"No," she interrupted with a grave, sweet smile, "do not say the rest. We think it quite fitting. My uncle at first refused to have any ladies included in the party; but I insisted on having one or two of my dearest friends, and it is agreed that we are not to be considered as forming any part of the company."
She passed on, without giving him any chance for further words. Beresford, who sat opposite, begrudged every syllable she had uttered.
All around the table the conversation was of field sports, adventures with dog and gun and prospects for the morrow's shooting. General DeKay and Mr. Noble, as veterans, led the discussions, the banker giving fluent and graphic accounts of his experiences in the Maine and Michigan woods, the General responding with racy bits of adventure in the game regions of Louisiana and Florida. Men who like field sports are, as a rule, earnest, healthy, vivacious fellows, fond of good cheer, with a decided leaning towards making the best of every thing. Such company as that around the board at the DeKay mansion, was, therefore, one to enjoy to the full the superb feast and all its attendant freedom from formality. The ladies retired when the cigars came in, leaving General DeKay and Mr. Noble to test some old brandy, while the younger men sipped a milder beverage, under the white wreaths of Cuban tobacco smoke. Two or three negro men-servants had quickly cleared the table, and now moved noiselessly about, or stood like white-aproned ebon statues, gazing thirstily upon the sparkling glasses.
Meanwhile the ladies were having their own pleasant dinner in the breakfast room, Miss Crabb entertaining them with a vivid account of some of her experiences as a correspondent and editor. Her sketches had a breadth and freedom, all the more fascinating to the Southern part of her audience, on account of the impressions they gave of a field of woman's labor unknown in the dreamy land of cotton and sugarcane, magnolias and mocking-birds. Miss Crabb was very earnest and sincere, deeply impressed with the importance and influence of her profession, and her straight forward manner of talking, along with a perfectly evident good-heartedness, won a peculiarly qualified admiration and respect from the majority of her listeners. Her effect with Miss Noble was quite different. The shrewd, wide-awake Northern girl knew very well how purely a matter of business Miss Crabb was making of the whole affair, and how like a dissecting-knife her pen would be. She sympathized with the young journalist, however, and silently hoped that she might make a success of her bold effort to penetrate to the inner heart of this old, exclusive Southern social circle, the picturesque charm of which seemed to hover like an atmosphere in the quaint, dingy, airy room.
All the doors and windows were open and the night breathed through the house, bearing the pungency of the men's tobacco in faint traces to the breakfast room, and presently the sound of a banjo along with the mellow, barbaric voice of a negro singer, filled the place. There was almost uproarious applause from many manly mouths. Uncle Mono was ending up the feast with his favorite song:
"De raccoon am a cunnin' ting,
He rammel in de dahk,
Wid nuffin' 'tall fo' to 'stu'b he mind,
Tell he yer my 'coon-dog bahk!"
He was a jolly-faced, jet black old fellow, with a great shock of grizzly wool on his head, a comically flexible mouth, and dusky eyes that danced to the rapid time of his music.
It was the merest chance that suggested Uncle Mono and his banjo, but if it had been pre-arranged, as in a play, that his two or three humorous songs and his one pathetic love-ditty should close the evening's festivities, it would have been in accord with the highest art. The almost rude yet wholly fascinating carvings on the time-stained panels of the dining-room, seemed to especially favor the effect of such lyrical savageness and grotesquerie.
The impression upon Moreton's mind was strange, almost weird. When all was over and he was alone in his room, he leaned back in a chair, with his feet thrust out of the open window, and gazed into the soft sky with a haunting sense of how suddenly and far he had been removed from the glare and show and polite tumult of his own world. It was all very fascinating, this isolation and decay, these soft-tongued women, these knightly, half-grave, half-hilarious men, this strain of music from Dahomey.