A DINNER OF SILENCES
The dinner was late, because Uncle Zack, wishing to make an everlasting
impression upon these neighbors of more moderate circumstances, had
spurred the cook to the limit of her capacity. So family and guests were
scattered about the porch, conversationally distrait as people are wont
to be while momentarily expecting the servant's announcement.
Nancy, in whose toilette discerning eyes would have seen a generous
share of Ann and Jane, was talking to the Colonel; who, in his turn, was
making her position of honor guest less trying than she had pictured it
during that long day of suspense.
Brent, terribly in the blues, sat at the extreme end of the porch,
pretending to read the morning paper which had come in that afternoon's
rural mail. Jane and Ann were near by, and Jane was noticeably quiet.
Bob, having in mind his tobacco crop, called to the reader:
"What's the weather prediction for this section, old scout?"
The engineer sighed and let his eyes travel to Jane who was gazing in
moody silence out at the tangle of trees and vines. Turning again to the
paper, and with much rustling of the pages, he made a pretense of
reading:
"The high barometric pressure and lovely sunshine generally spreading
over central and southeastern Kentucky is showing no disposition to move
in the direction of Arden. Forecast for the next twenty-four hours:
great humility, and low, angry clouds, accompanied by moisture in the
eyes and a crackling drought under the fourth left rib. Here," he handed
the paper to Bob, and sent another questioning glance at Jane, "read it
for yourself. I'm going in before the storm bursts!"
Bob looked after him, and then his surprised eyes sought Ann; but that
young matron answered with a comprehensive smile, whereupon he sank
comfortably behind the pages. Ann might have smiled again had she
followed Brent to the dining-room, and there watched him change two
place-cards.
Thus it chanced that Jane found herself seated next to him, and, having
arranged the place-cards herself, understood exactly how it came about.
The situation was decidedly awkward, and she came very near wishing
their quarrel might have been postponed a few hours; especially as she
realized that her other side was flanked by the Colonel, with Nancy on
his right--a condition positively closing any hope of attention from
this kind-hearted host. In a few minutes she was driven to seek refuge
across the table in Dale; but Ann--having made a shrewd, though by no
means accurate, diagnosis of the situation--determinedly held the
mountaineer in leash. She then turned to Bob, but he had become
engrossed with a neighbor on the subject of crops. Miss Liz was next
sounded, but that lady, frivolously entangled with various occupations,
proved hopeless. Finally, she tried eating, but the silence of her plate
became utterly intolerable. Brent had been waiting for this.
"It's no use," he softly told her. "Suppose we make up!"
She might not have heard him.
"Don't you think it is inconsiderate to our host, and the others?" he
asked. "They're sure to notice it!"
Silence.
"I didn't mean to offend you;--I was just bowled over, that's the simple
truth!"
He might have been talking to an empty room.
"You've been so much like a sister to me," he ventured again, "that I
didn't stop to think; and only--only acted on the very same impulse I
would if you actually were my sister!" (Oh, Brent, you unconscionable
liar!)
Still there was silence.
"Let's count," he suggested. "It won't be talking, and, at least, will
deceive the table."
Silence.
"We might say the Lord's Prayer! That's certainly proper, and you can
leave out 'as we forgive others.'"
In spite of herself the faintest shadow of a smile touched her lips, but
their silence was absolute.
"Or we might try Mother Goose," again came the pleading voice. "We
needn't speak after tonight--rather after this dinner. We can't, in
fact, if I'm going home tomorrow! Shouldn't we make some effort to keep
from spoiling the others' good time?"
Going home tomorrow? She had not heard of that! What would become of the
railroad? What would become--but nothing mattered except the railroad!
Was he acute enough to reason that he could move her by this threat, she
wondered? And if he were, and if she yielded, would he not use it as a
weapon for future forgivenesses, when he might again be taking her for
his sister--something which he did not possess? This idea sealed her
determination. Yet, on second thought she relented--oh, it could
scarcely be called relenting--just a wee bit and, still looking
steadfastly down at her plate, in a monotonous voice, said:
"Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard."
"Fine!" he laughed, but she quietly interrupted him:
"Nothing but Mother Goose--and, after this evening, nothing, ever!"
He drew a wry face, murmuring:
"Little Jack Sprite is very contrite, and wants to make up with his
lady!"
She puzzled a moment over Little Jack Sprite. It did not seem quite
relevant to the nursery classic which, only a few years back, she had
read many times to Bip.
"That isn't Mother Goose," she finally stated. "I shan't do this any
more."
"But it is," he protested, "and I'll show it to you in the book! They
were reading Mother Goose to me long after you lost interest in it."
There was no rise to this, and he cautiously added:
"My poor brain, while ages older, has never developed up to yours. Do
you know any rhymes, at all?"
Silence.
She looked again at Dale and found him listening to Ann. Again the
Colonel proved unpromising. One slight remark was entirely lost on
someone else, and Miss Liz offered more remote possibilities than
before. After the situation recommenced its torture, rather wearily she
said to her plate:
"Hey, diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the
moon."
"I love that one," he whispered, and, taking up her meter, continued:
"The little dog howled, and the pretty girl scowled, but promised to
make up soon! That's the second verse."
Another silence, but not so prolonged, when her voice reached him:
"Brent, Brent, the rich man's son, broke his word and away he run!"
"Heart," he corrected. "'Broke his heart,' is the way that goes!"
The silence was desperate now, and, after he had exhausted many forms of
pleading, she simply said:
"Hark, hark, the dogs do bark, the beggars are coming to town!"
"I don't think it's nice to be so personal in our Mother Goose party,"
he reproved her. "However, if you insist--"
"But I don't insist!"
He shrugged his shoulders. "I was just going to repeat: 'There was a
little boy and a little girl lived in an alley.' Will you finish it
out?"
"I don't remember it," she said, too hurriedly to be convincing. "I'll
say this one: 'Birds of a feather flock together, and so will pigs and
swine; rats and mice will have their choice, and so will I have mine.'"
"You have a choice collection, at any rate," he grinned.
"Some verses," she explained, "were added to the very recent editions
used in my childhood."
His grin became broader. "I hoped you might come across on that before
the evening was over. Has your very recent edition the one in it about:
'Jane was saucy, Jane was pert'?"
"You're a bit shocking tonight," she said, turning to the Colonel, whose
attention was still on Nancy.
Brent waited a minute, then: "Maybe you don't remember this one in your
very recent edition: 'A hard-hearted Queen from Flat Rock, Whose anger
came as a great shock, Said: I will not speak, sir, To you for a week,
sir, So he went out and--' but I haven't had time to make the last line
fit. You ought to laugh now!"
"I wish I could."
"It's original!"
"So I judge."
"Is that open window too cool for you?"
Silence.
"Here's another out of your very recent edition," he began, when she
desperately turned to him.
"I wish you'd play fair!"
"Have you played fair?" he asked.
"I might have expected an evasion from you!"
"Don't muddy the water, please. Let's whittle on one stick at a time.
Have you played fair?"
"Of course, I have!"
"That's all I want to know."
But this reply suggested a subtle accusation which she did not like, and
she asked:
"What do you mean?"
"Only this," he leaned so that his words could not be overheard, and his
voice was tense with a strange seriousness. "You knew perfectly well
that I was hardly to blame--and, blamable as that defense may be, what I
did was done reverently. You may not know, though I'll tell you now,
that you were the most exquisite thing I have ever beheld!--absolutely
the most adorable and exquisite! You literally balanced yourself before
my eyes, you literally taunted me with words which were a challenge of
unresisting sweetness, you literally drew me, and when I came, you flew
into a rage. You call that fair? I call it grossly unfair! Take it from
me, Jane, that a girl who willfully fires a man, as Almighty God fires
the heavens in a tempest, and then springs behind her propriety to
escape, has a serious form of pyromania that'll consume her some day,
just as sure as I'm talking to you--but not before it drives a lot of
decent fellows to eternal flames!"
"You're talking like a madman!" she gasped.
"Far from it. I'm talking the most rational stuff you ever heard in all
your life! In fact, your very presence compels me to be rational."
"An enigmatic compliment," she could not help smiling. "What kind of
deliriant have you been taking tonight?"
"You!" he whispered. "Just you, who intoxicate and torture me! And as
for enigmatic compliments, I swear that you inspire me with only the
highest reverence at all times. Don't think the library episode
indicates a lack of respect! It was the very soul of reverence
speaking--though," he slowly added, "it would not have spoken in just
that way if Zack's toddy--"
"I'm beginning to hate the very word of julep and toddy," she said
passionately; and the Colonel, hearing this, turned with an amused
expression of surprise.
Ann had let Dale off her leash, and he now was making mental charges
across the table to Jane, very much as a playful puppy would physically
have done to one it wished to attract. She caught his eye and smiled,
and then saw the haunted look in his face which aroused her at once to
what was going on.
The table had centered in a general conversation, and Miss Liz, without
suspecting the sting it carried, had launched into a tirade against the
lawlessness of the mountaineers who killed and were killed with an
abandon worthy of Apaches. That he should now be so frantically
signalling, as though he knew in her would be found help, touched the
girl's responsive nature. Brent, seeing this--as he saw much that passed
about him--whispered to her:
"After all's said and done, it's a good feeling--that of being needed,
isn't it?"
"Our mountaineers are not law breakers, Lizzie," the Colonel was saying
with more than ordinary sharpness in defense of his guest--and of his
State. "They keep the law extraordinarily well."
"How can you make such a statement!" the good lady cried. "I constantly
hear of men being killed up in that wicked country!"
"It's very much exaggerated, as Brent would say," he chuckled. "At any
rate," he cleared his throat, "I refer to the common law."
Bob and Brent exchanged winks. They knew the old gentleman was getting
frightfully tangled, and were curious to see how he would work himself
out of it.
"Then I suppose you mean," her voice rang with the challenge, "that
killing people is compatible with the common law?"
"Legal hangings are," he smiled blandly. "But, what I do seriously mean
is this: the common law of a country, and therefore the common law of a
place, is merely--and nothing more than--a common custom plus the power
to change that custom. This being the case, the mountaineer of Kentucky
is within the common law of his section, providing that he kills only
within that section where it is a common custom--plus the power to
change that custom."
Miss Liz sighed. "It doesn't sound like good sense," she said, "but may
be correct. I have always thought that law is law, everywhere."
"Law is law, my dear," he gently explained to her, "until it is changed;
certainly. But it is not always good sense. Take our waterways
hereabouts! They are every one governed by the same old law of riparian
rights which we took from England, whose waterways are no more like
those in this country than threads are like ropes. And, moreover,
England's law was construed long before the dream of artificial power,
having to do merely with streams adapted to navigation. Who cared then
for a falls or rapids? Who would have been mad enough to think of
bridled electricity? So today, these falls and rapids, which are quite
out of the question for navigable purposes, but possess as great a value
in other respects to the people at large, are entirely demoralized
through the application of an antiquated law framed to deal with streams
of a totally different character. Don't you see, my dear, how fallible
may be the thing called law if it runs counter to public good? And does
it not show you that every common law must be--in order to be
sensible--a consensus of public consent? Therefore, do I maintain that
the mountaineers of our proud State, who in common consent prosecute
their own feuds in their own domain, are within the common law of that
domain. Some day, when Brent's and other railroads have poured into them
a different civilization, their environment will be changed;--there will
arise amongst them a giant to turn things upside down--as Jeremy Bentham
threw defiance to the law of diodens."
The Colonel now, having distorted a little knowledge into a great flow
of verbal pyrotechnics which hopelessly confused and downed Miss Liz,
turned back to Nancy with a satisfied smile.
"Wasn't diodens a sort of old law that confiscated anything which
destroyed life?" Brent, in an undertone, asked Jane.
It seemed a safe enough subject, and she nodded: "I think so."
"I was just wondering," he whispered, "that if this law prevailed now,
which would the State confiscate--your eyes, your mouth, the tip of your
chin, your--"
"If thoughts kill," she frowned, "my mind would be seized. I've murdered
you several times with that."
"You've murdered me several times with everything about you! I wish I
were the State!"
"State of Idiocy? Why carry coals to Newcastle?"
"To heap on your head," he laughed, "and scorch your uncharitable soul!"
"My poor lost soul," she murmured.
"Then take notice that, if finders are keepers, I'm heading a search
party."
She looked gaily up at him, for it was hard to remember that she was
angry; but quickly her face sobered.
"I forgot, and I must not forget, that you've mortally offended me."
There was something very serious in the way she said it--something
totally beyond the slightest echo of banter--that affected him. She was
looking back fearlessly into his face, and he saw the hurt in her
eyes--and he saw in her eyes that she was anxious. A certain faint and
subtle element of surprise and wonderment had passed across them, like a
cloud shadow over a sunlit field of waving grain. It thrilled him to the
very depth of his nature. For the first time in his life he was being
driven by an influence, by a storm, or what you will, which contained
not one element of self.
"For the love of God, what have you done?" he whispered, almost
accusingly in his earnestness.
"Done?" she asked, looking away from him. "You are saying queer things
tonight!"
"I am experiencing queer things tonight," his voice trembled. "May I
come tomorrow and apologize properly?"
"Apologies are futile; besides, I am going to church with Bip."
"Then the next Sunday!" he entreated. "I know you've a lot to
forgive--but I'm so terribly sorry! It hasn't murdered our friendship,
has it, Jane?"
"I--I don't know. I'm tired tonight, and maybe can't see things as I
should."
"I'm coming tomorrow, anyway, and explain," he whispered.
"No. And please promise you will never refer to this evening again!"
"Very well. And there's another promise I'll make you, too--"
But Miss Liz had arisen, and the others were pushing back their chairs,
so Jane did not hear this other promise he would have made; for she was
moving from the table with Doctor Stone, having pinned that gentleman as
they first arose with no intention of letting him leave her. He had made
one or two amateurish efforts to wait for Nancy, and now in a bewildered
sort of way wondered why he continued with this other girl against his
will. Doctor Stone's university course had not included psychodynamics
in the female species. Thus it was that he walked from the dining-room
to its carefully trimmed terrace with Jane, and thus it was that Nancy
slowly followed with the Colonel, who had filled her arms with a
gorgeous bouquet of peonies.
The honor guest's face was flushed, but it had been flushed throughout
the dinner. Never had she sat down at so well appointed a table, and
never had she openly been shown attention by one of the Colonel's social
standing. She was excited and happy; she wanted to run and dance, as a
flower-laden child might run and dance along a sun-kissed, wooded path!