CHAPTER II
OLD, UNHAPPY, FAR-OFF THINGS
“The cost of living is high, very high.”
“Yes, father; I know that things cost, of course.”
“I have lived on very little while you were away, Zee. With one servant it’s possible to keep down expenses. Servants are ruinous. And I’m not rich, Zee, like your Aunt Julia and Uncle Rodney.”
“I want to do just what you would have me do, in everything. It was kind and generous of you to let me stay away so long. I know my expenses abroad must have been a great tax on you.”
Ezra Dameron looked quickly at his daughter.
“Yes, to be sure, Zee, to be sure. Mariona is a simple place and your sojourn abroad has hardly fitted you for our homely ways. You’ll find that things are done very differently here. But of course you will accommodate yourself to the conditions. And you’ll find the house quite comfortable. It’s a little old-fashioned, but it was your grandfather’s, and it rarely happens nowadays that a girl lives in the same house her mother was born in. Of course any little changes that you want to make will be all right; but you must practise economy.”
They were studying each other with a shrewd sophistication on the father’s side; with anxious wonder on the part of the girl. She knew little of her father. Even the memory of her mother had grown indistinct. The thing that had always impressed her about her father was his seeming age; she remembered him from her childhood as an old man, who came and went on errands which had seemed unrelated to her own life. The house had stood in a large tract when Zelda went away, but this had shrunk gradually as Ezra Dameron divided the original Merriam acres and sold off the lots. The front door of the homestead was now only a few feet from the new cement walk on what was called Merriam Street, in honor of Zelda’s grandfather. Sun and wind had peeled the paint from the brick walls and the green of the blinds had faded to a dull nondescript.
The house, without its original setting of trees and grass, was somber and ugly. A few cedars remained, but they only intensified the gloom of the place. The house had been built like a fortress and was old before the Civil War. It was a large house, or had been considered so, with several levels of floors marking the additions that had been made from time to time by the elder Merriam. There was a small iron balcony in front, opening from the upper windows; but it seemed ridiculous now that it hung over the public walk. At the rear there was a broad wooden gallery with pillars rising to the second story. A high board fence surrounded the back of the lot, as though to guard from further encroachment the few feet of earth that remained of the ampler acres of a bygone day. The house had fallen to Mrs. Dameron in the division of Roger Merriam’s estate, and she had willed it to her daughter, making it part of the property held in trust for Zelda by her father.
Mrs. Forrest liked the good things of life and spent her money generously to get them. She avoided discomfort at any cost, and Zelda’s ideas of living had naturally been derived in a considerable degree from her aunt. The transition from their pleasant quarters in Dresden, Florence and Paris to the grim living-room in Merriam Street was too abrupt. A wave of loneliness swept over the girl as she sat with her father in the stiff sitting-room, before the cramped little grate where a heap of burning anthracite gleamed like a single hot coal. Back of them was a table, covered with a faded felt cloth, and on it lay a few newspapers, a magazine, a religious weekly, and an old copy of the Bible, in which Ezra Dameron read a chapter twice a day. He was ill at ease now as he talked to his daughter. He felt that she was a stranger who had come to break in upon the orderly course of his life. He had believed sometimes during her absence that he needed her, that he was lonely and wished to have her back; but the photographs that she had sent home had not prepared him for the change in her. He had expected a child to return, but here was a woman, with a composure, a poise, that were disconcerting. Even her voice, her way of speaking, troubled him. She had tried to tell him fully of her life while away, to create the atmosphere of it for him; but she had only widened the margin between what he could know and what he could not be made to understand.
Mrs. Forrest
The girl felt for a moment that she could not stay, that it was more than she could bear. Her fingers were clasped upon her knees. She sat very straight in a hard unyielding chair that seemed to share the austerity of the whole house. She wished at that moment to escape—there was no other word for it—and run away to her aunt or uncle. Why were they alone here, these two, she and this difficult old man? Why had she not gone to Mrs. Forrest’s to live? It had grown suddenly colder at sundown and the wind swept dolorously through the cedars that brushed the side of the house. Why did not some one come? Why did not her uncle come for her? Carriages passed now and then with the smart beat of hoofs on the asphalt, so near that the sounds might have come from a remote room of the dreary house.
“Your aunt probably told you something of your business affairs,—of the trusteeship.”
Her thoughts had been far away; he watched her with a shrewd smile as she turned quickly toward him.
“Oh, no! Aunt Julia never discussed it; but I remember that she told me once I had some property. I know nothing more—except that there is a trusteeship—whatever that is!” And she laughed.
“Yes; it was a very wise idea of your mother’s in providing for you. She always maintained her separate estate. She inherited some property from her father,—you may have known.”
“No, I didn’t know, but I always supposed grandfather Merriam was rich.”
“I never touched your mother’s property at all; never a cent,” the old man went on. He did not know what Mrs. Forrest might have told Zelda. He was dropping down his plummet to measure her ignorance. Zelda knew nothing; and she cared very little. Her wants had always been provided for without any trouble on her part. Mrs. Forrest indulged herself, and she had indulged Zelda. Ezra Dameron was wondering just what Rodney Merriam and Mrs. Forrest would expect him to do for the girl. His position as her father had been anomalous ever since his wife died, ten years ago. The Merriams had taken his daughter away from him at once and then they had sent her out of the country, and now that they had brought her back he was not without curiosity as to what their attitude toward him would be.
“The trusteeship will not be terminated for a year—on your twenty-first birthday, unless you should marry before the end of that time. This is always an emergency to look forward to; but I trust you will be in no hurry to leave me.”
He looked at her again in his quick, nervous way. His voice showed the first hint of the whine of senility.
Zelda laughed abruptly.
“It’s funny, isn’t it?—the getting married. I honestly hadn’t thought of it before. I don’t know any young men. We didn’t meet any men abroad except very old ones. Aunt Julia was afraid the young men weren’t respectable!”
“There’s nothing like being careful where young men are concerned. There are many bad ones about these days. The temptations of modern life are increasing fast. A young girl can have no idea of them.”
“Who’s afraid?” she said, and laughed again.
He tried to laugh; he was making an effort to be friendly, to accommodate himself to his daughter’s ways, to understand her if he could.
The girl rose and walked restlessly about the room, picking up and throwing down the papers on the table; and then she examined several steel engravings on the walls. She had been at home a week, but the place was still unfamiliar.
A plate of apples had been placed on the table, and presently the old man took a knife and began paring one carefully. The girl paused in her restless wandering about the room, and turned to watch him. He had ceased trying to talk to her. There was something of pathos in his bent figure as he sat peeling the apple. She watched him silently, touched by his weight of years, and the feeling of loneliness left her suddenly. It had seemed hard and difficult at first, but it was only a kind of homesickness; this was home, and this was her father. There were things about him that moved her pity. His clothes were scrupulously neat; his linen was clean and his collar was carefully turned down over a high cravat, suggesting the stock of another time. His gray hair was long, and fell down on his coat, but it was carefully brushed.
Zelda went over and stood by him, and he looked up at her and smiled,—an impersonal, martyr-like smile.
“They look good, father. If you don’t mind I’ll get a knife and try one. It’s been a long time since I ate an apple.”
She brought herself a plate and knife from the pantry, and sat down near him. A gentler impulse had taken hold of her. She owed her father honor and respect; he was an old man, and at his age men were entitled to their whims. She won him to a more companionable mood than she had known in him before.
“I remember, father, a queer old table service that used to be here,—very heavy pieces, with a curious, big flower pattern. I haven’t seen it about anywhere; but I haven’t done much looking. Probably Polly knows where it is.”
“To be sure. I seem to remember it. It’s probably in the attic. The attic’s full of things.”
“I should like to explore it. I remember attics very pleasantly from my youth. There was Uncle Rodney’s. He always had the most curious things in his garret.”
“Yes, yes. Rodney is a very strange man.”
He looked at her sharply; evidently the girl did not understand the idiosyncrasies of the family relationship. Julia Forrest, his sister-in-law, was a more discreet woman than he had imagined.
“But about the attic,—I’ll give you the basket of keys, Zee, just as your mother left it. There is probably much rubbish that ought to be thrown away. No doubt there are things that might be given to the poor.” He bowed his head almost imperceptibly, as though in humble acknowledgment of all the beatitudes. Zelda took his plate and he rose and left the room. He walked lightly, and with an elastic step that was out of keeping with his appearance of age.
“I’ll be back in a moment,” he called, and he went up stairs, returning presently, carrying a small basket filled with keys.
“These are yours, my daughter,” he said, and waved his hand with a little touch of manner.
“Oh, so many!” She poured the keys upon the table. There were half a hundred of them, of many kinds and sizes; and they were all tagged with little bits of ivory, on which their several uses were written clearly in ink.
“Your mother was very methodical,—very painstaking—”
He shook his head and turned to the fire, as though to hide any show of feeling.
Zelda was turning the keys over in her hand, and she did not look at him. A mist had come into her eyes. She remembered the dark woman who had been so gentle and patient with her childhood. They used to walk together in the old pasture; and they carried their books to a seat that had been built under a great beech where her mother read the quaint tales and old ballads that were her delight. These were the only happy memories she had kept of her mother—the times under the beech, with which her father was not associated.
“I’m sure it’s your time to go to bed, father. You mustn’t let me break in on your ways.” Zelda walked over to him and put her hands on his shoulders. “I want to be very good to you, father; and I know we’ll live here very happily. You won’t mind me much—when you get used to me!”
She touched his forehead with her lips.
“Thank you, thank you,”—and there was a helpless note in his voice.
She turned away from him quickly, restored the keys to the basket and ran with it to her room.
The next morning she was down to his seven o’clock breakfast in the cold, forbidding dining-room. She was very gay and made him talk a great deal to her. He had been up for an hour at work in the barn, where he cared for his own horse. He carried the morning newspaper to the table, as he had done for years.
“This will never do, father! You must talk to me and help me to learn the American breakfast habit. I’ll be lonesome if you read at the table.”
His thoughts seemed far away; he had long been out of practice in the amenities and graces, and the morning had brought him once more face to face with this change in his life. The place across the table had been empty for so many years that he resented the appearance there of this slender dark girl, pouring his coffee with an ease that puzzled and even touched him. There had been another girl like her, in the long ago, and this was her child. The resemblance between mother and daughter was so marked that he grew uneasy as he pondered it; he made a pretense of holding up his newspaper to shut out the girl, and when he dropped it Zelda was waiting for him, her elbows on the table, her hands clasped under her chin.
“Oh, pardon me!” he exclaimed, rising hastily.
As she helped him into his overcoat her hand touched a hammer he carried in his pocket with a miscellaneous assortment of nails, for use in repairing the small properties he owned in many parts of town, and she drew the implement forth and inspected it at arm’s length.
“Why, father! What on earth is this?”
The nails jingled, and she made a dive into the pocket and drew forth a handful.
“Why, you’ve forgotten to empty your pockets! You mustn’t go about with this hardware in your clothes.”
He reached for the things, a little shamefacedly.
“You don’t understand. I need them to make trifling repairs, you know.” He smiled, and she put the things back into his pockets, still laughing at him.
“I must go about with you. I can carry the hammer. Maybe you will let me drive a nail once in a while, if I’m good.”
He drew out a faded silk handkerchief and began twisting it about his throat, but Zelda took it from him and adjusted it carefully under his coat collar; and she brushed his old brown derby hat with a whisk broom that lay on the hall table.
He suffered her ministrations with his patient smile, into which he tried to throw something of a look of pride; and when she had set the hat squarely on his head, she drew back and regarded him critically and then kissed him on the cheek.
“Now be sure to come home to luncheon always. You didn’t come yesterday and it was lonely. I must get Polly to show me the way to the grocery. I don’t intend to let her be the boss. I’m sure she’s been abusing you all these years.”
“Oh, in time you will come to it. Polly will do very well, and you oughtn’t to be bothered with such things. I—I usually buy the groceries myself. One of my tenants is a grocer and—and—he does a little better for me!”
“Oh, to be sure. You must do it in your own way, father.” There was a note of disappointment in her voice, and he would have liked to concede something to her, but he did not know how.
He turned to the door and went out, and she watched him hurry down the street.
She roamed idly about the house, going finally to the kitchen, where the colored woman told her that orders for the remaining meals of the day had been given by her father. Polly viewed Zelda with admiration, but she did not ask advice, and Zelda continued her wanderings, going finally to the attic with the key-basket.
The place was pitch dark when she threw open the door, and as there was no way of lighting it, she went down and brought several old glass candlesticks from the parlor. The attic was a great low room extending over the whole of the house. It was unplastered and the cobwebs of many years hung from the rafters. Boxes and barrels abounded. Bunches of herbs, long dried, and garden tools hung here and there; in a corner an old saddle was suspended by one stirrup. Pieces of furniture covered with cloths were distributed under the eaves, their draperies heavy with dust, and the light of the candles gave them a spectral appearance. Zelda went about peering at the labels that had been tacked carefully to every article. Here, then, was something to do—something that had even a touch of adventure; and she went for water and a broom and sprinkled and swept the floor.
There were several trunks of her mother’s clothing and Zelda peered into these bravely. Her mother had arranged them thus shortly before her death. The girl was touched by their nice order; they were folded many times in tissue paper and were sweet with lavender. There stole again into her heart a sense of loneliness, of separation from the past to which these plaintive things belonged; and there lay beneath everything a wonder and awe, as of one who entered with another’s key some strange, dark chamber of life. A sob clutched her throat as she ran her fingers caressingly over the parcels at the top of a small brass-bound trunk that contained little trinkets for the toilet-table. Unlike the other boxes she had opened, this had evidently been packed in haste. One flat packet had been crowded into the top, and the lid had crushed it, so that the paper wrapping had fallen aside. It held a small address book, bound in red leather; and Zelda ran the leaves through her fingers, noting the names of persons who were her mother’s friends. “Margaret Dameron” was written on one of the fly leaves. The book had been intended as a register of visits, begun at the threshold of her married life; but, from appearances, it had been abandoned soon as an address book. At the back, where the ink was fresher and of a different kind, some of the pages were filled. The girl carried the book close to the shrouded table where her candles stood and opened it.
“This is to you, Julia or Rodney. They have told me to-day that I am going to die; but I have known it for a long time. The end is nearer than they think it is; and I am going to set down here an appeal that I can not bring myself to make to either of you directly. It is about Zelda. I think she will be like us. God grant it may be so. I know what I hope her future may be; but I dare not plan it. My own—you know that I planned my own. * * * Save her, as you tried to save me from myself, if it should be necessary. She is very dear and gentle; but she has our pride. I can see it growing day by day. They say that we Merriams are hard and proud; but she will never be hard. Do for her what you would have done for me. Do not let him kill the sweetness and gentleness in her. Keep her away from him if you can; but do not let her know what I have suffered from him. I have arranged for him to care for the property I have to leave her, so that she may never feel that I did not trust him. He will surely guard what belongs to her safely. * * * Perhaps I was unjust to him; it may have been my fault; but if she can respect or love him I wish it to be so.”
Zelda read on. There were only a few pages of this appeal, but the words sank into her consciousness with the weight of lead. She was to be saved from her father, if need be, by her aunt and uncle; but she must not know what this dead woman, her mother, had suffered at his hands. There was the heartache of years in the lines; they had not been written to her, but fate had brought them under her eyes. She closed the book, clasping it in her hands, and stared into the dark area beyond the candlelight. Her mind was busily reconstructing the life of her mother, of whom she knew so little. The book that she held, with its pitiful plea for her own security and happiness, opened a new world to her; her mother’s words brought the past before her vividly and sent her thoughts into the future with a fierce haste of transition.
This was her home-coming and this was home! She forgot for the moment that she had friends anywhere; she felt herself a stranger in her native city, in the house where she was born. Her heart went out to her mother, across a distance that was vaster than any gulf of time, for there was added the greater void that sympathy and love would have filled if mother and child might have touched hands to-day.
Her fingers came upon the broken wrapper that had fallen from the little book. She lifted it to the light and read:
“Private. For brother Rodney or sister Julia.”