Galvin House

“ The study of JOHN BUILDER in the provincial town of Breconridge. A panelled room wherein nothing is ever studied, except perhaps BUILDER'S face in the mirror over the fireplace. It is, however, comfortable, and has large leather chairs and a writing table in the centre, on which is a typewriter, and many papers. At the back is a large window with French outside shutters, overlooking the street, for the house is an old one, built in an age when the homes of doctors, lawyers and so forth were part of a provincial town, and not yet suburban. ”

“ The cathedral stood on the edge of the old part of the town, and Galva was struck by the difference in her surroundings. Apart from a group of green-veiled American tourists, who, guide-book in hand, were gazing up at the famous rose window over the central porch, she seemed alone with the natives of San Pietro. She looked in astonishment at the poor houses, with their broken roofs, and their windows stuffed with rags and brown paper, at the mean little shops and at the dirtiness and poverty-stricken look of the people. ”

“ Revolutions on the horizon; Fleur in Spain; no comfort in Annette; no Timothy's on the Bayswater Road. In the irritable desolation of his soul he went into the Goupenor Gallery. That chap Jolyon's watercolours were on view there. He went in to look down his nose at them—it might give him some faint satisfaction. The news had trickled through from June to Val's wife, from her to Val, from Val to his mother, from her to Soames, that the house—the fatal house at Robin Hill—was for sale, and Irene going to join her boy out in British Columbia, or some such place. ”

“ What a wintry garden! How different from that languorous, warm, moonlit night when Daphne Wing had come dancing out of the shadow of the dark trees. How bare and sharp the boughs against the grey, darkening sky—and not a song of any bird, not a flower! She glanced back at the house. Cold and white it looked, but there were lights in her room and in the nursery, and someone just drawing the curtains. Now that the leaves were off, one could see the other houses of the road, each different in shape and colour, as is the habit of London houses. It was cold, frosty; Gyp hurried down the path. ”

“ The boyish face flushed a little and his grace bent over Galva's letter.
"A little," he said. "An idle man of the world like myself knows most of the pleasure spots on this old earth of ours—I had my car over here last year and I did a lot of work on these inland roads."
They were sitting on the balcony outside the drawing-room windows of Venta Villa. The duke had, immediately upon his arrival in the early hours of the morning, hurried Edward away from the lighted dock-side up to the house, keeping ever on the darker side of the way. ”

“ The tale of how Timothy Galvin, a ragged urchin living in a mud cabin and remarkable only for general dishonesty and shrewd selfishness, is given a start in life by an ill-gotten purse, and rises by his mother wit to wealth. ”

“ Daily are more and more of our crosses broken, of our tombs effaced, of our abbeys shattered, of our castles torn down, of our cairns sacrilegiously pierced, of our urns broken up, and of our coins melted down. All classes, creeds and politics are to blame in this. The peasant lugs down a pillar for his sty, the farmer for his gate, the priest for his chapel, the minister for his glebe. A mill-stream runs through Lord Moore's Castle, [32] and the Commissioners of Galway have shaken and threatened to remove the Warden's house—that fine stone chronicle of Galway heroism. ”

“ Soames regained his composure. Knowing that Bosinney had no capital, he regarded this as a wild suggestion. He saw, too, that he would be kept indefinitely out of this house on which he had set his heart, and just at the crucial point when the architect's personal care made all the difference. In the meantime there was Irene to be thought of! She had been very queer lately. He really believed it was only because she had taken to Bosinney that she tolerated the idea of the house at all. It would not do to make an open breach with her.
"You needn't get into a rage," he said. ”

“ It was so purely a matter which Bosinney could remedy if he liked; there must be a dozen ways in which he could cheapen the production of a house without spoiling the effect.
He awaited, therefore, his opportunity till Irene was handing the architect his first cup of tea. A chink of sunshine through the lace of the blinds warmed her cheek, shone in the gold of her hair, and in her soft eyes. Possibly the same gleam deepened Bosinney's colour, gave the rather startled look to his face.
Soames hated sunshine, and he at once got up, to draw the blind. ”

“ Old Jolyon frowned.
"It's not that I want it," said James hastily; "it wouldn't suit my purpose at that price. Soames knows the house, well—he'll tell you it's too dear—his opinion's worth having."
"I don't," said old Jolyon, "care a fig for his opinion."
"Well," murmured James, "you will have your own way—it's a good opinion. Good-bye! We're going to drive down to Hurlingham. They tell me June's going to Wales. You'll be lonely tomorrow. What'll you do with yourself? You'd better come and dine with us!" ”

“ CHAPTER XI AFTER listening to Andrew Galpin’s verbal report upon Senator Martin Embree’s painful and convincing characterization of The Guardian’s editorial page as for sale to the highest bidder, backed up by discouraging details regarding himself, A. M. Wymett retired to his house to commune with a bottle and a time-table of the trains to Canada. As a man’s house is his castle and as castles are not connected with a troublous and uncharitable world by wires of communication, he further fortified his position by cutting off the telephone. ”

“ With a full heart, I remounted, and turning my horse, pressed on in the rain. We said not a word till a friendly opening pointed the way to a planter's dwelling. Then calling to me to follow, the Colonel dashed up the by-path which led to the mansion, and in five minutes we were warming our chilled limbs before the cheerful fire that roared and crackled on its broad hearth-stone. [Pg 221]
CHAPTER XII. THE YANKEE-SCHOOL-MISTRESS.
The house was a large, old-fashioned frame building, square as a packing-box, and surrounded, as all country dwellings at the South are, by a broad, open piazza. ”

“ The house must be in good style, something that would always be certain to command a price, something unique, like that last house of Parkes, which had a tower; but Parkes had himself said that his architect was ruinous. You never knew where you were with those fellows; if they had a name they ran you into no end of expense and were conceited into the bargain.
And a common architect was no good—the memory of Parkes' tower precluded the employment of a common architect:
This was why he had thought of Bosinney. ”

“ Galvin was saying, “and if I do make the remark — and of course I know I have no right — but I cannot, I cannot see injustice done — the way you have treated him is a crying shame — we all have our faults —but he was working for his bread and butter — indeed, it is few enough of us ever sees the butter — but that’s always the way — the rich against the poor — and if I do say it — ”
“No, don’t say it, Galvin,” I interrupted. “I have no doubt but what you are quite right. You needn’t wait. I will give Darius the answer myself.” ”

“ The names Galva and Baxendale would suggest nothing. The girl had dropped her real name of Miranda for so long; she could do so for a few months more.
The cottage in Cornwall need not be given up; some woman in the village could easily be found to look after it during their absence. In the mean time, Mr. Sydney (as Edward must now be called) must bring his traps from Penzance and stay with them at Morna Cottage.
*****
It was late afternoon, and the two women were taking a last walk on the carn above the house in which they had lived so long. ”

“ If the days hung heavily upon the heart of the captive in the castle on the Alcador road, they hung no less heavily upon the man who waited in Venta Villa.
The culpability of one's actions is too often determined by the worldly success, or otherwise, which attends them, and Edward Povey was experiencing some very bitter moments. Had Galva been firmly and happily seated in the great throne-room up there in the Palace, he would have carried his head high and have looked upon himself as a hero, and his usurpation of the character of Sydney Kyser as a meritorious act. ”

“ He put on the 'shooter,' a higher collar, a pearl pin, and his neatest grey spats, to a somewhat blasphemous accompaniment. Looking at himself in the glass, he said, “Well, I'm damned if I'm going to show anything!” and went down. He found his grandfather's carriage at the door, and his mother in furs, with the appearance of one going to a Mansion House Assembly. They seated themselves side by side in the closed barouche, and all the way to the Courts of Justice Val made but one allusion to the business in hand. ”

“ It is the first aid that counts. Our people have been doubly generous, because they have not stood upon the order of their giving.”
129 CHAPTER VII.
Not a House in Galveston Escaped Damage—Young and Old, Rich and Poor, Hurried to a Watery Grave—Citizens with Guns Guarding the Living and the Dead. The all-absorbing story of the great flood is continued in the following pages, with new and thrilling incidents. Best informed residents of Galveston who have been over all portions of the city estimate that from 1200 to 1300 acres were swept clear of habitation. ”

“ Galindo often planned to live upon their own small fortune and the income derived from the living (a vicarage, of which the great tithes went to Sir Lawrence as lay impropriator) , so as to put-by the payments made by the baronet, for the benefit of Laurentia—our Miss Galindo. But I suppose they found it difficult to live economically in a large house, even though they had it rent free. They had to keep up with hereditary neighbours and friends, and could hardly help doing it in the hereditary manner. ”

“ We were on the highest point of ground in Galveston. That is all that saved us. For blocks and blocks, reaching into miles, not a house remains; not a building but is completely demolished—houses just torn board from board and piled up. I have climbed over wreckage forty feet high in the streets to get to places. ”

“ The house of his fathers was in a by-street in the center of the fashionable shopping district, and this dwelling, an old-fashioned double house of brown stone, was the only relic that remained to Phil of the former grandeur of the Gallatins. Great lawyers, however successful in safeguarding the interests of their clients, are notable failures in safeguarding the interests of their own. Philip Gallatin, the elder, had inherited a substantial fortune, but had added nothing to it. ”

“ Certainly $5,000,000 will be a moderate estimate. There is not a building but is damaged, not a house of those left standing but will have to be re-roofed, and few that will not need to be straightened on their foundations. If Galveston could get $10,000,000 it would be used judiciously to enable the people to become self-sustaining.
“It is true Galveston is represented as being one of the wealthiest cities of the country. But our rich people had everything here and are crippled. The people of moderate means, who had homes and worked on salaries are, with scarcely an exception, ruined. ”

“ There was not a building in Galveston which was not either entirely destroyed or damaged, and the people of the city lived in the valley of the shadow of death, helpless and hopeless, deprived of all hope and ambition—merely waiting for the appearance of the official death roll. ”

“ As Galva ascended the steps of the building between the rows of ragged and crippled beggars who daily congregated there to expose their miseries to the charitably inclined, a conviction came to her that all this hopeless poverty was the real result of the rule of the dissipated old monarch who lay dying up at the Palace. The new town of Corbo with its palatial hotels and wide boulevards was a whited sepulchre, behind which the sores of the true San Pietro festered in hiding. ”

“ Some sacred inspiration perhaps had come to him.
'Yes,' he thought, 'I must have room to hang my pictures.
That evening, on his return from the City, he called at Bosinney's office. He found the architect in his shirt-sleeves, smoking a pipe, and ruling off lines on a plan. Soames refused a drink, and came at once to the point.
"If you've nothing better to do on Sunday, come down with me to Robin Hill, and give me your opinion on a building site."
"Are you going to build?"
"Perhaps," said Soames; "but don't speak of it. I just want your opinion."
"Quite so," said the architect. ”

“ Old Jolyon, depositing his hat on the chair in the narrow hall, where that hat of Bosinney's had so long ago been mistaken for a cat, passed his thin hand grimly over his face with its great drooping white moustaches, as though to remove all traces of expression, and made his way upstairs.
He found the front drawing-room full. It was full enough at the best of times—without visitors—without any one in it—for Timothy and his sisters, following the tradition of their generation, considered that a room was not quite 'nice' unless it was 'properly' furnished. ”

“ The maid went downstairs, leaving him still in his fur coat, idly turning over the visiting cards in the porcelain bowl that stood on the carved oak rug chest in the hall.
Who the devil were all these people? He seemed to have forgotten all familiar things. The words 'no message—a trunk, and a bag,' played a hide-and-seek in his brain. It was incredible that she had left no message, and, still in his fur coat, he ran upstairs two steps at a time, as a young married man when he comes home will run up to his wife's room. ”