Edith Wharton - SSC 10 (25 page)

 
          
The
train was slowing down. “Frostingham,” the conductor shouted, stressing the
last syllable in the old
Boston
way. “Thank heaven,” Warbeck thought, “nothing ever really changes in
Boston
!”

 
          
A
newsboy came through the
Pullman
with the evening papers. Warbeck unfolded one and read on the first
page: “Frostingham preparing to celebrate Miss Martha Little’s hundredth
birthday.” And underneath: “Frostingham’s most distinguished centenarian chats
with representative of
Transcript.’’’’
But the train was slowing down again—and here was
Boston
. Warbeck thrust the paper into his
suit-case, bewildered yet half-understanding. Where else in the world but in
Boston would the fact of having lived to be a hundred lift even a Martha Little
into the lime-light? Ah, no;
Boston
forgot nothing, altered nothing. With a
swelling heart the penitent exile sprang out, and was folded to the breasts of
a long line of Warbecks and Pepperels, all of whom congratulated him on having
arrived from the ends of the earth in time for Martha Little’s birthday.

 
          
  

 
          
That
night after dinner, Warbeck leaned back at ease in the pleasant dining-room of
the old Pepperel house in
Chestnut Street
. The Copley portraits looked down
familiarly from the walls, the old Pepperel Madeira circulated about the table.
(In
New
York
,
thought Warbeck, Copleys and
Madeiras
,
if there had been any, would both have been sold long since.)

 
          
The
atmosphere was warm to the returning wanderer. It was pleasant to see about him
the animated replicas of the Copleys on the walls, and to listen again to the
local intonations, with the funny stress on the last syllable. His unmarried
Pepperel nieces were fresh and good-looking; and the youngest, Lyddy, judging
from her photograph, conspicuously handsome. But Lyddy was not there. Cousin Martha,
Mrs. Pepperel explained with a certain pride, was so fond of Lyddy that the
girl had to be constantly with her; and since the preparations for the
hundredth birthday had begun, Lyddy had been virtually a prisoner at
Frostingham. “Martha wouldn’t even let her off to come and dine with you
tonight; she says she’s too nervous and excited to be left without Lyddy. Lyddy
is my most self-sacrificing child,” Mrs. Pepperel added complacently. One of
the younger daughters laughed.

 
          
“Cousin
Martha says she’s going to leave Lyddy her seed-pearls!”

 
          
“Priscilla—!”
her mother rebuked her.

 
          
“Well,
mother, they
are
beauties.”

 
          
“I
should say they were,” Mrs. Pepperel bridled.
“The old
Wrigglesworth seed-pearls—simply priceless.
Martha’s been offered
anything for them! All I can say is, if my child gets them, she’s deserved it.”

 
          
Warbeck
reflected. “Were they the funny old ornaments that everybody laughed at when
Martha wore them at Grandma Warbeck’s famous ball?”

 
          
His
sister wrinkled her brows.
“That wonderful ball of Grandma’s?
Did Martha wear them there, I wonder—all those centuries ago? I suppose then
that nobody appreciated them,” she murmured.

 
          
Warbeck
felt as if he were in a dream in which everything
happens
upside-down. He was listening to his sister’s familiar kind of family anecdote,
told in familiar words and in a familiar setting; but the Family Tyrant, once
named with mingled awe and pride, was no longer the all-powerful Grandma
Warbeck of his childhood, but her effaced imperceptible victim, Martha Little.
Warbeck listened sympathetically, yet he felt an underlying constraint. His
sister obviously thought he lacked interest in the Frostingham celebrations,
and even her husband, whose mental processes were so slow and subterranean that
they never altered his motionless countenance, was heard to mutter: “Well, I
don’t suppose many families can produce a brace of centenarians in one year.”

 
          
“A brace—?”
Warbeck laughed, while the nieces giggled, and
their mother looked suddenly grave.

 
          
“You
know, Grayson, I’ve never approved of the Perches forcing themselves in.” She
turned to Warbeck. “You’ve been away so long that you won’t understand; but I
do think it shows a lack of delicacy in the Perches.”

 
          
“Why,
what have they done?” Warbeck asked; while the nieces’ giggles grew
uncontrollable.

 
          
“Dragged
an old Perch great-uncle out of goodness knows where, on the pretext that
he’s
a hundred too. Of course we never
heard a word of it till your aunts and I decided to do something appropriate
about Martha Little. And how do we know he
is
a hundred?”

 
          
“Sara!”
her husband interjected.

 
          
“Well,
I think we ought to have asked for an affidavit before a notary. Crowding in at
the eleventh hour! Why, Syngleton Perch doesn’t even live in
Massachusetts
. Why don’t they have
their
centenary in
Rhode Island
? Because they know nobody’d go to it—that’s
why!”

 
          
“Sara,
the excitement’s been too much for you,” said Mr. Pepperel judicially.

 
          
“Well,
I believe it will be, if this sort of thing goes on.
Girls,
are you sure there are programmes enough? Come—we’d better go up to the
drawing-room and go over the list again.” She turned affectionately to her
brother. “It’ll make all the difference to Martha, your being here. She was so
excited when she heard you were coming. You’ve got to sit on the platform next
to her—or next but one. Of course she must be between the Senator and the
Bishop. Syngleton Perch wanted to crowd into the third place; but it’s yours,
Martha says; and of course when Martha says a thing, that settles it!”

 
          
“Medes
and Persians,” muttered Mr. Pepperel, with a wink which did not displace his
features; but his wife interposed: “Grayson, you know I hate your saying
disrespectful things about Martha!”

 
          
Warbeck
went to bed full of plans for the next day: old friends to be looked up, the
Museums to be seen, and a tramp out on the Mill Dam, down the throat of a
rousing
Boston
east wind. But these invigorating plans
were shattered by an early message from Frostingham. Cousin Martha
Little
expected Warbeck to come and see her; he was to lunch
early and be at Frostingham at two sharp. And he must not fail to be punctual,
for before her afternoon nap
cousin
Martha was to have
a last fitting of her dress for the ceremony.

 
          
“You’d
think it was her wedding dress!” Warbeck ventured jocosely; but Mrs. Pepperel
received the remark without a smile. “Martha is
very
wonderful,” she murmured; and her brother acquiesced: “She
must be.”

 
          
At
two sharp his car drew up before the little old Grayson house. On the way out
to Frostingham the morning papers had shown him photographs of its pilastered
front, and a small figure leaning on a stick between the elaborate door-lights.
“Two Relics of a Historic Past,” the headline ran.

 
          
Warbeck,
guided by the radiant Lyddy, was led into a small square parlour furnished with
the traditional Copleys and mahogany. He perceived that old Grayson’s dingy
little house had been an unsuspected treasury of family relics; and enthroned
among them sat the supreme relic, the Crown Jewel of the clan.

 
          
“You
don’t recognize your cousin Martha!” shrilled a small reedy voice, and a
mummied hand shot out of its lace ruffles with a slight upward tilt which
Warbeck took as hint to salute it. The hand tasted like an old brown glove that
had been kept in a sandal-wood box.

 
          
“Of
course I know you,
cousin
Martha. You’re not changed
the least little bit!”

 
          
She
lifted from her ruffles a small mottled face like a fruit just changing into a
seed-pod. Her expression was obviously resentful. “Not changed? Then you
haven’t noticed the new way I do my hair?”

 
          
The
challenge disconcerted Warbeck. “Well, you know, it’s a long time since we
met—going on for thirty years,” he bantered.

 
          
“Thirty
years?” She wrinkled her brows. “When I was as young as that I suppose I still
wore a pompadour!”

 
          
When
she was as young—as seventy! Warbeck felt like a gawky school-boy. He was at a
loss what to say next; but the radiant Lyddy gave him his clue. “Cousin Martha
was so delighted when she heard you were coming all the way from
Peru
on purpose for her Birthday.” Her eyes met
his with such a look of liquid candour that he saw she believed in the legend
herself.

 
          
“Well,
I don’t suppose many of the family have come from farther off than I have,” he
boasted hypocritically.

 
          
Miss
Little
tilted up her chin again. “Did you fly?” she
snapped; and without waiting for his answer: “I’m going to fly this summer. I
wanted to go up before my birthday; it would have looked well in the papers.
But the weather’s been too unsettled.”

 
          
It would have looked well in the papers’.
Warbeck listened to her, stupefied. Was it the old Martha
Little
speaking? There was something changed in
Boston
, after all. But she began to glance
nervously toward the door. “Lyddy, I think I heard the bell.”

 
          
“I’ll
go and see,
cousin
Martha.”

 
          
Miss
Little
sank back into her cushions with a satisfied
smile.
“These reporters—!”

 
          
“Ah—you
think it’s an interview?”

 
          
She
pursed up her unsteady slit of a mouth.
“As if I hadn’t told
them everything already!
It’s all coming out in the papers tomorrow.
Haven’t touched wine or black coffee for forty years… Light massage every
morning; very light supper at six… I cleaned out the canary’s cage myself every
day till last December… Oh, and I
love
my Sunday sermon on the wireless… But they won’t leave a poor old woman in
peace. ‘Miss
Little
, won’t you give us your views on
President Coolidge—or on companionate marriage?’ I suppose this one wants to
force himself in for the rehearsal.”

 
          
“The rehearsal?”

 
          
She
pursed up her mouth again. “Sara Pepperel didn’t tell you? Such featherheads,
all those Pepperels! Even Lyddy—though she’s a good child… I’m to try on my
dress at three; and after that, just a little informal preparation for the
ceremony. The Frostingham selectmen are to present me with a cane … a
gold-headed cane with an inscription …
Lyddy
Her
thread of a voice rose in a sudden angry pipe.

 
          
Lyddy
thrust in a flushed and anxious face. “Oh,
cousin
Martha—”

 
          
“Well,
is
it a reporter? What paper? Tell
him, if he’ll promise to sit perfectly quiet…”

 
          
“It’s
not a reporter,
cousin
Martha. It’s—
it’s
cousin Syngleton Perch. He says he wants to pay you his respects: and he thinks
he ought to take part in the rehearsal. Now please don’t excite yourself,
cousin
Martha!”