Annie Eliot

“ Philander trembled slightly, and rising to his feet, stood looking down at Darnel, haggardly. It was quite over, that experience of two summers before, but while it lasted he had at least never dreamed that there were thousands of women in the world like her.
“Sit down, Phil, I am almost through. A woman like other women, and the story, when I write it, a common story. It will be the commonest possible story; common as a rose, common as a child. I am going back to Vermont, where I was born, and where I have been born anew. There will be plenty of time for the story—years, and years, and years. ”

“ Even the old lawyer, disciplined as he was by years of hard experience to disregard all such misleading impulses, felt his heart warm toward the young man.
“I hope,” said the new-comer, with a smile so pleasant, so ingenuous, so confiding, that all Maskelyne’s ideas of deception—had he had time to recognize them in the moment before a strange, unquestioning acquiescence took complete possession of him—were at once dissipated, “that I do not intrude too greatly on your time.” ”

“ Evidently Miss Perkins was a prim, thin, tall, spectacled, New England old maid. She had the delicate air and manner of a lady. A lady faded, perhaps, and unused to a larger social area than that surrounding her native village green. She had also the timid manner of hesitancy of New England spinsters—hesitancy concerning everything except questions of casuistry and religion—and seemed, in what she did, to be spurred on from behind by the niece, who was, on the whole, as Mr. Jerome Archibald told a friend at the club later, “quite extraordinary.” ”

“ Feeling himself to be now, for some reason, a distinctly immoral person, he read some of the quaint epitaphs, to which he was invited, in a spirit of humility, which presently changed to amusement. In death as in life, the hard, stern old village characters preserved on their headstones a fund of grim humor for the “sinner,” which in Archibald’s instance made him smile. “Oh,” he sighed to himself, “I long to take her away from all this sort of thing—forever!”
He took a long walk in the afternoon, and returned to the hotel to find a coldly worded note from Elvira inviting him around to tea. ”

“ She might move, of course; so might she be flayed alive; but she was not likely to survive either operation. The room, though far less important to her happiness than the view, was as much a part of her existence. She had lived in it seventeen years. She knew every stain on the wallpaper, every rent in the carpet; the light fell in a certain way on her engravings, her books had grown shabby on their shelves, her bulbs and ivy were used to their window and knew which way to lean to the sun. “We are all too old to move,” she said.
That afternoon it cleared. ”

“ Manstey had never 189been a sociable woman, and during her husband’s lifetime his companionship had been all-sufficient to her. For many years she had cherished a desire to live in the country, to have a hen-house and a garden; but this longing had faded with age, leaving only in the breast of the uncommunicative old woman a vague tenderness for plants and animals. It was, perhaps, this tenderness which made her cling so fervently to the view from her window, a view in which the most optimistic eye would at first have failed to discover anything admirable. ”

“ Manstey’s window was not a striking one, but to her at least it was full of interest and beauty. Mrs. Manstey occupied the back room on the third floor of a New York boarding-house, in a street where the ash-barrels lingered late on the sidewalk and the gaps in the pavement would have staggered a Quintus Curtius. She was the widow of a clerk in a large wholesale house, and his death had left her alone, for her only daughter had married in California, and could not afford the long journey to New York to see her mother. ”

“ The old lawyer turned and looked curiously at him. Of course, of course! Was a man to be changed, the bone of what he was to have its marrow drawn, the fibre of every muscle to be untwisted, by this nonsense of a boy? Of course old Bevington was right—and for the moment he did not remember that Bevington was dead—in sending the young fool to such a cool old hand as himself. ”

“ Toward afternoon, however, feeling that she must know the worst, she rose and dressed herself. It was a laborious task, for her hands were stiffer than usual, and the hooks and buttons seemed to evade her.
When she seated herself in the window, she saw that the workmen had removed the upper part of the balcony, and that the bricks had multiplied since morning. One of the men, a coarse fellow with a bloated face, picked a magnolia blossom and, after smelling it, threw it to the ground; the next man, carrying a load of bricks, trod on the flower in passing. ”

“ Your nature has so grown athwart, all impulse has been so long gone, all that softens or ennobles so thrown off that, in almost final self-assertion, what you really were or might have been stands by your side and bids you measure stature with itself. Your life has entered upon its wintry days, but sunlight is sunshine even in December and in youth.”
The old lawyer, almost shuddering, stepped back with repelling gesture. ”

“ Nevertheless, the old lawyer was more than puzzled—more than puzzled, although he, of all men in the great, wideawake city, would in popular opinion have been thought perhaps the very last to be thus at fault. If millstones were to be worn as monocles—if there was any seeing what the future might bring forth—the chances of a project, the risks of rise or fall in a stock, the hazards of a corner in a staple, the prospects of a party or of a partisan, Jacob Maskelyne would be regarded as the man of men for the work. ”

“ There is certainly a mistake somewhere, however, and under the circumstances it is likely to be a particularly awkward one. I would walk a good mile and a half to avoid a tête-à-tête with Esther Van Dyke. Because I have been fool enough after four years to remember the color of her eyes, I don’t care to have her know it and see it. I would leave now, like the historic Arab, if I hadn’t been such an ass as to give my card to the servant, and Esther has seen it by this time. I would rather face the music than give her the pleasure of laughing at me for running away. ”

“ As he lit his cigar and sat near an open window, feeling the cool southern breeze, he reflected that it was not improbable that in East Village the only landlord known to them was the keeper of a common tavern. It amused him to think of their primitive, quaint ignorance of city ways. He pictured the small life of East Village, Vt., the narrow social horizon, the strange interest in politics, the religious intolerance, the “strong” views on the temperance question which obtained there, and which leaked out from Miss Perkins as the days went on into August. ”

“ One April day, as she sat in her usual place, with knitting cast aside and eyes fixed on the blue sky mottled with round clouds, a knock at the door announced the entrance of her landlady. Mrs. Manstey did not care for her landlady, but she submitted to her visits with ladylike resignation. To-day, however, it seemed harder than usual to turn from the blue sky and the blossoming magnolia to Mrs. Sampson’s unsuggestive face, and Mrs. Manstey was conscious of a distinct effort as she did so. ”

“ He wondered that nice people did not use the Park more—as they did Hyde Park in London. As the days went on he filled his house with flowers, turned the second floor into an immense studio for Elvira, sat about and watched her, criticised, encouraged her. He forgot Newport, forgot his polo. He had strangely ceased to be bored. He was happy in New York in midsummer! Dick Trellis told his polo friends at Newport that Archibald was probably undergoing private treatment for softening of the brain, which theory, in fact, they deemed sufficiently complimentary. ”

“ He who has so won, so lost, stands alone or he would not so win. Choose rather the close companionship of worldly defeat, if it must be, and I say to you in the rapture of your youth, clay plastic to the moment’s touch, hold to yourself, and believe that no fame, no power, no wealth, can compensate for a contentious life, an empty heart, a desolate old age. ”

“ The blue sky with its round clouds shed a brightness over everything; the ailanthus had put on a 199tinge of yellow-green, the hyacinths were budding, the magnolia flowers looked more than ever like rosettes carved in alabaster. Soon the wistaria would bloom, then the horse-chestnut; but not for her. Between her eyes and them a barrier of brick and mortar would swiftly rise; presently even the spire would disappear, and all her radiant world be blotted out. Mrs. Manstey sent away untouched the dinner-tray brought to her that evening. ”

“ Hunnewell had found his yachting friends, and they had had a very good dinner. They were all very talkative—Somers, Billy Nahant, and Jack Chadwick. They were in flannel suits and yachting caps, and each was bronzed and sunburned to a fine copper hue.
“What is the name of the people who have taken your house?” asked Hunnewell, bluntly, after he had introduced Archibald to his friends.
“Miss Perkins and her niece, Miss Elvira Price,” replied Archibald, coldly.
Instantly Billy Nahant pricked up his ears. “Why,” he said, “isn’t she an actress? Didn’t she play in Boston last winter?” ”

“ Gradually almost new instincts came, desire for delight sank into appetite for gain, hope for the joy of higher existence was lost in the ambition for mere advancement. I wrought out in myself that fearful piece of handiwork whose every effort is but to grasp the worthless handful man can only wrest from the mere world. ”

“ I look forward to a visit to East Village as a complete change and rest. When I think of the white, dead walls of our meetinghouse, I am glad; when I think of the lack of color in everybody up there, it makes me glad; when I think of the plainness 152of everything, the simpleness, the truth of everything, I’m glad to go back. But don’t you—don’t come up to Vermont, Mr. Archibald. ”

“ Tell men that in some Indian sea, fathoms deep, lie hid forever Spanish galleons in which doubloons and moidores, as when honey more than fills the comb, almost drip from their sacks, and you will see in their sudden thoughtfulness how quickly they appreciate such loss; tell them, if you can, what, through poverty, erring endeavor, uncongenial occupation, the world with each year loses in intellectual riches, and they will stand heedless. ”

“ When they arrived, at 4 P.M., they sat a few moments in the reception-room, while the chalk-faced, alert maid announced them to Archibald in the room above. Miss Perkins folded her faded, gloved hands in her lap and sat up on the sofa stiffly. They had looked at ever so many houses, and they had come back to No. 41 with instinctive preference.
“I don’t think one room would be so very expensive,” said Miss Perkins. “He could put up two beds easily in that north room, and the room we saw on Thirty-fourth Street was only twelve dollars—what do you think, Elvira?” ”

“ Miss Perkins gave a little quinzied laugh of satisfaction. She was beginning to like Archibald very much.
“It would startle Elvira; but she’d be pleased,” ventured the thin old maid. “She’d be pleased—in spite of everything!”
A few days later Archibald, after half a day’s journey, found himself in Vermont. As the train drew near East Village the mountains grew higher and the scenery wilder. He could see the great August moon roll itself above the high crest of the mountains to the west. ”

“ He looked these things over occasionally, as a sort of awful example of himself to himself; though he had gone so far as to borrow some of their imagery, not without a certain shame, to adorn his light verse. His card-house had fallen, but some of 64the colored pasteboard was pretty enough to be used again. Curiously, he found that he could cut pasteboard into more ingenious shapes than ever since his brief experience in piling it; fancy served him better after imagination left him; his triolets were admirably turned, and his luck with the magazines began. ”

“ Ephraim was.
“Sir,” he said, after greeting Archibald, and looking with a grin of pity upon his engraved card—a grin directed chiefly to the “Mr.” before Archibald’s name—“you are Elvira’s landlord down to New York—tell me, how is your city and State going, do you think?”
Archibald felt taken aback. Politics were something of which he knew nothing. He was but barely aware that it was a presidential year. In the city he kept severely out of politics, as hardly the employment of gentlemen. ”

“ We went to at least six boarding-houses until we saw your sign—we saw the landladies. Really, Mr. Archibald, you have no idea how vulgar and unartistic most of the houses were. There was always a disagreeable odor, as if somebody was frying something. If I do succeed, as I wish, and make friends, and get to be known, and all, you may be certain that I shan’t forget you. I may organize an Art class, and take the whole house myself! ”

“ Another generation may find discreet recesses at every landing. When people are really thoughtful there will be a temporary addition where people can go up and down. Oh, if it was an evening party I could not blame Harold for staying away. Or if it was private theatricals—the stage is itself one grand opportunity! 13Or a picnic—what innumerable openings for raking up the dry leaves of a dead past on a picnic! But an afternoon tea! Nothing stronger or dryer than tea-leaves to be had. Harold need not be in the least afraid. Besides, it would have been really unfriendly not to send him a card. ”