The Lady of Situations

by Louis Auchincloss

  “Cat!” a brother would mutter, while her father gladly quit the room and her mother broke into a useless crying fit.

  There was only one serious threat: boys. These were less easily disposed of. Natica found herself all too readily and strongly attracted to male classmates of the athletic type, and as early as sixteen she was known as a “hot neck.” But as she never went further, scratching and biting if need be to ward off aggressors, and as such tactics soon tired her boy friends, she never became seriously involved. Also, her basic boredom with the kind of male who most aroused her helped her soon enough to regain her detachment. But what most contributed to her oft threatened but fiercely cherished emotional independence was her sense of the general expectation, encompassing not only her classmates but her family, that sooner or later Natica Chauncey, for all her intellectual airs and “fancy pants” notions of her proper niche in the universe, would yield to the basic female need of a brawny male to knock the silly ideas out of her snooty head and turn her into a clucking wife and mother. It sometimes seemed to her that the gray slatey sky over what seemed to her the eternal autumn of Smithport contracted in a vulgar damp wink at the inevitability of sexual intercourse and the futility of a girl’s settling for anything else.

  Her parents seemed to sink, with a slow, an almost contented acceptance, into what she deemed the turbid ooze of their village life, seeing some of their older friends, when the latter chose to remember them, but gradually coming to social terms with the more prominent of the tradesmen whom they had once called “locals” or “natives.” Harry Chauncey had aroused his daughter’s futile resentment by keeping his less expensive individual, as opposed to family, membership in the Smithport Beach and Sailing Club, so that he could use its fishing camp in the Catskills, with the result that his children had no privileges. It was this, more than anything else, that convinced Natica that anything done for her socially would have to be done by herself, that her parents, well meaning but ignorant, had simply no conception of the things they had deprived her of.

  She made a point now of being at home whenever one of the old “summer” friends called, in the hope that she might be asked to a party for one of their children, and this sometimes happened, although she usually found herself sitting silently and awkwardly by her hostess while the latter’s daughter and a clique of friends, excluding her with the ruthlessness of youth, chattered on about their own affairs. At home in the evenings, when she had finished her school work, and her brothers were at friends’ houses or bowling, and her mother was listening to one of her idiotic radio programs, she would draw her father out about his past and the careers of long-dead distinguished Chaunceys. Harry, an utterly unsnobbish man, hardly even aware of the hierarchical classifications so definite to his daughter, had little interest in family history as such, but he liked to tell what to him were affectionate and funny stories about dear old aunts and uncles and grandparents, and as these were of a deadly dullness to his wife and sons, he much appreciated Natica’s flattering interest. She would carefully note the rare detail that slipped into an anecdote, unbeknownst to its teller, to betray the social status of the characters: the casual reference to a coachman, or even once to a footman; the use of a proper name (“As old Mrs. Astor used to put it”); the changing of the mise en scene to Bar Harbor or Newport.

  In the summer before her senior year at high school, however, an opportunity came to Natica for a more extended visit behind the barrier guarded by the gatehouse at Amberley. Mr. DeVoe was to be kept in town all summer by a business crisis, and his loyal wife, refusing to go without him to their seaside villa in Maine, chose, to the disgust of her daughter Edith, to pass the “dead season” of July and August in Smithport, to which her husband could comfortably commute. And Aunt Ruth, Edith’s English teacher at Miss Clinton’s Classes in the city, had a project for her pupil’s use of this slack time which she imparted sarcastically to Natica.

  “The future is always full of surprises. Who would have thought that a girl like Edith DeVoe would ever want to soil the golden glory of her approaching debutante year with anything as sordid as college? Yet such is the case. Vassar and Smith have become the ‘thing.’ Or perhaps some ‘radical’ beau of Edith’s has accused her of being a kind of a social dinosaur. At any rate the poor girl has seen the light and has asked me about her qualifications. I’ve told her she’d better start filling in her educational gaps if she wants to get into a decent college, even a year from now. She says she’ll have nothing to do all summer, and I hinted that I had a clever niece in Smithport who might fill the bill as an English tutor. How about it, Natica? It should pay well for very little work. She asked if you were the girl who used to live in the gatehouse, and I told her you were also the girl who used to live in the big house.”

  Natica knew better than to allow her eyes to express the spurt of her sudden joy. Even Aunt Ruth, she had learned, could be dishearteningly puritanical where “joys” were concerned.

  “Well, I suppose I can try. Though remembering Edith, I doubt we’ll get through Adam Bede before Labor Day.”

  Natica was very nervous on the day she bicycled up the blue drive to Amberley, but she found Mrs. DeVoe friendly and Edith tolerant, and she soon settled into an easy routine of morning lessons and family lunch. Edith had matured into a tall, dark, handsome girl with a sometimes attractive indolence of manner and a never attractive conceit. She had read almost nothing and had no use for any of the arts except as necessary preliminaries to the now fashionable world of college. But she was pleasantly pleased with her new tutor’s way of abbreviating her tasks. Natica neatly summarized the plots of the novels that Edith was supposed to read and never suggested that there was anything of real importance to be gained by a study of literature. In her desire to make a friend of her pupil she even went so far as to imply that Edith needed only to add to her natural embellishments by absorbing a few capsules of classics, which might be expected, by some process of painless digestion, to make a minor contribution to the sprightliness of her social conversation.

  Edith’s regular companions being largely abroad or in New England, Natica had little difficulty in making herself indispensable. She knew better than to talk about herself or her own affairs and demonstrated an insatiable appetite for details of Edith’s boy friends, Edith’s dresses and Edith’s anticipated social triumphs. In one respect she was lucky enough to be particularly helpful, for it turned out that Edith’s special beau, Roy Somers, though a son of the richest resident of Smithport, was something of a rebel.

  “Roy doesn’t think like other people,” Edith complained. “Everyone knows that Roosevelt’s a horror and a traitor to his class, but he refuses to see it. He makes Daddy furious by touting the New Deal.”

  Natica was able to educate Edith in a few of the fundamentals of what the Roosevelt administration was trying to accomplish, so that her pupil could impress the radical Roy.

  Her success with Edith’s brother was even greater. Grant DeVoe was two years older than his sister, but her equal academically, as he had been dropped a form at Averhill School in Massachusetts and was, like her, now facing his senior year (or, as it was known at Averhill, his sixth form). He too felt the ennui of a Smithport summer, and his conversation was full of the visits he would make, if invited, to more socially active summer communities on the New England coast. He was pleasant looking rather than handsome, with a round, cheerful, rather thoughtless face and large brown eyes that seemed to promise a better temper and a more affectionate disposition than he had, and his dark curly hair and small tight figure, usually wrapped in bright blazers, completed this impression of amiability. Natica saw that, as with Edith, his interest in her sprang entirely from the summer vacuum. But it was also an interest that could be worked.

  She met Grant at first only at the family luncheons where she was careful to make a not too pointed note of smiling at his jokes. His immediate appreciation of this revealed the man who was quite accustomed to taking a second,
even a third, place among his peers. Soon he was directing his smarter remarks in her direction, and at last he invited her to go sailing with him. It was a hot and almost windless afternoon and the small boat required a minimum of handling. Grant was free to talk uninterruptedly about himself: how difficult it was to be the only boy in a family of four girls; how much his father preferred his older sister, Mary, to him; how constantly and articulately disappointed both his parents were at everything he did and didn’t do.

  “They think I should be more like Daddy,” he complained. “Daddy was senior monitor at Averhill and I’m not even a house prefect. Daddy was Phi Beta Kappa and Bones at Yale. Daddy’s the great banker … Well, you see, there’s no end of it.”

  They were in the middle of the little bay now, and Natica, looking back, could make out one of the gables of Amberley, high on the hill. For a moment her yearning for such a home and such a father was so acute as to be actually painful.

  “Your old man’s a tycoon, of course. He can’t help that. And everyone respects and admires him. But perhaps being a tycoon isn’t the only thing in the world. Your father has to pay for his success with the awe that surrounds him. He can’t expect to be popular and easy the way you are.”

  “Oh, do you really find me that?”

  “Well, aren’t you?”

  She let him kiss her, but then drew firmly back.

  “What’s wrong? Do I offend?”

  “Not at all,” she replied in a definite tone. “But I don’t think I want to get involved with you.”

  “Even a wee bit? Even for a summer afternoon?”

  “Not even that. Because, if you must know, you’re just a wee bit too attractive.”

  And she proceeded to show that she meant it by sitting farther away and continuing the conversation pleasantly but on more neutral grounds. It was thus that she intended to show him that, however much attracted she might be by his charm, she had no idea of constituting any sort of a social threat. It was not difficult; he did not attract her.

  He was evidently pleased, for in the ensuing days he did not renew his amatory gesture. He continued to devote his attention to her at family meals, and he took her sailing once again, but it seemed enough now to be able to tell her of his troubles, to joke with her, and sometimes, at the family board, to wink across the table in recognition of their special link. Perhaps he was relieved not to have to do more. Perhaps it was less challenging to be a god on a pedestal.

  “You seem to have made a convert of my brother,” Edith drawled one morning at their lesson. “I’ve never seen him take such trouble to be agreeable. If he keeps this up, he may become almost endurable.”

  But then came a lunch when Edith’s mother nearly rang down the curtain on the little drama of Natica’s fantasy of living with the rich. She did not mean to. She had a generous nature, but Natica was always aware that it was limited by the lazy impatience of a woman habituated over a lifetime to the devotion of family and the servility of staff.

  Edith, as was her wont, had been talking of the approaching revelry of her debutante year, now only ten months away (she would “come out” in June), and her mother made no effort to conceal her impatience.

  “I thought one of the advantages we might hope to derive from your going to college was that it would put a stop to all this silly talk. You won’t have time for more than a handful of dances, will you?”

  “Of course I will. All the best parties are now given in the summer or on weekends. People realize how many of us will be in college, so they make better use of the holidays. It’s not like your day, Ma, when a girl had nothing to do but dress up and dance.”

  “Dress up and dance! I like that! The year I came out I had to take both German and Italian lessons and practice at the piano an hour a day. And your grandfather used to drill me in the evening to see what I’d learned. I didn’t have a smart little Natica Chauncey to drill things into my thick head.”

  It always made Natica nervous when Mrs. DeVoe used her as a weapon against her daughter. She knew who could only be the loser. But Mrs. DeVoe now gained momentum.

  “I wonder, Edith, if you and your friends have any conception of how many people on relief could live on what your father will have to pay for your coming out party.”

  “Now, Ma, don’t try to persuade us you’re a socialist.”

  “Well, maybe we need a bit of socialism where debutante parties are concerned! I think it would be a very good idea if every debutante was required to share her party with another girl who couldn’t afford one.” Mrs. DeVoe’s eye now fell on Natica and at once lit up. “Exactly! Take Natica here. By all rights she should have a party of her own. If the depression hadn’t so hit her family, she would be having a lovely one, I’m sure. And that tells me just what I’m going to do. Our invitations will read: ‘In honor of Miss Edith DeVoe and Miss Natica Chauncey.’ There! I think that’s a splendid idea. What do you say, Natica, my dear?”

  Natica hardly needed to take in the glaze of Edith’s dark eyes to understand how odious was the idea of sharing her glory with anyone, let alone a girl who went to high school in Smithport and knew none of her friends.

  “Oh, Mrs. DeVoe, if that isn’t the sweetest, kindest thing I’ve ever heard! And I can’t imagine a greater honor than sharing the least part of Edith’s ball. But my aunt Ruth Felton has set her heart on giving me a little party in the city, and I’m afraid she might feel her thunder sadly stolen if I accepted your kind offer.”

  “Well I’m sure that does you great credit, my dear. And no doubt you know best what your aunt must feel. Please give her all my best wishes when you next see her. I have no doubt she will give you a lovely party. And I hope she will ask Edith to it.”

  The invented excuse was accepted, and Natica almost smiled at Edith’s transparent relief. But the danger was not yet over. Edith, in a sudden desire to make up to the humble tutor for the ball that the latter’s welcome sense of propriety had induced her to decline, turned to her brother.

  “Why don’t you ask Natica up to Averhill in my place for the Halloween party? I know you only asked me because Daddy suggested it. But I’ve decided I don’t want to go as a brother’s guest. It looks as if no one else would ask me.”

  Grant’s stare at his sister hardly expressed gratitude for her suggestion, but Natica spared him the embarrassment of an ungracious answer.

  “I think Grant should be free to make his own choice,” she insisted, smiling. “And anyway, my parents don’t like me to go away for weekends during school term.”

  That might have been the end of it except for the fact that Grant, on his return to Averhill in September, happened to ask the senior prefect, Leverett Chauncey, if he was by any chance related to his sister’s summer tutor. He was informed that they were indeed second cousins.

  “Lev says he’s never met you and would love to,” Grant wrote to Natica in an epistle imbued with a new respect. “He’s got a girl named Jessie Ives coming up for Halloween, and he suggested, if I asked you, that the four of us might have a table together at the dinner dance. How about it? Do you think your parents would make an exception? Tell them my mother says she’s coming up for that weekend and will take you in the car and deliver you safely home Sunday night.”

  Mrs. DeVoe did more than that. She telephoned to Natica’s mother, who made no objection to this infringement of a supposed domestic rule, and then asked if there would be any obstacle to her making Natica the present of a new evening dress. Mrs. Chauncey agreed to this as well. Turning to her daughter after the call she said:

  “I don’t know why people say that Madeleine DeVoe gives herself airs. She seems to me just as nice and dear as she can be. And arrogant? Why, she’s as simple as an old shoe!”

  Natica smiled to herself. The world was not so hard to put together. Certainly Grant DeVoe was as obvious as his sister. She had already learned about Leverett Chauncey from Aunt Ruth, who gleaned much from the girls at Miss Clinton’s. He was not only the sen
ior prefect at Averhill; he was one of the cleverest and most popular boys in the school, and the principal heir to his maternal grandfather’s oil fortune.

  2

  NATICA WOULD have many occasions to alter her first impressions of Averhill School, but she would never altogether lose her sense of the bright idealism in which she had initially chosen to see it bathed. On that clear October day it had struck her as a vision of rosy red brick and gleaming white columns around a broad green campus, with here and there a stately elm, and presided over by a serene gray Gothic chapel which seemed to bring a domesticated medievalism into harmony with a restrained transcendentalism. Natica had read about the school and about New England; she had heard Aunt Ruth, who had some prejudice about boys’ schools, describe Averhill as “a mixture of Emerson and Wall Street, sugared over with a glossy sermon by Phillips Brooks.” But she had not been prepared for the red and yellow glory of the countryside beyond the school gates, for the rich smell of varnish in the polished corridors and classrooms, for the unexpected Palladian splendor of the gymnasium, for the hurrying, laughing, jostling boys, so seemingly scrubbed and clean for the festivities, yet so muscular, so agile, so noisily good-natured. And when Grant, on their initial tour of the grounds, took her into the chapel and showed her the great Daniel French statue of a wounded doughboy, a memorial to the war dead, she murmured to herself the lines:

  This is the chapel; here my son,

  Your father thought the thoughts of youth

  And heard the words that one by one

  The touch of life has turned to truth.

  Not that she thought that Grant had such dreams. But surely there had been, or were now, those who did. Or if not, anyway, this was the place for them. There was no such place for Natica Chauncey.