American Adventures Part 38

"Where are you-all from?" she demanded.

The statement that we came from New York seemed to explain satisfactorily our ignorance of the I.I. and C. Evidently Mrs.

Eichelberger expected little of New Yorkers. The I.I. and C., she explained, was the Mississippi Industrial Inst.i.tute and College, formerly known as the Female College, a State inst.i.tution for young women; and the senior dramatics were even then in progress in the college chapel, just up the street.

To the chapel, therefore, my companion and I repaired as rapidly as might be, guided thither by frequent sounds of applause.

From among the seniors standing guard in cap and gown at the chapel door, the quick artistic eye of my companion selected a brown-eyed auburn-haired young G.o.ddess as the one from whom tickets might most appropriately be bought. Nor did he display thrift in the transaction.

Instead of buying modest quarter seats he magnificently purchased the fifty-cent kind.

The dazzling ticket seller, transformed to usher, now led us into the crowded auditorium and down an aisle. A few rows from the stage she stopped, and, fastening a frigid gaze upon two hapless young women who were seated some distance in from the pa.s.sageway, bade them emerge and yield their place to us.

Of course we instantly protested, albeit in whispers, as the play was going on. But the beautiful Olympian lightly brushed aside our objections.

"They don't belong here," she declared loftily. "They're freshmen--and they only bought quarter seats."

Then, as the guilty pair seemed to hesitate, she summoned them with a compelling gesture and the command: "Come out!"

At this they arose meekly enough, whereupon we redoubled our protests.

But to no purpose. The t.i.tian-tinted creature was relentless. Our pleas figured no more in her scheme of things than if they had been babblings in an unknown tongue. To add to our discomfiture, a large part of the audience seemed to have perceived the nature of our dilemma, and was giving us amused attention.

It was a crisis; and in a crisis--especially one in which a member of the so-called gentle s.e.x is involved--I have learned to look to my companion. He understands women. He has often told me so. And now, by his action, he proved it. What he did was to turn and flee, and I fled with him; nor did we pause until we were safely hidden away in humble twenty-five cent seats at the rear of the chapel, in the shadow of the overhanging gallery.

It is not my intention to write an extended criticism of the performance. For one thing, I witnessed only a fragment of it, and for another, though I once acted for a brief period as dramatic critic on a New York newspaper, I was advised by my managing editor to give up dramatic criticism, and I have followed his advice.

The scene evidently represented a room, its walls made of red screens behind which rose the lofty pipes of the chapel organ. On a pedestal at one side stood a bust of the Venus de Milo, while on the other hung an engraving of a familiar picture which I believe is called "The Fates,"

and which has the appearance of having been painted by some-one-or-other like Leighton or Bouguereau or Harold Bell Wright.

After we had given some attention to the play my companion remarked that, from the dialect, he judged it to be "Uncle Tom's Cabin." I had been told, however, that for certain reasons "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is never played in the South; I therefore asked the young man in front of me what play it was. He replied that it was Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson's comedy, "The Man From Home," and as he made the statement openly, I feel that I am violating no confidence in repeating what he said--especially since his declaration was supported by the program which he showed me.

He was a pleasant young man. Perceiving that I was a stranger, he volunteered the additional information that the masculine roles, as well as the feminine ones, were being played by girls; and I trust that I will not seem to be boasting of perspicacity when I declare that there had already entered my mind a suspicion that such was indeed the case.

Behold them! Gaze upon the character called Daniel Voorhees Pike! See what long strides he takes, and with what pretty tiny feet! Observe the manliness with which he thrusts his pink little hands deep in the pockets of his--or somebody's--pantaloons!

Look at the Grand Duke Vasili of Russia, his sweet oval face and rosy mouth partly obscured by mustache and goatee of a most strange wooliness.

Observe the ineradicable daintiness of the Honorable Almeric St. Aubyn, but more particularly attend to that villain of helpless loveliness, the Earl of Hawcastle. The frightful life which, it is indicated, the Earl has led, leaves no tell-tale marks upon his blooming countenance. His only facial disfigurement consists in a mustache which, by reason of its grand-ducal lanateness, seems to hint at a mysterious relations.h.i.+p between the British and Russian n.o.blemen.

Take note, moreover, of the outlines of the players. If ever earl was belted it was this one. If ever duke in evening dress revealed delectable convexities of figure, it was this duke. If ever worthy male from Indiana spoke in a soprano voice and was lithe, alluring, and recurvous, she was Daniel Voorhees Pike.

A young woman seated near us described to her escort the personal characteristics of the various young ladies on the stage, and when we heard her call one girl who played in a betrousered part, "a perfect darling," we echoed inwardly the sentiment. All were darlings. And this especial "perfect darling" appeared as well to be a "perfect thirty-six."

The Earl was my undoing. At a critical point in the unfolding of the plot there was talk of his having been connected with a scandal in St.

Petersburg. This he attempted to deny, and though I am unable to quote the exact words of his denial, the sound of it lingers sweetly in my memory. Nor would the exact words, could I give them, convey, in print, the quality of what was said, for the Earl, and all the rest, spoke in the soft, melodious tones of Mississippi.

"What you-all fussin' raound heah for, this mownin'?" That, perhaps, conveys some sense of a line he spoke on entering.

And when, in reply, one of the others mentioned the scandal at St.

Petersburg, the flavor of the Earl's retort, as its cooing tones remain with me, was this:

"Wha', honey! What you-all mean hintin' raound 'baout St. Petuhsbuhg? I reckon you don' know what you talkin' 'baout! Ah nevuh was in that taown in all ma bo'n days!"

What followed I am unable to relate, for the Earl's speech caused me to become emotional, and my companion, after informing me severely that I was making myself conspicuous, removed me from the chapel.

The auburn G.o.ddess was still on duty at the door as we went out.

Advancing, she placed in each of our hands a quarter. I regret to say that, in my shaken state, I misinterpreted this action.

"Oh, no! _Please!_" I protested, fearing that she thought we had not enjoyed the performance, and was therefore returning our money. "It really wasn't bad at all. We're only going because we have an engagement."

"Be quiet!" interrupted my companion in a savage undertone, jerking me along by the arm. "It's only a rebate on the seats!" And without allowing me a chance to set myself right he dragged me out.

CHAPTER XLII

OLD TALES AND A NEW GAME

Mrs. Eichelberger supplied us merely with a place to sleep. For meals she referred us to a lady who lived a few doors up the street. But when in the morning we went, full of hunger and of hope, to the house of this lady, we were coldly informed that breakfast was over, and were recommended to the Bell Cafe, downtown.

My companion and I are not of that robust breed which enjoys a bracing walk before its morning coffee, and the fact that the streets of Columbus charmed us, as we now saw them for the first time by daylight, is proof enough of their quality. There is but little appet.i.te for beauty in an empty stomach.

The streets were splendidly wide, and bordered with fine old trees, and the houses, each in its own lawn, each with its vines and shrubs, were full of the suggestion of an easy-going home life and an informal hospitality. Most of them were of frame and in their architecture ill.u.s.trated the decadence of the eighties and nineties, but here or there was a fine old brick homestead with a n.o.ble columned portico, or a formal Georgian house, disposed among beautiful trees and gardens and sheltered from the street by an ancient hedge of box. So, though Columbus is, as I have indicated, not too easily reached by rail, and though, as I have further indicated, walks before breakfast are not to my taste, I am compelled to say that for both the journey and the walk I felt repaid by the sight of some of the old houses--the Baldwin house, the W.D. Humphries house, the J.O. Banks house, the old McLaren house, the Kinnebrew house, the Thomas Hardy house, the J.M. Morgan house, with its garden of lilies and roses, its giant magnolia trees and its huge camellia bushes; and most of all, perhaps, for its Georgian beauty, the mellow tone of its old brick, its rich tangle of southern growths, and its a.s.sociations, the venerable mansion of the late General Stephen D.

Lee, C.S.A.--now the property of the latter's only son, Mr. Blewett Lee, general counsel of the Illinois Central Railroad, and a resident of Chicago.

It was apropos of our visit to the Lee house that I was told of a dramatic and touching example of the rebirth of amity between North and South.

Stephen D. Lee it was who, as a young artillery officer attached to the staff of General Beauregard, transmitted the actual order to fire on Fort Sumter, the shot which began the war. Two years later, having been promoted to the rank of lieutenant-general, the same Stephen D. Lee partic.i.p.ated in the defense of Vicksburg against the a.s.saults of Porter's gunboats from the river and of Grant's armies, which hemmed in the hilled city on landward side, until at last, on the 4th of July, 1863, the place was surrendered, making Grant's fame secure.

Years after, when the Government of the United States accepted a statue of General Stephen D. Lee, to be placed upon the battle ground of Vicksburg--now a national park--it was the late General Frederick Dent Grant, son of the capturer of the city, who journeyed thither to unveil the memorial to his father's former foe. And by a peculiarly gracious and fitting set of circ.u.mstances it came about that when, in April last, the ninety-fifth anniversary of the birth of U.S. Grant was celebrated in his native city, Galena, Illinois, it was Blewett Lee, only son of the general taken by Grant at Vicksburg, who journeyed to Galena and there in a memorial address, returned the earlier compliment paid to the memory of his own father by Grant's son.

Columbus may perhaps appreciate the charm of its old homes, but there is evidence to show that it did not appreciate certain other weatherworn structures of great beauty. I have seen photographs of an old Baptist Church with a fine (and not at all Baptist-looking) portico and fluted columns, which was torn down to make room for the present stupidly commonplace Baptist church: and I have seen pictures of the beautiful old town hall which was recently supplanted by an ignorantly ordinary town building of yellow pressed brick. The destruction of these two early buildings represents an irreparable loss to Columbus, and it is to be hoped that the town will some day be sufficiently enlightened to know that this is true and to regret that it did not restore and enlarge them instead of tearing them down.

Until a decade or two ago Columbus had, so far as I can learn, but four streets possessing names: Main Street, Market Street, College Street, and Catfish Alley, all other streets being known as "the street that Mrs. Billups, or Mrs. Sykes, or Mrs. Humphries, or Mrs. Some-one-else lives on."

Market and Main are business streets--at least they are so where they cross--and, like the other streets, are wide. They are lined with brick buildings few if any of them more than three stories in height, and it was in one of these buildings, on Main Street, that we found the Bell Cafe--advertised as "the most exclusive cafe in the State."

Being in search of breakfast rather than exclusiveness, we did not sit at one of the tables, but at the long lunch counter, where we were quickly served.

After breakfast we felt strong enough to look at picture post cards, and to that end visited first "Cheap Joe's" and then the shop of Mr.

Divilbis, where newspapers, magazines, sporting goods, cameras, and all such things, are sold. Having viewed post cards picturing such scenes as "Main Street looking north," "The 1st Baptist Church," and "Steamer _America_, Tombigbee River," we were about to depart, when our attention was drawn to a telephonic conversation which had started between Mr.

Divilbis's clerk and a customer who was thinking of going in for the game of lawn tennis. The half of the conversation which was audible to us proved entertaining, and we dallied, eavesdropping.

The clerk began by recommending tennis. "Yes," he said, "that would be very nice. Everybody is playing tennis now."

But that got him into trouble, for after a pause he said: "I'm sorry I can't tell you everything about it. I don't play tennis myself. Al could tell you, though. He plays."