Boston Adventure

by Jean Stafford

  The old lady always kept us waiting for at least a quarter of an hour in the library after we had been announced. Then, the rustle of her black skirts and the tap of her cane apprised us of her arrival and we stood up as she, after a formal, “Good afternoon, young ladies. I hope you enjoyed your ride,” sat down in a chintz wing chair under a portrait of her husband for whom she still wore mourning, though he had been dead for twenty years. She had no sooner put her feet on the chair’s matching stool than she said, as if it had just occurred to her, “What do you say to a cup of tea? Perhaps they’ll have something in the dining-room for us. My grandson promised to call on me this afternoon and I must have tea for him, you know.”

  Philip’s grandfather had one time been headmaster of a school so imitative of Eton and Harrow that the whole house spoke with a British accent. It had been Mrs. McAllister’s custom, in his lifetime, to have a “day” for chosen boys and because often as many as forty had dropped in, she had entertained them at an immensely long table in the dining room. Although now there were never more than half a dozen people to be served, twenty chairs were in readiness and as many cups stood before the tea urn. We were fed the simple food the boys had been fed: gingerbread squares, small sweet buns, and English muffins. On the preposterous plea that she could not handle “them all” by herself, she always placed Hopestill at the opposite end of the table so that the poor exile’s voice barely carried to us, while I was seated on her right (“I never have time to get really acquainted with this young lady”) and Philip on her left (“So that he can fetch and carry for me.”).

  Hopestill spoke of the old lady’s “closed door” policy while the one employed by her daughter, Philip’s mother, was the “open trap.” The younger Mrs. McAllister joined us today a few minutes after we had taken our places. Her pretty, submissive face was framed with white hair, the overnight acquisition at the time her son fell ill of infantile paralysis. After kissing her mother and nodding politely to me, she went at once to Hopestill whose two hands she clasped as she cried, “How glad I am to see you! Here, let me feast on that exquisite frock. Who but Hope Mather would think of bottle-green velveteen this year when the rest of us are all in navy blue?”

  Hope, complimenting her in turn on her hat, exchanged an amused glance with Philip while his grandmother said, “Bottle-green is very nice. Marian, would you look at this child’s nautical costume. I swear she robbed Admiral Nephews for her buttons. Why, they’re the real thing.”

  Her daughter nodded and turned again to Hopestill. “When are you going to let me have the honor of supplying you with a dressing room? I do think you’re unkind to give my mother all the pleasure. I have three rooms that are never in use, and if you’d only consent I could have more than these five-minute glimpses of you. I’ll tell you frankly that if I once got you, I’d kidnap you for a whole week-end.”

  Philip, knowing that his mother would make use of such an opportunity to satisfy so completely any curiosity the girl might have about him that she would never want to hear his name mentioned again, hastily interposed, “But, Mother, they would have to be driven from the station then, for they couldn’t possibly walk to our house and the walk to Grandma’s, as I understand it, is part of the expedition.” Both Hope and I confirmed him, but his mother was stubborn.

  “Does anyone have a more selfish son?” she cried. “Really, Philip, one would think you were afraid I intended to blacken your character.” This, of course, was precisely what she would have done, by going into his inconstancy, his hypersensitivity about his back, his egotism, his carelessness, by exhibiting his ugly baby pictures, by telling damning anecdotes, by resurrecting instances of his devotion to herself and attempting, in the light of the latter, to make Hopestill realize that she must play second fiddle to her if the marriage ever came off.

  The conversation, passing beyond the skirmish of wits, became general. Philip, casting a studious glance upon me who did not participate, said, “You must have given Sonie a run for her money today, Hope. She’s got the wind knocked out of her.”

  “Oh, on the contrary,” she replied with a laugh, “she gave me a run for mine.” And she began to praise my horsemanship and to deplore my horse, inventing a fantastically untrue account of my bold jumping and running which I was too dumfounded to deny. Old Mrs. McAllister patted my hand, said she could tell by my appearance that I could manage any horse, called upon her grandson to agree that I was the very picture of a healthy athlete, hoping to embarrass Hopestill who, though she was sound as a dollar, looked frail, and had chosen, instead of normal pleasures, the ugly affectation of the bluestocking. “I think you’re very wise, Sonia,” she said. “Why on earth our Hopestill wants to waste her youth and ruin her complexion investigating people’s nightmares I will never understand. And as for ‘repressions’ and ‘sublimations’ and so on, I think the least said about them the better. Goodness only knows we have serpents enough in our gardens without importing any more.”

  The ìciness of Hopestill’s smile was lost on her half blind hostess as she replied, “But, Mrs. McAllister, all of us are not so fortunate as you. My own garden was swarming with serpents when I first stepped into it.”

  Philip’s mother, leaning toward her, cried, “You clever thing! You know how to get the better of my mother! Tell me, Hope, what sort of thing do you do?”

  “Oh, I . . .” For the first time since I had known her, I saw Hopestill hesitate. Momentarily she averted her eyes as she jerkily returned her teacup to its saucer. Then, with a smile, she explained, “I’m not studying formally, you see, but with a psychiatrist. I see his patients and study their case histories and so on.”

  “What kind of patients are they, Hope?” pursued the woman. “I’m really ever so interested.”

  “Well, my man is rather fashionable and most of his patients are idle women who don’t like their husbands for one reason or another or else don’t have husbands and think they’ll go off the deep end if they keep on living alone.”

  Old Mrs. McAllister snorted gustily. “And what’s the cure, eh?”

  “They’re analyzed, of course, and Dr. Ragsdale gives them things to distract them. Ice-skating, knitting, growing herbs in the kitchen window.”

  Philip’s grandmother was silent with disgust and then, in order to hear no more of Hopestill’s nonsense which she was pouring out by request to her companion, she turned to Philip and said loudly, “I want you to give your father a talking-to, Perly. He’s set on selling the Bedford Road house. I would as soon cut off my hand as see it taken over by a stranger.”

  “And so would I,” said the young man in sincere alarm. “What gave him that idea?”

  “I can’t imagine,” returned the old lady. “But between ourselves, I have never felt your father had much sense of history.” Philip whispered, “You have never felt he had much sense of any kind, have you, Grandma?” But Mrs. McAllister was not going to agree to such a judgment of her son in my presence, and she went on. “I have always wanted you to have the house when you marry. Did you see the enchanting little water-color Amy Brooks did of it for me last autumn?” Then, turning to me, “You must make Philip take you to see it some day this spring. You will not find a more charming place in all New England.”

  The conversation at the far end of the table was lagging. Hopestill, getting up, said, “We must go to see the house some afternoon. It’s my aunt Lucy’s favorite next to her own on Pinckney.” She directed to me an ambiguous smile which I took to mean that she had not quite made up her mind to relinquish Philip altogether, but that she would let me know in good time if I might go alone with him to inspect the house.

  “You three,” said the younger Mrs. McAllister, “you three are inseparable, aren’t you?” I knew by her tone and by the look of injury on her turned-down lips that she liked me no better than she did Hopestill.

  “We are separating now,” said Hope. “But Philip and Sonie will meet
again at the Countess’.”

  As I was taking leave of my hostesses, Philip and Hopestill went into the hallway to get our coats. When I started out to join them, lingering at the door a moment to receive a final compliment upon my robust health from the old lady, I heard Philip saying, “I don’t need a procuress.”

  2

  The Countess’ “Saturday” was a formal dinner party for rarely more than ten, followed by a soirée at which one met chiefly Germans and Austrians who had had the foresight to leave (and in some instances, to leave with their money) in the early days of Hitler’s regime. There were, in addition, titled personages from other parts of the world: a Korean prince, a Russian baron, a Polish count. The Bostonians who came were either charmed by the illustrious company or outraged, the latter group maintaining that “these refugees” were impertinent and arrogant because they had the crust to criticize the United States and even, with supreme bad manners, to imply that it was only through luck, not through wisdom, that we were not ourselves ruled by a Hitler or a Stalin.

  The dinner, consisting of many courses, was served by two fat, frowning Alsatian matrons, while the wines were poured by a little Hawaiian houseboy, employed, the Countess acknowledged, because he was decorative. Otherwise, he had almost no qualifications and cried a good deal for a female monkey named Lilioukalani whom he had had to leave behind. Three bitches, a schnauzer, a Doberman, and a boxer, paced the floor beneath the table or stood between two chairs, gazing first at one guest until her wish was granted and he threw her a morsel from his plate, and then at the other until he likewise succumbed to the plea in the piteous eyes. Miss Pride who, characteristically enough, liked dogs “in their place” almost never accepted an invitation to dine with the Countess, but if she did, she overlooked the dogs as one would overlook a foreign object in the dessert. Unfortunately they were particularly attracted to her because she carried with her the odor of her cat, Mercy, and during the soup, when they had no pressing business in other quarters, the three of them clustered about her legs sniffing. Her aplomb was admirable: as she drank her soup, crumbled her bread, and listened to the man from the Rhineland who was interested in guilds, it was not apparent that a debate was going on within her, whether to kick the brutes once and for all or to endure.

  As soon as the gentlemen joined us, the door-bell commenced to ring and rang at intervals until well past eleven o’clock, bringing to us fortunate ten, a varied assortment of entertainers. Our hostess, immense and blazing in a diamond tiara and a cloth-of-gold gown which sheathed her ample flesh like hide and of which the central interest was a green orchid growing out of her mountainly bust, stirred her guests about, dispatching me to a Norwegian painter, Edward Pingrey to a cloth merchant from Berlin, Mrs. Hornblower to a young Puerto Rican of ambassadorial connections whom, unfortunately, it was easy to confuse with the houseboy. We were not allowed to remain long on any assignment. The Norwegian woman and I would just be establishing a communication of sorts after several false beginnings, when the Countess would descend: “You two charmers mustn’t monopolize each other! Sonie, go speak to that woman over there, the dark one, Frau Gross. She’s perishing to meet you. You’re much alike—imaginative, spirituelle. She’s a little deaf.” Frau Gross, more like her name than the Countess’ description of her, had not wanted to meet me, did not know my name, had not, in fact, ever seen me before and could hear nothing of what I said. In this enforced rotation one could hear conversations on German air-power, on French food, on Roman relics in England, on American politics, on European and tropical diseases, on coin collections, on train travel in the interior of China.

  If one flatly refused to talk, being stricken tonight with one of those moods of taciturnity that visit us all, the Countess suggested cards in the library. It was not too happy a substitute, for she forbade such banal games as bridge or hearts, allowed only recondite or obsolescent ones like omber, loo, piquet. It was nearly always my bad luck, if I were sent to “make up a table,” to find Baron Kalenkoff and one other person preparing a deck for omber, the most bewildering of all the games. The Baron, a handsome, well-tailored man in his thirties, a cosmopolitan and sycophant of wealthy women, was, as someone said, a “rattlesnake” at cards. He had, in addition to that acumen known as “card sense,” such perennial luck that his adversaries regarded him with suspicion, not as a shark, for he was clearly a gentleman, but as the darling of some prodigal goddess whose invisible fingers distributed the cards in such a way as to make him invariably win. Now the only two people who had mastered the rules of omber were the Baron and the Countess and of course the latter did not play on her Saturdays. Consequently, the two of us who were obliging the Russian floundered in terminology without having the slightest idea of the procedure and lost all our money, sometimes a very considerable amount as the Baron liked high stakes. I might learn the “basto” and the “spadille” and the “matadors” of one trump by the end of a hand, but my knowledge was useless in the next when a different trump was named. It did not bore the Baron at all to play with fuddled opponents. On one occasion the nightmare lasted three hours and a half and was only concluded because supper was announced.

  After that calamitous evening (poor Mr. Pingrey and I each lost fifteen dollars and I had to borrow money from the Countess), I did not go any more to the library, no matter how indisposed I was to chat with the Korean prince who had acquired the remarkable notion that I was an ardent student of pre-dynastic Chinese bone inscriptions, on which he was an expert.

  I remained in the large drawing-room, the setting for our ballet. It was furnished with the gleaming surfaces and floral furbelows of Louis Quinze, whimsically repeating the colors and the materials of the costume of the première danseuse: if she had chosen pale blue, it was to set off the chairs upholstered in azure satin or the skies in the murals inspired by Boucher and executed by a young relative whom she had sent home at once as soon as he had finished. Another night, as if the looped draperies at the wide bay-window had not been admired enough, the Countess appeared in a dress of olive velvet and remarked, “I got the idea from my windows, as you see.” There was a profusion of bare marble infants attached by their umbilica to the central support of gilt tables, or sprouting from the center of their curly heads bronze candelabra with a dozen sockets, or standing in pairs on the tops of cabinets bathing one another or posing as if for leap-frog or simply peeking at space with their stone eyes. It particularly irritated Miss Pride that two spurious Watteaus hung on either side of the fireplace where formerly, when the first Mrs. Brooks had been alive, there had been a genuine Trumbull on the right and on the left a stuffed twelve-pound trout from New Brunswick, caught by Ralph Brooks at the age of nine.

  This evening, Baron Kalenkoff at once set about to recruit five gulls for loo, among them Nicholas Doman who offered me effusive apologies in several Continental tongues. Out of the corner of my eye, I observed the approach of the Korean prince and fearing that if I were cornered by him, I would miss Dr. McAllister I cast about for an escape. To my relief, I saw Miss Pride entering with a young man whom I had seen here several times before, and I hastened to her.

  “Your admirer is downcast,” she said, nodding in the direction of the prince. (She had no use for any race but the Caucasian and she believed that no one these days was a prince and that no one would be until a son was born to the English king.) “Where Berthe finds them all one will never know.”

  The young Jew at her side gazed about the room with a supercilious detachment. “From an employment agency, no doubt,” he said.

  Miss Pride, regarding his witticism as inappropriate, gave him a lacerating stare. “And what is it you do, sir?” she inquired.

  Several times I had been seated next to the boy at dinner and each time had experienced a pleasurable shock at the resemblance he bore to Nathan Kadish. He was intelligent and insolent, and his voice had in it the same overstimulated quickness that had my friend’s. But I had alway
s found in him something lacking but which I could not name. He seemed, despite his carefully composed effrontery, entirely innocent, like a hornet that has been disarmed. Tonight, a trifle not only showed me why I had never struck up more than the most formal acquaintance with him, but restored a scene in Chichester just as earlier in the day I had recovered Ivan’s death. A girl passed by and a breath of her lilac scent loitered in the air. The fragrance brought to my mind the last time I had seen Nathan and what I had said to him: “I love your birthmark,” but the words reverberated now with a new undertone and with the addition of two other words which had been elided, that is, “I love you for your birthmark.” And I knew then that all that had fascinated me in Nathan was his disfigurement, solely that, for I had never felt protective of him, had desired more than anything else to touch, examine, and discuss what was taboo. This self-revelation so appalled me that with a rudeness equivalent to that of Miss Pride’s companion, I abruptly turned as he was in the middle of a sentence addressed to me, and offering no explanation, walked away to a deserted corner of the room, where I stood, faking a brown study so that I would not be disturbed, as horrified at my sinister nature as if I had found the marks of a vampire on my throat. (On the following day, Miss Pride, never dreaming of the reason why I had gone away, congratulated me on my resolute principles—for she assumed that I had been offended by his insolence which, in her fervor, she believed was incarnate in all Jews—saying, “I would have done the same. Courtesy to a discourteous Jew is beating one’s head against a stone wall. And yet I, despite my strong feelings, could never have done what you did.”) And I wondered if I would have coveted Philip McAllister if he had not been deformed. Dizzied by this symptom of an abnormal and somewhat repulsive nature in myself, I felt the need to be reassured, but paradoxically, the only person who could reassure me was Philip himself. The moment I had formulated the speech I would make to him when I asked his advice, I realized that I was really not in the least troubled by my perverse taste in men, that I had only been seeking an excuse to occupy his attention with my problems. I suppose that I was determined to be in love at whatever cost.