Part 3 (2/2)

Upon the other things, Paul put down his foot. The library set, its antique bookcases and desks curling up toward the ceiling, must be relegated to the attic. The mahogany and bird's-eye maple suite, which had furnished the spare bedroom, must accompany it. The family portraits, the china heirlooms, and the odd judge's musty home library, in the same crates in which they had come from Jackson, were pushed into the odd-shaped angles of the twilight garret. These had no place in the elaborate simplicity of a country home.

The study and library were fitted up afresh in dull quartered oak, with sectional bookcases. New porch chairs and lounges for the wide verandas, Persian rugs for the rooms where the old carpets would not suffice, he listed, viewed, and finally purchased. Mary's heart ached these days as she realized how she had been pushed out of his living.

The phone rang one afternoon. ”I'm sending out a rug for the library, Mary. Abramson's promised to get it there before five.”

”Did you look at the one at Hooper's I told you about?”

”We'll talk about that when I get home.” He rang off sharply.

Mary had it spread out before he arrived. It was a beauty, she thought ruefully; but it must have cost a mint. And it didn't go too well with the new bookcases and desk.

Paul reached home a little early, tired and cross from a big deal that had hung fire for ten days. ”Well, how do you like it?”

”It's a lovely piece of goods. How much was it? The tag was off.”

He walked in to observe it, altering its angle slightly. ”It's just what we wanted. I think we'll have another for the parlor, too.” He ignored her anxious eyes, and she did not press the question.

On Sundays Nathaniel Guild usually dropped in, for a stroll over the place, after a breakfast of eggs, bacon, and coffee at seven.

There was so much they must plan together; this could be done only on the ground. Paul, of course, was living on the mountain, and his share in the land was much the larger; but both were interested in the projected development, the wide boulevards curving with the contour of the ground, the advantageous grouping of sites naturally adapted to sloping lawns and well-placed residences.

”You see, Nate, every shrub I set out, every walk we put in, every flight of steps, will increase the value, when we put it on the market.”

”Waiting a few years,----”

”Now's the time to begin. Adamsville is spreading fast; it's course is bound to be this way. East Highlands is _the_ residence section now----”

”I see Mrs. Friedman's building on Haviland Avenue----”

”And three new houses to go up on East Thirtieth!”

”... It'll take a lot of money.” His eyes roamed reflectively over the gray, jagged outcrop, almost concealed by a tangle of grape and blackberry vines and rangy sumach bushes.

Paul tugged vindictively at a nettle that had encroached upon the path winding up to the house,--he carried his garden gloves for just such purposes. ”It'll be cleared before next summer,--all this half of it.”

On weekday mornings the master of the mountain was up earlier, hoeing the flower beds that frilled the verandas, and seeing to the setting out of trees and vines. After seven o'clock, he superintended the gangs of negro laborers who were filling and grading the gap road, and the extensions that bent down to the railroad spur on the west.

At times, that first winter, there were more than forty workmen remolding the mountain's resisting face. Quartz blasted from the quarry above the tracks, on the Logan land, made a permanent roadbed. The winter's settling would have it ready for the final surface of dirt after the spring rains. The negroes worked for a dollar a day; and Paul often observed disgustedly, after inspection of the day's work, that four-fifths of the job had been done before eight-thirty, when he left for the office in the city.

Pelham, just beyond his ninth birthday, found his spare time provided for. He spent his afternoons and Sat.u.r.days a.s.sisting in the overseeing of the grading. His father believed in getting him to work young. The mountain would be his some day,--his and his brother's and sisters',--it was none too soon to begin now to learn its problems.

When not at school, he was started in, before six o'clock, at weed-picking. Nell and Sue, and even the baby, could help here, when the work was near the house. In order to give a material incentive, the children were paid one cent a bucket for the weeds. Their earnings were banked with their mother, who kept the accounts in a little red book, an object of especial reverence to the involuntary depositors.

Pelham was especially sharp at locating the big weeds, their roots matted with moist earth, and spreading fan-like over the rocks never far below the surface. Five or six of these, and his bucket was full. Then he would lie on his back, dreaming, his body registering, through the blue cotton pants and thin s.h.i.+rt, each rock and hump on the ground. He followed the clouds sailing, like misty Argoes, over the placid blue sea of sky; he watched the crimson-capped woodp.e.c.k.e.rs tapping industriously at a nearby oak or hickory trunk, or the bouncing flight of flickers from clump to clump of bluegum and white-gum, or the distant descending spirals of a lazy buzzard, answering some noisome summons to a hidden and hideous feast.

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