All Story Magazine, December 1913 — page 24: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

734 he was among the last men in the world with whom I should venture into any- thing resembling it. CHAPTER V: A DISAPPOINTING EVENING. THE Van Huysen residence was on —th Street, a few doors east of Fifth Avenue—which is to say, that it was among the élite of New York's private dwellings. It was not a pretentious-looking place, and its interior leaned more to- ward the cozy than the esthetic. I can’t describe house-furnishings. When I enter a room I take the fur- niture for granted. Sometimes, if Pve been there more than once, I learn that a particular chair is more comfortable than the others, but I do not mentally catalogue the hangings and bric-a-brac, or make any fine distinctions between the Heppelwhite, Sheraton or modern designs in the tables and chairs and the rest of the usual things with which people fill their houses. The moment I entered the Van Huy- sen establishment I was conscious of a homelike warmth. For one thing, I was not confronted with the rather preva- lent Westminster Abbey Poets’ Corner effect in the hall—the only evidence of hero-worship being a bust of Goethe upon a pedestal in an out-of-the-way corner made by the curve of the stair- case, where the dead-white of the great Teuton’s Parian marble countenance was subdued by shadows. Even the bronze female figure crouching in the center of a circular fountain spray looked comfortable, and the English butler, with his nationality written clearly upon him, made me feel still more at home—that is—for a second. Then he walked a step or two and— limped. Every one will admit that a limping butler is a novelty. That fellow’s right heel appeared to trail behind after the rest of him had gone on, and _ all THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE. through dinner I tried to remember where the deuce I had seen a butler limp just like that before! It wasn't a bit of use. I could not place the chap at all, but I had a dis- agreeable suspicion that he had recog- nized me. His face did not indicate that he had, but that was the sort of butler he was. I imagined he would report the arrival of the millennium in the same dead tones in which he announced ‘‘ Mr, Mason.” He spoiled my dinner, and the Rol- lins-Van Huysen families unconscious- iy assisted him. With Rollins added, they were the group I had seen on the Randania. Mrs. Van Huysen was a charming woman, and her daughter Alice was a reproduction of the mother—almost line for line, gesture for gesture. The girl’s gray eyes held the same quiet, purposeful expression in them, with the same hint of humor lurking behind it, and the mouth and chin showed the same quality of determina- tion, without appearing in the least hard or unsympathetic. Her brother Ralph was her an- tithesis, being neither quiet nor pur- poseful nor humorous. His mouth and chin were weak, like Rollins's, and his eyes had a silly sort of habit of travel- ing ceilingward while he talked. Slightly under seventy inches, I judged by his flabby, anemic appear- ance that he did not care much for athletics. Campbell told me afterward that he had been “ sent down” from Harvard, for something or other which wasn’t made public. I felt sorry for him—at the same time I thought I would rather enjoy taking himnto the “ gym” and hammering a little life into him. But Miss Rollins—and here you are possibly going to be disappointed—was still more lifeless. I think I have previously said that she was prettier than her cousin Alice —but I’m afraid I can’t describe her as she appeared to me that night with- comilicloooks.com