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I
I did not doubt that my invitation to tea at the Misses Ingoldsby’s
was the direct outcome of Gertrude Cuyler’s dissatisfaction over the
abrupt termination of our chat. I knew her aunts but slightly. They
were middle-aged ladies of bridge-playing proclivities, and except for
the interpenetration of Eva Litchfield we should have continued upon a
basis of mutual indifferent kindliness.
I picked a careful way through the jungle of their useless possessions.
The apartment was cluttered with “things,” the heterogeneous collection
of the Victorian travelling female. They proved their culture by
visible evidence of the number of countries in which they had shopped,
and, the spoils requiring perches, there were too many cabinets against
the walls and too many tables crowding the floor. Everything was
handsome, and the effect was as a blow on the head. I accepted a cup
of tea, a beverage for which I harbour a vicious dislike, and found
that at once my mind was tinged with jaundiced opposition to whatever
they intended saying. That they had prepared a line of discussion I saw
plainly.
I was not to be left in doubt. The elder Miss Ingoldsby at once said:
“My dear Mrs. Avery, what do you think of Nicholas Van Suydam having
married Eva Litchfield? Do you believe that they have even a slim
chance at happiness?”
Between the Misses Ingoldsby lay a matter or five or six years of
added experience for Miss Augusta. As was only proper, therefore, Miss
Augusta had long ago assumed entire charge of Miss Lois’ mind and body.
The sisters were so unlike that their friends never ceased admiring
the further differentiation of them by the precisely right baptismal
names. Miss Augusta had a firm and upright character; suitably, her
figure was large and firmly handsome. Her splendidly preserved face
bore more than a trace of that coldly regular, pink-and-white beauty
brought into fashion by Lillian Russell. Her silver hair, of which she
retained an abundance, her good skin, her profile, her impressive voice
and the weight of her emphasis on her own remarks, served to make Miss
Augusta an asset at dinner-parties, although the truth was that she
could, and did, out-talk the hardiest. During the period of the early
Nineties, she had had a romance which had served to add to her stature
as a model woman: she had fallen in love with a married man, and had
then taken herself in hand. Her heart, however, proving the only thing
beyond her control and remaining true to this implanted image, her
abounding energy had had to seek an outlet which should not be disloyal
to the image. By way of securing this outlet, she developed into the
complete letter-writer of her generation; and this accomplishment, once
so obligatory with her class, had never been permitted to run to seed.
When the rush of the times had left her with no correspondents because
she wrote too often for modern persons to find the time to reply, she
took to writing, on world causes, to all individuals who had done
things either good or bad; the merit or discredit of their performances
made no difference, as in any case what she wanted was to air her own
views.
Miss Augusta was given to saying: “Sister Lois is so light-minded.” For
the younger Miss Ingoldsby was short and plump, dimpled and inclined
to laugh on any provocation. It was easy to see that Miss Augusta, as
usual, was right. Miss Lois was so far from serious that upon those
occasions when Miss Augusta reproved her for levity she took this as a
pretext for still more giggling. Miss Lois cared not at all for causes.
She cared not a snap of her fingers for anything which might force her
to be low in her mind, as she called an ascent into higher realms of
thought. Quite properly, Miss Augusta’s jutting chin put into disrepute
Miss Lois’ modest sliding contour.
“My dear Mrs. Avery,” advanced Miss Augusta after a pause during which
she marshalled her reasons for having brought about this conference,
“we felt that it might be advisable to discuss what can be done about
poor Nicholas and--poor--Eva. You young people are so apt to be
heedless until the mischief is wrought.”
I endeavoured not to grimace over the tea. It was sweetened, and made
more detestable by the addition of cream. “But surely you can’t be so
gracious as to call us ‘young people’?”
“Young to me,” said Miss Augusta airily. “Young to me.”
It was in this spirit of throwing a rosy and dissembling glow over
the gathering, I make no doubt, that she had invited the one man.
Mr. Tappan Tillinghast strolled in to give us the support and the
stabilizing weight of his presence. He was strikingly elegant, as
always, and, as always, he had in evidence his one defect, to which his
friends were accustomed but which instantly drew the eye of a stranger.
With all Mr. Tappan Tillinghast’s refined taste in dress, with all his
care of his person, his collars invariably appeared to be too large
for his neck. This was because one looked for a prominent Adam’s apple
and failed to find it. From Mr. Tappan Tillinghast’s head to his feet
there could be discovered no protuberance. His legs were long and
straight and thin, his waist, even at his age, was thin. He was the
envy of younger men because it gave him no trouble to remain without
curves. One might have fancied that he had at one time in his life been
subjected to a lengthy drying-out process in the tropics, although he
had never been known to venture into warm climates. Everything about
him was contradictory: he looked as if he had no blood in his veins,
and he had never been known to suffer from the cold; he spoke with the
chilliest of intonations, and inside he glowed with romance; he gave
the impression of having had his springs of being dammed at the source,
and for all of his conscious existence he had adored the elder Miss
Ingoldsby. One had to acknowledge that his pale blue eyes looked as
if they had been washed too often, but a quizzical expression lurked
behind their parchment lids. His grey hair was never rampant; one could
easily believe that it had grown from his infant head in the same
orderly arrangement of thin strands clinging decorously to his skull
that now so nicely topped his formally correct turn-out. His mouth,
exposed by a carefully trimmed moustache, was shown to be large though
thin-lipped; but this niggardly cut of his lips gave no indication
of a meanness of temperament but rather hinted at so profound an
understanding of himself that, for the sake of an inherited taste in
the affairs of life, Mr. Tillinghast had early set about getting the
better of errant fancies.
In his presence certain topics were avoided. No one asked for his
address. It took all of his scant means to keep himself going at the
Knickerbocker Club. It would never have occurred to him to give up
a club that he might be said to have inherited in order to be more
comfortable in the small matter of where to live. None knew how, and
few knew where, he lived. Actually, as I had discovered by accident,
he resided in the East Thirties, in one of the flats evolved from the
shell of his forefathers’ fine old house.
Bending at his admirable waist, he imprinted a kiss on my hand; and
this kiss was sadly pleasant in its aroma of a bygone day.
Miss Augusta’s voice rolled over us, massing us into an audience;
Miss Lois spattered a gaiety that was powerless to stem the flow of
such inevitability as that of her sister’s militant uplift; Mr.
Tillinghast maintained his seat, however precariously, in the saddle
of his balanced friendship. Between tea drinking and the anesthesia of
Miss Augusta’s phrases I felt myself to be neatly suspended. “Brains
directed to a worthy end--personalities turned into the service of our
country----” Miss Augusta’s gobblets of profundity was lavished on us.
“Do you realize that in every case of a President of the United States
being assassinated, it was inspired by the Pope?”
Miss Lois giggled. “My goodness, Gussie, are you going to tack that on
to the poor old gentleman?”
“I refer,” said Miss Augusta, “to the Pope at Rome.”
“I didn’t know there was another one,” gurgled Miss Lois with great
enjoyment.
“Ho! Ho!” came suddenly from Mr. Tillinghast, who then looked ashamed
of himself.
Miss Augusta could not be said to recover herself, for she had not for
a moment lost herself. “Shall we get down to the business that brought
us together today?” she enquired.
Surreptitiously wiping his eyes, Mr. Tillinghast smiled attenuatedly:
one would have thought that never had he laughed aloud, because never
had anything amused him. “Business? With three fair ladies?”