Part 21 (1/2)

”Come with me,” I urged. I was about to walk out myself. Together we bade adieu to Miss Caroline.

But the minister's walk ended at my own door. In the cool gloom of my little library I asked him if he would be good enough to excuse me a moment, indicating the broad couch beneath the window.

”With pleasure, Major!” and he sank among the restful pillows. ”I am ashamed to say that the heat has rendered me a trifle indolent”.

When I came softly back five minutes later, he lay in deep slumber, his face cherubically innocent, his breathing soft as a babe's. He awoke freshly two hours later. He apologized for his rudeness and expressed a wish for a gla.s.s of cool water. Three of these he drank with evidences of profound relish. Then he drew his large silver watch from his pocket.

”On my word, Major, it's after six, and I shall be late for tea! I have trespa.s.sed shamefully upon you!”

”The heat was very trying,” I said.

”Quite enervating, indeed! I seem only now to be feeling its effects.”

As he walked briskly down the now cooling street, he bared his brow to the gentle breeze of evening.

To the ladies, solicitous about Miss Caroline, who called upon him a few days later, he said, ”She is a most admirable and lovely woman--not at all a person one could bring one's self to address on the painful subject of intoxicants. Had she offered me a gla.s.s of wine or other stimulant, a way might have been opened, but I am delighted to say that her hospitality went no farther than this innocent beverage.” The minister indicated on his study table a gla.s.s containing sweetened ice-water in which some leaves of mint had been submerged.

”It is called a mint julep,” he added, ”though I confess I do not get the same delicate tang from the herb that her black fellow does. As he prepared the decoction I a.s.sure you its flavor was capital!”

CHAPTER XVII

THE TRUTH ABOUT SHAKSPERE AT LAST

Miss Caroline dutifully returned the calls that were paid her, with never a suspicion that her slavery to strong drink had been the secret inspiration of them. She was not yet awake to our sentiments in this matter. She had given strong waters to the minister with a heart as innocent as their disguise of ice and leaf.a.ge had made them actually appear to that good man. And I, who was well informed, hesitated to warn her, hoping weakly that she would come to understand. For I had seen there were many things that Miss Caroline had not to be told in order to know.

For one, she had quickly divined that the ladies of Little Arcady considered her furniture to be unfortunate. She knew that they scorned it for its unstylishness; that some of them sympathized in the humiliation that such impossible stuff must be to her; while others believed that she was too unsophisticated to have any proper shame in the matter. These latter strove by every device to have her note the right thing in furniture and thus be moved to contrast it instructively with her own: as when Mrs. Judge Robinson borrowed for an afternoon Aunt Delia McCormick's best blue plush rocker, Mrs. Westley Keyts's new sofa, upholstered with gorgeous ingrain, and Mrs. Eubanks's new black walnut combination desk and bookcase with bra.s.s tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs and little spindled balconies, in which could be elegantly placed the mineral specimens picked up along the river bank, and the twin statuettes of the fluting shepherd and his inamorata. As Mrs. Judge Robinson herself possessed new and high-priced furniture, including a gold-and-onyx stand to occupy the bay window and uphold the Rogers group, ”Going for the Parson,” as well as two fragile gilt chairs, which considerate guests would not sit in but leave exposed to view, and a complete new set of black walnut, the effect that day--which included a grand smell of varnish--was nothing less than sumptuous.

The occasion was a semi-monthly meeting of the Ladies' Home Study and Culture Club, at which Miss Caroline was to be present. There had been a suspension of the Club's meetings while Mrs. Potts was in abeyance, but on this day she was to enter the world again and preside over the meeting as ”Madam President,” though the ladies sometimes forgot to call her that.

The paper read by Mrs. Potts--who was not at all ineffective in her black--was on ”The Lake Poets,” with a few pointed selections from Wordsworth and others.

Whether or not Miss Caroline was rightly impressed by the furniture exhibit was a question not easy to determine. True, she stared at it with something in her eyes beyond a mere perception of its lines; but whether this was the longing pa.s.sion of an awakened soul or the simple awe of the unenlightened was not to be ascertained at the moment.

Testimony as to her enjoyment of the President's paper was more circ.u.mstantial. In the midst of this, as the listeners were besought to ”dwell a moment on this exquisite delineation of Nature,”--expertly p.r.o.nounced ”Nate-your” by Mrs. Potts,--Miss Caroline turned her head aside as one deeply moved by the poet's magic. But Marcella Eubanks, glancing at that moment into a mirror on the opposite wall,--a mirror in a plush frame on which pansies had been painted,--caught the full and frank exposure of a yawn. It was a thorough yawn. Miss Caroline had surrendered abjectly to it, in the belief--unrecking the mirror--that she could not be detected.

The discussion that followed the paper--as was customary at the meetings--proved to be a bit livelier. Each lady said something she had thought up to say, beginning, ”Does it not seem--” or ”Are we not forced to conclude--”

I suspect that Miss Caroline was sleepy. Perhaps she was nettled by the boredom she had been made to endure without just provocation; perhaps the fas.h.i.+onable fumes of varnish had been toxic to her unaccustomed senses. At any rate she now compromised herself regrettably.

Mrs. Westley Keyts had been thinking up something to say, something choice that should yet be sufficiently vague not to incriminate her. It had seemed that these requirements would be met if she said, in a tone of easy patronage, ”Mr. Wordsworth is certainly a very bright writer of poetry, but as for me--give _me_ Shakspere!”

She had thought of saying ”the Bard of Avon,” a polished phrase coined for his ”Compendium” by the ingenious Mr. Gaskell; but, hearing her own voice strangely break the silence, Mrs. Keyts became timid at the last moment and let it go at ”Shakspere.”

”Oh, Shakspere--of _course_!” said most of the ladies at once, and those not quick enough to utter it concertedly looked it almost reprovingly at the speaker.

A silence fell, as if every one must have time to recover from this trivial plat.i.tude. But it was a silence outrageously shattered by Miss Caroline, who said:--

”O dear! I've always considered Shakspere such an overrated man!”

The silence grew more intense, only Mrs. Potts emitting a slight but audible gasp. But swift looks flashed from each lady to her horrified sisters. Was it possible that the unfortunate woman had been in no condition to come among them?