The American Claimant

  CHAPTER XXI.

  She had made everything comfortable for the artist; there was no furtherpretext for staying. So she said she would go, now, and asked him tosummon the servants in case he should need anything. She went awayunhappy; and she left unhappiness behind her; for she carried away allthe sunshine. The time dragged heavily for both, now. He couldn't paintfor thinking of her; she couldn't design or millinerize with any heart,for thinking of him. Never before had painting seemed so empty to him,never before had millinerizing seemed so void of interest to her. Shehad gone without repeating that dinner-invitation--an almost unendurabledisappointment to him. On her part-well, she was suffering, too; for shehad found she couldn't invite him. It was not hard yesterday, but it wasimpossible to-day. A thousand innocent privileges seemed to have beenfilched from her unawares in the past twenty-four hours. To-day shefelt strangely hampered, restrained of her liberty. To-day she couldn'tpropose to herself to do anything or say anything concerning this youngman without being instantly paralyzed into non-action by the fear thathe might "suspect." Invite him to dinner to-day? It made her shiver tothink of it.

  And so her afternoon was one long fret. Broken at intervals. Three timesshe had to go down stairs on errands--that is, she thought she had to godown stairs on errands. Thus, going and coming, she had six glimpses ofhim, in the aggregate, without seeming to look in his direction; and shetried to endure these electric ecstasies without showing any sign, butthey fluttered her up a good deal, and she felt that the naturalnessshe was putting on was overdone and quite too frantically sober andhysterically calm to deceive.

  The painter had his share of the rapture; he had his six glimpses, andthey smote him with waves of pleasure that assaulted him, beat upon him,washed over him deliciously, and drowned out all consciousness of whathe was doing with his brush. So there were six places in his canvaswhich had to be done over again.

  At last Gwendolen got some peace of mind by sending word to theThompsons, in the neighborhood, that she was coming there to dinner.She wouldn't be reminded, at that table, that there was an absenteewho ought to be a presentee--a word which she meant to look out in thedictionary at a calmer time.

  About this time the old earl dropped in for a chat with the artist, andinvited him to stay to dinner. Tracy cramped down his joy and gratitudeby a sudden and powerful exercise of all his forces; and he felt thatnow that he was going to be close to Gwendolen, and hear her voice andwatch her face during several precious hours, earth had nothing valuableto add to his life for the present.

  The earl said to himself, "This spectre can eat apples, apparently. Weshall find out, now, if that is a specialty. I think, myself, it's aspecialty. Apples, without doubt, constitute the spectral limit. It wasthe case with our first parents. No, I am wrong--at least only partlyright. The line was drawn at apples, just as in the present case, butit was from the other direction." The new clothes gave him a thrill ofpleasure and pride. He said to himself, "I've got part of him down todate, anyway."

  Sellers said he was pleased with Tracy's work; and he went on andengaged him to restore his old masters, and said he should also want himto paint his portrait and his wife's and possibly his daughter's.The tide of the artist's happiness was at flood, now. The chat flowedpleasantly along while Tracy painted and Sellers carefully unpacked apicture which he had brought with him. It was a chromo; a new one,just out. It was the smirking, self-satisfied portrait of a man who wasinundating the Union with advertisements inviting everybody to buy hisspecialty, which was a three-dollar shoe or a dress-suit or somethingof that kind. The old gentleman rested the chromo flat upon his lap andgazed down tenderly upon it, and became silent and meditative. PresentlyTracy noticed that he was dripping tears on it. This touched the youngfellow's sympathetic nature, and at the same time gave him the painfulsense of being an intruder upon a sacred privacy, an observer ofemotions which a stranger ought not to witness. But his pity rosesuperior to other considerations, and compelled him to try to comfortthe old mourner with kindly words and a show of friendly interest. Hesaid:

  "I am very sorry--is it a friend whom--"

  "Ah, more than that, far more than that--a relative, the dearest I hadon earth, although I was never permitted to see him. Yes, it is youngLord Berkeley, who perished so heroically in the awful conflagration.Why what is the matter?"

  "Oh, nothing, nothing."

  "It was a little startling to be so suddenly brought face to face, soto speak, with a person one has heard so much talk about. Is it a goodlikeness?"

  "Without doubt, yes. I never saw him, but you can easily see theresemblance to his father," said Sellers, holding up the chromo andglancing from it to the chromo misrepresenting the Usurping Earl andback again with an approving eye.

  "Well, no--I am not sure that I make out the likeness. It is plain thatthe Usurping Earl there has a great deal of character and a longface like a horse's, whereas his heir here is smirky, moon-faced andcharacterless."

  "We are all that way in the beginning--all the line," said Sellers,undisturbed. "We all start as moonfaced fools, then later we tadpolealong into horse-faced marvels of intellect and character. It is by thatsign and by that fact that I detect the resemblance here and know thisportrait to be genuine and perfect. Yes, all our family are fools atfirst."

  "This young man seems to meet the hereditary requirement, certainly."

  "Yes, yes, he was a fool, without any doubt. Examine the face, theshape of the head, the expression. It's all fool, fool, fool, straightthrough."

  "Thanks,--" said Tracy, involuntarily.

  "Thanks?"

  "I mean for explaining it to me. Go on, please."

  "As I was saying, fool is printed all over the face. A body can evenread the details."

  "What do they say?"

  "Well, added up, he is a wobbler."

  "A which?"

  "Wobbler. A person that's always taking a firm stand about something orother--kind of a Gibraltar stand, he thinks, for unshakable fidelityand everlastingness--and then, inside of a little while, he begins towobble; no more Gibraltar there; no, sir, a mighty ordinary commonplaceweakling wobbling around on stilts. That's Lord Berkeley to a dot, youcan see it--look at that sheep! But,--why are you blushing like sunset!Dear sir, have I unwittingly offended in some way?"

  "Oh, no indeed, no indeed. Far from it. But it always makes me blush tohear a man revile his own blood." He said to himself, "How strangely hisvagrant and unguided fancies have hit upon the truth. By accident, hehas described me. I am that contemptible thing. When I left England Ithought I knew myself; I thought I was a very Frederick the Great forresolution and staying capacity; whereas in truth I am just a Wobbler,simply a Wobbler. Well--after all, it is at least creditable to havehigh ideals and give birth to lofty resolutions; I will allow myselfthat comfort." Then he said, aloud, "Could this sheep, as you call him,breed a great and self-sacrificing idea in his head, do you think?Could he meditate such a thing, for instance, as the renunciation of theearldom and its wealth and its glories, and voluntary retirement tothe ranks of the commonalty, there to rise by his own merit or remainforever poor and obscure?"

  "Could he? Why, look at him--look at this simpering self-righteous mug!There is your answer. It's the very thing he would think of. And hewould start in to do it, too."

  "And then?"

  "He'd wobble."

  "And back down?"

  "Every time."

  "Is that to happen with all my--I mean would that happen to all his highresolutions?"

  "Oh certainly--certainly. It's the Rossmore of it."

  "Then this creature was fortunate to die! Suppose, for argument's sake,that I was a Rossmore, and--"

  "It can't be done."

  "Why?"

  "Because it's not a supposable case. To be a Rossmore at your age,you'd have to be a fool, and you're not a fool. And you'd have to be aWobbler, whereas anybody that is an expert in reading character can seeat a glance that when you set your foot down once, it's there to s
tay;and earthquake can't wobble it." He added to himself, "That's enough tosay to him, but it isn't half strong enough for the facts. The more Iobserve him, now, the more remarkable I find him. It is the strongestface I have ever examined. There is almost superhuman firmness here,immovable purpose, iron steadfastness of will. A most extraordinaryyoung man."

  He presently said, aloud:

  "Some time I want to ask your advice about a little matter, Mr. Tracy.You see, I've got that young lord's remains--my goodness, how you jump!"

  "Oh, it's nothing, pray go on. You've got his remains?"

  "Yes."

  "Are you sure they are his, and not somebody else's?"

  "Oh, perfectly sure. Samples, I mean. Not all of him."

  "Samples?"

  "Yes--in baskets. Some time you will be going home; and if you wouldn'tmind taking them along--"

  "Who? I?"

  "Yes--certainly. I don't mean now; but after a while; after--but lookhere, would you like to see them?"

  "No! Most certainly not. I don't want to see them."

  "O, very well. I only thought--hey, where are you going, dear?"

  "Out to dinner, papa."

  Tracy was aghast. The colonel said, in a disappointed voice:

  "Well, I'm sorry. Sho, I didn't know she was going out, Mr. Tracy."

  Gwendolen's face began to take on a sort of apprehensive'What-have-I-done expression.'

  "Three old people to one young one--well, it isn't a good team, that's afact."

  Gwendolen's face betrayed a dawning hopefulness and she said--with atone of reluctance which hadn't the hall-mark on it:

  "If you prefer, I will send word to the Thompsons that I--"

  "Oh, is it the Thompsons? That simplifies it--sets everything right. Wecan fix it without spoiling your arrangements, my child. You've got yourheart set on--"

  "But papa, I'd just as soon go there some other--"

  "No--I won't have it. You are a good hard-working darling child, andyour father is not the man to disappoint you when you--"

  "But papa, I--"

  "Go along, I won't hear a word. We'll get along, dear."

  Gwendolen was ready to cry with vexation. But there was nothing to dobut start; which she was about to do when her father hit upon an ideawhich filled him with delight because it so deftly covered all thedifficulties of the situation and made things smooth and satisfactory:

  "I've got it, my love, so that you won't be robbed of your holiday andat the same time we'll be pretty satisfactorily fixed for a good timehere. You send Belle Thompson here--perfectly beautiful creature, Tracy,perfectly beautiful; I want you to see that girl; why, you'll just gomad; you'll go mad inside of a minute; yes, you send her right along,Gwendolen, and tell her--why, she's gone!" He turned--she was alreadypassing out at the gate. He muttered, "I wonder what's the matter;I don't know what her mouth's doing, but I think her shouldersare swearing. Well," said Sellers blithely to Tracy, "I shall missher--parents always miss the children as soon as they're out of sight,it's only a natural and wisely ordained partiality--but you'll be allright, because Miss Belle will supply the youthful element for you andto your entire content; and we old people will do our best, too. Weshall have a good enough time. And you'll have a chance to get betteracquainted with Admiral Hawkins. That's a rare character, Mr. Tracy--oneof the rarest and most engaging characters the world has produced.You'll find him worth studying. I've studied him ever since he was achild and have always found him developing. I really consider that oneof the main things that have enabled me to master the difficult scienceof character-reading was the vivid interest I always felt in that boyand the baffling inscrutabilities of his ways and inspirations."

  Tracy was not hearing a word. His spirits were gone, he was desolate.

  "Yes, a most wonderful character. Concealment--that's the basis of it.Always the first thing you want to do is to find the keystone a man'scharacter is built on--then you've got it. No misleading and apparentlyinconsistent peculiarities can fool you then. What do you read onthe Senator's surface? Simplicity; a kind of rank and protuberantsimplicity; whereas, in fact, that's one of the deepest minds in theworld. A perfectly honest man--an absolutely honest and honorableman--and yet without doubt the profoundest master of dissimulation theworld has ever seen."

  "O, it's devilish!" This was wrung from the unlistening Tracy bythe anguished thought of what might have been if only the dinnerarrangements hadn't got mixed.

  "No, I shouldn't call it that," said Sellers, who was now placidlywalking up and down the room with his hands under his coat-tails andlistening to himself talk. "One could quite properly call it devilishin another man, but not in the Senator. Your term is right--perfectlyright--I grant that--but the application is wrong. It makes a greatdifference. Yes, he is a marvelous character. I do not suppose that anyother statesman ever had such a colossal sense of humor, combined withthe ability to totally conceal it. I may except George Washington andCromwell, and perhaps Robespierre, but I draw the line there. A personnot an expert might be in Judge Hawkins's company a lifetime and neverfind out he had any more sense of humor than a cemetery."

  A deep-drawn yard-long sigh from the distraught and dreaming artist,followed by a murmured, "Miserable, oh, miserable!"

  "Well, no, I shouldn't say that about it, quite. On the contrary, Iadmire his ability to conceal his humor even more if possible than Iadmire the gift itself, stupendous as it is. Another thing--GeneralHawkins is a thinker; a keen, logical, exhaustive, analyticalthinker--perhaps the ablest of modern times. That is, of course, uponthemes suited to his size, like the glacial period, and the correlationof forces, and the evolution of the Christian from the caterpillar--anyof those things; give him a subject according to his size, and juststand back and watch him think! Why you can see the place rock! Ah, yes,you must know him; you must get on the inside of him. Perhaps the mostextraordinary mind since Aristotle."

  Dinner was kept waiting for a while for Miss Thompson, but as Gwendolenhad not delivered the invitation to her the waiting did no good, and thehousehold presently went to the meal without her. Poor old Sellers triedeverything his hospitable soul could devise to make the occasion anenjoyable one for the guest, and the guest tried his honest best to becheery and chatty and happy for the old gentleman's sake; in fact allhands worked hard in the interest of a mutual good time, but the thingwas a failure from the start; Tracy's heart was lead in his bosom, thereseemed to be only one prominent feature in the landscape and that was avacant chair, he couldn't drag his mind away from Gwendolen and his hardluck; consequently his distractions allowed deadly pauses to slip inevery now and then when it was his turn to say something, and of coursethis disease spread to the rest of the conversation--wherefore, insteadof having a breezy sail in sunny waters, as anticipated, everybody wasbailing out and praying for land. What could the matter be? Tracy alonecould have told, the others couldn't even invent a theory.

  Meanwhile they were having a similarly dismal time at the Thompsonhouse; in fact a twin experience. Gwendolen was ashamed of herself forallowing her disappointment to so depress her spirits and make herso strangely and profoundly miserable; but feeling ashamed of herselfdidn't improve the matter any; it only seemed to aggravate thesuffering. She explained that she was not feeling very well, andeverybody could see that this was true; so she got sincere sympathy andcommiseration; but that didn't help the case. Nothing helps that kind ofa case. It is best to just stand off and let it fester. The moment thedinner was over the girl excused herself, and she hurried home feelingunspeakably grateful to get away from that house and that intolerablecaptivity and suffering.

  Will he be gone? The thought arose in her brain, but took effect inher heels. She slipped into the house, threw off her things and madestraight for the dining room. She stopped and listened. Her father'svoice--with no life in it; presently her mother's--no life in that; aconsiderable vacancy, then a sterile remark from Washington Hawkins.Another silence; then, not Tracy's but her father's voice again. r />
  "He's gone," she said to herself despairingly, and listlessly opened thedoor and stepped within.

  "Why, my child," cried the mother, "how white you are! Are you--hasanything--"

  "White?" exclaimed Sellers. "It's gone like a flash; 'twasn't serious.Already she's as red as the soul of a watermelon! Sit down, dear, sitdown--goodness knows you're welcome. Did you have a good time? We've hadgreat times here--immense. Why didn't Miss Belle come? Mr. Tracy is notfeeling well, and she'd have made him forget it."

  She was content now; and out from her happy eyes there went a light thattold a secret to another pair of eyes there and got a secret in return.In just that infinitely small fraction of a second those two greatconfessions were made, received, and perfectly understood. All anxiety,apprehension, uncertainty, vanished out of these young people's heartsand left them filled with a great peace.

  Sellers had had the most confident faith that with the new reinforcementvictory would be at this last moment snatched from the jaws of defeat,but it was an error. The talk was as stubbornly disjointed as ever. Hewas proud of Gwendolen, and liked to show her off, even against MissBelle Thompson, and here had been a great opportunity, and what had shemade of it? He felt a good deal put out. It vexed him to think thatthis Englishman, with the traveling Briton's everlasting dispositionto generalize whole mountain ranges from single sample-grains ofsand, would jump to the conclusion that American girls were as dumb ashimself--generalizing the whole tribe from this single sample and she ather poorest, there being nothing at that table to inspire her, give hera start, keep her from going to sleep. He made up his mind that for thehonor of the country he would bring these two together again over thesocial board before long. There would be a different result anothertime, he judged. He said to himself, with a deep sense of injury, "He'llput in his diary--they all keep diaries--he'll put in his diary that shewas miraculously uninteresting--dear, dear, but wasn't she! I never sawthe like--and yet looking as beautiful as Satan, too--and couldn't seemto do anything but paw bread crumbs, and pick flowers to pieces, andlook fidgety. And it isn't any better here in the Hall of Audience. I'vehad enough; I'll haul down my flag--the others may fight it out if theywant to."

  He shook hands all around and went off to do some work which he said waspressing. The idolaters were the width of the room apart; and apparentlyunconscious of each other's presence. The distance got shortened alittle, now. Very soon the mother withdrew. The distance narrowed again.Tracy stood before a chromo of some Ohio politician which had beenretouched and chain-mailed for a crusading Rossmore, and Gwendolen wassitting on the sofa not far from his elbow artificially absorbed inexamining a photograph album that hadn't any photographs in it.

  The "Senator" still lingered. He was sorry for the young people; it hadbeen a dull evening for them. In the goodness of his heart he triedto make it pleasant for them now; tried to remove the ill impressionnecessarily left by the general defeat; tried to be chatty, even triedto be gay. But the responses were sickly, there was no starting anyenthusiasm; he would give it up and quit--it was a day specially pickedout and consecrated to failures.

  But when Gwendolen rose up promptly and smiled a glad smile and saidwith thankfulness and blessing, "Must you go?" it seemed cruel todesert, and he sat down again.

  He was about to begin a remark when--when he didn't. We have all beenthere. He didn't know how he knew his concluding to stay longer had beena mistake, he merely knew it; and knew it for dead certain, too. And sohe bade goodnight, and went mooning out, wondering what he could havedone that changed the atmosphere that way. As the door closed behind himthose two were standing side by side, looking at that door--looking atit in a waiting, second-counting, but deeply grateful kind of way. Andthe instant it closed they flung their arms about each other's necks,and there, heart to heart and lip to lip--

  "Oh, my God, she's kissing it!"

  Nobody heard this remark, because Hawkins, who bred it, only thought it,he didn't utter it. He had turned, the moment he had closed the door,and had pushed it open a little, intending to re-enter and ask whatill-advised thing he had done or said, and apologize for it. But hedidn't re-enter; he staggered off stunned, terrified, distressed.