“And Mrs. Kneeland’s waitress wears ear-rings!... No. Now I’ve been
thinking—don’t hurry along so, George. You never keep in line! It spoils
the pleasure of walking when one constantly outsteps you like that.”
“Pardon,” said George, and fell back.
Miss Haviland winced and shifted her maroon parasol to the shoulder on
his side, and smiled attentively at me to sweeten the interval, and
continued:
“Now _I_, if you’re interested to hear—”
I was very interested, and told her so. It always piqued my curiosity,
moreover, to think why Miss Haviland picked me out—young as I was—for
such confidences. I believe it was mostly because I always stared at her
so; which she mistook, characteristically, for sheer flattery.
Even as she spoke, I was remarking to myself the frilled languor of her
dress, and her firm rather large-boned throat, and the moisture—for it
was hot—under the imitation pearls, and the competent grip of her hand
on the long onyx handle of her parasol.
She stopped short of a sudden. George took a few steps ahead. She lifted
her parasol over to the other shoulder and looked at him, and he fell
into line again, a sensitive, pleased, proud smile showing above his
little round beard.
“Now _I_ think it would be better—simpler, more dignified, and less
ghastly for _him_—if he came, say, to luncheon, and if we arranged for a
small, a very small, group of the people he’d care most to see—he
doesn’t, poor fellow, want to see many of us!—a _small_ group, I say, to
come—George! _Please!_ It makes me nervous, it interrupts me, and it is
very bad for the path.... Cover it up now with your foot. No—here—let me
do it.”
“Pardon,” said George, cheerfully.
Miss Haviland winced again. “I don’t know about _trains_,” she went on,
“but we can look one out for him” (she facilely avoided the American
idiom) “and then motor him to town in—in Mrs. Edgerton’s car. Don’t you
think that will be more _comme il faut_?”
“He’ll be so pleased, he’ll enjoy so much meeting _her_!” exclaimed
George to me, rising on his toes repeatedly and rubbing his small dry
hands together. “Won’t he?”
Miss Haviland turned to him severely, and at a signal he drew his arm up
and she slipped hers through it.
“To worry now _is_ a bit premature, perhaps,” she called back. “We’re
off to see the new Discobulus. I fear it’s modeled on a late Roman
copy.”
And I saw her, when I glanced over my shoulder a second later, pause
again and withdraw her arm to point to the Memorial Library.
“What will he think of a disgrace like that, George?” I heard her
imprecating.... “_What?_ You don’t _see_—that the architect’s left off a
line of leaves from the capitals? Come on.”
Hurrell Oaks may have been over-fastidious. Yes. But his discernments
were the needs of a glowing temperament; they grew naturally out of
ideals his incomparable sensitiveness created. Whereas hers—Marian
Haviland’s—though derived from him, had all the—what shall I
say?—snobbishness, which his lacked utterly. I can’t estimate that side
of her, even now, not in view of all her accomplishments, even, except
as being a little bit cheap.
I didn’t, of course, though, gather at her first mention of his coming
half that it meant to her. And she wouldn’t, I might have known, with
her regard for the _nuances_, have let it baldly appear. But I
discovered afterward that she had made all sorts of overtures—done her
utmost to divert him to Newfair. She didn’t know him; had never set eyes
on him; but her reputation, which was considerable even then, helped her
a good deal. For she solicited news of him from her publishers; and she
wrote Mrs. ——, whatever her name was, finally, when she learned that
that was the real right source to appeal to, a no doubt handsome letter,
whence came the reply Miss Haviland had quoted to me, but which, as I
also afterward found out, only asked very simply, “in view of the
uncertainty of Mr. Oaks’s plans,” whether or not he could, in case he
had to, “spend the night there.”
Well, it eventuated, not strictly in accord with her wire-pulling, that
Hurrell Oaks’s route was changed so he could “run through” in the late
afternoon “for a look at the college.” He was to be motoring to a place
somewhere near, as it happened, and the Newfair detour would lengthen
his schedule by only an hour or two. Word of it didn’t come to her
directly, either; that letter was addressed to the president. But it was
humbly referred to Miss Haviland in the course of things, and she took
the matter—what was left of it—into her own hands.
“No,” she answered, unyielding to the various suggestions that cropped
up. “But I’ll tell you what I am willing to do: I will give up my own
little flat. Living in London as he does, he will feel—quite at home
there.”
Funny though it is, looking back over it, it had also, when all was said
and done—particularly when all was done—its pathetic side. For Hurrell
Oaks was the one sincere passion of her life. He was religion and—and
everything to her. The prospect of seeing him in the flesh, of hearing
him _viva voce_, was more than she had ever piously believed could come
to pass.
However much she imitated him—and remember, a large following bears
witness to her skill—however she failed in his beauty and poetry and
thoroughbredness, she must have had a deep, a discriminating love of his
genius to have taken her thus far. No wonder she couldn’t, with her
precise sense of justice, _not_ be the chosen person at Newfair to
receive him. But nobody dared question the justice of it, really. Wasn’t
she the _raison d’être_ of his coming?—of his being anywhere at all, as
some people thought?
Her very demeanor was mellowed by the prospect. She set about the task
of preparation with an ardor as unprofessed as it was apparent. She
doffed the need of impressing any one in her zeal to get ready to
impress Hurrell Oaks.
Her tone became warm and affluent as she went about asking this person
and that to lend things for the great day: Mrs. Edgerton’s Monet, Mrs.
Braxton’s brocades; a fur rug of Mrs. Green’s she solicited one noon on
the campus as if from a generous impulse to slight no one. And even when
Mrs. Green suggested timidly that she would be glad “to pay for having
the invitations engraved,” Miss Haviland didn’t correct her. But—
“No, dear,” she said. “I think I won’t let you do that much—_really_.
There aren’t to be so many, and I shall be able to write them myself in
no time.”
I can see her now, fingering her pearls and peering as hospitably as she
could manage into Mrs. Green’s commonplace eyes, and George Norton
hurrying across the grass to catch a word with her without avail. He was
the only person whom she was, during those perfervid preliminaries, one
bit cruel to.
But him she overlooked entirely. She didn’t seem to see him that day at
all. She just peered obliquely beyond him, and, engrossed quite
genuinely, no doubt, in Mrs. Green’s fur rug, took her arm and strolled
off. She had lost, for the time being, all use for him. He was left
deserted and alone at the teas and gatherings, magnetized from one spot
to another whither she moved forgetfully away.
I met him in the park and pitied his shy, inept efforts not to appear
neglected.
“Well, I kind of think it may rain,” he essayed, half clasping his small
hands behind him and looking sociably up around the sky for a cloud.
“But I don’t know as it will, after all.” And then, “Have you seen Miss
Haviland lately?” he asked out in spite of himself.
“Not since yesterday’s class.”
“How’s the improvements coming?”
“All right, I guess. The new stuff for the walls arrived, I heard. It
hasn’t been put on yet.”
“Oh—she’s papering, is she?”
“And painting.”
He tried to sparkle appreciatively. “Well, it takes time to do those
things. You never know what you’re in for. She’s well?”
And he swayed back and forth on his heels, and teetered his head
nervously. Poor thing! The gap he had tried so hard to bridge was filled
to brimming now by the promised advent of Hurrell Oaks.
Miss Haviland called me on the telephone one afternoon as the day was
approaching to ask if I would lend her my samovar; and she wanted I
should bring it over presently, if possible, as she was slowly getting
things right, and didn’t like to leave any more than was necessary to
the last moment. So I polished the copper up as best I could and went
’round that evening to the New Gainsborough to leave it.
The building looked very dismal to me, I recall. A forlorn place it
seemed to receive the great guest. It had been a dormitory once, which
had been given over, owing to the inconveniences of the location, to
accommodate unmarried teachers. It was more like a refined factory than
an apartment-house. The high stoop had no railing, and the pebbles which
collected on the coarse granite steps added to the general bleakness of
the entrance. The inner halls were grim, with plain match-board
wainscots and dingy paint, and narrow staircases that ascended steeply
from meager landings. Miss Haviland’s suite was three flights up.
But when I got inside it, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Her door was slightly ajar—it was the way Miss Haviland avoided the
bother and the squalor of having to let people in—and at my knock she
called out in a restrained, serene tone, “Come!” And I stepped through
the tiny vestibule into the study.
It was amazingly attractive—Hurrell Oaks himself would have remarked it,
I’ll wager. Nobody except Marian Haviland could have wrought such a
change.
Of course there were Mrs. Edgerton’s Monet, and Mrs. Braxton’s brocades,
and—yes—Mrs. Green’s fur rug, to say nothing of numberless other
borrowed _objets_, to help out the lavishness of the effect; but the
synthesis was magnificent. Everything looked as if it had grown there.
One might have been in an Italian palace. And Miss Haviland, seated at
her new antique walnut desk with the ormolu mounts, looked veritably
like a chatelaine. She had always, too—I ought to have seen it before—a
little resembled a chatelaine, a chatelaine without a castle.
But she had for the moment her castle now—enough of it to complete the
picture, at any rate. There was a low smoldering fire on the hearth, and
the breeze that played through the open window just swayed the heavy
damask hangings rhythmically. My samovar, as I set it down on a carved
consol near the door, looked too crude and crass to warrant the excuse
of my coming.
She read my dazed approval in a glance and laid down her pen, and, with
one experienced _coup d’œil_ over the manuscript before her, leaned
back, clasping the edge of her desk with both hands and staring at me.
She was wearing one of those black evening gowns, and a feather fan was
in easy reach of where she sat; and I noticed all at once that the
string of pearls was dangling from the gas-jet above her head.
“The new fixtures—the electric ones—will be bronze,” she hastened to
say.
I shall never forget, not to my dying day, the sight I had of her
sitting there; in that room, at that desk, in a black evening
gown—_writing_! And the string of pearls she had slung across the
condemned gas-jet by way of subtle disarmament for her task! The whole
place had the hushed grand air of having been cleared for action by some
sophisticated gesture; as if—the thought whimsically struck me—she might
have just rung for the “second man” and bidden him remove “all the
Pomeranians” lest they distract her.
“It’s too lovely, Miss Haviland; I can’t tell you what I think it is,” I
exclaimed, blankly.
She stood up, reached for the rope of pearls, and slipped them over her
head.
“I want you to see the hall,” she said. “Isn’t it _chic_?... And the
bedrooms. The men will leave their hats in the south chamber—my room—in
here; and the women will have the other—this one.”
She preceded me. She was quite simple in her eagerness to point out
everything she had done. Her childlike glee in it touched me. And she
looked so tired. She looked, in spite of her pomp and enthusiasm,
exhausted.
“How he—how Mr. Hurrell Oaks will love it,” I cried, sincerely. “If he
only realized, if he only could know the pains you’ve taken for him.”
“_Pains?_”
She leaned forward and let me judge for myself how she felt. Her eyes
glowed. I had never seen her with all the barriers down.
“It isn’t a _crumb_ of what’s due him,” she pleaded. “Do you think I
expect he’ll love it? No. It’s only the best I could do—the best I _can_
do—to save him the shock of finding it all awful. Oh, I didn’t, I so
don’t want him to think we are—barbarians!”
She gave it out to me from the depths of her heart, and I accepted it
completely, with no reservations or comments. It was the one real
passion of her life, as I’ve said. She was laying bare to me the utmost
she had done and longed to do for Hurrell Oaks.
“To think that he is coming here!” she murmured. “I’ve waited and hoped
so to see him—only to see him—it’s about the most I’ve ever wanted. And
it’s going to happen, dear, in my own little rooms. He is coming to me!
Oh, you can’t know what he’s meant to me in all the years—how I’ve
studied and striven to learn to be worthy of him! _All_—the little all
I’ve got—I owe to him—everything. He’s done more than anybody, alive or
dead, to teach me to be interested in life—to make me happy.”
She threw her long arms around my shoulders and pressed me to her, and
kissed me on the forehead. The chapel clock struck ten.
“You’ll come, too, won’t you?” she asked, stepping back away from me in
sudden cheerfulness. “For I want you to see how wonderful he will be.”
She put her arms about me once more, and went with me to the door when I
left. In her forgetfulness of all forms and codes she had become a
perfect chatelaine. She opened the door almost reluctantly, and stepped
out on to the meager landing, and stood there waving her hand and
calling out after me until I had got well down the narrow staircase.
The day dawned at last. The hour had been set at five o’clock, as Miss
Haviland’s Shakespeare course wasn’t over until three-thirty, and the
faculty hadn’t seen fit, after “mature consideration,” to give her
pupils a holiday. But the elect of Newfair were talking about the event,
and discussing what to wear, and whether they ought to arrive on the dot
of five or a few minutes after, or if they wouldn’t be surer of seeing
him “at his best” by coming a few minutes before.