Part 6

Miss Rittingway was holding a pink parasol between her and a brilliant but not vehement sun. The faint flush which she gained from the silk glorified a naturally brilliant complexion. Miss Rittingway was easily the prettiest woman in the impromptu and somewhat heterogeneous coaching party. I had been conscious of a certain quality in her which, now that she had used the word “safe,” made her more enigmatical than before. It was evident that her safeness was something more than discretion, a quality which we find so happily illustrated in the American girl. It was not merely a sense of proportion of which her sense of humor gave so true a sign. Her attitude of mind made me think of the remark of a modern dramatic teacher before a class of young women. “Ladies,” he said, “you always must distribute yourself over the centre of gravity.” At the first sound of it the admonition seemed mystical and empty enough. But when he went on to explain his admonition it began to seem more mundane and applicable. No pose, he told them, could be or could seem natural and finished which did not establish an equation with the law of gravity. He showed that every plant or tree, every bird on a bough, naturally and inevitably attained a balance, and that art, continually, in every department, sought this effect of balance, of visible relation between action or repose and the obvious centre of gravity. All of which is apologetically interpolated for the purpose of suggesting that Miss Rittingway’s mental lines appeared to be beautifully distributed over the centre of gravity. A little severity to the northeast was always balanced by an alleviating grimace to the southwest, and her contagious laugh never left a doubt of the reserve assets.

“But,” I said to her, “you should be married. If you are a predestined chaperon you should outwardly conform to the conventions by reason of which there is such a thing as a chaperon. Society and the dictionary expect you to be married. They do not insist, any more than society does in the case of the parson and the doctor. But they favor and expect.”

“You see I am in my novitiate,” said Miss Rittingway, looking at the palm of her left glove. “I am not yet ready to take the veil.”

“Meanwhile,” I said, “you do not seem to have accumulated any prejudices against the office. It sits lightly upon you. The robes of your responsibility flow gracefully. There is something which I have no doubt is typical in your unmarried chaperonage. You may not suspect just what there is of end-of-the-century character in your situation. We have had a lot of talk about chaperons, from which one might think they had just been invented. I am wondering whether you have any definite theories about chaperons.”

“I’m afraid I haven’t. I don’t think they are an altogether foolish idea, and I don’t think that they can be taken quite seriously either—perhaps I mean solemnly. Certainly a chaperon who took herself solemnly would scarcely fit into our American scheme.”

“As for that, no one who takes himself solemnly fits very well into our American scheme, though I have noticed that we Americans take many things seriously which we assume to carry with lightness, even with levity. I often suspect that we differ more from other peoples in our insistence upon this appearance of lightness than in our actual social qualities.”

“But isn’t that a social quality with us?” demanded Miss Rittingway, “this insistence upon an external lightness? The American is funny about some things.”

“I presume he is a bigger humorist than he commonly suspects.”

“He hates to admit that humanity is about the same sort of thing here as elsewhere. He despises the old labels. He believes in liberty as if he had patented the notion, and wants his children to have lots of it; but he is undoubtedly the most cautious parent in the world. He says we have no classes, and leaves the foreigner to find that we have classes as definitely set as any in the world.”

“Dear me!” I cried. “Is he so sophistical as that? If the American parent is cautious he is cautious in a very liberal way. There is the Grifton girl—”

At this I saw Miss Rittingway’s eyes wander in the direction of the booths as if it might be possible to estimate the situation of Mentley and his companion.

“The Grifton girl,” I said, “is a very modern daughter. I should fancy that she was somewhat difficult. I mention this because it has appeared that you have a particular interest in Miss Grifton.”

“I have. In a particular sense I am the chaperon of Miss Grifton. That is to say, I promised her mother, who is as delicate as one of those mothers in an old-fashioned English novel, though by no means so submissive, that I would do my best to keep Alice from being engaged to more than one man at a time.”

“Is she so engaging a girl?”

“It doesn’t seem to be precisely the old case of not being able to say ‘no.’ A girl who can’t say ‘no’ has only to be pretty and amiable like Alice to get into a heap of difficulty. But she _can_ say ‘no.’ She said ‘no’ to the young man her father likes.”

“The faculty for saying ‘no’ to that one is often developed quite early. My friend Sudwell told me one day that his daughter had a dexterity in despising the men he liked that made him wonder whether she read his thoughts or simply had a perverted taste.”

“Well,” returned Miss Rittingway, “it is only fair to Alice to say that she has said ‘no’ to several young men who had not the pleasure of being acquainted with her father. And she certainly means ‘no’ when she says ‘no.’ Sometimes it appears that she almost means ‘yes’ when she says ‘yes.’ I suppose it makes a good deal of difference whether in the series of young men she is to meet a girl encounters the worst ones first or last. Alice told me yesterday, with her adorable chuckle, that I must admit there was a steady improvement in the quality of the young men she was being engaged to. I told her I could stand the succession, but that if she wanted to be my friend she must have them one at a time. ‘But, my dear Margaret,’ she said, ‘can’t you see that it often happens—’ ‘Yes, I know. You would die of an unengaged interval, and of course you can’t discharge one until you are securely committed to the other.’ ‘How can I?’ she demanded. ‘How do I know that I shall have to discharge one until I _am_ securely committed to the other? And then the other one isn’t always where I can get at him to tell him. That is how it happens, Margaret dear.’ What can you do with such a girl?”

“What does her father say?”

“He _doesn’t_ say any more. Once he had theories of an old-fashioned formality. He had a good talk with the first man she was engaged to. After that he got dazed. Last fall he told her not to send any one else to him until she was quite sure. This amused her immensely. ‘It is so hard to be sure!’ she says, as if she had taken up being sure as a study.”

“It may be,” I said, “that she will get through all right. One of the cleverest and most happily married women I know was engaged six times. You never can tell. It is not fair to expect that the personal responsibility of choice which we have placed upon the American girl will not sometimes be attended with aberrations. There may be much of entertainment in being successively engaged. Yet I have no doubt but that the habit is degenerate.”

Miss Rittingway looked uncommonly serious for a moment. “We all know,” she said, “that the most dangerous period in a girl’s life is that immediately following a broken engagement. The periods following Alice’s broken engagements have always been so much enlivened by the excitements of new engagements that she has escaped a certain form of danger, whatever different danger she may have tumbled into.”

“And whatever may have been the danger of the men she has thrown over.”

“Yes, it would be fair to think of them. They say that Mortie Weldworth took it very hard. But do you know, I have an idea that Alice lets them down so delicately and prettily that most of them don’t get savage about it.”

“A polite executioner is a great mitigation,” I observed.

“Really, you know, Alice is the acme of graceful perversity. I think that if I were a man I should rather be rejected by Alice than accepted by some others.”

“That is an equivocal compliment to her, for the man who really gets her, who carries her off before she has a chance to engage herself to any one else—”

“Oh, the man who actually gets her will be made very happy.”

“That is real faith.”

“The curious thing is that Alice is not a flirt at all. She certainly will make a charming and loyal wife for some fellow.”

“You won’t mind if I remain incredulous on that point?”

“You are a man.”

“Yet I can see that she might be in some respects a more comfortable girl to be married to than to be engaged to. Her past must make an informed betrothed much more uneasy than it ever can make her husband.”

“Well, I assure you that I am as bad as all the men—I like Alice. I have tried to manage other girls who annoyed me much more. There was Miss—we shall say Miss Huron, a Wisconsin girl, who was with us at Nantucket. Probably I am telling you too much. It is a tribute to your admirably feigned interest. Well, Miss Huron had the funniest habit of staying up late. She hated to see her company go home. You couldn’t frown or nudge her into letting them go when they wanted to. She was the most owlish of night birds. When it came to going in the barge to a dance (‘barge’ is Nantucket for bus or carryall) it was she who always kept the barge waiting at the dance. If she couldn’t be out late in any other way she seemed to be able to have accidents happen, and if she had to walk home over four miles of dark road after a carriage break-down she was as happy as a child, though the man might be worried and fagged. Yet she was the soul of prudence, and never got engaged to anybody.”

“Do you know,” I said, “a man takes a peculiar pleasure in hearing of such idiosyncrasies in women. These traits give individuality to them. Women are apt to seem too much alike. I am going to suggest to Jaxton that he write something in the Darwinian spirit on ‘The Petty Depravities of Modern Women.’ It would be very instructive. You could be a great help to Jaxton.”

Miss Rittingway doubtless would have rebuked me had she not at that moment caught sight of Miss Pansy Marshford and Crewton crossing from the ball grounds toward the booths. “Poor Pansy!” she murmured.

“If you will forgive me for that momentary flippancy,” I said, “I should like to know why you are poor-ing Pansy. I thought every one was envying her.”

“Do you know Crewton?”

“Not well enough to refuse your opinion.”

“Probably you know that Crewton is very good. That is not the trouble,” she added with her enigmatical laughter of the eyes. “As he has lots of money it is a great credit to him to be so good. But Pansy wanted another man.”

“Did she hold off Crewton?”

“As long as she could.”

“Well, she at least has Crewton.”

“Is that optimism?” she asked.

“No; it is long division. What is the use of watching for miracles? Probably Pansy will be just as happy with Crewton as Alice will be with the last man she becomes engaged to.”

Miss Rittingway tweaked the handle of her parasol. “I have knocked about a good deal,” she said, catching my look at the “knocked about,” “but I hope I have retained that sense of moral proportion which makes a woman like to see another woman get the right man.”

“Presently,” I said, “I shall decide that you are not a chaperon at all, but a matchmaker. I approve of your last sentiment—”

“You are so good!”

“—and I should like to be credited with the same notion. I like to see a man get the right woman. But it is a wearing thing to try to direct the course of sentimental lightning. My feeling would be that in order to be a successful chaperon,—that is, to please the guardian, the girl, the man, and yourself,—you should undertake to regulate the social rather than the moral proprieties. I should go on believing, unless you were to contradict me, that it is not so much the business of a chaperon to see whom a girl meets and marries as to see how she meets and marries. Yours is essentially the supervisorship of form.”

“If you will stop teasing,” said Miss Rittingway, “I may tell you about the experiment of Mrs. Rudderson. It is not apropos of anything you have said, which is, perhaps, a good reason for introducing it.”

“This is better than I deserve.”

“Mrs. Rudderson told me one day that she was going to try a social experiment. She was then a widow, thirty-six, good to look at, good natured, and comfortably off. To amuse herself she was going to bring a poor girl from a small town, fit her out, and give her a winter. The poor girl was attractive and clever, and Mrs. Rudderson gave her the most worldly advice she knew how to give,—and Mrs. Rudderson knows the world pretty well. Before Christmas the experiment was moving along swimmingly. Mrs. Rudderson saw to it that her _protégée_ met some of the most desirable men in the city, including Austin Crimwell, who had several times been reported as being committed to Mrs. Rudderson. Probably Mrs. Rudderson didn’t deserve what happened, for, if she had amused herself with the experiment, she took a benevolent pleasure in watching the success of the girl; but Crimwell fell plump in love with the _protégée_. Mrs. Rudderson should have known better. It is easy to say that now.”

“I haven’t said it.”

“Somebody must say it if I have to say it myself. It was tempting Providence.”

“That is to say, Crimwell.”

“You understand,” pursued Miss Rittingway, without swerving, “she was a nice girl, and Mrs. Rudderson’s idea was to give her a great chance.”

“But not Crimwell.”

“You couldn’t say it was the ingratitude of the girl. She didn’t know. It simply was the ingratitude of circumstances.”

When I suggested that Circumstances were old offenders, Miss Rittingway went on, looking past me: “I can imagine Mrs. Rudderson, when she saw Crimwell drifting, studying herself in the mirror. You know she was only thirty-six.”

“An ideal age.”

“Seriously,” demanded Miss Rittingway, “at what age do you consider a woman to be at her best?”

“At the age when she meets the man who falls in love with her.”

“Mrs. Rudderson is one of those women who always seem to find it easy to vindicate their age. But I shall ask you another question. You see, there was something about the girl’s family which the girl should have told to any one whom she was to marry, and when the engagement actually was fixed, Mrs. Rudderson found that the girl had neither the courage nor the character to tell it. Mrs. Rudderson herself would have felt bound to tell it to any one but Crimwell. You can see how telling it to Crimwell would look. Even Crimwell must have known that Mrs. Rudderson was in love with him. What do you think Mrs. Rudderson should have done?”

“She should have told Crimwell.”

“She didn’t. She couldn’t. The thing which should have been told was nothing against the girl, and Mrs. Rudderson gave her a handsome wedding last June.”

“That is typical realism,” I said, “perhaps typical life; for there is no hero, no villain, a heroine who should have known better, and an _ingénue_ without a conscience; and as for living happily ever after—”

“Oh, I believe the match will be a great success! And Mrs. Rudderson is to marry Senator Wrensel. I saw her at Newport and she was looking her best.”

“That is what I like about the modern woman. She is so beautifully adjustable. To be sure, it has been the office of women from the beginning to acquire adjustability, and every uncynical person has resented the demands which have been made on this quality. But the modern woman, in a greater degree than any of her predecessors, enjoys the graces of chance, knows how to turn defeat into victory. She can marry the wrong man and never even let him know it. She can marry the right man and not upset him by making that too plain either. She can elude marriage altogether and make that seem not merely manifest destiny but a triumph of beneficent fate. She can be self-respectingly married and enchantingly single—”

Miss Rittingway checked me with a look.

“A man,” she said, “not only is greatly hampered in his view of these things, but he always appears to resent a woman’s ability to dominate social circumstances. It really distresses him to find that his initiation is not a finality, to discover that her last word is more potent than his first.”

“A cruel tirade,” I declared, “when I was only expressing my admiring astonishment or something of that import. As for her last word, even when you don’t say it—”

At this I saw the Judge coming back. “Judge,” I called down to him, “Miss Rittingway was just saying that she would like to have from you a judicial opinion on chaperons.”

“Well,” said the Judge, failing to observe Miss Rittingway’s protest, “there is a legal pleasantry which expresses itself in the query, ‘Who is to watch the trustee?’ I am going over there to arrange about the lunch for this interesting party, and then I am coming back to do some watching myself.”

“Don’t you think,” I asked Miss Rittingway when the Judge had gone again, “that there is a touch of _particular_ amiability in the Judge’s manner?”

“I think you had better go and help him about the luncheon,” was what Miss Rittingway said.

VIII

WITH A NICE MAN

We sat in the “cave,” the smallest of Tranton’s rooms, and the one consecrated to his choicest company. Mere acquaintances were never asked into the “cave,” and even friends found that the place expressed certain moods in the owner. When Tranton said, “Let us go into the cave,” or shuffled mutely into the place in his barbarically embroidered slippers, and lighted the candles, the favored one understood. It was impossible to tell precisely why candles were used here rather than more modern agencies of illumination. When I once ventured to ask Tranton he simply said, “I like them.”

In the candle light the “cave” looked to be a cross between a condensed studio and a business office. Rugs, skins, weapons, pipes, and trinkets littered the walls. There were other elements of conventional disorder. Over an oak desk in the corner were several photographs of women, an etching of Napoleon, a bow of yellow satin and a Turkish slipper filled with joss sticks. On the desk itself was a mess of literature and tobacco. Punctuating the triteness of the room were many little touches that were distinctively Trantonian, but which I spare publicity, lest they be repeated and thereby become trite in turn. Tranton himself personified something of the same conventionality relieved by difference. In the outer world he was so well dressed that no one ever spoke of his clothes, just as his place in society was so important and secure that no one ever called him a “society man.” He was old enough to have met a great many people; young enough still to have an open account with the affections.

As Tranton always took the chair by the desk, and as this when occupied blocked the path of retreat, he first sent me to the couch among the pillows. Then he drew over some pipes and a curious Egyptian jar containing his favorite weed. The pipe he chose for himself was of the sort you will see an Italian trench laborer biting, a black, hardened, surly-looking pipe which Tranton caressed with a tenderness that is lavished only upon inexplicable pets.

“When I left them,” said Tranton, resuming the talk we had begun in the other room, “they were all quarreling over the question of Kipling’s treatment of women. It was a great circus. That Miss Fanchell said she didn’t think that Kipling could have known many good women—I think she said _any_ good women—at the beginning, and that since he married an American girl, rather than modify his literary attitude, he preferred to write about men, beasts and locomotives. Mrs. Arch thought that he only used women as literary accessories, and Mrs. Gameston said she had heard that Kipling was very timid with women and that of course he _couldn’t_ understand them very well. Little Miss Stillberry said it was quite inevitable that men should know more of forward women. They appealed to me before I got away, and I told them I could be of no help whatever, because I didn’t understand either women or Kipling, though I liked both. I ventured to say, however, that if the American girl Kipling had married didn’t make him like women, in my opinion there was no hope for him. That let me out.”

“I should think it ought to,” I said.

“Women,” went on Tranton, with his eyes critically directed toward the bowl of his pipe, “will forgive a man for not understanding them, but never for not wanting to. Every debate of that sort has this explanation.”

“Did you tell them that?”

“I didn’t have time to stay and tease them. Perhaps I didn’t think of it until I got away. That often happens, doesn’t it?”

“It is better to think of a good thing we might have said than of an awkward thing we wish we hadn’t. If they had been wise women, Tranton, they would have spent their time devising ways to get you to tell the truth about them. Admitting that you don’t understand women, your knowledge of them, your command of data, give you the means of being hugely entertaining.”

“Do you think so?” asked Tranton, still studying the pipe bowl. “I wish I could translate them as well as they can translate us.”

“You would do it with an unction, Tranton, and I am entirely certain that you never would be accused of _lèse majesté_.”

“Speaking of translating,” said Tranton, “a girl told me about a book the other day—outlined for me the Brother Henry chapter of ‘My Lady Nicotine,’ which somehow I never had read, but which I certainly shall read a good many times. I got the book, and I give you my word that, making allowance for the fact that she had the first try, the chapter, delicious as it is, is not so good as her translation was, hasn’t the flavor that her exquisite humor got into it. I could not help thinking how lucky Barrie would have been if there was some way in which he could have written that chapter after she had told him about it.”

“Hence,” I said, “the greatest luck that can befall a man is that he shall have a translator in the house.”

“Pshaw!” returned Tranton. “The translator would probably lose her zest if she were in the house. My translator was willing to be a translator. You married men—”

“Now hold on, Tranton. That is an abstract proposition. Don’t make it personal. Have you acquired that from—”

“Hold on, yourself!” retorted Tranton. “Your proposition is abstract enough, but—well, we are both open to suspicion, I suppose. A man and a woman who meet occasionally are one thing—I mean that they are two; whereas if the same were married—to each other—they would be quite another,—that is to say, one. When they are one they must lose the charm, the entertainment, the stimulus of being two.”

“Rot!” was my friendly comment on this. But Tranton went on:—