Charles W. Chesnutt

The Colonel's Dream Charles W. Chesnutt

TWO gentlemen were seated, one March morning in 189 - , in the private office of French and Company, Limited, on lower Broadway. Mr. Kirby, the junior partner - a man of thirty-five, with brown hair and mustache, clean-cut, handsome features, and an alert manner, was smoking cigarettes almost as fast as he could roll them, and at the same time watching the electric clock upon the wall and getting up now and then to stride restlessly back and forth across the room. Mr. French, the senior partner, who sat opposite Kirby, was an older man - a safe guess would have placed him somewhere in the debatable ground between forty and of good height, as could be seen even from the seated figure the upper part of which was held erect with the unconscious ease which one associates with military training. His closely cropped brown hair had the slightest tinge of gray. The spacious forehead, deep-set gray eyes, and firm chin, chin, scarcely concealed by a light beard, marked the thoughtful man of affairs. His face indeed might have seemed austere, but for a sensitive mouth, which suggested a reserve of humour and a capacity for deep feeling. A man of well-balanced character, one would have said, not apt to undertake anything lightly, but sure to go far in whatever he took in hand; quickly responsive to a generous impulse, and capable of a righteous indignation; a good friend, a dangerous enemy; more likely to be misled by the heart than by the head; of the salt of the earth, which gives it savour. Mr. French sat on one side, Mr. Kirby on the other, of a handsome, broad-topped mahogany desk, equipped with telephones and push buttons, and piled with papers, account books and letter files in orderly array. In marked contrast to his partner's nervousness, Mr. French scarcely moved a muscle, except now and then to take the cigar from his lips and knock the ashes from the end. "Nine fifty!" ejaculated Mr. Kirby, comparing the clock with his watch. "Only ten minutes more."