Peter: A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero

by Francis Hopkinson Smith

And a veritable grand dame she looked, and was, as she took her seat and awaited the arrival of her guests—in bearing, in the way she moved her head; in the way she opened her fan—in the selection of the fan itself, for that matter. You felt it in the color and length of her gloves; the size of her pearl ear rings (not too large, and yet not too small), in the choice of the few rings that encircled her slender and now somewhat shrunken fingers (one hoop of gold had a history that the old French Ambassador could have told if he wanted to, so Peter once hinted to me)—everything she did in fact betrayed a wide acquaintance with the great world and its requirements and exactions.

Other women of her age might of their choice drop into charities, or cats, or nephews and nieces, railing against the present and living only in the past; holding on like grim death to everything that made it respectable, so that they looked for all the world like so many old daguerreotypes pulled from the frames. Not so Miss Felicia Grayson of Geneseo, New York. Her past was a flexible, india-rubber kind of a past that she stretched out after her. She might still wear her hair as she did when the old General raved over her, although the frost of many winters had touched it; but she would never hold on to the sleeves of those days or the skirts or the mantles: Out or in they must go, be puffed, cut bias, or made plain, just as the fashion of the day insisted. Oh! a most level-headed, common-sense, old aristocrat was Dame Felicia!

With the arrival of the first carriage old Isaac Cohen moved his seat from the back to the front of his shop, so he could see everybody who got out and went in, as well as everybody who walked past and gazed up at the shabby old house and its shabbier steps and railings. Not that the shabby surroundings ever made any difference whether the guests were “carriage company” or not, to quote good Mrs. McGuffey. Peter would not be Peter if he lived anywhere else, and Miss Felicia wouldn't be half so quaint and charming if she had received her guests behind a marble or brownstone front with an awning stretched to the curbstone and a red velvet carpet laid across the sidewalk, the whole patrolled by a bluecoat and two hired men.

The little tailor had watched many such functions before. So had the neighbors, who were craning their heads from the windows. They all knew by the carriages when Miss Felicia came to town and when she left, and by the same token for that matter. The only difference between this reception and former receptions, or teas, or whatever the great people upstairs called them, was in the ages of the guests; not any gray whiskers and white heads under high silk hats, this time; nor any demure or pompous, or gentle, or, perhaps, faded old ladies puffing up Peter's stairs—and they did puff before they reached his door, where they handed their wraps to Mrs. McGuffey in her brave white cap and braver white apron. Only bright eyes and rosy faces today framed in tiny bon nets, and well-groomed young fellows in white scarfs and black coats.

But if anybody had thought of the shabby surroundings they forgot all about it when they mounted the third flight of stairs and looked in the door. Not only was Peter's bedroom full of outer garments, and Miss Felicia's, too, for that matter—but the banisters looked like a clothes-shop undergoing a spring cleaning, so thickly were the coats slung over its hand rail. So, too, were the hall, and the hall chairs, and the gas bracket, and even the hooks where Peter hung his clothes to be brushed in the morning—every conceivable place, in fact, wherever an outer wrap of any kind could be suspended, poked, or laid flat. That Mrs. McGuffey was at her wits' end—only a short walk—was evident from the way she grabbed my hat and coat and disappeared through a door which led to her own apartments, returning a moment later out of breath and, I fancied, a little out of temper.

And that was nothing to the way in which the owners of all these several habiliments were wedged inside. First came the dome of Peter's bald head surmounting his merry face, then the top of Miss Felicia's pompadour, with its tiny diamond spark bobbing about as she laughed and moved her head in saluting her guests and then mobs and mobs of young people packed tight, looking for all the world like a matinee crowd leaving a theatre (that is when you crane your neck to see over their heads), except that the guests were without their wraps and were talking sixteen to the dozen, and as merry as they could be.

“They are all here, Major,” Peter cried, dragging me inside. It was wonderful how young and happy he looked. “Miss Corinne, and that loud Hullaballoo, Garry Minott, we saw prancing around at the supper—you remember—Holker gave him the ring.”

“And Miss MacFarlane?” I asked.

“Ruth! Turn your head, my boy, and take a look at her. Isn't she a picture? Did you ever see a prettier girl in all your life, and one more charmingly dressed? Ruth, this is the Major... nothing else... just the Major. He is perfectly docile, kind and safe, and—”

“—And drives equally well in single or double harness, I suppose,” laughed the girl, extending her hand and giving me the slightest dip of her head and bend of her back in recognition, no doubt, of my advancing years and dignified bearing—in apology, too, perhaps, for her metaphor.