 | II Portrait of a Philosopher |  |
2. II
WHILE they had been duly sensible of the lustre reflected upon them by the celebration in honor of their distinguished uncle, Professor Gridley's two nephews could scarcely have said truthfully that they enjoyed the occasion. As one of them did say to the other, the whole show was rather out of their line. Their line was wholesale hardware and, being eager to return to it, it was with a distinct feeling of relief that they waited for the train at the station. They were therefore as much displeased as surprised by the sudden appearance to them of their great-aunt, very haggard, her usual extreme timidity swept away by overmastering emotion. She clutched at the two merchants with a great sob of relief: "Stephen! Eli! Come back to the house," she cried, and before they could stop her was hobbling away. They hurried after her, divided between the fear of losing their train and the hope that some inheritance from their uncle had been found. They were not mercenary men, but they felt a not unnatural disappointment that Professor Gridley had left not a penny, not even to his aunt, his one intimate.
They overtook her, scuttling along like some frightened and wounded little animal. "What's the matter, Aunt Amelia?" they asked shortly. "We've got to catch this train."
She faced them. "You can't go now. You've got to make them take that picture away."
"Away!" Their blankness was stupefaction.
She raged at them, the timid, harmless little thing, like a creature distraught. "Didn't you see it? Didn't you see it?"
Stephen answered: "Well, no, not to have a good square look at it. The man in front of me kept getting in the way."
Eli admitted: "If you mean you don't see anything in it to make all this hurrah about, I'm with you. It don't look half finished. I don't like that slap-dash style."
She was in a frenzy at their denseness. "Who did it look like?" she challenged them.
"Why, like Uncle Grid, of course. Who else?"
"Yes, yes," she cried; "who else? Who else?"
They looked at each other, afraid that she was crazed, and spoke more gently: "Why, I don't know, I'm sure, who else. Like Grandfather Gridley, of course; but then Uncle Grid always did look like his father."
At this she quite definitely put it out of their power to leave her by fainting away.
They carried her home and laid her on her own bed, where one of them stayed to attend her while the other went back to rescue their deserted baggage. As the door closed behind him the old woman came to herself. "Oh, Stephen," she moaned, "I wish it had killed me, the way it did your uncle."
"What is the matter?" asked her great-nephew wonderingly. "What do you think killed him?"
"That awful, awful picture! I know it now as plain as if I'd been there. He hadn't seen it all the time he was sitting for it, though he'd already put in his will that he wanted the college to have it, and when he did see it—" she turned on the merchant with a sudden fury: "How dare you say those are your uncle's eyes!"
He put his hand soothingly on hers. "Now, now, Aunt 'Melia, maybe the expression isn't just right, but the color is fine . . . just that jet-black his were . . . and the artist has got in exact that funny stiff way uncle's hair stood up over his forehead."
The old woman fixed outraged eyes upon him. "Color!" she said. "And hair! Oh Lord, help me!"
She sat up on the bed, clutching her nephew's hand, and began to talk rapidly. When, a half-hour later, the other brother returned, neither of them heard him enter the house. It was only when he called
"You'll see the president . . . you'll fix it?" the old woman cried after him.
"I'll see, Aunt 'Melia," he answered pacifyingly as he drew his brother out of doors. He looked quite pale and moved, and drew a long breath before he could begin. "Aunt Amelia's been telling me a lot of things I never knew, Eli. It seems that . . . say, did you ever hear that Grandfather Gridley, the governor, was such a bad lot?"
"Why, mother never said much about her father one way or the other, but I always sort of guessed he wasn't all he
"He was a disreputable old scalawag!" cried his other grandson. "Some of the things Aunt Amelia has been telling me make me never want to come back to this part of the country again. Do you know why Uncle Grid lived so poor and scrimped and yet left no money? He'd been taking care of a whole family grandfather had beside ours; and paying back some people grandfather did out of a lot of money on a timber deal fifty years ago; and making it up to a little village in the backwoods that grandfather persuaded to bond itself for a railroad that he knew wouldn't go near it."
The two men stared at each other an instant, reviewing in a new light the life that had just closed. "That's why he never married," said Eli, finally.
"No, that's what I said, but Aunt Amelia just went wild when I did. She said . . . gee!" he passed his hand over his eyes with a gesture of mental confusion. "Ain't it strange what can go on under your eyes and you never know it. Why, she says Uncle Grid was just like his father."
The words were not out of his mouth before the other's face of horror made him aware of his mistake. "No! No! Not that! Heavens, no! I mean . . . made like him . . . wanted to be that kind, specially drink . . ." his tongue, unused to phrasing abstractions, stumbled and tripped in his haste to correct the other's impression. "You know how much Uncle Grid used to look like grandfather . . . the same black hair and broad face and thick red lips and a kind of knob on the end of his nose? Well, it seems he had his father's insides too . . . but his mother's conscience! I guess, from what Aunt Amelia says, that the combination made life about as near Tophet for him . . . ! She's the only one to know anything about it, because she's lived with him always, you know, took him when grandmother died and he was a child. She says when he was younger he was like a man fighting a wild beast . . . he didn't dare let up or rest. Some days he wouldn't stop working at his desk all day long, not even to eat, and then he'd grab up a piece of bread and go off for a long tearing tramp that'd last 'most all night. You know what a tremendous physique all the Gridley men have had. Well, Uncle Grid turned into work all the energy the rest of them spent in deviltry. Aunt Amelia said he'd go on like that day after day for a month, and then he'd bring out one of those essays folks are so crazy about. She said she never could bear to look at his books . . . seemed to her they were written in his blood. She told him so once and he said it was the only thing to do with blood like his."
He was silent, while his listener made a clucking noise of astonishment. "My! My! I'd have said that there never was anybody more different from grandfather than uncle. Why, as he got on in years he didn't even look like him any more."
This reference gave Stephen a start. "Oh, yes, that's what all this came out for. Aunt Amelia is just wild about this portrait. It's just a notion of hers, of course, but after what she told me I could see, easy, how the idea would come to her. It looks this way, she says, as though Uncle Grid inherited his father's physical make-up complete, and spent all his life fighting it . . . and won out! And here's this picture making him look the way he would if he'd been the worst old . . . as if he'd been like the governor. She says she feels as though she was the only one to defend uncle . . . as if it could make any difference to him! I guess the poor old lady is a little touched. Likely it's harder for her, losing uncle, than we realized. She just about worshipped him. Queer business, anyhow, wasn't it? Who'd ha' thought he was like that?"
He had talked his unwonted emotion quite out, and now looked at his brother with his usual matter-of-fact eye. "Did you tell the station agent to hold the trunk?"
The other, who was the younger, looked a little abashed. "Well, no; I found the train was so late I thought maybe we could . . . you know there's that business to-morrow . . .!"
His senior relieved him of embarrassment. "That's a good idea. Sure we can.
"It's out of our line, anyhow," agreed the younger, looking at his watch.
| II Portrait of a Philosopher | |