NATICA HAD SO prepared herself for the letdown that would inevitably follow her Halloween weekend that she found it not too hard to cope with. Besides, she was busy preparing for college entrance examinations in the spring, for Aunt Ruth had arranged for a partial scholarship at Barnard if she got in, and she was to live the following winter in her aunt's apartment. So liberation, at least from home and Smithport, was in sight. Edith DeVoe was at school in the city, and Grant, after one perfunctory letter, had ceased to write, so she had no further relations with the family at Amberley, even on weekends, when they presumably were there. No doubt it was just as well. She had evidently served her purpose in giving Grant an access to the senior prefect's crowd, and the cigarette episode with the headmaster had no doubt scared him away for good.
There was, however, to be one more meeting with him. Kitty Chauncey, seemingly assured of pleasing her daughter, announced one evening in the Christmas vacation:
"I saw your friend, Grant DeVoe, in the drugstore this morning. The family are here for the holidays. I asked him for Sunday lunch."
"And he's coming?" Natica asked with unconcealed dismay.
"Of course he's coming. Why shouldn't he come? Do you think he's too grand to sit at our humble board? I thought I had to do something about him, seeing that he asked you up to his school and his mother paid for your trip and a new evening dress. Really, Natica, one never knows how to please you."
Natica could picture the little scene at the drugstore. She knew how persistent her mother could be and what a poor actor Grant was. He would have stammered out a lame excuse which she would have promptly punctured, and he would have been left with no alternative but to accept.
It was all quite as awkward as she had anticipated. Grant arrived so late that they repaired at once to the dining room. This, at least, was the best room in the house. The Duncan Phyfe chairs, rare surviving Chauncey heirlooms, with their simple but vaguely offended dignity, like marquises in a Jacobin prison, distracted some attention from the dreary backyard and the frame houses beyond and from the flapping pantry door through which the black cook, hired for the day and not even in uniform, slammed in and out with the dishes. And on the sideboard, raised on a stand, was a fine George III silver platter which her father had refused to sell because the coat of arms of its original owner, an English earl, was supported by two large fish. But nothing could make up for the way her father used a toothpick behind his napkin. As a host in his former glory at Amberley this might have passed for an "old New York" eccentricity, an amusing reminder of high life in the 1840s, but in their cottage it was simply vulgar. And would her mother never cease with her odious comparisons?
"I know you're used to better things up the hill, Grant, and I'm sure it's very good of you to take potluck with us. We're not as fancy as we used to be, but I don't think we do too badly, either. Some people like to talk of the good old days before the depression, but do you know something? I'm not sure they were all so very good. What I've learned about human decency and good, old-fashioned simple kindness since we moved into this village I couldn't begin to tell you. When you come here just for the summer or weekends you don't get to know the real Smithporters. And they're great people, they really are!"
"I don't doubt it, Mrs. Chauncey."
"One of the reasons I'm glad that Natica has gone to public school here is that she'll feel more at home with many of the girls at Barnard when she goes there next fall. But I suppose in Harvard you'll find so many men from schools like Averhill and Groton and Saint Paul's that it won't matter."
"What won't matter, Mrs. Chauncey?" Grant asked in some bewilderment.
"Why, that you've not been to public school! Have you never thought that it sets you apart just a bit?"
"Isn't that what it's supposed to do? If you're already in heaven, how can you improve yourself?"
But there was no point trying to joke with Kitty. She took immediate umbrage. "Well, I still maintain—and I shall continue to do so no matter what all the smart young gentlemen may say—that there's no such great advantage in setting yourself above your fellow men."
Harry Chauncey at this point started one of his endless fishing stories, which was almost worse. Natica decided that the only way to endure the meal was to try to see it as a scene in a play and store it in her literary memory for some kind of future use. Watching poor bored Grant out of the corner of an eye she assessed him with dispassion. It was plain to her now that even possessed of the charm of a Marlene Dietrich, she could never really attract him. In him snobbishness was a virus so virulent as to cause something like panic at the prospect of being trapped even temporarily in a milieu not acceptable to the arbiters of his tiny world. Where had he caught it? His parents were persons of stalwart independence; his background fairly bristled with security. But the way he never looked at her, the way he took his leave immediately after the meal, with no word as to a future meeting, was ample evidence that he wanted to flee the house as an infected area.
"I daresay he's a nice enough young man," Kitty observed after his departure. "Though a bit spoiled, of course. I hope you won't mind my saying, dear, that I don't think he's ever going to set the world on fire."
"No, Mother, I shan't dispute you there. We must look elsewhere if we want an arsonist."
"I thought he was rather snooty about private schools. Who does he think he is, anyway?"
"I think he thinks he's someone who's never going to have another Sunday lunch with the Chaunceys."