Entity story · 3 min read · Set in Marchmont House ·
The Late Guest at Marchmont House
At the annual dinner at Marchmont House, a well-dressed stranger arrives after the coffee has been served, and lays a place for himself beside the youngest member of the family, who has never once been invited to sit at the table.
The Marchmont family had kept the same dinner every year on the third Saturday of November since the house was built, and the rules were older than anyone could remember. The table was laid for twelve. The soup was served at seven. Nobody spoke until the fish, and nobody left until the port had been passed twice. Every guest came in evening dress, and every guest was expected at the table by nine.
In the autumn of the year the youngest Marchmont daughter, Clemency, turned sixteen, the family had a new cook, a serious young woman from the coast who had been told the rules and had taken them to heart. On the night of the dinner she counted the places twice and found thirteen chairs set round the table, one more than she had been given to lay.
She went to the dining room door and asked her mistress what to do. Lady Marchmont looked at the thirteenth chair and went quite pale, and said, very quietly, that it had been there for forty years and that she had never once seen it used.
At nine minutes past nine the front door opened. Nobody had heard a car on the drive. A man in a dark suit and a silver-grey waistcoat came in, slowly, with the air of someone who has been delayed by traffic and is sorry for it. He wore white gloves. His face was pleasant and a little tired, the face of a host who has been up all night arranging other people's evenings.
He did not announce himself. He walked past the drawing room where the family was waiting for the soup, and past the staircase, and into the dining room, and he took the thirteenth chair without a glance at the other guests. He nodded to the young cook, who was carrying the tureen, and said, "Thank you. That was very kind," and lifted his napkin.
The family did not know what to say. Nobody did. The soup was served. The man ate politely, with small appreciative sounds, and complimented the cook on the leek. He spoke to Clemency, who was seated beside the empty chair, about the book she had been reading in the library that morning, and he asked her opinion of the ending. She had not been reading in the library. She had been sitting on the stairs, crying, because she had not been allowed to go to the school dance. But when she heard herself answer, she found she was describing the book in perfect detail, and the man listened as though he had written it.
By the port, the family had begun to relax. Lady Marchmont was laughing at a joke that had been made about the bishop. The cook had come in to see the late guest for herself. Clemency had stopped looking at the chair.
At half past eleven the man rose from the table, bowed to the room, and said that he had enjoyed the dinner very much but must be going. He took off his white gloves and laid them beside his plate. Then he walked to the door, and paused, and looked back at Clemency, very kindly.
"You'll be laying the table for yourself next year," he said. "Don't wait to be asked."
He went out. The front door closed. Nobody heard a car start. When the cook went to clear the thirteenth place, she found the gloves gone, and in their place a small card, printed in old-fashioned type: *Table for thirteen. Clemency Marchmont, at her own invitation.*
Clemency was seated at the table the following November, in her own chair, laid for her by her own hand. She did not invite anyone else. She sat through the soup and the fish and the port, and when she rose at last to leave, the thirteenth chair was already set, and a fresh white glove lay folded on the cloth beside it, waiting for the next late guest.