The billiard-room, on a suggestion from the architect, taken up with amusement by Laurence, had been made to resemble a European café. It had a low ceiling, red-plush benches round the panelled walls, long mirrors, and small tables in the corners; there was even a miniature bar.
Laurence, with his coat off, moved quickly round the green table, leaning half-way across it sometimes to make a difficult shot, managing his cue deftly and surely. The two younger boys followed his motions eagerly. John, who was playing his first real game, had a flush of excitement in his cheeks; his big blue eyes shone, he bit his lips nervously and his hands trembled; he laughed gaily when he made an awkward play. Timothy hung at his elbow, jeering and waiting anxiously for his turn. In the doorway lounged Jim maintaining a slightly supercilious attitude. Mary and Lavery were sitting on one of the plush benches; and the senior Carlin, standing at a little distance, contemplated the group round the table with interest. The men were smoking, the air was a little hazy. With the bright lights reflected in the mirrors, the click of the balls, quick movements and laughing comments of the players, the others watching, all seemed drawn together for the moment in an atmosphere of pleasure.
Laurence's face had brightened, his eyes smiled. When John had made his last play, a terrible fumble,and thrown down his cue angrily, he put his arm round the boy's shoulders and shook him with tender roughness.
"Be a good sport! You've got to lose before you win, you young monkey!"
John frowned, stamped his feet, and wrenched away, yet his eyes too smiled, and he hurried to fetch the chalk demanded by Timothy. Then when Timothy blundered John murmured a consoling word, little attended to, and when Timothy made a good stroke he applauded vigorously. Now and then he glanced happily at his mother, watching for her smile, or spoke to Jim, who only dropped his eyelids in answer; or went and stood beside his grandfather for a moment. He showed a quick consciousness of every one in the room, as though with infinitely delicate feelers touching them all. His physical motions were awkward, with the rapid growth of adolescence his arms and legs were somewhat out of control. He jostled Timothy at a critical point and received an impatient rebuff. Dashed by this, he stood apart for a while; and his face had its wistful, listening look, as if he sought among them all the human echo of some harmony heard far off.
After Timothy, it was Jim's turn. Jim had some pretensions to skill, but bore a smashing defeat with good grace, and complimented his father in an off-hand manly fashion, on which they shook hands with a cordiality rare between them. Jim as a rule irritated Laurence, either by obvious faults, laziness or extravagance, or else by silence and lack of response, a standing difference of temperament. But tonight Laurence looked at him affectionately, noting with pleasure hisdark good looks, his lithe youth. Jim was almost a man—next year he would be going to college, if he could manage to pass the examinations.... So time passes....
Laurence was aware of a dark whirl of thoughts, half-formed, somewhere at the back of his mind; and of a weight pressing on the nape of his neck. For some time he had slept little and had been conscious of an increasing fatigue, something that piled up day by day, and made increasing effort necessary to get through each day's activity. He would have to work tonight. Downstairs he had the papers of an important case in which he had reserved decision.... And then there were a lot of business matters to be gone over with Lavery....
But he was reluctant to leave this bright room, to break up the family gathering. It was rare that they were all together like this; Mary very seldom came up to the billiard-room. The occasion seemed to him significant, and searching for the reason, he wondered if his father's strange presence had anything to do with it, or with his own unusual mood. Perhaps so. Perhaps it was this that had, as it seemed, thrown him back into the past, had curiously removed him to a distance so that this present scene had a kind of unreality.... It was like a scene on the stage which he was watching as it were through a reversed glass, so that the figures of the actors, his own included, appeared very tiny and as if at an immense distance. He watched himself going through the motions of the game, talking, laughing, and the others moving about. It seemed that some drama was moving to an obscurebut deeply significant climax, but what was it all about?
At times he came to the surface of consciousness with what seemed like a crash, the lights and sounds smote his senses as if magnified, the actors became life-size or even bigger, and he waited for them or for himself to say or do some unheard-of thing.... All through he was conscious of an effort in himself to appear as usual, not to do anything extraordinary, not to lose touch with these human beings round him, all of whom seemed invested with some strange charm, newly felt, as though a hidden beauty in them had suddenly come into view....
At one moment he wondered if he were ill, or going to be; and put his hand on the back of his neck, where the dull pain pressed heavily. From across the room he saw John's eyes fixed on him earnestly; and smiled at him. The shadow of trouble in another person would trouble John. Strange boy! He was like a harp so delicately strung that a breath of air would stir it. What would happen to him in this world of harsh and jarring contacts?... The other two, he thought, would shoulder their way through well enough. They were strong normal boys with a good supply of egotism. The stock was sound....
He realized that he was looking at them all as though on the eve of departure, a farewell before a long journey.... The room swam in a dazzle of light. With an immense effort he pulled himself together, vanquished the momentary faintness, gave no other sign than a pallor, a rapid blinking of his eyes....
He found himself standing beside his father, before one of the long mirrors, and replying to some remarkhalf-heard. His vision cleared, he looked at the two figures in the glass, curiously. Would any one have taken those two for father and son?
No. In the first place, the elder looked absurdly young, with his smooth-shaven unwrinkled face and wiry figure. And then, he looked like a foreigner; the Irish was unmistakable. Old Timothy had never taken root in American soil, but floated like thistledown above it, for forty years.... And the other one there, the black-bearded one—with age the Irish came out in him too, unmistakably.... But he was an American, born here, with no dim shadow of allegiance elsewhere. A son of the soil, he had fought for its nationality—there was the sign, the old sabre-cut, a faint white line across his cheek. And those old American ideals, of liberty, equality—he had believed in them passionately, felt them a living current in his blood, would have given his life for them. He still believed in them—and surely nothing in his life had given the lie to that belief?
The old man there had questioned, doubted him, on the score of this material luxury, this big house he had built—which, for that matter, was as unsubstantial as a soap-bubble, he could almost feel it dissolving under him.... Why, that only proved the equality of opportunity here for every man, he had started empty-handed. Here in this country the stream of fortune ran swift, capricious.... Men were all like gold-washers on the banks of a river, today the current would wash the golden grains one way, tomorrow another.... Why, tomorrow this bubble of a house that he had amused himself blowing into shape, might vanish, and he be left empty-handed.... What matter? It wasall unreal, anyway, all a dream, what he had tried to build....
It seemed to him that he had been saying some of these things to his father, but he was not sure, there was a humming sound in his ears.... Again there was a flash of clear sight. John was there beside him, now there were three figures reflected in the mirror.
"Three generations!" said Laurence.
He spoke in his natural tone, the haggard pallor of his face changed suddenly; he felt that John had noticed it, was watching him.
"Look, Father, can you see any likeness among us three?" he asked.
The boy stood between them, straight as a young sapling, the radiance of his blond head like a beam of sunlight, a bow of promise across a cloud.
"No—no," said the old man thoughtfully. "I see it now in you and me, Larry—there's the same blood. But I don't see it in the boy."
"John isn't like any of us, anyhow," said Laurence, with the tender tones that he always had for this child. "He makes us look like a couple of scarred old logs, doesn't he?"
"Ah, youth—that's the pure gold," said the old man softly.
The boy smiled, deprecating, shrinking a little from their gentle scrutiny.
"It isn't that alone, there's something else, that's unaccountable," Laurence pondered, as if speaking to himself.
"It's the mother, perhaps—he's more like her. That's a different strain," said the old man.
Laurence turned and looked across the room. Mary had risen, was still talking to Lavery, but she was looking straight at them, at the group before the mirror.
"Mary, come here a minute," called Laurence.
She came, with her slow stately step, and Laurence put out his hand and drew her to his side.
"What is it?" she asked, with a faint tremulousness in her voice.
The old man, standing a step apart, and looking at the other three, replied.
"We were thinking of the likeness.... Yes, it's more on your side—yet I don't know—"
"Mary and I are different enough, eh?" said Laurence with a slight laugh. "That might account for almost anything. She's pure English, you see—English Puritan.... It was two enemy races mating when we married, eh, Father?"
"That makes the American, maybe," said the old man, still curiously intent on the boy.
But John, embarrassed by this prolonged attention, now broke away and left them.
"He's not like either of us," said Laurence abruptly, watching the boy's retreating figure. "That is, only a little. He's like a flower, sprung from heaven knows where."
Glancing again at the mirror he saw the quick response in Mary's face. In the mirror their eyes met with a deep flash of sympathy. Yes, this was something they both felt deeply and in common—the strange beauty of this child who had, nevertheless, sprung fromthem, from their two lives, however marred andfutile.... Their union had at least produced this thing of beauty....
They looked at one another with a deep sad gaze. Laurence, with a sharpened vision, saw something in Mary's face new to him. The physical change must have come slowly—Mary had not been ill for a long time, that sharpening of the contours that gave her beauty its new delicacy was perhaps only age. But what he saw was not physical. He saw suddenly that she was grieving, suffering, he did not know why; it gave him a quick throb of pain. He would have put his arm around her, but that she moved away sharply. At the same moment he felt again the clouding of his sight, the dizziness.... But, abruptly alleging that he must get to work, he was able to leave the room with only a slight unsteadiness of gait, which, he knew, might easily be attributed to another cause.