Chapter 2: “the Strata”

Bertram Henshaw called the Beacon Street home “The Strata.” This annoyed Cyril, and even William, not a little; though they reflected that, after all, it was “only Bertram.” For the whole of Bertram’s twenty-four years of life it had been like this—”It’s only Bertram,” had been at once the curse and the salvation of his existence.

In this particular case, however, Bertram’s vagary of fancy had some excuse. The Beacon Street house, the home of the three brothers, was a “Strata.”

“You see, it’s like this,” Bertram would explain airily to some new acquaintance who expressed surprise at the name; “if I could slice off the front of the house like a loaf of cake, you’d understand it better. But just suppose that old Bunker Hill should suddenly spout fire and brimstone and bury us under tons of ashes—only fancy the condition of mind of those future archaeologists when they struck our house after their months of digging!

“What would they find? Listen. First: stratum number one, the top floor; that’s Cyril’s, you know. They’d note the bare floors, the sparse but heavy furniture, the piano, the violin, the flute, the book-lined walls, and the absence of every sort of curtain, cushion, or knickknack. ‘Here lived a plain man,’ they’d say; ‘a scholar, a musician, stern, unloved and unloving; a monk.’

“And what next? They’d strike William’s stratum next, the third floor. Imagine it! You know William as a State Street broker, well-off, a widower, tall, angular, slow of speech, a little bald, very much nearsighted, and the owner of the kindest heart in the world. But really to know William, you must know his rooms. William collects things. He has always collected things—and he’s saved every one of them. There’s a tradition that at the age of one year he crept into the house with four small round white stones. Anyhow, if he did, he’s got them now. Rest assured of that—and he’s forty this year. Miniatures, carved ivories, bugs, moths, porcelains, jades, stamps, postcards, spoons, baggage tags, theatre programs, playing-cards—there isn’t anything that he doesn’t collect. He’s on teapots, now. Imagine it—William and teapots! And they’re all there in his rooms—one glorious mass of confusion. Just fancy those archaeologists trying to make their ‘monk’ live there!