522
PARTISAN REVIEW
drive runs right through the place," she replied. I grasped that the place
next door was still a part of the Bristead estate: the doctor would later
sell it. I had entered into the domain of the Bristeads as soon as I had
turned into the lane.
"I don't know why Jerry didn't see me," she said when she had waited
hardly a second. "Would you mind going to the house and getting Rosa
to call him?-1 think he's getting very lax," she said as I climbed down.
I walked into the house. Should I bolt? No, I couldn't. I passed reso–
lutely through the hallway-conscious, as I passed the Hebe, that I did not
give it a thought. But when I got to the door to the kitchen, I knew there
would be nobody there. I opened it, however, and looked in. There were
a big black coal-range with a stovepipe, a bare clean wooden floor, a
double row of copper pots and pans hanging along the wall. I called out,
"Hello ... Rosa ..."; but nobody answered. I ought now, I said to
myself, to go out the back door to the stable; but I had a half-dreamlike
instinct that I should not find anyone there either; and my sense that I
was not going to go there was filled out by a voice from the hallway which
told me that the coachman had come.
I joined her. She was taking off her bonnet. "Well, the styles in men's
clothes astonish me," she said, as I took off my overcoat. "Is that really
what they're wearing now?" "I'm perhaps a little eccentric," I said. "I
get to town so seldom," she continued, as we went into the living-room,
"that I don't know anything that's going on. And I believe that the young
men I see are rather conservative about their clothes."
The atmosphere, I felt, was relaxed. The room seemed to be largely
unchanged. There were the curtains, the grate with its coals, the tables
with low-hanging covers, the ornaments on a whatnot in the corner. I
noticed a large bronze gas chandelier with shades of pattern-frosted glass.
I must have scrutinized these objects rather curiously because she glanced
toward a group of swords and sabers, hung up in a design on the wall, at
which she evidently thought I was looking, and exclaimed, "Those are
oriental weapons. I don't think they have any place here-but Papa
considers them decorative. I tell him he ought to build a small armoury.–
Do sit down."
I questioned her for a moment about the various kinds of swords;
but she wasn't quite sure what they were and was obviously impatient
with them. There was something she wanted to get on to. "I should like
to talk to you quite frankly about something," she began as socm as we
were seated, "and I wish you would advise me frankly. You're the closest
friend
now
tha:t
we have-though it's b'een such a long time since we've
seen you." I was, then, an old family friend. "I have no brothers or
uncles to turn to as most women have-1 have nobody in the world but
Papa, and you know how prejudiced he is about so many things, and how
obstinately he sticks to his prejudices. I know that I can say that to you
because you know that I love and admire him more than anyone else
in
the
world-but-well,
yciu
know how sure he is about everything." I
