LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF
CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ
"PS
3 5VD 5
A 15
BOOKS BY MR. CABELL
FICTION:
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
THE SOUL OF MELICENT
CHIVALRY
THE CORDS OF VANITY
GALLANTRY
THE LINE OF LOVE
THE EAGLE'S SHADOW
GENEALOGY:
BRANCH OF ABINGDON BRANCHIANA
THE RIVET
IN GRANDFATHER'S
NECK
A Comedy of Limitations
BY JAMES BRANCH CABELL
"To this new South, who values her high past, in chief, as fit foundation of that edifice whereon she labors day by day, and „ with augmenting strokes."
NEW YORK
ROBERT M. McBRIDE fir COMPANY 1921
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY
Second Printing, May, iQib Third Printing, March, IQZO Fourth Printing, March, IQ2I
PRINTED IN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Published October,
TO PRJSCILLA BRADLEY CABELL
"Nightly I mark and praise, or great or small, Such stars as proudly struggle one by one To heaven's highest place, as Procyon, Antares, Naos, Tejat and Nibal Attain supremacy, and proudly fall, Still glorious, and glitter, and are gone So very soon; — whilst steadfast and alone Polaris gleams, and is not changed at all.
"Daily I find some gallant dream that ranges The heights of heaven; and as others do, I serve my dream until my dream estranges Its errant bondage, and I note anew That nothing dims, nor shakes, nor mars, nor changes, Fond faith in you and in my love of you."
CONTENTS
|
•*• JXV/JTXi^l ^ UA A I RENASCENCE |
, . 45 |
|
TERTIUS |
* • 79 |
|
APPRECIATION |
lie |
|
SOUVENIR |
|
|
BYWAYS |
, . . 1 . . 191 |
|
YOKED . |
,....«. 241 |
|
HARVEST « |
• • ?. • ' • * • **/3 |
|
RELICS . « |
» 319 |
|
IMPRIMIS |
§••*•«• 353 |
In the middle of the cupboard door was the carved figure of a man. ... He had goat's legs, little horns on his head, and a long beard; the children in the room called him, "Major-Gen- eral-field-sergeant-commander-Billy-goat's-legs" . . . He was al- ways looking at the table under the looking-glass where stood a very pretty little shepherdess made of china. . . . Close by her side stood a little chimney-sweep, as black as coal and also made of china. . . . Near to them stood another figure. ... He was an old Chinaman who could nod his head, and used to pre- tend he was the grandfather of the shepherdess, although he could not prove it. He, however, assumed authority over her, and therefore when "Major-general-field-sergeant-commander- Billy-goat's-legs" asked for the little shepherdess to be his wife, he nodded his head to show that he consented.
Then the little shepherdess cried, and looked at her sweet- heart, the chimney-sweep. "I must entreat you," said she, "to go out with me into the wide world, for we cannot stay here." . . . When the chimney-sweep saw that she was quite firm, he said, "My way is through the stove up the chim- ney." ... So at last they reached the top of the chimney. . . . The sky with all its stars was over their heads. . . . They could see for a very long distance out into the wide world, and the poor little shepherdess leaned her head on her chimney-sweep's shoulder and wept. "This is too much," she said, "the world is too large." . . . And so with a great deal of trouble they climbed down the chimney and peeped out. . . . There lay the old Chinaman on the floor . . . broken into three pieces. . . . "This is terrible," said the shepherdess. "He can be riveted," said the chimney-sweep. . . . The family had the Chinaman's back mended and a strong rivet put through his neck; he looked as good as new, but when "Major-General-field-sergeant-com- mander-Billy-goat's-legs" again asked for the shepherdess to be his wife, the old Chinaman could no longer nod his head.
And so the little china people remained together and were thankful for the rivet in grandfather's neck, and continued to love each other until they were broken to pieces.
PART I PROPINQUITY
*A singer, eh? . . . Well, well! but when he sings Take jealous heed lest idiosyncrasies Entinge and taint too deep his melodies; See that his lute has no discordant strings To harrow us; and let his vaporings Be all of virtue and its victories, And of man's best and noblest qualities , And scenery, and flowers, and similar things.
"Thus bid our paymasters whose mutterings Some few deride, and blithely link their rhymes At random; and, as ever, on frail wings Of wine-stained paper scribbled with such rhymes Men mount to heaven, and loud laughter springs From hell's midpit, whose fuel is such rhymes."
Nascitur.
AT a very remote period, when editorials were mostly devoted to discussion as to whether the Democratic Convention (shortly to be held in Chicago) would or would not declare in favor of bi-metallism ; when golf was a novel form of recreation in America, and people disputed how to pronounce its name, and pedestrians still turned to stare after an automobile; when, according to the fashion notes, "the godet skirts and huge sleeves of the present modes" were already doomed to extinc- tion; when the baseball season had just begun, and some of our people were discussing the national game, and others the spectacular burning of the old Pennsyl- vania Railway depot at Thirty-third and Market Street in Philadelphia, and yet others the significance of Gen- eral Fitzhugh Lee's recent appointment as consul-gen- eral to Habana : — at this remote time, Lichfield talked of nothing except the Pendomer divorce case.
And Colonel Rudolph Musgrave had very narrow- ly escaped being named as the co-respondent. This much, at least, all Lichfield knew when George Pen-
13
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
domer — evincing unsuspected funds of generosity — • permitted his wife to secure a divorce on the euphemis- tic grounds of "desertion." John Charteris, acting as Rudolph Musgrave's friend, had patched up this ar- rangement; and the colonel and Mrs. Pendomer, so rumor ran, were to be married very quietly after a decent interval.
Remained only to deliberate whether this sop to the conventions should be accepted as sufficient.
"At least," as Mrs. Ashmeade sagely observed, "we can combine vituperation with common-sense, and re- member it is not the first time a Musgrave has fig- ured in an entanglement of the sort. A lecherous race ! proverbial flutterers of petticoats ! His surname convicts the man unheard and almost excuses him. All of us feel that. And, moreover, it is not as if the idiots had committed any unpardonable sin, for they heave kept out of the newspapers."
Her friend seemed dubious, and hazarded some- thing concerning "the merest sense of decency."
"In the name of the Prophet, figs! People — I mean the people who count in Lichfield — are chari- table enough to ignore almost any crime which is just a matter of common knowledge. In fact, they are mildly grateful. It gives them something to talk about. But when detraction is printed in the morn- ing paper you can't overlook it without incurring the suspicion of being illiterate and .yirtueless. That's Lichfield."
"But, Polly "
14
PROPINQUITY
"Sophist, don't I know my Lichfield? I know it almost as well as I know Rudolph Musgrave. And so I prophesy that he will not marry Clarice Pen- domer, because he is inevitably tired of her by this. He will marry money, just as all the Musgraves do. Moreover, I prophesy that we will gabble about this mess until we find a newer target for our stone throw- ing, and be just as friendly with the participants to their faces as we ever were. So don't let me hear any idiotic talk about whether or no / am going to receive her "
"Well, after all, she was born a Bellingham. We must remember that."
"Wasn't I saying I knew my Lichfield?" Mrs. Ash-
meade placidly observed.
* * *
And time, indeed, attested her to be right in every particular.
Yet it must be recorded that at this critical junc- ture chance rather remarkably favored Colonel Mus- grave and Mrs. Pendomer, by giving Lichfield some- thing of greater interest to talk about; since now, just in the nick of occasion, occurred the notorious Scott Musgrave murder. Scott Musgrave — a fourth cousin once removed of the colonel's, to be quite ac- curate— had in the preceding year seduced the daugh- ter of a village doctor, a negligible "half -strainer" up country at Warren; and her two brothers, being irritated, picked this particular season to waylay him in the street, as he reeled homeward one night from
15
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
the Commodores' Club, and forthwith to abolish Scott Musgrave after the primitive methods of their lower station in society.
These details, indeed, were never officially made public, since a discreet police force "found no clues" ; for Fred Musgrave (of King's Garden), as befitted the dead man's well-to-do brother, had been at no little pains to insure constabulary shortsightedness, in preference to having the nature of Scott Musgrave's recreations unsympathetically aired. Fred Mus- grave thereby afforded Lichfield a delectable oppor- tunity (conversationally and abetted by innumerable "they do say's") to accredit the murder, turn by turn, to every able-bodied person residing within stone's throw of its commission. So that few had time, now, to talk of Rudolph Musgrave and Clarice Pendomer; for it was not in Lichfieldian human nature to dis- cuss a mere domestic imbroglio when here, also in the Musgrave family, was a picturesque and gory as- sassination to lay tongue to.
So Colonel Musgrave was duly reflected that spring to the librarianship of the Lichfield Historical Association, and the name of Mrs. George Pendomer was not stricken from the list of patronesses of the Lichfield German Club, but was merely altered to
"Mrs. Clarice Pendomer."
* * *
At the bottom of his heart Colonel Musgrave was a trifle irritated that his self-sacrifice should be thus unrewarded by martyrdom. Circumstances had en- 16
PROPINQUITY
abled him to assume, and he had gladly accepted, the blame for John Charteris's iniquity, rather than let Anne Charteris know the truth about her husband and Clarice Pendomer. The truth would have killed Anne, the colonel believed; and besides, the colonel had enjoyed the performance of a picturesque action. And having acted as a hero in permitting himself to be pilloried as a libertine, it was preferable of course not to have incurred ostracism thereby. His common-sense conceded this; and yet, to Colonel Musgrave, it could not but be evident that Destiny was hardly rising to the possibilities of the situation.
II
CONCERNING Colonel Musgrave one finds the ensuing account in a publication of the period devoted to biographies of more or less prom- inent Americans. It is reproduced unchanged, be- cause these memoirs were — in the old days — compiled by the person whom they commemorated. The cus- tom was a worthy one, since the value of an auto- biography is determined by the nature of its super- fluities and falsehoods.
"MUSGRAVE, RUDOLPH VARTREY, editor; b. Lichfield, Sill, Mar. 14, 1856; s. William Sebastian and Martha (Allardyce) M; g. s. Theodorick Q. M., gov. of Sill. 1805-8, judge of the General Ct, 1808-11, judge Supreme Ct. of Appeals, 1811-50 and pres. Supreme Ct. of Appeals, 1841-50; grad. King's Coll. and U. of Sill. Corr. sec. Lichfield Hist. Soc., and editor Sill. Mag. of Biog. since 1890 ; dir. Traders Nat. Bank, Sill. ; mem. Soc. of the Sons of Col. Govs., pres. Sill. Soc. of Protestant Martyrs, comdr. Sill. Mil. Order of Lost Battles, mem. exec. bd. SilL Hist. Assn. for the Preservation of Ruins. Democrat, Episcopalian, unmarried. Author: Colonial
PROPINQUITY
Lichfield, 1892; Right on the Scaffold, 1893; Secession and the South, 1894 ; Chart of the Descendants of Zeno- phon Perkins, 1894; Recollections of a Gracious Era, 1895; Notes as to the Vartreys of Westphalia, 1896. Has also written numerous pamphlets on hist., biog. and geneal. subjects. Address: Lichfield, Sill."
For Colonel Musgrave was by birth the lineal head of all the Musgraves of Matocton, which is in Lich- field, as degrees are counted there, equivalent to what being born a marquis would mean in England. Hand- some and trim and affable, he defied chronology by looking ten years younger than he was known to be. For at least a decade he had been invaluable to Lich- field matrons alike against the entertainment of an "out-of-town girl," the management of a cotillion and the prevention of unpleasant pauses among incon- gruous dinner companies.
In short, he was by all accounts the social triumph of his generation; and his military title, won by four years of arduous service at receptions and parades while on the staff of a former Governor of the State, this seasoned bachelor carried off with plausibility and distinction.
The story finds him "Librarian and Corresponding Secretary" of the Lichfield Historical Association, which office he had held for some six years. The sal- ary was small, and the colonel had inherited little ; but his sister, Miss Agatha Musgrave, who lived with him, was a notable housekeeper. He increased his resources in a gentlemanly fashion by genealogical
19
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
research, directed mostly toward the rehabilitation of ambiguous pedigrees; and for the rest, no other man could have fulfilled more gracefully the main duty of the Librarian, which was to exhibit the Associa- tion's collection of relics to hurried tourists "doing" Lichfield.
His "Library manner" was modeled upon that which an eighteenth-century portrait would conceiv- ably possess, should witchcraft set the canvas breath- ing.
Ill
ALSO the story finds Colonel Musgrave in the company of his sister on a warm April day, whilst these two sat upon the porch of the Musgrave home in Lichfield, and Colonel Musgrave waited until it should be time to open the Library for the afternoon. And about them birds twittered cheer- ily, and the formal garden flourished as gardens thrive nowhere except in Lichfield, and overhead the sky was a turkis-blue, save for a few irrelevant clouds which dappled it here and there like splashes of whipped cream.
Yet, for all this, the colonel was ill-at-ease; and care was on his brow, and venom in his speech.
"And one thing," Colonel Musgrave concluded, with decision, "I wish distinctly understood, and that is, if she insists on having young men loafing about her — as, of course, she will — she will have to entertain them in the garden. I won't have them in the house, Agatha. You remember that Langham girl you had here last Easter?" he added, disconsolately — "the one who positively littered up the house with young men,
21
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
and sang idiotic jingles to them at all hours of the night about the Bailey family and the correct way to spell chicken ? She drove me to the verge of insanity, and I haven't a doubt that this Patricia person will be quite as obstreperous. So, please mention it to her, Agatha — casually, of course — that, in Lichfield, when one is partial to either vocal exercise or amorous dal- liance, the proper scene of action is the garden. I really cannot be annoyed by her."
"But, Rudolph," his sister protested, "you forget she is engaged to the Earl of Pevensey. An engaged girl naturally wouldn't care about meeting any young men."
"H'ml" said the colonel, drily.
Ensued a pause, during which the colonel lighted yet another cigarette.
Then, "I have frequently observed," he spoke, in absent wise, "that all young women having that pe- culiarly vacuous expression about the eyes — I believe there are misguided persons who describe such eyes as being 'dreamy/ — are invariably possessed of a fickle, unstable and coquettish temperament. Oh, no ! You may depend upon it, Agatha, the fact that she contem- plates purchasing the right to support a peculiarly dis- reputable member of the British peerage will not hinder her in the least from making advances to all the young men in the neighborhood."
Miss Musgrave was somewhat ruffled. She was a homely little woman with nothing of the ordinary Musgrave comeliness. Candor even compels the state-
22
PROP I N
ment that in her pudgy swarthy face there was a droll suggestion of the pug-dog.
"I am sure," Miss Musgrave remonstrated, with placid dignity, "that you know nothing whatever about her, and that the reports about the earl have probably been greatly exaggerated, and that her picture shows her to be an unusually attractive girl. Though it is true," Miss Musgrave conceded after reflection, "that there are any number of persons in the House of Lords that I wouldn't in the least care to have in my own house, even with the front parlor all in linen as it un- fortunately is. So awkward when you have company ! And the Bible does bid us not to put our trust in princes, and, for my part, I never thought that photo- graphs could be trusted, either."
"Scorn not the nobly born, Agatha," her brother admonished her, "nor treat with lofty scorn the well- connected. The very best people are sometimes re- spectable. And yet," he pursued, with a slight hiatus of thought, "I should not describe her as precisely an attractive-looking girl. She seems to have a lot of hair, — if it is all her own, which it probably isn't, — and her nose is apparently straight enough, and I gather she is not absolutely deformed anywhere; but that is all I can conscientiously say in her favor. She is artificial. Her hair, now! It has a — well, you would not call it exactly a crinkle or precisely a wave, but rather somewhere between the two. Yes, I think I should describe it as a ripple. I fancy it must be rather like the reflection of a sunset in — a duck-pond.
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
say, with a faint wind ruffling the water. For I gather that her hair is of some light shade, — induced, I haven't a doubt, by the liberal use of peroxides. And this ripple, too, Agatha, it stands to reason, must be the result of coercing nature, for I have never seen it in any other woman's hair. Moreover," Colonel Mus- grave continued, warming somewhat to his subject, "there is a dimple — on the right side of her mouth, immediately above it, — which speaks of the most frivolous tendencies. I dare say it comes and goes when she talks, — winks at you, so to speak, in a man- ner that must be simply idiotic. That foolish little cleft in her chin, too "
But at this point, his sister interrupted him.
"I hadn't a notion/' said she, "that you had even looked at the photograph. And you seem to have it quite by heart, Rudolph, — and some people admire dimples, you know, and, at any rate, her mother had red hair, so Patricia isn't really responsible. I decided that it would be foolish to use the best mats to-night. We can save them for Sunday supper, because I am only going to have eggs and a little cold meat, and not make company of her."
For no apparent reason, Rudolph Musgrave flushed.
"I inspected it — quite casually — last night. Please don't be absurd, Agatha! If we were threatened with any other direful visitation — influenza, say, or the seventeen-year locust, — I should naturally read up on the subject in order to know what to expect. And since Providence has seen fit to send us a visitor rather 24
PROPINQUITY
than a visitation — though, personally, I should in- finitely prefer the influenza, as interfering in less de- gree with my comfort, — I have, of course, neglected no opportunity of finding out what we may reasonably look forward to. I fear the worst, Agatha. For I re- peat, the girl's face is, to me, absolutely unattractive!"
The colonel spoke with emphasis, and flung away his cigarette, and took up his hat to go.
And then, "I suppose," said Miss Musgrave, ab- sently, "you will be falling in love with her, just as you did with Anne Charteris and Aline Van Orden and all those other minxes. I would like to see you mar- ried, Rudolph, only I couldn't stand your having a wife."
"I! I!" sputtered the colonel. "I think you must be out of your head! I fall in love with that chit! Good Lord, Agatha, you are positively idiotic !"
And the colonel turned on his heel, and walked stiffly through the garden. But, when half-way down the path, he wheeled about and came back.
"I beg your pardon, Agatha," he said, contritely, "it was not my intention to be discourteous. But some- how— somehow, dear, I don't quite see the necessity for my falling in love with anybody, so long as I have you."
And Miss Musgrave, you may be sure, forgave him promptly; and afterward — with a bit of pride and an infinity of love in her kind, homely face, — her eyes followed him out of the garden on his way to open the Library. And she decided in her heart that she had
25
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
the dearest and best and handsomest brother in the universe, and that she must remember to tell him, ac- cidentally, how becoming his new hat was. And then, at some unspoken thought, she smiled, wistfully.
"She would be a very lucky girl if he did," said Miss Musgrave, apropos of nothing in particular; and tossed her grizzly head.
"An earl, indeed !" said Miss Musgrave
IV
AND this is how it came about : Patricia Vartrey (a second cousin once re- moved of Colonel Rudolph Musgrave's), as the older inhabitants of Lichfield will volubly attest, was always a person who did peculiar things. The list of her eccentricities is far too lengthy here to be enumerated ; but she began it by being born with red hair — Titian reds and auburns were undiscovered euphemisms in those days — and, in Lichfield, this is not regarded as precisely a lady-like thing to do; and she ended it, as far as Lichfield was concerned, by eloping with what Lichfield in its horror could only describe, with conscious inadequacy, as "a quite un- heardof person."
Indisputably the man was well-to-do already; and from this nightmarish topsy-turvidom of Reconstruc- tion the fellow visibly was plucking wealth. Also young Stapylton was well enough to look at, too, as Lichfield flurriedly conceded.
But it was equally undeniable that he had made his money through a series of commercial speculations
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
distinguished both by shiftiness and daring, and that the man himself had been until the War a wholly neg- ligible "poor white" person, — an overseer, indeed, for "Wild Will" Musgrave, Colonel Musgrave's father, who was of course the same Lieutenant-Colonel Wil- liam Sebastian Musgrave, C. S. A., that met his death at Gettysburg.
This upstart married Patricia Vartrey, for all the chatter and whispering, and carried her away from Lichfield, as yet a little dubious as to what recogni- tion, if any, should be accorded the existence of the Stapyltons. And afterward (from a notoriously un- truthful North, indeed) came rumors that he was rapidly becoming wealthy; and of Patricia Vartrey' s death at her daughter's birth ; and of the infant's health and strength and beauty, and of her lavish upbring- ing,— a Frenchwoman, Lichfield whispered, with ab- solutely nothing to do but attend upon the child.
And then, little by little, a new generation sprang up, and, little by little, the interest these rumors waked became more lax; and it was brought about, at last, by the insidious transitions of time, that Patricia Var- trey was forgotten in Lichfield. Only a few among the older men remembered her; some of them yet treasured, as these fogies so often do, a stray fan or an odd glove; and in by-corners of sundry time-tough- ened hearts there lurked the memory of a laughing word or of a glance or of some such casual bounty, that Patricia Vartrey had accorded these hearts' owners when the world was young. 28
PROPINQUITY
But Agatha Musgrave, likewise, remembered the orphan cousin who had been reared with her. She had loved Patricia Vartrey; and, in due time, she wrote to Patricia's daughter, — in stately, antiquated phrases that astonished the recipient not a little, — and the girl had answered. The correspondence flour- ished. And it was not long before Miss Musgrave had induced her young cousin to visit Lichfield.
Colonel Rudolph Musgrave, be it understood, knew nothing of all this until the girl was actually on her way. And now, she was to arrive that afternoon, to domicile herself in his quiet house for two long weeks — this utter stranger, look you! — and upset his com- fort, ask him silly questions, expect him to talk to her, and at the end of her visit, possibly, present him with some outlandish gimcrack made of cardboard and pink ribbons, in which she would expect him to keep
his papers. The Langham girl did that. * * *
It is honesty's part to give you the man no better than he was. Lichfield at large had pampered him; many women had loved him; and above all, Miss Agatha had spoiled him. After fifteen years of being the pivot about which the economy of a household revolves, after fifteen years of being the inevitable person whose approval must be secured before any domestic alteration, however trivial, may be consid- ered, no mortal man may hope to remain a paragon of unselfishness.
Colonel Musgrave joyed in the society of women.
29
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
But he classed them — say, with the croquettes adorned with pink paper frills which were then invariably served at the suppers of the Lichfield German Cub, — as acceptable enough, upon a conscious holiday, but wholly incongruous with the slippered ease of home. When you had an inclination for feminine society, you shaved and changed your clothes and thought up an impromptu or so against emergency, and went forth to seek it That was natural ; but to have a petticoated young person infesting your house, hourly, was as preposterous as ice-cream soda at breakfast.
The metaphor set him off at a tangent. He won- dered if this Patricia person could not (tactfully) be induced to take her bath after breakfast, as Agatha did? after he had his? Why, confound the girl, he was not responsible for there being only one bathroom in the house! It was necessary for him to have his bath and be at the Library by nine o'clock. This inter- loper must be made to understand as much.
The colonel reached the Library undecided as to whether Miss Stapylton had better breakfast in her room, or if it would be entirely proper for her to come to the table in one of those fluffy lace-trimmed garments such as Agatha affected at the day's begin- ning?
The question was a nice one. It was not as though servants were willing to be bothered with carrying trays to people's rooms; he knew what Agatha had to say upon that subject. It was not as though he were the chit's first cousin, either. He almost wished 30
PROPINQUITY
himself in the decline of life, and free to treat the girl paternally.
And so he fretted all that afternoon. * * *
Then, too, he reflected that it would be very awk- ward if Agatha should be unwell while this Patricia person was in the house. Agatha in her normal state was of course the kindliest and cheeriest gentlewoman in the universe, but any physical illness appeared to transform her nature disastrously. She had her "at- tacks," she "felt badly" very often nowadays, poor dear; and how was a Patricia person to be expected to make allowances for the fact that at such times poor Agatha was unavoidably a little cross and pessimistic?
YET Colonel Musgrave strolled into his garden, later, with a tolerable affectation of uncon- cern. Women, after all, he assured himself, were necessary for the perpetuation of the species; and, resolving for the future to view these weakly, big-hipped and slope-shouldered makeshifts of Na- ture's with larger tolerance, he cocked his hat at a devil-may-carish angle, and strode up the walk, whistling jauntily and having, it must be confessed, to the unprejudiced observer very much the air of a sheep in wolf's clothing.
"At worst," he was reflecting, "I can make love to her. They, as a rule, take kindlily enough to that; and in the exercise of hospitality a host must go to all lengths to divert his guests. Failure is not per- mitted. . . '."
Then She came to him.
She came to him across the trim, cool lawn, leis- urely, yet with a resilient tread that attested the vigor of her slim young body. She was all in white, di- aphanous, ethereal, quite incredibly incredible; but as she passed through the long shadows of the garden —
32
PROPINQUITY
fire-new, from the heart of the sunset, Rudolph Mus- grave would have sworn to you, — the lacy folds and furbelows and semi-transparencies that clothed her were now tinged with gold, and now, as a hedge or flower-bed screened her from the horizontal rays, were softened into multitudinous graduations of grays and mauves and violets.
"Failure is not permitted/* he was repeating in his soul. . . .
"You're Cousin Rudolph, aren't you?" she asked. "How perfectly entrancing! You see until to-day I always thought that if I had been offered the choice between having cousins or appendicitis I would have preferred to be operated on."
And Rudolph Musgrave noted, with a delicious tingling somewhere about his heart, that her hair was really like the reflection of a sunset in rippling waters, — only many times more beautiful, of course, — and that her mouth was an inconsiderable trifle, a scrap of sanguine curves, and that her eyes were purple glimpses of infinity.
Then he observed that his own mouth was giving utterance to divers irrelevant and foolish sounds, which eventually resolved themselves into the state- ment he was glad to see her. And immediately after- ward the banality of this remark brought the hot blood to his face and, for the rest of the day, stung him and teased him, somewhere in the background of his mind, like an incessant insect.
Glad, indeed!
33
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
Before he had finished shaking hands with Patricia Stapylton, it was all over with the poor man.
"Er— h'm!" quoth he.
"Only," Miss Stapylton w^ meditating, with puck- ered brow, "it would be unseemly for me to call you Rudolph-
"You impertinent minx!" cried he, in his soul; "I should rather think it would be!"
" and Cousin Rudolph sounds exactly like a
dried-up little man with eyeglasses and crows' feet and a gentle nature. I rather thought you were going to be like that, and I regard it as extremely hospitable of you not to be. You are more like — like what now ?" Miss Stapylton put her head to one side and consid- ered the contents of her vocabulary, — "you are like a viking. I shall call you Olaf," she announced, when she had reached a decision.
This, look you, to the most dignified man in Lich- field, — a person who had never borne a nickname in his life. You must picture for yourself how the colonel stood before her, big, sturdy and blond, and glared down at her, and assured himself that he was very indignant; like Timanthes, the colonel's biogra- pher prefers to draw a veil before the countenance to which art is unable to do justice.
Then, "I have no admiration for the Northmen," Rudolph Musgrave declared, stiffly. "They were a rude and barbarous nation, proverbially addicted to piracy and intemperance."
"My goodness gracious!" Miss Stapylton observed, 34
PROPINQUITY
— and now, for the first time, he saw the teeth that were like grains of rice upon a pink rose petal. Also, he saw dimples. "And does one mean all that by a viking?"
"The vikings," he informed her — and his Library manner had settled upon him now to the very tips of his fingers — "were pirates. The word is of Ice- landic origin, from vik, the name applied to the small inlets along the coast in which they concealed their galleys. I may mention that Olaf was not a viking, but a Norwegian king, being the first Christian mon- arch to reign in Norway."
"Dear me!" said Miss Stapylton; "how interest- ing!"
Then she yawned with deliberate cruelty.
"However," she concluded, "I shall call you Olaf, just the same."
"Er— h'm!" said the colonel.
* * *
And this stuttering boor (he reflected) was Colonel Rudolph Musgrave, confessedly the social triumph of his generation! This imbecile, without a syllable to say for himself, without a solitary adroit word within tongue's reach, wherewith to annihilate the hussy, was a Musgrave of Matocton!
* * *
And she did. To her he was "Olaf" from that day forth.
Rudolph Musgrave called her, "You." He was nettled, of course, by her forwardness — "Olaf," in-
35
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
deed! — yet he found it, somehow, difficult to bear this fact in mind continuously.
For while it is true our heroes and heroines in fic- tion no longer fall in love at first sight, Nature, you must remember, is too busily employed with other matters to have much time to profit by current litera- ture. Then, too, she is not especially anxious to be realistic. She prefers to jog along in the old rut, contentedly turning out chromolithographic sunrises such as they give away at the tea stores, contentedly staging the most violent and improbable melodramas ; and — sturdy old Philistine that she is — she even now permits her children to fall in love in the most primi- tive fashion.
She is not particularly interested in subtleties and soul analyses ; she merely chuckles rather complacently when a pair of eyes are drawn, somehow, to another pair of eyes, and an indescribable something is altered somewhere in some untellable fashion, and the world, suddenly, becomes the most delightful place of resi- dence in all the universe. Indeed, it is her favorite miracle, this. For at work of this sort the old Philis- tine knows that she is an adept; and she has re- joiced in the skill of her hands, with a sober work- manly joy, since Cain first went a-wooing in the Land of Nod.
So Colonel Rudolph Musgrave, without understand- ing what had happened to him, on a sudden was strangely content with life.
It was at supper — dinner, in Lichfield, when not a
PROPINQUITY
formal entertainment, is eaten at two in the afternoon — that he fell a-speculating as to whether Her eyes, after all, could be fitly described as purple.
Wasn't there a grayer luminosity about them than he had at first suspected? — wasn't the cool glow of them, in a word, rather that of sunlight falling upon a wet slate roof?
It was a delicate question, an affair of nuances, of almost imperceptible graduations; and in debating a matter of such nicety, a man must necessarily lay aside all petty irritation, such as being nettled by an irrational nickname, and approach the question with unbiased mind.
He did. And when, at last, he had come warily to the verge of decision, Miss Musgrave in all inno- cence announced that they would excuse him if he wished to get back to his work.
He discovered that, somehow, the three had finished supper; and, somehow, he presently discovered him- self in his study, where eight o'clock had found him every evening for the last ten years, when he was not about his social diversions. An old custom, you will observe, is not lightly broken.
37
VI
SUBSEQUENTLY: "I have never approved of these international marriages/* said Colonel Musgrave, with heat. "It stands to reason, she is simply marrying the fellow for his title. (The will of Jeremiah Brown, dated 29 November, 1690, recorded 2 February, 1690-1, mentions his wife Eliza Brown and appoints her his executrix.) She can't possibly care for him. (This, then, was the second wife of Edward Osborne of Henrico, who, marrying him 75 June, 1694, died before January, 1696-7.) But they are all flibbertigibbets, every one of them. (She had apparently no children by either marriage — ) And I dare say she is no better than the rest."
Came a tap on the door. Followed a vision of soft white folds and furbelows and semi-transparencies and purple eyes and a pouting mouth.
"I am become like a pelican in the wilderness, Olaf," the owner of these vanities complained. "Are you very busy? Cousin Agatha is about her housekeep- ing, and I have read the afternoon paper all through, — even the list of undelivered letters and the woman's
38
PROPINQUITY
page, — and I just want to see the Gilbert Stuart pic- ture," she concluded, — exercising, one is afraid, a cer- tain economy in regard to the truth.
This was a little too much. If a man's working- hours are not to be respected — if his privacy is to be thus invaded on the flimsiest of pretexts, — why, then, one may very reasonably look for chaos to come again. This, Rudolph Musgrave decided, was a case demanding firm and instant action. Here was a young person who needed taking down a peg or two, and that at once.
But he made the mistake of looking at her first. And after that, he lied glibly. "Good Lord, no! I am not in the least busy now. In fact, I was just about to look you two up."
"I was rather afraid of disturbing you." She hesi- tated; and a lucent mischief woke in her eyes. "You are so patriarchal, Olaf," she lamented. "I felt like a lion venturing into a den of Daniels. But if you cross your heart you aren't really busy — why, then, you can show me the Stuart, Olaf."
It is widely conceded that Gilbert Stuart never in his after work surpassed the painting which hung then in Rudolph Musgrave's study, — the portrait of the young Gerald Musgrave, afterward the friend of Jefferson and Henry, and, still later, the author of divers bulky tomes, pertaining for the most part to ethnology. The boy smiles at you from the canvas, smiles ambiguously, — smiles with a woman's mouth, set above a resolute chin, however, — and with a sort
39
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
of humorous sadness in his eyes. These latter are of a dark shade of blue — purple, if you will, — and his hair is tinged with red.
"Why, he took after me!" said Miss Stapylton. "How thoughtful of him, Olaf!"
And Rudolph Musgrave saw the undeniable resem- blance. It gave him a queer sort of shock, too, as he comprehended, for the first time, that the faint blue vein on that lifted arm held Musgrave blood, — the same blood which at this thought quickened. For any person guided by appearances, Rudolph Musgrave considered, would have surmised that the vein in ques- tion contained celestial ichor or some yet diviner fluid.
"It is true," he conceded, "that there is a certain likeness."
"And he is a very beautiful boy," said Miss Stapyl- ton, demurely. "Thank you, Olaf; I begin to think you are a dangerous flatterer. But he is only a boy, Olaf ! And I had always thought of Gerald Musgrave as a learned person with a fringe of whiskers all around his face — like a centerpiece, you know."
The colonel smiled. "This portrait was painted early in life. Our kinsman was at that time, I be- lieve, a person of rather frivolous tendencies. Yet he was not quite thirty when he first established his reputation by his monograph upon The Evolution of Marriage. And afterwards, just prior to his first meeting with Goethe, you will remember "
"Oh, yes !" Miss Stapylton assented, hastily ; "I re- 40
PROPINQUITY
member perfectly. I know all about him, thank you. And it was that beautiful boy, Olaf, that young-eyed cherub, who developed into a musty old man who wrote musty old books, and lived a musty, dusty life all by himself, and never married or had any fun at all ! How horrid, Olaf !" she cried, with a queer shrug of distaste.
"I fail," said Colonel Musgrave, "to perceive any- thing— ah — horrid in a life devoted to the study of anthropology. His reputation when he died was in- ternational."
"But he never had any fun, you jay-bird ! And, oh, Olaf! Olaf! that boy could have had so much fun! The world held so much for him! Why, Fortune is only a woman, you know, and what woman could have refused him anything if he had smiled at her like that when he asked for it?"
Miss Stapylton gazed up at the portrait for a long time now, her hands clasped under her chin. Her face was gently reproachful.
"Oh, boy dear, boy dear!" she said, with a forlorn little quaver in her voice, "how could you be so fool- ish? Didn't you know there was something better in the world than grubbing after musty old tribes and customs and folk-songs? Oh, precious child, how could you?"
Gerald Musgrave smiled back at her, ambiguously; and Rudolph Musgrave laughed. "I perceive," said he, "you are a follower of Epicurus. For my part, I must have fetched my ideals from the tub of the
41
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
Stoic. I can conceive of no nobler life than one de- voted to furthering the cause of science."
She looked up at him, with a wan smile. "A bar- ren life !" she said : "ah, yes, his was a wasted life ! His books are all out-of-date now, and nobody reads them, and it is just as if he had never been. A barren life, Olaf! And that beautiful boy might have had so much fun — Life is queer, isn't it, Olaf?"
Again he laughed. "The criticism," he suggested, "is not altogether original. And Science, no less than War, must have her unsung heroes. You must re- member," he continued, more seriously, "that any great work must have as its foundation the achieve- ments of unknown men. I fancy that Cheops did not lay every brick in his pyramid with his own hand ; and I dare say Nebuchadnezzar employed a few help- ers when he was laying out his hanging gardens. But time cannot chronicle these lesser men. Their sole reward must be the knowledge that they have aided somewhat in the unending work of the world."
Her face had altered into a pink and white penitence which was flavored with awe.
"I — I forgot," she murmured, contritely; "I — for- got you were — like him — about your genealogies, you know. Oh, Olaf, I'm very silly! Of course, it is tremendously fine and — and nice, I dare say, if you like it, — to devote your life to learning, as you and he have done. I forgot, Olaf. Still, I am sorry, somehow, for that beautiful boy," she ended, with a disconsolate glance at the portrait. 42
VII
LONG after Miss Stapylton had left him, the colonel sat alone in his study, idle now, and musing vaguely. There were no more ad- denda concerning the descendants of Captain Thomas Osborne that night.
At last, the colonel rose and threw open a window, and stood looking into the moonlit garden. The world bathed in a mist of blue and silver. There was a breeze that brought him sweet, warm odors from the garden, together with a blurred shrilling of crickets and the conspiratorial conference of young leaves.
"Of course, it is tremendously fine and — and nice, if you like it," he said, with a faint chuckle. "I wonder, now, if I do like it?"
He was strangely moved. He seemed, somehow, to survey Rudolph Musgrave and all his doings with complete and unconcerned aloofness. The man's life, seen in its true proportions, dwindled into the merest flicker of a match; he had such a little while to live, this Rudolph Musgrave! And he spent the serious hours of this brief time writing notes and charts
43
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
and pamphlets that perhaps some hundred men in all the universe might care to read — pamphlets no bet- ter and no more accurate than hundreds of other men were writing at that very moment.
No, the capacity for originative and enduring work was not in him; and this incessant compilation of dreary footnotes, this incessant rummaging among the bones of the dead — did it, after all, mean more to this Rudolph Musgrave than one full, vivid hour of life in that militant world yonder, where men fought for other and more tangible prizes than the mention of one's name in a genealogical journal?
He could not have told you. In his heart, he knew that a thorough digest of the Wills and Or- ders of the Orphans' Court of any county must al- ways rank as a useful and creditable performance; but, from without, the sounds and odors of Spring were calling to him, luring him, wringing his very heart, bidding him come forth into the open and crack a jest or two before he died, and stare at the girls a little before the match had flickered out.
At this time he heard a moaning noise. The colonel gave a shrug, sighed, and ascended to his sister's bedroom. He knew that Agatha must be ill; and that there is no more efficient quietus to wildish medi- tations than the heating of hot-water bottles and the administration of hypnotics he had long ago discov- ered.
44
PART TWO RENASCENCE
"As one imprisoned that hath lain alone
And dreamed of sunlight where no vagrant gleam
Of sunlight pierces, being freed, must deem
This too but dreaming, and must dread the sun
Whose glory dazzles, — even as such-an-one
Am I whose longing was but now supreme
For this high hour, and, now it strikes, esteem
I do but dream long dreamed-of goals are won.
"Phyllis, I am not worthy of thy love.
I pray thee let no kindly word be said
Of me at all, for in the train thereof,
Whenas yet-parted lips, sigh-visited,
End speech and wait, mine when I will to move,
Such joy awakens that I grow afraid."
Triumphs of Phyllis.
THEY passed with incredible celerity, those next ten days — those strange, delicious, topsy- turvy days. To Rudolph Musgrave it seemed afterward that he had dreamed them away in some vague Lotus Land — in a delectable coun- try where, he remembered, there were always pur- ple eyes that mocked you, and red lips that coaxed you now, and now cast gibes at you.
You felt, for the most part of your stay in this country, flushed and hot and uncomfortable and un- believably awkward, and you were mercilessly be- deviled there; but not for all the accumulated wealth of Samarkand and Ind and Ophir would you have had it otherwise. Ah, no, not otherwise in the least trifle. For now uplifted to a rosy zone of acqui- escence, you partook incuriously at table of nectar and ambrosia, and noted abroad, without any surprise, that you trod upon a more verdant grass than usual, and that someone had polished up the sun a bit ; and, in fine, you snatched a fearful joy from the per- formance of the most trivial functions of life.
47
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
Yet always he remembered that it could not last; always he remembered that in the autumn Patricia was to marry Lord Pevensey. She sometimes gave him letters to mail which were addressed to that nobleman. He wondered savagely what was in them; he posted them with a vicious shove; and, for the time, they caused him acute twinges of misery. But not for long; no, for, in sober earnest, if some fan- tastic sequence of events had made his one chance of winning Patricia Stapylton dependent on his spend- ing a miserable half -hour in her company, Rudolph Musgrave could not have done it.
As for Miss Stapylton, she appeared to delight in the cloistered, easy-going life of Lichfield. The quaint and beautiful old town fell short in nothing of her expectations, in spite of the fact that she had previously read John Charteris's tales of Lich- field,— "those effusions which" (if the Lichfield Courier-Herald is to be trusted) "have builded, by the strength and witchery of record and rhyme, ro- mance and poem, a myriad-windowed temple in Lich- field's honor — exquisite, luminous, and enduring — for all the world to see."
Miss Stapylton appeared to delight in the clois- tered easy-going life of Lichfield, — that town which was once, as the outside world has half -forgotten now, the center of America's wealth, politics and culture, the town to which Europeans compiling "im- pressions" of America devoted one of their longest chapters in the heyday of Elijah Pogram and Jefferson
48
RENASCENCE
Brick. But the War between the States has changed all that, and Lichfield endures to-day only as a pleas- ant backwater.
Very pleasant, too, it was in the days of Patricia's advent. There were strikingly few young men about, to be sure; most of them on reaching maturity had settled in more bustling regions. But many maidens remained whom memory delights to catalogue, — tall, brilliant Lizzie Allardyce, the lovely and cattish Marian Winwood, to whom Felix Kennaston wrote those wonderful love-letters which she published when he married Kathleen Saumarez, the rich Baugh heir- esses from Georgia, the Pride twins, and Mattie Ferneyhaugh, whom even rival beauties loved, they say, and other damsels by the score, — all in due time to be wooed and won, and then to pass out of the old town's life.
Among the men of Rudolph Musgrave's generation "—-those gallant oldsters who were born and bred, and meant to die, in Lichfield, — Patricia did not lack for admirers. Tom May was one of them, of course; rarely a pretty face escaped the tribute of at least one proposal from Tom May. Then there was Rod- erick Taunton, he with the leonine mane, who spared her none of his forensic eloquence, but found Pa- tricia less tractable than the most stubborn of juries. Bluff Walter Thurman, too, who was said to know more of Dickens, whist and criminal law than any other man living, came to worship at her shrine, as likewise did huge red-faced Ashby Bland, famed for
49
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
that cavalry charge which history-books tell you that he led, and at which he actually was not present, for reasons all Lichfield knew and chuckled over. And Courtney Thorpe and Charles Maupin, doctors of the flesh and the spirit severally, were others among the rivals who gathered about Patricia at decorous festi- vals when, candles lighted, the butler and his under- lings came with trays of delectable things to eat, and the "nests" of tables were set out, and pleasant chatter abounded.
And among Patricia's attendants Colonel Musgrave, it is needless to relate, was preeminently pertina- cious. The two found a deal to talk about, somehow, though it is doubtful if many of their comments were of sufficient importance or novelty to merit record. Then, also, he often read aloud to her from lovely books, for the colonel read admirably and did not scruple to give emotional passages their value. Trilby, published the preceding spring in book form, was one of these books, for all this was at a very remote period; and the Rubaiyat was another, for that poem was as yet unhackneyed and hardly well- known enough to be parodied in those happy days.
Once he read to her that wonderful sad tale of Hans Christian Andersen's which treats of the china chimney-sweep and the shepherdess, who eloped from their bedizened tiny parlor-table, and were fright- ened by the vastness of the world outside, and crept ignominiously back to their fit home. "And so," the colonel ended, "the little china people remained 50
RENASCENCE
together, and were thankful for the rivet in grand- father's neck, and continued to love each other until they were broken to pieces."
"It was really a very lucky thing," Patricia esti- mated, "that the grandfather had a rivet in his neck and couldn't nod to the billy-goat-legged person to take the shepherdess away into his cupboard. I don't doubt the little china people were glad of it. But after climbing so far — and seeing the stars, — I think they ought to have had more to be glad for." Her voice was quaintly wistful.
"I will let you into a secret — er — Patricia. That rivet was made out of the strongest material in the whole universe. And the old grandfather was glad, at bottom, he had it in his neck so that he couldn't nod and separate the shepherdess from the chimney- sweep."
"Yes, — I guess he had been rather a rip among the bric-a-brac in his day and sympathized with them?"
"No, it wasn't just that. You see these little china people had forsaken their orderly comfortable world on the parlor table to climb very high. It was a brave thing to do, even though they faltered and came back after a while. It is what we all want to do, Patricia — to climb toward the stars, — even those of us who are too lazy or too cowardly to at- tempt it. And when others try it, we are envious and a little uncomfortable, and we probably scoff; but we can't help admiring, and there is a rivet in the neck of all of us which prevents us from inter-
51
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
fering. Oh, yes, we little china people have a variety of rivets, thank God, to prevent too frequent nodding and too cowardly a compromise with baseness, — rivets that are a part of us and force us into flashes of upright living, almost in spite of ourselves, when duty and inclination grapple. There is always the thing one cannot do for the reason that one is con- stituted as one is. That, I take it, is the real rivet in grandfather's neck and everybody else's."
He spoke disjointedly, vaguely, but the girl nodded. "I think I understand, Olaf. Only, it is a two-edged rivet — to mix metaphors — and keeps us stiffnecked against all sorts of calls. No, I am not sure that the thing one cannot do because one is what one is, proves to be always a cause for international jubilations and fireworks on the lawn."
II
THUS Lichfield, as to its staid trousered citi- zenry, fell prostrate at Miss Stapylton's feet, and as to the remainder of its adults, vocifer- ously failed to see anything in the least remarkable in her appearance, and avidly took and compared notes as to her personal apparel.
"You have brought Asmodeus into Lichfield," Colonel Musgrave one day rebuked Miss Stapylton, as they sat in the garden. "The demon of pride and dress is rampant everywhere — er — Patricia. Even Agatha does her hair differently now ; and in church last Sunday I counted no less than seven duplicates of that blue hat of yours."
Miss Stapylton was moved to mirth. "Fancy your noticing a thing like that !" said she. "I didn't know you were even aware I had a blue hat."
"I am no judge," he conceded, gravely, "of such fripperies. I don't pretend to be. But, on the other hand, I must plead guilty to deriving considerable harmless amusement from your efforts to dress as an example and an irritant to all Lichfield."
S3
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
"You wouldn't have me a dowd, Olaf?" said she, demurely. "I have to be neat and tidy, you know. You wouldn't have me going about in a continuous state of unbuttonedness and black bombazine like Mrs. Rabbet, would you?"
Rudolph Musgrave debated as to this. "I dare say/' he at last conceded, cautiously, "that to the casual eye your appearance is somewhat — er — more pleasing than that of our rector's wife. But, on the other hand "
"Olaf, I am embarrassed by such fulsome eulogy. Mrs. Rabbet isn't a day under forty-nine. And you consider me somewhat better-looking than she is !"
He inspected her critically, and was confirmed in his opinion.
"Olaf" — coaxingly — "do you really think I am as ugly as that?"
"Pouf !" said the colonel airily ; "I dare say you are well enough."
"Olaf" — and this was even more cajoling — "do you know you've never told me what sort of a woman you most admire?"
"I don't admire any of them," said Colonel Mus- grave, stoutly. "They are too vain and frivolous — especially the pink-and-white ones," he added, un- kindlily.
"Cousin Agatha has told me all about your multi- farious affairs of course. She depicts you as a sort of cardiacal buccaneer and visibly gloats over the tale of your enormities. She is perfectly dear about 54
RENASCENCE
it. But have you never — cared — for any woman, Olaf?"
Precarious ground, this ! His eyes were fixed upon her now. And hers, for doubtless sufficient reasons, were curiously intent upon anything in the universe rather than Rudolph Musgrave.
"Yes," said he, with a little intake of the breath; "yes, I cared once."
"And— she cared?" asked Miss Stapylton.
She happened, even now, not to be looking at him.
"She!" Rudolph Musgrave cried, in real surprise. "Why, God bless my soul, of course she didn't! She didn't know anything about it."
"You never told her, Olaf?" — and this was re- proachful. Then Patricia said: "Well! and did she go down in the cellar and get the wood-ax or was she satisfied just to throw the bric-a-brac at you?"
And Colonel Musgrave laughed aloud.
"Ah!" said he; "it would have be<en a brave jest if I had told her, wouldn't it? She was young, you see, and wealthy, and — ah, well, I won't deceive you by exaggerating her personal attractions! I will serve up to you no praises of her sauced with lies. And I scorn to fall back on the stock-in-trade of the poets, — all their silly metaphors and similes and such- like nonsense. I won't tell you that her complexion reminded me of roses swimming in milk, for it did nothing of the sort. Nor am I going to insist that her eyes had a fire like that of stars, or proclaim that Cupid was in the habit of lighting his torch
55
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
from them. I don't think he was. I would like to have caught the brat taking any such liberties with those innocent, humorous, unfathomable eyes of hers! And they didn't remind me of violets, either," he pursued, belligerently, "nor did her mouth look to me in the least like a rosebud, nor did I have the slightest difficulty in distinguishing between her hands and lilies. I consider these hyperbolical figures of speech to be idiotic. Ah, no !" cried Colonel Mus- grave, warming to his subject — and regarding it, too, very intently; "ah, no, a face that could be patched together at the nearest florist's would not haunt a man's dreams o'nights, as hers does! I haven't any need for praises sauced with lies ! I spurn hyperbole. I scorn exaggeration. I merely state calmly and ju- dicially that she was God's masterpiece, — the most beautiful and adorable and indescribable creature that He ever made."
She smiled at this. "You should have told her, Olaf," said Miss Stapylton. "You should have told her that you cared."
He gave a gesture of dissent. "She had every- thing," he pointed out, "everything the world could afford her. And, doubtless, she would have been very- glad to give it all up for me, wouldn't she? — for me, who haven't youth or wealth or fame or any- thing? Ah, I dare say she would have been delighted to give up the world she knew and loved, — the world that loved her, — for the privilege of helping me digest old county records!"
56
RENASCENCE
And Rudolph Musgrave laughed again, though not mirthfully.
But the girl was staring at him, with a vague trouble in her eyes. "You should have told her, Olaf," she repeated.
And at this point he noted that the arbutus-flush in her cheeks began to widen slowly, until, at last, it had burned back to the little pink ears, and had merged into the coppery glory of her hair, and had made her, if such a thing were possible — which a minute ago it manifestly was not, — more beautiful and adorable and indescribable than ever before.
"Ah, yes !" he scoffed, "Lichfield would have made a fitting home for her. She would have been very happy here, shut off from the world with us, — with us, whose forefathers have married and intermar- ried with one another until the stock is worthless, and impotent for any further achievement. For here, you know, we have the best blood in America, and — for utilitarian purposes — that means the worst blood. Ah, we may prate of our superiority to the rest of the world, — and God knows, we do! — but, at bottom, we are worthless. We are worn out, I tell you! we are effete and stunted in brain and will- power, and the very desire of life is gone out of us! We are contented simply to exist in Lichfield. And she "
He paused, and a new, fierce light came into his eyes. "She was so beautiful!" he said, half-angrily, between clenched teeth.
57
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
"You are just like the rest of them, Olaf," she lamented, with a hint of real sadness. "You imagine you are in love with a girl because you happen to like the color of her eyes, or because there is a curve about her lips that appeals to you. That isn't love, Olaf, as we women understand it. Ah, no, a girl's love for a man doesn't depend altogether upon his fitness to be used as an advertisement for somebody's ready-made clothing."
"You fancy you know what you are talking about/' said Rudolph Musgrave, "but you don't. You don't realize, you see, how beautiful she — was."
And this time, he nearly tripped upon the tense, for her hand was on his arm, and, in consequence, a series of warm, delicious little shivers was running about his body in a fashion highly favorable to ex- treme perturbation of mind.
"You should have told her, Olaf," she said, wist- fully. "Oh, Olaf, Olaf, why didn't you tell her?"
She did not know, of course, how she was tempt- ing him; she did not know, of course, how her least touch seemed to waken every pulse in his body to an aching throb, and set hope and fear a-drumming in his breast. Obviously, she did not know; and it angered him that she did not.
"She would have laughed at me," he said, with a snarl; "how she would have laughed!"
"She wouldn't have laughed, Olaf." And, indeed, she did not look as if she would.
"But much you know of her!" said Rudolph Mus-
58
RENASCENCE
grave, morosely. "She was just like the rest of them, I tell you! She knew how to stare a man out of countenance with big purple eyes that were like vio- lets with the dew on them, and keep her paltry pink- and-white baby face all pensive and sober, till the poor devil went stark, staring mad, and would have pawned his very soul to tell her that he loved her! She knew! She did it on purpose. She would look pensive just to make an ass of you! She "
And here the colonel set his teeth for a moment, and resolutely drew back from the abyss.
"She would not have cared for me," he said, with a shrug. "I was not exactly the sort of fool she cared for. What she really cared for was a young fool who could dance with her in this silly new- fangled gliding style, and send her flowers and sweet- meats, and make love to her glibly — and a petti- coated fool who would envy her fine feathers, — and, at last, a knavish fool who would barter his title for her money. She preferred fools, you see, but she would never have cared for a middle-aged penni- less fool like me. And so," he ended, with a vicious outburst of mendacity, "I never told her, and she married a title and lived unhappily in gilded splendor ever afterwards."
"You should have told her, Olaf," Miss Stapylton persisted; and then she asked, in a voice that came very near being inaudible : "Is it too late to tell her now, Olaf?"
The stupid man opened his lips a little, and stood
59
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
staring at her with hungry eyes, wondering if it were really possible that she did not hear the pound- ing of his heart; and then his teeth clicked, and he gave a despondent gesture.
"Yes," he said, wearily, "it is too late now." Thereupon Miss Stapylton tossed her head. "Oh, very well !" said she ; "only, for my part, I think you acted very foolishly, and I don't see that you have the least right to complain. I quite fail to see how you could have expected her to marry you — or, in fact, how you can expect any woman to marry you, -—if you won't, at least, go to the trouble of asking her to do so!"
Then Miss Stapylton went into the house, and slammed the door after her.
60
Ill
NOR was that the worst of it. For when Ru- dolph Musgrave followed her — as he pres- ently did, in a state of considerable amaze, — his sister informed him that Miss Stapylton had retired to her room with an unaccountable headache.
And there she remained for the rest of the evening. It was an unusually long evening.
Yet, somehow, in spite of its notable length — af- fording, as it did, an excellent opportunity for un- disturbed work, — Colonel Musgrave found, with a pricking conscience, that he made astonishingly slight progress in an exhaustive monograph upon the frag- mentary Orderly Book of an obscure captain in a long-forgotten regiment, which if it had not actu- ally served in the Revolution, had at least been demon- strably granted money "for services," and so entitled hundreds of aspirants to become the Sons (or Daugh- ters) of various international disagreements.
Nor did he see her at breakfast — nor at dinner.
61
IV
A CURIOUS little heartache accompanied Colonel Musgrave on his way home that afternoon. He had not seen Patricia Sta- pylton for twenty-four hours, and he was just begin- ning to comprehend what life would be like without her. He did not find the prospect exhilarating.
Then, as he came up the orderly graveled walk, he heard, issuing from the little vine-covered sum- mer-house, a loud voice. It was a man's voice, and its tones were angry.
"No! no!" the man was saying; "I'll agree to no such nonsense, I tell you ! What do you think I am?"
"I think you are a jackass-fool," Miss Stapylton said, crisply, "and a fortune-hunter, and a sot, and a travesty, and a whole heap of other things I haven't as yet had time to look up in the dictionary. And I think — I think you call yourself an English gentle- man? Well, all I have to say is God pity England if her gentlemen are of your stamp! There isn't a costermonger in all Whitechapel who would dare talk to me as you've done! I would like to snatch you 62
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bald-headed, I would like to kill you — 'And do you think, now, if you were the very last man left in all the world that I would — No, don't you try to an- swer me, for I don't wish to hear a single word you have to say. Oh, oh ! how dare you !"
"Well, I've had provocation enough," the man's voice retorted, sullenly. "Perhaps, I have cut up a bit rough, Patricia, but, then, you've been talkin' like a fool, you know. But what's the odds ? Let's kiss and make up, old girl."
"Don't touch me!" she panted; "ah, don't you dare!"
"You little devil! you infernal little vixen! You'll jilt me, will you?"
"Let me go!" the girl cried, sharply. Rudolph Musgrave went into the summer-house.
The man Colonel Musgrave found there was big and loose- jointed, with traces of puffiness about his face. He had wheat-colored hair and weakish-look- ing, pale blue eyes. One of his arms was about Miss Stapylton, but he released her now, and blinked at Rudolph Musgrave.
"And who are you, pray?" he demanded, queru- lously. "What do you want, anyhow ? What do you mean by sneakin' in here and tappin' on a fellow's shoulder — like a damn' woodpecker, by Jove ! I don't know you."
There was in Colonel Musgrave's voice a curious tremor, when he spoke; but to the eye he was unruf- fled, even faintly amused.
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THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHERS NECK
"I am the owner of this garden," he enunciated, with leisurely distinctness, "and it is not my custom to permit gentlewomen to be insulted in it. So I am afraid I must ask you to leave it."
"Now, see here," the man blustered, weakly, "we don't want any heroics, you know. See here, you're her cousin, ain't you? By God, I'll leave it to you, you know ! She's treated me badly, don't you under- stand. She's a jilt, you know. She's play in' fast and loose "
He never got any further, for at this point Ru- dolph Musgrave took him by the coat-collar and half- dragged, half-pushed him through the garden, shaking him occasionally with a quiet emphasis. The colonel was angry, and it was a matter of utter indifference to him that they were trampling over flower-beds, and leaving havoc in their rear.
But when they had reached the side-entrance, he paused and opened it, and then shoved his companion into1 an open field, where a number of cows, fresh from the evening milking, regarded them with in- curious eyes. It was very quiet here, save for the occasional jangle of the cow-bells and the far-off fifing of frogs in the marsh below.
"It would have been impossible, of course," said Colonel Musgrave, "for me to have offered you any personal violence as long as you were, in a manner, a guest of mine. This field, however, is the property of Judge Willoughby, and here I feel at liberty to thrash you."
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Then he thrashed the man who had annoyed Pa- tricia Stapylton.
That thrashing was, in its way, a masterpiece. There was a certain conscientiousness about it, a cer- tain thoroughness of execution — a certain plodding and painstaking carefulness, in a word, such as is pos- sible only to those who have spent years in guiding fat-witted tourists among the antiquities of the Lich- field Historical Association.
"You ought to exercise more," Rudolph Musgrave admonished his victim, when he had ended. "You are entirely too flabby now, you know. That path yonder will take you to the hotel, where, I imagine, you are staying. There is a train leaving Lichfield at six-fifteen, and if I were you, I would be very careful not to miss that train. Good-evening. I am sorry to have been compelled to thrash you, but I must admit I have enjoyed it exceedingly."
Then he went back into the garden.
V
IN the shadow of a white lilac-bush, Colonel Mus- grave paused with an awed face.
"Good Lord!" said he, aghast at the notion; "what would Agatha say if she knew I had been fighting like a drunken truck-driver ! Or, rather, what would she refrain from saying! Only, she wouldn't believe it of me. And, for the matter of that," Ru- dolph Musgrave continued, after a moment's reflec- tion, "I wouldn't have believed it of myself a week ago. I think I am changing, somehow. A week ago I would have fetched in the police and sworn out a warrant; and, if the weather had been as damp as it is, I would have waited to put on my rubbers before I would have done that much."
66
VI
HE found her still in the summer-house, ex- pectant of him, it seemed, her lips parted, her eyes glowing. Rudolph Musgrave, look- ing down into twin vivid depths, for a breathing-space, found time to rejoice that he had refused to liken them to stars. Stars, forsooth ! — and, pray, what pal- try sun, what irresponsible comet, what pallid, clink- ered satellite, might boast a purple splendor such as this? For all asterial scintillations, at best, had but a clap-trap glitter; whereas the glow of Patricia's eyes was a matter worthy of really serious attention.
"What have you done with him, Olaf?" the girl breathed, quickly.
"I reasoned with him," said Colonel Musgrave. "Oh, I found him quite amenable to logic. He is leaving Lichfield this evening, I think."
Thereupon Miss Stapylton began to laugh. "Yes/* said she, "you must have remonstrated very feelingly. Your tie's all crooked, Olaf dear, and your hair's all rumpled, and there's dust all over your coat. You would disgrace a rag-bag. Oh, I'm glad you reasoned
THE RIVET IN
— that way! It wasn't dignified, but it was dear of you, Olaf. Pevensey' s a beast."
He caught his breath at this. "Pevensey !" he stam- mered; "the Earl of Pevensey! — the man you are go- ing to marry!"
"Dear me, no !" Miss Stapylton answered, with ut- most unconcern ; "I would sooner marry a toad. Why, didn't you know, Olaf? I thought, of course, you knew you had been introducing athletics and better manners among the peerage ! That sounds like a bill in the House of Commons, doesn't it?" Then Miss Stapylton laughed again, and appeared to be in a state of agreeable, though somewhat nervous, elation. "I wrote to him two days ago," she afterward ex- plained, "breaking off the engagement.. So he came down at once and was very nasty about it."
"You — you have broken your engagement," he echoed, dully ; and continued, with a certain deficiency of finesse, "But I thought you wanted to be a coun- tess?"
"Oh, you boor, you vulgarian !" the girl cried. "Oh, you do put things so crudely, Olaf! You are hope- less."
She shook an admonitory forefinger in his direc- tion, and pouted in the most dangerous fashion.
"But he always seemed so nice," she reflected, with puckered brows, "until to-day, you know. I thought he would be eminently suitable. I liked him tremen- dously until — " and here, a wonderful, tender change came into her face, a wistful quaver woke in her 68
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voice — "until I found there was some one else I liked better."
"Ah!" said Rudolph Musgrave.
So, that was it — yes, that was it! Her head was bowed now — her glorious, proud little head, — and she sat silent, an abashed heap of fluffy frills and ruffles, a tiny bundle of vaporous ruchings and filmy tucks and suchlike vanities, in the green dusk of the sum- mer-house.
But he knew. He had seen her face grave and ten- der in the twilight, and he knew.
She loved some man — some lucky devil! Ah, yes, that was it! And he knew the love he had unwit- tingly spied upon to be august; the shamed exultance of her face and her illumined eyes, the crimson ban- ners her cheeks had flaunted, — these were to Colonel Musgrave as a piece of sacred pageantry; and before it his misery was awed, his envy went posting to extinction.
Thus the stupid man reflected, and made himself very unhappy over it.
Then, after a little, the girl threw back her head and drew a deep breath, and flashed a tremulous smile at him.
"Ah, yes," said she ; "there are better things in life than coronets, aren't there, Olaf?"
You should have seen how he caught up the word !
"Life!" he cried, with a bitter thrill of speech; "ah, what do I know of life? I am only a recluse, a dreamer, a visionary! You must learn of life from
69
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
the men who have lived, Patricia. I haven't ever lived. I have always chosen the coward's part. I have chosen to shut myself off from the world, to posture in a village all my days, and to consider its trifles as of supreme importance. I have affected to scorn that brave world yonder where a man is proven. And, all the while, I was afraid of it, I think. I was afraid of you before you came."
At the thought of this Rudolph Musgrave laughed as he fell to pacing up and down before her.
"Life!" he cried, again, with a helpless gesture; and then smiled at her, very sadly. " 'Didn't I know there was something better in life than grubbing after musty tribes and customs and folk-songs ?' ' he quoted. "Why, what a question to ask of a profes- sional genealogist! Don't you realize, Patricia, that the very bread I eat is, actually, earned by the achieve- ments of people who have been dead for centuries? and in part, of course, by tickling the vanity of living snobs? That constitutes a nice trade for an able- bodied person as long as men are paid for emptying garbage-barrels — now, doesn't it? And yet it is not altogether for the pay's sake I do it," he added, halt- ingly. "There really is a fascination about the work. You are really working out a puzzle, — like a fellow solving a chess-problem. It isn't really work, it is amusement. And when you are establishing a royal descent, and tracing back to czars and Plantagenets and Merovingians, and making it all seem perfectly plausible, the thing is sheer impudent, flagrant art, 70
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and you are the artist " He broke off here and
shrugged. "No, I could hardly make you understand. It doesn't matter. It is enough that I have bartered youth and happiness and the very power of living for the privilege of grubbing in old county records."
He paused. It is debatable if he had spoken wisely, or had spoken even in consonance with fact, but his outburst had, at least, the saving grace of sincerity. He was pallid now, shaking in every limb, and in his heart was a dull aching. She seemed so incredibly soft and little and childlike, as she looked up at him with troubled eyes.
"I — I don't quite understand," she murmured. "It
isn't as if you were an old man, Olaf. It isn't as jf »
But he had scarcely heard her. "Ah, child, child !" he cried, "why did you come to waken me? I was content in my smug vanities. I was content in my ignorance. I could have gone on contentedly grub- bing through my musty, sleepy life here, till death had taken me, if only you had not shown me what life might mean! Ah, child, child, why did you waken me?"
"I ?" she breathed ; and now the flush of her cheeks had widened, wondrously.
"You! you!" he cried, and gave a wringing mo- tion of his hands, for the self-esteem of a compla- cent man is not torn away without agony. "Who else but you? I had thought myself brave enough to be silent, but still I must play the coward's part!
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
That woman I told you of — that woman I loved — was you! Yes, you, you!" he cried, again and again, in a sort of frenzy.
And then, on a sudden, Colonel Musgrave began to laugh.
"It is very ridiculous, isn't it?" he demanded of her. "Yes, it is very — very funny. Now comes the time to laugh at me! Now comes the time to lift your brows, and to make keen arrows of your eyes, and of your tongue a little red dagger! I have dreamed of this moment many and many a time. So laugh, I say! Laugh, for I have told you that I love you. You are rich, and I am a pauper — you are young, and I am old, remember, — and I love you, who love another man! For the love of God, laugh at me and have done — laugh ! for, as God lives, it is the bravest jest I have ever known!"
But she came to him, with a wonderful gesture of compassion, and caught his great, shapely hands in hers.
"I — I knew you cared," she breathed. "I have al- ways known you cared. I would have been an idiot if I hadn't. But, oh, Olaf, I didn't know you cared so much. You frighten me, Olaf," she pleaded, and raised a tearful face to his. "I am very fond of you, Olaf dear. Oh, don't think I am not fond of you." And the girl paused for a breathless moment. "I think I might have married you, Olaf," she said, half- wistfully, "if — if it hadn't been for one thing."
Rudolph Musgrave smiled now, though he found 72
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it a difficult business. "Yes," he assented, gravely, "I know, dear. If it were not for the other man — that lucky devil ! Yes, he is a very, very lucky devil, child, and he constitutes rather a big 'if/ doesn't he ?"
Miss Stapylton, too, smiled a little. "No," said she, "that isn't quite the reason. The real reason is, as I told you yesterday, that I quite fail to see how you can expect any woman to marry you, you jay- bird, if you won't go to the trouble of asking her to do so."
And, this time, Miss Stapylton did not go into the house.
VII
WHEN they went in to supper, they had planned to tell Miss Agatha of their earth- staggering secret at once. But the colonel comprehended, at the first glimpse of his sister, that the opportunity would be ill-chosen.
The meal was an awkward half -hour. Miss Aga- tha, from the head of the table, did very little talk- ing, save occasionally to evince views of life that were both lachrymose and pugnacious. And the lov- ers talked with desperate cheerfulness, so that there might be no outbreak so long as Pilkins — preeminently ceremonious among butlers, and as yet inclined to scoff at the notion that the Musgraves of Matocton were not divinely entrusted to his guardianship, — was in the room.
Coming so close upon the heels of his high hour, this contretemps of Agatha's having one of ner "at- tacks," seemed more to Rudolph Musgrave than a man need rationally bear with equanimity. Perhaps it was a trifle stiffly that he said he did not care for any raspberries. 74
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His sister burst into tears.
"That's all the thanks I get. I slave my life out, and what thanks do I get for it? I never have any pleasure, I never put my foot out of the house ex- cept to go to market, — and what thanks do I get for it? That's what I want you to tell me with the first raspberries of the season. That's what I want! Oh, I don't wonder you can't look me in the eye. And I wish I was dead! that's what I wish!"
Colonel Musgrave did not turn at once toward Patricia, when his sister had stumbled, weeping, from the dining-room.
"I — I am so sorry, Olaf," said a remote and tiny voice.
Then he touched her hand with his finger-tips, ever so lightly. "You must not worry about it, dear. I daresay I was unpardonably brusque. And Agatha's health is not good, so that she is a trifle irritable at times. Why, good Lord, we have these little set-to's ever so often, and never give them a thought after- wards. That is one of the many things the future Mrs. Musgrave will have to get accustomed to, eh? Or does that appalling prospect frighten you too much?"
And Patricia brazenly confessed that it did not. She also made a face at him, and accused Rudolph Musgrave of trying to crawl out of marrying her, which proceeding led to frivolities unnecessary to record, but found delectable by the participants.
VIII
COLONEL MUSGRAVE was alone. He had lifted his emptied coffee-cup and he swished the lees gently to and fro. He was curiously intent upon these lees, considered them in the light of a symbol. . . .
Then a comfortable, pleasant- faced mulattress came to clear the supper-table. Virginia they called her. Virginia had been nurse in turn to all the chil- dren of Rudolph Musgrave's parents; and to the end of her life she appeared to regard the emancipa- tion of the South's negroes as an irrelevant vagary of certain "low-down" and probably "ornery" Yan- kees— as an, in short, quite eminently "tacky" pro- ceeding which very certainly in no way affected her vested right to tyrannize over the Musgrave house- hold.
"Virginia," said Colonel Musgrave, "don't forget to make up a fire in the kitchen-stove before you go to bed. And please fill the kettle before you go upstairs, and leave it on the stove. Miss Agatha is not well to-night."
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"Yaas, suh. I unnerstan', suh," Virginia said, se- dately.
Virginia filled her tray, and went away quietly, her pleasant yellow face as imperturbable as an idol's.
77
PART THREE TERTIUS
"It is in many ways made plain to us That love must grow like any common things, Root, bud, and leaf, ere ripe for garnering The mellow fruitage front us; even thus Must Helena encounter Theseus Ere Paris come, and every century Spawn divers queens who die with Antony But live a great while first with Julius.
"Thus I have spoken the prologue of a play Wherein I have no part, and laugh, and sit Contented in the wings, whilst you portray An amorous maid with gestures that befit This lovely role, — as who knows better, pray, Than I that helped you in rehearsing it?"
Civic Voluntaries,
WHEN the Presidential campaign was at its height; when in various sections of the United States "the boy orator of La Platte" was making invidious remarks concerning the Republican Party, and in Canton (Ohio) Mr. M. A. Hanna was cheerfully expressing his confidence as to the outcome of it all ; when the Czar and the Czarina were visiting President Faure in Paris "amid unparal- leled enthusiasm"; and when semi-educated people were appraising, with a glibness possible to ignorance only, the literary achievements of William Morris and George du Maurier, who had just died: — at this re- mote time, Roger Stapylton returned to Lichfield.
For in that particular October Patricia's father, an accommodating physician having declared old Roger Stapylton's health to necessitate a Southern sojourn, leased the Bellingham mansion in Lichfield. It hap- pened that, by rare good luck, Tom Bellingham — of the Bellinghams of Assequin, not the Bellinghams of Bellemeade, who indeed immigrated after the War of 1812 and have never been regarded as securely
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THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
established from a social standpoint, — was at this time in pecuniary difficulties on account of having signed another person's name to a cheque.
Roger Stapylton refurnished the house in the ex- treme degree of Lichfieldian elegance. Colonel Mus- grave was his mentor throughout the process ; and the oldest families of Lichfield very shortly sat at table with the former overseer, and not at all un- willingly, since his dinners were excellent and an in- fatuated Rudolph Musgrave — an axiom now in plan- ning any list of guests, — was very shortly to marry the man's daughter.
In fact, the matter had been settled; and Colonel Musgrave had received from Roger Stapylton an ex- uberantly granted charter of courtship.
This befell, indeed, upon a red letter day in Roger Stapyl ton's life. The banker was in business matters wonderfully shrewd, as divers transactions, since the signing of that half -forgotten contract whereby he was to furnish a certain number of mules for the Confederate service, strikingly attested : but he had rarely been out of the country wherein his mother bore him; and where another nabob might have dreamed of an earl, or even have soared aspiringly in imagination toward a marchioness-ship for his only child, old Stapylton retained unshaken faith in the dust-gathering creed of his youth.
He had tolerated Pevensey, had indeed been pre- pared to purchase him much as he would have ordered any other expensive trinket or knickknack which Pa- 62
T E R T I U S
tricia desired. But he had never viewed the match with enthusiasm.
Now, though, old Stapylton exulted. His daughter — half a Vartrey already — would become by marriage a Musgrave of Matocton, no less. Pat's carriage would roll up and down the oak-shaded avenue from which he had so often stepped aside with an uncov- ered head, while gentlemen and ladies cantered by; and it would be Pat's children that would play about the corridors of the old house at whose doors he had lived so long, — those awe-inspiring corridors, which he had very rarely entered, except on Christmas Day and other recognized festivities, when, dressed to the nines, the overseer and his uneasy mother were by immemorial custom made free of the mansion, with every slave upon the big plantation.
"They were good days, sir/' he chuckled. "Heh, we'll stick to the old customs. We'll give a dinner and announce it at dessert, just as your honored grandfather did your Aunt Cojnstantia's betrothal — "
For about the Musgraves of Matocton there could be no question. It was the old man's delight to induce Rudolph Musgrave to talk concerning his ancestors; and Stapylton soon had their history at his finger-tips. He could have correctly blazoned every tincture in their armorial bearings and have explained the origin of every rampant, counter-changed or couchant beast upon the shield.
He knew it was the Bond Nova in the November of 1619, — for the first Musgrave had settled in Vir-
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
ginia, prior to his removal to Lichfield, — which had the honor of transporting the forebear of this family into America. Stapylton could have told you offhand which scions of the race had represented this or that particular county in the House of Burgesses, and even for what years ; which three of them were Gov- ernors, and which of them had served as officers of the State Line in the Revolution; and, in fine, was more than satisfied to have his daughter play Penelophon to Colonel Musgrave's debonair mature Cophetua.
In a word, Roger Stapylton had acquiesced to the transferal of his daughter's affections with the pe- culiar equanimity of a properly reared American par- ent. He merely stipulated that, since his business af- fairs prevented an indefinite stay in Lichfield, Colonel Musgrave should presently remove to New York City, where the older man held ready for him a purely ornamental and remunerative position with the Insur- ance Company of which Roger Stapylton was presi- dent.
But upon this point Rudolph Musgrave was obdu- rate.
He had voiced, and with sincerity, as you may re- member, his desire to be proven upon a larger stage than Lichfield afforded. Yet the sincerity was bred of an emotion it did not survive. To-day, uncon- sciously, Rudolph Musgrave was reflecting that he was used to living in Lichfield, and would appear to disadvantage in a new surrounding, and very prob- ably would not be half so comfortable.
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T E RT I U S
Aloud he said, in firm belief that he spoke truth- fully: "I cannot conscientiously give up the Library, sir. I realize the work may not seem important in your eyes. Indeed, in anybody's eyes it must seem an inadequate outcome of a man's whole life. But it unfortunately happens to be the only kind of work I am capable of doing. And — if you will pardon me, sir, — I do not think it would be honest for me to accept this generous salary and give nothing in re- turn."
But here Patricia broke in.
Patricia agreed with Colonel Musgrave in every particular. Indeed, had Colonel Musgrave proclaimed his intention of setting up in life as an assassin, Pa- tricia would readily have asserted homicide to be the most praiseworthy of vocations. As it was, she de- voted no little volubility and emphasis and eulogy to the importance of a genealogist in the eternal scheme of things; and gave her father candidly to understand that an inability to appreciate this fact was necessarily indicative of a deplorably low order of intelligence.
Musgrave was to remember — long afterward — how glorious and dear this brightly-colored, mettlesome and tiny woman had seemed to him in the second display of temper he witnessed in Patricia. It was a revelation of an additional and as yet unsuspected adorability.
Her father, though, said : "Pat, I've suspected for a long time it was foolish of me to have a red-haired
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THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
daughter." Thus he capitulated, — and with an in- effable air of routine.
Colonel Musgrave was, in a decorous fashion, the happiest of living persons.
86
II
COLONEL MUSGRAVE was, in a decorous fashion, the happiest of living persons. . . . As a token of this he devoted what little ready money he possessed to renovating Matocton, where he had not lived for twenty years. He rarely thought of money, not esteeming it an altogether suit- able subject for a gentleman's meditations. And to do him justice, the reflection that old Stapylton's wealth would some day be at Rudolph Musgrave's disposal was never more than an agreeable minor feature of Patricia's entourage whenever, as was very often, Colonel Musgrave fell to thinking of how ador- able Patricia was in every particular.
Yet there were times when he thought of Anne Charteris as well. He had not seen her for a whole year now, for the Charterises had left Lichfield shortly after the Pendomer divorce case had been set- tled, and were still in Europe.
This was the evening during which Roger Stapyl- ton had favorably received his declaration; and Colonel Musgrave was remembering the time that he
8*
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
and Anne had last spoken with a semblance of in- timacy— that caustic time when Anne Charteris had interrupted him in high words with her husband, and circumstances had afforded to Rudolph Musgrave no choice save to confess, to this too-perfect woman, of all created beings, his "true relations" with Clarice Pendomer.
Even as yet the bitterness of that humiliation was not savorless. . . .
It seemed to him that he could never bear to think of the night when Anne had heard his stammerings through, and had merely listened, and in listening had been unreasonably beautiful. So Godiva might have looked on Peeping Tom, with more of wonder than of loathing, just at first. . . .
It had been very hard to bear. But it seemed necessary. The truth would have hurt Anne too much. . . .
He noted with the gusto of a connoisseur how neatly the denouement of this piteous farce had been prepared. His rage with Charteris ; Anne's overhear- ing, and misinterpretation of, a dozen angry words; that old affair with Clarice — immediately before her marriage (one of how many pleasurable gallantries? the colonel idly wondered, and regretted that he had no Leporello to keep them catalogued for consul- tation)— and George Pendomer's long-smoldering jealousy of Rudolph Musgrave : all fitted in as neatly as the bits of a puzzle.
It had been the simplest matter in the world to
T E RT I U S
shield John Charteris. Yet, the colonel wished he could be sure it was an unadulterated desire of pro- tecting Anne which had moved him. There had been very certainly an enjoyment all the while in reflect- ing how nobly Rudolph Musgrave was behaving for the sake of "the only woman he had ever loved." Yes, one had undoubtedly phrased it thus — then, and until the time one met Patricia.
But Anne was different, and in the nature of things must always be a little different, from all other peo- ple— even Patricia Stapylton.
Always in reverie the colonel would come back to this, — that Anne could not be thought of, quite, in the same frame of mind wherein one appraised other persons. Especially must he concede this curious cir- cumstance whenever, as to-night, he considered divers matters that had taken place quite long enough ago to have been forgotten.
It was a foolish sort of a reverie, and scarcely worth the setting down. It was a reverie of the kind that everyone, and especially everyone's wife, admits to be mawkish and unprofitable; and yet, somehow, the next still summer night, or long sleepy Sunday after- noon, or, perhaps, some cheap, jigging and heart- breaking melody, will set a carnival of old loves and old faces awhirl in the brain. One grows very sad over it, of course, and it becomes apparent that one has always been ill-treated by the world ; but the sad- ness is not unpleasant, and one is quite willing to for- give.
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Yes, — it was a long, long time ago. It must have been a great number of centuries. Matocton was decked in its spring fripperies of burgeoning, and the sky was a great, pale turquoise, and the buttercups left a golden dust high up on one's trousers. One had not become entirely accustomed to long trousers then, and one was rather proud of them. One was lying on one's back in the woods, where the birds were astir and eager to begin their house-building, and twittered hysterically over the potentialities of straws and broken twigs.
Overhead, the swelling buds of trees were visi- ble against the sky, and the branches were like gro- tesque designs on a Japanese plate. There was a little clump of moss, very cool and soft, that just brushed one's cheek.
One was thinking — really thinking — for the first time in one's life; and, curiously enough, one was thinking about a girl, although girls were manifestly of no earthly importance.
But Anne Willoughby was different. Even at the age when girls seemed feckless creatures, whose aim- ings were inexplicable, both as concerned existence in general, and, more concretely, as touched gravel- shooters and snowballs, and whose reasons for burst- ing into tears were recondite, one had perceived the difference. One wondered about it from time to time.
Gradually, there awoke an uneasy self-conscious interest as to all matters that concerned her, a mental 90
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pricking up of the ears when her name was men- tioned.
One lay awake o' nights, wondering why her hair curled so curiously about her temples, and held such queer glowing tints in its depths when sunlight fell upon it. One was uncomfortable and embarrassed and Briar ean-handed in her presence, but with her absence came the overwhelming desire of seeing her again.
After a little, it was quite understood that one was in love with Anne Willoughby. . . .
It was a matter of minor importance that her father was the wealthiest man in Fairhaven, and that one's mother was poor. One would go away into foreign lands after a while, and come back with a great deal of money, — laks of rupees and pieces of eight, prob- ably. It was very simple.
But Anne's father had taken an unreasonable view of the matter, and carried Anne off to a terrible aunt, who returned one's letters unopened. That was the end of Anne Willoughby.
Then, after an interval — during which one fell in and out of love assiduously, and had upon the whole a pleasant time, — Anne Charteris had come to Lich- field. One had found that time had merely added poise and self-possession and a certain opulence to the beauty which had caused one's voice to play fan- tastic tricks in conference with Anne Willoughby, — • ancient, unforgotten conferences, wherein one had pointed out the many respects in which she differed
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
from all other women, and the perfect feasibility of marrying on nothing a year.
Much as one loved Patricia, and great as was one's happiness, men did not love as boys did, after all. . . .
" 'Ah, Boy, it is a dream for life too high/ " said Colonel Musgrave, in his soul. "And now let's think of something sensible. Let's think about the present political crisis, and what to give the groomsmen, and how much six times seven is. Meanwhile, you are not the fellow in Aux Italiens, you know; you are not bothered by the faint, sweet smell of any foolish jasmine-flower, you understand, or by any equally foolish hankerings after your lost youth. You are simply a commonplace, every-day sort of man, not thoroughly hardened as yet to being engaged, and you are feeling a bit pulled down to-night, because your liver or something is out of sorts."
Upon reflection, Colonel Musgrave was quite sure that he was happy; and that it was only his liver or something which was upset. But, at all events, the colonel's besetting infirmity was always to shrink from making changes; instinctively he balked against com- mission of any action which would alter his relations with accustomed circumstances or persons. It was very like Rudolph Musgrave that even now, for all the glow of the future's bright allure, his heart should hark back to the past and its absurd dear memories, with wist fulness.
And he found it, as many others have done, but cheerless sexton's work, this digging up of boyish 92
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recollections. One by one, they come to light — the brave hopes and dreams and aspirations of youth ; the ruddy life has gone out of them; they have shriveled into an alien, pathetic dignity. They might have been one's great-grandfather's or Hannibal's or Adam's; the boy whose life was swayed by them is quite as dead as these.
Amaryllis is dead, too. Perhaps, you drop in of an afternoon to talk over old happenings. She is perfectly affable. She thinks it is time you were married. She thinks it very becoming, the way you have stoutened. And, no, they weren't at the Robin- sons'; that was the night little Amaryllis was threat- ened with croup.
Then, after a little, the lamps of welcome are lighted in her eyes, her breath quickens, her cheeks mount crimson flags in honor of her lord, her hero, her con- queror.
It is Mr. Grundy, who is happy to meet: you, and hopes you will stay to dinner. He patronizes you a trifle; his wife, you see, has told him all about that boy who is as dead as Hannibal. You don't mind in the leastj you dine with Mr. and Mrs. Grundy, and pass a very pleasant evening.
Colonel Musgrave had dined often with the Char- terises.
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Ill
AND then some frolic god, en route from homi- cide by means of an unloaded pistol in Chi- cago for the demolishment of a likely ship off Palos, with the cooperancy of a defective piston- rod, stayed in his flight to bring Joe Parkinson to Lichfield.
It was Roger Stapylton who told the colonel of this advent, as the very apex of jocularity.
"For you remember the Parkinsons, I suppose?"
"The ones that had a cabin near Matocton? Very deserving people, I believe."
"And their son, sir, wants to marry my daugh- ter," said Mr. Stapylton, — "my daughter, who is shortly to be connected by marriage with the Mus- graves of Matocton! I don't know what this world will come to next."
It was a treat to see him shake his head in depre- cation of such anarchy.
Then Roger Stapylton said, more truculently : "Yes, sir! on account of a boy-and-girl affair five years ago, this half-strainer, this poor-white trash, has actually 94
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had the presumption, sir, — but I don't doubt that Pat has told you all about it?"
"Why, no," said Colonel Musgrave. "She did not mention it this afternoon. She was not feeling very -veil. A slight headache. I noticed she was not in- clined to conversation."
It had just occurred to him, as mildly remarkable, that Patricia had never at any time alluded to any one of those countless men who must have inevitably made love to her.
"Though, mind you, I don't say anything against Joe. He's a fine young fellow. Paid his own way through college. Done good work in Panama and in Alaska too. But — confound it, sir, the boy's a fool! Now I put it to you fairly, ain't he a fool?" said Mr. Stapylton.
"Upon my word, sir, if his folly has no other proof than an adoration of your daughter," the colonel protested, "I must in self-defense beg leave to differ with you."
Yes, that was it undoubtedly. Patricia had too high a sense of honor to exhibit these defeated rivals in a ridiculous light, even to him. It was a revela- tion of an additional and as yet unsuspected ador- ability.
Then after a little further talk they separated. Colonel Musgrave left that night for Matocton in or- der to inspect the improvements which were being made there. He was to return to Lichfield on the ensuing Wednesday, when his engagement to Patricia
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THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHERS NECK
was to be announced — "just as your honored grand- father did your Aunt Constantia's betrothal."
Meanwhile Joe Parkinson, a young man much enamored, who fought the world by ordinary like Hal o' the Wynd, "for his own hand," was seeing Pa- tricia every day.
IV
COLONEL MUSGRAVE remained five days at Matocton, that he might put his house in order against his nearing marriage. It was a pleasant sight to see the colonel stroll about the pan- eled corridors and pause to chat with divers defer- ential workmen who were putting the last touches there, or to observe him mid-course in affable con- sultation with gardeners anent the rolling of a lawn or the retrimming of a rosebush, and to mark the bearing of the man so optimistically colored by good- will toward the solar system.
He joyed in his old home, — in the hipped roof of it, the mullioned casements, the wide window-seats, the high and spacious rooms, the geometrical gardens and broad lawns, in all that was quaint and beautiful at Matocton, — because it would be Patricia's so very soon, the lovely frame of a yet lovelier picture, as the colonel phrased it with a flight of imagery.
Gravely he inspected all the portraits of his femi- nine ancestors that he might decide, as one without bias, whether Matocton had ever boasted a more de-
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THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
lectable mistress. Equity — or in his fond eyes at least, — demanded a negative. Only in one of these can- vases, a counterfeit of Miss Evelyn Ramsay, born a Ramsay of Blenheim, that had married the common great-great-grandfather of both the colonel and Pa- tricia— Major Orlando Musgrave, an aide-de-camp to General Charles Lee in the Revolution, — Rudolph Musgrave found, or seemed to find, dear likenesses to that demented seraph who was about to stoop to his unworthiness.
He spent much time before this portrait. Yes, yes ! this woman had been lovely in her day. And this bright, roguish shadow of her was lovely, too, eternally postured in white patnet, trimmed with a vine of rose- colored satin leaves, a pink rose in her powdered hair and a huge ostrich plume as well.
Yet it was an adamantean colonel that remarked:
"My dear, perhaps it is just as fortunate as not that you have quitted Matocton. For I have heard tales of you, Miss Ramsay. Oh, no ! I honestly do not believe that you would have taken kindlily to any young per- son— not even in the guise of a great-great-grand- daughter,— to whom you cannot hold a candle, madam. A fico for you, madam," said the most un- dutiful of great-great-grandsons.
Let us leave him to his roseate meditations. Ques- tionless, in the woman he loved there was much of his own invention: but the circumstance is not unhack- neyed; and Colonel Musgrave was in a decorous fashion the happiest of living persons.
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T E RT I U S
Meanwhile Joe Parkinson, a young man much en- amored, who fought the world by ordinary, like Hal o' the Wynd "for his own hand," was seeing Pa- tricia every day.
99
V
JOE PARKINSON— tall and broad-shouldered, tanned, resolute, chary of speech, decisive in gesture, having close-cropped yellow hair and frank, keen eyes like amethysts, — was the one alien present when Colonel Musgrave came again into Roger Stapylton's fine and choicely- furnished man- sion.
This was on the evening Roger Stapylton gave the long-anticipated dinner at which he was to announce his daughter's engagement. As much indeed was sus- pected by most of his dinner-company, so carefully selected from the aristocracy of Lichfield; and the heart of the former overseer, as these handsome, courtly and sweet-voiced people settled according to their rank about his sumptuous table, was aglow with pride.
Then Rudolph Musgrave turned to his companion and said softly: "My dear, you are like a wraith. What is it?"
"I have a headache," said Patricia. "It is nothing."
"You reassure me," the colonel gaily declared, "for
I had feared it was a heartache "
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She faced him. Desperation looked out of her pur- ple eyes. "It is," the girl said swiftly.
"Ah ?" Only it was an intake of the breath,
rather than an interjection. Colonel Musgrave ate his fish with deliberation. "Young Parkinson?" he presently suggested.
"I thought I had forgotten him. I didn't know I
cared — I didn't know I could care so much " And
there was a note in her voice which thrust the poor colonel into an abyss of consternation.
"Remember that these people are your guests," he said, in perfect earnest.
" and I refused him this afternoon for the last
time, and he is going away to-morrow "
But here Judge Allardyce broke in, to tell Miss Stapylton of the pleasure with which he had nolle prosequied the case against Tom Bellingham.
"A son of my old schoolmate, ma'am," the judge explained. "A Bellingham of Assequin. Oh, indis- creet of course — but, God bless my soul! when were the Bellinghams anything else? The boy regretted it as much as anybody."
And she listened with almost morbid curiosity con- cerning the finer details of legal intricacy.
Colonel Musgrave was midcourse in an anecdote which the lady upon the other side of him found wickedly amusing.
He was very gay. He had presently secured the attention of the company at large, and held it through a good half -hour; for by common consent Rudolph
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Musgrave was at his best to-night, and Lichfield found his best worth listening to.
"Grinning old popinjay!" thought Mr. Parkinson; and envied him and internally noted, and with an un- holy fervor cursed, the adroitness of intonation and the discreetly modulated gesture with which the colo- nel gave to every point of his merry-Andrewing its precise value.
The colonel's mind was working busily on matters oddly apart from those of which he talked. He wanted this girl next to him — at whom he did not look. He loved her as that whippersnapper yonder was not capable of loving anyone. Young people had these fancies ; and they outlived them, as the colo- nel knew of his own experience. Let matters take their course unhindered, at all events by him. For it was less his part than that of any other man alive to interfere when Rudolph Musgrave stood within a finger's reach of, at worst, his own prosperity and happiness.
He would convey no note to Roger Stapylton. Let the banker announce the engagement. Let the young fellow go to the devil. Colonel Musgrave would marry the girl and make Patricia, at worst, content. To do otherwise, even to hesitate, would be the empti- est quixotism. . . .
Then came the fatal thought, "But what a gesture!" To fling away his happiness — yes, even his worldly fortune, — and to do it smilingly ! Patricia must, per- force, admire him all her life. 102
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Then as old Stapylton stirred in his chair and broke into a wide premonitory smile, Colonel Musgrave rose to his feet. And of that company Clarice Pendomer at least thought of how like he was to the boy who had fought the famous duel with George Pendomer some fifteen years ago.
Ensued a felicitous speech. Rudolph Musgrave was familiar with his audience. And therefore :
Colonel Musgrave alluded briefly to the pleasure he took in addressing such a gathering. He believed no other State in the Union could have afforded an as- sembly of more distinguished men and fairer women. But the fact was not unnatural ; they might recall the venerable saying that blood will tell? Well, it was their peculiar privilege to represent to-day that sturdy stock which, when this great republic was in the pangs of birth, had with sword and pen and oratory discom- fited the hirelings of England and given to history the undying names of several Revolutionary patriots, — all of whom he enumerated with the customary pause after each cognomen to allow for the customary applause.
And theirs, too, was the blood of those heroic men who fought more recently beneath the stars and bars, as bravely, he would make bold to say, as Leonidas at Thermopylae, in defense of their loved Southland. Right, he conceded, had not triumphed here. For hordes of brutal soldiery had invaded the fertile soil, the tempest of war had swept the land and left it deso- late. The South lay battered and bruised, and pros-
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trate in blood, the "Niobe of nations," as sad a vic- tim of ingratitude as King Lear.
The colonel touched upon the time when buzzards, in the guise of carpet-baggers, had battened upon the recumbent form; and spoke slightingly of divers per- sons of antiquity as compared with various Confed- erate leaders, whose names were greeted with approv- ing nods and ripples of polite enthusiasm.
But the South, and in particular the grand old Commonwealth which they inhabited, he stated, had not long sat among the ruins of her temples, like a sorrowing priestess with veiled eyes and a depressed soul, mourning for that which had been. Like the fabled Phcenix, she had risen from the ashes of her past. To-day she was once more to be seen in her hereditary position, the brightest gem in all that glo- rious galaxy of States which made America the envy of every other nation. Her battle-fields converted into building-lots, tall factories smoked where once a holocaust had flamed, and where cannon had roared you heard to-day the tinkle of the school-bell. Such progress was without a parallel.
Nor was there any need for him, he was assured, to mention the imperishable names of their dear home- land's poets and statesmen of to-day, the orators and philanthropists and prominent business-men who jos- tled one another in her splendid, new asphalted streets, since all were quite familiar to his audience, — as fa- miliar, he would venture to predict, as they would eventually be to the most cherished recollections of 104
T E RT I U S
Macaulay's prophesied New Zealander, when this no- torious antipodean should pay his long-expected visit to the ruins of St. Paul's.
In fine, by a natural series of transitions, Colonel Musgrave thus worked around to "the very pleasing duty with which our host, in view of the long and in- timate connection between our families, has seen fit to honor me" — which was, it developed, to announce the imminent marriage of Miss Patricia Stapylton and Mr. Joseph Parkinson.
It may conservatively be stated that everyone was surprised.
Old Stapylton had half risen, with a purple face.
The colonel viewed him with a look of bland inter- rogation.
There was silence for a heart-beat.
Then Stapylton lowered his eyes, if just because the laws of caste had triumphed, and in consequence his glance crossed that of his daughter, who sat mo- tionless regarding him. She was an unusually pretty girl, he thought, and he had always been inordinately proud of her. It was not pride she seemed to beg him muster now. Patricia through that moment was not the fine daughter the old man was sometimes half afraid of. She was, too, like a certain defiant per- son— oh, of an incredible beauty, such as women had not any longer ! — who had hastily put aside her bonnet and had looked at a young Roger Stapylton in much this fashion very long ago, because the minister was coming downstairs, and they would presently be man
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and wife, — provided always her pursuing brothers did not arrive in time. . . .
Old Roger Stapylton cleared his throat.
Old Roger Stapylton said, half sheepishly: "My foot's asleep, that's all. I beg everybody's pardon, I'm sure. Please go on" — he had come within an ace of saying "Mr. Rudolph," and only in the nick of time did he continue, "Colonel Musgrave."
So the colonel continued in time-hallowed form, with happy allusions to Mr. Parkinson's anterior suc- cess as an engineer before he came "like a young Lochinvar to wrest away his beautiful and popular fiancee from us faint-hearted fellows of Lichfield"; touched of course upon the colonel's personal com- minglement of envy and rage, and so on, as an old bachelor who saw too late what he had missed in life ; and concluded by proposing the health of the young couple.
This was drunk with all the honors.
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VI
UPON what Patricia said to the colonel in the drawing-room, what Joe Parkinson blurted out in the hall, and chief of all, what Roger Stapylton asseverated to Rudolph Musgrave in the library, after the other guests had gone, it is unneces- sary to dwell in this place. To each of these in various fashions did Colonel Musgrave explain such reasons as, he variously explained, must seem to any gentleman sufficient cause for acting as he had done; but most candidly, and even with a touch of eloquence, to Roger Stapylton.
"You are like your grandfather, sir, at times," the latter said, inconsequently enough, when the colonel had finished.
And Rudolph Musgrave gave a little bowing ges- ture, with an entire gravity. He knew it was the highest tribute that Stapylton could pay to any man.
"She's a daughter any father might be proud of," said the banker, also. He removed his cigar from his mouth and looked at it critically. "She's rather like her mother sometimes," he said carelessly. "Her
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mother made a runaway match, you may remember — Damn' poor cigar, this. But no, you wouldn't, I reckon. I had branched out into cotton then and had
a little place just outside of Chiswick "
So that, all in all, Colonel Musgrave returned home- ward not entirely dissatisfied.
108
VII
THE colonel sat for a long while before his fire that night. The room seemed less comforta- ble than he had ever known it. So many of his books and pictures and other furnishings had been already carried to Matocton that the walls were a little bare. Also there was a formidable pile of bills upon the table by him, — from contractors and upholsterers and furniture-houses, and so on, who had been con- cerned in the late renovation of Matocton, — the heralds of a host he hardly saw his way to dealing with.
He had flung away a deal of money that evening, with something which to him was dearer. Had you attempted to condole with him he would not have understood you.
"But what would you have had a gentleman do, sir?" Colonel Musgrave would have said, in real per- plexity.
Besides, it was, in fact, not sorrow that he felt, rather it was contentment, when he remembered the girl's present happiness; and what alone depressed
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the colonel's courtly affability toward the universe at large was the queer, horrible new sense of being some- how out of touch with yesterday's so comfortable world, of being outmoded, of being almost old.
"Eh, well!" he said; "I am of a certain age un- doubtedly."
By an odd turn the colonel thought of how his friends of his own class and generation had hon- estly admired the after-dinner speech which he had made that evening. And he smiled, but very tenderly, because they were all men and women whom he loved.
"The most of us have known each other for a long while. The most of us, in fact, are of a certain age. ... I think no people ever met the sorry problem that we faced. For we were born the masters of a leisured, ordered world; and by a tragic quirk of destiny were thrust into a quite new planet, where we were for a while the inferiors, and after that just the competitors of yesterday's slaves.
"We couldn't meet the new conditions. Oh, for the love of heaven, let us be frank, and confess that we have not met them as things practical go. We hadn't the training for it. A man who has not been taught to swim may rationally be excused for preferring to sit upon the bank; and should he elect to ornament his idleness with protestations that he is self -evidently an excellent swimmer, because once upon a time his progenitors were the only people in the world who had the slightest conception of how to perform a nata- no
T E RT I U S
torial masterpiece, the thing is simply human nature. Talking chokes nobody, worse luck.
"And yet we haven't done so badly. For the most part we have sat upon the bank our whole lives long. We have produced nothing — after all — which was ab- solutely earth-staggering; and we have talked a deal of claptrap. But meanwhile we have at least enhanced the comeliness of our particular sand-bar. We have lived a courteous and tranquil and independent life thereon, just as our fathers taught us. It may be — in the final outcome of things — that will be found an even finer pursuit than the old one of producing Presi- dents.
"Besides, we have produced ourselves. We have been gentlefolk in spite of all, we have been true even in our iniquities to the traditions of our race. No, I cannot assert that these traditions always square with ethics or even with the Decalogue, for we have added a very complex Eleventh Commandment con- cerning honor. And for the rest, we have defiantly embroidered life, and indomitably we have converted the commonest happening of life into a comely thing. We have been artists if not artizans."
There was upon the table a large photograph in sepia of Patricia Stapylton. He studied this now. She was very beautiful, he thought.
" 'Nor thou detain her vesture's hem* — — " said the colonel aloud. "Oh, that infernal Yankee understood, even though he was born in Boston!" And this as coming from a Musgrave of Matocton, may fairly be
in
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
considered as a sweeping tribute to the author of Give All to Love.
Colonel Musgrave was intent upon the portrait. ... So! she had chosen at last between himself and this young fellow, a workman born of workmen, who went about the world building bridges and canals and tunnels and such, in those far countries which were to Colonel Musgrave just so many gray or pink or fawn- colored splotches on the map. It seemed to Colonel Musgrave almost an allegory.
So Colonel Musgrave filled a glass with the famed Lafayette madeira of Matocton, and solemnly drank yet another toast. He loved to do, as you already know, that which was colorful.
"To this new South/' he said. "To this new South that has not any longer need of me or of my kind.
"To this new South! She does not gaze unwill- ingly, nor too complacently, upon old years, and dares concede that but with loss of manliness may any man encroach upon the heritage of a dog or of a trotting- horse, and consider the exploits of an ancestor to guarantee an innate and personal excellence.
"For to her all former glory is less a jewel than a touchstone, and with her portion of it daily she appraises her own doing, and without vain speech. And her high past she values now, in chief, as fit foundation of that edifice whereon she labors day by
day, and with augmenting strokes." * * *
And yet — "It may be he will serve you better. But, 112
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oh, it isn't possible that he should love you more than I," said Colonel Musgrave of Matocton.
The man was destined to remember that utterance — and, with the recollection, to laugh not altogether in either scorn or merriment.
PART FOUR APPRECIATION
"You have chosen; and I cry content thereto, And cry your pardon also, and am reproved In that I took you for a woman I loved Odd centuries ago, and would undo That curious error. Nay, your eyes are blue, Your speech is gracious, but you are not she, And I am older — and changed how utterly! — I am no longer I, you are not you.
"Time, destined as we thought but to befriend And guerdon love like ours, finds you beset With joys and griefs I neither share nor mend Who am a stranger; and we two are met Nor wholly glad nor sorry ; and the end Of too much laughter is a faint regret."
Sonnets for Elena.
NEXT morning Rudolph Musgrave found the world no longer an impassioned place, but simply a familiar habitation, — no longer the wrestling-ground of big emotions, indeed, but un- doubtedly a spot, whatever were its other pretensions to praise, wherein one was at home. He breakfasted on ham and eggs, in a state of tolerable equanimity; and mildly wondered at himself for doing it.
The colonel was deep in a heraldic design and was whistling through his teeth when Patricia came into the Library. He looked up, with the outlines of a frown vanishing like pencilings under the india-rub- ber of professional courtesy, — for he was denoting or at the moment, which is fussy work, as it consists ex- clusively of dots.
Then his chair scraped audibly upon the floor as he pushed it from him. It occurred to Rudolph Mus- grave after an interval that he was still half-way be- tween sitting and standing, and that his mouth was open. . . .
He could hear a huckster outside on Regis Avenue.
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The colonel never forgot the man was crying "Fresh oranges !"
"He kissed me, Olaf. Yes, I let him kiss me, even after he had asked me if he could. No sensible girl would ever do that, of course. And then I knew "
Patricia was horribly frightened.
"And afterwards the jackass-fool made matters worse by calling me 'his darling/ There is no more hateful word in the English language than 'darling/ It sounds like castor oil tastes, or a snail looks after you have put salt on him."
The colonel deliberated this information; and he appeared to understand.
"So Parkinson has gone the way of Pevensey, — • and of I wonder how many others ? Well, may Heaven be very gracious to us both!" he said. "For I am going to do it."
Then composedly he took up the telephone upon his desk and called Roger Stapylton.
"I want you to come at once to Dr. Rabbet's, — • yes, the rectory, next door to St. Luke's. Patricia and I are to be married there in half an hour. We are on our way to the City Hall to get the license now. . . . No, she might change her mind again, you see. ... I have not the least notion how it happened. I don't care. . . . Then you will have to be rude to him or else not see your only daughter married. . . . Kindly permit me to repeat, sir, that I don't care about that or anything else. And for the rest, Pa- tricia was twenty-one last December." 118
APPRECIATION
The colonel hung up the receiver. "And now/' he said, "we are going to the City Hall."
"Are you?" said Patricia, with courteous interest. "Well, my way lies uptown. I have to stop in at Greenberg's and get a mustard plaster for the par- rot."
He had his hat by this. "It isn't cool enough for me to need an overcoat, is it?"
"I think you must be crazy," she said, sharply.
"Of course I am. So I am going to marry you."
"Let me go ! Oh, and I had thought you were
a gentleman "
"I fear that at present I am simply masculine." He became aware that his hands, in gripping both her shoulders, were hurting the girl.
"Come now," he continued, "will you go quietly or will I have to carry you?"
She said, "And you would, too " She spoke in
wonder, for Patricia had glimpsed an unguessed Ru- dolph Musgrave.
His hands went under her arm-pits and he lifted her like a feather. He held her thus at arm's length.
"You — you adorable whirligig!" he laughed. "I am a stronger animal than you. It would be as easy for me to murder you as it would be for you to kill one of those flies on the window-pane. Do you quite understand that fact, Patricia?"
"Oh, but you are an idiot "
"In wanting you, my dear ?"
"Please put me down."
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She thoroughly enjoyed her helplessness. He saw it, long before he lowered her.
"Why, not so much in that," said Miss Stapylton, "because inasmuch as I am a woman of superlative charm, of course you can't help yourself. But how do you know that Dr. Rabbet may not be somewhere else, harrying a defenseless barkeeper, or superintend- ing the making of dress-shirt protectors for the Hot- tentots, or doing something else clerical, when we get to the rectory?"
After an irrelevant interlude she stamped her foot.
"I don't care what you say, I won't marry an athe- ist. If you had the least respect for his cloth, Olaf,
you would call him up and arrange Oh, well!
whatever you want to arrange — and permit me to powder my nose without being bothered, because I don't want people to think you are marrying a second helping to butter, and I never did like that Baptist man on the block above, anyhow. And besides," said Patricia, as with the occurrence of a new view-point, "think what a delicious scandal it will create !"
1 20
II
PATRICIA spoke the truth. By supper-time Lichfield had so industriously embroidered the Stapylton dinner and the ensuing marriage with hypotheses and explanations and unparented ru- mors that none of the participants in the affair but could advantageously have exchanged reputations with Benedict Arnold or Lucretia Borgia, had Lichfield be- lieved a tithe of what Lichfield was repeating.
A duel was of course anticipated between Mr. Parkinson and Colonel Musgrave, and the colonel in- deed offered, through Major Wadleigh, any satisfac- tion which Mr. Parkinson might desire.
The engineer, with garnishments of profanity, considered dueling to be a painstakingly-described absurdity and wished "the old popinjay" joy of his bargain.
Lichfield felt that only showed what came of treat- ing poor-white trash as your equals, and gloried in the Salutary moral.
121
Ill
MEANWHILE the two originators of so much Lichfieldian diversion were not unhappy.
But indeed it were irreverent even to try to express the happiness of their earlier married life. . . .
They were an ill-matched couple in so many ways that no long-headed person could conceivably have anticipated — in the outcome — more than decorous tol- erance of each other. For apart from the disparity in age and tastes and rearing, there was always the fact to be weighed that in marrying the only child of a wealthy man Rudolph Musgrave was making what Lichfield called "an eminently sensible match" — than which, as Lichfield knew, there is no more infallible recipe for discord.
In this case the axiom seemed, after the manner of all general rules, to bulwark itself with an exception. Colonel Musgrave continued to emanate an air of con- tentment which fell perilously short of fatuity; and that Patricia was honestly fond of him was evident to the most impecunious of Lichfield's bachelors.
True, curtains had been lifted, a little by a little. Patricia could hardly have told you at what exact 122
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moment it was that she discovered Miss Agatha — who continued of course to live with them — was a dipso- maniac. Very certainly Rudolph Musgrave was not Patricia's informant; it is doubtful if the colonel ever conceded his sister's infirmity in his most private meditations; so that Patricia found the cause of Miss Agatha's "attacks" to be an open secret of which everyone in the house seemed aware and of which by tacit agreement nobody ever spoke. It bewildered Pa- tricia, at first, to find that as concerned Lichfield at large any over-indulgence in alcohol by a member of the Musgrave family was satisfactorily accounted for by the matter-of-course statement that the Musgraves usually "drank," — just as the Allardyces notoriously perpetuated the taint of insanity, and the Townsends were proverbially unable "to let women alone," and the Vartreys were deplorably prone to dabble in liter- ature. These things had been for a long while just as they were to-day; and therefore (Lichfield esti- mated) they must be reasonable.
Then, too, Patricia would have preferred to have been rid of the old mulatto woman Virginia, because it was through Virginia that Miss Agatha furtively procured intoxicants. But Rudolph Musgrave would not consider Virginia's leaving. "Virginia's faithful- ness has been proven by too many years of faithful service" was the formula with which he dismissed the suggestion. . . . Afterward Patricia learned from Miss Agatha of the wrong that had been done Vir- ginia by Olaf's uncle, Senator Edward Musgrave, the
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THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
noted ante-bellum orator, and understood that Olaf — without, of course, conceding it to himself, because that was Olaf's way — was trying to make reparation. Patricia respected the sentiment, and continued to fret under its manifestation.
Miss Agatha also told Patricia of how the son of Virginia and Senator Musgrave had come to a disas- trous end — "lynched in Texas, I believe, only it may not have been Texas. And indeed when I come to think of it, I don't believe it was, because I know we first heard of it on a Monday, and Virginia couldn't do the washing that week and I had to send it out. And for the usual crime, of course. It simply shows you how much better off the darkies were before the War," Miss Agatha said.
Patricia refrained from comment, not being willing to consider the deduction strained. For love is a contagious infection; and loving Rudolph Musgrave so much, Patricia must perforce love any person whom he loved as conscientiously as she would have strangled any person with whom he had flirted.
And yet, to Patricia, it was beginning to seem that Patricia Musgrave was not living, altogether, in that Lichfield which John Charteris has made immortal — "that nursery of Free Principles" (according to the Lichfield Courier-Herald) "wherein so many states- men, lieutenants-general and orators were trained to further the faith of their fathers, to thrill the listen- ing senates, draft constitutions, and bruise the paws of the British lion." 124
IV
IT may be remembered that Lichfield had asked long ago, "But who, pray, are the Stapyltons?" It was characteristic of Colonel Musgrave that he went about answering the question without delay. The Stapletons — for "Stapylton" was a happy innova- tion of Roger Stapylton's dead wife — the colonel knew to have been farmers in Brummell County, and Brum- mell Courthouse is within an hour's ride, by rail, of Lichfield.
So hfe set about his labor of love.
And in it he excelled himself. The records of Brummell date back to 1750 and are voluminous; but Rudolph Musgrave did not overlook an item in any Will Book, or in any Orders of the Court, that per- tained, however remotely, to the Stapletons. Then he renewed his labors at the courthouse of the older county from which Brummell was formed in 1750, and through many fragmentary, evil-odored and un- indexed volumes indefatigably pursued the family's fortune back to the immigration of its American pro- genitor in 1619, — and, by the happiest fatality, upon
125
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
the same Bona Nova which enabled the first American Musgrave to grace the Colony of Virginia with his presence. It could no longer be said that the wife of a Musgrave of Matocton lacked an authentic and tol- erably ancient pedigree.
The colonel made a book of his Stapyltonian re- searches which he vaingloriously proclaimed to be the stupidest reading within the ample field of uninterest- ing printed English. Patricia was allowed to see no word of it until the first ten copies had come from the printer's, very splendid in green "art-vellum" and stamped with the Stapylton coat-of-arms in gold.
She read the book. "It is perfectly superb," was her verdict. "It is as dear as remembered kisses after death and as sweet as a plaintiff in a breach-of- promise suit. Only I would have preferred it served with a few kings and dukes for parsley. The Staple- tons don't seem to have been anything but perfectly respectable mediocrities."
The colonel smiled. At the bottom of his heart he shared Patricia's regret that the Stapylton pedigree was unadorned by a potentate, because nobody can stay unimpressed by a popular superstition, however crass the thing may be. But for all this, an appraisal of himself and his own achievements profusely showed high lineage is not invariably a guarantee of excel- lence ; and so he smiled and said :
"There are two ends to every stick. It was the Stapletons and others of their sort, rather than any soft-handed Musgraves, who converted a wilderness, 126
APPRECIATION
a little by a little, into the America of to-day. The task was tediously achieved, and without ostentation; and always the ship had its resplendent figure-head, as always it had its hidden, nay! grimy, engines, which propelled the ship. And, however direfully America may differ from Utopia, to have assisted in the making of America is no mean distinction. We Musgraves and our peers, I sometimes think, may pos- sibly have been just gaudy autumn leaves which hap- pened to lie in the path of a high wind. And to cut a gallant figure in such circumstances does not neces- sarily prove the performer to be a rara avis, even though he rides the whirlwind quite as splendidly as any bird existent."
Patricia fluttered, and as lightly and irresponsibly as a wren might have done, perched on his knee.
"No ! there is really something in heredity, after all. Now, you are a Musgrave in every vein of you. It always seems like a sort of flippancy for you to ap- pear in public without a stock and a tarnished gilt frame with most of the gilt knocked off and a cata- logue-number tucked in the corner." Patricia spoke without any regard for punctuation. "And I am so unlike you. I am only a Stapylton. I do hope you don't mind my being merely a Stapylton, Olaf , because if only I wasn't too modest to even think of alluding to the circumstance, I would try to tell you about the tiniest fraction of how much a certain ravishingly beautiful half -strainer loves you, Olaf, and the conse- quences would be deplorable."
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THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
"My dear " he began.
"Ouch!" said Patricia; "you are tickling me. You don't shave half as often as you used to, do you? No, nowadays you think you have me safe and don't have to bother about being attractive. If I had a music-box I could put your face into it and play all sorts of tunes, only I prefer to look at it. You are a slattern and a jay-bird and a joy forever. And be- sides, the first Stapleton seems to have blundered somehow into the House of Burgesses, so that en- titles me to be a Colonial Dame on my father's side, too, doesn't it, Olaf ?"
The colonel laughed. "Madam Vanity!" said he, "I repeat that to be descended of a line of czars or from a house of emperors is, at the worst, an empty braggartism, or, at best — upon the plea of heredity —a handy palliation for iniquity ; and to be descended of sturdy and honest and clean-blooded folk is beyond doubt preferable, since upon quite similar grounds it entitles one to hope that even now, 'when their genera- tion is gone, when their play is over, when their pano- rama is withdrawn in tatters from the stage of the world,' there may yet survive of them 'some few ac- tions worth remembering, and a few children who have retained some happy stamp from the disposition of their parents.' '
Patricia — with eyes widened in admiration at his rhetoric, — had turned an enticing shade of pink.
"I am glad of that," she said.
She snuggled so close he could not see her face now. 128
APPRECIATION
She was to all appearances attempting to twist the top-button from his coat.
"I am very glad that it entitles one to hope — about the children Because "
The colonel lifted her a little from him. He did not say anything. But he was regarding her half in wonder and one-half in worship.
She, too, was silent. Presently she nodded.
He kissed her as one does a very holy relic.
It was a moment to look back upon always. There was no period in Rudolph Musgrave's life when he could not look back upon this instant and exult be- cause it had been his.
* * *
Only, Patricia found out afterward, with an in- explicable disappointment, that her husband had not been talking extempore, but was freely quoting his "Compiler's Foreword" just as it figured in the printed book.
One judges this posturing, so inevitable of detection, to have been as significant of much in Rudolph Mus- grave as was the fact of its belated discovery charac- teristic of Patricia.
Yet she had read this book about her family from purely normal motives : first, to make certain how old her various cousins were ; secondly, to gloat over any traces of distinction such as her ancestry afforded; thirdly, to note with what exaggerated importance the text seemed to accredit those relatives she did not es- teem, and mentally to annotate each page with un-
129
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHERS NECK
printable events "which everybody knew about"; and fourthly, to reflect, as with a gush of steadily augment- ing love, how dear and how unpractical it was of Olaf to have concocted these date-bristling pages — so staunch and blind in his misguided gratitude toward those otherwise uninteresting people who had rendered possible the existence of a Patricia.
MATTERS went badly with Patricia in the en- suing months. Her mother's blood told here, as Colonel Musgrave saw with dis- quietude. He knew the women of his race had by ordinary been unfit for childbearing ; indeed, the daughters of this famous house had long, in a grim routine, perished, just as Patricia's mother had done, in their first maternal essay. There were many hide- ous histories the colonel could have told you of, un- meet to be set down, and he was familiar with this talk of pelvic anomalies which were congenital. But he had never thought of Patricia, till this, as being his kinswoman, and in part a Musgrave.
And even now the Stapylton blood that was in her pulled Patricia through long weeks of anguish. Sur- geons dealt with her very horribly in a famed North- ern hospital, whither she had been removed. By her obdurate request — and secretly, to his own preference, since it was never in his power to meet discomfort willingly — Colonel Musgrave had remained in Lich- field. Patricia knew that officious people would tell
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him her life could be saved only by the destruction of an unborn boy.
She never questioned her child would be a boy. She knew that Olaf wanted a boy.
"Oh, even more than he does me, daddy. And so he mustn't know, you see, until it is all over. Because Olaf is such an ill-informed person that he really believes he prefers me."
"Pat," her father inconsequently said, "I'm proud of you ! And — and, by God, if I want to cry, I guess I am old enough to know my own mind ! And I'll help you in this if you'll only promise not to die in spite of what these damn' doctors say, because you're mine, Pat, and so you realize a bargain is a bargain."
"Yes — I am really yours, daddy. It is just my crazy body that is a Musgrave," Patricia explained. "The real me is an unfortunate Stapylton who has somehow got locked up in the wrong house. It is not a desirable residence, you know, daddy. No modern improvements, for instance. But I have to live in it ! . . . Still, I have not the least intention of dying, and I solemnly promise that I won't."
So these two hoodwinked Rudolph Musgrave, and brought it about by subterfuge that his child was born. At most he vaguely understood that Patricia was hav- ing rather a hard time of it, and steadfastly drugged this knowledge by the performance of trivialities. He was eating a cucumber sandwich at the moment young Roger Musgrave came into the world, and by that action very nearly accomplished Patricia's death. 132
VI
AND the gods cursed Roger Stapylton with such a pride in, and so great a love for, his only grandson that the old man could hardly bear to be out of the infant's presence. He was frequently in Lichfield nowadays; and he renewed his demands that Rudolph Musgrave give up the exhaustively- particularized librarianship, so that "the little coot" would be removed to New York and all three of them be with Roger Stapylton always.
Patricia had not been well since little Roger's birth.
It was a peaked and shrewish Patricia, rather than Rudolph Musgrave, who fought out the long and obstinate battle with Roger Stapylton.
She was jealous at the bottom of her heart. She would not have anyone, not even her father, be too fond of what was preeminently hers; the world at large, including Rudolph Musgrave, was at liberty to adore her boy, as was perfectly natural, but not to meddle : and in fine, Patricia was both hysterical and vixenish whenever a giving up of the Library work was suggested.
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
The old man did not quarrel with her. And with Roger Stapylton's loneliness in these days, and the long thoughts it bred, we have nothing here to do. But when he died, stricken without warning, some five years after Patricia's marriage, his will was dis- covered to bequeath practically his entire fortune to little Roger Musgrave when the child should come of age ; and to Rudolph Musgrave, as Patricia's husband, what was a reasonable income when judged by Lich- field's unexacting standards rather than by Patricia's anticipations. In a word, Patricia found that she and the colonel could for the future count upon a little more than half of the income she had previously been allowed by Roger Stapylton.
"It isn't fair!" she said. "It's monstrous! And all because you were so obstinate about your pica- yune Library!"
"Patricia " he began.
"Oh, I tell you it's absurd, Olaf I The money logi- cally ought to have been left to me. And here I will have to come to you for every penny of my money. And Heaven knows I have had to scrimp enough to support us all on what I used to have — Olaf," Pa- tricia said, in another voice, "Olaf! why, what is it, dear?"
"I was reflecting," said Colonel Musgrave, "that, as you justly observe, both Agatha and I have been practically indebted to you for our support these past five years — • — "
134
VII
IT must be enregistered, not to the man's credit, but rather as a simple fact, that it was never within Colonel Musgrave's power to forget the incident immediately recorded.
He forgave ; when Patricia wept, seeing how leaden- colored his handsome face had turned, he forgave as promptly and as freely as he was learning to pardon the telling of a serviceable lie, or the perpetration of an occasional barbarism in speech, by Patricia. For he, a Musgrave of Matocton, had married a Sta- pylton ; he had begun to comprehend that their stand- ards were different, and that some daily conflict be- tween these standards was inevitable.
And besides, as it has been veraciously observed, the truth of an insult is the barb which prevents its retraction. Patricia spoke the truth: Rudolph Musgrave and all those rationally reliant upon Ru- dolph Musgrave for support, had lived for some five years upon the money which they owed to Patricia. He saw about him other scions of old families who accepted such circumstances blithely: but, he said, he
135
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
was a Musgrave of Matocton; and, he reflected, in the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed is necessarily very unhappy.
He did not mean to touch a penny of such moneys as Roger Stapylton had bequeathed to him; for the colonel considered — now — it was a man's duty per- sonally to support his wife and child and sister. And he vigorously attempted to discharge this obligation, alike by virtue of his salary at the Library, and by spasmodic raids upon his tiny capital, and — chief of all — by speculation in the Stock Market.
Oddly enough, his ventures were through a long while — for the most part — successful. Here he builded a desperate edifice whose foundations were his social talents; and it was with quaint self-abhor- rence he often noted how the telling of a smutty jest or the insistence upon a manifestly superfluous glass of wine had purchased from some properly tickled magnate a much desiderated "tip."
And presently these tips misled him. So the colonel borrowed from "Patricia's account."
And on this occasion he guessed correctly.
And then he stumbled upon such a chance for re- investment as does not often arrive. And so he bor- rowed a trifle more in common justice to Pa- tricia.
136
VIII
WHEN those then famous warriors, Colonel Gaynor and Captain Green, were obsti- nately fighting extradition in Quebec; when in Washington the Senate was wording a suit- able resolution wherewith to congratulate Cuba upon that island's brand-new independence ; and when Mes- sieurs Fitzsimmons and Jeffries were making amica- ble arrangements in San Francisco to fight for the world's championship: — at this remote time, in Chi- cago (on the same day, indeed, that in this very city Mr. S. E. Gross was legally declared the author of a play called Cyrano de Bergerac), the Sons of the Colonial Governors opened their tenth biennial conven- tion. You may depend upon it that Colonel Rudolph Musgrave represented the Lichfield chapter.
It was two days later the telegram arrived. It read:
Agatha very ill come to me roger in perfect health.
PATRICIA.
He noted how with Stapyltonian thrift Patricia telegraphed ten words precisely. . . .
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THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHERS NECK
And when he had reached home, late in the evening, the colonel, not having taken his bunch of keys with him, laid down his dress-suit case on the dark porch, and reached out one hand to the doorbell. He found it muffled with some flimsy, gritty fabric. He did not ring.
Upon the porch was a rustic bench. He sat upon it for a quarter of an hour — precisely where he had first talked with Agatha about Patricia's first coming to Lichfield. ... Once the door of a house across the street was opened, with a widening gush of amber light wherein he saw three women fitting wraps about them. One of them was adjusting a lace scarf above her hair.
"No, we're not a bit afraid — Just around the cor- ner, you know — Such a pleasant evening — • — " Their voices carried far in the still night.
Rudolph Musgrave was not thinking of anything.
Presently he went around through the side entrance, and thus came into the kitchen, where the old mulat- tress, Virginia, was sitting alone. The room was very hot. ... In Agatha's time supper would have been cooked upon the gas-range in the cellar, he reflected. . . . Virginia had risen and made as though to take his dress-suit case, her pleasant yellow face as im- perturbable as an idol's.
"No — don't bother, Virginia," said Colonel Mus- grave.
He met Patricia in the dining-room, on her way to the kitchen. She had not chosen — as even the most 138
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sensible of us will instinctively decline to do — to vex the quiet of a house wherein death was by ringing a bell.
Holding his hand in hers, fondling it as she talked, Patricia told how three nights before Miss Agatha had been "queer, you know," at supper. Patricia had not liked to leave her, but it was the night of the Woman's Club's second Whist Tournament. And Virginia had promised to watch Miss Agatha. And, anyhow, vMiss Agatha had gone to bed before Pa- tricia left the house, and anybody would have thought she was going to sleep all night. And, in fine, Pa- tricia's return at a drizzling half-past eleven had found Miss Agatha sitting in the garden, in her night-dress only, weeping over fancied grievances — and Virginia asleep in the kitchen. And Agatha had died that afternoon of pneumonia.
Even in the last half -stupor she was asking always when would Rudolph come? Patricia told him. . . .
Rudolph Musgrave did not say anything. With- out any apparent emotion he put Patricia aside, much as he did the dress-suit case which he had forgotten to lay down until Patricia had ended her recital.
He went upstairs — to the front room, Patricia's bedroom. Patricia followed him.
Agatha's body lay upon the bed, with a sheet over all. The undertaker's skill had arranged everything with smug and horrible tranquillity.
Rudolph Musgrave remembered he was forty-six years old ; and when in all these years had there been
139
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
a moment when Agatha — the real Agatha — had not known that what he had done was self -evidently cor- rect, because otherwise Rudolph would not have done it?
"I trust you enjoyed your whist-game, Patricia."
"Well, I couldn't help it. I'm not running a sani- tarium. I wasn't responsible for her eternal drink- ing."
The words skipped out of either mouth like gleeful little devils.
Then both were afraid, and both were as icily tran- quil as the thing upon the bed. You could not hear anything except the clock upon the mantel. Colonel Musgrave went to the mantel, opened the clock, and with an odd deliberation removed the pendulum from its hook. Followed one metallic gasp, as of indig- nation, and then silence.
He spoke, still staring at the clock, his back turned to Patricia. "You must be utterly worn out. You had better go to bed."
He shifted by the fraction of an inch the old-fash- ioned "hand-colored" daguerreotype of his father in Confederate uniform. "Please don't wear that black dress again. It is no cause for mourning that we are rid of an encumbrance."
Behind him, very far away, it seemed, he heard Pa- tricia wailing, "Olaf !"
Colonel Musgrave turned without any haste. "Please go," he said, and appeared to plead with her. "You must be frightfully tired. I am sorry that I 140
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was not here. I seem always to evade my responsi- bilities, somehow "
Then he began to laugh. "It is rather amusing, after all. Agatha was the most noble person I have ever known. The — this habit of hers to which you have alluded was not a part of her. And I loved Agatha. And I suppose loving is not altogether de- pendent upon logic. In any event, I loved Agatha. And when I came back to her I had come home, somehow — wherever she might be at the time. That has been true, oh, ever since I can remember "
He touched the dead hand now. "Please go!" he said, and he did not look toward Patricia. "For Agatha loved me better than she did God, you know. The curse was born in her. She had to pay for what those dead, soft-handed Musgraves did. That is why her hands are so cold now. She had to pay for the privilege of being a Musgrave, you see. But then we cannot always pick and choose as to what we prefer to be."
"Oh, yes, of course, it is all my fault. Every- thing is my fault. But God knows what would have become of you and your Agatha if it hadn't been for me. Oh! oh!" Patricia wailed. "I was a child and I hadn't any better sense, and I married you, and you've been living off my money ever since! There hasn't been a Christmas present or a funeral wreath bought in this house since I came into it I didn't pick out and pay for out of my own pocket. And all the thanks I get for it is this perpetual fault-finding, and
141
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
I wish I was dead like this poor saint here. She spent her life slaving for you. And what thanks did she get for it? Oh, you ought to go down on your knees, Rudolph Musgrave — - — !"
"Please leave," he said.
"I will leave when I feel like it, and not a single minute before, and you might just as well under- stand as much. You have been living off my money. Oh, you needn't go to the trouble of lying. And she did too. And she hated me, she always hated me, because I had been fool enough to marry you, and she carried on like a lunatic more than half the time, and I always pretended not to notice it, and this is my reward for trying to behave like a lady."
Patricia tossed her head. "Yes, and you needn't look at me as if I were some sort of a bug you hadn't ever seen before and didn't approve of, because I've seen you try that high-and-mighty trick too often for it to work with me."
Patricia stood now beneath the Stuart portrait of young Gerald Musgrave. She had insisted, long ago, that it be hung in her own bedroom — "because it was through that beautiful boy we first got really acquainted, Olaf." The boy smiles at you from the canvas, smiles ambiguously, as the colonel now noted.
"I think you had better go," said Colonel Mus- grave. "Please go, Patricia, before I murder you."
She saw that he was speaking in perfect earnest. 142
IX
RUDOLPH MUSGRAVE sat all night beside the body. He had declined to speak with innumerable sympathetic cousins — Vartreys and Fentons and Allardyces and Musgraves, to the fifth and sixth remove — who had come from all quar- ters, with visiting-cards and low-voiced requests to be informed "if there is anything we can possibly do."
Rudolph Musgrave sat all night beside the body. He had not any strength for anger now, and hardly for grief. Agatha had been his charge; and the fact that he had never plucked up courage to allude to her practises was now an enormity in which he could not quite believe. His cowardice and its fruitage confronted him, and frightened him into a panic frenzy of remorse.
Agatha had been his charge; and he had entrusted the stewardship to Patricia. Between them — that Pa- tricia might have her card-game, that he might sit upon a platform for an hour or two with a half- dozen other pompous fools — they had let Agatha die. There was no mercy in him for Patricia or for him- self.
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
He wished Patricia had been a man. Had any man — an emperor or a coal-heaver, it would not have mat- tered— spoken as Patricia had done within the mo- ment, here, within arm's reach of the poor flesh that had been Agatha's, Rudolph Musgrave would have known his duty. But, according to his code, it was not permitted to be discourteous to a woman. . . .
He caught himself with grotesque meanness wish- ing that Agatha had been there, — privileged by her sex where he was fettered, — she who was so gen- erous of heart and so fiery of tongue at need; and comprehension that Agatha would never abet or adore him any more smote him anew.
* * *
And chance reserved for him more poignant tor- ture. Next day, while Rudolph Musgrave was mak- ing out the list of honorary pall-bearers, the post- man brought a letter which had been forwarded from Chicago. It was from Agatha, written upon the morning of that day wherein later she had been, as Patricia phrased it, "queer, you know."
He found it wildly droll to puzzle out those "crossed" four sheets of trivialities written in an Italian hand so minute and orderly that the finished page suggested a fly-screen. He had so often remon- strated with Agatha about her penuriousness as con- cerned stationery.
"Selina Brice & the Rev'd Henry Anstruther, who now has a church in Seattle, have announced their engage-
144
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ment. Stanley Haggage has gone to Alabama to marry Leonora Bright, who moved from here a year ago. They are both as poor as church mice, & I think marriage in such a case an unwise step for anyone. It brings cares & anxieties enough any way, without starting out with poverty to increase and render deeper every trouble. . . ."
Such was the tenor of Agatha's last letter, of the last self-expression of that effigy upstairs who (you could see) knew everything and was not discontent.
Here the dead spoke, omniscient; and told you that Stanley Haggage had gone to Alabama, and that marriage brought new cares and anxieties.
"I cannot laugh/' said Rudolph Musgrave, aloud. "I know the jest deserves it. But I cannot laugh, because my upper lip seems to be made of leather and I can't move it. And, besides, I loved Agatha to a degree which only You and I have ever known of. She never understood quite how I loved her. Oh, won't You make her understand just how I loved her? For Agatha is dead, because You wanted her to be dead, and I have never told her how much I loved her, and now I cannot ever tell her how much I loved her. Oh, won't You please show me that You have made her understand? or else have me struck by lightning ? or do an ything ... ?"
Nothing was done.
145
X
AND afterward Rudolph Musgrave and his wife met amicably, and without reference to their last talk. Patricia wore black-and-white for some six months, and Colonel Musgrave accepted the compromise tacitly. All passed with perfect smooth- ness between them; and anyone in Lichfield would have told you that the Musgraves were a model couple.
She called him "Rudolph" now.
"Olaf is such a silly-sounding nickname for two old married people, you know," Patricia estimated.
The colonel negligently said that he supposed it did sound odd.
"Only I don't think Clarice Pendomer would care about coming," he resumed, — for the two were dis- cussing an uncompleted list of the people Patricia was to invite to their first house-party.
"And for heaven's sake, why not ? We always have her to everything."
He could not tell her it was because the Charterises were to be among their guests. So he said: "Oh, well 1»
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"Mrs. C. B. Pendomer, then"— Patricia wrote the name with a flourish. "Oh, you jay-bird, I'm not jealous. Everybody knows you never had any more morals than a tom-cat on the back fence. It's a lucky thing the boy didn't take after you, isn't it? He doesn't, not a bit. No, Harry Pendomer is the puniest black-haired little wretch, whereas your other son, sir, resembles his mother and is in consequence a ravishingly beautiful person of superlative charm "
He was staring at her so oddly that she paused. So Patricia was familiar with that old scandal which linked his name with Clarice Pendomer's! He was wondering if Patricia had married him in the belief that she was marrying a man who, appraised by any standards, had acted infamously.
"I was only thinking you had better ask Judge Allardyce, Patricia. You see, he is absolutely cer- tain not to come "
* * *
This year the Musgraves had decided not to spend the spring alone together at Matocton, as they had done the four preceding years.
"It looks so silly," as Patricia pointed out.
And, besides, a house-party is the most economical method, — as she also pointed out, being born a Sta- pylton — of paying off your social obligations, because you can always ask so many people who, you know, have made other plans, and cannot accept.
"So we will invite Judge Allardyce, of course/' said Patricia. "I had forgotten his court met in June. Oh, and Peter Blagden too. It had slipped my mind his uncle was dead. . . ."
"I learned this morning Mrs. Haggage was to lec- ture in Louisville on the sixteenth. She was reading up in the Library, you see "
"Rudolph, you are the lodestar of my existence. I will ask her to come on the fourteenth and spend a week. I never could abide the hag, but she has such a — There! I've made a big blot right in the middle of 'darling/ and spoiled a perfectly good sheet of paper! . . . You'd better mail it at once, though, because the evening-paper may have something in it about her lecture."
XI
RUDOLPH " "Why— er— yes, dear?" This was after supper, and Patricia was playing solitaire. Her husband was reading the paper.
"Agatha told me all about Virginia, you know "
Here Colonel Musgrave frowned. "It is not a pleasant topic."
"You jay-bird, you behave entirely too much as if you were my grandfather. As I was saying, Aga- tha told me all about your uncle and Virginia," Pa- tricia hurried on. "And how she ran away after- wards, and hid in the woods for three days, and came to your father's plantation, and how your father bought her, and how her son was born, and how her son was lynched "
"Now, really, Patricia! Surely there are other matters which may be more profitably discussed."
"Of course. Now, for instance, why is the King of Hearts the only one that hasn't a moustache?" Patricia peeped to see what cards lay beneath that
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THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
monarch, and upon reflection moved the King of Spades into the vacant space. She was a devotee of solitaire and invariably cheated at it.
She went on, absently: "But don't you see? That colored boy was your own first cousin, and he was killed for doing exactly what his father had done. Only they sent the father to the Senate and gave him columns of flubdub and laid him out in state when he died — and they poured kerosene upon the son and burned him alive. And I believe Virginia thinks that wasn't fair."
"What do you mean?"
"I honestly believe Virginia hates the Musgraves. She is only a negro, of course, but then she was a
mother once — Oh, yes ! all I need is a black eight "
Patricia demanded, "Now look at your brother Hec- tor— the awfully dissipated one that died of an over- dose of opiates. When it happened wasn't Virginia taking care of him?"
"Of course. She is an invaluable nurse."
"And nobody else was here when Agatha went out into the rain. Now, what if she had just let Agatha go, without trying to stop her? It would have been perfectly simple. So is this. All I have to do is to take them off now."
Colonel Musgrave negligently returned to his perusal of the afternoon paper. "You are suggest- ing— if you will overlook my frankness — the most de- plorable sort of nonsense, Patricia."
"I know exactly how Balaam felt," she said, ir-
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relevantly, and fell to shuffling the cards. "You don't, and you won't, understand that Virginia is a human being. In any event, I wish you would get rid of her."
"I couldn't decently do that," said Rudolph Mus- grave, with careful patience. "Virginia's faithful- ness has been proven by too many years of faithful service. Nothing more strikingly attests the folly of freeing the negro than the unwillingness of the better class of slaves to leave their former own-
"Now you are going to quote a paragraph or so from your Gracious Era. As if I hadn't read every- thing you ever wrote ! You are a fearful humbug in some ways, Rudolph."
"And you are a red-headed rattlepate, madam. But seriously, Patricia, you who were reared in the North are strangely unwilling to concede that we of the South are after all best qualified to deal with the Negro Problem. We know the negro as you cannot ever know him."
"You! Oh, God ha' mercy on us!" mocked Pa- tricia. "There wasn't any Negro Problem hereabouts, you beautiful idiot, so long as there were any ne- groes. Why, to-day there is hardly one full-blooded negro in Lichfield. There are only a thousand or so of mulattoes who share the blood of people like your Uncle Edward. And for the most part they take after their white kin, unfortunately. And there you have the Lichfield Negro Problem in a nutshell.
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
It is a venerable one and fully set forth in the Bi- ble. You needn't attempt to argue with me, because you are a ninnyhammer, and I am a second Nestor. The Holy Scriptures are perfectly explicit as to what happens to the heads of the children and their teeth too."
"I wish you wouldn't jest about such matters "
"Because it isn't lady-like? But, Rudolph, you know perfectly well that I am not a lady."
"My dear !" he cried, in horror that was real, "and what on earth have I said even to suggest "
"Oh, not a syllable; it isn't at all the sort of thing that your sort says. . . . And I am not your sort. I don't know that I altogether wish I were. But if I were, it would certainly make things easier," Pa- tricia added sharply.
"My dear — — !" he again protested.
"Now, candidly, Rudolph" — relinquishing the game, she fell to shuffling the cards — "just count up the num- ber of times this month that my — oh, well! I really don't know what to call it except my deplorable omis- sion in failing to be born a lady — has seemed to you to yank the very last rag off the gooseberry-bush?"
He scoffed. "What nonsense ! Although, of course, Patricia •"
She nodded, mischief in her brightly-colored tiny face. "Yes, that is just your attitude, you beautiful idiot."
" — although, of course — now, quite honestly, Pa- tricia, I have occasionally wished that you would not 152
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speak of sacred and — er, physical and sociological matters in exactly the tone in which — well! in which you sometimes do speak of them. It may sound old-fashioned, but I have always believed that de- cency is quite as important in mental affairs as it is in physical ones, and that as a consequence, a gen- tlewoman should always clothe her thoughts with at least the same care she accords her body. Oh, don't misunderstand me ! Of course it doesn't do any harm, my dear, between us. But outside — you see, for peo- ple to know that you think about such things must necessarily give them a false opinion of you."
Patricia meditated.
She said, with utter solemnity, "Anathema mara- natha! oh, hell to damn! may the noses of all respect- able people be turned upside down and jackasses dance eternally upon their grandmothers' graves!"
"Patricia !" cried a shocked colonel.
"I mean every syllable of it. No, Rudolph; 7 can't help it if the vinaigretted beauties of your boyhood were unabridged dictionaries of prudery. You see, I know almost all the swearwords there are. And I read the newspapers, and medical books, and even the things that boys chalk up on fences. In conse- quence I am not a bit whiteminded, because if you use your mind at all it gets more or less dingy, just like using anything else."
He could not help but laugh, much as he disap- proved. Patricia fluttered and, as a wren might have done, perched presently upon his knee.
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THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
"Rudolph, can't you laugh more often, and not de- vote so much time to tracing out the genealogies of those silly people, and being so tediously beautiful and good?" she asked, and with a hint of serious- ness. "Rudolph, you don't know how I would adore you if you would rob a church or cut somebody's throat in an alley, and tell me all about it because you knew I wouldn't betray you. You are so infer- nally respectable in everything you do! How did you come to bully me that day at the Library? It seems almost as if those two were different peo- ple .. doesn't it, Rudolph?"
"My dear," the colonel said whimsically, "I am afraid we are rather like the shepherdess and the chimney-sweep of the fable I read you very long ago. We climbed up so far that we could see the stars, once, very long ago, Patricia, and we have come back to live upon the parlor table. I suppose it happens to all the little china people."
She took his meaning. Each was aware of an odd sense of intimacy. "Everything we have to be glad for now, Rudolph, is the rivet in grandfather's neck. It is rather a fiasco, isn't it?"
"Eh, there are all sorts of rivets, Patricia. And the thing one cannot do because one is what one is, need not be necessarily a cause for grief."
IS4
XII
IT was excellent to see Jack Charteris again, as Colonel Musgrave did within a few days of this. Musgrave was unreasonably fond of the novelist and frankly confessed it would be as preposterous to connect Charteris with any of the accepted standards of morality as it would be to judge an artesian-well from the standpoint of ethics.
Anne was not yet in Lichfield. She had broken the journey to visit a maternal grand-aunt and some Virginia cousins, in Richmond, Charteris explained, and was to come thence to Matocton.
"And so you have acquired a boy and, by my soul, a very handsome wife, Rudolph?"
"It is sufficiently notorious," said Colonel Mus- grave. "Yes, we are quite absurdly happy." He laughed and added: "Patricia — but you don't know her droll way of putting things — says that the only rational complaint I can advance against her is her habit of rushing into a hospital every month or so and having a section or two of her person removed by surgeons. It worries me, — only, of course, it is
155
not the sort of thing you can talk about. And, as Patricia says, it is an unpleasant thing to realize that your wife is not leaving you through the ordinary channels of death or of type-written decrees of the court, but only in vulgar fractions, as it were "
"Please don't be quite so brutal, Rudolph. It is not becoming in a Musgrave of Matocton to speak of women in any tone other than the most honeyed accents of chivalry."
"Oh, I was only quoting Patricia," the colonel largely said, "and — er — Jack," he continued. "By the way, Jack, Clarice Pendomer will be at Matoc- ton "
"I rejoice in her good luck," said Charteris, equably.
" — and — well! I was wondering ?"
"I can assure you that there will be no — trouble. That skeleton is safely locked in its closet, and the key to that closet is missing — more thanks to you. You acted very nobly in the whole affair, Rudolph. I wish I could do things like that. As it is, of course, I shall always detest you for having been able to do it."
Charteris said, thereafter: "I shall always envy you, though, Rudolph. No other man I know has ever attained the good old troubadourish ideal of domnei — that love which rather abhors than other- wise the notion of possessing its object. I still be- lieve it was a distinct relief to a certain military of- ficer, whose name we need not mention, when Anne decided not to marry you." 156
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The colonel grinned, a trifle consciously. "Well, Anne meant youth, you comprehend, and all the things we then believed in, Jack. It would have been de- cidedly difficult to live up to such a contract, and — as it were — to fulfil every one of the implied speci- fications !"
"And yet" — here Charteris flicked his cigarette — "Anne ruled in the stead of Aline Van Orden. And Aline, in turn, had followed Clarice Pendomer. And before the coming of Clarice had Pauline Romeyne, whom time has converted into Polly Ashmeade, reigned in the land "
"Don't be an ass!" the colonel pleaded; and then observed, inconsequently : "I can't somehow quite re- alize Aline is dead. Lord, Lord, the letters that I wrote to her! She sent them all back, you know, in genuine romantic fashion, after we had quarreled. I found those boyish ravings only the other day in my father's desk at Matocton, and skimmed them over. I shall read them through some day and appropriately meditate over life's mysteries that are too sad for tears."
He meditated now.
"It wouldn't be quite equitable, Jack," the colonel summed it up, "if the Aline I loved — no, I don't mean the real woman, the one you and all the other peo- ple knew, the one that married the enterprising brewer and died five years ago — were not waiting for me somewhere. I can't express just what I mean, but you will understand, I know ?"
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"That heaven is necessarily run on a Mohammedan basis? Why, of course," said Mr. Charteris. "Heaven, as I apprehend it, is a place where we shall live eternally among those ladies of old years who never condescended actually to inhabit any realm more tangible than that of our boyish fancies. It is the obvious definition; and I defy you to evolve a more enticing allurement toward becoming a dea- con."
"You romancers are privileged to talk nonsense anywhere," the colonel estimated, "and I suppose that in the Lichfield you have made famous, Jack, you have a double right."
"Ah, but I never wrote a line concerning Lich- field. I only wrote about the Lichfield whose ex- istence you continue to believe in, in spite of the fact that you are actually living in the real Lichfield," Charteris returned. "The vitality of the legend is wonderful."
He cocked his head to one side — an habitual ges- ture with Charteris — and the colonel noted, as he had often done before, how extraordinarily reminis- cent Jack was of a dried-up, quizzical black parrot. Said Charteris:
"I love to serve that legend. I love to prattle of 'ole Marster' and 'ole Miss/ and throw in a sprink- ling of 'mockin'-buds' and 'hants' and 'horg-killing time/ and of sweeping animadversions as to all 'free niggers' ; and to narrate how *de quality use ter cum' — you spell it c-u-m because that looks so convinc- 158
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ingly like dialect — «'ter de gret hous.' Those are the main ingredients. And, as for the unavoidable love- interest " Charteris paused, grinned, and pleas- antly resumed : "Why, jes arter dat, suh, a hut Yan- kee cap'en, whar some uv our folks done shoot in de laig, wuz lef on de road fer daid — a quite notori- ous custom on the part of all Northern armies — un Young Miss had him fotch up ter de gret hous, un nuss im same's he one uv de fambly, un dem two jes fit un argufy scanlous un never spicion huccum dey's in love wid each othuh till de War's ovuh. And there you are! I need not mention that during the tale's progress it is necessary to introduce at least one favorable mention of Lincoln, arrange a duel 'in de low grouns' immediately after day-break, and have the family silver interred in the back garden, because these points will naturally suggest themselves."
"Jack, Jack!" the colonel cried, "it is an ill bird that fouls its own nest/'
"But, believe me, I don't at heart," said Charteris, in a queer earnest voice. "There is a sardonic imp inside me that makes me jeer at the commoner tricks of the trade — and yet when I am practising that trade, when I am writing of those tender-hearted, brave and gracious men and women, and of those dear old darkies, I very often write with tears in my eyes. I tell you this with careful airiness because it is true and because it would embarrass me so horribly if you believed it."
Then he was off upon another tack. "And wherein,
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pray, have I harmed Lichfield by imagining a dream city situated half way between Atlantis and Avalon and peopled with superhuman persons — and by hav- ing called this city Lichfield? The portrait did not only flatter Lichfield, it flattered human nature. So, naturally, it pleased everybody. Yes, that, I take it, is the true secret of romance — to induce the mo- mentary delusion that humanity is a superhuman race, profuse in aspiration, and prodigal in the exercise of glorious virtues and stupendous vices. As a mat- ter of fact, all human passions are depressingly chicken-hearted, I find. Were it not for the police court records, I would pessimistically insist that all of us elect to love one person and to hate another with very much the same enthusiasm that we dis- play in expressing a preference for rare roast beef as compared with the outside slice. Oh, really, Ru- dolph, you have no notion how salutary it is to the self-esteem of us romanticists to run across, even nowadays, an occasional breach of the peace. For then sometimes — when the coachman obligingly cuts the butler's throat in the back-alley, say — we actually presume to think for a moment that our profession is almost as honest as that of making counterfeit money. ..."
The colonel did not interrupt his brief pause of meditation. Then the novelist said:
"Why, no; if I were ever really to attempt a tale of Lichfield, I would not write a romance but a tragedy. I think that I would call my tragedy Fu- 160
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ttiity, for it would mirror the life of Lichfield with unengaging candor; and, as a consequence, people would complain that my tragedy lacked sustained in- terest, and that its participants were inconsistent ; that it had no ordered plot, no startling incidents, no high endeavors, and no especial aim ; and that it was equally deficient in all time-hallowed provocatives of either laughter or tears. For very few jteople would under- stand that a life such as this, when rightly viewed, is the most pathetic tragedy conceivable."
"Oh, come, now, Jack! come, recollect that your reasoning powers are almost as worthy of employ- ment as your rhetorical abilities! We are not quite so bad as that, you know. We may be a little behind the times in Lichfield; we certainly let well enough alone, and we take things pretty much as they come ; but we meddle with nobody, and, after all, we don't do any especial harm."
"We don't do anything whatever in especial, Ru- dolph. That would be precisely the theme of my story of the real Lichfield if I were ever bold enough to write it. There seems to be a sort of blight upon Lichfield. Oh, yes! it would be unfair, perhaps, to contrast it with the bigger Southern cities, like Rich- mond and Atlanta and New Orleans; but even the inhabitants of smaller Southern towns are beginning to buy excursion tickets, and thereby ascertain that the twentieth century has really begun. Yes, it is only in Lichfield I can detect the raw stuff of a genu- ine tragedy; for, depend upon it, Rudolph, the most
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pathetic tragedy in life is to get nothing in particular out of it."
"But, for my part, I don't see what you are driv- ing at," the colonel stoutly said.
And Charteris only laughed. "And I hardly ex- pected you to do so, Rudolph — or not yet, at least."
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"I am contented by remembrances —
Dreams of dead passions, wraiths of vanished times,
Fragments of vows, and by-ends of old rhymes —
Flotsam and jetsam tumbling in the seas
Whereon, long since, put forth our argosies
Which, bent on traffic in the Isles of Love,
Lie foundered somewhere in some firth thereof,
Encradled by eternal silences.
"Thus, having come to naked bankruptcy, Let us part friends, as thrifty tradesmen do When common ventures fail, for it may be These battered oaths and rhymes may yet ring true To some fair woman's hearing, so that she Will listen and think of love, and I of you."
Revisions.
WHEN the Reliance, the Constitution and the Columbia were holding trial races off New- port to decide which one of these yachts should defend the America's cup; when the tone of the Japanese press as to Russia's actions in Man- churia was beginning to grow ominous; when the Jews of America were drafting a petition to the Czar; and when it was rumored that the health of Pope Leo XIII was commencing to fail: — at this remote time, the Musgraves gave their first house-party.
And at this period Colonel Musgrave noted and admired the apparent unconcern with which John Charteris and Clarice Pendomer encountered at Ma- tocton. And at this period Colonel Musgrave noted with approval the intimacy which was, obviously, flourishing between the little novelist and Patricia.
Also Colonel Musgrave had presently good reason to lament a contretemps, over which he was sulking when Mrs. Pendomer rustled to her seat at the break- fast-table, with a shortness of breath that was partly due to the stairs, and in part attributable to her youth- ful dress, which fitted a trifle too perfectly.
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THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
"Waffles?" said Mrs. Pendomer. "At my age and weight the first is an experiment and the fifth an amiable indiscretion of which I am invariably guilty. Sugar, please." She yawned, and reached a gener- ously-proportioned arm toward the sugar-bowl. "Yes, that will do, Pilkins."
Colonel Musgrave — since the remainder of his house-party had already breakfasted — raised his fine eyes toward the chandelier, and sighed, as Pilkins demurely closed the dining-room door.
Leander Pilkins — butler for a long while now to the Musgraves of Matocton — would here, if space per- mitted, be the subject of an encomium. Leander Pil- kins was in Lichfield considered to be, upon the whole, the handsomest man whom Lichfield had produced; for this quadroon's skin was like old ivory, and his profile would have done credit to an emperor. His terrapin is still spoken of in Lichfield as people in less favored localities speak of the Golden Age, and his mayonnaise (boasts Lichfield) would have com- pelled an Olympian to plead for a second helping. For the rest, his deportment in all functions of but- lership is best described as super-Chesterfieldian ; and, indeed, he was generally known to be a byblow of Captain Beverley Musgrave's, who in his day was Lichfield's arbiter as touched the social graces. And so, no more of Pilkins.
Mrs. Pendomer partook of chops. "Is this re- morse," she queried, "or a convivially induced re- quirement for bromides? At this unearthly hour of 166
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the morning it is very often difficult to disentangle the two."
"It is neither," said Colonel Musgrave, and almost snappishly.
Followed an interval of silence. "Really," said Mrs. Pendomer, and as with sympathy, "one would think you had at last been confronted with one of your thirty-seven pasts — or is it thirty-eight, Ru- dolph?"
Colonel Musgrave frowned disapprovingly at her frivolity; he swallowed his coffee, and buttered a su- perfluous potato. "H'm !" said he ; "then you know ?"
"I know," sighed she, "that a sleeping past fre- quently suffers from insomnia."
"And in that case," said he, darkly, "it is not the only sufferer."
Mrs. Pendomer considered the attractions of a third waffle — a mellow blending of autumnal yellows, fringed with a crisp and irresistible brown, that, for the moment, put to flight all dreams and visions of slenderness.
"And Patricia?" she queried, with a mental hiatus.
Colonel Musgrave flushed.
"Patricia," he conceded, with mingled dignity and sadness, "is, after all, still in her twenties "
"Yes," said Mrs. Pendomer, with a dryness which might mean anything or nothing; "she was only twenty-one when she married you."
"I mean," he explained, with obvious patience, "that at her age she — not unnaturally — takes an im-
NECK
mature view of things. Her unspoiled purity," he added, meditatively, "and innocence and general un- sophistication are, of course, adorable, but I can admit to thinking that for a journey through life they im- press me as excess baggage."
"Patricia/' said Mrs. Pendomer, soothingly, "has ideals. And ideals, like a hare-lip or a mission in life, should be pitied rather than condemned, when our friends possess them; especially," she continued, buttering her waffle, "as so many women have them sandwiched between their last attack of measles and their first imported complexion. No one of the three is lasting, Rudolph."
"H'm!" said he.
There was another silence. The colonel desperately felt that matters were not advancing.
"H'm!" said she, with something of interrogation in her voice.
"See here, Clarice, I have known you "
"You have not!" cried she, very earnestly; "not by five years!"
"Well, say for some time. You are a sensible woman — — "
"A man," Mrs. Pendomer lamented, parenthetically, "never suspects a woman of discretion, until she be- gins to lose her waist."
" — and I am sure that I can rely upon your womanly tact, and finer instincts, — and that sort of thing, you know — to help me out of a deuce of a
mess."
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Mrs. Pendomer ate on, in an exceedingly non- committal fashion, as he paused, inquiringly.
"She has been reading some letters," said he, at length; "some letters that I wrote a long time ago."
"In the case of so young a girl," observed Mrs. Pendomer, with perfect comprehension, "I should have undoubtedly recommended a judicious super- vision of her reading-matter."
"She was looking through an old escritoire," he explained; "Jack Charteris had suggested that some of my father's letters — during the War, you know — might be of value "
He paused, for Mrs. Pendomer appeared on the verge of a question.
But she only said, "So it was Mr. Charteris who suggested Patricia's searching the desk. Ah, yes! And then ?"
"And it was years ago — and just the usual sort of thing, though it may have seemed from the let- ters— Why, I hadn't given the girl a thought," he cried, in virtuous indignation, "until Patricia found the letters — and read them!"
"Naturally," she assented — "yes> — just as I read George's."
The smile with which she accompanied this re- mark, suggested that both Mr. Pendomer's corre- spondence and home life were at times of an interest- ing nature.
"I had destroyed the envelopes when she returned them," continued Colonel Musgrave, with morose con-
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fusion of persons. "Patricia doesn't even know who the girl was — her name, somehow, was not men- tioned."
" 'Woman of my heart* — 'Dearest girl in all the world/ " quoted Mrs. Pendomer, reminiscently, "and suchlike tender phrases, scattered in with a pepper- cruet, after the rough copy was made in pencil, and dated just 'Wednesday/ or 'Thursday/ of course. Ah, you were always very careful, Rudolph," she sighed; "and now that makes it all the worse, be- cause— as far as all the evidence goes — these letters may have been returned yesterday."
"Why !" Colonel Musgrave pulled up short,
hardly seeing his way clear through the indignant periods on which he had entered. "I declined," said he, somewhat lamely, "to discuss the matter with her, in her present excited and perfectly unreasonable condition."
Mrs. Pendomer 's penciled eyebrows rose, and her lips — which were quite as red as there was any neces- sity for their being — twitched.
"Hysterics?" she asked.
"Worse!" groaned Colonel Musgrave; "patient resignation under unmerited affliction!"
He had picked up a teaspoon, and he carefully bal- anced it upon his forefinger.
"There were certain phrases in these letters which were, somehow, repeated in certain letters I wrote to Patricia the summer we were engaged, and — not to put too fine a point upon it — she doesn't like it." 170
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Mrs. Pendomer smiled, as though she considered this not improbable; and he continued, with growing embarrassment and indignation :
"She says there must have been others" — Mrs. Pendomer's smile grew reminiscent — "any number of others; that she is only an incident in my life. Er — as you have mentioned, Patricia has certain notions — Northern idiocies about the awfulness of a young fel- low's sowing his wild oats, which you and I know per- fectly well he is going to do, anyhow, if he is worth his salt. But she doesn't know it, poor little girl. So she won't listen to reason, and she won't come downstairs — which," lamented Rudolph Musgrave, plaintively, "is particularly awkward in a house-party."
He drummed his fingers, for a moment, on the table.
"It is," he summed up, "a combination of Ibsen and hysterics, and of — er, rather declamatory observa- tions concerning there being one law for the man and another for the woman, and Patricia's realiza- tion of the mistake we both made — and all that sort of nonsense, you know, exactly as if, I give you my word, she were one of those women who want to vote." The colonel, patently, considered that feminine outrageousness could go no farther. "And she is tak- ing menthol and green tea and mustard plasters and I don't know what all, in bed, prior to — to "
"Taking leave ?" Mrs. Pendomer suggested.
"Er — that was mentioned, I believe," said Colonel Musgrave. "But of course she was only talking."
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Mrs. Pendomer looked about her; and, without, the cleanshaven lawns and trim box-hedges were very beautiful in the morning sunlight; within, the same sunlight sparkled over the heavy breakfast service, and gleamed in the high walnut panels of the break- fast-room. She viewed the comfortable appoint- ments about her a little wistfully, for Mrs. Pendom- er's purse was not over-full.
"Of course," said she, as in meditation, "there was the money."
"Yes," said Rudolph Musgrave, slowly; "there was the money."
He sprang to his feet, and drew himself erect. Here was a moment he must give its full dramatic value.
"Oh, no, Clarice, my marriage may have been an eminently sensible one, but I love my wife. Oh, be- lieve me, I love her very tenderly, poor little Pa- tricia! I have weathered some forty-seven birthdays; and I have done much as other men do, and all that — there have been flirtations and suchlike, and — er — some women have been kinder to me than I deserved. But I love her; and there has not been a moment since she came into my life I haven't loved her, and been " he waved his hands now impotently, al- most theatrically — '"sickened at the thought of the others."
Mrs. Pendomer's foot tapped the floor whilst he spoke. When he had made an ending, she inclined her head toward him. 172
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"Thank you !" said Mrs. Pendomer.
Colonel Musgrave bit his lip; and he flushed.
"That/5 said he, hastily, "was different."
But the difference, whatever may have been its na- ture, was seemingly a matter of unimportance to Mrs. Pendomer, who was in meditation. She rested her ample chin on a much-be jeweled hand for a moment; and, when Mrs. Pendomer raised her face, her voice was free from affectation.
"You will probably never understand that this par- ticular July day is a crucial point in your life. You will probably remember it, if you remember it at all, simply as that morning when Patricia found some girl-or-another's old letters, and behaved rather un- reasonably about them. It was the merest trifle, you will think. . . . John Charteris understands women better than you do, Rudolph."
"I need not pretend at this late day to be as clever as Jack," the colonel said, in some bewilderment. "But why not more succinctly state that the Escurial is not a dromedary, although there are many flies in France? For what on earth has Jack to do with crucial points and July mornings?"
"Why, I suppose, I only made bold to introduce his name for the sake of an illustration, Rudolph. For the last person in the world to realize, precisely, why any woman did anything is invariably the woman who did it. ... Yet there comes in every married woman's existence that time when she realizes, sud- denly, that her husband has a past which might be
173
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
taken as, in itself, a complete and rounded life — as a life which had run the gamut of all ordinary human passions, and had become familiar with all ordinary human passions a dishearteningly long while before she ever came into that life. A woman never realizes that of her lover, somehow. But to know that your husband, the father of your child, has lived for other women a life in which you had no part, and never can have part! — she realizes that, at one time or another, and — and it sickens her." Mrs. Pendomer smiled as she echoed his phrase, but her eyes were not mirthful.
"Ah, she hungers for those dead years, Rudolph, and, though you devote your whole remaining life to her, nothing can ever make up for them; and she always hates those shadowy women who have stolen them from her. A woman never, at heart, forgives the other women who have loved her husband, even though she cease to care for him herself. For she remembers — ah, you men forget so easily, Rudolph ! God had not invented memory when he created Adam ; it was kept for the woman."
Then ensued a pause, during which Rudolph Mus- grave smiled down upon her, irresolutely; for he ab- horred "a scene," as his vernacular phrased it, and to him Clarice's present manner bordered upon both the scenic and the incomprehensible.
"Ah! — you women!" he temporized.
There was a glance from eyes whose luster time and irregular living had conspired to dim. 174
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"Ah! — you men!" Mrs. Pendomer retorted. "And there we have the tragedy of life in a nutshell !"
Silence lasted for a while. The colonel was find- ing this matutinal talk discomfortably opulent in pauses.
"Rudolph, and has it never occurred to you that in marrying Patricia you swindled her?"
And naturally his eyebrows lifted.
"Because a woman wants love."
"Well, well! and don't I love Patricia?"
"I dare say that you think you do. Only you have played at loving so long you are really unable to love anybody as a girl has every right to be loved in her twenties. Yes, Rudolph, you are being rather subtly punished for the good times you have had. And, after all, the saddest punishment is something that happens in us, not something which happens to us."
"I wish you wouldn't laugh, Clarice "
"I wish I didn't have to. For I would get far more comfort out of crying, and I don't dare to, because of my complexion. It comes in a round pasteboard box nowadays, you know, Rudolph, with French mendaci- ties all over the top — and my eyebrows come in a fat crayon, and the healthful glow of my lips comes in a little porcelain tub."
Mrs. Pendomer was playing with a teaspoon now, and a smile hovered about the aforementioned lips.
"And yet, do you remember, Rudolph," said she, "that evening at Assequin, when I wore a blue gown,
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
and they were playing Fleurs d'Amour, and — you said ?"
"Yes" — there was an effective little catch in his voice — '"you were a wonderful girl, Clarice — 'my sun- shine girl/ I used to call you. And blue was always your color; it went with your eyes so exactly. And those big sleeves they wore then — those tell-tale, crushable sleeves! — they suited your slender youth- fulness so perfectly! Ah, I remember it as though it were yesterday!"
Mrs. Pendomer majestically rose to her feet.
"It was pink! And it was at the Whitebrier you said — what you said! And — and you don't deserve anything but what you are getting," she concluded, grimly.
"I — it was so long ago," Rudolph Musgrave apol- ogized, with mingled discomfort and vagueness.
"Yes," she conceded, rather sadly; "it was so long — oh, very long ago ! For we were young then, and we believed in things, and — and Jack Charteris had not taken a fancy to me — — " She sighed and drummed her fingers on the table. "But women have always helped and shielded you, haven't they, Ru- dolph ? And now I am going to help you too, for you have shown me the way. You don't deserve it in the least, but I'll do it"
176
II
THUS it shortly came about that Mrs. Pendo- mer mounted, in meditative mood, to Mrs. Musgrave's rooms ; and that Mrs. Pendomer, recovering her breath, entered, without knocking, into a gloom where cologne and menthol and the odor of warm rubber contended for mastery. For Patricia had decided that she was very ill indeed, and was sob- bing softly in bed.
Very calmly, Mrs. Pendomer opened a window, letting in a flood of fresh air and sunshine; very calmly, she drew a chair — a substantial arm-chair — to the bedside, and, very calmly, she began :
"My dear, Rudolph has told me of this ridiculous affair, and — oh, you equally ridiculous girl!"
She removed, with deft fingers, a damp and cling- ing bandage from about Patricia's head, and patted the back of Patricia's hand, placidly. Patricia was by this time sitting erect in bed, and her coppery hair was thick about her face, which was colorless; and, altogether, she was very rigid and very indig- nant and very pretty, and very, very young.
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"How dare he tell you — or anybody else!" she cried.
"We are such old friends, remember," Mrs. Pen- domer pleaded, and rearranged the pillows, soothingly, about her hostess ; "and I want to talk to you quietly and sensibly."
Patricia sank back among the pillows, and inhaled the fresh air, which, in spite of herself, she found agreeable. "I — somehow, I don't feel very sensible," she murmured, half sulky and half shame- faced.
Mrs. Pendomer hesitated for a moment, and then plunged into the heart of things. "You are a woman, dear," she said, gently, "though heaven knows it must have been only yesterday you were playing about the nursery — and one of the facts we women must face, eventually, is that man is a polygamous animal. It is unfortunate, perhaps, but it is true. Civilization may veneer the fact, but nothing will ever override it, not even in these new horseless carriages. A man may give his wife the best that is in him — his love, his trust, his life's work — but it is only the best there is left. We give our hearts; men dole out theirs, as people feed bread to birds, with a crumb for everyone. His wife has the remnant. And the best we women can do is to remember we are credibly informed that half a loaf is preferable to no bread at all."
Her face sobered, and she added, pensively: "We might contrive a better universe, we sister women, but this is not permitted us. So we must take it as it is."
Patricia stirred, as talking died away. "I don't
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believe it," said she; and she added, with emphasis: "And, anyhow, I hate that nasty trollop!"
"Ah, but you do believe it." Mrs. Pendomer's