George had never been inside Mr. Craik’s house, and the first impression
made upon him by the sight of the old gentleman’s collected spoil was a
singular one. The sight of beautiful objects had always given him
pleasure, but, on the other hand, his mind resented and abhorred alike
disorder and senseless profusion. He had no touch in his composition of
that modern taste which delights in producing a certain tone of colour
in a room, by filling it with all sorts of heterogeneous and useless
articles, of all periods and collected out of all countries. It was not
sufficient in his eyes that an object should be of great value, or of
great beauty, or that it should possess both at once; it was necessary
also that it should be so placed as to acquire a right to its position
and to its surroundings. A Turkish tile, a Spanish-Moorish dish, an
Italian embroidery and an old picture might harmonise very well with
each other in colour and in general effect, but George Wood’s
uncultivated taste failed to see why they should all be placed together,
side by side upon the same wall, any more than why a periwig should be
set upon a soup-tureen, as Johnson had remarked. He felt from the moment
he entered the house as if he were in a bazaar of bric-à-brac, where
everything was put up for sale, and in which each object must have
somewhere a label tied or pasted to it, upon which letters and figures
mysteriously shadowed forth its variable price to the purchaser while
accurately defining its value to the vendor.
It must not be supposed, however, that because George Wood did not like
the look of the room in which he found himself, it would not have been
admired and appreciated by many persons of unquestioned good taste. The
value there accumulated was very great, there was much that was
exceedingly rare and of exquisite design and workmanship, and the
vulgarity of the effect, if there were any, was of the more subtle and
tolerable kind.
George stood in the midst of the chamber, hat in hand, waiting for the
owner of the collection to appear. A door made of panels of thin
alabaster set in rich old gilt carvings, was opposite to him, and he was
wondering whether the light actually penetrated the delicate marble as
it seemed to do, when the chiselled handle turned and the door itself
moved noiselessly on its hinges. Thomas Craik entered the room.
The old gentleman’s head seemed to have fallen forward upon his
shoulders, so that he was obliged to look sideways and upwards in order
to see anything above the level of his eyes. Otherwise he did not
present so decrepit an appearance as George had expected. His step was
sufficiently brisk, and though his voice was little better than a growl,
it was not by any means weak. He was clothed in light-coloured tweed
garments of the newest cut, and he wore a red tie, and shoes of
varnished leather. The corner of a pink silk handkerchief was just
visible above the outer pocket of his coat, and he emanated a perfume
which seemed to be combined out of Cologne water and Russian leather.
“Official visit, eh?” he said with an attempt at a pleasant smile. “Glad
to see you. Sorry you have waited so long before coming. Take a seat.”
“Thanks,” answered George, sitting down. “I am glad to see that you are
quite yourself again, Mr. Craik.”
“Quite myself, eh? Never was anybody else long enough to know what it
felt like. But I have not forgotten that you came to ask—no, no, I
remember that. Going to marry Mamie, eh? Glad to hear it. Well, well.”
Thomas Craik rubbed his emaciated hands slowly together and looked
sideways at his visitor.
“Yes,” said George, “I am going to marry Miss Trimm——”
“Call her Mamie, call her Mamie—own niece of mine, you know. No use
standing on ceremony.”
“I think it is as well to call her Miss Trimm until we are married,”
George observed, rather coldly.
“Oh, you think so, do you? Well, well. Not to her face, I hope?”
George thought that Mr. Craik was one of the most particularly odious
old gentlemen he had ever met. He changed the subject as quickly as he
could.
“What a wonderful collection of beautiful things you have, Mr. Craik,”
he said, glancing at a set of Urbino dishes that were fastened against
the wall nearest to him.
“Something, something,” replied Mr. Craik, modestly. “Fond of pretty
things? Understand majolica?”
“I am very fond of pretty things, but I know nothing about majolica. I
believe the subject needs immense study. They say you are a great
authority on all these things.”
“Oh, they say so, do they? Well, well. Books are more in your line, eh?
Some in the other room if you like to see them. Come?”
“Yes indeed!” George answered with alacrity. He thought that if he must
sustain the conversation for five minutes longer, it would be a relief
to be among things he understood. Tom Craik rose and led the way through
the alabaster door by which he had entered. George found himself in a
spacious apartment, consisting of two rooms which had been thrown into
one by building an arch in the place of the former wall of division.
There were no windows, but each division was lighted by a large skylight
of stained glass, supported on old Bohemian iron-work. To the height of
six feet from the floor, the walls were lined with bookcases, the books
being protected by glass. Above these the walls were completely covered
with tapestries, stuffs, weapons, old plates and similar objects.
“Favourite room of mine,” remarked Mr. Craik, backing up to the great
wood fire, and looking about him with side glances, first to the right
and then to the left. “Look about you, look about you. A lot of books in
those shelves, eh? Well, well. About three thousand. Not many but good
and good, as books should be, inside and out. Eh? Like that?”
“Yes,” said George, moving slowly round the room, stooping and then
standing erect, as he glanced rapidly at the titles of the long rows of
volumes. The born man of letters warmed at the sight of the familiar
names and felt less inimically inclined towards the master of the house.
“I envy you such books to read and such a place in which to read them,”
he said at last.
“I believe you do,” answered Mr. Craik, looking pleased. “You look as if
you did. Well, well. May be all yours some day.”
“How so?” George inquired, growing suddenly cold and looking sharply at
the old man.
“May leave everything to Totty. Totty may leave everything to Mamie.
Fact is, any station may be the last. May have to hand in my checks at
any time. Funny world, isn’t it? Eh?”
“A very humorous and comic world, as you say,” George answered, looking
at the old man with a rather scornful twist of his naturally scornful
mouth.
“Humorous and comic? I say, funny. It’s shorter. What would you do if
you owned this house?”
“I would sell it,” George answered with a dry laugh, “sell it, except
the books, and live on the interest of the proceeds.”
“And you would do a very sensible thing, Mr. George Winton Wood,”
returned Tom Craik approvingly. All at once he dropped his detached
manner of speaking and grew eloquent. “You would be doing a very
sensible thing. A man of your age can have no manner of use for all this
rubbish. If you ever mean to be a collector, reserve that expensive
taste for the time when you have plenty of money, but can neither eat,
drink, sleep, make love nor be merry in any way—no, nor write novels
either. The pleasure does not consist in possessing things, it lies in
finding them, bargaining for them, fighting for them and ultimately
getting them. It is the same with money, but there is more variety in
collecting, to my mind, at least. It is the same with everything, money,
love, politics, collecting, it is only the fighting for what you want
that is agreeably exciting. It has kept me alive, with my wretched
constitution, when the doctors have been thinking of sending for the
person in black who carries a tape measure. I never had any ambition. I
never cared for anything but the fighting. I never cared to be first,
second or third. I do not believe that your ambitious man ever succeeds
in life. He thinks so much about himself that he forgets what he is
fighting for. You can easily make a fool of an ambitious man by offering
him a bait, and you may take the thing you want while he is chasing the
phantom of glory on the other side of the house. I hope you are not
ambitious. You have begun as if you were not, and you have knocked all
the stuffing out of the rag dolls the critics put up to frighten young
authors. I have read a good deal in my day, and I have seen a good deal,
and I have taken a great many things I have wanted. I know men, and I
know something about books. You ought to succeed, for you go about your
work as though you liked it for the sake of overcoming difficulties, for
the sake of fighting your subject and getting the better of it. Stick to
that principle. It prolongs life. Pick out the hardest thing there is to
be done, and go at it, hammer and tongs, by hook or by crook, by fair
means or foul. If you cannot do it, after all, nobody need be the wiser;
if you succeed every one will cry out in admiration of your industry and
genius, when you have really only been amusing yourself all the
time—because nothing can be more amusing than fighting. You are quite
right. Ambition is nonsense and the satisfaction of possession is bosh.
The only pleasure is in doing and getting. If, in the inscrutable ways
of destiny, you ever own this house, sell it, and when you are old, and
crooked, and cannot write any more, and people think you are a
drivelling idiot and are sitting in rows outside your door, waiting for
dead men’s shoes—why then, you can prolong your life by collecting
something, as I have done. The desire to get the better of a Jew dealer
in a bargain for a Maestro Georgio, or the determination to find the
edition which has been heard of but never seen, will make your blood
circulate and your heart beat, and your brain work. I have half a mind
to sell the whole thing myself for the sake of doing it all over again,
and keeping somebody waiting ten years longer for the money. I might
last ten years more if I could hit upon something new to collect.”
The old man ceased speaking and looked up sideways at George, with a
keen smile, very unlike the expression he assumed when he meant to be
agreeable. Then he relapsed into his usual way of talking, jerking out
short sentences and generally omitting the subject or the verb, when he
did not omit both. It is possible that he had delivered his oration for
the sake of showing George that he could speak English as well as any
one when he chose to do so.
“Like my little speech? Eh?” he inquired.
“I shall not forget it,” George answered. “Your ideas cannot be accused
of being stale or old fashioned, whatever else may be said of them.”
“Put them into a book, will you? Well, well. Daresay printer’s ink has
been wasted on worse—sometimes.”
George did not care to prolong his visit beyond the bounds of strict
civility, though he had been somewhat diverted by his relation’s talk.
He asked a few questions about the books and discovered that Tom Craik
was by no means the unreading edition-hunter he had supposed him to be.
If he had not read all the three thousand choice volumes he possessed,
he had at least a very clear idea of the contents of most of them.
“Buying an author and not reading him,” he said, “is like buying a pig
in a poke and then not even looking at the pig afterwards. Eh?”
“Very like,” George answered with a short laugh. Then he took his leave.
The old man went with him as far as the door that led out of the room in
which they had first met.
“Come again,” he said. “Rather afraid of draughts, so I leave you here.
Good day to you.”
George took the thin hand that was thrust out at him and shook it with
somewhat less repulsion that he had felt a quarter of an hour earlier.
The sight of the books had softened his heart a little, as it often
softens the enmities of literary men when they least expect it. He
turned away and left the house, wondering whether, after all, old Tom
Craik had not been judged more harshly than he deserved. The man of
letters is slow to anger against those who show any genuine fondness for
his profession.
He walked down the avenue, thinking over what he had seen and heard. It
chanced that after walking some time he stepped aside to allow certain
ladies to pass him and on looking round saw that he was in the door of
Mr. Popples’s establishment. A thought struck him and he went in.
“Mr. Popples——”
“Good morning, Mr. Winton Wood——” Mr. Popples thought that the two names
sounded better together.
“Good morning, Mr. Popples. I want to ask you a confidential question.”
George laughed a little.
“Anything, Mr. Winton Wood. Something in regard to the sales, no doubt.
Well, in point of fact, sir, it is just as well to ask now and then how
a book is going, just for the sake of checking the statement as we say,
though I will say that Rob Roy and Company——”
“No, no,” George interrupted with a second laugh. “They treat me very
well. You know Mr. Craik, do you not?”
“Mr. Craik!” exclaimed the bookseller, with a beaming smile. “Why, dear
me! Mr. Craik is your first cousin once removed, Mr. Winton Wood! Of
course I know him.” He prided himself on knowing the exact degree of
relationship existing between his different customers, which was
equivalent to knowing by heart the genealogy of all New York society.
“You are a subtle flatterer,” George answered. “You pretend to know him
only because he is my cousin.”
“A great collector,” returned the other, drawing down the corners of his
mouth and turning up his eyes as though he were contemplating an object
of solemn beauty. “A great collector! He knows what a book is, old or
new. He knows, he knows—oh yes, he knows very well.”
“What I want to know is this,” said George. “Does Mr. Craik buy my books
or not? Do you happen to remember?”
“Well, Mr. Winton Wood,” answered Mr. Popples, “the fact is, I do happen
to remember, by the merest chance. The fact is, to be honest, quite
honest, Mr. Craik does not buy your books. But he reads them.”
“Borrows them, I suppose,” observed George.
“Well, not that, exactly, either. The fact is,” said the bookseller,
lowering his voice to a confidential whisper, “Mrs. Sherrington Trimm
buys them and sends them to him. He buys mostly valuable books,” he
added, as though apologising for Mr. Craik’s stinginess.
“Thank you, Mr. Popples,” said George, laughing for the third time, and
turning away.
“Oh, not at all, Mr. Winton Wood. Anything, anything. Walking this
mor——”
But George was already out of the shop and the bookseller did not take
the trouble to pronounce the last syllable, as he readjusted his large
spectacles and took up three or four volumes that lay on the edge of the
table.
“It cannot be said,” George thought, as he walked on, “that I am very
much indebted to Mr. Thomas Craik—not even for ten per cent on one
dollar and twenty-five.”
George would have been very much surprised to learn that the man who
would not spend a dollar and a quarter in purchasing one of his novels
had left him everything he possessed, and that the document which was to
prove his right was reposing in that Indian cabinet of Mrs. Trimm’s,
which he had so often admired. It seemed as though Totty had planned
everything to earn his gratitude, and he was especially pleased that she
should have made her miserly brother read his books. It showed at once
her own admiration for them and her desire that every one belonging to
her should share in it.
Having nothing especial to do until a later hour, George thought of
going to see Constance and Grace. They had only been in town two days,
but he was curious to know whether Mrs. Bond had begun to look like
herself again, or was becoming more and more absorbed in her sorrow as
time went on. He had not been to the house in Washington Square since
the first of May, and so many events had occurred in his life since that
date that he felt as though he were separated from it by an interval of
years instead of months. The time had passed very quickly. It would soon
be three years since he had first gone up those steps with his cousin
one afternoon in the late winter. As he approached the familiar door, he
thought of all that had happened in the time, and he was amazed to find
how he had changed. Six months earlier he had descended those steps with
the certainty that the better and sweeter part of his life was behind
him, and that his happiness had been destroyed by a woman’s caprice. It
had been a rough lesson but he had survived the ordeal and was now a far
happier man than he had been then. In the flush of success, he was
engaged to marry a young girl who loved him with all her heart, and whom
he loved as well as he could. The world was before him now, as it had
not been then, when he had felt himself dependent for his inspiration
upon Constance’s attachment, and for the help he needed upon his daily
converse with her. If his heart was not satisfied as he had once dreamed
that it might be, his hopes were raised by the experience of
self-reliance. It had once seemed bitter to work alone; he had now
ceased to desire any companionship in his labours. Mamie was to be his
wife, not his adviser. She was to look up to him, and he must make
himself worthy of her trust as well as of her admiration. He would work
for her, labour to make her happy, to the extreme extent of his
strength, and he would be proud of the part he would play. She would be
the mother of children, graceful and charming as herself, or angular,
tough and hardworking as he was, and he and she would love them. But
there the relation was to cease, and he was glad of it. He owed much to
Constance, and was ready to acknowledge the whole debt, but neither
Constance herself, nor any other woman could take the same place in his
life again. Least of all, she herself, he thought, as he rang the bell
of her house and waited for admittance. In the old days his heart used
to beat faster than its wont before he was fairly within the precincts
of the Square. Now he was as unconscious of any emotion as though he
were standing before his own door.
Grace received him alone in the old familiar drawing-room. She happened
to be sitting in the place Constance used to choose when George came to
see her, and he took his accustomed seat, almost unconscious of the
associations it had once had for him.
“Constance is gone out,” Grace began. “I am sure she will be sorry. It
is kind of you to come so soon.”
“You are no better,” George answered, looking at her, and not heeding
her remark. “I had hoped that you might be, but your expression is the
same. Why do you not go abroad, and make some great change in your
life?”
“I am very well,” Grace replied with a faint smile which only increased
the sadness of her look. “I do not care to go away. Why should I? It
could make no difference.”
“But it would. It would make all the difference in the world. Your
sorrow is in everything, in all you see, in all you hear, in every
familiar impression of your life—even in me and the sight of me.”
“You are mistaken. It is here.” She pressed her hand to her breast with
a gesture almost fierce, and fixed her deep brown eyes on George’s face
for an instant. Then she let her arm fall beside her and looked away.
“The worst of it is that I am so strong,” she added presently. “I shall
never break down. I shall live to be an old woman.”
“Yes,” George answered, thoughtfully, “I believe that you will. I can
understand that. I fancy that you and I are somewhat alike. There are
people who are unhappy, and who fade away and go out like a lamp without
oil. They are said to die of broken hearts though they have not felt
half as much happiness or sorrow as some tougher man and woman who live
through a lifetime of despair and disappointment.”
“Are you very happy?” Grace asked rather suddenly.
“Yes, I am very happy. I suppose I have reason to be. Everything has
gone well with me of late. I have had plenty of success with what I have
done, I am engaged to be married——”
“That is what I mean,” said Grace, interrupting him. “Are you happy in
that? I suppose I have no right to ask such a question, but I cannot
help asking it. You ought to be, for you two are very well matched. Do
you know? It is a very fortunate thing that Constance refused you. You
did not really love her any more than she loved you.”
“What makes you say that?”
“If you were really in love, your love died a rather easy death. That is
all.”
“That is true,” George answered, smiling in spite of himself.
“Do you remember the first of May as well as you did three months ago?
Perhaps. I do not say that you have forgotten it altogether. When I told
you her decision, you did not act like a man who has received a terrible
blow. You were furiously, outrageously angry. You wished that I had been
a man, that you might have struck me.”
“I believed that I had cause to be angry. Besides, I have extraordinary
natural gifts in that direction.”
“Of course you had cause. But if you had loved her—as some people
love—you would have forgotten to be angry for once in your life and you
would have behaved very differently.”
“I daresay you are right. As I came here to-day I was thinking over it
all. You know I have not been here since that day. In old times I could
feel my heart beating faster as I came near the house, and when I rang
the bell my hand used to tremble. To-day I walked here as coolly as
though I had been going home, and when I was at the door I was much more
concerned to know whether you were better than to know whether your
sister was in the house or not. Such is the unstability of the human
heart.”
“Yes—when there is no real love in it,” Grace answered. “And the
strongest proof that there was none in yours is that you are willing to
own it. What made you think that you were so fond of her? How came you
to make such a mistake?”
“I cannot tell. I would not talk to any one else as I am talking to you.
But we understand each other, she is your sister and you never believed
in our marriage. It began very gradually. Any man would fall in love
with her, if he had the chance. She was interested in me. She was kind
to me, when I got little kindness from any one——”
“And none at all from me, poor man!” interrupted Grace.
“Especially none from you. It was she who always urged me to write a
book, though I did not believe I could; it was to her that I read my
first novel from beginning to end. It was she who seized upon it and got
it published in spite of my protests—it was she who launched me and made
my first success what it was. I owe her very much more than I could ever
hope to repay, if I possessed any means of showing my gratitude. I loved
her for her kindness and she liked me for my devotion—perhaps for my
submission, for I was very submissive in those days. I had not learned
to run alone, and if she would have had me I would have walked in her
leading-strings to the end of my life.”
“How touching!” exclaimed Grace, and the first genuine laughter of which
she had been capable for three months followed the words.
“No, do not laugh,” said George gravely. “I owe her everything and I
know it. Most of all, I owe her the most loyal friendship and sincere
gratitude that a man can feel for any woman he does not love. It is all
over now. I never felt any emotion at meeting her since we parted after
that abominable dinner-party, and I shall never feel any again. I am
sure of that.”
“I am sorry I laughed. I could not help it. But I am very glad that
things have ended in this way, though, as I told you when I last saw
you, I wish she would marry. She has grown to be the most listless,
unhappy creature in the world.”
“What can be the matter?” George asked. “Is it not the life you are
leading together? You are so lonely.”
“I came back on her account,” Grace answered wearily. “For my own sake I
would never have left that dear place again. I have told her that I will
do anything she pleases, go anywhere, live in any other way. It can make
no difference to me. But she will not hear of leaving New York. I cannot
mention it to her. She grows thinner every day.”
“It is very strange. I am very sorry to hear it.”
They talked together for some time longer and then George went away,
inwardly wondering at his own conduct in having spoken of Constance so
freely to her sister. It was not unnatural, however. Grace treated him
as an old friend, and circumstances had suddenly brought the two into
relations of close intimacy. As she had been chosen by Constance to
convey the latter’s refusal, it might well be supposed that she was in
her sister’s confidence, and George had said nothing which he was not
willing that Grace should repeat. He had not been gone more than half an
hour when Constance entered the room, looking pale and tired.
“I have been everywhere to find a wedding present for the future Mrs.
Wood,” she said, as she let herself sink down upon the sofa. “I can find
nothing, positively nothing that will do.”
“He has just been here,” said Grace indifferently.
Constance changed colour and glanced quickly at her sister. She looked
as though she had checked herself in the act of saying something which
she might have regretted.
“What did you talk about?” she asked quietly, after a moment’s pause. “I
wish I had been here. I have not seen him since he came to announce his
engagement.”
“Yes. He was sorry to miss you, too. He was not particularly
agreeable—considering how well he can talk when he tries. I am very fond
of him now. I am sorry I misjudged him formerly, and I told him so
before he came to town.”
“You have discovered that you misjudged him, then,” said Constance, as
calmly as she could.
“Yes,” Grace answered with perfect unconcern. “I am always glad to see
him. By-the-bye, we talked about you.”
“About me?”
“Yes. What is the matter? Is there any reason why we should not talk
about you?”
“Oh, none whatever—except that he loved me once.”
“He said nothing but what was perfectly fair and friendly. I asked him
if he was happy in the prospect of being married so soon, and then very
naturally we spoke of you. He said that he owed you the most loyal
friendship and sincere gratitude, that you had launched him in his
career by sending his first novel to the publisher without his consent,
that without you, he would not have been what he is—he said it seemed
natural, on looking back, that he should have loved you, or thought that
he loved you——”
“Thought that he loved me?” Constance repeated in a low voice.
“Yes. Considering how quickly he has recovered, his love can hardly have
been much more sincere than yours. What is the matter, Conny dear? Are
you ill?”
Constance had hidden her face in the cushions and was sobbing bitterly,
in the very place she had occupied when she had finally refused George
Wood, and almost in the same attitude.
“Oh Grace!” she moaned. “You will break my heart!”
“Do you love him, now?” Grace asked in a voice that was suddenly hard.
She had not had the least suspicion of the real state of the case.
Constance nodded in answer, still sobbing and covering her face. Grace
turned away in disgust.
“What contemptible creatures we women can be!” she said in an undertone,
as she crossed the room.