Bobbie, General Manager/Chapter 17
CHAPTER XVII
EDITH didn't remain in Europe as long as she expected. She dropped down upon us one night, with Ruth trailing on behind, as unexpectedly as a falling star. I had just had a letter that said that she and Ruth and Alec—my brother had since joined them—were all installed in a fashionable hotel in Paris for six weeks. You can imagine my surprise when Edith and Ruth appeared at my front door.
Will and I were playing cribbage. He had laid down his big book; I had put aside my sewing; and the four little pegs on the cribbage-board had already run the course twice. We always play five games of cribbage every night before we go upstairs to bed. We call it our sleeping-powder. Will had just dealt the cards—it was almost nine o'clock—when the door-bell rang. Old Delia had creaked up to bed ages ago, so Will went to the door himself. I didn't bother even to uncurl my feet—I was sitting Turkish fashion—for I thought it must be the expressman. I yawned and waited.
I heard Will say, "Hello! hello! Well, well, of all—When did you—Where—" and a moment later, resplendent in a long sealskin coat, a sealskin hat, a perfectly enormous muff and a gold chain purse, Edith pushed into our hall, eyes simply sparkling and cheeks aglow.
"Hello, Turtle-doves!" she exclaimed. "Hello, Brother Will! Hello, Mrs. Bobbikins!"
I started up.
"Of all things!" I ejaculated.
Edith kissed me through a prickly veil. Ruth kissed me too. Ruth was simply overwhelming in a huge blue hat with not less than six blue ostrich plumes. They both kissed Will. We all began to laugh.
"We knew you'd be surprised," said Ruth.
"But I thought—" I began.
"Where's Alec?" asked Will.
"Why in the world—" I tucked in.
"Listen! Wait!" commanded Edith. "I'll explain. We thought," she said, gurgling with mirth, "it would be great fun to surprise you, so—"
"Alec got a cable last week—" put in Ruth.
"From my dad," Edith went on. "Business! Wasn't it disgusting when we weren't planning to sail for six weeks? Al had to go right on to Chicago—and The Homestead—"
"We had the bridal suite on the Mauretania!" I heard Ruth exclaim to Will.
"—isn't open," finished Edith. "The servants are scattered to the four winds. I've written to them, but of course they haven't had a chance to open things up yet. So we thought it would be fun to—"
"To pop in on you!" giggled Ruth.
"Can you put us up?" snapped Edith.
"Of course! How nice!" I tried to say cordially, with the image of my cold, unused, north guest-room dancing before my eyes, the floor covered with newspapers, two cut-glass punch-bowls, thirteen berry dishes and seven vases. "Of course I can put you up. Take off your things."
Will produced two dining-room chairs and Edith and Ruth buried them in no time beneath a stack of coats, hats and muffs. Edith was gowned—slick as a black suede glove—in a tight-fitting, broadcloth, one-piece dress, Irish lace at neck and wrists. Ruth's new Parisian hair was simply glorious. They strutted into our comfortable living-room like two peacocks, Edith surveying the walls and ceilings as if she were examining the dome of the Boston State-house.
"So this is where you coo!" she said in her horrid patronising manner. Imagine Dr. William Maynard of the medical department of one of the biggest universities in the country cooing! I blushed for Will. He pushed up a chair. It chanced to be one of Father's old morocco leather armchairs I had found in the storeroom at home. Edith made opera-glasses of her two hands, and pretended to gaze intently at the poor old piece of furniture.
"Hello, old friend!" she said, and made a mock salute. "You look familiar. Back into service again, hey? 'Comfy' anyhow!" she finished and settled into it.
"What sort of a passage was it?" asked Will, and for the next half-hour we listened to an account of a perfectly disgusting customs officer in New York, who made Edith pay one hundred and ninety-five dollars on a half-dozen mere gowns that already were simply worn to shreds.
It was when Will had gone to the kitchen for some water that Edith leaned forward and said to me:
"How'd you happen to take this house, my dear? And don't you dress for dinner, Lucy?"
"Oh," I said, "this? It's short and I can hook it up myself."
"I just knew," chimed in my own sister Ruth, "that Lucy would be one of those to get slack after she was once married. Now I've always said that I—"
"I didn't know," broke in Edith in a sudden burst of laughter, "that there were any houses left nowadays that had those funny old-fashioned storm-doors that you hook on every winter."
"Trust Lucy to pick out the oldest shack in the town," tucked in Ruth, touching the surface of her perfect coiffure with light fingers, and glancing sideways at herself in an old gilt-framed mirror on the wall.
"By the way, Lucy," Edith added, piling it on, I thought, a bit too thick, "people aren't using doilies under ornaments any more. Where are all those stunning plateaus?"
"Dear me," I laughed, bound to be good-natured, "I'd completely forgotten the plateaus. They must be in one of the barrels we haven't opened."
"Haven't opened! I never saw any one like you. Haven't opened! It certainly is a good thing that I've come home."
It was with a sinking heart that I took Edith and Ruth up to the guest-room in which I had put one of Will's black walnut bedroom sets.
"If I'd only known you were coming!" I began going up the stairs trying to explain. "The bureau is chuck-full of silver things—we ought to have a safe. And the closet—all my good dresses are there. We have so little closet-room in this house. In the morning I'll clear it out. I know you'd like separate beds too, but when Will's things were all unpacked there wasn't room for much new furniture. And I'm sorry, Edith, that you haven't a bath connected. We have only one bathroom in the entire house and even that—"
Edith wouldn't let me finish. We were in the guest-room now. Her eyes were on the cut-glass in the corner.
"I ought never to have gone to Europe," she announced. "Never in this world!"
I wished she had never come home, and when I kissed her good-night, all the old rancour and rebellion, dormant for so long, was raging in my heart. I stole downstairs after I was undressed, pulled out Edith's silver service from underneath the stairs and put it on the sideboard; I unlocked Edith's chest of silver, and began laying the breakfast table with the horns-of-plenty; I dragged out some elaborate breakfast napkins; I hauled down from the top shelf of the pantry a Coalport breakfast-set. At one A.M., when I was crawling back stealthily to our room, I had to pass the guest-chamber door. I heard voices, and stopped a moment.
"It's human nature for a man, single or married, to prefer a woman in pretty clothes, whoever she is," said Edith.
"Of course," Ruth agreed. "When she came in to say good-night did you see the horrid old red worsted bedroom slippers she had on?"
"And moreover," Edith went on, "a man likes an attractive house—pretty pictures, pretty ornaments, a place where he is proud to bring his friends."
"Naturally."
"A man likes to be proud of his wife too," went on the sage, "proud of her friends, of her place in society. Now Lucy—absolutely no social-sense—not a spark. No doubt, if she's made any friends at all, they're the grocery-man and the seamstress, or the woman who washes her hair."
Ruth giggled.
"Now you, Ruth," Edith pursued, "are a girl after my own heart. You are the kind to be the wife of a famous man. You could be Mrs. William Maynard with the right sort of go."
I had to smile at the thought of Ruth and Will. Will hates false things—puffs and brilliantine; he hates fluffy negligees, and silly, high-heeled unwalkable shoes; he hates fuss and feathers. I passed on down the hall.
"It will take more than Edith Campbell and my young sister Ruth to disturb me, I guess," I said to myself as I turned out several flaring gas-jets in the hall and bathroom, left by those two extravagant creatures to burn all night.
Edith awoke the next morning armoured for battle. I could see it in her eyes and feel it in her manner. I knew it was to be no slight skirmish, but a well-thought-out and carefully-planned campaign. I knew it was to be a serious engagement because neither she nor Ruth criticised a single thing for the next two days. If they were shocked and surprised, I knew it only by raised eyebrows, critical smiles or covert glances. I hated their silence. I felt as if the entire foundation of my life was stealthily being honeycombed with tunnels, laid with bombs and dynamite, and I wondered a little uncomfortably when Edith would light the fuse. Edith is wonderful in some ways, as you know. At a hotel or on a steamer she catches on to the right people to know within the first twenty-four hours, and by the third day she's playing bridge with them. As soon as ever her half-dozen pieces of baggage had arrived, she donned a Paquin three-piece velvet suit and set out to call on Mrs. Percival. That night the explosion took place.
"I called on Mrs. Percival this afternoon," she began after dinner. "She says, Lucy, that you never returned her call."
Will had gone to a lecture that evening. Ruth was playing solitaire in front of the fire.
"Has Mrs. Percival called on me? I didn't realise it," I replied.
"Not only has Mrs. Percival called, but every one else who should. That impossible servant of yours said that all these people had called." Edith took down the brass jardinière where I deposit all my visiting-cards. "She said that you were never in afternoons and had not seen one of them. Where under the heavens were you, Lucy?"
I felt ashamed to tell Edith about the lectures, so I said instead:
"Oh, anywhere—walking, shopping—anywhere. I never stay in afternoons. I can't bear to."
"How many of those calls have you returned?" cross-examined my sister-in-law.
"Well—I am going to return them all," I began. "They're such strangers to me that I've been putting it off. You know how I hate making calls anyway. But of course—"
Edith interrupted me.
"The people in this town are the ones connected with the university. I have always heard that. You've had every opportunity to know them. They've all called on account of Will. You've simply thrown away chance upon chance. Here are the Philemon Omsteds' cards. Mrs. Percival says that Dr. Omsted is awfully queer—kind of a socialist—but that Mrs. Omsted's musicales are the selectest things given. Here are Mrs. Daniel Haynes McClellan's cards, the Bernkapps, Madame Gauthier. I found out from Mrs. Percival, indirectly of course, that all these people are in things. Mrs. Benedict Graham—even she has called on you. And Mrs. Percival says that she was a Granville—daughter of President Emeritus Granville. Dr. Graham is an awfully prominent man himself. Surely you've heard of Benedict Graham, Lucy. Surely—"
"Of course!" I interrupted. "Every one has, Edith, and I'm reading his book, but I'd be frightened to death to go up and pull the Benedict Grahams' bell. I couldn't!"
"You ought to be married to a clerk or a barber, and then you wouldn't need to. I should hate to think I had married a man whom I couldn't live up to. Every one has heard of Will. He has been talked about all over the country. But what about his wife? Who is she?" Edith's words were beginning to cut now and I bit my lip. "There was a tea this very afternoon to which Mrs. William Maynard ought to have been invited. Were you?"
I shook my head.
"Of course you weren't, nor last week to a musicale that Mrs. Omsted gave, and I'll bet you had nothing whatsoever to do with the Charity Bazaar that the younger women in the university set get up every Christmas. Do you think a man wants to be married to a person who is not received—absolutely ignored, as if something was the matter with her? Whom in the world do you know here, anyway? Any one at all?"
Pictures of the little man with the soft tie, the dear white-haired old gentleman whose name I did not even know, and Miss Avery, all impossible I knew to Edith, flashed before my eyes. So I shook my head and Edith went on.
"And the house—it's simply impossible! Such a location! Why, no one lives in this part of town. You would think that Will couldn't afford anything better, but he can. You ought to have two maids. And why under the heavens all this old furniture? People don't use black walnut any more, and that old narrow, square dining-room table is simply beyond words!"
"And you have no butler's pantry nor back stairs," put in Ruth.
"And you ought to make your maid wear black afternoons."
"And turn down the beds," added Ruth.
"It's my house," I began. "If you don't like it—" I got up quickly and started to leave the room.
"Oh, come, Bobbikins," Edith said in her persistently cheerful way. "Don't get cross. I was only trying to be helpful." Then she went on: "I found this on the floor, by your desk. I couldn't help but see it. It's an invitation for dinner from Mrs. Benedict Graham. I can't understand why she invites you if you've never returned her call, but of course it's on account of Will. I can't imagine your not accepting this invitation and yet I heard you say that next Thursday, the sixth, the very evening of this dinner, you and Will had tickets for the theatre."
"Yes, we've been planning to go on that particular night for three weeks. It's a little secret anniversary of ours," I said sullenly; "and we're going too. Why should you, Edith, come here and try to upset the whole universe? We're happy. Will is satisfied. He loves things simple. I wish you'd leave us alone. Will doesn't care a scrap about society, and I hate it, hate it, hate it!" I was on the verge of bursting into tears.
"Well, if there's going to be a scene, excuse me, please," said Ruth, and started to leave the room.
"If you're through with that card-table, please fold it up and put it in the closet," I said to Ruth with my eyes full of fire. "I haven't got six servants."
"Whew!" whistled Ruth and began gathering up her cards.
"I should think," calmly went on Edith like a repeating alarm-clock, "you'd like your husband to be proud of you."
"Oh, please—please—" I fired back, and then suddenly, too full to speak, I turned abruptly and fled up the stairs to my room.
The sweet darkness enveloped me. I drew a chair to the window. Will would ask her to mind her own affairs; Will would talk to her; Will would tell her how he hated her mean ambitions, how he abhorred her contemptible snobbishness; Will would defend and stand up for me; Will would fix her! "Just wait for Will!" I said, and listened for his step on the sidewalk outside and the sound of his key in the latch. I heard him come in about half past ten. It was almost twelve when he came up to me.
"Not in bed?" he asked gently and leaned down and kissed me. "Edith was downstairs when I came in and we've been talking. I don't know but what we ought to keep two maids, Bobbie dear," Will said, and I felt as if I had been struck. Will went over and lit the gas. "I guess we might as well postpone our theatre party for next Thursday," he went on. "I think, after all, we'd better go to the Grahams' dinner. By the way," he broke off, "didn't you get an invitation to the Omsteds' affair last week?"
"No, Will, I didn't," I said dully.
"Perhaps you'll find time to pay back a few of those calls some time pretty soon, Bobbie dear," he said to me. And that morning about four A.M. I cried myself to sleep.
Edith went to the dinner too. She had Will telephone and fix it up someway. I don't know how nor I didn't ask. I was very miserable, very unhappy. My heart was heavier than it had been for a whole year. "Will wasn't satisfied, Will wasn't proud, Will was ashamed of me," rang in my ears from morning till night. During the few days that still must be lived before Thursday the sixth at seven o'clock, Edith exhibited the usual kindness and gentle consideration of any victor over the vanquished. I didn't make another plea. I was as resigned as a fatalist, and as unmurmuring as a stoic. I wrote my acceptance at Edith's dictation without a word, and silently fought the tears that came to my eyes, as I sealed the envelope.
"O Bobbie," said Will gently, "don't worry so about it, dear. You weren't so frightened about your own wedding."
"Exactly," said Edith. "And I've had dinners at The Homestead just as grand as this. You're simply out of training. People won't notice you so much as you think anyhow. Just act slowly, and don't try to talk. That's all. I'll be there and you can 'lean on me, grandpa.' You'll be all right," she assured me grandly.
I couldn't explain to Will and Edith how I felt about that dinner at the Grahams'. They wouldn't understand. Of course I had been to Edith's parties at The Homestead, but then I was simply Lucy Vars; and now I was Mrs. William Ford Maynard. Everybody in Hilton had accepted Lucy Vars long ago as a queer, quiet sort of shy little mouse, and treated her as such. She was used to it. But here, no one had as yet discovered Mrs. William Ford Maynard. She had been living for six, beautiful, unmolested months in idyllic secretion. But she had been run down at last, she must give herself up like a hunted convict, and by Thursday at midnight all of Dr. Maynard's learned associates would know just what sort of insignificant little person he had married. Oh, if only for Will's sake I had been born clever and brilliant; if only I had possessed a little of Edith's style; Ruth's savoir faire. Do you wonder then, that I trembled in anticipation of this occasion? Ruth's coming-out party, my wedding, a dozen dinners of Edith's, were as doll's tea-parties as compared to this, when Mrs. William Ford Maynard must come forth from her hiding-place and meet this test of a searching inspection.
I shall never forget the faint, sickening feeling inside of me as we stood waiting for admittance before the big colonial house. We must have been the last ones to arrive. A babble of voices in the drawing-room at the left greeted us as we entered. We walked up the old colonial stairway, and into a big bedroom at the top with a black walnut bedroom set. I noticed that even in my fright.
"Mercy, child, don't take off your gloves," whispered Edith to me.
"I hate them," I said, and ripped my arms bare. I wore a light blue silk dress with a Dutch neck, in spite of Edith in her low-cut ball-gown plastered over with glittering black spangles. My hair was done in its usual everyday knot at the back of my neck, bobbed up in the last five minutes after Ruth's sixth attempt at dressing it in the "new way." Edith looked like a fashion-plate: she had a perfect figure; her neck is marvellous; she wore diamonds and a string of pearls.
I followed her down the stairs very carefully, lest I trip in my little French-heeled satin slippers or lose the silly things altogether. My heart was in my mouth. "What shall I say when I am introduced? What shall I say? What shall I say?" I kept thinking in a panic and watched Edith sweep across the hall in her most impressive manner. I waited an instant. A minute more and Will was announcing, "And this is my wife, Mrs. Graham." My heart fluttered as it used to at parties at home.
The grand lady smiled upon me. She took my hand.
"So this is Mrs. William Maynard," she said. "I'm glad you could come. We all know Dr. Maynard so well—we're so proud to have him one of us—that I am glad to meet you." Was she thinking how funny and young I looked? Was she saying "What a strange little insignificant bit of thing indeed for such a man as William Maynard!" I wished, after all, I had had my hair marcelled.
"I want Dr. Graham to meet you," my hostess continued and, leaning over, touched the great philosopher on the shoulder with her fan. He was talking to Edith. "Benedict, my dear." He turned. "Mrs. Maynard!"
I trembled in my shoes and raised my eyes.
"You!" I gasped and stepped back. Dr. Benedict Graham—the Dr. Benedict Graham—was no other than my dear sweet old white-haired gentleman of the philosophical lectures! His hands went out to me—both of them—and gathered my ten cold trembling fingers in his warm grasp.
"You?" he repeated with the sweet light of recognition in his eyes. "You! Pandora! Julia," he said to Mrs. Graham, "Mrs. Maynard is Pandora of whom I have told you, my little friend who takes a walk with me every week. Well—well," he chuckled. "Well—well." Then to astonished Will he exclaimed, "Your wife and I are old friends," and oh, I could have kissed him!
The colour rushed back into my cheeks. My hand was in Mrs. Graham's again, and when I looked around the room I found I stood in a little circle—every one's eyes, like the lights, upon me. It was like a surprise-party, or a fairy story, or some trick worked by a skilful magician. First my eyes fell upon Dr. Van Breeze; and then, in a flash, on Monsieur Gauthier, who gave the French lectures; and suddenly coming toward me was the funny little man with the soft wide tie. He wore it even to-night. He took my hand cordially and Will exclaimed, "Do you know her too, Mr. Omsted?"
It all happened in a minute. I can't tell it quickly enough. "She has read one of my books from cover to cover," I heard Dr. Graham laugh, eyes twinkling into mine; and I think it was just after that remark of Dr. Graham's that Monsieur Gauthier stepped forward and bowing before me in the dearest, Frenchiest manner in the world, said in his own language with every one listening, "I have never been presented to Mrs. Maynard, but if I am not mistaken I think I have observed her face at my Monday afternoon lectures. Is it not so? Always the same chair—third from the back, two removed from the aisle—always the same. It has been a pleasure to see you there each week."
I understood every word. I didn't lose a phrase. The warmth, the light, those words in French, everybody's eyes upon me acted like just enough champagne.
"Merci, Monsieur," I dared to say and swept him a little bow. I can hear now my voice and those two little French words falling upon the silence of that room like a noise on a still night. I don't know how I ever presumed to speak in French. I would have thought it affected in any one else, but at that exultant moment I could have mimicked Chinese. Two words in a foreign language I know should not be very amazing (any one could do it) but I could feel a little murmur pass among the people after I had spoken that was something—a little—like the applause at the theatre. A moment later the talking began again; I was being introduced at left and right; my own voice and laughter mingled with the general babble. It was exactly as though I had taken my plunge, come safely to the surface and now was swimming along with long even strokes with the others for the shore. Edith looked at me astonished. Will observed me as though I were a stranger. Easy words came to my lips, my cheeks burned, and every one was so kind—so good to me, that I forgot my dress, my hair and my French-heeled shoes.
I don't mean to imply that I was the belle of the evening. Of course I wasn't. It would be absurd for a mere slip of a girl, married though she was, to come among learned men and sages and have them all turning their attention and thought upon her. Even if she had been pretty, and skilful in the art of smiles and glances, which I am not, such an event would be amazing. I only mean to say that I didn't feel awkward nor wonder where to put my hands between the courses. I was placed at the left of Dr. Graham and felt as easy as if I were sitting beside my own father. The dinner, it seemed, was in honour of Dr. Van Breeze on account of his book about to be published, consisting of the very lectures he had been delivering in Tyler Hall. The talk centred about the book a good deal and though I didn't contribute a single idea to the conversation I understood perfectly what was being discussed. But I do not think Edith enjoyed herself. She was over-jewelled, in the first place, and kept running on to Dr. Omsted, who, you know, is a kind of socialist, about the gorgeous bridal suite on the Mauretania, the one hundred and ninety-two dollars duty she had to pay, and of how she smuggled in a thousand-dollar pearl necklace, until I was embarrassed.
We went home about ten-thirty. Just at the door as we were going out Mrs. Philemon Omsted stopped me. Will had me by the arm. Edith was just in front.
"Mrs. Maynard," she said to me, "just a moment, please. I have been very glad to meet you. And, by the way, Easter Monday I am giving a small musicale. Mrs. Graham is to pour for me. I should be delighted if you will assist."
I thanked her quietly (but oh, in my heart I could have crowned her with flowers) and passed out to our hired carriage.
I sat in the middle between Edith and Will. We drove away in silence, my heart singing, and my cheeks warm with excitement. Will pressed my arm with his bare hand hidden underneath the folds of my party-coat. I could feel his joy. It was Edith who spoke first.
"What a miserable stuffy little carriage," she said; then after a moment, "Those people may have brains, but I don't think I ever saw such a lot of frumpily dressed women in my life."
Will leaned forward then, and said playfully, but with a queer little sure sound in his voice, "What was your impression of Mrs. William Maynard?"
"Of Bobbie?" Edith asked raising her eyebrows, disgusted with Will's little streak of fun.
"Of Mrs. William Maynard," he corrected; then in a low voice he added, "Of Mrs. William Maynard, of whom I am so proud!" and I had to draw away my hand to wipe away two silly tears.