It was gray stone, with long roofs of thick green slate. An architect
who loved the milder “Gothic motives” had built what he liked: it was to
be seen at once that he had been left unhampered, and he had wrought a
picture out of his head into a noble and exultant reality. At the same
time a landscape-designer had played so good a second, with ready-made
accessories of screen, approach and vista, that already whatever look
of newness remained upon the place was to its advantage, as showing at
least one thing yet clean under the grimy sky. For, though the smoke was
thinner in this direction, and at this long distance from the heart
of the town, it was not absent, and under tutelage of wind and weather
could be malignant even here, where cows had wandered in the meadows and
corn had been growing not ten years gone.
Altogether, the New House was a success. It was one of those architects'
successes which leave the owners veiled in privacy; it revealed nothing
of the people who lived in it save that they were rich. There are houses
that cannot be detached from their own people without protesting: every
inch of mortar seems to mourn the separation, and such a house--no
matter what be done to it--is ever murmurous with regret, whispering the
old name sadly to itself unceasingly. But the New House was of a kind
to change hands without emotion. In our swelling cities, great places
of its type are useful as financial gauges of the business tides;
rich families, one after another, take title and occupy such houses as
fortunes rise and fall--they mark the high tide. It was impossible to
imagine a child's toy wagon left upon a walk or driveway of the New
House, and yet it was--as Bibbs rightly called it--“beautiful.”
What the architect thought of the “Golfo di Napoli,” which hung in its
vast gold revel of rococo frame against the gray wood of the hall, is to
be conjectured--perhaps he had not seen it.
“Edith, did you say only eleven feet?” Bibbs panted, staring at it, as
the white-jacketed twin of a Pullman porter helped him to get out of his
overcoat.
“Eleven without the frame,” she explained. “It's splendid, don't you
think? It lightens things up so. The hall was kind of gloomy before.”
“No gloom now!” said Bibbs.
“This statue in the corner is pretty, too,” she remarked. “Mamma and I
bought that.” And Bibbs turned at her direction to behold, amid a
grove of tubbed palms, a “life-size,” black-bearded Moor, of a plastic
composition painted with unappeasable gloss and brilliancy. Upon his
chocolate head he wore a gold turban; in his hand he held a gold-tipped
spear; and for the rest, he was red and yellow and black and silver.
“Hallelujah!” was the sole comment of the returned wanderer, and Edith,
saying she would “find mamma,” left him blinking at the Moor. Presently,
after she had disappeared, he turned to the colored man who stood
waiting, Bibbs's traveling-bag in his hand. “What do YOU think of it?”
Bibbs asked, solemnly.
“Gran'!” replied the servitor. “She mighty hard to dus'. Dus' git in all
'em wrinkles. Yessuh, she mighty hard to dus'.”
“I expect she must be,” said Bibbs, his glance returning reflectively
to the black bull beard for a moment. “Is there a place anywhere I could
lie down?”
“Yessuh. We got one nem spare rooms all fix up fo' you, suh. Right up
staihs, suh. Nice room.”
He led the way, and Bibbs followed slowly, stopping at intervals to
rest, and noting a heavy increase in the staff of service since the
exodus from the “old” house. Maids and scrubwomen were at work under the
patently nominal direction of another Pullman porter, who was profoundly
enjoying his own affectation of being harassed with care.
“Ev'ything got look spick an' span fo' the big doin's to-night,” Bibbs's
guide explained, chuckling. “Yessuh, we got big doin's to-night! Big
doin's!”
The room to which he conducted his lagging charge was furnished in
every particular like a room in a new hotel; and Bibbs found it
pleasant--though, indeed, any room with a good bed would have
seemed pleasant to him after his journey. He stretched himself flat
immediately, and having replied “Not now” to the attendant's offer to
unpack the bag, closed his eyes wearily.
White-jacket, racially sympathetic, lowered the window-shades and made
an exit on tiptoe, encountering the other white-jacket--the harassed
overseer--in the hall without. Said the emerging one: “He mighty shaky,
Mist' Jackson. Drop right down an' shet his eyes. Eyelids all black.
Rich folks gotta go same as anybody else. Anybody ast me if I change
'ith 'at ole boy--No, suh! Le'm keep 'is money; I keep my black skin an'
keep out the ground!”
Mr. Jackson expressed the same preference. “Yessuh, he look tuh me like
somebody awready laid out,” he concluded. And upon the stairway landing,
near by, two old women, on all-fours at their work, were likewise
pessimistic.
“Hech!” said one, lamenting in a whisper. “It give me a turn to see him
go by--white as wax an' bony as a dead fish! Mrs. Cronin, tell me: d'it
make ye kind o' sick to look at um?”
“Sick? No more than the face of a blessed angel already in heaven!”
“Well,” said the other, “I'd a b'y o' me own come home t' die once--”
She fell silent at a rustling of skirts in the corridor above them.
It was Mrs. Sheridan hurrying to greet her son.
She was one of those fat, pink people who fade and contract with age
like drying fruit; and her outside was a true portrait of her. Her
husband and her daughter had long ago absorbed her. What intelligence
she had was given almost wholly to comprehending and serving those
two, and except in the presence of one of them she was nearly always
absent-minded. Edith lived all day with her mother, as daughters do; and
Sheridan so held his wife to her unity with him that she had long ago
become unconscious of her existence as a thing separate from his. She
invariably perceived his moods, and nursed him through them when she
did not share them; and she gave him a profound sympathy with the inmost
spirit and purpose of his being, even though she did not comprehend it
and partook of it only as a spectator. They had known but one actual
altercation in their lives, and that was thirty years past, in the early
days of Sheridan's struggle, when, in order to enhance the favorable
impression he believed himself to be making upon some capitalists, he
had thought it necessary to accompany them to a performance of “The
Black Crook.” But she had not once referred to this during the last ten
years.
Mrs. Sheridan's manner was hurried and inconsequent; her clothes rustled
more than other women's clothes; she seemed to wear too many at a time
and to be vaguely troubled by them, and she was patting a skirt down
over some unruly internal dissension at the moment she opened Bibbs's
door.
At sight of the recumbent figure she began to close the door softly,
withdrawing, but the young man had heard the turning of the knob and the
rustling of skirts, and he opened his eyes.
“Don't go, mother,” he said. “I'm not asleep.” He swung his long legs
over the side of the bed to rise, but she set a hand on his shoulder,
restraining him; and he lay flat again.
“No,” she said, bending over to kiss his cheek, “I just come for a
minute, but I want to see how you seem. Edith said--”
“Poor Edith!” he murmured. “She couldn't look at me. She--”
“Nonsense!” Mrs. Sheridan, having let in the light at a window, came
back to the bedside. “You look a great deal better than what you did
before you went to the sanitarium, anyway. It's done you good; a body
can see that right away. You need fatting up, of course, and you haven't
got much color--”
“No,” he said, “I haven't much color.”
“But you will have when you get your strength back.”
“Oh yes!” he responded, cheerfully. “THEN I will.”
“You look a great deal better than what I expected.”
“Edith must have a great vocabulary!” he chuckled.
“She's too sensitive,” said Mrs. Sheridan, “and it makes her exaggerate
a little. What about your diet?”
“That's all right. They told me to eat anything.”
“Anything at all?”
“Well--anything I could.”
“That's good,” she said, nodding. “They mean for you just to build up
your strength. That's what they told me the last time I went to see you
at the sanitarium. You look better than what you did then, and that's
only a little time ago. How long was it?”
“Eight months, I think.”
“No, it couldn't be. I know it ain't THAT long, but maybe it was
longer'n I thought. And this last month or so I haven't had scarcely
even time to write more than just a line to ask how you were gettin'
along, but I told Edith to write, the weeks I couldn't, and I asked
Jim to, too, and they both said they would, so I suppose you've kept up
pretty well on the home news.”
“Oh yes.”
“What I think you need,” said the mother, gravely, “is to liven up a
little and take an interest in things. That's what papa was sayin' this
morning, after we got your telegram; and that's what'll stimilate your
appetite, too. He was talkin' over his plans for you--”
“Plans?” Bibbs, turning on his side, shielded his eyes from the light
with his hand, so that he might see her better. “What--” He paused.
“What plans is he making for me, mother?”
She turned away, going back to the window to draw down the shade.
“Well, you better talk it over with HIM,” she said, with perceptible
nervousness. “He better tell you himself. I don't feel as if I had any
call, exactly, to go into it; and you better get to sleep now, anyway.”
She came and stood by the bedside once more. “But you must remember,
Bibbs, whatever papa does is for the best. He loves his chuldern and
wants to do what's right by ALL of 'em--and you'll always find he's
right in the end.”
He made a little gesture of assent, which seemed to content her; and
she rustled to the door, turning to speak again after she had opened it.
“You get a good nap, now, so as to be all rested up for to-night.”
“You--you mean--he--” Bibbs stammered, having begun to speak too
quickly. Checking himself, he drew a long breath, then asked, quietly,
“Does father expect me to come down-stairs this evening?”
“Well, I think he does,” she answered. “You see, it's the
'house-warming,' as he calls it, and he said he thinks all our chuldern
ought to be around us, as well as the old friends and other folks. It's
just what he thinks you need--to take an interest and liven up. You
don't feel too bad to come down, do you?”
“Mother?”
“Well?”
“Take a good look at me,” he said.
“Oh, see here!” she cried, with brusque cheerfulness. “You're not so bad
off as you think you are, Bibbs. You're on the mend; and it won't do you
any harm to please your--”
“It isn't that,” he interrupted. “Honestly, I'm only afraid it might
spoil somebody's appetite. Edith--”
“I told you the child was too sensitive,” she interrupted, in turn.
“You're a plenty good-lookin' enough young man for anybody! You look
like you been through a long spell and begun to get well, and that's all
there is to it.”
“All right. I'll come to the party. If the rest of you can stand it, I
can!”
“It 'll do you good,” she returned, rustling into the hall. “Now take
a nap, and I'll send one o' the help to wake you in time for you to get
dressed up before dinner. You go to sleep right away, now, Bibbs!”
Bibbs was unable to obey, though he kept his eyes closed. Something
she had said kept running in his mind, repeating itself over and over
interminably. “His plans for you--his plans for you--his plans for
you--his plans for you--” And then, taking the place of “his plans for
you,” after what seemed a long, long while, her flurried voice came
back to him insistently, seeming to whisper in his ear: “He loves his
chuldern--he loves his chuldern--he loves his chuldern”--“you'll find
he's always right--you'll find he's always right--” Until at last, as he
drifted into the state of half-dreams and distorted realities, the voice
seemed to murmur from beyond a great black wing that came out of the
wall and stretched over his bed--it was a black wing within the room,
and at the same time it was a black cloud crossing the sky, bridging the
whole earth from pole to pole. It was a cloud of black smoke, and out
of the heart of it came a flurried voice whispering over and over, “His
plans for you--his plans for you--his plans for you--” And then there
was nothing.
He woke refreshed, stretched himself gingerly--as one might have a care
against too quick or too long a pull upon a frayed elastic--and, getting
to his feet, went blinking to the window and touched the shade so that
it flew up, letting in a pale sunset.
He looked out into the lemon-colored light and smiled wanly at the
next house, as Edith's grandiose phrase came to mind, “the old Vertrees
country mansion.” It stood in a broad lawn which was separated from the
Sheridans' by a young hedge; and it was a big, square, plain old box
of a house with a giant salt-cellar atop for a cupola. Paint had been
spared for a long time, and no one could have put a name to the color of
it, but in spite of that the place had no look of being out at heel, and
the sward was as neatly trimmed as the Sheridans' own.
The separating hedge ran almost beneath Bibbs's window--for this wing of
the New House extended here almost to the edge of the lot--and, directly
opposite the window, the Vertreeses' lawn had been graded so as to make
a little knoll upon which stood a small rustic “summer-house.” It was
almost on a level with Bibbs's window and not thirty feet away; and
it was easy for him to imagine the present dynasty of Vertreeses
in grievous outcry when they had found this retreat ruined by the
juxtaposition of the parvenu intruder. Probably the “summer-house” was
pleasant and pretty in summer. It had the look of a place wherein little
girls had played for a generation or so with dolls and “housekeeping,”
or where a lovely old lady might come to read something dull on warm
afternoons; but now in the thin light it was desolate, the color of
dust, and hung with haggard vines which had lost their leaves.
Bibbs looked at it with grave sympathy, probably feeling some kinship
with anything so dismantled; then he turned to a cheval-glass beside the
window and paid himself the dubious tribute of a thorough inspection. He
looked the mirror up and down, slowly, repeatedly, but came in the end
to a long and earnest scrutiny of the face. Throughout this cryptic
seance his manner was profoundly impersonal; he had the air of an
entomologist intent upon classifying a specimen, but finally he appeared
to become pessimistic. He shook his head solemnly; then gazed again
and shook his head again, and continued to shake it slowly, in complete
disapproval.
“You certainly are one horrible sight!” he said, aloud.
And at that he was instantly aware of an observer. Turning quickly,
he was vouchsafed the picture of a charming lady, framed in a
rustic aperture of the “summer-house” and staring full into his
window--straight into his eyes, too, for the infinitesimal fraction of
a second before the flashingly censorious withdrawal of her own.
Composedly, she pulled several dead twigs from a vine, the manner of her
action conveying a message or proclamation to the effect that she was in
the summer-house for the sole purpose of such-like pruning and tending,
and that no gentleman could suppose her presence there to be due to any
other purpose whatsoever, or that, being there on that account, she
had allowed her attention to wander for one instant in the direction of
things of which she was in reality unconscious.
Having pulled enough twigs to emphasize her unconsciousness--and at the
same time her disapproval--of everything in the nature of a Sheridan
or belonging to a Sheridan, she descended the knoll with maintained
composure, and sauntered toward a side-door of the country mansion of
the Vertreeses. An elderly lady, bonneted and cloaked, opened the door
and came to meet her.
“Are you ready, Mary? I've been looking for you. What were you doing?”
“Nothing. Just looking into one of Sheridans' windows,” said Mary
Vertrees. “I got caught at it.”
“Mary!” cried her mother. “Just as we were going to call! Good heavens!”
“We'll go, just the same,” the daughter returned. “I suppose those women
would be glad to have us if we'd burned their house to the ground.”
“But WHO saw you?” insisted Mrs. Vertrees.
“One of the sons, I suppose he was. I believe he's insane, or something.
At least I hear they keep him in a sanitarium somewhere, and never talk
about him. He was staring at himself in a mirror and talking to himself.
Then he looked out and caught me.”
“What did he--”
“Nothing, of course.”
“How did he look?”
“Like a ghost in a blue suit,” said Miss Vertrees, moving toward the
street and waving a white-gloved hand in farewell to her father, who
was observing them from the window of his library. “Rather tragic and
altogether impossible. Do come on, mother, and let's get it over!”
And Mrs. Vertrees, with many misgivings, set forth with her daughter for
their gracious assault upon the New House next door.