The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck Part 12

And the G.o.ds cursed Roger Stapylton with such a pride in, and so great a love for, his only grandson that the old man could hardly bear to be out of the infant's presence. He was frequently in Lichfield nowadays; and he renewed his demands that Rudolph Musgrave give up the exhaustively-particularized librarians.h.i.+p, so that "the little coot"

would be removed to New York and all three of them be with Roger Stapylton always.

Patricia had not been well since little Roger's birth.

It was a peaked and shrewish Patricia, rather than Rudolph Musgrave, who fought out the long and obstinate battle with Roger Stapylton.

She was jealous at the bottom of her heart. She would not have anyone, not even her father, be too fond of what was preeminently hers; the world at large, including Rudolph Musgrave, was at liberty to adore her boy, as was perfectly natural, but not to meddle: and in fine, Patricia was both hysterical and vixenish whenever a giving up of the Library work was suggested.

The old man did not quarrel with her. And with Roger Stapylton's loneliness in these days, and the long thoughts it bred, we have nothing here to do. But when he died, stricken without warning, some five years after Patricia's marriage, his will was discovered to bequeath practically his entire fortune to little Roger Musgrave when the child should come of age; and to Rudolph Musgrave, as Patricia's husband, what was a reasonable income when judged by Lichfield's unexacting standards rather than by Patricia's antic.i.p.ations. In a word, Patricia found that she and the colonel could for the future count upon a little more than half of the income she had previously been allowed by Roger Stapylton.

"It isn't fair!" she said. "It's monstrous! And all because you were so obstinate about your picayune Library!"

"Patricia--" he began.

"Oh, I tell you it's absurd, Olaf! The money logically ought to have been left to me. And here I will have to come to you for every penny of _my_ money. And Heaven knows I have had to scrimp enough to support us all on what I used to have--Olaf," Patricia said, in another voice, "Olaf! why, what is it, dear?"

"I was reflecting," said Colonel Musgrave, "that, as you justly observe, both Agatha and I have been practically indebted to you for our support these past five years--"

VII

It must be enregistered, not to the man's credit, but rather as a simple fact, that it was never within Colonel Musgrave's power to forget the incident immediately recorded.

He forgave; when Patricia wept, seeing how leaden-colored his handsome face had turned, he forgave as promptly and as freely as he was learning to pardon the telling of a serviceable lie, or the perpetration of an occasional barbarism in speech, by Patricia. For he, a Musgrave of Matocton, had married a Stapylton; he had begun to comprehend that their standards were different, and that some daily conflict between these standards was inevitable.

And besides, as it has been veraciously observed, the truth of an insult is the barb which prevents its retraction. Patricia spoke the truth: Rudolph Musgrave and all those rationally reliant upon Rudolph Musgrave for support, had lived for some five years upon the money which they owed to Patricia. He saw about him other scions of old families who accepted such circ.u.mstances blithely: but, he said, he was a Musgrave of Matocton; and, he reflected, in the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed is necessarily very unhappy.

He did not mean to touch a penny of such moneys as Roger Stapylton had bequeathed to him; for the colonel considered--now--it was a man's duty personally to support his wife and child and sister. And he vigorously attempted to discharge this obligation, alike by virtue of his salary at the Library, and by spasmodic raids upon his tiny capital, and--chief of all--by speculation in the Stock Market.

Oddly enough, his ventures were through a long while--for the most part--successful. Here he builded a desperate edifice whose foundations were his social talents; and it was with quaint self-abhorrence he often noted how the telling of a s.m.u.tty jest or the insistence upon a manifestly superfluous gla.s.s of wine had purchased from some properly tickled magnate a much desiderated "tip."

And presently these tips misled him. So the colonel borrowed from "Patricia's account."

And on this occasion he guessed correctly.

And then he stumbled upon such a chance for reinvestment as does not often arrive. And so he borrowed a trifle more in common justice to Patricia....

VIII

When those then famous warriors, Colonel Gaynor and Captain Green, were obstinately fighting extradition in Quebec; when in Was.h.i.+ngton the Senate was wording a suitable resolution wherewith to congratulate Cuba upon that island's brand-new independence; and when Messieurs Fitzsimmons and Jeffries were making amicable arrangements in San Francisco to fight for the world's champions.h.i.+p:--at this remote time, in Chicago (on the same day, indeed, that in this very city Mr. S.E.

Gross was legally declared the author of a play called Cyrano de Bergerac), the Sons of the Colonial Governors opened their tenth biennial convention. You may depend upon it that Colonel Rudolph Musgrave represented the Lichfield chapter.

It was two days later the telegram arrived. It read:

_Agatha very ill come to me roger in perfect health._ PATRICIA.

He noted how with Stapyltonian thrift Patricia telegraphed ten words precisely....

And when he had reached home, late in the evening, the colonel, not having taken his bunch of keys with him, laid down his dress-suit case on the dark porch, and reached out one hand to the door-bell. He found it m.u.f.fled with some flimsy, gritty fabric. He did not ring.

Upon the porch was a rustic bench. He sat upon it for a quarter of an hour--precisely where he had first talked with Agatha about Patricia's first coming to Lichfield.... Once the door of a house across the street was opened, with a widening gush of amber light wherein he saw three women fitting wraps about them. One of them was adjusting a lace scarf above her hair.

"No, we're not a _bit_ afraid--Just around the corner, you know--_Such_ a pleasant evening----" Their voices carried far in the still night.

Rudolph Musgrave was not thinking of anything. Presently he went around through the side entrance, and thus came into the kitchen, where the old mulattress, Virginia, was sitting alone. The room was very hot.... In Agatha's time supper would have been cooked upon the gas-range in the cellar, he reflected.... Virginia had risen and made as though to take his dress-suit case, her pleasant yellow face as imperturbable as an idol's.

"No--don't bother, Virginia," said Colonel Musgrave.

He met Patricia in the dining-room, on her way to the kitchen. She had not chosen--as even the most sensible of us will instinctively decline to do--to vex the quiet of a house wherein death was by ringing a bell.

Holding his hand in hers, fondling it as she talked, Patricia told how three nights before Miss Agatha had been "queer, you know," at supper.

Patricia had not liked to leave her, but it was the night of the Woman's Club's second Whist Tournament. And Virginia had promised to watch Miss Agatha. And, anyhow, Miss Agatha had gone to bed before Patricia left the house, and _anybody_ would have thought she was going to sleep all night. And, in fine, Patricia's return at a drizzling half-past eleven had found Miss Agatha sitting in the garden, in her night-dress only, weeping over fancied grievances--and Virginia asleep in the kitchen. And Agatha had died that afternoon of pneumonia.

Even in the last half-stupor she was asking always when would Rudolph come? Patricia told him....

Rudolph Musgrave did not say anything. Without any apparent emotion he put Patricia aside, much as he did the dress-suit case which he had forgotten to lay down until Patricia had ended her recital.

He went upstairs--to the front room, Patricia's bedroom. Patricia followed him.

Agatha's body lay upon the bed, with a sheet over all. The undertaker's skill had arranged everything with smug and horrible tranquillity.

Rudolph Musgrave remembered he was forty-six years old; and when in all these years had there been a moment when Agatha--the real Agatha--had not known that what he had done was self-evidently correct, because otherwise Rudolph would not have done it?

"I trust you enjoyed your whist-game, Patricia."

"Well, I couldn't help it. I'm not running a sanitarium. I wasn't responsible for her eternal drinking."

The words skipped out of either mouth like gleeful little devils.

Then both were afraid, and both were as icily tranquil as the thing upon the bed. You could not hear anything except the clock upon the mantel.

Colonel Musgrave went to the mantel, opened the clock, and with an odd deliberation removed the pendulum from its hook. Followed one metallic gasp, as of indignation, and then silence.

He spoke, still staring at the clock, his back turned to Patricia. "You must be utterly worn out. You had better go to bed."

He s.h.i.+fted by the fraction of an inch the old-fas.h.i.+oned "hand-colored"

daguerreotype of his father in Confederate uniform. "Please don't wear that black dress again. It is no cause for mourning that we are rid of an enc.u.mbrance."

Behind him, very far away, it seemed, he heard Patricia wailing, "Olaf----!"

Colonel Musgrave turned without any haste. "Please go," he said, and appeared to plead with her. "You must be frightfully tired. I am sorry that I was not here. I seem always to evade my responsibilities, somehow--"