Caleb West, Master Diver

by Francis Hopkinson Smith

With the soft glow of the candles the room took on a mellow, subdued tone; the pink roses on the cloth, the rosebuds on the candle-shades, and the mass of Mermets in the centre being the distinctive features, and giving the key-note of color to the feast. To Sanford a dinner-table with its encircling guests was always a palette. He knew just where the stronger tones of black coats and white shirt-fronts placed beside the softer tints of fair shoulders and bright faces must be relieved by blossoms in perfect harmony, and he understood to a nicety the exact values of the minor shades in linen, glass, and silver, in the making of the picture.

The guests arrived within a few minutes of one another. Mrs. Leroy, in yellow satin with big black bows caught up on her shoulder, a string of pearls about her throat, came first: she generally did when dining at Sanford’s; it gave her an opportunity to have a chance word with him before the arrival of the other guests, and to give a supervising glance over the appointments of his table. And then Sanford always deferred to her in questions of taste. It was one of the nights when she looked barely twenty-five, and seemed the fresh, joyous girl Sanford had known before her marriage. The ever present sadness which her friends often read in her face had gone. To-night she was all gayety and happiness, and her eyes, under their long lashes, were purple as the violets which she wore. Helen Shirley was arrayed in white muslin,—not a jewel,—her fair cheeks rosy with excitement. Jack was immaculate in white tie and high collar, while the self-installed, presiding genial of the feast, the major, appeared in a costume that by its ill-fitting wrinkles betrayed its pedigree,—a velvet-collared swallow-tail coat that had lost its onetime freshness in the former service of some friend, a skin-tight pair of trousers, and a shoestring cravat that looked as if it had belonged to Major Talbot himself (his dead wife’s first husband), and that was now so loosely tied it had all it could do to keep its place.

“No one would have thought of all this but you, Kate,” said Sanford, lifting Mrs. Leroy’s cloak from her shoulders.

“Don’t thank me, Henry. All I did,” she answered, laughing, “was to put a few flowers about, and to have my maid poke a lot of man-things under the sofas and behind the chairs, and take away those horrid old covers and curtains. I know you’ll never forgive me when you want something to-morrow you can’t find, but Jack begged so hard I couldn’t help it. How did you like the candle-shades? I made them myself,” she added, tipping her head on one side like a wren.

“I knew you did, and I recognized your handiwork somewhere else,” Sanford answered, with a significant shrug of his shoulders towards the dining-room, where the initial wreath was hung.

“It is a bower of beauty, my dear madam!” exclaimed the major, bowing like a French dancing-master of the old school when Sanford presented him, one hand on his waistcoat buttons, the right foot turned slightly out. “I did not know when I walked through these rooms this afternoon whose fair hands had wrought the wondrous change. Madam, I salute you,” and he raised her hand to his lips.

“Helen ... in white muslin—not a jewel”

Mrs. Leroy looked first in astonishment as she drew back her fingers. Then as she saw his evident sincerity, she made him an equally old-fashioned curtsy, and broke into a peal of laughter.

While this bit of comedy was being enacted, Jack, eager to show Helen some of Sanford’s choicest bits, led her to the mantelpiece, over which hung a sketch by Smearly,—the original of his Academy picture; pointed out the famous wedding-chest and some of the accoutrements over the door; and led her into the private office, now lighted by half a dozen candles, one illuminating the copper diving-helmet with its face-plate of flowers. Helen, who had never been in a bachelor’s apartment before, thought it another and an enchanted world. Everything suggested a surprise and a mystery.