"No, don't. I think it's ever so much cuter this way. Who was Cynara?"
"Well—ahem——"
"Huh! Bet she wasn't any better than she'd ought to be!" grunted old Mrs. Botlisch sceptically; whereat the doctor, after a momentary struggle, laughed so immoderately that we all more than half suspected she was right.
CHAPTER SIX
If Gwynne Peters had supposed at the outset that the new tenants would remain long unacquainted with their set of erratic landlords, the "quite a few gentlemen and some ladies" whom he had tactfully refrained from mentioning, he would have been profoundly mistaken; but in fact he supposed nothing of the sort. He knew his kin too well; and perhaps shared tacitly Templeton's openly-expressed and most devout hope that none of them would say or do anything to put the Pallinders out of the notion of buying the property when the lease should expire. "They'll want thirty-five or forty thousand, if not more, I'll bet a doughnut," the agent would say in moments of gloomy confidence; "and you know, Mr. Peters, the place ain't worth—at least it can't be sold for—a dollar over twenty-eight, the way times are. I might screw the colonel up to twenty-nine-fifty—he seems to be a free spender, and the ladies like the house so much, he'd do anything they want. But, like as not, just as I've done that and got everything good and going, Mr. Steven Gwynne will come in with some objection and knock the whole deal higher than Gilderoy's kite. And when I think of what it will be to get 'em all combed down and willing to sign—and those children of Lucien Gwynne's out in Iowa, you know, they've got to quiet the title—and Mrs. Montgomery over in Chillicothe, she's another—well, I suppose there's no use crossing that bridge till we've come to it, but I tell you sometimes it keeps me awake nights worrying." The family had fallen into the habit of leaving all the business connected with THE GWYNNE ESTATE—it must be written thus to furnish some idea of the proportions it assumed in their minds—to Gwynne's management. He had just been elevated to the bar; from thence to the bench, and to whatever corresponds to the woolsack in our judicial system was, according to them, a short step for a Gwynne. The mantle of his grandfather had fallen upon his shoulders; they were proud of him in their extraordinary fashion, which combined hysterical and wholly unmerited praise with equally hysterical and undeserved blame. For a while even Gwynne, who had a tolerable sense of humour, took himself with amazing seriousness. He sat in his office surrounded by that copious library of the old gentleman's, now grown somewhat out of date, to be sure, but still impressive by sheer weight and numbers; there was a photographed copy of the Governor's portrait, inkstand and all, over his desk, and a massive safe in one corner. It contained at this time, as Gwynne long years afterward acknowledged to me, with laughter, nothing but some of the old family silver, forks, trays, ladles, and what-not blackened with age and neglect sacked up in flannel wherein the moth made great havoc. "Sam's share, you know," said Gwynne, his face clouding a little, when his laugh was out. "I had to take care of it, of course."
Into this august retreat came daily one or another of the young fellow's connection with inquiries about that property which everyone of them called in all honesty and simplicity "my house"; and, after much futile advice, took their leave, commenting on the fact that he strongly resembled his grandfather, and adjuring him to "remember that he was a Gwynne." There were so many of them they gave the place a false air of bustle and business, to which Gwynne used, half in fun, to attribute his later success—"looked as if I was all balled up with work, you know, 'rising young lawyer,' and all the rest of it." But, indeed, I am afraid there were not many affairs of importance going forward among the calf-bound volumes, and Gwynne defaced more than one sheet of legal cap., with gross caricatures and idle verses. If the family took an interest in the fortunes of the house before, it was redoubled now. To have the place rented at all was a novelty; but to have it rented to personages of such opulence and distinction as the Pallinders satisfied the most exact standards; and the colonel's somewhat vague allusions to his design of ultimately buying it filled these sanguine souls with delight. Let me do them justice: they would one and all have indignantly refused thousands from people whom they deemed unworthy. Have we not seen them rejecting poor Silberberg's offer with contumely? But Colonel Pallinder with his Virginia accent and his large manner recalled a generation contemporary with Governor Gwynne himself, and the traditions of an antique and formal gentility. The Pallinders were the only people so far who had succeeded in residing in, and dispensing the hospitalities of the old Gwynne house without offence to its owners; I think the Gwynnes took a kind of vicarious pride in the spectacle. One after another, the entire family called upon them, appraised them, patronised them. They drank the colonel's fine sherry: they covertly eyed Mrs. Pallinder's suave beauty, and Mazie's bewildering toilettes; they were at first repelled and then overpowered by the rich tasteful changes in the ancient rooms; the peacock-blue plush and old-gold satin in the south parlour; the crimson wall-paper embossed with gilt figures the size of a cabbage in the dining-room; the grand piano in the north parlour and piano-lamp glorious with onyx slabs and pendant glass icicles of prisms—the Gwynnes saw all these things with an Indian stolidity in the presence of their tenants, but they came away pleased to the core. They went down to Gwynne's office—yes, even Mrs. Horace Gwynne went!—and both figuratively and literally patted him on the back. They were actually civil to Templeton! Old Steven Gwynne, who had been violently alarmed at first, supposing that these improvements and furnishings must be paid for by himself and the rest of the heirs, magically recovered his tranquillity so soon as he heard that Colonel Pallinder was doing it all out of his own pocket; he pronounced the wall-paper and new graining to be in the best of taste, although hardly the equal in appearance or cost of what Governor Gwynne would have provided. Such was the Gwynne enthusiasm that I am convinced it must have contributed largely to the success of the Pallinders with our society; for, after all, as unstable as they themselves were, the Gwynne position with us was of the most stable; our city had known them for fifty years. A family whose men were rigorously confined to the professions—all except Horace Gwynne, who was in the wholesale grocery business,—a family which numbered among its members a governor of a State—even if it also numbered one or more "queer" people—such a family held, unquestioned, the highest social rank. And Mrs. Horace Gwynne—she was a daughter of old Bishop Hunter, which may be supposed in a measure to set off the grocery business—frankly considered herself arbiter not only of her husband's family, but of society in general as well; and never doubted that in the matter of assigning people to their caste and station one blast upon her bugle-horn was worth a thousand men.
She performed her first visit in state and ceremony in her well-ordered barouche—the Horace Gwynnes were fairly well-to-do, owing, people said, to Mrs. Horace's implacable thrift—and eying the approaches to the old house, as she drove up in a highly critical and examining mood. Her sharp glance noted every change; the carefully-weeded sweep and circle of the drive, the close-cut lawn and pruned shrubbery pleased her like an incense to the Governor's memory. The place had not looked so since his day. There was a length of red carpet down over the flagged veranda and stone steps such as used to adorn the sacred threshold thirty years before when she was a young bride just entered into the family; this trivial thing moved her inexplicably as such things do, and she descended at the door in a temper of less severity. It augured well for the pair of ladies within, profanely peering through their exceedingly high-priced lace curtains and wondering who on earth the funny little old lady in the chignon and her best black silk was.
Mazie, as soon as her acquaintance became more extended and intimate, entertained us with a picturesque and I have no doubt entirely accurate account of this and other Gwynne visits. If they amused her she was by far too sharp to let it be seen; not thus do people attain popularity. Mazie knew when, and in what company, and of what sort of things to make fun; no gift can be more valuable to the social aspirant. No, Miss Pallinder, curled up on her flowered-cretonne sofa, nibbling caramels, and telling us about the Gwynnes, might have posed for the model of the ingénue, girlish, inexperienced, and youthfully gay. "We didn't know there was such a large family of Gwynnes," she explained. "Are any of you related to them? No? They're perfectly lovely people, aren't they? They've all called on us, and you know I think that's so kind when we came here such strangers; we were awfully lonesome for a while. If it hadn't been for Doctor Vardaman, I don't know what we'd have done. Isn't he the dearest old gentleman? Mamma fairly fell in love with him at first sight; we have him up to dinner all the time, now. You know it's such a terrible job for him to get a good servant—I'm sure I can't see why. I told him he could hire me any day. I suppose it's because it's a little lonely, and his house must be so quiet. We don't have any trouble, but then we have such a gang of them they keep each other company. But you know we were so surprised after people began to call on us to find out there were so many Gwynnes! Mr. Peters had said something about them—I think he's lovely, don't you? but we hadn't any idea there was such a big connection; the house belongs to all of them—did you know that? At least they all call it their house. Such a dear old lady came—well, maybe not so very old, but dressed in rather an old-fashioned way—Mrs. Horace Gwynne, of course you all know her. She was just sweet, and took such an interest. She told mamma the piano ought to be on the other side of the room, because there was so much better light by that window, and that was where it always was when Governor Gwynne lived here. And she wanted to know if we had noticed that those big cut-glass chandeliers in the centre of the ceilings downstairs were an exact copy, only smaller, of the one in the State-House—that was being built at the same time as this house, and the Governor had the copies made, he admired the design so much. Isn't that interesting? And then mamma had one of the servants bring some hot coffee and little cakes, the way we always do, you know, and Mrs. Gwynne told us about some kind of cookies she has made that are the best she ever ate, so mamma asked her for the recipe right off—mamma can't cook a bit, and don't go in the kitchen once a month, but she's ever so much interested just the same. And when Mrs. Gwynne went away she said she'd had a lovely time—wasn't it nice of her? and was going to have all her family call on us—wasn't that kind? And she sent us a card to her reception; and right the very next afternoon Mrs. Lawrence called—she's another Gwynne, isn't she?—and asked us to Marian's coming-out party, so sweet. And, oh, girls, two such dear funny little old mai—I mean elderly, and they aren't married, you know—Miss Gwynne and Miss Mollie Gwynne came—what are you all laughing at, what's the joke? Well, I think you're real mean not to tell me! I thought they were nice—well, of course, maybe they did seem kind of queer, but—well, it was a little funny," said Mazie, yielding to the laughter with apparent reluctance; "we took them all over the house, because we thought, you know, they'd be pleased to see the way we'd fixed it up. And they did seem rather tickled; Miss Gwynne said she thought they had never had any tenants in their house before that appreciated it as we did. And when we got to the south parlour Miss Mollie wouldn't go in, and Miss Gwynne took us in and said in an awful whisper that everybody in the family had been laid out in that room, but she'd try to get Miss Mollie in to look at the chandelier which was an exact copy of the one in the State-House—and Mollie hadn't been in the house for so long, maybe it would refresh her, and take her mind off the funerals, you know. So Mollie came in," went on Mazie, who by this time was openly laughing like everyone else, "and she took one look and covered her eyes like this, and said 'Oh, Sister Eleanor, I can't—I can't,' and Sister Eleanor said, 'Look up, Mollie, look up'—just as if it was Heaven, you know—'don't you remember the chandelier?' And then Miss Mollie said, 'Oh, yes, I remember—shall I ever forget—boo-hoo!—it cost three hundred and twenty-five dollars—boo-hoo!—every one of 'em cost three hundred and twenty-five dollars!' But, honestly, girls, it's all very well to laugh, but it gives me the creeps to think of that room since I've known; I can't go into it without seeing a coffin spread out right where our centre-table is; and you know there's that lovely bisque monkey climbing up a cord that mamma has hanging from the chandelier—think of that dangling down over a—B-r-r! I didn't know about so many Gwynnes dying here. There's enough left to keep the family going anyway, I should think. Was Mr. Peters' brother one of 'em that died in the house? Eh? What! Mercy! isn't that awful? Why, I thought somebody said Sam Peters was in Honduras or Alaska or somewhere—is it the same one? Isn't that awful! Isn't it safe to have him—— Horrors! Oh, girls, I think that's awful! And Mr. Peters is such a dear, isn't he? So nice! But don't you tell him I said that—now please don't, girls, I'd be ready to fall down dead I'd be so ashamed if he knew I said he was a dear. I'd never look him in the face again," said the ingenuous Mazie, knowing perfectly well—who better?—that Gwynne would be miraculously informed of this damaging admission before the next twenty-four hours were over.