I Walked in Arden Part 10

"Don't you think it is about time we got to know some of the important people in town--social stuff--country club and so on?" said Knowlton one evening as he looked at me through his cigar smoke with one of his quizzical grins.

"I'm not very keen about it," I growled, for I was tired and sulky from a hard day, and Deep Harbor was resting somewhat heavily upon my nerves.

"We've been here three months now, and not a solitary person has spoken to us except in the way of business."

Knowlton went on: "Still, I think it's bad business to keep away from them; we've got to know them. They haven't chased after us, so we must chase after them."

"Is there ever any other motive in your mind than a business one?" I exploded in disgust. This merely produced a particularly fiendish grin from Knowlton.

"Little inclined to kick over the traces tonight, aren't you, Ted? I don't blame you. You've had too long a dose without the right kind of relaxation. There must be plenty of nice people here if we could only get in touch with them. Better get out your Tuxedo and have it pressed.

We'll open a social campaign."

I paid little attention to Knowlton's latest plan; he was full of new schemes each day, all aimed at extending the scope of our business connections. Several days pa.s.sed, and, as I heard no more of his calculated social ambitions, I concluded that pressure of more important affairs had mercifully excluded this new idea from his mind. Then one afternoon my call sounded on the buzzer, and I reported at the office.

Knowlton greeted me with the customary grin. "Busy out in the laboratory?"

"No more than usual," I replied noncommittally. I had learned that when Knowlton introduced a subject with a prelude of this kind it usually meant extra work was about to be proposed.

"No experiment that will keep you this evening?" he queried. Should I start one as a measure of self-protection and then say "Yes," or should I chance whatever new plan Knowlton had on foot and step into his obvious trap? I decided on the latter course for the sake of variety.

"No," I answered. "I shall close down with the whistle."

"Good. Then I have a dinner invitation for you--now, you are to go, Ted, it's no use putting your back up. I've practically accepted."

"Are you going?" I asked suspiciously.

"Why no, Ted, I'm not. In the first place I haven't been invited; and, second, they are not so much in my line."

"Who, where, when?" I tried to make this scornfully ironic, but I only drew a broader grin than before from Knowlton.

"You owe the honour of this invitation to Mr. Hemphill, of our office staff."

I snorted, this time with anger.

"That fat old bore!" I exclaimed.

Knowlton interrupted me. "Hush, Teddy. While I recognize a certain truth in your description, still you are to know that our Mr. Hemphill, although hard up, belongs to one of the first families of Deep Harbor.

His wife helps run the social plant in this burg--she's superintendent of it, in fact, and issues or cancels all permits to circulate through the labyrinth. I've only recently made this important discovery. Hence your bid to dinner." Knowlton grinned triumphantly.

Hemphill was a particularly disagreeable figure in the outer office, for he always b.u.t.tonholed one to listen to a tiresome anecdote.

"It's the wife, Ted, who runs the works--not old Charlie. I agree with you about him. Believe me, he's kept on his good behaviour at home."

Knowlton pressed his buzzer. "I'll have him in and tell him you've accepted."

I saw it was useless to protest. Hemphill appeared at the door, and I looked more closely than heretofore at my prospective host. Across his fat red face there spread an oily smile which sank on each side into a coa.r.s.e iron-grey stubble. His forehead was high and greasy above two small blue eyes, beneath which were pouches of red skin. His hair, stiff and grey like the growth on his face, was worn pompadour and trimmed to make his head appear flat on top. Over the most conspicuously Falstaffian detail of his anatomy hung a heavy gold watch chain carrying many seals indicative of his members.h.i.+p in fraternal organizations. In the lapel of his coat was an enameled b.u.t.ton as further proof of his fellows.h.i.+p.

"Mr. Hemphill," said Knowlton, "Ted accepts with pleasure your invitation to dine at your house this evening."

"That's fine, Mr. Jevons," he replied. "That certainly helps us out of a hole." I p.r.i.c.ked up my ears. "Mrs. Hemphill was terrible put out because one of her regular young men was called to Pittsburgh to look after a pig-iron contract. His going kind of bust up the dinner party. I didn't think it mattered much myself, but you know what women are about such things. Wouldn't do to have one of the girls left without a beau, so I says, to make peace in the family, 'How about asking young Teddy out to the works?' Of course Sally--that's my wife--didn't care much about ringing in a stranger that way, but I said to her, says I, 'Shucks, Teddy's all right--nice, quiet boy, European education, and quite a swell where he comes from, according to what I've heard.' Well, that sort of quieted her, and finally she says to me--'Go ahead and ask him.

I can't have my dinner party spoiled.' So that's how I came to put the proposition up to you," he concluded.

I saw Knowlton playing with his paper knife and making desperate efforts not to catch my eye or grin. My indignation all but boiled over.

"I'm deeply flattered"--I began, but at this point Knowlton pressed his buzzer. A stenographer hurried in. "Get me New York on the 'phone," he commanded. "That's all, Teddy. Be there at quarter of seven," and both Hemphill and I found ourselves dismissed without further ceremony. I surrendered in despair. What was the use of fighting? But I made up my mind to be so silent a partner in the evening's proceedings that never again would my services be in demand for filling a gap at a dinner table. Really my rage at being patronized by such people made my hands shake so that my work in the laboratory was useless for the rest of the afternoon. I tingled all over and longed for some way to square the score. I was going to my first dinner party in Deep Harbor like a man from Blankley's--practically hired out for the evening.

I left at ten minutes before six to allow myself a larger margin for dressing. I stopped at the office, but the wise Knowlton had eluded me by going home at half-past five. There was no one with whom I could lodge a final protest.

I dressed in a savage mood. Many caustic epigrams occurred to me as I brushed my hair. I hoped I could remember them for later use that evening. One never can remember a rehea.r.s.ed conversation; it's like trying to use a handy phrase-book in a foreign country. The other side never leads up to one's cues. At last I was ready, and punctually at a quarter before seven I presented myself before the door of a large old-fas.h.i.+oned house set amid the maples of Myrtle Boulevard, Deep Harbor's most fas.h.i.+onable residential street. The house had been built, I judged, about or immediately after the period of the Civil War. It was square, with a door in the middle flanked on either side by long oval-topped windows. Projecting from the door and coming to meet one in a flight of brown stone steps, was a porch heavily ornamented with what appeared to be a Turco-Bulgarian style of design. In any event, this feature of the house was compounded of strange samples of the carpenter's craft, turned in oriental arabesques such as an architect might dream of after a hasty reading of _Kubla Khan_. Apart from the wanton outburst of the approach, the house was most solemn and dignified, with severe lines, its flat roof topped off by a little square cupola from which I fancied it would be fun to watch for Malbrouck's return from the wars. My curiosity to see within was fully aroused by the time I rang the doorbell. It was always a bother to remember that one was supposed to be angry; I had forgotten my chosen role and caught myself antic.i.p.ating the evening.

Hemphill himself opened the black walnut front door with its silver plated k.n.o.bs. As he did so a feminine voice called imperiously "Charles, Mary Ellen will answer the door!" "Alas for Charles," thought I, "the warning has come too late--the deed is done and I am within." Mary Ellen was visible on the horizon of the pa.s.sage which ran straight through the centre line of the house. Upon seeing what had happened she fled to the rear with a report of the situation at the front. Hemphill, much embarra.s.sed and evidently suffering some anxiety concerning the immediate future, helped me off with my coat. He hung it up upon a black walnut hatrack with which its designer had incorporated a slab of white marble. We entered a room upon the right with an extraordinarily high ceiling. The room was perfect early Victorian down to the last detail of crocheted anti-maca.s.sars on the backs of dull red plush chairs. To my great delight an engraving of _The Monarch of the Glen_ and of _Dignity and Impudence_ occupied the positions of honour upon the walls. There was also a scene in Venice, by Ruskin. Over all, however, was the shabbiness of respectable poverty which descends upon great possessions when they become relics of a vanished prosperity. I was so absorbed with my delight in the room--I decided on the spot to put it into a novel some day--that I overlooked for a moment the a.s.sembly gathered there.

But I was soon aware of a tall, stern-lipped woman in an evening dress corresponding to the period of the room, bearing down upon me.

"Mother," said Hemphill (I was certain this was a tactless epithet), "this is Teddy."

She shook hands icily as she surveyed me. My evening clothes were London made; I felt quite calm about this ordeal. I noticed a perceptible thaw, although nothing excessive, when she greeted me after inspection. Behind her came a tall girl of about nineteen, who was already a pale replica of her mother--the same angularity, particularly about the neck and shoulders, but in her eyes her father's meekness in the presence of authority. It was not a house of divided counsels, I decided, after another glance at the mother.

"My daughter Edith," mama announced. Edith dropped her eyes and modestly resisted my efforts to shake hands with her. "My sister, Mrs. Martin,"

was the next in line--a stout elderly lady in alpaca and cameos, who walked with the aid of an ivory stick. She wasn't unlike the Queen, taking her in silhouette. I was much struck by the similarity in types all the way from Windsor to Deep Harbor. I murmured something, intended as a compliment, to Mrs. Martin about the resemblance.

"Good gracious, I hope I'm not so old or so fat as all that!" came the crus.h.i.+ng retort. Evidently the path of tact in a new country was going to be strewn with unforeseen difficulties. I reddened. It was disconcerting to break a cuc.u.mber frame as soon as one entered the garden. "Miss Helen Claybourne," I heard Mrs. Hemphill continue. I looked up, hope abandoned, to encounter two large serious grey eyes gazing at me with frank curiosity. I started, for they were beautiful eyes set wide apart beneath a high, well-modelled brow, over which soft light brown hair waved most alluringly. A straight nose and firm chin completed a face that was not only full of character, but also good to look upon. I was enough of a sn.o.b to note that her clothes were right and that her athletic figure carried them magnificently. She shook hands heartily and frankly; her grasp was warm and pleasant, strong as a boy's, but womanly too. My rout was complete; I could find words in the gaze of those grey eyes which seemed to say "We believe in the truth." I felt humble and apologetic; one should first crave audience before daring to speak to those eyes. The next reaction was one of anger that a girl--she couldn't be over eighteen--had so abashed me.

There were others present, both men and women, but they did not exist for me. I heard their names mentioned and could not remember them; I went around the room shaking hands and trying to repeat the necessary conventional phrases, but I stammered and stuttered and b.u.mped into the furniture. Everywhere I felt two large grey eyes burning holes in the middle of my back. It was a great relief when we filed into the dining room. I was half hopeful and half fearful that I should be given Miss Claybourne to take down; I wasn't. My seat was next to Mrs. Martin for safe keeping, while grey eyes sat across from me and talked to an aggressive looking saphead in a watered silk waistcoat. My conversation was nil; my earlier break with Mrs. Martin discouraged me there, while she was now most absorbed in her food. I tried to hear something of what was said across the table, but in vain. Occasionally grey eyes looked in my direction, but without friendliness or even recognition. I sank into gloom and despair. Early in the dinner I hoped for a gla.s.s of wine to cheer me up. There was a slender empty gla.s.s beside the iced water at my plate. That hope was dashed when Mary Ellen filled these slender gla.s.ses with mineral water from a bottle most artfully concealed in a napkin.

Occasionally, Hemphill burst into anecdote, but usually these sallies of his were sternly suppressed by the voice of the skipper at the other end of the table. The latter carried on a marvellous sign language with the hara.s.sed Mary Ellen, to whom dinner parties on this scale were obviously a novelty. When she wasn't signalling Mary Ellen in a code of frowns and nods, Mrs. Hemphill spent her time searching with one foot for a mysterious bell that was concealed somewhere beneath the table. At last the dinner was over, and we all adjourned to the front room. There was no smoking for the men; I was thus bereft of my last hoped-for consolation.

In the drawing room little tables were set out, and Mrs. Hemphill announced that we would now play hearts. We were given beribboned tags with our table number on them, and this time luck smiled upon me; I drew grey eyes as my partner. Miss Hemphill, pale and wan as a tallow candle, was also at our table. The other man I have forgotten, I tried to be light-hearted and amusing from the start, but made such a sad mess of it that grey eyes began to look at me with unmistakable disapproval.

"Have you been in Deep Harbor long?" she asked me just as I made an atrocious misplay. In some way this harmless-seeming question implied censure. Like Bened.i.c.k, I thought "There is a double meaning in that." I retorted rather sharply: "Only three months." Grey eyes lifted her eyebrows the merest fraction. I regretted bitterly the tone of my reply, but it was too late.

"How does it happen that no one has met you?" she questioned quite calmly, without any apparent trace of rudeness in her voice. The effect was withering upon me; no school-girl could patronize me or cast doubts upon my social eligibility--at least, not in Deep Harbor. She knew I was angry and turned with some laughing remark to the other man, thus effectually squelching my intended retort, for which, however, I was still groping. The hand soon ended, and partners were changed. Although grey eyes was my opponent for another game, she did not address any but necessary remarks to me, while I continued to play badly and silently.

With the conclusion of this game she progressed to another table, and Mrs. Martin once more descended upon me. The old lady took ample revenge upon me for likening her to the Queen. She commented adversely upon each play I made, and in between times lectured me upon might-have-beens. The result was that I remained at the bottom table all the evening.

At ten o'clock the orgy was suspended, and to my amazement I saw grey eyes approaching me. I scrambled hastily to my feet, determined to make all possible amends. She handed me a little package tied with tissue paper and ribbon.

"I have been asked to present you with the b.o.o.by prize," she said with a dangerous twinkle in the grey eyes. My chagrin almost choked me.

Suddenly I felt lonely; I wanted her to be friendly with me. I wanted to beg her for a kind word. Instead I bowed and took my prize from her hands, feeling I had richly earned it.

"And now," said her soft, gentle voice, "you may take me into the dining room and get me some ice-cream."

My heart leaped with grat.i.tude; the kind word had come unsought. She took my arm quite as if we had been good friends for some time, and I floated into the other room with her, trailing, as it were, a cloud of glory. We found ice-cream, coffee, and marvelous rich cake oozing chocolate! There was a couch over by a bay window, and without more words we ensconced ourselves snugly on it. Her profile was almost severely beautiful--a cla.s.sic outline like that of a Greek Venus. I studied it with delight for along with its serene beauty was an intellectual charm, easily recognizable, but impossible to describe in specific terms. For twenty blessed minutes we talked--of nothing important; yet learned to know one another with bewildering speed. I have no recollection of what we said; words came and were approved on both sides. Sympathetic echoes were felt rather than expressed. We were a little formal, not quite sure as yet that such sympathy was real and not a dream. Then we were aware that the dinner party were beginning to bid the hostess good-bye. With unspoken reluctance we came out of our corner.

"May I see you home?" I whispered with anxious heartbeats.

"Yes," she smiled, "I live just across the street."

Mrs. Hemphill must have been amazed at the grat.i.tude I showered upon her for her invitation. I wrung Mr. Hemphill's hand with enthusiasm, as Helen glided up to me and took my arm. It was an exit in triumph.

Across the street we paused for a moment outside her front door.

"Good-night," I said. "Dream true."