A Strange, Sad Comedy

by Molly Elliot Seawell

“It is Colonel Corbin,” replied the Colonel, with stately affability.

“But you don’t remember me, I see. Perhaps you recall my father, John Farebrother—wines and liquors. We’re not in the business now,” he said, smiling, turning to Letty with a sort of natural gracefulness, “but, contrary to custom, we haven’t forgotten it.”

The Colonel seized Farebrother’s hand and sawed it up and down vigorously.

“Certainly, certainly,” he said. “Your father supplied the cellars of Corbin Hall for forty years, and the acquaintanceship begun in a business way was continued with very great pleasure on my part, and I frequently enjoyed a noble hospitality at your father’s villa here, in the good old days before the war.”

“And I hope you will extend the same friendship to my father’s son,” said Farebrother, still holding his hat in his hand, and looking very hard at Letty, as if to say, “Present me.”

“My granddaughter, Miss Corbin,” explained the Colonel, and Letty put her slim little hand, country fashion, when she was introduced, into the strong, sunburned one that Farebrother held out to her. Farebrother nodded to the statuesque person in the dog-cart, and his nod seemed to convey a whole code of meaning. The dog-cart trundled off down the road, and Farebrother walked along by Letty’s side, the Colonel on the other. Letty examined this new acquaintance critically, under her dark lashes, anxiously endeavoring to belittle him in her own mind. But having excellent natural sense, in about two minutes and a half she recognized that this man, who mentioned so promptly that his father dealt in wines and liquors, was a gentleman of the very first water. In fact, there is no discounting a gentleman.

Almost every carriage that passed caused Farebrother to raise his hat, and Letty took in, with feminine astuteness, that he was a man of large and fashionable acquaintance. He walked the whole way back to their dingy lodgings with them, and then went in and sat in the musty drawing-room for half an hour. What had Miss Corbin seen at Newport? he asked. Miss Corbin had seen nothing, as she acknowledged with a faint resentment in her voice. This Mr. Farebrother pronounced a shame, a scandal, and a disgrace. She must immediately see everything. His sisters would call immediately; he would see to that. His mother never went out. He hoped to see Miss Corbin at a breakfast or something or other his sisters were planning. They had got hold of an Englishman with a handle to his name, and although the girls pretended that the Britisher was only an incident at the breakfast, that was all a subterfuge. But Miss Corbin should judge for herself, and then, after thanking the Colonel warmly for his invitation to call again, Farebrother took his leave.

The very next afternoon, an immaculate victoria drove up to the Corbins’ door, and two immaculately stylish girls got out. Miss Jemima and the Colonel were not at home, so Letty received the visitors alone in the grim lodging-house parlor. They got on famously, much of the sweetness and true breeding of the brother being evident in the sisters. They were very English in their voices and pronunciation and use of phrases, but in some way it did not sound affected, and they were genuinely kind and girlishly cordial. And it was plain that “our brother” was regarded with extreme veneration. Would Miss Corbin come to a breakfast they were giving next Saturday? Miss Corbin accepted so delightedly, that the Farebrother girls, who were not accustomed to Southern enthusiasm over trifles, were a little startled.

Scarcely had the young ladies driven off when up came Mr. Farebrother. Letty, at this, their second meeting, received him as if he had been a long-lost brother. He, however, who knew something about the genus to which Letty belonged, grinned with keen appreciation of her rapturous greeting, and was not the least overpowered by it. He hung on in the most unfashionable manner until the Colonel arrived, who was highly pleased to meet his young friend, as he called Farebrother, who had a distinct bald spot on the top of his head, and the ruddy flush of six-and-thirty in his face. Farebrother desired the Colonel’s permission to put him up at the Club, and offered him various other civilities, all of which the Colonel received with an inconceivably funny air of conferring a favor instead of accepting one.

Newport assumed an altogether different air to the Corbins after the Farebrother raid. But Letty’s anticipations of the breakfast were dashed with a little secret anxiety of which she was heartily ashamed. What should she wear? She had never been to a fashionable breakfast before in her life. She hesitated between her one elaborate gown, and one of her fresh muslins, but with intuitive taste she reflected that a white frock was always safe, and so concluded to wear one, in which she looked like a tall white lily.