Edith Wharton - SSC 10

by The World Over (v2. 1)

  The atmosphere was warm to the returning wanderer. It was pleasant to see about him the animated replicas of the Copleys on the walls, and to listen again to the local intonations, with the funny stress on the last syllable. His unmarried Pepperel nieces were fresh and good-looking; and the youngest, Lyddy, judging from her photograph, conspicuously handsome. But Lyddy was not there. Cousin Martha, Mrs. Pepperel explained with a certain pride, was so fond of Lyddy that the girl had to be constantly with her; and since the preparations for the hundredth birthday had begun, Lyddy had been virtually a prisoner at Frostingham. “Martha wouldn’t even let her off to come and dine with you tonight; she says she’s too nervous and excited to be left without Lyddy. Lyddy is my most self-sacrificing child,” Mrs. Pepperel added complacently. One of the younger daughters laughed.

  “Cousin Martha says she’s going to leave Lyddy her seed-pearls!”

  “Priscilla—!” her mother rebuked her.

  “Well, mother, they are beauties.”

  “I should say they were,” Mrs. Pepperel bridled. “The old Wrigglesworth seed-pearls—simply priceless. Martha’s been offered anything for them! All I can say is, if my child gets them, she’s deserved it.”

  Warbeck reflected. “Were they the funny old ornaments that everybody laughed at when Martha wore them at Grandma Warbeck’s famous ball?”

  His sister wrinkled her brows. “That wonderful ball of Grandma’s? Did Martha wear them there, I wonder—all those centuries ago? I suppose then that nobody appreciated them,” she murmured.

  Warbeck felt as if he were in a dream in which everything happens upside-down. He was listening to his sister’s familiar kind of family anecdote, told in familiar words and in a familiar setting; but the Family Tyrant, once named with mingled awe and pride, was no longer the all-powerful Grandma Warbeck of his childhood, but her effaced imperceptible victim, Martha Little. Warbeck listened sympathetically, yet he felt an underlying constraint. His sister obviously thought he lacked interest in the Frostingham celebrations, and even her husband, whose mental processes were so slow and subterranean that they never altered his motionless countenance, was heard to mutter: “Well, I don’t suppose many families can produce a brace of centenarians in one year.”

  “A brace—?” Warbeck laughed, while the nieces giggled, and their mother looked suddenly grave.

  “You know, Grayson, I’ve never approved of the Perches forcing themselves in.” She turned to Warbeck. “You’ve been away so long that you won’t understand; but I do think it shows a lack of delicacy in the Perches.”

  “Why, what have they done?” Warbeck asked; while the nieces’ giggles grew uncontrollable.

  “Dragged an old Perch great-uncle out of goodness knows where, on the pretext that he’s a hundred too. Of course we never heard a word of it till your aunts and I decided to do something appropriate about Martha Little. And how do we know he is a hundred?”

  “Sara!” her husband interjected.

  “Well, I think we ought to have asked for an affidavit before a notary. Crowding in at the eleventh hour! Why, Syngleton Perch doesn’t even live in Massachusetts. Why don’t they have their centenary in Rhode Island? Because they know nobody’d go to it—that’s why!”

  “Sara, the excitement’s been too much for you,” said Mr. Pepperel judicially.

  “Well, I believe it will be, if this sort of thing goes on. Girls, are you sure there are programmes enough? Come—we’d better go up to the drawing-room and go over the list again.” She turned affectionately to her brother. “It’ll make all the difference to Martha, your being here. She was so excited when she heard you were coming. You’ve got to sit on the platform next to her—or next but one. Of course she must be between the Senator and the Bishop. Syngleton Perch wanted to crowd into the third place; but it’s yours, Martha says; and of course when Martha says a thing, that settles it!”

  “Medes and Persians,” muttered Mr. Pepperel, with a wink which did not displace his features; but his wife interposed: “Grayson, you know I hate your saying disrespectful things about Martha!”

  Warbeck went to bed full of plans for the next day: old friends to be looked up, the Museums to be seen, and a tramp out on the Mill Dam, down the throat of a rousing Boston east wind. But these invigorating plans were shattered by an early message from Frostingham. Cousin Martha Little expected Warbeck to come and see her; he was to lunch early and be at Frostingham at two sharp. And he must not fail to be punctual, for before her afternoon nap cousin Martha was to have a last fitting of her dress for the ceremony.

  “You’d think it was her wedding dress!” Warbeck ventured jocosely; but Mrs. Pepperel received the remark without a smile. “Martha is very wonderful,” she murmured; and her brother acquiesced: “She must be.”

  At two sharp his car drew up before the little old Grayson house. On the way out to Frostingham the morning papers had shown him photographs of its pilastered front, and a small figure leaning on a stick between the elaborate door-lights. “Two Relics of a Historic Past,” the headline ran.

  Warbeck, guided by the radiant Lyddy, was led into a small square parlour furnished with the traditional Copleys and mahogany. He perceived that old Grayson’s dingy little house had been an unsuspected treasury of family relics; and enthroned among them sat the supreme relic, the Crown Jewel of the clan.

  “You don’t recognize your cousin Martha!” shrilled a small reedy voice, and a mummied hand shot out of its lace ruffles with a slight upward tilt which Warbeck took as hint to salute it. The hand tasted like an old brown glove that had been kept in a sandal-wood box.

  “Of course I know you, cousin Martha. You’re not changed the least little bit!”

  She lifted from her ruffles a small mottled face like a fruit just changing into a seed-pod. Her expression was obviously resentful. “Not changed? Then you haven’t noticed the new way I do my hair?”

  The challenge disconcerted Warbeck. “Well, you know, it’s a long time since we met—going on for thirty years,” he bantered.

  “Thirty years?” She wrinkled her brows. “When I was as young as that I suppose I still wore a pompadour!”

  When she was as young—as seventy! Warbeck felt like a gawky school-boy. He was at a loss what to say next; but the radiant Lyddy gave him his clue. “Cousin Martha was so delighted when she heard you were coming all the way from Peru on purpose for her Birthday.” Her eyes met his with such a look of liquid candour that he saw she believed in the legend herself.

  “Well, I don’t suppose many of the family have come from farther off than I have,” he boasted hypocritically.

  Miss Little tilted up her chin again. “Did you fly?” she snapped; and without waiting for his answer: “I’m going to fly this summer. I wanted to go up before my birthday; it would have looked well in the papers. But the weather’s been too unsettled.”

  It would have looked well in the papers’. Warbeck listened to her, stupefied. Was it the old Martha Little speaking? There was something changed in Boston, after all. But she began to glance nervously toward the door. “Lyddy, I think I heard the bell.”

  “I’ll go and see, cousin Martha.”

  Miss Little sank back into her cushions with a satisfied smile. “These reporters—!”

  “Ah—you think it’s an interview?”

  She pursed up her unsteady slit of a mouth. “As if I hadn’t told them everything already! It’s all coming out in the papers tomorrow. Haven’t touched wine or black coffee for forty years… Light massage every morning; very light supper at six… I cleaned out the canary’s cage myself every day till last December… Oh, and I love my Sunday sermon on the wireless… But they won’t leave a poor old woman in peace. ‘Miss Little, won’t you give us your views on President Coolidge—or on companionate marriage?’ I suppose this one wants to force himself in for the rehearsal.”

  “The rehearsal?”

  She pursed up her mouth again. “Sara Pepperel didn’t tell you? Such featherheads,
all those Pepperels! Even Lyddy—though she’s a good child… I’m to try on my dress at three; and after that, just a little informal preparation for the ceremony. The Frostingham selectmen are to present me with a cane … a gold-headed cane with an inscription … Lyddy Her thread of a voice rose in a sudden angry pipe.

  Lyddy thrust in a flushed and anxious face. “Oh, cousin Martha—”

  “Well, is it a reporter? What paper? Tell him, if he’ll promise to sit perfectly quiet…”

  “It’s not a reporter, cousin Martha. It’s—it’s cousin Syngleton Perch. He says he wants to pay you his respects: and he thinks he ought to take part in the rehearsal. Now please don’t excite yourself, cousin Martha!”

  “Excite myself, child? Syngleton Perch can’t steal my birthday, can he? If he chooses to assist at it—after all, the Perches are our own people; his mother was a Wrigglesworth.” Miss Little drew herself up by the arms of her chair. “Show your cousin Syngleton in, my dear.”

  On the threshold a middle-aged motherly voice said, rather loudly: “This way, uncle Syngleton. You won’t take my arm? Well, then put your stick there; so—this way; careful …” and there tottered in, projected forward by a series of jaunty jerks, and the arm of his unseen guide, a small old gentleman in a short pea-jacket, with a round withered head buried in layers of woollen scarf, and eyes hidden behind a huge pair of black spectacles.

  “Where’s my old friend Martha Little? Now, then, Marty, don’t you try and hide yourself away from young Syngleton. Ah, there she is! I see her!” cousin Syngleton rattled out in a succession of parrot-like ejaculations, as his elderly Antigone and the young Lyddy steered him cautiously toward Miss Little’s throne.

  From it she critically observed the approach of the rival centenarian; and as he reached her side, and stretched out his smartly-gloved hand, she dropped hers into it with a faint laugh. “Well, you really are a hundred, Syngleton Perch; there’s no doubt about that,” she said in her high chirp. “And I wonder whether you haven’t postponed your anniversary a year or two?” she added with a caustic touch, and a tilt of her chin toward Warbeck.

  

  III.

  Transporting centenarians from one floor to another was no doubt a delicate business, for the vigilant Lyddy had staged the trying-on of the ceremonial dress in the dining-room, where the rehearsal was also to take place. Miss Little withdrew, and cousin Syngleton Perch’s watchful relative, having installed him in an armchair facing Warbeck’s as carefully as if she had been balancing a basket of eggs on a picket fence, slipped off with an apologetic smile to assist at the trying-on. “I know you’ll take care of him, cousin Henly,” she murmured in a last appeal; and added, bending to Warbeck’s ear: “Please remember he’s a little deaf; and don’t let him get too excited talking about his love-affairs.”

  Uncle Syngleton, wedged in tightly with cushions, and sustained by a footstool, peered doubtfully at Warbeck as the latter held out his cigarette-case. “Tobacco? Well … look here, young man, what paper do you represent?” he asked, his knotty old hand yearningly poised above the coveted cigarette.

  Warbeck explained in a loud voice that he was not a journalist, but a member of the family; but Mr. Perch shook his head incredulously. “That’s what they all say; worming themselves in everywhere. Plain truth is, I never saw you before, nor you me. But see here; we may have to wait an hour while that young charmer gets into her party togs, and I don’t know’s I can hold out that long without a puff of tobacco.” He shot a wrinkled smile at Warbeck. “Time was when I’d’a been in there myself, assisting at the dishabille.” (He pronounced the first syllable dish.) A look of caution replaced his confidential smirk. “Well, young man, I suppose what you want is my receipt for keeping hale and hearty up to the century line. But there’s nothing new about it: it’s just the golden rule of good behaviour that our mothers taught us in the nursery. No wine, no tobacco, no worn—. Well,” he broke off, with a yearning smile at the cigarette-case, “I don’t mind if I do. Got a light, young gentleman? Though if I was to assist at an undressing, I don’t say,” he added meditatively, “that it’d be Martha Little’s I’d choose. I remember her when she warn’t over thirty—too much like a hygienic cigarette even then, for my fancy. De-nicotinized, I call her. Well, I like the unexpurgated style better.” He held out his twitching hand to Warbeck’s lighter, and inserted a cigarette between his purplish lips. “Some punch in that! Only don’t you give me away, will you? Not in the papers, I mean. Remember old Syngleton Perch’s slogan: ‘Live straight and you’ll live long. No wine, no tobacco, no worn—’.” Again he broke off, and thumped his crumpled fist excitedly against the chair-arm. “Damn it, sir, I never can finish that lie, somehow! Old Syngleton a vestal? Not if I know anything about him!”

  The door opened, and Lyddy and the motherly Antigone showed their flushed faces. “Now then, uncle Syngleton—all ready!”

  They were too much engrossed to notice Warbeck, but he saw that his help was welcome, for extricating Syngleton from his armchair was like hooking up a broken cork which, at each prod, slips down farther into the neck of the bottle. Once on his legs he goose-stepped valiantly forward; but until he had been balanced on them he tended to fold up at the very moment when his supporters thought they could prudently release him.

  The transit accomplished, Warbeck found himself in a room from which the dining-table had been removed to make way for an improvised platform supporting a row of armchairs. In the central armchair Martha Little, small and hieratic, sat enthroned. About her billowed the rich folds of a silvery shot-silk, and the Wrigglesworth seed-pearls hung over her hollow chest and depended from her dusky withered ears. A row of people sat facing her, at the opposite end of the room, and Warbeck noticed that two or three already had their pens in leash above open notebooks. A strange young woman of fashionable silhouette was stooping over the shot-silk draperies and ruffling them with a professional touch. “Isn’t she too old-world for anything? Just the Martha Washington note: isn’t it lovely, with her pearls? Please note: The Wrigglesworth pearls, Miss Lusky,” she recommended to a zealous reportress with suspended pen.

  “Now, whatever you do, don’t shake me!” snapped the shot-silk divinity, as Syngleton and his supporters neared the platform. (“It’s the powder in her hair she’s nervous about,” Lyddy whispered to Warbeck.)

  The business of raising the co-divinity to her side was at once ticklish and laborious, for Mr. Perch resented feminine assistance in the presence of strange men, and Warbeck, even with the bungling support of one of the journalists, found it difficult to get his centenarian relative hoisted to the platform. Any attempt to lift him caused his legs to shoot upward, and to steady and direct this levitating tendency required an experience in which both assistants were lacking.

  “There!” his household Antigone intervened, seizing one ankle while Lyddy clutched the other; and thus ballasted Syngleton Perch recovered his powers of self-direction and made for the armchair on Miss Little’s right. At his approach she uttered a shrill cry and tried to raise herself from her seat.

  “No, no! This is the Bishop’s!” she protested, defending the chair with her mittened hand.

  “Oh, my—there go all the folds of her skirt,” wailed the dress-maker from the background.

  Syngleton Perch stood on the platform and his bullet head grew purple. “Can’t stand—got to sit down or keep going,” he snapped.

  Martha Little subsided majestically among her disordered folds. “Well—keep going!” she decreed.

  “Oh, cousin Martha,” Lyddy murmured.

  “Well, what of cousin Martha? It’s my rehearsal, isn’t it?” the lady retorted, like a child whimpering for a toy.

  “Cousin Martha—cousin Martha!” Lyddy whispered, while Syngleton, with flickering legs, protested: “Don’t I belong anywhere in this show?” and Warbeck caught Lyddy’s warning murmur: “Don’t forget, cousin Martha, his mother was a Wrigglesworth!”

  As if by magi
c Miss Little’s exasperation gave way to a resigned grimace. “He says so,” she muttered sulkily; but the appeal to the great ancestral name had not been vain, and she suffered her rival to be established in the armchair just beyond the Bishop’s, while his guide, hovering over his shoulder, announced to the journalists: “Mr. Syngleton Perch, of South Perch, Rhode Island, whose hundredth birthday will be celebrated with that of his cousin Miss Little tomorrow—”

  “H’m—tomorrow!” Miss Little suddenly exclaimed, again attempting to rise from her throne; while Syngleton’s staccato began to unroll the automatic phrase: “I suppose you young men all want to know my receipt for keeping hale and hearty up to the century line. Well, there’s nothing new about it: it’s just the golden rule … the … what the devil’s that?” he broke off with a jerk of his chin toward the door.

  Warbeck saw that an object had been handed into the room by a maid, and was being passed from hand to hand up to the platform. “Oh,” Lyddy exclaimed breathlessly, “of course!

  It’s the ebony cane! The Selectmen have sent it up for cousin Martha to try today, so that she’ll be sure it was just right for her to lean on when she walks out of the Town Hall tomorrow after the ceremony. Look what a beauty it is—you’ll let these gentlemen look at it, won’t you, cousin Martha?”

  “If they can look at me I suppose they can look at my cane,” said Miss Little imperially, while the commemorative stick was passed about the room amid admiring exclamations, and attempts to decipher its laudatory inscription. “‘Offered to Frostingham’s most beloved and distinguished citizen, Martha Wrigglesworth Little, in commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of her birth, by her friends the Mayor and Selectmen’ … very suitable, very interesting,” an elderly cousin read aloud with proper emotion, while Mr. Perch was heard to enquire anxiously: “Isn’t there anything about me on that cane?” and his companion reassured him: “Of course South Perch means to offer you one of your very own when we go home.”