Fairchild, watching him, said abruptly, “Say, Julius, Mark’s the very man for Major Ayers, ain’t he? Say, Major, here’s a man to take your first bottle. Tell him about your scheme.”
The florid man regarded the poet affably. “Ah, yes. It’s a salts, you see. You spoon a bit of it into your—”
“A what?” asked the poet, poising his spoon and staring at the florid man. The others all poised their tools and stared at the florid man.
“A salts,” he explained. “Like our salts at home, y’know—”
“A—?” repeated Mrs. Maurier. Mr. Talliaferro’s eyes popped mildly.
“All Americans are constipated,” the florid man continued blithely, “do with a bit of salts in a tumbler of water in the morning. Now, my scheme is—”
“Mr. Talliaferro!” Mrs. Maurier implored. Mr. Talliaferro girded himself anew.
“My dear sir,” he began.
“—is to put the salts up in a tweaky phial, a phial that will look well on one’s night table: a jolly design of some sort. All Americans will buy it. Now, the population of your country is several millions, I fancy; and when you take into consideration the fact that all Americans are con—”
“My dear sir,” said Mr. Talliaferro, louder.
“Eh?” said the florid man, looking at him.
“What kind of a jar will you put ’em in?” asked the nephew, his mind taking fire.
“Some tweaky sort of thing that all Americans will buy—”
“The American flag and a couple of doves holding dollar marks in their bills, and a handle that when you pull it out, it’s a corkscrew,” suggested Fairchild. The florid man glared at him with interest and calculation.
“Or,” the Semitic man suggested, “a small condensed table for calculating interest on one side and a good recipe for beer on the other.” The florid man glared at him with interest.
“That’s just for men,” Mrs. Wiseman said. “How about the women’s trade?”
“A bit of mirror would do for them, don’t you think?” the florid man offered, “surrounded by a design in colors, eh?” Mrs. Wiseman gave him a murderous glance and the poet added:
“And a formula for preventing conception and a secret place for hairpins.” The hostess moaned, “Mr. Talliaferro!” Mrs. Wiseman said savagely:
“I have a better idea than that, for both sexes: your photograph on one side and the golden rule on the other.” The florid man glared at her with interest. The nephew broke in once more:
“I mean, have you invented a jar yet, invented a way to get the stuff out of the jar?”
“Oh, yes. I’ve done that. You spoon it out, you know.”
“But tell ’em how you know all Americans are constipated,” Fairchild suggested. Mrs. Maurier rang the service bell furiously and at length. The steward appeared and as he removed the plates and replaced them with others, the florid man leaned nearer Mrs. Wiseman.
“What’s that chap?” he asked, indicating Mr. Talliaferro.
“What is he?” Mrs. Wiseman repeated. “Why — I think he sells things downtown. Doesn’t he, Julius?” She appealed to her brother.
“I mean, what — ah — race does he belong to?”
“Oh. You’d noticed his accent, then?”
“Yes. I noticed he doesn’t talk like Americans. I thought perhaps he is one of your natives.”
“One of our—?” She stared at him.
“Your red Indians, y’know,” he explained.
Mrs. Maurier rang her little bell again, sort of chattering to herself.
TWO O’CLOCK
Mrs. Maurier put an end to that luncheon as soon as she decently could. If I can only break them up, get them into a bridge game, she thought in an agony. It had got to where every time one of the gentlemen made the precursory sound of speech, Mrs. Maurier flinched and cringed nearer Mr. Talliaferro. At least she could depend on him, provided — But she was going to do the providing in his case. They had discussed Major Ayers’s salts throughout the meal. Eva Wiseman had turned renegade and abetted them, despite the atmosphere of reproof Mrs. Maurier had tried to foster and support. And, on top of all this, the strange young man had the queerest manner of using knife and fork. Mr. Fairchild’s way was — well, uncouth; but after all, one must pay a price for Art. Jenny, on the other hand, had an undeniable style, feeding herself with her little finger at a rigid and elegant angle from her hand. And now Fairchild was saying:
“Now here’s a clean case of poetic justice for you. A hundred odd years ago Major Ayers’s grandpa wants to come to New Orleans, but our grandfathers stop him down yonder in those Chalmette swamps and lick hell out of him. And now Major Ayers comes into the city itself and conquers it with a laxative so mild that, as he says, you don’t even notice it. Hey, Julius?”
“It also confounds all the old convictions regarding the irreconcilability of science and art,” the Semitic man suggested.
“Huh?” said Fairchild. “Oh, sure. That’s right. Say, he certainly ought to make Al Jackson a present of a bottle, oughtn’t he?”
The thin poet groaned sepulchrally. Major Ayers repeated: “Al Jackson?”
The steward removed the cloth. The table was formed of a number of card tables; by Mrs. Maurier’s direction he did not remove these. She called him to her, whispered to him; he went below.
“Why, didn’t you ever hear of Al Jackson?” asked Fairchild in unctuous surprise. “He’s a funny man, a direct descendant of Old Hickory that licked you folks in 1812, he claims. He’s quite a character in New Orleans.” The other guests all listened to Fairchild with a sort of noncommittal attention. “You can always tell him because he wears congress boots all the time—”
“Congress boots?” murmured Major Ayers, staring at him. Fairchild explained, raising his foot above the level of the table to demonstrate.
“Sure. On the street, at formal gatherings, even in evening dress he wears ’em. He even wears ’em in bathing.”
“In bathing? I say.” Major Ayers stared at the narrator with his round china-blue eyes.
“Sure. Won’t let anyone see him barefoot. A family deformity, you see. Old Hickory himself had it: that’s the reason he out-fought the British in those swamps. He’d never have whipped ’em otherwise. When you get to town, go down to Jackson square and look at that statue of the old fellow. He’s got on congress boots.” He turned to the Semitic man. “By the way, Julius, you remember about Old Hickory’s cavalry, don’t you?” The Semitic man was noncommittal, and Fairchild continued:
“Well, the old general bought a place in Florida. A stock farm, they told him it was, and he gathered up a bunch of mountaineers from his Tennessee place and sent ’em down there with a herd of horses. Well, sir, when they got there they found the place was pretty near all swamp. But they were hardy folks, so they lit right in to make the best of it. In the meantime—”
“Doing what?” asked the nephew.
“Huh?” said Fairchild.
“What were they going to do in Florida? That’s what we all want to know,” Mrs. Wiseman said.
“Sell real estate to the Indians,” the Semitic man suggested. Major Ayers stared at him with his little blue eyes.
“No, they were going to run a dude ranch for the big hotels at Palm Beach,” Fairchild told them. “And in the meantime some of these horses strayed off into the swamps, and in some way the breed got crossed with alligators. And so, when Old Hickory found he was going to have to fight his battle down there in those Chalmette swamps, he sent over to his Florida place and had ’em round up as many of those half-horse half-alligators as they could, and he mounted some of his infantry on ’em and the British couldn’t stop ’em at all. The British didn’t know Florida—”