Bobbie, General Manager/Chapter 18

by Olive Higgins Prouty

CHAPTER XVIII

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."