Instruments of Darkness (collection)/The Morning After
THE MORNING AFTER
A girl does expect to be the heroine of her own wedding—at least the central figure; she certainly does not expect to find a rival in a middle-aged maiden aunt. Aunt Helen's idea of middle age was an old-fashioned one—no lip stick or rouge, no perpetual wave or juvenile model contradicted Nature. Small wonder that my sister Gertrude was surprised to find the guests, ushers and at moments even the groom himself drifted away to form part of the circle about Aunt Helen.
In my boyhood she had lived in our house. She was my father's sister; and the Fenellons, who think a lot of themselves—from the point of view of family—believe in sticking together. She had read me stories from mythology, and I had pictured the goddess Diana in her image. She read me fairy tales, and she was always the rescued princess with the golden locks. She read me my first novels, and she was Lucy Bertram, and Rowena and Ethel Newcome. I can shut my eyes and see her now—her fine profile, her slender throat, her elegant clothes photographing themselves on my mind; a sort of perpetual illustration of the book she was reading.
And then there was all the romance and mystery of her broken engagement, the first secret, the first realization I ever had that life was not just breakfast, luncheon, supper and being taken to walk in the park. Suddenly, out of the many tall and indistinguishable strangers who came and went at our house, one—particularly tall and big, with a bushy mustache—stood out through an incomprehensible desire on his part that we should call him Uncle Ormond. We had hardly, with some embarrassment, accomplished this feat when he melted away and, as far as we knew, ceased to exist. It appeared he was not our uncle after all. The servants whispered about him in our presence.
My mother said to my father, “Don't you think we had better explain to the children?” and my father answered with a favorite phrase of his—“I see no necessity.”
Later, when we reached that delightful age when your mother begins to gossip with you about your father's relations behind his back, we heard a little more. By that time Aunt Helen was considered to be old enough to live alone, and she had moved to a little house of her own, much to my regret; but I think my mother, who brought a good deal of robust common sense into the remote aristocracy of the Fenellons' point of view, had always suffered from Aunt Helen's perfection and was not sorry.
“I used to pity Helen's beaus,” my mother would say; “and she had quantities. They always began to feel sooner or later like chimney sweeps in the presence of a little white blossom. If she deigned to read a book or wear a flower they had sent her they almost wept with the sense of their own unworthiness. But Ormond was different. I doubt if he believed so entirely in the dewdrop idea. He was attractive in a rough Newfoundland puppy sort of way. No, I never knew exactly what happened, but I can guess. Poor fellow, he lost his self-control so far as to kiss the tips of her fingers. Helen, confronted with such an example of masculine brutality, fainted away and, when she came to, refused ever to see him again.”
My loyalty to my aunt was a little shocked at my mother's amusement over the picture she had drawn, but I felt there was probably some truth in the sketch. Aunt Helen was extraordinarily unapproachable. She had the personal dignity of an Arab and the gentleness of a good child. I shall always remember seeing her enter the room at a tremendous dinner party to which I had been asked among a few younger, unimportant people. Her rank was transmitted in the butler's tone as he announced “Miss Fenellon”; and when she entered, though she is a small woman, it was like the entrance of a queen, so simple and secure.
My father was devoted to her, and I often wondered if he knew the whole story of her engagement. When I grew old enough to go into business with him—to be his partner as well as his son—I ventured to ask him, but he knew no more than any one else.
The breaking of the engagement had taken place twenty years ago. Now my aunt was over forty, still slim, still long-throated, still with a cameolike profile; but her hair was gray and her color faded. She came to Gertrude's wedding dressed just as a maiden aunt ought to be dressed, in gray and silver, with touches of blue, like the sky on a windy day. In the front pew behind a hedge of white lilies I could see her crying delicately—gentle tears that a cobweb of lace and cambric easily absorbed. They left no trace, except that as she came down the aisle after the ceremony her eyes were shining. I drove back to the house with her. “Why is it,” I said, “that women always cry at weddings?”
“I don't wonder your dear mother cried,” she answered. “She feels as if she were losing Gertrude, but she really isn't.”
I glanced at her. Of course I had wanted to ask why she cried, but I did not dare. She had the power of wrapping a veil of emotional invisibility about herself.
When we reached the house I established her in a quiet corner of the dining room, brought her a glass of a delicious cold liquid which had been concocted under my father's direction, and when she said, “There's nothing intoxicating in this, is there, Jim?” I answered, because it was the quickest and easiest thing to say, and didn't seem to matter much anyhow, “Oh, dear, no,” and went away about my own business.
As the son of the house I was kept busy. The wedding was a small one, but my mother had endless errands for me to do, and there were left-over members of both families to whom special attentions were to be paid. I did not see my aunt again for perhaps an hour—not until the party was almost over. Gertrude had gone up to change her clothes and many of the guests had left. I had been noticing for some time that the ushers were drifting away into the dining room. I thought it was our punch that was attracting their hungry young spirits. I found it was my Aunt Helen.
She was sitting just where I had left her, erect—that is to say, without a curve in her flat back, but inclined forward in her large chair. One hand hung like a pale fringed leaf from the arm of her chair; the other was holding the tall glass I had given her, at the moment almost empty. Grouped about her were all the men in the house, except the waiters, my father and myself. Some were in chairs, some on the floor, and one red-haired friend of the groom was curled up so close that the tips of her pointed fingers almost touched his copper-colored crest. Even the groom himself, aware that he ought to be changing his clothes, hung on the outskirts of the crowd, unable to tear himself away.
My mind took in facts in the following order: That my aunt had regained all the color and vivacity of youth; that her manner was rapidly varying between a priestlike graciousness, which would have been pomposity in a man, and an intimate friendliness; that she was amusing a group of young people not easy to amuse; and that she had been consuming my father's rum punch as if it were lemonade. I drew nearer in an agony and, leaning against the wall close to her but slightly behind her chair, I listened in an agony.
“Because you're a lady—I'm a lady—one's a lady,” she was saying, annoyed as we all are at times by the weakness of the English language in pronouns, “you mustn't assume she's absolutely inhuman. It's true—and you know it just as well as I do—the more refined a woman is the more she wants a man to be a man, if you know what I mean.”
Looking about her to be sure—and she would not accept less than a definite verbal affirmative—she allowed a few drops from her glass to trickle out upon the forehead of the red-haired boy. At this she was sincerely distressed.
“Oh, sussha pity!” she murmured, drawing away to observe the accident more clearly. Then, when the red-haired boy, eager to set everything right, assured her that it didn't matter a bit—that it was his own fault, she surprised us all by a complete reversal of her mood.
“To be candid,” she said, “I don't think your head should have been there at all,” and with the gesture of an empress she held out her glass to be refilled.
Gray Wellington, a serious young lawyer, a friend and contemporary of my own, hurried to obey her. He ought to have known better. I shook my head at him. I hope I am not a prig, but a feeling of horror had crept over me—horror for her.
When the moment of realization came to her what might it not mean to that proud and overrefined nature? It seemed to me that a woman like my aunt might easily kill herself rather than live on with such a humiliating recollection. I thought of myself saying to her in the course of some future scene, “But you were charming—more charming than ever before,” and at the same time I knew how little this would palliate the incident in her own consciousness.
Leaning over her chair, I murmured pitifully, “Wouldn't you rather have some vichy, Aunt Helen?”
She turned and smiled up at me with a ravishing smile.
“Why, Jim,” she said, “how solemn you look—just like your mother, poor woman, heavy-handed in joy or sorrow! I'm devoted to your mother, Jim, but you know she is heavy-handed. No, I like this bettern vichy—itzt licious. Thank you, Mr. Gray; so kind, so wonderfully kind.”
“It's a very great pleasure, Miss Fenellon,” said Gray, with a calm, open glance at me.
Not one of the group—not even the snubbed red-haired boy—showed anything but an entranced admiration; in fact the whole feeling was hostile to me for my mild suggestion that the situation ought to be changed. If I had tried to take her away, as I wanted to do, they would have put me out.
“Now warwarze I saying?” she went on. “Warwarze I saying when Jim trupted us?”
Gray told her that she was speaking of the fact that refined women like men to be men, and she flushed with pleasure at regaining her train of thought.
“Yes, of course—only there are limits.” She drooped and brooded a minute over this cryptic sentence, while they hung on her silence. “Alcohol's a terrible thing,” she added with a conviction that made us all jump. “I don't take it myself. Not narrow—no temptation—whisky—the mere tase” She scolded gently at whisky, with one uplifted hand. “People are so unattractive when they're drunk.”
“It depends on the person,” said Gray.
She beamed at him as if he had said something brilliant and ultimate.
“How true that is!” she said. “I don't remember your name, but how true that is! But the person I have in mind wasn't—he was perfectly horrible. His face was too large, anyhow, and it made it look enormous and very foolish. You can't love a person with a great big rolling face, can you? I must tell you this, because it will interest you, and I never told any one before. They all think I broke my engagement because he made love to me. Your mother, Jim—I love your mother, but she is a little bit crude, if you don't mind my saying so—she always thought I broke my engagement because he kissed me. Well”—she gave a short chuckle—“if that had been the reason I'd have broken it a good deal earlier.”
“I bet you would!” said Gray.
She nodded at him.
“Take my word for that,” she said, and became inarticulate with her own merriment. Presently she went on: “But I'm glad now I did not marry him. I saw him not long ago—quite bald and fat. I said to myself, 'Good thing I did not have to spend my life with that man.' Jim's mother thinks I do nothing but regret him—my sister-in-law, you know; nice woman, but never quite knows how a lady feels. I don't regret him at all—only the children—and they might have been bald and fat too. They often are, but not nes—not nesairly. If I had been so eager to marry I could have married many times, and some not so long ago.” She grew grave and thoughtful, and then began to smile again. “One man—only you must never repeat this—said I was like moonlight on a white rose. So silly! I felt embarrassed for him—wasn't embarrassed for himself.”
“Well, for my part, I know just what he meant,” said Gray.
“But it isn't the way I wanted to be at all,” replied my aunt. “I didn't tell him—there was no use in hurting his feelings, was there?” She leaned forward to be sure that she met Gray's mind on this point. “I don't want to be like moonlight on a white rose. I want”—she stopped, drew up her shoulders and wrinkled her fine nose at the thought—“I want to be like sunset on a tiger lily.”
“Ah, you never will be,” said Gray.
At that she became almost sad.
“How do you know?” she said. “I may be. I sometimes feel as if I might be anything—anything I wanted to be.”
And at this moment the neglected Gertrude appeared in her traveling dress, and reluctantly the group broke up.
I leaned again over Aunt Helen's chair and murmured, “Don't you want me to take you home?”
She shook her head.
“No,” she said, and sank into a deep reverie, staring at the floor, and when I touched her arm again she showed annoyance.
“Don't be prig, Jim,” she said. “There was something I wanted to tell all those nice young people—help them.”
“Tell me,” I suggested.
She was so intent on regaining her lost idea that she let me draw her hand within my arm and lead her to the staircase, though she kept murmuring to herself, “Spity to forget—'spity.”
Downstairs in the hall it came to her.
“Oh, yes!” she said, her whole face radiating joy. “I wanted to tell them they can be anything they want to be. Sussha help, sussha beau'ful thought.”
I managed to get her home without attracting the notice of either of my parents, from whom, for different reasons, I was equally eager to shield her.
After every one had gone my father and mother and I sat down to a delayed and rather dreary dinner. We talked the party over, and only late in the conversation was my aunt's name introduced. My father said:
“How very beautiful Helen looked! I couldn't get near her. It was like old times to see her surrounded by all the men. Do you remember”
My mother interrupted.
“I didn't see her at the house,” she said. “I noticed in the church—crying as all right-minded old maids always do at a wedding. I suppose she was thinking of Ormond. I thought she looked extremely worn. But too much refinement is aging. I wish Helen would break out once before she dies—run away with a circus clown or get drunk or something.”
My father frowned.
“Really, Gertie!” he said,
“I wish it only for her own sake,” answered my mother, unashamed. “It would do her a lot of good.”
“It would kill her,” said my father.
My own heart sank at hearing the hideous fact put into hideous words. It wasn't only, you see, that I loved my aunt herself, but I loved her grace and dignity and poise. I simply couldn't bear to think of what she must inevitably go through that night or the next morning. She probably would not remember just what had happened, and I thought I knew what she would do. She would send for me: and, pale, rigid and self-controlled, she would force me to repeat word for word all the little scene that I could remember. I at once began altering the record in my own mind, changing her sentences so as to make them more presentable. Perhaps she would remember enough to make it unnecessary to send for me. Perhaps she would suffer it alone, feeling disgraced and degraded, until
It wasn't moral conviction that made me take it so hard, but just the sense of what it would mean to her. I lay awake most of the night, and when, while I was still at breakfast, I was told that Miss Fenellon wished to speak to me on the telephone my heart shrank until it felt as if it were about the size of a walnut.
I could hardly control my voice as I bade her good morning with an ineffectual affectation of light-heartedness. There was no affectation about her. Her voice came clear and simple.
“I wish you would stop at my house on your way downtown.”
I answered that of course I would, and to end the agony I added, “Is there anything special?”
There was a second's pause.
“No; just something I wanted to ask you.”
I annoyed my mother during the rest of breakfast by not being able to give my full attention to anything that she said.
It was only a little after nine when I reached my aunt's house. Her custom was not to breakfast in bed, but this morning I expected to find her still in her room. I was wrong. She was already at her desk; and Maria, her cook, an elderly woman in lilac gingham, who had once been ours, was discussing the day's meals. Maria's presence made my entrance easier, and I made a note of Aunt Helen's unfailing tact.
“It was nice of you to come so promptly, dear boy,” she said. “I think that's all, Maria. Oh, yes, give me grapefruit again for lunch. It was very delicious for breakfast. But your coffee, Maria—it did not quite have its usual flavor, I thought.”
I detained the astonished Maria, whose coffee was impeccable, for our habitual interchange of memories. When she had gone I intended to say just what I ordinarily would say, and caught myself in time as I was about to ask how Aunt Helen felt after yesterday's festivities. She spoke first.
“And how are you after all the excitements of the wedding?” she said.
I answered that I was well; and she?
“I feel wonderfully,” said my aunt. “Not tired at all. You know, Jim, I believe it does people good now and then to get out of the rut, to see younger people, and even”—she paused as if she were overstepping the limits of credibility—“and even to talk a little nonsense. As I look back on yesterday it seems to me a—a—I don't know how to describe it—an illuminated afternoon, a golden day. Even this morning I feel full of vitality and—and” She hesitated for a word, and I suggested one.
“And pep?”
Her smile faded.
“I know I'm old-fashioned, dear. I don't like those slang words. Vitality is what I mean. Life seems vivid and interesting. I suppose it's all a reflection of dear Gertrude's happiness. How lovely she looked, Jim! And her husband—what a delightful young man! So friendly and sincere. In fact all the young people there impressed me very favorably. Sometimes I feel as if there were a barrier between me and the younger generation, but I did not feel it yesterday—quite the contrary. I hope your mother is not feeling sad to-day. I'm so fond of your mother, Jim.”
“Mother's a great old scout,” I answered flippantly; “but haven't you ever felt she was a little—how shall I put it?—heavy-handed?”
“My dear boy, I can't let you even think such things of your mother, with her wonderful energy and common sense. No, I've never thought such a thing.”
I saw she was really shocked at the suggestion, and at this proof that she remembered nothing my relief was so intense that I came as near tears as I have since I was a child. Yet I could not feel perfect confidence until I knew the motive that had made her send for me. Dangerous doubts might yet lie behind that impulse. I stood up.
“I must be getting downtown, Aunt Helen,” I said as casually as I could. “Was there anything special you wanted to ask me?”
Her eyes lit up softly.
“Oh, yes!” she said. “I was just telling Maria. I wonder if you would give me the receipt for that lemonade you had. It was so delicious, so unusually delicious.”
I was obliged to think quickly. If I evaded her question she would ask my father or, even worse, my mother, and learn the truth.
“My dear aunt,” I said, “I'm sorry, but that's a secret of my father's—one of the few he cherishes. If you asked him he'd only tell you something perfectly fantastic, and he doesn't like to be asked. Let it go until I'm married; then we'll have it again.”
She smiled gently. Hers was not a materialistic nature, and it never occurred to her that the point was worth pressing. Only, as I stooped to kiss her, she noticed my emotion.
“What does this mean, Jim?” she asked. 'Are you keeping something from me? Are you thinking of getting married?”
I shook my head. “Not until I can find a girl just like you,” I answered.