TOWARD the end of the winter there came a newspaper, addressed to Miss
Irene Lapham; it proved to be a Texas newspaper, with a complimentary
account of the ranch of the Hon. Loring G. Stanton, which the
representative of the journal had visited.
"It must be his friend," said Mrs. Lapham, to whom her daughter brought
the paper; "the one he's staying with."
The girl did not say anything, but she carried the paper to her room,
where she scanned every line of it for another name. She did not find
it, but she cut the notice out and stuck it into the side of her
mirror, where she could read it every morning when she brushed her
hair, and the last thing at night when she looked at herself in the
glass just before turning off the gas. Her sister often read it aloud,
standing behind her and rendering it with elocutionary effects.
"The first time I ever heard of a love-letter in the form of a puff to
a cattle-ranch. But perhaps that's the style on the Hill."
Mrs. Lapham told her husband of the arrival of the paper, treating the
fact with an importance that he refused to see in it.
"How do you know the fellow sent it, anyway?" he demanded.
"Oh, I know he did."
"I don't see why he couldn't write to 'Rene, if he really meant
anything."
"Well, I guess that wouldn't be their way," said Mrs. Lapham; she did
not at all know what their way would be.
When the spring opened Colonel Lapham showed that he had been in
earnest about building on the New Land. His idea of a house was a
brown-stone front, four stories high, and a French roof with an
air-chamber above. Inside, there was to be a reception-room on the
street and a dining-room back. The parlours were to be on the second
floor, and finished in black walnut or party-coloured paint. The
chambers were to be on the three floors above, front and rear, with
side-rooms over the front door. Black walnut was to be used everywhere
except in the attic, which was to be painted and grained to look like
black walnut. The whole was to be very high-studded, and there were to
be handsome cornices and elaborate centre-pieces throughout, except,
again, in the attic.
These ideas he had formed from the inspection of many new buildings
which he had seen going up, and which he had a passion for looking
into. He was confirmed in his ideas by a master builder who had put up
a great many houses on the Back Bay as a speculation, and who told him
that if he wanted to have a house in the style, that was the way to
have it.
The beginnings of the process by which Lapham escaped from the master
builder and ended in the hands of an architect are so obscure that it
would be almost impossible to trace them. But it all happened, and
Lapham promptly developed his ideas of black walnut finish, high
studding, and cornices. The architect was able to conceal the shudder
which they must have sent through him. He was skilful, as nearly all
architects are, in playing upon that simple instrument Man. He began
to touch Colonel Lapham's stops.
"Oh, certainly, have the parlours high-studded. But you've seen some of
those pretty old-fashioned country-houses, haven't you, where the
entrance-story is very low-studded?" "Yes," Lapham assented.
"Well, don't you think something of that kind would have a very nice
effect? Have the entrance-story low-studded, and your parlours on the
next floor as high as you please. Put your little reception-room here
beside the door, and get the whole width of your house frontage for a
square hall, and an easy low-tread staircase running up three sides of
it. I'm sure Mrs. Lapham would find it much pleasanter." The architect
caught toward him a scrap of paper lying on the table at which they
were sitting and sketched his idea. "Then have your dining-room behind
the hall, looking on the water."
He glanced at Mrs. Lapham, who said, "Of course," and the architect
went on--
"That gets you rid of one of those long, straight, ugly
staircases,"--until that moment Lapham had thought a long, straight
staircase the chief ornament of a house,--"and gives you an effect of
amplitude and space."
"That's so!" said Mrs. Lapham. Her husband merely made a noise in his
throat.
"Then, were you thinking of having your parlours together, connected by
folding doors?" asked the architect deferentially.
"Yes, of course," said Lapham. "They're always so, ain't they?"
"Well, nearly," said the architect. "I was wondering how would it do
to make one large square room at the front, taking the whole breadth of
the house, and, with this hall-space between, have a music-room back
for the young ladies?"
Lapham looked helplessly at his wife, whose quicker apprehension had
followed the architect's pencil with instant sympathy. "First-rate!"
she cried.
The Colonel gave way. "I guess that would do. It'll be kind of odd,
won't it?"
"Well, I don't know," said the architect. "Not so odd, I hope, as the
other thing will be a few years from now." He went on to plan the rest
of the house, and he showed himself such a master in regard to all the
practical details that Mrs. Lapham began to feel a motherly affection
for the young man, and her husband could not deny in his heart that the
fellow seemed to understand his business. He stopped walking about the
room, as he had begun to do when the architect and Mrs. Lapham entered
into the particulars of closets, drainage, kitchen arrangements, and
all that, and came back to the table. "I presume," he said, "you'll
have the drawing-room finished in black walnut?"
"Well, yes," replied the architect, "if you like. But some less
expensive wood can be made just as effective with paint. Of course you
can paint black walnut too."
"Paint it?" gasped the Colonel.
"Yes," said the architect quietly. "White, or a little off white."
Lapham dropped the plan he had picked up from the table. His wife made
a little move toward him of consolation or support.
"Of course," resumed the architect, "I know there has been a great
craze for black walnut. But it's an ugly wood; and for a drawing-room
there is really nothing like white paint. We should want to introduce
a little gold here and there. Perhaps we might run a painted frieze
round under the cornice--garlands of roses on a gold ground; it would
tell wonderfully in a white room."
The Colonel returned less courageously to the charge. "I presume
you'll want Eastlake mantel-shelves and tiles?" He meant this for a
sarcastic thrust at a prevailing foible of the profession.
"Well, no," gently answered the architect. "I was thinking perhaps a
white marble chimney-piece, treated in the refined Empire style, would
be the thing for that room."
"White marble!" exclaimed the Colonel. "I thought that had gone out
long ago."
"Really beautiful things can't go out. They may disappear for a little
while, but they must come back. It's only the ugly things that stay
out after they've had their day."