It will be seen that, by the close of their period, Doctor Vardaman
had grown to be pretty familiar in the Pallinder household. Mazie
professed a prodigious admiration for him. "He does say the cutest
things!" she remarked enthusiastically. But Mazie's attitude toward
the other sex was never anything but that of complete appreciation.
I have seen her turn her eyes on the coloured butler when commanding
a fresh relay of waffles with an expression to draw from him rubies,
let alone waffles! Her liking for the doctor was perhaps as sincere a
sentiment as she could harbour; who could forbear a fondness for that
genial, tolerant, grey-headed satirist? In him were to be found all
the strangely dissonant yet most manly qualities of his generation.
In the early eighties there was still extant a tribe of hearty old
gentlemen who wore black silk stocks, swore freely, and knew Henry
Clay. You may see their strong humorous faces, shirt-frills, and waving
forelocks upon scores of cracked canvases in how many Middle-Western
homes! Grandfather rode circuit with Swayne and Tom Ewing; he sat
in Congress with that Southern statesman of whom it was said that
when he took snuff all South Carolina sneezed. Perhaps he remembered
Chapultepec and the heights of Monterey; it is likely that he surveyed
the first turnpike, designed the first Courthouse, performed the first
mastoid operation in the State, in the country. In all things I think
he played a man's part, and maybe something more, without any heroics;
I knew many of him, and it cannot be denied that he would sometimes
get a sheet in the wind's eye, and tell robustly indecorous stories
after the second glass of whisky-punch sitting around the hearth of
a winter's evening. There was that one about the English visitor at
Niagara, who, being conducted around the place by the guide, out to the
little tower on Table Rock, and down on the _Maid of the Mist_ like
everyone else, wrote his name in the guests' book, and a conundrum: "Why
am I like Desdemona? Because----" But, at this point, by an ingenious
manoeuvre, someone invariably called me from the room! And, strange
to say, I was not suffered to return; Desdemona was in the nature of
a prelude, I suspect. We have changed all that; who so plain-spoken
as the lady-novelist of to-day, whom everybody reads, and, what is
more, discusses? Who so wise as our young people? Nobody would be
at the pains to banish them from the room. They would not laugh at
or with grandpa; they would only wonder a little and pity him. They
are all gone, all these humane old lads with their whisky-punches,
their dreadful old fly-blown anecdotes, their extraordinary, innocent
coarseness of mind. The type has vanished from among us, extinct like
the dinosaur, dead as Desdemona! It is hard to figure them pacing
beneath the cloudy porticos of that rather shoddy gilt Heaven in which
they stoutly believed; but do they then wander the empty house of Dis,
the idle, idle land? That were a doom at once unkind and unjust; rather
let me fancy them beside the cheerful hearth in some comfortable limbo
of good companionship and honest material pleasures; and if that too be
a heresy and interdict, may the sod rest light where they sleep!
Doctor Vardaman differed signally from his contemporaries in being not
at all disposed to punch and pruriency. He would have reddened like
a winter apple at Desdemona; and I am bound to say that here Colonel
Pallinder met him on equal ground. It would be worth a moralist's while
to inspect that stout piece of goods which is men's modesty beside
the curiously flimsy fabric we call the modesty of women. "It's funny
about men," Kitty Oldham confided to me once. "They can be as bad as
they want to, and so, when they're good they seem an awful lot better
than we are!" That may be the root of the matter; Kitty was undeniably
astute and observant in various small and eminently feminine ways.
"Nobody's all good anyhow," was another of her sayings, "nor all bad
either. I know by myself!" Colonel Pallinder was an example, too, had
we been aware of it. I have heard since from many indignant sufferers
that he was a swindling adventurer; yet Bayard himself could not have
walked more circumspectly in certain paths. He believed with all his
heart that his wife and daughter were beautiful and gifted above the
ordinary lot of mortals; I think they never had a wish ungratified.
That hand of his which they tell me was so ruthlessly busy about other
peoples' pockets, was forever emptying his own for the satisfaction of
his womenkind; the trait does not make any the better man of him, but I
am sure there have been worse. His behaviour toward Mrs. Botlisch was
a lesson in forbearance and good manners. He did more than endure her;
he showed her precisely the same chivalric deference as the rest of us.
Perhaps he was a little florid in the Southern style, and as became a
military man, but I think he was never ridiculous. It happened one day
that an ill-advised or maybe merely ill-bred young man having blurted
out some joke, high-flavoured, derogatory to Mrs. Botlisch, over one of
those famous juleps in the Pallinder dining-room, the colonel rose up
and with a severe countenance, laid his hand upon the joker's arm and
jerked him upright without much ceremony. "Don't mind him, Colonel,"
interposed an onlooker. "He--he's not used to ladies' society, you
know." "Sir," said the colonel sedately, "I should have said he was not
used to the society of gentlemen!" and with that bundled the offender
out of the room and the house. Nor did the action make him enemies; the
rest of the male company expressed an unqualified approval.
"I was a little afraid that he might want to resort to the 'code' as
practised in Virginia or Mississippi, or wherever he hails from,"
said Doctor Vardaman, commenting on this occurrence, "and call upon
my services as surgeon; but he was too shrewd, or in his way, too
large-minded for that. On the whole Pallinder was the most attractive
as well as the most diverting humbug I ever knew or can imagine. I
liked him against my will. He was generous to the last penny--with
money that was shadily come by, to be sure, but what would you have? He
might have been as tight as the bark on a tree. He was a brave man and
had borne himself gallantly on the field, and I am sure uncomplainingly
in defeat. There was no sham about that limp of his at any rate. But he
never spoke of these things, nor ever flourished the Lost Cause in your
face, that I know of. Maybe it was all part of his policy, but I like
better to think that he had the qualities of his defects."
It is to be supposed that Colonel Pallinder returned the doctor's
regard. The old gentleman was their nearest, in fact almost their
only neighbour, and the colonel used to dilate in comic vein upon the
advantages of having a physician next door, and keeping on good terms
with him. "'Hang it all, Miranda,' I said to my wife the other day,
'what do you want to call in young Sawbones--Pellets--whatever his name
is, the doctor-lad you had here last week for, when you can have twice
his experience and ten times the gumption he ever had or will have,
by merely going as far as your own front gate? Pellets is a homoeop.,
anyhow. I don't like homoeops. Give me the old school; they knock you
on the head with their whacking doses and kill you or cure you, put you
out of your misery any way, while the others are still measuring out
their infernal four dips of this and two swallows of that. When Mazie
there was three years old she ate a whole bottle of sugared pills while
the nurse wasn't looking. If it had been Doctor Vardaman's medicine,
we'd have had to send for him and the undertaker and let 'em fight
it out, and I'd back the doctor every time. As it was--never feazed
her! Day before yesterday, my coachman came to me: 'Don' know what's
the matter with me, boss. Feel mighty bad.' I asked him if he'd been
to the doctor. 'Yes, sah, he give me this. I'se got to take fo' dips
every hour.' 'Look here, James,' says I. 'I want you to notice just
one thing. You're a big man, and that's an almighty small bottle. Do
you think four dips of that is going to cure six-foot-two of nigger?
It don't stand to reason. When I'm sick,' says I, 'I go to Doctor
Vardaman. I want a _doctor_ to take care of _me_. Quit practice? Oh,
pshaw, pooh! Any doctor will always pull an ass out of a ditch on the
Sabbath day--what's that they say about the letter of the law killing
the spirit? Now you better go to him, too,' says I, 'if you know what's
good for you. You hear _me_?' 'Lordy, Mistah Pallindah, you wouldn't
tu'n me off for not gwine to yo' doctah?' 'No, James,' says I. 'I'd
turn you off for not having any sense!' I believe he did go to you,
doctor, and I'm much obliged. Of course you'll send the bill to me. I'm
not like some people that think anything's good enough for a nigger--I
want the poor devils that work for me to have the best that's going.
When a man's brought up on a Virginia plantation with three or four
hundred of 'em around, and knows he owns 'em all, and is responsible
in a way to his Maker for every one of those black souls--why, sir,
you can't get over the feeling all at once. Here, you, George, Sam,
one of you bring another bottle of that twelve-year-old Bourbon and
a syphon of soda. I won't have any whisky in the house, sir, under
seven years old, and preferably ten--preferably ten or twelve. It
comes a few dollars higher a bottle, but when you're getting a thing,
you might as well get it good, and if whisky's not properly aged it's
raw stuff, firewater, worst thing in the world for the stomach. My
wife sometimes accuses me of extravagance in the table, but I always
say: 'Well, Miranda, we've got to _live_, haven't we?' As long as
Phosphate preferred keeps soaring skywards, and dividends keep rolling
in without my having to do a lick of work to get 'em, _I_ don't see
that we're living too high. We keep within bounds, I guess. Within
bounds. I don't intend to spend all my income just because my principal
is invested in something as solid as a rock. By George, sir, I always
save up a little wad every year--I can do it without straining myself,
and manage to scratch along in tolerable comfort besides--so as to
buy whatever Phosphate I can lay hands on, but it's getting scarce,
mighty scarce. It's been pretty well gobbled up by the big fellows with
money that always get hold of all the good things; only I'm what you
might call on the inside, you know, and that gives me a chance to help
myself or let in a friend once in a while. But it's no use showing
the figures to Madame there, she can't make head or tail of 'em,
women never can; she says they give her the headache. Now last week,
I let out inadvertently--for I try never to bring my little business
anxieties home--that I stood to lose fifteen thousand if Ozark Field
went off another point. Gad, sir, she laid awake all night--thought we
were going to the poorhouse right off! Couldn't help laughing, though
I did feel sorry for her, too. Nothing I could say would reassure
her--women are funny. Well, I wasn't just longing to lose my fifteen
thousand either, a man don't like to be inconvenienced that way, even
temporarily. Fifteen thousand means something to me, though it wouldn't
be much to the people I'm thrown with all the time. I tell you, sir,
those big capitalists, their money kind of scares you, and yet it
gives you a mighty secure feeling to know that they're behind these
enterprises. All their millions are made up of thousands after all, and
they're not going to put a single thousand where they can't keep an eye
on it, and see it breed. Fortunately Ozark Field went up to a hundred
and seventeen instead of declining--I had confidence in it from the
first. I bought at eighty, you know, so I'm pretty easy in my mind just
now. If anybody were to ask me, though, I'd advise 'em to buy right
now, for it won't ever take another drop, and I expect it'll be out of
sight by the first of the year. Sam, chopped ice to Doctor Vardaman,
and give Mr. Lewis a fresh glass."
Archie Lewis sat looking into his tumbler with a rather queer
expression as the waiter put it down before him after sundry dexterous
operations with lemon-peel and bitters. Perhaps he was thinking that,
for a man who made a point of never bringing his business-affairs
home, it was truly remarkable how inevitably Colonel Pallinder worked
around to them in the course of a conversation, no matter what the
subject with which it started. Phosphate preferred, Lone Star common,
Ozark Field--I could not begin to enumerate the "enterprises" in which
the colonel and his capitalist friends were interested. The jargon of
the market-place will always be jargon to me; I dare say I have not
even quoted it aright. To this day I have never been able to find out
what Phosphate was; it may have been mined, assayed, and smelted; or
strained out of a river, or compounded with retorts and crucibles for
all of me. But, although nobody knew anything about it, it was, as I
have said, easy to see that Phosphate, in Templeton's formula, was a
paying proposition. Look at the Pallinders; people couldn't live that
way for nothing; this we said to one another, thinking it clinched the
argument, and not knowing that people live "in magnificent state,"
for nothing. Who is so care-free, so luxurious in his habits, so
open-handed and open-hearted as the man who never pays his debts? I
know of no one more to be envied. One of the things the Pallinders did
was to wall in with glass the large porch of the dining-room, install a
heating-apparatus, and make a conservatory of it; this, too, although
they had leased the Gwynne house for three years only, and Mrs.
Pallinder was constantly complaining of their cramped and inconvenient
quarters. "Of course," she said languidly, "one can't expect much of
a house at such a low rent, but the colonel and I have _always_ had
separate dressing-rooms. I thought I could make one do, for a while;
but we're too crowded for any peace or comfort. The colonel wants to
buy this house and add to it--but the end of it will be we'll have to
build. The colonel keeps telling me to go to an architect or send for
one--I shouldn't trust to anyone in this little town, you know. We'd
have to select the building-lot, and get some man from Boston or New
York to come out and look at it, and make the designs accordingly. But
I'm so awfully lazy I can't make up my mind to all that bother and
worry."
Such a low rent! Kitty and I exchanged a glance in spite of our
manners. Archie Lewis had told us that Templeton, whom he saw every
day in his father's office, had told _him_ he had made the lease at
a hundred and seventy-five a month; we did not think that a very
low rent, we who lived contentedly enough in houses at one-fifth
that amount, like by far the greater number of our friends. But the
Pallinders plainly did not measure by our standards. Mazie had a fresh
dress for every party; she wore almost as much jewelry as her mother,
and when Mrs. Pallinder came out in all her diamonds, she was the most
resplendent spectacle our society ever witnessed. Will anyone ever
forget her appearance as _Astarte_ at the Charity Ball? She twinkled
all over with jewelled stars, serpents, rings, ear-drops, gew-gaws any
_Astarte_ might have been proud to own--"goddess excellently _bright_!"
as Doctor Vardaman said. The ball took place during the Christmas
holidays--the Pallinders' second Christmas with us--just before Mazie
went to Washington, and, to quote the _State Journal_, "it was an event
long to be remembered in the social annals of our city." Odd-Fellows'
Hall was "a fairy-like dream of beauty," the same masterpiece of
descriptive rhetoric reported. Mazie deferred her visit so as not to
miss it, and went as _Folly_ in a white dress with spangles--glittering
fringes of white beads half a yard deep. Kitty Oldham appeared as
_Diana Vernon_--"I can wear the big hat with feathers afterwards,
you know," she thriftily remarked; she looked exceedingly trig in
a scarlet waistcoat with her little chin cocked up on a white lawn
stock. There was the usual supply of Watteau shepherdesses--I was
one of them--toreadors, Continental soldiers in buff-and-blue,
Queens-of-Hearts, Pierrots, and so on. Mrs. Pallinder's diaphanous and
low-cut magnificence, heavily hung with jewelry, outshone everybody,
and was a target for considerable unkind comment. A woman of her age!
It was startling, to say the least. She could have gone as Queen
Elizabeth or Lady Macbeth, but this was almost too theatrical; of
course, she was a beautiful woman, and looked scarcely older than her
own daughter, still----! "The reporters will describe every square
inch of Mrs. Pallinder's costume," some young fellow said to Kitty
Oldham. "They won't have to say much," retorted Kitty, with an oblique
glance--a remark which, backed by her mother's well-known acidity of
tongue, made Kitty's, reputation as a wit in our circle. The one person
whom it did not seem to amuse was Gwynne Peters; and he listened with
a singularly grum and discomposed face, and afterwards stalked off
without a word, although he was in general, genial enough. Something
must have gone at cross-purposes with Gwynne that night; he wore a
Charles Stuart dress, and stood about in gloomy attitudes, with his
sword, black velvet, and lace collar, looking the part to perfection;
and he went away quite early after showing no attention to anyone
except Mrs. Pallinder herself. But, indeed, the young men were about
her constantly, and _Astarte's_ popularity was not greatly increased
thereby.
I remember driving home with Mazie to luncheon a day or so later, and
coming unexpectedly upon a decent-looking young man sitting timidly
amongst the gilt legs and peacock-blue upholstery of Mrs. Pallinder's
parlour, waiting to "interview" that lady. He represented the _State
Journal_, he said; and wanted to know if it was true that Mrs.
Pallinder had worn her five-thousand-dollar diamond necklace at the
ball, and if she would allow the _Journal_ to publish a photograph of
her in the costume.
"La me, _I_ don't know; you'll have to ask her yourself," said Mazie
in her gay drawl. And presently Mrs. Pallinder came in, very tall,
sweeping and elegant in a long red broadcloth coat with black fur
and braid, and "dolman" sleeves; and a black and red _capote_, as we
called them. Laugh if you will; that was the way we dressed the winter
of eighty-three--when we could afford it! The photograph appeared
duly; and a picture of the necklace, too, with several more strands
and pendants than belonged to it, so that we concluded the artist had
drawn on his imagination or some representation of the crown-jewels of
England, in order to be more effective.
"Pooh, that necklace never cost five thousand dollars, I don't believe
it," Kitty said afterwards. She was a sharp little creature, as I have
hinted; and her critical view of our Southern friends may have been
shared by others, to judge by a remark young Lewis made to Doctor
Vardaman, as they approached the latter's gate on their way from the
Pallinders'. "You've got to take a long breath and get a good hold of
something when the colonel's around," said Archie, knocking the ash
from his cigar on the wrought-iron scroll along the top of the fence.
He eyed the doctor enigmatically.
"I don't understand?"
"If you don't you might be blown away."