The billiard-room, on a suggestion from the architect, taken up with
amusement by Laurence, had been made to resemble a European café. It
had a low ceiling, red-plush benches round the panelled walls, long
mirrors, and small tables in the corners; there was even a miniature
bar.
Laurence, with his coat off, moved quickly round the green table,
leaning half-way across it sometimes to make a difficult shot, managing
his cue deftly and surely. The two younger boys followed his motions
eagerly. John, who was playing his first real game, had a flush of
excitement in his cheeks; his big blue eyes shone, he bit his lips
nervously and his hands trembled; he laughed gaily when he made an
awkward play. Timothy hung at his elbow, jeering and waiting anxiously
for his turn. In the doorway lounged Jim maintaining a slightly
supercilious attitude. Mary and Lavery were sitting on one of the
plush benches; and the senior Carlin, standing at a little distance,
contemplated the group round the table with interest. The men were
smoking, the air was a little hazy. With the bright lights reflected
in the mirrors, the click of the balls, quick movements and laughing
comments of the players, the others watching, all seemed drawn together
for the moment in an atmosphere of pleasure.
Laurence's face had brightened, his eyes smiled. When John had made his
last play, a terrible fumble, and thrown down his cue angrily, he put
his arm round the boy's shoulders and shook him with tender roughness.
"Be a good sport! You've got to lose before you win, you young monkey!"
John frowned, stamped his feet, and wrenched away, yet his eyes too
smiled, and he hurried to fetch the chalk demanded by Timothy. Then
when Timothy blundered John murmured a consoling word, little attended
to, and when Timothy made a good stroke he applauded vigorously. Now
and then he glanced happily at his mother, watching for her smile, or
spoke to Jim, who only dropped his eyelids in answer; or went and stood
beside his grandfather for a moment. He showed a quick consciousness
of every one in the room, as though with infinitely delicate feelers
touching them all. His physical motions were awkward, with the rapid
growth of adolescence his arms and legs were somewhat out of control.
He jostled Timothy at a critical point and received an impatient
rebuff. Dashed by this, he stood apart for a while; and his face had
its wistful, listening look, as if he sought among them all the human
echo of some harmony heard far off.
* * * * *
After Timothy, it was Jim's turn. Jim had some pretensions to skill,
but bore a smashing defeat with good grace, and complimented his
father in an off-hand manly fashion, on which they shook hands with a
cordiality rare between them. Jim as a rule irritated Laurence, either
by obvious faults, laziness or extravagance, or else by silence and
lack of response, a standing difference of temperament. But tonight
Laurence looked at him affectionately, noting with pleasure his dark
good looks, his lithe youth. Jim was almost a man--next year he would
be going to college, if he could manage to pass the examinations.... So
time passes....
* * * * *
Laurence was aware of a dark whirl of thoughts, half-formed, somewhere
at the back of his mind; and of a weight pressing on the nape of
his neck. For some time he had slept little and had been conscious
of an increasing fatigue, something that piled up day by day, and
made increasing effort necessary to get through each day's activity.
He would have to work tonight. Downstairs he had the papers of an
important case in which he had reserved decision.... And then there
were a lot of business matters to be gone over with Lavery....
But he was reluctant to leave this bright room, to break up the family
gathering. It was rare that they were all together like this; Mary
very seldom came up to the billiard-room. The occasion seemed to him
significant, and searching for the reason, he wondered if his father's
strange presence had anything to do with it, or with his own unusual
mood. Perhaps so. Perhaps it was this that had, as it seemed, thrown
him back into the past, had curiously removed him to a distance so that
this present scene had a kind of unreality.... It was like a scene on
the stage which he was watching as it were through a reversed glass, so
that the figures of the actors, his own included, appeared very tiny
and as if at an immense distance. He watched himself going through the
motions of the game, talking, laughing, and the others moving about. It
seemed that some drama was moving to an obscure but deeply significant
climax, but what was it all about?
At times he came to the surface of consciousness with what seemed
like a crash, the lights and sounds smote his senses as if magnified,
the actors became life-size or even bigger, and he waited for them
or for himself to say or do some unheard-of thing.... All through he
was conscious of an effort in himself to appear as usual, not to do
anything extraordinary, not to lose touch with these human beings round
him, all of whom seemed invested with some strange charm, newly felt,
as though a hidden beauty in them had suddenly come into view....
At one moment he wondered if he were ill, or going to be; and put his
hand on the back of his neck, where the dull pain pressed heavily. From
across the room he saw John's eyes fixed on him earnestly; and smiled
at him. The shadow of trouble in another person would trouble John.
Strange boy! He was like a harp so delicately strung that a breath of
air would stir it. What would happen to him in this world of harsh and
jarring contacts?... The other two, he thought, would shoulder their
way through well enough. They were strong normal boys with a good
supply of egotism. The stock was sound....
He realized that he was looking at them all as though on the eve of
departure, a farewell before a long journey.... The room swam in a
dazzle of light. With an immense effort he pulled himself together,
vanquished the momentary faintness, gave no other sign than a pallor, a
rapid blinking of his eyes....
He found himself standing beside his father, before one of the long
mirrors, and replying to some remark half-heard. His vision cleared,
he looked at the two figures in the glass, curiously. Would any one
have taken those two for father and son?
No. In the first place, the elder looked absurdly young, with his
smooth-shaven unwrinkled face and wiry figure. And then, he looked like
a foreigner; the Irish was unmistakable. Old Timothy had never taken
root in American soil, but floated like thistledown above it, for forty
years.... And the other one there, the black-bearded one--with age the
Irish came out in him too, unmistakably.... But he was an American,
born here, with no dim shadow of allegiance elsewhere. A son of the
soil, he had fought for its nationality--there was the sign, the old
sabre-cut, a faint white line across his cheek. And those old American
ideals, of liberty, equality--he had believed in them passionately,
felt them a living current in his blood, would have given his life for
them. He still believed in them--and surely nothing in his life had
given the lie to that belief?
The old man there had questioned, doubted him, on the score of
this material luxury, this big house he had built--which, for that
matter, was as unsubstantial as a soap-bubble, he could almost feel
it dissolving under him.... Why, that only proved the equality of
opportunity here for every man, he had started empty-handed. Here in
this country the stream of fortune ran swift, capricious.... Men were
all like gold-washers on the banks of a river, today the current would
wash the golden grains one way, tomorrow another.... Why, tomorrow
this bubble of a house that he had amused himself blowing into shape,
might vanish, and he be left empty-handed.... What matter? It was all
unreal, anyway, all a dream, what he had tried to build....
It seemed to him that he had been saying some of these things to his
father, but he was not sure, there was a humming sound in his ears....
Again there was a flash of clear sight. John was there beside him, now
there were three figures reflected in the mirror.
"Three generations!" said Laurence.
He spoke in his natural tone, the haggard pallor of his face changed
suddenly; he felt that John had noticed it, was watching him.
"Look, Father, can you see any likeness among us three?" he asked.
The boy stood between them, straight as a young sapling, the radiance
of his blond head like a beam of sunlight, a bow of promise across a
cloud.
"No--no," said the old man thoughtfully. "I see it now in you and me,
Larry--there's the same blood. But I don't see it in the boy."
"John isn't like any of us, anyhow," said Laurence, with the tender
tones that he always had for this child. "He makes us look like a
couple of scarred old logs, doesn't he?"
"Ah, youth--that's the pure gold," said the old man softly.
The boy smiled, deprecating, shrinking a little from their gentle
scrutiny.
"It isn't that alone, there's something else, that's unaccountable,"
Laurence pondered, as if speaking to himself.
"It's the mother, perhaps--he's more like her. That's a different
strain," said the old man.
Laurence turned and looked across the room. Mary had risen, was still
talking to Lavery, but she was looking straight at them, at the group
before the mirror.
"Mary, come here a minute," called Laurence.
She came, with her slow stately step, and Laurence put out his hand and
drew her to his side.
"What is it?" she asked, with a faint tremulousness in her voice.
The old man, standing a step apart, and looking at the other three,
replied.
"We were thinking of the likeness.... Yes, it's more on your side--yet
I don't know--"
"Mary and I are different enough, eh?" said Laurence with a slight
laugh. "That might account for almost anything. She's pure English, you
see--English Puritan.... It was two enemy races mating when we married,
eh, Father?"
"That makes the American, maybe," said the old man, still curiously
intent on the boy.
But John, embarrassed by this prolonged attention, now broke away and
left them.
"He's not like either of us," said Laurence abruptly, watching the
boy's retreating figure. "That is, only a little. He's like a flower,
sprung from heaven knows where."
Glancing again at the mirror he saw the quick response in Mary's face.
In the mirror their eyes met with a deep flash of sympathy. Yes, this
was something they both felt deeply and in common--the strange beauty
of this child who had, nevertheless, sprung from _them_, from their two
lives, however marred and futile.... Their union had at least produced
this thing of beauty....
They looked at one another with a deep sad gaze. Laurence, with a
sharpened vision, saw something in Mary's face new to him. The physical
change must have come slowly--Mary had not been ill for a long time,
that sharpening of the contours that gave her beauty its new delicacy
was perhaps only age. But what he saw was not physical. He saw suddenly
that she was grieving, suffering, he did not know why; it gave him a
quick throb of pain. He would have put his arm around her, but that she
moved away sharply. At the same moment he felt again the clouding of
his sight, the dizziness.... But, abruptly alleging that he must get to
work, he was able to leave the room with only a slight unsteadiness of
gait, which, he knew, might easily be attributed to another cause.