DINNER AT COUSIN PARK'S.
Sunday dawned and with it the consciousness that I had to go through the
ordeal of dinner with Cousin Park. Oh, how I hated the thought of it! We
had slept late after the unusual hours we had kept the night before, and
Mr. Tucker had kindly had our breakfast sent up from the cafe.
"That's to make up for treating us the way he did last night," said Dum,
buttering her cakes as she sat up in bed.
"Treating us what way?" inquired Dee.
"Dancing with that Binks abomination. He knew he had no business to do
it."
"Why, Dum," I said, determined to cool her down if possible, "I don't
really see how Mr. Tucker could have done otherwise. A schoolmate who
from all appearances is devoted to his daughters, joins our group and
lets it be known that she is dying to dance, indeed is thinking of
dancing alone. Why, there was no way for a gentleman to behave than just
exactly as Zeb--I mean Mr. Tucker--did behave. I would have been pleased
if my Father had done exactly as yours did, and I believe Father would
if her innuendos had been addressed to him."
"Well, Doctor Allison would never have hopped as Zebedee did. What I
hate to think about is the way that girl is going to tell all the girls
at school about our handsome young Father and how he devoted himself to
her. I bet she comes here to-day on some pretext or other."
"Well, I'll sic Brindle on her if she does. He can't stand cats!" hissed
Dee, who was becoming worked up by Dum's evident passion.
"Well, I'll tell you one thing: the ruder you are to Mabel the more
polite your Father will be; and the more polite you are, the more
indifferent Mr. Tucker will be," I admonished.
"How did you get so wise, old Solomon?" asked Dum, in rather muffled
tones through a mouthful of flannel cakes.
"Why, Mammy Susan says, 'Men folks an' mules is moughty sim'lar; jes'
nachally contrary-wise. Ef yer want 'em ter go ter de mill, make out
dey's got ter stay in de parsture, an' jes' ter spite yer dey'll run all
de way ter de mill.'"
"Well, we'll make out Zebedee has got to go to the mill and he'll want
to stay in the pasture. Mabel Binks is more like a mill than a pasture,"
said Dum, rather taken with my philosophy.
"Yes, and 'All is grist that comes to her mill,' too," declared Dee. "I
am going to try the plan on Zebedee this minute," and she bounced up and
donning slippers and kimono went in to the living room where Mr. Tucker
was deep in the Sunday paper. She left the door slightly ajar and Dum
and I could plainly hear the conversation.
"Good morning, Zebedee," and the sound of a hearty kiss. "It was awfully
good of you to have breakfast sent up to us. We did not mean to
oversleep."
"Glad to do it, Tweedledeedles. I thought all of you would be tired
after tripping the light fantastic toe almost into Sunday morning."
"Say, Zebedee, Page has to go to her Cousin Park's to dinner to-day, so
don't you think it would be nice to have Mabel Binks to dinner with
us?"
Dum gasped and started to rush into the sitting room, without the
formality of a kimono, but I grabbed her and with a warning finger
quieted her.
"Oh, come now, Dee, I should think you and Dum would be content to spend
your last Sunday at home quietly with your poor old lonesome Zebedee. I
can't see what you want with Miss Binks. She is much older than you,
Tweedles, and not a bit the kind of person I should encourage you to
have as an intimate. I get the names of your schoolmates mixed, but
wasn't she the girl you wrote me was so purse-proud and unfeeling in her
treatment of that nice ladylike little girl from Price's Landing?"
"Ye--s, but I thought you liked her pretty well last night."
"Why, I never gave her a thought! She so plainly asked me to dance with
her that I had to do it; but that was all. She is showily handsome and
amusing enough in the daring way in which she talks, but nay, nay, not
for me!"
More sounds of kissing, and then: "Now run on and all of you get dressed
in a hurry so we can take a nice spin with Henry Ford and go to church
before Miss Page has to be delivered over to the Dragon."
"What's that smell, Zebedee? The hall is reeking with a terrible odor,"
asked Dee, sniffing suspiciously.
"I can't imagine. I was afraid you and Dum and Miss Page had gone in for
musk. The whole apartment is permeated with it." Dee went out into the
little hall connecting the girls' bedroom with the living room and poked
around the hatrack, where the odor seemed to be strongest.
"Here it is," she cried, "in your overcoat pocket!"
"Oh, that wretched girl's gloves! She asked me to hold them for her just
before we left the club, and I must have put them in my pocket. Hang 'em
outside the bathroom window. That smell is enough to make all of us
faint. Please turn my pocket inside out, so it can air."
"What did I tell you?" and Dee burst into the bedroom, waving the
smelly gloves as she came; "the minx made Zebedee keep her gloves just
so she could get around here. We'd better dress in a hurry so we can be
ready to receive her. She might eat up poor Zebedee without his knowing
what got him," and she scornfully hung the offensive kids out the
bathroom window.
Mabel Binks did come before Dum and I were quite dressed, but Dee was
installed in the living room waiting for her with Brindle at her side
ready to sic on Mabel if she showed signs of walking off with the
handsome young father.
"Oh, you naughty man, I am almost sure you purloined my gloves last
night!" we heard her say, in her loud and strident tones. "I thought I
would stop in on the way to church to get them."
"Yes, he did hook them from you," said Dum, making her appearance like a
whirlwind. "Zebedee is great on that. He steals girls' gloves all the
time and gives them to Dee and me. We never have to buy any. All the
girls get him to hold their gloves for them and then he brings them home
to us and we divide them up. Here yours are. Zebedee did not know whose
they were, but we recognized the perfume you are so fond of. They are
too big for us, so we were not going to row over them." Mr. Tucker sat
dumfounded during this tirade of Dum's, and as for me, I had to dive
back in the room from which I was emerging to get my countenance
straightened out.
Dee buried her nose in Brindle's neck and made such a funny little noise
trying to keep back her laughter that Brindle growled and wrinkled up
his neck in a most ominous manner. Mabel took the gloves, and for once
her aplomb deserted her. She beat a hasty retreat with good-bys that
were scarcely audible.
I fully expected that Mr. Tucker would admonish Dum for the ridiculous
fabrication of which she had been guilty, but he seemed to forget all
about the behavior befitting a parent, and caught us by the hand and in
a moment we were dancing the Lobster Quadrille and singing lustily,
"Will you, won't you, won't you, will you, will you join the dance?"
"Now hurry up and get on your hats and jackets and we will speed little
Henry Ford to church." And off we went in a Christian frame of mind and
at peace with the whole world, especially Dum, who had scored heavily
over the detested Mabel.
The hour for dinner at Cousin Park's had at last come. How slowly I
walked up the broad stone steps leading to her fine house! The same
lugubrious butler opened the door that had performed that office when I
visited Cousin Park on that other memorable occasion. He had the air of
one who is letting in the mourners. I involuntarily glanced at the door
bell to see if by any chance crepe could be hanging from it.
This butler's appropriate name was Jeremiah, and he was what is known as
"a blue-gum nigger." I smiled when I greeted him, and for a moment he
showed his blue gums in a vain attempt at cheerfulness, but he quickly
subsided into his habitual gloom. I recalled what Mammy Susan had said
to me many a time. "Be mighty keerful, honey; don' nebber cross a
blue-gum nigger, fer de bite er one is rank pizen and sho death."
Cousin Park was seated in state in her ugly, handsome, oiled-walnut
parlor. The room was of noble proportions and might have been pretty,
but Cousin Park had happened to marry the genial Major at the period
when oiled walnut was the prevailing style, and her whole life had been
built on the oiled-walnut basis ever since. Her costly velvet carpets
still came right to the edge of the floor and were snugly tacked close
to the baseboard. No hardwood floors and rugs for her.
The heavy furniture was deeply carved, and if the unwary visitor forgot
himself for a moment and attempted to lounge in his chair he was quickly
brought to a sense of propriety by a carved pineapple getting him
between his shoulders or maybe a bunch of grapes striking him in the
small of his back. I usually tried to sit on the horsehair sofa. Long
practice in riding bareback had given me a poise that enabled me to be
very comfortable seated thus without sliding off. The pictures were hung
close up to the ceiling according to the style in vogue in times gone
by. They were mostly dark portraits in heavy gilt frames and they
glared down at you as though they resented your intrusion into their
mausoleum.
Father was seated forward in his chair, trying to avoid the pineapple,
and on his face was an expression like that of a little boy who has been
taken to church and fears every minute to be questioned as to the text.
I rather expected our stern relative to tell him to go wash his hands
for dinner. He jumped up and hugged me enthusiastically, and I felt
ashamed that I had hated so to come. Cousin Park gave me an upholstered
embrace and I made for the horsehair sofa, that seemed friendly and
yielding in comparison with Cousin Park.
"Well, so you have torn yourself away from those Tuckers long enough to
do your duty, have you?" I scented a battle from afar, but determined to
be good and not say anything to make my cousin angry. No doubt she was
hungry and would be more agreeable as soon as dinner was announced.
"It is kind of you to ask me to dinner, Cousin Park, and I am glad to
come," I meekly replied. And thinking maybe it would be tactful to
change the subject, I said to Father: "How do you feel after dancing
last night?"
"Fine, daughter; I never had such a good time in my life."
"Cousin James! You--dancing! You are surely jesting--you--you--a man of
your age!"
"Oh, I'm not so awfully old, Cousin Park! There were men on the floor
ten years older than I am--bank presidents, eminent surgeons, and
several judges, all dancing the new dances with the utmost abandon."
"Well, where on earth did you learn the new dances, Cousin James?"
"Well, I never saw them danced before, so it must have been by a
correspondence course." And Father winked at me.
The sepulchral butler came in to announce dinner just at this crucial
moment when his irate mistress looked as though she would burst her
tight black satin basque in which she had been so compactly hooked. He
quavered in a sad voice: "Dinner is served," but his tone reminded me of
Jeremiah, Chapter IX, first verse: "Oh, that my head were waters and
mine eyes a fountain of tears that I might weep day and night!"
[Illustration: Dum looked at me aghast. "Page, you here, and
Dee!"--_Page 271._]
The dining room was one degree more cheerful than the parlor, as instead
of the portraits there were Audubon prints and the Marriage of
Pocahontas. A heavy walnut sideboard laden with massive silver almost
filled one side of the room. The table was precisely set and the food
may have been good, but everything was so ponderous, including the
hostess, that when we got through with the long tiresome courses I felt
like the old wolf that Mammy Susan used to tell about. He swallowed
seven little kids whole and then, while he slept by the water's edge,
the Widow Goat came and ripped him open, took out the dear little kids
and put in their place seven huge stones. The old wolf was naturally
thirsty after this surgical operation, and so was I when I had packed in
and hammered down roast chicken, boiled hominy, mashed potatoes, baked
rice, macaroni and I don't know what besides, except that we topped off
with a plum pudding that was the last straw.
I longed for sleep with an intensity that was truly painful, and I could
see that poor dear Father was desperate. The conversation at the table
was as heavy and starchy as the food. Father and I could not help
comparing it to the gay little dinner we had enjoyed the night before at
the Country Club.
Cousin Park's manner was always dictatorial, even when she was the
visitor instead of the hostess, and on that day she seemed to think she
was born to boss the Universe. She picked on me most of the time and I
let her do it, knowing Father must have had his share of correction, but
when she began on my friends, the darling Tuckers, I got a little
restive. Mammy Susan always told me: "Don't sass old folks till dey fust
sass you," and I began to feel that old folks were sassing me
considerably. I smiled to myself, remembering that Mr. Tucker had told
me that when the Major died, at his funeral they sang "Peace, perfect
peace," and the pall bearers themselves could hardly keep from grinning
to think what a far from peaceful time the poor Major had had on earth.
Father came to my rescue when our masterful cousin finally sprung this
mine on us: "I am astonished, Cousin James, that you should have no more
sense of propriety than to let Page visit that Jeffry Tucker without a
chaperon."
"Why, Cousin Park, you astonish me! Page is visiting Mr. Tucker's
daughters, her schoolmates. They are all three very young to have a
question of propriety brought up."
"I don't care, a woman is never too young or too old to be made the
subject of gossip," and Cousin Park creaked ominously.
"Well, that being the case, I think it is highly improper and imprudent
for me to be visiting you, unless we can look upon Jeremiah as a
chaperon."
And Cousin Park, knowing herself to be worsted, sighed a great, heaving
sigh and looked sadly at the Major's portrait, as though if he had been
alive he would have protected her.
How glad we were to hear the toot of Henry Ford and to know that our
time in purgatory was over. The fresh air took away that awful
drowsiness, and the cheerful talk of the Tuckers as we spun out into
the country made us forget the deadly conversation we had been forced to
be a party to. Father had an engagement for supper with a medical
brother, and he was to go back to Bracken the next day.
"Blood may be thicker than water," he said. "In fact, to-day it was so
thick you couldn't stir it, but never again do I intend to make a visit
at Cousin Park Garnett's. Why, I feel as though that blue-gum nigger had
bitten me."