Delphi Complete Works of Booth Tarkington (Illustrated), page 702
“That girl, my cousin, yes,” he said. “She had me say I’d be there at five o’clock and her mother wants me to lunch with them to-morrow. Why do I come running to you? Well, you’ve braced me up before this to meet people. What I need is somebody to tell me to wash out my jitters, step up like a little man and get these things over with. That’s what you’ll tell me, isn’t it?”
“I — —” She hesitated. “I’m not sure.”
“You aren’t?” Bailey’s head drooped. “That’s too bad. You don’t think I’m capable of it.”
“What nonsense!” Helena Jyre showed impatience. “Of course you are! You can go anywhere and meet anybody. Don’t for a moment think you can’t.”
“You believe so? I don’t suppose — I hope — —” He began again: “I was hoping it’d be just possible that if there are going to be some other people there this afternoon or at lunch to-morrow, maybe she’d asked you too. I’d feel a lot more propped up if you were there.”
“I?” Helena suppressed the impulse to ask him if he hadn’t seen how that girl had treated her yesterday; she said only, “No, I’m not invited.”
“Perhaps — perhaps Mr. Rossbeke, then, or — or Mrs. Williams or — —”
“No. Most unlikely.”
“Then they’ll all be strangers.”
She put her hand upon his arm. “See here; you don’t have to drive yourself. These Oaklins aren’t such close relatives of yours; you needn’t feel compelled to — —”
“But I think I promised — —” He broke off; then spoke thoughtfully. “My Cousin Josephine seems to be a confusing sort of girl. Wouldn’t you think so?”
“Yes, I would. She made you promise you’d come to-day — and to-morrow, too?”
“It seems so. I’ll have to go through with it. Maybe I can, thanks to you.”
“Thanks to me? What in the world do you mean?”
“Why, for believing I’m capable of it.” There was a rustle behind them as the two librarians, an elderly married couple, came in from their lunch. Bailey rose. “Since you think I can do it I’ll — I’ll try. Thank you, Miss Jyre; that’s what I needed.” He spoke almost firmly in greeting to the two librarians, as he left the room.
Helena Jyre opened her book, but didn’t look for the page at which she’d closed it. Mr. and Mrs. Weil, the librarians, both felt they’d like to have a chat with her about Bailey, in whom they were warmly interested; but, after a second glance at her expression, both decided that this was not the time.
At five o’clock in the afternoon, facing the carved stone and oak-paneled grandeur of the Tudorish front door, Bailey thought, even after he’d rung the bell, “I could still get away; I could turn and hobble off without being seen. No, Miss Jyre said I could go through with it. I can, I can, I can!” The door opened and he gave himself the command, “Go in, you fool; go in!”
The colored man who greeted him was thin, tall, grey-haired, benignly dignified. “You Mr. Bailey Fount; yes, Lieutenant, sir. I’m Harvey. I used to wait on the great gentleman, Mr. Thomas Oaklin, your uncle, sir. Yes, indeed, you one of the family! Please step in the drawing-room; yes, sir.”
The drawing-room, at the right of the marble-floored wide central hall, was large and evidently altered, diverted from its original intentions. The walls, once paneled, had been made plain pale lavender plaster. The parquetry floor was covered by a rug all white; the fireplace, merely a low black opening, had above it no mantelshelf nor anything except lavender wall and an unframed oval sheet of silver so polished as to be a mirror. There were no pictures upon the walls; there was no ornament of any kind within the room, unless the silver mirror might be thought one, and the furniture, most of it upholstered in either white leather or satin of harsh blue, was severely “functional.” Of these theorized surroundings Bailey was almost unaware; he found himself alone and began a muttering.
“Nobody here! Why’d I think there’d be a lot of people? What gave me such an idea? Maybe I’m too early, though. Did she say to-day? Is it even the wrong day? But that colored man seemed to — —”
Clicky footsteps on marble hushed him. A slow-moving blondish woman, over-stout in a street-dress of bright coral wool, came placidly flaming through the doorway and gave him a handful of fat fingers that did nothing, then withdrew. “I’m your Cousin Folia,” she said casually. “Your mother was my first-cousin-by-marriage, Bailey Fount. I’m rather surprised to see you in uniform. I understood from Josephine you were wearing civilian clothes, so I supposed you must be out of the Army.”
“No! No!” He cried out this denial; then hushed his voice to explain, “I’m on medical leave. I — I change my clothes for the museum work. It’s to — it’s to look more like an Assistant Curator.”
“I see,” Mrs. Oaklin returned vaguely. “The uniform’s very becoming.” She sighed. “I’m a martyr to arthritis and I believe you’re rather lame, yourself; so do let’s sit down.” With a muted grunt she followed her own suggestion; then, when she’d sunk into one of the blue satin armchairs, uttered a pettish exclamation and pushed herself up again. “These chairs! I never can remember not to sit in this one. It slides me forward, and with these short skirts one’s forced to wear nowadays — —” She made the plainly difficult exchange into one of the white leather chairs, pulled down the coral skirt to half-cover embarrassingly large knees, and went on with her complaint. “I hate this furniture. Even old-time horsehair’d be better. This used to be a beautiful room, the kind I like — tapestries and crystal chandeliers and French needlepoint furniture. Josephine did it over in this barbarous way before the war. Her grandfather wouldn’t have liked it; but I suppose she’ll do it over into something else when they get this dreadful war finished; she’s so restless. Sit down, too, won’t you, unless you’re wearing a brace or something for your leg that makes it easier standing?”
“No, it’s about well. Thank you.” He took the chair she’d vacated.
“She did spare the dining-room,” Mrs. Oaklin resumed. “It’s Sheraton my father-in-law collected. She told me she’s expecting you to lunch to-morrow; do be here by one o’clock, please — cooks are so dictatorial in wartime. She did over the music room on the other side of the hall, too; had some kind of Mexican paint such loud pictures on the walls I can’t bear to go in there unless I have to. Of course she didn’t touch her grandfather’s Jacobean library; she wouldn’t do that. She’s kept it just as it was; but I don’t like to go in there much, either — I always seem to see him sitting there. I suppose your mother told you a good deal about him, didn’t she?”
“Yes — at times.”
“You like your museum work, do you?” Mrs. Oaklin said languidly. “You look rather like your father, I think, Bailey. I scarcely knew him at all, of course. Your mother would marry him; nothing could stop her. He died when you were about fifteen, didn’t he?”
“My father? Yes — he did.”
“And your mother only about four years ago,” Mrs. Oaklin went on uninterestedly. “I telegraphed flowers to her funeral. Nobody ever acknowledged them, though; so I never knew whether they got there or not. I suppose you were too busy with the arrangements and all that. She was a nice girl. I really quite liked her. My father-in-law thought a great deal of her; but he got quite upset about her engagement to your father, thought he was just a harum-scarum sort of newspaper illustrator and liked moving around from one town to another. Your father’s cartooning never got him anywhere, did it? Of course that didn’t matter much, since your mother’d inherited rather largely from her father, hadn’t she? You three were always well enough off to get along quite comfortably, weren’t you?”
“I believe so,” Bailey said; but this wasn’t what he had the impulse to say as he looked at the flaccid, large, self-indulgent, pink face and precisely waved greyish blonde hair before him. This call upon his relatives was grinding him harder than he’d expected. Why had he come? Because Miss Jyre said he was capable of it and he’d promised his Cousin Josephine — who wasn’t here? Probably there were plenty of people who could talk to this Cousin Folia and not mind it — even if she murmured lazily about their mothers’ funerals. He had a dreadful temptation to burst out at her in harebrained clamors: “You ought to be as dead as your hair and eyes are! You’re just an old fat nothing, and I’m just a young broken nothing. We ought both to be dead because we’re nothing, nothing!” He brought forth a handkerchief and wiped his forehead.
“Yes.” Mrs. Oaklin assented to this gesture. “Josephine always has the house too hot. They don’t wear anything underneath any more. A horrible fashion, I tell her; but what can I do? She never listens. You’ve heard her engagement to Captain Harold Murties has been announced, I suppose?”
“Yes.”
“He seems a fairly nice sort of man,” Cousin Folia said. “From Alabama and quite nice-looking. Overwhelmed at first sight, I believe; proposed to her the second or third time they met. She tells me she took a great fancy to you, by the way. I suppose she told you so, too; she always does.”
“No. She was kind; but I’m afraid you’re mistaken. Nobody could — could — —”
“Nobody could take a fancy to you?” Cousin Folia laughed. “I’d think it quite possible. You look more Oaklin than I thought at first — not at all unlike your great-uncle, and he was the most distinguished-looking man I ever saw. Besides that, you have an expression of having been through perfect horrors and that always impresses my sex, of course. I don’t know how we all do bear this dreadful war; it’s such an unending strain. I hope you won’t have to be sent back into it.”
“No, please!” Bailey wiped his forehead again. “Don’t hope that. No! I — —”
“Indeed we all shall! After she saw you this morning Josephine told me she was sure it’s going to be a good thing to have another of the Oaklin family in the museum — to back her up, you see. Then of course there’s this thing she wants you for and’ll tell you about to-morrow. She —— Oh, dear me! They’ve let that dog out of the kitchen again!”
A stout brown-and-white springer spaniel, elderly but vivacious, had trotted in from the hall. He went waggingly to Bailey, confident of beginning a friendship, and was well received. “You’re a fine fellow,” Bailey told him, and was glad to stoop over him. “I had a springer almost exactly like you once. He lived to be fourteen years old. What’s your name?”
“Roggo,” Mrs. Oaklin said. “You’ll never get rid of him if you go on scratching his head. He’s the most awful nuisance; but Josephine keeps him around. He’s ten years old and’s begun to lose one of his eyes, but still behaves like a pup; he scratches hair out of himself and leaves it all over everything. There’s a bell-button set in the wall by the door yonder. Will you please give it a push for me?” Bailey got to his feet, found the disk near the door and did as she desired. “Thank you. I never liked dogs much; I don’t know why people have ’em, especially when they’re the everlastingly hair-shedding kind like this Roggo.” Then, as Harvey appeared in the doorway, she merely pointed at the spaniel and let that be her reproach.
“Yes’m,” Harvey said. “I don’t know who let Roggo out.” He bent over the friendly old dog, gave him a surreptitious pat on the head but took him by the collar. Roggo sent Bailey an upward appeal— “Couldn’t you do anything about this?” — and was dragged away.
“Don’t let him out again, Harvey!” Cousin Folia called toward the hall.
“No’m.”
Bailey, finding himself on his feet and near the doorway, thought that maybe by this time he’d finished his duty-call on the Oaklins and could respectably depart. “Thank you for letting me come in this afternoon, Cousin Folia,” he began. “Perhaps some day you might be so kind again. I — —”
“But you’re not going?”
“Yes, I — —”
“Oh, no, you can’t!” she exclaimed. “I’m just filling in till Josephine gets through with her meeting. Didn’t she tell you?”
“About a meeting? No.”
“Why, certainly,” Cousin Folia said. “She does all sorts of war work, you know. Forever flying from one thing to another, I don’t know how she manages all she does. Of course you see why she couldn’t be in the Waves or Wacs or any of those things, don’t you?”
“She couldn’t?” Bailey said — to be saying something.
“No, of course not. She has to be here when I have my attacks, naturally. Whenever I overstep my diet the slightest bit I have a terrible time; my heart goes back on me. The only doctor I have any faith in tore off to the Navy months ago and you can’t get a reliable nurse for love or money. They don’t care a cent what happens to the rest of us. Then of course Josephine has the museum on her hands, and the Symphony Orchestra Board. Doesn’t get a breath of rest. I wish you’d try to influence her to quiet down a little sometimes.”
“I? You wish I’d — —”
“Why, yes, she might listen,” Mrs. Oaklin said. “She’d always listen more to somebody new than she will to me. She’ll have a breakdown if she isn’t careful. All the people she works with are always so utterly incompetent. She decided the city must have an Officers’ Club. There’s the USO downtown for the men, of course; but until she got this idea the other day there’s never been anything for the officers, so she called this meeting. She has ’em in the library now — eight or ten girls and women, and Captain Murties to advise ’em how to go about it and all that. She told me on no account was I to let you leave until after they come out of the meeting. She’s got ’em in her grandfather’s library, the Jacobean room. I’m sure they won’t be much longer. Do sit down again.”
“But I’m afraid I — —”
“No, no; you can’t go. She wants you here, so you might as well sit down.”
XII
BAILEY’S RIGHT HAND made a movement to bring forth his handkerchief again; but he gave that hand a look — it obeyed him, dropped to his side, and he sat down. Cousin Folia repeated the effort to shelter her knees. “Have you met many people since you’ve been here?” she asked. “Probably you already know some of this new committee of hers, Charlotte Parannik, Sophie Tremoille, Mrs. Francis Paylor, Josie Smith, Julia — —”
“No, I haven’t met them; I haven’t met anybody outside of the museum except a few at The Cranford where I live.”
“She doesn’t think too much of any of ’em.” Cousin Folia, following her own vagrant trains of thought, evidently often heard the speech of others as sounds, not words. “They seemed to be the best she could get. She got Charlotte Parannik for the name of course — her husband’s the conductor of our Symphony, though he really oughtn’t to be, he’s so obstinate — and she didn’t want Mrs. Francis Paylor but had to because she’s in the Army. I don’t mean a Wac; her husband’s a major and they’re years and years older, but he’s Harold’s most intimate friend. The Paylors seemed to think they practically owned Harold until —— Oh, dear!” Cousin Folia interrupted herself as the opening of a door at some distance within the house made audible a clatter of women’s voices, most of them sounding more argumentative than amiable. They approached slowly, dallying with the dregs of some discussion, and Mrs. Oaklin looked petulant. “Josephine knew she’d have a time with some of ’em; they’d be sure to suggest ridiculous ideas. How many of ‘em’d you say you knew? Which ones?”
“None. I don’t know any of them.”
“Oh, dear!” Cousin Folia exclaimed again. “Then if she hangs back with Harold — she always likes to come in last and I wish she’d get over it! — I’ll have to do the introducing of you to all of ’em, and I always get names wrong when I introduce a lot of people.”
The chattering voices drew nearer. Bailey rose as half a dozen young women talked themselves into the room; then he found a friend and backed to a wall with him. The friend was the spaniel, Roggo; he’d made another escape and came in scurrying search of the new acquaintance who understood what dogs wish done to their heads. Bailey bent over him, did as desired, and the animation of Roggo’s stub of a tail proved his gratitude. Cousin Folia interrupted their affair, performed three or four introductions flusteredly and ordered the old dog removed by Harvey, who’d wheeled in a chromium-plated wagon stocked with little foods, tea and liquors. Roggo had to be dragged, protestive feet forward and collar disheveling his ears; but the new friend’s loss was greater than the dog’s.
What seemed a tumult made the room, for Bailey, a mere confusion. His tricky sensations informed him that near-by voices were screaming and that many people swept blurredly about him. In reality, although two or three older women had followed the younger ones, there weren’t a dozen persons in the room and they were displaying no unusual animation. They were constrained, had the disingenuous cordiality of people who are where they are only because they haven’t known how to avoid being there.
Josephine hadn’t appeared, but neither had she lingered behind with her Harold. Captain Murties, serious, was in the room, and presently he brought an affable matron to meet Bailey.
“Fount, this is my dear friend, Mrs. Francis Paylor,” Murties said. “When I met you in the museum I was stupid — I didn’t get just who you were, except that you were Josephine’s cousin. Last night at the Paylors’ I happened to mention your name and the Major reminded me — —”
“He didn’t, either!” Mrs. Paylor cried. “How like a man — always giving the credit for anything to another man! Until I spoke up, neither you nor my husband realized that this Mr. Fount is precisely the Lieutenant Bailey Fount who — —”
“No, no. Too much was made of that,” Bailey said hurriedly, and this time he didn’t check his hand when it groped for his handkerchief. Cousin Folia intervened, bringing some of the younger women to meet him. They seemed to make indistinguishable sounds at him; he hadn’t an idea of what any of them said to him or of what he said in return. “Stop that! Stop that!” was the fierce command he gave himself when he discovered that he was wiping his forehead almost continuously.
