"I know," said Joan. "I'm late again. And there'll be a row, I suppose.
Well, that will break the monotony, at any rate." Seizing the moment
when Gleave was wrestling with his cough, she slipped her letter into
her desk, rubbed her face vigorously with her handkerchief and made a
dart at the door. Grandfather Ludlow demanded strict punctuality and
made the house shake if it failed him. What he would have said if he
could have seen this eager, brown-haired, vivid girl, built on the slim
lines of a wood nymph, swing herself on to the banisters and slide the
whole way down the wide stairway would have been fit only for the
appreciative ears of his faithful man. As it was, Mrs. Nye, the
housekeeper, was passing through the hall, and her gasp at this
exhibition of unbecoming athletics was the least that could be expected
from one who still thought in the terms of the crinoline and had never
recovered from the habit of regarding life through the early-Victorian
end of the telescope.
Joan slipped into Mr. Cumberland Ludlow's own room, shut the door
quickly and picked her way over the great skins that were scattered
about the polished floor.
"Good morning, Grandfather," she said, and stood waiting for the storm
to break. She knew by heart the indignant remarks about the sloppiness
of the younger generation, the dire results of modern anarchy and the
universal disrespect that stamped the twentieth century, and set her
quick mind to work to frame his opening sentence.
But the old man, whose sense of humor was as keen as ever, saw in the
girl's half-rebellious, half-deferential attitude an impatient
expectation of his usual irritation, and so he merely pointed a shaking
finger at the clock. His silence was far more eloquent and effective
than his old-fashioned platitudes. He smiled as he saw her surprise,
indicated a chair and gave her the morning paper. "Go ahead, my dear,"
he said.
Sitting bolt upright, with her back to the shaded light, her charming
profile with its little blunt nose and rounded chin thrown up against
the dark glistening oak of an old armoire, Joan began to read. Her
clear, high voice seemed to startle the dead beasts whose heads hung
thickly around the room and bring into their wide, fixed eyes a look of
uneasiness.
Several logs were burning sulkily in the great open fireplace, throwing
out a pungent, juicy smell. The aggressive tick of an old and pompous
clock endeavored to talk down the gay chatter of the birds beyond the
closed windows. The wheeze of a veteran Airedale with its chin on the
head of a lion came intermittently.
They made a picture, these two, that fitted with peculiar rightness
into the mood of Nature at that moment. Youth was king, and with all
his followers had clambered over winter and seized the earth. The red
remainders of autumn were almost over-powered. Standing with his hands
behind him and his back to the fire, the old sportsman listened, with a
queer, distrait expression, to the girl's reading. That he was still
putting up a hard fight against relentless Time was proved by his
clothes, which were those of a country-lover who dressed the part with
care. A tweed shooting-coat hung from his broad, gaunt shoulders.
Well-cut riding breeches, skin tight below his knees, ran into a pair
of brown top-boots that shone like glass. A head and shoulders taller
than the average tall man, his back was bent and his chest hollow. His
thin hair, white as cotton wool, was touched with brilliantine, and his
handsome face, deeply lined and wrinkled, was as closely shaved as an
actor's after three o'clock. His sunken eyes, overshadowed by bushy
brows, had lost their fire. He could no longer see to read. He too
heard the call without, and when he looked at the young, sweet thing
upon whom he was dependent for the news, and glanced about the room so
full of memories of his own departed youth, he said to himself with
more bitterness than usual: "I'm old; I'm very old, and helpless; life
has no use for me, and it's an infernal shame."
Joan read on patiently, glancing from time to time at the man who
seemed to her to be older than the hills, startlingly, terribly old,
and stopped only when, having lowered himself into his arm-chair, he
seemed to have fallen asleep. Then, as usual, she laid the paper aside,
eager to be up and doing, but sat on, fearful of moving. Her
grandfather had a way of looking as though he would never wake up
again, and of being as ready as a tiger to pounce upon her if she tried
to slip away. She would never forget some of the sarcastic things he
had said at these times, never! He seemed to take an unexplainable
delight in making her feel that she had no right to be so young. He had
never confided to her the tragedy of having a young mind and an old
body, young desires and winter in his blood. He had never opened the
door in his fourth wall and let her see how bitterly he resented having
been forced out of life and the great chase, to creep like an old hound
the ancient dogs among. He had never let her suspect that the tragedy
of old age had hit him hard, filling his long hours with regret for
what he might have done or done better. Perhaps he was ashamed to
confess these things that were so futile and so foolish. Perhaps he was
afraid to earn a young incredulous laugh at the pathetic picture of
himself playing Canute with the on-coming tide of years. He was not
understood by this girl, because he had never allowed her to get a
glimpse into his heart; and so she failed to know that he insisted upon
keeping her in his house, even to the point of extreme selfishness,
because he lived his youth over again in the constant sight of her.
What a long and exquisite string of pearls there could be made of our
unspoken words!
The logs glowed red; the hard tick of the pompous clock marked off the
precious moments; and outside, spring had come. But Joan sat on with
mutinous thoughts, and the man who not so long ago had stalked the
beasts whose heads and skins were silent reminders of his strength, lay
back in his chair with nodding head.
"He's old," she said to herself, "dreadfully, awfully old, and he's
punishing me for being young. Oh! It's wicked, it's wicked. If only I
had a father to spoil me and let me live! If only Mother hadn't
forgotten all about me in her own happiness! If only I had money of my
own and could run away and join the throng!"
She heard a sigh that was almost a groan, turned quickly and saw two
slow tears running down her grandfather's face. He had been kicking
against the pricks again and had hurt his foot.
With all the elaborate care of a Deerslayer, Joan got up, gave the
boards that creaked a wide berth--she knew them all--and tiptoed to the
door. The fact that she, at eighteen years of age, a full-grown woman
in her own estimation, should be obliged to resort to such methods made
her angry and humiliated. She was, however, rejoicing at one thing. Her
grandfather had fallen asleep several pages of the paper earlier than
usual, and she was to be spared from the utter boredom of wading
through the leading articles which dealt with subways and Tammany and
foreign politics and other matters for which she had a lofty contempt.
She was never required to read the notices of new plays and operas and
the doings of society, which alone were interesting to her and made her
mouth water.
Just as she had maneuvered her way across the wide, long room and was
within reach of the door, it opened and her grandmother hobbled in,
leaning on her stick. There was a chuckle from the other end of the
room. The blood flew to the girl's face. She knew without turning to
look that the old man had been watching her careful escape and was
enjoying the sight of her, caught at the moment when freedom was at
hand.
Mrs. Ludlow was one of those busy little women who are thorns in the
flesh of servants. Her eyes had always been like those of an inspecting
general. No detail, however small, went unnoticed and unrectified.
She had been called by an uncountable number of housemaids and footmen
"the little Madam"--the most sarcastic term of opprobrium contained in
their dictionary. A leader of New York society, she had run charitable
institutions and new movements with the same precision and efficiency
that she had used in her houses. Every hour of her day had been filled.
Not one moment had been wasted or frittered away. Her dinner parties
had been famous, and she had had a spoke in the wheels of politics. Her
witty sayings had been passed from mouth to mouth. Her little
flirtations with prominent men and the ambitious tyros who had been
drawn to her salon had given rise to much gossip. Not by any means a
beauty, her pretty face and tiptilted nose, her perennial cheerfulness,
birdlike vivacity and gift of repartee had made her the center of
attraction for years.
But she, like Cumberland Ludlow, had refused to grow old gracefully and
with resignation. She had put up an equally determined fight against
age, and it was only when the remorseless calendar proved her to be
sixty-five that she resigned from the struggle, washed the dye out of
her hair and the make-up from her face and retired to that old house.
Not even then, however, did she resign from all activity and remain
contented to sit with her hands in her lap and prepare herself for the
next world. This one still held a certain amount of joy, and she
concentrated all the vitality that remained with her to the perfect
running of her house. At eleven o'clock every morning the tap of her
stick on the polished floors was the signal of her arrival, and if
every man and woman of the menage was not actively at work, she knew
the reason why. Her tongue was still as sharp as the blade of a razor,
and for sloppiness she had no mercy. Careless maids trembled before her
tirades, and strong men shook in their shoes under her biting phrases.
At seventy, with her snowy hair, little face that had gone into as many
lines as a dried pippin, bent, fragile body and tiny hands twisted by
rheumatism, she looked like one of the old women in a Grimm's fairy
tale who frightened children and scared animals and turned giants into
cowards.
She drew up in front of the frustrated girl, stretched out her white
hand lined with blue veins and began to tap her on the
shoulder--announcing in that irritating manner that she had a complaint
to make.
"My dear," she said, "when you write letters to your little friends or
your sentimental mother, bear in mind that the place for ink is on the
note paper and not on the carpet."
"Yes, Grandmother."
"Try to remember also that if you put your hand behind a candle you can
blow it out without scattering hot grease on the wall paper."
"Yes, Grandmother"
"There is one other thing, if I may have your patience. You are not
required to be a Columbus to discover that there is a basket for soiled
linen in your bedroom. It is a large one and eager to fulfill its
function. The floor of your clothes closet is intended for your shoes
only. Will you be so good as to make a note of these things?"
"Yes, Grandmother."
Ink, candle grease, wash basket--what did they matter in the scheme of
life, with spring tapping at the window? With a huge effort Joan forced
back a wild burst of insurrection, and remained standing in what she
hoped was the correct attitude of a properly repentant child. "How long
can I stand it?" she cried inwardly. "How long before I smash things
and make a dash for freedom?"
"Now go back and finish reading to your grand father."
And once more, trembling with anger and mortification, the girl picked
her way over the limp and indifferent skins, took up the paper and sat
down. Once more her clear, fresh voice, this time with a little quiver
in it, fitted in to the regular tick of the querulous clock, the
near-by chatter of birds' tongues and the hiss of burning logs.
The prim old lady, who had in her time borne a wonderful resemblance to
the girl whom she watched so closely,--even to the chestnut-brown hair
and the tip-tilted nose, the full lips, the round chin and the spirit
that at any moment might urge her to break away from
discipline,--retired to carry on her daily tour of inspection; and the
old man stood again with his back to the fire to listen impatiently and
with a futile jealousy to the deeds and misdeeds of an ever-young and
ever-active world.