The Lady of Situations

by Louis Auchincloss

  For the moment the sadness of this reflection, tempered with the silver sweetness of a conscious self-pity, was not unpleasant.

  The weekend proved a good deal easier than she had anticipated. She and Jessie Ives, chaperoned by Mrs. DeVoe, stayed at a small white inn, owned by the school and used for visiting parents. Grant’s mother, as the wife of a prominent graduate and trustee, was received by all from the headmaster down with a demonstrative warmth and respect. Jessie Ives, small, tritely pretty and rather aggressively blond, with an air of faint malice in her pale tan eyes and slight snub nose, was adequately polite to Natica, who had heard all about her from Edith. Her father had also been ruined in the crash, but her mother had faced that plight very differently from Kitty Chauncey. Mrs. Ives, haggardly but stylishly thin, and always elegant in the last year’s dresses of her rich friends, supported her family by giving bridge lessons to, and playing the game for high stakes with, the donors of her wardrobe. She clung passionately to every link with her old world, fiercely determined that Jessie should “get it all back.” And indeed the girl showed every aptitude and inclination to do just that.

  Natica sighed to think how cheerfully she would have labored in that vineyard had her own mother adopted the course. She wondered if she could not read, behind Jessie’s thin cordiality, the distrust of another girl in the same boat. Her wonder became assurance the moment Lev Chauncey showed an interest in her. Was this common creature from a mere high school, Jessie’s instant glare demanded, trying to elbow into her territory?

  It was not that Lev’s interest was more than cousinly, even second cousinly. He showed a genial concern in getting to know .“this long-hidden blossom” of his family tree. He was a restless squirrel of a young man, with bright blue eyes and black hair, who dominated his schoolmates by his cheerful, strong-willed vigor and an irresistible good will. It had been a feat for one so diminutive to be elected to so high a school office, and Natica guessed that Jessie’s principal attraction was that she, too, was small.

  Lev was good to his promise to Grant that they would constitute a foursome, and Natica’s escort was obviously pleased that his guest was proving (as he had no doubt planned) a wedge into the senior prefect’s more intimate circle.

  At the dinner dance in the big hall of the gymnasium, whose Palladian elegance had been garishly disguised with pumpkins, lanterns and streamers, Lev and Grant and their girls sat at a table with two other couples. Lev introduced the topic of careers for women. He favored them.

  “The women in my family have more brains than the men,” he observed. “And I’m sure that Natica here is no exception. What about the DeVoes, Grant? Doesn’t Edith have more bean than you? Not that that’s saying much.”

  “I doubt Edith has much bean,” Grant retorted. “But that shouldn’t hold her back, should it? When my sister wants something, she wants it with a terrible force. It’s awesome to watch Edith wanting something.”

  “Is that the way to get things?” Jessie asked. “I thought it was important to hide your wants.”

  “If you can. But Edith couldn’t possibly hide hers. You’d see them sticking out under her dress.”

  “But does Edith want a career?” Lev inquired.

  “Edith wants whatever the going thing is. She picks the box office with the longest line. And then claws her way to the front of it.”

  Natica reflected that sibling rivalry had made Grant almost intelligent.

  Lev turned to Jessie. “How about you, Jess?”

  “I might like to do some designing. Or decorating. I think I may have a bit of a flare for that. But my family would always come first.”

  Natica noted the conventional qualification, designed, no doubt, to improve her grade in the matrimonial market.

  “And you, Natica?”

  Natica resolved suddenly to sparkle. Or try to, anyway. It had to be worth a gamble. When would the chance come again?

  “Oh, I want a career! By all manner of means a career.”

  Her tone caused a slight stir of interest around the table.

  “What kind of a career?” one of the men asked.

  “Oh, the very squarest, the least feminine. One where I’d wear mannish suits and be taken very seriously indeed.”

  Jessie squinted at her as if trying to divine her game.

  “Would you wear those awful three-cornered black hats, like Madame Secretary of Labor?”

  “Or even something uglier!” Natica clasped her hands in affected enthusiasm. “I adore Madame Perkins’s hats. I adore everything about Madame Perkins!”

  “But surely a woman can have a career and still be attractive and well dressed,” one of the girls observed.

  “No, no,” Natica protested. “The men would associate her with dolls and put her in a little house to be played with. A butterfly that wants to be esteemed by moths must shed its bright colors.”

  “So we men are moths, is that it?” Lev demanded.

  “Well, look around this hall. All those gray and dark blue suits. But the girls are like the lilies of the field, quite unsuited for toiling or spinning. Even my humble gown would hardly be the uniform for the floor of the Exchange or for Grant’s father’s bank.” She glanced at Grant, who had been watching her apprehensively, and saw that the reference was mollifying.

  “Then I take it,” Lev pursued, “that you’ve liberated yourself from the onerous labor of having to attract the moths. You can all ravage the linen closet together.”

  “Is that how you see Wall Street? No doubt you know. But yes, I suppose, a girl must make a choice. An ambitious girl, that is. She can marry her way up or work her way up. Of course, it might come to the same thing.”

  The four men at the table laughed; the girls did not. Natica’s sharp ear took in Jessie’s murmured remark to her neighbor: “They say there’s a lot of feminist agitation in the public schools. At Fox-croft we learn to be ladies before we’re men.”

  “You wouldn’t want a family and children?” another girl asked Natica.

  “Well, when I consider the brand of joy I’ve brought to my own darling mama, I wonder if I might spare myself that.”

  “Haven’t plenty of wives and mothers become famous?” Lev put to her.

  “Of course! But don’t they owe at least their start to wedlock? Not the movie stars, of course. That’s another dimension. But who would have heard of Eleanor Roosevelt if she hadn’t made effective use of her feminine charms to catch the wandering eye of our president?”

  Both sexes at the table indulged in crude guffaws. It was a stoutly Republican group.

  “It’s rather shaming, really,” Natica mused. “Fortunately not many charms are needed.”

  “Fortunately? Aren’t you downgrading your sex?”

  “No, yours.”

  “Touché!”

  With Lev’s exclamation the conversation changed, but Natica felt suddenly elated. She had had her moment in the spotlight, and she felt she had brought it off. Dancing with Grant between the courses, she wondered if she didn’t love everyone in the great chamber except Jessie Ives.

  “Could we go outside a moment?” she asked him. “It’s such a lovely warm evening. Oh, I know we’re not supposed to leave the party alone, but others are sure to follow.”

  He led her, albeit reluctantly, to a door which opened on a wide terrace used for gymnastics in the spring. It was empty and they strolled about. Natica’s spirits were so high that she felt she had to do something to give them expression.

  “You know what I’d really like? I hardly ever smoke, but I’d love a puff. You don’t have a cigarette, do you?”

  “Of course not!” He was shocked. “It’s absolutely verboten. Dr. Lockwood told us that if any of our girls just had to smoke, she could do so in his study. But of course he was being sarcastic.”

  She laughed. “It would be fun to test him. Shall we try?”

  “Natica! Are you crazy tonight?”

  “Well then, you can give me a kiss instead.
”

  He drew back. “There’s not supposed to be any smooching either. Certainly not at the party. It’s a strict rule.”

  “I don’t want to smooch. Ugh! What a disgusting idea. I want just one kiss. A chaste one, planted lightly on my lips. Come, sir. A gentleman can’t refuse a lady that.”

  He glanced nervously about and then gave her just what she asked, no more. But she wanted no more, and she would have been quite satisfied had not fate intervened.

  “Ooops!” came a voice from the doorway. “Let’s not go out there. I thought we were at Averhill. But it seems we’ve stumbled into Smithport High.”

  Jessie Ives turned around in the doorway and pushed Lev back to the dance floor.

  “It’ll be all over the place now,” Grant said sourly. “She’ll tell everyone we’ve been necking in the bushes. Let’s go in.”

  “Necking in the bushes! When I’ve had one tiny kiss! And when I think what we’ve spied going on in corners and behind stairways this weekend!”

  “That wasn’t the party,” he said stubbornly.

  It was the end of her exhilaration; there would be no more of that now. She felt only disgust with the whole visit and with herself for having accepted Grant’s invitation in the first place. On the dance floor he was sullenly silent, hoping that someone would cut in, but not sanguine about it. She looked up to see his mother sitting on the balcony with the other chaperones. Mrs. DeVoe waived to her gaily.

  “I’m going up to sit with your mother for a bit. You can dance with some of these lovelies. But be sure they don’t lure you out on the terrace!”

  Mrs. DeVoe remonstrated volubly at the idea of Natica’s leaving the dance floor to talk with “an old woman like me,” but when Natica insisted, she was happy to tell her how she had been employing her time on the balcony.

  “I’m keeping count of the number of times the more popular girls are cut in on. Of course, my dear, you’re subjecting yourself to a severe handicap by being up here.”

  “Oh me. I wouldn’t have a chance anyway.” She marveled at this manifestation of Mrs. DeVoe’s relentless competitiveness and wondered if it mightn’t explain some things about Edith and even Grant. “I don’t know anybody but Grant and Lev.”

  “Pish! A pretty face and a good figure are what they’re after. Oh, look!” Her eye had not left the dance floor. “The Sargent girl has been cut in on again. I wonder what she’s got that’s so alluring.”

  “Mrs. DeVoe?”

  “Yes, dear?” The brown, oddly noble face under the high crown of loosely gathered auburn hair, too noble, really, for her present occupation, perhaps for any of her occupations, was turned now to Natica.

  “I want you to know how deeply I appreciate all your kindness › tome.

  “Don’t be a goose. It’s been my pleasure. And now you should go down to that dance floor and wow all those nice young men.”

  Mrs. DeVoe turned resolutely back to her game, and Natica was left to sit silently by her side. She was overcome with a sense of dry desolation. She wanted to love and be loved by Mrs. DeVoe. She wanted to throw her arms around her, to hug and be hugged. But that could never be. If the older woman should catch even a glimpse of how passionately she coveted all the things that Mrs. DeVoe, having them, could afford to regard as the mere externals, the mere decorating externals, of the essentially good inner life, she would turn her back with scorn on her as a climber, a schemer, a sinister watcher from the dark street of the lighted festival within.

  Gazing down at the agitation of a rumba on the floor below, Natica knew with an ache in her heart that her trouble was that she saw herself just as she was and at the same time saw the different image that she managed at times to create in the eyes of others. She saw herself as doomed to wear a mask, and were not masks in the end almost invariably detected? Life’s trophies went to the self-deceived or to those who were capable of deceiving with relish. Armed with a fatuous complacency or a fuzzy emotionalism, she might make her way into the society that so dazzled her imagination without in any way impressing her intellect. But the girl who saw her own story unfolding chapters ahead of where she was placed in it was headed for an unhappy ending. Why? Because she saw the ending, and, seeing it, had already composed it.

  What could she do but write? Ah, yes! She clung to the old salvation, pressed it to herself. Hadn’t Jessie Ives in her spitefulness offered her a character for a story as good as the snooty Blanche Ingram, who had made life so miserable for Jane Eyre?

  Grant unexpectedly appeared behind her. Was she ready to go back to the floor? Of course, he could hardly abandon the girl he had invited and who had been brought up to school by his mother.

  “I’ll be keeping score,” Mrs. DeVoe said cheerfully.

  It turned out that Natica had enough partners not too much to disappoint the scorekeeper. The senior prefect had passed the word that his cousin was to be looked after.

  ***

  But the next day, before her departure with Mrs. DeVoe, she had a ritual which she had promised herself during her largely sleepless night to perform. She had slipped a cigarette out of Mrs. DeVoe’s purse in the Parents’ House, and after lunch, holding it between her fingers, she asked Grant to show her where the headmaster’s study was. He glanced in horror at the cigarette and demanded what the hell she thought she was going to do.

  “I’m not asking you to take me there. I’m asking you where it is.”

  He refused point-blank to have anything to do with her insane project, so she left him, and having been informed by a small boy on the campus that the headmaster’s study was in the vast red-brick cube of a residence that formed the end of the largest school building, she made her way there. She was ushered by a maid into a dark room in the center of which Dr. Lockwood was reading a book at a table desk under a green lamp. Of course, she had seen him when he greeted the Halloween guests, but she had not been close, and now she made out the curious red stare in the rocky square face that looked up to the doorway. He was about to rise from his desk when she said:

  “Is it all right, sir, if I smoke in here?”

  He sat back at once in his chair, waving her to a seat opposite him. Without uttering a word he resumed his reading.

  Natica, puffing at her weed, gazing at the long tiers and rows of framed photographs on the walls—of teams and crews, of stalwart athletes expressionlessly holding oars or bats or footballs, of suited figures in chairs clasping copies of the school paper or magazine, of classes arrayed on steps after commencement, of gathered faculty, all male—felt like Kipling’s jungle boy who had come, hidden, to see the mystery of the elephants’ dance. When she crept away silently at last and cast a furtive glance back at her companion, it was to note that he remained as motionless as a Buddha.

  3

  NATICA HAD SO prepared herself for the letdown that would inevitably follow her Halloween weekend that she found it not too hard to cope with. Besides, she was busy preparing for college entrance examinations in the spring, for Aunt Ruth had arranged for a partial scholarship at Barnard if she got in, and she was to live the following winter in her aunt’s apartment. So liberation, at least from home and Smithport, was in sight. Edith DeVoe was at school in the city, and Grant, after one perfunctory letter, had ceased to write, so she had no further relations with the family at Amberley, even on weekends, when they presumably were there. No doubt it was just as well. She had evidently served her purpose in giving Grant an access to the senior prefect’s crowd, and the cigarette episode with the headmaster had no doubt scared him away for good.

  There was, however, to be one more meeting with him. Kitty Chauncey, seemingly assured of pleasing her daughter, announced one evening in the Christmas vacation:

  “I saw your friend, Grant DeVoe, in the drugstore this morning. The family are here for the holidays. I asked him for Sunday lunch.”

  “And he’s coming?” Natica asked with unconcealed dismay.

  “Of course he’s coming. Why shouldn’t he
come? Do you think he’s too grand to sit at our humble board? I thought I had to do something about him, seeing that he asked you up to his school and his mother paid for your trip and a new evening dress. Really, Natica, one never knows how to please you.”

  Natica could picture the little scene at the drugstore. She knew how persistent her mother could be and what a poor actor Grant was. He would have stammered out a lame excuse which she would have promptly punctured, and he would have been left with no alternative but to accept.

  It was all quite as awkward as she had anticipated. Grant arrived so late that they repaired at once to the dining room. This, at least, was the best room in the house. The Duncan Phyfe chairs, rare surviving Chauncey heirlooms, with their simple but vaguely offended dignity, like marquises in a Jacobin prison, distracted some attention from the dreary backyard and the frame houses beyond and from the flapping pantry door through which the black cook, hired for the day and not even in uniform, slammed in and out with the dishes. And on the sideboard, raised on a stand, was a fine George III silver platter which her father had refused to sell because the coat of arms of its original owner, an English earl, was supported by two large fish. But nothing could make up for the way her father used a toothpick behind his napkin. As a host in his former glory at Amberley this might have passed for an “old New York” eccentricity, an amusing reminder of high life in the 1840s, but in their cottage it was simply vulgar. And would her mother never cease with her odious comparisons?

  “I know you’re used to better things up the hill, Grant, and I’m sure it’s very good of you to take potluck with us. We’re not as fancy as we used to be, but I don’t think we do too badly, either. Some people like to talk of the good old days before the depression, but do you know something? I’m not sure they were all so very good. What I’ve learned about human decency and good, old-fashioned simple kindness since we moved into this village I couldn’t begin to tell you. When you come here just for the summer or weekends you don’t get to know the real Smithporters. And they’re great people, they really are!”