Chapter 2

The girl on the sofa was a thoroughly healthy person of twenty-four. She played excellent female tennis, and her golf was better than that of half of the male members at the club. Yet she had none of the mannish mannerisms that so often accompany an "athletic" girl. At the present time she was submitting herself to a rigorous course in "housekeeping" majoring in cooking and minoring in accounting, and she had taught Sunday School ever since she had been graduated from Miss Hammond's School at Mill Rock some six years ago. People instinctively liked her unless they were bored by obvious wholesomeness. And although no one ever thought of her as being particularly pretty--she was somewhat too dumpy to be thought that--people noticed her hair, which was a most fashionable shade of red. Then, of course, in as much as she had Mrs. Norris for a mother, one could never be entirely sure that she might not burst forth in some altogether unexpected and delightful manner. Her impromptu _bataille des fleurs_, for example, was still remembered in Woodbridge although it took place nearly sixteen years ago. Somewhere her attention had been caught by the picture of a cherub, or possibly seraph, perched on a cloud and pouring from a cornucopia great masses of flowers upon the delighted earth. The idea seemed such a lovely one that when, in the spring, her mother gave a card party out on the terrace, she determined to give the ladies a delightful surprise. For weeks before it she despoiled the garden, keeping her plans miraculously secret, and storing her treasures away in a waste-basket, in lieu of the cornucopia. And then, when the ladies were twittering away happily beneath, she stepped out upon her porch clad only in a Liberty scarf borrowed from her mother's wardrobe--the young creature in the picture confined itself to a ribonny dress which floated charmingly about it--and discharged her flowers. She was prepared for astonishment in her audience, and her reception was all she could ask; but what she was not prepared for was the insidious decay which had set in among the blooms, and which robbed them entirely of their natural colour and fragrance, transforming them into a composition recognized by polite people only upon their lawns. It had been Mary's first encounter with the baffling thaumaturgy of chemistry; and to the end of her days her confidence in it was never wholly restored.

Henry Whitman at last finished his story and rose to go. The Dean, who was a genial soul, and who, with his generous embonpoint and his knickers, looked at present a little like Mr. Pickwick, regarded him affectionately. He had retired from the college two years before, but upon the President's departure for Europe on a six months' leave, he had been called from retirement to act in his place because of the great respect the College had for his temperate judgment, a quality at that time particularly useful in college affairs, stirred as they were by the contentions of the advocates of a larger Woodbridge. It was the Dean's duty to keep these malcontents, these radicals--some of whom were powerful--in their places. Quality not quantity had ever been the Woodbridge cry, and it should remain so as long as he had any power. In other respects, however, he was as gentle as one could well be. In the matter of motoring, for example, he was so gentle that to the untutored eye he might seem almost timid. He had viewed the rise of the motor car with all the misgivings of a lover of the Old Ways, long refusing to accompany his wife on her hectic flights, but at last he had consented to buy an electric. For three dreadful weeks he ran it in agony or apprehension. It was not that he might run into people: there was no danger there, for even if he had bumped into some one, the damage would have been only very trifling. No, the terrible thought was what the reckless people might do who would crash into him. So at the end of the three weeks he abandoned the lever and, bringing Murdock in from the stable, definitely transformed him into his chauffeur. The picture that he presented was, he realized, somewhat sedate, but at least he was no longer taking foolhardy chances, and he could now, furthermore, see something as he went along. "When are you expecting Nancy?" he asked Henry.

"Oh, I supposed Mary had told you. Why, she is coming day after tomorrow. Henry Third is very much excited. He has been making a collection for her as a present. I didn't know anything about it until the other day when Annie told me. It seems that he has been very much impressed by a postal card from his Aunt Nancy showing a California orange grove, and so he has been collecting orange pips ever since! He now has over ninety and he is afraid she will arrive before he can get a hundred. It seems to be a rule of the collection that his pips can only be taken from oranges he's eaten, and as he only gets one a day at his breakfast, there is no help for him."

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Henry, send him up here and I'll let him eat out his hundred," said Mary.

"Fine person you are," laughed Whitman, "ruining my son's good habits."

They had passed out into the hall when the bell rang violently two or three times.

"That must be mamma," said Mary, and going to the door, she opened it for a majestic lady who swept into the room, talking volubly as she began peeling off the shawls and capes in which she was wrapped.

"Why, Henry, dear, what on earth are you doing here? You never come to see us any more, and I am so anxious, too, to ask you all about the stabilized dollar and these new vitamines. Susan!" she called suddenly in the general direction of the upper floors. Then, addressing no one in particular, "I must find out about the salted almonds that the Dean asked for last night," and she started for the kitchen.

"I ordered them this morning, Gumgum, myself, when I was ordering everything else. I had them on my list."

"You did?" and Mrs. Norris burst into the most contagious laughter. "Tom, I wish you'd stop my daughter calling me that horrid name. It's disgusting. I'm going to call her 'Snuffles.'"

"I really must go, Aunt Helen," said Whitman, starting for the door. The "Aunt" was a heritage of an earlier and more innocent day and not an indication of blood relationship. "Uncle Julian" had, however, been allowed to lapse, upon Henry's accession to the Woodbridge Faculty.

"Oh dear," replied Mrs. Norris. "Well, I'm coming down to see Nancy as soon as she gets back, and then you've got to come up here for dinner. It will be such a relief having her here for the party. And now," she added, putting her arm through Tom's, "I must have a little talk with Tom. I suspect he needs a pill, and I'm going to give it to him. Come here, Tommy, dear, and let me look at you," and she pulled him back into the library.

III

Mrs. Norris was about to force Tom down upon the Bosom when her eye was caught by the cheque-book on the table. "Oh, land," she exclaimed, "why didn't I give Henry his cheque! I've owed him for those German Socialist books he got me for I don't know how long, and here I've forgotten to give it to him. I must send Susan after him with it right away," and going over to a bell by the fireplace, she pushed it until Susan appeared. Then, looking at Tom, with her sweetest smile she asked, in her quietest voice, "Why don't you like Henry?"

"Why, I don't mind Henry."

"Oh, come now, Tommy." She moved over to "her" chair under the yellow lamp and, picking up the knitting immediately set the needles flying and clicking over one another. "You know you can't bear him. He is a little cut and dried--that's the trouble with him, I think--but then, as far as I can make out, you people in the classics and literatures are just as bad."

"Oh, Mrs. Norris."

"You are too. You are perfectly dreadful. Why, I can remember as well as anything, old Professor Packard standing up before that fireplace and saying, 'Helen,' says he, 'no gentleman is worthy the name who doesn't know his Horace.' 'Stuff,' says I, 'that's utter nonsense. You might as well say a gentlemen is not worthy of the name unless he knows his French for "fiddle-dee-dee"----like the Red Queen,'" and still knitting busily, she rocked with laughter.

Tom dropped into a chair beside her, threw one leg over the arm, and, pipe in hand, gazed at her affectionately. She was about the age his own mother would have been, he thought, in the immediate neighbourhood of sixty. But his own mother, who he knew had become reconciled to the life of Ephesus, could never have arrived at sixty with the imperious disregard for convention that was so perfectly Mrs. Norris's. Upon her face at present, as she looked down at her knitting, was a smiling benignity that would have recommended itself to the Virgin at Chartres; and at the same time her hair--what modest growth there was left--was uncurling itself from behind and threatening to pull down the whole structure after it. It was perfect, Tom told himself, and were he a sculptor commissioned to make her bust, he would do her just like that.

"Nancy, I sometimes think, is the worst person in the world to look after Henry. It's bad for her and bad for him. What he ought to do is to go out and get another wife and leave Nancy alone to do as she pleases. I have a good mind to take her with me to Athens next winter myself. What with Mrs. Robert Lee-Satterlee taking her to California this winter and my taking her to Athens next, Henry will have to get married."

There had been rumours abroad lately that Henry had about arrived at the same conclusion himself and that Mary Norris was receiving serious consideration as a candidate, but there was nothing in Mrs. Norris's manner that suggested a knowledge of it, and Tom correctly concluded that it was just another of those idle rumours that live their luxurious day in Faculty Row.

"Oh, my no," said Tom, "that wouldn't do at all. Why, another marriage would completely upset Henry's System that he's always talking so much about. It's almost certain she couldn't stand it, you know, and then where would Henry be? Suppose, for example, that she forgot to have his senna tea for him at night or didn't care about playing cribbage for three-quarters of an hour after dinner? Now Nancy, apparently, gives perfect satisfaction. She adores little Henry and she manages the house so well that there isn't a single thing to bother big Henry. But they say--"

"Stop it, Tommy. You've been listening again to that horrid old Mrs. Conover. Her husband was a perfect old Scrooge, and now that she's rid of him, poor dear, she feels that she's got to expand and make up for lost time----" Her voice, which had become more and more drowsy, as if bored with what it had to say, trailed off and died. Then, with renewed interest, she exclaimed, "I wonder what they are going to do about Poland?"

Tom had learned that an answer to these startling questions and comments of Mrs. Norris was not required. There was no harm, however, in saying the first thing that came into one's head, as in a psychological test, and he accordingly now answered, "Paderewski."

"Yes," said Mrs. Norris quietly. Then brightening up: "How is your work going, Tommy?"

"Why, it's going pretty well."

"They get rather difficult about this time of year, don't they?"

"They do! Oh my, I've had an awful time with them lately. I've muffed Carlyle and Transcendentalism completely."

"Oh, no! Why that's Emerson and all those Concord people. Still, I suppose Louisa Alcott is getting a little old-fashioned."

"You should have seen the set of papers I got back today. There it was, all that I had given them, in great heavy undigested lumps--"

"Like footballs," suggested Mrs. Norris.

"Once I was funny with them," went on Tom, "and I may say that I was properly punished. They put it all down in their notebooks and then mixed it up with everything they shouldn't have mixed it up with--and I shall never be funny again."

"I shall give you _at least_ two grains----"

"Then there are the young men who get off all the stale old facts and expect an A. One of them came to me yesterday, when I had given him a C, and whined around my desk until I finally told him I did not consider his performance remarkable in a young man of eighteen, however much so it might be in a poll parrot of the same age."

"Now that was wrong. Were there other boys around?"

"Yes."

"Well, you simply must not go do that kind of thing. They'll hate it."

"I know it was wrong, but I am rather amused by it. As a matter of fact, I can stand anything but the ones who think they can fool me with a lot of embroidery and gas. They're insulting----"

"Why, Tommy, you were doing the same thing yourself only three or four years ago. You mustn't get so snufty so soon."

"Of course, at times when I've had a good recitation I wouldn't trade places with anyone. It's a kind of ecstasy. It's like all sorts of rushing, exciting things--like a high tide, or a close race, or a fire; really it is. Then you go to the other extreme and you ask yourself what on earth is the use of so futile a business, and what right has a young man with anything to him whatever to waste his time with it. Better go and make bird cages or hair nets or--or--hot water bags, and make some money. When I feel that way I sometimes go out along the ridge, just at dusk, you know, or into the woods--"

"You do? Why, I think that's awfully romantic of you; like Chateaubriand, you know." Then, dreamily, "He used to go out and lean on a pedestal and let the moon shine down on him through the trees. I think Nancy is a little that way herself."

There was a pause, during which the young educator's difficulties were brushed aside.

"Do you realize that I haven't seen Nancy since leaving college?"

"Why, that's strange."

"No: you see she had left for the west before college opened in the fall, and I hadn't been back between then and the time I graduated. As a matter of fact, the last time I saw her was in this house. It was the night of our Senior Prom. I took Mary, you know, and Teddy Roberts took Nancy, and when it was over we came in here and had a cooky contest in the kitchen. Nancy could put a whole one of those gingersnaps you always have into her mouth without breaking it."

"Oh dear. I'm afraid she has the Billings mouth."

"We then got to talking about growing moustaches, and Nancy bet Teddy she could grow one before he could."

"How disgusting! That's what comes of all this emancipation. Marcus Aurelius has a lot to say about it. I must look that up. Did she win?"

"As I remember it, she was in a fair way to, but the war came along, and we left before it could be settled."

Mrs. Norris stopped knitting and looked at Tom with amused curiosity through her tortoise-shell spectacles, which had slid rather farther down her nose than usual. "I forget. Didn't you use to see a good deal of Nancy at one time?" she asked.

"Only just here," he replied.

"Oh," said Mrs. Norris, and went on with her work.

At this point the Dean entered, dressed for dinner.

"Oh dear, I'm not ready at all," cried Mrs. Norris, jumping up; and her knitting, worsted, and bag spilled out upon the floor. "Tommy, tell Norah to put on a plate for you."

"I can't really, Mrs. Norris. This is Thursday night, you see, and I'm going around to the Club." Then as his hostess disappeared up the stairs, he hurried into his overcoat and, indulging in only a small fraction of his usual recessional with the Dean, he was gone.

Outside, walking down the long driveway that led to Tutors' Lane, Tom slowed his pace. Overhead, Betelgeuse was making the most of its recent publicity, unobstructed by vagrant clouds. Tom gazed up at it with a certain air of proprietorship. He had known Betelgeuse years ago and personally had always preferred its neighbour Rigel, which had received no publicity at all. As a small boy some one had given him a Handbook of the Stars, with diagrams of the constellations on one page and chatty notes about them opposite. He had lain on his back out in the fields, with opera glasses to sweep the heavens and a flashlight to sweep the diagrams until he had reconciled the two. This had been in the summer, and although his observations had extended to the autumn stars, the winter constellations had suffered. Still, he knew the great ones and, weather permitting, he would gaze upon them and their neighbours with awe, the greater, perhaps, for his unfamiliarity with their diagrams.

Tom occasionally gave parlour lessons in astronomy, and he had given one to Nancy on the night of his Senior Prom, the night of the cooky contest. He had looked out and seen that the summer stars were up, and had spoken of it, to the boredom of Mary and Teddy Roberts. But Nancy wanted Scorpio pointed out, and from Scorpio they naturally progressed to the others until Nancy sneezed and the kitchen window had to be shut. Then, as it was getting light anyway and the waffles were ready, they stopped the lesson. Tom, however, with the true teacher's instinct, had sent her a copy of his Handbook of the Stars, and at his Training Camp he had received a note of thanks. It was the only note he had ever received from her, and he found it remarkable. She had thanked him without the barrage of gratitude usual among young ladies on such occasions. There had been something masculine in the directness of it, and yet there was no doubt that she had been pleased. In closing, she looked forward to seeing him back at Woodbridge when the war was over. There had been no fine writing about his Going to the Flag. Tom had been impressed by the amount left unsaid, and he had saved the letter until, in moving about, it had been lost. He was annoyed when he missed it, but on second thought he wondered if it were not just as well. For, on later inspection, it might not have proved so remarkable, after all.

Well, the war was now over, and he was back at Woodbridge. It would be very pleasant indeed if she had gone ahead as she gave promise of doing; and why in the world shouldn't she? When he was in college Nancy had been admittedly the first of Woodbridge young ladies. To take her to a dance was to have the ultimate in good times, there was no need to worry about her getting "stuck," and in addition to the thrill of taking a popular girl one could enjoy all the advantages of a stag. One could flit from flower to flower until surfeited with beauty and then retire for a smoke or other innocent diversion without the haunting fear that possibly Dick or Bill was circling around and around in ever-deepening gloom with one's elected for the night. Nancy had permanently impressed herself upon the imagination of discerning Woodbridge youth, and it was hardly extravagant that Tom should look forward to her return.

Let it, therefore, without further evasion, be stated at once that he did look forward to her return.

IV

Nancy Whitman arrived at Woodbridge Center as planned, and her brother and nephew were at the station to meet her, the latter with his collection of ninety-six orange pips in a candy box.

In describing Juliet it will be remembered that the author said nothing about her colour or dimensions, but described her indirectly, and succeeding generations have had their attention called to the merit of the performance. We know, for example, that she taught the candles to burn bright, and, furthermore, that she seemed to hang upon the cheek of night like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear--most probably a pearl. So, in describing Nancy, perhaps it would be effective to point out that the snow began thawing as soon as she arrived, that the motor which carried her home from the station purred along without the "knock" that had been troubling it, and that Tutors' Lane was less bumpy as they passed over it. But such a description, being dangerously near burlesque, however refined and genteel, must not be thought of for a moment in connection with a prominent resident of Tutors' Lane. It is something of a pity, nevertheless, that it must be given up, for Nancy was not particularly pretty, as young men nowadays measure beauty, and were it possible, the truth might have been hidden. She was something too elfish--and then there was the Billings mouth already mentioned. Gertrude Ellis, who spent much of her time with her aunt in New York and who had a proper care for her person, thought it a ridiculous pose for Nancy not to have something done about her freckles. It was such a simple matter nowadays to have them removed that obviously only a poseuse would tolerate them. Still, men were so unobserving about things that they didn't seem to mind them at all, and Gertrude got nowhere when she once tried to discuss Nancy with a senior.

"Oh, Nancy is so wonderful that she could look like a leopard and people wouldn't care," he had said. "It's funny about her, isn't it? She's not good looking, and yet she's so nice everyone's crazy about her. You have to hand it to a girl that's like that."

Henry Third, or Harry, as everyone but his father called him, had immediately given his collection and been rewarded. He had on his best suit for the occasion and the tie his aunt had sent him on his seventh and latest birthday. He was a handsome, sturdy boy, and his father expected a Phi Beta Kappa key of him and an enthusiasm for Marx and John Stuart Mill. His aunt's plans were vague, but altogether different. At present she was inclined to favour the family business, with the understanding that when he was established at its head he should give a beautiful chapel with a Magdalen tower to the College. His own goal was the Woodbridge football team and, after that, a locomotive on the run to New York.

They were met at the door by Annie, Harry's nurse, and by Clarence, Harry's Airedale. Clarence, who immediately dominated the scene, rendering Nancy's greeting to Annie vain and perfunctory, was a three-year-old with a frivolity of manner that ill became his senescent phiz. Upon its grizzled expanse there would pass in amazing succession the whole range of canine passion, rage, love, urbanity, shame, drollery, ennui, and, most frequent of all, curiosity. At present all his energy was devoted to expressing unmitigated pleasure, the dignity of which exhibition was continually being marred by sliding rugs. But it is almost certain that he didn't care a rap for his lost dignity. His mistress was back after an unconscionable absence, and there was every reason to believe in the reappearance of the superior brand of soup bones, a matter in which of late there had been too much indifference.

Nancy luxuriated in her renewed proprietorship of the old house, her home, and the home of her family even before the British officers seized it for their quarters in 1812. There was a hole to this day in the white pine panelling above the fireplace in the dining room, which, tradition held, had been made by a British bullet discharged after a discussion of the family port. She had found something depressing in the rococo civilization of Southern California. There was an insufficient appreciation of Mr. Square's Eternal Fitness of Things. The spirit of Los Angeles, for example, was the same as that of the picnic party which, lunching on Ruskin's glacier, leaves its chicken bones and eggshells to offend all subsequent picnickers. At Woodbridge people did not make public messes of themselves. If they picnicked on a glacier they did up their eggshells in a neat package, which, in default of a handy bottomless pit, they took home with them and put in their garbage pails. That's the way nice people behaved, and what on earth was there to be gained by behaving otherwise?