The Group

by Mary McCarthy

  It seemed to Mrs. Renfrew that Dottie shivered in reply. “I’ll go with you, dear,” she added, brightly. “If you want moral support …Or you could ask one of your married friends—Kay or Priss.” Mrs. Renfrew did not know what had done it—the mention of New York, perhaps—but Dottie began to cry. “I love him,” she said, choking, as the tears ran in furrows down either side of her long, distinguished nose. “I love him, Mother.”

  At last it had come out. “I know, dear,” said Mrs. Renfrew, fishing in Dottie’s pocketbook for a clean handkerchief and gently wiping her face. “I don’t mean Brook,” said Dottie. “I know,” said Mrs. Renfrew. “What am I going to do?” Dottie repeated. “What am I going to do?” “We’ll see,” promised her mother. Her principal object now was to get Dottie’s tears dried and her face powdered and take her home, before any of their friends could see her here. “We’ll give up the fitting,” she said. The doorman brought the car around (he and Mrs. Renfrew were old friends); Mrs. Renfrew put her small foot on the accelerator and in a few minutes they were home and up in Dottie’s bedroom, with the door closed, having let themselves in so softly that Margaret, the old parlormaid, had not heard them. They sat on Dottie’s chaise longue, with their arms around each other.

  “I thought I was over it. I thought I loved Brook.” Mrs. Renfrew nodded, though she had not yet learned the circumstances or even the young man’s name. “Do you want to marry him?” she asked, going straight to the heart of the matter. “There’s no question, Mother, of that,” Dottie answered, in a cold, almost rebuking tone. Mrs. Renfrew drew a deep breath. “Do you want to ‘live’ with him?” she heard herself bravely pronounce. Dottie buried her head in her mother’s strong small shoulder. “No, I guess not,” she acknowledged. “Then what do you want, darling?” said her mother, stroking her forehead. Dottie pondered. “I want to see him again,” she decided. “That’s all, Mother. I want to see him again.” Mrs. Renfrew clasped Dottie tighter. “I thought he’d be at Kay’s party. I was sure he’d be there. And you know, when I first came in, I only wanted him to be there so that he could hear about my engagement and see my engagement ring and watch how happy I was. I looked awfully well that day. But then, when he didn’t come, I started wanting to see him just to see him—not to show him he didn’t mean a thing to me any more. Was that first feeling just sort of an armor, do you think?” “I imagine so, Dottie,” said her mother. “Oh, it was awful,” said Dottie. “Every time the doorbell rang, I was convinced it was going to be Dick”—she pronounced the name shyly, looking sidewise at her mother—“and then when it wasn’t I nearly fainted, each time, it hurt me so. And all those new friends of Kay’s were terribly nice but I almost hated them because they weren’t Dick. Why do you think he didn’t come?” “Was he invited?” asked Mrs. Renfrew practically. “I don’t know and I couldn’t ask. And it was so peculiar; nobody mentioned him. Not a word. And all the time a drawing by him of Harald was hanging right there on the wall. Like Banquo’s ghost or something. I felt sure he’d been invited and was staying away on purpose and that everybody there knew that and was watching me out of the corner of their eye.” “Your grammar, Dottie!” chided her mother, absently; her sky-blue eyes had clouded over. “Does Kay know about this?” she asked, taking care to make the question sound casual, so that she would not seem to be reproaching Dottie. Dottie nodded mutely, not looking at her mother, who made a little grimace and then controlled herself. “If she knew, dear, and knew you were engaged,” she said lightly, “she doubtless didn’t invite him. For your sake.” Mrs. Renfrew was “fishing,” but Dottie did not bite. “How cruel,” she answered, which told Mrs. Renfrew nothing. “You mustn’t be unfair, dear,” she said mechanically, “because you’re unhappy. Your father would say,” she added, smiling, “that Kay ‘showed good judgment.’” And she looked questioningly into Dottie’s eyes. How far had this thing gone? Mrs. Renfrew had to know, yet Dottie did not seem to be aware of the fact that she had left her parent in the dark.

  “Then you think I shouldn’t see him?” Dottie answered swiftly. “How can I say, Dottie?” protested her mother. “You haven’t told me anything about him. But I think you think you shouldn’t see him. Amn’t I right?” Dottie stared pensively at her engagement ring. “I think I must see him,” she decided. “I mean I feel I’m fated to see him. If I don’t do anything about it myself. As if it would be arranged, somehow, before I was married, that I would meet him just once. But I think I mustn’t try to see him. Do you understand that?” “I understand,” said Mrs. Renfrew, “that you want to have your cake and eat it too, Dottie. You’d like God to arrange for you to have something that you know would be wrong for you to have if you chose it of your own free will.” A look of relief and wonder came into Dottie’s face. “You’re right, Mother!” she cried. “What a marvelous person you are! You’ve seen right through me.” “We’re all pretty much alike,” consoled Mrs. Renfrew. “Judy O’Grady and the Colonel’s lady, you know.” She squeezed Dottie’s hand. “And yet,” said Dottie, “even if it’s wrong, I can’t stop hoping. Not hoping, even. Expecting. That somehow, somehow, I will see him. On the street. Or on a bus or a train. The day after Kay’s party, I went to the Museum of Modern Art; I made believe I was going to see an exhibition. But he wasn’t there. And the time’s getting so short. Only a month left. Less than a month. Mother, in Arizona, I hardly thought about him at all. I’d almost forgotten him. It was Kay’s party that brought it all back. And ever since then I’ve had the most peculiar feeling. That he was thinking about me too. Not just that, Mother. Watching me, sort of skeptically, wherever I went, like to Dr. Perry today or a fitting; he has the most thrilling grey eyes that he narrows. …” She hesitated and broke off. “Do you believe in thought transference, Mother? Do you remember Peter Ibbetson? Because I feel that Dick is listening to my thoughts. And waiting.” Mrs. Renfrew sighed. “Your imagination has got over-active, dear. You’re letting it run away with you.” “Oh, Mother,” said Dottie, “if you could only see him! You would like him too. He’s terribly good-looking and he’s suffered so much.” All at once, she dimpled. “How could you ever have thought that I’d have fallen for someone that looked like that Putnam Blake? Why, he’s white as a leper and needs to wash his hair! Dick isn’t the unwashed type; he comes from a very good family—descended from Hawthorne. Brown is a very good name.”

  Mrs. Renfrew put her hands on her daughter’s shoulders and shook her gently. “I want you to lie down now. And I’ll bring you a cold compress for your eyes. Rest till dinner. Or till Daddy comes home.” It was just as she had feared; talking about this man had revived all Dottie’s feeling for him; having started by crying, she had finished in smiles and dimples. In the bathroom, wringing out two hand towels in cold water, Mrs. Renfrew wondered whether it might not be a good thing, however, for Dottie to see this man again. In her own environment, among her own friends …Despite what Dottie said, he was evidently a bit of a rough diamond. If Dottie had not been engaged, she could have asked him to a little party in New York, perhaps at Polly Andrews’ place. Or to dine quietly with herself and her mother some night, and to go to a play or a concert afterward, with some older man present to make a fourth? Six would be better still—less pointed. Dottie could simply telephone him and say that her mother had an extra ticket and could he dine first? But an engaged girl was not free to ask whomever she chose, even with all the chaperonage in the world. And what would Brook say to Dottie’s mother if anything were to happen as the result?

  Mrs. Renfrew sharply wrung out the compress, which had got tepid while she was thinking, and held it afresh under the cold-water tap. For Dottie’s own sake, she had to know how far the thing had gone. If it had gone the whole way and the man had aroused her senses, the poor child was in a fix. Some women, they said, never got over the first man, especially if he were skillful; he left a permanent imprint. Why, they even said that a child conceived with the legal husband would have the features of the first lover! That w
as nonsense, of course, old wives’ talk, yet the thought stirred Mrs. Renfrew’s blood a little. She was forty-seven years old and had just had her twenty-fifth reunion (where she had been voted the youngest-looking member of the class) at the time of Dottie’s Commencement, and yet at heart, she feared, she was still a romantic; it excited her foolish fancy to think that a man who took a girl’s virginity had the power to make her his forever. She could not make out what Dottie’s own heart was dictating. Dottie was independent; she had her own bank account in the State Street Trust. What then was holding her back from seeing this man if she wanted to?

  She laid the compress on Dottie’s forehead, briskly drew the shades, and sat down on the bed, meaning to stay only a minute, to feel Dottie’s pulse. It appeared to be normal. “Dottie,” she said impulsively, tucking the coverlet around her, “I think you have to be true to your own lights in this. If you love ‘Dick’”—she brought out the name with difficulty—“perhaps you should take the initiative in trying to see him. Is it your pride that’s holding you back? Did he hurt you in some way? Did you have a quarrel or a misunderstanding?” “He doesn’t love me, Mother,” said Dottie in a low voice. “I just excite him sexually. He told me so.” Mrs. Renfrew closed her eyes for an instant, feeling something click inside her, rather unpleasantly, at hearing, with finality, what she had already guessed to be the case; then she picked up Dottie’s hand and squeezed it warmly. “So he was your lover.” There had only been one night, it seemed; the night she had tried to reach Dottie at the Vassar Club and Dottie did not come in. That was the time. “But you hardly knew him,” said Mrs. Renfrew. “Dick’s a fast worker,” replied Dottie with a twinkle and a cough. “And what happened afterward?” said Mrs. Renfrew gravely. “You never heard from him again? Was that it, Dottie?” Compassion for her daughter moved her heart. “I can’t explain,” said Dottie. “I don’t know myself what happened. I ran away, I suppose you could say.” Mrs. Renfrew clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Was it a very painful experience? Did you bleed a great deal, dear?” “No,” said Dottie. “It wasn’t painful that way. Actually, it was terribly thrilling and passionate. But afterward …Oh, Mother, I simply can’t tell you, I can never tell anyone, what happened afterward.” Mrs. Renfrew’s sensitive conjectures were wide of the mark. “He made me”—Dottie suddenly spoke up—“go to a doctor and get a contraceptive, one of those diaphragm things you were talking about.” Mrs. Renfrew was stunned; her wide bright eyes canvassed her daughter’s face, as if trying to reassemble her. “Perhaps that’s the modern way,” she finally ventured. “That’s what Kay said,” replied Dottie. She described her visit to the doctor. “But what were you supposed to do with it then?” asked Mrs. Renfrew. “That was the whole trouble,” said Dottie, flushing. And she told how she had sat for nearly six hours in Washington Square with the contraceptive apparatus on her lap. “I knew then he couldn’t care for me at all or he couldn’t have put me through that.” “Men are strange,” said Mrs. Renfrew. “Your father—” She stopped. “I sometimes think that they don’t want to know too much about that side of a woman’s life. It destroys an illusion.” “That was your generation, Mother. No. The truth is, Dick didn’t give me a thought. I have to be unsentimental, like Kay, and face that. I left the whole caboodle under a bench in Washington Square. Imagine the junkman’s surprise! What do you suppose he thought, Mother?” Mrs. Renfrew could not help smiling too. She understood now what had made Dottie shed tears in the Ritz. “So you thought,” she said gaily, “Dr. Perry and I were going to make you go back to the same woman doctor. Like seeing the same movie over. Oh, poor Dottie!” Despite themselves, both mother and daughter began to laugh.

  Mrs. Renfrew wiped her eyes. “Seriously, Dottie,” she said, “it’s queer that your ‘Dick’ wasn’t home all that time. What do you suppose he could have been doing? I rather agree with Kay that he couldn’t have sent you to the doctor just to make game of you.” “He just forgot,” said Dottie. “He stopped to have a drink in a bar, probably. That’s another thing, Mother. He drinks.” “Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Renfrew.

  He was a thoroughly bad hat, then, but that was the kind, of course, that nice women broke their hearts over. Mrs. Renfrew remembered the gay days of the war, when Dottie was still in short dresses with her hair in a big ribbon, and Sam, home on leave from camp, had christened a member of their set “the matrimonial submarine.” How attractive he had been, too, to dance with, though all the men disliked him and in the end he had drunk himself into the sanatorium after torpedoing three happy marriages! She nodded. “You’re right, Dottie,” she said firmly. “If he were serious about you, he would have realized the shock he’d given your feelings and tracked you down through Kay. Or there may be some good in him. He may have decided to leave you alone, knowing that he’d ruin your life if you fell in love with him. Had he been drinking when he seduced you?” “He didn’t seduce me, Mother. That’s vieux jeu. And I am in love with him. Do you think if he knew that …? He’s very proud, Mother. ‘I’m not in your class,’ he said. That’s one of the first things he told me. If I were to go to him and tell him …?”

  “I don’t know, Dottie,” Mrs. Renfrew sighed. It was not clear to her whether she herself was trying to dissuade Dottie from seeking this Dick out or the opposite. More than anything else, she wanted to guide Dottie to discover her own real feelings. There was one simple test. “Dear,” she said. “I think we’d better postpone your wedding for a few weeks. That will give you time to know what your real feelings are. Meanwhile, you rest, and I’ll get you a fresh compress.” She got up and smoothed down the counterpane, feeling decidedly more cheerful as she began to see that it really would be practicable, and probably the best solution, to put off the wedding for the present. “Luckily, Dottie,” she murmured, “we didn’t order the invitations today. Just think, if I hadn’t stopped at the Club for a manicure this morning, I should never have seen that newspaper, and you would never have told me what you did, and the invitations would be ordered. ‘For want of a nail …’” “But what about the dresses?” said Dottie. “The dresses will still be good a month from now,” replied Mrs. Renfrew. “We’ll lay the blame on Dr. Perry.” By this time, her active and sanguine mind had raced ahead another step; she was checking off the eventualities in case the wedding should be called off altogether in the end. She and Sam would have to compensate the bridesmaids for their dresses, but that would not amount to much: because of Polly Andrews, they had chosen an inexpensive model. And a few pieces of silver had already been marked, but fortunately in the old way, with the bride’s initials, so that they would come in handy some time. No wedding presents would have to be returned, barring Lakey’s Madonna, which could wait till Lakey came back. As for the wedding gown, it could either be kept or passed on to one of the younger cousins. At Mrs. Renfrew’s age, she had learned to cope with disappointments; young people, she had noticed, found it a great deal harder to adjust to a change of plans.

  When she came back with a fresh compress, she at first thought Dottie had fallen asleep, for her eyes were closed and she was breathing regularly. Mrs. Renfrew raised the window a crack and laid the cold towels gently on Dottie’s forehead, noticing with tenderness the strong widow’s peak. Then she tiptoed out of the room, thanking her stars that she had found the right remedy; as soon as the pressure of the oncoming wedding had been removed, Dottie had been able to relax. But just as she was closing the door, carefully, Dottie spoke.

  “I don’t want the wedding postponed. Brook would never understand.” “Nonsense, Dottie. We’ll just say that Dr. Perry—” “No,” said Dottie. “No, Mother. I’ve made up my mind.” Mrs. Renfrew came into the room again and shut the door behind her; she had heard old Margaret, who was an eavesdropper, prowling about. “Darling,” she said, “you thought you’d made up your mind before. You were very sure you loved Brook and could make him happy.” “I’m sure again,” said Dottie. Mrs. Renfrew advanced into the room with her precise,
light step; she had limped as a young girl and overcome it with exercises and golf. “Dottie,” she said firmly, “it’s cruel and wicked to marry a man you only half love. Especially an older man. It’s a kind of cheating. I’ve seen it happen among my own friends. You promise the man something that you can’t give. As long as that other man remains in the back of your mind. Like a hidden card up your sleeve.” She had grown quite agitated, and her golden head, with its silver glister, had begun to tremble a little, as if in memory of that old invalidism which they had called palsy in those days.

  To her immense distress, they began to quarrel, in low-pitched, well-bred voices; Mrs. Renfrew would not have thought this could happen between her and Dottie. She was telling Dottie that she must see Dick again, if only to make sure. “If you order me to, I’ll do it, Mother. But afterward I’ll kill myself. I’ll throw myself off the train.” “Please don’t be melodramatic, Dottie.” “It’s you who’re being melodramatic, Mother. Just allow me to marry Brook in peace.” Distractedly, Mrs. Renfrew was aware of the oddity of this situation, in which the roles were reversed, and the daughter was hurrying herself into a “suitable” marriage while the mother was pleading with her to seek out an unsuitable rake. This was, apparently, that “gulf between the generations” that had been discussed at her class reunion last June; one of the faculty members of Mrs. Renfrew’s class had stated it as a generalization that this new crop of girls was far less idealistic, less disinterested, as a body of educated women, than their mothers had been. Mrs. Renfrew had not believed it, noting to herself that Dottie and her friends were all going out to work, mostly at volunteer jobs, and were not trammeled by any of the fears and social constraints that had beset her own generation. And yet here was Dottie virtually demonstrating what that faculty member had said. Was it a sign of the times? Had the depression done it? Were girls nowadays afraid of taking a risk? She suspected that Dottie, with her poor health and Boston heritage, was terrified of becoming an old maid. That (not the other) was the “fate worse than death” for Dottie’s classmates. Yet marriage, as she had always impressed on Dottie, was a serious thing, a sacrament. Dottie did not love Brook; the certainty of this was beyond any doubt to Mrs. Renfrew’s eyes, and she felt as though she would be condoning a very grave sin if, knowing what she knew, she let her go ahead unreflecting. Did Dottie even respect Brook? If so, she ought to hesitate.