Ray’s heart sank. He was so anxious to get at those opinions; and yet he
did not like to refuse Mr. Brandreth; a little thing might prejudice the
case; he ought to make all the favor at court that he could for his
book. “I--I’m afraid it mightn’t be convenient--at such a time--for Mrs.
Brandreth”--
“Oh, yes it would,” said Mr. Brandreth in the same desperate note. “Come
along. I don’t know that Mrs. Brandreth will be able to see you, but I
want you to see my boy; and we can have a bachelor bite together,
anyway.”
Ray yielded, and the stories of the baby began again when he moved on
with Mr. Brandreth. It was agony for him to wrench his mind from his
story, which he kept turning over and over in it, trying to imagine what
the readers had differed about, and listen to Mr. Brandreth saying,
“Yes, sir, I believe that child knows his grandmother and his nurse
apart, as well as he knows his mother and me. He’s got his likes and his
dislikes already: he cries whenever his grandmother takes him.
By-the-way, you’ll see Mrs. Chapley at dinner, I hope. She’s spending
the day with us.”
“Oh, I’m very glad,” said Ray, wondering if the readers objected to his
introduction of hypnotism.
“She’s a woman of the greatest character,” said Mr. Brandreth, “but she
has some old-fashioned notions about children. I want my boy to be
trained as a boy from the very start. I think there’s nothing like a
manly man, unless it’s a womanly woman. I hate anything masculine about
a girl; a girl ought to be yielding and gentle; but I want my boy to be
self-reliant from the word Go. I believe in a man’s being master in his
own house; his will ought to be law, and that’s the way I shall bring up
my boy. Mrs. Chapley thinks there ought always to be a light in the
nurse’s room, but I don’t. I want my boy to get used to the dark, and
not be afraid of it, and I shall begin just as soon as I can, without
seeming arbitrary. Mrs. Chapley is the best soul in the world, and of
course I don’t like to differ with her.”
“Of course,” said Ray. The mention of relationship made him think of the
cousin in his story; if he had not had the cousin killed, he thought it
would have been better; there was too much bloodshed in the story.
They turned into a cross-street from Lexington Avenue, where they had
been walking, and stopped at a pretty little apartment-house, which had
its door painted black and a wide brass plate enclosing its key-hole,
and wore that air of standing aloof from its neighbors peculiar to
private houses with black doors and brass plates.
Mr. Brandreth let himself in with a key. “There are only three families
in our house, and it’s like having a house of our own. It’s so much
easier living in a flat for your wife, that I put my foot down, and
wouldn’t hear of a separate house.”
They mounted the carpeted stairs through the twilight that prevails in
such entries, and a sound of flying steps was heard within the door
where Mr. Brandreth applied his latch-key again, and as he flung it open
a long wail burst upon the ear.
“Hear that?” he asked, with a rapturous smile, as he turned to Ray for
sympathy; and then he called gayly out in the direction that the wail
came from; “Oh, hello, hello, hello! What’s the matter, what’s the
matter? You sit down here,” he said to Ray, leading the way forward into
a pretty drawing-room. He caught something away from before the fire.
“Confound that nurse! She’s always coming in here in spite of
everything. I’ll be with you in a moment. Heigh! What ails the little
man?” he called out, and disappeared down the long narrow corridor, and
he was gone a good while.
At moments Ray caught the sound of voices in hushed, but vehement
dispute; a door slammed violently; there were murmurs of expostulation.
At last Mr. Brandreth reappeared with his baby in his arms, and its
nurse at his heels, twitching the infant’s long robe into place.
“What do you think of that?” demanded the father, and Ray got to his
feet and came near, so as to be able to see if he could think anything.
By an inspiration he was able to say, “Well, he _is_ a great fellow!”
and this apparently gave Mr. Brandreth perfect satisfaction. His son’s
downy little oblong skull wagged feebly on his weak neck, his arms waved
vaguely before his face.
“Now give him your finger, and see if he won’t do the infant Hercules
act.”
Ray promptly assumed the part of the serpent, but the infant Hercules
would not open his tightly-clinched, wandering fist.
“Try the other one,” said his father; and Ray tried the other one with
no more effect. “Well, he isn’t in the humor; he’ll do it for you some
time. All right, little man!” He gave the baby, which had acquitted
itself with so much distinction, back into the arms of its nurse, and it
was taken away.
“Sit down, sit down!” he said, cheerily. “Mrs. Chapley will be in
directly. It’s astonishing,” he said, with a twist of his head in the
direction the baby had been taken, “but I believe those little things
have their moods just like any of us. That fellow knows as well as you
do, when he’s wanted to show off, and if he isn’t quite in the key for
it, he won’t do it. I wish I had tried him with my hat, and let you see
how he notices.”
Mr. Brandreth went on with anecdotes, theories, and moral reflections
relating to the baby, and Ray answered with praiseful murmurs and
perfunctory cries of wonder. He was rescued from a situation which he
found more and more difficult by the advent of Mrs. Chapley, and not of
Mrs. Chapley alone, but of Mrs. Brandreth. She greeted Ray with a
certain severity, which he instinctively divined was not so much for him
as for her husband. A like quality imparted itself, but not so
authoritatively, from her mother; if Mr. Brandreth was not master in his
house, at least his mother-in-law was not. Mrs. Brandreth went about the
room and made some housekeeperly rearrangements of its furniture, which
had the result of reducing it, as it were, to discipline. Then she sat
down, and Ray, whom she waited to have speak first, had a feeling that
she was sitting in judgment on him, and the wish, if possible, to
justify himself. He began to praise the baby, its beauty, and great
size, and the likeness he professed to find in it to its father.
Mrs. Brandreth relented slightly. She said, with magnanimous
impartiality, “It’s a very _healthy_ child.”
Her mother made the reservation, “But even healthy children are a great
care,” and sighed.
The daughter must have found this intrusive. “Oh, I don’t know that
Percy is any great care as yet, mamma.”
“He pays his way,” Mr. Brandreth suggested, with a radiant smile. “At
least,” he corrected himself, “we shouldn’t know what to do without
him.”
His wife said, drily, as if the remark were in bad taste, “It’s hardly a
question of that, I think. Have you been long in New York, Mr. Ray?” she
asked, with an abrupt turn to him.
“Only a few weeks,” Ray answered, inwardly wondering how he could render
the fact propitiatory.
“Everything is very curious and interesting to me as a country person,”
he added, deciding to make this sacrifice of himself.
It evidently availed somewhat. “But you don’t mean that you are really
from the country?” Mrs. Brandreth asked.
“I’m from Midland; and I suppose that’s the country, compared with New
York.”
Mrs. Chapley asked him if he knew the Mayquayts there. He tried to think
of some people of that name; in the meantime she recollected that the
Mayquayts were from Gitchigumee, Michigan. They talked some
irrelevancies, and then she said, “Mr. Brandreth tells me you have _met_
my husband,” as if they had been talking of him.
“Yes; I had that pleasure even before I met Mr. Brandreth,” said Ray.
“And you know Mr. Kane?”
“Oh, yes. He was the first acquaintance I made in New York.”
“Mr. Brandreth told me.” Mrs. Chapley made a show of laughing at the
notion of Kane, as a harmless eccentric, and she had the effect of
extending her kindly derision to Hughes, in saying, “And you’ve been
taken to sit at the feet of his prophet already, Mr. Brandreth tells me;
that strange Mr. Hughes.”
“I shouldn’t have said he was Mr. Kane’s prophet exactly,” said Ray with
a smile of sympathy. “Mr. Kane doesn’t seem to need a prophet; but I’ve
certainly seen Mr. Hughes. And heard him, for that matter.” He smiled,
recollecting his dismay when he heard Hughes calling upon him in
meeting. He had a notion to describe his experience, and she gave him
the chance.
“Yes?” she said, with veiled anxiety. “Do tell me about him!”
At the end of Ray’s willing compliance, she drew a deep breath, and
said, “Then he is _not_ a follower of Tolstoï?”
“Quite the contrary, I should say.”
Mrs. Chapley laughed more easily. “I didn’t know but he made shoes that
nobody could wear. I couldn’t imagine what other attraction he could
have for my husband. I believe he would really like to go into the
country and work in the fields.” Mrs. Chapley laughed away a latent
anxiety, apparently, in making this joke about her husband, and seemed
to feel much better acquainted with Ray. “How are they living over
there? What sort of family has Mr. Hughes? I mean, besides the daughter
we know of?”
Ray told, as well as he could, and he said they were living in an
apartment.
“Oh!” said Mrs. Chapley, “I fancied a sort of tenement.”
“By-the-way,” said Mr. Brandreth, “wouldn’t you like to see our
apartment, Mr. Ray”--his wife quelled him with a glance, and he
added,--“some time?”
Ray said he should, very much.
Mrs. Brandreth, like her mother, had been growing more and more
clement, and now she said, “Won’t you stay and take a family dinner with
us, Mr. Ray?”
Ray looked at her husband, and saw that he had not told her of the
invitation he had already given. He did not do so now, and Ray rose and
seized his opportunity. He thanked Mrs. Brandreth very earnestly, and
said he was so sorry he had an appointment to keep, and he got himself
away at once.
Mrs. Chapley hospitably claimed him for her Thursdays, at parting; and
Mrs. Brandreth said he must let Mr. Brandreth bring him some other day;
they would always be glad to see him.
Mr. Brandreth went down to the outer door with him, to make sure that he
found the way, and said, “Then you _will_ come some time?” and
gratefully wrung his hand. “I saw how anxious you were about those
opinions!”