The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories

The willows haunted the lake more gloomily, trailed their old branches more dejectedly, than when Dr. Hiram Webster had, forty years before, bought the ranchos surrounding them from the Moreño grandees.  Gone were the Moreños from all but the archives of California, but the willows and Dr. Hiram Webster were full of years and honors.  The ranchos were ranchos no longer.  A somnolent city covered their fertile acres, catching but a whiff at angels’ intervals of the metropolis of nerves and pulse and feverish corpuscles across the bay.

Lawns sloped to the lake.  At the head of the lawns were large imposing mansions, the homes of the aristocracy of the city, all owned by Dr. Webster, and leased at high rental to a favored few.  To dwell on Webster Lake was to hold proud and exclusive position in the community, well worth the attendant ills.  To purchase of those charmed acres was as little possible as to induce the Government to part with a dwelling-site in Yosemite Valley.

Webster Hall was twenty years older than the tributary mansions.  The trees about it were large and densely planted.  When storms tossed the lake they whipped the roof viciously or held the wind in longer wails.  There was an air of mystery about the great rambling sombre house; and yet no murder had been done there, no traveller had disappeared behind the sighing trees to be seen no more, no tale of horror claimed it as birthplace.  The atmosphere was created by the footprints of time on a dwelling old in a new land.  The lawns were unkempt, the bare windows stared at the trees like unlidded eyes.  Children ran past it in the night.  The unwelcomed of the spreading city maintained that if nothing ever had happened there something would; that the place spoke its manifest destiny to the least creative mind.

The rain poured down one Sunday morning, splashing heavily on the tin of the oft-mended roof, hurling itself noisily through the trees.  The doctor sat in his revolving-chair before the desk in his study.  His yellow face was puckered; even the wrinkles seemed to wrinkle as he whirled about every few moments and scowled through the trees at the flood racing down the lawn to the lake.  His thin mouth was a trifle relaxed, his clothes hung loose upon him; but the eyes, black and sharp as a ferret’s, glittered undimmed.

He lifted a large bell that stood on the desk and rang it loudly.  A maid-servant appeared.

“Go and look at the barometer,” he roared.  “See if this damned rain shows any sign of letting up.”

The servant retired, reappeared, and announced that the barometer was uncompromising.

“Well, see that the table is set for twenty, nevertheless; do you hear?  If they don’t come I’ll raise their rents.  Send Miss Webster here.”

His sister entered in a few moments.  She was nearly his age, but her faded face showed wrinkles only on the brow and about the eyes.  It wore a look of haunting youth; the expression of a woman who has grown old unwillingly, and still hopes, against reason, that youth is not a matter of a few years at the wrong end of life.  Her hair was fashionably arranged, but she was attired in a worn black silk, her only ornament a hair brooch.  Her hands were small and well kept, although the skin hung loose upon them, spotted with the moth-patches of age.  Her figure was erect, but stout.

“What is it, brother?” she asked softly, addressing the back of the autocrat’s head.

He wheeled about sharply.

“Why do you always come in like a cat?  Do you think those people will come to-day?  It’s raining cats and dogs.”

“Certainly; they always come, and they have their carriages—­”

“That’s just it.  They’re getting so damned high-toned that they’ll soon feel independent of me.  But I’ll turn them out, bag and baggage.”

“They treat you exactly as they have treated you for thirty years and more, brother.”

“Do you think so?  Do you think they’ll come to-day?”

“I am sure they will, Hiram.”

He looked her up and down, then said, with a startling note of tenderness in his ill-used voice: 

“You ought to have a new frock, Marian.  That is looking old.”

Had not Dr. Webster been wholly deficient in humor he would have smiled at his sister’s expression of terrified surprise.  She ran forward and laid her hand on his shoulder.

“Hiram,” she said, “are you—­you do not look well to-day.”

“Oh, I am well enough,” he replied, shaking her off.  “But I have noticed of late that you and Abigail are looking shabby, and I don’t choose that all these fine folks shall criticise you.”  He opened his desk and counted out four double-eagles.

“Will this be enough?  I don’t know anything about women’s things.”

Miss Webster was thankful to get any money without days of expostulation, and assured him that it was sufficient.  She left the room at once and sought her companion, Miss Williams.

The companion was sitting on the edge of the bed in her small ascetic chamber, staring, like Dr. Webster down-stairs, through the trees at the rain.  So she had sat the night of her arrival at Webster Hall, then a girl of eighteen and dreams.  So she had sat many times, feeling youth slip by her, lifting her bitter protest against the monotony and starvation of her existence, yet too timid and ignorant to start forth in search of life.  It was her birthday, this gloomy Sunday.  She was forty-two.  She was revolving a problem—­a problem she had revolved many times before.  For what had she stayed?  Had there been an unadmitted hope that these old people must soon die and leave her with an independence with which she could travel and live?  She loved Miss Webster, and she had gladly responded to her invitation to leave the New England village, where she was dependent on the charity of relatives, and make her home in the new country.  Miss Webster needed a companion and housekeeper; there would be no salary, but a comfortable home and clothes that she could feel she had earned.  She had come full of youth and spirit and hope.  Youth and hope and spirit had dribbled away, but she had stayed, and stayed.  To-day she wished she had married any clod in her native village that had been good enough to address her.  Never for one moment had she known the joys of freedom, of love, of individuality.

Miss Webster entered abruptly.

“Abby,” she exclaimed, “Hiram is ill.”  And she related the tale of his unbending.

Miss Williams listened indifferently.  She was very tired of Hiram.  She accepted with a perfunctory expression of gratitude the gold piece allotted to her.  “You are forty-two, you are old, you are nobody,” was knelling through her brain.

“What is the matter?” asked Miss Webster, sympathetically; “have you been crying?  Don’t you feel well?  You’d better dress, dear; they’ll be here soon.”

She sat down suddenly on the bed and flung her arms about her companion, the tears starting to her kindly eyes.

“We are old women,” she said.  “Life has not meant much to us.  You are younger in years, but you have lived in this dismal old house so long that you have given it and us your youth.  You have hardly as much of it now as we have.  Poor girl!”

The two women fondled each other, Abby appreciating that, although Miss Webster might not be a woman of depths, she too had her regrets, her yearnings for what had never been.

“What a strange order of things it is,” continued the older woman, “that we should have only one chance for youth in this life!  It comes to so many of us when circumstances will not permit us to enjoy it.  I drudged—­drudged—­drudged, when I was young.  Now that I have leisure and—­and opportunity to meet people, at least, every chance of happiness has gone from me.  But you are comparatively young yet, really; hope on.  The grave will have me in a few years, but you can live and be well for thirty yet.  Ah! if I had those thirty years!”

“I would give them to you gladly for one year of happiness—­of youth.”

Miss Webster rose and dried her eyes.  “Well,” she said, philosophically, “regrets won’t bring things.  We’ve people to entertain to-day, so we must get out of the dumps.  Put on your best frock, like a good child, and come down.”

She left the room.  Miss Williams rose hurriedly, unhooked a brown silk frock from the cupboard, and put it on.  Her hair was always smooth; the white line of disunion curved from brow to the braids pinned primly above the nape of the neck.  As she looked into the glass to-day she experienced a sudden desire to fringe her hair, to put red on her cheeks; longing to see if any semblance of her youthful prettiness could be coaxed back.  She lifted a pair of scissors, but threw them hastily down.  She had not the courage to face the smiles and questions that would greet the daring innovation, the scathing ridicule of old man Webster.

She stared at her reflection in the little mirror, trying to imagine her forehead covered with a soft fringe.  Nothing could conceal the lines about the eyes and mouth, but the aging brow could be hidden from critical gaze, the face redeemed from its unyouthful length.  Her cheeks were thin and colorless, but the skin was fine and smooth.  The eyes, which had once been a rich dark blue, were many shades lighter now, but the dulness of age had not possessed them yet.  Her set mouth had lost its curves and red, but the teeth were good.  The head was finely shaped and well placed on the low old-fashioned shoulders.  There were no contours now under the stiff frock.  Had her estate been high she would have been, at the age of forty-two, a youthful and pretty woman.  As it was, she was merely an old maid with a patrician profile.

She went down-stairs to occupy her chair in the parlor, her seat at the table, to be overlooked by the fine people who took no interest whatever in the “Websters’ companion.”  She hated them all.  She had watched them too grow old with a profound satisfaction for which she reproached herself.  Even wealth had not done for them what she felt it could have done for her.

The first carriage drove up as she reached the foot of the stair.  The front door had been opened by the maid as it approached, and the rain beat in.  There was no porte-cochère; the guests were obliged to run up the steps to avoid a drenching.  The fashionable Mrs. Holt draggled her skirts, and under her breath anathematized her host.

“It will be the happiest day of my life when this sort of thing is over,” she muttered.  “Thank heaven, he can’t live much longer!”

“Hush!” whispered her prudent husband; Miss Webster had appeared.

The two women kissed each other affectionately.  Everybody liked Miss Webster.  Mrs. Holt, an imposing person, with the rigid backbone of the newly rich, held her hostess’s hand in both her own as she assured her that the storm had not visited California which could keep her from one of dear Dr. Webster’s delightful dinners.  As she went up-stairs to lay aside her wrappings she relieved her feelings by a facial pucker directed at a painting, on a matting panel, of the doctor in the robes of Japan.

The other guests arrived, and after making the pilgrimage up-stairs, seated themselves in the front parlor to slide up and down the horse-hair furniture and await the entrance of the doctor.  The room was funereal.  The storm-ridden trees lashed the bare dripping windows.  The carpet was threadbare.  White crocheted tidies lent their emphasis to the hideous black furniture.  A table, with marble top, like a graveyard slab, stood in the middle of the room.  On it was a bunch of wax flowers in a glass case.  On the white plastered walls hung family photographs in narrow gilt frames.  In a conspicuous place was the doctor’s diploma.  In another, Miss Webster’s first sampler.  “The first piano ever brought to California” stood in a corner, looking like the ghost of an ancient spinet.  Miss Williams half expected to find it some day standing on three legs, resting the other.

Miss Webster sat on a high-backed chair by the table, nervously striving to entertain her fashionable guests.  The women huddled together to keep warm, regardless of their expensive raiment.  The men stood in a corner, reviling the mid-day dinner in prospect.  Miss Williams drifted into a chair and gazed dully on the accustomed scene.  She had looked on it weekly, with barely an intermission, for a quarter of a century.  With a sensation of relief, so sharp that it seemed to underscore the hateful monotony of it all, she observed that there was a young person in the company.  As a rule, neither threats nor bribes could bring the young to Webster Hall.  Then she felt glad that the young person was a man.  She was in no mood to look on the blooming hopeful face of a girl.

He was a fine young fellow, with the supple lean figure of the college athlete, and a frank attractive face.  He stood with his hands plunged into his pockets, gazing on the scene with an expression of ludicrous dismay.  In a moment he caught the companion’s eye.  She smiled involuntarily, all that was still young in her leaping to meet that glad symbol of youth.  He walked quickly over to her.

“I say,” he exclaimed, apologetically, “I haven’t been introduced, but do let ceremony go, and talk to me.  I never saw so many old fogies in my life, and this room is like a morgue.  I almost feel afraid to look behind me.”

She gave him a grateful heart-beat for all that his words implied.

“Sit down,” she said, with a vivacity she had not known was left in her sluggish currents.  “How—­did—­you—­come—­here?”

“Why, you see, I’m visiting the Holts—­Jack Holt was my chum at college—­and when they asked me if I wanted to see the oldest house in the city, and meet the most famous man ‘on this side of the bay,’ why, of course, I said I’d come.  But, gods!  I didn’t know it would be like this, although Jack said the tail of a wild mustang couldn’t get him through the front door.  Being on my first visit to the widely renowned California, I thought it my duty to see all the sights.  Where did you come from?”

“Oh, I live here.  I’ve lived here for twenty-four years.”

“Great Scott!” His eyes bulged.  “You’ve lived in this house for twenty-four years?”

“Twenty-four years.”

“And you’re not dead yet—­I beg pardon,” hastily.  “I am afraid you think me very rude.”

“No, I do not.  I am glad you realize how dreadful it is.  Nobody else ever does.  These people have known me for most of that time, and it has never occurred to them to wonder how I stood it.  Do you know that you are the first young person I have spoken with for years and years?”

“You don’t mean it?” His boyish soul was filled with pity.  “Well, I should think you’d bolt and run.”

“What use?  I’ve stayed too long.  I’m an old woman now, and may as well stay till the end.”

The youth was beginning to feel embarrassed, but was spared the effort of making a suitable reply by the entrance of Dr. Webster.  The old man was clad in shining broadcloth, whose maker was probably dead these many years.  He leaned on a cane heavily mounted with gold.

“Howdy, howdy, howdy?” he cried, in his rough but hospitable tones.  “Glad to see you.  Didn’t think you’d come.  Yes, I did, though,” with a chuckle.  “Well, come down to dinner, I’m hungry.”

He turned his back without individual greeting, and led the way along the hall, then down a narrow creaking stairway to the basement dining-room, an apartment as stark and cheerless as the parlor, albeit the silver on the table was very old and heavy, the linen unsurpassed.

The guests seated themselves as they listed, the youngster almost clinging to Miss Williams.  The doctor hurriedly ladled the soup, announcing that he had a notion to let them help themselves, he was so hungry.  When he had given them this brief attention he supplied his own needs with the ladle direct from the tureen.

“Old beast!” muttered Mrs. Holt.  “It’s disgusting to be so rich that you can do as you please.”

But for this remark, delivered as the ladle fell with a clatter on the empty soup-plate, the first course was disposed of amidst profound silence.  No one dared to talk except as the master led, and the master was taking the edge off his appetite.

The soup was removed and a lavish dinner laid on the table.  Dr. Webster sacrificed his rigid economic tenets at the kitchen door, but there was no rejoicing in the hearts of the guests.  They groaned in spirit as they contemplated the amount they should be forced to consume at one of the clock.

The doctor carved the turkeys into generous portions, ate his, then began to talk.

“Cleveland will be re-elected,” he announced dictatorially.  “Do you hear?  Harrison has no show at all.  What say?” His shaggy brows rushed together.  He had detected a faint murmur of dissent.  “Did you say he wouldn’t, John Holt?”

“No, no,” disclaimed Mr. Holt, who was a scarlet Republican.  “Cleveland will be re-elected beyond a doubt.”

“Well, if I hear of any of you voting for Harrison!  I suppose you think I can’t find out what ticket you vote!  But I’ll find out, sirs.  Mark my words, Holt, if you vote the Republican ticket—­”

He stopped ominously and brought his teeth together with a vicious click.  Holt raised his wine-glass nervously.  The doctor held his note to a considerable amount.

“The Republican party is dead—­dead as a door-nail,” broke in an unctuous voice.  A stout man with a shrewd time-serving face leaned forward.  “Don’t let it give you a thought, doctor.  What do you think of the prospects for wheat?”

“Never better, never better.  They say the Northern crops will fail, but it’s a lie.  They can’t fail.  You needn’t worry, Meeker.  Don’t pull that long face, sir; I don’t like it.”

“The reports are not very encouraging,” began a man of bile and nerves and melancholy mien.  “And this early rain—­”

“Don’t contradict me, sir,” cried Webster.  “I say they can’t fail.  They haven’t failed for eight years.  Why should they fail now?”

“No reason at all, sir—­no reason at all,” replied the victim, hurriedly.  “It does me good to hear your prognostications.”

“I hear there is a slight rise in Con.  Virginia,” interposed Mrs. Holt, who had cultivated tact.

“Nonsense!” almost shouted the tyrant.  The heavy silver fork of the Moreños fell to his plate with a crash.  “The mine’s as rotten as an old lung.  There isn’t a handful of decent ore left in her.  No more clodhoppers ’ll get rich out of that mine.  You haven’t been investing, have you?” His ferret eyes darted from one face to another.  “If you have, don’t you ever darken my doors again!  I don’t approve of stock-gambling, and you know it.”

The guests, one and all, assured him that not one of their hard-earned dollars had gone to the stock-market.

“Great Scott!” murmured the youth to Miss Williams; “is this the way he always goes on?  Have these people no self-respect?”

“They’re used to him.  This sort of thing has gone on ever since I came here.  You see he has made this lake the most aristocratic part of the city, so that it gives one great social importance to live here; and as he won’t sell the houses, they have to let him trample on their necks, and he loves to do that better than he loves his money.  But that is not the only reason.  They hope he will leave them those houses when he dies.  They certainly deserve that he should.  For years, before they owned carriages, they would tramp through wind and rain every Sunday in winter to play billiards with him, to say nothing of the hot days of summer.  They have eaten this mid-day dinner that they hate time out of mind.  They have listened to his interminable yarns, oft repeated, about early California.  In all these years they have never contradicted him, not once.  They thought he’d die long ago, and now they’re under his heel, and they couldn’t get up and assert themselves if they tried.  All they can do is to abuse him behind his back.”

“It all seems disgusting to me.”

His independent spirit was very attractive to the companion.

“I’d like to bluff him at his own game, the old slave-driver,” he continued.

“Oh don’t! don’t!” she quavered.

She was, in truth, anxiously awaiting the moment when Dr. Webster should see fit to give his attention to the stranger.

He laughed outright.

“Why, what makes you so afraid of him?  He doesn’t beat you, does he?”

“It isn’t that.  It’s the personality of the man, added to force of habit.”

“Well, Mr. Strowbridge,” cried Dr. Webster, suddenly addressing the youth, “what are you doing for this world?  I hear you are just out of Harvard University.  University men never amount to a row of pins.”

Strowbridge flushed and bit his lip, but controlled himself.

“Never amount to a row of pins,” roared the doctor, irritated by the haughty lifting of the young man’s head.  “Don’t even get any more book-learning now, I understand.  Nothing but football and boat-racing.  Think that would make a fortune in a new country?  Got any money of your own?”

“My father, since you ask me, is a rich man—­as well as a gentleman,” said Strowbridge, with the expression of half-frightened anger of the righteously indignant, who knows that he has not the advantages of cool wit and scathing repartee, and, in consequence, may lose his head.  “He inherited his money, and was not forced to go to a new country and become a savage,” he blurted out.

Mr. Holt extended himself beneath the table, and trod with terrified significance on Strowbridge’s foot.  Miss Williams fluttered with terror and admiration.  The other guests gazed at the youth in dismay.  For the first time in the history of Webster Hall the grizzly had been bearded in his lair.

“Sir! sir!” spluttered Webster.  Then he broke into a roar.  “Who asked this cub here, anyway?  Who said you could write and ask permission to bring your friends to my house?  How dare you—­how dare you—­how dare you, sir, speak to me like that?  Do you know, sir—­”

“Oh, I know all about you,” exclaimed Strowbridge, whose young blood was now uncontrollable.  “You are an ill-bred, purse-proud old tyrant, who wouldn’t be allowed to sit at a table in California if it wasn’t for your vulgar money.”  He pushed back his chair and stood up.  “I wish you good-day, sir.  I pity you.  You haven’t a friend on earth.  I also apologize for my rudeness.  My only excuse is that I couldn’t help it.”

And he went hurriedly from the room.

To Miss Williams the feeble light went with him.  The appalled guests attacked their food with feverish energy.  Dr. Webster stared stupidly at the door; then his food gave out the sound of ore in a crusher.  He did not speak for some time.  When he did he ignored the subject of young Strowbridge.  His manner was appreciably milder—­somewhat dazed—­although he by no means gave evidence of being humbled to the dust.  The long dinner dragged to its close.  The women went up to the parlor to sip tea with Miss Webster and slide up and down the furniture.  The men followed the doctor to the billiard-room.  They were stupid and sleepy, but for three hours they were forced alternately to play and listen to the old man’s anecdotes of the days when he fought and felled the grizzly.  He seemed particularly anxious to impress his hearers with his ancient invincibility.

That night, in the big four-posted mahogany bed in which he had been born, surrounded by the massive ugly furniture of his old New England home, Dr. Webster quietly passed away.