His loosely hung, impractically tall figure was clad in the inevitable shiny black “best clothes,” that poor Margaret knew so well, even to the cut of the long frock-coat, with its flapping tails behind and its bagging, unhindered fronts, between which was displayed, through a premeditated opening in the vest, a modicum of white shirt-front, interrupted for an inch or so by the fastening of the upper buttons, only to reveal itself in more generous expansiveness higher up upon the Major’s manly bosom.
Margaret’s quick eye at once perceived the incongruity of the whole situation, and warned her of the necessity of effort on the part of all to reconcile and overcome it. She went forward and received Major King with the perfect politeness which was as natural to her as breathing, and then turned to present Mr. Gaston, who, with the folding-doors of the library opened wide, was quite as if he were in the same room.
Gaston’s aspect, at the first glance she gave him, was absolutely startling to her. His whole bearing had changed. He had risen from his seat and turned toward the drawing-room, and was standing by the table, very erect and still. The expression of his face was repellant to the last degree, the brows were contracted in a slight but perceptible frown, and the lips were shut with a firm severity.
Margaret, as she mechanically named the two men to each other, could not help drawing a swift mental contrast between the gaunt Southerner, whose features were, in reality, the handsomer of the two, and the Northern man, in his quiet evening dress, and wondering why the latter looked so greatly the superior. Mr. Gaston’s attitude, despite its stiffness, was dignified and impressive, and Major King’s, notwithstanding its ease, was slouching and ungainly.
But the most significant point of contrast came when each man, after his kind, acknowledged the introduction.
“Glad to meet you, sir,” said Major King, in loud, reverberating tones, and made a motion forward, as if to extend his hand. This impulse was repressed, however, by the short, supercilious bow with which the other responded, pronouncing the two words, “Good-evening,” with a chilling and clear-cut utterance that formed the strongest possible contrast to the stranger’s bluff and off-hand style of address. Margaret observed that he did not pronounce Major King’s name at all.
The young girl watched this interchange of greetings with a rush of conflicting emotions. Indignation, shame, astonishment and real pain fought for the predominance; but above all, she was conscious of an instinct which made her feel that the Southern man’s side was her side.
Mr. Gaston, as soon as the introduction was over, resumed his seat at the library-table, and went on with his work, turning his back squarely toward the drawing-room, an action which made it impossible for Major King to fail to realize that he was being intentionally and deliberately slighted. How galling this knowledge must be to a Southern man Margaret well knew, and she felt all her sympathies enlisted for Major King. With the keenest anxiety she watched to see what his course would be.
With a slight flushing of the cheek and a dark flashing of the eye, the tall Southerner seated himself in a delicate little gilt chair, which he proceeded to tip backward, until his heavy weight caused the slight wood-work to creak ominously. Then, in response to a brilliant leader respecting the weather, thrown out by poor Margaret in her extremity, he launched into a fluent and somewhat irrelevant strain of conversation, which soon made it evident that he could go alone. His voice, alas! was loud and self-asserting, and his whole manner so arrogant and ill-bred that Margaret felt her spirit of partisanship growing fainter and fainter. One thing alone was clear to her, and that was her own course. She heard Major King with polite attention, and answered his remarks, when his fluency would permit, with entire courtesy. But Margaret was on the rack the whole time as he talked on, loud, familiar, and irritating. Louis Gaston, seated just within the library door, heard every word—as indeed he must have been deaf not to do—and Margaret fancied she could detect an expression of angry superciliousness in the very attitude of the well-set shoulders and the inclination of the close-cropped head.
The minutes came and went, until they mounted up to hours, and still Major King sat and talked and laughed and told jokes with a ghastly hilarity, which his companion found it frightfully hard to respond to. Nine o’clock struck—ten, eleven, and still he did not go! It could not be that he was enjoying himself, for the poor girl felt that he was secretly as uncomfortable as herself, and, besides, he could never have had a less entertaining companion. She forced herself to attend, while he was giving an account of a play he had seen the night before, which must have been lame and impotent enough in the first instance, but which in the rehash was intolerable. She even tried to laugh when he came to the amusing parts, which he always indicated by laughing loudly himself. But it was torture to her.