On the Lightship Part 9

THE MONSTROSITY

Fifteen minutes after Mr. and Mrs. Lemuel Livermore, accompanied by their daughter Selma, had driven away from their comfortable West Side residence, for the purpose of attending an annual family gathering at the house of Mrs. Livermore's widowed mother, Mrs. Pease, on the opposite side of Central Park, the Livermore domestics were stirred by a more than usually imperative ring at the front door-bell. It was Christmas Eve, a season when mercantile delivery wagons may appear at any hour. Presents had been arriving all the afternoon, and the sight of a large van backed up against the curbstone occasioned no surprise.

"What are they bringing us now?" inquired Bates, the butler, who rarely condescended to open the door in the absence of the family, from his pantry.

"It looks to me something like a sofa," replied the smiling housemaid, who generally knew by instinct when the ringer was to be young and good-looking, "and the delivery gentlemen want to know where to put it."

"A sofa, is it?" exclaimed the butler, coming forward. "I'd like to know who has been silly enough to make a present of a sofa to a family who have already more household goods than they know what to do with.

They'll be sending in a porcelain bath-tub next," he added with a grunt, as he unbolted the second half of the front door to make room for a c.u.mbrous piece of furniture, just then ascending the steps apparently upon four l.u.s.ty legs. "Here, you fellows, wipe your feet and put it in the parlor, and when the family comes home I bet somebody'll get a blessing."

The sofa was, in point of fact, a well-fed lounge, corpulent and plushy and be-flowered, and when, its wrappings removed, it occupied the center of the Livermore pink and white drawing-room, the Livermore bric-a-brac and bibelots and bijouterie appeared to turn a trifle pale and to shrink within themselves, as though a note of discord had distressed them.

"Lord!" said the housemaid frankly, as she regarded the latest unwelcome acquisition, "but it is a beast!"

"Sets the room off, don't it?" remarked the fattest and most optimistic of the furniture men, as he consulted a memorandum in his hat. "Come in handy, won't it, when the missus wants to s.n.a.t.c.h a nap in the afternoon?"

The butler and the housemaid exchanged a glance of tolerant pity, but such benighted ignorance of social use was beyond enlightenment.

"Best give it a good brush-up to bring out the colors," the optimist admonished, surveying his late burden admiringly.

"I wouldn't touch it with the tongs," declared the housemaid, and the butler prophesied, "It won't stop long to gather dust where it is when the missus sets eyes on it once."

"Well," moralized the other, with a comprehensive glance about the room, "it's certainly a fact that rich folks does come in for all the luck."

And so saying he withdrew, accompanied by his mate, and the bolts were shot behind them.

"Our dinner will be getting cold," observed the butler. "Go down, Mary Anne, and tell the cook I'm coming, and I'll bring down the decanters.

That sherry's hardly fit to serve upstairs again."

The housemaid sniffed.

"Be careful, Mr. Bates," she cautioned him. "The old butler, Auguste, was discharged because he found so many bottles of champagne that were unfit to serve upstairs."

"Auguste," rejoined the butler, "was a French duffer. He ought to have known that even broad-minded gentlemen always count champagne."

"Shall we leave the lights all burning in the parlor?" asked the housemaid.

"Certainly," replied Bates; "it wouldn't do for the missus to stumble over that thing in the dark."

"Lord!" said the housemaid, with a parting glance across her shoulder.

"Lord! but it _is_ a beast."

"An out and out monstrosity," the butler agreed.

Time pa.s.sed; the servants went their ways; the parlor gas purred soothingly; the bric-a-brac engaged in whispered consultation. Whatever happened, the monstrosity should be made to feel its isolation--and it did. It stood a thing apart from its environment; it seemed to sigh, and presently its plebeian breast began to heave as with emotion. A crack developed in its tufted side, a pair of eyes appeared within the crack.

The gas purred on; sounds from the servants' hall below suggested that the sherry had begun to express itself in terms of merriment. The crack grew wider until the sofa opened like a fat and flowery trunk. The eyes became a head, the head a man, who sat upon the sofa's edge and looked about him.

"All zings is the same," he murmured to himself in broken English.

"Nothing is changed except that ze arrangements are in less taste zan in my time. Ah, people do not know when zay have ze good fortune."

He sighed, and, rising, ventured one large foot, encased in a felt shoe, upon the rug. He stood and gazed about him lovingly, as one who contemplates inanimate things once dear. He moved with noiseless caution to the nearest door and disappeared. Presently he returned, bearing a salver laden with pieces of silver from the dining-room--an ice-pitcher, an epergne, some dishes; these he proceeded deftly to roll in flannel bags, depositing each with loving care in the interior of the Monstrosity. Another expedition resulted in an equally attractive lot of plate, to be bestowed as carefully. Next, stepping to the mantel-piece, he selected a modest pair of Dresden images from the a.s.sortment there displayed.

"These," he soliloquized, "are mine undoubtedly. I might have broken them a thousand times and did not, and, therefore, they are mine."

He laid the figures tenderly and almost with a sigh beside the silver and closed the heavy tufted lid upon them.

"I will go upstairs for ze last time," he mused, a trace of sadness on his Gallic features, "and behold if Madame is still as careless with her jewel-box as in old days. I will ascertain for myself if Monsieur still sticks his scarf-pins in ze pin-cus.h.i.+on.... Ah, but it is depressing to revisit once familiar scenes. It makes one shed ze tear."

The tall clock in the hall struck half-past eight.

Even as the clock struck the butler below was rising to propose a toast.

"'Here's to those that love us,'" it began, and went on: "'Here's to us that love those,'"--but as this was not the way it should have gone on, the butler paused and blinked in disapproval at the cook, who laughed.

"'Here's to those that love those that love those that love those,'" he persisted solemnly, and might have continued the hierarchy still further had not an electric summons from the front door interrupted him.

"Sakes!" cried the cook, "what can that be?"

"More presents," the housemaid suggested.

"Another monstrosity, I'll be bound," the butler chuckled, stumbling from the room. "Let'sh all go shee about it."

He climbed the stairs unsteadily, and made his way along the hall with noticeable digressions from an even course.

"'Here's to those that love us that love them,'" he caroled cheerily, and when, with fumbling fingers, he had thrown the front door open, his eyes, still blinking, failed to perceive for the moment that Mr.

Livermore himself stood on the threshold, surrounded by some half a score of m.u.f.fled figures.

"Bates," began Mr. Livermore, "I forgot my latch-key, and ..."

"Get away with you," cried cheerful Mr. Bates; "we've got all the monstrosities we want already. 'Here's to them that love them that we love' ..."

"Bates," said Mr. Livermore, "you're drunk."

"s.h.i.+r," said Bates; "s.h.i.+r, I ashure you sherry was not fit to sherve upstairs."

"Bates," said Mr. Livermore, "you are very drunk."

"s.h.i.+r," said Bates, "s.h.i.+r, I ashure you it's all owing to that monstrosity. Monstrosity not fit to sherve upstairs."

Meanwhile Mrs. Livermore had lost no time in pus.h.i.+ng past her husband into the hall, followed by Selma, followed by her widowed mother, Mrs.

Pease, and Mr. Bertram Pease, her brother, and Miss McCunn, to whom Mr.

Pease was supposed to be attentive, and Cousin Laura Fanshaw, and the two Misses Mapes, and Mr. Sellars, and Doctor Van Cott, all old friends, and a young gentleman by the name of Mickleworth, whom n.o.body knew much about, except Selma, who, for reasons of her own, kept her knowledge to herself. He had been invited to the family party as a chum of Cousin d.i.c.k Busby's, and was to have come with d.i.c.k, but the latter gentleman, at the last moment having received a more promising invitation, had sent word that he was ill.

While Mr. Livermore drew Bates aside, the housemaid busied herself with the ladies' wraps.