by Joan Aiken
For a moment or two Val gazed at him wide-eyed, really silenced. He returned her gaze calmly; there was still nothing but benevolence in the dry, spare, slightly lantern-jawed face under the smooth white thatch of hair.
“You must be joking, Mr. Dexter?” she said tentatively at length. “You can’t really be serious?”
“Indeed I can, my dear child. Without the faintest shadow of doubt, if—when you get married, one or the other of you will have to make a radical change in your way of life. You may, of course, insist on Benet’s doing so; you have that privilege. And I am sure that he loves you enough to make any concessions you ask. But you will have to understand that if you make him do this, you will cut him off from his family. And that would make him wretchedly unhappy. You, on the other hand, my dear—and though I have every sympathy for your solitary position, I am sure you have the intelligence to see that it may in some ways be regarded as a simplification at this particular juncture—you have no family to tug you into a position of stress.”
“But I do have a position—a career,” burst out Val. She could hardly believe her ears.
Mr. Dexter’s eyelids drooped over his mild eyes. He went on suavely, “We can therefore only trust to your generosity to spare Benet and allow yourself to be the one who makes the sacrifice.”
“But Mr. Dexter—”
“I know—” he checked her with a soothing, uplifted hand. “Believe me, my dear young lady, I am fully in accord with your feelings about this. May I say that, in hoping you are to become part of our family, I look forward with the liveliest pleasure to what I trust will be a long friendship between us, for I suspect that you and I feel alike on a great many important—and perhaps also unimportant—issues. But, as one who has also suffered—in some slight degree—for the cause of family unity, I believed that perhaps I was best qualified to approach you in this way—now, rather than later—to save you, it might be, a few surprises, a certain amount of heartache in the early days of your married life.”
The tone of warning was unmistakable.
“Thank you,” she said mechanically. So much had been so swiftly laid down that she would have to ponder it later, in her bedroom, in the dark and silence, when all this light and music and nonsense had ended—she could not properly take it in at present.
Presently she said, “Benet hasn’t suggested anything of the—he never spoke to me in this—”
“Ah, Benet loves you so much! And he has a nature that turns naturally to the sun; fortune has always smiled on Benet.”
“You mean he doesn’t like unpleasantness,” said Val bluntly.
Down came Mr. Dexter’s lids again.
“Did Benet ask you to say these things to me?”
“My dear! How should you think it? No indeed, Benet would never ask anyone else to undertake a difficult task that he should do himself. But he has so much to tackle at present—his own career, and all the family affairs that are laid at his door—as you saw just now; and he has had the care of his mother and sister since his father’s death; it was a heavy burden for a young man and he has fulfilled his charge loyally and conscientiously.”
I know it, Val thought. And that is one of the reasons why I love him. But is he never to be free of them all? She wondered what Mr. Dexter had suffered in the family cause, what had been his sacrifice? An unsuitable marriage? Some other relationship, abandoned under pain of family censure?
Suddenly she had had enough of Mr. Dexter and his suggestions; though she did believe that they were kindly meant. Her eyes strayed back to the group around old Mrs. Allerton. Surely Benet would soon be able to detach himself from them? The band, in its grotto of tree ferns and camellias, had begun to tune up; the long procession of arrivals, snaking in from the street and up the red-velvet staircase to where Benet’s mother and sister were positioned, was beginning to dwindle; couples had started to cluster together and move out tentatively on to the dance floor.
“Tell me, Mr. Dexter,” Val said, coolly changing the subject, “who is the dark young lady in the pretty pink dress, the one who is talking to Benet now?”
“Oh, my, my,” he said. “How very bad of me not to tell you. Indeed, I had no notion that you had not met her before; I’m afraid that’s how it is in these large families, where we’ve all known each other since we were in pinafores and tuckers—we take it for granted that you know us all. That is Benet’s cousin Lottie Warren—Charlotte—Alma’s daughter. Let me introduce you to her.”
And he began to steer Val gently back towards Mrs. Allerton’s group with one gloved hand guiding her elbow. Then, clasping it a fraction tighter, he delayed her a moment to murmur, “Perhaps I should just mention—everyone else has known it for so long that it has become another of those items about which the whole family is so well aware that we forget to tell outsiders—at one time there was a kind of boy-and-girl arrangement, just a family thing, you know, between Benet and Lottie. Cousins marry so very often among the Chaunceys and Allertons and Dexters that for several years it was quite expected—but of course there was nothing formal or binding about it; you have no reason to reproach yourself; I just explain in order to avoid any possible awkwardness for you later, you know.”
So that, Val thought hollowly, that accounts for the poor girl’s miserable expression. Possible awkwardness, indeed! No wonder that, while Mr. Dexter was talking to me, I thought I saw her ever so discreetly blot away what might have been a tear with the tip of a gloved finger.
Poor, poor Lottie. To have lost Benet—what in the world could make up for that?
She imagined, with a shudder like footsteps on her grave, how it would feel: the sun of his warmth gone out for ever.
“But hark,” said Mr. Dexter, finger uplifted. “Do I hear them playing a minuet?”
He made another of his sudden checking movements. “Yes, I see it is to be one of those four-couple minuets—a most delightful dance! And—oh dear me—I observe that Benet has been obliged—instructed, should I perhaps say?—to lead out his cousin; perhaps old Mrs. Allerton has decided that to be his partner for the first dance might be—some consolation for her disappointment in other respects? Yes, they are going off together—so, if you will permit an elderly bachelor, may I offer myself for this one, my dear?”
Dumbly, Val allowed herself to be led to the centre of the floor.
It was a great honour, of course. She knew that. To be partnered by Mr. James Dexter, a most accomplished dancer, set the seal of society’s approval on any young female. She only hoped that her own dancing would prove adequate.
Her mind, as a rule so alert, felt curiously numb and blank. What was she supposed to make of all this? Was it a kind of threat? She could only decide, as she had over Mr. Dexter’s previous communications, that she must postpone making any judgment.
Later. I’ll decide about it later. I must wait and see.
She did, though, glance once, almost shamefacedly, toward Benet, as if she had no right to try to catch his eye. But her care was wasted; his face, bent toward that of his partner, could not be seen; it was not possible to gauge his expression. That of Charlotte Warren was visible, though; a tremulous, almost incredulous rapture irradiated her small face; she was glowing, Val remarked with a mixture of compassion and amusement, like one of the new gas chandeliers. But there was a sting of pain in the observation.
All the fiddlers swept their bows up high, then brought them down with a flourish. The music began.
For Val, dutifully dancing, smiling, enduring a nonstop sequence of introductions to members of this huge family, answering the same questions over and over, struggling to keep her expression calm and pleasant, in the face of antagonism, veiled or fairly explicit, patronising remarks, polite snubs, supercilious or ignorant or prejudiced comments on her profession, the next few hours seemed interminable. Names and faces of what appeared to be an endless horde of Chaunceys, Allertons,
Babcocks, Dexters became entangled in her memory; aunts, sisters, cousins, uncles and their wives, husbands and grown-up offspring came, spoke, and moved on, spoke and moved on.
Punch was presently dispensed, strictly nonalcoholic, for the benefit of the younger ladies present, and then, later, champagne. Supper was served in the conservatory.
Mr. Dexter took Val in to supper; sitting confidentially beside her on a gilt bamboo chair at a little table in a palm-shaded corner, he consumed terrapin soup, crab mayonnaise, duck, and ice cream; Val found that she had little appetite. She feared at first that he might revert to their former topic of conversation, but he did not. Instead he discussed the paintings of Millais and Rossetti, which he had lately seen in London, the writings of Ruskin, George Eliot’s last novel, the meteoric rise of a new young politician, Nugent Reydon, who seemed likely to become the next English prime minister, and the poetry of Lord Tennyson and Mrs. Browning, both of whom Val thought greatly overrated. They also touched on a work which Val had read and Mr. Dexter had not—A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, by a writer called Mary Wollstonecraft. He had hardly heard of her.
“She died more than eighty years ago,” said Val, “and yet her ideas are still revolutionary, a long way in advance of current opinion. She thought that men and women should be equal, that the marriage bond is unnecessary, but, if marriage takes place, then husbands and wives should be allowed their own friends, professions, and property, that they should be able to live together in a free relationship of unpossessive affection.”
“My dear!” Mr. Dexter seemed startled to the roots of his being. “Do you share these views, may I ask?”
She said drily, “Perhaps! I can see they are impracticable in society as it is arranged now. But I think there is much to be said for them. Women should be allowed control of their own fortunes and lives. I fancy there is more enlightenment on these matters in England than in our country, progressive as we Americans think ourselves; what is your opinion, Mr. Dexter, you have just come back from England?”
“It is true,” he said, “that English women go about more freely, unescorted, and enter more into public life than is encouraged in America at present. You speak as if you had been in England yourself?”
“I have,” she said. “Several times. My father took me when I was in my teens, and I have been back since, writing a series of reports for the Inquirer.”
“You intrepid young lady! And did you travel about unescorted?”
“I’m afraid so.” She smiled inwardly, thinking of streetcar rides, with carpetbag, to and from the steamer, of the London cab drivers and the underground railway system, and the shabby hotels. How different from the carefully chaperoned trips around Europe of girls such as Charlotte Warren, with their mothers and their maids, and the couriers who were paid to conduct them to all the correct works of art and the necessary viewpoints. “And I may say that I was never once molested or treated with any kind of incivility.”
Mr. Dexter looked as if he thought it would be a brave man who attempted such behaviour. “But just the same, my dear child—my gracious me! Going unescorted about London! Why, did no one even mention—for instance—the terrible risks that are run by females in that area south of the Thames—”
“You mean those awful murders? The Bermondsey Beast? But they were all a particular class of women.”
“I should not have alluded to it.” Mr. Dexter looked as if he very much regretted having spoken. “It is not at all a proper topic for this kind of occasion. Tell me rather on what subjects you were reporting?”
“Oh—factory conditions, education, slum housing. Not very proper topics either, I’m afraid!”
With grace, Mr. Dexter intimated that he was unequipped to handle these subjects; he turned the conversation on to a comparison of English and American social manners and customs; Val obliged him by playing her part, and they tacitly agreed to eschew any other dangerously controversial areas.
But as he led her back toward the ballroom, where the cheerful notes of the Lancers were encouraging laggard eaters to abandon the supper tables, he sighed again, at the vista of inevitable frictions and hard choices which must, it seemed to him, lie ahead for Benet and this intelligent, awkward girl.
In place of the docile and acceptable sprat from his own pool, Benet had cast his line into the open sea and landed himself a dolphin. How could they possibly settle down together in peaceful conjugality?
It won’t do, Mr. Dexter was thinking regretfully. No, it most definitely won’t do.
As the night wore slowly on, Val began to feel more and more severed from Benet. During the various waltzes, polkas, gavottes, he was kept continuously busy leading out his aunts, nieces, in-laws, and cousins young and old. Val, for her part, danced with an interminable procession of male relations whom she mentally divided into two classes: those who were stiffly correct, obviously alarmed by her, and the others who, equally obviously, felt she might be fair game and would have made unsuitable advances had she given them the slightest blink of encouragement. To be on the safe side, she adopted the same glacial manner toward both groups. In the whole course of the evening she and Benet achieved only two dances together, a mazurka and a schottische; neither was conducive to intimate conversation. But twice more she noticed that Benet danced with his cousin Charlotte, and each time her downcast face became suddenly transformed, glowing out into animation as she lifted her eyes to her tall cousin.
“Too bad about that affair,” Val heard Edith Calbert, one of Benet’s cousins, murmur behind her fan, glancing significantly at the pair.
“What went wrong? I thought it was all fixed up.”
“Oh, greedy Alma took the girl to London, hoping to hook an earl; didn’t succeed; brought her back, by which time they found that Edward had left them without two dollars to rub together; Lottie needs a good parti even more now; but in the meantime Benet’s eye had wandered elsewhere.”
“And, my dear, look what he—”
Val moved away. It seemed she had been employing the same evasive technique for untold hours.At last the long ordeal slowly began to wind down toward its conclusion. Farewells were said, the ladies once more picked their way upstairs with carefully held skirts to the bedrooms where, hours before, they had given their ringlets a last-minute tweak by the gas burners. Cloaks reclaimed, they descended. Family landaus and broughams clattered and battled their way over the cobbles to the red-covered steps. The guests ran out under the awning, clutching their furs round them, for a cool breeze blew and leaves scuttered on the sidewalk; summer had suddenly turned the corner toward fall.
Benet, overriding the protests of his mother—and of Val herself, who had intended to order one of Brown’s coupés from the livery stable—had promised to drive Val home to Twenty-third Street in his brougham. Now she was glad of this, thankfully able to keep aloof from the gossiping swarm of ladies in the bedrooms engaged in comparisons of dance programmes and blistered heels. At least she need not suffer their inspection of her workaday plaid merino coat and beaver tippet. She remained with Benet’s mother and sister, politely stifling yawns, until the last of the aunts and cousins had left. At last she was able to say her thanks and farewells to the Allerton ladies, who were drooping with sleep like small wax dolls left too near the fire.
“Good night, my dear—ahhhh!—I’m sure it all went very well—ah!—excuse me. Take good care of her, Benet. Don’t be long, now. Doyle will be waiting to let you in.”
He nodded, for once with a slight touch of impatience, refrained from pointing out that he had his own latchkey, and slammed the brougham’s dark-blue polished door.
The drive from Washington Square to Twenty-third Street was a silent one. Val was tired and depressed. Not for the first time after exposure to the Allerton family she found herself wishing ardently for some kin of her own; how different it would have been if this return could have been made to sympa
thetic, exclaiming younger sisters, or a mother with whom she could have discussed the whole affair, or to her father’s cool, detached, but friendly interest.
“I won’t ask you in,” she said, collecting her muff and fan from the cushions and preparing to alight.
He seemed cast down at this, as if he had really expected that she would. Absurd creature! It must be past three in the morning. But he said, sighing, “No, I suppose Miss Chumley would hardly approve.”
“Indeed she would not.” Val omitted to mention that Miss Chumley was out of town, visiting a married ex-pupil in Maryland; there was no need to scandalise the Allertons even further by letting them discover that for the last two weeks she had been housekeeping on her own, unchaperoned, in this shabby bohemian neighbourhood.
“I’ll wait till old Chloe comes to let you in.”
“Oh, mercy! She’s been asleep for hours. I have a key; I told her not to wait up.”
She slipped from the carriage at the foot of the six steps leading to the battered old brownstone with its peeling stucco.
Benet prepared to follow. Impatiently she gestured him not to but he ignored the gesture. For once, his pleasant face had lost its equable expression; he looked tired and perplexed, almost angry. Val determinedly kept her eyes on her muff, in the recesses of which she was hunting for her latchkey.
The big lopsided ailanthus tree growing at one side of the steps cast a fringed and jagged shadow over half the stoop. Val, on the second step, was suddenly glad of Benet’s company, as, with a smothered gasp that was half a shriek, she stopped at the sight of a long, black-trousered leg extending from the tree’s shadow.
“What the devil?” Benet exclaimed, coming up beside her.
A voice spoke from the darkness.
“Vallie? Is that you? What late hours you keep!”
Rising from the shadow like the serpent in the garden of Eden, a long, languid figure uncoiled itself and was revealed as an elegantly dressed young man, hatless, despite the cool of the night breeze, with a mop of pale straw-coloured hair and a long, smiling clown’s face.