Playing! Of course he would not work all the time. And he was going back
to his old friends, to people who had always known him, to girls-He did his best then. He told her of the old family house, built by one of
his forebears who had been a king's man until Washington had put the case
for the colonies, and who had given himself and his oldest son then to the
cause that he made his own. He told of old servants who had wept when he
decided to close the house and go away. When she fell silent, he thought
he was interesting her. He told her the family traditions that had been
the fairy tales of his childhood. He described the library, the choice
room of the house, full of family paintings in old gilt frames, and of his
father's collection of books. Because it was home, he waxed warm over it
at last, although it had rather hurt him at first to remember. It brought
back the other things that he wanted to forget.
But a terrible thing was happening to Sidney. Side by side with the
wonders he described so casually, she was placing the little house. What
an exile it must have been for him! How hopelessly middle-class they must
have seemed! How idiotic of her to think, for one moment, that she could
ever belong in this new-old life of his!
What traditions had she? None, of course, save to be honest and good and
to do her best for the people around her. Her mother's people, the
Kennedys went back a long way, but they had always been poor. A library
full of paintings and books! She remembered the lamp with the blue-silk
shade, the figure of Eve that used to stand behind the minister's portrait,
and the cherry bookcase with the Encyclopaedia in it and "Beacon Lights of
History." When K., trying his best to interest her and to conceal his own
heaviness of spirit, told her of his grandfather's old carriage, she sat
back in the shadow.
"Fearful old thing," said K.,--"regular cabriolet. I can remember yet the
family rows over it. But the old gentleman liked it--used to have it
repainted every year. Strangers in the city used to turn around and stare
at it--thought it was advertising something!"
"When I was a child," said Sidney quietly, "and a carriage drove up and
stopped on the Street, I always knew some one had died!"
There was a strained note in her voice. K., whose ear was attuned to every
note in her voice, looked at her quickly. "My great-grandfather," said
Sidney in the same tone, "sold chickens at market. He didn't do it
himself; but the fact's there, isn't it?"