own damnation, poor devil!”

Before Miner made any answer, Ralston came out again. His face looked drawn and weary and there were dark shadows under his eyes. He stood still a moment on the threshold of the door, looked deliberately to the left, towards Broadway, then to the right, along the street, and at last at his friends. Then he slowly lighted a cigarette, brushed a tiny particle of ash from the sleeve of his rough black coat and came out upon the pavement, with a quick, decided step.

“Now then, I’m ready for the undertaker,” he said, with a sour smile. “Sorry to have kept you waiting so long,” he added, as though by an afterthought.

“Not a bit,” answered Miner, cheerfully.

Bright said nothing, and his quiet, healthy face expressed nothing. But as they went towards the crossing of Broadway, he was walking beside Ralston, instead of letting little Frank Miner keep his place in the middle.