The Lady of Situations (7 page)

"That is so, sir."

Those small eyes penetrated her. "Were you by any chance the young lady who smoked in my study?" The tone was mellifluous, but the air was tainted with danger.

Of course, she had a lie ready. The Lockwood memory was famous.

"It was I."

"And may I inquire if you are still addicted to the weed?"

"That was my last cigarette, sir."

"Oh? And dare I attribute to my (I trust silent) disapprobation so beneficent a result?"

"It was you who cured me."

His broad smile now welcomed her to Averhill. But after a brief reflection he sighed. "I'm afraid Grant is not doing very well at Harvard." The great brow darkened. "He is a most unsettled young man. A pity. A pity."

"I haven't seen him for the last two years."

The headmaster at this rose almost to gallantry. "No doubt he has suffered from the loss of a good influence. His loss, anyway, is Thomas's gain. I'm sure Thomas has told you that we expect our faculty wives to be present at lunch at the school and sit at their husbands' tables. And also, of course, to attend Sunday morning services at chapel. I like my masters to be on or near the campus at all times. Naturally I do not presume to control
your
comings and goings, but I expect each master to inform me when he plans to be away from school overnight and why."

"Oh, Tom has made those things very clear, sir." She decided that she might now venture a smile. "You'll have no trouble with me, I trust."

He came as close as she supposed he knew how to beaming. "Oh, I'm certain not, my dear. And let me assure you how happy I am that Thomas has picked so charming a bride. I shall call you Natica, if I may. I like to think of my faculty as one big and, I hope, happy family."

Natica learned a good deal about the headmaster in a very short time. The "family," particularly the faculty wives, discussed him almost compulsively, and it was soon evident that her husband's worshipful attitude was by no means shared by all. Dr. Lockwood was controversial in the strongest sense of that word. He excited fierce loyalty and equally fierce hostility.

All were agreed that he was a dictator. His harsh voice, reverberating down the long school corridors, exacted immediate obedience from boys and masters alike. Yet that same instrument, heard from the pulpit, was capable of extraordinary modulations. It could soar in almost musical notes of sweet piety; it could suggest a faith as simple as it was deeply compelling. For the headmaster appeared to see no inconsistency between the strict disciplinarian of the campus and the loving comforter of the chapel. Heaven hovered in the air over the buildings of Averhill; the school life was a plain of laborious preparation for an ultimate blessed union with a divinity who was supposed as well to be a living presence in the hearts of the faculty and student body, particularly the latter, at every minute of the day.

To the boys Rufus Lockwood was for the most part a headmaster: a thing to be obeyed, a presence to be avoided as much as possible, a loud and usually disagreeable noise, part of the donnée of Latin texts and parents and arbitrary rules of conduct that had to be accepted. A few—a dedicated and devoted few, it was true—were deeply impressed by his faith and brilliant sermons, but these "converts" had little effect on the majority. Among the faculty and graduates, Natica gathered, there was a split of opinion between those whose admiration of Lockwood as an administrator and fund raiser was unqualified and those who wished that his undoubted virtues were less tarnished by snobbishness and autocracy.

For Lockwood, atypically among New England church school headmasters, had been lowly born—his father had been a butcher in Worcester—and his struggle up the social ladder, aided by his cloth and ultimately crowned by his marriage to a Lowell, had not inspired him with any lack of reverence for the goals attained. Lockwood distressed many with his almost hand-rubbing appreciation of old names and large fortunes.

When Natica mentioned this to Tom, however, he spoke to her sharply for the first time.

"Dr. Lockwood has had to raise immense sums for the school. Where was he to get it but from rich graduates and parents? And they don't open their checkbooks for people who don't know how to talk to them. I hope you're not gossiping with faculty wives, Natica. That's a poor way to begin."

"I like to know what I'm getting into, that's all," she replied sulkily.

The penetration of the headmaster's personality, even into Natica's more private moments, was blunt. She and Tommy were frequently awakened by his early morning rings.

"Good morning, Natica. I want to talk to Thomas about changing the hymn for morning chapel."

And sometimes her day would end in the same way, the jangle of his call startling her out of the deep sleep into which she had just fallen or interrupting the climax of their lovemaking.

"I want to ask Thomas about his changes in the third form sacred studies schedule."

She and Tommy seemed never to be alone together, which gave an eerie intensification to her feeling that she had married a man who was essentially a stranger. This feeling was not diluted by her awareness that it was not shared by her loving but too satisfied spouse. Why was Tommy so sure he had got exactly what he had bargained for? And what, for that matter,
had
he bargained for?

He was off to chapel after an early breakfast and in classes all morning. Then she joined him at lunch in the dining hall and shared the perfunctory chatter of the fourteen-year-olds at his third form table. In the afternoon he coached lower school football, and three evenings a week he had to preside over a study period from eight to nine. On weekends attendance at the varsity football game and the headmaster's tea was virtually compulsory, and Sunday was taken up by midmorning and early evening chapel.

As the academic community had little affiliation with the village of Averhill or the local countryside, and as the school housekeepers, trained nurses and secretaries were not considered the equals of the faculty, social life for the latter was largely confined to themselves. Mrs. Lockwood, who as everyone knew had been born a Lowell, like Lady Macbeth, tended to "keep her state," allowing the leadership of the wives to pass to Mrs. Evans, whose husband was head of the English department, but the headmaster's wife always invited a newcomer to call, and Natica in due course received her bid to the "residence," the huge three-story bulge at the end of the longest and most rambling of the red-brick school buildings.

Mrs. Lockwood's "den" was crammed with red upholstered Victorian chairs and divans, and with papier-mâché tables and étagères bearing bibelots and framed portrait photographs. It was as if she were trying to preserve the tightly linked world of her kith and kin from the catastrophe of modernity in a kind of brocaded time capsule.

"You were a Chauncey, I understand. There was an Ernest Chauncey in the class of 'twenty-five who married my cousin Euphemia Higginson's second daughter, Hetty."

But when Natica, versed in the branches of her family tree, proceeded to explain the exact degree of cousinship, she quickly perceived that Mrs. Lockwood was not attending. Information might proceed from behind the fine shell of that egotism, but not penetrate it. She was a small, plainly dressed woman, with a round, rather featureless face and curiously hard pale blue eyes, who smoked incessantly, a cigarette dangling from her lips as her darting hands worked at needlepoint.

"I'm told you're a great reader, Mrs. Barnes. Perhaps you have read some of Cousin Amy Lowell's poems. They used to be considered rather too passionate to have been written by a respectable spinster, but then Cousin Amy was always a law unto herself. You've probably heard that she even smoked cigars. She started a school in poetry that was called imagism. There was an irreverent fellow—I think his name was Pound—who claimed to be the real founder and that hers was 'Amygism.' Dear me, how my poor mother used to laugh at that! She never quite approved of Cousin Amy. But then our branch never went in for the arts."

And this, Natica reflected, was the woman who had married a butcher's son! Perhaps, like "Cousin Bessie Tudor," as the Virgin Queen had been described by a legendary Back Bay dowager, she considered her state such as to warrant any match or none at all.

They were joined by Mrs. Evans, known to the faculty as the
camarera mayor
of the headmaster's wife, a large fair blond woman of imposing manner and hearty tones, who listened for twenty minutes with studied patience to Mrs. Lockwood's soliloquies. When she rose to leave, she quite firmly took Natica with her.

"It's best not to tire her," she explained when they were outside. "Dear Mrs. Lockwood has a minor heart ailment. Nothing to be really alarmed about, but we must be careful. No doubt you have received full instruction in the genealogies of the 'hub.'"

"She does seem to have them at her fingertips."

Mrs. Evans gave her a quick glance, as if to approve the moderation of her reply.

"She is a woman of great stature. Her patience and courage with ill health has been an example to us all. And it cannot be too easy, having been born what she was, to adapt herself to the life of a boys' school in the country."

Was this a second test? Natica smiled to herself as she gave a sturdy response: "I should think being the wife of the headmaster of Averhill would be good enough for a Bourbon!"

Mrs. Evans's laugh did not conceal her approval. "How amusingly you put it. And speaking of Bourbons, that reminds me. Would you care to join a little group of faculty wives that meets every other Thursday at my house to discuss a selected piece of French literature? We call it our
Cercle Français.
"

Of course, Natica would be only too honored.

When she walked to the river the next day with Alice Ransome, one of the more congenial of the younger wives, she found her only sourly impressed with Mrs. Evans's invitation.

"Oh, if you're in Marjories precious
cercle
already, you won't be hanging around with the likes of me."

"You mean she wouldn't ask you to join?"

"The wife of the athletic director? Dream on, my dear."

"Then I don't know if I care to go myself."

"Oh, go, by all means, if only to tell me about it."

Alice was a tall, broad-shouldered woman of thirty whose figure might have been impressive had she not stooped to look smaller. Her bobbed straw-colored hair made a poor frame for a large nose and fallen chin.

"Is the
cercle
then so coveted?"

"What else is there to covet?"

Natica thought this might be a good point. She preferred Alice to Mrs. Evans, but poor Alice was not in any position to provide amusement. When "Marjorie," as she was now privileged to call the latter, informed her that the newest member always selected the topic for her first meeting, she chose
Phèdre.

"Well, that's just fine. I was sure you'd give us tone. Watch out, Mr. Racine, here we come!"

***

Mrs. Evans's living room was on the bare side; the walls were painted yellow and the chairs and sofa draped in a dull brown. A small breakfront displayed indifferent plates on teakwood stands. The sentimental watercolor of an Evans daughter hung over the mantel. An open door revealed Mr. Evans's library, more invitingly crammed with books and framed old maps, but Mrs. Evans closed it when the seven ladies were assembled, and the sighing heavy Irish maid toted in the big tray with tea things. Greetings and inquiries as to health were conducted in hesitant and painfully articulated French, but the main discussion, led by the hostess, was not.

"I'm going to start by admitting that I've only seen one play at the Comédie Française, and that was
Le Monde ou l'on S'ennuie.
The title seemed appropriate." Here she paused for laughs and received a couple. "I don't doubt that
Phèdre
is a great play. But I must say—and call me if you will a spoiled American who pines for derring-do—that five acts of Alexandrine verse where the only bit of action is a sword pulled out of its scabbard—never of course used—is what our German friends (if we have any in these Nazi days) call
landweilig.
"

"Ah, but, Marjorie, if you had seen the divine Sarah in her greatest role, as I was blessed to in my salad days, you would have had your fill of excitement." Mrs. Knight, wife of the senior Latin teacher, rarely appeared on campus, having somehow exempted herself from the jurisdiction of the headmaster. She was the oldest of the faculty wives, in her middle or even late sixties, and had a long, haggard face, heavily made up, and brooding dark eyes over blue shadow. The added touches of her richly dyed auburn hair and huge amber beads made her seem like a retired actress. She was, on the contrary, a New York heiress who lived away from the school in a big dark Tudor house of her own purchasing and wrote poetry that she was too "free-spirited" to publish.

"You mean Sarah Bernhardt?" gasped Mrs. Greenwald, the wide-eyed, constantly astonished wife of the physics teacher. "You actually saw Sarah Bernhardt, Estelle?"

"Bless you, my dear, I saw her many times. Why, she even came to my aunt's house in Paris and heard me recite a poem. Yes,
me,
poor, scared-to-death little Estelle Tyler! Oh, I almost expired when I heard my mother, who would stop at nothing, ask
cette chère Madame Sarah
if she would be so
gracieuse
as to
écouter la petite.
And then suddenly there I was, standing up before them all, declaiming 'Le Sommeil du Condor.'" Mrs. Knight closed her eyes and clasped her hands. "Oh, why didn't I perish, like Pheidippides, at that summit of joy? For next I heard the famous
voix d'or
actually asking me to her home for a lesson in diction! But
bien entendu,
that was not a milieu for a
jeune fille,
and dear Papa put his foot firmly down. Who knows what histrionic career he may have nipped in the bud?"

"Why couldn't a
jeune fille
go there?" Mrs. Greenwald, in all sincerity, wanted to know.