IV
NANCY WHITMAN arrived at Woodbridge Center as planned, and her brother and nephew were at the station to meet her, the latter with his collection of ninety-six orange pips in a candy box.
In describing Juliet it will be remembered that the author said nothing about her colour or dimensions, but described her indirectly, and succeeding generations have had their attention called to the merit of the performance. We know, for example, that she taught the candles to burn bright, and, furthermore, that she seemed to hang upon the cheek of night like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear—most probably a pearl. So, in describing Nancy, perhaps it would be effective to point out that the snow began thawing as soon as she arrived, that the motor which carried her home from the station purred along without the "knock" that had been troubling it, and that Tutors' Lane was less bumpy as they passed over it. But such a description, being dangerously near burlesque, however refined and genteel, must not be thought of for a moment in connection with a prominent resident of Tutors' Lane. It is something of a pity, nevertheless, that it must be given up, for Nancy was not particularly pretty, as young men nowadays measure beauty, and were it possible, the truth might have been hidden. She was something too elfish—and then there was the Billings mouth already mentioned. Gertrude Ellis, who spent much of her time with her aunt in New York and who had a proper care for her person, thought it a ridiculous pose for Nancy not to have something done about her freckles. It was such a simple matter nowadays to have them removed that obviously only a poseuse would tolerate them. Still, men were so unobserving about things that they didn't seem to mind them at all, and Gertrude got nowhere when she once tried to discuss Nancy with a senior.
"Oh, Nancy is so wonderful that she could look like a leopard and people wouldn't care," he had said. "It's funny about her, isn't it? She's not good looking, and yet she's so nice everyone's crazy about her. You have to hand it to a girl that's like that."
Henry Third, or Harry, as everyone but his father called him, had immediately given his collection and been rewarded. He had on his best suit for the occasion and the tie his aunt had sent him on his seventh and latest birthday. He was a handsome, sturdy boy, and his father expected a Phi Beta Kappa key of him and an enthusiasm for Marx and John Stuart Mill. His aunt's plans were vague, but altogether different. At present she was inclined to favour the family business, with the understanding that when he was established at its head he should give a beautiful chapel with a Magdalen tower to the College. His own goal was the Woodbridge football team and, after that, a locomotive on the run to New York.
They were met at the door by Annie, Harry's nurse, and by Clarence, Harry's Airedale. Clarence, who immediately dominated the scene, rendering Nancy's greeting to Annie vain and perfunctory, was a three-year-old with a frivolity of manner that ill became his senescent phiz. Upon its grizzled expanse there would pass in amazing succession the whole range of canine passion, rage, love, urbanity, shame, drollery, ennui, and, most frequent of all, curiosity. At present all his energy was devoted to expressing unmitigated pleasure, the dignity of which exhibition was continually being marred by sliding rugs. But it is almost certain that he didn't care a rap for his lost dignity. His mistress was back after an unconscionable absence, and there was every reason to believe in the reappearance of the superior brand of soup bones, a matter in which of late there had been too much indifference.
Nancy luxuriated in her renewed proprietorship of the old house, her home, and the home of her family even before the British officers seized it for their quarters in 1812. There was a hole to this day in the white pine panelling above the fireplace in the dining room, which, tradition held, had been made by a British bullet discharged after a discussion of the family port. She had found something depressing in the rococo civilization of Southern California. There was an insufficient appreciation of Mr. Square's Eternal Fitness of Things. The spirit of Los Angeles, for example, was the same as that of the picnic party which, lunching on Ruskin's glacier, leaves its chicken bones and eggshells to offend all subsequent picnickers. At Woodbridge people did not make public messes of themselves. If they picnicked on a glacier they did up their eggshells in a neat package, which, in default of a handy bottomless pit, they took home with them and put in their garbage pails. That's the way nice people behaved, and what on earth was there to be gained by behaving otherwise?
So Nancy was glad to be home and see again the family things she had grown up with and loved. She was glad to see Henry, who appeared in his turn glad to see her; but her feelings upon being restored to her nephew were much deeper than either. Harry mattered more to her than anyone else in the world. Her mother, who had died five years ago, when Nancy was twenty, had been particularly devoted to him; and this would have been sufficient reason in itself for commending him to her tenderest care.
Such was the family that would have met the casual eye of a stranger: a young professor in extremely comfortable circumstances, with a brilliant future and an enviable son, living in a fine old house administered by a younger sister, the favourite daughter of the town. Beneath the surface, however, and unknown except to a few, was a conflict of wills that only an exterior made up of strong family pride and respect for the established order could have withstood.