“Quite right,” approved Miss Augusta, waving her handsome white hand.
“We will now come to the point.”
Miss Lois said surprisingly: “Gussie, you always do talk too much.”
Accentuating her parliamentary pose, Miss Augusta endeavoured to
stare down her younger sister. “I should think, Sister Lois, that what
concerns so intimate a friend as Lavinia Van Suydam concerns us in only
a slightly less degree.”
“I can’t forget,” continued Miss Lois, “having heard Eva say to
Nicholas that she needed to feel at home. She sounded forlorn: so
there! And I don’t yet see, Mrs. Avery, why Eva shouldn’t feel at home
with her husband’s family and their friends.” She wound up with her
giggle, which I began to suspect of ramifications.
Miss Augusta emitted what in anyone else would have been called a true
snort. “She followed that up, if I remember rightly, by saying that she
wanted no more condescension. Such ingratitude! After all that Lavinia,
and Lavinia’s friends, have tried to do for her!” But I thought that
she looked really hurt.
The younger Miss Ingoldsby went along her own pleasantly winding way.
“Nicholas has learned to curse!” She defied her sister’s outraged
parliamentary hand. “Oh, yes, he has, Gussie! The time we ran across
them at the speakeasy Tilly took us to----”
“Ahem!” hastily interposed Mr. Tillinghast. “I do really suspect that
all along Nicholas knew how to curse.” But his eye, taking a furtive
survey of the ground with Miss Augusta, showed me that the institution
of the speakeasy was one of the lady’s inspirations for battle.
“Well, anyway,” continued Miss Lois, “Eva sailed in like a bird. She
has a pretty chin; it’s always so high in air. Nicholas was too upset
to notice that they were passing our table. And----”
Miss Augusta’s frigidity was directed at Mr. Tillinghast who had
escorted her to unsuitability. “He didn’t expect to see us in such a
place. I refer to what is called a speakeasy.”
“He was growling in his throat,” joyfully continued Miss Lois. “And
Eva’s skirt went rather billowing down the room. Oh, dear! I’d so like
to be young and slim and have my skirts billow! People just have to
look at Eva.”
“Outside of her appearance, people would stare at Eva,” I said mildly.
“Do please remember that she’s tremendously well known. Her name is
known, but also her face.”
“Oh, of course!” screamed Miss Lois. “That’s what Nicholas didn’t like.
I heard him distinctly, roaring--although it was under his breath, it
sounded for all the world like a roar--‘Damn her public!’”
“Sister Lois!” interrupted Miss Augusta. “Enough! I will not permit
such language.”
“He was roaring to his own public, which is his intelligence, I
daresay,” I suggested amiably.
They looked enquiringly at me. “What?” they said.
In a nearby apartment someone played badly on the piano. The notes
fell indifferently, like drops of water. Life seemed a merry-go-round,
getting us nowhere. I sipped tea and looked them over with cool
appraisal. I decided that it was a case of dog eat dog: they would eat
Eva, if Eva did not eat them first. The game is the same; people may
be different, in different cases, but the game remains the same. And
the old saws are long-lived because they are true. The piano tinkled,
tinkled, tinkled. The tea was awful. I wondered if in decency I could
leave and so stop off their discussion.
Spencer Mapes must perch like a raven on Nicholas Van Suydam’s
shoulder--always on hand at the wrong time--making a peck at his
thoughts and hitting the mark; for Miss Lois went on: “That Mr.
Mapes--such a friend of Eva’s, isn’t he, Mrs. Avery?--tried to smooth
Nicholas down. I heard him say ‘You’re so lucky that you don’t have to
advertise your work; aren’t you? You find it difficult to see why we
pander to the buyers of our goods?’ So tactful of him, to try to smooth
dear Nicholas down. Nicholas has his father’s fiery temper.”
Miss Augusta put her teacup down with a clatter. “Sister Lois, if you
would make an effort to be less frivolous we might get at what I wished
to see Mrs. Avery about.”
For a minute, Miss Lois was silent. But Miss Augusta took too long to
set the stage, and she started in again. “Do you know, Tilly, I do
feel that all the friction started at Lavinia’s dinner? I know that’s
what Gussie is getting ready to talk about. But Gussie won’t believe
that----”
“And how, pray,” begged Miss Augusta as if any answer would be
incorrect, “did we hurt her feelings? I hold that she displayed a
lamentable lack of the proper feeling. You ask what happened, Mrs.
Avery? I’ll tell you. I aroused fury on her part by asking her to
recite some of her work.”
The younger Miss Ingoldsby repeated her idea.
The elder Miss Ingoldsby dismissed the objection with a wave of her
hand. “She was merely awaiting an excuse to drag Nicholas out of the
home of his ancestors.”
“If you had asked her in another way?” ventured Mr. Tillinghast. His
long loyalty did not fail Miss Augusta. Once upon a time, she might
have loved a married man, but he had every confidence in her. His
suggestion was without the strength of conviction.
Miss Augusta appealed to me in a deadly calm. “Mrs. Avery, do you see
why Eva should have been affronted? I’ve always understood that authors
like nothing better than to read their writings to their friends.”
I was immediately under the necessity of saying with emphasis: “To
their friends, yes. Mightn’t it have been that Eva felt you weren’t
friends?”
This released all forces hitherto pent in convention. “I must tell you,
Mrs. Avery,” said Miss Augusta with spirit, “that Nicholas’ wife will
bring his mother’s grey hair in sorrow to the grave.” I luxuriated in
this hackneyed condemnation. She looked sharply at me. “That amuses
you? But tell me this: could you yourself live amicably in the house
with Eva Van Suydam?”
It was not compulsory to tell her the truth, that none of us could live
together. Quiet at home was necessary; and with more than one seeking
quiet, noise, strangely enough, reigned.
“When she left Lavinia’s dinner-party,” resumed Miss Augusta, “she was
in a tantrum. She said ‘I’m a working woman, and must get home to my
labours’. Poor Nicholas! His face was a study.”
I helped myself to another buttered muffin. The Misses Ingoldsby were
heavy providers.
“She was so artificial about it. Poor Nicholas said--trying to put a
good face on it--that the making of books was a sealed book to him; and
she was kittenish and shook her finger at him. ‘A pun! For shame!’ It
sounded most silly.”
“You got yourself in trouble,” interrupted Miss Lois with a rare
censoriousness, “by trying to manage things. You always try to manage
people, and they don’t like it. You started in directly we had left
the table, and drew up chairs and told Eva to stand on a certain spot;
it was exactly as if she had been hired to amuse the guests. I’ve been
sure, ever since, that it made trouble.”
Miss Augusta reared back in her straight chair and looked at her
younger sister. In her silent look there was more power than in her
spoken word. The air became impregnated with her conviction that Eva
had shown base ingratitude. When finally she spoke it was to remark
that there were many who were grateful for what she had done for them.
Thinking of how, since my return, I had been kept to the question of
Eva’s marriage, my own remarks became tinged with acrimony. She almost
hastened with her reply. “My dear Mrs. Avery, you don’t think that I
should take up your time--not to mention my own, which I assure you
is filled with useful tasks--with this trivial scene at Lavinia Van
Suydam’s? No, indeed! I really planned to request you to use your
influence about the apportioning of the rooms in Nicholas’ house.” I
must have stared with, almost, my mouth open. But her eyes were beaming
with the best intentions.
I made the reasonable request to know what she could possibly mean. She
explained that she was afraid Nicholas would come to his death by the
present distribution of sunlight in his home. “It was done by Eva,” she
told me significantly. Another woman would have been disconcerted by my
amused bewilderment; but the elder Miss Ingoldsby took it as a tribute
to her ability as a public speaker. She sat waiting for me to heckle
her. She knew how to wait for what she desired: it was I, and not she,
who broke down. I said that I was sorry I did not understand.
“Of course you remember how the small houses on the side streets are
arranged?” she began her exposition of Eva’s iniquity. “On each floor
there is one sunny room and one in which the sun never shines. It is
unhealthy to get no sunshine,” she said through tightly pressed lips.
She made me know that never willingly would she condemn.
“And Eva has the sunny rooms?” I knew that she must: she loved the sun.
“She has, Mrs. Avery.”
I laughed, seeing Eva at her writing-table in transparent shafts of
golden sunshine. I knew how she arranged her background; always, her
study was the same. A glow of copper--the light streaming through
chintz figured with bright birds and roses which were rust-coloured and
big as cabbages, and falling on bowls of overblown tea roses revealing
their copper hearts. Against the roses with their deep hearts and their
imminent surcease, Eva’s head was that of a painted saint wearing a
halo of beaten gold leaf. I said in her defense: “She hadn’t time to
stop and think what was good for him.” But disapproval so permeated the
drawing-room that I hastened to add a lame second thought: “Eva is a
very hard worker, and sometimes she seems much more heedless than in
her heart she is.”
I was not sure whether Miss Augusta’s resultant sniff was one of
approval of my defense of my friend or disapproval of my evident
inability to see her grounds for a virtuous indignation. She said
shortly: “Poor Nicholas will shoot up weedy and pale like a potato
sprouting in a cellar.”
Miss Lois’ giggle relieved a suspense that I felt to be fairly exuding
from Mr. Tappan Tillinghast. “I don’t think he would like to be called
a potato in a cellar, Gussie; he’s such a good looking man. Besides,
when they were showing us the house he really did impress me as being
awfully proud of it. And I did hear her say to you that it was lucky
that when she wrote she wanted sunshine, and when he worked at home he
needed a north light for his drawing-table.”
“She didn’t explain a like apportioning of the bedrooms,” brooded Miss
Augusta.
Mr. Tillinghast ventured that he fancied Nicholas admired his wife so
much that he was contented. “Remember when he said ‘Suppose we go back
to Eva’s study? She looks so sweet at her writing-table--like a little
girl playing’?”
Miss Lois gurgled: “Eva does know how to manage men! And I do
think----” Her pause was caused by her stifling giggle.
“Well?” demanded Miss Augusta. “What were you going to say, Sister
Lois?”
Miss Lois almost swooned, so spasmodic was her giggling fit. “I meant,
Eva does know how to pull the wool over gentlemen’s eyes!”
Properly, Miss Augusta passed this over in silence. When she inflated
her lungs it was for a further exposition of her own argument. “She
leaves Nicholas in those dreadful northern rooms during the warm
weather when the only breath of air comes through the southern windows.
It’s useless for him to assert--he is so chivalrous, being Lavinia’s
son--that he prefers the north light for his work. He works at his
office. And if the house is so good to work in, why--will you tell
me--does she take herself off to some cool spot every summer?”
I refused to commit myself beyond the remark that I saw nothing I could
do about it. This brought from Miss Augusta the innuendo that I did
not yet know the half of it. There were, for instance, unnecessary and
solitary trips to Europe----