Mrs. Pawket squeezed out the dishmop with a thoughtful air; she cast a
hasty, authoritative glance at the range, banging the door shut with a
decision that made Mr. Pawket jump as she snapped:
"Just the same, this here ain't no place for a vanilla. A vanilla around
these parts would be the same as if you was to wear your Sunday silk hat
out a-plowin'. They hain't got good judgment, them two hain't."
The old farmer regarded his wife with serious attention. Lighting his
pipe, he lay back in the Turkey-red chair, puffing in silence. At last
he laid the pipe down and, laboriously pulling off his boots, hummed an
air which had for its sole motif the undynamic suggestion:
"By and by
By and by
By and by. By and by. By and by."
At last the thumping of stocking feet ceased with the drone of the
drowsy voice; a bit of sunlight filtering first through the tulip-trees,
then through the little low kitchen window, let it be seen that Mr.
Pawket had lapsed into slumber. His wife looked at him with an
expressionless face. Wringing her hands out of the dish-water, she
carried the pan to the door; with contemptuous words of warning to some
chickens near by, she flung the contents on the grass. Going further
into the door-yard she dragged up some bleached clothing and stuffed it
into a clothes-basket. Choking the range full of coal, wrenching into
place a refractory coal-scuttle, she turned the damper in the stove-pipe
and set the stove-plates slightly a-tilt. Then she seized the tin
wash-basin, and, setting up a small mirror against the window, loosened
her hair and dragged her face and head through a severe toilet whose
original youthful motive of comeliness had been lost in habitual effort
of tidiness. This done, Mrs. Pawket donned a clean white apron and
draped around her neck a knitted orange tie which she pinned with a
scarlet coral breast-pin.
Having thus dressed for the afternoon and for the feared, desired, but
seldom experienced visitation called "company," Mrs. Pawket took from
her pocket the screw her grandson had bestowed upon her. Suddenly, with
the expression of one who in the interests of art performs dangerous
acrobatic feats, she dragged a chair in front of a cupboard. Climbing,
with many expressions of insecurity, on this chair, Mrs. Pawket reached
a bony hand into the cupboard, groping on the top shelf for an object
which her fingers approached tremulously. This object with considerable
care Mrs. Pawket brought down to earth and set upon the kitchen table.
It was a short, stumpy bowl or jar, upon which curious protuberances of
all kinds clustered. The protuberances encircled the jar in something
like the way fungus circles a tree hole, in strange and various
patterns.
Mrs. Pawket, the light deepening in her eyes, took from her apron pocket
the screw; holding it very daintily in one work-worn hand, with the
other she dove into further recesses and produced, wrapped in an oily
bit of newspaper, a large lump of putty.
Now a solemn ritual began. Breaking off a bit of the putty, Mrs. Pawket
welded it on the jar near the other protuberances; while the putty was
soft she fixed in it the screw, arranging that implement by a method
best calculated to display its screw characteristics. Then Mrs. Pawket's
eyes grew darker, a flush came into her wrinkled cheeks; she wrung the
moisture from her brow in a sort of agony of creative pleasure. As one
who performs an action sacred in its heightened detachment and
mechanical efficiency, she rummaged with desperate insistence on another
and higher shelf of the cupboard, this time bringing forth a very small
vial of gilt varnish and an equally small paint-brush with which to
apply it. Mrs. Pawket then observed that her hand was shaking and chid
herself severely:
"Look at me! Soon as I see how pritty this here Everything Jar is
gettin' to be, I go and get excited. If I'm goosefleshed now, what'll I
be when the Everything is finished?"
But the Everything Jar was a long way from finished and the unsatisfied
ache of the creative artist made heavy Mrs. Pawket's breast. She
surveyed the ceramic, half-erupt with a medley of buttons, screws,
safety-pins, hooks, knobs, all covered with their transforming gilt, and
tried to imagine how it would seem to have it completed. Then the
ultimate anxiety beset her--when completed, should the Everything be
bestowed upon the minister's family or--this a recent and daring
inspiration--should it be conferred upon Willum's wife, the mistress of
the proposed vanilla? Mrs. Pawket was fairly tortured by uncertainty.
She shook the sleeping Mr. Pawket by the shoulder.
"Say, look at the Everything. I just now put on that last screw. Ain't
it handsome?"
As he blinked at the fantastic jar gleaming with golden excrescences, a
deep sense of beauty thrilled Mr. Pawket.
"Hey, Maw," he chuckled. "That's the best yet. My! ain't it pritty? It
beats that lamp-shade ye made out er the tinfoil. Now the question is,
who ye goin' to give it to?"
"It's fer the vanilla," returned Mrs. Pawket, calmly.
Mr. Pawket put up his hand and wrung out his ear; he thought he could
not have heard aright; such aplomb, such dashing assurance as was his
wife's! His gray beard vibrated with curiosity.
"For the vanilla," the artist repeated, firmly. "I take it Willum's wife
won't be too proud to accept a notion or two fer her parlor. 'Tain't
likely that she, being so long in a furrin country, has had much chance
to go through the stores and pick out bric-a-brac. I don't know but what
she would be thankful for an ornament or so."
"Ornaments?" Mr. Pawket dwelt reverently upon the word. "Ornaments? I
dunno but what you got it right, though I wouldn't never have thought of
it myself." He leaned over the table the better to gloat upon the golden
jar. "Well," he summed up--"well, wimmen do beat all for mind-readin'.
First she sets up house-keepin', it's _ornaments_ she's goin' to hanker
fer--something fer the center-table most likely; and here you, who she
'ain't never see, stands all ready with an Everything fer her!"
A few days after the excitement produced by Willum's letter the
architect arrived. He was a tall, old-young man with the preoccupied air
of having reduced all human existence to exact diagrams. He was,
however, strangely intoxicated by the quiet and beauty of his country
surroundings. On the evening of his arrival he installed himself happily
in the spare room of the Pawkets' farm-house, acting, as Mrs. Pawket
marveled, as "if he hadn't never lived up in them classy city beehives."
Mr. Badgely, however, seemed to the farmer and his wife unnaturally
ecstatic over the ordinary manifestations of the physical universe. He
would stand for hours looking off over soft sunrise country; he would
hang over the bars by the cow-sheds, staring down the red road or
gazing pensively up at the ancient outlines of the Pawkets' homestead.
When the old farmer went up to him with knockkneed, rheumatic tread,
inquiring, "Well, how goes it?" the architect would reply:
"Oh, heavenly! Such depth! Such substance! Such integrity!"
When Mr. Pawket, fearing such brain lesions as he could not diagnose,
saw that these epithets were directed toward his own home in its
tulip-tree setting, he would range himself alongside of the architect,
eye his residence critically, and expectorate as he avowed:
"It wants roofing. Come vacation I'm goin' ter put the twins to scrapin'
them pesky mossback shingles; then I may go with the tide and buy me a
fancy tin roof."
Mr. Badgely would sweep him with an unseeing look. He would stretch five
very long fingers toward the facade of the farm-house, muttering, "Of
course not the dormers; they obtrude, I think, and the note is
pseudo-foreign. We should try to evolve something absolutely American,
don't you think? But the pilasters, the door paneling, positively Doric
in their clean sobriety! The eastern development, now; there may have
been reason for the extreme slant toward the east--it orients well, but
with a certain shock...."
"Shock? I guess yes," Mr. Pawket would reply. "'Twuz struck by
lightnin', tore down considerable." Then Mr. Pawket would remember that
Willum had asked him to be all the help he could to the architect, so he
would cast his eyes up to the sun as one who dovetails multitudinous
engagements, remarking: "What say we go down to Cedar Plains now? Fool
around a little. Kindy block the thing all out, as it were."
Once Mr. Pawket had added, "Ef we can't do nothin' else, you can tell me
ef you want any of them trees left a-standin'."
The dreaming architect had turned on him like one under sudden electric
compulsion; he shook himself into unbelievable alertness.
"The--er--trees? Left standing?"
Mr. Pawket smiled indulgently. He scratched a match on the seat of his
overalls and lighted his pipe, answering between puffs: "I guess you 'm
new to the business, ain't ye? Don't ye know, boy, the fust thing ye do
when ye set out to build a house is to lay all the trees low? Some does
it with dunnamite; some does it with mules and swearin'--anything to
root out the pesky things."
An extraordinary look of terror had swept the architect's face.
"Nervous," noted Mr. Pawket, "nervous! Maw'll have to feed him up with
buttermilk and put drops into his coffee. Them city people is always
nagged into nerves." The old man continued in fatherly fashion:
"Now, you wantin' to make all clear for anything as sizable as a
vanilla, fust thing we do is to 'scratch off the trees.' I can git you
plenty fellers handy with ax and saw, but when it comes to them cussed
roots, why, then, you 'm goin' to want dunnamite."
The architect bowed his head thoughtfully. As the two took the little
bronzed path leading to the natural park-land dark with tapering cedars,
he gave a puzzled look at the old farmer. At last he seemed struck by an
idea and said, slowly:
"Do you know, Mr. Pawket, we architects are often a little vague; we
need so much to--er--confer--and--er--ahem!--consult. Now, really, I
should be so interested. Just what are your personal preferences with
regard to the construction of an Italian villa?"
Mr. Pawket was for the moment slightly dazed. He surmised that the
question placed him somewhat at a disadvantage; yet, somehow, it seemed
to him that he knew a good deal about Italian villas. Gathering together
certain impressions derived from the conversation of the twins, from a
picture seen on a calendar, from the one lurid film of his experience,
and from certain opulent descriptions of the building of the Tabernacle,
it seemed to him that he knew a little something about occult species of
architecture. He not immodestly presented his ideas.
"I take it"--squashing ruminatively through puddles--"I take it that the
vanilla idee is kinder intricate, ain't it?--somethin' fancy and grand
like a castle? Two or three cupolos, er course, and all run around with
stoops and balconies; marble staircases inside." Mr. Pawket added this
carelessly as one used to the larger handling of details. "High
sideboards set out in silver in the dinin'-room--a reel handsome
phonnygraft into the front room and statoos on the gateposts."
The architect receiving this preliminary sketch with such silent
respect, Mr. Pawket gained courage and resumed:
"Wall-papers I ain't so sure about." The old farmer took out a large
clasp-knife and, paring his thumb-nail, continued, somewhat loftily: "I
presume that is as the lady of the house commands. Some favors blue, but
there's a many as is great hands for red. I see a house once had dead
animals, stuffed codfish, and shot ducks all over the wall-paper into
the dinin'-room; 'twuz reel tony! As fer the yard--well, I mistrust that
Willum, bein' sociable and always interested into the open air, would
want circular seats around whatever trees was left standin'. Ye could
paint 'em red, white, and blue, ye know. And he'd like a pond, maybe,
with a white swan shovin' back and forth."
* * *
At last came the day when vans of imported laborers arrived and began
quick breaking of ground and laying of foundations on Cedar Plains.
Parts of the superb heating system, the installing of which was the
architect's special care, numerous white bath-tubs--these things were
deposited before the eyes of the excited Mr. Pawket, who, in the absence
of the owner of the proposed villa, felt that he must be very vigilant
in overseeing. Every day the old man appeared at Cedar Plains, boots
spattered, overalls greased and clayey, making his anxious comments to
the architect, who received them thoughtfully, with the air of putting
all suggestions into immediate execution.
So the building of the "vanilla" proceeded, but it proceeded under the
stigma of an outraged countryside. The "show-place" confidently
predicted seemed not to evolve; outside of insane expenditures for
heating and bathing and the sanitary care of laundry and food, there
were few evidences that the villa was to be magnificent. Development
after development not only puzzled the neighboring farmers, but incensed
them. Men driving by "Willum's vanilla" pointed it out, tongue in
cheek, with derisive whip; their women folks, veiled and taciturn,
leaned forward in curious wonder to condemn silently. Such complacent
agriculturists as owned "ottermobiles" came from miles away to view the
thing; they halted their machines by the roadside and went in parties up
through the tapering cedars to where stood the slowly rising square
white walls, which they stared at with patronizing guffaws. It was the
fashion for the youth of Brook Center to spend Sunday afternoons down in
Cedar Plains, where among the dark trees they found the rosy trail of
arbutus; where strawberries hung in the rank green grass, and where, of
autumn days, wandering over the sweet stubble, they confessed to each
other those innocent melancholies of beings that have never known
sorrow.
On the edge of the plains where the russet path met the highway was an
old well. Here the brooding boys and girls were accustomed to bring
their loves and quarrels; here they hoisted the bucket from its
glittering black depths, poured water on tight bunches of anemone, fern,
and Dutchman's breeches, took long, gasping country drinks, and played
all the pranks youth plays when relaxed beside its subtle, laughing
ally--water. As the Sunday sun went down the boys and girls discussed
the strange phenomenon of the new house whose enigmatic walls gleamed
through the fields of their once free rovings. They uttered dark
hearsay: "Some says them two is crazy; that's why they been chased out
er It'ly." The twins, playing stick-knife in the soft turf that edged
the road, flatly contradicted this:
"They are not crazy, neither; they 'm as common sense as you are."
"Well, ef they ain't crazy, why they goin' to have stone floors? Why
they got them big old stone jars that come yesterday? Why ain't they
goin' to have no stair carpets? Why ain't they goin' to have no
window-curtings?"
"They are, too, crazy, and they gone and built that old vanilla right on
where we used to pick checkerberries, and he's goin' to put a outlandish
Dago top right on this here well, the kind they have in It'ly where they
all wear rags and eat lemon-skins."
"Nobody won't keep me from drinkin' out of this well when it's got a
Dago top."
"Nobody won't never stop me from goin' on Cedar Plains if I've got a
mind ter. I got as good a right as they got."
"I'd just as soon heave a rock right now at that there vanilla. I don't
care for it. I ain't afraid of no tin-faced I-talian dudes."
At last came a letter announcing the proposed arrival of the villa
furniture. The buckboard with the white horse halted again under the
tulip-tree and this time Mr. Pawket with unwonted sense of haste
intercepted the letter. The Rural, whose Rough Rider hat was now
discarded for a black-velvet tam-o'-shanter adorned with a coquettish
pink rose, rigidly resigned it to his eager grasp.
Mr. Pawket, for all his preoccupation, was not blind to the pink rose;
he quickly got its sense and made the usual deduction.
"When does the weddin' take place?" he asked, facetiously.
The rigidity around the corners of the Rural's mouth did not lessen as
she replied with the evasion Brook Center found piquant, "Next day after
Never."
Having successfully warded off inquiry as to personal plans, the Rural
returned to her rightful prerogatives of newsmonger, demanding:
"How's Mis' Pawket's Everything gittin' along? I got a couple
shoe-buttons fer her. She'd better hurry up and finish it; I hear there
is four more in town startin' Everything Jars. Seems there's a sort of
rivalry of who's goin' to be the first to get a Everything into the
vanilla."
A look of calamity shaded Mr. Pawket's face, but he accepted the two
shoe-buttons with dignified reserve.
"All she needs now is a harness buckle and a couple peanut-shells," he
explained, nonchalantly. "I can get them fer her easy enough; the twins
have been helping her some, one with a sinker and the other with a hook
and eye. 'Tain't likely any one can git their jar in afore hern. I
wouldn't advise nobody to nerve themselves up to it. There's been
rumors," added Mr. Pawket, gravely--"there's been rumors as some one is
tryin' to git up a rockery fer the vanilla. Now I wouldn't advise 'em
to. The lady will want to tinker with that herself. But if everybody is
itchin' to help, why don't they take up a nice collection er white
door-knobs to trim up the garden paths?"
The mail maiden smiled a contemptuous smile; her black eyes held like
sediment the look of repudiation.
"Ah, door-knobs!"--scornfully. "What's the use Of givin' up your curios
and souvenirs to folks like that? They don't know how to appreciate it!
I got a better use for my door-knobs. They 'm peculiar, them two is;
they don't know nothin'. You heard that about the bedrooms, I presume?"
Mr. Pawket, a worried look settling on his kind face, peered up at the
Rural; he took off his sun-hat and fanned himself with it.
"The bedrooms?" he questioned, falteringly. "D' ye mean that comical
cage-like where they goin' to sleep outdoors?"
The Rural smiled scornfully; she adjusted the pink rosebud with a
haughty, gauntleted hand.
"I mean the walls," shortly. "Plaster walls. Yes, sir, that's what I
mean and I know what I'm talkin' about--rough walls, plaster, like a
cellar. I know what I'm talkin' about, for it's my intended has the job;
he's 'most crazy about it, my intended is, it's gone all over the Center
and every one laughin' and teasin' him about it.... She's wrote it
herself in a letter with that same honey-bee onto the envelope. 'I want
the bedroom walls to be rough plaster,' that's what she's went and
wrote, 'of a pale yellow colorin' Mr. Badgely will choose. Please allow
him to mix the color' (ain't it awful?) 'and put it on very rough' (she
says). 'I want the grain especially coarse and rich' (she says).
'_Coarse and rich_'!" The Rural lifted dramatic eyes, inquiring again,
"Ain't that _terrible_?"
Mr. Pawket hesitated. An idea of loyalty possessed him; he made a feeble
attempt at seeming to support the unknown lady's taste.
"Er course, as I look at vanillas--" he began, weakly.
But the Rural interrupted him with a vicious clip of her lean brown
jaws. "Vanillas?" with scornful inflection. "_Vanillas?_" She lashed the
white horse into a sprawling stagger as she snapped, "She don't know
nothin' about vanillas!" and rattled confidently away, calling back,
scornfully; "She don't know nothin'; she 'ain't never had no
instruction; she don't reelize that there's such things as wall-papers.
'Coarse and rich,'" sneered the Rural. She peered back over her trim
young shoulder, adding: "They say their furniture has come. Everybody is
down to the junction, studyin' it. I'm glad it ain't mine."
It was true that the furniture had arrived. Braving the vicissitudes of
sea routes; badly shipped by an Italian warehouse, and roughly handled
at an American port, still the furniture had arrived. It had been dumped
out of its crated cars at the little Brook Center station. To the lover
of Flemish and Spanish carving, to the connoisseur of Genoese cabinets
and Italian intarsia, to the student of time-fumed designs and forms,
the coming of this furniture might well have been an event; for by a
freak of destiny, on the little platform of an obscure country junction
were assembled the hoardings of centuries of tradition, the adored
heirlooms of a long line of ancestry. One huge case, half wrecked,
showed the gleam of Florentine brasses; another, crated and roped,
revealed faded Genoese brocades; slender broken legs and edges of carved
flaps protruded from battered sheathings. To some minds all this might
have spelled a certain sort of poetry; to the curious group assembled at
the junction it spelled eccentricity and, what was worse, a fixed and
immoral shabbiness of existence!
The junction agent pointed out a half-crated table standing by itself;
it looked inconceivably old and was of a timber unknown to Brook Center.
Its rickety four legs, wrapped separately, tapered off into carvings of
opulent nymphs and the wild, laughing faces of dryads and fauns--these
legs were observed by the curious groups at the junction to be badly
worn and honeycombed with worm-holes.
"For the vanilla," it was whispered from one to another; the junction
agent, hand over mouth, bowed himself backward in mirth. "They say it's
all from her home, and this is the dinin'-room table. My! My! My! ain't
it awful, all them old, ancient things?"
Mr. Pawket, affecting a connoisseurship unconsciously copied from the
architect, bent over the table, examining it; with vague puzzlement he
passed his hand over its cut and hacked surface--surface on which
hundreds of monks of the time of Clement III had whetted their restless
knives.
"I don't onderstand it; I don't onderstand it"--the old farmer feebly
shook his head--"unless it's she ain't used to nothin' better and he's
kep' his mouth shut. 'Twould be like Willum to pertend he didn't care;
he was always biddable. M' wife could feed him anythin' from pot-cheese
to pork; he was always a great hand to keep the peace."
The junction master watched in leering silence the brittle collection of
household fittings being lifted into carts. "Well, I guess I'm glad it
ain't _me_ is goin' to have 'em for neighbors," he observed, feelingly.
"They 'll fall back on you a good deal, one thing and another; they 'm
pretty well broken down in pocket--you can see that."
Mr. Pawket in dumb disappointment climbed up into his wagon and stooped
to take the reins. For a few moments he chewed violently with his front
teeth before he spat desperately into the junction geranium-bed,
asserting with dignity:
"Oh, I guess you got no call to worry. 'Tain't as if they didn't have no
friends in this country. Willum's sort of son to me, my own boy bein'
long dead. Ef the worst comes to the worst I don't know but what I could
make a fist to help him out. Whoa, there!" Mr. Pawket, rising in his
seat, backed his team truculently. "Ef anythin's needed," he observed,
superbly, "I shall see to it myself--'twould n't take me long to buy him
a dining-room table and a few little fixin's so's he could hold up his
head in the world."
All the way home Willum's friend pondered the thing. Once when the
horses stopped to drink at a wayside trough he slapped his knee fiercely
and said: "That's the ticket! Yes, sir, that's the size of it!" At
dinner, after the twins had taken their departure, he suggested his plan
to his wife; to his immense relief she met the thing in his own spirit.
"A golden-oak dinin'-table, anyway," argued Mr. Pawket. "One or two
fancy fixin's so they can hold up their heads in the world."
"And shut people's mouths," agreed his wife. "That hotel-keeper's girl,
now, I never see any one more sassy--she with an Everything only half
done and sayin' she's goin' to be the first to get one into the vanilla,
and yet talkin' something terrible behind them and their furniture's
backs."
"How's your Everything?" asked Mr. Pawket, suddenly; a grim
determination shot into the eyes under his hairy brows.
For answer his wife rose. Unwrapping some white mosquito-netting, she
presented to view a large, bulbous object encircled with protuberances,
excrescenced with golden knobbiness--this object, strangely sticky,
smelled something like bananas; it was the Everything, completed and
unveiled. Mr. and Mrs. Pawket gazed upon it in silent admiration. As
they stood lost in contemplation of its conglomerate goldiness, there
came the sound of a sprightly whistle and light step, and the architect
appeared in the doorway.
Mr. Badgely had by this time become an intimate member of the farm
household. The two old people beamed upon him; Mr. Pawket waved him
excitedly toward the table, announcing:
"Well, sir, it's finished. Take it or leave it; I don't know as you
could find one any handsomer."
Mr. Badgely started theatrically. He was clad in white flannels and a
white silk shirt; a golden-brown tie matched the brown of a dreaming
fire in his eyes, and there were brown silk socks upon his shapely
calf-skinned feet. The Pawkets, even in their absorption, noted that, if
not really young, the architect suggested something very like youth. His
dapper figure now bent reverently over the kitchen table on whose
red-and-white-checkered cloth reposed the gold jar; he drew a long
breath.
"The--er--Everything!" he murmured. After a long and careful scrutiny of
the golden object, he turned to Mr. Pawket.
"Really--it--it defies description--it is so--er--genuine! I confess I
never have seen anything quite like it--anywhere. Mrs. Pawket, I do
congratulate you."
"There's a rage for 'em now," explained Mr. Pawket, proudly, "but 't was
she started the first one. She began the hull thing; we was foolish
enough to mention ourn to the hotel-keeper's daughter, and now, as fur
as I can gather, there's six Everythings started right here in Brook
Center."
Mr. Badgely showed deep emotion. "Really, six Everythings? You surprise
me. I had no idea the community boasted such--er--creative feeling."
The old farmer looked at the young man, then at his wife. "Tell him what
you goin' to do," he commanded. Mrs. Pawket, however, twisted nervously
at the end of the white mosquito-netting and said she felt too shy. Mr.
Pawket with manly decision relieved her of the burden of explanation.
"Seems she's had it in her mind to finish that there Everything in time
to have it on the center-table in the vanilla," he said; "and now she's
gone and got me so het up with interest that I got to take a hand, too.
Now, fer instance, the furniture--" The old man hitched himself nearer
to the architect, saying in sepulchral tones of parental anxiety:
"'Tain't fer me to interfere, but I seen the stuff. I been down to the
junction and see what they got. Well, say, ain't it pitiful, all that
old, ancient furniture?"
Mr. Badgely nodded his head with another sort of concern. "Perfectly
rotten carelessness. But I've sent to town for a corking man who handles
these things; he's coming out to-morrow with his staff. After all, it's
merely a question of understanding period, and American restoration is
diabolically clever."
But the old farmer waved the younger man grandly aside. "That's as may
be; that's as may be," he said, hastily. "Put it in the kitchen or use
it in the g'rage--I ain't one to advise waste; but see here, my young
man"--he stared impressively into the architect's face--"I knowed
Willum's folks. I know what he's used to and what he's got a right to
expect. Ef he's lost money, that ain't none of my business, and ef he's
married an Eyetalian, that ain't no reflection on _her_. As I take it,
they 'm all sorter down at heel in It'ly, and it seems they got now so
they don't know no better. But I knowed Willum's folks. I know he should
hold up his head in his own country."
A faint color stole into Mr. Pawket's gray-bearded face. Mrs. Pawket's
eyes were fixed admiringly on her husband. Mr. Badgely bent his head in
respectful listening. Mr. Pawket struck an attitude close to the
Everything Jar. He was glad that the twins, with their habit of shrewd
analysis, were not there as he said:
"I ain't rich--but," with a significant cough, "I ain't no one to stand
by and see the hull Center pokin' the finger er shame at Willum and his
furniture. The vanilla ... well, what's done is done, and it can't be
helped: seems it's what they set their hearts on and some folks like to
be strange-appearin', but the furniture--well, it don't suit, that's
all! Willum's the kind should have what 's all the go--plush and satin
and chenille-like." The old farmer looked at the architect meaningly; he
felt himself suddenly a man of the world; he stood almost straight in
his wrinkled boots, looking around the little kitchen fiercely and
roaring: "Golden oak or bird's-eye maple! I got catalogues. Spare no
expense. Get him what he needs. I'll back you!"
It was a moment full of significance. The architect, a man of many
subtle perceptions, was quite aware of it. He himself had been worried
over the general attitude of the country community toward the villa,
which, he could see, had deeply disappointed and mortified anticipation.
Rumors had reached him that the neighborhood not only repudiated the new
building on the grounds of general distaste, but that a movement of
ostracism had begun by which the intents and purposes of the occupants
of the villa were to be balked and frustrated. Brook Center, so Mr.
Badgely had divined, was keen for patronizing the newly arrived Italian
lady with gifts of decorated umbrella-stands, lamp-shades, and
door-mats; but, on the other hand, it had severely decided not to be
patronized by the expected householders. Supplies of milk and cream
could not be promised; fresh eggs, it appeared, were needed for home
consumption; pranks were planned by the young people to further
humiliate the supposedly downtrodden and financially embarrassed Willum.
There had even been talk of filling up the well--now topped by a
graceful Italian canopy--with mud and stones; and one enterprising
spirit had already chalked upon the bucket, "We don't want no Dagos to
Brook Center." In short, it had begun to seem to the architect that the
immediate atmosphere was unpropitious for a serene home-coming. Now, as
he faced the eager old farmer, something like a solution dawned on him.
"Er--expense"--the architect repeated Mr. Pawket's word--"er--do I
understand, sir, that besides that very rare and (ahem!) imposing
specimen of Mrs. Pawket's handiwork--this Everything Jar--do I
understand you to mean that you are so good as to wish to assist in
the--er--interior furnishings?"
The old farmer eyed him with delight.
"That's the ticket," he roared. "You got it right; you're the man for my
money." He struck an attitude of almost intoxicated satisfaction,
roaring again: "Golden oak, that's what; none too good for such as him.
Get him what he's used to. _Him_ with that old, ancient furniture!" Mr.
Pawket pressed a roll of extremely faded one-dollar bills into the
architect's hand, repeating: "A golden-oak set fer the dinin'-room. I
know where they have it slick and shinin'. Take yer catalogue and make
yer pick. Cost! By the great gander! what do I care fer cost?" A fervor
like that of a whirling dervish seized the old farmer. "Golden oak!" he
roared. Red-plush parlor suite." His gaze, falling upon the Everything,
became radiant. He hitched his suspenders with broad effects of swagger,
repeating once more, "It's what he's used to and the best ain't too good
for how he was brought up."
* * *
At last arrived the morning of the day when the owners of the villa
were expected, and it found the architect in a curious mixture of dread,
amusement, doubt, and eagerness. The villa, its tiled roof melting
softly through the filed tapers of dark cedars, was, he knew, what it
should be. He walked about the winding drives, his eyes dwelling upon
clumps of imported cypress and rare fruit-trees, his approving glance
sweeping over vistas landscaped by his own art, which clever art had set
stone benches in lovely little dells or by pools where a mossy nymph
sprayed the surrounding ferns.
Everything was as it should be. The walls of the white villa would soon
be softened by young vines newly sprouting; the terraces had stretches
of arcades and flowers; large terra-cotta pots filled with acacias and
oleanders massed well against the white of the steps and the blue of the
country sky. The whole scene was almost Italian--sunny, graceful,
restful. The architect smiled happily and knew himself justified of his
undertaking.
But within--within, where most he had dreamed mellowness--where most he
had desired the sense of ripe and harmonious surroundings? Oh, the thing
was too horrible, too outrageous! Could they possibly understand? Could
William Folsom and this Italian wife of his ever be made to see how
unavoidable, inevitable it had all been? Badgely, anxiously gnawing his
lower lip, shook his head. "I'm a fool," he muttered; "and yet I vow I
know of no other way. Talk about vendettas! they are queer here, really
queer--if one were sufficiently to antagonize them!..."
The architect directed his steps to the big stucco garage, still a
little raw-looking with its green shutters and tiles; there he
encountered the head of the workmen who were engaged in restoring the
much-suffering villa furniture. The alert, gray-clad man met him at the
door and shook his head deprecatingly.
"Don't ask me about those heavenly things!" He waved despairing hands.
"They are too lovely. I've been quoting Tasso to that little signorina
of a writing-desk. But, dear man, we can't possibly install any of it
for at least a month. These things are exquisite, priceless, but so
antique they've got to be mothered like babies. The chests are about
the only things in condition, and they've lost their hinges and I've got
to have the lovely brasses copied."
Stepping into the smartly cushioned car, Mr. Badgely sat himself down.
He gave the order dreamily. With a perturbed yet dauntless expression he
lay back on the soft cushions, gazing up to the whirling green of the
trees as the car flew along the country road.
"It all depends on her--it really all depends upon her. If she's the
real thing she'll understand and play the game; if she isn't--" He shook
his head, put one long leg over the other, and groaned.
When, however, the train stopped at the Brook Center Junction and
William Folsom, laughing, waved his hat, Mr. Badgely drew a long breath
of relief, for at Folsom's side stood a tall, graceful cosmopolite, a
being dark-eyed, daring, with the keen, lovable face of the aristocrat
of the spirit--in short, a perfection of feminine understanding in very
assured tailoring.
"She'll do," the architect told himself. His greetings were suave and
deliberate, but of necessity, almost before the car sprang away from the
junction, he began to explain that which was heavily on his mind.
William Folsom leaned back in the car, his shining eyes dwelt upon old
landmarks; he chuckled as he listened.
"You see, dear lady, your welcome is to be of the people--the
_forestiere_--I wonder if I can make you understand in so short a time
as we have? The entire countryside is at the villa now; they all told me
they were coming to greet you--so"--he shot a look at Folsom--"I invited
them."
The owner of the vanilla gave a mild war-whoop. "Oh, I say, this is
enchanting! Badgely, old chap, I can picture your sufferings." Then,
with a droll look at his wife: "She understands, bless her! She isn't
the idol of her own town for nothing!" Folsom turned and sketched the
architect's perturbation to his wife.
"Have the goodness to mention the--er--Everything," insisted Mr.
Badgely, grimly. "Have you ever seen one? No? Well, then, you needn't be
so funny." He added desperately: "They are there now arranging
the--er--golden oak and the (ahem!) the red-plush suite." He shuddered,
reiterating: "Really, Billy, the thing was _necessary_. I didn't dare
refuse. You've no idea how these people are antagonized by an Italian
villa. It seems sort of shameful to them. They foam at the mouth. Why,
unless I had been tactful you'd have had vendetta and Mafia and
everything else wished on you."
Mrs. Folsom tried to comprehend. "The poor Littles!" She had a marvelous
voice full of bird-like stirrings. Then she looked thoughtfully at the
architect. "But we will say to them 'Forget it,'" adding, with a little
pride, "I am learning William's slangs."
"Dear old gump, you forget that I was brought up in this very
neighborhood." Folsom soothed the despairing architect, but he laughed
immoderately. "His precious artistic sensibilities are having perfect
duck fits," he shouted. "He's as mad as a wet hen."
But Mrs. Folsom leaned back, taking fresh breaths of air. "This is a
green country," she announced, "and you have a little brown brook that
winds, and great trees like cathedrals. Do you think that with all this
around me I shall be staying to the _salon_ remarking continuously upon
the Jar of Everythings?"
Both men laughed and the architect kissed her hand.
When the car swept around the white shell drive and halted by the lower
terrace, Folsom, with a whoop like a boy, sprang out; he ran joyfully
forward, for there stood the old couple whose faces, to his home-coming
sense, seemed like those of parents. Mr. Pawket trembled slightly; he
stood high-collared and coattailed, upon the glittering steps. Mrs.
Pawket, in black silk, clove to his arm. The twins, in the heated
wretchedness of Sunday clothes, stepped forward, and in the interests of
sentiment stuck forth two wads of tightly bound pink roses. The Rural,
blushing in a costume of very bright blue, wearing elbow mitts, and
carrying a pink feather fan, introduced a sweet-smelling young man as
"my intended."
Among the small groups of peering and excited neighbors was Mr. Fripp,
the junction agent.
"Seems there's a good deal of excitement in the air. We 'ain't all been
out like this sence the mad dog was shot down to Galloway's." When this
gentleman was presented to Mrs. Folsom he drew himself up, looked at her
suspiciously, and said, "Pleased to meet you." He cast the eye of a
worldling over her quiet traveling costume and retired to nudge the
Rural and remark: "Well, I see the furniture money 'ain't been spent on
_her_ back."
The lady of the vanilla looked about her with pure happiness. She met
all introductions radiantly, sniffing rapturously at the twins' roses,
lifting first one, then the other stodgy bunch.
"But you are all so kind!" The clear voice rippling with novelty and
excitement gave a sense of thrill to the occasion. The mistress of the
vanilla held Mrs. Pawket's perspiring hand.
"To know this lady--like the mother of Weeliam--and Mr. Pawket, my first
American of the famous farmer trrribes!"
The stranger's insecurity of English had its immediate triumph. The
countryside had expected that she would chatter Italian like a predatory
organ-grinder, but around this picturesque _naivete_ they clustered as
they would around a lost child. Jessica Folsom met the architect's eyes
triumphantly, but he edged to her side and bent to whiff the roses,
muttering, "The worst is yet to come."
However, the slender figure of Mrs. Folsom drifted from one to the other
of her welcomers, unembarrassed, friendly, appealing. She put them
immediately at their ease as she announced:
"We shall all at once have tea. On the terrace--my little _festa_! I,
who find the home of my fathers in your new green country." A lovely
color coming into her dark face, she burst into undulating Italian. "The
first Dago she's spoke sence she's got here," commented Mr. Fripp, in an
undertone. Once more he creaked up to the mistress of the villa, saying,
loudly:
"Too bad about the furniture!"
The new-comer turned upon the junction agent liquid, long-lashed eyes.
"Ah the _garnitures_ of Bella Fortuna, they have been--how do you say
it, Weeliam?--dislocated, smashed in traveling the great waves." She
appealed anxiously to the junction agent. "I fear they are in great
distress of breaking, but"--a light came into the appealing dark
eyes--"but in your so practical country shall we not find the new?"
Mrs. Pawket, hearing this, suddenly nudged her husband, and Mr. Pawket
realized that his moment had come. He took one or two ponderous steps
forward, wiping his brow, clearing his throat. In his buzzing brain he
sensed a great occasion, like a wedding or a funeral. He got a glimpse
of Mrs. Pawket nodding her head urgently and mouthing his words after
him as he roared:
"That's as may be; that's as may be." Again Mr. Pawket cleared his
throat. He felt, as he afterward expressed it, "like he was grindin' a
corn-hopper with nothing into it." Suddenly his gaze fell upon Willum,
his boy, now a glad-looking man with a tender light in his eyes and his
arm around his dark-eyed wife. This, Mr. Pawket felt, was as it should
be. It gave him sudden eloquence.
"I dunno," he said, and he bent a severe eye upon the Rural, Mr. Fripp,
and the hotel-keeper's daughter--"I dunno but what we was gettin' a
little sour-hearted, here in Brook Center. There has been some spites
and a good many mean doin's and sayin's--namin' no names. What we didn't
have was big feelin's. Everybody was nesty and nifty, and we all thought
we know'd it all; but it seems that yet for all we didn't know much
about vanillas nor that they could turn out so purty as this here
vanilla has gone and turned."
William Folsom poked the architect in the ribs. "Hear! Hear!" he
murmured, in a subdued voice.
Mr. Pawket mildly waited for these asides to conclude before he resumed:
"Howsomever, it seems that one dear to us"--he fixed his eyes on Willum,
but in spite of him his gaze wandered off to Willum's lady--"one dear to
us has got back from foreign lands and built a vanilla." The old farmer
turned to Mrs. Folsom with a burst of eloquence. "Sence that has
happened, by gum! our whole lives is changed and we know more about
It'ly than I ever thought we should; and so with regards to this here
new vanilla house and a few little presents and one thing and another,
why, all I can say is, Mrs. Folsom, we've gone and did as we'd be done
by."
There was something very like a cheer at the conclusion of these
remarks. Meanwhile, at a sign from the architect, the great carved doors
of the villa swung open and the little group pressed in.
They stepped into the cool, dim court with its paved floors and
delicately woven stairways. Mrs. Folsom clasped her hands with pleasure
over a wide window-seat which gave on a western slope where the gold sun
was speared by the tall black trees. But Folsom, to whom the architect
gave a nervous cue, hurried to the _sala da mangiare_, and thrust back
its sumptuous Genoese curtains.
There under the iron candelabra of the Medicis stood a shining table of
varnished splendor; on it, as if hoping to deaden its aggressive luster,
was a marvelous strip of Paduan lace, while around its stodgy newness
were six smug chairs of a very palpable "golden oak." Folsom threw up
his hands in apparent joy and astonishment.
"Great Harry!" The young man's voice was extraordinarily exalted. He
bent over and touched the varnished surfaces with a reverent hand. "A
perfectly new dining-table--a present--a complete set of absolutely
unused chairs! Oh, I say! This won't do--it's preposterous! Somebody has
been getting gay." The young man first looked suspiciously at the
architect, then turned and with severe eyes surveyed Farmer Pawket's
shamefaced elation.
"So it's you, sir," he said. "Now look here!" Folsom strode up and put
his firm hand on the old man's chest. "Brace up and tell what you know
about this. Look me in the eye and tell me you didn't do it. No, you
can't hide behind Mother Pawket." Folsom's grave glance reduced Mrs.
Pawket to a helpless flutter. "She's probably put you up to it; she's a
designing woman." Folsom went eagerly over to the dark-eyed Italian
lady. "Jessica dearest, look at all this. Golden oak. _Store furniture_,
by Jove! Mr. Pawket's gift to you and me."
The lady of the vanilla did not betray Mr. Badgely's hope of her.
Widening her lovely eyes at the rich solidities before her, she slipped
to the old man's side and seized his hands. A strange sense of fog
enveloped Mr. Pawket; he stole a scared glance sidewise at the Rural.
"It was all for me," the vibrant voice insisted. "This Weeliam he is
_favorito_--he thinks the whole world is for his gift; but kind Signor
Pawket thinks only of me; he knew"--with exquisite slow arrangement of
accents--"how interested and happy I should be to at once understand the
practical American ways--and he knew, with such understanding, how I
must save and guard the poor destructed--what you call
them?--_foornitures_, of my own people."
"Now, now, now!" protested Mr. Pawket, feebly.
Mr. Fripp, however, nodded to the Rural. "Well, it seems she knowed all
the while that that there furniture warn't no good."
At last, at the architect's somewhat desperate solicitation, they all
turned their steps to the _salon_. Mr. Badgely, making pathetic
dumb-show, dragged William Folsom to the rear.
"Nerve yourself," he whispered, "nerve yourself. I'm afraid it's going
to be worse than I feared. It seems that there were actually six of
them--only one is not quite finished. The competition was very
tense--and they all arrived in my absence. Old man, hold me! I'm about
all in!"
Mr. Folsom, with appropriate concern, put his arm about his friend.
Together they braced to meet any shock. When at last they lifted their
eyes it was to stand locked in awe and admiration. Over the shoulders of
the group in front of them they could see into the _salon_. It was
furnished with a sofa and six chairs upholstered in scarlet plush. There
was also a center-table on which was spread a red plush cover. On this
table, each with a card tied with a ribbon bow and bearing the name of
its maker, stood ranged in solid splendor six golden "Everythings."