“Myra!”
She carefully placed the bowl and glass on the carpet and rose, smiling.
“Why,” he exclaimed, “they didn’t tell me you were here!”
“Your father — welcomed me.”
“Lordy! He must have gone upstairs and forgotten all about it. Did he insist on your eating this stuff? Why didn’t you just tell him you didn’t want any?”
“Why — I don’t know.”
“You musn’t mind father, dear. He’s forgetful and a little unconventional in some ways, but you’ll get used to him.”
He pressed a button and a butler appeared.
“Show Miss Harper to her room and have her bag carried up — and her trunk if it isn’t there already.” He turned to Myra. “Dear, I’m awfully sorry I didn’t know you were here. How long have you been waiting?”
“Oh, only a few minutes.”
It had been twenty at the least, but she saw no advantage in stressing it. Nevertheless it had given her an oddly uncomfortable feeling.
Half an hour later as she was hooking the last eye on her dinner dress there was a knock on the door.
“It’s Knowleton, Myra; if you’re about ready we’ll go in and see mother for a minute before dinner.”
She threw a final approving glance at her reflection in the mirror and turning out the light joined him in the hall. He led her down a central passage which crossed to the other wing of the house, and stopping before a closed door he pushed it open and ushered Myra into the weirdest room upon which her young eyes had ever rested.
It was a large luxurious boudoir, paneled, like the lower hall, in dark English oak and bathed by several lamps in a mellow orange glow that blurred its every outline into misty amber. In a great armchair piled high with cushions and draped with a curiously figured cloth of silk reclined a very sturdy old lady with bright white hair, heavy features, and an air about her of having been there for many years. She lay somnolently against the cushions, her eyes half closed, her great bust rising and falling under her black negligee.
But it was something else that made the room remarkable, and Myra’s eyes scarcely rested on the woman, so engrossed was she in another feature of her surroundings. On the carpet, on the chairs and sofas, on the great canopied bed and on the soft Angora rug in front of the fire sat and sprawled and slept a great array of white poodle dogs. There must have been almost two dozen of them, with curly hair twisting in front of their wistful eyes and wide yellow bows flaunting from their necks. As Myra and Knowleton entered a stir went over the dogs; they raised one-and-twenty cold black noses in the air and from one-and-twenty little throats went up a great clatter of staccato barks until the room was filled with such an uproar that Myra stepped back in alarm.
But at the din the somnolent fat lady’s eyes trembled open and in a low husky voice that was in itself oddly like a bark she snapped out “Hush that racket!” and the clatter instantly ceased. The two or three poodles round the fire turned their silky eyes on each other reproachfully, and lying down with little sighs faded out on the white Angora rug; the tousled ball on the lady’s lap dug his nose into the crook of an elbow and went back to sleep, and except for the patches of white wool scattered about the room Myra would have thought it all a dream.
“Mother,” said Knowleton after an instant’s pause, “this is Myra.”
From the lady’s lips flooded one low husky word: “Myra?”
“She’s visiting us, I told you.”
Mrs. Whitney raised a large arm and passed her hand across her forehead wearily.
“Child!” she said — and Myra started, for again the voice was like a low sort of growl — “you want to marry my son Knowleton?”
Myra felt that this was putting the tonneau before the radiator, but she nodded. “Yes, Mrs. Whitney.”
“How old are you?” This very suddenly.
“I’m twenty-one, Mrs. Whitney.”
“Ah — and you’re from Cleveland?” This was in what was surely a series of articulate barks.
“Yes, Mrs. Whitney.”
“Ah — — “
Myra was not certain whether this last ejaculation was conversation or merely a groan, so she did not answer.
“You’ll excuse me if I don’t appear downstairs,” continued Mrs. Whitney; “but when we’re in the East I seldom leave this room and my dear little doggies.”
Myra nodded and a conventional health question was trembling on her lips when she caught Knowleton’s warning glance and checked it.
“Well,” said Mrs. Whitney with an air of finality, “you seem like a very nice girl. Come in again.”
“Good night, mother,” said Knowleton.” ‘Night!”barked Mrs. Whitney drowsily, and her eyes sealed gradually up as her head receded back again into the cushions.
Knowleton held open the door and Myra feeling a bit blank left the room. As they walked down the corridor she heard a burst of furious sound behind them; the noise of the closing door had again roused the poodle dogs.
When they went downstairs they found Mr. Whitney already seated at the dinner table.
“Utterly charming, completely delightful!” he exclaimed, beaming nervously. “One big family, and you the jewel of it, my dear.”
Myra smiled, Knowleton frowned and Mr. Whitney tittered.
“It’s been lonely here,” he continued; “desolate, with only us three. We expect you to bring sunlight and warmth, the peculiar radiance and efflorescence of youth. It will be quite delightful. Do you sing?”
“Why — I have. I mean, I do, some.”
He clapped his hands enthusiastically.
“Splendid! Magnificent! What do you sing? Opera? Ballads? Popular music?”
“Well, mostly popular music.”
“Good; personally I prefer popular music. By the way, there’s a dance to-night.”
“Father,” demanded Knowleton sulkily, “did you go and invite a crowd here?”
“I had Monroe call up a few people — just some of the neighbors,” he explained to Myra. “We’re all very friendly hereabouts; give informal things continually. Oh, it’s quite delightful.”
Myra caught Knowleton’s eye and gave him a sympathetic glance. It was obvious that he had wanted to be alone with her this first evening and was quite put out.
“I want them to meet Myra,” continued his father. “I want them to know this delightful jewel we’ve added to our little household.”
“Father,” said Knowleton suddenly, “eventually of course Myra and I will want to live here with you and mother, but for the first two or three years I think an apartment in New York would be more the thing for us.”
Crash! Mr. Whitney had raked across the tablecloth with his fingers and swept his silver to a jangling heap on the floor.
“Nonsense!” he cried furiously, pointing a tiny finger at his son. “Don’t talk that utter nonsense! You’ll live here, do you understand me? Here! What’s a home without children?”
“But, father — — “
In his excitement Mr. Whitney rose and a faint unnatural color crept into his sallow face.
“Silence!” he shrieked. “If you expect one bit of help from me you can have it under my roof — nowhere else! Is that clear? As for you my exquisite young lady,” he continued, turning his wavering finger on Myra, “you’d better understand that the best thing you can do is to decide to settle down right here. This is my home, and I mean to keep it so.”
He stood then for a moment on his tiptoes, bending furiously indignant glances first on one, then on the other, and then suddenly he turned and skipped from the room.
“Well,” gasped Myra, turning to Knowleton in amazement “what do you know about that!”
III
Some hours later she crept into bed in a great state of restless discontent. One thing she knew — she was not going to live in this house. Knowleton would have to make his father see reason to the extent of giving them an apartment in the city. The sallow little man made
her nervous, she was sure Mrs. Whitney’s dogs would haunt her dreams- and there was a general casualness in the chauffeur, the butler, the maids and even the guests she had met that night, that did not in the least coincide with her ideas on the conduct of a big estate.
She had lain there an hour perhaps when she was startled from a slow reverie by a sharp cry which seemed to proceed from the adjoining room. She sat up in bed and listened, and in a minute it was repeated. It sounded exactly like the plaint of a weary child stopped summarily by the placing of a hand over its mouth. In the dark silence her bewilderment shaded gradually off into uneasiness. She waited for the cry to recur, but straining her ears she heard only the intense crowded stillness of three o’clock. She wondered where Knowleton slept, remembered that his bedroom was over in the other wing just beyond his mother’s. She was alone over here — or was she?
With a little gasp she slid down into bed again and lay listening. Not since childhood had she been afraid of the dark, but the unforeseen presence of someone next door startled her and sent her imagination racing through a host of mystery stories that at one time or another had whiled away a long afternoon.
She heard the clock strike four and found she was very tired. A curtain drifted slowly down in front of her imagination, and changing her position she fell suddenly to sleep.
Next morning, walking with Knowleton under starry frosted bushes in one of the bare gardens, she grew quite light-hearted and wondered at her depression of the night before. Probably all families seemed odd when one visited them for the first time in such an intimate capacity. Yet her determination that she and Knowleton were going to live elsewhere than with the white dogs and the jumpy little man was not abated. And if the near-by Westchester County society was typified by the chilly crowd she had met at the dance — —
“The family,” said Knowleton, “must seem rather unusual. I’ve been brought up in an odd atmosphere, I suppose, but mother is really quite normal outside of her penchant for poodles in great quantities, and father in spite of his eccentricities seems to hold a secure position in Wall Street.”
“Knowleton,” she demanded suddenly, “who lives in the room next door to me?”
Did he start and flush slightly — or was that her imagination?
“Because,” she went on deliberately, “I’m almost sure I heard someone crying in there during the night. It sounded like a child Knowleton.”
“There’s no one in there,” he said decidedly. “It was either your imagination or something you ate. Or possibly one of the maids was sick.”
Seeming to dismiss the matter without effort he changed the subject.
The day passed quickly. At lunch Mr. Whitney seemed to have forgotten his temper of the previous night; he was as nervously enthusiastic as ever; and watching him Myra again had that impression that she had seen him somewhere before. She and Knowleton paid another visit to Mrs. Whitney — and again the poodles stirred uneasily and set up a barking, to be summarily silenced by the harsh throaty voice. The conversation was short and of inquisitional flavor. It was terminated as before by the lady’s drowsy eyelids and a p’an of farewell from the dogs.
In the evening she found that Mr. Whitney had insisted on organizing an informal neighborhood vaudeville. A stage had been erected in the ballroom and Myra sat beside Knowleton in the front row and watched proceedings curiously. Two slim and haughty ladies sang, a man performed some ancient card tricks, a girl gave impersonations, and then to Myra’s astonishment Mr. Whitney appeared and did a rather effective buck-and-wing dance. There was something inexpressibly weird in the motion of the well-known financier flitting solemnly back and forth across the stag on his tiny feet. Yet he danced well, with an effortless grace and an unexpected suppleness, and he was rewarded with a storm of applause.
In the half dark the lady on her left suddenly spoke to her.
“Mr. Whitney is passing the word along that he wants to see you behind the scenes.”
Puzzled, Myra rose and ascended the side flight of stairs that led to the raised platform. Her host was waiting for her anxiously.
“Ah,” he chuckled, “splendid!”
He held out his hand, and wonderingly she took it. Before she realized his intention he had half led, half drawn her out on to the stage. The spotlight’s glare bathed them, and the ripple of conversation washing the audience ceased. The faces before her were pallid splotches on the gloom and she felt her ears burning as she waited for Mr. Whitney to speak.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “most of you know Miss Myra Harper. You had the honor of meeting her last night. She is a delicious girl, I assure you. I am in a position to know. She intends to become the wife of my son.”
He paused and nodded and began clapping his hands. The audience immediately took up the clapping and Myra stood there in motionless horror, overcome by the most violent confusion of her life.
The piping voice went on: “Miss Harper is not only beautiful but talented. Last night she confided to me that she sang. I asked whether she preferred the opera, the ballad or the popular song, and she confessed that her taste ran to the latter. Miss Harper will now favor us with a popular song.”
And then Myra was standing alone on the stage, rigid with embarrassment. She fancied that on the faces in front of her she saw critical expectation, boredom, ironic disapproval. Surely this was the height of bad form — to drop a guest unprepared into such a situation.
In the first hush she considered a word or two explaining that Mr. Whitney had been under a misapprehension — then anger came to her assistance. She tossed her head and those in front saw her lips close together sharply.
Advancing to the platform’s edge she said succinctly to the orchestra leader: “Have you got ‘Wave That Wishbone’?”
“Lemme see. Yes, we got it.”
“All right. Let’s go!”
She hurriedly reviewed the words, which she had learned quite by accident at a dull house party the previous summer. It was perhaps not the song she would have chosen for her first public appearance, but it would have to do. She smiled radiantly, nodded at the orchestra leader and began the verse in a light clear alto.
As she sang a spirit of ironic humor slowly took possession of her — a desire to give them all a run for their money. And she did. She injected an East Side snarl into every word of slang; she ragged; she shimmied, she did a tickle-toe step she had learned once in an amateur musical comedy; and in a burst of inspiration finished up in an Al Jolson position, on her knees with her arms stretched out to her audience in syncopated appeal.
Then she rose, bowed and left the stage.
For an instant there was silence, the silence of a cold tomb; then perhaps half a dozen hands joined in a faint, perfunctory applause that in a second had died completely away.
“Heavens!” thought Myra. “Was it as bad as all that? Or did I shock ‘em?”
Mr. Whitney, however, seemed delighted. He was waiting for her in the wings and seizing her hand shook it enthusiastically.
“Quite wonderful!” he chuckled. “You are a delightful little actress — and you’ll be a valuable addition to our little plays. Would you like to give an encore?”
“No!” said Myra shortly, and turned away.
In a shadowy corner she waited until the crowd had filed out with an angry unwillingness to face them immediately after their rejection of her effort.
When the ballroom was quite empty she walked slowly up the stairs, and there she came upon Knowleton and Mr. Whitney alone in the dark hall, evidently engaged in a heated argument.
They ceased when she appeared and looked toward her eagerly.
“Myra,” said Mr. Whitney, “Knowleton wants to talk to you.”
“Father,” said Knowleton intensely, “I ask you — — “
“Silence!” cried his father, his voice ascending testily. “You’ll do your duty — now.”
Knowleton cast one more appealing glance at him, but Mr. Whitney only sh
ook his head excitedly and, turning, disappeared phantomlike up the stairs.
Knowleton stood silent a moment and finally with a look of dogged determination took her hand and led her toward a room that opened off the hall at the back. The yellow light fell through the door after them and she found herself in a dark wide chamber where she could just distinguish on the walls great square shapes which she took to be frames. Knowleton pressed a button, and immediately forty portraits sprang into life — old gallants from colonial days, ladies with floppity Gainsborough hats, fat women with ruffs and placid clasped hands.
She turned to Knowleton inquiringly, but he led her forward to a row of pictures on the side.
“Myra,” he said slowly and painfully, “there’s something I have to tell you. These” — he indicated the pictures with his hand — “are family portraits.”
There were seven of them, three men and three women, all of them of the period just before the Civil War. The one in the middle however, was hidden by crimson-velvet curtains.
“Ironic as it may seem,” continued Knowleton steadily, “that frame contains a picture of my great-grandmother.”
Reaching out, he pulled a little silken cord and the curtains parted, to expose a portrait of a lady dressed as a European but with the unmistakable features of a Chinese.
“My great-grandfather, you see, was an Australian tea importer. He met his future wife in Hong-Kong.”
Myra’s brain was whirling. She had a sudden vision of Mr. Whitney’s yellowish face, peculiar eyebrows and tiny hands and feet — she remembered ghastly tales she had heard of reversions to type — of Chinese babies — and then with a final surge of horror she thought of that sudden hushed cry in the night. She gasped, her knees seemed to crumple up and she sank slowly to the floor.
In a second Knowleton’s arms were round her.
“Dearest, dearest!” he cried. “I shouldn’t have told you! I shouldn’t have told you!”
As he said this Myra knew definitely and unmistakably that she could never marry him, and when she realized it she cast at him a wild pitiful look, and for the first time in her life fainted dead away.
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 302