There was a short silence. And then, “Who?” asked Elizabeth Langdon.
“A couple of my students,” said Arthur Langdon.
“It must be almost five,” said Natalie quickly. “I’d better be getting back.”
She rose, and Arthur Langdon said, “Don’t go, unless you really have something important to do. You might enjoy meeting these girls.”
“Well,” said Natalie hesitantly, not knowing to what extent these people might be trusted to want her for her father’s sake, or her own. “I would like to stay,” she said, reverting to her never-never land of no precedents.
“Please stay,” said Elizabeth Langdon.
This, at any rate, could not be insincere. Natalie smiled shyly and sat down again.
Once she had definitely indicated her continuing presence Arthur Langdon seemed to feel free to speak to his wife, as though Natalie were now enough a member of the family not to hear anything he said. Her seniority as guest allowed them to talk of the new guests expected, and even to hope, perhaps, that Natalie might share in their arrangements for entertainment, perhaps carrying glasses, or emptying ashtrays, or simply preparing herself with a stock of small talk to be used directly they entered.
“They won’t drink any more than two cocktails apiece,” said Arthur Langdon to his wife. “Do you have any pretzels or anything?”
“What’s all the fuss over them?” Elizabeth asked, not moving.
“I like things to be nicely arranged when my students come to see me,” he said.
“It looks all right to them if they get a free drink and a few words of wisdom from you,” Elizabeth said.
“Nevertheless,” he said emphatically, “I want my students treated as well as possible.”
Elizabeth addressed Natalie, “You and I don’t need anything fancy, do we? Pretzels? Imported caviar? Breast of guinea hen?”
Natalie opened her mouth to speak, Arthur Langdon opened his mouth to speak, and the doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” Arthur said quickly. His wife watched him without expression as he hurried to the door.
“Can’t wait, can he?” she said unpleasantly to Natalie.
Natalie, uncomfortable and wishing she had left, and yet at the same time enjoying immensely a series of events which she could watch without being really implicated, stood up uncertainly as Arthur opened the door.
“Can I get the pretzels or anything for you?” she asked Elizabeth.
Elizabeth laughed. “Arthur will get them,” she said. “Watch little Arthur be the little host.”
Arthur came back into the room, followed by two girls. Natalie, looking at them with a frank stare possible only because they were both looking at Arthur and for the moment ignoring both herself and Elizabeth, saw with the irritation she was beginning to know as jealousy that they were both lovely, in the way that Elizabeth Langdon was lovely: the rounded, colorful, rich beauty of girls who have been pretty babies and pretty little girls and pretty boarding school girls and who have, at last, in college, reached a fulfillment of prettiness because they are finally nubile; that their loveliness would be deadened as Elizabeth’s had been deadened was not more than a small consolation to Natalie; that this loveliness built and recharged itself with an awareness of loveliness, and almost certainly masked vacant stupidity, was no consolation at all. The further thought that, premising the loveliness of young women as nature’s infallible way of insuring them husbands, these two could at best marry no more than a few of the men in the world, was less than no consolation at all.
Vicki, one of them was named, and the other was Anne. Vicki had great, long-lashed dark eyes which she disguised, as though it were a joke between herself and the beholder, with heavy-rimmed glasses; these glasses, to enhance the joke, she played with constantly, taking them off and putting them on with a mock-efficient gesture, using them to wave with, to hold in her hands, but very rarely keeping them over her face. With or without the glasses, she gave an additional impression of seeing clearly everything that went on around her, and of enjoying it without pity.
Anne—had these girls become friends on purpose?—was sweet and subdued; like something out of Little Women, Natalie thought with scorn, thinking almost at the same minute that she would not be wise to underestimate Anne, who smiled shyly and almost curtseyed, who looked sweetly at Natalie and at Elizabeth and at Vicki and at Arthur Langdon, as though in this pretty world it was incredible that everyone should be so kind to shy Anne; who would never, it was perfectly clear, give away an inch of anything she had once gotten hold of.
“How do you do, Mrs. Langdon?” said Anne softly to Elizabeth. “How are you?”
“Very well, thank you, Anne,” Elizabeth said, not moving from the couch.
“Mrs. Langdon,” said Vicki, coming over to Elizabeth with her hand out, “it’s been so long since we’ve seen you.”
Are these old friends of hers? Natalie wondered; perhaps some of the girls she knew as students? She turned as she heard her name. “Natalie Waite,” Arthur was saying.
“How do you do?” said Natalie politely, and felt for a long minute the two pair of eyes regarding her, disdaining her perhaps, estimating her.
“I think I’ve seen you in the dining room or somewhere,” Vicki said, as one to whom the dining room was a lesser estate, belonging to her general inheritance, but rarely visited, perhaps because of its barrenness, or the provincial nature of its inhabitants.
“You’re new, aren’t you?” added Anne.
And that, Natalie thought, is the extent of my impact upon the college so far; she signified that she was very new indeed, and somehow managed, unwillingly, to imply that she was now in the presence of the first four people she had spoken to as formal acquaintances since she had reached the college. All four of them smiled upon her, for the only time united, in their mutual superiority at having been in this place longer than Natalie had. Perhaps, too, at that moment, something vague solidified within Natalie, in the face of the three lovely girls in the room, so that she became less of a meek and submissive personality and was without warning as good a soul as the rest of them; from within the strongholds of her own possessive pride in herself it became now apparent to her that there were weaknesses of defense in other fortresses. She might, she thought in this minute, choose to pursue an acquaintance with these two girls; it was obvious that both Elizabeth and Arthur Langdon had perceived that, of the vast unidentified face of the new student body, Natalie had become an individual, with a father, and recognizable. Was it—and again this thought had never in these words troubled Natalie before—worthwhile bothering with any of them?
At any rate, acquaintances or not, it was first necessary for all of them to find a place to sit down, and for Arthur to get everyone drinks, and for Elizabeth, never moving from the couch, where she was now half-reclining, to say some few words, somehow—as it seemed—managing to choke out the barest civilities, in a manner both indifferent and insulting. Natalie looked into her glass with embarrassment, not so much for Elizabeth as for the fact that she had suddenly discovered that in the confusion attending the entrance of Vicki and Anne, she had consumed without knowing it the rest of the cocktail, making, with the new one Arthur handed to her, four strong cocktails for Natalie. She wondered, and thought she had wondered before, that this intoxicant should be liquid, why was it that a substance so indulged in should not be a solid, like candy, or a smoke, like tobacco, or even merely a scent? The oddness of having to drink alcohol (surely she could not have consumed so much water in the late afternoon) perplexed Natalie, and she wanted to speak of this unique perspective but could not find phrases; then she became aware that Arthur Langdon was speaking.
“—And so I thought that we might work from that angle for a while. You ought to read that book,” he was telling Anne.
Anne looked at him for a long minute before answering; it had the double effect of keeping e
veryone’s eyes fixed on her while they waited for her to speak, and of convincing everyone, apparently, that she was serious, and timid about voicing her opinions, and also led one to believe that when she did speak it would be with a slight, charming lisp. Natalie unwisely thought that this method must be ineffective with anyone of sense, after the first time. “Will you lend it to me?” Anne asked Arthur finally.
What a fool she is, Natalie thought, and looked at Elizabeth to see if Elizabeth too thought that Anne was a fool, but Elizabeth was staring again at her own hands and her empty glass.
“How do you like it here?” Vicki asked Natalie. “Still pretty strange?”
“Not at all,” Natalie said politely. “Everyone has been so kind.”
“Anne and I live on the floor below you,” Vicki said. “Did you know it?”
“In the same house?” Natalie said, surprised.
“The same house,” Vicki agreed, making it sound like a bordello. “They always put a few reliable upperclassmen in with the new students. To make them feel at home,” she added, and grinned.
“I haven’t seen you,” Natalie said.
“We were in your room the other day while you were out,” Vicki said carelessly. Natalie stared at her and she laughed. “We knew you wouldn’t mind,” she said. “We were curious about you because you looked more interesting than most. There’s a red-headed character—” She shuddered theatrically. “Anyway, we thought we’d find out what you were like, so we wandered in one day when we knew you were out.”
Anne had given over her conversation with Arthur to listen to Vicki, and now she laughed prettily. “We practically sneaked in,” she told Natalie.
“Can’t trust this pair,” Arthur Langdon added with something that might have been pride. “They’ll do anything.”
“I don’t understand,” Natalie said uncertainly, meaning that she did not understand her own feelings at the moment; the thought of anyone, and particularly these two girls, coming unbidden into her room was abhorrent to her. On the other hand, they seemed to think nothing of it, but looked at her now with calm, guiltless, amused eyes; they premised their visit on what must be a complimentary opinion of Natalie, they criticized the red-haired girl, and they had Arthur Langdon’s blessing upon them, although Elizabeth looked at them now with incurious contempt.
She shook her head; should she accept this and gamble upon the value these two girls might possibly hold for her; should she show anger and demonstrate to Arthur Langdon that she was not to be tampered with, that even Vicki and Anne might not tangle safely with Natalie Waite? Elizabeth was at best a dubious ally, Natalie’s journal was always locked and the key always with her, she had as yet incriminated herself in no way with her room. She smiled quickly and said, “But how did you get in? I always lock the door.”
Anne and Vicki laughed, and even Arthur laughed with them. Then Anne said very meekly, “All the corresponding rooms on each floor use the same lock. Your room is 27, so the keys to 17 and 37 and 7 all unlock it.”
“Didn’t you ever know we’d been there?” Vicki asked Natalie. “We sat on your bed and read some of your books.”
And my letters, Natalie thought, and judged my clothes and commented on the dirty laundry under the bed and opened my dresser drawers and observed the view from my window and tried my lipstick and sampled my perfume and tested . . . “And what did you find out about me?” she asked.
“I thought,” said Anne in her innocence, “that you must be an awfully interesting person to know.” She just avoided saying “awf’ly int’resting.” “All those books,” she added.
“Except for your bedspread,” Vicki said impolitely. “Who did pick that out?” She edged the remark over into a faint compliment by hesitating just long enough, and then saying, “Not you, of course.”
Resolving not to be rid of the bedspread until it was worn to shreds, Natalie said, “My mother. She also chooses my clothes.” She hoped she had implied that she was too mad a creature to concern herself with clothes and bedspreads, perhaps even the despair of her mother’s heart for her giddy impracticality. “My father chooses my books,” she told Arthur Langdon, and he nodded, impressed.
“Don’t you make up your own mind about anything?” Anne asked sweetly.
“My mother,” Vicki said ruefully, “doesn’t care what I wear. Once just to prove it I put on black nail polish—this was when I was about fifteen,” she added hastily, looking from Natalie to Arthur Langdon, “—and when I came to the dinner table and waved my hands around frantically trying to make her notice, she finally said to me, ‘Victoria dear, I wish you’d eat more vegetables; you seem so nervous.’”
Natalie laughed; she had committed herself now to amiability, and she was determined to make the knowledge of her these girls had acquired legitimate; she thought, I will have to see the bedspreads in their rooms before I can sleep privately in mine again.
“Another drink?” said Arthur Langdon. He made a large gesture with his hand of sweeping all the glasses together.
“Thank you so much,” said Anne, and Vicki held out her glass with a smile. Natalie discovered with horror that she had finished another drink, but her small protest was overwhelmed by Arthur Langdon. As before, he passed his wife without offering to take her empty glass, and Vicki and Anne glanced at each other, and then, bewilderingly, at Natalie, and they all smiled.
“Did you have a pleasant summer?” Elizabeth asked abruptly.
Anne shrugged perfectly, and Vicki said, “About the same as usual, I guess. Sort of dull.”
“You were together, of course?” said Elizabeth, this time addressing Anne, the polite hostess speaking first to one guest and then to the other.
“Of course,” Anne said, and laughed deprecatingly. “I guess we always are,” she said.
“We were on the island, most of the time,” Vicki said.
“This island,” Elizabeth said deliberately to Natalie, it being perhaps Natalie’s turn to be spoken to, “about which Vicki is so modest, is a little hideout of approximately four hundred square miles that belongs to Vicki’s family. It’s named something like Bide-A-Wee or Dew Drop Inn or Joe’s Place.”
“Shangri-La,” said Vicki coolly. “I didn’t name it.”
“It’s lovely there, though; so private,” Anne said, looking at the wall between Elizabeth and Natalie.
Elizabeth said to Natalie, as though wanting this clearly defined, as though it were necessary now to emphasize these facts, “Anne’s mother, by the way, designs evening gowns neither you nor I can afford.”
First of all, Natalie thought, How does she know I can’t afford . . . ? and then she understood that she was an as yet untried but possibly very strong ally, and if Elizabeth could use a heavy social parody to set Anne and Vicki into a different world and locate her sensitive, impoverished army securely behind their pride . . . thinking this far, Natalie thought, She must know I hate their going into my room, and said, “My mother chooses my evening gowns.” Evening gowns, she thought, evening gowns for Natalie Waite, that debutante.
“My brother sells insurance in New Jersey,” Elizabeth said, playing it just a shade too heavy.
Natalie laughed, and Vicki and Anne turned to look at her together, speculatively.
“She’s making fun of us, you know,” Anne said to Natalie.
In my own country I was accounted quite a killer, Natalie thought; next time she’ll stay where she belongs. “I’m sure she must be,” Natalie said sweetly.
Elizabeth leaned over the edge of the couch and set her glass firmly on the floor. Natalie and Vicki and Anne watched her silently, and then Elizabeth lifted her head and looked at Anne.
She is sure I’m with her, Natalie thought; what is she going to do?”
“You still chasing after my husband?” Elizabeth said suddenly to Anne. “Doing any better this year?”
“Everybody about given me up?” Arthur Langdon came back into the room carrying a tray on which were four full glasses and a bowl of pretzels. As he set the tray down upon the coffee table and began handing around the glasses, he said, “Sorry to keep you all waiting. I had to mix more cocktails.” He looked for a long minute at his wife, who stared back solemnly at him. “They were all gone,” Arthur said. “Pretzel?” he added politely to Anne.
“Dear,” said Elizabeth softly, “Anne and Vicki have just been telling us all about what they did this summer. They had the most interesting time.”
“Really?” Arthur said to Vicki; his voice was faintly wistful.
“The usual thing,” Vicki said, and Elizabeth laughed loudly.
Natalie was now far too happy to think of leaving. She thought she would like to be in Vicki’s place, perhaps, in this scene, or even in Anne’s; her feeling of pity for Elizabeth, which had been momentary at best, was now a sort of curious wonder; what further could this madwoman do? How could she expose herself as so weak before these two girls, before Natalie, whom she knew so slightly?
“Tell me about your father,” Arthur Langdon said to Natalie. Natalie retraced his thought. (Vicki’s family, money, fame, Natalie’s father) and said, “I’m sure he’d love to meet you. I’ll have to write him all about you, you know.”
He looked at her inquiringly, and she said, “I write him almost everything that happens, and particularly,” she said, thinking, Why not throw him a fish? “all about any interesting people I meet.” She smiled with an excellent imitation of Anne’s shy smile.
“He’s certainly an interesting person,” Anne said immediately.
“Your father will—” Vicki began.
“Interesting like a potato bug,” Elizabeth said from the couch.
We are all a little drunk, Natalie told herself wisely.
When the phone rang it was perfectly clear to everyone in the room that Elizabeth was not going to attempt getting off the couch to answer it, and everyone except Arthur Langdon waited tensely for him to leave the room again.