Part 25 (2/2)
n.o.body ever knew, you see, until they began, what Miss Haviland did during the long periods she shut herself up in that little apartment of hers in the New Gainsborough. If, as you say, she seemed to burst so suddenly, so authoritatively, into print for you, think what it must have meant for us when we saw such dexterity and finish unfurled all at once in the pages of the _Standard_. Unbeknownst she had been working and writing and waiting for years, with an indefatigable and indomitable and clear-sighted vision of becoming an author. It was her aim, people have told me since, from the time she was a girl.
She had been to Harvard, summers, and taken all the courses which the vacation curriculum afforded-unnoticed, unapplauded, it is said, by her instructors. She had traveled-not so widely, either, but cleverly, eclectically, domineeringly, with her sole end in view. After five minutes with only-say-a timetable, acquired, let us suppose, at Cook's, Topica, she could as showily allude to any express _de luxe_ there mentioned-be it for Tonkin or Salamanca-as the most confirmed pa.s.senger ever upon it. She had mastered French and Italian. And she had-first and last and betweenwhiles-read Hurrell Oaks. I venture to say there wasn't a vowel-or consonant, for that matter-of the seventy-odd volumes she hadn't persistently, enamouredly, and enviously devoured.
At Newfair, people had by this time, of course, compared her ”work” with the ”works” of Hurrell Oaks; but you know how few people have the patience or the taste to ”take him in”? And the result of comparisons almost invariably was that Marian Haviland was better. She had a.s.similated some of the psychology, much of the method, and a little of the charm; and had crossed all her T's and dotted her I's, and revised and simplified the style, as one person put it, for ”the use of schools”; and brought what Hurrell Oaks called ”the base rattle of the foreground” fully into play.
Instead of being accused of having got so much from him, she was credited, one thought, with having given him a good deal. You might have guessed, to hear people at Newfair talk, that _she_ was partly responsible for the ovations being tendered him over the country during the season of his return-the first time in fifteen years-to his native land.
”Mrs. --,” Miss Haviland explained, mentioning a well-known metropolitan name, ”has written me” (of course she would be the one literary fact at Newfair to write to on such matters) ”to ask if we can possibly do with Mr. Oaks overnight.”
I gaped under my handkerchief at the fluency of her ”do.”
”But I don't just know how,” she went on, ”we _could_ make him comfortable. Mrs. Edgerton won't be well in time. And he _mustn't_ stay at the Greens'.” She waxed indignant at the very possibility. ”In _her_ guest-room, my dear? With those Honiton laces, and that s...o...b..tic carpet, and the whirligig pattern on the walls-and the windows giving on the parti-colored slate roof of the gymnasium?”
I tried, in spite of myself, to think commensurately.
”And Mrs. Kneeland's waitress wears ear-rings!... No. Now I've been thinking-don't hurry along so, George. You never keep in line! It spoils the pleasure of walking when one constantly outsteps you like that.”
”Pardon,” said George, and fell back.
Miss Haviland winced and s.h.i.+fted her maroon parasol to the shoulder on his side, and smiled attentively at me to sweeten the interval, and continued:
”Now _I_, if you're interested to hear-”
I was very interested, and told her so. It always piqued my curiosity, moreover, to think why Miss Haviland picked me out-young as I was-for such confidences. I believe it was mostly because I always stared at her so; which she mistook, characteristically, for sheer flattery.
Even as she spoke, I was remarking to myself the frilled languor of her dress, and her firm rather large-boned throat, and the moisture-for it was hot-under the imitation pearls, and the competent grip of her hand on the long onyx handle of her parasol.
She stopped short of a sudden. George took a few steps ahead. She lifted her parasol over to the other shoulder and looked at him, and he fell into line again, a sensitive, pleased, proud smile showing above his little round beard.
”Now _I_ think it would be better-simpler, more dignified, and less ghastly for _him_-if he came, say, to luncheon, and if we arranged for a small, a very small, group of the people he'd care most to see-he doesn't, poor fellow, want to see many of us!-a _small_ group, I say, to come-George! _Please!_ It makes me nervous, it interrupts me, and it is very bad for the path.... Cover it up now with your foot. No-here-let me do it.”
”Pardon,” said George, cheerfully.
Miss Haviland winced again. ”I don't know about _trains_,” she went on, ”but we can look one out for him” (she facilely avoided the American idiom) ”and then motor him to town in-in Mrs. Edgerton's car. Don't you think that will be more _comme il faut_?”
”He'll be so pleased, he'll enjoy so much meeting _her_!” exclaimed George to me, rising on his toes repeatedly and rubbing his small dry hands together. ”Won't he?”
Miss Haviland turned to him severely, and at a signal he drew his arm up and she slipped hers through it.
”To worry now _is_ a bit premature, perhaps,” she called back. ”We're off to see the new Discobulus. I fear it's modeled on a late Roman copy.”
And I saw her, when I glanced over my shoulder a second later, pause again and withdraw her arm to point to the Memorial Library.
”What will he think of a disgrace like that, George?” I heard her imprecating.... ”_What?_ You don't _see_-that the architect's left off a line of leaves from the capitals? Come on.”
Hurrell Oaks may have been over-fastidious. Yes. But his discernments were the needs of a glowing temperament; they grew naturally out of ideals his incomparable sensitiveness created. Whereas hers-Marian Haviland's-though derived from him, had all the-what shall I say?-sn.o.bbishness, which his lacked utterly. I can't estimate that side of her, even now, not in view of all her accomplishments, even, except as being a little bit cheap.
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