Corinne felt like hearing her own voice in the quiet breakfast room. She went into details: "It’s a letter and some poems from a college girl in Vermont. The letter’s sweet. You can see she spent hours and hours writing it. Anyway, if you can possibly decipher her handwriting and can read the verses, you’re to make some comment to me..." As she looked at her new husband’s handsome, Monday-morning-go-to-work-for-the-first-time face, her trend of thought drifted away from her. She reached across the table, stroked his hand, and finished weakly, "She’s coming to New York and plans to phone me for your criticism. All very complicated."
Ford nodded. "Be glad to," he said, and stuffed the letter and verses into his jacket pocket.
But it was a much too simple and final reply. Corinne wanted to draw him closer, physically and otherwise, to her. She wanted the oblique shafts of breakfast-table sunshine to fall on them together, not singly, not one at a time.
"Wait a minute, darling. Just give me her address for a second. I’ll drop her a line and ask her to tea Sunday."
"All right. Fine." Ford handed over the envelope, smiled, and finished his corn flakes.
But as late as the following Sunday noon Ford still hadn’t read the verses. Corinne finally rapped on his door.
"Ray. Darling. That girl I wrote to is coming here in a couple of hours," she said gently. "Do you think you could just glance through her verses? Just so you can say a few words to her?"
"Sure! I was just looking at some things here. Where are they?"
"You have them, darling. They’re probably still in the coat of your blue suit."
"I’ll get dressed and look at them right away," he said efficiently.
But he stayed at his desk, working, until at three o’clock the front doorbell rang.
Corinne rushed back to his study, "Darling, have you read the poems yet?"
"Is she here already?" Ford asked incredulously.
"I’ll entertain her. You read. Come out when you’re finished," Corinne closed the door hurriedly. Rita, the maid, had already answered the doorbell.
"How do you do, Miss Croft," Corinne said—all hostess—moving forward toward her guest in the living room.
She was addressing a slight, fair-haired girl with a receding chin, who might almost have passed for eighteen instead of twenty. She was hatless and wearing a good gray flannel suit— very new.
"It’s awfully nice of you to let me come, Mrs. Ford."
"Won’t you sit down? I’m afraid my husband will be a little late."
Both women sat down, Miss Croft saying, "I think I’ll recognize him. I saw his picture in Poetry Survey. Wasn’t it a wonderful picture? I never say anyone so handsome." Her voice wasn’t giddy, but it had in it all the reputed frankness of youth. She looked at her hostess enthusiastically.
Corinne laughed. "I never did either," she said. "How do you like New York, Miss Croft?"
Corinne sat with her guest for an hour and a half without any appearance by Ford.
Conversation was not difficult, however. On the contrary, Miss Croft seemed to have arrived forewarned of the deadly platitudes usually exchanged between out-of-towners and resident New Yorkers. It seemed she had brought her own fresh dialogue. She confessed to Corinne, to begin with, that she liked New York, but only to live here, not to visit. Corinne was genuinely amused—as had been intended—and began to feel sorry for her guest’s little receding chin and to notice that her calves and ankles were really quite nice.
"I’m trying," Miss Croft suddenly confided, a little glumly, "to persuade my aunt to let me stay in New York to study. I don’t have much hope, though. Especially after last night. A drunken man came into the dining room at the hotel." She grinned. "I’m not even allowed to wear lipstick."
Corinne leaned forward on an impulse. "Look. Would you really like to stay and study?"
"More than anything else in the world, I guess."
"What about Creedmore? You’d want to finish there, wouldn’t you?"
"I could go to Barnard. Then I could study at Columbia in the evening," Miss Croft said readily.
"Do you think it would help if I spoke with your aunt? I mean, an older woman? I’d be very glad to, if it’s what you really want," Corinne offered with characteristic kindness.
"Oh, golly, that’s awful nice!" said Miss Croft. But she shook her head immediately. "But, thanks. I think I’d better fight it out alone for the few more days we’re here. You couldn’t help anyway. I’m afraid. You don’t know Aunt Cornelia." She looked down self-consciously at her hands. "I’ve never really been away from home. I live in a way that—" She broke off with a smile Corinne found extremely winning. "What’s the difference? I’m really very grateful to be here at all."
Corinne asked quietly, "Where are you staying, dear?"
"At the Waldorf. I think we’re going back next Sunday." Miss Croft giggled. "Aunt Cornelia doesn’t trust the servants with the silver. Especially the ‘new’ cook—she’s only been with us nine years and hasn’t really proved herself."
Corinne laughed—really laughed. She suddenly disapproved the possibility of this bright small person going back to Vermont with all or surely most of her challenges unmet.
"Mary—may I call you Mary?" Corinne began.
"Bunny. Nobody calls me Mary."
"Bunny, you’re perfectly welcome to stay here for a while after your aunt leaves. If she’ll let you. Really. We have a lovely room that we don’t even—"
Emotionally, Bunny Croft pressed Corinne’s hand. Then she placed both her hands into the side pockets of her suit. Her fingernails were bitten down to the quick.
"I’ll work out something," she said with confidence, and smiled.
Apparently it was not her nature to be hopelessly depressed by adverse circumstances. With considerable tea-table enterprise she began, verbally, to conduct Corinne around her home in Vermont, pointing out with mixed affection and abhorrence things that had stood of greenly stretched or lay unrepaired all through her childhood. Aunt Cornelia came into focus: a funny, humorless spinster who evidently was carrying on a private war on may fronts, chiefly against progress and dust and fun. Corinne listened attentively, sometimes laughing out loud, sometimes vicariously oppressed, shaking her head.
But it was when the servants began to move through the house that Corinne was most personally moved. As Bunny began to speak tenderly and inclusively of an old butler named Harry, whom she had unqualifiedly loved and depended upon, Corinne was acutely, almost painfully reminded of Eric, her father’s old chauffeur, so long dead.
"And Ernestine!" Bunny exclaimed with great warmth. "Golly, I wish you could meet Ernestine. She’s Aunt Cornelia’s maid. She’s a terrible kleptomaniac," she fondly classified. "Has been ever since I can remember. But when I first came to Aunt Cornelia’s. Ernestine was the only one in the house—except Harry—who had any idea that a little girl wasn’t just a young, short adult." She giggled. A gleam of real mischief cam into her eyes—her eyes were very pretty: gray-green, and quite large. "For years I confessed to all kinds of petty thefts around the house. I still do. Golly. Aunt Cornelia would discharge Ernestine in a minute if she knew about her—her ‘trouble’." She grinned.
"What did your aunt do—I mean when you were a child—when you took the blame for Ernestine?" Corinne asked, amused and interested. Interested in, and somewhat envious of, the apparent resourcefulness by which her guest (apparently unscathed) had passed through childhood.
"What would she do?" Bunny shrugged her shoulders—a gesture curiously immature for her age, Corinne thought. Bunny grinned. "She wouldn’t do much about it. Forbid me the use of the library. Ernestine would get the key for me anyway. Or tell me I couldn’t ride in the horse show. Something like that."
Corinne looked at her wristwatch suddenly. "Ray should be here," she apologized. "I’m awful sorry he’s so late."
"Sorry!" Bunny looked shocked. "Golly, Mrs. Ford. To think that he’d—I mean, that he’d find the time to see me at a
ll . . ." Self-consciously she scratched her frail wrist, but asked, "Has he had a chance at all to look at my poems? I mean, had he had the time at all?"
"Well, so far as I know—" Corinne started to stall, but turned in her chair gratefully, as she heard the double doors to the living room open. "Ray! Finally. Come in, darling."
Corinne attended to the introductions. Bunny Croft was visibly flustered.
"Sit down, darling," the bride addressed the groom. "You look a little dragged. Have some tea."
Ford sat down on the chair between the two women, pushed it back a little, and immediately asked, "Have you tried to have published any of these poems you have written, Miss Croft?"
Involuntarily Corinne arched her back a little. Her husband’s question was ice-cold.
"Well, no, Mr. Ford—I don’t know. I just thought—well, I thought I ought to find out whether I’m any good or not. . . I don’t know." Bunny’s eyes flashed Corinne an appeal for help.
"Darling, have some tea," Corinne suggested, confused. Her husband had not come into the room altogether intact. He had brought his handsome head. And probably all of his genius. But where was his kindness?
"No tea, Corinne, thank you," Ford declined, looking a little naked without his kindness.
Corinne handed Bunny Croft a fresh cup of tea, and looked at her husband evenly. "Are the poems interesting, darling?" she asked.
"How do you mean, interesting?"
Corinne carefully put cream in her own cup of tea. "Well, I mean are they lovely?"
"Are your poems lovely, Miss Croft?" Ford asked.
"Well—I—I hope so, Mr. Ford."
"No, you don’t," Ford contradicted quietly. "Don’t say that."
"Ray," Corinne said, upset. "What’s the matter darling?"
But Ford was looking at Bunny Croft. "Don’t say that," he said to her again.
"Gol-lee, Mr. Ford, if my poems aren’t—well, at all lovely—I don’t know what they are. I mean—golly!" Bunny Croft flushed and put her hands into her jacket pockets, out of sight.
Ford abruptly stood up. He looked down at Corinne. "I have to go, Corinne. I’ll be back in an hour."
"Go?" Corinne said.
"I promised Dr. Funk I’d drop by if we got back today."
It was a lie, however unelaborate. It waylaid deftly any oral response from Corinne. She looked up at her husband and just nodded. Ford turned to Bunny Croft, saying, "Good-by" and sounded curiously logical.
The groom bent over and kissed the bride, who immediately got her voice back. "Darling. If you could just give Miss Croft a little constructive criticism that might..."
"Oh, no!" Bunny Croft protested. "Please. It isn’t—I mean it isn’t at all necessary— really!"
Ford, who had caught a head cold during the drive back from Canada, used his handkerchief. He replaced it, saying slowly, "Miss Croft, I’ve read every one of the poems you sent to me. I can’t tell you you’re a poet. Because you’re not. And I’m not saying that because your language is dissonant, or because your metaphors are either hackneyed or false, or because your few attempts to write are so flashy that I have a splitting headache. Those things can happen sometimes."
He sat down suddenly—as though he had been waiting for hours for a chance to sit down.
"But you’re inventive," he informed his guest—without a perceptible note of accusation in his voice.
He looked at the carpet, concentrating, and pushed back the hair at his temples with his finger tips.
"A poet doesn’t invent his poetry—he finds it," he said, to no one in particular. "The place," he added slowly, "where Alph, the sacred river ran—was found out, not invented."
He looked out the window from where he sat. He seemed to look as far out of the room as he could. "I can’t stand any kind of inventiveness," he said.
Nothing led away from this statement.
He sat still for a moment. Then, as abruptly as he had sat down, he stood up. He took Miss Croft’s sheaf of poems out of his jacket pocket and rather anonymously placed them on the tea table, not directly in front of anyone. He then removed his reading glasses, narrowing his eyes as people with extremely bad eyesight usually do when they undress their eyes. He put on his other pair of glasses, his street glasses. Then one more he bent owver and kissed his bride good-by.
"Ray, darling. Miss Croft is terribly young. Isn’t it possible that—"
"Corinne, I’m late now," Ford said, and stood up straight. "Good-by," he said inclusively. He left the room, looking pressed for time.
Corinne’s right-and-wrong reflexes had been uncomfortablly overactive most of her life, and at four-thirty in the afternoon her husband’s walkout, his general behavior toward his guest, his unelaborate but obvious lie—all had, to her, a very high unacceptableness, whether taken singly or collectively. But around six in the evening, one of those connubial accidents happened to her which disable a wife—sometimes for months—from speaking up. She happened to open a closet door and one of Ford’s suit jackets—one she had never seen—fell across her face. Besides having a certain natural olfactory value to her, the jacket had two great holes at the elbows. Either hole alone could have pledged her to loving silence. At any rate, when at seven Ford came home, she had been ready for at least an hour to be the last person in the world to ask him for an explanation.
Not once all evening did Ford himself allude to the afternoon in any way. He was quiet at dinner but, as he was often reflectively quiet, he quietness at dinner wasn’t obstrusive, didn’t necessarily imply that he was carrying around some new X-quantity.
After dinner the Fowlers dropped by—unannounced and disconcertingly tight—to see the returned newlyweds. They stayed until after midnight, Wesley Fowler incessantly one-fingering the keyboard of the piano, and Ginnie Fowler, obviously postponing a crying jag by smoking handfuls of cigarettes. By the time the Fowlers had pulled out Corinne had half forgotten the afternoon, or had informally convinced herself that there is nothing real about a Sunday afternoon, anyway.
Monday noon, when Bunny Croft telephoned Corinne at the magazine, the call came almost as a surprise. But her second reaction was annoyance. Annoyance with herself for having asked Bunny Croft to meet her. "Look, why don’t you call me at the magazine tomorrow, and let’s have lunch together," and annoyance with Bunny Croft not only for taking advantage of yesterday’s invitation, but for still being in New York. Trying people’s loyalty to their husbands, keeping people from running over to Saks’ Fifth Avenue in their lunch hours.
"Do you know where the Colony is?" Corinne asked Bunny over the telephone—aware that there was something unkind about the question.
"No, I don’t. I can find it though."
Corinne gave directions. But she suddenly didn’t like the way her own voice was sounding, and broke in with, "Do you think your Aunt Cornelia would like to join us? I’d love to meet her."
"She would I know, but she’s in Poughkeepsie. She’s visiting somebody she used to go to Vassar with, that has to be fed through tubs or something."
"Oh—well . . ."
"Mrs. Ford, are you sure I’m not inconveniencing you? I mean I don’t want—"
"No, no! Not at all. One o’clock then?"
In the taxi, on the way to the Colony, Corinne planned to be perfectly pleasant at lunch, but at the same time to let it be known that once dessert was over her term of hospitality would naturally expire.
Lunch, however, was different from what Corinne had vaguely expected of allowed for. Lunch was nice. Lunch was really quite nice, Corinne had to admit. Lunch was gay—lunch was really quite gay. On the first Martini, Bunny Croft began describing with mixed indifference and penetration, two of her young men callers in Harkins, Vermont, one of them a medical student, the other a dramatics student. Both young men sounded extremely young and serious and funny to Corinne and several times she laughed out loud. And as Bunny’s casual, superior dormitory talk kept coming across the table, and as the waiter brought
a third round of Martinis, Corinne herself began to feel distinctly collegiate. Characteristically, she looked around for something generous to say in repayment.
"Let me get you a date while you’re here," she offered abruptly. "The magazine staff is full of young men. Some of them quite nice and bright. . . I’m getting tight."
Bunny looked on the verge of showing interest in Corinne’s offer. But she shook her head. "I don’t think so," she said thoughtfully. "I want to go to some lectures while I’m here. And—well, I write a little when I don’t have to chase around looking at lamps or something with Aunt Cornelia. Thank you, though." She looked down at her Martini glass, then up at the table. "I suppose if I had any sense," she said uncomfortably, "I’d quit writing altogether. I mean—well, golly. After what Mr. Ford said."
Corinne sat up straighter, in her seat. "You mustn’t feel that way," she ordered uneasily. "Ray has a nasty cold he caught on the drive back to Canada. He’s not at all himself. It’s all in his chest. He really feels quite horrible."
"Oh, I guess I won’t really quit. I mean, not really." Bunny smiled, but averted her eyes self-consciously.
Corinne gave in to the nearest impulse.
"Come to the theatre with us tonight. I have to see this play, for the magazine. I have a ticket for my husband, and I’m sure I can get another. The show’s lovely in places."
She saw that Bunny, though attracted to the idea, was going to make the proper gesture under the circumstances.
"Do you think Mr. Ford would—" Bunny broke off awkwardly. "Since yesterday I’ve been feeling like—golly, I don’t know. Like an old crone that goes around with a sack of poisoned apples."
Corinne laughed. "Now stop that. You just come along with us. We’ll pick you up at the Waldorf?"
"Are you sure it’s all right?" Bunny asked anxiously. "I mean I don’t have to go."
"Of course you have to go." Corinne’s voice lowered itself to fill up with love. "Really," she said. "You’re very mistaken. My husband is the kindest man in the world."
"I’d love to come," Bunny responded simply.
"Good. We’ll pick you up at the Waldorf. Let’s eat. I’m getting tight as a coat. I must say you seem to able to hold your liquor like an old trooper."
22 Out-of-print J. D. Salinger Stories Page 22