The Sayre house stood on the hill behind the town, a long, rather low
white house on Italian lines. In summer, until the family exodus to the
Maine Coast, the brilliant canopy which extended out over the
terrace indicated, as Harrison Miller put it, that the family was “in
residence.” Originally designed as a summer home, Mrs. Sayre now used it
the year round. There was nothing there, as there was in the town house,
to remind her of the bitter days before her widowhood.
She was a short, heavy woman, of fine taste in her house and of no taste
whatever in her clothing.
“I never know,” said Harrison Miller, “when I look up at the Sayre
place, whether I'm seeing Ann Sayre or an awning.”
She was not a shrewd woman, nor a clever one, but she was kindly in the
main, tolerant and maternal. She liked young people, gave gay little
parties to which she wore her outlandish clothes of all colors and all
cuts, lavished gifts on the girls she liked, and was anxious to see
Wallie married to a good steady girl and settled down. Between her son
and herself was a quiet but undemonstrative affection. She viewed him
through eyes that had lost their illusion about all men years ago, and
she had no delusions about him. She had no idea that she knew all that
he did with his time, and no desire to penetrate the veil of his private
life.
“He spends a great deal of money,” she said one day to her lawyer. “I
suppose in the usual ways. But he is not quite like his father. He has
real affections, which his father hadn't. If he marries the right girl
she can make him almost anything.”
She had her first inkling that he was interested in Elizabeth Wheeler
one day when the head gardener reported that Mr. Wallace had ordered
certain roses cut and sent to the Wheeler house. She was angry at first,
for the roses were being saved for a dinner party. Then she considered.
“Very well, Phelps,” she said. “Do it. And I'll select a plant also, to
go to Mrs. Wheeler.”
After all, why not the Wheeler girl? She had been carefully reared, if
the Wheeler house was rather awful in spots, and she was a gentle little
thing; very attractive, too, especially in church. And certainly Wallie
had been seeing a great deal of her.
She went to the greenhouses, and from there upstairs and into the rooms
that she had planned for Wallie and his bride, when the time came. She
was more content than she had been for a long time. She was a lonely
woman, isolated by her very grandeur from the neighborliness she craved;
when she wanted society she had to ask for it, by invitation. Standing
inside the door of the boudoir, her thoughts already at work on
draperies and furniture, she had a vague dream of new young life
stirring in the big house, of no more lonely evenings, of the bustle and
activity of a family again.
She wanted Wallie to settle down. She was tired of paying his bills at
his clubs and at various hotels, tired and weary of the days he lay in
bed all morning while his valet concocted various things to enable him
to pull himself together. He had been four years sowing his wild oats,
and now at twenty-five she felt he should be through with them.
The south room could be the nursery.
On Decoration Day, as usual, she did her dutiful best by the community,
sent flowers to the cemetery and even stood through a chilly hour there
while services were read and taps sounded over the graves of those who
had died in three wars. She felt very grateful that Wallie had come back
safely, and that if only now he would marry and settle down all would be
well.
The service left her emotionally untouched. She was one of those women
who saw in war, politics, even religion, only their reaction on
herself and her affairs. She had taken the German deluge as a personal
affliction. And she stood only stoically enduring while the village
soprano sang “The Star Spangled Banner.” By the end of the service she
had decided that Elizabeth Wheeler was the answer to her problem.
Rather under pressure, Wallie lunched with her at the country club, but
she found him evasive and not particularly happy.
“You're twenty-five, you know,” she said, toward the end of a
discussion. “By thirty you'll be too set in your habits, too hard to
please.”
“I'm not going to marry for the sake of getting married, mother.”
“Of course not. But you have a good bit of money. You'll have much more
when I'm gone. And money carries responsibility with it.”
He glanced at her, looked away, rapped a fork on the table cloth.
“It takes two to make a marriage, mother.”
He closed up after that, but she had learned what she wanted.
At three o'clock that afternoon the Sayre limousine stopped in front of
Nina's house, and Mrs. Sayre, in brilliant pink and a purple hat, got
out. Leslie, lounging in a window, made the announcement.
“Here's the Queen of Sheba,” he said. “I'll go upstairs and have a
headache, if you don't mind.”
He kissed Nina and departed hastily. He was feeling extremely gentle
toward Nina those days and rather smugly virtuous. He considered that
his conscience had brought him back and not a very bad fright, which was
the fact, and he fairly exuded righteousness.
It was the great lady's first call, and Nina was considerably uplifted.
It was for such moments as this one trained servants and put Irish lace
on their aprons, and had decorators who stood off with their heads a
little awry and devised backgrounds for one's personality.
“What a delightful room!” said Mrs. Sayre. “And how do you keep a maid
as trim as that?”
“I must have service,” Nina replied. “The butler's marching in a parade
or something. How nice of you to come and see our little place. It's a
band-box, of course.”
Mrs. Sayre sat down, a gross disharmony in the room, but a solid and not
unkindly woman for all that.
“My dear,” she said, “I am not paying a call. Or not only that. I came
to talk to you about something. About Wallace and your sister.”
Nina was gratified and not a little triumphant.
“I see,” she said. “Do you mean that they are fond of one another?”
“Wallace is. Of course, this talk is between ourselves, but--I'm going
to be frank, Nina. I want Wallie to marry, and I want him to marry soon.
You and I know that the life of an unattached man about town is full of
temptations. I want him to settle down. I'm lonely, too, but that's not
so important.”
Nina hesitated.
“I don't know about Elizabeth. She's fond of Wallie, as who isn't? But
lately--”
“Yes?”
“Well, for the last few days I have been wondering. She doesn't talk,
you know. But she has been seeing something of Dick Livingstone.”
“Doctor Livingstone! She'd be throwing herself away!”
“Yes, but she's like that. I mean, she isn't ambitious. We've always
expected her to throw herself away; at least I have.”
A half hour later Leslie, upstairs, leaned over the railing to see if
there were any indications of departure. The door was open, and Mrs.
Sayre evidently about to take her leave. She was saying:
“It's very close to my heart, Nina dear, and I know you will be tactful.
I haven't stressed the material advantages, but you might point them out
to her.”
A few moments later Leslie came downstairs. Nina was sitting alone,
thinking, with a not entirely pleasant look of calculation on her face.
“Well?” he said. “What were you two plotting?”
“Plotting? Nothing, of course.”
He looked down at her. “Now see here, old girl,” he said, “you keep your
hands off Elizabeth's affairs. If I know anything she's making a damn
good choice, and don't you forget it.”