Of Time and the River (93 page)

The inference was warranted: even as they stood there in a spacious, airy big room, the guests standing and talking in groups, drinking small glasses of a fine dry sherry, the youth could hear Joel’s eager whispering voice engaged in earnest, but respectful, debate, with his leonine grand-sire, and Mr. Joel’s nobly growled out answers. The conversation was about books—about the artist’s right to use the materials of his own experience and conversation— and it hinged particularly upon a certain book in which the writer had apparently made use of personal letters and private documents that people he knew, a woman chiefly, had written him.

“No, sir,” Mr. Joel growled, “I do not care what the circumstances may be or what the nature of the work. If I had a friend, sir, who would deliberately make public letters which a woman had written him, why, sir, I should drop him from my acquaintance—I should be forced to conclude, sir,”—here the old growling voice fell to an ominous whisper of irrevocable judgment, and he looked out at his grandson with a fierce glint of his old eyes under bushy brows—“I should be forced to conclude, sir, that he was nothing but a cad,” old Mr. Joel whispered, and with a suddenly fierce glint of his old eyes, a sudden movement of his leonine head, he growled out in a low and savage tone: “And I should tell him so, sir. I should be compelled to tell him that he was nothing but a cad!”

“Yes, grandfather,” Joel whispered eagerly, his thin figure bent forward in an attitude of devoted and attentive reverence—“But after ALL, some pretty great people have done it—Rousseau did it, and The Confessions are pretty great, you know—You’ve got to admit that.—And Byron did it in his poems—at least, everyone knew whom he was talking about, and then there was De Musset and George Sand.”

“It makes no difference, sir,” growled Mr. Joel implacably, “it makes no difference who they were or how great they may be considered in the realm of art, or how great the work they did may be—if I knew a man who did a thing like that, I should be forced to consider him a low cad—no matter how great a poet or a writer, or how great his work might be—I should consider him a cad,—and”— his old growling voice fell to a whisper of boding and implacable judgment—“I should tell him so, sir. I should let him know that I considered him a cad.”

Such was Joel’s grandsire, Mr. Joel, and surely he was a specimen of which any group or class could well be proud: of all that Hudson River aristocracy he was justly venerated and esteemed as one of its noblest and proudest adornments. He had lived a long, honourable, and successful life; and now in his old age he had retired to the bosom of his paternal earth to spend his last years in dignity and simple ease and in calm but fruitful reflection on his rich experience. He was writing a book, and in advance it could be solemnly averred that he would make no use in it of any letters that a woman ever wrote to him.

What man, therefore, could speak with greater weight about the duties, codes and principles of man? What man was better qualified to know the rules of honour and the standards of a gentleman—and to assert a truth that might have gone unnoticed by a person of a baser spirit and a lower quality—that Rousseau was a scoundrel and De Musset and Lord Byron a couple of low cads—“because, sir, they made public letters that a woman wrote them.”

It was indeed delightful to find such Thackerayan gallantry, such Olympian scorn for knavish genius and for the lives of mighty poets dead and gone who illuminated mankind with their radiance but had their own light put out—must dwell for evermore “a couple of low cads,” in outer darkness, never again to be received, acknowledged, given gracious pardon by the chivalric flower of the Hudson River rich. How wretched that stern judgment must have made Rousseau! What bitter news for Byron! What misery for De Musset!

But now a woman servant entered and announced that lunch was served. The chattering groups of people turned and formed instinctively, and by a kind of native respect, into files of deferential waiting, until Mr. Joel had passed. He led the way, a grand and leonine old man, superbly garmented in a coat of soft, rich blue, wide loose white flannels, wound at the waist by a great sash of yellow silk—an adornment that seemed in no way inappropriate but superbly fitting the noble dignity of the old man.

At the door he paused and stood aside, with a grizzled majesty of courtesy, for his wife and the other ladies of the group to pass. Then he entered the dining-room, followed by his grandson and the other young men. The dining-room was another light, spacious, and graciously beautiful room in the old New England style: through the open windows one saw the deep green and gold of trees and flowers in the embowered magic of the setting, and the fragrance of sweet drowsy air breathed on the curtains and flowed through the room.

The snowy table had a great bowl of fresh-cut wood flowers in the centre: the food was also native, plain old American, and superbly cooked: there was a thick pea-soup, fried chicken, plump and tender, done superbly to a juicy, delicately encrusted brown: there were candied sweet potatoes, string beans, cooked the Southern way with the succulent sweet seasoning of pork, stewed golden corn, and creamy mashed potatoes, a deep smooth gravy, rich and brown and thick, sliced tomatoes and sliced cucumbers, no alcoholic beverages, but iced tea, cold and tall and fragrant in high tinkling glasses rimed with ice, flaky biscuits, smoking hot, and for dessert, fresh apple-pie, hot and crusty, hued with cinnamon and flanked by thick fresh squares of pungent yellow cheese.

It was, in short, a plain but wholesome and most appetizing meal, completely American in its flavour and abundance, and superbly cooked, most fitting to this house; the simple green and natural, casual beauty of the place, the life, the people, the homely gracious hospitality of democracy.

It is true, the meal was also rather Southern in its cooking and its quality—a fact that was not surprising, however, when one remembered that Mr. Joel’s present wife had been a famous Southern belle from the blue-grass region of Kentucky.

One not only remembered this fact, it was difficult for one not to remember it; Mrs. Joel herself made her romantic origins evident. Although she was a woman in her early sixties with white hair, she was still remarkably preserved, and her manners, graces, dimpled smiles, her roguish glances and her languishing soft drawl were still the familiar stock-in-trade of the Dixieland coquette.

She was certainly what is called “a fine figure of a woman”; her figure was tall, spacious, amply proportioned, her face, although beginning to show the signs of age—a slightly wrinkled plumpness like the skin of a full but slightly withered apple—was still almost as soft and white and tender as a child’s: she had almost all her natural teeth and they were white and pearly, her hands were white and plump and fine, her voice had the refined and throaty burble that is familiar in the majestic American female of the upper crust, and she dimpled beautifully when she smiled.

It was rather uncomfortably evident at once that there was a strong, if suppressed, hostility between Mrs. Joel and her step- daughter, Joel’s mother.

The struggle between the two was for the possession of something that neither of them any longer had—youth. Both were obviously enamoured of youth—of the freshness of youth, the warmth, the charm, the grace, the vitality of youth. Both hated the idea of growing old: both bitterly and desperately refused to admit the possibility of growing old. Mrs. Joel was able to cast over her soul a spell of hypnotic deception, and by absurdly flaunting around the graces, airs and manners of a coquette, to convince herself that she was young and beautiful, able to enslave every man she met under the domination of her captivating charm.

And Mrs. Pierce felt bitterly that the older woman had had her day, that she should be willing to admit her years, gracefully submit, and take a back seat. This ugly rivalry was now apparent in almost everything they said, and gave everyone at the table a feeling of tension, embarrassment and discomfort. Thus, Mrs. Joel, speaking to her step-daughter, and including the whole company, in a reference to Mrs. Pierce’s strenuous pursuit of youth, her grim devotion to youth’s figure and its vigorous gymnastics, now remarked in a tone of sugared venom, a malicious gaiety of fine surprise:

“But really, I do, I think it’s the most astonishing thing to see a woman of your age take part in all these sports and games that only the YOUNG people of my generation played. . . . After all, if you were twenty—the age of Joel or this young man—I could understand it better—but at YOUR age, my dear,”—she drew a fine breath of astonishment, “—really, I marvel that you don’t collapse.”

“Do you?” said Mrs. Pierce, smiling her glacial and inflexible smile, and in a tone of cold, impassive irony—“I confess, Mother, I see nothing at all to marvel at. . . . Please set your mind at rest—I assure you I’m not in the slightest danger of collapse. . . . I can do everything,” she went on grandly, “that I could do at twenty—and I can do it better now, with less fatigue and greater skill. . . . I can hold my own with any of these young people around here, no matter what it is—whether swimming, golfing, playing tennis, or going for a walk. So you can save your sympathy, Mother,” she concluded with a laugh which seemed casual and friendly enough, but which showed plainly the hard inflexibility of her antagonism, “—when I need your condolences I’ll let you know.”

“But, my DEAR,” said Mrs. Joel with sweet gushing malice—“I think it’s ma-a-rvellous! I only wonder how you do it at your age! . . . Why, no girl of my time and generation would have THOUGHT of doing all the things you do every day without turning a hair—Why!” she breathed, looking around her with an air of fine amazement, “I hear Ida plays FIVE sets before breakfast every morning and thinks nothing of it—but in MY day and time, if a girl—a YOUNG girl, mind you—played a SINGLE set—she’d be positively exhausted—done up for a week.”

“Perhaps, Mother,” Mrs. Pierce coolly suggested, “that is why the young girls of your time were such a soft and grubby lot—and why they turned out to be such dowdy frumps later on.”

Mrs. Joel’s dimpled smile did not lose a single atom of its saccharine benevolence, nor did her voice alter by a shade its honeyed drip, but for a moment something bright and adder-like passed across her eyes, and she gave her step-daughter a swift and poisonous glance that would have done credit to a snake. “—And then, of course,” she went on sweetly, taking the young men at the table into her confidence with her dimpled smile—“we had such old- fashioned notions in those days, too—you boys, I know, would be amused if you could know what some of our quaint notions were—but— hah! hah! hah!”—she laughed a gay and silvery little laugh of envenomed hatred, “—my dear,” she said to Joel, “—you’ll have to laugh when I tell you—but do you know it was actually considered IMMODEST—UNWOMANLY—for a young girl of my time to take part in sports—COMPETE in sports—against men—and as for a woman of Ida’s age doing it—why, it was UNTHINKABLE! UNHEARD of!—a middle-aged woman,” she pronounced the words with obvious relish and for a moment there was a swift hard flexion of the muscles in Mrs. Pierce’s jaw—“but a middle-aged woman in MY day who had attempted such a thing would have been OSTRACIZED—an OUTCAST—decent people would have had nothing to do with her!”

“Yes, I know, Mother,” Mrs. Pierce said with a swift and glacial urbanity. “We’ve all heard about that—I think it’s generally conceded now by most intelligent people that women of that generation were a pretty worthless, dull and barbarous lot.”

“Ah-hah-hah!” Mrs. Joel laughed sweetly, and dimpled at her best— “TERRIBLY old-fashioned, of course—but,” she turned graciously to her grandson’s young guest and lavished on him her most dimpled smile,—”FRIGHTFULLY amusing, don’t you think?”

He reddened like a beet, looked helplessly at the two contesting women, craned his neck nervously along the edges of his collar, and finally said nothing.

Joel relieved the painful situation with his swift whispering grace of tact and kindliness. “But really, Granny,” he whispered courteously and eagerly, “—Mums is awfully good at it, she really is. . . . She can beat me two sets out of three in tennis, and give me ten strokes in golf—and when it comes to SWIMMING—”

“Oh,” said little Howard Martin in his mincing, languishing, and effeminate tone—“she’s ma-a-rvellous! . . . Ida,” he gushed, in a kind of over-ripe ecstasy—“your diving is simply divine! . . . If you could only show me—oh-h,” he said, with gushing effeminacy— “if you could only teach ME how you do it—but it’s SIMPLY perfect— MARVELLOUS—”

The meal now proceeded more smoothly. Mr. Joel seemed to take small notice of the feud between the two women—his daughter and his wife—he talked to Joel, Rosalind, and to the other young men in his grand growling way, expressed his opinion on the candidacies of Davis and Coolidge, and said he would vote for Davis.

“If John Davis gets in,” said Mrs. Pierce with that positive worldly assurance that characterized her opinions, “Charles Dana Gibson will get the ambassadorship to England—oh, but THAT’S settled!” she said positively, “I happen to know that Dana Gibson can have the ambassadorship any time he wants it—”

“Providing Davis gets elected,” Joel whispered, laughing. Turning to his grandfather, he whispered respectfully, “What do you think, Grandfather? Do you think that Davis will get in?”

“No, sir,” Mr. Joel growled, “I do not. I think his chances of getting elected are VERY slight—unless some sudden upheaval turns the tide in his direction before election day.”

“And whom will you vote for, sir?” Joel whispered.

“I shall vote for Davis, sir,” growled Mr. Joel. “I have known him for many years, he is a very able lawyer, a very ABLE man—but, sir,”—his old growling voice sank to a whisper, and he peered out fiercely from under his grizzled eyebrows at his grandson—“his chances of election are very slight indeed. I should not be surprised to see Coolidge win by a land-slide.”

“Did you hear what Alice Longworth said about him?” said Mrs. Pierce laughing, “—that he looked as if he had been weaned upon a pickle.”

Everyone laughed, even Mr. Joel joining with a kind of growling chuckle. As for Joel, he bent double, radiantly, gleefully convulsed with soundless laughter, snapping his fingers softly as he did so. His own humorous invention was not fertile, but his love of a good story—particularly when his mother or one of his friends told it, or quoted one of their own group—was enthusiastic. Now for a moment he bent double with this convulsed, whispering laughter: when he recovered somewhat he said softly and slowly: