Part 16 (1/2)
Penelope and I were standing before a great gray-stone house. I carried my eyes from the doors of iron grill-work over the severe breadth of wall, broken only by rank above rank of windows so heavily curtained that one might have suspected those within to live in darkness, fearing even to face the sunlight. I laughed. When I had been searching for the girl with the blue feathers in her hat, I had never given this house more than a pa.s.sing glance, deeming it altogether too palatial in its size and too severe in its aspect to s.h.i.+eld a man of so garish a mind as I attributed to Rufus Blight, judging him from memory alone. I should have placed him rather next door to it, behind the over-ornate Moorish front and had him look out on the world through curtains of elaborately figured lace. But within, I now said to myself, I shall find the expression of the man in a riot of color in walls and hangings and in ill-a.s.sorted mobs of furniture.
Here again I was wrong. We pa.s.sed the grilled doors into a place so gray and cold that it might have led us to a cloister. We mounted broad stairs, our footfalls m.u.f.fled by a heavy carpeting of so un.o.btrusive a color that I cannot name it. We crossed a white panelled hall, so spa.r.s.ely furnished that the untutored might have thought that the family were just moving in or just moving out. Penelope pushed through heavy portieres and we stood at last in a room that seemed designed for human habitation. But it was the design of an alien mind, not of the owner. The owner had not been allowed to fit it to himself as he would his clothes. The alien mind had said: You do not know; you must allow me to arrange your habitat. Here I have placed the wonderful old fireplace which I bought for you in France, and above it the Reynolds for which you paid forty thousand dollars; here in the centre is the carved table which I got for you in Florence, and geometrically arranged about its corners are books of travel; with its back to it, a great divan covered with most expensive leather, so that you can lounge in its depths and watch the fire. Around it I have arranged sundry other chairs done in deep-green velour to tone in with the walls, and along the walls are bookcases, fronted with diamond panes and filled with leather-bound volumes--for this, sir, is your library.
The room was so perfect that Mrs. Bannister, seated before the fire, brewing herself a lonely cup of tea, seemed a jarring note. She would have been as much in place in a corner of the _Galerie-de-Glace_ at Versailles, and but for her presence and her domestic occupation I might have said to myself after a languid survey, ”So, this is where the king lounged”--then waited to be led on.
Mrs. Bannister was expecting us. She spoke as though in having tea waiting she had acted in the forlorn hope that some time we might return, and as though for hours she had been a prey to the gravest apprehensions, for Penelope's safety. In bringing Penelope back at all I had in some degree allayed the hostility with which she at first regarded me, but though she was now outwardly quite cordial, I was conscious that over the top of her cup she was studying me closely as I sat on the divan stirring my tea and striving to be thoroughly at home.
Her subtle scrutiny made me very uncomfortable. She asked me questions with an obvious purpose of putting me at my ease, and I answered in embarra.s.sed monosyllables. Whether I would or no, I seemed constantly to slide to the perilous edge of my seat, and no matter what care I used, I strewed crumbs over the rug until it seemed to me that my bit of cake had a demoniacal power of multiplying itself.
I was angry--this hour, this formal pa.s.sage of inane conversation, was so different from what I had pictured my first meeting with Penelope to be. I was angry at my weakness in letting this perfect room overpower me, and this woman of the world, with no other weapon than the knowledge of the people one should know, transfix me, silence me, transform me into a dull, bucolic boor. Penelope was annoyed. I knew that she was chagrined at my lack of _savoir faire_, for in one of the long pauses following an abrupt response of mine I caught a glance of mute despair. She seemed to accuse me of falling short of her expectations by my lamentable lack of the social graces.
I was for flight then. I rose to go. I paused to dispute in my mind whether I must say farewell first to the older or the younger woman, and from the hopelessness of ever solving the question I might have stood there for an hour pulling at my hands had not the portieres opened and Rufus Blight come in.
I should not have known him as Rufus Blight but for Penelope's joyous hail. I had expected to see him as I saw him that day when he came to the farm to take Penelope away--a short, fat, pompous man with a bristling red mustache and a hand that moved interminably; a sleek man in spotless, creaseless clothes who might have stood in his own show-window to inspire his fellows to sartorial perfection. I saw, instead, a small man, rather thin, and slightly bald. The bristling red mustache had turned to gray and drooped. His whole figure drooped.
His black clothes hung in many careless creases, and as he came forward it was not with his old quick, all-conquering step, but haltingly, as though Mrs. Bannister owned the room and he doubted if he were welcome.
I lost my embarra.s.sment in wonder. I recalled my old fond pictures of Rufus Blight when he should have grown older and fatter, more pompous and more all-commanding. I watched the little dusty man draw Penelope's head down to him and kiss her. I looked around the room, at the great fireplace, at the Reynolds, at the carved table and the costly empty s.p.a.ces, and I lost myself in the marvel that he should have attained them.
”Uncle Rufus,” Penelope said, drawing him toward me, ”here is some one you will be glad to see. It's David Malcolm, my old friend David Malcolm.”
”Why, David Malcolm--my old friend, too,” cried Mr. Blight, his face lighting genially as he took my hand. ”The boy who wouldn't let me have Penelope. Upon my word, David, I didn't blame you.”
He laughed and shook my hand again and again. He asked after my father and mother as though they were his dearest friends, and I contrasted his cordial mention of them with his once cavalier treatment, but when he made me sit beside him on the divan and meet and answer a rapid fire of questions as to myself and my occupation, the old prejudices began to disappear before his simple, unaffected kindness. Penelope was on his other side, and her hand was in his. I forgave him. I forgot the neglect of long ago. I forgot even the mystery of the letters. I forgot the fat, pompous, all-commanding man. This was a meeting of three rare old friends. Mrs. Bannister, too, had gone from my thoughts. If she still regarded me over the top of her cup, I was unconscious of it, for I was telling how I had come to meet Penelope again, and he was recalling the day when, as a small boy, I had resisted him so vigorously.
”It has all turned out well, eh, David?” Rufus Blight said, laying a hand upon my knee. ”Here we are--the three of us--just as if we had never quarrelled--good friends; and it is good to find old friends. We haven't many old friends, Penelope and I. Indeed, but for Mrs.
Bannister”--he bowed to the majestic woman--”we should have few new ones. An old one recovered is too precious to lose; and we are not going to lose you again--are we, Penelope?”
The color shot high on Penelope's cheeks as she laughingly a.s.sented, and I flattered myself that she had forgotten the boor who a few moments before had shown to such disadvantage under Mrs. Bannister's critical eye.
”You must come to us often,” Rufus Blight pursued. ”I shall be glad to see you any time. It is good to have an old friend about when time hangs so heavily on one's hands as it does on mine. Never go out of business, David. Take warning from me, and don't let yourself be stranded, with nothing to do but to play golf. Golf is a poor occupation. I was out to-day--couldn't find a soul around the club--had to take on the professional--spoiled my score by getting into the brook on the tenth hole, and came home utterly miserable and dissatisfied with life. But when you get well wetted you appreciate the kitchen stove, as old Bill Hansen, in our town, used to say--eh, Mrs. Bannister?”
From this I surmised that Mr. Blight as well as the ball had gone into the brook, and in the homely aphorism I divined a subtle purpose to bait Mrs. Bannister, which showed an astonis.h.i.+ng courage in so mild-mannered a little man. Such was the awe in which I held Mrs.
Bannister that I could have loved any one who dared in her presence to acknowledge an acquaintance with old Bill Hansen. If Mrs. Bannister did disapprove, she was careful not to show it. Her lips parted in a half smile and she observed to me that Mr. Blight had a jovial way of quoting Mr. Hansen, as though Mr. Hansen were his dearest friend.
”He is,” declared Mr. Blight. ”To be sure, I haven't seen him for years, but I always remember him as the wisest man I ever knew. Why, if it wasn't for Penelope I should go back to the valley, just to be near him. It would be better than golf--to sit with him on the store porch on a sunny day listening to the mill rumbling by the creek and the killdee whistling in the meadow, to watch the shadows crawl along the mountains, and now and then to hear Bill Hansen say something.
That would be living--eh, David?”
Rufus Blight touched a train of thought which had been often in my mind. Here was a man who had won in the great fight and he seemed to be camping now on the field which he had taken. About him were the spoils--the Reynolds, the fireplace, the perfectly bound books, and the costly s.p.a.ces of the great room. Yet he was voicing the same longing that I, whose fight was just beginning, had often felt--the longing to step aside from the struggle for vain things, the longing to turn from the smoke and grime of the conflict to the quiet and peace of the valley. Now I voiced that longing too, forgetting Mrs. Bannister and her evident creed that man's chief end was to know the right people.
”It would be living, indeed,” I said with enthusiasm. ”More than once I have been on the point of going back to stay. I don't suppose you ever knew my old friend Stacy Shunk, did you? When it comes to real wisdom I'd rather talk to Stacy Shunk than----”
Mrs. Bannister had half risen--I thought in horror. It was really the butler who had brought my eulogy of Stacy Shunk to a sudden close, for, appearing in half-drawn portieres, he announced: ”Mr. Talcott.”
The mere entrance of Mr. Talcott carried us far from the valley and such rude a.s.sociates as old Bill Hansen and his kind. I think that even Rufus Blight would have been too discreet to refer to them in his presence--for Penelope's sake, if nothing else. He was a slender young man of medium height, clean-shaven, perfectly groomed, and perfectly mannered. He was as much at ease as I had been ill at ease, and I envied him for it. He declined tea because he had just come from the club, and I envied him this delightful way of avoiding cake and embarra.s.sing crumbs. Mrs. Bannister addressed him as Herbert, and I knew at once that he was Edward Herbert Talcott, whose name I had often seen in my paper-reading task. His claim to distinction was descent from the man whose name he bore, a member of the cabinet of one of our early presidents. A dead statesman in a family is always a valuable a.s.set, and the longer dead the better. Statesmen, like wines, must be hidden away in vaults long years to be properly mellowed for social uses. I think that Mr. Secretary Talcott would have been astonished, indeed, could he have measured his influence after a century by the numbers, collateral and direct, who were proud to use his name. There were Talcott Joneses, and Talcott Robinsons, and Talcott Browns by the score in town, but one and all they acknowledged the primacy of this Edward Herbert Talcott, and never lost an opportunity of speaking of him as their cousin. He had written, I learned afterward, a monograph on his great-grandfather, which had given him a certain literary distinction in his own set, and it was generally understood that, while he might easily have earned a livelihood by his pen, he had been relieved of the necessity of doing it by his ancestors' investments in Harlem real estate.
Talcott looked perfectly inoffensive, and yet he had hardly been seated before I conceived a profound aversion to him. Mrs. Bannister's treatment of him did much to arouse it. Here, she seemed to say, is a human being, a sentient creature with ideas in his head, a finished man with an appreciation of the finer things of life. She asked him if he was going to the Martin dance.
Mr. Talcott did not know--he might--he hadn't made up his mind.
”There will probably be a rather mixed crowd,” he said, with his lips twitching into a cynical smile.