for him to taste the mixture and give his verdict. “One of the special dishes of my own state.”
“And what’s terrapin?” he pressed. She told him.
“Oh,” he said, “sort of turtle, eh? I shan’t touch it. Take it away, please,” – this to the reverential Ditto hovering in the immediate background.
From this point on, the talk ceased to be general. In spots, the dinner comparatively was silent, then again in other spots conversation abounded. From his seat near the foot, Mr. Braid kept casting interpolations in the direction of the farther end of the table. Repeatedly his sister squelched him. At least, she tried to do so. He seemed to thrive on polite rebuffs, though. He sat between the Thwaites, and Major Thwaites was almost inarticulate, as was usual with him, and Mrs. Thwaites said very little, which was not quite so usual a thing with her, and Mr. Braid apparently felt that he must sow his ill-timed whimsicalities broad-cast rather than bestow them upon the dead eddy of his immediate neighborhood.
For instance, when Miss Rachel Semmes, who was one of Ingleglade’s most literary women, bent forward from her favored position almost directly opposite the guest of honor and said, facing eagerly toward him over the table, “Oh, Mr. Boyce-Upchurch, talk to me of English letters,” Mr. Braid broke right in:
“Let’s all talk about English letters,” he suggested. “My favorite one is ‘Z.’ Well, I like ‘H,’ too, fairly well. But to me, after all, ‘Z’ is the most intriguing. What’s your favorite, everybody?”
Here, as later, his attempted levity met deservedly the interposed barrier of Miss Semmes’ ignoring shoulders. She twisted in her place, turning her back on him, the more forcibly to administer the reproof and with her eyes agleam behind her glasses and her lips making little attentive sucked-in gasping sounds, she harkened while Mr. Boyce-Upchurch discoursed to her of English letters with frequent references to his own contributions in that great field.
As the traveled observer in his own time may have noted, there is a type of cultured Britisher who regards it as stupid to appear smart in strange company, and yet another type who regards it as smart to appear stupid. Mr. Boyce-Upchurch fell into neither grouping. He spoke with a fluency, with an authoritative definiteness, with a finality, which checked all counter-thoughts at their sources. In his criticisms of this one and that one, he was severe or he was commendatory, as the merits of the individual case required. He did not give opinions so much as he rendered judgments. There was about him a convincing firmness. There was never even a trace, a suggestion of doubt. There were passages delivered with such eloquence that almost it seemed to some present as though Mr. Boyce-Upchurch must be quoting from a familiar manuscript. As, if the truth must be known, he was. Still, had not all of intellectual America as far west as Omaha acclaimed “Masters of the Modern English Novel, with Selected Readings from the Author’s Own Books” as a noteworthy platform achievement?
Thus the evening passed, and the Gridleys’ dinner party. All had adjourned back again to the living-room, where coffee and cigarettes were being handed about, when from without came gusts of a warm swift wind blowing the curtains and bringing a breath of moistness.
“Oh, I believe it’s really fixing to rain,” declared Mrs. Gridley, hopefully, and on this, as if in confirmation, they all heard a grumble of distant summer thunder off to the northwest.
At that, Mrs. Thwaites said she and the Major really must run home – they’d come away leaving all the windows open. So they bade everybody good night – the first ones to go.
Mr. Braid saw them to the door. In fact he saw them as far as the front porch.
“Coming to the lecture tomorrow night, I suppose,” he said. “Rally around a brother Briton, and all that sort of thing?”
“I am not,” said little Mrs. Thwaites, with a curious grim twist in her voice. “I heard it tonight.”
“Perishing blighter!” said the Major; which was quite a long speech for the Major.
“I’m ashamed!” burst out Mrs. Thwaites in a vehement undertone. “Aren’t you ashamed, too, Rolf?”
“Rarther!” stated the Major. He grunted briefly but with passion.
“Fault of any non-conformist country,” pleaded young Mr. Braid, finely assuming mortification. “Raw, crude people – that sort of thing. Well-meaning but crude! Appalling ignorance touching on savories. No bitters in the home. No – ”
“Don’t make fun,” said Mrs. Thwaites. “You know I don’t mean that.”
“Surely, surely you are not referring to our notable guest? Oh, Perfidious Albinos!” He registered profound grief.
“I am not.” Her words were like little screws turning. “Why should we be ashamed of him – Rolf and I? He’s not typical – the insufferable bounder! Our writing folk aren’t like that. He may have been well-bred – I doubt it. But now utterly spoiled.”
“Decayed,” amended her husband. “Blighting perisher!” he added, becoming, for him, positively oratorical.
“It’s you Americans I’m ashamed of,” continued this small, outspoken lady. “Do you think we’d let an American, no matter how talented he might be, come over to England to snub us in our own homes and patronize us and preach to us on our shortcomings and make unfair comparisons between his institutions and ours and find fault with our fashion of doing things? We’d jolly well soon put him in his place. But you Americans let him and others like him do it. You bow down and worship before them. You hang on their words. You flock to hear them. You pay them money, lots of it. You stuff them up with food, and they stuff you with insults. This one, now – he’s a sponge. He’s notorious for his sponging.”
“Pardon, please,” interjected Mr. Braid. “There you touch my Yankee pride. Sponging is an aquatic pastime not confined to one hemisphere. You perhaps may claim the present international champion but we have our candidates. Gum we may chew, horn-rimmed cheaters we may wear, but despite our many racial defects we, too, have our great spongers. Remember that and have a care lest you boast too soon.”
“You won’t let me be serious, you do spoof so,” said Mrs. Thwaites. “Still, I shall say it again, it’s you Americans that I’m ashamed of. But I was proud of you tonight, young man. When you mispronounced the name of Maudlin College by calling it ‘Magdeline,’ the Yankee way, and he corrected you, and when immediately after that when you mentioned Sinjin Ervine as ‘St. John’ Ervine and he corrected you again, I knew you must be setting a trap. I held my breath. And then when you asked him about his travels and what he thought of your scenic wonders and he praised some of them, and you brought in Buffalo and he said he had been there and he recalled his trip to Niagara Falls and you said: ‘Not Niagara Falls, dear fellow —Niffls!’ why that was absolutely priceless scoring. Wasn’t it absolutely priceless, Rolf?”
“Rarther!” agreed the Major. He seemed to feel that the tribute demanded elaboration, so he thought briefly and then expanded it into “Oh, rarther!”
“We do our feeble best,” murmured young Mr. Braid modestly, “and sometimes Heaven rewards us. Heaven was indeed kind tonight… Speaking of heavenly matters – look!”
As though acting on cue the horizon to the west had split asunder, and the red lightning ran down the skies in zig-zag streaks, like cracks in a hot stove, and lusty big drops spattered on the porch roof above them.
“It’s beginning to shower – and thank you once more for ‘Niffls.’” Mrs. Thwaites threw the farewell over her shoulder. “We shall have to run for it, Rolf.”
In the steeple of the First Baptist Church of Ingleglade, two blocks distant, the clock struck eleven times. Except for the kitchen wing the residence of the Gridleys on Edgecliff Avenue was, as to its lower floor, all dark and shuttered. The rain beat down steadily, no longer in scattered drops but in sheets. It was drunk up by the thirsty earth. It made a sticky compound of a precious wagon-load of stable leavings with which Mrs. Gridley, one week before, had mulched her specimen roses in their bed under the living-room windows. It whipped and it drenched a single overlooked garment dangling on