Eliza Marshall meditated on the Bates dinner for several days succeeding,
and when the following Saturday morning came round she was still busy
with it. Saturday was her day for going over the antiquated accumulations
of her parlor; no hands ever dusted and replaced the ornaments on her
what-not save her own. She had been very chary of expressing herself
about Susan Bates's entertainment, even to Jane. But now she felt that
the time had come when she might trust herself to speak.
"I can't say I see the need of so many kinds of spoons," she said, as she
transferred one of her gilt candelabra from the what-not to the contorted
old rosewood centre-table: the candelabra were of an operatic cast--the
one under removal represented (though all unknown to Eliza Marshall)
Manrico and Leonora clasped in each other's arms beneath a bower-like
tree. "Cut right through the middle, too--so that you could hardly tell
whether they were spoons or forks."
"What could be better for ice-cream or salad?" asked Jane, who was
blooming forth as an authority on matters social. She sometimes assisted
her mother on these Saturday mornings--under close supervision.
"And three kinds of wineglasses," observed her mother, with some
disapproval. "Sort of showy, I thought. Kind of as if they wanted to
impress us, and let us see what--No!" she cried, as a figure came up the
front walk, carrying a tray fastened in front. "No! 'Melia, tell him we
don't want any suspenders or collar-buttons; we don't wear them."
"Showy!" called Jane. "My sakes! it was the plainest thing, I ever saw at
their house. If you could see _some_ of their doings!"
Eliza Marshall set back the candelabrum and transferred her attention to
a Rock of Ages in Parian marble. "I believe things get dirtier here every
year. I'm sure more dust comes in at that window than goes out." Then:
"Well, I don't see but what we're as good as anybody else; I don't see
but what we are as well worth taking pains for." She ran her cloth
resentfully between the arms of Faith and the arms of the cross.
"Oh, dear me suz!" cried Jane; "are you trying to get the poor woman both
ways? Her dinner was just right, and I am sure she took every possible
pains to have it so."
"What?" called her mother, craning her neck and contorting her features.
A locomotive was letting off steam opposite the house, and the noise and
the vapor came across the hundred yards of dead grass together.
"I say it was all right," shouted Jane. "Don't you suppose she knows how
to--Dear me! what's the use of trying to talk here?" She fell on the
mantel-piece and dusted its vases in silent desperation.
Her mother accepted this dictum as final--a proof of Jane's altered
status, and of the discretion with which she was carrying herself. "Of
course I am not a society girl," was the way Jane turned the matter over
in her own head; "I am a benevolent old maid, with a capacity for society
when occasion offers." Jane had kept this point distinctly in view, and
had now extricated herself from the squeezed and anomalous position
which, for the last few years, she had occupied between her two sisters.
"Alice thinks she knows everything, just because she's married," Jane
had said to herself a year back; "and Rosy thinks she knows everything
just because--well, I'm sure I can't exactly tell why.
"But anyhow, between the two, I'm being pretty well flattened out. I've
got to do _something_." And she had.
Jane, running on the new track she had laid down for herself, had
regained the consideration of Alice, and had even conquered the respect
of Rosy. Indeed, so far had she triumphed with her younger sister that
Rosy was even showing civility and goodwill to Theodore Brower, whose
regard for Jane had brought about his social rehabilitation. "I wonder
why he never cut his beard to a point before," Rosy said one day; "he
looks ever so much better. And I see that he has finally provided himself
with calling-cards. Well, if he leaves one behind every time he comes, we
shall soon have a fine litter."
"He won't, though," said Jane, "except when he calls on you."
"Well, he may call on me if he chooses," responded Rosy, with a gracious
condescension. "I'm sure he talks very sensibly."
"Never fear," retorted Jane; "he isn't competing with the British
aristocracy!"
Then Rosy would go up-stairs for a bit of pen-and-ink practice--to cover
a sheet with such words as these: Lady Rosamund This-or-that; Rosamund,
Countess of Thus-and-so; the Honourable Rosamund Such-a-one. She lingered
fondly over the baptismal "Rosamund"; what word could match more fitly
with a title, or harmonize more completely with the grand old names
of the peerage? Once she wrote on the extreme lower corner of the sheet:
Mrs. W. F. Bates. "Oh, pshaw!" she exclaimed, and tore the corner off and
threw it into the fire.
The locomotive had relieved itself, and no noise remained save the
jangling of a long line of freight-cars on another track. "Those people
who repaired the carriage," resumed Eliza Marshall, now beginning on one
of her Dresden figures--"those people who repaired the carriage spoke to
your father about--'Melia, shoo that tramp out of the side yard; of
_course_ we haven't got anything for him this time of day. They spoke to
your father about--"
She paused, and began to bestow an exaggerated care upon the figure now
under her hands--a dancing-girl of Seville. Jane paused in her own work
and waited for the rest. "Well?" she asked, presently.
Her mother wiped the head of the dancing-girl very carefully. The girl
had black hair parted in the middle and laid in two wide scallops over
her ears. "They told your father they were looking for a site to build a
new warehouse on."