Trust (40 page)

If he had spoken to me kindly he would have diminished my adoration. I leaned just on that scorn in him that reduced and denied his father. It made us, in a way, both fatherless. It leveled us. Now all freely I spun out the strand of love.

And tangled it curiously, a moment afterward, in the bright quick feet of the girl whose snare of kisses I had seen him ravel while I stood as witness in my dress of gold and silver, like a measure of those kisses' cost, in that midnight on the terrace.

She came running toward me down the hall; her shoes were not the same, no longer blue, and no blue strap went as isthmus across her instep now: instead an ordinary brown ribbon-bow bestrode the brown point of each darting toe. She halted, not certain of me—her berry-mouth was swelled like a pouch, full Of cake; and then, when she had swallowed that obstruction down, recognizing me, it turned out it was full of a message too. "Hey!" she began. "Come on, you're wanted inside. You weren't
supposed,
to be here, you know; but now he's heard you are—some little clerk told him—so of course he has to say he wants you."

"Well, thanks," I said, with a certain dryness, in no hurry now to present myself to William, no matter whether he summoned or not. His son had metamorphosed him into a stark criminality and the confrontation all at once seemed a prospect more complicated than half an hour before, when I had thought him a blameless adviser, my mother's lawyer, confidant, and even, in a blanched but lingering sense, husband.

But meanwhile William's messenger, grown suddenly lazy (or perhaps in imitation of those heroic messengers of Greek drama who, having arrived choking, breathe out the vital scene, and then collapse and die), leaned against the wall—or, rather, stood interestingly propped by a long papery tube which she thrust as a kind of supporting rod or flying buttress between her round flowered hip and the nearest vertical surface. The device, I saw in a moment, was only a rolled-up magazine; and with a childlike maneuver that was still more charming than the first, she lifted it to her eye like a telescope, let herself fall with the grace of a vivid stem against the wall, and squinted out at me. It was more startling than any open gaze she might have tried. "You don't have to tail it to him right away," she informed me while I watched her peer through her improvised hole. "He's not doing anything anyhow—just talking to a couple of men."

"I know," I said. "I saw."

"One's Connelly and one's Karp. I've been introduced to eVerybody!" she told me with a snicker of triumph—she clearly meant everybody important. "I might get Karp to put an ad for the Harvard Law School in the
Sport,
you know that? Anyhow I could try.
That
wouldn't be unethical, at least—for the next issue, if they don't tan it. You know they're thinking of banning the next issue?" she pressed, brisk with indignation, just as though events at Miss Jewett's occupied the universe, school facts being the world's facts. She even expected me to show my contempt for the censors, which I did, by means of the unwitting wince I gave while avoiding getting struck by her jutting scroll. "You know who Karp is? He's a
professor
up there," she went on. "So actually it wouldn't be unethical for
them
to advertise, would it?"

"But it might be unprofitable," I said mildly. "For the Law School, I mean. You don't think anyone from Miss Jewett's would apply?"

The rolled-up tube came slowly down and both her eyes looked frankly across at me. "Law's for
boys,
" she told me unequivocally.

"What about Portia?"

"Who's that?"

"A famous woman lawyer," I admitted lamely.

"Look," she expostulated, "it takes brains." She was all reasonable patience. "In England they even have to wear wigs—they're all supposed to look like George Washington, don't ask me why. It's just wild! I know, I looked into the books once—half the stuff's in Spanish."

"It's not Spanish," I said. "It's Latin."

"Latin?"

"Yes."

She meditated briefly. "Ovum and Virgin," she said.

"What?"

"Ovum and Virgin," she daintily repeated. "Those are two Latin writers. We learned about them last term in Social Studies Past and Present. We had Past before gym and Present afterward."

"What about Future?" I inquired.

She answered me gravely, worried about the deficiency. "We don't have anything like that at Miss Jewett's," said she. "We have everything else, though. Maybe they give that at the Academy. They're awful sticklers there—poor Nanette even had to take algebra, you know that? I'd've died if my father'd made me go there, wouldn't you?—I mean your stepfather," she corrected.

"My stepfather doesn't make me do anything," I said.

She emitted a half-envious cluck. "Lucky you—I don't get away with peanuts. They treat me like the Prisoner of Zenda, especially since all the fuss at school—you know. That's why I can't wait to get married, so I can do just as I please. When you're married no one can stop you from doing
anything.
" But this seemed to remind her of something else: she picked at the cloth blossoms that grew out of her buttons and with an innocence almost clever fashioned her transition—"How come you showed up here, by the way?"

"I thought it a proper thing to congratulate William," I invented with a try at dignity.

"Why, what's he done?"

The straightforward orderliness of this question charged me with a secret mischief: what had William done! I could not get out of my head what William had done—it was all a new and horrendous gospel—it made me delay and delay. Nevertheless I was obligated to reply only to her meaning, and not to mine. "It's what his son's done," I explained. "What the party's for."

"Oh," she said dubiously, "I didn't realize you'd heard about it."

"The party? I hadn't," I confessed.

"I mean the
engagement,
" she emphasized. "They
said
William would leak it to Mrs. Vand before anyone wanted him to—they're supposed to be very thick, he tells her everything, it's a shame—" She stopped herself guiltily. "Anyway they all thought you ought to be asked for today, but I couldn't see it. It's not as though you were related, or even
friends.
So then they didn't. I hope you don't mind," she ended civilly.

"I don't mind," I assured her.

"It's sort of my fault."

"It's really all right," I said, thinking her not so bad-mannered after all. Still, it was hard to forgive her; the pink flowers in her dress seemed to dance around her throat and multiplied in garlands at her knees—she swiveled her little neck and I discovered in astonishment a live tea rose dangling from a dip of hair behind her ear. "Did you help plan this? I thought the office people did it."

"Oh no," she protested, "it was my idea, the whole thing! They
paid
for it and all, but I'm the one who thought it up. It was my idea to bring down the Cabbages, anyway. The whole lot of them came down." She laughed at my incomprehension. "That's what we call our team, isn't it awful? The opposite team's Onions. And when we have a game it's called a Stew—that's all Miss Jewett's thing, it's the way it's done in England. Do you play volleyball?"

"Not much," I said.

"Really?" she exclaimed pityingly. "Don't you play anything?

"I used to."

"What?"

"The violin."

But her grimace showed how unfair this was. "What corn. I'd
die
if I had to. Nanette's got to take piano, William
makes
her."

"Maybe she likes it."

"
She
doesn't like anything but doing plays," my companion observed with a hoot of scorn. "That's why William didn't want her here today, on account of Euphoria Karp—she bosses some sort of theatre up at Cambridge, and that Nanette! She'd badger
anybody
to death for a part. Tears and all. You honestly wouldn't imagine a girl like that could have a halfway human brother, would you?"

"You approve of her brother," I interpreted.

"Well, why wouldn't I?" she wondered. "Ask the Cabbages!
They're
all disgustingly in love with him. He's not even handsome, you know that?"

I wretchedly obliged her: "You don't think so?"

"Oh,
I
think he's a brute, absolutely!" she flung at me with an enthusiasm so radiantly possessive it both puzzled and alarmed me. "Everybody does; don't you?"

"I agree he's halfway human," I echoed her.

She took this as she had given it—as the most sweeping praise imaginable. "Oh, I know! I adore him!" she rejoiced, letting her magazine snap down like a sprung window-shade in plain celebration. "Sometimes he can be pretty nasty, though—it might bother some people, but it doesn't bother
me.
You have to be that way if you're going into politics, like the Senate and the Board of Estimate and things. You know he might go into politics? William doesn't want him to—they never
have
in that family, except for one teeny alderman away back who doesn't count—but he'd be awfully good at it, he's got just the perfect voice for it, don't you think? And anyhow campaigning's terrific!"

And so was she; I drew back in awe. "You shouldn't call his father 'William.' You keep saying that," I objected with all the resentfulness of an outcast whose last feeble privilege has been violated by a parody.

She stared. "What do
you
call him?"

"William," I said weakly.

"There! And you're nothing to him!—Even though everybody thinks you are."

"That doesn't justify
you,
" I said.

"Oh, don't be so strict—what do you expect?" she struck back. "It's not as if he isn't practically my father-in-law already!" She indulged herself in a broad but modest preening; she peeped down the front of her dress, as though hunting for a dare. "I can call him what I please. And if I want to I'll even call him Willie!"

So I was left, after the disclosure, after, rather, the transmutation—it was quite like watching the cygnet turn into its true identity of princess—with nothing to pronounce but the blessing. "You're not the Pettigrew he's marrying," I pronounced instead, half-muffled by somber envy; "you're not the fiancée?"—not sparing myself, though sparing her: what else could the descending language of my startled melancholy be if not: Is it you? Are you the one? Not you!—still, even in my milder spoken version, showing no more than delayed perception, I felt a bungler, and overwhelmed. She had in fact moved the mountain: she was a sprite, all in flowers, all unexpectedly loosing her not-to-be-guessed-at influences, and whatever those massed circlets were in which she gleamed, lilies or pansies or some bland designer's abstract notion of a bloom, just the same she stood sheathed in them as if in instruments and magnets formidable, glancing out her fragile might.

"Well, who'd you think I was?" she demanded. "Didn't I just
tell
you I was getting married?"

"I didn't know you meant immediately. —Then the party's really yours," I concluded.

"Sure," she said. "It's tit for tat. Last time it was yours."

"This one seems more of a success," I said ruefully.

"It's because of the Cabbages—they're a riot! A while ago a bunch of 'em was trying to empty the water cooler so's to fill it with gin, did you see?"

I acknowledged that I had unfortunately missed this.

"It didn't work, though—they only got the whole back part of the floor flooded; I nearly died laughing! Did you ever see this really antique Clark Gable movie where they fill a gin bottle with water from the water cooler? You ought to, honestly, it's a scream—it's where the Cabbages got the idea, only in reverse. In the movie Clark Gable gets drunk just from
thinking
it's gin!" she shot out gloriously, and then in a darker voice, which, it struck me after a moment, was fashioned to console, began again, "Say, you want to know what was the matter with that bon voyage thing you had?"

"For one thing, there wasn't any voyage."

"Well I heard you weren't going, but that's not what I mean. It was the creepy music, right out of the Dark Ages, you know? The
band
wasn't bad, just the music. Nobody wants to dance to that stuff. That's how come it fizzled," she earnestly advised.

"I'm sorry about that," I said.

"Oh,
I
didn't mind, honestly! Because that's the night I found out," she told me suspensefully, dangling the statement for me to probe.

I went right after it, just as she wished, though wearily. "Found out what?"

"About getting married, silly! Till then I was just hoping. You saw how crazy he was about me, didn't you? I guess that nutty editor of your mother's, you know who, got him jealous, because driving home he all of a sudden said O.K., let's get
married,
for God's sake. And all I did was have one conversation with that Ed McGovern! I love to see boys get jealous," she said contentedly. "So for me that night wasn't really a fizzle, if that makes you feel any better about it. Oh come on, that's not being fair, don't look at my finger!" she cried, although I had all the while kept my eyes on my own sad wrists, one crossed over the other, "—because I don't have the ring to show yet, it's still on order. But it's absolutely fantastic—it'll
kill
the Onions!"

"Are any of them here?" I wondered.

"Any of who?"

"The Onions."

"Gosh no! We don't go to theirs and they don't come to ours. Anyway," she went on with a pleased sniff, "we're three engagements ahead of them this term—mine's the third. Didn't you see the signs? They've got Form 7 on them; that
includes
the Onions, which practically
peels
them anyhow."

"Those lapel things, do you mean? I did, but they all said Fannie, and I didn't think—"

"It's for short, like a nickname; we all have nicknames. I hate mine, but that's the idea, you're
supposed
to have a nickname that you hate. Fannie's not so bad really, it's only the end part of Stefanie. You know what the Onions call Beverly Snearles, even though she's an Onion?—They call her Reveille, isn't that wild? I mean the reason it's so funny is because she's always late in the morning, she can't get up. And you "know poor Eleanor, who got kicked out of the Assemblies? They used to just call her El's Bells, but now since all the fuss they call her Little Knell—with a K, like for doom and all that!" she happily informed me.