Mary S. Watts

“ But I knew they were taking poor Caroline Gwynne to "the place where they put mad people," that Sam had promised her so long ago. We wondered under our breaths whether it was Sam who had ordered it; whether the two boys had agreed or quarrelled; and what the other Gwynnes had said or done. The unspeakable isolation of insanity that converts a human being into a kind of dreadful chattel hung about Caroline; we did not dare to ask a question. Doctor Vardaman knew all about it, but—"I'm afraid to say anything to John," whispered Miss Clara. "He wouldn't tell anyhow, you know. Doctors never do. ”

“ Yes, Pallinder was a scamp; but Doctor Vardaman found, with a wretched surprise, that he had had no real comprehension of what the word meant—the thing it denoted. This was its meaning, this shabby trickery, this cheap deceit; the discovery came upon him like a blow. There is an extraordinary bitterness to any generous mind in beholding the uncovered shame of a friend; we hate to see the feet of clay; the pain is two-edged and strikes us either way with the sense of his unworthiness, of our own folly. The doctor had liked Pallinder ”

“ Too much of his life had been passed in the grimly fantastic environment of Gwynne family traditions for him to be completely emancipated at twenty-four.
"I want to do the right thing as much as anybody," said Gwynne; he scowled into the fire, chewing the end of his cigar. "Only it's not always easy to say what is the right thing. In real life right and wrong aren't laid down in black and white the way they are in those Tommy-and-Harry books we used to have when we were children; they sort of shade off into each other. You've got to—to make compromises. ”

“ I have seen her turn her eyes on the coloured butler when commanding a fresh relay of waffles with an expression to draw from him rubies, let alone waffles! Her liking for the doctor was perhaps as sincere a sentiment as she could harbour; who could forbear a fondness for that genial, tolerant, grey-headed satirist? In him were to be found all the strangely dissonant yet most manly qualities of his generation. In the early eighties there was still extant a tribe of hearty old gentlemen who wore black silk stocks, swore freely, and knew Henry Clay. ”

“ Archie Lewis had told us that Templeton, whom he saw every day in his father's office, had told him he had made the lease at a hundred and seventy-five a month; we did not think that a very low rent, we who lived contentedly enough in houses at one-fifth that amount, like by far the greater number of our friends. But the Pallinders plainly did not measure by our standards. Mazie had a fresh dress for every party; she wore almost as much jewelry as her mother, and when Mrs. Pallinder came out in all her diamonds, she was the most resplendent spectacle our society ever witnessed. ”

“ Colonel Pallinder threw back his head in hearty amusement. "Oh, Lord, that wasn't a client, Doctor, that old creature—what was her name now, MacGonigal, MacGilligan, MacSomething? No, I was trying to get rid of her as gently as might be without hurting her feelings. For after all people like that have feelings, you know; they are worthy of some consideration; hang it, a gentleman has only one kind of manners. I'm glad she came in while my clerks were all out, and saw me instead of any of them—you know what Jack-in-office is. ”

“ It occurred to him, with a fine irony, that here was probably one of Gwynne's cases where there was some right on both sides. The main thing at the moment, he realised, was to get Steven quieted.
"I'm sorry, but I—really I can't advise you, Steven," he said in his most moderate voice. "Have you talked to Mr. Templeton? He's your real agent, you know; he does the collecting, doesn't he? I'm sure if he and Gwynne both think——"
"Templeton! He's a—a creature of Gwynne's!" cried Steven angrily. "He's no better than a—a mercenary—a—a hired bravo!" ”

“ Among the forgotten fashions of the years from eighteen-eighty to eighty-five was that of giving our parties, evening or afternoon, for young people or old, of whatever kind, in short, in our own homes; the easy hospitality of clubs or fashionable hotels was not yet known. Houses with double-parlours and a dining-room back were considered ideal for any sort of entertainment; and, of course, such an architectural triumph as the old Gwynne house with that splendid ballroom on the third floor, was hors concours. ”

“ Say, Doc., it's a good ways to Broadway, ain't it?" said he, and waved a farewell. "So long! Many thanks! See you later!" He flashed forth from the house, his retainer at his heels. The doctor saw their tumultuous passage down the walk, saw them scramble, clamber, struggle into the waiting hack, saw it hurl upon its way with vociferations—and silence fell like a blow. There stood Doctor Vardaman and the policeman staring at each other in the empty porch.
"That fellow can hump, can't he?" said Clancy admiringly. "You just gotta where he comes from. Tell you, New York's th' place!" ”

“ Who so wise as our young people? Nobody would be at the pains to banish them from the room. They would not laugh at or with grandpa; they would only wonder a little and pity him. They are all gone, all these humane old lads with their whisky-punches, their dreadful old fly-blown anecdotes, their extraordinary, innocent coarseness of mind. The type has vanished from among us, extinct like the dinosaur, dead as Desdemona! It is hard to figure them pacing beneath the cloudy porticos of that rather shoddy gilt Heaven in which they stoutly believed ”

“ Lewis," Miss Mollie took courage to say falteringly.
"Not so bad as being in debt to somebody yourself, though," said Archie genially. This well-intended levity was a serious mistake; they shrank—they withered before the dreadful suggestion.
"We—we aren't that, Mr. Lewis," cried both old maids in scared chorus. "It's not we that are in debt—it's somebody that owes us——"
"That owes the GWYNNE ESTATE," said Steven ponderously. ”

“ Many warm-hearted people felt a great sympathy for Doctor Vardaman in his isolation and solitude after Miss Clara's death; I suspect that had the doctor been an old maid instead of an old bachelor, he would not have received so much attention. There is something in the spectacle of an elderly unattached male being, no matter how independent he may be, or how capable of taking care of himself, that at once engages the solicitude of all his friends, men and women alike. ”

“ The only thing about which they were in entire concord was the glory past, present, and to come of their name; they saw desecration in laying hands upon the torn and mildewed wall-paper, the blistered varnish, the leaking roofs of Uncle Samuel's shrine. It would have taken twelve or fifteen hundred dollars to put the place in order, at the least; and indeed as time went on, it promised to take more. The viewless forces of destruction invade an empty house, and lay it waste like a devastating army. "If they would just let me shingle the roof anyhow," said Templeton in despair. ”

“ We are none of us saints, as the doctor himself said; we dislike especially the pose of holier-than-thou. Jones and Smith may not be model citizens, but let us give them the benefit of the doubt and continue to accept their dinner-invitations. Doctor Vardaman, an upright man who would as soon have taken a horse-whip to a servant as cheat him out of a penny, found himself averse to believe what was under his eyes every day, and obscurely whispered here and there by people in other ranks of life than Huddesley's. What if the Pallinders were besieged by duns, and their servants unpaid? ”

“ He is not like his father, neither so delicate in body, nor so gentle and winning as I remember the elder Gwynne—but, in truth, I do not know if I ever found the way to his heart, with all my diplomacy; the unconquerable barrier of age divided us; childhood looks with so solidly-rooted a suspicion on our efforts to approach it; it guards its quaint jungles, its enchanted gardens with so jealous a care that we may well despair of ever touching hands. ”

“ Teddy was very good-natured; he sang, he winked, he joked, he told stories, he lavished endearments on his "frenge." Even in his worry, the doctor found time for the reflection that wine in, truth out is the most solid of maxims; liquor puts nothing into a man's nature that was not there already, it can but reveal him naked; and if he will be a brute in his cups, it is odds but you shall find him a brute at heart out of them. ”

“ Most of the young people she asked caught eagerly at the invitation; you may laugh, or perhaps jeer, but house parties were not then the affair of everyday occurrence they have since become—not in our corner of the world, certainly. We all felt, delightedly, as if we were living in an English novel—one of "The Duchess'" for choice.
"You know we're going to have private theatricals in the ballroom," Mazie told everybody. "The girls and men in the house will all be in it, so we can have rehearsals any time. And papa is going to have a stage built with footlights and a curtain. ”

“ That's like a woman!" said Steven in strong disgust. "A little! Don't you pay any attention to 'em, Gwynne!"
"Do you need money, Cousin Eleanor?" asked Gwynne gently.
Mollie began to cry hysterically again.
"We don't want you to advance any, Gwynne," said old Eleanor, trembling and turning very pale. "You've done that before, and—and now you will need all your money for poor Sam. And—and besides, Gwynne, I—I—we're not fit to be trusted with money—I—I was going to tell you, only it's so hard—but we're—we're—we've been very wicked women!" She burst out sobbing. ”

“ He only wore them when the event was of enough importance to justify such a display—a queer sentimental tribute to certain queer sentimental recollections. They had been given him who knows how long ago, and by whom? So do we all in secret offer some absurd and pathetic oblation before the shrines of the past. I dare say when the doctor opened the top drawer of his high-shouldered mahogany bureau and took his Labrador-stone buttons out of their dingy little green morocco case, for one moment the breath of a vanished spring saluted him, and the roses still bloomed by the calm Bendemeer. ”

“ I remember about Huddesley because you had just got rid of that awful man that had d.t's and came up here with an axe wanting to kill somebody."
"Huddesley's arrival raised the tone of our neighbourhood appreciably," said the doctor, with a laugh. Doctor Vardaman's men were a byword in the community. Men of every colour and nationality had drifted through his hands; it was a long procession of lazy, drunken, thieving rascality, or honesty so abysmally stupid and incompetent as to be equally worthless. ”

“ A man like you can take hold of anything, no matter whether he's had any previous experience or not—he can take up anything and do well at it. Now, look at you! I suppose you've hardly ever been in a broker's office before in your life, and you come in here, and with scarcely a word of explanation from me, grasp the whole subject at once! I tell you what, I'd like you to meet Sheister, and just hear him talk Phosphate once. He's a self-made man, Doctor, no gentleman-of-the-old-school such as you, but for that very reason I think you'd find it an interesting experience. ”

“ But Miss Clara Vardaman, the doctor's old-maid sister, who kept house for him, overhearing us, frowned impartially on us both and shook her head. "Gwynne, child——" she began severely; then checked herself, and turning upon me with a severity even greater, in that it was, as I felt, unjust: "You shouldn't ask so many questions," she said. "Little girls should be seen and not heard." This was perplexing behaviour in Miss Clara, who, in general, was the gentlest and tenderest of souls. She cried when the doctor chloroformed their old cat ”

“ Mrs. Botlisch had providentially gone to bed with a bilious attack; she had entertained us with a particular account of her symptoms, remedies, and their results at luncheon. So Mrs. Pallinder received, looking rather haggard, I thought, in spite of her rouge; perhaps it was because she was not wearing those famous diamonds, and one missed their generous brilliance. Jewels were eminently suited to Mrs. Pallinder; her fair hair and clear stone-grey eyes seemed to gain a needed lustre from her necklaces and pendants, and she was the only woman I ever saw who could wear an earring gracefully. ”

“ Doctor Vardaman was strangely touched to observe him; it seemed as if the battle were too one-sided, whatever its cause; as if the strong and sane young man had too much the advantage. "I'm tired of hearing that, Gwynne. You don't know how to get the money, or you don't try. 'If you want your business done, go and do it yourself; if not, send!' That's a pretty good motto, seems to me. I'm going to attend to this now, myself——"
"Cousin Steven, you can't possibly do anything—you'll only make matters worse. ”

“ Young men in regimentals, army or navy; young men in fancy dress, striking attitudes with a sword, or making a leg in silk tights; young men with the painfully close-fitting trousers and upright brush of hair fashionable in the eighties—it was a noble array, that gallery of Mazie's, particularly when she began to enrich it with certain more familiar likenesses. There you might see "J. B." Taylor—everybody called him "J. B."—with the cap and gown he had worn at his last Commencement; Teddy Johns laughing and showing all his teeth—Teddy had fine teeth and knew it ”

“ That part of town is now given over to warehouses and junk-shops. The dirty, draughty hallways of the Turner Building are very empty and melancholy. They used to be handsomely carpeted with cocoa-matting, and in the odd corners one came upon little pyramids of tin spittoons piled up handily by the janitor, either just washed or in need of washing. The place was as busy as an anthill that morning when Doctor Vardaman paced along the cocoa-paths on his way out. ”

“ The thing happens every day, and should be no great tragedy; few Americans are born and live and die in the same house, and a building of any sort rarely remains the property of one family for more than a generation. But the Gwynnes, one and all, mourned aloud and refused to be comforted. Governor Gwynne's house, Uncle Samuel's house, the house that great man planned and built, whose hospitalities had been enjoyed by the very best and highest in the land! ”

“ Mazie, as soon as her acquaintance became more extended and intimate, entertained us with a picturesque and I have no doubt entirely accurate account of this and other Gwynne visits. If they amused her she was by far too sharp to let it be seen; not thus do people attain popularity. Mazie knew when, and in what company, and of what sort of things to make fun; no gift can be more valuable to the social aspirant. ”

“ In twenty-five years, how will your sons and daughters deride you; with what longing, with what amused tenderness, will you not look back to these kind, simple days!
Doctor Vardaman, then, with Destiny stalking viewless at his side, swung off the checker-board car, and began the homeward walk. Some way ahead of him he saw a figure diminished by distance, plodding through his yard toward the kitchen door; and as he drew nearer, two more figures emerged from his front porch. ”