Mr. Vertrees, having watched their departure with the air of a man who
had something at hazard upon the expedition, turned from the window and
began to pace the library thoughtfully, pending their return. He was
about sixty; a small man, withered and dry and fine, a trim little
sketch of an elderly dandy. His lambrequin mustache--relic of a
forgotten Anglomania--had been profoundly black, but now, like his
smooth hair, it was approaching an equally sheer whiteness; and though
his clothes were old, they had shapeliness and a flavor of mode. And for
greater spruceness there were some jaunty touches; gray spats, a narrow
black ribbon across the gray waistcoat to the eye-glasses in a pocket,
a fleck of color from a button in the lapel of the black coat, labeling
him the descendant of patriot warriors.
The room was not like him, being cheerful and hideous, whereas Mr.
Vertrees was anxious and decorative. Under a mantel of imitation black
marble a merry little coal-fire beamed forth upon high and narrow
“Eastlake” bookcases with long glass doors, and upon comfortable,
incongruous furniture, and upon meaningless “woodwork” everywhere,
and upon half a dozen Landseer engravings which Mr. and Mrs. Vertrees
sometimes mentioned to each other, after thirty years of possession, as
“very fine things.” They had been the first people in town to possess
Landseer engravings, and there, in art, they had rested, but they still
had a feeling that in all such matters they were in the van; and when
Mr. Vertrees discovered Landseers upon the walls of other people's
houses he thawed, as a chieftain to a trusted follower; and if he
found an edition of Bulwer Lytton accompanying the Landseers as a final
corroboration of culture, he would say, inevitably, “Those people know
good pictures and they know good books.”
The growth of the city, which might easily have made him a millionaire,
had ruined him because he had failed to understand it. When towns begin
to grow they have whims, and the whims of a town always ruin somebody.
Mr. Vertrees had been most strikingly the somebody in this case. At
about the time he bought the Landseers, he owned, through inheritance,
an office-building and a large house not far from it, where he spent the
winter; and he had a country place--a farm of four hundred acres--where
he went for the summers to the comfortable, ugly old house that was his
home now, perforce, all the year round. If he had known how to sit
still and let things happen he would have prospered miraculously; but,
strangely enough, the dainty little man was one of the first to fall
down and worship Bigness, the which proceeded straightway to enact the
role of Juggernaut for his better education. He was a true prophet of
the prodigious growth, but he had a fatal gift for selling good and
buying bad. He should have stayed at home and looked at his Landseers
and read his Bulwer, but he took his cow to market, and the trained
milkers milked her dry and then ate her. He sold the office-building and
the house in town to buy a great tract of lots in a new suburb; then
he sold the farm, except the house and the ground about it, to pay the
taxes on the suburban lots and to “keep them up.” The lots refused to
stay up; but he had to do something to keep himself and his family up,
so in despair he sold the lots (which went up beautifully the next year)
for “traction stock” that was paying dividends; and thereafter he ceased
to buy and sell. Thus he disappeared altogether from the commercial
surface at about the time James Sheridan came out securely on top; and
Sheridan, until Mrs. Vertrees called upon him with her “anti-smoke”
committee, had never heard the name.
Mr. Vertrees, pinched, retired to his Landseers, and Mrs. Vertrees
“managed somehow” on the dividends, though “managing” became more and
more difficult as the years went by and money bought less and less. But
there came a day when three servitors of Bigness in Philadelphia took
greedy counsel with four fellow-worshipers from New York, and not long
after that there were no more dividends for Mr. Vertrees. In fact, there
was nothing for Mr. Vertrees, because the “traction stock” henceforth
was no stock at all, and he had mortgaged his house long ago to help
“manage somehow” according to his conception of his “position in
life”--one of his own old-fashioned phrases. Six months before the
completion of the New House next door, Mr. Vertrees had sold his horses
and the worn Victoria and “station-wagon,” to pay the arrears of his two
servants and re-establish credit at the grocer's and butcher's--and a
pair of elderly carriage-horses with such accoutrements are not very
ample barter, in these days, for six months' food and fuel and service.
Mr. Vertrees had discovered, too, that there was no salary for him in
all the buzzing city--he could do nothing.
It may be said that he was at the end of his string. Such times do come
in all their bitterness, finally, to the man with no trade or craft, if
his feeble clutch on that slippery ghost, Property, shall fail.
The windows grew black while he paced the room, and smoky twilight
closed round about the house, yet not more darkly than what closed round
about the heart of the anxious little man patrolling the fan-shaped zone
of firelight. But as the mantel clock struck wheezily six there was the
rattle of an outer door, and a rich and beautiful peal of laughter went
ringing through the house. Thus cheerfully did Mary Vertrees herald her
return with her mother from their expedition among the barbarians.
She came rushing into the library and threw herself into a deep chair by
the hearth, laughing so uncontrollably that tears were in her eyes. Mrs.
Vertrees followed decorously, no mirth about her; on the contrary,
she looked vaguely disturbed, as if she had eaten something not quite
certain to agree with her, and regretted it.
“Papa! Oh, oh!” And Miss Vertrees was fain to apply a handkerchief upon
her eyes. “I'm SO glad you made us go! I wouldn't have missed it--”
Mrs. Vertrees shook her head. “I suppose I'm very dull,” she said,
gently. “I didn't see anything amusing. They're most ordinary, and the
house is altogether in bad taste, but we anticipated that, and--”
“Papa!” Mary cried, breaking in. “They asked us to DINNER!”
“What!”
“And I'm GOING!” she shouted, and was seized with fresh paroxysms.
“Think of it! Never in their house before; never met any of them but the
daughter--and just BARELY met her--”
“What about you?” interrupted Mr. Vertrees, turning sharply upon his
wife.
She made a little face as if positive now that what she had eaten would
not agree with her. “I couldn't!” she said. “I--”
“Yes, that's just--just the way she--she looked when they asked her!”
cried Mary, choking. “And then she--she realized it, and tried to turn
it into a cough, and she didn't know how, and it sounded like--like a
squeal!”
“I suppose,” said Mrs. Vertrees, much injured, “that Mary will have an
uproarious time at my funeral. She makes fun of--”
Mary jumped up instantly and kissed her; then she went to the mantel
and, leaning an elbow upon it, gazed thoughtfully at the buckle of her
shoe, twinkling in the firelight.
“THEY didn't notice anything,” she said. “So far as they were concerned,
mamma, it was one of the finest coughs you ever coughed.”
“Who were 'they'?” asked her father. “Whom did you see?”
“Only the mother and daughter,” Mary answered. “Mrs. Sheridan is dumpy
and rustly; and Miss Sheridan is pretty and pushing--dresses by the
fashion magazines and talks about New York people that have
their pictures in 'em. She tutors the mother, but not very
successfully--partly because her own foundation is too flimsy and partly
because she began too late. They've got an enormous Moor of painted
plaster or something in the hall, and the girl evidently thought it was
to her credit that she selected it!”
“They have oil-paintings, too,” added Mrs. Vertrees, with a glance of
gentle pride at the Landseers. “I've always thought oil-paintings in a
private house the worst of taste.”
“Oh, if one owned a Raphael or a Titian!” said Mr. Vertrees, finishing
the implication, not in words, but with a wave of his hand. “Go on,
Mary. None of the rest of them came in? You didn't meet Mr. Sheridan
or--” He paused and adjusted a lump of coal in the fire delicately with
the poker. “Or one of the sons?”
Mary's glance crossed his, at that, with a flash of utter comprehension.
He turned instantly away, but she had begun to laugh again.
“No,” she said, “no one except the women, but mamma inquired about the
sons thoroughly!”
“Mary!” Mrs. Vertrees protested.
“Oh, most adroitly, too!” laughed the girl. “Only she couldn't help
unconsciously turning to look at me--when she did it!”
“Mary Vertrees!”
“Never mind, mamma! Mrs. Sheridan and Miss Sheridan neither of THEM
could help unconsciously turning to look at me--speculatively--at the
same time! They all three kept looking at me and talking about the
oldest son, Mr. James Sheridan, Junior. Mrs. Sheridan said his father is
very anxious 'to get Jim to marry and settle down,' and she assured me
that 'Jim is right cultivated.' Another of the sons, the youngest one,
caught me looking in the window this afternoon; but they didn't seem
to consider him quite one of themselves, somehow, though Mrs. Sheridan
mentioned that a couple of years or so ago he had been 'right sick,'
and had been to some cure or other. They seemed relieved to bring the
subject back to 'Jim' and his virtues--and to look at me! The other
brother is the middle one, Roscoe; he's the one that owns the new house
across the street, where that young black-sheep of the Lamhorns, Robert,
goes so often. I saw a short, dark young man standing on the porch with
Robert Lamhorn there the other day, so I suppose that was Roscoe. 'Jim'
still lurks in the mists, but I shall meet him to-night. Papa--” She
stepped nearer to him so that he had to face her, and his eyes were
troubled as he did. There may have been a trouble deep within her own,
but she kept their surface merry with laughter. “Papa, Bibbs is the
youngest one's name, and Bibbs--to the best of our information--is a
lunatic. Roscoe is married. Papa, does it have to be Jim?”
“Mary!” Mrs. Vertrees cried, sharply. “You're outrageous! That's a
perfectly horrible way of talking!”
“Well, I'm close to twenty-four,” said Mary, turning to her. “I haven't
been able to like anybody yet that's asked me to marry him, and maybe I
never shall. Until a year or so ago I've had everything I ever wanted in
my life--you and papa gave it all to me--and it's about time I began
to pay back. Unfortunately, I don't know how to do anything--but
something's got to be done.”
“But you needn't talk of it like THAT!” insisted the mother,
plaintively. “It's not--it's not--”
“No, it's not,” said Mary. “I know that!”
“How did they happen to ask you to dinner?” Mr. Vertrees inquired,
uneasily. “'Stextrawdn'ry thing!”
“Climbers' hospitality,” Mary defined it. “We were so very cordial and
easy! I think Mrs. Sheridan herself might have done it just as any kind
old woman on a farm might ask a neighbor, but it was Miss Sheridan who
did it. She played around it awhile; you could see she wanted to--she's
in a dreadful hurry to get into things--and I fancied she had an idea it
might impress that Lamhorn boy to find us there to-night. It's a sort of
house-warming dinner, and they talked about it and talked about it--and
then the girl got her courage up and blurted out the invitation. And
mamma--” Here Mary was once more a victim to incorrigible merriment.
“Mamma tried to say yes, and COULDN'T! She swallowed and squealed--I
mean you coughed, dear! And then, papa, she said that you and she had
promised to go to a lecture at the Emerson Club to-night, but that her
daughter would be delighted to come to the Big Show! So there I am,
and there's Mr. Jim Sheridan--and there's the clock. Dinner's at
seven-thirty!”
And she ran out of the room, scooping up her fallen furs with a gesture
of flying grace as she sped.
When she came down, at twenty minutes after seven, her father stood in
the hall, at the foot of the stairs, waiting to be her escort through
the dark. He looked up and watched her as she descended, and his gaze
was fond and proud--and profoundly disturbed. But she smiled and nodded
gaily, and, when she reached the floor, put a hand on his shoulder.
“At least no one could suspect me to-night,” she said. “I LOOK rich,
don't I, papa?”
She did. She had a look that worshipful girl friends bravely called
“regal.” A head taller than her father, she was as straight and jauntily
poised as a boy athlete; and her brown hair and her brown eyes were
like her mother's, but for the rest she went back to some stronger and
livelier ancestor than either of her parents.
“Don't I look too rich to be suspected?” she insisted.
“You look everything beautiful, Mary,” he said, huskily.
“And my dress?” She threw open her dark velvet cloak, showing a splendor
of white and silver. “Anything better at Nice next winter, do you
think?” She laughed, shrouding her glittering figure in the cloak again.
“Two years old, and no one would dream it! I did it over.”
“You can do anything, Mary.”
There was a curious humility in his tone, and something more--a
significance not veiled and yet abysmally apologetic. It was as if
he suggested something to her and begged her forgiveness in the same
breath.
And upon that, for the moment, she became as serious as he. She lifted
her hand from his shoulder and then set it back more firmly, so that he
should feel the reassurance of its pressure.
“Don't worry,” she said, in a low voice and gravely. “I know exactly
what you want me to do.”