Edith Wharton - SSC 10 (26 page)

 
          
“Excite
myself, child? Syngleton Perch can’t steal my birthday, can he? If he chooses
to assist at it—after all, the Perches are our own people; his mother was a
Wrigglesworth.” Miss
Little
drew herself up by the
arms of her chair. “Show your cousin Syngleton in, my dear.”

 
          
On
the threshold a middle-aged motherly voice said, rather loudly: “This way,
uncle Syngleton. You won’t take my arm? Well, then put your stick
there
; so—this way; careful …” and there
tottered in, projected forward by a series of jaunty jerks, and the arm of his
unseen guide, a small old gentleman in a short pea-jacket, with a round
withered head buried in layers of woollen scarf, and eyes hidden behind a huge
pair of black spectacles.

 
          
“Where’s
my old friend Martha
Little
? Now, then, Marty, don’t
you try and hide yourself away from young Syngleton. Ah, there she is! I see
her!” cousin Syngleton rattled out in a succession of parrot-like ejaculations,
as his elderly Antigone and the young Lyddy steered him cautiously toward Miss
Little’s throne.

 
          
From
it she critically observed the approach of the rival centenarian; and as he
reached her side, and stretched out his smartly-gloved hand, she dropped hers
into it with a faint laugh. “Well, you really
are
a hundred, Syngleton Perch; there’s no doubt about that,” she
said in her high chirp. “And I wonder whether you haven’t postponed your
anniversary a year or two?” she added with a caustic touch, and a tilt of her
chin toward Warbeck.

 
          
  

 
          
Transporting
centenarians from one floor to another was no doubt a delicate business, for the
vigilant Lyddy had staged the trying-on of the ceremonial dress in the
dining-room, where the rehearsal was also to take place. Miss
Little
withdrew, and cousin Syngleton Perch’s watchful
relative, having installed him in an armchair facing Warbeck’s as carefully as
if she had been balancing a basket of eggs on a picket fence, slipped off with
an apologetic smile to assist at the trying-on. “I know you’ll take care of
him, cousin Henly,” she murmured in a last appeal; and added, bending to
Warbeck’s ear: “Please remember he’s a little deaf; and don’t let him get too
excited talking about his love-affairs.”

 
          
Uncle
Syngleton, wedged in tightly with cushions, and sustained by a footstool,
peered doubtfully at Warbeck as the latter held out his cigarette-case.
“Tobacco?
Well … look here, young man, what paper do you
represent?” he asked, his knotty old hand yearningly poised above the coveted
cigarette.

 
          
Warbeck
explained in a loud voice that he was not a journalist, but a member of the
family; but Mr. Perch shook his head incredulously. “That’s what they all say;
worming themselves in everywhere. Plain truth is, I never saw you before,
nor
you me. But see here; we may have to wait an hour while
that young charmer gets into her party togs, and I don’t know’s I can hold out
that long without a puff of tobacco.” He shot a wrinkled smile at Warbeck.
“Time was when I’d’
a been
in there myself, assisting
at the dishabille.” (He pronounced the first syllable
dish.)
A look of caution replaced his confidential smirk. “Well,
young man, I suppose what you want is my receipt for keeping hale and hearty up
to the century line. But there’s nothing new about it: it’s just the golden
rule of good behaviour that our mothers taught us in the nursery. No wine, no
tobacco, no worn—. Well,” he broke off, with a yearning smile at the
cigarette-case, “I don’t mind if I do. Got a light, young gentleman? Though if
I
was
to assist at an undressing, I
don’t say,” he added meditatively, “that it’d be Martha
Little’s
I’d choose. I remember her when she warn’t over thirty—too much like a hygienic
cigarette even then, for my fancy. De-nicotinized, I call her. Well, I like the
unexpurgated style better.” He held out his twitching hand to Warbeck’s
lighter, and inserted a cigarette between his purplish lips. “Some punch in
that! Only don’t you give me away, will you? Not in the papers, I mean.
Remember old Syngleton Perch’s slogan: ‘Live straight and you’ll live long. No
wine, no tobacco, no worn—’.” Again he broke off, and thumped his crumpled fist
excitedly against the chair-arm. “Damn it, sir, I never
can
finish that lie, somehow!
Old Syngleton a
vestal?
Not if I know anything about him!”

 
          
The
door opened, and Lyddy and the motherly Antigone showed their flushed faces.
“Now then, uncle Syngleton—all ready!”

 
          
They
were too much engrossed to notice Warbeck, but he saw that his help was
welcome, for extricating Syngleton from his armchair was like hooking up a
broken cork which, at each prod, slips down farther into the neck of the
bottle. Once on his legs he goose-stepped valiantly forward; but until he had
been balanced on them he tended to fold up at the very moment when his
supporters thought they could prudently
release
him.

 
          
The
transit accomplished, Warbeck found himself in a room from which the
dining-table had been removed to make way for an improvised platform supporting
a row of armchairs. In the central armchair Martha
Little
,
small and hieratic, sat enthroned. About her
billowed
the rich folds of a silvery shot-silk, and the Wrigglesworth seed-pearls hung
over her hollow chest and depended from her dusky withered ears. A row of
people sat facing her, at the opposite end of the room, and Warbeck noticed
that two or three already had their pens in leash above open notebooks. A
strange young woman of fashionable silhouette was stooping over the shot-silk
draperies and ruffling them with a professional touch. “Isn’t she too old-world
for anything? Just the Martha Washington note: isn’t it lovely, with her
pearls? Please note:
The Wrigglesworth
pearls
, Miss Lusky,” she recommended to a zealous reportress with suspended
pen.

 
          
“Now,
whatever you do, don’t shake me!” snapped the shot-silk divinity, as Syngleton
and his supporters neared the platform. (“It’s the powder in her hair she’s
nervous about,” Lyddy whispered to Warbeck.)

 
          
The
business of raising the co-divinity to her side was at once ticklish and
laborious, for Mr. Perch resented feminine assistance in the presence of
strange men, and Warbeck, even with the bungling support of one of the
journalists, found it difficult to get his centenarian relative hoisted to the
platform. Any attempt to lift him caused his legs to shoot upward, and to
steady and direct this levitating tendency required an experience in which both
assistants were lacking.

 
          
“There!”
his household Antigone
intervened, seizing one ankle while Lyddy clutched the other; and thus
ballasted Syngleton Perch recovered his powers of self-direction and made for
the armchair on Miss Little’s right. At his approach she uttered a shrill cry
and tried to raise herself from her seat.

 
          
“No,
no! This is the Bishop’s!” she protested, defending the chair with her mittened
hand.

 
          
“Oh,
my—there go all the folds of her skirt,” wailed the dress-maker from the
background.

 
          
Syngleton
Perch stood on the platform and his bullet head grew purple. “Can’t stand—got
to sit down or keep going,” he snapped.

 
          
Martha
Little
subsided majestically among her disordered
folds. “Well—keep going!” she decreed.

 
          
“Oh,
cousin
Martha,” Lyddy murmured.

 
          
“Well,
what of cousin Martha? It’s
my
rehearsal, isn’t it?” the lady retorted, like a child whimpering for a toy.

 
          
“Cousin
Martha—
cousin
Martha!”
Lyddy whispered, while Syngleton, with flickering legs, protested: “Don’t I
belong anywhere in this show?” and Warbeck caught Lyddy’s warning murmur:
“Don’t forget, cousin Martha,
his mother
was a Wrigglesworth!”

 
          
As
if by magic Miss Little’s exasperation gave way to a resigned grimace. “
He
says so,” she muttered sulkily; but
the appeal to the great ancestral name had not been vain, and she suffered her
rival to be established in the armchair just beyond the Bishop’s, while his
guide, hovering over his shoulder, announced to the journalists: “Mr. Syngleton
Perch, of South Perch, Rhode Island, whose hundredth birthday will be
celebrated with that of his cousin Miss Little tomorrow—”

 
          
“H’m—
tomorrow!”
Miss
Little
suddenly exclaimed, again attempting to rise from her throne; while Syngleton’s
staccato began to unroll the automatic phrase: “I suppose you young men all want
to know my receipt for keeping hale and hearty up to the century line. Well,
there’s nothing new about it: it’s just the golden rule … the … what the
devil’s
that
?” he broke off with a
jerk of his chin toward the door.

 
          
Warbeck
saw that an object had been handed into the room by a maid, and was being
passed from hand to hand up to the platform. “Oh,” Lyddy exclaimed
breathlessly, “of course!

 
          
It’s
the ebony cane! The Selectmen have sent it up for
cousin
Martha to try today, so that she’ll be sure it was just right for her to lean
on when she walks out of the Town Hall tomorrow after the ceremony. Look what a
beauty it is—you’ll let these gentlemen look at it, won’t you,
cousin
Martha?”

 
          
“If
they can look at me I suppose they can look at my cane,” said Miss
Little
imperially, while the commemorative stick was passed
about the room amid admiring exclamations, and attempts to decipher its
laudatory inscription. “‘Offered to Frostingham’s most beloved and
distinguished citizen, Martha Wrigglesworth Little, in commemoration of the
hundredth anniversary of her birth, by her friends the Mayor and Selectmen’ …
very suitable, very interesting,” an elderly cousin read aloud with proper
emotion, while Mr. Perch was heard to enquire anxiously: “Isn’t there anything
about me on that cane?” and his companion reassured him: “Of course South Perch
means to offer you one of your very own when we go home.”

 
          
Finally
the coveted object was restored to Miss Little, who, straightening herself with
a supreme effort, sat resting both hands on the gold crutch while Lyddy hailed
the approach of imaginary dignitaries with the successive announcements: “The
Bishop—the Mayor… But, no, they’d better be seated before you arrive, hadn’t
they,
cousin
Martha? And exactly
when
is the cane to be presented? Oh, well, we’ll settle all the
details to-morrow … the main thing now is the stepping down from the platform
and walking out of the Hall, isn’t it? Miss Lusky, careful,
please
…
Gentlemen, will you all move your chairs back? … Uncle Henly,” she appealed to
Warbeck, “perhaps you’ll be kind enough to act as Mayor, and give your arm to
cousin
Martha? Ready,
cousin
Martha? So—”

 
          
But
as she was about to raise Miss Little from her seat, and hook her securely onto
Warbeck’s arm, a cry between a sob and an expletive burst from the purple lips
of cousin Syngleton.

 
          
“Why
can’t I be the Mayor—ain’t I got any rights in this damned show?” he burst out
passionately, his legs jerking upward as he attempted to raise himself on his
elbows.

 
          
His
Antigone intervened with a reproachful murmur.

 
          
“Why,
uncle Syngleton, what in the world are
you thinking
of? You can’t act as anybody but
yourself
tomorrow! But I’m going to be the Bishop now, and give you my arm—there, like
this…”

 
          
Miss
Little
, who had just gained her feet, pressed heavily
on Warbeck’s arm in her effort to jerk around toward Mr. Perch. “Oh, he’s going
to take the Bishop’s arm, is he? Well, the Bishop had better look out, or he’ll
take his seat too,” she chuckled ironically.