The Group (23 page)

Selecting a green pencil, Hatton made a small check on the society page; this meant: present, Miss Phyllis; a red-pencil check meant: present, Miss Mary. With a new sigh, this time of content, he folded the paper to the obituary page—one of his favorite sections. Yet even here the voice of duty intruded, though not, he saw at a glance, this evening: he would not have to warn Yvonne, Mrs. Prothero’s personal maid, to look over her mistress’ blacks, nor get Mr. Prothero ready to be a pallbearer. He settled down to the obits. Next, he turned to the stock-market pages, which no longer interested him much personally; he had not had a flyer since the fall of ’29; but he kept abreast of the market in order to follow the conversation at the dinner table when the senior Protheros were entertaining and the ladies had left the room. In the back of his mind, there was always the thought of picking up a tip from one of the older gentlemen, but he had not yet refound the courage to call his broker with an order.

Relighting his pipe, he studied the entertainment news, to make sure the film he planned to see on his day out was still playing. He read Percy Hammond’s review of the play that had opened the night before. Hatton had never been to a proper theatre, only to music hall, but he took an interest in the stage partly because he understood that it was customary to begin a play with a scene between a butler and a parlormaid with a feather duster. He would have given something to see that. Miss Mary’s friend, Miss Katherine from Vassar, had promised to get him tickets some time on his night out, but that was the last he had heard of it. She was the one who had married the actor or whatever he was, something connected with the stage; Miss Mary had gone to the wedding. Hatton had never been partial to Miss Katherine; he did not see eye to eye with Forbes, who called her “the bonny lass.” Forbes would have changed her tune if she had seen what he had, coming downstairs one night, still tying his dressing-gown sash in his hurry and his bridgework not in, because the Madam had “heard a noise, Hatton. Please go and see.” For once, the Madam was right: there the two of them were, in the front hall, on the landing, the “bonny lass” and her “fiancé,” going right at it. Hatton had not liked the look of him at dinner. “Harald Petersen,” he was called, like some blasted Viking; Hatton had taken special notice of the spelling as he made out the place card. When Miss Katherine was going to get married, Miss Mary, Hatton recalled, had consulted him as to whether it would be possible for the young lady to have the use of the town house for the wedding, since the rest of the family, except Mr. Prothero, would already have gone down to the country. Bearing in mind what he had seen (“Just a bit of kissing,” Forbes said; did you do that on the floor with your skirts up and the “fiancé” planted on top of you for anybody from the street to see?), not to speak of the tickets, Hatton had said no, the furniture would be in dust covers, and it would upset the master, if he was staying in town that night, to find strangers in the house. “You’re a treasure, Hatton!” Miss Mary had proclaimed. Hatton had not been surprised to read in the paper this last summer that the play Mr. Petersen was with had closed, despite Miss Katherine’s telling them that it was going to run for years and years; since then, he had not seen the name in the theatrical columns, though he had observed in the real-estate notices that a Mr. and Mrs. Harold Peterson (sic) had taken an apartment in the East Fifties, near Sutton Place. That was them, said Miss Mary, who had been there only the other day. She had not had them to the house, though, since she had been up there at agricultural college; when she gave a dinner party nowadays, it was more for her own sort; she would just phone down to Hatton to have twelve covers and make up the list himself and to be sure and see to it that Miss Phyllis was not home for dinner that night. But if Miss Katherine and Mr. Petersen
were
ever asked again, Hatton had made a mental note to address her as “madam” when he opened the door. “Good evening, madam” (not “miss”), and a small, discreet smile; it was those little touches that counted. “He called me ‘madam’; isn’t that perfect?” Miss Katherine would whisper to her husband. “Hatton called me ‘madam,’ Pokey; what do you know?”

Hatton turned to the front page, which he had saved for the last; he liked the sense of exercising his intellect which the world and general news gave him. A labor dispute had been occupying a small part of the front page for over a week; the waiters of the principal hotels were on strike. Hatton made it a point to take no sides in American politics; he believed that it was against the law for an alien to interfere in the domestic affairs of a foreign country and consequently refrained from having any thoughts on the subject. “Who would
you
vote for, Hatton?” Miss Katherine had asked him at the time of the last election, when she was staying in the house. “I am not an American citizen, miss,” Hatton had replied. Nevertheless, the waiters’ strike had enlisted his sympathies, to a certain degree, for they were his fellow-creatures, even if there was a gulf, a very wide gulf, between private service and what you might call common service. For a brief time, while he was getting his training, he had worked at a hotel in London. Hence, he had been following the strike news, and he knew from Cook’s
Daily Mirror
that something had happened last night at the Cavendish—another demonstration.

Now his grey eyes imperturbably widened; he shook the newspaper on his lap. When he had finished reading the item and turned to page five for the continuation, he refolded the paper back to page one, selected a blue pencil from his table and slowly drew a border around the story. His hands trembled slightly with suppressed excitement. Then he refolded the paper still again, into a shape that would fit onto a salver, which he would present to Mrs. Prothero at breakfast: “Beg pardon, madam; I thought this would interest Miss Mary.” He then mentally withdrew to the sideboard or, better, to the serving pantry, within earshot.

“Hatton!” he heard the mistress’ voice call in agitation the next morning, and he slowly re-entered the dining room. “What
is
this? Why have you brought me this?” Mrs. Prothero quivered through all her shapeless, cushiony form. “Excuse the liberty, madam, but I ventured to think that one of the gentlemen referred to was Miss Katherine’s husband.” He bent forward and indicated to his mistress with his pink, manicured forefinger the name of Harald Petersen (spelled “Harold Petersen”). “Miss Katherine?” demanded Mrs. Prothero. “Who is she? How do we know her, Hatton?” She turned her head away from the group photograph on page five he was attempting to show her. “The young lady who came to stay, madam, over the Christmas holidays and on one or two other occasions when Miss Mary was in school at Vassar.” He paused, waiting for Mrs. Prothero’s otiose memory to begin to work. But Mrs. Prothero shook her head, a mass of pale-brown, lusterless, trembling ringlets that, despite all Yvonne’s and the hairdresser’s labors, resembled a costumer’s wig. “Who were her people?” “We never knew, madam,” Hatton replied solemnly. “‘Strong,’ she was called. From one of the western states.” “Not Eastlake?” queried Mrs. Prothero, with a momentary, uncertain brightening. “Oh no, madam. We
know
Miss Elinor. But this other young lady was dark too, and pretty, in a natural sort of way. Forbes, if you remember, took a fancy to her. ‘A Highland rose,’ she used to say.” He imitated Forbes’s burr. Mrs. Prothero gave a faint cry. “Oh, dear, yes,” she said. “I remember.
Very
pretty, Hatton. But rather uncouth. Or was that the person she married? What was it she always called him?” “‘My fiancé’?” supplied Hatton, with a smile in abeyance. “That’s it exactly!” cried Mrs. Prothero. “Still, we oughtn’t to laugh at her. Mr. Prothero used to recite a poem when she stayed here. ‘Maud Muller, on a summer’s day …’ And then something about the hay. Oh dear, how did it go? Help me, Hatton.” But Hatton for once was caught napping. “I’ve got it!” Mrs. Prothero exclaimed. “‘Stood listening while a pleased surprise/Gleamed in her long-lashed hazel eyes.’ Tennyson, I suppose.” “I daresay, madam,” replied Hatton austerely. “But we never knew who she was,” Mrs. Prothero reminisced, sighing. “Mr. Prothero often used to ask me, ‘Who’s that girl who’s always staying here? The Maud Muller girl.’ And I was never able to tell him. Her people were early settlers out West, I believe she said.” She put on her glasses and peered again at the folded rectangle of newspaper. “And now, Hatton, you tell me she’s in jail. What has she done? Shoplifting, I expect.” “I believe,” Hatton intervened, “that it’s her husband who was in custody. Something to do with a labor dispute.” Mrs. Prothero waved a pale plump hand. “Don’t tell me any more, Hatton. And I beg you not to bring it to Mr. Prothero’s attention. We had the man to dinner. I remember it distinctly.” She reflected, her pale, dim eyes turning anxiously behind her gold-rimmed spectacles. “The best thing, I think, Hatton, would be for you to take that article out to the kitchen and burn it in the stove. Without saying anything to Cook, if you please. People in our position can’t afford, Hatton—” She looked up at the butler expectantly, for him to finish her thought. “Quite, madam,” he agreed, picking up the folded paper and replacing it on the salver. “‘People who live in glass houses,’ Hatton …How does it go? Oh, dear, no, I mean another one. ‘Should be above reproach.’ Shakespeare, isn’t it?
Julius Caesar
.” She smiled. “We are being quite highbrow this morning,” she went on. “Quite the intellectuals. We must blame Vassar for that, mustn’t we, Hatton? Though you’ve always been quite a thinker.” Hatton bowed in acknowledgment and retired a few steps. “Now mind you burn it, Hatton. With your own hands,” his mistress cautioned.

When the butler had left the room, Mrs. Prothero gave way; she leaned on a podgy milk-blue elbow and let the tears rise to her eyes. Hatton watched her through the porthole in the pantry door. He knew what the Madam was thinking. She was thinking how brave she had been in the butler’s presence, not letting him see how upset she was by that nasty story in the newspaper. Disgraceful. And of how she blamed everyone, starting with the Chapin School, for contriving to send Miss Mary to that college that was always getting in the paper—not that the others were any better, but you heard less about them. Everyone she trusted, starting with the Chapin School, had turned against her on the college issue: the schoolmistress, what was her name, who had helped Miss Mary fill out her own application forms; Forbes, who had lent her the price of the registration fee out of her savings; the Hartshorn girl, who had smuggled her out of the house three days running, it seemed, to take the college entrance exams; and Hatton, Hatton himself, who had got round her and her husband, when Miss Mary was accepted, by announcing that he did not believe a year or two of college would do the young lady any harm. It was like a case in Bar Harbor she had heard about only the other day at the Colony Club. She had told Hatton about it, just to show him that she had not forgotten. An elopement,
that
was, out a French window of one of the big houses and through a parting in the hedge. The staff, as usual, there too (Yes, she had said “as usual” straight out to Hatton) had gone against the family’s wishes; the butler had actually crept out at night with a pair of garden shears and cut a hole through the hedge. What if the couple
were
married immediately, by a minister who was waiting in the rectory, so they said? He was only another accomplice. As for her own staff, she had always suspected that someone—Forbes or, more likely, Hatton—had signed her name to the Vassar application forms; Miss Mary swore she had done it herself and was brash as paint about it, but Mrs. Prothero still felt that Hatton had guided her hand.

Hatton turned away from the porthole; the Madam’s sobs were becoming audible, and he went to ring for Yvonne. When she reached that point, the Madam was quite unreasonable. She was very much mistaken in thinking, as she still did, that he had forged her signature. They had kept their secret from him too; he had known nothing about the whole affair until it was over, and Miss Mary had been accepted. At the present time, he rather shared the Madam’s views on higher education, though the Madam was not consistent: why give Miss Mary a plane if you did not want her to fly up every week now to learn to be a horse doctor? But Miss Mary always had her way, except with him.

He compressed his lips and went to take another peek at Mrs. Prothero. He was sorry now he had showed her the newspaper story, for what she did not know would not hurt her, poor lady. It had been an excess of zeal that had prompted it, he recognized—a certain over-perfectionism, if that was the term, in the performance of his role. “Hatton,” he said to himself, “pride goeth before a fall.” In the dining room, Mrs. Prothero would be reflecting that, thanks to higher education, she had had a jailbird in the house.

“A jailbird!” she repeated indignantly, with a wobble of her receding chin, so loud that Yvonne, coming down the stairs, could hear her. Clutching her wrapper around her and holding Yvonne’s arm, she retired upstairs to her bedroom and canceled the car, which was to take her to the hairdresser at eleven. Meanwhile Hatton, who had already told the chauffeur that he would not be needed, was cutting out the newspaper clipping and preparing to paste it in his scrapbook.

In Boston, the next morning, Mrs. Renfrew met Dottie for lunch at the Ritz. They were lunching early in order to go to Bird’s for the wedding invitations and announcements; later in the afternoon, they had an appointment at Crawford Hollidge for a fitting. Dottie’s wedding dress and going-away costume were being made in New York, but on most items, country suits and simple sport things above all, you could do just as well in Boston and at half the price. After Crawford Hollidge, if there was time, they were going to stop at Stearns’ to look at linen and compare prices with Filene’s. The Renfrews were not rich, only quite comfortably off, and Mrs. Renfrew economized wherever she could; she felt it was poor taste, in these times, to splurge when others were doing without. They had had the dressmaker in to see if Mrs. Renfrew’s wedding gown, which
she
had got from
her
mother, could possibly be made over for Dottie, who was dying to wear it, but there was not enough material in the seams; Dottie, they discovered (and there was progress for you!), was nearly four inches wider in the waist, bust, and hips, though not at all “hippy” or “busty”; it was a question of larger bones. Mrs. Renfrew’s mind this morning was full of measurements—sheet and glove and dress sizes; she was thinking too of the bridesmaids’ presents. Silver compacts from Shreve Crump? Tiny sterling cigarette lighters? There would only be the three: Polly Andrews, of course, and Helena Davison, and Dottie’s cousin, Vassar ’31, from Dedham, who was going to be matron of honor. Since the groom was a widower, both Dottie and Mrs. Renfrew felt it was better for the wedding to be quiet, just the matron of honor and the two attendants behind her. Dottie had been pining to have Lakey, but Lakey had written, from lovely Avila, that she could not come back this year. In her letter she said that she was sending a little Spanish primitive of a Madonna (perfect for the Southwest) and that Dottie should have no trouble clearing it through the Customs House, as an antique. Mrs. Renfrew hoped that Sam, Dottie’s father, whose firm had been clearing Customs since the days of sailing ships, would see to that for them; there was such a great deal to do.