Chapter 3

So Nancy was glad to be home and see again the family things she had grown up with and loved. She was glad to see Henry, who appeared in his turn glad to see her; but her feelings upon being restored to her nephew were much deeper than either. Harry mattered more to her than anyone else in the world. Her mother, who had died five years ago, when Nancy was twenty, had been particularly devoted to him; and this would have been sufficient reason in itself for commending him to her tenderest care.

Such was the family that would have met the casual eye of a stranger: a young professor in extremely comfortable circumstances, with a brilliant future and an enviable son, living in a fine old house administered by a younger sister, the favourite daughter of the town. Beneath the surface, however, and unknown except to a few, was a conflict of wills that only an exterior made up of strong family pride and respect for the established order could have withstood.

On the evening of the day on which Mrs. Robert Lee-Satterlee--the grandeur of whose name was never reduced by the omission of a single syllable--asked Nancy to go to California, Nancy had talked it over with Henry.

"It would be nice to go, for I haven't really been away since Mother died. I confess I'd like it, but she's not coming back until March, and that seems a long time to leave Harry and the house."

Henry had leisurely put his cigar into his mouth, had puffed luxuriously, and had then continued to gaze at his paper without saying anything.

Nancy hated this indifference, and she knew that Henry knew that she hated it. It was like his whistling. At times, when for some reason or other he wished to be disagreeable, he would start quietly whistling behind his paper, apparently for his sole enjoyment. It was as if, in view of the coldness of his audience, he were forced to express himself in a humble and subdued manner, but express himself he must. The tunes that he chose were The Rosary, The Miserere, Tosti's Good-bye, Gounod's Ave Maria. There would be an occasional lapse into the jazz song of the moment, and quite frequently a sacred number. The songs themselves exasperated her, but what was unbearable were the trills and improvised fireworks. She would leave the room thoroughly angry, and would fancy that as she ascended the stairs the tune swelled slightly and acquired even more airs and graces.

So now, as he deliberately smoked his cigar without noticing her, her anger rose. He was so smug, so self-sufficient--she wanted to stick a pin into him.

"It isn't, of course, as if the house were not in capable hands," she went on, "for Katie and Julia are perfectly responsible, and Annie couldn't be better." Henry put down his paper, blew a cloud of smoke, and, looking blandly at her, twisted his mouth so that he might enjoy the luxury of biting his cheek.

"Well?" burst out Nancy. "I don't see why you need be so irritating about it?"

"Why, don't be foolish," he replied with an amused smile; "do just what you want, of course." To Nancy, the smile spoke a great deal more. "How fatuous you are," it said, "with your devotion to my son and to me. Let a lollypop in the way of a trip to California come along, and away you go as if you didn't have a responsibility in the world. There's a firm nature for you."

She had fled to Mrs. Norris, as always in an emergency, and, receiving reassuring words, she had gone, but not without tears and misgiving and not without an unforgettable memory of Henry's behaviour.

She had frankly discussed her Henry Problem with Mrs. Robert Lee-Satterlee. "I can't seem to reach any middle ground with him," she had said. "Either I feel terribly because things go so wrong, so much worse than when Mother was alive, or else I am furious with him. Then I am overwhelmed with mortification and make up my mind that I _will_ get on with him, no matter what happens. And of course he can be perfectly lovely when he wants to be--and then he will deliberately go and do some horrid thing which makes me want to go away and--drive an auto stage, or something."

As a matter of fact Nancy would on these occasions, retire and invest herself in some such romantic, emancipated, rôle. Possibly she would be a great surgeon. Having gone through her preliminary training with unprecedented speed, she had established herself as a famous specialist--of the brain. People who had gone wrong in their heads would be brought to her by their desperate friends and relatives. If she only would help them out. She did usually, although heaven knew that she was but one little woman to so many brains, and as she worked chiefly under God's guidance, anyway, she had to conserve her strength. However, she operated steadily from eight in the morning until eight at night with only a light lunch in between--possibly only a water cracker. She saw herself in the operating room with her rubber gloves and her knives. There was a hazy cloud of white-robed nurses and distinguished surgeons who, attracted from all over the world, had come to see her miracles for themselves. A form was on the table, with head shaved. She was to go into his cerebellum and take out a tumor which had caused deafness, dumbness, and blindness. She would probably have to make two hundred stitches or more in sewing him up, but she always had been good at needlework, and it gave her no concern. She picked up her saw--but to her horror she found she couldn't bear to stick it in!

Or she was a famous lawyer, strongly reminiscent of Portia, specializing in pleading for widows and orphans. She had a secretary to handle her correspondence, who explained that as Miss Whitman was able to work chiefly by the grace of God--her health was none too robust, and it was necessary for her to put her trust in Him--it really was not fair of them to expect her to handle their cases. However, the most outrageous ones she passed on to Nancy and it was by them that Nancy made her great reputation. Of course she took no fees, but as body and soul had to be kept together and the secretary's salary paid, she wrote syndicated articles for the papers, on religious and ethical subjects. Naturally she was an object of interest and curiosity and people thronged the court room when she pleaded. They saw a quiet woman, dressed in black, but when she began speaking you could hear a pin drop. There was a thrilling quality in her voice, much remarked by the press, and big lawyers pitted against her had been known to break down and weep, to the confusion of their clients. The judge--it was always the same one--had a big bushy beard, and, though of fierce and impartial mien at the beginning of the proceedings, he had been known time and again, as her address continued, to draw forth his large silk handkerchief and blubber into it. The gratitude of the widows--who extended in a long, black line, leading their army of white-faced little boys, looking strangely like Harry when he had the croup--was the one thing that she could not stand. She would not see them when it was all over, but she couldn't keep them from sending her flowers, and accordingly her apartment was always a bower.

So mighty would these scenes be, so moving, and so pathetic, that Nancy would emerge entirely at peace with Henry and the world. They dwarfed the cause of her anger; they left her calm and serene, a cousin to the Superwoman.

* * * * *

The first evening at home passed off very pleasantly indeed. Henry was charmingly interested in the details of her trip, and the usual cribbage session was doubled. Harry's progress at school and through the mumps--an illness which had torn his aunt--were duly recounted and the maids given a good bill of health. The state of Henry's classes was described at some length. They were slightly better than usual, it appeared, and his special course in Labour Problems was going perfectly. It was really making him famous, he told Nancy.

That night in her room, as she sat at her desk writing her diary, she calmly told herself that the present tranquillity should last. She solemnly resolved to guard against every possible contingency that might lead to a "situation." She did not purpose to surrender her individuality; she would not become a dummy. But there _must_ be a middle ground where she could blend service to herself with service to her family. Life should be rich, but it ought also to be tactful. Surely this was not an impossible union. Very well, then, she would live richly and tactfully.

Just exactly what she meant by living richly she didn't quite know. It would doubtless be somewhat clearer in the morning when she wasn't so sleepy. Americanization work in Whitmanville. That seemed to offer rich possibilities. There must be room for endless Uplift in Whitmanville. And what could be richer than Uplift? She would start a school, she thought, as she turned off the light and climbed into her four-poster. She would teach the women how to take care of their babies and the men how to take care of their women. But it must all be done tactfully. She must be eternally vigilant upon that score. Yet not so tactful as to become less rich. Nor yet so rich as to become less tactful.... Tact and riches--riches and tacks--tracts--striches--....

V

The night following Nancy's return was the night of the Norris party, the party which is to Woodbridge what the Mardi Gras is to New Orleans, the Carnival to Rome, and what the Feast of the Ygquato Bloom was to the ancient Aztecs. It is always held on the twenty-first of March, Sunday of course excepted, and it is known as the Vernal. Not to be seen at it is too bad. Not to be invited--unlike the lupercals before mentioned it requires invitations--is a blight mercifully spared all but the most painfully outré. Of these the Coogans, who live in Center and whose connubial infelicities are proverbial, are an example. Tradespeople frequently bear witness to the marks of a man's fingers on Mrs. Coogan's fair--and by no means insignificant--arm, and it is common property that she drinks paregoric. It is quite clear, of course, that such people can not expect to be invited.

The Vernal has always been "different." In the old days Mrs. Norris set her face against dancing, not upon any moral grounds, certainly, but because of its alleged dullness. Why couldn't people enjoy one another without flying into a perspiration? she asked; but, unfortunately for her plans for the establishment of an animated conversazione, the substitutes she had advocated were felt to be even duller. So, one by one, all her nice games were abandoned and only the charade is left. This however has gained in popularity, if anything, and certainly it has gained paraphernalia. Mrs. Norris's costume box has overflowed into a trunk, and from the trunk has spread into a closet, and the closet is now nearly filled. From this treasure the two captains select their colleagues' wardrobes, a duty discharged in advance of the performance by way of ensuring enough professionalism to prevent the party's collapsing at the start. In other words, Mrs. Norris, although luckless in the matter of "adverbs," memory contests, and backgammon tourneys, has established charades.

It used to be a masquerade party, but because of certain unhappy circumstances which have recently befallen, it was decided this year to do without the masks and "Fancy dress." For the last few years people have been complaining a little of the necessity of getting something new each year. Mrs. Bates, for example, has exhausted the possibilities of her husband's summer bath robe. It served excellently at first as a Roman toga, and the next year it did well enough for Mephistopheles. By cutting away the parts ravaged by moths it passed as a pirate, but she despairs of any further alteration. Then, too, it would always be remembered that a stranger at the last Vernal had in all seriousness reproved old Professor Narbo, the Chemist, for not taking off his funny old mask when he already had done so, a mishap none the less enjoyed because the bringing of a similar charge to one's friends has been an inevitable jest among the wags for generations. Professor Narbo had been offended, and great is the offendedness of a Full Professor, particularly when he is a Heidelberg Ph.D. and parts his hair all the way down the back. The stranger had been crushed; and, all in all, it was as mortifying an affair as one could well imagine, and one which in itself would have been enough to do away with the masks--a long-discussed possibility--had not worse followed. Edgar Stebbins, Assistant Professor of History, was unfortunately a little too warmly devoted to the memory of the grape, or, more specifically, of the corn. Being mildly mellowed by something more than the memory of it, he found occasion to embrace a lady who was dressed in his period, the Late Roman, and to whom he was naturally drawn. The lady promptly screamed and unmasked; and the situation was not at all improved by its being discovered that she was the wife of Professor Robbins of the Latin Department, with which gentleman Mr. Stebbins was not on speaking terms. Mrs. Robbins, it seemed, had employed the squeaky voice so familiar at masquerade parties and had thus rendered her disguise complete. Upon her testimony it was learned that Mr. Stebbins's voice had been so roughened by drink that his own mother wouldn't have recognized it. Mr. Stebbins had withdrawn from the party and, at the end of the academic year, from the college as well, and his name is now only an appalling memory.

In the morning Nancy hurried up to the Norrises' as soon as she could. She found Mary and her mother in the drawing-room. Mary was playing the piano while her mother sat in a distant chair, amiably shredding codfish, a pleasure which she would on no account yield to the kitchen.

As soon as the rush of sisterly greeting was passed, all four--for the cod could not be left behind--repaired to the sofa in the library; and after the gaps in their correspondence had been filled, they came to the party. Mary was to be one of the charade captains and Tom Reynolds the other. Nancy, who was an inevitable member of the charade, was to be on Tom's side.

"Tell me," she asked, "is he really as nice as you people make out?"

"Oh yes," replied Mary, "he's one of us."

"He used to scare me. He never would dance with me any more than he had to, and I always was afraid he would get that terribly bored look I've seen him get. I think probably he's conceited."

"Oh dear, to hear you girls talk you'd think that a little honest boredom was the most dreadful thing on earth. Why, your fathers used to get so bored with us that----"

"Now, Gumgum, you know that isn't sensible," broke in Mary severely--a regrettable habit which seems increasingly prevalent among our modern daughters--"unless you people were ninnies."

"That was in Garfield's administration," replied Mrs. Norris absently, "or possibly a little before, in Hayes's--Rutherford B. Hayes. He did away with the carpetbaggers and all those dreadful people in the South." Then, more dreamily still, "His middle name was Birchard."

"I know why you think he's conceited," Mary went on, warming up to the never-ending pleasure of analysis, "but it's because he's really diffident. Lots of people I know who people think are snobby are only just diffident."

"What on earth do you mean by saying that Rutherford Hayes was diffident? He wasn't a bit. He was a very great philanthropist."

"She's too awful today," exclaimed Mary, "with that smelly old fish and Rutherford Garfield. Gracious, I'd like to bury the old thing."

"You horrid, ungrateful child, when I'm doing this for your lunch. We're just old Its, we mothers. I'm going to start an Emancipation Club for Mothers. The poor old things, they might just as well crawl away into the bushes like rabbits."

There then followed a tender passage between mother and daughter, which ended in Mary's blowing down her mother's neck. A convulsive scream and a frantic clawing gesture in the direction of her daughter was the immediate reaction, much to the confusion of the codfish, which was only just saved by Nancy from a premature end upon the hearth.

Following the rescue, the heroine, who had some shopping to do, began making motions of departure. "You must come as soon as you can after dinner to have Tom explain what you are to do. Gumgum thinks we ought to have a rehearsal, but Tom has a five o'clock, and I don't think it's necessary anyway. He's really awfully funny and clever, Nancy, and you must like him."

"I hate clever people. I have nothing to say to them. I'm a perfect gawk when they're around, and I'm afraid I won't be able to stand him."

As she walked on down to Center, however, it occurred to her that he might come in useful with the children of the parents in her Whitmanville school. He could teach them basketball and of course he could coach their baseball team. He would also be useful in taking them off on hikes and--But she hadn't seen him in ever so long, and he might not do at all. In fact, it was highly probable that he wouldn't do, for boys are suspicious of clever people, and he almost certainly wouldn't think of doing it. Or possibly he might, out of politeness, and then when he got bored with it he would decide to be funny with the boys, and they would get to hate him and tell their parents, who would come to her with sullen looks and threatening gestures and----

When Nancy arrived in the evening, she found Tom distributing costumes. He was heavier, she noticed, and his forehead was higher. Some day she might get a chance to tell him how she saved Henry's hair simply by brushing it carefully. It was ridiculous to put a lot of smelly greasy stuff on it----

She had shaken hands with him and received her costume which was an aigrette and a peacock-feather fan. "The word is 'draper,'" explained Tom, "and you are to be the Lady Angela. In the first syllable you have lost your pet Persian and, after explaining your loss to the little house-maid who is dusting around, you call in Merriam the detective. I am Merriam the detective and I arrive immediately after you are through calling me up on the telephone. The little maid goes over to the window and says, 'Goody, here comes Mr. Merriam the detective in a dray,' and then you go out to meet me, and that's the first act. Then I come on alone in the second act and investigate the room heavily, looking for a clue, you see. I have a theory that the little maid is the thief, and when you come in, as you do when I have said 'Ha, it is a match box,' I explain to you that----"

"Oh, dear, I haven't any idea what I'm to do."

"Well, you just go in and wave your fan disconsolately, and I'll do the rest. It will be dreadful, of course, but then, no one ever expects them to be otherwise. Now I think the best way is for us to run over it, and then little things will come to you."

VI

Downstairs the Dean and Mrs. Norris had begun receiving their guests, most of the receiving being done by the Dean. His wife, whose trail was like that of a runaway astral body, was here, there, and everywhere, calling, ordering, laughing.

The Misses Forbes, invariably the first comers, had taken possession of front-row seats. This year Miss Edith had the Burnham lace--an heirloom whose glory could on no account be dimmed by a tri-partite division--and Miss Annie had the Burnham pearls. They were a modest string, perhaps, but they lived on after more spectacular ones became gummy. As for Miss Jennie, the youngest, aged sixty-five, she was something of a philosopher, being the community's sole theosophist, and she regarded her sisters' pleasure in their baubles with amusement. Nor could she be drawn into a discussion of their ultimate disposition, a nice problem, for other Burnhams and Forbeses were there none. "Why not give them to the museum?" she had once suggested, to the sorrow of her sisters, who hated to see her cynical side. Worse than that, she was a radical and had boldly come out for the open shop, or the closed shop, whichever was the radical one, and she talked very wildly indeed of Unions and Compensation Bills.

Miss Elfrida Balch had arrived, and likewise her brother, the artist. Miss Balch was a lady of almost crystalline refinement. She was tall and fair, with a delicacy of complexion that stood in no need of retailed bloom. She might have passed for the daughter of a kindly old Saxon chieftain--it was, indeed, generally known that she sprang from the seed of Saxon kings--who, firm in the belief that no young man was her equal in birth or behaviour, had insisted upon her declining into a spinsterhood which increased in refinement as it did in service. Sentimental persons held that she came by that manner from association with Art in her brother's studio. Others, of a more sardonic turn, said that her manner was that of one who continually smelled a bad smell, and that if she got it by looking at her brother's pictures they didn't wonder.

Leofwin Balch was not a personable gentleman. The early Saxon strain in him had taken the form of obesity, a tendency not confined, if we may trust the evidence of scholars, to descendants of Saxon kings. To those who had little sympathy with genius in its more alarming shapes, his fair chin whisker seemed an absurdity. The more discriminating, however, welcomed it. Anything might be expected of a man with a chin whisker which some one, with more imagination than restraint, had described as an "attenuated shredded wheat biscuit seen through a glass darkly." Leofwin's work had of late years suffered on account of a rheumatism which defied medicine. He had sacrificed his tonsils and nine teeth upon the altar of Art with little or no relief, and it was now feared by those closest to him, his sister and himself, that he would never again approach the promise given in his "Willows." "Willows" had received an honourable mention at the Exhibition--just which Exhibition, was a subject of controversy among the uninitiated--and had been purchased by a rich baronet in Suffolk. The Balches had seen it in his gallery, and it had become an open secret that hanging in the same room were a Constable and a John Opie.