_ 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 visably 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 reponses 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 bigest 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!" _