Nancy Whitman arrived at Woodbridge Center as planned, and her brother
and nephew were at the station to meet her, the latter with his
collection of ninety-six orange pips in a candy box.
In describing Juliet it will be remembered that the author said nothing
about her colour or dimensions, but described her indirectly, and
succeeding generations have had their attention called to the merit of
the performance. We know, for example, that she taught the candles to
burn bright, and, furthermore, that she seemed to hang upon the cheek of
night like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear--most probably a pearl. So,
in describing Nancy, perhaps it would be effective to point out that the
snow began thawing as soon as she arrived, that the motor which carried
her home from the station purred along without the "knock" that had been
troubling it, and that Tutors' Lane was less bumpy as they passed over
it. But such a description, being dangerously near burlesque, however
refined and genteel, must not be thought of for a moment in connection
with a prominent resident of Tutors' Lane. It is something of a pity,
nevertheless, that it must be given up, for Nancy was not particularly
pretty, as young men nowadays measure beauty, and were it possible, the
truth might have been hidden. She was something too elfish--and then
there was the Billings mouth already mentioned. Gertrude Ellis, who
spent much of her time with her aunt in New York and who had a proper
care for her person, thought it a ridiculous pose for Nancy not to have
something done about her freckles. It was such a simple matter nowadays
to have them removed that obviously only a poseuse would tolerate them.
Still, men were so unobserving about things that they didn't seem to
mind them at all, and Gertrude got nowhere when she once tried to
discuss Nancy with a senior.
"Oh, Nancy is so wonderful that she could look like a leopard and people
wouldn't care," he had said. "It's funny about her, isn't it? She's not
good looking, and yet she's so nice everyone's crazy about her. You have
to hand it to a girl that's like that."
Henry Third, or Harry, as everyone but his father called him, had
immediately given his collection and been rewarded. He had on his best
suit for the occasion and the tie his aunt had sent him on his seventh
and latest birthday. He was a handsome, sturdy boy, and his father
expected a Phi Beta Kappa key of him and an enthusiasm for Marx and John
Stuart Mill. His aunt's plans were vague, but altogether different. At
present she was inclined to favour the family business, with the
understanding that when he was established at its head he should give a
beautiful chapel with a Magdalen tower to the College. His own goal was
the Woodbridge football team and, after that, a locomotive on the run to
New York.
They were met at the door by Annie, Harry's nurse, and by Clarence,
Harry's Airedale. Clarence, who immediately dominated the scene,
rendering Nancy's greeting to Annie vain and perfunctory, was a
three-year-old with a frivolity of manner that ill became his senescent
phiz. Upon its grizzled expanse there would pass in amazing succession
the whole range of canine passion, rage, love, urbanity, shame,
drollery, ennui, and, most frequent of all, curiosity. At present all
his energy was devoted to expressing unmitigated pleasure, the dignity
of which exhibition was continually being marred by sliding rugs. But it
is almost certain that he didn't care a rap for his lost dignity. His
mistress was back after an unconscionable absence, and there was every
reason to believe in the reappearance of the superior brand of soup
bones, a matter in which of late there had been too much indifference.
Nancy luxuriated in her renewed proprietorship of the old house, her
home, and the home of her family even before the British officers seized
it for their quarters in 1812. There was a hole to this day in the white
pine panelling above the fireplace in the dining room, which, tradition
held, had been made by a British bullet discharged after a discussion of
the family port. She had found something depressing in the rococo
civilization of Southern California. There was an insufficient
appreciation of Mr. Square's Eternal Fitness of Things. The spirit of
Los Angeles, for example, was the same as that of the picnic party
which, lunching on Ruskin's glacier, leaves its chicken bones and
eggshells to offend all subsequent picnickers. At Woodbridge people did
not make public messes of themselves. If they picnicked on a glacier
they did up their eggshells in a neat package, which, in default of a
handy bottomless pit, they took home with them and put in their garbage
pails. That's the way nice people behaved, and what on earth was there
to be gained by behaving otherwise?
So Nancy was glad to be home and see again the family things she had
grown up with and loved. She was glad to see Henry, who appeared in his
turn glad to see her; but her feelings upon being restored to her nephew
were much deeper than either. Harry mattered more to her than anyone
else in the world. Her mother, who had died five years ago, when Nancy
was twenty, had been particularly devoted to him; and this would have
been sufficient reason in itself for commending him to her tenderest
care.
Such was the family that would have met the casual eye of a stranger: a
young professor in extremely comfortable circumstances, with a brilliant
future and an enviable son, living in a fine old house administered by a
younger sister, the favourite daughter of the town. Beneath the surface,
however, and unknown except to a few, was a conflict of wills that only
an exterior made up of strong family pride and respect for the
established order could have withstood.
On the evening of the day on which Mrs. Robert Lee-Satterlee--the
grandeur of whose name was never reduced by the omission of a single
syllable--asked Nancy to go to California, Nancy had talked it over with
Henry.
"It would be nice to go, for I haven't really been away since Mother
died. I confess I'd like it, but she's not coming back until March, and
that seems a long time to leave Harry and the house."
Henry had leisurely put his cigar into his mouth, had puffed
luxuriously, and had then continued to gaze at his paper without saying
anything.
Nancy hated this indifference, and she knew that Henry knew that she
hated it. It was like his whistling. At times, when for some reason or
other he wished to be disagreeable, he would start quietly whistling
behind his paper, apparently for his sole enjoyment. It was as if, in
view of the coldness of his audience, he were forced to express himself
in a humble and subdued manner, but express himself he must. The tunes
that he chose were The Rosary, The Miserere, Tosti's Good-bye, Gounod's
Ave Maria. There would be an occasional lapse into the jazz song of the
moment, and quite frequently a sacred number. The songs themselves
exasperated her, but what was unbearable were the trills and improvised
fireworks. She would leave the room thoroughly angry, and would fancy
that as she ascended the stairs the tune swelled slightly and acquired
even more airs and graces.
So now, as he deliberately smoked his cigar without noticing her, her
anger rose. He was so smug, so self-sufficient--she wanted to stick a
pin into him.
"It isn't, of course, as if the house were not in capable hands," she
went on, "for Katie and Julia are perfectly responsible, and Annie
couldn't be better." Henry put down his paper, blew a cloud of smoke,
and, looking blandly at her, twisted his mouth so that he might enjoy
the luxury of biting his cheek.
"Well?" burst out Nancy. "I don't see why you need be so irritating
about it?"
"Why, don't be foolish," he replied with an amused smile; "do just what
you want, of course." To Nancy, the smile spoke a great deal more. "How
fatuous you are," it said, "with your devotion to my son and to me. Let
a lollypop in the way of a trip to California come along, and away you
go as if you didn't have a responsibility in the world. There's a firm
nature for you."
She had fled to Mrs. Norris, as always in an emergency, and, receiving
reassuring words, she had gone, but not without tears and misgiving and
not without an unforgettable memory of Henry's behaviour.
She had frankly discussed her Henry Problem with Mrs. Robert
Lee-Satterlee. "I can't seem to reach any middle ground with him," she
had said. "Either I feel terribly because things go so wrong, so much
worse than when Mother was alive, or else I am furious with him. Then I
am overwhelmed with mortification and make up my mind that I _will_ get
on with him, no matter what happens. And of course he can be perfectly
lovely when he wants to be--and then he will deliberately go and do some
horrid thing which makes me want to go away and--drive an auto stage, or
something."
As a matter of fact Nancy would on these occasions, retire and invest
herself in some such romantic, emancipated, role. Possibly she would be
a great surgeon. Having gone through her preliminary training with
unprecedented speed, she had established herself as a famous
specialist--of the brain. People who had gone wrong in their heads would
be brought to her by their desperate friends and relatives. If she only
would help them out. She did usually, although heaven knew that she was
but one little woman to so many brains, and as she worked chiefly under
God's guidance, anyway, she had to conserve her strength. However, she
operated steadily from eight in the morning until eight at night with
only a light lunch in between--possibly only a water cracker. She saw
herself in the operating room with her rubber gloves and her knives.
There was a hazy cloud of white-robed nurses and distinguished surgeons
who, attracted from all over the world, had come to see her miracles for
themselves. A form was on the table, with head shaved. She was to go
into his cerebellum and take out a tumor which had caused deafness,
dumbness, and blindness. She would probably have to make two hundred
stitches or more in sewing him up, but she always had been good at
needlework, and it gave her no concern. She picked up her saw--but to
her horror she found she couldn't bear to stick it in!
Or she was a famous lawyer, strongly reminiscent of Portia, specializing
in pleading for widows and orphans. She had a secretary to handle her
correspondence, who explained that as Miss Whitman was able to work
chiefly by the grace of God--her health was none too robust, and it was
necessary for her to put her trust in Him--it really was not fair of
them to expect her to handle their cases. However, the most outrageous
ones she passed on to Nancy and it was by them that Nancy made her great
reputation. Of course she took no fees, but as body and soul had to be
kept together and the secretary's salary paid, she wrote syndicated
articles for the papers, on religious and ethical subjects. Naturally
she was an object of interest and curiosity and people thronged the
court room when she pleaded. They saw a quiet woman, dressed in black,
but when she began speaking you could hear a pin drop. There was a
thrilling quality in her voice, much remarked by the press, and big
lawyers pitted against her had been known to break down and weep, to the
confusion of their clients. The judge--it was always the same one--had a
big bushy beard, and, though of fierce and impartial mien at the
beginning of the proceedings, he had been known time and again, as her
address continued, to draw forth his large silk handkerchief and blubber
into it. The gratitude of the widows--who extended in a long, black
line, leading their army of white-faced little boys, looking strangely
like Harry when he had the croup--was the one thing that she could not
stand. She would not see them when it was all over, but she couldn't
keep them from sending her flowers, and accordingly her apartment was
always a bower.
So mighty would these scenes be, so moving, and so pathetic, that Nancy
would emerge entirely at peace with Henry and the world. They dwarfed
the cause of her anger; they left her calm and serene, a cousin to the
Superwoman.
* * * * *
The first evening at home passed off very pleasantly indeed. Henry was
charmingly interested in the details of her trip, and the usual cribbage
session was doubled. Harry's progress at school and through the
mumps--an illness which had torn his aunt--were duly recounted and the
maids given a good bill of health. The state of Henry's classes was
described at some length. They were slightly better than usual, it
appeared, and his special course in Labour Problems was going perfectly.
It was really making him famous, he told Nancy.
That night in her room, as she sat at her desk writing her diary, she
calmly told herself that the present tranquillity should last. She
solemnly resolved to guard against every possible contingency that
might lead to a "situation." She did not purpose to surrender her
individuality; she would not become a dummy. But there _must_ be a
middle ground where she could blend service to herself with service to
her family. Life should be rich, but it ought also to be tactful. Surely
this was not an impossible union. Very well, then, she would live richly
and tactfully.
Just exactly what she meant by living richly she didn't quite know. It
would doubtless be somewhat clearer in the morning when she wasn't so
sleepy. Americanization work in Whitmanville. That seemed to offer rich
possibilities. There must be room for endless Uplift in Whitmanville.
And what could be richer than Uplift? She would start a school, she
thought, as she turned off the light and climbed into her four-poster.
She would teach the women how to take care of their babies and the men
how to take care of their women. But it must all be done tactfully. She
must be eternally vigilant upon that score. Yet not so tactful as to
become less rich. Nor yet so rich as to become less tactful.... Tact and
riches--riches and tacks--tracts--striches--....
V
The night following Nancy's return was the night of the Norris party,
the party which is to Woodbridge what the Mardi Gras is to New Orleans,
the Carnival to Rome, and what the Feast of the Ygquato Bloom was to the
ancient Aztecs. It is always held on the twenty-first of March, Sunday
of course excepted, and it is known as the Vernal. Not to be seen at it
is too bad. Not to be invited--unlike the lupercals before mentioned it
requires invitations--is a blight mercifully spared all but the most
painfully outre. Of these the Coogans, who live in Center and whose
connubial infelicities are proverbial, are an example. Tradespeople
frequently bear witness to the marks of a man's fingers on Mrs. Coogan's
fair--and by no means insignificant--arm, and it is common property that
she drinks paregoric. It is quite clear, of course, that such people can
not expect to be invited.
The Vernal has always been "different." In the old days Mrs. Norris set
her face against dancing, not upon any moral grounds, certainly, but
because of its alleged dullness. Why couldn't people enjoy one another
without flying into a perspiration? she asked; but, unfortunately for
her plans for the establishment of an animated conversazione, the
substitutes she had advocated were felt to be even duller. So, one by
one, all her nice games were abandoned and only the charade is left.
This however has gained in popularity, if anything, and certainly it has
gained paraphernalia. Mrs. Norris's costume box has overflowed into a
trunk, and from the trunk has spread into a closet, and the closet is
now nearly filled. From this treasure the two captains select their
colleagues' wardrobes, a duty discharged in advance of the performance
by way of ensuring enough professionalism to prevent the party's
collapsing at the start. In other words, Mrs. Norris, although luckless
in the matter of "adverbs," memory contests, and backgammon tourneys,
has established charades.
It used to be a masquerade party, but because of certain unhappy
circumstances which have recently befallen, it was decided this year to
do without the masks and "Fancy dress." For the last few years people
have been complaining a little of the necessity of getting something new
each year. Mrs. Bates, for example, has exhausted the possibilities of
her husband's summer bath robe. It served excellently at first as a
Roman toga, and the next year it did well enough for Mephistopheles. By
cutting away the parts ravaged by moths it passed as a pirate, but she
despairs of any further alteration. Then, too, it would always be
remembered that a stranger at the last Vernal had in all seriousness
reproved old Professor Narbo, the Chemist, for not taking off his funny
old mask when he already had done so, a mishap none the less enjoyed
because the bringing of a similar charge to one's friends has been an
inevitable jest among the wags for generations. Professor Narbo had been
offended, and great is the offendedness of a Full Professor,
particularly when he is a Heidelberg Ph.D. and parts his hair all the
way down the back. The stranger had been crushed; and, all in all, it
was as mortifying an affair as one could well imagine, and one which in
itself would have been enough to do away with the masks--a
long-discussed possibility--had not worse followed. Edgar Stebbins,
Assistant Professor of History, was unfortunately a little too warmly
devoted to the memory of the grape, or, more specifically, of the corn.
Being mildly mellowed by something more than the memory of it, he found
occasion to embrace a lady who was dressed in his period, the Late
Roman, and to whom he was naturally drawn. The lady promptly screamed
and unmasked; and the situation was not at all improved by its being
discovered that she was the wife of Professor Robbins of the Latin
Department, with which gentleman Mr. Stebbins was not on speaking terms.
Mrs. Robbins, it seemed, had employed the squeaky voice so familiar at
masquerade parties and had thus rendered her disguise complete. Upon her
testimony it was learned that Mr. Stebbins's voice had been so roughened
by drink that his own mother wouldn't have recognized it. Mr. Stebbins
had withdrawn from the party and, at the end of the academic year, from
the college as well, and his name is now only an appalling memory.
In the morning Nancy hurried up to the Norrises' as soon as she could.
She found Mary and her mother in the drawing-room. Mary was playing the
piano while her mother sat in a distant chair, amiably shredding
codfish, a pleasure which she would on no account yield to the kitchen.
As soon as the rush of sisterly greeting was passed, all four--for the
cod could not be left behind--repaired to the sofa in the library; and
after the gaps in their correspondence had been filled, they came to the
party. Mary was to be one of the charade captains and Tom Reynolds the
other. Nancy, who was an inevitable member of the charade, was to be on
Tom's side.
"Tell me," she asked, "is he really as nice as you people make out?"
"Oh yes," replied Mary, "he's one of us."
"He used to scare me. He never would dance with me any more than he had
to, and I always was afraid he would get that terribly bored look I've
seen him get. I think probably he's conceited."
"Oh dear, to hear you girls talk you'd think that a little honest
boredom was the most dreadful thing on earth. Why, your fathers used to
get so bored with us that----"
"Now, Gumgum, you know that isn't sensible," broke in Mary severely--a
regrettable habit which seems increasingly prevalent among our modern
daughters--"unless you people were ninnies."
"That was in Garfield's administration," replied Mrs. Norris absently,
"or possibly a little before, in Hayes's--Rutherford B. Hayes. He did
away with the carpetbaggers and all those dreadful people in the South."
Then, more dreamily still, "His middle name was Birchard."
"I know why you think he's conceited," Mary went on, warming up to the
never-ending pleasure of analysis, "but it's because he's really
diffident. Lots of people I know who people think are snobby are only
just diffident."
"What on earth do you mean by saying that Rutherford Hayes was
diffident? He wasn't a bit. He was a very great philanthropist."
"She's too awful today," exclaimed Mary, "with that smelly old fish and
Rutherford Garfield. Gracious, I'd like to bury the old thing."
"You horrid, ungrateful child, when I'm doing this for your lunch. We're
just old Its, we mothers. I'm going to start an Emancipation Club for
Mothers. The poor old things, they might just as well crawl away into
the bushes like rabbits."
There then followed a tender passage between mother and daughter, which
ended in Mary's blowing down her mother's neck. A convulsive scream and
a frantic clawing gesture in the direction of her daughter was the
immediate reaction, much to the confusion of the codfish, which was only
just saved by Nancy from a premature end upon the hearth.
Following the rescue, the heroine, who had some shopping to do, began
making motions of departure. "You must come as soon as you can after
dinner to have Tom explain what you are to do. Gumgum thinks we ought
to have a rehearsal, but Tom has a five o'clock, and I don't think it's
necessary anyway. He's really awfully funny and clever, Nancy, and you
must like him."
"I hate clever people. I have nothing to say to them. I'm a perfect gawk
when they're around, and I'm afraid I won't be able to stand him."
As she walked on down to Center, however, it occurred to her that he
might come in useful with the children of the parents in her
Whitmanville school. He could teach them basketball and of course he
could coach their baseball team. He would also be useful in taking them
off on hikes and--But she hadn't seen him in ever so long, and he might
not do at all. In fact, it was highly probable that he wouldn't do, for
boys are suspicious of clever people, and he almost certainly wouldn't
think of doing it. Or possibly he might, out of politeness, and then
when he got bored with it he would decide to be funny with the boys, and
they would get to hate him and tell their parents, who would come to her
with sullen looks and threatening gestures and----
When Nancy arrived in the evening, she found Tom distributing costumes.
He was heavier, she noticed, and his forehead was higher. Some day she
might get a chance to tell him how she saved Henry's hair simply by
brushing it carefully. It was ridiculous to put a lot of smelly greasy
stuff on it----
She had shaken hands with him and received her costume which was an
aigrette and a peacock-feather fan. "The word is 'draper,'" explained
Tom, "and you are to be the Lady Angela. In the first syllable you have
lost your pet Persian and, after explaining your loss to the little
house-maid who is dusting around, you call in Merriam the detective. I
am Merriam the detective and I arrive immediately after you are through
calling me up on the telephone. The little maid goes over to the window
and says, 'Goody, here comes Mr. Merriam the detective in a dray,' and
then you go out to meet me, and that's the first act. Then I come on
alone in the second act and investigate the room heavily, looking for a
clue, you see. I have a theory that the little maid is the thief, and
when you come in, as you do when I have said 'Ha, it is a match box,' I
explain to you that----"
"Oh, dear, I haven't any idea what I'm to do."
"Well, you just go in and wave your fan disconsolately, and I'll do the
rest. It will be dreadful, of course, but then, no one ever expects them
to be otherwise. Now I think the best way is for us to run over it, and
then little things will come to you."