ALFRED
Cousin Eunice's new house in the city, which is really a very old
house with the addition of all the wires and pipes and hardwood
trimmings which we think we can't live without these days, is a love
of a place. They bought it for the height of the ceilings and the size
of the rooms, where every member of the family can spread out like a
fried egg. But its especial glory is the drawing-room, a long, stately
apartment all tricked out in the deepest, wild-woodiest green.
The walls and hangings are of the hue that our Mother Nature loves
best, while the antique furniture is the color of chestnuts at
Hallowe'en. There are dark-toned pedestals at intervals, holding jars
of ferns, and the entire room presents such a perfect reproduction of
a shady nook in the woods that Rufe declared at first he dared not
venture into it, for fear of being snake-bitten.
There is a big leather chair over in one secluded corner, a chair
which will easily hold the entire Clayborne family, and, on nights
when there is no company and they are in a sentimental mood, the
married lovers pretend that the room is the ravine in which they did
their courting, and that the big chair is the old gray rock they were
sitting on when he proposed to her.
This is a delightful make-believe--for them. Usually Waterloo and I
are thrown upon each other for companionship, if it is late in the
evening and Grapefruit has gone home.
He often begs for music, which I am always glad to furnish, or would
be if his taste were not so very pronounced and so limited, and does
not by any means include my favorite classics.
"You play 'Ditsie,' and I'll play 'Little Ditsie,'" his baby voice
suggests, as he finds his French harp and blows a violent
accompaniment. But if I tire of this and my fingers wander off into
the mournful notes of the _Miserere_ from _Il Trovatore_ (another
love of my youth) his harp and the corners of his mouth drop
simultaneously, and he implores me not to play that "poor song."
This has not happened very many times, however, for there is nearly
always somebody here. The Gordons frequently, and sometimes Alfred.
They never come together, for whenever Doctor Gordon goes out anywhere
at night Alfred has to stay at home and attend to the calls that come
in. This is what a "cub" is for; then, too, it gives the Gordons a
better chance to talk about him, which they take as much pleasure in
doing as if he were their own dear son.
It is amazing how much they all think of Alfred. Not amazing,
certainly, in any sense that he is not worthy of all the affection
they bestow upon him, but I believe that it is seldom a girl has a
young man thrown at her head so _unanimously_ as I have Alfred thrown
at me by our loving friends.
If he threw himself I should die, but he never does.
He is frank, and loyal, and sober-sided; just a little merry with me
now and then, but for the most part going his even-tenored way and
doing his work without any more fuss and splutter than--a fireless
cooker. He never talks about what he is going to do, although his eyes
are so deep and brown that I feel sure he is a dreamer.
He is the kind of man who seems to walk, with deliberate yet sure
step, into the things he wants. This denotes, of course, that he has
sat up late many nights, smoothing out rough places in the road, so
that his course might be dignified and steady when he gets ready to
run it.
And, if Solomon--or whoever it was--told the truth about silence being
golden, then Alfred Morgan is sinfully rich. He is timid, too, around
women--_well_ women, I mean; and I don't believe he would ever have
grown so fond of me if he had not first known me at an age when I wore
such plain linen blouses and soft silk ties you couldn't tell whether
I was a boy or girl.
Even after my dresses began to sweep the ground I think he still
thought of me as a boy. "You're a good little chap," he would say to
me occasionally when I had done something for his comfort or pleasure;
and I so entirely considered _him_ a boy in spite of those six years
between us that I seldom felt to see how my hair was arranged when I
would hear his footsteps approaching.
Then, one day I had a rude shock about Alfred's degree of manhood.
Ann Lisbeth and I were in his private office waiting for Doctor Gordon
to get through with a string of patients which was overflowing the
reception-room, and write out a check for her to take on a shopping
excursion. (Things have changed with them since the days of their
early married life, when Ann Lisbeth got a new dress only once a year;
and then had to have it made by somebody who was owing her husband for
a baby or a spell of measles.)
There was plenty of space in Alfred's room, poor boy, and I was
sitting in front of his desk, idly fingering some papers and journals
lying around in scattered confusion.
My attention was arrested presently by a small, oblong blotting-pad,
with his name, Doctor Alfred Morgan, printed on the celluloid cover.
The drug firms of the city sent such things out to all the doctors
occasionally, but this was a particularly pretty one, with a little
raised medallion on it--a picture of a stately stork approaching a
cheery little cottage, with the fat, rosy, inevitable burden in his
bill. The moon and stars were shining as they never shone on sea nor
land, and there was a comfortable glow coming from the cottage
windows, a glow of welcome, it seemed.
It was a happy-looking little picture, but it brought a curious
feeling of uneasiness to my mind.
"Ann Lisbeth," I called, loud enough to cause her to look up from the
magazine she was reading, yet not so loud as to be heard by Alfred,
who was in the next room making a blood count. "Do you suppose they
let anybody as young as Alfred do _this_?" I held up the picture.
"Oh, my goodness," she laughed, looking not so much at the picture as
at my horrified face. "_Young!_ Why, he has two pairs of twins _named_
for him, besides a little girl whose happy parents are so fond of him
that they made him name her. Her name is Ann Morgan."
"The Ann is for _you_," I cried, my face flushing.
"Nay, for you," she insisted, still laughing so that Alfred heard her
and came in to see what it was that was so funny.
"Some of Ann's nonsense," she explained, and I slapped the blotter
into my purse before he turned and looked at me.
After that I naturally began to treat Alfred with a good deal more
respect, which he never seemed to notice.
It was about this time that he began finding a "good class" of
patients who were trusting enough or reckless enough to let him
operate on them; patients who remembered his work at the hospital, or
who were willing to take Doctor Gordon's word for it when he assured
them that Morgan could do the job as well as he himself. Of course
this last happened only when there was an emergency case that Doctor
Gordon could not attend to, or an out-of-town call that promised to
have so little compensation that the elder doctor felt that he would
not be justified in leaving the city for it.
And then it was that perhaps some old six-cylinder surgeon who
happened to see the operation would go away and remark that he always
knew Morgan was going to make good, for, by George! the fellow handled
the knife like a veteran!
These stories never failed to bring a thrill of satisfaction to my
breast, for Alfred is my old chum, and I have already mentioned in
here my reverence for power.
Jean Everett likes Alfred almost as much as I do, and reads me long
lectures upon the idiocy of my course. She religiously invites him out
to her house when I am spending the week-end there and makes me dress
up in absurdly coquettish things, in view of the fact that he has
possibly seen me for the past seven days in the plainest of tailored
clothes.
Jean has not grown up to be a beauty, that is, not a beauty that could
be marked off by rule, but she has that indefinable something about
her exquisite get-up which makes you suspect that all her lingerie is
stitched with thread number 120. So dainty is she in her pretty blue
frocks that a poetic he-cozen of hers calls her a Wedgwood girl, but
Guilford calls her his twenty-two carat girl, because her heart is as
golden as her hair.
I have been in the city only a little while--if I take the calendar's
word for it; but it has seemed long to me, for the season of the year
is that when everything is very dull. All the people who have country
homes are reluctantly bidding them good-by and the signs of fall
cleaning are disfiguring all the city homes. The theaters are
publishing long lists of attractions which are coming later on, but
now there is nothing.
The only politicians I have seen I have met accidentally up at the
_Times_ office--and they are all old, and wear long frock coats,--and
look as if they chewed tobacco.
So, as I promised in the first chapter that I was not going to bother
you with daily details and venison pasties, I suppose I shall have to
close this chapter without recording _one_ thing of interest. I can
assure you, however, that you do not regret the dullness of it _half_
so much as I do.
But hold! Shall I forget Neva? Self-centered thing that I am! Because
the last three weeks have been dreary and barren to me shall I not
rejoice in the happiness of some one else?
Among the other unimportant things which I have done since coming up
to the city I have helped Neva get installed in a boarding-school for
young ladies. An expensive place, it is, where for a certain
unnaturally large sum each year they teach you to broaden your a's,
sharpen your eyes, and loath your home surroundings for ever
afterward.
The matter had been under discussion for some days before I left home,
and I set forth the pros and especially the _cons_ to Mrs. Sullivan.
But the humiliation of the fit doctor's visit was fresh and galling;
and Neva's boarding-school experience would more than turn her rival's
triumph into Dead Sea fruit. She must be entered as a student at the
beautifully named college.
They came up together a week before time for the school to open, Neva
and her mother, so that they could learn their way about the city a
little and also buy Neva some new music and a supply of winter
clothes.
Now, Neva's songs, while new and silly, are sung in her buoyant young
voice with so much gusto on the caressing words that they are a kind
of actual music; a joyous sort of wholesome music, like the sound of
the postman's whistle on a sunshiny morning, when you know that he is
bringing you a love-letter! There goes my imagination again, for I
never had a love-letter in my life! Not even a post-card, and it's
been _three weeks_. Possibly dignified people do not write post-cards!
Especially gubernatorial timber!
Now, what started this digression? Oh, yes, Neva's silly songs which
she bought while she was up here those few days before school
commenced. I started out to say that they did not seem at all silly to
me this time. I actually caught myself singing them over and over
again and found considerable beauty in one that was a plea to some
hardhearted beloved to make "ev'ry dream come true."
Yes, I was delighted with Neva's new songs, and Neva was delighted
with everything she saw in the city: with the pure linen shirt-waists
marked down to one dollar; with the vast, dim cathedral which we
would drop into to enjoy its solemn beauty nearly every time we were
near it, after I found that Neva responded to its appeal; she admired
the Egyptian mummies in the museum--the terrified delight of my early
years; but she found the greatest joy in watching the fire-engines at
work.
Mrs. Sullivan remained strictly at home after her first day of
tramping the city streets, which she declared "was the death o' her
feet," so that Neva's bubbling accounts of the sights seen, when she
would return to their hotel at night and try to cheer her mother up
with her lively recitals, were by no means the least enjoyable part of
the day's program.
"Oh, mamma, the cathedral's just _grand_," she declared with
enthusiasm, after her first visit. "I told Miss Ann that I _wished_
papa had stayed a Catholic and had raised me that way."
Mrs. Sullivan's Baptist eyebrows flew up in horror, then her entire
face settled into its normal look of hopelessness.
"Maybe you won't be so glib to wish it at the Great Day of Judgment,"
she said warningly, and the capital letters I have used were all in
her voice.
"--And the mummies!" Neva hastened on, seeing that she had struck the
wrong key, and her tones were as light and frolicksome as her
mother's were lugubrious. "I just love mummies!"
Mrs. Sullivan still refused to show a smiling interest.
"Well, I reckon they're all right, if Miss Ann recommends 'em," she
said grudgingly, but with a little wonder depicted on her face;
"still, I make it a rule not to fill _my_ stomach too full of strange
vittles!"
"Oh, mamma! They ain't things to eat," Neva corrected, struggling
between her shame and amusement, then she launched forth into a brief
explanation of embalming "after the manner of the Egyptians."
At the word "Egyptians" quick comprehension dawned in Mrs. Sullivan's
disapproving eyes. Certainly she had read her Bible.
"Shucks! Is _them_ what you're talking about? Well, I can tell you,
miss, I knew all about mummies before _you_ was ever borned! But you
talked about 'em so gushing that I thought of course they was some
kind o' new-fangled ice-cream."
"When I said that I _loved_ them I meant that they are _so_
interesting, you know," Neva said, hoping to mollify her, but her
explanation proved a poor quality of oil poured upon the troubled
waters of maternal understanding.
"Them's strange things for a girl to be going to see," she commented
with pointed brevity. "--Men, women and children layin' there without
_no_ clo'es on--and nobody not knowing what they died with!"
But the fires! I don't know whether there was an unusually large
number of such calamities during this period or not, but I had never
had my attention so attracted to them before.
We happened to find ourselves almost in the thick of one the very
first day we were up in the shopping district, and the excitement so
appealed to Neva that after that no member of the fire department
could have taken a more lively interest in the clang of the bell than
she did.
On the last night of Mrs. Sullivan's stay, when she was already
weeping over having to leave her only born, there was such a sudden
and close clang of the alarm as would furnish Edgar Allan Poe with
inspiration enough for four more stanzas of "bells, bells, bells."
Neva listened, counted the strokes, then scrambled around distractedly
for the alarm card. The fire might be near enough for her to see!
"Well, Nevar," her mother said, wiping her eyes and looking at her
motions with reproach, "it is poorly worth while trying to educate
_you_! You've been here a whole week and _ain't learned the fire-alarm
card yet_!"