CHAPTER IX.
THE LAMBERT MANSION.
The Lamberts were a proud family, aristocratic in birth intellect and breeding. This branch with which our story deals, had added great wealth to its other possessions by marriage with a rich man’s only daughter.
Mrs. Lambert was not content with a home in the Fifth Avenue, which many a small monarch might have coveted for a regal palace, but she must have it altogether different, more superb than her neighbors, unique as well as magnificent. Mrs. Lambert had led society so long, and travelled so much, that commonplace things, bought by the yard, and arranged exactly like every other house of the class, were far beneath her aspirations. Her stately mansion abounded in beautiful objects, rare and costly, which she had been years in collecting at every curiosity-shop and brie-a-brae sale in Europe.
The ground on which the Lambert mansion was built had been a farm, or rather homestead, when its present mistress was born. As the city throve and grew around it, that which had been a modest competency became enormous wealth, in the heart of which she replaced the old homestead with a palace, and turned the old garden and goodly home lot into a wilderness of flowers. These grew and bloomed beautifully, in spite of three or four grand old forest trees which still kept a firm root-hold in the soil. Standing in front, with those broad steps winding up to the entrance through their heavy stone balustrades, you saw nothing of the lovely green paradise that bloomed on the other side of that costly building. The plate glass windows were so brilliant, the stone work so elaborate, that an idea of nature took you by surprise.
Leave the avenue only for a minute, turn down the first cross street, and the bloom, the rich greenness, and rustle of leaves, come upon you like enchantment. Through them all, you saw sheets of curved glass rolling downward like sunlit waves of the ocean; and through them come the splendid glow of blossoming flowers, among which you could see birds fluttering, and a fountain shooting up diamonds.
This bit of paradise had formerly been old Mr. Lambert’s kitchen-garden, planted around the edge with currant-bushes, and with a thicket of feathery fennel rising like a green fountain in the center. Where the thicket of tea-roses blossomed most richly, he had planted an asparagus bed and sold the product to market women at the highest price he could get. That great plot of heliotrope and scarlet geraniums, gave him a rich harvest of beets and carrots, in the good old days. But of all the old, thrifty life, there was nothing left save one great white rose-tree, that still clambered up a green post, and half buried a pretty wren-house in its sturdy foliage.
This wren-house the old man had devised when he planted the rose on his daughter’s birth-day, a bit of affectionate sentiment, she could never force herself to root from the gorgeous splendor of her after life. So there the rose-tree bloomed, and the wren-house gave forth yearly broods of young birds, that in their turn built nests, and filled the little spot with songsters bright and beautiful as the flowers.
Mrs. Lambert was a middle-aged lady now, and the white rose had died more than once in its main stock since she was born. Still shoots sprang up from the roots again, and the bush remained itself; while an old, old man, who had worked on the original homestead, and now lived over one of the stables, kept the wren-house thatched, and the ground rich around the old memorial bush, sometimes crying a little as he dug up the earth, and counted the years since the first slender twig was planted by the hand so long cold, while he stood and looked on, wondering if the sprout would take root.
This old man, with hair as white as snow, was in the garden a few days after the opening of this story, looking weird and strange in all that bloom as the old white rose itself; this, being out of flower, was gnarled and rough, having nothing but green leaves to shelter the wren-house with. Some of its branches had died with age, and with his withered and trembling hands the old gardener was attempting to cut the lifeless wood away, a task that went to his heart, for it seemed like digging his own grave.
As the old gardener hacked at the rough wood, a man, who had been loitering along the side-walk, stopped, as many a curious person had done before, and looked in upon the pleasant spot, while his hand held lightly by one of the iron rails. It was a white, thin hand, but not of that delicate mould which entire freedom from toil, from the cradle up, leaves to the possessor. Some time in its owner’s life that hand had wrought and toiled, though the palm was soft now and the fingers slender.