Part 5

And the treasurer was to have no voice in this, her own especial branch of service! No wonder Mrs. Grindstone’s spirit rose! Old Mrs. Bennett, breaking in upon the conversation to read aloud an obituary notice striking her fancy, effected a happy diversion.

From that date Mrs. Stratton, absorbed in her own ambitious plans for a feast to the English author that should be described in the local prints, and perchance quoted in metropolitan news columns, saw but little of her two friends. It was observed by some lookers-on that Cornelia Bennett was seen moving about the streets with animation, paying frequent visits to the new caterer, Simonson, and preserving withal an air of pleasing mystery. Other people saw good Mrs. Grindstone going hither and thither in much the same way. And putting two and two together, Sutphen decided that there was to be at least a “chicken salad and oyster spread” in store for the members of the Literary Club, following the appearance on their platform of the great man, Timothy Bludgeon. The unliterary portion of Sutphen licked its chops at the suggestion!

But a week before the appointed time, out came a genuine surprise. Two sets of cards were issued simultaneously. One from Mrs. and Miss Bennett, inviting their friends to meet Mr. Bludgeon at luncheon on the fifteenth; the other stating that Mr. and Mrs. Grindstone would be “At Home” on the evening of the same day, at half-past ten o’clock, with the additional words, “To meet Mr. Bludgeon” inscribed across the tops!

Where now was the wind to fill Mrs. Stratton’s sails? In vain might she whistle for it, when her lion was due to roar at two banquets besides her own in the self-same day. And worse than all, Cornelia Bennett, in undertaking to give this ridiculous luncheon of hers, would actually take precedence in point of time of Mrs. Chauncey Stratton! Of course the affair would be a sad failure. Cornelia knew little, her mother less, of the customs of entertaining in modern society. Theirs would be homely doings. Turkey with cranberry sauce, for example; jellies in tall glasses set around a china _compotier_ of floating island; cakes, big and little. No lobster _farcie_, no mushroom on toast, French chops, birds, tongue in aspic, salads, ices--such as Mrs. Stratton would have ordered. Mrs. Grindstone’s festivity would be--equally, of course--on the same old-fashioned lines. Oyster stews and molds of ice-cream, the predominating element of the table. A smell of fried oysters enveloping all. Oh! Annetta well knew the sort of thing to expect. She pitied poor Mr. Bludgeon for falling into the hands of these stupid, pushing women, who were not satisfied to sit still and see her take the field of Sutphen’s hospitality to distinguished strangers. One thought occurred to her, to fill Annetta’s soul with consolation! The weak spot in Sutphen’s domestic panoply, as known to all Sutphen’s housekeepers, was the general prevalence of plain white or old willow-pattern china on the shelves. Most of Sutphen’s lords and masters preferred these varieties of porcelain, and had set their feet down upon any suggestion of change. Strange to say, even the amenable Mr. Chauncey Stratton had once asserted himself so far as to declare he preferred to eat his meals from the dishes he had been accustomed to ever since his wife and he had set up housekeeping. This was the crumpled roseleaf in Mrs. Chauncey Stratton’s couch of down. That her set of white porcelain rejoiced in gilded edges, while those of other people were plain, gave her but limited satisfaction. For two years she had been bending every energy of her mind toward securing a set of Royal Meissen--“onion pattern”--that she had seen in a famous shop in New York. For two years Mr. Chauncey Stratton had resisted her. His attitude was to be accounted for only by the saying of old Mrs. Bennett, “The very best and most biddable of husbands has his obstinate spot, my dear; and when a woman runs afoul of it, she might as well give up.”

Of late, coincidently with the threatened dinner to Mr. Timothy Bludgeon, Mrs. Stratton had seen a ray of light pierce the darkness surrounding this question of china for the table. In investigating the resources of Simonson, the New York _restaurateur_, her eyes had sparkled at the discovery in the rear of his premises of an entire service of “onion pattern” Meissen--or at least a good imitation of that desired original.

What an opportunity was here to deck out her board with an “effect” in porcelain of the latter-day style she aspired to introduce into Sutphen.

Little by little, the wily caterer had induced her to trust the whole thing into his hands. In cases where Simonson undertook to serve the feast throughout, it was his custom, he said, to supply also the table service, china, silver, dishes, candelabra, rose-colored candles with shades to match, side-dishes for bonbons--all. Under these conditions he guaranteed that Mrs. Stratton’s dinner should be the finest ever seen in Sutphen. And thus it came to pass that with a heart lightened of responsibility, but weighted with some apprehension as to the amount of the final bill, Mrs. Stratton had tripped away from Simonson’s. Her last word, an afterthought upon the sidewalk, which she returned to the shop to deliver, was to enjoin upon the glib caterer absolute silence regarding every detail of her arrangements.

When the day arrived that was to see the triplicated entertainment of the Englishman, Sutphen was at fever-heat. So much had popular imagination expected of the object of all these cares, it was a distinct disappointment when a solemn little black-a-vised man carrying an American “dress-suit” case, stepped out of the omnibus of the Dixon House and requested of the clerk of that hostelry one of his one-dollar rooms. Barring a further demand for hot water in a jug--which the bell boy took to indicate some intention toward a private brew of punch--there was nothing to distinguish the great genius from an ordinary commercial traveler. Some enterprising spirits who had been hanging around the hotel corridor to see this arrival, went home and confided to wives and daughters their opinion that Mr. Bludgeon had better be read than seen. And these ladies who for days had been conning well-thumbed volumes of his writings sighed the sigh of discomfiture--feeling rather glad, however, that certain entertainers who were at that moment yearning for his arrival, were destined to share their disillusionment. Just before the arrival of her twelve guests for luncheon, Miss Bennett received a hasty note from Mrs. Stratton, expressing deepest regret that her fatigue resulting from necessary cares of state and home (of which naturally there was no one to relieve _her_) would prevent her from being present.

“‘A positively raging headache,’ she says,” remarked Cornelia, compressing her lips. “Never mind, mother; I don’t care. I’ll send right over and fill up with little Miss James, the elocution teacher. She is pretty and clever, and can talk up to Annetta any day, if she only gets the chance. And if you’ll believe _me_, mother, it’s not so much headache the matter with Annetta as vexation because I’m to skim the cream off the milk pan first. Good gracious! I’m tired to death myself, but I’d rather die than give up now.”

Curiosity among Miss Bennett’s _invités_ was fully sated when, upon the arrival of the guest of honor, luncheon was at once announced, and they filed into the well-remembered dining-room, where they had of old partaken of feasts of the frizzled beef and scrambled egg description. Here, _mirabile dictu!_ was a board set out in modern conventional fashion--a silver wine-cooler full of roses in the center, silver dishlets holding salted almonds, bonbons and little cakes around it; at each cover a name card, napkin, glass for claret, another for sauterne, and still another for sherry, setting off a plate of blue Meissen porcelain!

So far Mr. Bludgeon had said little beside “hum!” and “ha!” He had devoured his bread and bouillon in silence, and had drank a glass of white wine; but now he bestowed upon the listening public his first connected utterance:

“Hum! ha! very fair imitation,” he said to his hostess, turning his plate upside down to gaze upon the trade-mark on the bottom. “We use this kind of thing in our own house for every day. Perhaps you knew--but it may be only chance--that this is my favorite pattern in china. Looks clean and tidy somehow, so I tell my wife.”

Sustained by this mark of approval, Miss Bennett inwardly blessed Simonson, who, looking unconscious in an evening dress suit, was occupied at the side table, in dispensing platters of fish croquettes to his two subordinates to serve. She only wished that Annetta Stratton might have been near enough to hear. The rest of the meal, whisked along expeditiously by the trained minions, went so fast, that Miss Bennett could hardly believe her good luck when all was over. True to the instincts of more artless days, she had some thoughts of putting on her bonnet and running out to talk it over with Annetta. But her feet ached, her dress felt too tight, her mother was fretting over the loss of both pairs of spectacles, Simonson’s men were overrunning everything, Mr. Bludgeon had gone away without more than the scantest recognition of her personality--so she went up to her bedroom and had a hearty, nervous cry.

In the Lyceum Hall that afternoon, where the literary club met at 4 P.M. for the “lecture,” everybody was buzzing over the reports of the Bennetts’ swell luncheon. Mrs. Chauncey Stratton, who had insisted upon calling at the Dixon House to fetch Mr. Bludgeon to the hall in her own carriage, did not arrive till too late to hear the gossip. Just before the solemn little man stepped upon the platform, the great lady of Sutphen passed up the middle aisle, wearing a bonnet with plumes turning to all points of the compass, a trailing skirt of rich satin, a jet cuirass, and a large bouquet of violets in the bosom of her gown. Smiling, nodding on all sides with conscious pride, this patron of letters took her seat beside Mrs. Mark Grindstone.

“Seems to me you’ve ‘picked up’ since lunch time,” observed that lady, in her customary muffled tones.

“I _do_ feel better,” said Mrs. Stratton, unable to cease bowing, although in conversation with her friend. “So you were at poor Cornelia’s little affair? Do tell me how it went off.”

“Six courses--three wines--the whole thing served by Simonson--couldn’t have been better done,” answered Mrs. Grindstone, lightly.

“Simonson?” The shot had gone home.

“Mr. Bludgeon was most agreeable. He particularly noticed the table service, and seemed so pleased,” went on Mrs. Grindstone, who had a long score to settle. “But hush! Here he comes. What do you suppose he is going to read?”

“Didn’t you see the program?” asked Annetta in a chilly tone. “It was settled with me, by letter. In fact I selected the extracts from his own works, and it will be sure to be satisfactory to all.”

We pass over the somewhat subduing effect upon a large mixed audience, alien to him by birth and training, of the Englishman’s recital of his own gems of thought. The usual frost accompanying this species of entertainment was deepened while his tragic scenes and interludes were rehearsed successively. Some members of the Club were rash enough to whisper between themselves that the entertainment wasn’t worth the appropriation from their treasury required to meet its cost.

During the “tea” with introductions, that followed, Mrs. Stratton again rose to the occasion. As the fairy godmother of Genius she was immense. But Genius remained from first to last unsmiling. Life was real, life was earnest to him during that episode of American homage.

Seated at Mrs. Stratton’s right hand, at dinner in her pleasant dining-room, Mr. Bludgeon, in evening dress, unfolding his napkin, looked almost amiable. When he caught sight of the soup plate succeeding the one on which his oysters had been served, his face actually expanded into a smile.

“Very nice, very nice, upon my word,” he said, indicating the object before him with a condescending wave of his hand. “I had always been told you Americans do things in very lavish style, but, this, really, is more than I could have expected, don’t you know?”

Annetta was radiant, although she could not exactly understand why her guest’s gratitude for courtesy extended took this form. Evidently Simonson’s china, silver, roses, bonbons, decorations, were on a scale surpassing anything in Bludgeon’s previous experience of America. She felt she could afford then and there to forgive Cornelia Bennett for having had Simonson for lunch.

The dinner, rather a weight upon the Sutphenites, dragged heavily along, but it ended at last, and after coffee and cigars (Simonson’s cigars!) the gentlemen rejoined the ladies in the drawing-room.

“I am sorry to say,” explained Mrs. Stratton to her guest-in-chief, “that as we in Sutphen keep rather early hours, the reception given for you at my friend Mrs. Grindstone’s will have already begun. Mr. and Mrs. Grindstone left some time ago, with apologies to you. It is too bad that we should have to deprive ourselves of you; but I hope you will not quite forget our home and our little efforts to be agreeable.”

“No, I shall not, by George,” exclaimed the author, who had become a trifle more relaxed; “and when I tell them at home about it, they will hardly believe me, don’t you know!”

This put the apex upon Mrs. Stratton’s pyramid of joy. In her own carriage, the author seated beside her, facing her husband and Cornelia Bennett, they drove to Mrs. Grindstone’s house on the outskirts of the town.

The most novel revelation of Mrs. Grindstone’s party, at first sight, was that all the gas jets in the house were lighted and blazing--reckless of the monthly gas bill. This was something unprecedented, as also the cloak-room (Simonson’s invention), the white-capped maids (Simonson’s), and the four pieces of music hidden by Simonson in a bower of palms on the stairway. Only the familiar stooping figure of old Mr. Grindstone in his worn frock coat with a large new white silk tie, brought the public to a realizing sense of where they were. If Simonson could have tucked away the host into the hall closet, along with superfluous wraps, umbrellas, and old overshoes, that functuary would have been very much relieved.

Mrs. Grindstone, on the contrary, who might always be reckoned upon to come out strong in the matter of finery, wore a brave new gown of black silk and net, upon which had been let loose a whole collection of green beaded butterflies. The splendor of this reality at once effaced the tradition of the velvet cloak. Mrs. Grindstone’s flaxen gray hair strained to the summit of her head, was there surmounted by an aigrette of green feathers, caught by a diamond brooch. Directly she saw her, Mrs. Stratton knew why her friend had hurried home at the conclusion of the dinner. Mrs. Grindstone had not been willing to expend the first blush of success of such a toilette upon another woman’s entertainment.

“Isn’t she splendid?” whispered Cornelia. “No such dressing has ever been seen in Sutphen, in my time.”

“If I didn’t feel sure Mr. Bludgeon would think it overdone,” said Annetta, shrugging.

But she was herself impressed, and greatly. The revolt of Cornelia and Mrs. Grindstone from her rule; their blossoming forth with all this magnificence of a day; the fact that they would henceforth stand side by side with _her_ in the reminiscences of how Sutphen welcomed Mr. Timothy Bludgeon to its Literary bosom, made Annetta smart. The one consoling thought was that Mr. Bludgeon had told her his people at home would not believe him when he described to them her dinner.

“Now for the fried oysters and ice cream,” thought Mrs. Chauncey Stratton when, later on, old Mr. Grindstone offered his arm to her to follow Mrs. Grindstone and Mr. Bludgeon into supper.

Here a new surprise--one greater than all the rest--awaited her. Little tables, an innovation undreamt of in simple Sutphen, were dotting the whole room. At the chief one of these, the two leading couples, flanked by Cornelia Bennett and Major Gooch, were placed. In a trice, that indefatigable Simonson had begun the service of a supper in courses, closely resembling Miss Cornelia Bennett’s lunch.

Annetta could have cried with annoyance. Not only were the dishes, the silver, the candelabra, and all the rest, just what had twice already that day appeared before the Englishman--but the china--the imitation “onion pattern”--was identically the same.

Mr. Bludgeon, when this latter fact became manifest to his observation, smiled for the second time in Sutphen. It was not, at best, a gay, hilarious, or even a complaisant smile; but a reluctant smile of flattered vanity impossible to mistake. Presently, when they called upon him for a speech, he arose holding in his hand a glass of Simonson’s (American) champagne. What he said, preliminary to the gist of his remarks, Mrs. Stratton hardly understood. Her brain was tingling with vexation, she even snapped at Cornelia in an undertone, and fairly turned the cold shoulder on Mrs. Grindstone. When she could at last control herself sufficiently to be able to listen, the author had reached the climax of his sentences, and Mrs. Stratton was rewarded for all her labors in behalf of the Literary Club, by hearing this:

“Before I came to this country,” said the solemn little man, “I may have had doubts about American hospitality. Since visiting Sutphen especially, I have none remaining. You are the most gracious hosts in the world. As an instance of this fact, I shall always cite my unparalleled experience to-day. At the luncheon of your Secretary, the amiable lady who sits at the table with me here, pleased me with her china service; I happened to tell her it reminded me of home. What was my surprise and gratification to find that your accomplished President, at whose house I was dining a few hours later on--to whom no doubt my remark had been repeated--had at such very short notice managed to duplicate the set of china I had commended. And now, again, what can I say? Words indeed fail me, when at the hospitable board of your admirable Treasurer, I find a third set of my favorite porcelain. The resources of you Americans really do surprise me. Such a compliment, so conceived, so carried out, has never been paid to me, before. Need I say that it goes to my inmost--”

Mr. Bludgeon stopped. He had heard a giggle of hilarity that could no longer be repressed. The company, among whom Simonson and his belongings had of course been under free discussion ever since they had sat down to the tables, fairly exploded with delight.

Mr. Bludgeon hemmed, hawed, colored--finally took his seat. Mrs. Stratton hastily left the room. Mrs. Grindstone and Miss Bennett, sat on, mute, unrevealing as two Sphinxes--but evidently not offended beyond hope of recovery.

* * * * *

Some time after Mr. Bludgeon’s visit to Sutphen had begun to pass into tradition, poor Simonson’s establishment in Main Street was shut up. He had dragged along for some time; but, lacking customers, finally decided to pack up his onion-pattern china, and the rest, and had emigrated to a more promising field for a caterer’s operations. The day of his great success had proved his Waterloo.

* * * * *

Mrs. Grindstone is now the President of the Sutphen Literary Club--_vice_ Mrs. Chauncey Stratton resigned and gone abroad. Miss Bennett is still the Secretary. Mr. Grindstone’s gas bills remain reasonably low.

LEANDER OF BETSY’S PRIDE

LEANDER OF BETSY’S PRIDE

The close of a long, bright summer’s day at one of the Virginian watering-places found a little party of young people, most of them from the North, importuning jolly old Dick Ross (an offspring of the soil, and imbued with its traditions as an orange-flower is with scent) to tell them “stories.”

Ross, a tall, high-stepping, grizzled veteran, who had come out of the civil strife a Brigadier-General of Confederate Volunteers, and the hero of a hundred daring adventures about which he kept close as an oyster, was considered by the bevy who now surrounded him the best boon of their visit to the South. But for General Ross it had been passing dull at the staid old mountain spa, whither their respective families had journeyed for health and pleasure. Evening after evening, after they had danced together in the moldering old drawing-room, or played cards around a rickety table, seated in shabby chairs of defaced mahogany with ancient haircloth seats, or yawned because there was nothing else to do, the apparition of the General’s lean figure strolling into their hall of pleasures had been hailed with delight. Through him the visitors had become familiar with habits, customs, and incidents of a bygone generation, in a community as foreign to their own modes of thought as if it had been geographically remote, like Russia or the golden India. And on his side Ross never realized what a tremendously old fogy he had become till he saw the impersonal nature of the approval expressed of him and his narrations in the eyes of that pretty Puritan, little Miss Eunice Hall of Boston.

She was a scion of a famous abolition tree. Her progenitors had fought to the death against Ross and his fellow-Virginians, and had triumphed loftily over the eternal downfall of the slave aristocracy in the crash of war. True, her brother Angus, named for the sturdy representative of their line who had done most mischief to the South, showed but a homeopathically diluted remnant of his ancestor’s spirit in this respect. He had but a dim general idea of the part his grandsire had played in the Senate of the United States before the war, and was rather bored when accosted about it by strangers. He was more interested in his yacht, in golf, and in University boat-races than in musty discussions and wrangles about the right of men to hold their brother men enslaved.

Eunice was different. Lately, since she had come to womanhood, it had been her “fad” to unearth every item concerning this mighty question that had rent asunder for a time the great country she revered. Since her mamma had elected to take a cure at a placid Virginian watering-place Eunice had found several good opportunities to prosecute her researches--but none, on the whole, as satisfactory as those afforded by General Richard Ross.

The old bachelor had been absent for a few days, having ridden away astride of a pair of venerable saddle-bags on a fiery, half-broken colt to visit some kinsfolks of whom he vaguely spoke as residing “up in the country.” Now, on his return to the “Old Blue,” as these springs were generically termed, General Ross consumed a hasty supper, endued himself in a suit of spotless white duck, brushed his back hair well to the front, and stepped into the parlor, where he knew the young ladies were to be found. He was received as a hero come home from the wars.

“We have stagnated since you left,” said Louisa Stapleton of New York. “While Eunice filled up her note-book with yarns of your skirmishing, there has been nothing for the rest of us to do.”

“I am too much honored,” said the General, bowing to Miss Hall, hand on heart. “But have there been no new arrivals, no younger men to push me into the background?”

“Only one newcomer,” said Eunice, making place for him on a rusty sofa.

“And he a foreigner, ailing and married,” added Louisa, disdainfully. “Who but Eunice would have looked twice at that old fossil with one foot in the grave?”