Aladdin and Company Part 17

This remark elicited the laughter which the puns failed to provoke; for Cecil was color-blind in all things relating to the American joke. The humor of _Punch_ appealed to him, and the wit of Sterne and Dean Swift; but the funny column and the paragrapher's niche of our newspapers he regarded as purely pathological phenomena. I sometimes feel that Cecil was right about this. Can the mind which continues to be charmed by these paragraphic strainings be really sound?--but this is not a dissertation. Cecil reconciled himself to his position as the local exemplification of the traditional Englishman whose trains of ideas run on the freight schedule--and was one of the most popular fellows in Lattimore. He gloried in his slavery to Antonia, and seemed to glean hope from the most sterile circ.u.mstances.

It was easy to hope, in Lattimore, then. It was not many days after our talk in the park before I noticed a change for the better in Giddings, even. Just before Jim's house-warming, he came to me with something like optimism in his appearance. I started to cheer him up, and went wrong.

"I'm glad to see by your cheerful looks," said I, "that the philosophy of Iago--"

"Say, now!" cried he, "don't remind me of that, for Heaven's sake!"

"Why, certainly not," said I, "if you object."

"I do object," said he most earnestly; "why, that d.a.m.ned-fool philosophy may have ruined my life, you know."

"Of course I know what you mean," said I; "but I'm convinced, and so are all your friends, that if you fail, it'll be your own lack of nerve, and nothing else, that you'll owe the disaster to. You should--"

"I should have refrained from trampling under foot the dearest ideals of the only girl-- However, I can't talk of these things to any one, Barslow. But I have some hope now. Antonia and Josie have both been very kind lately--and say, Barslow, I see now how little foundation there is for that old gag about the women hating each other!"

"I've always felt," said I, anxious to draw him out so that I might see what the conspirators had been doing, "that there's nothing in _that_ idea. But what has changed your view?"

"Antonia, and Josie, and even your wife," said he, "have been keeping up a regular lobby in my behalf with Laura. They think they've got the deal plugged up now, so that she'll give me a show again, and--"

"Why, surely," said I; "in my opinion, there never was any need for you to feel downcast."

"Barslow," he said, with the air of a man who has endured to the limit, "you are a good fellow, but you make me tired when you talk like that.

Why, four weeks ago I had no more show than a s...o...b..ll in--in the crater of Vesuvius. But now I'm encouraged. These girls have been doing me good, as I just said, and I'm convinced that my series of editorials on 'The Influence of Christianity on Civilization,' in which I've given the Church the credit of being the whole thing, has helped some."

"They ought to do good somewhere," said I, "they certainly haven't boomed Lattimore any."

"d.a.m.n Lattimore!" said he bitterly. "When a man's very life--But see here, Barslow, I know you're not in earnest about this. And I'll be all right in a day or two, or I'll be eternally wrong. I'm going to make one final cast of the die. I may go down to bottomless perdition, or I may be caught up to the battlements of heaven; but such a ma.s.s of doubts and miseries as I've been lately, I'll no longer be! Pray for me, Barslow, pray for me!"

This despairing condition of Giddings's was a sort of continuing sensation with us at that time. We discussed it quite freely in all its aspects, humorous and tragic. It was so unexpected a development in the young man's character, and, with all due respect to the discretion and resisting powers of Miss Addison, so entirely gratuitous and fact.i.tious.

"He has ability as a writer," said the Captain; "but in such a mattah anybody but a fool ought to see that the thing to do is to chahge the intrenchments. I trust that I may not be misunde'stood when I say that, in my opinion, a good rattling chahge would not be a fo'lo'n hope!"

"It bothers," said Jim; "and if it weren't for that, I'd feel conscience-stricken at doing anything to rob the idiot of a most delicious grief."

The coolness of early autumn was in the air the night of Jim's house-warming. To describe his dwelling, in these days when fortunes are spent on the details of a stairway, and a king's ransom for the tapestries of a salon, all of which luxuries are spread before the eyes of the public in the columns of Sunday papers and magazines, would be to court an anticlimax. But this was before the multimillionaire had made the need for an augmentative of the word "luxury"; and Jim's house was noteworthy for its beauty: its cunningly wrought iron and wood; and columned halls and stairways; and wide-throated fireplaces, each a picture in tile, wood, and metalwork; and vistas like little fairylands through silken portieres; and carven chairs and couches, reminiscent of royal palaces; and chambers where lovely color-schemes were worked out in rug, and bed, and canopy. There were decorations made by men whose names were known in London and Paris. From out-of-the-way places Mr.

Elkins had brought collections of queer and interesting and pretty things which, all his life, he had been acc.u.mulating; and in his library were broad areas of well-worn book-backs. Somehow, people looked upon the Mr. Elkins who was master of all these as a more important man than the Elkins who had blown into the town on some chance breeze of speculation, and taken rooms at the Centropolis.

It was all light and color, that night. Even the formal flower-beds of the grounds and the fountain spouting on the lawn were like scenery in the lime-light. Only, back in the shrubbery there were darker nooks in summer-houses and arbors for those who loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds, to the common mind, were likely to seem foolish. I remember thinking that if Mr. Giddings really wanted a chance to take the high dive of which he had spoken to me, the opportunity was before him.

His Laura was there, her devotee-like expression striving with an exceedingly low-cut dress to sound the distinguis.h.i.+ng note of her personality. Giddings was at the punch-bowl as on their arrival she swept past with the General. When he saw the nun-like glance over the swelling bosom, the poor stricken cynic blushed, turned pale, and wheeled to flee. But Cecil, as if following orders, arrested him and began plying him with the punch--from which Giddings seemed to draw courage: for I saw him, soon, gravitate to her whom he loved and so mysteriously dreaded.

"It's a pe'fect jewel-case of a house!" said the Captain, as he moved with the trooping company through the mansion.

"Indeed, indeed it is," said Mrs. Tolliver to Alice; "the jewel, whoever it may be, is to be envied."

"I hope," said Jim to Josie, "that you agree with Mrs. Tolliver?"

"Oh, yes," said Josie, "but you attach far too much importance to my judgment. If it is any comfort to you, however, I want to praise--everything--unreservedly."

"I won't know, for a while," said Jim, "whether it is to be my house only, or home in the full sense of the word."

"One doesn't know about that, I fancy," said Cecil; "for a long time--"

"I mean to know soon," said Jim.

Josie was looking intently at the carving on one of the chairs, and paid no heed, though the remark seemed to be addressed to her.

"What I mean, you know," said Cecil, "is that, no matter how well the house may be built and furnished, it's the a.s.sociations, the history of the place, the things that are in the air, that makes 'Ome!"

There was in the manner of his capitalizing the word as he uttered it, and in the unwonted elision of the H, that tribute to his dear island which the exiled Briton (even when soothed by the consolation offered by street-car systems to superintend, and rose-pink blondes to serve), always pays when he speaks of Home.

"a.s.sociations," said Jim, "may be historical or prophetic. In the former case, we have to take them on trust; but as to those of the future, we are sure of them."

"Yahs," said Cecil, using the locution which he always adopted when something subtle was said to him, "I dare say! I dare say!"

"Well, then," Jim went on, "I have this matter of the atmosphere or a.s.sociations under my own control."

"Just so," said Cecil. "Clever conceit, Miss Trescott, isn't it, now?"

But Miss Trescott had apparently heard nothing of Jim's speech, and begged pardon; and wouldn't they go and show her the bronzes in the library?

"This mansion, General," said the Captain, "takes one back, suh, to the halcyon days of American history. I refeh, suh, to those times when the plantahs of the black prairie belt of Alabama lived like princes, in the heart of an enchanted empire!"

"A very interesting period, Captain," said the General. "It is a pity that the industrial basis was one which could not endure!"

"In the midst of fo'ests, suh," went on the Captain, "we had ouah mansions, not inferio' to this--each a little kingdom with its complete wo'ld of amus.e.m.e.nts, its cote, and its happy populace, goin' singin' to the wo'k which supported the estate!"

"Yes," said the General, "I thought, when we were striking down that state of things, that we were doing a great thing for that populace. But I now see that I was only helping the black into a new slavery, the fruits of which we see here, around us, to-night."

"I hahdly get youah meaning, suh--"

"Well," said the General, looking about at the little audience. (It was in the smoking-room, and those present were smokers only.) "Well, now, take my case. I have some pretty valuable grounds down there where I live. When I got them, they were worthless. I could build as good a mansion as this or any of your ante-bellum Alabama houses for what I can get out of that little tract. What is that value? Merely the expression in terms of money of the power of excluding the rest of mankind from that little piece of ground. I make people give me the fruits of their labor, myself doing nothing. That's what builds this house and all these great houses, and breeds the luxury we are beginning to see around us; and the consciousness that this slavery exists, and is increasing, and bids fair to grow greatly, is what is making men crazy over these little spots of ground out here in the West! It is this slavery--"

"Suh," exclaimed the Captain, rising and grasping the General's hand, "you have done me the favo' of making me wisah! I nevah saw so cleahly the divine decree which has fo'eo'dained us to this opulence. Nothing so satisfactory, suh, as a basis and reason foh investment, has been advanced in my hearing since I have been in the real-estate business!

Let us wo'k this out a little mo' in detail, if you please, suh--"

"Let us escape while there is yet time!" said Cornish; and we fled.

After supper there was a cotillion. The s.p.a.cious ballroom, with its roof so high that the lights up there were as stars, was a sight which could scarcely be reconciled with the village community which he had found and changed. The palms, and flowers, and lights which decorated the room; the orchestra's river of dance-music; the men, all in the black livery which--on the surface--marks the final conquest of civilization over barbarism; the beautiful gowns, the sparkling jewels, and the white shoulders and arms of the ladies--all these made me wonder if I had not been transported to some Mayfair or Newport, so pictorial, so decorative, so charged with art, it seemed to be. The young people, carrying on their courts.h.i.+ps in these unfamiliar halls, their disappearances into the more remote and tenebrous outskirts of the a.s.sembly--all seemed to me to be taking place on the stage, or in some romance.

I told Alice about this as we walked home--it was only across the street--to our own new house.

"Don't tell any one about this feeling of yours," said she. "It betrays your provincialism, my dear. You should feel, for the first time in your life, perfectly at home. 'Armor, rusting on his walls, On the blood of Clifford calls,' you know."

"Mine didn't hear the call," said I; "I'm probably the first of my race to wear this--But I enjoyed it."

"Well, I am too full of something that took place to discuss the matter," said she, as we sat down at home. "I am perplexed. You know about Mr. Cornish and Josie, don't you?"

She startled me, for I had never told her a word.