Delphi Complete Works of Booth Tarkington (Illustrated), page 668
“But it does,” Ames pointed out, with a response like Mr. Berriam’s to Morella. “She wouldn’t have taken a way that could fail. She’d have done something else. The answer to your morbidness is that she’s still alive.”
Kate didn’t think this the answer; but he was unhappily right about Aunt Daisy’s still being alive. She lay month after month in her old Eastlake bed upstairs. After her fall she never again spoke intelligibly. No one knew what she thought.
XIX
ALTHOUGH IT IS true that nothing except change is permanent, the changes seem to move at such variable gaits that sometimes their motion isn’t perceptible to us and we believe ourselves to be stabilized, living in a static world. After the great jolt that ends such a delusion we look back, and, always pressing for lingual definitions, say that we were living in an epoch. For some reason this seems to satisfy us, even though we cannot fail to perceive that the epoch was itself anything but static — on the contrary, a rapid slide toward the jolt. During the hours, days or years of jolt we know all too well that we’re in extremities of motion and often desolately wonder where we shall come down when the explosion that hoisted us shall have expended its force.
The dispersive concussions of Nineteen twenty-nine were accelerated through the year Nineteen-thirty; Kate Fennigate, unusually steady-headed for her age, twenty-two, wasn’t at all sure where she or anybody else was to come down — though she made an exception of old Mr. Henry L. Roe. She spoke of this to her friend Tuke Speer as they sat again in the faded library under Uncle John Cunningham’s portrait, where Tuke hadn’t been for a long time.
“He’s an unbeatable old marvel!” she said. “Went ahead and finished his Equitable Trust Company building, nineteen stories, according to original plans just as if nothing were happening. Everybody said it would be a case of Roe’s Folly and the whole building’d stand vacant; but look at it! Uses the four top floors for the headquarter offices of Roe Metal Products and of course the ground floor and second and third for the Trust Company. Well, there are about six floors of doctors and surgeons and specialists because he got the Wilson X-ray people to bring their laboratories here, just over ’em. Quite a lot of the rest of the building is rented, too — it’ll pay its taxes. But you’ll see it to-morrow.”
“Yes, we’re putting our conclusions before the Old Man in the morning.” Tuke had been away five months, engaged in work for Roe Metal Products. “Of course I’ve been only a junior technical member of the squad he sent East; but I’ve had quite a hand in drawing up our report. Our recommendations are going to be in line with the policy he followed in putting up that building. They’re to the effect that Metal Products is strong enough to organize an Eastern Division right now, Depression or no Depression. Everybody else is retrenching, nobody’s buying anything; but Roe makes some gadgets that save people money and we’ve found him some empty factories that he can buy for nothing and re-vamp. Talk about economic revolution — our report favors expansion on a falling market. How do you think he’ll take it?”
“All right, Tuke, if your squad keeps reminding him that it’s his own idea. I’ll put in a word for you with him if I ever get the chance.”
“You’re that thick with him, are you?” Tuke laughed.
“You’d be surprised! Anyhow since you went East he’s put me in his own office, and every now and then he asks me questions you’d never believe. That doesn’t mean I quite dare to thrust my opinions upon him.”
“No,” Tuke said. “You mean you don’t thrust ’em on him yet. Up to now they’ve probably been shown to Mr. Roe in much the same way your opinions about my private affairs have been shown to me. You don’t suppose I’ve ever been really in the dark about your opinion of Laila Capper, do you? Or of what you think of me for being in love with her?”
Kate looked down at her hands, small and quiet upon her lap. “You say ‘being’ in love with her, Tuke. Then your absence hasn’t — —”
“I didn’t write a single word to her. The night before I left I told her I wouldn’t, I never wanted to hear of or from her again. She wrote me four letters I didn’t answer. Well, I got off the train at five o’clock this afternoon and didn’t call her up; instead I went to the club. By the way, I was pleased to see Ames there. I had a drink with him and Sam Augren in a corner and he told me you were well and enjoying your work. Said I’d find you here in the old house if I looked in any time after your office hours.”
“He did? Ames suggested your coming to see me?”
“Naturally I’d have come pretty soon anyhow,” Tuke said. “I’d certainly want to say hello, wouldn’t I? Ames didn’t say how you still happen to be here. When I went East the place had already been on the market four or five months, hadn’t it? — everything to be sold and — —”
“It still is,” Kate informed him. “Everything still is to be sold or leased. Unfortunately for Mr. Beaton and Mr. Lucius they’ve never had but the one really serious ‘prospect’ — that rug dealer who was here the day of my aunt’s accident and didn’t come back. Nothing’s changed since you left: we’re still here, at Mr. Lucius’s request and a nominal monthly rent — just to have the place looking as if it were ‘a little kept up,’ he says. Our agreement to show ‘prospects’ over the house if any turn up hasn’t burdened us much.”
“ ’Our’? ‘Us’?” Tuke asked, and for a moment looked as if a new thought about her began to puzzle him. “You and Ames?”
She caught his look but didn’t show that she understood it. “Oh, there are other people here, of course. There’s the cook and Mrs. Ferry — Mrs. Ferry’s the woman who looks after my aunt — and except in school hours there’s Celia, too. Celia’s become quite a responsible person since she’s been at Miss Carroll’s, you know.” Kate’s voice changed a little, as it always did when she mentioned Miss Carroll’s School; but Tuke didn’t notice this wistful slight alteration. Kate hadn’t presented Celia at the school; she’d arranged for Martha Gilpin to do that. “My aunt sleeps, or seems to, most of the time, Tuke; so when the cook’s out and Celia’s in school Mrs. Ferry’s usually available.”
Kate continued to speak casually of these domestic arrangements but omitted some that were more intimate. She had tried to persuade Ames to move to an apartment with Celia — yet was never to be sure that she’d tried as hard as she could. A surreptitious remorse sometimes beset her and she nagged herself for not having got them out of the gloom of the house that still contained the living-dead Aunt Daisy in the room where Cousin Roberta, when she came, only whispered with Kate or Mrs. Ferry. A consciousness of that room pervaded every part of the house; Kate pressed this upon Ames as a reason for taking Celia out of it. He said no, he and his daughter were more in duty bound to see it through than a niece was; and Kate, yielding guiltily she feared, took up financial questions with him. She paid half the “nominal rent”, also everything for Aunt Daisy, including Mrs. Ferry, and half of the monthly bills. Otherwise Ames couldn’t have sent Celia to Miss Carroll’s and joined the Carlyle Club, necessities upon which Kate insisted. Mr. Roe had been liberal; but Kate still had to step lightly to save the soles of her shoes.
As she went on talking, telling Tuke nothing of these matters but becoming uncharacteristically voluble upon others, his new thought of her reappeared in his expression. It became one of surprised curiosity. “I think I get the picture,” he said finally. “In the evenings after you’ve spelled Mrs. Ferry you go over Celia’s school work with her; then if Ames is at home you and he get out the chess board. You’ve got him started going out again, though, quite a little, I seem to see — the club or now and then a party with his married crowd. You don’t go with him to the parties?”
“Why, no, of course not; there’s too much to do here.”
“Yes, I suppose so.” Tuke looked reflective. “Your account of things — really almost entirely about him — well, I wonder if you realize, yourself, Kate, what a domestic scene you paint.”
“What?”
“You don’t know it?”
“No!” she exclaimed, and her angry blush was deep. “What’s ‘domestic’ about my sticking to a paralyzed aunt, the nearest relative I have — or about Ames and Celia’s feeling they couldn’t decently abandon her, either? Celia’s only a child and a nervous one; but she’s at least able to think of such things and want to do her share. She’s — —”
“Yes, I’m sure she is.” Tuke was amiably amused. “Kate, you seem rather flustered. In fact, I don’t recall seeing you more so. Of course you know I’d never be intrusive in your — —”
“You may, though!” Kate had her poise again. “You may be as intrusive in my private affairs as you like, because I haven’t any. Let’s get to something more exciting. I mean your private affairs, Tuke. You say you didn’t call Laila up this afternoon but went to the club instead. It’s ten o’clock now and you got here about nine. You stayed all that time at the club — four hours?”
He laughed, seeing how keenly her eyes were fixed upon him. “You should have been a criminal lawyer. You think I’ve gone back on everything I swore to myself, do you? You think I’ve seen Laila?”
“Of course.”
“You’ve got me,” he admitted, smilingly rueful. “You’re too much for me. I didn’t call her up; but she called me at the club. She must have had scouts out because she knew I’d got back this afternoon. I haven’t a chance on earth, Kate; I couldn’t get out there fast enough. Gave me just one look and I made it all up with her. Everything’s angelic again and I’m rolling in silly bliss. No Patterson boy, no anybody. Nobody but me. That is, of course there are some old stand-bys, and Bill Jones grabbed her after dinner for something she’d promised and couldn’t get out of. Dinner itself strictly family — just her mother and stepfather and Laila and me. Mr. and Mrs. Barnes didn’t give me their blessing in so many words; but they had a melancholy air of sanction of me. Laila laughed about that when we were alone afterward before Bill came.”
“Did she?” Kate asked. “About their melancholy sanction of you?”
“Yes. She can be pretty fascinatingly humorous sometimes. She said they reminded her of a kind old couple who were going to the poorhouse and couldn’t take their pet canary with ’em but thought they’d found it a fairly good home — not what they’d hoped for the poor little bird but anyhow somebody who’d do his best to buy enough birdseed. Not laughing, Kate? You’d heard Mr. A. Villrid Barnes got badly caught in the big collapse, hadn’t you?”
“Yes, Tuke. Looking over the town one doesn’t ask who’s gone under: one asks who hasn’t. I’ve wondered what Mr. Barnes’d do. I even wondered if — —” She paused.
It was Tuke’s turn to be shrewd. “You even wondered if Laila’d go to work?”
“Well, almost. I mean I almost wondered that; but not quite.”
“No.” He spoke earnestly. “She was never meant for it. She was just meant to be beautiful, Kate — beautiful and worshiped. Some things are created to live on high. The Acropolis oughtn’t to be turned into a factory, ought it? There I go, making you think again that I’m a fantastic ass. To get down to earth, I don’t mind telling you I think it’s about settled. Her flashy old stepfather — I oughtn’t to call him flashy any more because the poor berry’s down on his luck and looks it — but anyhow, he mentioned that he thought he had an opening on the coast, Seattle or somewhere, and he and Mrs. Barnes are talking of moving out there. Laila told me she couldn’t bear the idea and absolutely wouldn’t. She hasn’t promised in so many words; but I think, Kate — I really do believe so this time — I think she’s going to stay here — with me. Unless I’m the worst fooled man alive, my going away really did some good. Well, being pretty sure of your true opinion, I suppose if I’m able to drag her into a Justice of the Peace’s office one day before long I’ll have your condolences. Will I?”
“No, Tuke, I’ll keep those for myself. Of course I pretty well lost you long ago when she first laid hands on you; but after you’re married I shouldn’t expect — —”
“Don’t jump so far,” he said, smiling. “Married? With Laila, a man couldn’t entirely believe that till the deed were done. It does begin to look like it, though, Kate. Well, I’ve hoped that maybe it wouldn’t interfere with you and me — that maybe I’d even see more of you than I have during all these fracases and make-ups I’ve had with her. Laila as a married woman would be an awful lot improved by your influence, Kate. No, don’t stare; she would. I’ve thought maybe you and she could be as thick as you used to be. I’ve hoped so. She talks a lot about you, you know. She was asking me all about you to-night. I — —” Tuke hesitated timidly. “I told her I wished you and she saw more of each other nowadays. Could you — could you stand it, Kate?”
His earnestness and that timid hope of his were touching; Kate was easily reached that way. She told him she could stand anything for him.
Deeply pleased, he showed great feeling; and, in these moments of emotional friendship, neither of them realized the extent of what they were implying about Laila Capper.
XX
IT WAS APPARENTLY something like a new Laila who came to please the most constant of her lovers by renewing an old intimacy. At the top of her beauty and in the hour of its compelling radiant full bloom she seemed anxious to be ingratiating. She’d simplified herself and announced to Kate that she’d discarded her affectations; she had the grace to laugh at them.
“Oh, yes, I’m onto myself these days!” she said. “Tuke’s tough medicine to swallow. Every time he thinks I’m putting on side, dropping my R’s and all that, he burlesques it, gives me a horrible imitation of myself. I can hardly stand him most of the time; but anyhow I’m through being anything but natural. Guess I’ve been going through sort of a raw period; but I’m not the only girl that ever caught it. He’s always talking about you and it makes me sick; but he might be right at that, old girl. Looking back over my life, I’ve often thought you’re the only real friend I ever had. Mom’s all right; but she can be a hellion to me too when she feels like it, you know.”
“I’ve had the idea she was always jolly with you, Laila.”
“So? You ought to’ve seen her a few times when she’d get jealous of me about her old Barnesy! When he gave me that car — whooee! Anyhow, though, Kate, I think Tuke’s correct about you, and I’m pretty crazy about him right now. I don’t know if you still like me as much as you did; but I’d be glad if you do. I think he kind of hopes we’ll make it a foursome.”
Kate didn’t immediately grasp this. “A what?”
Laila’s tone became cozy. “Well, you see, Tuke’s so devoted to Ames Lanning, and you and I used to be such good friends, too, so if we were that way again — why, I think Tuke feels it would be pretty nice all round. You know what I mean: bridge and golf and little parties like all four dining at restaurants together sometimes, and all that.”
“It’s Tuke’s idea, Laila?”
“Well, of course he didn’t put it just exactly that way, Kate; but — —”
“He knows I couldn’t,” Kate said. “I’m at the office all day and the rest of the time I can’t go out anywhere, particularly not in the evenings.”
“Just on account of your aunt’s condition?” Laila looked arch for a moment; but let the look be the extent of her badinage. “Well, of course that isn’t going to last forever,” she added. “Listen, does she just lie there all this time? Somebody told me she couldn’t speak and couldn’t move, except one hand. Does she — does she recognize anybody? You, for instance?”
“I’m not sure, Laila. She tries to speak sometimes, a little — and I’m afraid she thinks I’m Mary.”
“Golly, Kate! Well, cheerio! We’ll hope Tuke’ll get his way about the foursome before so very long, and in the meantime I think you’re the same dear little thing you always were and aren’t going to mind my giving you a big rush to please him and improve my character — on his account!” She laughed and took Kate’s hand affectionately. “Okay, girlie?”
. . . Laila’s “rush” wasn’t agreeable to the young Celia, approaching now the age of thirteen. She’d long looked upon Kate as her own property and spoke out against the encroachment. “What’s the matter with that woman?” she inquired one day. “I’ve got a crush myself. It’s Mamie Augren; she’s a senior. Nearly all the girls in my class have ’em on some senior; but I didn’t suppose it was the custom among adults. Here, all of a sudden half the afternoons when you get home from downtown and I need you for lots of things unless I go somewhere, why, she pops in, obtruding herself, and I can’t get in a word edgeways. It’s almost rude the way she shows she doesn’t take any interest in me. Anyhow, though, thank heaven she’s never here in the evening.”
A few hours later Celia found herself mistaken. Laila had lingered, chattering about herself, about Tuke, about families that formerly possessed six cars and now had only the Chevvie left, when she seemed to realize abruptly that she was staying too long. She and Kate were in the living-room and Ames was heard to open the front door, pass through the hall and go upstairs.
“My, I didn’t know it was that late!” Laila exclaimed and jumped up. “Stops at the club on his way home, doesn’t he?” She looked at her watch. “Gosh, yes, dinnertime. I wish I’d made a date to eat with Tuke downtown. I certainly don’t enjoy the prospect of sitting at table with Mom and Barnesy — not this evening, thank you! I didn’t tell you about that, did I?”
“No, not yet, Laila.”
“Same old story,” Laila said. “Mom’s got another fit. Barnesy’s always been bad style, you know; great big diamond ring on his little finger. Well, Mom insisted on his selling the stone to get more dough for whatever he thinks he’s going to do out on the west coast, and she thought he had. Of course I knew in these times he wouldn’t get what it’s worth or I wouldn’t have let him; but anyway he had it worked up into a really swell clip-pin for me, with some little bitty stones round the big one, and Mom found out about it yesterday. It makes really a pretty nifty gem, Kate, and one reason I got the old bird to do it was I thought maybe if I’m going to need a trousseau I could sell it for enough to fit me out kind of cutely, though of course I’d hate to give it up. One thing’s certain: I’m not going out west with that couple!”
