"You hain"t never heared o" the Dunkards, I reckon," the old woman said to Mrs. March. "Some folks calls "em the Beardy Men, because they don"t never shave; and they wash feet like they do in the Testament. My uncle was one. He raised me."
"I guess pretty much everybody"s a Beardy Man nowadays, if he ain"t a Dunkard!"
Miss Mela looked round for applause of her sally, but March was saying to his wife: "It"s a Pennsylvania German sect, I believe--something like the Quakers. I used to see them when I was a boy."
"Aren"t they something like the Mennists?" asked Mrs. Mandel.
"They"re good people," said the old woman, "and the world "d be a heap better off if there was more like "em."
Her son came in and laid a soft shawl over her shoulders before he shook hands with the visitors. "I am glad you found your way here," he said to them.
Christine, who had been bending forward over her fan, now lifted herself up with a sigh and leaned back in her chair.
"I"m sorry my father isn"t here," said the young man to Mrs. March. "He"s never met you yet?"
"No; and I should like to see him. We hear a great deal about your father, you know, from Mr. Fulkerson."
"Oh, I hope you don"t believe everything Mr. Fulkerson says about people," Mela cried. "He"s the greatest person for carrying on when he gets going I ever saw. It makes Christine just as mad when him and mother gets to talking about religion; she says she knows he don"t care anything more about it than the man in the moon. I reckon he don"t try it on much with father."
"Your fawther ain"t ever been a perfessor," her mother interposed; "but he"s always been a good church-goin" man."
"Not since we come to New York," retorted the girl.
"He"s been all broke up since he come to New York," said the old woman, with an aggrieved look.
Mrs. Mandel attempted a diversion. "Have you heard any of our great New York preachers yet, Mrs. March?"
"No, I haven"t," Mrs. March admitted; and she tried to imply by her candid tone that she intended to begin hearing them the very next Sunday.
"There are a great many things here," said Conrad, "to take your thoughts off the preaching that you hear in most of the churches. I think the city itself is preaching the best sermon all the time."
"I don"t know that I understand you," said March.
Mela answered for him. "Oh, Conrad has got a lot of notions that n.o.body can understand. You ought to see the church he goes to when he does go.
I"d about as lief go to a Catholic church myself; I don"t see a bit o"
difference. He"s the greatest crony with one of their preachers; he dresses just like a priest, and he says he is a priest." She laughed for enjoyment of the fact, and her brother cast down his eyes.
Mrs. March, in her turn, tried to take from it the personal tone which the talk was always a.s.suming. "Have you been to the fall exhibition?" she asked Christine; and the girl drew herself up out of the abstraction she seemed sunk in.
"The exhibition?" She looked at Mrs. Mandel.
"The pictures of the Academy, you know," Mrs. Mandel explained. "Where I wanted you to go the day you had your dress tried on."
"No; we haven"t been yet. Is it good?" She had turned to Mrs. March again.
"I believe the fall exhibitions are never so good as the spring ones. But there are some good pictures."
"I don"t believe I care much about pictures," said Christine. "I don"t understand them."
"Ah, that"s no excuse for not caring about them," said March, lightly.
"The painters themselves don"t, half the time."
The girl looked at him with that glance at once defiant and appealing, insolent and anxious, which he had noticed before, especially when she stole it toward himself and his wife during her sister"s babble. In the light of Fulkerson"s history of the family, its origin and its ambition, he interpreted it to mean a sense of her sister"s folly and an ignorant will to override his opinion of anything incongruous in themselves and their surroundings. He said to himself that she was deathly proud--too proud to try to palliate anything, but capable of anything that would put others under her feet. Her eyes seemed hopelessly to question his wife"s social quality, and he fancied, with not unkindly interest, the inexperienced girl"s doubt whether to treat them with much or little respect. He lost himself in fancies about her and her ideals, necessarily sordid, of her possibilities of suffering, of the triumphs and disappointments before her. Her sister would accept both with a lightness that would keep no trace of either; but in her they would sink lastingly deep. He came out of his reverie to find Mrs. Dryfoos saying to him, in her hoa.r.s.e voice:
"I think it"s a shame, some of the pictur"s a body sees in the winders.
They say there"s a law ag"inst them things; and if there is, I don"t understand why the police don"t take up them that paints "em. I hear 182 tell, since I been here, that there"s women that goes to have pictur"s took from them that way by men painters." The point seemed aimed at March, as if he were personally responsible for the scandal, and it fell with a silencing effect for the moment. n.o.body seemed willing to take it up, and Mrs. Dryfoos went on, with an old woman"s severity: "I say they ought to be all tarred and feathered and rode on a rail. They"d be drummed out of town in Moffitt."
Miss Mela said, with a crowing laugh: "I should think they would! And they wouldn"t anybody go low neck to the opera-house there, either--not low neck the way they do here, anyway."
"And that pack of worthless hussies," her mother resumed, "that come out on the stage, and begun to kick."
"Laws, mother!" the girl shouted, "I thought you said you had your eyes shut!"
All but these two simpler creatures were abashed at the indecorum of suggesting in words the commonplaces of the theatre and of art.
"Well, I did, Mely, as soon as I could believe my eyes. I don"t know what they"re doin" in all their churches, to let such things go on," said the old woman. "It"s a sin and a shame, I think. Don"t you, c.o.o.nrod?"
A ring at the door cut short whatever answer he was about to deliver.
"If it"s going to be company, c.o.o.nrod," said his mother, making an effort to rise, "I reckon I better go up-stairs."
"It"s Mr. Fulkerson, I guess," said Conrad. "He thought he might come"; and at the mention of this light spirit Mrs. Dryfoos sank contentedly back in her chair, and a relaxation of their painful tension seemed to pa.s.s through the whole company. Conrad went to the door himself (the serving-man tentatively, appeared some minutes later) and let in Fulkerson"s cheerful voice before his cheerful person.
"Ah, how dye do, Conrad? Brought our friend, Mr. Beaton, with me," those within heard him say; and then, after a sound of putting off overcoats, they saw him fill the doorway, with his feet set square and his arms akimbo.
IX.
"Ah! h.e.l.lo! h.e.l.lo!" Fulkerson said, in recognition of the Marches.
"Regular gathering of the clans. How are you, Mrs. Dryfoos? How do you do, Mrs. Mandel, Miss Christine, Mela, Aunt Hitty, and all the folks? How you wuz?" He shook hands gayly all round, and took a chair next the old lady, whose hand he kept in his own, and left Conrad to introduce Beaton.
But he would not let the shadow of Beaton"s solemnity fall upon the company. He began to joke with Mrs. Dryfoos, and to match rheumatisms with her, and he included all the ladies in the range of appropriate pleasantries. "I"ve brought Mr. Beaton along to-night, and I want you to make him feel at home, like you do me, Mrs. Dryfoos. He hasn"t got any rheumatism to speak of; but his parents live in Syracuse, and he"s a kind of an orphan, and we"ve just adopted him down at the office. When you going to bring the young ladies down there, Mrs. Mandel, for a champagne lunch? I will have some hydro-Mela, and Christine it, heigh? How"s that for a little starter? We dropped in at your place a moment, Mrs. March, and gave the young folks a few pointers about their studies. My goodness!
it does me good to see a boy like that of yours; business, from the word go; and your girl just scoops my youthful affections. She"s a beauty, and I guess she"s good, too. Well, well, what a world it is! Miss Christine, won"t you show Mr. Beaton that seal ring of yours? He knows about such things, and I brought him here to see it as much as anything. It"s an intaglio I brought from the other side," he explained to Mrs. March, "and I guess you"ll like to look at it. Tried to give it to the Dryfoos family, and when I couldn"t, I sold it to "em. Bound to see it on Miss Christine"s hand somehow! Hold on! Let him see it where it belongs, first!"
He arrested the girl in the motion she made to take off the ring, and let her have the pleasure of showing her hand to the company with the ring on it. Then he left her to hear the painter"s words about it, which he continued to deliver dissyllabically as he stood with her under a gas-jet, twisting his elastic figure and bending his head over the ring.
"Well, Mely, child," Fulkerson went on, with an open travesty of her mother"s habitual address, "and how are you getting along? Mrs. Mandel hold you up to the proprieties pretty strictly? Well, that"s right. You know you"d be roaming all over the pasture if she didn"t."
The girl gurgled out her pleasure in his funning, and everybody took him.
on his own ground of privileged character. He brought them all together in their friendliness for himself, and before the evening was over he had inspired Mrs. Mandel to have them served with coffee, and had made both the girls feel that they had figured brilliantly in society, and that two young men had been devoted to them.
"Oh, I think he"s just as lovely as he can live!" said Mela, as she stood a moment with her sister on the scene of her triumph, where the others had left them after the departure of their guests.
"Who?" asked Christine, deeply. As she glanced down at her ring, her eyes burned with a softened fire.
She had allowed Beaton to change it himself from the finger where she had worn it to the finger on which he said she ought to wear it. She did not know whether it was right to let him, but she was glad she had done it.