If Gwynne Peters had supposed at the outset that the new tenants
would remain long unacquainted with their set of erratic landlords,
the "quite a few gentlemen and some ladies" whom he had tactfully
refrained from mentioning, he would have been profoundly mistaken; but
in fact he supposed nothing of the sort. He knew his kin too well; and
perhaps shared tacitly Templeton's openly-expressed and most devout
hope that none of them would say or do anything to put the Pallinders
out of the notion of buying the property when the lease should expire.
"They'll want thirty-five or forty thousand, if not more, I'll bet a
doughnut," the agent would say in moments of gloomy confidence; "and
you know, Mr. Peters, the place ain't worth--at least it can't be sold
for--a dollar over twenty-eight, the way times are. I might screw the
colonel up to twenty-nine-fifty--he seems to be a free spender, and
the ladies like the house so much, he'd do anything they want. But,
like as not, just as I've done that and got everything good and going,
Mr. Steven Gwynne will come in with some objection and knock the whole
deal higher than Gilderoy's kite. And when I think of what it will be
to get 'em all combed down and willing to sign--and those children
of Lucien Gwynne's out in Iowa, you know, they've got to quiet the
title--and Mrs. Montgomery over in Chillicothe, she's another--well,
I suppose there's no use crossing that bridge till we've come to it,
but I tell you sometimes it keeps me awake nights worrying." The
family had fallen into the habit of leaving all the business connected
with THE GWYNNE ESTATE--it must be written thus to furnish some idea
of the proportions it assumed in their minds--to Gwynne's management.
He had just been elevated to the bar; from thence to the bench, and
to whatever corresponds to the woolsack in our judicial system was,
according to them, a short step for a Gwynne. The mantle of his
grandfather had fallen upon his shoulders; they were proud of him in
their extraordinary fashion, which combined hysterical and wholly
unmerited praise with equally hysterical and undeserved blame. For a
while even Gwynne, who had a tolerable sense of humour, took himself
with amazing seriousness. He sat in his office surrounded by that
copious library of the old gentleman's, now grown somewhat out of date,
to be sure, but still impressive by sheer weight and numbers; there
was a photographed copy of the Governor's portrait, inkstand and all,
over his desk, and a massive safe in one corner. It contained at this
time, as Gwynne long years afterward acknowledged to me, with laughter,
nothing but some of the old family silver, forks, trays, ladles, and
what-not blackened with age and neglect sacked up in flannel wherein
the moth made great havoc. "Sam's share, you know," said Gwynne, his
face clouding a little, when his laugh was out. "I had to take care of
it, of course."
Into this august retreat came daily one or another of the young
fellow's connection with inquiries about that property which everyone
of them called in all honesty and simplicity "my house"; and, after
much futile advice, took their leave, commenting on the fact that he
strongly resembled his grandfather, and adjuring him to "remember that
he was a Gwynne." There were so many of them they gave the place a
false air of bustle and business, to which Gwynne used, half in fun,
to attribute his later success--"looked as if I was all balled up with
work, you know, 'rising young lawyer,' and all the rest of it." But,
indeed, I am afraid there were not many affairs of importance going
forward among the calf-bound volumes, and Gwynne defaced more than
one sheet of legal cap., with gross caricatures and idle verses. If
the family took an interest in the fortunes of the house before, it
was redoubled now. To have the place rented at all was a novelty; but
to have it rented to personages of such opulence and distinction as
the Pallinders satisfied the most exact standards; and the colonel's
somewhat vague allusions to his design of ultimately buying it filled
these sanguine souls with delight. Let me do them justice: they would
one and all have indignantly refused thousands from people whom they
deemed unworthy. Have we not seen them rejecting poor Silberberg's
offer with contumely? But Colonel Pallinder with his Virginia accent
and his large manner recalled a generation contemporary with Governor
Gwynne himself, and the traditions of an antique and formal gentility.
The Pallinders were the only people so far who had succeeded in
residing in, and dispensing the hospitalities of the old Gwynne
house without offence to its owners; I think the Gwynnes took a kind
of vicarious pride in the spectacle. One after another, the entire
family called upon them, appraised them, patronised them. They drank
the colonel's fine sherry: they covertly eyed Mrs. Pallinder's suave
beauty, and Mazie's bewildering toilettes; they were at first repelled
and then overpowered by the rich tasteful changes in the ancient rooms;
the peacock-blue plush and old-gold satin in the south parlour; the
crimson wall-paper embossed with gilt figures the size of a cabbage in
the dining-room; the grand piano in the north parlour and piano-lamp
glorious with onyx slabs and pendant glass icicles of prisms--the
Gwynnes saw all these things with an Indian stolidity in the presence
of their tenants, but they came away pleased to the core. They went
down to Gwynne's office--yes, even Mrs. Horace Gwynne went!--and both
figuratively and literally patted him on the back. They were actually
civil to Templeton! Old Steven Gwynne, who had been violently alarmed
at first, supposing that these improvements and furnishings must be
paid for by himself and the rest of the heirs, magically recovered
his tranquillity so soon as he heard that Colonel Pallinder was doing
it all out of his own pocket; he pronounced the wall-paper and new
graining to be in the best of taste, although hardly the equal in
appearance or cost of what Governor Gwynne would have provided. Such
was the Gwynne enthusiasm that I am convinced it must have contributed
largely to the success of the Pallinders with our society; for, after
all, as unstable as they themselves were, the Gwynne position with
us was of the most stable; our city had known them for fifty years.
A family whose men were rigorously confined to the professions--all
except Horace Gwynne, who was in the wholesale grocery business,--a
family which numbered among its members a governor of a State--even
if it also numbered one or more "queer" people--such a family held,
unquestioned, the highest social rank. And Mrs. Horace Gwynne--she was
a daughter of old Bishop Hunter, which may be supposed in a measure to
set off the grocery business--frankly considered herself arbiter not
only of her husband's family, but of society in general as well; and
never doubted that in the matter of assigning people to their caste
and station one blast upon _her_ bugle-horn was worth a thousand men.
She performed her first visit in state and ceremony in her well-ordered
barouche--the Horace Gwynnes were fairly well-to-do, owing, people
said, to Mrs. Horace's implacable thrift--and eying the approaches
to the old house, as she drove up in a highly critical and examining
mood. Her sharp glance noted every change; the carefully-weeded sweep
and circle of the drive, the close-cut lawn and pruned shrubbery
pleased her like an incense to the Governor's memory. The place had not
looked so since his day. There was a length of red carpet down over
the flagged veranda and stone steps such as used to adorn the sacred
threshold thirty years before when she was a young bride just entered
into the family; this trivial thing moved her inexplicably as such
things do, and she descended at the door in a temper of less severity.
It augured well for the pair of ladies within, profanely peering
through their exceedingly high-priced lace curtains and wondering who
on earth the funny little old lady in the chignon and her best black
silk was.
Mazie, as soon as her acquaintance became more extended and intimate,
entertained us with a picturesque and I have no doubt entirely accurate
account of this and other Gwynne visits. If they amused her she was by
far too sharp to let it be seen; not thus do people attain popularity.
Mazie knew when, and in what company, and of what sort of things to
make fun; no gift can be more valuable to the social aspirant. No, Miss
Pallinder, curled up on her flowered-cretonne sofa, nibbling caramels,
and telling us about the Gwynnes, might have posed for the model of the
ingénue, girlish, inexperienced, and youthfully gay. "We didn't know
there was such a large family of Gwynnes," she explained. "Are any of
you related to them? No? They're perfectly lovely people, aren't they?
They've all called on us, and you know I think that's so kind when we
came here such strangers; we were awfully lonesome for a while. If it
hadn't been for Doctor Vardaman, I don't know what we'd have done.
Isn't he the _dearest_ old gentleman? Mamma fairly fell in love with
him at first sight; we have him up to dinner all the time, now. You
know it's such a terrible job for him to get a good servant--I'm sure
I can't see why. I told him he could hire me any day. I suppose it's
because it's a little lonely, and his house must be so quiet. We don't
have any trouble, but then we have such a gang of them they keep each
other company. But you know we were so surprised after people began
to call on us to find out there were so many Gwynnes! Mr. Peters had
said something about them--I think he's _lovely_, don't you? but we
hadn't any idea there was such a big connection; the house belongs
to all of them--did you know that? At least they all call it their
house. Such a dear old lady came--well, maybe not so very old, but
dressed in rather an old-fashioned way--Mrs. Horace Gwynne, of course
you all know her. She was just _sweet_, and took _such_ an interest.
She told mamma the piano ought to be on the other side of the room,
because there was so much better light by that window, and that was
where it always was when Governor Gwynne lived here. And she wanted
to know if we had noticed that those big cut-glass chandeliers in the
centre of the ceilings downstairs were an exact copy, only smaller,
of the one in the State-House--that was being built at the same time
as this house, and the Governor had the copies made, he admired the
design so much. Isn't that _interesting_? And then mamma had one of
the servants bring some hot coffee and little cakes, the way we always
do, you know, and Mrs. Gwynne told us about some kind of cookies she
has made that are the best she ever ate, so mamma asked her for the
recipe right off--mamma can't cook a bit, and don't go in the kitchen
once a month, but she's ever so much interested just the same. And when
Mrs. Gwynne went away she said she'd had a _lovely_ time--wasn't it
nice of her? and was going to have all her family call on us--wasn't
that kind? And she sent us a card to her reception; and right the
very next afternoon Mrs. Lawrence called--she's another Gwynne, isn't
she?--and asked us to Marian's coming-out party, _so_ sweet. And,
oh, girls, two such dear funny little old mai--I mean elderly, and
they aren't married, you know--Miss Gwynne and Miss Mollie Gwynne
came--what are you all laughing at, what's the joke? Well, I think
you're real mean not to tell me! _I_ thought they were _nice_--well,
of course, maybe they did seem kind of queer, but--well, it _was_ a
little funny," said Mazie, yielding to the laughter with apparent
reluctance; "we took them all over the house, because we thought, you
know, they'd be pleased to see the way we'd fixed it up. And they
_did_ seem rather tickled; Miss Gwynne said she thought they had never
had any tenants in their house before that appreciated it as we did.
And when we got to the south parlour Miss Mollie wouldn't go in, and
Miss Gwynne took us in and said in an awful whisper that everybody in
the family had been laid out in that room, but she'd try to get Miss
Mollie in to look at the chandelier which was an exact copy of the one
in the State-House--and Mollie hadn't been in the house for so long,
maybe it would refresh her, and take her mind off the funerals, you
know. So Mollie came in," went on Mazie, who by this time was openly
laughing like everyone else, "and she took one look and covered her
eyes like this, and said 'Oh, Sister Eleanor, I can't--I can't,' and
Sister Eleanor said, 'Look up, Mollie, look up'--just as if it was
Heaven, you know--'don't you remember the chandelier?' And then Miss
Mollie said, 'Oh, yes, I remember--shall I ever forget--boo-hoo!--it
cost three hundred and twenty-five dollars--boo-hoo!--every one of 'em
cost three hundred and twenty-five dollars!' But, honestly, girls,
it's all very well to laugh, but it gives me the creeps to think of
that room since I've known; I can't go into it without seeing a coffin
spread out right where our centre-table is; and you know there's that
lovely bisque monkey climbing up a cord that mamma has hanging from
the chandelier--think of that dangling down over a--B-r-r! I didn't
know about so many Gwynnes dying here. There's enough left to keep
the family going anyway, I should think. Was Mr. Peters' brother one
of 'em that died in the house? Eh? What! _Mercy!_ isn't that _awful_?
Why, I thought somebody said Sam Peters was in Honduras or Alaska or
somewhere--is it the same one? _Isn't_ that awful! Isn't it safe to
have him---- Horrors! Oh, girls, I think that's awful! And Mr. Peters
is such a dear, isn't he? So _nice_! But don't you tell him I said
that--now please don't, girls, I'd be ready to fall down dead I'd be
so ashamed if he knew I said he was a dear. I'd never look him in the
face again," said the ingenuous Mazie, knowing perfectly well--who
better?--that Gwynne would be miraculously informed of this damaging
admission before the next twenty-four hours were over.
The Pallinders were not quit of their landlords, for a few episodes
such as those Mazie described; but, as it happens, I never heard her
tell of Steven Gwynne's visit; and only learned the details afterwards
in a roundabout way from Doctor Vardaman and Gwynne, both of whom were
witnesses of that momentous event. Steven was about the age of Doctor
Vardaman and looked twenty years older; they had been boys together.
When Steven came in town--he lived in a weird little tumble-down
cottage with a ragged little farm to match it, several miles out in
the country--he always went to see the doctor, whom he called Jack,
and of whom he grew touchingly and somewhat embarrassingly fond
towards the last of his life. I remember him a tremulous old man with
wild grey hair and beard in clothing worse than shabby, and coarse
boots, walking with the aid of a ferocious-looking cane, a forlorn and
fantastic and rather alarming figure; yet he was really nothing to be
afraid of, although I suppose he was just not quite crazy. When you
came to know about him, poor old Steven filled one with pity and that
strange baseless remorse with which the view of weakness or suffering
sometimes afflicts us. The gifts are so unjustly portioned out; simple
flesh-and-blood rebels at the shame of it. These are whole, prosperous
and victorious; these maimed, mad, dull, helpless, or hopeless--and who
is to blame? It is none of our fault; none the less, the sight galls
us to the quick; and there are moments when the spectacle of a string
of navvies moiling soddenly in a ditch seems an outrage on humanity.
Something of this used to go through Doctor Vardaman's mind as he sat
in his library listening patiently and most humanely to his old-time
playfellow's endless rambling talk. Steven was a profuse talker;
he picked up crumbs of misinformation with a kind of squirrel-like
diligence; all his life he had been beginning something--law, medicine,
divinity, what had he not tried? He never learned anything; he
could hardly spell; he used to declaim heatedly against the tyranny
of schools, and had a great taste for phrases such as "Nature's
gentlemen." Even our tolerant society could not stand Steven Gwynne;
it was said that he was not stupid, and not much queerer, after all,
than some of the other Gwynnes, but--nobody could stand Steven Gwynne.
When he had nearly run through his patrimony, the Governor, who was
his cousin, took him in hand, regulated his affairs, and exiled him to
that little farm I have mentioned. Steven was upwards of thirty at this
time, but he obeyed the family great man peaceably enough; and there he
had lived ever since; indulging--theoretically only, by good luck--in
extraordinary beliefs about State Rights--during the Civil War--about
Science and Religion, about Property, about Marriage, about everything
and anything under the sun, harmless, distressing, and annoying. Young
Gwynne had inherited him along with the other responsibilities of the
GWYNNE ESTATE; and when, rumours of the new tenants having reached him,
the old gentleman appeared in the office, Gwynne must take him to call
upon them. "I would not wish to be lacking in etiquette," said Steven
elaborately. "And I'm told that Colonel Pallinder's family belong to
our circle. It is the duty of every one of the owners, and I trust
that it won't be forgotten that _I_ am one of the heirs to the Gwynne
estate," he added, eying the reluctant young man with some harshness,
for Steven was tenacious of his rights: "to--to hold out the right hand
of fellowship to--to the stranger within our gates."
"You never did before," Gwynne objected. "We've had two or three
tenants that you've never even seen. I don't really think it makes the
least difference----"
"I've never had this kind of tenants before," said Steven--which,
indeed, was an unanswerable argument. "Why, they've been there six
months! You don't understand about these social matters, Gwynne. It's
diplomacy. They're in Governor Gwynne's house, and it's natural they
should expect the Gwynne family to recognise them. Why, they might
take offence and leave! Besides, it's the part of kindness for us to
introduce them around, it--it gives 'em a place at once. People say:
'There's So-and-so, he's a friend of the Gwynnes.' That--that _settles_
it, don't you see? Why, now, to give you an example: Jake Bennett was
at my house the other day, and I told him I'd pay him as soon as the
rent from my property came in. He says: 'That's all right, Mr. Gwynne,
I know I can trust you. A Gwynne's word's as good as his bond,' he
says. That just shows. 'A Gwynne's word's as good as his bond,' he
says. 'I know _you_, Mr. Gwynne; you're Governor Gwynne's cousin, and
that's good enough for me, or anybody----'"
"Who's Jake Bennett?" asked Gwynne abruptly.
"Why, he's a man I buy a load of manure from once in a while. He's a
little queer in the upper story, you know," said old Steven, tapping
his own forehead with a wise nod. "But the poor fellow's heart's in the
right place. 'A Gwynne's word's as good as his bond,' he says----"
"You oughtn't to be owing that man, Cousin Steven," interrupted Gwynne.
He turned to his desk. "Here, this is the nineteenth, but I'll give
you yours now, and then you can pay him when you get home. Now, you
sign a receipt for this seven-fifty, and I'll tell Templeton I advanced
it, so he can hold it out of yours next month. Now you're getting your
December money in November, see? There won't be anything coming to you
from the house the first of December, understand? Seven dollars and
a half--sign here. And you pay that manure-fellow as soon as you get
home, will you?"
Steven would, he said. He folded the money together and crammed it into
his tattered old pocket-book; he handled it a little eagerly, never
having had much to handle. "We'd better start out to see them, the
Pallinders, you know--right away, hadn't we?" he said, glancing at the
clock.
Gwynne looked at him with a sinking heart. Of course he was not
ashamed of his kin. What! Ashamed of Cousin Steven! Gwynne would have
knocked down the man who hinted it. Nevertheless, it must be allowed
that Cousin Steven was more lax in matters relating to his personal
appearance even than became one of Nature's gentlemen. He did not
shave; he chewed tobacco; his boots manifested some acquaintance with
Jake Bennett's unpaid-for wares. We all know that these things really
do not count; a man's a man for a' that. It would be a shoddy soul that
would condemn him for not blacking his boots, or cavil at the fashion
of his coat. Still, we are conscious of a curious confusion within
us on the point; we muddle the clear stainless water of our theories
with the cloudy dye of our conventions; and to most of us, the quality
of gentleman seems somehow inextricably associated with clean linen.
Gwynne was no snob, but----
"Suppose we stop in to see Doctor Vardaman first and ask him to lend
you a collar and tie--you know that kind of high black stock he wears?"
he suggested weakly. "And then you--you might wash your hands, you
know, and, and--clean your nails. I should think your hands would be
cold this weather, Cousin Steven; don't you want to buy a pair of
gloves?"
"Gloves?" said Steven contemptuously. "You're too delicate, Gwynne.
You've got all effeminated, living the way you do. Gloves! D'ye suppose
Adam, the great father of mankind, wore gloves? You want to get out and
live next to grand old Nature, and old Mother Earth. Those Pallinders
are kind of dressy people, hey? Well, I don't care how dressy they
are; they can wear all the gloves they damn please. I'll let you know,
sir, that a Gwynne in his undershirt would be enough too good for any
Pallinder that ever lived--yes, or anybody else either!" A mottled
flush appeared on his old face; he raised his voice; he made wild
hasty gestures, thumping with his cane. "You want me to spend money
on gloves--drivelling ostentation! Gold's the curse of this country,
and you want me to----" Gwynne was a little alarmed at these signs of
excitement.
"All right, Cousin Steven, never mind," he said soothingly. "I--I just
wanted you to be comfortable, you know. You'd just as lief go and see
Doctor Vardaman, wouldn't you?"
Steven was readily mollified--or perhaps, diverted would be the better
word. Jack? Yes, he wanted to see old Jack--he wanted to talk to him
about something. Jack Vardaman was a man of sound sense, if he could
be brought to the right views. "He's been cramped by--by his career,
and his profession," said the old man, gesticulating with one hand as
they walked. "I tried it, studying medicine, you know--but it's not
broad enough, Gwynne, not broad enough. Jack finds it hard to grasp
any new ideas. I said to him the last time I was in: 'John, this
money trouble we're labouring under all proceeds from--from--from the
circulating medium. Why have any? Why have any circulating medium?
Poverty is a lacking in the essentials of life because of waste on
the superfluities through the use of money--circulating medium;
you want to rid yourself of the--the--the economic compulsion to
wrong-doing--I've been studying a pamphlet by William P. Drinkwater
that goes to the heart of the financial situation in this country.'
I say, get rid of the circulating medium. Gwynne, do away with it
utterly, fall back on exchange of the--the products of labour, and an
era of prosperity will set in such as this country has never seen!"
Gwynne reflected with a wry smile that it would be interesting to hear
an expression of opinion from Jake Bennett on the subject; times were
hard in eighty-one, as some of us remember, and in these disjointed
arguments, Gwynne recognised some echo of the political agitations
of the day. To be fair, Steven Gwynne was no more astray in speech
or manner than many of the William P. Drinkwaters; the exasperating
thing about him was that constant appearance of being able to control
himself, if he only would, which seems to be one of the specific
symptoms of unsoundness.
"You will find that the lack--I mean the absence of a medium of
coinage," said Steven, as they climbed on the car--"By George! It
_is_ cold, isn't it?" he interrupted himself, "I guess I'll put my
mitts on." And, to Gwynne's surprise, he produced those symbols of
ostentation and effeminacy from the pocket of his overcoat, and began
to adjust them with every display of comfort. They were a bright
"Maria-Louise" purple. "Knit worsted, you know," said Steven. "I got
'em at Billy Sharpe's at the corners, for seventy-five cents----"
"You're getting effeminated, Cousin Steven," said Gwynne, soberly.
"Mittens! The idea! Do you suppose Adam wore mittens?"
"Well, I understand Adam didn't wear breeches either," said Steven,
with an unexpected flash of humour. "I'm not luxurious, anyhow, like
you with your kids. But you're young--you'll learn." He laid his hand
on Gwynne's arm affectionately. "You're a good boy, Gwynne, if you
do get kind of stuck-up notions, you're a good boy," he said with
earnestness--and the young man's heart smote him.
He found his cousin so tractable on the journey out that he began to
have hopes of persuading Steven to the collar and wash-basin, with
Doctor Vardaman's help. "I'd rather Mrs. Pallinder saw him looking
clean, anyhow--she's so dainty herself," thought Gwynne, with a burning
change of colour. Alas! No such good luck! As they neared the Swiss
cottage, they beheld the lady tripping out from the door, exquisitely
trim and gracious, smiling and showing all her pretty white teeth,
with Doctor Vardaman escorting her to his gate, in his pleasantly
formal old way. Mrs. Pallinder dimpled, and flashed her clear grey
eyes under their amazingly black lashes and brows at Gwynne; she was
en-haloed in rich furs and soft scrolls of ostrich-plumes; she rustled
and fluttered with an enticing suggestion of dainty womanliness, and
there was something even in the frail absurdity of her little, thin,
high-heeled and pointed-toed boots that appealed to the masculine sense
almost touchingly. Old Steven Gwynne himself felt this jewelry-box
charm; he looked at her with open, child-like, rather frightened
admiration. Wealth and luxury for which in the abstract he had--or
believed himself in all sincerity to have--so vigorous a disdain,
exhibited thus concretely, stunned the old man; Mrs. Pallinder, to
the ordinary view merely an unusually handsome and well-dressed
woman, somehow represented to Steven that material power, confident,
lucky, successful, to which he had long ago bowed down in the person
of Governor Gwynne; and, if it had not been for the uplifting
consciousness of being that great man's cousin, Steven would have
shuffled and stammered before her like any school-boy.
"Mr. Peters," said Mrs. Pallinder, delightedly. She withdrew a hand
from her coquettishly fashionable little muff--we wore them very small
in those days, a mere cuff of fur--and gave it to Gwynne, who was
oddly nervous, with soothing self-possession. The readiness with which
she set herself to the business of putting Steven at his ease was a
grateful thing to see; she accepted his purple mitt, and shed on him
a smile as winning as if he had been the most desirable acquaintance
in the world. These courtesies, we have been assured, are, in reality,
nothing but small evidences of a kind heart; yet I never thought
Mrs. Pallinder a kind-hearted woman. Her elegant cordialities were
not spontaneous; she spread the conversation with a thin glittering
varnish of smiles, agreeable speeches, pretty conventionalities;
one sometimes felt uneasily that her tact was almost aggressively
brilliant, her good manners too flawless. But Gwynne, having in mind,
maybe, this very incident, was quite enthusiastic about her to his
intimates; Mrs. Pallinder was so kind, so considerate, a--a--a really
sweet woman--sweet-tempered, he meant, of course, wasn't she? As for
Steven, he proclaimed her without exception the most polished lady he
had ever met. Doctor Vardaman--but one could not always be sure of
what Doctor Vardaman thought. "Mrs. Pallinder was an uncommon sort of
woman," he used to say with an unreadable expression. "I admired her
very much--almost as much as I wondered at her. When we met at my gate
she contrived to look at us three men, as if every one severally were
_the_ man in the world in whom she was most interested. Are ladies
taught these things from their cradles? I am told so; but I never saw
one of them do it so well as Mrs. Pallinder. It's a tolerably stiff
job to listen to poor Steven discourse on the circulating medium.
_Experto credite!_ I've done it myself for hours at a stretch that I
piously hope will count for me when I get to the Place of Punishment.
But I'm sure I never could have done it with so perfect a grace as
Mrs. Pallinder. We went up to the house, she walking the whole way
with Steven, Gwynne and I following in the rear, humbly grateful and
admiring. 'You're not a married man, Mr. Gwynne?' says Mrs. Pallinder,
snatching at a change of topic in one of the pauses of Steven's
eloquence. 'I've met so many charming Mrs. Gwynnes----' 'Madame, I am
not,' said Steven. 'Do you know why the eagle is called the bird of
freedom, Mrs. Pallinder?' Here," said the doctor, with a malicious
grin, "I thought I detected a sort of crooked sequence in Steven's
thoughts, but Mrs. Pallinder was as nearly gravelled as I ever saw
her; and you must admit the subject was somewhat abruptly introduced.
'A--er--why, I must give it up, I am afraid,' she said. 'It's a riddle,
isn't it? I'm not very good at riddles.' 'Because it never mates in
captivity, ma'am,' says Steven profoundly. 'That's the way I am; the
chains of _gold_, the circulating----' and I suppose he was going to
intimate by a delicate allegory that he couldn't afford a wife and
family, but we reached the house at that moment, and the changes in its
appearance switched him off, as it were."
The old man was, in fact, rather pathetically overawed by all the
Pallinder sumptuousness; he looked down at his boots doubtfully, and
trod with caution on the velvet moss-roses and lilies of the south
parlour. It required the telling of the cut-glass chandelier story
to revive his spirit; and Mrs. Pallinder further smoothed matters by
asking his opinion of the new wall-paper with a caressing deference.
Afterwards, it is true, Steven went away in a mood of gracious
approval, and bragged freely with no little satisfaction about his
tenants in his house; but at the first moment, he was both startled
and unhappy. There were gilt mirrors all about that gave back a
pitiless reflection of the party, and of them all, I believe that
Doctor Vardaman was the only one who was not faintly ill at ease. The
situation was actually relieved by the entrance of old Mrs. Botlisch,
as incongruous a figure in the scene as Steven himself. "And somehow or
other," said the doctor, "I am sure the look of her for once was a kind
of comfort to Gwynne; it seemed as if she and poor Steven were a--well,
a stand-off, with the balance in favour of Steven. You know Mrs.
Pallinder was always saying in a gentle regretful way that her mother
was 'eccentric.' She was, in fact--ahem!--I am informed by the ladies
of my acquaintance," Doctor Vardaman would say, with another grin,
"that she was a dreadfully 'common' old person who drank and swore
like a trooper, but was as sane as anybody. Whereas, we all know that
whatever Steven's faults, he was not--was not entirely responsible."
"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 the table 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 tell _me_, 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?"