months. They took a extra shine to me because I did the prize-pupil
stunt; but they won't let anybody slip back if they give 'em half
a chance. When they got me sound again, did they ship me back to the
shipping department in the sub-basement? Not muchy! Looka me now, little
missy! Clerk in their biggest display; in three months a raise to ninety
dollars. Can you beat it? Ninety dollars would send all the shipping
clerks of the world off in a faint."
"Gee, it--it's swell!"
"And--"
"Look! Look!"
"Persimmons!" A golden mound of them lay at the base of a tree, piled up
against the hole, bursting, brown. "Persimmons! Here; taste one, little
missy. They're fine."
"Eat 'em?"
"Sure!"
She bit into one gently; then with appetite.
"M-m-m! Good!"
"Want another?"
"M-m-m--my mouth! Ouch! My m--mouth!"
"Gee, you cute little thing, you! See, my mouth's the same way too.
Feels like a knot. Gee, you cute little thing, you--all puckered up and
all."
And he must link her arm in his and crunch-crunch over the brittle
leaves and up a hillside to a plateau of rock overlooking the flaming
country; and from the valley below, smoke from burning mounds of leaves
wound in spirals, its pungency drifting to them.
"See that tree there? It's a oak. Look; from a little acorn like this it
grew. See, this is a acorn, and in the start that tree wasn't no bigger
than this little thing."
"Quit your kiddin'!" But she smiled and her lips were parted sweetly;
and always unformed tears would gloze her eyes.
"Here, sit here, little lady. Wait till I spread this newspaper out.
Gee! Don't I wish you didn't have to go back to the city by two o'clock,
little lady! We could make a great day of it here, out in the country;
lunch at a farm and see the sun set and all. Some day of it we could
make if--"
"I--I don't have to go back, Eddie."
His face expanded into his widest smile.
"Gee, that's great! That's just great!"
Silence.
"What you thinking of, little lady, sitting there so pretty and all?"
"N-nothing."
"Nothing? Aw, surely something!"
A tear formed and zigzagged down her cheek.
"Nothing, honest; only I--I feel right happy."
"That's just how you oughtta feel, little lady."
"In three months, if--aw, ain't I the nut?"
"It'll be a big Christmas, won't it, little missy, for both of us? A big
Christmas for both of us; you as sound and round as a peach again, and
me shooting up like a skyrocket on the pay roll."
A laugh bubbled to her lips before the tear was dry.
"In three months I won't be a T.B., not even a little bit."
"Sh-h-h! On the farm we wasn't allowed to say even that. We wasn't
supposed to even know what them letters mean."
"Don't you know what they mean, Eddie?"
"Sure I do!" He leaned toward her and placed his hand lightly over hers.
"T.B.--True Blue--that's what they mean, little lady."
She could feel the veins in his palm throbbing.
MR. EBERDEEN'S HOUSE[9]
By ARTHUR JOHNSON
From _The Century_
[9] Copyright, 1915, by The Century Company. Copyright, 1916, by Arthur
Johnson.
It loomed there, high and large, uncompromised by the gloom of mist
about it, unruffled by the easterly gusts that bent the two rows of
larches which stretched in deliberate diagonal lines from the street
to the corners of its grim façade. Hastings could hear the beating of
the sea; it was probably in that chaos of space behind the house. As
he stood leaning against one of the tall gate-posts and surveying the
scene, he began to feel, almost in spite of himself, in sympathy with
it.
A motor drew up near where he stood. Instinctively his attention was
directed from it to the green Georgian portal, which at the moment was
drawn in to permit somebody to pass out. She was in glaring contrast to
her setting; she was fresh and lovely, young and fashionable-looking.
She paused on the wide stone step, glanced up at the sky, opened her
umbrella, and briskly proceeded down the avenue to the gate. Within a
few yards of it she raised her eyes from the puddled gravel and started
back at sight of him.
"Jack!" she cried out. "How did you get here? Why didn't you tell me? I
am this minute on my way to meet you."
"I'm admiring your summer home, Julia--Julia dear," he said to her,
a little constrained. "It's sad and desolate, and everything that I
suppose you want it to be. I expected to hate it. I thought that having
spent most of my life away from all this, I should have lost every scrap
of--tolerance for New England. But ever since I set foot in Rockface--"
"When _did_ you, Jack?" she demanded.
"An hour ago. I've been in the strangest mood ever since."
"Come, now, and tell me about it," she suddenly saw the need to say,
walking away from him to dismiss the grinning chauffeur.
Hastings lingered alone in the hall.
"It's much nicer by the fire," Julia called to him impatiently from
the next room. And he followed the sound of her voice; he moved slowly
over to a chair, opposite her own, and sat down, forgetting to talk.
"I vow I'm amused," she exclaimed, "at the way you take it. You've made
letters full of fun of me for settling my parents 'on that ugly little
Massachusetts point'; you've laid it all down to my 'Middle-Western love
of Puritan relics' and 'Eastern culturine,' and scorned my 'romantic
inexperience'; and here you come, redolent of Europe, to be as much
impressed by our choice as if you were a Montana school-girl!" He smiled
back, but it was obvious that he hadn't heard a word. "What's the matter
with you, Jacky?" she asked interestedly; "had a bad journey?"
He tried to concentrate his faculties on looking genial and at the same
time intelligent.
"It was just like me, Julia," he began, the ghost of cheerfulness on
his face. "I took the earliest sort of train, instead of the one I
telephoned you I'd take. You see, to have landed at night, after all
the years--think of it! And then to go walking around by myself, seeing
things crop suddenly up that I hadn't thought of since--well--scarcely
since I was born. No wonder I couldn't sleep. This morning, like a
stranded idiot, I got out at that little way-station of yours, and
realized for the first time that I didn't have a blessed idea where
you lived."
"Rockface is about as enormous as a biscuit. Anybody could have told
you."
"That's the strangest part of it," recollected Hastings. "You see, I
had a curious hunch about it; I felt a little forsaken. I was actually
surprised and irritated that somebody--I didn't know who--wasn't waiting
to meet me.
"There was something about the place, Julia," he gravely pursued, "made
me feel justified in thinking a hospitable welcome was due me ... Oh
I don't mean because you were here! But--well--the veil of sea-turn
that half-hid the buildings across the square made me feel the need of
some kind of greeting--I expected one!--right on the spot! Can you
understand? And--instead--the cold east wind blew round me as if I were
an outcast.
"I stole down the first crooked street I came to. I stared at the
house-fronts, at the little square panes of the sagging window-sashes,
at the dingy doors, with those short, steep flights of steps leading
down to the side-walks."
Julia sobered to a tentative frown. Jack's eyes were bigger than
usual, and he did look, notwithstanding the feverish flush on his
cheeks, rather fagged. How she had been counting the days for him
to come! It didn't seem possible that the visit which he had been
promising for so long to make her should have finally materialized.
Wasn't it really an indication,--she pondered while again happily she
sized up the situation,--if he took so much trouble for her, that he
did, after all, care more perhaps than she had sometimes thought? But
what an extraordinary meeting it had been! He had at once launched
forth on this extreme discourse. She sat back, and let her eyes rest
on him with amused tolerance, her smile attentively adjusted to suit
his mood; for her moment's anxiety vanished at further sight of his
strong, broad shoulders and the handsome appearance he made in her
favorite high-back chair, his firm hands grasping the arms of it.
"You've stayed away from America too long," she said carelessly; "Paris
is bad for you."
He leaned forward, his delicately modeled cheekbones emphasized by the
firelight, his hair becomingly awry.
"I _knew_ it would all be as it was," he went inspiredly on. "There was
a thick clump of hedge, cold and dreary in the mist, that awoke pictures
of a prison I used to dread the sight of when I was--I don't know how
old. Once I partly thought I must be dreaming; so I put out my hand and
touched the wet, sodden picket of an old fence. I looked suspiciously
behind me. But there was only an old man behind, fully two hundred yards
away. Then the idea came to me that it would be a relief to talk to
somebody; I hadn't interchanged a word with any one since I got off the
ship. All kinds of impressions, you see, had been accumulating, and they
thronged like phantoms about me.
"I wanted to hear myself speak--to see if I could. So I turned, and
waited for him to come. The rain was dripping all around; there wasn't
another sound anywhere. Now, this is the queerest thing of all: what do
you think I said to him?" Jack leaned forward, his eyes darting
intensely over her face. "I said: 'Can you tell me the way to Mr.
Eberdeen's house?'"
"Mr.--_Eberdeen's_ house!" She stood abruptly up. "Who--who told you,"
she gasped, "that this was Mr. Eberdeen's house?"
He stood up, too, stepping back from her. "You must have told me," he
said, aware of his quivering lips, "in one of your letters. The name
came to me--"
"I never told you," she stated emphatically, "I never told any
one--for--for--why did you ask such a question of that old man?"
His gaze wandered.
"My throat felt parched from disuse. It took a distinct effort to make
the words sound articulate.
"'Sure, now,' answered the old man, while I was still puzzling to
explain to myself the question I had asked him, 'but never have I
heard it called _that_--not since my father died from the cold he
caught drivin' the mare up from Portsville. Ther' was a time, in the
days when they talked of it bein' ha'nted, you'd hear folks call it
Eberdeen Manor; but not--no, and my father likely's been dead these
forty years now--never, Mr. Eberdeen's house!"
"'Mr. Eberdeen--there was such a person, then?'
"'There'll be a time, me boy, when they'll doubt yerself was a living
thing.' He straightened his bent body reprehensibly; he shook his head.
'Walk back to the next corner,' he muttered, 'and turn to yer left.
It'll be down there ber the cliffs, if nobody's stolen it. Somebody'll
sure 'nough be there ter point it out to yer.'
"'I'm a stranger,' I apologized; 'I really didn't know.'
"'_Know!_' he shouted. 'Who was it owned the land this 'ere street
runs over? Who built it? Who was it paid fer the church on the hill?
Who did fer the sick, and gave to the poor, and got nothin' hisself
fer the trouble but grief and loneliness and a broken heart? Wher'
did yer come from?'
"And he surveyed me, as if the mere fact of his seeing me for the first
time made him doubt my intentions. Still I stood there waiting.
"'What was he like? What did he do? Who was he?' I couldn't help
flinging out in my wonderment.
"'As good's'll ever come back from wher' yer've been, or 'll pray fer
the like of yer, I reckon. Judge not, I tell yer, that yer be not
yerself judged.'
"I tried to smile at the old man.
"'Good-day to yer,' he grumbled, and walked back in the direction from
which he had come. I watched until he was lost in the thickness."
Julia looked at Hastings in astonishment. Just another glimmer of
anxiety crossed her mind; but any foolish worry she might have had for
him was merged in her consciousness of something indeed more staggering.
"Do you think," she brooded, "that it can be true--that--that the house
is--_was_--haunted?"
"I had," Jack unresponsively continued--"I couldn't help it--on the
way a queer loathing of the little village. The gaunt house-fronts
obtruded themselves so obstinately, so self-satisfiedly, like anemic
country parsons, with their eyes close together, giving me a mean,
soulless stare. Every object testified to its lack of any temperamental
share in the joy of living. The emptiness of the streets seemed
pitiless; their narrowness was oppressive."
"I love every inch of it," said Julia, defiantly.
Hastings was silent. He looked at the dry, colorless walls, covered with
circuitous lines of crackling old paint.
"Was this furniture here, Julia?" he asked.
"Not this," she exclaimed with pride.
"No wonder," he argued half to himself, "that the next generation
preferred black walnut, even with all its grapes and gewgaws! Horrible
as it was, it wasn't so orthodox and priggish and mirthless as what came
before."
He strayed out into the hall again; he viewed its stateliness, its
expurgated elegance. "Well, this has got me, Julia--seriously," he said
with a surprised realization that she was standing beside him.
"It's--it's immense."
"Oh, _that_," she cried out, "from _you_!" And slowly she stepped closer
to say something to him; but she thought better of it. "Don't you
think," she just let slip, "I've made it look at least--well--_old_?"
"As only a Westerner could want to make it look." His sense of humor
affectionately covered any lack of enthusiasm.
"Come, Jacky," she urged at last, "I'll show you all of it before lunch
is ready."
The stairs rose straight in the rear of the hall, directly opposite the
main entrance, with its border of finely traceried windows, branching
squarely to right and left two thirds of the way up. By the first door
above the side whither Julia conducted her guest she stepped fondly back
and announced:
"This, Jack, is your room. I hope you will like it."
"Yes," he murmured, distractedly gazing about him.
Despite the freshness of everything, despite the new woolen carpets,
with their correct geometric designs, ones Julia had had copied from
some battered relics which she had somehow acquired, despite the new
chintzes and the recently refinished furniture so deliberately assembled
there for the first time, despite the spickness and spanness of each
suitably collected detail of the room's decorations, a musty smell in
the air caught his breath. The floor swooped reminiscently down toward
the right; the boards of it made a stifled creak as he stepped across
them. He himself was a little unsteady. The window gave on impenetrable
fog. Hastings threw up the sash and peered out into the dampness; he
heard the sound of unseen boats groping their ways through the distance;
the water lapped and laved below him.
"Jack!" Julia called.
He turned to her, dazed, smiling in that way he had of trying to conceal
his consciousness of inattention.
"Of course, it seems plain and spare and--rather humble, after Europe. I
know _that_."
As if directed by her words, his eyes swept rapidly over the room.
"It's no use, Julia," he answered; "if you're New England to the core,
you can't get free of it. I'd like every drop of New England blood
drained out of me, and something--say Hebrew or--or Middle-West," he
laughed, "substituted in place of it. To you this is 'pretty' and 'cozy'
and--and 'cheerful'; to me--well, it's like an orgy of blue laws; it's
the personification of witch-lore--like self-inflicted penance for I
don't know what." He glanced at her in excitement, shifting his hands
uneasily in and out of his pockets.
"Yes," she said slowly. "I had thought, nevertheless, that you might
like it."
"Like it?" he echoed. "That's the trouble. I wish I weren't so full of
the meaning of it all. Can you fancy how a monk might feel, who'd been
away on a vacation, just getting back to his cell? _Like_ it? I can't
help liking it. It's my proper setting; I see that fast enough. But
I've come back to find how inexorable and harsh and catechismical it is,
and naturally I resent being what I am. Oh--" he broke off, suddenly
realizing the folly of his harangue, and after another moment he added:
"It's delightful, Julia dear, really. If only all the Westerners could
come to New England and revive it--and all the New-Englanders move West
and revive themselves!"
They went on from room to room.
"You Westerners," Hastings reiterated--"oh, I don't just know what the
difference is, for you're New England, too. Only you've got so much else
mixed up with it. You've become free-lances; your more recent, less
bigoted adventures have made you forget."
"What?" asked Julia, indignantly.
But he was at a loss, as he looked about him, to explain, however
much each new survey of the scene convinced him. "Here," he muttered,
"everything has been steeping so long in the attenuated resolutions
that drove us to come; everything is still conscientiously
soaked--saturated--in the barren memory of it."
"_You're_ not," said Julia, testily, to draw him out. "Precious little
of it _you've_ had! Two years at a school! You're more foreign than you
are New England. Remember--your--"
"Yes. I don't forget I've one foreign ancestor to boast of, and bless
Heaven for it! How my great-grandmother ever happened to marry--see
this!" Hastings went on, incoherently catching her arm and waving his
other over the exquisite array of her "colonial" chamber. "Now, this, to
you, is--well--it's as 'amusing' as if you'd tried to furnish a room to
imitate one in Cinderella's palace, as 'interesting' as if you'd done it
Louis Sixteenth, or--or--its meaning is hardly more personal to you than
the room you furnished in Munich that winter."--She blushed admiringly
at memory of their first meeting.--"The problem appealed to you, and you
made it charming. But to me--"
"You really hate it," said Julia, determined to face the facts.
"I really love it," he retorted sadly, "the way you couldn't help loving
a parent, even though you mightn't believe in him."
"Jack," she characteristically cried out to him again, "there is one
thing more that I hardly dare show you then. You'll think me such a
fool. I--"
A servant appeared to announce that luncheon was ready.
"Don't say anything to _them_ against it," she told him on the way down.
That wasn't, however, what made him silent during the meal. He took
little part in the conversation except when Mr. and Mrs. Elliott plied
him with questions, which he then found himself answering with only
unsatisfactory vagueness--answers that he could do nothing, not even
when Julia flew tenderly to his rescue, to make any better. Yes, he
liked the house, he said gravely. It was a nice old house. And he
thought how murky, despite its new coats of cleaning, was that far
corner up near the ceiling. No, he wasn't sorry, he responded, that he
had left the École des Beaux Arts to devote all his time to painting; it
was the one thing he was suited for. Yes, his foreign great-grandfather
had been a portrait-painter. He couldn't remember what his name was.
Tremaine? Henry Tremaine. That was it. Julia was looking hard at him.
She was gazing down at her plate. He knew he had eaten nothing. He
could not eat. No, he wasn't at all hungry. Why was it so chilly? he
thought. Doubtless he had picked up a germ. The house, he muttered to
himself, was on his nerves. It was so everlastingly gloomy! Julia had
reinhabited it too authentically. "Eberdeen Manor"--"Mr. Eberdeen's
House." What names!
An hour afterward he told Julia he was dead sleepy and that, contrary
to all his habits, he was going up-stairs to take a nap. Dinner was
at seven? All right, he would be in better shape by then. He felt
wretchedly, but he didn't say so.
Out in the hall he paused a moment at the foot of the wide lower
staircase. The ticking of a good many clocks came to him from different
parts of the house; they seemed to focus their monotonous activity
especially on his hearing. Extraordinary recollections swept him. He
remembered having heard an old nurse, Sarah Teale, describe how her aunt
once rushed out the back door right in the midst of frying doughnuts,
and was instantly stricken with paralysis on account of it. There was
a low groaning; a moan floated to him from somewhere above. Bravely he
forced himself to climb the stairs toward it. He turned the knob. The
door stuck. He shook it again, and it yielded.
II
It was nearly dark when he awoke. A late, a very late, an unnaturally
late, afternoon dusk shadowed in streaks across the floor. He could
hardly breathe. The windows were close shut. The striped shades were
drawn down to the sills. But he could see the yellowed print of Da
Vinci's "Last Supper"--the one he had bought at Milan--hanging on the
panel above the empty hearth. There was the sand-shaker on his maple
desk. That old lithograph of the two kittens over beside the bureau was
crooked. He must remember to straighten it. The wall-paper was getting
dingy.
He stretched himself. A sharp pain was going through his head. But it
was late; he must get up and dress, or he wouldn't be ready in time.
The clothes he had just taken off lay across an arm of the painted
chair by his bed. He lifted the coat, and let it fall from his grasp.
He moved over to the wash-stand. The Chinese pitcher was as light as
if filled with air when he turned its nose to the basin. The hat-tub
stood on end between the wash-stand and the closet door. He reached
for the battered old red tassel of the bell-rope and pulled it. It
was so late,--it was getting later,--he must hurry, whether Simpkins
came or not. He could manage. And he opened the closet door, sighing
at the bothersome prospect of getting into his togs. He ran his hand
over his hair. Where was the mirror? And, damme! he had no light!
The shoes were a trifle hard to draw on, too small for him; the
breeches were badly in need of pressing; the coat was stiff. He began
opening drawers in the bureau, delving through piles of neatly folded
linen and silk. At last he chose a shirt and put it on over his head.
He laid aside the purple satin waistcoat until he should have arranged
his stock, which he found tight, and difficult to make meet in the back.
But he finally got it adjusted; he brought the thick, wide ends around
in front, tied them in a huge bow while he walked over to the window
and gazed out. Fine night. The mist had gone, the stars were dimly
appearing. He turned back for his waistcoat and jacket. By mistake he
opened the closet door again instead of the one which led into the hall.
"I knew you would come!" she said, approaching so near to him from
out the somber blackness of the garments which draped the walls that
he could see her quite plainly by the light of the candle in her hand.
She wasn't a day over twenty. If she was pale, it was more the pallor
of fright than of ill health, or perhaps only because her skin showed
so white, lighted by the faint glare, in contrast to her deep eyes and
to the thick, glossy braids bound round and round above her forehead.
"John, John, won't you speak to me?"
He took a step forward, faltering. At that moment there was a brusque
movement beside him, and he turned to behold there a young man, dressed
in knee-breeches, wearing a purple waistcoat and velvet coat, as like
unto himself as his own image.
"Duty bade me come," the stranger answered stiffly, as if it was for his
ears that her words had been intended.
Hastings' gaze flew to meet hers, which he was astonished to find still
directed on him instead of on the speaker. He felt himself melted to
pity by her frailness and beauty and charm, so that he turned almost
angrily toward the intruder, who, at that moment, however, began to
address her in tones Hastings could but admire:
"To you!" cried out the young stranger--"you, for whom duty knows no
promptings!"
At that, Hastings turned to her again, his heart rent by the plea she
uttered.
"But you love me? You love me? Oh, say it to me!" And she was looking
not at his counterpart; she was imploring _him_, she was stretching her
arms out to _him_, she was veritably making her plea to _him_, as if he
were the one who had elicited it.
"I will do anything for you--anything!" he would have promised her had
not the threat of the stranger so like unto himself interrupted.
"Don't mock my patience, Lydia," Hastings heard as once more he shifted
his eyes to the speaker.
It was maddening how from one to the other of them his sympathies
veered. The sepulchral voice of the man seemed to express Hastings'
own thoughts; yet her sweet appeal awoke resentful fury for what words
he dared say to her. If only Hastings might explain, when she stared
so reproachfully, that it was only he who had spoken!