UNIX. > CALIF. LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES
The
INHERITANCE
"'And you thought I saw him kiss you, too, I suppose?'"
[Page 326]
The
INHERITANCE
BY
JOSEPHINE DASKAM BACON
AUTHOR OF
"THE MADNESS OF PHILIP," "MARGARITA'S SOUL,"
"THE MEMOIRS OF A BABY," ETC.
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK AND LONDON
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1912
COPYHJGHT, IQI2, BY
JOSEPHINE DASKAM BACON
Published August, 191 a
Printed in the United States of America
TO B. J. D.
IN MEMORIAM
The sunbeams flash across the pool,
The August trees lean toward the blue,
Below the bridge glide minnows cool,
The urchins hail you, free from school
But where (with rod and reel) are you?
Down the still air the red leaves sail,
The good sun bakes the orchards through,
The katydid begins her wail,
For you the old wood spreads her trail
But where (with dog and gun) are you?
The fire roars up the chimney wall,
The plates are filled, the songs are new,
The boys and girls, your subjects all,
For you still wait, for you still call
But where (with pipe and glass) are you?
J. D. B.
July, 1912.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. IN WHICH I INTRODUCE MYSELF THE
HERO i
II. IN WHICH I Go A-CHARING, FOR THE FIRST
AND LAST TIME 13
III. IN WHICH I DISCOVER AMERICA ... 19
IV. IN WHICH I LOOK ABOUT ME ... 27
V. IN WHICH I INTRODUCE THE READER TO
CHRISSY 38
VI. IN WHICH I TAKE You TO A CHRISTENING
PARTY 55
VII. IN WHICH I BEGIN MY EDUCATION . . 65
VIII. IN WHICH You MAY RENEW YOUR AC-
QUAINTANCE WITH CHRISSY . . - . 82
IX. IN WHICH I GROW UP 98
X. IN WHICH WE BEGIN TO LEAVE THE NEST . 123
XI. IN WHICH I Go TO FIND MY INHERITANCE 134
XII. IN WHICH I SEE LIFE 144
XIII. IN WHICH I GLIMPSE MY INHERITANCE . 170
XIV. IN WHICH I TASTE OF STOLEN WATERS . 188
XV. IN WHICH I RENOUNCE MY INHERITANCE . 206
XVI. IN WHICH WE SETTLE DOWN . . . 227
XVII. IN WHICH BERT PAYS His SCORE . . . 236
vii
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
XVIII. IN WHICH WE RIDE TO MEET TROUBLE . 244
XIX. IN WHICH THE DOCTOR GIVES UP DRIVING
FOR SOME TIME 263
XX. IN WHICH I BREAK THE NEWS TO CHRIS-
SY 267
XXL IN WHICH WE MANAGE, SOMEHOW . . 277
XXIL IN WHICH THINGS TAKE A TURN . . 294
XXIII. IN WHICH You MAY OR MAY NOT BELIEVE. 301
XXIV. IN WHICH WE TAKE OUR EASE . . .310
XXV. IN WHICH MY EYES ARE OPENED . . 323
XXVI. IN WHICH WE Go HONEY-MOONING . . 332
XXVII. IN WHICH I COME INTO MY INHERITANCE . 338
Vlll
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
" 'And you thought I saw him kiss you, too, I suppose ? ' "
Frontispiece
" ' Will he cure her out of the black bottle, Nana ? ' " . . . 46
"'I hope you feel that we've done our best by you.'" . . 140
"The wagon swayed and lurched." 256
IX
THE INHERITANCE
A ROMANCE OF THE FAMILY
CHAPTER I
In Which I Introduce Myself the Hero
THE first words that I remember in my life were
French. I can dimly see a great blue blur, which
I now know to have been the ocean ; there was
a comforting, sun-warmed substance under me, yielding,
yet hard, slipping through the fingers, yet susceptible of
manipulation, which I believe now to have been sand;
there were intermittent articles, self-propelled, crossing
my field of vision, some dark and bifurcated, some float-
ing and many-coloured, which I infer to have been the
garments of perambulating adults with heads altogether
out of my view. One of these coloured, billowy articles
stopped and did not go sailing by my tiny outlook, but
presently lowered itself till a face neared my level. Then
I was aware of a sweet odour like flowers but there were
no flowers about and a row of flashing white teeth:
there were shiny eyes somewhere above the teeth, but I
don't remember any cheeks or nose or hair. (Subsequent
studies in anthropology, however, have convinced me that
there must have been all three of these usual features of
humanity.)
THE INHERITANCE
"Quel ange d' enfant!" cried a voice, and I must have
understood, for I distinctly recall my reply.
"Je 'sommes pas ange! J 'som' bebe!" I said with dig-
nity, and the teeth and eyes flashed, again and again the
high laugh sounded, with other laughs, deeper, coming
from far above. Even so, I suppose, Jove's thunderous
peals awed and irritated the helpless underlings in ancient
days.
I made a brief visit to Normandy about twenty years
later (ah, what a visit!), and something in the air, the
shape of the white beaches, the glint of the sun on the
sails, struck home to me so quaintly, so conformably, that
I have never had a doubt since that my first consciousness
awakened there, though Nana could not or would not con-
firm this intuition, reiterating that she had no idea what
part of the French country we were in, but that the tea
was nasty enough, no matter where it was! We must
have been there for some months, for when I first heard
French spoken again, nine or ten years afterward, it had
a perfectly familiar ring, though I couldn't, of course,
understand it. But I had the feeling that I should under-
stand, presently, if it went on long enough, and Bert told
me later that my lips moved unconsciously and that I
tried to follow the silly gabble and looked like a donkey.
I can see the brown, stained schoolroom now, the dusty
blackboards, the hacked forms, the enticing boughs wav-
ing out of window, and the shuffling, inattentive class.
One ray of sunlight struck the bald, nervous head of the
little French teacher and shone on the scanty greyish
locks carefully arranged over the ears. He was slightly
asthmatic, and when he wheezed chirpily :
"Maintenant, messieurs, nous commengons a parler
Francois, heinf" everybody laughed, promptly and loudly,
after the tactful, encouraging fashion of early boyhood.
2
I INTRODUCE MYSELF THE HERO
Everybody but me, that is. I stared and grew hot and
stared harder, and the poor little man, who had supposed
the derisive mirth of the others to be an enthusiastic and
spontaneous tribute to the beauty of his native tongue,
mistook my excited interest for contempt, and glaring
fiercely at me, reproved my bad manners and became in-
stantly possessed of a cordial dislike of me. In view of
such possibilities of error at the time of the erection of the
famous Tower of Babel, I can hardly wonder at the in-
cipience and persistence of the subsequent race-feuds;
for I, being on the whole a favourite with my teachers,
since I was quick, well mannered (compared with Ameri-
can boys) and apt at fitting together the bits of informa-
tion I had picked up from the reading of miscellaneous
fiction, was undoubtedly a little spoiled and accustomed
to finding my presence in the class-room appreciated, and
M. Merot's obvious dislike of me produced a not unnat-
ural enmity which required more than a school term to
smooth over.
But we straightened it all out, ultimately, and before
another year he had solemnly presented me with an auto-
graphed copy of his "Grammar and Conversation Book
for Beginners in the French Language with Compendious
Verb-forms Attached," and "Hommages de 1'auteur" in
a beautiful pointed hand on the title page. To this day
(if he is alive, which isn't likely, as he was frightfully
bilious and continually going into rages directly after his
meals) I haven't the remotest doubt that he regards me
as a cynical young savage, tamed and refined, in spite of
myself, by the ameliorating influences of his society.
But to return to my reminiscences : the boat is the next
thing I can be sure of, and a tremendous boat it seemed
to me. We must have had a rough passage, for I believe
children are not commonly afflicted with mat de mer, not
3
THE INHERITANCE
deeply so, at any rate. This must have been the opinion
of the fussy little Frenchman who told Nana as she sup-
ported me tenderly and urged me to "get it over and be
done with it," not to fdcher herself unnecessarily, since
"les enfants ne sont jamais malades, madame." At this
I stared sadly at him, and remarked succinctly :
"Mais-2-oui, monsieur, je le suis!" and promptly vin-
dicated my judgment, to his disgust and horror for I
was much too near him. I have never been a good sailor.
The next thing that I remember may lead to a valu-
able psychological theory as to when the influences of cos-
tume begin to make themselves felt upon the infantile
character, for it is my gradual but unmistakable descent,
sartorially speaking, that has most deeply impressed me.
I distinctly recall a blue velvet suit with wide white cuffs
and a black cap like a Cossack's, with a sort of abbre-
viated plume stuck into it, also shiny boots with tassels
on the top. I had plenty of pocket-handkerchiefs, too, for
I remember that I was accustomed to blow my nose, fre-
quently, and with somewhat of a flourish, moreover, for
it was a recent accomplishment, and I was very proud of
it. I had the neatest possible pinafores, too, for playing
about of mornings, with deep, useful pockets and a kind
of ornamentation upon the chest for which I had at that
period, naturally, no name, but by the effect of which I
must have been impressed, because, when I saw a pina-
fore like it on a burly peasant in a hunting print in the
office, years afterward, and asked Chrissy what such a
garment was called, and she told me it was a smock-
frock, I answered :
"That's what I wore when we lived in London."
"Yes, the English children wear them, but we don't in
the States," she instructed me, and I thought it was a
pity, for I admired them.
I INTRODUCE MYSELF THE HERO
"When I have children they shall wear them," I re-
marked, and she laughed at me.
"Boys don't say, 'when I have children/ " she said ;
"girls say that."
"But men do have children," I persisted; "the doctor
has children, four of them, hasn't he ?"
She looked puzzled, and her eyebrows touched and
made a straight dark line across her face.
"Y-yes," she said, "that's true. He has. I must think
about that."
She thought, and I waited respectfully for her, for I
revered her judgment greatly.
"And there isn't any mother there, only Aunt Addie,"
she added. "I don't believe there was, ever. But, all the
same, Hugh, I'm sure it's the mothers that have them
mostly."
She never changed much, bless her! I never met a
woman with her capacity for altering an opinion, once
formed on a practical basis, when new evidence, appar-
ently of value, entered the question. She included it, in
the whole case, like a man. I don't mean that she af-
fected thus to include it, out of policy, or to humour her
antagonist, but that she did include it. And I don't mean
that the evidence was always of the character just de-
scribed !
Well, well, I had got to London, I believe, London,
and our greatly increasing poverty there for, of course,
that is what the poor clothes must have meant. I was
growing rapidly, I suppose, for the last I remember of
the blue velvet suit, it was away above my knees, and I
blew my nose on anything handy, and the Cossack bonnet
I wore mostly around my neck by the strings, it was so
much too small. But Nana always made me carry it, at-
tached, at least, to my person. It was her emblem of gen-
5
THE INHERITANCE
tility, her symbol of my ideal in spite of my actual ap-
pearance.
"I'll not have you about bareheaded like that horrid
rough street lot," she told me. "Remember you're a gen-
tleman, deary, and above such as them. Don't pay no
heed to their naughty talk it's not for such as you.
You'll be riding through them in your carriage, some
day."
At which I bridled and looked haughty and agreed
with her though heaven knows it was no neighbourhood
to tempt the possessor of a carriage to excursions !
It was, in fact, an extremely dirty and disagreeable
neighbourhood, and whether it looked or smelled or
sounded most shocking would have been hard to say. We
had come into it (and down to it) rather hastily! We
were always growing a little dirtier and more disagree-
able. At one period we had boasted some geraniums in
the window and sat at a table with napkins, which Nana
pinned round my neck, herself, somewhat obtrusively,
with an eye on the slavey that waited on us.
"Please to tell the young person that brings in the tray
that I prefer to attend to the young gentleman myself,
Mrs. Fibbs," she told the keeper of the lodging house,
and Mrs. Fibbs said ingratiatingly:
"Yes, certainly, by all means, Mrs. False, and a hand-
some young gentleman, too, and a great credit to you,
that he is ! I will say, as I tell Fibbs frequent, his parents
should be forever grateful to you for the beautiful man-
ners you've kep' him to, and very wise, too, considering
he'll soon meet them again, I suppose?"
"I suppose so," said Nana smoothly, and Mrs. Fibbs
tossed her head disgustedly and left.
At that time Nana wore neat black, with white cuffs
and collar and a big cameo brooch, with a hunter pointing
6
I INTRODUCE MYSELF THE HERO
a gun (for some mysterious reason) toward a dog at his
feet, engraved on it. Her hands were quite soft and she
combed my hair twice a day, and we walked in a charm-
ing park where there was a pond, and I played with the
children in my velvet suit and she sat on a bench with
some small sewing and chatted with the other nurses. I
know she was much respected among them. I have heard
more than one ask for her opinion as to eruptions on the
back or repeated and inexplicable attacks of hiccough or
an incurable tendency to biting if annoyed or crossed in
any way.
Once as I was floating some sticks across the pond in
company with a charming little creature in a pink hood
edged with white fur, a very beautiful lady with a sad
face (children always notice sadness in a face) and a
black, black veil that hung down over her dress came and
sat down on the bench near Nana and, after a few mo-
ments, put a small black glove on her knee.
"I beg your pardon, nurse," she said in a sweet, cry-
ing sort of voice (as I called it in my mind), "but may I
ask you if you have had the care of that little fellow for
long?"
Nana jumped and stared at the lady, but collected her-
self and said rather coldly, I thought, for such a pretty
lady:
"Yes, madam, I've taken care of him from an infant."
"Ah . . . then you are probably much attached to
him, and would not care to consider a change?"
Nana looked much relieved and unbent distinctly, at
which I was pleased.
"Why, thank you, Ma'am, I'm afraid not," she said,
with a respectful pity for the black veil.
"I am anxious to find a nurse for my little boy I am
taking him abroad, perhaps to India . . . my plans
2 7
THE INHERITANCE
are unsettled," and she too looked at her veil and her
lovely eyes filled with tears.
"I'm sure, ma'am," Nana said kindly.
"I have been watching you with your little charge, and
I liked your manner so much. I took a great fancy
. . . a good nurse would be worth a great deal to me
a great deal."
"You're very kind, ma'am, but I'm quite suited. I
wouldn't think of leaving my present place," said Nana
decidedly, and the lady got up and gave Nana something
and moved off to where a little fellow of my own age in
black ribbons was playing with a footman in mourning
livery.
"Well, well, it's you for luck, Mrs. False, dear," said
Pink-hood's nurse discontentedly, "that was Lady
(I missed the name), and it'd mean a place for life, I'll
lay my new bonnet !"
"Indeed," Nana returned with composure; "I'm sorry
for the poor young widow, then."
"You must have a rare berth of your own," the other
grumbled, but respectfully.
"I'm satisfied with it, for one," said Nana, and, putting
away her sewing, called me to come home, as she always
did when anyone pressed her in the least.
Pink-hood's nurse would have been surprised had she
followed us to our unpretentious lodgings, but surprise
would have inadequately expressed her feelings, I am
sure, could she have watched the stages of our descent
from the napkin-geranium home, which gradually as-
sumed the proportions of a luxurious palace in my mem-
ory ; and by the time we had reached the dingy, smelling
court I remember best, because we stopped there longest,
she would have long since dismissed us from her genteel
consideration.
8
I INTRODUCE MYSELF THE HERO
By that time we were often hungry. It was long be-
fore I suffered, for Nana assured me she was not hungry
these days, not to say hungry, that is, and if I didn't eat
the victuals they'd go begging. I often wished they
would go begging, for they were not very palatable vic-
tuals, to tell the truth. In the beginning of the scarcity,
though bread and tea with an occasional egg were all
that Nana seemed to care for, there was always a chop
for my dinner with a baked potato, and nearly always an
apple for dessert. By and by the apple ceased to be forth-
coming, and after that the chop appeared at rare inter-
vals, and finally ceased, too, until second-day loaves and
skim-milk were all that could with any surety be counted
on, and my diet was practically the same as hers. It was
the same with our clothes. At first, though Nana's collar
and cuffs slipped away from her neat black dress and
her shoes grew shapeless and broken and her old mantle
got spoiled with the rain, I went brave in morning pina-
fore and afternoon velvet, and the plume in the Cossack
hat was curled magnificently over the tea-kettle; but
little by little these small niceties relaxed, the velvet
suit became frankly anachronistic, the pinafores wore
out, my shoes lacked not only tassels (at which I
complained), but soles and uppers (which didn't
trouble me so much) and before long I was as poorly
dressed as she.
What Nana did I don't know, but I suppose she must
have gone out charing, like most of the women in the
neighbourhood. She left early and got back at dark, and
I spent the day with Hannerellen, the minder.
"What's a minder?" I asked Nana disconsolately when
first she informed me of my fate.
"A girl that minds, o' course, deary, and Hannerel-
len's a good, kind girl trust me to see to that before I'd
9
THE INHERITANCE
put my own boy with her ; some o' them minders is awful
to the children," she assured me.
Hannerellen was kind. I suppose her name to have
been Hannah Ellen, but it is a supposition merely, and I
offer it as such. I was the only boy among her charges,
of whom there were five, and entered her peripatetic
school at the regular rate of sixpence a day. It was
high, but Hannerellen was worth it, and knew her worth.
Her terms included surveillance from six to six, Sun-
days excepted (Saturdays a half holiday for the parent
if wished, but nothing deducted) ; the administration of
lunch (provided by parent) and all required drinks of
water (provided by the City) ; noses wiped carefully and
any other personal attentions as required; street cross-
ings guaranteed and all addresses on a slip of paper in
the bosom of her frock, in case of accident. I was strong
and cautious, and in consideration of admitted assistance
at the crossings and such good manners that I was easy
to manage and not quarrelsome, having always obeyed
Nana implicitly and being utterly ignorant of the bad
words Hannerellen so deplored in her clientele, my rate
was reduced to fivepence, and I became a sort of lieu-
tenant to the party and always took my drink of water
last.
Hannerellen grew very fond of me and I of her. She
confided her ambitions to me (one of them was to be-
come a school teacher and the other to taste roast chicken
and currant jelly), and I told her about the napkin-and-
geranium palace, where I had tasted both, when the
velvet coat came to my ankles.
"My ! No" wonder you ain't like the others," she would
say, "you're a gentleman, Master Hugh, it's easy seen."
"Oh, yes, I'm a gentleman," I would answer simply.
"I'll be riding in my carriage some day."
10
I INTRODUCE MYSELF THE HERO
I must have been about five. . . .
Then came the day when Nana decided to take me
with her, charing, and save the fivepence.
"I could go a bit say, part way in a bus, then, my
dear," she told Hannerellen, "and get him a mug o' milk
with the rest and leave him in the airey most always the
cook'd keep an eye on him, and he's sensible and quiet.
And we could walk home. But I get sort o' faint like,
walkin' so much, to tell you the truth. I'm not used to
it."
"I know that, Mrs. False. But I fair hate to think o'
losin' Hughie. Maybe I could take 'im for thruppence,
and he does a good bit o' mindin', anyways."
I think I determined then never to forget Hannerellen.
"Master Hugh," said Nana with a meaning glance at
my poor little minder, "Master Hugh is much obliged to
you, Hannerellen, but it's best as I've planned, and will
you have a bit o' supper with us, since you're here?"
I stared at this, frankly, for I had made up my baby's
mind, rather drearily, to skim-milk and second-day bun,
and I was unprepared for the contents of Nana's news-
paper. She warmed a bit of cooked steak for me, served
the abashed Hannerellen with half of a jam tart, rather
crushed, and a buttered roll, and nibbled at a bit of the
stale bun herself, saying lightly that she had dined late
and was not hungry. I thank God that I am utterly un-
able to remember the dark rings that I now know lay
under her eyes nor the gauntness of her cheek-bones nor
the ring of her cough. Her boots were nearly gone.
And here is a wonderful thing. Hannerellen was fully
thirteen and shrewd, with the terrible shrewdness of the
London tenement child. She knew, if she had stopped to
think, that Nana was weak and ill with overwork and
worry and hunger; she must have realised that there
ii
THE INHERITANCE
was something extremely odd, to say the least, in the
presence in such a place of a young gentleman who con-
templated driving in his carriage in the near future ; she
had never, I am sure, so much as heard my surname.
And yet, so potent is a strong will, so enormous the
force of a determined personality, that she and all that
overworked, underfed little world we lived in implicitly
accepted us at our face value, never dreamed that we
were doing other than we chose, and would never have
presumed to suggest to Nana that she needed her own
share of those broken meats in a newspaper, the un-
doubted gift of a compassionate servant. And people
used to doubt the claims of hypnotism !
CHAPTER II
In Which I go a-Charing, for the First and
Last Time
I REMEMBER so well that next morning, a "London
regular" as to weather, all choking, yellow, wet fog.
Nana coughed and strangled in it, and I clung to
her cold, roughened hand, snivelling mournfully, for I
missed Hannerellen, and this woke Nana's jealousy, poor
woman, so that she had boxed my ears which certainly
hadn't proved efficacious as far as the snivelling was con-
cerned. I had had a most unsatisfactory breakfast, and
had been disturbed in the night by Nana's crying when
she thought I was asleep; she explained afterward that
she had the toothache. I lagged along, whining out my
small discomforts, and Nana coughed from time to time
and said nothing; she was sorry for the ear-boxing, I
knew.
At last we reached our objective point and were con-
fronted with an enormous van blocking the way. To
Nana's surprised inquiries a harassed cook made short
answers.
"These is all for storage, missis sails for the States day
after to-morrow. She don't require you any more. Yes,
it was a bit suddent like, but that's the way in this world."
Nana turned silently away, but the cook stopped her.
"Oh! Mrs. False, I was to tell you from number
thirty-eight that there'd be no call there for anything
further. The gentleman's went bankrupt, and they're go-
13
THE INHERITANCE
ing into lodgings for the present. 'Twas the parlour
maid ran out on a message and asked me to tell you and
save you the trouble."
Nana must have looked badly, for even that busy cook
relented a little from her brisk fatalism.
"Step in and have a bit o' something, won't you?" she
asked kindly ; "it's as much as my place to stop, for she's
as flighty as can be with the moving and all, but you and
the young one could rest. It's a bad season to lose two
families at once, I know had you any others ?"
"No," said Nana dully, "I hadn't any others. Thank
you just as much, though. I don't think we'll stop.
Come along, deary."
And we trudged off into the fog again.
It was too much for me. I burst into loud crying and
refused to be comforted.
"I'm so cold," I wailed, "and I'm so hungry, Nana!
I can't walk all that way! You said I might sit
down . . ."
She stopped dead and stared at me curiously, imper-
sonally. There was a look in her I'd never seen before,
and it struck a frost into even my baby blood, so despair-
ing, so bitter it was.
"I'll be good, I'll be good," I cried hastily, "I'm not so
very tired, truly, Nana ! I won't cry any more."
"Poor lambie," she muttered in a low, miserable voice,
"a fine Nana I've been to you, after all starvin' and
chillin' you to get you your rights ! Much good they'd
do you in your coffin ! You shan't be hungry any more,
lambie your Nana'll see to that. Stand still by me a
minute," and she fumbled in the bosom of her soiled,
frayed black gown and drew out a folded envelope. From
it she took a small card and to my amazement a couple
of shillings. Still with that curious, miserable gaze fas-
14
I GO A-CHARING
tened on me, as if her eyes had been opened suddenly
and she had never till then realised what a starving, shiv-
ering little object I was, she signalled a drifting hansom
and handed the driver the card, the money exhibited
plainly in her hand.
"Drive to that, please," she said and, taking me on her
lap in the cab, burst into tears on my shoulder.
I am afraid I was too much excited and pleased with
the drive to extend her much sympathy. Indeed I ob-
jected violently to getting out and was only comforted
by a kind young man who sat in a little room with a
green baize writing table and books all over the walls,
and amused me very pleasantly by wrapping his hand in
his handkerchief and intoning lugubriously :
"Father, oh, father, I've come to confess
Yes, child, yes."
I was hugely delighted with this pantomime and forgot
my empty stomach and my wet feet completely, under the
sovereign spell of Art the beneficent. So shall you see
the children skipping about some dingy square, when the
cracked hand-organ whines out Non ti scordar, and even
the weary grinder smiles at them and forgets the hunger
at home and the heavy winter lurking always ahead for
the poor. I often think of this when Aunt Addie won-
ders testily why the travelling show man pockets the
street cleaner's pennies, when there is the Provident Fund
all ready for their pitiful coppers and a Burial Company
round the corner ; and it takes me back in a whiff to that
green-baize, calf-bound room, and the freckled young
man that had pity on a chilblained, frightened baby and
charmed away its troubles for five minutes. For it could
not have been more than that before Nana came out of
15
THE INHERITANCE
an inner, larger room, her face flushed now and her
eyes hard and bright, with a dimly seen little, thin gen-
tleman behind her.
"Much wiser, much wiser, my good woman," he was
saying in a dry, clicking voice, "and you may depend
upon it, I shall remit regularly to any address you may
send. Is this the boy ?"
"Yes. Come, deary," and she seized my hand her
own was hot.
"No other course could have been of such value to
him. He will live to thank you for it yet," said the dry
voice. I could hardly lift my eyes from the mysterious
handkerchief that still wrapped the freckled fist of the
kind young man.
"To thank me for being kept out of his own?" she
cried sharply.
"Tut, tut ! This is no spirit, Mrs. False no spirit to
show. Do you undertake to prove anything to be his
own? If so, bring your case immediately to me, and
even now I will hand you back your signature ! Shall I ?"
"No, no," she muttered, "I see it's no use. I only
tried to help him. . . ."
"Exactly. Good afternoon, then," and I saw a pair of
pepper-and-salt legs vanish behind the door.
Nana cried no more, then, nor at any time after that
I ever knew, though now I believe that those nights when
she paced the floor, her hands pressed to her head, she
had no more toothache than I had.
"I'm all you've got now, lambie," she said as we passed
out into the street, and gave me a strangling hug in the
doorway, but as I had never had anything or anybody
else, to my knowledge, this did not trouble me, and even
if it had, subsequent events would have dispelled the
trouble.
16
I GO A-CHARING
For we went home, as nearly as we could, in a 'bus, and
stopped on the way and bought a mutton-pie, hot, with
potatoes and gravy, and a great fresh loaf, and a pot of
new butter, and a boiled pudding in a bag, and a quart
of real milk with cream on the top; and when we got
home, Hannerellen, who had "dropped around" to hear
how I had spent the day, was despatched for coals and
a big pot of porter, frothing on the top, and joined us
at Nana's request in a hearty farewell supper "for we're
moving out, to-morrow," Nana informed her briefly. The
porter was warmed over the fire and I had some "the
child must be fattened and stren'thened," said Nana and
a delicious full-fed drowsiness came over me, and I slept
like a top. I drowsed all the next day and she fed me
at intervals (I must have been pretty far gone with cold
and hunger, when warmth and food stupefied me so) and
between these pleasant intervals I was dimly conscious
of Nana bent over her sewing, and of Hannerellen fever-
ishly helping her. I slept another night and drowsed an-
other day, still with those pleasant intervals of beef
and boiled bread and milk and warm porter, and still
the lamp burned late and still Nana sewed and Hanner-
ellen helped her. Then one morning I woke suddenly,
alert and fresh with the wonderful recuperation of child-
hood, and there was Nana, trim in a new black dress
with white collar and cuffs and smooth hair under her
black bonnet, and whole, new shoes.
"Where's the man with the gun to pin your collar?"
I inquired suddenly.
"Bless the child !" she cried, "to think of that, now !
It's gone, lambie, and I can't get it again, but if you're so
set on it, I'll try to have another. Let Nana dress you,
now."
And there was a fresh little suit with warm under
17
THE INHERITANCE
flannels, and shiny, new boots and a neat hat with a cock-
ade in it and gloves for my hands. And on the top
of a new leather box, full and waiting for the strap, I
saw a pile of small handkerchiefs for me, beyond a
doubt.
But there was one thing that struck me forcibly.
"What makes my coat black, Nana?" I asked, as they
dressed me with hasty, nervous fingers, "the velvet one
was blue."
"It's best for you to wear it, deary," she said briefly.
"You may kiss Hanerellen for once, if you like, and say
good-bye you're going on the big boat now."
"Good-bye, Master Hughie, good-bye !" cried my faith-
ful little minder, weeping, "I'll never forget you, never !
And you'll remember Hannerellen, now and again, won't
you, for all you'll be so high, now?"
"Indeed he will," said Nana kindly, "though not, o'
course, as a friend, and you wouldn't expect nor wish it,
Hannerellen, I'm sure. But little gentlemen never forgets
those as was kind to them, and no more will he, you may
depend. He always liked you, Hannerellen."
"Yes, I always liked you," I assured her comfortingly,
and with that I passed out of her life, and all that dingy
court became as a dream to me.
CHAPTER III
In Which I Discover America
OCEAN travel was a vastly different affair forty-
five years ago, let me tell you. To begin with,
fewer people travelled on the ocean. Those
that did, travelled more seldom and more slowly, and
regarded each other with deeper interest and respect as
a more definitely selected class. Now the butcher and
the baker "step across the Pond," as my devoted country-
men put it, for their little holiday, and the candle-stick
maker sends his wife and daughter to patronise hotels
whose luxury would have amazed my lord and his lady,
half a century ago. Any one who had told the captain
of the "big boat" Nana pointed out to me from the trunk
we sat on that his successors would command the serv-
ices of electric lifts, roof gardens, gymnasiums and daily
papers that they would, moreover, desire these unrea-
sonable diversions during a trip of less than five days
from New York to Fishguard would have been re-
garded as dangerously flighty by that vastly important
official. In a word, there was more respect for the
Atlantic in those days.
And is the air above us, that "blue cerulean" that be-
longed to the poets exclusively, in the days when I read
poetry, is that, too, doomed, and will the school teachers
and the authoresses be sailing through it, patronizing
Mars over the edge of a Baedeker in their summer holi-
days, when I am seventy?
19
THE INHERITANCE
Let us go back, patient reader, to Nana and me sitting
on our new trunks, waiting to be told how and where and
when to go. Somewhere in the bustle of luggage and
sailors and great drays unloading and packets of mail and
weeping relatives (for we wept more, forty-five years ago,
on embarking upon a long voyage, and had prayers read
over us before and after taking it, too) I got separated
from her, and was led about by a kindly old gentleman in
a white top-hat on a searching party for her.
"She was in black, my boy, wasn't she?" he asked,
after a glance at the ribbon around my neck and the
streamers to my cap.
"Yes, please," I quavered, and with many a cheery
pat on the shoulder he led me at last to a lady, who sat
crocheting in the ladies' salon, raised his hat politely,
began :
"Here's a little charge of yours, I think, ma'am
and then dashed away suddenly after some of his luggage,
waving his stick and shouting so violently at the porter
as quite to drown the mutual remonstrances of both the
crocheting lady and myself. For though she was cer-
tainly dressed in deep mourning, she was not Nana. She
was, in fact, Aunt Addie, and the old gentleman, having
achieved this next purpose of Fate, in my regard, disap-
peared entirely out of my life and I never laid eyes on
him again for all I know, Fate dropped him overboard
with a view to stopping the mouth of some special shark,
thus blunting its appetite so that She could save the life
of some other of the dramatis persona!
"Have you lost your mother, little boy ?" the lady asked
with sufficient kindness, and I whimpered:
"No, it's Nana."
"Oh, your nurse! Don't be frightened you'll soon
find her. Stay here by me if you like, and she
20
I DISCOVER AMERICA
will be certain to look for you here. Is your father on
board?"
"No, only Nana."
"Ah, I see poor little fellow !" and she too patted my
shoulder kindly. Knowing Aunt Addie as I do now, I feel
quite justified in assuring the reader that to her mind my
status was as clearly defined as though Nana had deliv-
ered a sworn statement of it into her hands. My clothes,
though quiet, were of the best materials ; my appearance
must have been far from unpleasing, for I well remember
that, in the days of the park and Pink-hood, all the little
girls were eager to play with me and the mothers always
complimented Nana upon my pretty ways and curly hair ;
and finally, and most important of all, Nana's presence
and manner were unmistakably those of that triumph of
civilisation, the absolutely perfect English upper servant.
She would have marked any family as correct, any estab-
lishment as "high class." There may be some other divi-
sion of the human race whose members possess that pre-
cise understanding of their own self-respect and yours,
that perfect comprehension of easy service without servil-
ity, of sympathetic interest without hypocrisy, there may
be, I say, possessors of these gifts and graces who are
not of this class I have mentioned, but I never met any
such. I have been in a position to observe both the feudal
zeal of an old French provincial bonne and the passionate
devotion of a darkey slave, and in each there was, I own,
a little too much of the familiar to suit my Saxon taste.
But any one who has encountered, on her native heath, an
English housekeeper of the old vintage, with the shrewd
insight of the Gallic servant, the loyal affection of the
negro and the manners of her own mistress, will agree
with me that no other nation can show the like. Behold
Aunt Addie, then, touched by my black clothes, new, like
21
THE INHERITANCE
her own ; predisposed in my favour by my English voice
and ways, and completely won by Nana's respectful
thanks on my recovery.
"So this poor little fellow is all alone ?" she asked gra-
ciously, when (and just because, probably) Nana started
off with me. For Aunt Addie detested pushers-in, as
she often said, and thought little of people who scraped
acquaintance easily.
"He's nobody but me, thank you, madam," Nana an-
swered respectfully, "but I've had him from an infant
and no one could think more of him."
"And you are taking him to relatives in America?"
"It's not settled where we shall go, ma'am," said Nana
quietly.
There was always something in Nana's reticence that
impressed people. She was so neat and immaculate, so
controlled, so clearly determined to say as much as she
thought wise and no more, that every one felt reproved
at the mere suggestion of having intruded. I have seen
a dozen people bite their lips after some such question
as this of Aunt Addie's and go further than they had
intended, perhaps, in their next remark.
"He is very fortunate in having such a faithful nurse,
who can be trusted to take such good care of him, I'm
sure," she said hastily. "Have you ever been in America
before?"
"No, madam, I'm not acquainted with the States at all."
"You'll find things different, very different," Aunt
Addie continued with a sigh.
"I've not been there myself for fifteen years. This
dreadful war has upset everything so I suppose my
brother has lost his practice in all these four years he was
away and yet, of course, people must be ill just the same,
whether there's a war or not, and all I ask is who's to
22
I DISCOVER AMERICA
take care of them? Suppose, for instance, you should
be terribly ill, or your little boy how dreadful it would
have been if there had been no physician there to take
charge of the case, because they were all fighting the ne-
groes I mean, of course, the Rebels why, the child's
relatives would never forgive you, though it would hardly
be your fault, as they sent you here, and you would have
had to obey your orders, of course . . ."
"Of course, ma'am," Nana said quietly.
"But Robert my brother is back now, and so if any-
thing should happen to the little boy," Aunt Addie went
on, calmly amalgamating, as she always did, her recent
suppositions with the existing facts, and treating the
result as a natural consequence, "why, I'm sure Dr. Cald-
well will be only too glad to attend him. He's had a
great deal of experience with children. He has four
boys of his own."
"Indeed, ma'am," said Nana attentively, "it would be
a comfort to feel that there was a good medical man
handy by, in a new country, too."
"Exactly," Aunt Addie replied, "and that's why I men-
tion it. Do you expect to be anywhere in the neighbour-
hood of New York?"
"It is very likely, ma'am," Nana said guardedly, "and
for the sake of a good doctor. . . ."
"There would be no objection just where you settled
I see, I see, perfectly," Aunt Addie went on rapidly, "so
long as you were within easy reach of New York. Very
natural, I'm sure, and that is just where my brother lives,
hardly more than an hour from the city. Ask them if
there would be any objection to South Warwick, Con-
necticut the water is very good and every one has
always admitted the air was exceptional. Write and ask
them."
3 23
THE INHERITANCE
"There would be no objection to my going there, I'm
sure, ma'am; at first, anyway," said Nana serenely
and the discreet reader beholds us Aunt Addie's proteges
from that moment.
Observe the simplicity of the whole affair, I beg you,
and bear in mind that when Aunt Addie told the doctor
she knew all about us, she honestly supposed she did.
Had she not talked steadily every day for two weeks to
Nana, who tended her assiduously through the painful
results of a rough winter crossing, taught her a new cro-
chet stitch, gave her her arm on the deck and waited on
her, generally, so unobtrusively that Aunt Addie, in all
simplicity, actually offered her services to an afflicted lady
with four sick children! There was no one on board
that did not like and admire Nana, I believe. She did
not know the meaning of sea-sickness, and even the
spoiled, nervous little American children obeyed her in-
voluntarily. Their mothers invariably referred to her
as that nice nurse of Miss Caldwell's: we happened to
be (in spite of the hardly ended war) the only persons in
mourning on the boat, and it was almost inevitable that
we should be associated in people's minds. Years after-
ward I met, professionally, the mother of two young men,
Baltimoreans, whom I treated for some unimportant ill-
ness, and she recognised me and reminded me of the time
we came to America together, "with your aunt, Miss
Caldwell, and that kind English nurse, who took care of
the twins when I was so sick you remember, doctor ?"
Oh, there's no doubt Fate fitted it all together very
neatly! If any one had told Aunt Addie that she had
done all the talking, ventured all the assertions, suggested
her views as to my establishment in South Warwick and
my upbringing there, invented a family for me in Eng-
land, who, for reasons best known to Aunt Addie, pre-
24
I DISCOVER AMERICA
ferred to send me to America ; and that Nana had merely
assented gravely to part of her chatter and simply kept
silence before the rest of it, the good lady would have
been seriously hurt. She would have assured that per-
son that she only answered a deserving stranger's ques-
tions and gave advice when urged.
And so when we landed in New York, there were
three of us for the Doctor to put into the waiting car-
riage and afterwards into the railway coach, and I am
quite convinced indeed he admitted to me years after-
ward that he supposed me to be the son of his sister's
maid, when he gathered up the luggage at South War-
wick, and was distressed at her need for such an appen-
dage in his democratic household. But she soon unde-
ceived him.
"Can you recommend a good moderate-priced boarding
house for Mrs. False, Robert ? Later she can look about
her a little. She has been very thoughtful of me on the
trip, and the English always find our prices here so high
I'd like to save her unnecessary expense, though there's
plenty, of course Hughie must have the best but still,
his people might as well be saved from absolute fleecing,
such as they'd get in that dreadful Warwick Hotel. . . ."
I can see the look of relief on his face, now.
"Oh, I see, Addie, I thought it meant bringing a child
into the house, and I'm sorry to say Bert and Carey
both have the measles. But if the lady "
"She's Hughie's nurse," Aunt Addie interrupted briefly,
"and I have never had the measles, Robert. You might
have remembered that, I should think."
"And forbidden the boys to indulge in them ?" he said
laughing. "You haven't changed, have you, Addie?
How would the Banks's do for the little boy? They've
25
THE INHERITANCE
advertised for boarders, now their father's on crutches
and the brother's lost his arm."
"Were you in the war? Where's your red coat?" I
demanded suddenly, and that was the first time that ever
I spoke to the Doctor.
CHAPTER IV
In Which I Look About Me
IF South Warwick had not been suffering from an
epidemic of measles when I entered it, I am con-
vinced that my subsequent career there would have
been vastly different. In the first place, I should never
have been for a month one of the Doctor's household
which was, as I now know, my open sesame to Warwick
society at large, ten years later. In the second place,
Aunt Addie would not have strengthened her already defi-
nite conviction that she knew all about me which in its
turn subtly but unceasingly wrought upon the Doctor till
I verily believe he would have said offhand (after a few
years) that he knew all about me! In the third place, I
should never have known the boys, and Hux and Robert
and Bert and Gary (poor little Caryl) have been so much
a part of my life and my affairs my profession, my work
in the world, which would never have been what it is,
but for them that I simply can't, even in fancy, plan
what that life would have been without them.
Let me look back, then, a moment, and take you with
me, if I can, so that you can see the old house with my
round, childish eyes, as it looked to me that night. It
was large the largest house I had ever been in. A ram-
bling, roomy, comfortable house, set well back from the
street, and far from the centre of the village at that
time. Later, the town flowed round it and engulfed it
and the pasture that adjoined it came near to being a
factory site in the 8o's; but at that time it would have
been almost too far for a physician, had the Doctor not
27
THE INHERITANCE
made himself so necessary to the Warwickians that they
came (or sent) the mile from the town hall that he moved
before Gary was born.
That was five years ago, and Bert was only a year old
or so, and remembered his mother as little as the tiny
thing she left behind her. Just as they were reasonably
certain that the delicate little fellow was firmly settled in
this world and meant to add to his months of sojourn in
it, the war broke out, and the Doctor went out with his
regiment, and sent for his sister Gary to take care of the
children, which she did to every one's satisfaction until
her own soldier-lover came back to her, with a bullet in
his shoulder, when she promptly married him and handed
her four little nephews over to Aunt Addie.
It was on her voyage to take over this charge that we
encountered that lady, and so, as a matter of fact, she
knew me before she knew them, for she had never seen
any of them, though Robert, in his capacity of god-son,
wrote her a dutiful letter of thanks each birthday. He
was nine, and loomed very large to me, as he stood in
the big central hall, one arm over Huxley's shoulder,
staring defiantly at us. Hux was as large, in spite of the
year and a half between them : they were often taken for
twins.
"Well, well, here we are!" said the Doctor, a little
wearily, perhaps, for Aunt Addie had discoursed to him
on the impropriety of measles at such a time till even I
felt embarrassed, for I knew that one couldn't help having
them.
"How is everything?"
Rob advanced a step and fixed me with his eye.
"Your little boy had better look out, Aunt Addie," he
said instructively, "for the measles is a terrible catching
disease."
28
I LOOK ABOUT ME
"And I'll bet you he gets 'em, too," Hux prophesied
gloomily.
These were perfectly characteristic remarks, and I
never think of them without a smile !
"Gracious, child, he's not my little boy !" from Aunt
Addie, fussily, "he's little Hughie Gordon and are you
Rob ? Have you got a kiss for aunty and Huxley, too ?
How much they look as you used to, Robert ! Do either
of the others favour poor Alberta?"
"Bert very much, Gary a little," he said calmly, and
though ready tears sprang to Aunt Addie's eyes, he did
not even clear his throat.
And here I must digress again to add that I never,
even when I came to know him so well, remarked in the
Doctor the slightest evidence of feeling at any chance ref-
erence and, indeed, they were very few to his young
wife. He must have loved her, or why should he have
been at the pains to marry her against her parents' con-
sent ? And yet, beyond her picture in a velvet frame on
his bureau and the old square piano with her Scotch
ballads in a yellowed pile on it, there was actually no sign
nor mention of her in the house. I have heard Aunt
Addie painfully questioning the two older boys about her
with the doubtfully wise intention of awaking filial mem-
ories, but almost in vain. She played on the piano and
sewed, yes, and her eyes were grey, they thought, and
she told them stories, yes, and of course they loved her.
But that was all. She seems to have been one of those
curiously colourless souls who pass out of life, leaving
no wake behind them. She had added four inhabitants
to the world, had borne them in agony, stamped her fea-
tures on two of them, and was less to them than the
pretty young Aunt who succeeded her! The greatest
tragedy of her seemed to be the abstract one : the inevi-
THE INHERITANCE
table sadness of a young mother taken from her children.
And it can't be denied that the Doctor pushed philos-
ophy to an almost stoic point in his relations with life.
He worked hard for his boys, exacted little from them,
and as each in turn disappointed him (for, one way and
another, they all did) mentioned the fact quietly and went
on his way; hard working, interested in life as a battle-
ground, a spectacle and a laboratory. I really believe that
his wife was to him precisely the incident she appeared to
be : husbandhood and fatherhood were his as they should
be every healthy man's; had the one relation lasted as
long as the other he would have been as faithful to it,
and it would have occupied its proportionate share of his
life. It had not so lasted, and that portion of the book
was closed. That was all. It is not the temperament
of which the heroes for ladies' novels are made, I grant
you that, but it is a temperament that has a bigger role
on life's stage than most ladies' novelists would assign
to it.
And so, although Aunt Addie came prepared to com-
fort two small boys who could not remember their
mother, she found that her sympathies were only re-
quired, as a matter of fact, for two small boys with the
measles. This foe to childhood's liberty was raging
through the village, owing to the good old-fashioned
method of sending the hitherto immune to play with the
victim "so that they could catch them and get them over
with," and as there were no trained nurses then, mothers
and aunts, older sisters and neighbours relieved each
other at the feverish, irritable bedsides.
Dr. Caldwell was in a sad way, for old Bridget, nurse
since Huxley's babyhood, was crippled with sciatica, and
good, trusty women hard to come by, even for a well-
loved doctor, just then.
30
I LOOK ABOUT ME
I can see him now, as he stood perplexed in the hall,
listening to the voluble Norah's reasons for there being
no supper, and her all afternoon with the sick children,
and all, and the good beefsteak ready for the broiler, but
Bert not willing to leave her out of his sight !
"Well, well," he broke in impatiently, "we'll forage
for something cold, that's all. Go to Bert, and I'll look
at them both, after I've had a sandwich. Then I'll try
to see about a place for Mrs. Mrs. "
"False, sir," said Nana, curtseying slightly, "and I
couldn't think of being such a trouble, sir. If it's not
taken as putting forward at all, Miss Caldwell, which
I'm not one to wish to appear so, I could whisk on my
apron and hot up something for the doctor: gentlemen
must eat, as we all know."
"Oh, yes, Mrs. False, pray do," sighed Aunt Addie,
"it would be such a relief. And, boys, take care of
Hughie ; won't you ? Will you show me my room, Rob-
ert?"
He started upstairs with her and I started shyly after
Nana my place was always with her, of course. But to
my surprise she pushed me gently back. Did I hesitate
a little, as I left her, and crossed a bridge I was never
to go back over? I don't know. Did her voice
break, as she sent me and stayed behind? I cannot
remember.
"No, no, lambie, stay with the young gentlemen," she
said quietly; "the kitchen's no place for you."
"Certainly not," Aunt Addie called over the bannister;
"boys, haven't you any toys for Hughie ? I depend upon
you to amuse him ... I do hope, Robert, there's a
southern exposure, I feel the dampness so! I suppose
Gary felt she was justified, but the notice was so short
. . . you may depend entirely upon Mrs. False ... I
31
THE INHERITANCE
supposed you knew, my dear Robert, that I never had
the measles : Gary had them when you did . . ."
Thus Aunt Addie up the stairs, across the landing, and
on again to the second story. How many of her mono-
logues I was destined to hear ! Monologues that trapped
the unwary by proceeding steadily for minutes, while
attention wandered with impunity, only to stop short with
an unexpected direct question, which brought that same
listener to a disgraced apology, inevitably!
"I have some white mice, if you like them," Rob
vouchsafed grandly. "I don't use them much, now. I
suppose your mother died, too? We had black suits,
when ours did."
"Yes, please," I answered timidly, in a general way,
and went in search of the mice. (I was rather surprised
than otherwise, the next day, to hear Norah telling Nana
it was no wonder the poor little fellow took to the boys
so, with his mother gone like their own !
"Children make friends quickly at Master Hugh's
age," said Nana quietly, and went on her inscrutable
way.)
So when I went in to supper that evening I sat on the
Doctor's right hand, my hair brushed by Aunt Addie, and
Nana waited on us, bringing in first a great hot steak
("I made bold to grill it, sir, though Cook had laid the
spider out"), then a mound of mashed potatoes wreathed
with pink ham slices, and then, "shall I serve the fruit
tart, sir?" says Nana.
"Oho: she means apple-pie!" derided Rob, as it came
on, and Aunt Addie corrected him instantly : "Nonsense,
Rob, of course it's tart ! I suppose Hugh won't take any,
Mrs. Gordon?"
"No, thank you, madam; Master Hugh will do best
with his bread and milk," said Nana staidly, while I gazed
32
I LOOK ABOUT ME
with interest at the young lords of creation wolfing down
the steak and ham.
"I see you bring up your little charge properly," the
Doctor approved, and Nana nodded respectfully.
"I'm sure I try my best, sir," she said simply.
A hurry call snatched the Doctor from us, just then,
but not before he had separated Rob and Hux in one of
their frequent rough-and-tumbles (they were devoted
brothers, but constantly tempting each other to a fight),
soothed Norah's ire at the half of to-morrow's meals all
cooked up by the English nurse, and me with me hands
full and too full, Doctor, and well you know it! an-
swered Gary's fretful screams, and sketched out a hasty
plan for Aunt Addie's looking for extra help in the
morning.
He left, I say, in all this hullaballoo, and doubtless ex-
pected to return to it, poor man, but Fate (and Nana)
had willed otherwise, for when he came back a scant
hour afterwards, I was just ready to go upstairs with
Aunt Addie, who embroidered placidly in the sitting-room
while Hux and Rob struggled with to-morrow's sums,
and I arranged dominoes in gratifying patterns on the
rug before the fire.
"There! I forgot to see about the Banks' cottage,
after all !" he cried, "and after that delicious supper, too !
I haven't had a supper like that in I don't know when."
"You needn't bother, Robert," said Aunt Addie plac-
idly; "Mrs. False is going to stop with us till the boys
are well she's had a great deal of experience with sick-
ness. The boys seem to take to her, she says, and then
Cook can get back to her kitchen. I know from Gary
how hard it is to get decent servants here, and every-
thing will be more or less upset till the sickness is out
of the house. She will take the room next to the boys',
33
THE INHERITANCE
and there's one next hers I had her get ready
for Hughie."
"Why but Addie," he began, "that would be very
lucky for us, but I'm not sure that we have any
right "
Aunt Addie waved her hand regally. "It's quite all
right, Robert, I assure you," she said; "I know Mrs.
False very well (I believe with all my soul that she
thought she did!), and I assure you that she makes all
her own arrangements of that kind. Besides, as she says,
she can look about her, and Hughie will certainly be bet-
ter off here than in an hotel."
"Oh, well, if you put it that way, I agree with you,"
he admitted with relief. "It seems a little unusual, but
you know the English better than I do, Addie, and I'll
be glad to pay anything that's right "
"Gracious, Robert, I wouldn't think of it !" Aunt Addie
exclaimed. "She's a most respectable woman and quite
independent. You'll look her out a nice little cottage, of
course, and keep an eye on Hughie I as good as prom-
ised her that much for, of course, he's a heavy responsi-
bility to her, now, so far from the family."
"Why, certainly, Addie anything I can do," the Doctor
answered, one ear at the stairs. But no crying of Gary's,
or raging of Bert's sounded from above, and we went
upstairs together. When we got to the sickroom I was
not so surprised as he, for I had seen Nana at work there.
I had watched the dusty litter brushed away, the tum-
bled sheets replaced with fresh linen, the cool lotion
sopped on the blotched faces, the comforting drink gurgle
down the parched throats. And now Nana sat, in stiff,
clean print, by the shaded lamp, reading gently in her
soft English voice (ah, how soon an expatriate begins
to notice that voice!) and two quiet little fellows lis-
34
I LOOK ABOUT ME
tened drowsily to the moving tale of the Babes in the
Wood.
"Well, well!" said Dr. Caldwell. And that was all,
but it spoke whole volumes, and Nana appreciated them
and curtseyed gratefully.
"I hope there's no objection to us stopping while I look
about me, sir?" she asked tactfully; "I'm well accus-
tomed to the care of the sick, and Master Hugh will be
no trouble, I'll warrant him, for I can keep him by me
if necessary he's had the measles it's two years now.
Nurse seems fair ill with her own troubles, I see, and
I could give her a rub now and then, and if the other
young gentlemen should come down, and I hear that
Cook's not too fond of the village help "
"You couldn't please me better, Mrs. False," said the
Doctor, "and I feel more relieved about the boys than
I've been since they came down. You're a good nurse,
I see."
"Thank you, sir. Then I'll stop a bit. And now, Mas-
ter Hugh, your bed is ready, and I'll bath you and set-
tle you before it's time for their next drink."
And by the next morning (so adaptable are we to good
fortune!) we were actually settled into what seemed but
my natural and simple life to me who was not three
weeks out of a London gutter ! Had Nana planned with
Machiavellian cunning to make a great gap in my life, a
blank that staggered memory, she could have contrived
nothing better than the sudden change to shipboard, the
position of importance and interest I assumed there, the
utter newness of everything in a small country town a
whole Atlantic away from my small miseries of scarce
a month ago. In a week's time I seemed to myself, very
simply, a sort of brother to Bert and Gary, and at least
a cousin to the older boys !
35
THE INHERITANCE
I revered them and thought them especially Rob
infallible, but on my own side I was not without great
interest for them. To begin with, though Bridget and
Norah would have died (or worse, left the household!)
if asked to add a prefix to the other boys' names, I was
always Master Hugh to them nothing else would have
been possible, with Nana's grave example. Then, from
her, at least, the boys enjoyed the same dignity, and
though they grinned covertly at first and mocked one an-
other with the title, it grew, with custom, dearer (as I
have seen titles grow on my adopted countrymen since)
and before the invalids were well downstairs, selected
playmates were inveigled into hanging about the side
porches to hear Nana's unconscious performance as she
called Rob and Hux in to tea !
It was well that she quietly took over this and many
other little responsibilities, for poor Bridget must have
found early that real nursing was a sinecure compared
to attendance on an English lady suffering from change
of climate. Whatever native tendencies to waiting on
herself Aunt Addie may have possessed had long ago
vanished under the insidious spell of deft English serv-
ice, and her bell tinkled cheerfully through the short au-
tumn days, till Bridget quite gave up the idea of having
sciatica, as she confided to Nana, for sure there was no
time for it at all !
Not the least of Nana's triumphs, by the way, was her
skillful avoidance of any issue with these two faithful
Paddies (as we called them then). No hint of Hunga-
rian cook, Japanese butler or Swedish parlourmaid had
come to the Land of the Free, at that period of domestic
economy, and it was to the Green Isle that we looked
with one accord for ministering angels of the larder
and broom. Nothing but infinite tact could have enabled
36
I LOOK ABOUT ME
Nana to conceal her English scorn of the crudeness and
the rudeness of the two bare-armed, voluble, warm-
hearted Paddies that daily, yes, hourly, shocked Aunt
Addie's sensibilities and worried the Doctor at every
shock! And not even her tact, I am afraid, could have
made endurable to their loving jealousy her quick su-
premacy in the headless household, her standing with the
Doctor, their idol, even her importance to Aunt Addie,
their terror. But circumstances worked for her. Even
I could see that the little boys were better under her re-
gime than Bridget's, and the boys were dearer than all to
faithful Bridget, who had had them from the monthly,
Mrs. False, and walked the floor with 'em more nights
than ever they'll know ! And Bridget, freed of all re-
sponsibility beyond her kitchen, gained in leisure and
peace of mind what she lost in authority and realised it.
So we lingered and lingered, and before Bert and Gary
were well, before the shine was off my new black, before
I had remembered to ask Nana when my mother died,
even (which I had decided to do, I believe, after Robert's
first question about her), the last shreds of my old life
had faded to filmy, misty fragments and dissolved in the
clear, sunny present of a happy, healthy child among his
natural mates and equals.
CHAPTER V
In Which I Introduce the Reader to Chrissy
1WAS between six and seven years old and so I
judge that we had been living in America (Nana
still called it "the States") for about a year. Nana
was sitting placidly at her sewing in the little sitting
room and I was playing with some lettered blocks at her
feet, for the noon sun was too intense to allow of my
going out, she thought the American August with its
cloudless heat alarmed her exceedingly and the green
blinds were down, making a cool dimness in the fresh,
clean little cottage. Everything in our house shone and
burnished and twinkled with cleanliness. The windows
were diamonds, the walls were pearls, the little "yard"
with its poppies and phlox was, to carry out the simile,
emerald spangled with ruby and coral. The path to the
door was edged with oyster shells and the floor, where
there was no carpet, was scrubbed with sand. The whole
interior was wonderfully restful, for Nana had a hunger
for old country surroundings, and in an era of varnished
pine atrocities and imitation ebony and jig-saw walnut
horrors, had quietly bought at auctions and gratefully
taken from overloaded garrets the worn, solid old shapes
despised and rejected of the grandchildren of that time
to be paid for by them later and "restored" at enormous
cost! Nana did not select the old dressers and high-
boys and oaken chairs and tables because she was aesthetic,
far from it, but because they reminded her of home and
could be purchased for a few dollars.
38
I INTRODUCE CHRISSY
And so an old clock with wooden works ticked slum-
berously on the dresser, and an old Windsor chair with a
clean, patched cushion and a funny little old footstool
stood near the Franklin grate with gilt balls on the top
and a big jug of sunflowers where the fire would be, and
an old settle, of bog-oak (as we found thirty years later
I refused five hundred dollars for it) painted red then,
and softened by means of a worn pew-cushion given her
by the sexton of the Methodist Church when she nursed
his wife through pneumonia, filled one side of the room
and was for me alternately coach, boat and prairie
schooner, as well as toy repository and general napping
place. There were flowers everywhere, for Nana could
not live without them, and never ceased to wonder at the
dreary wastes of vegetable tins, dog bones and arid or
slimy soil that stretched from her neighbour's doors; to
her mind poverty had no excuse for flowerlessness, when
a few pennies would purchase a packet of seeds, and slips
and cuttings were to be had for the asking. So that
hardly a day passed without somebody's inquiring the
name of her English wall flower, or purple Canterbury
bells or giant mignonette, and more than one lady driv-
ing by (for we lived on the outskirts of the town on the
way to the Millpond woods, a favourite drive) had
stopped to speak about her peonies and fuchsias and left
an order for some sewing before she went away.
Well, on this hot August day the Doctor drove up
behind his chestnut mare, threw the reins to Thomas, an
ex-slave who had gone through the War with him and
always called him "Major," jumped out and hurried in
to the cottage. For Nana always called it a cottage : it
was but a story and a half and had but four rooms and
a large closet.
"Can you come with me directly, Mrs. False?" he
4 39
THE INHERITANCE
asked, with a "Hello, Master Hughie !" for me. "There's
a poor lady up by the millpond that's going to need you
badly in a few hours. An English lady, and I think you'll
be a heap of comfort to her ; name's Mrs. Vereker per-
haps I've spoken of her?"
"Yes, sir, I think you have, sir. It's her first, I believe,
doctor?"
"Her first what ?" said I, and he laughed and said :
"Her first trouble, Master Hughie! You can leave
your young gentleman at the house, if you like, Mrs.
False."
And to this day I don't know why I wasn't "left at the
house" ; many a day I had spent with Bert and Gary when
Nana was similarly occupied. But this time I wasn't;
I drove with Nana and Thomas to Mrs. Vereker's, when
she had packed her little bag and taken off her apron and
hidden the key behind the shutter, and the Doctor said
he'd be around presently and see how things were going.
They must have gone pretty well for a long time, for he
didn't appear, and I wandered, much interested and
amused, through the strangest house I had ever entered.
It was a low-eaved, rambling, very old farmhouse, re-
paired and perfectly weather-tight, but utterly paintless
from a century's rains and snows and suns. It stood far
back from the road, surrounded with larches, pines and
hemlocks, in the midst of tall, straggling weeds and bur-
docks and mulleins of every description ; the path to the
door, a broken flagged walk, was grown thick with grass
and moss. The windows were heavily curtained and
nearly all closed; there was not an animal or fowl or
flower to be seen about.
Nana tried the front door, but it was locked, and in-
deed a tiny fern was growing up in the crack of it ! So
we went around and entered by a side door, more in use,
40
I INTRODUCE CHRISSY
evidently, and Nana asked a middle-aged mulattress who
met us there to take her to the lady.
"I'm expected, I suppose?" she asked in her low, com-
petent voice, and the woman nodded and started up the
stairs.
"You stop about till I come, deary," said Nana to me,
"and mind you don't meddle or touch anything, will you ?
I'll be down soon," and they left me alone.
I peeped into the kitchen behind me and was gratified
to see one of the maids from the Doctor's house there,
spreading flannels on a little clothes horse before the
fire.
"Well, Master Hughie, you here?" she inquired good-
naturedly ; "well, well ! Hark what was that up above ?"
She dashed up the stairs, and after a comprehensive
glance at another mulatto woman, older than the first one,
who was stirring something in a bowl, in a corner, and
wiping her eyes on her sleeve, I left that part of the house
and peeped into what should have been the dining-room.
And here began the strangeness of the house, for the
room was packed full and literally running over with
books. The dining table was piled high with them, like
a counter in a book shop; the sideboard held them in
rows; the eight chairs that stood against the walls car-
ried each its load of thick paper pamphlets. Stout pine
shelves ran around the room to a considerable height and
they too were book-filled. The blinds were down, and
a few hot shafts of noon sun struck through little holes
in them and gleamed like arrows through the dusty air.
And nowhere in the room was a sign or symbol of its
original purpose not a dish nor spoon nor glass. It ap-
peared to have been thus crammed with print for years,
with that mysterious but inevitable use-and-wont that
stamps the rooms of human habitation and forbids them
41
THE INHERITANCE
to lie or give even a false impression of the purposes to
which they have been put.
We go into so many rooms, we who struggle with
the pain and folly of man and womankind, and we grow
very wise in the interpretation of them. What is it that
tells us, Madam X, as we sit in your drawing room and
stare impatiently at your Louis Seize gilt-and-cane while
we wait to be summoned to your bedside, that you could
not distinguish that monarch from Julius Caesar or George
the Fourth, that the upholsterer purchased them for you
when Monsieur your husband made that lucky turn in
copper, and that you are secretly afraid to sit on them
a.nd would have preferred red plush? The chairs tell
us, madam, and we read your alabaster statues on col-
oured marble pedestals as we read your temperature on our
clinical thermometer. And you, kindly Mrs. Y., what is
it to us that your sunny bedroom is in perfect, pathetic
order, every table in place and your snowy counterpane
fresh creased, and only photographs and a trained nurse
to fill the deep window sills and roomy rocking chairs?
To our shrewd eyes the children clamber down out of
the silver frames and fill the chairs with doll babies and
guns and wooden horses; their mended stockings over-
flow from your empty work basket, their dusty shoes soil
that lustrous bed covering. The room speaks to us as
loudly as your pulse. And when we are hastily called
from our hotel, Contessa Z (how glad you are of an
"American doctor!"), and interrupt our sight-seeing to
consult with il dottore in your noble husband's Roman
palace, how pitifully do your small, hopeless efforts to
transport a little of the Anglo-Saxon into those echoing
Latin corridors call out to us! It is not the fever that
is holding you down, Contessa, but the empty, scornful
walls, that have echoed for centuries to passions you
42
I INTRODUCE CHRISS.Y
can never comprehend, that have been stained with crimes
and lighted with visions meaningless to you, but strong
enough to wear out even your fresh and furious vitality.
Your tapestries tell tales, Contessa, and they counsel a
change of air quite as strongly as your pallor!
Behold me, then, pushing my way, a curious little fel-
low, through this dusky cave of volumes, and wonder-
ing what they were for. I had never touched a book,
so far as I know, beyond Nana's prayer book and her
cook book (those two bulwarks of her sex!) and a cer-
tain highly coloured history of Cock Robin. But I like to
think that they interested me from the first, those calf-
bound comrades, and that we took kindly to each other
at once.
I went into the next room, a long, low apartment that
filled that half of the house, and here again the books
crowded every chink and corner. There had been at some
time various ornaments and pictures scattered about the
room, I suppose, for when the shelves had been put up
around the walls the pictures had been taken down and
piled here and there on the floor, and there they lay, traps
for the unwary feet, while a huddle of dusty vases and
shapeless objects filled the four corners of the topmost
shelves, relentlessly driven back by the ever-flowing tide
of books. They slid from back to seat on the arm chairs,
they stood in tottery piles in the open fireplace, they es-
caped into the narrow, central hall and nestled in little
groups in the stair corners. I wondered again what they
were for; and picked my way amongst them up to the
next floor. Here were two great glass cases of them,
stealing nearly all the passageway from the upper hall
into which three doors opened. I pushed one cautiously
and peered in : it was piled from floor to ceiling, nearly,
all around the sides, with stacked periodicals and reviews
43
THE INHERITANCE
of various colours, each colour arrayed neatly by itself,
so that the effect was that of a charming little square
room, artificially built up, with a tiny ell where the win-
dow was left free to light it: this delighted me hugely,
and I planned to play there one day.
At this point a sharp, short cry and a sort of whimper-
ing caught my ear and I stepped out and pushed open
the second door, whence it issued. Here was a large
and well-lighted room, and though it was nearly as full
of books as the others, it was quite different, for it was
obviously in occupation. There was a big four-posted
bed with dusty, torn hangings and tumbled bed clothes;
a heavy mahogany writing table with a great soiled ink-
stand in the midst of papers, blotters, pen-racks, maps
and sketches ; chairs and tables piled with the omnipresent
volumes, which lined two of the walls and crowded the
chimney-piece and the dressing-table itself, and finally,
there were trays of food in various stages of disorder all
about the room. Glasses of water stood here and there,
odd shoes and slippers peeped from the valances, in the
middle of the floor lay a little ring of petticoats, like a
nest, just as they had been stepped out of and left. A
flannel bed gown had been thrown into one corner, and
Nana, her trim neatness more marked than ever in this
maelstrom of untidiness, was wrapping another gown
about a woman who cowered over a fire in a Franklin
grate a fire, though the locusts were buzzing hotly out
of doors.
"There, there," Nana was saying as I stole softly in;
"there, there, poor soul! This is no warmer than the
other, but you shall have it, since you're that set upon it,
and change again, if you like; I'm never for thwarting
at such times ; it's not good."
The woman, whose face was deeply flushed and her
44
I INTRODUCE CHRISSY
eyes scared and glazed, began to whine and moan again,
and bowed herself over in the tumbled chair ; a book fell
off the arm of it.
"Think how soon 'twill be over now, and you so happy,
that's a dear," Nana soothed her, "and when it comes
again, now, do like I told you, you'll find 'twill ease you.
There's many worse off than you, I'll warrant you. Walk
about a bit, now, and the Doctor'll be here in no time.
And everything all ready, and soon you'll forget it all !"
"No, no, no! Never!" the woman cried and bowed
over again in the chair, moaning and clinching her hands.
I looked about for the sick person, but saw no one
answering that description, to my mind, and stared dis-
tastefully at the litter of candle-sticks and fresh linen
and tea-cups that covered the chest of drawers and the
streaked dust of the dressing mirror; children have nor-
mally, I think, a strong feeling for freshness and order,
though they are not often credited with it.
Just then the woman in the chair uttered a sharp,
angry cry, and then another; her face distorted, and she
alarmed me ; I was relieved to see the Doctor step quickly,
yet softly his way into the room. I knew that he made
people feel better.
"You're none too soon, Doctor," said Nana hurriedly;
"she's getting a bit wild-like, poor dear goodness gra-
cious, lambie, how came you here? Run out, now, and
play in the front mind Nana directly, now!"
And at another sight of that crimson, twisted face and
another sound of that choked, groaning voice, I ran out
willingly enough, only wondering at the pleasant smile
the Doctor gave me and his unconcerned greeting, as he
took the lady's hand.
"Well, well, Mrs. Vereker, we're getting along, I see,
getting along famously !"
45
THE INHERITANCE
"Will he cure her out of the black bottle, Nana?" I
whispered, as she pushed me out of the door, and he
heard me he had the ears of a lynx and called back
good-naturedly :
"Not that bottle, Master Hughie, but I'll cure her,
don't worry ! Let's have the pulse, now . . ." and I left
them leaning over her, and pushed open the third door
on that floor.
This room too was, as I had begun to expect, book-
lined and book-piled. A great desk full of pigeon holes
stood in the exact middle of it, and the heavy carpet
displayed a little worn path, about a foot in width, that
wound about the room, just as a path winds through a
meadow, when the same feet have walked the same route
for many years. In an alcove I saw a cot bed, spread
neatly enough with a blue-and- white knitted cover of the
sort the American housewives used to make, before the
inventive Mr. Whitney spared them the necessity of such
manual labour, and a tin bath and water can, of a pattern
familiar to me, stood at the foot of it. Except for the
bed and this bath I believe every article of furniture, save
the arm chair before the desk, to have been covered with
books : even the footstool bore a fat, heavy volume, open,
upon its tiny top.
Standing before the shelves in the act of reaching down
a book from one of them, I beheld for the first time Pro-
fessor Christopher Vereker in the most characteristic at-
titude of his life. He was a lean, bald gentleman, with
kindly, weary eyes, shielded by a green shade, like a sort
of scholarly halo, bound about his brow. I never, in
all the years of my acquaintance with him, saw him at-
tired otherwise than in a rusty frock coat, with loose
grey trousers, crumpled but perfectly clean linen, that had
the air of having been made for a much larger man, a
46
"'Will he cure her out of the black bottle, Nana?'"
I INTRODUCE CHRISSY
black clerical tie and a red-and-white bandanna handker-
chief drifting out of his right trouser pocket. His father-
in-law, I learned later, had presented him with a case
of these handkerchiefs some incredible number of doz-
ens and they had become a part of his personality.
As he reached down his book I coughed slightly and
closed the door (for I disliked the steady groaning that
came from the other room) and these sounds caught his
attention, so that he turned and saw me. His mild stare
embarrassed me not a little; he seemed to be looking
through me, and I shifted my feet about and coughed
again.
"Ah . . . how do you do?" he said at last.
"How do you do?" I answered, relieved. And there
our conversation hung fire, so to speak, and we might
have been standing there to this day had Nana not ap-
peared, and taken me by the hand to lead me away.
"The nurse, sir," she said, making her quiet little
English curtsey. "All's going well inside, sir. Come,
lambie," and we turned to go. I shall never forget the
extraordinary expression on the Professor's face at that
moment. He seemed to come down to earth with a bump
and regarded me with a positively dazed stare.
"Is this the surely this is not is it all over?" he
said vaguely, and Nana, with a whispered God 'a' mercy!
advanced firmly to him and shook him gently but with
decision.
"No, sir," she answered, perfectly respectfully, "no, sir,
not yet, sir. This is a grown boy, sir."
"Ah. ... I had not supposed it could be so large
..." he said, blinking hungrily at his book, half closed
out of some dim politeness.
"No, sir, it will be much smaller," Nana assured him,
still respectfully (everybody was always quite respectful
47
THE INHERITANCE
to the Professor, somehow), "and a great comfort and
blessing to you, I'm sure, sir "
"Mrs. False! Mrs. False!"
The Doctor was calling in a short, authoritative voice
I had never heard from him, and Nana ran hastily in to
him; she was behind the closed door before her voice
had ceased to echo in our ears.
And now that troublesome moaning grew louder and
more constant; it rose higher in gusts and sank lower
into muttering, querulous pleadings with some one, to be
let alone, let alone, let alone. Soon we heard words dis-
tinctly :
"No! no! not another step! I will not go away!
Oh! Oh! Oh!"
The Professor began to walk nervously about and
about the room on the little worn carpet path, and I,
glancing uneasily at the wall, where the sounds came
through, strode after him determinedly. Round and
round we walked, as odd a pair of mortals, I dare say,
as you would find in any one room in the Three King-
doms, and still the misery endured in the room beyond
the wall, and still the Professor turned the pages of the
book he carried at the height of his nose.
And now the moaning ceased a moment and we were
aware of a scurry of steps. Then suddenly the voice began
to wail and sob in utter abandonment the crying of a
tired, hurt child: in some respects it was more painful
than the groaning.
"This this is frightful !" the Professor exclaimed hur-
riedly, and strode to the door Nana had closed so pur-
posely. He knocked, softly but decidedly, and in a mo-
ment Nana was holding it partly open and confront-
ing us.
"Well, sir?" she inquired shortly, and I could see that
48
I INTRODUCE CHRISSY
we were terribly inopportune, the Professor and I, and
wondered how he dared to accost Nana in her strong-
hold.
"This this all this can nothing be done?" he be-
sought her earnestly, searching her implacable face with
his pale, disturbed eyes. "Surely the Doctor there must
be some anaesthetic this is unreasonable . . ."
"Unreasonable or not, sir, it's got to be," said Nana
coldly, "and if you mean chloroform, no sir, not yet.
There's many worse and longer at it than your lady,
sir. Be patient, now, and all will be forgotten by morn-
ing, I do assure you, sir. That's the way of it. It has
to be."
"If I could only help "
"Yes, sir, of course," said Nana, with a slight but un-
mistakable scorn ; "that's what many feels, sir. But you
can't. So why don't you just go away, sir? Tis not like
other pain, and in the end there's something to show for
it, as I always say. Just go off this floor, now, there's
a good man!"
She had one ear turned from us and it was plain that
not one of the heavy, whimpering breaths in the room
escaped her.
"Come now, that's better you're very good and
brave."
I heard the Doctor's voice, as gentle I will not say
as a woman's, for no woman's voice could be so kind and
yet so stern and strong as his floated out to us : I caught
all that in it then, as I have so many times since and
Nana began to close the door against us.
"If you don't feel you could leave the house, sir, why,
many gentlemen will always go to the cellar," she sug-
gested, kindly but conclusively, "and that would be my
advice, sir, at present. You may be sure all is right, sir."
49
THE INHERITANCE
And the latch clicked.
We found ourselves walking the little path again, and
as he stopped suddenly and faced me (I had hold of the
tails of his frock coat by now) I was brought to an
equally sudden stop and collided violently with him.
"These sufferings," he said abruptly, "differ from all
others known to science, I understand, in that it is im-
possible to reconstruct them from memory. You have
always understood this, have you not?"
"Y-yes, please, sir," I answered tremulously : I could
not possibly have replied otherwise.
"Very good. The curiously evanescent character
hark!"
A long wail of utter anguish struck across his dry
voice, so that we both jumped and listened nervously, but
it was not repeated.
"This proves their character to be distinctly physio-
logical and not, strictly speaking, pathological at all," he
continued decisively; "you follow me?"
"Y-yes, please, sir," I answered again, and suddenly
a high, rending shriek rang through the house, another,
and yet another.
"No! No!" the voice screamed, "I will not I cannot!
Christopher! Christopher! They're killing me!"
"Great God, this is too much!" he exclaimed, and
dashed out of the room and down the stairs, I clinging
wildly to the tails of his coat and skipping through the
air after him. But even as we passed the terrible door
I could distinguish perfectly the hoarse, all but unhuman
cries, Nana's soothing murmurs ("There, there, dear
there, there!") and the stern, quick orders of my won-
derful Doctor.
Downstairs we flew, through the kitchen, where as in
a dream I noted the younger mulatto woman gathering
50
I INTRODUCE CHRISSY
flannel hastily from her rack and the elder kneeling on
the floor with clasped hands and wet cheeks, her lips
moving steadily. Out of that house of anguish we fled
as one flees in nightmares, he with hands clapped to his
ears, I swinging and swaying in his wake, gripping the
coat tails like grim death a scare-crow couple, hag rid-
den by one dreadful, compelling necessity, to outrun
those snarling, panting noises.
Across the yard we thundered, I in great, long, tiptoe
strides that barely touched the earth, into the weather-
beaten old barn, and up the slippery, treacherous, sagging
steps to the loft, where we threw ourselves down with
one accord and grovelled into the hay, burying our
shamed heads in it, crowding it into our helpless, out-
raged ears. I heard what I had never heard before: a
man's harsh, heavy sobs, and to them I joined my own
small pipe and wept, till, forgetting what I wept for, I
fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.
When I woke it was late afternoon and the sun was
hard on his setting. I was hungry and confused and
quite alone. In a vague way I recalled what had hap-
pened, but only vaguely, and plodded toward the house,
bent on finding out from Nana what it had all been about
and why we had run so fast.
The house, as I mounted the stair, was perfectly quiet,
and perfectly quiet the room where Nana had mounted
guard at noontime. I knocked gently, and receiving no
answer, listened fearfully at the key hole. There, crouch-
ing down, I heard distinctly a gentle humming and rec-
ognized my nurse's voice, aye, even the old song she
sang, a prime favourite of my own :
"O the oak and the ash and the bonny ivy-tree,
They all grow together in the North Countrie!"
51
THE INHERITANCE
sang Nana softly, and I, knowing that she was always in
the best of spirits when she sang this song, turned the
knob boldly and entered the room.
On the very threshold I stopped in amaze, for it was
the same room, yet a different. All the stale melee of
food and clothes and ink had vanished ; the chairs stood
empty and plump in fresh chintz covers ; the big writing
table had been dragged to one side and covered with a
white cloth whereon lay piles of linen, flannel and what
not, and a spirit lamp and tiny tea service; the fireplace
was clean and swept empty and a great jug of cool green
ferns (the people thereabouts called them "brakes")
stood in it, like our sunflowers at home; there was no
clothing in sight, and the bed fairly twinkled in crisp,
snowy curtains and rufflings, while from a sea of white
linen under its canopy, a dark head emerged.
A wholesome, pungent odour filled the room, and I
knew it was that of a certain toilet vinegar which Nana
compounded with herbs and spices and carried with her
when she went out nursing ; I was very fond of it. Nana
herself sat in a low chair on the other side of the bed and
in order to reach her I had to pass by the white bolster
with the dark head on it.
"Is this the little boy?" a pleasant, low voice came
from the pillows, and I could no more believe that the
gentle, placid lady that lay there, pale and smiling kindly,
was the crimson, staring creature I had seen there, than
that this clean, quiet, sweet-smelling room was the fever-
ish, cluttered place I had peered across a few hours ago.
"Come to Nana, deary are you hungry ? I'll warrant
you are. Go softly down the stairs, lambie, and ask the
black woman there in the kitchen to give you a bowl of
that grand rich broth she was at when we came. Poor
soul, she's made enough for the parish, all overwrought
52
I INTRODUCE CHRISSY
as she was! And you can crumb your bread in it
Don't you want to see the baby, deary, before you go?
It's a lovely little girl, as fine and strong as can be
just a perfect child! Come and see the little darling!"
A great red ray of the dropping sun struck across her
chair and enveloped all that peaceful room with a rich
glow. Cow bells jangled somewhere in the distance and
the fresh muslin curtains swayed in the little sunset
breeze. Nana's foot beat softly, rhythmically on the
floor and she burst again into soft humming.
"O the oak and the ash and the bonny ivy-tree"
I can close my eyes and see it now. . . .
Then I noticed that Nana held a flannel bundle in her
arms as she swayed and crooned held it with that won-
derful passion of protecting curves which you may see
alike in the gutter child cradling a dressed clothes-pin
and Raphael's Sistine Mother embracing her treasure.
Black and white, old and young, maid and wife, they
turn the same eyes on you, just lifted from that curved
arm; I think the glance has never changed since Eve
first fed her eyes on Cain and then swept the world with
a vision new-washed. So Nana looked at me, though the
child she held was none of hers nor, indeed, does it need
to be, O ye army of faithful nurses, from whom many of
us first learned that look of love and illumination. Ra-
chels weeping for your children are ye all, one day or
other, and they go away from you and grow beyond you,
and you must hide your tears and offer your bruised heart
at another and yet another cradle.
Nana pulled me nearer and I saw that in that careful
bundle a tiny red and wrinkled face was hidden : a face
immeasurably old, it seemed to me, yet very evidently
soft and helpless, a breakable, crushable thing that put
53
THE INHERITANCE
one instantly upon one's honour to protect and defend it.
"Kiss her little hand, precious; she weighs eight
pounds !" cried Nana jubilantly, yet in a sort of whisper
and thus it was that I was introduced to Chrissy !
CHAPTER VI
In Which I Take You to a Christening Party
IT is quite unreasonable, I know, but as a matter of
fact I don't remember ever questioning the likeli-
hood of Chrissy's name. And now as I write, the
years and the shadows of them roll back as the stage
curtains draw back and loop themselves at the side of
the scene, and I see myself, a solemn little fellow of
nearly seven, standing by the font in the little stone
church and staring with all my eyes at the Professor,
who held an unaccustomed prayer book close to his near-
sighted eyes and endeavoured feebly to settle his green
eye shade over his brow. This he could not do for the
reason that it was not present on this occasion, Nana
having removed it, just as he left the house, from its
perilous perch above his straw sailor hat. Close by him
stood Aunt Addie, who had readily accepted the office
of god-mother, sharing this function with the rector's
wife, a kind-hearted, almost totally deaf creature who
never made any impression on anybody beyond that of
always coming apart in back and having to be hooked up ;
I distinctly recall Aunt Addie's performing that helpful
duty for her as she stood smiling, with that peculiar
placid smile of the deaf, the sprawling baby in her arms.
Nana stood respectfully in the background with a watch-
ful eye on the Professor, whom she considered her special
charge ever since their first meeting, ready to arrest him
in case he should forget his whereabouts (and his why-
6 55
THE INHERITANCE
abouts, if I may coin the word) and leave before the con-
clusion of the ceremony. The Rev. Mr. Applegate was
a cheery, ruddy, plump little fellow, who had preached his
cheery, ruddy little sermons to a handful of the faithful
and baptized the few babies they added to his flock and
played whist with the president of the bank and dined
once a week with the owner of the Banksville Hardware
Works, for quarter of a century. His was not a popu-
lous nor a popular parish, and but for the disproportion-
ately generous gifts from these two or three wealthy
parishioners he would have been hard put to it to justify
its existence at all.
Aunt Addie who had in fifteen years of London
residence become almost completely Anglicised and had
honestly returned to her widowed brother from a sense
of duty only, for she preferred England to America to
the day of her death was an ardent supporter of the
Reverend Applegate, and spoke of and to him with a
deep respect which must have been very pleasing to the
little man. And as for Nana well, I verily believe that
to Nana and not at all to the subsequent legacies by
which St. Matthews' profited and the two new Southern
families that moved to South Warwick after the war,
was due the rehabilitation of the little church and its
gradual growth in importance. It is at present only a
mission chapel in what is called the "old part" of the
town : a gymnasium and a free bath and a reading room
and domestic science laboratory mark sufficiently the
status of the class to which it ministers, and a new St.
Matthews', twice as large, with a vested choir and a
famous boy soprano and stained-glass windows from
Tiffany, stands at the end of the long, crowded avenue
that leads to the old Vereker house, now a fresh-air re-
treat for city waifs. But in the 6o's only three of War-
56
I TAKE YOU TO A CHRISTENING
wick's "first families" embraced what Aunt Addie called
the Church, and the "decent poor bodies," in Nana's
phrase, had long fallen away from one of the oldest par-
ishes in the country when she valiantly mounted a ladder
and scrubbed its dull windows, broomed the carpet with
tea leaves, polished the old brasses and actually re-covered
the pew cushions, in what she called her odd bits of time.
I don't think she could have been six months in the town
before a baker's dozen of shame-faced deserters to the
eight or nine forms of "Dissent" that divided the spir-
itual allegiance of Warwick found themselves marshalled
into the rear pews of St. Matthews', and standing sooner
or later with their various offspring near the clumsy,
stained marble font, Aunt Addie and the amazed Mrs.
Applegate placidly renouncing the devil and all his works
in their innocent offsprings' various behalves.
Aunt Addie was firmly convinced that she had led the
prodigals thither and to the infant classes in catechism
which she found herself conducting later, just as the
wealthy Miss Fanny Banks undoubtedly supposed herself
the originator of the Christmas tree, and the almost
equally wealthy Mrs. Levi Bragg would have died at
the stake defending her responsibility for the afterward
famous quartette choir, which actually gave a concert
at Easter and made eighty dollars, to say nothing of a
notice in the New York paper. And when old Colonel
Rogers died from his Antietam bullet, finally (its devious
course through his anatomy was one of the horrid de-
lights of Warwick infancy) it is quite probable that Miss
Ellaline Rogers honestly believed the new-fashioned me-
morial pipe-organ to have been her own idea. At any
rate she paid the organist's salary and bought all the
music, and when Bert, nine or ten years later, had the
organ, and doubled the quartette and gave a full English
57
THE INHERITANCE
choral communion service so well that city summer vis-
itors filled the church and the offertory plate together,
she and Bert divided the honours between them. And
nobody dreamed that that good nurse of Dr. Caldwell's
who is so delightfully respectful, my dear, and knows
her place so well, had the remotest connection with the
Mass in D Flat. Nor that her matter-of-fact suggestion
that Master Bert should try his hand at the organ, to
oblige, in the absence of Miss Rogers' man, was the foun-
dation of the saving occupation that kept the poor, gifted
lad out of mischief for a whole year. If Nana her-
self had any idea of the connection she was far too dis-
creet a person to breathe it, and agreed quietly to all
the praises of the energetic ladies whose interest and gen-
erosity had done so much to raise St. Matthews' to its
proper place.
Well, we stood at the font (Nana had steadfastly re-
fused to stand as god-mother, though Mrs. Vereker had
requested her to, on the ground that her position was
not suitable to such an office, though grateful for the
honour, indeed, ma'am, and ever shall be), and Aunt
Addie, even while deprecating her attitude, felt secretly
relieved, any one could see.
"For as you can quite understand, Mrs. Applegate,"
she said to the rector's wife in the piercing tones required
by that lady's deafness, so that I, who was building
houses of bricks with Gary, at the time, in the adjacent
dining-room, heard her plainly, "it really would be a little
odd. Not even a foster mother, you see, as in Hughie's
case, and after all, extraordinary as Mrs. Vereker may
be, she was a St. Aubyn, you know, and it can't be got-
ten over. It would hardly be proper for a child's nurse,
no matter how good the child's own family may be, to
stand up for Major St. Aubyn's granddaughter."
58
I TAKE YOU TO A CHRISTENING
"I suppose not," said Mrs. Applegate.
"No. To say nothing of the Professor, who stands
very well, I am told, by my friends in London. I wrote
directly I found out about them, and Bishop Vereker was
his great-uncle. His father afterward went over to
Rome, I'm sorry to say. And yet with all that religion
in the family, he never has entered a church since he
was married ! Fancy it !"
"Dear me," said Mrs. Applegate, "they are certainly
very strange."
And they were strange. Even as a child of six I knew
that they were strange. When I went up to the Verekers'
with Nana to see how the lady was getting on, and was
ushered upstairs into the book-filled bedroom to confront
Mrs. Vereker nursing her infant with one hand, as it
were, and writing with the other, an abstracted stare on
her sweet, sallow face, a quill pen hovering over the
big, untidy inkstand, I realized that such was not the
custom of her sex in general. Even in that dingy London
court that was never mentioned between Nana and me
since we were quit of it, the busiest drudges devoted their
entire attention for the moment to this maternal function.
I had often seen them. Nor was she any more engrossed
with her own nourishment, which was invariably carried
to her desk on a tray; a large volume stood propped
before her as she ate, and oftener than not the food grew
cold and glazed while she turned the pages. During
whole days after Chrissy's arrival she read lying flat in
her bed, the younger mulattress kneeling beside her and
holding the heavy book at a proper angle for hours to-
gether without a word or movement.
The knowledge that beyond the wall sat the Professor
reading from his book propped in front of his tray af-
fected me strongly : I used often to creep from one room
59
THE INHERITANCE
to the other in order to peer at them as they sat there
image-like, utterly solitary, utterly content. The only
difference in their methods of life was that the Professor
took a regular constitutional between the barn and the
house once a day, irrespective of every form of weather
but heavy snow drifts, while his wife never was known
to leave her room except to superintend the clearing out
of the used books and the introduction of new into their
places. At the time of my entry into Warwick they filled
only the two living-floors: when we sold them, finally,
the attic and the cellar were packed with them.
She was generally supposed, in later years, by the few
who came to know her, to be excessively learned. I
never knew if she were or not. Certainly nothing in her
manner of conversation ever indicated it. The Doctor al-
ways insisted that she was a victim to bibliomania, and
was addicted to print precisely as any of her fellow
victims to drugs or alcohol. He told me years after-
wards that he doubted if she could live a week if she
should ever go blind.
The Professor was an Egyptologist, and usually sup-
posed by his readers and fellow students to spend most
of his time in close study of that country, which he had
never viewed from any nearer point than the British Mu-
seum. But I have been told that he possessed a singular
faculty for rehabilitating all that ancient life and pictur-
ing for his readers the most vivid conceptions of its vari-
ous ethnological, geographical and historical changes.
He certainly knew little enough of the country he had
adopted. He had come from New York directly to War-
wick, established himself, his books and his little house-
hold in the farmhouse left him by his uncle (who had
taken the property for a debt and never seen it) and so
60
I TAKE YOU TO A CHRISTENING
far as anybody knew, never left it until he followed Nana
meekly to his daughter's baptism.
"I think he knows the blessed lamb's not being prom-
ised for into any of that heathenry he's always mulling
over I give him that," Nana confided to me, "but more
than that much I'll warrant you, no!"
And to tell the truth I think the ritual of the Book of
the Dead, whose great bird-headed gods were one of the
terrors of my childhood, would have been vastly more
familiar to Professor Vereker than the service he was
now following.
The sun filtered through the painted glass presentment
of a most unconvincing Moses, engaged, apparently, in
a badly aimed attempt to bash the tribes out of existence
with the Tables of the Law, and shining into Chrissy's
eyes caused her to sneeze violently. Mrs. Applegate, who
was sensitive, as the deaf always are, to vibration, jumped
as the baby's convulsion startled her and threw herself
backward toward the Professor. He, startled in his turn
out of some Egyptian dream, caught his breath suddenly
and woke to his surroundings just as the little rector,
eying him somewhat sternly, said in his close-clipped,
busy little way:
"Name this child."
The Professor stared helplessly at him, then, at Nana,
but Nana, ordinarily ready for any emergency, was
twitching with impatience at the baby's sneeze, vexed be-
yond bearing almost, at Mrs. Applegate's fecklessness in
not standing out of the guilty ray of sunlight, and was
for the moment quite off her guard.
"Name this child!" Mr. Applegate repeated, more
crisply than ever, fixing his keen little grey eye upon the
Professor.
61
THE INHERITANCE
Professor Vereker straightened himself unconsciously
and stood like one of his own slim priests of Isis.
"Christopher Vane Vereker !" he pronounced, loud and
clear, with a sort of thrill of family pride, I make no
doubt, as the good old name rang out, and a dim sense
of all the honest Verekers planted for generations around
the Lincoln Fens, to whose numbers, depleted by centu-
ries of malaria from those same miasmatic Fens, he had
added a new recruit, a healthy suckling, a fresh reach
into a future dark as the interior of any of his pyramids.
Mrs. Applegate smiled, Aunt Addie, who had sneezed
sympathetically with the baby, and was still confused with
the indignity of the explosion, heard only the last two
names, and Nana, overcome with horror, had only time
to clear her throat before Mr. Applegate continued
briskly :
"Christopher Vane, I baptise thee in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. . . ."
The Professor was back in his dream again : so far as
he was concerned Mr. Applegate might as well have bap-
tised his daughter in the name of Ra and of Nu and of
the Sacred Nile, I am quite certain. The latter trinity
was certainly far more familiar to his mind than the
former.
What passed through Aunt Addie's scandalised mind
no one was ever able to discover, so involved did she in-
variably become when enlarging upon this theme. It is
probable that she was immediately engaged in schemes
for changing the poor child's sex to accord with a sacred
rite, for long years of intimacy with Aunt Addie have
accustomed me to the reading of her mental processes,
and this was quite along her usual lines of ratiocination.
As for Nana, she frankly admitted afterward that her
knees went together so that it took all she knew to keep
62
I TAKE YOU TO A CHRISTENING
them tip, and aside from the irreverence of interrupting
a church service and contradicting her rector, of which
course she had grave doubts as to the validity, under any
circumstances, she couldn't have done anything to save
her life, not if it had been ever so.
As for Chrissy, she didn't care at all, naturally, and
would have sneezed neither more nor less if she had been
baptized Rameses or Pharaoh Meneptah.
As for me, I considered Christopher Vane Vereker
to be a fine-sounding mouthful of a name, and felt that
I had never known the Professor to look so grand as
when he stood straight and shouted it out so loud.
Nana, for the only time in her life, so far as I know,
deserted a cause and fled incontinently from the church,
talking to herself and red as a turkey cock, and Aunt
Addie, disgusted with her pusillanimity and too scared
to better it, sailed angrily out after her, leaving the mulat-
tress, Diana, who stood meekly outside in the vestibule,
to bundle the outraged and recently endued Christian
home.
Afterwards, when it all came out, and while the little
rector was debating with Aunt Addie as to laying the
matter before his bishop and Nana was swimming in apol-
ogies and trying to take the whole tragedy on her broad,
accustomed shoulders, the Professor stopped all further
discussion by remarking quietly that he was well enough
satisfied with the name as it was, that he could not see
that this particular combination of vowels and consonants
was any the less desirable for being applied a little out
of its ordinary course, and that he preferred to hear no
more of it, as he could not possibly spare the time to upset
another morning by going to the church again. Nobody
ever learned Mrs. Vereker's opinion for the reason that
she never gave it, nor am I at all sure that her attention
63
THE INHERITANCE
was ever sufficiently caught by the affair to warrant her
forming any.
Nor do I ever expect to see the day when any name
known to the calendar shall sound to me so loving and
lovable, so friendly and honest, and all that there is of
womanly, as Chrissy's!
CHAPTER VII
In Which I Begin My Education
A DAY or two ago the Powers that Be in my house
gave warning that the study was to be turned
out, and I was requested, in those gentle tones
of forbearance that spell (to the initiated) instant sub-
mission and no quarter, to empty out my desk, and par-
ticularly those old drawers at the 'way back. Shrouded
in the dense gloom that must inevitably characterise all
such occasions (for what harm, I ask you, could be sup-
posed to lurk in those innocent drawers at the 'way
back?) I approached the task, and like many a devoted
martyr before me, reaped an unexpected reward, for
there tumbled out, thick with dust and creased to the
breaking point, a half score old manila envelopes, and
from them I drew out, as a woman draws out old gar-
ments scented with the attar of roses of half a lifetime,
such quaint old records of a childish past as I had sup-
posed long forgotten, beyond any power of yellowed pa-
pers and tarnished metal to recall.
And lo, it was not forgotten, nor vanished, nor dead,
but vivid and living with me, and touching beyond any
power of mine to bring before you. The years between
rolled back like the smoke of my pipe, that went out un-
heeded between my teeth, as I turned over those hints
and scraps of yesterday, and that foolish concession we
call Time flew out of the study window with the blue
smoke rings.
Monthly Report of Hughie Gordon, Scholarship, De-
65
THE INHERITANCE
portment and Morals, was written in a crabbed, pains-
taking hand on the outside of a thin and obviously home-
made pamphlet, basted neatly together out of thin, glazed
wrapping paper. It was signed Hetty Lavinia Parrott,
and as I read it I was six years old again, and trotting
along with Bert and Gary to old Mrs. Parrott's Private
School for Young Children of Both Sexes. There were
no kindergartens then, and no one had discovered the
inestimable value of modelling clay and twisted tissue
paper in the development of infancy. So we carried a
red-bound slate, a First Reader, conservatively covered
with chocolate-coloured muslin, and a substantial luncheon
basket with a fringed red napkin dribbling out below the
cover. These three articles were considered to occupy
quite sufficiently our hands, our brains and our stomachs,
and so far as I can remember this simple faith was quite
justified.
Old Mrs. Parrott ! I say old, for old she appeared to
us then ; I suppose she was no more middle aged than the
possession of two grown daughters would warrant. She
was plump and brown and altogether robin-like, with
kindly, twinkling eyes and a strong sense of order and
despatch : it never occurred to me to doubt for a moment
that she was called Parrott because of the cross-grained
pink-and-grey bird that swung in a (necessarily) strong
iron cage under a cherry tree in summer weather and in
the south window of the dining-room in winter. We
went to school in the dining-room, that always smelled
comfortingly of coffee and buttered rusk, and we began
the exercises of the day in the following manner.
"Bibles, Hughie!" Mrs. Parrott would chirrup to me,
and I would bring, two by two, puffing and blowing, for
they were very heavy, armfuls of large, yellow calf-bound
Bibles. In spite of their size (and they were like small
66
I BEGIN MY EDUCATION
dictionaries) their print was not particularly coarse, for
we had no fine India paper, limp-leaved, map-filled de
luxe Bibles in those days, and we bent over them and
traced the words with our ringers, painfully in poor
Gary's case, tearfully, in all our cases, with an absolute
lack of appreciation of what we were reading about.
After I had slammed the books down in front of each
of the half dozen or so students (and it is a triumph to
Mrs. Parrott's character and system that I was deeply
sensible of the honour of this position of Bible bringer,
though as a matter of fact it tired me and I often pinched
my finger between the table and Carroll Lee's Bible, which
was the biggest and heaviest) we opened them with a
vast deal of shuffling and swishing of leaves and any
amount of assistance from Mrs. Parrott, and intoned each
a verse of one of the Psalms, turn about.
"Lift-up-your-heads-O-ye-gates-and-the-King-of-glory-
shall-come-in."
"Very good, very good, Fanny. Now, Bert !"
"Who - is-this-King-of-glory? The-Lord-strong-and-
mish-ty-the-Lord "
("Mighty, Bert, mighty.")
"Mi-tey-the-Lord-mish-ty "
("Mighty!")
"Mi-tey-in-bat-tle?"
"Drop your voice, Bert. That is a full stop."
"Oh bat-tit !"
"There, there, Bert! More control, more control!
Now, Gary, dear, and remember not to read out the
'Selah'."
("I dare you to read it, Gary!")
"Hush, Bert, hush! Now, Gary! Don't be fright-
ened; there's a good boy! And take your thumb out.
And don't say 'Selah,' will you ?"
67
THE INHERITANCE
But poor Gary was frightened, and didn't take his
thumb out and did read "Selah" after all!
Here is a small printed paper, much folded, that turns
out to be a blotted piano score, copied in violet ink, with
the rests much too big in proportion for the eighths and
quarters. The Carnival of Venice is printed at the top,
and those four words alone seem positively to fill my
nostrils with a scent that surely was never compounded
in my study. But I sniff again and again, and actually
draw in breaths of Miss Susy Farwell's parlour, where
once a week I took my music lesson, sandwiched be-
tween Bert and Gary, who preceded and followed me
respectively. Miss Susy's parlour was small and dim and
full of all manner of things much more interesting than
the old square piano : her hallway smelled of seed cookies
and oilcloth, but the parlour had a vanilla bean in it, some-
where, and a stuffed pheasant, always called Walter by
us, for some reason I have forgotten, and Walter was
not what he had been, and was always in moulting sea-
son. There was a charming engraving of a little bare-
footed girl starting off for the beach with her pail and
shovel, called "Going to Work," and a "what-not" fitted
into the corner, with diminishing triangular shelves
loaded with shells and small, carved wooden animals and
the Lord's Prayer on ivory, very tiny, to be looked at
under a magnifying glass, and a bunch of wax flowers
under a glass bell, that added to the curious mixture of
odours the Carnival of Venice spells for me.
Miss Susy had knotted, wrinkled fingers, and the yel-
low, tinkling keys of her old piano (she called it a piano-
forte) clicked strangely when one pounded out the Car-
nival. The green shutters were always closely drawn,
and a sort of filtered, yellow light lay over everything
and left the corners dusky and mysterious. It seems to
68
I BEGIN MY EDUCATION
have been always very warm when I took my lessons,
for I recall Miss Susy as always in a loose, white sacque,
waving a palm leaf fan and wiping her brownish fore-
head. As always, in our trio, I did passably well and
gave comparatively little trouble, Bert did very well and
gave a great deal, and Gary sucked his thumb and cried
and had to be pacified with seed cakes. I was supposed
to practice half an hour a day on the Doctor's piano, and
as the half hour selected for me came directly after the
middle-day dinner, and I invariably played all the after-
noon there, it was the most natural thing in the world for
me to have dinner with them, three days out of four,
especially when the Doctor had set Nana on some nursing
case and there would be no one to look after me at our
cottage. As a matter of fact, there were weeks on end
when I lived there, and "Master Hughie's room" had
always been kept ready for me since our first visit.
When my London clothes wore out, Aunt Addie her-
self suggested getting mine made with the others, while
the woman was at it for a gnarly, bad-tempered little
tailoress still made boys' clothes at that date in South
Warwick and I well remember Nana's unconcealable
surprise when Miss Tucker sat down to the table with
us. She herself, at the Doctor's suggestion, ate in the
dining-room after we had finished, in order to establish
some kind of precedent to be followed by her other
patrons, for I do not believe that there was such a thing
as a servants' dining-room in the community. (Nana
still absentmindedly asked Aunt Addie, "and the corned
beef for the 'hall,' Miss Caldwell, I suppose?" in cater-
ing for us, though no human being but Aunt Addie knew
that she meant the servants' hall.) She was, as a mat-
ter of course, except in those establishments that "sent
up a tray," expected to eat with the family, but stead-
69
THE INHERITANCE
fastly refused to do this, and so the Doctor's plan was
evolved as a decent compromise.
"I've set the sempstress's place with mine, Miss Cald-
well," she announced, on the first day of Miss Tucker's
semi-annual visitation, and I can see the drop of her
honest jaw now at Aunt Addie's unrestrained horror.
"Gracious, Mrs. False, put her with the rest of us, or
she'll walk out of the door without opening her scis-
sors !" cried Aunt Addie. "She's proud as Lucifer, and
we'd never get her again she always eats with the
family!"
Nana never could grasp the curious social distinctions
of the States, and on this occasion, I remember, poured
out her feelings to me, as she tidied me for dinner.
"It's not as if she was one to make her call in the draw-
ing-room with the ladies, regular-like would I say a
word, then? But slinking in at the side entry, and her
bonnet and shawl on the pegs for your school clothes,
and her bundle under her arm ! How was I to know, I
ask you? And her own sister cashier at the draper's
my word, but I'm sorry for Miss Caldwell, and her used
to a sensible country! Let me know where I stand,
is all I ask. There, now, Master Hugh, you're all tidied,
and mind, now, none of that horrid ice in your water.
I'll not have your vitals chilled out of you. The Doctor'll
get his mutton underdone, for once, tell him from me,
if you're sitting next him. I cooked it myself. This
stewing good mutton to a dishclout is more than I can
bear."
Dear, dear, how long ago it was !
"It's only the Doctor's boys," people would call to each
other, as we raced through their "backyards," hooting
and screeching, for Rob and Hux were at the noisy age
and very healthy. Nana dreaded these trips, through
70
I BEGIN MY EDUCATION
the noon heats, and would always put up packets of
luncheon for us, urging us to lie in the shade and eat
slowly ; such delectable luncheon packets ! I can taste
her sandwiches now, of cold mutton, liberally sprinkled
with celery salt, for which condiment I had a passionate
preference, and certain little tarts or "turnovers," as
they were called, made of dried apples flavoured with
lemon peel and kept, moist and flaky, in a cool stone
crock. Hux was a bit of a gourmand, in his quiet, heavy
way, and most of his allowance went for root beer, sold
at a little notion and newspaper shop near us, a certain
kind of cough-candy flavoured with anise, to which he
was much addicted, and the nuts which I learned at that
period to call "English walnuts." These dainties he
would add to the luncheons, and there was a definite
though not codified understanding that we were not to
accept his hospitality too liberally. Whenever I dine at
his house now and enjoy his jellied consomme, his soft
crabs and his especial Burgundy (a trifle beyond a strictly
proportionate adjustment of the income of even the vice-
president of the bank, Mrs. Robert thinks) I recall with
a chuckle those picnic luncheons at Millpond swimming
hole, and I can't see that old Hux has changed very
much.
Which parent did they resemble? Certainly not the
Doctor, unless Rob's cool detachment came from him.
But Bert was not a bit like his father, and it is incon-
ceivable that a mother unable to impress herself on any-
body's memory could have given that poor, unhappy,
gifted fellow the brilliant capacities he was so little able
to balance. As for poor little Gary, he was like any other
naturally sweet-tempered child whom a chronic weak-
ness frets and disables. Had I the care of the boy now
I should know that I was treating that dread foe of fam-
6 71
THE INHERITANCE
ilies, infantile paralysis, and in the light of my present
experience should wonder that the poor little fellow
dragged his limping leg about for as many years as he
did. But in the late sixties we knew less of the treat-
ment of children than we know to-day. God sent them
and God took them, our patients said. I can't but feel
that those who scold so portentously because our present-
day parents seem inclined to doubt the first proposition,
forget that we have taught them to doubt equally the last,
thereby reducing enormously the infantile death rate !
So Gary had his "bad days" and his "good days," and
we dragged him in his little cart through the one and
walked slowly, to allow him to keep up, through the
other; and because he longed for the fresh air all the
time and lived in it all day, and because Nana super-
vised his food more or less and kept him as much as
she could on porridge and fresh eggs and vegetables, we
doubled, I believe now, his short span of life.
He even took his turn at the public school with us,
when, at about eight, I fancy, Mrs. Parrott's system
proved scarcely strenuous enough, and we three younger
ones followed Rob and Hux into old "Number Six,"
where Miss Emily Washburn, fat and friendly, but pos-
sessed of an almost superhuman knowledge of the human
heart, took us, our marbles, our smudgy slates and our
"McGuffey's Readers" in hand. In the light of *he
unspeakably filthy rags with which we sedulously cleaned
those grimy slates, applying them to our mouths when
the doubtful water went dry in our bottles (officially
employed to the exclusion of nature's method), I am in-
clined to suspect the entire validity of the germ theory.
Virchow and Pasteur would have lacked many of their
present students had those germs been quite so black as
they are painted nowadays !
72
I BEGIN MY EDUCATION
The public school (or schools, for there are at least
five of them now) was a very different affair in those
days. I doubt if Miss Emily Washburn had ever studied
psychology in any other textbooks than those provided
for her by her Maker, and I am certain that she knew
nothing of folk-dancing, brass pounding, nature study,
basketry or cabinet making; and yet, with all these dis-
advantages, Miss Emily, strange as it may seem, was
really a good teacher. True, she did not deal with the
miscellaneous mass of humanity that I survey when, in my
capacity of inspector, I sit solemnly on the platform of
the new "Number Six." There was not an Italian child
in our school, not a Pole, not a Slav nor Hungarian, nor
even, I believe, a Russian Jew. Such few of the Chosen
People as were among us had scarcely a trace of foreign
accent, and used the same idioms as we did. The curi-
ous jargon which began to be exploited as theirs, on the
stage in the eighties and in fiction a decade later, was
unheard of among us, and Abey Fox was only noticeable
for being cleverer than the rest of us, and for the dis-
qualifying fact that his father owned a liquor saloon.
Miss Emily, who was a strict Methodist and who failed
to teach folk-dancing for quite other reasons than her
ignorance of the art, had persuaded Abey into "signing
the pledge" early in his career, and had high hopes of his
razing the saloon to the ground at such time as he should
succeed to the paternal property. She often talked to
us of the great day when all that beer and rum and wine
should pour down the gutters of Main street, and we
looked forward to it eagerly ; I am not sure that I must
not date a certain creeping, insidious maturity to my first
suspicions that Abey would never do this, and that Fox
and Son would probably replace the gilded A. Fox that
now adorned the entrance to Miss Emily's pet Inferno.
73
THE INHERITANCE
No, those of us who were not of English stock were
of Irish, in those days, with here and there a friendly
blond German; and a paternal government was not
obliged to wash us, nor to examine our teeth and our
hair, nor to teach us to tell the truth and tell it in the
Queen's English, nor to barricade our teachers from the
onslaughts of infuriated South European maternity, while
we were being vaccinated by the board of health. All
these things were attended to at home, and Miss Emily
came to tea with our mothers and boarded with our aunts
and was assistant superintendent of the Sunday school
under our uncles.
Heavens, how we spelled and parsed and spelled again !
By the time we had parsed through "The curfew tolls
the knell of parting day," under Miss Etta Marvin, as
tall and acid as Miss Etnily had been plump and jolly,
and come to Milton's Paradise Lost, as we always called
it, under Miss Lida Pierson, who had studied at Mt.
Holyoke Seminary and knew Latin, I believe we could
have spelled anything in reason in the English lan-
guage. Bert was a famous speller, and on Fri-
day afternoons, when we chose sides and had
matches, I was proud to stand beside him and win
the day with him against Fanny Pratt and her embattled
Amazons.
We must have been about twelve, then, and Rob and
Hux two or three years older. They were a dictatorial,
managing pair, and didn't get on very well with their
school equals, so they were better satisfied to lead a troop
of younger lads, whom they drilled and disciplined in
comparative peace. This confined them to our immedi-
ate neighbourhood, which was sparsely settled then, and
resulted in a somewhat curious social situation, which
would have continued indefinitely, I am convinced, had
74
I BEGIN MY EDUCATION
it not been suddenly and completely altered, in the fol-
lowing manner.
On the evening of my twelfth birthday, which had been
marked by a picnic and swim at the beach, to which Nana
had brought little Chrissy Vereker, as she had never seen
salt water, and Bert and I had fought for the pleasure of
teaching her to swim, so that his nose bled all over my
bathing suit on this evening I was led by Nana, both of
us in our best and rather stiff, accordingly, to the Doc-
tor's office, by previous appointment, evidently, as he was
alone, free, and distinctly interested.
"Well, Mrs. False?" he said, motioning Nana to a
chair, which to my surprise she took, for she never sat
before him.
"Yes, sir, thank you, and I will, with all respect, for
I'm a kttle worried in my mind, Doctor, and that always
goes to my legs, if I may say oO," she began. "It's about
Master Hugh I'm come, Doctor."
"What ? No mischief, surely ?" and he looked search-
ingly at me. If any one had told him that he definitely
regarded himself as my guardian by now, and would
have held himself responsible for any serious breach of
mine as much as in the case of any of the boys, he might
have denied it, but I am not sure it would not have been
true.
"Oh, no, sir," with a thankful pat for me, "Hughie's
always been all I could wish, Doctor. It's not that. But
I'm not entirely satisfied with his schooling, sir, and
that's the truth."
"No? Why, what's wrong? Reports bad?"
"Oh, no, sir. But Master Hugh is twelve years of age,
Dr. Caldwell, and I can't think it's right as he should be
under the women so much. It don't seem natural to me,
somehow. Surely, when he goes to the university, it
75
THE INHERITANCE
won't be women, Doctor? And oughtn't he to be doing
Latin and Greek? He seems to study no languages at
all, and all will be to do when he's older."
"I see," said the Doctor, and looked at me curiously,
then at her.
"You want him brought up like the English lads, then?"
"I'm not saying that, Doctor, but it don't seem right
to me that a young gentleman should know no more than
the butcher's girls that he's at school with !"
"Come, come, Mrs. False, this is a free country you've
come to, you know ! We're each as good as his neigh-
bour!"
"Yes, sir, but but there's other schools to be had,
aren't there, Doctor?"
"Why, certainly. You don't think that what's good
enough for my boys is good enough for Hugh, then ?"
"I don't say that, sir."
"Perhaps you think the public school is not good
enough for the boys ?"
Nana creased her black skirt silently for a moment,
then spoke suddenly:
"Doctor, who are Master Rob's and Master Huxley's
friends?"
"Who? Who?" he repeated, staring at her. "Why,
the boys of the neighbourhood, I suppose. Aren't they
decent, respectable lads enough ? I don't know them by
name . . . I'm very busy ..."
"I know it, Dr. Caldwell, and that's why I make bold
to speak, for, of course, Miss Caldwell is poorly, and
can't be expected to know such things. But it don't seem
right to me that the young gentlemen should never be
amongst those of their own age, sir, and always bullying
the sort of little fellows that's around here. I've naught
against the O'Shaugnessy woman nor the fishmonger's
76
I BEGIN MY EDUCATION
twins near the pond nor the livery stable children over
beyond our pasture, Doctor, but I can't see that it's so
free-and-equal, when Master Rob lords it over them
so. They're gentlefolk, sir, and the others are not, put it
how you may, and I don't like the words Master Bert
picks up from those livery stable boys, and neither would
you, sir. And unless you disapprove, Doctor, I'd wish to
put Master Hugh to the academy on the hill."
"Dr. Crane's, you mean?"
"Yes, sir."
"Hugh can afford it, I suppose?"
"Oh, yes, sir."
"Use your own judgment, of course," he said shortly,
and whirled about in his chair, and we sat in silence, un-
comfortably.
Presently, however, he whirled back again and held out
his hand.
"You're right, perhaps, Mrs. False," he said in his old
voice, "and I suppose I've been negligent. If their
mother had lived. . . ."
"I know, sir, I know!"
"I haven't a moment, myself, and so long as they were
healthy and honest. . . ."
"Yes, sir, of course. And I know 'tis different over
here. But there's forty boys in the academy, Doctor,
and and "
"And they're Americans, too, you mean, and I can
afford it?"
"Yes, sir, just so, sir, if you thought best."
"Of course, you know, I don't admit that our public
schools "
"No, indeed, sir, and when they were younger it was
different, of course. But for young lads of fifteen to be
under a woman I can't make it seem right, Doctor."
77
THE INHERITANCE
"I always meant to have some one, perhaps Dr. Apple-
gate, get the older boys ready for college I didn't realize
they were growing so . . ." he said, half to himself.
"No, sir, I thought not. And Master Bert not that
he's not good at heart, but he'll be needing a strong
hand, Doctor, you'll find, before long. That Miss Pier-
son's no match for him, I can tell you. He's by far
too much around the stable, sir, for a young gentleman,
and I doubt you know the words he'll let out when he's
angry. It's not to be expected that Miss Caldwell "
"No, no, of course not. I'll see Dr. Crane to-morrow."
"Thank you, sir. And if clothes are to be provided
any ways different, Doctor "
"Oh, Miss Caldwell will get them all together," he said
carelessly. "How do you feel about this, Hugh ? Should
you like to desert Bert and Cary and go off to be an
aristocrat on the hill, eh?"
"Oh, no, please not !" I cried ; "send them, too, Doctor,
and then we can play ball ! Our nine sent a challenge to
the Crane middle-size fellows, and they said they didn't
play with Publics."
"Poppy-cock !" he exploded furiously, but he reddened,
and we saw it.
He called on Dr. Crane the next afternoon, and we,
in our best and quite astounded at the suddenness of all
this, went too, Cary and I with him in the stanhope,
and the other three driven by Thomas and the pair in
the surrey. As we all got out, we had the satisfaction of
hearing envious comments on the parts of the proud
wearers of the uniform of the Crane Academy ball nine,
and knew they were deserved, for whatever might be Dr.
Caldwell's laxities of establishment, they were not in the
matter of horse flesh.
Dr. Crane was delighted to see us, and said so frankly.
78
I BEGIN MY EDUCATION
"A fine showing, Caldwell, a fine showing!" he said
warmly. "I have long felt that you owed me these boys,
you know !"
And we knew that this pleased the Doctor.
A long consultation between Aunt Addie and Nana,
who had nursed in many houses on the hill, filled the
morning that we spent in getting our books from the
desks that already seemed less desirable to us, and the
next day we went in a body to New York and were
fitted out, top to toe, with the approved wardrobe of
Crane's Academy, Rob and Hux in their first long
trousers. We dined at a restaurant famous for its sea
food and ate great dishes of French ice cream, and Aunt
Addie, who was delighted with the change she had long
wanted to make and never been able to achieve, gave us
each a five dollar bill for a commemorative present. We
spent it, I recall, most characteristically: Rob reserving
all but the price of a bat and ball for his bank, Hux suc-
cumbing to crystallized ginger, chocolat menier and a
book of Scotch ballads, Bert going to the theatre by him-
self, Cary undecided as to his purchases and fractious
from the uncertainty, I wishing to take Nana to Eden
Musee, so as to remind her of Madame Tussaud's wax-
works in London, which she had often described to
me.
When we marshalled, defiant in our new clothes, in
Dr. Crane's library, and he brought in assorted boys to
meet us, we were not surprised to hear ourselves de-
scribed as "Dr. Caldwell's five boys, young gentlemen,
whom I am sure you will be delighted to welcome among
you. Robert, Huxley, Albert, Cary and Hugh Caldwell.
Shake hands, boys."
"I'm I'm Hugh Gordon, sir," I faltered, horrified at
such prominence among so many strangers.
79
THE INHERITANCE
"Ah ! I had understood that you were one of the Doc-
tor's household," said Dr. Crane doubtfully.
"He is. He lives with us mostly," Hux explained
bluntly.
"He's English, really," Bert added ; "father's his
"Oh, I see; your father is his guardian. Ah, yes, I
understood some time ago that Miss Adeline Caldwell
was interested . . . ah, yes," the doctor boomed cheer-
fully on. "Yes, yes. Well, we are all brothers together
here, young gentlemen," and we shook hands sheepishly
and went out to the morning recess.
The day after we had solemnly burned all our school-
books used in any other institution (a sacred rite peculiar
to Crane Academy; the magnificent and unusual blaze
resulting from some thirty volumes gave us a fine start-
off!) and installed each our new set in our private, var-
nished, hinged-top desks such a contrast to the nicked,
worn, double-seated affairs of the "Public," we were as
far in spirit from the dingy old brick building on West
Main Street as the very baseball captain himself, who
had been at Crane's since he was eight.
What with Rob's and Huxley's long trousers and the
awe-inspiring school caps of us little ones, we seemed,
undoubtedly, to the fish-monger's twins, et aL, like beings
ravished away into another sphere, and we literally never
played with them again, to the best of my memory.
When I recall that up to this time we had literally no
intimate acquaintance among what may fairly be called
our own class in South Warwick (though the Doctor was
known everywhere and Aunt Addie made and received
many languid, yearly calls of ceremony), and when I add
that Rob married the sister of an intimate classmate at
Crane's, that Hux went into the bank through the father
of his best friend there, that Bert was at one time beyond
80
I BEGIN MY EDUCATION
a doubt the most popular young man of his age in the
town, on the hill and off, and that my whole life was
greatly shaped by my having been with them there you
won't wonder that I consider Nana's conversation with
the Doctor that evening to have been more than common
interesting !
CHAPTER VIII
In Which You May Renew Your Acquaintance
with Chrissy
WHEN Chrissy (as she often did, in later life, I
fear) shocked the ladies of South Warwick, I
am told they would look meaningly at one an-
other and say, "But what could you expect, my dear,
brought up as she was ?"
As a matter of fact, Chrissy never was "brought" up ;
she came up of her own accord. There was no one to
"bring" her, to begin with. Certainly no human being
in his or her senses could have supposed Mrs. Vereker
capable of bringing anybody or anything up or down.
The Professor, indeed, became obsessed from time to time
by various educational nightmares, which Nana, who
made a point of dropping in on that curious household at
more or less regular intervals, described with various
degrees of horror to Aunt Addie.
The first two years of the child's life were passed in
a large clothes hamper. She was a big, strong infant,
Nana says, as placid and healthy as if she had derived
her sustenance from what Mr. Micawber would have
called the maternal font of an active milkmaid, braced
with air and dew and hearty labour in the open. "By con-
trary," as Nana used to say, "that Mrs. Vereker never
moves from one fortnight to the next, and as for the
messes those yellow women stew up for her, how they
ever made Christian milk for ten months is more than I
or any other sensible body can see !"
82
YOU RENEW ACQUAINTANCE
It was at Nana's suggestion that the clothes hamper
was procured, and for a year the baby lay cooing there,
dragged into the shade or the sun, as the season de-
manded, by the younger mulatto woman, who bathed and
dressed her. The marvel of her tiny wardrobe I
myself remember, for Nana never tired of showing it
to me, in default of any worthier admirer, during
the weeks that she stayed with the Verekers at Chrissy's
advent.
"See, Iambic, see that little barrow coat," she would
murmur in awed tones, "and look at the sheaves of wheat
stand up on the flannel it's a crime to use them so com-
mon, they're fit for a royal princess !"
I gazed with interest, aware only that the filmy white
stuff that wrapped the baby was far thinner and more
fragile than the material of which my own clothes were
composed, that each little garment was frosted and flow-
ered and frescoed with fine needlework in the most
charming and interesting designs I called them "pic-
tures on the frocks," and sometimes asked to see any
fresh ones that might be forthcoming. There was one
that particularly pleased me, of convolvulus and
feathery ferns, each frond distinct and like some lovely,
delicate bas-relief, and it was in this, at my request, that
the baby was christened.
"They're all from the West Indies, lovey, where the
blacks are and the sugar canes and such," Nana in-
formed me. "There's no such work done in these parts,
I'll warrant you."
Aunt Addie and Mrs. Applegate hung enraptured over
the lacy things and took endless patterns of them, and as
fast as they were outgrown Nana wrapped them carefully
in dark blue tissue paper, sprinkled bits of white wax
amongst them, "against they yellow, with lying idle," and
83
THE INHERITANCE
put them away with twists of lavender from her own gar-
den in a carved cedar chest from which she contemptu-
ously turned out the inevitable volumes.
It lasted, this royal layette, for just a year, and for
just a year, too, the clothes hamper proved sufficient for
Chrissy's growing bulk, but when she deliberately upset
it one day and adventured forth on hands and knees, to
be found crawling in the road by the scandalized butcher,
even Diana felt that something must be done, and ap-
proached the Professor on the subject. He gave the mat-
ter prolonged consideration, then suggested that a larger
hamper be ordered from the village. This being done,
and the answer forthcoming that hampers "didn't come
any larger," the Professor cogitated still more pro-
foundly, then caused a carpenter to be summoned. This
worthy, asked if he could make a basket similar in all
proportions to the one before him, but larger, agreed
that he could manage the frame, and the gypsies over by
the pond could doubtless, if it were made worth their
while, plait the basket. Orders were accordingly given
to this effect, and when Nana and I came on our next
visit we beheld the surprised and baffled infant literally
roaming about in a mammoth contrivance which had the
curious effect of making all other furniture seem out
of proportion, whereat we stood rooted to the ground
with amazement.
"Bless the man !" Nana cried, on hearing the history of
this prodigious basket, "but why did it have to be just
like the other, then ? A great box would have answered,
padded thorough, and far less trouble."
"I supposed from your insistence on the first, that the
shape and material were best suited to the child's needs
at this period," the Professor explained.
"But surely, sir," Nana ventured respectfully, "you
84
YOU RENEW ACQUAINTANCE
could see that there's naught in a basket, to say basket,
that can help the child."
The Professor waved his hand vaguely.
"These matters are hardly within my province," he
said. "I trust you do not regard the hamper as harmful
in any way ?"
"Oh, no, no, sir," she assured him, "not the least. And
very generous in you, I'm sure, for it must have been a
heavy expense. You meant well, I'm sure, sir!"
The Professor was gratified and returned to ancient
Egypt with a sigh of relief.
I saw Chrissy only once when she was three : she was
staggering about, leaning on a huge bloodhound puppy,
the gift of an English major, I learned, who had jour-
neyed up from Bermuda, where he was stationed, to visit
her mother. He had but an hour or so to spare, and
Nana, learning of his impending arrival, by some mys-
terious wireless telegraphy beside which Signor Marconi's
invention is but a slow and mushroom affair, had bustled
over to see if she could not be helpful in preparing some
sort of conventional meal, "for the poor bodies have
eaten messes off trays so long, and the dining-room full of
books and all," quoth Nana.
But when we got there we saw that all our sympathy
was wasted. There in the shade of a great sugar maple
on the lawn at the east side of the old house, we saw a
white-spread table glittering with silver and quaint, thick
cut-glass dishes, a large epergne in the centre filled with
fragrant, dewy pond-lilies. I saw dark liquids in pot-
bellied decanters and squat glass dishes with ginger in
syrup and dried fruits heaped on a basket-work silver
platter. There were little groups of slender, small glasses
at each of the three plates, an arrangement I had never
seen before, and on a sort of tray on legs, nuts,
85
THE INHERITANCE
sweet biscuits, ripe peaches and a tinier decanter waited.
We entered modestly from the back, and found the
silent, yellow cook in a most unwonted bustle, her stove
overflowing, her languor and sulks all gone. Diana, we
learned, was dressing her mistress, and was not required
to wait at table, as the Major's body-servant would attend
to that.
Nana, frankly curious, and excited in spite of herself,
inspected the courses as they went out, and I poked an
inquiring nose toward each savoury dish as Diana handed
it to the stiff but appreciative orderly : chilled cantaloupes
(muskmelons, we boys called them) ; a rjch broth of
clams, with nutmeg atop; a massive lobster in a nest of
shredded cabbage and lettuces ; quarters of young chicken
cased in batter and smothered in mushrooms (War-
wickians at that period regarded this vegetable growth as
but doubtfully wholesome) and a pyramid of tinted jellies,
quivering and odorous. Major Protheroe, bronzed and
spare, sat at one side of the polished mahogany table,
the Professor, positively distinguished in a yellowish linen
suit, with a new necktie and polished shoes, sat opposite,
and between them a lady whom I did not at first recog-
nise laughed and chatted pleasantly.
"A body'd never know her," Nana whispered, and then
I realized that it was Mrs. Vereker. She had on a worked
muslin frock and a pale blue sash with long floating ends
about her waist; her dark shadowy hair was rolled out
on each side of her face and drawn high on her head with
a big, carved ivory comb behind. About her neck a deep
red carbuncle hung on a carved gold chain, and she had
earrings of the same in her small ears. There was not
a book nor review nor so much as a pamphlet anywhere
about, and her vivacity and animation were surprising.
Chrissy, leaning over the deep-jowled hound's neck, tod-
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died about the grass, and with her, too, miracles had been
achieved. Her hair, at that time light, had been coaxed
into curls, and a rose-coloured band tied among them;
"the yellow woman ran up that little frock out of an
old petticoat of madam's," Nana muttered, "and I took
note of the pink sash and the embroidered socks in a
drawer once."
Irresistibly fascinated, I hung about the group; the
charming al fresco effect of it (so unusual, in fact, so
unknown in Warwick) was like a stage scene to me. Not
so, however, to Nana. She, too, gravitated towards the
picture unconsciously.
"For all the world like gentlefolk taking their tea at
home," she said softly.
"How are you, laddie?" the Major inquired kindly, sip-
ping his coffee luxuriously.
"Come here, Hughie," Mrs. Vereker called, "this is
little Hugh, Major, a protege of the good doctor I was
telling you about. A little English boy."
"English? What's he here for?" asked the Major
bluntly.
"Why er why is he, Christopher ?" she said, the ear-
rings swaying as she turned ; "I never knew exactly, did
I ? Some inheritance business I suppose under a will,
or something of that sort wasn't that the idea we got
from Miss Caldwell ? His nurse is here, I think . . ."
But Nana had slipped back behind the cedar shrubbery,
and I had no idea what I was here for, so I couldn't
help.
"Undoubtedly, undoubtedly," the Professor agreed
wisely, and the Major added :
"Oh, of course, if it's property ,. . . " and everybody
seemed satisfied.
I was in the last of my London clothes, a sailor suit of
7 8 7
THE INHERITANCE
white drilling, too small for me, but treasured by Nana
because of the intense midsummer heats, and as Chrissy
and I hung over the patient puppy and a little breeze
scattered the scent of the pond lilies, the Major glanced
contentedly over the scene a natural enough one to him
and sighed.
"It's quite like being at home, Vereker, isn't it?" he
said ; "they told me I should find America so different."
"Oh, no," said the Professor, "dear me, no. Very
much the same, I should say."
"Why should it be different?" Mrs. Vereker queried
innocently. I heard a gasp behind the cedar shrubbery,
and I knew now why Nana lost control of herself to that
extent: a scene and people more unlike the South
Warwick of that day would have been difficult to find
in that vicinity. Not a person there but the Major was
in his or her usual course, nothing that they did or said
seemed real or possible to any of the spectators. As to
the Verekers, who can tell which was their real life
this hasty scene, set, staged and (it seemed to Chrissy and
me) acted for a few hours, or that pale, solitary existence
to which they returned, directly he left, as easily as they
had left it! Chrissy remembers the rose-coloured sash
and fillet well, and the sugared wine-and-water and nuts
and candied ginger we were fed by the indulgent Major,
who was, like many bachelors, devoted to children.
"Are there many balls about here, now ?" he asked idly ;
"do you remember how we danced till morning on the
old JEtnaf"
This could not but catch my ear, for I knew from Mrs.
Parrott that there were abandoned parents on the hill
who sent their children to dancing masters precisely in
order to set them on this broad road leading to destruc-
tion. But I connected the diversion with childhood ex-
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clusively, and the idea of elderly ladies (as Mrs. Vereker
appeared to me to be) as having been at any time in the
memory of man engaged in such performances seemed
fantastic to a degree.
Much later, when I saw a picture of her in ball costume
with a wreath of gardenias on her dark head and a
bracelet (it had a lock of the Major's hair in it) on her
arm, I was able to realize that she was but five and
twenty at the time and consequently not more than thirty,
at most, when the Major recalled those nights on the deck'
of the old jEtna.
"Are there many balls, Christopher?" she asked indif-
ferently, and the Professor looked vague and said po-
litely :
"My interests, Eugenie, are not such as to keep me au
courant with the local pleasures of that sort, but I have
no doubt that there are the usual number!"
"Humph !" breathed Nana.
"Much hunting?" the Major queried negligently; "it
looked good hunting country from the coach."
At this point I hastened to assist the conversation.
"They hunted a fox up on Bragg's Hill," I piped up;
"some big boys shot him."
"Pooh, pooh !" the Major chided ; "s-sh, s-sh, my man !
Foxes aren't shot, you know ! Mustn't go wrong there."
"But this fox " I went on instructively, and ceased
abruptly, for I caught Nana's eye, glowering from the
shrubbery.
"Speaking of inheritance, and property, and that sort
of thing," the Major said, jerkily, as he always spoke,
"Stacey's got the title, you know."
"Really?" Mrs. Vereker cried, "dear Major Stacey!
When?"
"Brother chucked off his mare," said the Major, "all
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girls in that family, you know. Three years, nearly. But
he put in a steward and sticks by the service. Says he
won't leave these ten years."
"That's like him," said Mrs. Vereker, softly, "did he
stay in India?"
It may seem unlikely to you that a child of my age
should have noted so clearly the difference between these
people and the other citizens on whose daily lives my little
life impinged, but I did note it. The desultory talk that
went on for an hour, so much more abrupt than ours,
apparently, and taking so much for granted that Ameri-
cans would have been busily explaining to one another;
the infinitely wider field of conversation sans argument,
sans lecturing, skipping from India to Bermuda; from
the Emperor (sickening even then, and casting the
shadow of Sedan before him, though the Major knew it
not) to the hunting field ; from the frightful cost of trans-
portation in the States as compared with the parcels post,
to the Prince Consort and all in such short words, such
pregnant pauses !
When Nana, fascinated with the pleasant English
sing-song voice, drew nearer and nearer, the easy, kindly
way in which the Major nodded to her, spoke a good
word for my health and manners, supposed she missed
London, and then ceased to notice her, impressed me
greatly. It had taken South Warwick a long time to ac-
custom itself to Nana; anyone who combined complete
independence with what she called "knowing her place"
puzzled the greater number of her employers and made
them a little stiff and conscious with her. She "expected
nothing," as the ladies said, and yet she was so obviously
superior to the Celtic invasion, who "expected a great
deal," as to make them a little uncertain of her exact
place in the social scale.
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Well, the red rays of the big sun sank lower and lower
and turned the grass to emerald, and the amber liquor in
the Major's tiny glass grew prismatic and the earrings
seemed to stain Mrs. Vereker's creamy cheek, in the glow.
Curiously enough, though I never saw her again in any-
thing like such attractive and becoming dress (nor did any
one) it is like that I remember her. No one else that I
ever heard of ever came to visit her, and Chrissy's meta-
morphosed frock was never again assumed. When next
I saw her playing with the bloodhound her costume was
so different as to warrant a detailed description.
It appears that the Professor, on this memorable after-
noon, being as nearly recalled to the visible world as was
ever possible in his case, turned his eyes on his daughter
and observed that she stumbled frequently. This, though
partly due to her youth, was undoubtedly to a certain ex-
tent to be explained by her rose-coloured sash, which was
bound tightly just below her knees, thereby rendering
her progress toward any desired point extremely slow and
uncertain.
"The child seems to be trammelled," he said critically,
and Nana, thriftily tying the silver up in faded canton-
flannel bags, spoke soothingly to him, as was her wont.
"That's true, sir," she admitted, "but then, 'tis a girl,
you see, sir, and she must expect it."
"Why?" asked the Professor laconically.
' 'Why' ?" Nana repeated patiently, "why, because, sir,
she must be used to it some time, mustn't she, sir ?"
"There are women there have been women," the Pro-
fessor continued dreamily, "whose garments have not
confined their bodies in the slightest degree."
"But not Christians, sir !" Nana suggested firmly.
"Ah! perhaps not, perhaps not," he agreed, "but that
does not prevent the fact that the freedom must be ex-
THE INHERITANCE
tremely desirable, especially in the growing child. The
early attempts at locomotion would seem to be sufficiently
complicated without adding to the difficulty, in the mat-
ter of costume. I will consider the matter more fully."
"Of course, the sash could be tied higher up, sir,"
Nana ventured, but he waved her off.
"You are like Hamlet, Christopher, you mean to reform
it altogether, don't you?" said Mrs. Vereker, laughing,
and he gave her a sweet and wonderfully human smile
even I felt it. But what he intended to do nobody so
much as dreamed.
On his next constitutional to the barn and back, he
drew, Diana told Nana, strange figures in a sand bank
behind the cowhouse, and finally requested a large sheet
of wrapping paper on which he sketched an uncanny
pattern I say uncanny, because, simply, it appeared so to
the scandalized few permitted to see it. Huxley's little
grandchildren (Hux married early, and his sons followed
his eminently successful example) wear precisely the
same garments to-day and call them "overalls." I have
seen many small maidens in them, for that matter, pret-
tily pink-and-blue. But none of us had seen them then,
and as, at the Professor's request, they were made up out
of strong material resembling bedticking, as the long legs
and arms were uncompromisingly unadorned, as, finally
and unpardonably, they indicated with anatomical accu-
racy the fact that Miss Vereker was possessed of two
legs, they were from the Warwickian point of view
shockingly indecent. For three or four years Chrissy
wore them, and Diana enlarged the pattern as fresh air,
exercise and food enlarged Chrissy. Her hair was soon
cut short by the mulattress, too, who did not care for chil-
dren and took every means to make her charge as little
troublesome as possible. The Professor, pleased with
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the success of this, his first sartorial venture, bent his
mind upon the question of foot gear, as Chrissy detested
shoes and stockings but cut her little feet on the rough
stones and briers of the old pastures where she played.
A shoemaker was summoned and given a drawing of a
strange affair with a strong sole and a top consisting only
of two straps and buckles.
"I suppose," said the Professor, "it would not be im-
possible to make a pair of these ?"
"Nothin's impossible, if you've got the leather," said
the shoemaker stolidly, "though it looks pretty queer, and
that's a fact. I guess the little one will be the first that
ever wore 'em."
"Except for a negligible nation or two, yes," said the
Professor gravely.
"A nation ?" asked the cobbler doubtfully.
"The Greeks, sir," the Professor assured him politely.
"Oh, well, they don't live nowheres about here, I
guess," the man of leather commented pityingly, and to
this the Professor agreed with a sigh.
That cobbler's son, then a bright boy of twelve or so,
followed his father's trade, for a wonder, and has often
told me how, sitting in the modern office in his great
factory, full of telephones and typewriters and filing sys-
tems and electric bells, the remembrance flashed across
him, one busy morning, apropos of some customer's com-
plaints that the leather shoes seemed so heavy for sum-
mer, of the curious contrivances his father had made for
the crazy English gentleman on the Bragg's Hill road,
long ago, and he sent for a designer or two and a patent
lawyer and an illustrator and an advertising agent, and,
shortly after, flooded the world with the famous barefoot
sandal for children.
But Professor Vereker was, long before that time, in
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THE INHERITANCE
the bosom of Isis (or wherever it is that good Egyptolo-
gists go) and never knew to what extent his paternal
inspiration was justified.
I wished he could have been with me the day I motored
among the New Hampshire hills in the great screaming
buff-coloured Panhard in which a wealthy friend of mine
stakes our lives when he wishes to gratify us. He is not
only very wealthy but curiously humble to any of us
and this humility and the reason for it is so twisted in
with one of the saddest parts of my life that, much as I
admire his essentially fine nature, to be with him leaves
me in a confusion of regret, remorse and respect too
painful to be often undergone. I must tell more of him
in a proper place.
On the occasion I have in mind, however, he stopped
with something as nearly related to a jerk as he admits
the buff-coloured terror is capable of perpetrating, and
pointed to a neat little vine-draped cottage in an emerald
plot of turf, set back from the road.
"See that?" he queried.
"Do you mean the place, or the old negro on the
porch ?" I asked, in my turn.
"Both, doctor," he answered.
"After I had cleaned up a pretty good pile oh, say
ten years ago, I was coming through here, to see how the
little fire-engine affair I'd given the village was working
you know I lived here when I was a boy, once, for a
little while. Well, my car broke down and I stopped here
for repairs at the blacksmith's yonder, and stepped in
here for a drink of water. Nothing but water for me,
since oh, well, you know."
I did know, and I winced. Oh, Bert, Bert, why need
it have happened?
"Well," he went on hastily, his eyes averted, "there
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was an old darkey woman sitting on that porch, sewing,
and she seemed sort of superior, somehow, and very soft
spoken, and offered me some red flowers I admired.
'They look like the red stuff that grew in a place I used
to live in,' says I.
" 'Where was that, sir?' she says.
" 'South Warwick/ says I.
" 'For the Lord's sake, sir,' she cried out, getting up
suddenly, 'I lived there twenty-one years! Might I ask
your name?'
"Of course she didn't know it when she heard it I
was only there a little while, you know but you can bet
I found out about her pretty quick. It seems she
used to be a servant in some house there I couldn't
get the name at all, after all. But whenever I'm
up this way I look her up. Anybody from that town,
you know . . .
"I offered her some little present or other, but she
wouldn't touch it. She got me out some tea and some
ginger preserves my, they were great, those preserves !
and a young darkey woman living with her told me
they were very comfortable indeed; the old woman had
made a neat little nest-egg selling those calico overalls
the kids wear now, you know. It seems the old woman
invented 'em herself, and sent 'em all over the country
long before the big stores took 'em up. So they'd saved
enough to get along, though their orders were smaller
now. Funny thing, she told me, they were really thought
up by a man, a writing chap, that was her employer for
all those twenty-one years."
"Was the name Vereker ?" I cried, and he stared.
"That's it Vereker! Why of course!"
I made him turn back, and we went up to
the clean little kitchen. I doubt if I should have known
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THE INHERITANCE
her, she was so withered and darkened, but when I
asked :
"Is this you, Diana ?" a look of comprehension dawned
in her failing eyes, and she staggered up and dropped a
curtsey.
"It's Master Hugh, Diana, the Professor's friend and
Miss Chrissy's, don't you remember? That lived in
South Warwick?"
"Warwick, yes, sir, Warwick," she mumbled, but the
light faded out again, and we left her to her dozing and
dreaming.
How Chrissy romped and climbed and swung and
jumped in those ridiculous Noah's Ark garments! (By
the way, I am told they call them "rompers" now.)
After I left Mrs. Parrott's for "Number Six," I
scarcely saw Chrissy again for the five years that I
roamed, a lawless little "ganger," under Rob's leadership.
I scorned girls then, and the views I caught of her from
time to time, when we went nutting, or after choke-
cherries, or gypsy-baiting, were not conducive to mascu-
line admiration. Once I saw her battling with a young,
trampish boy who had sneaked in under the tree she was
beating and began to pick up her nuts. She came down
like a flash, hand over hand, and wrestled with him
fiercely, not biting nor screaming nor gulping (great
tricks of her sex when so engaged) but in a stern retrib-
utive silence. Her dog was not with her, for some rea-
son, and she was hard put to it, but she won, and drove
him off snarling. It must have been about this time that
I fought a gang of hoodlums that came out to make fun
of her "boys' clothes," as they called them. I was beaten,
of course, but between the three of us, Chrissy, the hound
and me, we punished them pretty fairly, and the other
boys got up in time to save the day. Chrissy had a cut
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lip and a bruise on her forehead, and if she cried, it was
from baffled rage alone. As a result of this battle Nana
managed to get her into frocks again, to her bitter dis-
gust, for she sulked and tore them off until they had to
burn the old emancipated, trouser-legged garb to ashes.
Then she took to shoes, Nana told us, and by the time I
left for Crane Academy, she must have looked much like
any other broad, brown, silent little girl of two or three
years more than she, for she was very large for her age.
She never was known to have an illness of any sort,
Nana said, and was never seen with any other playmate
than the great hound. The wind and the brook and the
big rocks of Bragg's Hill were her companions, and in
the light of what they made her, finally, I could wish
more growing girls better acquainted with these friends.
CHAPTER IX
In Which I Grow Up
1 SOMETIMES think that men may be classified
broadly as those who have or have not had a happy
youth. I say men, because women seem so much
more flexible; so much better able to grow flowering
vines over the ugly rocks of their past years; so much
quicker to forget what they do not wish remembered. I
have never known a man (who was not an artist) pos-
sessed of the ability to really give himself up to happy
hours in middle life, if his childhood had been cheated
of such hours. Which seems unfair, somehow, but . . .
when was this odd business of life ever fair? More than
kind, sometimes, for me but less than decent, in turn,
for you ! No, no, the only place you may look for logic
and certainty is in Euclid and even he had to assume
his axioms!
They tell me the Germans are questioning them, now,
by the way (since there was nothing left for them to
question, I suppose), which must be a great joy to the
schoolboys. And this brings me back to my mutton again
and the fact that as a schoolboy I was very happy. As
I look back on the six years of my life at Crane's, I am
sure it is no deceitfully rosy glow of memory that veils
my youth there. For the essentials of happiness can all
be counted coldly: I was among those I loved, I was
healthy, I was in comfortable circumstances, and I was
kept so busy that my play hours were highly valued.
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I GROW UP
Dr. Crane's school would have been a credit, I believe,
to any generation of boys ; in ours it was a marvel. His
father had taken him and his brothers to Switzerland for
their education, and he had imported the discipline and
other good features from Vevay, grafted onto it the
English system of honours and responsibilities among the
boys, and added the rough-and-ready democracy of his
native country to a better housing and feeding plan than
Europe (I am convinced) ever offered in any school!
How proud I was the day when I heard my name read
out on the list, after Friday prayers, as among the three
selected, for general standing, to dine with the doctor's
family the next Sunday noon ! Under sixteen, for Sun-
day dinner at noon ; over sixteen, to Thursday dinner at
night, was the rule, and it was regarded as no empty
honor. The doctor and his family lived in the right wing
of the great house, entirely separate, with a separate front
door and a large lawn and verandah away from the play-
ing field. A distant relative of his, Miss Temperance,
was school housekeeper, as Mrs. Crane had no connec-
tion whatever with the institution, to the never-ending
gossip of South Warwick, which considered that she held
herself absurdly high, but was gratified when asked to
her evening parties. Her old coachman was one of the
few liveried men in the town, and her daughters had a
governess.
Oh, Dossy! Oh, Pippy! Oh, Lulu! I can see you
now, and if you are confused in my mind with roast tur-
key, baked sweet potatoes glazed with sugar, frozen pud-
ding with figs and almonds in it, and nuts and port (we
called it port wine) afterwards, it is only because I met
you all together.
Dossy's name was Dorothea, and she was tall, blonde
and slender, with dark blue eyes and a very tiny waist.
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Pippy's name was Philippa, and she was medium-sized
and dark, with plump, laughing shoulders and a dimple,
and loved a joke. Lulu's name was Henrietta, and she
was small and unspeakably graceful, with sandy hair,
green eyes and any amount of freckles. Everybody at
Crane's fell madly in love with Dossy at sight, grew tired
of her by degrees, and found that Pippy was more fun,
then, by some mysterious but inevitable influence, real-
ized that it was Lulu he had loved all the time, and rarely
recovered entirely till he left the academy. It was no
surprise to any boy at Crane's when Lulu married the
handsomest and richest young man that ever visited War-
wick, and all the mothers wondered how on earth that
plain, little, green-eyed, freckled creature had ever at-
tracted young Fortunatus ! We knew. Nor, on the other
hand, were we very much in the dark as to why Dossy,
called for long the prettiest girl in Warwick, finally at
the age of twenty-five (a ripe age, then, my masters!)
accepted the hand of one of her father's young teachers.
The mothers all wondered, but we didn't. Somehow,
Dossy didn't wear. Pippy (bless her!) never married at
all, though she must have had dozens of offers. She got
better looking all the time, and at forty was one of the
handsomest women I have ever seen, with thick, crinkly,
iron-grey hair and the dimple deeper than ever. She
never found the man, she told me then, that could have
stood her sense of humour, and perhaps she was right, but
I can't help thinking that old Mother Nature misses
Pippy's boys and girls out of her scheme, and would
gladly exchange Dossy's pale and commonplace young-
sters for them. As for Lulu's, she has soared so high out
of our sphere that I don't know anything about them.
I made quite a name for myself by skipping the Dossy
phase entirely and becoming at once and for six years
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I GROW UP
Pippy's faithful slave. Lulu, for some reason, I didn't
care for very much or very long, and she was always
rather interested in me on that account. More than once
she has invited me to share Hux's anise confections with
her, and on one celebrated occasion asked me on a canoe-
ing expedition with Bert and had Bert paddle us! But
that might have been, as he explained later, only for the
purpose of making him jealous. He was the only boy
who ever kept in with all three sisters at one time, and it
is said that Dossy and Pippy came to blows about him in
the rhododendron shrubbery near the big gold-fish globe.
But as Lulu was playing mumble-peg with him at the
time, it didn't so much matter what they did.
They sat in a short pew together at the Congregational
Church (the official church of the school) between their
mother and Miss Temperance, the doctor heading three
long pews of boys behind. Dossy wore pale blue, Pippy
deep pink, and Lulu a misleading sort of putty-colour with
green ribbons. These facts I learned from Rob and Hux,
who went to church there with the other boys, to Nana's
scandalization. Aunt Addie had come too late to have
much effect on their habits, but Bert, Cary and I were
all confirmed together, and they only escaped now and
then, when Bert felt the need, from Mr. Applegate, and I,
of course, never left his fold. He had a settled sermon
for every season of the Christian year, and we soon got
to know them almost as well as he did. It is quite true
that Bert prompted him once, in an Advent sermon, when
his mind wandered!
He had come to America, an optimistic British young-
ster of twenty-odd, with a pink little British wife hardly
out of her 'teens, some fifteen years before we did. I
suppose that by the time he had Aunt Addie in whom to
confide his disillusionments, he had really almost forgot-
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THE INHERITANCE
ten them, and grown quite accustomed to playing second
fiddle to the two Congregational churches which, with
three or four exceptions in our favour, divided the aris-
tocracy of the town.
Nana couldn't understand it, frankly, and held long
if respectful arguments over it with Aunt Addie.
"To have the chapel folk take the lead, Miss Caldwell !"
she would breathe sadly, "but it seems fair wicked, and
Mrs. Crane such a real lady !"
"Of course, in New York, it's different," Aunt Addie
would reply, "and you may be thankful, Mrs. False, that
we are not living in Boston, with that dreadful Mr. Theo-
dore Parker's sermons read every Sunday! Dr. Crane
is descended from Jonathan Edwards, you know, and so,
of course . . . Not that he believes, of course, that
the poor little babies will be burned . . . but his wife
was a Quincy. And that reminds me, Mrs. False, could
you spare a day or two this week to show Norah about
some quince marmalade?"
It is probable that this conversation was responsible
for Nana's attitude towards a great book of Professor
Vereker's, whose illustrations delighted my soul at one
period. She found me once studying with horrid joy an
old woodcut of a great cage of wicker-work filled with
Druidical victims, in the process of being burned, with
many severe Druids, carrying knives and mistletoe, stalk-
ing around it.
"Ugh! Nasty dissenting things!" said Nana with a
shudder, and when I, fourteen, classical, and otherwise
erudite, informed her seriously that at that period of the
world's history the Druids, far from being dissenters,
were on the contrary ardent members of the then Estab-
lished Church of England, she turned on me fiercely.
"I'll thank you for none of that nonsense, Master
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I GROW UP
Hugh ! I know all about that dreadful old Jonathan Ed-
wards and his burnt babies. Disgusting, I call it. I
take notice that Dr. Crane burned none of his own,
though!"
There was nothing with which to meet all this con-
fusion of ideas but a tolerant masculine sigh, which I
forthwith heaved, and closed the book.
And how did I happen to be opening and closing books
at the Professor's?
By what we call, of course, mere chance if there
really is such a thing!
A few days after my fourteenth birthday I had gone,
in response to a message from Nana, to the Verekers,
in order to take some important parcel or other to Mrs.
Applegate from her. Nana was nursing the cook, who
had an attack of jaundice, and had utilized the occasion
(Nana's usual method with occasions) to persuade Diana,
who was a wonderful needlewoman and laundress, to "do
up," mend and incidentally decorate with a trifle of sim-
ple embroidery, the little store of clerical linen that hung
in Mr. Applegate's professional wardrobe.
St. Matthews' was distinctly looking up in these days.
Not only had the Lees and the Peytons joined us (and
though they were poor as church mice, they were "qual-
ity" of the first order, and well did South Warwick learn
that lesson!) but Aunt Addie, under the impression that
she had originated the idea, suggested to Mrs. Applegate
that if Dr. Crane's boarding-school should be thoroughly
canvassed it was more than likely that a certain number
of "Church-boys" would be found, whose parents, if
written to, would be glad to have their children attend
St. Matthews' rather than the "First Church."
"Of course," said Aunt Addie, in the piercing tones
necessary if any successful communication was to be
8 103
THE INHERITANCE
made to her hearer, "of course, as Mrs. False says, it
would have to be done very specially, by Mr. Applegate,
and in such a way that the Doctor wouldn't mind. But
they're our boys and we ought to have them if there
are any."
And so a list was obtained, and letters were despatched,
and parental consent was got, and as a result seven young
gentlemen appeared on Easter Sunday, led by one of the
teachers, and filled a pew discreetly thereafter. And be-
fore the next long vacation began, seven young ladies (by
a curious coincidence!) marshalled by a strict and ex-
traordinarily High Church drawing teacher, paraded
every Sunday from Miss Hoppin's Select Seminary for
Young Ladies to the seat across the aisle from the seven
young gentlemen.
Miss Fanny Banks taught these their Collects and re-
sponses in the Sunday school that Nana had supposed
sacred to the needs of what she persisted in calling "the
villagers' " children, and couldn't understand how it was
possible that little Chrissy Vereker could be considered
eligible to its ranks.
"If the young ladies were wishful to teach, now," she
would say stiffly, and only yielded her point to Mr. Ap-
plegate himself.
"You know, it's different at home," he pleaded earn-
estly, and Nana sniffed, murmured something about
"burnt babies," and yielded. Miss Ellaline Rogers had
the Sunday school room repainted and the little wheezy
melodeon repaired; the Miss Peytons covered the small
store of library books with fresh chocolate-coloured mus-
lin, and pasted on new titles written in a spidery hand.
Miss Fanny Banks donated twenty-five new volumes
(how Dossy and Pippy wept over The Daisy Chain and
The Pillars of the House!) and Mrs. Levi Bragg, not to
104
I GROW UP
be outdone, carpeted the church itself, so that with its
ivy-smothered walls and quaint, unpretentious, coloured
windows, it looked a very prosperous little House of God
indeed, and began to draw quite a contingent of young
people, who came at first to see the summer visitors from
the city, and remained out of sheer interest in the beau-
tiful old liturgy and the reverent pageant of the Church's
commemorative year.
Diana turned out (by one of Nana's intuitive strokes
of genius) to have been specially trained in the cutting
and embroidering of churchly vestments, and under the
delighted superintendence of Miss Hoppin's drawing-
teacher, constructed a new and beautiful set of these gar-
ments, and the drawing-teacher's brother, a curate in
Trinity Parish, preached a series of Lenten sermons in
them that actually became quite "the thing" in South
Warwick, so that on Good Friday the little building was
crowded to the doors and the boys from Dr. Crane's (all
in the confirmation class) had to bring in chairs from
the Sunday school room and put them in the aisles ! Mrs.
Applegate wept from excitement, and there were forty-
eight dollars in the alms-basin.
Well ! It was on an errand in the matter of these
vestments that I came to the Professor's that day and
made one of the great discoveries of my life.
For as I waited patiently enough, in the book-filled
dining-room, wondering vaguely what had become of the
little girl that used to live there, and whether she ever
learned to swim, and if it were true that she didn't come
to the Sunday school because her father wanted her to
learn all about all the religions in their historical order
before she became conversant with Christian doctrines,
my eye fell on a large, dimly lettered, fat, black, leather
volume with an embossed golden picture on the cover, of
105
THE INHERITANCE
a man dropping a tight bundle from his back into an
interesting pit full of horned devils and leering satyrs,
leaping in flaming fire. I drew it toward me languidly,
unclasped the great tarnished clasps that shut it together,
and opened wherever the leaves might fall apart. Pome-
granates and bells twined about the large, clear print,
framing it as if it were a picture ; and between the double
columns of each page grew a slender mysterious tree with
an evil snake folded among the branches. Like the ru-
brics of the Prayer-book, there were little headings done
in red, and where I opened, these read :
"Mr. Valiant summoned . . . His will . . . his last
words.
" 'Then,' said he, 7 am going to my Father's . . . My
sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my Pilgrim-
age, and my Courage and Skill to him that can get it . . .
my Marks and Scars / carry with me.' . . .
"When the day that he must go hence was come,
many accompanied him to the riverside, into which
as he went he said, 'Death, where is thy sting f
and as he went down deeper, he said, 'Grave, where
is thy victory?'
"So he passed over, and all the Trumpets sounded for
him on the other side."
And with those trumpets sounding in my ears I turned
back the pages and read, now here, now there, of that
brave, ageless Pilgrim and his wondrous Progress
through life, which has never changed, to the celestial
city, which has, somehow, in all these years, altered con-
siderably in the theory of its architecture, customs, and
population !
I don't remember, honestly, if I had read many or
any books before that day: I must have, I suppose.
But they could have made little impression on me, for I
106
I GROW UP
never took them at all seriously, nor, I am sure, spent
much time with them.
But that afternoon (a cool, mellow October one, I re-
member, with yellow leaves drifting down from a deep
blue sky, and the winey flavour of them mounting to
the nostrils) some door opened widely before me, and
great endless vistas of delight stretched out into the fu-
ture; some veil dropped, swiftly and silently, from my
eyes, and I beheld the great, beneficent fields of Art,
spreading awa/ and away into the dim distance, ready
for me whenever I should desire them; something woke
and stirred in my tight-sealed, childish soul and whis-
pered, "This that you see and touch and hear is not all !
There is a worldful of other things you never suspected,
ready to be lived in, to be enjoyed, to be made your very
own !"
In other and perhaps clearer words, I had discovered
Literature.
To many perhaps most of my readers this discov-
ery has never come. It may be that they have always
lived in the great country, or walked into it so young
or so gradually that there was no moment when their
freehold was lacking there. But with me there is always
the memory of that dated hour, that point in space and
time, when I stood silent, like Balboa upon his peak, and
gazed, awakened, upon the great ocean, all unsuspected
till now, that glittered before me in that October sun.
There was no such collection of books in the town
(or in many towns, for that matter), and from that time
on I can see that my detachment from Bert and Gary
began. Rob and Hux were studying hard for their ex-
aminations, and quite out of our lives, just then. They
even ate their dinner with the school (to gain the ad-
vantage of the table conversation, carried on in German),
107
THE INHERITANCE
and went on long geological rambles, which were very
popular at about that time, accompanied by one of the
teachers and a number of little bags and hammers, when
they were not engaged in translating Greek and Latin.
They stood high in Dr. Crane's regard, and their father
was very proud of them. Cary took a sudden turn for
the better, and grew quite strong, for him, with the result
that he threw himself feverishly into the sports and com-
panionships not always possible for him, and became
one of a trio of inseparables who parted only for the
night. It might have been a quartette, for either Bert
or I would have been welcome, but Bert was pleased to
find them a little young for him, and I, not sorry to find
Cary no longer entirely dependent on us, slipped away
to the Professor's books just often enough to break the
continual intimacy that such a small band needs, so that
we five became slowly and insensibly separated, never,
I can see now, to be together on quite the old terms.
It was in these next two years, I believe, that Bert
began to develop that life apart from the rest of us that
no one, at that time, suspected. The doctor does not
agree with me, and believes with Nana, that, years
ago, among the livery-stable hangers-on and the gipsy
squatters near the pond were sowed the seeds of those
childish wild oats that we supposed buried under the neat
gravel walks of all the terms at Crane's Academy. Ah,
well, what does it matter, now? Maybe it was born in
him, as old Norah always maintained, that subtle taint
of blood, that little, ugly trait of secrecy, that unquench-
able thirst for the lawless, the hidden, the unconventional,
the proscribed.
Nobody knew when he made those expeditions on
which he learned so much unknown to us: he never
seemed to be absent from schoolroom or playground any
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I GROW UP
more than the rest of us. He was known and liked
by every boy in the Academy. But the young men about
Fox's bar knew him, too, and the snickering loafers at
the old stable, and the gipsies and the travelling actors
that played in the old town hall.
Mrs. Applegate adored him and would never listen
to Nana's fears that he smoked those dreadful cigarettes
that he rolled up in tissue paper, and Lily Peyton gave
him a piece of her hair in a locket; but Fanny Pratt
was seen wearing the locket one day, and after that
Bert was never inside the Peyton gates, and Fanny's
mother put her in the Sisters' school though it was
whispered that she went down on her knees to Father
Ryan before he'd let the girl in. Fanny's father was
the ticket agent at the station, and there is no doubt
she hung about the tracks too much. "The tracks" made
a social district of their own, and I shall never forget
Rob's face on the day when, back from his successful
examinations we had all marched up with him to the
academy to hear him tell the Doctor he had looked
around him as we entered the big gates, saying, "Where's
Bert ?" and a butcher boy, driving his red wagon through
as we passed him, mimicked scornfully, " 'Where's- Bert ?
Where's Bert?' Better go down to the tracks, Mr. Rob
Caldwell you're sure to find him there !"
Bert was fifteen then, and well grown for his age, and
when the Doctor and Aunt Addie found out after Rob's
stormy outburst, for he had gone down to the tracks and
had .found Bert there, not in the most creditable cir-
cumstances for the brother of a Yale freshman of good
standing when they found this out and a great deal
more, that was not such a surprise to some people as it
was to Dr. Caldwell, it was felt that Bert had been taken
in time and that a new start would be made. Well, well
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THE INHERITANCE
I don't know. Perhaps it would have been in time for
another boy . . . perhaps.
One day, when I had quite got into the way of spend-
ing two or three afternoons in the week at the Verekers
I came quietly in through the kitchen, and roamed
about that floor as I wished, with the Professor's cordial
consent I glanced up from my book (it was the Ara-
bian Nights) with the sensation of being looked at, and
found a girl in a short, tight frock staring at me from
a pile of lexicons on which she was sitting.
Her dark hair was cut only a little longer than a boy's,
and hung elfishly about her face, which was tanned to
a rich, even brown; her eyes were deep-set and dark,
with heavy, straight brows ; her lips firmly shut. I had
not seen her for a long time, but I knew it was Chrissy
Vereker.
"Hello," I said patronisingly, "how do you do? Do
you go to school yet ?"
For it was a scandalous fact that when last I had
heard of her she could not even read, as she had behaved
so strangely at old Mrs. Parrott's that the Professor had
been forced to remove her from that abode of learning.
"No," she replied calmly, "I don't. I don't like
schools."
"So I hear," said I maliciously ; "the schools don't like
you either, do they?"
She looked at me quietly for a moment longer, then
got up, with a certain clumsy dignity, and walked away,
leaving me a little uncomfortable, though of course I
wouldn't admit it. It wasn't very polite, what I had
said, to be sure, but then, I didn't think the occasion
called for politeness, precisely. It was only Chrissy
Vereker, and she was only nine years old, a tomboy, who
couldn't even read. From one who measured girls by
no
I GROW UP
Dossy and Pippy, one who wore long trousers and read
C&sar's Commentaries, it was incredible that such a colt-
ish creature should expect anything but an amused toler-
ance, and that was what I had meant to convey.
When I met her again she was nursing her big hound,
who had run a thorn into his foot, and the handy way in
which she washed and bandaged it rather impressed me.
"Big fellow, isn't he ?" I asked, and she nodded silently.
"Do you remember the day we fought the town boys in
Bragg's wood?" I asked her, and she smiled gravely and
nodded again.
Do you notice how easily I said "town boy"? And
yet, four years ago, I had been a "town boy" myself,
and all unknown to Mrs. Crane and the Misses Peyton.
I was honestly unconscious of it.
She seemed a jolly little thing enough when she smiled,
and her very taciturnity made one interested in "drawing
her out," as the phrase goes. It seemed she knew Bert
quite well, and often spent hours with him while he fished
the upper lengths of the Mill River.
"I like him," she said briefly. "He tells me nice sto-
ries."
"I'll tell you one, if you like," said I, and then, on
second thoughts, I took her into the dining room and
read her from the Mart d' Arthur, which she appeared
to enjoy very thoroughly.
"Now, if you knew how to read," I appended instruc-
tively, "see how you would enjoy this book yourself.
Why don't you learn ?"
She bent her brows thoughtfully. "But I do know
how," she said quietly, "only not in English. That book
is in English."
"What can you read?" I asked, amused.
"Latin," she answered.
in
THE INHERITANCE
"Wh-what Latin?" I stammered distrustfully.
"Oh, Ovid, and about Balbus and Medusa, and other
things," she said vaguely; "my father says Latin came
first and I must read it first."
When Dr. Crane, amused and scandalised at this story,
made a call upon the Professor to inquire of him why, at
that rate, he hadn't started Chrissy on Coptic, which had
the advantage of Latin in the matter of priority, to say
nothing of the Early Saxon Chronicles, the Professor
staggered him by replying simply that he had, but that
the child hadn't at that time the necessary degree of con-
centration for either ! Geometry, however, he added, she
mastered easily, and greatly interested the doctor by
showing him the whitewashed walls of the cowhouse,
completely frescoed with large theorems done in charcoal.
"At that rate," the doctor commented, "she must have
been at fractions when she was seven."
"She has never heard of them," the Professor re-
plied, and then it came out that Chrissy didn't know her
tables, and couldn't have told you seven times eight to
save her life !
At this point the doctor threw up his hands in de-
spair and rode away (he rode everywhere on a great,
gray mare), and told us all about it on the Thursday
after my sixteenth birthday, when, with outward flip-
pancy but inward pride, I dined at half past six with
his family. Pippy, a year older than I, had just put up
her hair, and Dossy, reported to be engaged to Miss Hop-
pin's drawing teacher's brother, was ethereally lovely
in pale sky blue. Lulu, who was paying for years of
heart breaking by a real and not-too-steadily-reciprocated
attachment for Bert, sulked quietly next her mother be-
cause Bert's standard of work had not allowed him to
come to Thursday dinner yet. Mrs. Crane, I think, was
112
I GROW UP
glad of this, and we knew, somehow, that she was glad.
We had an idea, too, why it was that she was glad. And
yet when Bert jumped for her parasol, opened it for her
with his winning smile (which no woman, child or ani-
mal, I believe, ever resisted), patted her pug, a hateful
little beast that snapped at every boy in the school
but him, and hoped she'd have a pleasant drive,
she smiled back at him as she never smiled at Rob or
Hux!
Hux went up to Yale that autumn, and Bert and I went
upstairs to the doctor's own room, and I was monitor
for the little fellows, adjudged their grievances, sat at
the German conversation table and answered quite as
often to the name of "Caldwell senior" as to my own.
Even Dr. Crane called me that. There had always
been a Caldwell senior and a Caldwell junior, and Bert
and I had their desks. Up to sixteen we had been Bert
and Hugh. ("Bert," though nicknames were strictly
taboo in the schoolroom). But Bert Caldwell couldn't
be changed, it seems : the girls on the hill and the loafers
at the tracks, Mrs. Crane and little Chrissy Vereker, all
called him that.
Before the winter came on, the Doctor and Aunt Addie
called me down from our study one evening, where I
was helping Cary with his algebra, too much, already,
for his fretful attention, for he had had a bad summer,
and looked pinched and worn. Bert was out somewhere,
no one knew exactly where, though we all supposed (or
said we supposed) he was with a crowd of decent enough
young lads who were going to serenade Miss Hoppin's
girls.
"Hugh," said the Doctor, "are you staying here to-
night?"
"Yes, sir," I said, "Nana is afraid those people down
"3
THE INHERITANCE
at Harbor Point have scarlet fever. She said I'd better
stay till they were sure."
"Glad to have you," he answered musingly. Then,
"Let's see, Hugh; you're with us quite as much as
you're at the cottage, aren't you?"
"Oh, yes, sir more, I suppose. Isn't that so, Aunt
Addie?"
She smiled at me : Bert and I were always her
favourites.
"Well, well, all the better then," he said. And then,
as simply as possible, the next great change in my life
slipped quietly into place.
Mrs. Vereker had been coughing slightly all summer,
and now, by September, the cough was worse. Native
air, in the Doctor's opinion, was indicated, and he had
strongly advised her spending the winter in Bermuda. A
sudden chance to go, slowly and in comparative comfort,
in the one ladies' cabin on a big schooner, had turned
up, and she had agreed to start in a few days, taking
Diana with her. The older mulattress was perfectly
competent to attend to the Professor's simple wants, and
neither of them had even so much as mentioned poor
Chrissy, who, bereft of even Diana's grudging superin-
tendence, would run wilder and more spindle-shanked
than ever. It had occurred, said the Doctor, to to
well, who had suggested it, Addie ? Aunt Addie seemed
vague, but supposed that she had, and he, though uncon-
vinced, finally supposed so, too. At any rate, it had
occurred to somebody that the situation would become
perfectly simplified if Chrissy should go to Nana for the
winter (Nana had a neat, careful young North-of-Ire-
land girl as general servant, now she was out at nursing
so much), and I should move definitely into my old room
at the Doctor's. This arrangement would be necessary,
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I GROW UP
inasmuch as there were but two bedrooms in the cottage
and a tiny cupboard for the little servant.
It all seemed as simple as bon jour to me, and a great
thing for Chrissy (we all knew that the yellow-faced
cook had never loved her), and without a word to Nana,
even, I moved what few things I kept at the cottage away
from it, the day that Mrs. Vereker sailed for Jamaica.
Nana was too busy to leave her case, and I moved out
of the room I was never to occupy again with as little
interest as if the seed of my life had not been sown there.
O youth, youth, youth!
The Doctor and I drove the Vereker family to the
wharf to see Mrs. Vereker off. Even the Doctor was
surprised at the fact that the captain offered to bring
the schooner to South Warwick harbour for his pas-
senger nobody had dreamed of such a thing.
"There must be a good deal of influence at work some-
where, my boy," he muttered to me, as the gruff captain
came off his graceful winged craft, cap in hand, to lead
his languid passenger aboard. There were fruit and flow-
ers, too, in the spotless little cabin, and it glistened with
new paint.
"Ah, Captain Pedgett, this is very kind, I'm sure,"
she said, but she did not appear to be greatly surprised.
Quite a crowd had assembled to see the big schooner
start, and Bert, who turned up arm in arm with one of
his new cronies, a daredevil sort of fellow who sailed
races for money in his own catboat, whispered to us that
an awning had been rigged on the deck for her and one
of the ship's boys told off for her special service.
"Good-bye, Doctor, many thanks for everything," she
said ; "good-bye, Chrissy, be a good child and mind Mrs.
False. Don't bring the dog into the house. Au revoir,
Christopher; I'll send you some curry put those books
THE INHERITANCE
in the cabin, please, boy ! I'll write you when I'm coming
back."
The Professor waved his hat gallantly. "Do, my
dear," he said, "and I shall let you know if I am right
about that scarab in Bologna. I am confident it is an
imitation. Say good-bye, Chrissy."
"Good-bye," said Chrissy awkwardly. "Why do those
white sheets on the sticks make the boat move, Bert?"
And thus, her adieux to her family being made, Mrs.
Vereker sailed away from us, and we never saw her
again.
Mysterious woman that she was, did any one know the
key to her? Was she happy or unhappy, incredibly fool-
ish or incredibly wise? Was South Warwick, so keen,
for the most part, at unearthing the odd and interesting,
a little off its guard in the case of Mrs. Christopher
Vereker ? I don't know, frankly. But I know that when
I think of that curious embarking, and recall her as she
walked gently, with a slight swaying movement, up the
gangplank on the captain's eager arm, I see her, not as
she undoubtedly appeared, but as she looked on that day
seven years back, under the sugar maple, all in flowing
white, with carbuncles smouldering at her throat and
ears, and her dark hair rolled high under the high, white
ivory comb.
I don't know whether Aunt Addie was most shocked at
Chrissy's keen interest in her new room at the cottage
or the Professor's complete forgetfulness of her. Both
were, at any rate, quite sincere and unaffected. Nana
had moved into my old room, the smaller of the two, and
when Bert and I helped Thomas up with the little
boxes that held Chrissy's pathetic wardrobe and few
treasures, we all admired the results of the days of
preparation Aunt Addie had described to us. Out of the
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I GROW UP
sum the Professor had insisted upon handing over in a
lump, a gay pink-and-white paper had been put on the
walls; the prettiest of the pictures from the London
Graphic, sent regularly to Aunt Addie and begged from
Bert and me, whose perquisites they were, had been
framed and hung ; the invaluable Hoppin drawing teacher
had repainted in charming flowery garlands a set of
quaint old-fashioned chairs resurrected by Nana from
somebody's attic ; and there was that delicious coquettish
purity of snowy curtain and ruffled dressing table that
women know so well how to produce, when their hearts
are in it.
To Chrissy it must have seemed a little paradise, and
she retired into it without so much as a thank you or a
good-bye for any of us, an overgrown little figure in a
frock too tight and childish for her, with wild, stiff hair
under a bonnet all askew. Even the Doctor noted her
untended appearance.
"But we may depend on Mrs. Palse, I am sure, eh,
Professor?" he said hopefully, and the Professor, jerked
back from some Egyptian revery, blinked, nodded, and
agreed generally.
"Ah, yes, quite as you say, we all depend on Mrs.
Palse," he replied politely, and walked back alone to
the Delta of the Nile.
Nana was never three days together without dropping
in on us that autumn, for the terrible servant question
grew worse and worse as Aunt Addie grew more and
more irritable with her increasing sciatica and rheuma-
tism, and there was no hand like Nana's for bringing
order into the kitchen or relief to Aunt Addie's aching
muscles. I saw her, accordingly, quite as often as if I
had been living at the cottage, and thus had no occasion
to go there; and though we never talked for long at a
117
THE INHERITANCE
time, because, naturally, the next-to-head boy at a young
gentlemen's academy, with German conversation and
junior discipline on his mind, can have few conversational
topics in common with his old nurse, we always passed
the time of day, as Nana said, and it was well under-
stood that we did, for I have more than once, while
waiting for some classmate on the hill, heard the
voice of his Family explaining loudly to Mrs.
Applegate :
"Yes just waiting for my son. Mrs. False has been
looking after my daughter, this time. So sweet, I think,
and thoughtful of Hugh, never to forget how she used
to take care of him ! An old family servant, you
see. . . ."
And I, blushing a little, could not but feel, neverthe-
less, that the family voice was right and that I was rather
thoughtful !
Cary had to leave school the year that Hux went up
to Yale, and crawled restlessly about from bed to sofa,
passing long, silent days with his face to the wall, irri-
table and irritating. On his good days he drove about
with the Doctor and visited the academy, but he could
not endure the competition with the other boys, and
seemed to cease growing in every way. We had always
been good friends, and it was a real distress to me when
he began to shrink from me or more justly, I believe,
from the health and activity I could not but contrast with
his feebleness but with the easy selfishness of my sex
and age I soon got used to it, and by the winter I had
almost ceased to see him.
It was Bert, curiously enough, who took my place, and
evening after evening as I studied upstairs I would hear
the old piano or the banjo, for hours together, and knew
that Bert was giving up his private amusements for his
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I GROW UP
sickly brother's sake. I say amusements, for Bert had
long ceased to study at night. His native quickness and
wonderful memory enabled him to hold a fair, or nearly
fair, place in his classes, with the minimum of prepara-
tion, and the teachers, though they shook their heads
gravely, and held long consultations over him, invariably
ended with the inevitable laughter at his ingenious ex-
cuses, his clever parodies, his really brilliant caricatures,
for he developed at this time a great gift for drawing,
or his apparently sincere promise of amendment. The
Doctor had no mercy on him, and raged at his selfishness,
and selfish, I admit, he was. But the brother whom he
subdued his quick temper to endure patiently, the friends
to whom he cheerfully offered his last cent, the animals
he gave up his sleep to nurse and the tramps who
smoked his tobacco and pawned his clothes did they
think him selfish?
Of course, as Rob pointed out, somewhat acridly, Gary
was the one member of his family to whom he recognized
any obligation; the money he loaned his friends was in
reality his father's; the animals that tagged about after
him were a public nuisance, and the clothes he gave away
he could ill spare but . . . whoever loved the Elder
Brother of the great parable, impregnable in his virtue
though he be? If only the charming people could be in
the right since the people who are in the right are so
seldom charming!
The Christmas holidays began after school dinner, that
year, and, coming home quickly, I .paused on the stair
opposite Aunt Addie's room, attracted by shouts of glee
from Gary and a feminine voice unknown to me. My
knock was unheard and I entered before the laugh was
over. Aunt Addie sat in her great stuffed chair, the book
she required a pile of cushions to hold (to save her
9 119
THE INHERITANCE
cramped, knotted fingers) forgotten, her face wreathed
in smiles. Gary, stretched on her sofa, a gay afghan
over his weak legs, fairly held his sides as Bert pranced
about the room imitating Mrs. Applegate engaged in po-
lite conversation with the younger Miss Peyton, who
never raised her voice in speaking to the deaf, because
she considered it unladylike. As Mrs. Applegate never
for a moment admitted that she was deaf, their conver-
sations were incredible social catastrophes, and scarcely
required caricature.
Near Aunt Addie's chair sat a pretty gipsy-like girl,
whose thick, heavy hair not even the backcomb then
worn by school girls could deform. Her forehead was
broad and finely shaped, with a pronounced "widow's
peak," her eyes mischievous and yet trusty, her full red
lips well cut, over a square, strong chin. She wore a
trim dark stuff dress, wine-coloured, with a fresh ruf-
fled white apron over all, tied back into a crisp bow, and
even as she laughed aloud, she fitted together bright
squares of cambric and sewed at them in a notably house-
wifely fashion. I stared. She had a look of was she
. . . yes, she was little Chrissy Vereker! With just
enough of a look of Pippy Crane to catch one's breath
over. For she was plumpish, like Pippy, a robin red-
breast of a girl, with a round arm and a broad chest.
I checked them, but only for a moment, for Bert was
at his best and irresistible, and Cary good-tempered and
generous. We talked and laughed till dusk, and the Doc-
tor joined us and listened to our nonsense, the lines fading
from his forehead, with Chrissy cuddled in his arm in an
accustomed manner that amazed me no less than her
smoothed hair and her sewing. But I had more to learn,
for " r hen he asked, "Well, chicken, how are the lessons ?"
1 20
I GROW UP
she blushed, and bringing out a little pile of books,
pointed out map and sum and chapter, while Gary
straightened and looked important and Bert mocked
him.
"Yes, indeed, Hugh, she can ! She learned to read in
three weeks! And I must say, Robert, if poor Gary
could teach her all this, it speaks badly for Mrs. Parrot,
who is not in the least lame !"
Thus Aunt Addie, luminously, and we all laughed
again.
"You see, there was something in Nana's scheme, after
all," the Doctor put in ; "remember how you all made fun
of the idea of Gary teaching anybody ?"
"Didn't suppose I could, myself," Gary admitted lan-
guidly, "but Chrissy knows a queer lot of stuff you
wouldn't expect, don't you, Chris ?"
"What are you reading?" I asked respectfully, and
Chrissy blushed (she always blushed easily, but faced
you bravely through it), and handed me the book. It
was the Mort d' Arthur.
"Oh! you liked it, then!" I said, and she nodded si-
lently.
"Is this my quilt?" the Doctor a sked, fingering the
bright squares, and she unearthed from her little round
basket countless others, sewed into quartettes, and laid
them on his knee.
"You ought to have had a daughter, Robert," said
Aunt Addie, and we all nodded soberly, for every lad
is a father of girls in his deeper heart.
Nana said she took to her needle like a duck to water
though, to carry on the simile, no maternal hen could
have been more surprised at her foster duckling's aquatic
capacities than Mrs. Vereker would have been at Chris-
sy's needlework.
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THE INHERITANCE
"Who will walk home with Chrissy, boys ?" Aunt Addie
asked presently. "Nana will be anxious."
Bert and I spoke together, but neither of us could
have been much surprised when she chose him!
CHAPTER X
In Which We Begin to Leave the Nest
1 WONDER if we were ever all together again after
that first summer I came home from Yale ? I don't
think so. There seems to be in most large families
(I have often remarked it, since, in my professional prac-
tice) a distinct point where disintegration begins, and
after that only such crises as weddings and funerals
bring the scattered units together again. A friend of
mine put it characteristically enough when he said that
he never saw the family any more, unless one of his aunts
died, and everybody present nodded comprehendingly.
Six of Doctor Crane's boys went to college that year,
and we formed, naturally enough, a little clique, with
Bert, from the beginning, the most prominent among us,
since it was his clever ruse that won us the great sopho-
more-freshman battle, and made his name known in an
hour all over the campus. Rob and Hux were half
proud, half jealous of this meteoric debut, and both of
them discussed with me the probability of its turning the
boy's head and being bad for him in the end, but I don't
think it was. Publicity always steadied him, and the
fact that he had entered his classes under heavier condi-
tions of incompleted work than Dr. Crane usually al-
lowed and the strictest promises to make up the deficien-
cies, kept us closer together than I had dared to hope
we should be. Except for a few outbreaks of boyish,
undergraduate vandalism and a few unfortunate wine
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THE INHERITANCE
suppers, we got him through the year very well, and the
Doctor met him with a hearty handshake at Christmas.
How delightful that winter holiday was ! The dressing
of our little church had grown, in the last few years, into
a curious little social function curious, in that the young
people of Warwick's "first families," without regard to
creed, had come to consider it as their duty and privi-
lege to decorate St. Matthews' from altar to font (in
that church, the font stood at the entrance) with the
choicest of cedar, holly and mistletoe. There was a tacit
but well-formulated age limit, and girls of fifteen waited
eagerly till next Christmas, and girls of much more than
twenty openly regretted that their time was past. More
than this there was, bien entendu, a caste limit, and woe
to the forth-putting maiden who offered her services, un-
solicited, for the occasion. Not that the elect were solic-
ited far from it. There was no doubt in their minds
"they knew," as Pippy Crane explained succinctly to me,
on the occasion of Miss Susy Farwell's boarder's daugh-
ter. That was a slightly contested field, for we boys
rather "took to" the boarder's daughter, and had skated
with her on the millpond and danced the Mother Goose
lancers with her in the great "Kermess" held in the
town hall for the benefit of the prospective South War-
wick hospital. She had been Little Bo Peep in those
lancers, and most bewitching she was with her crook and
short skirts.
Somebody had told her about those evenings of tying
and bunching and wreathing, Christmas week, with carol
practice later, and hot coffee and cake after that, and
she had interpreted Mr. Applegate's brisk little public an-
nouncement quite literally and came, bright and early, of
a Monday night. And the very girls who had rehearsed
the lancers with her and served with her at the candy
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WE BEGIN TO LEAVE THE NEST
booth at the Christmas cake sale in the First Church,
those very girls, I say oh well, you know what girls are,
don't you? How they can be so ... so trying, is hard
for us to see. The gooseflesh fairly stood out on my
spine while Miss Farwell's boarder's daughter learned
her little lesson that Monday night.
It was Bert, finally, who took her home haughtily and
invited her for a moonlight sleigh ride, and didn't come
back to the church that night. Not that this did the poor
girl much good in the end, because, unfortunately, after
he'd deposited her at Miss Susy's at half past ten, he hap-
pened to meet Fanny Pratt, and started out with her
again and didn't bring the sleigh back to the livery stable
till one. Fanny was just cruel enough to let the confused,
whispering gossip go on without clearing the matter up,
and finally there had to be a distinctly disagreeable meet-
ing, where Bert and the Doctor and Miss Susy's boarder
"had it out" and straightened things as far as the board-
er's daughter went, anyhow. Nobody tried to straighten
poor Fanny's affairs by now, I'm afraid, and when the
innocent (travelling) manager of the Kermess suggested,
for the roller-skating quadrille, "that tall, handsome Miss
Pratt, that skates so well," there was an uncomfortable
silence and a change of subject that even the boys didn't
resent.
Poor Fanny Pratt ! Was hers one of the cases of which
there must be just so many, and did she happen to be
the one in South Warwick ? Sometimes I have thought
so. Perhaps in a larger city or a smaller village she
would have settled to one level or another more certainly.
As it was, no one, just then, had definitely pronounced
the ultimate adjective in Fanny's case. But when we
boys skated with her Tuesdays and Fridays, when the old
Odd Fellows' hall was turned into a rink, and the roll
125
THE INHERITANCE
and click was like the surge of the shore, and the band
played till midnight (though nice girls left at ten), when,
I say, we swayed by, cross-linked with Fanny, we didn't
nod to the hill girls ; and when we tore down the tobog-
gan slide with her scarlet cap and stylish blanket coat
packed in front of us, we didn't wave to them.
Fanny was named after Miss Fanny Bragg, and wore
a gold locket with a pearl in it presented at her christen-
ing by that lady. She wore, too, a silver bangle hung
with ten-cent pieces, each with an engraved monogram
on it, and this bracelet might have been used, as far as
the male youth of South Warwick went, for a Blue Book
of the town! Ten cents was little to give and Fanny
had such an attractive, thick-lashed smile ! Her eyes
were a very dark blue, and the lashes as thick as a paint
brush and curly at the ends. She sold so many sub-
scriptions to the Christian Herald that she won the first
premium of a lady's safety bicycle easily, in advance of
all other competitors, and rode it like a darting swallow.
(How we laughed at those first "safeties," by the way!
Bert and I, perched high on our old-style "bikes," har-
assed the prim young bank cashier on his, the first man
in the town to use the new-fangled low one, till he sold
it, out of very shame!)
She was of that social stratum her mother was a
dressmaker where the girls, in those days, never
dreamed of undertaking any trade or profession after
they left school, and so, after she had attended to a few
negligible household duties, Fanny's time (her mother
worked sixteen hours a day) was her own to the regret
of some other mothers of Warwick!
Well, well! As I look back at it all, she appears no
Delilah, but a simple-minded, pleasure-loving, easy-going
girl, with no education in particular and a heart too soft
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WE BEGIN TO LEAVE THE NEST
for her own good. She made delicious peanut taffy and
cocoanut cake, and if the light in the Pratt parlour burned
beyond the ordinary reception hours of young ladies,
why, everybody knew that Mrs. Pratt was up, sewing, in
the room above.
Miss Fanny Bragg was often appealed to, to "do some-
thing about it," and always replied nervously that if Mrs.
Palse had only had that idea of the Girls' Friendly So-
ciety a year or two earlier, and if Fanny had only not
been Roman Catholic, it might have been different ! And
perhaps it might.
Chrissy, of course, was much too young for such
junketings as church dressing and roller skating,
and passed her time, we found out at Easter, mostly at
the Doctor's doing lessons with Gary, holding wool, and
going errands generally for Aunt Addie, and reading to
the Doctor, evenings, when he was free ; a practice under-
taken as a test of proficiency at first and continued from
sheer pleasure to both, after the tests were no longer nec-
essary. The Doctor was a profound lover of Dickens and
read little else in the way of fiction. It had not always
been convenient to take her home after these sessions,
and during one fortnight in March when Nana was tak-
ing the rising generation of Bankses through the measles,
Chrissy had proved such a pleasant guest that the visit
had extended indefinitely and the little guest room being
really too small for her trunk and books and work table,
the trunk, as the least important, was carried to the attic
and stayed there for four years !
We found her music roll on the hat stand, her stout
arctic overshoes in the vestibule, her sun hat in the hall,
and her old dog, a little irritable and rheumatic now,
lying on the sunny side porch.
"And really, boys, I don't know what your father
127
THE INHERITANCE
would do without her now," Aunt Addie confided to us.
"If Mrs. Vereker ever comes back, he'll miss her ter-
ribly. You see, there's no one now but poor Gary, and
he's so quiet that the house seems empty without her.
You boys were a trouble, goodness knows, but at least
you were alive!"
Yes, yes, we were alive. And houses that once have
echoed to that life seem ghostly and drear without it
even to nervous, middle-aged, spinster aunts ! The halls
were clean and clear, now, and it was some use painting
the dining room, and the porch chairs came in when it
rained, and white mice, turtles, rabbits and mongrel pups
no longer wandered casually into the drawing room
(South Warwick said "parlour," but Aunt Addie and
Nana simply couldn't change.) But I really believe the
Doctor and Aunt Addie would have welcomed even the
turtles, to have us back!
Chrissy had dropped her pinafores and her dresses
were quite to her boot tops, she was so large for her age,
and her thick hair no longer needed the round comb and
flowed smoothly back into a net. She was like any other
young girl, in short, except for one curious, great differ-
ence: she seemed utterly unconscious of her sex. Of
course, we didn't call it that, because we weren't suffi-
ciently wise or analytical, and anyway "sex" wasn't a
word much in use in Warwick in the early '8o's. It was
an odd sort of expression, as Aunt Addie said, and not
exactly of the sort one would care to be quoted as having
used. Not, of course, that it was necessarily . . . but,
in short, it was just as well not.
(Lord, Lord ! If poor Aunt Addie could hear Hux's
eldest girl on the social evil! And everything she says
true, too!)
Well, we only knew that Chrissy didn't giggle, but
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WE BEGIN TO LEAVE THE NEST
laughed out, as a boy does ; that she never dropped her
eyes, but looked straight at you; that her step was free,
from the hip, and her grip tight and quick; that she
never said those innocent-appearing things that as soon
as you answer them tell what you didn't intend in short,
that her mind was more like our own. Her mental proc-
esses, I should have said, not her mind. For after all,
boys of nineteen, even reasonably decent ones, would
hardly allow that a nice little girl of thirteen who had
never been to college could have their minds imputed to
her dear little innocence. Our speech, at that epoch, was
rather like those twisted old-fashioned glass flasks that
pour, according as you wish, oil or vinegar, and we took
a great deal of satisfaction in turning the flask to suit
the social situation. Just as we enjoyed a man-of-the-
worldish game of pool in the parlour over Abey Fox's
father's saloon, with some of Bert's old livery-stable
friends and a commercial traveller or two ("drummers"
we called them), and then settled the score, had a glass
of beer, and sauntered out in time for clean clothes and
a shave we each had our mug and brush at the barber's
and were shaved by one of "the fish monger's twins near
the pond" in time for dinner with Mrs. Crane, and told
Pippy and Dossy how well the New Haven girls danced !
Dossy was at her loveliest she must have been about
twenty-two, and I taught her a new schottische myself,
after dinner, with her mother contentedly looking on and
Bert playing the banjo to Lulu, who was just about to
capture Fortunatus and was the best dancer except Bert
and Fanny Pratt in Warwick. Had Lulu been twenty
to-day, she would have been pirouetting in classic drapery
(or out of it) to enraptured audiences after dinner par-
ties ; but at that time her parents would never have
dared to show their faces in the streets of Warwick if
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THE INHERITANCE
any child of theirs had dreamed, in the secret recesses of
her chamber, of perpetrating such pas seuls as Miss Hop-
pin's successor undoubtedly offers in her curriculum to-
day! Autres temps, we can assure you, dear nieces,
autres mceurs, and perhaps the girls are all the same,
always, at heart, as Horace, or somebody equally classic,
has undoubtedly said, but they, are certainly vastly dif-
ferent at foot and ankle from generation to generation !
That summer, as I said before, somewhere, found us
all together, for one delightful season, before the begin-
ning of the end that is, after all, just life. People can't
go on picnics and moonlight sails and clam-bakes and
hotel "hops" for ever, and of course they don't want to.
But what fun they were !
Chrissy developed a perfect genius for planning, engi-
neering, commissarying and transporting these affairs,
and as she never expected the least share in what would
ordinarily be considered the pleasures of them, from a
girl's point of view, always going ahead with Thomas and
the hampers and driving home with the Doctor, whom
she often persuaded to come (people aren't so sick in the
summer in the country, anyhow), she was quite popular,
in a quiet, maiden-auntish sort of way, and loaned hair
pins and hat pins and safety pins and plain pins, talked
to shy boys, amused little sisters and brothers, washed up
and boiled the kettle generally.
Bert picked out the place and time, Rob attended to
the invitations, crossing out many of Bert's invites (for
Rob was by now distinctly a bit of a snob) and Gary
delivered the messages over the new telephone (which
many people in Warwick didn't know how to use, frankly,
and tied up during thunder storms!).
Gary was admittedly incurable, now, and used a crutch.
Teaching Chrissy was his one interest, and by that sum-
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WE BEGIN TO LEAVE THE NEST
mer he actually had her up to her graded age in the pub-
lic school in everything, and beyond it, in some branches.
It opened my eyes, even then, to the immense amount of
time wasted in all routine, mass work, and the little
amount gained by each individual child under ordinary
school conditions. Ever since then I have been less im-
pressed by the phenomenal progress made by those phe-
nomenal children when taught by devoted enthusiasts;
for Chrissy was not particularly intellectual and never
loved books for themselves. But she had a pathetic de-
sire to be like other people, and a great deal of pride,
and these, with the entire attention of an interested tutor,
on his mettle, carried her on with amazing strides.
What baskets she packed! Breasts of chicken, sand-
wiched into Norah's Parker House rolls; little brown-
rimmed tarts, each with a slice of cheese wrapped in with
it ; ham, minced with home-made pickles, spread on Bos-
ton brown bread; sheets of yellow sponge cake; dozens
of soft, moist, enormous molasses cookies, to be eaten
with "pot cheese," packed into egg shells; lemonade, all
mixed but the water, and Mrs. O'Shaugnessy's root beer
that frothed all over one's trousers when it was opened
I wonder we had breath to sing as we did, when the moon
came up !
First we went in bathing, laughing meanwhile at the
wagonloads of country people (real country, from the
hills behind the coast) who romped into the water in old
skirts and trousers, with straw hats tied on and a terrible
fear of wetting their hair. They thought our modest
bathing suits indecent and said so loudly, and we felt
amused and cosmopolitan and dived from the spring-
board, trod water, and smoked cigarettes while swim-
ming, to impress them. They screamed and squawked
and jumped up and down in the water, and we imagined
THE INHERITANCE
them on Broadway, with that sort of hair cut, and prac-
tised overhand strokes.
Chrissy, by the way, was with us here, swimming out
with Bert, our best diver and under-water performer,
and leaving every one else behind. She never walked into
the water, like the other girls, but went off from the end
of the pier.
Then in again, to the row of stuffy, tarry little bath
houses, two at a time, towelling and puffing, to emerge
damp-haired and dying of hunger, and find the beach fire
at just the right stage of embers, the coffee breathing
Araby the blest, the plates and cups in place, and Chrissy
directing Bert as to the courses.
While we flirted and smoked, full fed, she attended to
the affairs that Thomas couldn't manage, saw that the
Doctor had a coat to sit on, and dropping down near
him added her sweet, deep alto to the choruses we sent
up to those placid stars that have watched so many young
picnickers come and eat and sing and go away again.
They shone down over Cemetery Point, those same equal-
minded stars, and perhaps saw less difference between its
inhabitants and us than we would have relished.
We sang a song that began :
"There is a tavern in the town,
(In the town!)
And there my true love sits him down
(Sits him down!)"
and another, a beautiful German harmony:
"Forsaken, forsaken, forsaken, am I"
that I can't hear now without a twist of the heart, but
sang out gaily enough then and,
"How can I bear to .leave thee," which was a little
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WE BEGIN TO LEAVE THE NEST
too much the good-bye soldier song of the 6o's for those
parents who came late to bring some of us home, so
that they coughed and felt for their pockets and listened
to us longer than they meant.
Our songs were sad, mostly about lovers who never
came back and friends who were parted will any one
tell me why ? but we were not sad ; oh, dear, no ! Now,
it seems to go the other way. . . .
And Lulu Crane looked at Bert's handsome profile,
thrown back as he sang in his charming barytone, and
Dossy sat near Rob, who didn't sing, and Hux and I
threw in a casual bass and Pippy and a summer boarder
at Miss Hoppin's led the tune in two of the sweetest
sopranos I ever heard. Hux thought so, too, for he
sang carefully at the summer boarder. And Miss Pey-
ton, there by sufferance, wished Bert hadn't been so wild
and the Doctor was grateful he hadn't been any wilder,
and I begged Pippy to wear my college pin till autumn,
anyway, and Thomas said the horses had stood long
enough.
So we sang ourselves home, and Bert, fully intending
to go out again after we were all settled, went softly in
to kiss Aunt Addie good night Aunt Addie, whose heart
would be heavy if she knew he was going out again,
but would forgive him anything for that kiss !
Ah, well . . .
"Good night, ladies,
Good night, ladies,
Good night, LADIES.
We're going to leave you now!"
It's over, all over, and life is fuller now, and deeper-
but oh, how happy it all was !
CHAPTER XI
In Which I Go to Find My Inheritance
IT was just a year to a day from the date of our
happiest beach picnic that summer (the picnic when
Pippy Crane let her warm, competent hand lie
under mine on the firm sand, all through the endless
verses of that absurdly haunting song wherein we ex-
plained to each other how, when, where and why we were
"seeing Nellie home") ; just one year, exactly, and I
was tramping the deck of what we called "a great ocean
liner" in those unsophisticated times.
There was, to be sure, a difference between this boat
and the one that had brought me to America. It was
bigger, it travelled faster, and there was a little more
ceremony observed as to the serving of meals and the
order of the day, generally. But we still felt conscious
of taking a great step, and were distinctly brothers in
adventure, and consequently friendly, a priori. And
we still wore our oldest clothes (even older than we kept
for travelling, when we "got there" oh, yes, madam!),
and those of us who were male assumed yachting caps,
and those of us who were female presented a vastly dif-
ferent appearance from the dashing young person nomi-
nally under Hux's authority, whom Aunt Chrissy "went
in" to "see off" the other day. Indeed, that oldest girl
of Huxley's has a vastly different appearance, generally,
from the strong-minded type of the early '8o's.
"Strong-minded and well-dressed, eh ?" says our grate-
ful friend of the many motors (who took me to see old
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I GO TO FIND MY INHERITANCE
Diana, you remember). "Oh! well, God help the men,
that's all !"
The reason for my being on this "great ocean liner"
(with due apologies to the Mauretania) was not
at all what you may have supposed. In my last year at
Crane's an English boy had come to the academy to be
fitted for Yale, the son of a Londoner who had drifted
to Canada, in the typical English fashion, liked it, formed
business connections in the States, grew enthusiastic over
the American business methods (so pleasant, when one
profits by them!) and decided to bring his boy up to
be an out-and-out Yankee. The boy's name was, oddly
enough, Gordon Hughes, and such a coincidence, plus
the fact that he was a pleasant fellow enough, and had
travelled more than the rest of us, which made his talk
interesting, drew us together, and he became one of that
little coterie at the university that Bert made so famous.
He was twenty-one that summer, and very proud of his
father's confidence in entrusting him with some private
commissions in London, besides the duty of looking up
various god-parents and grandmothers and such like in-
the provinces.
"Why don't you come along, too, Hughie?" he had
suggested (we were always "Hughie" and "Hughesy" to
each other and the boys had taken it up). "Wouldn't
your governor allow it ? Mine told me I could take any
one of the fellows along granny's so used to a lot of
fellows, you know ; I've eight uncles and my aunt wants
to see a real Yankee boy. Wouldn't you like it ?"
Wouldn't I? I'd ask the Doctor. He'd know about
the money. And as to the absurdity of my being a rep-
resentative Yankee boy, you must believe that it never
struck me !
The Doctor agreed heartily with Aunt Addie that it
10 135
THE INHERITANCE
would be a fine chance for me, and personally lugged
down from the attic his great bag (did we call it a "Glad-
stone" then? I think so), and said that my allowance
would cover it, he was sure, only no nonsense, mind, for
I was no Crcesus.
"Oh, no, of course not," I said vaguely (you must
remember that I got my allowance cheque every month,
with the other boys, and endorsed it, like them, in much
the spirit of Elijah endorsing the ravens' performances).
Later he called me into the office and handed me a
slip of much-figured paper.
"I know you're pretty steady, Hugh, so I don't mind
showing you this : you'll see you really have 'more than
we thought I don't see why you shouldn't run into a
thousand dollars for the trip, if you want to travel a
little. Or even more. Things might come up, you
know."
Oh, yes, things might come up. I agreed with him
thoroughly.
"And as Addie says, you could lay in some clothes.
There's no doubt they're cheaper, and she says they're
better. I don't know much about that.
"You see, Hugh" (how sweet that deprecating, quiz-
zical smile of his was ! Hux had it, a little, and I think
that was why I almost liked Hux) ; "you see, I'm no
business man, this way. The only thing I ever had a
particle of money-sense about is real estate. I must say
I have a nose for that ! But when I took over your af-
fairs I let that bank at Hartford manage it, more or less.
It was just the monthly cheque and your expenses, you
know. And so, I just drew on the account, instead of
Nana. You always appear to be solvent. . . ."
His smile saddened, and I knew by that almost uncom-
fortable telepathy that afflicts (and blesses) families, that
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I GO TO FIND MY INHERITANCE
he was thinking of poor Bert. Ah, well, it takes all sorts
to make a world, as Nana used to say; and that, like
many and many a cant phrase, is the very bedrock of
truth, when you brush away the cobwebs that custom has
staled it with. We know nothing of any other sort of
world, after all, do we? And yet we act and talk as if
there were some one, really normal sort of person, one
clear type, as describable as a "mammal," say, or a "ver-
tebrate" !
"It looks to me as if Nana must have saved a good
deal in those first years," said the Doctor thoughtfully,
"and, of course, she could have. She was a great mana-
ger. By the way, have you told her you're going?"
No, I hadn't thought of it. But she'd soon be "up at
the house," probably, though of course she didn't come
nearly as much as she used, and of course she'd be de-
lighted. Being English, herself, you know.
"Ye-es," the Doctor agreed doubtfully. "But you know
you're English, too, Hugh."
I smiled, and said I knew it, but I never felt so, some-
how, and he nodded and looked thoughtful again.
"It would be pretty hard on us all if you had to
go back there, after all, wouldn't it, Hughie?" he said
suddenly.
"Go back? But I wouldn't, I won't!" I cried. "Why,
who could make me, Doctor ?"
"Well, I don't know . . . there might be some inher-
itance business . . . well, we'll know very soon. Of
course, there's no use pretending that your guardians
over there, whoever they may be, have any particular
affection for you, Hugh. Evidently there's no pretence
of it. There's plenty of money, and it's paid regularly,
and that's all. With both parents dead you never even
saw your mother, I understand?"
137
THE INHERITANCE
"No, Doctor."
"Nor your father?"
I shook my head.
"And not even any report demanded of your health
or progress or studies Addie tells me there's never been,
and certainly there hasn't been since I signed the quar-
terly receipts it looks as if what relatives there were
were only interested in bare justice. Now, of course,
with everything as open and aboveboard as it is, and the
solicitor I deal with who he is he's Geddie, you know,
handles all Professor Vereker's wife's business : Vereker
can't speak too highly of him and with Nana what she
is and so devoted to your family, why, of course, we know
that everything's . . . oh, well, it's not the American way
of doing things, certainly, but, as Addie says, there may
be only too many reasons why you wouldn't be too wel-
come to whoever's holding your place till you're twenty-
one, Hugh, my boy !"
The dear Doctor ! There has never been a doubt in my
mind that my adopted countrymen constitute the most
romantic nation in the world.
"Of course, my boy," he went on, looking at me di-
rectly, "I wouldn't for the world force your confidence,
and you may know more than I of your prospects "
"Me, sir!" I cried eagerly, "why, I always supposed
you and Aunt Addie knew more than I did ! You know
Aunt Addie always said that when I was twenty-
one "
"Yes, yes, I know," he interrupted hastily; "and I
must tell you, my boy, that it's my belief your Aunt
Addie thinks she knows more than she does! It's all
come over me since this European trip of yours came up,
somehow. To tell you the truth, Hugh, we none of us
know anything, and that's the end of it. Nana is the
138
I GO TO FIND MY INHERITANCE
only one that knows, and her instructions are evidently
perfect silence. As Addie says (how we all fell back
on Aunt Addie, try how we might !) it's more than likely
that the whole allowance ceases if the conditions are
broken don't you see ?"
I nodded comprehensively.
We both looked very wise, but how we could have
explained the equity of this arrangement, outside of a
melodrama, passes my comprehension, to-day ! Although,
to do him justice, some inkling of this must have come
over the Doctor's mind, for he added musingly :
"And, I must say, it would have been highly irregular
and dangerous to have trusted so young a child, with
such prospects, to any ordinary servant, Hugh. I must
say that. But as Addie points out, any arrangement sanc-
tioned by Geddie, is, of course . . . indicates that . . .
well, they knew Nana thoroughly, of course. Eighteen
years in the family, as she admitted to Addie. And as
your Aunt Addie puts it, any one who has lived as long
in London as she has, knows the character of Geddie's
clients. That alone, as she says ..."
"Of course," I said briefly, trying to speak maturely
and not to show how curiously excited and stirred I was,
all at once. The consciousness of a family solicitor whose
very name was a Rock of Gibraltar of importance and
definite position, known to many, and making my small
affairs important and definite, and known to many, in
their turn, utterly aside from my personality, rushed
over me, and I became from that moment like a girl that
has once been loved, or a lad that has lost his first inno-
cence, never the same again. Even the well-known fact
of Nana's allegiance took on, of a sudden, a new light
to my opened eyes.
"Eighteen years in the family!"
139
THE INHERITANCE
That she had been eighteen years in my service, was
of course, but eighteen years in the family! Such feudal-
ism was not, in South Warwick, in the '8o's.
"And then, of course, one must remember," the Doc-
tor went on, thinking backward, "that you came to us
so soon that Nana really had the entire responsibility
only a very little while."
"Of course," I murmured again. O Aunt Addie, Aunt
Addie! Who brought Nana and me to "us"? Tell me
that!
"And I hope, Hugh, my boy," the Doctor concluded,
rising from his leather pivot chair and holding out his
hand, "I hope you feel that we've done our best by
you however things may turn out. It's hard to
realise that you're not one of my own boys : I wish you
were."
"Th-thank you, Doctor," I stammered briefly. I could
say no more, for I found my lips were twitching, but we
took hands tightly, and no son of his father's loins could
have felt more than I felt at that moment, I'll swear, for
the Doctor.
He blew his nose abruptly and sat down again.
"That's all, I think, then," he said, with the shyness
Americans always have at such points, "except that I
think I ought to remind you, Hugh, not to think of hunt-
ing Geddie up. I understand from Addie that any at-
tempts of that sort must wait, for a year and a half.
After that, of course "
"Oh, after that ..." I repeated, pursing my lips in
a manner calculated to win even Mr. Geddie's well-
weighed approval, "after that. . . ."
I went out in a sort of dream, and amazed Chrissy,
coming in for her nightly Dickens, by calling her "littk
woman" and remarking that "we were growing fast,
140
" 'I hope you feel that we've done our best by you.' "
I GO TO FIND MY INHERITANCE
these days !" It seemed to me I was of another genera-
tion, simply. It was as if I felt another and older civili-
sation in my blood; thicker-layered, deeper-rooted, with
winding, cross-currents running far underground (mixed
metaphors, these!) quite unknown to the simple, open-
book life of this community of no privacies. I felt, sud-
denly, what the Professor meant when he insisted that
every one in America was like every one else. My school
fellows, now: any one of their lives was the pattern
of the others. Who of them had my sealed history? No
open book there!
Little turns of speech of Aunt Addie, dropped on stony
ground, took root and flowered all at once.
"But of course in Hugh's case, it's different. . . .
I don't know if that would be suitable for Master Hugh,
Nana? . . . Nonsense, Robert and Huxley, Hugh has
always had a room to himself ! . . . Now, my dear Hugh,
don't, whatever you do, neglect your French you may
live to regret it bitterly, some day !"
And so on, and so on ... I seemed to see, darkly,
as in a glass, what she meant, now. And it stirred my
blood and clouded my brain and set my heart a-tingle for
that ocean liner!
Nana didn't happen to drop in for some time, for South
Warwick was thick in plans for its new hospital, and
she was in the very centre of it all, trying from her vast
experience of ways and means to make out a budget of
possible running expenses, and laying personal levies
upon all the linen and bedding and sick-room supplies of
the village. You see, in those benighted days there was
no science of abstract efficiency, no college of comprehen-
sive domestic economy, where learned chits instructed
weary matrons by the book. No: in those dark ages of
your country, dear madam, only those were supposed to
141
THE INHERITANCE
know life who had lived, and the ships of domestic state
had women of a "certain age" at the helm.
But on a hurried visit to the Doctor who, with herself,
really formed what we had learned to call the "head cen-
tre" of the hospital board, she took the occasion to wel-
come me back from college, and learned the great
news.
We agreed that she seemed very quiet about it, and
that her "Yes, indeed, Master Hugh, 'twill make a fine
change for you," hardly met the occasion.
"And I've shown him how rich he is, Nana; he's so
prudent, I'm sure it was all right," said the Doctor jok-
ingly.
"Have you, then, Dr. Caldwell? I doubt he's none
too rich for his needs," she said briefly, and I caught a
glance from Aunt Addie to her brother that flushed me
nervously.
"Well, well, young birds must try their wings," he
said, "and Hugh's to go as much over a thousand dollars
on the way to well, say five hundred more, as he thinks
he needs. He's never once gone over his allowance,
Nana, and that would leave his next two years all safely
provided for, besides the nest egg."
"Anything you say, Dr. Caldwell," she agreed gravely ;
"you and Master Hugh'll do what's right between you,
no fear."
"And, by the way," said the Doctor in a low voice,
as she followed him into the office, "I gave Hugh a hint
about not disturbing Mr. Geddie the solicitor, you know.
I understand it is necessary under the terms of the . . .
that is to say, he's to wait until he's of age, before
we . . ."
"It has always been so meant, sir," she answered
simply.
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I GO TO FIND MY INHERITANCE
Truly, as Mr. Applegate never tired of saying, my old
nurse was a remarkable woman !
Did she know where she was sending me to what?
If I had stopped to think, I must have realised that she
was the only soul this side of the Atlantic who could
have known ; if I had stopped to think, I might have won-
dered at the quick flash of her eye, so soon veiled, and
the strange yearning depth of her glance at her nurseling,
her charge for so many faithful years, before he was
"one of the Doctor's boys." But it was many years
before I stopped to think.
CHAPTER XII
In Which I See Life
AS I look back on the three months that followed,
it almost seems that I must be turning the pages
of some brightly illustrated, gaily bound book,
with a hero whose sprightly progress through the plot
interests me indeed, but has no connection with me. Into
the midst of my quiet, hard-working, and on the whole,
responsible life, there bloomed this strange and startling
flower, this exotic, heavy-scented growth of hot-houses
whose like I shall never, probably, see again. Can I be-
lieve that I saw them really? Here in my comfortable
study, I can close my eyes and make an effort of the
will, and can see, behind my shut lids, the book-lined
walls rise and spread and gleam with tooled morocco and
aureate edges, and divide into embrasures for marble
busts and ivory carvings, and veil their edges in wine-
coloured velvet. My humble leather chairs turn into
carved oak and tapestry ; my man, who but now brought
me in some logs from the stable, swells into a majestic,
white-calved creature with a powdered head and divides
into many of his kind ; the rain trickling down the eave
pipe is the fountain in the great conservatory that offers
one door to this metamorphosed library, and the gentle
echoes of a piano through two walls is the distant waltz
from the great ballroom.
I am in twelve-guinea evening clothes with a white
rose and a bit of maidenhair in my buttonhole, and the
144
I SEE LIFE
feet that tap to the waltz measure are in trim, varnished
pumps. And if I am a little flushed and if the waltz
sings a little giddily in my young ears, am I the only
youth that night in London of whom this can be said ?
For the hot mutton and iced water of Connecticut are
far behind me now, and steadier heads than mine have
capitulated to the Burgundy of that princely host of
mine!
And, mark you (for this is the wonder of it all), no
salmon in the sea, no hawk in the air, felt ever more at
ease and accustomed in his element than I in this gilded
whirl of London in the Season. If I had experienced any
strangeness, any consciousness of another standard of
living, it was not here, but in the noisy, comfortable, pro-
vincial house of Hughes' grandmother, whose married
daughters managed the house for her and kept her (as
she said, with a sly wink at me) from getting dull and
prosy.
There were croquet and even archery contests (shades
of the squash court, forgive these antediluvian lapses!)
on that estate ; there were fat ponies and sleek bays, and
a grapery, and friendly, chattering girls in pink and blue
there was, from the South Warwick point of view, lux-
ury and a notable ease of life. And yet, from the mo-
ment I paid off my cab at the door, saw my new leather
box started up the side stairs, tossed away my cigarette
and strolled out through the shrubbery, studying my new
tweeds appreciatively and flicking my new flexible stick
against my new straw hat (for I was new from top to
toe), from that moment, I say, a faint, unclassified feel-
ing that had lain dormant up till now, back, back in my
brain, suddenly cleared into definite shape, and I knew
that the attitude I was holding toward Hughesy and his
happy, prosperous kin was tolerance. Just that. Heaven
145
THE INHERITANCE
knows why, but, contrary to what you might expect, I
didn't care a button what they might think of me, and
I knew as soon as I had met them that they were not a
little interested in what I thought of them.
"Heartily glad to see you, my boy, heartily !" cried an
expansive Uncle Hughes, beaming at me over a dazzling
white waistcoat, "been looking forward to it ever since
you reached London, haven't we, mamma ? Glad to show
you any simple hospitality in our power of course, we're
plain people, you know, plain people! But I have a
little claret I'd have warranted before you were born
ha! Girls, where are you? Here's Gordie's friend
from the States come, now, look alive ! England's
honour, you know mustn't let the Yankee girls
beat us!"
I bowed gravely. The girls were all blonde, and large
and high coloured and their mammas and aunts were
rustling and gold chained and braceletted.
"It's very good indeed of you, Mr. Gordon, to give
us a few days," said the principal mamma, "and I assure
you we appreciate it: we know that your time here has
many claims upon it, don't we, girls?"
Again I bow deprecatingly "Not at all, oh, not in
the least."
"Ah, but we know better, you see! Gordie couldn't
but tell us. He was so surprised he'd no idea you knew
anybody, you see, anybody at all, to say nothing of . . ."
"Oh, bother it all, auntie, I say! Hughie's all right
if we're not grand enough for him he can cut away, that's
all. Come on, Hughie, I think my nicest cousins are over
on the croquet lawn."
Are you rubbing your eyes, O puzzled reader, at these
unaccountable allusions? Do you detect in the simple
British merchant a little tendency, not wholly absent from
146
I SEE LIFE
his ilk, whose raison d' etre you're at a loss to explain?
To understand it, and me, at this stage, you must go
back a little.
Professor Vereker had entrusted to me a certain very
precious scarab, which was on no account to leave my
person until I delivered it safely to another professor with
an absolutely unpronounceable German name, at the Brit-
ish Museum. Dr. Crane's boys had a pretty fairly de-
served reputation for useable German, and everything the
Other Professor (as I invariably styled him) should an-
swer to my list of questions to be read from the paper
I was to copy faithfully and guard as the apple of my
eye. The scarab was then to be carried to Major (now
Colonel) Protheroe, at the Sirdar Club, with a letter of
instructions and what he was to do with it in Egypt,
where he was going in the autumn, only he and the Pro-
fessor knew.
We stepped out into a bright London morning (at
least, Hughesy assured me it was bright) and I, meekly
piloted by his superior personality, listened respectfully to
his careless information and thought myself very lucky
to have such a friend at court. The smoky doors of the
Sirdar received us, and we waited patiently among the
filed Indian newspapers and somnolent old gentlemen
who pretended to read them, absorbing toddies the while,
staring curiously about us when the liveried pomposities
were not looking, for I had never been in a club in my
life.
Presently the Major (I couldn't think of him as
Colonel) appeared, looking just as he looked eleven
years ago, from my point of view, and the letter was de-
livered, the scarab entrusted, Hughesy introduced, and
matters appeared to be concluded.
"Stop a bit," said the Colonel suddenly, looking over
147
THE INHERITANCE
his letter, "it's not possible that you are that little chap?
Do you remember me ?"
"Oh, yes, sir, quite well. I don't think you've changed,
Maj Colonel."
"God bless my soul! You and the puppy and the
little girl hey ? And I suppose she's grown, too ?"
"Yes, sir. She's a great deal changed, too her hair is
very dark, now."
"Yes, yes like her mother's. Is she Mrs. Vereker
in the Bermudas now ? Vereker writes she's gone home
for a bit."
"Yes, sir. She's been there quite a while, now."
"Ah, yes. Yes, yes. . . ."
His eyes fixed themselves absently on me, under the
bushy, gray brows, and he fell into a brown study.
A great handsome man, with iron-gray moustaches,
shouldered by us and clapped the Colonel on the back.
"Morning, Frothy! Any news?"
"We're off by September definitely."
"Hard luck ! That's the second shooting you've missed,
I think? Well, well, it's a dog's life, ain't it, Frothy?"
"Um," said the Colonel noncommitfally. "Here,
Stacey, see here, who do you think I've got here ? Vere-
ker 's boy, from the States. You remember Eugenie La
Febvre, of course ?"
"Indeed I do. So this is her son? He doesn't look
like her."
"No, no, God bless me! It was a girl. No, this is a
ward of sorts English lad, you see inheritance busi-
ness stays over there till his majority something like
that, Gordon, eh? Lord, how it all comes back! I re-
member that day so plain . . . you were a little shaver,
then, weren't you?"
"Yes, Colonel, about nine."
148
I SEE LIFE
"Miss La Febvre married a writing man, didn't she,
Frothy? Scientific chap?"
"Yes ; Vereker, the Egyptian authority, you know."
"Not the Vereker?"
"That's it. I've a scarab from him that's to go to
Egypt (entre nous, of course) and upset all the previous
evidences of of what invasion is it, my boy?"
I disclaimed any responsibility for this terrible scarab,
only adding modestly that its results were confidently
expected to stagger the antiquarian world which, as a
matter of fact, I believe, they did, ultimately.
"Well, well, how the years go by!"
The Colonel puffed out a great sigh. "I never enjoyed
a meal better than that cook of yours gave us,
Gordon. Ever tried American lobster, Stacey? And
that liqueur brandy . . . you must stop, my boy, and
have a bit of luncheon with me. Talk over old
times, eh?"
"No, no, Frothy, wait a bit and lunch with me ; Parra-
vale's coming in for his tailor my son, you know (to
me) and the two youngsters can hit it off together. I've
just sent a saddle in from Staceways very juicy, they
tell me. Stop and try it and your friend, if he
will. . . ."
But Hughesy had to meet one of his principal uncles
at his club, and excused himself. As he turned to go, re-
gretfully, I thought, the big military shoulders of "Sta-
cey" twisted about on his powerful trunk, and he sum-
moned one of the pomposities.
"Tell the chef I shall have four, and I'll have some
of that yellow-label of mine, will you ?"
"Yes, my lord," said the pomposity bowing, and as I
escorted Hughesy to the door, officially, we heard the
pomposity murmur to one of his underlings :
149
THE INHERITANCE
"Look sharp, now Lord Stacey's mutton for four
and the yellow label at the usual table."
"Whew! You are going it, aren't you?" and I felt
a knowing nudge at my elbow.
"Am I ?" I said innocently ; "it was kind of the Major,
wasn't it?"
"Oh, I dare say," and Hughesy gave me an odd, re-
spectful sort of glance. For, you see, I was perfectly
unconscious, and that made all the difference. I had
never met a lord, to be sure, but then, I had never met
a queen, or an earl, or an archangel. And I had read
about them all, and "yes, my lord," sounded just as it
looked in the novels. It was all a sort of play to me,
and I was only Master Hugh, after all.
Later, as I discussed the Staceways' excellent South-
down, opposite a strapping young fellow whose name ap-
peared to be Patty (he called his father pater, just as they
did in the novels), Lord Stacey looked at my full glass
and pursed his lips in mock solicitude.
"Not up to your famous liqueur brandy, eh ?" he said.
"I'm afraid your people spoiled the Colonel here."
"Oh, no, no, sir," I stammered, gulping at it, "it's not
that, but I'm not used to wine, so very much. I'm sure
it's delicious."
"Couldn't please me better, my boy," he answered ap-
provingly. "It's best saved till later, in my way of think-
ing. Wish you'd get Patty with you, there ! Hey, Pat ?"
"Oh, come, now, guv'nor," drawls Pat; "how about
Tour Bottle Harry' at Trinity?"
And the old fellows laugh heartily and ask me my
plans.
"For Pat might show you about a bit, if you're not
too busy."
No, I wasn't busy. I had thought of hunting out a
I SEE LIFE
tailor my aunt knew of, if my friend Mr. Hughes had
time. . . ."
"Just going to my own rather decent fellow glad to
take you, if you like," says Patty ; "shall we start ?"
"That's right, that's right, and why not come to us
for a bit when Prothy's with us Lady Stacey knew your
mother, I'm sure didn't she, Prothy?"
"Yes, indeed, at Bermuda God bless my soul,
Stacey, this isn't Eugenie's boy, you know hers was a
girl. This is the little ward-in-chancery boy stopping
with them, you know. Vereker's much attached to him
all that sort of thing. The girl's in his guardian's
family, I believe, while her mother's away that it, my
boy?"
"Yes, sir, Chrissy's with us all the time, now."
"Oh, well, it's all the same call a cab, Biggestow, for
the young gentlemen (Yes, my lord), and, Pat, your
mother expects you for dinner in the country, you know."
"Yes, pater."
"Taffy isn't quite the thing, this season, so we left
town early, you know, Prothy, and the women all like it
so much, by Gad, they don't even come in for the balls."
"All the same, guv'nor, keep your eye on the Filly
Thursday fortnight, at our ball!" quoth Patty sagely;
"you'll find her 'quite the thing,' then, I fancy. Now,
if you're ready, Gordon. . . ."
I can see that tailor, now: his manners made a far
greater impression upon me than Lord Stacey's.
"One's always taking fellows to tailors that've just
come back home," Pat vouchsafes. "Queer, after he's
seen his people, first place a fellow makes for. A cousin
of mine had a ranch near you, somewhere, and he always
laid in a stock, first thing."
"A ranch near me ?"
11 151
THE INHERITANCE
"Colorado, it was. Or are you in the Southern states ?
They're off Bermuda, aren't they?"
I gasped.
"I'm near New York," I said gravely; "there aren't
many ranches there."
"I'd give my hat to go there," says Pat gloomily ; "but
I suppose I'll have to stick by the ship. Two of my
brothers Lionel and Jerry are going out to my cousin
next year. He has eight thousand sheep. Ever met him
Bellew Stacey: tall, dark chap?"
"N-no. I never went West, Lord Parravale."
"Oh, chuck it call me Pat, won't you? You know
the pater was sweet on your mother once, don't you?
The way I know, he was joking the old Colonel about it
oh, ages ago, when I was a little chap in knickers.
He'd just been to the States and seen her for a bit,
you know, and they were all chaffing him, he was so
down.
" 'You've no right to nag me, Stace, old man,' he came
out, all of a sudden, 'I've seen the poetry you wrote her !'
"Jove, wasn't there a howl !"
"But but that wasn't my "
"Hi! stop, you, cabby! You're 'way out 48, I told
you, and here it is 79, and I'm late, as it is."
"Very sorry, sir. . . ."
I seem hopelessly entangled with the Verekers and
have a feeling that I shall continue to be.
The manners of that tailor, so unlike any tailor I
ever knew, placed me in utter subjection to them, and I
stood in a tremour of uncertainty as to the proper things
to do and say to him and his assistant. From the mo-
ment when he bowed to us, accepted the fact of my ex-
istence, and expressed himself as enchanted to serve any
friend of Lord Parravale's, I was as wax in his hands.
152
I SEE LIFE
"William, oblige me by assisting Mr. Hughes-Gordon
with his coat thank you. William, will you kindly bring
those sample light-weight tweeds to Lord Parravale's
friend? William, kindly record these measures of Mr.
Hughes-Gordon and how does London appear to you,
sir, after your long absence ? Homelike, I trust ? Many
Colonial gentlemen have depended upon me for years,
sir, and even in the event of the measures changing
slightly (as they will, we all know) I have satisfied per-
fectly. What is it, William ?"
For William was murmuring in subdued tones and
pointing to my distinguished measurements under his
breath, so to speak. There was a short colloquy.
"How many, er, to what extent was your friend think-
ing of ordering, my lord?"
"Why? What's up, Goodenow ?"
"It's quite a coincidence, sir, but as I said to Will-
iam (William, oblige me by sending inside for all of
the Honourable Mr. Avesham's order), as I said, 'Will-
iam, mark my words, there will be somebody come along
that will be glad to get these, and a favor to the family,
into the bargain.' But I never expected it so soon. You
heard of poor Mr. Avesham's death, my lord?"
"Yes, indeed, poor beggar. Hard luck. Walked out
of a third-story window in his sleep, three days before
his wedding, Gordon. Nice chap, I believe."
"Yes, sir. I've attended to the family since he went
out of kilts, my lord. He had a fancy for everything
new, do you see some gentlemen have, and a good job
for their valets, I assure you! I had his whole order
here they were going to Scotland. As William points
out, the measures are identical with your friend's, sir,
identical or as much as makes no matter in the trouser
length; Mr. Avesham had a shade the longer leg, sir.
153
THE INHERITANCE
Naturally, the family didn't want to see them. Sir Bless-
ington Avesham forbade me to allow his mother to know
about them, and I told him to leave everything here, and
I'd make such an offer to any gentleman as could use
them, as to dispose of them quick, and only recoup myself
to the extent of the actual cloth and the making. Would
you care to see them, sir ?"
William appeared, staggering under garments, a laden
underling in the rear.
"Don't look alarmed, sir, it's the Inverness that bulks
so. There were three lounge suits and a frock and the
evening clothes and the riding breeches and the heavy
morning tweeds and the flannels two, he was a cricketer,
you'll remember, my lord the light overcoat and the
smoking jacket. That large box the boy has was the
body linen. All sent here to be marked. The shirts, the
very best. The scarfs he picked out the last thing, from
the shop below. He'd a new box it's in the cutting
room and it was sent here for his man to pack, for we
were late with the Inverness. Yes, and a new silver
cigarette case that he'd specially fancied and picked out
in Bond Street, it seems, and sent over for us to cut a
special pocket for, for he fancied the size a little large,
you see, sir. The bill came with it ... I'd be delighted
to make you a price, sir, and Lord Parravale will assure
you that you'll get your money's worth."
"Great chance, I should say," said Lord Parravale
promptly ; "why don't you try one on ?"
"Would you care to try the linen, sir? None of it's
marked."
I followed William's respectful becks and nods into
a private room and emerged in a few moments, a little
diffident, but perfectly conscious of a highly satisfactory
result. The cool grey garments of the Honourable Mr.
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I SEE LIFE
Avesham might have been cut and fitted and sewed with
my proportions in careful view.
"And the hips just takes up that length in the leg, you
see, William!"
"It's a marvel," vouchsafed William succinctly.
"And you're dressed for two years, easy, sir. ... I
would make it (for a friend of yours, Lord Parravale),
let me see. . . ."
I had known from the beginning that I should take
them.
"Suppose I give you a draft for fifty pounds," I began.
"Oh, my dear sir don't think of it at your leisure
Oh, certainly, if you prefer. But pray don't hurry about
the balance ! And the boxes, sir, I'll send . . . you'll find
the cigarette case a neat thing, and distinguished, I think
out of the ordinary. Oh, yes, my lord, Colonial gen-
tlemen and from America invariably have a great deal
of money by them. And pay very largely. I've often
remarked it. Very free they are. They do business in
a large way, I suppose."
I could see that Pat was impressed, though he tried
to hide it with an offhand manner, and insisted on pre-
senting me with a malacca stick from the shop below,
"for a wedding present" a callous young thing, Pat!
I purchased a new straw hat, too, and some grey gloves,
and strode out into the glimmering London sunshine, for
the first time in my life, a very glass of fashion.
We took a new hansom and rode idly along to the Park,
linked into a strange, factitious intimacy through this
sudden larkish purchase of my trousseau, as Pat per-
sisted in calling it; and we got buttonholes from a red-
cheeked flower girl; and Pat bowed left and right; and
I could not help thinking that the mammas and daughters
he bowed to looked at me, too, as they nodded. One of
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THE INHERITANCE
the mammas signed to Pat with her parasol and told him
to get her some tea, and he said, "Yes, Lady Kitty, if
you'll give me a dance Thursday," and she laughed and
called him a saucy infant and told him she had nearly
been his godmother, which could hardly have been so, I
thought, for she was so very beautiful.
We sat about a little table on the emerald turf, and
Lady Kitty smiled frankly into my eyes, and told Pat
to talk to her daughter Aileen, who was sixteen and
even more beautiful than she, but very shy.
"I adore Colonials," said Lady Kitty, "they do things.
Is your friend to be at the ball ?"
"Sure to," said Pat, full of tea cake ; "he's coming to
Staceways before that, though. He don't know old Bel-
lew, though. I don't believe old Bell's very popular,
Lady Kitty; there's two Americans I know, now, and
neither of 'em knows him. That man from New Orleans
didn't, either."
It seemed to me that the world was one flood of vic-
torias and satin-shining bays: I had never seen such
horses. And such beautiful creatures leaned back behind
them, framed in pale rosy and blue halves of parasols;
such quiet, contented, distinguished men stood or sat at
ease, punctuating this flower bed of femininity ; such an-
gelic blond children called to one another across the vel-
vet turf in such lovely throaty voices. Ever since that
day I always think of England as the land where it was
always afternoon : against all my convictions and habits
of life, there persists in my recollection of that lotus
country the feeling that for such a gracious flowering of
civilisation as Hyde Park, all the roots of England were
planted ! The great cruel mills ; the wicked black mines ;
the desolation of other mean, unlovely towns ; the horror
of the slimy slums that fester at London's vitals ; the sod-
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I SEE LIFE
den, crippled drunkenness that trails through her arteries
all these seem a mere tangle of obscure worms beneath
that jewel-like turf. Nay, in an epicure's conception,
almost they richened the soil !
The glamour of that wonderful old England! She
has not been kind to me, the Old Mother, and for a time,
at least, I thought she had broken my heart, but even
with her cruelty, I felt her charm, her depth, her many-
sidedness. Her life is like one of those galantines she
loves so: plunge down into the rich aspic at any point,
and reach layer after layer of succulence, cross-currents
of meaty surprises, at every plunge of the inquiring fork.
And so it has always been that her gorgeous dandies
lolling through the London afternoons invariably recall
to me her Raleighs and all the Buccaneers ; those somno-
lent old majors at the Sirdar bring up to my imagination
the bronzed, hard-bitten men that hold all India in leash ;
the flushed and roystering collegians, foolish over the
punch bowl at Christmas dances, you shall find sweating
and dogged along the African veldt ; and any one of those
shy, cake-filled school boys, tow-headed and rough of
tongue, may be another Shakespeare !
You see, now, I hope, why Uncle Hughes spoke as he
did.
And when Hughesy called around at the quiet hotel
in Russell Square to which Aunt Addie had sent me, to
ask if I would come out to his uncle's that evening, I
had to put off that pleasure because of a previous en-
gagement to dine with Lady Kitty Vale-Griffiths at the
Savoy.
"I say," observed Hughesy gravely, "but you are go-
ing it, you know ! And look at our clothes ! Who's our
tailor?"
I told him, and he shook his head blankly.
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THE INHERITANCE
"But there's where the swells go!" he cried. "By
George, Hughie, you were a swell all the time, and never
said so!"
Pat was to have dined with us, but at the last moment
his mother wouldn't let him off, and I found myself at
eight o'clock alone with the first lady who ever looked
deep into my dazzled eyes over a franker expanse of
creamy skin than I had dreamed a decent woman could
face the world with. Two little wisps of pale, diapha-
nous stuff were evidently intended to answer for sleeves,
and with each dip of her polished breast the old Vale
sapphires winked and shot out their flames.
She had coils of blue-black hair, a dusky olive cheek,
and deep violet, Irish eyes, with a little dancing devil in
each of them. She had also a gambling old rake of a
husband, to whom she had been sold at her daughter's
age sixteen and no more sense of responsibility than a
lovely panther.
Now I had never conceived the possibility of such feel-
ings as Lady Kitty inspired in the breast of susceptible
youth. I knew one felt so about girls, but in my experi-
ence, wives and mothers were quite out of the social
and emotional question. And lo, it was so with me that
Lady Aileen now appeared a raw young chit, best off in
her nursery, and her mother that pillar of fire that guides
each son of Adam, once at least in his life, through his
sturm und drang in the desert !
"Lady Kitty's great fun," Pat had let fall casually,
"and, my word, she's taken a fancy to you! There are
two duels on her account everybody knows . . . they say
young Goggy Gordon Shropshire Gordons, you know
had to be sent to India on her account. By the by, they
must be some of your people. Goggy's very fair, like
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I SEE LIFE
you, and the chin's the same I knew your face was
natural, somehow."
Lord Stacey's yellow label still sang in my ears; I
forgot my prudence; all the simple, unconscious, incuri-
ous reserve that I had grown up in seemed melting away
from me in this warm, easy, friendly London, and a re-
sentful disquiet welled up in its stead. What a ridiculous
ignorance I had suffered what a childish credulity !
"My people aren't any too anxious to claim me!" I
muttered angrily, "but a man wants something more than
an allowance, I can tell you, Parravale!"
"Oh, ... I see, I see," he murmured reflectively, "Sir
Wilkie's not yearning to take Colonials to his bosom,
then, . . . well, that is hard luck, old fellow I know
his nibs, and he's the devil for family rows. All the same,
blood's thicker than water, and I'd look 'em up, Gordon,
and take the chances. Lady Grace is a trump she's
always patching up the shindies."
I grew confused, and made an honest effort to break
through the webs that were set a-spinning round me.
"I ought to tell you, Lord Parravale," I began, "that
as a matter of fact I am utterly ignorant of who "
"O Lord, don't drag me into it !" he burst out. "The
fact is, Gordon, I'm supposed to be more or less tied up
with Joan, the daughter, you know, and though it's
nothing formal, in fact well, there's nothing, really I
haven't seen the girl for five years but the mater and
Lady Grace are keen on it, don't you know, and I don't
say it won't be. So there's no good my taking sides. I
don't doubt you're in the right Colonel Protheroe told
my father you were as fine a fellow as ever stepped he
knows all about it, of course."
"There's one person that does know all about it," I
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THE INHERITANCE
said thickly, "and that's Mr. Geddie I'll know what he
has to say before I'm much older !"
"Oh, Geddie!" says Pat, relieved; "if old Geddie's
managing, you're all right, no fear. He does all our
business don't bother, now, but be guided by Geddie,
Gordon. Just leave it to him. Why, the pater says Ged-
die's patched up more families than any man in London.
And I'll have a go at Lady Grace, if you like Gad, you'll
be late you've hardly time to change, and I'll never get
to Staceways for dinner."
I rose in haste, and signalled a cab as unconsciously as
if I had summoned those useful vehicles for a decade.
"And to think we never knew that one of 'em went
to the Bermudas!" mused Pat; "I'll wager Joan and
Taffy haven't an inkling! There was that bad egg of a
Sir Hugo, though, they never mention maybe it was he.
. . . Gad, I believe it must have been he! He was the
Baronet when I was a kiddie Oh, my dear fellow, my
dear Gordon, I beg your pardon ! I didn't realize, on my
honour . . . please forget it!"
Sir Hugo ! Sir Hugo ! Something seems to take
shape, tantalisingly, in my clouded brain, then fade again.
What was that I seemed to grasp ?
"Never mind, never mind," I mutter vaguely.
"And Goggy's called for him, you know, anyway at
least, I suppose so," Pat extenuates, "though of course
it's more than likely it's just a family name like yours,
you know. But you won't mind my remembering that
Sir Wilkie was awfully bitter ; I happen to know, because
I was asking Goggy, once, years ago, if he was named
for Victor Hugo, and he told me there was a row on with
his uncle. His father was probably awfully prejudiced."
"We'll see about all this later, Parravale," I said briefly ;
"it's it's what I've come over for."
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I SEE LIFE
And suddenly I saw that what I had said was true !
So, even as I laughed back at the little sapphire devils
in Lady Kitty's eyes and wondered why it was that I had
been possessed of the silly idea that women with grown
daughters couldn't, a priori, be fascinating, even then, I
say, my brain, incredibly dormant, it seemed, till now,
galvanised and threw off brilliant, vivid sparks, and
whizzed as it whirled about in my head.
Sir Hugo ! Sir Hugo ! "Fair like me, with the same
chin." And I had been buried sixteen years in Warwick !
"Stupid that Patty couldn't come," Lady Kitty was
saying, "isn't it? Grace Stacey is rather a cat, some-
times. She seems to think I should bite Pat !"
"But you wouldn't, I'm sure."
"Oh, no ; I'd not bite him !"
"You'll make me jealous of Pat, Lady Kitty!"
"O-o-oh! And one hears of 'shy Colonials'! Never
mind, you're a dear boy yourself, Mr. Gordon, a very
dear sort of boy. I shouldn't dare to tell you what an at-
tractive boy you were but no doubt you've been told so
too often for your own good."
"No on my honour, I haven't! Tell me!"
"As if I would! (No, indeed, no more for me. Well,
only a pint, then!) But, seriously, I don't mind telling
you one thing. You're rather like another dear boy that
that used to be fond of me ..."
"When?"
"Oh, ages ago six months, then. Your chin that
little, square cleft exactly like his."
"You mean Goggy?" I ask quickly.
"Why, yes how did you know? Do you know
Goggy ? Why, to be sure, you're a Gordon, too !"
"Yes, I'm a Gordon, too," I repeat bitterly.
"And your eyes! That same green that's really blue
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THE INHERITANCE
glauque, you know, and the lashes so dark ... I knew
there was something! But coming from America, I
never thought ! Why didn't Patty say something about it
I thought he'd just met you to-day."
"He had."
"Oh ! . . . But but I thought they were all girls, the
rest of the Gordons? How interesting! And Sir Wil-
kie's father the old Baronet surely he was the only
son. Why, yes, because, when poor old Hugo went to
the bad, everybody said it was old Sir Doric's fault for
breaking the Gordon rule and having more than one son
don't you know ?"
"No, I don't know. I'm a stranger here, Lady Kitty."
"Like your motto 'A Sir anger, but still a Gordon.'
And that's what you are, aren't you, Mr. Gordon? I
suppose you've come over here to 'trace it up,' as the
Yankees say? I met a man at your Ambassador's once,
who told me that he owned the city of Leeds, really ; his
name was Ingraham. But he called it In-gra-ham like
that."
"Yes. I've come to trace it up."
"How serious we are! Only don't disinherit poor
Goggy, will you where did you meet him? He never
was in Bermuda you're from Bermuda, I think? Only
poor Hugo was there when he was Sir Hugo. What's
your name, Mr. Gordon?"
"Hugh."
"Hugh? Why, how strange! How very . . . Why,
who are you, Mr. Hugh Gordon ?"
There is but one answer to this blunt question, but I
do not make it.
"I will tell you some other time, later, Lady Grif-
fiths."
"(Vale-Griffiths, my child.) But ... but ... I
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I SEE LIFE
don't want to seem impertinent, dear Mr. Gordon, only
your eyes and your chin, you know. It's not possible that
. . . Oh, it can't be I"
The wine, the lights, the low clink and rustle and mur-
mur of a well-fed English roomful, the glistening shoul-
ders, the arch eyes of jewelled women turned so often
and so unmistakably on our table (for Lady Kitty and I
were quite alone), the men who rose, serviette in hand,
stood so stiffly and bowed so ceremoniously when they
caught a glance of my vis-a-vis, the delicate, wonderful
food is it any wonder that between the boy of yesterday
and to-day a great gulf suddenly stretched?
I leaned toward her and tapped the shining damask
slowly.
"More things are possible than you or your friends
suspect," I said, under my breath.
The little devils gleamed no longer in her eyes. Only
a keen, serious interest was in them, as they met my own
squarely.
"Do you mean do I understand you to say, that Hugo
had another son in Bermuda? That he married there?"
"I say nothing," I muttered thickly, "I only said I'd
tell you another time. Remember, I say nothing."
"Because it's quite possible, of course," she went on,
utterly ignoring my last speech. "And it would be just
like Hugo. Old Cecil Vale always said there was some-
thing or other hushed up, about Hugo. He said once I
remember it perfectly well 'Grace Gordon will have
hard work quieting that business down, I'll wager !' And
when I said what business, he only answered, 'Oh, just
a little more of that precious Hugo's devilry, my dear,
that's all! Ten to one, he's fooled them at Hopestairs,
any way.' Tell me, did he fool them ?"
My head rang.
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THE INHERITANCE
"I say nothing ! Mind you, I say nothing !" I repeated
mechanically.
"You may say nothing, dear Mr. Gordon, but your chin
says volumes," she answered quickly. "Tell me only this
who was your mother ?"
The room was a bright blur.
"I don't know," I said, and my voice seemed another
man's voice, "she died when I was a baby."
"But but your name . . . Gordon . . . ?"
"Oh, yes," I answered bitterly, "it's my name all right
enough, Lady Kitty I've seen my mother's wedding
ring."
"Ah!" she said thoughtfully, "it's very curious."
My mind went back like lightning to the incident of the
wedding ring; I had been rummaging through Nana's
bureau for toffee, which she made me on rainy days, and
had brought to the surface a little carved wooden box
such as one buys at the Swiss resorts, from which, as I
pried into it, there fell a broad gold rinj, a straight band
with a black enamel pattern around it in the Greek-key
style.
"What's this, Nana?" I asked, "why don't you
wear it?"
"It's your mother's wedding ring, lovey," she answered,
after a long pause, "and Nana's saving it to give to you
when you're twenty-one."
At that she burst into a passion of tears, which alarmed
me terribly, and I begged her to stop.
"Did you love her so much ?" I queried, when she was
calm again, "were you so sorry that that she "
"God help me, but I doubt I loved her too well!" she
said in a whisper. "But put by the thought of it, Iambic,
I've done the best I could. And when you're a man
grown, you must do the rest yourself."
164
I SEE LIFE
"Anyway, I like your ring the best," I said comfort-
ingly, and she smiled wanly and twisted her own rounded
gold circlet about her roughened finger.
"Eh, but it's been of more service to me than ever hers
was to her !" she said, very low, and put back the enam-
elled one into the box.
Under the spell of the memory I found myself telling
Lady Kitty the incident, and from then on it needed but
little urging to get from my crowded boy's heart all that
was in it. Before our coffee was cool for drinking, Lady
Vale-Griffiths knew all of my life that I did, and guessed
more, as I very soon saw.
"Twenty years twenty years ago," she murmured,
pressing her lovely ringed hands over her eyes. "Why,
surely, that was when poor old Hugo came back from
Bermuda. . . .
"Yes. I was nearly thirteen, and I heard Aunty scold-
ing about it to Sir Patrick.
" 'Grace may regret the day she refused Sir Hugo,'
Aunty said, 'for all she counts on his never marrying
again. Hugo never kept a promise yet, and you'll see
he'll be up with a son and heir just as poor Wilkie Gor-
don expects it least. Hugo's not dead yet,' says she."
"Then, Sir Hugo was married ?"
"Goodness, yes; didn't you know? oh, no, you don't
know anything. Well, he married a sort of person oh,
well, she was impossible, but she was married, it couldn't
be denied."
"A sort of person," I prompted.
"What was she, now? We all knew all about it, of
course, and especially me, because Aunty would have
married me to him in a minute, do you see, if I'd been
but three years older !"
"What!"
165
THE INHERITANCE
"Oh, yes, he was ages older than me, but he always
admired me, poor old Hugo.
" 'You hurry and grow, and I'm hanged if I don't
marry you, Kitty-cat,' he used to say, 'marry and settle
down, eh?' And give the horridest wink ugh, I
couldn't bear Sir Hugo then. But he wasn't so bad when
he wasn't tipsy."
"Whom did you say he married ?"
"She was oh, yes, she was the daughter of a chemist
out Euston way, somewhere. Her father brought him
out of delirium tremens one day and kept him in his
house, over the shop, and she took care of him. Of
course, that was enough for Hugo. I remember as well
as can be when Sir Patrick came stamping into the
schoolroom where Aunty was watching my drawing les-
son (the teacher used to make love to me, I'm sorry to
say) and burst out with the news.
" 'Well, it's all over,' he said, perfectly furious, 'that
ass of a Hugo's done it now.'
" 'Another affaire?' says Aunty 'remember the child,
Patrick.'
" 'Pah !' says Uncle, 'it's worse than that, Biddy this
time he's married her !'
"And it was true: Lady Emma Gordon she was, and
poor Grace cried her eyes out, nearly; she was twenty,
and Joan was just born she wants to marry Pat to
Joan, you know. Nobody's seen Joan for five years,
since she went to the Sacre Cceur in Tours. If you
cut Pat out at the ball it's her coming-out, you
know, Grace will never forgive you, for her heart
is set on it."
"Is Lady Emma "
"Dead, a long time. More than sixteen years, it must
be, for they didn't come to my wedding, for their deep
166
I SEE LIFE
mourning. Mon Dieu, I had better have worn mourning
myself, n'est ce pas?"
I scowled. Patty had told me a few facts about the
aristocratic Vale-Griffiths.
"Between his never being sober, and her such a oh,
she was simply impossible ! Anyway, people weren't any
too cordial (he was very trying to have in one's house,
because he was always after the maid-servants poor,
dreadful old Hugo and of course the woman hadn't a
shred of influence over him), so when his lungs went bad
and they got him off to the Bermudas, it was a great re-
lief. He'd just got into another mess of some sort I
didn't know much about it, but with Hugo it was always
the one thing: women and poor Grace Gordon had to
literally hold Wilkie away from his brother, they say.
She settled everything (that was what Lord Cecil said
Grace would have hard work quieting), but she did it,
and got him and Lady Emma off there was some
brother that threatened to kill him, I believe poor Hugo
always found the brothers troublesome !
"Lady Emma Lady Senna, we all called her, d cause
de papa died in childbirth, and Hugo came back to
Hopestairs with the body. He looked terribly old and
broken, and never seemed the same.
" 'Have it your own way, Grace and Wilkie,' he said,
Til trouble you no more/ and he kept his word for once.
Lord Cecil said it took ten years off them when he died."
"Off whom?"
"Why, Grace and Wilkie, stupid. So Wilkie got the
baronetcy. And if poor Hugo's boy and Lady Senna's
hadn't died before it was born, where would Grace and
Wilkie have been? Grace said it made one believe in
religion, after all. That was all about twenty years
ago."
12 167
THE INHERITANCE
Something seemed closing, weaving all around me; I
dreaded I knew not what.
"Twenty years?" I said mechanically, "twenty years?
Why, I am nearly twenty-one years old ..."
Lady Kitty smiled mockingly. "Do you begin to see,
then?" she whispered, leaning till her white breast
touched her coffee cup, "do you see why it was worth
their while to pay so well ? Not Grace, I will say for her,
she'd not dare; for all she's a bit of a cat, she's good
enough. But Wilkie heavens, there's nothing on earth
that man wouldn't do ! And with Gideon Geddie to help
him I tell you Wilkie Gordon has no limits !"
"You mean that I that my mother that I am
really "
"I mean that what your mother couldn't do for you,
Mr. Hugh Gordon, what your father was too weak to
stand up for, your old nurse tried to fight for, that's what
I mean. Till she was starved out of it. What was her
name ?"
"Nana ?" I was utterly dazed. "I don't oh, of course.
It was Esther False."
"Then that was that maid of Lady Senna's old Salsy-
palsy, Hugo used to call her. She was a kind of
relative, in service, and poor Senna had to have some-
body she could talk to! She used to keep her in her
room to give it to Hugo, when he drank. Salts-and-
Senna, everybody called them."
"Then you think that S "
"I think, cher enfant," she put out her warm white
hand and I grasped it feverishly. We were almost alone
in the room, for everyone had gone on to the play or the
ball.
"I think, Monsieur Innocence, that Master Goggy is
just Master Hugo Gordon, the son of a younger son,
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I SEE LIFE
(poor old Wilkie!) and that you are . . ." she smiled
into my eyes, prolonging my torture.
"Oh, no! Oh, no!" I muttered; but all the while I
knew that I thought with her, and longed to hear her
say it.
"Come and take me to my carriage, Sir Hugh!" she
whispered, and I rose and gave her my arm, and we
passed out between the lines of bowing waiters.
CHAPTER XIII
In Which I Glimpse My Inheritance
AT Lady Kitty's advice I took no official steps in
the direction of Gideon Geddie, both because he
was found to be on his holiday, which he passed,
like all good Britons, in sunny France, and because she
judged it better that I should make friends before I made
revelations. In France, too, were Sir Wilkie and Lady
Grace, travelling a little with their daughter, Joan, be-
fore they brought her home to bring her "out," a phrase
which I had heretofore connected entirely with fiction.
(In South Warwick, when our young ladies lengthened
their skirts and raised their hair, they were, ipso facto,
"out," and they were never very much "in," anyhow.)
"Just go about with Patty," counselled Lady Kitty,
"and then when the row is on, you'll have all his set to
back you. Patty's none too attached to Sir Wilkie, though
he's awfully fond of Lady Grace ; if he does marry Joan,
it will be just to please her."
"I should like to catch myself marrying for such a rea-
son," I said hotly.
"Oh, you'll have your pick, mon cher, or I'm much
mistaken," she said meaningly. I looked straight into her
yielding eyes.
"It is quite unlikely that 7 should marry for some
time," I said slowly, and I had the satisfaction of seeing
her eyelids fall. She had captured me absolutely, this
lovely panther, and at her nod I would have proclaimed
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I GLIMPSE MY INHERITANCE
my identity from the top of St. Paul's or guarded it for-
ever in my heart.
Love's instinct taught me that she liked me best when
I was most like the lads of my age with whom Patty's
friendship threw me, and truly, I doubt if any stranger
could have selected, in a week's time, from that crew of
invincible young elegants, the simply bred Yankee!
Dr. Caldwell had given me, as a matter of course,
drafts on my entire little property, for my well-known
conservatism in money matters would have made this a
reasonable course in the eyes of a more suspicious guar-
dian ; and his simple mental picture of an untravelled boy
guided by a middle-class merchant's son through the ob-
vious sight-seeing of the metropolis would have vastly en-
tertained the placid young impertinences that cantered
Rotten Row with me! How I blessed Chrissy's fat
Shetland pony (a famous gift from the Major) on which
we had all of us practised every deed of daring that the
mind of boy or tomboy could conceive! An English
groom, the flotsam of the Warwick livery stable, had
taken pains to teach Bert, who passed on to us, the Eng-
lish rise to the trot that was considered so "affected" at
that time, in the town, and mounted us more than once,
for bribes of the doctor's tobacco, on the one or two rid-
ing horses the stable boasted. No one could live with the
doctor and be long ignorant of the good points of the
greatest of all animals, and my shrewd criticisms on the
horseflesh submitted to my lordly judgment by Pat's
eager friends, my final well-weighed purchase of the
chestnut cob deemed worthy, put me beyond the need of
any further sponsorship.
"Gad, my boy, I wouldn't mind you pickin' me a
hunter, myself !" the Major vouchsafed, warmly. "You
should have seen him, Stacey Pat's a babe to him!"
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THE INHERITANCE
"Oh, come now, Major," says Pat, "that's not quite
fair look how the gov'nor keeps one down to eighty
quid! Give me an accommodating banker in the States
to send on all I cable for, and watch me !"
They smile, but the smile is a respectful one, the char-
acteristic English smile that greets the golden means of
the comfort and leisure they among all nations know best
how to use and enjoy. The mammas smile, the pink
maidens smile, the young bloods that remember my sup-
per after the play smile, and Lady Kitty, shapely and
swaying on her grey gelding, smiles, too, and glances at
the new bangle on her wrist. And I heaven help me !
I smile, too, and pat the neck of the chestnut cob and
tap my varnished riding-boots the boots of the Honour-
able Mr. Avesham. Was there in the garments of that
unexceptionably clothed honourable some insidious virus,
some inoculation of extravagance that penetrated the
system, swiftly and surely, and wrapped the wearer of
them in a blinding, golden haze that veiled all the sharp
angles of actuality with the vagueness of a Fairy Prince
future ? It seems to me now that there must have been.
Certainly I had not worn those breeches an hour before
a borrowed nag appeared impossible to me, and the pur-
chase of Emperor, the chestnut, seemed the merest
necessity.
And now I come to an embarrassing point in these
memories, a point which a certain foolish candour will
not let me disallow, though it may stand seriously in my
way with the publisher of these idle memoirs, if ever they
attain such a chimerical importance. For in case they
should in these circumstances ever fall into the hands of
male youth of the age of the subject of my poor ram-
blings, I realize perfectly that it should be the object of
the instructor of such youth to draw a weighty moral as
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I GLIMPSE MY INHERITANCE
to the effect of the undoubted dissipation of time, money
and energy on my part during the six weeks that I spent
in and about London, and that said effects should be pic-
tured as taking the form of weakness, pallor, ill looks,
et cetera the undying accompaniments in the Edgeworth
school, of late nights, empty bottles, dawdling mornings
and lack of useful employment. But I am writing of
things as they were, not as they might have or should
have been, and I find it necessary to record that those
six weeks were six weeks of the greatest physical bien
etre, in one sense, of my life !
The regular, hard exercise, the full, meat diet, the
generous wines, the open-air existence, the shock of the
cold, bracing baths which I learned to take at that time,
above all, the delicious, prodigal feeling of superiority,
ease and irresponsibility, brought about in me a glow, a
solidity, an elasticity that I had never before experienced.
To ride hard all the morning, then stand tingling from
the buckets that young Viscount Pellegrew's man threw
over us in the little marble salle de bain he had had built
into his suite of bachelor rooms in Berkeley Square, to be
officiously helped into fresh, lavender-scented linen by the
absurd little frog in buttons I had taken over for my Lon-
don sojourn from Ulick Vale, Lady Kitty's cousin, who
had trained him into a fair valet and who pointed out
that since I had to have a groom, this creature, Greggs by
name, had been raised from that estate originally and
might as well give me the advantage of these two ac-
complishments when I had emerged from his hands, I
say, scented and buttonholed (I always wore a white rose
since I had first met Lady Kitty wearing one, and she
had commented favourably on it), my moustache (shades
of Warwick!) waxed, and my hair over the left temple
not entirely innocent of one deft twist of the tongs ; when
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THE INHERITANCE
I had devoured a delicate, clear soup, a bit of sole, a gen-
erous slice of red, juicy beef, a bowl of escarole mixed
into a salad by Pelligrew's incomparable man, all washed
down with as much of a quart of Burgundy as left little
enough for Greggs ; when, lolling at Ulick's rooms over
his own Turkish coffee and the special cigarettes that
just fitted my famous silver case (it had got, somehow,
by now, a "G" in turquoises on one side, and the cigar-
ettes proved to have a tremendous success since I had
persuaded the tobacconist at a price to keep all of that
size for my personal consumption), when, rolling a thim-
bleful of apricot brandy under my tongue, I lolled about,
I say, joking Ulick over his little dancer, in full fed, con-
tented torpor, that terrible candour I have invoked com-
pels me to say that I was never healthier in my life !
What I had learned to regard as "dissipation" at Yale
was entirely a matter of closed rooms, and wine suppers
that only irritated over-taut nerves, unrelieved by strenu-
ous exercise and good feeding for our college fare was
of the kind popularly supposed in New England to be
conducive to high thinking. Moreover, I never had an
idea of good wine till I came to London, for the stuff
doled out to our unsuspecting youth, at terrible prices,
was not even a remote cousin to the generous clarets and
Burgundies that I soon learned to appreciate. I was
fair enough at rowing and baseball, but not heavy enough
for football as it is now played, nor quick enough for the
game at that date, and not up to a Varsity standard in
any of the three. So, like a normal American youth, as
I could not take a part in the picked crews, I eschewed
violent exercise altogether and sat, a contented and up-
roarious spectator, at the various contests.
But now, what with riding in the morning, boxing,
fencing or rowing in the afternoon, and dancing all night
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I GLIMPSE MY INHERITANCE
long for Parliament sat very late that summer and all
London lingered with it eating and drinking five times
in the twenty-four hours and sleeping when I needed to,
I literally spread out and up, and Mr. Goodenow let out
chest and shoulders of the Honorable Avesham's trous-
seau.
Let me take up the tale of my worthless but how
amusing! day, and see if I can fill you with the scan-
dalised Warwickian sense of its luxurious uselessness.
When the effects of our luncheon had worn off we
caused cabs to be summoned except Pelligrew, who
kept his own, and Lord Landry's second son, who used
his father's and drove majestically, ogling the crowd as
we passed, to a mysterious, bare room near the Brixton
Road, where Young Tom, a gigantic black, obliged all
and sundry young blades with as much punishment in
gloves as they cared to pay for. I was fairly good at that,
and particularly good at wrestling, which was a hobby
of Dr. Crane's, he having been exceptionally well trained
in it by a Magyar servant of his father's in Geneva. He
had taught us more than one clever dodge at his favourite
sport, and these, forgotten for nearly three years, came
back to me gradually and won more excited admiration,
now, than I had ever dreamed of when I learned them,
more to please the old doctor than for any other reason.
One particular "throw" Young Tom condescended to
beg to learn, offering me in exchange free bouts with
the gloves, and one day as I lay panting on a leather
couch, after a hard demonstration of my skill ( for Young
Tom was very earnest in his pursuit of knowledge), I
heard a husky whisper from the window ledge:
"hi sye, mates, look alive there an' you'll see the toff
as give Young Tom wot for 'e's lyin' down, wropped
up in a blanket !"
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THE INHERITANCE
We all stared I among the rest to see the "toff," and
met the adoring gaze of a window ledge of gutter boys,
hanging perilously from the gutters they were related
to, peering into our sanctum. As I looked, Landry (he
was called "Laundry" or "the Wash") gave a guffaw.
"You silly ass, it's you he means!" cried the Wash,
and sure enough, I, little Hughie Gordon, was the toff !
How good the scrub-down with Young Tom's assist-
ant's hair mittens, and the glow that filled every vein and
artery as we drove back, dazzling Piccadilly, to ride at
anchor at Pellegrew's cousins' in Grosvenor Square,
where one got the best teacake in London, and ate plates
of it, also buttered scones and jam roll and four cups of
tea with yellow cream and so much sugar that the young-
est cousin was ashamed to send the footman out again
for more!
Then, with promised dances scribbled on our cuffs, off
to the stable where I kept my bull pup, a snowy, massive
creature with a pedigree beside which the Vere de Veres
were of mushroom growth. This bull pup had become a
sort of fetish among us, and the story of his acquisition
is so characteristic of the curious light in which Fate saw
fit to exhibit me to my new friends, that I must not
slight it.
Comments on my riding, so much better than that of
most Colonials, brought the old Warwick livery-stable
groom before mentioned so clearly to my mind that I
exhumed, along with poor, drunken Skidder's sandy,
bleary visage, a chance recommendation to "mind I went
to Humpleby's in the old Kent Road, number 39, down
the alley, if ever I wanted a good pit bull." This appar-
ently irrelevant remark, so little likely to apply, at the
time, to any further circumstances of mine, seemed to
have been bitten into my memory with acid, and on my
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I GLIMPSE MY INHERITANCE
carelessly admiring a little terrier bitch of Ulick's, and
his recommending the famous Midland Kennels that bred
her, I found myself saying quietly that my own choice
was a good pit bull, and that I had an idea of hunting up
a great connoisseur in that line in the old Kent Road
recommended strongly by an old groom.
An old groom, mark you, not my old groom. I spoke,
as I thought, vaguely, but was supposed by my circle and
by Humpleby (who turned up, as everything English
does turn up, in the same place) to have implied that
Skidder was one of my home retinue. Humpleby, in
fact, would hear of nothing else, and being prevented
from addressing me as "your lordship," compromised on
"your honour," and was sympathetically eager to hear of
old Bill Skidder's good berth in the States with such a
fine young master, begging my honour's pardon, but a
better stablehand than Bill never was and never will be
found, when not in liquor, be who he may! And for a
good drench, there never was his equal, drunk or sober.
He could bring a sick animal around in better time, could
Bill
"Don't want to interfere, Gordon, old chap, but should
say you were rather an ass to let him go man like that's
good as a vet," murmurs the Wash through his Havana,
and I hasten to explain.
"But, my dear Laundry, I didn't mean that it was
my "
"Oh, not your honour's fault, I'll lay," says Humpleby
warmly ; " 'e'd always lose his berth, would old Bill, ac-
count o' the drink. 'Ow else would he a left Lord Utter,
and 'er Ladyship weeping tears at losing of 'im, along
of 'er little bay mare that 'e syved from the knacker
with that drench o' his ? But it 'ad to be."
"Oh, you'll take him on again, when you go home,"
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THE INHERITANCE
says Pat easily. "Chap always does, you know. Can't
manage, unless. Always so."
It appears that I must add Skidder to my establish-
ment, already elastic enough to include a racing stable, a
cellar unrivalled for West Indian liqueurs, and a Magyar
body servant, and I do so fatalistically, whereat Hum-
pleby touches a greasy, grateful cap, and we go to in-
spect the dogs.
They come tumbling and snarling and grinning out
into the tiny, paved court which appears to be their recre-
ation ground, and I gaze at them rather blankly, for I
don't like them as much as I'd hoped I should. One
among them, a broad-beamed, heavy-jowled, incredibly
wrinkled object of an obviously different strain from the
others, takes my eye and I point my malacca stick lan-
guidly at him.
"What's his figure?" I ask.
"There, now, look at 'im !" Humpleby cries admiringly,
"can you fool 'im, I arsk yer ? Not to any hextent, gen-
tlemen, not much ! Wot's 'is figger, says 'e ? That, your
honour, is nigh onto bein' the champion of England, that
is, and so nigh that you might call 'im so and not call 'im
much out of 'is nyme ! That's a five 'undred guinea dorg,
gentlemen, and got with an eye to the fancy, more than
private tryde. 'Ector's Glory 'is nyme is, son o' Glory's
East Anglia. I got 'im to try a bit o' breedin' o' my own,
to cross with one o' me own strain, but if your honour
says the word ..."
I gasp, but hold my own.
"A fine dog, Humpleby, but a little high for me. I
merely mentioned him."
"I see, sir. And if you've an equal eye for the 'orses,
sir, I pity Bill that 'e 'ad to leave your honour's stybles, I
do ! Well, now, about 'ow 'igh was your honour thinkin'
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I GLIMPSE MY INHERITANCE
to go? 'Undred an' a 'alf ? TJndred an' a quarter? I
'ave one at a 'undred (guineas) that I've got on com-
mission from a friend, like, who must sell for ready
money Alf, get out that big fellow that come in Tues-
day was a week."
Alf got out the big fellow and he was more than ade-
quate to his description: we looked at each other and
were destined.
And I, after one long, careful survey, paid for that
fifty pounds odd of caninity the price of one year's lodg-
ing, food and instruction at Yale College, U. S. A., and
paid it on the nail, without a murmur !
"Pounds, sir, we'll say pounds, your honour I could
do no less for Bill's old master and such a gentleman, sir
it's a pleasure to serve you ! If not as in hevery way
claimed, return 'im tomorrer and receive the full sum,
your honour ! And if it's not a liberty, my regards to Bill
Skidder and 'earty thanks for 'is recommend. And
pleased to serve any o' your honour's friends a line from
your honour will get my personal attention. The pup's
not named, sir. Thank you."
"What should you call him, Gordon ?"
"I baptize him Stranger," I said; "here Stranger, here
boy!"
And Pat's eyes met mine with a gleam of comprehen-
sion.
"I'll stand godfather, Gordon!" he cried; "here, you,
here's to drink Stranger's health ! 'A Stranger, but still
a Gordon,' eh ?"
" 'A Stranger but still a Gordon !' " they cry all to-
gether, and moved by some mad, boyish instinct, I take
off my hat swiftly, and stoop to pat my dog, with misted
eyes. Ah, well, how one felt, how one felt, I say, those
years !
179
THE INHERITANCE
I was too little versed in ladies' hearts to realize how it
was that the secret I had supposed shared between Gideon
Geddie, Lady Kitty and me should have filtered out, little
by little, and seemed to be known, in a vague, undetailed
way, to all my world of London. I myself had been
rigid; it never occurred to me that Lady Kitty, my
adored monitress, could have broken her own rule, and
I was not unnaturally forced (consider my age!) to the
conclusion that either Geddie himself, aware that I had
more friends at court than any one could have foreseen,
had been beforehand with me, to save his face, or that
old, half-forgotten stories, covered at the time, were res-
urrecting themselves from neglected London memories.
And this last was not entirely a false idea. On the
great night of the Stacey ball, when for the first time I
met Pat's mother, more surprises were in store for me
than would have sufficed to turn an older and warier head
than mine. The great, lighted mansion, the red velvet
across the pavement, the gaping London throngs, the
fragrant, crowded hall, the sprightly violins, the lines of
powdered footmen all these were no more to me than to
Ulick, who entered with me, or to Patty, who welcomed
me, I verily believe. To tell the truth, I hardly noticed
them, for my brain was boiling, and the violins sang no
waltzes and polkas to my dizzy ears, but screamed a very
triumphal entry. For in the entering crush, a mellow
voice behind me had penetrated to me and the voice had
said:
"Why, there's old Wilkie's boy with Ulick Vale I
had thought him in India. How that lad has improved,
and how much he looks like Hugo! Poor Hugo how
handsome he used to be, when all's said and done! I
never thought his nevvy'd equal him, but I believe he
will."
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I GLIMPSE MY INHERITANCE
"S-sh, Bishop, that's not Goggy that's the mysterious
lost heir from Bermuda ! The one that Kitty Vale-Grif-
fiths "
"Ahem, my dear, perhaps it would be just as well not
to go into that. But, God bless me, you don't mean to tell
me that's not a Gordon? With that chin?"
"But he is a Gordon. A Mister Gordon, and the image
of Hugo. And as rich as Croesus. You know Hugo
lived in Bermuda "
The voice dies down.
"Steady on, Gordon ! Easy does it," Ulick murmurs at
my elbow, and I see that he is leading me away from
the voice.
"Then you you know ?" I stammer, for I see he is as
red as I.
"No more than you want me to, old fellow," he says
soothingly. "It's it's a damned shame, anyhow," he
adds vaguely. "He's an old fox, Geddie. My uncle
that's Lord Cecil, you know told me Gideon would sell
his soul any day for Lady Grace's shoe-buckle. Uncle
Cis hunted out an old letter last night for Cousin Kit I
think she'll bring it you. She said she pitied Goggy when
he saw that letter Lord, but they had it hot and heavy,
Goggy and Kitty ! She never forgave him for going to
India. There she is, now."
But before I can get to her Pat seizes me and leads
me chafing to Lady Stacey.
"Here, mater, here he is at last," says Pat. "Let me
present Mr. Gordon Mr. Gordon, my mother, Lady
Stacey."
Surely the handsome matron in the emerald collar turns
pale as I bow? Surely she glances strangely at Pat and
away again? Surely after I have passed before her
murmuring something or other that neither of us hears,
181
THE INHERITANCE
I hear her say quickly, "Where is your father, Parravale ?
I must speak to your father."
And when I meet the Filly, whose other name is Taffy,
whose other name is the Honourable Phyllis Stacey, she
gapes, actually, into my face.
"Why, if it isn't Goggy's twin !" she cries. "Did you
ever in all your life, Pat? And the image of Jumping
Joan !"
"Shut up, Taffy, you're howling too loud," says Pat
rudely, "and he's better looking than Goggy. However,"
as I push past them, "he's after the same lady, fast
enough !"
The Honourable Phyllis blushes a deep rose and turns
her haughty chestnut head away from me, but I care
little for that, nor for the fact that Pat maliciously
brought on that hauteur (because he does not love Goggy,
disapproves of his mother's scheme for marrying Taffy
to him, and is jealous of his connection or would-be
connection with Lady Kitty).
My own position with this queen of youthful hearts
has become so obvious that the crowd of younger brothers
and subalterns melts decorously away as I approach, and
we swing into a polka without a word of greeting a
dangerous sign, young people, if you don't know !
"You have a letter for me?" I ask after we have cir-
cled the room two or three times in silence.
But this is too abrupt. You, of course, wouldn't be
guilty of such a sottise, young man who reads this I
know you! And she was looking her loveliest in pale
sky-blue with forget-me-nots in her hair and my bangle
on her wrist.
"Letter? letter?" she pouts, "one would think I was
a post office ! You are not too gallant, milord."
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I GLIMPSE MY INHERITANCE
Even the jest of that title quivers through me. She is
so close to me and so soft and fragrant, her eyes are so
schooled to convey just what nuance of emotion she
chooses, the violins are so shrill and sweet !
"Don't play with me Kitty!" I whisper, "don't, for
God's sake! Can't you see that I must know who it is
that loves you so much, before I tell you ? That I haven't
any right, until?"
Oh, world of London, that teaches even a son of New
England so quickly what he may say and do to lovely
Lady Kitties! Oh, Master Hughie, what would they
say in Warwick if they knew that Lady Kitty was not
even the unscrupulous widow they would deplore, but
owned a noble and very much alive lord in the bonds of
holy matrimony ? And, oh, mammas of all the pink-and-
whiteness of England, do you really believe that the
aforesaid pink-and-whiteness is quite so ignorant of the
Lady Kitties as you tell us? Really? Je m'en doute, to
employ the useful tongue so undoubtedly invented for the
discussion of these delicate subjects !
After that outburst of mine, my divinity was silent,
and she was of those whose silence is far more subtle
than their speech. Only, as we finished our polka, and
I gave her up to a young giant of a cavalry man, she
pointed to a waltz with my initials scratched against it,
and whispered, "In the library." I nodded and sought
out the Honourable Taffy, whose curiosity caused her to
pencil out the twin brother of an Earldom (he was sev-
enteen minutes younger than the heir!) and dance two
of his waltzes with me.
"Mamma's in a frightful wax about you," she confided ;
"she is going to write to Lady Grace first mail. Did you
know?"
13 183
THE INHERITANCE
"No. Is she? Why?"
"I don't know." She looks up obliquely, "but I sup-
posed you did. Pat does."
"Does he?"
"Yes. He said, 'All right, mater, but I suppose you
know you're pretty certain to upset the apple-cart. From
what I hear, I'd hate to be the one to tell them.' Mamma
was furious. Do you know Goggy Sir Wilkie's son ?"
"By name only."
"It's all very odd," she says, curiously, "but I expect
we'll all know, sooner or later. Did mamma ask you to
Staceways ?"
"No."
"She was going to. But I think she'll wait, now, till
she hears from Lady Grace. I hope you'll come and
bring your dog. We've heard so much about him. Your
stables must be beautiful I adore horses, you know.
Violet Utter said you had their old groom, Skidder
he taught me to ride : put me on my first pony when we
were visiting Vi at Utterfields. He had six boys under
him there, but I suppose you have lots more."
I smile enigmatically (Oh, Master Hughie!) and guide
her skillfully to the glowering twin who entered this vale
of tears seventeen minutes too late.
"Don't be too severe, Mountstuart," I say, audaciously,
"you know I'm a stranger in London."
"A stranger but still a Gordon !" somebody chuckles,
whirling by me, and though I start and turn, it is too late
to trace the voice. The very mystery of it intoxicates me :
it seems that I am a prince at a masked ball, and that
all the dancers know it and we shall soon unmask. . . .
Oh, that any drink could be brewed in human vats to
match that nectar of the gods mixed of hope and youth !
I waited in the library and fumed impatiently among
184
I GLIMPSE MY INHERITANCE
the ivories and folios, but she did not keep me long. And
with her perfect knowledge of the young male heart and
how far to press it, she drew from her blue bodice a
folded letter, even as she crossed the threshold, and
handed it, still a-warm, to my eager grasp.
"It is from Aunt Biddy to Uncle Cecil," she explained
quickly; "just the pages that tell about about you. He
remembered directly, and he says it looks bad for Grace.
It seems there was a great deal of talk, at the time."
I dash at the spidery, Italian pages, written close in
violet ink on thin, crackly paper.
"About poor Lady Senna, it's all as ridiculous
and tiresome as everything else the woman did
or didn't do she seems bound to make trou-
ble for dear Grace, even in her grave! It ap-
pears that she did not die in childbirth, as Hays
writes, but a week later, because her people
have just got a letter that she wrote saying,
'I can't bear to look at the poor, dear little
baby, though I feel I must, for he has no friend
but me. His father has been drinking all this
week and has not come near us. It seems ter-
rible that the boy is to have no rights at Hope-
stairs I cant but feel he would be better dead.
My troubles, thank God, are nearly over /
shall never see England again, I know. Esther
False has been so good so kind, but she cries
and cries, and I know that my strength cannot
last long. How I wish I had never left you all
and the shop but no one can blame the WUkie
Gordons, they have borne too much from Hugo.
But I did love him once. And that poor little
boy but a week old and Esther with all to man-
age God be merciful to her!'
"I copied this from the letter itself, because,
185
THE INHERITANCE
as the Palses say, it was very odd that a baby
a week old shouldn't have been in the coffin
with poor Senna's body. And Hugo saying
all along that the child was born too prema-
turely for burial dreadful ! I suppose the long
and short of it is that he realized when he was
brought face to face with his disgraceful mes-
alliance just how disgraceful it was, and hated
the child.
"Old Slade, that was my maid before I was
married, you know, is a great friend of the
False woman that was a poor connection of the
family and went out with Lady Senna the one
they called Salts and she was with them
when the letter finally came it had got de-
layed, and they were furious and wanted to go
straight to Mr. Geddie and have the child's
body looked up and buried with the mother,
but she, Esther False, said not to think of it;
that Hugo was wicked enough without making
him tell any more blasphemous lies, and that
poor Lady Gordon wouldn't have thanked them
for making any more disturbance. Slade said
she was dreadfully upset by the letter, and
wondered how it could have been mailed, and
got them to promise to burn it. At last they
did, but Slade copied out this page of it, pri-
vately of course, and brought it to me, the week
before she died, poor old thing. She said it
looked so odd. What do you think, yourself?"
Here the page ended abruptly.
"Uncle Cis says it all comes back to him now," Lady
Kitty added, as I lifted my eyes from the pages, "and
he and Aunt Biddy gossipped a lot over it, he says. There
was some horrid scandal about a servant maid, you see,
that really sent them off to Bermuda, and Wilkie got the
1 86
I GLIMPSE MY INHERITANCE
whip-hand then, and I suppose . . . this . . . was the
price."
"This?"
"Well you, then !"
"Are you sure enough Kitty?"
"Sure, Hugh? I have been sure ever since I saw
you !"
The music comes but faintly to this great library, is
almost subdued, in fact, by the fountain in the conserva-
tory, but a charitable observer, passing us, must have
concluded that we, too, were waltzing. . . .
As she draws away from me, I catch her hand, and
even she, blonde veteran at this most ancient of games,
cannot unclasp her soft, pulsing fingers from mine, once
they have touched.
"What is that waltz?" I whisper, and she whispers
back:
"It is the Blue Danube don't you remember?"
"I shall never forget it. ... "
Oh, wicked, wonderful, human Danube! How many
hearts, how many reputations, how many pasts and fu-
tures have your languorous blue waves engulfed ! They
have risen, those charmed musical waters, up to the
hearts, the lips, of how many generations of waltzers, till
the poor, happy fools felt too late that you were over
their heads, and they were floating out, drugged with
your insidious, swaying melody, to the open sea and the
night- fog !
"Und das hat wit ihrem Singen
Die Lorelei gethan!"
CHAPTER XIV
In Which I Taste of Stolen Waters
IT was three in the dim London morning when I car-
ried Lady Kitty home from the ball, doubly
drunken, with the Stacey champagne, of which I
had taken far more than was good for me, and the first
passion of my young manhood, against which there are
no signable pledges, even in South Warwick! And yet,
when in the quiet of my rooms (I had taken the suite a
story above Lord Pellegrew, on Patty's advice, who said
significantly that there was no telling for how long I
might want them, and a quarter in advance was nothkig
to me, he supposed), when, I say, in the still, smoky
dawn of those pleasant, luxurious new quarters of mine
I turned out the contents of my pockets on the mantel,
where Lady Kitty's photograph stood daringly in its
silver, turquoise-studded frame and Ulick's little dancer
flaunted her abbreviated petticoats opposite tangled
with the spray of satin forget-me-nots that had pressed
my deity's white bosom was a little pink silk rosebud:
there had been one of these on each of the Honourable
Phyllis Stacey's satin slippers when first we waltzed to-
gether, at eleven! At one I had been in the library; at
one-thirty I had bribed the musicians and waltzed through
a second Blue Danube the maddest, richest waltzing I
should ever keep time to and at two-fifteen, exactly, in
the conservatory, I had cut from Taffy's slipper, with
a tiny, thin gold pocket-knife, that naughty little pink
rosebud, and Taffy had blushed above me!
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I TASTE OF STOLEN WATERS
And Lady Kitty, floating into the conservatory with
Pat, had noted the blush, and scribbled on her dance-
card : "It should have been Hugo, not Hugh, mon cher:
bon chien chasse de race!"
And Pat had growled, but not too seriously, "I say,
Gordon, but you are going it, rather! Cutting Goggy
out every way !"
And I had laughed, a little loudly, I'm afraid, and
urged Taffy to promise she'd be riding in the afternoon
and I would have Gregg bring the famous Stranger for
her to see.
"Has he really rough turquoises on his collar?" she had
asked, and I had answered :
"Yes it was a present to him from an old friend."
And she had stammered, "So so I heard. Vi says that
all the young men 1-like o-older women ... at first !"
Oh, pink-and-whiteness of the London fogs ! And, oh,
that strange curiosity a lad's first passion !
On the table, propped against the crystal tantalus and
steadied with my favourite foil, was a foreign letter, in an
unfamiliar handwriting. I slit it open unsteadily with a
tortoise-shell dagger Lord Pellegrew's present to me on
taking up my lodgings and read, in the wonderful legal
longhand of England, that Mr. Gideon Geddie, solicitor,
detained at Etretat by a sprained ankle, presented his
compliments to Mr. Hugh Gordon and advised him, as
the person probably best informed as to Mr. Gordon's
affairs, to take one of two courses: either to return
promptly to the United States of America (the course
most strongly recommended by Mr. Geddie), or, if this
should not prove agreeable to Mr. Gordon, to travel as
rapidly as possible to confer with Mr. Geddie at his lodg-
ings in Etretat, where Mr. Geddie would most unfor-
tunately be detained for fully a week's time.
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THE INHERITANCE
Mr. Geddie could not but regret that Mr. Gordon had
not seen fit to observe the spirit if not the exact letter
of the agreement undoubtedly explained to him by his
guardians, who had appeared hitherto most scrupulous
and well advised during a period so nearly completing
the terms of the agreement, but inferred that Mr. Gor-
don stood ready to accept the consequences to which he
must perceive his unguarded allusions and unwise choice
of friends (one in particular) had laid him open. Mr.
Geddie could not sufficiently impress Mr. Gordon with
the futility of his inferences, no matter from what prem-
ises they might have been drawn, and trusted that this
warning might prove sufficient; in which case, in view
of the exemplary attitude of Mr. Gordon and his guar-
dians during practically the whole period of his minor-
ity, Mr. Geddie felt that he might go so far as to assure
Mr. Gordon that no difference would be made in the
last two quarterly allowances (since no official steps had
yet been taken), and moreover that he might strain a
point, in view of the exemplary attitude before men-
tioned, and add that a fairly considerable sum, sufficient
for partly (at least) establishing a respectable trade
or professional career, if undertaken in the United
States of America, would be placed, as a final transac-
tion, in Mr. Gordon's hands, on the attainment of his
majority.
Trusting that he might hear by return of post either
of Mr. Gordon's intention to return to the States or to
visit him at Etretat, he was, Mr. Gordon's obed't serv't,
Gideon Geddie. P. S. In the event of such a course
having possibly occurred to Mr. Gordon, Mr. Geddie
could not refrain from warning him against visiting
Hopestairs, Shropshire, previous to an interview with
himself. G. G.
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I TASTE OF STOLEN WATERS
In the glass over the mirror I caught a glimpse of my
flushed, snarling face and recoiled from it. Was that hot-
eyed, hasty fellow that cursed a paper, crumpled in his
shaking fist, really I ?
Furiously I jerked at the bell that communicated with
Greggs' attic; furiously I tore at my tailed coat; furi-
ously I looked out the trains by a guttering candle.
"Get me a cold bath and my serge suit and a brandy-
and-soda, double-quick!" I ordered the sleepy, half-
dressed fellow, "and tell Mr. Vane I can't box this morn-
ing I must catch the four-twenty Shropshire special."
"Four-twenty, sir?"
"Draw the bath, damn you!" I growled, and he fled,
buttoning himself amazedly.
It was barely more than a half hour later that I went
out, through the quiet halls, into early morning London.
My head was braced into the factitious clearness that a
sleepless night, a cold bath, a brandy-and-soda and fresh
clothes can produce, and I felt very calm and steady, more
master of myself than was, in fact, quite normal. A
drowsy, grateful cabby, voyaging for luck through Old
Bond Street, caught me, and we travelled clop-clap
through the sleeping thoroughfares, meeting only the
early milk and some market carts heaped with sea-green
cabbage and curly kale, gay posies bunched among the
dewy mounds and a sprawled, somnolent driver a-top.
The hour that I sped along in the express passed like
a tenth of itself, while quick, clear images of what had
been and what must be, now, raced through my decep-
tively steady head. I passed Great Hope and Little Hope-
mead and got out at Hopestairs Lower Cross as placidly
as though I had been coming home from school there
every long vacation of my life. It was after five in the
morning, and more than one cart was to be seen on the
191
THE INHERITANCE
road, the cloaked figure of more than one old woman
passed me by (for in the 8o's one still saw cloaks in
English villages very frequently), as I struck off on the
way to Hopestairs, as pointed out to me by a clumsy boy,
driving a little donkey. The way was plain and every
half mile or so I passed some cottager or labourer, no
one of whom but touched a cap or pulled a straggling
forelock, with a stupid, wondering look at my face.
When I reached the great lodge and the heavy iron
gate, a shock-headed fellow ran out at a call from within,
knuckling his forehead hastily, as he pulled at the big
hasp.
"Why, it's Mr. Hugo, for sure!" a woman's voice
called, "and us thinking him 'way over in Injy! Come
out, father, and oh, I beg your pardon, sir, I'm sure,
but I thought . . . why, it's never . . . should I know
you, sir?"
"Hardly," I answered cheerfully, "but you seem to
think you do ! My name is Gordon."
"And indeed I don't need to be told that, sir. Mr.
Gordon from ..."
"From the States. Can I see Hopestairs ?"
"Indeed, sir, and I'm only sorry the family's away
we'll do the best we can. Sir Wilkie and Lady Gordon
are in France with Miss Joan, but they're expected yes-
terday week. Tommy, run up with the gentleman and
tell Mrs. Pullfit to show the house herself I'll be up
directly."
Tommy pockets a shilling and runs ahead, and I fol-
low for a mile of shaded path and lofty beech aisle, hedge-
row and coppice, a wonderful glimpse of deer park and
a willow-fringed pond with a rustic bridge.
"This here's the short mile cut," Tommy vouchsafed,
"big road goes on nigh a mile more. Us'll go woodway."
192
I TASTE OF STOLEN WATERS
And "woodway" we go, rabbits starting from under
our feet, quail piping in the distance, the morning dew
glistening on the boughs. Truly, a fair heritage, this old
Hopestairs and whose? I pull the crumpled sheets from
my pocket feverishly. "The poor, dear little baby . . . he
has no friend but me . . . it seems terrible that the boy
is to have no rights." . . . O Mr. Geddie, is there no fair
play in England ? "A respectable trade," indeed !
Now the big, dark brick house starts out at us, bright-
ened with whitestone facings, draped with wrist-thick
ivy vines.
"They creepers be that full o' nests !" says Tommy.
Some one has gone faster than we, for Mrs. Pullfit,
rustling in black silk and a swelling gold chain, is in the
hall, and from window and door pop eager heads, with-
drawn when I look. Mrs. Pullfit is excited and curious,
for she has been twenty-two years at Hopestairs, Mr.
Gordon, and never so much as heard of any of the fam-
ily in the States. Pettibone, be so good as to preserve
Mr. Gordon's card most carefully. Mr. Hugh Gordon?
Indeed ! How disappointed her ladyship will be ! What
will Mr. Gordon have, Pettibone?
But Mr. Gordon will have nothing, thank you, and
he has but an hour to spare, as he has a luncheon en-
gagement in town.
"You're not strange, then, to London, sir?"
Mr. Gordon mentions Lord Parravale, Viscount Pelle-
grew, Mr. Ulick Vane, and sundry others of his friends.
Ah ! A-a-a-h ! Will Lady Gordon know the address,
when she returns?
Why, yes, Mr. Gordon is rather of the opinion that
she will.
Naturally, of course. Would Mr. Gordon like to see
the 'ouse, being here ?
193
THE INHERITANCE
Mr. Gordon thinks he would.
And so, with never a question as to this informally
early hour for visiting a gentleman's country house, Mrs.
Pullfit conducted me through the state drawing rooms,
the family drawing room, the bedroom where George the
Fourth had slept, the dining room with the Hepplewhite
suite, the upper, panelled passage where Lady Emilia
Gordon had been killed by her brother, for cause shown,
and where she accordingly and subsequently walked in
white, and finally the gallery. It was not so very exten-
sive, for the family had not, it appeared, been notably
one of connoisseurs, but there were a Reynolds, a couple
of Romneys, some mellow Morlands, and a reputed Rem-
brandt. And into one of the pictures I looked as one
looks into a mirror, and beheld myself, encomoassed with
a gold frame.
Mrs. Pullfit gasped and swallowed.
"Th-the late Baronet, Mr. Gordon, Sir Hugo," she
brought out explosively, "painted when at Oxford. I
was sewing maid when it was brought home, and well
remember it. Did you had you ever I think vou said
you had never met the late Baronet, sir ?"
No, Mr. Gordon had never had that pleasure.
Excusing the liberty, but as an old servant of the
family . . . was Mr. Gordon born in the States?
Mr. Gordon (clutching at a paper in his pocket) was
born in Bermuda.
"God be good to us all !" cried Mrs. Pullfit and went
white as paper and sank into a carved Elizabethan chair.
And a half dozen maids appeared mysteriously and
brought her water and a drop of something and stole
sly glances at the guest and the portrait of the late Baro-
net.
I felt ashamed but defiant, and went out hastily, at-
194
I TASTE OF STOLEN WATERS
tended by Pettibone, apologising contritely for Mrs. Pull-
fit, who'd not been quite the thing for these three days,
it seemed, and was overtaxing herself. And then I
peeped into the stables, glanced at the formal garden
with the sun dial, passed by the wall fruit, shook myself
free of the peeping heads and whispering voices that
sprang up wherever I went, and cut across the fields ab-
ruptly.
I followed a worn path with seats beside it at inter-
vals, unconscious of any definite goal, weak with fast-
ing and fatigue and more feeling than I had dreamed that
pictured face could wake in me. I had no sense of son-
ship in looking at it he was too young, the man there,
for that. But who could look at us, he and I, and doubt
for a moment what I was to him ? I walked, staggering
and muttering to myself, for I don't know how long, and
the morning deepened as I walked, and the air cleared,
and the birds sang in the English fields and I can you
blame me that I looked over those fields and cursed the
chicanery that had kept me from them?
In the lee of a thick green hedge, close by a little white-
washed cottage that smelt of bergamot and sun-drying
linen, I flung myself down on a haycock and
fell into an exhausted sleep. In my thick dreams
I talked and pleaded with Mrs. Pullfit, and it was with
no real surprise therefore that I heard her voice as I
woke.
" 'A turn,' says you ! Why, nurse, I was that faint
inside of me as never was ! If Hetty there hadn't brought
me the sal volatile, I don't say I shouldn't have quite
fainted off, I don't."
"Well, well," says another voice, the dry, toneless
voice of an old woman, "to think of it ! And 'twas Mas-
ter Hugo, was it? And why didn't he come to see
195
THE INHERITANCE
Nurse Holley, then? Did he grudge a few steps to a
old woman?"
"No, no, Mrs. Holley ; not Sir Hugo ! He's dead, you
know, dead these fifteen years and more."
"Aye, so he is. This was Master Goggy you're mean-
ing. But they sent him to India, surely? Account of
that nasty Irish woman / know. I heard her poor
young ladyship telling of it."
"No, no, Nurse; Master Goggy's safe enough from
her. And her ladyship's not to say young any longer,
you know. No, this was one from Bermuda."
"Bermuda ? Bermuda ? Where poor Esther False went
with her ladyship that was? I'm glad she had Emma
with her there was more of Emma than ever you knew,
my girl eh, that was a bad business! An' I washed
him on my lap an' who'd have guessed what he'd be?
But there was never a handsomer Gordon born than
Hugo. Is this his son, then ?"
"Oh, Mrs. Holley, who knows? I got Hetty to order
me out the ponycart and Wilkins drove me himself
I had to come. Try to remember, Mrs. Holley there's
no doubt that her ladyship Lady Emma, you know her
they called Senna died in childbed? It's up in the
church, surely?"
"Eh, my dear, 'twas a bad business a bad business!
I know this: there was a good much poor Lady Grace
never knew. Esther Palse's second cousin the 'pothe-
cary's wife, you know, her ladyship's own mother, she
was here in my cottage raving over a letter, and Esther
quieting her.
" 'Say no more, Cousin Ann, say no more,' says Esther,
'what's done is done, and my word is passed. He was a
a devil and deceived right and left, but Emma's name
is safe/
196
I TASTE OF STOLEN WATERS
" 'Your Emma's, yes,' cries Mrs. False, 'but is mine
to be marked a liar ? Where's that baby that was a week
old when she wrote? Where's the heir of Hope-
stairs ?"
"So loud she cried that I couldn't but hear her, and
I threatened to send for her ladyship, but Esther stopped
me.
" 'Nurse Holley,' says she to me, 'mark my words, as
I hope to die,' says she, 'Ann False knows nothing at all.
A good friend to all our family the Gordons have been,
and my word is passed to them, and will be kept. If si-
lence is sometimes paid for, Mrs. Holley,' says she, 'you
can depend that them that takes the pay knows well for
what they take it. The letter is burned and was on a
subject Ann False will do well to forget, if she did but
know it,' she says. Eh, poor Mrs. False she was dead
before the month was out, she and Jemima Slade
and Abel False the son, with the smallpox, and
Emma in the Bermudas with God knows what gone,
all gone ! And they blood kin to a baronet's wife ! Dear,
dear!"
"She said there was an heir!"
"Hush, deary; I'm an old woman, now. And the let-
ter was burned, so Esther said. Esther False was a
Christian woman, and never missed the first Sunday in
the month regular. Who was the young gentleman that
come ?"
"Mrs. Holley, if you had but seen him! He was Sir
Hugo to an eyelash, and high and easy, like all of them.
And the look he sent at Sir Wilkie's picture, Mrs. Hol-
ley! And the young boy Tommy said he fair ate the
trees and the deer park, with looking at them ! Tell me,
dear, is Esther False living?"
"It was her or Emma that died away in the islands,
197
THE INHERITANCE
deary. Or else Emma came back . . . aye, it was Emma
that died. So maybe Esther lived. But I'm old, you
see "
"Yes, indeed, Nurse, and I'm a fool to worry you, so
I am. I've brought you some marrow broth, and you
have a bit of a lie-down, now, and forget me and my
bothers. I must settle those cackling girls. . . ."
I got up softly and stepped by the cottage, keeping the
hedge between. There was but one place more for me
to see, and the stone spire of it rose among the trees to
my left. Yes, here are the graves, here the worn stile,
here the old lych gate. It is many years now since
the little parish church has served as an actual tomb,
for Boards and Councils have seen a great light on such
pious practices, and what I want is out in the open under
the pearly, misted English sky.
Ah, yes ! "Hugo Stair, Sixth Baronet Gordon, in the
thirty-ninth year of his life, obiit June 27, 1861. Emma
Alice, his wife, who died in childbirth, May 15, 1860.
The Lord of Hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our
Refuge."
The 'pothecary's daughter! Poor Lady Senna! Un-
happy in her life, untruthful in her grave !
"Oh, Nana, why did you take the filthy money?" I
muttered, my face hot against the lichened stone; "why
did you? I had rather have died far rather! My
poor, weak, helpless mother you wouldn't have been
ashamed of me, if he was !"
But even as I leaned against the cold, dead stone, a
little thought like a warm, furtive flame flickered up
through my grief. Ashamed of the son of the Sixth
Baronet Gordon? An apothecary's daughter?
Alas, poor Lady Senna! I tried to think of you as
mother, tried honestly, but Kitty's light laugh echoed in
198
I TASTE OF STOLEN WATERS
my ears "of course she was an impossible person !" and
God help me, I thought she was !
By eleven I was back in London. I had planned a
letter to Mr. Geddie and was a shade displeased to be
put off it by Pellegrew and Ulick, who had dispensed
with the formality of going to bed and had been at cards
all the morning with a certain Captain Renfrew, who had
lingered along with them, it appeared, on the chance of
meeting me. All Ulick's Irish blood was in his cheeks
under the excitement of his pet weakness, gambling, and
I, no gamester in particular, felt a sudden dash of scorn
for the mercurial fellow and an idiotic desire to impress
the Captain with my greater stability. They had had only
some coffee and rolls since the ball, and were quite ready
for the thundering breakfast I suddenly discovered the
need of; so Pellegrew's incomparable fellow was sent
out to the pastry cook's and down to his master's private
cellar.
I can see that table now : the great "standing pie," the
curry of Yorkshire ham the Captain compounded with
turned-back cuffs, the plovers' eggs in aspic (got up by
the Incomparable from the Prince of Wales' own recipe)
and the long-necked cobwebbed bottles. The day had
closed in, suddenly, a yellow, dreary fog rolled through
the windows, and the chill of September in a little
foretaste, sent the Incomparable to the grate. We
had the curtains drawn, the lamps lit, and the bottles
opened.
"This is the governor's port," Pellegrew announced;
"I've no right to it I keep it here for him, for it's all
he touches but I've prigged it for you, Renfrew, for
you're the only other man in the three kingdoms who
could appreciate it. Try it, Gordon? It's a wonderful
thing, I believe."
14 199
THE INHERITANCE
I had discovered early in my London career that I
was the fortunate possessor of a strong, sound head. In
this regard I was the frank envy of my associates and
not without renown among men of Captain Renfrew's
age. So I matched the quiet Captain glass for glass, bot-
tle for bottle, led on by the sardonic amusement that
peeped from his lazy, half-shut eyes, conscious only that
no liquid hitherto encountered by me had possessed the
extraordinary, magnetic and stimulant qualities of this
chosen drink of Edward Antony Cuthbert, Viscount
Pellegrew, Baron Staynewayre, C.I.E.
Now the table is cleared, but for cigars and cards, and
the port (there's plenty more down at Stayne, Captain
fire away ! My word, Gordon, but you're a wonder my
father says no man under forty can manage a pint of
that stuff!).
Now the Incomparable disappears entirely. Now a
messenger is despatched for Ulick's cheque book. Now
the room seems much lighter than I had supposed, and
later the lamps go dim, apparently, for I have to bend to
see my cards. Now Greggs brings me down my bank-
book and a letter from the inside flap of the green mo-
rocco portfolio an American letter from Hartford, Con-
necticut ('ow is that last -word spelled, sir? Good Lord,
how do I know? Spell it yourself! Very good, sir).
Now Ulick is very white, and says "No, thanks, Pelle-
grew," and ceases to play. Now my host, who seems to
be farther off than I had supposed even his drawing room
admitted of, shakes his head solemnly (or is it the lamps
flickering?) and murmurs, "I say, Gordon, old man, you
are going it, aren't you? Have some soda water? I
must see the States simply must."
"It's those damn colonials no income tax only
son. . . ." growls Ulick.
200
I TASTE OF STOLEN WATERS
"I hear that Mr. Gordon has more property than is
commonly supposed, even . . . expectations ... re-
markable situation. . . ." Captain Renfrew ventures
softly.
Now I seem to be talking. My hands are shuffling,
dealing, playing a clear, steady game of cards; but my
tongue is quite dissociated from them, and talks before
I am quite ready for it. I am talking about Mrs. Pullfit
and reading them a letter ... we all shake hands. "By
God, I believe he's outflanked them, gentlemen!" cries
the Captain, still softly ; "y u play, I believe, Lord Pelle-
grew ?"
Now the viscount shakes his head. . . . "If you want
to call that bay hunter ninety guineas, Renfrew, but I
hate to lose him, I swear !"
. . . What is Pellegrew saying? The steadiest run of ill
luck he ever knew ? Whose ill luck ? Who loses like an
Englishman, anyway? Who hopes to give us our re-
venge, later, but suppose we understand that the Regi-
ment leaves in three days? Yes, three days so Colonel
Protheroe said. Who hopes somebody will come out to
visit the Colonel and get his revenge ? Who calls Greggs
and says these infernal, twisty stairs will kill somebody
yet and he shall write to the landlord ?
Somebody asks what the time is: five o'clock, sir.
Somebody puts his head on a cool linen pillow and drops
into a deep, deep nothingness. . . .
I woke with a start. What ! Still five o'clock ? Was
it always going to be five o'clock, now ? Oh, of course,
five o'clock to-morrow, is what Greggs meant! That is,
to-day, really. And I am sorry to cast a shade of doubt
upon such exemplary things as tracts and moral phys-
iology books for schools by stating that I woke without
a shade of headache, completely rested, and as hungry
201
THE INHERITANCE
as a bear ! I was too eager for my bath and the tea that
the forethoughtful Greggs had ready, to try to recall
the events of the day before. And on the tray, between
the sugar and cream, lay a small, pale-blue envelope ad-
dressed in a hand that sent little shivers of pleasure
through my incorrigible youth and health. After a great
cupful I sighed and opened it.
I sent to your rooms, but you could not be
found. I suppose that when you get this I shall
be ought I to tell you? But if you should
make an appointment with Geddie, it would only
be a mile, and then we could say good-bye. I
shall be Mrs. Vale there, and it is Jeanne Bruel's
little cottage my old nurse's. I shall never see
that brute again the farce is over. Oh, Hugh,
why did you have them play the Blue Danube
again? And to have to hear such words from
him whatever I have done or do he has
driven me to Ulick knows. But Ulick said
not to see you even for good-bye. You will
burn this. For the first time in years, I feel
free! Perhaps I had better say good-bye now
Kiss Stranger for me. Yours, K.
I could just get the night boat for Calais.
I had but a five-pound note in my pocket, and drew
my cheque book to me as I pushed back the sleeve of
my cachemire dressing gown. Ah, well, it is such an
old story, too trite to offer the practised reader of novels,
who knows too well what I read there for me to insult
him with a flat coup de theatre! Briefly, I had five
pounds in the world, and my clothes.
You may think that I have forgotten my sensations
that time has dulled them that I was too stupefied to
realise that my living, my education, my reputation for
202
I TASTE OF STOLEN WATERS
responsibility were all things of the past. But you are
wrong, absolutely wrong.
It is literally true that I laughed, lit a cigarette, swag-
gered into the little drawing room to burn the pale-blue
note scrupulously, and said, with a stoicism that amazed
and delighted even Hugh Gordon (late a wealthy Colo-
nial, my masters!) : "Now, Mr. Geddie, we'll see what
you have to say!"
O barely One-and-twenty, is there any period of life
to match you ? Eternity is a mere whiff of time to your
spendthrift, ageless audacity !
The salt wind was fresh on my face, the slap of the
waves a tonic to my ears. The rapid, musical chatter
was by no means so strange as I should have thought, and
I found myself, after a few moments, actually compre-
hending an appreciable part of it. In the coach I fell
into what might almost be called conversation with an
affable young commis voyageur, and accepted his com-
pliments gravely: if there be such a thing as a man of
the world, can he possibly feel so like himself as I did
that night? And under all my easy calm, my talkative
high spirits, my pulses were beating like drums to what
was I travelling, there in France, at night?
The villas shone like lighted cardboard houses in the
play. Every stage of my journey slipped easily on to
the next, no mistakes, no back steps. Yes, M. Geddie
established himself at the Pension Larue below there.
L'avocat anglais evidently. And the cottage of Jeanne
Bruel, ah, that was a good English mile, then, quite alone,
beyond the quai, on the sands, for example. It held it-
self apart from the others. A beautiful night, monsieur,
au claire de la lune! Many thanks, monsieur.
It is irrational, I know nay, it is wrong. But I
would not willingly lose the memory of that mile of sea
203
THE INHERITANCE
walk through the sweet, salty dusk. One doesn't walk
two such miles in his life, of that I am sure. And those
who try, of set purpose, to reduplicate that walk, cheat
themselves and the emotions they stalk as other sports-
men stalk deer. No, no ; it must be walked in good faith
and but once, that mile, and if the lips it leads to are
the same old lips that close on yours at the last, when all
walks here are over and day and night are the same
why, so much the better for you! But this is not for
every son of Adam.
The little cottage was whitewashed and glistened in
the moonlight. Not a sound but the purring waves came
from it, not a light but the great, full, orange moon that
formed a path of shifting glitter almost to its door. The
other gleaming windows seemed far away.
My feet crunched on the white sand and I walked into
the shadow of the deep roof. As I put out my hand
to the clumsy hasp, the door opened slowly backward,
as if by magic, and she stood trembling there.
"I knew I knew !" she whispered ; "I felt you com-
ing, but you ought not. Oh, Hugh, we are crazy ! I
I never meant . . ."
'"You never meant?' Ah, Kitty!"
"Well, then, I ought not to have meant I don't know
why we should whisper, Hugh there is nobody here but
us. Jeanne is gone into the town to nurse somebody
some Englishman has had a seizure of some sort and
she may not come back."
She was all in loose flowing white, with a scarf about
her hair like Isolde, only we did not know Isolde then.
She had no sapphires, no jewels of any sort but a bangle
on her wrist with a dull, blue stone on it. Her left hand
is on my shoulder, and as I look down on it I see that
there is no ring of any sort there.
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I TASTE OF STOLEN WATERS
"Do you really mean "
"I threw it into the sea!" she gasps, and her hair
quivers under my cheek.
"And this was for me ?"
"Oh you! You are a child, dearest; a foolish, hot-
headed boy! I shouldn't have written you shouldn't
have come. . . ."
"But you did write, and I did come! Darling Kitty,
it's no use. Wherever you were, I should have known.
Look up at me !"
"I mustn't/'
"Look at me, Kitty!"
"Hugh, I I daren't!"
"Ah, that's better. Now, look at me !"
So at last she looks at me, and the great, secret moon,
that has looked at so many of us, and must have learned
to make so many allowances since she herself looked one
night at Endymion, knows that we shall look no more at
her nor listen any longer to the musical waters she is
dragging up to us as fast as may be.
CHAPTER XV
In Which I Renounce My Inheritance
1HAD never met the Honourable George Herbert
Cecil until he became the late Mr. Vale-Griffiths.
He died, as he had always prophesied, I learned, a
second son, but not in any other respect, I suppose, as he
had planned, for his demise was the result of an overdose
of morphia, taken to calm his nerves (what he had left
of them) during a jealous fury in the pursuit of his wife
in her flight to France. His body was laid out in the
chief bedroom of the hotel, with Jeanne Bruel in attend-
ance, and as she bustled out on some grewsome errand
across the courtyard and encountered me, dazed, and try-
ing to digest the shock of it all, she screamed slightly
and stared at me.
"Would Madame not, then, see Monsieur?" she cried,
coming closer to me. "Let him not fear to approach Ma-
dame with the tidings, for one would have great wrong
to pretend that she would not rejoice ! Truly, except for
the money, I would not serve him even to this extent!
But what would you have, Monsieur? One must live, is
it not?"
"I I are you Jeanne Bruel?" I stammered, hot and
confused. She threw up her hands.
"Am I? Truly, Monsieur, I am the same as I was
three hours ago at eight o'clock, when Monsieur gave
me the gold piece and found from me the direction."
Here I pushed back my hat from my eyes and faced
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I RENOUNCE MY INHERITANCE
her, amazed, and she stared and stammered in her turn.
Pardon, it was a mistake, the sun in her eyes "Mme.
Bruel ! Mme. Bruel !" a sharp, impatient voice called,
and with a puzzled look at me she flew across the court.
I was too confused to note this incident very deeply.
More clearly than ever before I felt the necessity for
seeing Mr. Geddie at once, and even the news of Lady
Kitty's release (for it was no less, from any point of
view) did not seem to me to call for any change of ac-
tion on my part. Directly in front of me as I turned m
at the solicitor's lodgings, a lumbering provincial coach
drew up, and a majestic woman, in deep black and heav-
ily veiled, stepped with easy dignity before me into the
little hallway of the pension.
"The English lady? Yes, Madame, all was expected,
Mr. Geddie was waiting, would Madame be good enough
to enter ? And Monsieur again ! Yes, Monsieur was to
step into the outer room. Pardon but all was in con-
fusion with this dead English milord one could not hold
a servant in her place if one turned the back !"
I found myself in a sort of dining room, evidently,
but used for business, for despatch boxes were all about.
The black draperies rustled ahead of me into an inner
room and I took a chair in the corner near the partition
door. The house was perfectly quiet but for the low mur-
mur of voices through the wall.
Presently the door was set ajar.
"Leave me to deal with him, your ladyship ; much wiser
much wiser," said a dry voice, that sounded, somehow,
familiar. Surely I had heard that voice say "much
wiser" before?
"Poor Grace!" a soft, clear voice answered. "Since
Sir Wilkie has heard, Mr. Geddie, he has become so
much worse that it is useless to conceal it from any one.
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THE INHERITANCE
His last attack brought on by rage, entirely, Lady Gor-
don wrote, has ended in a sort of coma, and the doctors
give little hope. You knew, of course, that Hugo had
been sent for."
"He is here, Lady Stacey. I have an appointment with
him this morning. It was wonderfully kind in you to
make such a personal effort "
"Oh, anything I could do ! Thursday night, as
soon as I saw the young man, I wrote to Lady Grace and
sent it off by Lord Stacey's secretary. He handed it to
her personally and brought back hers to me. They
had concealed his father's attacks from Hugo, you
know "
"At my advice, Lady Stacey. There were circum-
stances ... a certain unfortunate entanglement. . . ."
"Pray, Mr. Geddie, do not mince matters with me.
That is one reason I am here. My son learned from Mr.
Vale that that his cousin was to be here, and I hoped
that I might reach Hugo before he had seen any one.
I am his god-mother, you know, and he used to be very
fond of me. But this dreadful death of "
"Exactly. And it cannot be kept from Mr. Gordon that
he will soon be the head of his family?"
"Hardly, I should think, now."
"Then . . . then I am afraid that any further coer-
cion along those lines "
"Oh, Mr. Geddie ! Don't say that, don't !"
"I regret to annoy your ladyship, but I fear it is best
to look the facts in the face."
"But, Mr. Geddie, this other young man this I don't
know what to call him, but she has been quite mad about
him, and we hoped so much that dear me, it is a terrible
thing to say, and Lord Cecil is my second cousin, but
oh, the harm that woman has done us all ! And she was
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I RENOUNCE MY INHERITANCE
such a pretty child! I promised Grace I would go and
see her, Mr. Geddie."
"My dear Lady Stacey !"
"And yet, if she knows the truth about this Hugh Gor-
don there cannot be any mistake, Mr. Geddie ! You are
certain that that nothing happened in Bermuda ?"
I hold my breath and sit forward on the shaky lodg-
ing-house chair. I could not have spoken to save
my life.
"It can't be that your ladyship is taken in by all this
farrago?" the dry voice sounds reprovingly. "The whole
thing has been abominable abominable. Had I not been
unfortunately away for two months "
"But his money, Mr. Geddie he lives like a young
prince ! Lord Pellegrew told Parravale that he had lost
oh, -very heavily, at his rooms, to that Captain Renfrew
of Colonel Protheroe's regiment. And Pullfit at Hope-
stairs, you know is quite sick with it all. The servants
are convinced. . . ."
"Aye, trust them ! But I had not supposed you will
pardon me, your ladyship that the masters, as well, were
to be frightened into thinking that we were all in a
play-acting scene or some parcel of nonsense in a trum-
pery, romancing novel ! Shall I show you "
"Oh, no; oh, no! Of course Lady Grace could never
. . . but Sir Wilkie was very bitter against Sir Hugo,
you know, and Parravale feared . . ."
"Lord Parravale will do well to make a long stay in the
Tyrol," dryly. "And now your ladyship must excuse
me, but I cannot feel that Lord Stacey would wish me
to detain you longer. You are, of course, perfectly in-
cognito, but every hour that you remain this side the
channel "
"I know I know. The veil is very thick. Only I
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THE INHERITANCE
hoped I might Lady Grace and I had always planned
"So I have understood, Lady Stacey. But human na-
ture in the second generation cannot always be moulded
advantageously, I have noticed. I should not advise too
many hopes in that direction. Your maid is in the car-
riage ?"
"Kedge, yes. And Lord Stacey would send Mr. Un-
derwood he stopped at the station, though. You don't
advise my waiting for Hugo?"
"Quite the contrary. You understand that my ankle
I am forbidden the effort - "
"Oh, pray, Mr. Geddie, pray don't try ! I insist ! And
I had rather go quietly out don't ring, please. It is only
to the carriage."
The black draperies move through the room. I follow
them and we meet in the hall.
"Lady Stacey!"
She gasps softly, then throws back her heavy veil.
"Goggy Hugo!" she begins, then steps back. "Mr.
Gordon !"
"Yes. I only wanted to tell you, Lady Stacey, that
you may set your mind at rest in one particular Hugo
Gordon will never marry the lady as to whom you are so
distressed !"
She trembles slightly, but there is no dislike in her fine
eyes.
"Oh, Mr. Gordon, go home, go home !" she says softly ;
"believe me, you have my all our sympathy ! Go home !"
And then, as the kind sadness in her voice and her
deep black clothes fill my ears and eyes, a spring is
touched, and I know that I have heard and seen her be-
fore. Her hair is gray, now, and her figure fuller than
it was sixteen years ago, but she is the lady who spoke
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I RENOUNCE MY INHERITANCE
to Nana in Kensington Gardens, and the little boy in
mourning why, that must have been Pat ! I stare emp-
tily at her, and even while I stare, hat in hand, she sighs
softly and sweeps out into her carriage, and I never see
her again. Lost in a flood of memory I stand there, and
the links grow, and I realise that Mr. Geddie's voice is
the voice of the pepper-and-salt suit that said "much
wiser, my good woman, much wiser" why, of course!
Ah, but he has no starved nurse and hopeless child to
deal with now! Farrago, indeed! And I walk in to Mr.
Gideon Geddie, solicitor. If Goggy is to come, later, so
much the better. I have more than one count to settle
with Master Goggy.
Mr. Geddie bowed slightly.
"Mr. Gordon?"
I returned the bow in silence. If my resemblance to
the expected Hugo struck him, he did not at all show
it. Nor did my ironic silence at all disconcert him, for
after a moment he began to speak, in his dry, clicking
voice.
"I have more than one appointment this morning, Mr.
Gordon, and much unexpected business thrown upon me,
so I can promise only a brief interview with you, I fear."
"Nothing would suit me better, Mr. Geddie."
"Precisely. My previous correspondence explains my
position sufficiently, I hope ?"
"Perfectly. But you can hardly expect me to be satis-
fied "
"One moment, Mr. Gordon. I am able to satisfy every
possible curiosity on your part, and directly. I see my
clerk just outside in the street, and as I need to confer
with him immediately, I am going to ask you to examine
these documents in the outer room, while I do so. They
are, as you will see, attested copies of the originals. For
211
THE INHERITANCE
many reasons you will be as well alone while examining
them, and I shall be at liberty shortly to add any expla-
nations you may request, although I am sure that your
intelligence (here he shot a sly glance at me) will require
very little explanation, Mr. Gordon."
He reached a packet from a stand beside him, handed
it into my outstretched fingers and nodded to a freckled,
red-haired, clerkish-looking man who entered upon a
low knock. Even in my excitement I remembered that
man, and smelled calfskin and green baize again at the
sight of his freckles : he had wrapped his hand in a
handkerchief, sixteen years ago, for my amusement!
The door shut between us and I sat again in my cor-
ner with three or four papers docketted together in my
hand. In re Emma Esther Poise, was written on the out-
side. That, of course, would be Lady Gordon, but why
call her by her maiden name? For it was dated 1860.
Ah Bermuda! Hamilton, Bermuda! Born to Emma
Esther False, May 5, 1860, at Hamilton, Bermuda . . .
aha, Master Hugo, so there had been a male child, then !
E. Kenniwick, physician and surgeon, Esther False,
nurse. Now, a small slip, dated at some French town
that I cannot stop to make out : baptised at the English
Church by the rector, Frederick Goddestow Hugh Gor-
don, sponsors, two blurred English names anJ Esther
False. Now, a short half page of clear, clerkly writing,
pinned to a longer sheet : I read the shorter first.
Everything that Emma False has signed to
is true. As she cannot live, I will take the child
and do my best for it, as I promised my Lady.
So long as the money comes regular, as they
promise it will, and Lady Grace would never
deceive, I will hold my tongue and make no
trouble. And I know that Emma has no rights,
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I RENOUNCE MY INHERITANCE
and it would only be making bad blood amongst
all for no good. I will go to America and bring
him up right. And Emma may forgive him,
for she was always soft, but I never will. And
I only do this because if it had not been for me
bringing her to Little Hopemead, for the dairy
work, it would never have happened.
(Signed) ESTHER FALSE.
I begin to feel confused and dull: Esther False is
Nana, of course, "my Lady" is Lady Senna. Then who is
Emma Esther False ? What had the apothecary's daugh-
ter to do with dairy work ? I take up the long page and
glance involuntarily to the bottom :
Emma X False (her mark), is signed there, with
Hamilton, Bermuda, May Jih, 1860, below it :
I, Emma False, am saying this to be written
down, which I could never write without some
trouble, and now being too weak. I feel very
gone-like, and 'tis not likely I'll ever be up
again, say what they will. Cousin Esther tells
me that the poor little baby will be strong and
well, and that she will take care of him and that
his people will always send money. And I know
now there is no law that they must, and that I
should be kindly grateful, which I hope to ever
be. Her ladyship has asked to see him, and
Cousin Esther is to take him to her when Sir
Hugo is from home. He is not to see him. Of
course I did not know he was Sir Hugo, being
new to Shropshire, and Cousin Esther thought
only kind when she had me from Devonshire
for the dairying at Little Hopemead Farm.
'Twas because I was named for great-aunt
False, the same as her Ladyship, and Cousin
Esther thought only to help mother out, us be-
213
THE INHERITANCE
ing so many at home. He asked for some milk
and a piece of the loaf just before sunrise, and
he was shooting, and gave me a hare for jug-
ging. So after that he came early and I was
always down the first. And I was always
taught right, as Cousin Esther knows, but I
thought that as I had the ring and he could not
go to London yet, I should get my lines after-
ward. He said it was often so in London. He
put it on my finger and said I was Mrs. Stair,
but his brother would not let him marry in Lon-
don yet. It was a pretty ring, with a black pat-
tern on it, in squares like. And then when I
knew I was in that way, I was afraid and sent
for Cousin Esther, and she took me on the boat
here to Bermuda with them, but he did not
know, for I went second, and ate with the maids.
And they will never know at home, if I make
no trouble, and her Ladyship has been very kind.
Only it does not look to me to be right that
she should lose her own baby, that would be a
gentleman, and everyone glad, and mine must
always be ashamed. But Cousin Esther will
have him christened, only not here. And Cousin
Esther say 'tis well known God forgives every-
one, once they are sorry, but she never will. I
forgive him, because my family will never know
and I am going to die. And I loved him very
much once, though not now. I am sorry about
the baby.
I sat silent in the silent, closed room, the paper trem-
bling in my trembling hand. Through the wall came low
murmurs and the rattle of keys and stiff parchments. As
I stooped mechanically to pick up a sheet from the floor
I saw another slip: it hardly needed study, for I knew
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I RENOUNCE MY INHERITANCE
what it would be. Yes: a death certificate for E. E.
False, dated Bermuda, July n, 1860.
The story was over, the game was played. It seemed
incredible, now, that I should have thought anything
else possible. As if the absurd melodrama I had con-
ceived could have been regarded seriously in this serious
old England, tied across with red tape, bulwarked with
solicitors, signed and sealed on her immemorial parch-
ments ! Why had we not thought of it before what I
must be? In a flash I saw that, except for Aunt Addie,
every one would have thought of it : what could an Eng-
lish nurse, single-handed, have done for a little strange
boy in Warwick? Poor Aunt Addie! I recalled with a
bitter grin the London paper I had mailed her after Lady
Stacey's ball, with its mention of the guests Lord Par-
ravale, Lord Pellegrew, Mr. Hugh Gordon of Bermuda
and the United States how it must have delighted her!
In one of those sardonic photographic feats of memory,
I saw myself stretched over an ivied grave near a Nor-
man Church tower, and winced at the lad who had pitied
the apothecary's daughter pity, from the nameless son
of a dairy maid!
I must have sat there for a long time, but no motion
came from the inner room, and slowly, but surely, it grew
clear to me that there was no need of any further inter-
view with the terrible Gideon Geddie, and that he knew
it and hoped that I did. I crowded the papers into my
waistcoat pocket and stole softly from the room. . . .
Only when my feet grated on the sand did I realise
where they had carried me. The little cottage looked
bald and glaring in the fierce light and the tide was far
out and no longer whispered musically. Kitty, I knew,
never rose till eleven, and as I sat in the lee of an old,
half-buried boat, sun-warmed and somnolent, my head
15 215
THE INHERITANCE
fell forward and I slept that healthy sleep of exhausted
youth that recuperates itself, as simply as a baby, from
the shocks maturity can never meet without a lasting
strain.
When I woke, long shadows stretched beyond the old
fishing boat, and I felt curiously stiff. It never occurred
to me that I had any other or earlier task than to tell
her. My brief contact with the friends of my prosperity
had left me with a keen instinct as to how I should si-
lently slip out of those idle, happy lives : I knew, as defi-
nitely as if it had been written in one of those certified
documents of Mr. Geddie, that I should never see them
again, that, mercifully, our eyes would never meet. And
I knew that it was better infinitely better so. But
Kitty ah, that was different ! She and I knew how dif-
ferent. How could I tell her?
To my hesitating knock came Jeanne Bruel, shuffling
over the brick floor. She eyed me curiously, frankly,
and in silence. In silence, too, she extended a tiny, blue
note.
Madame milady was not here? On the contrary.
Madame was gone. It was in the billet.
But she would doubtless return.
It was in the billet. Monsieur was to read, here, in
the cottage. Would Monsieur sit?
No, Monsieur would stand.
It was all a mistake, dear Hugh! We were
both mad. Try to forget, and forgive me if you
can. There is only one man who could ever man-
age me, and he is taking me away. We are to be
married, later, after Sir Wilkie dies, and now
he is to leave me after the funeral no one
will know where for awhile. I was nearly
crazy when he went so far away, and have been
216
I RENOUNCE MY INHERITANCE
so ever since, I think ! He would have killed me
if I hadn't gone, and you, too don't forget that,
Hugh. His temper is terrible. You will not
see him he has given me a solemn promise.
Pray go back to America immediately I was
mad to encourage you everyone knows by now.
Pat and Pellegrew are in Switzerland. You
will soon forget me, and I will try to be glad
of it. Except for Goggy, I always liked you
better than any man I ever knew. You will
burn this. Good-bye good-bye! K.
I sank on the oak stool Jeanne had pushed toward me,
stared at her, and as her beady, black eyes met mine full
of a curious, furtive defiance, I heard my own voice,
strained and harsh, break into a cackle of ugly laughter.
Once begun, I could not stop, like girls in a boarding
school. Even as I choked and held my teeth together,
the shrill, crowing noise would push through, and some
one, waiting, detached, disillusioned, behind my brain,
thought to himself : "This is the way they laugh on the
stage! I always thought it was theatrical, but you see
it is real, after all."
It died down suddenly, that nasty laughter, and most
of my youth died with it, once for all.
I like to think that when the watchful peasant said
mumblingly :
"Madame had warned me that one would destroy the
billet . . ." it was not with boyish grandiloquence but a
certain dignity that I crossed the little room and thrust
the butterfly, blue thing into the coals under the stew
pot. "There was of course the necessity for ordering the
mourning of Madame," the placid peasant's voice added.
"Of course." (Was that Hugh Gordon that spoke ?)
"Alors, c'est tout?" said Jeanne.
217
THE INHERITANCE
"C'est tout," said I, and gave my last loose silver into
her roughened, eager hand.
"Monsieur would eat something?" she inquired, with
her inscrutable, shiny eyes affably fixed on the top of my
head.
"In this cottage ?" I replied roughly, and left her bow-
ing in the door.
As I look back on the next two days, what most amazes
me is not the course I pursued, but my reasons for pur-
suing it. Is it so unpardonable that I considered, all the
way across the channel, where to use the revolver that
I promised myself to purchase? It honestly seemed to
my boy's mind the only decent thing to do. I had no
friend, no counsellor, no mistress, no money and no
name. Mine seemed too soiled and insulted a life to
drag back across the Atlantic. Indeed, I believe that the
only thing that carried me over the Channel was the
necessity for paying Greggs! In such crises we have
all of us our point of honour and Greggs was mine.
This is humiliating, heaven knows, but it is true, and I
believe now that I date my first feeling of hopefulness
from the day I paid that absurd, buttoned creature and
felt my self-respect revive ever so little.
I paid him from part of the proceeds of the Honour-
able Aversham's famous "trousseau," from which I saved
out one suit of clothes only, beside the garments I stood
in. Next I collected all the knick-knacks about the rooms,
a certain empty picture frame; a shell paper cutter; the
contents of a small box left for me and waiting my re-
turn, unsigned, unlabelled, from which, as I turned the
heap roughly out on the table, a turquoise bracelet tum-
bled ; a dog's collar set with rough turquoises. From the
sale of these (all managed by the interested Greggs) I
realised nearly enough to pay my small debts, as to which,
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I RENOUNCE MY INHERITANCE
curiously, I was far more anxious than the larger. Nev-
ertheless, when Pellegrew's groom left a note to the effect
that his master (called from London by urgent private
matters) would be glad to consider Mr. Gordon's chest-
nut hunter the equivalent of the little obligation existing
between them, my mouth twitched in spite of myself, and
I signed the printed form with the first thrill of real,
healthy gratitude I had known for three days. I had
but twenty-five pounds of debt, now, and on an inspira-
tion sent Stranger back to the Old Kent Road with in-
structions to Greggs to do what he could. He came back
with fifty pounds, and I realized suddenly that I could go
home to-morrow home? In the few honest, sudden
tears that fell on the bare table that day, all my stubborn
pride and black, bitter despair washed away, somehow,
and I realised how gratefully ! that I had only to strug-
gle up from this (after all) my first great, slippery fall,
and Life was there, waiting for me, ready to be used, if
I could only use it. And all my years of sturdy, Ameri-
can common sense held up my head and reminded me that
I, the essential Hugh, was precisely the same as though
I could claim the honourable name I had dreamed of, and
that my adopted country my only country, now would
not be too hard with me, if only I could earn her respect.
I was going to the land of the Individual: the land of
the Family could have no more power to tempt and then
crush me. It had been a boy who went to England in the
first cabin six weeks ago ; I believe that a man went back
in the second.
The long, empty days in which I dozed and planned
and watched the grey, tumbling water, dulled and soft-
ened and obliterated that kaleidoscope that had been my
life in London. When I stepped off the train at South
Warwick with the Doctor's faithful old bag in my hand,
219
THE INHERITANCE
I thought for a moment that I was the same old Hugh :
I forgot the black stain and the deep gash and the dull,
never-to-be-cured ache that had inevitably changed my
heart from the fresh, unscarred one I took abroad.
When I stood in the old study among the worn, familiar
objects, and caught the delight in his eye, the unconcealed
joy of his, "Why, Hugh, my boy ! It's not you !" it was
hard to have to cloud his pleasure, as I knew I must.
Strangely enough, in all the long, broken tale that I
poured out, what shamed me the most was the wicked
waste of my little capital. London standards were far
from me now, and I saw clearly how my education, my
very fortune itself, had been gambled away on that foggy
afternoon in Pellegrew's rooms.
He listened to me in silence.
Only, "Poor boy! Poor lad!" broke from him from
time to time, and when I came to that night on the sands
by Etretat, he patted my shoulder and told me I need
not go on. My feelings when the hot, shamed recital
was over, and his hand lay so kindly on my knee, have
given me an enduring regard for the confessional that
real stronghold of old Rome, long after her miracles and
obstinacies and blindnesses shall have been buried under
the silt and slime of Time the remorseless.
"Well, Hugh, what are your plans now? For you
won't leave us, of course?"
Here I felt on firmer ground.
"I had thought, Doctor, of borrowing from that college
trust fund my marks are high, you know and getting
through. I can easily make it up by tutoring next sum-
mer. Professor Wickham would send me a half dozen
fellows for chemistry alone."
"I see. And then?"
I firmly believe that a direct inspiration (to use our
220
I RENOUNCE MY INHERITANCE
fathers' quaint phrase) came to me then. I thought, in
a lightning flash, of Rob, nearly through the law school,
of Hux, firmly established at the First National Bank,
of Bert the unsteady, of poor, sickly Cary, and of how
none of them had realised the hope of their father's heart.
I thought of what he had been to me. I thought of what
this generous, free forgiveness had been (for he had
not one harsh word for me), and I thought of what I
could do to pay him back.
"Why, doctor," I said, flushing, "if you think that this
this history of mine could be got over, I should like
to put in a lot of science this year, and if there was any
chance of a medical college scholarship, I could take up
your trade."
"Hugh !"
His face shone.
"You don't mean it?"
"Of course, if people got to know that I had no right
to my name "
"Dear boy," he said, taking my ready hand, "I meant
to do this befpre you said what has done me more good
than if you came back with a fortune. I am all the more
glad to say it now. Will you let your old name be
buried in your poor mother's grave, Hugh, and take
mine ours ? You are legally a child, you know, my boy,
and shall we call those mistakes and and wrongdoings
the errors of the child, and believe that you will help me
to keep my name clear from them?"
I think the grip I gave that warm, kindly hand meant
all the words I couldn't have said to him.
It was all very simply managed. In a very few days
the signs and seals and foolscap that made me Hugh
Caldwell were deposited in one of those mysterious black
tin boxes that swallow such things, and none of the boys
221
THE INHERITANCE
knew any more than that my relations with my guardians
had proved unsatisfactory to me and that I had decided
to help the Doctor in his profession so soon as I should
be prepared for it. Only Rob made a few objections on
the score of property division and expense, but when he
realised that even if I failed to win one of the half dozen
good scholarships open to me, I was perfectly capable
of repaying any loan of his father's by tutoring in the
summer, and that nothing would induce me to ac-
cept my further education on the score of adoption, he
withdrew all his objections ceremoniously and even, in
a somewhat patronising letter (which led me to suspect
that he was not without an inkling, anyway, of what my
English discoveries had been), thanked me for making
up to his father his disappointment in having no doctor
son to leave in Warwick. Hux was uninterested, Bert
delighted and Gary noncommittal.
I felt rather ashamed when the Doctor reminded me
that it would be only right to tell our plans to Nana, and
hastened with him to the hospital, which had been com-
pleted and equipped in my absence. The little cottage
was rented, now, all pretense of Chrissy's living any-
where but with us had been dropped when her father had
left the old house in the spring for a Mexican exploring
expedition, and Nana, in fresh blue-and-white stripes, bib
apron and snowy cap, a basket of keys at her belt and
six nurses under her matronship, seemed farther away
from us than since we came to Warwick, she and I.
Dr. Caldwell had put it very simply to her, repeating
his phrase of my sad little history being buried in that
poor unwreathed grave in Bermuda ; and she had wiped
her eyes frankly and accepted his tribute to her faith-
fulness and silence with her own quiet dignity.
"Indeed, Doctor, I did the best I could, as Master
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I RENOUNCE MY INHERITANCE
Hugh knows," she said choking, "and I'm as glad as
never was that he's to have such a home !"
We shook hands all 'round and said no more : the one
effort I had made at breaking her reserve had met with
such immovable reticence that I had withdrawn, ashamed
of the attempt, which a little consideration showed to have
been cruel to her, since she had quietly admitted the truth
of the documents I had brought back, adding that all of
it was better forgotten, now, things being as they were.
"Good, faithful creature!" said the Doctor warmly;
"you'll never forget what she's done, Hugh !"
"No, nor what you've done for her!" I insisted, and
he laughed and called me his most devoted son which, as
a matter of cold fact, I suppose, I was.
I never worked harder than in the next three years.
His pride was delightful to witness when I led my class
and won my scholarship. Chrissy and he came up to
hear my valedictory address and I hoped it covered a
little of his regret about Bert, who had gone beyond all
bounds in his idleness and worse, till only strict promises
of amendment won him the right to come back and try
an extra year the first of the family to whom such a
disgrace had ever occurred. And yet it was not wholly
disgrace, for no boy had done cleverer work at Yale,
in certain ways. His original compositions, besides sur-
passing everybody's, had been printed more than once
in such a periodical as the Atlantic Monthly, of which
treasured copies lay on Aunt Addie's table; his parodies
of the different professors had been read privately, it
leaked out, at meetings of the college faculty; his year
on the college glee club had been marked by really artistic
achievement; and the very teachers that were forced in
self-respect to vote for his rustication mourned him
openly. He was sent back to Warwick at Easter, when
223
THE INHERITANCE
I was working my hardest and had given up any attempt
at controlling him. Alas, once I could have tried with
a better grace ! But I found that though my standards
were as strict as Rob's or Huxley's again, my conscience
got between me and my remonstrances. Who was I to
preach temperance, chastity or economy to poor, gifted
Bert? I blushed at the thought. An older man might
have turned his experiences to account, but shame and
disgust, fear of preaching and real distaste of the lad's
sordid experiences held me back, and I could only try
to come between him and consequences, and lend him
more money than I could afford.
He took over the organ at St. Matthews' that sum-
mer and read every day with Mr. Applegate: the first
money he earned he paid all to me, most scrupu-
lously it made my eyes smart, years afterward, to re-
member it.
I tutored some lads for Dr. Crane all that summer and
drove about with our Doctor, learning much that cannot
be taught in laboratories. Hux surprised us all by mar-
rying that very parlour boarder at Miss Hoppin's who
came to our last picnic (somehow, we didn't have any
more), and settled down in a nice little house, full of
wedding presents, and became in three months a solid
family man with a great deal of life insurance. To see
him a church warden was very funny. He and I had a
decided quarrel over a disagreeable, shadowy rumour
that floated up over Bert and Fanny Pratt, who, as a
typewriter and stenographer (at that time the new dis-
covery in the line of women's occupation), was hand-
somer and more reckless than ever. Bert assured me
there was nothing in it, and I, stifling my suspicions, pre-
ferred to believe it and insisted that Hux should.
"And mind you, Hux," I said to him significantly,
224
I RENOUNCE MY INHERITANCE
"Chrissy's not to suspect anything she has enough on
her mind."
The Doctor passing us in the hall we were driving
with Mrs. Hux caught this last sentence.
"What has Chrissy on her mind, boys ?" he asked, and
as we hesitated, he went on : "I'm afraid Hugh is right
Nana said something to-day. ... I suppose she is
young for all the housekeeping and nursing the child
does. I wish we had persuaded her to go to a term to
Miss Hoppin."
"Oh, Gary's taught her more than Miss Hoppin ever
knew," said Hux easily.
"So I supposed," he agreed eagerly, "and so good for
the boy. But Nana (I shall never learn to say Mrs.
False, and I must!) seemed to think the companionship
of other young girls . . ."
"Oh, bosh," Hux interrupted, "Chris always loved to
putter and goody about the house, and she likes you bet-
ter than girls, dad !"
"That's it ought she to?" he answered doubtfully.
"And where the child got her domestic turn passes my
comprehension ! The house would be dead without her,
boys."
"She'll never go to Miss Hoppin," I said decidedly.
"It's not the lessons, but the girls would tease her, she
thinks. You see they remember what a tomboy she was,
and those bloomer things !"
"But there are other schools," the doctor began tenta-
tively.
"Oh, Chrissy couldn't be a school girl !" I cried, laugh-
ing; "she's mended and made puddings and held Aunt
Addie's wool too long !"
Nevertheless the seed had dropped, and before I went
off to Johns Hopkins, Nana, Bert and I had actually
225
THE INHERITANCE
taken Chrissy off to New York and fitted her out from
a memorandum list of Mrs. Hux with a duplicate supply
of that well-dressed little woman's school wardrobe.
Nana's decent, respectful black, and Bert's airy aristoc-
racy and insistence on the best of everything convinced
the metropolitan princess that served us of our right to
deep consideration; and truly, when I beheld Chrissy
blushing in her modish basque and bright, scarlet-winged
hat, when the extraordinary tournure of the 8o's gave
her hitherto indeterminate figure the sudden effect of
womanly fashion and importance, when she dimpled at
the Doctor's birthday watch and bridled under her piled-
up hair, I realised suddenly that we had nearly cheated
her of her birthright of girlhood.
Weeping and laughing and begging us not to forget
to write, she went away from us to a famous Connecti-
cut finishing school, and I forwarded the Professor's warm
if absent-minded approval in two letters, and said good-
bye in my turn. It was to be hard work for me, now,
and after a year of it I was only too glad to spend my
first long vacation in highly remunerative tutoring in the
South. If I was not intensely enthusiastic for the work's
own sake, the Doctor's delight in my honours and little
successes, his pride in my announcement that another
summer's hospital work would win me my diploma and
send me back to Warwick a full-fledged M. D., spurred
me on, and reconciled me to two solid years of absence
from the place I loved best on earth, the place that had
twined into my growing fibres and made me what I was
my home.
CHAPTER XVI
In Which We Settle Down
BY the time I had grown used to the "M. D." after
my name on the little black sign under the Doc-
tor's, everybody, I believe, was used to the
"Hugh Caldwell" that preceded it. Indeed, I had been
"one of the Caldwell boys" so long, that the whole thing
seems to have made but the slightest ripple in South
Warwick. It appeared to be generally understood that
I had been dissatisfied with the terms of my "inheritance
matters" as Aunt Addie called them, and preferred to
relinquish their (presumable) advantages for the inde-
pendence of American citizenship a preference consid-
ered highly creditable to me. I had been strongly for
telling Aunt Addie all about it for telling everybody, in
fact, and chafed not a little at the Doctor's decision
against this.
"That's all buried, Hughie you're my son, now," he
would say quietly; "there's been enough romancing
poor Addie!"
And he always made me feel, somehow, that my proud
humility would have been rather melodramatic . . .
well, well, he used to throw cold water on my literary
aspirations and try to make me believe I hadn't the talent
for it, and maybe these very efforts prove him right !
It was such a blow to him when Robert flatly refused
to take up his profession, and Huxley followed Rob.
There was no chance of poor Bert, of course, and Gary
227
THE INHERITANCE
was always delicate. So if I had failed him but of
course I wouldn't have failed him ; I wouldn't have been
fit to black my humblest reader's shoes if I had failed
him. I'd have been a plumber or a photographer or a
missionary to China, if he'd set his heart on it. And
I'm eternally glad he never knew that absurd thrill of
jealousy I felt when Bert had that first little sketch of
his accepted by the Atlantic Monthly.
Ah, well, it's all over now. I'm no writer, of course,
and never shall be. Never should have been, probably,
and I've never laboured under the delusion that the world
lost much when my hankerings after literature were sup-
pressed. But I believe nine men out of ten will, if they
tell the truth, confess to a sneaking feeling that the ca-
reer they failed of or refused or found too late would
have proved their happiest field of endeavour just as
a woman is always sure that the child that died would
have been her finest, the flower of the flock !
It would have been the merest affectation not to realise
what I was to him. Bert had never taken his degree,
after all, but had drifted into the position of assistant
organist and choir master, and, with the small salary car-
ried by this post, occasional cheques from the periodicals
and what we feared to be less creditable winnings, just
managed to avoid asking for more money than was harm-
lessly normal in his case. In spite of his uncertain repu-
tation, he was wonderfully popular, and his uniform good
temper, easy, humorous laugh and bright jokes were,
as a matter of fact, the pleasantest things about the house
during the few months we were together there.
For it was not a gay household, just then, it must be
confessed. Aunt Addie was periodically overset with
her increasing sciatica and totally unable to cope with
the relays of servants that ebbed and flowed through the
228
WE SETTLE DOWN
house. Gary, though better tempered than he had been
as a boy, was a confirmed invalid, and needed niceties of
temperature and diet. Rob we scarcely saw once a year,
though reports of him as junior counsel came through
the papers. Huxley was buried deep in the bosom of
his family a real family, now, with two little daughters
and Mrs. Huxley unfortunately didn't get on with
Aunt Addie.
"How we miss Nana!" Aunt Addie murmured queru-
lously one evening, when only Bert's gay nonsense had
rendered the half-cooked mutton endurable and the Doc-
tor and he together had retired nearly exhausted from
a struggle with the furnace.
"Nana!" the Doctor burst out impetuously, "are you
crazy, Addie? It's Chrissy that sets us straight and has
these two years !"
Chrissy had spent this last summer in unprecedented
visiting, insisted upon by the generous Doctor, and what
her loss had been we only realised when she came back
to us. Nor was the reason for her coming too sad to
those who knew the child's odd history, though to a
stranger her double loss might well have seemed tragic.
Her father had taken to irregular absences on lecturing
tours, begun, the Doctor confided to me, in his opinion,
to render impossible Chrissy 's frequent proposals to
return and make a home for her father. One attempt at
this had proved its utter failure, for the old Professor
had become a complete hermit, amenable to none but
the cross mulattress, and lived in a wilderness of manu-
scripts, oblivious to the ardent young life that seemed
only to fatigue and embarrass him.
I was called there suddenly by a hasty message from
Nana, to find the strange old scholar, who had always a
fondness for me, and had summoned me before, in pref-
229
THE INHERITANCE
erence to his older friend the Doctor, in the final coma
that follows severe paralytic shock. I did not dare leave
him, and even as I sat by his book-piled couch, the end
came. He roused himself, pressed my hand, attempted
a smile, then suddenly shifted his eyes and appeared to
listen intently.
"Very well, my dear," he articulated awkwardly, "I
understand I am coming."
And so Christopher Vereker died, and by the time we
were enabled to reach Chrissy, who had gone up to one
of the Adirondack camps that began to be fashionable
just then, we had learned that Mrs. Vereker, that myste-
rious woman, had breathed her last but a few moments
before her husband. She seemed to have had no definite
disease, but ceased to live, quietly, with a book in her
hand and an untouched tray before her, and her body, by
her own desire, expressed in a letter just begun to her
husband, was brought to Warwick, and they were buried
in one grave, more closely united, in their own strange
way, I firmly believe, than we ever knew.
Chrissy was no such surprise to the others, who had
seen her, at school intervals, for two years, but I had
to rub my eyes at the handsome, dark-eyed young woman
whose black dress showed her firm, strong figure to such
advantage, while the little white lawn bands at neck and
wrists threw out the rich red of her cheeks and the
smooth rolls of her abundant black-brown hair.
Her sterling good sense kept her from any morbidness
of regret or grief indeed, we all knew that the Doctor's
death would have been a far keener blow to her. The
simple formalities of the funeral were soon past, and
the dignified regrets of his scientific confreres all over
the world of letters were a real pride and pleasure to her.
Her mother, she confessed frankly to me, seemed less real
230
WE SETTLE DOWN
to her than Aunt Addie, and indeed it was touching to
see how Aunt Addie brightened and improved, once she
was in the house again. Chrissy finished her sentences
and heard her complaints and restored her self-confidence
for it was a great shock to poor Aunt Addie to dis-
cover that the awkward, shy girl whom she believed her-
self to have rendered fit for society was the real main-
spring of the home mechanism.
Although the Professor's affairs turned out to have
been highly involved, so that for a few days poor Chris-
sy's outlook seemed sadly limited, the sale of some Ber-
muda property of her mother's and the discovery (by
Hux, of all people in the world, we thought!) that the
old savant was possessed of some highly valuable books
and collections, assured her finally of a slender income
that did not seem so tiny in South Warwick, when one
considered that her home was, as a matter of course,
with us.
Her little room at the end of the hall was no longer
considered suitable, and I suppose it was the rearrange-
ment of sleeping places, consequent to her clever sugges-
tion of giving the Doctor a sort of secondary sitting room,
opening out of the office, for his bedroom, thus sparing
Aunt Addie the tinklings of his bed telephone, that set
us at the complete renovating of the comfortable, shabby
old house. This change, hailed with joy by the Doctor,
put Chrissy into his dingy, big room, next to Aunt Addie,
and left, at his own request, the great play attic for Bert.
He painted and stencilled and frescoed furiously, produc-
ing in the end a really interesting, studio-like effect,
crowned by the introduction, after superhuman efforts,
in defiance of all advice, of the old square piano, since
the Doctor, fired by the general renewing of everything,
insisted on presenting Chrissy with a new, handsome up-
16 231
THE INHERITANCE
right, bought at a great bargain from a grateful patient.
The great art reaction of the 7<D's had reached our
shores, and Oscar Wilde's discovery (for it was surely
no less!) of the cat-tail and the Japanese fan, the dim,
shaded "dado" (now as extinct as the dodo), the neutral
backgrounds, and the severe furniture, were fresh and
keen to our travelled Chrissy, and though it is past and
gone now, and I visit my patients among sanitary wall
tints and washable decorations, it all seemed very im-
pressive and advanced then ; and really, scattered among
the good solid pieces and restful old engravings that
Bert's impatient scorn could not shame off the new-
papered walls, relieved by fresh hangings and crisp white
window petticoats, lighted by the sun that had always
had plenty of bright panes to enter by, in that south-
facing house, the new "jugs and rugs and mugs," as the
Doctor called them, did not look incongruous.
A beautiful service of Canton blue from the Vereker
pantries banished the remnants left us by kitchen incum-
bents; the wicker pieces brought from Bermuda, ruf-
fled in chintz pillows, gave a quaint continental air and
made the formal "parlour" a real living room ; the dozen
good oils and water colours a long professional career
had gradually accumulated in the way of bequests were
reframed and hung by Bert, whose customary irritating
idleness yielded, as always, when he was really inter-
ested, to a fit of hard working worth two ordinary men's ;
and unexpected treasures of old embroideries, carved
wood, glass and ivory turned up from the Professor's un-
touched chests, and made a pleasing variety in our old
routine. Carpets were torn scornfully from bedroom
floors, Chinese mattings and painted wood freshened the
upper rooms out of all belief; old fireplaces were un-
blocked and grates re-established; Nana (who could al-
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WE SETTLE DOWN
ways find time for Miss Chrissy, Aunt Addie complained)
appeared miraculously and consulted over lists of linen,
pillows and bedroom china, and last of all the Doctor suc-
cumbed to the general fever and ordered the house and
stable repainted, while Thomas requisitioned a new lawn
mower and trimmed the privet hedge till his arm ached.
Chrissy was in her element, mending, polishing, list-
ing and arranging. With Bert as head assistant she ac-
complished wonders, and was never too tired to play
and sing for us in the autumn evenings, so that we were
positively jealous of the neighbours who would persist
in dropping in to see her. I don't believe that either of
her musical accomplishments was of the first class: she
had learned them too late for that, and was not naturally
of the dramatic temperament. But her ear was true and
her touch sure, and the pieces she had learned most
carefully all old favourites of the Doctor showed in
what spirit she had forced her fingers to their task. It
was very sweet to us, her music, and so was her reading,
which she did unusually well. In her characteristic
methodical way she had spent many holiday evenings in
dividing the complete works of Dickens into evening por-
tions for the year; and Bert, always caught by the hu-
mour of such ideas, had actually ripped a set of the great
novelist apart, and bound each week's reading in trim
cardboard backs, lettered and even illustrated fantasti-
cally.
How the Doctor prized it ! How he showed it to all
and sundry guests and patients and wiped his eyes over
the work on it !
Everything slipped into place as soon as she came
back to us. The great bone of contention between Aunt
Addie and the servants the evening dinner she quietly
changed to English afternoon tea and a warm, late sup-
2/53
THE INHERITANCE
per, so that the Doctor, who really depended on it, for his
noon eating was always uncertain, enjoyed a leisurely,
nourishing meal at the end of his work ; and Gary, Aunt
Addie and I shared with Chrissy the midday dinner which
soothed the feelings of the kitchen contingent.
She made calls, that they might be returned to Aunt
Addie, too lazy and irritable now to undertake them, but
vexed at not receiving them ; she amused and waited on
Gary; she kept my office hour (a period nobody pre-
tended to observe) free and orderly; she filled the house
with flowers ; she even took over the poor patients Nana
had been used to cosset for us, and all with a brightness
and ease that would have been impossible for her in the
bustling, practical days before she had learned to take
life a little gaily. In some respects she was really
younger at eighteen than she had been at sixteen, and
the neat fit of her simple black, the very fall of her veil,
made the rough-haired girl of past years seem an incred-
ible fable.
How often I have come in from a cold afternoon of
bicycle calls (for I insisted that I couldn't yet afford a
horse, to Bert's disgust and his father's pride) to meet
around the bright tea table it was considered a snobbish
affectation by much of Warwick society warm already,
at sight of the glowing logs and the steaming pot, Gary's
gay afghan over his shrunken legs, for he found he could
nearly always get downstairs, now Chrissy was home, and
the bright crimson silk umbrella of a lampshade that alone
would have made a winter centre for the house ! It was
surprising how the Doctor managed to drop in on his
route for a hot, strong cup of his favourite Oolong (no
one had ever thought to ask him if he had any tea pref-
erences, till Chrissy found them out!), and the buttered
toast and trim sandwiches he found there were often his
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WE SETTLE DOWN
only meal since breakfast. Bert had fewer mysterious
engagements, somehow, and played endless cribbage with
his brother, and Aunt Addie's brow was smooth and her
game of solitaire only a pretence at the harassed employ-
ment of old times.
We chattered and joked and the young people got into
the way of dropping in, on their way from skating ah,
no wonder the Warwick Sentinel referred to us as "the
old Caldwell mansion, that famous centre of old-time
comfort and hospitality !"
And there were some of us, by then, who well knew
that all this was founded on a lonely orphan, who had
never known, until she created it, what a real home
might be!
CHAPTER XVII
In Which Bert Pays His Score
LIKE many another man, our poor Bert was to
learn that Life, that wrinkled old landlady, gives
long credit to her favourites, maybe, but fore-
closes grimly, by and by, all the same. It was hard
that just as he had settled down among us and admitted
frankly that no period of his stormy-petrel existence had
been so really happy how hard it was that the old, dingy
rumours about him and Fanny Pratt should struggle up
from under the stacked wild oats that a steady young
organist had long ago piled over them, struggle up and
refuse to rot away in silence ! We ignored them as long
as we could, and I wonder, now, if it wouldn't have been
better to have fought the whole thing out, then and there,
on the spot? I wonder, now, if we couldn't have won
Fanny over, and made, if not a friend, at least not an
enemy, of her? And I wonder, now, how things would
have gone if those curt, scornful words of mine had
never been said, that Bert listened to so quietly the day
after I saw him sitting on the arm of Chrissy's morris
chair, murmuring to her, while she coloured slightly un-
der those long-lashed dark-blue eyes of his ?
And yet I meant well God knows I meant well! I
was sick and sore at the slow, creeping rumours and his
easy disregard of them; at the happy-go-lucky way he
took the easy comforts he had only begun to earn ; at the
selfish indulgence of allowing himself to touch her heart,
236
BERT PAYS HIS SCORE
that trusty, trusting girl we were all bound brothers to
protect and defend her, with that smirched record of
his, that I knew even better than the poor Doctor ! Was
I the sorer because of a certain six weeks in the life of
steady old Hugh Caldwell Hugh, that was often sup-
posed the oldest of the old Doctor's boys? Maybe so
though I didn't think so, then. And if it had been any-
body but Chrissy! I can't describe how contemptible
it seemed to me, how selfish, how intolerable ! They had
been a great deal together since Chrissy had joined the
vested choir that was adding new laurels to St. Mat-
thews', and their jokes and engagements delighted Aunt
Addie, whose sly comments really served to put me
on the lookout and turned my attention to that long look
of his and her pretty colour under it.
"Aunt Addie !" I exploded, "you don't mean Bert !"
"It would be the making of him, Hugh," she answered
delightedly, "and Robert would be so pleased! He's
doing so well, now, and she has a little of her own. . . ."
"Very well, indeed!" I interrupted scornfully, "and
a charming use to make of the Doctor's ward ! If Chrissy
were your daughter, Aunt Addie, would you like a man
with Bert's record to have her? Tell me that !"
Well, well, who's to know? To just what extent are
the follies of youth important, anyway? "Young devil,
old saint" they say, and maybe my profession has made
me a little cynical as to this and many other mottoes
of like sort. Certain it is that time has softened poor
Bert's past most wonderfully to me, and where I once
saw the ink indelible, I only think, now, of the value of
the parchment, and of all the kindly, human, winning
chapters that were written there!
And who am I, to say what wisdom that parchment
might have shown, in later years? When I think of the
237
THE INHERITANCE
old, over-scrawled vellums, tainted with what ribaldries
of what ribald ages, that pious hands have trusted with
the purest of gospels, I wonder, till my eyes, even now,
smart and sting. . . .
Well, I said my few curt words, and heaven knows
they were true, and he listened, in silence, bit his lips,
and answered briefly.
"So that's how it seems to you ?"
"That's how it seems to me."
"All right," he said, "we won't discuss it any further.
You're probably right from your point of view."
Of course he was too young not to be dramatic about
it, and the next rehearsal night Carol Lee walked home
with her, and in the morning her eyes were red and
she avoided mine. I took a bitter pleasure in it,
and when, in a few days more, even the Doctor
saw that something must be done in the Pratt mat-
ter, interviewed the mother, and came home grey and
old looking, I had a stiff satisfaction in answering Bert
temperately.
"You seem to have been right, as usual, Hugh," he
said easily. "Fanny has a right to pick her scapegoat,
of course, and I'll do whatever my father says. It's all
I Can do. But I want you to know that I'm obliged for
your hint as things turned out."
"I spoke as I thought right," I replied ; "you know best
if it was deserved."
"Oh, it's always deserved in my case," he said lightly ;
"we can't all hold the same views, you know."
"The trouble with your views," I burst out, "is that we
all pay for them!"
It was so easy, in those days, to be in the right so
hard to be wise. . . .
There was nothing to do but get him away for a while,
238
BERT PAYS HIS SCORE
and Fanny's mother was not beyond treaty. Unfor-
tunately the Doctor's old friend who providentially of-
fered a place on his Colorado ranch, could not start for
the West for a few weeks, and those weeks were the
straw too much for Bert to bear. A young fellow just
come to town to take the position of head clerk at our
leading pharmacy had fallen in with him, and the slight
acquaintance developed into a close intimacy, like nearly
all Bert's intimacies, a little beneath him. Young
Fletcher was a weakish, dandified fellow, unduly wise in
exotic "cocktail" mixtures, but too much Bert's admirer,
we supposed, to have any influence on him.
I like to think how we shook hands over the Colorado
plan that morning, he and I, and that he said, "You
know I always thought a lot of you, Hughie, just the
same, if you did scold !"
"And I of you, Bert," I answered earnestly ... it
was really a good-bye.
The few frightened lads who saw the tragedy assured
us that he was quite sober, that it was only Fletcher who
had "had too much." The clerk had persisted in hiring
the gayest horse in the livery stable, and only got it on
the representation that Bert was to be with him Bert
could drive anything. It was all over in a moment : the
plunging, backing animal, the stone coping, the terrified,
helpless hands at the reins, the cry for help, the timid
bystanders, the reeling phaeton. Then Bert around the
corner, the despairing cry, "Bert ! Bert ! Help ! Don't let
him kill me!" and Bert, seizing the bit of the furious,
rearing creature.
"Jump !" he cried ; "it's all right, Fletcher, only jump !"
and as the half-drunken fellow lurched out of the
phaeton, only to entangle himself in the wheels, Bert
left the bit, pulled him out like lightning and slipping, was
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THE INHERITANCE
kicked against the stone coping. His death must have
been instantaneous.
I can see them now, as they brought him home on the
shutter from the pharmacy, six sobered, wry-faced lads,
struggling with their sick tears. There was never any
doubt or any hope. Fletcher had to be held, to keep him
from the river, and I think he faced us desperately in the
hope of some crazy revenge on our part : I never saw a
man so changed.
"Dr. Caldwell," he said, shaking in an ague, "this is
my fault I killed him. He was the bravest, noblest . . .
and for me! Oh, my God, for a useless, weak devil like
me ! Is it prison ?"
Truly, it was the most characteristic thing in poor
Bert's life, that quick, kindly death of his! He would
have done it for a dog, literally, we all knew. But that
brilliant, strong young existence, dashed out in a second
for a vicious little drunken druggist's clerk it was too
ironic.
The Doctor was very fine. He heard the story, then
gave the abject, trembling fellow his hand before us all.
"There's no question of prison, Fletcher," he said
gravely; "you have had a terrible lesson. If he had to
die, I am proud it should have been to save a friend.
Let it make a man of you, Fletcher, and make us all feel
that it wasn't wasted I'll stand by you."
Nobody who ever saw the look of doglike idolatry in
the drawn, haggard face will ever forget it.
It was the first near death we had ever known, and we
crept silently about the darkened house, in that merciful,
dulled busyness that few of earth's children can hope to
avoid for more than three decades. The tragedy, the
swiftness, the remorse, were all strangely calming and
fatalistic; there was an odd, terrifying sensation that
240
BERT PAYS HIS SCORE
it had to be, that Bert could never have gone on, some-
how, like the rest of us. Only Gary was bitter.
"That he should go, and I stay here a sickly stick
of a weed !" he moaned and fought with us, and it was
too true to deny, after all. It was our first taste of that
inscrutable, inevitable Power that shakes our little human
dice, out of the womb, into the tomb, never swerving in
its mysterious aim, never yielding its implacable purpose.
"What does it all mean? Oh, Hugh, what does it
mean ?" poor Aunt Addie cried, gripped with the endless
pain and pity of the question none of us can answer ; and
only Chrissy, white and low-voiced, calm and accom-
plishing everything, could quiet her.
I doubt if Warwick will ever again see the like of that
funeral. The Doctor tried to keep it very quiet, but even
we, who had some inkling of the difficulty of privacy,
had no idea of how the brave, useless, brilliant sacrifice
had fired the imagination of the town. News travels fast,
and no great public character could have counted on
the endless black river of carriages that followed the
hearse to the old cemetery. The house overflowed, the
lawn was crowded, men stood bare-headed in the street.
St. Matthews' choir could not have sung, but they stood,
robed and silent, about the grave that could not be seen
for the wreaths and boughs; his class at Yale gathered
from all over, miraculously, and marched, two by two, all
the way ; while Dr. Crane's boys, to whom his name was
a legend for dare-deviltry and cleverness, came in a body,
capped and uniformed, the old doctor, shaken, and im-
pressive in his master's gown, at the head. Half the
shops in town were closed, and the livery stable, whose
owner would not take a penny from any one for a car-
riage, filled no other orders that day.
I have heard the burial service many times since then,
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THE INHERITANCE
but never without a vague wonder why the clergyman
leaves out, "Whosoever loseth his life shall save it"
so closely were these words connected with the ashes to
ashes, that day, the day when the wonderful, beautiful
liturgy took shape for the first time to me, as it must, I
suppose, for us all at some one time, so that ever after-
wards it is repetition, merely.
Gary, of course, could only walk on his crutch beside
us three, and when the people realised who the fourth
was that carried the coffin, a long sigh ran through the
great, moved crowd, and all the eyes turned wonderingly
to the Doctor, with Aunt Addie on his arm. It was poor
Fletcher, moving like one in a dream, his eyes fixed and
staring, beyond tears, beyond shame, a man grown over-
night !
Would the crowd never cease enlarging? Children he
had tossed, girls he had danced with, loafers he had flung
a dime to, teachers he had teased, and behind the Crane
girls, weeping and veiled beside their sobbing mother,
poor Fanny Pratt, in deep black. It was a tribute to the
grave, high emotion of that strange day when little Mrs.
Hux, Fanny's bitterest foe, actually spoke kindly to her
and hoped she and her mother were doing well in their
new home town ! But there was no room for smallness,
now. The remorse we all felt (for how clearly it all
comes out, too late, how much we might have done, how
much prevented do we not all know it?) put us all on
one grade of inachievement, one common ground of un-
dervaluing, one rankling regret for missed opportuni-
ties of love and kindness, and if I could judge all hearts
by mine, It was my fault! was written deep on them all.
It was a wonderful experience for the Doctor. He
saw himself the father of a hero, one of the loved pillars
of the town, the object of a respectful sympathy such as
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BERT PAYS HIS SCORE
he had never imagined. And when we came back to the
quiet, cleared, lightened house, so familiar and so
changed, and ate obediently what Nana had prepared for
us, while she led Aunt Addie away, we realised, together,
that such experiences roll over the trivialities of every day
and wash them clean of all the pettiness of years, even as
his noble dying washed his life clean, and that, after all,
it is only Death that binds together the living!
CHAPTER XVIII
In Which We Ride to Meet Trouble
1 ALWAYS think of the next two years as a sort of
gentle autumn in our lives there is a mellow
tinting, a kind of haze of quiet, falling leaves over
it all, that confuses itself strangely, in my own case, with
actual middle age. Indeed, I had much to age me. An
unexpected gift to the hospital had put it on a vastly dif-
ferent footing and the Doctor, as responsible for the gift,
at the head of the hospital staff. He enjoyed this work
increasingly and laid more and more of his practice on
me, so that I became his actual partner and set up my
own carriage of necessity we all bit our lips when it ap-
peared, fresh and shining, at the door, that first day, at
the common, quick thought of Bert and his jokes about
my bicycle. Indeed, there was no day that we didn't
think of him. Young Fletcher alone, who had charged
himself with reporting weekly to the Doctor and came
up from New York (where he advanced rapidly during
a year to higher and higher clerkships in a great whole-
sale drug establishment), to tell of his rising affairs,
would have kept us in mind, without Aunt Addie's black,
or the kind, solicitous tenderness of a host of neighbours,
turned into friends from the day of the tragedy.
Even Gary, who had conceived an unconquerable
grudge against poor Fletcher, was wholly won over when
he found that the faithful fellow was devoting his Sun-
days in Warwick to the slow but steady collection of the
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WE MEET TROUBLE
riff-raff of town boys that hung about bar and stable,
and the banding of them into a sort of loose organization
for Sunday tramps and games. Every one saw and ap-
preciated his motive, and even the strait-laced "Y. M.
C. A.," new then, and many grades above Fletcher's wild
and suspicious gangs, relaxed into giving shower-bath
and reading-room privileges on certain stated nights, and
finally gave one entire gymnasium evening, for the new
game of basket-ball, to what was now known as the Boys'
Club. Gary offered his services as night-school teacher,
and at Nana's matter-of-fact suggestion, when the first
shock was over, agreed cordially in the offer of Bert's
empty studio as school and reading-room ; and when the
boys, to whom Bert was an absolute hero, begged to be
known as the Bert Caldwcll Club, we all, after a moment
of shrinking, consented, and as we look back, now, to
the results of that honest druggist's simple efforts to
"even things up," as he put it, we can only shake our
heads and wonder at the branching tree to which that
little graft of manly penitence has grown.
Gary seemed just then in one of those periods of wax-
ing strength that had always characterized him at inter-
vals. He was a born teacher, and the boys in the "Club"
adored him ; though he spent much time in his long chair,
his crutch became a cane, and I had great hopes of him.
So it was a double shock to me when the Doctor called
me into his office one afternoon, and between a smile and
a choke, confided to me that he had given, if not a hearty
consent, at least no refusal to an admitted engagement
between the lad and Chrissy.
"Chrissy!" I gasped; "why why, Doctor!"
"I know, I know," he said kindly, "but don't worry,
Hugh, it can't amount to anything, and she's absolutely
set on it, dear girl. He says he wouldn't dream of mar-
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THE INHERITANCE
riage till he's absolutely sound, and and if it will make
him happy while it lasts ..."
"You don't mean " I said, sobered, and he nodded
calmly.
"Short of a miracle, there's no lookout whatever for
the boy," he said quietly, "never has been. I've had any
amount of advice, and it all agrees with my own idea.
He would only have sharper and longer attacks of pain.
And she feels she owes everything to him he's taught
her all she knows, she told me, and really 'woke her mind
up,' as she puts it."
Whatever flash of irritation I may have felt at the first
was all softened into pity, now.
"Does she know ?" I asked.
"You can't tell about a girl, in such cases," he an-
swered wisely, "she shuts her eyes and says that she can
save him. He thinks so, anyhow look at them."
I turned and looked with him at the group under the
yellow September elms, on the lawn behind the house.
Gary, in his chair, was leaning back, gazing contentedly
at the russet boughs against the blue. Chrissy sat on a
light rug on the grass below him, one hand held his, one
turned the pages of the book from which she read aloud :
her grave, full tones just reached us. His hand lay on
her smooth, dark head; one of Bert's dogs was half in
her lap.
"He asked for his mother's engagement ring for her
and I gave it. You you can't blame me, Hugh ?"
"No, no," I muttered thickly, "not as things are."
We watched them, he and I, as two men of equal age
might watch children: I think he forgot utterly that I
was hardly older than the poor fellow under the autumn
tree. And it was like some infinitely elder brother that
246
WE MEET TROUBLE
I shook her hand with the diamond hoop on it, and
watched her eyes kindle when she whispered.
"Oh, Hugh, he does need me so!"
"And you love him, Chrissy ?"
I could not resist this, though I could have kicked my-
self, after the words were said. But she looked straight
and clear into my eyes.
"Why, Hugh, how can you ask me ? Not love Gary ?"
I was answered though not as she thought, dear, in-
nocent, straightforward thing !
And so we went on another year, subdued, under the
cloud of Bert's loss and the shadow of Gary's future,
hard-working and busily happy, with it all, in what I can
see now was a sort of merciful backwater before Life
thrust us out into the rapids again, for our last long trial
before she could give us our diplomas as able-bodied
seamen! And only the gipsy who read my palm on
Hampstead Heath and told me that trouble to me and
mine was to come, more than once, along of horses only
she would have nodded, as unsurprised.
I was the last man to see the Doctor before the acci-
dent. He stood on the sunny little porch, drawing on his
driving gloves, glancing about him in his brisk, keen
fashion with those kindly grey eyes that hid so many
well-filled years in their wrinkled corners. He stood as
straight as he stood twenty years ago, I thought.
"Well, Hugh," he called out cheerily to me, "coming?
Still feel you can't trust the old gentleman?"
I had to laugh, even as I caught up some letters from
the mail-table, and took the reins from old Thomas. Of
course, he was getting on, though. Pink as your cheeks
may be, between tiny white "mutton-chop" whiskers,
pink with the clear freshness of every bodily temper-
17 247
THE INHERITANCE
ance; bright and strong though your eyes may look out
at us, and straight as you may stand, Doctor, with the
vitality that no sickness has sapped since you were a
schoolboy, sixty years are sixty years, and we know it
and you know it.
There must have been a bit of this in my face, I fancy,
for I can see now the whimsical look in his, as he took
over the reins, ran his eye over the harness and the shafts
of the Stanhope in his lightning way, and sighed a little
as we started off.
"Well, Hugh, it's all right, and you're a good boy to
me a good boy," he said thoughtfully, and I patted his
knee and thought (who could help it?) of Robert and
Huxley and Bert and Carey, and how little they had been
to him when all was said and done.
This, too, though I know I never showed it, he under-
stood, with his abominable quickness in reading one's
thoughts, and pursed his lips in his neat, trimmed beard.
"Well, well, things don't turn out as we plan, always,
Hugh," he went on, "and you've found that out, no doubt,
without the three score, eh ? I thought so."
We slipped along a good ten miles an hour, for Black
Molly had a gait as smooth as oil and the village street
grew sparser and sparser of horses, the fields and pas-
tures more and more frequent.
"How's this for speed?" I began, to tease him a bit
and rouse him out of a little depression I'd been sensing
in him all the morning; "how much better would you do
in a horseless carriage, Doctor?"
My little scheme worked. He shifted the reins to his
left hand and shook his forefinger argumentatively.
"Now, don't you cry down that horseless carriage,
Hugh," he began, with the good old didactic ring I had
hoped for; "that man is on the right track. There's no
248
WE MEET TROUBLE
earthly reason why his machine shouldn't be entirely
practicable. My George! it is practicable."
"But the weight," I insisted, "the necessary weight to
carry the power! You'd break the roads, without rails.
And to carry the fuel and the awful expense and "
"My dear boy, remember that my grandfather was just
your age when Fulton took his Folly up the Hudson," he
said quietly, "and I remember perfectly what the busi-
ness men clamoured then !"
"That's true," I agreed.
"And how much have you put into S n's scheme?"
"Five thousand about all I had clear. All the rest
I have here," and he tapped his right waistcoat pocket.
I nodded. That was why I was with him, of course.
A man of sixty, with ten thousand dollars in his waist-
coat, driving a high-spirited six-year-old Morgan mare
over a lonely country road, was not exactly my idea of
safety.
Not that I didn't follow his reasoning. The property
we'd come out to buy belonged to a crusty old farmer,
none too anxious to sell, and especially wary of the Doc-
tor, whose bloodhound scent for real estate was known.
He knew keen old psychologist of a doctor that he was !
that a sight of those one hundred hundred-dollar bills
would clinch the bargain if anything on earth could, and
he had them and the papers all ready.
"And do you really consider that rambling old hotel
worth all that?" I asked him.
Again he shifted the reins. "My dear boy," (again
the wagging finger) "that hotel on that hill facing that
view twenty minutes from two railroad stations on
two different roads with that spring that orchard and
garden, will be worth ten times that to the man that has
the sense to realize its possibilities! That place, Hugh,
249
THE INHERITANCE
is a Sanitarium. This country has dosed itself half way
to the grave with patent medicines and cure-alls, and now
its livers and kidneys and stomachs have got to get back
to normal with diet and rest and open-air exercise. And
where's it to be done ? On hills like this. Yes, hills like
this. You mark my word, Hugh, in twenty years rich
patients from New York City will be rolling up that steep
hill in S n's horseless carriage, for a good German
Kur!"
"At fifteen miles an hour, I suppose," I inquired sar-
castically, "on a soft road?"
"Fifteen? fifteen?" he repeated. "My George, Hugh,
they'll go fifty, boy ! What's to prevent ? You don't sup-
pose they'll be dragging a ton of coal apiece? Why
shouldn't they use electricity ? Why not naphtha ? Why
not whoa, there, Molly ! steady . . . steady ..."
For Black Molly shied violently, and we drew up, the
Doctor humouring and soothing her as she crabbed half
across the road. Like most good horses, she loathed
shapeless, huddled masses by the wayside, and this was
a man, a hulking, bearded fellow, shabby and dirty and
half drunk, by the look of him. An old forage-cap was
crowded down over his mat of hair, almost covering his
eyes, and as he staggered up and put his grimy, black-
nailed hand on the rim of the wheel and growled out
something about the price of a bed for the night, I was
tremendously thankful I was with the Doctor, I can tell
you, for he was a six-footer and more, and an ugly cus-
tomer at that.
"Get away, there, will you ? You'll be hurt !" I cried
angrily, as he took Black Molly's bit with a clumsy pre-
tence of making himself useful; the clean, dainty beast
tried to toss herself free of his dirty paw disdainfully.
"Won't yer gi' me a quarter for a bed, boss?" he
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WE MEET TROUBLE
whined. "I'm a poor man, that can't drive my blooded
stock "
"It's a poor man, indeed, that can't work for a living,
with your youth and strength," said the Doctor sharply ;
"let go my horse, sir !"
"Look here, boss, I've got to have a quarter," the man
droned, half supporting himself by the bit, now, and I
believe it was greatly rage at the sight of the mare's ten-
der mouth drawn away that made the Doctor raise his
whip and cut the fellow across the cheek, so that he
howled with pain.
Molly jerked herself free, but not soon enough for us
to escape the torrent of vile abuse he hurled at us.
"To hell with you, you damned stingy old brute !" he
bellowed after us ; "I'd slit your old throat for a nickel,
I'd "
And even more unsavoury were the last sentences we
heard.
"Faugh !"
I can see the Doctor now as he shook himself slightly,
as if to scatter from his immaculate white duck waist-
coat (he never was seen without one) the slime of that
spattering drunken tongue. He was singularly neat in
his person; the jealous young physicians in the town
who had him to thank for most of their practise, by the
way called him "Dr. Dandy," and "Brummel, M. D."
As he had not varied the fashion of his clothes in thirty
years, I suppose them to have referred to this spotless
vest, with his shining boots, well-kept hands and close-
trimmed beard, that showed, in his rarely wide smiles,
teeth as clean as a hound's. He wore no jewelry but a
heavy seal ring that had been his father's, and a thick-
linked, respectable watch chain with a curious Roman
coin, of great but unsuspected value, swinging from it. It
251
THE INHERITANCE
had been the grateful gift of a wealthy patient and life-
long friend, and was stamped in almost effaced Roman
characters with his initials, R. C, and had been pro-
nounced by experts to be without a duplicate in the
realms of numismatics.
His tongue was as clean as his teeth; I never in my
life heard a questionable word from him. His favourite
expletive ("My George, Hugh, I can't see the good of
profanity!") was one of his most lovable characteristics
to us who loved him why is it that our affections are so
often caught by these trifling earmarks of personality and
so seldom by the academic good points of our friends ?
and I believe that what hurt him most when Bert was
brought home from his first boyish debauch was the
trickle of stained words that the rest of us took as the
least of his offences.
"I gave him a hard cut, I'm afraid," he said after a
moment.
"No more than he deserved," I answered shortly. "He
might have been responsible for a very pretty little run-
away."
"Molly's restless to-day; she always feels the thunder
coming like me," he added.
"Thunder? We're practically in November," I re-
minded him, but he only smiled and shook his head; he
was a perfect barometer.
And just at that moment there came a low mutter, and
Molly pricked back her ears and the dead leaves whirled
in my face, and one of those curious, haunting certain-
ties that I had experienced all this before swept over me.
Somewhere, somewhere, surely I had said to somebody,
"Thunder? We're practically in November," and the
brown elm leaves had whirled against my cheek. It was
uncanny.
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WE MEET TROUBLE
The sky grew steadily darker. We drove in silence,
and I no longer tried to raise him from the depression
I had felt in him, for it was creeping insensibly over me.
"If this blows up, I'll turn back; I don't relish taking
her through the Millpond woods in a thunder storm," he
said at last, and I agreed briefly. We all wished he were
a little less exigent in the matter of horseflesh ; the tra-
ditional jogging old grey of the country doctor would
have given us more peaceful hours than Black Molly or
her predecessors had ever allowed.
"So we'll be taking back the money after all, Hugh,"
he said at last with a glance at the sky, very thick by now,
and fairly menacing behind the angry flying leaves and
the bare boughs. "By the way, has Chrissy any cash at
all ? I'm pretty low at the bank."
"She found fifteen dollars in your shoe-pocket," I an-
swered demurely, "and a coffee cup full of small change
behind the dining-room mirror. Then there was that
ninety-six dollars she collected last week the old bills,
you know."
He couldn't help smiling.
"The little rascal !" he muttered; "but look here, Hugh,
she mustn't be too hard on anybody, you know. By the
way, I stuffed some money under the clock in the office."
"I don't think she will," I assured him drily. "Chrissy's
quite right about the bills. You have no more idea what
people owe you, Doctor than than they have. But she's
going to find out. And then, she says, if you really want
to give it in charity, you can do it a little more evenly.
We really need new carpets, you know, and Thomas says
he can't possibly humour the furnace through another
winter."
"She's been stuffing you up with all this, 1 see," he said,
not displeased, though, and with the smile he always had
253
THE INHERITANCE
for Chrissy. "Well, the child has a level head a level
head. And you're backing her, it seems."
"Oh, yes, I'm backing her," I answered simply; "I'm
always backing Chrissy, you know."
He chuckled, then grew grave suddenly.
"She's growing a fine woman a fine woman," he said,
"soon we'll have to take her seriously, for she'll make a
fine woman, Hugh."
I almost got my hand on the reins.
"Why, Doctor," I cried, "she'll make? she'll make?
She's made it ! She is a fine woman, Doctor !"
He gave a little gasp, and as I looked at him, his cheeks
actually seemed to fall in and his eyes sink back in his
head.
"My George, Hugh !" he murmured, "my George ! I'm
sixty-one years old ! Sixty-one, and Chrissy's a woman !
And I was a middle-aged man when I helped her into the
world ! Do you think she'll help me out of it, Hugh?"
"Don't talk that way, Doctor, don't !" I begged. "Of
course, she's only a girl ..."
"No, no," he checked me, "you don't need to eat your
words, my dear boy, you don't need to. You're quite
right: she's a woman."
A great fork of lightning branched across the sky, and
as Molly reared and shook her head, he turned her ab-
ruptly, cramped the wheel very short, and headed for
home. I didn't answer him, for I couldn't. There was a
pause. She slowed to a walk, and the leaves dropped
and rested on her glossy back and the wind began to
rise and moaned a little: the boughs had an autumn
creak.
I remember how that next flash lighted everything with
a nasty green glare ; he had a hard time with Molly, and
I was within an ace of helping him, a thing he never
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WE MEET TROUBLE
would have forgiven. But he got her under, somehow,
though I could see it had taxed him terribly; his breath
came short and I felt his knees shaking, against mine.
But never a drop of rain ; only the rustle of dry leaves
and the black clouds bearing down on us.
Then it all happened in a moment. The very dome of
the heavens cracked and split and roared; Molly gath-
ered her legs under her and jumped like a rabbit ; a gust
of cold wind blew the lap robe out of the Stanhope, and
in an involuntary movement to catch it I lost the second
when I could have helped him with the reins. The
wagon swayed and lurched, and as that frightful crack
and roar came again and a great oak near us ripped down
the middle like a tearing sheet and fell close to her head,
Molly gave a positive scream and danced in an ecstasy
of nervous terror sidewise across the road. The light
vehicle dragged stiffly after her a moment, then the near
shaft snapped, the wheels tilted and my side sank down.
"Jump! Jump, Doctor!" I cried, and tried to push
him as I fell.
But his hands seemed welded to the reins; he only
stared ahead of him.
I was wedged between the wheel and the dashboard.
I remember thinking that it was all over with me, prob-
ably, and wondering if Chrissy would find the money
under the office clock, when Molly swerved again and,
backing violently, threw me out, heels over head, as help-
less as a doll.
Everything went bluish, and I saw a bolt of fire as big
as a child's head floating across the road; little tingling
shocks ran through me, and clicking, snapping noises
filled the air. Molly was staggering and backing, and
the swaying, lurching Stanhope reeled menacingly, like
the rough man we had met just there a little while ago.
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I heard the swish and fall of big trees, beyond in the
woods, and the grinding of the boughs; it sickened me,
somehow it was like human bodies crushed and creak-
ing ...
I crawled up the bank, almost crazy with joy to see
Molly still backing and staggering ; she had not advanced
a yard, and he still sat there, glued to the reins, staring
ahead.
"I can get him out!" I cried aloud; "hold on, Doc-
tor, I'm coming!"
But my legs moved slowly, as in those terrible dreams
that haunt us so dreadfully, and she started suddenly and
broke ahead just as the tramp rose again from his old
hollow by the road. He was wild with terror; his eyes
stood out of his head. He gave a howl like some great,
dying animal and waved furiously with his ragged arms,
and then I saw that the ball of fire was drifting like a
balloon towards him. The blood was still dripping from
his hairy cheek, where our whip had cut him ; he looked
like a nightmare.
It was the last straw for Molly, and she bolted like
a shot, the wagon struck a great stone on the side of the
road, and then, as the entire sky opened, a frightful
lemon-coloured well, and blue points of fire spurted from
the steel rivets of the Stanhope, the Doctor pitched from
the bounding seat and was thrown hard against the bel-
lowing man. His hat flew off and I heard the crack of
skull against skull "it's concussion," I thought, in one of
those timeless flashes of the brain, "and he can't possibly
stand it. He's gone." Then a crash of noise that
swamped thought and life and everything, the top of my
head seemed to lift off and up, and as they dropped to-
gether, I went out in a gulf of black noise.
256
"The wagon swayed and lurched."
WE MEET TROUBLE
I came to myself slowly, expecting obstinately to see
the white walls of a hospital ward. It was perfectly clear
to me that I had just been operated upon by the Doctor
and myself, and soon, I knew, the head nurse would swim
into the vague circle of trees and all would be plain.
"I think these are bushes and rocks, but of course they
are walls and beds," I said to myself calmly, when all at
once a veil seemed to roll away, and I knew the sur-
roundings for what they were and tried my limbs pain-
fully. All seemed sound ; my neck and shoulders were a
bit stiff, and I had the general bruised, bent misery that
follows acute nervous shock, but otherwise I was per-
fectly fit, and I got up slowly and went haltingly across
the road.
Molly, of course, was gone as clean away out of sight
and sound as the black clouds and the blue lightning.
Only the deep ruts of the wheels, in horrid, blurred cir-
cles, witnessed her performance of how long ago? I
could not tell; I judged from the sky it was about half
past four we had started at two. I walked quickly to
the roadside; as a matter of fact, I had no hope. No
man of sixty could take such a blow on the head and live.
One body lay, limp and straight, in the hollow the Doc-
tor's. There was no sign of anyone else.
I knelt by him and put my hand over the heart. Noth-
ing, of course. I turned the head partly over and nodded
quietly at the frightful, discoloured area I had expected.
I was kneeling by the body of the best friend I had in the
world, the man who had made me whatever I was, and I
could do nothing for him. I don't think I exaggerated
when I felt that I would gladly have given the rest of
my natural span for the years he would ordinarily have
rounded out. You see, I was a grateful sort of fellow.
Whatever revenge the tramp might have been tempted
257
THE INHERITANCE
to wreak on an old man in his power, he had been spared
the trouble of. That was something to be grateful for,
at least. I shuddered to see the blood from that whip-
lash smeared on the Doctor's neck under the ear. It was
rather gruesome and yet he had acted well within his
rights; the man had meant mischief, beyond a doubt.
Then something occurred to me, and I put my hand into
his waistcoat pocket where I had seen him put the money
and the papers. Only the papers were there.
"Watch gone, too, of course," I muttered, but saw
with surprise that it was still in its place, though the
chain no longer lay across the white duck, and yes, the
Roman coin was gone.
It seemed incredible; the watch was of obvious value,
the coin a dull, coppery looking affair, its very ugliness
its safety. How had it caught the eye of that drunken,
lawless fellow?
"I can't leave the body here," I thought, slowly, for
my mind creaked on its hinges, and things came slowly
to me, "and yet I must tell Chrissy it must be me. How
far could I drag it ?"
I sat, a rather pathetic figure, I should suppose, squat-
ting beside him, my hand still over his heart, when all
at once I jumped and gasped, for I felt a weak, flutter-
ing throb under my wrist the pump I had dis-
trusted so was starting up again ! I put my cheek to his
lips surely I felt something? Shaking with excitement
I loosened his collar and felt for the tiny pocket case of
hypodermic and stimulant he always carried ; it was there,
unbroken. I moistened his lips and chafed his hands,
and at last he swallowed feebly. What splendid vitality
he had! I moved his arms and legs tentatively they
seemed supple. The spine I dreaded to touch, but there
was a puddle of stagnant water a few yards off, and I
258
WE MEET TROUBLE
had a compress on the frightful contusion of the head
in less time than I had thought possible. Again and once
again he swallowed, and then, catching sight of the red
stable blanket across the road, I fetched it, and with set
teeth lifted him onto it ; it seemed to me, though I could
not be sure, that his back was all right, but it was almost
too much to hope, I thought. His eyelids quivered slowly,
slowly, and at length, as I held my breath, lifted, and his
eyes focussed vaguely on mine.
"That's right, Doctor," I said cheerfully. "How goes
it? Feeling better?"
Still they searched stupidly ; his eyes, and something
I don't know what chilled me as a small, cold draught
of air chills a hot body. Of course, I couldn't expect him
to become perfectly conscious all in a moment, but it was
something more than that. ... I looked hard at him,
and as the mind struggled back to those clouded eyes
blank as the windows of an empty house I leaned over
him.
"Do you know me, Doctor?"
The old question how many times have I not asked it !
Other men of my calling may grow indifferent to it
(though most, I believe, do not), but for myself I have
never asked it nor heard it asked without a thrill. Do
they know us ? Has that absent something returned yet ?
Has that rolling pupil, blank in its iris, connected yet with
the wonderful, delicate cord along which the visible, tan-
gible universe flashes its messages to our flesh and
blood?
"Do you know me? Do you know me, dear?" The
sick, faint odour of chloroform too often chokes that ques-
tion on their lips, those trembling wives that press be-
tween us and the narrow, white bed, and we know the
seconds are hours to them, the minutes eternities, and
259
THE INHERITANCE
pity them from our hearts while we ask calmly, "Is this
your watch, nurse? Oh, yes. No nourishment for sev-
eral hours, of course."
"Will she know me? Oh, doctor, will she?" How
they peer under the swathing too-white bandages that
cap the little faces, too white themselves, also, and press
their hands over their poor, pounding hearts, those ago-
nizing, thrice-pitiful mothers, pressing down and squeez-
ing out the last drops of that cup of anguish mysteri-
ously prepared for them from the beginning, coining their
tortured breasts into counters for some child's thriftless
spending, by and by ...
And then that strangled cry, that racking joy, as the
little lips quiver and the eyes faintly light into
theirs
"She knows me, doctor! She knows me!" And we
murmur soothingly and the nurses bite their lips and
breathe deep . . .
Well, I asked the old question, the few perfunctory
words that lead, like most well-worn phrases of the sort,
down into the very deeps of life, and I asked it sharply,
and with a voice changed even in my own ears, for I
knew, as I asked it, that those eyes were conscious, that
the great connection was made, the mighty circuit that
separates you and me from the imbecile and the inor-
ganic, completed and yet, he did not know me ! He did
not, and I realized this and he realized it.
He turned his head feebly and winced.
"Don't try to move," I said mechanically. "I've put a
compress at the base of the brain ; you had a nasty fall.
But all right otherwise, I think. You remember, don't
you, Doctor?"
His jaws moved once or twice, and he made a rough
260
WE MEET TROUBLE
sound in his throat. The blood was in his cheeks again,
and with every heart-beat he was manifestly stronger;
he clasped and unclasped his fists, and deliberately moved
his feet from the ankle the spine was safe, then.
"Come," I urged, and now I was sure my voice was
sharp and high, "I'm sure you remember, Doctor?"
He coughed. Then :
"To hell "with you, you damned stingy old brute!" he
cried hoarsely, and then as I fell back from him horri-
fied, he ground his teeth and tried, his eyes flashing un-
mistakable hate at me, to raise himself.
I watched him sink down again and heard him cough
feebly, without offering to touch him. I could not have
moved just then had he died before my eyes. For again
that tiny cold draught blew across me, and I shivered to
the marrow.
At last I forced myself to approach him.
"Let me put back the compress," I said dully, "and lie
still. You will hurt yourself "
"For a nickel I'd slit his old throat!" he snarled at me,
and then, as the torrent of filth that the wind had carried
to our ears along the road, two hours ago, rolled over me
again, the little hairs on my skin pricked me as they
crawled upright, and I stared dumbly at him, for I was
not listening to a madman nor, I would have taken my
solemn oath to it, a man temporarily deranged, but to
a man that did not know me !
He saw my fear I must have been ashy and did not
share it. His lips curled back wolfishly (the horror of
that grimace on those lips oppresses me still, in the
night), and he tried again to rise. For the first time he
dropped his eyes and looked at his hand, white and well
kept, with the big old seal ring on it. The most inde-
261
THE INHERITANCE
scribable look came over his face, and he stared blankly
at me with the dropped jaw of an idiot.
It was too much ... I heard the rattle of an ap-
proaching wagon, stood up and waved my arms, some-
how, and fainted in the road.
CHAPTER XIX
In Which the Doctor Gives Up Driving for
Some Time
1FIND I am hesitating, so reluctantly, to take up this
part of my narrative, that I had best get at it at
once and be done with it. You will have to know it
and Chrissy will have to know it, and I must break the
news in both cases. So it is just as well that I came to
myself as quickly as I did, with two frightened men bend-
ing over me, and the echoes of that horrid raving still in
the air.
"Drink a drop of this, doctor," said one, and the other
added :
"I'll get the old Doctor to swallow some, too, if I can.
He's in a pretty bad condition, I guess. It was that black
mare, I suppose ?"
I knew them directly: they were the undertaker's head
driver and his assistant, and behind them stood the tall
hearse with its ornamental tops like a four-poster bed and
its discreet pleated curtains. Two big, heavy blacks drew
it, with long manes and tails, and they stood decorously
in the road where Molly had pranced and pawed. They
were proof against any storm that ever brewed, I knew.
The raw brandy stung me awake, and I motioned them
to keep it from the Doctor.
"He's had all the stimulant that's safe, I think," said
I, coughing. "The thing is to get him home without jar-
ring, if we can. He he's completely out of his mind.
18 263
THE INHERITANCE
It's partly electrical shock you see the boot soles are
blackened. The fluid must have gone straight through
him. There's a nasty contusion, too. Have you got any-
thing inside there ?"
"No, sir," said the driver respectfully, "we're just back
from Millpond Crossing old Captain Banks's funeral.
There's a few chairs inside, but they're all in bags, and
there's plenty of room. Has he been conscious since it
happened, doctor?"
I went over to him a little unsteadily but, to my relief,
he lay in a stupor, breathing heavily, but quiet.
"He was conscious for a moment," I said, "but relapsed
again, just just as I did. See if we can lift him in the
blanket. I'm afraid I can't help you much."
They got him in very deftly, on the whole, and we tied
back the doors for air, and I sat cross-legged with his
head on my knees, and the blacks paced slowly along.
It was the most disagreeable drive I ever took in my life.
I have seen too much of death to be afraid of it, and a
hearse, per se, had at that time no personal associations
for me, but it is not a pleasant vehicle, all the same, and
as I sat there, cramped and frightfully uncomfortable, my
old friend's bandaged head so heavy on me and his ster-
torous breathing, like a rattling machine in my ears,
which still echoed with that flood of ribaldry ; as my mind
pictured with the femorseless accuracy of the photographic
lens that look of idiotic horror as his eyes had fallen
on his white hand and the seal ring, I tell you it was all
I could do not to scream out like an hysterical woman.
From time to time we stopped, and one of the men got
down to inquire if everything was all right, and at the
main fork of the road he turned, to my surprise, in the
wrong direction, so that I rapped sharply on the glass to
stop him.
264
THE DOCTOR GIVES UP DRIVING
"Look here! Where are you going?" I cried testily,
for the Doctor was beginning to moan and writhe a little
and his pulse was quickening irregularly.
"Why, don't you want to take him to the hospital?"
said the man quickly ; "it's a good mile nearer, doctor, and
I thought every minute counted."
"Right you are, of course," I answered after a sec-
ond's worry, "and push the pace a bit, Henry he's get-
ting restless. Try a trot, and I'll tap, if it's too much."
It was none too soon : he was muttering, presently, and
struggling feebly, and by the time we had pulled up at
the high horseblock and an orderly and two doctors could
get out to us, it took four men to carry him, raving, curs-
ing and kicking, into the building.
The out patients heard and crowded to the door of
their waiting-room ; he was due for an hour with them
and here he was, but worse off than any of them, and
they fell back with white faces. The nurses rushed from
the wards (he was a great favourite with them) and Nana
herself, her keys rattling from her belt, her good English
face ruddy above the striped blue-and-white of her uni-
form, hurried in from her little office on the ground floor.
For the first time in years she was shocked out of her
official demeanour in public, and ran to me, her hands
over her ears to shut out that horrifying, pelting obscen-
ity, so incredible from those calm, clean, friendly lips.
"What is it, Hughie ? Oh, my lamb, what is it ?" she
cried, shaking, and even though I glanced reprovingly
at her, I put my arm over her shoulder: they all knew
who she was.
"A private room, at once, Mrs. False," I said quietly,
and to the head nurse, who appeared just then with eyes
like saucers, I added, clearly, so that they might all hear :
"Delirium, from electrical shock and severe contusion.
265
THE INHERITANCE
He got a terrible blow at the base of the skull. Tele-
phone for J y from the city directly, and wire Dr.
B n at New Haven : I'd like them to consult."
Nana was herself again, directly more so, indeed, than
poor Miss Riggs, the head nurse, who had been in at-
tendance under him at an operation that morning; the
poor girl's lips twitched nervously, and she steadied her-
self by the newel post as she started up the stairs. It was
a black day for the hospital.
I lingered in the square, bare hall that smelled so per-
sistently, if faintly, of anaesthetics and disinfectants
odours that not all the flowers presented by the Ladies'
Auxiliary could quite kill trying to think what I
must do first : should I sit by him or warn Chrissy ? Such
news travels all too fast, and there was no immediate
danger of death, apparently; he was stronger than one
could have dared to hope, and no concealment of his con-
dition was possible, now the vile words floated down
clearly at this very moment from the little lift they were
taking him up in, and in his clear barytone, penetrated
the place. I could not shield him in that way, or I should
not have left him for a moment. One of the best doctors
in town had hurried out on our arrival, and Miss Riggs
was most efficient yes, I would go and tell Chrissy and
the boys, for she must not come to the hospital.
"Tell Dr. Hunter I've taken his rig I'll telephone
from the house in ten minutes!" I cried to the second
orderly, who came hurrying in from the men's ward, and
jumped into the buggy near the side entrance. And I
knew, as I drove off, that I left him with relief. I
was glad to leave the best friend I had in the world to
the care of others !
CHAPTER XX
In Which I Break the News to Chrissy
WHEN I pulled up at the comfortable old red
house with the white, ribbed Doric pillars
(Chrissy had set Thomas at the leaves, and
the lawn and drive and walk were neatly swept, the
shrubs banked, straw tied about the rose bushes, and the
roof gutters clean ; the whole place looked trim and cred-
itable to a degree, and she had had the fence painted the
week before) the door flew open and she hurried out
w*th Thomas at her heels.
"How is he better? Is anything broken? Are they
bringing him here?" she cried eagerly.
"Why why, how did you know?" I stammered, im-
mensely relieved, I can tell you ;" (blanket the horse, Tom,
and keep him here, I'll be going back presently), yes, he's
stronger than any one could expect. Who told you ?"
She stood by the gate, with the wind blowing her
smooth, strong hair into heavy wisps about her cheeks.
They were flushed, and her eyes were very bright, but I
knew the deep white she had looked at the first shock
and how black her eyes must have turned against it : ex-
citement always took her that way quick pallor and then
the flush and her wits working at the double-quick that
was Chrissy.
"Molly," she said simply; "she came home with the
Stanhope all down on one side and the reins dragging.
They caught her at the corner, and I called up the bank
267
THE INHERITANCE
and the livery stable and the hospital. Rob was at the
bank. They sent six teams out in different directions,
and Rob and Hux telephoned everywhere. They traced
you to the Millpond road, and then that undertaker's
Henry called up the bank. Rob started for the hospital,
and I got everything ready here in case you brought him.
Hux had to stay at the bank he's all alone there. I
didn't think it would be right to worry Gary. Can't
they bring him here, Hugh? Miss Riggs told me there
was nothing broken, so far as they could see only that
blow on the skull. Nana said she'd never leave him till I
got there, in case they couldn't bring him. I'm all ready."
The good, brave thing ! It nearly broke me down, she
was so sensible and steady though I knew she was
strung up to concert pitch, inside. Nothing undone,
everything "seen to," as they say in South Warwick, and
that quiet ending "I'm all ready" I could have wagered
my last penny that she was.
She wore a bright red bodice, a sort of tight-fitting af-
fair that showed every line of her firm, strong-knit fig-
ure: didn't they call them "jerseys" then? There was a
stiff little white collar at the top, like a man's, and a
little trig black bow to finish it off, and stiff little cuffs
came down to her wrists: the cuffs were masculine (at
least, it seems so now, since the women don't wear them
any more), but somehow, when a round, dimpled wrist
showed at the end of such a cuff, the contrast brought
things to your mind, and I don't think the ladies lost by
it at all. Her upper arm the weak point usually in those
of her sex who are not washwomen was wonderfully
modelled, full and round as a statue's, and the line of her
breast and shoulder, unmercifully revealed by that red
jersey, was like some wide-browed Juno's.
"Miss Vereker is not beautiful, but she has a fine fig-
268
I BREAK THE NEWS TO CHRISSY
ure, if you care for that kind," the ladies of South War-
wick used to say, and I, and many others, were quite
frank to admit that we did care for that kind. Aunt
Addie thought her a trifle heavy for her age, and used to
advise her to drink a little good cider vinegar three times
a day and not to take twice of the beef, my dear, but the
Doctor and I had something to say on that point, I as-
sure you.
"I think perhaps he's better at the hospital for a little,
Chris," I began "the jar, you know . . . I'll see how he
is when I go back."
"But I'm going, too, Hugh?"
"I think you'd better stop here, dear, for the present."
"Hugh," she said, looking hard at me, "what's the
matter? You don't have to lie to me. Is he going to
die?"
"On my honour, Chrissy, I don't think so," I assured
her hastily, "and I don't mean to lie to you you know
that. The only thing is, he's he's out of his mind, for
the moment, and he wouldn't know you, if you were to
go. The shock, you know it often acts that way. He
he doesn't talk like himself at all, and it would be a ter-
rible blow to you."
She drew her eyebrows together and looked at me
under that straight dark line.
"Why would it be a blow to me, Hugh, now that I
know about it ? Nana heard him."
"Yes . . . but Nana is an older woman. And it did
shock her, for the matter of that. Didn't she give you
any idea of it?"
"No, she only said he was very bad, but no bones
broken, they thought. I don't see what age has to do
with it."
"Look here, Chrissy," I said, swinging the gate back
269
THE INHERITANCE
and forth nervously, while old Thomas listened with all
his ears, "I want you to take my word for this won't
you? You'd be everlastingly sorry to have to remember
the Doctor as he is now. Those shocks act very queerly,
sometimes, and though we all understand that he's not
responsible, fast enough, some of the things he says
you've you've never heard in your life, and you don't
want to. He'll probably get quieted soon, and then, the
minute I think you wouldn't regret it afterward, I'll call
you up and let you see him. Won't that do?"
"Do you mean he swears, Hugh ?"
"Yes," I answered, relieved, "he swore terribly when he
came to, and he kept it up. It was a great shock to Miss
Riggs, I can tell you, and she has to hear that sort of
thing, you know, in the wards. But I tell you very
plainly, Chris, I wish 7 hadn't heard him."
She looked undecidedly at me.
"Honestly, Chrissy, if if anything should happen, you
shall see him, you know. I wouldn't keep you from that.
But if he's alive now, there's no reason that I can see
why he shouldn't keep up longer."
"Honestly, Hugh?"
"Honestly, Chris. Surely you can trust me ? It's only
for your sake, really. I don't want you to have it to
remember, don't you see?"
She drew a long breath.
"All right," she said quietly. "Ill go in to Aunt Addie.
Of course she's dreadfully excited."
"Of course," I assented. "I'll step up to her a mo-
ment, and telephone before I start back."
And that was all there was of that interview I'd
dreaded so. It is often like that : the worst things come
with no warning, and I'm not sure one doesn't bear them
just as well. And when one is all braced for the ex-
270
I BREAK THE NEWS TO CHRISSY
pected, it doesn't happen. Not that many girls would
have yielded like that. It was a terrible disappointment
to her, I knew. But she was too good a manager herself
not to know when it was best to let others manage the
best test, especially in women. Now Aunt Addie, at her
age, would have insisted.
I called up the hospital, and left the two women to-
gether: Chrissy could always manage Aunt Addie, and
she was very tearful and trembling, poor old lady. For
Aunt Addie was not young, fifty-eight, though she didn't
look it for a minute. But a shock of any kind always
showed up her age.
"How is he still the same?" I asked the doctor who
answered my call.
He seemed to hesitate.
"No, doctor, I wouldn't say he was quite the same.
Less violent. We've got him in bed and the head all
dressed and got a little sedative down, I believe he
fought that. The heart is holding out wonderfully.
There's a good deal of incoherent muttering. We've got
the delusion fixed, now he's sure he's somebody else.
He says he's 'on the road.' Miss Riggs seems to have the
best effect on him he hasn't recognized any one yet.
Mr. Robert Caldwell is quite discouraged about it. I've
told him it's not unusual at all ; that is to say ..."
"Oh, yes, of course," I cut in hastily. "Well, I'll be
right up. Can J y and B n get here, do you
know?"
"J y's on the way; Dr. B n will come to-mor-
row by the noon express."
I drove back not so fast as I had come, and marvelled
at the quickness with which all had fallen into place. It
seemed that this had been going on a long time, and that
the worry and apprehension were of long standing, so
271
THE INHERITANCE
matter-of-course it appeared that I should be driving in
a borrowed carriage to see a man dangerously ill, in the
very hospital he had conducted an operation in, that
morning ! I felt empty, suddenly, and unreasonably tired,
and drew up before the livery stable ; at one side, on the
ground floor, Henry's wife kept a sort of little coffee-
and-sandwich stall, and two or three men, drivers of the
funeral coaches, probably, were standing before the nar-
row counter with heavy stoneware cups before them. I
threw the reins to a waiting boy and stepped in ; Henry
himself was one of the patrons. He made a place for me
respectfully.
"What's the news from the hospital, doctor ?" he asked
eagerly (the Doctor had operated on Mrs. Henry, whose
name, by the way, was O'Shaughnessy, and he never for-
got how successfully. He had been one of the old law-
less gang that followed Rob and Hux in the pre-acad-
emy days). "Still keeping his end up?"
"Yes, indeed," I said, "though out of his mind yet, I'm
sorry to say." There was no use in avoiding this part of
it better get it over frankly. "You know a violent
shock will do that, Henry. I don't know where we'd have
been without you. Captain Banks would have been
mighty glad to do a good turn to the Doctor, wouldn't
he?"
"Yes, sir," Henry agreed thoughtfully, "he surely
would, now you put it that way even on his own
funeral ! Those shocks must be awful things. I suppose
anybody in that neighbourhood would 'a' got one, hey?"
"I suppose so," I assented.
"Reason I asked," Henry went on, stirring his steam-
ing cup vigorously, "we passed a tramp, 'bout a mile be-
fore we come up to you, on the Millpond road, reeling
and staggering along, pretty well corned, we thought
272
I BREAK THE NEWS TO CHRISSY
he was muttering and shouting, crazy like, holdin' his
head why, what's the matter, doc?"
In a flash my carelessness came over me.
"Go on ! go on !" I gasped.
"Why, nothing, only we wondered, afterwards, if
maybe he'd had one o' them shocks, too, and wasn't
drunk, after all. What d' you think? He was a big,
tough-looking fellow."
"I've been a stupid fool !" I groaned, "and it may be
too late, worse luck! Can you start out two or three
teams directly, Henry, along that road, and I'll send Mr.
Robert Caldwell and the sheriff and any one else I can
get. . . . That tramp has ten thousand dollars of the
Doctor's money, Henry all he had in the bank!"
"Lord a'mighty, doc, why didn't you tell us before?
That's awful why he's got a choice o' three stations, and
but there," he added with a real consideration, "I don't
know what you could 'a' done more'n you did, when you
come to think of it. It was neck or nothin' with the old
Doctor, and no time for police work, was there?"
"That's it," I groaned again, " that was just it ! I did
the best I could, but well, there's a chance yet. Don't
go unarmed, Henry he's an ugly customer. He threat-
ened us on the drive."
I left the coffee untasted on the counter, threw down a
dime beside it and dashed over to the bank. Within
twenty minutes we had started half a dozen men out, and
I was telephoning from the bank to the four nearest rail-
road stations. But I couldn't feel very hopeful: it was
four o'clock . . .
A quick ring checked me as I was half-heartedly get-
ting in touch with New York and a detective bureau.
"Is this you, doctor? All right this is the hospital
Hunter. Miss Vereker told me to try the bank. See here,
273
THE INHERITANCE
doctor, there's been quite a change in Dr. Caldwell I'm
a little afraid it's the last flare-up. He seems pretty
nearly rational at least, he's asking who he is and all
about it. I can't exactly say he knows any of us here,
but he speaks plain enough to Miss Riggs. I was think-
ing some more of the family ought to be here; there's
only Huxley, and I can't get hold of Robert, somehow.
Mrs. False suggested Miss Chrissy's coming up, and I
shouldn't wonder if it might be a good thing. He's quiet
enough."
"All right," I said, "I'll bring her. We'll be there in
fifteen minutes."
She was ready, of course she felt I'd be there, she
said, ever since they telephoned for me and quite pre-
pared, I could see, for the worst. We both were, of
course. Sixty-one next birthday, you see. I had to tell
her about the money, but I knew she'd never blame
me. Still, when she said she'd never have for-
given me if I'd wasted five minutes on it a moment
before I did, I felt better than I had since I ordered that
coffee !
We got out in silence, and I went up in the little lift
with her she couldn't know who had been there last, or
what we'd heard from him. Before the door we paused
a moment.
"You must allow for the bandages, of course," Dr.
Hunter reminded her gently, and she nodded. "You
know, of course, that he's not responsible," she nodded
again. We went in.
Nana was not there, a little to my surprise, and Hun-
ter, a quick enough fellow in his way, stopped us a mo-
ment on the threshold.
"Mrs. False thought that as he didn't recognize her at
all, there was no use her staying," he said ; "she's gone to
274
I BREAK THE NEWS TO CHRISSY
lie down for a few minutes of course, she feels it badly,
and she was up all night in the maternity ward."
"Of course, of course," I murmured vaguely, but all
the same I thought it was queer and so, I could see, did
Chrissy. We would either of us have sworn that she
wouldn't have left that bed.
"Who's that?"
It was the Doctor's voice, though rough and weak, and
we stepped forward together unconsciously.
"How goes it, Doctor ?" I said, as naturally as I could.
"Don't don't try to move!"
For as I neared him he actually rose on one elbow and
thrust out his hands the look of utter hate and murder
in his eyes was plain to them all, and the guttural snarl
that went with it turned my heart sick.
"Le' me at him! Le' me " I slipped like a flash
behind a draught-screen, and left Chrissy alone there, and
with a bewildered, baffled stare he sank back : it was clear
he distrusted his own sight.
"Th' whole damn business all wrong all crazy
doctored rum " he muttered thickly, and they all
looked distressed, and Hunter motioned Chrissy to go.
But she set her lips and walked to the bed, though I saw
she was white as she passed me; that snarl had been
dreadful to hear.
"You know Chris, dear, don't you?" she asked him in
her clear, firm voice, and we all held our breaths.
Hunter told me afterward that the colour flooded into
her cheeks as soon as she spoke, and that she was as
red as her bodice. He never saw her handsomer, he said.
There was a silence, and I knew as well as if I had
been on the other side of the screen that he was staring
at her. Finally he spoke :
"Chris? Chris?" he mumbled, "Chris who?"
275
THE INHERITANCE
Another silence.
"Spit it out, can't yer?" he said quite clearly, "Chris
who?"
I heard her breath catch, and wondered that, knowing
what she had to expect, she should be so overwhelmed.
For there was no violence in these last words.
"Chr-Christopher, you know . . . Christopher, Doc-
tor !" she got out, at last.
Still another silence, and there came from the bed a
low, horrible chuckle the cunning, calm chuckle you get
in delirium tremens.
"Christopher! Christopher's a man's name! God!
We're all crazy together, then!"
("Better come now, Miss Vereker," I heard Hunter.)
" 'Christopher' ! Ah take that, Christopher, and let's
see if you're real or like the other damned spook !"
They held him down, of course, and we got her out.
I thought she would faint on the landing, but she bit her
forefinger, deliberately, and the pain saved her.
"No, no it isn't that not what you think !" she cried
wildly. "I expected that . . . but but, oh, Hugh, his
eyes the way he looked at me oh, it was too dreadful
to tell!"
I was glad I couldn't be certain what she meant.
CHAPTER XXI
In Which We Manage, Somehow
IT IS, of course, an obvious truism that one looks back
on periods of stress and strain and finds them in
the retrospect more unnerving and appalling than
they appeared at the time. And yet I can't resist risking
the truism, and marvelling a little at how we "kept up,"
as the Warwickians put it, so well, through what was
surely an unusual measure of trouble for two young peo-
ple for, of course, it all fell on Chrissy and me. And
as I indulge myself in this looking back, it occurs to me
that the crises in my life have always massed themselves
in this way: brief, sharp batterings of Fate, cruelly re-
peated at cruelly short intervals, and then long spaces of
plain sailing and placid immunity.
And though, during the next three years, we received
much sympathy from our friends, and were generally
looked upon as singled out by Providence for the endur-
ance of "more than our share" of its mysterious disci-
pline, I have never been able to convince myself that our
lot was, after all, so abnormally bitter. It may be that
my profession, which has, of course, put me in a position
to see more than most people of the undercurrents of life,
prejudices me ; but I am more and more convinced, as I
grow older, that except in rare cases, it is only the ex-
tremely selfish or the unnaturally isolated personality that
escapes in the years from twenty-five to fifty much more
shock and loss than we did. It has so happened that our
277
THE INHERITANCE
sorrows have been, perhaps, rather unusually dramatic
and therefore more difficult of concealment than those of
our neighbours: I admit this cheerfully the fact ac-
counts, probably, for my itch for chronicling them, at
this late date. But that we underwent more, bulk for
bulk, than falls to eight out of ten of those marvellous,
fate-connected, incredible little island groups in the sea
of humanity that we call "families," I am strongly in-
clined to deny.
Hamlet and Lear, my dear, young, romantic patients
(whom your mammas beg me to cure of all sorts of ob-
scure and modern complaints, and whom I diagnose as
only victims to that old, old malady of youth!) Hamlet
and Lear have found their way down to us, like Ecclesi-
astes and Antigone, because they are, essentially, realis-
tic as realistic, at bottom, believe me, as the characters
of Mr. Howells, who have somewhat unfairly, it seems
to me, confused that useful expression, in the minds of
his countrymen, at least, to an equivalent for the daily
journey from tub to table, and from table to bed. This
is a very real journey, undoubtedly, but battle and mur-
der and sudden death are real, too, and if we like Ham-
let, it is not because he is like the hippogriff, who is a
fairy tale, but because he resembles, in truth, our Uncle
John Smith, who is difficult to live with !
And the chief objection to the style of romance which
is supposed (and with some truth, I believe) to unfit our
young damsels of the leisure class for the disillusionments
of actual life, is not that they are too dramatic and highly
spiced, but that the spice is all of one flavour and the
drama is all in one scene.
We, on our own crowded little stage, were far too busy
and troubled at the time I write of to realise the sudden
dramatic quality of it all. In an amazingly short time
278
WE MANAGE, SOMEHOW
our life had adjusted itself to the new routine: three calls
a day at the hospital ; unusual care of Gary, whose de-
votion to his father had always been greater than any
of the brothers', so that his weak heart gave way alarm-
ingly under the shock and put him definitely to bed;
greatly augmented responsibility for me, on whom most
of the Doctor's practice that I had not fallen heir to be-
fore, pressed heavily. It was good for me : it braced me
out of the remorse into which my carelessness (real or
fancied) as to the ten thousand dollars had thrown me,
and gave me a chance to make up for it by undertaking
practically the support of the family till events should
prove the Doctor's accident fatal or otherwise.
For the present he lay in a curious state of coma:
there was no return of the fits of foul-mouthed rage that
had so curiously obsessed him. The one that Chrissy had
so unfortunately witnessed had died away, through mum-
bling and snarling, into sullen, obstinate silence, passing
thence into a dazed, apparently frightened stage, and
lastly into positive blankness, ending in a prolonged,
sound sleep of nearly fifty-six hours. I saw him after
twenty-four hours of this (with all precautions for a
speedy disappearance), and again at twelve-hour inter-
vals, until he woke, when it was judged best for him not
to see any one so likely to cause a recurrence of the dis-
tressing rages. But I doubt, now, if this would have been
the result : after that long, mysterious period of oblivion,
Dr. Caldwell woke, extraordinarily restored as to pulse,
temperature and every bodily function so restored as
to completely upset our theories as to the physical damage
he had sustained, but so utterly blank mentally as to recall
no image but that of the new-born. Speech meant noth-
ing to him, the doctors were forced to believe, and after
three days of careful nourishment we were introduced by
19 279
THE INHERITANCE
anxious degrees to his room, now the centre of interest
in the hospital : first, Nana, unaccountably shrinking and
perturbed; then Hux, next Gary, whom we had carried
in the ambulance; then myself (I was sure, somehow,
that the result would be what it was) ; last of all, Chrissy,
white, and trembling slightly, but composed and deter-
mined. It was all useless ; he stared at us vaguely, with-
out a shadow of regard of any sort. Except that he had
less than his usual ruddy colour and that the bandage
about his head gave him an unfamiliar expression, he
might have been the Doctor of a week ago, fortunately
recovered after a nasty blow on the skull but we all re-
alised at a glance that the head of our household for
so many genial, busy years, was, for the present, at least,
quite gone.
And yet, strangely enough, after the horrid shock of
his first state, this discovery did not affect us as it might
have : the relief was greater than the pain. "Poor thing !
All's one to him, now !" Nana said with a sob, and sat
by him at every spare moment. Chrissy never missed her
hour in the afternoon, and Aunt Addie used to walk over
every other morning the exercise was undoubtedly one
of the causes of her unusually good health at that period.
It was wonderful how Addie came up in a crisis; she
was invaluable with Cary, who grew not unnaturally
querulous at his enforced quiet, and she relinquished un-
consciously all the little demands on us that made her a
responsibility instead of a help.
After another fortnight we moved the Doctor out into
a large, sunny convalescent room, and promoted him to
a reclining chair by day, and as he lay there, all bandages
removed, shaved and fresh, in a new, blue blanket-gown
and homelike morocco slippers, a vase of carnations on
the stand near him and a crackling open fire on the cheer-
280
WE MANAGE, SOMEHOW
ful hearth, photographs and his favourite paintings soften-
ing the distempered walls, books and little odds and ends
from the office on the table, and Chrissy with her mend-
ing basket within reach of his hand, it was difficult to
believe that he wouldn't speak at any moment, that the
whimsical smile wouldn't light in his eyes. But his lips
hardly moved from hour to hour, and his eyes, once fixed
on any object, remained there indefinitely, unless startled
away by some sudden movement or sharp sound. We
could discover absolutely no preference for one attendant
over another.
Nothing had ever been heard of the tramp, though Rob
had taken that part of the matter into his hands and em-
ployed detectives liberally in vain, for the fellow could
not even be traced beyond Warwick.
It was on one of his consulting visits of this nature
that the slight, veiled antagonism between Rob and me
dropped all concealment and stood open to us both;
though I am thankful to say there was no public rup-
ture.
"This is a bad business about the old gentleman," he
began one afternoon, when I was enjoying a little well-
earned Sunday leisure in the office my office, now, for it
had altered itself insensibly, to fit my special personal an-
gles, and the desk had drawn up into the window, the new
system of card catalogues stood in a neat cabinet near
the door, the little table where Chrissy wrote out the bills
had a pot of pink geraniums and a gay little paper-
weight, and my own growing library of nervous disor-
ders and children's special treatment (this last a rising
novelty) was replacing the old Encyclopaedia Britannica
and medical reports of the seventies. Most notable
change of all, a serious, brindled German hound of the
sort called Great Dane they are really Deutsche dogge
281
THE INHERITANCE
lay in massive slumber before the comfortable little Eng-
lish coal-grate Bert and Chrissy had cleaned out so tri-
umphantly it seemed so long ago! The Doctor never
cared for dogs, and I had always kept the mongrels of
my youthful collection at Nana's or the Verekers.
"It might have been a worse business," I returned
briefly, pipe in teeth, as I puttered about among some cor-
ner shelves destined to be fitted with some small elec-
trical apparatus.
"Yes, yes," he muttered vaguely, "but look here, Hugh,
it's well into February, now, and there's no change you
admit that, don't you?"
"Absolutely none, as far as I can see," I agreed briskly.
"Exactly. I've spoken with J y and B n and
that German fellow they had over, and young Hunter,
and all of them. They don't hold out the slightest hope."
"Except that he's alive," I suggested.
"Oh, yes, of course if you call it life."
"I certainly do call it life."
He shrugged his shoulders and lit one cigarette from
another.
"Look here, Hugh," he began again, "don't think I
don't appreciate what you're doing I do."
"Suppose we leave that out of it, Rob," I said quietly.
"No, but I can't. Hux never opens his mouth, of
course, except about his family, and Gary is as innocent
as a babe, and Aunt Addie and Chrissy seem to think it a
matter of course that you should devote your strength
and best years simply to keeping my father's practice
for that's all it amounts to, isn't it?"
"Yes, that's all, since you put it that way."
"Well, I do put it that way. Now, the question is,
how long is it going to last? You wouldn't necessarily
select South Warwick as a place to practise, would you ?"
282
WE MANAGE, SOMEHOW
"Not necessarily, perhaps."
"I should say not. And you certainly wouldn't have a
big house like this, an invalid like Gary and an old lady
on your hands. My father's old patients only took you
with the feeling that he was there to refer to "
"At least, they would have nobody who would know
more about them, if I left!"
"Well and good grant that. But the hospital prac-
tise, which you admit interests you more, has slipped over
to Hunter, I hear. ..."
"You've been going into this, haven't you, Rob?"
"And what if I have ? With all this property tied up,
and all these real estate investments, and the good will of
the present practise the present practise, mind you
you must see, Hugh, if you will look at it without preju-
dice, that it's simply idiotic to go on this way, pinching
and economising, and acting as if there were any hope."
"I don't admit that there isn't."
"Well, you'll have to, sooner or later, that's all. You've
scared the rest out of making any definite statement and,
of course, as long as you hold out ..."
"Look here, Rob," I broke in, bluntly, "I see what
you're driving at, and of course it's easy enough to get
Hux on your side, with his wife in her present condition,
and a chance at the vice-presidency for himself. If you
wish to sacrifice Chrissy, Aunt Addie, Gary and your
father to your own city investments, and have the legal
right to do it go ahead. I can't stop you, and I, as you
say, don't necessarily prefer South Warwick as a future
career. But if you depend on my medical opinion as au-
thority for breaking up, selling the property and the prac-
tise and dividing your shares (and you won't have to
wait long for Gary's, by the way), you'll never get it
at least, not for a long time."
283
THE INHERITANCE
He jumped up, began to speak, but controlled him-
self and went out of the room abruptly to a conference
with Huxley, I afterward learned. There is no doubt I
put them in a hard position, a position too ungracious to
assume, even for Rob. And if I afterwards traced to
Mrs. Hux more than one clinging, poisoned little cob-
web of female gossip, more than one little hint of a
jealous adopted son who fed his love of authority (and a
good country practise) on the lost opportunities of others
and feathered his own nest with his brothers' clipped
wings ah, well, I tried to be gentle with the selfish,
purring little kitten she was only fighting for her own,
as Nature taught her!
It was a great responsibility I took in that ten minutes,
in the office, and God knows it wasn't for myself I acted,
however it turned out ! I knew the load I set my shoul-
ders to, and Chrissy knew (Rob to the contrary), for I
explained it to her. We knew just how crippling the
Doctor's enormous charity practise would be and how his
careless, unmethodical system of bill neglecting had tied
our hands ! We knew none better what the loss of ten
thousand dollars in cash meant to such a family as ours.
And we knew just how much help we might expect from
Rob and Hux, I promise you ! But there didn't seem to
be anything else to do. I knew, as no one else knew,
what his Warwick practise meant to him, and I couldn't,
while he lived and breathed, put an end to it, as his.
Aunt Addie and Gary had grown like trees with the
house : it stood, that old, red building, for the twined and
rooted soul of all that our Anglo-Saxon race is founded
on the Family. And it was left for Chrissy and me, the
two twigs of all that the old tree had sheltered so kindly,
who had no family, to preserve it !
Strange fate that I, who had cursed the selfish institu-
284
WE MANAGE, SOMEHOW
tion that combined to crush me in my native land; that
Chrissy, who had been, to all intents and purposes, aban-
doned by it from infancy that we, of all others in our
little world, should have fought, shoulder to shoulder, to
defend it !
For it was a fight. When Rob curtly announced his
engagement to us, and we had recovered from the shock
of his bride-to-be, a plain, distinctly unpleasant sister of
the most unpopular boy of our day at Crane's, he never
knew of our shifts to present the lady with a wedding
gift worthy of the daughter of a great oil king. Why she
should have selected Rob out of the (doubtless) many
aspirants for her hand, we never knew. Her father
thought highly of him, beyond a doubt, and it was mur-
mured in that part of the press about to be known as the
"Yellow Journals," that old Larry Larson had strongly
recommended his eldest daughter to make an end of
romance and settle in life. She was not, as the papers
put it, ten years older than her ambitious and far-seeing
young husband, but she had certainly five years the ad-
vantage of him. All the same, it didn't take Chrissy to
discover that she was really fond of him. I saw it in her
eyes at the great, dull, glittering wedding breakfast,
where all her lace couldn't make her young and pretty,
but where all her diamonds couldn't hide that little gleam
in her flat, pale eyes as she looked at her dignified, keen
young lawyer.
A curious mixture of the great world was there : "old
families" of New York, inscrutable, but consenting; bril-
liant Western meteors, amused at the easy capitulation of
the social fortresses they had believed impregnable; act-
resses newly raised to the purple ; threadbare aristocracy
desperately refusing to fall from it; lofty British share-
holders, staring, eating and drinking, and shedding the
285
THE INHERITANCE
lustre of the new Anglo-mania upon what was universally
conceded to be a brilliant social function.
I think, take it all in all, we did Rob credit. Aunt
Addie had, of course, to stay with Gary, who spent most
of his time in bed, now, and Hux's fourth daughter was
too recent an acquisition to allow of her mother's leaving
home ; but Hux and I escorted Chrissy, whose dress, con-
structed out of an embroidered crepe shawl from her
mother's trousseau, actually got reported in the papers
and received such stares of envy that even Hux and I
could but notice them ! She wore her mother's carbun-
cles, and the creamy embroidery, set off by the rich, glow-
ing stones, made a highly favourable frame for her dark
eyes and heavy hair. She gave Rob a little ivory statu-
ette, whose value, as set by Tiffany, leaked out, and was
whispered around the big roomful of presents, where
somebody was always telling somebody else that "it was
really a museum piece given to the young lady's father
by the Egyptian government." Gary had inherited from
his namesake aunt a beautiful little Chippendale secre-
tary, of Virginia mahogany vintage, and at Chrissy's
earnest solicitation he had meant it for her presented
it proudly, delighted with the enthusiastic note from the
heiress, who was, like all the elect of those days, newly
awake to the charm of "old pieces." I devoted the pro-
ceeds of a successful article on infantile mal-nutrition to
a bit of rock-crystal, and we all agreed in the refurbish-
ing of the old English silver tea service, as the eldest
son's due. With the initials of Rob and his bride stamped
under the monogram of thirty-six years ago, it had a
solid, satisfactory, family air, that handsome old service,
and though it left our sideboard lamentably bare, we none
of us grudged it, and we knew the Doctor wouldn't have.
Chrissy and I, fresh from contriving how best to cut
286
WE MANAGE, SOMEHOW
down the house-bills, wise in the food values of neck-of-
mutton, mush-and-molasses, and pork-and-beans, couldn't
but laugh to each other as we dallied with mounded
mayonnaise, galantines, out-of-season fruit and cham-
pagne !
"I wish we could take some for Gary !" she confided to
me under cover of the famous orchestra of Mr. L r,
which discoursed Strauss waltzes behind a great smilax
screen.
Alas, even as we ate and drank and thought of him,
poor Gary had ceased to need us or our fruit and wine.
The telegram had been overlooked in the wedding bustle,
and when Nana met us at the door that evening we had
celebrated by going to a concert in the afternoon she
had done the last services for the little fellow whose
first severe illness she had nursed and soothed! It had
been very quick and merciful, and we had only to bless
the kindness that had sent her over to "sit with Miss
Caldwell, the while you were away, Master Hugh" for
in moments such as these, Nana's tongue slipped its
leash and forgot the "Yes, doctor" she was so proud
to say.
It was just as his father had always prophesied: the
slight throat affection he had always foreseen and warned
me against had lately set in, and the exertion of sitting up
to welcome young Fletcher, come for his Saturday wood-
carving class, had proved too much.
It was the same with us as with most families, I
imagine : once death pays his visit, the edge is off and the
details of his second coming seem curiously habitual and
wonted. Chrissy was very quiet and collected it seemed
to prove to me that she must have known, though we
never discussed that phase of it and if she put on her
simple black again as a matter of course, I could not feel
287
THE INHERITANCE
that her calm, busy self-possession was the mask of a
terrible suffering.
In the evenings, as she mended or made, she would wipe
her eyes silently, now and then, and once I saw her sit-
ting in his room with her chin in her hands, but she spoke
of him often and easily, it seemed to me, in marked dis-
tinction to her manner as regarded Bert. Indeed, none
of us could speak of Bert readily for two or three years ;
it was too bitter, too poignant the might-have-been was
too much to bear. But Gary's gentle, not-unhappy life
slipped away under the shadow of his father's strange
fate, and left us, so braced for what might be a long
struggle, so used to expect his going, that it seemed more
a fulfilment than a parting. I have seen many such, and
marvelled afresh at the softening, binding power of
Death, who is not always the grisly enemy that inexperi-
ence dreads.
It was Easter, now, and as there had been absolutely
no change in the Doctor's condition, I decided to move
him to his own house, to the great delight of Chrissy and
Aunt Addie, and the first warm day after the decision
found him in Gary's old, sunny parlour, with Miss Riggs,
his constant attendant hitherto, established in the adjoin-
ing bedroom. It was an expense, of course, and Chrissy
objected strongly, wishing all the care of him, but I real-
ised how impossible this would be, with all her other
cares, and I understood, too, better than she could, the
strain of continued tendance upon one so mysteriously
afflicted. Miss Riggs worshipped him, was proud to care
for him, believed desperately with me that the strange
veil might lift, and assured us that he had warned her a
year ago that she was not strong enough for general
nursing. She had an indisputable right to rate her serv-
ices at the moderate value she set us, and in the end we
288
WE MANAGE, SOMEHOW
accepted her gratefully. So into the vacancy that Gary
left, his father slipped, so gently that no one seemed
missing, somehow, and when we fell into the habit of
keeping my room always ready for John Fletcher, who
grew able to devote more and more evenings to his now
famous club, and spent all his Sundays with us, the old
house was seen to have mended all its breaches and no
vacant chambers cried out at us as we passed by their
halls.
Our patients filled all the empty hours and hands;
Bert's old studio was in constant, quiet use, for the lads
came and went by side porch and back stairs and never
once disturbed us ; and we had this year what had been
lacking for many children's feet and voices, the first
since ours to echo there.
Mrs. Hux, as I think I must have mentioned before,
didn't get on with Aunt Addie, and had been used to say,
very frankly, that she never quite understood Miss Vere-
ker's position at the Caldwells. But the fourth Miss
Caldwell was delicate and took up a great deal of time,
the third and second Misses Caldwell were too young for
school, and the eldest Miss Caldwell, a strapping, dicta-
torial young person, needed more room for her expan-
sive personality than her parents' premises, in a fashion-
able location, it is true, but somewhat limited in area,
could be expected to supply. So there were few days
that we didn't see them, by two in the afternoon, a whisk-
ing young tomboy, two shy little love birds and a pale,
doll-like image in a varnished English "pram" with a
worried nursemaid in the rear. Khitmutgar, the staid old
pony, companion of an earlier tomboyhood, is led forth,
docile and affectionate as ever, and Aunt Chrissy sum-
moned to conduct him about the orchard paths, under the
old white pines and round the flagged grape arbour. He
289
THE INHERITANCE
always stops at the covered well house, wreathed with
wistaria, where he had been used to nose out Hux's stores
of apples and seed cookies, and Aunt Chrissy tells the
endlessly fascinating history of how papa was surprised
the day he came to look for his nut cake there! The
tomboy stays with Aunty, the love birds go hand-in-hand
to see if Uncle Hugh has time to tell them a story, and
the baby is wheeled around to Aunt Addie, in her sunny
porch corner.
For Aunt Addie, never too fond of children in our
time, has mellowed wonderfully to them in this genera-
tion, and discusses infant feeding learnedly with Nana
and the nurse, and holds the baby by the hour together.
Old stores of shells, long since gathered on Warwick
Beach, does Aunt Addie bring out; quaint, worn spin-
ning tops and dog's-eared fairy tales and bows and ar-
rows does she miraculously resurrect in Aunt Chrissy's
very teeth, who had thought them spring-cleaned out of
existence long ago! Catechisms does Aunt Addie hear
and scrap books for the children's ward does she paste
and taffy does she order to be boiled, whereat Uncle
Hugh and Aunt Chrissy smile slyly at each other.
And whoever may neglect Aunt Addie, there is one
who never means to, it seems, for John Fletcher, a broad,
manly fellow, with the beard that we all wore then, a
straight eye and a strong grip, known well to many a
lad in Warwick who has no friend but him, John
Fletcher is never far from her chair or sofa (not that
Aunt Addie inclines greatly to sofas), consults her seri-
ously as to his growing affairs, and tells her all his plans
"the very first," an attention she dearly loves.
He had always had a quick, commercial cleverness,
and from the first I had believed there was a great chance
for his now famous Fletcher's Emulsion, the result of a
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WE MANAGE, SOMEHOW
chance discovery of happy flavouring and convenient
blend. I helped him in patenting the harmless formula
and rejoiced with him in the ready sale it found, though
I was quite unprepared for the leaps and bounds it made
under the judicious advertising which grew into a practi-
cal profession in the 9<D's.
That spring his firm helped him to incorporate and
broke ground for a factory, and hardly had we ceased
marvelling at the old house he rented in the Warwick
slum district, papered, painted, fire-escaped and fitted
with shower baths and billiard tables for the Bert Cald-
well Club, when Aunt Addie told us that he had cele-
brated his first salary as vice-president of the Fletcher's
Emulsion Company by an Albert Caldwell Scholarship
at Yale to be filled by Warwick boys from the club.
"If only Robert could know!" she sobbed, and we
comforted her through our own straining tears.
Day in, day out, the Doctor lay in his sunny room, no
longer lifted to the chair, even, for the effort seemed to
me to prove indefinitely uncomfortable to him, and Miss
Riggs, on whose judgment we relied greatly, agreed
with me. Day in, day out, his mild, empty eyes fixed
themselves vaguely on space, following quick movements
only. Sudden noises distressed him, we thought, and
the summer thunder storms affected the whole organism
painfully, so that he required steady stimulants while
they lasted; indeed, both Miss Riggs and I thought that
the broken sounds he once muttered hardly more than
groans, we had to admit during a bad August storm,
were the sounds of approaching death, and had almost
sent for Hux.
After that storm I fancied his reactions a thought more
complex, it seemed to me his eyes shifted a shade more
frequently, and once, that autumn, he groaned in the
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THE INHERITANCE
night. But it all (if it had ever existed outside of our
imagination) passed again, and we watched like misers,
around an empty casket.
Hux had long since forgiven us, and admitted to me
privately that we had taken the only dignified course, and
that it was a comfort to see the old name on the old shin-
gle and feel that Aunt Addie wasn't cast adrift in some
boarding house. And when Rob, to our surprise, brought
Mrs. Rob to our Thanksgiving dinner, and we sat about
the elongated table, I at the head, by general request,
Aunt Addie at the foot, Chrissy and the infants along
one side and Fletcher with his first proud freshman be-
tween Mrs. Rob and her husband, I telegraphed a thrill
of pride to Chrissy that no one at that table knew what
planning the great turkey, the oysters and chicken pie,
the nuts and raisins and mincemeat had cost us. Fletcher,
who had begged to send in wine, nuts, fruit and bon-
bons, cigars and Hux's favourite anisette, little knew
what a relief he had been to us, for not the least of our
triumphs was that the honest fellow never suspected the
straits we had been in, nor dreamed that Thomas hadn't
been paid for six months, that Chrissy had fallen back
on Aunt Addie's stores of black dresses, that I was wear-
ing the Doctor's shoes and that the hogshead of oil old
Larry Larson sent us for a joke had enabled us to keep
the grocer's bill to reasonable proportions all winter!
The Caldwell house had always stood for ease and lux-
ury to him, and as he never came to us without a great
hamper of delicacies, he never saw the difference. Faith-
ful Anne Riggs worked as chambermaid, seamstress and
charwoman, and Nana, who would have guessed in a mo-
ment if she had been able to see us often, thought the
help she no longer offered quite unnecessary. On this
Thanksgiving day she sat with the Doctor (we never left
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WE MANAGE, SOMEHOW
him a moment alone) to allow Miss Riggs her treat, and
the nurse, her keen, regular features softened by the
frills of one of Chrissy's old, light dresses, sat between
Rob and John Fletcher.
Rob's hair was gray at the temples, now, and his
mouth drooped. He had fallen an early prey to nervous
dyspepsia, and looked longingly at the turkey; his wife
rarely spoke. Fletcher had hinted to me for Fletcher
conversed now with financial magnates far beyond my ac-
quaintance that old Larson had been badly squeezed
by the big oil interests and needed all Rob's cleverness to
get him through honourably even by New York stand-
ards. And I knew that Rob had tried to borrow from
Hux's bank ; he was badly in debt and their position re-
quired large sums of ready money.
So it was a curious fact that of all who sat around that
turkey, beyond a doubt, the happiest people there were
two orphans, one of whom had lost her lover not a year
since and had to work far into every night to help the
other, on whose shoulders hung her support and the sup-
port of a rheumatic old woman and a man whose state
was popularly supposed to be worse than death !
And yet so strange, so rich in surprises is this old
world, that these two who had grown old before their
time with work and responsibility, laughed in their
patched shoes, owned life a battle and the dice loaded,
but hoped to win, drew strength from every night for
every day, and, harnessed to a tomboy and two love
birds, romped around the table where they gave their
honest thanks!
CHAPTER XXII
In Which Things Take a Turn
WELL, well, it's all over now, that hard time,
and I wonder, sometimes, why I can't make
it seem harder, as I live it over in memory!
And yet for the life of me, I can't, as I recall the pale,
worried fellow who sat for so many hours alone at night
in his office, rubbing his eyes to make the figures come
straight, wondering if he had done right, after all, to take
such heavy responsibilities, fretting a little at his class-
mates' brilliant, unhampered successes (for my interests
always lay in problem and research rather than practise),
I can't, I say, feel half as much pity for his straits as
pleasure in the little whiffs that came to him from time
to time, the little relaxations, the little unexpected wind-
falls that mean so much to the unexpecting worker !
Those delightful days when, during the next spring,
the old bills began for some reason to produce their long-
waited cheques ! The joy of the dividends from Fletch-
er's Emulsion, in which we had all, Aunt Addie included,
been practically forced to take a few friendly shares!
I really don't remember a jollier day, in its unpretending
way, than that April morning when Chrissy and I started
for New York with two hundred dollars that we "simply
had to spend for clothes." With new hat, shoes and
gloves and a trim tan overcoat, secure in the future fit of
the black frock coat young doctors thought necessary
then, I sallied forth with Chrissy, demure in a delicious
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THINGS TAKE A TURN
gray ulster and the most refreshing garnet-breasted
toque (all the ladies spoke of toques, then, I think, and
they took to bonnets earlier in life) and together we se-
lected a garnet silk and a pleasant-coloured soft wool
material like the top of a lightly browned biscuit. These
colours were impressed on my mind because the clerk in
each case remarked with a smile: "This will be ex-
tremely becoming to your wife's complexion, doctor," as
I gave the address.
It seems rather a sad tribute, now, to our staid, prac-
tical, householding temperaments and the brotherly-sis-
terly feelings of two young people who ought to have
blushed and started nervously, that we didn't the least
bit do either !
"It's funny how they all seem to think we're married,"
Chrissy remarked absently ; "I think I'll get another pair
of gray gloves, Hugh, they are such a bargain, and do
you think we can manage that lace collar for Aunt Addie,
your coat was so reasonable ?"
"I don't see why not," I said, "and I've been thinking,
Chris, that since the Doctor's underclothes fit me so well,
and if Rob really does give up his extra horse and sends
on the harness and lap robes, I'll tell the tailor to make
an extra pair of light trousers while he's about it, and
maybe I'll go to that conference at Baltimore !"
Small wonder that a third interested attendant, whom
I had insisted that Chrissy should patronise to the extent
of a broad-brimmed summer hat with a Roman scarf
about it, like Mrs. Hux's new one, should suggest, after
hearing one of our conferences over office towels (which
have such a terrible way of wearing out!) :
"Any children's things for spring, madam? We have
some sweet Easter hats in the children's department!"
I swear the girl didn't even colour !
20 295
THE INHERITANCE
"I'm only an aunt, thank you," she said, with her pleas-
ant, warm smile.
A vague sense of wrong crept over me.
"But you oughtn't to be, Chris," I began, as we moved
away, "you ought to have babies of your own, do you
know it ? And here you are, slaving away for us all like
an old, settled . . ."
"Why, I am settled, you goose!" she laughed, "and
have been for years ! I was born 'Aunt Chrissy/ I think,
Hugh, I enjoy it so much ! You know perfectly well I
shan't marry don't you know, some girls don't? And
what would you do, Dr. Caldwell, if I did?"
What, indeed! And it was quite true that she was
"settled" : she looked more than her twenty-six years, a
little though not, as I began to notice, then, so much
in advance of her real age as she had at sixteen or at
twenty. Like many women of the mature, dark type,
Chrissy was wearing extremely well, and it occurred to
me that she was distinctly of Pippy Crane's order, who,
at thirty-six, had not altered for five years, while the
lovely Dossy was faded and nervous, and Lulu, I had
heard, already "touched up" her hair!
It was Easter Saturday, and I was looking forward
to a rather sad Sunday with Aunt Addie, for it would be
poor Gary's anniversary and she never forgot those dates.
But that Sunday was destined to prove another sort of
day altogether.
At three in the morning Nana called me by telephone
to what proved when I got there to have been the death-
bed of old Beulah, the Bermuda negress who had cooked
and cared for Professor Vereker so many years. After
his death she had roamed and drifted uneasily, between
Warwick and New York, parted from Diana, who had
long since left them, possessed to the end by her strange
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THINGS TAKE A TURN
dislike of Chrissy, whose entrance into the world she had
so long resented. Her culinary talents supported her
easily and we had always, among us, kept an eye on her,
as the phrase goes, and Nana herself had been instru-
mental in getting her at the last into the public ward of
the hospital.
"She 'minds me o' the old times, doctor, and I can't
feel it's altogether best to forget," said the loyal soul.
Still, I couldn't quite see why I should be summoned
at three o'clock that Easter morning to hear that the old
woman's troubles were over, and I'm afraid I spoke rather
curtly.
"Any special reason, Mrs. False . . . ?"
"Yes, Master Hugh," she said gravely, "there is, and
I couldn't feel right not to call you immediate. That
tramp, the one that stole all that money from the poor
Doctor "
"Yes, yes! Go on, what?" I cried, for Nana always
wiped her eyes when she mentioned the Doctor.
"Of course the poor creature was wandering like, and
she always spoke outlandish, as we all know, but I could
always make out what she wanted, you know, and I'm
sure she meant that it was him that came to the Profes-
sor's house while she was there, and left the money."
"While she was there? Why, Nana, the house has
been closed for years ! She was rambling !"
"Didn't you know she always stopped there, sir? In
through the wood shed she'd get and 'twas winked at
by the agent, for she often made her a fire in the kitchen,
winters. Miss Chrissy always knew it. She took her
some soup there, once, and the queer old thing threw it
out. She said she was there the day o' the big storm, and
a big, blackish man came in, and she was afraid, but
when she saw it was the Doctor, she let him stay."
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THE INHERITANCE
"The Doctor! Why, she was crazy, then! But the
money, Nana, the money!"
"Yes, sir, I'm coming to it. She said the big man
had pains in his head, but he knew her name, and called
her Beulah, and then he had a fit and fell on the floor,
she said, but before that he took out a great roll of money,
all yellow, and hid it under the shavings in the wood pile
and put a penny on top "
"A penny?"
"Yes, sir, but that's her crazy negro way of lying, I
don't doubt "
"Well, well, is it there? Did she leave it?"
"So she said. And that she was afraid to tell, for
fear of the police, for they might say she killed him."
"Did he die there ?"
"It seems so, doctor. I couldn't rightly make out that
part, for she kept saying that sometimes he was the Doc-
tor and then he would be the Devil, again. But he had
a fever and another fit and then he died. And she said
she'd never been there since, for fear of hauntings and
such like. You see, she was never herself, since the
Professor died, doctor."
"I'll call Mr. Hux directly," I said excitedly, for, like
Nana, I felt I couldn't wait. It seemed too good to be
true and yet . . . !
Before long he had joined me and before much longer
we were pushing into the dark, cobwebbed shed, the lan-
tern from the Stanhope faint against the pale dawn. Hux
was inclined to pooh-pooh the whole thing, but there was
just enough of the barely possible about it to give us a
great start and a thrill when we saw an ugly, broken
shoe below a length of soiled trouser, projecting
from the brown, broken bits of the great pile of kindling
wood.
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THINGS TAKE A TURN
"Hugh, old fellow, she was right!" he muttered, and
grasped my arm nervously.
I did not, naturally, share his repugnance to the in-
spection of the unpleasant matter before us at least, not
to the degree he manifested and I had soon made all
the proof possible to make that the murderous fellow of
a year and a half ago or what there was left of him
lay indeed in the old Vereker wood-house. I can shut
my eyes now and see the queer shadows from my lantern
play upon the dusty, stained walls, the old barrels, the
rotten garden hose, the toothless, wooden rake, the wa-
tering pot without a spout, that I reviewed hastily in my
search for a pile of shavings. Suddenly, there they were
they leaped into the circle of light in a far corner, a
mound as high as my waist, and as I pushed tentatively
about in the base of it, cynical, suddenly, as to any result,
my hand closed on a hard, resisting object, and I drew
out, breathing quick, a roll of fresh, yellow banknotes,
while a hard coin dropped through my fingers and tin-
kled on the trodden, earthen floor. I had no need to
study it it was it must be his old Roman coin !
"So that was the penny !" I muttered ; "old Beulah was
right! Why why should he take it and leave the
watch ?"
"It's mighty good he did don't you see it identifies
it as ours ?" Hux answered soberly ; "the two go together
nobody else had a coin like father's."
But my head was whirling. Old thoughts, old doubts,
old fears surged back over me, and the months since the
accident were wiped out like writings on a child's slate.
I stood staring at the coin, while things unspeakable
raced through my brain. Who had laid that coin proof
of his identity on that pile of yellow bills: who? Whose
mind, planning, had selected money and medal and
299
THE INHERITANCE
left the watch? Whose soul dictated to those hairy
hands that had grasped Black Molly's bridle? Whose ?
Oh, why had I not listened to Beulah with my own
ears? Why had I not been able to ask
"Hadn't we better get off?" Hux asked softly; "there's
a lot to be done and Sunday's a hard day. . . ."
"Yes, yes," I assented, "yes, I suppose so. Better tel-
ephone Rob. I'll send the coroner and the police up."
It was Easter morning when we got home.
CHAPTER XXIII
In Which You May or May Not Believe
1HAVE rarely been so touched as I was on that
windy, wet afternoon a fortnight later, when Hux,
twisting the stem of his tiny chasse of apricot
brandy in his fingers (after as good a dinner as he could
have got at home, Chrissy and Aunt Addie congratulated
each other) told me that Rob had attended to all the legal
details, and that in view of the well-known hopeless con-
dition of his father and the entire community of interest
and opinion between the only heirs, he was in a position
to offer me one-third of the ten thousand dollars, out-
right.
"And I think, Hugh," he added, a little nervously, it
seemed to me, "that it would be only the decent thing for
us all to put up five hundred apiece, say, as a share for
Chrissy. She's the only sister we ever had, and if father
could see what she's done all this while . . . you see, his
not making a will would leave her . . ."
I saw, perfectly. I saw, too, that though Hux had in
a way the whiphand of Rob at present, in the event of the
Doctor's dying, there would be nothing for Chrissy, and
Rob was hardly in a financial condition to recognise very
delicate obligations.
"I say we make it a thousand each," I suggested, and
he not only agreed but actually bullied Rob into doing
the same. I had never before felt on such an equality of
sonship with the boys, and it was very sweet to me, I can
tell you.
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THE INHERITANCE
I had the less objection to taking my share that I
had more than earned it, of course, but there was an-
other reason, one that I kept to myself all through the
quiet summer and well into the autumn.
There was no change in the Doctor and no one believed
that there would be. That we should watch and tend
him until, sooner or later, the feeble spark should vanish
out of the flesh that barely held it, breathing, was all that
any one of the various eminent men that his name easily
brought to me could promise. His enormous vitality
alone, the perfect functioning of an unusually healthy
body, had preserved that body so long, and a year, a
month nay, a day more of what we were forced to call
life, since it was not death what difference did it make ?
Indeed, I am not sure that my own feelings, now, were
not more scientific than personal. Rob and Hux, I knew,
regarded their father as dead, and when I laid before
them, on a wintry day nearly two years after the acci-
dent, the dangerous experiment I wanted their permission
to make, I, for one, could hardly blame Rob if I caught
in his voice that its danger was not entirely a drawback
in his eyes.
It was Fletcher who really decided me. We had been
discussing, after a July thunderstorm which had weak-
ened our patient's pulse almost fatally (though Miss
Riggs had been sure that his nostrils had twitched and
his lips moved) the probable effects of a continuous elec-
tric current; and though I explained to him that this
treatment had been employed at the very first, in the hos-
pital, and more than once, later, but always with such
terrifying results that it had been almost immediately
checked, he remained obstinately unconvinced.
"Perhaps it wasn't strong enough," he said.
I stared at him.
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YOU MAY OR MAY NOT BELIEVE
"My own idea, precisely," I said at last; "but . . .
the risk, Fletcher, the risk !"
"Anything's better than this, Caldwell," he answered
quietly, "and I want to tell you that Miss Riggs is break-
ing down. She's very nervous about him and she's lost
weight this year. You'll never supply her place if she
has to leave."
I saw it was so, after a moment of anxious thought;
and when he showed me a clipping from an electrical
journal with a rather technical explanation of the anoma-
lous effects of heavy voltage and a query as to the curious
questions it opened in regard to the matter of electrocu-
tion, I found that these two tiny straws suddenly showed
me the direction of my mind and explained my growing
interest in larger batteries and more complicated appa-
ratus than Warwick could offer.
Rob and Hux never knew what a share of my portion
of the famous ten thousand went into those great glass
cases, but Chrissy guessed, and nearly quarrelled with
me because I would not let her bear a share in their
purchase.
It was all very quietly arranged: Aunt Addie acqui-
esced with an unexpected calmness, and put her hand on
his forehead very quietly as she took her turn at what
might be a last look. His eyes were nearly always closed
now, and this was generally regarded as a bad symptom.
Rob and Hux stood together by the bed, looked a moment,
then went out together, arms across each other's shoul-
ders, in their old school-boy way. Chrissy bent a mo-
ment and kissed the delicately tinted cheek bone above the
short gray beard. Then she took my hand in both hers.
"Whatever happens, Hugh, you've done your very,
very best, from the beginning," she said, low, but quite
clearly.
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THE INHERITANCE
I wrung her hands, but couldn't speak. I had no hope,
just then, for all my excitement was over, but it seemed
that I must go on. Something had driven me forward
ever since I had broached the matter timidly to Nana,
and she, to my surprise, had warmly advised it.
"If there's but a chance, as you say, Master Hugh,
'tis but right for all that it should be tried," she said
calmly; "I've been thinking these three months 'twould
be better settled one way or another. Those New York
doctors have kept you from freeing your mind this long
time: that I know."
I had only Hunter and two others of the hospital staff
with me, and one of my medical classmates who had
agreed with me from the beginning. He was to give me
such simple help as I should need, and Miss Riggs and
Nana were ready with stimulants. The broad, straight,
stairs had made it an easy matter to move him on a cot
to the office, and once there all personality left him, so
far as I was concerned (the common course with me),
and he became the patient merely I, the interested but
unmoved practitioner. I fitted the padded bulb to his
head, stated in a few brief sentences to my noncommittal
colleagues what results might be hoped for, and nodded
to Hunter, who cranked the wheel of the big static bat-
tery, as placidly as though he were about to soothe a
lady's neuralgia.
I thought in a lightning flash of Chrissy's brave words :
"If he dies why, then, we must just think he died two
years ago !" and with my finger at his pulse administered
my first shock.
His eyelids flew apart, and the colour left his face. I
motioned for the second.
The muscles about his mouth twitched and he
groaned: I felt a thrill of delight, but realised imme-
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YOU MAY OR MAY NOT BELIEVE
diately that I got no pulse. Miss Riggs was at him in
a second, and when the stimulant was fairly down I sent
my third shock crashing along those mysterious, sleeping
nerves and even while my classmate murmured, "Easy,
easy, Caldwell ! Look out, there !" I drenched the inani-
mate body lying before me with more of that terrible,
tremendous current than I had ever handled in my life
before. The air reeked with released ozone and blue,
jagged sparks flew from the wheel and the chains of the
apparatus. The body on the long table quivered and
twisted, the eyeballs rolled, the lips parted, and as I flung
off the current, that deep, strangling, welling gasp that
even the nurses call the "going soul" rattled through the
tense room.
"Gone, hasn't he?" Hunter whispered, and I noticed
how the hair still stood on end on his blond head under
the electric influence.
Miss Riggs's hand was on his heart, but I knew by
her face that there was no movement under that waiting
hand. Her hair, too, waved curiously above the neat
uniform.
I saw Nana with a tiny glass, but I shrugged my
shoulders dully, as she tried to part the set teeth.
"It was madness madness!" I thought, "and they all
knew it!"
How 
