“Yes, suppose you do. It’s a fine enough thing when it isn’t in the way, but I’ve got to see you while I talk, Miss Alicia,” said Mr. Temple Barholm. The episode of the epergne--Burrill’s expression, and the rigidly restrained mouths of Henry and James as the decoration was removed, leaving a painfully blank space of table-cloth until Burrill silently filled it with flowers in a low bowl--these things temporarily flurried Miss Alicia somewhat, but the pleased smile at the head of the table calmed even that trying moment.
Then what a delightful meal it was, to be sure! How entertaining and cheerful and full of interesting conversation! Miss Alicia had always admired what she reverently termed “conversation.” She had read of the houses of brilliant people where they had it at table, at dinner and supper parties, and in drawing-rooms. The French, especially the French ladies, were brilliant conversationalists. They held “salons” in which the conversation was wonderful--Mme. de Staël and Mme. Roland, for instance; and in England, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Sydney Smith, and Horace Walpole, and surely Miss Fanny Burney, and no doubt L. E. L., whose real name was Miss Letitia Elizabeth Landon--what conversation they must have delighted their friends with and how instructive it must have been even to sit in the most obscure corner and listen!
Such gifted persons seemed to have been chosen by Providence to delight and inspire every one privileged to hear them. Such privileges had been omitted from the scheme of Miss Alicia’s existence. She did not know, she would have felt it sacrilegious to admit it even if the fact had dawned upon her, that “dear papa” had been a heartlessly arrogant, utterly selfish, and tyrannical old blackguard of the most pronounced type. He had been of an absolute morality as far as social laws were concerned. He had written and delivered a denunciatory sermon a week, and had made unbearable by his ministrations the suffering hours and the last moments of his parishioners during the long years of his pastorate. When Miss Alicia, in reading records of the helpful relationship of the male progenitors of the Brontes, Jane Austen, Fanny Burney, and Mrs. Browning, was frequently reminded of him, she revealed a perception of which she was not aware. He had combined the virile qualities of all of them. Consequently, brilliancy of conversation at table had not been the attractive habit of the household; “poor dear papa” had confined himself to scathing criticisms of the incompetence of females who could not teach their menials to “cook a dinner which was not a disgrace to any decent household.” When not virulently aspersing the mutton, he was expressing his opinion of muddle-headed weakness which would permit household bills to mount in a manner which could only bring ruin and disaster upon a minister of the gospel who throughout a protracted career of usefulness had sapped his intellectual manhood in the useless effort to support in silly idleness a family of brainless and maddening fools. Miss Alicia had heard her character, her unsuccessful physical appearance, her mind, and her pitiful efforts at table-talk, described in detail with a choice of adjective and adverb which had broken into terrified fragments every atom of courage and will with which she had been sparsely dowered.