"This I call the Sala de los Embajadores; here is
where I receive my distinguished guests.
where I receive my distinguished guests.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v11 - Fro to Gre
" thought Jane.
She was not yet so far
appeased nor so far forgetful of her own initial awkwardness as
to refrain from searching out the joints in the other's armor.
"What does a woman of fifty-five want to be taking music les-
sons for? »
-
The music-room was a lofty and spacious apartment done com-
pletely in hard-woods; its paneled walls and ceilings rang with a
magnificent sonority as the two pairs of feet moved across the
mirror-like marquetry of the floor.
## p. 6107 (#77) ############################################
HENRY B. FULLER
6107
To one side stood a concert-grand; its case was so unique and
so luxurious that even Jane was conscious of its having been
made by special order and from a special design. Close at hand
stood a tall music-stand in style to correspond. It was laden with
handsomely bound scores of all the German classics and the usual
operas of the French and Italian schools. These were all ranged
in precise order; nothing there seemed to have been disturbed
for a year past. "My! isn't it grand! " sighed Jane. She already
felt herself succumbing beneath these accumulated splendors.
Mrs. Bates carelessly seated herself on the piano stool, with her
back to the instrument. "I don't suppose," she observed, casually,
"that I have sat down here for a month. "
"What! " cried Jane, with a stare. "If I had such a lovely
room as this I should play in it every day. "
"Dear me," rejoined Mrs. Bates, "what pleasure could I get
from practicing in this great barn of a place, that isn't half full
until you've got seventy or eighty people in it? Or on this big
sprawling thing? "-thrusting out her elbow backward towards
the shimmering cover of the keyboard.
"So then," said Jane to herself, "it's all for show. I knew it
was. I don't believe she can play a single note. "
"What do you suppose happened to me last winter? " Mrs.
Bates went on. "I had the greatest set-back of my life. I asked
to join the Amateur Musical Club. They wouldn't let me in. "
"Why not? "
"Well, I played before their committee, and then the secre-
tary wrote me a note. It was a nice enough note, of course, but
I knew what it meant. I see now well enough that my fingers
were rather stiffer than I realized, and that my Twinkling
Sprays' and 'Fluttering Zephyrs' were not quite up to date.
They wanted Grieg and Lassen and Chopin. Very well,' said I,
'just wait. ' Now, I never knuckle under. I never give up. So
I sent right out for a teacher. I practiced scales an hour a day
for weeks and months. Granger thought I was crazy. I tackled
Grieg and Lassen and Chopin,—yes, and Tschaikowsky, too.
going to play for that committee next month.
Let me see if
they'll dare to vote me out again! "
I'm
"Oh, that's it! " thought Jane. She was beginning to feel
desirous of meting out exact and even-handed justice. She found
it impossible to withhold respect from so much grit and deter-
mination.
## p. 6108 (#78) ############################################
6108
HENRY B. FULLER
"But your father liked those old-time things, and so did all
the other young men. " Mrs. Bates creased and folded the end of
one of her long sleeves, and seemed lapsing into a retrospective
mood. "Why, some evenings they used to sit two deep around
the room to hear me do the 'Battle of Prague. ' Do you know
the 'Java March'? " she asked suddenly.
"I'm afraid not," Jane was obliged to confess.
"Your father always had a great fondness for that. I don't
know," she went on, after a short pause, "whether you under-
stand that your father was one of my old beaux-at least, I
always counted him with the rest. I was a gay girl in my day,
and wanted to make the list as long as I could; so I counted
in the quiet ones as well as the noisy ones. Your father was one
of the quiet ones. "
"So I should have imagined," said Jane. Her maiden deli-
cacy was just a shade affrighted at the turn the talk was taking.
"When I was playing he would sit there by the hour and
never say a word. My banner piece was really a fantasia on
'Sonnambula a new thing here; I was the first one in town
to have it. There were thirteen pages, and there was always a
rush to see who should turn them. Your father didn't often
enter the rush, but I really liked his way of turning the best of
any. He never turned too soon or too late; he never bothered
me by shifting his feet every second or two, nor by talking to
me at the hard places. In fact, he was the only one who could
do it right. "
"Yes," said Jane, with an appreciative sigh; "that's pa-all
over. "
Mrs. Bates was twisting her long sleeves around her wrists.
Presently she shivered slightly. "Well, really," she said, "I don't
see that this place is much warmer than the other; let's try the
library. "
In this room our antique and Spartan Jane was made to feel
the need of yet stronger props to hold her up against the over-
bearing weight of latter-day magnificence. She found herself
surrounded now by a sombre and solid splendor. Stamped hang-
ings of Cordova leather lined the walls, around whose bases ran
a low range of ornate bookcases, constructed with the utmost
taste and skill of the cabinet-maker's art. In the centre of the
room a wide and substantial table was set with all the parapher-
nalia of correspondence, and the leathery abysses of three or
—
## p. 6109 (#79) ############################################
HENRY B. FULLER
6109
four vast easy-chairs invited the reader to bookish self-abandon-
ment.
"How glorious! " cried Jane, as her eyes ranged over the
ranks and rows of formal and costly bindings. It all seemed
doubly glorious after that poor sole book-case of theirs at home-
a huge black-walnut thing like a wardrobe, and with a couple of
drawers at the bottom, receptacles that seemed less adapted to
pamphlets than to goloshes. "How grand! " Jane was not exi-
gent as regarded music, but her whole being went forth towards
books. "Dickens and Thackeray and Bulwer and Hume and
Gibbon, and Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets,' and -»
"And twenty or thirty yards of Scott," Mrs. Bates broke in
genially; "and enough Encyclopædia Britannica to reach around
the corner and back again. Sets-sets-sets.
"What a lovely chair to sit and study in! " cried Jane, not at
all abashed by her hostess's comments. "What a grand table to
sit and write papers at! " Writing papers was one of Jane's chief
interests.
"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Bates with a quiet toleration, as she
glanced towards the shining inkstand and the immaculate blot-
ting-pad. "But really, I don't suppose I've written two lines at
that table since it was put there. And as for all these books,
Heaven only knows where the keys are to get at them with. I
can't do anything with them; why, some of them weigh five or
six pounds! "
Jane shriveled and shivered under this. She regretted doubly
that she had been betrayed into such an unstinted expression of
her honest interest. "All for show and display," she muttered,
as she bowed her head to search out new titles; "bought by the
pound and stacked by the cord; doing nobody any good-their
owners least of all. " She resolved to admire openly nothing
more whatever.
Mrs. Bates sank into one of the big chairs and motioned Jane
towards another. "Your father was a great reader," she said,
with a resumption of her retrospective expression.
"He was
very fond of books - especially poetry. He often read aloud to
me; when he thought I was likely to be alone, he would bring
his Shakespeare over. I believe I could give you even now, if
I was put to it, Antony's address to the Romans. Yes; and
almost all of Hamlet's soliloquies, too. "
Jane was preparing to make a stand against this woman; and
here apparently was the opportunity. "Do you mean to tell
## p. 6110 (#80) ############################################
6110
HENRY B. FULLER
me," she inquired, with something approaching sternness, “that
my father-my father. was ever fond of poetry and -— and
music, and-and all that sort of thing? "
"Certainly. Why not? I remember your father as a high-
minded young man, with a great deal of good taste; I always
thought him much above the average. And that Shakespeare of
his I recall it perfectly. It was a chubby little book bound in
brown leather, with an embossed stamp, and print a great deal
too fine for my eyes. He always had to do the reading; and he
read very pleasantly. " She scanned Jane closely. "Perhaps you
have never done your father justice. "
-
――
Jane felt herself driven to defense-even to apology.
"The
fact is,” she said, "pa is so quiet; he never says much of any-
thing. I'm about the only one of the family who knows him
very well, and I guess I don't know him any too well. " She
felt, though, that Mrs. Bates had no right to defend her father
against his own daughter; no, nor any need.
"I suppose so," said Mrs. Bates slowly. She crossed over to
the radiator and began working at the valve. "I told Granger I
knew he'd be sorry if he didn't put in furnace flues too. I really
can't ask you to take your things off down here; let's go up-
stairs-that's the only warm place I can think of. "
She paused in the hall. "Wouldn't you like to see the rest
of the rooms before you go up? "
"Yes I don't mind," responded Jane. She was determined
to encourage no ostentatious pride; so she made her acceptance
as indifferent as she felt good manners would allow.
Mrs. Bates crossed over the hall and paused in a wide door-
way. "This," she indicated, in a tone slightly suggestive of the
cicerone, "is the-well, the Grand Salon; at least, that's what
the newspapers have decided to call it. Do you care anything
for Louis Quinze ? "
Jane found herself on the threshold of a long and glittering
apartment; it was full of the ornate and complicated embellish-
ments of the eighteenth century-an exhibition of decorative
whip-cracking. Grilles, panels, mirror frames, all glimmered in
green and gold, and a row of lustres, each multitudinously can-
dled, hung from the lofty ceiling.
Jane felt herself on firmer ground here than in the library,
whose general air of distinction, with no definite detail by way
of guide-post, had rather baffled her.
## p. 6111 (#81) ############################################
HENRY B. FULLER
6111
"Hem! " she observed critically, as her eyes roamed over the
spacious splendor of the place; "quite an epitome of the whole
rococo period; done, too, with a French grace and a German
thoroughness. Almost a real jardin d'hiver, in fact. Very hand-
some indeed. »
Mrs. Bates pricked up her ears; she had not expected quite
such a response as this. "You are posted on these things,
then? »
"Well," said Jane, "I belong to an art class. We study the
different periods in architecture and decoration. "
"Do you? I belong to just such a class myself and to three
or four others. I'm studying and learning right along; I never
want to stand still. You were surprised, I saw, about my music
lessons. It is a little singular, I admit-my beginning as a
teacher and ending as a pupil. You know, of course, that I was
a school-teacher? Yes, I had a little class down on Wabash Ave-
nue near Hubbard Court, in a church basement. I began to be
useful as early as I could. We lived in a little bit of a house a
couple of blocks north of there; you know those old-fashioned
frame cottages
one of them. In the early days pa was a car-
penter-a boss carpenter, to do him full justice; the town was
growing, and after a while he began to do first-rate. But at the
beginning ma did her own work, and I helped her. I swept and
dusted, and wiped the dishes. She taught me to sew, too; I
trimmed all my own hats till long after I was married. "
Mrs. Bates leaned carelessly against the tortured framework
of a tapestried causeuse. The light from the lofty windows shat-
tered on the prisms of her glittering chandeliers, and diffused
itself over the paneled Loves and Graces around her.
"When I got to be eighteen I thought I was old enough to
branch out and do something for myself - I've always tried to
hold up my own end. My little school went first-rate. There
was only one drawback-another school next door, full of great
rowdy boys. They would climb the fence and make faces at my
scholars; yes, and sometimes they would throw stones. But that
wasn't the worst: the other school taught book-keeping. Now, I
never was one of the kind to lag behind, and I used to lie awake
nights wondering how I could catch up with the rival institu-
tion. Well, I hustled around, and finally I got hold of two or
three children who were old enough for accounts, and I set them
to work on single entry. I don't know whether they learned
-
## p. 6112 (#82) ############################################
6112
HENRY B. FULLER
anything, but I did - enough to keep Granger's books for the
first year after we started out. "
Jane smiled broadly; it was useless to set a stoic face against
such confidences as these.
(
"We were married at the most fashionable church in town—
right there in Court-house Square; and ma gave us a reception,
or something like it, in her little front room. We weren't so very
stylish ourselves, but we had some awfully stylish neighbors - all
those Terrace Row people, just around the corner.
'We'll get
there too, sometime,' I said to Granger. This is going to be a
big town, and we have a good show to be big people in it. Don't
let's start in life like beggars going to the back door for cold
victuals; let's march right up the front steps and ring the bell
like somebody. ' So, as I say, we were married at the best church
in town; we thought it safe enough to discount the future. "
"Good for you," said Jane, who was finding her true self in
the thick of these intimate revelations; "you guessed right. "
"Well, we worked along fairly for a year or two, and finally
I said to Granger: Now, what's the use of inventing things
and taking them to those companies and making everybody rich
but yourself? You pick out some one road, and get on the in-
side of that, and stick there, and — › The fact is," she broke off
suddenly, "you can't judge at all of this room in the daytime.
You must see it lighted and filled with people. You ought to
have been here at the bal poudré I gave last season — lots of
pretty girls in laces and brocades, and powder on their hair. It
was a lovely sight.
Come; we've had enough of this. "
Mrs. Bates turned a careless back upon all her Louis Quinze
splendor. "The next thing will be something else. "
-
Jane's guide passed swiftly into another large and imposing
apartment.
"This I call the Sala de los Embajadores; here is
where I receive my distinguished guests. "
"Good! " cried Jane, who knew Irving's 'Alhambra' by heart.
"Only it isn't Moorish; it's Baroque- and a very good ex-
ample. "
――――
·
The room had a heavy paneled ceiling of dark wood, with a
cartouche in each panel; stacks of seventeenth-century armor
stood in the corners, half a dozen large Aubusson tapestries
hung on the walls, and a vast fireplace, flanked by huge Atlan-
tes and crowned by a heavy pediment, broken and curled, almost
filled one whole side. "That fireplace is Baroque all over. "
## p. 6113 (#83) ############################################
HENRY B. FULLER
6113
<<
"See here," said Mrs. Bates, suddenly, are you the woman
who read about the 'Decadence of the Renaissance Forms' at
the last Fortnightly? "
"I'm the woman," responded Jane modestly.
But you
"I don't know why I didn't recognize you before.
sat in an awfully bad light, for one thing. Besides, I had so
much on my mind that day. Our dear little Reginald was com-
ing down with something-or so we thought. And the bonnet
I was forced to wear- well, it just made me blue. You didn't
notice it? "
"I was too flustered to notice anything. It was my first time
there. "
"Well, it was a good paper, although I couldn't half pay
attention to it; it gave me several new notions. All my decora-
tions, then-you think them corrupt and degraded? "
"Well," returned Jane, at once soothing and judicial, “all
these later forms are interesting from a historical and sociologi-
cal point of view. And lots of people find them beautiful, too,
for that matter. " Jane slid over these big words with a prac、
ticed ease.
"They impressed my notables, any way," retorted Mrs. Bates.
"We entertained a good deal during the Fair-it was expected,
of course, from people of our position. We had princes and
counts and honorables without end. I remember how delighted
I was with my first prince-a Russian. H'm later in the
season Russian princes were as plentiful as blackberries: you
stepped on one at every turn. We had some of the English too.
One of their young men visited us at Geneva during the sum-
mer. I never quite made out who invited him; I have half an
idea that he invited himself. He was a great trial. Queer about
the English, isn't it? How can people who are so clever and
capable in practical things ever be such insolent tom-fools in
social things? Well, we might just stick our noses in the pict-
ure gallery for a minute.
"We're almost beginners in this branch of industry," she
expounded, as she stood beside Jane in the centre of the room.
under the coldly diffused glare of the skylight. "In my young
days it was all Bierstadt and De Haas; there wasn't supposed to
be anything beyond. But as soon as I began to hear about the
Millet and the Barbizon crowd, I saw there was. Well, I set to
work, as usual. I studied and learned. I want to learn. I
XI-383
## p. 6114 (#84) ############################################
6114
HENRY B. FULLER
want to move; I want to keep right up with the times and the
people. I got books and photographs, and I went to all the
galleries. I read the artists' biographies and took in all the loan
collections. Now I'm loaning, too. Some of these things are
going to the Art Institute next week-that Daubigny, for one.
It's little, but it's good: there couldn't be anything more like
him, could there?
"We haven't got any Millet yet, but that morning thing over
there is a Corot- at least we think so. I was going to ask one
of the French commissioners about it last summer, but my nerve
gave out at the last minute. Mr. Bates bought it on his own
responsibility. I let him go ahead; for after all, people of our
position would naturally be expected to have a Corot. I don't
care to tell you what he paid for it. "
"There's some more high art," said Mrs. Bates, with a wave
of her hand towards the opposite wall. "Carolus Duran; fifty
thousand francs; and he wouldn't let me pick out my own cos-
tume either.
"And now," she said, "let's go up-stairs. " Jane followed her,
too dazed to speak or even to smile.
Mrs. Bates hastened forward light-footedly. "Conservatory —
that's Moorish," she indicated casually; "nothing in it but orchids
and things. Come along. " Jane followed-dumbly, humbly.
Mrs. Bates paused on the lower step of her great stairway.
A huge vase of Japanese bronze flanked either newel, and a
Turkish lantern depended above her head. The bright green of
a dwarf palm peeped over the balustrade, and a tempered light
strained down through the painted window on the landing-stage.
"There! " she said, "you've seen it all. " She stood there in a
kind of impassioned splendor, her jeweled fingers shut tightly,
and her fists thrown out and apart so as to show the veins and
cords of her wrists. "We did it, we two-just Granger and I.
Nothing but our own hands and hearts and hopes, and each
other. We have fought the fight-a fair field and no favor-
and we have come out ahead. And we shall stay there too;
keep up with the procession is my motto, and head it if you
can. I do head it, and I feel that I'm where I belong. When I
can't foot it with the rest, let me drop by the wayside and the
crows have me. But they'll never get me- never! There's ten
more good years in me yet; and if we were to slip to the bot-
tom to-morrow we should work back to the top again before we
## p. 6115 (#85) ############################################
HENRY B. FULLER
6115
finish. When I led the grand march at the Charity Ball I was
accused of taking a vainglorious part in a vainglorious show.
Well, who would look better in such a rôle than I, or who has
earned a better right to play it? There, child! ain't that suc-
cess? ain't that glory? ain't that poetry? -h'm," she broke off
suddenly, "I'm glad Jimmy wasn't by to hear that! He's always
taking up his poor mother. "
"Jimmy? Is he humble-minded, do you mean? "
"Humble-minded? one of my boys humble-minded? No in-
deed; he's grammatical, that's all: he prefers 'isn't. ' Come
up. ”
Mrs. Bates hurried her guest over the stairway and through
several halls and passages, and introduced her finally into a
large and spacious room done in white and gold. In the glitter-
ing electrolier wires mingled with pipes, and bulbs with globes.
To one side stood a massive brass bedstead full-panoplied in
coverlet and pillow-cases, and the mirror of the dressing-case re-
flected a formal row of silver-backed brushes and combs.
"My bedroom," said Mrs. Bates.
"How does it strike you? »
"Why," stammered Jane, "it's all very fine, but-"
"Oh, yes; I know what they say about it - I've heard them
a dozen times: 'It's very big and handsome and all, but not a
bit home-like. I shouldn't want to sleep here. ' Is that the
idea? »
"About," said Jane.
"Sleep here! " echoed Mrs. Bates. "I don't sleep here. I'd as
soon think of sleeping out on the prairie. That bed isn't to sleep
in; it's for the women to lay their hats and cloaks on. Lay yours
there now. "
«
Jane obeyed. She worked herself out of her old blue sack,
and disposed it, neatly folded, on the brocaded coverlet. Then
she took off her mussy little turban and placed it on the sack.
"What a strange woman," she murmured to herself. " She
doesn't get any music out of her piano; she doesn't get any
reading out of her books; she doesn't even get any sleep out of
her bed. " Jane smoothed down her hair and awaited the next
stage of her adventure.
"This is the way. " Mrs. Bates led her through a narrow side
door.
"This is my office. " She traversed the "office,"
passed into a room beyond, pushed Jane ahead of her, and shut
the door.
## p. 6116 (#86) ############################################
6116
HENRY B. FULLER
The door closed with a light click, and Jane looked about her
with a great and sudden surprise. Poor stupid, stumbling child!
- she understood at last in what spirit she had been received
and on what footing she had been placed.
She found herself in a small, cramped, low-ceiled room which
was filled with worn and antiquated furniture. There was a pon-
derous old mahogany bureau, with the veneering cracked and
peeled, and a bed to correspond. There was a shabby little
writing-desk, whose let-down lid was lined with faded and blotted
green baize.
On the floor there was an old Brussels carpet, an-
tique as to pattern, and wholly threadbare as to surface. The
walls were covered with an old-time paper whose plaintive primi-
tiveness ran in slender pink stripes alternating with narrow green
vines. In one corner stood a small upright piano whose top was
littered with loose sheets of old music, and on one wall hung a
set of thin black-walnut shelves strung together with cords and
loaded with a variety of well-worn volumes. In the grate was
a coal fire.
Mrs. Bates sat down on the foot of the bed, and motioned
Jane to a small rocker that had been re-seated with a bit of old
rugging.
"And now," she said, cheerily, "let's get to business. Sue
Bates, at your service. "
Oh, no," gasped Jane, who felt, however dumbly and mistily,
that this was an epoch in her life. "Not here; not to-day. "
"Why not? Go ahead; tell me all about the charity that isn't
a charity. You'd better; this is the last room-there's nothing
beyond. " Her eyes were twinkling, but immensely kind.
"I know it," stammered Jane. "I knew it in a second. " She
felt too that not a dozen persons had ever penetrated to this little
chamber. "How good you are to me! "
Presently, under some compulsion, she was making an exposi-
tion of her small plan. Mrs. Bates was made to understand how
some of the old Dearborn Seminary girls were trying to start a
sort of club-room in some convenient down-town building for
typewriters and saleswomen and others employed in business.
There was to be a room where they could get lunch, or bring
their own to eat, if they preferred; also a parlor where they
could fill up their noon hour with talk or reading or music; it
was the expectation to have a piano and a few books and maga-
zines.
## p. 6117 (#87) ############################################
HENRY B. FULLER
6117
"I remembered Lottie as one of the girls who went with us
there, down on old Dearborn Place, and I thought perhaps I
could interest Lottie's mother," concluded Jane.
"And so you can," said Lottie's mother, promptly. "I'll have
Miss Peters - but don't you find it a little warm here?
pass me that hair-brush. "
Just
-
――――
Mrs. Bates had stepped to her single little window. "Isn't it
a gem? " she asked. "I had it made to order; one of the old-
fashioned sort, you see - two sash, with six little panes in each.
No weights and cords, but simple catches at the side.
It opens
to just two widths; if I want anything different, I have to con-
trive it for myself. Sometimes I use a hair-brush and some-
times a paper-cutter. "
She dropped her voice.
"Did you ever have a private secretary? "
"Me? " called Jane. "I'm my own. "
«< Keep it that way," said Mrs. Bates, impressively. "Don't
ever change-no matter how many engagements and appoint-
ments and letters and dates you come to have. You'll never
spend a happy day afterwards. Tutors are bad enough—but
thank goodness, my boys are past that age. And men-servants
are bad enough—every time I want to stir in my own house I
seem to have a footman on each toe and a butler standing on
my train; however, people in our position-well, Granger insists,
you know. "
"And now business is over," she continued. "Do you like
my posies? >>
She nodded towards the window where, thanks to
the hair-brush, a row of flowers in a long narrow box blew about
in the draft.
"Asters? "
"No, no, no! But I hoped you'd guess asters. They're
chrysanthemums-you see, fashion will penetrate even here.
But they're the smallest and simplest I could find. What do I
care for orchids and American beauties, and all those other ex-
pensive things under glass? How much does it please me to
have two great big formal beds of gladiolus and foliage in the
front yard, one on each side of the steps? Still, in our position,
I suppose it can't be helped. No; what I want is a bed of por-
tulaca, and some cypress vines running up strings to the top of a
pole. As soon as I get poor enough to afford it I'm going to
have a lot of phlox and London-pride and bachelor's-buttons out
## p. 6118 (#88) ############################################
6118
HENRY B. FULLER
there in the back yard, and the girls can run their clothes-lines
somewhere else. "
"It's hard to keep flowers in the city," said Jane.
"I know it is. At our old house we had such a nice little
rose-bush in the front yard.
appeased nor so far forgetful of her own initial awkwardness as
to refrain from searching out the joints in the other's armor.
"What does a woman of fifty-five want to be taking music les-
sons for? »
-
The music-room was a lofty and spacious apartment done com-
pletely in hard-woods; its paneled walls and ceilings rang with a
magnificent sonority as the two pairs of feet moved across the
mirror-like marquetry of the floor.
## p. 6107 (#77) ############################################
HENRY B. FULLER
6107
To one side stood a concert-grand; its case was so unique and
so luxurious that even Jane was conscious of its having been
made by special order and from a special design. Close at hand
stood a tall music-stand in style to correspond. It was laden with
handsomely bound scores of all the German classics and the usual
operas of the French and Italian schools. These were all ranged
in precise order; nothing there seemed to have been disturbed
for a year past. "My! isn't it grand! " sighed Jane. She already
felt herself succumbing beneath these accumulated splendors.
Mrs. Bates carelessly seated herself on the piano stool, with her
back to the instrument. "I don't suppose," she observed, casually,
"that I have sat down here for a month. "
"What! " cried Jane, with a stare. "If I had such a lovely
room as this I should play in it every day. "
"Dear me," rejoined Mrs. Bates, "what pleasure could I get
from practicing in this great barn of a place, that isn't half full
until you've got seventy or eighty people in it? Or on this big
sprawling thing? "-thrusting out her elbow backward towards
the shimmering cover of the keyboard.
"So then," said Jane to herself, "it's all for show. I knew it
was. I don't believe she can play a single note. "
"What do you suppose happened to me last winter? " Mrs.
Bates went on. "I had the greatest set-back of my life. I asked
to join the Amateur Musical Club. They wouldn't let me in. "
"Why not? "
"Well, I played before their committee, and then the secre-
tary wrote me a note. It was a nice enough note, of course, but
I knew what it meant. I see now well enough that my fingers
were rather stiffer than I realized, and that my Twinkling
Sprays' and 'Fluttering Zephyrs' were not quite up to date.
They wanted Grieg and Lassen and Chopin. Very well,' said I,
'just wait. ' Now, I never knuckle under. I never give up. So
I sent right out for a teacher. I practiced scales an hour a day
for weeks and months. Granger thought I was crazy. I tackled
Grieg and Lassen and Chopin,—yes, and Tschaikowsky, too.
going to play for that committee next month.
Let me see if
they'll dare to vote me out again! "
I'm
"Oh, that's it! " thought Jane. She was beginning to feel
desirous of meting out exact and even-handed justice. She found
it impossible to withhold respect from so much grit and deter-
mination.
## p. 6108 (#78) ############################################
6108
HENRY B. FULLER
"But your father liked those old-time things, and so did all
the other young men. " Mrs. Bates creased and folded the end of
one of her long sleeves, and seemed lapsing into a retrospective
mood. "Why, some evenings they used to sit two deep around
the room to hear me do the 'Battle of Prague. ' Do you know
the 'Java March'? " she asked suddenly.
"I'm afraid not," Jane was obliged to confess.
"Your father always had a great fondness for that. I don't
know," she went on, after a short pause, "whether you under-
stand that your father was one of my old beaux-at least, I
always counted him with the rest. I was a gay girl in my day,
and wanted to make the list as long as I could; so I counted
in the quiet ones as well as the noisy ones. Your father was one
of the quiet ones. "
"So I should have imagined," said Jane. Her maiden deli-
cacy was just a shade affrighted at the turn the talk was taking.
"When I was playing he would sit there by the hour and
never say a word. My banner piece was really a fantasia on
'Sonnambula a new thing here; I was the first one in town
to have it. There were thirteen pages, and there was always a
rush to see who should turn them. Your father didn't often
enter the rush, but I really liked his way of turning the best of
any. He never turned too soon or too late; he never bothered
me by shifting his feet every second or two, nor by talking to
me at the hard places. In fact, he was the only one who could
do it right. "
"Yes," said Jane, with an appreciative sigh; "that's pa-all
over. "
Mrs. Bates was twisting her long sleeves around her wrists.
Presently she shivered slightly. "Well, really," she said, "I don't
see that this place is much warmer than the other; let's try the
library. "
In this room our antique and Spartan Jane was made to feel
the need of yet stronger props to hold her up against the over-
bearing weight of latter-day magnificence. She found herself
surrounded now by a sombre and solid splendor. Stamped hang-
ings of Cordova leather lined the walls, around whose bases ran
a low range of ornate bookcases, constructed with the utmost
taste and skill of the cabinet-maker's art. In the centre of the
room a wide and substantial table was set with all the parapher-
nalia of correspondence, and the leathery abysses of three or
—
## p. 6109 (#79) ############################################
HENRY B. FULLER
6109
four vast easy-chairs invited the reader to bookish self-abandon-
ment.
"How glorious! " cried Jane, as her eyes ranged over the
ranks and rows of formal and costly bindings. It all seemed
doubly glorious after that poor sole book-case of theirs at home-
a huge black-walnut thing like a wardrobe, and with a couple of
drawers at the bottom, receptacles that seemed less adapted to
pamphlets than to goloshes. "How grand! " Jane was not exi-
gent as regarded music, but her whole being went forth towards
books. "Dickens and Thackeray and Bulwer and Hume and
Gibbon, and Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets,' and -»
"And twenty or thirty yards of Scott," Mrs. Bates broke in
genially; "and enough Encyclopædia Britannica to reach around
the corner and back again. Sets-sets-sets.
"What a lovely chair to sit and study in! " cried Jane, not at
all abashed by her hostess's comments. "What a grand table to
sit and write papers at! " Writing papers was one of Jane's chief
interests.
"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Bates with a quiet toleration, as she
glanced towards the shining inkstand and the immaculate blot-
ting-pad. "But really, I don't suppose I've written two lines at
that table since it was put there. And as for all these books,
Heaven only knows where the keys are to get at them with. I
can't do anything with them; why, some of them weigh five or
six pounds! "
Jane shriveled and shivered under this. She regretted doubly
that she had been betrayed into such an unstinted expression of
her honest interest. "All for show and display," she muttered,
as she bowed her head to search out new titles; "bought by the
pound and stacked by the cord; doing nobody any good-their
owners least of all. " She resolved to admire openly nothing
more whatever.
Mrs. Bates sank into one of the big chairs and motioned Jane
towards another. "Your father was a great reader," she said,
with a resumption of her retrospective expression.
"He was
very fond of books - especially poetry. He often read aloud to
me; when he thought I was likely to be alone, he would bring
his Shakespeare over. I believe I could give you even now, if
I was put to it, Antony's address to the Romans. Yes; and
almost all of Hamlet's soliloquies, too. "
Jane was preparing to make a stand against this woman; and
here apparently was the opportunity. "Do you mean to tell
## p. 6110 (#80) ############################################
6110
HENRY B. FULLER
me," she inquired, with something approaching sternness, “that
my father-my father. was ever fond of poetry and -— and
music, and-and all that sort of thing? "
"Certainly. Why not? I remember your father as a high-
minded young man, with a great deal of good taste; I always
thought him much above the average. And that Shakespeare of
his I recall it perfectly. It was a chubby little book bound in
brown leather, with an embossed stamp, and print a great deal
too fine for my eyes. He always had to do the reading; and he
read very pleasantly. " She scanned Jane closely. "Perhaps you
have never done your father justice. "
-
――
Jane felt herself driven to defense-even to apology.
"The
fact is,” she said, "pa is so quiet; he never says much of any-
thing. I'm about the only one of the family who knows him
very well, and I guess I don't know him any too well. " She
felt, though, that Mrs. Bates had no right to defend her father
against his own daughter; no, nor any need.
"I suppose so," said Mrs. Bates slowly. She crossed over to
the radiator and began working at the valve. "I told Granger I
knew he'd be sorry if he didn't put in furnace flues too. I really
can't ask you to take your things off down here; let's go up-
stairs-that's the only warm place I can think of. "
She paused in the hall. "Wouldn't you like to see the rest
of the rooms before you go up? "
"Yes I don't mind," responded Jane. She was determined
to encourage no ostentatious pride; so she made her acceptance
as indifferent as she felt good manners would allow.
Mrs. Bates crossed over the hall and paused in a wide door-
way. "This," she indicated, in a tone slightly suggestive of the
cicerone, "is the-well, the Grand Salon; at least, that's what
the newspapers have decided to call it. Do you care anything
for Louis Quinze ? "
Jane found herself on the threshold of a long and glittering
apartment; it was full of the ornate and complicated embellish-
ments of the eighteenth century-an exhibition of decorative
whip-cracking. Grilles, panels, mirror frames, all glimmered in
green and gold, and a row of lustres, each multitudinously can-
dled, hung from the lofty ceiling.
Jane felt herself on firmer ground here than in the library,
whose general air of distinction, with no definite detail by way
of guide-post, had rather baffled her.
## p. 6111 (#81) ############################################
HENRY B. FULLER
6111
"Hem! " she observed critically, as her eyes roamed over the
spacious splendor of the place; "quite an epitome of the whole
rococo period; done, too, with a French grace and a German
thoroughness. Almost a real jardin d'hiver, in fact. Very hand-
some indeed. »
Mrs. Bates pricked up her ears; she had not expected quite
such a response as this. "You are posted on these things,
then? »
"Well," said Jane, "I belong to an art class. We study the
different periods in architecture and decoration. "
"Do you? I belong to just such a class myself and to three
or four others. I'm studying and learning right along; I never
want to stand still. You were surprised, I saw, about my music
lessons. It is a little singular, I admit-my beginning as a
teacher and ending as a pupil. You know, of course, that I was
a school-teacher? Yes, I had a little class down on Wabash Ave-
nue near Hubbard Court, in a church basement. I began to be
useful as early as I could. We lived in a little bit of a house a
couple of blocks north of there; you know those old-fashioned
frame cottages
one of them. In the early days pa was a car-
penter-a boss carpenter, to do him full justice; the town was
growing, and after a while he began to do first-rate. But at the
beginning ma did her own work, and I helped her. I swept and
dusted, and wiped the dishes. She taught me to sew, too; I
trimmed all my own hats till long after I was married. "
Mrs. Bates leaned carelessly against the tortured framework
of a tapestried causeuse. The light from the lofty windows shat-
tered on the prisms of her glittering chandeliers, and diffused
itself over the paneled Loves and Graces around her.
"When I got to be eighteen I thought I was old enough to
branch out and do something for myself - I've always tried to
hold up my own end. My little school went first-rate. There
was only one drawback-another school next door, full of great
rowdy boys. They would climb the fence and make faces at my
scholars; yes, and sometimes they would throw stones. But that
wasn't the worst: the other school taught book-keeping. Now, I
never was one of the kind to lag behind, and I used to lie awake
nights wondering how I could catch up with the rival institu-
tion. Well, I hustled around, and finally I got hold of two or
three children who were old enough for accounts, and I set them
to work on single entry. I don't know whether they learned
-
## p. 6112 (#82) ############################################
6112
HENRY B. FULLER
anything, but I did - enough to keep Granger's books for the
first year after we started out. "
Jane smiled broadly; it was useless to set a stoic face against
such confidences as these.
(
"We were married at the most fashionable church in town—
right there in Court-house Square; and ma gave us a reception,
or something like it, in her little front room. We weren't so very
stylish ourselves, but we had some awfully stylish neighbors - all
those Terrace Row people, just around the corner.
'We'll get
there too, sometime,' I said to Granger. This is going to be a
big town, and we have a good show to be big people in it. Don't
let's start in life like beggars going to the back door for cold
victuals; let's march right up the front steps and ring the bell
like somebody. ' So, as I say, we were married at the best church
in town; we thought it safe enough to discount the future. "
"Good for you," said Jane, who was finding her true self in
the thick of these intimate revelations; "you guessed right. "
"Well, we worked along fairly for a year or two, and finally
I said to Granger: Now, what's the use of inventing things
and taking them to those companies and making everybody rich
but yourself? You pick out some one road, and get on the in-
side of that, and stick there, and — › The fact is," she broke off
suddenly, "you can't judge at all of this room in the daytime.
You must see it lighted and filled with people. You ought to
have been here at the bal poudré I gave last season — lots of
pretty girls in laces and brocades, and powder on their hair. It
was a lovely sight.
Come; we've had enough of this. "
Mrs. Bates turned a careless back upon all her Louis Quinze
splendor. "The next thing will be something else. "
-
Jane's guide passed swiftly into another large and imposing
apartment.
"This I call the Sala de los Embajadores; here is
where I receive my distinguished guests. "
"Good! " cried Jane, who knew Irving's 'Alhambra' by heart.
"Only it isn't Moorish; it's Baroque- and a very good ex-
ample. "
――――
·
The room had a heavy paneled ceiling of dark wood, with a
cartouche in each panel; stacks of seventeenth-century armor
stood in the corners, half a dozen large Aubusson tapestries
hung on the walls, and a vast fireplace, flanked by huge Atlan-
tes and crowned by a heavy pediment, broken and curled, almost
filled one whole side. "That fireplace is Baroque all over. "
## p. 6113 (#83) ############################################
HENRY B. FULLER
6113
<<
"See here," said Mrs. Bates, suddenly, are you the woman
who read about the 'Decadence of the Renaissance Forms' at
the last Fortnightly? "
"I'm the woman," responded Jane modestly.
But you
"I don't know why I didn't recognize you before.
sat in an awfully bad light, for one thing. Besides, I had so
much on my mind that day. Our dear little Reginald was com-
ing down with something-or so we thought. And the bonnet
I was forced to wear- well, it just made me blue. You didn't
notice it? "
"I was too flustered to notice anything. It was my first time
there. "
"Well, it was a good paper, although I couldn't half pay
attention to it; it gave me several new notions. All my decora-
tions, then-you think them corrupt and degraded? "
"Well," returned Jane, at once soothing and judicial, “all
these later forms are interesting from a historical and sociologi-
cal point of view. And lots of people find them beautiful, too,
for that matter. " Jane slid over these big words with a prac、
ticed ease.
"They impressed my notables, any way," retorted Mrs. Bates.
"We entertained a good deal during the Fair-it was expected,
of course, from people of our position. We had princes and
counts and honorables without end. I remember how delighted
I was with my first prince-a Russian. H'm later in the
season Russian princes were as plentiful as blackberries: you
stepped on one at every turn. We had some of the English too.
One of their young men visited us at Geneva during the sum-
mer. I never quite made out who invited him; I have half an
idea that he invited himself. He was a great trial. Queer about
the English, isn't it? How can people who are so clever and
capable in practical things ever be such insolent tom-fools in
social things? Well, we might just stick our noses in the pict-
ure gallery for a minute.
"We're almost beginners in this branch of industry," she
expounded, as she stood beside Jane in the centre of the room.
under the coldly diffused glare of the skylight. "In my young
days it was all Bierstadt and De Haas; there wasn't supposed to
be anything beyond. But as soon as I began to hear about the
Millet and the Barbizon crowd, I saw there was. Well, I set to
work, as usual. I studied and learned. I want to learn. I
XI-383
## p. 6114 (#84) ############################################
6114
HENRY B. FULLER
want to move; I want to keep right up with the times and the
people. I got books and photographs, and I went to all the
galleries. I read the artists' biographies and took in all the loan
collections. Now I'm loaning, too. Some of these things are
going to the Art Institute next week-that Daubigny, for one.
It's little, but it's good: there couldn't be anything more like
him, could there?
"We haven't got any Millet yet, but that morning thing over
there is a Corot- at least we think so. I was going to ask one
of the French commissioners about it last summer, but my nerve
gave out at the last minute. Mr. Bates bought it on his own
responsibility. I let him go ahead; for after all, people of our
position would naturally be expected to have a Corot. I don't
care to tell you what he paid for it. "
"There's some more high art," said Mrs. Bates, with a wave
of her hand towards the opposite wall. "Carolus Duran; fifty
thousand francs; and he wouldn't let me pick out my own cos-
tume either.
"And now," she said, "let's go up-stairs. " Jane followed her,
too dazed to speak or even to smile.
Mrs. Bates hastened forward light-footedly. "Conservatory —
that's Moorish," she indicated casually; "nothing in it but orchids
and things. Come along. " Jane followed-dumbly, humbly.
Mrs. Bates paused on the lower step of her great stairway.
A huge vase of Japanese bronze flanked either newel, and a
Turkish lantern depended above her head. The bright green of
a dwarf palm peeped over the balustrade, and a tempered light
strained down through the painted window on the landing-stage.
"There! " she said, "you've seen it all. " She stood there in a
kind of impassioned splendor, her jeweled fingers shut tightly,
and her fists thrown out and apart so as to show the veins and
cords of her wrists. "We did it, we two-just Granger and I.
Nothing but our own hands and hearts and hopes, and each
other. We have fought the fight-a fair field and no favor-
and we have come out ahead. And we shall stay there too;
keep up with the procession is my motto, and head it if you
can. I do head it, and I feel that I'm where I belong. When I
can't foot it with the rest, let me drop by the wayside and the
crows have me. But they'll never get me- never! There's ten
more good years in me yet; and if we were to slip to the bot-
tom to-morrow we should work back to the top again before we
## p. 6115 (#85) ############################################
HENRY B. FULLER
6115
finish. When I led the grand march at the Charity Ball I was
accused of taking a vainglorious part in a vainglorious show.
Well, who would look better in such a rôle than I, or who has
earned a better right to play it? There, child! ain't that suc-
cess? ain't that glory? ain't that poetry? -h'm," she broke off
suddenly, "I'm glad Jimmy wasn't by to hear that! He's always
taking up his poor mother. "
"Jimmy? Is he humble-minded, do you mean? "
"Humble-minded? one of my boys humble-minded? No in-
deed; he's grammatical, that's all: he prefers 'isn't. ' Come
up. ”
Mrs. Bates hurried her guest over the stairway and through
several halls and passages, and introduced her finally into a
large and spacious room done in white and gold. In the glitter-
ing electrolier wires mingled with pipes, and bulbs with globes.
To one side stood a massive brass bedstead full-panoplied in
coverlet and pillow-cases, and the mirror of the dressing-case re-
flected a formal row of silver-backed brushes and combs.
"My bedroom," said Mrs. Bates.
"How does it strike you? »
"Why," stammered Jane, "it's all very fine, but-"
"Oh, yes; I know what they say about it - I've heard them
a dozen times: 'It's very big and handsome and all, but not a
bit home-like. I shouldn't want to sleep here. ' Is that the
idea? »
"About," said Jane.
"Sleep here! " echoed Mrs. Bates. "I don't sleep here. I'd as
soon think of sleeping out on the prairie. That bed isn't to sleep
in; it's for the women to lay their hats and cloaks on. Lay yours
there now. "
«
Jane obeyed. She worked herself out of her old blue sack,
and disposed it, neatly folded, on the brocaded coverlet. Then
she took off her mussy little turban and placed it on the sack.
"What a strange woman," she murmured to herself. " She
doesn't get any music out of her piano; she doesn't get any
reading out of her books; she doesn't even get any sleep out of
her bed. " Jane smoothed down her hair and awaited the next
stage of her adventure.
"This is the way. " Mrs. Bates led her through a narrow side
door.
"This is my office. " She traversed the "office,"
passed into a room beyond, pushed Jane ahead of her, and shut
the door.
## p. 6116 (#86) ############################################
6116
HENRY B. FULLER
The door closed with a light click, and Jane looked about her
with a great and sudden surprise. Poor stupid, stumbling child!
- she understood at last in what spirit she had been received
and on what footing she had been placed.
She found herself in a small, cramped, low-ceiled room which
was filled with worn and antiquated furniture. There was a pon-
derous old mahogany bureau, with the veneering cracked and
peeled, and a bed to correspond. There was a shabby little
writing-desk, whose let-down lid was lined with faded and blotted
green baize.
On the floor there was an old Brussels carpet, an-
tique as to pattern, and wholly threadbare as to surface. The
walls were covered with an old-time paper whose plaintive primi-
tiveness ran in slender pink stripes alternating with narrow green
vines. In one corner stood a small upright piano whose top was
littered with loose sheets of old music, and on one wall hung a
set of thin black-walnut shelves strung together with cords and
loaded with a variety of well-worn volumes. In the grate was
a coal fire.
Mrs. Bates sat down on the foot of the bed, and motioned
Jane to a small rocker that had been re-seated with a bit of old
rugging.
"And now," she said, cheerily, "let's get to business. Sue
Bates, at your service. "
Oh, no," gasped Jane, who felt, however dumbly and mistily,
that this was an epoch in her life. "Not here; not to-day. "
"Why not? Go ahead; tell me all about the charity that isn't
a charity. You'd better; this is the last room-there's nothing
beyond. " Her eyes were twinkling, but immensely kind.
"I know it," stammered Jane. "I knew it in a second. " She
felt too that not a dozen persons had ever penetrated to this little
chamber. "How good you are to me! "
Presently, under some compulsion, she was making an exposi-
tion of her small plan. Mrs. Bates was made to understand how
some of the old Dearborn Seminary girls were trying to start a
sort of club-room in some convenient down-town building for
typewriters and saleswomen and others employed in business.
There was to be a room where they could get lunch, or bring
their own to eat, if they preferred; also a parlor where they
could fill up their noon hour with talk or reading or music; it
was the expectation to have a piano and a few books and maga-
zines.
## p. 6117 (#87) ############################################
HENRY B. FULLER
6117
"I remembered Lottie as one of the girls who went with us
there, down on old Dearborn Place, and I thought perhaps I
could interest Lottie's mother," concluded Jane.
"And so you can," said Lottie's mother, promptly. "I'll have
Miss Peters - but don't you find it a little warm here?
pass me that hair-brush. "
Just
-
――――
Mrs. Bates had stepped to her single little window. "Isn't it
a gem? " she asked. "I had it made to order; one of the old-
fashioned sort, you see - two sash, with six little panes in each.
No weights and cords, but simple catches at the side.
It opens
to just two widths; if I want anything different, I have to con-
trive it for myself. Sometimes I use a hair-brush and some-
times a paper-cutter. "
She dropped her voice.
"Did you ever have a private secretary? "
"Me? " called Jane. "I'm my own. "
«< Keep it that way," said Mrs. Bates, impressively. "Don't
ever change-no matter how many engagements and appoint-
ments and letters and dates you come to have. You'll never
spend a happy day afterwards. Tutors are bad enough—but
thank goodness, my boys are past that age. And men-servants
are bad enough—every time I want to stir in my own house I
seem to have a footman on each toe and a butler standing on
my train; however, people in our position-well, Granger insists,
you know. "
"And now business is over," she continued. "Do you like
my posies? >>
She nodded towards the window where, thanks to
the hair-brush, a row of flowers in a long narrow box blew about
in the draft.
"Asters? "
"No, no, no! But I hoped you'd guess asters. They're
chrysanthemums-you see, fashion will penetrate even here.
But they're the smallest and simplest I could find. What do I
care for orchids and American beauties, and all those other ex-
pensive things under glass? How much does it please me to
have two great big formal beds of gladiolus and foliage in the
front yard, one on each side of the steps? Still, in our position,
I suppose it can't be helped. No; what I want is a bed of por-
tulaca, and some cypress vines running up strings to the top of a
pole. As soon as I get poor enough to afford it I'm going to
have a lot of phlox and London-pride and bachelor's-buttons out
## p. 6118 (#88) ############################################
6118
HENRY B. FULLER
there in the back yard, and the girls can run their clothes-lines
somewhere else. "
"It's hard to keep flowers in the city," said Jane.
"I know it is. At our old house we had such a nice little
rose-bush in the front yard.
