Lacking a sense of humor, Mrs. Ansley was literal.
"I don't like you to say that. It sounds as if when you do get the
chance--But perhaps you'll know better by that time. It's something I
hope Guy will help you to see in return for all the--well, the physical
protection you give him."
"Oh, but, ma'am, I--"
"That'll do. I know my boy is brave. But I know too that he's not very
strong, and to have a great fellow like you, used to roughing it--It
reminds me of the big Cossack who always goes round with the little
Tsarevitch. Not that Guy is as young as that, but he's been tenderly
brought up."
"Oh, mother, give us a rest!" Guy had rushed into his flowered room
from whatever errand had taken him away. "If I _have_ been tenderly
brought up, I'm as tough to-day as any mucker down where Tom lives."
"The dear boy!"
She smiled at Tom, as at one who like herself understood this
extravagance, moving away with the stately lilt that made her skirts
flounce up and down.
"It's Hildred that's sicking the old lady on to her little song
and dance in your favor," Guy declared, when they had the room to
themselves again. "Hildred likes you. Always has. She's democratic,
too, just like me. Once let a fellow be a sport and Hildred wouldn't
care what he was socially."
"Keep your mouth shut and live," became Tom's daily self-adjuration.
That Guy sincerely liked him he was sure, and this in itself meant much
to him. The patronage could be smiled away. If he and his mother failed
in tact they gave him much in compensation. In their house he was
getting accustomed to certain small usages which at first had overawed
him. Space didn't dwarf him any more, nor beauty strike him spellbound.
He was so courteous to Pilcher that Pilcher, returning deference for
deference, had once or twice called him "sir." The plays to which
Guy took him were a long step in his education; the music they heard
together released a whole new range in his emotions.
He discovered that Guy was what is commonly called musical. He played
the piano not badly; he knew something of the classics, of the great
romanticists, of the moderns. Back of the library was a music room, and
when other occupations palled, there Guy would play and explain, while
Tom sat listening and enjoying. Guy liked explaining; it showed his
superiority. Tom liked to learn. To know the difference between Mozart
and Beethoven was a stage in progress. To have the cabalistic names of
Wagner and Debussy, which he had often seen in newspapers, spring to
significance was an initiation into mysteries.
So with work, with sports, with amusements, the winter sped by,
bringing a sense of an expanding life. He had one main care: Maisie
was more unhappy. Her appeals to him to throw up college, to become a
chauffeur and marry her, increased in urgency.
He had come to the point of seeing that his engagement to Maisie was
a bit of folly. If Honey were to learn of it, or the Ansleys ... but
he hoped to keep it secret till he won a position in which he could be
free of censure. Once with an income to support a wife, his mistakes
and sufferings would be his own business. In proportion as life opened
up it was easy for him to face trouble cheerfully.
May had come round, and by keeping his birthday on the fifth of March,
he was now more than eighteen. On a Saturday morning when there was no
school to attend he and Guy had lingered on the roof of the Ansley
house after their task with the wireless apparatus was over. Looking
across the river toward Cambridge, where one big tower marked the site
of Harvard, they were speculating on the new step in manhood they would
take in the following October.
Pilcher's old head appeared through the skylight to inform Mr. Guy that
lunch was waiting. Madam wished him to come down.
"Where is she?"
"She's in the dining room, Mr. Guy."
"Get along, Tom. I'll be ready with the runabout at two. You won't be
late, will you?"
Tom said he would not be late, following Pilcher through the skylight
and down the several flights of stairs. He was eager to slip out the
front door without encountering Mrs. Ansley. Mrs. Ansley was eager not
to encounter him. With lunch on the table, it would be awkward not to
ask him to sit down; and to ask him to sit down would be out of the
question. It would be just like Guy....
And then Guy did what was just like him. "Mother," he called out,
puffing down the last of the staircases, "why can't Tom have lunch with
us? He's got to be back here at two anyway. He's coming out with me in
the runabout."
Tom was doing his best to turn the knob of the front door. "Couldn't,
Guy," he whispered back, shaking his head violently. "Got to beat it."
In reality he was running away. To sit at the table with Mrs. Ansley,
and be served by Pilcher, required a knowledge of etiquette he did not
possess.
"Mother, grab him," Guy insisted. "He might as well stay, mightn't he?"
Reluctantly Mrs. Ansley appeared in the doorway. In so far as she could
ever be vexed with Guy, she was vexed. "If Whitelaw's got to go, dear--"
"He hasn't got to go, have you, Tom? He don't have a home to toe the
line at. He just picks up his grub wherever he can get it."
To such an appeal it was impossible to be wholly deaf. "Oh, then, if
Whitelaw chooses to stay with us--"
"Oh, I couldn't, ma'am," Tom cried, hurriedly. "I've got to--"
But Guy, who had now reached the floor of the hall, caught him by the
arm. "Oh, come along in. It can't hurt us. The old lady's just as
democratic as Hildred and me."
Mrs. Ansley was overborne; she couldn't help herself. Tom also was
overborne, finding it easier to yield than to rebel. There being but
three places laid at the table, one of which was reserved for Mr.
Ansley in case he came home for luncheon, Pilcher set a fourth.
"Will you sit there, Whitelaw?"
"Oh, mother, call him Tom. He isn't a chauffeur, not when he's in town
here."
If anyone but Guy had put her in this situation Mrs. Ansley would
have deemed it due to herself to sail from the room. As it was, she
endeavored to humor the boy, to keep Tom in his place, and to rescue
the dignity which had never yet sat down at table with a servant.
"I'm sure there's no harm in being a chauffeur. I'm the last person in
the world to say so, dependent on chauffeurs as I am. Besides, we knew,
of course, that some of the young people helping us at the inn-club
were studying in colleges, and that they didn't mean to stay in those
positions permanently." She grew arch. "But I'm not democratic, Mr.
Whitelaw. Guy knows I'm not. It's his way of teasing me. He's perfectly
aware that I consider democracy a failure. There never was a greater
fallacy than that all men were born free and equal. As to freedom I'm
indifferent; but I've never pretended that any Tom, Dick, or Harry was
my equal, and I never shall."
"You don't mean this Tom, do you, old lady?"
"Now, Guy! Isn't he a tease, Mr. Whitelaw? But I do believe in equality
of opportunity. That seems to me one of the glories of our country. So
many of our great men have come from the very humblest origin. And if
we can do anything to help them along--with Guy that's an obsession.
If it's a fault I say it's a good fault. Better to err on that side, I
always think, than to see some one achieve the big thing, and know that
you had no share in it when you might have had. That's shepherd's pie,
Mr. Whitelaw. We have very simple lunches because Mr. Ansley doesn't
always come home, and in any case his meal is his dinner."
She rambled on because Guy was too busy with his food to help her, and
Tom too terrified. He was sorry not merely for himself, but for her.
Compelled to admit him to breaking bread with her, she must feel as if
he had been forced on her in her dressing room. As a matter of fact,
he admired the way in which she was carrying it off. Long ago, having
divined her as taking her inherited position in Boston as a kind of
sanctifying aura, shrinking from unauthorized approach like a sensitive
plant from a touch, she reminded him of an anecdote he had somewhere
read of Queen Victoria. The Queen was holding a council. Present at it
among others was a statesman sitting for the first time as a member of
the cabinet. Obliged at a given moment to carry a paper from one side
of the table to the other, this gentleman passed back of the Queen's
chair, accidentally grazing it with his hand. The Queen shuddered
and shrank away. The touching merely of the chair was a violation of
majesty. "He won't do," she whispered to the prime minister. He didn't
do. He passed not only into political but into social oblivion. Tom
recalled the incident as he tried to choke down his shepherd's pie.
He was the unhappy statesman. He wouldn't do. Amiable as Mrs. Ansley
tried to make herself, he knew how she was suffering. He was suffering
himself.
And in on his suffering, to make it worse, bustled Mr. Ansley. Throwing
his hat and gloves on a settle in the hall, he shot into the dining
room at once. He was a man who shot, sharply, directly, rather than one
who walked. Tom stood up.
"Sorry I'm so late, Sunshine--" His eye fell on Tom. "Oh, how-d'ye-do?
Seen you before, haven't I? Oh! Oh!" The exclamations were of surprise
and a little pain. "Why, you're the young fellow who ran the station
car for us."
Mrs. Ansley intervened as one who pacifies. "He's going out with Guy at
two o'clock, to help him run the runabout."
"_Help_ me run it! Why, mother, you talk as if--"
"And Guy couldn't let him go off without anything to eat."
"Quite so! quite so!" Mr. Ansley agreed. "Glad to see you. Sit down."
He helped himself to the shepherd's pie which Pilcher passed again.
"Let me see! What was it your name was?"