Through the Eye of the Needle: A Romance

  XIII

  I am so often at a loss for the connection in Mrs. Makely's ideas that Iam more patient with her incoherent jargon than you will be, I am afraid.It went on to much the effect that I have tried to report until themoment she took the hand of the guest who came next. They arrived, untilthere were eight of us in all, Mrs. Strange coming last, with excuses forbeing late. I had somehow figured her as a person rather mystical andrecluse in appearance, perhaps on account of her name, and I had imaginedher tall and superb. But she was, really, rather small, though not belowthe woman's average, and she had a face more round than otherwise, with asort of business-like earnestness, but a very charming smile, andpresently, as I saw, an American sense of humor. She had brown hair andgray eyes, and teeth not too regular to be monotonous; her mouth was verysweet, whether she laughed or sat gravely silent. She at once affected melike a person who had been sobered beyond her nature by responsibilities,and had steadily strengthened under the experiences of life. She wasdressed with a sort of personal taste, in a rich gown of black lace,which came up to her throat; and she did not subject me to thatembarrassment I always feel in the presence of a lady who is muchdecolletee, when I sit next her or face to face with her: I cannot alwayslook at her without a sense of taking an immodest advantage. Sometimes Ifind a kind of pathos in this sacrifice of fashion, which affects me asif the poor lady were wearing that sort of gown because she thought shereally ought, and then I keep my eyes firmly on hers, or avert themaltogether; but there are other cases which have not this appealingquality. Yet in the very worst of the cases it would be a mistake tosuppose that there was a display personally meant of the displaypersonally made. Even then it would be found that the gown was worn sobecause the dressmaker had made it so, and, whether she had made itin this country or in Europe, that she had made it in compliance with aEuropean custom. In fact, all the society customs of the Americans followsome European original, and usually some English original; and it is onlyfair to say that in this particular custom they do not go to the Englishextreme.

  We did not go out to dinner at Mrs. Makely's by the rules of Englishprecedence, because there are nominally no ranks here, and we could not;but I am sure it will not be long before the Americans will begin playingat precedence just as they now play at the other forms of aristocraticsociety. For the present, however, there was nothing for us to do but toproceed, when dinner was served, in such order as offered itself, afterMr. Makely gave his arm to Mrs. Strange; though, of course, the whiteshoulders of the other ladies went gleaming out before the whiteshoulders of Mrs. Makely shone beside my black ones. I have now become soused to these observances that they no longer affect me as they once did,and as I suppose my account of them must affect you, painfully,comically. But I have always the sense of having a part in amateurtheatricals, and I do not see how the Americans can fail to have the samesense, for there is nothing spontaneous in them, and nothing that hasgrown even dramatically out of their own life.

  Often when I admire the perfection of the stage-setting, it is with avague feeling that I am derelict in not offering it an explicit applause.In fact, this is permitted in some sort and measure, as now when we satdown at Mrs. Makely's exquisite table, and the ladies frankly recognizedher touch in it. One of them found a phrase for it at once, andpronounced it a symphony in chrysanthemums; for the color and thecharacter of these flowers played through all the appointments of thetable, and rose to a magnificent finale in the vast group in the middleof the board, infinite in their caprices of tint and design. Another ladysaid that it was a dream, and then Mrs. Makely said, "No, a memory," andconfessed that she had studied the effect from her recollection of sometables at a chrysanthemum show held here year before last, which seemedfailures because they were so simply and crudely adapted in the china andnapery to merely one kind and color of the flower.

  "Then," she added, "I wanted to do something very chrysanthemummy,because it seems to me the Thanksgiving flower, and belongs toThanksgiving quite as much as holly belongs to Christmas."

  Everybody applauded her intention, and they hungrily fell to upon theexcellent oysters, with her warning that we had better make the most ofeverything in its turn, for she had conformed her dinner to the brevityof the notice she had given her guests.