Chicago Stories by James Daley

Author:James Daley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2016-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

A SPIDER PHAETON (1924)

William John Pickard

My Dear Mr. Eliot:

It would give us pleasure to have you with us over the next week end. There are not to be many guests, but among them are some that you know, and others, I hope, that you will enjoy meeting.

I trust that you will pardon the tardiness of this note. I wrote to you a week ago. To my dismay I have just discovered that through the carelessness of my secretary the letter was never mailed.

I hope that nothing will prevent your coming and that we may expect you in time for tea Friday afternoon.

Cordially yours,

Charlotte Chesterfield Kingsley

May twenty-first,

Nineteen twenty-three.

The white, silky linen with unravelled edges was engraved in miniature script:

The Kingsley Manor

Lake Forest, Illinois.

JOSEPH ELIOT HELD the stationery to the light. A soft transparency and a weave of many fine lines greeted his eyes. On the last sheet was a dim watermark of kissing doves and stars enclosed with a border of right angles and half circles. There was not the slightest suggestion of perfume, just the refreshing scent of elegant, finely woven linen.

He read the note again. His eyes blinked. He whipped out his glasses and read it for the third time. He blew on his glasses, wiped them with his cotton handkerchief, and read it the fourth time. “There must be some mistake,” he said to himself. Mrs. John Chesterfield Kingsley he had never met. Heard of her, yes, frequently. Who hadn’t? All New York, Washington, Chicago, and parts more distant, that had a part in Society or worshipped its activities from afar—and such was the case with Joseph Eliot—had heard of Lady Kingsley. The society columns were crowded with her numerous yet not too numerous entertainments, and nearly as frequently illustrated with her pictures. “Among those present at the Opera at the Auditorium last night were Mr. and Mrs. John Chesterfield Kingsley. In their box with them were Lord and Lady Mount-Savage, Mr. and Mrs. Fifield Jones, and the John Henry Hendersons.” As a social leader she had no peer, and her influence in the world of art, philanthropy, and politics had few bounds. It was whispered, as such things are, that she had made members of more than one President’s Cabinet. To be invited to one of her week ends at her Lake Forest Estate automatically made our Joseph Eliot the envy of high diplomacy; counts, earls, dukes; the presidents of far flung corporations; others of lesser titles but no less distinction.

There certainly was a mistake. Although it was Joseph Eliot’s address that appeared on the envelope, the invitation must have been meant for another person with the same name. No one was conscious of this error more than Joseph Eliot, himself. Furthermore, his was the quandary; he it was who had to decide whether or not to attend. There must be many famous Joseph Eliots in many honorable and noteworthy professions. Right at the moment he could not specifically remember reading about any, but the odds were all in favor of their existence.

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