To-morrow Morning (Parrish)/Chapter 12

by Anne Parrish

Chapter Twelve

"WHY, mother! I'm surprised at you!"

"Hoh! Oh, Joe! Goodness! You nearly made me jump over the banisters! Feel my heart!"

"Aren't you ashamed, hanging over the stairs listening to J. Hartley Harrison!"

"Ssh! They'll hear you. Certainly I'm not listening! I hope I have better things to do than listen to Hartley Harrison talk about himself! I'm just trying to find out if there's any chance of his going, so I can get the table set for supper."

"He's waiting to be asked."

"Goodness! Don't I know it! Why can't he go home to his little mother with her great big brain? That's what he's always telling me, that his little mother is the one woman he knows that he can have an intellectually satisfying conversation with—Mrs. Harrison! Hmp! Joe, he's here the whole enduring time. You don't think Charlotte and he could possibly——?"

"Gosh, no! Charlotte's dippy about Hoagland."

"Non-sense!" Kate whispered, piercingly.

"Well, I think so."

"Perfectly absurd!"

"He's here all the time."

"Well, mercy! He always has been, ever since you were children."

"I notice a big difference since I've been home this time."

"Well, all I can say is you certainly have a strong imagination. I'm going to try to slip down without his seeing me——"

She crept slowly downstairs, pausing on creaking steps, rolling agonized eyes up toward Joe's encouraging grimaces, wrinkling her nose at J. Hartley Harrison's overshoes demurely side by side, and leaning over the banisters to examine the music peeping out from under his nice muffler and his nice gloves. "Songs!" she mouthed to Joe, making a face, pointing to "Would God I Were a Tender Apple Blossom," and Joe mouthed back, "Going to spend the evening!"

She tried to pour herself quickly around the edge of the door at the foot of the stairs, but Hartley caught sight of her, and leaped forward to draw her in.

"Ontray, ontray, My Lady Green. Don't be shy! Well, how's my best girl?"

Whose house is this, anyway? thought Kate, and said, coldly:

"'Do, Hartley. Well, Charlotte dear, was it a nice service?"

"A lovely service, Mrs. Green—pardon me, Char——lotte—a lovely, lovely service. My very good friend Mr. Broome of the Church of the Transfiguration in Beaumont preached, we were brought together in our Scout-master work, you know that's one of my pet enthusiasms, Mrs. Green, I think I'm prouder of being a Scout-master than anything else in the world except being the son of my little mother, God bless her. Mr. Broome didn't know I lived here, and I wish you could have seen the sweet way his face lighted up when he caught sight of me as we were leaving the church—I said to him, Mr. Broome, I hope you're going to be in Westlake for some little length of time, I'd like you to meet my mother and my grandmother, eighty-three years young last August, bless her heart. Mother and grandma didn't get to Vespers; the snow was too deep for them; the same reason that kept you at home, Mrs. Green, I presume. We have to take care of ourselves as we get older, I fully realize that. But he said unfortunately he was leaving almost at once. I'd be very glad to introduce you to him at some more favorable opportunity, Mrs. Green; he is one of the sweetest, cleanest fellows, a real inspiration to us all—and what is more, aman, my son. Kipling. I remember his coming up to me at Beaumont after I'd had the privilege of leading a little sing we had, and taking my hand in his, and the dear fellow was so touched he couldn't say a word, just stood there looking at me with the tears in his eyes, it make me kind of choke up myself——"

"Well, that's very—oh, the telephone! Excuse me, Hartley——"

"Pardon me, Mrs. Green, I hear your son answering, and it seems to be for him. I was telling you about this meeting at Beaumont—this will interest you, too, Charlotte——"

Oh, go home, go home, Kate thought, looking despairingly at his neat waves of hair, the tie puffling under a large scarf pin ("It was the dear dad's, Mrs. Green, one of the finest cat's-eyes I've ever seen——") his thumb and finger pinching his pince-nez as he looked in his pocketbook for an inspirational clipping. You might just as well go, for I won't ask you to supper, Joe's last night before he goes back to college—the idea! Go on home to your little mother, God bless her, and God help her, too! Half past six—mercy! I don't care—chicken salad will keep. Why don't I just get up and go out?

"Pardon me, Mrs. Green—one minute! You'll enjoy this, When I was getting ready to leave for Vespers I saw mother and grandma with their heads together in a corner, and I said to them, what are you twe girls up to now, and grandma said——"

I'll have to ask him, and it will just spoil Joe's last evening. Oh, Joe darling, why are holidays over so quickly? How can I stand having you go? I must try to make him run over to the Mortimer girls' just for a minute to say good-by; he won't want to, but it means so much to them . . . did I water the plants to-day? I'll wait five minutes longer, and then I'll have to go out and make the coffee.

"Pardon me, Charlotte, but Hoagland Driggs is not what I would call a gentleman."

"I'd like to know why not!"

"I have good and sufficient reason for my statement."

"Well, what?"

"Things I wouldn't care to mention before women."

"I think it's the limit to say such things and then not prove them."

"You probably don't recall that he had to be sent away from home in disgrace——"

"He was simply sent away to boarding school, and, anyway, that was ages ago, when he was just a child!"

"The child is father to the man. I think Mrs. Green will bear me out in that statement."

"Hoagland Driggs——"

"Pardon me, Charlotte, the dad always used to say there were three rules by which you could tell a gentleman—number one——"

Was this Charlotte, this burning blush, this torrent of indignant words pouring over Hartley as he hopped on one leg in the hall, putting on an overshoe, trying to get in calming remarks—"One moment, Charlotte—" "Pardon me, Charlotte, a woman isn't capable——"

"I do believe you're right! I do believe Charlotte's in love with Hoagland!" Kate said, awed, to Joe, as she washed the supper dishes and he sat smoking on the kitchen table. Her wonderful perceptive son! "Oh, Joe darling! To-morrow's so soon!" Her eyes filled; she pulled in her lips and bit down on them.

"Sure I'm right," Joe answered, embarrassed and brisk at the sight of her tears. "He's in there now talking away; they never even saw me when I went in for cigarettes. I betcha anything those two will be engaged before I come home again."

"Oh, Joe! If Charlotte was married, think of the things we could do! Go abroad——!"

It seemed too good to come true. But Charlotte and Hoagland did get engaged. They were to be married in June, just after Joe's graduation. "Of course I'll miss her terribly," Kate told her friends. "But he certainly has turned out to be a splendid steady young man, and they're wonderfully suited to each other." She only hoped she didn't show how surprised she was that Charlotte should be engaged at all. And although Mr. and Mrs. Driggs weren't quite—well—Hoagland was asked everywhere, and while one mustn't think of money in connection with marriage——

Charlotte, placid and pleased, embroidered monograms, went shopping, tried on dresses. Dorothy Jackson gave a linen shower for her, Gladys Blunt a kitchen shower, with white satin ribbons tied to egg beaters and lace-edged bouquets stuck into tin funnels. There were luncheons with Kewpie dolls dressed as brides, sticking out their stomachs among roses and asparagus fern—"Now—my—dear! Did you ever see anything so cunning? Now I ask you!" The girls looked at her ring. "Charlotte! My dear! Well, of course, it's perfectly adorable!" They envied her because she was going abroad on her wedding trip. Through all the excitement Charlotte was calm, cheerful, capable.

The day before the wedding. Through the screened windows came soft fragrant heat and the sound of the lawn mower Noble had brought over to cut the Greens' lawn. Kate ran up and down stairs with flaming spots in her cheeks, told Carrie Pyne she thought her feet were going to drop off, went to the kitchen on errands she forgot on the way, shouted upstairs to Joe, and then shouted: "Never mind! Nothing!" The doorbell rang; the telephone rang; Hatty Butterfield was in the library with Charlotte, writing down "wh. satin, lace veil l. by Mrs. Elisha Whipple old fam. heirloom—b-maids bs pink roses (find kind) & delphinium relieved with larkspur—" Through it all Charlotte was serene.

But when Kate went to say good night, she found Charlotte face down on her bed, crying desperately.

"Why, Charlotte, darling! There, there——"

"Oh-o-oh, Aunt Kate——!"

"There, there, there——"

The room was bright with moonlight that silvered Charlotte's open trunk, her bags, the dolls' house Hoagland had given her long ago, her wet pillow. Her sobs died; she lay quiet under Kate's stroking hand.

"What's the matter, darling?"

"Nothing—I guess I was tired. I'm all right now." She sat up, sniffed, blew her nose vigorously.

"You know it's not too late—if you have any misgivings," Kate suggested, timidly.

"It's no use having misgivings with the silver all marked and everything," Charlotte said, beginning to brush her hair. "I think I'll have a bath if there's enough hot water." She dismissed Kate kindly. And on her wedding day she was herself again.

Clark has done the church very nicely, Kate thought, going up the aisle on Joe's arm. Too much asparagus fern, but those tall baskets of roses at the ends of the pews were impressive. She would have had flowers from the garden, but the decorations were a present from Mr. and Mrs. Driggs. Aunt Sarah was in the front pew, tiny, erect, and disapproving. Tom Green's daughter marrying a nouveau riche nobody! Carrie was crying already; her ostrich feather tickled Kate every time she bent close to whisper. Kate leaned forward, shading her eyes with her whitegloved hands, stealing a downward glance at her kangaroo's child of orchids and maidenhair fern, gift of the groom, far too excited to pray.

The wedding was blotted out for her by Joe's tie, that had slipped up in the back.

Coming down the aisle now, Charlotte firm and composed in white satin, smiling pleasantly, but not too much, because they were still in church. Hoagland was the picture of dignity. Gray trousers, black cutaway, gardenia, stately scarlet face.

He gave his weeping mother a little bow—Mr. and Mrs. Baylow beaming at him—keep in step—"Gee whiz, I'm glad I'm free, no we-hedding be-bells for me-he!"

Opal Mendoza in a pew by the door. No one had asked her; she had just come to the wedding, and sat smiling at him from under her broad hat with its long suivez-mot, jeune homme streamers, the blue of her eyes. He stalked past her with Charlotte's hand through his arm, his eyes straight ahead, but he saw her smile—promising, mocking—sweet——

And then they were at 29 Chestnut Street. Charlotte was remembering just what everyone had sent them: "Oh, Mrs. Roberts, that beautiful bridge lamp! And the parchment shade will go with anything." "That quaint little door stopper, Mrs. Partridge! It just goes with the chintz I've picked out for my guest room—" "That exquisite etching—" Mrs. Driggs was getting off her little joke about the wedding presents, over and over: "It's a pity no one gave them anything!" Vanilla ice-cream slippers and cupids and hearts skated about the plates under the chipping spoons. Charlotte came running downstairs in her new gray cape suit and Alice-blue hat, and through a patter of rice Mr. and Mrs. Hoagland Driggs, Jr., started on their honeymoon.

Then they were back again, before Kate had finished saying, "Yes-in-deed we do miss her!" Before she had gotten used to the holiday feeling of having no one say, "Pull down your hat in front, Aunt Kate," or, "Oh, Aunt Kate, you've sat on your coat!" Before she had time to do any of the wonderful care-free things she had planned. She had meant to get seriously to work at her painting, now Charlotte was out of the studio and Joe helping with expenses so that she was able to have Effa Ashburn come in every day, instead of now and then. But Joe's old room was so tiny, just about big enough for the sewing machine and the cutting table, and she loved letting him have the studio for his own, to make his models of stage scenery. She thought his stage sets were perfect. The drawing-room scene for "The Wild Duck," with its marbled fireplace and looped-back scraps of brocade curtains, and pyramid bouquets, so quaintly pompous that it made her laugh; the ice-blues and water-greens of the Undine sets that made her feel lonely, she didn't know why. She watched him working in the evenings, fascinated. Making peach trees of wire, dipping the branches in glue, then rolling them in pink-dyed: wheat flakes, cutting yew trees from greendyed sponge, running glass beads on wires to make a fountain's spray. Who but her clever Joe would think of doing things like that?

She urged him to take his models to New York and show them to theatrical producers. But the idea paralyzed Joe. "They're not good enough yet," he told her. "Some day, when I have more time, maybe I really can do something."

At present he was in the vacuum-cleaner factory, dreamy, impractical, working hard. But some day——

Charlotte and Hoagland brought home large albums of Hoagland's neatly pasted snapshots, each labeled clearly in white ink—"Sunshine and shadow in Old Carcassonne," "Young Citizens of Old Hyères," or "Old Inn at Clovelly; Excellent Pork Pie." Hoagland had carried a heavy elaborate camera wherever they went, and used it seriously, often asking Charlotte to step to one side so as not to spoil the pictures. It was so easy to spoil a picture. He still thought with regret of that study of old house walls, curving cobbled street, and fig trees that had been spoiled by a pair of drawers hung to dry from a window that came bang in the middle of the composition.

Kate looked at snapshots and snapshots and snapshots, setting a trembling jaw against yawns, her eyes filling with tears. The big leaves turned slowly, slowly. "We wanted to share our good times with the rest of you," Charlotte explained, brightly.

"Here's a rather nice snap of a thatched cottage near Watersmeet."

"Oh, I thought that one was in Lynmouth, dear."

"No, this was Watersmeet. Don't you remember the day we went to that little place for tea?"

"Oh, the day you had too much clotted cream? Oh, that was at the Lorna Doone Farm, Hoagland. Don't you remember? That English family was there, too, and she was so snippy and the hen jumped right up on the table—the same day you snapped the church——"

"No, I don't mean that day, I mean the other one——"

"Oh, the other one! Oh! Well, maybe, but I thought this— Well, it doesn't matter—still, I'm sure— Oh, here's Anne Hathaway's cottage, Aunt Kate! That one didn't come out very well; it was such a dark day. Who is that by the gate, dear?"

"Hmm. Let's see. Isn't that that Miss Prendergast?"

"What Miss Prendergast? Oh, you mean Miss Spottiswood. Maybe it is; it's so black I can't make it out——"

"Here's one that will appeal to Aunt Kate's artistic eye, Charlotte."

"Let's see, dear—which? Oh yes! Look, Aunt Kate! Two little peasant children leaving a bunch of wild flowers at a wayside shrine. Will you ever forget the time you had making them pose naturally, Hoagland? They were just as stiff as pokers, but Hoagland just kept at them——"

"Aunt Kate certainly did enjoy the pictures, dear," Charlotte said to Hoagland as they motored home to their new Spanish-Italian house with its sun porches and green-tiled roof. "I like to do any little thing like that to cheer her up. I don't want her to think I've forgotten her just because I'm so happy." And in the studio, where she had sought him out, Kate flapped her hands at a sympathetic Joe and cried: "Joe—Green—I'm dead! Though of course I want to be nice to Charlotte and Hoagland, and it was very kind of them."