Doctor Vardaman's house was called, in the day when it was built, a
Swiss cottage. It was a story and a half high, with a steep-pitched
roof, garnished with a kind of scalloped wooden lambrequin pendant from
the eaves all around. There were casement-windows with arched tops, and
the whole edifice was painted a dark chocolate-brown in accordance,
no doubt, with the best Swiss models--at least we never questioned
the taste of it. It is possible that the charming and faithful Swiss
cottage of to-day may be as much of an offence to the landscape in
twenty-five years--so does the old order change, giving place to new.
Yet it will always be true that a house derives some curious character
from its tenant; the doctor redeemed his cottage; he was the soul of
that misbegotten body. It was shabby and down-at-heel, if you like, but
it was not bourgeois. There was a charm in his unkempt garden, in the
slouching ease of his worn old furniture and carpets, his multitudinous
loose-backed books, his dim family portraits in chipped gilt frames.
He met all hints at alteration or renewal with an indulgent ridicule.
"Fresh paint?" he said. "It would make the house look like a
servant-girl dressed for Sunday!" Or: "Better is a horse-hair sofa with
brass nails than a plush platform-rocker and veneering therewith!" When
the Pallinders moved in, trailing a procession rich as Sheba's past his
little iron gate, the doctor viewed it with an indecipherable smile.
It was in April, a day of light gusty winds, flashes of sunshine
and flashes of rain; and Doctor Vardaman, in his shirt-sleeves, was
trowelling amongst his young plants with what he frequently denounced
as a frantic and futile energy. "I don't know why I do it," he would
say soberly. "Nothing ever grows the better for it; very often nothing
grows at all. The Irishman, the negro, the very Chinaman whom for my
sins I am constrained to employ about the house, have achieved triumphs
in the way of lilies of the valley and young onions that leave me
gasping in defeat. They are ignorant, unwashed, dissolute pagans.
Ling Chee was a spectre soaked in opium; Erastus absconded with all
my clothes, my most cherished razors, and whatever money he could get
at--yet they had but to scratch the ground and lo, the desert blossomed
like the rose! You may see therein the constant allegory of Vice
ascendant and unrewarded Virtue."
He leaned on his spade in an ironically rustic attitude to watch the
Pallinder household goods go by--goods, not gods, for everything, as
he observed, was of a transcendant and sparkling newness. Most of us
live in unacknowledged bondage to certain kind, familiar, sooty, and
begrimed, utterly useless hearthstone deities. We cling shamefaced
to our rickety old relics. The pair of vases that used to stand on
mother's mantelpiece--hideous things they are, too,--the little high
chair that was Johnny's--he died in '87, you remember--who has not seen
this pathetic lumber voyaging helplessly about from house to apartment,
from town to country and back again, hobnobbing peaceably on the rear
of the wagon with flower-stands and the gas-range, retiring at last to
the garret, but somehow never getting as far as the junk-shop? _Sunt
lacrimæ rerum_--as Doctor Vardaman would have said, being somewhat
given to Latin tags after the taste of an older generation. His own
house was crowded with these touching reminders; the Pallinders
went to the other extreme; either they sternly repressed the mushy
sentimentalism that would cherish outworn sticks and stoneware for the
sake of auld lang syne, or they never had had any to cherish. "They
brought nothing into the town with them, and it is certain they took
nothing away," said the doctor afterwards in an awful and irreverent
parody. An aroma of fresh packing-stuff and varnish hung about the
caravan; bright new mirrors swayed and glanced; and, since the fashions
of eighty-one were more or less flamboyant, you might see from afar
the roses, poppies, and what-not that bloomed upon the Pallinder rolls
of new carpet, the gilt and veneered scrolls, knobs, and channellings
of the Pallinder furniture, the Pallinder Tennessee-marble table-tops,
carefully boxed, yet--as one may say in a figure--hallooing aloud for
admiration of their size and costliness. There was one van filled with
hogsheads packed with china; it was whispered that many of the things
had been ordered from New York, but most of them were got in town at
prices that kept the shop-keepers smiling until their bills were sent
in--I am anticipating. The doctor espied the ladies in a carriage at
the end, and bowed with the rather exuberant courtesy taught in his
youth.
Miss Pallinder returned the salutation; Mrs. Botlisch shouted a jovial
"Howdy, Doc.!" Mrs. Pallinder drew back impulsively in a momentary
embarrassment; she emerged almost instantly and recognised him,
triumphantly gracious. But the doctor resumed his digging, inscrutably
grinning at the next shovelful. The fact is, this casual passage
vividly recalled his first encounter with these ladies a few weeks
earlier, upon one of the occasions when they had driven out to inspect
the Gwynne house, before the bargain was closed. Doctor Vardaman, in a
sleeve-waistcoat, for the day was cold, was busily spading up his beds,
when a carriage drew in beside the iron palings.
"I looked up," the old gentleman used thus to recount the incident,
"and saw an exceedingly homely old woman with her bonnet awry; a
moderately good-looking young one with hers as straight as Nature
intended it, and the rest of her clothes, so far as a man may judge,
directly calculated to inspire all other women with despairing envy;
and a very uncommonly handsome middle-aged one, whose clothes made
positively no difference at all, so much did her looks eclipse them. I
saw all these people craning out of their carriage, I say, and in the
distance a cavalier on horseback dashing along after them in a military
style. 'Say, you----' began the homely old one. 'My good man,' says the
middle-aged one, with an ineffable sweet patronage in her tone. 'Will
you take this card in to your master and tell him----' And at that
moment up comes the outrider. He took me in at a glance, jumped off
his horse, splashed through the mud, uncovered with a very gallant and
engaging deference to my years, and: 'Doctor Vardaman?' says he. 'I'm
sure this _is_ Doctor Vardaman, I'm happy to make your acquaintance.
We're going to be your neighbours, I hope, and by gad, sir, you set
us a good example! We find you like--ah--um--Quintilius among his
cabbages. Sir, my name is Pallinder; let me present----' the fellow's
manner was perfect; for the soul of me I couldn't help warming to him.
And if you think it's a poor sort of gratification to be known for a
gentleman, consider how very uncomplimentary it is to be taken for
a servant! 'Lord--_ee_, Bill!' screeched out the old woman. 'Mirandy
thought he was th' hired man! That's one on _you_, Mirandy! Called
him 'my good man,' she did! and went into a choking and gurgling fit
of laughter. Mrs. Pallinder's face turned purple. 'Madame,' says I,
anxious to relieve an unpleasant situation. 'I answer to the noun, but
I'm a little doubtful about the adjective!' We parted in the end with
great protestations on both sides; but Mrs. Pallinder was still red
as they drove off. Sir, she had made a mistake, and she never would
forgive _me_ for it!"
This was the first appearance of the Pallinder family upon our stage.
They had figured brilliantly on a good many others already, as was
discovered some two years later, when occurred their exit; San
Francisco, Denver, Chicago, Louisville, to say nothing of a score of
minor cities knew them, birds of passage. I believe they came from
Memphis in the beginning, that is, if they can be said to have come
from anywhere, or been native to any place. They were emphatically
citizens of the world and called all skies home. I find, upon comparing
recollections with friends of those days that the measures by which the
Pallinders established themselves in our society are, in that phrase
dear to the sedate historian of far weightier matters, shrouded in
the mists of--of antiquity, the historian would say. Yet it is only
twenty-five years, and no one now remembers, or perhaps took note
at the time, exactly how these people who came from everywhere and
nowhere, whom nobody knew, got themselves in the space of six months,
known, liked, and invited far and wide. I fear that solid unornamental
worth such as--let us be frank--yours or mine, would not have
accomplished so much in as many years. Mrs. Pallinder must have done a
deal of social campaigning in those other centres of enlightenment and
culture which I have mentioned, to have become so apt and able; that
little slip with Doctor Vardaman was the only one I ever heard recorded
against her. She never referred to her life and acquaintance elsewhere,
nor traded upon her experiences to advance herself with us; yet she
never seemed to be pushing. She built, as it were, from the ground;
and I have heard very kind and intelligent persons who were not in the
least snobs, comment with astonishment on the headway she contrived
to make coming wholly unknown as she did, and handicapped by such a
mother. The spectacle of wealth allied to feminine beauty, talent, and
virtue, struggling for notice is one with which we are all tolerably
familiar.
It is likely that prehistoric woman in the jungle--not prehistoric
man, for man seems always to have been a creature slothful in social
duties, dull, and democratic in his tastes--demurred at mingling with
the same set as the jungle-lady next door; would not allow the children
to play with the little cave-dwellers across the way; wanted to move
to the choice and exclusive neighbourhood of the Probably-Arboreals,
where she would have better opportunities for meeting those elect
gentry. Nowadays, her grand-daughter goes to church with a praiseworthy
devotion, she subscribes to all the charities, she sends her children
to the most fashionable schools--they are always the best--she takes
courses in French literature, in Current Events, in bridge-playing,
in cooking, yes, she would take them, decent woman as she is, in
bare-back riding and ballet dancing, in everything and anything under
the sun, that will bring her into contact with the charmed circle.
She endures unnumbered snubs, or what is worse, the soul-blighting
frigid politenesses of present-day Probably-Arboreals; she sheds tears
in secret, she nearly drives her husband to drink, or the poorhouse.
And she "gets there," she always gets there, and gleefully proceeds
to visit upon the next aspirant some of the treatment she herself
received. The strange thing is that you, who have been "there" all
your life, who cannot understand her frantic desires, who are disposed
to laugh or sneer at her, you will find her no hustling and elbowing
vulgarian as you imagined, but a very charming woman, as clever and
well bred as you or any of your native-born residents of the purple.
She only wanted to get "there"; already she has forgot that mean
struggle. As high-minded as you are, you too must at least a little
admire Success; and she has displayed as much courage and perseverance
on her shabby battlefield as it takes to conquer a citadel.
All this is by way of calling attention to the really remarkable fact
that Mrs. Pallinder employed none of the tactics just recited; classes
in bridge and Current Events were unknown in her day, and she went to
church neither more nor less than other people. She succeeded, I make
bold to say, as no one ever has before or since. And this, in spite of
the rather unfavourable impression which she and her daughter had made
at the start. I, for one, did not much fancy Gwynne's description of
Miss Pallinder--her name was Mazie--ogling and making fun with a man
like Templeton; I thought her behaviour distinctly _common_. And that
business of taking Gwynne behind the house for a drink of whiskey--out
of the _bottle_, at that!--which does not shock me at all now, was
anathema in my eyes then. These opinions were shared by everybody
who heard the circumstances; what made us change our minds? That is
the mystery. I think now that the Pallinders won upon us by that very
frank gaiety and kindliness that had so touched and attracted Gwynne;
nothing else can account for their popularity. Of course at the end of
their stay everyone simultaneously discovered a number of disagreeable
things; the usual wiseacres went about uttering the usual wisdom of
"I-told-you-so." Colonel Pallinder had always been a man to distrust;
Mrs. Pallinder and her daughter undeniably painted and were too lively
in their manners; there was more poker and mint-julep going freely
behind the Parthenon portals than one ever saw in the best houses;
and Mrs. Botlisch was perfectly intolerable. To be just, however, no
one had ever pretended to think Mrs. Botlisch other than intolerable;
some people even went so far as to say that it was greatly to the
Pallinders' credit that they did not shake off that terrific social
drawback altogether.
The colonel was a big man, with thick flowing grey hair under a
wide-brimmed soft hat; he wore his clothing with a slashing military
picturesqueness--d'Artagnan in a long-skirted black broadcloth coat;
and limped a little from a bullet in the thigh at Missionary Ridge. He
had a handsome office downtown, and was always enthusiastically busy
over the syndicate's affairs; maps of railroads, of iron, salt, coal
and "phosphate" territory in Arkansas and elsewhere adorned his walls;
circulars and prospectuses gushed forth from his place of business as
from a living fountain. Who went up and drank at that sempiternally
flowing spring--who, in plain language, invested with Colonel
Pallinder? Nobody knew; but it was easy to see that investment with
him paid; the Pallinders lived in the spacious ease of an unlimited
income.
I suppose his profession was that of promoting--a pursuit which has
since been compactly described to me as selling you a cullender for
a wash-basin. Socially he took no hand beyond inviting young men to
the house, and within an incredibly short time he did not even have
occasion for that. They went, of their own motion, in droves, like
all the rest of the world. And I will say here, speaking for our
youth, that in spite of the cards and cigarettes and champagne, the
over-eating and over-drinking, the general lax gaiety of that meteoric
two years, I do not believe any of us were materially harmed. We
sincerely liked the Pallinders; we did not merely hanker for their
flesh-pots. And even now, after twenty-five years, and knowing all the
mean and dingy side of their career, I still cherish a fondness for
those hearty, happy, self-indulgent, irresponsible adventurers.
The old Gwynne house now underwent a transformation the nature and
extent of which can best be realised when it is learned that poor old
Caroline Gwynne's room became Miss Mazie Pallinder's; the roses of
Mazie's wall-paper climbed all over that tragic apartment; lace-edged
muslins and flowered cretonne festooned the windows. What with a pillar
obscuring the east window, and a heavy growth of wistaria matted on a
frame in front of the south, you had to feel your way about at broad
noon; and were liable to be suddenly assaulted on the tenderest part
of the shins or ankles by some dastardly rocking-chair, lurking in
the gloom like a Thug, and inadvertently set in motion. Surprises
were pretty frequent in that room; it was not unusual to put your
foot down in a box of chocolate-cream drops or through the parchment
vitals of Mazie's banjo abandoned on the floor. And when you came
face to face with a pale glimmering phantom in a corner it might be
either your own figure reflected in one of the full-length mirrors
liberally distributed around the walls, or Miss Pallinder herself in
an embroidered French night-dress, her favourite afternoon wear. The
other decorations were mostly photographs of Mazie in an astounding
variety of costumes, and her numberless real or supposed conquests.
Young men in regimentals, army or navy; young men in fancy dress,
striking attitudes with a sword, or making a leg in silk tights; young
men with the painfully close-fitting trousers and upright brush of
hair fashionable in the eighties--it was a noble array, that gallery
of Mazie's, particularly when she began to enrich it with certain more
familiar likenesses. There you might see "J. B." Taylor--everybody
called him "J. B."--with the cap and gown he had worn at his last
Commencement; Teddy Johns laughing and showing all his teeth--Teddy
had fine teeth and knew it; Bob Carson, with something written on the
back of the photograph that Mazie made an affectation of not allowing
us to read--we had all seen it nevertheless, and used to wonder if
Bob were really in earnest; Gwynne Peters, whose fair hair did not
come out very well in the photograph, looking startlingly like his
grandfather's portrait, with the same long thick flourish of the pen
under his name as used to adorn the Governor's. "Yours truly, Gwynne
Peters," and the _s_ streeling off in a comet's-tail like the final _e_
of old Samuel Gwynne's signature. All these young fellows frequented
the house; on summer nights they could be heard as they strode away
down Richmond Avenue, proclaiming at the tops of their several sets
of lungs to a smiling world that the moon shone bright on their old
Kentucky-y-y ho-ome, or lamenting in concert that Alas, they were no
swimmers, so they lost their Clementine! Doctor Vardaman heard them as
he sat smoking the pipe of peace in his porch. "God bless the boys!"
the old man used to say to himself with a sigh. Sometimes they stayed
over night, and came yawning downtown to their desks in the morning,
sheepishly evading the paternal scowl, victims of Colonel Pallinder's
strenuous hospitality. If Mazie had no scalps strung at her belt, she
at least displayed the spoils of the vanquished; gloves, bangles, and
bon-bons were hers in profuse supply; when she went away on a visit
she corresponded with all of them, and was reported to be engaged
three deep, to our horrified delight. It is a mistake to suppose that
girls envy one another these light successes; we all admired, and I
am afraid some of us tried to imitate Miss Pallinder. It was to be
noticed that she herself showed an entire impartiality; when no one
else was convenient, she did not hesitate to keep her hand in on Doctor
Vardaman, half in fun of course. The old gentleman made an open joke
of it. "This is the first time I have given away my picture in forty
years," he said; and wrote at the bottom of the card in his neat,
clear, physician's hand: _"Non sum qualis eram_----"
"What does that mean, Doctor?" Mazie asked him suspiciously.
"It is a plaint--the plaint of an elderly sentimentalist like me,"
he answered gravely. "'I am not what once I was in thy day, oh dear
Cynara,' he remarks--in effect. Shall I write the English?"
"No, don't. I think it's ever so much cuter this way. Who was Cynara?"
"Well--ahem----"
"Huh! Bet she wasn't any better than she'd ought to be!" grunted old
Mrs. Botlisch sceptically; whereat the doctor, after a momentary
struggle, laughed so immoderately that we all more than half suspected
she was right.