At the rear, near the main entrance, in a cleared space, stood two long trestles bearing the refreshments, of which, at a suitable moment, all and sundry would be invited to partake. The feast plainly would be a rich and abundant one, including, as it did, such items as cream puffs, ham sandwiches, Frankfurters, bananas, and soda pop of the three more popular varieties—lemon, sarsaparilla and strawberry—in seemingly unlimited quantities.
Sister Eldora Menifee, by title Queen Bee of the Ladies' Royal Auxiliary of the Supreme Kings, had charge of the collation, its arrangement and its decorations. She hovered about her handiwork, a mighty, black mountain, vigilant to frown away any who might undertake any clandestine poaching. The display of napery and table linen was most ample; and why not? Didn't Sister Menifee do the washing for the biggest white folks' boarding house in town?
With an eye filmed and morose, Jeff Poindexter, pausing at the rear, comprehended this festive scene. Then, as his gaze ran to and fro, he saw that which he dreaded to see and yet sought to behold. He saw Smooth Crum-baugh sitting with Ophelia on the right side of the hall, well up toward the front. Their backs were to him; their heads inclined sidewise toward a common centre.
The loose fold of flesh in Smooth's bull neck pouched down over his glistening collar as he slanted one shoulder to whisper sweet somethings in Ophelia's ear. They must have been sweet somethings, and witty withal; for at once the lady gave vent to a clear soprano giggle. Her mirthful outburst rose above the babble of voices and, floating backward, pierced Jeff Poindexter's bosom as with darts and javelins; and jealousy, meantime, like the Spartan boy's fox, gnawed at his inwards.
The sight and the sound, taken together, made Jeff Poindexter desperate almost to the point of outright recklessness—almost, but not quite. He noted the fortuitous circumstance of a vacant chair directly behind the pair he watched. Surely now Smooth Crumbaugh would start no disturbance here. Surely—so Jeff reasoned it—time, place, occasion and the present company, all would operate and cooperate to curb Smooth's chronic belligerency.
If only for a fleeting period, Jeff longed to venture within conversational distance of Ophelia; to bask for a spell in one of her brilliant smiles; to prove to her by covert looks, if not by whispered words, that there were no ill feelings; to give her an opportunity for visual appreciation of his housings; and, most of all, subtly to convey the suggestion that it was bodily indisposition which had caused him to absent himself from her presence throughout the Christmas. Under cover of his hand he rehearsed a deep cough, and simultaneously began to inch his way along an aisle toward the coveted seat in the adjacent rear of the couple.
The programme proper was well under way; it had begun auspiciously and it promised much. There had been a prayer and a welcoming address by the Imperial Grand Potentate, and now there was singing. Starting shortly, the annual memorial service for any member or members who had departed this life during the preceding twelve months would follow; this lasting until five minutes before midnight. Then all the lights would be turned out, and the gathering would sit in darkness, singing some lugubriously appropriate song as a vocal valedictory for the passing year until the first stroke of midnight, when the lights would flash on again. Thereafter would follow the strictly social phases of the watch party.
Almost until the last it had seemed that the memorial exercises would have to be foregone for lack of material to work on. But at the eleventh hour, as it were, Red Hoss Shackleford, who always heretofore had been a disappointment to everybody, had greatly obliged, and, at the same time, disproved the oft-repeated assertion that one born for hanging can never be drowned, by falling overboard off the tugboat Giles C. Jordan.
This tragedy had occurred at a late hour of the evening of December twenty-sixth, when the Giles C. Jordan was forty miles up Tennessee River on a crosstie-towing venture, and while Red Hoss Shackleford, who had shipped aboard her as cook and general roustabout, was yet overcome by the potent elements of his Christmas celebration, self-administered internally in liquid form.
At least such were the tidings borne by the captain and surviving crew upon their return to port on the twenty-ninth instant. Whereupon the Supreme Kings had seized upon the opportunity thus vouchsafed as a free gift of a frequently inscrutable Providence.