I.ULYSSES AND PENELOPE.
Onthe morning of August 14th, in this last summer, Mr. Austin May alighted at the little Cypress Street station of the Boston & Albany Railroad, and, accompanied only by a swarthy and adroit valet, and a very handsome St. Bernard dog, got into the somewhat antiquated family “carryall” which awaited him, and drove away. May was a stranger to the man in charge of the station, as well as to the wide-awake trio of boys who made it a sort of club, their exchange of gossip, and pleasure resort; and thus his arrival was unnoticed and unrecorded, though his last absence had extended over a period of several years. It was a most oppressive day; and what few human beings were dressed and stirring made haste to get beneath the dense foliage, or to plunge into the numerous private-paths and shortcuts,with which the suburb of Brookline is provided; leaving the roads and their dust undisturbed, except by the sedate progress of the old carryall, which left behind it, suspended in the air, an amazing quantity of the same considering its speed, and quite obscured the morning sun with its golden cloud. Austin May might have been an entering circus procession, and no one would have found it out. Even the boys at the station were sluggish, and indisposed to “catch on” behind every train, much less to give their particular attention to one undistinguished stranger, with or without a dog.
May lit a cigar, and the carryall and its occupants lumbered along unheeded. The road was walled in and roofed over by a dense canopy of foliage borne by arching American elms; and through its green walls, dense as a lane in Jersey, only momentary glimpses were to be had of shaven lawns and quiet country-houses. When they came to a gate, with high stone posts, topped by an ancient pair of cannon-balls, the carryall turned slowly in. A moment after they had passed the screen of borderfoliage, May found himself in the midst of a wide lawn and garden, open to the sunlight, but rimmed upon all points of the compass by a distant hedge of trees, so that no roads, houses, thoroughfares, or other fields, were visible. In the centre of this stood, with much dignity, an elderly brick house, its southern wall quite green with ivy. In front of it was a large pavilion, some hundred yards removed, low and stone-built, rising without apparent purpose from the side of an artificial pool of water, rimmed with rich bands of lilies. May looked anxiously for the pavilion, and, when he saw it, sank back in his seat with a sigh of relief.
The carryall stopped before a broad, white marble step at the front door; and the Charon of the conveyance, known locally as the “dépôt-man,” having dumped the one leather trunk upon the step, stood looking at the stranger contemplatively, as if his own duties in this world were all fulfilled.
“How much?” said May.
“Twenty-five cents,” said the dépôt-man.
May pulled out a half-dollar. “No matter about the change,” he added, as the dépôt-man hitched up his vest, preparatory tofishing in his cavernous trousers for the requisite quarter.
The dépôt-man changed his quid of tobacco, and drove off without a word, the downward lines from the corners of his mouth a shade deeper, as if he profited unwillingly by such unnecessary prodigality, which aroused rather contempt than gratitude. May waited until the carryall had quite disappeared in the elm-trees, and then rang the bell. Apparently, he expected no prompt answer; for he sat down upon one of the old china garden-seats, which flanked the door, and rolled and lit a cigarette. After a few minutes he rang again, louder; the unwonted tinkle reverberated through the closed house, and an imaginative man, putting his ear to the key-hole, might have heard the scuffle of the family ghosts as they scurried back to their hiding-places. At last an uncertain step was heard in the hall, and after much turning of keys and rattling of chains, the door was slowly opened by an old woman, who blinked at the flood of sudden light which poured in, rebounded, eddied, and at last filled each corner of the fine old hall.
“Mrs. Eastman, I suppose?”
“That’s my name,” said the woman, in a strong down-east accent.
“I am Mr. May,” said he.
The woman glared at him as before, and did not compromise her dignity by a courtesy. “Mr. Eastman got your letter,” said she, “and I have got your room ready. Will you go there now? I don’t know who’s to carry up your trunk.”
May’s valet solved that difficulty by shouldering the leather receptacle and carrying it up himself. The room was large, airy, and neatly kept. A straw matting was on the floor, covered here and there with well-worn rugs; and from about the windows came a twittering of birds. All in it indicated, not a new and modern house, but the well-worn nest of a family that had been born, had cried, laughed, played, made love, and died, in every room. Yet there was no evidence of recent occupation; the room was innocent of those last touches which are the pride of the feminine housekeeper; curtains, splashers, anti-macassars, were few; and no twilled, frilled, or pleated things infested the windows, and impeded the entryof the outer air. May opened the door of a large closet; it was empty, save for a broad, white, chip hat of prehistoric fashion, and ribbons of faded rose-color; but, if it had belonged to a daughter of the house, it was evident that its owner was either dead or married, and her womanly activity was exercised in other locuses and focuses. No other manifestation of what Goethe (impatiently) calls the “eternal woman” was present; and May’s expression almost approached to a smile as he opened the door of the spacious bath-room, and noted the naked mantels and marble slabs, unencumbered by china dogs, translated vases, and other traps for the unwary. On the shelf was a noble pile of rough and manly towels, and as he turned the faucet, he found that the water was copious and cold. From all this you may infer that Mr. Austin May was a bachelor. I have committed myself to no such statement as yet, and May himself would have been the first to term your curiosity—at the present stage of your acquaintance with him—an impertinence. As he turned away from the bath-room the smile of satisfaction died awayupon his lips. Mrs. Eastman was still standing at the door, the incarnation of the custodian, in iron-gray rigidity of dress, and equilateral triangularity of whitefichu.
“Everything seems to be all right, Mrs. Eastman,” said he, graciously. (Behold how simple are the needs of man—give them but fresh water, space, and peace, and their desires are filled; while womankind—are otherwise.)
“Everythingisall right,” broke in Mrs. Eastman, like the offended Vestal deity, at a statement implying contrary possibilities. Then again she congealed.
May looked at her more closely, with a slight shade of annoyance. How was he to get rid of this woman?
“You must have had a sadly lonely life here, Mrs. Eastman,” said he, by way of placation. And lo! the flood-gates were loosened and the tide poured forth. Who ever could have suspected Mrs. Eastman of gregarious instinct? As well have fancied her loquacious. As Moses’s wand upon the rock of Horeb, so an adroit phrase addressed to womankind.
“I have not complained, Mr. May; andnobody can say that I haven’t done by you as if it were my own house that I was living in, and the water-back out of order all the time, and the pipes freezing all the winter; and Mr. Eastman, says he, we must have a furnace fire, and I say no, it ain’t of enough account for us two old people, and so we sit by the kitchen stove, and my sister, Mrs. Tarbox, with her four children and the scarlet fever, over at Roxbury, and nobody to provide for ’em, for John Tarbox—says I to Cynthia when he come up to Augusta from the Provinces (I come from Augusta, Maine, Mr. May), he ain’t but a shiftless fellow, you mark my words, says I; and says she, you let me alone, Miranda, and I’ll do as much by you, s’ she; an’ so it turned out, an’ many’s the time I’ve said to Mr. Eastman, Mr. Eastman, I must go an’ see Cynthia, s’s I, for there she is on her back, with her hands full of children, an’ no one to do for ’em but just John Tarbox; an’ s’s he, Miranda, it would be tempting Providence for you to go with your rheumatism, an’ s’s I, I can’t help that, Mr. Eastman (he’s a member o’ the church, Mr. Eastman), I guess Providence ain’t got no more to say aboutit than my horse-chestnuts in my dress pocket, an’ I always wear flannel next my skin; an’ s’s I, I’d go, come what may, but for Mr. May’s silver, s’s I (I keep it under my bed, Mr. May, and have slept upon it every mortal night since I took this house), an’ I know I saw a moth in the best parlor last week, an’ the furniture not beaten since April; an’ so six weeks gone since I saw my sister; an’ since there’s a foreigner in the kitchen, s’ I to Mr. Eastman, Mr. Eastman——”
“My dear Mrs. Eastman,” interposed May, gently, “I had no idea you thought it necessary to stick so close to the house. Now I beg that you will go at once. My servant will get all I want for dinner. You and Mr. Eastman must both go, and don’t think of coming back before to-morrow—haven’t you any other visits to pay?”
Mrs. Eastman, who had started at the “my dear Mrs. Eastman” as if May had offered to kiss her, admitted, ungraciously, that her husband’s sister lived in Jamaica Plain. But the foreign valet was, evidently, still in her mind; and, after sundry prognostications as to the domestic evils to resultfrom “that man’s” presence in the kitchen, she finally removed herself, with some precipitation, only when May, in desperation, began to take off his coat. Left to himself, May resumed his coat, drew a chair to the window, sighed, and lit a cigarette. Mrs. Eastman’s disappearance was followed by a distant shriek; and shortly afterward there was a slight scratching at the door. May opened it, and the St. Bernard dog walked gravely in and stretched himself by the chair; a certain humorous expression about his square jowl indicating that he had been the cause of the shriek in question. It was a bad quarter of an hour for Mrs. Eastman’s nerves. Fides was the dog’s name, and his master patted his head approvingly.
May sat down again, and his eye roamed over the stretch of green turf, a view broken above by the huge arms of button-wood, and canopies of English elm. Shortly afterward he saw the valet emerge from a side entrance, and step hastily across the lawn into the shade of a great hemlock, where he stood, gesticulating wildly. A minute or two later Mrs. Eastman, in anIndian shawl and purple bonnet, appeared in progress down the carriage-road, limply accompanied by her lord and master. When she disappeared, with her husband and a red and roomy carpet-bag, behind the avenue of elms, the sinuous oriental emerged from the hemlock, and shook his fist. Silence supervened. The prospect of peace emboldened May to light a large cigar. The valet returned to the house, and no sound was audible but the chirping of the birds, the rustle of leaves, and the dignified and heavy breathing of the hound of St. Bernard.