But no one else, and certainly not Mis" Holcomb herself, perceived the surface of things vexed by a ripple.
"Well, now," said that great Mis" Amanda Toplady heartily, "that _is_ so about saltin" your potato. I know it now, but I never thought of it right out before. Lots o" things are true that you don"t think of right out. Now I come to put my mind on it, I know at our house if I cut up a big plate o" bread we don"t eat up half of it; but just as sure as I don"t, I hev to get up from the table an" go get more bread."
"I know--we often speak of that!" and "So my husband says," chimed Mis"
Holcomb and Mis" Sturgis.
"Seems as if I"d noticed that, too," Calliope said brightly.
Whereupon: "My part," Miss Lucy Liberty contributed shyly, "I always like to see a great big plate of good, big slices o" bread come on to the table. Looks like the crock was full," she added, laughing heartily to cover her really pretty shyness, "an" like you wouldn"t run out."
Calliope"s glance at me was still more distressed, for my table showed no bread at all, and my maid was at that moment handing rolls the size of a walnut. But for the others the moment pa.s.sed undisturbed.
"I"ve never noticed in particular about the bread," observed Mis"
Sykes,--she had great magnetism, for when she spoke an instant hush fell,--"but what _I_ have noticed"--Mis" Sykes was very original and usually disregarded the experiences of others,--"is that if I don"t make a list of my washing when it goes, something is pretty sure to get lost.
But let me make a list, an" even the dust-cloths"ll come back home."
Everybody had noticed that. Even Libbie Liberty a.s.sented, and exchanged with her sister a smile of domestic memories.
"An" every single piece has got my initial in the corner, too," Mis"
Sykes added; "I wouldn"t hev a piece o" linen in the house without my initial on. It don"t seem to me rill refined not to."
Calliope"s look was almost one of anguish. My hemst.i.tched damask napkins bear no saving initial in a corner. But no one else would, I was certain, connect that circ.u.mstance, even if it was observed, with what Mis" Sykes had said.
"It"s too bad Mis" Fire Chief Merriman wouldn"t come to-day," Calliope hastily turned the topic. "She can"t seem to get used to things again, since Sum died."
"She didn"t do this way for her first husband that died in the city, I heard," volunteered Mis" Sturgis. "Why, I heard she went out _there_, right after the first year."
"That"s easy explained," said Mis" Sykes, positively.
"Wasn"t she fond of him?" asked Mis" Holcomb. "She seems real clingin", like she would be fond o" most any one."
"Oh, yes, she was fond of him," declared Mis" Sykes. "Why, he was a professional man, you know. But then he died ten years ago, durin" tight skirts. Naturally, being a widow then wasn"t what it is now. She couldn"t cut her skirt over to any advantage--a bell skirt is a bell skirt. An" they went out the very next year. When she got new cloth for the flare skirts, she got colours. But the Fire Chief died right at the height o" the full skirts. She"s kep" cuttin" over an" cuttin" over, an"
by the looks o" the Spring plates she can keep right on at it. She really can"t afford to go _out_ o" mournin". I don"t blame her a bit."
"She told me the other day," remarked Libbie Liberty, "that she was real homesick for some company food. She said she"d been ask" in to eat with this family an" that, most hospitable but very plain. An" seems though she couldn"t wait for a company lay-out."
"She won"t go anywheres in her c.r.a.pe," Mis" Sykes turned to me, supplementing Calliope"s former information. "She"s a very superior woman,--she graduated in Oils in the city,--an" she"s fitted for any society, say where who _will_. We always say about her that n.o.body"s so delicate as Mis" Fire Chief Merriman."
"She don"t take strangers in very ready, anyway," Mis" Holcomb explained to me. "She belongs to what you might call the old school. She"s very sensitive to _every_thing."
The moment came when I had unintentionally produced a hush by serving a salad unknown in Friendship. When almost at once I perceived what I had done, I confess that I looked at Calliope in a kind of dread lest this too were a _faux pas_, and I took refuge in some question about the coming Carnival. But my attention was challenged by my maid, who was in the doorway announcing a visitor.
"Company, ma"am," she said.
And when I had bidden her to ask that I be excused for a little:--
"Please, ma"am," she said, "she says she has to see you _now_."
And when I suggested the lady"s card:--
"Oh, it"s Mis" Fire Chief Merriman," the maid imparted easily.
"Mis" Fire Chief Merriman!" exclaimed every one at table. "Well forevermore! Speakin" of angels! She must "a" forgot the tea was bein"."
In my living-room, in her smartly freshened spring toilet of mourning, Mis" Fire Chief Merriman rose to greet me. She was very tall and slight, and her face was curiously like an oblong yellow brooch which fastened her gown at the throat.
"My dear friend," she said, "I felt, after your kind invitation, that I must pay my respects _during_ your tea. Afterwards wouldn"t be the same.
It"s a tea, and there couldn"t be lanterns an" bunting or anything o"
the sort. So I felt I could come in."
"You are very good," I murmured, and in some perplexity, as she resumed her seat, I sat down also. Mis" Merriman sought in the pocket of her petticoat for a black-bordered handkerchief.
"When you"re in mourning so," she observed, "folks forget you. They don"t really forget you, either. But they get used to missing you places, an" they don"t always remember to miss you. I did appreciate your inviting me to-day so. Because I"m just as fond of meeting my friends as I was before the chief died."
And when I had made an end of murmuring something:--
"Really," she went on placidly, "it ought to be the custom to go out in society when you"re in mourning if you never did any other time. You need distraction then if you ever needed it in your life. An" the chief would "a" been the first to feel that too. He was very partial to going out in company."
And when I had made an end of murmuring something else:--
"You were very thoughtful to give me an invitation for this afternoon,"
she said. "An" I felt that I must stop in an" tell you so, even if I couldn"t attend."
Serenely she spread her black c.r.a.pe fan and swayed it. In the dining-room my guests proceeded with their lonely salad toward a probable lonely dessert. At thought of that dessert and of that salad, a suggestion, partly impulsive and partly flavoured with some faint reminiscence, at once besieged me, and in it I divined a solution of the moment.
"Mrs. Merriman," I said eagerly, "may I send you in a cup of strawberry ice? I"ve some early strawberries from the city."
She turned on me her great dark eyes, with their flat curve of shadow accenting her sadness.
"I"m sure you are very kind," she said simply. "An" I should be pleased, I"m sure."
I rose, hesitating, longing to say what I had in mind.
"I"d really like your opinion," I said, "on rather a new salad I"m trying. Now would you not--"
"A salad?" Mis" Merriman repeated. "The chief," she said reflectively, "was very partial to all green salads. I don"t think men usually care for them the way he did."
"Dear Mrs. Merriman," said I at this, "a cup of bouillon and a bit of chicken breast and a drop of creamed cauliflower--"
"Oh," she murmured, "really, I couldn"t think--"
And when I had made my cordial insistence she looked up at me for a moment solemnly, over her c.r.a.pe fan. I thought that her eyes with that flat, underlying curve of shadow were as if tears were native to them.
Her grief and the usages of grief had made of her some one other than her first self, some one circ.u.mscribed, wary of living.
"Oh," she said wistfully, "I ain"t had anything like that since I went into mourning. If you don"t think it would be disrespectful to him--?"
"I am certain that it would not be so," I a.s.sured her, and construed her doubting silence as capitulation.