The Flowered Tea Set
by Sophie Svelt
This short story first appeared in the January 1897 issue of The New England Magazine
(Volume 21, Issue 5)
“You turn round by Aaron Tukey’s black-smith shop into a long, grassy lane, and by the time you begin to smell the sea there’ll be the old Pory house, turning its back on folks - just like the Porys.”
Those were the directions of the landlady of the Cataumet House, and that was how it happened that a buck-board load of gay summer people appeared suddenly to Miss Lucilly Pauret, sitting upon her sunken door-stone that was flanked by tall-stalked burdocks and bristling thistles.
Miss Pauret-Pory, Lucilly Pory, she was called in Cataumet, was a small, angular woman; her little bony back was rounded pathetically and her sallow face was seamed, but her blue eyes still held a spark in their depths and her black hair had a youthful luster; where it might have been gray, around the temples, she anointed it with beeswax and burnt charcoal, – even when troubles pressed heavily upon her she never forgot this rite.
“What a perfectly delightful old house!” exclaimed the enthusiastic young woman who alighted first from the buckboard; and Lucilly smiled grimly.
She labored untiringly to cover the house’s grayness with the woodbine and hop vines of which the bleak sea winds made sad havoc. The summer visitors who had begun to frequent Cataumet admired the grayness, but Lucilly was mortified because the house was not painted.
“We have heard, too, that you have some beautiful old things – I beg your pardon!” When Lucilly Pory arose, in spite of her shabby dress she looked a lady. “My aunt is perfectly wild over fine old things and if you would be so very kind as to show them to us---”
Lucilly’s grim face relaxed slightly. There was an unconfessed comfort in showing her treasures to people who appreciated them.
The visitors observed the softening and misunderstood it. What had the landlady told them? – that Lucilly Pory had lost her pension, through some technicality, and one of her arms was paralyzed, and her nephew had gone off and left her; and the rocky farm was “all run out.” Cataumet had no poorhouse, but the town was going to board her at Mrs. Ajax Robinson’s, down at the Neck .
“And if you wished to sell any of them–” ventured the girl, remembering this.
“They ain’t for sale,” answered Lucilly shortly. “But you can bring your folks in, if you want to,” she added more graciously.
The gay party took possession of the great, dingy, low-ceilinged living room like a flock of brilliantly plumaged birds invading an ancient rookery. Lucilly stiffly took down from her old dresser some pewter pieces, a curiously-wrought silver tankard, a loving cup with a coat of arms engraved upon it, and what looked like an Apostle spoon, battered and defaced.
“I gave it to my nephew when he was teething. Twa’nt’ any too good for him,” exclaimed Lucilly frigidly.
The young girl who had acted as spokesman recalled the landlady’s further account of Lucilly Pory. “Her folks way back were some kind of French that fought for their religion. Huguenot? Well, maybe that was it; folks never took much notice. Land, I don’t think anything of what my folks was so far back.”
The visitors went into such genuine raptures over a pair of slender gold candle sticks and the frost-like filigree gilt of a mirror frame that Lucilly thawed visibly. She was absent-minded while she showed the spindle-legged chairs and the exquisite buffet.
“I’m a good mind to show you my flowered tea-set!” She said it suddenly, impulsively, with a kind of wistful appeal in her eyes. “It hasn’t been drunk tea out of for twenty-five years. Grandmother left it to me – while I live. Then it goes to the next of kin by the name of Pory– that was the way it was set down in grandmother’s will. And that’s Lizabuth Pory, down to the Port, that’s like her mother’s folks.” Lucilly’s voice faltered. “I’m going to show it to you,” she added firmly, “though I haven’t shown it since – since my own folks died.”
She disappeared in the direction of the front hall, and soon returned with an ancient leather case.
The chaperon of the party, the aunt who was perfectly wild over fine old things, uttered an exclamation of delight when the dainty, fragile pieces of china were revealed.
“It is Svres! I am sure it is Svres!” she cried.
“It’s real china,” said Lucilly with anxious pride. “It belonged to my great-great-grandmother in France.”
“It is worth a good deal of money,” said the visitor, and she looked through her lorgnette at Lucilly.
“I never thought about that,” said Lucilly simply. But suddenly she trembled. She seized the pieces of china almost fiercely and thrust them back into their faded pink satin nests, her small, purple-veined hands shaking.
“I should like to have my brother see them; he is a connoisseur,” said the lady. “He would know their money value.”
“I don’t want to know their money value,” said Lucilly sharply.
A young man of the party tapped his forehead significantly behind Lucilly’s back.
Lucilly showed her visitors out stiffly, receiving their enthusiastic thanks in constrained silence. But, after the creaking buckboard had started, the driver was forced to pull up his horses in response to the waving of Lucilly’s sunbonnet.
“You can fetch him if you’re a mind to,” she called.
“She was only playing off a little,” said the young man who had doubted her sanity.
Lucilly took the ancient case to restore it to its hiding place, but she sat down again and groaned. “I’ve got to gather them all together - all the old things - before the selectmen come. And if – if it’s true that Mis’ Ajax Robinson said that there wa’n’t any room in her attic for my old rubbish– why I haven’t got any place for the old things that seem to look at me with the faces of those that are gone–” she said it aloud as if her misery challenged the heartless dumbness of even insensate things, “of mother and Adely and – and little John.” She liked to remember her nephew as a child, when he had not been indifferent to the fact that he was a Pauret nor wished to marry the blacksmith’s daughter at Millbridge.
The town was to sell the old house, with its rocky acres, for taxes, the next week. Someone had proposed to purchase and renovate it for a summer boarding-house. Lucilly Pory would soon have been obliged to come upon the town, anyway, people said. It was suspected that she had now but scanty fare and scanty fuel. There would have been more sympathy if she had been less proud. There was a comfortable theory that she would be much better off with Mrs. Ajax Robinson.
“Folks think I’m crazy to feel so,” continued Lucilly, aloud in the loneliness, as she sat clutching her ancient case. “They think they’re only chairs and tables and dishes, and don’t see what they mean to me. But I mustn’t feel so; it’ll kill me and then Lizabuth Pory will have the tea-set!”
A gleam of hope shone suddenly through her despair.
“Old Mis’ Rumy Whiting, that I’ve neighbored with some, might give me a room in her house to live in and keep my things with me. I can use my hand better and better; twon’t be long before I can knit for the store again. And there are my three cropple crowns laying steady, and there’s berries, and I can live on such a little mite! I’ll go right down and ask her. I couldn’t for myself, if it wasn’t for my things.”
As she went through the lane she discovered two of her hens dead and mangled, and the third squawked faintly from behind the fence and was dead when Lucilly took it up.
“Twas that fierce dog belonging to the man that’s hired the summer cottage next to the hotel. I saw him following the buckboard,” said Lucilly to herself. “Now I can’t tell Miss Rumy Whiting that I’ve got them for a mainstay.” Her eyes smarted, though they were tearless, as she walked on; the sun as it glittered upon the sea was blinding.
Old Mrs. Whiting was evidently greatly surprised, but she thought they might have got along real well, and she shouldn’t have worried about the pay, but it had happened, kind of queer, that she had that day received a letter from her stepdaughter, Sophrony, saying she was coming with her three children to spend two or three months with her; they would take every bit of her spare room.
Lucilly was numb with despair as she walked homeward, although she told herself that she had not hoped. There was no one else whom she could think of asking to shelter her and her treasures until she could knit again.
Since she had received warning from the town of its intended sale of her estate she had resumed the habit, despairingly dropped in the last year, of walking to the post office, every night, to see whether her nephew John had written to her. It was a mile and a half to the post office and for two years she had walked there through wet and dry.
“There’s that poor creature comin’ again,” said old Mrs. Galkins, the postmaster’s wife, when she saw her coming. “It seems as if it would be only a kindness to give her a hint that tisn’t any use. That nephew of hers wasn’t going to stand it to be kept aloof from his mates and then to be hindered from marrying a good, likely girl. I expect he thinks it serves her right if she has got to be town’s poor.”
“No, Miss Pory, there isn’t a mite of a letter for you.” Old Mrs. Calkins fat and comfortable face, appearing in the square aperture where letters were handed forth, was to Lucilly the awful visage of Fate.
“Young folks, when they get a chance to go their own ways don’t think much of those that are left behind. And things don’t ever happen just in the nick of time.”
“Then you don’t believe in the Lord’s providence?” Lucilly turned back from the door to say this, in a harsh, strained voice.
“I couldn’t help thinking ‘He resisteth the proud,’ ” said Mrs. Calkins, afterwards, “but I hadn’t the heart to say it.”
Someone was sitting on her door stone as Lucilly drew near it in the dusk. Her heart thrilled. She was a religious woman and she had hoped for “a special providence”; moreover, like all intense natures, she had felt that the extremity of her suffering must bring relief, as a child feels that it’s paroxysm of tears must change the course of events.
But it was Lizabuth Pory who arose from the doorstep, – a middle-aged woman with a light juvenility of aspect and an airy manner.
She kissed her relative with effusion and Lucilly received the salute frigidly. She was inwardly resentful of Lizabuth’s coming and of her pitying tone; but she brewed for her the precious little package of tea which she had reserved, in the face of keen temptations, for possible company, and boiled for her the last two eggs laid by her cropple crowns.
“Maria Simpkins was down to the Port, dressmaking, and she told me about – about how mean the town was acting.” Lizabuth said this as she ate the last of the hard, dry, little caraway cakes that Lucilly had saved for a month. “Mother and I said, right away, that if we were only a little better off we’d be glad to offer you a home; and, anyway, our house would be a safe place to put the old things–”
“I shall never be separated from my old things till the Lord separates me,” said Lucilly, in a grim voice. “While I live they’ll belong to a Pauret – she gave her name its full French accent although she oftener corrupted its last syllable in the Cataumet fashion – “and after–” her voice trembled and broke.
“It seems as if you couldn’t bear to think that I should have the tea-set,” cried Lizabuth Pory in an injured tone. “I don’t know who you do want to have it, now John has gone off and left you. I don’t see how you can be so proud when you’ve got so put down.”
The tears ran down Lucilly’s hollowed cheeks. “I never was a mite proud,” she said, “not a mite! Folks don’t understand.”
“Mother was right in saving that she isn’t fit to have the care of those things,” soliloquized Lizabuth Pory in the seclusion of the spare chamber, “but it wouldn’t be of any use to ask her to let me have the tea-set.”
Lucilly set huckleberry biscuits grimly before her guest in the morning, a breakfast which she had lain awake to plan and had achieved only by borrowing cream of tartar from old Mis’ Rumy Whiting, a deed her soul abhorred; but she did not bid her stay. At the breakfast table she sat where Lizabuth could see her rigid reflection in the looking glass and she caught her scrutinizing it.
“She thinks I’m going to die!” thought Lucilly.
She proceeded to gather her treasures into one room as soon as she had seen Lizabuth Pory off by the stage.Her knees were weak, but her soul was nerved to do battle with the town authorities and with Mrs. Ajax Robinson for her old things.
In the middle of the forenoon there appeared the lady with the lorgnette and her brother. Lucilly had forgotten the permission she had given; she opened the case reluctantly.
“Madam, the set is worth nearly a thousand dollars,” said the connoisseur. “I myself would pay you seven hundred and fifty dollars.”
Seven hundred and fifty dollars! More–more than the taxes due the town!
The tall clock curtsied to Lucilly and the row of poplars outside the window dipped into the sea; but when they had righted themselves she still sat rigid upon the sofa, and heard her own voice say harshly:
“It isn’t for sale; there’s more than a money meaning to some things.”
She was in a fever of alarm after the visitors had left. What might not the town force her to do? – a pauper with such riches!
She was awake all that night, and before dawn she had dug a deep hole – and with one hand, she could not yet knit!– at the foot of the storm twisted pear tree in her garden. She brought seaweed from the beach and covered the fresh earth.
“Folks know I always put seaweed on my garden for dressing; they won’t think strange of it,” she said to herself.Neither the town nor Lizabuth Pory would have that tea-set.
She lay upon the haircloth sofa that forenoon, and at the noise of wheels she did not stir.
“I’ve wondered what kept the town officers; they’ve come now,” she said to herself, inwardly gathering all her forces.
But the jingling of tinware mingled with a driver’s cheerful whoa; the blessedness of relief followed by a sickening pang of regret.How pleasant it had been, even sometimes after John went, in the sparkling mornings when the Millbridge tin peddler stopped, – a respectful man from whom one need not disdain to hear a little news.
Her lips quivered when she silently disclaimed the need of a new teakettle. The tin peddler burst forth sympathetically:
“I declare, Miss Pory, it’s a shame the way this town’s a-kerryin’ on. We was talkin’ it over in Jason Winchell’s store down to Millbridge” – Lucilly winced – “and there was a stranger there from aboard a vessel, come to Millbridge to see his girl; some said ‘twas your nephew.” The tin peddler looked cautiously at her and was emboldened to continue. “He ‘peared to be all struck of a heap. He was afraid his vessel would go off and leave him, but some said he come tearin’ up here to Cataumet. Anyhow, he scribbled off something and asked me to give it to you.”
Lucilly took the scrawl in a hand that shook like a leaf in the wind.
“Dear Aunt Cilly:I just wish I had known about that pension and the sort of luck you were having; but you know you said you didn’t want anything more to do with me unless I would give up Kate and – well, you know what a Pauret is for setting his heart on a thing. I struck it pretty middling rich down in South America, and I’ll fix things with the town so that the old place will be yours, all safe and clear. I had a pretty hard time the first two years, and now I’ve got to go back to South America to look after my little pile. When I get to Boston I’ll send you a remittance. When I come back I hope to stay on shore. Kate wants me to. I’ll fix the old house up, and if you should want us to live there – why, Kate would be very nice and easy to get along with. And she’ll be a Pory when she’s my wife.”
Lucilly started up. It had jarred upon her to read about Kate, even in her joy; but now a new hope thrilled her.
“She’ll be a Pory! John’s wife will be a Pory, and the next of kin!” she murmured. “I do want her – to live here!”
“Nephew getting’ married? Should think he’d better be lookin’ out for own folks first,” said the tin peddler, who did not wish to return empty of news to Jason Winchell’s store.
“My nephew has paid the taxes; the house is mine; he will live here with his wife when he returns from South America,” said Lucilly with dignity. In spite of the dignity, the joy of her heart bubbled in her voice. “I–I expect I shall want a new tea-kettle next time you come!”
“Lizabuth Pory may say that next of kin means blood relation. I won’t take it up till I find out how she’s going to act,” she thought.
She wrote a letter to Lizabeth Pory that very day, and in due time received this answer:
“I’m one that’s always glad to hear of the good fortune of my relatives, whatever I may think of their deservings. You appear to think so much about that old tea-set that I might as well tell you that, come next fall, my name won’t be Pory; and when I go to housekeeping I expect all my dishes will be nice and new-fashioned.”