CHAPTER IX
Life tragedies happen swiftly, with a simplicity that is appalling. People seldom scream; they stand agape, or rush out of the house, dragging back a doctor who can do nothing, or a policeman who can do even less. It was Griggs who told Rose Van Cortlandt. It was the second time he had been through a similar experience. Five years before as valet to the young Earl of Lowden, he had found him a suicide in his villa at Dinard. He, too, had been gambling.
Griggs had gone straight to the bedroom door of his mistress. She was asleep. Her husband’s room, being separated from hers by a bathroom, a dressing-room, a boudoir, and two closed doors, not a sound of the tragedy had reached her.
“Something of the utmost importance, madam,” called Griggs, rapping sharply and rousing her.
“Come in,” she said sleepily.
The butler entered, and stood for a moment immovable as a statue before her.
“Madam,” said he, “I have come to you with bad news—with terrible news, madam.”
She sat bolt upright in bed. His words and manner awakened her as if she had been struck with a whip. She stared at him wide-eyed, with compressed lips.
“Well?” she breathed tensely.
“Mr. Van Cortlandt is dead.”
Griggs saw her clutch at the lace coverlet. She did not utter a sound.
“He has shot himself, madam.”
She drew her knees up under the coverlet and buried her face in her hands. For a long moment neither spoke.
Suddenly she looked up, white as the pillows about her.
“Where is he?” she asked.
“In his room, madam—madam will permit me to tell her that it is better madam does not go there at once.”
Griggs withdrew, closed the bedroom door, and rang for Marie. To that now hysterical girl, gasping out hermon Dieu’s! he repeated again briefly what had happened, commanding her to be calm. “Calm as your mistress, do you hear?”
As Marie tremblingly started to enter the bedroom Rose Van Cortlandt opened the door in her dressing-gown. She stood straight, her lungs filled with a deep breath.
“Ah!mon Dieu!” sobbed Marie afresh.
“Go to your room,” said her mistress, “and wait there until I call you.” Then she made her way to his door, to gaze at him whom she had held in high esteem.
The news of Sam Van Cortlandt’s failure and suicide flashed through New York, was galloped up-town inspecial editions, greasy wet from the press, was bawled out by newsboys, was discussed in clubs and bedrooms, in boudoirs, in street-cars, at dinners and theatre-parties, for all of a day, and subsided the next into stale news, the long sensational columns contracting to short biographies of his financial career, and a photograph taken of him several years previous, re-touched with Chinese white. The following day the press contented itself with a paid announcement of his funeral. The least surprised of all was Wall Street. Friends of his had long ago warned him that his system of speculation was suicidal. They were right.
To Rose Van Cortlandt the blow was a bitter one. Everything she had loved—wealth, position—had been swept away from her, her position in society depending wholly upon his wealth. The note he left upon his night table was of a private nature, intended solely for his wife and not for these pages. In a month the few intimate friends she saw had grown tired of telling her how charming she looked in black. In the settling of the estate, despite the money owed to his creditors, Sam had left her far from penniless. The house in Park Avenue was sold, and all it contained—the pictures alone bringing her a comfortable fortune that many another woman in her situation would have been satisfied with. Rose Van Cortlandt considered it a mere pittance. She found a bond of sympathy among other widows who had been reduced to twenty-five thousand a year.
Lamont became a frequent visitor to her smart little studio apartment in Washington Square—to which Sue was never invited, and where we shall leave Rose Van Cortlandt to the care of a few so-called Bohemians to consume her whiskey and cigarettes.
Enoch was doing an unheard-of thing—for Enoch—straightening up the living-room of his hermitage on the top floor, slowly transforming this much-beloved refuge of his from its pell-mell accumulation to a semblance of neatness and order. The idea had struck him suddenly, following a decision which he had come to the evening before, as he sat hunched up in his big leather chair before the fire thinking over past events, the Van Cortlandt suicide being one of them.
He had left his card at the house of mourning with a formal word of sympathy, more than that he felt he could not do. He had argued with himself for more than an hour, trying to decide whether or not to write the widow a letter of condolence, and had begun two at his desk, both of which he destroyed as being false in sentiment and not honestly in keeping with his opinion of the deceased, whose business methods he had so openly denounced to the Fords. True, he had accepted her invitation, and gone to the musicale, but in this case it was Sue who was solely responsible for his presence. What he had expected had happened—he had found Lamont, despite his warning to him, pleading to take her home. He had arrived in thenick of time to offer her his arm and his club cab, both of which she had gladly accepted.
The old room during all the years it had warmed and sheltered Enoch, had become, little by little, so choked with books, bibelots, and souvenirs, some of them utterly useless to him, that he had only now awakened to the fact that there was little floor space left for his feet to wander over, and he was continually upsetting this and that, whenever he moved. Nooks on the table and mantelpiece, where he was wont to lay his pipe, spectacles, and tobacco, were now hard to find, and were continually being smothered under letters, books, and pamphlets—Matilda and Moses having strict orders to keep everything tidy, and to touch nothing.
“’Spec’ I fine him snowed under some mornin’, an’ have to dig him out,” remarked Matilda. “Gittin’ so bad, Mister Rabbit wouldn’t have no show gittin’ through—reg’lar claptrapshun place—bad’s my ole pot-closet, whar I used to stow ’way mah broom. ‘Bresh up! Bresh up!’ he sez to me, ‘Matilda.’ Jes’ ez ef I cud straighten out dat dar conglomeraction, ’thout techin’ it—mah lordy! but I do certainly despize dust, man.”
“’Tain’t no common dust,” Moses would reply. “’Spec’ yo better keep yo black han’s offum dat yere dust—ain’t yo never heerd tell of immo’tal dust? Ef you ain’t, yo ain’t never read yo Bible. Dem things, like dust an’ ashes dar, is sacred.”
Enoch had begun his house-cleaning with a will. He was in no humor to be interrupted. He went at his work grimly, his teeth set; the hopelessness of the task appalled him.
For a while he prowled around his bookcases, grumbling over the many useless volumes, which like unwelcome tramps had lain hidden snug in their berths among those dear to him. One after another he routed these vagabonds out of their nests, and flung them in a pile on the floor for Matilda to cart away in her blue apron, and present them to the ash-man if she chose. Some of these trashy novels had the ill-luck to be discovered in the company of the product of such able masters as Thackeray and Dickens, Scott and Fielding, Balzac, Hugo, and Maupassant. These latter in French, which he read fluently. One yellow paper-covered novel he raised above his head and sent slamming to the floor.
“Trash!” he cried aloud—a habit with him when he was roused and was forced to speak his mind for the benefit of his own ears. “Trash! That’s what they want nowadays—a novel never gets interesting to them until they get to the divorce—artificial heroines who make you shudder, whose morals and manners are no better than a trull’s in a tavern, and heroes whom I always feel like kicking—a lot of well-dressed cads. As for style, it’s gone to the dogs. They do not even speak correct English, much less write it. There’s not one of them who could produce a page of Thackeray or Flaubert if they were to hang for it. Whatthey write for is the publisher and his check. It’s that infernal check that has prodded on more writers to ruin than it ever helped. The more money they can make, the more mediocre and sensational they get—scarcely a page that is not cooked up like a pudding—one quart of sentimentality to two heaping pints of sensation, add a scant teaspoonful of pathos, sprinkle with a happy ending, and serve hot before the last novel gets cold. Slop! and drivel!” he snarled, scraping out the bowl of his strongest pipe, and stuffing it with fine-cut Virginia that would have bitten any less hardy tongue than Enoch’s. He searched in vain for a match; discovered Rose Van Cortlandt’s invitation, tore it in two, rolled one half into a lighter, kindled it over the blazing logs in his fireplace, lighted his favorite brierwood, and began to snort and puff the smoke through his nostrils, his pipe doggedly clenched between his teeth, his opinion of modern literature gruffly subsiding in grunts. Then he returned to his books.
He plucked out another—“Muriel’s Choice”—and turned to the fly-leaf. On it was hastily scribbled in pencil in a woman’s angular handwriting—all ups and downs: “Do read this, Mr. Crane; so sorry to have missed you. Emma Jackson.” He turned the pages with a rip under his thumb.
“About as light as Emma,” he remarked, recalling that person to his mind, whose attentions had annoyed him when he was a young student at law. He was about to send it spinning to the pile when he noticedit contained several woodcut illustrations depicting the lovelorn and unhappy Muriel at various stages of her romantic history. Muriel seemed always to be waiting for him—at the old turnstile ’neath the mournful drooping willows; at the rain-flecked library window, listening for the grating sound of his carriage wheels; again at the stile. This time she had brought her Newfoundland dog.
“They’ll do for the children to color,” reflected Enoch, referring to a hospital charity he never mentioned to others.
He laid the book aside, straightened up, drew a deep, courageous breath, and riveted his gaze on the centre-table.
“What’ll I do with all that?” he exclaimed aloud, scratching his gray head, half tempted to dump the whole of it into his bedroom closet, and sort it later. Then he realized there were important papers buried under the pamphlets and books, bills and receipts that needed filing, and more than one unanswered letter.
He began with the books, mostly scientific works, which had lately served him as reference in an article on economics he had written for theAtlantic Monthlymodestly over his initials, and which had been widely quoted. These filled the gaps left by the pile on the floor. The letters, bills, and receipts he stowed away in the drawers of an old-fashioned mahogany desk beside his fire. One of these drawers, the small one over his inkstand, was locked. This he rarely opened,though he carried its flat key on the end of his watch-chain—had, in fact, for years.
Matilda thought it was where he kept his money. Had his strong-box been open on the table, its contents would have been as safe with Matilda and Moses as if under the protection of his own pocket.
The old room, now that the books were in place, the table cleared and neatly arranged, and the chairs pushed back into cosey corners, began to assume an air of hospitality, and that is precisely why Enoch had cleared it up. There remained, however, a final touch of welcome, which he put on his hat and hurried out for—a gorgeous bunch of red Jacqueminot roses. These he arranged in an old Chinese porcelain bowl on the centre-table. This done, he surveyed his domain, with a feeling of relief and satisfaction, and rang for Matilda.
“For de land’s sakes!” exclaimed that honest soul, as she poked her bandannaed head into the open doorway, and stood with her arms planted on her big hips, while she glanced around her at the change. “Befo’ de Lord, ef it doan look scrumpsush.”
“Needed it,” muttered Enoch, turning a furrowed brow upon her, as he bent to smell the roses.
“Dat it suttenly did, marser. ’Tain’t de fust time I tole Moses I’se been worryin’ over de looks of dis yere place. Ain’t had no fixin’ up like dis in y’ars. Dat’s sartin’. ’Spec’ youse ’spectin’ company, ain’t you?”
“That’s why I sent for you, Matilda—where’s Moses?”
“He’s a pokin’ of his fiah down in de cellar—ain’t yo felt de heat?”
She bent down on her knees, and opened the register between the bookcases, a puff of dust accompanied the hot air, sending her hand across her eyes, her voice choking.
“Gwine to strangle me, is yo? Keep yo mouf shut d’yer hear me, till I clean yo face so’s you kin open it ’thout insultin’ yo betters,” she commanded, snapping shut the register, and wiping it with her apron.
“Matilda,” said Enoch, as she rose to her feet, his eyes kindling with good-humor for the first time that morning, “I’ve invited a few friends this afternoon to tea.”
“Yas, suh——”
“It isn’t as easy as you think, Matilda. You and Moses will have to attend to it—cakes, sandwiches, teacups, and all.”
He drew out his portfolio, and handed her a ten-dollar bill, which she received respectfully and tucked deep in her bosom.
“Is—is yo gwine to hab quality, marser—or just plain tea?”
“Both,” smiled Enoch. “Miss Preston and her mother are coming at five, Mr. Ford also, the Misses Moulton, and Mr. Grimsby. Six in all, Matilda.”
“Ah see,” returned Matilda with conviction. “Wot you might call mixed company.”
Enoch raised his eyebrows sharply in surprise.
“’Tain’t de tea, nor de kittle, nor de cakes, nor de sandwhiches, nor de bilin’ water, what’s a worryin’ me,” declared Matilda. “It’s de doilies—I ain’t got ’em, marser, but I kin git ’em, an’ dey ainter goin’ ter cost no ten-dollar bill, neider.”
“But the teacups?” he intervened anxiously. “Here, I’ll give you a note to Vantine’s—ask for Mr. Gresham.” He turned briskly to the desk and opened his inkstand.
“Ain’t no use in goin’ dar,” she protested. “Ain’t no Mister Gresham’s got ’em.Igot ’em, an’ dey ain’t no common kitchen china, neider. Dey’s wot my Mistiss Mary left me when de good Lord done come an’ tuk ’er from me.” Her voice quavered. “Dey’s de best. Dey’s so white an’ fine, yo kin see yo han’ through ’em, an’ dey’s got lit’l’ gold rims round ’em, an’ handles no thicker’n er butterfly’s wing. Doan’ s’pose I’se er gwine let Miss Sue drink outer no common store trash, does yer? Um! um!—mouf like er rosebud. ’Mines me er mah young mistiss when she was jes about her aige, an’ young Capt’n Pendleton come up to de big house to see ’er. Bimeby he seen me, an’ come inter de kitchen, whar I was a mixin’ an’ a stirrin’, and a stirrin’ an’ a mixin’, for de hot corn cakes, an’ de waffles for de supper dat evenin’. ‘Matilda,’ he sez to me, all a shinin’ in his uniform, ‘I’se gwine teck yo babby ’way from you, d’yer hear me, nigger? She’s done lived long nuf lone in dis heah lonesome place—’er eatin’ out ’er heart.’ Den I begun to shook an’ shake, an’ I got er tremblin’ in mah knees, an’ Icudn’t say nuffin for de sobbin’ an’ de cryin’. Den he ’gun to laf, an’ he come over an’ laid his han’ ’pon my shoulder. Den I see his eyes was er twinklin’ like de stars in de heaven.
“‘Miss Mary an’ I’se gwine be married,’ says he.
“‘Yo ain’t er gwine teck ’er ’way from ’er ole mammy, is you?’ sez I. ‘See heah,’ sez I, ‘Marse Pendleton, I done brought ’er up—I done nussed ’er. I ain’t never let ’er outer mah sight fer twenty years ever since she was a babby.’
“Den he ’gun to talk ’bout devotion an’ pholosophy—an’, an’ de end. ‘Dere ain’t goin’ to be no end,’ says I. ‘She ain’t never even dressed herself, alone, yit; nor combed ’er own har. Dere ain’t been a mornin’, nor an evenin’, nor er night, dat her ole mammy wa’n’t dar to help ’er.’ Den I see he was er smilin. ‘Mammy,’ sez he, ‘youse gwine long wid us.’ ‘Praise de Lord,’ sez I. An’ dat’s de way I happin to come North, Marser Crane. I wanter goin’ let mah young mistiss be travellin’ round ’mong dem Northerners, ’thout her ole mammy to teck cyar of ’er.”
She ceased speaking, and moved slowly toward the door. “I’ll git everythin’ ready fer de tea,” she said, brightening. “You needn’t worry ’bout nothin’, Marser Crane. ’Tain’t de fust time mah ole Moses an’ I’se waited on comp’ny.”
Enoch stood listening to her as she descended the stairs. She was crooning softly to herself in a minor key:
“Moonlight on de swamp an’ ’possum in de tree....”
Enoch leaned over the banisters; then the door of her kitchen closed upon her and he returned to his room. For a long moment he stood thoughtfully before his desk, thinking of her devotion, of what the death of her mistress must have meant to her, of the vicissitudes in the years that followed, of their present sordid quarters in comparison to the “big house,” its great rooms, and its bygone hospitality, the picture she had drawn of that young Captain Pendleton and the one he loved, clear in his mind. Then he slowly unbuttoned his watch-chain of braided hair, inserted the flat key in the lock of the little drawer above his inkstand, opened it, felt under a packet of letters tied with a narrow blue ribbon, and drew out a small leather daguerreotype case, unhooked it, and stood gazing at the portrait of the young girl it contained—a young girl in a checkered silk dress, with large, nervous black eyes, her dark hair falling in two soft curls over her neck, a red rose in her hair. He turned it askance to the light, bringing into clearer detail the delicate contour of the wistful face, the drooping, sensitive, melancholy mouth, the bit of lace at her throat, fastened by a brooch of garnets. Then he reverently returned it to the drawer, closed it, and locked it.
It did not, as Matilda had supposed, contain his money—only a memory.
While Enoch had been straightening out his room, Joe had been fidgeting this morning over his work in the office of Atwater & Grimsby, Architects, a modest square room on the third floor of an old brick buildingin State Street, its two dingy lower floors being filled by Italian fruit merchants and the mingled perfume of the green banana, the orange, the lemon, and the fig. Joe this morning had accomplished nothing, his whole mind elated over Enoch Crane’s invitation to tea and his promised glimpse of Sue. He drew, sprawled over his drawing-board, his pencil and T-square moving at a snail’s pace as he counted the hours that remained before five, which the moon-faced clock, solemnly ticking over his head, appeared in no hurry to shorten; its punctilious hands seemed barely to move. He fussed for an hour over some rough ideas for a dormer window, spent another in searching through a book on early Tudor for a half-timbered inspiration, broke the point of his pencil constantly, and finally, with the memory of Sue’s voice in his ears, upset a full bottle of India ink, its contents flooding the emerald-green water-color lawn in front of Mrs. Amos Jones’s cottage destined for Dunehurst, changing it into a lake of indelible ink that found an outlet for itself over the edge of the drawing-board and went streaming to the floor. Sam Atwater’s thin, alert face raised in disgust. He slid off his stool, readjusted his eye-glasses with his nervous hand, and regarded the ruin of Mrs. Amos Jones’s water-colored country-seat in dismay.
“That’s done for,” said he gloomily.
“By the gods!” cried Joe, flinging up his strong arms in his enthusiasm. “Done for! Why, it’s immense! It’s a hummer, by Jove! Look at the value of black,will you? Ripping! Cast your eyes on that contrast of trees and roof bang up against that ebony lake. Talk about values, picks up that little touch of apple-green on the roof and makes her sing. You wait until I get through with the next water-color. I’ve got a scheme, I tell you, that will make the rest of the boys sit up and blink. Why, black’s the most valuable thing in the world, only you’ve got to have enough of it. We’ve been fooling around with a lot of timid shadows, afraid to smash in a big effect straight from the shoulder. Look at the value of that high light next to the strongest dark. That’s one reason why Rembrandt’s portraits look as if they could step out of the frame and shake you by the hand. Ruined! you sou marqué—it’s a corker! Black—that’s it, and plenty of it, with good, strong drawing and a big, splendid sky smashed in with Chinese white, raw umber, and French blue—I’ve got it, Sam. You wait. No more anæmic water-colors for me, and no more white paper, either. That’s good enough for illustrators, but it’s no good for architects. Give me gray paper—gauche—and charcoal—something you can build on.”
Sam Atwater was studying him as he rattled on with the wide-eyed interest of a man listening to the secret of a new invention, which, although he did not wholly grasp its possibilities, nevertheless was slowly opening his eyes to its logical advantages.
“Gray paper—that’s it!” cried Joe. “Cool gray for gray days, and a yellow gray for hot sunlight.Can’t you see, old man, that shadows are transparent and that everything else in hot sunlight is opaque?”
As no one had yet touched the ink-bottle, Joe kicked it into the corner.
“When is this miracle of yours going to happen?” asked Atwater, picking up the ruined water-color disconsolately and jamming it into the waste-paper basket.
“Happen!” exclaimed Joe. “Why—just as soon as I can draw well enough and can get used to handling gauche instead of the skimmed milk I’ve been using.”
“You can draw well enough now, Joe,” returned Atwater—“when you want to.” He paused, grew a little red, half turned away, then wheeling around, added seriously: “See here, Joe, I’m not the nagging kind, and you know it—but—you know what we’ve got to do as well as I do, and the time that’s left us to do it in. I’m doing my best to get the Jones job in before the 15th, specifications and all. Well—you don’t seem to be getting on to the job lately, that’s all. I—I hate to say this and—but, you see how it is, don’t you? We’ve got to hustle—and there’s another thing I might just as well say,” he went on, clearing his throat and twirling his HB lead pencil nervously in his active hand, a hand as precise as a machine, and as timid as a woman’s. “You’re not the same as you used to be—you’ve changed—you’ve got to dreaming—well—ever since the Fords moved in.”
Joe gripped him heartily by both shoulders. “Good old Sammy,” said he. “Oh, you’re right—I don’tdeny it. I’m goin’ to brace up and help—and—and hustle. There—feel better?”
The clock above them struck twelve-thirty with a wheezy dang.
“Time to eat!” exclaimed Joe, with a persuasive twinkle. “Poor old Sammy! See here, what we need is food and a change of scene. What do you say to going to Old Tom’s for luncheon—eh? It’ll do you good—my treat, Sammy, and don’t you dare say no, because if you do—” he grinned—“I’m going to pick you up and carry you there, if I have to walk up Broadway with you on my back. Is it a go?”
Sam hesitated. “Hadn’t we better go back to the Pioneer Dairy,” he ventured. “It’s cheaper, Joe, and the stuff isn’t so bad.”
“It’s abominable,” protested Joe. “I’m tired of the kind that mother used to make. I’ve got enough of skimmed milk, I tell you, and seeing that sour old maid with the asthma pass the crullers. No, sir—what we want is some man’s food and a good pint of ale in us—in a snug place that’s alive.”
He grabbed Atwater’s derby from the hook next his own and jammed it on his studious head, wholly against Sam’s ideas of right and wrong.
“Come along!” cried Joe, recovering his own broad-brimmed gray felt—a daily companion of his Beaux-Arts days, which had sheltered him through dozens of like little extravagances that his pocket always suffered for on the morrow. And so the two went off to old Tom’s chop-house in Trinity Lane, where they had,heeding the counsel of old Tom himself, a “combination” of spicy sausage, juicy chop, and a broiled kidney, sizzling hot, and done to a turn, that genial little Irishman in his shirt-sleeves further suggesting, with his habitual abbreviation of vegetables, a little “cel” and a little “spin” on the side, and two pints of his oldest ale, nearly as dark and powerful as Hartligan’s oldest, next door, and with two cross-sections of hot mince pie to follow, “mince with a slip on,” smothered under the best of Welsh rarebits, all of which in due time, as Tom had promised, were poked through the blackened worn hole connecting with the busy kitchen, and were devoured serenely, without as much as ruffling the digestion of youth.
“I feel better,” declared Joe, and he looked it. So did Atwater, though he had broken a whole golden rule in regard to light luncheons and his duty to his drawing-board. He was also worrying about the pie.
“Let’s have another,” coaxed Joe, as he pinioned his last morsel of mince-meat, flaky pie-crust, and melted cheese nimbly on his steel fork and calmly raised it.
“Let’swhat?” exclaimed Atwater, aghast. “More of that pie? Not on your life. That stuff will put you on the Christmas tree if you get the habit.”
“I’ll split one with you,” laughed Joe. “Come on, be a game sport.”
“No, you won’t,” declared Atwater firmly.
“Now, Sammy; it’s my fête day.”
“You wait until you get the bill, and you’ll think it’s New Year’s,” remarked Atwater gravely.
“Ben Jonson and good old Falstaff would have been tickled to death with this place,” enthused Joe, sipping his coffee and unheeding the anxious look in Atwater’s eyes, as he ordered two light panetelas. “Nothing like good food for inspiration, old man. Hanged if I wouldn’t like to have a tavern of my own—bumpers—trenchers, old beams, cobwebs, and troubadours, buxom lasses, a few captains of fortune with their ready blades, and the mail-coach due at one. Veiled lady getting out, assisted by his Grace the Duke. Dogs, minions, and stable-boys—small, fair-haired child running with bunch of posies for the Duke’s lady, smiling Boniface in doorway with napkin. Steaming leaders stamping out of their trace-chains—and a fight in the back room——”
“Everything all right, gentlemen?” interrupted Tom, bringing the bill in his head and enumerating its items and total to Joe.
“I hope so,” ventured Atwater meekly, his mind still dwelling on the pie, as Joe laid his last spare ten-dollar bill on the table, received four dollars and ten cents back in change, shook the genial Irishman by the hand, who boasted he had never been out of New York, and when he wanted a breath of sea air went to the Battery, complimented him upon his cuisine, and thanked him for the good luncheon—all with so much cheery good-humor, that Tom followed them both out to the door, and over its sawdustedthreshold, to send them off with a final wave of the hand.
Joe Grimsby was the first to arrive.
Whatever glimpse he was to get of Sue this afternoon he wished to prolong as much as possible. In fact, he sprang up Enoch’s stairs as early as half past four, heralding his presence by a hearty “Hello!” that brought Enoch out to his landing.
“I’m early, I know, but then I didn’t want to be late,” he explained with a frank laugh, as Enoch welcomed him with both hands and ushered him into his room.
Joe flung himself into the proffered armchair and glanced about him.
“By thunder!” he cried. “What a nice old room.”
“It’s comfortable, my boy,” returned Enoch, studying his well-knit figure and his splendid chest, his keen eyes observing the well-bred ease with which Joe made himself instantly at home. He had changed his office suit for a soft, light-gray homespun—its double-breasted high-cut waistcoat, the flamboyant black silk bow cravat, and the low, turned-down collar, allowing plenty of play to his strong, ruddy throat, giving him a slightly foreign air, which Enoch rightly decided was the result of his Paris student days in the Latin Quarter, where Joe had lived out four eminently respectable years, made a good record at the Beaux-Arts, plenty of friends, and noliaisons. So that when he left there was no good, faithful little “Marcelle” or“Yvette” to shed tears over his going, and all he had to do was to call a fiacre, shoulder his trunk, chuck it on top, say again good-by to his oldconcierge, Madame Dupuy, and to the red-facedcocherawaiting his order—“Gare St. Lazare.” It seems almost a pity that there was no little Yvonne or Marie to accompany him to the station. Ah, how brave they are! And when one’s heart is big so that it chokes one it is not easy to be brave—none to have packed his things and bought his ticket in her perfect French, and put a kiss between the sandwiches, and deposited more right before the accustomed eyes of the important red-facedchef de gare, until the tragic, relentless bleat of his horn sent the long-dreaded express to Havre moving swiftly out of the station. Joe had come out of it all as straight as a T-square.
“So you like the old room?” said Enoch, opening a thin box of fat cigarettes.
“Ripping old room,” Joe declared. “I’ve never known a room that didn’t have a personality—good, bad, or indifferent. Some rooms seem almost to speak to you.”
“Or, rather, they reflect the personality of the occupant,” said Enoch. “Some rooms reflect deeper than mirrors, my boy. They give out to you much of the true character of the person whom they shelter. They’re as much a part of them as their minds and manner of life.”
“Look at the charm of this old place—its friendliness, the way it hangs together!” Joe went on. Hewas bordering unconsciously on a compliment, Enoch swerving it with:
“Take, on the other hand, for instance, in your profession. There is nothing more ridiculous and incongruous to me than the houses some people live in. Some of you architects design salons and dining-rooms for people who would be far more at their ease in the kitchen. Imagine a boudoir with a Madame Récamier lounge for a woman’s rights delegate—a library for a grocer, and a ball-room for an undertaker, and you have my idea,” grinned Enoch.
“You ought to see the bedroom I’ve designed for Mrs. Amos Jones,” Joe declared. “She’s daft on Marie Antoinette ever since she saw the Petit Trianon last summer and bought the postal cards.”
Enoch broke out into a hearty laugh.
“I’ve got baa-lambs in blue bows and shepherdesses with golden crooks,” confessed Joe, “stencilled all over the frieze, and the royal crown made by a cabinet-maker in Hoboken over her canopied bed. Atwater was furious, but Mrs. Jones would have it.”
Enoch roared.
“That’s it,” said he. “I can see it all. What a lot of fools some women are.”
“Ever seen Mrs. Amos Jones?” Joe ventured.
“No,” grinned Enoch, “but I can imagine her.”
“No, you can’t,” chuckled Joe, as Matilda passed through the room to open the door for the Fords, and hurried back a second later to reopen it for the Misses Moulton.
And what a tea it was! How pretty Sue looked, and how good were the hot little muffins Matilda had prepared as a surprise, which old Moses served with silent dignity in his best alpaca coat and white cotton gloves. And how “darling” Sue thought Matilda’s exquisite little cups, into which Miss Ann poured tea with the grace and gentleness of a lady.
The old room had never heard so much talk before, so much neighborly good-humor, broken at intervals by Ebner Ford’s somewhat raw and insistent attempts to engage the others in listening to the beginning of one of his many anecdotes—all of which Mrs. Ford had heard a thousand times, and which generally ended apropos of business, but which did not deter that effusive lady from referring as usual to her famous Southern family, of course apropos of the muffins, which she naïvely led up to.
“Now, when I was a girl,” she beamed, “I remember so well our delicious Southern hot breads—our table fairly groaned with them, Mr. Crane. We were five sisters, you know. Well, of course, our house was always full of company, father being so prominent in the place. I shall never forget how furious father was at an old beau of mine for taking me driving in the phaeton without his permission,” simpered the rotund little woman. “You see, we were young girls and, if I do say it, we had a great many young men at the house constantly, and, of course, when father became judge....”
“Yo heah all day hiferlutin’ talk,” whispered Matildato Moses in the bedroom, transformed for the occasion into a serving-pantry. “I’se never heerd no real quality yit a talkin’ ’bout dere family. Dey don’t have to. Eve’ybody knows what dey is when dey looks at em.”
There were two young people in two chairs by the window in the fast-growing twilight, whom Enoch skilfully managed to leave by themselves.
“And you forgive me?” ventured Joe, looking up into her frank blue eyes.
“Why, I haven’t anything to forgive you for,” laughed Sue nervously. “Only it did seem a little queer—your—your inviting me so suddenly.”
“But you will forgive me, won’t you? You don’t know how much I’ve thought about it, and how much I cared. Then when we met on the stairs that day and you seemed so cold—half afraid of me. Tell me you’re not afraid of me now, are you?”
A deeper color spread slowly to her cheeks.
“Why, no; I’m not afraid. I was foolish, I suppose,” Sue added half audibly, with lowered eyelids, clasping her hands nervously in her lap.
The dusk of evening came on apace; they forgot the chatter in the old room.
Joe leaned toward her.
“I wish wecouldbe friends,” said he, regarding her small, nervous hands longingly. “Real friends, I mean—that is, if you’ll trust me?” She glanced up at him quickly, her gaze as quickly reverting to her lap. Then, with a forced little shrug of her pretty shoulders:
“Why, yes; of course I’ll trust you, Mr. Grimsby.”
Impulsively he touched her warm little hand.
“Honest?” he smiled, thrilled by that touch from his head to his feet. “Honest Injun? Cross your heart?”
“I said I would,” she said evenly.
Their eyes met—his with a happy gleam in them, hers with a timid, tender look, her heart beating until she felt its throb in her ears.
“I fear we had better be going,” she said, making a little movement to rise. “I’m afraid it’s awfully late.”
Joe snapped out his watch, bending closer to the window, where he ascertained it lacked a few minutes past six.
“You can stay a little longer, can’t you?” he pleaded. “Now that we’re to be good friends.”
“It’s on account of mother,” she replied evasively, catching the tone of Mrs. Ford’s voice which had risen to that shrill key which invariably accompanied her leave-taking—a moment in which she again referred beamingly to Lamont, who had been kindness itself, she had heard, to Mrs. Van Cortlandt, “all through that awful tragedy, my dear,” she explained to Miss Jane Moulton, who had scarcely opened her lips. “He’s kind to every one,” she went on effusively. “You should see the beautiful roses he sent me only yesterday—two dozen of the most gorgeous American Beauties. I wassosurprised—as I told daughter....”
Her words nettled Joe, and he turned sharply.Enoch struck a match savagely under the mantelpiece and lighted the Argand burner.
“Oh, please don’t!” protested Sue. “I do love the twilight so, Mr. Crane.”
“Then you shall have it, my dear,” returned Enoch. “I wonder if you’ll do me a favor. Will you sing to us—in that twilight you love? Just a little song, any you please. I’m sorry there’s no piano. Come, won’t you?”
“Please,” pleaded Joe.
“Why, yes; of course I will if you wish it, Mr. Crane,” consented Sue. “Let me see—what shall I sing?”
“That ravishing little thing from—‘Aïda’—isn’t it, darling?—the one with the fascinating warbles,” suggested her mother. “She has another one that’s too cute for words,” she confided to Miss Jane. “I’ll get her to sing it.”
Sue started to rise. Enoch raised his hand.
“Pray don’t get up,” he begged. “Sit where you are, dear, and sing me the ‘Old Kentucky Home.’”
The room grew hushed. Two dark forms filled the narrow doorway of the bedroom. Enoch slipped into his favorite chair, his chin sunk deep in the palm of his hand. Then Sue began. The old song poured forth from her pure young throat clear and plaintive, in all the simple beauty of its words and melody. Matilda’s lips moved. At the third verse something seemed to be strangling her; unseen in the dusk, she buried her black, tear-stained face in her hands, Moses comforting her in whispers.
Joe sat beside the singer in the dusk—immovable—in a dream. Beneath his hand lay Sue’s—warm, tender, unresisting. Thus ended the song—as if it were the most natural thing in the world for songs to end that way.