Work of Art

17

He saw coming toward him, on his second afternoon in Black Thread, when he was wandering through the village and being edified by the information, 'Well, you been away quite a while', a tall man who looked as though he were vigorously going somewhere but was not quite sure where it was; a tall man with a high forehead, thin hair, large spectacles, and high black shoes. The man looked rather like Herbert Lambkin, but surely could not be, for Herbert was not older now than thirty-two or -three, and the man approaching looked forty.

It was Herbert Lambkin, right enough.

He manhandled Myron in greeting, and spouted, 'It certainly is fine to see you in the old town, Myron! I hear everything's gone fine with you.'

'Oh, so so.'

'Staying a while?'

'Yes, a few weeks, I guess.'

'Well, we must see a lot of each other. There's nothing sadder in life than the way old friends of boyhood, comrades at arms, you might say, permit the currents of life to part them. We must have some good walks and talks, and try to break bread together.'

'Yuh--yuh, sure!'

'I'm sorry, Myron, we didn't see more of each other in New Haven, but of course we were both so busy trying our fledgling wings and . . . I presume you are staying with your father and mother?'

'Yes.'

'A splendid couple! Such sterling characters!'

'But what are you doing here in town, Bert? Aren't you teaching in some university? Commencement time already?'

'No, not exactly, though I'm seriously considering one or two very flattering offers. But after I took my M.A. at Yale University, in English Literature, you know, I had an irreconcilable feeling that one ought, you might say, to enter education through the foundation, if you don't mind the metaphor, instead of just flitting in through the attic window--in other words, a really well-rounded educator ought first to familiarize himself thoroughly with the instruction of the child-mind, so for some years now I have been superintendent of schools here--a position, I trust, not without some credit and responsibility, and . . . We were pretty wild lads in college days, eh? beer and who knows what, but now I'm afraid my salad days are over, and I'm settled down, with a wife and a couple of bonny children! We're planning to build an up-to-date bungalow, but just for the present, my little family and I are staying with my father--that big, roomy house, and father so pitifully lonely since the death of my mother, and you must certainly come and break bread with us there, Myron, and very soon, and I'm sure Julia will be particularly glad to see you. I seem to remember that you were a bit sweet on her, as a young lad.'

'Oh, Julia. That's right. Your sister. Yes--yes, sure--I was quite in love with her. Ha, ha, ha!'

'Ha, ha, ha!'

'Quite struck on her! Ha, ha, ha! Well, I've got to be . . .'

'Ha, ha, ha! That's so. Well . . .'

'What's become of Julia? She still in town?'

'Yes, uh, just, uh, temporarily. She married a fine fellow from Sharon, Willis Wood, the electrician. He isn't exactly a college man, but even so, he's got one of the finest minds you ever encountered. He can make the mysteries of electricity so plain that anybody who runs may read; he even makes them clear to me, though, to tell the truth, and this despite the fact that it is one of my less amusing tasks, among many others, to teach physics in high school, but what I mean to say is, I never did have a natural talent for the sciences--my natural bent is more artistic and literary and perhaps psychological, but Willis has a natural insight into electricity that's simply astonishing--just like the grasp of commercial problems that I'm sure you must have, old man.'

'I see. Well, I've got to be hiking on. See you later. I suppose Julia lives in Sharon, then?'

'Well, not just at the moment. The electrical profession has been a little overdone lately, and Willis is waiting for a new opening, and meantime he's here in Black Thread, helping father in the store, and he and Julia are also living with me and father at the old home, and she has two lovely children, too--just lovely! So you must come and dine with us all!'

'Yes, be glad to. Well, I've got to be skipping along. Fine to seen you. See you soon!'

Myron was too relieved at escaping from Herbert to get any particular joy out of seeing the humility of the retired Brahmin who had once considered him an Untouchable. After Herbert, it was sheer ecstasy to sit on the stone bridge and just gently, lyrically, spit in the creek.

That evening, while he was defenceless in the American House lobby, Herbert descended upon him again.

'Well, sir, it's mighty nice to see your face around the old town again, Myron! We certainly have missed you. This town needs enterprising men like you. Why, do you know, I haven't been able to get the business men of this town interested in either the Boy Scout movement or Rotarianism, although I have ventured to give them my opinion as an educator, as a University man and a Master of Arts, that there are no movements that tend more to develop patriotism, good citizenship, and the social point of view than these; so much so that it might be novel but quite sound to say that, despite the different origins of these two great spiritual awakenings, a Boy Scout is a young Rotarian, and every Rotarian is a Boy Scout in long trousers! I've thought of presenting this, perhaps, somewhat original point of view in a piece for the Educational Review, but I have been so engrossed in the cares of the poor driven educator that I have not had the time to . . . But that's not really what I dropped in to see you about. When I told the family of my good fortune in encountering you on our village street this afternoon, they all hailed my suggestion that you must somehow be coerced into coming and breaking bread with us and how about Friday evening, have you a date?'

'Well . . . no . . . I . . .'

'Then we won't take "no" for an answer! Friday evening then, six-thirty. You must pardon us if we merely have our customary village supper instead of the evening dinner to which I suppose you are accustomed in the great caravanserais of the Metropolis, and of course, you need not dress--we practically never do.'

'That's good. I didn't bring any dinner clothes.'

'No need of them here at all, my dear fellow; no need at all. There are only one or two residences in the vicinity at which it is at all customary for the household to dress, except on the most formal occasions.'

('My God! Bert should tell me about Black Thread Centre!')

'So, then, we'll expect you at six-thirty on Friday, and I need not assure you that it will be a most grateful re-union and commemoration of our happy childhood. Now there is one other thing. Uh--say, Myron . . . The fact is: though I prize greatly the civic opportunities that lie open to the village educator, touching the minds of the Little Ones, who will later be our stalwart citizens and the pillars of the Republic, when they are still dewy and fresh, yet this great métier is not what you might call really well paid. Just between us, and I don't want you to tell this to any of our good old friends as you encounter them in New York, but my stipend for all the toil and responsibility which I must shoulder is only sixteen hundred dollars a year! And I must begin to consider my wife and the little ones and . . . Now you have a great and influential position in the hotel-world. . . .'

'I have not! I hope I may have, some day, in eight or ten years, but I've merely made a good beginning.'

'Nonsense, nonsense, my dear fellow. I know you better than you do yourself! I can see, just talking to you, Myron, that you have great capacity and influence, if you care to use it. I could discern that way back when we were boys. Whatever else I may know, I have a curious natural gift for being able to judge people's characters on sight. I suppose that's the key to what humble success I may have had as an educator. But what I mean to say is . . . Now with all your influence in the hotel-world, I wonder if you couldn't put me on to a good opening where I could make better, or certainly much better-paid, use of my capabilities.'

'Why . . . well . . . uh . . . Just what training have you?'

'My dear fellow, a man who has cared for every detail of the lives of hundreds of children . . . Think of what I do here, daily, entirely aside from teaching and formulating curricula. I have to choose teachers. I have to be able to tell instantly whether some poor grubby little urchin is lying to me. I have to be a really skilled technician--you know the natural bent I have always had for architecture, and possibly it was a mistake not to have followed that up, but I mean: I have to be no mean expert on such sordid details as heating, lighting, ventilation, an adequate supply of clean, pure drinking-water and, uh, if you will pardon my being so realistic, the arrangement and conduct of toilets. And there is perhaps a yet more important factor. As I understand it, the making of entertaining yet informative after-dinner addresses is no mean part of the modern Boniface's equipment and if I may say so without boasting, it just happens, through no virtue of my own, that I seem to have the gift of oratory and, I am told, of rather witty eloquence . . .'

Myron did not get rid of him till after eleven, and he was not at all sure that he had made it clear he was not going to find Herbert a job at the Westward. Jock McCreedy, who had twice come in from the bar to try to rescue him, was very comforting. 'You've been sitting under Prof. Lambkin for two hours, kid. What I prescribe is a whisky sling.'

'Jock, did you know I'm an Eminent Boniface?'

'Well, if you are, they're certainly making the Bonifaces a lot skinnier than when I was a young fellow. Here's how!'

Like the streets of Black Thread Centre, the Trumbull Lambkin mansion had for Myron, at first, most of its ancient awe. The side porch no longer seemed unique, but the heavy cherrywood stairs from the hall, the heavy black walnut chairs and marble fireplace and glassed-in bookcases in the parlour still spelled for him unassailable respectability.

But the Lambkins themselves, in the mere flesh, had no particular sanctity.

Before he had returned to Black Thread, he had absolutely forgotten Julia, the queen of Gibson Girls. In the two days before the party supper, he had managed to work up considerable sentimental excitement about her, but it dropped dead the second he stumbled up to her in the parlour, breathed 'Julia!' and looked at her. She was a rather tall, long-faced woman, with sunken cheeks and wrinkles of anger about her eyes, and she seemed a generation older than himself. He was made nervous by the overpowering cordiality with which she shrieked, 'So you thought you were going to give your old friends the go-by and not come see us, now you're such a great success and all! I've certainly got a bone to pick with you for that! 'Well, Myron, it's grand to see you--it certainly is just dandy! I want you to meet my husband, and see my kiddies . . . . They were bound and determined they'd stay up to see their Uncle Myron!'

And so she stood, a thin woman worn with housework, surrounded by her jewels: Mr. Willis Wood, a youngish male with eyeglasses and hair parted in the middle, and two small children who looked extraordinarily like all other children; and she beamed, and Myron wiggled his face with grimaces and felt melancholy and a little embarrassed.

He had so often seen this same family group, with no magic for him, not even the elegance of Gibson-girlism, creeping awkwardly toward a hotel desk, wondering how much a double room would cost, and whether they could get the whole family into one room.

He was painfully cordial to Willis Wood, and bubbled, 'Well, I certainly congratulate you, Mr. Wood, getting this lovely bride.' ('Grrrr! The way she used to high-hat me, damn her!') 'If you'll keep it to yourself, I'll admit I fell pretty average hard for her as a youngster, Mr. Wood!'

'Call me Willis,' croaked Willis.

It was his brightest remark all evening.

Nor had the lordly Mr. Trumbull Lambkin preserved any grandeur. He had lost the selectness of grey side-whiskers; he was simply a meagre, stooped old man who mumbled that in his opinion, hotel-rooms in New York cost a lot of money.

Herbert's wife was a plump little woman, a nice little woman, a cheery little woman--in fact she was a Black Thread Centre little woman. It seemed that her two sprigs also invariably called the guest 'Uncle Myron', but they had not learned that they did so well as had Julia's kitty-witties--on sight of their Uncle Myron they merely giggled and fled, for which he liked them better than anyone in the room, till Effie May came in.

She came from the kitchen, Effie May, Julia's younger sister, dimpling, laughing, her softly fuzzy cheeks a little damp from cooking, and she was a Scandinavian goddess, all gold and blue and ivory, plump but light-footed, looking on Myron as ever so good a joke, looking on all life as a joke and an adventure--young Freya, with skin like a silver birch.

'I guess you don't remember me,' she giggled.

'Why, it's . . . it's . . .'

'Effie May. Isn't it just the silliest name!'

'Well, now, Effie May, it was your grandmother's,' began Mr. Lambkin, clearing his throat as one who would a tale unfold, but he never unfolded it, for, to Myron's entire approbation, Effie May cut him short with, 'I guess I was just a brat when you first went away.'

'You still are!' snarled Herbert.

'How long you been gone, Mr. Weagle?' said Effie May.

'Thirteen years.'

'Oh, then I was only seven when you left. Was I pretty terrible?'

'Well, no, I wouldn't say that, but I remember your putting flour paste in my hat one time when I was courting Julia.'

'Were you courting me?' Julia was very coy about it. 'I declare, I wish you'd let me know. I'd of waited for you, instead of marrying a sawed-off trouble-shooter like Willis!'

'Oh, is that so!' said Willis.

'I think we can all sit down to supper now,' said Effie May.

In fact she was not only the comeliest but the most sensible of the Lambkins, to Myron's way of thinking.

Between them, Julia and Effie May had produced all the features with which their mother, in her lifetime, had adorned company suppers, and of which Myron had, as a boy, enviously heard from outside. There were not only the traditional Lambkin fried chicken, corn fritters, crab-apple jelly, and ice-cream, but the candied orange-peel and brandied peaches, the last a favourite viand among teetotallers in Black Thread.

But they had not arranged for much conversation.

Mr. Lambkin chewed and gulped, and grumbled that the chicken was tough and that it must be pretty fine for Myron to get back home after living 'round in strange hotels. Herbert champed and belched and talked without stopping, but as no one particularly noticed what he was talking about, that could not be called conversation either. The four children, who were supposed to be fashionably tucked away up-stairs, out of hearing, hung about the landing on the stairs and yapped, 'Maaaa-ma!' And all the rest of the company, including Myron, chewed and said nothing profounder than 'May trouble you pass salt?'

Yet Myron and Effie May were talking incessantly.

When Herbert slammed the table to emphasize a point--it was to the effect that education for children was, or possibly was not, a good idea--Effie winked at Myron. When Mr. Lambkin muttered to Julia something ending '. . . where did you put the toothpicks, then?' Effie giggled softly, and her glance and Myron's crossed.

Herbert had to go down to school-board meeting for half an hour after supper, Julia had a chance then, and Myron understood why he had been invited.

It seemed, according to Julia, that Herbert had a muted affection for Myron; that he regarded him as the best innkeeper since Noah; that the brightest moment in his life was Myron's return to Black Thread; that he had always longed to be a hotel-keeper; and that Myron would do a favour not only to Herbert, to herself, and the entire village and township of Black Thread, but to the travelling public, if he found Herbert a tidy little job in hotel-keeping at three or four thousand a year--for a start.

'I'm sure any hotel-owner would be awfully glad to get a man like him, with his fine education and social position and all his training in caring for children. They must have a terrible time, having to depend on ex-waiters and like that,' gurgled Julia.

Myron took to himself a good deal of credit for not saying 'I am an ex-waiter'. He felt helpless. But as his eye roved desperately round the parlour with its forbidding wall-paper of dark red, it rested on Effie, and she dimpled sympathetically at him, and gave him strength to say brazenly, 'I'll certainly look into opportunities for him the minute I get back to New York, though the business is dreadfully crowded just this minute. If I were he, I wouldn't give up my teaching job for a few months yet.'

Effie May giggled faintly. Julia looked at her savagely, and began to talk about 'our old gang'. They were, it seemed, severally and collectively, a 'bunch of cabbage heads'. This was married to a cat, this other was a cat herself, and the third was a vile housekeeper.

Now the persons of whom Julia thus disposed were precisely the lords and ladies of Black Thread who as princelings had most clung about her on the archducal side porch, and whose grandeur Myron had most envied. Yet he could get no satisfaction out of hearing their former sovereign offering them up to him as sacrifices. He would not have liked it, but he would have felt that life was more integral and logical if she had snapped, 'I love all my old friends implicitly, and you, you pot-walloper, you may have more money than we now, but we consider you as fortunate even to be allowed to sit there in mother's old chair'. He listened miserably, and wanted to smoke--apparently, even at this apex of modernity, 1911, one still did not smoke in a Lambkin parlour--and he escaped before the return of Herbert, although it appeared that Herbert would be agonized at missing his old chum.

Effie May walked to the gate with him.

'I'm glad you haven't turned out a crab, like ole Julia and Bert,' said Effie May. 'Don't they love to knock!'

'You think I'm not so bad?'

'You--I think you're just won'erful!' giggled Effie May.

Won'erful, he was to learn, was her favourite word.

He was delighted to find one person in Black Thread who considered life won'erful.

'Look!' he said urgently. 'I'll be just loafing around, for a few weeks. Can't you and I--we're the young, unmarried generation, apparently--can't we get off into the country?'

'I think that would be won'erful. Some of us kids are going to have a picnic on Lake Nekobee, next Sunday afternoon. Could you come along?'

'I'd love to,' said Myron.

And so he again walked from the Lambkin mansion to the American House, falling into love with a Lambkin daughter.

'She's twenty. Of course I'm pretty mature. Still, at that, I'm only eleven years older. Just right. Trained housekeeper. She certainly would be useful in checking up the housekeeping department in . . . No! I won't have my wife working!' reflected that mature New Yorker, Mr. Myron Weagle.