The Caldwell watchman. (Columbia, La.) 1885-1946, 1915-04-16
CHAPTER II.

"oAS VINE Ahot Pol tioll VI VIC HouoS
which rightly may be described as
public" In order to distinguish it
from other parts where privacy was
enforced, was not unlike any of the
richly furnished, old fashioned places
IN the lower part of the city, where
there are still traces left of the Knick-
erbockers and their times. This was
not the home Of men who had been
merely rich; it was not wealth alone
that stood behind these stately invest
mentS
At the top of the house were the
rooms which no one entered except by
the gracious will of the master. Here
James Brood had stored the quaint.
priceless treasures Of his own peculiar
fancy-eXquiste, curious things from
the mystic East, things that are not
to be bought and sold but come only
to the hand Of him who searches in
lands where peril is the price.
Worlds separated the upper and
lower regions of that fine old house;
a single step took one from the sedate
Occident into the very heart Of the
Orient; narrow threshold was the
line between the rugged West and the
soft, languOrous, seductive East. In
this part of the house, James Brood,
when at home for one of his brief
stays, spent many of his hours in Sc
clusion, shut off from the rest of the
establishment as completely as if he
were the inhabitant of another world.
Attended by his Hindu servant, a
silent man named Ranjab, and on oc.
casions by his secretary, he saw but
little of the remaining members of
his rather extensive household. For
several years he had been engaged in
the task of writing his memoirs-so
called-in so far as they related to his
experiences and researches of the past
twenty years.
His secretary and amanuensis was
Lydia Desmond, the nineteen-year-old
daughter of his one.time companion
and friend, the late John Desmond,
whose death occurred when the girl
was barely ten years of age.
Brood, on hearing of the mans
death, Immediately made inquiries con.
corning the condition in which he had
left his wife and child, with the result
that Mrs. Desmond was installed as
housekeeper in the New York house
and the daughter given every advan-
tage in the way of education. Des-
mond had left nothing in the shape of
riches except undiminished love for
his wife and diary kept during those
perilous days before he met and mar
ried her This diary was being incor-
porated in the history of James
Brood's adventures, by consent of the
widow, and was to speak for Brood
in words he could not with modesty
utter for himself. In these pages John
Desmond was to tell his own story, in
his own way, for Brood's love for his
friend was broad enough even to ad-
NIT of that. He was to share his life
in retrospect with Desmond and the
two old men as he had shared it with
them in reality.
Lydia's room, adjoining her moth.
er's, was on the third floor at the foot
of the small stairway leading up to
the prescribed retreat at the top Of
the house. There was small sitting
room off the two bed chambers, given
over entirely to Mrs. Desmond and her
daughter. In this little room, Frederic
Brood spent many a quiet, happy hour.
The Desmonds, mother and daughter,
understood and pitied the lonely boy
who came to the big house soon after
they were themselves installed. His
heart, which had many sores, expand
ed and glowed in the warmth of their
kindness and affection; the plague Of
unfriendliness that was his by absorp-
ton gave way before this unexpected
kindness, not Immediately, it is true.
but completely in the end.
BY nature he was slow to respond
to the advances of others; his life had
been such that avarice accounted for
all that he received from others in the
shape of respect and consideration
He was prone to discount a friendly
attitude for the simple reason that in
his experience all friendships were
marred by the fact that their sincerity
rested entirely upon the generosity of
the man who paid for them-his ia.
Their. No one had loved him for him.
self; no one had given him an unself-
ish thought in all the years of his
boyhood.
At first he held himself aloof from
the Desmonds; he was slow to sur.
render. He suspected them of the
same motives that had been the basis
of all previous attachments. When at
last he realized that they were not
like the others, his cup of Joy, long
an empty vessel, was filled to the brim
and his happiness was without bounds
They were amazed by the transforma.
ton. The rather sullen, unapproach.
able lad became at once so friendly,
so dependent, that had they not been
acquainted with the causes behind the
old state of reticence, his very Joy
might have made a nuisance Of him.