"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 thetable 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 tellme, 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?"
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 wouldsometimes 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 theMaid of the Mistlike 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 manœuvre, 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, thecolonel 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 homœop., anyhow. I don't like homœops. 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 adoctorto take care ofme. 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 hearme?' '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 goto 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 tolive, 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,Idon'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 trulyremarkable 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 havealwayshad 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 architector 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 toldhimhe 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 asAstarteat the Charity Ball? She twinkled all over with jewelled stars, serpents, rings, ear-drops, gew-gaws anyAstartemight have been proud to own—"goddess excellentlybright!" 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 theState 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 asFollyin a white dress with spangles—glittering fringes of white beads half a yard deep. Kitty Oldham appeared asDiana Vernon—"I can wear the big hat withfeathers 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, andAstarte'spopularity was not greatly increased thereby.
I remember driving home with Mazie to luncheon a day or so later, and coming unexpectedly upon a decent-lookingyoung man sitting timidly amongst the gilt legs and peacock-blue upholstery of Mrs. Pallinder's parlour, waiting to "interview" that lady. He represented theState 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 theJournalto publish a photograph of her in the costume.
"La me,Idon'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 redcapote, 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."
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 theState Journala 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 12P. 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 toinquire, 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 theJournal, theRecord, theEvening 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 theGwynne 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. "Hisoffice! 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 didnotcost five thousand dollars. It cost—ah—well, gentlemen, it was a present to my wifeon 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 didnotcost 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 thegate, somebody bounced out of hiding and ''Alt!' says he, in a shrill voice. ''Alt!' That fellow Huddesley is English, you know, and drops hish'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 manœuvring 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 theJournalman 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 MistherHuddesley, 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; itwasa 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 theState 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, 201Richmond Avenue. Take Lexington and Amherst Street cars."
The clerk in theJournaloffice 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!'"
"'When you and I behind the Veil are passed,Oh, but the long, long while the World shall last!'"
"'When you and I behind the Veil are passed,Oh, but the long, long while the World shall last!'"
"'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, thatgrim, 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 littledinners; 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.
[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.
[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.
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 shewasvisiting 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 tothe 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, dodrivehim 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 youyet?' I never ask any more how much hedidmake—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, inmyoffice, 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 asit 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. "Isthatit? Well, I don't know why I'm surprised—I might have suspected as much—in fact, Ihavesuspected 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 ColonelPallinder'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;Idon'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 wontto 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 trickhim; 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. GwynnePeters." 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 hetold 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 aboutnow? 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 whatisthe 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—abstractlyright—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 whatIthink," Gwynne interrupted eagerly. "It's as much a point of what'sbestto do as of what's rigorouslyrightto 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 waseasy 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—youcan't. I'm one of the heirs—I've got aright——"
"Cousin Steven, if you'll just listen a minute," Gwynne began with an effort.
"You can't stop me—I've got aright—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 shallnotgo 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 dignityin 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 askingyou, 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,tellhim 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, pettifogginglittle 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 toyou, 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 Gwynneet 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, andought'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 toseethat 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 alawyer, and won't doanything—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, yousee, 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 acent, for over a year, and he won'tdoanything! He ought to sue, oughtn't he, John?"
"Why, Lord bless me, Steven,Idon't know," said thedoctor, 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'dbring 'em to time, ifIhad 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—yourproperty—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 Ihave—I have for a year, and look how he's managed it!" cried Steven; he looked from the doctor to Gwynnein 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—acreatureof Gwynne's!" cried Steven angrily. "He's no better than a—a mercenary—a—a hired bravo!"