Allen French - The Barrier - A Novel

There was the temporary focus of social life; he saw the lights; had he opened his window he might have heard the music. Carriages drove up, people entered the house, and on the curtains of the ball-room he saw moving shadows. In that house were what he wanted – recognition, a new life, Judith. But she was guarded by the powers of a whole order, was infinitely remote.

His talk with Judith had doubled his determination to enter the upper world, and yet changed his regard for it. It became Judith's world, seeming to-night like a house which she inhabited, more precious by her presence. And because she was so much finer than he had imagined the women of her class, her sphere looked farther away, and his determination to enter it was tempered by the fear of failure.

As he took the first step in his new venture, he had been half ashamed of his desire to "better himself," quite unable to justify himself by appeal to the natural American wish to obtain the highest indorsement of his community. So long as there had been anything left for him to win, he had turned instinctively toward it. Now he suddenly realised that he faced his greatest fight. He had often said that he liked fighting; he had struggled for many years with all the power of nerve and mind. To-night his brain seemed weary, bruised and scarred as a body might be. Watching the house where Judith was, contemplating her image, a softness came over Ellis, new to him; resolution became a wish, and then turned to yearning. It was with difficulty that he roused himself, surprise mingling with his contempt of the unrecognised sensation. He was in for it now, he told himself almost roughly; the game was worth the candle, and he would see it through.

Mr. Peveril Pease had finished his week's work, and feeling no obligation to attend the golf club tea, went home and settled himself in his snuggery among his books. When his feet were once in slippers, his velvet jacket was on, and he held a well-marked volume in his hand, he felt he had more true comfort than all the golf clubs in the world could give. So thorough was his satisfaction that rather than read he gave himself up to the enjoyment of his well-being. Gazing about the room, Mr. Pease permitted himself a brief retrospection of his career.

Few men in the town could with so much right compliment themselves. He had begun life with nothing but ancestral debts and encumbered property, and now he was nearly as rich as Ellis, who had started with the traditional dollar in his pocket. Pease's credit was firm as a rock; the stock of his bank was quoted – no, it was hoarded. The widow, the orphan, the struggling clerks who had their money in Pease's hands could sleep at ease, and the respect in which he was held by the business men of the city – but he wasn't thinking of that.

No, this little house was his thought, and this room, and that array of books. He had been thirteen years of age when his grandfather died, and within the month he had refused the trustees his permission to sell a foot of the real estate. Judge Harmon never tired of telling of the visit of the boy, swelling with rage and resolution. "Cynthia may be willing, but grandfather never would sell, and I won't have it!" he had declared, and so strong was the lad's feeling that the trustees, divided in opinion, had yielded to him, backing the debts of the estate with their own credit. At eighteen he was practically their adviser and his own trustee; at twenty he had redeemed the homestead with his earnings; at twenty-five he had sold a single lot of the down-town property for what the entire estate would not have brought twelve years before. So much for determination and a long head.

Fifteen years more had passed, and still his life had not made him hard nor calculating. When he left his office he left his business; he went "home," to the house in which he was born. The little shingled building, so quaint, had been in the family for six generations; a Percival Pease founded it, a Pembroke Pease finished it, a Peveril Pease owned it now. It had never been rebuilt; the wainscot was still the same, the floors sagged, the stairs were queer, the ceilings low. It corresponded the least in the world with his riches and his great interests. But Pease had the heart of a boy and the affections of a woman. The house was his paradise, the room his bower, the books his especial delight. All his spare time he spent among them, giving himself to "mental improvement."

Many people thought him odd; some called him "poor Mr. Pease," with such pity as is given to the struggling artist or the ambitious novelist, for Pease had never been even to the high-school, and it seemed foolish for him to try to cultivate his mind. They did not consider that the grace of humility was not denied him, with just a touch of that saving quality, humour. He knew himself fairly well, he guarded himself successfully, only one person really knew his heart, and for the opinion of the rest he had a smile. Let them laugh or pity, they had nothing so fine as he, they were not so happy as he, and his kind of a fool was not the worst.

And so we must acknowledge that he was thoroughly complacent. None of Judith Blanchard's discontent stirred him, none of Mather's anger at the world, and none of Ellis's desire to advance. This little room gave him all that he wanted: intellectual improvement, the feeling of progress, mental satisfaction. Pease went beyond cherishing an ideal of happiness; he believed that he was happy, and that no one could take his happiness from him.

And thinking so at this minute, his eye rested fondly on a motto on the wall.

It was from Goethe; it was lettered in old German characters, framed in passe-partout, and hung above the mantel. Pease had dug it out of "Faust"; it embodied so completely his notion of existence that he resolved to keep it before him always. No mere translation could do it justice; "Gray, dear friend, is all theory, and green the golden tree of life" – that was too tame. No; the sonorous German could best express it:

Pease whispered the words to himself. Gray indeed were the lives of all others; he alone dwelt beneath life's green tree and ate its golden fruit. This house, this room, these books – ah, Paradise!

There came a knock at the door. "Peveril?"

"Yes, Cynthia."

"Don't forget, little Miss Blanchard is coming to dinner."

"No, Cynthia."

She was not requesting him to "dress." He always did. She was not asking him to be on time; he always was. Being on the safe side of the door, however, his cousin meant to remind him of her hardihood in inviting to his table some one young and pretty.

Not, Miss Cynthia sighed, that it would make any difference to him. When her visitor arrived a little early, and sat chatting in the parlour, Miss Pease reflected that Peveril, upstairs, was dressing no more carefully for this charming girl than he would have done for old Mrs. Brown. Charming – but he knew nothing of the real, the true, the living best!

Thus we may briefly record that Miss Cynthia Pease, who was the one person that understood her cousin, was not wholly in sympathy with his pursuits. Not that she would have acknowledged it to him, nor to anyone else, not even to "little Miss Blanchard," Judith's sister Beth, who was questioning her in a spirit of fun.

"I'm so afraid of dining with your cousin!" Beth exclaimed.

"No, you're not!" contradicted Miss Cynthia grimly.

"If I should make some slip in statement, or spot the table-cloth! He is so accurate, they all say."

"You may depend on him to be polite under all circumstances," responded Miss Cynthia, glaring.