XVII

The ladies were stealing a good many glances at the clock beneath the Arab and his prancing steed on Mrs. Leaf’s mantelpiece. Four o’clock⁠—certainly time for coffee and cake if their suppers weren’t to be spoiled. The flannel for the orphans’ nightgowns puckered more and more slowly over their needles.

And then, instead of going comfortably in and sitting around the dining-room table for their cake and coffee as they always did, always, at every meeting of the Guild, Carpus the houseman in his white jacket, with his black forehead all puckered with perplexity, brought in a tray and put it on a small spidery table by Mrs. Leaf⁠—and there wasn’t anything on it but tea and bread and butter! Tea! And bread and butter! Mrs. Talbot nearly cried, she was so disappointed, and Mrs. Pennock gave Mrs. Holly such a look! It was hardly worth the trouble of balancing the cups and plates. And poor Miss Perry, who had counted on saving her supper, gazed round at the blue velvet ottomans and chairs with their fat fringes, the grand gas chandelier like a floating bouquet of white glass tulips with twisty stems, and the bright-colored peasants dancing on large china vases, and couldn’t understand it at all. Mrs. Leaf generally gave “such an elegant entertainment.”

Mrs. Leaf knew what they were feeling, and was bright pink with self-consciousness. But her guest from New York, Mrs. Hawthorn, had afternoon tea, with bread and butter, so the Leafs were having it⁠—and the ladies of the Guild were having it.

Mrs. Hawthorn’s opulent curves, covered with tight black silk, filled an S shaped rocking-chair, white frothed from beneath her long black train, bracelets encircled her plump white wrists and a chatelaine watch clung to the steeps of her bosom. She was being charming to everyone, as a rose sheds its fragrance for all, as a queen bows to the crowd. Mrs. Almond thought she certainly washed her hair with soda to make it golden, and told Hessie Farley so; and Hessie murmured back that that was probably what gave her face that queer artificial look, and that very likely it wasn’t enamelled at all.

“Fannie and Prentice and their two little girls are home for a visit, May,” said Mrs. Leaf. “Fannie’s so anxious to see you. She told me to tell you you must be sure to come for lawn tennis, tomorrow morning, all three of you.”

“We couldn’t, thank you, Mrs. Leaf. Victor gets home from Harvard this evening, and we simply couldn’t leave him.”

“But, of course he must come too! Little Victor Campion a grownup Harvard gentleman⁠—think of it! How time flies! You know you all seem children to me, and yet here’s Fannie been married four years⁠—by the way, is she a month older than you, or a month younger? We were trying to remember. Older! That’s what I told them. And Robert married a year and a half, and both the children thinking they know more about bringing up babies than I do! No soothing syrup, if you please! And their stuck-up nurse-girls! But I must say the babies are lovely⁠—remind me to show you a new photograph of Isabel holding little Robbie⁠—he certainly looks like his daddy. Now you come tomorrow, or Fannie will feel dreadfully. I told her and Lucy Hawthorn they were bad girls not to stay for the sewing this afternoon, but they all went over to the Sandersons to play at lawn tennis⁠—they’re nuts on it, as Robert says. Carpus! Now put the tray here⁠—here on the table, and take the teapot out⁠—excuse me, May⁠—and tell Lissa to fill it up again. Carpus! Tell Lissa not so strong⁠—not so strong⁠—no, don’t take the tray, just the teapot⁠—Mercy!”

“I’m afraid my little Goosey-Lucy isn’t much of a loss as far as the sewing goes,” said Mrs. Hawthorn, throwing a veil of tact over her friend’s fluster. “She belongs to a sewing circle in New York, but I don’t believe the girls do much but gossip and drink chocolate. I notice most of the sewing’s brought home for my poor Elise to do.”

“Elise is Mrs. Hawthorn’s French maid,” Mrs. Leaf explained. That made up for Carpus acting as if he’d never seen a teapot in his life before⁠—the foolish!

“Mrs. Hawthorn was lovely, wasn’t she?” asked Lily as the sisters walked home. “Did you see her handkerchief? It was all lace except for a piece of cambric about the size of a postage stamp, and she smelled so sweet, like that soap from Paris Cousin Lizzie gave you one Christmas, sort of heliotropy.”

May’s face flushed darkly, and her lip began to tremble.

“I couldn’t bear her! You could see every minute she was thinking, ‘I’m being charming! I’m being perfectly charming to all these country bumpkins!’ Yes, and that’s what we are⁠—country bumpkins, and I’m sick of it! Aren’t we ever going to do anything all our lives but sit at home and scrimp, scrimp, scrimp, so that Victor can have nice clothes, Victor can get away, Victor can go to college? We’re human, too, aren’t we?”

“Why, May⁠—!”

“Yes, ‘why, May!’ I’m sick and tired of wearing a steamed velvet iron-holder trimmed with an old duck wing Maggie’s cured on the wagon-shed wall, because I can’t afford a hat, and so Victor can. Who’d look at me, who’d look at any of us in these old made-overs? Who is there to look, anyway? There isn’t a man here who isn’t married or about a hundred⁠—but Victor must have everything, so we’ll just sit at home and twiddle our thumbs and get older and older and older, and fifty years from now they’ll still be calling us the Campion girls⁠—”

She began to laugh. “Did you hear Mrs. Leaf bragging to me about Fannie and Robert and their children? Why should I be expected to be interested in Robert Leaf’s baby, I should like to know? He and Isabel can have a million babies for all I care⁠—it certainly isn’t of the slightest importance to me⁠—”

“Why, May!”

“Why, Lily! I wish you could see your face!” May laughed, harder, harder, until she was almost sobbing. And then suddenly the jangle of laughter stopped, and she looked faint and exhausted, opening her hand and letting the hot crushed daisies she had snatched off by their heads fall to the ground.

They had scraped to send Victor to Harvard. May complained, but she made their clothes just the same, turning and making over and trimming with bits of this and that from the piece bag in the entry closet, until they looked pretty enough really to have come from the grand places whose labels she ripped out of Mamma’s old gowns and sewed in. And she trimmed their hats, too, taking one by one the stuffed birds, the oriole, the bluejay, the rose-breasted grosbeak, from their branches under the glass bell on top of Papa’s secretary.

Maggie did the cooking. Martha had married her young darkie, and a life he was leading her! And Lily helped save by giving up her music lessons with Miss Martin, and working alone, with a novel propped open on the music rack while she practiced her scales, to relieve the monotony.

Maggie had set her heart on Victor’s going to Harvard because Papa had gone there. And Victor wanted to go, too, while the going was still far away, while the mountains were distant waves of mist-blue, instead of steep grey rocks and slipping stones. At home, planning to go, he had been all of Harvard; but when he got to Harvard he was nothing.

Those first homesick days! He would have run home to The Maples if he could, as he had run on his first day of school.

He sat in his small room looking as lost as if he were alone on a raft in the middle of the sea. From his window he saw a thin grey cat slowly stalk a sparrow; then a man came by calling bananas. The sparrow flew away, the cat poured itself through a hole in a fence, the banana man’s cries grew fainter and were still.

At dusk he went out and bought a box of crackers. He could see that the other young men on the streets were all accustomed to the place, that everyone knew everyone else intimately. They knew just where they were going and why, as they walked along, calm and assured. He felt as if they were all looking at him, and laughing. And although he thought he was lost in the strange streets, he couldn’t ask the way. “Could you please tell me⁠—” No, he couldn’t make a sound⁠—

And in sudden terror of having really been stricken dumb, he dashed into a drug store, that seemed so friendly with its familiar smell, its bright blue boxes of the very same toothpowder that they used at The Maples, the “Pear’s Soap Boy” getting his scrubbing from his grandmother, that he could ask quite naturally for a box of shoe polish.

He came out of the drug store, drooping his eyelids and curving his mouth scornfully, then catching sight of a clock on a building, pulled out Papa’s big watch, compared the two, and suddenly hurried off with a slight, anxious frown, as if he were late for an important engagement. Lamps were being lit in the houses⁠—he could see books, geraniums, maids pulling curtains together. Lamps were being lit for these other people, lamps were being lit at home⁠—

Oh, the breathless relief of getting off the street into his own room! He shut the door and leaned against it, his heart pounding as if there were pursuers on the stairs.

He ate the crackers, pausing for a long time between bites, his wide blue eyes fixed absently on the smoky red wall. He and the girls were coming home from a walk in the autumn dusk⁠—a rabbit’s white tail went flashing under a hedge. The boats on the river hooted and moaned to each other through the fog, and the yellow leaves under the tulip tree were too wet to rustle. May’s chilly pink fingers lit the first fire, the thin blue and yellow flames came licking through the dry sticks and around the logs that had waited there for them ever since last April, beetles that had set up housekeeping came bursting out, the smoke poured up in one thick, greyish yellow curl. They had supper in front of the fire, cold beef and hot baked potatoes, and big, pale yellow-green grapes⁠—

He was getting into bed in his room at home. Everything was just as it had always been, except the new suit waiting to be put on tomorrow, the bag still open, waiting for his brush and comb and toothbrush, and the two oblongs of dark olive-green leaves and vermilion berries on the wall paper that everywhere else had faded to shades of straw color. Mamma had hung there in her sealskin sacque, caught in a photographer’s snowstorm, and Papa, with his hand thrust into the front of his coat, but now they were packed to go to Cambridge with him.

There was a tapping at the door, and Maggie’s voice, low, so as not to wake the others.

“Victor⁠—I saw your light. Are you all right? Can I help do anything?”

And he answered, pretending to yawn, so that she shouldn’t guess that he was wide awake with nervousness and excitement:

“Aw righ’, thank you⁠—g’nigh’⁠—”

Well, here he was. He finished his crackers. And then he blackened his shoes, slowly, thoroughly. When they were polished, that was all there was to it. He had nowhere to go in them.

But after awhile he made some friends, and they had good times together.

At the Holly Tree Inn, around the oilcloth covered table that red-haired John in his red shirt was wiping up with a cloth as black as a crow:

“Now I’ll tell you what it is about this fellow Zola⁠—”

“The girl I’d like to see is Lily Langtry. Very snappy, my boy, very snappy!”

“Happy thought! What about an oyster supper and a few bottles of the rosy, one of these frosty evenings, beloved brethren?”

And John’s grubby hand setting down the wonderful poached eggs and hot, thin, buttered toast.

Strolling together to the place on the corner of Holyoke Street, with its cigars, its soda-fountain with the slender marble pillars on either side of the mirror, its jewelled lamp that might have lighted some harem.

“Afternoon, gentlemen.”

White walrus-mustache, eyeglasses on a bit of pink string, and straw hat that seemed as much a part of him as the fungus is part of the tree, he stood there in shirtsleeves and velveteen waistcoat, mixing soft drinks.

“What’s yours, Mr. Campion?”

To have such friends! To be called by name! “Ham sandwich and chocolate ice-cream soda, General!” And in his heart he was jumping up and down like an excited little boy.

A night in Boston, starting with “musties” at Billy Park’s, and going on⁠—where? Among the clouds, among the comets? All men were brave, all women beautiful.

“Ha-a-appy thought! Nozher bottle of oh be joyful!”

“Fixshed bayonet for me, Zhorzh.”

“Branny⁠—shhh-mash!”

And coming home in the horse car, how sweetly they sang:

“ ‘When I drive out eash day in my little coo-pay hay⁠—’

hold⁠—it⁠—

‘I tell you I’m shomehing to shee⁠—’ ”

They sang so sweetly that Victor could not keep back his tears. Their voices died, his sobs died. He and his friends slept upon each other’s shoulders until at the Yard entrance the kind conductor called, “Good morning, gents! Sports’ Alley!”

Then they saw each other home, back and forth, back and forth, for hours. And finally, in his own room, Victor remembered the carnation in his buttonhole. Someone had put it there⁠—who in the dickens? Someone he’d promised never to forget. He put it in his hat in the middle of the floor and poured in all the water from his pitcher. Now and then he would lose himself in dreamy admiration of anything his eyes happened to fall on⁠—his lamp, his soapdish⁠—but presently he would wrench himself back, and pour in a little more water, until it was all used and, something accomplished, something done, he could go to bed in his boots.

But lessons⁠—examinations⁠—

He had tried⁠—but before he understood the beginnings of things, the class was leaping on, and he was trying to leap with it, trying to read before he knew his letters. Clutching his hair in his hands, he would scowl at his books under his green shaded student-lamp, despairing, yawning, taking a great bite of apple, and wishing for some open-sesame that would magically unlock the door of knowledge for him.

He hadn’t passed his examinations. He had been warned after the midyears, and now he had to tell the girls that he wasn’t going back. The train lurched towards home from familiar station to familiar station. The car lamps swung and creaked.

“Well, girls, brace yourselves for a shock⁠—yours truly is home for good.”

The blue river with its white sails unrolled alongside the tracks, the daisies ran down to them.

“I have to tell you something. I couldn’t pass the exams., and the pleasure of my company is not requested for next year.”

The church spire over the trees, the Leaf’s high hedge, Mrs. Pennock’s cows a brown fleet in the foam of daisies. But the feeling of home withheld itself, he couldn’t feel anything but that gnawing sickness at the pit of his stomach.

“Girls, I am sorry to have to tell you⁠—”

And in the middle of Maggie’s account of the ridiculous time Aunt Priscilla was having with her guinea-chickens, he burst out, sounding loud and rough because he had been planning it so long:

“I can’t go back next year! I couldn’t pass my examinations!”

He had told! He had told, and they didn’t scorn him. Maggie said she’d always heard, always, that examinations didn’t signify anything, really; and, of course, he couldn’t go back and be a freshman all over again. Lily cried, “Those mean professors,” and wept a little; and May said everybody knew that what you went to college for was the friends you made, not the things you learned out of books. Waves of love broke over him, waves of gratitude, and he would have died for his sisters happily.

And at last the blinding, numbing tension was dissolved, and he could let the feeling of home flow through him, the sweet air, the lights moving silently on the river, the shadowy parlor and the absurd things that had been there forever, no one knew why, no one knew from where⁠—the lacquer bowl with its strange sweet smell, the three-cornered bronze inkwell that never held any ink in its little glass hat, the penwiper of a doll’s head dressed as a nun on which no pens were wiped. Drunk with relief he plunged after Maggie, helping her shut the windows for the night, and doing such things to the curtains! It nearly drove her crazy, and yet she couldn’t say anything, it was so sweet of him to try to help.