Sherman was
solitary
because silent.
Yeats
How full of memories
it was to him! what playmates and boyish adventures did it not bring to
mind! To him it seemed to say, 'Stay near to me,' as to Howard it had
said, 'Go yonder, to those other joys and other sceneries I have told
you of. ' It bade him who loved stay still and dream, and gave flying
feet to him who imagined.
II
The house where Sherman and his mother lived was one of those bare
houses so common in country towns. Their dashed fronts mounting above
empty pavements have a kind of dignity in their utilitarianism. They
seem to say, 'Fashion has not made us, nor ever do its caprices pass
our sand-cleaned doorsteps. ' On every basement window is the same dingy
wire blind; on every door the same brass knocker. Custom everywhere!
'So much the longer,' the blinds seem to say, 'have eyes glanced
through us'; and the knockers to murmur, 'And fingers lifted us. '
No. 15, Stephens' Row, was in no manner peculiar among its twenty
fellows. The chairs in the drawing-room facing the street were of heavy
mahogany with horsehair cushions worn at the corners. On the round
table was somebody's commentary on the New Testament laid like the
spokes of a wheel on a table-cover of American oilcloth with stamped
Japanese figures half worn away. The room was seldom used, for Mrs.
Sherman was solitary because silent. In this room the dressmaker sat
twice a year, and here the rector's wife used every month or so to
drink a cup of tea. It was quite clean. There was not a fly-mark on the
mirror, and all summer the fern in the grate was constantly changed.
Behind this room and overlooking the garden was the parlour, where
cane-bottomed chairs took the place of mahogany. Sherman had lived here
with his mother all his life, and their old servant hardly remembered
having lived anywhere else; and soon she would absolutely cease to
remember the world she knew before she saw the four walls of this
house, for every day she forgot something fresh. The son was almost
thirty, the mother fifty, and the servant near seventy. Every year they
had two hundred pounds among them, and once a year the son got a new
suit of clothes and went into the drawing-room to look at himself in
the mirror.
On the morning of the 10th of December Mrs. Sherman was down before her
son. A spare, delicate-featured woman, with somewhat thin lips tightly
closed as with silent people, and eyes at once gentle and distrustful,
tempering the hardness of the lips. She helped the servant to set the
table, and then, for her old-fashioned ideas would not allow her to
rest, began to knit, often interrupting her knitting to go into the
kitchen or to listen at the foot of the stairs. At last, hearing a
sound upstairs, she put the eggs down to boil, muttering the while,
and began again to knit. When her son appeared she received him with a
smile.
'Late again, mother,' he said.
'The young should sleep,' she answered, for to her he seemed still a
boy.
it was to him! what playmates and boyish adventures did it not bring to
mind! To him it seemed to say, 'Stay near to me,' as to Howard it had
said, 'Go yonder, to those other joys and other sceneries I have told
you of. ' It bade him who loved stay still and dream, and gave flying
feet to him who imagined.
II
The house where Sherman and his mother lived was one of those bare
houses so common in country towns. Their dashed fronts mounting above
empty pavements have a kind of dignity in their utilitarianism. They
seem to say, 'Fashion has not made us, nor ever do its caprices pass
our sand-cleaned doorsteps. ' On every basement window is the same dingy
wire blind; on every door the same brass knocker. Custom everywhere!
'So much the longer,' the blinds seem to say, 'have eyes glanced
through us'; and the knockers to murmur, 'And fingers lifted us. '
No. 15, Stephens' Row, was in no manner peculiar among its twenty
fellows. The chairs in the drawing-room facing the street were of heavy
mahogany with horsehair cushions worn at the corners. On the round
table was somebody's commentary on the New Testament laid like the
spokes of a wheel on a table-cover of American oilcloth with stamped
Japanese figures half worn away. The room was seldom used, for Mrs.
Sherman was solitary because silent. In this room the dressmaker sat
twice a year, and here the rector's wife used every month or so to
drink a cup of tea. It was quite clean. There was not a fly-mark on the
mirror, and all summer the fern in the grate was constantly changed.
Behind this room and overlooking the garden was the parlour, where
cane-bottomed chairs took the place of mahogany. Sherman had lived here
with his mother all his life, and their old servant hardly remembered
having lived anywhere else; and soon she would absolutely cease to
remember the world she knew before she saw the four walls of this
house, for every day she forgot something fresh. The son was almost
thirty, the mother fifty, and the servant near seventy. Every year they
had two hundred pounds among them, and once a year the son got a new
suit of clothes and went into the drawing-room to look at himself in
the mirror.
On the morning of the 10th of December Mrs. Sherman was down before her
son. A spare, delicate-featured woman, with somewhat thin lips tightly
closed as with silent people, and eyes at once gentle and distrustful,
tempering the hardness of the lips. She helped the servant to set the
table, and then, for her old-fashioned ideas would not allow her to
rest, began to knit, often interrupting her knitting to go into the
kitchen or to listen at the foot of the stairs. At last, hearing a
sound upstairs, she put the eggs down to boil, muttering the while,
and began again to knit. When her son appeared she received him with a
smile.
'Late again, mother,' he said.
'The young should sleep,' she answered, for to her he seemed still a
boy.
