by Peter Taylor
From the other guests came one concerted gasp. And then an instant later, mistaking Ned’s outcry to be something he had planned all along and probably intended—as they imagined—for the very cream of the jest, the whole company burst once again into laughter—not a chorus of laughter this time but a volley of loud guffaws from the boys, and from the girls a cacophony of separately articulated shrieks and trills.
None of the guests present that night could—or would—give a satisfactory account of what happened next. Everyone insisted that he had not even looked at the Dorsets, that he, or she, didn’t know how Miss Louisa and Mr. Alfred reacted at first. Yet this was precisely what those of us who had gone there in the past had to know. And when finally we did manage to get an account of it, we knew that it was a very truthful and accurate one. Because we got it, of course, from Tom Bascomb.
Since Ned’s outburst came after the dancing exhibition, the Dorsets were in their most disheveled state. Miss Louisa’s hair was fallen half over her face, and that long, limp strand of Mr. Alfred’s was dangling about his left ear. Like that, they stood at the doorway to the dining room grinning at Tom Bascomb’s antics. And when Tom Bascomb, hearing Ned’s wail, whirled about, the grins were still on the Dorsets’ faces even though the guffaws and the shrieks of laughter were now silenced. Tom said that for several moments they continued to wear their grins like masks and that you couldn’t really tell how they were taking it all until presently Miss Louisa’s face, still wearing the grin, began turning all the queer colors of her paper flowers. Then the grin vanished from her lips and her mouth fell open and every bit of color went out of her face. She took a step backward and leaned against the doorjamb with her mouth still open and her eyes closed. If she hadn’t been on her feet, Tom said he would have thought she was dead. Her brother didn’t look at her, but his own grin had vanished just as hers did, and his face, all drawn and wrinkled, momentarily turned a dull copperish green.
Presently, though, he too went white, not white in faintness but in anger. His little brown eyes now shone like resin. And he took several steps toward Ned Meriwether. “What we know is that you are not one of us,” he croaked. “We have perceived that from the beginning! We don’t know how you got here or who you are. But the important question is, What are you doing here among these nice children?”
The question seemed to restore life to Miss Louisa. Her amber eyes popped wide open. She stepped away from the door and began pinning up her hair which had fallen down on her shoulders, and at the same time addressing the guests who were huddled together in the center of the hall. “Who is he, children? He is an intruder, that we know. If you know who he is, you must tell us.”
“Who am I? Why, I am Tom Bascomb!” shouted Ned, still from the bottom step of the stairway. “I am Tom Bascomb, your paper boy!”
Then he turned and fled up the stairs toward the second floor. In a moment Mr. Dorset was after him.
To the real Tom Bascomb it had seemed that Ned honestly believed what he had been saying; and his own first impulse was to shout a denial. But being a level-headed boy and seeing how bad things were, Tom went instead to Miss Dorset and whispered to her that Tom Bascomb was a pretty tough guy and that she had better let him call the police for her. She told him where the telephone was in the side hall, and he started away.
But Miss Dorset changed her mind. She ran after Tom telling him not to call. Some of the guests mistook this for the beginning of another chase. Before the old lady could overtake Tom, however, Ned himself had appeared in the doorway toward which she and Tom were moving. He had come down the back stairway and he was calling out to Emily, “We’re going home, Sis!”
A cheer went up from the whole party. Maybe it was this that caused Ned to lose his head, or maybe it was simply the sight of Miss Dorset rushing at him that did it. At any rate, the next moment he was running up the front stairs again, this time with Miss Dorset in pursuit.
When Tom returned from the telephone, all was quiet in the hall. The guests—everybody except Emily—had moved to the foot of the stairs and they were looking up and listening. From upstairs Tom could hear Ned saying, “All right. All right. All right.” The old couple had him cornered.
Emily was still standing in the little niche among the flowers. And it is the image of Emily Meriwether standing among the paper flowers that tantalizes me whenever I think or hear someone speak of that evening. That, more than anything else, can make me wish that I had been there. I shall never cease to wonder what kind of thoughts were in her head to make her seem so oblivious to all that was going on while she stood there, and, for that matter, what had been in her mind all evening while she endured Tom Bascomb’s caresses. When, in years since, I have had reason to wonder what some girl or woman is thinking—some Emily grown older—my mind nearly always returns to the image of that girl among the paper flowers. Tom said that when he returned from the telephone she looked very solemn and pale still but that her mind didn’t seem to be on any of the present excitement. Immediately he went to her and said, “Your dad is on his way over, Emily.” For it was the Meriwether parents he had telephoned, of course, and not the police.
It seemed to Tom that so far as he was concerned the party was now over. There was nothing more he could do. Mr. Dorset was upstairs guarding the door to the strange little room in which Ned was locked up. Miss Dorset was serving lime punch to the other guests in the dining room, all the while listening with one ear for the arrival of the police whom Tom pretended he had called. When the doorbell finally rang and Miss Dorset hurried to answer it, Tom slipped quietly out through the pantry and through the kitchen and left the house by the back door as the Meriwether parents entered by the front.
There was no difficulty in getting Edwin and Muriel Meriwether, the children’s parents, to talk about what happened after they arrived that night. Both of them were sensible and clear-headed people, and they were not so conservative as some of our other neighbors in West Vesey. Being fond of gossip of any kind and fond of reasonably funny stories on themselves, they told how their children had deceived them earlier in the evening and how they had deceived themselves later. They tended to blame themselves more than the children for what had happened. They tried to protect the children from any harm or embarrassment that might result from it by sending them off to boarding school. In their talk they never referred directly to Tom’s reprehensible conduct or to the possible motives that the children might have had for getting up their plan. They tried to spare their children and they tried to spare Tom, but unfortunately it didn’t occur to them to try to spare the poor old Dorsets.
When Miss Louisa opened the door, Mr. Meriwether said, “I’m Edwin Meriwether, Miss Dorset. I’ve come for my son Ned.”
“And for your daughter Emily, I hope,” his wife whispered to him.
“And for my daughter Emily.”
Before Miss Dorset could answer him, Edwin Meriwether spied Mr. Dorset descending the stairs. With his wife, Muriel, sticking close to his side Edwin now strode over to the foot of the stairs. “Mr. Dorset,” he began, “my son Ned—”
From behind them, Edwin and Muriel now heard Miss Dorset saying, “All the invited guests are gathered in the dining room.” From where they were standing the two parents could see into the dining room. Suddenly they turned and hurried in there. Mr. Dorset and his sister of course followed them.
Muriel Meriwether went directly to Emily who was standing in a group of girls. “Emily, where is your brother?”
Emily said nothing, but one of the boys answered: “I think they’ve got him locked up upstairs somewhere.”
“Oh, no!” said Miss Louisa, a hairpin in her mouth—for she was still rather absent-mindedly working at her hair. “It is an intruder that my brother has upstairs.”
Mr. Dorset began speaking in a confidential tone to Edwin. “My dear neighbor,” he said, “our paper boy saw fit to intrude himself upon our company tonight. But we recognized him as an outsider from the start
.”
Muriel Meriwether asked: “Where is the paper boy? Where is the paper boy, Emily?”
Again one of the boys volunteered: “He went out through the back door, Mrs. Meriwether.”
The eyes of Mr. Alfred and Miss Louisa searched the room for Tom. Finally their eyes met and they smiled coyly. “All the children are being mischievous tonight,” said Miss Louisa, and it was quite as though she had said, “all we children.” Then, still smiling, she said, “Your tie has come undone, Brother. Mr. and Mrs. Meriwether will hardly know what to think.”
Mr. Alfred fumbled for a moment with his tie but soon gave it up. Now with a bashful glance at the Meriwether parents, and giving a nod in the direction of the children, he actually said, “I’m afraid we’ve all decided to play a trick on Mr. and Mrs. Meriwether.”
Miss Louisa said to Emily: “We’ve hidden our brother somewhere, haven’t we?”
Emily’s mother said firmly: “Emily, tell me where Ned is.”
“He’s upstairs, Mother,” said Emily in a whisper.
Emily’s father said: “I wish you to take me to the boy upstairs, Mr. Dorset.”
The coy, bashful expressions vanished from the faces of the two Dorsets. Their eyes were little dark pools of incredulity, growing narrower by the second. And both of them were now trying to put their hair in order. “Why, we know nice children when we see them,” Miss Louisa said peevishly. There was a pleading quality in her voice, too. “We knew from the beginning that that boy upstairs didn’t belong amongst us,” she said. “Dear neighbors, it isn’t just the money, you know, that makes the difference.” All at once she sounded like a little girl about to burst into tears.
“It isn’t just the money?” Edwin Meriwether repeated.
“Miss Dorset,” said Muriel with new gentleness in her tone, as though she had just recognized that it was a little girl she was talking to, “there has been some kind of mistake—a misunderstanding.”
Mr. Alfred Dorset said: “Oh, we wouldn’t make a mistake of that kind! People are different. It isn’t something you can put your finger on, but it isn’t the money.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Edwin said, exasperated. “But I’m going upstairs and find that boy.” He left the room with Mr. Dorset following him with quick little steps—steps like those of a small boy trying to keep up with a man.
Miss Louisa now sat down in one of the high-backed dining chairs which were lined up along the oak wainscot. She was trembling, and Muriel came and stood beside her. Neither of them spoke, and in almost no time Edwin Meriwether came downstairs again with Ned. Miss Louisa looked at Ned, and tears came into her eyes. “Where is my brother?” she asked accusingly, as though she thought possibly Ned and his father had locked Mr. Dorset in the bathroom.
“I believe he has retired,” said Edwin. “He left us and disappeared into one of the rooms upstairs.”
“Then I must go up to him,” said Miss Louisa. For a moment she seemed unable to rise. At last she pushed herself up from the chair and walked from the room with the slow, steady gait of a somnambulist. Muriel Meriwether followed her into the hall and as she watched the old woman ascending the steps, leaning heavily on the rail, her impulse was to go and offer to assist her. But something made her turn back into the dining room. Perhaps she imagined that her daughter, Emily, might need her now.
The Dorsets did not reappear that night. After Miss Louisa went upstairs, Muriel promptly got on the telephone and called the parents of some of the other boys and girls. Within a quarter of an hour, half a dozen parents had assembled. It was the first time in many years that any adult had set foot inside the Dorset house. It was the first time that any parent had ever inhaled the perfumed air or seen the masses of paper flowers and the illuminations and the statuary. In the guise of holding consultations over whether or not they should put out the lights and lock up the house, the parents lingered much longer than was necessary before taking the young people home. Some of them even tasted the lime punch. But in the presence of their children they made no comment on what had happened and gave no indication of what their own impressions were—not even their impressions of the punch. At last it was decided that two of the men should see to putting out the lights everywhere on the first floor and down in the ballroom. They were a long time in finding the switches for the indirect lighting. In most cases, they simply resorted to unscrewing the bulbs. Meanwhile the children went to the large cloak closet behind the stairway and got their wraps. When Ned and Emily Meriwether rejoined their parents at the front door to leave the house, Ned was wearing his own overcoat and held his own fedora in his hand.
Miss Louisa and Mr. Alfred Dorset lived on for nearly ten years after that night, but they gave up selling their figs and paper flowers and of course they never entertained young people again. I often wonder if growing up in Chatham can ever have seemed quite the same since. Some of the terror must have gone out of it. Half the dread of coming of age must have vanished with the dread of the Dorsets’ parties.
After that night, their old car would sometimes be observed creeping about town, but it was never parked in front of their house any more. It stood usually at the side entrance where the Dorsets could climb in and out of it without being seen. They began keeping a servant too—mainly to run their errands for them, I imagine. Sometimes it would be a man, sometimes a woman, never the same one for more than a few months at a time. Both of the Dorsets died during the Second World War while many of us who had gone to their parties were away from Chatham. But the story went round—and I am inclined to believe it—that after they were dead and the house was sold, Tom Bascomb’s coat and hat were found still hanging in the cloak closet behind the stairs.
Tom himself was a pilot in the war and was a considerable hero. He was such a success and made such a name for himself that he never came back to Chatham to live. He found bigger opportunities elsewhere I suppose, and I don’t suppose he ever felt the ties to Chatham that people with Ned’s kind of upbringing do. Ned was in the war too, of course. He was in the navy and after the war he did return to Chatham to live, though actually it was not until then that he had spent much time here since his parents bundled him off to boarding school. Emily came home and made her debut just two or three years before the war, but she was already engaged to some boy in the East; she never comes back any more except to bring her children to see their grandparents for a few days during Christmas or at Easter.
I understand that Emily and Ned are pretty indifferent to each other’s existence nowadays. I have been told this by Ned Meriwether’s own wife. Ned’s wife maintains that the night Ned and Emily went to the Dorsets’ party marked the beginning of this indifference, that it marked the end of their childhood intimacy and the beginning of a shyness, a reserve, even an animosity between them that was destined to be a sorrow forever to the two sensible parents who had sat in the upstairs sitting room that night waiting until the telephone call came from Tom Bascomb.
Ned’s wife is a girl he met while he was in the navy. She was a Wave, and her background isn’t the same as his. Apparently, she isn’t too happy with life in what she refers to as “Chatham proper.” She and Ned have recently moved out into a suburban development, which she doesn’t like either and which she refers to as “greater Chatham.” She asked me at a party one night how Chatham got its name (she was just making conversation and appealing to my interest in such things) and when I told her that it was named for the Earl of Chatham and pointed out that the city is located in Pitt County, she burst out laughing. “How very elegant,” she said. “Why has nobody ever told me that before?” But what interests me most about Ned’s wife is that after a few drinks she likes to talk about Ned and Emily and Tom Bascomb and the Dorsets. Tom Bascomb has become a kind of hero—and I don’t mean a wartime hero—in her eyes, though of course not having grown up in Chatham she has never seen him in her life. But she is a clever girl, and there are times when she will say to me, “Tell me about C
hatham. Tell me about the Dorsets.” And I try to tell her. I tell her to remember that Chatham looks upon itself as a rather old city. I tell her to remember that it was one of the first English-speaking settlements west of the Alleghenies and that by the end of the American Revolution, when veterans began pouring westward over the Wilderness Road or down the Ohio River, Chatham was often referred to as a thriving village. Then she tells me that I am being dull, because it is hard for her to concentrate on any aspect of the story that doesn’t center around Tom Bascomb and that night at the Dorsets’.
But I make her listen. Or at least one time I did. The Dorset family, I insisted on saying, was in Chatham even in those earliest times right after the Revolution, but they had come here under somewhat different circumstances from those of the other early settlers. How could that really matter, Ned’s wife asked, after a hundred and fifty years? How could distinctions between the first settlers matter after the Irish had come to Chatham, after the Germans, after the Italians? Well, in West Vesey Place it could matter. It had to. If the distinction was false, it mattered all the more and it was all the more necessary to make it.
But let me interject here that Chatham is located in a state about whose history most Chatham citizens—not newcomers like Ned’s wife, but old-timers—have little interest and less knowledge. Most of us, for instance, are never even quite sure whether during the 1860’s our state did secede or didn’t secede. As for the city itself, some of us hold that it is geographically Northern and culturally Southern. Others say the reverse is true. We are all apt to want to feel misplaced in Chatham, and so we are not content merely to say that it is a border city. How you stand on this important question is apt to depend entirely on whether your family is one of those with a good Southern name or one that had its origin in New England, because those are the two main categories of old society families in Chatham.
