"I'm not so rich yet, as riches go in these days, that you need be
alarmed," I said.
She looked at me helplessly a moment.
"I feel that it isn't--right, somehow, that you'll pay for it, that we'll
pay for it. Goodness knows, we have everything we want, and more too.
This house--this house is real, and I'm afraid that won't be a home,
won't be real. That we'll be overwhelmed with--with things!"...
She was interrupted by the entrance of the children. But after dinner,
when she had seen them to bed, as was her custom, she came downstairs
into my study and said quietly:--"I was wrong, Hugh. If you want to build
a house, if you feel that you'd be happier, I have no right to object. Of
course my sentiment for this house is natural, the children were born
here, but I've realized we couldn't live here always."
"I'm glad you look at it that way," I replied. "Why, we're already
getting cramped, Maude, and now you're going to have a governess I don't
know where you'd put her."
"Not too large, a house," she pleaded. "I know you think I'm silly, but
this extravagance we see everywhere does make me uneasy. Perhaps it's
because I'm provincial, and always shall be."
"Well, we must have a house large enough to be comfortable in," I said.
"There's no reason why we shouldn't be comfortable." I thought it as well
not to confess my ambitions, and I was greatly relieved that she did not
reproach me for buying the lot without consulting her. Indeed, I was
grateful for this unanticipated acquiescence, I felt nearer to her, than
I had for a long time. I drew up another chair to my desk.
"Sit down and we'll make a few sketches, just for fun," I urged.
"Hugh," she said presently, as we were blacking out prospective rooms,
"do you remember all those drawings and plans we made in England, on our
wedding trip, and how we knew just what we wanted, and changed our minds
every few days? And now we're ready to build, and haven't any ideas at
all!"
"Yes," I answered--but I did not look at her.
"I have the book still--it's in the attic somewhere, packed away in a
box. I suppose those plans would seem ridiculous now."
It was quite true,--now that we were ready to build the home that had
been deferred so long, now that I had the money to spend without stint on
its construction, the irony of life had deprived me of those strong
desires and predilections I had known on my wedding trip. What a joy it
would have been to build then! But now I found myself: wholly lacking in
definite ideas as to style and construction. Secretly, I looked forward
to certain luxuries, such as a bedroom and dressing-room and warm tiled
bathroom all to myself bachelor privacies for which I had longed. Two
mornings later at the breakfast table Maude asked me if I had thought of
an architect.
"Why, Archie Lammerton, I suppose. Who else is there? Have you anyone
else in mind?"
"N-no," said Maude. "But I heard of such a clever man in Boston, who
doesn't charge Mr. Lammerton's prices; and who designs such beautiful
private houses."
"But we can afford to pay Lammerton's prices," I replied, smiling. "And
why shouldn't we have the best?"
"Are you sure--he is the best, Hugh?"
"Everybody has him," I said.
Maude smiled in return.
"I suppose that's a good reason," she answered.
"Of course it's a good reason," I assured her. "These people--the people
we know--wouldn't have had Lammerton unless he was satisfactory. What's
the matter with his houses?"
"Well," said Maude, "they're not very original. I don't say they're not
good, in away, but they lack a certain imagination. It's difficult for me
to express what I mean, 'machine made' isn't precisely the idea, but
there should be a certain irregularity in art--shouldn't there? I saw a
reproduction in one of the architectural journals of a house in Boston by
a man named Frey, that seemed to me to have great charm."
Here was Lucia, unmistakably.
"That's all very well," I said impatiently, "but when one has to live in
a house, one wants something more than artistic irregularity. Lammerton
knows how to build for everyday existence; he's a practical man, as well
as a man of taste, he may not be a Christopher Wrenn, but he understands
conveniences and comforts. His chimneys don't smoke, his windows are
tight, he knows what systems of heating are the best, and whom to go to:
he knows what good plumbing is. I'm rather surprised you don't appreciate
that, Maude, you're so particular as to what kind of rooms the children
shall have, and you want a schoolroom-nursery with all the latest
devices, with sun and ventilation. The Berringers wouldn't have had him,
the Hollisters and Dickinsons wouldn't have had him if his work lacked
taste."
"And Nancy wouldn't have had him," added Maude, and she smiled once more.
"Well, I haven't consulted Nancy, or anyone else," I replied--a little
tartly, perhaps. "You don't seem to realize that some fashions may have a
basis of reason. They are not all silly, as Lucia seems to think. If
Lammerton builds satisfactory houses, he ought to be forgiven for being
the fashion, he ought to have a chance." I got up to leave. "Let's see
what kind of a plan he'll draw up, at any rate."
Her glance was almost indulgent.
"Of course, Hugh. I want you to be satisfied, to be pleased," she said.
"And you?" I questioned, "you are to live in the house more than I."
"Oh, I'm sure it will turn out all right," she replied. "Now you'd better
run along, I know you're late."
"I am late," I admitted, rather lamely. "If you don't care for
Lammerton's drawings, we'll get another architect."
Several years before Mr. Lammerton had arrived among us with a Beaux Arts
moustache and letters of introduction to Mrs. Durrett and others. We
found him the most adaptable, the most accommodating of young men, always
ready to donate his talents and his services to private theatricals,
tableaux, and fancy-dress balls, to take a place at a table at the last
moment. One of his most appealing attributes was his "belief" in our
city,--a form of patriotism that culminated, in later years, in "million
population" clubs. I have often heard him declare, when the ladies had
left the dining-room, that there was positively no limit to our future
growth; and, incidentally, to our future wealth. Such sentiments as these
could not fail to add to any man's popularity, and his success was a
foregone conclusion. Almost before we knew it he was building the new
Union Station of which he had foreseen the need, to take care of the
millions to which our population was to be swelled; building the new Post
Office that the unceasing efforts of Theodore Watling finally procured
for us: building, indeed, Nancy's new house, the largest of our private
mansions save Mr. Scherer's, a commission that had immediately brought
about others from the Dickinsons and the Berringers.... That very day I
called on him in his offices at the top of one of our new buildings,
where many young draftsmen were bending over their boards. I was ushered
into his private studio.
"I suppose you want something handsome, Hugh," he said, looking at me
over his cigarette, "something commensurate with these fees I hear you
are getting."
"Well, I want to be comfortable," I admitted.
We lunched at the Club together, where we talked over the requirements.
When he came to dinner the next week and spread out his sketch on the
living-room table Maude drew in her breath.
"Why, Hugh," she exclaimed in dismay, "it's as big as--as big as the
White House!"
"Not quite," I answered, laughing with Archie. "We may as well take our
ease in our old age."
"Take our ease!" echoed Maude. "We'll rattle 'round in it. I'll never get
used to it."
"After a month, Mrs. Paret, I'll wager you'll be wondering how you ever
got along without it," said Archie.
It was not as big as the White House, yet it could not be called small. I
had seen, to that. The long facade was imposing, dignified, with a touch
of conventionality and solidity in keeping with my standing in the city.
It was Georgian, of plum-coloured brick with marble trimmings and marble
wedges over the ample windows, some years later I saw the house by
Ferguson, of New York, from which Archie had cribbed it. At one end, off
the dining-room, was a semicircular conservatory. There was a small
portico, with marble pillars, and in the ample, swift sloping roof many
dormers; servants' rooms, Archie explained. The look of anxiety on
Maude's face deepened as he went over the floor plans, the
reception-room; dining room to seat thirty, the servants' hall; and
upstairs Maude's room, boudoir and bath and dress closet, my "apartments"
adjoining on one side and the children's on the other, and the
guest-rooms with baths....
Maude surrendered, as one who gives way to the inevitable. When the
actual building began we both of us experienced, I think; a certain mild
excitement; and walked out there, sometimes with the children, in the
spring evenings, and on Sunday afternoons. "Excitement" is, perhaps, too
strong a word for my feelings: there was a pleasurable anticipation on my
part, a looking forward to a more decorous, a more luxurious existence; a
certain impatience at the delays inevitable in building. But a new legal
commercial enterprise of magnitude began to absorb me at his time, and
somehow the building of this home--the first that we possessed was not
the event it should have been; there were moments when I felt cheated,
when I wondered what had become of that capacity for enjoyment which in
my youth had been so keen. I remember indeed, one grey evening when I
went there alone, after the workmen had departed, and stood in the litter
of mortar and bricks and boards gazing at the completed front of the
house. It was even larger than I had imagined it from the plans; in the
Summer twilight there was an air about it,--if not precisely menacing, at
least portentous, with its gaping windows and towering roof. I was a
little tired from a hard day; I had the odd feeding of having raised up
something with which--momentarily at least--I doubted my ability to cope:
something huge, impersonal; something that ought to have represented a
fireside, a sanctuary, and yet was the embodiment of an element quite
alien to the home; a restless element with which our American atmosphere
had, by invisible degrees, become charged. As I stared at it, the odd
fancy seized me that the building somehow typified my own career.... I
had gained something, in truth, but had I not also missed something?
something a different home would have embodied?
Maude and the children had gone, to the seaside.
With a vague uneasiness I turned away from the contemplation of those
walls. The companion mansions were closed, their blinds tightly drawn;
the neighbourhood was as quiet as the country, save for a slight but
persistent noise that impressed itself on my consciousness. I walked
around the house to spy in the back yard; a young girl rather stealthily
gathering laths, and fragments of joists and flooring, and loading them
into a child's express-wagon. She started when she saw me. She was
little, more than a child, and the loose calico dress she wore seemed to
emphasize her thinness. She stood stock-still, staring at me with
frightened yet defiant eyes. I, too, felt a strange timidity in her
presence.
"Why do you stop?" I asked at length.
"Say, is this your heap?" she demanded.
I acknowledged it. A hint of awe widened her eyes. Then site glanced at
the half-filled wagon.
"This stuff ain't no use to you, is it?"
"No, I'm glad to have you take it."
She shifted to the other foot, but did not continue her gathering. An
impulse seized me, I put down my walkingstick and began picking up pieces
of wood, flinging them into the wagon. I looked at her again, rather
furtively; she had not moved. Her attitude puzzled me, for it was one
neither of surprise nor of protest. The spectacle of the "millionaire"
owner of the house engaged in this menial occupation gave her no thrills.
I finished the loading.
"There!" I said, and drew a dollar bill out of my pocket and gave it to
her. Even then she did not thank me, but took up the wagon tongue and
went off, leaving on me a disheartening impression of numbness, of life
crushed out. I glanced up once more at the mansion I had built for myself
looming in the dusk, and walked hurriedly away....
One afternoon some three weeks after we had moved into the new house, I
came out of the Club, where I had been lunching in conference with
Scherer and two capitalists from New York. It was after four o'clock, the
day was fading, the street lamps were beginning to cast sickly streaks of
jade-coloured light across the slush of the pavements. It was the sight
of this slush (which for a brief half hour that morning had been pure
snow, and had sent Matthew and Moreton and Biddy into ecstasies at the
notion of a "real Christmas"), that brought to my mind the immanence of
the festival, and the fact that I had as yet bought no presents. Such was
the predicament in which I usually found myself on Christmas eve; and it
was not without a certain sense of annoyance at the task thus abruptly
confronting me that I got into my automobile and directed the chauffeur
to the shopping district. The crowds surged along the wet sidewalks and
overflowed into the street, and over the heads of the people I stared at
the blazing shop-windows decked out in Christmas greens. My chauffeur, a
bristly-haired Parisian, blew his horn insolently, men and women jostled
each other to get out of the way, their holiday mood giving place to
resentment as they stared into the windows of the limousine. With the
American inability to sit still I shifted from one corner of the seat to
another, impatient at the slow progress of the machine: and I felt a
certain contempt for human beings, that they should make all this fuss,
burden themselves with all these senseless purchases, for a tradition.
The automobile stopped, and I fought my way across the sidewalk into the
store of that time-honoured firm, Elgin, Yates and Garner, pausing
uncertainly before the very counter where, some ten years before, I had
bought an engagement ring. Young Mr. Garner himself spied me, and handing
over a customer to a tired clerk, hurried forward to greet me, his manner
implying that my entrance was in some sort an event. I had become used to
this aroma of deference.
"What can I show you, Mr. Paret?" he asked.
"I don't know--I'm looking around," I said, vaguely, bewildered by the
glittering baubles by which I was confronted. What did Maude want? While
I was gazing into the case, Mr. Garner opened a safe behind him, laying
before me a large sapphire set with diamonds in a platinum brooch; a
beautiful stone, in the depths of it gleaming a fire like a star in an
arctic sky. I had not given Maude anything of value of late. Decidedly,
this was of value; Mr. Garner named the price glibly; if Mrs. Paret
didn't care for it, it might be brought back or exchanged. I took it,
with a sigh of relief. Leaving the store, I paused on the edge of the
rushing stream of humanity, with the problem of the children's gifts
still to be solved. I thought of my own childhood, when at Christmastide
I had walked with my mother up and down this very street, so changed and
modernized now; recalling that I had had definite desires, desperate
ones; but my imagination failed me when I tried to summon up the emotions
connected with them. I had no desires now: I could buy anything in reason
in the whole street. What did Matthew and Moreton want? and little Biddy?
Maude had not "spoiled" them; but they didn't seem to have any definite
wants. The children made me think, with a sudden softening, of Tom
Peters, and I went into a tobacconist's and bought him a box of expensive
cigars. Then I told the chauffeur to take me to a toy-shop, where I stood
staring through a plate-glass window at the elaborate playthings devised
for the modern children of luxury. In the centre was a toy man-of-war,
three feet in length, with turrets and guns, and propellers and a real
steam-engine. As a boy I should have dreamed about it, schemed for it,
bartered my immortal soul for it. But--if I gave it to Matthew, what was
there for Moreton? A steam locomotive caught my eye, almost as elaborate.
Forcing my way through the doors, I captured a salesman, and from a state
bordering on nervous collapse he became galvanized into an intense
alertness and respect when he understood my desires. He didn't know the
price of the objects in question. He brought the proprietor, an
obsequious little German who, on learning my name, repeated it in every
sentence. For Biddy I chose a doll that was all but human; when held by a
young woman for my inspection, it elicited murmurs of admiration from the
women shoppers by whom we were surrounded. The proprietor promised to
make a special delivery of the three articles before seven o'clock....
Presently the automobile, after speeding up the asphalt of Grant Avenue,
stopped before the new house. In spite of the change that house had made
in my life, in three weeks I had become amazingly used to it; yet I had
an odd feeling that Christmas eve as I stood under the portico with my
key in the door, the same feeling of the impersonality of the place which
I had experienced before. Not that for one moment I would have exchanged
it for the smaller house we had left. I opened the door. How often, in
that other house, I had come in the evening seeking quiet, my brain
occupied with a problem, only to be annoyed by the romping of the
children on the landing above. A noise in one end of it echoed to the
other. But here, as I entered the hall, all was quiet: a dignified,
deep-carpeted stairway swept upward before me, and on either side were
wide, empty rooms; and in the subdued light of one of them I saw a dark
figure moving silently about--the butler. He came forward to relieve me,
deftly, of my hat and overcoat. Well, I had it at last, this
establishment to which I had for so long looked forward. And yet that
evening, as I hesitated in the hall, I somehow was unable to grasp that
it was real and permanent, the very solidity of the walls and doors
paradoxically suggested transientness, the butler a flitting ghost. How
still the place was! Almost oppressively still. I recalled oddly a story
of a peasant who, yearning for the great life, had stumbled upon an empty
palace, its tables set with food in golden dishes. Before two days had
passed he had fled from it in horror back to his crowded cottage and his
drudgery in the fields. Never once had the sense of possession of the
palace been realized. Nor did I feel that I possessed this house, though
I had the deeds of it in my safe and the receipted bills in my files. It
eluded me; seemed, in my, bizarre mood of that evening, almost to mock
me. "You have built me," it seemed to say, "but I am stronger than you,
because you have not earned me." Ridiculous, when the years of my labour
and the size of my bank account were considered! Such, however, is the
verbal expression of my feeling. Was the house empty, after all? Had
something happened? With a slight panicky sensation I climbed the stairs,
with their endless shallow treads, to hurry through the silent hallway to
the schoolroom. Reassuring noises came faintly through the heavy door. I
opened it. Little Biddy was careening round and round, crying
out:--"To-morrow's Chris'mas! Santa Claus is coming tonight."
Matthew was regarding her indulgently, sympathetically, Moreton rather
scornfully. The myth had been exploded for both, but Matthew still hugged
it. That was the difference between them. Maude, seated on the floor,
perceived me first, and glanced up at me with a smile.
"It's father!" she said.
Biddy stopped in the midst of a pirouette. At the age of seven she was
still shy with me, and retreated towards Maude.
"Aren't we going to have a tree, father?" demanded Moreton, aggressively.
"Mother won't tell us--neither will Miss Allsop."
Miss Allsop was their governess.
"Why do you want a tree?" I asked.
"Oh, for Biddy," he said.
"It wouldn't be Christmas without a tree," Matthew declared, "--and Santa
Claus," he added, for his sister's benefit.
"Perhaps Santa Claus, when he sees we've got this big house, will think
we don't need anything, and go on to some poorer children," said Maude.
"You wouldn't blame him if he did that,--would you?"
The response to this appeal cannot be said to have been enthusiastic....
After dinner, when at last all of them were in bed, we dressed the tree;
it might better be said that Maude and Miss Allsop dressed it, while I
gave a perfunctory aid. Both the women took such a joy in the process,
vying with each other in getting effects, and as I watched them eagerly
draping the tinsel and pinning on the glittering ornaments I wondered why
it was that I was unable to find the same joy as they. Thus it had been
every Christmas eve. I was always tired when I got home, and after dinner
relaxation set in.
An electrician had come while we were at the table, and had fastened on
the little electric bulbs which did duty as candles.
"Oh," said Maude, as she stood off to survey the effect, "isn't it
beautiful! Come, Miss Allsop, let's get the presents."
They flew out of the room, and presently hurried back with their arms
full of the usual parcels: parcels from Maude's family in Elkington, from
my own relatives, from the Blackwoods and the Peterses, from Nancy. In
the meantime I had had my own contributions brought up, the man of war,
the locomotive, the big doll. Maude stood staring.
"Hugh, they'll be utterly ruined!" she exclaimed.
"The boys might as well have something instructive," I replied, "and as
for Biddy--nothing's too good for her."
"I might have known you wouldn't forget them, although you are so
busy."....
We filled the three stockings hung by the great fireplace. Then, with a
last lingering look at the brightness of the tree, she stood in the
doorway and turned the electric switch.
"Not before seven to-morrow morning, Miss Allsop," she said. "Hugh, you
will get up, won't you? You mustn't miss seeing them. You can go back to
bed again."