Presently the supper bell began to ring in the depths of the house, and the sound proceeded steadily upward, growing in intensity all the way up towards the upper floors.The higher it came the more maddening was the noise, until at last what it lacked of being absolutely deafening, was made up of the sudden crash and clatter of an avalanche of boarders down the uncarpeted stairway.The peerage did not go to meals in this fashion; Tracy's training had not fitted him to enjoy this hilarious zoological clamor and enthusiasm.He had to confess that there was something about this extraordinary outpouring of animal spirits which he would have to get inured to before he could accept it.No doubt in time he would prefer it; but he wished the process might be modified and made just a little more gradual, and not quite so pronounced and violent.
Barrow and Tracy followed the avalanche down through an ever increasing and ever more and more aggressive stench of bygone cabbage and kindred smells; smells which are to be found nowhere but in a cheap private boarding house; smells which once encountered can never be forgotten;smells which encountered generations later are instantly recognizable, but never recognizable with pleasure.To Tracy these odors were suffocating, horrible, almost unendurable; but he held his peace and said nothing.Arrived in the basement, they entered a large dining-room where thirty-five or forty people sat at a long table.They took their places.
The feast had already begun and the conversation was going on in the liveliest way from one end of the table to the other.The table cloth was of very coarse material and was liberally spotted with coffee stains and grease.The knives and forks were iron, with bone handles, the spoons appeared to be iron or sheet iron or something of the sort.
The tea and coffee cups were of the commonest and heaviest and most durable stone ware.All the furniture of the table was of the commonest and cheapest sort.There was a single large thick slice of bread by each boarder's plate, and it was observable that he economized it as if he were not expecting it to be duplicated.Dishes of butter were distributed along the table within reach of people's arms, if they had long ones, but there were no private butter plates.The butter was perhaps good enough, and was quiet and well behaved; but it had more bouquet than was necessary, though nobody commented upon that fact or seemed in any way disturbed by it.The main feature of the feast was a piping hot Irish stew made of the potatoes and meat left over from a procession of previous meals.Everybody was liberally supplied with this dish.On the table were a couple of great dishes of sliced ham, and there were some other eatables of minor importance--preserves and New Orleans molasses and such things.There was also plenty of tea and coffee of an infernal sort, with brown sugar and condensed milk, but the milk and sugar supply was not left at the discretion of the boarders, but was rationed out at headquarters--one spoonful of sugar and one of condensed milk to each cup and no more.The table was waited upon by two stalwart negro women who raced back and forth from the bases of supplies with splendid dash and clatter and energy.Their labors were supplemented after a fashion by the young girl Puss.She carried coffee and tea back and forth among the boarders, but she made pleasure excursions rather than business ones in this way, to speak strictly.
She made jokes with various people.She chaffed the young men pleasantly and wittily, as she supposed, and as the rest also supposed, apparently, judging by the applause and laughter which she got by her efforts.
Manifestly she was a favorite with most of the young fellows and sweetheart of the rest of them.Where she conferred notice she conferred happiness, as was seen by the face of the recipient; and; at the same time she conferred unhappiness--one could see it fall and dim the faces of the other young fellows like a shadow.She never "Mistered" these friends of hers, but called them "Billy," "Tom," "John," and they called her "Puss" or "Hattie."Mr.Marsh sat at the head of the table, his wife sat at the foot.Marsh was a man of sixty, and was an American; but if he had been born a month earlier he would have been a Spaniard.He was plenty good enough Spaniard as it was; his face was very dark, his hair very black, and his eyes were not only exceedingly black but were very intense, and there was something about them that indicated that they could burn with passion upon occasion.He was stoop-shouldered and lean-faced, and the general aspect of him was disagreeable; he was evidently not a very companionable person.If looks went for anything, he was the very opposite of his wife, who was all motherliness and charity, good will and good nature.
All the young men and the women called her Aunt Rachael, which was another sign.Tracy's wandering and interested eye presently fell upon one boarder who had been overlooked in the distribution of the stew.
He was very pale and looked as if he had but lately come out of a sick bed, and also as if he ought to get back into it again as soon as possible.His face was very melancholy.The waves of laughter and conversation broke upon it without affecting it any more than if it had been a rock in the sea and the words and the laughter veritable waters.
He held his head down and looked ashamed.Some of the women cast glances of pity toward him from time to time in a furtive and half afraid way, and some of the youngest of the men plainly had compassion on the young fellow--a compassion exhibited in their faces but not in any more active or compromising way.But the great majority of the people present showed entire indifference to the youth and his sorrows.Marsh sat with his head down, but one could catch the malicious gleam of his eyes through his shaggy brows.He was watching that young fellow with evident relish.