Scene: Through the curtained doorway of Mrs. Edward Roberts’s pretty drawing-room, in Hotel Bellingham, shows the snowy and gleaming array of a table set for dinner, under the dim light of gas-burners turned low. An air of expectancy pervades the place, and the uneasiness of Mr. Roberts, in evening dress, expresses something more as he turns from a glance into the dining-room, and still holding the portière with one hand, takes out his watch with the other.
Mr. Roberts to Mrs. Roberts entering the drawing-room from regions beyond: “My dear, it’s six o’clock. What can have become of your aunt?”
Mrs. Roberts, with a little anxiety: “That was just what I was going to ask. She’s never late; and the children are quite heart-broken. They had counted upon seeing her, and talking Christmas a little before they were put to bed.”
Roberts: “Very singular her not coming! Is she going to begin standing upon ceremony with us, and not come till the hour?”
Mrs. Roberts: “Nonsense, Edward! She’s been detained. Of course she’ll be here in a moment. How impatient you are!”
Roberts: “You must profit by me as an awful example.”
Mrs. Roberts, going about the room, and bestowing little touches here and there on its ornaments: “If you’d had that new cook to battle with over this dinner, you’d have learned patience by this time without any awful example.”
Roberts, dropping nervously into the nearest chair: “I hope she isn’t behind time.”
Mrs. Roberts, drifting upon the sofa, and disposing her train effectively on the carpet around her: “She’s before time. The dinner is in the last moment of ripe perfection now, when we must still give people fifteen minutes’ grace.” She studies the convolutions of her train absent-mindedly.
Roberts, joining in its perusal: “Is that the way you’ve arranged to be sitting when people come in?”
Mrs. Roberts: “Of course not. I shall get up to receive them.”
Roberts: “That’s rather a pity. To destroy such a lovely pose.”
Mrs. Roberts: “Do you like it?”
Roberts: “It’s divine.”
Mrs. Roberts: “You might throw me a kiss.”
Roberts: “No; if it happened to strike on that train anywhere, it might spoil one of the folds. I can’t risk it.” A ring is heard at the apartment door. They spring to their feet simultaneously.
Mrs. Roberts: “There’s Aunt Mary now!” She calls into the vestibule, “Aunt Mary!”
Dr. Lawton, putting aside the vestibule portière, with affected timidity: “Very sorry. Merely a father.”
Mrs. Roberts: “Oh! Dr. Lawton? I am so glad to see you!” She gives him her hand: “I thought it was my aunt. We can’t understand why she hasn’t come. Why! where’s Miss Lawton?”
Lawton: “That is precisely what I was going to ask you.”
Mrs. Roberts: “Why, she isn’t here.”
Lawton: “So it seems. I left her with the carriage at the door when I started to walk here. She called after me down the stairs that she would be ready in three seconds, and begged me to hurry, so that we could come in together, and not let people know I’d saved half a dollar by walking.”
Mrs. Roberts: “ She’s been detained too!”
Roberts, coming forward: “Now you know what it is to have a delinquent Aunt-Mary-in-law.”
Lawton, shaking hands with him: “O Roberts! Is that you? It’s astonishing how little one makes of the husband of a lady who gives a dinner. In my time—a long time ago—he used to carve. But nowadays, when everything is served à la Russe, he might as well be abolished. Don’t you think, on the whole, Roberts, you’d better not have come?”
Roberts: “Well, you see, I had no excuse. I hated to say an engagement when I hadn’t any.”
Lawton: “Oh, I understand. You wanted to come. We all do, when Mrs. Roberts will let us.” He goes and sits down by Mrs. Roberts, who has taken a more provisional pose on the sofa. “Mrs. Roberts, you’re the only woman in Boston who could hope to get people, with a fireside of their own—or a register—out to a Christmas dinner. You know I still wonder at your effrontery a little?”
Mrs. Roberts, laughing: “I knew I should catch you if I baited my hook with your old friend.”
Lawton: “Yes, nothing would have kept me away when I heard Bemis was coming. But he doesn’t seem so inflexible in regard to me. Where is he?”
Mrs. Roberts: “I’m sure I don’t know. I’d no idea I was giving such a formal dinner. But everybody, beginning with my own aunt, seems to think it a ceremonious occasion. There are only to be twelve. Do you know the Millers?”
Lawton: “No, thank goodness! One meets some people so often that one fancies one’s weariness of them reflected in their sympathetic countenances. Who are these acceptably novel Millers?”
Mrs. Roberts: “Do explain the Millers to the doctor, Edward.”
Roberts, standing on the hearth-rug, with his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets: “They board.”
Lawton: “Genus. That accounts for their willingness to flutter round your evening lamp when they ought to be singeing their wings at their own. Well, species?”
Roberts: “They’re very nice young newly married people. He’s something or other of some kind of manufactures. And Mrs. Miller is disposed to think that all the other ladies are as fond of him as she is.”
Mrs. Roberts: “Oh! That is not so, Edward.”
Lawton: “You defend your sex, as women always do. But you’ll admit that, as your friend, Mrs. Miller may have this foible.”
Mrs. Roberts: “I admit nothing of the kind. And we’ve invited another young couple who haven’t gone to housekeeping yet—the Curwens. And he has the same foible as Mrs. Miller.” Mrs. Roberts takes out her handkerchief, and laughs into it.
Lawton: “That is, if Mrs. Miller has it, which we both deny. Let us hope that Mrs. Miller and Mr. Curwen may not get to making eyes at each other.”
Roberts: “And Mr. Bemis and his son complete the list. Why, Agnes, there are only ten. You said there were twelve.”
Mrs. Roberts: “Well, never mind. I meant ten. I forgot that the Somerses declined.” A ring is heard. “Ah! that’s Aunt Mary.” She runs into the vestibule, and is heard exclaiming without: “Why, Mrs. Miller, is it you? I thought it was my aunt. Where is Mr. Miller?”
Mrs. Miller, entering the drawing-room arm in arm with her hostess: “Oh, he’ll be here directly. I had to let him run back for my fan.”
Mrs. Roberts: “Well, we’re very glad to have you to begin with. Let me introduce Dr. Lawton.”
Mrs. Miller, in a polite murmur: “Dr. Lawton.” In a louder tone: “O Mr. Roberts!”
Lawton: “You see, Roberts? The same aggrieved surprise at meeting you here that I felt.”
Mrs. Miller: “What in the world do you mean?”
Lawton: “Don’t you think that when a husband is present at his wife’s dinner party he repeats the mortifying superfluity of a bridegroom at a wedding?”
Mrs. Miller: “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. I should never think of giving a dinner without Mr. Miller.”
Lawton: “No?” A ring is heard. “There’s Bemis.”
Mrs. Miller: “It’s Mr. Miller.”
Mrs. Roberts: “Aunt Mary at last!” As she bustles toward the door: “Edward, there are twelve—Aunt Mary and Willis.”
Roberts: “Oh, yes. I totally forgot Willis.”
Lawton: “Who’s Willis?”
Roberts: “Willis? Oh, Willis is my wife’s brother. We always have him.”
Lawton: “Oh, yes, Campbell.”
Mrs. Roberts, without: “Mr. Bemis! So kind of you to come on Christmas.”
Mr. Bemis, without: “So kind of you to ask us houseless strangers.”
Mrs. Roberts, without: “I ran out here, thinking it was my aunt. She’s played us a trick, and hasn’t come yet.”
Bemis, entering the drawing-room with Mrs. Roberts: “I hope she won’t fail altogether. I haven’t met her for twenty years, and I counted so much upon the pleasure—Hello, Lawton!”
Lawton: “Hullo, old fellow!” They fly at each other, and shake hands. “Glad to see you again.”
Bemis, reaching his left hand to Mr. Roberts, while Mr. Lawton keeps his right: “Ah! Mr. Roberts.”
Lawton: “Oh, never mind him. He’s merely the husband of the hostess.”
Mrs. Miller, to Roberts: “What does he mean?”
Roberts: “Oh, nothing. Merely a joke he’s experimenting with.”
Lawton to Bemis: “Where’s your boy?”
Bemis: “He’ll be here directly. He preferred to walk. Where’s your girl?”
Lawton: “Oh, she’ll come by and by. She preferred to drive.”
Mrs. Roberts, introducing them: “Mr. Bemis, have you met Mrs. Miller?” She drifts away again, manifestly too uneasy to resume even a provisional pose on the sofa, and walks detachedly about the room.
Bemis: “What a lovely apartment Mrs. Roberts has.”
Mrs. Miller: “Exquisite! But then she has such perfect taste.”
Bemis, to Mrs. Roberts, who drifts near them: “We were talking about your apartment, Mrs. Roberts. It’s charming.”
Mrs. Roberts: “It is nice. It’s the ideal way of living. All on one floor. No stairs. Nothing.”
Bemis: “Yes, when once you get here! But that little matter of five pair up”—
Mrs. Roberts: “You don’t mean to say you walked up! Why in the world didn’t you take the elevator?”
Bemis: “I didn’t know you had one.”
Mrs. Roberts: “It’s the only thing that makes life worth living in a flat. All these apartment hotels have them.”
Bemis: “Bless me! Well, you see, I’ve been away from Boston so long, and am back so short a time, that I can’t realize your luxuries and conveniences. In Florence we always walk up. They have ascenseurs in a few great hotels, and they brag of it in immense signs on the sides of the building.”
Lawton: “What pastoral simplicity! We are elevated here to a degree that you can’t conceive of, gentle shepherd. Has yours got an air-cushion, Mrs. Roberts?”
Mrs. Roberts: “An air-cushion? What’s that?”
Lawton: “The only thing that makes your life worth a moment’s purchase in an elevator. You get in with a glass of water, a basket of eggs, and a file of the ‘Daily Advertiser.’ They cut the elevator loose at the top, and you drop.”
Both Ladies: “Oh!”
Lawton: “In three seconds you arrive at the ground-floor, reading your file of the ‘Daily Advertiser;’ not an egg broken nor a drop spilled. I saw it done in a New York hotel. The air is compressed under the elevator, and acts as a sort of ethereal buffer.”
Mrs. Roberts: “And why don’t we always go down in that way?”
Lawton: “Because sometimes the walls of the elevator shaft give out.”
Mrs. Roberts: “And what then?”
Lawton: “Then the elevator stops more abruptly. I had a friend who tried it when this happened.”
Mrs. Roberts: “And what did he do?”
Lawton: “Stepped out of the elevator; laughed; cried; went home; got into bed: and did not get up for six weeks. Nervous shock. He was fortunate.”
Mrs. Miller: “I shouldn’t think you’d want an air-cushion on your elevator, Mrs. Roberts.”
Mrs. Roberts: “No, indeed! Horrid!” The bell rings. “Edward, you go and see if that’s Aunt Mary.”
Mrs. Miller: “It’s Mr. Miller, I know.”
Bemis: “Or my son.”
Lawton: “My voice is for Mrs. Roberts’s brother. I’ve given up all hopes of my daughter.”
Roberts, without: “Oh, Curwen! Glad to see you! Thought you were my wife’s aunt.”
Lawton, at a suppressed sigh from Mrs. Roberts: “It’s one of his jokes, Mrs. Roberts. Of course it’s your aunt.”
Mrs. Roberts, through her set teeth, smilingly: “Oh, if it is, I’ll make him suffer for it.”
Mr. Curwen, without: “No, I hated to wait, so I walked up.”
Lawton: “It is Mr. Curwen, after all, Mrs. Roberts. Now let me see how a lady transmutes a frown of threatened vengeance into a smile of society welcome.”
Mrs. Roberts: “Well, look!” To Mr. Curwen, who enters, followed by her husband: “Ah, Mr. Curwen! So glad to see you. You know all our friends here—Mrs. Miller, Dr. Lawton, and Mr. Bemis?”
Curwen, smiling and bowing, and shaking hands right and left: “Very glad—very happy—pleased to know you.”
Mrs. Roberts, behind her fan to Dr. Lawton: “Didn’t I do it beautifully?”
Lawton, behind his hand: “Wonderfully! And so unconscious of the fact that he hasn’t his wife with him.”
Mrs. Roberts, in great astonishment, to Mr. Curwen: “Where in the world is Mrs. Curwen?”
Curwen: “Oh—oh—she’ll be here. I thought she was here. She started from home with two right-hand gloves, and I had to go back for a left, and I—I suppose—Good heavens!” pulling the glove out of his pocket. “I ought to have sent it to her in the ladies’ dressing-room.” He remains with the glove held up before him, in spectacular stupefaction.
Lawton: “Only imagine what Mrs. Curwen would be saying of you if she were in the dressing-room.”
Roberts: “Mr. Curwen felt so sure she was there that he wouldn’t wait to take the elevator, and walked up.” Another ring is heard. “Shall I go and meet your aunt now, my dear?”
Mrs. Roberts: “No, indeed! She may come in now with all the formality she chooses, and I will receive her excuses in state.” She waves her fan softly to and fro, concealing a murmur of trepidation under an indignant air, till the portière opens, and Mr. Willis Campbell enters. Then Mrs. Roberts breaks in nervous agitation “Why, Willis! Where’s Aunt Mary?”
Mrs. Miller: “And Mr. Miller?”
Curwen: “And Mrs. Curwen?”
Lawton: “And my daughter?”
Bemis: “And my son?”
Mr. Campbell, looking tranquilly round on the faces of his interrogators: “Is it a conundrum?”
Mrs. Roberts, mingling a real distress with an effort of mock-heroic solemnity: “It is a tragedy! O Willis dear! it’s what you see—what you hear; a niece without an aunt, a wife without a husband, a father without a son, and another father without a daughter.”
Roberts: “And a dinner getting cold, and a cook getting hot.”
Lawton: “And you are expected to account for the whole situation.”
Campbell: “Oh, I understand! I don’t know what your little game is, Agnes, but I can wait and see. I’m not hungry.”
Mrs. Roberts: “Willis, do you think I would try and play a trick on you, if I could?”
Campbell: “I think you can’t. Come, now, Agnes! It’s a failure. Own up, and bring the rest of the company out of the next room. I suppose almost anything is allowable at this festive season, but this is pretty feeble.”
Mrs. Roberts: “Indeed, indeed, they are not there.”
Campbell: “Where are they, then?”
All: “That’s what we don’t know.”
Campbell: “Oh, come, now! that’s a little too thin. You don’t know where any of all these blood-relations and connections by marriage are? Well, search me!”
Mrs. Roberts, in open distress: “Oh, I’m sure something must have happened to Aunt Mary!”
Mrs. Miller: “I can’t understand what Ellery C. Miller means.”
Lawton, with a simulated sternness: “I hope you haven’t let that son of yours run away with my daughter, Bemis?”
Bemis: “I’m afraid he’s come to a pass where he wouldn’t ask my leave.”
Curwen, re-assuring himself: “Ah, she’s all right, of course. I know that”—
Bemis: “Miss Lawton?”
Curwen: “No, no—Mrs. Curwen.”
Campbell: “Is it a true bill, Agnes?”
Mrs. Roberts: “Indeed it is, Willis. We’ve been expecting her for an hour—of course she always comes early—and I’m afraid she’s been taken ill suddenly.”
Roberts: “Oh, I don’t think it’s that, my dear.”
Mrs. Roberts: “Oh, of course you never think anything’s wrong, Edward. My whole family might die, and”— Mrs. Roberts restrains herself, and turns to Mr. Campbell, with hysterical cheerfulness: “Who came up in the elevator with you?”
Campbell: “Me? I didn’t come in the elevator. I had my usual luck. The elevator was up somewhere, and after I’d pressed the annunciator button till my thumb ached, I watched my chance and walked up.”
Mrs. Roberts: “Where was the janitor?”
Campbell: “Where the janitor always is—nowhere.”
Lawton: “Eating his Christmas dinner, probably.”
Mrs. Roberts, partially abandoning and then recovering herself: “Yes, it’s perfectly spoiled! Well, friends, I think we’d better go to dinner—that’s the only way to bring them. I’ll go out and interview the cook.” Sotto voce to her husband: “If I don’t go somewhere and have a cry, I shall break down here before everybody. Did you ever know anything so strange? It’s perfectly—pokerish.”
Lawton: “Yes, there’s nothing like serving dinner to bring the belated guest. It’s as infallible as going without an umbrella when it won’t rain.”
Campbell: “No, no! Wait a minute, Roberts. You might sit down without one guest, but you can’t sit down without five. It’s the old joke about the part of Hamlet. I’ll just step round to Aunt Mary’s house—why, I’ll be back in three minutes.”
Mrs. Roberts, with perfervid gratitude: “Oh, how good you are, Willis! You don’t know how much you’re doing! What presence of mind you have! Why couldn’t we have thought of sending for her? O Willis, I can never be grateful enough to you! But you always think of everything.”
Roberts: “I accept my punishment meekly, Willis, since it’s in your honor.”
Lawton: “It’s a simple and beautiful solution, Mrs. Roberts, as far as your aunt’s concerned; but I don’t see how it helps the rest of us.”
Mrs. Miller to Mr. Campbell: “If you meet Mr. Miller ”—
Curwen: “Or my wife”—
Bemis: “Or my son”—
Lawton: “Or my daughter”—
Campbell: “I’ll tell them they’ve just one chance in a hundred to save their lives, and that one is open to them for just five minutes.”
Lawton: “Tell my daughter that I’ve been here half an hour, and everybody knows I drove here with her.”
Bemis: “Tell my son that the next time I’ll walk, and let him drive.”
Mrs. Miller: “Tell Mr. Miller I found I had my fan after all.”
Curwen: “And Mrs. Curwen that I’ve got her glove all right.” He holds it up.
Mrs. Roberts, at a look of mystification and demand from her brother: “Never mind explanations, Willis. They’ll understand, and we’ll explain when you get back.”
Lawton, examining the glove which Curwen holds up: “Why, so it is right!”
Curwen: “What do you mean?”
Lawton: “Were you sent back to get a left glove?”
Curwen: “Yes, yes; of course.”
Lawton: “Well, if you’ll notice, this is a right one. The one at home is left.”
Curwen, staring helplessly at it: “Gracious Powers! what shall I do?”
Lawton: “Pray that Mrs. Curwen may never come.”
Mr. Curwen, dashing through the door: “I’ll be back by the time Mr. Campbell returns.”
Mrs. Miller, with tokens of breaking down visible to Mrs. Roberts: “I wonder what could have kept Mr. Miller. It’s so very mysterious, I”—
Mrs. Roberts, suddenly seizing her by the arm, and hurrying her from the room: “Now, Mrs. Miller, you’ve just got time to see my baby.”
Mr. Roberts, winking at his remaining guests: “A little cry will do them good. I saw as soon as Willis came in instead of her aunt, that my wife couldn’t get through without it. They’ll come back as bright as”—
Lawton: “Bemis, should you mind a bereaved father falling upon your neck?”
Bemis: “Yes, Lawton, I think I should.”
Lawton: “Well, it is rather odd about all those people. You can say of one or two that they’ve been delayed, but five people can’t have been delayed. It’s too much. It amounts to a coincidence. Hello! What’s that?”
Roberts: “What’s what?”
Lawton: “I thought I heard a cry.”
Roberts: “Very likely you did. They profess to deaden these floors so that you can’t hear from one apartment to another. But I know pretty well when my neighbor overhead is trying to wheel his baby to sleep in a perambulator at three o’clock in the morning; and I guess our young lady lets the people below understand when she’s wakeful. But it’s the only way to live, after all. I wouldn’t go back to the old up-and-down-stairs, house-in-a-block system on any account. Here we all live on the ground-floor practically. The elevator equalizes everything.”
Bemis: “Yes, when it happens to be where you are. I believe I prefer the good old Florentine fashion of walking upstairs, after all.”
Lawton: “Roberts, I did hear something. Hark! It sounded like a cry for help. There!”
Roberts: “You’re nervous, doctor. It’s nothing. However, it’s easy enough to go out and see.” He goes out to the door of the apartment, and immediately returns. He beckons to Dr. Lawton and Mr. Bemis, with a mysterious whisper: “Come here both of you. Don’t alarm the ladies.”