The Rivet in Grandfather\'s Neck - James Branch Cabell
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
A Comedy of Limitations
BY
JAMES BRANCH CABELL
"_To this new South, who values her high past in chief, as fit
foundation of that edifice whereon she labors day by day, and with
augmenting strokes_."
1915
TO
PRISCILLA BRADLEY CABELL
"Nightly I mark and praise, or great or small,
Such stars as proudly struggle one by one
To heaven's highest place, as Procyon,
Antares, Naoes, Tejat and Nibal
Attain supremacy, and proudly fall,
Still glorious, and glitter, and are gone
So very soon;--whilst steadfast and alone
Polaris gleams, and is not changed at all.
"Daily I find some gallant dream that ranges
The heights of heaven; and as others do,
I serve my dream until my dream estranges
Its errant bondage, and I note anew
That nothing dims, nor shakes, nor mars, nor changes,
Fond faith in you and in my love of you."
CONTENTS
PART ONE - PROPINQUITY
PART TWO - RENASCENCE
PART THREE - TERTIUS
PART FOUR - APPRECIATION
PART FIVE - SOUVENIR
PART SIX - BYWAYS
PART SEVEN - YOKED
PART EIGHT - HARVEST
PART NINE - RELICS
PART TEN - IMPRIMIS
In the middle of the cupboard door was the carved figure of a man....
He had goat's legs, little horns on his head, and a long beard; the
children in the room called him, "Major-General-field-sergeant
-commander-Billy-goat's-legs" ... He was always looking at the
table under the looking-glass where stood a very pretty little
shepherdess made of china.... Close by her side stood a little
chimney-sweep, as black as coal and also made of china.... Near
to them stood another figure.... He was an old Chinaman who could nod
his head, and used to pretend he was the grandfather of the shepherdess,
although he could not prove it. He, however, assumed authority over her,
and therefore when "Major-general-field-sergeant-commander-Billy-goat's
-legs" asked for the little shepherdess to be his wife, he nodded his head
to show that he consented.
Then the little shepherdess cried, and looked at her sweetheart, the
chimney-sweep. "I must entreat you," said she, "to go out with me into
the wide world, for we cannot stay here." ... When the chimney-sweep saw
that she was quite firm, he said, "My way is through the stove up the
chimney." ... So at last they reached the top of the chimney.... The sky
with all its stars was over their heads.... They could see for a very
long distance out into the wide world, and the poor little shepherdess
leaned her head on her chimney-sweep's shoulder and wept. "This is too
much," she said, "the world is too large." ... And so with a great deal
of trouble they climbed down the chimney and peeped out.... There lay
the old Chinaman on the floor ... broken into three pieces.... "This is
terrible," said the shepherdess. "He can be riveted," said the
chimney-sweep.... The family had the Chinaman's back mended and a strong
rivet put through his neck; he looked as good as new, but when
"Major-General-field-sergeant-commander-Billy-goat's-legs" again asked
for the shepherdess to be his wife, the old Chinaman could no longer nod
his head.
And so the little china people remained together and were thankful for
the rivet in grandfather's neck, and continued to love each other until
they were broken to pieces.
PART ONE - PROPINQUITY
_"A singer, eh?... Well, well! but when he sings
Take jealous heed lest idiosyncrasies
Entinge and taint too deep his melodies;
See that his lute has no discordant strings
To harrow us; and let his vaporings
Be all of virtue and its victories,
And of man's best and noblest qualities,
And scenery, and flowers, and similar things_.
"Thus bid our paymasters whose mutterings
Some few deride, and blithely link their rhymes
At random; and, as ever, on frail wings
Of wine-stained paper scribbled with such rhymes
Men mount to heaven, and loud laughter springs
From hell's midpit, whose fuel is such rhymes."
PAUL VERVILLE. _Nascitur_.
I
At a very remote period, when editorials were mostly devoted to
discussion as to whether the Democratic Convention (shortly to be held
in Chicago) would or would not declare in favor of bi-metallism; when
golf was a novel form of recreation in America, and people disputed how
to pronounce its name, and pedestrians still turned to stare after an
automobile; when, according to the fashion notes, "the godet skirts and
huge sleeves of the present modes" were already doomed to extinction;
when the baseball season had just begun, and some of our people were
discussing the national game, and others the spectacular burning of the
old Pennsylvania Railway depot at Thirty-third and Market Street in
Philadelphia, and yet others the significance of General Fitzhugh Lee's
recent appointment as consul-general to Habana:--at this remote time,
Lichfield talked of nothing except the Pendomer divorce case.
And Colonel Rudolph Musgrave had very narrowly escaped being named as
the co-respondent. This much, at least, all Lichfield knew when George
Pendomer--evincing unsuspected funds of generosity--permitted his wife
to secure a divorce on the euphemistic grounds of "desertion." John
Charteris, acting as Rudolph Musgrave's friend, had patched up this
arrangement; and the colonel and Mrs. Pendomer, so rumor ran, were to be
married very quietly after a decent interval.
Remained only to deliberate whether this sop to the conventions should
be accepted as sufficient.
"At least," as Mrs. Ashmeade sagely observed, "we can combine
vituperation with common-sense, and remember it is not the first time a
Musgrave has figured in an entanglement of the sort. A lecherous race!
proverbial flutterers of petticoats! His surname convicts the man
unheard and almost excuses him. All of us feel that. And, moreover, it
is not as if the idiots had committed any unpardonable sin, for they
have kept out of the newspapers."
Her friend seemed dubious, and hazarded something concerning "the merest
sense of decency."
"In the name of the Prophet, figs! People--I mean the people who count
in Lichfield--are charitable enough to ignore almost any crime which is
just a matter of common knowledge. In fact, they are mildly grateful. It
gives them something to talk about. But when detraction is printed in
the morning paper you can't overlook it without incurring the suspicion
of being illiterate and virtueless. That's Lichfield."
"But, Polly--"
"Sophist, don't I know my Lichfield? I know it almost as well as I know
Rudolph Musgrave. And so I prophesy that he will not marry Clarice
Pendomer, because he is inevitably tired of her by this. He will marry
money, just as all the Musgraves do. Moreover, I prophesy that we will
gabble about this mess until we find a newer target for our stone
throwing, and be just as friendly with the participants to their faces
as we ever were. So don't let me hear any idiotic talk about whether or
no _I_ am going to receive her--"
"Well, after all, she was born a Bellingham. We must remember that."
"Wasn't I saying I knew my Lichfield?" Mrs. Ashmeade placidly observed.
* * * * *
And time, indeed, attested her to be right in every particular.
Yet it must be recorded that at this critical juncture chance rather
remarkably favored Colonel Musgrave and Mrs. Pendomer, by giving
Lichfield something of greater interest to talk about; since now, just
in the nick of occasion, occurred the notorious Scott Musgrave murder.
Scott Musgrave--a fourth cousin once removed of the colonel's, to be
quite accurate--had in the preceding year seduced the daughter of a
village doctor, a negligible "half-strainer" up country at Warren; and
her two brothers, being irritated, picked this particular season to
waylay him in the street, as he reeled homeward one night from the
Commodores' Club, and forthwith to abolish Scott Musgrave after the
primitive methods of their lower station in society.
These details, indeed, were never officially made public, since a
discreet police force "found no clues"; for Fred Musgrave (of King's
Garden), as befitted the dead man's well-to-do brother, had been at no
little pains to insure constabulary shortsightedness, in preference to
having the nature of Scott Musgrave's recreations unsympathetically
aired. Fred Musgrave thereby afforded Lichfield a delectable opportunity
(conversationally and abetted by innumerable "they _do_ say's") to
accredit the murder, turn by turn, to every able-bodied person residing
within stone's throw of its commission. So that few had time, now, to
talk of Rudolph Musgrave and Clarice Pendomer; for it was not in
Lichfieldian human nature to discuss a mere domestic imbroglio when
here, also in the Musgrave family, was a picturesque and gory
assassination to lay tongue to.
So Colonel Musgrave was duly reelected that spring to the librarianship
of the Lichfield Historical Association, and the name of Mrs. George
Pendomer was not stricken from the list of patronesses of the Lichfield
German Club, but was merely altered to "Mrs. Clarice Pendomer."
* * * * *
At the bottom of his heart Colonel Musgrave was a trifle irritated that
his self-sacrifice should be thus unrewarded by martyrdom. Circumstances
had enabled him to assume, and he had gladly accepted, the blame for
John Charteris's iniquity, rather than let Anne Charteris know the truth
about her husband and Clarice Pendomer. The truth would have killed
Anne, the colonel believed; and besides, the colonel had enjoyed the
performance of a picturesque action.
And having acted as a hero in permitting himself to be pilloried as a
libertine, it was preferable of course not to have incurred ostracism
thereby. His common-sense conceded this; and yet, to Colonel Musgrave,
it could not but be evident that Destiny was hardly rising to the
possibilities of the situation.
II
Concerning Colonel Musgrave one finds the ensuing account in a
publication of the period devoted to biographies of more or less
prominent Americans. It is reproduced unchanged, because these memoirs
were--in the old days--compiled by the person whom they commemorated.
The custom was a worthy one, since the value of an autobiography is
determined by the nature of its superfluities and falsehoods.
"MUSGRAVE, RUDOLPH VARTREY, editor; _b_. Lichfield, Sill., Mar. 14,
1856; _s_. William Sebastian and Martha (Allardyce) M; _g. s_.
Theodorick Q.M., gov. of Sill. 1805-8, judge of the General Ct.,
1808-11, judge Supreme Ct. of Appeals, 1811-50 and pres. Supreme Ct. of
Appeals, 1841-50; grad. King's Coll. and U. of Sill. Corr. sec.
Lichfield Hist. Soc., and editor Sill. Mag. of Biog. since 1890; dir.
Traders Nat. Bank, Sill.; mem. Soc. of the Sons of Col. Govs., pres.
Sill. Soc. of Protestant Martyrs, comdr. Sill. Mil. Order of Lost
Battles, mem. exec. bd. Sill. Hist. Assn. for the Preservation of Ruins.
Democrat, Episcopalian, unmarried. _Author_: Colonial Lichfield, 1892;
Right on the Scaffold, 1893; Secession and the South, 1894; Chart of the
Descendants of Zenophon Perkins, 1894; Recollections of a Gracious Era,
1895; Notes as to the Vartreys of Westphalia, 1896. Has also written
numerous pamphlets on hist., biog. and geneal. subjects. _Address_:
Lichfield, Sill."
For Colonel Musgrave was by birth the lineal head of all the Musgraves
of Matocton, which is in Lichfield, as degrees are counted there,
equivalent to what being born a marquis would mean in England. Handsome
and trim and affable, he defied chronology by looking ten years younger
than he was known to be. For at least a decade he had been invaluable to
Lichfield matrons alike against the entertainment of an "out-of-town
girl," the management of a cotillion and the prevention of unpleasant
pauses among incongruous dinner companies.
In short, he was by all accounts the social triumph of his generation;
and his military title, won by four years of arduous service at
receptions and parades while on the staff of a former Governor of the
State, this seasoned bachelor carried off with plausibility and
distinction.
The story finds him "Librarian and Corresponding Secretary" of the
Lichfield Historical Association, which office he had held for some six
years. The salary was small, and the colonel had inherited little; but
his sister, Miss Agatha Musgrave, who lived with him, was a notable
housekeeper. He increased his resources in a gentlemanly fashion by
genealogical research, directed mostly toward the rehabilitation of
ambiguous pedigrees; and for the rest, no other man could have fulfilled
more gracefully the main duty of the Librarian, which was to exhibit the
Association's collection of relics to hurried tourists "doing"
Lichfield.
His "Library manner" was modeled upon that which an eighteenth century
portrait would conceivably possess, should witchcraft set the canvas
breathing.
III
Also the story finds Colonel Musgrave in the company of his sister on a
warm April day, whilst these two sat upon the porch of the Musgrave home
in Lichfield, and Colonel Musgrave waited until it should be time to
open the Library for the afternoon. And about them birds twittered
cheerily, and the formal garden flourished as gardens thrive nowhere
except in Lichfield, and overhead the sky was a turkis-blue, save for a
few irrelevant clouds which dappled it here and there like splashes of
whipped cream.
Yet, for all this, the colonel was ill-at-ease; and care was on his
brow, and venom in his speech.
"And one thing," Colonel Musgrave concluded, with decision, "I wish
distinctly understood, and that is, if she insists on having young men
loafing about her--as, of course, she will--she will have to entertain
them in the garden. I won't have them in the house, Agatha. You remember
that Langham girl you had here last Easter?" he added, disconsolately
--"the one who positively littered up the house with young men,
and sang idiotic jingles to them at all hours of the night about
the Bailey family and the correct way to spell chicken? She drove me to
the verge of insanity, and I haven't a doubt that this Patricia person
will be quite as obstreperous. So, please mention it to her,
Agatha--casually, of course--that, in Lichfield, when one is partial to
either vocal exercise or amorous daliance, the proper scene of action is
the garden. I really cannot be annoyed by her."
"But, Rudolph," his sister protested, "you forget she is engaged to the
Earl of Pevensey. An engaged girl naturally wouldn't care about meeting
any young men."
"H'm!" said the colonel, drily.
Ensued a pause, during which the colonel lighted yet another cigarette.
Then, "I have frequently observed," he spoke, in absent wise, "that all
young women having that peculiarly vacuous expression about the eyes--I
believe there are misguided persons who describe such eyes as being
'dreamy,'--are invariably possessed of a fickle, unstable and coquettish
temperament. Oh, no! You may depend upon it, Agatha, the fact that she
contemplates purchasing the right to support a peculiarly disreputable
member of the British peerage will not hinder her in the least from
making advances to all the young men in the neighborhood."
Miss Musgrave was somewhat ruffled. She was a homely little woman with
nothing of the ordinary Musgrave comeliness. Candor even compels the
statement that in her pudgy swarthy face there was a droll suggestion
of the pug-dog.
"I am sure," Miss Musgrave remonstrated, with placid dignity, "that you
know nothing whatever about her, and that the reports about the earl
have probably been greatly exaggerated, and that her picture shows her
to be an unusually attractive girl. Though it is true," Miss Musgrave
conceded after reflection, "that there are any number of persons in the
House of Lords that I wouldn't in the least care to have in my own
house, even with the front parlor all in linen as it unfortunately is.
So awkward when you have company! And the Bible does bid us not to put
our trust in princes, and, for my part, I never thought that photographs
could be trusted, either."
"Scorn not the nobly born, Agatha," her brother admonished her, "nor
treat with lofty scorn the well-connected. The very best people are
sometimes respectable. And yet," he pursued, with a slight hiatus of
thought, "I should not describe her as precisely an attractive-looking
girl. She seems to have a lot of hair,--if it is all her own, which it
probably isn't,--and her nose is apparently straight enough, and I
gather she is not absolutely deformed anywhere; but that is all I can
conscientiously say in her favor. She is artificial. Her hair, now! It
has a--well, you would not call it exactly a crinkle or precisely a
wave, but rather somewhere between the two. Yes, I think I should
describe it as a ripple. I fancy it must be rather like the reflection
of a sunset in--a duck-pond, say, with a faint wind ruffling the water.
For I gather that her hair is of some light shade,--induced, I haven't a
doubt, by the liberal use of peroxides. And this ripple, too, Agatha, it
stands to reason, must be the result of coercing nature, for I have
never seen it in any other woman's hair. Moreover," Colonel Musgrave
continued, warming somewhat to his subject, "there is a dimple--on the
right side of her mouth, immediately above it,--which speaks of the most
frivolous tendencies. I dare say it comes and goes when she
talks,--winks at you, so to speak, in a manner that must be simply
idiotic. That foolish little cleft in her chin, too--"
But at this point, his sister interrupted him.
"I hadn't a notion," said she, "that you had even looked at the
photograph. And you seem to have it quite by heart, Rudolph,--and some
people admire dimples, you know, and, at any rate, her mother had red
hair, so Patricia isn't really responsible. I decided that it would be
foolish to use the best mats to-night. We can save them for Sunday
supper, because I am only going to have eggs and a little cold meat, and
not make company of her."
For no apparent reason, Rudolph Musgrave flushed.
"I inspected it--quite casually--last night. Please don't be absurd,
Agatha! If we were threatened with any other direful visitation
--influenza, say, or the seventeen-year locust,--I should
naturally read up on the subject in order to know what to expect. And
since Providence has seen fit to send us a visitor rather than a
visitation--though, personally, I should infinitely prefer the
influenza, as interfering in less degree with my comfort,--I have, of
course, neglected no opportunity of finding out what we may reasonably
look forward to. I fear the worst, Agatha. For I repeat, the girl's face
is, to me, absolutely unattractive!"
The colonel spoke with emphasis, and flung away his cigarette, and took
up his hat to go.
And then, "I suppose," said Miss Musgrave, absently, "you will be
falling in love with her, just as you did with Anne Charteris and Aline
Van Orden and all those other minxes. I _would_ like to see you married,
Rudolph, only I couldn't stand your having a wife."
"I! I!" sputtered the colonel. "I think you must be out of your head! I
fall in love with that chit! Good Lord, Agatha, you are positively
idiotic!"
And the colonel turned on his heel, and walked stiffly through the
garden. But, when half-way down the path, he wheeled about and came
back.
"I beg your pardon, Agatha," he said, contritely, "it was not my
intention to be discourteous. But somehow--somehow, dear, I don't quite
see the necessity for my falling in love with anybody, so long as I have
you."
And Miss Musgrave, you may be sure, forgave him promptly; and
afterward--with a bit of pride and an infinity of love in her kind,
homely face,--her eyes followed him out of the garden on his way to open
the Library. And she decided in her heart that she had the dearest and
best and handsomest brother in the universe, and that she must remember
to tell him, accidentally, how becoming his new hat was. And then, at
some unspoken thought, she smiled, wistfully.
"She would be a very lucky girl if he did," said Miss Musgrave, apropos
of nothing in particular; and tossed her grizzly head.
"An earl, indeed!" said Miss Musgrave
IV
And this is how it came about:
Patricia Vartrey (a second cousin once removed of Colonel Rudolph
Musgrave's), as the older inhabitants of Lichfield will volubly attest,
was always a person who did peculiar things. The list of her
eccentricities is far too lengthy here to be enumerated; but she began
it by being born with red hair--Titian reds and auburns were
undiscovered euphemisms in those days--and, in Lichfield, this is not
regarded as precisely a lady-like thing to do; and she ended it, as far
as Lichfield was concerned, by eloping with what Lichfield in its horror
could only describe, with conscious inadequacy, as "a quite unheard-of
person."
Indisputably the man was well-to-do already; and from this nightmarish
topsy-turvidom of Reconstruction the fellow visibly was plucking wealth.
Also young Stapylton was well enough to look at, too, as Lichfield
flurriedly conceded.
But it was equally undeniable that he had made his money through a
series of commercial speculations distinguished both by shiftiness and
daring, and that the man himself had been until the War a wholly
negligible "poor white" person,--an overseer, indeed, for "Wild Will"
Musgrave, Colonel Musgrave's father, who was of course the same
Lieutenant-Colonel William Sebastian Musgrave, C.S.A., that met his
death at Gettysburg.
This upstart married Patricia Vartrey, for all the chatter and
whispering, and carried her away from Lichfield, as yet a little dubious
as to what recognition, if any, should be accorded the existence of the
Stapyltons. And afterward (from a notoriously untruthful North, indeed)
came rumors that he was rapidly becoming wealthy; and of Patricia
Vartrey's death at her daughter's birth; and of the infant's health and
strength and beauty, and of her lavish upbringing,--a Frenchwoman,
Lichfield whispered, with absolutely nothing to do but attend upon the
child.
And then, little by little, a new generation sprang up, and, little by
little, the interest these rumors waked became more lax; and it was
brought about, at last, by the insidious transitions of time, that
Patricia Vartrey was forgotten in Lichfield. Only a few among the older
men remembered her; some of them yet treasured, as these fogies so often
do, a stray fan or an odd glove; and in bycorners of sundry
time-toughened hearts there lurked the memory of a laughing word or of a
glance or of some such casual bounty, that Patricia Vartrey had accorded
these hearts' owners when the world was young.
But Agatha Musgrave, likewise, remembered the orphan cousin who had
been reared with her. She had loved Patricia Vartrey; and, in due time,
she wrote to Patricia's daughter,--in stately, antiquated phrases that
astonished the recipient not a little,--and the girl had answered. The
correspondence flourished. And it was not long before Miss Musgrave had
induced her young cousin to visit Lichfield.
Colonel Rudolph Musgrave, be it understood, knew nothing of all this
until the girl was actually on her way. And now, she was to arrive that
afternoon, to domicile herself in his quiet house for two long
weeks--this utter stranger, look you!--and upset his comfort, ask him
silly questions, expect him to talk to her, and at the end of her visit,
possibly, present him with some outlandish gimcrack made of cardboard
and pink ribbons, in which she would expect him to keep his papers. The
Langham girl did that.
* * * * *
It is honesty's part to give you the man no better than he was.
Lichfield at large had pampered him; many women had loved him; and above
all, Miss Agatha had spoiled him. After fifteen years of being the pivot
about which the economy of a household revolves, after fifteen years of
being the inevitable person whose approval must be secured before any
domestic alteration, however trivial, may be considered, no mortal man
may hope to remain a paragon of unselfishness.
Colonel Musgrave joyed in the society of women. But he classed
them--say, with the croquettes adorned with pink paper frills which were
then invariably served at the suppers of the Lichfield German Club,--as
acceptable enough, upon a conscious holiday, but wholly incongruous with
the slippered ease of home. When you had an inclination for feminine
society, you shaved and changed your clothes and thought up an impromptu
or so against emergency, and went forth to seek it. That was natural;
but to have a petticoated young person infesting your house, hourly, was
as preposterous as ice-cream soda at breakfast.
The metaphor set him off at a tangent. He wondered if this Patricia
person could not (tactfully) be induced to take her bath after
breakfast, as Agatha did? after he had his? Why, confound the girl, he
was not responsible for there being only one bathroom in the house! It
was necessary for him to have his bath and be at the Library by nine
o'clock. This interloper must be made to understand as much.