Our “Tea” at Paradise Park

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 3, 20 July 1910, Page 50

Our “Tea” at Paradise Park

By

CHARLES BATTELL LOOMIS,

bit N afternoon tea is not the sort of /I thing that the average man will J I walk a hundred miles to attend. I do not deny that many most delightful women go to and are to be found at afternoon teas, while many a man otit of a job or too wealthy to need one or too lazy to hold one down for more than half a day diurnally, flits from afternoon tea to afternoon tea, but as a general statement, that will admit of whatever qualifications the reader may wish to apply, an afternoon tea does not compare to either soccer or basket-ball, except that the push is sometimes as great in a given spot as at either of those games. After we had lived in Paradise Park a year or two, and Mrs Dolten had accepted the hospitality of many women in New York who have the afternoon-tea ■habit—although I was saved from accompanying her to these feminine fests toy pressure of business in the life insurance office that enables me to pay my bills—more or less tardily—she took it into her head that it was up to her—to use a modern phrase and thus help the language to live—to give a tea in return for all the green cakes and lemon-flavour-ed decoctions she had absorbed in many a fifteen-foot parlour east and west of Central Park.

I told her that I thought it would be a good thing, that I was rather proud of our handsome little house that 1 had been paying for two years, and that no one could enter its sun-kissed rooms and not wish she lived in the suburbs and had fresh eggs for breakfast from her own hen-yard, instead of paying sixty cents a dozen for—explosives. "We’ll give two, on the first and third Thursdays in February, and I’ll send out a hundred invitations,” said my wife as we sat in our roomy living room and watched the pine knots snap and crackle ©n the real hearth.

“Why not send out two hundreds, and «o make sure that at least three or four will come out?” said 1 quizzically. Mrs Dolten bridled. “Why shouldn’t they come out? Haven’t I gone the Same distance to their teas?” I looked at Mrs Dolten, and smiled benignly.

' “Don’t you realise that what is only fifteen miles into New York is at least thirty miles out of it? The funny papers 'have drawn the horrors of suburban life bo graphically, although so falsely, that the average New Yorker would far rather go to London than come out to the suburbs.” “So would I,” said Mrs Dolten, drily. “Hut I’m quite sure that enough will come to make the thing a success, and you’ll be here to lend an air of reality to the affair. You know lots of people don’t believe I’m married because they’ve mover seen you.” “Well, my dear, they’ll have to keep on imagining that I don’t exist,” I answered crisply. “Do you think for a moment that 1 would leave the delights of my

office to come out here and listen to you or any pretty woman ring the changes on cream and lemons? Oh, no; the afternoons you reward your city friends for coming fifteen miles up and beyond the Palisades by giving them green and pink cakes, grass sandwiches and tea, I’ll ■work hard and happily at the office, and I’ll dine in town too, because you won’t have any appetite for dinner after nibbling at confections all the afternoon.” “Leonard, if you don’t come home and give me your support I’ll never speak to you again as long as I live—really.” •She smiled in a way not only to belie ■her words but to make me willing to do anything to please her, and I weakly replied, “Dear, that is a bliss that I will not bring upon myself. You may count on me, and if you like I’ll bring some of the men from the office.” “No, don’t,” said Felicia, quickly. “Why not, you know they’re good friends of mine?” Felicia rumpled up her eyebrows. “Yes, dear, 1 know, but they’re not afternoon tea men.” “Well, but neither am I an afternoon tea man, when it comes to that.” “No, but you 1 know what I mean. The men in your office are very nice and kind, but they’re not the kind— —” “In other words—er—my wife—is just a little imbued with snobbishness, isn’t that it?” Felicia put her hand on mine. “I wish you’d understand me, dear. Those men would feel very much out of it if they had to come here and meet some of the ladies whom 1 expect; but that isn’t snobbish —it’s just the truth, and respect for their feelings. They are very nice “Yes, they are very nice, but let ’em keep their places, damn ’em. Isn’t that •what you mean? Being merely Americans with nothing but Americans back of them for several generations they are not the sort to meet your New York friends, many of whom have had money for nearly a whole generation——”

My wife withdrew her hand. “Now you’re getting silly,” said she. Whenever I hit a living truth Felicia calls me silly, and I feel sure that I have Tung the bell. Then I stop teasing her.

“All right, I’ll tell the boys that you’d love to have them come out for tennis some afternoon when no New Yorkers are likely to be present, but if they’d just as soon get their tea somewhere else that afternoon you'll be obliged. But I’ll come. By the way, is it a compliment to my social standing that you’ll let your 'husband come to your tea?” Felicia ignored my final sally. “I hope •Mrs Sturtevant will come, because she seemed to take quite a fancy to you after the opera that night.” “Oh, was that the florid and towering lady with the feather duster in her back hair and very little else incommoding her progress to her car? I shall never forget how graciously she spoke to me. It prolonged my life. I felt as if Queen Elizabeth had kissed my hand, and invited me to spend a week-end at Holyrood or whatever her castle was.” “Silly! Mrs Sturtevant has loads of money, but she’s as simple ” “Yes, she was a good sort. Jolly and probably perfectly willing to crack jokes at her grandfather the grocer’s expense. 1 hope she’ll come. She’ll lend the pro- ; per tone to the affair, and I’ll take her out and show her the chickens.” Felicia started. “Don’t do anything bo foolish.” (It will be seen that Felicia is lacking in humour. 1 had no real intention of leading the dowager duchess of Sturtevant —or whatever her title is—out to my humble hen house. Yet I’m quite sure that she with all her money cannot buy an egg that is fresher than one just laid by my Rhode Island red pullets.) “All right, but what’ll you do to amuse the duchess?” “No one is ever amused at a tea.” “Gospel truth! But what am I to do? I’m no ladies’ man. I can’t talk life insurance to them, can I? I might explain our annuity scheme to the duchess.”

“You’ll just behave yourself and be nice and kind, and you needn’t think about anything else. I’m quite sure that if you had been brought up in a different environment ” “I’d be quite a gentleman. I’ve always thought so, but what can _ the son of a college professor hope to be in a republic like this?” To report no more of our convocation, which, as will be seen, was of the usual husband-and-wifely tone, let me state that Mrs. Dolten sent out the cards for the teas, that the first Thursday dawned clear and balmy—quite a May day in fact—the sort of “May days” that we get in late June—and when 1 left the office 1 felt quite sure that it was the sort of

weather to made sidewalks swarm with nursemaids and perambulators, and lure city folk suburbward to see what might be picked up in the way of real estate. For there is a decided lean toward the suburbs, and “back to the land” is getting to be a bromide.

I got home a little after three o’clock and found that my hens were all scratching around the front steps. The maid had left the hen-yard gate open and the fowls were taking advanage of the summery air to hunt for grubs—twelve sumptuous Rhode Island Red pullets and a grandiloquent rooster. Picturesque, but not the proper sight for the dowager duchess Sturtevant. It might do for my hopeless fellow •clerks who lived in the suburbs themselves, but it was not the usual concomitant of a really swell tea. So I chased them all back to their yard land then collected the eggs, a pastime which never loses its freshness—oh, if eggs but had the same Cleopatran power —a suburban delight that all the lobster hunting in the Great White Way could not atone for, were my hens to be taken away from me.

I had thought to arrange the rich, brown eggs in a pretty dish and set them on the centre table as something rather unusual in these cold-storage days, but on my way in at the kitchen door I reduced the eggs to a liquid mass strewn with shells and my pocket was out of commission—to say nothing about the general appearance of my bran new sack coat.

The afternoon had not begun well. Our cook met me in the kitchen with a sympathetic shake of her head and said: “Mrs. Dolten is after fakin’ sick an’ the doctor was just here.” “What?”

“Yes, sir. He says she must toe kep’ quiet an’ not sec anny w'an. He’s not sure what’s ailin’ her, but lie’ll Know tomorrow.”

“And guests coming from New .York!' You know Mrs. Dolten was to give * tea to-day.” Mary nodded . her head reassuringly. .“Oh, it’s not likely they’ll come. Daye like this the city’s good enough for anny wan. I wisht 1-was there.” I hurried to Felicia’s bedroom and found her very pale but quite composed. She felt that perhaps it was typhoid" but she was not alarmed, as typhoid cases were light this season, and she never took any disease very hard. She hoped I’d do the honours and express her regrets. Jennie Trowbridge was coming in from next door to pour tea. I shook my head decidedly. “No, the

tea's off. I’ll have Eddie Trowbridge stand up at the corner and when they step off the cars I’ll send them back to New York.”

My wife was horror-stricken and would leave fallen back on the pillow if she had not already been there. "You'd riot do such an inhospitable thing! Now don’t cross me, dear, because the doctor said I must be kept quiet. Get your things and dress in the spare room and I think I’ll fall asleep. 1 haven’t been feeling good for much lately, but 1 hoped I’d get through to-day. And this morning 1 felt so miserable that I called up Dr. Briggs and he sent me to bed.”

I offered Felicia my sympathy, but 1 was not greatly alarmed. I know Dr. Briggs, ami if ever there was an alarmist he is one. 1 have had heart disease, pneumonia in both lungs, neuritis, and half-a-dozen complaints since lie moved to Paradise Park on the death of Dr. Grayson, and yet I have not been housed a week by all the diseases put together. First, he half scares a patient to death and then toy his abiding good nature he brings him back from his low estate and cures him in a jiffy.

When 1 was all dressed I peeped in at the door and found that Felicia was not asleep, so I showed myself. She uttered a faint cry. “My dear, go and take off that tie and those gloves at once. Really a cut-away would be enough, but you do look well in a frock coat. But take off the gloves and put on your green tie —that poplin one that Bister brought you from Dublin. It’s very, becoming to you.” After I had made these changes—“ How am I to know these dukes and duchesses, and how soon do I ply them with tea?” “Under the circumstances,” answered Felicia, “you can ask their names. No, I forgot, Mary will tend the door and she will announce each one ” > “in a rich brogue that will give A

comic effect to all the names, Then 1 tell them I’m delighted, till them with flea and show them the photograph album. By the way, where is it?” “Don’t you think of doing such a thing," said my too literal wife. “Jennie {Trowbridge will see to the tea and they’ll stay about twenty minutes and then go.” “‘Twenty Minutes in the Suburbs, or How Do 1 Get Baek?' 1 don’t believe they’ll be anxious to repeat the trip.” While 1 was talking a trolley stopped at the corner, and 1 stepped to the window and saw three women get out. “Here come some already and Jennie isn’t hefe. Oh, here she comes down her steps. Helo, they don’t know which Way to go. Didn’t you give ’em directions?” “Locust-avenue is on my cards.” “Well, they're going up instead of down. They’ll be lost in the woods in another minute. 1 guess I'd better' go after them. No need in adding to their {difficulties. Oh ” “What is it?” asked Felicia. “One has stopped and turned back and she’s looking inquiringly around her.” “Go tell her, dear. It's no time to be formal when they have taken the pains to come way out here.” I left the bedroom and hurried downstairs, almost running into Jennie, who, as pretty as a peach and with much pinker cheeks than a Morris White's, for instance, was handing her wraps to Mary. “How do,” I shot at her as I passed. “Got to chase up some teaers who hare btrayed away. Got your lemons sliced? ’Licia’s ill. Go up and see her, but don’t disturb her. Baek in a minute.” Up the well-paved street 1 ran bareheaded. The streets in Paradise Park are all there, and they are all paved. Some of them were paved before they were there and all were there before a single piece of land was sold. We can thank the comic papers for some things, and they have given good papers to many a suburban town because the real estate people did not dare to offer any mudfloundering to prospective buyers. I met my woman at the corner, and by great good luck I knew her as an old friend of my wife, “Awfully glad to see you,” I said as I grabbed her hand and pointed out my house. “One with hen-house in rear. Must chase these other two. Be. back in a minute. You go along.” Locust Avenue runs up hill. It will look beautiful when the great New Jersey locusts meet overhead in the middle of the street, and make the avenue a leafy bowel' leading to Paradise Woods. Just at present the locusts are not much thicker than the locust of a policeman, but they are growing, and their overarching beauty is only a matter of years —twenty years, say.” I ran on uphill, somewhat winded but game, and finally called to the two aiiead of me. I recognised them as from the city. They turned ami came toward Imo with a relieved expression on their countenances. I would have taken off my hat if 1 had not been bareheaded. As it was 1 made a pass toward my forelock and then remembered. “ You’re looking tor Mirs.

Dtoltenk I suppose. I’m Mr. Dolten. I’ll take you there.” They run three ears to Paradise Park from the Ferry at Fort Stonewall, on the arrival of each ferry boat, and as 1 reached the corner with the lady in tow, the second ear was stopping. Out of it came ten fashionably-attired women. What a success was Felicia’s tea already, and she unable to be at it! Just as I was preparing to welcome the first one, Whom I recognised as a Mrs. Trombeau, a French miniature painter whom my wife had crossed the ocean with the year before we were married, a limousine car came up Highway Avenue from the Ferry, and stopping at the corner, the liveried chauffeur said to me, somewhat flippantly, “Can you tell me how many miles is it to Mrs. Dolten’s?” Through the glass front I saw Mrs. Sturtevant, and I pointed to my modest abode —and, so queer a thing is man; my house never looked so desperately humble as at that moment. The hens, by the way, were out again and litererally swarming up the front steps and on to the piazza. The Trowbridge boy has sometimes fed them there. The ear turned towards my house, and I offered my hand to Mrs. Trombeau with the exaggerated politeness that one instinctively shows toward a French woman, and with a general, “This way, ladies,” quite as if I were a floorwalker, I led the way to the house. Just as the door of the motor-car opened the front door of my house also opened; and as Mrs. Sturtevant stepped regally out Mary stepped out on the mat and said distinctly and angrily and with excellent carrying power, “ Get to the divil out of that!” “I have already gotten out,” said Mrs. Sturtevant with ready good-nature and a sense that she could afford to bandy words with anyone. Mary nearly fainted on the mat. “ Oh, indade, ma’am, an’ I didn’t mane you at arl, at arl. Thim hens'll be the deat’ of me. They’d go in the parlor if I’d let them. Will ye’ kindly walk up. Sure I didn't mane you.” “ And if you had I shouldn’t have minded you,” said Mrs. Sturtevant, at which Mary broke into a peal of laughter, and re-established her mental equilibrium. As for the hens, they flew squawking down the steps almost upsetting the grand dams. One of the hens recognised in the limousine, the door of which still stood open, for the chauffeur was fussing with his levers, a new and luxurious hen-house and flew in. A moment later the chauffeur closed the door and the hen was imprisoned. I thought it no more than right to tell the fellow what had happened, and his disgust was supreme. He muttered something in French, which perhaps fortunately I could not understand, and getting out of the car, he shooed the hen out of the palatial nest, but not before she had laid an egg on the nest. 1 then recognised in her the hen who lays her eggs wherever she may happen to be, not at all artistic in her temperament, but ready to produce the goods anywhere and everywhere. I handed the warm egg to Mrs. Sturte-

vant with a “ courtly ” bow, and she rose to the situation by accepting it and depositing it in her muff, laughing good-naturedly as she did so. “ The simple life,” said she. “ I wish I might live it. Fresh eggs everywhere, a lovely view, and hosts of loyal friends, who brave the perils of the country." This plainly referred to the people who

were with me, but although I have not Felicia’s sense of social gradations I felt that most of those who were ascending the steps were more than what you might call a nuance away from the class represented by Mrs. Sturtevant. I thought of my contemned fellow-clerks. Still,' Felicia belongs to several clubs, and one or two of them are intellectual. By this time a third car had stopped at the corner, and another bevy of women alighted, and after starting up the hill, turned, and seeing the limousine, came towards our house. 1 sensed that there were eight or nine. Mary did herself proud shouting out the names, although as some of them had no cards and announced themselves with low-voiced reluctance, I am not

sure that she always achieved perfMl pronunciation. The one I had sent to the house was already drinking tea in the dining-room. Jennie looked very pretty in the candle light. Jennie looks pretty in any sort of light, but some of my guests But after all, a man has no business to make personal remarks about women.

“Ain’t it cute?” said one whose name sounded like Boggeltorfer, and I found that she referred to the late sunlight streaming through our one stained-glass window. “ Oh, I’ve fell in love with it. An’ the air’s just fine ” “Are there two bathrooms?” asked a voice at my side, of no one in particular, and no one in particular answered her. I never had any gift at small talk, anyhow. I’ve heard two women clatter for a quarter of an hour as to whether a supporting column was wood or plaster, but it is a knack 1 was never able to acquire. I was suddenly conscious that a few had removed their cloaks. “ Will you—er —lay off your wraps?” I asked, and then remembered that it was a country expression that Felicia has tried to cure me of saying. Later 1 suffered mortification upon learning from Jennie that cloaks are “ worn ” on during a tea. Mrs. Sturtevant said breezily: “ You don’t overheat your house, thank fortune, and so I really need every stitch. It’s a dear little nest. But where is Mrs. Dolten?” I explained to her what had happened, and then, remembering a phrase that I had heard at a tea, I said, “ want to bring about the meeting of two charming women, and Miss Trowbridge is pouring. May I take you in?” She acquiesced most gracefully, and put me quite at my ease, but some of the other people made me feel as if I did not belong. As soon as Jennie Trowbridge had attended to Mrs. Sturtevant’s wants and they had found a common topic of conversation in Debussy’s music, 1 came back and asked the rest of them to have tea. “Ain’t there punch?” asked the Boggletorfer person. “I’m afraid not,” said I. “My, at Heavenly Heights last week they had champagne an-turkey san’wiches. It was great. But there wasn’t no sewer. Is there a sewer on thie •treatt” I assured the lady that there was a! •ewer, and wondered where my wife had picked her up.

“How often do the ears run?” “Oh, there’s uo hurry,” said I impulsively, through a spirit of hospitality. “That ain’t no answer. How often do they run’” “Oh, every half hour. Must you be going?” “Not till I’ve seen the house. Have you stationary tubs’” How domestic my visitors were. I am one of those men who know very little about the economy of the household, and I could not say oil-hand whether our tubs were stationary or portable. Just then Mrs Trombeau, who had been having tea, came up, and looking around the room with one of those comprehensive glances that artists give, said, "I theenk it is pairfeetly charming. But I am so sorry your wife is ill. How she must 1-ofe it here. What sunsets on zo meadows wiz zat little river twisting about in ze long grass—ze marshes, is it not? As your S’a’kespe-air says, ‘Geelding pale streams wiz 'eavenly alchemy.’ Eet is lofely, pairfeetly lofely out here. No wonder Eeleesia was dying to leave out of town.” Just then there was a crash of crockery and at the risk of being rude I left Mrs Trombeau and went into the diningroom where I found that two of the guests had made a grab for eake and had upset the dish. Of course, it was an accident, and they were sincerely sorry, but I wondered at their eagerness. It did not seem well bred. I was sure that Mrs Sturtevant would not have done such a thing. It struck me that although my fellow clerks are not “afternoon-tea men”' they would have comported themselves with more regard for the little conventionalities of life than my wife’s guests—some of them—were showing. It seemed to me that most of them were over-dressed and nearly all of them spoke with that most dreadful of all aeeents—the New York whine. But I have learned not to be led too far by appearances. I think it was Tennyson or one of the English poets who said that “kind hearts were more than coronets.” None of my guests had coronets, to be sure, but they must have had some pleasant qualities that had appealed to my gentle wife.

I could see that Mrs Sturtevant was concealing her surprise at the table manners of several, but when an embonpoiutish person picked up some of the little delicacies that had been dropped, and put them in her muff, “for Denny,” Mrs Sturtevant concealed her mirth as ■well as her surprise. I did not remember Denny, but I am fond of children, and I was quite sure that he was a dear, little boy with a tooth for sweets, and told his mother so, at which she said rather irrelevantly, 1 thought, “How many tons of coal do you burn, a month, and is there a laundry in the cellar t”

They seemed leading questions, but a true host never refuses information eoucerniug his domestic resources, so to the best of my ability I answered her questions and several others asked me by one or two standing near who seemed to regard a house in the suburbs as a hitherto unknown proposition. Mrs Boggeltorfer had joined Mi's Embonpoint at what seemed to them a freehmeh counter, and they put down edibles and tea in a hurried way that suggested Wall-street at noon. Their wants amply supplied, they went out to the kitehen with determined steps that showed they felt at home somewhere, but they came hack in a moment. “Ain’t it small for so large a house? Art’ hot!” said Mrs Boggeltorfer.

Now the heat of the kitehen is a sore point with me because I’ve thought it wrong to make a girl work in such an oven, while Mrs Dolten thinks that girls

—or “maids” as she calls them—are not as sensitive as Life Insurance men, which is plainly absurd because all offices are overheated, and yet I gasp in our kitchen. So 1 am afraid I showed some heat in my reply.

Without appealing to notice it one of them said, “How many bedrooms are there?” and started to go upstairs. I could hear Mrs Trombeau saying to Mrs Sturtevant, “What strange people! Where did zey pick zein up?” Mrs Boggeltorfer and the stout one ■were followed by half a dozen others, but just as they got to the first landing the unexpected happened. A door opened on the floor above, and a moment later Felicia, clad in a tea gown and looking fragile but lovely, and nt the .same time vexed, eame to the turn in the stairs and surveyed the motley collection ut people in the wide drawingroom. “Ladies,” she said, stopping the progress of the curious ones. "You have made a mistake. The tc<l bungalow

which is for sale is on Elm-avenue on the block below. This is an afternoon tea.” - i

Mrs Boggeltorfer shot an angry glance at me. , x.. .. •> > « "Why didn’t the chump tell us? Well, I’m glad I won’t have such a hot kitchen as that. Come on, Mame." Mary opened the front door with very evident pleasure, and nearly a score of oddly-assorted persons flocked out and went down Locust-avenue to the red-tiled bungalow. There were left Mrs Sturtevant, Mrs Trombeau, Mrs Van Nostrand, Mrs Schermerhorn and one or two others. “So good of you to come such a distance,” said my wife sweetly, and I felt that the “tea” had at last begun.