Part 4 (1/2)

The room itself, its light shut out by the adjoining extensions, prevented it; so did the glimpse of hard asphalt covering the sc.r.a.p of a yard, its four melancholy posts hung about with wire clothes-lines; and so did the clean-shaven, smug-faced butler, who invariably conducted his master's guests to their chairs with the movement of an undertaker, and who had never been known to crack a smile of any kind, long or short, during his five years' sojourn with the family of Breen.

Not that anybody wanted Parkins to crack one, that is, not his master, and certainly not his mistress, and most a.s.suredly not his other mistress, Miss Corinne, the daughter of the lady whom the successful Wall Street broker had made his first and only wife.

All this gloomy atmosphere might have been changed for the better had there been a big, cheery open wood fire snapping and blazing away, sputtering out its good morning as you entered--and there would have been if any one of the real inmates had insisted upon it--fought for it, if necessary; or if in summer one could have seen through the curtained windows a stretch of green gra.s.s with here and there a tree, or one or two twisted vines craning their necks to find out what was going on inside; or if in any or all seasons, a wholesome, happy-hearted, sunny wife looking like a bunch of roses just out of a bath, had sat behind the smoking coffee-urn, inquiring whether one or two lumps of sugar would be enough; or a gladsome daughter who, in a sudden burst of affection, had thrown her arms around her father's neck and kissed him because she loved him, and because she wanted his day and her day to begin that way:--if, I say, there had been all, or one-half, or one-quarter of these things, the atmosphere of this sepulchral interior might have been improved--but there wasn't.

There was a wife, of course, a woman two years older than Arthur Breen--the relict of a Captain Barker, an army officer--who had spent her early life in moving from one army post to another until she had settled down in Was.h.i.+ngton, where Breen had married her, and where the Scribe first met her. But this sharer of the fortunes of Breen preferred her breakfast in bed, New York life having proved even more wearing than military upheavals. And there was also a daughter, Miss Corinne Barker, Captain and Mrs. Barker's only offspring, who had known nothing of army posts, except as a child, but who had known everything of Was.h.i.+ngton life from the time she was twelve until she was fifteen, and she was now twenty; but that young woman, I regret to say, also breakfasted in bed, where her maid had special instructions not to disturb her until my lady's jewelled fingers touched a b.u.t.ton within reach of her dainty hand; whereupon another instalment of b.u.t.tered rolls and coffee would be served with such accessories of linen, porcelain and silver as befitted the appet.i.te and station of one so beautiful and so accomplished.

These conditions never ceased to depress Jack. Fresh from a life out of doors, accustomed to an old-fas.h.i.+oned dining-room--the living room, really, of the family who had cared for him since his father's death, where not only the sun made free with the open doors and windows, but the dogs and neighbors as well--the sober formality of this early meal--all of his uncle's meals, for that matter--sent s.h.i.+vers down his back that chilled him to the bone.

He had looked about him the first morning of his arrival, had noted the heavy carved sideboard laden with the garish silver; had examined the pictures lining the walls, separated from the dark background of leather by heavy gold frames; had touched with his fingers the dial of the solemn bronze clock, flanked by its equally solemn candelabra; had peered between the steel andirons, bright as carving knives, and into the freshly varnished, s.p.a.cious chimney up which no dancing blaze had ever whirled in madcap glee since the mason's trowel had left it and never would to the end of time,--not as long as the steam heat held out; had watched the crane-like step of Parkins as he moved about the room--cold, immaculate, impa.s.sive; had listened to his ”Yes, sir--thank you, sir, very good, sir,” until he wanted to take him by the throat and shake something spontaneous and human out of him, and as each cheerless feature pa.s.sed in review his spirits had sunk lower and lower.

This, then, was what he could expect as long as he lived under his uncle's roof--a period of time which seemed to him must stretch out into dim futurity. No laughing halloos from pa.s.sing neighbors through wide-open windows; no Aunt Hannahs running in with a plate of cakes fresh from the griddle which would cool too quickly if she waited for that slow-coach of a Tom to bring them to her young master. No sweep of leaf-covered hills seen through bending branches laden with blossoms; no stretch of sky or slant of suns.h.i.+ne; only a grim, funereal, artificial formality, as ungenial and flattening to a boy of his tastes, education and earlier environment as a State asylum's would have been to a red Indian fresh from the prairie.

On the morning after Morris's dinner (within eight hours really of the time when he had been so thrilled by the singing of the Doxology), Jack was in his accustomed seat at the small, adjustable accordion-built table--it could be stretched out to accommodate twenty-four covers--when his uncle entered this room. Parkins was genuflecting at the time with his--”Cream, sir,--yes, sir. Devilled kidney, sir? Thank you, sir.”

(Parkins had been second man with Lord Colchester, so he told Breen when he hired him.) Jack had about made up his mind to order him out when a peculiar tone in his uncle's ”Good morning” made the boy scan that gentleman's face and figure the closer.

His uncle was as well dressed as usual, looking as neat and as smart in his dark cut-away coat with the invariable red carnation in his b.u.t.tonhole, but the boy's quick eye caught the marks of a certain wear and tear in the face which neither his bath nor his valet had been able to obliterate. The thin lips--thin for a man so fat, and which showed, more than any other feature, something of the desultory firmness of his character--drooped at the corners. The eyes were half their size, the snap all out of them, the whites lost under the swollen lids. His greeting, moreover, had lost its customary heartiness.

”You were out late, I hear,” he grumbled, dropping into his chair. ”I didn't get in myself until two o'clock and feel like a boiled owl.

May have caught a little cold, but I think it was that champagne of Duckworth's; always gives me a headache. Don't put any sugar and cream in that coffee, Parkins--want it straight.”

”Yes, sir,” replied the flunky, moving toward the sideboard.

”And now, Jack, what did you do?” he continued, picking up his napkin.

”You and Garry made a night of it, didn't you? Some kind of an artist's bat, wasn't it?”

”No, sir; Mr. Morris gave a dinner to his clerks, and--”

”Who's Morris?”

”Why, the great architect.”

”Oh, that fellow! Yes, I know him, that is, I know who he is. Say the rest. Parkins! didn't I tell you I didn't want any sugar or cream.”

Parkins hadn't offered any. He had only forgotten to remove them from the tray.

Jack kept straight on; these differences between the master and Parkins were of daily occurrence.

”And, Uncle Arthur, I met the most wonderful gentleman I ever saw; he looked just as if he had stepped out of an old frame, and yet he is down in the Street every day and--”

”What firm?”

”No firm, he is--”

”Curbstone man, then?” Here Breen lifted the cup to his lips and as quickly put it down. ”Parkins!”

”Yes, sir,” came the monotone.

”Why the devil can't I get my coffee hot?”