Boston a novel
youngest brother; Abner Quincy Thornwell, burly and slow-moving,
stoop-shouldered and very deaf. Like many thus afflicted, he considered
it necessary to hear his own voice. “Well, Cornelia,” he boomed, “well,
well--so it has come at last! A hard day for you, I know! We’ll stand
back of you, my dear. Anything I can do?” There was a look of concern
on his bland and rosy countenance--something that happened rarely, for
he gave most of his time to chess and would sit for hours lost in a
problem.
Clara appeared, and greeted her uncle. When he asked her what he could
do, she shouted into his ear, “Make Mother wear a veil.”
“Veil?” said Abner. “Of course she’ll wear a veil! Aren’t veils made
for widows?”
“Mother doesn’t care, she wants to advertise to the world that she
isn’t grieving. I don’t believe she has shed a single tear.”
Said Cornelia, “I have read that moving picture actresses make tears
out of glycerine. Perhaps I may do that for the funeral.”
“Oh, Mother, how can you say such horrid things?” Clara began wiping
real tears from her nose and her uncle peered from one to the other,
with the uneasiness of the deaf. “Glycerine?” said he. “I hear it cures
cancer, but I don’t know if it’s true. What did Josiah die of?”
“Dr. Morrow called it heart failure.”
“Heart failure, hey? Well, that’s respectable enough. Where is he, up
in his room? Poor old boy! But he had a long life, and he got what he
wanted.”
He ambled off, and Cornelia found herself escorted into the library
for a formal conference with James Scatterbridge. This son-in-law did
not possess the worldly art of concealing his purposes, but had to
come directly to the point, like a business man. “Mother, I suppose
you haven’t had time to think what you are going to do, but I want to
be the first to tell you that you’ll be welcome to live with Clara and
me. Nothing will give us greater pleasure, and we’ll do everything we
can to make it the same as your own home. Things will stay just as the
governor loved to have them.”
The meaning of that was plain enough: Deborah and Alice were right in
their fears! “I suppose, James,” she said, “this house will come to
you?”
“It is already mine, Mother. The governor gave me a deed several years
ago. You know how his New Haven stock went all to pieces; and the money
I advanced to him was more than the place was worth. The governor felt
a little nearer to me because I had so much to do with managing the
mills.”
“Yes, of course, James. But the girls are going to be vexed. Does the
deed include the furnishings?”
“Yes, Mother; but Clara and I will do our best to satisfy the others.
What I want to make clear to you is, it will be your home just the
same. You need never know that anything has been changed.”
“That is kind of you, James.” She said this with her lips, but at the
same time her mind was flying on. Clara would bring her brood of seven
to this stately old house and they would possess it; she could hear
their shouts resounding through the halls, their heels clattering on
the stairs; she could see them sliding on the polished floors, using
the Shah of Persia’s rug to play marbles on. Against the wall of the
library in front of her was a bookcase some ten feet tall and seven
feet wide, of French walnut, hand-carved over every inch of its surface
with rose-vines and blossoms; the morning sun streamed upon it, and a
thousand facets shone like burnished gold. There was a companion-piece
farther down the wall and Cornelia knew that the last dealer who had
inspected her husband’s treasures had mentioned eight thousand as a
price for that pair.
“There are some valuable things in this house, James.”
“I know, Mother, and don’t you worry. We’ll add a wing back of the
conservatory and keep the children there till they’ve learned manners.
I haven’t been used to fine things, but Clara has and she’s the boss of
this family. You stay and help her.”
“I don’t know, James. I am sixty years old, and all that time I have
done what other people have told me. Now I might want to please myself.”
A troubled look appeared behind the large round spectacles of James
Scatterbridge. He had a literal mind, adjusted to the production of
seventy million yards of low-priced cotton goods per annum; this
production was the real religion of his life, and, for the rest, he
left everything to his wife, satisfied that he had done the best
possible in the matrimonial line. And now here was this little old lady
with the laughing eyes, bearing the sacred name of Thornwell, hinting
at the revolutionary idea of pleasing herself. In his heart James was
afraid of this great family, with its implacable pride and dignified
cruelty; they were sons of pirates and privateersmen, while James was a
farmer-boy, whose ancestors had worked and produced.
V
He had no chance to question Cornelia. The bell rang and through the
wide double doors of the library he saw Addicks in conference with
several well-dressed youngish men. Presently the servant came with a
message which, repeated from one dinner table to another, became a
standard jest of the inner circles of Boston. Addicks had been with
the family more than fifty years and understood all possible social
relationships. Now, after due meditation, he came to his master with a
formula precisely adjusted: “Mr. James, there are three reporters and a
gentleman from the _Transcript_.”
James went out, took the three reporters and the gentleman into the
privacy of the governor’s study, and proceeded to enjoy the fruits of
his own distinguished marriage. He reminded them that the Thornwell
line went back to the Mayflower; there was in the mansion a cradle
which had been brought over in that greatest of ships. He reminded
them that there had been two colonial governors in the line, and two
governors of the Commonwealth. He reminded them of the deeds which
Josiah had performed in office, how he had sent the public thieves to
jail. He verified the names of the ex-governor’s children and gave
the names of the grandchildren, not forgetting the seven of James,
all of whom carried the blessed name: Josiah Thornwell Scatterbridge,
Cornelia Thornwell Scatterbridge, James Thornwell Scatterbridge,
Quincy Thornwell Scatterbridge--and so on. He was in the midst of
telling them how the Thornwell mills were to be closed for a half day
during the funeral, when a tap was heard on the door of the study, and
there entered in full majesty Mrs. Rupert Alvin, _née_ Deborah Quincy
Thornwell.
“James, do I understand that these are representatives of the press?
Good morning, gentlemen, I am Mrs. Alvin, the governor’s oldest
daughter. You will wish to know that I have been in communication over
the telephone with the Reverend Doctor Wolverhampton, rector of St.
Luke’s Church here in Thornwell, which the governor built and endowed.
He has agreed to officiate at the funeral services, which will be held
in the family home. I understand that some of the papers have a report
that the funeral will be held in Trinity Church, Boston, but that is
a mistake; they will take place in this house on Friday afternoon at
two o’clock, and be sure you get it correct so that our friends will
be under no misapprehension. Yes, the name is pronounced Woolton, but
spelled W-o-l-v-e-r-h-a-m-p-t-o-n--the Reverend Doctor James Lowell
Wolverhampton, rector of St. Luke’s Church, Thornwell. He will be
assisted by the Reverend Mr. Quincy Adams Thornwell, a cousin of the
governor’s. The interment will be in the family vault at St. Alston’s
Cemetery.”
After which Mrs. Rupert Alvin, _née_ Deborah Quincy Thornwell, seated
herself firmly upon the sofa, knowing that so long as she was there not
even her plebeian brother-in-law would dare to contravene her. It was
a legend of the family that in one of Deborah’s disputes with her own
husband she had said: “Take me into the closet and spit on me if you
will, but when we are in public show me the respect that is due to my
station.”
The three reporters and one gentleman took their departure in a
taxi-cab which they had hired jointly and were whirled down to the
village, where each annexed himself to a telephone receiver and spelled
out these details, which were first rushed out on a typewriter and then
upon a linotype machine and then upon a printing-press. So in less
than an hour after James had spoken and Deborah had revised him, the
newsboys were crying the second edition of the afternoon papers, with
all possible particulars about the life and death and impending funeral
of the ex-governor of the Commonwealth. They had a generous-sized
picture of him on the front page; a lean face with thin, tight-shut
lips and a long thin nose tapering to a point; a face that had
reappeared continuously in the course of three centuries. In panels on
the walls of his music-room were four oil paintings, life-size, of four
different governors, in four different costumes, but unchanged in soul;
personally incapable of wrong-doing and merciless to all wrong-doers.
Statesman, manufacturer, philanthropist, said the newspapers in their
editorials: a model to posterity, an exemplar of all things dignified
and worthy of emulation--
And meantime, up in the big room with the four-poster bed and the
windows shrouded with dark curtains, Hobson, the psychologist, was
remarking to one of his assistants, “If you don’t stop pumping on that
carotid you’ll have this old gent’s face discolored and have to paint
him.”
VI
Rupert Alvin arrived, having stopped at the Pilgrim National Bank
just long enough to glance at his mail and order his engagements
postponed. Now he emerged from his purring limousine, drew himself up
to his full height of six feet, composed all the bulges of his face,
straightened his waistcoat and went in. He listened with politeness to
James’s account of the arrangements made, and then, in a room apart, he
listened to his wife’s emphatic opinions of Hobson, and rugs, and the
determination of James to become the Thornwell family.
Finally he sought out Cornelia. “Mother. I want to tell you that
Deborah and I will be more than glad to have you make your home with us
and will do everything in human power to make you happy.”
“Thank you, Rupert. I really can’t say yet; I haven’t had time to get
myself together.”
But her mind was quick, and was busy picturing life with Rupert and
Deborah. They had a big house on Commonwealth Avenue, where they lived
three months of the year; the rest of the time they occupied a castle
on the rocks of the North Shore. Deborah had the lean face and thin
nose of her father and held herself in the same stiff manner; for her
that variety of chair is made, of which the backs go up in a straight
vertical. She would be her father’s successor in understanding and
preserving the Thornwell traditions. She was very devout, and gave
her spare time to the management of charities--certain special ones;
she did not like other people to make contributions to them, because
they would then expect to meddle with her administration. It was her
complaint that there was no such thing as an efficient subordinate to
be hired; impossible to delegate any responsibility, so she managed
everything.
As for Rupert, he was running a great banking industry which carried
a general supervision of other industries and the gradual taking
over of many of them. In between times he would advise about his
wife’s charities and their religious affairs. His hobby was church
architecture; the rectors of parishes in eastern Massachusetts would
come to him for advice about the proper proportions of an apse.
Cornelia realized that if she went to live with them she would indeed
feel “at home”; she would be told what to do, exactly as if Josiah were
there.