CHAPTER XIII.
A RISING YOUNG MAN.
Mr. James Elwell was sealed in a pleasant apartment in one of the many large apartment buildings of Chicago; the windows were open to admit the soft evening air that blew, strong and cool, from its passage over the great lake. The room was comfortably, even luxuriously furnished, and James Elwell, seated in an easy-chair by one of the large windows, with his slippered feet elevated to a comfortable degree, and a cigar in his mouth, was in perfect keeping with the rest of the room.
Rather a handsome man was Mr. James Elwell, though the lines were deeply graven in his face, and his dark hair was slightly streaked here and there with gray.
He was what is generally termed a rising young man, though his friends would have been puzzled to have told what he had risen from. All they knew of him was that he had got on ’Change a twelvemonth before, and had been on ’Change ever since. He had not occupied these pleasant apartments at that time; his apartments then consisted of one room in a South Side boarding house; but Mr. James Elwell had done a great deal in that year. For, although he had been limited at first in his dealings on ’Change, he had speculated with an audacity that rather astonished the old heads.
“Too bad,” he muttered, as he impatiently knocked the ash from his cigar; “too bad, but it’s just my luck. Now that I have fallen on my feet for the first time in my life, I am tied up by that old business, and likely at any time to be pulled down again.” And then a look of pity, almost sorrow, overspread his face, and he murmured: “Poor little thing! I wonder if she still mourns for me?”
Just then his meditations were interrupted by a thunderous knock at the door.
He called out “Come in!” and half arose from his chair with an expectant look upon his face, which quickly changed to one of indifference as the intruder entered the room.
“Hello, Coleman!” he said. “What blew you around here?”
“Hello!” replied his visitor, who was a short, fat, jolly-looking little man, with shrewd eyes and a turned-up nose. “This is a nice state of affairs. What’s the matter? Got the blues, or only thinking of how you’ll do them up on the board to-morrow?”
“Why, what is the matter?” inquired Elwell placidly. “Don’t things suit you to-night?”
“No, they don’t,” replied his visitor coolly. “It never suits me to mope, or to see my friends mope. Life is too short for that.”
“Well, you have a reputation to sustain,” said Elwell, with a touch of contempt in his quiet tone. “Every one expects you to be a jolly dog.”
“Quite right, too,” said Mr. Peter Coleman, who was commonly called Short, or Shorty, by his intimate friends. “I get more enjoyment out of life in one week by being jolly, than I would in a dozen years if I carried a face as long as some folks,” and he laughed in proof of his assertion.
“Quite a compliment to the length of my visage, I suppose,” said Elwell quietly.
“Well, you are a little trying at times,” admitted Coleman, with great candor; “but you have improved greatly since I first met you.”
“Owing altogether to your good example,” replied Elwell sarcastically. Whereat his friend removed the hat he still wore, and made him a low, mocking bow. “What did you intend doing this evening?” inquired Elwell, paying no attention to this ceremony.
“I did think of going to Hooley’s,” said Coleman; “but I hate going alone, so I thought I would come and get you. After that, if I am sober enough, I am going to study up a little.”
“I will go with you,” said Elwell, rising to get his shoes, “if only to see that you _are_ sober enough. A little study will do you good. But what particular case excites your attention now?”
“Oh, only a little matter of divorce,” replied Coleman, who was an attorney with a limited practice.
Elwell was putting on his shoes. He now looked up with one shoe in his hand.
“Divorce, did you say?” he inquired. “I don’t suppose you have much practice in that line now?”
“By Jove! you are right there,” replied Coleman, with another hearty laugh. “And you might have added the other lines, too, and then not find me crowded.”
“I suppose not,” assented Elwell; “but I meant in proportion to your other business.”
And he put on his other shoe, but with a look of deep attention.
“It is out of proportion to my other business, for I do more of it; but you don’t always see my name connected with the cases,” replied Coleman, with a look of great cunning.
“What do you mean?”
“What do I mean, my inquisitive friend?” repeated Coleman, helping himself to one of his friend’s cigars, “I mean that there are often reasons for procuring a divorce _quietly_; and while the business is too profitable for a poor devil like me to refuse, it is not exactly the line of business that one would care to build his reputation on; and for that reason I keep my name out of it.”
“I understand,” said Elwell. “I have seen the advertisements--divorces obtained without publicity--but I did not think a legal divorce could be obtained without going through a public court, and being reported in the papers, and all that sort of thing.”
He said all of this carelessly, but still in a questioning way, and he looked at his friend as if he expected him to continue the conversation on the subject.
“Oh, as to the legality----” replied Coleman.
He had started as if he intended to say more; but catching the intent look on his friend’s face he stopped, and walking to one of the windows, stood looking out.
“Well, what about the legality?” asked Elwell, impatiently.
“There can be no question about the legality,” replied Peter, in a peculiar tone.
“Legal, and still perfectly quiet,” said Elwell, in a musing tone, after they had got out into the street. “Perfectly quiet, I think you said?” turning to Coleman.
“Oh, perfectly quiet. If they could not be obtained quietly, there would be less business in that line.”
“Ah! a strange business yours,” continued Elwell, in that same musing tone. “You learn a great many secrets now, I suppose?”
“Yes; and keep them, too,” replied Coleman shortly.
“Keep them? Of course,” said Elwell, “that is part of your business. I suppose we are always known to our physician and our lawyer?”
“Yes, I suppose we are,” assented Coleman, much as if he were considering an abstract problem.
They went to Hooley’s, and from there went to several other places, but Peter remained perfectly sober--unusually sober, in fact, and rather taciturn--while Elwell, on the other hand, was unusually voluble.
It would have appeared even as if Mr. Elwell--rising young man as he was--had altogether forgotten that he had started out with the expressed idea of keeping his friend sober.
“And now we are going home to study our divorce, eh?” said Elwell, as they stopped. He had one hand upon each of Coleman’s shoulders, and gently rolled him back and forth, as he spoke, in a very jovial way. “Going to get up our points, eh?”
Yes, Peter was going to take a turn at it, it appeared.
“What an industrious fellow,” continued Elwell. “And so knowing! Now, what are the main requirements for obtaining one of those quiet divorces?”
“Money,” responded Peter, with great promptness.
“Oh, money of course,” said Elwell, not quite so jovially. “Money of course; but what else, now?”
“Well, with money,” replied Coleman, speaking very soberly, “there is not much else actually necessary, excepting that one of the parties should have continued to reside in this State for one year preceding the application.”
Elwell said nothing more about it; but bidding his friend good-night, entered the house, seemingly in a very pleasant humor indeed.
Peter Coleman, on the contrary, appeared to get even more sober as he passed along the street on his way home.
And when he got there, he sat in an easy-chair, with his short legs extended as straight as possible in front of him, his hat on the back of his head, and his hands in his trousers pockets, and sitting thus, he whistled softly for a short time.
At last he arose, muttering such phrases as: “Clever fellow! How well he did it.” And “Who would have thought it!”
He retired to bed, having first congratulated himself on running onto such a good case, and promising to “bleed” some unknown person as much as possible.