CHAPTER XXXI
TOURNAMENT DAY
The noon sun of tournament day shone brilliantly over the village, drowsy no longer, for many vehicles were hitched at the curb, or moved leisurely along the leafy street: big, canvas-topped country wagons drawn by shaggy-hoofed horses and set with chairs that had bumped and jostled their holiday loads from outlying tobacco plantation and stud-farm; sober, black-covered buggies, long, narrow, springless buckboards, frivolous side-bar runabouts and antique shays resurrected from the primeval depths of cobwebbed stables, relics of tarnished grandeur and faded fortune. Here and there a motor crept, a bilious and replete beetle among insects of wider wing. Knots of high-booted men conversed on street corners, men hand-cuffed, it would seem, to their whips; children romped and ran hither and thither; and through all sifted a varicolored stream of negroes, male and female, good-natured and voluble. For tournament day was a county event, and the annual sport of the quality had long outstripped even circus day in general popularity.
At midday vehicles resolved themselves into luncheon-booths—hampers stowed away beneath the seats, disclosing all manner of picnic edibles—the court-house yard was an array of grass-spread table-cloths, and an air of plenty reigned.
Within Mrs. Merryweather Mason’s brown house hospitality sat enthroned and the generous dining-room was held by a regiment of feminine out-of-town acquaintances. At intervals Aunt Charity, the cook, issued from the kitchen to peer surreptitiously through the dining-room door with vast delight.
“Dey cert’n’y do take aftah dat fried chick’n,” she said to old Jereboam, who, with a half-dozen extras, had been pressed into perspiring tray-service. “Dey got all de Mefodis’ preachahs Ah evah see laid in de shade dis day. Hyuh! hyuh!”
“’Deed dey has! Hyuh! hyuh!” echoed Jereboam huskily.
The Mason yard, an hour later, was an active encampment of rocking-chairs, and a din of conversation floated out over the pink oleanders, whose tubs had achieved a fresh coat of bright green paint for the occasion. Mrs. Poly Gifford—a guest of the day—here shone resplendent.
“The young folks are counting mightily on the dance to-night,” observed Mrs. Livy Stowe of Seven Oaks. “Even the Buckner girls have got new ball dresses.”