Delphi Complete Works of Booth Tarkington (Illustrated), page 673
“Yes, she does, Ames.”
“All three of us do,” he resumed. “Your not being broken-hearted over Tuke makes it easier for me to go into it with you. Of course I know you may feel it’s only another of my absurdities; but I’m pretty sure it’d be a sensible thing to do. Anyhow I’m going to ask you to think it over. I know how foreign anything sentimental is to you; but here’s the situation as I see it: we’re all three used to one another and get along together just about perfectly. For years Celia’s been really dependent on your care and in many ways I’ve been that, myself. Even lately when I’ve been looking forward to a happy married life I’ve always thought of you as an intimate part of it. I couldn’t imagine getting along without your being around somewhere pretty near. Well, Kate dear, except for moving out of this house, things wouldn’t be so very different. Do you think you could consider it, Kate? I surely don’t need to tell you what my feeling about you is — and has always been — do I?”
“No.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t need to be told what yours is for Celia and me, either. I have a strong conviction that the three of us oughtn’t to be separated. If you haven’t any other plans, would you be willing to think of it?”
Kate’s face was inexpressive and so was her voice. “Ames, you’re asking me to marry you, aren’t you?”
“Why, yes, of course.”
“You’re proposing to me,” she said, as if to herself in meditation. “You, Ames Lanning, are proposing to me, Kate Fennigate. You’re proposing to me.” Then she spoke up. “It might be thought pretty sharply on the rebound, mightn’t it?”
He was troubled and humble. “Yes — yes, I know. It might seem so; but at that I haven’t been able to imagine life without you. I admire you above anybody; you’re inexpressibly dear to me and I — —”
“Never mind.” Her face still told nothing; but she gravely gave him her hand. “I think it would be sensible, too. Yes, I will.”
. . . This was the proposal of marriage from the man Kate Fennigate had fallen forever in love with at sixteen, and in this manner she accepted him.
As she gave Ames her hand Mrs. Ferry stood in the dark doorway to the darker hall, solemnly inclined her head once and whispered the word “Gone.” Then she looked to Kate for instructions.
“Yes, I’ll come,” Kate said. “Please telephone Dr. Powls and then Mr. Plaestro. I’ll call Cousin Roberta and the others.”
Mrs. Ferry’s skirts rustled faintly, disappearing. Kate hadn’t withdrawn her hand. “Ames, will you call up the bishop and ask him? Aunt Daisy always — —”
“Yes, I know; I’ll ask him.” Ames looked down at her hand as it left his.
“Thank you,” she said in a whisper.
“Why, no, it’s nothing. I don’t mind asking the — —”
“I didn’t mean for that.”
She turned from him; but in the last half second of this movement looked up at him, and he was amazed. Such joy and bright anger, too, glowed in that one look as made him feel once again that he’d never before seen her. For that brief atom of time she was a dazing lovely stranger. The half instant’s brightness remained in the dim room after she’d left him and gone to telephone all the relatives that Aunt Daisy was dead at last.
XXV
THERE IS NO neatly closed finish, not even death, to any part of any life; but if there could exist such a thing as a portrait of Kate Fennigate done in music, then here, at this point, the second of the first two movements would be completed, the earlier having concluded with her return from Europe and the next one, now, with Aunt Daisy’s funeral. At the opening of the third movement, the more somber orchestrations would cease to be heard. The fundamental theme, Kate, would repeat; but the time would accelerate and, with this increase in activity, the mood would advance toward liveliness. A fourth movement would be indicated to follow as a consummation; but it is with the third that this interlude concerns itself.
Elements heretofore not stressed must take their place in the composition: Kate Fennigate’s life with Ames Lanning now differs from what went before. It is to be pressed that she’s American and that she was a factor in the growth of Roe Metal Products. The country and the corporation, too, would thus need to be more emphasized.
The business of the country, enfeebled after over-production, had begun its long droop before Kate Fennigate accepted Ames Lanning’s offer of marriage. The droop continued, and governmental efforts to restore prosperity by too many devices only frightened and harried the drooper. Here and there, however, shrewd heads were still erect and among them were those that built the high fortunes of Roe Metal Products. This adroit corporation rose while others fell, and so the men governing it had to meet the trials that beset worldly success. Such trials are the most perilous test of a man, for adversity tries only his courage whereas success strikes at everything weak within him. Intimate with him in poverty and believing that you know him, you may not even recognize him in his success, which will have clapped upon him a new face. Kate Fennigate was to look long upon such a face.
Over the country riches crumbled, moderate comfort grew poorer, and faintly, faintly from geologic depths beneath the soil rose sounds of thunder. Of those who heard them, some refused to listen and more announced, as if with certain knowledge, that the earthquake forming in faraway continents could never shake our American solidity. A great deal of sea water, they said, made it impossible for the dreadful tremors to reach us.
These approached, however, water or no water, and Roe Metal Products was aware of that fatal nearing. Because of it the colossal enlargements of the corporation’s Plant Three rose in the smoke of the southwestern borders of the city; and, for comprehension of what befell Kate Lanning, who in her way was one of the builders of the great edifice, the fortunes of a youth who came to do his part in it are revealing. Until he arrived he was unknown to Kate, though her husband had heard of him and Mr. Roe was expecting him.
Returning, finally, to the perhaps over-forced comparison of Kate’s portrait to a musical structure, the fourth movement would open with the young man’s coming. By this time variations based upon earlier passages might appear to be as extreme as are the often startling changes a decade can produce in the exterior life of any group of people.
XXVI
APRIL TWILIGHT DARKENED the upper grassy slopes where stood the long-roofed country club; but while the western windows still shot last sunset blazings across the river valley below, chandeliers and table lamps within the clubhouse, like an opening chorus of light instead of sound, began a festal night. Out of the great smoke smudge that betokened the city’s presence five miles down the river boulevard, hundreds of twin headlights swam fast through dimness, and now and then certain of them, bearing to the right, entered the club’s stone gateway and followed the curvings of the long drive that bordered the links. One of these cars carried onward to a new phase of his life a young man whose dispositional curiosity was at least tripled by the probability that his future depended upon people he was about to meet for the first time. It is to his credit that he didn’t know how agreeable an impression his amiable hazel eyes and general good looks would make upon them.
“How long will you let me go on being a human question-mark, Mr. Augren?” he asked the middle-aged man who drove the small coupé.
“All you like.” Mr. Augren was affable. “I’m supposed to act as a kind of governess for you these first few days. To-morrow I’ll be breaking you in at Plant Three; but now we’re on a purely social basis. My wife’d be better for that — getting you introduced around among the young — but she’s away. This shindig to-night’s for the orphan twins, Roe’s only grandchildren. One of ‘em’s a girl and not very attractive; but you’re an upstanding young feller from the romantic Southland and maybe you’d like to begin your career with Roe Metal Products as the gilded grandson-in-law of the Old Man.”
He laughed as he spoke, and the youth beside him, Miley Stuart, amiably laughed too. “What’s Mr. Roe like, Mr. Augren?”
“Probably the self-madest man in the United States,” Augren said. “He’s all right, that old bird; but I expect you’ll feel more at home at this big party of his than he will, though you’re a stranger.”
“Why?” Miley Stuart asked. “You see I don’t know anything at all about him or about what’s happened to me except that I got kept out of the army because my arm won’t salute without dislocating my game shoulder, and my great-aunt wrote to Mr. Roe for a job for me. So many of my age are beginning to be in uniform now I keep feeling I ought to apologize to everybody and explain all about how my shoulder got me rejected. I’ll feel more that way of course if we should get into the war and — —”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Augren interrupted. “You might be more use on our blueprints than you would with a gun, if it should happen that we do go in. Some of our head men think we probably will; that’s the reason for all our new expansions. You were asking me why Mr. Roe wouldn’t feel at home to-night at his own party.”
“Yes. Why wouldn’t he, Mr. Augren?”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” Augren said. “Henry L. Roe only came here about forty years ago and’s spent all his time going to church and building Roe Metal Products into one of the biggest industries in the country. Of course a great deal of the prosperity of the city revolves round him now; but on the social side I doubt if he trusts himself. This party to-night, for instance, the list of guests, music, decoration, food and everything else, I suspect he’s put up to Ames Lanning. Here’s a tip for after you get into your job, young fellow: a good deal might depend on what Ames Lanning thinks of your work.”
“Lanning, Mr. Augren? He’s not too big in Metal Products to notice how an insignificant new hand like me gets on?”
Augren chuckled and shook his head, as men do over a never-ending marvel. “Sometimes you’d almost think Ames Lanning knows how every man on the total payroll’s pulling his weight — or isn’t. Likely one reason why Mr. Roe stays in love with him, I shouldn’t wonder. Lanning’s supposed to be Roe’s head lawyer, you know; but really he’s the Grand Vizier.”
“I take it he’s a pretty able citizen, Mr. Augren.”
“Yes, we’ve all had to admit that,” Augren said. “He’s gone over the heads of the rest of us pretty fast. Roe didn’t put him on the Board of Directors till ‘thirty-six, only five years ago this spring, you see. It makes some of us swaller fairly hard; but there’s no denying he delivers. You’d be surprised! I expect right now the Old Man’d take Lanning’s say on whether to put out a new issue of preferred stock and also about the proper hair-do for the little granddaughter, Marjie Roe. What I mean, Mr. Stuart, is it won’t hurt you to remember if Lanning likes you, why, Henry L. Roe is pretty apt to like you, too. It oughtn’t to be hard: Lanning’s a good approachable sort.”
“I’m glad to hear that, sir.”
“Maybe he used to be a shade more so,” Augren added qualifyingly. “I mean maybe he used to be a little more folksy than his position lets him be now. Except socially, he wasn’t much of anybody, you see, until his legal firm beat the government in a suit it brought against Metal Products. Lanning’s name was just barely gold-leafed below the rest on his firm’s door; but it was his work at the trial that won the case. Roe saw that and right there began to take him up in a big way. Of course some people think Lanning’s begun to get a swelled head; but some people always do think that about successful men.”
“Do you, in this case, Mr. Augren?” the young man asked.
“Me? I like him fine. I’ve known him since a good long while before he got started, and you can take my word for it he’s all to the good. He didn’t get where he is by bootlicking the Old Man; Mr. Roe’s too smart and Lanning didn’t need to and wouldn’t anyhow. Call him the Brains of the Board, and from Henry L. Roe down nobody in Metal Products’ll start much of an argument with you on that. Here’s where we get out.”
The car stopped; and, leaving it at the tail of a long line of parked sedans, coupés and “convertibles”, the two made their way across a hundred yards of sward to the clubhouse. There they entered into a cheerful large confusion of voices and movement, and presently, at the top of a wide stairway, were in the midst of more of both.
“Splendiferous, what?” Augren said, alluding to the elaborately gay floral decorations, the full dress of the crowding guests, and to the strains from a distant orchestra. “Must be upwards of three or four hundred people here. Yonder’s the Old Man and his family, under the archway. Come do the polite.”
To the young Southerner’s first glance Henry L. Roe was an anti-climax, a stout little grey-haired man who’d already mussed his white tie. He was shaking hands with clustering guests, passing them along as hurriedly as he could to the twin grandchildren, Marjie and Marvin, who stood beside him. Miley Stuart had time to perceive that in looks Marjie was more “unattractive” than Mr. Augren had intimated and that Marvin was fully her twin. About twenty, rich, ugly and inoffensive, they seemed nonentities except for the riches, and riches had come to have swifter wings than formerly. Miley, a sensitive young man, knew a flighty moment of compassion for Henry L. Roe — that he had to try to make such a pair important.
Augren, however, was introducing him; and the President of Roe Metal Products, giving him an unexpectedly bright look of comprehension, became briskly hearty.
“Right, right; you look all right,” Henry L. Roe said. “Augren, he looks all right! We’ll put him through. Forty-one years ago, just before I came to this town, his great-uncle, Colonel John Miley, backed me without security, Augren. Never forgot it and never will. Give your great-aunt my love when you write to her, Miley Stuart. Here, Marjie; here, Marvin: this is Miley Stuart, a fine young man that’s going into our Plant Three to-morrow. Make him feel at home. Wait a minute!” Mr. Roe had a second thought. “They can’t do anything; got to stand here and shake hands.” He looked over his shoulder and called to a dark-eyed girl chattering with a group of young people. “Celia! Celia, come here, will you? Miley Stuart ought to meet the young folks; Celia’ll do better for that than you, Augren.” The dark-eyed girl appeared before him. “Here, Celia. Here’s Miley Stuart, a fine young man from Down South that’s just come to go into the business. You take care of him. Understand?”
Celia at once began capably to take care of the stranger. She conducted him first into the youthful group with which she’d been standing, made him known to its members; then took his arm and joined an irregular procession moving into a big room where tables were laid for the dinner that was to precede dancing. There were no place-cards, she explained; they could sit anywhere, and, from the small table she selected, they commanded, through an open wide doorway, a view of the still crowded club lounge whence they had come.
“There, Mr. Stuart,” she said. “From here you can look over almost everybody and make up your mind which ones you’d like to meet later. Snobbishly I’d call it rather a mixed crowd, because it’s a tactful concoction of Metal Products and old citizenry. That dear old Mr. Roe picked me for your Who’s Who because I can tell you about both.”
“ ’Dear old’?” Miley Stuart repeated thoughtfully. “I’m glad you call Mr. Roe that; it’s encouraging.”
“I didn’t just call him that; he is!” Celia said. “He’s a dear; but he’s datedly strict: everybody has to be terrifically good the horse-and-buggy way. You’ve noticed there are no cocktails, and the waiters’ll bring us terrapin but there won’t be any champagne.” She waved a hand toward the other tables. “Don’t you want to ask me about some of these people? I’d like to know which ones stand out to a stranger.”
As she spoke, Miley had been looking through the open doorway into the lounge, and his interest was stirred by a man and a woman, both tall, both dark, approaching the dining-room together. The man, whose hair still showed no grey, had a commanding and resourceful eye; and his air of distinction was partly an effect of the look of success he seemed to wear unconsciously and by no interpretation pompously. The woman, ten years younger, was at once notable, too, as Miley Stuart observed. “Those two tall people just coming in,” he said. “That woman in the close shiny black with the gold necklace and gold bracelets — and goldish skin, too, as if she’s been beach tanning in Florida all winter — she seems to be aware herself that she’s a personage. Who’s she and who’s the Grand Duke with her?”
Celia laughed. “You tell me. Give me your notion of ’em first and then I’ll tell you.”
“All right, I’ll try,” Miley said. “Those two would stick out from the rest in any crowd. They’re rather like the star and leading man in a play — and maybe they feel a little that way, themselves, particularly the lady. She knows how handsome she still is — I’d have to put in the ‘still’, wouldn’t I? She looks pretty experienced — enough to be over thirty, I’d guess. I think she feels important; but there’s a kind of eagerness about her —— Would you almost call it pushing, as if she’d like to be a lot more so?”
“Ouch for her; but good for you!” Celia was delighted. “What else?”
“I hope they aren’t your cousins or anything,” Miley said. “She strikes me as a woman well aware she’s had a good many men in love with her.”
“And expects they’ll go on being that way — and that there’ll be more of ’em? Proceed, stranger!”
“I like the man better,” the young Southerner said. “He looks darned able and — and pleased with himself and the world and everything but pretty friendly — and a good squareshooter, too, I’d say.”
“Right!” Celia’s pleasure continued. “Anything else?”
“Is that red-haired hollow-cheeked pale man behind them with them or just lurking along? He makes them look more like play hero and heroine than ever — as if he’s the villain of the piece. I suppose they’re husband and wife and he’s — —”
