My American

by Stella Gibbons

  Now that Amy had fewer chances to get to the British Museum, the old man lying on his cannons and The Light of the World rather took the place in her affections of the Amaravati Tope. St. Paul’s was useful to her in many ways; it not only provided her with a beautiful refuge from the roaring streets and a place where she ate her sandwiches on wet days, but a good deal of The Great White Rajah’s Servant was written there, with a three and sixpenny fountain pen purchased by Amy out of her first week’s salary on a very small scribbling block. She first politely approached a verger and said that she wrote every week to a cousin in Australia who was very interested in churches as he was going to be a curate, and would it matter if she took down some notes about the Cathedral sometimes to send to him? The verger, after a rather lengthy study of her neat person and inquiring face, said that he supposed it would be all right, and she settled down with a light heart to start Chapter Five.

  She had not been at the office a day before she decided that it would be quite impossible to write there. Miss Grace watched her closely all the time without seeming to, and often she would look up from her seat at the table by the door to find Mr. Danesford’s bloodshot, melancholy eyes fixed immovably upon her in a long, terrifying stare. Even Lord Welwoodham had said to her more than once “Not writing a story, are you, Miss Lee? No, no, that would never do.” And Mr. Ramage had said when she thanked him for telling Lord Welwoodham about her, “Well, you’re quite safe so long as you don’t try to write for The Prize!”

  The fact was (though she was not the person to realize it) they found her a completely satisfactory office girl and were anxious not to lose her. She was so neat, polite, intelligent and efficient that they all found it hard to realize that she was poor Lee’s daughter. She seemed to belong to a lower caste, to the world of respectable small shopkeepers, with her touch of anxious politeness and her faint cockney accent—though that, Lord Welwoodham had noticed with some amusement, was fading. It must be unconscious mimicry, he decided, for I’ll swear she never thinks about the difference between my accent and her own (of poor Miss Grace’s accent Lord Welwoodham had the same opinion that he had of Amy’s, but Mr. Danesford’s voice had such a rich, deep sad colour to its tones that not even Lord Welwoodham thought about accents in connection with him, any more than one thinks of them in connection with a bloodhound’s bay). That cockney whine and her haberdashery-respectability must be the mother, I suppose, thought Lord Welwoodham. Poor Lee. Caught young.

  For Lord Welwoodham, like his father before him, was a charming chap but a chap so shut in by his caste that he knew little about human nature outside it.

  But although they all in their different ways approved of her, Mr. Danesford never unbent towards her, never bayed a single stately joke at her nor praised her when she did right, but only gloomily instructed her day by day in her tiny yet necessary duties, and she continued to be, if not exactly frightened, very much in awe of him.

  CHAPTER XIII

  ON A SNOWY night four years later, the house in Vine Falls was echoing to music. The family was in the living-room amusing itself, the older members with bridge and the younger ones with talking against the noise of the radio, while at the piano sat Bob, vamping a soft accompaniment to the tunes coming over the air and doing it very well.

  Strangers were always surprised to learn that he could play the piano, for medical students usually prefer the hotter instruments, but his family had been used ever since he was a little boy to hearing the piano singing under his big hands; at first uncertainly in stiff little traditional pieces given him by his music mistress (a cousin of that same old Miss Cordell present at the home-coming garden party) and later, as he grew older, with easy casual sweetness. He read music slowly yet accurately, but was happier when finding the prettiest way through the newest tune by ear, or playing an air thirty years old to please his mother. The piano and boxing were his chief recreations in his first year at the Owen Vallance Medical School; he had an old Bosendorfer in his rooms at Morgan, where he lived during term, and made himself temporarily unpopular with his fellow boarders by playing it after midnight as a rest from his text-books.

  At a few months over twenty he was a very large young man indeed, with what Lou called “the swellest figure around.” But he was a little too thin, because he was just entering (without anyone knowing it, least of all himself) upon that second adolescence which many young men pass through between twenty and twenty-five, when they get mysterious skin-troubles, cannot decide on a career, tire easily, are unconsciously cruel and moody with their young women, and finally emerge not much the worse (if they are lucky) into maturity.

  Bob, who was only at the beginning of these trials, had no regular young woman with whom to be cruel and moody, though he squired dozens of girls (he usually picked them small and dark) from Vine Falls and Morgan and Alva to the movies and dances, and kissed them good-night with ardour but without much personal interest. It was always he who said cheerfully on these occasions, “Well, I suppose we’d better be getting along now.” But the gentleness and strength that went with his nice manners and unconventional good looks made him irresistible to most girls, and he often came home feeling puzzled and vaguely guilty from an evening that had begun pleasantly enough, but had ended—heaven knew why, he didn’t—in temper or tears.

  The tempo of his nature, like that of a piece of music, was slow. Like some music it was also deep and sweet, but it could not be forced, and it was the despair of the quickly-fired, aware girls who were his contemporaries; they felt the depth and sweetness in him but could not, so to speak, get at it. And if they tried to comfort themselves by thinking scornfully, “He’s only a kid,” the thought rang singularly false inside their heads (where there was usually ample room for it to ring) for he certainly had none of the crudeness and freshness of a kid; his gentle easy manner covered a calm self-assurance.

  This confidence grew out of a natural happiness, that nothing—so far—had shattered. He had grown to young manhood in a happy prosperous American home, sheltered by a father and mother who loved one another and loved their children; it would have been strange had he not been happy.

  And only one, of all the girls he danced with, kissed, and took to the movies, knew that he was romantic, that he could not fall in love with love as most young men do, but must find the one girl.

  Helen was sitting on the couch beside Irene, talking over plans for the Christmas vacation which was only a few days old. Bob had gone before dinner to fetch her through the snowstorm from her home, which was only a quarter of a mile or so down the hill, and brought her up hanging on to his arm, their laughing faces wet with snow, her eyelashes sticking out in wet points above her wind-rosed cheeks. He steered her along the sidewalk, in the raccoon coat and warm ski-ing trousers she had put on as the only sensible wear in such weather. They were breathless and shouting with laughter, the snow stinging their faces.

  “Look at that crazy pair,” said Helen’s mother, pleased, leaning back in the car as it left the walkers behind on the short climb up to the Vorst home. “They don’t care so long as they’re together.”

  Mr. Viner, a slim man whose little dark Imperial beard gave him a foreign air, smiled and nodded and both felt a glow of comfort, a strong sense of the solidity of their family traditions all round them, as they drove on through the gale.

  Helen had been happy, hanging on to Bob’s arm and drawing her breath in gasps against the force of the wind, and loving the pure smell of the driving snow. She knew that this—the feel of Bob’s warm firm arm, the sound of his laughing voice coming down to her above the wind, the knowledge that they were alone together, fighting the storm side by side—was happiness. She knew that when she was an old woman, whatever happened between Bob and herself, she would remember such moments with the deepest tenderness that her heart had ever known.

  But this evening she was also in a mood of natural girlish confidence, hopeful and gay. Bob had been struck almost into shyness, for a moment,
at the first sight of her! And when he got his breath back he had said, still staring, “Hullo, Helen,” and forgotten to give her his usual cousinly kiss.

  Helen, who knew everything about how young men fell in love, thought that these were hopeful signs.

  Perhaps … this very evening … he would … say something.

  She was his special now—at least, in one way. He wrote to no other girl, she knew, as he wrote to her; short letters, but letting her know what he was thinking and feeling. He wrote in short stiff sentences that were nevertheless exciting to her because she knew him so well and could give each word its proper weight and shade of meaning as though she were translating from a foreign tongue.

  She often wondered if he translated her letters in the same way? But there was not so much need for him to, for she wrote him everything (save only one thing) that she was thinking and feeling, and—and a man’s mind didn’t work the same way as a girl’s, anyway, and Bob was more reserved than she was and could not express his feelings so easily: men often couldn’t. He was younger in many ways, too, than she. Yet in some ways he made her feel the younger, and she loved that, because she was so sensible that she was always treated by her crowd at college as adviser-in-chief—a rôle which can become unsatisfying.

  She was so happy in the special course of Drama study that she was taking at Cedars, a women’s college in the next state, her life was so crowded with delightful activities and and friends, that she felt hardly a shadow of pain about her caring for Bob. She did not call her feeling for him “love,” she thought of it as “caring”, and no doubts about the future had crept into her heart. Sometimes, when their visits home had not coincided, and she had not seen him in months, she felt faintly alarmed at the strength of her longing to see him again. But as soon as they met she felt quite easy once more; they were so happy together in the old familiar places they had known since they were in rompers, and it seemed unbelievable that she should have so longed to see Bob again—that long-legged creature with the lock of hair he never would wear decently short, who only a few years ago had held a place in her heart a long way below Eva le Gallienne!

  Ah, but now there was no question (this always frightened her when she admitted it to herself) about who came first with her! She was an unusually loving daughter in that casual post-Jazz age, a tender elder sister to the conceited and skinny Stebby now working his way with unexpected intelligence through High, a loyal friend, and a soul dedicated to whatever demands the Drama might make—but Bob came first. He was the “you” in a dozen or so poems hidden in a locked desk that would never be shown to a dearest friend, much less to an editor. He was her standard of comparison for all her luckless young men, who did not so much come off badly as never get a look in at all. He grew through her whole life like the root, stem and branches of a big gentle tree; and as she sat to-night in her pale yellow dress, moving her shoulders gently in time to Bob’s playing and smiling at Irene as they discussed what they would wear to the Frankwood’s party on Thursday, she was in exactly the same plight as the Princess in the fairy story. Dowered with beauty, goodness, riches, but … she shall prick her finger on a spinning wheel. The wound was already there, and she in the magic sleep blinding her to all faces but one.

  “Oh!” Irene suddenly interrupted herself. “I knew I had something to tell you! Francey Carr’s left Frankwood’s and nobody knows where she’s gone!”

  “She’s gone to Morgan. Dan got her a job,” observed Lou, looking up from the latest Kathleen Norris.

  “How do you know?” demanded Irene.

  “How does she ever know anything?” Bob glanced across the glossy surface of the piano and smiled, nodding his fair head as if he liked the sound of his own playing and the pretty picture made by the group of girls near the fire. “Myron told her, of course.”

  “Is that so, Lou?”

  Lou nodded, not looking up.

  “Oh, well—I’m glad if she’s fixed up.” Irene looked a little embarrassed and lit another cigarette. She had grown into a pretty, smart and completely ordinary girl, and was more than a little jealous of Lou, who at nearly sixteen wore her plain summer ginghams and tough fall coats with the casual but unmistakable air that means a girl is going to be not merely a follower of styles but a setter of them. This was as it should be, for Lou planned to be a dress-designer. She was plain and slender with a good figure, a good skin, and a small but manageable head of fair hair. Irene, who was to be married in the spring to Jesson, the Parlour-Pink, often felt vaguely dissatisfied with her own conventionally smart appearance.

  “She was working on the stocking-counter at Frank-woods, you know,” Irene went on.

  “I didn’t know,” said Helen. “Bob never told me the last time he wrote—somewhere ’round Independence Day, that would have been.”

  “Well!” Bob struck a tremendous chord, causing the table of elderly bridge players at the far end of the room to look up, and his Aunt Carol Viner to say mildly, “Bob, please! I’m trying to concentrate!”

  “I get such a heap of time to write you or anyone else a Sunday supplement about the old home town, don’t I? Besides, I didn’t think a nice girl like you would want to hear about a cheap skate like Francey.”

  They smiled at one another across the room, and Bob struck two soft chords.

  If ever I fall for anyone I hope I’ll be cagier about it than Helen is, thought Lou, turning over three pages of the Kathleen Norris. Anybody can see how she is about Bob. Suspecting a story from Irene’s embarrassed tone, she smoothly went on:

  “Why are you glad she’s fixed up?”

  “Oh—it wasn’t anything, only I was in Frankwoods on Monday to get some gloves and Francey got so darned fresh with me I reported her.”

  Helen said nothing. The shrill little voice jarred on her, with its fashionable use of slang and she did not like the picture of Irene, bright ornament of the Junior League, patronizing poor stupid Francey Carr.

  Bob looked across at his sister and observed:

  “Well, that was sweet of you.”

  “Well, I know it sounds kind of mean, Helen, but honestly, it was for her own good——”

  “And not to get a bit of your own back, why no!”

  Bob struck another tremendous chord.

  “Well, I didn’t say anything for a while, because I knew how she always used to try and start a fight when we were kids—remember, Helen?—but at last she got me so mad, and Mrs. Boadman——”

  “Attaboy!” And Bob struck up The Star-Spangled Banner in hideous contrast with the radio, causing the bridge-players to jump and look up irritably, while his father called:

  “Bob! Please!”

  The three girls laughed; it was an old family joke whose origin was lost in the Vorst-Viner past that Bob always whistled this tune whenever Mrs. Boadman’s name came up.

  “Mrs. Boadman happened to be there getting stockings for Elenor, and she whispered to me that if I didn’t report Francey someone else would, and not so nicely, either——”

  “So you went right ahead and did it nicely?” said Lou, shutting her book and looking at her sister with her head on one side.

  “Yes, I did. I said, ‘I’m afraid I shall have to report you——”

  “And what did Francey say?”

  “Oh, she didn’t say a thing, she was throwing the stockings around and just burning up—you know how she always does. But after I’d reported her, what do you think she had the neck to say?”

  “Irene Vorst, you’re lousy!” said Lou promptly, and they all laughed.

  “Lou dear, I don’t like to hear you talk like that, it’s ugly,” called her mother absently from the other end of the room.

  “It’s all right, Aunt Sharlie, she was only quoting,” said Helen. “Well, then what happened?”

  “Yes, that’s just what she did say, and you should have seen Mrs. Boadman and everybody’s faces! And when I went in yesterday there was a new girl on the stockings, and they told me Francey�
�d gone.”

  “Fired, do you mean?” Bob’s voice was suddenly stern and he looked quickly across at his sister.

  “Gosh, no! She just walked out, the girl said.”

  “Well, it’s no thanks to you if she wasn’t fired.” Bob got up from the piano and came across to the girls and sat down on the sofa between Irene and Helen with his arms behind his head. “It was a low-down thing to do.”

  “She asked for it!” cried Irene indignantly.

  “Maybe she did, but you ought to have taken no notice. You know Francey’s about as dumb as anyone could be. Besides, she’s jealous of you girls—always has been.”

  Helen nodded. “Yes—I always used to notice when we were kids how she looked when she saw us at the movies, and I used to feel sorry for her.”

  “Well, I wasn’t,” said Irene hardly. “I always thought she was just a cheap skate and I do now. But Bob always had a kind of crush on her, hadn’t he, Lou—Helen? You remember?”

  “Yes, and he went dancing with her last summer,” said Lou composedly.

  “How do you know?” demanded Bob, surprised. “You can’t have seen us, she used to meet me at a place in Morgan.”

  “I didn’t see you, smarty, but Myron’s got a friend who knows someone in a band in Morgan and this bandman told Myron’s friend he’d seen you and the friend told Myron and Myron told me.”

  “All right, all right, I give up.” Bob put his head in his hands. “You win.”

  “Oh, well, if Dan’s got her a job, that’s swell,” concluded Irene, taking another cigarette. Lou casually took one as well, but on her mother’s voice calling in the same absent tone:

  “No, Lou dear. Not until you’re eighteen,” she put it back with grin.

  A few years ago, Mrs. Vorst would not so easily have been able to stop a young daughter from smoking, for social opinion would have been on the daughter’s side. But the collapse of the Coolidge Prosperity Era, and the Depression that followed, had helped a natural reaction to set in against the licence and bad manners of the Jazz Age, and Bob and Irene and Lou, Helen and Stebby, had grown up into a world in which “hard-boiled” was no longer the highest word of praise for an American girl. The knee-length skirts and close shingle of the 1920’s seemed like an amusing dream to Helen and Irene in their long graceful evening frocks balanced by clusters of soft curls; and Helen, like a number of her friends, did not smoke. Because everyone took girls smoking for granted, it would never have, for these twenty-year-olds, the daring appeal as of a broken tabu that it had for their elder sisters who were now nearing the thirties. If Irene talked cheap slang, drank whenever she could get drink, and smoked hard it was because she liked doing those things, not because she saw herself—as Jeanette Waldron had—as a smasher of blue-nosed Victorian traditions. Nevertheless, the Jazz Age had branded its followers for life. Jeanette and Boone, who had been married for two years, were just finding this out.