6
The heavy damask cloths had been spread. Another carriage full of cousins and aunts and uncles arrived to fill the house with more confusion. Mary Eastin and some of the other girls came to help Emily direct the placing of the great piles of china plates, the gleaming goblets and compotes that would be filled with uncle Jackson’s wine and aunt Rachel’s preserves and relishes. The heavy soup ladle was rubbed till it glittered, a mound of apples and nuts was heaped on a tray which Emily edged with holly.
Mary Eastin, very young and eager, had a cameo face and a lilting laugh. Life would always be gay for Mary. A president’s nephew would one day find her irresistible, but now she was a dancing sprite, doing pirouettes with a vinegar cruet for a partner, getting in everybody’s way.
“You’ll break something, Mary. Do go and coax uncle Jackson to tootle on his new flute,” urged Emily.
“He makes such silly noises on it,” protested Mary, “and he screws up his face till I’m scared to death I’ll laugh and offend him.”
“But he loves it and it gets politics out of his mind.”
Mary grabbed Emily’s arm. “Emmy, he’s coming isn’t he? I can see it sticking out all over you. Emmy, I think all these stuffy old people are crazy. If I had a boy in love with me, I’d have him, no matter if every Donelson alive croaked themselves to death.”
“Mary, for Heavens’ sake, hush! Things are going to be bad enough—I’m just holding my breath.”
“I think it’s wonderful!” Mary’s eyes were full of stars. “Let me tell you something though—don’t you start out being a dutiful wife like aunt Rachel. A woman can get herself simply subjugated by being so worshipful. I mean to keep my spirit and my personality, whoever I marry. Aunt Rachel’s kind of wife is going out of fashion.”
Emily bent her brows together. Of course Jack would expect a dutiful wife. Hadn’t he been trained by uncle Jackson, who had never known any other mode of life except to be master in his house? Jack would expect his wife to be a gracious copy of aunt Rachel—with a bit more style perhaps, and more ease in company, Emily amended, with no disloyalty. Aunt Rachel was good. She did not need a flair for clever conversation or the sly, pretty arts by which some women kept men enthralled, but as Mary had said, times were changing. Women even went to colleges now and read deep books.