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The Longmeadow Country Club, on the Saturday afternoon following Armstrong's abrupt dismissal, was a scene of gaiety and beauty without compare. Set in broad acres of wood and lawn, the club-house proudly dominated far-flung golf-links and nearer tennis-courts. Shining motors stood parked on the plaza before the club garage, each valued at several years' wages of a workingman.
He was a dark-eyed, square-browed, serious man, with black hair falling below his white band. His mouth had a sweet benign expression, even when he quizzed me about my dauphinhood. A New England pastor was a flame that burned for the enlightenment of the nations. From that hour it was settled that I should be his pupil, and go with him to Longmeadow to finish my education.
"Eleazar Williams," he would say, "do you pretend to be the son of the French king? I tell you what! I will not let the name of Williams be disgraced by any relationship to any French monarch! You must do one of two things: you must either renounce Williamsism or renounce Bourbonism!" Though there was liberty of conscience to criticise the pastor, he was autocrat of Longmeadow.
The pension no longer came from Europe. It ceased when I returned from France. Its former payment was considered apocryphal by Longmeadow, whose very maids too white, with a pink spot in each cheek smiled with reserved amusement at a student who thought it possible he could ever be a king. I spoke to nobody but Pastor Storrs about my own convictions.
Sallie Gardiner was absorbed in keeping her white pique dress clean and chattering with the ubiquitous Fred, who kept Beth in constant terror by his pranks. It was not far to Longmeadow, but the tent was pitched and the wickets down by the time they arrived. A pleasant green field, with three wide-spreading oaks in the middle and a smooth strip of turf for croquet.
He had a long nose, and a high forehead. His black hair crinkled, and a merry crease drew its half circle from one cheek around under his chin to the other. Longmeadow did not receive me without much question and debate. There were Williamses in every direction; disguised, perhaps, for that generation, under the names of Cooley, Stebbins, Colter, Ely, Hole, and so on.
Eunice Williams of Deerfield, the grandmother of Thomas Williams, was a traditional brand never snatched from the burning, in the minister's town of Longmeadow, where nearly every inhabitant was descended from or espoused to a Williams.
These sheds protect, of course, both horse and carriage from wind and rain. Few churches had horse-sheds until after the War of the Revolution, and some not until after the War of 1812. In 1796 the Longmeadow Church had "liberty to erect a Horse House in the Meeting House Lane." This horse house was a horse-shed.
But nothing that I could write was fit to send, and I knew not whether she was yet at Mont-Louis. Forever she was holding the door against me. Skenedonk, coming and going at his caprice, stayed a month in every year at Longmeadow, where the townspeople, having had a surfeit of aboriginal names, called him John.
For now the thread of our narration, like the silken cord in the Labyrinth of Crete, leads us back to the Country Club at Longmeadow, the scene, that very afternoon, of the sudden and violent rupture between the financier and Catherine Flint.
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