by Frank Norris
“Why, hello, Connors!”
“Why, hello, Mister Brodhead!”
Then a long conversation was begun, the policeman standing on the curbstone, one foot resting upon the hub of a wheel, the expressman leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, twirling his whip between his hands. The expressman told some sort of story, pointing with his elbow toward the house, but the other was incredulous, gravely shaking his head, putting his chin in the air, and closing his eyes.
Inside the house itself there was a hushed and subdued bustling that centred about a particular room. The undertaker’s assistants and the barber called in low voices through the halls for basins of water and towels. There was a search for the Old Gentleman’s best clothes and his clean linen; bureau drawers were opened and shut, closet doors softly closed. Relatives and friends called and departed or stayed to help. A vague murmur arose, a mingled sound of whispers and light foot-steps, the rustle of silks, and the noise of stifled weeping, and then at last silence, night, solitude, a single gas-jet burning, and Vandover was left alone.
The suddenness of the thing had stunned and dizzied him, and he had gone through with all the various affairs of the day wondering at his calmness and fortitude. Toward eleven o’clock, however, after the suppressed excitement of the last hours, as he was going to bed, the sense of his grief and loss came upon him all of a sudden, with their real force for the first time, and he threw himself upon the bed face downward, weeping and groaning. During the rest of the night pictures of his father returned to him as he had seen him upon different occasions, particularly three such pictures came and went through his mind.
In one the Old Gentleman stood in that very room, with the decanter in his hand, asking him kindly if he felt very bad; in another he was on the pier with his handkerchief tied to his cane, waving it after Vandover as though spelling out a signal to him across the water. But in a third, he was in the smoking-room, fallen into the leather chair, his arm resting on the table and his head bowed upon it.
After the funeral, which took place from the house, Vandover drove back alone in the hired carriage to his home. He would have paid the driver, but the other told him that the undertaker looked out for that. Vandover watched him a moment as he started his horses downhill, the brake as it scraped against the tire making a noise like the yelping of a dog. Then he turned and faced the house. It was near four o’clock in the afternoon, and everything about the house was very quiet. All the curtains were down except in one of the rooms upstairs. The butler had already opened these windows and was airing the room. Vandover could hear him moving about, sweeping up, rearranging the furniture, making up the bed again. In front of him, between the horse-block and the front door, one or two smilax leaves were still fallen, and a tuberose, already yellow. Behind him in the street he had already noticed the marks of the wheels of the hearse where it had backed up to the curb.
The crêpe was still on the bell handle. Vandover did not know whether it had been forgotten, or whether it was proper to leave it there longer. At any rate he took it off and carried it into the house with him.
His father’s hat, a stiff brown derby hat, flat on the top, hung on the hatrack. This had always been a sign to Vandover that his father was at home. The sight was so familiar, so natural, that the same idea occurred to him now involuntarily, and for an instant it was as though he had dreamed of his father’s death; he even wondered what was this terrible grief that had overwhelmed him, and thought that he must go and tell his father about it. He took the hat in his hands, turning it about tenderly, catching the faint odour of the Old Gentleman’s hair oil that hung about it. It all brought back his father to him as no picture ever could; he could almost see the kind old face underneath the broad curl of the brim. His grief came over him again keener than ever and he put his arms clumsily about the old hat, weeping and whispering to himself:
“Oh, my poor, dear old dad — I’m never going to see you again, never, never! Oh, my dear, kind old governor!”
He took the hat up to his room with him, putting it carefully away. Then he sat down before the window that overlooked the little garden in the rear of the house, looking out with eyes that saw nothing.
Chapter Eleven
The following days as they began to pass were miserable. Vandover had never known until now how much he loved his father, how large a place he had filled in his life. He felt horribly alone now, and a veritable feminine weakness overcame him, a crying need to be loved as his father had loved him, and also to love some one as he himself had loved his father. Worst of all, however, was his loneliness. He could think of no one who cared in the least for him; the very thought of Turner Ravis or young Haight wrought in him an expression of scorn. He was sure that he was nothing to them, though they were the ones whom he considered his best friends.
Another cause of misery was the fact that his father’s death in leaving him alone had also thrown him upon his own resources. Now he would have to shoulder responsibilities which hitherto his father had assumed, and decide questions which until now his father had answered.
However, he felt that his father’s death had sobered him as nothing else, not even Ida’s suicide, had done. The time was come at length for him to take life seriously. He would settle down now to work at his art. He would go to Paris as his father had wished, and devote himself earnestly to painting. Yes, the time was come for him to steady himself, and give over the vicious life into which he had been drifting.
But it was not long before Vandover had become accustomed to his father’s death, and had again rearranged himself to suit the new environment which it had occasioned. He wondered at himself because of the quickness with which he had recovered from this grief, just as before he had marvelled at the ease with which he had forgotten Ida’s death. Could it be true, then, that nothing affected him very deeply? Was his nature shallow?
However, he was wrong in this respect; his nature was not shallow. It had merely become deteriorated.
Two days after his father’s death Vandover went into the Old Gentleman’s room to get a certain high-backed chair which had been moved there from his own room during the confusion of the funeral, and which, pending the arrival of the trestles, had been used to support the coffin.
As he was carrying it back his eye fell upon a little heap of objects carefully set down upon the bureau. They were the contents of the Old Gentleman’s pockets that the undertaker had removed when the body was dressed for burial.
Vandover turned them over, sadly interested in them. There was the watch, some old business letters and envelopes covered with memoranda, his fountain-pen, a couple of cigars, a bank-book, a small amount of change, his pen-knife, and one or two tablets of chewing-gum.
Vandover thrust the pen and the knife into his own pocket. The bank-book, letters, and change he laid away in his father’s desk, but the cigars and the tablets of gum, together with the crumpled pocket-handkerchief that he found on another part of the dressing-case, he put into the Old Gentleman’s hat, which he had hidden on the top shelf of his clothes closet. The watch he hung upon a little brass thermometer that always stood on his centre table. He even wound up the watch with the resolve never to let it run down so long as he should live.
The keys, however, disturbed him, and he kept changing them from one hand to the other, looking at them very thoughtfully. They suggested to him the inquiry as to whether or no his father had made a will, and how much money he, Vandover, could now command. One of the keys was a long brass key. Vandover knew that this unlocked a little iron box that from time out of mind had been screwed upon the lower shelf of the clothes closet in his father’s room. It was in this box that the Old Gentleman kept his ready money and a few important papers.
For a long time Vandover stood undecided, changing the keys about from one hand to the other, hesitating before opening this iron box; he could not tell why. By and by, however, he went softly into his father’s room, and into the clothes closet near the head of
the bed. Holding the key toward the lock, he paused listening; it was impossible to rid his mind of the idea that he was doing something criminal. He shook himself, smiling at the fancy, assuring himself of the honesty of the thing, yet opening the box stealthily, holding the key firmly in order that it might not spring back with a loud click, looking over his shoulder the while and breathing short through his nose.
The first thing that he saw inside was a loaded revolver, the sudden view of which sent a little qualm through the pit of his stomach. He took it out gingerly, holding it at arm’s length, throwing open the cylinder and spilling out the cartridges on the bed, very careful to let none of them fall on the floor lest they should explode.
Next he drew out the familiar little canvas sack. In it were twenty-dollar gold-pieces, the coin that used to be “Good for the Masses.” Behind that was about thirty dollars in two rolls, and last of all in an old, oblong tin cracker-box a great bundle of papers. A list of these papers was pasted on one end of the box. They comprised deeds, titles, insurance policies, tax receipts, mortgages, and all the papers relating to the property. Besides these there was the will.
He took out this box, laying it on the shelf beside him. He was closing the small iron safe again very quietly when all at once, before he could think of what he was doing, he ran his hand into the mouth of the canvas sack, furtively, slyly, snatched one of the heavy round coins, and thrust it into his vest pocket, looking all about him, listening intently, saying to himself with a nervous laugh, “Well, isn’t it mine anyway?”
In spite of himself he could not help feeling a joy in the possession of this money as if of some treasure-trove dug up on an abandoned shore. He even began to plan vaguely how he should spend it.
However, he could not bring himself to open any of the papers, but sent them instead to a lawyer, whom he knew his father had often consulted. A few days later he received a typewritten letter asking him to call at his earliest convenience.
It was at his residence and not at his office that Vandover saw the lawyer, as the latter was not well at the time and kept to his bed. However, he was not so sick but that his doctor allowed him to transact at least some of his business. Vandover found him in his room, a huge apartment, one side entirely taken up by book-shelves filled with works of fiction. The walls were covered with rough stone-blue paper, forming an admirable background to small plaster casts of Assyrian bas-reliefs and large photogravures of Renaissance portraits. Underneath an enormous baize-covered table in the centre of the room were green cloth bags filled apparently with books, padlocked tin chests, and green pasteboard deed-boxes. The lawyer was sitting up in bed, wearing his dressing-gown and occasionally drinking hot water from a glass. He was a thin, small man, middle-aged, with a very round head and a small pointed beard.
“How do you do, Mr. Vandover?” he said, very pleasantly as Vandover passed by the servant holding open the door and came in.
“How do you do, Mr. Field?” answered Vandover, shaking his hand. “Well, I’m sorry to see you like this.”
“Yes,” answered the lawyer, “I’m — I have trouble with my digestion sometimes, more annoying than dangerous, I suppose. Take a chair, won’t you? You can find a place for your hat and coat right on the table there. Well,” he added, settling back on the pillows and looking at Vandover pleasantly, “I think you’ve grown thinner since the last time I saw you, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” answered Vandover grimly, “I guess I have.”
“Yes, yes, I suppose so, of course,” responded the lawyer with a vague air of apology and sympathy. “You have had a trying time of it lately, taking it by and large. I was very painfully shocked to hear of your father’s death. I had met him at lunch hardly a week before; he was a far heartier man than I was. Eat? You should have seen — splendid appetite. He spoke at length of you, I remember; told me you expected to go abroad soon to study painting; in fact, I believe he was to go to Paris with you. It was very sad and very sudden. But you know we’ve all been expecting — been fearing — that for some time.”
They both were silent for a moment, the lawyer looking absently at the foot-board of the bed, nodding his head slowly from time to time, repeating, “Yes, sir — yes, sir.” Suddenly he exclaimed, “Well — now, let’s see.” He cleared his throat, coming back to himself again, and continued in a very businesslike and systematic tone:
“I have looked over your father’s papers, Mr. Vandover, as you requested me to, and I have taken the liberty of sending for you to let you know exactly how you stand.”
“That’s the idea, sir,” said Vandover, very attentive, drawing up his chair.
Mr. Field took a great package of oblong papers from the small table that stood at the head of his bed, and looked them over, adjusting his eyeglasses. “Well, now, suppose we take up the real property first,” he continued, drawing out three or four of these papers and unfolding them. “All of your father’s money was invested in what we call ‘improved realty.’”
He talked for something over an hour, occasionally stopping to answer a question of Vandover’s, or interrupting himself to ask him if he understood. At the end it amounted to this:
The bulk of the estate was residence property in distant quarters of the city. Some twenty-six houses, very cheaply built, each, on an average, renting for twenty-eight dollars. When all of these were rented, the gross monthly income was seven hundred and twenty-eight dollars. At this time, however, six were vacant, bringing down the gross receipts per month to five hundred and sixty dollars. The expenses, which included water, commissions for collecting, repairs, taxes, interest on insurance, etc., when expressed in the terms of a monthly average, amounted to one hundred and eighty-six dollars.
“Well, now, let’s see,” said Vandover, figuring on his cuff, “one hundred and eighty-six from five hundred and sixty leaves me a net monthly income of three hundred and eighty-four — no, seventy-four. Three hundred and seventy-four dollars.”
The lawyer shook his head while he drank another glass of hot water:
“You see,” he said, wiping his moustache in the hollow of his palm, “you see, we haven’t figured on the mortgages yet.”
“Mortgages?” echoed Vandover.
“Yes,” answered Mr. Field, “when I spoke of expenses I was basing them upon the monthly statements of Adams & Brunt, your father’s agents. But they never looked after the mortgages. Your father acted directly with the banks in that matter. I find that there are mortgages that cover the entire property, even the homestead. They are for 6-1/2 and 7 per cent. In some cases there are two mortgages on the same piece of property.”
“Well,” said Vandover.
“Well,” answered the lawyer, “the interest on these foots up to about two hundred and ninety dollars a month.”
Vandover made another hasty calculation on his cuff, and leaned back in his chair staring at the lawyer, saying:
“Why, that leaves eighty-four dollars a month, net.”
“Yes,” assented Field. “I made it that, too.”
“Why, the governor used to allow me fifty a month,” returned Vandover, “just for pocket money.”
“I’m afraid you mustn’t expect anything like that, now, Mr. Vandover,” replied Field, smiling. “You see, when your father was alive and pursuing his profession, he made a comfortable income besides that which he derived from his realty. His law business I consider to have been excellent when you take everything into consideration. He often made five hundred dollars a month at it. Such are the figures his papers show. He could make you a handsome allowance while he was alive, but all that is stopped now!”
“Well, but didn’t he — didn’t he leave any money, any — any — any lump sum?” inquired Vandover incredulously.
“There was his bank account,” answered the other. “You see, he invested most of his savings in this same realty, and since he stopped building he seems to have lived right up to his income.”
“But eighty-four dollars!
” repeated Vandover; “why, look at the house on California Street where we live. It costs that much to run it, the servants and all.”
“Here’s your father’s domestic-account book,” answered Field, taking it up and turning the leaves. “One hundred and seventy-five dollars a month were the average running expenses.”
“One hundred and seventy-five!” shouted Vandover, feeling suddenly as if the ground were opening under him. “Why, great heavens! Mr. Field, where am I going to get — what am I going to do?”
Mr. Field smiled a little. “Well,” he said, “you must make up your mind to live more modestly.”
“Modestly?” exclaimed Vandover, scornfully.
“You’ll have to rent the house and take rooms.”
Vandover gave a gasp of relief.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” he answered, subsiding at once. “How much would it bring — the house?”
The lawyer hesitated as to this. “That I could hardly tell you definitely,” he answered, shaking his head. “Adams & Brunt could give you more exact figures. In fact, I would suggest that you put it into their hands. California near Franklin, isn’t it? Yes; the neighbourhood isn’t what it used to be, you know. Every one wants to live out on Pacific Heights now. Double house? Yes, well — with the furniture, I suppose — oh, I don’t know — say, a hundred and fifty. But, you know, my estimate is only guesswork. Brunt is the man you want to see.”
“Well,” answered Vandover, solaced, “that makes — two thirty-four; that’s more like it. But,” he added, hastily, “you say the homestead is mortgaged as well; how about the interest on that?”
“You needn’t be bothered about that,” answered Mr. Field. “The interest on that mortgage is included in the two hundred and ninety that I spoke of, and the insurance interest on the homestead is included in Adams & Brunt’s statement. That was on the whole estate with the homestead, you understand? But there is another thing you must look out for. Most of the mortgages are for one year, and every time they are renewed there is an expense of between forty and fifty dollars.”