Mrs. Norris was pleased with Tom's account of his success in the writing
of the examination paper. Certain unsatisfactory rumours had come to her
ears recently about his work. Henry Whitman, for example, had stated
that Tom was loafing and that unless he picked up and showed improvement
he might not receive a reappointment when his present term had expired.
It is curious how everyone knows everyone else's business at Woodbridge.
Each man has his grade stamped clearly upon him, for all, with the
possible exception of the man himself, to see. A young man can raise
this grade; and Mrs. Norris--who loved Tom almost as though he were her
own--was hopeful for him.
"All he needs, Julian," she said to the Dean when she told him of Tom's
triumph, "is a guiding hand. I can't do it, because I'm too old, but I
know someone who can." She was "straightening out" the library at the
time, and as she said this she gave a chair a shove with her knee, which
sent it flying into the books on the wall.
"Mercy on us," cried the Dean, annoyed by this display of vigour, "who
is it?"
"Nancy."
"Oh, pshaw, you're always trying to marry her off. You're the worst
match-maker I know."
Mrs. Norris laughed quietly. "You wait and see," was all she said; but
she had settled in her mind upon a picnic.
Mary, when approached upon the subject, had not been at all
enthusiastic. "Why, it's much too early for a picnic," she had objected.
"It is not at all. Everything is three weeks early this year, and that
makes it about the middle of May. We'll have a lovely moon, too. It will
be grand." And she proceeded to invite the guests, Nancy and Tom, and
Furbush, for it was true that he had been most attentive to Mary of
late. Mrs. Norris at first refused to go, but Mary insisted.
"You will have to watch the fire, Gumgum, while we are off looking for
sticks and things." And so she had gone, after all.
Mrs. Norris's ideas of a picnic were large, the heritage of a day that
knew few tins and miraculous powders that bloom into omelettes. She
scorned them and brought along a generous store of raw steak and bacon
and potatoes. A picnic without a fire and roasting meat was too
namby-pamby for words; and though she would not now undertake to cook
the food herself, because of a certain eccentricity of the knee joints,
and since her daughter, despite her domestic science, declined to do so,
she had brought along Julia the cook. Nothing but the big limousine
would do for such an undertaking, and, as it was, Furbush had to nurse
the steak in his lap. Mrs. Norris would have reached the picnicking
ground in a procession of buggies, but at that Mary protested so
vigorously that she was forced to resign.
The picnic place was a pretty, slightly inaccessible rock overlooking a
creek. Though actually not far from Woodbridge, as the road was
overgrown and the turns sharp the motor had to proceed with a
deliberation which made the trip justifiably difficult. The rock itself
was about a hundred yards from the road; and since there was scarcely
any path through the woods to it, there were made possible the pretty
callings and hallooings, fallings-down and pickings-up, without which no
picnic is quite perfect. Mrs. Norris, as a matter of fact, did more than
her share of this. She had not gone more than thirty steps into the wood
before she was completely lost; and by the time she had been safely
brought to the rock her hat was well over on one side, her hair
streaming down, and the torn fringe of her petticoat dragging along
behind in the dirt. Julia and Horace, the chauffeur, however, had gone
directly to the rock without the preliminary vagaries vouchsafed to
their superiors, and by the time Mrs. Norris was finally captured they
had succeeded in getting the supper well under way.
Upon her arrival Mrs. Norris announced her intention of roasting a
potato.
"Gumgum, please sit down," begged her daughter. "You are only upsetting
everything," and she laid an unfilial hand upon her mother's arm.
"I am going to roast a potato," Mrs. Norris cried, shaking herself free
and seizing upon a pared potato. "Tommy, get me a stick."
"Isn't she awful," laughed Mary. "Don't you dare give her a stick, Tom."
But Tom did dare, and Mrs. Norris, with her smiling benignity, stood
waving the stick back and forth over the fire in time with the andante
movement of her favourite Brahms sonata.
"Well, we might as well get ready to eat that old stuff," said Nancy to
Furbush. "Don't you dread it?"
"I would not dread it, dear, so much, dreaded I not mother more," he
replied, to Mary's intense gratification. But Tom, who heard the
low-spoken words, thought them decidedly forced and disliked Furbush the
more for them.
Furbush's presence was undoubtedly a drawback to Tom's pleasure. How
could he be natural with a person whom he disliked as much as he did
Furbush and who he knew disliked him? Besides, he did not feel like
being sprightly and picnicky with Nancy beside him. Instead, he felt
homesick, or at least that is the way it seemed to him. Still, how could
it be genuine homesickness when the object of his yearning was beside
him? Nevertheless, there had been in his thoughts recently the picture
of a certain small colonial house in Tutors' Lane, a house now for rent
or for sale. Possibly, however, the contrast of such a life--the house
would be furnished with highboys and gate-leg tables and oval, woven
mats--with his present one at Mrs. Ruddel's furnished him with a genuine
case of homesickness, after all. How perfect would life be in such
surroundings! He liked to think of breakfast: He and Nancy, alone,
except, of course, for the pretty, efficient maid--at their mahogany
breakfast table. Nancy, busy with the coffee things at one end and he at
the other--no, at the side--tucking away his grapefruit and bacon and
hot buttered muffins and jam in the last few minutes before he dashed
off up the hill to his eight-thirty. Good heavens, what a life that
would be! He saw Nancy with the morning light on her hair and her
pleasant, lively face--the nose with only the faintest possible trace of
powder--bending over his cup; and then he realized that he was gazing at
her now in the same position, only with the sunset light in her hair,
and with a white porcelain cup receiving the coffee out of a thermos
bottle, instead of a china cup from a swelling-silver pot.
"Careful Tommy, you are dribbling it all over me."
"Oh, Nancy, I'm so sorry. I ask you, isn't that stupid. Please excuse
me."
"A little lemon or a hot iron or soap and water will fix it, probably,"
said Furbush.
Tom looked over at Furbush. He hated his liquid tones, like honey
dripping on a blue plush sofa. "How the hell do you get that way?" he
wanted to ask--then he rounded out the sentence with certain phrases
which had been current among our heroes along all war fronts from
Kamchatka to Trieste. Even a milder remark was happily averted, for at
this point the potato which Mrs. Norris had been steadily roasting,
burst into flame and had to be plunged into the fire; a grateful
accident, for now she was willing to sit down on the camp stool brought
for her and to confine herself to the slicing of the bread.
What passed until the meal was finished was of slight significance. It
was a decidedly detached party, the two couples being brought together
chiefly through Mrs. Norris; and when Nancy and Tom had finished a
banana which they had divided in the jolly picnic way, Tom stood up. "Do
you realize," he asked Nancy, "that this is a wishing carpet we've been
sitting on? Let's take it down by the creek and see where it will take
us."
"Oh, dear," said Mrs. Norris, not at all displeased. "And now where are
you and Mary going?"
"We're going to look for crocuses in the garden of the Queen of the
Fairies," replied Furbush. "They ought to be up now."
"Well, take along this flashlight: it's getting awfully bosky-wosky in
there." And then Mrs. Norris was left alone with Julia, whom she
entertained with an animated and brilliant account of Titania and
Oberon.
"Where shall we go?" asked Tom when they were seated on the magic motor
rug.
"Let's go to Libya!" said Nancy promptly.
"Libya! Well, I suppose we might as well go there as anywhere. You
realize, of course, that we won't go until I put my foot on the
carpet"--his left foot was straggling over the edge.
"Perhaps you'd better keep it there for a few minutes, then, until we
are sure that we really want to go. As a matter of fact, I think it is
rather nice right here in Woodbridge," and she smiled up at him.
Nancy had, of course, smiled upon a great many young men without
precipitating a proposal of marriage, but then, the young men had
probably not woven her image into their future hopes and fears as
thoroughly as he had. Also the hour and the place lent their potency to
her smile. The soft spring evening, happily extended by Daylight Saving,
the noisy little creek running by their feet, and the staunch ally of
all such projects, the great round moon, all combined to weave a spell,
just as Mrs. Norris planned that they should.
Tom had come to the picnic prepared to speak his mind, not doubting that
an opportunity would be given him. He had not memorized a speech, but
was ready to trust to the inspiration of the moment. His cause was an
honest one; he might expect the gift of tongues, but the starting gun
had now been fired, the race was on, and he was not granted the gift of
tongues. A little preparation might not have been amiss, after all.
"I agree with you about Woodbridge. In fact, I think had rather go on
living here than anywhere else in the world, provided one thing." He
had plunged in without the gift of tongues.
It was not so dark but that Tom could see the colour come into her face.
"Provided what, Tom?"
"Provided I can have you, Nancy. Provided you can love me as I love
you." He had come nearer her, and although he had brought both feet upon
the magic carpet, they remained stationary. "You mean more to me than
anything I have ever known. I used to wonder how I could ever think more
of anyone than I thought of Woodbridge and the Star and the different
boys in college, but that was nothing compared to this." Nancy was
tracing a series of geometrical patterns upon the magic carpet with a
bit of stick. "I wish I could do something to show you how much I care
now." Still Nancy said nothing. "And, oh, Nancy, what you could do for
me! With you to help me, I think I could do anything. But I know I need
you. Nancy, will you marry me?"
Nancy was hardly prepared for this. She had, since the social service
fiasco, acknowledged to herself that she had grown in that short space
very fond of Tom. She looked forward to seeing him, and when he was gone
she went over with pleasure what he had said and how he had looked. She
liked his drollery and his strength, she admired his poise and
self-reliance; and she had the greatest respect for his teaching
ability, of which she had received direct proof. Still, she was not at
all sure that she wished to marry him. After all, she had really known
him only something over a month, and it was not the Whitman way to hurry
into anything--least of all into matrimony.
"You mustn't ask me that, Tom."
"Why not, Nancy?"
"Because I cannot accept; not now."
"You mean that perhaps you can later? For of course I shall never grow
tired of asking you."
The moon had climbed a little and had turned a silvery yellow. It
flooded the rock and the people moving about on it, but Nancy and Tom
remained in shadow. "Tell me, Nancy," he said, leaning over and covering
with his own the hand upon which she was resting, "tell me that I may
ask you again, for, dear Nancy, I cannot lose you." She did not draw her
hand away immediately and when she did so she did it gently.
"You're awfully good, Tom," she said and Tom's heart swelled at the
softness of her tone. Then she climbed to her feet, and--Tom picking up
the magic carpet, which had become soaked through with the dampness of
the creek bank--they made their way back to the rock.
And so ended their first love scene. That Tom's behaviour will appear
tepid, in these vigorous days, is to be feared. His own contemporaries,
of both sexes, will almost certainly be the first to point out that had
they been in his place nothing would have kept them from proceeding from
the tame seizure of Nancy's hand to some bolder action. Tom, however,
helping Nancy along over the rocks and sticks was happily oblivious of
his unconventionality. The beauteous evening did, in very truth, seem
calm and free to him, though the party on the rock was making a little
too much noise to have the holy time quiet as a nun, breathless with
adoration. His mind turned to the scrap of Wordsworth he had lately
memorized, and though he was a trifle annoyed to find that he couldn't,
even now, perhaps when he most wanted it, remember all, the phrase
"comfort and command" stayed with him and did nicely for the whole.