Part 17 (1/2)

Having settled Ruby's age and asked Eloise hers, and told her she looked young for nineteen, the good woman branched off upon the grandeur of the Crompton House, with its pictures and statuary and bric-a-brac, its flowers and fountains, and rustic arbors and seats scattered over the lawn. Eloise had heard something of the place from a school friend, but never had it been so graphically described as by Mrs. Biggs, and she listened with a feeling that in the chamber of her childhood's memory a picture of this place had been hung by somebody.

”Was it my father?” she asked herself, and answered decidedly, ”No,” as she recalled the little intercourse she had ever had with him. ”Was it my mother?” she next asked herself, and involuntarily her tears started as she thought of her mother, and how unlikely it was that she had ever been in Crompton.

Turning her head aside to hide her tears from Mrs. Biggs, she said, ”Tell me more of the place. It almost seems as if I had been there.”

Thus encouraged, Mrs. Biggs began a description of the lawn party which she was too young to remember, although she was there with her mother, and had a faint recollection of music and candy and lights in the trees, and an attack of colic the night after as a result of overeating.

”But, my land!” she said, ”that was nothin' to the blow-out on Amy's sixteenth birthday. The Colonel had kep' her pretty close after he took her from school. She had a governess and she had a maid, but I must say she didn't seem an atom set up, and was just as nice when she met us girls. 'h.e.l.lo, Betsey,' she'd say to me. That's my name, Betsey, but I call myself 'Lisbeth. 'h.e.l.lo, Betsey,' I can hear her now, as she cantered past on her pony, in her long blue ridin' habit. Sometimes she'd come to the school-house and set on the gra.s.s under the apple trees and chew gum with us girls. That was before her party, which beat anything that was ever seen in Crompton, or will be again. The avenue and yard and stables were full of carriages, and there were eighteen waiters besides the _canterer_ from Boston.”

”The what?” Eloise asked, and Mrs. Biggs replied, ”The _canterer_, don't you know, the man who sees to things and brings the vittles and his waiters. They say he alone cost the Colonel five hundred dollars; but, my land! that's no more for him than five dollars is for me. He fairly swims in money. Such dresses you never seen as there was there that night, and such bare necks and arms, with a man at the door, a man at the head of the stairs to tell 'em where to go, and one in the gentlemen's room, and two girls in the ladies' rooms to b.u.t.ton their gloves and put on their dancing pumps. The carousin' lasted till daylight, and a tireder, more worn-out lot of folks than we was you never seen. I was nearly dead.”

”Were you there?' Eloise asked, with a feeling that there was some incongruity between the Crompton party and Mrs. Biggs, who did not care to say that she was one of the waitresses who b.u.t.toned gloves and put on the dancing pumps in the dressing-room.

”Why, yes, I was there,” she said at last, ”though I wasn't exactly in the doin's. I've never danced since I was dipped and jined the church.

Do you dance, or be you a perfessor?”

Eloise had to admit that she did dance and was not a professor, although she hoped to be soon.

”What persuasion?” was Mrs. Biggs's next question, and Eloise replied, ”I was baptized in the Episcopal Church in Rome.”

”The one in York State, I s'pose, and not t'other one across the seas?”

Mrs. Biggs suggested, and Eloise answered, ”Yes, the one across the seas in Italy.”

”For goodness' sake! How you talk! You don't mean you was born there?”

Mrs. Biggs exclaimed, with a feeling of added respect for one who was actually born across the seas. ”Do you remember it, and did you know the Pope and the King?”

Eloise said she did not remember being born, nor did she know the Pope or the King.

”I was a little girl when I left Italy, and do not remember much, except that I was happier there than I have ever been since.”

”I want to know! I s'pose you've had trouble in your family?” was Mrs.

Biggs's quick rejoinder, as she scented some private history which she meant to find out.

But beyond the fact that her father was dead and her mother in California, she could learn nothing from Eloise, and returned to the point from which they had drifted to the Episcopal Church in Rome.

”I kinder mistrusted you was a 'Piscopal. I do' know why, but I can most always tell 'em,” she said. ”The Cromptons is all that way of thinkin'.

Old Colonel is a vestedman, I b'lieve they call 'em, but he swears offul. I don't call that religion; do you? But folks ain't alike. I don't s'pose the Church is to blame. There's now and then as good a 'Piscopal as you'll find anywhere. Ruby Ann has jined 'em, and goes it strong. B'lieves in candles and vestures; got Tim into the choir one Sunday, and now you can't keep him out of it. Wears a--a--I don't know what you call it,--something that looks like a short night-gown, and I have to wash it every other week. I don't mind that, and I do b'lieve Tim is more of a man than he was, and he sings beautiful. And hain't learnt nothin' bad there yet, but the minister does some things I don't approve; no, don't approve. What do you think he does right before folks, in plain sight, sittin' on the piazza?”

Eloise could not hazard a guess as to the terrible sin of which Mr.

Mason, the rector of St. John's, was guilty, and said so.

”Well,” and Mrs. Biggs's voice sank to a whisper as she leaned forward, ”_he smokes a cigar in broad daylight_! What do you think of that for a minister of the gospel?”

She was so much in earnest, and her manner so dramatic, that Eloise laughed the first real, hearty laugh she had indulged in since she came to Crompton. Smoking might be objectionable, but it did not seem to her the most heinous crime in the world, and she had a very vivid remembrance of a coat in which there lurked the odor of many Havanas, and to which she had clung desperately in the darkness and rain on the night which seemed to her years ago. She did not, however, express any opinion with regard to the Rev. Arthur Mason's habits, or feel especially interested in him. But Mrs. Biggs was, and once launched on the subject, she told Eloise that he was from the South, and had not been long in the place; that he was unmarried, and all the girls were after him, Ruby Ann with the rest, and she at least half a dozen years older.

”But, land's sake! What does that count with an old maid when a young minister is in the market,” she said, adding that, with the exception of smoking, she believed the new minister was a good man, though for some reason Col. Crompton did not like him, and had only been to church once since he came, and wouldn't let Miss Amy go either.