I
The luncheon was at one o'clock. Not one of your club luncheons,
served in a silent, sedate mausoleum on the principal street, where
your host in the hall below enters your name in a ledger, and a
brass-be-buttoned Yellowplush precedes you upstairs into a desolate
room furnished with chairs and a round table decorated with pink
_boutonnieres_ set for six, and where you are plied with Manhattans
until the other guests arrive.
Nor yet was it one of your smart petticoat luncheons in a Fifth Avenue
mansion, where a Delmonico veteran pressed into service for the
occasion waves you upstairs to another recruit, who deposits your coat
and hat on a bed, and who later on ushers you into a room ablaze with
gaslights--midday, remember--where you and the other unfortunates are
served with English pheasants cooked in their own feathers, or
Kennebec salmon embroidered with beets and appliqued with green
mayonnaise. Not that kind of a mid-day meal at all.
On the contrary, it was served,--no, it was eaten,--reveled in, made
merry over, in an ancient house fronting on a sleepy old park filled
with live oaks and magnolias, their trunks streaked with green moss
and their branches draped with gray crape: an ancient house with a big
white door that stood wide open to welcome you,--it was December,
too,--and two verandas on either side, stretched out like welcoming
arms, their railings half hidden in clinging roses, the blossoms in
your face.
There was an old grandmother, too,--quaint as a miniature,--with
fluffy white cap and a white worsted shawl and tea-rose cheeks, and a
smile like an opening window, so sunny did it make her face. And how
delightfully she welcomed us.
I can hear even now the very tones of her voice, and feel the soft,
cool, restful touch of her hand.
And there was an old darky, black as a gum shoe, with tufts of
grizzled gray wool glued to his temples--one of those loyal old house
servants of the South who belong to a regime that is past. I watched
him from the parlor scuffling with his feet as he limped along the
wide hall to announce each new arrival (his master's old Madeira had
foundered him, they said, years before), and always reaching the
drawing-room door long after the newcomer had been welcomed by shouts
of laughter and the open arms of every one in the room: the newcomer
another girl, of course.
And this drawing-room, now I think of it, was not like any other
drawing-room that I knew. Very few things in it matched. The carpet
was a faded red, and of different shades of repair. The hangings were
of yellow silk. There were haircloth sofas, and a big fireplace, and
plenty of rocking chairs, and lounges covered with chintz of every
pattern, and softened with cushions of every hue.
At one end hung a large mirror made of squares of glass laid like
tiles in a dull gilt frame that had held it together for nearly a
century, and on the same wall, too, and all so splotched and mouldy
with age that the girls had to stoop down to pick out a pane clear
enough to straighten their bonnets by.
And on the side wall there were family portraits, and over the mantel
queer Chinese porcelains and a dingy coat-of-arms in a dingier frame,
and on every table, in all kinds of dishes, flat and square and round,
there were heaps and heaps of roses--De Vonienses, Hermosas, and
Agripinas--whose distinguished ancestors, hardy sons of the soil, came
direct from the Mayflower (This shall not happen again), and who
consequently never knew the enervating influences of a hothouse. And
there were marble busts on pedestals, and a wonderful clock on high
legs, and medallions with weeping willows of somebody's hair, besides
a miscellaneous collection of large and small bric-a-brac, the
heirlooms of five generations.
And yet, with all this mismatching of color, form, and style,--this
chronological array of fittings and furnishings, beginning with the
mouldy mirror and ending with the modern straw chair,--there was a
harmony that satisfied one's every sense.
And so restful, and helpful, and comforting, and companionable was it
all, and so accustomed was everything to be walked over, and sat on,
and kicked about; so glad to be punched out of shape if it were a
cushion which you needed for some special curve in your back or twist
of your head; so delighted to be scratched, or slopped over, or
scarred full of holes if it were a table that could hold your books or
paste-pot or lighted pipe; so hilariously joyful to be stretched out
of shape or sagged into irredeemable bulges if it were a straw chair
that could sooth your aching bones or rest a tired muscle!
When all the girls and young fellows had arrived,--such pretty girls,
with such soft, liquid voices and captivating dialects, the one their
black mammies had taught them,--and such unconventional, happy young
fellows in all sorts of costumes from blue flannel to broadcloth,--one
in a Prince Albert coat and a straw hat in his hand, and it near
Christmas,--the old darky grew more and more restless, limping in and
out of the open door, dodging anxiously into the drawing-room and out
again, his head up like a terrapin's.
Finally he veered across to a seat by the window, and, shielding his
mouth with his wrinkled, leathery paw, bent over the old grandmother
and poured into her ear a communication of such vital import that the
dear old lady arose at once and, taking my hand, said in her low,
sweet voice that we would wait no longer for the Judge, who was
detained in court.
After this the aged Terrapin scuffled out again, reappearing almost
immediately before the door in white gloves inches too long at the
fingers. Then bowing himself backwards he preceded us into the
dining-room.
And the table was so inviting when we took our seats around it, I
sitting on the right of the grandmother--being the only stranger--and
the prettiest of all the girls next to me. And the merriment was so
contagious, and the sallies of wit so sparkling, and the table itself!
Solid mahogany, this old heirloom! rich and dark as a meerschaum, the
kind of mahogany that looked as if all the fine old Madeira and choice
port that had been drunk above it had soaked into its pores. And every
fibre of it in evidence, too, except where the silver coasters, and
the huge silver centrepiece filled with roses, and the plates and the
necessary appointments hid its shining countenance.
And the aged Terrapin evidently appreciated in full the sanctity of
this family altar, and duly realized the importance of his position as
its High Priest. Indeed, there was a gravity, a dignity, and repose
about him as he limped through his ministrations which I had noticed
in him before. If he showed any nervousness at all it was as he
glanced now and then toward the drawing-room door through which the
Judge must enter.
And yet he appeared outwardly calm, even under this strain. For had he
not provided for every emergency? Were not His Honor's viands already
at that moment on the kitchen hearth, with special plates over them to
keep them hot against his arrival?
And what a luncheon it was! The relays of fried chicken, baked sweet
potatoes, corn-bread, and mango pickles--a most extraordinary
production, I maintain, is a mango pickle!--and things baked on top
and brown, and other things baked on the bottom and creamy white.
And the fun, too, as each course appeared and disappeared only to be
followed by something more extraordinary and seductive. The men
continued to talk, and the girls never ceased laughing, and the
grandmother's eyes constantly followed the Terrapin, giving him
mysterious orders with the slightest raising of an eyelash, and we had
already reached the salad--or was it the baked ham?--when the fairy in
the pink waist next me clapped her hands and cried out:--
"Oh, you dear Judge! We waited an hour for you"--it doubtless seemed
long to her. "What in the world kept you?"
"Couldn't help it, little one," came a voice in reply; and a man with
silver-white hair, dignified bearing, and a sunny smile on his face
edged his way around the table to the grandmother, every hand held out
to him as he passed, and, bending low over the dear lady, expressed
his regrets at having been detained.
Then with an extended hand to me and, "It gives me very great pleasure
to see you in this part of the South, sir," he sat down in the vacant
chair, nodding to everybody graciously as he spread his napkin. A
moment later he leaned forward and said in explanation to the
grandmother,--
"I waited for the jury to come in. You received my message, of
course?"
"Oh, yes, dear Judge; and although we missed you we sat down at once."
"Have you been in court all day?" I asked as an introductory remark.
Of course he had if he had waited for the jury. What an extraordinary
collection of idiocies one could make if he jotted down all the stupid
things said and heard when conversations were being opened.
"Yes, I am sorry to say, trying one of those cases which are becoming
daily more common."