Tutors' Lane Part 9

Mrs. Norris was pleased with Tom's account of his success in the writing of the examination paper. Certain unsatisfactory rumours had come to her ears recently about his work. Henry Whitman, for example, had stated that Tom was loafing and that unless he picked up and showed improvement he might not receive a reappointment when his present term had expired.

It is curious how everyone knows everyone else's business at Woodbridge.

Each man has his grade stamped clearly upon him, for all, with the possible exception of the man himself, to see. A young man can raise this grade; and Mrs. Norris--who loved Tom almost as though he were her own--was hopeful for him.

"All he needs, Julian," she said to the Dean when she told him of Tom's triumph, "is a guiding hand. I can't do it, because I'm too old, but I know someone who can." She was "straightening out" the library at the time, and as she said this she gave a chair a shove with her knee, which sent it flying into the books on the wall.

"Mercy on us," cried the Dean, annoyed by this display of vigour, "who is it?"

"Nancy."

"Oh, pshaw, you're always trying to marry her off. You're the worst match-maker I know."

Mrs. Norris laughed quietly. "You wait and see," was all she said; but she had settled in her mind upon a picnic.

Mary, when approached upon the subject, had not been at all enthusiastic. "Why, it's much too early for a picnic," she had objected.

"It is not at all. Everything is three weeks early this year, and that makes it about the middle of May. We'll have a lovely moon, too. It will be grand." And she proceeded to invite the guests, Nancy and Tom, and Furbush, for it was true that he had been most attentive to Mary of late. Mrs. Norris at first refused to go, but Mary insisted.

"You will have to watch the fire, Gumgum, while we are off looking for sticks and things." And so she had gone, after all.

Mrs. Norris's ideas of a picnic were large, the heritage of a day that knew few tins and miraculous powders that bloom into omelettes. She scorned them and brought along a generous store of raw steak and bacon and potatoes. A picnic without a fire and roasting meat was too namby-pamby for words; and though she would not now undertake to cook the food herself, because of a certain eccentricity of the knee joints, and since her daughter, despite her domestic science, declined to do so, she had brought along Julia the cook. Nothing but the big limousine would do for such an undertaking, and, as it was, Furbush had to nurse the steak in his lap. Mrs. Norris would have reached the picnicking ground in a procession of buggies, but at that Mary protested so vigorously that she was forced to resign.

The picnic place was a pretty, slightly inaccessible rock overlooking a creek. Though actually not far from Woodbridge, as the road was overgrown and the turns sharp the motor had to proceed with a deliberation which made the trip justifiably difficult. The rock itself was about a hundred yards from the road; and since there was scarcely any path through the woods to it, there were made possible the pretty callings and hallooings, fallings-down and pickings-up, without which no picnic is quite perfect. Mrs. Norris, as a matter of fact, did more than her share of this. She had not gone more than thirty steps into the wood before she was completely lost; and by the time she had been safely brought to the rock her hat was well over on one side, her hair streaming down, and the torn fringe of her petticoat dragging along behind in the dirt. Julia and Horace, the chauffeur, however, had gone directly to the rock without the preliminary vagaries vouchsafed to their superiors, and by the time Mrs. Norris was finally captured they had succeeded in getting the supper well under way.

Upon her arrival Mrs. Norris announced her intention of roasting a potato.

"Gumgum, please sit down," begged her daughter. "You are only upsetting everything," and she laid an unfilial hand upon her mother's arm.

"I am going to roast a potato," Mrs. Norris cried, shaking herself free and seizing upon a pared potato. "Tommy, get me a stick."

"Isn't she awful," laughed Mary. "Don't you dare give her a stick, Tom."

But Tom did dare, and Mrs. Norris, with her smiling benignity, stood waving the stick back and forth over the fire in time with the andante movement of her favourite Brahms sonata.

"Well, we might as well get ready to eat that old stuff," said Nancy to Furbush. "Don't you dread it?"

"I would not dread it, dear, so much, dreaded I not mother more," he replied, to Mary's intense gratification. But Tom, who heard the low-spoken words, thought them decidedly forced and disliked Furbush the more for them.

Furbush's presence was undoubtedly a drawback to Tom's pleasure. How could he be natural with a person whom he disliked as much as he did Furbush and who he knew disliked him? Besides, he did not feel like being sprightly and picnicky with Nancy beside him. Instead, he felt homesick, or at least that is the way it seemed to him. Still, how could it be genuine homesickness when the object of his yearning was beside him? Nevertheless, there had been in his thoughts recently the picture of a certain small colonial house in Tutors' Lane, a house now for rent or for sale. Possibly, however, the contrast of such a life--the house would be furnished with highboys and gate-leg tables and oval, woven mats--with his present one at Mrs. Ruddel's furnished him with a genuine case of homesickness, after all. How perfect would life be in such surroundings! He liked to think of breakfast: He and Nancy, alone, except, of course, for the pretty, efficient maid--at their mahogany breakfast table. Nancy, busy with the coffee things at one end and he at the other--no, at the side--tucking away his grapefruit and bacon and hot b.u.t.tered m.u.f.fins and jam in the last few minutes before he dashed off up the hill to his eight-thirty. Good heavens, what a life that would be! He saw Nancy with the morning light on her hair and her pleasant, lively face--the nose with only the faintest possible trace of powder--bending over his cup; and then he realized that he was gazing at her now in the same position, only with the sunset light in her hair, and with a white porcelain cup receiving the coffee out of a thermos bottle, instead of a china cup from a swelling-silver pot.

"Careful Tommy, you are dribbling it all over me."

"Oh, Nancy, I'm so sorry. I ask you, isn't that stupid. Please excuse me."

"A little lemon or a hot iron or soap and water will fix it, probably,"

said Furbush.

Tom looked over at Furbush. He hated his liquid tones, like honey dripping on a blue plush sofa. "How the h.e.l.l do you get that way?" he wanted to ask--then he rounded out the sentence with certain phrases which had been current among our heroes along all war fronts from Kamchatka to Trieste. Even a milder remark was happily averted, for at this point the potato which Mrs. Norris had been steadily roasting, burst into flame and had to be plunged into the fire; a grateful accident, for now she was willing to sit down on the camp stool brought for her and to confine herself to the slicing of the bread.

What pa.s.sed until the meal was finished was of slight significance. It was a decidedly detached party, the two couples being brought together chiefly through Mrs. Norris; and when Nancy and Tom had finished a banana which they had divided in the jolly picnic way, Tom stood up. "Do you realize," he asked Nancy, "that this is a wishing carpet we've been sitting on? Let's take it down by the creek and see where it will take us."

"Oh, dear," said Mrs. Norris, not at all displeased. "And now where are you and Mary going?"

"We're going to look for crocuses in the garden of the Queen of the Fairies," replied Furbush. "They ought to be up now."

"Well, take along this flashlight: it's getting awfully bosky-wosky in there." And then Mrs. Norris was left alone with Julia, whom she entertained with an animated and brilliant account of t.i.tania and Oberon.

"Where shall we go?" asked Tom when they were seated on the magic motor rug.

"Let's go to Libya!" said Nancy promptly.

"Libya! Well, I suppose we might as well go there as anywhere. You realize, of course, that we won't go until I put my foot on the carpet"--his left foot was straggling over the edge.

"Perhaps you'd better keep it there for a few minutes, then, until we are sure that we really want to go. As a matter of fact, I think it is rather nice right here in Woodbridge," and she smiled up at him.

Nancy had, of course, smiled upon a great many young men without precipitating a proposal of marriage, but then, the young men had probably not woven her image into their future hopes and fears as thoroughly as he had. Also the hour and the place lent their potency to her smile. The soft spring evening, happily extended by Daylight Saving, the noisy little creek running by their feet, and the staunch ally of all such projects, the great round moon, all combined to weave a spell, just as Mrs. Norris planned that they should.

Tom had come to the picnic prepared to speak his mind, not doubting that an opportunity would be given him. He had not memorized a speech, but was ready to trust to the inspiration of the moment. His cause was an honest one; he might expect the gift of tongues, but the starting gun had now been fired, the race was on, and he was not granted the gift of tongues. A little preparation might not have been amiss, after all.

"I agree with you about Woodbridge. In fact, I think had rather go on living here than anywhere else in the world, provided one thing." He had plunged in without the gift of tongues.

It was not so dark but that Tom could see the colour come into her face.

"Provided what, Tom?"

"Provided I can have you, Nancy. Provided you can love me as I love you." He had come nearer her, and although he had brought both feet upon the magic carpet, they remained stationary. "You mean more to me than anything I have ever known. I used to wonder how I could ever think more of anyone than I thought of Woodbridge and the Star and the different boys in college, but that was nothing compared to this." Nancy was tracing a series of geometrical patterns upon the magic carpet with a bit of stick. "I wish I could do something to show you how much I care now." Still Nancy said nothing. "And, oh, Nancy, what you could do for me! With you to help me, I think I could do anything. But I know I need you. Nancy, will you marry me?"

Nancy was hardly prepared for this. She had, since the social service fiasco, acknowledged to herself that she had grown in that short s.p.a.ce very fond of Tom. She looked forward to seeing him, and when he was gone she went over with pleasure what he had said and how he had looked. She liked his drollery and his strength, she admired his poise and self-reliance; and she had the greatest respect for his teaching ability, of which she had received direct proof. Still, she was not at all sure that she wished to marry him. After all, she had really known him only something over a month, and it was not the Whitman way to hurry into anything--least of all into matrimony.

"You mustn't ask me that, Tom."

"Why not, Nancy?"

"Because I cannot accept; not now."

"You mean that perhaps you can later? For of course I shall never grow tired of asking you."

The moon had climbed a little and had turned a silvery yellow. It flooded the rock and the people moving about on it, but Nancy and Tom remained in shadow. "Tell me, Nancy," he said, leaning over and covering with his own the hand upon which she was resting, "tell me that I may ask you again, for, dear Nancy, I cannot lose you." She did not draw her hand away immediately and when she did so she did it gently.

"You're awfully good, Tom," she said and Tom's heart swelled at the softness of her tone. Then she climbed to her feet, and--Tom picking up the magic carpet, which had become soaked through with the dampness of the creek bank--they made their way back to the rock.

And so ended their first love scene. That Tom's behaviour will appear tepid, in these vigorous days, is to be feared. His own contemporaries, of both s.e.xes, will almost certainly be the first to point out that had they been in his place nothing would have kept them from proceeding from the tame seizure of Nancy's hand to some bolder action. Tom, however, helping Nancy along over the rocks and sticks was happily oblivious of his unconventionality. The beauteous evening did, in very truth, seem calm and free to him, though the party on the rock was making a little too much noise to have the holy time quiet as a nun, breathless with adoration. His mind turned to the sc.r.a.p of Wordsworth he had lately memorized, and though he was a trifle annoyed to find that he couldn't, even now, perhaps when he most wanted it, remember all, the phrase "comfort and command" stayed with him and did nicely for the whole.

XIII

Tom telephoned to Mrs. Norris the next day to make certain that he might see her. He felt that she was an ally in the matter of Nancy, and it was important to get her advice.