It is true that even the less well-to-do, summoning all their strength, sometimes gave “parties,” but few houses encouraged the cheerful custom of having friends “drop in.” And so, no more useless room in any dwelling than the parlor. Yet so great was the power of this tradition of a lost hospitality, that people who had almost nothing else over and above the grimmest necessities, still had their parlor. Discomfort and cramping of every kind was stoically borne that the sacred precincts might be preserved inviolate. For what? Nobody ever asked.
So then, in the dining-room, sat Nathaniel Mar even on this fine Sunday afternoon, when, as a rule, the desk was shut and the owner gone to potter in the garden. But the exigency was great, and for once even the Seventh Day had brought no rest. As he sat there, bent over the desk, the light fell with such harshness on the man’s foreshortened features, under the unkempt mop of prematurely graying hair, that you would not easily have believed him to be under forty odd.
He was not yet thirty-five. The deep line that dropped from the side of each nostril, to lose itself in the heavy, dark mustache, gave to his face a stricken and weariful air. And he sat crooked, with one high shoulder more hunched than the other. You saw the reason of that when he got up to shut out the sounds of pan-banging, and fire-irons rattling, that came in through the inch of open door opposite the one leading into the hall. Before rising, Mar had felt for his walking-stick, and any one who noticed how heavily he bore upon it in limping over the worn carpet, knew why it was that one of his great shoulders was pushed awry.
He made the same detour in returning to his seat as had carried him to the kitchen door, carefully cruising round the pitfall presented by a half-yard or so of extra dilapidation in the yellow-brown carpet. As you looked closer at what his avoidance made more noticeable, you saw that a less faded piece had been tacked over a part hopelessly worn and mended, and how even this newer square had despairingly let go of the tacks that held it, and been kicked up by some foot less considerate or more courageous than Mr. Mar’s. The superimposed piece sat now, in a frayed, rag-baggy condition, gaping with despair, and like some beggar in extremis by the way, ready to lay hold on the first unwary foot that passed.
The entire room wore that indescribable air of settled melancholy that no one thing in it, not even the carpet, seemed quite ugly or uncomfortable enough to account for. The furniture was heavy and old. Upon the walls, besides two or three reconnaissance maps, were some inoffensive prints. A “Signing of the Declaration of Independence” hung high between the two windows, and underneath, in oval, gilt frames, were companion pictures of Mar’s mother and of his father, who had been for many years minister to Valdivia’s first Presbyterian Church.
On the opposite wall a good engraving of Lincoln was flanked, somewhat incongruously, by a photograph of a buxom young woman with a group of girls behind her—Mar’s wife in her school-teaching days, with her class. Besides these, an old view of the Lake of Geneva, a print of Cromwell, and on the wall behind Mar’s revolving chair, an engraved portrait, bearing underneath it the inscription: John W. Galbraith, President Rock Hill Mining Co.
Even if these adornments were of a very mild description, they, at least, covered several feet of the marbled yellow paper that apparently had been chosen (and chosen a good while ago) to “go with” the hideous “grained” woodwork. That it did “go with” that peculiarly perverse soiling and smearing of inoffensive surfaces, may not be denied. It went far. It arrived at such a degree of success that all the little room irradiated a bilious yellowness “clawed” with muddy brown.
The very atmosphere was not left as nature sent it in at the window. It halted upon the sill and changed color, like one who gets wind of ill news. The moment it penetrated beyond the holland blinds it turned sick and overflowed the room in dirty saffron.
It may well be wondered why any creature who was not obliged to should come here. And yet the defeated-looking man at the window did not lack high companionship. Sunset and the rain, the call of the winds, clouds of majesty, and mists of silver, not these alone. Daydreams penetrated the sullen walls. Here, where the rudest emigrant would not long abide, fair visions made themselves at home—“exultations, agonies”—a field here for the unconquerable mind no more unfit than many another for the long battle men call life.
On this particular July afternoon, Nathaniel Mar had no sooner shut out one order of disturbance, than another penetrated the room from a different direction.