Hudson River Bracketed · Book II · Chapter 6 (2/2)

She nodded. “You know ‘The Ancient Mariner,’ then? Sixth Reader, I suppose⁠—or college course?” She laughed a little. “So culture comes.”

He interrupted angrily: “What have I said to make you laugh?”

“Nothing. I wasn’t laughing at you, but at the intelligence of our national educators⁠—no, educationists, I think they call themselves nowadays⁠—who manage to take the bloom off our greatest treasures by giving them to young savages to maul. I see, for instance, that they’ve spoilt ‘The Ancient Mariner’ for you.” She continued to scrutinize him thoughtfully. “You’re not one of the young savages⁠—but the bloom has been rubbed off a good many things for you in that way, hasn’t it?”

“Well, yes⁠—some.”

“Not that it matters⁠—for you. You’ll get it back. But I do so hate to think of mutilated beauty.”

Mutilated beauty! How rich the words sounded on her lips⁠—as if she swept the rubbish of the centuries from some broken statue, noble in its ruin! Vance continued to look at her, absently yet intently. He had drawn her into his dream.

But she stood up and pushed her chair aside. “And now,” she said gaily, in a new voice, a light and humorous one, “perhaps you’ll tell me who you are and how you got here.”

The question seemed to come to him from so far off that he stared at her perplexedly before answering. “I⁠—oh, I’m just the Tracys’ cousin. I’m staying at their house. They’re somewhere round dusting the other rooms.”

Her look became more friendly. “Oh, you’re the cousin from the West, who’s been ill and has come to Paul’s Landing for a change? Mrs. Tracy told me about you⁠—only I can’t remember your name.”

“Vance Weston.”

“Mine’s Héloïse Spear. They call me Halo. The name and the nickname are both ridiculous.” She held out her hand. “And you’ve come to call on poor old Cousin Elinor? It’s an attention she doesn’t often receive from her own family.” She glanced about the room. “I haven’t been here in an age⁠—I don’t know what made me come today. At least I didn’t⁠—” she broke off with one of her fugitive smiles, letting her eyes rest on his and then turning away from him to inspect the books. “Some day,” she said, as if to herself, “I must have the courage to take these down and give them a good cleaning.”

Vance stood up also, beginning to speak eagerly. “Could I come and help you when you do⁠—I mean with the books? I’d⁠—I’d like it first-rate.”

She turned back to him, her eyes brimming with banter and coquetry. “On account of the books?”

But he was too deep in his own emotion to heed the challenge. He answered simply: “I don’t often get a chance at this kind.” His eyes followed hers about the crowded shelves. “I’ve never before been in a house with a library⁠—a real library like this.”

She gave a little shrug. “Oh, it’s a funny library, antiquated, like the house. But Cousin Elinor does seem to have cared for good poetry. When other ladies were reading ‘Friendship’s Garland’ she chose Coleridge.”

His gaze returned perplexed to her face. “Why do you call it a funny library?”

“Well, it’s not exactly up-to-date. I suppose it’s a fairly good specimen of what used to be called a ‘gentleman’s library’ in my great-grandfather’s time. With additions, naturally, from each generation. Cousin Elinor must have bought a good many books herself.” She looked about her critically. “After all,” she concluded with a smile, “the Willows is getting to have an atmosphere.”

Vance listened, still perplexed. Her allusions escaped him⁠—her smile was unintelligible⁠—but he gathered that she attached no very great importance to the house, or to the books, and he dimly resented this air of taking for granted what to him was the revelation of an unknown world.

Involuntarily he lowered his voice. “It’s the first time I’ve ever been in a very old house,” he said, as if announcing something of importance.

“A very old house? The Willows?” The idea seemed a new one to her. “Well⁠—after all, everything is relative, as what’s-his-name said.”

“Don’t you call it a very old house?”

She wrinkled her dark eyebrows in an effort of memory. “Let me see. Father’s great-uncle Ambrose Lorburn built it, I believe. When would that be?” She began to count on her fingers. “Say about 1830. Well, that does make it very nearly an old house for America, doesn’t it? Almost a hundred years!”

“And the same folks always lived in it?”

“Oh, of course.” She seemed surprised at the question. “The present owner is the first absentee⁠—poor Cousin Tom! He thinks he ought to live here, but he says he can’t come up to scratch. So he makes up for it by keeping everything unchanged.” Again she surveyed the plaintive shadowy room. “I suppose,” she mused, “the house will be getting to have an archaeological interest of its own before long. It must be one of the best specimens of Hudson River Bracketed that are left, even in our ultraconservative neighbourhood.”

To Vance she seemed still to be speaking another language, of which he caught only an occasional phrase, and even that but half comprehensible.

“Hudson River Bracketed?” he echoed. “What’s that?”

“Why, didn’t you know it was our indigenous style of architecture in this part of the world?” Her smile of mockery had returned, but he did not mind for he saw it was not directed against himself. “I perceive,” she continued, “that you are not familiar with the epoch-making work of A. J. Downing Esq. on Landscape Gardening in America.” She turned to the bookcases, ran her hand along a shelf, and took down a volume bound in black cloth with the title in gilt Gothic lettering. Her fingers flew from page to page, her shortsighted eyes following as swiftly. “Here⁠—here’s the place. It’s too long to read aloud; but the point is that Mr. Downing, who was the great authority of the period, sums up the principal architectural styles as the Grecian, the Chinese, the Gothic, the Tuscan or Italian villa, and⁠—Hudson River Bracketed. Unless I’m mistaken, he cites the Willows as one of the most perfect examples of Hudson River Bracketed (this was in 1842), and⁠—yes, here’s the place: ‘The seat of Ambrose Lorburn Esq., the Willows, near Paul’s Landing, Dutchess County, N.Y., is one of the most successful instances of etc., etc.⁠ ⁠… architectural elements ingeniously combined from the Chinese and the Tuscan.’ And so they were! What an eye the man had. And here’s the picture, willows and all! How lovely these old steel engravings were⁠ ⁠… and look at my great-uncle and aunt on the lawn, pointing out to each other with pride and admiration their fairly obvious copper beech⁠ ⁠… ‘one of the first ever planted in a gentleman’s grounds in the United States.’ ”

They bent their heads together over the engraving, which, as she said, reproduced the house exactly as Vance had just beheld it, except that the willows were then slender young trees, and the lawns mown, that striped awnings shaded the lower windows, and that a gentleman in a tall hat and a stock was calling the attention of a lady in bonnet and cashmere shawl to the celebrated copper beech. From Miss Spear’s tone Vance could not tell whether pride or mockery was uppermost in her comments on her ancestor’s achievement. But he dimly guessed that, though she might laugh at the Willows, and at what Mr. Downing said of it, she was not sorry that the house figured so honourably in his book.

“There,” she concluded with a laugh, “now you know what the Hudson River Bracketed style was like, and why Uncle Ambrose Lorburn was so proud of his specimen of it.” She handed him the volume, glanced at her wristwatch, and turned to nod to him from the threshold. “Gracious, how late it is! I must hunt up the Tracy children, and see how much crockery they’ve smashed.”

She disappeared in the spectral shadows of the drawing room, and Vance heard her heels rapping lightly across the hall, and through unknown rooms and passages beyond. He sat motionless where she had left him, his elbows propped on the table, the book still open before him, his head pressed between his hands, letting the strangeness of the place and the hour envelop him like the falling light.

It was dusk in the book-lined room when he was roused by Upton’s hobbledehoy tread and a tap on the shoulder. “What’s become of you? I guess you’ve been sound asleep,” his cousin challenged him.

Vance sat upright with a start. “No, I haven’t been asleep.” He got to his feet and looked about him. “Where’s Miss Spear?”

“Miss Halo? Oh, did you see her? She’s gone long ago. A gentleman friend called for her in his car. I don’t know where they went. She never stays anywhere more than five minutes.” Vance was silent, and Upton added: “Say, come along; Laura Lou’s waiting. Time to lock up.”

Vance reluctantly followed his cousin. As they left the house he realized that, instead of seizing the opportunity to explore every nook of it, he had sat all the afternoon in one room, and merely dreamed of what he might have seen in the others. But that was always his way: the least little fragment of fact was enough for him to transform into a palace of dreams, whereas if he tried to grasp more of it at a time it remained on his hands as so much unusable reality.