The cloud that had hung dimly over him had begun to show little rifts;
but the dark masses between the rifts were thicker and heavier than
ever. It was the last brief convulsive struggle of the patient against
the power of the anaesthetic, when the nervous hand goes up to put the
cloth away from the mouth, just before the work is done and
consciousness slips utterly away, and life is no more for the sufferer,
though his heart beat and the breath be warm between his lips.
[Illustration]
When he was bright he was almost like his old self, and these delusive
periods came oftenest when he met some old friend, or in quiet morning
hours when his daughter--so he always called her--sat at his feet in the
sunny breakfast-room, and sewed and listened, or perhaps read to him
from Scott's latest novel.
He may have had some faint sub-consciousness of his condition, for
although he took the deepest interest in the balls and the dinners, he
would never appear before his son's guests except when he was at his
best and brightest. But he loved to sit, withdrawn in a corner, watching
the young life that fluttered through the great rooms, smiling to
himself, and gently pleased if some old crony sought him out and talked
of old times--the older the times were, the better he remembered them.
Indeed, he now recalled some things that he had not thought of since his
far-off boyhood.
In truth, the younger Dolphs often had small heart in their festal
doings. But the medical science of the day, positive, self-satisfied,
and blinded by all manner of tradition, gave them, through its
ministers, cruelly false hopes of the old man's ultimate recovery.
Besides, they could not well order things otherwise. The extravagant
hospitality of the day demanded such ceremonial, and to have abated any
part of it would only have served to grieve and to alarm the object of
their care.
The whole business was a constant pride and joy to old Mr. Jacob Dolph.
When there was a dinner to be given, he would follow Aline as she went
about the house superintending the preparations of her servants, in her
flowered apron of black silk, with her bunch of keys--honest keys,
those, a good four inches long, with tongues as big as a
domino--jingling at her side. He would himself overlook the making ready
of the wines, and give oft-repeated instructions as to the proper
temperature for the port, and see that the champagne was put on ice in
the huge octagonal cellaret in the dining-room corner. And when all was
ready, as like as not he would kiss Aline on the forehead, and say:
"I have a headache to-night, my dear, and I think I shall take my dinner
in my room."
[Illustration: "Mons'us gran' dinneh, Seh!"]
And he would go feebly up stairs, and when old Julius, who always waited
upon him, brought up his tray, he would ask:
"Is it a fine dinner, Julius? Did everybody come?"
And Julius would invariably reply, with profound African dignity:
"Mons'us gran' dinneh, seh! 'E fines' dinneh I eveh witness', seh! I
have stood behin' you' chai', seh, this thutty y'ah, an' I neveh see no
such a gran' dinneh, Misteh Do'ph, seh!"
"Except the dinner we gave Mr. Hamilton; in State Street, Julius," the
old man would put in.
"_Ex_cep' that, seh," Julius would gravely reply: "_that_ was a
pol-litical dinneh, seh; an', _of_ co'se, a pol'litical dinneh--" an
expressive pause--"but this he' is sho'ly a mons'us fine dinneh, seh."
* * * * *
His bodily vigor was unimpaired, however, and except that his times of
entire mental clearness grew fewer and briefer as the months went on,
there was little change in the old gentleman when the spring of 1829
came. He was not insane, he was not idiotic, even at the worst. It
seemed to be simply a premature old age that clouded his faculties. He
forgot many things, he was weakly absent-minded, often he did not
recognize a familiar face, and he seemed ever more and more disinclined
to think and to talk. He liked best to sit in silence, seemingly
unconscious of the world about him; and if he was aroused from his
dreamy trance, his wandering speech would show that his last
thought--and it might have entered his mind hours before, at the
suggestion of some special event--was so far back in the past that it
dealt with matters beyond his son's knowledge.
He was allowed to do as he pleased, for in the common affairs of daily
life he seemed to be able to care for himself, and he plaintively
resented anything that looked like guardianship. So he kept up his
custom of walking down into the city, at least as far as St. Paul's. It
was thought to be safe enough, for he was a familiar figure in the town,
and had friends at every turn.
But one afternoon he did not return in time for dinner. Young Jacob was
out for his afternoon ride, which that day had taken him in the
direction of the good doctor's house. And when he had reached the house,
he found the doctor likewise mounted for a ride. The doctor was going up
to Bond Street--the Dolphs' quarter was growing fashionable already--to
look at a house near Broadway that he had some thoughts of buying, for
he was to be married the coming winter. So they had ridden back
together, and after a long examination of the house, young Jacob had
ridden off for a gallop through the country lanes; and it was five
o'clock, and dinner was on the table, when he came to his father's house
and learned from tearful Aline that his father was missing.
The horse was at the stable door when young Jacob mounted him once more
and galloped off to Bond Street, where he found the doctor just ready to
turn down the Bowery; and they joined forces and hurried back, and down
Broadway, inquiring of the people who sat on their front stoops--it was
a late spring evening, warm and fair--if they had seen old Mr. Dolph
that day.
Many had seen him as he went down; but no one could remember that the
old gentleman had come back over his accustomed path. At St. Paul's, the
sexton thought that Mr. Dolph had prolonged his walk down the street.
Further on, some boys had seen him, still going southward. The searchers
stopped at one or two of the houses where he might have called; but
there was no trace of him. It was long since old Jacob Dolph had made a
formal call.
But at Bowling Green they were hailed by Mr. Philip Waters, who came
toward them with more excitement in his mien than a young man of good
society often exhibited.
"I was going for a carriage, Dolph," he said: "your father is down there
in the Battery Park, and I'm afraid--I'm afraid he's had a stroke of
paralysis."
They hurried down, and found him lying on the grass, his head on the lap
of a dark-skinned, ear-ringed Spanish sailor. He had been seen to fall
from the bench near by, another maritime man in the crowd about him
explained.
"It was only a minit or two ago," said the honest seafarer, swelled with
the importance that belongs to the narrator of a tale of accident and
disaster. "He was a-settin' there, had been for two hours 'most, just
a-starin' at them houses over there, and all of a sudden chuck forward
he went, right on his face. And then a man come along that knowed him,
and said he'd go for a kerridge, or I'd 'a' took him on my sloop--she's
a-layin' here now, with onions from Weathersfield--and treated him
well; I see he wa'n't no disrespectable character. Here, Pedro, them's
the old man's folks--let 'em take him. A-settin' there nigh on two
hours, he was, just a-studyin' them houses. B'long near here?"
[Illustration]
Young Jacob had no words for the Connecticut captain. Waters had
arrived, with somebody's carriage, confiscated on the highway, and they
gently lifted up the old gentleman and set off homeward. They were just
in time, for Waters had been the earliest of the evening promenaders to
reach the Battery. It was dinner hour--or supper hour for many--and the
park was given up to the lounging sailors from the river-side streets.
The doctor's face was dark.
"No, it is not paralysis," he said. "Let us proceed at once to your own
home, Mr. Dolph. In view of what I am now inclined to consider his
condition, I think it would be the most advisable course."
He was as precise and exact in his speech, even then, as he was later
on, when years had given an innocent, genial pomposity to his delivery
of his rounded sentences.
They put old Jacob Dolph to bed in the room which he had always
occupied, in his married as in his widowed days. He never spoke again;
that day, indeed, he hardly moved. But on the next he stirred uneasily,
as though he were striving to change his position. The doctor bled him,
and they shifted him as best they could, but he seemed no more
comfortable. So the doctor bled him again; and even that did no good.
About sunset, Aline, who had watched over him with hardly a moment's
rest, left the room for a quarter of an hour, to listen to what the
doctors had to say--there were four of them in the drawing-room below.
When she and her husband entered the sick-room again, the old man had
moved in his bed. He was lying on his side, his face to the windows that
looked southward, and he had raised himself a little on his arm. There
was a troubled gaze in his eyes, as of one who strains to see something
that is unaccountably missing from his sight. He turned his head a
little, as though to listen. Thus gazing, with an inward and spiritual
vision only, at the bay that his eyes might never again see, and
listening to the waves whose cadence he should hear no more, the
troubled look faded into one of inscrutable peace, and he sank back into
the hollow of his son's arm and passed away.
* * * * *
The next time that the doctor was in the house it was of a snowy night a
few days after New Year's Day. It was half-past two o'clock in the
morning, and Jacob Dolph--no longer Jacob Dolph the younger--had been
pacing furiously up and down the long dining-room--that being the
longest room in the house--when the doctor came down stairs, and
addressed him with his usual unruffled precision:
"I will request of you, Dolph, a large glass of port. I need not suggest
to you that it is unnecessary to stint the measure, for the hospitality
of this house is----"
"How is she, doctor? For God's sake, tell me--is she--is she----"
"The hospitality of this house is prover--" the precise doctor
recommenced.
"Damn the hospitality!" cried Jacob Dolph: "I mean--oh, doctor--tell
me--is anything wrong?"
"Should I request of you the cup of amity and geniality, Mr. Dolph, were
there cause for anything save rejoicing in this house?" demanded the
physician, with amiable severity. "I had thought that my words would
have conveyed----"
"It's all over?"
"And bravely over!" And the doctor nodded his head with a dignified
cheerfulness.
"And may I go to her?"
"You may, sir, after you have given me my glass of port. But remember,
sir----"
Dolph turned to the sideboard, grasped a bottle and a glass, and thrust
them into the doctor's hand, and started for the door.
"But remember, sir," went on the unperturbed physician, "you must not
agitate or excite her. A gentle step, a tranquil tone, and a cheerful
and encouraging address, brief and affectionate, will be all that is
permitted."
Dolph listened in mad impatience, and was over the threshold before the
doctor's peremptory call brought him back.
"What is it now?" he demanded, impatiently.
The doctor looked at him with a gaze of wonder and reproach.
"It is a male child, sir," he said.
[Illustration]
Jacob Dolph crept up the stairs on tiptoe. As he paused for a moment in
front of a door at the head, he heard the weak, spasmodic wail of
another Dolph.
* * * * *
"There's no help for it--I've got to do it," said Jacob Dolph.
It was another wintry morning, just after breakfast. The snow was on the
ground, and the sleigh-bells up in Broadway sent down a faint jingling.
Ten winters had come and gone, and Mr. Dolph was as comfortably stout as
a man should be who is well fed and forty. He stood with his back to the
fire, pulling at his whiskers--which formed what was earlier known as a
Newgate collar--with his right thumb and forefinger. His left thumb was
stuck in the armhole of his flowered satin waistcoat, black and shiny.
Opposite him sat a man of his own age, clean-shaven and sharp-featured.
He had calm, somewhat cold, gray eyes, a deliberate, self-contained
manner of speaking, and a pallid, dry complexion that suited with his
thin features. His dress was plain, although it was thoroughly neat. He
had no flowered satin waistcoat; but something in his bearing told you
that he was a man who had no anxiety about the narrow things of the
counting-room; who had no need to ask himself how much money was coming
in to-morrow. And at the same time you felt that every cent of whatever
might be to-morrow's dues would find its way to his hands as surely as
the representative figures stood on his ledger's page. It was young Mr.
Van Riper--but he, too, had lost his right to that title, not only
because of his years, but because, in the garret of the house in
Greenwich Village, a cobweb stretched from one of the low beams to the
head of old Abram Van Riper's great walking-stick, which stood in the
corner where it had been placed, with other rubbish, the day after Abram
Van Riper's funeral.
"I should not advise it, Dolph, if it can be helped," Mr. Van Riper
observed, thoughtfully.
"It can't be helped."
"I can give you your price, of course," Van Riper went on, with
deliberation; "but equally of course, it won't be anything like what the
property will bring in the course of a few years."
Dolph kicked at the hearthrug, as he answered, somewhat testily:
"I'm not making a speculation of it."
Mr. Van Riper was unmoved.
"And I'm not making a speculation of you, either," he said, calmly: "I
am speaking only for your own benefit, Dolph."
Mr. Dolph put his hands in his pockets, strode to the window and back
again, and then said, with an uneasy little laugh:
"I beg your pardon, Van Riper; you're quite right, of course. The fact
is, I've got to do it. I must have the money, and I must have it now."
Mr. Van Riper stroked his sharp chin.
"Is it necessary to raise the money in that particular way? You are
temporarily embarrassed--I don't wish to be intrusive--but why not
borrow what you need, and give me a mortgage on the house?"
Ten years had given Jacob Dolph a certain floridity; but at this he
blushed a hot red.
"Mortgage on the house? No, sir," he said, with emphasis.
"Well, any other security, then," was Van Riper's indifferent amendment.
Again Jacob Dolph strode to the window and back again, staring hard at
the carpet, and knitting his brows.
Mr. Van Riper waited in undisturbed calm until his friend spoke once
more.
"I might as well tell you the truth, Van Riper," he said, at last;
"I've made a fool of myself. I've lost money, and I've got to pocket the
loss. As to borrowing, I've borrowed all I ought to borrow. I _won't_
mortgage the house. This sale simply represents the hole in my capital."
Something like a look of surprise came into Mr. Van Riper's wintry eyes.
"It's none of my business, of course," he observed; "but if you haven't
any objection to telling me----"
"What did it? What does for everybody nowadays? Western lands and Wall
Street--that's about the whole story. Oh, yes, I know--I ought to have
kept out of it. But I didn't. I was nothing better than a fool at such
business. I'm properly punished."
He sighed as he stood on the hearthrug, his hands under his coat-tails,
and his head hanging down. He looked as though many other thoughts were
going through his mind than those which he expressed.
"I wish," he began again, "that my poor old father had brought me up to
business ways. I might have kept out of it all. College is a good thing
for a man, of course; but college doesn't teach you how to buy lots in
western cities--especially when the western cities aren't built."
"College teaches you a good many other things, though," said Van Riper,
frowning slightly, as he put the tips of his long fingers together; "I
wish I'd had your chance, Dolph. _My_ boy shall go to Columbia, that's
certain."
"_Your_ boy?" queried Dolph, raising his eyebrows.
Van Riper smiled.
"Yes," he said, "my boy. You didn't know I had a boy, did you? He's
nearly a year old."
This made Mr. Jacob Dolph kick at the rug once more, and scowl a little.
"I'm afraid I haven't been very neighborly, Van Riper--" he began; but
the other interrupted him, smiling good-naturedly.
"You and I go different ways, Dolph," he said. "We're plain folks over
in Greenwich Village, and you--you're a man of fashion."
Jacob Dolph smiled--not very mirthfully. Van Riper's gaze travelled
around the room, quietly curious.
"It costs money to be a man of fashion, doesn't it?"
"Yes," said Dolph, "it does."
There was silence for a minute, which Van Riper broke.
"If you've got to sell, Dolph, why, it's a pity; but I'll take it. I'll
see Ogden to-day, and we can finish the business whenever you wish. But
in my opinion, you'd do better to borrow."
Dolph shook his head.
"I've been quite enough of a fool," he replied.
"Well," said Mr. Van Riper, rising, "I must get to the office. You'll
hear from Ogden to-morrow. I'm sorry you've got in such a snarl; but--"
his lips stretched into something like a smile--"I suppose you'll know
better next time. Good-day."
* * * * *
After Mr. Dolph had bowed his guest to the door, Mrs. Dolph slipped down
the stairs and into the drawing-room.
"Did he take it?" she asked.
"Of course he took it," Dolph answered, bitterly, "at that price."
"Did he say anything," she inquired again, "about its being hard for us
to--to sell it?"
"He said we had better not sell it now--that it would bring more a few
years hence."
"He doesn't understand," said Mrs. Dolph.
"He _couldn't_ understand," said Mr. Dolph.
Then she went over to him and kissed him.
"It's only selling the garden, after all," she said; "it isn't like
selling our home."
He put his arm about her waist, and they walked into the breakfast-room,
and looked out on the garden which to-morrow would be theirs no longer,
and in a few months would not be a garden at all.
High walls hemmed it in--the walls of the houses which had grown up
around them. A few stalks stood up out of the snow, the stalks of
old-fashioned flowers--hollyhock and larkspur and Job's-tears and the
like--and the lines of the beds were defined by the tiny hedges of box,
with the white snow-powder sifted into their dark, shiny green. The
bare rose-bushes were there, with their spikes of thorns, and little
mounds of snow showed where the glories of the poppy-bed had bloomed.
Jacob Dolph, looking out, saw the clear summer sunlight lying where the
snow lay now. He saw his mother moving about the paths, cutting a flower
here and a bud there. He saw himself, a little boy in brave breeches,
following her about, and looking for the harmless toads, and working
each one into one of the wonderful legends which he had heard from the
old German gardener across the way. He saw his father, too, pacing those
paths of summer evenings, when the hollyhocks nodded their pink heads,
and glancing up, from time to time, at his mother as she sat knitting at
that very window. And, last of all in the line, yet first in his mind,
he saw his wife tripping out in the fresh morning, to smile on the
flowers she loved, to linger lovingly over the beds of verbena, and to
pick the little nosegay that stood by the side of the tall coffee-urn at
every summer-morning breakfast.
And the wife, looking out by his side, saw that splendid boy of theirs
running over path and bed, glad of the flowers and the air and the
freedom, full of young life and boyish sprightliness, his long hair
floating behind him, the light of hope and youth in his bright face.
And to-morrow it would be Van Riper's; and very soon there would be
houses there, to close up the friendly window which had seen so much,
which had let so much innocent joy and gladness into the old
breakfast-room; and there would be an end of flower-bordered paths and
nodding hollyhocks. She put her face upon her husband's shoulder, and
cried a little, though he pretended not to know it. When she lifted it,
somehow she had got her eyes dry, though they were painfully bright and
large.
"It isn't like selling our house," she said.
IV.
Jacob Dolph got out of the Broadway stage at Bowling Green, followed by
Eustace Dolph. Eustace Dolph at twenty-two was no more like his father
than his patrician name was like simple and scriptural Jacob. The elder
Dolph was a personable man, certainly; a handsome man, even, who looked
to be nearer forty than fifty-two; and he was well dressed--perhaps a
trifle out of the mode--and carried himself with a certain genial
dignity, and with the lightness of a man who has not forgotten that he
has been a buck in his time. But Eustace was distinctly and unmistakably
a dandy. There are superficial differences, of course, between the dandy
of 1852 and the dandy of 1887; but the structural foundation of all
types of dandy is the same through all ages. Back of the clothes--back
of the ruffles, or the bright neckcloth, or the high pickardil--which
may vary with the time or the individual, you will ever find clearly
displayed to your eyes the obvious and unmistakable spiritual reason
for and cause of the dandy--and it is always self-assertion pushed
beyond the bounds of self-respect.
Now, as a matter of fact, young Eustace's garments were not really worse
than many a man has worn from simple, honest bad taste. To be sure, the
checked pattern of his trousers was for size like the design of a prison
grating; he had a coat so blue that it shimmered in the sunlight; his
necktie was of purple satin, and fearfully and wonderfully made and
fringed, and decked with gems fastened by little gold chains to other
inferior guardian gems; and his waistcoat was confected of satin and
velvet and damask all at once; yet you might have put all these things
on his father, and, although the effect would not have been pleasant,
you would never have called the elder gentleman a dandy. In other words,
it was why young Eustace wore his raiment that made it dandified, and
not the inherent gorgeousness of the raiment itself.
The exchange of attire might readily have been made, so far as the size
of the two men was concerned. But only in size were they alike. There
was nothing of the Dolph in Eustace's face. He bore, indeed, a strong
resemblance to his maternal great-grandmother, now many years put away
where she could no longer trouble the wicked, and where she had to let
the weary be at rest. (And how poor little Aline had wept and wailed
over that death, and lamented that she had not been more dutiful as a
child!) But his face was not strong, as the face of Madam Des Anges had
been. Some strain of a weaker ancestry reappeared in it, and, so to
speak, changed the key of the expression. What had been pride in the old
lady bordered on superciliousness in the young man. What had been
sternness became a mere haughtiness. Yet it was a handsome face, and
pleasant, too, when the young smile came across it, and you saw the
white small teeth and the bright, intelligent light in the dark eyes.