“She mustn’t ever find it out,” Teresa intervened feverishly. “You’ve got to help me . . . Henry Bates is coming to the house to see me tonight . . . he just left me at the corner. Janet, you’ll have to pretend he’s calling to see you. And what’s more I’m going to stay right in this room. I’m not going to stay with Mother.”
“Right you are. You came in with an awful headache and I’ve put you to bed. . . . David, my lad, your work is cut out for you. Tonight you just must take Big Sister out while Henry visits me and my niece whom I’m chaperoning.”
Their incurable nonsense calmed Teresa’s fears. She allowed Janet to establish her on the couch while David went to tell Olivia that her daughter had come. . . . The youthful uncle and aunt left the two together.
“Who’d have thought little Teresa had it in her!” David exulted. “Imagine her putting anything like this over on Big Sis!” Janet shook her head. “Remember she hasn’t put it all over yet, Big Boy. If she does, all I have to say is ‘She’s a better man than either you or I, Gunga Din!’”
Teresa had shared in David and Janet’s banter because there was really nothing else to do. No one had ever seen these two serious; whether they ever knew gravity in each other’s presence it was impossible to say. . . . For herself she was really definitely, heavily, worried. She had, it was perfectly true, deceived her mother completely with regard to Chicago as well as to her engagement to Henry. But the success of both these deceptions arose from the fact of her mother’s absence from the battlefield. Now with her mother on the scene she was losing immediately her sense of assurance, her belief in herself. Olivia was the type who, through sheer singleness of purpose and vision, swept everything else out of her path; she did not know there were obstacles, so intent was she on cleaving her way to her goal.
The young girl remembered an incident of her early childhood. They had had a laundress, a colored woman, who used to come to the Cary house for two days a week. She and Christopher were little children . . . it must have been before Oliver was born for after he came they never had colored servants.
This laundress used to bring her little boy with her on Monday mornings and the two would stay overnight until the work was finished on Tuesday. It was no unusual thing for Willie to fall foul of his mother’s approval. At such times he would come tearing through the lower rooms, his mother, a heavily moving avenging Fury on his track; he would stretch out his little hands with a swimming motion as though he were pushing people and things away from him on either side. “Out of my way, chillen,” he would cry. “Out of my way!”
Olivia was like that, Teresa thought, listening to her mother’s determined setting aside of every objection which her daughter raised. Again and again, the girl pointed out the absurdity, not to mention the bad taste, of her mother’s plans.
“But, Mother, we just can’t go to Newburyport and thrust ourselves like that on the Burtons.”
“You wouldn’t be thrusting yourself upon them. How could you be when you’ve already been so friendly with the daughter?”
“And another thing. They are very well to do; not millionaires but used to doing things in very good style. We couldn’t keep up with them in any way.”
“Your father could certainly manage to keep things going in the proper manner for two or three months at least, since the results would mean so much. If they’re as wealthy as you say, you won’t be needing anything from us after you marry.”
In her embarrassment and shame she could have screamed. The headache, which Janet had told her to feign, descended on her malignantly . . . her temples throbbing.
“But, Mother, you must, you must listen to me! Phineas and I are nothing to each other. I can’t bear him. It was all a mistake.”
“Oh,” said Olivia, understandingly. “You’ve had a quarrel. But that’s all right. That can be patched up. You’re to go to his Commencement?”
“He didn’t ask me,” she sobbed, relieved to find herself speaking the truth in this awful morass of deception. “He’s not staying for it himself—the Burtons are going to Europe.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before, Teresa?” her mother queried impatiently. “Well, we’ll stay here for a few days and then go home.”
CHAPTER X
TRUE to his promise David took his sister out for the evening to a performance of amateur theatricals given by the Radcliffe Dramatic Club. But the respite availed Teresa little. So nervous and distraught was she that Henry hardly recognized her. He was also considerably disturbed by the continuous entrances and prolonged stays of Janet, who seemed unable to remain away from the room in which the two were sitting for more than ten minutes at a time.
“What’s the matter with her?” he finally demanded with lawful wrath. “I never knew her to act like this before.”
With some trepidation Teresa informed him of her mother’s arrival. “You know, I’ve never told her anything about us, Henry. And we’re so near the end. I really thought it best to have Janet around so that if Mother should come in suddenly, it would—sort of seem as though you were calling on her.”
At this disclosure he was considerably surprised; even naively discomfited. “My goodness me! Why shouldn’t I be calling on you? She certainly expects you to see some boys, doesn’t she? Well, what’s the matter with me?”
Here were fresh quicksands, more shoals of disaster. “Of course she does, Henry. . . . Darling, I can hardly talk to you, my head is setting me wild.”
“Of course it is . . . you poor, suffering child.” He was immediate contrition. “I’ve never seen you sick before Teresa. It makes you look like an infant. . . . This time next week if you have a headache, I’ll be putting you to bed and soothing your fevered brow . . . and pretty soon you’ll be feeling all better. . . .”
“Hey!” said Janet, putting her head in the door a moment. “How’s tricks? Listen, they’re just in the middle of that show now. . . . She won’t be home for hours. Mind if I run down to the drug-store a moment?”
She was gone without waiting for an answer. Henry, mistaking the look of apprehension on Teresa’s face for a new twinge of pain, jumped to his feet. “Know what I think? That we’d better not wait till next week. You’re to go to bed now.”
“I guess you’re right,” she told him feverishly. “I just don’t seem able to get myself together tonight.” Almost too hastily she raised her fevered lips to receive his farewell kiss.
“Say,” he exclaimed anxiously, “you really are all in. Now mind as soon as you let me out, you go straight to bed. But I’ll be here tomorrow night. . . . And then the next night will be . . . heaven.”
For a second they clung in the dim vestibule. . . . A key grating in the lock made them start apart as David and Olivia entered. The light from the inside hall fell full on Henry’s startled face. The older woman glanced at him, then at Teresa drooping in the shadows and walked into the long parlor.
“Hello, Bates,” David said in a clear, carrying voice. “You’re leaving? Where’s Janet? Oh, is she out? Here I’ll walk to the corner with you.”
Olivia stopped her daughter on her way upstairs. “Was that some friend of Janet’s, Teresa? I can’t imagine what your grandmother can be thinking about, letting her associate with that type of young man.”
“How’d you happen to come home?” Teresa quavered.
“Oh, David had made a mistake in the date . . . so tiresome. I must say he was really sorry about his error. He’s usually so scatter-brained. However, I didn’t have anything else to do. And the trip was very pleasant. He met a couple of his Harvard friends in an ice-cream parlor. He wants to take both of us tomorrow night; I’d like you to go along too. You might meet some of them.”
Teresa climbed to her room in silence.
The following day found her sufficiently under the weather to make her refusal to venture out at night perfectly plausible.
David, after consulting ostentatiously tickets, clocks and even calendars, started off once more wit
h his older sister to the performance of the Dramatic Club. “You’ve got to keep her out this time,” Janet told him, “even if you have to kidnap her. Teresa’s almost to pieces. I’ve never seen anyone so nervous.”
With the coming of Henry, the girl’s apprehension wore off, however. He was so happy, so sure that everything would fall into place, that the whole adventure would be perfect. Only one little note cast a shadow on the calmness of the evening.
“Look, Tess,” he asked her suddenly. “Why didn’t you introduce me to your mother last night? Anyone would think I had the leprosy the way you keep us apart. She couldn’t have suspected anything about us just from meeting me, could she? I’d really have liked to talk for her a moment . . . to expose her to my fatal charm. Mothers are supposed to be my specialty.”
He flashed his winning smile, thinking momentarily of other times, other girls, of moments not so significant as those he had spent with Teresa, but still “mighty pleasant,” he told himself, “mightee pleasant.”
Teresa stammered something about her headache making her too stupid to know what she was doing. So pitifully worried she seemed that he ceased to tease her. “It’s all right, darling. Plenty of time yet to meet everybody. Now you really understand about tomorrow?”
They kissed for the last time in that house. . . . When Olivia returned the parlor was empty; Janet sat reading and yawning over a magazine in the little second-story sitting-room. Teresa, she informed her sister, was in bed.
One last deception, one final turn of the wheel and all would be over. Teresa had arranged for Virginia Raft, a former Christie classmate, to call her up and ask her to spend the day. She would actually go there dressed in her lovely cream suit and lace blouse in which she was to be married.
On leaving she would go to Henry’s Commencement and from there to the station where she had left her bags. Here she would meet Henry, who was to transfer her luggage and leave it with his own in the other station. They would then have dinner together, marry at nine, and then, as her lover said, “flee her irate parent to parts unknown.”
Everything worked as by magic. Virginia telephoned. . . . There was a momentary hitch there. Olivia, hearing of the invitation, wanted to accompany her daughter to Virginia’s house. “After all I’ve never met any of your new friends, Teresa. Her mother and I might have some acquaintances in common.”
It took all of Janet’s ingenuity to thwart this. Neither she nor David had the slightest idea of Teresa’s plans except that she wished to attend Henry’s Commencement but they were quite sure that the aforesaid plans did not include Olivia.
At last the girl was free; she was on the street; she was at Virginia’s, who amusingly enough had used Teresa’s visit for a pretext for carrying out certain projects of her own. They were to go shopping, she told her mother without batting an eyelash, then to lunch and the matinée.
“Look for us when you see us,” she ended gaily.
Her mother was an old-fashioned woman. “I don’t like to have you out all day like that by yourselves,” she demurred. “But I suppose each of you can look after the other. Now mind, don’t get run over.”
The two young ladies remained together long enough to absorb an ice-cream soda and to discuss the merits and evils of parents. Then bidding each other an adieu, with a regard greatly heightened by the prospect of their immediate parting, each went on to her own affairs.
Teresa never forgot that Commencement . . . young men, young men, young men! America’s finest! The streets teemed with them, with their fine young bodies, their keen fearless faces which never again would be so keen, so fearless; so quickly would life blunt them and tame them. . . . And presently she saw Henry starting for the procession.
He was surrounded constantly by admiring class-mates, by fellows bringing up parents. “This is Henry Bates, Dad.” “Good-bye, Bates, you old son-of-a-gun!” “Say, fella, if you ever come to Rochester, just look me up; the latch-string will always be out for you.”
She had known he must be popular, but she had not thought of his being as popular as this . . . it made her so proud!
He had caught her eye and waved. . . . Within, all through the long ceremony, she caught him beaming at her whenever their glances met. For a while she stopped looking at him so that he could absorb the environment and atmosphere for himself. . . . Her husband’s Commencement. His Great Day!
And then suddenly it was over. She was out of the building and into the little restaurant of which he had told her, before the crowd could engulf her. . . . And finally there was the long wait in the station. He had warned her he would be late, there would be so many last odds and ends to arrange. . . . But there he was after all, tall and strong and radiant. The handsomest man too, she felt, that she would ever see, except Nicholas Campbell . . . and she liked him so much more than she could ever like Nick; there was a ruthlessness about Nicky that might some day tear a girl’s—and his own heart—to pieces. . . . But Henry was kind.
She came toward him, meaning to congratulate him. But he had dropped his bag; before she could say a word he had her in his arms.
“Teresa, you’re so lovely . . . so nice, so undeceiving! In that white thing you look just like a bride!”
“Henry, you mustn’t, you mustn’t kiss me like that right in the railway station!”
“Why not? That’s what railway stations are for. And anyway what difference does it make? . . . You’re going to be my wife, aren’t you? It’s barely a matter of hours. . . . Come on, we’ll get your bags and climb into a taxi. . . . Talk about kisses! Girl you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”
The bags were forthcoming, a big one and a little one. He carried her large one and his own; she walked beside him with the little one striking him inadvertently on the shin.
“Gosh!” he said gaily, “you wield a mean weapon. If we’d been married ten years, I’d say you were doing it on purpose. You wouldn’t beat me up, would you, Baby?”
“Darling, I’ll always be so soft about you. . . . I bet I’ll let you get away with murder many times and never be able to do a thing about it.”
They were turning the corner of a telephone booth. He stopped for a second beside it, placing the bags on the floor.
“After that lovely speech, Mrs. Bates-to-be, how about another little one?”
“Oh, Henry!” she said weakly, happily, yielding.
A voice like ice said: “Teresa, Teresa Cary! Will you tell me what this means?”
Bewildered she whirled about, knowing it couldn’t be true. But it was! There stood Olivia, emerging from the booth, her face actually pale with anger and outrage.
“Oh, Henry,” Teresa exclaimed, reverting to terrified childhood, “it’s Mother! Henry, I think you’d better go and let me talk to her.”
“Like hell, I’ll go!” he answered surprisingly and braced himself to meet this bugaboo. “You don’t think I’m going to run away and leave you to face this, do you? We haven’t been doing anything wrong.” He turned to Mrs. Cary. “You asked what this means? Well, I’ll tell you. It means I love your daughter and she loves me.”
“Nonsense!” said her mother brusquely. “She couldn’t love you. . . . Why, why, it’s just all impossible! Teresa, take this bag, if it’s yours, and come home with me.”
“She is not,” said Henry firmly, “going anywhere unless I go too. I don’t know you, Mrs. Cary, but unless you’re very different from most mothers I’ve met I know you don’t want any racket in a place as public as a railway station!
“I still can’t imagine what there is to get so excited about but whatever it is unless you consent to having me come along and explain a few facts to you, you are probably going to be placed in the most embarrassing position of your life.”
Olivia was too good a general not to know when affairs were out of control. “We’ll all get in a taxicab and go to your grandmother’s,” she ordained, still addressing only Teresa. Very clearly there were one or two matters on which she’d have to inform
this young man.
In the long cool parlor the two antagonists faced each other. Henry spoke first. “Mrs. Cary, I’d like formally to ask you for your daughter’s hand. I’ve known her and been engaged to her for two years—ever since I met her in Chicago. . . . She is . . . she is utterly lovely. I’ve never seen anyone else like her. I expect to take care of her all her life and make her a good husband.”
Olivia asked irrelevantly. “How could you have met her in Chicago two years ago? Where would she ever run across you?”
He was taken off his guard. “Why shouldn’t she run across me? Boys and girls meet in Chicago just as much as anywhere else.”
She ignored his flippancy and turned to her daughter. “Teresa, I don’t understand this. How did you come to meet him at Judge Barrett’s?”
Henry interrupted her. “I don’t seem able to get this straight, Mrs. Cary. Of course she met me at Judge Barrett’s. We never speak of the relationship, . . . it’s so distant. But as a matter of fact Judge Barrett’s father and my grandfather were remote cousins.”
“You mean Judge Barrett is colored! Teresa, you’ve been deceiving your father and me all this time?”
“Not Daddy, Mother,” she said miserably. “Daddy always knew it.”
Henry was listening in bewilderment. “But what if he is colored? Aren’t you colored, Mrs. Cary? Isn’t Teresa colored? What’s it all about?” Light began to dawn on him. “You don’t mean to say, Mrs. Cary, that you’re objecting to me because I’m not white?”
“I certainly do. I have brought Teresa up all her life to think of herself as white. Why shouldn’t I? Her father and I have scraped and saved and sacrificed to give her the proper environment and clothes and ideals so that when she grew up she could take her place in the white world. . . .”
He said evenly: “You mean by marriage?”
“Yes, of course by marriage. How else could she get out of it? And why should she stay in it with you, never knowing when she is going to meet with insult, always having to take second place, never sure of shelter in a strange town, always weighted down by a sense of inferiority. If you were any kind of a man you wouldn’t ask her to expose herself to it . . . just because you can’t help yourself. . . .”