IN NEW YORK TWO nights before (the story Mrs. Davison read had been reprinted from the previous day’s late edition), Hatton, the Protheros’ English butler, in his royal-purple wadded dressing gown of Chinese embroidered silk with moiré lapels, had been seated in a wing chair in his bedroom on the top floor of the Prothero town house, reading the Herald Tribune, his radio set turned on. He was smoking a pipe, and his feet, in silk socks and red leather slippers, were resting on a footstool. The dressing gown, the slippers, the wing chair, the radio set—all of Hatton’s costume and stage properties, except the pipe he was smoking—had been passed on to him by Mr. Prothero, a mature sporty fashion plate of Hatton’s age and build. Hatton was somewhat taller, more dignified, and less purple in the face; one of the footmen had overheard the Vassar young ladies, Miss Mary’s classmates, declare that the butler looked like Henry James, an American novelist and London diner-out, it seemed, who had moved in the best circles—facts that Hatton himself had unearthed on his day out, in the reference room of the Society Library, not trusting the chauffeur, who exchanged Mrs. Prothero’s crime story, picked for her every Friday by the head librarian, to do the job properly. (Mr. Prothero’s library, as Hatton observed to the younger footman, was more what you might call a gentleman’s library; it contained chiefly sporting books—histories of the thoroughbred, stud and yachting registers, memoirs of turf and field, bound in morocco and calfskin—and some volumes of pornography in dummy cases.)
The newspaper Hatton was conning had been glanced at by Mr. Prothero this morning and turned over to the butler in almost mint condition, like the dressing gown and the slippers, which scarcely showed signs of wear. Hatton, in fact, was a sort of double or slightly enlarged replica version of Mr. Prothero, and he was not displeased by this, feeling himself to be, on the whole, an improvement on his American master: Mr. Prothero’s suits showed to better advantage on him because of his greater height; he enjoyed his evening read of the newspaper more than Mr. Prothero did the morning’s brief, bloodshot stare at the stock-market pages. When valeting Mr. Prothero, he could not help seeing him sometimes, as he flicked the brush over his shoulders and adjusted the handkerchief in his pocket, as a sort of tailor’s dummy in relation to himself—a mere padded form of wire and cloth on which clothes and other accoutrements were tried in rough stitching by a fitter for the “man” who was their real and final destination. Mr. Prothero, you might even say, broke in his shoes for him. He not only succeeded to Mr. Prothero’s wardrobe, his chair, newspaper, and radio set, practically as good as new; he “stood in” for Mr. Prothero in household emergencies, such as fire alarms, for Mrs. Prothero, a huge, “delicate” lady, soft as a plump bolster or sofa cushion, had a great fear of fire, and Hatton, trained by her to “smell smoke,” often led the family and the footmen and the maids downstairs to safety in the middle of the night, while Mr. Prothero slept. To meet Hatton, like a big wattled purple bird, in the corridors or on the stairways of the tall house late at night (Mrs. Prothero also had a fear of “prowlers”) had often confused Miss Mary’s house guests, coming back from a ball somewhat the worse for champagne; Hatton was aware of the fact that, seeing him without his livery, they took him for Mr. Prothero, whom they might have met during the evening in an identical dressing gown helping himself from the decanter of whisky in the library. Hatton himself was a total abstainer.
Hatton was not only the “man” but also the “man of the house” and a very responsible character. He had been with the family for years, ever since the girls were small, and though he had once had a secret plan of retiring to England on his savings and marrying a young woman, he had done the distinguished thing of losing all he had in the stock-market crash, four and a half years before. They had sold Hatton out, on the Street, and here too he had outshone Mr. Prothero, who, after a short setback in ’29, had gone through the depression getting steadily richer without any effort on his part but because of a patent he had bought from a man someone had introduced to him at the Piping Rock Club after a polo game. This fellow, who had looked like a swindler, had killed himself shortly afterward by diving into an empty swimming pool. But the patent, which controlled one of the processes in making the new synthetics, turned out to be worth a mint. Making money, Mr. Prothero confessed, must be in the blood. He went downtown, now, to an office most weekdays, to provide what he called the window dressing for the firm that administered the patent; they made him a director, though he did not, as he said, understand what the hell they were manufacturing or leasing for manufacture, whichever it was. But he supposed it was his duty, in these times, to put his shoulder to the wheel.
The Prothero family, on both sides (Mrs. Prothero was Schuyler), was dim-witted and vain of it, as a sign of good breeding; none of them, as far back as they could trace their genealogy, had received a higher education, until Pokey, or Mary, as she was called at home, came along; her younger sister, Phyllis, had been dropped from Chapin, to Mrs. Prothero’s relief, in the sophomore year, and after a few months in Miss Hewitt’s Classes, had been able to leave school, according to state law, as soon as she turned sixteen. By now, she had had her coming-out party and was ready for marriage at nineteen—just the right age, Mrs. Prothero thought, although she would be sorry to lose her, for she was a lonely woman and enjoyed having Phyllis’ companionship on her trips to the hairdresser and the Colony Club, where she could sit in the lounge while Phyllis and her friends swam in the pool. Mrs. Prothero, poor soul, her staff agreed, was a woman of few resources: unlike most ladies, she did not care for shopping; fittings fatigued her, for she did not believe she could stand long, having suffered from milk leg after the births of the girls; matinees made her cry (there were so many sad plays nowadays), and she had never been able to learn the bidding for contract bridge. She took no interest in interior decoration, the way so many ladies were doing; the furniture, carpets, and pictures in the main rooms of the house had scarcely changed since Hatton had been there. The servants, except for the younger footman and Annette, the girls’ maid, had not changed either. Mrs. Prothero had a pale, dusty tannish skin—the color of the upholstery and stair carpets; the paintings in the drawing room were of white and brown ruminants, cows and sheep, sitting in dark-brown fields. Hatton approved of the paintings, which he understood to be Dutch and valuable, and of the subdued brownish tone of the furnishings, but the women servants said that the place needed livening up. The trouble was that you could not get either Mrs. Prothero or the girls to take any notice. Recently, Forbes, the girls’ nursery governess, who now looked after the linen and the heavy mending, had taught Mrs. Prothero to do petit point, which, as Forbes said, was like having a bit of company in the house, what with Miss Mary away at Cornell, studying to be a vet and never bringing her friends to stay any more, weekends, the way she had at Vassar, and Mr. Prothero at the office, and Miss Phyllis, who had been such a mainstay, off with girls of her own set to lunches and teas and fashion shows.
The Protheros entertained, but only at dinner; Mrs. Prothero was not equal to leading the talk at luncheon. Mr. Prothero always took his lunch at the Brook or the Racquet or the Knickerbocker, and the girls were told to have their friends to lunch at the Club, to save making extra work for Hatton. That was the Madam’s way of putting it, but Hatton had never shirked work, as she ought to know. It was Hatton who planned Mrs. Prothero’s dinners, bringing her the menus and a diagram of the seating arrangements, before writing out the place cards; the conundrum of seating eight or sixteen had never been unriddled by Mrs. Prothero, who always looked up at Hatton with faint surprised alarm when she found another lady opposite her, where she was used to seeing Mr. Prothero, at the other end of the long table. Mrs. Prothero’s life was too inactive to warrant her having a social secretary, except during the two seasons when the girls were coming out. Hatton managed her invitations and her acceptances, told her who was coming to dinner and whom she was going to. He directed her contributions to charity and sometimes, on a night when they were entertaining, was able to suggest a topic for conversation.
Needless to say, he was also in the habit of giving the girls a hand. “Hatton, you’re a genius!” Miss Mary and Miss Phyllis were always shrieking when they did a list or seated a table in consultation with him. “Infallible social sense,” Mr. Prothero often muttered, of the butler, with a wink and a peculiar movement of the cheek muscle that gave him a paralyzed appearance. The girls had more confidence too in Hatton’s judgment in matters of dress than they had in Annette’s or Forbes’s; they would come up to his room in their ball gowns, twirl around before him, and ask him whether they should wear the pearls or the Madam’s diamonds or carry a scarf or a fan. It had been Hatton, in alliance with Forbes, who had seen to it that Miss Phyllis was made to wear a patch over one eye, as well as keep the braces on her teeth; if Hatton had not backed up Forbes, poor Miss Phyllis would be, as Forbes said, a regular Ben Turpin today.
The whole family adored Hatton. “We all adore Hatton,” Miss Mary would announce in a vigorous whisper, shielding her pursed mouth with one hand, to a young man who was seeing her home, for the first time, from a tea dance or a young lady who was coming, for the first time, to stay; the butler’s trained features would remain impassive as he led the way up the stairs, though the pretense of not hearing would have tried an inferior servant, since both the young ladies were not only blind as moles but had loud, flat, unaware voices like the voices of deaf people, so that even when they whispered everyone turned around to look at them and listen to what they were saying. They had inherited this trait, another sign of blue blood, from their grandmother on their father’s side.
Hatton, though he took no notice, partly from habit, was not displeased that the young ladies made it a point that nobody who stayed in the house or came to dinner should fail to appreciate him. The slow ceremoniousness of his manners, his strict austere bearing ought to have spoken for themselves, but it was a convention, he understood, among the better class of Americans, to pretend that the service was invisible, which was their little way of showing that they were used to being waited on. This offended Hatton’s professional pride and had caused him to leave his last place. With the Prothero family, being more of the old school, his exceptional endowment and qualifications were brought into the limelight, and the more unobtrusive he made himself, the more all heads turned surreptitiously to watch his deportment as he entered or left a room. He had only to close a door, noiselessly, or retire into the pantry to know that the family and its guests were discussing him. To be aware of Hatton was a proof of intimacy with the family—a boast, you might say, particularly among the young people. “Hatton’s a wonder,” the tall young gentlemen who were going on to a dance in white ties and tails would confide to each other, profoundly, over the coffee and the brandy when the young ladies had left the dining room. “Hatton’s a wonder, sir,” they would say to Mr. Prothero, at the head of the table. Hatton did not have to be psychic (which Miss Mary liked to let on he was) to surmise, from a glance through the pantry door, the trend of the conversation. The Vassar young ladies upstairs not all being used to society, the footman who served the Benedictine and the crème de menthe sometimes came down with a tale to tell, but with the young gentlemen over the brandy it was always the same.
“Like one of the family,” Mr. Prothero would reply. “Kind of an institution, Hatton is. Famous.” Hatton was not sure that he cared to be described as “like one of the family”; he had always maintained his distance, even when the young ladies were toddlers. But he did feel himself to be an institution in the household and was used to being looked up to, like a portrait statue raised on a tall shaft in a London square. With this end in mind, he had perfected an absolute immobility of expression, which was one of his chief points, he knew, as a monument and invariably drawn to the attention of visitors. The signals directing attention to his frozen, sculptured face on the part of the young ladies and their friends Hatton was perfectly familiar with and accepted as a form of compliment while not, even inwardly, moving a muscle. When asked about the family he had served so long and with such apparent suppression of self (“Hatton is devoted to us,” Mrs. Prothero declared, in one of her rare positive assertions of any kind), he would answer, with reserve, that it was “a good place.” Miss Phyllis, when she was younger, used to pester him to say he liked her, being the ugly duckling, not that the rest were swans, but all Hatton would answer was simply, “It’s a good place, miss.” The same with the master when he was half-seas over and Hatton was guiding him to bed: “You like us, eh, eh, Hatton? After all these years, eh?” Forbes, a stout party from Glasgow who had been with the family ever since Miss Mary was born, sometimes reminded Hatton that there were better places: a first-class butler, she said, was not supposed to act as a social secretary and valet, besides being a Holmes Protective man and a human fire-alarm system (this was Forbes’s joke). “Beggars can’t be choosers,” Hatton, who was fond of a proverb, coldly retorted, but he really meant the opposite: a butler of his capacities could choose to take on extra duties without prejudicing his legend. He was the bigger man for it. Hatton, through doing crossword puzzles, was familiar with the principal myths, and his mind sometimes vaguely dwelt on the story of Apollo serving King Admetus, not that he would place Mr. Prothero so high. Yet the comparison occasionally flashed through his head when he was waiting on table, throwing a spacious aureole or nimbus around him as he moved from one chair to the next, murmuring “Sherry, madam?” or “Champagne, miss?” Miss Mary, he felt, was aware of the nimbus, for he would find her nearsighted eyes frowningly focused on him, as if observing something unusual, and her nostrils sniffing, a sign of aroused attention she had probably-picked up from the Madam; the poor young lady herself had no sense of smell. Miss Mary swore by telepathy; she had a sixth sense, she insisted, to make up for the missing one. She had decided that Hatton had too. “Are your ears burning, Hatton?” she often asked him when he came to answer the bell in a room where she and her friends were playing one of those mind-reading games, with cards, she had learned at Vassar. He explained to her that it was the job of a good servant to read his master’s mind and anticipate his wishes; for him, he added reprovingly, it was all in the day’s work, no fun and games about it. “How did you become a butler, Hatton?” she sometimes asked, seating herself on his bed. “Yes, how did you, Hatton?” said Miss Phyllis, occupying his footstool. But Hatton declined to answer. “That is my private affair, miss.” “I think,” said Miss Mary, “you decided to become a butler because you were psychic. Natural selection.” This was over Hatton’s head, but he did not allow the fact to be seen. Miss Mary turned to Miss Phyllis. “It proves my point, Phyl. Don’t you get it? Darwin. The survival of the fittest.” Her loud peremptory voice resounded through the servants’ quarters. “If Hatton wasn’t psychic he’d be a flop as a butler. Ergo, he is psychic. Q.E.D.” She scratched her head and beamed victoriously at Hatton. “Pretty smart, eh wot?” “Very smart, miss,” Hatton agreed, wondering if this was the Darwin who had discovered the missing link. “Girrls!” came Forbes’s voice from below. “Come down and get into your baths.”
The fact was, Hatton had become a butler because his father had been in service. But he too had come to feel that there was something more to it than this; like Miss Mary said, he had had a vocation or a higher call that had bade him assume the office. This conviction had slowly overtaken him in America, where genuine English butlers did not grow on trees. “You’re the real article, Hatton!” a gentleman who had come to stay in the Long Island house had said to him one morning with an air of surprise. He was like a stage butler or a butler you saw on the films, the gentleman doubtless meant to imply. Hatton had been pleased to hear it; being somewhat younger then and on his own, so to speak, in a foreign country, he had tried to conform to an ideal of the English butler as he found it in films and in crime stories and in the funny papers that Cook read, for the wise man knew how to turn the smallest occasion to profit. Yet he now felt that study alone could not have done it. When the young ladies told him he was a genius, he believed they had hit on the truth: “out of the mouths of babes.” He had long accepted the fact that he was the brains of the family and the heavy obligation that went with it. The eternal model of the English butler, which he kept before his eyes, even in his moments of relaxation and on his day off, required that he have the attributes of omniscience and ubiquity, like they taught you in the catechism: “Where is God?” “God is everywhere.” Hatton was Church of England, and did not mean to blaspheme, but he could not help noticing those little correspondences, as when he had observed, in his earlier situation, that he was expected to be invisible too.
Folding the newspaper, Hatton sighed. One of the duties or accomplishments of the classic English butler, of which he personally was the avatar, was to be well informed on matters that would not at first glance seem to be relevant to the job in hand and also to be a past master of proper names. That was why, at present, he was reading the Herald Tribune, on behalf of the family, having already had a hasty look at Cook’s tabloid for the murders, and why he had started with the society columns and the sporting pages, to have a go at them while his mind was fresh. Hatton was not a sporting man, except for the races and, back home, the cricket, but duty obliged him to take cognizance of the proper names and lineage of dogs, cats, boats, horses, polo players, golfers, as they appeared in the news, together with all sorts of figures and ratings, since it was these names and figures that were most commonly wanted in the Prothero household. Then there were the society columns, for the Madam and the girls. When a young gentleman got married, it was Hatton who struck his name off Miss Mary’s list, and when a young lady announced her engagement, it was Hatton who reminded Miss Mary or Miss Phyllis to buy a wedding present—a thing Miss Mary often neglected or sent Annette to do.
Selecting a green pencil, Hatton made a small check on the society page; this meant: present, Miss Phyllis; a red-pencil check meant: present, Miss Mary. With a new sigh, this time of content, he folded the paper to the obituary page—one of his favorite sections. Yet even here the voice of duty intruded, though not, he saw at a glance, this evening: he would not have to warn Yvonne, Mrs. Prothero’s personal maid, to look over her mistress’ blacks, nor get Mr. Prothero ready to be a pallbearer. He settled down to the obits. Next, he turned to the stock-market pages, which no longer interested him much personally; he had not had a flyer since the fall of ’29; but he kept abreast of the market in order to follow the conversation at the dinner table when the senior Protheros were entertaining and the ladies had left the room. In the back of his mind, there was always the thought of picking up a tip from one of the older gentlemen, but he had not yet refound the courage to call his broker with an order.
Relighting his pipe, he studied the entertainment news, to make sure the film he planned to see on his day out was still playing. He read Percy Hammond’s review of the play that had opened the night before. Hatton had never been to a proper theatre, only to music hall, but he took an interest in the stage partly because he understood that it was customary to begin a play with a scene between a butler and a parlormaid with a feather duster. He would have given something to see that. Miss Mary’s friend, Miss Katherine from Vassar, had promised to get him tickets some time on his night out, but that was the last he had heard of it. She was the one who had married the actor or whatever he was, something connected with the stage; Miss Mary had gone to the wedding. Hatton had never been partial to Miss Katherine; he did not see eye to eye with Forbes, who called her “the bonny lass.” Forbes would have changed her tune if she had seen what he had, coming downstairs one night, still tying his dressing-gown sash in his hurry and his bridgework not in, because the Madam had “heard a noise, Hatton. Please go and see.” For once, the Madam was right: there the two of them were, in the front hall, on the landing, the “bonny lass” and her “fiancé,” going right at it. Hatton had not liked the look of him at dinner. “Harald Petersen,” he was called, like some blasted Viking; Hatton had taken special notice of the spelling as he made out the place card. When Miss Katherine was going to get married, Miss Mary, Hatton recalled, had consulted him as to whether it would be possible for the young lady to have the use of the town house for the wedding, since the rest of the family, except Mr. Prothero, would already have gone down to the country. Bearing in mind what he had seen (“Just a bit of kissing,” Forbes said; did you do that on the floor with your skirts up and the “fiancé” planted on top of you for anybody from the street to see?), not to speak of the tickets, Hatton had said no, the furniture would be in dust covers, and it would upset the master, if he was staying in town that night, to find strangers in the house. “You’re a treasure, Hatton!” Miss Mary had proclaimed. Hatton had not been surprised to read in the paper this last summer that the play Mr. Petersen was with had closed, despite Miss Katherine’s telling them that it was going to run for years and years; since then, he had not seen the name in the theatrical columns, though he had observed in the real-estate notices that a Mr. and Mrs. Harold Peterson (sic) had taken an apartment in the East Fifties, near Sutton Place. That was them, said Miss Mary, who had been there only the other day. She had not had them to the house, though, since she had been up there at agricultural college; when she gave a dinner party nowadays, it was more for her own sort; she would just phone down to Hatton to have twelve covers and make up the list himself and to be sure and see to it that Miss Phyllis was not home for dinner that night. But if Miss Katherine and Mr. Petersen were ever asked again, Hatton had made a mental note to address her as “madam” when he opened the door. “Good evening, madam” (not “miss”), and a small, discreet smile; it was those little touches that counted. “He called me ‘madam’; isn’t that perfect?” Miss Katherine would whisper to her husband. “Hatton called me ‘madam,’ Pokey; what do you know?”
Hatton turned to the front page, which he had saved for the last; he liked the sense of exercising his intellect which the world and general news gave him. A labor dispute had been occupying a small part of the front page for over a week; the waiters of the principal hotels were on strike. Hatton made it a point to take no sides in American politics; he believed that it was against the law for an alien to interfere in the domestic affairs of a foreign country and consequently refrained from having any thoughts on the subject. “Who would you vote for, Hatton?” Miss Katherine had asked him at the time of the last election, when she was staying in the house. “I am not an American citizen, miss,” Hatton had replied. Nevertheless, the waiters’ strike had enlisted his sympathies, to a certain degree, for they were his fellow-creatures, even if there was a gulf, a very wide gulf, between private service and what you might call common service. For a brief time, while he was getting his training, he had worked at a hotel in London. Hence, he had been following the strike news, and he knew from Cook’s Daily Mirror that something had happened last night at the Cavendish—another demonstration.
Now his grey eyes imperturbably widened; he shook the newspaper on his lap. When he had finished reading the item and turned to page five for the continuation, he refolded the paper back to page one, selected a blue pencil from his table and slowly drew a border around the story. His hands trembled slightly with suppressed excitement. Then he refolded the paper still again, into a shape that would fit onto a salver, which he would present to Mrs. Prothero at breakfast: “Beg pardon, madam; I thought this would interest Miss Mary.” He then mentally withdrew to the sideboard or, better, to the serving pantry, within earshot.
“Hatton!” he heard the mistress’ voice call in agitation the next morning, and he slowly re-entered the dining room. “What is this? Why have you brought me this?” Mrs. Prothero quivered through all her shapeless, cushiony form. “Excuse the liberty, madam, but I ventured to think that one of the gentlemen referred to was Miss Katherine’s husband.” He bent forward and indicated to his mistress with his pink, manicured forefinger the name of Harald Petersen (spelled “Harold Petersen”). “Miss Katherine?” demanded Mrs. Prothero. “Who is she? How do we know her, Hatton?” She turned her head away from the group photograph on page five he was attempting to show her. “The young lady who came to stay, madam, over the Christmas holidays and on one or two other occasions when Miss Mary was in school at Vassar.” He paused, waiting for Mrs. Prothero’s otiose memory to begin to work. But Mrs. Prothero shook her head, a mass of pale-brown, lusterless, trembling ringlets that, despite all Yvonne’s and the hairdresser’s labors, resembled a costumer’s wig. “Who were her people?” “We never knew, madam,” Hatton replied solemnly. “‘Strong,’ she was called. From one of the western states.” “Not Eastlake?” queried Mrs. Prothero, with a momentary, uncertain brightening. “Oh no, madam. We know Miss Elinor. But this other young lady was dark too, and pretty, in a natural sort of way. Forbes, if you remember, took a fancy to her. ‘A Highland rose,’ she used to say.” He imitated Forbes’s burr. Mrs. Prothero gave a faint cry. “Oh, dear, yes,” she said. “I remember. Very pretty, Hatton. But rather uncouth. Or was that the person she married? What was it she always called him?” “‘My fiancé’?” supplied Hatton, with a smile in abeyance. “That’s it exactly!” cried Mrs. Prothero. “Still, we oughtn’t to laugh at her. Mr. Prothero used to recite a poem when she stayed here. ‘Maud Muller, on a summer’s day …’ And then something about the hay. Oh dear, how did it go? Help me, Hatton.” But Hatton for once was caught napping. “I’ve got it!” Mrs. Prothero exclaimed. “‘Stood listening while a pleased surprise/Gleamed in her long-lashed hazel eyes.’ Tennyson, I suppose.” “I daresay, madam,” replied Hatton austerely. “But we never knew who she was,” Mrs. Prothero reminisced, sighing. “Mr. Prothero often used to ask me, ‘Who’s that girl who’s always staying here? The Maud Muller girl.’ And I was never able to tell him. Her people were early settlers out West, I believe she said.” She put on her glasses and peered again at the folded rectangle of newspaper. “And now, Hatton, you tell me she’s in jail. What has she done? Shoplifting, I expect.” “I believe,” Hatton intervened, “that it’s her husband who was in custody. Something to do with a labor dispute.” Mrs. Prothero waved a pale plump hand. “Don’t tell me any more, Hatton. And I beg you not to bring it to Mr. Prothero’s attention. We had the man to dinner. I remember it distinctly.” She reflected, her pale, dim eyes turning anxiously behind her gold-rimmed spectacles. “The best thing, I think, Hatton, would be for you to take that article out to the kitchen and burn it in the stove. Without saying anything to Cook, if you please. People in our position can’t afford, Hatton—” She looked up at the butler expectantly, for him to finish her thought. “Quite, madam,” he agreed, picking up the folded paper and replacing it on the salver. “‘People who live in glass houses,’ Hatton …How does it go? Oh, dear, no, I mean another one. ‘Should be above reproach.’ Shakespeare, isn’t it? Julius Caesar.” She smiled. “We are being quite highbrow this morning,” she went on. “Quite the intellectuals. We must blame Vassar for that, mustn’t we, Hatton? Though you’ve always been quite a thinker.” Hatton bowed in acknowledgment and retired a few steps. “Now mind you burn it, Hatton. With your own hands,” his mistress cautioned.
When the butler had left the room, Mrs. Prothero gave way; she leaned on a podgy milk-blue elbow and let the tears rise to her eyes. Hatton watched her through the porthole in the pantry door. He knew what the Madam was thinking. She was thinking how brave she had been in the butler’s presence, not letting him see how upset she was by that nasty story in the newspaper. Disgraceful. And of how she blamed everyone, starting with the Chapin School, for contriving to send Miss Mary to that college that was always getting in the paper—not that the others were any better, but you heard less about them. Everyone she trusted, starting with the Chapin School, had turned against her on the college issue: the schoolmistress, what was her name, who had helped Miss Mary fill out her own application forms; Forbes, who had lent her the price of the registration fee out of her savings; the Hartshorn girl, who had smuggled her out of the house three days running, it seemed, to take the college entrance exams; and Hatton, Hatton himself, who had got round her and her husband, when Miss Mary was accepted, by announcing that he did not believe a year or two of college would do the young lady any harm. It was like a case in Bar Harbor she had heard about only the other day at the Colony Club. She had told Hatton about it, just to show him that she had not forgotten. An elopement, that was, out a French window of one of the big houses and through a parting in the hedge. The staff, as usual, there too (Yes, she had said “as usual” straight out to Hatton) had gone against the family’s wishes; the butler had actually crept out at night with a pair of garden shears and cut a hole through the hedge. What if the couple were married immediately, by a minister who was waiting in the rectory, so they said? He was only another accomplice. As for her own staff, she had always suspected that someone—Forbes or, more likely, Hatton—had signed her name to the Vassar application forms; Miss Mary swore she had done it herself and was brash as paint about it, but Mrs. Prothero still felt that Hatton had guided her hand.
Hatton turned away from the porthole; the Madam’s sobs were becoming audible, and he went to ring for Yvonne. When she reached that point, the Madam was quite unreasonable. She was very much mistaken in thinking, as she still did, that he had forged her signature. They had kept their secret from him too; he had known nothing about the whole affair until it was over, and Miss Mary had been accepted. At the present time, he rather shared the Madam’s views on higher education, though the Madam was not consistent: why give Miss Mary a plane if you did not want her to fly up every week now to learn to be a horse doctor? But Miss Mary always had her way, except with him.
He compressed his lips and went to take another peek at Mrs. Prothero. He was sorry now he had showed her the newspaper story, for what she did not know would not hurt her, poor lady. It had been an excess of zeal that had prompted it, he recognized—a certain over-perfectionism, if that was the term, in the performance of his role. “Hatton,” he said to himself, “pride goeth before a fall.” In the dining room, Mrs. Prothero would be reflecting that, thanks to higher education, she had had a jailbird in the house.
“A jailbird!” she repeated indignantly, with a wobble of her receding chin, so loud that Yvonne, coming down the stairs, could hear her. Clutching her wrapper around her and holding Yvonne’s arm, she retired upstairs to her bedroom and canceled the car, which was to take her to the hairdresser at eleven. Meanwhile Hatton, who had already told the chauffeur that he would not be needed, was cutting out the newspaper clipping and preparing to paste it in his scrapbook.
In Boston, the next morning, Mrs. Renfrew met Dottie for lunch at the Ritz. They were lunching early in order to go to Bird’s for the wedding invitations and announcements; later in the afternoon, they had an appointment at Crawford Hollidge for a fitting. Dottie’s wedding dress and going-away costume were being made in New York, but on most items, country suits and simple sport things above all, you could do just as well in Boston and at half the price. After Crawford Hollidge, if there was time, they were going to stop at Stearns’ to look at linen and compare prices with Filene’s. The Renfrews were not rich, only quite comfortably off, and Mrs. Renfrew economized wherever she could; she felt it was poor taste, in these times, to splurge when others were doing without. They had had the dressmaker in to see if Mrs. Renfrew’s wedding gown, which she had got from her mother, could possibly be made over for Dottie, who was dying to wear it, but there was not enough material in the seams; Dottie, they discovered (and there was progress for you!), was nearly four inches wider in the waist, bust, and hips, though not at all “hippy” or “busty”; it was a question of larger bones. Mrs. Renfrew’s mind this morning was full of measurements—sheet and glove and dress sizes; she was thinking too of the bridesmaids’ presents. Silver compacts from Shreve Crump? Tiny sterling cigarette lighters? There would only be the three: Polly Andrews, of course, and Helena Davison, and Dottie’s cousin, Vassar ’31, from Dedham, who was going to be matron of honor. Since the groom was a widower, both Dottie and Mrs. Renfrew felt it was better for the wedding to be quiet, just the matron of honor and the two attendants behind her. Dottie had been pining to have Lakey, but Lakey had written, from lovely Avila, that she could not come back this year. In her letter she said that she was sending a little Spanish primitive of a Madonna (perfect for the Southwest) and that Dottie should have no trouble clearing it through the Customs House, as an antique. Mrs. Renfrew hoped that Sam, Dottie’s father, whose firm had been clearing Customs since the days of sailing ships, would see to that for them; there was such a great deal to do.
On her way here to meet Dottie, who had gone to Dr. Perry for a check-up, Mrs. Renfrew had stopped at the Chilton Club to have a manicure and leafed through the day’s New York papers in the library, in case she saw anything in the ads for Dottie that could be ordered by mail. Her eye was caught by a photo of some young people in evening dress on one of the inner pages, next to a Peck & Peck ad. She turned back to start the story, reprinted from yesterday’s late edition, on the front page. When she saw Harald’s name, she immediately made a note to tell Dottie at lunch; Dottie might want to call Kay to get all the gory details. Mrs. Renfrew was a cheerful, lively person who always looked on the gay side of things; she imagined it must have been quite an adventure for those radical young people to get dressed up and do battle with the hotel staff, rather like a Lampoon prank; Kay’s husband, she was sure, when he came up for trial, would be let off after a lecture from the judge, the way the Harvard boys always were when they got in trouble with the Cambridge police force. Apropos of that, she meant to ask Sam to stop at City Hall and pay a parking ticket she and Dottie had got the other day.
It was only because she had so many other things on her mind, such as type faces, sheet sizes (would Brook and Dottie sleep in a double bed? It was so hard to know, with a widower, what to expect), and the bridesmaids’ dresses (such a problem, unless Helena could come on from Cleveland early to be fitted), that she quite forgot to mention Harald’s fracas till they had finished luncheon and were walking down Newbury Street, side by side, like two sisters, Mrs. Renfrew in her beaver and Dottie in her mink. “Dottie!” she exclaimed. “I nearly forgot! You’ll never guess what I was reading this morning at the Club. One of your friends has run afoul of the law.” She looked quizzically up at her daughter, her blue eyes dancing. “Try to guess.” “Pokey,” said Dottie. Mrs. Renfrew shook her head. “Not even warm.” “Harald Petersen!” repeated Dottie, when her mother had told her. “That wasn’t fair, Mother. He’s not exactly a friend. What did he do?” Mrs. Renfrew related the story. In the middle of it, Dottie stopped dead, between Arlington and Berkeley. “Who was the other man?” she asked. “I wonder who it could have been.” “I don’t know, Dottie. But his picture was in the paper. He had quite a ‘shiner.’” “You don’t remember the name, Mother?” Mrs. Renfrew ruefully shook her head. “Why? Do you think it’s someone you know?” Dottie nodded. “It was a fairly common name,” said Mrs. Renfrew, pondering. “It seems to me it began with B.” “Not Brown?” cried Dottie. “It might have been,” replied her mother. “Brown, Brown,” she repeated. “I wonder if that was it.” “Oh, Mother!” said Dottie. “Why didn’t you clip it out?” “Darling,” said her mother. “You can’t clip newspapers in the Club. It’s against the house rules. And yet you’d be surprised, the number of members that do it. Magazines too.” “What did he look like?” said Dottie. “Rather artistic,” said Mrs. Renfrew. “Dissipated-looking. But that may have been the black eye. A gentleman, I should think. Now, what did it say he did? Sad to say, Dottie, my memory’s going. ‘Harald Petersen, playwright,’ and the other one was something like that. Not ‘ditchdigger,’ anyway,” she added brightly. “‘Painter’?” suggested Dottie. “I don’t think so,” said her mother.
All this time, they had been standing in the middle of the sidewalk, with people brushing past them. It was cold; Mrs. Renfrew pushed back her coat sleeve and glanced at her watch. “You go on, Mother,” said Dottie abruptly. “I’ll meet you. I’m going back to the Ritz to buy the paper.” Mrs. Renfrew looked seriously up at Dottie; she was not alarmed, having guessed for a long time that some little love trouble had happened to Dottie early last summer in New York. That was why she had sent her out West, to get over it. “Do you want me to come with you?” she said. Dottie hesitated. Mrs. Renfrew took her arm. “Come along, dear,” she said. “I’ll wait in the ladies’ lounge while you get it from the porter.”
A few minutes later, Dottie appeared with the Herald Tribune; the Times had been sold out. “Putnam Blake,” she said. “You were right about the B. I met him at Kay’s party. He raises funds for labor. We got an appeal from him the other day for something. And he married Norine Schmittlapp, who was in our class. You can see her in the big picture. The four of them have got very inty this winter.” From Dottie’s flat tone, Mrs. Renfrew could tell that this was not “the one.” The poor girl laid the paper aside quietly; then she sank her chin into the palm of her hand and sat thinking. Mrs. Renfrew took out her compact, so as not to seem to watch Dottie. As she powdered her pretty, bright features, she considered what to do. Dottie still “had it bad,” as the girls said nowadays; that was all too clear. Her mother’s sympathies, like delicate feelers, fluttered out to her; she knew how it felt to yearn for the sight of a certain name long after the man who owned it had passed out of one’s life forever. The very prospect of seeing his name and his photograph had got Dottie all “hot and bothered” again. Yet Mrs. Renfrew could not decide whether it would be wiser to let Dottie bear her disappointment in silence or to help her talk it out. The danger of this was that Dottie’s flame might only be fanned by talking; if she had the strength to stamp it out alone, she would come through, in the end, a finer person. And yet it made little Mrs. Renfrew wince and bite her lips to sit pretending to fix her hair when a few words from her might be balm to Dottie’s soul.
Mrs. Renfrew had complete confidence in Dottie’s judgment: if Dottie considered this man in New York, whoever he was, unsuitable for her, Dottie must be right. Some girls in Dottie’s position might give up a fine young man because he was poor or had a dependent mother and sisters to support (Mrs. Renfrew had known such cases), but Dottie would not do that; through her religion, she would find the patience to wait. Whatever the reason, Dottie’s heart had made its decision last summer and stuck to it splendidly; it was Mrs. Renfrew’s guess that the man was married. There were cases (the wife hopelessly insane and shut up in an institution and no prospect of her death) in which Mrs. Renfrew might have counseled a liaison for Dottie, no matter what Sam Renfrew threatened, but if it had been something of that sort, Dottie would surely have told her. No; Mrs. Renfrew did not doubt that Dottie had done the wise and brave thing in cutting this man out of her life; it only troubled her that Dottie might be marrying too hastily, “on the rebound,” before her former feelings had had a chance to die naturally. She had come back from Arizona quietly happy and looking fit as a fiddle, but with Brook still out West and the strain of the wedding preparations, she had begun to seem a little over-tired and nervous. It worried Mrs. Renfrew, now, to realize that Dottie, with two fittings yet to come on her wedding dress, would be in New York and exposed, probably, at every turn, to memories of this man.
These thoughts, sharp as bird tracks, passed through Mrs. Renfrew’s pretty little hatted head as she sat, tense with sympathy for her daughter, in the Ritz ladies’ lounge. She wondered what Dr. Perry or Dr. Leverett, the dear old rector, would advise; perhaps Dottie would be able to talk to one of them, in case she had any real doubts about the state of her feelings. She snapped shut her handbag. “How was Dr. Perry today?” she asked smiling. “Did he give you a clean bill of health?” Dottie raised her head. “He wants to try some diathermy for my sciatica. But he says I’ll be better when I get back into the sun—the great open spaces.” She forced a twinkle into her brown eyes. Mrs. Renfrew hesitated; this was neither the time nor the place, but she was a believer in impulse. She looked around the lounge; they were alone. “Dottie,” she said. “Did Dr. Perry say anything to you about birth control?” Dottie’s face and neck reddened, giving her a rough, chapped look, like an ailing spinster. She nodded briefly. “He says you told him to, Mother. I wish you hadn’t,” Mrs. Renfrew guessed that Dr. Perry had been having one of his gruff days and had offended Dottie’s maiden modesty; engaged girls often had the most unaccountable reactions to the prospect of the wedding night. Mrs. Renfrew moved her chair a little closer. “Dottie,” she said. “Even if you and Brook are planning to have children, you mayn’t want them just yet. There’s a new device, I understand, that’s ninety-per-cent effective. A kind of rubber cap that closes off the uterus. Did Dr. Perry tell you about it?” “I stopped him,” said Dottie. Mrs. Renfrew bit her lip. “Darling,” she urged, “you mustn’t be frightened. Dr. Perry, you know, isn’t a woman’s doctor; he may have been a bit brusque. He’ll arrange to send you to a specialist, who’ll make it all seem easier. And who’ll answer any questions you want to ask—you know, about the physical side of love. Would you rather see a woman doctor? I don’t think this new device is legal yet here in Massachusetts. But Dr. Perry can fix it for you to have an appointment in New York, the next time we go down for your fittings.”
It seemed to Mrs. Renfrew that Dottie shivered in reply. “I’ll go with you, dear,” she added, brightly. “If you want moral support …Or you could ask one of your married friends—Kay or Priss.” Mrs. Renfrew did not know what had done it—the mention of New York, perhaps—but Dottie began to cry. “I love him,” she said, choking, as the tears ran in furrows down either side of her long, distinguished nose. “I love him, Mother.”
At last it had come out. “I know, dear,” said Mrs. Renfrew, fishing in Dottie’s pocketbook for a clean handkerchief and gently wiping her face. “I don’t mean Brook,” said Dottie. “I know,” said Mrs. Renfrew. “What am I going to do?” Dottie repeated. “What am I going to do?” “We’ll see,” promised her mother. Her principal object now was to get Dottie’s tears dried and her face powdered and take her home, before any of their friends could see her here. “We’ll give up the fitting,” she said. The doorman brought the car around (he and Mrs. Renfrew were old friends); Mrs. Renfrew put her small foot on the accelerator and in a few minutes they were home and up in Dottie’s bedroom, with the door closed, having let themselves in so softly that Margaret, the old parlormaid, had not heard them. They sat on Dottie’s chaise longue, with their arms around each other.
“I thought I was over it. I thought I loved Brook.” Mrs. Renfrew nodded, though she had not yet learned the circumstances or even the young man’s name. “Do you want to marry him?” she asked, going straight to the heart of the matter. “There’s no question, Mother, of that,” Dottie answered, in a cold, almost rebuking tone. Mrs. Renfrew drew a deep breath. “Do you want to ‘live’ with him?” she heard herself bravely pronounce. Dottie buried her head in her mother’s strong small shoulder. “No, I guess not,” she acknowledged. “Then what do you want, darling?” said her mother, stroking her forehead. Dottie pondered. “I want to see him again,” she decided. “That’s all, Mother. I want to see him again.” Mrs. Renfrew clasped Dottie tighter. “I thought he’d be at Kay’s party. I was sure he’d be there. And you know, when I first came in, I only wanted him to be there so that he could hear about my engagement and see my engagement ring and watch how happy I was. I looked awfully well that day. But then, when he didn’t come, I started wanting to see him just to see him—not to show him he didn’t mean a thing to me any more. Was that first feeling just sort of an armor, do you think?” “I imagine so, Dottie,” said her mother. “Oh, it was awful,” said Dottie. “Every time the doorbell rang, I was convinced it was going to be Dick”—she pronounced the name shyly, looking sidewise at her mother—“and then when it wasn’t I nearly fainted, each time, it hurt me so. And all those new friends of Kay’s were terribly nice but I almost hated them because they weren’t Dick. Why do you think he didn’t come?” “Was he invited?” asked Mrs. Renfrew practically. “I don’t know and I couldn’t ask. And it was so peculiar; nobody mentioned him. Not a word. And all the time a drawing by him of Harald was hanging right there on the wall. Like Banquo’s ghost or something. I felt sure he’d been invited and was staying away on purpose and that everybody there knew that and was watching me out of the corner of their eye.” “Your grammar, Dottie!” chided her mother, absently; her sky-blue eyes had clouded over. “Does Kay know about this?” she asked, taking care to make the question sound casual, so that she would not seem to be reproaching Dottie. Dottie nodded mutely, not looking at her mother, who made a little grimace and then controlled herself. “If she knew, dear, and knew you were engaged,” she said lightly, “she doubtless didn’t invite him. For your sake.” Mrs. Renfrew was “fishing,” but Dottie did not bite. “How cruel,” she answered, which told Mrs. Renfrew nothing. “You mustn’t be unfair, dear,” she said mechanically, “because you’re unhappy. Your father would say,” she added, smiling, “that Kay ‘showed good judgment.’” And she looked questioningly into Dottie’s eyes. How far had this thing gone? Mrs. Renfrew had to know, yet Dottie did not seem to be aware of the fact that she had left her parent in the dark.
“Then you think I shouldn’t see him?” Dottie answered swiftly. “How can I say, Dottie?” protested her mother. “You haven’t told me anything about him. But I think you think you shouldn’t see him. Amn’t I right?” Dottie stared pensively at her engagement ring. “I think I must see him,” she decided. “I mean I feel I’m fated to see him. If I don’t do anything about it myself. As if it would be arranged, somehow, before I was married, that I would meet him just once. But I think I mustn’t try to see him. Do you understand that?” “I understand,” said Mrs. Renfrew, “that you want to have your cake and eat it too, Dottie. You’d like God to arrange for you to have something that you know would be wrong for you to have if you chose it of your own free will.” A look of relief and wonder came into Dottie’s face. “You’re right, Mother!” she cried. “What a marvelous person you are! You’ve seen right through me.” “We’re all pretty much alike,” consoled Mrs. Renfrew. “Judy O’Grady and the Colonel’s lady, you know.” She squeezed Dottie’s hand. “And yet,” said Dottie, “even if it’s wrong, I can’t stop hoping. Not hoping, even. Expecting. That somehow, somehow, I will see him. On the street. Or on a bus or a train. The day after Kay’s party, I went to the Museum of Modern Art; I made believe I was going to see an exhibition. But he wasn’t there. And the time’s getting so short. Only a month left. Less than a month. Mother, in Arizona, I hardly thought about him at all. I’d almost forgotten him. It was Kay’s party that brought it all back. And ever since then I’ve had the most peculiar feeling. That he was thinking about me too. Not just that, Mother. Watching me, sort of skeptically, wherever I went, like to Dr. Perry today or a fitting; he has the most thrilling grey eyes that he narrows. …” She hesitated and broke off. “Do you believe in thought transference, Mother? Do you remember Peter Ibbetson? Because I feel that Dick is listening to my thoughts. And waiting.” Mrs. Renfrew sighed. “Your imagination has got over-active, dear. You’re letting it run away with you.” “Oh, Mother,” said Dottie, “if you could only see him! You would like him too. He’s terribly good-looking and he’s suffered so much.” All at once, she dimpled. “How could you ever have thought that I’d have fallen for someone that looked like that Putnam Blake? Why, he’s white as a leper and needs to wash his hair! Dick isn’t the unwashed type; he comes from a very good family—descended from Hawthorne. Brown is a very good name.”
Mrs. Renfrew put her hands on her daughter’s shoulders and shook her gently. “I want you to lie down now. And I’ll bring you a cold compress for your eyes. Rest till dinner. Or till Daddy comes home.” It was just as she had feared; talking about this man had revived all Dottie’s feeling for him; having started by crying, she had finished in smiles and dimples. In the bathroom, wringing out two hand towels in cold water, Mrs. Renfrew wondered whether it might not be a good thing, however, for Dottie to see this man again. In her own environment, among her own friends …Despite what Dottie said, he was evidently a bit of a rough diamond. If Dottie had not been engaged, she could have asked him to a little party in New York, perhaps at Polly Andrews’ place. Or to dine quietly with herself and her mother some night, and to go to a play or a concert afterward, with some older man present to make a fourth? Six would be better still—less pointed. Dottie could simply telephone him and say that her mother had an extra ticket and could he dine first? But an engaged girl was not free to ask whomever she chose, even with all the chaperonage in the world. And what would Brook say to Dottie’s mother if anything were to happen as the result?
Mrs. Renfrew sharply wrung out the compress, which had got tepid while she was thinking, and held it afresh under the cold-water tap. For Dottie’s own sake, she had to know how far the thing had gone. If it had gone the whole way and the man had aroused her senses, the poor child was in a fix. Some women, they said, never got over the first man, especially if he were skillful; he left a permanent imprint. Why, they even said that a child conceived with the legal husband would have the features of the first lover! That was nonsense, of course, old wives’ talk, yet the thought stirred Mrs. Renfrew’s blood a little. She was forty-seven years old and had just had her twenty-fifth reunion (where she had been voted the youngest-looking member of the class) at the time of Dottie’s Commencement, and yet at heart, she feared, she was still a romantic; it excited her foolish fancy to think that a man who took a girl’s virginity had the power to make her his forever. She could not make out what Dottie’s own heart was dictating. Dottie was independent; she had her own bank account in the State Street Trust. What then was holding her back from seeing this man if she wanted to?
She laid the compress on Dottie’s forehead, briskly drew the shades, and sat down on the bed, meaning to stay only a minute, to feel Dottie’s pulse. It appeared to be normal. “Dottie,” she said impulsively, tucking the coverlet around her, “I think you have to be true to your own lights in this. If you love ‘Dick’”—she brought out the name with difficulty—“perhaps you should take the initiative in trying to see him. Is it your pride that’s holding you back? Did he hurt you in some way? Did you have a quarrel or a misunderstanding?” “He doesn’t love me, Mother,” said Dottie in a low voice. “I just excite him sexually. He told me so.” Mrs. Renfrew closed her eyes for an instant, feeling something click inside her, rather unpleasantly, at hearing, with finality, what she had already guessed to be the case; then she picked up Dottie’s hand and squeezed it warmly. “So he was your lover.” There had only been one night, it seemed; the night she had tried to reach Dottie at the Vassar Club and Dottie did not come in. That was the time. “But you hardly knew him,” said Mrs. Renfrew. “Dick’s a fast worker,” replied Dottie with a twinkle and a cough. “And what happened afterward?” said Mrs. Renfrew gravely. “You never heard from him again? Was that it, Dottie?” Compassion for her daughter moved her heart. “I can’t explain,” said Dottie. “I don’t know myself what happened. I ran away, I suppose you could say.” Mrs. Renfrew clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Was it a very painful experience? Did you bleed a great deal, dear?” “No,” said Dottie. “It wasn’t painful that way. Actually, it was terribly thrilling and passionate. But afterward …Oh, Mother, I simply can’t tell you, I can never tell anyone, what happened afterward.” Mrs. Renfrew’s sensitive conjectures were wide of the mark. “He made me”—Dottie suddenly spoke up—“go to a doctor and get a contraceptive, one of those diaphragm things you were talking about.” Mrs. Renfrew was stunned; her wide bright eyes canvassed her daughter’s face, as if trying to reassemble her. “Perhaps that’s the modern way,” she finally ventured. “That’s what Kay said,” replied Dottie. She described her visit to the doctor. “But what were you supposed to do with it then?” asked Mrs. Renfrew. “That was the whole trouble,” said Dottie, flushing. And she told how she had sat for nearly six hours in Washington Square with the contraceptive apparatus on her lap. “I knew then he couldn’t care for me at all or he couldn’t have put me through that.” “Men are strange,” said Mrs. Renfrew. “Your father—” She stopped. “I sometimes think that they don’t want to know too much about that side of a woman’s life. It destroys an illusion.” “That was your generation, Mother. No. The truth is, Dick didn’t give me a thought. I have to be unsentimental, like Kay, and face that. I left the whole caboodle under a bench in Washington Square. Imagine the junkman’s surprise! What do you suppose he thought, Mother?” Mrs. Renfrew could not help smiling too. She understood now what had made Dottie shed tears in the Ritz. “So you thought,” she said gaily, “Dr. Perry and I were going to make you go back to the same woman doctor. Like seeing the same movie over. Oh, poor Dottie!” Despite themselves, both mother and daughter began to laugh.
Mrs. Renfrew wiped her eyes. “Seriously, Dottie,” she said, “it’s queer that your ‘Dick’ wasn’t home all that time. What do you suppose he could have been doing? I rather agree with Kay that he couldn’t have sent you to the doctor just to make game of you.” “He just forgot,” said Dottie. “He stopped to have a drink in a bar, probably. That’s another thing, Mother. He drinks.” “Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Renfrew.
He was a thoroughly bad hat, then, but that was the kind, of course, that nice women broke their hearts over. Mrs. Renfrew remembered the gay days of the war, when Dottie was still in short dresses with her hair in a big ribbon, and Sam, home on leave from camp, had christened a member of their set “the matrimonial submarine.” How attractive he had been, too, to dance with, though all the men disliked him and in the end he had drunk himself into the sanatorium after torpedoing three happy marriages! She nodded. “You’re right, Dottie,” she said firmly. “If he were serious about you, he would have realized the shock he’d given your feelings and tracked you down through Kay. Or there may be some good in him. He may have decided to leave you alone, knowing that he’d ruin your life if you fell in love with him. Had he been drinking when he seduced you?” “He didn’t seduce me, Mother. That’s vieux jeu. And I am in love with him. Do you think if he knew that …? He’s very proud, Mother. ‘I’m not in your class,’ he said. That’s one of the first things he told me. If I were to go to him and tell him …?”
“I don’t know, Dottie,” Mrs. Renfrew sighed. It was not clear to her whether she herself was trying to dissuade Dottie from seeking this Dick out or the opposite. More than anything else, she wanted to guide Dottie to discover her own real feelings. There was one simple test. “Dear,” she said. “I think we’d better postpone your wedding for a few weeks. That will give you time to know what your real feelings are. Meanwhile, you rest, and I’ll get you a fresh compress.” She got up and smoothed down the counterpane, feeling decidedly more cheerful as she began to see that it really would be practicable, and probably the best solution, to put off the wedding for the present. “Luckily, Dottie,” she murmured, “we didn’t order the invitations today. Just think, if I hadn’t stopped at the Club for a manicure this morning, I should never have seen that newspaper, and you would never have told me what you did, and the invitations would be ordered. ‘For want of a nail …’” “But what about the dresses?” said Dottie. “The dresses will still be good a month from now,” replied Mrs. Renfrew. “We’ll lay the blame on Dr. Perry.” By this time, her active and sanguine mind had raced ahead another step; she was checking off the eventualities in case the wedding should be called off altogether in the end. She and Sam would have to compensate the bridesmaids for their dresses, but that would not amount to much: because of Polly Andrews, they had chosen an inexpensive model. And a few pieces of silver had already been marked, but fortunately in the old way, with the bride’s initials, so that they would come in handy some time. No wedding presents would have to be returned, barring Lakey’s Madonna, which could wait till Lakey came back. As for the wedding gown, it could either be kept or passed on to one of the younger cousins. At Mrs. Renfrew’s age, she had learned to cope with disappointments; young people, she had noticed, found it a great deal harder to adjust to a change of plans.
When she came back with a fresh compress, she at first thought Dottie had fallen asleep, for her eyes were closed and she was breathing regularly. Mrs. Renfrew raised the window a crack and laid the cold towels gently on Dottie’s forehead, noticing with tenderness the strong widow’s peak. Then she tiptoed out of the room, thanking her stars that she had found the right remedy; as soon as the pressure of the oncoming wedding had been removed, Dottie had been able to relax. But just as she was closing the door, carefully, Dottie spoke.
“I don’t want the wedding postponed. Brook would never understand.” “Nonsense, Dottie. We’ll just say that Dr. Perry—” “No,” said Dottie. “No, Mother. I’ve made up my mind.” Mrs. Renfrew came into the room again and shut the door behind her; she had heard old Margaret, who was an eavesdropper, prowling about. “Darling,” she said, “you thought you’d made up your mind before. You were very sure you loved Brook and could make him happy.” “I’m sure again,” said Dottie. Mrs. Renfrew advanced into the room with her precise, light step; she had limped as a young girl and overcome it with exercises and golf. “Dottie,” she said firmly, “it’s cruel and wicked to marry a man you only half love. Especially an older man. It’s a kind of cheating. I’ve seen it happen among my own friends. You promise the man something that you can’t give. As long as that other man remains in the back of your mind. Like a hidden card up your sleeve.” She had grown quite agitated, and her golden head, with its silver glister, had begun to tremble a little, as if in memory of that old invalidism which they had called palsy in those days.
To her immense distress, they began to quarrel, in low-pitched, well-bred voices; Mrs. Renfrew would not have thought this could happen between her and Dottie. She was telling Dottie that she must see Dick again, if only to make sure. “If you order me to, I’ll do it, Mother. But afterward I’ll kill myself. I’ll throw myself off the train.” “Please don’t be melodramatic, Dottie.” “It’s you who’re being melodramatic, Mother. Just allow me to marry Brook in peace.” Distractedly, Mrs. Renfrew was aware of the oddity of this situation, in which the roles were reversed, and the daughter was hurrying herself into a “suitable” marriage while the mother was pleading with her to seek out an unsuitable rake. This was, apparently, that “gulf between the generations” that had been discussed at her class reunion last June; one of the faculty members of Mrs. Renfrew’s class had stated it as a generalization that this new crop of girls was far less idealistic, less disinterested, as a body of educated women, than their mothers had been. Mrs. Renfrew had not believed it, noting to herself that Dottie and her friends were all going out to work, mostly at volunteer jobs, and were not trammeled by any of the fears and social constraints that had beset her own generation. And yet here was Dottie virtually demonstrating what that faculty member had said. Was it a sign of the times? Had the depression done it? Were girls nowadays afraid of taking a risk? She suspected that Dottie, with her poor health and Boston heritage, was terrified of becoming an old maid. That (not the other) was the “fate worse than death” for Dottie’s classmates. Yet marriage, as she had always impressed on Dottie, was a serious thing, a sacrament. Dottie did not love Brook; the certainty of this was beyond any doubt to Mrs. Renfrew’s eyes, and she felt as though she would be condoning a very grave sin if, knowing what she knew, she let her go ahead unreflecting. Did Dottie even respect Brook? If so, she ought to hesitate.
“You’re unwilling to make a sacrifice,” Mrs. Renfrew said sorrowfully, her head commencing to tremble again. “Not even to wait a month to keep from hurting a man who isn’t in his first youth. You’re unwilling to sacrifice your pride to see ‘Dick’ again and live with him, if you love him, and try to reform him. Women in my day, women of all sorts, were willing to make sacrifices for love, or for some ideal, like the vote or Lucy Stonerism. They got themselves put out of hotels for registering as ‘Miss’ and ‘Mr.’ when they were legally married. Look at your teachers, look what they gave up. Or at women doctors and social workers.” “That was your day, Mother,” Dottie said patiently. “Sacrifices aren’t necessary any more. Nobody has to choose between getting married and being a teacher. If they ever did. It was the homeliest members of your class who became teachers—admit it. And everybody knows, Mother, that you can’t reform a man; he’ll just drag you down too. I’ve thought about this a lot, out West. Sacrifice is a dated idea. A superstition, really, Mother, like burning widows in India. What society is aiming at now is the full development of the individual.”
“Oh, I agree; I quite agree,” said Mrs. Renfrew. “And yet it’s such a little thing I’m asking of you, Dottie. Bear with your Aged P.” She put in this family joke in a nervous conciliatory manner. “It isn’t necessary, Mother. I truly do know my mind. Because I slept with Dick doesn’t mean I should change my whole life. He feels the same way himself. You can fit things into their compartments. He initiated me, and I’ll always be grateful to him for making it so wonderful. But if I saw him again, it might not be so wonderful. I’d get involved. …It’s better to keep it as a memory. Besides, he doesn’t want my love. That’s what I was thinking about when you were in the bathroom. I can’t throw myself at him.” “It often works,” said Mrs. Renfrew, smiling. “Men—unhappy, lonely men, particularly—” she continued gravely, “respond to a faithful heart. An unswerving faith, Dottie, moves mountains; you should have learned that from your religion. ‘Whither thou goest I will go. …’” Dottie shook her dark head. “You try sitting in the Common, Mother, with a douche bag and whatnot on your lap. And anyway you don’t really want me to live with him either. You’re only talking, because you want me to ‘pay the price.’ Postpone my wedding and upset everybody’s plans, just to allow a ‘decent interval’ to elapse. Of mourning for Dick. Isn’t it true?” A faint teasing smile came into her brown eyes as she interrogated her mother.
Mrs. Renfrew considered the accusation. It was true, she had to confess, that she did not want Dottie to “live with” Dick. But she would want Dottie to want to do it. Yet how to express this? Perhaps Dottie was right, and she was only being conventional in wishing to postpone the marriage. It might be the conventional Bostonian in her that felt that Dottie ought to make some gesture toward the past. Yet was this enough to account for the deep sad sense of disappointment she had—disappointment in Dottie? It seemed to her, looking at it as charitably as she could, that Dottie was being tempted by Brook’s wealth and by the glorious outdoor life he had to offer her, of which she had painted such a vivid unforgettable picture—the desert and the silver mines and the pack trips into the mountains. “You were ‘just talking’ yourself, Dottie,” she chided, “when you said you loved Dick. I was only going by what you told me. I don’t believe you do love him. But I think you like to say so. Because if you didn’t you would be too shamed and degraded.” “Please, Mother!” said Dottie haughtily. Mrs. Renfrew turned away. “Try to get some rest,” she said. “I’m going to lie down myself.” There were tears in her bright-blue eyes as she lay on her chaise longue, which faced the window, hung with pretty Swiss-embroidered curtains, overlooking Chestnut Street. She had certainly not married Sam Renfrew for money or for what they called “security” nowadays, and yet she felt as if she had and as if some dreadful pattern were being repeated in Dottie. Had she and Sam given Dottie false values, despite all their efforts to the contrary? She and Sam had married for love, and there had never been anyone before him, and yet she felt as if, long ago, she had had a lover whom she had given up for this house and the State Street Trust and the golf and the Chilton Club, and it was all being visited on Dottie or on that poor man out in Arizona. The sins of the fathers. This was all perfect stuff, she knew, and Dottie, she supposed, might learn to love Brook, especially since her senses seemed to have been awakened; that, at least, was the positive side of all this sad affair—or could be, if Brook were careful. The Arizona climate, too, was “just what the doctor ordered” for Dottie. A few tears, nevertheless, rolled out of one eye, and she stanched them with the handkerchief of fine Irish linen and lace old Margaret had given her for Christmas. An idea of a lost lover, of someone renounced, tapped at her memory like a woodpecker. Whom could she be thinking of, she asked herself demurely. The matrimonial submarine?