The Last Adam (8 page)

"Oh," faltered Mrs. Banning, "how did she get it? Why, how dreadful! She couldn't hurt herself, could she?"

"I don't care what she does to herself; it's the car I'm worried about. She got it because I was fool enough to leave the keys in it. How did I know she was going to sneak around and take it when I wasn't looking? If you and Father can't make her stop, I  can. I'll spank the pants off her —"

"Now, Guy!" interrupted Mrs. Banning. "That's enough. I want you to control your temper. I quite understand that you're upset; and there's no excuse for Virginia. Your father will deal with it —"

"He won't do anything to her; he never does—"

"Now, darling, we aren't going to spoil this week-end with quarrelling. Virginia is younger than you are. She doesn't always understand —"

"Understand?" he groaned. "What doesn't she understand? The English language? And, my God, she's practically seventeen. You talk as if she were about ten. That's the whole trouble, really. Everybody treats her like a baby. She ought to be at school. Except, I suppose, no decent school would take her, after she's been fired from everywhere on the map."

Mrs. Banning arose. "We won't talk about it when you're so excited, dear. You go and finish dressing. I'm not excusing Virginia; it was very wrong of her to take your car without your permission, and I know she won't do it again. And, Guy, try to be a little patient with her, won't you? She's not very strong, and she's not very happy. She really hasn't a friend her own age except Valeria Hoyt —"

"All right," he said, "all right! I suppose you would make her behave if you could; and if you don't, you just can't." He turned and went out.

His mother, following him, went to the stairs. The slight weight of her small, but carefully recorded and clearly seen concerns made her frown a little. She could, almost simultaneously, be anxious about Virginia; regret Guy's violence when annoyed; remember to speak to Mary about the mint sauce. From the afternoon's meeting of the School Committee, she kept her resolve to do something—perhaps appeal to Hartford—about Doctor Bull's utter neglect of his duties in-regard to the compulsory vaccination of the school children at Cold Hill. Plainly the county authorities weren't going to do anything about it. Her own personal distaste for Doctor Bull, his boorishness, his coarse, roaring manner, his callous, undoubtedly ignorant neglect of his work and his patients, she tried to keep out of it; but really it was almost incredible that a family like the Bulls could have produced such a person!

From her encounter with Doctor Wyck, the Rector, she had the matters of seeing that flowers for the altar, in the proper, seasonally difficult red of an Apostle and Martyr, were on hand on Tuesday. When Doctor Wyck spoke of Tuesday, she had, with the greatest presence of mind, been able to remember that it was
v
St. Matthias's Day, and say so, before he made his own reference to the Feast of Our Patron. She was, after all, one of the few that Doctor Wyck relied on for a decorous High Church attitude, and she would have been much chagrined if she had let him down.

Then there was poor Mamie Talbot. She must really go over to-morrow and see for herself if anything could be done to make the child more comfortable. Mamie's illness brought back the never welcome thought of Doctor Bull; and she wondered if Doctor Verney couldn't be persuaded—Doctor Bull's gross negligence and incompetence made it really Doctor Verney's Christian duty—to come up and—

In the hall and along the stairs, the walls were papered in the modern copy of an old pattern. Vertically, horizontally, and obliquely, in exact alignment, three sage-green designs repeated themselves on the white ground. One was a stiff, heraldic eagle, his claws full of furled American flags; one was a laurel-wreathed bouquet of cannon, swords, muskets, and infantry drums. The third showed the gaunt face of President Jackson. Below his bust, the cleft streamer read:
Our Federal Union it must be preserved.
Mrs. Banning halted and studied it, startled, for she thought that she had seen a stain near the top at the end. Her mind jumped instantly to the chance of a tub overflowing in the bath between Guy's room and Virginia's. Relieved, she realized then that it was only a shadow, and went on.

Turning back through the hall, the half-open door gave her a glimpse of the warm dusk in the library. A mixture of lamplight and failing firelight shone up the panelled, urn-topped doors of a secretary desk from her great-grandfather's New Haven house. Her husband sat before it, the pen in his hand moving steadily. Beyond his small, neat shoulders and upright head, she could see the books climbing the wall in unbroken rows through the aureate twilight, gilt titles catching the glow. From this glimpse as from the tranquil hall, and from the dining-room (now that she went through it) with the fine sideboard, the laid oval table with candles unlighted, the four good Chippendale chairs— , she wished that she had four more, instead of three more; but seven, when they were such exceptionally good and authentic ones, was a respectable number— Mrs. Banning could take the quiet, never-ending, often not even conscious, pleasure of a house by years of patient effort made exactly the way she wanted it, and functioning serenely under her attentive eye.

The pantry and kitchen were glowing, full of a savoury warmth of good cooking, a cheery cleanliness and shining order in the porcelain and enamel, the glass and non-corrosive metals of modern equipment. Mary, seated by the prim burnt orange curtains, was reading the morning paper. Ethel was calmly busy over pots steaming on the long stove. Mary put down the paper and stood up. Ethel said: "Good evening, ma'am."

"Oh, Ethel, that smells very nice," Mrs. Banning said contented. "Mary, will you remember to use the little silver boat for the mint sauce, please? And will you bring some ice and a shaker into the library in about five minutes? I think Mr. Banning and Guy would like a cocktail."

Laying down the tapering black shadows of screening cedars, gilding the enclosing fence of woven chestnut paling, Virginia watched her headlights sweep the garage and stable. Immediately mounted up the boom of deep-throated barking. Virginia could see, now that she was past the fence, the twin dog-houses near the door of Larry's living quarters. Out of them were thrust the smooth piebald heads, large ears cocked bristling, belligerent, of the Great Danes. Observing that this car was going right into the garage, first Delilah, then, eagerly, Samson, planted massive thick-toed forepaws on the trampled snow. Their splotch-marked bodies emerged. First one, then the other, barked; monitory rather than excited. With diligent haste, majestic in their mere stature, they bounded together in order to investigate.

Virginia brought Guy's car to a halt beside her father's; switched off the ignition and then the lights. She could hear the pad of heavy feet on the cement. Samson's sharp ears and bold, big muzzle appeared, face to face with her, his paws supported on the doortop at her side. He made at once a gratified whining sound. Jostling him, up came Delilah, pawing Virginia's leather-covered shoulder with her blunt claws. Virginia sat still a moment and Samson's wide wet tongue slapped vigorously down her cheek. Recoiling, she pushed his head away, opened the door, forcing them both down, and stepped out. Delilah made a half wheel, collapsed, displaying her long, nipple-marked breast and belly to be scratched. Virginia started to put out a foot, but her knees, she found, were not yet steady. Samson pushed his heavy head confidingly against her hip, crowding closer.

The kindness of this reception seemed enough to kill her. Virginia could feel a violent tingling in the bridge of her nose; tears swam warm into her eyes; a trembling came over her and her chest swelled to suffocation. She sniffed a little, and Delilah rolled back; disappointed, she arose to her feet. Both of them tilted their heads up to regard her face, their tongues hanging in mild wonder.

She managed to say, "Leave me alone, you damn fools!" for she knew that they were going to do that in a moment. Their instinctive, reasonless jubilation at sight of her would be innocently exhausted. The dog-houses, slightly warmed by their big bodies, were where they wanted to be, since there was nothing to eat and no one to attack. They would withdraw, her two last senseless friends, bored with her. "Get away!" she choked. She went and snapped out the garage lights. In the darkness she could see the dogs' big shadowy shapes slip round the jamb, out against the starlit snow. When she had come out and pulled down the overhead doors, she saw that they were already back, snug in their kennels.

At the top, across the back of the last cheque, Mr. Banning wrote
Herbert Tracy Banning for deposit only.
He blotted it, laid it with the others. Turning the little pile over, he took the deposit slip and compared the list. Since it was correct, he put cheques and slip together in a long envelope and addressed it to his New York bank. Laying his pen on the rack of an old Sheffield tray, he sat back in his chair, thoughtful.

A pad covered with columns of his neat figures informed him that he was slightly better off than he had expected to be. There might not be much margin this year; but really it was remarkable that there was any margin at all.

Part of the difference, he supposed, was not having Virginia's school bills through the winter. Getting herself expelled from Miss Keble's, however regrettable, would seem to have been a very comfortable financial lift. A solid contribution, in fact; both to him, and, little as Guy might suspect it, to Guy. It would not be necessary to bring up the matter of Guy's expenses—

This was Guy's third year at Yale, and he had managed to spend progressively more money. Naturally, he did it without making a splurge. Being ostentatiously rich was something he and his friends regarded with contemptuous distaste; the only possible worse form was being obviously poor. From what Mr. Banning had seen of these young men on rare occasions in New Haven, or when one or two of them came up to visit Guy, he concluded that they were perfectly satisfied if they had, materially, no more than the best of everything in merely practical quantities. This seemed to Mr. Banning reasonable. Philosophy had nothing to do with youth. If you were not a great athlete, or what seemed to be called a Big Man, and so beyond criticism, what buttressed your pride—not less excruciatingly sensitive for being callow—except the perfection of your clothes and possessions? It would be time enough to laugh at this puerile obsession with material things later, when the ego had found a new mainstay in some form of personal accomplishment and might even enjoy not looking like the great man everyone could easily learn that you were.

Having by now a fair idea of what it cost Guy to be impeccable in Yale's eyes, Mr. Banning was prepared to add it to the already remarkably large total of Guy's expenses through school and college. Guy's education would probably prove a good investment. Guy would not, naturally, know anything in the scholastic, or even cultural sense; but he would be admirably fitted, through his acquaintances and habits of mind and life, to enrich himself. There was no reason to doubt that he would be happy doing it. Since Mr. Banning had never in his own life done anything but reflect, and read in his library, and work in his garden, he was not sure that he was qualified to have an opinion on the virtue or value of Guy's prospects.

Indeed, he doubted if he knew enough about Guy to see clearly where good lay for him in life. He could not possibly guess what it was like to be Guy; or what Guy, in command of his own affairs and able to behave as best pleased him (rather than as his family with its crushing full knowledge of his past expected him to behave), was like. At home you couldn't tell; he deferred to his father partly through habit, partly perhaps because he did not and never had understood the defensive nature of his father's dry, often indulgently ironic speech. The day hadn't yet come when Guy would realize that he himself was much the more formidable of the two; that irony was really a form of embarrassment; and that what his father needed was a little firm handling. Probably, Mr. Banning reflected, he would live to find Guy competently making up his mind for him, patiently seeing that his vagaries didn't do him any real harm. Guy already had the voice and expression; he merely lacked the sharpened eye to see that his father was an aimless old putterer. The patronage of to-day would be reversed as Guy, turning from his large and successful affairs, found a moment to say: "Father, you know you don't want anything of the sort. It's absurd. I'll arrange to —"

The prospect amused him, and it was only right; for Guy had none of his own disabilities. Without spoiling the effect by trying, Guy could already please people worth pleasing; probably he was learning to command people not worth pleasing. Instead of walling himself up with austere and formal communications, Guy. spoke out, if not fluently, positively. His position was altogether in the open and he occupied it, tough spirited, ready to take his chances. Of greater importance than not fearing or envying people more fortunate than himself, Guy would never feel embarrassed and apologetic to people less fortunate or weaker. Never apologetic, Guy could not be imposed on. Mr. Banning was accustomed to being imposed on, and knew that he was. His heart was half on the side of any knave who, having none himself, by begging or fraud tried to get what he could of Mr. Banning's money. In his frequent moments of insight, Mr. Banning could see his life as really one long, half-expressed apology for being born superior, for being kept there by money not earned, for eating when other men went hungry, riding when other men walked, living at idle ease when other men struggled to death. He did not like it much; but any more competent or arrogant attitude he would like less.

Seeing his future master coming into the library now, he shut up the desk, took a silver box from the table, and getting a cigarette from it, offered Guy one. "Would you care for a cocktail?" he asked.

"Virginia!"

She was half-way upstairs, and though she heard her mother step out of the library, she went on while she said, "What?"