VI

On the afternoon of the first of December, Albert left his desk in the County Clerk’s office at four o’clock, feeling very much as he used to when school was dismissed in the middle of the afternoon just before the Christmas holidays. It was his uncle’s birthday that was in his mind; his own, of course, gave him no particular pleasure. If one stopped to think of that, there was a shiver waiting round the corner. He walked over the Smithfield Street Bridge. A thick brown fog made everything dark, and there was a feeling of snow in the air. The lights along the sheer cliffs of Mount Washington, high above the river, were already lighted. When Albert was a boy, those cliffs, with the row of lights far up against the sky, always made him think of some far-away, cloud-set city in Asia; the forbidden city, he used to call it. Well, that was a long time ago; a lot of water had run under this bridge since then, and kingdoms and empires had fallen. Meanwhile, Uncle Doctor was still hanging on, and things were not so bad with them as they might be. Better not reflect too much. He hopped on board a street car, and old women with market baskets shifted to make room for him.

When he reached home, the table was already set in the living room. Beautiful table linen had been one of his mother’s extravagances (he had boxes of it, meant to give some to Elsa on her marriage), and Mrs. Rudder laundered it with pious care. She had put out the best silver. He had forgotten to order flowers, but the old woman had brought up one of her blooming geraniums for a centerpiece. Uncle Albert was dozing by the fire in his old smoking jacket, a volume of Schiller on his knees.

“I’ll put the studs in your shirt for you. Time to dress, Uncle Doctor.”

The old man blinked and smiled drolly. “So? Die claw-hammer?”

“Of course die claw-hammer! Elsa is going to a masquerade with Carl, and they are coming up to see us before they go. I promised her you would dress.”

“Albert,” the Doctor called him back, beckoned with a mysterious smile; “where did you get that wine now?”

“Oh, you found it when she put it on ice, did you? That’s Judge Hammersley’s, the best he had. He insisted on sending it to you, with his compliments and good wishes.”

Uncle Albert rose and drew up his shoulders somewhat pompously. “From my own kind I still command recognition.” Then dropping into homely vulgarity he added, with a sidelong squint at his nephew, “By God, some of that will feel good, running down the gullet.”

“You’ll have all you want for once. It’s a great occasion. Did you shave carefully? I’ll take my bath, and then you must be ready for me.”

In half an hour Albert came out in his dress clothes and found his uncle still reading his favorite poet. “The trousers are too big,” the Doctor complained. “Why not die claw-hammer and my old trousers? Elsa wouldn’t notice.”

“Oh, yes, she would! She’s seen these every day for five years. Quick change!”

Doctor Engelhardt submitted, and when he was dressed, surveyed himself in his mirror with satisfaction, though he slyly slipped a cotton handkerchief into his pocket instead of the linen one Albert had laid out. When they came back to the sitting room, Mrs. Rudder had been up again and had put on the wine glasses. There was still half an hour before dinner, and Albert sat down to play for his uncle. He was beginning to feel that it was all much ado about nothing, after all.

A gentle tap at the door and Elsa came in with her young man. She was dressed as a Polish maiden, and Carl Abberbock was in a Highlander’s kilt.

“Congratulations on your birthday, Herr Doctor, and I’ve brought you some flowers.” She went to his chair and bent down to be kissed, putting a bunch of violets in his hand.

The Doctor rose and stood looking down at the violets. “Hey, you take me for a Bonapartist? What is Mussolini’s flower, Albert? Advise your friends in Rome that a Supreme Dictator should always have a flower.” He turned the young girl around in the light and teased her about her thin arms — such an old joke, but she laughed for him.

“But that’s the style now, Herr Doctor. Everybody wants to be as thin as possible.”

“Bah, there are no styles in such things! A man will always want something to take hold of, till Hell freezes over! Is dat so, Carl?”

Carl, a very broad-faced, smiling young man with outstanding ears, was suddenly frightened into silence by the entrance of a fine lady, and made for the door to get his knotty knees into the shadow. Elsa, too, caught her breath and shrank away.

Without knocking, Mrs. Parmenter, her arms full of roses, appeared in the doorway, and just behind her was her chauffeur, carrying a package. “Put it down there and wait for me,” she said to him, then swept into the room and lightly embraced Doctor Engelhardt without waiting to drop the flowers or take off her furs. “I wanted to congratulate you in person. They told me below that you were receiving. Please take these flowers, Albert. I want a moment’s chat with Doctor Engelhardt.”

The Doctor stood with singular gravity, like some one in a play, the violets still in his hand. “To what,” he muttered with his best bow, “to what am I indebted for such distinguished consideration?”

“To your own distinction, my dear sir — always one of the most distinguished men I ever knew.”

The Doctor, to whom flattery was thrice dearer than to ordinary men, flushed deeply. But he was not so exalted that he did not notice his little friend of many lonely hours slipping out of the entry-way — the bare-kneed Highland chief had already got down the wooden stairs. “Elsa,” he called commandingly, “come here and kiss me good night.” He pulled her forward. “This is Elsa Rudder, Mrs. Parmenter, and my very particular friend. You should have seen her beautiful hair before she cut it off.” Elsa reddened and glanced up to see whether the lady understood. Uncle Doctor kissed her on the forehead and ran his hand over her shingled head. “Nineteen years,” he said softly. “If the next nineteen are as happy, we won’t bother about the rest. Behut’ dich, Gottr.

“Thank you, Uncle Doctor. Good night.”

After she fluttered out, he turned to Mrs. Parmenter. “That little girl,” he said impressively, “is the rose in winter. She is my heir. Everything I have, I leave to her.”

“Everything but my birthday present, please! You must drink that. I’ve brought you a bottle of champagne.”

Both Alberts began to laugh. “But your father has already given us two!”

Mrs. Parmenter looked from one to the other. “My father? Well, that is a compliment! It’s unheard of. Of course he and I have different lockers. We could never agree when to open them. I don’t think he’s opened his since the Chief Justice dined with him. Now I must leave you. Be as jolly as the night is long; with three bottles you ought to do very well! The good woman downstairs said your dinner would be served in half an hour.”

Both men started toward her. “Don’t go. Please, please, stay and dine with us! It’s the one thing we needed.” Albert began to entreat her in Italian, a language his uncle did not understand. He confessed that he had been freezing up for the last hour, couldn’t go on with it alone. “One can’t do such things without a woman — a beautiful woman.”

“Thank you, Albert. But I’ve a dinner engagement; I ought to be at the far end of Ellsworth Avenue this minute.”

“But this is once in a lifetime — for him! Still, if your friends are waiting for you, you can’t. Certainly not.” He took up her coat and held it for her. But how the light had gone out of his face; he looked so different, so worn, as he stood holding her coat at just the right height. She slipped her arms into it, then pulled them out. “I can’t, but I just will! Let me write a note, please. I’ll send Henry on with it and tell them I’ll drop in after dinner.” Albert pressed her hand gratefully and took her to his desk. “Oh, Albert, your Italian writing table, and all the lovely things on it, just as it stood in your room at the Villa Scipione! You used to let me write letters at it. You had the nicest way with young girls. If I had a daughter, I’d want you to do it all over again.”

She scratched a note, and Albert put a third place at the table. He noticed Uncle Doctor slip away, and come back with his necktie set straight, attended by a wave of eau de cologne. While he was lighting the candles and bringing in the wine cooler, Mrs. Parmenter sat down beside the Doctor, accepted one of his cigarettes, and began to talk to him simply and naturally about Marguerite Theisinger. Nothing could have been more tactful, Albert knew; nothing could give the old man more pleasure on his birthday. Albert himself couldn’t do it any more; he had worn out his power of going over that sad story. He tried to make up for it by playing the songs she had sung.

“Albert,” said Mrs. Parmenter when they sat down to dinner, “this is the only spot I know in the world that is before-the-war. You’ve got a period shut up in here; the last ten years of one century, and the first ten of another. Sitting here, I don’t believe in aeroplanes, or jazz, or Cubists. My father is nearly as old as Doctor Engelhardt, and we never buy anything new; yet we haven’t kept it out. How do you manage?”

Albert smiled a little ruefully. “I suppose it’s because we never have any young people about. They bring it in.”

“Elsa,” murmured the Doctor. “But I see; she is only a child.”

“I’m sorry for the young people now,” Mrs. Parmenter went on. “They seem to me coarse and bitter. There’s nothing wonderful left for them, poor things; the war destroyed it all. Where could any girl find such a place to escape to as your mother’s house, full of chests of linen like this? All houses now are like hotels; nothing left to cherish. Your house was wonderful! And what music we used to have. Do you remember the time you took me to hear Joseffy play the second Brahms, with Gericke? It was the last time I ever heard him. What did happen to him, Albert? Went to pieces in some way, didn’t he?”

Albert sighed and shook his head; wine was apt to plunge him into pleasant, poetic melancholy. “I don’t know if any one knows. I stayed in Rome too long to know, myself. Before I went abroad, I’d been taking lessons with him right along — I saw no change in him, though he gave fewer and fewer concerts. When I got back, I wrote him the day I landed in New York — he was living up the Hudson then. I got a reply from his house-keeper, saying that he was not giving lessons, was ill and was seeing nobody. I went out to his place at once. I wasn’t asked to come into the house. I was told to wait in the garden. I waited a long while. At last he came out, wearing white clothes, as he often did, a panama hat, carrying a little cane. He shook hands with me, asked me about Mrs. Sterrett — but he was another man, that’s all. He was gone; he wasn’t there. I was talking to his picture.”

“Drugs!” muttered the Doctor out of one corner of his mouth.

“Nonsense!” Albert shrugged in derision. “Or if he did, that was secondary; a result, not a cause. He’d seen the other side of things; he’d let go. Something had happened in his brain that was not paresis.”

Mrs. Parmenter leaned forward. “Did he look the same? Surely, he had the handsomest head in the world. Remember his forehead? Was he gray? His hair was a reddish chestnut, as I remember.”

“A little gray; not much. There was no change in his face, except his eyes. The bright spark had gone out, and his body had a sort of trailing languor when he moved.”

“Would he give you a lesson?”

“No. Said he wasn’t giving any. Said he was sorry, but he wasn’t seeing people at all any more. I remember he sat making patterns in the gravel with his cane. He frowned and said he simply couldn’t see people; said the human face had become hateful to him — and the human voice! ‘I am sorry,’ he said, ‘but that is the truth.’ I looked at his left hand, lying on his knee. I wonder, Marjorie, that I had the strength to get up and go away. I felt as if everything had been drawn out of me. He got up and took my hand. I understood that I must leave. In desperation I asked him whether music didn’t mean anything to him still. ‘Music,’ he said slowly, with just a ghost of his old smile, ‘yes — some music.’ He went back into the house. Those were the last words I ever heard him speak.”

“Oh, dear! And he had everything that is beautiful — and the name of an angel! But we’re making the Doctor melancholy. Open another bottle, Albert — father did very well by you. We’ve not drunk a single toast. Many returns, we take for granted. Why not each drink a toast of our own, to something we care for.” She glanced at Doctor Engelhardt, who lifted the bunch of violets by his plate and smelled them absently. “Now, Doctor Engelhardt, a toast!”

The Doctor put down his flowers, delicately took up his glass and held it directly in front of him; everything he did with his hands was deft and sure. A beautiful, a wonderful look came over his face as she watched him.

“I drink,” he said slowly, “to a memory; to the lost Lenore.”

“And I,” said young Albert softly, “to my youth, to my beautiful youth!”

Tears flashed into Mrs. Parmenter’s eyes. “Ah,” she thought, “that’s what liking people amounts to; it’s liking their silliness and absurdities. That’s what it really is.”

“And I,” she said aloud, “will drink to the future; to our renewed friendship, and many dinners together. I like you two better than anyone I know.”

When Albert came back from seeing Mrs. Parmenter down to her car, he found his uncle standing by the fire, his elbow on the mantel, thoughtfully rolling a cigarette. “Albert,” he said in a deeply confidential tone, “good wine, good music, beautiful women; that is all there is worth turning over the hand for.”

Albert began to laugh. The old man wasn’t often banal. “Why, Uncle, you and Martin Luther — ”

The Doctor lifted a hand imperiously to stop him, and flushed darkly.

He evidently hadn’t been aware that he was quoting — it came from the heart. “Martin Luther,” he snapped, “was a vulgarian of the first water; cabbage soup!” He paused a moment to light his cigarette. “But don’t fool yourself; one like her always knows when a man has had success with women!”

Albert poured a last glass from the bottle and sipped it critically.

“Well, you had success to-night, certainly. I could see that Marjorie was impressed. She’s coming to take you for a ride to-morrow, after your nap, so you must be ready.”

The Doctor passed his flexible, nervous hand lightly over the thick bristles of his French hair-cut. “Even in our ashes,” he muttered haughtily.