improvident, gracefully graceless good-fellow of a good-for-nothing, his
nephew, him and his pretty-handed, big-eyed wife—he hadn’t seen either
of them since they ran away and were married—sent for them and put them
in his great, old house and—didn’t you hear Maceration growling about
the luck some people have just before we left? He says the nephew will
have all the old man’s property.”
“What’s the world coming to?” said the senior, “or what is coming to the
world?”
[Illustration: [Inkwell]]
A PURITAN INGÉNUE
BY JOHN SEYMOUR WOOD
[Illustration: [Man]]
I
The Archibald house, on West Forty-— Street, was of the character
described as a “modernized front.” A handsome arch in rough stone
surmounted the front-door, which was done in polished oak and
plate-glass. The stoop was on a level with the sidewalk; a richly carved
bow-window jutted out from the second story. “No. 41,” in old iron open
work, formed a pretty grating above the door. There was, in fact,
nothing which would lead an ordinary person to conceive of the house as
given over to boarders, except, possibly, the sign,
+----------------------+
| TO LET, FURNISHED. |
+----------------------+
which was posted conspicuously below the first-story window, and at an
angle which enabled him that ran to read.
Old Mr. Archibald’s death, the autumn before, had left his widow rather
poorer than she anticipated. He was a great collector of pretty things.
His taste was exquisite, and he had gratified it by filling his house
with a variety of _bric-à-brac_, pictures, statuary, and old furniture,
which made it a centre of attraction to many of the old gentleman’s
artistic friends. Mrs. Archibald, loath to dispose of her husband’s art
collections, determined to let the house, as it stood, “at an exorbitant
figure, to a very rich tenant without children.” Under these terms, on
her departure for Europe, her agent was entrusted with the house, and
her son Jerome, when he saw her off on the steamer, received a parting
injunction, “Be sure and see that they have no children.” Jerome
Archibald saw his mother and sisters depart—in no very enviable frame of
mind; but he was a good son, and he resolved to forego Newport, if it
would tend to dispose of the house as his mother wished, and add to her
diminished income.
His mother and sisters sailed in May. It was now July, and very warm and
disagreeable. As the “heated term” set in, he began to think it too bad,
you know, of mamma and the girls to remain abroad for three whole years.
It was positively absurd. What was he to do? After the house was
let—where was he to go? By Jove, he felt deuced lonely, don’t you know!
It was especially trying for a sensitive man to go in and out of a house
with a great placard on it, “To Let, Furnished,” but it was a deal more
trying to have people come and want board. Yes, actually, two ladies
came one morning and wanted to know if they could see the landlord. It
was positively ridiculous! His agent was a clevah fellow, but even he
gave up hope of letting the house until fall. Hadn’t he better run down
to Newport? He got a letter from Dick Trellis that morning, and they
really didn’t see how they were going to get on without him in the polo
matches. It put him in a fuming fury. He had never stayed late in the
city in summer before. How infernally hot it was—and nahsty—don’t you
know! His collars were in a perpetual state of wilt—they never wilted at
Newport. Then everybody was not only out of town, having a good time
somewhere, but they had a provoking way now of ostentatiously boarding
up their front-doors—yes—and their windows, too—which made it doubly
disagreeable for those who had to remain. It was bad enough to see the
blinds drawn down, but boxing up their stonework and planking up their
front-doors caused Mr. Jerome Archibald unutterable pangs. Then they
thought it was a boarding-house!
_They_ were coming again in the afternoon, at four. There were two of
them—ladies. In his rather depressing and solitary occupation of living
alone in his house, with one solemn apoplectic cook and one chalk-faced
maid, in order to exhibit it to that endless raft of females with
“permits,” who universally condemned or “damned with faint praise” his
father’s exquisite taste in rugs and furniture, Mr. Jerome Archibald had
to-day admitted to himself a distinct pleasure in showing “Miss Perkins”
and her niece (whose name did not happen at the time to be mentioned)
over the house, and pointing out in his quiet way its excellences.
They saw the sign, they said, and so made bold to enter. Evidently Miss
Perkins was a prim, thin, tall, spectacled, New England old maid. She
had the delicate air and manner of a lady. A lady faded, perhaps, and
unused to a larger social area than that surrounding her native village
green. She had also the timid manner of hesitancy of New England
spinsters—hesitancy concerning everything except questions of casuistry
and religion—and seemed, in what she did, to be spurred on from behind
by the niece, who was, on the whole, as Mr. Jerome Archibald told a
friend at the club later, “quite extraordinary.”
In the first place, as he said, the niece was undeniably beautiful.
“She wore rawther an odd street dress,” he said, “made up in the country
somewhere, by a seamstress who gathered her crude notions of the
prevailing fashions from some prevaricating ladies’ journal, and her hat
was something positively ridiculous—but her _face_!” The fastidious Mr.
Jerome Archibald at once conceded to it a certain patrician quality of
elegance. It denoted pure blood and pure breeding, somewhere up among
Vermont hills or Maine forests. A long line of “intelligent ancestors,”
perhaps. It was fine, and—beautiful. The forehead high, nose straight,
the large eyes gray, the mouth and chin sweet, and yet quite determined.
When he showed them a large room at the rear, on the second story,
facing the north, the niece had observed, with a lofty air—mind, the
room was literally crammed with the most costly _bric-à-brac_—“I think
this will suit me very well, aunt dear, on account of the light.”
He noticed in her unfashionable dress a certain artistic sense of
freedom, a _soupçon_ of colored ribbon here and there, and he concluded
that she was all the more interesting, as an artist, in that she so
quietly accepted the elegancies around her. She gave an unconscious sigh
over a small glass-covered “Woodland Scene,” by Duprez. Mr. Jerome
Archibald noticed it, and inwardly smiled, delighted.
Perhaps the niece captivated him the more by her silent appreciation of
some things he himself admired exceedingly. It was odd that she seemed
always to choose _his_ favorites. There was nothing said as to the rent,
the size of the house, the lot, the plumbing. He spent an hour showing
his etchings alone, and in the afternoon, at four, they were coming
again, “to decide.”
II.
Of course Mr. Jerome Archibald must have been an extremely susceptible
young man to have fallen in love at first sight with a strange young
woman, who had come to look at his house with a view to renting. But he
was—“rawther down and depressed.” The usual summer malaria had set in.
The usual excavations in the streets were going on—they were digging
with “really extraordinary energy” that summer—the pavements were up on
all the Fortieth streets. Fifth Avenue presented the appearance of a
huge empty canal. It was something more, this presidential year, than
the perennial laying down and taking up of pipes. “He was really ripe
for _une grande affaire du cœur_,” said one of his club friends, he was
getting so lonesome. He _did_ fall quite entirely in love,
precipitately, unquestionably, in spite of the fact that they took the
house for a boarding-place! They asked to hire but one room only.
When they arrived, at 4 P.M., they sat a few moments in the
reception-room, while the chalk-faced, alert maid announced them to
Archibald in the room above. Miss Perkins folded her faded, gloved hands
in her lap and sat up on the sofa stiffly. They had looked at ever so
many houses, and they had come back to No. 41 with instinctive
preference.
“I don’t think one room would be so very expensive,” said Miss Perkins.
“He could put up two beds easily in that north room, and the room we saw
on Thirty-fourth Street was only twelve dollars—what do you think,
Elvira?”
“I think twelve dollars is altogether too high,” said the niece, looking
up from a delicate little Elzevir she was holding. “I think he wants to
let the rooms very much; none of them seem to be taken. Remember it is
midsummer, aunt dear.”
There was a little pause.
“Of course he will prefer having _nice_ people. It will be a great help
to your art, Elvira—you can study at great advantage. There are so many
pictures for you to copy. I think your father would say it was a ‘lucky
find.’ If you will persist in your art, why, I think we are very
fortunate.”
“You are always ready to sneer at my art, Aunt Perkins.” And she gave a
peculiar laugh.
“It is something that has come up since my day,” she replied, glancing
about over the pictures and the rare editions on the table. “I was
brought up to plain living. But I guess if we can get it all for twelve
dollars we ought to be satisfied. It’s a pleasant change to see the
city. It’s pleasant to see these ornaments. Yes, I don’t blame art so
much as your father does, Elvira, and I don’t believe _he_ would blame
it if he knew we could have so much of it for twelve dollars.”
“Father secretly admires it as much as I do,” said the niece; “only he
likes to talk.”
Just then Mr. Jerome Archibald entered. He was faultlessly dressed in
half-mourning for his father. Indeed, he had dressed himself with
exceeding care, being desirous, he frankly admitted to himself, of
making an impression. He bowed graciously, and took Elvira’s extended
gloved hand, which, as she offered it, he held a moment. “Have you
decided?” he asked.
They had explained, when they left in the morning, that they should want
only one room, and he tacitly inferred that they would require board. He
received a dreadful shock, but made up his mind that the charming niece
would prove the more charming on closer acquaintance, and he
deliberately decided to keep both the gentle New Englanders under his
roof for a time, if he could! The more he thought of the plan, the more
interesting the situation became to him. He fairly dreaded, at last,
lest they should find their way into a remote boarding-house in some
cheap quarter of the city, where it would be quite impossible for him to
follow them. He gravely announced to the astonished maid that he had
determined to let out the rooms to the ladies, who, he pretended for her
benefit, were old acquaintances. When they were announced he was
scarcely able to conceal his pleasure. Mr. Jerome Archibald had fallen
in love.
“We have decided to take one room,” said Elvira, “if we can agree upon
the price; and we wish to know the price of board—”
“We shan’t want much to eat,” put in Miss Perkins, with a nervous
twitch.
Archibald admirably concealed a smile. His long mustache aided him a
good deal in doing this. He was still standing, and he put his hand to
his lips: “I think we shall agree very easily upon the price,” he said.
Miss Perkins again twitched a little. “We thought twelve dollars—room
and board——” she said, leaving the sentence half finished, while Elvira
looked up at him, expectantly.
“My dear ladies, I should not think of charging more than ten. You are
strangers in the city, and I would not impose upon you for the world. It
happens that this is the dull season——”
“So we thought,” said Miss Perkins, “and board and lodging ought to come
a little cheaper.”
“Precisely. The maid will show you your sleeping-room—and, of course,
the entire house is at your service. I hope you will find everything to
your comfort. I am very anxious to please.” He laughed a little.
Elvira gave him a grateful, but at the same time a rather patronizing,
glance. He felt at once that in carrying out his little _ruse_ he had
placed himself deliberately upon a questionable footing with the
beautiful girl. He hoped, however, to redeem himself by impressing her
with his knowledge of the pursuit which, he accurately judged, had
brought the ladies to the city. Archibald had at one time done a little
painting himself. He had dreamed dreams, as a young man, which indolence
and the stern business atmosphere of the city had choked off
prematurely. As he looked down upon the girl’s sweet gray eyes a vision
of this youthful period came back to him. Twenty-two and thirty-two have
this in common, that the latter age is not too far away to quite despise
the younger enthusiasm. Archibald at thirty-two still believed in
himself, don’t you know.
III.
Several days passed, during which the ladies settled themselves very
readily in their new surroundings. They were very methodical, preferring
to rise at an hour which, to Archibald, was something savoring of
barbarism. He studied their habits, with a view to conforming to them as
far as possible, but found that he could not bring himself to give up
his nine-o’clock breakfasts, and so went to his club, leaving orders
that the ladies should be accommodated at the earliest hour they might
choose. He found that they had discovered Central Park, and came to make
it a habit to stroll with them of a morning upon the Mall, and around
the stagnant lakes. Central Park was a novelty to him, except as seen
from horseback, or a four-in-hand, and it really seemed very beautiful
those summer mornings—he was really surprised, don’t you know! He
wondered that nice people did not use the Park more—as they did Hyde
Park in London. As the days went on he filled his house with flowers,
turned the second floor into an immense studio for Elvira, sat about and
watched her, criticised, encouraged her. He forgot Newport, forgot his
polo. He had strangely ceased to be bored. He was happy in New York in
midsummer! Dick Trellis told his polo friends at Newport that Archibald
was probably undergoing private treatment for softening of the brain,
which theory, in fact, they deemed sufficiently complimentary.
As for his mother and sisters in Europe—why, pray, should he inform them
of his little joke?
Elvira worked away at her easel when the light was best—during the
afternoon. In the evening, after dinner, the ladies became socially
inclined. It was then that they allowed Archibald to smoke in the
“studio” and talk Art with Elvira. Indeed he found it very difficult to
talk anything else with the shy New England primrose.
About Art—with a big A—she was rapturous. There seemed to be in her soul
a strange hunger for everything ornate and richly beautiful. Archibald
devoted himself to studying her. He became strangely interested in East
Village, Vt., where, he gathered, the Hon. Ephraim B. Price, her father,
was a very distinguished Republican lawyer and politician. He drew Aunt
Perkins out concerning her Congregational church, her minister, her fear
of the Catholics, her fondness for cats, her secret disbelief in Art.
Once in a while they read him a letter from the Hon. Ephraim, in which
he could see reflected their own liking for _him_. He found that he was
spoken of as “Landlord Archibald.” The Hon. Ephraim was a shrewd old
fellow, however, and his counsels and advice were generally of the
“trust-not-too-much-to-appearances” order. One evening Miss Perkins
complained of a headache, and Archibald found himself alone for an hour
with Elvira. She sat beneath the rich brazen lamp, with its pretty
crimson shade, absorbing some of the red glow in her lovely face. They
had been two weeks in the city, and out of delicate feeling had
deposited two ten-dollar bills upon the mantelpiece in the library,
where Archibald would see them. He had roared with laughter over them
and intended having them framed, but ultimately he found a different use
for their amusing board-money.
He made some little allusion to the time they had been with him.
“Two very short weeks,” said Elvira, “and you have been so very
unusually kind, Mr. Archibald. You have done so much for us. We have
noticed it. Is it usual for landlords to—to do so much, in the city?”
“It depends,” he said, gravely. “Landlords do more for people who are
congenial—you are congenial——”
“Oh!” A slight pause.
“You are more than congenial, _really_,” said Archibald. “For you take
an interest, Miss Price. I have secretly espied both you and your aunt
dusting——”
Elvira bit her lip. “We _have_ dusted,” she admitted, reddening a
little, “but it is merely out of force of habit.”
“Really,” said Archibald, “I rawther like you the better for it, don’t
you know!”
“I’m afraid,” said Elvira, her face lighting up with conscious pleasure,
“that you have made up your mind as a landlord to like us, whatever we
do. I’m afraid you would not like it at all if you knew everything that
aunt has done.”
“Tell me—I will keep it a profound secret, I assure you,” he laughed.
“She has actually dared to invade your kitchen!”
“Has she?” said Archibald, dubiously; “really!”
“Yes, and she declares that your cook wastes enough every day to keep
four families!”
“Really!” said Archibald; “I’ll have to look into it.”
“You won’t save much out of what we pay,” said Elvira, “and we don’t
want to stay if it doesn’t pay you; but——”
“Well?”
“Mr. Archibald, we are poor.” She looked down.
“I’m very sorry, I’m sure—I—” he really did feel a compassion which
found its way into his voice, and made it tremble a little.
“Aunt says you _can’t_ be making any money. Now, we don’t think it is
right to stay another day and be _burdens_, do you see?”
A solemn pause.
“Isn’t that what they are talking about so much now in the novels?” he
asked, at length.
“What?”
“The terrible New England conscience?”
“Right is right and wrong is wrong, Mr. Archibald, disguise it how we
may,” and Elvira compressed her pretty lips firmly.
Archibald puffed on his cigar, lazily.
“I wasn’t sure,” he said, as if a doubt had crept into his mind.
She glanced at him impatiently.
“Can’t you _see_ how wrong it would be for us to stay here and enjoy all
we have in your beautiful house, knowing that we were swindling you?”
She stamped her foot. “Mercy!” she added, half to herself, “what _can_
you be made of?”
He hastened to a display of rugged conscience, which relieved her.
“Oh, of course, I see how wicked it would be if you _did_ swindle; but
I’m making money! Really—I haven’t spent the twenty dollars board-money
yet. Oh, pray rest assured—I shan’t lose. I will tell you when I run
behind.”
A great sense of relief seemed to come over the girl.
“But it is all we can pay. I told father I would not ask for more.
Father said he knew it would take more, but I said I would give up Art
first.”
“Oh, I say!” he protested.
“And to-morrow I am going to begin taking lessons, but I _will_ not call
on father for another cent. He shan’t be able to throw it in my face
that it turned out as he said, and that I was wrong. When he and I
dispute it always does turn out as he says—this time it _shan’t_.”
Archibald laughed a little. The poor fool, don’t you know, was so
captivated that every word, every action of the girl was music to him.
The two weeks of observation had told on her dress. To-night she wore a
white muslin, elaborated with pretty ribbons. She no longer seemed
especially rustic to him. He noticed that she was doing her hair now in
the prevailing style. “By Jove!” he said to himself, “I’ll see that she
comes out at the Patriarchs’ next winter!”
This was his highest earthly happiness for a _débutante_.
“I am going to make money,” she went on; “I’m going to paint vases,
plates, odds and ends, pot-boilers, you know, and so father shan’t know
what it costs.”
[Illustration: [Woman]]
“Oh, by the way, if you do,” he pretended, lazily blowing out a ring of
smoke, “I happen to know a fellow—an old friend of mine—who gives very
fair prices for those sort of things. Now, I am sure he will take any
gimcrack you may do.”
Somehow the word gimcrack displeased her.
“My Art work has always been thought very pretty in East Village,” she
said. “It would never _sell_, but it was thought pretty. I used to long
to help father—and our family is so large, you know, four little
brothers and two sisters younger than I am—and now, if I only _could_
get on, and help father! Oh, Mr. Archibald, you don’t know how _little_
law there is to go round in East Village!” She heaved a deep sigh.
He tried to appear sympathetic.
“I know a fellow who gets a thousand dollars for a portrait, and he has
only just commenced. You can’t help but succeed, Miss Price, really!”
She gave him a grateful glance.
“Oh, if I _could_!” she said, anxiously. “I taught school one winter,
but the pay was so small. And I’ve tried—you will laugh, Mr. Archibald,
at my telling you these things—but I’ve tried story writing. I was _so_
hopeful about it, and it took as many as ten rejections before I became
convinced; and now, if my Art fails me——”
She gave a little fluttering sigh.
“I think you have talent.”
“Perhaps it is only enthusiasm——”
“That amounts to the same thing. It will keep you up to your work. They
used to tell me I had talent, but I had no enthusiasm, so I dropped it.
I wish to encourage you,” he added; “I hope you will go on. It takes a
lot of work, but you have just the right temperament. You _will_ work.
You _will_ get on, and when you become celebrated, Miss Price, you won’t
forget your old friends?”
He realized that it was a rather bold step forward, and he trembled for
her reply.
“I shall always recommend your house,” she said, a little stiffly,
making him feel more than ever her aristocratic superiority to
landlords, “and I shall always remember your kindness. We went to at
least six boarding-houses until we saw your sign—we saw the landladies.
Really, Mr. Archibald, you have no idea how vulgar and unartistic _most_
of the houses were. There was always a disagreeable odor, as if somebody
was frying something. If I _do_ succeed, as I wish, and make friends,
and get to be known, and all, you may be certain that I shan’t forget
you. I may organize an Art class, and take the whole house myself!”
He went no further. It was enough to him, as he sat opposite her in his
evening dress, his rich opal, set with diamonds, flashing on his white
shirt-front, his lawn tie, low shoes, white waistcoat—everything in the
latest and most expensive style—it was enough for Mr. Jerome Archibald
to sit there and smoke his delicate Havana, and reflect that he at least
had her promise to do what she could to recommend his boarding-house!
The next day, at dinner, he again suggested, in an offhand way, that
Miss Price should turn her attention to portrait-painting. Miss Perkins
seriously objected at once.
“Your father would never give his consent,” she said. “There was old Mr.
Raymond, who lived on the Poor Farm, because he found portrait-painting
didn’t pay.”
“Mr. Raymond painted dreadful, hideous caricatures,” said Elvira. “He
painted my mother’s portrait, and father is always throwing him in my
face. But I don’t know. I have no one to begin on except aunt, and I
have tried and tried, and I can’t get anything but the expression of her
spectacles.”
Even Aunt Perkins laughed at this a little.
“Begin on me,” ventured Archibald. “Call it the ‘Portrait of an Ideal
Landlord.’”
There was a little pause. The ladies rose without replying, and
Archibald followed them into the drawing-room, feeling indefinitely that
he had been too forward. As he lit his cigar and sat near an open
window, feeling the cool southern breeze, he reflected that it was not
improbable that in East Village the only landlord known to them was the
keeper of a common tavern. It amused him to think of their primitive,
quaint ignorance of city ways. He pictured the small life of East
Village, Vt., the narrow social horizon, the strange interest in
politics, the religious intolerance, the “strong” views on the
temperance question which obtained there, and which leaked out from Miss
Perkins as the days went on into August. The easy sense of accommodation
to their new surroundings also amused him.
[Illustration: [Man]]