Part 17 (1/2)
This remark elicited the laughter which the puns failed to provoke; for Cecil was color-blind in all things relating to the American joke. The humor of _Punch_ appealed to him, and the wit of Sterne and Dean Swift; but the funny column and the paragrapher's niche of our newspapers he regarded as purely pathological phenomena. I sometimes feel that Cecil was right about this. Can the mind which continues to be charmed by these paragraphic strainings be really sound?--but this is not a dissertation. Cecil reconciled himself to his position as the local exemplification of the traditional Englishman whose trains of ideas run on the freight schedule--and was one of the most popular fellows in Lattimore. He gloried in his slavery to Antonia, and seemed to glean hope from the most sterile circ.u.mstances.
It was easy to hope, in Lattimore, then. It was not many days after our talk in the park before I noticed a change for the better in Giddings, even. Just before Jim's house-warming, he came to me with something like optimism in his appearance. I started to cheer him up, and went wrong.
”I'm glad to see by your cheerful looks,” said I, ”that the philosophy of Iago--”
”Say, now!” cried he, ”don't remind me of that, for Heaven's sake!”
”Why, certainly not,” said I, ”if you object.”
”I do object,” said he most earnestly; ”why, that d.a.m.ned-fool philosophy may have ruined my life, you know.”
”Of course I know what you mean,” said I; ”but I'm convinced, and so are all your friends, that if you fail, it'll be your own lack of nerve, and nothing else, that you'll owe the disaster to. You should--”
”I should have refrained from trampling under foot the dearest ideals of the only girl-- However, I can't talk of these things to any one, Barslow. But I have some hope now. Antonia and Josie have both been very kind lately--and say, Barslow, I see now how little foundation there is for that old gag about the women hating each other!”
”I've always felt,” said I, anxious to draw him out so that I might see what the conspirators had been doing, ”that there's nothing in _that_ idea. But what has changed your view?”
”Antonia, and Josie, and even your wife,” said he, ”have been keeping up a regular lobby in my behalf with Laura. They think they've got the deal plugged up now, so that she'll give me a show again, and--”
”Why, surely,” said I; ”in my opinion, there never was any need for you to feel downcast.”
”Barslow,” he said, with the air of a man who has endured to the limit, ”you are a good fellow, but you make me tired when you talk like that.
Why, four weeks ago I had no more show than a s...o...b..ll in--in the crater of Vesuvius. But now I'm encouraged. These girls have been doing me good, as I just said, and I'm convinced that my series of editorials on 'The Influence of Christianity on Civilization,' in which I've given the Church the credit of being the whole thing, has helped some.”
”They ought to do good somewhere,” said I, ”they certainly haven't boomed Lattimore any.”
”d.a.m.n Lattimore!” said he bitterly. ”When a man's very life--But see here, Barslow, I know you're not in earnest about this. And I'll be all right in a day or two, or I'll be eternally wrong. I'm going to make one final cast of the die. I may go down to bottomless perdition, or I may be caught up to the battlements of heaven; but such a ma.s.s of doubts and miseries as I've been lately, I'll no longer be! Pray for me, Barslow, pray for me!”
This despairing condition of Giddings's was a sort of continuing sensation with us at that time. We discussed it quite freely in all its aspects, humorous and tragic. It was so unexpected a development in the young man's character, and, with all due respect to the discretion and resisting powers of Miss Addison, so entirely gratuitous and fact.i.tious.
”He has ability as a writer,” said the Captain; ”but in such a mattah anybody but a fool ought to see that the thing to do is to chahge the intrenchments. I trust that I may not be misunde'stood when I say that, in my opinion, a good rattling chahge would not be a fo'lo'n hope!”
”It bothers,” said Jim; ”and if it weren't for that, I'd feel conscience-stricken at doing anything to rob the idiot of a most delicious grief.”
The coolness of early autumn was in the air the night of Jim's house-warming. To describe his dwelling, in these days when fortunes are spent on the details of a stairway, and a king's ransom for the tapestries of a salon, all of which luxuries are spread before the eyes of the public in the columns of Sunday papers and magazines, would be to court an anticlimax. But this was before the multimillionaire had made the need for an augmentative of the word ”luxury”; and Jim's house was noteworthy for its beauty: its cunningly wrought iron and wood; and columned halls and stairways; and wide-throated fireplaces, each a picture in tile, wood, and metalwork; and vistas like little fairylands through silken portieres; and carven chairs and couches, reminiscent of royal palaces; and chambers where lovely color-schemes were worked out in rug, and bed, and canopy. There were decorations made by men whose names were known in London and Paris. From out-of-the-way places Mr.
Elkins had brought collections of queer and interesting and pretty things which, all his life, he had been acc.u.mulating; and in his library were broad areas of well-worn book-backs. Somehow, people looked upon the Mr. Elkins who was master of all these as a more important man than the Elkins who had blown into the town on some chance breeze of speculation, and taken rooms at the Centropolis.
It was all light and color, that night. Even the formal flower-beds of the grounds and the fountain spouting on the lawn were like scenery in the lime-light. Only, back in the shrubbery there were darker nooks in summer-houses and arbors for those who loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds, to the common mind, were likely to seem foolish. I remember thinking that if Mr. Giddings really wanted a chance to take the high dive of which he had spoken to me, the opportunity was before him.
His Laura was there, her devotee-like expression striving with an exceedingly low-cut dress to sound the distinguis.h.i.+ng note of her personality. Giddings was at the punch-bowl as on their arrival she swept past with the General. When he saw the nun-like glance over the swelling bosom, the poor stricken cynic blushed, turned pale, and wheeled to flee. But Cecil, as if following orders, arrested him and began plying him with the punch--from which Giddings seemed to draw courage: for I saw him, soon, gravitate to her whom he loved and so mysteriously dreaded.
”It's a pe'fect jewel-case of a house!” said the Captain, as he moved with the trooping company through the mansion.
”Indeed, indeed it is,” said Mrs. Tolliver to Alice; ”the jewel, whoever it may be, is to be envied.”
”I hope,” said Jim to Josie, ”that you agree with Mrs. Tolliver?”
”Oh, yes,” said Josie, ”but you attach far too much importance to my judgment. If it is any comfort to you, however, I want to praise--everything--unreservedly.”
”I won't know, for a while,” said Jim, ”whether it is to be my house only, or home in the full sense of the word.”