But Aunt Ada was walking to a glass fronted what not in a corner, and I followed. "These are some of the things Mr. Huff and I brought home from our tour of Europe and the Holy Land." She pointed. "That vial contains water from the River Jordan. And those are marble fragments we picked up at the Forum." She gave me a brief account of everything on the shelves: a tiny folding fan from France that was a souvenir of the Revolution, a little gilt slipper enclosing a velvet-covered pincushion she'd bought in Belgium, a sea-shell her husband, "my late husband," had picked up from the beach at the English resort at which they'd stayed. And she ended with the prize of her collection: a daisy, brown and pressed flat, from Shelley's grave. Young Felix came bouncing down the stairs and into the room. He had a clean collar on now, and a tie, vest, gold watch-chain, a short black coat, and black-and-white-checked pants. When he saw I was being given the tour, he caught my eye and winked. Then he sat down at the front windows and began to read a newspaper he'd brought with him, the New York Express. Julia was back in the dining room, setting the table, and Aunt Ada and I moved to the white marble mantelpiece and a row of Christmas cards there. On cards as shiny as though they'd been varnished, there were frowzy-haired little-girl angels extending flowers; a few thin Santa Clauses in red-and-white garments like monks' habits, with attached hoods, and skirts to the ground; and quite a few humorous cards, one of them, for example, showing a Christmas dinner at which a quarreling family was throwing plates and glasses. I was even more startled by the «agony» cards, her name for them. One showed a sobbing little girl lost in a howling blizzard; another offered us a child's footprints in the snow, ending at the edge of a river; another a dead bird flat on its back, claws in the air, the caption reading Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings! I didn't know how I ought to react till Aunt Ada cued me. She said, "They're absurd, of course, ridiculous, but all the go nowadays," and I smiled.
A man in his middle thirties came down now, and Aunt Ada introduced us; this is Felix's photo of him.
He was a tall thin man named Byron Keats Doverman, and he wore a mustache, the tips of which flowed into little explosions of whiskers overhanging his jaw. His hair was thick, wavy, red-brown.
He sat down, congratulated Grier on his birthday, borrowed part of his newspaper, and ignored the tour, which continued. I inspected and admired a bamboo easel on which stood a framed painting of some fruit and a dead rabbit. Aunt Ada led me to a small table with porcelain casters, then stood waiting, hands demurely clasped, while I bent over to examine a large sepia photograph propped against a vase filled with cattails. It was a full-length portrait of a woman in tights and wearing a peaked felt hat from which trailed a long feather; she had an elbow planted on a marble pillar and, chin in hand, stood in profile staring off into space. The caption, in gilt script, was The Jersey Lily, and in the opposite corner was what I took to be the name of the photographer, Sarony.
She saved the best for the last. Beside a small handsome organ of dark wood, on the mantelpiece of the fireplace, stood a yard-high set of plaster figures that must have weighed a hundred pounds. The title, cut into the base, was Weighing the Baby, and the figures were of a bearded frock-coated doctor and a mobcapped midwife examining the reading on the balance arm of a scale, in the scoop-tray of which lay a wailing baby. On one side of this plaster tableau stood a glass dome under which sprouted a formal bouquet of strange flowers. Looking closely, I saw that they were made of dyed feathers.
Aunt Ada had to leave before we were finished; supper was nearly ready, and Julia signaled her. But there were plenty of other things to see: family portraits, framed pictures, a giant fern in a corner by the front windows. I told her I liked her parlor very very much, which was true. I think it's the most pleasant room I've ever been in. Sitting there waiting for supper, then Felix Grier handed me a section of his paper, and I glanced at it but didn't read it — I sat looking around that crowded, interesting room again, listening to the crackle of the fire in the stove, feeling the heat of it on the side of my face, watching the wind fling an occasional scatter of snow past the front windows, and I felt at peace.
I sat facing the stairs, watching for the man I'd come to see, and presently Miss Maud Torrence came down and joined us: a small, plain, sweet-faced woman of about thirty-five. She wore a blue-serge skirt, a white blouse buttoned high around the neck, and a small gold watch on a necklace chain. She worked in an office, I learned later, and this was the way she dressed for work. Byron Doverman introduced us, then she stood by the windows watching the night outside, and I saw a wooden pencil stuck into the bun of tight-rolled hair at the base of her neck. She asked me politely if I didn't think the weather had been «fierce» lately, and I agreed but said it was what you'd expect in New York at this time of year; then Julia spoke in the doorway behind us to say that supper was ready.
I was too excited to eat much, too conscious of being here at this table under the almost silent hiss of the gaslights of the overhead chandelier, and beginning to feel worried because my man hadn't appeared. We sat, six of us, with one empty chair, Aunt Ada at the head of the oval table carving the breast of a turkey, then passing our plates to us. For a time we were silent except for murmurs of thanks as dishes were passed. I sat looking around a little, not too obviously. There were half a dozen large framed pictures on the walls. One was a sepia head-and-shoulders of a stern middle-aged man, a family portrait, I supposed; the others were black-and-white engravings of the Roman Forum, pastoral scenes, and the like. Then, all of us served, we began eating, and Byron Doverman tossed in the conversational ball by announcing that he'd just finished reading Ben Hur. Julia and Felix said they were surprised he hadn't read it long since. There was a little talk about Ben Hur then, especially about its "message," and Aunt Ada asked if I'd read it. I never had but I'd seen the movie, so I said yes, adding something or other about the excitement of the chariot race. Then Byron Doverman said casually that he'd once seen the author, General Lew Wallace, ride past his regiment when he'd been a soldier encamped near Washington during the war. As I stared across the table at this still-young, reddish-brown-haired man whose face was almost unlined, it took me a moment to realize that he meant the Civil War.
"Heard the latest about Guiteau?" Felix was asking the table in general. "Someone took a shot at him through his cell window —»
"That was in the papers," Julia said.
"Yes, but this wasn't — the story was all over town this afternoon. The bullet hit the wall and flattened into an absolutely perfect profile of Guiteau as the wretch looks when frightened."
I glanced cautiously around the table but they were all nodding soberly, accepting this as fact without a smile. Then I realized that Aunt Ada was speaking to me, asking my opinion about the trial verdict. I sat looking thoughtful, as though considering, trying to remember what little I knew about Guiteau. I hadn't read much about him, but knew he'd been found guilty, and executed. I wasn't here to reform social attitudes, and I told Aunt Ada that since he was clearly guilty I felt sure he'd be hanged.