There was something incomplete and irreparable for Immy in the fact
that she reached New York too late to see her father before he joined
her mother in oblivion.
The new New York was beyond her comprehension. She was appalled by the
aged look of all her old friends whom she remembered as young friends.
She and her mirror had kept such steady company that she could not see
the slow changes in her own features. She saw them all at once in the
looking-glass of her old companions.
They made her unhappy and she went up to Tuliptree Farm to live, saying
that it was more wholesome for her children. Keith’s wife died and
his children grew away from him and he felt tired, old, of an evening
mood. So he also settled down at Tuliptree Farm, taking care that the
restorations after the storm should renew the old lines of the house
without disturbing its cellar walls.
He had had a large part in the engineering of the large six-mile
siphon that ran four hundred and twenty feet under the oozy bed of the
Harlem. He watched the water from the new Croton aqueduct roll into
Lake Manahatta in Central Park, and felt that the Croton field was now
drained.
All eyes turned further north, but the remaining cis-Hudsonian streams
belonged to the State of Connecticut whose sovereign rights were not at
the mercy of Albany.
The Catskill Mountains were the nearest source in the trans-Hudsonian
territory, and the Ramapo Company bought up all the rights. A tempest
of scandal broke out and Governor Roosevelt and Mayors Low and
McClellan quashed the company and set on foot the project of the
Ashokan reservoir, rivaling the magnitude of the canal cut through the
Isthmus of Panama.
A strip of land two hundred feet wide and ninety-two miles long must
be secured by condemnation and purchase, from Esopus Creek to New York
across thousands of farms, and a siphon must be driven a thousand feet
under the Hudson River between Storm King and Breakneck.
The work involved the submersion or removal of sixty-four miles of
highways, and eleven miles of railroad, nine villages and thirty-two
cemeteries of nearly three thousand graves, some of them more than two
centuries old.
And Tuliptree Farm with its graves was only one of this multitude.
Keith and Immy fought the city in vain. Nothing they could do could
halt the invading army of fifteen hundred workmen that established
itself at Valhalla and began to dam the Bronx above White Plains.
The dam was of cyclopean concrete, eighteen hundred feet across, and it
was made to hold thirty-eight billion gallons of water. Which was only
a fifty-day supply for New York.
The new lake with its forty miles of shore line would obliterate no
villages and few burial places. But one of these few was the RoBards’
plot and Keith trembled to think that when the house came down and the
cellar walls were removed piecemeal, the bones of Jud Lasher would be
disclosed.
He dared not speak even to Immy of the secret in the walls. He could
only stand aside and mourn the felling of the great tree-steeples.
He and Immy watched the wrecking crew demolishing the house, throwing
the chimneys down, tearing off the roof and opening the attic to the
sun. Then the ceiling went and the floors of the bedrooms where their
bare feet had toddled.
At last the house was gone, all but the main floor, and from that
stairways went up to nowhere.
After the wrecking crew had left off work for the day, Keith and Immy
wandered one evening through the place where the house once was, and
poked about the débris on the library floor. They noted the hearthstone
of white marble.
They had seen to the removal of the graves before the tulip trees came
down. The family had been transported to the increasing city of the
dead at Kensico, but they were still debating what monument to rear.
One little coffin was found there which Keith could not account for.
That was Immy’s secret and she kept it, though it ached in her old
heart, remembering the wild romance of her youth. A blush slipped
through her wrinkles and the shame was almost pleasant at this distance.
Now that she and Keith stared at the white marble hearthstone, they
were both inspired by a single thought.
“Let’s use that for a headstone in the family lot in Kensico!” Immy
said and Keith agreed.
They were proud of the felicity of their inspiration and hiring
laborers, stole the slab that very night and carried it over to the
graveyard, and saw to its establishing.
And they never knew the final irony of its presence there above the
parallel bodies of David and Patty RoBards. It linked Harry Chalender’s
destiny forever with theirs. But they never made a protest. It
was the Parthian shot of fate, the perfection of the contemptible
contemptuousness with which life regards its victims.
Unwitting of this dismal joke upon his father and remembering only the
secret of which he was trustee, Keith loitered about to see the cellar
walls demolished and the dead Jud Lasher brought to light. He kept
wondering what to say when the crisis was reached. He could not find a
lie to utter.
But from somewhere the edict came that the cellar walls should not be
taken away; and the workmen abandoned them.
And now the house was gone as if it had been burned in some night of
fire. But it had served its time. It had lived the short life of wooden
homes. Stone houses may outlast sonnets and coins and chronicles, but
houses of wood and of flesh perish soon. They have lived as stone never
lived. Through the wood the white blood of sap once coursed and trees,
like hearts, suffer too well for time to endure. They must go back to
the dust whence new trees and new hearts are made.
It was time for the old house to vanish. Like a human heart it had
held within its walls sorrow and honor, passion and crime. It was time
for it to cease to beat, cease to be.
It went out with an honorable name. It went into oblivion with no
history, and the old word of Tacitus about nations was true of houses,
too. Happy is the house that has no history. But all houses, and all
nations, have histories—if one only knew.
Keith was almost sorry that the cellar walls were left. He had braced
himself against the shock of revelation and when it did not come,
he suffered a collapse of strength. But he could not share this
disappointment with anyone. It must remain forever a RoBards secret to
die with him.
When at last the dam was piled across the valley, and the little
brooks encountered it, they backed up and filled their own beds to
overflowing. They swelled till they covered the levels where the
bridges had been. Stealthily they erased the roads that dipped into
them now and ran under water till they climbed out again on the
opposite slope. The brooks united into a pond and the pond widened and
lengthened. It began to climb the hills and wind about the promontories.
It aspired toward the highway cut out of the rock along the top of the
hills, and toward the lengthy tall-piered concrete bridge with the
ornaments of green bronze.
Keith and Immy watched the gradual drowning of the farm and took
their last walks about it, hand in hand, until long arms of water cut
off their approach even to the Tarn of Mystery, which was now a bald
hillock, an island height, a tiny Ararat.
Up and up the water climbed and came at last to the cellar walls,
lipping them inquiringly. They had the isolated dignity of ruins on the
Nile. They stood up in a little sea of waters and if anyone were to rip
the strongbox of their secret open now, he must take a boat to reach it.
One evening Keith and Immy went out to bid the home a last good-by.
They rode along the highway in a motor car and left it with its driver
while they clambered down to sit upon the hillside and pay the final
rites of observation.
Over their heads the automobiles went by in a stream, flashing back
the sunset that turned the sheet of waters into blood.
As the sunset grew wan and colorless, the motor lamps came out like
stars and the searchlights fenced as with swords. It grew chill, but
the old brother and sister sat fascinated by the disappearance of all
their memories under the climbing waters.
They were old and yet they felt themselves children, for they stared
across the misty years between to the clear opposite heights of youth.
Their hands unbidden moved to each other and clasped fingers. They were
the last of their generation, though other generations out of their
loins were gathering their own secrets of sins and griefs to keep from
their own posterities.
At length by imperceptible deepenings the cellar walls were all
engulfed. The lake was an unbroken mirror to the placid sky.
The house and farm of Tuliptree had been. They were no more.
* * * * *
But still the ancient children lingered, numb with cold and loneliness
and yet at peace, wonderfully at peace.
Above their heads a motor had stopped in the thick hush of the
gloaming. Two lovers, thinking themselves alone in their world, were
whispering and scuffling in amorous play. There was a girl’s voice that
gasped, “Don’t!” and a man’s voice that grumbled, “All right for you!”
Evidently the world would never lack for lovers. Lovers were still
coquetting and sulking and making a war of opportunity.
The girl, vexed by her gallant’s too easy discouragement, spoke
stupidly:
“I love sunsets, don’t you?”
“Uh-huh!”
“The lake’s pretty, don’t you think?”
“Pretty big for its age. It’s just a new pond, you know, to add to New
York’s collection. They’re looking for more water every day. I was
reading that they’re planning to tap the Adirondacks next, as soon as
the Catskills are used up.
“They’re turning a river around up there now. It was flowing west and
they’re going to dig under a mountain through an eighteen mile tunnel
and steal the river, and make it run east and south to New York.”
This titanic work did not interest the girl at all. She tried to fetch
the youth around to human themes:
“Somebody was telling me there used to be farms and homes down under
where the water is now. You can hardly believe it!”
“Ye-ah, people used to live down there, they say.”
“I wonder what they were like. Nice old-fashioned souls, I suppose,
good and simple and innocent, and not wicked in our modern ways.”
“I suppose not. But they didn’t get much out of life, I guess. They
couldn’t have known what love was. They couldn’t have seen anybody down
there as pretty as you are.”
“Don’t! Somebody might see you. It’s getting so dark you must drive me
home. If Mamma knew I had been out here alone with you——!”
Still there was stealth in the world—joy to be stolen and turned into
guilt, secrets to be cherished.
Keith helped Immy to her feet and they struggled toward the road out of
the night up into the night.
In the sky to the south the sleepless torches of far-off New York were
pallidly suspected. The waters below were black to their depths, save
where the stars slept or twinkled as a ripple shook their reflection,
or a fish, exploring its new sky, broke through into another world.
THE END.
_Harper Fiction_
THE VEHEMENT FLAME BY MARGARET DELAND
Can a man marry a woman twenty years his senior—and be happy and remain
true to the wife of his choice? This—and the Biblical quotation from
the Song of Solomon: “Love is strong as death, jealousy is cruel as the
grave; the coals thereof are coals of fire which hath a most vehement
flame”—is the basis of Mrs. Deland’s latest novel. This book by its
sheer bigness of theme, will rank above even _The Iron Woman_ and _The
Awakening of Helena Ritchie_.
THE VERTICAL CITY BY FANNIE HURST
New York! The Vertical City! Fannie Hurst has daringly inquired into
the lives of people who live dangerously in this greatest of all
monolithic cities, and pictured them for us in six whirlwind sketches.
You will never again think of this author’s shorter work as merely
short stories, for they are more than that—they are vivid impressions
of life.
CONFLICT BY CLARENCE BUDINGTON KELLAND
Mystery, love, and strong personalities are brought together in this
latest Kelland story. It tells how a girl made weak and effete by
the society of the city regained her womanhood when she was thrown
among those who still believe in the power of their fists—how a rich,
hypocritical, old lumberman and guardian of his wealthy society-loving
niece tried to save her soul by breaking her spirit.
THE PATHLESS TRAIL BY ARTHUR O. FRIEL
Arthur O. Friel comes forward with a story of the wildest kind of
adventure in the only place in America where there are still cannibals.
It is the strange story of a man who thought he had killed another and
to escape punishment by death fled to Peru. Adventures more exciting
than Tarzan’s in a land more weird and wonderful.
HARPER & BROTHERS
FRANKLIN SQUARE NEW YORK
_Humor and Drama_
_By Distinguished Authors_
THE MAN FROM HOME BY BOOTH TARKINGTON AND HARRY LEON WILSON
The scene takes place in Italy, and the American humor shows up
brilliantly against the foreign background. _Illustrated._
MONNA VANNA BY MAURICE MAETERLINCK
One of the Belgian poet’s most powerful dramas. The scenes are laid at
Pisa, Italy, at the end of the fifteenth century. _Portrait._
L’AIGLON BY EDMOND ROSTAND
This, the only English edition published of the story of the great
Napoleon’s unfortunate son, was translated by Louis N. Parker. It is
illustrated with pictures of Miss Maude Adams in the character of the
Duke of Reichstadt. _Illustrated._
PARTING FRIENDS BY WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
A farcical scene on an outgoing steamer, when two sweethearts can find
neither time nor place for tender farewells. Readers who like brilliant
conversation, unrestrained fun, and amusing character portrayal will
find in these farces a rich treat. _Illustrated._
THE MOUSE-TRAP BY WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
This volume contains in compact form four of Howells’s most popular
farces, which have been both read and acted with complete enjoyment and
success. The farces in this volume are: The Garroters, Five-o’Clock
Tea, The Mouse-Trap, A Likely Story. _Illustrated._
HARPER & BROTHERS
FRANKLIN SQUARE NEW YORK
Transcriber’s Notes
pg 16 Changed: the maples and wild rhodendendrons
to: the maples and wild rhododendrons
pg 41 Changed: he had taken a whole tumberful
to: he had taken a whole tumblerful
pg 96 Changed: bury you in the Potter’s Feld
to: bury you in the Potter’s Field
pg 121 Changed: a strange pilgrimake through the
to: a strange pilgrimage through the
pg 164 Changed: The boy had evidenty inherited
to: The boy had evidently inherited
pg 285 Changed: somewhow in all these years
to: somehow in all these years