She attracted men, but she no longer attracted boys; she had been through the experience of perceiving that. With her mother, she had returned to the Maine coast for the past two summers, and had found herself “too old” for the Beach Club dances. A person of fifty, seeing her beside one of the girls who prevailed at these dances, could not have decided which was the elder: to his eye Claire showed not any outward sign at all of her maturity; but the dancing boys knew instantly that she was “too old” for them. Youth has its own divinations; and, for these boys — some of them her own age — Claire was already an “old girl.”
“Twenty-five!” she thought, now, biting again upon this sore tooth. Twenty-five would make her an “old girl” indeed; but it should not make her marry. She knew well enough why these women at Mrs. Allyngton’s had married these men. Some of them had married in a kind of contagion because they were of the marrying age and because “all the rest” were getting married. Some of them had dallied, then married almost in a panic, grasping at anything as they saw “twenty-five,” or worse, approaching; she had been a bridesmaid for “old girls” thus frantically marrying and had shed tears, really of rage, for them.
Angered but vague, she supposed the whole affair of marriage to be “something probably biological.” The young had to get out of the nest: the boy learned to forage for himself; but the girl’s part was ignominious: she had to find a forager — and ride him! A whole epoch in a woman’s life was devoted to the competition, the struggles against her companions to obtain a forager; — hysterically affecting gayety all the while, she must scramble and fight to get him, never letting him perceive that it wasn’t he who did the scrambling. The elation of newly engaged girls had sometimes made Claire sick with pity for her sex: it seemed to her that what she read in the roseate look of the maiden betrothed was, “I’ve got mine!”
Having got theirs, they were generous to Claire: they wanted her to get hers, though she needed no forager and could still choose which one of several she would take, if she wished. She had been fortunate enough to have the foragers scrambling for her, indeed; and what she was resolved to resist was the contagion: she was bitterly resolved not to be married because “all the rest” were married or getting themselves married. Almost despairingly, she asked for a better reason.
A dozen of “all the rest” were here in Mrs. Allyngton’s apartment, this afternoon, and, as she looked at them, she wondered that such a contagion could reach her from them; for undeniably she felt it. She was intimate with them, and several of them still thought of her as “best friend”; but the intimacy was merely habit, she perceived — a habit sprung from chance propinquities and parental associations. She and these best friends of hers had shared experiences: they had stepped together into the arena and had formed the intimacies of a band of young gladiators. When they found themselves pitted against one another they had fought according to their own code, though most of them had half-forgiven some rather tricky wounds; — but what Claire had come more and more keenly to realize was that she had little true congeniality with any of them. Why then did she bore herself by remaining intimate with them? Why did she still make exertions not to be “left out”? Why on earth had she bothered to come here this afternoon?
For Mrs. Allyngton’s “tea” was only the daily “cocktail party.” The “conversation” was but the noise that mechanically grew louder and less coherent as the chemical action of gin inevitably operated the mechanical action of vocal organs. Daily these people met somewhere to put themselves through these same chemic mechanics: they seemed to need to drug themselves in order to bear one another’s society, and since they were as dull as that, Claire thought, what wonder their lives were as chemic mechanical as their parties! Well, why in the world did she still go to the parties?
She couldn’t answer her own question; but she was certain that she hadn’t come, this afternoon, because Walter Rackbridge would be here. Mr. Rackbridge was he who had delivered the ultimatum expiring at nightfall of this same day, and the last person with whom she desired, to hold converse. Yet here he was, a comely, thin, dark bachelor of thirty with a haggard eye; and, upon his arrival in Claire’s corner, the two attendant gentlemen at once intelligently went forth to riot mildly in other regions. She was left tête-à-tête with him and in an unhappy mood.
XXIV
YOU’VE DECIDED,” HE said immediately. “Which is it, Claire?”
She shook her head, looking at him sadly. “Thoughtful of you, Walter, to ask me that — here!”
“Isn’t it?” The young man’s face, not hopeful before she spoke, became gloomier; for correctly he assumed that what she said was an unfavourable portent. “I suppose you think I might have been more tactful to inquire by telephone?”
“No,” she returned, and she laughed ruefully. “My idea of tactful is that you’d have made no inquiry at all.”
“I see. I should just have let it run on, remaining your undemanding servant forever. Well, I’m afraid tact will have to go by the board.”
“I dare say. And you with it, Walter?”
“If you send me by the board with it, yes.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, no! I’d never send you. That’s in your own hands: if you go it’s because you want to.”
“Claire,” he said quietly, “I think you’ve told other men just that same thing. Probably some of them have been weak enough to keep on hanging around rather than incur the kind of reproach you imply.”
“What ‘reproach’?”
“That they didn’t care enough for you to be content with your liking them. That’s a pretty old story, it seems to me, and so far as I’m concerned it’s not helpful. I think you’re the cruellest person I’ve ever known, Claire.”
“Do you?” she said; and her expression, as she looked weariedly away from him, caused his own to become one of desperation.
“Yes, I do — banal as you think me for saying so.” He was not altogether successful in stifling an actual groan; it became audible, and that there might be no doubt of his suffering, a dew, not of the heat, appeared upon his forehead. “You’ve been genuinely brutal to me almost from the first,” he said. “You’re the most adorable thing in this world, and you know perfectly well that any man in his senses must see that you are. You knew at the very start that I thought so; you didn’t care at all for me and yet you deliberately made yourself as enrapturing to me as you could. You’ve always done that: you’re doing it even now at the very moment when you intend to tell me I’ve got to give up my last hope of you.”
“Now?” she asked scornfully. “What am I doing now?”
“You’re looking your most beautiful!” He laughed painfully. “You couldn’t even bring yourself to the decency of dressing unbecomingly or in any way looking less charming — and I couldn’t possibly find a more damning thing to say of you.”
“Oh, dear!” she murmured. “I think you’ve said this to me several times before, Walter.”
He caught his breath; then he said quietly, “Yes, the only novelty about this is that it’s the last time. Don’t think I’m unaware of the answer you’re going to give me. It’s ‘no.’”
She continued to look away from him, and did not speak.
“Isn’t it?” he said, in a voice a little tremulous, after a silence. “Isn’t it ‘no’?”
She turned and looked at him with a sorrowful gravity. “I told you more than a year ago that I could never be in love with you, Walter. You’ve been pretty nice to me and you know well enough how much I like you. I like to be with you — when you’re sensible enough to be just friendly — and I like to hear music with you: I even like spending several hours at a time with you — again when you’re just friendly. Well, that’s all, and I can’t help it. You say it’s not enough, and I can’t help that, either. You say I’ve got to promise to marry you or you’ll take yourself permanently out of my orbit. Very well, I’m not going to be married merely for the sake of being married.”
&nb
sp; “And if you married me,” he said gently, “that’s all it would be?”
She was sorry for him; he was miserable, and she knew that he had cared for her, truly and well, a long time. Moisture appeared in her eyes. “Yes, it would,” she said. “I’m sorry I ever let you get started, Walter. That was my fault, it’s true; because I could have stopped you; but I hadn’t learned enough to do such things then. I confess to you that I wanted to charm all the men I could. There — I’m letting you see what I’ve really been like; it ought to be useful to you.”
“Useful!” he groaned. “It only makes me see that you’re lovelier than ever — for owning up to it.” He took a step away, as if to leave her; then turned back. “Well — nothing’s likely to make any difference for me? It’s all over, is it?”
“Unless you’d like it to stay as it is.”
“I can’t,” he said. “I’ve tried; but I’ve either got to win you or leave you — and I can’t win you.
Well—” He contrived to form the semblance of a smile. “Good-bye — dear.”
“Good-bye,” she said, in a low voice; and to her sudden surprise she found this parting sharply painful: she had expected to be relieved, not hurt, by it. She put out her hand impulsively. “Good-bye — dear!” she said in little more than a whisper.
At that, he started and looked at her intently; but she released her hand from his, said hastily, “No! Just good-bye!” and, crestfallen, he turned away.
He did not go far. Their hostess was already upon them, convoying a middle-aged gentleman and a girl of eighteen; and before Walter could evade this anticlimax, Mrs. Allyngton had seized him by the arm. “I was just coming over to break up the tête-à-tête,” she said. “Miss Ambler, this is Mr. Sherman Peale. Walter, this is Miss Peale. There’s some music coming and you can dance with her pretty soon, and in the meanwhile be witty for her. You can, sometimes, you know! Claire, I’m going to leave Mr. Peale with you; that’s what he wants.”
XXV
THAT WAS WHAT Mr. Sherman Peale wanted, I as Claire already understood. He was a grayish, meagre man with a brown face and alert bright eyes that had seen a great deal, but were as lively and un jaded as those of his eighteen-year-old daughter who now turned aside with the unhappy Walter. Claire catalogued Mr. Peale as an “interesting” man, for which rating she had previous information from the public prints. He was an exploring anthropologist and had just returned to face batteries of interviewers after a long immersion in the steamy jungles of the Orinoco, a river of apparently no interest to him at the present moment. With a breath-taking clarity he explained what did interest him.
“I saw you the moment my daughter and I came into this room, Miss Ambler,” he said. “Yours was the one face that stood out, and I knew you were the one person here I wanted to know. I’ve been living entirely among savages for several years and I’m afraid I’ve thus relapsed into a habit of primitive frankness of speech lost by our own race some thousands of years ago. Can you stand it?”
“I think perhaps,” she said, “I can even equal it.”
At that, his youthful eyes glinted forth sparklings of pleasure. “Well, suppose you give me a sample of your own.”
“Of my own frankness?” She laughed, and then, with a light audacity, she said, “I saw you as you came in, Mr. Peale, and humbly hoped for a little notice.” And, though she should have blushed to say it, this was the mere truth: she had observed the advent of the distinguished gentleman, and had instantly thought, recognizing him, “There’s a man I’d like to know!” The reason she should have blushed was that this thought of hers had been in her head during her rejection of Walter Rackbridge: the unfortunate Walter might well have been entitled to all of her thoughts for those few crucial moments. But no one had quite all of Claire’s thoughts at any moment whatever; she was never wholly free of that “double” sense of hers, that curse of “seeing” herself as somebody else, even when she truly suffered. And thus, even while she had rejected Walter and had said to herself of Sherman Peale, “There’s a man I’d like to know,” she had simultaneously been her own audience, seated aloof and observing the actress. Moreover, as audience, she had said: “Walter goes. That brown-faced man coming in and looking at me, could that be He?” And she had let the brownfaced man become aware for an instant of her eyes upon him; so here he was — of course!
“You’ll get the notice, Miss Ambler,” he said, delighted. “I hope you can stand it as well as the frankness.”
“I think I can. Has it begun?”
“Decisively!” he rejoined; and he went on at once: “After a man has been cut off a long time from his kind, he comes back to them as a lonely stranger. My wife used to go with me upon my expeditions; but since her death I’ve gone alone. Coming back to New York has seemed to me the loneliest of all my expeditions, though it might surprise you to hear me say so, Miss Ambler. I’ve moved among crowds of people ever since I landed, two weeks ago; I’ve been obliged to make speeches at science association dinners — even at other dinners. I’ve been in a whirl of lunches and parties and reporters and celebrities; I’ve even danced until three in the morning. Yet I’ve never felt so alone in my life; it may be nostalgia for swamps and savages, but I don’t feel that I’ve been in actual human contact with a fellow-being since I left South America. When I saw you I had a queer thought, and as you say you can stand savage frankness, I’ll tell you what it was. I thought, “There’s someone who would understand me.”
“It might be overestimation,” Claire said. “But how could you feel quite so alone with a daughter like that to go about with you?”
“Kitty? Good heavens! To me she’s the greatest stranger of all. I left her a little schoolgirl of fourteen in her aunt’s charge, and I’ve come back to find a curiously sophisticated adult person whose very vocabulary is less open to me than that of some primitive tribes who express themselves principally in grunts and squeals. Bless me! I’m afraid I shall never become acquainted with Kitty. That good-looking youth with her now already knows more about her, I haven’t a doubt, than I ever shall.” Claire’s eyes followed his glance to where his daughter sat with Walter; and to the girl of almost twenty-five Miss Kitty Peale was no such mystery as her father found her. She was a slim little fair creature, exquisite peach-bloom in a knowing small gray hat, an amber-coloured blouse and skirt, the latter perhaps eighteen inches long, pale yellow silk stockings naturally much in view, and beautiful amber shoes from the Rue St. Honoré — superb small works by an artist in footwear and worth preserving in a collection. She was not inappreciative of them, herself, and, as she chattered to Walter, sometimes slightly elevated one or the other of them, bestowing a momentary glance of thoughtful pleasure upon it from beneath her lovely ashen lashes. Her stockings pleased her, too, undoubtedly; though she frequently tweaked the little skirt down to cover part of a kneecap. She had many such little fluttery and impulsive gestures, and her voice was also fluttery and impulsive. She uttered laughter and little outcries as of surprise throughout her talking, so that she seemed continually to have an obbligato accompaniment of mirth and wonderment.
“Ah, me!” Claire thought. “That’s just what I was like, then. Poor Walter!”
But, to her surprise, as she glanced at him, Walter seemed less downcast than she had expected. His equanimity was the more puzzling to her because she could hear perfectly what the child was loudly prattling to him. “So you’re actually Charlie Rackbridge’s cousin! I know him awf’ly well, really! I think he’s perfectly peachy wonderful — just as a boy in college, I mean of course. I went down to both the games he played in before he broke his collarbone; but of course I’m not wildly collegiate; Charlie’s peachy in his own place, I mean! I never dreamed I’d meet a cousin of his this afternoon.” Here she looked wistfully for one second into Walter’s eyes; then, with an air of mockery, tapped his arm with the tips of her fingers. “And such a cousin!”
“She’s a terrific little belle, I’m afraid,” her father said t
o Claire. “She has a squadron of boys hanging about and seems to spare no one. She tells me she prefers ‘older men,’ and I suppose she means young gentlemen about as old as the one she’s proceeding to enthrall just now. I haven’t a doubt she’ll annex him before she leaves his side and will probably tell me, after we go out, that she has an engagement with him for the evening. She’ll break several previous ones, incidentally, but she’ll patch all that up later somehow. I’m sure I don’t know how she does it.” Claire thoroughly knew how Kitty did it; and she shivered slightly, remembering how she herself had done it. “There, but for the grace of God in making me almost twenty-five, walk I!” she thought; and then hearing what Kitty said next, she was startled.
“I saw you the minute I came into the place,” Kitty chirped loudly. “And I wondered right away who you were.”
At this, Claire perceived that in one detail, at least, even the grace of God had not granted to twenty-five any superiority over eighteen. Kitty was beginning with Walter just as her father and Claire had begun with each other. “Good heavens!” the girl almost twenty-five said to herself. “Did I do it like this at eighteen? Am I still doing only the same things I did then — endlessly repeating them as long as I can stay in the ring?” And, dismayed, she wondered if there was any real difference between her present situation with Mr. Sherman Peale and Kitty’s with Walter Rackbridge. Hadn’t Kitty probably asked herself, at first sight of Walter, “Is this He?” She indeed probably had! And just as Claire was already certain that if she chose she could make Mr. Peale take any amount of interest in her she thought desirable, wasn’t the eighteen-year-old girl capable of a like certainty in regard to Walter? “Not that Walter would,” Claire thought; and then, hearing his response to Kitty’s overture, she had another surprise.
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 431