It used to be a source of great anxiety to Father that none of his
children was married. He had a notion that the only way to make a
family name a strong one was by increase. When Tom and Alec were
scarcely out of college and the twins were still in short trousers,
Father announced that he was going to present to the first grandson
bearing the name of Vars, a check for three thousand dollars. We
treated it a good deal as a joke then and used to poke a lot of fun at
the boys about it. That was a long time ago--before Father died--and
when we found the same offer written out in plain black and white in
Father's will we were a little surprised and a little touched too,
realising how dreadfully in earnest the poor dear man must have been
about it, and how disappointed. According to his instructions, however,
the three thousand dollars was put away at interest to await the coming
of the first Vars heir.
At the beginning of this chapter three of us were married--though of
course I didn't count, being a girl--and still the three thousand
dollars remained unclaimed. Poor unlucky Elise had had four girls,
and Edith hadn't had a baby of any kind. However, we all knew if ever
such an event should take place in Edith's career it would be the most
important occasion in the entire annals of the family. And we weren't
mistaken. Edith had been married several years when the wonderful
preparations were begun. One would have thought she was the Queen
of Holland. Everybody in Hilton seemed to vie one with another in
embroidering tiny martingales, knitting worsted blankets, or scalloping
flannel shawls for Edith Vars' baby. The nursery that she had had built
on the sunny side of Father's house four years before fairly bloomed
into pink and white equipment. You had only to spend a half-hour there
to discover what a popular person Edith was and what a select place
in society she had at last attained. She was more than accommodating
about telling from whom each little gift had come. For instance the
superb baby-dress with Irish insertion Mrs. Alfred Sturtevant brought
over herself yesterday; the elaborate hand-embroidered bassinette
sheets were from Mrs. Barlow--_the_ Mrs. Barlow, you understand; the
silk puffs, silk socks, silk caps from Beatrice, Phyllis and Bernice.
A hand-made, finely-worked Christening dress of Alec's, proving the
family's prosperity thirty-five years ago (Edith herself had risen from
the sod, you know; you may be sure _her_ Christening dress wasn't on
exhibition) had been rooted out of an old trunk in the storeroom. The
most expensive "Specialist" within reach had been engaged, and a nurse
from Boston was to remain for four months at the rate of twenty-five a
week. You could trust Edith to do the thing up in the proper style; you
could trust her also to carry away that three thousand dollars premium
in Father's will. She felt cock-sure of it herself. Things had always
come her way, hadn't they? _She_ never did the ignominious thing, did
she? Poor Elise and her four little girls she had always held in the
lowest esteem. Fate simply wouldn't allow Edith Vars' baby to be a
girl. Every one said so. Even I was convinced.
Alec treated Edith as if she were the centre of the universe. When
the shocking news about Oliver reached us, Alec's chief concern was
in regard to the effect of the news upon poor Edith. It was two years
after that first dinner of ours at Dr. Graham's that the knowledge of
my brother Oliver's latest escapade reached me one morning in early
April.
I was diligently dusting the black walnut bookcases in our sunny
living-room. I sat down in the nearest chair at hand, perfectly stunned
for a moment, my jaw hanging open, no doubt, and read through the
letter containing the fatal news at least three times before I had the
strength to get up. The first thing I did was to hang up the square
piece of hem-stitched cheese-cloth at the head of the cellar stairs;
then I went and hunted up a time-table. There was a train due to leave
for Hilton at eleven-ten. Will had left early that morning, for he had
a nine o'clock recitation, so he wasn't at home when Alec's letter
came. But I knew that nothing less than a death in the family could
drag him away from his precious clinic the next day, so I hurried off
for the train alone. I stuck a note of explanation into the dish of
ferns on the middle of the dining-room table:
"_Dear Will_,
"I've had a letter from Alec. Oliver was married to a Madge Tompkins
in February! He's bringing her to Hilton to-night. This is all I know
about it. Will try to be back before Sunday.
"BOBBIE."
During the last half-year Oliver had been superintending a gang of
granite workers in a little town in Vermont. City life hadn't seemed
to agree with Oliver's purse very well, and the diversions of the
several middle-western cities, in each of which Oliver had made a great
hit with all the nicest girls and their mothers, had interfered with
his business hours. It was after he had tried six or seven positions,
starting with banking in Pittsburg, and ending up with shipping
automobile tires in Akron, Ohio, that Tom and Alec deposited Oliver,
with scarcely a cent to his name, in Glennings Falls, Vermont, where
the possibilities for spending money were rather limited.
Poor Oliver! I felt awfully sorry for him. He's such a
brilliant-appearing fellow! It seemed to me as if he had struck an
awfully hard run of luck since he graduated from college. He really
is a civil engineer, but fate has swerved him into other lines, which
I think is the cause of his checkered career. He always loved to
build bridges and dams and toy railroads even as a small boy. After
he finally succeeded in squeezing through college he conceived a
foolish notion--foolish according to Tom--to take a course in Civil
Engineering at Cornell. Of course he didn't have anything else to
study--no bugbears like English Composition, Latin or Greek, so perhaps
that is why he did so well in the Engineering. Anyhow he passed the
examinations with some kind of an honour--the only one, poor boy, that
he had ever been able to boast of in his life. Tom, who had pooh-poohed
the idea of Oliver's wasting a year at Cornell, finally gave up his
plan of putting the boy to work in his lumber camps, and Oliver started
forth, hopes high and spirits aglow, to accept an engineering job
in Arizona. On the way out, at Pittsburg, he stopped off to visit an
old college friend for a fortnight, and at the end of the first week
he wrote that he had struck a "gold mine." His friend's father was
prominently connected with half a dozen banks in Pittsburg and had
offered him a position. I could have told the friend's father that
Oliver would never make a banker, but he found it out himself in a
little while.
After Oliver left Pittsburg everything went wrong with him. No civil
engineering jobs presented themselves, no more friends' fathers, no
more "gold mines" seemed to be available. After that Oliver became a
regular rolling-stone. He couldn't seem to keep any of his positions,
or he wouldn't, I don't know which. He tried everything. It was
manufacturing automobile parts in Toledo; selling motorcycles in
Buffalo; making out orders for plumbers' supplies in Cleveland. He
fizzled miserably each time. He never had any money. He was forever
sending to Tom or Alec for a check for fifty until his salary was due.
He was forever running down to New York or over to Chicago for a class
reunion or a dance. He was forever writing to me vivid descriptions of
new "queens" he had met.
It was when Tom and Alec had to pay fourteen hundred and fifty dollars
for a "swell" little last season's roadster that Oliver had secured at
a wonderful bargain from a friend of his in Akron (this was when he was
a shipping clerk in a tire factory) and in which he had been sporting
about through the streets of the place at a speed of thirty an hour,
that he was summoned to the court of his older brothers, and after due
consultation was sent up to Glennings Falls, like a convict, to work in
the mines. His roadster was sold at a terrible sacrifice, he said, and
that fact seemed at the time to be his greatest regret.
I could have cried for Oliver. There would be no "queens" in Glennings
Falls; there would be no Sunday-night Lobster-Newbergs over a
chafing-dish; there would be no stunning "visiting girls" whom he met
at Class-Day or in Pittsburg when he was there, or in Toledo, Cleveland
or Buffalo, for him to call on until eleven P.M.
When I arrived in Hilton, Alec was at the station in the automobile
to meet me (I had had just time to 'phone him that I was coming) and
Tom who had come flying on from the West the minute Alec's shocking
telegram had reached him was there too. Malcolm had caught the midnight
from New York and was waiting on the veranda when we ran up under the
porte-cochère. It was really a family reunion, but all the joy of
seeing each other again was buried beneath the horror and consternation
in our hearts. Oliver's act was astounding. We're not an erratic
family. We never figure in accidents or tragedies of any kind. We hate
notoriety.
"And besides all the horrid publicity of a secret marriage," said Ruth,
"Edith says the creature is too _common_ for anything." Ruth dangled
a dainty velvet pump on the tip of her toe as she made this remark.
We were gathered in the room that used to be the sitting-room, all of
us--Tom, Malcolm, Edith, Alec, Ruth and I. We had been talking for an
hour.
"Common!" took up Edith. "She's absolutely impossible, I tell you!
We stopped off to see Oliver for an hour on our way to the Green
Mountains," she explained to me, "last fall, in the automobile. He
didn't know we were coming. It was Sunday and he had some dreadful
little frowzy-headed creature in tow, I'm sure her name was
Tompkins--silly, simpering little thing--perfectly enormous pompadour
and a cheap Hamburg open-work lingerie waist, over bright pink--oh,
horribly cheap! I can't begin to tell you!"
"Well--well--we must try to make the best of it," said Tom lightly.
"Best of it!" scoffed Edith. "Well, if Oliver thinks for one minute
that I am going to throw open my house to his precious Madge
Tompkins he's greatly mistaken. Ruth is having a large bridge party
Thursday--ten tables. This affair has simply got to be kept quiet
until after that. Breck Sewall is coming up from New York to spend
Sunday. You all know he's paying marked attention to Ruth, and the
Sewalls--Heavens!--they're particular to a degree! Oh, we mustn't let a
single word of this miserable affair leak out--not a single word! Oh,
when I think of it, I just want--"
"Come, come, Edith," interrupted Alec. "Gently, dear. Gently, you know."
"Well, if any of you expect _me_," Edith went on, "to have that common
person here, I must tell you that I can't--I simply can't! I'm not in a
condition to endure it. I--"
"Now look here, dear," Alec said soothingly, "no one expects you to.
Everything will be exactly as you wish."
Oh, he would have stopped the sun from rising if Edith had requested
it. I've never witnessed such dog-devotion as Alec shows to Edith.
He can't be five minutes late to an appointment with her, without
telephoning a plausible excuse, or sending a special messenger. She has
him wonderfully trained. You ought to see him run around and put down
windows, raise shades, carry chairs or rush upstairs for her work-bag
which she forgot and left on her bureau just before dinner.
At about five o'clock that afternoon Malcolm, who had been haunting the
station all day in the hope of meeting Oliver and his companion, and
hurrying them quietly into a closed carriage as soon as possible, burst
in upon us, all excitement.
"What in the world is the matter now?" exclaimed Ruth.
"Have they come?" asked Alec.
"Has any one heard of it?" gasped Edith.
"Heard of it! It's gotten into the papers!" Malcolm announced.
Tom and Alec both got up.
"Very bad?" asked one of them, and Edith sprang forward like a cat and
snatched the paper out of Malcolm's hand.
"On the front page," said Malcolm. "Here! There it is. Oh, no one can
miss it."
"Heavens!" Edith ejaculated as her eyes fell upon the headlines.
"Read it," commanded Tom.
"Romantic Love Affair of Oliver Chenery Vars ends in an Elopement. Son
of William T. Vars, former President of the Vars & Co. Woollen mills
of this City Marries his Landlady's Daughter."
She stopped short.
"Go on," said Tom in a low voice.
"Hadn't _I_ better?" suggested Alec.
But Edith continued:
"The friends of Oliver Chenery Vars will be surprised to learn of
his marriage to Miss Madge Tompkins of Glennings Falls, Vermont. For
the past year young Vars has been connected with the Glennings Falls
Granite Works, and the attachment between himself and Miss Tompkins,
daughter of Mrs. Ebenezer Tompkins, a widow with whom he boarded, has
been a matter of some concern to the Vars family. The news of his
marriage, which is said to have taken place last February, comes as
a total surprise and few particulars are known. However, it has been
ascertained that the young lovers have been forgiven and that they
will be the guests of the Alexander Vars at The Homestead for the
remainder of the week. The new Mrs. Vars is but eighteen and carried
off the blue ribbon in the Pretty Girl contest at the Glennings Falls
Agricultural Fair last September."
"How perfectly disgusting!" broke in Ruth.
"Rotten!" muttered Malcolm.
Edith couldn't speak. The paper fluttered to the floor and Alec went
over and put her gently in a chair. Tom scowled and looked hard out of
the window. We sat in silence for a full half-minute, then Tom turned
suddenly.
"Look here," he said, "here he comes! Here Oliver comes!"
I leaned forward quickly, picked up the discarded paper and thrust it
under my elbow on the table.
Oliver was alone. I shall always remember how he looked on that spring
evening as he swung along, overcoat open and flapping in the wind,
head held high and brow smooth and cloudless. His step was as sure and
firm as when he joined us all after he had received his diploma on his
graduation day at college. My heart went out to him--poor Oliver always
getting into trouble, gifted and talented in a way (he can sing like an
angel) awfully good-looking and lovable (he has friends everywhere),
poor Oliver--what would become of him? I heard his step on the veranda,
and a minute later he was standing, six feet high, smiling and
confident in the door of the library. There is something irresistible
about Oliver's smile. If he had only looked at me I should have smiled
back, but his eyes rested on Tom.
"Hello, everybody!" he said. "Hello, Tom! Mighty good of _you_ to come
way on East. Well, well," he glanced swiftly around the room, "all
here, aren't you?" Then he added, "Well, what do you think?"
"Seen the paper?" inquired Tom.
"Is it in the paper?" asked Oliver, and Malcolm pulled the horrible
thing from beneath my elbow and thrust it into Oliver's hands. I
watched Oliver closely. I saw the slow, dark colour spread over his
face and across that cloudless brow of his. I saw his eyes travel once
through the article and then go back and retrace each painful word of
it again. When he had satisfied himself he laid the paper down and
looked up.
"Well, it's true," he said, and six pairs of eyes glowered upon him.
"What explanation have you for this--step of yours?" asked Tom.
Oliver's confidence fell away a little. He picked off a bit of lint
from the sleeve of his coat.
"Oh, why hash the whole thing over?" he said. "I'm married all right.
What's the use--of course I'm sorry it is in the paper."
"Sorry!" sniffed Ruth.
"But _I_ didn't let it out. Hang it all," he broke off, "you bury me in
a hole like that--she was the only girl worth looking at. _I_ didn't
want to go to Glennings Falls. It was _your_ plan."
"You had had six other positions before we resorted to Glennings
Falls," fired Alec.
Oliver flushed.
"Oh, well--if you've all made up your minds to be disagreeable! I left
Madge at the station to come up in a carriage," he explained. "She'll
be here in five minutes. I hope at least you'll be decent to _her_."
"Decent to _her_, Oliver Vars!" Edith had found her voice, "I guess you
better begin and think how _you_ can be decent to _us_. Do you know
what you've done? You've simply ruined our reputations and just when
Breck Sewall--oh, you've disgraced us all! I shall never want to hold
up my head again, and Ruth has invitations out for a big bridge. Madge
Tompkins! Don't ask _me_ to be decent to _her_. She'll never spend a
night under _this_ roof as long as _I_ live. Oh, I've seen her--common
little--"
"Be careful," shot back Oliver, flushed and angry now. "Madge's father
was a minister, an educated gentleman, when yours at that period of his
career was collecting scrap iron and junk from people's back yards!"
Edith grew red. The early life of her iron-king father had always been
a sore point with her. I don't know what she would have done; perhaps
literally have scratched Oliver's eyes out, if Tom hadn't interrupted.
"Oh, come. None of this," he said. "Oliver, you were hasty in what you
said; and, Edith, let us see the young lady before we pass judgment on
her. I think she's coming. At least here is a carriage."
It was very touching to me when Oliver went down to the carriage at
the curbing and helped out the girl whom of all the hundreds (for
Oliver could have had almost any one: Women adored him) he had chosen
to honour the most highly. She was short and a little shabby with a
sort of cheap flashiness that you could see a hundred yards away. I
knew particular, fastidious Oliver must feel a little ashamed of the
wrinkled checked suit she wore, the big-figured gaudy lace veil over
her hat, the dingy white ostrich plumes. I felt very sorry for Oliver
when at the library door she stepped back to let him enter, and he said
gently, "_You_ first, Madge." She stumbled in smiling and confused.
She really was rather impossible: pretty in a way, but oh, miles and
miles away from everything that is essential to a good taste and good
manners. She wore white kid gloves and patent-leather slippers that
pinched her feet. There was a celluloid comb in the back of her hair
with rhinestones in it.
"Well, here they are, Madge!" said Oliver heartily.
Her first words jarred us.
"I guess we surprised you some," she laughed.
"Well--it was unexpected," said Tom finally.
She giggled at that; then she asked, trying to appear at ease, "Well,
aren't you going to introduce me around, Oliver?"
It was very painful. She gave her fingers to us in a ridiculous
fashion. "Pleased to meet you!" she said like a machine after each
name, and then after I, the last one, had dropped her hand, in a moment
of deep confusion she remarked, glancing around the room, "Oh, my, I
think your house is just grand!"
Malcolm coughed; Oliver flushed.
"Did you have a long trip?" I asked.
"Just dreadful," she replied eagerly. "The dirt was something awful. We
came up in a parlour-car. I just love parlour-cars! We've been staying
at an elegant hotel in New York."
"Sit down, won't you?" said Malcolm kindly. He pushed up a chair and
she glanced at him archly.
"Thank you ever so much!" Then she added coyly, and my heart bled
for her poor pitiful attempt, "I know _you_. _You're_ Malcolm. I was
awfully gone on your photo once." She giggled again. Alec took out a
large white handkerchief and wiped his brow. Malcolm shifted uneasily
to his other foot, and she added confidentially, "It was something
awful the way it used to make Oliver jealous."
At that moment Edith swept up before her. "I think I met you once," she
began loftily.
"I remember," said Madge. "You came through in a big auto. My, but I
thought Oliver had some stylish folks!"
"I'm extremely sorry that our rooms are all filled to-night," went on
Edith grandly, "and that it will be impossible for me to ask you to
remain."
Madge reddened. "I wouldn't trouble you for anything," she apologised.
"No," said Oliver and his voice shook with scorn, "we wouldn't trouble
you. Madge, please wait for me a moment on the veranda." She looked
up frightened. "Yes," he said, and she rose and without a word walked
out of the room. Oliver closed the door. He was red in the face with
indignation.
"Thank you all for your kindness," he said very scathingly; "I'm sure
I'm very grateful. If this is what it means to be a member of a family,
let me be free of it."
Tom got up. "Well--" he drawled, "if you can get along without us, why
we--"
"Very well," retorted Oliver. "Very well, if that's your answer. I've
thrown up the charming job at Glennings Falls anyway. I'm not so
everlasting dependent as you have an idea. I'm off, and thank heaven!
It's too bad if I've interrupted Ruth's bridge party. It's really too
bad. I'm through with the whole lot of you. I'm through!" He turned.
The door slammed. The room trembled to the very ceiling and a gust of
wind snatched a pile of loose papers on the table and whirled them on
to the floor. We heard the angry bang of the outer door and Oliver had
gone.
That evening I wired to Will: "_Three of us will arrive to-night.
Bobbie._"