It was a brave and lustrous banquet; and a noisy one, too, because there
was an orchestra among some plants at one end of the long dining-room,
and after a preliminary stiffness the guests were impelled to
converse--necessarily at the tops of their voices. The whole company
of fifty sat at a great oblong table, improvised for the occasion by
carpenters; but, not betraying itself as an improvisation, it seemed
a permanent continent of damask and lace, with shores of crystal and
silver running up to spreading groves of orchids and lilies and
white roses--an inhabited continent, evidently, for there were three
marvelous, gleaming buildings: one in the center and one at each end,
white miracles wrought by some inspired craftsman in sculptural icing.
They were models in miniature, and they represented the Sheridan
Building, the Sheridan Apartments, and the Pump Works. Nearly all the
guests recognized them without having to be told what they were, and
pronounced the likenesses superb.
The arrangement of the table was visibly baronial. At the head sat the
great Thane, with the flower of his family and of the guests about him;
then on each side came the neighbors of the “old” house, grading down to
vassals and retainers--superintendents, cashiers, heads of departments,
and the like--at the foot, where the Thane's lady took her place as a
consolation for the less important. Here, too, among the thralls and
bondmen, sat Bibbs Sheridan, a meek Banquo, wondering how anybody could
look at him and eat.
Nevertheless, there was a vast, continuous eating, for these were
wholesome folk who understood that dinner meant something intended
for introduction into the system by means of an aperture in the face,
devised by nature for that express purpose. And besides, nobody looked
at Bibbs.
He was better content to be left to himself; his voice was not strong
enough to make itself heard over the hubbub without an exhausting
effort, and the talk that went on about him was too fast and too
fragmentary for his drawl to keep pace with it. So he felt relieved when
each of his neighbors in turn, after a polite inquiry about his health,
turned to seek livelier responses in other directions. For the talk
went on with the eating, incessantly. It rose over the throbbing of the
orchestra and the clatter and clinking of silver and china and glass,
and there was a mighty babble.
“Yes, sir! Started without a dollar.”... “Yellow flounces on the
overskirt--“... “I says, 'Wilkie, your department's got to go bigger
this year,' I says.”... “Fifteen per cent. turnover in thirty-one
weeks.”... “One of the biggest men in the biggest--“... “The wife says
she'll have to let out my pants if my appetite--“... “Say, did you see
that statue of a Turk in the hall? One of the finest things I ever--“...
“Not a dollar, not a nickel, not one red cent do you get out o' me,' I
says, and so he ups and--“... “Yes, the baby makes four, they've lost
now.”... “Well, they got their raise, and they went in big.”... “Yes,
sir! Not a dollar to his name, and look at what--“... “You wait! The
population of this town's goin' to hit the million mark before she
stops.”... “Well, if you can show me a bigger deal than--”
And through the interstices of this clamoring Bibbs could hear the
continual booming of his father's heavy voice, and once he caught the
sentence, “Yes, young lady, that's just what did it for me, and that's
just what'll do it for my boys--they got to make two blades o' grass
grow where one grew before!” It was his familiar flourish, an old
story to Bibbs, and now jovially declaimed for the edification of Mary
Vertrees.
It was a great night for Sheridan--the very crest of his wave. He sat
there knowing himself Thane and master by his own endeavor; and his big,
smooth, red face grew more and more radiant with good will and with the
simplest, happiest, most boy-like vanity. He was the picture of health,
of good cheer, and of power on a holiday. He had thirty teeth, none
bought, and showed most of them when he laughed; his grizzled hair was
thick, and as unruly as a farm laborer's; his chest was deep and big
beneath its vast facade of starched white linen, where little diamonds
twinkled, circling three large pearls; his hands were stubby and strong,
and he used them freely in gestures of marked picturesqueness; and,
though he had grown fat at chin and waist and wrist, he had not lost the
look of readiness and activity.
He dominated the table, shouting jocular questions and railleries at
every one. His idea was that when people were having a good time they
were noisy; and his own additions to the hubbub increased his pleasure,
and, of course, met the warmest encouragement from his guests. Edith had
discovered that he had very foggy notions of the difference between a
band and an orchestra, and when it was made clear to him he had held out
for a band until Edith threatened tears; but the size of the orchestra
they hired consoled him, and he had now no regrets in the matter.
He kept time to the music continually--with his feet, or pounding on the
table with his fist, and sometimes with spoon or knife upon his plate
or a glass, without permitting these side-products to interfere with the
real business of eating and shouting.
“Tell 'em to play 'Nancy Lee'!” he would bellow down the length of
the table to his wife, while the musicians were in the midst of the
“Toreador” song, perhaps. “Ask that fellow if they don't know 'Nancy
Lee'!” And when the leader would shake his head apologetically in answer
to an obedient shriek from Mrs. Sheridan, the “Toreador” continuing
vehemently, Sheridan would roar half-remembered fragments of “Nancy
Lee,” naturally mingling some Bizet with the air of that uxorious
tribute.
“Oh, there she stands and waves her hands while I'm away! A sail-er's
wife a sail-er's star should be! Yo ho, oh, oh! Oh, Nancy, Nancy, Nancy
Lee! Oh, Na-hancy Lee!”
“HAY, there, old lady!” he would bellow. “Tell 'em to play 'In the
Gloaming.' In the gloaming, oh, my darling, la-la-lum-tee--Well, if they
don't know that, what's the matter with 'Larboard Watch, Ahoy'? THAT'S
good music! That's the kind o' music I like! Come on, now! Mrs. Callin,
get 'em singin' down in your part o' the table. What's the matter you
folks down there, anyway? Larboard watch, ahoy!”
“What joy he feels, as--ta-tum-dum-tee-dee-dum steals. La-a-r-board
watch, ahoy!”
No external bubbling contributed to this effervescence; the Sheridans'
table had never borne wine, and, more because of timidity about it than
conviction, it bore none now; though “mineral waters” were copiously
poured from bottles wrapped, for some reason, in napkins, and proved
wholly satisfactory to almost all of the guests. And certainly no wine
could have inspired more turbulent good spirits in the host. Not even
Bibbs was an alloy in this night's happiness, for, as Mrs. Sheridan had
said, he had “plans for Bibbs”--plans which were going to straighten out
some things that had gone wrong.
So he pounded the table and boomed his echoes of old songs, and then,
forgetting these, would renew his friendly railleries, or perhaps,
turning to Mary Vertrees, who sat near him, round the corner of the
table at his right, he would become autobiographical. Gentlemen less
naive than he had paid her that tribute, for she was a girl who inspired
the autobiographical impulse in every man who met her--it needed but the
sight of her.
The dinner seemed, somehow, to center about Mary Vertrees and the
jocund host as a play centers about its hero and heroine; they were the
rubicund king and the starry princess of this spectacle--they paid court
to each other, and everybody paid court to them. Down near the
sugar Pump Works, where Bibbs sat, there was audible speculation and
admiration. “Wonder who that lady is--makin' such a hit with the old
man.” “Must be some heiress.” “Heiress? Golly, I guess I could stand it
to marry rich, then!”
Edith and Sibyl were radiant: at first they had watched Miss Vertrees
with an almost haggard anxiety, wondering what disasterous effect
Sheridan's pastoral gaieties--and other things--would have upon her,
but she seemed delighted with everything, and with him most of all.
She treated him as if he were some delicious, foolish old joke that
she understood perfectly, laughing at him almost violently when he
bragged--probably his first experience of that kind in his life. It
enchanted him.
As he proclaimed to the table, she had “a way with her.” She had,
indeed, as Roscoe Sheridan, upon her right, discovered just after the
feast began. Since his marriage three years before, no lady had bestowed
upon him so protracted a full view of brilliant eyes; and, with the
look, his lovely neighbor said--and it was her first speech to him--
“I hope you're very susceptible, Mr. Sheridan!”
Honest Roscoe was taken aback, and “Why?” was all he managed to say.
She repeated the look deliberately, which was noted, with a
mystification equal to his own, by his sister across the table. No one,
reflected Edith, could image Mary Vertrees the sort of girl who would
“really flirt” with married men--she was obviously the “opposite of all
that.” Edith defined her as a “thoroughbred,” a “nice girl”; and the
look given to Roscoe was astounding. Roscoe's wife saw it, too, and
she was another whom it puzzled--though not because its recipient was
married.
“Because!” said Mary Vertrees, replying to Roscoe's monosyllable. “And
also because we're next-door neighbors at table, and it's dull times
ahead for both of us if we don't get along.”
Roscoe was a literal young man, all stocks and bonds, and he had been
brought up to believe that when a man married he “married and settled
down.” It was “all right,” he felt, for a man as old as his father to
pay florid compliments to as pretty a girl as this Miss Vertrees, but
for himself--“a young married man”--it wouldn't do; and it wouldn't
even be quite moral. He knew that young married people might have
friendships, like his wife's for Lamhorn; but Sibyl and Lamhorn never
“flirted”--they were always very matter-of-fact with each other. Roscoe
would have been troubled if Sibyl had ever told Lamhorn she hoped he was
susceptible.
“Yes--we're neighbors,” he said, awkwardly.
“Next-door neighbors in houses, too,” she added.
“No, not exactly. I live across the street.”
“Why, no!” she exclaimed, and seemed startled. “Your mother told me this
afternoon that you lived at home.”
“Yes, of course I live at home. I built that new house across the
street.”
“But you--” she paused, confused, and then slowly a deep color came into
her cheek. “But I understood--”
“No,” he said; “my wife and I lived with the old folks the first year,
but that's all. Edith and Jim live with them, of course.”
“I--I see,” she said, the deep color still deepening as she turned from
him and saw, written upon a card before the gentleman at her left the
name, “Mr. James Sheridan, Jr.” And from that moment Roscoe had little
enough cause for wondering what he ought to reply to her disturbing
coquetries.
Mr. James Sheridan had been anxiously waiting for the dazzling visitor
to “get through with old Roscoe,” as he thought of it, and give a
bachelor a chance. “Old Roscoe” was the younger, but he had always been
the steady wheel-horse of the family. Jim was “steady” enough, but was
considered livelier than Roscoe, which in truth is not saying much for
Jim's liveliness. As their father habitually boasted, both brothers were
“capable, hard-working young business men,” and the principal difference
between them was merely that which resulted from Jim's being still a
bachelor. Physically they were of the same type: dark of eyes and of
hair, fresh-colored and thick-set, and though Roscoe was several inches
taller than Jim, neither was of the height, breadth, or depth of the
father. Both wore young business men's mustaches, and either could have
sat for the tailor-shop lithographs of young business men wearing “rich
suitings in dark mixtures.”
Jim, approving warmly of his neighbor's profile, perceived her access of
color, which increased his approbation. “What's that old Roscoe saying
to you, Miss Vertrees?” he asked. “These young married men are mighty
forward nowadays, but you mustn't let 'em make you blush.”
“Am I blushing?” she said. “Are you sure?” And with that she gave him
ample opportunity to make sure, repeating with interest the look wasted
upon Roscoe. “I think you must be mistaken,” she continued. “I think
it's your brother who is blushing. I've thrown him into confusion.”
“How?”
She laughed, and then, leaning to him a little, said in a tone as
confidential as she could make it, under cover of the uproar. “By trying
to begin with him a courtship I meant for YOU!”
This might well be a style new to Jim; and it was. He supposed it a
nonsensical form of badinage, and yet it took his breath. He realized
that he wished what she said to be the literal truth, and he was
instantly snared by that realization.
“By George!” he said. “I guess you're the kind of girl that can say
anything--yes, and get away with it, too!”
She laughed again--in her way, so that he could not tell whether she was
laughing at him or at herself or at the nonsense she was talking; and
she said: “But you see I don't care whether I get away with it or not.
I wish you'd tell me frankly if you think I've got a chance to get away
with YOU?”
“More like if you've got a chance to get away FROM me!” Jim was inspired
to reply. “Not one in the world, especially after beginning by making
fun of me like that.”
“I mightn't be so much in fun as you think,” she said, regarding him
with sudden gravity.
“Well,” said Jim, in simple honesty, “you're a funny girl!”
Her gravity continued an instant longer. “I may not turn out to be funny
for YOU.”
“So long as you turn out to be anything at all for me, I expect I can
manage to be satisfied.” And with that, to his own surprise, it was his
turn to blush, whereupon she laughed again.
“Yes,” he said, plaintively, not wholly lacking intuition, “I can see
you're the sort of girl that would laugh the minute you see a man really
means anything!”
“'Laugh'!” she cried, gaily. “Why, it might be a matter of life and
death! But if you want tragedy, I'd better put the question at once,
considering the mistake I made with your brother.”
Jim was dazed. She seemed to be playing a little game of mockery and
nonsense with him, but he had glimpses of a flashing danger in it;
he was but too sensible of being outclassed, and had somewhere a
consciousness that he could never quite know this giddy and alluring
lady, no matter how long it pleased her to play with him. But he
mightily wanted her to keep on playing with him.
“Put what question?” he said, breathlessly.
“As you are a new neighbor of mine and of my family,” she returned,
speaking slowly and with a cross-examiner's severity, “I think it would
be well for me to know at once whether you are already walking out with
any young lady or not. Mr. Sheridan, think well! Are you spoken for?”
“Not yet,” he gasped. “Are you?”
“NO!” she cried, and with that they both laughed again; and the pastime
proceeded, increasing both in its gaiety and in its gravity.
Observing its continuance, Mr. Robert Lamhorn, opposite, turned from a
lively conversation with Edith and remarked covertly to Sibyl that Miss
Vertrees was “starting rather picturesquely with Jim.” And he added,
languidly, “Do you suppose she WOULD?”
For the moment Sibyl gave no sign of having heard him, but seemed
interested in the clasp of a long “rope” of pearls, a loop of which she
was allowing to swing from her fingers, resting her elbow upon the table
and following with her eyes the twinkle of diamonds and platinum in the
clasp at the end of the loop. She wore many jewels. She was pretty,
but hers was not the kind of prettiness to be loaded with too sumptuous
accessories, and jeweled head-dresses are dangerous--they may emphasize
the wrongness of the wearer.
“I said Miss Vertrees seems to be starting pretty strong with Jim,”
repeated Mr. Lamhorn.
“I heard you.” There was a latent discontent always somewhere in her
eyes, no matter what she threw upon the surface of cover it, and just
now she did not care to cover it; she looked sullen. “Starting any
stronger than you did with Edith?” she inquired.
“Oh, keep the peace!” he said, crossly. “That's off, of course.”
“You haven't been making her see it this evening--precisely,” said
Sibyl, looking at him steadily. “You've talked to her for--”
“For Heaven's sake,” he begged, “keep the peace!”
“Well, what have you just been doing?”
“SH!” he said. “Listen to your father-in-law.”
Sheridan was booming and braying louder than ever, the orchestra having
begun to play “The Rosary,” to his vast content.
“I COUNT THEM OVER, LA-LA-TUM-TEE-DUM,” he roared, beating the measures
with his fork. “EACH HOUR A PEARL, EACH PEARL TEE-DUM-TUM-DUM--What's
the matter with all you folks? Why'n't you SING? Miss Vertrees, I bet a
thousand dollars YOU sing! Why'n't--”
“Mr. Sheridan,” she said, turning cheerfully from the ardent Jim, “you
don't know what you interrupted! Your son isn't used to my rough ways,
and my soldier's wooing frightens him, but I think he was about to say
something important.”
“I'll say something important to him if he doesn't!” the father
threatened, more delighted with her than ever. “By gosh! if I was his
age--or a widower right NOW--”
“Oh, wait!” cried Mary. “If they'd only make less noise! I want Mrs.
Sheridan to hear.”
“She'd say the same,” he shouted. “She'd tell me I was mighty slow if I
couldn't get ahead o' Jim. Why, when I was his age--”
“You must listen to your father,” Mary interrupted, turning to Jim, who
had grown red again. “He's going to tell us how, when he was your age,
he made those two blades of grass grow out of a teacup--and you could
see for yourself he didn't get them out of his sleeve!”
At that Sheridan pounded the table till it jumped. “Look here, young
lady!” he roared. “Some o' these days I'm either goin' to slap you--or
I'm goin' to kiss you!”
Edith looked aghast; she was afraid this was indeed “too awful,” but
Mary Vertrees burst into ringing laughter.
“Both!” she cried. “Both! The one to make me forget the other!”
“But which--” he began, and then suddenly gave forth such stentorian
trumpetings of mirth that for once the whole table stopped to listen.
“Jim,” he roared, “if you don't propose to that girl to-night I'll send
you back to the machine-shop with Bibbs!”
And Bibbs--down among the retainers by the sugar Pump Works, and
watching Mary Vertrees as a ragged boy in the street might watch a rich
little girl in a garden--Bibbs heard. He heard--and he knew what his
father's plans were now.