Part 5 (1/2)
Checking an exclamation of horror father started forward, to meet Richard's cheerful, frank gaze and the request, as he dug away persistently, to ”Please wait one minute more, dranpa. I've got the heart all done, that big floppy piece is lungs, an' I've most made the liver.
Not the good kind that goes wif curly bacon, but a nasty one like what we wear inside.”
Then spying a medical chart with coloured pictures that was propped up against the wood box, father found the clew, and comprehended that Richard was giving himself a practical lesson in anatomy by trying to carve these organs from a huge mangel wurzel beet that he had rolled in from the root cellar. Did father scold him for mess-making, or laugh at his attempt that had little shape except in his own baby brain?
No, neither; he carefully closed the door against Martha's possible entrance, seriously and respectfully put the precious objects on a plate, to which he gave a place of honour on the mantel shelf, and after removing as far as possible all traces of beet from face and hands in his sacred office lavatory, he took Richard with him into the depths of the great chair and told the happy child his favourite rigmarole, all about the ”three gentlemen of high degree,” who do our housework for us. How the lungs, who are Siamese twins, called to the heart to pump them up some blood to air, because they were almost out of work, and how the big lazy liver lay on one side and groaned because he had drunk too much coffee for breakfast, and had a headache,--until Richard really felt that he had achieved something. So the first thing this morning he set about making a snow man, that he might put the beet vitals in their proper places, nearly convulsing father by their location. Though, as he told me, they were accurate, compared to the ideas of many trained nurses with whom he had come in contact.
But where was Ian during the beet carving? Father quite forgot him until, Richard falling asleep in his arms, he arose to tuck him up on the sofa. A sound of the slow turning of large pages guided him to the corner by the bay window where some bookcases, standing back to back, made a sort of alcove. There was Ian, flat upon his stomach, while before him the ”Wandering Jew” legend, with the Dore pictures, lay open at the final scene--The Last Judgment--where the Jew, his journey over, looks up at the angels coming to greet him, while little devils pull vainly at his tattered boots. It was not the Jew or the angels, however, that held Ian's attention, and whose outlines he was tracing with his forefinger, but the devils, one big fellow with cows' horns and wings drooping like those of a moulting crow, and a bevy of imps with young horns and curly tails who were pulling a half-buried body toward the fiery pit by its hair.
Father explained the pictures in brief, and closed the book as quickly as possible, thinking the boy might be frightened in his dreams by the demons. But no, Ian was fascinated, not frightened. He would have liked the pygmies to come and play with him, and he turned to father with a sigh, saying, ”They're bully pullers, dranpop. I guess if they and me pulled against Corney Delaney we could get him over the line all right,”
one of the boys' favourite pastimes being to play tug-of-war with the goat, the rope being fastened to its horns, but Corney was always conqueror.
Neither did Ian forget the imps quickly, as some children do their impressions, but strove to model them this morning, making round snow bodies, carrot horns, corncob legs, and funny celery tails; the result being positively startling and ”overmuch like witch brats,” as Effie declared, with bulging eyes.
They unfortunately did not perish with the fort, for Richard doesn't like them; but are now huddled in a group under the old Christmas tree, where Lark is barking at them.
I started to record our visit to Lavinia Dorman, but my ”human doc.u.ments,” printed on vellum, came between, and I would not miss a word they have to say for the ”Mechlinia Albertus Magnus,” which father says is the rarest book in the world, though Evan disputes his preference, and Martin Cortright would doubtless prefer the first edition of Denton's ”New York.”
In past times, when we have visited Miss Lavinia, we have been fairly meek and decorous guests, following the programme that she planned with such infinite attention to detail that free will was impossible, and we often felt like paper dolls.
We had read her lament on the death of sociability and back yards with many a smile, and a sigh also, for to one born in the pool, every ripple that stirs it must be of importance, and it is impossible for outsiders to urge her to step out of the eddies altogether and begin anew, for New Yorkitis seems to be not only a rarely curable disease to those who have it, but an hereditary one as well.
As usual, Evan came to the rescue, as we sat in the den the night before our departure. ”Let us turn tables on Miss Lavinia this time and take her to see our New York,” he said, ”since we are all quite tired of hers. Do you remember the time when we went to town to buy the trappings for the boys' first tree and were detained until Christmas morning by the delay of a cable I had to wait for? After dinner Christmas Eve we coaxed Miss Lavinia out with us and bought half a bushel of jolly little toys from street fakirs to take home, and then boarded an elevated train and rode about the city until after midnight, in and out the downtown streets and along the outskirts, to see all the poor people's Christmas trees in the second stories of tenements, cheap flats, and over little shops. How she enjoyed it, and said that she never dreamed that tenement people could be so happy; and she finally waxed so enthusiastic that she gave a silver half dollar each to four little newsboys crouching over the steam on a grating in Twenty-third Street, and when they cheered her and a policeman came along, we told the dear old soul that he evidently thought her a suspicious character, a counterfeiter at the very least. And she always spoke afterward with bated breath on the dangers of the streets late at night, and her narrow escape from arrest. We came to New York unsated and without responsibilities to push us, and looked from the outside in.
”No, Barbara, you did better than you knew that day six years ago, when we sat in the Somerset garden, and you persuaded me to become a commuter and let you plant a garden, promising never to talk about servants, and you've kept your word. I was dubious then, but now--if you only knew the tragedies I've seen among men of my means and aims these last few years, the struggle to be in the swim, or rather the backwater of it. The disappointment, the debt and despair, the pink teas and blue dinners given in cramped flats, the good fellows afraid to say no to wives whose hearts are set on being thought 'in it,' and the wives, haggard and hollow-eyed because the husbands wish to keep the pace by joining clubs that are supposedly the hall-marks of the millionnaire. New York is the best place for doing everything in but three--to be born in, to live in, and to die in.”
”So you wish us to play bachelor girl and man for a few days, and herd Miss Lavinia about, which I suppose is the pith of these heroics of yours,” I said, rather astonished, for Evan seldom preaches. ”I never knew that you were such an anti-whirlpooler before, and I've at times felt selfish about keeping you at the old home, though not since the boys came, it's so healthy for them, bless them. Now I feel quite relieved,”
and I arranged a little crisp curl that will break loose in spite of persistent wetting, for men always seem to discourage curly hair, father keeping his shorn like a prize-fighter. This curl softens the rigour of Evan's horseshoe scowl, and when I fix it gives him a chance to put his arm around my waist, which is the only satisfactory way of discussing plans for a pleasure trip.
We arrived in town duly a little before dinner time. It is one of Evan's comfortable travelling habits, this always arriving at a new place at the end of day, so as to get the bearings and be adjusted when we awake next morning. To arrive in the morning, when paying a visit especially, is reversing the natural order of things; you are absent-minded until lunch, sleepy all the afternoon, dyspeptic at dinner, when, like as not, some one you have wholly forgotten or hoped to is asked to meet you. If the theatre follows, you recuperate, but if it is cards (of which I must have a prenatal hatred, it is so intense) with the apology, ”I thought you might be tired and prefer a cosey game of whist to going out,” you trump your partner's tricks, lead the short suits and mix clubs and spades with equal oblivion, and, finally, going to bed, leave a bad impression behind that causes your hostess to say, strictly to herself, if she is charitable, ”How Barbara has deteriorated; she used to be a good talker, but then, poor dear, living in the country is _so_ narrowing.”
Of course if you merely go away to spend the day it is different; you generally keep on the move and go home to recover from it. And how men usually hate staying in other people's houses, no matter how wide they keep their doors open or how hospitably inclined they may be themselves.
They seem to be self-conscious, and are constrained to alter their ordinary habits, which makes them miserable and feel as if they had given up their free will and ident.i.ty. There are only two places that I ever dream of taking Evan, and Lavinia Dorman's is one of them.
When we had made ourselves smart for dinner and joined Miss Lavinia by the fire in her tiny library, we read by her hair that she was evidently intending to stay at home that evening, for her head has its nodes like the moon. She has naturally pretty, soft wavy hair, with now and then a silver streak running through it. I have often seen Lucy when she brushes it out at night. But because there is a dash of white in the front as if a powder puff had rested there a moment by accident, it is screwed into a little k.n.o.b and covered with skilfully made yet perfectly apparent frontlets to represent the different styles of hair-dressing affected by women of abundant locks.
No. 1, worn at breakfast, is the most reasonable. It is quite plain, slightly waved, and has a few stray hairs carelessly curved where it joins the forehead. No. 2 is for rainy weather; the curls are fuzzy and evidently baked in; it requires a durable veil to keep it in countenance. Evan calls it the ”rasher of bacon front.” No. 3 is for calling and all entertainments where the bonnet stays on; it has a baby bang edge a trifle curled and a substantial cus.h.i.+on atop to hold the hat pins; while No. 4, the one she wore on our arrival, is an elaborate evening toupie with a pompadour rolling over on itself and drooping slightly over one eye while it melts into a b.u.t.terfly bow and handful of puffs on the crown that in turn end in a single curl behind.
We had a dainty little dinner, grape fruit, clear soup, smelts, wild duck, salad, fruit, and coffee, and it was daintily served, for Miss Lavinia always keeps a good cook and remembers our dislike of the various forms of hash known as entrees.
The coffee was placed on a low mahogany stand by the library fire, and Miss Lavinia herself handed Evan a quaint little silver lamp by which to light his cigar, for she has all the cosmopolitan instincts of a woman who not only knows the world but had heard her father discuss tobacco, and really enjoyed the soothing fragrance of a good cigar.
As soon as we were settled and poor singed Josephus had tiptoed in by the fire, evidently trying to make up for his shabby coat by the profundity of his purr, Evan set forth his scheme to our hostess. We were to lodge and breakfast with her, but after that she was to play our way, and be at our disposal morning, afternoon, and evening, at luncheon, dinner, and supper, and the game was to be the old-fas.h.i.+oned one of ”follow the leader!”
At first Miss Lavinia hesitated regretfully, it seemed so inhospitable,--she had thought to take us to several parlour concerts.
Mrs. Vanderdonk, she that was a De Leyster, was going to throw open her picture gallery for charity, which would give us an opportunity to see her new house. In fact the undertow of the Whirlpool was still pulling at her ankles, even though she had freed her head, and it seemed impossible to her that there could be any New York other than the one she knew.
Finally her almost girlish vitality a.s.serted itself, and bargaining that we should allow her one evening to have Sylvia Latham to dinner, she surrendered.