The Group (24 page)

On her way here to meet Dottie, who had gone to Dr. Perry for a check-up, Mrs. Renfrew had stopped at the Chilton Club to have a manicure and leafed through the day’s New York papers in the library, in case she saw anything in the ads for Dottie that could be ordered by mail. Her eye was caught by a photo of some young people in evening dress on one of the inner pages, next to a Peck & Peck ad. She turned back to start the story, reprinted from yesterday’s late edition, on the front page. When she saw Harald’s name, she immediately made a note to tell Dottie at lunch; Dottie might want to call Kay to get all the gory details. Mrs. Renfrew was a cheerful, lively person who always looked on the gay side of things; she imagined it must have been quite an adventure for those radical young people to get dressed up and do battle with the hotel staff, rather like a
Lampoon
prank; Kay’s husband, she was sure, when he came up for trial, would be let off after a lecture from the judge, the way the Harvard boys always were when they got in trouble with the Cambridge police force. Apropos of that, she meant to ask Sam to stop at City Hall and pay a parking ticket she and Dottie had got the other day.

It was only because she had so many other things on her mind, such as type faces, sheet sizes (would Brook and Dottie sleep in a double bed? It was so hard to know, with a widower, what to expect), and the bridesmaids’ dresses (such a problem, unless Helena could come on from Cleveland early to be fitted), that she quite forgot to mention Harald’s fracas till they had finished luncheon and were walking down Newbury Street, side by side, like two sisters, Mrs. Renfrew in her beaver and Dottie in her mink. “Dottie!” she exclaimed. “I nearly forgot! You’ll never guess what I was reading this morning at the Club. One of your friends has run afoul of the law.” She looked quizzically up at her daughter, her blue eyes dancing. “Try to guess.” “Pokey,” said Dottie. Mrs. Renfrew shook her head. “Not even warm.” “Harald Petersen!” repeated Dottie, when her mother had told her. “That wasn’t fair, Mother. He’s not exactly a friend. What did he do?” Mrs. Renfrew related the story. In the middle of it, Dottie stopped dead, between Arlington and Berkeley. “Who was the other man?” she asked. “I wonder who it could have been.” “I don’t know, Dottie. But his picture was in the paper. He had quite a ‘shiner.’” “You don’t remember the name, Mother?” Mrs. Renfrew ruefully shook her head. “Why? Do you think it’s someone you know?” Dottie nodded. “It was a fairly common name,” said Mrs. Renfrew, pondering. “It seems to me it began with B.” “Not Brown?” cried Dottie. “It might have been,” replied her mother. “Brown, Brown,” she repeated. “I wonder if that was it.” “Oh, Mother!” said Dottie. “Why didn’t you clip it out?” “Darling,” said her mother. “You can’t clip newspapers in the Club. It’s against the house rules. And yet you’d be surprised, the number of members that do it. Magazines too.” “What did he look like?” said Dottie. “Rather artistic,” said Mrs. Renfrew. “Dissipated-looking. But that may have been the black eye. A gentleman, I should think. Now, what did it say he did? Sad to say, Dottie, my memory’s going. ‘Harald Petersen, playwright,’ and the other one was something like that. Not ‘ditchdigger,’ anyway,” she added brightly. “‘Painter’?” suggested Dottie. “I don’t
think
so,” said her mother.

All this time, they had been standing in the middle of the sidewalk, with people brushing past them. It was cold; Mrs. Renfrew pushed back her coat sleeve and glanced at her watch. “You go on, Mother,” said Dottie abruptly. “I’ll meet you. I’m going back to the Ritz to buy the paper.” Mrs. Renfrew looked seriously up at Dottie; she was not alarmed, having guessed for a long time that some little love trouble had happened to Dottie early last summer in New York. That was why she had sent her out West, to get over it. “Do you want me to come with you?” she said. Dottie hesitated. Mrs. Renfrew took her arm. “Come along, dear,” she said. “I’ll wait in the ladies’ lounge while you get it from the porter.”

A few minutes later, Dottie appeared with the
Herald Tribune
; the
Times
had been sold out. “Putnam Blake,” she said. “You were right about the B. I met him at Kay’s party. He raises funds for labor. We got an appeal from him the other day for something. And he married Norine Schmittlapp, who was in our class. You can see her in the big picture. The four of them have got very inty this winter.” From Dottie’s flat tone, Mrs. Renfrew could tell that this was not “the one.” The poor girl laid the paper aside quietly; then she sank her chin into the palm of her hand and sat thinking. Mrs. Renfrew took out her compact, so as not to seem to watch Dottie. As she powdered her pretty, bright features, she considered what to do. Dottie still “had it bad,” as the girls said nowadays; that was all too clear. Her mother’s sympathies, like delicate feelers, fluttered out to her; she knew how it felt to yearn for the sight of a certain name long after the man who owned it had passed out of one’s life forever. The very prospect of seeing his name and his photograph had got Dottie all “hot and bothered” again. Yet Mrs. Renfrew could not decide whether it would be wiser to let Dottie bear her disappointment in silence or to help her talk it out. The danger of this was that Dottie’s flame might only be fanned by talking; if she had the strength to stamp it out alone, she would come through, in the end, a finer person. And yet it made little Mrs. Renfrew wince and bite her lips to sit pretending to fix her hair when a few words from her might be balm to Dottie’s soul.

Mrs. Renfrew had complete confidence in Dottie’s judgment: if Dottie considered this man in New York, whoever he was, unsuitable for her, Dottie must be right. Some girls in Dottie’s position might give up a fine young man because he was poor or had a dependent mother and sisters to support (Mrs. Renfrew had known such cases), but Dottie would not do that; through her religion, she would find the patience to wait. Whatever the reason, Dottie’s heart had made its decision last summer and stuck to it splendidly; it was Mrs. Renfrew’s guess that the man was married. There
were
cases (the wife hopelessly insane and shut up in an institution and no prospect of her death) in which Mrs. Renfrew might have counseled a liaison for Dottie, no matter what Sam Renfrew threatened, but if it had been something of
that
sort, Dottie would surely have told her. No; Mrs. Renfrew did not doubt that Dottie had done the wise and brave thing in cutting this man out of her life; it only troubled her that Dottie might be marrying too hastily, “on the rebound,” before her former feelings had had a chance to die naturally. She had come back from Arizona quietly happy and looking fit as a fiddle, but with Brook still out West and the strain of the wedding preparations, she had begun to seem a little over-tired and nervous. It worried Mrs. Renfrew, now, to realize that Dottie, with two fittings yet to come on her wedding dress, would be in New York and exposed, probably, at every turn, to memories of this man.

These thoughts, sharp as bird tracks, passed through Mrs. Renfrew’s pretty little hatted head as she sat, tense with sympathy for her daughter, in the Ritz ladies’ lounge. She wondered what Dr. Perry or Dr. Leverett, the dear old rector, would advise; perhaps Dottie would be able to talk to one of them, in case she had any real doubts about the state of her feelings. She snapped shut her handbag. “How was Dr. Perry today?” she asked smiling. “Did he give you a clean bill of health?” Dottie raised her head. “He wants to try some diathermy for my sciatica. But he says I’ll be better when I get back into the sun—the great open spaces.” She forced a twinkle into her brown eyes. Mrs. Renfrew hesitated; this was neither the time nor the place, but she was a believer in impulse. She looked around the lounge; they were alone. “Dottie,” she said. “Did Dr. Perry say anything to you about birth control?” Dottie’s face and neck reddened, giving her a rough, chapped look, like an ailing spinster. She nodded briefly. “He says you told him to, Mother. I wish you hadn’t,” Mrs. Renfrew guessed that Dr. Perry had been having one of his gruff days and had offended Dottie’s maiden modesty; engaged girls often had the most unaccountable reactions to the prospect of the wedding night. Mrs. Renfrew moved her chair a little closer. “Dottie,” she said. “Even if you and Brook are planning to have children, you mayn’t want them just yet. There’s a new device, I understand, that’s ninety-per-cent effective. A kind of rubber cap that closes off the uterus. Did Dr. Perry tell you about it?” “I stopped him,” said Dottie. Mrs. Renfrew bit her lip. “Darling,” she urged, “you mustn’t be frightened. Dr. Perry, you know, isn’t a woman’s doctor; he may have been a bit brusque. He’ll arrange to send you to a specialist, who’ll make it all seem easier. And who’ll answer any questions you want to ask—you know, about the physical side of love. Would you rather see a woman doctor? I don’t think this new device is legal yet here in Massachusetts. But Dr. Perry can fix it for you to have an appointment in New York, the next time we go down for your fittings.”

It seemed to Mrs. Renfrew that Dottie shivered in reply. “I’ll go with you, dear,” she added, brightly. “If you want moral support …Or you could ask one of your married friends—Kay or Priss.” Mrs. Renfrew did not know what had done it—the mention of New York, perhaps—but Dottie began to cry. “I love him,” she said, choking, as the tears ran in furrows down either side of her long, distinguished nose. “I love him, Mother.”

At last it had come out. “I know, dear,” said Mrs. Renfrew, fishing in Dottie’s pocketbook for a clean handkerchief and gently wiping her face. “I don’t mean Brook,” said Dottie. “I know,” said Mrs. Renfrew. “What am I going to do?” Dottie repeated. “What am I going to do?” “We’ll see,” promised her mother. Her principal object now was to get Dottie’s tears dried and her face powdered and take her home, before any of their friends could see her here. “We’ll give up the fitting,” she said. The doorman brought the car around (he and Mrs. Renfrew were old friends); Mrs. Renfrew put her small foot on the accelerator and in a few minutes they were home and up in Dottie’s bedroom, with the door closed, having let themselves in so softly that Margaret, the old parlormaid, had not heard them. They sat on Dottie’s chaise longue, with their arms around each other.

“I thought I was over it. I thought I loved Brook.” Mrs. Renfrew nodded, though she had not yet learned the circumstances or even the young man’s name. “Do you want to marry him?” she asked, going straight to the heart of the matter. “There’s no question, Mother, of that,” Dottie answered, in a cold, almost rebuking tone. Mrs. Renfrew drew a deep breath. “Do you want to ‘live’ with him?” she heard herself bravely pronounce. Dottie buried her head in her mother’s strong small shoulder. “No, I guess not,” she acknowledged. “Then what do you want, darling?” said her mother, stroking her forehead. Dottie pondered. “I want to see him again,” she decided. “That’s all, Mother. I want to see him again.” Mrs. Renfrew clasped Dottie tighter. “I thought he’d be at Kay’s party. I was
sure
he’d be there. And you know, when I first came in, I only wanted him to be there so that he could hear about my engagement and see my engagement ring and watch how happy I was. I looked awfully well that day. But then, when he didn’t come, I started wanting to see him just to see him—not to show him he didn’t mean a thing to me any more. Was that first feeling just sort of an armor, do you think?” “I imagine so, Dottie,” said her mother. “Oh, it was awful,” said Dottie. “Every time the doorbell rang, I was convinced it was going to be Dick”—she pronounced the name shyly, looking sidewise at her mother—“and then when it wasn’t I nearly fainted, each time, it hurt me so. And all those new friends of Kay’s were terribly nice but I almost hated them because they weren’t Dick. Why do you think he didn’t come?” “Was he invited?” asked Mrs. Renfrew practically. “I don’t know and I couldn’t ask. And it was so peculiar; nobody mentioned him. Not a word. And all the time a drawing by him of Harald was hanging right there on the wall. Like Banquo’s ghost or something. I felt sure he’d been invited and was staying away on purpose and that everybody there knew that and was watching me out of the corner of their eye.” “Your grammar, Dottie!” chided her mother, absently; her sky-blue eyes had clouded over. “Does Kay know about this?” she asked, taking care to make the question sound casual, so that she would not seem to be reproaching Dottie. Dottie nodded mutely, not looking at her mother, who made a little grimace and then controlled herself. “If she knew, dear, and knew you were engaged,” she said lightly, “she doubtless
didn’t
invite him. For your sake.” Mrs. Renfrew was “fishing,” but Dottie did not bite. “How cruel,” she answered, which told Mrs. Renfrew nothing. “You mustn’t be unfair, dear,” she said mechanically, “because you’re unhappy. Your father would say,” she added, smiling, “that Kay ‘showed good judgment.’” And she looked questioningly into Dottie’s eyes. How far had this thing gone? Mrs. Renfrew had to know, yet Dottie did not seem to be aware of the fact that she had left her parent in the dark.

“Then you think I shouldn’t see him?” Dottie answered swiftly. “How can I say, Dottie?” protested her mother. “You haven’t told me anything about him. But I think
you
think you shouldn’t see him. Amn’t I right?” Dottie stared pensively at her engagement ring. “I think I
must
see him,” she decided. “I mean I feel I’m fated to see him. If I don’t do anything about it myself. As if it would be arranged, somehow, before I was married, that I would meet him just once. But I think I mustn’t
try
to see him. Do you understand that?” “I understand,” said Mrs. Renfrew, “that you want to have your cake and eat it too, Dottie. You’d like God to arrange for you to have something that you know would be wrong for you to have if you chose it of your own free will.” A look of relief and wonder came into Dottie’s face. “You’re right, Mother!” she cried. “What a marvelous person you are! You’ve seen right through me.” “We’re all pretty much alike,” consoled Mrs. Renfrew. “Judy O’Grady and the Colonel’s lady, you know.” She squeezed Dottie’s hand. “And yet,” said Dottie, “even if it’s wrong, I can’t stop hoping. Not hoping, even. Expecting. That somehow, somehow, I
will
see him. On the street. Or on a bus or a train. The day after Kay’s party, I went to the Museum of Modern Art; I made believe I was going to see an exhibition. But he wasn’t there. And the time’s getting so short. Only a month left. Less than a month. Mother, in Arizona, I hardly thought about him at
all
. I’d almost forgotten him. It was Kay’s party that brought it all back. And ever since then I’ve had the most
peculiar
feeling. That he was thinking about me too. Not just that, Mother. Watching me, sort of skeptically, wherever I went, like to Dr. Perry today or a fitting; he has the most thrilling grey eyes that he narrows. …” She hesitated and broke off. “Do you believe in thought transference, Mother? Do you remember
Peter Ibbetson
? Because I feel that Dick is listening to my thoughts. And waiting.” Mrs. Renfrew sighed. “Your imagination has got over-active, dear. You’re letting it run away with you.” “Oh, Mother,” said Dottie, “if you could only see him! You would like him too. He’s terribly good-looking and he’s suffered so much.” All at once, she dimpled. “How could you ever have thought that I’d have fallen for someone that looked like that Putnam Blake? Why, he’s white as a leper and needs to wash his hair! Dick isn’t the unwashed type; he comes from a very good family—descended from Hawthorne. Brown is a very good name.”