Boston Adventure

by Jean Stafford

  Similarly at Miss Pride’s on silent nights, what unbalanced the poise of quintessential self (a play on words would come to me: the eye was the proof of I, not only of my own eye or my mind’s eye, bur the Cyclopean eye of the Airedale) was the protesting, bewildered cry of Miss Pride’s cat shut up in her bedroom. It would come toward the middle of the evening and was no more than one prolonged off-key yet musical howl which petered out on a descending scale.

  I had seen Mercy only once or twice in all the time I had lived with Miss Pride. When I first came, I had been told that she was jumpy and unfriendly because her kittens, begot by an unauthorized tomcat during the summer when she had been entrusted to the care of the Hornblowers in Concord, had been chloroformed as soon as they were born, and the mother, her instincts baffled, hunted them with piteous persistence, crying and snooping through the closets, the bedroom, the bath, and her own apartment, a storeroom no longer in use. Until her mesalliance and its results, she had been allowed to roam at will throughout the house, but Miss Pride, attributing a high degree of intelligence to her, thought that by way of revenge, she might now defile upholstery and rugs, in her search might overturn vases and clocks, might in her despair and anger scratch visitors and claw their stockings. By this time, she had surely forgotten her kittens, but Miss Pride had decided to make this limited arena permanent, for what reason I do not know. Each morning, I saw Ethel putting Mercy’s sand-box (called by Miss Pride “the kitty-cat’s water-closet” but by the embarrassed servants “the cat’s carton”) shrouded with last night’s Transcript on the dumb-waiter to be emptied and filled with fresh sand. This and the lonely cry at night were the only evidence I had that there was an animal in the house.

  One night I thought that it would do no harm if I let the prisoner out for an hour or so, bringing her up to my room which was not a spacious place to romp in but would at least be a change of scene. I went down. Miss Pride’s room was dark except for the fire that had burned down to a rich glow and at first I could not see the cat. When I was accustomed to the shadows, I perceived a pair of sulphurous eyes which, seeming to be suspended in the air four feet from the floor, regarded me with the unflinching stare of the hypnotist. I switched on the night-lamp beside the bed and in its weak light saw the animal perched on a chest of drawers beside the fire-place. For a moment she did not move but only looked at me. She had a short, square face and silver whiskers that curved downward from her tawny cheeks, marked on each side with two black stripes. She sat with her front legs straight and her luxurious tail curled about her feet. I moved toward her and she started, thrusting her head suddenly forward so that I could see the pure white fur under her chin. “Kitty, kitty,” I said. She leapt from the chest with a chirrup of fear and ran to her room, a streak of fur that blended shades of red and yellow and blue, all overlaid and softened with a cloudy silver and striped with black. As she ran, her tail dragged on the floor like a train. I did not pursue her, for there had been in her face as she saw me coming toward her a look of primitive terror that could, I thought, easily become the rage of a wild beast. I ran back up the stairs two at a time to my cheerful room where all the lights were burning. Three or four nights later, again hearing the cry and again wishing to bring her upstairs, I went down to try a second time. I found the door to Miss Pride’s bedroom locked.

  It was easy enough to explain the locked door. I remembered that in my haste the first time to get away from the cat and to end our mutual fear, I had neglected to turn out the night-lamp, and Miss Pride, finding it and realizing that someone—probably a servant, she would think—had been in her room, henceforth took precautions against Mercy’s escape. She preferred to do that, I reasoned, rather than to shut the door to the storeroom. But ever after that, when I passed through the hall on the second floor, the fact struck me as potentially sinister that I had never heard Mercy’s call until these last weeks when I, too, was virtually a prisoner, heard it only at night when I was alone except for Mamselle Thérèse and the servants who were all on the floor above me. As I went on and ascended the flight of stairs to the third story, my common sense returned and told me that heretofore I had been reading aloud to Miss Pride at this hour, and that on the nights when she was at home, I used my typewriter, the racket of which shut out all but loud noises or very near ones. But there is a side in us that courts and would like to believe in the fanciful. “Of course it was no more than coincidence,” we say, but we would like our audience to share our wonder and reply, “Coincidence, certainly, and yet . . .”

  2

  By day our house was the scene of what Miss Pride crossly called “a needless hullabaloo” for which, as a matter of fact, she was largely responsible, for while Hopestill and Philip had wanted a small wedding, she had insisted that a step of this kind be taken with public pomp. It was typical of her to speak of it as “a step of this kind,” as if it were some sort of sensible negotiation which had been undertaken after several other “kinds” had been discarded. It was she who had wired Mamselle Thérèse (recommended by the Countess and deplored by Hopestill who had her own modiste) and she who had sent out invitations to three hundred guests for the wedding breakfast, and she who had persuaded a notable clergyman who had left Boston several years before to perform the ceremony. There had been some argument about this last detail. Both Miss Pride and Dr. McAllister’s father were Unitarians and did their best to dissuade Hopestill from being married in the Episcopal church in which, adopting her father’s rather than her mother’s sect, she had been confirmed. She was adamant and requested, moreover, that the minister from whom she had received the Eucharist at her first communion be brought back for the occasion. In only one other particular had she insisted on having her own way. She refused to be given away by her uncle Arthur Hornblower or any other relative and before even consulting her aunt, conferred the honor upon Admiral Nephews.

  I thought that she wanted to be married in the Episcopal church out of a nostalgic attachment to her childhood, as it had been a better and happier time. I could find no other reason, for she was altogether without religious conviction and never went to any services. I divined, too, that in denying any member of her family the right to participate actively in the ritual, she was relieving them, symbolically, of any accessory responsibility.

  In the week before the wedding, my duties were many and complex. I acted as the intermediary between Miss Pride and the representatives of florists, liquor dealers, caterers, and took great pleasure in ordering such things as twelve cases of champagne and thirty pounds of filet of sole. Miss Pride would have preferred to attend to these matters herself because all tradespeople were scoundrels and I was both gullible and extravagant, but she was occupied with other things, among them with ridding the house of kinsfolk who came in droves beginning at nine o’clock in the morning, expecting to be asked to luncheon and then tea and even dinner. They infuriated her by telling her that she looked “worn-out” and that they were going to make her go to bed while they themselves took over, lock, stock, and barrel. To such a suggestion, Miss Pride would say, turning her eyes like pistols on the offender, “If I want crutches, I’ll buy them, Sally Hornblower.” They were full of plans for what she would wear to the wedding (I knew what she would wear: a new black broadcloth suit and a green beaver hat) and for the most decorative way of arranging the display of gifts. She would nod her head and say, “I dare say that would be nice. But I shall just muddle on in my old way. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Once, after this cliché, she gave a mirthless “ha! ha!” and sounded, indeed, like the dog that could not be taught but had learned in his youth the trick of biting trespassers.

  The continual stir of the house was intoxicating. On my way out of the house to run some important errand, I would glance into the upstairs sitting-room where the presents gradually were accumulating. Hopestill might, as I passed, be unwrapping something that had just come. She would hold up for me to see a blue plum-blossom jar or a si
lver pitcher. We could hear the bee-like flurry of the sewing machine and the animated conversation of Mamselle Thérèse and her two assistants. The door-bell and the telephone reiterated their clamorous demands until the servants were beside themselves. Leaving Hopestill surrounded by her treasure, I would go downstairs to receive a final instruction from Miss Pride. Nearly always, on one of the tables in the hall, there was a silver bowl half filled with water on whose surface floated the disintegrating but still fragrant flowers that Hopestill had worn the night before. I was curiously moved at the sight of them, and imagined her coming in late, the dangers of another day behind her, Philip’s car already pulling away from the curb. I wondered if she would not ponder her face in the mirror above the table as she unpinned the orchid or the gardenias just as I pondered mine a moment before I left the house. Which face would she see? The one with which everyone was familiar or the one I had seen on the day she had come home when in her distress she had seemed old and plain?

  The churchly odor of old wood and stone was sweetened with the perfume and boutonnières of the wedding guests assembled twenty minutes early. A beam of sunshine came through the open door and extended the length of the central aisle until, at the sanctuary, it joined in a pool of opaline light with another laden shaft sifted through the stained glass windows, of which the three segments were so detailed that I could read in them no narrative but saw only brilliant colors throwing off the glitter of jewels. Then, through the gilded haze the altar was visible, furnished with a massive cross, two golden urns of white azaleas, and pale candles still unlit. The sun and the flowers and the open door made me think of spring, though I had only to look at the fur coats to remember that it was not yet midwinter and that the cool of the church was withal warmer than the outside temperature. The freshness of the bath I had just taken and the clean, acrid odor of my new clothes combined with this pleasure to give me a general sense of well-being and excellent health, as if I had shaken off the aches and miseries of one season and had entered upon the next under favorable omens, like the day on which we realize that our blood has expunged the last particle of disease. Two incidents the day before, which was Sunday, had lightened my heart. When I went to the library in the morning, I found Miss Pride more cordial than she had been since the night of my defection (“The night,” she called it, “when you came home in such an informal state of mind.”), and by way of showing that I was being recalled from exile, she gave me a glass of her fine personal sherry and told me that I must not fail to be at the wedding and the wedding breakfast the following day. Then, at the asylum, I was told that I could see my mother for only a few minutes as she was very ill and was confined to her bed in the infirmary. The doctor, the same one I had talked with before, admitted that he was not so confident of her cure as he had been. He was positive, he told me, of her ultimate recovery but thought she could not be moved for at least six months instead of three as he had told me before. The extension of time seemed like an act of benevolence performed by the doctor himself out of the goodness of his heart and I so ill concealed my gratitude that I drew from him a smile and a companionable pat on the shoulder as he wished me a Merry Christmas. I was, moreover, in good spirits today because the end of my suspense was at last in sight and henceforth I would not hear Hopestill weeping into her pillow nor catch in her face an occasional look of alarm.

  From where I sat at the back of the chapel, I could see Miss Pride in the front pew sitting between the Reverend McAllister and his wife. She was wearing a new suit, but as it was made in the same pattern as all her others and cut from the same wool, perhaps I alone knew that it was new, for I had seen the tailor’s bill. She had made one concession to her relatives, and in place of her green beaver wore a small hat planted with red posies which caused her so much consternation, because she thought it would fall off, that during the ceremony, as she told everyone later, she could think of nothing but the moment when she might take it off.

  She and the clergyman, in their sober black, whose forebears had not taken passage on the same boat with the Tory Almighty who had lodged in this chapel since pre-Revolutionary times, sat rigidly, staring straight ahead with disapproval at the Popish paraphernalia of the altar which, as Miss Pride said, was “tantamount to a repudiation of the Declaration of Independence.” Distrust of the high-church folderol as well as of her headgear gave her face the dour immobility of a Protestant martyr and she did not smile once or look either to the right or to the left from the moment Frank Whitney ushered her to her seat of honor until she left it. The Reverend McAllister, on the contrary, sent his eyes meddling into the nooks and crannies of the “temple,” as he spoke of it, and glowered upon the kneeling attitudes of some of these first cousins to the Roman Catholics, into whose ranks he was heartily disinclined to release his son. The Reverend was a man of extraordinary obtuseness and had he ever taken the trouble—as his wife and mother did—to observe his future daughter-in-law even to form an impression of her external appearance, he would have been freed at once of his suspicions that she was leading Philip to the Pope, would have been far more worried that she would lead him to atheism. I had heard that at the time Al Smith was running for president, Reverend McAllister had been the victim of a recurrent nightmare in which a company of dwarfs (presumably Catholic dwarfs) attempted to stuff him into a confessional box, and he remarked to several people that if Smith were elected, he would die. Very likely he would have. He had presented himself at the house this morning to pay his respects to Miss Pride and as she was then engaged, I went down to entertain him until she would be free. He was a teetotaler and refused the port I had been commissioned to offer him. For five minutes he listed some facts to me which he had gleaned from his reading the night before, among which was the sagacious custom of polar bears who, when stalking seals, covered their black noses with their paws so that there was nothing about them to show that they were anything but mounds of snow.

  Philip’s mother who, although she would have preferred to wear black as a sign of mourning for her son, had finally decided that it would be too much of a good thing if all four of the chief relatives were attired as for a funeral, and was dressed in pale blue, becoming to her rosy checks and her white hair and her blue eyes, which had not been reddened but made only prettily clouded by the incessant stream of tears they had released ever since the engagement was announced. She had lost her appetite, had been unable to sleep a night through, and had not appeared at any of the pre-nuptial parties. It was said by her husband that her heart was temporarily “out of kilter.” She had several times written Hopestill begging her to come to Concord: “We have so much to talk about,” she wrote. “I feel there are many things you must know about Philip which only I can tell you. The hastiness of your wedding has prevented us from getting really well acquainted, but perhaps we can make up for lost time if only you will agree to spend two or three days with me.” Hopestill, either because she was harassed by the business which the wedding involved or because she could think of no way to refuse the invitation graciously, did not answer, a breach of manners that had already had serious consequences. The elder Mrs. McAllister had told the story everywhere and, making use of her daughter’s unwittingly accurate phrase, repeated often, “The wedding is too hasty for me. Marian and I both wish they’d wait until June. It is breaking Philip’s mother’s heart that she can’t have a garden party for them. And since the poor thing’s ill now, she can’t even have an indoor party for them. I do think it’s inconsiderate.” The heart-sufferer, through a supreme sacrifice of her health, had managed to come to the wedding, though she would not be able to come to the breakfast. Her excuses, “doctor’s orders,” had been made through her husband this morning, as if she could not bear even to speak to Miss Pride.

  The Countess, resplendent in a gray suit and a fox scarf, was sitting with Amy Brooks some pews ahead of me but she had spied me and was mouthing something which I could not catch and so mouthed back, “I can’t understand wha
t you’re saying.” It came out later that she had been telling me to be sure to look at Mrs. Hornblower, who had oddly enough come in evening clothes. I had, as a matter of fact, been on the lookout for Mrs. Hornblower who had heretofore seemed mythical, for I had learned on asking someone why it was that the tea-party to which I had been invited was such a remarkable event because the host’s wife was to be there, that while she was on the friendliest terms with her husband, she did not share his house or his servants but lived in her own establishment fifty yards from his, a path leading from one door to the other. I asked my interlocutor—it was, as I remember, one of the girls at the Countess’ Friday—to explain this. “They’re just cranks,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “Mrs. Hornblower used to come to tea with my grandmother now and again when she was in town and she was at that time wrapped up in spiritism. It made poor Grandma have bad dreams about Mrs. Hornblower’s astral body, and once when she said, ‘Mary, I can simply walk through that wall if you only have faith in me,’ Grandma shrieked, ‘Nellie!’ at the top of her lungs and it made Mrs. Hornblower furious although Grandma passed it off very nicely by saying that she just wanted Nellie to bring some more muffins. After that she took up the cause of Sacco and Vanzetti, but she didn’t come to call any more for, as she told someone who of course repeated it to us, she didn’t think my grandmother was interested in ideas.” She had given up the occult for more pressing matters, but every now and again she would put in an appearance at a séance for old-time’s sake, and at one of them, Kakosan had met her. Mrs. Hornblower had been a tremendous success and Kakosan, who assumed that because I lived opposite Louisburg Square I was intimately acquainted with everyone of consequence, had begged me to arrange an introduction. Mrs. Hornblower was a person of fine bearing, a large woman of whose face one immediately said, “She must have been lovely when she was young,” and now, pitifully palsied, her white hair stained with yellow, she was still handsome. Much larger than her chubby husband who, although he was her senior, was better preserved and still wore black hair in which there was not a trace of gray, she bent toward him the loving and respectful looks of the obedient young wife.