The Attic Guest: A Novel

by Robert E. Knowles

I was only eighteen then, and I didn't care much where elders slept, or whether they slept at all or not. Besides, it was already nine o'clock, and I was going to a little party where "Tripping the light fantastic" was to be the order of the evening. By the way, I only found out the other day that Milton was the author of that fantastic toe phrase—and the news startled me about as much as if some one had told me Cromwell invented "Blind Man's Buff."

"Has Dinah got me buttoned right?" I asked, backing up to my Aunt Agnes. Aunt Agnes was my mother's sister. I can see her yet, her hands going up in an abstracted kind of way to correct one of Dinah's oversights; for she was still revolving the great question of the elder and the attic, the attic and the elder.

"You're all right now, honey," she said in a moment, giving me a gentle push away, her whole mind reverting to the subject of family concern.

"I'm sure," she went on in the same breath, "it's going to be an elder from the country. Mr. Furvell told me to wait after prayer-meeting last night; and he said the billeting committee sat till two in the morning trying to divide the ministers and elders as fairly as they could—and he thought we were going to get an elder from Pollocksville."

"Let us hear what Henry thinks about it," my mother suddenly interrupted, her face turned towards the door as she spoke. "Sit here, Henry," as she made room on the sofa for my uncle; "sister Agnes thinks it will be dreadful to send our delegate to the attic if he's to be a minister—but she doesn't mind a bit if he's an elder."

My uncle smiled as he took his place beside my mother. And the face that was turned in fondness upon his wife at the other side of the room had a look of kindly drollery. For uncle was the tenderest of men, and his countenance reflected the purity and gentleness of his heart. He was a gentleman of the old school, was uncle. His great-grandfather before him had been born in our quaint little Virginian town, and the gracious culture of a century and a half had not been for nothing. The mist of years lies between me and that April evening when we discussed the approaching Presbytery that was to honour our little town by convening in our midst, pondering our approaching guests as solemnly as though they had been envoys from a royal court; but I can still see the tall athletic form, not yet bowed with age—he was less than fifty—and the careless-fitting, becoming clothes that wrapped it in sober black, and the easy dignity of his poise as he held out his hands to the fire—above all, there rises clear before me the grave and noble face, strength and gentleness blending in the mobile mouth and aquiline nose, while the large gray eyes looked out with the loving simplicity of childhood upon the little circle that was so dear to him and to which he was so dear. Yet there was latent fire in those gentle eyes; when in complete repose, they looked out like two slumbering furnaces that needed only to be blown—and any one familiar with the best type of Southern gentlemen would have descried the old Virginian looking through them, the native courage, the inborn anger against meanness, the swift resentment of a wrong, the reverence of womanhood, the pride of family, that were such salient features of the old-time patrician of the South.

"What's your say on the subject, Uncle Henry?" my mother asked again, breaking the silence. For my uncle's gaze had wandered from his wife's face and was now fixed upon the fire. It was April, as I have said, but a generous flame was leaping on the hearth. So generous, indeed, that the back window whose tiny panes looked towards the west was open; this is a form of conflicting luxuries which only Southern folks indulge in.

"I just think the other way round," Uncle Henry finally responded; "different from Agnes, I mean," his eyes smiling as they met his wife's. "I'd send him to the attic if he's a preacher; a minister wouldn't be so apt to misunderstand, because they're trained to sleep anywhere at a moment's notice—and they know what it is to have to stow their own company away in every nook and corner. Besides, it's those same preachers that make heaps o' folk sleep sitting right bolt up in church. But an elder," Uncle Henry went on reflectively, "an elder kind o' wants to make the most of it when he's visitin'—it's more of an event to him, you see; they look on going to Presbytery as a kind of rehearsal for going to heaven."

"Then they ought to be glad to get the highest place," broke in my Aunt Agnes triumphantly, for she had a ready wit.

"Depends on how you get there," retorted Uncle Henry after a very brief but very busy pause; he had no mind to be worsted in an argument if he could help it. "Everything depends on how it's given to you. There's all the difference in the world between being lifted and being hoisted—I saw a fellow tossed by a bull one day out at Cap'n Lyon's farm; he got the highest place, all right, but he didn't seem to relish the promotion."