The baggage arrived at about ten minutes to eight, after we had sat helplessly waiting for nearly an hour. The rooms were plentifully supplied with buttons marked: Maid; Valet; Butler's Pantry—and so on. But, though we pressed these anxiously, there was no response. I concluded that the valet was hunting or sleeping or otherwise occupied. I unpacked my trunks without assistance; my wife unpacked hers. But before I could find and assemble my evening garments I had to unwrap the contents of every tray and fill the room knee-high with tissue-paper.
Unable to secure any response to her repeated calls for the maid, my wife was nearly reduced to tears. However, in those days I was not unskillful in hooking up a dress, and we managed to get downstairs, with ready apologies on our lips, by twenty minutes of nine. We were the first ones down however.
The party assembled in a happy-go-lucky manner and, after the cocktails had been served, gathered round the festive board at five minutes past nine. The dinner was the regulation heavy, expensive New York meal, eaten to the accompaniment of the same noisy mirth I have already described. Afterward the host conducted the men to his "den," a luxurious paneled library filled with rare prints, and we listened for an hour to the jokes and anecdotes of a semiprofessional jester who took it on himself to act as the life of the party. It was after eleven o'clock when we rejoined the ladies, but the evening apparently had only just begun; the serious business of the day—bridge—was at hand. But in those days my wife and I did not play bridge; and as there was nothing else for us to do we retired, after a polite interval, to our apartments.
While getting ready for the night we shouted cheerfully to one another through the open doors of the bathroom and, I remember, became quite jolly; but when my wife had gone to bed and I tried to close the blinds I discovered that there were none. Now neither of us had acquired the art of sleeping after daylight unless the daylight was excluded. With grave apprehension I arranged a series of makeshift screens and extinguished the lights, wandering round the room and turning off the key of each one separately, since the architect had apparently forgotten to put in a central switch.
If there had been no servants in evidence when we wanted them before dinner, no such complaint could be entered now. There seemed to be a bowling party going on upstairs. We could also hear plainly the rattle of dishes and a lively interchange of informalities from the kitchen end of the establishment. We lay awake tensely. Shortly after one o'clock these particular sounds died away, but there was a steady tramp of feet over our heads until three. About this hour, also, the bridge party broke up and the guests came upstairs.
There were no outside doors to our rooms. Bells rang, water ran, and there was that curious vibration which even hairbrushing seems to set going in a country house. Then with a final bang, comparative silence descended. Occasionally still, to be sure, the floor squeaked over our heads. Once somebody got up and closed a window. I could hear two distant snorings in major and minor keys. I managed to snatch a few winks and then an alarm-clock went off. At no great distance the scrubbing maid was getting up. I could hear her every move.
The sun also rose and threw fire-pointed darts at us through the windowshades. By five o'clock I was ready to scream with nerves; and, having dug a lounge suit out of the gentlemen's furnishing store in my trunk, I cautiously descended into the lower regions. There was a rich smell of cigarettes everywhere. In the hall I stumbled over the feet of the sleeping night-watchman. But the birds were twittering in the bushes; the grassblades threw back a million flashes to the sun.
Not before a quarter to ten could I secure a cup of coffee, though several footmen, in answer to my insistent bell, had been running round apparently for hours in a vain endeavor to get it for me. At eleven a couple of languid younger men made their appearance and conversed apathetically with one another over the papers. The hours drew on.
Lunch came at two o'clock, bursting like a thunder-storm out of a sunlit sky. Afterward the guests sat round and talked. People were coming to tea at five, and there was hardly any use in doing anything before that time. A few took naps. A young lady and gentleman played an impersonal game of tennis; but at five an avalanche of social leaders poured out of a dozen shrieking motors and stormed the castle with salvos of strident laughter. The cannonade continued, with one brief truce in which to dress for dinner, until long after midnight. Vox, et praeterea nihil!
I look back on that house party with vivid horror. Yet it was one of the most valuable of my social experiences. We were guests invited for the first time to one of the smartest houses on Long Island; yet we were neglected by male and female servants alike, deprived of all possibility of sleep, and not the slightest effort was made to look after our personal comfort and enjoyment by either our host or hostess. Incidentally on my departure I distributed about forty dollars among various dignitaries who then made their appearance.