Kennedy Square Part 19

"Why?--has father paid him?" he asked in a listless way, squeezing Dandy's nose thrust affectionately into his hand--his mind still on Kate. Now that Willits was with her, as every one said, she would never write him again. He was a fool to expect it, he thought, and he sighed heavily.

"Of course he hasn't paid him--but I have. That is, a friend of mine has--or will."

"You have!" cried Harry with a start. He was interested now--not for himself, but for St. George: no penny of his uncle's should ever go to pay his debts. "Where did the money come from?"

"Never you mind where the money came from. You found it for Gilbert--did he ask you where you got it? Why should you ask me?"

"Well, I won't; but you are mighty good to me, Uncle George, and I am very grateful to you." The relief was not overwhelming, for the burden of the debt had not been heavy. It was only the sting of his father's refusal that had hurt. He had always believed that the financial tangle would be straightened out somehow.

"No!--d.a.m.n it!--you are not grateful. You sha'n't be grateful!" cried St. George with a boyish laugh, seating himself that he might fill his pipe the better from a saucer of tobacco on the table. "If you were grateful it would spoil it all. What you can do, however, is to thank your lucky stars that that greasy red pocket-handkerchief will never be aired in your presence again. And there's another thing you can be thankful for now that you are in a thankful mood, and that is that Mr.

Poe will be at Guy's to-morrow, and wants to see me." He had finished filling the pipe bowl, and had struck a match.

The boy's eyes danced. Gadgem, his father, his debts, everything--was forgotten.

"Oh, I'm so glad! How do you know?"

"Here's a letter from him." (Puff-puff.)

"And can I see him?"

"Of course you can see him! We will have him to dinner, my boy! Here comes Todd with your coffee. Take my seat so I can talk to you while I smoke."

CHAPTER XIV

Although St. George dispensed his hospitality without form or pretence, never referring to his intended functions except in a casual way, the news of so unusual a dinner to so notorious a man as Edgar Allan Poe could not long be kept quiet.

While a few habitues occupying the arm-chairs on the sidewalk of the club were disappointed at not being invited,--although they knew that ten guests had always been St. George's limit,--others expressed their disapproval of the entire performance with more than a shrug of the shoulders. Captain Warfleld was most outspoken. "Temple," he said, "like his father, is a law unto himself, and always entertains the queerest kind of people; and if he wants to do honor to a man of that stamp, why that, of course, is his business, not mine." At which old Tom Purviance had blurted out--"And a shiftless vagabond too, Warfield, if what I hear is true. Fine subject for St. George to waste his Madeira on!" Purviance had never read a dozen lines of anybody's poetry in his life, and looked upon all literary men as no better than play actors.

It was then that Richard Horn, his eyes flashing, had retorted:

"If I did not know how kind-hearted you were, Purviance, and how thoughtless you can sometimes be in your criticisms, I might ask you to apologize to both Mr. Poe and myself. Would it surprise you to know that there is no more truth in what you say than there is in the reports of that gentleman's habitual drunkenness? It was but a year ago that I met him at his cousin's house and I shall never forget him. Would it also surprise you to learn that he has the appearance of a man of very great distinction?--that he was faultlessly attired in a full suit of black and had the finest pair of eyes in his head I have ever looked into? Mr.

Poe is not of your world, or of mine--he is above it. There is too much of this sort of ill-considered judgment abroad in the land. No--my dear Purviance--I don't want to be rude and I am sure you will not think I am personal. I am only trying to be just to one of the master spirits of our time so that I won't be humiliated when his real worth becomes a household word."

The women took a different view.

"I can't understand what Mr. Temple is thinking of," said the wife of the archdeacon to Mrs. Cheston. "This Mr. Poe is something dreadful--never sober, I hear. Mr. Temple is invariably polite to everybody, but when he goes out of his way to do honor to a man like this he only makes it harder for those of us who are trying to help our sons and brothers--" to which Mrs. Cheston had replied with a twinkle in her mouse eyes and a toss of her gray head:--"So was Byron, my dear woman--a very dreadful and most disreputable person, but I can't spare him from my Library, nor should you."

None of these criticisms would have affected St. George had he heard them, and we may be sure no one dared tell him. He was too busy, in fact--and so was Harry, helping him for that matter--setting his house in order for the coming function.

That the table itself might be made the more worthy of the great man, orders were given that the big silver loving-cup--the one presented to his father by no less a person than the Marquis de Castellux himself--should be brought out to be filled later on with Cloth of Gold roses so placed that their rich color and fragrance would reach both the eyes and the nostrils of his guests, while the rest of the family silver, brightened to a mirror finish by Todd, was either sent down to Aunt Jemima to be ready for the special dishes for which the house was famous, or disposed on the side-board and serving-table for instant use when required. Easy-chairs were next brought from upstairs--tobacco and pipes, with wax candles, were arranged on teak-wood trays, and an extra dozen or so of bubble-blown gla.s.ses banked on a convenient shelf. The banquet room too, for it was late summer, was kept as cool as the season permitted, the green shutters being closed, thus barring out the heat of early September--and the same precaution was taken in the dressing-room, which was to serve as a receptacle for hats and canes.

And Todd as usual was his able a.s.sistant. All the darky's training came into play when his master was giving a dinner: what Madeira to decant, and what to leave in its jacket of dust, with its waistcoat of a label unlaundered for half a century; the temperature of the claret; the exact angle at which the Burgundy must be tilted and when it was to be opened--and how--especially the "how"--the disturbing of a single grain of sediment being a capital offence; the final brandies, particularly that old Peach Brandy hidden in Tom Coston's father's cellar during the war of 1812, and sent to that gentleman as an especial "mark of my appreciation to my dear friend and kinsman, St. George Wilmot Temple,"

etc., etc.--all this Todd knew to his finger ends.

For with St. George to dine meant something more than the mere satisfying of one's hunger. To dine meant to get your elbows next to your dearest friend--half a dozen or more of your dearest friends, if possible--to look into their faces, hear them talk, regale them with the best your purse afforded, and last and best of all to open for them your rarest wines--wines bred in the open, amid tender, cl.u.s.tering leaves; wines mellowed by a thousand sunbeams; nurtured, cared for, and put tenderly to sleep, only to awake years thereafter to warm the hearts and cheer the souls of those who honored them with their respect and never degraded them with their debauchery.

As for the dishes themselves--here St. George with Jemima's help was pastmaster: dishes sizzling hot; dishes warm, and dishes stone cold.

And their several arrivals and departures, accompanied by their several staffs: the soup as an advance guard--of gumbo or clams--or both if you chose; then a sheepshead caught off Cobb's Island the day before, just arrived by the day boat, with potatoes that would melt in your mouth--in gray jackets these; then soft-sh.e.l.l crabs--big, crisp fellows, with fixed bayonets of legs, and orderlies of cuc.u.mber--the first served on a huge silver platter with the coat-of-arms of the Temples cut in the centre of the rim and the last on an old English cut-gla.s.s dish. Then the woodc.o.c.k and green peas--and green corn--their teeth in a broad grin; then an olio of pineapple, and a wonderful Cheshire cheese, just arrived in a late invoice--and marvellous crackers--and coffee--and fruit (cantaloupes and peaches that would make your mouth water), then nuts, and last a few crusts of dry bread! And here everything came to a halt and all the troops were sent back to the barracks--(Aunt Jemima will do for the barracks).

With this there was to follow a change of base--a most important change.

Everything eatable and drinkable and all the gla.s.ses and dishes were to be lifted from the table--one half at a time--the cloth rolled back and whisked away and the polished mahogany laid bare; the silver coasters posted in advantageous positions, and in was to rattle the light artillery:--Black Warrior of 1810--Port of 1815--a Royal Brown Sherry that n.o.body knew anything about, and had no desire to, so fragrant was it. Last of all the notched finger-bowls in which to cool the delicate, pipe-stem gla.s.ses; and then, and only then, did the real dinner begin.

All this Todd had done dozens and dozens of times before, and all this (with Malachi's a.s.sistance--Richard Horn consenting--for there was nothing too good for the great poet) would Todd do again on this eventful night.

As to the guests, this particular feast being given to the most distinguished literary genius the country had yet produced,--certainly the most talked of--those who were bidden were, of course, selected with more than usual care: Mr. John P. Kennedy, the widely known author and statesman, and Mr. John H. B. Latrobe, equally noteworthy as counsellor, mathematician, and patron of the fine arts, both of whom had been Poe's friends for years, and who had first recognized his genius; Richard Horn, who never lost an opportunity to praise him, together with Judge Pancoast, Major Clayton, the richest aristocrat about Kennedy Square and whose cellar was famous the county over--and last, the Honorable Prim.

Not because old Seymour possessed any especial fitness one way or the other for a dinner of this kind, but because his presence would afford an underground communication by which Kate could learn how fine and splendid Harry was--(sly old diplomat St. George!)--and how well he had appeared at a table about which were seated the best Kennedy Square could produce.

"I'll put you right opposite Mr. Poe, Harry--so you can study him at your leisure," St. George had said when discussing the placing of the guests, "and be sure you look at his hands, they are just like a girl's, they are so soft and white. And his eyes--you will never forget them.

And there is an air about him too--an air of--well, a sort of haughty distraction--something I can't quite explain--as if he had a contempt for small things--things that you and I, and your father and all of us about here, believe in. Blood or no blood, he's a gentleman, even if he does come of very plain people;--and they were players I hear. It seems natural, when you think it over, that Latrobe and Kennedy and Horn should be men of genius, because their blood ent.i.tles them to it, but how a man raised as Mr. Poe has been should--well--all I can say is that he upsets all our theories."

"But I think you are wrong, Uncle George, about his birth. I've been looking him up and his grandfather was a general in the Revolution."

"Well, I'm glad of it--and I hope he was a very good general, and very much of a gentleman--but there is no question of his descendant being a wonder. But that is neither here nor there--you'll be right opposite and can study him in your own way."

Mr. Kennedy arrived first. Although his family name is the same as that which dignifies the scene of these chronicles, none of his ancestors, so far as I know, were responsible for its t.i.tle. Nor did his own domicile front on its confines. In fact, at this period of his varied and distinguished life, he was seldom seen in Kennedy Square, his duties at Washington occupying all his time, and it was by the merest chance that he could be present.

"Ah, St. George!" he exclaimed, as he handed his hat to Todd and grasped his host's hand. "So very good of you to let me come. How cool and delicious it is in here--and the superb roses--Ah yes!--the old Castellux cup. I remember it perfectly; your father once gave me a sip from its rim when I was a young fellow. And now tell me--how is our genius? What a master-stroke is his last--the whole country is ringing with it. How did you get hold of him?"

"Very easily. He wrote me he was pa.s.sing through on his way to Richmond, and you naturally popped into my head as the proper man to sit next him," replied St. George in his hearty manner.

"And you were on top of him, I suppose, before he got out of bed. Safer, sometimes," and he smiled significantly.

"Yes, found him at Guy's. Sit here, Kennedy, where the air is cooler."

"And quite himself?" continued the author, settling himself in a chair that St. George had just drawn out for him.

"Perhaps a little thinner, and a little worn. It was only when I told him you were coming, that I got a smile out of him. He never forgets you and he never should."

Again Todd answered the knocker and Major Clayton, Richard Horn, and Mr.

Latrobe joined the group. The major, who was rather stout, apologized for his light seersucker coat, due, as he explained, to the heat, although his other garments were above criticism. Richard, however, looked as if he had just stepped out of an old portrait in his dull-blue coat and white silk scarf, St. George's eyes lighting up as he took in the combination--nothing pleased St. George so much as a well-dressed man, and Richard never disappointed him, while Latrobe, both in his dress and dignified bearing, easily held first place as the most distinguished looking man in the room.

The Honorable Prim now stalked in and shook hands gravely and with much dignity, especially with Mr. Kennedy, whose career as a statesman he had always greatly admired. St. George often said, in speaking of this manner of the Scotchman's, that Prim's precise pomposity was entirely due to the fact that he had swallowed himself and couldn't digest the meal; that if he would once in a while let out a big, hearty laugh it might split his skin wide enough for him to get a natural breath.

St. George kept his eyes on Harry when the boy stepped forward and shook Prim by the hand, but he had no need for anxiety. The face of the young prince lighted up and his manner was as gracious as if nothing had ever occurred to mar the harmony between the Seymour clan and himself.

Everybody had seated themselves now--Malachi having pa.s.sed around a course of palm-leaf fans--Clayton, Latrobe, and Horn at one open window overlooking the tired trees--it was in the dog days--Seymour and the judge at the other, while St. George took a position so that he could catch the first glimpse of the famous poet as he crossed the Square--(it was still light), the dinner hour having arrived and Todd already getting nervous.

Once more the talk dwelt on the guest of honor--Mr. Kennedy, who, of all men of his time, could best appreciate Poe's genius, and who, with Mr.

Latrobe, had kept it alive, telling for the hundredth time the old story of his first meeting with the poet, turning now and then to Latrobe for confirmation.

"Oh, some ten or more years ago, wasn't it, Latrobe? We happened to be on the committee for awarding a prize story, and Poe had sent in his 'Ma.n.u.script in a Bottle' among others. It would have broken your hearts, gentlemen, to have seen him. His black coat was b.u.t.toned up close to his chin--seedy, badly worn--he himself shabby and down at the heels, but erect and extremely courteous--a most pitiable object. My servant wasn't going to let him in at first, he looked so much the vagrant."