A THANKSGIVING PARTY.
In Oakland avenue there stands another mansion. It is a lofty pile of
brownish stone, and is luxuriously complete in its every detail.
Standing as it does on a prominent hill, it comes in for a great share
of excellent praise for its beauty and magnificence, and is classed as a
close rival of that other mansion in Highland avenue.
Here lived, when in the effulgence of his power and influence in the
complicated machinery of a big city, one Jacob Cobb--a short, squatty,
round-faced, blue-eyed, clear-complexioned man of business, so far as
anybody knew about his worldly affairs. Here his wife Betty, and
daughters, Susanna and Marjorie, entertained the eclat of society
according to the à la mode of fashion; and many were the gay parties,
balls and dinners that they gave for the select few constituting their
circle of acquaintances.
Charming, indeed, were these great affairs, unrivaled in all their
appointments in the high-toned residential district in this unequaled
city of social madness and financial debauchery. Oh, yes; charming they
were, indeed, to those select of the very select who pandered to Mammon
in the workaday hours and to Bacchus in the time of refreshment.
Aye, aye; here came the proud, the haughty, the vapid, the insipid; the
hilarious strumpets of swelldom, the strutting monstrosities of fashion,
the pompous parrots of mimicry; the glib scandal-mongers, the gregarious
loiterers over afternoon teas; the straight-laced of the kid-gloved
gentry, the snobs, the prudes, the fops; the blase young men, the
genteel puppets, the vacuous gentlemen, the bombasts, the old
curmudgeons; the doting mothers, the innocent maidens; with now and then
a sprinkling of the good, the sage, the savant, as a savory condiment to
the mess of social pottage the Cobbs dished out of their pot of ethics.
These events were wonderful achievements in the life of Mrs. Cobb, and
Mr. Cobb paid the bills without a murmur or complaint.
Mrs. Cobb was sumptuously independent in the conduct of these affairs.
All the glories of the Queen of Henry of Navarre could not equal her
glorious accomplishments in the one great and only ambition of her
life--shining in society. Mr. Cobb was bumptuously indifferent as to how
his wife shone, just so she shone, and that in her shining she did not
obfuscate him altogether.
Mrs. Cobb was chunky, like her husband. She was the quintessence of
charm. She was the substantive mood of the present tense of the verb to
be. She was gay, humorous, and a true leader--in her line of activity.
She was near the middle time of life, but she had lost little of her
beauty. Her dark brown eyes snapped like sparks of fire, and her cheeks
glowed pink when she was enjoying the company around her; when in a
different mood, she ever had the fine quality of knowing how to be
pleasant when most bored.
Mrs. Cobb's afternoons were of course mild affairs, but still very grand
to all those idle ladies who deemed it a distinctive honor to receive an
invitation, and a compliment to their refinement to be there.
Accomplishment and refinement! O, fudge!
Mrs. Cobb must celebrate Thanksgiving day. She and her husband must
offer up their oblation, in their own unhampered fashion, to the
gracious Lord who had blessed them with so much to be thankful for. And
they did celebrate.
It was to be an unsurpassed dinner at seven, a violation of the rule of
etiquette for such state affairs; but as dancing was to follow, the
order of formality was modified, so that the exhilarating whirl could
thereby be prolonged. She, therefore, sent out the exact number of fifty
invitations, equally distributed among ladies and gentlemen. The dinner
was served in the great dining room, dazzling with its silver, gold,
glass and polished wood, with carnations and roses burdening the air
with their mesmeric fragrance.
Promptly at the hour of seven, Mr. Cobb, with Mrs. Cobb on his arm,
struck out through the maze of palms and smilax and other greenery, for
the feasting board. Arriving at the table, with her husband, she
delivered him at the head, and she took a seat on his right hand (all
contrary to form, but she was original, if anything), with her favorite
bachelor friend, Miram Monroe, on Mr. Cobb's left, as a cold balancing
weight to old man Cobb's ebulliting spirits. Next to Mr. Monroe sat Miss
Edith Jarney. Jasper Cobb sat opposite Miss Jarney, and by his side was
Miss Star Barton; and so on down the long table sat the other
sublunaries of the Cleopatra of fashion, the number not stopping till a
second long table was filled with similarly handsomely gowned ladies,
and gloomily groomed gentlemen, with the Cobb girls sitting among them
in peek-a-boo fluffiness.
"Mr. Monroe," said Mrs. Cobb, after having made some trifling remarks to
some of the other guests, showing her white teeth with the vivaciousness
of a young girl, "you appear not to be enjoying yourself tonight."
"Oh, yes, Mrs. Cobb," he replied, with a board-like stiffness, "I am
delighted."
"Mrs. Cobb," interjected her husband, beaming one of his sly winks at
her, "you should not tease Mr. Monroe tonight. Just behold the fair
young lady he has by his side!"
"Mr. Cobb, you are so jolly tonight," she answered. "Mr. Monroe did not
salute me when he arrived this evening, so I am in ill-humor with him."
"Beg your pardon, Mrs. Cobb," said the ghostly Monroe. "The fact is I
had no opportunity. Sure, madam, I would not slight you for the world,
did you give me the opportunity."
"Mr. Monroe," said Mrs. Cobb, in her best humor, "you must get rid of
your rigidity of expression, or I will be compelled to get another man,
younger than you, to take your place. I am now almost tempted to put my
son in your place; Jasper, you know."
"I will not hear to that, Mrs. Cobb," interrupted Edith. "Why, I shall
attempt to enliven Mr. Monroe." Then to that sedate imbecile, she said:
"Mr. Monroe, cheer up. See, every gentleman present but you is in the
fullness of his grandiose verboseness tonight. Cheer up, and be alive
for once!"
Mr. Monroe turned a lethargic smile upon Edith, and whispered, loud
enough for his near auditors to hear: "Miss Jarney will do me the
pleasure, I am sure, of reaching me the salt."
"Why, with pleasure--salt--salt," said Edith, with a gay and mischievous
laugh. "This man--waiter, waiter--wants some salt to salt down his
opinion of women's rights."
"Good, good!" applauded Mrs. Cobb. "Now, what are your opinions of
women's rights, Mr. Monroe?"
"I am salting them down," he replied, sadly, as he began to spray most
liberally his salad, which looked, before he ceased, as if it would be
in a brine of thick salineness. "My opinion of women is--aside from my
mother--that they are a lot of soap bubbles."
"You bad man," said Mrs. Cobb, lowering her eyebrows; "that is no
definition. Women's rights--what is your opinion?"
"They haven't any rights, save what the men choose to give them," he
whispered looking at Edith, with as much expression as a monkey.
"You bleak old bachelor," retorted Mrs. Cobb. "Edith will never have you
for saying that."
Edith turned a wrathful glance upon Mrs. Cobb, and gave a scornful laugh
at the jest. Then she turned to Mr. Monroe, who had ceased in his
rapid-fire eating long enough to look at her like a plaster cast might
look.
"Miss Edith," said Jasper Cobb, who had been earnestly engaged with Miss
Barton, paying her the closest attention with his palavering nonsense,
"I am jealous of Mr. Monroe."
"Indeed," returned Edith.
"I am, indeed," he answered, and the impropriety of his remark struck
Edith's ear discordantly.
"What a great teaser you are, Jasper," said Mrs. Cobb.
"A chip of the old block," said Mr. Cobb, smiling at his joke, as he
took it to be.
"Jasper does not mean a word of it," said Mrs. Cobb, at the same time
hoping that he did.
"With due consideration for my friend, Mr. Monroe," said Edith, "I will
turn my attention to him."
Then Edith summoned up all her latent substitutes for naturalness, and
bore down upon Mr. Monroe with such a load of banter and mirthful
sayings that that gentleman eventually smiled, to the surprise of
everybody. Then it became alarmingly noticeable that Mr. Monroe was
paying close attention to Edith's highly interesting but entirely
assumed form of gabbling--so much so, in fact, that it was feared by
Mrs. Cobb once that he was on the point of taking Edith in his unloving
embrace, and running away with her. But Mrs. Cobb saved him from this
duncely possibility by saying:
"Be careful, Mr. Monroe, or you will do something desperate directly!"
Mr. Monroe quickly recovered himself and became a living sphynx again.
"Hah, Miss Edith," said Jasper Cobb, catching the trend of things
Edithward, "now, I am jealous."
Miss Edith turned to him, with pretended hautiness, and should liked to
have said, "Impudence," but forbore that unlady-like expression in
deference to her own good breeding. She was relieved, however, from
making any answer to him by Mr. Cobb, who arose at that critical moment
and announced, most graciously and grandiloquently, that the table would
be cleared of the women and menu to make way for cigars and wine.
All of which orders being carried into execution, as per custom, the
waiters proceeded to serve those two refreshing desserts. They sat long
over their cigars, and longer over their wine--till the air was an
ultramarine blueness, and the men in tipsy joyousness.
Mr. Monroe was very thirsty, it turned out, from the number of glasses
that he drained, which had an happy effect upon him. For, with the
disappearance of the wine down his esophagus, came a set grin on his
face, akin to the smile of a disgruntled ghost. Young Cobb, aside from
smoking enormously, imbibed freely, much against his personal appearance
and qualifications to enter much farther into the pleasures of the
evening. All the other gentlemen, including old man Cobb, entered into
the libations with rare partiality--except Mr. Jarney, who, it was seen,
refrained from participating in the dispatching of the invigorating
liquor, a constitutional habit with him. This trait was looked upon by
his now inebriating friends as a high breach of etiquette in not sipping
wine after breaking bread at the home of a friend, and was an affront
not to be condoned on such an occasion. But Mr. Jarney, while not
approving of such bacchanalian practices, as far as he and his family
were concerned, looked askance at them, so long as they were confined to
others, and he made no protest.
After the free lubrication of their unsettled nerves and muddled heads,
the men arose to join the ladies, who in the meantime had dressed for
the ball, now to follow.
When all was in readiness and the band had struck up a softly
insinuating waltz, Mr. and Mrs. Cobb wheeled out on the floor and glided
around the room with the agility of two sixteen-year-olds. Mr. and Mrs.
Jarney came after them, stately and graceful in their evolutions. Then
came the ghost--Monroe--looking like a piece of burning asbestos, as a
result of the wine, with his arm around the waist of Miss Edith. Then
came young Cobb, whispering words of foolishness into the ear of Miss
Barton, as they went round and round in a delirious whirl--to him. Then
came all the other ladies and gentlemen, the latter suffering wondrously
in the advanced stage of booziness. No, we will not cast all the shame
upon the men in their journey of giddiness, for some of the bewitching
woman, ah, and even unbewitching, too, presumed it their blessed
privilege to partake of a little of the tonic of joy, as an equalizer to
the wabbling motions of their husbands or friends.
Number after number, in this wise, was pulled off, each time the bibbers
adding more and more wine as a wash down after each exhausting
exhibition. So in consequence, after awhile, man after man began to fall
by the wayside, and call feebly upon the good Samaritan: Bromo-seltzer,
or bromo-something else: to keep them in condition to continue the mad
seance. But the little imp Wine, once he secrets himself in the
corpuscles of the blood, is a pretty difficult being to placate in so
short a time. Not satisfied was he in laying hold of the faultless
gentlemen in spike-tailed coats and immaculate bosoms, sparkling with
all the iridescence of the purchasing power of money, but he sought out
some of the decolleted dames and gauzyed damsels, and enveloped them in
his opiatic arms. Even Mr. and Mrs. Cobb were not spared from his
envelopment; for, after the fourth set, they became so maudlin in their
hilarity that the sober servants were called upon to lead them out of
the ballroom, from which they went, in a great state of regal debility,
into the seclusion of their own bedchamber, there to sleep away their
Thanksgiving potation.
And it was not long till every corner in the house had a sleeper
languishing in the happy shades of somnolence. Mr. Monroe, the astute
ghost of quietness, after cavorting for a considerable time like a nanny
goat in a field of crimson clover, was among the first to succumb to the
silencing influence of the giver of potency, and disappeared, like a
settling stone, into a whirlpool of revelry. And young Jasper Cobb, the
gay and handsome son of the Thanksgiving father and mother, after
cutting capers that would put to ignominious flight a colored gen'man at
a cake walk, gave up the contest at last and became numbered among the
recumbent forms that rested, like so many babes in the woods, along the
walls.
You are not supposed to believe that the Jarneys witnessed all these
antics of the merry makers at this party, to which a half column space
in the society page of the Sunday newspapers was devoted. No, you are
not to believe they remained, retaining all their senses, to witness
this pyretic debauch of high society. The truth is, that the Jarneys
came as a matter of form in deference to Mr. Cobb, one of the high-ups
in business; and they left in deference to their conscience and
self-respect. The fact is, that after the second number was rendered,
Mr. and Mrs. Jarney, seeing how things were going, and also at the
solicitation of Miss Edith, took their ward, Star Barton, and repaired
to their home.
"Well, how do you like high society?" asked Edith, when she and Star had
reached their boudoir for a short lounging before going to bed.
"If that party is a fair sample, I don't like it," emphatically answered
Star. "Why, it is no more respectable, if half as much, with all their
fine things and glitter, than some of the hoe-downs in Hell's Half
Acre."
"I am very sorry we attended," said Edith.
"I am not," returned Star. "It has been a great lesson to me."
"Would you go again?" asked Edith.
"I shall always be guided by you, dear Edith."
"Then you will have no further opportunity to attend a function of that
kind, for that is the last for me," said Edith; "especially with that
class of people. Papa and mamma care nothing for such doings; neither do
I; but owing to business connections, we are obliged to lend our
presence, sometimes. Formality! Star; formality!"
"Is it one of the requirements of business?" asked Star, innocently.
"It is a deplorable truth," answered Edith.
"I am glad, dear Edith, you are not wrapped up, heart and soul, with
such people," said Star.
"It is my pleasure to be independent, Star."
"And I shall follow your example, dear Edith," returned Star, with
unbounden confidence in her friend.
"Say, Star," said Edith, as she seated herself on an ottoman at the feet
of Star, and taking one of Star's hands in hers, "I have a trip planned
for you; will you go?"
"If it is your wish, I will," answered Star.
"Star," and Edith looked up into her friend's face, blushing the least
bit, "you remember the young man of whom I was telling you about meeting
by chance? Yes. He is now my father's private secretary."
"Oh, is he?" asked Star, by rote.
"Yes; and by my request, too. I will take you to my father's office
tomorrow, and, if he is there, you shall share his acquaintance with
me."
"I shall be glad to meet him--if he is your friend," said Star.
"He is my friend, Star--no, not yet--but I want him to be, Star," and
Edith buried her head in Star's lap to hide her tell-tale face. Then
raising her head, in a moment, "Will you go? Of course you will."
"If you permit me to talk with him," said Star, teasingly, "I will go."
"Who would think of being jealous of you, my dear Star? Why should I? He
is no more--yes, he is--" and Edith buried her face again, while Star
stroked her long silken tresses in loving admiration.
"Ho, ho, Edith! I know," said Star, pointing a finger of jest at her, as
she raised her face.
"Do you guess my secret, Star?"
"Why, dear girl, I cannot help but know it."
"And you will keep it, Star?"
"To my dying day. Does he know it?"
"Oh, no, no; I have seen him only once. Do you think it right in me,
Star?"
"I don't know, Edith. How will you ever make it known to him?"
"Oh, Star! I do not wish to; I do not wish to! He must find it out for
himself. I know he is such a fine young man; for my father even praises
him."
"He may never know it, Edith," said Star, not yet knowing herself the
secrets of love, as old as she was; albeit, she possessed a true sense
of the great mystery of life; "and then what?"
"I can only live in hope that he will, some day, see and know. Do you
think it wrong in me, Star, to say these things?"
"If it is from your heart, no."
"Let me kiss you, Star? There!"
Love comes to a pure woman veiled in mystery, and departs only when her
spirit returns unto God who gave it. Were they all as pure as Edith, the
temptations of our modern Edens would be as holy as the waters of
Siloam's Pool.