“God A’mighty, man, ‘lobster!’ I could eat the can,” cried one of the recumbents, springing up with such alacrity that his bounce awakened Colonel Kenwynton, who had been able to forget his fatigue and hunger in a doze.
“Get that dinner on the table, or I’ll be the death of you,” cried Floyd-Rosney. “We are hungry. It is nearly five o’clock and we have had nothing since breakfast.”
The door closed slowly on the disaffected cook, who was evidently a devotee to art for art’s sake, for he presently reappeared in his capacity of table servant, as if he had been rebuked in an altogether different identity as cook. He drooped languidly between the door and the frame and once more in his high falsetto plaint he upbraided the Captain.
“The Cap’n nuver done me right. He oughter have let me pack that box, instead of the steward. There ain’t no fruit napkins, Mr. Floyd-Rosney. Jes’ white doilies,” he was not far from tears, “white doilies to serve with o’anges!”
The mere mention was an appetizer.
“Let me get at ’em, whether they are served with doilies or bath-towels!” cried the recumbent figure, recumbent no longer. “Call the ladies. Ho, for the festive board. If you don’t want scraps only, you had better not let me get there first. Notify the ladies. Does this vast mansion possess nothing that is like a dinner-bell, or a gong, or a whistle, that may make a cheerful sound of summons. Ha, ha, ha!”
“It compromises on something like the crackling of thorns under a pot,” said Floyd-Rosney, sourly. Then with gracious urbanity, “Major, let me give you my arm, perhaps our presence at the festive board may hasten matters.”
The ladies had already surged out into the great, bare, echoing hall, Hildegarde Dean, freshly arrayed in an Empire gown, as blue as her eyes, protesting that she was as hungry as a hunter. Ducie offered his arm ceremoniously to her mother, and Floyd-Rosney, who had intended his attention to the old blind Major as a bid for his wife’s notice and approval, was not pleased to see the procession, stately and suggestive, by reason of the lordly expansiveness of the place, headed by the heir of the old owners in the guise of host. It was an idea that never entered Ducie’s mind, not even when whetting the carving knife on the steel in anticipation of dispensing shares of the saddle of mutton from his end of the table. At this table, in truth, his grandfather had sat, and his great-grandfather also, and dispensed its bounty. So heavy it was, so burdensome for removal, that in the various disasters that had ravaged the old house, war and financial ruin, marauders and tramps, wind and rain, lightning and overflow, it had endured throughout. Mahogany was not earlier the rage as now, and the enthusiasm of the up-to-date man could scarcely be restrained. There were no chairs; planks from the flooring elsewhere had been hastily stretched benchwise on the boxes that had held the provisions and bedding, but even this grotesque make-shift did not detract from his keen discernment of the admirable in the entourage. The size and shape of the room, the old-fashioned bow-window, the ornate mantel-piece, the cabinets built into the walls for the silver and choice show of old china, now without even a shelf or a diamond-shaped pane of glass, the design of the paper, the stucco ornaments about the chandelier, or rather the rod which had once supported it, for the pendants had been dismembered in wanton spoliation and now lay in fragments on the lawn without, the pantry, the china-closet, the storeroom contiguous all came in for his commendation, and much he bewailed the grinning laths looking down from the gaps in the fallen plaster, the smoke-grimed walls, the destroyed hearth, half torn out from the chimney-place. The stream of his talk was only stemmed by the reappearance of the cook, now with his white jacket and apron in the rôle of waiter. Every eye was turned apprehensively toward him lest he was moved to say that the Cap’n had ordered no dinner to be put into the box. He dolorously drooped over Ducie’s shoulder in the place of host, and at once disclosed the melancholy worst. “Dere ain’t no soup, sir. While I was speakin’ to you gemmen in de—de—in de library, sir, de soup scorched. I had set dat ole superannuated mule of de Major’s ter watch de pot an’ he didn’t know enough to set it off de fire when it took to smokin’. Hit was ’p’tage Bec’mul, sir.”
Ducie laughed and called for the roast, and the company, as soon as the functionary had disappeared, addressed their wits to the translation of the waiter’s French to discover what manner of soup they had lost.
Paula was not sorry to see Adrian Ducie in his hereditary place; somehow it would have revolted her that she and hers should sit in the seat of the usurper. Accident had willed it thus, and it was better so. She had noted the quick glance of gauging the effect which her husband had cast at her as he made much ado of settling the old Major at the table. Even without this self-betrayal she would have recognized the demonstration as one of special design. How should she now be so discerning, she asked herself. She knew him, she discriminated his motives, she read his thoughts as though they were set forth on the page of an open book. And of this he was so unconscious, so assured, so confident of her attitude as hitherto toward him, that she had the heart to pity while she despised him, while she revolted at the thought of him.