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Page 9
The owner of the shell was chilled but not daunted. There would surely
be others less benighted who must acclaim the shell's charm.
Presently he was at the familiar front gate and his father, looking
unusual, somehow, came to lift him down.
"See my shell I found at Grammer's!"
"Your mother is dead."
"See my shell I found at Grammer's!"
"Your mother is dead."
It was the sinister iteration by which he was stricken, rather than the
news itself. The latter only stunned. His hand in his father's, he went
up the walk and into the house. There were women inside, women who moved
with an effect of bustling stillness, the same women who had so often
asked him what his name was. They seemed to know it well enough now. He
was aware that his entrance created no little sensation. One of them
kissed him and told him not to cry, but he had no thought of crying. He
became aware of the thing in his hands.
"See my shell I found at Grammer's!"
The invitation was a general one. They looked in silence and some of
them moved about, and then through a doorway he saw in the next room an
object long and dark and shining set on two chairs.
He had never seen anything like it, but its suggestion was evil. The
women waited. Something seemed to be expected of some one. His father
led him into that room and lifted him up to see. His mother's face was
there under a glass. He could see that she wore her pretty blue dress,
and on one arm beside her was something covered with white. He called
softly to her.
"Mamma! Mamma!"
But she did not open her eyes.
Then he was out again where the people were, and the people seemed to
forget about him. He went to his little room under the sloping roof. He
had not let go of the shell and now, in the fading light from the low
window, he lost himself once more in its depths. Inwardly he knew that a
terror lurked near, but he had not yet felt it. Only when bedtime came
did the continued silence of his mother become meaningful. When he was
left alone, he cried for her, still clutching his shell.
The minister came the next day, and many people, and the minister talked
to them about his mother. The two Uncle Bunkers were there, grim,
hard-mouthed, glaring, for they hated each other as only brothers can
hate. He wondered if they would still let him be partly a Bunker, now
that his mother was gone. He wondered also at the novel consideration he
saw being shown to his father. Dressed in a new suit of black, with an
unaccustomed black hat, his father was plainly become a man of
importance. He was one apart, and people of undoubted consequence
deferred to him--to the very last. He earnestly wished his mother could
see that; his nervous little mother with the flushed face and tired
eyes, always terrifically concerned about one small matter or another.
He thought she would have liked to see that his father was some one,
after all.
II
The Chicago epoch began a year later. The true nature of its causes
never lay quite clearly in the mind of Bean. There was, first, an
entirely new Uncle Bunker whom he had never seen, but whom he at once
liked very much. He was a younger, more beautiful uncle, with a gay,
light manner and expensive clothing. He wore a magnificent gold watch
and chain, and jewelled rings flashed from his white fingers as he, in
absent moments, daintily passed a small pocket-comb through the meshes
of his lustrous brown side-whiskers. Little Bean knew that he did
something on a board in Chicago; that he "operated" on the Board of
Trade was the accustomed phrasing. He liked the word, and tried to
picture what "operating" might mean in relation to a board.
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