Mummers in Mufti/Chapter 4

TYPICAL November evening, tinged with fog and coal smoke, was settling down as Bellsmith pushed into the street in front of the doctor's office. Around him the mottled asphalt, the uneven pavement, the glare of lights from small shops under tenement blocks, before which fat Italians argued and gesticulated, all reflected the sounds and smells of a slowly growing, slowly decaying old Eastern seaboard city.

In the sudden damp chill, Bellsmith gathered his coat around him. His limousine, dimly lighted fore and aft, like a ship at anchor, was waiting dutifully at the curb, but the chauffeur, who was watching with profound amusement three small boys in a quarrel at the head of an alley, was distinctly caught napping. His master's hand was on the door of the car before he was startled out of his preoccupation.

The chauffeur was a cheery, freckled, and broad-faced type of young Irishman. In the early, hysterical days of motoring, he had been a race driver of some modest prominence, but now his chief interest in life was centered on boxing-bouts, which he attended two or three evenings a week and at which he could yowl and heckle to his heart's content. His secret ambition, these days, was to sit officially in a "corner" and wave a bath-towel for some third-rate slugger.

It was a curious but rather attractive commentary on human nature that Bellsmith and Keefe, the chauffeur, were on the best of terms, not only professionally but personally. They were of about the same age, but one would have thought that the rugged, tough, battling Irishman would have looked with supreme contempt on his effete and old-maidish master. As a matter of fact, Keefe had for Bellsmith a hearty respect and something approaching a genuine fondness. The reason lay in the paradoxical fact that they had not one single thing in common. If Bellsmith, like most young men of his class, had tried continually to impress Keefe with his own sage knowledge of cars or of professional sport, the chauffeur would indeed have regarded him with a veiled contempt; but Bellsmith knew nothing of cars, he never expected to know anything of cars, in the presence of an engine he lay inert and helpless. He took everything that Keefe said as supreme law and oracle, and, as a result, Keefe responded like a man and a sportsman. The two lived in separate worlds, and, in his own field, each acknowledged the other's complete supremacy.

Thus it had not chafed Keefe a bit to have been kept waiting for more than two hours, although the return trip home was less than three city blocks. Like Bellsmith himself, Keefe had a sense of fitness which understood plainly enough that certain occasions, such as a trip to the station or a trip to a doctor's office, no matter how short, called inevitably for the etiquette of a car. Besides, it always amused Keefe to work his way through the traffic at this crowded hour between five and six on a winter evening. The old Bellsmith mansion, behind its tall iron fence, lay in the very heart of the business district of Leicester, the only private residence within a mile of the spot. On one side an office building rose sheer above it. On the other stretched indiscriminate blocks of small shops and tenements. A big department store was only a stone's-throw away. At this hour not only the streets but the side-walks before the Bellsmith mansion would be packed with shoppers and clerks returning from work. It gave Keefe a fine sense of importance to throw up his hand, turn suddenly, and drive in at the gates through a narrow lane of wide-eyed pedestrians, suddenly blocked in two ranks in their progress and staring amazed at this sight of a huge motor-car coming right up across the sidewalk. At that moment Keefe always felt as if he were driving the chief of police or the President of the United States.

Although only the iron fence, an 1850 affair shaped like a long stand of spears with a battle-ax at the end of each section, separated the old Bellsmith place from the surging tides of pedestrians and from the endless clangor of traffic, yet, once inside the gates, there sprang up a curious sense of seclusion. The lawn was still as religiously tended as if the place were five miles in the country. There were even a few poplar-trees along the brick walls which flanked the grounds at the sides and rear, and geranium-beds, in the shape of a crescent, were ranged round the. In the summer-time Jewish real estate men would stand and gaze longingly through the iron fence and shake their heads at the thought of what those geranium-beds would mean if translated into terms of ten-story building. In his secluded, self-centered habits, however, Bellsmith was as unconscious of any incongruity in his situation as his father had been before him, when only horse-cars jangled in front of the house and a dozen similar mansions, some three-storied and mansarded like this, some shaped like sandstone Greek temples, could have been found in the eight or ten blocks which, at that time, made up the Main Street of Leicester.

In the porte-cochère Bellsmith left the car and automatically said good night. Then, with a sudden recollection, he turned and added, "Oh, by the way!"

Keefe waited, poised—willing enough but a bit apprehensive. From long association with Bellsmith, Keefe had become almost as keen a psychologist as Dr. MacVickar. He knew that almost by the movement of his shoulders he could throw Bellsmith's decision one way or the other, so, to the honor of Keefe, be it said that he did not move at all. Left to himself in his choice of courses, Bellsmith as usual took the least definite.

"No, never mind," he corrected, apologetically. "It was nothing. I had an idea of going out this evening, but I think I will walk."

Cheerily Keefe touched his visor and whirred the car down toward the brick stable at the foot of the garden. It had been a narrow squeak for him. Two exceedingly likely boys were on the card that evening for the semi-final at the North Side Athletic Club.

Bellsmith himself felt rather relieved at letting the chauffeur go off without obligation. He didn't quite know even, yet how he felt in regard to the evening before him, but by giving no definite orders to Keefe he could still, for another two hours, keep it out of his mind as something improbable and altogether hazy. He turned and walked into the house over an echoing vestibule floor of diagonal blue-and-white tiles and under a square hanging gas-lamp bordered with red-and green bull's-eyes.

Although, in this leisurely and possibly maddening narrative, it may be necessary to give many descriptions of Arnold Bellsmith and his entourage, none can be more inclusive than the simple statement that the Bellsmith mansion had been the first private house in the City of Leicester to use electricity and yet it still remained the last one to use gas. At a date so far in the past that people came to inspect the wonder, old Colonel Bellsmith had had installed in the very middle of his front hall a tremendous brass plate, fully two feet square, with rows and rows of switches, from which every light in the house could be turned on and off. Nevertheless, thirty-five years later, the square hanging lamps in both the front and side vestibules were still burning gas from old-fashioned, knifebladed jets. Every evening, at five in winter and six in summer, a maid approached with a long, nickel-plated scepter at the top of which were a slot for turning the key of the vestibule lamp and a lighted taper for touching it off. What, one often wondered, would happen if that nickel-plated arrangement should ever be broken or lost? Would there be a shop in the world where another could be obtained? Or would the maid simply resign and the last hall gas-lamp in Leicester go out forever?

One change, and probably the only change which the growth of the district had induced in the old Bellsmith mansion, had been the necessity of keeping all doors and lower windows invariably locked. Standing on the echoing tiles and under the bull's-eye lamp, Arnold Bellsmith fished automatically for his key, but before he could find it the ponderous inner door, with its silver knob and great brass chain, was opened by William, the butler, not because William had seen him coming but simply because William had happened to be there.

At first thought, one would be inclined to say that William was a false note in the Bellsmith establishment, but on maturer study one would slowly realize that he was the last touch in a superb perfection. William was English, to be sure—Pitkin was his last name,—but he was not at all the majestic, impersonal, yes-me-lud, no-me-lud, majordomo that a superficial taste might have liked to find in the Bellsmith mansion. William was essentially a comedy butler. Like the chauffeur, he had red hair and freckles, but William was undersized, he had one pop-eye, and was generally ridiculous. He would have looked much more in place collecting fares in a trolley-car—on an outlying and insignificant run. His relieving feature was an astonished grin, an incredulous grin, which somehow made the person to whom he was talking share his own utter incredulity at whatever might be the turn of events. If Bellsmith had come in now to announce, "William, the mayor of Leicester has just been shot," for a moment William's pop-eye would have stared his master out of countenance, then a broad grin would have swept his face, he would have said "Only fawncy!" and a moment later the two together would have been practically roaring at His Honor's absurd predicament. If the truth were known, it had probably been William alone who had, up to this time, saved Bellsmith from insanity or self-destruction.

The most startling feature of William was the fact that he really did know his business—when he chose to display it. This, naturally, was on the rare occasions when there were guests at the Bellsmith house. Then, clothed in a superhuman gravity, although still not without a certain naïve air of astonishment, he would go through the motions of his appointed ritual with a deftness equal to that of any tall Parkins or Admirable Grichton. On such occasions, however, it were well for all who knew him to keep their eyes from him. To all others, his very incongruous appearance seemed to make him appear unusually talented.

On this particular evening no words passed between Bellsmith and William. In fact, William, seeing no occasion for ceremony, merely picked up the evening paper and was half-way down the hall before Bellsmith began to ascend the heavily carpeted stairs, already feeling the unhappy weight of an adventure to which he knew that he was committed but which, for no reason except his dread of commitments in general, he was unwilling to face.

In his dressing-room he dallied and dawdled awhile, staring out of the window at the flashing lights and surging crowds in the street below him; then turning with increasing nervousness and apprehension he began to dress. Below, in the basement kitchen, William began to tease the fat cook and the pretty young parlor-maid, making passes at the latter with the folded newspaper which he still held in his hand. At the foot of the garden Keefe merrily snapped the padlock on the stable door and went up the driveway whistling "Love Nest" in tempo rubato, in excellent key and with intricate variations. Out in the street the news-boys kept up an endless, shrill overtone above the dull roar of the traffic: "'Eve—uning Tribune and Press,' 'Leicester Advocate,' last udition!"

Certain questions which Dr. MacVickar had asked that afternoon had been purely formal, for the doctor had known perfectly well the circumstances by which his patient was surrounded. For years Arnold Bellsmith had been the sole possessor of one of those quiet but ponderous fortunes which are found in every New England city, fortunes which have been massed up by nothing more than the simple accumulation of three or four generations and which, in their silent, impregnable bulk, form the despair of eager young business men who are tempted to be exultant in the pride of their first hard-earned and precarious thousands.

The Bellsmiths had always been exceedingly quiet people. Theirs had never figured among the actively fashionable names of Leicester, although among the traditional families their place had always been incontestable. They were one of those families which, socially, seem to be represented, on the rare occasions when they are represented at all, chiefly by prim, homely, unmarried women, no longer young—women who leave behind them a faint atmosphere of black silk and white gloves. A modest town-councilor or two and one inconspicuous congressman had been, during seventy years, the extent of the Bellsmith participation in public life.

Arnold Bellsmith—he was known as "Young Bellsmith," and had been for fifteen years and would be for twenty years more—was, in spite of his protestations, rather a shadowy figure, more a name than an actual person, to most of his generation in Leicester, although he had never been absent for more than two years at a time from the huge square, brick house on Main street with its Mansard roof, its iron fence, and its curious anachronistic geranium beds. Abandoned by the steady migration of the residence section toward the west end of the town, that house was now worth, as a commercial site, a considerable fortune in itself, but no one would ever have thought of trying to buy the old landmark. Like its owners, the Bellsmith place had long since been dropped from the commercial possibilities of the city.

Even in the older and smaller days of Leicester, when all the big men of the town had been accustomed to thump their own gold-headed canes down Main Street every morning at nine o'clock, most people could never make the Bellsmith family seem quite real. Although the family wealth had been for fifty years an august and ominous element in half the banks and industries of the city, yet the curious name had always seemed more or less a myth, a symbol, like "Lloyd's." Some fussy, obsequious lawyer or ponderous, secretive banker had always appeared to represent the Bellsmith family at directors' meetings, and now the blank annonymity [sic] of a trust company absorbed all the details of the estate within its broad marble portico.

Compared, indeed, with his forebears, young Arnold Bellsmith was far more widely acquainted but, at the same time, far less known. It was not that he differed greatly from them in intent, but the informalities and gregariousness of modern life no longer permit the extreme type of provincial baron which had been represented by his father and grandfather. One had seldom seen a male Bellsmith of the older generations in the life. For years at a time even the name would practically disappear from the local press until a head of the family died, as one did at frequent intervals, and his estate would come up for probate, at which the bankers and brokers of Leicester would gasp at learning the size to which the estate had grown. Thereupon the name would sink out of sight until another head of the house passed away, and the same thing would occur again.

As usually happens in such cases, one heard of the Bellsmiths more often from outside of Leicester than in it—from New York perhaps, or from Europe or the older summer resorts such as Saratoga. It was common enough for a traveler to say to a Leicester man or a Leicester woman, "By the way, I met some people from your town, not long ago—named Bellsmith."

"Bellsmith?" the Leicester resident would reply. Oh, yes, the Bellsmiths. I know who they are, but personally I have never met them."

Even in New York and in Europe and at Saratoga, the older Bellsmiths had always appeared as modestly, albeit as regally, as they had at home. They were people of a type which hotel managers recognized at sight as guests who would make many fussy demands but would pay for everything in immediate and ponderous cash. In those days they had had a regular "beat" of resorts which they covered, in this country and in Europe. In fact, Arnold Bellsmith, the senior, had virtually ceased going to New York when the Fifth Avenue Hotel was torn down. He could not endure the appalling thought of a change. Even the Murray Hill and the Holland House had been unable to console him. This Arnold Bellsmith, the father of the present one, had been a tall, bony man with a huge walrus mustache, who always wore gray spats, a gray cutaway suit, and gray derby hat, with a flat top. Standing, expressionless, on a hotel piazza, he had looked like a cross between a stage duke and an old-time gambler. In reality, under his heavy mustache and his deep bass voice he had the mouse-like soul and the gentle manners of a village music-master. For that was all that there had ever been to the so-called mystery of the Bellsmith family. They were not really haughty or exclusive people, as sometimes they had been accused of being. They were merely timid, apprehensive of all change, mistrusting all innovations, dreading all contacts.

Romance is usually outraged when one attempts to pursue a fact to its actual origin, hotly indignant when one really succeeds in doing so; but the origin of the attitude held by families like the Bellsmiths is too obvious to be denied. In the days when, paradoxically, new wealth seemed older than old wealth does now, wealth of any kind held itself and was held by others in no small degree of sacredness. At a time when, for all we know, such an inference might well have been justified, the succeeding members of the Bellsmith race were carefully schooled, either actually or by implication, in the obsessing idea that any stranger was a potential adventurer with possible designs less, perhaps, on the Bellsmith money than on the august Bellsmith name. Arnold Bellsmith himself, or his father, for that matter, had probably never heard any such nonsense, but nevertheless the old tradition had done its work and produced a habitual state of mind which still persisted.

Thus Arnold Bellsmith before his windows, taking off his coat and waistcoat one at a time, thus William in the kitchen below now affecting a temporary truce with the parlor-maid, thus Keefe well on his way to the "Baltimore Lunch" for an "egg with," a cup of coffee, and a big cut of pie, and thus the newsboys outside the window still endlessly howling their "Last udition! Last udition!"