The Fortunes of Oliver Horn [18]
corners.
These porticoes and stone door-steps were really the open-air drawing-rooms of Kennedy Square in the soft summer nights. Here ices were served and cool drinks--sherbets for the young and juleps and sherry cobblers for the old. At the Horn house, on great occasions, as when some big melon that had lain for days on the cool cellar floor was cut (it was worth a day's journey to see Malachi cut a melon), the guests would not only crowd the steps, but all the hall and half up the slender staircase, where they would sit with plates in their laps, the young men serving their respective sweethearts.
This open-air night-life had gone on since Kennedy Square began; each door-step had its habitues and each veranda its traditions. There was but one single porch, in fact, facing its stately trees whereon no flocks of birds, old or young, ever alighted, and that belonged to Peter Skimmerton--the meanest man in town--who in a fit of parsimony over candles, so the girls said, had bared his porch of every protesting vine and had placed opposite his door-step a glaring street gas-lamp---a monstrous and never-to- be-forgotten affront.
And yet, free and easy as the life was, no stranger sat himself down on any one of these porches until his pedigree had been thoroughly investigated, no matter how large might be his bank-account nor how ambitious his soarings. No premeditated discourtesy ever initialed this exclusiveness and none was ever intended. Kennedy Square did not know the blood of the stranger--that was all--and not knowing it they could not trust him. And it would have been altogether useless for him to try to disguise his antecedents --especially if he came from their own State-- or any State south of it. His record could be as easily reached and could be as clearly read as a title- deed. Even the servants knew. Often they acted as Clerks of the Rolls.
"Dat Mister Jawlins, did you ask 'bout?" Malachi would say. "Why you know whar he comes f'om. He's one o' dem Anne Rundle Jawlinses. He do look mighty peart an' dey do say he's mighty rich, but he can't fool Malachi. I knowed his gran'pa," and that wise and politic darky, with the honor of the house before his eyes, would shake his head knowingly and with such an ominous look, that had you not known the only crime of the poor grandfather to have been a marriage with his overseer's daughter-- a very worthy woman, by the way--instead of with some lady of quality, you would have supposed he had added the sin of murder to the crime of low birth. On the other hand, had you asked Malachi about some young aristocrat who had forgotten to count his toddies the night before, that Defender of the Faith would have replied:
"Lawd bress ye! Co'se dese young gemmens like to frolic--an' dey do git dat way sometimes--tain't nuthin'. Dem Dorseys was allers like dat--" the very tones of his voice carrying such convictions of the young man's respectability that you would have felt safe in keeping a place at your table for the delinquent, despite your knowledge of his habits.
This general intimacy between the young people, and this absolute faith of their elders in the quality of family blood, was one of the reasons why every man about Kennedy Square was to be trusted with every other man's sister, and why every mother gave the latch-key to every other mother's son, and why it made no difference whether the young people came home early or late, so that they all came home when the others did. If there were love-making--and of course there was love-making--it was of the old- fashioned, boy-and-girl kind, with keepsakes and pledges and long walks in the afternoons and whispered secrets at the merry-makings. Never anything else. Woe betide the swain who forgot himself ever so slightly--there was no night-key for him after that, nor would any of the girls on any front steps in town ever look his way again when he passed-- and to their credit be it said, few of the young men either. From that day on the offender became a pariah. He had committed the unpardonable sin.
As for
These porticoes and stone door-steps were really the open-air drawing-rooms of Kennedy Square in the soft summer nights. Here ices were served and cool drinks--sherbets for the young and juleps and sherry cobblers for the old. At the Horn house, on great occasions, as when some big melon that had lain for days on the cool cellar floor was cut (it was worth a day's journey to see Malachi cut a melon), the guests would not only crowd the steps, but all the hall and half up the slender staircase, where they would sit with plates in their laps, the young men serving their respective sweethearts.
This open-air night-life had gone on since Kennedy Square began; each door-step had its habitues and each veranda its traditions. There was but one single porch, in fact, facing its stately trees whereon no flocks of birds, old or young, ever alighted, and that belonged to Peter Skimmerton--the meanest man in town--who in a fit of parsimony over candles, so the girls said, had bared his porch of every protesting vine and had placed opposite his door-step a glaring street gas-lamp---a monstrous and never-to- be-forgotten affront.
And yet, free and easy as the life was, no stranger sat himself down on any one of these porches until his pedigree had been thoroughly investigated, no matter how large might be his bank-account nor how ambitious his soarings. No premeditated discourtesy ever initialed this exclusiveness and none was ever intended. Kennedy Square did not know the blood of the stranger--that was all--and not knowing it they could not trust him. And it would have been altogether useless for him to try to disguise his antecedents --especially if he came from their own State-- or any State south of it. His record could be as easily reached and could be as clearly read as a title- deed. Even the servants knew. Often they acted as Clerks of the Rolls.
"Dat Mister Jawlins, did you ask 'bout?" Malachi would say. "Why you know whar he comes f'om. He's one o' dem Anne Rundle Jawlinses. He do look mighty peart an' dey do say he's mighty rich, but he can't fool Malachi. I knowed his gran'pa," and that wise and politic darky, with the honor of the house before his eyes, would shake his head knowingly and with such an ominous look, that had you not known the only crime of the poor grandfather to have been a marriage with his overseer's daughter-- a very worthy woman, by the way--instead of with some lady of quality, you would have supposed he had added the sin of murder to the crime of low birth. On the other hand, had you asked Malachi about some young aristocrat who had forgotten to count his toddies the night before, that Defender of the Faith would have replied:
"Lawd bress ye! Co'se dese young gemmens like to frolic--an' dey do git dat way sometimes--tain't nuthin'. Dem Dorseys was allers like dat--" the very tones of his voice carrying such convictions of the young man's respectability that you would have felt safe in keeping a place at your table for the delinquent, despite your knowledge of his habits.
This general intimacy between the young people, and this absolute faith of their elders in the quality of family blood, was one of the reasons why every man about Kennedy Square was to be trusted with every other man's sister, and why every mother gave the latch-key to every other mother's son, and why it made no difference whether the young people came home early or late, so that they all came home when the others did. If there were love-making--and of course there was love-making--it was of the old- fashioned, boy-and-girl kind, with keepsakes and pledges and long walks in the afternoons and whispered secrets at the merry-makings. Never anything else. Woe betide the swain who forgot himself ever so slightly--there was no night-key for him after that, nor would any of the girls on any front steps in town ever look his way again when he passed-- and to their credit be it said, few of the young men either. From that day on the offender became a pariah. He had committed the unpardonable sin.
As for