DAMERON BLOCK, 1870
When Zelda asked her father one day where his office was, he answered
evasively that it was in the Dameron Block. This was an old-fashioned
office building, with a basement and a short stairway leading to the
main corridor. It was no longer fashionable, as the better class of
lawyers and real estate brokers had sought buildings of a later type
that offered electric lights and elevators. The Dameron Block faced the
court-house square, and was the habitat of divers small attorneys and
real estate men. In the basement below, a justice of the peace sat in
judgment next door to a musty old book-shop, where the proprietor, a
quaint figure with a great mop of iron-gray hair, sold pens and paper
and legal blanks to Dogberry Row, as this quarter of the street was
called.
Zelda strayed into this thoroughfare by chance one winter afternoon
shortly before Christmas and was arrested by the sight of some old
books in the bookseller’s window. The venerable bookseller came out
into the basement area and spoke to her of the books, holding a volume
meanwhile, with his forefinger closed upon the page he had been
reading. Yes; he kept French books, he said, and she went into the shop
and looked over his shelves of foreign books.
“There is very little demand for them,” he said. “Some of these are
rare. Here is a little volume of Hugo’s poems; very rare. I should
be glad if you would take it for a dollar,--any of these poets for a
dollar. But of course I can only offer. It is for you to decide.”
He took down other volumes, with praise for every one but with shy
apology for offering them.
“I shall take the Hugo,” said Zelda, presently.
He wrapped it for her carefully, even regretfully, and held the packet
for a moment, caressing it with his hands, while she produced a dollar
from her purse and took it from him.
“Call again. I have been here for twenty years; Congdon, Dameron Block.”
“Yes, Dameron Block,” repeated Zelda.
The constables and loungers on the sidewalk in front of the justice’s
court stared at her as she came out and glanced for a moment at the
upper windows of the building. A galvanized iron sign at the eaves bore
the name “Dameron Block, 1870,” in letters that had long since lost the
false aspect of stone given to them originally by gray paint.
Zelda went into the dim entrance and read the miscellaneous signs that
were tacked there. One of them was inscribed “E. Dameron, Room 8”; and
passing on she presently came to a frosted-glass door, where the same
legend was repeated. It was late in the afternoon; possibly her father
would go home with her, she thought, and turned the knob.
She entered a dark room on a courtway, evidently used as a place of
waiting; there was another room beyond, reached by a door that stood
half-open. Her father was engaged; his voice rose from the inner room;
and she took a chair by the outer door of the waiting-room. She looked
about the place curiously. On a long table lay in great disorder many
odds and ends--packages of garden-seed under dust that afforded almost
enough earth to sprout them; half a dozen fence pickets tied together
with a string; and several strata of old newspapers. On the floor in
a corner lay a set of harness in a disreputable state of disrepair;
and pasted on the walls were yellowed sheets of newspapers containing
tables of some sort. Zelda did not know what these were, though any one
of the loafers on the curbstone could have enlightened her as to their
character,--they were the official advertisements of the sales of tax
titles. Ezra Dameron always “talked poor,” and complained of the burden
of taxes and street improvements; but he had been the chief buyer of
tax titles in the county.
“I’m sure that I’ve been very lenient, very lenient indeed,” Ezra
Dameron was saying. “I have, in fact, considered it a family matter,
calling for considerate treatment, on the score of my friendship with
your husband. If it had been otherwise, I should have been obliged
long ago to take steps--steps toward safeguarding the interests--the
interests of my trust, I should say.
“But another extension of two years would be sufficient for me to pay.
I wish very much for Olive not to know that her schooling was paid
for with borrowed money. She gives me all she earns. Her position is
assured, and I am putting aside something every month to apply on the
debt. We owe nothing else.”
“But two of these notes are already in default, Mrs. Merriam. I have
incurred obligations on the strength of them. A woman can’t understand
the requirements and exactions of business.”
“I am sorry, very sorry, Mr. Dameron. All I ask is this extension. It
can’t be a large matter to you!”
“I regret more than I can tell you that it is impossible. If it were
myself,--if it were my own money that I advanced you, I could perhaps
be less insistent, but as it is, this money belongs to another,--in
fact, it is part of my daughter’s estate. She is perfectly helpless,
utterly ignorant of business; it is necessary for me to exercise the
greatest care in administering her affairs. It is a sacred trust, Mrs.
Merriam, a sacred trust from her dear mother.”
“I came to-day,” said the woman’s voice, apologetically, “hoping that
payment could be deferred.”
“Yes, to be sure; it’s wise to be forehanded. But the loan must be paid
at the maturity of the last note, in May. I must close my wife’s estate
very soon. I have timed all my loans to that end.”
The purring voice stole through the anteroom, where Zelda sat forward
in her chair, listening with parted lips and wonder and pain in her
eyes. The book in her lap fell to the bare floor, making a sharp
clatter that startled her. She gave a little gasp and reached for it,
scarcely stooping, so intent were her eyes on the door of the inner
room; and when she had regained it, she ran into the hall and down the
steps to the street.
She turned west toward the gray shaft of the monument and round it,
past the little Gothic church, to High Street. She felt a great
yearning for sympathy, for some one to whom she could confess her
misery and heartache. It was growing dark, and when she reached her
uncle’s house, the lights shone brightly in his library. She knew he
was there, and that she could, at a word, make his house her home and
shake herself free forever from her father. She was always rebuffing
and thwarting her Uncle Rodney in his efforts to help her. But at the
gate she paused with her hand on the catch. The Japanese boy opened the
front door just then to pick up the evening paper, and the hall light
fell upon the steps invitingly. But she hurried on. The lights in the
houses mocked her; here were homes in a city of homes, and she was
as homeless and friendless as though she walked in a wilderness. She
came to Mrs. Forrest’s house. There, too, a welcome awaited her; but
the thought of the overheated rooms, of the cheerless luxury in which
her aunt lived, stifled her. She felt no temptation to make any appeal
there.
Her pride rose again; she would not break under a burden her mother
had borne; and with this thought in her heart, she turned into a side
street that led to her father’s house and walked slowly homeward.
Without putting aside her wraps she dropped a match into the kindling
in the fireplace of the living-room, and waited until the flames leaped
into the throat of the chimney. Polly was in the dining-room, showing
a new assistant how to lay the table for the evening meal, and she
came to the folding doors and viewed Zelda with the interest that the
girl always had for her. Polly was Zelda’s slave, and she went about
half the day muttering and chuckling over what seemed to her Zelda’s
unaccountable whims.
“Polly,” said Zelda, “this is Julius Cæsar’s birthday,--or Napoleon
Bonaparte’s or the Duke of Argyle’s--do you understand?”
The black woman showed all her teeth in appreciation.
“And we’ll have out the candlesticks,--those very high ones; and you
may use that gold-banded china and the real cut glass. And mind,--some
terrible thing will happen to you, if you let that new weird young
thing out there break a single piece. _Comprenez-vous?_ Yes? Then you
may return to your enchantments. But mind you, no trifling with your
sacred trust! Let those sweet potatoes _sauté_ approximate, if they do
not fully realize, perfection. And as for that duck--the dear little
thing--pray remember that roasting does not mean incineration. You may
go now.”
Polly departed chuckling and Zelda went to her room.
Her father was reading his newspaper by the fireplace when she came
in upon his startled gaze an hour later. She had arrayed herself in a
white silk evening gown. He had never before seen her dressed so at
their family dinner-table. The long skirt added to her height. Her hair
was caught up from her forehead in an exaggeration of the prevailing
mode.
“Good evening, father! I thought I’d dress up to-night just for fun,
and to get the crinkles out of my things. Isn’t this gown a perfect
love? It’s real Parisian.”
She swept past, the rich silk brushing him, and then,--Polly having
appeared at the door with her eyes staring from her head,--
“Now let us feast while we may,” she said.
She passed before him into the dining-room with an inclination of her
head and to her place.
The old man had not spoken and he sat down with painstaking care,
finding apparently some difficulty in drawing in his chair. He bowed
his head for the silent grace he always said, and raised his eyes with
a look of sweet resignation to the girl.
“We are dining _en fête_, father,” Zelda began hastily. “I felt that
we must be gay to-night,--something seemed to be in the air,--and I
thought it well to celebrate. It’s funny, isn’t it, how every day must
be an anniversary of something! I’m sure something noble and cheerful
must have happened on this day a hundred years ago. Where _do_ you
buy celery? I wish you’d tell them that it’s perfectly dreadful; this
to-day is as tough as wire.”
Nothing in the old house ever escaped his sharp eyes. The old china
with its gold band, and the cut glass that had not known service for
years struck him at once.
Ezra Dameron did not understand much about human nature, though like
all cunning people he thought he did. It was beginning to dawn upon
him that Zelda was deeper than he had imagined. Perhaps, he said to
himself, she was as shrewd and keen as himself; or, he asked again, was
she not playing some deep rôle,--even laying a trap for him? He did
not know that the moods of a girl are as many as the moods of the wind
and sea. He remembered that his wife had been easily deceived. He had
crushed the mother; but this girl would not so easily be subdued. The
candles made a soft light upon the table. He lifted his eyes furtively
to see whether the gas in the chandelier overhead was lighted; and was
relieved to note that the extravagance of the candles was not augmented
there. He drew his bony fingers across the table-cloth, feeling its
texture critically. He knew that it had been taken from a forbidden
shelf of the linen closet. Clearly his rule over the ancient Polly was
at an end.
Zelda had little idea of the things that interested her father. He read
the morning and evening newspapers through every day except Sunday.
The Sunday papers he did not take. He subscribed for several religious
newspapers of his denomination, and these, too, he read and pondered.
Zelda knew nothing of his own family. He was the only member of it that
lived in the state. His correspondence was carried on from his office,
and the only letters that the postman left at the Dameron house were
the envelopes that poured in steadily, bearing invitations for Zelda,
an occasional foreign letter from some friend she had made abroad, and
on the first of the month, bills for her own purchases at the shops.
She always found it difficult to talk to her father; to-night she felt
strangely inclined to say something that would vex him.
The maid went about the table in white apron and cap and waited on them
with a grin on her face.
“Won’t you take some more of the apple sauce, father? Angeline, the
apple sauce. Those were superb apples that came in from the farm the
other day, father. I suppose the farm really pays for itself,--you are
always sending in nice things from there.”
“Oh, not at all! Everything I raise is very costly, very costly.”
He looked at her suspiciously. At any mention of money or expense he
put himself on guard.
“But the tenant you have out there must make his living--”
“Not at all. I can show you my books. I keep a faithful account; it’s
been a loss each year since I took it.” He spoke defensively, in spite
of himself.
“Oh, please don’t show me any accounts! They must be very, very
depressing;” and she shrugged her shoulders.
“To be sure! to be sure! quite that!” He laughed with a real heartiness.
“I suppose many people have troubles about money,” she went on. “Making
both ends meet, I think they call it.”
“To be sure, Zee. God’s poor are always with us.”
She bent over suddenly and inspected the handle of a spoon intently.
“But when people can’t pay--rents, mortgages, whatever their troubles
are--then what do they do?”
“The balance must be struck in some way. A debt is a debt. A creditor
is entitled to his pay. It is the law of the land.”
“The law; yes, I suppose there is the law. But there aren’t any laws
for the poor, are there? I heard that--in France. And the peasants over
there didn’t look as though they had any laws on their side.”
“It’s very different here; quite different. We are all poor here. This
is God’s great republic of the poor, as one of our poets has said.”
“That sounds well, but I’m afraid it’s only poetry,” said Zelda,
soberly. And then, smoothing her crumbs into a little heap for the girl
to brush away:
“In anything that you have--or I have--we shall deal very kindly with
poor people, shan’t we?”
His restless fingers were playing with his coffee spoon and his eyes
were on the table-cloth. He looked up now and met Zelda’s gaze bent
gravely upon him.
“Yes, what we have--what we have--” there was a slight stress on the
pronoun, as though he wished to emphasize the fact of their common
interests--“we must use--as God would have us.”
He nodded his head back and forth, with a far look in his eyes that was
intended to express spiritual exaltation. It was not Zelda’s purpose to
disclose the fact of her visit to his office; she had gone as far as
she dared. He had begun to interest her, not so much as a person who
had any claim on her affection, but as a curious character--even as an
eccentric and untrustworthy character in a story; yet she felt toward
him somewhat as a parent may feel toward a deformed child, conscious,
indeed, of a moral deformity that fascinated her.
“Yes, of course; I am sure that we want to do right,” she said, with
the slightest accent on the pronoun, in imitation of his own manner of
the moment before.
When they returned to the living-room he tended the fire; and when he
took up his paper nervously, from habit, he put it down again, and
began to talk. Almost for the first time since Zelda’s return, he
showed an interest in her foreign experiences, and led her to speak of
them. And she exerted herself to be entertaining. He had supposed that
Mrs. Forrest would prejudice Zelda against him during the years in
which she had kept the girl away; but his daily scrutiny had discovered
no trace of disrespect or contempt in her attitude toward him.
The striking resemblance between Margaret Dameron and her daughter
impressed him to-night; but there were puzzling differences. He was
conscious of depths in Zelda that he could not fathom. During her
recital of the story of a mishap that had befallen her aunt and herself
at a carnival in Rome, it occurred to him that she was showing him this
graciousness to-night in the hope of wresting money from him. He lost
interest and turned to his newspaper abruptly. Zelda picked up the book
she had purchased at Congdon’s shop and fell to reading; and after he
had turned his paper restlessly for half an hour, he rose to go to bed.
It had been on her tongue several times to ask him boldly about the
debt of Olive’s mother, even if it should be necessary to confess that
she had overheard his conversation with Mrs. Merriam; but this might
cause an unpleasant scene. No great haste was necessary, she judged;
and so she waited. She could probably persuade her aunt or uncle to
help her in the matter when the time came, if no other way should occur
to her.
“Good night, father!”
She rose and watched him from the room; but he did not look at her
again.
“Good night, daughter,” he said, a little vaguely, as though he had
forgotten her existence.
No one came and she sat looking steadily at the dying fire. The
thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts, says the poet; but their
natural habitat should be a realm of light and peace and not
dark vales of uncertainty and doubt. When she went at last to her
room, the old cedars outside her windows were moaning softly. She
found a satisfaction in bolting her door, and then she drew from
her writing-table the little book, tied with its faded ribbon, and
opened it to the charge her mother had written,--those last pitiful
words,--and read them over and over again, until they seemed to be
audible whispers in the room:
“_Perhaps I was unjust to him; it may have been my fault; but if she
can respect or love him I wish it to be so._”
She lay awake staring into the dark for half the night, with tearless
eyes, one hand clasping the little book under her pillow.