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A Border Ruffian
by
“Miss Winthrop, permit me to present Mr. Livingstone. Miss Winthrop is half Boston and half European, Mr. Livingstone; and as you, after these ten years abroad, must be wholly European, you can cheer each other as fellow foreigners in the midst of Philadelphia barbarism”–with which pleasant speech the hostess turned quickly to receive the last arrival (a man, of course; only a man would dare to be even near to late at one of Mrs. Rittenhouse Smith’s dinners), and then, standing beside the doorway, with Mr. Hutchinson Port, marshalled her company in to dinner. It was a comfort to her to know that for once in his fault-finding life Mr. Port would be compelled, since he was to be seated beside his hostess, to eat his food without abusing it.
Just at this time two things struck Mrs. Smith as odd. One was that as she presented her handsome guest to Miss Grace Winthrop she certainly had felt him start, while his arm had trembled curiously beneath her hand. The other was that as Mr. Rittenhouse Smith left the drawing-room, passing close beside her with Miss Winthrop upon his arm, he made a face at her. The first of these phenomena struck her as curious. The second struck her as ominous. Had it been possible she would have investigated the cause of Mr. Smith’s facial demonstration. But it was not possible. She only could breathe a silent prayer that all would go well–and the while sniff anxiously to discover if perchance there were a smell of scorching duck.
Mrs. Smith would have been still more mystified could she have been cognizant at this juncture of her husband’s and of Miss Grace Winthrop’s and of Mr. Livingstone’s thoughts.
The first of these was thinking: “It isn’t Van Rensselaer Livingstone, any more than I am; though he certainly looks like him. And I’m sure that he knows that he don’t know me. And I think that we’ve managed to get into a blank idiotic mess!”
And the second of these was thinking: “If he’s been in Europe for the past ten years, there’s not one chance in fifty that I ever have laid eyes on him. But I know I have!”
And the third of these was thinking: “There isn’t man in the room who looks enough like Dicky Smith to be his tenth cousin. But if ever the goodness of heaven was shown in the affairs of men it is shown here to me to-night!”
VI.
Even as the sun triumphs over the darkness of night and the gloom of the tempest, so did Mrs. Rittenhouse Smith’s dinner-party emerge radiantly from the sombre perils which had beset it. It was a brilliant, unqualified success.
Miss Winthrop was good enough to say, when the evening was ended–saying it in that assured, unconscious way that gives to the utterances of Boston people so peculiar a charm–“Really, Mrs. Smith, you have given me not only a delightful dinner, but a delightful surprise; I would not have believed, had I not seen it myself, that outside of Boston so many clever people could be brought together!”
And Mr. Hutchinson Port, upsetting all his traditions, had kept up a running fire of laudatory comment upon the dinner that had filled Mrs. Smith’s soul with joy. She had expected him, being cut off by her presence from engaging in his accustomed grumbling, to maintain a moody silence. She had not expected praise: and she valued his praise the more because she knew that he spoke out of the fulness of his wisdom; and because in a matter of such vital moment as eating she knew that she could trust him to be sincere. His only approach to invidious comment was in regard to the terrapin.
With the grave solemnity that marks the serving of this delicacy in Philadelphia; in the midst of a holy calm befitting a sacred rite, the silver vessels were carried around the board, and in hushed rapture (a little puzzling to the Bostonians) the precious mixture was ladled out upon the fourteen plates; and Mr. Hutchinson Port, as the result of many years of soulful practice, was able to secure to himself at one dexterous scoop more eggs than fell to the lot of any other two men.