"Dinner"s ready now," said Mrs. Sewell, for all comment. She left the expansiveness of sympathy and gratulation to her husband on most occasions, and on this she felt that she had less than the usual obligation to make polite conversation. Her two children came downstairs after her, and as she unfolded her napkin across her lap after grace she said, "This is my son, Alfred, Mr. Barker; and this is Edith." Barker took the acquaintance offered in silence, the young Sewells smiled with the wise kindliness of children taught to be good to all manner of strange guests, and the girl c.u.mbered the helpless country boy with offers of different dishes.
Mr. Sewell as he cut at the roast beef lengthwise, being denied by his wife a pantomimic prayer to be allowed to cut it crosswise, tried to make talk with Barker about the weather at Willoughby Pastures. It had been a very dry summer, and he asked if the fall rains had filled up the springs. He said he really forgot whether it was an apple year. He also said that he supposed they had dug all their turnips by this time. He had meant to say potatoes when he began, but he remembered that he had seen the farmers digging their potatoes before he came back to town, and so he subst.i.tuted turnips; afterwards it seemed to him that dig was not just the word to use in regard to the harvesting of turnips. He wished he had said, "got your turnips in," but it appeared to make no difference to Barker, who answered, "Yes, sir," and "No, sir," and "Yes, sir," and let each subject drop with that.
III.
The silence grew so deep that the young Sewells talked together in murmurs, and the clicking of the knives on the plates became painful.
Sewell kept himself from looking at Barker, whom he nevertheless knew to be changing his knife and fork from one hand to the other, as doubt after doubt took him as to their conventional use, and to be getting very little good of his dinner in the process of settling these questions. The door-bell rang, and the sound of a whispered conference between the visitor and the servant at the threshold penetrated to the dining-room. Some one softly entered, and then Mrs. Sewell called out, "Yes, yes! Come in! Come in, Miss Vane!" She jumped from her chair and ran out into the hall, where she was heard to kiss her visitor; she reappeared, still holding her by the hand, and then Miss Vane shook hands with Sewell, saying in a tone of cordial liking, "_How_ d"ye do?"
and to each of the young people as she shook hands in turn with them, "How d"ye _do_, dear?" She was no longer so pretty as she must have once been; but an air of distinction and a delicate charm of manner remained to her from her fascinating youth.
Young Sewell pushed her a chair to the table, and she dropped softly into it, after acknowledging Barker"s presentation by Mrs. Sewell with a kindly glance that probably divined him.
"You must dine with us," said Mrs. Sewell. "You can call it lunch."
"No, I can"t, Mrs. Sewell," said Miss Vane. "I could once, and should have said with great pleasure, when I went away, that I had been lunching at the Sewells; but I can"t now. I"ve reformed. What have you got for dinner?"
"Roast beef," said Sewell.
"Nothing I dislike more," replied Miss Vane. "What else?" She put on her gla.s.ses, and peered critically about the table.
"Stewed tomatoes, baked sweet potatoes, macaroni."
"How unimaginative! What are you going to have afterwards?"
"Cottage pudding."
"The very climax of the commonplace. Well!" Miss Vane began to pull off her gloves, and threw her veil back over her shoulder. "I will dine with you, but when I say dine, and people ask me to explain, I shall have to say, "Why, the Sewells still dine at one o"clock, you know," and laugh over your old-fashioned habits with them. I should like to do differently, and to respect the sacredness of broken bread and that sort of thing; but I"m trying to practise with every one an affectionate sincerity, which is perfectly compatible not only with the brotherliness of Christianity, but the politeness of the world." Miss Vane looked demurely at Mrs. Sewell. "I can"t make any exceptions."
The ladies both broke into a mocking laugh, in which Sewell joined with sheepish reluctance; after all, one does not like to be derided, even by one"s dearest friends.
"As soon as I hear my other little sins denounced from the pulpit, I"m going to stop using profane language and carrying away people"s spoons in my pocket."
The ladies seemed to think this also a very good joke, and his children laughed in sympathy, but Sewell hung his head; Barker sat bolt upright behind his plate, and stared at Miss Vane. "I never have been all but named in church before," she concluded, "and I"ve heard others say the same."
"Why didn"t you come to complain sooner?" asked Sewell.
"Well, I have been away ever since that occasion. I went down the next day to Newport, and I"ve been there ever since, admiring the ribbon-planting."
"On the lawns or on the ladies?" asked Sewell.
"Both. And sowing broadcast the seeds of plain speaking. I don"t know what Newport will be in another year if they all take root."
"I dare say it will be different," said Sewell. "I"m not sure it will be worse." He plucked up a little spirit, and added: "Now you see of how little importance you really are in the community; you have been gone these three weeks, and your own pastor didn"t know you were out of town."
"Yes, you did, David," interposed his wife. "I told you Miss Vane was away two weeks ago."
"Did you? Well I forgot it immediately; the fact was of no consequence, one way or the other. How do you like that as a bit of affectionate sincerity?"
"I like it immensely," said Miss Vane. "It"s delicious. I only wish I could believe you were honest." She leaned back and laughed into her handkerchief, while Sewell regarded her with a face in which his mortification at being laughed at was giving way to a natural pleasure at seeing Miss Vane enjoy herself. "What do you think," she asked, "since you"re in this mood of exasperated veracity--or pretend to be--of the flower charity?"
"Do you mean by the barrel, or the single sack? The Graham, or the best Haxall, or the health-food cold-blast?" asked Sewell.
Miss Vane lost her power of answering in another peal of laughter, sobering off, and breaking down again before she could say, "I mean cut flowers for patients and prisoners."
"Oh, that kind! I don"t think a single pansy would have an appreciable effect upon a burglar; perhaps a bunch of forget-me-nots might, or a few lilies of the valley carelessly arranged. As to the influence of a graceful little _boutonniere_, in cases of rheumatism or cholera morbus, it might be efficacious but I can"t really say."
"How perfectly cynical!" cried Miss Vane. "Don"t you know how much good the flower mission has accomplished among the deserving poor? Hundreds of bouquets are distributed every day. They prevent crime."
"That shows how susceptible the deserving poor are. I don"t find that a bowl of the most expensive and delicate roses in the centre of a dinner-table tempers the asperity of the conversation when it turns upon the absent. But perhaps it oughtn"t to do so."
"I don"t know about that," said Miss Vane; "but if you had an impulsive niece to supply with food for the imagination, you would be very glad of anything that seemed to combine practical piety and picturesque effect."
"Oh, if you mean that," began Sewell more soberly, and his wife leaned forward with an interest in the question which she had not felt while the mere joking went on.
"Yes. When Sibyl came in this morning with an imperative demand to be allowed to go off and do good with flowers in the homes of virtuous poverty, as well as the hospitals and prisons, I certainly felt as if there had been an interposition, if you will allow me to say so."
Miss Vane still had her joking air, but a note of anxiety had crept into her voice.
"I don"t think it will do the sick and poor any harm," said Sewell, "and it may do Sibyl some good." He smiled a little in adding: "It may afford her varied energies a little scope."
Miss Vane shook her head, and some lines of age came into her face which had not shown themselves there before. "And you would advise letting her go into it?" she asked.
"By all means," replied Sewell. "But if she"s going to engage actively in the missionary work, I think you"d better go with her on her errands of mercy."
"Oh, of course, she"s going to do good in person. What she wants is the sensation of doing good--of seeing and hearing the results of her beneficence. She"d care very little about it if she didn"t."
"Oh, I don"t know that you can say that," replied Sewell in deprecation of this extreme view. "I don"t believe," he continued, "that she would object to doing good for its own sake."
"Of course she wouldn"t, David! Who in the world supposed she would?"
demanded his wife, bringing him up roundly at this sign of wandering, and Miss Vane laughed wildly.
"And is this what your doctrine of sincerity comes to? This fulsomeness!
You"re very little better than one of the wicked, it seems to me! Well, I _hoped_ that you would approve of my letting Sibyl take this thing up, but such _unbounded_ encouragement!"
"Oh, I don"t wish to flatter," said Sewell, in the spirit of her raillery. "It will be very well for her to go round with flowers; but don"t let her," he continued seriously--"don"t let her imagine it"s more than an innocent amus.e.m.e.nt. It would be a sort of hideous mockery of the good we ought to do one another if there were supposed to be anything more than a kindly thoughtfulness expressed in such a thing."
"Oh, if Sibyl doesn"t feel that it"s real, for the time being she won"t care anything about it. She likes to lose herself in the illusion, she says."
"Well!" said Sewell with a slight shrug, "then we must let her get what good she can out of it as an exercise of the sensibilities."
"O my dear!" exclaimed his wife, "You _don"t_ mean anything so abominable as that! I"ve heard you say that the worst thing about fiction and the theatre was that they brought emotions into play that ought to be sacred to real occasions."
"Did I say that? Well, I must have been right. I--"
Barker made a scuffling sound with his boots under the table, and rose to his feet. "I guess," he said, "I shall have to be going."