Herbert Rowbarge

by Natalie Babbitt

  “Ruby’s all right,” said Herbert. “Any girl with a banker for a father’s all right. And she’s sweet on me.”

  “You better be careful you don’t break her heart,” said Dick, smiling again.

  “I’m not going to break her heart,” said Herbert. “I’m going to marry her.”

  Dick’s smile faded. “Marry her? When you don’t even like her?”

  “Now, listen, Dick,” said Herbert. “We got to get more money, don’t we?”

  “Nope,” said Dick. “We’re doing fine.”

  “Well, I say we got to get more money, and this is the best way to do it. Once I’m married to Ruby, we can get a loan from the bank any time we need it, and start to do things right.” He sat down opposite Dick and took off the straw hat. “Look here,” he said. “I’m going to marry Ruby whether you like it or not. She’s no beauty, but she’s what we need. And you got to help me.”

  “How?” said Dick, torn between shock and loyalty. “What can I do?”

  “It’s this way, Dick,” said Herbert. “I don’t want you blabbing about the Home and Gaitsburg and me being an orphan and all that. Ruby’s father and that durned sister of hers’d never go for that. They’re pretty high-toned people. I told Ruby I got money from an aunt I lived with after my folks died. So now she thinks I’m high-toned, too. And I don’t want you saying anything different.”

  “But, Bertie, what’s so bad about saying the money come from selling the farm? You don’t know anything about your folks. Or an aunt or anybody.”

  “Well, I know that,” Herbert exploded. “But Ruby doesn’t have to know it. She thinks I come from good people down to Cincinnati, and I don’t want you spoiling it. You got to promise me, Dick.”

  Dick took his crutch, rose, and swung to the window, where he stood silent for a moment. “I don’t like telling lies, Bertie,” he said at last. “I’d do anything for you, you know that, but I don’t like telling lies.”

  “Listen, Dick. Now just listen,” said Herbert patiently. “You’re lucky. You know about your folks. But Mrs. Frate never told me anything about mine. Not one blamed word. So how do we know they weren’t high-toned? They might as well have been. Isn’t that right?”

  “We-ell,” said Dick.

  “So,” said Herbert, “it’s not like telling lies if we don’t know what the truth is, is it? Except for the aunt part. But who cares about aunts? If it makes old man Nill happy to think I had a rich aunt, what’s the difference? What harm does it do? But I s’pose you think I don’t look like I could’ve had a rich aunt,” he added with a scowl. “I s’pose you think I look like some kind of goddamn gypsy.”

  “Course I don’t, Bertie.” Dick turned around to face him earnestly. “Anybody’d be proud to have you in their family.”

  Herbert’s face cleared. “Well, then!” he said in triumph. “There you are. So promise you’ll back me up.”

  “Well, all right, Bertie,” said Dick reluctantly, wondering how he’d been maneuvered into yet another uncomfortable promise. Still, he had to admit Bertie did have a way about him, somehow. Maybe he did come from high-toned folks, after all. You couldn’t tell. And he sure was smart. They were doing real well, just like he’d said they would. Course, it wasn’t like having the farm, not at all, but, well, Bertie never had wanted the farm, and if he was happy …

  Herbert put his hat back on and stood up. “Get Frank off the bed, will you? I’ll be home in a couple of hours. Oh, and by the way, Dick,” he added, all in a rush, “I told Ruby I’m a Kenyon man. Class of 1900.”

  “Bertie ! Gee whiz!”

  Herbert laughed. “She thinks it’s swell,” he said. “C’mon, Dick, don’t be such a prig. I’m doing it all for us. For you and me and Frank. Remember, now, class of 1900.” And he clapped Dick on the back and hurried out the door.

  Herbert at twenty-three looked much as he had at seven—light brown hair, long nose, sharp eyes. The difference was that the sharpness became him more, now that he was grown, than it had when he was little. It made him look hard-driving. It made him look as if he knew what he was doing. Now, in the boat with Ruby Nill, he did know what he was doing, and he was doing it very well. Ruby gazed at him adoringly as he pulled on the oars, and then, catching herself, she turned her gaze away and looked back to the dock, where her younger sister, Opal, sat watching, like the narrow-eyed chaperone she’d been sent along to be.

  “We mustn’t stay out too long, Mr. Rowbarge,” said Ruby primly, tucking her long skirts tight around her ankles. “Opal will want to get back soon.”

  “Opal, Opal, Opal,” said Herbert. “How am I supposed to remember about Opal, or anything else, when I’m with you?” Ruby blushed, and Herbert, noting the blush, smiled to himself. He had practiced this kind of talk on girls at the Home, and had discovered he had a sort of knack for it.

  Ruby tilted her parasol over one shoulder and trailed her fingers in the water, as she’d seen a girl do in a magazine picture. Ruby was twenty-two, and her father and sister had been afraid no one would ever marry her. It had been hard on Opal, who, at nineteen, had a serious suitor. A doctor, too, Dr. Stuart Loose, who’d been to the university and everything. But Father had felt that Opal should wait, that Ruby, as the eldest, should marry first. Still, Stuart Loose wouldn’t hold on forever. And then, just when Ruby had begun to despair, this wonderful man had suddenly appeared, this beautiful, wonderful man who didn’t seem to notice that she was a little too thick and short to look like a real Gibson Girl, or that her hair, no matter how she struggled, was a little too fly-away and thin to stay pinned obediently around its rat. He seemed to think she was … well … acceptable, anyway. At the very least, acceptable. Ruby looked out across the water and blushed again. They’d been together every Sunday for months now, and Ruby didn’t want to understand it. She just wanted to believe in it. He really was wonderful—and a comer, too. Even her father said so.

  “You look fine today, Miss Nill,” said Herbert, keeping his voice low and soft. “But then, you always do.”

  “Oh, Mr. Rowbarge,” she fluttered, “you mustn’t say such things.”

  “Why mustn’t I?” he demanded. “It’s the truth!”

  “Well …” she said, looking away.

  “And you know it, too,” he added. “You’re such a tease. I think you’re trying to break my heart.”

  “Oh, Mr. Rowbarge!” she murmured, charmed and aghast both at once. She—a tease? She would have loved to believe herself a tease, but hadn’t realized she even knew how. Opal would laugh at her, as usual, when she reported this conversation. Opal didn’t like Mr. Rowbarge.

  “You’re such a dummy, Ruby,” Opal had said. “Don’t you see? He only likes you because we’re rich.”

  And she had answered, hotly, “That’s not so, Opal. How can you be so mean? Why, he’s got lots of money of his own!”

  This did appear to be true, but Opal was not silenced. “And a merry-go-round! What kind of work is that?”

  “I think it’s romantic!” Ruby had said stoutly. “Romantic and lovely, to want to give people pleasure. He says he’ll have a big park here someday, just like the ones out East.”

  “Well, go ahead and make a fool of yourself if you want to,” Opal had said with a shrug. “But I don’t trust him.”

  “You don’t have to trust him,” Ruby retorted in a rare show of spirit. “He isn’t sweet on you.”

  “Thank goodness for that,” Opal had snapped. “I wouldn’t have him if he was.”

  But Mr. Rowbarge—Herbert—was far handsomer than Stuart Loose, and smarter, too. Ruby decided Opal was merely jealous—imagine! how satisfying! —and made up her mind to ignore her.

  They slipped across the warm brown water smoothly, and soon, rounding a wooded little island, Herbert rested on the oars and let the rowboat drift. They were out of sight of the dock now, where Opal sat waiting, and here, in the shadow of willows leaning from the banks, the August air was cooler and smelled delicious. Herbert sniff
ed, half closing his eyes. His mood was rare and dreamy, as it always was out on the lake, for he had discovered that he loved to go rowing. There was something deeply soothing to this floating about in boats.

  “Now, this is the stuff,” he said, opening his eyes again and looking at Ruby with meaning. “Just you and me. I wish it could always be this way.”

  Ruby caught her breath and tried to think of an answer, but nothing came. Why, it was almost a proposal, what he’d said! She wondered weakly if she ought to swoon. Would that be proper, or … of course, if she swooned, unless he was near enough to catch her, she might fall out of the boat and … no, dear me, she mustn’t swoon! Trembling, she closed her parasol and laid it beside her on the wooden seat. Then: “I brought some poems to read,” she gasped, holding up a little book. “I thought we could read some poems. And then I expect we’d better get back.”

  “Poems?” said Herbert. “Oh. All right. That would be nice.”

  “All right,” said Ruby bravely. “I’ll go first. It’s Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Here’s one”—opening the book. “It’s called ‘Kubla Khan.’”

  “All right,” said Herbert.

  And Ruby began in a small, singsong voice:

  In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

  A stately pleasure dome decree:

  Where Alph, the sacred river—

  “Wait a minute,” said Herbert, sitting forward. “What does he say there?”

  “‘Where Alph, the sacred river’?”

  “No. Before that.”

  “Well, let me see. ‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome—’”

  “That’s it!” Herbert exclaimed. “‘A stately pleasure dome.’ Say, that’s grand! By Jove, Miss Nill, that’s what I’m going to call my park. The Pleasure Dome. The Rowbarge Pleasure Dome.”

  “Oh, Mr. Rowbarge,” Ruby sighed, her eyes starry. “That would be beautiful!”

  “It’s going to be a dilly, Miss Nill,” said Herbert. “I’m going to get a bigger merry-go-round pretty soon, a better one, and then one of these new rides they call a Ferris wheel. And after that—well, by the time I’m done, this town’ll be famous all around the state.”

  “Oh, Mr. Rowbarge,” Ruby sighed again. “You’re just so smart! Even Father says so.”

  Herbert, fired by this last, seized the moment. “Miss Nill—Ruby—won’t you share it with me? If you were with me, everything would be a pleasure, the whole dad-blasted world. Can I speak to your father now? Today? I can’t wait any longer.” In one quick movement he came forward to his knees and put his arms around her, marveling, himself, at his eloquence. And Ruby, conquered, dropped the book into the lake, where it bobbed off daintily a little way before it sank. She hadn’t gotten to the part in the poem where the woman wails for her demon lover. But, oh, she would. She would.

  Monday morning, May 26, 1952

  The Loose house, since the start of Aunt Opal’s widowhood, has slowly taken on a different cast. Gone is the doctor’s old armchair with its crumb-dry sifting of pipe tobacco trapped forever in the crevasses beneath its cushion. Here instead, by the fireplace, stands a handsome wing chair upholstered in gold brocade. His study, where for years he hid from Opal and devoured the magazines he knew she disapproved of, is a card room now, with bright new carpeting and curtains that smell like the shops they came from, not like Stuart. The old things from this room have all been moved to Walter’s apartment, and the stacks of magazines, too, whisked away by Walter before his mother had a chance to burn them. Gone is the portable bar, a walnut cabinet on wheels, with bottles and glasses in clever interior racks and a white tile top with the words What’ll You Have embellished on it. Walter has taken this as well, though he has covered the top, which he says was “corny,” with a cutting board for sandwiches, lemons, and limes. Walter leads an active social life.

  Upstairs, the room that was Walter’s in his boyhood is a second guest room now, done over in dusty rose, with new white-painted beds and bureau, and a dressing table skirted in white eyelet to match the curtains. This room, like the rest of the house, is not so much feminized as ordered. There is no “man’s mess” anywhere.

  Babe stands at the white-painted bureau brushing her hair, for it is this room she shares, on an alternating basis, with Louisa. For five years it has been constantly occupied by one or the other, but it shows no signs of wear or the softening that some rooms—some houses—acquire from long habitation by a loving owner. That softening, in fact, is what Aunt Opal especially dislikes. Except for a few framed photographs, the house, from cellar to attic, could belong to anyone—or no one. It is dust-free, scratch-free, flawless as a scalpel, and living there is like living in a fine, and very new, hotel. It was hard to keep the house this way while Stuart and Walter were in it. But now Aunt Opal can walk through the rooms and feel a pleasure so rich that sometimes she is nearly moved to tears. Aunt Opal isn’t glad that Stuart’s gone, but still, she’s not entirely sorry, either.

  Her nieces have placed on the white-painted bureau three photographs of their own: one of themselves arm in arm on the day of their high-school graduation; one of their father, a formal portrait taken some years back and retouched to vacuity, a state quite unlike him, by a zealous Bell Fountain photographer; and one, an enlarged snapshot, of their mother standing in bright sunlight beside a wicker double stroller on the seat of which they, at the age of one, sag dangerously, bonnets askew, staring blankly at infinity. The picture is fuzzy, but their mother’s expression is clear: she looks astonished.

  Aunt Opal has said that their mother often looked that way. “She had two expressions,” Opal told them once. “Surprised, like that”—indicating the snapshot—“and asleep.”

  Hurt, they said, “Didn’t you like her?”

  And she said, surprised, now, herself, “Of course I did. She was my sister! What a question.”

  It was a question they did not raise again.

  Babe puts down the hairbrush and rubs her shoulders. She is stiff from her turn at the oars on the lake the day before. But the afternoon in the rowboat was a great success. She and Louisa have decided to do it again some afternoon this week, and Babe is just wondering whether she ought to call Louisa and set a date, when the phone on the bedside table rings.

  “I’ll get it,” she calls to Aunt Opal, who is dressing in her own room down the hall. She picks up the receiver and says, “Hello?”

  It’s Louisa. Breathlessly she says, “Babe? Listen, I’ve only got a minute. Walter and I are taking Daddy to a doctor over in Bell Fountain this morning. In just a few minutes, as soon as Walter gets here. But I wanted to call and let you know.”

  Babe sits down suddenly on the bed and says, “Louisa—what’s wrong?”

  “Well,” says her sister with a quaver, “I’m not really sure. He had a sort of spell at breakfast. He seemed to forget where he was. And he looked at me and he said in this funny, really loud sort of voice, ‘What?’”

  “‘What?’” Babe echoes.

  “Yes. What. And I hadn’t said anything.”

  “Oh, dear,” says Babe.

  “And then,” says Louisa, “oh, Babe, he tried to stand up and he couldn’t. His legs just buckled under him.”

  “Louisa—how terrible—what did you do?”

  “Well,” says Louisa, “I didn’t do anything right off. I guess I just sat there. And then—then—he was all right again.”

  Babe has pressed her fingers to her lips. She feels, all at once, very cold.

  “Babe?” says Louisa anxiously. “Are you still there?”

  “I’m here,” says Babe. “I’m just … trying to figure it out. So did you call Dr. Herdman?”

  “Yes,” says Louisa. “I got up and didn’t say what I was doing, and I went and called him, but I couldn’t reach him. His daughter … Helen?”

  “Ellen,” says Babe.

  “Well, anyway, she graduated from college yesterday and he went over for it and won’t be back till tomorrow. So I didn’t
know what to do, so I called Walter and he knows this doctor over in Bell Fountain at the clinic—at least, he knows his nurse …”

  “Of course he’d know the nurse,” says Babe.

  “And so he said he’d make an appointment and be right down to help me talk Daddy into going.”

  “Louisa,” says Babe, standing up, “I’d better come over.”

  “Oh—no, Babe, there isn’t time. Walter will be here any … he’s here now, Babe, he’s coming up the driveway.”

  “All right,” says Babe. “Now, look—you go along and don’t worry about me. I’ll call the clinic myself in a couple of hours and see what’s what. Which doctor is it?”

  “Marks.”

  “All right,” says Babe. “Chin up. I’ll talk to you later.”

  Louisa hangs up and Babe stands by the phone for a moment. She feels heavy, her insides feel heavy, and tired. Poor Daddy, she thinks. Then she puts the receiver back in its cradle and wanders over to the bureau.

  “Who was it?” calls Aunt Opal from down the hall.

  “Louisa,” Babe answers.

  “It beats me,” says Aunt Opal, “how you two can find so much to talk about all hours of the day.”

  Babe feels too heavy just now to explain. She picks up the hairbrush again, and holds it in her hand, and stares at the picture of her mother. “He can’t be really sick,” she thinks. “Not Daddy. People like Daddy go on forever.” But she knows, even before the thought has passed, that this is nonsense. It’s just that it seems—too soon. She lays the brush down carefully and says to the astonished woman in the photograph, “I guess life is full of surprises.”

  September 1907

  There are plenty of reasons for a man’s getting married that don’t have anything to do with love. After all, human needs quite often go beyond the willing ear in the evening, the soft arms in the night. Herbert Rowbarge had felt a human need for the warm hand in the wallet, and in this he was by no means the first. Nevertheless, he thought it probable that marriage would demand of him at least some loverlike behavior, and so, before his wedding, he went to Dick for the facts to flesh out—fortunate phrase!—what little he had learned about girls from those rare glimpses at the Home which had so far served him as his only solid instruction on the female anatomy. But Dick, crimson with embarrassment, was unable to tell him much. “Don’t worry about it, Bertie” was all he could manage. “You’ll know how to do it when the time comes.”