back?”
“What are you afraid of, Byng?”
“I ask for information.”
“Your voice certainly trembled. No danger. Rachel will never peer through and hiss ‘Le flambeau fume encore.’ No Lady Macbeth will march in, wringing her hands that never will be clean.”
“I hope not, I am sure.”
“It is clear you expect it. Your tone is ominous.”
“Indeed. A Palazzo Sforza style of place inspires Palazzo Sforza fancies, perhaps. But really, Harry, where does the door open?”
“It does not open, and probably will not till doomsday. It is bolted solid on my side, whatever it be on the other. It leads to a dark room.”
“A dark room! that is Otrantoish.”
“A windowless room, properly an appendage to this. But there is another door on the corridor. You may have noticed it, closed with a heavy padlock. The tenant enters there, and asks no right of way of me.”
“The tenant, who is he? I should know my next neighbor.”
“You know him already.”
“Don’t play with my curiosity. Name.”
“Densdeth.”
“Densdeth,” I repeated, aware of a slight uneasiness. “What use has he for a dark room? — here, too, in this public privacy of Chrysalis?”
“The publicity makes privacy. Densdeth says it is his store-room for books and furniture.”
“Well, why not? You speak incredulously.”
“Because there is a faint suspicion that he lies. The last janitor, an ex-servant of Densdeth’s, is dead. None now is allowed to enter there except the owner’s own man, a horrid black creature. He opens the door cautiously, and a curtain appears. He closes the door before he lifts it. Densdeth may pestle poisons, grind stilettos, sweat eagles, revel by gas-light there. What do I know?”
“You are not inquisitive, then, in Chrysalis.”
“No. We have no concierge by the street-door to spy ourselves or our visitors. We can live here in completer privacy than anywhere in Christendom. Daggeroni, De Bogus, or Mademoiselle des Mollets might rendezvous with my neighbor, and I never be the wiser.”
“Well, if Densdeth is well bolted out of my quarters, I will not pry into his. And now I’ll look about a little at your treasures.”
“Do; while I finish packing. I cannot quite decide about taking clean shirts to Washington. In a clean shirt I might abash a Senator.”
“Abash without mercy! the country will thank you,” said I. “But, old fellow, what a wealth of art, virtu, and rococo you have here!”
“I have sampled all the ages of the world. No era has any right to complain of neglect,” says Stillfleet, patronizingly. “You will find specimens of the arts from Tubal Cain’s time down. One does not prowl about Europe ten years without making a fair bag of plunder. How old Churm enjoys my old books, old plates, and old objets!”
“I hope he will not desert the place when its proper master is gone. Where are his quarters in Chrysalis?”
“Story above, southwest corner, with an eye to the sunset. Odd fellow he is! He lurks here in a little hermit cell, when he might live in a gold house with diamond window-panes.”
“Is he so rich?”
“Crœsus was a barefooted pauper to him.”
“Not a miser, — that I know.”
“No; he spends as a prairie gives crops. But always for others. He would be too lavish, if he were not discretion itself. Only his personal habits are ascetic.”
“Perhaps he once had to harden himself sternly against a sorrow, and so asceticism grew a habit.”
“Perhaps. He is a lonely man. Well, here I am, packed, abashing shirts and all! Come down now. I must exhibit you, as my successor, to Locksley, the janitor of Chrysalis, — and a capital good fellow he is.”
THE PALACE AND ITS NEIGHBORS
Stillfleet and I passed out into the chilly marble-paved corridor.
The young Chrysalids in the class-room seemed to be in high revolt. They were mobbing their lank professor. We could see the confusion through the open door.
“He takes it meekly, you see,” said Stillfleet. “He knows that the hullabaloo isn’t half punishment enough for his share in the fiction of calling the place a college.”
We descended the main stairway. The white-washed fan-tracery snowed its little souvenir on us as we passed. On the ground floor, a few steps along the damp corridor, was the door marked “Janitor.”
Stillfleet pulled the bell. A cheerful, handsome, housewifely woman opened.
“Can we come in, Mrs. Locksley?” said my friend.
“You are always welcome, Mr. Stillfleet.”
We entered a compact little snuggery. There was something infinitely honest and trusty in the effect and atmosphere of the place.
Three junior Locksleys caught sight of Stillfleet. They rushed at him, with shouts and gambols enough for a dozen.
I love to see children kitten it securely about a young man. They know friends and foes without paying battles and wounds for the knowledge. They seem to divine a sour heart, a stale heart, or a rotten heart, by unerring instinct. If a man is base metal, he may pass current with the old counterfeits like himself; children will not touch him.
“The world has smoked and salted me,” said Stillfleet, “and tried to cure me hard as an old ham. But there is a fresh spot inside me, Byng, and juveniles always find it. I’ve come to say good-bye, children,” he continued; “but here’s Mr. Bob Byng, he’ll take my place. His head is full of fairy stories for Dora. His fingers make windmills and pop-guns almost without knowing it. Think of that, Hall!”
Dora, a pretty damsel of twelve, and Hall, a ten-year-old male and sturdy, inspected me critically. Was I bogus? Their looks said, they thought not.
“As for Key Locksley here,” said Harry, “all he wants is romp and sugar-plums. This is Mr. Byng, Key. ‘Some in his pocket and some in his sleeve, he’s made of sugar-plums I do believe.’”
So Master Key, a toddler, accepted me as his Lord Chief Confectioner.
“Now, children,” said Stillfleet, with mock gravity, “be Mr. Byng’s monitors. Require him to set you a good example. Tell him young men generally go to the bad without children to watch over them.”
