Mr. Rounders,' said I; 'and while I have nothing to do with it, and do
not want to know anything about it, I do not wish to force you into an
unpleasant position, and if you would rather go away while Mr. Rounders
is here, I will have some one sent to take your place until he leaves.
Then we shall want you back again. In this unusual position you have
acquitted yourself most admirably.'
"While I was speaking Isadore had been thinking hard and fast; it was
easy to see this by the varied expressions which swept over his face.
When I had finished he spoke quite blandly:
"'It is that it would be beneath me, sir, to allow any of the dislike
of mine to interfere with the comfort or the pleasure of yourself and
madame. I beg that you will not believe that I will permit myself even
to think of such a thing. I remain so long as it is that you wish me. Is
it that you intend that your visitor shall know my position in your town
house?'
"'Oh, no,' said I; 'as I have not told my wife, of course I shall not
tell him. I am much obliged to you for your willingness to stay. It
would be very awkward if you should go.'
"'I understand that, sir,' said Isaac, 'and I would do not one thing to
discompose madame or yourself.'
"Rounders arrived according to schedule, and I met him at the gate, and
explained that my wife insisted it would be incongruous for a carriage
to drive up to the cot. 'I like that!' exclaimed Rounders. 'I like to
walk a little.' I took up one of his valises, the good Isaac carried the
two larger ones, while Rounders, with an apologetic look from right to
left, as if there might be some person present to whom this action
should be explained, took up some canes and umbrellas wrapped in a rug,
and we all went down to the cot, where Anita was waiting to receive us.
"'Oh, I like this,' said Rounders, quite cheerfully. 'I do not know when
I have gone anywhere without some of my people. But I assure you I like
it. At the bottom of our hearts we all like this sort of thing.'
"Anita showed him everything, and probably bored him dreadfully; but our
guest was determined to be pleased, and never ceased to say how much he
liked everything. There was no foolish pride about him, he said; he
believed in coming close to nature; and although a great many of the
peaceful joys of humanity were denied the man of affairs, still, when
the opportunity came, how gladly our inward natures rose up to welcome
it! 'Your wife tells me,' said he, 'that she is cook, housekeeper,
everything. This is charming! It must be a joy to you to know she is
capable of it. But, my dear friend,' he said, putting his hand on my
shoulder, 'you must not let her overwork herself. She will be very apt
to do it; the temptation is great. I am sure if I were she the
temptation to overwork in these new spheres would be very great.'
"Rounders certainly did overwork himself, and this was in the line of
trying to make us believe that he thoroughly liked this plan of ours of
living in a cot by a rill, and that he was quite capable of forgetting
his ordinary life of affluence and luxury in the simple joys of our
rural household. He would have produced an impression on both Anita and
me if he had not said so much about it; but I knew what he was trying to
do, and made all the necessary allowances for him.
"But, say what he might, I knew he was not satisfied. I could see that
he missed his 'people,' by whom he was accustomed to be surrounded and
served; and I soon found out that his meals did not suit him. Anita
visited the kitchen much more frequently than she had done just before
Rounders arrived, and she talked a great deal about the dishes which
were served to us; but, so far as I could judge, she had no more to do
with their preparation than she had previously had. I was thoroughly
well satisfied with everything; and, although Rounders was not, it was
impossible for him to say so when he sat opposite the lady who told him
two or three times at every meal that she presided in the kitchen. Of
course I would have done everything in my power to give Rounders things
to eat that he liked, but I did not know what to do. Our table was just
as good, though not as varied, as it was when we were in town; and that
Rounders was accustomed to living better than we did I could not for one
moment believe. I came to the conclusion that, in spite of his efforts
to subdue his dominating habit, he could not resist the temptation to
let us know that he was not used to humble life, or even the appearance
of it.
"So I enjoyed our three good meals a day,--Anita would not allow us any
more,--which were prepared by one of the best cooks on the continent
from the choicest materials furnished regularly under Baxter's orders;
and if Rounders chose to think that what was good enough for me was not
good enough for him, he must go his own way and suffer accordingly. In
fortune and in station I was so immeasurably superior to him that it
nettled me a little to see him put on airs at the table to which I had
invited him. But Rounders was Rounders, and I did not allow my
irritation to continue.
"In two or three days our visitor's overwork began to show on him: his
naturally plump cheeks hung down, his eyes drooped, and, although he
drank a great deal of wine, he was seldom in good spirits. On the fourth
day of his visit, after the morning mail had been brought to us by
Isaac, Rounders came to me and told me he had just received a letter
which would make it necessary for him to go home that afternoon. I
expressed my regret, but did not urge him to stay, for it was obvious
that he wanted to go. 'I have had a most delightful time,' he said, as
he took leave of Anita; 'but business is business, and I cannot put it
aside.'
"I believed both these statements to be incorrect: I knew that at that
season he was not likely to be called away on business, and he had given
me no reason to suppose he was enjoying himself; and as I walked with
him to the gate I am afraid I was only stiffly polite. Our spirits rose
after his departure. Anita said she had found him an incongruity, and I
was tired of the spectacle of a purse-proud man trying to appear like
other people. But if I were harsh in my judgment of him I was speedily
punished. On the third day after he left I received a message from
Baxter, who wanted to see me at Baldwin's tent. He was not allowed to
come into the grounds, for Anita said that would look too much like
business.
"I found that Baxter's errand was indeed urgent, and that he was fully
warranted in disturbing our privacy. The members of an English syndicate
were coming down from Canada to make final arrangements with me for the
purchase of a great tract of mining land, and as my presence and
signature were absolutely necessary in the concluding stages of the
transaction, I would be obliged to be in New York on the next day but
one.
"I was greatly annoyed by this intelligence. The weather was
particularly fine, Anita was reading me a most interesting novel, and I
was settling myself down to a thorough enjoyment of our cottage life,
which I did not wish interfered with by anybody or anything, and I
growlingly asked why the syndicate had chosen such an unsuitable time of
the year to come down from Canada. But Baxter did not know. I continued
to growl, but there was no way out of it. I must go to New York. For the
sake of perhaps half a million dollars, which would not alter our
ordinary manner of living, which would not give us any pleasures,
privileges, or advantages of any kind which we did not now possess, we
must break up our delightful life at the cot and rill, and go back to
the humdrum of ordinary society.
"Baxter tried to console me. He said we could easily return when this
business had been settled. But I knew that going away would break the
charm; I thoroughly understood Anita's nature, and I was sure if she
left the cot for a time she would not want to go back to it. But when I
told her Baxter's business, and that she would have to have some one
come and pack up for her, she flatly declared that no one should do
anything of the kind. She would stay where she was.
"'You can't stay here by yourself!' I cried.
"'Of course not,' she said. 'Who could imagine such an absurdity? But I
shall not be alone. I was thinking this very morning of Fanny Ransmore
and her mother. I want some women guests this time, and they would be
delightful after Mr. Rounders. Fanny is as lively as a cricket, and
Mrs. Ransmore could take care of anybody. You can tell Baxter to have
some one to patrol the grounds at night, and we shall get along
beautifully. I am sure you will not be away long.'
"'But can you get the Ransmores?' I asked.
"'Certainly,' said she. 'They are at Newport now; but I will telegraph
immediately, and they can start to-night and get here to-morrow
afternoon. You need not be afraid they cannot come. They would give up
any engagement on earth to be our only guests.'
"The matter was settled according to Anita's plan, and I was more
willing to go to New York when I reflected that after the Ransmores came
Anita would not be able to read aloud to me."
"At this point," said the Master of the House, "your hero makes me
angry. Why should he think he could not go away and leave his wife for
three days, when I leave my wife, and daughter too, for three years? His
Anita is not worth one twentieth as much as either my wife or daughter.
Then again, if I were in his place, I would not allow a disadvantageous
half-million to take me away from you two. It is only the absolutely
necessary thousands that make me leave you as I do."
"Your sentiments are just as nice as they can be, papa," said the
Daughter of the House; "but don't you see if the gentleman did what you
would do it would spoil the story?"
John Gayther smiled with pleasure. Here was a young lady who never
forgot the principle of the thing, whatever the thing might be.
"That is true!" exclaimed the captain, stretching himself at full length
in his chair. "I did not think of that. Madam, please proceed; let the
King of Siam recommence his performances."
"I will merely remark," said the Mistress of the House, "that if the
King of Siam undertook to emulate my hero in all his performances, it
would be a pretty hard thing for his already overtaxed subjects.
"The Ransmores arrived on time, and were as delighted with the
invitation as Anita had said they would be. According to her orders,
neither of them brought a maid, which must have been pretty hard on the
old lady; but they declared that the fun of waiting on themselves would
be greater than anything Newport could possibly offer them.
"I went to New York, attended to my business, which occupied me for
three days, and then I thought this would be a good opportunity to take
a trip to Philadelphia to look at a large steam-yacht which was in
course of construction at the shipyards there. I did not feel in such a
hurry to go back to the cot now that the Ransmores were there, and I was
sure also that Anita would like to hear about the new yacht, in which we
hoped to make a Mediterranean voyage during the winter. But early in the
forenoon of my second day in Philadelphia, while I was engaged in a
consultation concerning some of the interior fittings of the yacht, I
received a telegram from Baxter informing me that my wife had returned
from the cot on the previous evening, and was now at our town house. At
this surprising intelligence I dropped the business in hand and went to
New York by the first train.
"'Of course,' said Anita, when we were alone, 'I will tell you why I
left that precious cot. We had a very good time after you left, and I
showed the Ransmores everything. The next day Fanny and I determined to
go fishing, leaving Mrs. Ransmore to read novels in a hammock, an
occupation she adores. Isaac was just as good as he could be all the
time; he got rods for us, and made us some beautiful bait out of raw
beef, for of course we did not want to handle worms; and we started for
the river. We had just reached a place where we could see the water,
when Fanny called out that somebody had a chicken-yard there, and that
we would have to go around it. We walked ever and ever so far, over all
sorts of stones and bushes, until we made up our minds we were inside a
chicken-yard and not outside, and so we could not get around it. I was
very much put out, and did not like it a bit because we could not reach
the river; but Fanny saw through it all, and said she was sure the fence
had been put there to keep all sorts of things from disturbing us; and
then she proposed fishing in the rill.
"'We tried this a long time, but not a bite could we get; and then Fanny
went wandering up the stream to see if she could find a spring, because
she said she had heard that trout were often found in cold streams.
After a while she came running back, and said she had found the spring,
and what on earth did I think it was? She had soon come to what seemed
to be the upper end of the rill, and went down on her hands and knees
and looked under the edge of a great flat rock, and there she saw the
end of an iron pipe through which the water was running. When I heard
this I threw down my fishing-rod and would have nothing to do with an
artificial rill. I remembered then that I had thought, two or three
times, it had improved very much since I had first seen it; and when I
asked Mr. Baxter about it last night, he said the original rill had not
water enough in it for the little cataracts and ponds, and all that, and
so he had brought down water from some other stream about half a mile
away.
"'When we went back to the cot Fanny seemed to have her suspicions
excited, and she pried into everything, and soon told me that the
furniture and all the things in the cot were only imitation of the
things plain country people use, and were, in reality, of the best
materials and wonderfully well made, and that it must have cost a lot of
money to buy all these imitations of old-fashioned, poor-folksy things.
Then she went into the garden and peered about, and told Isaac, who was
working there, that she had never seen so many different kinds of
vegetables all ripe at the same time. He touched his cap, and said that
was a compliment to his gardening. But pretty soon she saw the edge of a
flower-pot sticking above the ground, and showed it to me. I made him
dig up whole beds of things, and there was nothing but pots and pots, in
which everything was growing.
"'I went back to the house and looked about a good deal more, with Fanny
at my elbow to tell me how poor people would never have this or that or
the other thing. Then I was very angry with myself for not being able to
see things without having them pointed out to me by that Fanny Ransmore,
who was not invited to pry about and make herself disagreeable in that
way.'
"'And were you angry with me?' I asked.
"'Yes,' she answered; 'for a little while. But when I remembered the
plans I had made I thought we were about square, and that I had
concealed as much from you as you had from me. I was not angry, but I
was determined I would not stay in that mock-cot any longer. I could not
bear the sight of anything I looked at. I thought the quickest way of
settling the matter was to get rid of the whole business at once, and I
told Isaac to put a crowbar under the kitchen stove, which was full of
burning wood, and turn it over. But he was horrified, and said he might
be arrested and put in prison for doing that; and, besides, it would be
such a shame to waste so many beautiful things. Fanny and her mother
thought so, too. And I asked Isaac where the family lived who used to
own the cot, and he said they were still at the hotel, not being able to
find any suitable quarters. So I sent for the widow and her daughter and
son, and I told them to take the cot just as it was, and to keep it
forever, and I would have Mr. Maxwell make out the law papers. They went
about shouting with delight at everything they saw, very different from
that Fanny! So it was really a very nice thing to do, and I feel a great
deal better. And here I am, and you will find Fanny and her mother
somewhere in the house whenever you want to see them. After this I think
it will be better for us both not to try any affectionate frauds on each
other.'
"I was very glad the investigating Fanny had not discovered all my
affectionate frauds, and that I was able myself to reveal to Anita the
identity of the useful Isaac. This did amaze her, and for a moment I
thought she was going to cry; but she was not in the habit of doing much
of that sort of thing, and presently she laughed. 'Monsieur Isadore,'
she exclaimed, 'working in the garden and washing pots and pans! Why,
don't you know some people think he is almost as good as our head chef
Leonard?'
"'As good!' I cried. 'He is infinitely better. Leonard could never have
done for us what our good Isaac did. And now I must tell you a story
about Isadore that Baxter related to me this morning as we drove up from
the station.' I then told her the story of Isadore alias Isaac--of his
dislike for Mr. Rounders, and of the noble manner in which he had
determined to stand by us when he heard that gentleman was about to
visit us. 'After Rounders's arrival,' I remarked, 'things went on
apparently as well as before--'
[Illustration: "I made him dig up whole beds of things."]
"'Apparently!' Anita interrupted. 'They went on better than before. I
let Isaac, as we called him, do a great deal more of the cooking than he
did before Mr. Rounders came. I thought our meals were remarkably good,
and if Mr. Rounders did not like them, as I sometimes thought he did
not, I believed it was because he could not help putting on airs even to
us.'
"I laughed. 'Well,' said I, 'the state of the case was this: during the
whole time Rounders stayed with us, Isadore did not cook one particle of
food for him.'
"'That was impossible,' cried Anita. 'I noticed nothing of the kind,
and, besides, Mr. Rounders would have found it out immediately.'
"'Of course neither of us noticed it,' said I, 'for Isadore did not
serve us with any of the things he gave to Rounders. And as for the
latter discovering that he was eating his food raw, he had no idea that
such was the case. He supposed he was eating what we ate, and therefore
did not like to say anything about it.'
"'But I do not understand!' cried Anita. 'How could any one eat things
and not know they were uncooked?'
"'You do not understand,' said I, 'because you do not comprehend the
deep and wonderful art of Isadore. Baxter tried to explain some of it to
me as he heard it from the lips of the chef himself, but I do not know
enough of kitchen magic to understand it. As Isadore waited on us, he
was able to bring us well-prepared food, and to give Mr. Rounders
something very different, but which looked just like that we had. Even
his coffee was served in a cup heated hot in the oven, while the coffee
itself had merely been warmed. I cannot explain all these uncooked
meals, and if you want to know more you must ask Isadore himself. But
Baxter told me that spices and condiments must have been used with
wonderful effect, and that the poor man must have lived mostly on
biscuits. Isadore said that all his life he would laugh when he thought
of Mr. Rounders trying to eat a chicken croquette the inside of which
was perfectly raw, while the outside smoked, and looking at the same
time with astonishment at you and me as we quietly ate what seemed to be
exactly like the thing he had on his plate.'
"'But, Harold,' said Anita, 'that was a shameful way to treat our
guest!'
"'That is what Baxter said to Isadore; but the cook excused himself by
stating that all this happened in a cot, in a dear little cot, where
everything was different from everything else in the world, and where he
had tried to make you and me happy, and where he himself had been so
happy, especially when he saw Mr. Rounders trying to eat chicken
croquettes. He was also so pleased with the life at the cot that he is
going to have one of his own when he goes back to Alsace, which will be
shortly, as he has made enough to satisfy his wants, and he intends to
retire there and be happy in a cot.'
"Anita reflected for a few moments, and then she said: 'I think life in
a cot might be very happy indeed--for Isaac.'"
With this the Mistress of the House rose from her chair.
"Is that at all?" exclaimed her daughter. "There are several things I
want to know."
"That is all," replied the story-teller. "Like the good King of Siam, I
consider my already overtaxed subjects." And with this she went into the
house.
"Do either of you suppose," remarked the Master of the House, "that that
Anita woman gave the whole of that great estate to the widow and her two
children? How much land do you think, John Gayther, was enclosed inside
that chicken wire?"
"I have been calculating it in my head," replied the gardener, "and it
must have been over a thousand acres. And for my part, sir, I don't
believe it was all given to the widow. When Mr. Baxter came to attend to
the papers I think he made over the cot and about seven acres of land,
which was quite enough to be attended to by a half-grown boy."
"That is my opinion, too," said the Daughter of the House, "and I think
that the opulent owner of that great estate made a deer-park of the rest
of it, with reindeer, fallow deer, red deer, stags, and all sorts of
deer, and not one of them able to jump over the wire."
"Ah, me!" said the captain, rising and folding his arms as he leaned his
broad back against a pillar of the summer-house, "these great volcanoes
of wealth, always in eruption, always squirting out town houses, country
houses, butlers, chefs, under-chefs, diamonds, lady's-maids, horses,
carriages, seaside gardens, thousand-acre poultry-yards, private
sidewalks, and clouds of money which obscure the sun, daze my eyes and
amaze my soul! John Gayther, I wish you would send me one of your
turnip-hoers; I want him to take my second-best shoes to be mended."
THIS STORY IS TOLD BY
THE MASTER OF THE HOUSE
AND IS CALLED
THE GILDED IDOL AND THE
KING CONCH-SHELL
V
THE GILDED IDOL AND THE KING CONCH-SHELL
The rose-vines were running riot over the old garden wall, and as it
was now midsummer and the season of their full bloom had passed, John
Gayther set to work one morning to prune and train them. The idea of
doing this was forcibly impressed upon his mind that day by the fact
that the Mistress of the House had returned the evening before, and he
knew that she would notice the untidy appearance of the rose-vines as
soon as it should please her to come into the garden. The family had
been at the sea-shore for nearly two weeks, and the gardener had missed
them sorely, especially the Daughter of the House. They had now all
returned, and the butler had told him that they had brought with them a
visitor, a Frenchman. John Gayther, whose mind was always full of the
Daughter of the House, immediately inquired if he was young; but the
butler's answer was unsatisfactory, as he said the gentleman was neither
young nor old, and talked queer English. As the butler himself--who was
English--talked what seemed to the gardener queer English, John did not
lay much stress upon that statement.
He was soon to make his own observations, however, for a sweet voice he
knew well called out to him: "We are all back, John, in the dear old
garden!"
John turned, and found four persons had come up quietly and were
watching his work. He returned the cordial greetings of the family, and
then the Master of the House informally introduced their companion. "We
have a foreign gentleman with us, John; he belongs to the same nation as
your great hero Lafayette, and therefore I know you will be pleased to
have him join our story-telling party. For it has been decided by the
ruling power in this house that a story is to be told this morning; so
leave your vines, and come with us."
John was obliged to follow as the party took the path to the
summer-house, but he went unwillingly. Lafayette was a great and good
man, but it did not follow that all his countrymen were of that sort;
and, in fact, John knew but little about Frenchmen. He immediately
conceived a dislike to this one as he saw him walking by the side of the
Daughter of the House and evidently pleased with her company. He greatly
disliked the idea of telling a story to this stranger, and determined it
should not be made interesting.