The Web and The Root Read Free Page A

Webber came to Libya Hill, and he stayed, and in a modest way he prospered. And he left his mark upon it. It was said of him that he found the place a little country village of clapboard houses and left it a thriving town of brick. That was the kind of man he was. He liked what was solid and enduring. When he was consulted for his opinion about some new building that was contemplated and was asked what material would be best to use, he would invariably answer, “Brick.”
    At first, the idea of using brick was a novel one in Libya Hill, and for a moment, while Mr. Webber waited stolidly, his questioner would be silent; then, rather doubtfully, as if he was not sure he had heard aright, he would say, “Brick?”
    “Yes, sir,” Mr. Webber would answer inflexibly, “brick. It’s not going to cost you so much more than lumber by the time you’re done, and,” he would say quietly, but with conviction, “it’s the only way to build. You can’t rot it out, you can’t rattle it or shake it, you can’t kick holes in it, it will keep you warm in Winter and cool in Summer, and fifty years from now, or a hundred for that matter, it will still be here. I don’t like lumber,” Mr. Webber would go on doggedly. “I don’t like wooden houses. I come from Pennsylvania where they know how to build. Why,” hewould say, with one of his rare displays of boastfulness, “we’ve got stone barns up there that are built better and have lasted longer than any house you’ve got in this whole section of the country. In my opinion there are only two materials for a house—stone or brick. And if I had my way,” he would add a trifle grimly, “that’s how I’d build all of them.”
    But he did not always have his way. As time went on, the necessities of competition forced him to add a lumber yard to his brick yard, but that was only a grudging concession to the time and place. His real, his first, his deep, abiding love was brick.
    And indeed, the very appearance of John Webber, in spite of physical peculiarities which struck one at first sight as strange, even a little startling, suggested qualities in him as solid and substantial as the houses that he built. Although he was slightly above the average height, he gave the curious impression of being shorter than he was. This came from a variety of causes, chief of which was a somewhat “bowed” formation of his body. There was something almost simian in his short legs, bowed slightly outward, his large, flat-looking feet, the powerful, barrel-like torso, and the tremendous gorillalike length of his arms, whose huge paws dangled almost even with his knees. He had a thick, short neck that seemed to sink right down into the burly shoulders, and close sandy-reddish hair that grew down almost to the edges of the cheek bones and to just an inch or so above the eyes. He was getting bald even then, and there was a wide and hairless swathe right down the center of his skull. He had extremely thick and bushy eyebrows, and the trick of peering out from under them with the head out-thrust in an attitude of intensely still attentiveness. But one’s first impression of a slightly simian likeness in the man was quickly forgotten as one came to know him. For when John Webber walked along the street in his suit of good black broadcloth, heavy and well-cut, the coat half cutaway, a stiff white shirt with starched cuffs, a wing collar with a cravat of black silk tied in a thick knot, and a remarkable-looking derby hat, pearl-grey in color and of a squarish cut, he looked the very symbol of solid, middle-class respectability.
    And yet, to the surprised incredulity of the whole town, this man deserted his wife. As for the child, another construction can be put on that. The bare anatomy of the story runs as follows:
     
    A BOUT 1885, J OHN Webber met a young woman of Libya Hill named Amelia Joyner. She was the daughter of one Lafayette, or “Fate” Joyner, as he was called, who had come out of the