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Title: The Tenants
       An Episode of the '80s


Author: Mary Stanbery Watts



Release Date: May 31, 2019  [eBook #59640]

Language: English

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THE TENANTS

An Episode of the '80s

by

MARY S. WATTS


[Illustration: Logo]






New York
The McClure Company
MCMVIII

Copyright, 1908, by The McClure Company

Published, March, 1908


THE TENANTS




CHAPTER ONE


They were tearing down the old Gwynne house the other day as we drove
past, and it was not without a twinge of sentimental regret that we
beheld the spectacle. The old Gwynne house was what our newspapers
delight to honour by referring to as an "historic landmark." In the
huge, expensive, devastating, and reconstructing haste of a growing
American town--a town of the middle West at that--any building
twenty-five years of age is likely to be so described; but this must
have numbered all of four-score. Many valiant notable deeds and people
were associated with it; it went through a whole epic of adventures
like--as one might whimsically fancy--a stationary Odysseus. At the
latter end it fell to be that common drudge and slattern among homes,
a boarding-house; reached the last sordid depth as a tenement; and now
they are abolishing it utterly, and a new subdivision to be called, I
believe, Gwynne Park Place, will presently flourish above the grave.
Once upon a time there _was_ a park; it lay upon the utmost border
of town, and brick walls bound with a ribbon of stone along the top,
kept the house and its outlying lawns in a pompous seclusion. That was
all swept away long ago; of late the ground has been reclaimed from
slums and shanties and laid out in building-lots, curbed, sewered,
gas-mained. But you may see here and there a single elm or buckeye,
keeping yet amongst the spruce new flower-beds and within call of
factory-whistles, some air of its antique dignity, remote and cool. In
my time Doctor Vardaman's cottage, hard by where you used to turn into
the Gwynne driveway, was the only other dwelling hereabouts; a great,
spraddling, staring apartment-house covers the site of it now.

Governor Gwynne built his mansion--as he probably called it--in the
year eighteen-thirty or thereabouts; and being an admirer of the
classic and a wealthy man for those days, treated himself to a fine
Parthenon front, with half a dozen stone pillars in the Doric taste
springing from the black-and-white pavement of the veranda to uphold
the overreach of the roof, "Governor Gwynne's Attic roof," as some wit
of the mid-century once styled it; that wretched pun survives to-day in
a kind of deathless feebleness; it will only pass from men's memories
with the house itself. Much the same fashion of architecture is popular
nowadays, but people pay more attention to comfort. The governor's
pillars were ingeniously disposed so as to darken all the windows
looking that way, whether in the double parlours on the first floor,
the bed-chambers on the second, or the big ballroom over the entire
house on the third. It was a rather gloomy splendour in which the old
gentleman lived, I think. The rich, ponderous mahogany furniture,
the dismal brocade draperies, the hair-cloth and brass nails, the
ghastly white marble mantelpieces carved with mortuary-looking urns
and cornucopias spilling out cold white marble fruits, with which he
embellished his abode, were yet to be seen when I was a child. The
hall was decorated with a wall-paper setting forth the wanderings of
Aeneas, wherein he and his companions marched, fought, and sailed
progressively all about the walls and up the stairs, ending--entirely
innocent of any irony--with the descent into hell, and the awful
waves of Phlegethon flaming on either side of the double-doors
into the ballroom, on the top landing. The sternness of the subject
somehow subdued or dominated its brilliant colouring; and I have
never been able to divest my mind of that incongruous association.
For me the pale helmsman still steers toward that ballroom door; and
it is beside Governor Gwynne's ancient black walnut newel-post that I
shall always behold the splendid figure of the hero lusty and living
amongst the exiguous shadows. In the library the Governor's law-books
paraded along the shelves in close order behind the securely locked,
shining glass-and-mahogany doors; in the dining-room there stood a
grim old mahogany wine-cellaret like a short upright coffin; it was
difficult to imagine any sort of good-cheer proceeding from that
forbidding receptacle, but out of it Governor Gwynne had entertained
Andrew Jackson, Captain Marryat, Henry Clay, a whole long register of
celebrities. And I believe--under correction, for the date is cloudy in
my recollection--that he was preparing to entertain the Prince of Wales
with its help, when that young gentleman visited this country, had not
humanity's oldest and best-known guest called upon him earlier. They
used to show you the exact spot in the vast darkling front parlour on
the south side where his body had lain in state a September afternoon
in 1851, and Chase had pronounced the funeral oration over him. There
was a full-length portrait of him scowling at a scroll of legal cap,
with a big double-inkstand on the table beside him--"handy so he could
shy it at you in case you disagreed," Gwynne Peters used profanely to
suggest--hanging on the parlour wall just opposite the long mirror
between the windows; the chairs and sofas were always shrouded in
white linen covers; white net bags swathed the ornate gilt-and-glass
chandeliers. It was a ghostly place, that room, with a clock mounted in
a kind of Greek temple of alabaster under a glass dome on the mantel
sepulchrally ticking out the irrecoverable hours, and Governor Gwynne
eyeing you sternly from his elevation. He looked not too well pleased
with his canvas immortality and considering what he must see, it was no
wonder.

He was born some time during the last quarter of the eighteenth
century, and therefore must have been upwards of sixty before the
day when Chase sonorously reminded his hearers in the south parlour
that--"The history of Samuel Gwynne's life was, in very truth, the
history of his native State, so closely was he associated with her
struggles, her vicissitudes, and her achievements.... If zeal, if
integrity, if courage and ability in the discharge alike of public and
private duties can establish a claim upon the grateful remembrance of
posterity, _then_, fellow-citizens, we may well point with pride....
_This_ was the noblest Roman of them all," etc. A neat pamphlet
containing the address and the Resolutions of the Bar Association was
afterwards printed and distributed; it was only the other day that I
came upon a copy of it, very yellow and dusty, but bearing no marks
of ever having been tampered with by a reader--indeed, some of the
leaves were yet uncut--among other essays and orations of a like nature
blushing unseen in the darkest corner of a second-hand book-shop. From
it I extracted the rhetorical gems just cited, and it is doubtful if
they will ever see the light again, yet I am confident that the old
gentleman deserved much that was said of him, and would have been the
first to deprecate any "pointing with pride." He was an upright judge,
a temperate and God-fearing man; he amassed a handsome fortune, and
served his particular section of the country through two terms as
Governor, rather fancying himself, I believe, in the role of statesman,
and all unwittingly laying the foundations of that intolerable, absurd,
and tragic Gwynne family pride; it beset all his descendants and all
the countless kindred of Gwynnes like a curse. No more arrogantly
self-righteous set of people ever existed; and no more hysterically
clannish. The Governor's memory held them all together for forty years
after his death; only recently, with the introduction of new blood, has
that strange, intangible bond dissolved. Samuel died and was gathered
to his fathers; and Samuel, his son reigned in his stead, and busily
drank himself to death in as short a time as that agreeable result
could be compassed; he was not the first nor the last of the family to
make thus the easy Avernian descent. I have heard some of the Gwynnes
themselves comment upon the familiar fate and character of great men's
sons, as exemplified by Governor Gwynne's with a kind of melancholy
complacence.[1] The Governor left a queer, unjust, and wrong-headed
will--realising, perhaps, how queer, unjust, and wrong-headed were
some of his prospective heirs--tying up a part of his property to the
third generation, devising what seemed an unfair proportion to his
brothers and sisters, of whom it might be said that their name was
legion--Lucien Gwynne, David Gwynne, Charlotte, Eleanor, Marian; I have
never known anyone who could accurately catalogue all the Gwynnes--and
bequeathing the house and furniture to all his children in succession,
as if he had a premonition that none of them would enjoy it long.
There was a son who had run away to sea and was never heard of again;
no provision was made for him in case he should reappear, although he
was the oldest. Then came Sam, that died in a fit of delirium tremens;
then Arthur. Him they found hanging to a beam under the "Attic" roof
one summer morning not long after he had succeeded to the kingdom of
the Gwynnes; and I suppose there was a horrid silence in the attic,
and presently wild, pale-faced women and running and hurry and horses'
hoofs churning the gravel before the door. The body was laid in the
same south parlour and Governor Gwynne stared over his scroll at the
suicide. Arthur left two daughters, young women grown; by the time I
put on long dresses they were two old maids and lived narrowly, doing
their own work, in a little cheap house at the other end of town. They
were always clad alike in the last bombazine that was ever seen among
us, I am sure, and wore their hair in the ringlets of eighteen-sixty,
with knobs of black satin ribbon at the temples. They had the name of
being queer, but then all the Gwynnes were queer.

After Arthur, a daughter, Harriet Peters, went to live in the house;
she was a widow, Donald Peters having gone into the army--about '62
or '63, I think--and died of typhus in Libby Prison. One would have
thought the house held out very slender attractions for the remaining
Gwynnes, by this time; but all the heirs were pretty well straitened
in means, and Mrs. Peters probably welcomed any way of reducing
expenses. No one, least of all the heirs themselves, ever seemed to
know, or be able to explain what had become of the Gwynne fortune;
but it is certain that ten years after the Governor's death it was
almost entirely dissipated, except what was held in trust or otherwise
secured. This included the house, which could not be sold, as I have
been told; at any rate Mrs. Peters had it for her life rent-free. I
dare say she had pleasant enough memories of old days when she was a
child and played about the pillars with her brothers and Caroline;
she had two children, two little boys of her own, and she liked the
idea of bringing them up in what she called without the least notion
of being affected, her ancestral home. All the Gwynnes loved their
dreary inheritance; they had as great a fondness and reverence for
their name as if everyone that ever bore it had lived and died in the
odour of sanctity; and doubtless regarded the house with something akin
to the sacred affection of the Israelites for the Temple. I remember
Mrs. Peters when she lived there, a tall woman with the thin, aquiline
features and red hair of the family, going about with her black
skirts and solemn face. Being constantly treated by her friends as a
broken-hearted heroine, the daughter of one departed patriot and widow
of another, I believe the pose became not distasteful to her as years
went on; I have heard her refer to herself in sounding and mournful
phrase as "the last of the Gwynnes,"--whereas, Heavens knows there were
enough Gwynnes to stock a colony! She must have meant that she was the
last of the Governor's immediate descendants--and so she was, excepting
Caroline.[2]

It was at this time that I began to know the house; as I think of
those days, I suffer a sharp return of that feeling which Mr. Andrew
Lang has somewhere most touchingly and truly called "the _heimweh_ of
childhood." When I was a young lady of eight years or so, they used
to pack me into our elderly phaeton and send me out to the country to
spend the day playing with Gwynne Peters. I wore my white embroidered
pique, with a pink sash; and the brilliant red-and-green plaid
stockings in which at that period it was the fashion to encase the
legs of little girls. All glorious without was I; the feminine mind
recalls these details with a photographic minuteness. Gwynne was a
gentle little boy about my own age and not very strong, which was one
reason why they asked me, a girl, to play with him. Another, which,
with an elegant modesty, I refrained from mentioning first, was that
Gwynne was very devoted to me--I was Juliet in my plaid stockings!
Romeo wore baggy little trousers that buttoned on a yoke about his
manly waist, if I recollect aright. I had in my possession until a
short while ago--I gave it to Gwynne's eldest daughter the last time
she visited me, finding her screaming with laughter over it and the
other contents of an old desk--a solid and rumpled document reciting
that: "This is to say that i Gwynne Peters do love you Mary Stanley,
and we will be marrid when we grow up in witnes whareoff i have sined
this with my bludd yours respektifly Gwynne Peters." It is painfully
printed on a leaf of thick cream-coloured paper with a high gloss; we
tore it out of an old photograph-album we found in the attic. That was
a charming playground, crowded with the most fascinating assortment of
rubbish, that a nimble imagination could convert into almost any kind
of stage "property." There were broken-down chairs and tables, mildewed
old pictures, carpetbags, bandboxes covered with flowered wall-paper,
saddle-bags and holsters, a round-topped hair-trunk studded with
nails, with mangy bare patches upon its flanks that conferred an air
of reality on it when it figured romantically as a horse, camel, or
other beast in our dramas. We spurred into Araby on that hair-trunk,
we fought with Moslems, we carted off bales of treasure. When fancy
flagged we could turn to two chests of mothy, mouse-eaten old books
that stood under the eaves; no one ever opened the cases in the great
gloomy library downstairs, notwithstanding our pleadings. Gwynne,
who has always been of an affectionately reminiscent disposition,
said to me not so long ago: "I should like to go back and be eleven
years old again, just to read 'Ivanhoe' the first time. Don't you
remember?" Indeed I remembered very well two children huddling by the
low attic window with the book between them; sometimes it is in the
chilly twilight of a winter's afternoon, with eerie shadows hovering
in the corners, and a landscape all in sharp blacks and whites like
an India-ink drawing, outside; sometimes the warm, hasty summer rain
switches on the roof; sometimes there is a fresh chorus of birds
beneath our window, and mating sparrows flit about the chimneys.
"Hound of the Temple--Stain to thine order--Set free the damsel!"
"Bois-Guilbert, notwithstanding the confusion of the bloody fray,
showed every attention to her safety. Repeatedly he was by her side,
and neglecting his own defence, held before her the fence of his
triangular steel-plated shield." "That's the way I'd take care of you,"
says Gwynne, not grasping the point of Bois-Guilbert's assiduities
about Rebecca. "Let's play it, and we'll play the trunk's Zamor, the
good steed that never yet failed his master." We could be as noisy as
we chose in the attic, for the whole lofty barn-like ballroom beneath
us intervened to deaden all sounds. There was no other place about
the house where we were allowed to run and shout, and even outside we
must go decorously. We longed to play Robin Hood under the beautiful
old beeches and in the alleys of the garden, but someone was forever
hushing us. Mrs. Peters would come out on the veranda, where, standing
between the columns at the top of the steps in her flowing black she
looked exactly like Medea in the big steel-engraving of "The Marriage
of Jason and Creusa" over the sideboard in the dining room: "Gwynne,
my son, I am astonished. Don't you know you may disturb your Aunt
Caroline?"

No one ever saw Gwynne's Aunt Caroline. She lived in one of the large
bedrooms towards the front of the house--a bedroom with iron bars at
the windows. "Why are those rods there?" I once asked. "It used to be a
nursery--that's a place where they put babies, you know," said Gwynne,
flushing oddly; he had the singularly delicate, fair skin common to
all red-haired people, and a change of colour showed brilliantly on
his ordinarily pale face. "The bars were put there to keep them from
falling out." I was satisfied; it would never have occurred to me to
doubt Gwynne, who was even touchily truthful. But Miss Clara Vardaman,
the doctor's old-maid sister, who kept house for him, overhearing us,
frowned impartially on us both and shook her head. "Gwynne, child----"
she began severely; then checked herself, and turning upon me with
a severity even greater, in that it was, as I felt, unjust: "You
shouldn't ask so many questions," she said. "Little girls should be
seen and not heard." This was perplexing behaviour in Miss Clara, who,
in general, was the gentlest and tenderest of souls. She cried when the
doctor chloroformed their old cat; I think she would have cut off her
hand rather than spank either one of us, although we must sometimes
have tried her sorely. She used to invite us in and fill us with
doughnuts or other deleterious sweets when she caught us trespassing
in their garden. I remember a transient and rather resentful wonder
at the pained look on her face when she thus reproved us; and she was
afterwards, illogically enough, very gentle with Gwynne, and gave him a
notably larger share of cake than mine.

It would not have been possible to keep me in ignorance forever
about Aunt Caroline, of course, but the enlightenment came with a
sort of ferocious suddenness. It is one of a good many unpleasant
recollections of mine connected with Gwynne's brother, Sam Peters.
Sam was the elder by two or three years, a cold, surly, hulking lad
of whom I was very much afraid--with reason, for he used his superior
strength to browbeat and bully us. That the two brothers should be
eternally at odds is not surprising; every nursery has its tyrant,
and, remembering our own childish days, we must all be uneasily aware
that our youngsters fight like small savages amongst themselves, and,
as in most primitive communities, might makes right, and the battle
is generally to the strong. Gwynne had a high spirit in his poor
little weak body, and he invariably got the worst of it, yet never
gave in. Every way but physically he had the advantage of his brother,
who was a dull boy--and, I believe, liked Gwynne no better for being
cleverer than himself. "Smarty" was one of his favourite names for
him; I have known him to pummel his junior unmercifully upon some
boyish difference; yet he would sometimes come cringing to both of us
for help with his grimy slate and pencil. It would be hard to say in
which posture I most disliked and feared him; but I have a fancy now
that there was always something uncanny about Sam Peters in his fits
of stubborn silence, of unprovoked anger, of repellent and fawning
submission. He was most often to be found about the stables, and when
his mother's commands--she had scarcely any control over him, and he
treated her alternately with insolent indifference, and with a kind of
wild affection--or the servants' persuasions brought him indoors, came
scowling in upon our mild little games, kicking Gwynne's toys right
and left. He took away our "Ivanhoe" and kept it for days, in mere
spite, for he was not reading it himself--that I could have understood
and almost pardoned; but I never saw him with a book. He invented
various fantastically brutal ways of torturing the pet animals; and
enjoyed beyond measure our frantic tears and expostulations. Sam never
abated his tramping and whistling out of deference to Aunt Caroline;
he stormed through the house when and how he chose, and on Gwynne's
offering a remonstrance one day: "You shut up!" said Sam coarsely.
"Aunt Caroline's crazy, and when I grow up I'm going to send her to the
place where they put mad people so she won't be a bother any more."

Gwynne's thin face went white; he doubled his feeble fists and struck
out at his brother in a blind and futile indignation. "Don't you
believe him, Mary," he gasped. "It's a lie! How dare you say that, Sam?
How dare you tell?"

The cook and gardener rushed in, hearing the uproar of this battle and
separated the combatants, or rather the persecutor and his victim, for
Gwynne was helpless under his elder's hailing blows. They were old
servants, for the Gwynnes possessed among other ill-assorted traits,
a faculty for enlisting the lifelong fidelity and affection of their
underlings.

"My Lord, Mr. Gwynne, whatever is the matter?" said the cook; she took
him on her knee and staunched his bleeding nose with her apron. "Mr.
Sam, for shame! You'd oughtn't to hit your little brother."

Gwynne would not explain the cause of the quarrel, nor, for that
matter, would Sam; he went off whistling harshly. "He said Miss Gwynne
was crazy," I volunteered.

"It's a lie," blubbered Gwynne. "It's a lie, ain't it, Hannah?"

"S-h-h, you mustn't say that naughty word--there now--now," said the
cook soothingly, and she and the gardener exchanged a meaning glance.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Judge Lewis, whom I have quoted more than once in this history, had
a way of saying with prodigious gravity that the Gwynnes as a family
were not without some of the weaknesses of genius; a remark which they
innocently liked to repeat until Gwynne Peters, the only one of them
all who ever discovered the slightest sense of humour, pointed out its
ambiguity.--M. S. W.

[2] Caroline, poor woman, only died the other day, at nearly ninety,
I think; she must have outlived the "last of the Gwynnes" upwards of
thirty years.--M. S. W.




CHAPTER TWO


Mrs. Peters died rather suddenly the spring of the Centennial year.
That, or the fact that hers was the first funeral I ever went to, has
served to fix the date in my memory. Gwynne, who would be seventeen his
next birthday, came home from college; Sam came home too, of course,
but not from college. He never showed much aptitude for learning, nor
stayed longer than six months in any of the numerous schools to which
he was sent one after another. At the time of his mother's death he
was away on a fishing-trip in Canada, they said. The boys came home,
there was a gathering of the Gwynne clan; that sombre south parlour,
dedicated to such ceremonies, was once more opened, the white covers
came off the chairs, revealing them stark and stiff bluish rosewood and
black horsehair. Otherwise the house seemed nowise different; it was
never a cheerful place. We drove out to the funeral with Mrs. Oldham,
who could not afford either to own or hire a carriage herself, and was
always benevolently remembered by her friends on these occasions. In
spite of, or it may be, because of a gift she had of rich and spicy
talk, Mrs. Oldham was one of the people whom no one ever forgets or
overlooks.

"Harriet Peters would be alive this minute," she remarked "if it
hadn't been for Caroline. Taking care of Caroline just about killed
Harriet. Think of having to live with _that_ in the house all the
time! I do think the Gwynnes are too funny; anybody else, any other
set of people under the sun would have sent Caroline to an institution
long ago. All these years they've talked about 'poor Carrie,' and made
believe she was just an ordinary invalid, when everybody _knew_, and
they _knew_ they knew that she's as crazy as a loon." "Oh, no, she
isn't that, you know, Kate," said my grandmother mildly. "She's just
melancholy." "Fiddle-de-dee, what's the difference? She's as crazy as
Arthur; they're all queer, you know it. The Peters boy, Sam, you know,
is queer; Clara Vardaman told me so, she's known those children ever
since they were born. What do you suppose they'll do with Caroline
_now_? There's nobody left, particularly, to look after her; for all
their sniffing around about 'poor Carrie,' they'll none of 'em take
her, you'll see. I suppose Governor Gwynne's will must have made some
provision for her--but then, nobody expected her to outlive all the
others. People like that always live forever somehow." Here, as we
passed another carriage, Mrs. Oldham's face, which had been wearing a
very bright and lively expression, suddenly darkened to one of decent
sadness, touched with satisfaction--that expression sacred to the
sympathetic friends who gather about at funerals. We have all seen
it, and, I dare say, worn it ourselves, more than once. Mrs. Oldham
bowed gravely to the other vehicle, and immediately upon its passage,
turned to my grandmother with a lightning vivacity. "That was Lulu
Gwynne--Lulu Stevens, you know," she said. "How old she's beginning to
look, isn't she?"

I remember listening to Mrs. Oldham with a shocked wonder; she would
not greatly surprise nor offend me nowadays, I am afraid. I have gone
a long way and witnessed funerals a-many since that day, and I have
learned to know that she was no indifferent scoffer, but in her way,
a good-hearted enough woman. She even cried a little at the funeral,
perhaps recalling old times when she and Harriet were girls together;
I thought her, so unsparing is youth, a hideous hypocrite--yet I
cried heartily myself, although I did not care in the least for poor
Mrs. Peters! But who, indeed, young or old, is not somewhat moved by
the brave and sad and beautiful words of the Service? From my place
I could look across at Gwynne sitting quietly with a weeping female
Gwynne on either hand, and marvelled that he shed no tears. He stared
sternly ahead; and I caught myself with shame noting that he seemed
stronger, and was plainly outgrowing his clothes; his wrists stuck out
distressingly, his feet were too large. And Sam--was Sam "queer"? He
did nothing "queer" at the funeral at any rate. Doctor Vardaman was
one of the pall-bearers. We all came away as cheerfully as if it had
been a wedding, it seemed to my severe young mind; I did not know that
everyone is always cheerful coming away from a funeral. The carriages
trot; the hearse-driver pulls up at a wayside watering-trough; he is a
merciful man and merciful to his beasts; by a remarkable coincidence
there is a road-house somewhere in the background, whence he presently
issues, and resumes the reins, wiping his mouth. He hails a friend:
"Hi, Joe, want to ride?" "Don't care if I do." The pall-bearers
exchange cigars and smoke in their carriage. There is a gentle rain
beginning to fall; the shadows lengthen; people comment on the fact
that the cemetery is a long, tiresome ride from town. And as we roll
along, Mrs. Oldham enlivens the journey by sprightly guesses at what on
earth will be done with all the things in the old Gwynne house.

She would probably have keenly appreciated my opportunities; for, being
asked out to stay with Miss Vardaman--who, innocent old schemer that
she was, undoubtedly had certain sentimental ends in view, regarding
Gwynne and me--at about this time, I was a rather shy and reluctant
witness to what Doctor Vardaman grimly denominated the division of
the spoils. There was so much coming and going of Gwynnes visible
from Miss Clara's sitting-room windows that that simple spinster, who
passed her life in a monotony of neat and even pretty little duties,
became feverishly excited. She forgot the canary, neglected the
doctor's socks, let the rubber-plant in the dining-room languish for
want of water while she gazed and speculated. It is true that on one
occasion Miss Clara retreated from her conning-tower with a scared,
serious face, and asked me, fluttering a little, please to lower the
shade. "We oughtn't to seem to be staring, or to notice at all--it's
awful--awful!" she said incoherently, and kept to the other side of
the house the rest of the afternoon. A closed carriage drove into the
park, and after a space, drove out again--that was all. But I knew
they were taking poor Caroline Gwynne to "the place where they put mad
people," that Sam had promised her so long ago. We wondered under our
breaths whether it was Sam who had ordered it; whether the two boys had
agreed or quarrelled; and what the other Gwynnes had said or done. The
unspeakable isolation of insanity that converts a human being into a
kind of dreadful chattel hung about Caroline; we did not dare to ask a
question. Doctor Vardaman knew all about it, but--"I'm afraid to say
anything to John," whispered Miss Clara. "He wouldn't tell anyhow,
you know. Doctors never do. Poor Carrie! I knew her when we were both
young, before--you know. But she never was quite like other girls.
Poor Carrie! It's thirty years----"

By the next day, however, Miss Clara had recovered spirits and
interest; and when a furniture-van slouched up Richmond Avenue, and
turned in between the old brick pillars at the entrance to the park,
she could contain herself no longer. "Mary, come here, do look--you
don't seem to notice anything. That's Zimmermann's wagon, I know it,
and I do believe that's young Charlie Gwynne, Horace's Charlie, you
know, the little one, not Gilbert's Charlie, he's at Harvard, on the
seat telling the driver where to go. Nobody ever knows the way out
here. Now isn't that like Jennie Gwynne? She does just love to boss
and manage everybody. I _knew_ something was up when I saw her coming
out every day--she's not so devoted to the boys as all that, you may
be sure. She just wants to tell 'em what to do and how to do it, and
which, and where, and when, and why--some people beat everything. Not
but what Jennie _is_ a good manager, I'll say that for her. I suppose
they're going to divide the things--well, of course, they've got to be
divided, but I do wonder if poor Gwynne will get anything worth having.
The boy's so gentle and quiet, he won't ever think of speaking up, and
saying, 'I ought to have that, Cousin Jennie.' It would be just like
her to--there goes another wagon. Well, _will you look_? It's one of
those nasty, dirty people, those Bulgarians that keep the second-hand
shops down on Scioto Street--well, if that doesn't pass everything!
The idea of selling anything out of Governor Gwynne's house to those
people--Bulgarians! It's enough to make him turn in his grave."

The doctor, who was a very tall, lean man, laid down his book, arose,
and gravely looked over his sister's head, out of the window at the
procession.

"I don't think that's a Bulgarian, Clara," he observed solemnly.

"What, it isn't? Well, John Vardaman, your eyes are failing,
that's all! There, I can see the name on his ramshackle old cart.
Am--Am--Amirkhanian--there, now, what do you think of _that_?"

"I think he's an Armenian," said the doctor, with no abatement of his
gravity. "I think they're all Armenians--Armenian Jews----"

"Oh, well, tease if you want to! Armenians or Bulgarians it's all one;
those countries where the men wear petticoats, and everybody drinks
sour milk--horrid! The idea of Jennie Gwynne clearing out the house for
_them_! I don't see how the others can let her run things that way; I
don't believe she knows anything about it. Do you suppose she has ever
heard that those blue India-ware plant-tubs, those great big elegant
things were intended to be given to Lucien's wife? Harriet herself told
me she had found a memorandum of it in her father's desk."

"Well, she can't very well sell 'em to the Armenians," said Doctor
Vardaman, with an air of profound consideration. "No Armenian that ever
lived would want to drink his sour milk out of a plant-tub. And besides
they have holes in the bottom, and he couldn't!"

"Oh, you may talk, John, but it's important for somebody to remember
all these things. Jennie Hunter--Jennie Gwynne, I mean, ought to be
told that somebody besides those two forlorn helpless boys knows about
it, and she can't have everything her own way----"

"Better not interfere, Clara," said the doctor, really serious this
time. And Miss Clara who knew very well herself that she ought not
to interfere, was silenced for a while. All the morning she seethed,
watching one van after another trudge away from the house, laden,
apparently, with old mattresses, stove-pipes, and table-legs; for,
such is the irony of circumstance, that, let a house be ever so
richly supplied otherwise, these useful and universal but singularly
uncomely articles always occupy the positions of most prominence on
a furniture-wagon. Their view fed without appeasing the fire of Miss
Clara's curiosity; she exhausted herself in conjecture. And Doctor
Vardaman had not been gone half an hour on his afternoon's round of
visits when she called me excitedly.

"Get your hat and coat; I'm going up there right away. You can't tell
what Jennie Gwynne may be doing. I saw something sticking out of the
back of the last wagon, and I won't be positive, of course, but it
looked _very much_ like the top of one of the mahogany posts to that
big four-post bed in Harriet's room; they are solid mahogany, you know,
Mary, carved all the way up with a kind of pineapple-shaped thing on
the top. If Jennie Gwynne's gone and given away that bed that was poor
Gwynne's own mother's, I just won't stand it, that's all! She won't
stop till she's stripped the boys perfectly bare. What's that? Maybe
it's being sent to storage? Oh, pshaw, she'd never do that, it's too
handsome! For a minute I thought it was the bed in the spare-room,
but I remember now that has helmets carved on top of the posts, not
pineapples. Is my bonnet straight? You know, of course, Mary, I don't
think Jennie would do anything dishonest," she added hastily, her
kind old face suddenly perturbed. "I wouldn't for the world have you
think I meant that. But she's always run everything and everybody. I
don't believe Horace Gwynne dares to say his soul's his own--why, you
_know_ that, you've been there. Jennie just can't help it--she's always
perfectly sure she's right, and she never will listen to anybody, or
consider anybody else's opinion worth anything."

It occurred to me that, in that case, there was not much use
of Miss Clara's rushing in with remonstrances, where much more
angelically-minded persons than she might well have feared to tread;
the Gwynnes were not a family to brook outside interference. But, being
brought up in the seen-and-not-heard tradition, I passively followed
in the old lady's wake. Miss Vardaman's bark was, I knew, a great deal
worse than her bite; and I could hardly fancy her facing down that
ready, cock-sure, and energetic little Mrs. Horace Gwynne. In fact, as
we neared the house, it was obvious that Miss Clara's courage was going
the road of Bob Acres'. She walked slower, commented casually on the
beauty of the spring foliage, and paused in an uneasy hesitation when
we caught sight of another lady--_not_ Mrs. Horace Gwynne--descending
the steps with a bundle in her arms.

"It's Lulu Stevens," she said in an undertone. "I didn't know _she_ was
out here. _Cormorants!_ Harriet couldn't bear her."

"Do you suppose I'll ever get home with this thing?" Mrs. Stevens
greeted us cheerily. The last time I had seen her had been at the
funeral, where she listened as attentively as any of us to the great
and awful words in which we are warned that man walketh in a vain
shadow and disquieteth himself in vain; he heapeth up riches and cannot
tell who shall gather them. "I came out on the cars--next time I'll
take the carriage. It's the old French china punch-bowl--you know--the
one that used to stand on top of the wine-cabinet in the dining-room.
Cousin Jennie said she thought I might as well take it, she didn't
believe anybody else wanted it. Cousin Jennie's the oldest, you know,
and she has so much _judgment_. Those are those two old cut-glass
decanters I just wrapped up and put inside. Goodness, it's as heavy as
lead! You ought to see the house, Clara, you just ought to _see_ it!
It's cram-full of everything under the sun, I wouldn't have believed
there was all the truck in it."

"It won't be there long, I think," said Miss Vardaman, with unnatural
dryness, glaring at the punch-bowl.

"Well, I don't know," said Mrs. Stevens, quite unconscious of any
sarcasm, which was the last thing in the world one would have looked
for from Miss Clara Vardaman. "It'll take another week to clean it all
out, I believe, though Cousin Jennie is awfully quick and thorough.
The old garret is packed to the eaves, the things there haven't been
touched for twenty-five years. You know poor Harriet never was much
of a housekeeper. Just think, we found eighteen pairs of old shoes
stuck away in a closet--_eighteen_! Some of 'em had rubbers to match.
And there was that pair of crutches one of the boys had when he broke
his leg, and a whole great pile of daguerreotypes taken in the year
One--pretty near everybody in this town--oh, I know it's perfectly
awful to laugh, but you can't help it to save you--old Mrs. Duval, you
know, Clara, in a lace mantle, and corkscrew curls, and a thing like a
tart on a band around her forehead! And some little girl that I think
_must_ be Sallie Gwynne in pantalettes with a poke-bonnet--oh, there're
ever so many we can't place--there's nobody alive now that remembers
'em. There're two or three trunks of old clothes, and Donald Peters'
old uniform and sword, and about a million medicine-bottles, and a set
of false teeth--_false teeth_! Think of it! I'd as soon have expected
to find a coffin-plate."

"What are they going to do with things like that?" asked Miss Clara,
shamefacedly interested.

"Why, Cousin Jennie sent down to some of those second-hand people on
Scioto Street. She says it's a great deal better to sell the things and
get a little money for them that can be divided up among the heirs,
than to try and give them away and have everybody dissatisfied. Cousin
Jennie's so _sensible_."

"It's a shame," Miss Clara commented in a fierce whisper, as the other
went off, radiantly. "That's that beautiful old punch-bowl with the
deep gilt rim and wreath of roses. Daniel Webster's had punch out
of that bowl. And I did so want Gwynne and you to have it in your
house--that is, I--I--I had set my heart on Gwynne's having it, you
know, my dear. Well," she added reflectively, making the best of the
situation, "after all, a good many of the Gwynnes have taken to drink,
so perhaps it's just as well. Only I don't believe Gwynne ever will.
She didn't say a word about the Governor's law-library. Well, now,
Gwynne's going to have that, or I'll know the reason why! I do think it
would be an outrage to give those books to anybody but him--Governor
Gwynne's only grandson--that is, of course, there's Sam. But if Jennie
sets out in that high-handed way to give them to somebody else, I'll
just let her know I'm here, that's all! Mercy, what a noise!"

There was an unusual colour in her cheeks as we climbed the steps;
her lips moved, rehearsing the biting speeches with which she meant
to confound Jennie Gwynne. That lady was upstairs superintending the
removal of one of the enormous carved wardrobes with full-length
mirrors in the doors; we could hear her shrill voice pitched high in
command, and the men grunting and shoving. All the doors and windows
were wide open, the daylight flaunted shamelessly about the grave,
gloomy, reticent old house. A constant bickering of hammers filled
the air; they were taking down and boxing the pictures. Half a dozen
of the huge line-engravings that used to hang in an orderly row about
the walls, "Signing of the Declaration" over one bookcase, "Sistine
Madonna," over another, "Jason and Creusa," "C'est Moi; Scene in the
Prison of the Conciergerie during the Reign of Terror"--all these
artistic treasures, I say, were down and standing about the rooms
awaiting their turn. The Governor's portrait leaned against the white
marble mantel, and you might see the dust-webs festooning the space
where it had hung. "Poor Harriet, she didn't know a thing about keeping
house!" sighed Miss Clara, observing them. In the library all the books
were piled on the floor, and there stood Gwynne, knee-deep amongst
them, in his shirt-sleeves, looking a little helpless and worried.
A youngster whom I recognised for one of the Lawrence children was
playing on the floor in a corner with a quantity of those small square
flat morocco cases decorated with a sort of bas-relief all over the
outside, in which daguerreotypes were once enshrined. Mrs. Lawrence was
haranguing Gwynne excitedly, yet in a subdued voice, with one wary eye
on the stairs.

"Of course, I don't say that Cousin Jennie doesn't _mean_ it all for
the best, Gwynne, but if she would _only_ consider a little! She's
positively _insisted_ on my taking the mahogany hat-rack with the
deer's antlers mounted on it, you know--and even after I _said_ to her,
'Why, Cousin Jennie, I'm sure its awfully nice of you to want me to
have it, but I'd be afraid to put that thing in my house, the hall's so
little, and the stairs come right down by the front door, so there's
hardly any room, and I'd be afraid all the time the children would fall
down the steps and put their eyes out on those prongs--it's a perfect
death-trap!' Now, Gwynne, that's every word I said, and I didn't say it
in a disagreeable way at all, I just said, 'Why, Cousin Jennie, I'd be
afraid to take that thing in my house; and I _told_ her on account of
the children and all, just as nicely as I could, and she got just as
mad as could be, and said she supposed I'd like to have the handsomest
thing in the house, the dining-room set, or something like that, and
you _know_, Gwynne, I never _thought_ of such a thing, and I just wish
you'd speak to her----"

"I'm sorry, Cousin Charlotte," said Gwynne, harassed and weary.
"I--it's really none of my business, you know, the things belong to the
estate, and I suppose Cousin Jennie's the best one to divide them--oh,
Miss Clara!"

He broke off to come and shake hands eagerly; he was glad to see us,
I think. He had grown tall, and older-looking; his voice plunged from
unnatural heights to unexpected depths with a startling and, I dare
say, rather ludicrous effect. Wouldn't we sit down? "It's--it's all
mussed up," he said, casting an anxious glace around. He called to
the carpenters to stop their racket; it was warm, wasn't it? He'd
have Hannah get us something, some lemonade, wouldn't we like it?
No, he wasn't busy, just packing books, he'd be glad to rest. Sam?
Why--why--Sam had gone--had gone back to Canada, didn't we know it?
There wasn't really anything for Sam to do, you know. Cousin Jennie was
seeing to everything.

"Jennie has so much _judgment_, you know," Mrs. Lawrence put in. "We
couldn't have anybody, any legal person coming in here to appraise and
divide, that would be simply _horrid_--dear old Uncle Samuel's things.
And Jennie is a perfectly ideal person--so sensible and just. But then
we aren't the kind of family to have any fussing anyhow."

("Now wasn't that _Gwynne_ all over?" said Miss Clara afterwards.
"She'd just been giving Jennie _Hail Columbia!_ But they might fight
like cats and dogs among themselves, they'd never let an outsider know
it. There's Gwynne Peters, the best boy that ever lived. He'd die
rather than tell a lie, or take what didn't belong to him--and there
he sat, just pleasantly smiling and pretending that everything was all
right, when he was nearly worn out with the fuss and worry!")

Mrs. Horace Gwynne came downstairs in the rear of the leviathan
wardrobe, ordering and exhorting. As the men staggered down the front
steps with it, she turned into the library. "I suppose your Cousin
Charlotte has been telling you about the hat-rack, Gwynne," she began
in an acid voice. "All I have to say is--oh, how do you do, Miss Clara.
Mercy, Charlotte, tell Marian to come away from those books! Come here
to Cousin Jennie, dearie; what have you got there? Don't hurt that nice
book."

"It ain't a nice book," said the child resentfully. "It's Revised
Statutes of the State of Ohio--it says: 'Forcible entry does not
c-o-n-con-s-t-i-constitute trespass.' What's 'forcible entry,' Cousin
Gwynne?"

"Put it down, dear, never mind," said Mrs. Horace kindly. "I want
Gwynne to have all his grandfather's library," she explained, turning
to Miss Vardaman. "It's only right, you know. He's Governor Gwynne's
only grandson--except Sam, of course. But I said to all the family in
the beginning that Gwynne Peters should have those books, it would be
outrageous to give them to anyone else."

Poor Miss Clara! I could have laughed at the blank expression with
which she beheld this stealing of her thunder.

"I'm sure you're quite right, Jennie," she said tamely. "You've always
had a great deal of _judgment_. Gwynne, dear, how did you get that
great black bruise on your forehead?"

"I ran into something," Gwynne said, flushing.

"Oh, Cousin Gwynne, oh, what an awful story!" Marian piped in her sharp
treble. "It's where Cousin Sam threw the boot at you when he got mad at
you the other day. Cousin Sam had a queer spell, I heard Hannah say so."

"Marian!" cried her mother savagely.

"Hannah's getting into her dotage, and imagines things," said
Mrs. Horace Gwynne, reddening to her forehead. "I don't know what
we're going to do with the poor old thing----" They all talked on
desperately. It was a ghastly moment for everybody. The skeleton
rattled its grisly bones in the Gwynne family closet, and there was
something foolishly and pitiably heroic in the gallant effort they made
to silence that hideous activity. Mrs. Lawrence and Mrs. Horace, the
one Gwynne by blood, the other by adoption, forgot their private feud
in the common defence. To your tents, O Israel!

"You might look over those old daguerreotypes, Miss Clara," Mrs.
Gwynne said. "Marian, run and get them for Miss Vardaman. I don't know
who some of the people are, maybe you'll recognise them."

Gwynne opened a case. "This one is all going to pieces," he said, as
the little pad of faded green brocade in the lid fell out; behind it
was a slip of yellowed paper. "Oh, look here, it has 'John to Louise,
June, 1839,' on it, 'John to Louise'--who was that, do you suppose?"

"Let me see it," said Miss Clara.

"Louise? Maybe that's Louise Andrews--she was a Gwynne, you know," said
Mrs. Lawrence frowning in an effort of recollection. "I can't think of
any other Louise. Is there a picture of her? She was a great beauty."

"Did you ever see her, Cousin Charlotte?"

"Goodness, no, she's been dead I don't know how long."

"I remember her," said Miss Vardaman. "I'm so much older than any of
you. She married Leonard Andrews, she didn't live very long. Yes, she
was very pretty. That's John's picture. Yes, I suppose it _does_ look
funny, but that's the way they all dressed, you know, in those days.
They were engaged and then they quarrelled about something--oh, dear
me, it's years and years ago."

"You'd better take that picture, Miss Clara," said Mrs. Horace Gwynne
briskly. "Maybe Doctor Vardaman would like to have it, and--oh, I was
going to speak to you about something. You know I'm managing everything
and it's an awful responsibility; I've counted all the towels and
sheets and measured all the pieces of goods I've found--nothing
ought to be wasted or thrown away, you know. There're a whole lot of
medicine-bottles upstairs, over three hundred--do you think the doctor
could use them? They're very good bottles, you know, no corks of
course--I thought maybe the doctor----"

"John wouldn't have any use for them, I thank you, Jennie," said Miss
Clara, stiffening.

Gwynne's eyes met mine. "The wistaria on the dining-room porch is going
to bloom, don't you want to see it?" said he, biting his lips.

We retreated to the wistaria, and both of us, propped against the
dining-room wall, gave away to hysterical laughter, all the more
violent because we must smother it. Gwynne's nerves, I think, were a
little unstrung by all he had been through the last melancholy week.
"I--I can't help it----" he gasped. "I know it's all wrong, but I can't
help it. They're so funny!"

We were presently visited with retribution for our ungodly merriment;
for, as we stood there, an Armenian--or Bulgarian--gentleman came
around the corner of the house with a wheelbarrow heaped with the spoil
of the garret, and after him another bearing on his shoulders our old
hair-trunk. Hardly any hair was left upon it, now; but there it was
long and low and round-topped with rows of brass nails black with
verdigris. It was going away on the Armenian shoulders--going out of
our lives forever like those childish days. Gwynne looked at me with a
rather tremulous smile.

"'Ha, Saint Edward! Ha, Saint George!' exclaimed the Black Knight,
cutting down a man at each invocation," he quoted. "Don't, Mary!" For
I am ashamed to say that I sat down on the top step and cried openly,
while the boy tried to comfort me.




CHAPTER THREE


Herewith began another volume in the saga of the old Gwynne house.
After nearly fifty years of Gwynnes, it must now pass to other
ownership. The thing happens every day, and should be no great tragedy;
few Americans are born and live and die in the same house, and a
building of any sort rarely remains the property of one family for
more than a generation. But the Gwynnes, one and all, mourned aloud
and refused to be comforted. Governor Gwynne's house, Uncle Samuel's
house, the house that great man planned and built, whose hospitalities
had been enjoyed by the very best and highest in the land! Why, the
State ought to buy that house! The State was of a different opinion,
although the house was offered at a ridiculously low price, not more
than twice what it was worth. None of the Gwynnes, it appeared, could
afford to buy it in, or even rent it, the expense of living there was
so terrifying. At that distance from town, one must keep a horse and
carriage, the street-cars being so far away; the care of the park and
garden required one man's whole time; and there was the huge old house
itself. It had at least sixteen rooms, and with its high ceilings,
and long rambling hallways, took as much coal to heat it in our
winters as three ordinary houses. Besides, it had--ahem--undeniably
run down somewhat during poor Harriet's administration, and was in
need of costly repairs. No, alack and alas! the house must be sold or
leased--dreadful profanation! The furniture was at last cleared out;
the Governor's portrait went down to the State-house, and you may see
him there at this moment, in line with all the rest of the governors,
but in a rather obscure corner--such is the notorious ingratitude of
republics. All the Gwynne establishments in town blossomed out with
relics, brass andirons, branch candlesticks, horse-hair sofas--people
confided to one another that, on the whole, Mrs. Horace Gwynne had made
a pretty fair division; she herself sternly declined to take anything
but the alabaster clock in the south parlour. That mausoleum-looking
engine now ticks out the time from the middle of a charming white wood
mantel in her eldest son's "colonial" residence. It long since ticked
out eternity for Mrs. Gwynne, as for some of the other friends we met
in the last chapter. The Armenians finally accomplished the dismantling
of the attic and cellar; the contents, Gwynne Peters once told me,
brought just seventy-two dollars. "That was a little less than four
dollars all around," he said with a grin. "I spent my four on my first
box of cigars, and got awfully sick on the very first one I tried to
smoke, I remember--as if it were for a judgment on me!" He went back
to college. Old Hannah went, whimpering, to live in the country with a
married niece. The windows were boarded up, the old iron gates chained
across; and, for a while, an advertisement appeared in our papers,
and, I believe, in some of the big New York and Chicago ones: "FOR
SALE OR LEASE--Commodious mansion built by the late Governor Gwynne,
delightfully situated in the suburbs, within easy walking-distance of
two lines of cars.[3] Large grounds, fruit and shade trees, stable,
dairy, etc. House of twenty rooms in perfect order with all modern
improvements. Suitable for a young ladies' seminary or summer-hotel.
For further particulars address Virgil H. Templeton, Agt. for the
Gwynne Estate."

There is a peculiar fascination in these artless notices; one may
read whole columns of such Paradises awaiting tenants, every morning
in the journals. They are so rich in promise, so fertile in pleasant
suggestion, it seems as if a person might spend a happy lifetime in
the simple pursuit of renting and moving into them one after another.
But, strange to say, for many months Mr. Virgil H. Templeton piped and
nobody would dance! The causes of both health and education suffered
serious neglect; nobody showed the least anxiety to teach young ladies
in the commodious mansion built by the late Governor Gwynne; nobody
wanted to establish a summer-resort within easy walking-distance of two
lines of cars. Once in a while someone would come in, get the keys,
and go out to inspect the place; but invariably "they laughed as they
rode away," like the false knight in the ballad. It is possible that
the disadvantages connected with living in it which the family had
noticed, were, by some strange chance, apparent to would-be tenants
also. Templeton did his best; he placarded the brick walls of the
park; he changed and re-worded his advertisements; he even lowered
the terms and promised repairs! All these measures were looked upon
with strong disfavour by the family; and it is safe to say that no
real-estate dealer before or since has ever come in for the share of
bullying and badgering that that well-meaning man received. The two
old Misses Gwynne, Arthur's daughters, put on their two old bonnets,
and went down to Judge Lewis' office, where the unfortunate agent had
a desk, declaiming loudly against the vulgarity of advertising their
noble ancestral residence in the _common_ papers where every ragamuffin
might read their names shamelessly printed. "Want me to go 'round and
whisper it to everybody, I s'pose," said Templeton in a rage, when they
had left. He was an excitable little man. Mrs. Horace Gwynne visited
him with the information that she, for one, would never consent to
the house being rented for less than two hundred. "Cents or dollars,
ma'am?" asked Templeton politely sarcastic. "You're quite as likely
to get one as the other." Steven Gwynne, as "queer" a body as one
commonly sees at large without a keeper--he was a Southern sympathiser,
and never cut his hair or beard after the fall of Vicksburg--ambushed
Templeton in Judge Lewis' own room, to tell him roundly that what was
good enough for Governor Gwynne was good enough for any damned upstart
that wanted to rent his house, and that not one square inch of new
wall-paper should go on those walls, so help him, if he, Steven Gwynne,
had to camp on the doorstep with a shot-gun! The judge witnessed
these passages-at-arms with mingled annoyance and amusement; it was
a nuisance of course, he said; he was minded to evict Templeton a
dozen times--but how it did enliven the dull legal round! The Gwynnes
and their agent furnished that jolly and kind-hearted jurist with
material for some of the best after-dinner stories he ever told. "By
George," he used to say, "it got so that whenever one of my clerks
came in and found a Gwynne lying in wait for Templeton and breathing
fire and slaughter, he'd post somebody in the hall, and when Templeton
came along: 'Hey, go slow, Temp., the enemy's poisoned the well!' and
Templeton would shin for the street so fast you could play checkers on
his coat-tail!"

The fact is the poor old house was going to rack and ruin as rapidly as
so solid and substantial a structure could go; the wonder was that Mrs.
Peters had managed to get along at all in that comfortless monument
to the Gwynne family-pride, but living there was probably a point of
honour with her, that fantastic standard of honour, to which all the
race of Gwynnes clung with a fanatic tenacity. No single member of the
family could afford to spend any money on the house, and concerted
action among fifteen or twenty Gwynne heirs was, as their agent
speedily found out, next to an impossibility. The only thing about
which they were in entire concord was the glory past, present, and to
come of their name; they saw desecration in laying hands upon the torn
and mildewed wall-paper, the blistered varnish, the leaking roofs of
Uncle Samuel's shrine. It would have taken twelve or fifteen hundred
dollars to put the place in order, at the least; and indeed as time
went on, it promised to take more. The viewless forces of destruction
invade an empty house, and lay it waste like a devastating army. "If
they would just let me shingle the roof anyhow," said Templeton in
despair. "But the only one of 'em all that has any sense is that young
Peters fellow--not the queer one, you know, the one that's on the ranch
in New Mexico, but that other, that nice tall red-haired boy. Trouble
is, he's a minor. You just wait a couple of years or so till he's
twenty-one and through college, and I'll bet he makes 'em all stand
'round!"

The stout, excitable little man displayed more penetration than one
would have supposed he possessed. Gwynne did make them stand 'round.
When he came home on his vacations, you might see him prowling
about the place with a delegation of unwilling relatives, arguing,
explaining, persuading. Being a Gwynne himself, the boy knew how to get
at his kin, upon what side to take them without offence. There was very
little boyishness about his weary, anxious, gently humorous face, and
the family all knew, that, young as he was, he already had one grave
and bitter care. Perhaps that made them respect him; there are some
people that never grow up, and, conversely, there are some who never
seem to have any youth. When Gwynne came home, the estate's property
all at once took on a smiling look of change. Sidewalks were mended and
shutters painted; the grass was cut in the park and the rubbish cleared
away; he even got them to consent to putting a furnace in the house!
Templeton went about in jubilant relief at having someone to share his
responsibilities. "Told you so! That boy has a _head_! All Peters and
mighty little Gwynne, that's what _he_ is!"

In spite of their efforts, however, the house, as Templeton pointed
out with a solemn wagging of the head, "was not a paying proposition."
Going away to boarding-school at this time with Kitty Oldham and
others of about our age, we heard and saw less and less of it. Nobody
of our acquaintance would risk the experiment of living in it; it
was only strangers who fitfully came and went as tenants of the old
Gwynne house. Sometimes there would be curtains at the windows, and
smoke hanging from the chimneys; on our next return it would be again
shut and deserted. Those people? Oh, yes, they were in some railroad
position, and they've been moved to Indianapolis. No, no one called
on them, it's so hard to get out there, you know, and they were only
here a few months. Once the tenants scuttled out in a dreadful state
of scare, declaring that Arthur Gwynne's ghost came down and paraded
the ballroom o' nights, with his head on one side, and the rag of
sheet dangling from his twisted neck! "I do hope poor Cousin Eleanor
and Cousin Mollie won't hear that story," said Gwynne, in concern,
and painstakingly invented and retailed to them another excuse for
the sudden cessation of rent. Once, in the summer vacation, the Board
of Lady Managers of the Home for Incurables gave a lawn-party on
the grounds for the benefit of their charity. There were booths set
up and Japanese lanterns swinging under the beeches, and a deal of
noise beneath Caroline Gwynne's windows where we children had been
obliged to go so sedately in the old days. People who had no carriages
came in long weary procession from the Lexington and Amherst Street
cars--within easy walking-distance--bearing their contributions of
bowls of salad and chocolate-cakes shrouded in their oldest napkins.
The house was opened, and the ladies of the committee heated coffee on
the crippled old built-in range in Hannah's kitchen. They every one
agreed in buzzing whispers that the place was a perfect rattle-trap,
and they could not imagine how any people could move out leaving a
house so dirty as the last inmates had done. The young men gaily
took turns drawing water from the ancient clanking pump outside the
kitchen-door, and bringing in armfuls of firewood. Children raced
and romped with a thunderous uproar in the big echoing rooms. In the
evening there was a curtain rigged between the Parthenon pillars, and
a play was given in which Teddy Johns appeared and sang the kind of
topical song popular in those days, of which I remember one verse:


     "The gloaming one day was beginning to gloam,
                   That's all, that's all!
     When I heard someone say 'The Incurables' Home?
                   That's all, that's all!

     He told me of servants they had more than eight,
     And he thought that the one poor old battered inmate
     Must certainly live in magnificent state,
                   That's all, that's all!"


A humorous effort which was received with great applause, the paucity
of Incurables, and the disproportionate energy of their Lady Managers
being a standing joke in our community. Mrs. Oldham was rumoured to
have remarked acutely upon being applied to for a donation to the Home,
that the only thing incurable about it was the idiots who ran it.
Teddy sang and swaggered through his part in a very amusing fashion;
he was good at that sort of entertainment. The fete--anything carried
on out-doors was a fete in those days--was a success, netting _the_
Incurable the handsome sum of fifty-one dollars twenty-seven cents,
according to Mrs. Lewis' report. And the next day everyone in town
was circulating the story of how some blundering or malicious person
actually went up to poor Gwynne Peters and asked him where Sam was and
what he was doing!

After this the house went again into one of its periods of eclipse,
so to call them. No one even cared to look it over any more; and few
people visited the neighbourhood at all since dear old Miss Clara
Vardaman died and the doctor gave up practice. If it had not been for
Gwynne I believe the house would have fallen down, and he must have had
a hard pull getting the rest of them to contribute their share of the
taxes and insurance. It was offered for sale at gradually diminishing
terms; they had one chance to dispose of it to a German gentleman who
proposed to convert it into a place of entertainment for the masses
to be called Silberberg's Garden. Templeton was enthusiastically in
favour of this plan, but figure the indignation of the two old Misses
Gwynne! Even Gwynne, while he laughed, was a little ruffled. "Think of
a band-stand and merry-go-round in the park," he said. "German waiters
in their shirt-sleeves dashing from the house with beer-glasses and
plates of wienerwurst, plumbers' apprentices and their girls waltzing
and perspiring in our old ballroom, with a free fight thrown in now
and then by way of variety! And how Doctor Vardaman would relish it!
Picnic parties, sardine-cans, paper napkins, beer-bottles, sentimental
couples spooning, band scraping and tooting 'Die Wacht am Rhein,' and
'How can I leave thee?' under his windows all day long--his property
would be absolutely unsalable. We can't do it, I guess; no, not even
for Silberberg's twenty-five thousand dollars!" I told him he was like
the Arab who wouldn't part from his steed, in the poem at the back of
the Third or Fourth Reader. "My beautiful, my beautiful----" he says;
"Avaunt, tempter, I scorn thy gold!" And, springing on the horse's
back, vanishes into the desert. Thus did all the Gwynnes turn up their
noses--in the vernacular--at Silberberg. Templeton was very doleful.
"You're missing the only chance you'll ever have to get rid of that
damned old white elephant, Mr. Peters," he said. "Why not let the
Dutchman have it? Lord, what difference does it make to you whether he
turns it into a beer-garden or a cemetery? It's had its day." But, for
once in his life, the little real-estate agent was at fault; for, on a
sudden, without notice, fully five years after the house came on the
market, when it had weathered through nearly every vicissitude known
to houses, and its fortunes were at the dregs, the wheel took another
turn--spun clean around--came full circle, in fact. Time and the hour
run through the roughest day.

FOOTNOTE:

[3] Easy walking distance! It was between five and six squares on a
very indifferent plank sidewalk, as I have cause to know!--M. S. W.




CHAPTER FOUR


Many warm-hearted people felt a great sympathy for Doctor Vardaman in
his isolation and solitude after Miss Clara's death; I suspect that had
the doctor been an old maid instead of an old bachelor, he would not
have received so much attention. There is something in the spectacle
of an elderly unattached male being, no matter how independent he may
be, or how capable of taking care of himself, that at once engages the
solicitude of all his friends, men and women alike. Everybody felt
sorry for him; everybody wondered how he got along. Doctor Vardaman
was a hale old gentleman verging on seventy, it is true, but still
vigorous of mind and body, and with pronounced notions of his own
on the subject of diet, hygiene, and the conduct of life generally.
No one could have needed benevolent supervision less; but he might
well have prayed with the antique worthy to be delivered from his
friends. At Christmas he used to describe himself as blushing to his
very heels and retreating in shamed confusion before the stern gaze
of the expressman who unloaded case after case of expensive wines
and spirits before his door; that he already had a whole cellar-full
partly of his own collecting, partly inherited from his father, a man
of means and discernment in such matters, made no manner of difference
to these eager and generous givers. If he had smoked as diligently as
a factory-chimney, he could not have vanquished the army of cigars
he received yearly. A centipede would not have accommodated all the
doctor's pairs of knit and crocheted slippers; he solemnly avowed
that there were bales of smoking-jackets and pen-wipers stored in his
garret. He could have paved his walk with paper-weights, yet I never
saw him use but one--a glass globe with a remarkable cameo-looking
head encircled by a wreath of flowers mysteriously embedded beneath
the surface, which Gwynne and I, clubbing our pennies, had presented
to him the first Christmas after we were enlightened on the Santa
Claus subject. He used to laugh and make little jokes about his being
an "universal favourite" like certain patent medicines; yet he had
a sentiment for all this trash, and would not allow it to be thrown
or given away, except when kindness took the form of sending some
perishable delicacy for his table, a frequent occurrence after Miss
Clara's death, as it was known he had some trouble in getting competent
"help." It would have been physically impossible for the doctor to get
through all the aspic jelly, mango-pickle, and fruit-cake bestowed on
him, and he said that it went against his medical conscience to give
these rich dainties away, yet that must be done sometimes.

I myself have laboriously carried out little trays of orange-marmalade
tumblers which I am sure never did any good to anybody but Mrs.
Maginnis' children, who used to come bare-legged, with their tousled
heads, freckles, and blue eyes to fetch the doctor's wash. It took
no slight gymnastic ability to carry a basket or waiter of such
unmanageable articles as marmalade-glasses, change cars twice, and
pick one's way across the ankle-deep mud of Richmond Avenue, and along
the wooden sidewalk full of loose uncertain boards, as far as Doctor
Vardaman's house. On a gusty April day with a promise of rain in
the air, one must go cumbered with an umbrella and overshoes; only
fancy what that was to a young woman clad in the fashionable costume
of eighty-one, to wit: a skin-tight navy-blue silk "jersey" waist, a
navy-blue bunting skirt kilt-pleated with a voluminous round overskirt,
and a pocket with purse and handkerchief securely concealed somewhere
amongst the folds in the rear; French-heeled shoes, tan-coloured
suede "Bernhardt" gloves, and a tremendous erection of velvet and
feathers that we called a "Gainsborough hat" over all! These modes have
mercifully gone out; but not more, I think, than the simple and kindly
custom of sending glasses of jelly about to one's friends; I should not
presume to ask one of my young acquaintances to perform so unseemly
an office; no one either makes jelly or sends it as a present any
more. Fortunately I fell in with Gwynne Peters on the last lap of the
journey, that is, the Lexington and Amherst cars.

"Here, let me take that thing," said he, and as I thankfully gave up
to him my burden of sweets--my wrists, not too loosely cased in the
tan-coloured "Bernhardts" fairly aching with the weight--he went on:
"What do you think? I believe we've got the old place rented at last!
Templeton's going to have some people out there this afternoon and I'm
to meet them. But they've been out two or three times already, and he
says they've taken a fancy to it. The man--he's a Colonel Pallinder
from Mobile or New Orleans or somewhere--says it reminds him of his old
home in Virginia, 'befo' the wah,' you know, that's the way he talks."

"Are they nice? I mean--anybody we'd _know_?"

"Why, I don't know--yes, I guess so. They're Episcopalians, they were
asking Templeton about Trinity Church. I haven't met them yet, and
you can't go much by what Templeton says--a fellow like that doesn't
know anything except whether people are respectable or not. They're all
grown-ups, no children. I think there's a young lady; Templeton's lost
in admiration of Mrs. Pallinder--told me two or three times, 'She's an
elegant lady, Mr. Peters, very lah-de-dah manners, you know, stylish as
she can be!' Doctor Vardaman's met them; but there's no use asking the
doctor anything, he just grinned when I mentioned the Pallinders, and
said he didn't doubt they'd be a great addition to the neighbourhood."

Templeton's "livery-rig" was standing at the foot of the wide shallow
steps leading up to the Parthenon portico as we came in sight of it
from the road. The shutters were open; feet and voices went to and fro
inside. A tall slim girl in a red waist (it was a "jersey," I thought)
and hat came out to the carriage and gave the driver some order. The
agent appeared from the back of the house between two more tall people,
a lady and gentleman. Templeton gesticulated, he flourished toward
the grounds, he flourished toward the facade of Doric columns. The
gentleman pulled his beard, which he wore in a long sharply pointing
tuft on his chin, and listened with his head at an angle. "Jiminy! I'm
glad I got that chimney fixed!" ejaculated Gwynne thoughtfully. "You
know I'd like to take away those old iron stags and things from the
front lawn, but Cousin Steven would fall down dead if I touched 'em."

"Oh, I don't know, Gwynne, somehow they seem to suit the old place,
they've been there so long. Wouldn't it be nice if these people turned
out really--really _nice_, so that the house would be the way it was in
your grandfather's time?"

"It would _so_!" Gwynne agreed heartily. He looked about. Some way
it seemed as if the thing were not wholly improbable; the fresh
hopefulness of spring was in the air; pockets of new grass showed an
excellent green, the trees were faintly rimmed with colour. All the
thickets piped with birds. There were Arcadian vistas of many smooth
mottled trunks and loftily stooping branches; the old house with its
absurd classic front and assemblage of iron flocks and herds still
became the landscape well. "It _is_ pretty, isn't it?" said the young
man, earnestly. "I should think anybody'd like it, wouldn't you?"

As he spoke, Templeton, an odd enough herald of good tidings, came
scrunching hastily down the gravel drive from the house. He was too
excited to notice my presence. "By gummy, Mr. Peters," he exclaimed
breathlessly, as soon as he got within hearing distance, "I've landed
'em! You come on up to the house. Three years' lease--you come on
up--privilege of purchase--you want to come right up and meet 'em--by
gummy!"

Gwynne came grinning to us afterwards, as Doctor Vardaman and I stood
in the old gentleman's porch, to describe the interview.

"I went up to the house," he said, "and here were Colonel Pallinder,
looking like the Count of Monte Cristo, or the Chevalier de Maison
Rouge, in a low-cut vest and a turn-down collar and black string-tie,
and Mrs. Pallinder--by Jove, Templeton was right, she's an awfully
handsome woman, and the _youngest_ looking, she might be her own
daughter! She was one of their Southern belles, I suppose, only she's
quite fair, light hair and a beautiful complexion--have you noticed her
complexion, doctor?"

"Mrs. Pallinder's complexion is remarkably well cared-for, I should
say," said the doctor judicially.

"Yes, I've always understood these Southern women don't do much but eat
candy and fix themselves up. Anyway, she's very striking-looking, much
more so than the daughter. She's a very tall girl, I noticed her eyes
were almost on a level with mine--big black eyes and she kind of rolls
'em around, you know----"

"What did they have on, Gwynne?"

He paused; he meditated. "They were all dressed up," he said at last,
with the air of one conveying a piece of valuable information, the
result of close and prolonged study. Again he meditated. "Well, they
were both all dressed up, you know. What's that thing you've got on,
that tight jacket thing--or is it a--a waist? Hers was red, with little
curlycues all over it."

"You mean it was braided?"

"Yes, that's it, braided--they were both all dressed up, you know.
Well, then Templeton introduced us, told the colonel who I was, that
is, and he welcomed me as if I had been his long-lost brother with
the strawberry-mark. Called me 'my dear boy' right off--I don't much
care about that sort of thing," said Gwynne, shrugging. "But I suppose
it's his way. Everybody was very cordial, and there was so much
hands-all-round and hurrah-boys, you never would have thought we'd
just met for the first time. It's not the way we're used to up here,
but on the whole, doctor, it's rather nice--they're very interesting
people, and they've got such pleasant Southern voices, and they're gay,
somehow, gay and kind," said Gwynne, who, poor young fellow, had had
little enough either of gaiety or kindness in his experience of life.
"The colonel presented me to the ladies with the grandest flourish you
ever saw, and said he understood this was my ancestral home, and he
knew just how I felt at seeing strangers in it, but I mustn't cease to
look upon it as my home just the same, and that he hoped I would come
there whenever I felt like it; and he didn't know how _I_ thought about
it, but for _his_ part, it seemed to him there was nothing like having
a gentleman for a tenant and a gentleman for a landlord. Right there,"
said Gwynne, with a grin, "I might have sprung it on him that he was
going to have quite a few gentlemen and some ladies for a landlord,
but I only said, 'The house belongs to an estate, you know,' and
something about our being so fortunate to have them in it--I _had_ to
say something after all their cordiality. And he went right on, without
paying much attention, 'Ah, indeed?' he thought it quite possible he
might buy it, he wanted to settle down somewhere, he was tired of
travelling about, and he had got his business in such shape that he
_could_ settle down at last."

"What is his business, Gwynne?" interrupted the doctor suddenly.

"Why, he's a broker, and Templeton says he's agent for a big syndicate
of Eastern capitalists that have some kind of railroad or mining
interests all over the West. He's rented an office in the Turner
Building. I was going to bring up the subject of repairs, but it
seems Templeton and he had got that all settled already. Pallinder's
going to do a lot himself, about the bathroom and kitchen, and Mrs.
Pallinder doesn't like the wood-work painted white that old-fashioned
way, so they're going to change it, grain it to look like quartered
oak or mahogany. I suppose Cousin Eleanor and the rest of them will go
into fits, and I kind of hate to see the old white wood-work changed
myself," added Gwynne regretfully. "But if the colonel buys the place,
and I'm pretty sure he's going to after putting out all this money on
it, why, it doesn't make any difference what they do to it. The whole
thing's almost too good to be true."

"It _is_," said Doctor Vardaman, rubbing his chin. "Being agent for an
Eastern syndicate must be a very profitable walk of life--most people
aren't so willing to spend their money on a rented house. Somehow or
other I fear, I very much fear the Danai bringing gifts. Did you meet
the old lady--Mrs. Botlisch? Was she with them?"

Gwynne began to laugh. "I was going to tell you about her. After we
had gone through the whole house, and the colonel had pointed out
what he meant to change, for instance: 'Those old mirrors over the
parlour-mantels will do very well,' says he, pointing with his cane.
'The frames want a little----' 'Put a lick o' gilt paint over the
bare spots,' says Templeton in a mortal stew for fear they were going
to ask for something expensive. 'That'll make 'em look all right.'
'Exactly--a lick of paint over the bare spots,' said Pallinder,
listening politely and without a smile. 'Mr. Templeton is quite right.'
And with that Mrs. Pallinder began: 'I've been thinking I'll have the
front parlour on the south side done in peacock-blue and old-gold,
Mr. Peters. I saw a lovely paper with the blue ground and large gilt
fleur-de-lys on it downtown that would just suit.' Templeton turned
green. 'Well--er--um--I don't know----' says he. 'Oh, I'll have that
done, Mr. Templeton,' said the colonel--and this time he did laugh, and
winked at me over the little man's head. 'You're a very conscientious
agent, sir,' says he. 'But don't worry. I wouldn't expect you to
gratify a whim like that. I'll let you into a secret, gentlemen, I'm
a terribly hen-pecked man, and being the only one in the family, the
odds are so heavily against me, three to one, that I always jump and do
whatever's wanted without any discussion.' 'I guess it's pretty hard to
refuse Mrs. Pallinder anything,' said Templeton, coming out strong in a
way that nearly floored me; the lady gave him a sweet smile, and Miss
Pallinder laughed outright. 'I'm going to have a paper with pink roses
all over it, and pink curtains to match in my room, if Papa will let
me, Mr. Templeton,' says she, and worked her eyes around at him like
this. 'Now can't you say something nice to _me_?' 'I would, but I'm
afraid Mrs. Templeton would hear of it,' said Templeton, and be hanged
if he didn't roll _his_ eyes around at her," said Gwynne, writhing
with laughter. "And then you ought to have seen Miss Pallinder laugh!
We finally got around to the kitchen, and while the two ladies and
Templeton were inspecting the closets, Colonel Pallinder mysteriously
beckoned me outside. The man had driven Templeton's hack back there so
as to stand in the shade, and I thought I saw somebody sitting on the
rear seat, but I just glanced at it, for the colonel said: 'Ahem--Mr.
Peters, you recall perhaps what the governor of South Carolina said
to the governor of North Carolina? In my section of the country,
sir--he pronounced it, 'suh'--we don't consider a bargain closed until
we've--ahem--poured out a libation to--ah--um--Morpheus.' And upon
that he fished out a very handsome silver-mounted flask from his hip
pocket, with a little silver top that unscrewed and telescoped into a
cup. 'If you'll partake, sir----?' says the colonel, pouring it full,
so we partook, I out of the cup, and he out of the bottle, and I must
say if the colonel's a poor student of the classics, he's a mighty
good judge of whiskey," said Gwynne, with all the air of a connoisseur.
"Only it was a pretty stiff drink. I believe my moustache smells of it
this minute," he added with concern, fingering that exiguous growth
tenderly. "While we were 'partaking,' somebody snorted out so suddenly
that we both jumped and nearly dropped the sacrificial vessels, 'Say,
Billie, I don't mind if I do myself. It's pretty dry work settin'
out here.' And I looked and saw the old woman leaning out of the
carriage----" Gwynne paused, and eyed the doctor inquiringly.

"Mrs. Botlisch?"

"Mrs. Botlisch. Doctor Vardaman, how--in--thunder,
now--_how_--_in_--_thunder_ do you suppose they came to have
that--that----?"

"She's Mrs. Pallinder's mother, I believe," said the old gentleman.

"Yes, I know, the colonel introduced us right off, and handed over the
flask and cup just as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
'Here's how, bub!' the old woman said, winked at me, turned the whiskey
off like an expert, handed the things back, and wiped her mouth on the
back of her hand. Mrs. Pallinder's mother! It's inconceivable! Doctor,
I swear you could have knocked me down with a straw. The Pallinders
don't seem to make anything of it--but that pretty, delicate-featured
woman, and that slender spirited-looking girl, both of them so
beautifully dressed, and their manners really charming, Doctor--a
little different from what one sees ordinarily, maybe, but charming for
all that! Why, the old woman might be their cook--I can't understand
it! They take it just as a matter of course."

"Well, I don't know how else you'd have them take it," said the
doctor. "She's Mrs. Pallinder's mother, and that's all there is to it.
But Mrs. Pallinder did say something to me about the old lady being
'queer'--eccentric, as she put it. That's like charity--it covers a
multitude of strange doings."

"Yes, 'queer' accounts for a good deal," said Gwynne, his face
sobering. Doctor Vardaman looked at him with regretful tenderness.
He walked with us as far as the street, and patted Gwynne's shoulder
gently as we parted--an unusual display of feeling from the doctor, who
was anything but a demonstrative man.




CHAPTER FIVE


Doctor Vardaman's house was called, in the day when it was built, a
Swiss cottage. It was a story and a half high, with a steep-pitched
roof, garnished with a kind of scalloped wooden lambrequin pendant from
the eaves all around. There were casement-windows with arched tops, and
the whole edifice was painted a dark chocolate-brown in accordance,
no doubt, with the best Swiss models--at least we never questioned
the taste of it. It is possible that the charming and faithful Swiss
cottage of to-day may be as much of an offence to the landscape in
twenty-five years--so does the old order change, giving place to new.
Yet it will always be true that a house derives some curious character
from its tenant; the doctor redeemed his cottage; he was the soul of
that misbegotten body. It was shabby and down-at-heel, if you like, but
it was not bourgeois. There was a charm in his unkempt garden, in the
slouching ease of his worn old furniture and carpets, his multitudinous
loose-backed books, his dim family portraits in chipped gilt frames.
He met all hints at alteration or renewal with an indulgent ridicule.
"Fresh paint?" he said. "It would make the house look like a
servant-girl dressed for Sunday!" Or: "Better is a horse-hair sofa with
brass nails than a plush platform-rocker and veneering therewith!" When
the Pallinders moved in, trailing a procession rich as Sheba's past his
little iron gate, the doctor viewed it with an indecipherable smile.
It was in April, a day of light gusty winds, flashes of sunshine
and flashes of rain; and Doctor Vardaman, in his shirt-sleeves, was
trowelling amongst his young plants with what he frequently denounced
as a frantic and futile energy. "I don't know why I do it," he would
say soberly. "Nothing ever grows the better for it; very often nothing
grows at all. The Irishman, the negro, the very Chinaman whom for my
sins I am constrained to employ about the house, have achieved triumphs
in the way of lilies of the valley and young onions that leave me
gasping in defeat. They are ignorant, unwashed, dissolute pagans.
Ling Chee was a spectre soaked in opium; Erastus absconded with all
my clothes, my most cherished razors, and whatever money he could get
at--yet they had but to scratch the ground and lo, the desert blossomed
like the rose! You may see therein the constant allegory of Vice
ascendant and unrewarded Virtue."

He leaned on his spade in an ironically rustic attitude to watch the
Pallinder household goods go by--goods, not gods, for everything, as
he observed, was of a transcendant and sparkling newness. Most of us
live in unacknowledged bondage to certain kind, familiar, sooty, and
begrimed, utterly useless hearthstone deities. We cling shamefaced
to our rickety old relics. The pair of vases that used to stand on
mother's mantelpiece--hideous things they are, too,--the little high
chair that was Johnny's--he died in '87, you remember--who has not seen
this pathetic lumber voyaging helplessly about from house to apartment,
from town to country and back again, hobnobbing peaceably on the rear
of the wagon with flower-stands and the gas-range, retiring at last to
the garret, but somehow never getting as far as the junk-shop? _Sunt
lacrimae rerum_--as Doctor Vardaman would have said, being somewhat
given to Latin tags after the taste of an older generation. His own
house was crowded with these touching reminders; the Pallinders
went to the other extreme; either they sternly repressed the mushy
sentimentalism that would cherish outworn sticks and stoneware for the
sake of auld lang syne, or they never had had any to cherish. "They
brought nothing into the town with them, and it is certain they took
nothing away," said the doctor afterwards in an awful and irreverent
parody. An aroma of fresh packing-stuff and varnish hung about the
caravan; bright new mirrors swayed and glanced; and, since the fashions
of eighty-one were more or less flamboyant, you might see from afar
the roses, poppies, and what-not that bloomed upon the Pallinder rolls
of new carpet, the gilt and veneered scrolls, knobs, and channellings
of the Pallinder furniture, the Pallinder Tennessee-marble table-tops,
carefully boxed, yet--as one may say in a figure--hallooing aloud for
admiration of their size and costliness. There was one van filled with
hogsheads packed with china; it was whispered that many of the things
had been ordered from New York, but most of them were got in town at
prices that kept the shop-keepers smiling until their bills were sent
in--I am anticipating. The doctor espied the ladies in a carriage at
the end, and bowed with the rather exuberant courtesy taught in his
youth.

Miss Pallinder returned the salutation; Mrs. Botlisch shouted a jovial
"Howdy, Doc.!" Mrs. Pallinder drew back impulsively in a momentary
embarrassment; she emerged almost instantly and recognised him,
triumphantly gracious. But the doctor resumed his digging, inscrutably
grinning at the next shovelful. The fact is, this casual passage
vividly recalled his first encounter with these ladies a few weeks
earlier, upon one of the occasions when they had driven out to inspect
the Gwynne house, before the bargain was closed. Doctor Vardaman, in a
sleeve-waistcoat, for the day was cold, was busily spading up his beds,
when a carriage drew in beside the iron palings.

"I looked up," the old gentleman used thus to recount the incident,
"and saw an exceedingly homely old woman with her bonnet awry; a
moderately good-looking young one with hers as straight as Nature
intended it, and the rest of her clothes, so far as a man may judge,
directly calculated to inspire all other women with despairing envy;
and a very uncommonly handsome middle-aged one, whose clothes made
positively no difference at all, so much did her looks eclipse them. I
saw all these people craning out of their carriage, I say, and in the
distance a cavalier on horseback dashing along after them in a military
style. 'Say, you----' began the homely old one. 'My good man,' says the
middle-aged one, with an ineffable sweet patronage in her tone. 'Will
you take this card in to your master and tell him----' And at that
moment up comes the outrider. He took me in at a glance, jumped off
his horse, splashed through the mud, uncovered with a very gallant and
engaging deference to my years, and: 'Doctor Vardaman?' says he. 'I'm
sure this _is_ Doctor Vardaman, I'm happy to make your acquaintance.
We're going to be your neighbours, I hope, and by gad, sir, you set
us a good example! We find you like--ah--um--Quintilius among his
cabbages. Sir, my name is Pallinder; let me present----' the fellow's
manner was perfect; for the soul of me I couldn't help warming to him.
And if you think it's a poor sort of gratification to be known for a
gentleman, consider how very uncomplimentary it is to be taken for
a servant! 'Lord--_ee_, Bill!' screeched out the old woman. 'Mirandy
thought he was th' hired man! That's one on _you_, Mirandy! Called
him 'my good man,' she did! and went into a choking and gurgling fit
of laughter. Mrs. Pallinder's face turned purple. 'Madame,' says I,
anxious to relieve an unpleasant situation. 'I answer to the noun, but
I'm a little doubtful about the adjective!' We parted in the end with
great protestations on both sides; but Mrs. Pallinder was still red
as they drove off. Sir, she had made a mistake, and she never would
forgive _me_ for it!"

This was the first appearance of the Pallinder family upon our stage.
They had figured brilliantly on a good many others already, as was
discovered some two years later, when occurred their exit; San
Francisco, Denver, Chicago, Louisville, to say nothing of a score of
minor cities knew them, birds of passage. I believe they came from
Memphis in the beginning, that is, if they can be said to have come
from anywhere, or been native to any place. They were emphatically
citizens of the world and called all skies home. I find, upon comparing
recollections with friends of those days that the measures by which the
Pallinders established themselves in our society are, in that phrase
dear to the sedate historian of far weightier matters, shrouded in
the mists of--of antiquity, the historian would say. Yet it is only
twenty-five years, and no one now remembers, or perhaps took note
at the time, exactly how these people who came from everywhere and
nowhere, whom nobody knew, got themselves in the space of six months,
known, liked, and invited far and wide. I fear that solid unornamental
worth such as--let us be frank--yours or mine, would not have
accomplished so much in as many years. Mrs. Pallinder must have done a
deal of social campaigning in those other centres of enlightenment and
culture which I have mentioned, to have become so apt and able; that
little slip with Doctor Vardaman was the only one I ever heard recorded
against her. She never referred to her life and acquaintance elsewhere,
nor traded upon her experiences to advance herself with us; yet she
never seemed to be pushing. She built, as it were, from the ground;
and I have heard very kind and intelligent persons who were not in the
least snobs, comment with astonishment on the headway she contrived
to make coming wholly unknown as she did, and handicapped by such a
mother. The spectacle of wealth allied to feminine beauty, talent, and
virtue, struggling for notice is one with which we are all tolerably
familiar.

It is likely that prehistoric woman in the jungle--not prehistoric
man, for man seems always to have been a creature slothful in social
duties, dull, and democratic in his tastes--demurred at mingling with
the same set as the jungle-lady next door; would not allow the children
to play with the little cave-dwellers across the way; wanted to move
to the choice and exclusive neighbourhood of the Probably-Arboreals,
where she would have better opportunities for meeting those elect
gentry. Nowadays, her grand-daughter goes to church with a praiseworthy
devotion, she subscribes to all the charities, she sends her children
to the most fashionable schools--they are always the best--she takes
courses in French literature, in Current Events, in bridge-playing,
in cooking, yes, she would take them, decent woman as she is, in
bare-back riding and ballet dancing, in everything and anything under
the sun, that will bring her into contact with the charmed circle.
She endures unnumbered snubs, or what is worse, the soul-blighting
frigid politenesses of present-day Probably-Arboreals; she sheds tears
in secret, she nearly drives her husband to drink, or the poorhouse.
And she "gets there," she always gets there, and gleefully proceeds
to visit upon the next aspirant some of the treatment she herself
received. The strange thing is that you, who have been "there" all
your life, who cannot understand her frantic desires, who are disposed
to laugh or sneer at her, you will find her no hustling and elbowing
vulgarian as you imagined, but a very charming woman, as clever and
well bred as you or any of your native-born residents of the purple.
She only wanted to get "there"; already she has forgot that mean
struggle. As high-minded as you are, you too must at least a little
admire Success; and she has displayed as much courage and perseverance
on her shabby battlefield as it takes to conquer a citadel.

All this is by way of calling attention to the really remarkable fact
that Mrs. Pallinder employed none of the tactics just recited; classes
in bridge and Current Events were unknown in her day, and she went to
church neither more nor less than other people. She succeeded, I make
bold to say, as no one ever has before or since. And this, in spite of
the rather unfavourable impression which she and her daughter had made
at the start. I, for one, did not much fancy Gwynne's description of
Miss Pallinder--her name was Mazie--ogling and making fun with a man
like Templeton; I thought her behaviour distinctly _common_. And that
business of taking Gwynne behind the house for a drink of whiskey--out
of the _bottle_, at that!--which does not shock me at all now, was
anathema in my eyes then. These opinions were shared by everybody
who heard the circumstances; what made us change our minds? That is
the mystery. I think now that the Pallinders won upon us by that very
frank gaiety and kindliness that had so touched and attracted Gwynne;
nothing else can account for their popularity. Of course at the end of
their stay everyone simultaneously discovered a number of disagreeable
things; the usual wiseacres went about uttering the usual wisdom of
"I-told-you-so." Colonel Pallinder had always been a man to distrust;
Mrs. Pallinder and her daughter undeniably painted and were too lively
in their manners; there was more poker and mint-julep going freely
behind the Parthenon portals than one ever saw in the best houses;
and Mrs. Botlisch was perfectly intolerable. To be just, however, no
one had ever pretended to think Mrs. Botlisch other than intolerable;
some people even went so far as to say that it was greatly to the
Pallinders' credit that they did not shake off that terrific social
drawback altogether.

The colonel was a big man, with thick flowing grey hair under a
wide-brimmed soft hat; he wore his clothing with a slashing military
picturesqueness--d'Artagnan in a long-skirted black broadcloth coat;
and limped a little from a bullet in the thigh at Missionary Ridge. He
had a handsome office downtown, and was always enthusiastically busy
over the syndicate's affairs; maps of railroads, of iron, salt, coal
and "phosphate" territory in Arkansas and elsewhere adorned his walls;
circulars and prospectuses gushed forth from his place of business as
from a living fountain. Who went up and drank at that sempiternally
flowing spring--who, in plain language, invested with Colonel
Pallinder? Nobody knew; but it was easy to see that investment with
him paid; the Pallinders lived in the spacious ease of an unlimited
income.

I suppose his profession was that of promoting--a pursuit which has
since been compactly described to me as selling you a cullender for
a wash-basin. Socially he took no hand beyond inviting young men to
the house, and within an incredibly short time he did not even have
occasion for that. They went, of their own motion, in droves, like
all the rest of the world. And I will say here, speaking for our
youth, that in spite of the cards and cigarettes and champagne, the
over-eating and over-drinking, the general lax gaiety of that meteoric
two years, I do not believe any of us were materially harmed. We
sincerely liked the Pallinders; we did not merely hanker for their
flesh-pots. And even now, after twenty-five years, and knowing all the
mean and dingy side of their career, I still cherish a fondness for
those hearty, happy, self-indulgent, irresponsible adventurers.

The old Gwynne house now underwent a transformation the nature and
extent of which can best be realised when it is learned that poor old
Caroline Gwynne's room became Miss Mazie Pallinder's; the roses of
Mazie's wall-paper climbed all over that tragic apartment; lace-edged
muslins and flowered cretonne festooned the windows. What with a pillar
obscuring the east window, and a heavy growth of wistaria matted on a
frame in front of the south, you had to feel your way about at broad
noon; and were liable to be suddenly assaulted on the tenderest part
of the shins or ankles by some dastardly rocking-chair, lurking in
the gloom like a Thug, and inadvertently set in motion. Surprises
were pretty frequent in that room; it was not unusual to put your
foot down in a box of chocolate-cream drops or through the parchment
vitals of Mazie's banjo abandoned on the floor. And when you came
face to face with a pale glimmering phantom in a corner it might be
either your own figure reflected in one of the full-length mirrors
liberally distributed around the walls, or Miss Pallinder herself in
an embroidered French night-dress, her favourite afternoon wear. The
other decorations were mostly photographs of Mazie in an astounding
variety of costumes, and her numberless real or supposed conquests.
Young men in regimentals, army or navy; young men in fancy dress,
striking attitudes with a sword, or making a leg in silk tights; young
men with the painfully close-fitting trousers and upright brush of
hair fashionable in the eighties--it was a noble array, that gallery
of Mazie's, particularly when she began to enrich it with certain more
familiar likenesses. There you might see "J. B." Taylor--everybody
called him "J. B."--with the cap and gown he had worn at his last
Commencement; Teddy Johns laughing and showing all his teeth--Teddy
had fine teeth and knew it; Bob Carson, with something written on the
back of the photograph that Mazie made an affectation of not allowing
us to read--we had all seen it nevertheless, and used to wonder if
Bob were really in earnest; Gwynne Peters, whose fair hair did not
come out very well in the photograph, looking startlingly like his
grandfather's portrait, with the same long thick flourish of the pen
under his name as used to adorn the Governor's. "Yours truly, Gwynne
Peters," and the _s_ streeling off in a comet's-tail like the final _e_
of old Samuel Gwynne's signature. All these young fellows frequented
the house; on summer nights they could be heard as they strode away
down Richmond Avenue, proclaiming at the tops of their several sets
of lungs to a smiling world that the moon shone bright on their old
Kentucky-y-y ho-ome, or lamenting in concert that Alas, they were no
swimmers, so they lost their Clementine! Doctor Vardaman heard them as
he sat smoking the pipe of peace in his porch. "God bless the boys!"
the old man used to say to himself with a sigh. Sometimes they stayed
over night, and came yawning downtown to their desks in the morning,
sheepishly evading the paternal scowl, victims of Colonel Pallinder's
strenuous hospitality. If Mazie had no scalps strung at her belt, she
at least displayed the spoils of the vanquished; gloves, bangles, and
bon-bons were hers in profuse supply; when she went away on a visit
she corresponded with all of them, and was reported to be engaged
three deep, to our horrified delight. It is a mistake to suppose that
girls envy one another these light successes; we all admired, and I
am afraid some of us tried to imitate Miss Pallinder. It was to be
noticed that she herself showed an entire impartiality; when no one
else was convenient, she did not hesitate to keep her hand in on Doctor
Vardaman, half in fun of course. The old gentleman made an open joke
of it. "This is the first time I have given away my picture in forty
years," he said; and wrote at the bottom of the card in his neat,
clear, physician's hand: _"Non sum qualis eram_----"

"What does that mean, Doctor?" Mazie asked him suspiciously.

"It is a plaint--the plaint of an elderly sentimentalist like me,"
he answered gravely. "'I am not what once I was in thy day, oh dear
Cynara,' he remarks--in effect. Shall I write the English?"

"No, don't. I think it's ever so much cuter this way. Who was Cynara?"

"Well--ahem----"

"Huh! Bet she wasn't any better than she'd ought to be!" grunted old
Mrs. Botlisch sceptically; whereat the doctor, after a momentary
struggle, laughed so immoderately that we all more than half suspected
she was right.




CHAPTER SIX


If Gwynne Peters had supposed at the outset that the new tenants
would remain long unacquainted with their set of erratic landlords,
the "quite a few gentlemen and some ladies" whom he had tactfully
refrained from mentioning, he would have been profoundly mistaken; but
in fact he supposed nothing of the sort. He knew his kin too well; and
perhaps shared tacitly Templeton's openly-expressed and most devout
hope that none of them would say or do anything to put the Pallinders
out of the notion of buying the property when the lease should expire.
"They'll want thirty-five or forty thousand, if not more, I'll bet a
doughnut," the agent would say in moments of gloomy confidence; "and
you know, Mr. Peters, the place ain't worth--at least it can't be sold
for--a dollar over twenty-eight, the way times are. I might screw the
colonel up to twenty-nine-fifty--he seems to be a free spender, and
the ladies like the house so much, he'd do anything they want. But,
like as not, just as I've done that and got everything good and going,
Mr. Steven Gwynne will come in with some objection and knock the whole
deal higher than Gilderoy's kite. And when I think of what it will be
to get 'em all combed down and willing to sign--and those children
of Lucien Gwynne's out in Iowa, you know, they've got to quiet the
title--and Mrs. Montgomery over in Chillicothe, she's another--well,
I suppose there's no use crossing that bridge till we've come to it,
but I tell you sometimes it keeps me awake nights worrying." The
family had fallen into the habit of leaving all the business connected
with THE GWYNNE ESTATE--it must be written thus to furnish some idea
of the proportions it assumed in their minds--to Gwynne's management.
He had just been elevated to the bar; from thence to the bench, and
to whatever corresponds to the woolsack in our judicial system was,
according to them, a short step for a Gwynne. The mantle of his
grandfather had fallen upon his shoulders; they were proud of him in
their extraordinary fashion, which combined hysterical and wholly
unmerited praise with equally hysterical and undeserved blame. For a
while even Gwynne, who had a tolerable sense of humour, took himself
with amazing seriousness. He sat in his office surrounded by that
copious library of the old gentleman's, now grown somewhat out of date,
to be sure, but still impressive by sheer weight and numbers; there
was a photographed copy of the Governor's portrait, inkstand and all,
over his desk, and a massive safe in one corner. It contained at this
time, as Gwynne long years afterward acknowledged to me, with laughter,
nothing but some of the old family silver, forks, trays, ladles, and
what-not blackened with age and neglect sacked up in flannel wherein
the moth made great havoc. "Sam's share, you know," said Gwynne, his
face clouding a little, when his laugh was out. "I had to take care of
it, of course."

Into this august retreat came daily one or another of the young
fellow's connection with inquiries about that property which everyone
of them called in all honesty and simplicity "my house"; and, after
much futile advice, took their leave, commenting on the fact that he
strongly resembled his grandfather, and adjuring him to "remember that
he was a Gwynne." There were so many of them they gave the place a
false air of bustle and business, to which Gwynne used, half in fun,
to attribute his later success--"looked as if I was all balled up with
work, you know, 'rising young lawyer,' and all the rest of it." But,
indeed, I am afraid there were not many affairs of importance going
forward among the calf-bound volumes, and Gwynne defaced more than
one sheet of legal cap., with gross caricatures and idle verses. If
the family took an interest in the fortunes of the house before, it
was redoubled now. To have the place rented at all was a novelty; but
to have it rented to personages of such opulence and distinction as
the Pallinders satisfied the most exact standards; and the colonel's
somewhat vague allusions to his design of ultimately buying it filled
these sanguine souls with delight. Let me do them justice: they would
one and all have indignantly refused thousands from people whom they
deemed unworthy. Have we not seen them rejecting poor Silberberg's
offer with contumely? But Colonel Pallinder with his Virginia accent
and his large manner recalled a generation contemporary with Governor
Gwynne himself, and the traditions of an antique and formal gentility.
The Pallinders were the only people so far who had succeeded in
residing in, and dispensing the hospitalities of the old Gwynne
house without offence to its owners; I think the Gwynnes took a kind
of vicarious pride in the spectacle. One after another, the entire
family called upon them, appraised them, patronised them. They drank
the colonel's fine sherry: they covertly eyed Mrs. Pallinder's suave
beauty, and Mazie's bewildering toilettes; they were at first repelled
and then overpowered by the rich tasteful changes in the ancient rooms;
the peacock-blue plush and old-gold satin in the south parlour; the
crimson wall-paper embossed with gilt figures the size of a cabbage in
the dining-room; the grand piano in the north parlour and piano-lamp
glorious with onyx slabs and pendant glass icicles of prisms--the
Gwynnes saw all these things with an Indian stolidity in the presence
of their tenants, but they came away pleased to the core. They went
down to Gwynne's office--yes, even Mrs. Horace Gwynne went!--and both
figuratively and literally patted him on the back. They were actually
civil to Templeton! Old Steven Gwynne, who had been violently alarmed
at first, supposing that these improvements and furnishings must be
paid for by himself and the rest of the heirs, magically recovered
his tranquillity so soon as he heard that Colonel Pallinder was doing
it all out of his own pocket; he pronounced the wall-paper and new
graining to be in the best of taste, although hardly the equal in
appearance or cost of what Governor Gwynne would have provided. Such
was the Gwynne enthusiasm that I am convinced it must have contributed
largely to the success of the Pallinders with our society; for, after
all, as unstable as they themselves were, the Gwynne position with
us was of the most stable; our city had known them for fifty years.
A family whose men were rigorously confined to the professions--all
except Horace Gwynne, who was in the wholesale grocery business,--a
family which numbered among its members a governor of a State--even
if it also numbered one or more "queer" people--such a family held,
unquestioned, the highest social rank. And Mrs. Horace Gwynne--she was
a daughter of old Bishop Hunter, which may be supposed in a measure to
set off the grocery business--frankly considered herself arbiter not
only of her husband's family, but of society in general as well; and
never doubted that in the matter of assigning people to their caste
and station one blast upon _her_ bugle-horn was worth a thousand men.

She performed her first visit in state and ceremony in her well-ordered
barouche--the Horace Gwynnes were fairly well-to-do, owing, people
said, to Mrs. Horace's implacable thrift--and eying the approaches
to the old house, as she drove up in a highly critical and examining
mood. Her sharp glance noted every change; the carefully-weeded sweep
and circle of the drive, the close-cut lawn and pruned shrubbery
pleased her like an incense to the Governor's memory. The place had not
looked so since his day. There was a length of red carpet down over
the flagged veranda and stone steps such as used to adorn the sacred
threshold thirty years before when she was a young bride just entered
into the family; this trivial thing moved her inexplicably as such
things do, and she descended at the door in a temper of less severity.
It augured well for the pair of ladies within, profanely peering
through their exceedingly high-priced lace curtains and wondering who
on earth the funny little old lady in the chignon and her best black
silk was.

Mazie, as soon as her acquaintance became more extended and intimate,
entertained us with a picturesque and I have no doubt entirely accurate
account of this and other Gwynne visits. If they amused her she was by
far too sharp to let it be seen; not thus do people attain popularity.
Mazie knew when, and in what company, and of what sort of things to
make fun; no gift can be more valuable to the social aspirant. No, Miss
Pallinder, curled up on her flowered-cretonne sofa, nibbling caramels,
and telling us about the Gwynnes, might have posed for the model of the
ingenue, girlish, inexperienced, and youthfully gay. "We didn't know
there was such a large family of Gwynnes," she explained. "Are any of
you related to them? No? They're perfectly lovely people, aren't they?
They've all called on us, and you know I think that's so kind when we
came here such strangers; we were awfully lonesome for a while. If it
hadn't been for Doctor Vardaman, I don't know what we'd have done.
Isn't he the _dearest_ old gentleman? Mamma fairly fell in love with
him at first sight; we have him up to dinner all the time, now. You
know it's such a terrible job for him to get a good servant--I'm sure
I can't see why. I told him he could hire me any day. I suppose it's
because it's a little lonely, and his house must be so quiet. We don't
have any trouble, but then we have such a gang of them they keep each
other company. But you know we were so surprised after people began
to call on us to find out there were so many Gwynnes! Mr. Peters had
said something about them--I think he's _lovely_, don't you? but we
hadn't any idea there was such a big connection; the house belongs
to all of them--did you know that? At least they all call it their
house. Such a dear old lady came--well, maybe not so very old, but
dressed in rather an old-fashioned way--Mrs. Horace Gwynne, of course
you all know her. She was just _sweet_, and took _such_ an interest.
She told mamma the piano ought to be on the other side of the room,
because there was so much better light by that window, and that was
where it always was when Governor Gwynne lived here. And she wanted
to know if we had noticed that those big cut-glass chandeliers in the
centre of the ceilings downstairs were an exact copy, only smaller,
of the one in the State-House--that was being built at the same time
as this house, and the Governor had the copies made, he admired the
design so much. Isn't that _interesting_? And then mamma had one of
the servants bring some hot coffee and little cakes, the way we always
do, you know, and Mrs. Gwynne told us about some kind of cookies she
has made that are the best she ever ate, so mamma asked her for the
recipe right off--mamma can't cook a bit, and don't go in the kitchen
once a month, but she's ever so much interested just the same. And when
Mrs. Gwynne went away she said she'd had a _lovely_ time--wasn't it
nice of her? and was going to have all her family call on us--wasn't
that kind? And she sent us a card to her reception; and right the
very next afternoon Mrs. Lawrence called--she's another Gwynne, isn't
she?--and asked us to Marian's coming-out party, _so_ sweet. And,
oh, girls, two such dear funny little old mai--I mean elderly, and
they aren't married, you know--Miss Gwynne and Miss Mollie Gwynne
came--what are you all laughing at, what's the joke? Well, I think
you're real mean not to tell me! _I_ thought they were _nice_--well,
of course, maybe they did seem kind of queer, but--well, it _was_ a
little funny," said Mazie, yielding to the laughter with apparent
reluctance; "we took them all over the house, because we thought, you
know, they'd be pleased to see the way we'd fixed it up. And they
_did_ seem rather tickled; Miss Gwynne said she thought they had never
had any tenants in their house before that appreciated it as we did.
And when we got to the south parlour Miss Mollie wouldn't go in, and
Miss Gwynne took us in and said in an awful whisper that everybody in
the family had been laid out in that room, but she'd try to get Miss
Mollie in to look at the chandelier which was an exact copy of the one
in the State-House--and Mollie hadn't been in the house for so long,
maybe it would refresh her, and take her mind off the funerals, you
know. So Mollie came in," went on Mazie, who by this time was openly
laughing like everyone else, "and she took one look and covered her
eyes like this, and said 'Oh, Sister Eleanor, I can't--I can't,' and
Sister Eleanor said, 'Look up, Mollie, look up'--just as if it was
Heaven, you know--'don't you remember the chandelier?' And then Miss
Mollie said, 'Oh, yes, I remember--shall I ever forget--boo-hoo!--it
cost three hundred and twenty-five dollars--boo-hoo!--every one of 'em
cost three hundred and twenty-five dollars!' But, honestly, girls,
it's all very well to laugh, but it gives me the creeps to think of
that room since I've known; I can't go into it without seeing a coffin
spread out right where our centre-table is; and you know there's that
lovely bisque monkey climbing up a cord that mamma has hanging from
the chandelier--think of that dangling down over a--B-r-r! I didn't
know about so many Gwynnes dying here. There's enough left to keep
the family going anyway, I should think. Was Mr. Peters' brother one
of 'em that died in the house? Eh? What! _Mercy!_ isn't that _awful_?
Why, I thought somebody said Sam Peters was in Honduras or Alaska or
somewhere--is it the same one? _Isn't_ that awful! Isn't it safe to
have him---- Horrors! Oh, girls, I think that's awful! And Mr. Peters
is such a dear, isn't he? So _nice_! But don't you tell him I said
that--now please don't, girls, I'd be ready to fall down dead I'd be
so ashamed if he knew I said he was a dear. I'd never look him in the
face again," said the ingenuous Mazie, knowing perfectly well--who
better?--that Gwynne would be miraculously informed of this damaging
admission before the next twenty-four hours were over.

The Pallinders were not quit of their landlords, for a few episodes
such as those Mazie described; but, as it happens, I never heard her
tell of Steven Gwynne's visit; and only learned the details afterwards
in a roundabout way from Doctor Vardaman and Gwynne, both of whom were
witnesses of that momentous event. Steven was about the age of Doctor
Vardaman and looked twenty years older; they had been boys together.
When Steven came in town--he lived in a weird little tumble-down
cottage with a ragged little farm to match it, several miles out in
the country--he always went to see the doctor, whom he called Jack,
and of whom he grew touchingly and somewhat embarrassingly fond
towards the last of his life. I remember him a tremulous old man with
wild grey hair and beard in clothing worse than shabby, and coarse
boots, walking with the aid of a ferocious-looking cane, a forlorn and
fantastic and rather alarming figure; yet he was really nothing to be
afraid of, although I suppose he was just not quite crazy. When you
came to know about him, poor old Steven filled one with pity and that
strange baseless remorse with which the view of weakness or suffering
sometimes afflicts us. The gifts are so unjustly portioned out; simple
flesh-and-blood rebels at the shame of it. These are whole, prosperous
and victorious; these maimed, mad, dull, helpless, or hopeless--and who
is to blame? It is none of our fault; none the less, the sight galls
us to the quick; and there are moments when the spectacle of a string
of navvies moiling soddenly in a ditch seems an outrage on humanity.
Something of this used to go through Doctor Vardaman's mind as he sat
in his library listening patiently and most humanely to his old-time
playfellow's endless rambling talk. Steven was a profuse talker;
he picked up crumbs of misinformation with a kind of squirrel-like
diligence; all his life he had been beginning something--law, medicine,
divinity, what had he not tried? He never learned anything; he
could hardly spell; he used to declaim heatedly against the tyranny
of schools, and had a great taste for phrases such as "Nature's
gentlemen." Even our tolerant society could not stand Steven Gwynne;
it was said that he was not stupid, and not much queerer, after all,
than some of the other Gwynnes, but--nobody could stand Steven Gwynne.
When he had nearly run through his patrimony, the Governor, who was
his cousin, took him in hand, regulated his affairs, and exiled him to
that little farm I have mentioned. Steven was upwards of thirty at this
time, but he obeyed the family great man peaceably enough; and there he
had lived ever since; indulging--theoretically only, by good luck--in
extraordinary beliefs about State Rights--during the Civil War--about
Science and Religion, about Property, about Marriage, about everything
and anything under the sun, harmless, distressing, and annoying. Young
Gwynne had inherited him along with the other responsibilities of the
GWYNNE ESTATE; and when, rumours of the new tenants having reached him,
the old gentleman appeared in the office, Gwynne must take him to call
upon them. "I would not wish to be lacking in etiquette," said Steven
elaborately. "And I'm told that Colonel Pallinder's family belong to
our circle. It is the duty of every one of the owners, and I trust
that it won't be forgotten that _I_ am one of the heirs to the Gwynne
estate," he added, eying the reluctant young man with some harshness,
for Steven was tenacious of his rights: "to--to hold out the right hand
of fellowship to--to the stranger within our gates."

"You never did before," Gwynne objected. "We've had two or three
tenants that you've never even seen. I don't really think it makes the
least difference----"

"I've never had this kind of tenants before," said Steven--which,
indeed, was an unanswerable argument. "Why, they've been there six
months! You don't understand about these social matters, Gwynne. It's
diplomacy. They're in Governor Gwynne's house, and it's natural they
should expect the Gwynne family to recognise them. Why, they might
take offence and leave! Besides, it's the part of kindness for us to
introduce them around, it--it gives 'em a place at once. People say:
'There's So-and-so, he's a friend of the Gwynnes.' That--that _settles_
it, don't you see? Why, now, to give you an example: Jake Bennett was
at my house the other day, and I told him I'd pay him as soon as the
rent from my property came in. He says: 'That's all right, Mr. Gwynne,
I know I can trust you. A Gwynne's word's as good as his bond,' he
says. That just shows. 'A Gwynne's word's as good as his bond,' he
says. 'I know _you_, Mr. Gwynne; you're Governor Gwynne's cousin, and
that's good enough for me, or anybody----'"

"Who's Jake Bennett?" asked Gwynne abruptly.

"Why, he's a man I buy a load of manure from once in a while. He's a
little queer in the upper story, you know," said old Steven, tapping
his own forehead with a wise nod. "But the poor fellow's heart's in the
right place. 'A Gwynne's word's as good as his bond,' he says----"

"You oughtn't to be owing that man, Cousin Steven," interrupted Gwynne.
He turned to his desk. "Here, this is the nineteenth, but I'll give
you yours now, and then you can pay him when you get home. Now, you
sign a receipt for this seven-fifty, and I'll tell Templeton I advanced
it, so he can hold it out of yours next month. Now you're getting your
December money in November, see? There won't be anything coming to you
from the house the first of December, understand? Seven dollars and
a half--sign here. And you pay that manure-fellow as soon as you get
home, will you?"

Steven would, he said. He folded the money together and crammed it into
his tattered old pocket-book; he handled it a little eagerly, never
having had much to handle. "We'd better start out to see them, the
Pallinders, you know--right away, hadn't we?" he said, glancing at the
clock.

Gwynne looked at him with a sinking heart. Of course he was not
ashamed of his kin. What! Ashamed of Cousin Steven! Gwynne would have
knocked down the man who hinted it. Nevertheless, it must be allowed
that Cousin Steven was more lax in matters relating to his personal
appearance even than became one of Nature's gentlemen. He did not
shave; he chewed tobacco; his boots manifested some acquaintance with
Jake Bennett's unpaid-for wares. We all know that these things really
do not count; a man's a man for a' that. It would be a shoddy soul that
would condemn him for not blacking his boots, or cavil at the fashion
of his coat. Still, we are conscious of a curious confusion within
us on the point; we muddle the clear stainless water of our theories
with the cloudy dye of our conventions; and to most of us, the quality
of gentleman seems somehow inextricably associated with clean linen.
Gwynne was no snob, but----

"Suppose we stop in to see Doctor Vardaman first and ask him to lend
you a collar and tie--you know that kind of high black stock he wears?"
he suggested weakly. "And then you--you might wash your hands, you
know, and, and--clean your nails. I should think your hands would be
cold this weather, Cousin Steven; don't you want to buy a pair of
gloves?"

"Gloves?" said Steven contemptuously. "You're too delicate, Gwynne.
You've got all effeminated, living the way you do. Gloves! D'ye suppose
Adam, the great father of mankind, wore gloves? You want to get out and
live next to grand old Nature, and old Mother Earth. Those Pallinders
are kind of dressy people, hey? Well, I don't care how dressy they
are; they can wear all the gloves they damn please. I'll let you know,
sir, that a Gwynne in his undershirt would be enough too good for any
Pallinder that ever lived--yes, or anybody else either!" A mottled
flush appeared on his old face; he raised his voice; he made wild
hasty gestures, thumping with his cane. "You want me to spend money
on gloves--drivelling ostentation! Gold's the curse of this country,
and you want me to----" Gwynne was a little alarmed at these signs of
excitement.

"All right, Cousin Steven, never mind," he said soothingly. "I--I just
wanted you to be comfortable, you know. You'd just as lief go and see
Doctor Vardaman, wouldn't you?"

Steven was readily mollified--or perhaps, diverted would be the better
word. Jack? Yes, he wanted to see old Jack--he wanted to talk to him
about something. Jack Vardaman was a man of sound sense, if he could
be brought to the right views. "He's been cramped by--by his career,
and his profession," said the old man, gesticulating with one hand as
they walked. "I tried it, studying medicine, you know--but it's not
broad enough, Gwynne, not broad enough. Jack finds it hard to grasp
any new ideas. I said to him the last time I was in: 'John, this
money trouble we're labouring under all proceeds from--from--from the
circulating medium. Why have any? Why have any circulating medium?
Poverty is a lacking in the essentials of life because of waste on
the superfluities through the use of money--circulating medium;
you want to rid yourself of the--the--the economic compulsion to
wrong-doing--I've been studying a pamphlet by William P. Drinkwater
that goes to the heart of the financial situation in this country.'
I say, get rid of the circulating medium. Gwynne, do away with it
utterly, fall back on exchange of the--the products of labour, and an
era of prosperity will set in such as this country has never seen!"

Gwynne reflected with a wry smile that it would be interesting to hear
an expression of opinion from Jake Bennett on the subject; times were
hard in eighty-one, as some of us remember, and in these disjointed
arguments, Gwynne recognised some echo of the political agitations
of the day. To be fair, Steven Gwynne was no more astray in speech
or manner than many of the William P. Drinkwaters; the exasperating
thing about him was that constant appearance of being able to control
himself, if he only would, which seems to be one of the specific
symptoms of unsoundness.

"You will find that the lack--I mean the absence of a medium of
coinage," said Steven, as they climbed on the car--"By George! It
_is_ cold, isn't it?" he interrupted himself, "I guess I'll put my
mitts on." And, to Gwynne's surprise, he produced those symbols of
ostentation and effeminacy from the pocket of his overcoat, and began
to adjust them with every display of comfort. They were a bright
"Maria-Louise" purple. "Knit worsted, you know," said Steven. "I got
'em at Billy Sharpe's at the corners, for seventy-five cents----"

"You're getting effeminated, Cousin Steven," said Gwynne, soberly.
"Mittens! The idea! Do you suppose Adam wore mittens?"

"Well, I understand Adam didn't wear breeches either," said Steven,
with an unexpected flash of humour. "I'm not luxurious, anyhow, like
you with your kids. But you're young--you'll learn." He laid his hand
on Gwynne's arm affectionately. "You're a good boy, Gwynne, if you
do get kind of stuck-up notions, you're a good boy," he said with
earnestness--and the young man's heart smote him.

He found his cousin so tractable on the journey out that he began to
have hopes of persuading Steven to the collar and wash-basin, with
Doctor Vardaman's help. "I'd rather Mrs. Pallinder saw him looking
clean, anyhow--she's so dainty herself," thought Gwynne, with a burning
change of colour. Alas! No such good luck! As they neared the Swiss
cottage, they beheld the lady tripping out from the door, exquisitely
trim and gracious, smiling and showing all her pretty white teeth,
with Doctor Vardaman escorting her to his gate, in his pleasantly
formal old way. Mrs. Pallinder dimpled, and flashed her clear grey
eyes under their amazingly black lashes and brows at Gwynne; she was
en-haloed in rich furs and soft scrolls of ostrich-plumes; she rustled
and fluttered with an enticing suggestion of dainty womanliness, and
there was something even in the frail absurdity of her little, thin,
high-heeled and pointed-toed boots that appealed to the masculine sense
almost touchingly. Old Steven Gwynne himself felt this jewelry-box
charm; he looked at her with open, child-like, rather frightened
admiration. Wealth and luxury for which in the abstract he had--or
believed himself in all sincerity to have--so vigorous a disdain,
exhibited thus concretely, stunned the old man; Mrs. Pallinder, to
the ordinary view merely an unusually handsome and well-dressed
woman, somehow represented to Steven that material power, confident,
lucky, successful, to which he had long ago bowed down in the person
of Governor Gwynne; and, if it had not been for the uplifting
consciousness of being that great man's cousin, Steven would have
shuffled and stammered before her like any school-boy.

"Mr. Peters," said Mrs. Pallinder, delightedly. She withdrew a hand
from her coquettishly fashionable little muff--we wore them very small
in those days, a mere cuff of fur--and gave it to Gwynne, who was
oddly nervous, with soothing self-possession. The readiness with which
she set herself to the business of putting Steven at his ease was a
grateful thing to see; she accepted his purple mitt, and shed on him
a smile as winning as if he had been the most desirable acquaintance
in the world. These courtesies, we have been assured, are, in reality,
nothing but small evidences of a kind heart; yet I never thought
Mrs. Pallinder a kind-hearted woman. Her elegant cordialities were
not spontaneous; she spread the conversation with a thin glittering
varnish of smiles, agreeable speeches, pretty conventionalities;
one sometimes felt uneasily that her tact was almost aggressively
brilliant, her good manners too flawless. But Gwynne, having in mind,
maybe, this very incident, was quite enthusiastic about her to his
intimates; Mrs. Pallinder was so kind, so considerate, a--a--a really
sweet woman--sweet-tempered, he meant, of course, wasn't she? As for
Steven, he proclaimed her without exception the most polished lady he
had ever met. Doctor Vardaman--but one could not always be sure of
what Doctor Vardaman thought. "Mrs. Pallinder was an uncommon sort of
woman," he used to say with an unreadable expression. "I admired her
very much--almost as much as I wondered at her. When we met at my gate
she contrived to look at us three men, as if every one severally were
_the_ man in the world in whom she was most interested. Are ladies
taught these things from their cradles? I am told so; but I never saw
one of them do it so well as Mrs. Pallinder. It's a tolerably stiff
job to listen to poor Steven discourse on the circulating medium.
_Experto credite!_ I've done it myself for hours at a stretch that I
piously hope will count for me when I get to the Place of Punishment.
But I'm sure I never could have done it with so perfect a grace as
Mrs. Pallinder. We went up to the house, she walking the whole way
with Steven, Gwynne and I following in the rear, humbly grateful and
admiring. 'You're not a married man, Mr. Gwynne?' says Mrs. Pallinder,
snatching at a change of topic in one of the pauses of Steven's
eloquence. 'I've met so many charming Mrs. Gwynnes----' 'Madame, I am
not,' said Steven. 'Do you know why the eagle is called the bird of
freedom, Mrs. Pallinder?' Here," said the doctor, with a malicious
grin, "I thought I detected a sort of crooked sequence in Steven's
thoughts, but Mrs. Pallinder was as nearly gravelled as I ever saw
her; and you must admit the subject was somewhat abruptly introduced.
'A--er--why, I must give it up, I am afraid,' she said. 'It's a riddle,
isn't it? I'm not very good at riddles.' 'Because it never mates in
captivity, ma'am,' says Steven profoundly. 'That's the way I am; the
chains of _gold_, the circulating----' and I suppose he was going to
intimate by a delicate allegory that he couldn't afford a wife and
family, but we reached the house at that moment, and the changes in its
appearance switched him off, as it were."

The old man was, in fact, rather pathetically overawed by all the
Pallinder sumptuousness; he looked down at his boots doubtfully, and
trod with caution on the velvet moss-roses and lilies of the south
parlour. It required the telling of the cut-glass chandelier story
to revive his spirit; and Mrs. Pallinder further smoothed matters by
asking his opinion of the new wall-paper with a caressing deference.
Afterwards, it is true, Steven went away in a mood of gracious
approval, and bragged freely with no little satisfaction about his
tenants in his house; but at the first moment, he was both startled
and unhappy. There were gilt mirrors all about that gave back a
pitiless reflection of the party, and of them all, I believe that
Doctor Vardaman was the only one who was not faintly ill at ease. The
situation was actually relieved by the entrance of old Mrs. Botlisch,
as incongruous a figure in the scene as Steven himself. "And somehow or
other," said the doctor, "I am sure the look of her for once was a kind
of comfort to Gwynne; it seemed as if she and poor Steven were a--well,
a stand-off, with the balance in favour of Steven. You know Mrs.
Pallinder was always saying in a gentle regretful way that her mother
was 'eccentric.' She was, in fact--ahem!--I am informed by the ladies
of my acquaintance," Doctor Vardaman would say, with another grin,
"that she was a dreadfully 'common' old person who drank and swore
like a trooper, but was as sane as anybody. Whereas, we all know that
whatever Steven's faults, he was not--was not entirely responsible."

"That old Gwynne feller's crazy, ain't he?" the old woman said to him
as the doctor sat at the Pallinder dinner-table that evening. There
were a number of other guests, for the colonel's hospitalities were
already well known; it was a pleasing picture of evening-coats, white
shoulders, brilliant glassware, and cutlery; and Mrs. Pallinder at
the head, lent the table a distinction like that of some expensive
ornament or flower. Across the way sat her mother, shovelling in
French peas on the blade of her knife, that being one of the phases
of her eccentricity, and disposing of everything from soup to sweets
with an audible gusto. "It's astonishing!" said the doctor to himself,
his glance travelling from one woman to the other. "Pardon me, Mrs.
Botlisch, you were saying----?"

"I say that old Gwynne feller's crazy," said Mrs. Botlisch. "He ain't
dangerous, is he?"

"What? Steven?" said the doctor, and although she was very nearly
right, he recoiled inwardly. "Why, no, he's not crazy, he's a little--a
little eccentric," he finished, conscious of a wretched irony in the
phrase.

"Pooh, pshaw, don't you tell _me_, Doc., he's as crazy as a bedbug,"
said Mrs. Botlisch coolly. "It's a pity about that young Peters' folks
being that way, so many of 'em, ain't it?"




CHAPTER SEVEN


It will be seen that, by the close of their period, Doctor Vardaman
had grown to be pretty familiar in the Pallinder household. Mazie
professed a prodigious admiration for him. "He does say the cutest
things!" she remarked enthusiastically. But Mazie's attitude toward
the other sex was never anything but that of complete appreciation.
I have seen her turn her eyes on the coloured butler when commanding
a fresh relay of waffles with an expression to draw from him rubies,
let alone waffles! Her liking for the doctor was perhaps as sincere a
sentiment as she could harbour; who could forbear a fondness for that
genial, tolerant, grey-headed satirist? In him were to be found all
the strangely dissonant yet most manly qualities of his generation.
In the early eighties there was still extant a tribe of hearty old
gentlemen who wore black silk stocks, swore freely, and knew Henry
Clay. You may see their strong humorous faces, shirt-frills, and waving
forelocks upon scores of cracked canvases in how many Middle-Western
homes! Grandfather rode circuit with Swayne and Tom Ewing; he sat
in Congress with that Southern statesman of whom it was said that
when he took snuff all South Carolina sneezed. Perhaps he remembered
Chapultepec and the heights of Monterey; it is likely that he surveyed
the first turnpike, designed the first Courthouse, performed the first
mastoid operation in the State, in the country. In all things I think
he played a man's part, and maybe something more, without any heroics;
I knew many of him, and it cannot be denied that he would sometimes
get a sheet in the wind's eye, and tell robustly indecorous stories
after the second glass of whisky-punch sitting around the hearth of
a winter's evening. There was that one about the English visitor at
Niagara, who, being conducted around the place by the guide, out to the
little tower on Table Rock, and down on the _Maid of the Mist_ like
everyone else, wrote his name in the guests' book, and a conundrum: "Why
am I like Desdemona? Because----" But, at this point, by an ingenious
manoeuvre, someone invariably called me from the room! And, strange
to say, I was not suffered to return; Desdemona was in the nature of
a prelude, I suspect. We have changed all that; who so plain-spoken
as the lady-novelist of to-day, whom everybody reads, and, what is
more, discusses? Who so wise as our young people? Nobody would be
at the pains to banish them from the room. They would not laugh at
or with grandpa; they would only wonder a little and pity him. They
are all gone, all these humane old lads with their whisky-punches,
their dreadful old fly-blown anecdotes, their extraordinary, innocent
coarseness of mind. The type has vanished from among us, extinct like
the dinosaur, dead as Desdemona! It is hard to figure them pacing
beneath the cloudy porticos of that rather shoddy gilt Heaven in which
they stoutly believed; but do they then wander the empty house of Dis,
the idle, idle land? That were a doom at once unkind and unjust; rather
let me fancy them beside the cheerful hearth in some comfortable limbo
of good companionship and honest material pleasures; and if that too be
a heresy and interdict, may the sod rest light where they sleep!

Doctor Vardaman differed signally from his contemporaries in being not
at all disposed to punch and pruriency. He would have reddened like
a winter apple at Desdemona; and I am bound to say that here Colonel
Pallinder met him on equal ground. It would be worth a moralist's while
to inspect that stout piece of goods which is men's modesty beside
the curiously flimsy fabric we call the modesty of women. "It's funny
about men," Kitty Oldham confided to me once. "They can be as bad as
they want to, and so, when they're good they seem an awful lot better
than we are!" That may be the root of the matter; Kitty was undeniably
astute and observant in various small and eminently feminine ways.
"Nobody's all good anyhow," was another of her sayings, "nor all bad
either. I know by myself!" Colonel Pallinder was an example, too, had
we been aware of it. I have heard since from many indignant sufferers
that he was a swindling adventurer; yet Bayard himself could not have
walked more circumspectly in certain paths. He believed with all his
heart that his wife and daughter were beautiful and gifted above the
ordinary lot of mortals; I think they never had a wish ungratified.
That hand of his which they tell me was so ruthlessly busy about other
peoples' pockets, was forever emptying his own for the satisfaction of
his womenkind; the trait does not make any the better man of him, but I
am sure there have been worse. His behaviour toward Mrs. Botlisch was
a lesson in forbearance and good manners. He did more than endure her;
he showed her precisely the same chivalric deference as the rest of us.
Perhaps he was a little florid in the Southern style, and as became a
military man, but I think he was never ridiculous. It happened one day
that an ill-advised or maybe merely ill-bred young man having blurted
out some joke, high-flavoured, derogatory to Mrs. Botlisch, over one of
those famous juleps in the Pallinder dining-room, the colonel rose up
and with a severe countenance, laid his hand upon the joker's arm and
jerked him upright without much ceremony. "Don't mind him, Colonel,"
interposed an onlooker. "He--he's not used to ladies' society, you
know." "Sir," said the colonel sedately, "I should have said he was not
used to the society of gentlemen!" and with that bundled the offender
out of the room and the house. Nor did the action make him enemies; the
rest of the male company expressed an unqualified approval.

"I was a little afraid that he might want to resort to the 'code' as
practised in Virginia or Mississippi, or wherever he hails from,"
said Doctor Vardaman, commenting on this occurrence, "and call upon
my services as surgeon; but he was too shrewd, or in his way, too
large-minded for that. On the whole Pallinder was the most attractive
as well as the most diverting humbug I ever knew or can imagine. I
liked him against my will. He was generous to the last penny--with
money that was shadily come by, to be sure, but what would you have? He
might have been as tight as the bark on a tree. He was a brave man and
had borne himself gallantly on the field, and I am sure uncomplainingly
in defeat. There was no sham about that limp of his at any rate. But he
never spoke of these things, nor ever flourished the Lost Cause in your
face, that I know of. Maybe it was all part of his policy, but I like
better to think that he had the qualities of his defects."

It is to be supposed that Colonel Pallinder returned the doctor's
regard. The old gentleman was their nearest, in fact almost their
only neighbour, and the colonel used to dilate in comic vein upon the
advantages of having a physician next door, and keeping on good terms
with him. "'Hang it all, Miranda,' I said to my wife the other day,
'what do you want to call in young Sawbones--Pellets--whatever his name
is, the doctor-lad you had here last week for, when you can have twice
his experience and ten times the gumption he ever had or will have,
by merely going as far as your own front gate? Pellets is a homoeop.,
anyhow. I don't like homoeops. Give me the old school; they knock you
on the head with their whacking doses and kill you or cure you, put you
out of your misery any way, while the others are still measuring out
their infernal four dips of this and two swallows of that. When Mazie
there was three years old she ate a whole bottle of sugared pills while
the nurse wasn't looking. If it had been Doctor Vardaman's medicine,
we'd have had to send for him and the undertaker and let 'em fight
it out, and I'd back the doctor every time. As it was--never feazed
her! Day before yesterday, my coachman came to me: 'Don' know what's
the matter with me, boss. Feel mighty bad.' I asked him if he'd been
to the doctor. 'Yes, sah, he give me this. I'se got to take fo' dips
every hour.' 'Look here, James,' says I. 'I want you to notice just
one thing. You're a big man, and that's an almighty small bottle. Do
you think four dips of that is going to cure six-foot-two of nigger?
It don't stand to reason. When I'm sick,' says I, 'I go to Doctor
Vardaman. I want a _doctor_ to take care of _me_. Quit practice? Oh,
pshaw, pooh! Any doctor will always pull an ass out of a ditch on the
Sabbath day--what's that they say about the letter of the law killing
the spirit? Now you better go to him, too,' says I, 'if you know what's
good for you. You hear _me_?' 'Lordy, Mistah Pallindah, you wouldn't
tu'n me off for not gwine to yo' doctah?' 'No, James,' says I. 'I'd
turn you off for not having any sense!' I believe he did go to you,
doctor, and I'm much obliged. Of course you'll send the bill to me. I'm
not like some people that think anything's good enough for a nigger--I
want the poor devils that work for me to have the best that's going.
When a man's brought up on a Virginia plantation with three or four
hundred of 'em around, and knows he owns 'em all, and is responsible
in a way to his Maker for every one of those black souls--why, sir,
you can't get over the feeling all at once. Here, you, George, Sam,
one of you bring another bottle of that twelve-year-old Bourbon and
a syphon of soda. I won't have any whisky in the house, sir, under
seven years old, and preferably ten--preferably ten or twelve. It
comes a few dollars higher a bottle, but when you're getting a thing,
you might as well get it good, and if whisky's not properly aged it's
raw stuff, firewater, worst thing in the world for the stomach. My
wife sometimes accuses me of extravagance in the table, but I always
say: 'Well, Miranda, we've got to _live_, haven't we?' As long as
Phosphate preferred keeps soaring skywards, and dividends keep rolling
in without my having to do a lick of work to get 'em, _I_ don't see
that we're living too high. We keep within bounds, I guess. Within
bounds. I don't intend to spend all my income just because my principal
is invested in something as solid as a rock. By George, sir, I always
save up a little wad every year--I can do it without straining myself,
and manage to scratch along in tolerable comfort besides--so as to
buy whatever Phosphate I can lay hands on, but it's getting scarce,
mighty scarce. It's been pretty well gobbled up by the big fellows with
money that always get hold of all the good things; only I'm what you
might call on the inside, you know, and that gives me a chance to help
myself or let in a friend once in a while. But it's no use showing
the figures to Madame there, she can't make head or tail of 'em,
women never can; she says they give her the headache. Now last week,
I let out inadvertently--for I try never to bring my little business
anxieties home--that I stood to lose fifteen thousand if Ozark Field
went off another point. Gad, sir, she laid awake all night--thought we
were going to the poorhouse right off! Couldn't help laughing, though
I did feel sorry for her, too. Nothing I could say would reassure
her--women are funny. Well, I wasn't just longing to lose my fifteen
thousand either, a man don't like to be inconvenienced that way, even
temporarily. Fifteen thousand means something to me, though it wouldn't
be much to the people I'm thrown with all the time. I tell you, sir,
those big capitalists, their money kind of scares you, and yet it
gives you a mighty secure feeling to know that they're behind these
enterprises. All their millions are made up of thousands after all, and
they're not going to put a single thousand where they can't keep an eye
on it, and see it breed. Fortunately Ozark Field went up to a hundred
and seventeen instead of declining--I had confidence in it from the
first. I bought at eighty, you know, so I'm pretty easy in my mind just
now. If anybody were to ask me, though, I'd advise 'em to buy right
now, for it won't ever take another drop, and I expect it'll be out of
sight by the first of the year. Sam, chopped ice to Doctor Vardaman,
and give Mr. Lewis a fresh glass."

Archie Lewis sat looking into his tumbler with a rather queer
expression as the waiter put it down before him after sundry dexterous
operations with lemon-peel and bitters. Perhaps he was thinking that,
for a man who made a point of never bringing his business-affairs
home, it was truly remarkable how inevitably Colonel Pallinder worked
around to them in the course of a conversation, no matter what the
subject with which it started. Phosphate preferred, Lone Star common,
Ozark Field--I could not begin to enumerate the "enterprises" in which
the colonel and his capitalist friends were interested. The jargon of
the market-place will always be jargon to me; I dare say I have not
even quoted it aright. To this day I have never been able to find out
what Phosphate was; it may have been mined, assayed, and smelted; or
strained out of a river, or compounded with retorts and crucibles for
all of me. But, although nobody knew anything about it, it was, as I
have said, easy to see that Phosphate, in Templeton's formula, was a
paying proposition. Look at the Pallinders; people couldn't live that
way for nothing; this we said to one another, thinking it clinched the
argument, and not knowing that people live "in magnificent state,"
for nothing. Who is so care-free, so luxurious in his habits, so
open-handed and open-hearted as the man who never pays his debts? I
know of no one more to be envied. One of the things the Pallinders did
was to wall in with glass the large porch of the dining-room, install a
heating-apparatus, and make a conservatory of it; this, too, although
they had leased the Gwynne house for three years only, and Mrs.
Pallinder was constantly complaining of their cramped and inconvenient
quarters. "Of course," she said languidly, "one can't expect much of
a house at such a low rent, but the colonel and I have _always_ had
separate dressing-rooms. I thought I could make one do, for a while;
but we're too crowded for any peace or comfort. The colonel wants to
buy this house and add to it--but the end of it will be we'll have to
build. The colonel keeps telling me to go to an architect or send for
one--I shouldn't trust to anyone in this little town, you know. We'd
have to select the building-lot, and get some man from Boston or New
York to come out and look at it, and make the designs accordingly. But
I'm so awfully lazy I can't make up my mind to all that bother and
worry."

Such a low rent! Kitty and I exchanged a glance in spite of our
manners. Archie Lewis had told us that Templeton, whom he saw every
day in his father's office, had told _him_ he had made the lease at
a hundred and seventy-five a month; we did not think that a very
low rent, we who lived contentedly enough in houses at one-fifth
that amount, like by far the greater number of our friends. But the
Pallinders plainly did not measure by our standards. Mazie had a fresh
dress for every party; she wore almost as much jewelry as her mother,
and when Mrs. Pallinder came out in all her diamonds, she was the most
resplendent spectacle our society ever witnessed. Will anyone ever
forget her appearance as _Astarte_ at the Charity Ball? She twinkled
all over with jewelled stars, serpents, rings, ear-drops, gew-gaws any
_Astarte_ might have been proud to own--"goddess excellently _bright_!"
as Doctor Vardaman said. The ball took place during the Christmas
holidays--the Pallinders' second Christmas with us--just before Mazie
went to Washington, and, to quote the _State Journal_, "it was an event
long to be remembered in the social annals of our city." Odd-Fellows'
Hall was "a fairy-like dream of beauty," the same masterpiece of
descriptive rhetoric reported. Mazie deferred her visit so as not to
miss it, and went as _Folly_ in a white dress with spangles--glittering
fringes of white beads half a yard deep. Kitty Oldham appeared as
_Diana Vernon_--"I can wear the big hat with feathers afterwards,
you know," she thriftily remarked; she looked exceedingly trig in
a scarlet waistcoat with her little chin cocked up on a white lawn
stock. There was the usual supply of Watteau shepherdesses--I was
one of them--toreadors, Continental soldiers in buff-and-blue,
Queens-of-Hearts, Pierrots, and so on. Mrs. Pallinder's diaphanous and
low-cut magnificence, heavily hung with jewelry, outshone everybody,
and was a target for considerable unkind comment. A woman of her age!
It was startling, to say the least. She could have gone as Queen
Elizabeth or Lady Macbeth, but this was almost too theatrical; of
course, she was a beautiful woman, and looked scarcely older than her
own daughter, still----! "The reporters will describe every square
inch of Mrs. Pallinder's costume," some young fellow said to Kitty
Oldham. "They won't have to say much," retorted Kitty, with an oblique
glance--a remark which, backed by her mother's well-known acidity of
tongue, made Kitty's, reputation as a wit in our circle. The one person
whom it did not seem to amuse was Gwynne Peters; and he listened with
a singularly grum and discomposed face, and afterwards stalked off
without a word, although he was in general, genial enough. Something
must have gone at cross-purposes with Gwynne that night; he wore a
Charles Stuart dress, and stood about in gloomy attitudes, with his
sword, black velvet, and lace collar, looking the part to perfection;
and he went away quite early after showing no attention to anyone
except Mrs. Pallinder herself. But, indeed, the young men were about
her constantly, and _Astarte's_ popularity was not greatly increased
thereby.

I remember driving home with Mazie to luncheon a day or so later, and
coming unexpectedly upon a decent-looking young man sitting timidly
amongst the gilt legs and peacock-blue upholstery of Mrs. Pallinder's
parlour, waiting to "interview" that lady. He represented the _State
Journal_, he said; and wanted to know if it was true that Mrs.
Pallinder had worn her five-thousand-dollar diamond necklace at the
ball, and if she would allow the _Journal_ to publish a photograph of
her in the costume.

"La me, _I_ don't know; you'll have to ask her yourself," said Mazie
in her gay drawl. And presently Mrs. Pallinder came in, very tall,
sweeping and elegant in a long red broadcloth coat with black fur
and braid, and "dolman" sleeves; and a black and red _capote_, as we
called them. Laugh if you will; that was the way we dressed the winter
of eighty-three--when we could afford it! The photograph appeared
duly; and a picture of the necklace, too, with several more strands
and pendants than belonged to it, so that we concluded the artist had
drawn on his imagination or some representation of the crown-jewels of
England, in order to be more effective.

"Pooh, that necklace never cost five thousand dollars, I don't believe
it," Kitty said afterwards. She was a sharp little creature, as I have
hinted; and her critical view of our Southern friends may have been
shared by others, to judge by a remark young Lewis made to Doctor
Vardaman, as they approached the latter's gate on their way from the
Pallinders'. "You've got to take a long breath and get a good hold of
something when the colonel's around," said Archie, knocking the ash
from his cigar on the wrought-iron scroll along the top of the fence.
He eyed the doctor enigmatically.

"I don't understand?"

"If you don't you might be blown away."




CHAPTER EIGHT


It seemed written, foreordained, Gwynne Peters used to say, half in
amusement, half in distaste, that his grandfather's house should
forever be either completely retired from notice, or else figure
gaudily in the limelight of a publicity that would have caused its
dignified founder untold wrath and mortification. "All that newspaper
gabble about the Pallinders and the diamond necklace is to blame for
this!" said Gwynne, when he read in the _State Journal_ a week after
the Charity Ball, a circumstantial account under flaming headlines of
how "the mansion of the late Governor Gwynne, the historic landmark
in the suburbs of our city, on Richmond Avenue, not far from the
junction of the Lexington and Amherst car-lines, now occupied by
the well-known society leaders, Colonel and Mrs. William Pallinder,
was the objective-point of a burglarious attack last night about 12
P. M." It appeared that the burglarious attack had failed!
the diamonds were still safe--as, indeed, the thief whom "our vigilant
and efficient Chief of Police, Captain O'Brien, in spite of every
effort, had not yet been able to locate." Friends of the family would
be relieved to hear that Mrs. Pallinder's venerable mother, Mrs. Jacob
Botlisch, had experienced no ill effects from this exciting midnight
episode; Mrs. Pallinder herself, on the contrary, was quite prostrated,
and could not see one of the innumerable reporters who besieged the
house. "It's a perfect persecution," Gwynne announced with unwonted
heat, having called the next day to inquire, and been ushered into
a parlourful of these gentry. "Here were all those fellows roosting
about like vultures--and the greatest racket and confusion! Just as if
poor Mrs. Pallinder hadn't been lying upstairs sick with the fright
and worry. She--she's a very delicate, sensitive woman, you know,"
said the young man, with the easy flush that showed so over his thin,
fair-skinned face. He left his card, and not long after the florist's
boy came to the back door, having received express instructions not
to ring the bell and annoy Mrs. Pallinder, with one of those large
pasteboard boxes, wherein for all their prosaic look, so much romance
is carted about the world. Truly a red-faced lad with a cold in the
nose, and patches of alien materials applied to prominent parts of
his trousers, is an odd figure to be employed upon these sentimental
errands--yet such are all florists' boys. A reporter pounced on this
one as he strolled jauntily around the house, whistling in a high and
cheery fashion under his burden. "What you got there, Johnny?" said
this inquiring gentleman. "Vi'lets." "Who for?" "S'Pallinder." "Well,
who from then?" "Dunno. They're five dollars a hundred." The maid took
them in, and doubtless Mrs. Pallinder's delicate and sensitive nature
was greatly soothed by the tribute.

The colonel showed himself most genial and accessible. Interviews a
column in length and photographs of everything and everybody concerned
graced the front pages of the _Journal_, the _Record_, the _Evening
Despatch_. A complete history of the old Gwynne house up to date was
"featured." The reporters even approached Gwynne for a "few words."
Templeton saw himself in print to his huge gratification: "Mr. Virgil
H. Templeton, who has controlled the destinies of the Gwynne property
for many years, was seen at his office No. 16a Wayne Street, and
says----" Templeton bought an armful of copies of the paper and sent
them about with blue pencillings around the paragraph. "_His_ office!
Well, I like that!" said Judge Lewis, in mock indignation.

"Thank you, I thank you for your kind inquiries, gentlemen," said
Colonel Pallinder, as he received the newspaper cohorts. "Mrs.
Pallinder is resting easily, and will be recovered in a few days, I
think, from the nervous shock. It was what I may call a nerve-racking
adventure for a woman. My daughter, I am thankful to say, is in
Washington, visiting some relations of ours, the Lees and Randolphs.
I have telegraphed her not to worry when she sees the papers. She
left last night on the nine o'clock train; as it happened, two of our
young friends, Mr. J. B. Taylor and Mr. Johns, had driven down to the
depot with her to see her off, after dining here, and came back in
the carriage at my request to spend the night. We had all retired,
when about midnight my wife, who is a sufferer from severe neuralgic
headaches, got up, feeling one coming on, and went into our daughter's
room, in search of some bromide which generally gives her relief. She
did not light the gas, and was groping for the bottle in the dark when
she felt a strong draught of cold air from an open window. She says her
only thought was: 'How careless of Mazie to leave that window open!
Now my head will be worse than ever!' and was going toward the window
to close it, when, with a scuffle, up jumps this scoundrel directly in
front of her! She says it was as if the floor had opened and belched
him up at her feet. She screamed--I trust, gentlemen, I shall never
hear such another cry of terror as my wife gave!" said the colonel
fervently. "I sprang out of bed, and rushed to the spot just in time
to see the fellow scrambling through the window. Most unfortunately,
I had no weapon, or I think I may safely say that would have been the
last time he ever went hunting for diamond necklaces. The window is on
the south side of the house; as you observe there is a vine growing on
a frame directly in front of it all the way up to the roof, by which
he climbed up and down. We found his tracks all around in the damp
ground at the bottom, but lost them in the turf at a short distance
from the house. Nothing but the very strong sentiment I have for the
owners of the place, which, I need hardly remind you, belongs to one
of the finest old families in the State, and especially for my dear
young friend Mr. Peters, whose boyhood days were passed here--nothing
but that feeling prevents me from having the vine uprooted and the
trellis torn away. The family, as is natural, are very much attached
to everything about their old home. Well, as I was saying, in as short
time as we could manage, the young men and I got our clothes on, called
the cook and housemaid to look after my wife and her mother, and young
Taylor and I set out to explore the grounds, leaving Mr. Johns here
to protect the house. We searched high and low without success, and
down by the gate fell in with Doctor Vardaman and his man Huddesley
just starting out on a tour of exploration on their own hook. It seems
that the doctor's man had waked some little while before, thinking
he heard a noise in their hen-house; and as you know we are a little
uncomfortably near Bucktown[4] here--my own servants are coloured,
for that matter--Huddesley thought he'd better investigate. He told
us he got up and looked out of the window, and distinctly saw a man
walking rapidly away from the rear part of the doctor's lot where it
joins the Gwynne property, in the direction of this house--or, at any
rate, making for the park entrance, with something under his arm which
Huddesley is positive was a chicken, but which was much more likely,
I think, to have been a kit or bundle of burglars' tools. Well, then,
gentlemen," Colonel Pallinder continued, pulling at his goatee with a
sly smile, "Huddesley got himself partly dressed, and started out very
courageously with the kitchen poker; but, getting as far as the gate,
the park looking pretty gloomy and forbidding, and the night rather
dark, he concluded discretion was the better part of valour, and turned
back and aroused the doctor. We joined forces and fairly raked the
premises, but to no purpose--the rascal had made too good use of his
time, and we, of course, had had some unavoidable delays. I wrote a
note to the Chief of Police, and sent my coachman down with it, and we
all went to bed again. As you see, it's a very simple story, and hardly
deserves your trouble. My own theory is that the thief, probably some
well-known criminal whom they will have no trouble in catching, passing
through town, or perhaps, making a casual stay here--that sort of
gentry never have any home--read about Mrs. Pallinder's jewels in the
papers, and thought he might make a good haul.

"Now I consider that you gentlemen are partly to blame for that, and
I bear no malice, only I wish you'd be a little more particular. Now
if you'll just correct one report: Mrs. Pallinder's necklace did _not_
cost five thousand dollars. It cost--ah--well, gentlemen, it was a
present to my wife on our last wedding anniversary, and to let the
cat out of the bag, it was bought with the surplus of a little flyer
in Phosphate I took--now I beg you won't say anything about that in
the papers--you might say, with entire truth, that it did _not_ cost
five thousand dollars. The necklace and earrings together came to more
than that, and I believe I bought her some other trinket at the time, a
brooch or something--but the whole business was not more than eight or
nine thousand, and no one item was quite as much as five. Now if you'll
just revise that statement, I'd be obliged. Sam, bring the whisky."

J. B., reading the colonel's version slightly condensed, with the
truth about the diamonds carefully set forth, chuckled freely. "Well,"
he said. "That was about the way it happened. But you ought to have
heard old Mrs. Botlisch! She indulged in very meaty language, I never
heard meatier, not even from a darky roustabout on the levee at New
Orleans--you know somebody said she'd been cook on a canal-boat, and
I declare I shouldn't wonder if that were true. She was mad at being
waked up, mad at 'Mirandy,' mad at 'Bill,' mad at Teddy and me, and the
thief and the diamonds and everything else. But let me tell you about
Pallinder. We started out to ransack the park; you know how it was
last Tuesday, a cold, sleety January night, without any snow falling,
or we could have followed the fellow's tracks. As it was we just had
to go prowling around the walls, and into the shrubbery. I had an old
bird-gun of the colonel's, that hadn't been fired for years. It was a
muzzle-loader, with a kind of sawed-off barrel, and I'll bet it would
scatter like a charge of bribery in the State Legislature. Pallinder
hadn't anything but one of these little light rattan canes. When we
got down to the gate, somebody bounced out of hiding and ''Alt!' says
he, in a shrill voice. ''Alt!' That fellow Huddesley is English, you
know, and drops his _h_'s; he's an awfully funny little chap. Well, I
''alted.' I was taken by surprise, and I didn't want to let fly with
my blunderbuss without knowing what it was all about. But what do you
think Pallinder did? Walked right up to him, took him by the collar
and pulled him out--yes, sir, that's what the colonel did, without
hesitating one instant. Pretty cool, I call it, for a man of his age,
practically unarmed, with a lame leg. Of course, I wasn't frightened;
there was nothing to frighten anybody, and besides I had a gun; but I
wasn't sharp and ready like the colonel; I hesitated. But Pallinder
walked right up, collared him and pulled him forward. 'Come out o'
that!' says he. 'Who are you?' 'Oh, Lord, Colonel Pallinder, sir, is it
you?' says Huddesley, trembling all over. He was the worst scared man
you ever saw. 'Hi didn't know you. The doctor will be 'ere in two twos,
sir. 'E told me to 'alt hanybody Hi saw.' And then along came Doctor
Vardaman with a lantern. 'What on earth is all this?' he said. 'Is this
your chicken-thief, Huddesley?'

"As we went back to the house, I said to the colonel: 'That was rather
startling, wasn't it, being shouted at to halt that way?' He laughed
and said yes, it reminded him of a time he rode head foremost into the
Yankee pickets one night--'when both armies were manoeuvring around the
Potomac basin--not very long before Chancellorsville, you know. I was
carrying despatches,' he said. I asked him what he did. 'Well, I guess
I did about two-forty, and it wasn't over a very good track either!'
he said and laughed again. 'I lit right out. They shot my horse. I
wasn't lame then, though.' And I couldn't get another word out of him.
I wish he'd talk simply like that all the time," the young man added,
thoughtfully. "Instead of gassing around so much."

J. B. himself declined to be interviewed--amiably enough, but still
he declined. And Doctor Vardaman was another to whom the reporters
appealed in vain. "The circumstances are exactly as Colonel Pallinder
related them," he said to the only one whom he would consent to see.
"And there is really nothing for me to say. I had gone to bed when my
man Huddesley pounded on the door and called me. I got up and found him
breathless, and very much excited; he was half-dressed, had been out
of doors, and as I could see, was badly frightened. One cannot expect
heroic behaviour in a man of his calibre, and on the whole I think he
showed a very good spirit. As soon as I understood what he had seen, I
ordered him to go outside and wait until I got my clothes on, and to
challenge anyone he might see about the park gate, for I immediately
suspected that my chicken-house would not offer much inducement to a
thief alongside of Mrs. Pallinder's diamonds. The man has been quite
sick since from exposure and excitement. I wish you a very good-day,
sir."

And with this the _Journal_ man and others had to be content. Huddesley
himself would doubtless have been more expansive, but the honest
fellow went to bed with a serious sore throat and cold the day after
the attempted robbery, and could not leave his room for a week. Mrs.
Maginnis held sway in the doctor's kitchen, dispensing unlimited tea
and gossip to the grocers' men, milkmen, postmen, even the baffled
reporters and "plain-clothes," or uniformed detectives that called in
shoals for days. "The docthor won't see yez," she told the latter, "so
it's no use askin'. An' as for Misther Huddesley, he's on th' flat of
his back, an' can't raise his voice above a whisper. Annyway, he says
he couldn't swear to th' man, if it was to save his immorrtal sowl. It
was too dark, an' he only saw 'twas a man gallivantin' around where
he'd no business. It's a foine-spurted bye he was to go afther that
thievin', murderin' divil with th' poker, an' I'm glad th' docthor's
got him instid of that drunken spalpeen he had befure; him that got on
a tear, I mane, an' wint up to th' big house with a knife yellin' an'
swearin' he'd cut th' hearrt out of iverybody--bad scran to him! It's
turrible lot of men th' docthor's had intoirely."

She was right; it _was_ a terrible lot of men the doctor had had.
The picturesque ruffian of whom she spoke had been dismissed by the
old gentleman a fortnight before at the close of a spree in which he
had taken it into his drunken head to invade the Pallinder kitchen,
menacing the panic-struck maids with a cleaver and demanding more
liquor. To him succeeded Huddesley; I never saw the latter except
on one occasion, but he became a familiar figure to most of us, and
Doctor Vardaman was rather fond of telling how he acquired the only
good servant he ever had. The doctor (according to his own narrative)
after having at great expense of time and trouble and some personal
risk, got rid of the highly emotional person with the cleaver who was
haled off screeching and shackled in a patrol-wagon; and after having
gone downtown and seen the wretch cared for in Saint Francis' Hospital,
inserted his usual advertisement in the _State Journal_, "Wanted--by
a physician (retired) living in the suburbs, an unmarried man to take
entire charge of his house and garden. Must be experienced in cooking
and indoor-work. References required. Dr. John Vardaman, 201 Richmond
Avenue. Take Lexington and Amherst Street cars."

The clerk in the _Journal_ office who took it in grinned at sight of
him. "Guess we'll have to give you a rebate on your subscription,
Doctor," he said cheerfully. "This is the third time this has gone in
since last July. So long! Happy New Year!"

A day or so later the doctor was sitting in the homely disorder of his
library, reading a new book, when the washerwoman who came in by the
day during these periods of storm and stress, stuck her towelled head
around the door. "Doc'thor, yer honour!"

Doctor Vardaman did not answer, did not even hear; he was in an
enchantment, his lips moving unconsciously as he read. The beauty of
the lines stirred him with an almost painful sense of enjoyment.

"Ah, thin, Docthor, asthore!"


     "'When you and I behind the Veil are passed,
     Oh, but the long, long while the World shall last!'"


read the doctor aloud. He looked up vaguely, still under the spell.
"What is it, Mrs. Maginnis?"

"Here's a man to see yez about th' pla-ace."

Doctor Vardaman clapped Omar shut briskly. In the phrase of a poet as
yet unknown to the world, he turned a keen, untroubled face, Home to
the instant need of things. "Send him in." The man came in, closed the
door quietly, and stood at attention while the doctor examined him. It
was evident that he was a little nervous, yet respectfully anxious to
conceal it.

"What is your name?"

"James Huddesley, sir."

"You have a reference?"

Huddesley produced a worn letter and handed it over. The doctor read
it through carefully. It certified that the bearer of this, James
Huddesley, was honest, sober and capable; he had lived with the writer
four years as butler, and fifteen months as valet and general man.

"This is dated two years back," said the doctor, as he returned it.
"Was that your last place?"

"For steady work--yes, sir."

"Why did you leave it? And what have you been doing in the meantime?"

"If you please, sir," said Huddesley, looking down. "Hi've 'ad
misfortunes. Hi left 'is lordship, thinkin' to better myself by settin'
hup in a small way--in a pub., sir. It was no go, sir, Hi 'adn't 'ad
the experience, and Hi didn't like the life. Hi lost my money, hall
Hi'd saved hup, and--and----" He hesitated, fingering his hat. "And 'a
little that was my wife's, if you'll hexcuse me mentioning my haffairs,
sir. Then she went back to 'er people, and--Hi just come away, Hi
couldn't stand it."

"I didn't want a married man," said the doctor reluctantly.

"It's just the same as bein' single, sir, beggin' yer parding," said
Huddesley, staring out of the window. "She won't never come back to me
no more--she said so. And there wasn't any children--'e died, the baby
did."

The doctor was touched oddly by this sordid little romance of the
kitchen and backstairs. Perhaps certain long, long dead and buried
hopes, dreams, disappointments of his own stirred, faintly responsive
beneath their graves; oh, that grim, arid little cemetery walled off
in some corner of every heart! Ghosts walk about it, and we call them
Regrets.

"What have you been doing since?" the old man asked gently.

"Nothing much, sir--hodd jobs, waitin' in heating-'ouses, and
such-like," Huddesley answered openly. "'Tain't what Hi've been used
to, but Hi can turn my 'and to most anything. Hi saw the paper, and Hi
thought Hi'd like to get with a gentleman again; there was hanother
hadvertisement in from the big 'ous hup there with the pillars, that Hi
hinquired habout--but Hi found they don't 'ave nobody but coloured."

Mrs. Pallinder recalled this circumstance afterwards, with some regret.
"He was here quite a while," she said. "The cook told me making
inquiries in the kitchen--but I didn't see him. Such a pity--the
coloured servants wouldn't have minded, but you can't expect a white
man to sit down with them, you know. Well," she would conclude with her
charming smile, "if I couldn't have him, I don't know of anybody I'd
rather see him with than Doctor Vardaman." The doctor put a few more
questions for form's sake, and ended by engaging Huddesley on the spot.
"As to his references," he said, "I never troubled to look them up. A
man like that is his own reference. Lord What's-his-Name of Berkeley
Square, London, and What's-his-Name's Hall, Yorks, was a trifle too
far off for me to bombard him with letters about a servant whom he had
probably entirely forgotten. I'll risk Huddesley."

The event justified him; never had the doctor lived in such
comfort--never, that is, since the death of his spinster sister,
some years before. His boots and broadcloth showed the ex-valet's
ministrations; the old gentleman gave choice little dinners; it was
his turn to send dainties about amongst his friends. The only fault
he ever found in Huddesley was a certain sour aversion to society for
which, as Doctor Vardaman remarked, the man could hardly be blamed. "He
never takes a day out, and won't look at a woman," said the doctor.
"Most men of his class, after such an experience, take for a while at
least to drink, or other reprehensible courses. And indeed I suspect
that Huddesley didn't put in all of that dismal two years in the chaste
occupations of waiting in heating-'ouses, and hother hodd jobs. But I
don't want to push the inquiry. After all, he's had a pretty hard time
for a young man--he's not over thirty, I think--what would you have?
We're none of us saints."

FOOTNOTE:

[4] This was a negro settlement, a survival of old "Underground
Railroad" days, full of bad characters, about half a mile off, towards
the river. It has been improved away of late years.--M. S. W.




CHAPTER NINE


Mazie Pallinder's visit to her relatives, the Lees and Randolphs, was
prolonged until the Easter holidays, which came the last week in March
that spring. It is a fact, verified by solid paragraphs of "newspaper
gabble," that she _was_ visiting people of those high-sounding and
brilliantly suggestive names, and moving amongst the elect. The family
must have been well connected on the Pallinder side at any rate--who
or what the Botlisch clan were, no one would like to think. We missed
Mazie. Mrs. Pallinder went about alone to teas and receptions, smiling
steadily in her beautiful clothes that she wore with so dignified a
grace, and reporting that she and the colonel were having a kind of
ridiculous honeymoon time of it by themselves, no one calling, no
banjos humming in the parlour, no impromptu little dances, no hordes
of girls doing one another's hair, and munching nougat all day long
in Mazie's room, no prowling about the ice-chest at midnight for
chicken salad and champagne. "The house is as quiet as a funeral," she
humorously complained. "All our young men have deserted us, except
Mr. Peters, who comes, I think, out of sheer humanity. My mother goes
to bed very early, and there the colonel and I sit by the fire like
two old fogies until we fall asleep in our chairs. The other night we
actually went to bed at nine o'clock. Sometimes Doctor Vardaman comes
up and we have a game of cribbage. Positively I don't know why we
don't take root where we sit, and grow fast to the spot like plants.
On the whole this restful time may be good for the colonel. He's been
so immersed in business and those Eastern men, those rich, grasping
creatures, do _drive_ him so. I often say to him, 'Oh, William, never
mind the money. Haven't you made enough by this last deal in Phosphate
to satisfy you _yet_?' I never ask any more how much he _did_ make--I
don't know anything about business, and it frightens me to think of him
handling such big sums, and taking such risks and responsibilities. He
gave me this ring the other day, though, so I know that whatever it
was, the venture turned out all right. Isn't it a beauty? Of course,
I'm not sorry he's making money, but, oh, Mrs. Lawrence, our husbands
work too hard--all our men work too hard--it's not worth it. A few
thousands less would content us, and what we want more than anything
else in the world is to have them in good health. Shall I put you down
here? Oh, I'm pleased you like this little brougham; I had it lined
with the dark green cloth because, to tell the truth, I thought I would
look better with my fair hair against a dark green background than if
it were maroon or deep blue. Don't laugh, my dear, there're tricks in
all trades, and it's a woman's trade to look her best. Home, James!"

Colonel Pallinder, however, never went to his office until ten o'clock
in the morning, and might be seen posting home any day at about
half-past three in the afternoon--"after banking-hours," he used to
explain, when one met him; "there's really nothing to be done--nothing,
in _my_ office, at any rate." And his gesture somehow indicated wider
horizons than ours and a vista of great affairs. For all that, he had
no appearance of a man harried by cares; and it may be, too, that
his home was not quite so quiet and restful as it was represented.
"I understand that Mrs. Pallinder is trying again to get a maid for
her mother," said Doctor Vardaman, half thinking aloud, half speaking
to Huddesley as the latter brought him the morning paper, in company
with his breakfast on the old silver-plated tray with which a previous
generation of Vardamans had been served; the copper of its foundation
showed through here and there under Huddesley's vigorous care; the
delicate etched arabesque around the heraldic device and motto in the
centre were almost worn away. Doctor Vardaman liked to fancy he could
see his mother's thin, fine hands fluttering about above the cups
and saucers on this tray; she, too, had had a habit of harmless and
somehow perfectly dignified familiarity with her staid old servants
over this one meal. The doctor opened his paper, turning at once--as
everybody invariably does--to a certain concise, ominous column in the
lower left-hand corner of the inside page where might be read, framed
in undertakers' advertisements, and notices that So-and-So's mortuary
sculptures were the best in the market, the names of yesterday's dead.
Close by, another column offered you a list of marriage-licenses with a
fine indifference to the fitness of things; and not far away appeared
the "Help wanted--Male--Female." "I see Mrs. Pallinder's advertising
for a maid," said the doctor. "And here, in another place, she wants
a cook, too. She's had a great deal of trouble with servants this
winter. There's a pair of us--_arcades ambo!_" He grinned into his
coffee-cup. "Only I'm very well-off now at least. This coffee's very
fine, Huddesley. It's a pity Mrs. Pallinder's having such a time."

"Yes, sir," said Huddesley respectfully. "That kind generally does have
trouble, sir."

He caught the doctor's eye and coughed discreetly.

"The house is large and there must be a great deal of work," said the
doctor, considering with vast satisfaction how comfortable he was in
his little den.

"Nobody minds doin' work that 'e's paid for, Hi've noticed," said
Huddesley. "It's when you 'ave trouble colleckin' wages that you're
liable to break hoff relations haltogether--speakin', hof course, sir,
as a man in my position, not as a gentleman in yours."

"The deuce!" ejaculated Doctor Vardaman inwardly. "Is _that_ it? Well,
I don't know why I'm surprised--I might have suspected as much--in
fact, I _have_ suspected as much off and on."

"Hof course coloured people are very precarious, sir, very precarious;
you don't know 'ow they live, nor you don't want to," said Huddesley,
arranging the dishes. "Their servants is hall coloured, sir, you know.
Hi halways think 'Like master, like man'--that's the hold sayin', sir."

"I must stop him," thought Doctor Vardaman guiltily. "It's disgraceful
listening to a servant's gossip this way--Ahem! Who was that I
heard you having such a squabble with at the kitchen door yesterday
afternoon, Huddesley?" he asked abruptly.

"A fellow peddlin' shoe-strings and collar-buttons, sir--Hi didn't like
'is looks and Hi hordered 'im hoff pretty sharp. Hi'm sorry you heard
the--the haltercation, sir, but they're very 'ard to get rid of."

"And you aren't any too plucky," said the doctor to himself with some
amusement, remembering Huddesley's not over-heroic behaviour on the
occasion of the burglary. "Why, I saw him going up the avenue towards
Colonel Pallinder's afterwards, and I thought he looked like a
respectable man," he said aloud.

Huddesley paused a moment before answering; he was folding the
tablecloth with an elaborate neatness; the operation required his
undivided attention. Then: "Beg parding, sir, that wasn't 'im you saw,"
he said calmly. "That was the gent that collecks for Barlow & Foster,
goin' hup to see if 'e couldn't get something on their coal-bill; I
persoom you know it ain't been paid yet. There was hanother there
yesterday from Scheurmann--the fourth or fifth time for _'im_, Hi've
lost count, there's been so many of 'em lately."

Doctor Vardaman retreated to his library, somewhat out of countenance.
"Good Lord!" he thought, "it's worse than I supposed--a deal worse!
These servants see or smell out everything. It's not safe to let them
talk to you; _I_ don't want to know anything about the Pallinders'
affairs." Nevertheless he smiled a little as he sat smoking by the
fire. "'The haltercation,'" he quoted. "Huddesley certainly is a
character. He reminds me of that valet of Major Pendennis' in the
novel, that fellow Morgan--only Morgan turned out to be a rascal,
the head villain of the story, if I remember." He took down the
book--it was a first edition with Thackeray's own clumsy yet spirited
illustrations--and sat reading the rest of the morning.

As reluctant as he was, however, the doctor, like the rest of the
world, could not always keep his eyes and ears closed against those
embarrassing things which we should all so much rather not know.
There are bits of gossip which seem to be common and not altogether
undesirable property; and there are ugly rumours which we feel it to
be the part of decency to hush up. We hear, underhand, that Jones is
wont to skulk at home for a fortnight dead drunk, that Smith's latest
financial venture was curiously involved and cloudy; even if true, and
even if we disapprove of Jones' and Smith's conduct in the abstract,
it yet in no way concerns us. We are none of us saints, as the doctor
himself said; we dislike especially the pose of holier-than-thou. Jones
and Smith may not be model citizens, but let us give them the benefit
of the doubt and continue to accept their dinner-invitations. Doctor
Vardaman, an upright man who would as soon have taken a horse-whip to
a servant as cheat him out of a penny, found himself averse to believe
what was under his eyes every day, and obscurely whispered here and
there by people in other ranks of life than Huddesley's. What if the
Pallinders were besieged by duns, and their servants unpaid? That was
none of his business; at the suggestion the old gentleman felt an
irritation for which perhaps some mocking inner self was partly to
blame. He found excuses for them; they were notoriously and amusingly
careless, extravagant, free-handed--er--er--_Southern_, in a word; the
colonel might be a rogue, as he undoubtedly was a wind-bag, yet of his
own knowledge, the doctor could say nothing. Nobody had ever tried to
trick _him_; he saw no reason why he should suddenly cold-shoulder the
Pallinders; their house was the pleasantest he knew.

Thus the doctor reflected uneasily, trying to hush that ironic sprite
within; and presently he was left with fewer defences still against
its sly unwelcome jeers, for the business which he took such comfort
in assuring himself was not his, became his in spite of him! He was
a little surprised, when, in the late afternoon of the same day,
Huddesley deferentially opened the library-door to announce "Mr.
Gwynne Peters." This formality of entrance was imposed on everybody by
the new man, and there was an old-world flavour about it that agreed
well with the doctor's house and character. Huddesley, who would have
been an ordinary flunkey in such an establishment as the Pallinders',
was already that endearing person--a trusted and trustworthy
servant--at Doctor Vardaman's. Gwynne came in, ruddy from the thin
brisk March air, eager and confident of his welcome, bringing to the
doctor's mind what kind memories of old days; of times when he used to
come with a top, a kite, a lame kitten, and filled the childless house
with childish confusion. Now he was as tall as Doctor Vardaman, and the
latter noted with an odd pang that his young face was settling into
the harder lines which recalled to so many his grandfather's portrait;
perhaps the anxiety that never entirely forsook him had made its mark
on Gwynne. At any rate it was very apparent as he said, glancing about,
after Huddesley had taken his hat and overcoat, and gone silently and
most respectfully out of the room: "Cousin Steven hasn't been here, has
he? I asked Huddesley, but he didn't seem to know."

"Come to think of it, I don't believe Steven has been in to see me
since I've had Huddesley--that's about two months, you know," said
the doctor. "He knows nearly everyone now, and never seems to get the
names and faces mixed up. If he'd ever seen Steven, he wouldn't have
forgotten him----" ("I wish I hadn't said that!" he added inwardly).
But Gwynne only frowned absent-mindedly, and began to feel along the
mantelpiece for matches. "Were you looking for him?"

"He's in town; he was in the office, but I had gone out. Then
afterwards I met Templeton on the street, and he told me he understood
Cousin Steven to say he was coming out here. You--you haven't seen him
going up to the Pallinder's, have you?"

"Why, no. But he'll be along in a little while, I dare say," said the
doctor easily--and wondered within him what Steven was about _now_?
He said nothing more, having in perfection the gift of companionable
silence; and for almost five minutes Gwynne himself did not speak,
blowing a soothing cloud of smoke by the doctor's fire. Then he said
abruptly, not looking at his old friend, as if trusting him to follow
up his thought.

"I went out to see Sam the other day."

"Ah? Was he----"

"Just the same. He didn't know me--never does. Perhaps it's just
as well. The attendant spoke as if he thought Sam was in very good
shape--physically, you know. 'He'll probably live for years, Mr.
Peters,' he said to me. 'He's stronger than you are this minute.' They
treat him all right, I think. It's always on my mind a little, you
know, that maybe they wouldn't if it wasn't for my having an eye on
them all the time. I go out about once a month, but they never know
when I'm coming. But you can't tell what happens in those places--even
the best of them."

"Sheckard is a reliable man; I've known him for thirty years. He's
always very careful about the attendants, as far as I've noticed; even
the patients that haven't any money, the ones he takes for a merely
nominal sum, or whatever their people can scrape up, are just as well
cared-for, I think. And of course that isn't the case with Sam----"

"It takes all Sam has," interrupted Gwynne gloomily. "Every cent."

"You can't blame them. But I wouldn't worry about him, if I were in
your----"

"I'm not worrying. I'm simply trying to do the best I can," said Gwynne
sharply.

The doctor caught the note of uneasy irritation in his voice with
surprise. Nothing could have been farther from his mind, or indeed,
more unjust, than to accuse Gwynne of shirking his duties, yet the
young man was plainly nettled--on the defensive. "I must have been
too sympathetic," thought the doctor, remembering the miserably
touchy Gwynne pride. Doctor Vardaman was the one person on earth,
hardly excepting his own family, to whom Gwynne would have mentioned
his brother. For everybody else, Sam Peters was away in California,
in Algiers, in Timbuctoo--the devices by which Sam was kept in the
background would have afforded material for a pitiful farce, if they
had not been concerned with so pitiful a tragedy; there was about these
lies a kind of wretched courage that went near to rendering their folly
dignified. Gwynne knew that his brother's misfortune was in no sense
a disgrace; but he could not bring himself to regard it as a thing to
be thought or spoken of like any other illness. Too much of his life
had been passed in the grimly fantastic environment of Gwynne family
traditions for him to be completely emancipated at twenty-four.

"I want to do the right thing as much as anybody," said Gwynne; he
scowled into the fire, chewing the end of his cigar. "Only it's not
always easy to say what _is_ the right thing. In real life right and
wrong aren't laid down in black and white the way they are in those
Tommy-and-Harry books we used to have when we were children; they sort
of shade off into each other. You've got to--to make compromises. You
can't take any satisfaction in being right--abstractly _right_--when
you're being hard and--and cruel."

"What on earth is the boy arguing with himself about?" thought Doctor
Vardaman; these not very original remarks had, for all their emphasis,
the air of being offered in advocacy of some doubtful cause; there was
a trace of temper and self-consciousness in them, and even the speaker
himself appeared unconvinced. "He's been having trouble with Steven, I
suspect," the doctor concluded, remembering how capable Steven was of
making trouble, and how difficult it was to manage him without recourse
to a tyranny from which Gwynne would recoil.

"That may be a good frame of mind for a lawyer, Gwynne," he said
pleasantly. "That disposition, I mean, to allow a certain amount of
right on every side. The question of expediency----"

"That's what _I_ think," Gwynne interrupted eagerly. "It's as much a
point of what's _best_ to do as of what's rigorously _right_ to do. But
you can't make people see that; now people like----"

"Mr. Steven Gwynne!" said Huddesley, opening the door. And even in
the uproar of Steven's entrance--he could do nothing quietly, and had
a voice of thunderous volume--Doctor Vardaman had time to observe
Gwynne's start and changing colour. Huddesley withdrew, taking Steven's
"artics" with a manner conveying his fixed belief that they should be
handled with tongs; but the doctor, who generally viewed this comic
by-play with profound amusement, for once let it pass unnoticed. As his
guests fronted each other, the old gentleman felt a sudden menace in
the air; something had gone wrong, had gone very wrong, indeed; that
much was easy to read in the two lowering faces. He looked from one
to the other in apprehension; he tried to relieve the situation by a
gust of what he inwardly characterised as "futile patter," offering
chairs and comments on the weather. That his unoffending parlour should
be made the scene of a Gwynne family squabble did not strike him as
outrageous; he felt too genuine and humane an interest in both parties.
At the back of his mind the thought was busy that Steven must have
been stirring up some kind of mischief with his confounded vapouring
communistic and anarchistic theories, his "circulating medium," or
Heaven knew what other foolishness; and how was Gwynne, or for that
matter anybody else, to deal with him? The poor old fellow was not--not
responsible; yet he could not be bullied like a slave, or put aside
like a child; that would only make him worse! "It would be better, it
would absolutely be better, if Steven would go stark mad and be done
with it (Lord forgive me for saying so!)" he thought. "Then, at least,
he could be cared for properly. As it is, you can't excite him, you
can't reason with him, you can't control him!" An acute sympathy for
both of them possessed him--for Steven as for a baby from whom one
should tear away some dangerous beloved plaything--for Gwynne because
he must do this really humane thing, perforce, inhumanely. The job was
obviously distasteful; Gwynne wore, the doctor thought, a reluctant,
even a sort of hang-dog air; and it was Steven who began, ruffling and
reddening in blotches over his wildly bearded face and down to his
grooved and corded old neck: "You--you got my letters, Gwynne?"

"I got them, Cousin Steven," said Gwynne sullenly.

"You didn't answer 'em, sir."

"I don't think we need to discuss this before Doctor Vardaman, Cousin
Steven," said the young man. It was a dignified and temperate speech;
yet, strangely enough, it conveyed to the doctor less consideration
for himself than desire to avoid the interview altogether. Something,
either in Gwynne's tone or manner, struck a false note, and Doctor
Vardaman looked at him perplexed.

"I don't see why we shouldn't talk before old Jack," said Steven
trustingly; he at least was sincere; there was no complexity about
Steven; his mind worked with the directness of a child's. "I'd have
asked his opinion anyhow--I meant to--that's what I'm here for----"

"You haven't been to the Pallinders' then?" interrupted Gwynne, in
evident relief. "You haven't been there yet?"

"No, but I'm going." Steven's eyes were uncomfortably bright as he
faced the other, with all the desperate obstinacy of a weak character.
"You can't stop me doing that, Gwynne--you _can't_. I'm one of the
heirs--I've got a _right_----"

"Cousin Steven, if you'll just listen a minute," Gwynne began with an
effort.

"You can't stop me--I've got a _right_--I'm not a minor," cried the
old man; the words might have been ludicrous but for his pitiful
earnestness. "I'm going to know where my money's gone to--I'm going to
have an accounting. That Pallinder fellow----"

"I say you shall _not_ go there," said Gwynne doggedly. "Your money's
all right. If you'll only have a little patience, I'll attend to it,
and you'll get your share----"

"You said that before--you've said it two or three times," said Steven,
his face working. He was evidently striving with all his might for
self-control; there was a painful dignity in the effort. Doctor
Vardaman was strangely touched to observe him; it seemed as if the
battle were too one-sided, whatever its cause; as if the strong and
sane young man had too much the advantage. "I'm tired of hearing that,
Gwynne. You don't know how to get the money, or you don't try. 'If you
want your business done, go and do it yourself; if not, send!' That's
a pretty good motto, seems to me. I'm going to attend to this now,
myself----"

"Cousin Steven, you can't possibly do anything--you'll only make
matters worse. Ask Templeton, ask anybody----"

"It's no use asking _you_, that's plain," said Steven bitterly. "I want
my money." In spite of him, his voice raised and cracked on the last
words. He turned to the doctor pleadingly. "John," he said, "it ain't
right--it ain't right. You'll say it ain't right, when you hear. Tell
him it ain't right, John, _tell_ him it ain't." He pointed to Gwynne
with his shaking hand. The younger man scowled back with a resentment
touched by some feeling not far removed from shame; Doctor Vardaman
looked at him in open inquiry, and was confounded to see that Gwynne
avoided his eye.

"You'd better sit down here quietly, Steve, old man," he said kindly.
"Now what is it you want me to tell Gwynne? Let's thrash it all out.
We'll put it straight in five minutes, I've no doubt." He shook his
head warningly at Gwynne behind the other's back; and Gwynne set his
lips ominously and looked away.

Old Steven began to fumble in his pockets; in his excitement he could
not command his stiff trembling fingers, and cursed with impatience as
he sought. "I've got it here--I've got a statement, Jack," he explained
twice or thrice. "I put it all down. I may not be a pin-headed,
pettifogging little know-it-all attorney," he said with a withering
side-glance at Gwynne standing against the mantelpiece in a morose
silence. "But I guess I can add up a column of figures and make it
come out right just the same." Doctor Vardaman might have laughed at
another time; but now he was too concerned for the outcome, feeling
instinctively that, at its core, this was no laughing matter. The
presentiment chilled him into gravity as he watched Steven turn out a
collection of rubbish such as any schoolboy might have owned--broken
bits of slate-pencil, a disabled toothbrush, hanks of cotton string,
a handful of Indian corn and one of loose tobacco, numerous buttons,
a large red apple--"I brought that for Gwynne, but now I'll give it
to _you_, John," said the old man severely. Finally from the midst
of this dunnage he produced a creased and soiled paper and spread it
out triumphantly. "There, Jack, there, I wrote it all out. 'William
Pallinder, Esquire'--no, I'll be damned if I call him 'esquire,'
it's too good for him--lend me your pen-knife, Jack, I'll scratch it
out when I get through reading--'William Pallinder in account with
Steven Gwynne _et al._--I remember that out of the books when I was
studying law--_et al._, for house-rent due from November, 1881, to
March, 1883, sixteen months, at one hundred and fifty dollars a month,
twenty-four hundred dollars--ain't that correct? And there's twenty
of us, you know, John, counting Eleanor and Mollie's share as one,
twenty goes into twenty-four once and four over--I put that down on
another piece of paper--I can't find it, but I remember anyhow--twenty
into twenty-four once and four over, twenty into forty goes twice,
and ought's ought, and _ought's ought_. That's a hundred and twenty
apiece that's coming to us, John, ain't that correct?" He looked into
the doctor's face eagerly; momentarily it seemed as if the gravity
of the scene were about to evaporate in a cheap burlesque. In the
variegated patchwork of Steven's mental processes, theories about the
superfluousness of money, and laboured calculations as to how much was
coming to him found an equal place, and were matched side by side with
no sense of incongruity.

"Yes, that's perfectly correct, Steven," said the doctor, somewhat
illuminated.

Steven eyed Gwynne vindictively. "I guess I can figger all right if I
ain't a pin-head----"

"Nobody's saying your figures aren't right," said Gwynne, with a weary
patience. "The colonel owes the estate that much, and if you'll let
things alone, it'll be paid."

"Oh, yes, it'll be paid. I'll make it my business to _see_ that it's
paid," said Steven, nodding. He turned to the doctor, confident of his
support. "Ain't I right, John? Gwynne there won't do anything--won't
lift his hand--just lets the rent keep on piling up and piling up.
Calls himself a _lawyer_, and won't do _anything_--I've written
him time and time again authorising him to--to sue--to sue for our
rent--haven't I, Gwynne? Did I, or did I not write you, answer me that?"

"Oh, yes, you wrote me," said Gwynne drily.

"There, you see, you _see_, John," said Steven despairingly. "That's
the way he acts--just that indifferent and shilly-shally. It's seven
dollars and a half a month we ought each one to have been getting all
this time--seven dollars and a half," his voice cracked again--"we
haven't had a cent--not a _cent_, for over a year, and he won't _do_
anything! He ought to sue, oughtn't he, John?"

"Why, Lord bless me, Steven, _I_ don't know," said the doctor, at once
relieved yet remotely disquieted to learn the cause of the trouble,
worried over Steven, and slightly amused at this seven-dollar-a-month
melodrama. "I'm not a lawyer, you know. I suppose there's some way
of getting at tenants that won't pay their rent--some way other than
evicting 'em bodily, I mean--you'd hardly like to do that, you know, to
people like the Pallinders----"

"Don't see why not," said Steven, seizing upon this new idea with a
very disconcerting readiness. "_I'd_ bring 'em to time, if _I_ had
the doing of it." He directed a vindictive glance at Gwynne. "'Pay or
quit,' that's what I'd say----"

"Oh, come now, Steven, you wouldn't want to see the Pallinders'
bureaus and bedsteads out on the sidewalk. It would be a kind of
discredit to the property--_your_ property--Governor Gwynne's house,"
said the doctor, struggling with an inconvenient tendency to laugh,
yet diplomatically approaching Steven on his most vulnerable side.
"You wouldn't treat Mrs. Pallinder that way--she's a very polished
lady--I've heard you say so a dozen times myself."

"There's no occasion to bring in Mrs. Pallinder's name at all, I
think," said Gwynne, in so savage a voice that Doctor Vardaman started
with astonishment. Their eyes met. "She has nothing to do with this,"
said the young man constrainedly, averting his gaze almost at the
instant. "We're all gentlemen, I hope, and we don't have to talk about
a woman."

Doctor Vardaman rubbed his chin. "Steven," he said thoughtfully, "I
think maybe you'd better let Gwynne manage it his own way----"

"But I _have_--I have for a year, and look how he's managed it!"
cried Steven; he looked from the doctor to Gwynne in an exasperated
bewilderment. "We aren't as well off now as we were a year ago! There's
that much more owing us--and he said just the same thing then, to let
things alone. Damn it, we've let 'em alone, and see where we are!"

There was a devious justice in this argument that, taken with Gwynne's
more or less disingenuous behaviour, was not without its effect on the
doctor; of course, he told himself, the young fellow's inactivity was
capable of some perfectly reasonable explanation; everyone knew that
the direction of the Gwynne affairs was a fearfully complicated task,
and Doctor Vardaman was not desirous of going further into its details,
even if Gwynne had wanted to enlighten him--still he would have been
better satisfied if the boy had shown himself more frank and not quite
so sulky. It occurred to him, with a fine irony, that here was probably
one of Gwynne's cases where there was some right on both sides. The
main thing at the moment, he realised, was to get Steven quieted.

"I'm sorry, but I--really I can't advise you, Steven," he said in his
most moderate voice. "Have you talked to Mr. Templeton? He's your real
agent, you know; he does the collecting, doesn't he? I'm sure if he and
Gwynne both think----"

"_Templeton!_ He's a--a _creature_ of Gwynne's!" cried Steven angrily.
"He's no better than a--a mercenary--a--a hired bravo!"

Gwynne had to smile. The idea of fat little spectacled Templeton in the
role of chief-villain's handy-man, be-cloaked and be-daggered as we are
accustomed to figure those romantic gentlemen, was irresistibly comic.
But Steven saw the smile and turned purple; he got up, choking and
trembling.

"Very well, young man, very well!" he said, not without dignity. "I
suppose you can afford to laugh--you have the upper hand. It's very
funny, no doubt--but _I_ wouldn't laugh at anybody in trouble--not
at my own kin anyhow--blood's thicker than water. Oh, yes, I'm
very funny, of course; I'm nothing but an old man that don't know
anything--and--and a--a kind of a nuisance, I suppose, and and--I
don't dress stylish, and it's real funny for me to want my money--oh,
yes! You needn't worry, Gwynne, I'm not going to trouble you any more
about it--I'll attend to my own affairs after this. Jack, where're
my gum-shoes, please? _You_ can let things alone, if you choose, Mr.
Peters, but _I'm_----"

"What are you going to do?" said Gwynne harshly--the more harshly,
perhaps, because he was touched and a little shamed, against his will.

Almost involuntarily, he moved between his cousin and the door.

"I'm going to my house, to _my_ house, to see Pallinder myself," said
Steven, frightened yet obstinate.

Gwynne made a gesture of angry impatience. "He won't be at home at this
time of day. Cousin Steven, if you'll _only_ wait a little----"

"I've done all the waiting I intend to, Mr. Gwynne Peters. If he ain't
at home, I mean to see _her_----"

"Oh, good Lord, Steven, you can't do that--you can't talk to a woman
about things like that!" interposed Doctor Vardaman, shocked. "Now I'll
tell you what, you stay here quietly with me, and take dinner and let
Gwynne see to it. Gwynne'll fix it all right if you----" if you will
give him time, the doctor was about to add, when the weakness of that
already well-worn plea struck him.

"I don't trust him, I tell you--he ain't to be trusted. I can attend to
my own affairs and I _will_!" said Steven fiercely. The question had by
this time become to him not so much that of recovering his money as of
having his own way; they would conspire against him, would they? They
would keep him from having a voice in his own proper affairs? Somebody
had been meddling with him that way all his life; _he_ would show them,
he, Steven Gwynne! "I won't have him interfering with me any longer--he
don't suit me--I'll run my affairs to suit myself, without any leave
from you, Mr. Gwynne Peters--call yourself a lawyer--I wouldn't trust
you 'round the corner with a cent of _my_ money--I wouldn't have you
try a case for my dog, I wouldn't----"

"Then get some other lawyer that you do trust!" shouted Gwynne above
the other's shouting. "But right now you're not going near Mrs.
Pallinder, d'ye hear me? It's shameful; she shan't be persecuted this
way!"

"I'll go where I damn please, sir. Get another lawyer! Precious good
care you've taken that I _can't_ get another lawyer! Where's the money?
where's my hundred and twenty dollars, Gwynne Peters?"

"If you'll come down to the office, I'll give you your infernal hundred
and twenty now," said Gwynne, steadying himself as best he could. "I'll
give it to you myself out of hand, and then you can go and employ ten
lawyers if you like. But if you think I'm going to turn Mrs. Pall--the
Pallinders out of doors, or hound them about the rent, you're mistaken.
Why, it's my money just as much as yours, and am _I_ worrying? The
colonel's good for it, and even if he isn't, the house and furniture
are there; they aren't going to fly away--if you'll be patient and act
sensibly, I'll get your money. If you won't I'll wash my hands of the
whole business. You can----"

"For God's sake, Gwynne," ejaculated the doctor in an undertone, "don't
make things worse than they are! Steven can't control himself, but
_you_ can!"

"Why, I'm not a brute, Doctor Vardaman, I'm not a--a Jew! I won't
allow Mrs. Pallinder to be made wretched because of this--this--it's
bad enough for me to have to stand it; but she--she----" The young man
caught himself; he was on the edge of saying "she's an angel," but even
in that moment of excitement some saving sense of humour mercifully
restrained him. "She don't know anything about business. You can't go
to _her_ for your rent! It's--it's inhuman to harry a woman like Mrs.
Pallinder about _rent_. Leave _her_ out of it at any rate, it's the
least you can do."

"You, sir, get me my gum-shoes," said Steven determinedly, as the door
once more swung to admit Huddesley. It is possible that this discreet
and admirably trained individual had been improving his knowledge
of Doctor Vardaman's acquaintances, just outside the key-hole; he
overlooked Steven's orders, and went up to the doctor with a perturbed
countenance. "Doctor Vardaman, if you please, sir----" there followed a
whisper charged with meaning.

"Oh, the _devil_!" said the old gentleman desperately. He looked
around. "Steven, Gwynne, do sit down, both of you--why, yes, of course,
Huddesley, certainly you can bring her in--and--and here's the key of
the wine-cellar, Huddesley;" he was quite flustered. The others forgot
their excitement a moment to wonder at him. "Bring her in, Huddesley,
don't keep a lady standing," said the doctor, speaking testily in
his confusion. Huddesley was keenly alive to the dramatic aspect of
the meeting; he went ceremoniously out and ceremoniously returned,
spreading the door with a flourish.

"Mrs. Pallinder!" he announced.




CHAPTER TEN


It was a _coup-de-theatre_, falling as pat as if prearranged, an
unthinkable accident; the melodrama was becoming entirely too
melodramatic, according to Doctor Vardaman's notion. "Good Heavens!" he
said to himself, irritated; "this sort of thing doesn't _happen_--it
has no business to happen!" He had what is perhaps the best tact in
the world, the tact of a kind heart; but a plain man's experience does
not prepare him for moments of such awkwardness, and the doctor's
self-possession for once left him in the lurch. He advanced to
meet Mrs. Pallinder, blunderingly putting on his eye-glasses, and
blunderingly dropping them again to the length of their black silk
ribbon, stuttering out a welcome, apprehensive of Steven's next move,
out of patience with the whole grotesque and intolerable situation,
and fearful that he showed it. Mrs. Pallinder could hardly have failed
to overhear something of what was going forward; Steven's loud voice
had been raised almost to its furthest pitch, and Gwynne's, if he was
more self-contained, was still forcible and distinct enough. Neither
one could at once adjust his threatening brows to a placid, scarcely
even a natural expression, and, for that matter, the silence betrayed
as much as their speech. She would have needed to be blind or deaf not
to know that her presence came amiss--and blind and deaf Mrs. Pallinder
promptly became! It was a feat; her assumption of unconsciousness
was too perfect, but, if Gwynne and the doctor were undeceived, they
were still profoundly grateful, and Steven was reduced to a kind of
pathetic diffidence. The old man felt, in his dim way, that he had no
arms against this dazzling feminine creature; her manners, her dress,
even her delicate and finished beauty frightened him; he might as well
plan to sue a fairy for rent as this detached and brilliant personage.
"Gwynne could have let the poor old boy go in peace," thought Doctor
Vardaman, observing Steven's altered bearing; "he never would have
faced Mrs. Pallinder--I doubt if he could have stood up to the colonel!"

"Don't get up, gentlemen, don't stand for just _me_!" said Mrs.
Pallinder, looking around on everybody and beginning to loosen her
furs. "Oh, Mr. Gwynne, what a nice surprise to find you here! Doctor
Vardaman, you didn't tell me you were expecting Mr. Gwynne. You see I'm
an old story to the doctor, Mr. Gwynne, I drop in almost every day--I
wonder he doesn't run at the sight of me--it must be a relief as well
as a pleasure to him to have you come in once in a while. Why don't you
come to see _me_, ever? We're so lonely out here--the colonel and I
depend on the doctor. Nobody ever comes to see two rusty old creatures
like us. Nobody but you, that is, Mr. Peters, you treat us with the
respect due our age." She gave him a laughing glance; Gwynne knelt
down, reddening and incoherent, to take off her overshoes. The doctor
had space to reflect that a pretty woman, be she never so well or so
long married, seldom wholly ceases to be a coquette. And all this while
Steven stood, spellbound into silence, waiting for someone else to sit
down. He would have liked to be gallant, cynical, daring, epigrammatic;
Steven's notions of society were founded on Bulwer-Lytton's novels,
with a dash of Reade, Disraeli, and Charles Lever. He had revolved
more than one graceful yet stinging speech for the humbling of the
Pallinders, figuring them brought down to a species of admiring
submission. Lo, the hour was arrived, but where was the man? All his
eloquence had stolen away; he was taken at unawares, tongue-tied in an
awkwardness that at once incensed and humiliated him. He almost envied
Gwynne his uncalculated ease.

"I had a letter from Mazie this morning, doctor," said Mrs. Pallinder,
resolutely keeping the conversation going, and including Steven, as it
were, by main force. "My daughter, you know, Mr. Gwynne. You've been
at your country-place all winter, haven't you?" It was thus that Mrs.
Pallinder picturesquely referred to Steven's ramshackle residence; and
on her lips the phrase had a richness that pleased him ineffably. "Then
you don't know that my daughter has been away nearly two months--she
went a little after the holidays--and, oh, Mr. Gwynne, did you hear
about the robbery?"

"_She_ don't have to make talk about the weather--trust a woman!" said
the doctor inwardly, both satirical and admiring. He had an instant of
suspense, wondering what use Steven would make of his opportunity--and
Steven was as mild as a lamb! He cleared his throat, and said yes, he
had heard about the robbery--they didn't get anything after all, did
they? He understood--that is, the paper said--he hadn't been in town
to talk to anybody--that they were after Mrs. Pallinder's diamonds.
There had been a picture in the paper of the necklace--he was glad they
hadn't got anything.

"Why, I didn't know you approved of diamonds, Mr. Gwynne, I wouldn't
have dared to wear mine before you," said Mrs. Pallinder, tempting
Providence. "Everybody says you're so severe and critical--and--and
like all the rest of you men--you laugh at us poor women shamefully,
yes, and tyrannise over us, too, you know you do!" she went on,
displaying a discernment for which nobody would have given her credit.

"Madame," said Steven, highly flattered; "you mistake me--beauty
unadorned----"

"Oh, but Mr. Gwynne, I'm not in that class! Now come up to dinner
to-night, and I'll put on every diamond I have, and you'll see I'll
look the better for it." She raised her hand. "But don't involve me
in an argument--I can't hold my ground with you, you know--you're
too clever for me--I remember the last time, when you demolished me
utterly--you told me we didn't need money to get along--think of that,
Doctor Vardaman, he actually told me we didn't need to use money at
all, 'the circulating medium,' wasn't that what you called it, Mr.
Gwynne? See how well I remember! And, Doctor, before he got through,
he persuaded me, sure enough, that we didn't need money--I believed
him--at least I had nothing to say!"

Now how, how, I ask the unprejudiced and fair-minded observer, how
could any gentleman--of the name of _Gwynne_--come at so winningly
simple a woman as Mrs. Pallinder with a low question of rent? "Pay or
quit" indeed! The thing was inconceivable, the moment inappropriate.

"You _will_ come to dinner, won't you, Mr. Gwynne? Mr. Peters, I've a
crow to pick with _you_, for never bringing him. Oh, I know you hate
society, Mr. Gwynne, but just for once----"

Steven faltered; he would have accepted the invitation in another
moment--and if he had, who knows how this story might have ended?--but
Doctor Vardaman intervened briskly.

"Steven's got to stay here, madame, I asked him first," he said, and
clapped the other on the shoulder. Perhaps the doctor was a shade more
cordial even than his nature prompted; he felt a great pity for Steven,
and a certain shame at the cheap and flimsy devices by which his poor
old friend could be overpowered. Mrs. Pallinder made a little mouth at
him.

"You always have your way, Doctor, you've gotten the better of me ever
so many times. _You've_ got Huddesley, for instance," she said, not
disdaining to bestow an _oeillade_ on the servant as he stood before
her, offering sherry in the doctor's little old trumpet-shaped glasses;
he acknowledged the compliment by a respectful grin. "And _I'm_ simply
having the most _awful_ time--you don't know of a good cook, do you,
Huddesley?"

"No, ma'am. Hi don't know hanybody 'ere, ma'am," said Huddesley, with a
faintly superior air; and passed on to Gwynne with his silver tray. It
was true; he held himself apart from, and rather above, other servants.
The doctor had often remarked it with an amused sympathy.

"_Don't_ you? Isn't that a pity--I want so much to get settled in the
kitchen before Mazie comes home--well, if you hear of anyone, you'll
remember me, Huddesley, won't you?" Mrs. Pallinder held her glass in
one hand, and shook a letter out of her muff with the other. "Mazie's
letter, Doctor Vardaman--she'll be back in a week--she's going to bring
a friend--the most _English_ name--one of those hyphenated names, you
know. Her father's one of the secretaries at the Legation. Where--oh,
here it is. 'Muriel' _isn't_ that _English_? But just listen to the
rest of it!--'Ponsonby-Baxter.' Her father is Sir Julian--no, it's
Lucien--no, Mr. Peters, I believe my eyes are failing--can you make out
what that word is?"

Gwynne, after a solemn inspection, pronounced it to be Llewellyn.

"I notice all these young men read my daughter's handwriting a great
deal better than I can, for some mysterious reason, Mr. Gwynne," said
Mrs. Pallinder pointedly, to Steven, with her pretty laugh. And Steven
actually laughed, too! Where was his animosity? Where his anathemas?
He was at ease, mild, pleased, interested. In fact, Mrs. Pallinder,
looking hardly a day over thirty-five, with her fresh voice, her softly
bright eyes, her trim and supple figure, was an impossible sort of
person for the role of mother. There was a charming absurdity in her
continual half-humorous, half-sentimental allusions to her years and
infirmities. "When they get here, I'm thinking of having a little
company in the house, Mr. Peters," she went on, with a confidential
glance that magically comprehended everybody in the room. "Some of
the girls, like Kitty Oldham, for instance, and your cousin Marian,
of course, if her mother will let her come--I always say, Mr. Gwynne,
that it's no wonder all the girls in your family are so well-bred and
have such lovely manners--_Gwynne_ manners, Colonel Pallinder calls
them--it's no wonder they're all that way, they've had such careful
mothers, and _such_ training! It's my despair--I'll never make Mazie
that way! I should like to go to school to Mrs. Horace Gwynne myself
for a while, only she wouldn't have an old thing like me around, trying
to copy those beautiful, finished ways she has--the most _elegant_
woman I know! I think a little party in the house like that will
make it pleasant for Miss--Miss Baxter, I suppose we'll call her--the
whole name's a little too much--_Ponsonby-Baxter_! And now the colonel
says he'll have to have some men in the house in self-defence. Such
a houseful of women! It bores a man, I really think--oh, now, you
needn't look that way, Mr. Gwynne, you _know_ it bores men sometimes
to have too many women around. So we want to have some of the young
men, too--of course you, Mr. Peters, and do you think Mr. Lewis would
come? And then there's Mr. Taylor--the one you all call J. B., I mean.
There're those three large rooms in the wing at the back, and the small
one over the hall--plenty of room, don't you think so, Mr. Gwynne? You
ought to know how many the house will hold."

Steven looked important and considered. He remembered when Governor
Gwynne had entertained the Whig Campaign Committee in--in--he forgot
the year, but it was when Van Buren was elected; every room in the
house had been occupied, and cots in the library--you could put ten
cots in the library--oh, easily ten, end to end, you know----

"Cots! Oh, I don't think we'll need cots, you know, with young ladies
in the party----"

Steven did not hear her. He was launched on an accurate description
of the festivities, to which Mrs. Pallinder listened with a caressing
attention. How much had she overheard? Or how much guessed? Possibly
she would have been as painstakingly gracious to Steven in any event;
to look her best, to act her best, was Mrs. Pallinder's trade, and you
may trust me it was not always an easy one. "_So_ interesting, isn't
it? Oh, it's all very well for you to smile, Doctor Vardaman, you
remember all this, and it seems very ordinary to you, no doubt. But
it's rarely one hears such reminiscences--you've met so many celebrated
people, Mr. Gwynne--the Governor knew everybody, of course, in his
position, and then he was a famous man himself. Oh, now I'm here, and
have a chance at last, I want you to tell me again about that time
the Governor gave away the crimson velvet waistcoat with gold bees
embroidered on it--don't you remember, you told it to me the first time
we met, and I tried to tell it to the colonel afterwards, but I got it
all mixed up. He gave it to Tom Corwin, didn't he? And then the darky
waiter got hold of it somehow, and wore it to the party? I laughed so
when I came to that part, I couldn't go on with the story----"

Doctor Vardaman listened between relief and a singularly unreasonable
resentment; the business of pacifying Steven seemed ludicrously easy,
now. His weaknesses and the adroitness with which they were approached,
were alike contemptible. Anything, of course, he admitted unwillingly,
anything was better than having a scene; they should be thankful they
were so well past that danger. Yet he wondered privately what Gwynne
thought of this dexterous jockeying; a woman's performances in what
she chooses to consider the art of diplomacy unveiled, seldom fail
of moving the masculine onlooker to mingled wonder, scorn, and pity.
The creature has the cunning of her feebleness; how she does juggle
with honour and decency! How lightly she trips it along the unstable
wire! What capital she makes of her toy emotions, her sham beliefs and
unbeliefs! There is even something admirable in her serene assurance
that the end always justifies the means.

Steven may not have talked himself, or been talked, into a complete
forgetfulness of his errand; but at least the evil hour was a while
postponed. He saw Mrs. Pallinder leave the house escorted by Gwynne
through the falling dusk, with genial unconcern; and reiterated to
the doctor as they sat at table that evening his conviction that Mrs.
Pallinder was a very polished lady! Thus did the afternoon finish;
never was there a tamer sequel to a more alarming prelude. If the
doctor had received some disquieting revelations, he could still put
them from his mind as no affair of his; and if a vexed anxiety about
Gwynne lurked within him, it needed no great effort to stifle or
banish that, too, momentarily, at any rate. The boy knew what he was
about--_laissez faire!_ he thought, and surrendered himself to a long
evening of Steven and the circulating medium with thankfulness and even
some amusement.

"You--you're ever so kind to poor old Cousin Steven, Mrs. Pallinder,"
Gwynne said to her, with a good deal of feeling, as they parted in
the shadow of the Parthenon front. His voice trembled a little; and
perhaps the lady let him hold her hand a trifle longer than etiquette
prescribes.

"My dear boy," she said with gentle emphasis, "my dear boy, don't _I
know_---- If there is any way I can think of to make a person like
that happier, wouldn't I gladly do it? That seems to me a very small
thing--a woman's duty--what else are we for? I would do it for _you_
anyhow, even if I didn't feel so sorry for him." She melted into the
house without waiting to gauge the effect of this touching speech, and
the young man went off down the avenue with his head in the stars.

All very wrong and very improper, no doubt! But, on the whole, Gwynne's
conduct, it seems to me, was most edifying--a pattern for any youth in
his position. If Mrs. Pallinder had been the angel he thought her, he
could not have borne himself toward her with more respect. A young
man's first love, or let us call it, his first amorous fancy, is free
from grossness. There was something spiritual and exalted in Gwynne's
devotion; I believe he figured himself, foolishly and egotistically
enough, her knight, faithful without hope of reward, and gloried in his
anguish. If he stood between her and the all-too-righteous exactions of
his relatives and co-heirs, if he shielded her from the vials of their
wrath, at the cost of some squirmings of conscience, still I am loath
to blame him.

There was, of course, no excuse for him, yet---- Mrs. Pallinder was
old enough to be his mother, and married to boot; but she was a very
beautiful woman, and he was softhearted and sentimental, and had had
a harsh and loveless life. How can I sit in judgment on him? Was I so
wise at twenty-four? For Mrs. Pallinder herself, I say and stick to it,
she was a perfectly good woman; having discovered that she could twist
Gwynne around her finger, she cannot be blamed, in the circumstances,
for twisting him. The men may well sneer at our tools, but we must even
use the tools you let us have, gentlemen, and sometimes you thrust the
haft into our hands. No woman can make a fool of a man, I think, unless
the man lends himself whole-heartedly to the job. And there are times
when she goes at it with little relish.

Was it pleasant for Mrs. Pallinder to blarney Gwynne into
forgetfulness? Did she enjoy listening to old Steven's dreary,
everlasting talk? I think that mean necessity galled her at times as
much as it would have the highest-minded reader of this page. We must
suppose she loved her swindling rascal of a husband, for I detect a
dingy loyalty in her method of supporting him. So he cleaves to her
and cherishes her, a woman cares not a jot whether her husband be
honest or not; she will uphold him by such sorry arts as he himself
will look upon with disfavour. So terrific is her moral obliquity
that she will lie, wheedle, cozen, cheat, with an unruffled mind to
protect or further him; displaying a distorted integrity of purpose
that compels our grudging admiration. Let anyone who doubts these
statements ask the wives and mothers who unsparingly condemn Mrs.
Pallinder's line of conduct, what they would have had her do? Give up
the game, and so betray her husband's interests, or engage in a little
harmless flirtation to put off the hour of his reckoning? You will
find that these virtuous ladies will dodge the question utterly. They
will indignantly and scornfully reject either course--yet they will
not be able to think of any other, and therein you have your answer.
I remember once hearing Doctor Vardaman solemnly declare and vow that
he believed nine-tenths of the shiftless, incompetent, scoundrelly men
in the world were kept going in their profitless or criminal careers
solely by the co-operation of some fool of a woman--"an honest woman,
at that!" he added, with a laugh.

Gwynne walked away in a state of exaltation that obliterated from his
mind all such sordid and petty considerations as twenty-four hundred
dollars of rent in arrears. At the end of the avenue he turned to
look back, and saw a light spring up in the bedroom window he knew
to be Mrs. Pallinder's; he walked on slowly, watching it with what
high-coloured and high-flown fancies! Miranda, I am afraid, is a name
that defeats the muse; but Gwynne continued in this Romeo attitude and
meditation until he crashed into a weary, homing labourer, a resident
of Bucktown, most probably, faring along through the twilight with a
whitewash bucket and brushes.

"Hy-yah! Keerful, cahn't yo'? Yo' 'd oughta look whar yo's g'wine,
boss!"

Gwynne started at the words; he ought to look where he was going! He
went on, slowly, frowning a little, with his head bent.




CHAPTER ELEVEN


Lent dragged or slipped or scurried along according to the varying
tempers of those that watched it go; of late years the speed of its
passage has increased noticeably, it seems to me; successive Lents
shove one another off the stage with an alarming celerity. But most of
us voted it dismally slow in those days. A church entertainment was
given, in which Mrs. Pallinder figured in tableaux as _Ruth_, with
white draperies, her hair bound up with fillets, and a sheaf of wheat
(it was really pampas grass) in her beautiful bare white arms. She
looked, undoubtedly, as much like _Ruth_ as she had like _Astarte_;
that is to say, not at all. But people were unfeignedly delighted
this time, and not without reason; the curtain had to be rung up
repeatedly on "Ruth and Boaz." I thought, to be truthful, that her
features seemed hard and sharp in the strong calcium-light; perhaps she
was a little too old to impersonate a character like Ruth. But Teddy
Johns assured me vehemently that she was ideal. "Beau'ful creature,
Mis' Pallinder--_hic_--s'prisin'--Ruth--'Starte--Greek Slave--no,
no, didn't mean that, of course--_hic_--Greek statue--always doin'
somethin'--Pallinders, somethin' new, all time!" he said, meeting me
in the passageway of Trinity Parish House, where the entertainment
was given. I do not know where he had been; it is generally difficult
to draw young men to church-tableaux, and there were not many there.
Teddy had an air of surprise at finding himself in the audience; his
face was very much flushed, he laughed loud and inappropriately; and
Judge Lewis came with a grave face, and took him by the arm and pulled
him away, muttering some apology to me. Judge Lewis was a vestryman; I
saw him talking to some of the others afterwards, and their grey heads
wagged solemnly; the judge could not have been telling one of those
humorous anecdotes for which he was so celebrated.

It was not long after this that Mazie at last came home; and she lived
up to the reputation that Teddy had given the Pallinders of always
doing something new. Doctor Vardaman assured her gallantly that she was
like the angel that came down and stirred up the Pool of Bethesda--"we
were all stagnating," said the old gentleman, in his kind mock-serious
manner; and Mazie smiled and lifted her eyes at him, without, I dare
say, understanding in the least where or what the Pool of Bethesda was.
She brought with her Miss Muriel Ponsonby-Baxter; and, following upon
their arrival, Mrs. Pallinder collected her house party. Most of the
young people she asked caught eagerly at the invitation; you may laugh,
or perhaps jeer, but house parties were not then the affair of everyday
occurrence they have since become--not in our corner of the world,
certainly. We all felt, delightedly, as if we were living in an English
novel--one of "The Duchess'" for choice.

"You know we're going to have private theatricals in the ballroom,"
Mazie told everybody. "The girls and men in the house will all be in
it, so we can have rehearsals any time. And papa is going to have a
stage built with footlights and a curtain. We'll ask everyone, of
course, and dance afterwards. I bought the favours for the german in
New York coming home, you know. They're simply too sweet for any use."

("I baought the favuhs foh the juhman in New Yawhk, yuh knaow. Theah
simply too sweet foh any use," was the way she said it, but I shall
not attempt to reproduce Mazie's speech. It had a kind of drawling
vivacity; and the final sentence was in the slang of the day--very
fresh and spirited it sounded then, too!)

Mazie Pallinder was not a pretty girl; she was too tall and lank;
and, except when she got her cheeks touched up, too pallid with
her ink-black hair. But she had a certain air of lazy distinction,
helped out by a real talent for dressing herself, and an unlimited
purse--maybe an unlimited indifference to bills and tradesmen would be
a better way of putting it.

"The first thing on the programme is to be 'William Tell,'" she said.
"That's to have just men in it, you know. I think it's always best to
have a lot more men than girls, and make them stand around. That's the
way it is in the South, New Orleans, or Charleston, or anywhere I've
ever been. You see them lined up all around the room waiting a chance,
at dances, you know. All the girls have to split every waltz."

Bewildering dream of bliss! Somebody, recovering from the
contemplation, wanted to know what "William Tell" would be like with
only men in it?

"Oh, I've talked that all over with J. B." said Mazie. "It was his
suggestion, you know. They gave it at college, his senior year, and, of
course, all the parts were done by men. He said it was simply great.
It's a take-off of the real 'William Tell.' What do you think? Doctor
Vardaman asked if it was the real 'Tell,' and he said there was a
beautiful _adagio_ for the horn in the overture! I simply screamed--I
laughed till I nearly fell over. You see the funny thing is there _is_
a horn--but it's a dinner horn! Archie Lewis comes on with it when he
sings his topical song. Archie's to be 'Tell,' you know. He's got a hit
on everyone in town--they'll all be here in the audience, of course. It
begins:


     "'I'm a horny--horny--horny-handed
             SON OF TOIL!
     From Maine to California
     You couldn't find a hornier,
         And--and--I'm----


I can't remember the rest of it. He and J. B. wrote the verses--it's
awfully funny, don't you think, Muriel? We've seen them go over parts
of it."

"Yes," said Muriel tepidly. We all looked at her with some curiosity;
lying back in one of Mazie's profuse rocking-chairs, she seemed very
large by contrast with the rest of us. She had long round arms, long
sloping thighs, long hands and feet, a great deal bigger than any of
ours, but well-shaped, in so just a proportion one hardly noticed
their size. I think I never saw so beautiful a woman. Beside her large
classic calm, we were as a tribe of little gesticulating marionettes.
She listened to our facile laughter, our high, excited voices, with
a grave and rather wondering tolerance; no one ever saw _her_ laugh.
We decided it was a pose with her, thinking she was conscious, very
likely, that outright mirth or any other visible emotion would somehow
become her ill. You cannot imagine the Bartholdi Liberty laughing. Such
regularity of features, such steadfast, intrepid eyes had Muriel; and
so did she oppose to passing people and events, silence and an unmoved
brow. I give the idea that she was dull; it was not so. She thought as
much and as much to the point as any of us; she only lacked our fevered
sprightliness.

Mazie went on expounding: "Teddy Johns is to be Mrs. Gessler, and
Gwynne Peters is Mrs. Tell, or Matilda, I forget which, and J. B.'s
young 'Tell.' In the play his name's _Jemmy_, of all things I do think
that's the funniest--Jemmy! J. B. said when they found that in the
libretto, they said it would be a shame to change it. I believe in the
original opera, a girl always sings the part. J. B.'s all the time
wanting someone to hear him speak his piece, or give him a drink of
water--things like that, you know, as if he were about four years old.
And he gets lost and says to the policeman that he's Jemmy Tell--I
don't know why you want to laugh, but it's so silly you can't help
it. He must be six-feet-two if he's an inch, and he's going to wear a
little white pique kilt to his knees with a sash and short socks and
ankle-ties, and a red apple fastened on his head kind of skew-wow over
one ear, with an elastic under his chin. Simply too funny for any use!"

"I don't see how he can do it," said Muriel. "Fancy! A kilt! I think
it's horrid!" She spoke with unexpected energy; the lovely English rose
in her cheeks suddenly deepened. Every other girl in the room wondered
what it was that had waked her up; and Mazie, who was manicuring her
nails (she introduced that art among us), paused with the polisher
suspended, and gave her friend an acute fleeting glance.

"I don't believe J. B. minds, or he wouldn't get himself up that way,"
she remarked airily. "We can stand it if he can. He's got an awfully
good figure. After all, the kilt isn't much different from a Roman
costume--like what John McCullough wears in 'Virginius,' you know.
J. B.'s on to his own good points; he's not going to make a guy of
himself--catch a man doing that. 'Tell's' sort of comic opera, and do
you know, girls, honestly, I can't see but that it's every bit as good
as 'Olivette'--you haven't seen that yet. They'll have it out here by
next winter, I suppose; it's always a year before things get West from
New York. We thought we'd have the other play afterwards--they aren't
either of them long. That will give all the men a chance to get into
their dress-clothes before the dancing begins. Teddy and J. B. are both
in the second one, too. It's called 'Mrs. Tankerville's Tiara."

"Where did you get it? Public Library?"

"Oh, gracious, no. I shouldn't have known what to ask for, you know;
why, there've been millions and _millions_ of plays written--did you
know that? Just _millions_! No, Doctor Vardaman lent me the book; I
went down to the house and looked over ever so many with him. You
ought to see the doctor's library; I'd never been in it before; I
believe where we've got one book, he has twenty at the very least. They
go all around the room in shelves with the busts of people on top,
Shakespeare, I suppose, and--and--well, Shakespeare, you know, and
men like that. And he has funny old stuffed birds sitting up between
the busts. You wouldn't think that would be pretty, would you, just
books, and mothy old birds, and no curtains at the windows; it isn't
a bit stylish, but somehow it looks like Doctor Vardaman. Well, we
looked at the greatest pile of books of plays, and I told the doctor
I thought we oughtn't to attempt anything but farce, so that we'd
be sure of entertaining people. But he said if we really meant to be
funny, we'd better be serious; he'd guarantee everybody would be much
more entertained. Doctor Vardaman does say such queer things--you
never know whether he's laughing at you, or with you. But he's lovely
about hearing us rehearse (he's seen it on the stage, you know), and
suggesting _business_--that's when you have to stand in a corner and
make believe to be doing something when it isn't your turn to talk.
Isn't it funny you never see actors standing still, and looking stumped
for something to do? They're always walking around, or they've got
something in their hands to fuss with, or----"

"Well, that's _business_, isn't it?"

"Yes, but I don't see why they can't sit still just the way we are
now--but if they did, it probably wouldn't look right on the stage.
Only how do they think up all the things they do? _Business_ is a lot
harder than talking, anyhow. Muriel's the leading lady, she's got an
awfully long part. J. B. has to make love to her, you know, and when
the butler steals the diamonds, and they think Muriel did it, he goes
right away and proposes to her, to show that _he_ trusts her anyway----"

"I don't like all that spoony part," said Muriel, colouring painfully.

"He don't either, I guess," said Kitty. "Men don't like being made to
look ridiculous."

Kitty was undoubtedly a cat, but---- "You're in the play, too, aren't
you, Miss Oldham?" Muriel asked her.

"Yes. I'm Mrs. Tankerville's maid. I've only got about two words to
say."

"Oh!" said Muriel in her pleasant low voice. "Oh!" That was all. But
she had got even, to our surprise. I believe we all liked her the
better for it.

"We'll all have to copy out our parts," continued Mazie rather hastily.
"It's comedy, except where Mrs. Tankerville's diamonds are stolen;
Teddy Johns is 'Jenks,' the butler; in the last act he's shot, while
he's hiding behind a screen, and then they find the diamonds on
him, and it all comes out right, of course. And oh, girls, it opens
with a ballroom scene, and we'll all have to be dressed up to the
nines--wouldn't mamma be raging if she heard me say that--she thinks
slang's simply _awful_!"

"Was that slang?" asked honest Muriel, opening her eyes. "It doesn't
seem to have any sense. But then one doesn't notice it, because so much
of your talk is like that, in the States!"

"Never mind, you'll learn as you go along," said Kitty encouragingly.
"It may take a good while, but you're bound to learn _some_ time.
Everyone gets used to our slang in the end, even the very slowest ones!"

Mazie again intervened to shunt the conversation on a safer track;
she kept on with the question of dress for the forthcoming dramatic
performance; and as there were a good many changes for everybody, the
scene being laid in the present day, before long she had us all in
smooth water once more. Mazie was her mother's own daughter, deft as a
juggler among the uncertain knives and balls of social favour; she was
fully awake to the difficulties of managing that most unmanageable of
bodies, a set of amateur actors. But during the fortnight or so that
"William Tell" and "Mrs. Tankerville's Tiara" were in preparation, she
and Mrs. Pallinder must have been taxed to the utmost, adroit as they
were, to keep things going smoothly, or indeed, going at all. Teddy
Johns, who was somewhat given to hyperbole, or, as he himself would
have said, to "tall talk," once confided to me that he had a feeling
we were "all dancing on top of a volcano--like the What-d'ye-call-'ems
over the Thingumbob, you know," he said, gloomily. "I've read about 'em
somewhere. Lucky if it don't go off under us!" It _did_ go off, after a
fashion, but not quite as Teddy had expected.

Teddy Johns displayed more real talent--to call his small gift by a
very large name--for the stage than any of us. He was not a clever
young man--he had one lamentable failing; but he could control his
sallow, solemn face, and ungainly body into expressions and attitudes
that would have won laughter from stocks and stones. When Archie Lewis
in his character of "Tell" came tearing across the stage, clamouring
wildly in the highest style of high tragedy, "Me che-ild, me che-ild!
Must I spank me own che-ild?" Teddy could say, "Do Tell!" in an
accent of vacuous astonishment that reduced one to helpless and I
suppose perfectly senseless merriment. Teddy was our sheet-anchor.
Unquestionably without him the whole thing would be a "fizzle."




CHAPTER TWELVE


About this time all the papers were giving considerable attention
in the columns which they headed variously: "Social Doings," "Among
the Four Hundred,"--a phrase just then coming into notoriety,--"The
Society Calendar," etc., to Mrs. Pallinder's house-party. That lady
herself, her establishment, her clothes, her diamonds had provided us
with gossip, as I have endeavoured to show, for the past two years.
But if we were inured to Mrs. Pallinder, Miss Muriel Ponsonby-Baxter
was something new. Everyone entertained for her; it was a matter of
pride with us to give our English girl-visitor an unapproachably "good
time," to prove to her how much the best country in this best of all
possible worlds America was for the young, well-born, well-mannered,
good-looking, and happy--ourselves, in short. Not one of us had the
slightest acquaintance with English society; but we were confident
our own was immeasurably better. Twenty-five years ago, it must be
remembered, there was a chillier feeling between the two countries;
and, of course, our provincialism accented it. The eagle ramped upon
his perch; the lion suffered a deal of tail-twisting; hands across
the sea were not quite so fervent in their clasp then as now. Our
demagogues flung about dark hints concerning the machinations of
the "Cobden Club." American protectionists, American free-traders
bellowed themselves purple in the face from the stump in defence
of their several creeds, and strangely enough, found in England
equally an awful example, and a beacon-light of progress! The last,
for obvious reasons, was a very unpopular view; in those Arcadian
days the main diversion of a certain class of our politicians was
the ferocious baiting of perfidious Albion. The Oriental-war scares,
the race-problems, the anti-trust, and anti-railroad agitations of
to-day must cause these amiable jingoes--a name, by the way, which
they never heard--to turn in their graves. Bless thee, Bottom, how
art thou translated! In that year, the Pendleton Civil-Service Reform
Bill was the most important measure before the two Houses; and "to the
victors belong the spoils," was the cry most frequently raised against
it. That admirable argument, at once so condensed and so forcible,
what respectable person would dare to utter it to-day? Blaine was
alive; Tilden was alive; Ben Butler was governor of Massachusetts,
he of fragrant memory, house-cleaner of New Orleans, promulgator of
Regulation 19--or was it 29? Iram indeed is gone with all his rose, and
Ben and all the rest along with him; and we have ceased, at a woeful
expense, to be provincial. We were not bothering our heads _then_,
about tropical canals and the Philippines--oh, all-but-forgotten Golden
Age!

We were not always certain what sort of impression we were making on
Muriel; and, however eager we might have been to find out, there are
some questions any girl would go to the scaffold rather than ask. But
I know that on one point we were intolerably vain; perhaps that vanity
was the most honest, creditable, endearing quality we possessed; and
something of the same feeling stirs me even now. Where, where on this
globe, we asked ourselves triumphantly, would Muriel find anything to
match the ready deference, the kind, half-humorous, wholly charming
devotion of the American man to his womankind? Indeed, it was plain
to see she was unused to this Sir Walter Raleigh attitude; she was as
much puzzled as pleased by it. I think we were somewhat disposed to
patronise her; and Kitty Oldham declared openly she didn't believe Miss
Baxter had ever had an offer in her life. She was an exceptionally
handsome girl; she must have had a far wider social experience than
ours; but, for all that, and in spite of her size and the splendid
unconscious ease of her bearing, we detected in her a curious timidity.
It suited her. Had she attempted to imitate the brisk, fearless,
autocratic American girl, she would have been merely a big hoyden.
There was, after all, something sweet in her naive tactlessness, her
awkward conscientious efforts at adapting herself to ways she could
not understand, and perhaps at heart, did not really like. To one of
us, at least, the association was not without profit. I used to feel
that someone ought in conscience to explain Mrs. Botlisch to Muriel,
to apologise for that really terrible old woman; the irritating thing
was that Muriel accepted her without comment, exactly as she accepted
the rest of us--as if, I thought with annoyance, we were all freaks
together! "Mazie's grandmother is not--well--er--she's not at all--you
know?" I said, feeling, notwithstanding this public-spirited effort, a
little embarrassed under Muriel's direct, serious gaze. "Mrs. Botlisch
is--well, she's really not--er--very good style, nobody else here is
like her--you must have noticed it. She's awfully _common_--of course,
we didn't know much about the Pallinders before they came here--nobody
knows how they--they got _in_, you see----"

"I shouldn't think you'd come to the house so much if you feel that
way," said Muriel. "I wouldn't."

She did not mean it as a rebuke; she was only saying, as usual,
precisely what she thought. But all at once, with the uncompromising
harshness of youth, I saw and denounced myself inwardly for a petty
groundling, eating people's bread with a covert sneer, and parading
their shortcomings before a stranger. No, Muriel would not have done
it. _Noblesse oblige!_

The Pallinders, to their honour be it said, never seemed to be ashamed
of Mrs. Botlisch. They had their notions of _noblesse oblige_, too,
strange as that may sound. Reflecting upon it now, I see certain
a heroism in the respect they paid that dreadful, screeching,
vile-tongued old termagant. I have known prosperous, reputable
families, who paid the butcher and thought it a sin to play cards,
wherein the unornamental older members were not treated with one-half
the consideration these kind-hearted, conscienceless outlaws bestowed
on Mrs. Botlisch. She was a fat harridan of seventy with a blotched red
face, a great, coarse, husky voice like a man's and thick hands, the
nails bitten down to the quick. She liked to go about without corsets
or shoes in a shapeless gaberdine she called a double-gown--not too
clean at that. She kept a bottle of whisky on her mantelpiece; she
had a disconcerting habit of whisking out her teeth and laying them
down wherever she chanced to be; you might come upon them grinning
amongst Mazie's music on the piano, or under the sofa-cushions. She
frankly enjoyed a loose story, and made a point of telling them in
mixed companies of young people. She alternately bullied the servants
and gossiped with them in the kitchen; once I most inopportunely
happened upon Mrs. Botlisch engaged in a battle-royal with one of the
chambermaids over some trifle--a broken dish, perhaps--in the pantry.
Fortunately, I could not understand one word they uttered; and after
a little, Mrs. Pallinder came, looking quite grey over her handsome
resolute face, and took her mother away still shrieking hideous abuse.
"Ma is so eccentric," she said to me afterwards, with a ghastly smile;
and some feeling, of mingled horror and compassion, withheld me from
reporting the wretched scene. In most households, these undesirable
parents can be thrust, gently or not, into the background; in fact,
very many parents retire thither of their own accord. But Mrs. Botlisch
was not of that type.

"I like to set in the parlour an' see the young folks," she said.
"Mirandy she don't want me to, but I says to her, 'Mirandy,' says I,
'don't you worry. I'm goin' ter keep my uppers an' lowers in, 'less
I git a fish-bone er a hunk o' meat under the plate at dinner, an' I
ain't a-goin' to no bed till I git sleepy,' says I. She says, 'Ma, I'm
afraid you won't be comf'ble with your--you know--on all evenin'.'"
(Here she gave J. B. a poke in the side and dropped her left eyelid).
"'Lord love you, don't set there lookin' so innercent like you'd
never saw a woman undress in yer life--don't come that over _me_,
young feller. She says, 'Ma, I'm afraid you'll feel kinder tight an'
uncomf'ble with 'em on all evenin' 'long as you ain't used to wearin'
'em much in the daytime,' she says. 'Land!' says I. 'Mirandy,' I ain't
squoze inter my cloze by main stren'th the way Mazie is. 'F I feel
uncomf'ble, I'll just undo the bottom buttons of my basque an' I'll be
all right, you see.'"

And there she sat, true to her word, creaking in her black silk and
bugles (with the bottom buttons undone!), perspiring greasily over her
fat red face; and shouting rough, humorous, and frequently shrewd
criticism at our amateurs during rehearsal until midnight, when we
went out to the dining-room for oysters, egg-nogg, and the too lavish
entertainment of Colonel Pallinder's sideboard. The first time this
occurred Teddy Johns retreated precipitately from the table, and, being
sought, was discovered at last, pallidly reclining on the library
lounge.

"I'm all right, old man," he said feebly. "Just a minute, please. I
couldn't stand seeing old Mrs. Botlisch wallop down those oysters,
that's all."

There lies before me now a square of rough paper (designedly rough),
with jagged edges (designedly jagged), tinted in water colours an
elegant cloudy blue, with a butterfly, or some such insect, painted
in one corner, and a slit diagonally opposite through which we stuck
a single rosebud, as I remember. Slanting across the sheet in loose
gilt lettering I read "Programme," and a date beneath. This confection
represented days of effort and ingenuity on the part of those young
ladies among my contemporaries who painted china, or were otherwise
"artistic." Some of them took the "Art Amateur," at a ruinous
expenditure; that publication has long since gone the way of all flesh
and most print, in company, it would appear, with the amateurs for whom
it was destined. Nobody is either "artistic" or amateurish any more. We
did the jagging with a meat-saw, I believe--what a spectacle for our
accomplished posterity!

If I reverse the sheet, I find upon the other side, in a correct
angular hand (it may well be my own, for angularity was much the
fashion in those days; and the inartistic ones let what aid they could
to the task of programme-making), I find, I say, the


                       CAST OF CHARACTERS

                          WILLIAM TELL,

                      An Opera in Two Acts.

     William Tell                     Mr. Archer Baldwin Lewis
     Arnold von Winkelreid                  Mr. James Hathaway
     Walter Furst                              Mr. Julian Todd
     Melcthal                             Mr. Appleton Wingate
     Gessler                                   Mr. James Smith
     Rudolph                                   Mr. John Porter
     Ruodi                          Mr. Joseph Randall McHenry
     Leuthold                           Mr. Henry Barnes Smith
     Matilda                                 Mr. Gwynne Peters
     Mrs. Tell                                 Mr. Oliver Hunt
     Mrs. Gessler                        Mr. Theodore E. Johns
     Jemmy, Tell's son   Mr. Junius Brutus Breckinridge Taylor
     Chorus of Peasants, Knights, Pages,
       Ladies, Hunters, Soldiers, etc.       Mr. Robert Carson

                 Scene: The Schactenthal Waterfall.


The uninformed might very well inquire, as did Doctor Vardaman,
what under Heaven Arnold von Winkelreid was doing in this
_galere_? He appeared among the other historical personages with a
baseball-catcher's padded guard tied about his chest, and stuck full of
enormous arrows; at one time or another every young man in the cast,
including Jimmie Hathaway himself, was overheard laboriously explaining
to Muriel that it was "all just nonsense, you know; of course
Winkelreid didn't have anything to do with Tell--but there was an
Arnold in the cast of the real opera--and then there was that funny old
piece about Arnold von Winkelreid in McGuffey's Reader, you know: 'Make
way for liberty, he cried, make way for liberty, and died!' and he
somehow seemed to fit in pretty well with the rest of the foolishness.
They had thought of having Casabianca, too, but gave it up," and so on
and so on.

"Don't pay any attention to their excuses, Miss Baxter," said the
doctor fiercely, yet shaking with laughter. "It's all miserable
horse-play--vandalism--desecration. 'Guillaume Tell' is a beautiful
opera, the creation of a great musical genius. I've seen Sonntag and
Lablache in it; it ought to be sacred from these barbarians--you hear
me, boys, barbarians!" He menaced them with a closed fist; and they
went on shamelessly:


     _Gessler_ (_in a loud voice_)--Who are these fellows?

     _Rudolph_--My lord, these are Swiss.

     _Gessler_ (_louder, pointing to Tell_)--Who's that fellow with the
     freckles?

     _Rudolph_--My lord, that is a dotted Swiss.

     _Gessler_ (_louder still_)--Take away that dashed Swiss!

     _Rudolph_--My lord, I said _dotted_.

     _Gessler_ (_very loud_)--Well, I said _dashed_----


It took little enough to make us laugh, for we thought all that very
funny indeed. And an interesting point might be made of the fact that
"William Tell," whether the men had greater abilities, or easier parts,
or from whatever reason, was, as a whole, far and away superior to the
play in which the girls appeared. Doctor Vardaman, for all his old-time
gallantry, betrayed his preference more than once; but it sometimes
seemed to me as if the old gentleman took a malign satisfaction
in viewing our performances, theatrical and otherwise, as one who
should stand by and observe the antics of so many apes with an amused
detachment.

"Of course, of course, I enjoy the comedy. Don't you want me to enjoy
the comedy?" he said when I taxed him, and eyed me sidelong with his
discomfiting grin. The doctor was a queer old man; not the least
evidence of his queerness was the interest he displayed in our affairs.
He watched us drill for "William Tell" and "Mrs. Tankerville's Tiara,"
day by day, appearing to find therein unfailing entertainment. To be
sure he had little else to do; he had long retired from practice,
and, as he said of himself, was the weak-minded victim of his own
whims. With all his oddities, we were fond of him; and his advice
and suggestions were a real help to such of us as took ourselves and
our parts seriously. The stage was one of his many hobbies; he had
collected a huge library of books relating to it; had seen all of the
celebrated actors of his day and known not a few of them; and could
recall Laura Keane in the very role which Muriel was now essaying.

"Do you remember what she wore, Doctor?" Mazie asked him,
characteristically enough, by the way.

"White gauze, I think," said the old gentleman, considering. "Yes, it
was white gauze, and a touch of green about it somewhere."

"Huh! Touch o' green was a fig-leaf, I s'pose--hope so, anyhow!"
said Mrs. Botlisch, and "wallopped" down another oyster. She _was_ a
terrible old woman.

"I don't know what we'd do without you, doctor," said Mazie
precipitately. "You know so much about it--what we ought to do, I mean,
and how the whole thing ought to go. It's ever so kind of you----"

"Not at all--the kindness is on your side," said the doctor. He glanced
about with a smile in which there lurked a whimsical melancholy. "I
don't aspire to the post of guide, philosopher, and fr----"

"Talkin' o' guides," old Mrs. Botlisch interrupted him. "Ever hear
that story 'bout the English feller that went aroun' Niagry Falls with
a guide, out to Table Rock an' Goat Island, and down under th' Falls
an' everywheres, an' when they got through, he took an' wrote in th'
visitors' book, 'Why am I like Desdemona?' That's th' white girl that
married a nigger in one o' these here plays, you know. He took an'
wrote, 'Why am I like Desdemona? Becuz----'"

"Ahem!" interrupted Doctor Vardaman, with extraordinary vehemence. "You
were asking me for the address of the man that sells make-up boxes, one
of you the other day. I meant to bring it with me to-night, but forgot.
Any time you want, you can stop at my house, and in case I'm out, ask
Huddesley, I left it with him. It's Kryzowski--bowski--wowski--some
such unpronounceable Russian name, and his shop is somewhere on Sixth
Avenue, I think, but I can't exactly remember."

All of which speech the doctor delivered in a rapid and vigorous
outburst of words, not pausing until he was quite out of breath; and
even then he had the air of one skirting by a hair's-breadth some
desperate verge.

"I'll stop in to-morrow," said J. B. "Huddesley isn't likely to get
mixed up about it, is he?"

"Huddesley? Oh, no, trust _him_. Besides I'll leave it written down.
But Huddesley is perfectly reliable--a remarkable man, that--never had
a such a servant is my house--he's really unusual."

"Snake in th' grass--don't tell _me_!" Mrs. Botlisch grunted. She had
taken a bitter prejudice against the doctor's man-servant; partly, no
doubt, because although he was a good deal about the house, coming
and going on the doctor's errands, he had managed to avoid both her
bullying and her patronage. There is nothing more offensive than
the servant whose manners are better than our own. And Huddesley's
manners were perfect in his degree; he was English, we supposed from
the short fragment of his history we had heard, and had not been long
enough abroad to lose the insular standard of domestic service, and the
insular traditions of class.

"Huddesley'll get spoiled if you don't look out, Doctor," Colonel
Pallinder warned him. "None of my affair, of course, but, pardon me,
too much notice and perhaps too much pay----"

"I know some of 'em that ain't sufferin' from _that_ anyhow!" growled
the old woman pointedly.

"I believe ma thinks we ought to give all these lazy darkies as much as
we spend on ourselves," said Mrs. Pallinder with an indulgent laugh.
"As if they weren't eating us out of house and home already! But
William's right, doctor, Huddesley will be spoiled if we're not all
more careful. A white servant can't stand petting and familiarity the
way black ones do; sooner or later he'll presume on it. Did you know
that all these boys have been going down to your house to get Huddesley
to hear them their parts?"

"It's my fault, I began it," J. B. explained, reddening. "I said to Ted
that if he wanted to know how an English butler behaved he'd better
get a few pointers from Huddesley. Huddesley'd make an ideal 'Jenks,'
you know, as far as looks go, I mean. He's the real thing in butlers.
And it's funny, he's got ever so many good ideas about _business_, you
know, and all that. But we won't do it any more if you'd rather not,
Doctor."

"Pooh, you can't spoil a man like that," the doctor said. "Reverence
for class is born in 'em; it runs in the blood. That's what I admire
about these English servants--their perfect self-respect, and idea of
the dignity of their own position, without presuming on yours."

"It's awfully convenient having him to prompt anyhow," said Mazie, who
needed a great deal of prompting. "Nobody wants to sit and hold an old
prompt-book and watch for mistakes. What bothers me is all those funny
little pairs of letters '_r.u._' and '_cross over_' and '_sits right_'
scattered all through your speech like hiccups. I don't know what
_r.u._ means, anyhow."

"Huddesley says it means _retire up_--walk toward the back of the
stage, you know."

"Well, but I thought you oughtn't _ever_ to turn your back on the
audience."

"Depends on yer figger, I guess," said Mrs. Botlisch. "Some girl's
backs and fronts ain't no different--they're flat both sides like a
paper doll!"

"Huddesley has aspirations," said Doctor Vardaman briskly. "I
discovered that some time ago. At first I thought he wanted to
study medicine; he used to be forever poking about my little room,
pretending to dust and arrange the bottles, and asking all manner of
questions. But since this business of your plays has come up, he's been
tremendously interested in them. The fellow has some education, you
know. I've found him two or three times reading in my library, with the
feather duster under his arm--perfectly absorbed. He was very mortified
the first time I caught him at it, and humbly begged my pardon. 'Hi
can't resist a book, sir, sometimes,' he said. 'Hi wouldn't wish to be
thought to presoom, but Hi've tastes hother than my lot can gratify;
and Hi've 'ad 'opes--but,' says he, with a sigh, 'that's hall hover and
gone, now.'"

"Kind of stagey, wasn't he?"

"Yes, of course, he must have got that out of some book. Once in a
while, he uses very fine language, indeed, and then I know he's been
reading. I said, 'Well, Huddesley, it's a pity, if feeling that way,
you can't raise yourself as high as you choose here in America.' I only
said it to draw him out, you know. He shook his head mournfully. 'No,
sir,' says he, 'Hi won't never be anything but a butler--a servant
pourin' out wine an' blackin' boots for the rich and light-'earted
like yourself, sir.' I asked him what he would like to be if he could
begin over again. 'A hactor, sir,' said he respectfully. 'Hi feel the
stirrin' of Hart within my buzzom.' 'That's where we commonly feel 'em,
Huddesley,' says I. 'Hi don't mean 'eart, sir, beggin' your parding, Hi
mean Hart--with a Hay, sir--that's what Hi feel, but they'll never 'ave
no houtlet, sir, Hi'm a butler--the die is cast----' and then I escaped
into the garden to laugh."

"That isn't all funny--it's pathetic too," said J. B. thoughtfully.
"Poor devil!"

At least two people in the room looked at the young man with a quicker
interest--Doctor Vardaman and Muriel, the doctor with an odd and
pleased surprise in his keen quizzical face. As for Muriel, she and J.
B. looked at one another pretty often, as I remember. Mrs. Botlisch
raised her hard old features from a close inspection of her empty,
swept and scraped platter, and fixed the doctor with a little twinkling
porcine eye.

"How long you had him anyway, Doc.?"

"Three months, or so, I believe."

"Oh, no, it's not that long, Doctor," exclaimed Mazie. "I remember
Huddesley came after the holidays, just as I was starting to
Washington. That was a little after the Charity Ball. I put off going
so as not to miss it. I remember about Huddesley because you had just
got rid of that awful man that had d.t's and came up here with an axe
wanting to kill somebody."

"Huddesley's arrival raised the tone of our neighbourhood appreciably,"
said the doctor, with a laugh. Doctor Vardaman's men were a byword
in the community. Men of every colour and nationality had drifted
through his hands; it was a long procession of lazy, drunken, thieving
rascality, or honesty so abysmally stupid and incompetent as to be
equally worthless. "I'll never let him go, now I've got him," said the
old gentleman. "I have a fellow-feeling for all you ladies that keep
house. Rather than lose him, I'd give him everything I own even unto
the half of my substance."

"He'll git more'n that 'fore he's through with ye," said Mrs. Botlisch.
"You young Taylor feller,"--she always called J. B. and in fact all the
young men that frequented the house, by the last name--"you'd better
git that bottle o' rye away from Johns. He's had about enough, 'f _I'm_
any jedge--an' I reckon I'd oughter be, all th' drunks I've handled----"

"Pioneer times, pioneer times," said the colonel, hastily. "Er--um--the
ice to Mr. Johns, Sam."

"When Mirandy's pa useter came home loaded," pursued the old woman,
unmoved, "many's the time I've shet him in th' woodshed, him hollerin'
bloody murder--'Let him holler!' says I. Time mornin' come I'd git him
under th' pump--oh my, yes, I've had lots of experience."

"Pioneer times," said Colonel Pallinder again desperately. (But J. B.
_did_ take the bottle away from Teddy's neighbourhood.) "Pioneer days!
Good God, gentlemen, when I think of what men and women had to contend
with then, I'm ashamed, yes, ashamed of the luxuries we live in. You
were saying, Doctor----"

"About--ahem--oh--ah--yes, about Huddesley," said the doctor, who had
not been saying anything. "I can't always make the fellow out--I'm
rather puzzled----"

"Speakin' o' puzzles," said old Mrs. Botlisch, "I was goin' to tell
ye that one 'bout th' English feller that the guide was takin' 'roun'
Niagry Falls. After they had gone down under th' Falls, an' out to
Goat Island, and everywheres else, ye know, he took an' wrote in th'
visitors' book, 'Why am I like Desdemona?' (That's the white girl that
goes off with a nigger in th' play, ye know). He wrote just that: 'Why
am I like Desdemona?' Th' answer is: 'Becuz----'"

This time, in spite of an outburst of coughing that threatened
serious results to Doctor Vardaman, in spite of a fusillade of loud
irrelevant talk from the colonel, in spite even of Teddy Johns' quite
unintentionally falling over a chair, this time, I say, we all heard
the answer!




CHAPTER THIRTEEN


Not long since I had a visit from Gwynne Peters' oldest boy. The
little fellow is twelve, and, as I abstained from any embarrassing and
inconvenient demonstrations of affection or even friendship, we became
quite intimate, and I believe he enjoyed himself after a fashion. He
is not like his father, neither so delicate in body, nor so gentle
and winning as I remember the elder Gwynne--but, in truth, I do not
know if I ever found the way to his heart, with all my diplomacy;
the unconquerable barrier of age divided us; childhood looks with so
solidly-rooted a suspicion on our efforts to approach it; it guards
its quaint jungles, its enchanted gardens with so jealous a care
that we may well despair of ever touching hands. And for that matter
I sometimes think we are all strangers more or less to the end, and
our nearest intimacy only a painful interchange of signals in a
fog. Little Gwynne tolerated me, and I soon ceased to ask anything
else. He approved of cookies and the works of Mr. Alger; as these
latter immortal productions do not form a part of my library, we were
obliged to call upon the Carnegie one a few squares distant, whence
he requisitioned them at the rate of a new Alger volume about every
twenty-four hours until the supply was exhausted, when we began on
Mr. Henty. This fell out very luckily, as I had discovered him asleep
in a corner over "Ivanhoe," and I should not have wished him to carry
away so unfavourable an impression of my resources in the way of
entertainment. But what I most observed in him was an indifference to,
or ignorance of, his family history and traditions that seemed abnormal
in a Gwynne, however remotely descended. I asked him if he had ever
been to see his great-grandfather's portrait in the State-House? The
moment was ill-chosen, as he was profoundly occupied with a new variety
of top, but he absently answered: "Yep."

"What did you think of it?"

"Nothin'," said this renegade, with astounding callousness, bending
himself to the top; it was warranted to spin five minutes at a stretch,
and when he had got it started, and was timing it by my watch, he
felt his mind released from cares enough to volunteer indulgently:
"Father's got a big photograph of it in his office. It's all yellow and
fly-specky, because it's so old, you know. I guess it's 'most as old as
father--or maybe _you_."

"Doesn't your father ever tell you about him--what a great man he was,
and all?"

"Nope."

"What!" said I, then, unable to believe my ears. "Doesn't he ever talk
to you about Governor Gwynne? Doesn't anybody ever tell you to remember
that you're a Gwynne?" The top was reeling to its fall, and he was very
busy, and, as I could see, justifiably annoyed at my persistence, but
this question caused him to look up sharply with the quick suspicion of
his twelve years.

"Aw, you're in fun!" he said, eying me shrewdly. "Father wouldn't talk
guff like that! And anyway my name's Peters--Gwynne's just my given
name--so it wouldn't be true, see?" Guff like that! These were his
sacrilegious words. Nothing could have more stingingly brought home
to me the lapse of years, or better illustrated the changes in men's
minds. And I might here insert some valuable reflections on the vanity
of human achievement, and the hollow and transitory character of fame,
if I were not uneasily conscious that Governor Gwynne's renown, even in
his heyday, was not of a kind to fill the four corners of the universe;
it was only in the opinion of his family that it reached those
magnificent proportions. Now he and his deeds are forgotten, even by
them; the fires are all dead on that fantastic altar which the Gwynnes
tended for so many years with so much misplaced zeal. It is not likely,
I think, that little Gwynne will ever be troubled by the problems
confronting his father in March of the year of Grace, 1883.

In fact, during this time, Gwynne might have been seen any day
pondering gloomily before his empty desk, under his grandfather's
grimly searching scrutiny, by the hour. The Pallinder business had
reached a stage when he could no longer ignore it; yet he could not
bring himself to any active measures. Gwynne knew as much as anybody
about the colonel's affairs; he had heard certain subdued but very
disagreeable rumours. Templeton himself had brought them to him months
earlier with a countenance of fright and perplexity. It had not cleared
much when he left the office; the little agent could not understand
what ailed his patron. He had never known Gwynne to be so indifferent,
so careless of the rights and feelings of the other heirs; it was
clean out of his character, and Templeton felt with dismay that his
surest prop had been removed. If Mr. Peters was becoming as queer
as the rest of them, Templeton was almost ready to resign from the
management of the Gwynne estate; single-handed, he could not "hold up
his end," as he phrased it. In the years of their association he had
conceived something like a real affection for the young man, and this
change obscurely alarmed and distressed him. Gwynne, about everything
else so open, so resourceful, so patient in the control of his
difficult kindred, so genially shrewd, would not allow any discussion
of the Pallinder delinquency; he shifted the subject, or turned upon
Templeton with a manner of such forbidding reticence that the agent
shrank discomfited. "Oh, well, Mr. Peters, I--I guess I'd better leave
you alone to run your tenants and the family," he would say humbly,
reaching for his hat in an apologetic confusion. "I--I ain't ever made
such a success of it that I've any call to argue, or advise _you_ how
to do," and so would shuffle meekly from the room, leaving the young
man, had he known it, in a miserable humiliation. Time and again,
Gwynne had made the resolve to have it out with the colonel; and time
and again had turned aside from the act, like a hunter refusing the
leap. He bargained with himself, loathing his own weakness; he would
go and see Colonel Pallinder on such a day at such an hour; he would
say to him thus and so. The day came and the hour--why was it that
something invariably prevented him? Once he even got so far as the
door of Colonel Pallinder's office--and it was locked. The office
was closed for the day: it was late Saturday afternoon, and in his
heart Gwynne knew the office would be closed--knew it before he left
his own. He turned away in a flash of angry contempt of himself--of
Pallinder--of the whole shabby business. Yet the colonel was safe
for that day; you cannot scour the town for a man, like a bailiff;
and Gwynne certainly was not going to follow him to the house, and
dun him under the very roof where he himself had received so many
hospitalities, such unfailing courtesy and kindness, within hearing of
the fellow's innocent wife and daughter! What had Mrs.--ahem!--what had
those two poor women done? Very likely they knew nothing whatever about
Pallinder's indebtedness; they were both of them touchingly ignorant
of money matters. This was strictly an affair for men--he would see
Pallinder Monday. And so Gwynne strode away home, to dinner and a
change of dress, and thence, by the most natural sequence in the world,
to the Lexington and Amherst cars, and out to the Pallinders'! In one
of his spasms of conscience he had refused their urgent invitation
to the house party--the irony of his position was apparent, even to
him; but he balanced the scales by going out night after night to the
rehearsals of "William Tell," wherein he bore his part with a feverish
enthusiasm that surprised his friends.

It might have been noticed, but, as a matter of fact, I am sure hardly
anybody did notice, that Gwynne was the only one of the family who
figured in the theatricals, or, in the pungent everyday phrase, had
anything to do with the Pallinders. Marian Lawrence had been asked to
the house party, and had eagerly promised to come, but in a day or so
Mrs. Pallinder received a charming, apologetic, and graceful little
note from Mrs. Lawrence, declining on Marian's behalf, for some vague
reason. The truth is, Mrs. Horace Gwynne, on hearing of the plan, had
once again ordered out her barouche and driven over to the Lawrences',
upright and stern, with the stark face of Doom. And after a heated
conference with the mother, the note had been despatched; Mrs. Lawrence
sat down and cried heartily with the disappointed girl when that dire
act had been performed--but neither of them thought of disobeying
Cousin Jennie. When they met Mrs. Pallinder face to face coming out
of church next Sunday morning they were both a good deal flustered;
they flinched before Mrs. Pallinder's steadily radiant smile, and were
devoutly glad, I think, to escape from her neighbourhood into the
crowd. Archie Lewis walked home with Marian, and raised his hat as a
carriage spun by--"That was the Pallinders with Miss Baxter," said
Archie, observing with a passing surprise that his companion made no
sign of recognition. "Was it? I didn't see them," said Marian stoutly,
looking straight in front of her with very red cheeks. Not so long
before, Mazie had been one of her most intimate friends. Look on that
picture, and now on this! What was the matter with all the Gwynnes?
Little old Eleanor and little old Mollie, on seeing the colonel less
than half a square off, advancing upon them, already uncovered,
courtly, bland, with outstretched hand--the two old sisters, I say,
fairly took to their heels up a side street, with scared and shrinking
faces. They gathered up their virgin skirts and fled shudderingly as
from contamination. Mrs. Horace Gwynne, alone of them all, possessed
the courage of her convictions. Erect in her barouche, she encountered
and returned Mrs. Pallinder's smile with a salute so casual, so
perfunctory that it suggested the recognition she would have bestowed
upon her cook in event of a public meeting with that functionary.
Mrs. Pallinder bit her lips; she reddened through her rouge--and the
next moment was gaily bowing to another acquaintance as if life meant
nothing to her but this pleasant exchange of civilities. "Of course I
never would deliberately _cut_ anybody," Mrs. Horace explained later;
"that sort of behaviour is childish and ill-tempered. But I flatter
myself I know as well as anyone how to put people in their proper
place, and intimate my opinion of them, without talking or acting like
a washerwoman. I wanted Mrs. Pallinder to understand that while I was
absolutely indifferent to such a matter as the back-rent she owed me
and every one of us, I did not approve of the _principle_ of the thing.
She knew perfectly well what I meant. And at receptions or wherever
she happened to be in the same company with me afterwards, I simply
didn't see her at all! I was always talking to someone else, or had my
back turned. She understood--a _person_ like that!" I dare say Mrs.
Pallinder did understand; she was not without some previous experience,
and it is likely deserved every snub and stab which Mrs. Horace, with
the just severity of a good and upright woman, inflicted on her. So
must we all lie upon the beds we make.

This was the secret of the Gwynnes' altered demeanour; it was, of
course, not the failure to pay them their rent to which they objected,
but the appalling _principle_, or lack of principle, it indicated. At
least, that is what they all and severally declared afterwards. At the
time, with characteristic Gwynne reticence, they kept their troubles to
themselves; no set of conspiring revolutionists could have been more
close-mouthed. Their behaviour in this instance was of a piece with
the futile pride that prompted their efforts to distract the public
mind from Caroline--from Steven--from Sam Peters. What! Drag their
noble name through the mud and riot of a Common Pleas suit? Associate
their house and the memory of Governor Gwynne with a debasing scandal
about Money! I should not care to reveal the arts by which Gwynne put
off the hour of retribution for the Pallinders, playing upon these
familiar strings with a skill he himself despised. Even he, in the
end, sounded the note once too often, as we have seen in the case
of old Steven, to whom the sum, small as it was, meant more than
to the other members of the family. For Steven, once away from the
blandishments of Mrs. Pallinder, naturally reverted in the shortest
possible space of time to his previous mood of brooding indignation. He
had parted from Doctor Vardaman with a confused notion that everything
was going smoothly--that Gwynne would settle with the Pallinders in
a few days--a week, perhaps, at furthest. It had not been stated in
so many words; none the less Steven carried away these ideas planted
within him either by Mrs. Pallinder's soothing flatteries, or by the
doctor's well-meant efforts at comforting and diverting him. He waited
a day or two, eagerly inspecting every mail; he spoke grandly of his
expected remittances to his tolerant country neighbours, and alluded to
Gwynne with a large air as his man of business. But as the days passed
and his man of business made no sign, Steven's slender allowance of
patience gave out once more. He wrote to Gwynne, and waited a fevered
while for an answer. Wrote again, and with the letter, addressed and
stamped, in his pocket, abandoned his design, and took the first train
for town. It was with a fierce and resolute face that he stalked into
the office that afternoon--and Gwynne had gone out! This delay, to
speak in high metaphorical terms which would have delighted Steven's
own taste, did not arrest the falling of the levin-brand; it only
increased its momentum. In proportion as the moments lapsed, his
wrath gathered head. As it happened, he found himself in appropriate
company, with his grievance; when he entered the room there sat his
cousins, the two Misses Gwynne, with their pale, furtive, startled
faces framed in curls and satin rosettes, in their rigid bombazine
skirts, Miss Gwynne tremblingly clasping an umbrella, Miss Mollie
fingering a foolscap document whereon, if Steven had cared to look,
he might have seen some arithmetical calculations similar to his own.
They started up, fluttering and ejaculating at his appearance; then
sank down disappointed, yet, probably, a little relieved. The two not
only dressed, but thought and acted in couples; either one was helpless
without the other; and both now wore an air of terrified resolution
such as a pair of mice, a pair of pullets might have presented in
some desperate crisis of the trap or butcher's knife. Even in their
day, a day which recognised but one career for respectable women,
which knew not women's colleges or bachelor-maids, or what we call the
professional equality of the sexes, Eleanor and Mollie were caricatures
of spinsterhood; we looked upon them with as much pity as amusement, I
believe. This was a tremendous step for them to take; and horror laid a
throttling hold on both at the idea (occurring to them simultaneously)
that Cousin Steven might think them indiscreet or unladylike. But
Steven was much too preoccupied to spare a thought to their confusion.
"Huh, girls!" said he, sat down in Gwynne's revolving-chair, and
glowered absently out of the window, beating a tattoo on the desk, and
framing the sentences in which he would open his arraignment. "Waiting
to see Gwynne?" he inquired, rousing himself with a momentary curiosity
after a while.

The twins murmured inarticulately, looking at each other.

"So'm I," said Steven, scowling, and they might all three have
proceeded to some explanations, but at that moment, upon this amiable
family-group, strolled in Archie Lewis, on some errand from his
father's office, debonair, whistling his song from "William Tell,"
and very much taken aback at sight of the company into which he had
stumbled. "It was a perfect nest of Gwynnes," he said, graphically
describing the episode. "I felt like Daniel in the lions' den."

"Oh--ah--Mr. Gwynne--er--Miss Gwynne----" said he, stopping short in
embarrassment. "Ah--um--Gwynne's gone out, I see."

"He'll be back in a few minutes," stammered Miss Eleanor, after a
moment of fearful indecision.

"The office-boy said so," added Miss Mollie faintly. "It's almost
half-an-hour now."

"Well, I guess I won't wait--if you'll be so kind as to tell him I was
here? And I'll just put this on his desk under the paperweight--he'll
understand when he sees it," said Archie, depositing his bundle of
papers on the desk as he spoke, and very ready to beat a retreat. But
Steven, eying him, suddenly growled out, "You're Judge Lewis' son,
ain't you?"

"Why, yes--you know my father, of course--I've often heard him speak of
you," said Archie, conventionally, edging off.

"Sit down," said Steven, imperiously motioning. "Gwynne'll be along in
a little. You ought to be a lawyer, young man--your father's a lawyer.
I haven't seen him for years--I guess he's a good deal changed. Law
kind of changes people; it's seldom a man takes it up and stays honest.
Sit down; Gwynne'll be here presently."

("And so," said Archie, "I sat down. The fact is, the old fellow looked
sort of queer, and though I never heard of his _doing_ anything, I
didn't much like to leave him alone with those two old ladies--you
never can tell, you know.")

"I'd like to see the judge," said Steven.

"Why, I'm sure father'd be very pleased----"

Steven waved an impatient gesture. "I'm not particular about seeing
_him_," said he--and Archie used to repeat this part of the story in
his father's presence with infinite relish--"But I'd like to have his
_opinion_, in a matter of--a matter of _debt_!"

The two sisters exchanged a horrified glance; they knew what Steven's
errand was, now, and thought he was about to reveal the awful secret,
and tarnish the name of Gwynne forever. But that was by no means
Steven's intention; he was as tender of the family honour as they, but
much more confident of his own knowledge of the world and diplomatic
abilities. Archie, upon whose youthfully sharp wits none of this
by-play was lost, sat wondering what was to come next.

"This debt--or--er--this indebtedness," said Steven elaborately,
"is--er--it should be, in short, collected--that is--er--measures
should be taken by which it--could be, in short, collected." He fixed
a profound look on the young man, pausing while he considered in what
other roundabout terms he could present the situation.

"Is the fellow that owes you responsible--solid, I mean, you know?"
asked Archie, beginning to be interested. "If he's on a salary, or got
a good business you might attach----"

"I--I--I'm not prepared to state," said Steven, appalled at the
briskness of Archie's deductions. "I'm just supposing a case, you
understand."

"Oh!" said Archie, suppressing a grin. "Well--ah--are you supposing it
to be a large sum, Mr. Gwynne?"

"A debt's a debt," said Steven, with magnificent brevity; he could
not resist a sidelong glance at Eleanor and Mollie, commanding their
admiration.

"Yes, of course, Mr. Gwynne, but there's a difference between a debt of
five dollars and one of five hundred," said Archie peaceably. "If you
can come to some kind of compromise, it's generally a great deal better
than going to law; you may get a little less than you're entitled to,
but you save time and trouble and worry. I suppose I've heard my father
say that to a hundred clients."

This view appeared to strike Eleanor and Mollie favourably; something
in the half-a-loaf policy appeals with a subtle power to the feminine
mind. But Steven's old face reddened; he darted a vengeful glance at
this Laodicean councillor.

"Compromise--_nothing_!" he snarled. "I'll see him da--I'll see him
farther before I'll compromise!"

"All right--all right, I was just saying that's one way of settling
these things," said Archie hastily. "Of course you know what you
want, Mr. Gwynne. Trouble is, you go into court with a case, and you
never know how long it will take to wind it up--maybe two or three
years--that's perfectly irrespective of the rights of the case.
Whereas, if you accept some kind of settlement, you--well, in general,
you come out ahead of the game," said Archie, falling back on the
vernacular.

Oh, wise young judge! The two Misses Gwynne listened to Archie's
exposition with respectful awe. I have heard him say with a laugh that
at no time in his subsequent career--which has been one of considerable
distinction--has he ever felt himself to be exerting so much influence,
no, not in his most sustained and vigorous flights of oratory. "I might
have been the Almighty, instead of a smart-Alecky boy, by the way those
two poor old women were impressed--it was funny--funny and pitiful,"
he says, and shakes his grizzling head.

"It's--it's very awful to have someone in debt to you, Mr. Lewis," Miss
Mollie took courage to say falteringly.

"Not so bad as being in debt to somebody yourself, though," said
Archie genially. This well-intended levity was a serious mistake; they
shrank--they withered before the dreadful suggestion.

"We--we aren't _that_, Mr. Lewis," cried both old maids in scared
chorus. "It's not we that are in debt--it's somebody that owes us----"

"That owes the GWYNNE ESTATE," said Steven ponderously. He had forgot
all about his supposititious case, and Archie, who, as he himself might
have said, was not born yesterday, had already made a shrewd guess as
to the identity of the debtor.

"A debt's a bad business, anyway you fix it," he said easily. "Reminds
me of that story father tells of himself when he was a boy borrowing
money of their old coloured man to go to the circus with. 'Chile,' says
old Mose, 'you's got to 'member this; er debt that ain't paid stahts er
_roorback_! You owe me, an' I owe Pete, an' Pete he owes that wall-eyed
niggah oveh at the liv'ry-stable, an' lakly Mistah Walleye, _he_ owes
somebody else, an' 'twell one of us stahts the payin', nobuddy cyahn't
pay--an' thar's your _roorback_!'" Archie laughed. He laughed alone,
for this sprightly tale, although he had recited it in a careful
imitation of Judge Lewis' best manner, apparently failed to amuse
anybody but himself. Perhaps it went too near the truth to be wholly
agreeable. "I never realised until that moment," he used to say with a
certain naivete, "what an awful job poor Gwynne Peters had for years
with those people. I'll bet nobody knows or ever will know what he put
up with!"

His new sympathy put a greater warmth into his greeting when Gwynne
at last came in, a few minutes later. Archie, as he explained his
errand, noted inwardly that his friend's face was drawn and tired; nor
did he wonder much at the grim look Gwynne cast around the waiting
family-circle.

"You're late, Gwynne," said old Steven, fierce-eyed under his shaggy
brows.

"I know it," said Gwynne, in a harsh voice. "I had to go out to the
country this morning, and that put me back with everything."

"You mean to the house? You've been out to the house?" Steven asked
eagerly. "You've talked to Pall----?"

Gwynne looked at him steadily. "No, I haven't. I've been out to see
Sam. Will you please let me have my chair, Cousin Steven? I want to
make a note of this for Judge Lewis."

"It's no matter," said Archie hurriedly, anxious to escape as much on
the Gwynnes' account as on his own. ("I was afraid they were in for a
regular family-row and I wanted to get out," he said. "Why, you might
have known something was wrong with Gwynne, by his coming out about Sam
that way. That was the first time I ever knew him to do anything like
that!") "Never mind, Gwynne--father said you could keep them as long as
you wanted. I'll stop in some other time. You're--you're busy now."

"I wish you'd stay, Arch," said Gwynne desperately. The others sat in
a ghastly silence, even the old man. He got up and surrendered the
chair to Gwynne without a word. The sisters hardly dared look at each
other, in the trepidation produced by the mere mention of Sam's name.
Thus carelessly or rashly to flaunt Sam in the public view, and invite
attention to him seemed to them nothing less than a profane assault on
the temple of the Gwynne reputation--that edifice propped and shored
through so many years by what profitless sacrifices, what wrong-headed
devotion, what pitiful and heroic subterfuge! At this rate Gwynne might
say something about his Aunt Caroline, they thought in quaking panic.
The veil of the sanctum was rent in twain--what would he do or say next?

He did nothing; and after Archie had taken his leave, it was Eleanor
who quavered, frightened, yet with a real sympathy for him stirring at
her elderly maiden heart: "Is anything the matter, Gwynne? With--with
Sam, I mean?"

"Yes, Dr. Sheckard sent for me. They think he'll have to be taken
away--sent to some other place. He's--well, restless, you know."

"That'll take money, Gwynne," said Steven abruptly. Now that Archie's
restraining presence had been removed, he was eager to get to the
business in hand, and designed by one or two tactful remarks of this
nature to lead up to it. Eleanor and Mollie shrank a little; they were
genuinely and self-forgetfully interested in their unfortunate kinsman.

"I'll manage it, somehow," said Gwynne briefly. He put aside his
domestic tragedy without much effort; to the observant mind the
facility with which we get used to our lives is the one great everyday
miracle. Let them visit us with what trials they will, we defeat the
gods by our submission. Gwynne addressed himself to the task of the
moment with no further thought of Sam. "You wanted to see me about
something, Cousin Eleanor?" he asked, foreseeing drearily what the
answer would be. But in spite of all their preparation, the direct
question startled them; the neat and perfectly ladylike speeches in
which Eleanor and Mollie had coached each other for days vanished from
their minds--from their one mind, I might almost say. They looked at
him with stricken faces. "There is something you wanted to see me
about, Cousin Mollie?" repeated Gwynne--and could have cried "For
shame!" at the forbidding coldness of his own voice.

"Oh, Gwynne," said Miss Mollie, trembling a good deal, and thrusting
her paper at him. "I--we--Eleanor and I don't want you to think that
we are unappreciative, or--or that we've any fault to find with the
way you've managed our property--you've done everything you could,
we _know_ that, Gwynne, and you're always so good to us." Her voice
broke, but she went on resolutely. "But I--we don't know whether
you've noticed anything lately, or whether any of the others have told
you--you're so busy--and we know a woman oughtn't to interfere, or ask
questions about her money, Gwynne--and--and we oughtn't to come to your
office, we _know_ that--it's no place for a lady--but we're--we're so
worried, we couldn't help it. You don't mind our being here, do you?
We thought at first we'd write, only it takes so much longer----" here
poor Miss Mollie broke down completely and began to cry in a noiseless
and unimpeachably ladylike manner into her black-bordered handkerchief.
Miss Eleanor took up the thread, having conquered her own tears:

"We thought perhaps you didn't know, Gwynne, if Mr. Templeton hadn't
told you, but the Pallinders--that is, Colonel Pallinder, you know,
they haven't paid us any rent for our house for over a year--it's on
the paper, we added it up--I know it's right, because we did it by long
division, and then multiplied to make sure--and it's a hundred and
twenty dollars they're owing us, Gwynne, and--and we thought you'd do
something, if you knew----"

"Well, you needn't worry--he _won't_!" said Steven, savagely satirical.
Both handkerchiefs were going now; but the two old maids scarcely heard
Steven; they regarded Gwynne with a heart-breaking confidence.

"Why--yes--I knew about this, Cousin Eleanor," the young man began,
with a wretched feeling of humbug. "The only thing about commencing
proceedings to recover--bringing suit, you know--is the--the
publicity--you might have to appear in court and testify--and it would
all be in the papers, like a--a scandal----"

"Oh, scandal--bosh!" cried Steven wrathfully. Eleanor and Mollie were
looking at Gwynne with affrighted eyes over their handkerchiefs; but
Steven's masculine mind, even if none of the strongest, could not in
nature be always wrought upon so easily. These arguments were old to
him and their effect was dulled. "Scandal! There's no scandal about
going to law to get your money!" he said impatiently, and with justice.
"And as for publicity, you could fix all that, if you wanted to,
Gwynne, you know it. They could--they could make oath before a notary,
couldn't they?"

"We--we wouldn't have to do anything, if he could just get us a
_little_ of it--the--the way Mr. Lewis said, you know, Mollie," Eleanor
faltered.

"Arch? Did you tell him about this?" Gwynne asked, disturbed.

"No harm if we had," said Steven, contentiously. But Mollie looked
at Gwynne in dread. "No, no--we didn't say a thing--we didn't say a
word, Gwynne--but he just happened to say that debts were sometimes
compromised--you took some, not all, you know, but you didn't have any
lawsuit----"

"If we could get a little----" said Eleanor anxiously.

"A _little_! That's like a woman!" said Steven in strong disgust. "A
_little_! Don't you pay any attention to 'em, Gwynne!"

"Do you need money, Cousin Eleanor?" asked Gwynne gently.

Mollie began to cry hysterically again.

"We don't want you to advance any, Gwynne," said old Eleanor, trembling
and turning very pale. "You've done that before, and--and now you will
need all your money for poor Sam. And--and besides, Gwynne, I--I--we're
not fit to be trusted with money--I--I was going to tell you, only it's
so hard--but we're--we're--we've been very wicked women!" She burst
out sobbing. Gwynne might have smiled at this lurid statement from two
such timid, plaintive and abjectly respectable old maiden ladies if the
circumstances had left him any heart for smiling.

"Why, what's the matter, Cousin Eleanor?--don't cry that way!" he said,
distressed. "It's not your fault, you know. Now I promise you I'll see
about it--I'll get your money for you--these things are bound to take a
little time, you know----"

"Huh! You said that before--you've said it a dozen times!" said Steven.
He looked at Gwynne with open suspicion. "Will you come with me over to
Pallinder's office now?"

"No, no, don't do that; wait till I've told him everything,
Steven--wait a minute Gwynne!" cried Eleanor, laying her damp hands and
handkerchief on the young man's arm. "Gwynne!" she said tragically,
"it's quite true--we're wicked, wicked women! We took--Mollie and I
took all our money--it was that thousand dollars that we got when
Cousin Lucien died, you know, that we'd always put away to use if we
were sick--or, or got married--or anything, and some besides that we'd
saved up--it was last year--and we thought the rent would be coming
in all the time, and we counted on that--you know we were quite sure,
Gwynne, or we wouldn't have done it--and--and--we'd heard about so many
people making money in stocks--Caleb Spicer--that's the vegetable-man
we've taken from for ever so long, and I _know_ Caleb's honest--he
told us about his brother-in-law--only Caleb didn't tell us about
_this_ stock, Gwynne, it wasn't Caleb's fault at all, I wouldn't have
you think that--his brother-in-law's stock was some other kind, I
don't remember what now. And we--we bought some stock, Gwynne--it was
'Phosphate'--a mine, or was it a well, Sister Mollie? We--we've never
had any money, Gwynne, I mean much, you know--and we--we've had to save
so, and go without a girl and all--and make our own clothes--and we
did so want to have a little more--and we thought it would get to be
worth double or treble in the least little while, the way those things
do--the way Caleb's brother-in-law's did--and besides Colonel Pallinder
said it would----"

"_What!_" said Gwynne. He got up. His face blanched; the likeness to
old Samuel Gwynne leaped out upon his features so strong, so lowering,
that Eleanor and Mollie involuntarily drew back, appalled. They
supposed the confession had angered him. "We didn't know anything about
it, Gwynne," they both began. "We didn't know--we didn't mean to do
anything wrong!"

"You didn't do anything wrong," said Gwynne, with an effort. "Go on.
What has happened?"

"It was all my fault, Gwynne," said Eleanor, generously. "I put it into
Mollie's head--it was my fault, all of it."

"It doesn't make any difference about that, Nellie," said Mollie.
"I was just as much to blame--you couldn't have done it without
me. We--we've found out a terrible thing about 'Phosphate,'
Gwynne--it's--it's not going to double at all. We thought we'd get some
money right away, and we didn't--and then we waited--and we didn't get
any--and we were afraid to ask Colonel Pallinder, for fear it would
look as if--as if--we didn't believe in him--don't, Gwynne, don't
look that way! And then at last we went down to the Third National
where our money used to be; we got Mary to go with us, because we were
afraid to go by ourselves, and besides it's not ladylike; she knows
your friend, Mr. Taylor, that great big tall young man that's in there
back in the brass-wired-off place, you know, Gwynne. And Mary wasn't
a bit afraid; she just asked for him, and he came out and took the
paper--it's a certificate, isn't it?--and looked at it, and then went
back into the president's room, and we heard some men laughing, Gwynne.
And then Mr. McAlpine himself came out after a while, and he came up
and said he knew we'd believe him, because of his being president, and
he was sorry to have to tell us, but that stock wasn't worth the paper
it was printed on, and he wanted to know whose advice we had acted
on in buying it. So he and Mary and Mr. Taylor and you are the only
people that know anything about it, Gwynne, and--and--if it don't go
any farther than that, it won't--it won't be a disgrace to you or the
family," said poor old Mollie with tears.

Gwynne looked at them helplessly. That these two shy, fearsome, frugal,
penny-wise old gentlewomen could have ventured their all upon one
reckless stake like the worst and wildest gambler that ever tossed his
last dollar on the cloth, was well-nigh inconceivable--but the thing
had happened! It was not merely unexpected, it was impossible--and
it had happened! If he had been asked to name the members of his
family who might most safely be trusted to hoard and watch over their
lean inheritance, he would have pitched upon Eleanor and Mollie; he
would have supposed them impregnable behind their barrier of timorous
ignorance, entrenched forever in the habit of grinding economy--and lo,
that very childish inexperience, that thriftless parsimony, had been
their undoing!

"Well, but whose advice _did_ you take?" he asked. "You surely asked
_somebody_ besides Caleb What's-his-name? Why didn't you come to me--or
Cousin Jennie?"

"But Jennie wouldn't have let us do it, you know," said Eleanor, with
entire simplicity. "There wouldn't have been any use asking _her_. And
we were so _sure_--we thought Colonel Pallinder's advice was enough--we
knew you wouldn't go to the house so much if you didn't think he
was to be trusted--you wouldn't go where anybody was dishonourable.
But I don't believe he _is_ honourable, Gwynne; of course, he's had
misfortunes with 'Phosphate' like ourselves, but if he were really
honourable, he'd pay our rent."

The young man was silenced; anger and shame surged together within him.
The most expert of fencers could not have pricked him closer home than
Eleanor with her simple earnestness of belief. Their faith blackened
him in his own eyes; their affection stung; their tremulous apologies
scourged.

"Never mind, Cousin Mollie--don't cry--I'll take care of you," he said,
huskily, at last. "Now let me get a carriage and send you home--and
don't worry about your money, nor the rent--I'll get it back for you
some way or another----"

Mollie and Eleanor cried harder than ever; mingled with their ghastly
visions of ultimate destitution, and much more concretely awful, had
been the fear of what Gwynne would say, of what he would think when he
heard the shameful news. Their tears comforted them; and I dare say
that many a real sinner has touched thus the utter depth, and found
there a like unexpected peace.

"Oh, Gwynne, you're so good to us--and with poor Sam on your mind all
the time, too--but you never think about yourself at all!"

Gwynne almost smiled. Sam? What care had he given to Sam or Sam's
interests of late? And of whom had he been thinking, if not solely of
himself?

"Now promise me you won't worry," he said, urgently kind. "I'll fix it
all right----"

"You've been saying that a good while to _me_, and nothing's come of
it so far," said Steven distrustfully. "Hope you ain't forgetting that
it's Sam's money, too, you've been letting go all this year and a half?"

"I'm not forgetting it, Cousin Steven," said Gwynne, turning his
haggard eyes on the other. "I won't forget Sam."

After they had gone, Gwynne went back to the office and sat a long
while with his set face staring at that other face on the wall, under
whose shadow he had lived his whole life, without, as it would seem,
profiting much by the association. There he sat--and I think we may
very well refrain from spying on him. Doubtless he did full justice
upon Gwynne Peters that spring afternoon, alone with his condemning
thoughts; doubtless every selfish lie, every mean evasion rose up and
confronted him; doubtless he took himself to task more sternly than
he deserved, and fancied he sat, a broken man, amongst the ruins of a
dishonoured life. Hardly, I am sure, at his present age, can Gwynne
look back upon that hour with an equal mind; when it recurs to him, the
taste of his folly must yet be bitter on his tongue. He is to-day a
successful man, greatly liked, greatly respected. Mrs. Gwynne Peters,
I believe, is a very happy wife and mother, not at all jealous, and
having no cause to be. But has Gwynne ever mentioned Mrs. Pallinder
to her? He might do so without a blush, but he probably feels that it
would be an unprofitable business; let the old ashes lie, and let the
lost corners grow up with weeds and be forgot. Wives and husbands,
if they be wise, will not go prospecting in the remote places of
each other's hearts, lest they chance upon some of these disquieting
ruins--ugly little cairns, decrepit old tombstones. The days were
lengthening, yet it was twilight as Gwynne walked home; street-lamps
burned dimly through the foggy spring air, and the newsboys were crying
the last edition.




CHAPTER FOURTEEN


Doctor Vardaman was not a wealthy man; he occupied what he considered
the golden mean, the "neither poverty nor riches" of the Preacher;
enough to live in a simple, uncalculating ease. His chief pastime,
as he used to describe it with some amusement, was the practising
of certain small economies whereby he accumulated enough to indulge
himself once in a while with an expensive new edition, or rare and
equally high-priced old one. Like most professional men, he had no
turn for affairs, and no temptation ever assailed him to "take a
flyer in Phosphate," or anything else. It was, therefore, without
any idea of investment that he scaled the stairs leading to Colonel
Pallinder's office a few days after the Misses Gwynne had visited
Gwynne's to explain their operations in finance. He was, in fact,
bent on an errand that took him past the colonel's door, and into the
rear of the Turner Building, where the City Superintendent of Parks
and Gardens had a retiring, little, unfrequented room. The doctor
wanted to file objections against the setting up of several monumental
bill-boards and advertising signs on the vacant lots along the west
side of Richmond Avenue, facing number 201. "As a physician in good
standing, sir," he expounded vigorously, yet not without a smile, to
the City Superintendent, who was an old acquaintance and ex-patient. "I
dislike to be confronted every time I open my front door with 'Geary's
Purple Pills' for various disorders not commonly referred to in polite
society. And as a patriotic citizen, I don't want to see our town
disfigured by any such monstrosities!"

Coming away with his point half gained, he once more passed Colonel
Pallinder's office door. At that time the Turner Building was at the
very core of our business district. There was a bank on the ground
floor, the old Third National--J. B. had some position in it, assistant
bookkeeper, perhaps. One used to catch fleeting glimpses of the young
fellow's big shoulders in shirt-sleeves, and sleek, dark head on an
altitudinous stool behind gilt wire screens, through the plate-glass
windows on the Market Street side. On his last visit he told me that
he had gone down Market Street and walked past those old windows in
a sentimental mood, recalling the brave days when he was twenty-one.
"I got sixty a month," he said, "and thought I was doing first-rate!
It's hard to believe that that old rookery was the best office
building in town. We hadn't the beginnings of an idea about fire-proof
construction; but there was an elevator, and the bank had a floor of
black and red tiles, remember? The passages were so dim the gas had
to be kept burning at noon-day. The steam-heating apparatus must have
been one of the first put in; anyway it never did very well, and was
forever breaking down. I've worked in my overcoat many a time, with a
blue nose, figuring away with my stiff fingers. Harvey Smith--you know,
Jim's brother--had a law-office with some other young chap, I've forgot
who, now, on the third floor, and they set up a sheet-iron cannon-stove
to keep from freezing to death. There wasn't much business coming
Harvey's way in those days--we used to wonder how he made out."

That part of town is now given over to warehouses and junk-shops. The
dirty, draughty hallways of the Turner Building are very empty and
melancholy. They used to be handsomely carpeted with cocoa-matting, and
in the odd corners one came upon little pyramids of tin spittoons piled
up handily by the janitor, either just washed or in need of washing.
The place was as busy as an anthill that morning when Doctor Vardaman
paced along the cocoa-paths on his way out. Near the top of the
stairs--which were generally preferred to the elevator--he encountered
Colonel Pallinder ushering from his office somebody with a shawl and
bonnet and fat black umbrella, whose outlines in the semi-obscurity
appeared vaguely familiar to the old gentleman's casual glance.

"Is that you, Doctor? Come in, come in, sir," said the colonel,
promptly relinquishing his client ("In point of fact, he dropped her
like a hot potato," the doctor said afterwards), when he saw who was
approaching. And, overriding the doctor's demurrer, "Oh, nonsense,
I say come _in_, sir! Why, we've got a little business together,
forgot that, hey?" He smote Doctor Vardaman a light, humorous,
affectionate blow on the shoulder and pushed him into the office.
"I don't want to interrupt you----" the doctor began, accepting at
last the handsome leather chair his host pulled forward. He glanced
about curiously, rolling the colonel's excellent Havana between
his fingers. The Pallinders possessed the secret of a delightful
spontaneous and whole-souled hospitality; the stranger within their
gates was unaffectedly welcome to the best they had--and the best
they had was very good indeed; self-denial was a virtue they never
needed to practise, apparently. The atmosphere of their house was
always kind, gay, care-free, and they themselves highly ornamental.
Colonel Pallinder bustled about the doctor with a dozen pleasant little
attentions, yet contrived somehow never to be officious. It is a
strange thing, and a depressing instance of the inborn tendency to evil
of the human race, that it has been within the experience of everyone
of us, I think, to lodge with and suffer the kindnesses of many
virtuous families to whom the name and the habits of the Pallinders
would be anathema--and we shrink from remembering how incredibly we
were bored thereby!

The office was a rich, comfortable place. Everything was new; the
colonel's mahogany roll-top desk, the leather lounge, which, Doctor
Vardaman noted inwardly, had the air of being pretty constantly in
use, the brilliantly glazed maps of "Phosphate" territory gleaming on
the walls. A great accumulation of mail loaded the desk; the colonel's
correspondence was evidently something colossal. There were numberless
pamphlets, circulars, prospectuses, and newspaper clippings with
rows of figures accompanied by at least half-a-dozen ciphers printed
conspicuously at the top. "_The ARKANSAS CONSOLIDATED PHOSPHATE, COAL,
AND IRON COMPANY, CAPITAL AND SURPLUS $4,455,000.00._" "_EL PASO &
RIO GRANDE EXTENSION_ is the _BEST ZINC STOCK_ on the market at the
price. _EL PASO MINES_ have paid over $172,000,000.00 in dividends. We
strongly recommend this _STOCK for INVESTMENT_. Ballard & Co., Wall
St., N. Y. William Pallinder, Agt." Doctor Vardaman surveyed these
and like documents with a kind of satirical interest. "Of course," he
used to explain, "I had had more than a suspicion for a good while
that 'Phosphate' and 'Zinc' and the colonel's capitalist friends were
all more or less mythical. You can't be as intimate as I was with a
man like that for two years and not 'get a line on him,' as the boys
say. And then there was Steven and that terrific flare-up he had with
Gwynne about the rent in my own library. Latterly I had begun to have a
pretty well-defined notion that Pallinder was in a tight place--getting
near the end of his rope in our town, at least. Along in the fall
sometime he had borrowed fifty dollars of me on some pretext; and I
not unnaturally supposed that he wanted to corner me into lending him
another fifty, or maybe thought that with my hazy ideas about business
he might make a sale of 'Phosphate.' I was a good deal interested to
see how he would go about it; I'd quite made up my mind not to do
either, you know--lend him the fifty, or buy any stock, I mean."

What then was the doctor's astonishment when Colonel Pallinder
impressively brought out an elegant dark green Russia-leather purse and
card-case combined, with "W. B. P." intertwined in a gold monogram on
one side, and from a thick layer of greenbacked bills therein selected
a fifty-dollar one and laid it on the old gentleman's knee! Doctor
Vardaman stared at it as if it had been a specimen from the flora of
another planet.

"Now, now, now, no objections! I _insist_," said the colonel, rather
unnecessarily in view of the doctor's dumb surprise. "It's a matter
of principle with me, even about such paltry sums as this, that
short settlements make long friends," he continued, conveniently
oblivious of the fact that he had been in the other's debt for this
particular paltry sum more than six months. "Never could understand,
sir, how a man can go on owing and owing people simply because he
knows they're his friends and won't dun him. That's a queer idea of
honesty, seems to me," said the colonel, looking Doctor Vardaman in
the eye with a frank and open smile. "You don't come down this way
very often, Doctor. I suppose you think all this--" he waved his hand
around--"market-place--beasts at Ephesus, hey?"

"I'm a--I'm a little out of place, I fear," the doctor stammered, still
in a confusion. "I hope I didn't drive your client away."

Colonel Pallinder threw back his head in hearty amusement. "Oh, Lord,
that wasn't a client, Doctor, that old creature--what was her name now,
MacGonigal, MacGilligan, MacSomething? No, I was trying to get rid
of her as gently as might be without hurting her feelings. For after
all people like that have feelings, you know; they are worthy of some
consideration; hang it, a gentleman has only one kind of manners. I'm
glad she came in while my clerks were all out, and saw me instead of
any of them--you know what Jack-in-office is. Why, sir, you have no
conception of how we are bothered by that kind of person. They watch
the stock market for a while, or get to talking with their friends,
and then the first thing you know they come in here all agog with
their savings--a hundred, two hundred, perhaps three hundred dollars,
wanting to _invest_! It's the hardest thing in the world to make
them understand that we can't handle little dabs like that; they're
twice as much trouble as other people's tens of thousands. Your small
investor is eternally writing and making inquiries about this stock and
that stock, wanting to change, wanting to transfer, wanting to sell,
wanting to buy, wanting to be reassured perpetually at the slightest
fluctuation of the market. 'Do you think my stock is all right? Will
it go any higher? Will it go any lower?' Like as not he sees some
perfectly worthless stuff advertised broadcast and promptly sit down
and writes me, all on fire: 'William Pallinder, Esq., Dear Sir: Would
like your opinion about the enclosed clipping relating to Timbuctoo
and South Pole Railway shares. Hadn't I better take my dime's worth
of Phosphate Preferred and put it into T. &. S. P.? Yours truly, Jack
Ass.' Oh, you may laugh, Doctor, but it's no joke. And then, Doctor
Vardaman, there's another side to it that I never lose sight of," said
the colonel, leaning forward and tapping the old gentleman on the hand
with a grave look. "That, sir, is the question of _moral obligation_.
Take the case of that old woman. 'Why, Mrs. Mac-What's-your-name,' says
I, 'if I understand you, this is all the money you have'--it was four
hundred and odd, I believe--'and you want to put it into Lone Star
common. Now,' says I, 'of course that's a perfectly safe investment,
solid as United States bonds, non-taxable, pays nine per cent., and
will double in value in the natural course of events before another
six months; and what you say is quite true, that you will never have
another opportunity of getting it as low as forty-five'--she was
really a shrewd and intelligent woman for her class, and for a minute
I was almost tempted to let her have her way, for, of course, there
wasn't the slightest risk. 'Now,' said I, 'if you had two or three
thousand or even one thousand to spare, mind you, I say _to spare_,
I should say to you, go ahead, by all means. But,' says I, 'I can't
take the responsibility of letting you invest your last cent this
way, just on my say-so. I've got my own money in it, but my money and
your money are two very different propositions. Go and consult your
lawyer, get the advice of your friends, go to another broker for that
matter, if you choose. All I would urge is, _do it soon_, or you may
lose a great chance, such as don't come along every day.' She was very
reluctant, but I finally persuaded her; she was just going as you came
along. Oh, of course, I know very well, nobody better after all my
experience, that she may have gone straight off to some other broker
as I suggested, and _he'll_ get the commission, not being so--well, so
squeamish as I am, but William Pallinder isn't that--kind, Doctor; we
can't help the way we're made, and I'm--not--that--kind!"

He spaced the last words out, emphasising them by a gentle blow with a
ruler on the palm of his hand, and leaned back, surveying his companion
through a haze of cigar smoke, with the expression of one who might
have added, were it necessary: "Behold in me a monument of integrity!"

Doctor Vardaman gazed at the El Paso and Rio Grande circulars with a
new respect. Was it possible, he asked himself, that he ought to revise
his opinion of Pallinder? To be sure, Huddesley had hinted--but what
does a servant's chatter amount to? And then there was that business
of the unpaid rent--but Gwynne had not seemed to take that very
seriously, and surely he should know. As to that flourishing manner of
the colonel's, we are prone to associate it with--well, with buncombe,
in plain words; yet it was, in fact, entirely natural, the direct
result of certain traditions, early environment, and upbringing. He
had reached this point in his reflections, smoking silently, when the
colonel was most unfortunately inspired to remark:

"I see you're looking at that map of Phosphate territory in Arkansas.
It's a wonderful thing the way the Southwest is opening up, wonderful!
All due to Northern enterprise and vigour, sir, every bit of it. We'd
be nowhere without you. You'll find few men from my section of the
country that will acknowledge it, but it's _so_. I never did believe
in keeping up that spirit of mutual distrust and jealousy--waving the
bloody shirt and all that; let bygones be bygones, I say; let's all
work together for the common good, and give honour where honour is due.
Why, sir, it was a Northern man--Lewis Sheister, from some little town
up in New York State, that discovered and worked the first phosphate
vein in Arkansas. The people down there in the Ozarks were ready to run
him and his men out of there with shotguns when he started in--and now
I guess they bless the day Sheister turned up. He's worth five hundred
thousand dollars to-day, and he's been a factor in enriching that whole
State. Yes, sir, there's millions right here." He rose, and, drawing a
pencil from his waistcoat pocket, defined a small circle on the shining
brittle surface of the map. "Right in that little zone, sir, millions
for anyone, even with a very limited capital--ten for one, sir, ten
for one is what dozens of my clients are drawing at this moment," said
the colonel, pointing with his pencil, like a teacher of mathematics
demonstrating at the blackboard, and eying the doctor profoundly. "Ever
think of investing, Doctor?" he added, indifferently, resuming his
seat, and picking a thread from his coatsleeve as he spoke.

Alas, the gentleman had protested too much! "You'd find me one of your
troublesome small investors, I am afraid," said the doctor, wishing
uncomfortably that he could believe in Pallinder. "It's rarely a
professional man lays up any money, you know."

"Oh, you'd be a different pair of shoes," said Colonel Pallinder
genially. "I'd rather handle a couple of hundred for a man like you
than a couple of thousand for some others I could mention. Now I always
contend that stocks such as I deal in are a Heaven-sent boon to the
man of moderate means. Say you only have a hundred or so. You put it
into Ozark Field or--well--yes, you _could_ get half-a-dozen shares of
Lone Star. I know a man, a banker in New York, a personal friend, you
understand, that I think I could persuade into parting with a little
block like that, although they hate to like the devil--but I believe
he'd do it for me. Now these things advance so rapidly that in a month
or six weeks you could sell out to great advantage--if you didn't want
to wait for your dividends, or found the speculation kept you lying
awake o' nights," he interpolated, with jovial sarcasm. "Of course,
Doctor, I hardly need to tell a man of your intelligence and breadth
of view that--um--ah--'there's a tide in the affairs of men,' you
know--the time is coming when nobody but the kings of finance will be
able to buy and control these shares, they're going up so fast; but if
you were already _in_ the _ring_, as I may say----"

"I doubt if the kings of finance and I would hit it off very well,"
said the doctor soberly. Colonel Pallinder laughed uproariously. He
slapped his knees and laughed, and wiped his eyes and laughed again.
Never had the doctor's dry humour received such appreciation; and
not being acutely conscious of having been humorous, he observed the
colonel's manifestations of delight with a good deal of interest.

"You talk in a rather disparaging vein about the business ability
of professional men, Doctor," he said, when his mirth had somewhat
subsided. "But the fact is, I've met with just as much shrewdness
among them as anywhere else. A successful lawyer, a widely-known and
successful physician like yourself--why, he's _got_ to be very much
above the average in intellect and education both. A man like you
can take hold of anything, no matter whether he's had any previous
experience or not--he can take up anything and do well at it. Now,
look at you! I suppose you've hardly ever been in a broker's office
before in your life, and you come in here, and with scarcely a word
of explanation from me, grasp the whole subject at once! I tell you
what, I'd like you to meet Sheister, and just hear him talk Phosphate
once. He's a self-made man, Doctor, no gentleman-of-the-old-school
such as you, but for that very reason I think you'd find it an
interesting experience. He'll talk by the hour about his early trials
and struggles--it sounds like a romance. He has the whole history
of Phosphate at his finger-ends. Of course _I_ can't talk about the
stuff except in a business way--I only know that it's been a gold mine
for Sheister and the men he got to go in with him. Sir, I knew that
fellow when he hadn't but one shirt in the world, and he didn't know
where his next meal was to come from--and now he's travelling round
in his private car with a valet and a cook! I've done pretty well in
Phosphate myself," said the colonel, with becoming restraint; "but I'm
not a patch on Sheister. Really, I'd like you to see Mrs. Sheister's
diamonds, just for a curiosity. My wife can't bear her--thinks she's
_common_, and all that--you know how women are--but I tell her she's
down on Mrs. Sheister just because she's jealous of her diamonds."

"Mrs. Pallinder has no cause to be jealous of anybody's diamonds, I
think," said the doctor smoothly. "Our young people will be giving
their entertainment in a few days now," he added, thinking it high time
to change the subject. And the colonel glided away on the new tack as
gracefully as if the manoeuvre had been of his own suggestion.

"Yes, and what do you think that daughter of mine said to me the
other day? It seems they have to make a great show of jewelry in the
second play--what's the name of it--'Mrs. Tinkleton'? Mazie's '_Mrs.
Tinkleton_,' and she's going to pile on all her own and her mother's
too. So she comes to me: 'Oh, papa, wouldn't it be nice if we could
have a real tiara? We've got to fix ma's necklace to look like one,
but I think those little coronets they have at Tiffany's are just
too utterly sweet.' That's the way the girls and boys talk nowadays,
Doctor, 'too utterly too,' 'too intensely all but,'--can't understand
half the gibberish they're saying; but I grasped the meaning of _that_!
'Why, good heavens, my child,' I said, 'do you think I'm _made_ of
money? There's your mother's necklace cost me thirty-five hundred--the
papers made it five thousand, but you know, Doctor, they always blow
around and talk big--not so very long ago, not more than two years, I
believe, and now _you_ want a tiara.' 'Well, papa, you know you said
ma's necklace was just bought out of that rise in Phosphate, and it was
like getting it for nothing, and you'd never miss the money because
the dividends were so much more than you had expected. Won't something
else take a rise?' And in fact, Doctor," continued Colonel Pallinder,
pulling at his goatee with a ruefully comic grin, "she rather had me
there. It was just as she said, the stock having gone up beyond my
wildest expectations. I realised treble what I'd been looking for, and
I always like to make my wife some little gift when anything of that
sort happens. But a tiara at Tiffany's! I couldn't quite go _that_.
Must you be going? Well, good-bye. When you feel like looking into
Phosphate a little farther, drop in. I've some figures I think would
interest you."

Doctor Vardaman took his way from the Turner Building, walking fast
in a brown study; such was his preoccupation that twenty steps from
the entrance he collided with a young man carrying a green cloth bag,
weighted with books or papers, heading for the stairs.

"Hello, Doctor!" he began to apologise. "I didn't know it was you. Why,
it's great to see you down here. Come up and take a look at my office."

"I've just been up in the building, Harvey," said the old gentleman,
recognising him. "I ought to be home sitting down to my luncheon this
minute. Huddesley would discharge me if I were not on time. I went up
to see Ogden about those signboards on Richmond Avenue." He paused and
then some indefinable feeling prompted him to add: "Fine office Colonel
Pallinder has, hasn't he? The building is certainly very complete and
well-equipped; you ought to have seen the two-story frame shanty where
I first hung out my shingle. It was over a grocery with an outside
stairs leading up to it."

Young Smith eyed him with a certain apprehension in his keen boyish
face. "Oh, yes, the Turner Building is said to be one of the finest in
the West; but I understand they are going to put up some in Chicago
that'll beat us all hollow. Pallinder's a great friend of yours, isn't
he, Doctor?"

"We are neighbours, you know," said Doctor Vardaman, diplomatically,
and smiled, meeting the other's eye. "Don't be uneasy. I haven't been
investing."

"Why--I--I----" Harvey stammered, crimsoning in his confusion, yet
plainly a little relieved. "I just couldn't help wondering if you had,
you know. The Colonel's a great old blatherskite, isn't he? Of course,
I don't mean--that is, I mean----"

"Harvey, Harvey," said Doctor Vardaman, wagging his head solemnly,
"I'm afraid that's not the way counsel for the defence should open his
remarks."

"Well, it's _so_, you know, anyhow," said the young fellow ingenuously.
"Jim sees a lot of them; he goes out there all the time. He's in that
shindy they're going to give on the twelfth. Say, have you heard that
about Gwynne Peters?"

"No, what was it--Oh, here's my car--never mind, Harvey. I don't need
any help."




CHAPTER FIFTEEN


Fate, who, as Doctor Vardaman's favourite classic assures us, calls,
equal-footed, upon carpenters and kings, must surely have laid a
directing hand on the old gentleman's shoulder that morning; not yet
were his adventures over, even when he reached his own door. The
Lexington and Amherst Street car crawled with him laboriously as far
as the corner of Amherst and Richmond, where he must disembark and
trudge the remaining five blocks of board sidewalk to number 201. The
trolley whisks you out there in five minutes now. Not long ago I saw in
somebody's back yard, a back yard of the proletariat, next door to a
tenement, one of these dilapidated old horse-cars, pygmy ancestor of a
race of giants, thrown aside, weather-worn, ancient as the palaeolithic
period, serving as a play-house for the proletarian youngsters. The
windows were all out of it, even the purple glass lights overhead; but
you might dimly discern the legend: "No. 5. Lexington and Amherst. No.
5." along its battered sides. The thing was as romantic as a derelict
galleon; sentimental melancholy possessed me as I looked at it; all
my youth rode in that decrepit chariot, if not with comfort, at least
with tolerable satisfaction. Will the rising generation treasure so
picturesque a memory? I think not. In cold weather there was a layer
of straw, doubtful-tinted, breathing strange odours, in the bottom of
it, thoughtfully provided by the street-car company to protect its
patrons' feet. It was lit by two oil lamps, in two niches, fortified by
wire-work, one at either end of the car. These vehicles were banded
about the body with a wide stripe in various colours to distinguish the
various lines, an amazingly ingenious idea if people had only been able
to see after dark, like cats; and, as the spectrum had been exhausted
by the time the builders got around to the Lexington and Amherst line,
they designated these cars, in a creditable burst of originality, by
a sash of black-and-red squares, like the Rob Roy plaid. Immediately
arose some genius with an equally fertile invention and baptised them
"the checker-board cars," a title which they wore to the end. There was
one very steep hill at the foot whereof it was the custom to hitch on
an extra team of mules; I know of no more gallant spectacle than that
furnished by a quadriga of mules nobly breasting Wade Street hill, with
a checker-board car plunging in the rear. When it got off the track, as
not infrequently happened, all the male passengers got out and helped
push it back. We were firmly persuaded that this was rapid transit! Yet
spare your merriment, youth of to-day; impartial Fate is waiting for
your admired institutions, too, your Twentieth Century Flyers, your
automobiles, your seven-league-boots. In twenty-five years, how will
your sons and daughters deride you; with what longing, with what amused
tenderness, will you not look back to these kind, simple days!

Doctor Vardaman, then, with Destiny stalking viewless at his side,
swung off the checker-board car, and began the homeward walk. Some way
ahead of him he saw a figure diminished by distance, plodding through
his yard toward the kitchen door; and as he drew nearer, two more
figures emerged from his front porch. The doctor recognised Bob Carson,
and in the over-tall, lankily-graceful young woman, Mazie Pallinder,
in an extremely modish tan-coloured cloth coat with dark brown plush
collar and pocket flaps. Mazie's sleeves were about as tight as Bob's
trousers--that is to say, they were as tight as human skill could make
them, or human arms and legs endure. Thus were we clad in the eighties.

"Oh, hello, Doctor," said Bob, dropping Mazie's hand--I suppose he had
been fastening her glove--and addressing the old gentleman with unusual
vivacity and a notable increase of colour. "Ah--we--we've just been
getting Huddesley to hear us our parts--in 'Mrs. Tankerville,' you
know."

"I hope you have mastered yours," said Doctor Vardaman, without a
smile. Bob's part, as he and everyone else knew, might have been
omitted altogether without materially damaging the performance; he
was a footman in "Mrs. Tankerville," and his lines were hardly more
than "Yes, sir," and "No, sir," stated at the proper intervals. He got
redder than ever under the doctor's grave survey, and affected to be
busy knocking invisible mud from his boot heel with his cane as they
stood by the gate. Mazie did not blush--for the best of reasons. Her
face was too carefully arranged to permit of it. And, besides, what was
there to blush about? Bob changed colour almost whenever she looked at
him; but then Bob was a quiet and rather shy youth.

"Huddesley's simply _fine_!" she said with enthusiasm. "I asked him how
he came to know so much about the stage, and he says he was dresser for
an actor once when he was right young, and used to be behind the scenes
a lot. Come home and take lunch with us, won't you, Doctor?"

"I can't very well to-day. I was just about to ask you to stay here.
Huddesley, you can get us up something, can't you?"

"Bit of 'am and a glass of porter, sir," said Huddesley deferentially,
holding the door open. "Beg parding, Doctor Vardaman, sir, but Mrs.
Maginnis is 'ere with your wash."

"I guess we'd better not stop so long's I've got so much company in the
house," said Mazie. "Good-bye, Doctor; you'll come up this evening,
anyway?" And as they walked away, the doctor heard Bob say, "Isn't
Huddesley _immense_, though? 'Bit of 'am and a glass of porter.' Sounds
just like Dickens, don't it?"

The doctor, still squired by unseen Fortune, went upstairs to his
bedroom--and there, it may be presumed, the goddess left him, having
executed her appointed task. Mrs. Maginnis awaited him, and Huddesley
was already laying the doctor's shirts out of the basket. The laundress
generally performed this rite herself, but to-day she stood watching
the man with an oddly flustered manner, twisting the fringes of her old
shawl between her fingers. Her bonnet, that feathered and beribboned
structure indigenous to washerwomen, had worked askew a little; her
face, with its premature wrinkles, its sunken mouth, was flushed with
exercise or excitement. The doctor, observant as all physicians from
lifelong habit, looked at her in some surprise. It crossed his mind
that at some prehistorically distant time, when Mrs. Maginnis was a
fresh barefoot girl, running the green swards of Connemara, she might
have been pretty; her Irish blue eyes, faded with years, with toil,
with sickness, with care, were quite bright to-day. A kind of tremulous
happiness, an anxious joy, irradiated her; she was like a child to whom
one should have given a new toy, scarcely daring to be glad yet in its
possession.

"Got change for a fifty-dollar bill, Mrs. Maginnis?" said the old
gentleman jocosely.

"Yez will have yer joke, now, won't ye, Docthor?" she retorted with
gaiety, and tossed her head with the upstanding plumes in a roguish
manner. "Niver moind. Some day I'll change ut for yez aisy enough.
'Taint much longer I'll be comin' 'round for me dollar and a half, at
all, at all."

"Has Tim got well? Is he going back to work?" asked the doctor,
beginning to fish for the required sum amongst the loose silver in his
pockets. He spoke of her husband.

Tim was what Doctor Vardaman called a "non-combatant." To say that
he was a washerwoman's husband describes him. Who ever heard of a
washerwoman with a husband that was worth anything?

"Naw, it ain't that, Docthor," said Mrs. Maginnis, looking momentarily
a little dashed. "Naw, Tim's awful bad with rheumatics this spring. But
it's meself that's afther ma-akin me fortune in--in stocks. Yez didn't
see me in the Turrner Buildin' th' marrnin'?"

Doctor Vardaman's hand paused, rigidly suspended over the money spread
on his palm. "What--what's that you say?" he asked abruptly.

"I was goin' to ask yez to spake a wurrd to me characther wid
Misther--I mane Meejor Pallinder," went on Mrs. Maginnis, happily
unconscious. "But he seemed to be in a hurry, an' says I to meself,
'Betther not worry him, Nora Maginnis. Th' Meejor's thrustin' yez
anyhow, an' ye're thrustin' him an' iverythin's fair an' square an'
aboveboord. 'Taint as if yez were a gurrl goin' to ta-ake a new
pla-ace, ye goose,' says I. So I just held me tongue, an' walked
off. It's a grand gintleman th' Meejor is intoirely," she finished
enthusiastically.

The doctor looked at her through a mist. "What have you been doing?"
he said at last, striving to speak in his natural voice. He might have
spared the trouble; Mrs. Maginnis was only too proud and pleased at his
interest, at her own importance.

"Ah, thin, I've been investin'--investin' in stocks--or is it shares,
I dinnaw?" she said eagerly, lifted her skirt, and drew out a paper,
carefully hoarded, from a pocket in her petticoat. She held it toward
him. "I got a letther about thim in th' mail, a printed letther, an'
ut says: 'Dear Madame, we want to call your attintion----' like that
ut begun, Docthor. I can't raymimber th' rest of ut, but yez ought to
hear me little Danny, he's got ut by hearrt. Anyway, I was to call on
or com-communicate with William Pallinder, Turrner Buildin', like what
ut says there. They was iver so many on our sthreet got th' sa--ame,
th' Hogans 'crost th' way, an' th' Schwartzes nixt dure but wan, but
they ain't anybody wint but me, an' th' Meejor says it's a grreat pity,
an' they'll all git left, for they won't be anny more shares or stocks,
whichever ut is, sold so low. An' it's just loike pickin' money off of
trees, he says, yez git tin for wan. That's four thousan' I'll git,
Docthor, for it's four hundred I'm ta-akin out o' th' Buildin' an'
Loan, where we been puttin ut for th' last tin years--an' weary wurrk
ut is, too, savin' so slow, nothin' loike this, where yez just put in
yer money, an' set back an' twiddle yer thumbs! It kapes goin' higher
ivery breath yez draw purty near, th' Meejor says. An' whin I give
him th' money, he wrote off a grand pa-aper, a receipt, he called ut,
an' says he: 'I congrat'late yez, Mrs. Maginnis,' says he. 'It's th'
smarrt woman yez arre, an' plucky, too,' says he. 'Nothin' venture,
nothin' have, yez may have hearrd th' sayin',' he says. 'That's the
way I begun meself,' says he. 'I had just a little, 'twasn't be
half so much as yours, an' I put ut in, an' ut kep' a-goin' up an'
a-goin' up, an' there I was, like a big fool'--that's what he said,
Docthor--'shiverin' an' shakin' an' layin' awake noights, for fear
somethin' would happen to ut, an' whin ut doubled, I fair et up th'
road gittin to th' office to sell out--an' th' very nixt day it was
thribbled already! But I'm all over thim days now,' he says, laughin'
that way he has, 'an' yez can see wid wan eye shut how I live, Mrs.
Maginnis. Well, all that come from that little lump o' money not be
half so big as yours, as I was just afther tellin' yez, an' that's
where yez'll be, too, inside of a year, if yez'll be guided by me,' he
says. Indade, it's th' foine gintleman he is, an' th' koind man, to be
doin' all that for th' loikes of me, an' so I tould him."

For the second time that day Doctor Vardaman gazed silently at "El Paso
& Rio Grande," "$172,000,000.00 in dividends," until the characters
swam before his eyes.

"At least you'll want your dollar and a half in the meantime, Mrs.
Maginnis," he said finally with an effort, and counted the money into
her hand. She had on a pair of black worsted gloves, the fingers too
long for her own, crooked, hardened and disfigured with work. She took
the coins clumsily, and some of them dropped and rolled about the floor.

"Troth, what'll I do whin I'm a la-ady, settin' in me kerridge, wid
kid gloves on, I wondher," she said with a laugh. "I'm that awkward
wid these, I'd betther be learnin', I think. I'm goin' to have Maggie
ta-ake pianny lessons, Docthor, an' I'm goin' to git a pair of va-ases
for th' parlour mantelpiece, an' a wheel chair for Tim. That's what
I'm goin' to do whin th' firrst o' th' money comes in. I made up me
moind to that as I was walkin' along wid yer wash th' marrnin', an'
thin all to oncet, I says to meself. 'An' what'll th' docthor be doin'
for somewan to clear-starch his shirrts th' way he loikes? An' to do
up thim white lawn cravats that's all cut on th' bias, an' sthretches
somethin' awful--thim stocks yez call 'em, Docthor. Faith, there's
stocks an' _stocks_, think o' that, now?" She laughed a little,
hysterically, gulping at her own joke. "Yez wouldn't belave ut,
Docthor, for all I was so happy, I cud ha' set right down an' cried to
think that somewan might git hould o' thim, some naygur, mebbe, that
'ud ruin 'em!" The tears came into her faded blue eyes. "It's th' good
man yez arre, Docthor Varrdaman, an' it's koind yez have been to me
all these harrd years, an' I'll niver forgit ut. Whin I'm settin' in
me parlour, wid th' pitchers an' th' Rogers Group like I mane to have
ut, rockin' in me chair, an' listenin' to Maggie play, I'll be thinkin'
of yez often an' often, Docthor, an' of th' ould days, whin I was
sthrugglin' along at th' tub an' yez helped me."

Doctor Vardaman mechanically twisted his features into a smile. "I wish
you luck with all my heart, Mrs. Maginnis," was all he could say; but
the Irishwoman was too emotionally wrought up to heed the strangeness
of his manner. Her sky was radiant with dreams.

"Sure, I kin have thim masses said for me mother--rest her sowl!" she
said, crossing herself fervently; and the next moment, in gleeful
anticipation: "An' buy me a black silk, Docthor, a black silk dhress,
me that hasn't had a new rag to me back for eight years!"

She went; and Doctor Vardaman sat down before his table. He took out
the colonel's fifty-dollar bill--the colonel's! It was Mrs. Maginnis',
like all the rest of the bills in that handsome Russia-leather case!
The doctor was as sure of it as if it had been sworn to in his
presence. He stared at it miserably. Of course, he told himself, he
had known all along that Pallinder was a humbug, had known in a sort
of way that he was a scamp. But the truth is, you and I, even the
most experienced, even the wisest and worldliest and most wary of us,
knows very little about scamps. The doctor had lived his seventy years
with such vicissitudes as fall to the lot of the ruck of mankind, and
had encountered no greater rascality than that of some patient who
ignored a bill or refused to pay it--an offence which he himself was
the first to excuse or condone. By nature a humane and sympathetic man,
he had learned in his profession a large charity, a habit of making
allowances which he now denounced savagely for a contemptible shirking
of responsibilities. _Laissez faire_, indeed! And one-half the world,
not knowing how the other half lives, need not care! Yes, Pallinder
was a scamp; but Doctor Vardaman found, with a wretched surprise, that
he had had no real comprehension of what the word meant--the thing it
denoted. This was its meaning, this shabby trickery, this cheap deceit;
the discovery came upon him like a blow. There is an extraordinary
bitterness to any generous mind in beholding the uncovered shame of
a friend; we hate to see the feet of clay; the pain is two-edged and
strikes us either way with the sense of his unworthiness, of our own
folly. The doctor had liked Pallinder; liked him still--liked him
and despised him. He sat wondering at his own weakness. "If it had
been me," thought the old gentleman, "if it had been me that he had
cheated, fleeced, bamboozled in this way, or anyone of my class, I
could almost say the game was fair and have my laugh at the dupe;
it's our business to know better. But that poor old woman, that poor,
ignorant, faithful, trusting creature, that honest, simple drudge!"
He thought of her tired, work-worn hands in those pitiful gloves with
a throb of pain and unreasoning self-reproach. Colonel Pallinder's
hands were large, white, and very well-kept; a seal ring in pretty
taste, _simplex munditiis_, adorned his little finger, the only piece
of jewelry he wore. It was paid for, if at all, the doctor reflected
grimly, out of the pocket of some other Mrs. Maginnis. The flavour of
the colonel's cigar was yet on his lips; what washerwoman, what widow,
what patient, laborious wage-earner's little savings had paid for
_that_? He got up and walked the floor restlessly. There was a kind of
irony in the thought that he, John Vardaman, must suffer this travail
of spirit, while the guilty one himself pursued his way unmoved,
tranquil, eating and sleeping in triumphant ease. "After all," said
the doctor inwardly, "am I my brother's keeper? No. But I have sat at
Pallinder's table, smoked with him, drunk with him, laughed with him,
sanctioned and encouraged him. All the while I knew he was a rogue; I
did it open-eyed; I shared the spoil--it's late, late in the day, Jack
Vardaman, for you to cry Fie on the thief! Dozens of others are daily
doing the same thing; why not? The Pallinders amuse them. Of what stuff
are we all made?" His glance fell on the bill again; he picked it up
and smoothed it out mechanically, wondering what had prompted Pallinder
to pay him out of all the people he owed. It was certainly not from any
warm friendship, for Colonel Pallinder liked everybody equally well;
his cordiality, his generosity emulated the very sunshine in their
wide diffusion. If he stole meanly, he gave away magnificently--after
his own desires were indulged. He was quite capable of picking Mrs.
Maginnis' pocket one day, and relieving her distress with coal and
warm blankets the next; and it is more than likely that he would have
paid the first comer, whether Doctor Vardaman or somebody else, if the
matter had occurred to him, and if the sum were not inconveniently
large.

Huddesley, coming in with the tray of luncheon, was astonished at the
doctor's haggard look; he moved about noiselessly, disposing the dishes
to the old gentleman's liking, and once or twice sending a sharp glance
into his face unobserved.

"Shall you be going up to Mrs. Pallinder's to dinner this evening,
sir?" he asked at length respectfully. "Miss Pallinder said something
about you----"

"No," said Doctor Vardaman sternly. "No. I shan't be going there again."

Huddesley looked at him with singular blankness. "Beg parding, sir, did
you say----?"

"I said I was not going there again," repeated the doctor with
deliberation. He thought a moment. "I'll write a note and ask the
younger gentleman here to dinner next Friday night, Huddesley, and
you can take it up to Mrs. Pallinder. It's the night of their party;
we shan't see much more of them," said Doctor Vardaman, checking a
sigh. He would not acknowledge to himself how much he should miss the
careless jollity, the youthful fun and freedom of the last two years.
Huddesley was leaving the room when the doctor abruptly called him
back: "Huddesley!"

"Yes, sir."

"I--I seldom interfere in the affairs of my servants, Huddesley,"
said Doctor Vardaman, hesitating. "I realise that I have no more right
to meddle with your business than you with mine. But I--I should
like to ask you if you have ever had any business dealings with
Colonel Pallinder? If you--you have ever bought any of his mining or
'Phosphate' stocks, in short?"

Huddesley, after a moment's puzzled silence, so far forgot his usually
impeccable manners as to utter a queer unpleasant sound between a
sneer and a laugh. "Me?" said he. "Not much. Think I'd be roped in by
any such con game as that? I guess _not_--bet your bottom dollar!" He
caught the doctor's startled look, and faltered. "Hi--Hi 'ope you'll
hexcuse me, sir," he said in genuine and very alarmed confusion; "Hi
'ear so much rough talk sometimes, Hi can't 'elp picking it hup----"

"Never mind," said Doctor Vardaman kindly. "I thought you were too
shrewd a man and had seen too much of the world to--to be taken in, as
you say. I should be sorry to think of your losing money--especially
through over-confidence in--in any friend of mine. I wouldn't like to
feel that you were influenced in that way," the old gentleman concluded
rather sadly.

The servant eyed his downcast face with an unfathomable expression. He
fumbled with the door-knob; then he cleared his throat and spoke with
something of an effort. "You're mighty kind to me, Doctor Vardaman," he
said huskily. "You treat me mighty white--and I won't forget it."

It was the second time within the hour that Doctor Vardaman had
received this agreeable assurance. "'Mighty white,'" he quoted to
himself, almost smiling, as the door closed. "I'm afraid Huddesley is
becoming Americanised."




CHAPTER SIXTEEN


Among the forgotten fashions of the years from eighteen-eighty to
eighty-five was that of giving our parties, evening or afternoon,
for young people or old, of whatever kind, in short, in our own
homes; the easy hospitality of clubs or fashionable hotels was not
yet known. Houses with double-parlours and a dining-room back were
considered ideal for any sort of entertainment; and, of course, such
an architectural triumph as the old Gwynne house with that splendid
ballroom on the third floor, was _hors concours_. There was not another
home in town to compare with it. Mrs. Pallinder could entertain without
disturbing a single piece of the peacock-blue and old-gold furniture;
she meant, however, to have the whole place floor-clothed the night
of the twelfth. "I can't risk my Moquette carpets with a mob of young
people tearing around all over the house, you know, my dear," she said
with a smiling pretence of severity; and her guests, eying the rich
scrolls and garlands underfoot, gravely acquiesced. Everywhere else,
all the movables, except the bookcases and piano, were marshalled
upstairs or out on the back porch. The little sofas in our parlours
generally went into retirement under the stairs at the rear end of the
hall. In the afternoons we were just beginning to have progressive
euchres, and what we actually called "high teas." It is doubtless
impossible for the mind of to-day to conceive of a society so devoid
of education and good taste as to call any species of entertainment
a "high tea," but such is the appalling fact. You may pick up a
_Journal_ or _Evening Despatch_ of that date, and read not one but many
notices such as this:


     "At Mrs. Henderson P. Gates' high tea on Monday in the fashionable
     crush were observed:

     Mrs. Colonel Pallinder in a toilet of ottoman silk and silk plush
     in two shades of electric blue, with garniture of chenille and
     pearl fringes, and a capote of feathers en suite.

     Miss Pallinder in wine-coloured surah with sleeves and draperies
     of spotted silk grenadine.

     Miss Ponsonby-Baxter wore a redingote of crushed-strawberry pekin
     opening over a brocaded front in shades of the same, with panels
     of----"


No, I have not the heart to go on with the gaudy details of Muriel's
panels and passementerie. But I remember that dress well, and,
believe it or not, she looked as nobly and placidly beautiful in the
crushed-strawberry redingote as had she been draped like the Winged
Victory. Mrs. Gates continued her party with a dance that same evening.
"The house was all torn up anyhow," Lily Gates told us; "and mamma
thought she might just as well go ahead."

Muriel and J. B., or Mr. Taylor, as she decorously called him,--he
was only J. B. to college mates or others who knew him well,--were
sitting out a waltz on the top step of the Henderson P. Gates' stairs.
It was a long flight, turning sharply at a little landing to reach the
upper hall; and the musicians penned in the alcove behind the steps
on the first floor were discoursing "A Medley of Popular Airs," with
admirable command of rhythm and expression. "Wh-i-te Wings," "Swee-ee-t
Vi-o-_lets_," the sounds travelled up to them as through a chimney.
There was a smothering scent of lilacs--the house had been decorated
with them--and in pauses of the noise one could hear the window-panes
shuddering to the assaults of successive blasts of wind and rain
commingled. The spring was early that year. A discreet twilight on the
top step held out opportunities for flirtation which Mazie Pallinder
never would have neglected in the world; but neither J. B. nor Muriel
had any notion of taking advantage of them. The girl was absorbed in
a certain dilemma; her even delicate brows were slightly drawn as
she studied the pattern of her fan, and wondered how she could lead,
draw, drag the conversation around to the desired point. And J. B. was
thinking that "Pretty Pond-lilies" was a good waltz, and if it hadn't
been so hot, and Miss Baxter something of an armful to pull around--and
she couldn't reverse--he would have suggested a turn. He looked at
her. It would be desirable, I suppose, to record minutely what Muriel
wore that night; I refer you to the columns of the _Journal_; but does
anyone remember that full dress in the eighties--in common with dress
for all occasions--comprehended those two aids to beauty, "bangs," and
"bustles"? Muriel's pretty copper-brown hair was arranged in the fringe
down to the eyebrows, the knot low on the nape of her neck, to which
a famous stage-beauty had lately given her name; and I am afraid her
black lace skirts were crinolined in the height of the fashion. But the
young man thought she looked like Juno--Juno with a bustle! They had
been talking about Doctor Vardaman.

"The doctor's really awfully fond of his queer old things," J. B.
remarked. "If you show the least interest--and it's not put on with
me, I _am_ interested--he'll take you around, and explain to you who
all the big-bugs, his ancestors in the portraits were, and what they
did, and tell you about his first editions, and the old wine he's got
laid away, and the autograph-letters to his grandfather from Benjamin
Franklin and all the rest of it."

"How odd!" said Muriel.

"Yes, I suppose it's funny to you, but you see over here we don't have
all that the way you do. People aren't used to seeing it about them
all the time. I expect that's the reason Huddesley fits in with the
doctor so well; he cares for everything and understands--the way old
family-servants do in novels you know. He's so English----"

"No, he isn't," said Muriel decidedly. "You think so, but none of you
_know_. Nobody talks like that at home."

"Well, not nice people of course, but servants----"

"No, not servants either. He's no more like a real servant at home than
our stage-Yankees are like you."

"You've never come into contact with his class much, I guess," said J.
B., remembering that the treatment accorded servants varies widely.
"Everything is different with us; now the doctor likes to make him
talk. We're all going down there to dinner Friday night, did you know
it?"

"What, all of us? Why, that's the night we----"

"No, only the men, I mean. The doctor told Mrs. Pallinder he'd like to
have us, and he thought maybe she'd just as lief we were out of the
house, while all of you were getting ready for the performance. There
are so many of us, you know, for 'William Tell.' Some of the fellows
have sent their clothes out to his house, and are going to dress there."

Muriel looked at him timidly. He was unconsciously opening a door for
the entrance of that all-important topic; she was not quick, however,
and besides she was in doubt whether--whether it would be quite proper
for her to speak to him about it at all! Next moment the opportunity
was gone.

"If we get everybody in a good humour with the first performance, they
won't care if 'Mrs. Tankerville' _is_ a little rocky," J. B. observed
sagely. "Teddy isn't so good as _Jenks the butler_. He's not--not
convincing. Ted doesn't look as if he could steal a potato, let alone
a hatful of diamonds. And then he hasn't the chances to be funny there
are in 'Tell.' Nobody knows their part yet, and here the thing's set
for Friday!"

"I'm rather sure of myself all except one place," Muriel said. "We've
been going so we haven't had much time to study."

"I know. It's an awful rush this season. The girls can stand it, of
course; they rest in the daytime. But a fellow's got to go to business.
Somebody said to Arch. Lewis the other day, 'Oh, never mind. They don't
need you at the office.' He said, 'Yes, but hang it all, I don't want
'em to find that out!'"

Muriel listened and assented vaguely; she was not accustomed to young
men who had businesses and offices. Time was passing, and they were no
nearer the point than they were ten minutes ago. She hesitated; and J.
B. admired, yet a little wondered at, the swift changes of colour in
her cheeks. "These English girls beat everything at blushing," he said
to himself; and then removed his eyes with a sudden guilty flush over
his own face as he realised that he had been staring too hard. But,
Jove, what a beauty she was!

"You all think Mr. Johns is very good in his part, don't you?" said
Muriel, nervously conscious that they had been silent too long.
American men, she had noticed, expected the girls to do the most of the
talking; and, somehow, the girls did.

"Why, yes, especially in 'Tell,' don't _you_?"

"Well, I--I don't always understand, you know. And the last night we
rehearsed, after we went to that dinner at the Ellises', I couldn't
even make out some of the words he said, he spoke so----"

"He--he wasn't very well--we had to call the rehearsal off, you
remember?" interrupted the young man hastily. Muriel was surprised to
see him redden and avoid her eyes. There was an awkward pause--the kind
of pause that, had Muriel been an American girl, with their uncanny
sharpness of intuition, she would not have allowed to occur. But, had
Muriel been an American girl, this history would have remained forever
unwritten. But for her visit to the Pallinders' there would have been
no 'Tell,' no 'Mrs. Tankerville,' no dinner at Doctor Vardaman's--who
can say what might have happened instead?

"Ted can imitate Billy Rice first-rate," said J. B., anxious to
steer gracefully away from an uncomfortable situation. "We had a
minstrel-show one time, and he made up to look like Rice and sang that
song of his:


     "Arthur, they say, will em-i-grate,"


"Then all the rest of us had to shout, you know,


             "WHEN?"
     "Bye-and-bye!
     Into the ma-tri-mo-ni-al state."
             "WHEN?"
     "Bye-and-bye!"


"They're all the time getting off something about the President
marrying again, you know. Teddy was as good as Rice any day."

"Billy Rice?" repeated Muriel. She had not thought the fragment of
comic song very comic (and therein I dare say she was right), and she
knew no more who Billy Rice was than--than the average reader of these
lines. Time has dismissed that fat, jolly troubadour. Upon what bank of
misty Acheron does he now perform his melodies? And where are the snows
of yester-year?

"He's a big fat fellow--a white man, you know. They're all white, but
blacked up, in the minstrel-shows," J. B. explained patiently.

"Fancy! What do they do?"

"Why, sing and dance; buck-and-wing, and all that. It's rather
knock-down-and-drag-out fun, some of it; and some's pretty good."

"I don't believe I'd understand the jokes," said Muriel forlornly.
"It's so different at home--it's quite simple. Everyone always knows
when to laugh. But you know that song you sing in 'Tell,' 'The Maiden
on the Icy Plank,' that first verse--would you mind explaining? You
know where it says:


     "The maiden on the icy plank
     Showed conduct quite surprising,
     She went and got a cake of yeast--
     Then fell instead of rising!"


I--I don't quite see it--the--the point, you know."

"Oh, that's just nonsense, you know--it's just silly. The fact
is--_yeast_, you know, _yeast_, well, it makes things _rise_, and she
_fell_----'

"Oh, she _ate_ the yeast?" said Muriel with a charming smile. "Oh,
that's very droll!" She almost laughed. "It didn't say that, you see.
That's why I didn't understand. But she _ate_ the yeast!"

"Yes, she _ate_ the yeast," said J. B. resignedly. "One can't quite
explain a thing like that somehow. It's only meant to be silly."

"Most of your American jokes are like that, aren't they? I mean they
have to be explained. At first I thought it was because I was slow--but
you say such _queer_ things--and one can't ever be certain whether
you're in fun or earnest."

"I suppose it _is_ hard for a stranger. Is there anything else--any
other joke, I mean, that you'd like to get at the true inwardness of?"

Muriel recognised the opportunity she had sought.

"I--I wish you'd tell me, if you don't mind, you know that costume you
wear in the play, that kilt--why do you wear that, Mr. Taylor?"

J. B. surveyed her perplexed.

"Why do I wear the kilt and all the rest of it? Why--why to make a
little fun, you know."

"I _thought_ that was it," said Muriel earnestly. "But, you see, it's
really not funny."

"Oh, isn't it?"

"Not a bit," Muriel assured him; and then her heart dropped dismally at
the expression on his face.

He did not looked pleased somehow.

"I--I didn't mean that _you_ aren't funny, you know, I mean _it_ isn't
funny."

"I'm afraid I don't catch the distinction," said the young man a little
drily. Bitter is the cup of the unappreciated joker.

"I mean--I--I----" quavered Muriel miserably. "Maybe it's because I'm
not used to your fun--I don't see things--it's always really funny at
home--so different from here--so much easier. But--I--I think you're
too--too nice to wear a kilt!"

The tears came into her eyes; tears of embarrassment and perhaps some
deeper unanalysed feeling. Amazement encompassed J. B. What on earth
was the matter with her? It was not possible she thought the kilt
indecent!

"And--and that little red apple on the corner of your head!" faltered
Muriel. "It all makes you look so foolish--not at all funny. And you're
not foolish--really and truly not the least bit foolish--and I think
it's a shame for you to make yourself look so!"

At the moment J. B. looked exceedingly foolish. Her interest was
gratifying, of course; there was something almost maternally sweet in
it. But it put him, as he phrased it to himself, in an awful box.

"You--you're not vexed, are you?" said Muriel, holding her chin steady
by an effort. The young man glanced at her, and surprised an expression
that caused him to look away, crimsoning. The next instant he inwardly
cursed himself savagely for a despicable cad. Couldn't a nice girl look
at him without his imagining----!

"Oh, I wouldn't get mad about a little thing like that, Miss Baxter,"
he said heartily. "I'm feeling pretty stuck-up about your--your
speaking of it at all, you know. Of course, it _is_ a Tom-fool costume,
but I've let myself in for it now, and I can't very well back out, and
leave them without anybody at the last minute. And I won't look any
sillier than the others--not so silly as Ted for instance, in women's
clothes."

"Oh, he doesn't make any difference!" said Muriel, almost with
impatience.

"Well, he thinks he's pretty important, anyway," J. B. said, wondering
privately what they would have done without the comparatively safe
and conservative ground of Teddy Johns' character and abilities for
a retreat, when the conversational horizon grew overcast. "In the
second play especially--making away with peoples' diamond coronets and
things! Mrs. Pallinder's going to let us have all hers. She's got some
sparklers, you know, regular headlights; you've seen her wear them?
Tell you, if I were in Ted's place, I wouldn't want to have 'em in
my charge, even for a few minutes--and it's all through the last two
acts--until the place where they drag him out from behind the screen,
after I'm supposed to shoot him, remember?"

"Yes, where you say: 'Don't put the handcuffs on a dead man, men!'"

"And Billy Potter says: 'He ain't dead; you can't kill that kind with
a blast o' dynamite. I guess these here's your tiary, lady.' Ted's
going to have it all done up in a package in his inside pocket. He says
he's going to keep the things in his clothes the whole time. There are
so many servants around, and the carpenters to fix the scenery, and
the caterer's men--you can't be too careful. 'Twouldn't do to leave a
five-thousand-dollar diamond necklace lying around loose; everybody in
town knows about that necklace, I guess."

"Do you suppose Mr. Potter really looks at all like a detective?"

J. B. laughed. "No. He cocks his hat over one eye, and acts that tough
way, just to give the part a kind of snap--a little go, you know. But
the only detective I ever knew was a very quiet, gentlemanly sort
of fellow. We had a little trouble at the bank once, and had this
chap--his name was Judd--there for a couple of weeks, in plain clothes,
you know. He didn't look like Vidocq either--not a bit. He looked
like--like--well, a nice young fellow clerking in a shoe-store, say."

"Fancy!"

The music achieved its final chord; and the stairs promptly filled with
resting couples. Mrs. Gates came out of the parlour with an armful of
gilt shepherds' crooks and wreaths of tissue-paper roses. She looked
up at the long slant of young people, nodding and signalling; and went
back to speak to the musicians. The "juhman" was about to begin.

"I do think it's too funny for any use," said Kitty Oldham across her
late partner to the nearest girl, "the way Britannia throws herself at
_somebody's_ head. Simply monopolises him the _whole_ time."

"Oh, they were just sitting out one dance," said the man with her,
displaying an unexpected acuteness. "Never mind looking at me that way,
Miss Kitty. I know whom you were talking about. J. B. just didn't want
to dance it, I guess."

"No wonder. Self-preservation's the first law of nature," said Kitty
with undaunted pertness.

"Funny they don't teach 'em to _dance_, on the other side, isn't it?"

"Oh, she thinks she's dancing," said Kitty, lazily scornful. "It's a
delusion they all have, I suppose. J. B.'s the only man around big
enough for her--except Gwynne, and he's tall, but he's too slim. He's
dropped out of the play--did you know?"

"Why, no--what for?"

"I don't know. If he'd been here to-night, I'd have asked him. He just
walked off, and nobody said anything, for fear of putting their foot in
it. I guess there never was a thing of the kind yet, that there wasn't
a lot of fighting about. It's bound to be that way, you know. Nobody
will be on speaking-terms before it's over."

"Have they got someone to take his place?"

"I believe Joe McHenry is going to do Matilda, and they're going to
leave out Joe's old part--it wasn't much anyway, and somebody or other
can take his speeches. Pretty nearly every man in town that can sing or
act at all is in it already, you know. Archie says he doesn't know what
they'd do, if anyone were to be taken sick."

"But why do you suppose Gwynne----?"

"Goodness knows! It's a bother, we'd fixed up all the programmes
with his name on, and there isn't time to make a whole new lot now.
You can't tell anything about it--there's a queer streak in all the
Gwynnes, you know."




CHAPTER SEVENTEEN


Doctor Vardaman's house wore something of a festive look on Friday
night when the "all-star cast," as some ribald jeerer had christened
them, of "William Tell," began to arrive. It was partly due to the
appearance of Huddesley in his worn evening-clothes, carefully brushed
and pressed. How he contrived to get the dinner--and it was a good
dinner--cooked and ready for serving, and yet present himself in the
doctor's little oil-clothed entry to open the door whenever the bell
tinkled, clean, cool, and unhurried, ready to take charge of overcoats
and hats--how Huddesley did all that, I say, would have been a mystery
to any woman. Even some of the young men spoke of it afterwards with
enthusiasm. As I have already stated, it happened that I never saw
Huddesley except once, later in this same fateful Friday evening, as
we shall presently hear, so that I am unable to describe him; but he
achieved a certain measure of immortality in much better-known and more
widely-read columns than mine will ever be. And in fact there could not
have been much about him to describe; I think he was undersized and
lean, a decent-looking, temperate, capable creature. But nothing in his
appearance, they tell me, would have moved one to a second glance at
him; and perhaps it was that very neutrality of face and figure that
adapted him so well to his position. That, and his manners, prudently
balanced between respectful reticence and respectful interest. He had
contributed in no small share to the coaching of everybody in the
all-star cast; he knew these young men as well as any subordinate
can know his superiors--yet he took their coats in sedate silence,
recognising them only by his grave "yes, sir," and "no sir," and
retiring to his kitchen as soon as his services were no longer needed.
Just once did J. B. imagine that he detected a faint flavour of--call
it irony or covert impudence in the man's bearing; and he presently
dismissed the idea from his mind as too fantastic. It was when
Huddesley was hanging up Teddy Johns' coat alongside the others on the
old-fashioned iron hat-rack, wrought in the semblance of a grapevine
with tendrils and bunches of fruit that decorated the hall between two
life-size oil-paintings of the doctor's "big-bugs."

"Who's that, Huddesley?" asked Teddy affably, indicating by a nod the
one to the right. "The respectable-looking party in the knee-breeches,
I mean."

"That's Doctor Vardaman's grandhuncle, I believe, sir; 'e's dead."

"No, you don't say? Tst, tst! Too bad! That's the first I've heard of
it. When?"

"Habout heighteen-twelve, Hi hunderstand, Mr. Theodore," said
Huddesley, paying the tribute of a deferential smile to the other's
jocularity.

"Well, well, in the midst of life--the doctor's bearing up tolerably,
however, I see. Do you suppose it was a good likeness? What a terrific
big red nose the old boy had, didn't he?"

"Hi'm hafraid 'e was haddicted to the bottle, sir," said Huddesley
respectfully. "That's what comes of the 'abit hoften."

"Hey? The bottle?"

"Yes, sir--'e took a drop too much, I dessay," said Huddesley without
the slightest change of expression. "But a great many gents did in
those days compared to what does now, Hi'm told. Heverybody's very
temperate _now_, sir, as you must 'ave noticed. 'E probably began
hearly, the hold gent yonder; you might say 'e was brought hup on the
bottle."

J. B. eyed the man as Teddy, colouring a little, turned hastily into
the parlour; but Huddesley's face was guileless. It was impossible
to guess how much the fellow knew or meant to hint, though, indeed,
it would have required no great penetration to discover poor Teddy's
weakness. The wonder was that Huddesley, the silent, the discreet,
should have allowed himself to touch upon the subject at all. It struck
J. B. that he was almost too innocently humorous; he wondered if they
had spoiled Huddesley, as Colonel Pallinder had predicted, by their
unthinking familiarity. Muriel's words recurred uncomfortably to the
young man's mind: "You think he's English, but you don't _know_."
"He's no more like a servant at home than our stage-Yankees are like
you." But the idea of his being anything else, of his perpetrating an
elaborate hoax extending over two months and involving disagreeable
manual labour, for no conceivable end, was too preposterous. The
thought, hardly more than half-formed, floated across J. B.'s mental
horizon, and vanished like a shred of cloud before the wind. Yet his
confidence in Huddesley was oddly shaken; he halted, wavering at the
fulfilment of a plan he had had in mind but a moment earlier. To say:
"Look here, Huddesley, I wish you'd not fill Mr. Johns' glass as often
as the rest of us, and never quite full anyhow"--surely that would
have been a small matter, and no disloyalty to his friend, rather a
kindness. And Huddesley was discreet--yes, that was just it, confound
his wooden-faced discretion! All at once it savoured to J. B. of
slyness. This uncertain mood was new to him, and while he hesitated in
a kind of irritated wonder at his own lack of resolution----

"Beg parding, Mr. Breckinridge, sir, did you want to speak to me?" said
Huddesley.

That settled it. J. B. felt as if those respectful eyes had bored
through into his thoughts.

"No," he said shortly; and followed Teddy into his host's presence.

Doctor Vardaman's guests sat down some ten or twelve strong, the
doctor at the head of his table, in a dress-coat the fashion of which
antedated even Huddesley's, with his iron-grey hair brushed forward in
a tuft over each ear; with a black stock such as he had worn since the
year '40; his eyeglass on a black ribbon aslant across his shirt-front
like an order; and a pair of Labrador-stone buttons in his cuffs, dark
watery-green with a crumb of fire eerily visible in the depths of them.
These cuff-buttons signalised the dinner as a gala-occasion; the doctor
marked the day with a Labrador-stone. He only wore them when the event
was of enough importance to justify such a display--a queer sentimental
tribute to certain queer sentimental recollections. They had been given
him who knows how long ago, and by whom? So do we all in secret offer
some absurd and pathetic oblation before the shrines of the past. I
dare say when the doctor opened the top drawer of his high-shouldered
mahogany bureau and took his Labrador-stone buttons out of their dingy
little green morocco case, for one moment the breath of a vanished
spring saluted him, and the roses still bloomed by the calm Bendemeer.
Thus did the old gentleman preside, invested with the kind dignity
of his age and character, and of his noble and beautiful profession;
and I have no doubt his ancient bachelor heart warmed a good deal at
this exercise of hospitality, at the brave sight of the double row of
young men's faces before him, and the deep and pleasant sound of their
laughter. The other end of the table was held by Mr. J. Breckinridge
Taylor, as the journals persisted in reporting him; and Huddesley
brought in the soup. The doctor served it himself from a tub of a
tureen, with a silver ladle not less than a yard long, both of which
had graced the tables of his mother and grandmother--there were giants
in those days!--as had all the other furnishings of this memorable
dinner.

"There was one of those three-story-high cut-glass things, with tiers
of cups on circular platforms--I don't know what you call 'em--filled
with shaky jelly stuff and cream all foamy on top of it," one more
than commonly observant young man told me afterwards. "That was in
the middle of the table. And two silver castors with red Bohemian
glass bottles full of vinegar and oil and things like that, you know,
on each side of it; you could whirl 'em around, and pick out the
bottle you wanted. And there were shallow glass dishes with jelly and
two tall ones like big champagne-glasses, with kind of thick sticky
preserves--they had lids, the tall ones. After the soup, everything
came on at once, game, prairie-chicken, at the doctor's end, and just
plain John Smith chicken roasted, about the middle, and boiled leg of
mutton with this white sauce that has hard-boiled egg and little green
things like pickled shoe-buttons"--he meant capers--"all through it,
for J. B. to carve, and oysters and a ham, and four or five vegetables
all over the table. There were the funniest old steel knives with
ivory handles, and thin old silver forks and spoons with the doctor's
crest, and a motto, '_Foy tiendrai_,' whatever that may mean, on the
backs. Everybody had half-a-dozen wine-glasses; and to begin with there
were four decanters of sherry, one at each corner of the table, and
when we'd finished those--well, you _had_ to have a lot of liquor to
get through a dinner like that, you know--Huddesley brought out three
other kinds."

J. B. conscientiously carving the joint at his end of the table,
viewed the shrinkage in the decanters with considerable uneasiness.
There was nothing prim or kill-joy about J. B. He had no idea of
affecting the virtue that denies to another man his cakes and ale.
But he was a hard-headed young fellow, not given to self-indulgence
of any kind; and although in the State of his birth and earlier years
over-drinking was anything but uncommon, he confessed to a sort of
contemptuous impatience with the man who did not know when he had
enough. It seemed as if one or two of the present company had nearly
reached that desirable condition; and still Huddesley travelled about
the table, impartial as Fate herself, leaving no glass unfilled; or
even half-full. J. B. could see Doctor Vardaman's face but imperfectly
around the erection of custard-cups in the centre, but he thought an
anxiety equal to his own appeared and vanished there by turns. Once
or twice the old gentleman seemed on the edge of signalling Huddesley
to hold his hand, but some feeling rooted, most probably in his
old-fashioned notions of hospitality, must have restrained him.

"Tell you what," said J. B.'s next neighbour confidentially, "Johns is
about as full as I like to see him; it don't take much, you know. He's
just good and jolly now, but if he gets much more----" He shook his
head dubiously. "Say, have you heard anything more about the colonel? I
saw Gwynne Peters on the street to-day----"

"Hock or madeira, sir?" said Huddesley in J. B.'s ear. "Hock, sir? Yes,
sir."

"It seems the Pallinders--I don't care, hock, I guess. What's the
difference anyhow? I don't know one of these wines from the other."

"What about the Pallinders _now_?" asked J. B.

At that very moment, the length of the table away, Archie Lewis was
saying, "Suppose you've heard that about Gwynne Peters, Doctor?"

Doctor Vardaman set down his glass with unusual emphasis. "That's the
third or fourth time this week that I've heard 'that about Gwynne
Peters,'" said he. "And in spite of it, I've never found out yet what
'that about Gwynne Peters' is!"

"_What!_ Didn't you _know_? Why, I thought somehow you knew all about
the Gwynnes. Haven't you heard about the fuss with Pallinder and all?"

The doctor shook his head, and motioned to Huddesley for fresh glasses.
"Never saw anything like the way the boys are getting through the
wine," was his inward comment. "And how warm they all look!" Then
aloud: "So _that's_ the reason Gwynne dropped out of the play; I
thought it a little odd when he declined my dinner," he said, fixing a
thoughtful gaze on Archie. "There's been a fuss with the Colonel, has
there? What was it about?" He fully expected to hear Archie say, "Why,
you know old Steven Gwynne----" had done this or that. But the young
man only looked at him inquiringly.

"I thought you always knew all there was to know about the Gwynnes,"
he repeated. "Templeton, their agent, has a desk with us--do you know
_him_?"

"No--yes, I've seen him. He's short and stout and wears spectacles,
doesn't he?"

"Yes, that's Templeton. You must have heard father's stories about him
and the Gwynnes; he has this little real-estate business, and scratches
along somehow, I believe the Gwynne estate's the biggest part of it.
Father says it's no trouble at all now compared to what it was before
Gwynne Peters took hold; father says there were two or three years
when Gwynne was away, before he got through Harvard, you know, when
Templeton's life wasn't worth living."

"Well, I never understood that Gwynne managed the estate personally,"
said the doctor, recalling, however, a recent scene in his library with
considerable interest.

"No, he don't. He--well, he manages the family--I guess that's about
the size of it. Gwynne's getting a pretty good law-practice, you
know; he couldn't take his time to run around looking at roofs and
down-spouts. That's Templeton's job. When he leased the house to
Colonel Pallinder, you ought to have seen Templeton! I'll bet he was
the happiest man in Washington County. He's a nervous, excitable little
fellow anyhow. He said Pallinder leased it for three years at a hundred
and fifty a month, and it was a perfect miracle; the house is awfully
old, and it was all out of repair and hadn't any modern improvements,
except a furnace. Why, you remember what it was like, Doctor. Well,
then, the question of repapering and putting it in order came up,
and he told the Colonel flat he couldn't allow but just so much (one
month's rent, I think) for repairs. It was too funny, Doctor, to hear
him telling father about it. 'You know there's about twenty of the
Gwynne heirs, Judge Lewis,' says he, 'and nobody's got any money, and
everybody's got a say; and I simply _couldn't_ promise to do all the
Colonel wanted. Every time I paint a porch or fix somebody's sink,
those two old Miss Gwynnes take to their beds!' You just ought to
have seen Templeton telling all this, doctor, with those big glasses
shining, and his Adam's apple kind of working up and down the way
it does with nervous men. I guess it's not all pie attending to the
Gwynnes' affairs, even now. They're all so queer--except Gwynne Peters,
_he's_ all right. Finally the Colonel said he rather expected to buy
the house anyhow, and if they had no objection he'd go ahead and fix
it to suit himself, _at his own expense_. This is Templeton's side I'm
giving you, you know; I guess it's as near the truth as we'll ever
get. Seems to me Templeton was pretty careless, not to have it all in
writing. Anyhow, you know what they did, Doctor; built that little
conservatory, and put in all new plumbing, and had the house painted
and papered and grained from top to bottom--the Lord knows what all the
bills will come to--the Lord knows and He won't tell! But somebody else
will," said Archie with a grin.

"Well, what's happened?"

"Everything," said Archie concisely. "The wonder is, it didn't happen
before. In the first place, the plumber turns up in our office the
other day with his unpaid bill for six hundred and sixty-four dollars
and eight cents. He can't get anything out of Pallinder--Pallinder
cannily refers him to the owners of the property. He comes in with fire
in his eye, wanting to sue Templeton or the estate--father says he's
got a case, too. The plumber's a German, and pretty excitable, and I
told you Templeton was excitable, so you can imagine what it was like.
We tried to smooth 'em down, but we all got so full of laugh, we made
it worse, I think. One of the boys in the office says: 'Oh, come now,
Mr. Scheurmann, let him down easy, knock off the eight cents, won't
you?' 'I vill nodt gompromise! I vill haf my money! I vill nodt knock
off von pfennig!' I tell you the office was a lively place for about
two minutes, with Scheurmann jumping up and down and shaking his fists
on one side, and Templeton jumping up and down shaking his on the
other!"

"Well, but what's all this got to do with Gwynne?"

"Why, he came in after a while with some papers that I'd taken over
to his office a day or so before, when I found that old Gwynne fellow
that lives out on the farm, you know, and the two little old Gwynne
twins sitting around like crows waiting for Gwynne to come in--I told
you about that, didn't I? I was pretty sure right then that there was
going to be some kind of trouble. Anyway Gwynne came into our office,
and Templeton and the plumber left off jumping on each other to light
into him. As if Gwynne had had anything to do with it! I never felt so
sorry for a man in my life; he's the kind that always shoulders all
the responsibility and gets blamed for everything, somehow. He takes
the whole business terribly to heart; he'd been to see Pallinder, and
I guess they'd had it hot and heavy. He was all broken up over it. He
told father there was a poor devil of a gardener that had done some
work about the greenhouse, and came to him with a bill for twelve
dollars; his wife was sick, and he wanted Gwynne to see if he couldn't
get the money out of the colonel. Gwynne didn't say so, but I know he
paid that fellow out of his own pocket--he's that sort. He told father
if he could he'd rake and scrape and pay the whole thing himself
rather than have such a miserable scandal connected with the family. He
seems to feel as if it all kind of came back on him--over sensitive,
_I_ call it. You'd think it was all his fault."

"I think I can understand the feeling," said the doctor. "I'm afraid
we've all bowed ourselves in the house of Rimmon."

"Hey? The house? Oh, yes, I was going to tell you about that, it all
comes out now, the rent hasn't been paid, not one cent, since the
first six months! Gwynne's going to bring suit. He said he wouldn't
do it on his own account, but he's Sam's guardian--you knew about Sam
being out at the asylum, or whatever Sheckard calls his place?--and he
was responsible for Sam's money. I guess he had a devil of a row with
Pallinder--he wouldn't talk about it. You'd think anyone could have
seen all along that the colonel was nothing but an old bunco-steerer,
but I suppose Gwynne actually thought he was all right until this came
up!"

"The idea of accepting the Pallinders' hospitality doesn't sit heavy
on your conscience at any rate," said the doctor. Archie looked up,
surprised; then he flushed a little and laughed.

"Why, no, why should it? Pallinder's debts aren't worrying me any. And
as for talking about him, why, Doctor, it's been all over town the last
three days."

The doctor's wine and the Pallinder's affairs circulated in about
equal proportion; and there was a good deal of speculation as to how
long the present state of things would last--how long the colonel
could hold out. "I hope nothing's going to happen--not while that Miss
Baxter, that nice English girl is here, that's all--the papers always
go for anything of that kind tooth-and-nail," said J. B.'s neighbour.
"And you know, after all, in his way, he's been kind of pleasant to
know--I've had some awfully good times up there."

"So have I. It seems low-down talking this way, but everybody does,"
said J. B.

The other let his eyes rest on J. B. a moment, half-amused,
half-inquisitive. "I wonder--I do wonder what she thinks of us anyway."

"She? Who?"

"Why, Miss Baxter."

"Pretty small potatoes, I guess," said J. B. absently, one eye on Teddy.

"She thinks _you're_ all right, old man."

"Bosh!" said J. B., resenting the tone more than the words.

"She told me the other day she thought Breckinridge was a beautiful
name. 'Why, Miss Baxter,' I said, 'you ought to go to Kentucky; that's
J. B.'s old home. It's so full of Breckinridges, you can't throw a
stone without hitting one of 'em!' 'Really?' she says, just like that.
'Really?' She thought I was in earnest!"

"Every Breckinridge you hit would have a gun in one hip-pocket and a
flask in the other," said J. B., turning the talk from Muriel as best
he could. "Bad men to throw stones at, on the whole----"

"Champagne, sir?"

"No! Good Heavens, do you suppose the doctor expects us to eat all
that pudding and jelly stuff, and fruit and nuts and cheese into the
bargain? It's--what d'ye call it?--Homeric, that's what it is--a
Homeric feast!"

"Whash savin' up for, J. B.?" Teddy shouted from his seat; and J.
B.'s face darkened. He directed a meaning look at Teddy's nearest
neighbours; but by this time all the young men were beginning to be
somewhat flushed, whether from too much eating or too much drinking,
and there was an amazing amount of loud talk and hilarity. Teddy
repeated his question: "Why'n't you drinkin', J. B.? Huddesley, you've
lef' out Mr. Taylor. Mr. Taylor's _my_ frien', Huddesley. All my frenge
here----" He made a sweeping gesture, and knocked over a preserve-dish
with a stunning clatter, gazed at the ruin a minute, then burst into a
yell of laughter, in which, sad to relate, he was joined by more than
one at the table. Teddy suddenly straightened up and looked around
with profound gravity. "Somebody's makin' great deal noise!" said he,
with elaborate distinctness of utterance. And then returned to the
charge: "Why'n't you take some champagne, J. B.? Free's air, doctor's
champagne. You do' wan' hurt doctor's feelingsh, J. B.?" he inquired
pathetically.

"I want to be so I can sing my part," said J. B. good-humouredly. "It's
hard to sing on top of a big dinner like this, you know, Ted. Better
look out, hadn't you?--For Heaven's sake, somebody tell Huddesley
not to give him any more!" he added in a whisper to his neighbours,
and tried to catch the servant's eye. But Huddesley was bending all
his energies to scooping up with exemplary method and expedition
the mess of syrup and broken glass; it seemed impossible to attract
his attention. And in another tour of the table he filled Teddy's
glass again, no one remembering, or perhaps noticing at all, J. B.'s
telegrams of consternation. "Well, damn it, I'm not his keeper!" said
the latter to himself, in a rage. "Everybody's forgotten that Ted's
pretty near the whole show, and they're letting him drink himself
blind drunk. He won't be able to stand up after this--I've done _my_
best anyhow," and in a spirit of savage recklessness, he swallowed his
own champagne at one gulp, and turned to find Huddesley at his elbow
with another bottle. Caution returned upon him.

"Say, Huddesley, didn't you see me shake my head when you gave Mr.
Johns that last glass? He's had all that's good for him already. Now
you quit it, you hear me?" said J. B., conscious of some confusion in
his own head where _his_ last glass was apparently hurrying to and fro
uneasily. He spoke with huge severity; the more as Huddesley met his
eye with disconcerting intelligence.

"Oh, Lord love you, Mr. Breckinridge, 'e ain't 'ad enough to 'urt,"
said he soothingly. "Hi won't let 'im get hout o' hand, sir."

J. B. all at once found himself standing up. Why was he standing up?
The occasion somehow seemed to require it.

"You mind what I tell you. He's got a very impartont
port--I mean a perry veportant imp--I say a very
important-part-in-the-play-and-I-don't-want-him-to-be-too-drunk
-to-speakstinctly," said J. B. painstakingly.

"That's all right, Mr. Taylor, you just sit right down in your
chair--it's a nice chair; you just sit right down, now won't you?" said
Huddesley still soothingly--too soothingly by far to suit J. B.

"Don't you give me any impudence," he said darkly. He sat down
surveying the assembly with scorn shading into pity. _He_ wasn't drunk,
anyhow. But now Doctor Vardaman had risen in his place at the head of
the table, and was asking silence at the top of his lungs--not the
best way in the world of getting it, to the mind of a disinterested
onlooker, but, as nobody was so far gone yet as not to heed the host
of the evening, he was finally obeyed, after Teddy, under the mistaken
impression that he was being called on to give his justly famous
rendition of the farmer about to kill a turkey, had been quelled.

"Gentlemen," said the doctor, casting a look of some anxiety over his
table-full, "let us not forget, that, however much we may be enjoying
the present hour--I speak for myself"--here a number of voices assured
him heartily, "So are we! You bet!" and so on--"I say, gentlemen,
we must not forget that time is passing, and we are due for the
entertainment of our friends at nine o'clock. It would never do, I
think, to keep the ladies waiting. And, having their convenience in
view, I propose that we drink a final glass--" said the doctor, unable
to avoid a slight stress on the adjective--"a _final_ glass to the
success of the performance and adjourn. Reversing what seems to have
been the practice of Scriptural times, I will offer you a very rare and
choice old vintage--you will pardon the conceit that calls attention to
its excellence--a wine that was laid down by my father, gentlemen, in
eighteen-fifteen, the year of the battle of New Orleans, the Waterloo
year, and, as it happens, the year of my birth. He obtained it--for it
has its history--of a Dutch merchant in Cadiz, and we have since called
it, not knowing in truth what its real name should be, Mynheer Van der
Cuyp's wine. Huddesley----"

Here Huddesley stepped forward, and set before the doctor with
something of a flourish two thick black bottles, dusty as to the
shoulders, with the corks drawn, and a tray of the smallest variety of
glasses--rather miserly provision, it might appear, for such a company,
but Doctor Vardaman, not without considerable show of embarrassment,
proceeded to explain: "I--I find myself obliged to warn you, gentlemen,
inhospitable as it seems, that Mynheer Van der Cuyp's wine, what with
age and the richness of its ingredients, is of an unexampled potency.
It is at once smooth and heady, and--and I would not have you taken at
unawares. In short, boys," he added earnestly, abandoning his formal
manner, "it's the very deuce to go to one's head, and you all have
to be careful. Huddesley----" Again that invaluable person began to
circulate.

Doctor Vardaman did not get through his little speech (which he
delivered in a style quaintly reminiscent of the after-dinner orators
of his youth, in an attitude with one hand beneath his coat-tails)
without some uproarious interruptions; the momentary pause that
followed had the surprising effect of clearing the brain of at least
one in his audience. Whatever the others felt, J. B. suddenly realised,
as he afterwards put it, that "he had reached his limit." He knew when
_he'd_ had enough, and the trepidation visible in the doctor's face as
Mynheer Van der Cuyp's wine went on its devastating way, was repeated
in his own. If the truth were known, the old gentleman had been
congratulating himself on bringing off what he considered a tolerably
clever _coup_ to end a sitting which promised disaster to some of the
company; and doing it without offence. But alas! for the best-laid
plans of mice and men! The catastrophe had occurred; some, perhaps most
of the men were a little the worse for liquor; a few minutes of cool
night air would cure them; but Teddy Johns, their prime performer, the
peg upon which hung all their hopes of success, Teddy was hopelessly
drunk. No night air, no applications of crushed ice and wet towels
would cure _him_. Teddy was very good-natured; he sang, he winked, he
joked, he told stories, he lavished endearments on his "frenge." Even
in his worry, the doctor found time for the reflection that wine in,
truth out is the most solid of maxims; liquor puts nothing into a man's
nature that was not there already, it can but reveal him naked; and if
he will be a brute in his cups, it is odds but you shall find him a
brute at heart out of them. There was nothing brutal about poor Teddy;
you could no more be angry with him than with a child. Too late the
doctor regretted his hospitality, too late he lamented the love of good
cheer and youthful company that had prompted him to this inordinate
abundance. He was in the frame of mind to write a temperance tract;
and a sarcastic grin fled across his features as he pictured what that
celebrity of his earlier years, Mr. T. S. Arthur, would have made of
the scene--the moral he would have drawn therefrom.

Once I myself had the privilege of tasting the wine of Mynheer Van der
Cuyp. It was a dark and heavy liquor, pouring like oil, rich of aroma,
searching the veins with subdued fire. Perhaps few of Doctor Vardaman's
guests could appreciate that marvellous flavour; at any rate Teddy was
the only one to express a clamorous approval:

"Pretty goo' for ol' Chickencoop! Give us s'more, Huddesley!"

And Huddesley stolidly gave him some more, oblivious to signs. It
is with great reluctance that this historian enters a record of the
disgraceful scene--but the thing must be done. The horrid tale of
Mynheer Van der Cuyp's wine cannot be omitted. Of course, no man who
reads about Doctor Vardaman's banquet has ever so far forgot himself as
to get drunk, not even when he was a boy; he always had the strength
of character to resist that beastly temptation. And any woman knows
very well that instead of an assemblage of fairly decent and manly
young fellows, the doctor's guests were all low, swilling louts and
boors. So be it; it is true that they turned out, as years went on, to
be tolerable citizens most of them, good husbands, fathers of families
for whom they toiled honestly and provided handsomely--but all that has
nothing to do with the matter in hand.

J. B. bounced up with great, even unnecessary vigour, crying out: "Oh,
this has got to be stopped--one of you fellows take it away from him!"

"No use now, Breck," said Archie dolefully. "That jag will last till
morning."

"Jag yourself!" said Teddy epigrammatically, if somewhat indistinctly.

"Take away his glass, I say!"

"Shan't either," said Teddy, grasping it unsteadily. "J. B., for shame!
You're drunk----" He got to his feet wavering; everybody was up by this
time. "Doc' Vardaman, 'pol'gise--J. B.'s condition--sorry----" He tried
to carry the glass to his lips, failed, and it crashed on the floor.
Teddy stood swaying, he smiled benevolently upon the doctor, "Sorry,"
he murmured.

"Look out! Hold him up!"

"Huddesley----"

"Here--hold on----!" A chair went over. Huddesley sprang to the rescue.

"Sorry," repeated Teddy sleepily, "lead horsh to water--can't make him
stop drinkin'--sorry." He drooped on Huddesley's shoulder.

"'Old hup, Mr. Theodore," said the latter amiably. "Lord! 'E 'as 'ad a
leetle too much, ain't 'e? Never mind, gents, Hi'll get 'im hupstairs,
Hi've 'andled 'em before."

"Here's a nice how-de-do, now what's to be done?" said J. B.
despairingly as Teddy was dragged off. He looked around on the suddenly
sobered and very shame-faced group. Mr. T. S. Arthur could not have
pointed a moral half so well as did the spectacle of that drunken lad;
for somehow every man there felt himself at fault.

Dr. Vardaman was not a little downcast; he saw himself in the
unenviable posture of an old Silenus, leading boys astray. "I am to
blame for this, boys," he said, glancing about in genuine distress.
"I--I----"

"No, you aren't, Doctor, we were all taking too much," somebody said.
"And we're old enough to know better. We ought to have looked out for
Ted."

"What I want to know is, what are we going to do now?" repeated J. B.
And in the silence of blank looks that followed, Huddesley came back.

"'E'll do nicely now, gents," he announced cheerfully. "Hi'll go hup
and get the rest of 'is clothes hoff hafter a while. 'E was a _leetle_
fractious habout being' hundressed, but Hi persuaded 'im 'e was goin'
to put on 'is costoom for 'William Tell,' and 'e let me take 'is coat
like a lamb."

"'William Tell,' hey?" said Archie grimly. "It's all up with 'William
Tell' now."

"Sir?" said Huddesley aghast.

"Worse than that--it's all up with 'Mrs. Tankerville,' too."

"Five minutes to nine! We ought to be there now."

"Well, we'll just have to tell them that he's been taken sick----"

"Everybody knows what that means," said J. B. impatiently. "Might as
well tell the truth."

"Good Lord! What will the girls think? And Miss Baxter, too--what will
_she_ think? What will everybody say? We'll never hear the last of it!
Can't anybody--can't one of you fellows take his part? Here, Ollie
Hunt--or you, Joe?"

Vain hope! "I'm doing Gwynne Peters' part as it is," said Joe,
helplessly. A hurried canvass revealed the dire fact that the one
or two men who were of a size to wear the dress either were already
provided with parts of too much importance to be left out, or could
not sing the music allotted to _Mrs. Gessler_. Nobody remembered the
dialogue in either play; but that was a small matter, if only someone
could be found, a dummy, a straw man, anybody to appear on the stage
and read the lines. Things looked black--and already the carriages of
prompt arrivals were beginning to roll into the Pallinder gate.

"Couldn't you give him some stuff--something strong that would bring
him around, Doctor?" it was asked as the old gentleman returned from a
look at his guest. "They won't be surprised at an amateur performance
being late--and an hour might straighten him out."

The doctor shook his head. "Nothing I know of in the whole range of
medicine," said he briefly. "He's sound asleep, stupefied, dead drunk,
or whatever you choose to call it--as if he'd been drugged. Mynheer Van
der Cuyp's wine was the last straw--terribly strong stuff."

"I guess there's no way out of it--we'll have to give the thing up or
postpone it," said Archie gloomily. "Nice job for the Pallinders, isn't
it? Think of the staging and lights----"

"And the house all floor-clothed and decorated----"

"And the orchestra----"

"_I'm_ waiting to hear what old Botlisch will say, that's all!"

"We'll have to stand from under when _she_ begins, I guess."

"Can't be helped now, fellows, we'll have to take our medicine. But
who's going to tell 'em?"

"Beg parding, Mr. Breckinridge, sir, but you ain't goin' to give hup
the plays on haccount of Mr. Theodore, are you?" Huddesley inquired
with a face of consternation.

"Have to, Huddesley," said the doctor. "There's no one to take his
place, you know."

"But, beg parding, sir, 'ow'll you hexplain?"

"Why, somehow--anyhow--get up some kind of story."

"Doctor Vardaman, sir," said Huddesley, wagging his head solemnly.
"Murder will hout. Wotever story you get hup, you'll 'ave--if you'll
hexcuse my saying it--you'll 'ave the devil's own time."

"Well, we've thought of that, but----"

"You 'aven't thought hof heverything, sir," said Huddesley in a
melodramatic undertone. "THE PAPERS, sir!" (and nothing but the largest
capitals will express the curdling whisper with which he brought out
the words). "'HAWFUL HORGIES HAMONG THE FOUR 'UNDRED! PRIVATE LIFE OF
HEMINENT PHYSICIAN REVEALED! DAYS HOF HANCIENT ROME RECALLED! HEXTRY!
HALL HABOUT THE SCANDAL IN 'IGH LIFE!' That's what it will be sir, as
sure as fate!" His face and gestures were vividly pictorial; headlines
such as he suggested in letters half-a-foot high on the first page
of the morning journals loomed upon everyone's mental vision. J. B.
looked at the man and again suspicion awoke within him.

"Any editor that publishes lies like that will get a horse-whipping,"
said he deliberately (J. B. was not born a Kentuckian for nothing).
"And if any story of the kind gets out, the man that starts it will get
another. If you want to be bought off, Huddesley, you've come to the
wrong people."

"I wasn't thinking of that, Mr. Breckinridge," said Huddesley,
cringing. "I only wanted to save trouble."

"Save trouble how?"

"Why, if it isn't presuming too much, sir, I--I could do Mr. Johns'
parts, I've heard him often. I don't want to be putting myself forward,
sir, but I gave him some suggestions about the _business_, and you
yourself were so kind as to say that they were good ones."

J. B. and the doctor stared at first incredulously, then with a glimmer
of relief. The servant was plainly in desperate earnest. His forehead
was wet, there was colour in his sallow cheeks, he twisted the napkin
in his hands. But J. B., as he afterwards confessed, paid little enough
attention to the changes in Huddesley's manner, singular as they
were; he was too much occupied with this possible way out of their
difficulty. If Huddesley _could_ do it, the day might yet be saved.
No one but the performers need know it; in the _Mrs. Gessler_ make-up
Teddy was unrecognisable from the front, as also when he appeared as
_Jenks the butler_ in mutton-chop sidewhiskers. They were all men in
"William Tell"; in the second play, his role would not bring Huddesley
into offensive contact with the girls; they would have to be told, but
trust Mazie Pallinder to carry off a situation like that! If Huddesley
could manage to get through, some excuse could be found for his
non-appearance afterwards; nobody would suspect anything, and when the
truth did come out, gossip would have been staved off for a little
while at least, and people rarely halloo long on a cold scent. J. B.
questioned the doctor with a glance; then called to the others:

"I say, you fellows, come here a minute, I want to talk about
something!"




CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


When I meet some fellow-performer in the Pallinder theatricals nowadays
we seldom fail to hark back to that noteworthy occasion before we have
had out our talk. There were many of us and we have since scattered
wide to widely differing lives, yet, I think for most this episode
of the eighties probably bulks largest in the dun landscape of our
respectable careers. This is no tragedy; we all married--or by far the
greater number of us--and lived happily at times, at times unhappily,
as people do, ever after. But we never came nearer to adventure.
Reviewing that night with a friend, I am always amazed at the stirring
events that took place within the notice of only one or two persons; we
each cherish a different recollection. So much seems to have happened
to us individually, it is after all not surprising that something
tremendous should have happened to us collectively. Not long since, as
we were discussing it in a company, someone said: "Wasn't it awful when
I fell over the jardiniere right out by the footlights?" Nobody else
remembered the shocking occurrence! This heroine is now a comfortable
matron of forty-odd with two daughters at Bryn Mawr; she has a handsome
establishment, and an excellent dressmaker; her only anxiety, I
believe, is her youngest son, who is a delicate child. It is strange
to think of this sensible middle-aged woman, who, like all the rest of
us, has lived out her romance, seen the world, suffered who knows how
many griefs and disappointments, and yet had her share of happiness,
it is strange to think of her harbouring all these years the stinging
memory of how she fell over the jardiniere. The mind has a vexatious
pet-animal trick of picking up and storing away trivialities; what
would we not all give to remember what is worth remembering--and to
forget!

I said we were many; for, besides the cast of "Tell," "Mrs.
Tankerville's Tiara" demanded a practically unlimited number of young
people in full dress for the ballroom scene. I have since suspected
that Mazie, the diplomatic, selected the play for that very reason. She
asked all the debutantes, and every one else who was "anybody"; and,
no matter what we said, we were all sufficiently tickled to figure so
publicly in a new dress, even if only for a few minutes, and in what I
have seen aptly ticketed a "thinking part." Such was my own, and I was
divided between a feeling of relief that I had no speeches to remember
and deliver in the hollow expectant silence of the audience-room, and
an inward conviction that had I been cast for a leading role, I should
have done much better than anyone else. The performance was, of course,
late in beginning; but everybody expected that, and although people
had been invited for nine, many did not arrive until long after. To
this day I can remember the look of the ballroom,[5] very high, wide,
and chilly, rows of empty chairs drawn up across the floor, spirals of
smilax twisted around the pillars--it was a hard place to decorate, so
big and bare--and Mrs. Pallinder erect by the door, with a grove of
potted plants behind her. She had to receive by herself, as Mazie took
part in the second play, and did not care to dull the effect of her
first costume by letting it be seen prematurely. Mazie had a fine idea
of dramatic proprieties, and a certain sense of climax. The colonel
did not show for some reason; I believe he was downstairs, welcoming
the men as they came in, to the punchbowl on the sideboard. Mrs.
Botlisch had providentially gone to bed with a bilious attack; she had
entertained us with a particular account of her symptoms, remedies, and
their results at luncheon. So Mrs. Pallinder received, looking rather
haggard, I thought, in spite of her rouge; perhaps it was because she
was not wearing those famous diamonds, and one missed their generous
brilliance. Jewels were eminently suited to Mrs. Pallinder; her fair
hair and clear stone-grey eyes seemed to gain a needed lustre from
her necklaces and pendants, and she was the only woman I ever saw who
could wear an earring gracefully. That barbaric ornament set her ear
like a drop of dew on the petal of a flower--there was no hint of
mutilation about it; and I believe she could have sported a stud in
her nostril without offence. She was placed to the utmost advantage;
her delicately classic head and white shoulders were detached upon the
background of dark foliage with a charming cameo-like effect. But she
was all one faint exquisitely-faded colour in an ashes-of-roses silk,
and that or something else more subtle made her look strangely older.
She had surrendered her diamonds with many playful-serious cautions to
_Mrs. Tankerville_, that is, Mazie; and that young woman was decorating
her languid Oriental person with them in the depths of her den of
rocking-chairs and mirrors.

The Chorus of "William Tell" arrived a long while ahead of the stars,
who, as we have seen, were dining with Doctor Vardaman. Even by the
time the Chorus had finished dressing--there was only one of him, as
I believe I have intimated elsewhere, a tall fair young man, who wore
eye-glasses in private life and was a great admirer of Mazie's,--the
rest of the cast had not yet put in an appearance. I suppose if we
could have known what was going forward in the Swiss cottage we would
have been much exercised; but we had no apprehensions, and no quick
means of communication, if any doubts had assailed us. Few private
houses had a telephone in those days, not even the Pallinders--which
was, no doubt, owing in large part to the inconvenient habit prevailing
among telephone-companies from the earliest times of demanding
quarterly payments in advance, and removing the instrument if they
were not forthcoming. So far from worrying, however, we found some
pleasurable excitement in the long wait behind the scenes, and stealthy
peeps through the eye-hole. The setting for "Tell" was the same
throughout its two acts as I recall, a Swiss picture with Alps in the
background, canvas trees and foliage to the front, and a "practicable"
well with a gigantic sweep, whence they brought up pails of water and
diluted the contents of _Tell's_ milk-cans--he was a dairyman in the
burlesque; this was the _Schactenthal Waterfall_, and was the subject
of many noble apostrophes from all the actors; even _Gessler_ and
_Jemmy_ had something to say about it. There was a trap-door in the
floor of the stage and a servant stood to hand up buckets as they were
needed.

"Most people," the Chorus remarked to me, "would have had to put up a
lot of money for all this. The colonel got a carpenter from the Grand
Opera House, not the head man, I suppose, but some second-best fellow
they could spare, to plan and oversee it all, so that everything would
be safe. That's the man over there now; he told me the bill for the
lumber alone would be thirty-five or forty dollars--and it's good for
nothing but kindling-wood after to-night, you know."

We were sitting together on a green baise-covered mound, very much in
the way, doubtless, as we watched the men getting things in position.
I had no business to be there at all, but I was dressed and ready for
my part, and so alive with curiosity and excitement, I could no more
stay in one place sedately than a young kitten or puppy. The stolid
professionals at work on the scenery endured our presence on the
principle, perhaps, that bids us to suffer fools kindly.

"The Pallinders must be awfully well off," I said. My companion eyed me
soberly. The Chorus was a serious and practical young fellow; at the
present time he is conducting a great milling business somewhere up in
Michigan. They make two or three kinds of breakfast-foods, I think,
and have been extraordinarily successful. But we were not dreaming of
that the night we perched together on the make-believe mound behind the
swaying drop-curtain; rather must his thoughts have been occupied with
Mazie Pallinder, her long serpentine figure, and sprightly drawl. For
I noticed how his eyes wandered constantly in the direction whence she
might appear.

"I wish the boys would get here," he said, wrinkling his brows. "It's
half-after already. They're beginning to crowd in pretty thick--last
time I looked all the first fifteen rows were taken. Is--ah--is Miss
Pallinder going to come and help her mother receive? I didn't see her.
But if she is, I--ah--I really ought to go and speak to them."

He coloured furiously at the mere mention of her name; and it struck me
as exquisitely humorous that his goddess was probably at that instant
producing just such a blush on her own well-tried cheeks by what
mysterious agency! Pink nail-paste and talcum-powder had a good deal to
do with it, I believe.

"She isn't there, and you shouldn't go in costume anyhow. Nobody ought
to be seen beforehand--Mazie says so. She's all dressed and sitting in
her room until 'Mrs. Tankerville,' begins. How did it happen you didn't
go to dinner at Doctor Vardaman's with the others?"

"Why, I had to go down to the train to meet Susie; she's coming on from
New Haven with the two children to make us a visit. Her train was due
at eight, but it's five hours late--stalled at a washout just this side
of Pittsburgh, the fellow at the ticket-office told me. He said all
the Pan-Handle and B. & O. trains were coming in anywhere from one to
nine hours behind the schedule-time. Freshets, you know; the Ohio's on
a boom. They're having an awful time in Cincinnati, they say, biggest
flood in years. There, isn't that J. B.'s voice?"

I beat a hasty retreat for Mazie's room, where the entire feminine
cast of "Mrs. Tankerville" was by this time collected. We had to be
bestowed in some place where we could talk in safety; and no talking
could be allowed "behind" while the plays were in progress, even such a
scatter-brained crew as we were, knew that. But from time to time one
of us would steal out to the wings, watch the familiar antics, listen
to the familiar jokes a while, and bring back a report. I believe we
enjoyed this excited hour or two more than anything that went before or
after. In Mazie's room the gas flared high; the chairs, the lounge,
the bed were heaped with finery. We pulled a big pink silk screen
in front of the door so that the arriving audience, taking off its
wraps in the other bedrooms, might not see us. There was a green-room
atmosphere (we thought) of flowers, candy, perfume, acid gossip; and
now and again we could hear one of the men rushing through the hall
outside to their quarters in the wing, for a change of clothes; or a
thunderous burst of laughter, "like a dam giving away," Kitty said,
when the dining-room door in the hall below swung open.

"It's going all right," she reported, returning from one of these
expeditions with very bright eyes and flushed cheeks. She looked
distractingly neat and coquettish in her black frock, cap, and short
ruffled apron as the maid; and I was afterwards told that one of the
men had caught and kissed her in a dark corner behind the prompter's
chair. They all seemed to be in wonderfully high spirits. "Only it's
so funny the audience sometimes laugh in places where we didn't expect
'em to at all! You ought to see J. B. Taylor. He looks perfectly
_immense_ in that kilt; I didn't _know_ he was such a big man; great
big round pink arms like this! And the kilt kind of peaks down right
in the middle of the back; Harry Smith called him Doctor Mary Walker;
and _Gessler_ said he ought to have a bustle--right out loud so that
the people could hear! They call that _gagging_ the part." She sent a
glance of sparkling malice, suggestive, somehow, of a file of small new
pins, toward Muriel. "J. B.'s the _silliest_--you can't help laughing
to save your life."

"Did they laugh at Teddy?"

"Like everything! He's a little husky, or else it's too much dinner,
his voice sounds kind of queer, but I guess that will wear off in a
minute." She added in a rapid whisper, as Mazie's back was turned,
"Girls, it's _rich_! He's got himself up to look about as fat as Mrs.
Botlisch in an old gingham wrapper without corsets, you know, and he's
sort of taking her off, he's simply _splendid_, people just roll over
and laugh every time he opens his mouth."

"Is Doctor Vardaman there?"

"What, behind? No. He's not here at all, one of the men told me. He had
to go and sit up with some sick person, or something. Don't you want to
see J. B., Muriel?"

"No," said Muriel flatly. She was looking acutely distressed, like a
large sorrowing Madonna. "I think Mr. Johns must look a great deal
sillier," she said with a kind of defiance. "Or that other--what is his
name?--the one that pretends to be the Chorus, just one of him--he's
_very_ silly!"

"How is Bob doing?" Mazie asked.

Bob was the Chorus. He was no actor; but the part only required someone
with a voice, and he had a really beautiful high sweet tenor. All he
must do was to appear in season and out of season and jodel, which he
did to admiration, with a perfectly grave face, for as I have said, he
was of a sober disposition, and to tell the truth saw nothing comic
in it. But about the seventh or eighth jodel the audience fell into
paroxysms of laughter and so continued whenever the Chorus came on. Bob
made one of the hits of the evening, to his own great confusion and the
frank surprise of everyone else in the cast.

"Bob? Oh, all right. But that's one of the things they're laughing at;
isn't that funny?"

"Why not, if he's funny?" said Muriel, puzzled.

"Oh, I don't mean funny _that_ way, you know, I mean _funny_. Why
don't you come and look on a while, Maze? Bob'll do better if you're
there."

"Oh, I guess I don't care to," said Mazie with indolent emphasis.
"I'd tear my dress or something. It's all full of ropes and nails and
pegs behind there." She leaned back in her rocker, contemplating the
sweeping breadths of her dull red silk train, spangled with jets; the
front of her low corsage darted light from innumerable facets of jet
and diamonds. In the absence of an actual tiara, her mother's diamond
necklace had been fastened on a symmetrical frame of silver wire, and
gleamed abroad from Mazie's dead-black hair, arranged in a forest of
bangs. Without a single pretty feature, she wrought a curious illusion
of dark and brilliant beauty; and Kitty gave her the tribute of an
unwilling admiration. A girl, and not a handsome girl at that, who was
too lazy or too stiff-necked to walk half-a-dozen steps to show herself
when she was looking her best to a man, who as we all knew was in love
with her, and who would be no poor match either--such a girl, I say,
commanded all the respect of which Kitty's small soul was capable.

Then I adventured again, alone; and harvested a sensation. For, while
I was standing in the left wings, between two blocks of scenery, with
my skirts furled as close as the fashion of the day would allow, to
avoid casual tacks, Teddy Johns came off, followed by a gratifying,
yet somehow a little awesome, burst of applause. He stood close
beside me breathing hard, for his humour was largely acrobatic,
and dabbing the perspiration from his forehead and cheeks with a
corner of handkerchief, daintily so as not to mar his paint. And the
audience clamoured a recall. I suppose there were not more than a
couple of hundred people in the ballroom, yet the noise they made was
deafening in so contracted a space; there was something formidable and
pitiless in that great insistent voice. Sudden comprehension of what
stage-fright might be came to me, and I looked at Teddy with admiring
wonder. What must it be to face that hydra of a creature, that thing
of many souls fused into one unthinkable whole out there beyond the
footlights!

"Weren't you frightened?" I whispered.

He turned towards me--and it was not Teddy Johns at all! It was a man I
had never seen before.

I was so startled I could only gasp and stutter; the light was good
enough, yet I thought it must have misled me, and peered into his
face anxiously, expecting his familiar chuckle. His features were a
mask of paint, apparently laid on at random, but as I know now, with
real skill and knowledge of effect; he wore false eyebrows and a wig
with a grotesque "slat" sunbonnet pushed halfway off, and held by the
strings knotted under his chin. His body was padded shapelessly. And
while I strove to find Teddy under this disguise, he suddenly bestowed
on me a grin so vicious and repellent, that I almost screamed aloud.
Whether that expression of amusement was involuntary on Huddesley's
part, or whether he feigned it out of deliberate deviltry, I have often
wondered. I must have uttered some sort of queer noise, for he said in
a biting whisper: "Hold your tongue, you--fool!" and in the same breath
was back on the stage, bowing to the tumult. He made the leader of the
orchestra a sign, the instruments crashed out the opening bars of his
song, and he began over again.

I did not faint or go into hysterics, for I was a healthy and after all
a tolerably sensible young woman; but it is impossible to convey any
idea of my bewilderment. Fortunately it lasted only a moment or so.
Huddesley made his second exit to the right, for the sake of variety,
maybe; and the Chorus, crossing the stage, stationed himself in the
wings almost at my side, that he might be heard jodeling "off," in
stage-phrase.

"No, that isn't Teddy," he whispered, in answer to my excited murmur.
"Yo-de-la-_hee-ho_!--Teddy's sick, that's the doctor's man--La-he,
la-he, la-he, ho!--Huddesley, you know; they got him to take Ted's
place, mighty lucky he can, too--Yo-de-la--_hee_-ho, yo-de-la-a-a!"

FOOTNOTE:

[5] It was the last time I saw it; in fact, I doubt, on thinking it
over, if any of us were ever inside the old Gwynne house again.--M. S.
W.




CHAPTER NINETEEN


Doctor Vardaman viewed the departure of his guests with mingled
relief and chagrin; the evening had not ended quite according to his
expectations, and he could not decide whether the disaster was his
fault or theirs; perhaps on the whole, they were lucky the outcome was
no worse. The young men of this generation lacked the self-control or
the physical fibre of their sires, he told himself irritably; and then
a queer smile twitched his lips as he remembered his own father saying
the same thing. To every age its own faults, and also its own standards
of judging them. In his day people used to speak tolerantly enough of
a man who drank; it was held a contemptible, but hardly a disgraceful
weakness. Are we grown better, or only more prudent? We go to church
less, but we certainly bathe a deal oftener. The creed of keeping one's
health is no such poor creed, when all is said; a man will diet to save
his mortal body with twice the vigour and conviction than he will pray
to save his immortal soul--and who shall say that it is not right, or
at least expedient for him to do so? For after all the health of his
soul is his own affair, but the health of his body vitally concerns
the welfare of others. Thus the doctor, moralising a little far afield
from the events of the evening; and he shrewdly suspected that to the
rest of the young fellows, Ted's drunkenness was not so unforgivable
an offence in itself, except for the monstrous inconvenience of it.
"And I am afraid I _am_ responsible for that," he said with half a
sigh. "If I had married and brought up a family, I should have known
better how to manage the lads. Eh, Louise?" He uttered the last words
aloud with a pensive glance at his Labrador-stones, and started at the
eerie sound of his own voice raised in sentimental monologue beside
his empty hearth. "I'm getting maudlin myself, now!" he thought, and
went to close the hall door swaying and creaking dismally in a rush of
damp, chilly air. It was raining pitilessly; it had rained for nearly
two weeks. The doctor, standing in his doorway, beheld the arrowy slant
of water shining against the dark where the hall light irradiated it;
amongst the irregularities of his brick-paved walk small puddles showed
an unsteady glistening surface. The bushes in half-leaf on either
side drooped and shone. Farther away there was an incessant rumour
of wheels, and he was aware of the measured approach and passage of
carriage-lamps in pairs, directed toward the Pallinder gate. Doctor
Vardaman watched them absently for some time, while the swift wind
refreshed his house; then he remembered Teddy, whom he had refused to
leave alone, slammed the door and went upstairs.

The young man was sleeping heavily, spread out upon the doctor's staid
old four-post bed; not in years, if ever, had that respectable piece
of furniture witnessed such a spectacle, and the doctor had a quaint
fancy that it withdrew itself shudderingly from the contamination.
It had been his mother's, and a kind of feminine severity appeared
in its starched and ruffled valance, as of indignant petticoats. He
leaned over and scanned Teddy's face, holding his own chin in his hand,
with knotted brows; then he felt the sleeper's pulse, listened to his
thick breathing, shook his head with a perplexed look, and began
mechanically to gather up the clothes thrown here and there about the
room. He went back and surveyed the bed again. "Very strange," said
Doctor Vardaman. And again: "Very strange!"

He went downstairs, and, not without a sardonic grin, brought up a
pitcher of ice-water, and placed it in readiness on the little old
mahogany candle-stand at the sufferer's right hand. The dining-room
was a woeful picture as he re-entered it. In the middle of the table,
the pyramid of jellies and cream had partly dissolved and trickled
down to mix with a waste of crumbled cake, cigar-stumps and ashes,
nut-shells, soiled napkins, shattered china--the doctor sat down
amid the desolation, likening himself to Marius among the ruins of
Carthage. There was a dreary odour--an odour? A _stench_, Doctor
Vardaman vigorously characterised it--of stale wine, stale coffee,
stale tobacco. Fragments of cheese swam in pudding-sauce; spent
bottles cumbered the sideboard; the door was open into the kitchen,
affording a vista of plates piled in tottering heaps, pots and pans
crowded on the cold range, a bowl of dishwater crowned with scum in
the sink, half-eaten meats and vegetables stiffening grimly in lakes
of discoloured gravy. "Faugh!" said the doctor in strong distaste, and
closed the door on the depressing scene. He sat down in his place at
the head of the table. Huddesley would have a job of cleaning up this
squalid hole on the morrow, he thought, and wondered how the man was
getting on in his new sphere; smiled, too, as he reflected that the
dream of Huddesley's life was being fulfilled. He had wanted to be
a "hactor," and indeed he had some turn that way, poor creature! It
was strange to think how unequally the gifts of Fate are distributed:
now there was Huddesley, an honest man, not at all a dull man, who,
if he had been born in any class but the servant class, even in a
less respectable one, might have made more of himself! That inherited
attitude of servility was a greater bar to his advancement than dulness
or vice; in America it might have been different; we have no definite
classes, and no traditions of behaviour. But in England a man who
habitually says "sir," and drops his _h's_--here the old gentleman came
bolt upright in his chair, upon a sudden moving recollection. Huddesley
had not dropped a single _h_ nor added one on, since assuming Teddy's
character! During all the talk that had followed his proposal, and
when he had hurriedly recited for them a number of Teddy's speeches,
his accent had nowise differed from their own. The fact, noted in
some obscure corner of the doctor's brain, now in the silence of the
vacant room, obtruded itself with an unwelcome insistence. It was
a slight thing, yet of a curious significance; a person could not
thus at will abandon the habit of a lifetime. Say it were not such a
habit, what then? Why, then the dialect was put on, like a garment;
and for what reason? If that was the case, Huddesley was by far too
much of a "hactor" to be officiating in the doctor's kitchen. We
do not look for, nor somehow relish so much versatility in one of
Huddesley's degree. Doctor Vardaman's thoughts hardly proceeded in
so orderly a sequence as they have been here set down, but by vague
speculative turns and windings they reached the last conclusion. He
began uncomfortably to review the manner of his engaging Huddesley,
and was startled to realise how little he actually knew of the man,
how haphazard had been his methods of hiring servants. "I'll write
to that Lord Whatever-his-name-was to-morrow," he told himself--and
then had to smile a little at this access of belated caution. The
whole thing, of course, was capable of some very simple explanation,
he thought impatiently, unwilling to own himself baffled; there was
not necessarily a dark, bloody mystery about a person's speaking in
dialect one moment and in the queen's English the next. It might be
that Huddesley was the exiled black sheep of some decent, even gentle
family--well, perhaps, not a black sheep, but at least a brindled one,
not good enough for the station to which he had been born, too good for
that to which he had sunk; stranger things than that have happened.
He had told a perfectly straight story; even if it were an invention,
that, so long as the man behaved himself, was no concern of Doctor
Vardaman's. "And when he misbehaves," said the doctor inwardly, "why,
then, like Dogberry, I'll let him go, and thank God I am rid of a
knave! I don't believe he _is_ a knave, but certainly I've always had
an idea he was no ordinary man. Maybe I'd better have a talk with him
to-morrow."

Now that suspicion, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, a
kind of doubting curiosity, had been aroused in the doctor's mind,
it would not down; a dozen instances of slips or inconsistencies in
Huddesley's conduct thronged upon him. He sat a long while, frowning
in uncomfortable recollection; then got up at last, and halfway to
the mantelpiece to get a cigar, paused again in puzzled meditation
with his gaze on the floor. At his feet there lay the broken bits
of Teddy's final glass in a sticky morass of Mynheer Van der Cuyp's
wine, that calamitous beverage, seeped into the nap of the carpet.
Doctor Vardaman gathered up the largest pieces gingerly, and tried
to fit them together; that set of glasses had been his mother's when
she went to housekeeping. It was beyond mending, however, and he was
on the point of tossing the shards into a waste-basket, when a fresh
discovery restrained him. He sniffed at them, sniffed his fingers, got
down on all-fours and laboriously sniffed the stained carpet. He rose;
"Teddy didn't drink that glass," he said aloud. "He only drank the
first one Huddesley gave him. But he had been drinking all evening." He
smelled at some other glasses standing near the young man's place, but
apparently could make nothing of them. He went hesitatingly toward the
door of a little room opening upon the hall, and at the very threshold
wavered in indecision. "Oh, this is all foolishness," he said. "How
could Huddesley--what possible motive----?" He opened the door. It
was a dark, windowless place, little more than a closet, which the
doctor had put to all sorts of uses, experimenting with chemicals,
photographic plates, raising mushrooms, the hundred-and-one devices of
industrious idleness. Everything there was in a kind of handy masculine
disorder, and he often boasted that he could go there in the dark and
pick up whatever he wanted without a moment's hesitation. But now he
struck a match, and ran an anxious eye along the shelves; he breathed a
little freer when he discerned the bottle he sought in its accustomed
place with contents undisturbed; it was colourless stuff. "All fancy!
I'm getting as notional as an old woman," he said to himself, and was
turning away, when some second thought prompted him to reach the bottle
down from the shelf. His match had gone out; the doctor went into the
parlour, where all the gas-jets were burning wastefully high, and some
red tulips he had bought that afternoon to decorate his banquet flagged
miserably in the old French china vases. He deliberately removed the
cork, smelled it, hesitated, touched the bottle to his tongue. "Well,
I'll be----," he ejaculated, facing his own pale and perturbed image in
the old-fashioned gilt mantel-glass.

Doctor Vardaman did not finish saying what he would be, but with a
mechanical precision, poured the rest of the liquid into a vase of
tulips. "There wasn't enough there to hurt him," he said thoughtfully.
"I _thought_ he didn't seem like a plain drunk somehow. He'll be pretty
sick when he comes to, but he'd be that anyway." He sought a cigar,
and sat down by the fireless grate with his hands on his knees. "The
question is, what next?" said he. "What is the bottom of all this? And
what on earth ought I to do?"

The old gentleman smoked his cigar out with his queries unanswered, and
sat staring intently at the mantel-board, his mind travelling up and
down in a fog of doubt and futile conjecture. The mantel-board exactly
fitted the opening of the fireplace, and was covered with pale green
wall-paper, having an arabesque border in white and gold all around
the edges, and in the middle a design of a Watteau gentleman and lady
kissing beside a fountain at the foot of a flight of marble steps with
a temple in the background. Clouds, roses, swans, butterflies and
turtle-doves contributed to the scene, and on a ribbon scroll beneath
one read: "_Dolce far niente._" It was an interesting mantel-board and
at least fifty years old. The doctor stared so long and so hard that
presently he experienced no surprise at finding himself on his way to
morning-service at the temple with a bunch of tulips in one hand and
a bottle of Mynheer Van der Cuyp's wine labelled somewhat erratically
"CAUTION. POISON. _Antidote, very strong black coffee_," in the other.
He was obliged to take passage in a boat with old Mrs. Botlisch, and
when Huddesley came around to collect the fare, discovered to his
mild annoyance that he had omitted to put on his trousers--a lapse
from conventionality which nobody else noticed, however. There arose
a terrific storm of thunder mainly, and someone began to be very
seasick--and--and----

And then the doctor waked up, with a jerk and the well-known but
perfectly indefinable feeling of lateness in the air. He looked around
blinking. Certain dismal sounds from the bedroom overhead accounted for
one feature of his dream, and a fusillade of knocks on the front door
supplied the thunder. "Why, I believe I've been asleep!" said Doctor
Vardaman, slowly collecting his faculties. A pause, and then more
knocking; voices muttered together, feet went to and fro on his porch,
somebody fumbled for the bell-handle, struck a match and found it, and
directly the bell sent forth a shattering broadside of sound in the
waste and deserted kitchen. "I'm coming!" shouted the doctor, adding a
brief anathema under his breath, and went to the door. Outside the rain
had ceased, but a wet wind shook and tip-toed among the trees. There
was a ghostly twilight abroad; it was possible dimly to descry the
outlines of the landscape. Stationary before his gate the lamps of a
carriage burned dimly. It was dawn! The doctor repressed an exclamation
of surprise and turned to his visitors. There were three of them; one
was a policeman in a shining waterproof cape-coat; he was a head and
shoulders above the others, and stood back from them deferentially as
one in the presence of his superiors. Before a word was spoken Doctor
Vardaman observed confusedly that all three drew together, and closed
up in front of the opening door, and the policeman shortened his grasp
on the baton he carried.

"Somebody hurt?" inquired the doctor, following up the first idea
suggested by this apparition. He was met by a counter question.

"Doctor Vardaman?" said the foremost. The doctor looked at him. He was
a commonplace man in commonplace clothes, stoutly-built and active,
with rather hard features and quick black eyes. The other might have
been his twin, save for a certain youthfulness in his alert gaze; he
leaned against the door-post chewing the fag end of a dead cigar.
There was a vague hostility in the appearance of these people; in the
unbecoming light of early morning, everyone wore a haggard and unkempt
air, except the burly fresh-faced policeman in his trim wet-weather
gear.

"I am Doctor Vardaman," said the old gentleman. "Is anyone hurt or
sick?"

"No, it's all right, Doc., take it easy, nobody's needin' you," said
the first speaker. "Sorry to knock you up this time o' night, but it
couldn't be helped. If my train had 'a' got in on time, I'd 'a' been
here not much after supper; but we're just in, I come right up from the
deepo. I gotta hump myself, or I wouldn't 'a' thought o' disturbin'
you. Here's my card. Say, you got a man named Huddesley, ain't you?"

"Huddesley?" echoed the doctor, in helpless bewilderment. During the
above speech, which had been delivered in a brisk, authoritative, but
carefully lowered voice, the speaker had walked in without the ceremony
of waiting to be asked, and now stood in the middle of the hall,
apparently inventorying everything in it with a swift and practised
eye. His subordinates followed, the policeman halting at the door-mat
and respectfully wiping his shoes.

"Yes, Huddesley, had him about eight or ten weeks, ain't you? Little
dark, stocky fellow; talks like he was English; says he was butler to
the nobility over there--ain't that him? Is he in the house now?"

"I don't think so," said the doctor, at once disturbed and resentful.
"He had to go out this evening. If you will oblige me with your name,
sir, and the object of this visit----?"

"You got it there on the card," said the other. "Take your time, Doc.,
don't go off at half-cock. I know it's kinder sudden, and I'm sorry,
but I guess I'll have to pinch your man. Where is he? Where'd he go?
Don't you know whether he's in or not? Who's that upstairs?"

"That is a guest of mine who is ill," said the doctor with rising
irritation. "If you will please to explain, sir----"

"I gotta hump myself, or I wouldn't 'a' bothered you, Doc.," said the
man, civilly enough. "Soon's you've got the sleep outa your eyes, you
can just look at that card I give you. We ain't goin' to make _you_
any trouble, you know, any more'n we can help, that is. Where's his
room? Upstairs? To the back? Go up there and look, Judd. Here, you,
one-o'-the-finest, what's your name?"

"Clancy, sor," said the policeman, and put a finger to his helmet.

"Go 'round to the back, and keep your eye out. I'll stay here. Is there
any other outside-doors, Doc.?"

"No," said the doctor shortly. "Is--ah--is this your card, sir?"

"Keep your shirt on," said the other soothingly. "You're comin' along
by the slow freight, but you'll get there directly. Go easy, and when
you're through readin' let me know."

The doctor, diverting his astounded mind from the spectacle of a
strange man of uncouth appearance and no manners giving orders in his
house, and another strange man going upstairs seemingly to search it,
adjusted his glasses and bringing them to bear on the card which the
leader had thrust into his passive hand, read:


     JOHN P. HOPPLE, Collector.
     Mercantile and Commercial Protective Association.

     D. B. stands for Dead Beats. B. D. stands for Bad Debts. We
     collect Bad Debts from Dead Beats everywhere for everybody. We
     can collect yours. We collect regardless of Lodge, Politics, or
     Religion. Do business with us and we will both make money.

     _Some people don't like us._


"Ain't nobody up there," said the ancient, returning from the
exploration of Doctor Vardaman's upper rooms. "Except the sick dude in
the front room. Say, maybe he ain't been on a bat, ain't he? Oh, no, I
guess not!"

"Do I understand that Huddesley has got himself in trouble owing
someone?" asked Doctor Vardaman, finding the situation somewhat
illuminated. "It appears to me, Mr.--er"--he glanced again at the
card--"Mr. Hopple, it appears to me that your methods of collecting are
unduly--shall I say vigorous? To rout people out at this hour--I've no
doubt the man would have paid you without all this to-do. What is the
amount, if I may----"

"Say, ain't you barking up the wrong tree?" interrupted the other,
eying him in perplexity. "Or--here--say, that's funny, I give you the
wrong card. Excuse _me_, Doc., my mistake. That's a man's business-card
I met in the smoker coming from N'Yawk. This is _me_. Just read that,
will you? It's all square, Doc., I've got a reference--and Judd here's
from your own p'lice headquarters anyhow."

Again the doctor applied himself to a card and found thereon the
following legend:


         WILLIAM O. GRIMM.
     Paterson Detective Bureau.
         "We never sleep."


It was hardly reassuring, in spite of the last statement; but before
Doctor Vardaman had sufficiently collected himself to ask for further
enlightenment, the policeman appeared in the doorway.

"Why--er--say," he remarked, "there's a party in a hack outside here
wants to know the way to Colonel Pallinder's. I told him that there
big house standin' back with them big pillows up the front, ain't that
right?"

"That's the place," said the doctor, half-listening.

"An' why--er--say, he said he see by the papers they was a party at
Colonel Pallinder's to-night and do you guess they've gone to bed yet,
becos he's met a lot o' kerridges comin' away from this di-rection like
it was over, an' he'd like to get there, becos he's gotta hump, he
says."

"Blamed if that ain't Hopple!" exclaimed the detective, in admiring
wonder. "Well, don't that beat the Dutch!"

"They ain't but that one Pallinder in town, is there?" asked the
policeman. "He says if they's anybody up yet, he's going to hump right
along and ketch 'em."

"Somebody may not have gone to bed yet," said the doctor, sparing a
moment from his own muddled affairs to wonder what this late arrival,
and energy of pursuit might mean. "In fact it seems my man Huddesley
has not got back from there yet. Tell him to drive straight on and turn
to the right at the gate. Did you say you were looking for Huddesley,
Mr. Grimm? What for?"

"Why, for a number o' things, Doc., bustin' up a safe at the Farmers'
an' Traders' Bank o' Sharontown, Missouri, an' makin' a get-away with
the specie, thirty-two hundred dollars in coin an' greenbacks, for one
thing. That was in July, 1881. If he's the man I'm looking for, his
name's Tuttle, or Cohen, or Jimmy the Toff--he goes by all of 'em--and
he's wanted in Boston besides for a jewelry-shop job last year."

Doctor Vardaman gazed speechless. Mr. Grimm's words, delivered in a
dry, curt, and entirely unsensational manner, fairly rattled about
the old gentleman's ears like hail. He was conscious of anger, of
resentment, and in the same breath of a ghastly and growing conviction.

"Impossible!" he gasped; and then felt involuntarily for his
cuff-buttons. "Jewelry-shop job! You mean Huddesley's a thief!"

"Put it there," said the detective, nodding encouragingly.

"Good Lord! Why--I--I can't believe it. He's been in my house for over
two months, and I've never missed a thing!"

"I guess you didn't have nothing worth while," said Grimm, casting the
glance of a connoisseur about him. "He thought it was a good place to
hide, or else he was fixing to bring off some other job."

"That's what!" said Judd briefly.

"I--I--it don't seem as if it _could_ be! Don't you think there's some
mistake?"

"Not likely," said Judd, without emotion. "I spotted him that time I
come up here peddlin' collar-buttons--t'ain't more'n two weeks ago--an'
I'll bet anything he spotted me, too. He's pretty fly, that fellow."

Mr. Grimm produced a bundle of papers from the inside pocket of his
coat, fished out a bit of pasteboard and held it before the doctor's
eyes. "That him?" he queried.

Doctor Vardaman surveyed it a while in silence. "I'm afraid so," he
said at last, with a sigh. "This is clean-shaven, and Huddesley wears
mutton chop side-whiskers, but it's the same face, undoubtedly."

The detective nodded with a satisfied air, and returned the photograph
to its place. He repeated his former question. "Did you say he'd gone
out? Was it to this party to-night? How'd that happen?"

"The--the circumstances are a little peculiar," said the doctor.
"Won't you sit down, Mr. Grimm? The fact is the young gentlemen of the
party--it's an entertainment, private theatricals--were dining with me,
and one of them was taken sick----"

"The feller upstairs, hey?" interposed Mr. Judd, smiling slightly.

"Ahem--yes. Well, then, Huddesley, who knew his part, volunteered
to take his place in the play, you understand. It was a great
accommodation----"

"Hold on a minute. Didn't it strike you as kinder queer he should 'a'
been so well up in the stage-business? Fact is, he _has_ been an actor,
he's been pretty nearly everything, but you didn't know that of course.
But didn't you ever have any suspicions?"

"Well, I had always thought the man was rather--rather unusual--a
little above his station, perhaps. But _this_! It never occurred to me.
You may have heard that there was an attempt at robbing the Pallinder
residence this winter, and Huddesley was one of the first to discover
it, and rouse the----"

He paused, seeing the two detectives exchange a meaning glance. "Told
you so," said Judd. He got up, walked to the door, spat into the porch,
and returned to his seat. "I was _on_--not right off, but pretty soon,"
said he. "Go ahead, Doc., you say Huddesley took your friend's part in
the play----"

"I suppose he had seen these young men go through their parts a dozen
times. It didn't seem at all odd to us; it would be a long story to go
into all the details, but we--we found it most fortunate that he could
supply the sick man's place. I wish to say, Mr. Grimm, that I have no
cause, personally, to complain of Huddesley. His conduct since he has
been with me has been most exemplary, I have never observed anything
suspicious----"

The doctor came to a dead stand-still, for at that moment his discovery
of the evening flashed into his mind with inconvenient abruptness.

"You're a kind-hearted man, sir," said Grimm, with warmth, "to say what
you can for the fellow, but I've got his record. It's queer he ain't
back yet." He looked at his watch. "They keep it up pretty late, don't
they? It's after three." He got up briskly. "I guess we'd better leave
Clancy here, Judd, an' go on up to the house. Looks to me like that'd
ought to be our next move. All ready?" He stood a moment frowning over
some new thought. "This here party, Doc., I guess it was goin' to be
pretty swell, wasn't it? I mean ladies all diked out with diamond
earrings an' breast-pins, hey?"

Doctor Vardaman, gripping the arms of his chair hard, stared at the
detective transfixed. If the various revelations which had visited the
old gentleman during the last moment had assumed the concrete, tangible
form of so many successive clubbings, he could not have been more
stunned. And in the ensuing short silence, Teddy's voice could be heard
upstairs mournfully requesting more ice-water for God's sake.

"Got himself good and tanked, didn't he?" said the detective, grinning.

"Mr. Grimm," said the doctor, with difficulty, "I have reason to
believe that my young friend has been drugged. I think Huddesley found
something among some few medicines I keep--it was a preparation of
chloroform--and put it in his wine. I happened to examine the bottle,
and it had been filled up with water. And the young man's glass smelled
perceptibly of the stuff--I was at a loss to account for it--why
Huddesley should want to drug him, I mean, but I--I am beginning to
understand. And--wait a minute!" he interposed as both of the others
opened their mouths on a question. "In one of the plays which they were
to perform, there is a question of some diamonds being stolen--the plot
turns on that episode, in fact. Jewels were loaned for the young people
to use--very costly ones. I am told Mrs. Pallinder's necklace alone is
valued at----"

"Told you so!" shouted Judd, starting to his feet. Grimm quieted him
with a gesture. "Well?" he said.

"Teddy's part--the part Huddesley contrived to get himself substituted
in, was that of a butler who steals the diamonds----"

"_Well_, WELL?"

"Well, sir, he would have them on his person, in his possession, at his
mercy, for the last two acts, the better part of an hour----"

"_And he ain't back yet!_" screeched Mr. William O. Grimm. He made a
frantic gesture. "Have they got a telephone? Where's your telephone?"

"I have none," said the doctor, feeling as if he were confessing to
arson. "The nearest is the drug-store corner of----"

Mr. Grimm uttered an oath direct and brilliant as a lightning-stroke.
Then he commanded himself with an effort. "Judd!" he bawled, making for
the door, and even in headlong flight, discharged a shaft of melancholy
satire: "No telephone! Say, Doc., it's a good ways to Broadway, ain't
it?" said he, and waved a farewell. "So long! Many thanks! See you
later!" He flashed forth from the house, his retainer at his heels. The
doctor saw their tumultuous passage down the walk, saw them scramble,
clamber, struggle into the waiting hack, saw it hurl upon its way
with vociferations--and silence fell like a blow. There stood Doctor
Vardaman and the policeman staring at each other in the empty porch.

"That fellow can hump, can't he?" said Clancy admiringly. "You just
_gotta_ where he comes from. Tell you, New York's th' place!"




CHAPTER TWENTY


Before "William Tell" was half over it became evident that Teddy's
place was more than filled. There were those among the audience who
assured me later that they had penetrated the disguise early in the
performance; but, if so, they exhibited rare powers of self-control,
for they did not remark upon it at the time, nor indeed until the whole
calamitous story had come out and been town-talk for days. Some queer
_esprit de corps_ kept the girls from spreading the miserable truth
about Teddy. Sick! We knew only too well what was the matter with him;
but that was no reason why we should proclaim it to the world. We
entered into the conspiracy of silence, partly from a real generosity
of spirit and desire to shield the poor fellow, and partly because,
as Mazie sagaciously pointed out, talking about it would certainly
discredit a girl (in a manner of speaking) with the other men. Mazie
undoubtedly possessed some of the qualities of a born leader, among
them that of getting herself listened to, without being either
disagreeable or ridiculous; no one of us, not even Kitty, would have
questioned her knowledge of men and their ways. We knew a dozen who
were prettier, better bred, cleverer, and kinder than Mazie Pallinder,
but, when it came to influence, they were nowhere beside her. Even
now, I believe if she came into my life again, with her sallow,
paint-touched face, her slip-shod pronunciation, her odd flat black
eyes, her ineffably appropriate and beautiful clothes--I say, even now,
I should probably follow and imitate her as I did then!

But when the curtain went up on "Mrs. Tankerville's Tiara," and the
moment arrived when Huddesley must appear as Teddy with no disguise
save that of a livery and false whiskers, we trembled for the success
of the deception. We might have spared our worry; Huddesley came on
in the ballroom scene with which the play opened, handing a tray of
ices--and he was so like Teddy in face and movements that even upon the
stage where the devices of his make-up could be studied close at hand,
the effect was startling. _Plus roi que le roi_, he was; he passed his
tray not like a butler imitating a gentleman, but like a gentleman
imitating a butler; he dropped his _h's_ and stumblingly forgot to
drop them with all Teddy's humorous self-consciousness. He managed his
double part so well, no light task even for a finished actor, that
he achieved a kind of equality with us; we forgot that he was Doctor
Vardaman's servant. The thing was so much a matter for gratulations
that I think we scarcely remembered it was also a matter for wonder. If
J. B. or the other men felt any uneasiness they did not reveal it; but,
so ingenuously self-centred is youth, it is probable we were much too
deeply interested, everyone in his own appearance and the impression he
was making, to be genuinely concerned about anybody else.

The audience about whom I had had such fearsome fancies must have
been singularly lenient, even more so than such audiences usually are
to such performers. My recollection is that, excepting Huddesley, we
were too bad even to be funny. "Mrs. Tankerville" is a good stirring
comedy-drama, of the type Boucicault and Tom Taylor made so popular
during the quarter-century succeeding 1850; there is an abundance of
vivid dialogue, with plenty of "points," and plenty of "situations."
But what it all became in our hands is a dire memory. Mazie, it is
true, made a splendid figure on the stage, and was quite dashing and
theatrical, but she forgot two-thirds of her lines, and in the great
scene where she accused Muriel of the robbery, had to be prompted at
every other word. And Muriel--well, there was no blinking the fact,
Muriel was a "stick." She was so big and gentle and honest-looking
that no sane person in stage-land or out of it, could have suspected
her for a moment of anything more criminal, say, than hopping into
bed to say her prayers because her feet were cold! The excitement
flushed her so that it was visible through her paint, and she did not
look so statuesquely calm and finished as usual; nervousness, which
is unbecoming to everybody, set particularly ill on a person of her
weight and inches. She knew every word of her part, and recited it with
the conscientiousness which she would have shown to the Catechism--and
with much the same expression! She replied to Mazie's halting tirades
in the tone and with the air of someone declining a cup of afternoon
tea. "Will you drive me into the street?" she remarked amiably, and her
manner suggested: "Well, all right, just wait till I get my hat on!"
Kitty mimicked her in the bedroom, until the rest of us were feeble
with laughter. Owing to Colonel Pallinder's forethought, the machinery
of the curtain and footlights worked perfectly, and the stage-settings
were orderly and accurate; but aside from these, every accident known
to the production of amateur theatricals befell us. At one juncture,
when there should have been a "loud crash" behind the scenes, none
occurred, no one in particular having been entrusted with that feature
of the performance; and, in the midst of a dead silence, Jimmie
Hathaway found himself obliged to exclaim, "Good Heavens! What is all
that infernal din about?" To make matters worse, some over-zealous
person immediately thereon made a "loud crash," and Jimmie, lacking the
presence of mind to repeat his former remark, went on with the next
speech: "Everything is quiet as the grave, now. What could it have
been?" The general verdict was that J. B. did very well, even in the
love-scenes where we had thought he would make a failure of it; but
J. B. was deservedly popular anyway. He triumphed by sheer force of
personality. The young fellow was so kind and hearty and good-looking
he could not but be pleasing. Whatever applause "Mrs. Tankerville"
brought forth (and that of a sadly feeble and perfunctory nature, I
fear) went to him, and none of us grudged it.

The play has three acts, and our much-enduring audience had sat through
two of them, when Huddesley waylaid Mazie behind the scenes as she
was rushing back for one of her numerous changes of costume. These
afforded a species of entertainment that was "not in the bill," as some
humourist observed; "Mrs. Tankerville's" clothes were one of the few
points of real interest about the performance.

"Miss Pallinder?" said Huddesley, timidly halting in her way.

"Yes, what is it?"

"Here's the di'monds," said Huddesley, presenting the box, done up for
the sake of stage-effect in a rather large and lumbering parcel. "I've
been carrying 'em around like you told me to, so they'd be safe. I
didn't want to give 'em to hanybody but you, and I've got to go now.
You know I don't have to show again, except where Mr. Taylor comes in
and sees me in the mirror, and plugs me over with the pistol-shot, and
then they drag me out from behind the screen. And I thought anybody
could put on the clothes for that, as long as the audience don't see
anything but just a body----"

"Yes, but what's the matter? Why can't you finish?" asked Mazie, a
little startled. She took the box mechanically, and edged toward her
room.

"If you please, ma'am, I ain't feelin' very well. I think maybe it's
the wet cold night. It's just come over me--I've got a kind of bad turn
on the stomach and----"

"Oh, I'm so sorry," interrupted Mazie, fearful from his manner that
Huddesley was about to enter on some embarrassing details. "Better go
down and ask my father for some whisky--he's in the dining-room--tell
him I sent you. But what shall we do--oh, Mr. Carson?"

The enslaved Chorus, who figured in a small part in "Mrs. Tankerville,"
approached; he was always hanging around whenever Mazie went on or
left the stage, in hopes of a word. But the girl now saw him, to her
surprise, in overcoat and hat.

"You're not going?" she asked, with a pang of regret; she wished,
momentarily, that she had been "nicer" to him. Whether a woman cares
for a man or not, she never sees him leave her without dismay. "You're
not going?" said Mazie, directing a troubled and wistful smile upon him.

"Can't help it, Miss Pallinder," said Bob, warming to the very marrow
at her glance. "I--I hate to awfully. But it's getting late, you know,
and I've got to meet my sister; her train will be in about midnight."

"Oh, it's not that yet."

"Pretty near."

"But, Mr. Carson, I don't know what we--I don't know what I shall do
without you. I haven't anybody to go to but you. Such a pity about Mr.
Johns, isn't it--his being taken sick, I mean--it's upset everything
dreadfully. Here's Huddesley----"

Huddesley explained volubly--"And if you, or somebody of the young
gentlemen could just put on the clothes, Mr. Robert, the audience will
never know the difference; they don't see anything but the body when
they drag me out after Mr. Taylor's shot me. I've got a bad turn on my
stomach and----"

"All right," said Bob hastily. "Is that package the diamonds? They have
to find 'em on you, don't they? Here, I'll do it--I guess I can make
the train anyhow. Come along and get the costume off, Huddesley, you
want to hurry."

Mazie stopped him, with a hand on his arm. "Oh, Mr. Carson, we--I ought
to give Huddesley something, oughtn't I? For coming this evening? It
was very accommodating, you know, he isn't like a darky servant. What
ought I to give him? Five dollars? Ten dollars?" she whispered, with a
manner of special confidence that was like a caress to the young man.

"Never mind, Ma--Miss Pallinder," he said, absurdly tremulous and
excited. "I'll see about it--don't worry--it's like you to think of
it--you're so--that is----" words forsook him. "I'll fix Huddesley, you
know," he faltered, chafing privately at the limitations of etiquette
and the English language. Mazie rewarded him with a long look, and
walked off.

By this time, in the crowded area behind the scenes, what with gas-jets
burning full head on, the smell of cookery coming up the back stairs,
sawdust, recent paint, cut flowers, innumerable other odours perfectly
impossible to classify, the air had grown well-nigh unbearable.
Everybody was overheated and out of temper; the play dragged on
stupidly. I went down to the second landing for a breath of fresh air,
and was standing there by the open window, in, I suppose, the only
quiet and cool spot in the whole house, when someone came with a rush
down the stairs. It was Huddesley. I remember being struck, as I turned
and saw him, with the sharp rigidity of his features; devoid of paint
and false beard, they resembled a parchment mask. There was an animal
swiftness in his movements, yet he stopped short as we faced, taking
the last three steps with an air of leisure, and a certain reckless
and impudent triumph in his glance. He had something in his hand, and
I recall the jaunty motion with which he tossed and caught it--it was
a gold coin--and thrust it deep in his pocket; Bob's money, no doubt,
but I knew nothing of that, and seeing the man pause, looked at him
inquiringly "Why, if there ain't little tootsie that I made a face at!"
he said. "Sorry I scared you, toots! Bye-bye!" And while I yet stood in
a helpless stupor of surprise, passed an arm around my bare shoulders,
twitched my chin into his hand, and--he was gone with a laugh, out of
the house, and out of our lives! I may fairly say that of all that
company I was the last to have any dealings with Huddesley; and I took
care, as may be imagined, that no one else should know the picturesque
circumstances of his departure. Fortunately my testimony was not
necessary, was not even asked. He went, and the night received him into
its dark world of wet and wind and tossing branches. No exit could have
been more appropriate, more typical.

A moment later the thunderous rumble of chairs and outburst of voices
overhead announced that "Mrs. Tankerville's Tiara" had at last run
its disastrous course. It was very late; "William Tell" had not begun
until nearly ten o'clock, and the encores had taken up a good deal of
time. The second play had not been prolonged by undue enthusiasm from
the audience, at any rate; yet I doubt if they were as weary of it as
we. It hung on in spite of us; the speeches that we had heard till
flesh and spirit fairly recoiled from the sound of them (and yet no one
knew his own!) simply would _not_ get themselves said. We had reached
the mood when we hated the smooth and conscientious politeness of our
hearers.

"Up at the 'Peoples' they'd guy this thing off the stage," one young
man said to another. "And serves us right, too!"

"I wish to goodness we'd stopped with 'Tell,' the audience wouldn't
have been so tired----"

"Audience! It's a congregation!" said Kitty Oldham savagely. "And I'm
glad the obsequies are over. 'Mrs. Tankerville' is dead and buried--for
mercy's sake, don't anyone mention her name to me again!"

"You did awfully well, Miss Kitty--you reminded me of Lotta."

"Of course," said Kitty with neat sarcasm. "Now go and tell Muriel she
reminded you of Bernhardt!"

"She looked more like Mrs. Langtry, didn't she?" said her companion
diplomatically. "But Miss Pallinder now did have a kind of likeness to
Bernhardt, she's so tall and thin. I thought she was stunning in that
red dress and the diamonds--why didn't she put them on again? Right at
the end there, where they find them, I mean?"

"I don't know, unless she wanted to shorten up the last scene, and get
through. She said she was going to give them back to her mother as soon
as it was over."

"Mrs. Pallinder's not wearing them, though. What became of Huddesley
toward the last there?"

"Mazie said he had to go, the doctor had sent for him or something, I
didn't catch what it was. That was Bob in his clothes, you know."

"Say, Teddy's had a lot of substitutes this evening, hasn't he? Do you
suppose anyone suspects?"

"Nobody's said anything to me anyhow."

"Hello, here's Capoul!"[6]

"Oh, Capoul--Rats!" said Bob, reddening with vexation. He had a
secret conviction that a tenor voice lacked manliness, and mistook
the felicitations of his friends for artfully disguised raillery.
"People will be poking that 'La-_hee_-ho' business at me from now till
doomsday, I suppose."

"We were just wondering if anyone knew about Ted."

"Guess not; I haven't heard anybody say a word about it."

"Look here, how do you happen to be here yet, my son? I thought you
said you had to go and meet Susie."

"Well, I do, but not right away. I got one of the cab-drivers
outside--there's about fifty of 'em, you never saw such a jam in
your life--to go down to the drug-store and telephone, and they say
the train from New York won't be in till two o'clock or after. Tell
you, the telephone's an institution, isn't it? It's like Jules Verne
coming true; they say they'll have 'em all over in private houses and
everywhere before long. Have you seen Miss Pallinder? I've got this
next waltz--oh, there she is with her mother."

He drifted off, and Kitty gave her partner a meaning look. "Bob means
business, I guess," said the latter, returning it.

His hostess welcomed the young man with a wan vivacity. "How do you
do, Mr. Carson? This is the first chance I've had to congratulate you.
Everybody did _so_ well. You were especially good at the last."

Undoubtedly Mrs. Pallinder was not her usual suave and confident self
that night; her attention wandered. She had forgot what part Bob took,
and there was no graciousness in her fixed smile; it might have been
painted on her face like some of her other adornments.

"The last was the best part of the whole performance, I guess, for the
audience," said Bob, grinning. "That was me they dragged in from behind
the screen, you know. It's not everybody that can make believe to be
dead as artistically as I can. I'm the second-assistant-deputy-Ted
Johns. Miss Pallinder told you about Huddesley, didn't she? She said
you knew."

"Yes--very unfortunate, wasn't it?" said Mrs. Pallinder, smiling
mechanically. "I mean fortunate, of course--that he could take Mr.
Johns' part, that is. Did you--have you got my necklace, Mr. Carson?"

"Me? Why, no," said Bob, in surprise. "They were supposed to find the
jewels on _Jenks'_ body, you know, in a bundle, and Miss Pallinder took
them. Don't you remember where she says: 'Oh, my tiara! That poor
child! What has become of her?'"

Mrs. Pallinder ought to have remembered it, for Mazie had begun with:
"'Oh, my child! That poor tiara, what has become of it?'" so that a
number of the audience and nearly all the actors had been extinguished
in giggles. But she only said vaguely, "Oh, ah, yes, I believe there
was something of the kind said. Mazie, honey, I've just been asking Mr.
Carson what he had done with the tiara, the necklace, I mean--I reckon
he thinks _I_ think he's stolen it!"

"Oh, I didn't even undo the parcel," said Mazie languidly. "I just
pretended to on the stage. I couldn't worry around with the thing.
That play's too long anyhow; I cut it short right at the end there on
purpose. We had the necklace all twisted up on wires, you know. I just
pitched it into the bureau-drawer and locked it up. It's safe."

"I'm afraid you're tired," said Bob, as Mrs. Pallinder, with a return
of her accustomed tact, moved unobtrusively away. "I'm afraid you're
worn out," repeated the young fellow tenderly. "You had the hardest
part of anybody."

FOOTNOTE:

[6] Happening to mention Capoul the other day, I discovered that none
of my hearers remembered that dashing _Faust_, _Count Almaviva_,
_Romeo_ of twenty-five years ago. "And who was Capoul?" their blank
looks seemed to ask. _Sic transit gloria!_--M. S. W.




CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE


It was over at last--the party was over; like everything else in life,
things had turned out neither quite so good nor quite so bad as we had
expected. "Mrs. Tankerville" was a failure--but then "William Tell"
had been a success, so the score was even. The curtain had gone down
on both of them, and was about to descend upon another little drama,
if we had known it. Everyone said the evening was a great success, one
more feather in the Pallinder crown; downstairs, under the colonel's
benevolent supervision, limitless champagne flowed; the supper was a
triumph; the german one of the prettiest ever danced. Muriel led with
J. B., and some of the older people stayed to see it, and talked for
days afterwards about the favours Mazie had brought from New York;
the figure where the men got little silver pencil-cases and the girls
painted gauze fans; and that other figure where they all looked so
pretty with Japanese parasols and paper lanterns; and the figure where
they had the Easter eggs--that was charming! But it was all over at
last; blank dreariness and silence settled upon the ballroom, the
last carriage rumbled away, the musicians sacked and boxed up their
instruments and disappeared, featureless and unremarked, along with
the caterers' men rattling their dishes, and banging amongst their
folding chairs--"into the dark went one and all." They left behind
a tired and not too good-tempered mob of young people; on the stage
and behind it everything was in a frenzied disorder; and when in the
pinched and colourless small hours, we went yawning to our beds, those
useful articles of furniture were hardly to be found cumbered as they
were with wreckage. There were hats, dresses, damp towels, artificial
flowers and withering natural ones, slippers and odd stockings, soiled
and tumbled veils, handkerchiefs, gloves, fans, the gilt and tinsel
scraps of favours--it was a wilderness where the most amazing things
turned up in the most amazing places. Somebody found a comb in a box
of candy; a pair of corsets wrapped carefully together with some fine
damask table-napkins, and sticking upright in a water-pitcher (an
empty one by good luck); and old Mrs. Botlisch's teeth (the lower set)
jammed firmly between the strings of a guitar that had been used in
"Tell"--these were some of the discoveries. We were too tired to be
amiable, and there were some sharp wrangles over lost nightdresses, and
the ownership of tooth-brushes in the girls' quarters before we settled
down for what was left of the night--the morning, rather. We were
two in a bed, one on the lounge, and always three or four in a room
according to the Pallinders' happy-go-lucky style of hospitality. The
men, very likely, retired with even less formality; they had some big
rooms in an ell running out from the main building at the back given
over to their use.

It seemed as if I had no more than closed my eyes (and, as I afterwards
found, it had actually only been about ten minutes since the last door
locked and the last gas-jet was turned off) when the consciousness of
disturbance somewhere about the house roused me. Someone was shouting
out of a window, and being answered from below. The sash slammed; and
presently there was the sound of stockinged feet padding downstairs.
Kitty waked up, and crossly suggested that one of the guests had
forgot something, and come back for it. "Of all things at this time of
night!" she snapped. "Might have waited till daylight, seems to me.
Some people have no sense!"

The bolts of the front door rattled, the hall-gas flashed up, sending a
dim shaft of light through our transom; and a rumble of voices arose.
Then the feet padded back, and there was some stir in Mrs. Pallinder's
room.

"Oh, bother! Whatever it is, they'll never find it to-night in this
mess," said Kitty vigorously. She sat up in bed. "Why don't they tell
'em to go home, and let us have a little peace and quiet?"

That simple expedient, however, did not seem to occur to anyone else.
One of the girls awake in the next room called in that somebody must
have lost some money or jewelry--"they couldn't be coming back for
anything else." Again the feet padded down. The rumbling talk increased
in volume. We distinctly heard Colonel Pallinder's voice, raised
in explanation or argument, it was impossible to guess which; Mrs.
Pallinder or someone in skirts went rustling along the hall. Apparently
she paused to lean over the banister and listen a while. Lights began
to start up elsewhere in the house; there was some movement among the
men in their reservation; and old Mrs. Botlisch challenged raucously
from her room at the end of the passage to know what was the matter.
No one answered her, and after a moment there came a tap at our door.
I got out of bed and opened it, full of uneasy wonder. There stood
Mrs. Pallinder in a flowered blue silk tea-gown flung on anyway over
her nightdress, and flowing about her in a huddle of lace and ribbons;
she clutched it together at the throat; thin wisps of straw-coloured
hair hung around her face. There was something indefinably alarming in
the very haste and carelessness of her appearance, she who was always
powdered and corseted to a fashion-plate correctness. She looked the
scared ghost of her everyday self, immeasurably older, and a surprising
likeness to Mrs. Botlisch came out on her harassed features.

"So sorry to disturb you, my dear," she said, with a tortured smile.
"But can you wake Mazie--I want to speak to her."

"Nobody's sick, is there?" I asked, startled.

"Is it a telegram? It's not bad news for anyone, is it?" Kitty cried
out apprehensively from the bed.

"No, no, it's nothing--really nothing at all," repeated Mrs.
Pallinder--and this was so palpably false that even I could see through
it. "Tell Mazie to come here, please, I want to speak to her."

"I'm coming," said Mazie drowsily, beginning to fumble in the dark for
her slippers. And somebody, Muriel, I think, scrambled out of bed and
lit the gas.

"You mustn't get up, don't any of you get up," said Mrs. Pallinder
excitedly. "I tell you it's only Mazie I want to speak to. All of you
go back to bed and go to sleep. Shut your doors and go to bed!" Her
usually soft voice broke shrilly; she laid a hot trembling hand on my
shoulder and pushed me back within the room. By this time, however,
everybody was broad awake, staring, listening, and wondering. And Mrs.
Botlisch began again:

"What's the matter? Is it fire? Mirandy, where are you? Is the house
took fire?"

"No, it ain't, ma. Shut up, will you?" said Mrs. Pallinder roughly.
Astonishment struck us all dumb; never before had we heard her speak
so to the old woman. Mazie, looking very long and limp in her white
gown with strands of black hair sailing down her back, came to the
door, and her mother dragged her outside, slamming it on us sharply.
More low-voiced confusion ensued. Mazie gave a high exclamation, and
Mrs. Pallinder hushed her violently. All the girls congregated in the
room, in wild array of curl-papers and "Mother Hubbards." In the hall
one of the men could be heard asking what was the matter, and excuse
him, but could he be of any use?

"What on earth do you suppose has happened?" said Kitty, no longer
out of temper, but on edge with curiosity; before anyone could offer
a guess, Mazie came back. She did not look at any of us; she did not
speak; she walked straight to the bureau in her room, took a package
from its top drawer, and walked straight out again. For so simple an
act it was the strangest bit of pantomime that can be imagined; so
quick and purposeful were her movements in contrast to her ordinary
languor, that no one had a chance to ask questions, even if we had
dared; but I believe we were all a little frightened by the unexplained
change in her bearing and her mother's. There was a controlled menace
about the girl; she dominated us to the last; and when she went out,
closing the door not fiercely as her mother had done, but with a
resolute gentleness, we should not have been surprised to hear the key
turn in the lock. The scene was not without its ludicrous aspects;
there we were eight or ten night-gowned girls, shivering in the
draughts, perched here and there amid the rich, fantastic disorder of
that room, while mystery whispered in the hall outside. We did not
talk; we were all openly listening, and such was the tension that when
Muriel said suddenly: "There's a carriage coming!" everyone in the
room started violently. A girl by the window put the blind aside and
peeped out cautiously. "Why, there's one here already!" she said, and
then: "There're two men in the other; they're just getting out----"

Upon the words, a strange voice, a man's voice, cried out in the hall
below, with mingled anger and surprise, "Damnation!" it shouted, "What
d'ye mean by _this_?" Mrs. Pallinder screamed harshly like a strangling
animal, and with a truly melodramatic fitness, the door bell began
furiously to ring!

That was too much for us. I don't know who was first in the hall; it
seemed as if we were all there at once. The immediate person I saw was
Mazie standing against the opposite wall. She had snatched up some kind
of shawl or blanket and wrapped it around her over her nightgown; her
face was white, but she was laughing in a hysterical way. At the head
of the stair Mrs. Pallinder clung to the newel. From the hall there
arose a clamour of excited voices, punctuated by peal after peal on the
bell like the knocking at the castle-gate in the awful scene of the
murder from "Macbeth." The door of Mrs. Botlisch's room was open, and
there was the old woman sitting up in bed, a tremendous figure in her
red flannel nightdress, roaring out questions to which no one paid any
attention.

"Oh, do go back, girls, do go back, here 're the men!" said Mazie,
still giggling feebly.

"Men!" cried her grandmother, catching the word. "Time enough! I'd like
to see someone with some sense. Where's that Taylor feller?"

"Taylor--what Taylor?" said I, bewildered. I thought, for an instant,
the old woman had suddenly gone crazy, and wanted to be measured for a
pair of breeches. Anything seemed possible in the hurly-burly.

"Here I am," said J. B., presenting himself in trousers and a
night-shirt, one red sock and one polka-dotted blue one, and his
suspenders trailing in the rear. "He went the kilt one better, didn't
he?" said Kitty, recalling his appearance later, and she wondered what
Muriel thought. But if the men were a weird crew, what were we?

"Here I am," said J. B. "What's the matter? Can I do anything?" He
afterwards said that everything under the sun that could have happened
went through his mind, from fire and murder to the reappearance of
Arthur Gwynne's ghost--everything that could have happened, except the
inconceivable thing that _had_ happened!

Mazie ran to the banisters. "Do somebody open the door! Can't you hear
the bell?" she screamed.

"Find out who it is first! Find out who it is--don't let them in
without finding out!" Mrs. Pallinder called out desperately.

"You Taylor, for the Lord's sake, see what it's all about!" cried Mrs.
Botlisch. "Mirandy, gimme my teeth----"

A fresh outbreak of voices downstairs announced that the door had
finally been opened. Mazie came running back as Colonel Pallinder
limped up the stairs. "There! _Huddesley!_" she exclaimed and burst
into shrill laughter. "They're asking for him. The minute that
man opened the package I thought about Huddesley. Never mind, ma,
they can't come on _us_ for anything. Huddesley's got the laugh on
everybody!"

Mrs. Pallinder all at once broke into sharp crying. "I can't stand
it, I can't stand it any longer!" she screamed out, and beat her hands
together. "I can't stand this life, I tell you, I can't stand it!"

"All right, honey, you shan't have to," said the colonel, trying to
soothe her. "I'll take care you shan't."

She pulled away from him furiously. "Oh, _you_!" she said with fierce
scorn. "Oh, _you_!" And then in some strange and violent revulsion:
"No, no, I didn't mean that, Willie, I didn't mean that, my dear!" and
began to cry wildly in his arms. It was horrible.

I relate these circumstances as faithfully as I remember them; but it
is difficult to give any idea of the mirthless farce, the grotesque
tragedy of that night. It was at this moment, I believe, as we were all
standing in a miserable embarrassment, and irresolution and (speaking
for the girls, at least) something not unlike fright, that one of the
strange men whom we had heard, came up the steps. He paused as his head
rose above the landing, and he caught sight of us. Well he might! We
must have been a fearsome picture.

"Sorry to intrude, ladies and gents," said he, hastily dropping back a
little, and removing his hat. "But I gotta hump----"

J. B. came to the head of the flight, and, as it were, took command of
the situation. He was no great figure of a hero with his suspenders
slapping at his heels; but for all that he looked a manly and masterful
young fellow, and I think we were all both grateful and relieved at his
assumption of responsibility. No one else seemed equal to the needs of
the hour.

"Look here," said J. B. quite pleasantly and firmly. "You can't come up
here. These ladies must not be disturbed any more, do you understand?
Now who are you and what do you want?"

"That's business," said the other frankly. "I'm a detective. My name's
Grimm. I've got another plain-clothes man from your police headquarters
downstairs, if you don't believe me, ask him----"

"Mr. Taylor--isn't that Mr. Taylor?" said someone from below. "Don't
you remember me--Judd--don't you remember me at the bank?"

"That's all right," said J. B. "I remember you. Go ahead, Mr. Grimm,
what do you want?"

"Well, say," said another voice a little farther down, "young fellow,
if you're bossing this, my name's Hopple, and I----"

"One at a time," said J. B. forcibly. "Go on, Mr. Grimm."

"Right you are, sir," said Grimm fervently. "I thought I'd struck an
asylum full of lunys at first, but I guess it ain't so after all. I'm
looking for a man named Huddesley--that is, he called himself Huddesley
here--that's wanted for several crooked jobs all over the country.
I've been after him for six months. It's a dead cinch Huddesley's the
man--Judd here's had an eye on him for six weeks----"

"That's what!" said Judd, with emphasis.

"----he was in the house to-night. Is he here now, do you know?"

"Huddesley has been here," said J. B., commanding his surprise. He
turned his face towards us, and hushed us with a gesture. "Huddesley
has been here, but he left the house some time ago, I don't quite know
when. Miss Pallinder, do you remember when he went?"

He had to repeat the question twice before Mazie could get herself
together enough to answer it. "When he went?" she said vaguely. "When
he went?" Someone else said it was before midnight; at last Mazie
exclaimed that it was three hours, oh, yes, she was sure it must be
quite three hours since he had gone.

"He said he was sick and was going home--that is to Doctor Vardaman's,
where he is employed," said J. B. "If you will go there, you may find
him, the house is----"

"Find him the hell!" interrupted Mr. Grimm with dismay in his face.
"When he's had three hours' start!" He made a gesture of finality.
"It's all off!" said he. "Why, I've been to Doctor Vardaman's, mister,
how'd you s'pose I happened to come here?"

"Somebody's tipped it off," said Judd, below stairs.

"That's what you get for peddlin' collar-buttons, sonny," said Grimm.
"He was onto you from the word Go!"

"If he's not at the doctor's, I suppose he got wind of you somehow, and
skipped out," said J. B., overriding these cryptic remarks, and anxious
to end the business. "Anyhow that's none of our affair. Is that all you
wanted to know, Mr. Grimm? For we're all tired and we'd like to go to
bed."

"Here, wait a minute--" said Hopple, vigorously, and the detective,
sweeping us with a comprehensive glance, spoke at the same moment:
"Hold on, young man, no affair of yours, hey? Well, I ain't so sure
about that. The old gent said he would likely have the handling of
some valuables, a necklace or something. Will you kindly ask all those
ladies if they'll take account o' stock and see if they're missing
anything?"

The unseen Mr. Hopple uttered a strong exclamation. Every girl made a
movement toward her bedroom, or nervously grabbed at some part of her
person as her own particular treasures occurred to her. Every girl but
Mazie, that is; and her next words, pronounced with entire calm, by the
way, were comparable in effect to the explosion of a bomb amongst this
singular company.

"Oh, mercy-me!" she said. "How slow you all are! Can't you _see_? Why,
I saw it right off! I believe he's got the necklace!"

There was an instant of appalled silence. Then:

"Told you so! Always said he was a rascal!" cried Mrs. Botlisch
triumphantly.

"Huddesley got the necklace?" said J. B. aghast. "Why, how could he? He
gave it back to you. Bob Carson had it, didn't he?" Everybody spoke at
once. The detective whistled, swore softly, then he stooped to mutter
with Judd. "That's what!" said the latter vehemently. Two or three of
the coloured servants had collected on the third-floor landing above
us, and hung over the banisters, giggling and nudging. In the darkness
their faces were nothing but shining teeth and eyeballs, reminding me,
oddly enough, of a picture in "Alice in Wonderland," of the Cheshire
Cat's grin materialising; Gwynne and I had had the book when we were
little. I cannot think why I should have thought of it then, of all
times; or, indeed, why the incongruous memory abides with me now. Mazie
was speaking in a high, strained voice. "I never opened the package,"
she was saying. "Why, you know I didn't. I just took it from him and
I never opened it. After 'Mrs. Tankerville' I locked the thing up and
never thought of it again. I wouldn't have dreamed of suspecting
Huddesley; why, he's been in and out of the house all day long for
_weeks_, hasn't he, ma? Hasn't he, girls?" There was a kind of defiance
in her voluble explanation. "Tell that Hopple man, will you?" she urged
the detective, forgetting that "that Hopple man" was almost within
arms' reach of her. "He'd better go after Huddesley if he wants his
necklace--_we_ haven't got it. Huddesley must have banked on my not
opening the package; but anyhow, he was out of the house and gone long
before I had a chance to----"

"Who's Bob Carson, and who's Mrs. Tankerville, and what package are you
talking about?" Grimm inquired succinctly.

"Well, this is the package, I guess," said Hopple's voice, and
two hands reaching up delivered to Mr. Grimm a crumpled piece of
wrapping-paper, and about a ladleful of carpet tacks.

"There's your diamond necklace," continued the voice in hoarse satire.
"Leastways there's what was given me for a diamond necklace. I don't
know Huddesley from Adam's off ox, but it's a pretty slick sort o'
story, seems to me."

What Mr. Hopple looked like, I cannot say, for none of us saw the
gentleman. He made a movement to ascend the stairs, but J. B. looming
very large and square on the top step intercepted him.

"Are you another detective, sir?" asked J. B. in his mild and steady
voice.

"No, I ain't," returned Mr. Hopple, sulkily, yet not uncivilly this
time.

"Then," said J. B. with increasing mildness, "perhaps you will be good
enough to explain what you are doing here?"

"I'm collecting a bill for Goldstein Brothers--that's my business,
collecting. I know it's a little bit late at night, but I can't help
that. I've got to hump myself; I thought I might find somebody up on
account of the blow-out----"

"It's an outrage, sir, an outrage which no Southern gentleman----" said
Colonel Pallinder, turning from his wife. "I repeat, sir, no Southern
gentleman----"

"If we had the money, don't you suppose we'd pay your old bill?" cried
Mrs. Pallinder, in a kind of hysterical screech. Her face was red
and swollen with crying; her fair hair hung in strings. She ran to
the banisters and shook her slim fist at the man, a tousled virago,
unrecognisable in her rage. "Why don't you believe us? As if anybody
_wanted_ to owe you--as if anybody _liked_ to owe you! It's too
silly--you act perfectly crazy! We'd have given you the necklace if
we'd had it, but we haven't _got_ it--Huddesley's stolen it. What are
you staying around here for? We haven't got the money and we haven't
got the necklace, I tell you! Why don't you go away? You haven't any
right here--you're a cheat, trying to collect for that necklace when we
haven't got it. Make him go away, Willie!"

"That's right, Mirandy, you talk to him like a Dutch uncle!" said old
Mrs. Botlisch with keen enjoyment.

"I don't care--I'm glad Huddesley _has_ got it!" said Mazie fiercely.

"Owing to circumstances--a temporary shortage of funds, sir," said
Colonel Pallinder, addressing J. B., blandly, "I have been unable
to satisfy this fellow's monstrous, his preposterous demand. But
if--Mr.--ah--Mr. Hopple will come around to my office to-morrow at
half-past eleven _sharp_, I----"

Mr. Hopple's voice invited him to teach his grandmother to suck eggs.
"This here bill's been owing three years, and I'm going to collect it,
don't you worry--I'll be at the office. I'm going to collect if I've
got to hang around this town till the cows come home!"

"You can't get blood out of a turnip," said Mr. Grimm philosophically.
J. B. interrupted this lively exchange of metaphor.

"Mr. Grimm," said he, "it's pretty plain, I think, that the criminal
you want, this Huddesley, has got away with the diamond necklace. Why
we never suspected him seems strange enough now; I can think of a dozen
things that should have put us on our guard, but the fact remains we
never did. If you'll just step downstairs, and wait until I can get
some clothes on, I'll tell you all that we know about him. Mr. Hopple,
you can see for yourself that there's nothing to be done here now.
Your business can very well hold over until to-morrow--until daylight,
that is--it's none of my business, of course"--he interrupted himself,
glancing inquiringly at Colonel Pallinder, and as that gentleman
remained silent, went on--"but I think it's about time you went to your
hotel, and let these people go to bed----"

"Huh! I don't take my orders from you, young fellow!"

"Oh, don't be a fool, Hopple," said the detective impatiently. "He's
right. Go along; you can't do anything here."

J. B. descended a step. "You don't have to take my orders, Mr. Hopple,"
said he gently. "But I should think you'd rather take an order than a
kick."

"Noble boy!" ejaculated Colonel Pallinder, much affected. "There
spoke a son of old Kentucky!" The collector retreated with sundry
mutterings. J. B. came back, dusting his hands lightly together.

"Sir," said Colonel Pallinder, holding his wife with one arm, and
stretching out the other in a fine gesture. "Your hand! A Southern
gentleman, sir----"

"Oh--er--that's all right," said J. B., embarrassed. He turned a kind
troubled glance upon us. "I wish all you girls and everybody would go
to bed. It's--it's all right, you know. I'm going to see those fellows,
and they'll go away presently."

"You're A Number One, that's what you are, Taylor," said old Mrs.
Botlisch, in high approval. "You got more gumption in your little
finger than all the rest of 'em in their whole bodies, d----d if you
ain't!"

Mrs. Pallinder dried her eyes, and began to arrange her dishevelled
dress with fluttering hands. "You mustn't mind ma, girls," she said,
resuming her smile. "She's really awfully eccentric."




CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO


Next day the crash came. The papers revelled in it; the Pallinders'
affairs occupied the place of honour (or at least of supreme notoriety)
in the first column of the first page; the Pallinders' creditors
assembled and filled the air with thunder; Muriel was incontinently
recalled to Washington; excited Gwynnes rushed upon the scene. And
when at last the smoke of conflict lifted, where were the Pallinders?
Nobody knew; nobody cared--except Scheurmann and Goldstein Brothers,
and perhaps a few others. Within a fortnight there was a red flag,
flaunting garishly on the lawn among the budding lilacs and faintly
greening beeches. Templeton had out sandwich-men and yard-long posters
announcing an auction in the house--"everything without reserve to the
highest bidder."

The Armenians reappeared, and various other greasy-looking,
dark-skinned birds of prey flocked through the rooms, rapping on the
mirrors, testing the peacock-blue and old-gold draperies between their
dirty talons. I met Mrs. Maginnis coming out of Doctor Vardaman's yard,
boo-hooing and calling on all the saints to bless him, with a tribe
of little Maginnises at her heels. What had the doctor done? I do not
know. The old gentleman went quite shabby that summer in an old linen
duster we had not seen on him for years; and it is certain he bought no
more first editions for a long while.

And here closes the episode--for episode it truly was, and no story,
as must have been discovered by this time. A story, properly conceived
and executed, must have a beginning and an end, and this lacks both;
it even lacks a hero and heroine. Fiction would have demanded, and a
conscientious storyteller would have supplied, a much more picturesque
and appropriate final act. The diamonds should have been restored, and
(let us hope) the bill paid; Muriel should have married J. B.; Bob
should have married Mazie; the curtain should have gone down on the
lovers embracing and everyone else shaking hands. I have not been a
novel-reader all these years for nothing, and nobody need remind me how
a romance should end; if this narrative finishes in open defiance of
all the proprieties, I can only offer the mean apology that it is all,
or nearly all, true. _Pars minima fui!_ Some of it I saw, some heard,
some merely guessed, and alas, none of the beautiful things mentioned
above came to pass! Looking back on it now, with the compliant wisdom
of forty-odd, I am satisfied it is as well those marriages did not take
place. Muriel would hardly have been a success transplanted; and the
Pallinder connection would inevitably have proved disastrous to poor
Bob.

As for Huddesley, I cannot sincerely say I was ever sorry that that
entertaining and original scoundrel escaped; in other and more gallant
days, he and the Pallinders alike might have figured as a sort of
pirates, differing in degree and methods perhaps, hardly at all in
kind. There is humour in the spectacle of one of them preying on the
other. And, for the soul of me, I cannot be angry with either. _Bon
voyage_, oh ye adventurers! What shores have you not coasted, and what
men essayed in all these twenty-five years! At least I did not suffer
by you, and therefore, with a noble generosity, I wish you well!

I fell in with J. B. the other day, after a long interval; and he had
a good deal to tell me in the pleasant hour we spent of, "Don't you
remember----" and "Whatever has become of----?" J. B. goes up and
down the world, and knows many men and their cities these days; he
is getting a little bald and massive, yet is still a notable figure,
not greatly changed; and, "What do you think?" he said, "I've seen
Huddesley, and he knew me at once! It was the year of the St. Louis
Fair; that's the last time I was West, you know. I went from there to
the town of Joliet, Illinois, where you know the Government runs an
elegant home for ladies and gentlemen whose society and services the
community doesn't need all the time.

"I went out there--voluntarily," he added, with a chuckle. "It was
the Fourth of July and blazing hot, and I had three hours to put in
before my train left. The man I went to see told me I'd find the Pen
'very instructive.' But when I got there, they were giving all these
wretches a holiday, in honour of Uncle Sam's birthday, and I tell you
they were a pretty hard-looking set. The guard was showing me through
a yard, when suddenly one of these jolly, cursing, sky-larking parties
in stripes dropped out of a bunch of them, and, says he, getting in
the way, and staring hard at me: 'Mr. Breckinridge, don't you know
me?' I didn't at all, for a minute, although really, considering his
age, and the kind of life he must have led, he hasn't changed much.
Then: 'Will you 'ave 'ock with your hoysters, sir?' said the scoundrel
with a wink--and it flashed on me who he was! 'Huddesley!' I shouted
out. The attendant was perfectly petrified; he thought I must be some
old pal of Huddesley's--I had to explain before he would let us talk.
Eh? Why, _sure_! As the children say, _sure_! I talked to him, and he
asked after everybody with the greatest interest. He even got quite
autobiographical and confidential after a while; told me he was up for
five years this time (for a little trouble he got into in New Orleans,
he said delicately), but he had served two-thirds of the sentence, and
would be out in six months, his time having been shortened for good
behaviour. 'There's nothin' to it, anyway, Mr. Breckinridge,' says he,
in a serious manner. 'I guess I ought to know, I've tried both ways.
It's me for the simple life after this; my eyes are kind of troubling
me, and I'm getting along in years. I'm goin' to square it after I get
out this time----' He meant he was going to live honestly, you know.
'In all I've spent eighteen years in the stir'--that's slang for the
prison, it seems--'with a sentence here and a sentence there, since
the first time of all in Pentonville, 'long back in '72. That's a
good while out of a man's life that ain't but fifty-five years old.
I'm going to cut it out after this. I begun pretty young and I'm
through now.' He told me he was London-born, Seven Dials, some slum, I
suppose--'That's where Hi got the haccent,' he said, grinning again.
He had a chequered career before we knew him, footman, errand-boy,
sneak-thief, actor, preacher, insurance-agent, confidence-man--it
would be hard to say what he hadn't been. There was an interval when
he was apprentice to a pastry-cook--I think he was honest then, for
about a year, until the till was left open one evening. He said that
was where he learned the trade of cook--'But I was always was one to
pick up things quick, _you_ know that, Mr. Breckinridge,' he said with
a funny swagger. I asked him if he had had an eye on Mrs. Pallinder's
diamonds from the first, or whether he just took the chance when it
came. He gave me an odd look. 'Say, you don't mind asking questions,
do you?' he said. And then, quickly with a half-laugh: 'Oh, well, Mr.
Taylor, you're straight, I know you wouldn't throw me down, and it's
twenty years, anyhow.' He went on to say that he had landed in town
just about the time of the Charity Ball, when the papers were full of
the diamonds--you remember, don't you? The Pallinders were It then.
'I thought I might get the job of butler at the house, and applied,'
he said. 'Nothin' doin'--their help was all coloured. The very next
day Doctor Vardaman's advertisement came out; say, I was right there
with the goods. He was easy, the old gent was. I hadn't spieled my
little spiel five minutes before I saw it was 'M' lud, the carriage
waits,' for mine. And let me tell you, Mr. Taylor, I was wise to
the Pallinder game from the start; I knew Pallinder was due to blow
up any day, and your Uncle James would have to hustle to get those
diamonds, or somebody else would. That's why I went after 'em by the
Romeo-and-Juliet route, 'stead of taking it slow and easy, and getting
to be like a son of the house like I'd planned. Well, you know that
deal fell through owing to Mrs. Pallinder's neuralgia; if you and
the colonel and everybody else had stepped a little livelier, you'd
'a' nipped me. As it was, I just barely had time to get back home;
and then what does the faithful, devoted, all-to-the-square-dealing
Huddesley do but wake up Doctor Vardaman, and lodge an information
against himself----' 'What?' I cried. 'You were the burglar?' To tell
the truth, I hadn't quite been able to follow Huddesley's flights of
metaphor for the last few sentences, until all at once it come over
me what he meant. 'You mean you were the burglar all the time?' I
asked him. He grinned with a queer kind of pride. 'Sure I was. But,
say, didn't I play it smooth? Couldn't I give Hen. Irving cards and
spades, though? Next day I _did_ have a sore throat--I'm subject to
'em--but I wasn't sick like Doctor Vardaman thought. I kept up the
game--stayed in bed and passed up the cops and the high-brows with
the stylographic pens--I couldn't risk seein' 'em, you know. I don't
know how that fellow Judd got on the trail--I guess he had a little
more grey matter than the rest of 'em. Of course they had photos and
descriptions of me all over the country. Anyway, when he turned up,
peddlin' collar-buttons about six weeks later, I was next right off.
I knew I'd better beat it for the tall and waving--but I did hate
like poison to go without those rhinestones--after all the trouble
I'd took, too.' The fellow's persistence and patience were something
astonishing," said J. B., with wonder. "Enough to have insured his
success at any honest undertaking, you'd think. He told me it was very
hard to keep up the role. 'Sometimes I'd forget--about the talk, and
all, you know,' he said. 'And then I'd lay awake at nights in a cold
sweat for fear somebody had noticed it. Yes, sir, I'd been studying
and studying, making myself solid with everybody, and playing the
faithful-and-devoted racket until I was sick of it--and no diamonds in
sight yet! Then "Mrs. Tankerville" came up, and all at once I began
to see a ray o' light. But just as things was going like greased
rollers on a toboggan-slide, hanged if the doctor didn't sour on the
Pallinders! Said he was never going there again. 'Stead of shooting the
chutes, looked like I was due to bump the bumps.'

"'In the end, that was the best thing that could have
happened--because, you know, the old gent invited you all to dinner,
and the minute he did that, I saw the chance. I knew Johns was a good
deal of a lusher, and if I could get him stewed good and plenty,
why, I could turn the trick. If some of the rest of you got a little
how-come-you-so, not batty, you know, just a little googleish, it
wouldn't hurt. But I wasn't taking any chances on Johns; I fixed
him with some kind of rock-a-bye-baby dope out of the doctor's
closet. You remember what happened after that. Say, I enjoyed
it--honest-to-goodness I did; I liked all you boys first-rate. Say,
if I'd been different, if I'd been born and brought up like you, for
instance, I'd have cut a pretty wide swath, now, wouldn't I? It's all
in the start a man gets, ain't it?'"

J. B. paused.

"I dare say Huddesley could imitate me better than I can him," he said.
"But wasn't that last a funny thing for a man like that to say? He was
in earnest, proud of his peculiar talents, and a little regretful. I
didn't know what to say, but I knew better than to sermonise."

"Do you suppose he really did 'square it' after he got out?"

"Not likely, I think. Good resolutions aren't very lasting with that
class. I've no doubt he meant it at the time. He asked about Doctor
Vardaman. I told him, and do you know the fellow's face clouded over
for a second. I believe he really was pained.

"'Well,' he said. 'The doctor was an old man, and of course it wasn't
to be expected he could live very much longer. I might have known. But
it makes me feel bad, Mr. Taylor. I kind of expected to go and see him
when I got out this time, and tell him I was going to finish out on
the square. He was the whitest man I ever knew. I never took the value
of a cent from him, though I had plenty of chances; yes, sir, he was
the real thing, that old gent was.' And, just as I was leaving he said:
'I'd like mighty well to know who that nice little trick was that I
kissed on the back stairs when I was dusting out with the necklace. I
didn't know her name, I guess she didn't ever come to rehearsals when
I was around. Kind of a fat little girl, with brown eyes--she was too
surprised to squeal; it was a fool thing to do, but I felt pretty good,
and she was just my size in girls.' I couldn't place her for him, but I
shouldn't wonder if it was Kitty. It would be like Kitty to keep quiet
about it." I agreed with him that it would be much like Kitty; her eyes
are blue, by the way, but J. B. had forgot that.

His face was a little sober as he answered some of my questions.

"I met the colonel in New York not long ago," he said. "He looks pretty
old and seedy and shifty-eyed these days. He talked just the same; had
a few shares to sell--just a few, you know, they were soaring up in
price and in a week would be unobtainable for love or money, but he
wanted to let me in on the ground floor--in a gold mine down in Eastern
Tennessee.

"Don't laugh; it wasn't funny. He was too anxious to be so fluent and
convincing as he used to be in the old days; he reminded me of a poor,
hungry, eager old dog. I bought some of the shares, for the sake of
auld lang syne--I couldn't help it. And there was something sordidly
pathetic in the air of affluence he put on after he'd gathered the
money up in his trembling old hands. I suppose he hadn't handled so
much in months; yet the sum was not large. He insisted on my going
home to dinner with him; they were in a dingy boarding-house over in
Brooklyn. It gave me a start to see Mrs. Pallinder; I actually thought
for a minute it was the old Botlisch woman, although she died years
ago, the colonel told me. Mrs. Pallinder's got to looking exactly like
her, but she has more manner, you know; she put on a lot of 'side'
for my benefit. The boarding-house people were very much impressed.
I shouldn't wonder if my visit bolstered up the Pallinder credit a
good deal--I'm so solidly respectable. But do you know, I'm sure, that
aside from any motives of self-interest, the Pallinders were honestly
glad to see me; they talked about old times the same as you and I are
doing now--just as if they hadn't left owing everybody and under a
cloud generally! I wouldn't have opened my mouth about the diamond
necklace, and that last night, but Mrs. Pallinder brought it up right
away; she rather flourished it before the other boarders. Huddesley and
her jewels, and what she said, and what So-and-So said--it was rather
diverting to hear her version."

"Mazie wasn't with them, was she?"

"Oh, no, Mazie's married. Married an army-officer, and they're living
in the Philippines. Mrs. Pallinder told me the name, but I've forgotten
it."

"We used to think that Bob Carson----"

"Yes. Bob's never married--he was awfully in earnest. Remember what
a sweet voice he had? They used to get him to sing 'Comfort ye, my
people,' in Trinity the last Sunday in Advent, don't you remember? Poor
old Bob!"

"Rich old Bob, you'd better say! He's made a lot of money. Susie's
children will get it all, most likely. He's very fond of them; he sent
the youngest girl to Europe last year to study music, somebody told me.
Maybe, if Mazie knew, she'd be sorry she wouldn't have him. But it's
better so; they wouldn't have been happy. Do you suppose he ever asked
her, though?"

"Well, a man don't--one isn't likely to know about things like that,"
said J. B. somewhat embarrassed. "But I believe he did--right after the
party, in the midst of the rumpus when the Pallinders were getting it
right and left from everybody."

"And she refused him? I think it was fine of Bob to ask her. Like you
and Muriel, wasn't it?"

"Hey?" said J. B., very much startled. A sudden flush appeared on his
amiable, middle-aged countenance; he goes clean-shaven now, he who was
so gallantly moustached in eighty-three--such are the mutations of
fashion.

"I mean in the play--in 'Mrs. Tankerville,'" I added hastily.

"Oh, the play--oh, yes, I remember." He looked down meditatively,
fingering the stem of his wine-glass as we sat at luncheon. Muriel
would not have refused _him_, had she been asked in good earnest; I
wondered if he knew it--but I think he was at once too gallant and too
simple--honest, kindly J. B.!

"I saw her when I was over this last time," he said. "She's the
Countess of Yedborough now, you know. She's got eight children! The
oldest girl looks something like her, but not so handsome as her mother
was at her age--oh, not to compare. She was the handsomest woman I ever
saw."

"Has she changed much?"

"Well, these big women--she's got awfully fat--fine-looking still,
of course, but she's too fat." Then, catching my eye inadvertently
directed on his own not inconsiderable expanse of light waistcoat, he
grinned good-naturedly. "Guess I'd better be careful how I throw stones
around here," said he. "I'm living in a glass house myself."

"Did Muriel ask after any of us?"

"Oh, yes, wanted to know about everyone--even Ted Johns. I told her
they'd found out that Huddesley put some drug in Ted's wine that night,
so that it wasn't liquor that was the matter with him. I thought I'd
save his reputation that much, if I could. Poor Ted, how he did waste
his life! No man ever had better chances at the beginning, but he was
his own worst enemy."

"You might say that of all of us."

"Yes, I suppose so. But we don't all drink like fish. Kind of sad about
Teddy; he got some appointment in the commissariat when our troops went
to Cuba, and died of the fever at Siboney in '98--you knew that? He
ought never to have risked going to that climate; he couldn't have had
any constitution left by that time."

I assented, and we paid Teddy's memory the tribute of a moment's
silence; yet I dare say we were not thinking so much of him and his
career, as of our own youth and the inevitable years.

"Well, this has been very pleasant, but I must go," he said presently
and rose. "Next time I come West I'm going to bring my wife; I want her
to meet everyone here--the old set, I mean. She's heard me talk about
you so much. I wish we could meet a little oftener, but living so far
apart--you know----"


Well, _fuit Ilium_! _Fuimus Troes!_ J. B. will find both the old set
and the old town changed greatly (for the better, no doubt) when he
returns. The coming generation--nay, the generation that has already
arrived, will not remember the look of things as they were in my time.
As I was saying, they were tearing down the old Gwynne house the other
day.




+-------------------------------------------------+
|Transcriber's note:                              |
|                                                 |
|Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.  |
|                                                 |
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