For the Major: A Novelette

by Constance Fenimore Woolson

CHAPTER VIII.

AUTUMN at last came over the mountains; she decked them in her most sumptuous colors, and passed slowly on towards the south. The winds followed the goddess, eight of them; they came sounding their long trumpets through the defiles; they held carnival in the high green valleys; they attacked the forests and routed the lighter foliage, but could not do much against the stiff, dark ranks of the firs. They careered over all the peaks; sometimes they joined hands on Chillawassee's head, and whirled round in a great circle, laughing loudly, for half a day; and then the little people who lived on the ground said to each other that it "blew from all round the sky."

They came to Far Edgerley more than once; they blew through Edgerley Street; at night the villagers in their beds heard the long trumpets through the near gorges, and felt their houses shake. But they were accustomed to these autumn visitors; they had a theory, too, that this great sweeping of their peaks and sky was excellent for their mountain air. And upon the subject of their air there was much conceit in Far Edgerley.

When at length the winds had betaken themselves to the lowlands, with the intention of blowing across the levels of Georgia and Florida, and coming round to surprise the northerners at Indian River and St. Augustine, the quiet winter opened in the mountains they had left behind them. The Major had had no return of his October illness; he came to church on Sundays as usual, and appeared at his wife's receptions. It was noticed, although no one spoke of it, that he did not hold himself quite so erect as formerly, and that perhaps his eyesight was not quite so good; but he still remained to his village the exemplar of all that was noble and distinguished, and they admired him and talked about him as much as ever. He was their legend, their escutcheon; so long as they had him they felt distinguished themselves.

The winter amusements began about Christmastime. They consisted principally of the Sewing Society and the Musical Afternoons. To these entertainments "the gentlemen" came in the evening—F. Kenneway, Mr. Phipps, the junior warden, and the rector, when they could get him. A Whist Club had, indeed, been proposed. There was a double motive in this proposal. There were persons in the congregation who considered whist-playing a test of the best churchmanship; these were secretly desirous to see the test applied to the new rector, or rather the new rector applied to it. But the thoughtful Mrs. Greer, having foreseen this very possibility at an early date in the summer, had herself sounded the rector upon the subject, and brought back a negative upon the end of her delicate conversational line. She had asked him if he thought that the sociability engendered by card-tables at small parties could, in his opinion, counterbalance the danger which familiarity with the pasteboard squares might bring to their young men (Phipps and Kenneway); and whether he himself, at moments of leisure, and when he wished to rest from intellectual fatigue, of which, of course, he must have so much, ever whiled away the time with these same gilded symbols, not with others, but by himself.

Owen, who had not for the moment paid that attention to the eloquence of Mrs. Greer which he should have done, did not understand her. He had received an impression of cymbals. This was no surprise to him; he had found Mrs. Greer capable of the widest range of subjects.

"I mean the painted emblems, you know—cards," explained Mrs. Greer; "clubs, diamonds, and spades, Mr. Owen. Nor should we leave out hearts. I was referring, when I spoke, to solitaire. But there is also whist. Whist is, in its way, a climate by itself—a climate of geniality."

This was a phrase of Madam Carroll's. Mrs. Greer had collected a large assortment of phrases from the overflow of the Farms. These she treasured, and dealt out one by one; her conversation was richly adorned with them. She had excellent opportunities for collecting, as Madam Carroll had long been in the habit of telling her any little item which she wished to have put in circulation through the village in a certain guise. She always knew that her exact phrase would be repeated, but not as hers; it would be repeated as if it were original with the lady who spoke it. This was precisely what Madam Carroll intended. To have said herself, for instance, that the new chintz curtains of her drawing-room combined delicacy and durability, and a bower-like brightness, was too apparent; but for Mrs. Greer to say it (in every house on Edgerley Street) was perfectly proper, and accomplished the same result. The whole town remarked upon the delicacy and the durability and the bower-like brightness; and the curtains, which she had made and put up herself at small expense, took their place among the many other peculiarly admirable things possessed by the Farms. Upon the present occasion, however, Mrs. Greer gave Madam Carroll's name to the phrase she had repeated; she thought it would have more influence. "Yes, that is what our dear Madam Carroll used to call it—a climate of geniality," she said, looking at the rector with an inquiring smile.