“More beans, Oliver,” says Mrs. Ellicott in a voice like thin syrup,
her “generous” voice. The generous voice is used whenever Mrs. Ellicott
wants to show herself a person of incredibly scrupulous fairness before
that bodiless assemblage of old women in black that constitute the They
who Say--and so it is used to Oliver nearly all the time.
“No thank you, Mrs. Ellicott.” Oliver manages to look at her politely
enough as he speaks but then his eyes go straight back to Nancy and
stay there as if they wished to be considered permanent attachments.
All Oliver has been able to realize for the last two hours is the mere
declarative fact that she is _there_.
“Nancy!”
“No, thanks, mother.”
And Nancy in her turn looks once swiftly at her mother, sitting there
at the end of the table like a faded grey sparrow whose feathers make it
uncomfortable. It isn't feathers, though, really--its only Oliver.
Why can't mother get reconciled to Oliver--why _can't_ she--and if
she can't, why doesn't she come out and say so instead of trying to be
generous to Oliver when she doesn't want to while he's there and then
saying mean things when he's away because she can't help it?
“Stanley?”
“Why, no, my dear--no--yes, a few, perhaps--I might reconsider--only a
few, my dear,”--his voice does not do anything as definite as cease--it
merely becomes ineffectual as Mrs. Ellicott heaps his plate. He then
looks at the beans as if he hadn't the slightest idea where they came
from but supposes as long as they are there they must be got away with
somehow, and starts putting them into his mouth as mechanically as if
they were pennies and he a slot-machine.
It is hot in the Ellicotts' dining-room--the butter was only brought
in a little while ago, but already it is yellow mush. There are little
drops on the backs of Mr. Ellicott's hands. Oliver wants to help Nancy
take away the dishes and bring in the fruit--they have started to make a
game out of it already when Mrs. Ellicott's voice enforces order.
“No, Oliver. No, please. Please sit still. It is so seldom we have a
_guest_ that Nancy and I are apt to forget our _manners_--”
Oliver looks to Nancy for guidance, receives it and subsides into his
chair. That's just the trouble, he thinks rather peevishly--if only
Mrs. Ellicott would stop acting as if he were a guest--and not exactly
a guest by choice at that but one who must be the more scrupulously
entertained in public, the less he is liked in private.
The fruit. Mrs. Ellicott apologizing for it--her voice implies that she
is quite sure Oliver doesn't think it good enough for him but that
he ought to feel himself very lucky indeed that it isn't his deserts
instead. Mr. Ellicott absent-mindedly squirting orange juice up his
sleeve. Oliver and Nancy looking at each other.
“Are you the same?” say both kinds of eyes, intent, absorbed with the
wish that has been starved small through the last three months, but now
grows again like a smoke-tree out of a magicked jar, “Really the same
and really loving me and really glad to be here?” But they can get no
proper sort of answer now--there are too many other Ellicotts around,
especially Mrs. Ellicott.
Dinner is over with coffee and cigarettes that Mrs. Ellicott has bought
for Oliver because no one shall ever say she failed in the smallest
punctilio of hospitality, though she offers them to him with a gesture
like that of a missionary returning his baked-mud idol to a Bushman too
far gone in sin to reclaim. Mr. Ellicott smoked cigarettes before his
marriage. For twenty years now he has been a contributing member of the
Anti-Tobacco League.
And now all that Oliver knows is that unless he can talk to Nancy soon
and alone, he will start being very rude. It is not that he wants to be
rude--especially to Nancy's family--but the impulse to get everyone but
Nancy away by any means from sarcasm to homicidal mania is as reasonless
and strong as the wish to be born. After all he and Nancy have not seen
each other wakingly for three months--and there is still her “grand
news” to tell, the grandness of which has seemed to grow more and more
dubious the longer she looked at Oliver. Now is the time for Mr. and
Mrs. Ellicott to disappear as casually and completely as clouds over the
edge of the sky and first of all, not to mention the fact that they are
going. But Mrs. Ellicott has far too much tact ever to be understanding.
She puts Mr. Ellicott's hat on for him and takes his arm as firmly as
if she were police, and he accepts the grasp with the meekness of an
old offender who is not quite sure what particular crime he is being
arrested for this time but has an uncomfortable knowledge that it may be
any one of a dozen.
“Now we old people are going to leave you, children alone for a little
while” she announces, fair to the last, her voice sweeter than ever.
“We know you have such a great many important _affairs_ to talk
over--particularly the _splendid_ offer that has just come to Nancy--my
little girl hasn't told you about it yet, has she, Oliver?'
“No, Mrs. Ellicott.”
“Well, her father and myself consider it quite _remarkable_ and we have
been _urging_--very _strongly_--her acceptance, though of course” this
with a glacé smile, “we realize that we are only her _parents_. And,
as Nancy knows, it has always been our dearest wish to have her decide
matters affecting her happiness entirely _herself_. But I feel sure that
when both of you have talked it _well_ over, we can trust you both to
come to a most _reasonable_ decision.” She breathes heavily and moves
with her appurtenance to the door, secure as an ostrich in the
belief that Oliver thinks her impartial, even affectionate. Her
conscientiousness gives her a good deal of applause for leaving the two
young people so soon when they have all one evening and another morning
to be together--but subconsciously she knows that she has done her best
by her recent little speech to make this talking-it-over a walk through
a field full of small pestilent burrs, for both Oliver and Nancy.
They say _au revoir_ very politely--all four--the door shuts on Mr.
Ellicott's meek back.
Mrs. Ellicott is not very happy, going downstairs. She knows what has
undoubtedly happened the moment the door was shut--and a little twinge
of something very like the taste of sour grapes goes through her as she
thinks of those two young people so reprehensibly glad at being even for
the moment in each other's arms.