IN WHICH WE OBSERVE THE INTERIOR OF A DESERTED HOUSE
An empty, lonely house was that on Quality Hill in Elm Street after the
daughter's marriage. It was not that the Doctor and Mrs. Nesbit did not
see their daughter often; but whether she came every day or twice a week
or every week, always she came as a visitor. No one may have two homes.
And the daughter of the house of Nesbit had her own home;--a home
wherein she was striving to bind her husband to a domesticity which in
itself did not interest him. But with her added charm to it, she
believed that she could lure him into an acceptance of her ideal of
marriage. So with all her powers she fell to her task. Consciously or
unconsciously, directly or by indirection, but always with the joy of
adventure in her heart, whether with books or with music or with
comradeship, she was bending herself to the business of wifehood, so
that her own home filled her life and the Nesbit home was lonely; so
lonely was it that by way of solace and diversion, Mrs. Nesbit had all
the woodwork downstairs "done over" in quarter-sawed oak with elaborate
carvings. Ferocious gargoyles, highly excited dolphins, improper,
pot-bellied little cupids, and mermaids without a shred of character,
seemed about to pounce out from banister, alcove, bookcase, cozy corner
and china closet.
George Brotherton pretended to find resemblances in the effigies to
people about Harvey, and to the town's echoing delight he began to name
the figures after their friends, and always saluted the figures
intimately, as Maggie, or Henry, or the Captain, or John Kollander, or
Lady Herdicker. But through the wooden menagerie in the big house the
Doctor whistled and hummed and smoked and chirruped more or less
drearily. To him the Japanese screens, the huge blue vases, the
ponderous high-backed chairs crawly with meaningless carvings, the
mantels full of jars and pots and statuettes, brought no comfort. He was
forever putting his cane over his arm and clicking down the street to
the Van Dorn home; but he felt in spite of all his daughter's efforts to
welcome him--and perhaps because of them--that he was a stranger there.
So slowly and rather imperceptibly to him, certainly without any
conscious desire for it, a fondness for Kenyon Adams sprang up in the
Doctor's heart. For it was exceedingly soft in spots and those spots
were near his home. He was domestic and he was fond of home joys. So
when Mrs. Nesbit put aside the encyclopedia, from which she was getting
the awful truth about Babylonian Art for her paper to be read before the
Shakespeare Club, and going to the piano, brought from the bottom of a
pile of yellow music a tattered sheet, played a Chopin nocturne in a
rolling and rather grand style that young women affected before the
Civil War, the Doctor's joy was scarcely less keen than the child's.
Then came rare occasions when Laura, being there for the night while her
husband was away on business, would play melodies that cut the child's
heart to the quick and brought tears of joy to his big eyes. It seemed
to him at those times as if Heaven itself were opened for him, and for
days the melodies she played would come ringing through his heart. Often
he would sit absorbed at the piano when he should have been practicing
his lesson, picking out those melodies and trying with a poignant
yearning for perfection to find their proper harmonies. But at such
times after he had frittered away a few minutes, Mrs. Nesbit would call
down to him, "You, Kenyon," and he would sigh and take up his scales and
runs and arpeggios.
Kenyon was developing into a shy, lovely child of few noises; he seemed
to love to listen to every continuous sound--a creaking gate, a
waterdrip from the eaves, a whistling wind--a humming wire. Sometimes
the Doctor would watch Kenyon long minutes, as the child listened to the
fire's low murmur in the grate, and would wonder what the little fellow
made of it all. But above everything else about the child the Doctor was
interested in watching his eyes develop into the great, liquid, soulful
orbs that marked his mother. To the Doctor the resemblance was rather
weird. But he could see no other point in the child's body or mind or
soul whereon Margaret Mueller had left a token. The Doctor liked to
discuss Kenyon with his wife from the standpoint of ancestry. He took a
sort of fiendish delight--if one may imagine a fiend with a seraphic
face and dancing blue eyes and a mouth that loved to pucker in a pensive
whistle--in Mrs. Nesbit's never failing stumble over the child's eyes.
Any evening he would lay aside his Browning----even in a knotty passage
wherein the Doctor was wont to take much pleasure, and revert to type
thus:
"Yes, I guess there's something in blood as you say! The child shows it!
But where do you suppose he gets those eyes?" His wife would answer
energetically, "They aren't like Amos's and they certainly are not much
like Mary's! Yet those eyes show that somewhere in the line there was
fine blood and high breeding."
And the Doctor, remembering the kraut-peddling Mueller, who used to live
back in Indiana, and who was Kenyon's great-grandfather, would shake a
wise head and answer:
"Them eyes is certainly a throw-back to the angel choir, my dear--a sure
and certain throw-back!"
And while Mrs. Nesbit was climbing the Sands family tree, from Mary
Adams back to certain Irish Sandses of the late eighteenth century, the
Doctor would flit back to "Paracelsus," to be awakened from its spell
by: "Only the Irish have such eyes! They are the mark of the Celt all
over the world! But it's curious that neither Mary nor Daniel had those
eyes!"
"It's certainly curious like," squeaked the Doctor amicably--"certainly
curious like, as the treetoad said when he couldn't holler up a rain.
But it only proves that blood always tells! Bedelia, there's really
nothing so true in this world as blood!"
And Mrs. Nesbit would ask him a moment later what he could find so
amusing in "Paracelsus"? She certainly never had found anything but
headaches in it.
Yet there came a time when the pudgy little stomach of the Doctor did
not shake in merriment. For he also had his problem of blood to solve.
Tom Van Dorn was, after all, the famous Van Dorn baby!
One evening in the late winter as the Doctor was trudging home from a
belated call, he saw the light in Brotherton's window marking a yellow
bar across the dark street. As he stepped in for a word with Mr.
Brotherton about the coming spring city election, he saw quickly that
the laugh was in some way on Tom Van Dorn, who rose rather guiltily and
hurried out of the shop.
"Seegars on George!" exclaimed Captain Morton; then answered the
Doctor's gay, inquiring stare: "Henry bet George a box of Perfectos Tom
wouldn't be a year from his wedding asking 'what's her name' when the
boys were discussing some girl or other, and they've laid for Tom ever
since and got him to-night, eh?"
The Captain laughed, and then remembering the Doctor's relationship with
the Van Dorns, colored and tried to cover his blunder with: "Just boys,
you know, Doc--just their way."
The Doctor grinned and piped back, "Oh, yes--yes--Cap--I know, boys will
be dogs!"
Toddling home that night the Doctor passed the Van Dorn house. He saw
through the window the young couple in their living-room. The doctor had
a feeling that he could sense the emotions of his daughter's heart. It
was as though he could see her trying in vain to fasten the steel
grippers of her soul into the heart and life of the man she loved. Over
and over the father asked himself if in Tom Van Dorn's heart was any
essential loyalty upon which the hooks and bonds of the friendship and
fellowship of a home could fasten and hold. The father could see the
handsome young face of Van Dorn in the gas light, aflame with the joy of
her presence, but Dr. Nesbit realized that it was a passing flame--that
in the core of the husband was nothing to which a wife might anchor her
life; and as the Doctor clicked his cane on the sidewalk vigorously he
whispered to himself: "Peth--peth--nothing in his heart but peth."
A day came when the parents stood watching their daughter as she went
down the street through the dusk, after she had kissed them both and
told them, and after they had all said they were very happy over it. But
when she was out of sight the hands of the parents met and the Doctor
saw fear in Bedelia Nesbit's face for the first time. But neither spoke
of the fear. It took its place by the vague uneasiness in their hearts,
and two spectral sentinels stood guard over their speech.
Thus their talk came to be of those things which lay remote from their
hearts. It was Mrs. Nesbit's habit to read the paper and repeat the news
to the Doctor, who sat beside her with a book. He jabbed in comments;
she ignored them. Thus: "I see Grant Adams has been made head carpenter
for all the Wahoo Fuel Companies mines and properties." To which the
Doctor replied: "Grant, my dear, is an unusual young man. He'll have ten
regular men under him--and I claim that's fine for a boy in his
twenties--with no better show in life than Grant has had." But Mrs.
Nesbit had in general a low opinion of the Doctor's estimates of men.
She held that no man who came from Indiana and was fooled by men who
wore cotton in their ears and were addicted to chilblains, could be
trusted in appraising humanity.
So she answered, "Yes," dryly. It was her custom when he began to bestow
knighthood upon common clay to divert him with some new and irrelevant
subject. "Here's an item in the _Times_ this morning I fancy you
didn't read. After describing the bride's dress and her beauty, it says,
'And the bride is a daughter of the late H. M. Von Mueller, who was an
exile from his native land and gave up a large estate and a title
because of his participation in the revolution of '48. Miss Mueller might
properly be called the Countess Von Mueller, if she chose to claim her
rightful title!'--what is there to that?"
The Doctor threw back his head and chuckled:
"Pennsylvania Dutch for three generations--I knew old Herman Mueller's
father--before I came West--when he used to sell kraut and cheese around
Vincennes before the war, and Herman's grandfather came from
Pennsylvania."
"I thought so," sniffed Mrs. Nesbit. And then she added: "Doctor, that
girl is a minx."
"Yes, my dear," chirped the Doctor. "Yes, she's a minx; but this isn't
the open season for minxes, so we must let her go. And," he added after
a pause, during which he read the wedding notice carefully, "she may put
a brace under Henry--the blessed Lord knows Henry will need something,
though he's done mighty well for a year--only twice in eighteen months.
Poor fellow--poor fellow!" mused the Doctor. Mrs. Nesbit blinked at her
husband for a minute in sputtering indignation. Then she exclaimed:
"Brace under Henry!" And to make it more emphatic, repeated it and then
exploded: "The cat's foot--brace for Henry, indeed--that piece!"
And Mrs. Nesbit stalked out of the room, brought back a little dress--a
very minute dress--she was making and sat rocking almost imperceptibly
while her husband read. Finally, after a calming interval, she said in a
more amiable tone, "Doctor Nesbit, if you've cut up all the women you
claim to have dissected in medical school, you know precious little
about what's in them, if you get fooled in that Margaret woman."
"The only kind we ever cut up," returned the Doctor in a mild,
conciliatory treble, "were perfect--all Satterthwaites."
And when the Doctor fell back to his book, Mrs. Nesbit spent some time
reflecting upon the virtues of her liege lord and wondering how such a
paragon ever came from so common a State as Indiana, where so far as any
one ever knew there was never a family in the whole commonwealth, and
the entire population as she understood it carried potatoes in their
pockets to keep away rheumatism.
The evening wore away and Dr. and Mrs. Nesbit were alone by the ashes in
the smoldering fire in the grate. They were about to go up stairs when
the Doctor, who had been looking absent-mindedly into the embers, began
meditating aloud about local politics while his wife sewed. His
meditation concerned a certain trade between the city and Daniel Sands
wherein the city parted with its stock in Sands's public utilities with
a face value of something like a million dollars. The stocks were to go
to Mr. Sands, while the city received therefor a ten-acre tract east of
town on the Wahoo, called Sands Park. After bursting into the Doctor's
political nocturne rather suddenly and violently with her feminine
disapproval, Mrs. Nesbit sat rocking, and finally she exclaimed: "Good
Lord, Jim Nesbit, I wish I was a man."
"I've long suspected it, my dear," piped her husband,
"Oh, it isn't that--not your politics," retorted Mrs. Nesbit, "though
that made me think of it. Do you know what else old Dan Sands is doing?"
The Doctor bent over the fire, stirred it up and replied, "Well, not in
particular."
"Philandering," sniffed Mrs. Nesbit.
"Again?" returned the Doctor.
"No," snapped Mrs. Nesbit--"as usual!"
The Doctor had no opinion to express; one of the family specters was
engaging his attention at the moment. Presently his wife put down her
paper and sat as one wrestling with an impulse. The specter on her side
of the hearth was trying to keep her lips sealed. They sat while the
mantel clock ticked off five minutes.
"What are you thinking?" the Doctor asked.
"I'm thinking of Dan Sands," replied the wife with some emotion in her
voice.
The foot tap of Mrs. Nesbit became audible. She shook her head with some
force and exclaimed: "O Jim, wouldn't I like to have that man--just for
one day."
"I've noticed," cut in the Doctor, "regarding such propositions from the
gentler sex, that the Lord generally tempers the wind to the shorn
lamb."
"The shorn lamb--the shorn lamb," retorted Mrs. Nesbit. "The shorn
tom-cat! I'd like to shear him." Wherewith she rose and putting out the
light led the Doctor to the stairs.
Both knew that the spectral sentinels had used Daniel Sands and his
amours only as a seal upon their lips.
The parents could speak in parables about what they felt or fancied
because there was so little that was tangible and substantial for them
to see. Of all the institutions man has made--the state, the church, his
commerce, his schools,--the home is by far the most spiritual. Its
successes and its failures are never material. They are never evidenced
in any sort of worldly goods. Only in the hearts of those who dwell in a
home, or of those to whom it is dear, do its triumphs and its defeats
register themselves. But in Tom Van Dorn's philosophy of life small
space was left for things of the spirit alone, to register. He was
trying with all his might to build a home upon material things. So above
all he built his home around a beautiful woman. Then he lavished upon
her and about the house wherein she dwelled, beautiful objects. He was
proud of their cost. Their value in dollars and cents gave these objects
their chief value in his balance sheet of gain or less in footing up his
account with his home. And because what he had was expensive, he prized
it. Possibly because he had bought his wife's devotion, at some material
sacrifice to his own natural inclinations toward the feminine world, he
listed her high in the assets of the home; and so in the only way he
could love, he loved her jealously. She and the rugs and pictures and
furniture--all were dear to him, as chattels which he had bought and
paid for and could brag about. And because he was too well bred to brag,
the repression of that natural instinct he added to the cost of the
items listed,--rugs, pictures, wife, furniture, house, trees, lot, and
blue grass lawn. So when toward the end of the first year of his
marriage, he found that actually he could turn his head and follow with
his eyes a pretty petticoat going down Market Street, and still fool his
wife; when he found he could pry open the eyes of Miss Mauling at the
office again with his old ogle, and still have the beautiful love which
he had bought with self-denial, its value dropped.
And his wife, who felt in her soul her value passing in the heart she
loved, strove to find her fault and to correct it. Daily her devotion
manifested itself more plainly. Daily she lived more singly to the
purpose of her soul. And daily she saw that purpose becoming a vain
pursuit.
Outwardly the home was unchanged as this tragedy was played within the
two hearts. The same scenery surrounded the players. The same voices
spoke, in the same tones, the same words of endearment, and the same
hours brought the same routine as the days passed. Yet the home was
slowly sinking into failure. And the specters that sealed the lips of
the parents who stood by and mutely watched the inner drama unfold,
watched it unfold and translate itself into life without words, without
deeds, without superficial tremor or flinching of any kind--the specters
passed the sad story from heart to heart in those mysterious silences
wherein souls in this world learn their surest truths.