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 young men, this life with the girls was all the life they knew. There were fishing parties, of course, at the "Falls" when the gudgeons were biting, and picnics in the woods; and there were oyster roasts in winter, and watermelon parties in summer--but the girls must he present, too. For in those simple days there were no special clubs with easy-chairs and convenient little tables loaded with drinkables and smokables--none for the young Olivers, and certainly none for the women. There was, to be sure, in every Southern city an old mausoleum of a club--sometimes two--each more desolate than the other--haunted by gouty old parties and bonvivants; but the young men never passed through their doors except on some call of urgency. When a man was old enough to be admitted to the club there was no young damosel on Malachi's steps, or any other steps, who would care a rap about him.
HIS day was done.
For these were the days in which the woman ruled in court and home---championed by loyal retainers who strove hourly to do her bidding. Even the gray-haired men would tell you over their wine of some rare woman whom they had known in their youth, and who was still their standard of all that was gentle and gracious, and for whom they would claim a charm of manner and stately comeliness that--"my dear sir, not only illumined her drawing-room but conferred distinction on the commonwealth."
"Mrs. Tilghman's mother, were you talking about?" Colonel Clayton or Richard Horn, or some other old resident would ask. "I remember her perfectly.
We have rarely had a more adorable woman, sir. She was a vision of beauty, and the pride of our State for years."
Should some shadow have settled upon any one of these homes--some shadow of drunkenness, or love of play, or shattered brain, or worse--the woman bore the sorrow in gentleness and patience and still loved on and suffered and loved and suffered again, hoping against hope. But no dry briefs were ever permitted to play a part, dividing heart and hearth.
Kennedy Square would have looked askance had such things been suggested or even mentioned in its presence, and the dames would have lowered their voices in discussing them. Even the men would have passed with unlifted hats either party to such shame.
Because of this loyalty to womankind and this reverence for the home--a reverence which began with the mother-love and radiated to every sister they knew--no woman of quality ever earned her own bread while there was an able-bodied man of her blood above ground to earn it for her. Nor could there be any disgrace so lasting, even to the third and fourth generation, as the stigma an outraged community would place upon the renegade who refused her aid and comfort. An unprogressive, quixotic life if you will--a life without growth and dominant personalities and lofty responsibilities and God-given rights--but oh! the sweet mothers that it gave us, and the wholesomeness, the cleanliness, the loyalty of it all.
With the coming of summer, then, each white marble step of the Horn mansion, under Malachi's care, shone like a china plate.
"Can't hab dese yere young ladies spile dere clean frocks on Malachi's steps--no, sah," he would say; "Marse Oliver'd r'ar an' pitch tur'ble."
There were especial reasons this year for these extra touches of rag and brush. Malachi knew "de signs" too well to be deceived. Pretty Sue Clayton, with her soft eyes and the mass of ringlets that framed her face, had now completely taken possession of Oliver's heart, and the old servant already had been appointed chief of the postal service--two letters a day sometimes with all the verbal messages in between.
This love-affair, which had begun in the winter, was not yet of so serious a nature as to cause distress or unhappiness to either one of their respective houses, nor had it reached a point where suicide or an elopement were all that was left. It was, in truth, but a few months old, and so far the banns had not been published. Within the last week Miss Sue had been persuaded "to wait for him--" that was all. She had not, it is true, burdened her gay young heart with the number of years of her patience. She and Oliver were sweethearts--that was enough for them both. As proof of it, was she not wearing about her neck at the very moment a chain which he had fashioned for her out of cherry-stones; and had she not given him in return one of those same ringlets, and had she not tied it with a blue ribbon herself?
