For a collector, Mrs. Blakeney was certainly sportsmanlike, yes, magnanimous. We called it broad-minded when she gave to Jimmy Alexander’s bride, as a wedding-gift, her “Flight into Egypt” piece; an object so tenderly cherished by her that she had never even made mention of it in any of her monographs, but had kept it unspotted from the world, in her own collection. She had always, and with reason, considered it an Alexander heirloom to which she was justly entitled, through the bequest of her grand-uncle, Judge Alexander. She knew, however, that the Alexanders, like most of us, had had ups and downs; she knew that one branch of the family, had been prolific in good-for-nothings, some of whom had fallen so low as to misspell the family name for a whole generation, writing it Ellicksender, when they wrote it at all. Though she doubted the justice of calling the humble Ellicksender home a “den of thieves,” she nevertheless believed it probable that Judge Alexander’s “La Fuite en Egypte” porringer had come into his family’s possession in some vague, unexplained way, rather than by purchase. For Judge Alexander’s father, Dr. Phineas Alexander, that pillar of the Presbyterian faith, had originally been a mere Ellicksender, so-called; he it was who had “turned out real good,” and so had failed to win the interest of either Felix or myself, in our childish days. As Mrs. Blakeney said, “The ironies of Time certainly do iron out everything, if you wait long enough”; and it was Dr. Alexander, alias Ellicksender, who had lifted up the fallen fortunes of his family to their former lofty place in American history.
Felicia is really a kindly little soul. When I went to see Cousin Felix after the wedding, I was not surprised to find that on the ground of safety first, she insists that the Lafayette bottom shall remain, during her father’s lifetime, remarried to its fluted, flame-topped cover. The écuelle is easily the pride of the collector’s heart. “Of course I have costlier pieces,” quoth Felix, “but none so dear to me as this.”
We grinned at each other as he repeated his boyhood’s gesture, wetting a thumb and forefinger before he touched the flame.
THE FACE CALLED FORGIVENESS
The little dinner was a masterpiece. From hail to farewell, there had been no falling-off in quality; the crystal chalices of liquid topaz that heralded the feast (or shall I say plainly, the cocktail-glasses?) were not more graciously cut than the quips of the final speech of congratulation. Guests, viands, vintages, and starry flowers had been chosen by the law of hospitality wedded to the spirit of beauty. The purse they had between them was not unduly large, but it had been joyously and wisely spent.
It was an artist’s dinner given by an uncle to a nephew, a dinner in honor of an honor. Twenty years before, Steven Grant had received the coveted Gold Medal for Sculpture; to-day, a like mark of distinction had been awarded to his favorite nephew, Gerald Weldon. Steven was a bachelor, and nephews counted. What more natural than a dinner of reunion and rejoicing?
There were ladies present; and some of them had satisfied alike their decorative and their hero-worshipping instincts by sending in advance to the house of their host two lengths of wide ribbon of cloth-of-gold, with a command that both host and guest of honor should use them to bind about their necks the beautifully sculptured tokens of their greatness. Very ample and splendid is that famous gold medal. A little weighty for festal wearing, indeed; but to refuse would have been churlish, and uncle and nephew had adjusted their adornments with the air of men who do not mean to dodge any part of the day’s work. Having done that, they promptly forgot the big bright plaques on their chests, except when playfully reminded of them by the lady who had conceived the idea, and who basked gladly in the thought of her originality.
It was indeed an evening to remember; but, just like an evening to forget, it had to come to an end. The last and loveliest lady, revealing the exact amount of lacy stocking demanded by fashion, had with Gerald’s aid tucked up her slender glittering trail within her glass coach; the last and most uninteresting gentleman had been sped clubward. Uncle and nephew went up the broad stairs to talk it all over in Steven Grant’s den, a great orderly panelled room always very dear to young Gerald.