The Lady of Situations by Louis Auchincloss
Authors: Louis Auchincloss
Tags: General Fiction
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only mistake that she could see she had made was to have delivered her message to Marjorie instead of to Roy.
"The headmaster hopes that Roy will speed the gentlemen with their coffee and cigars after dinner. He is going to be closeted with Dr. Cotton, and Mrs. Lockwood doesn't care to be left too long with the ladies."
Marjorie Evans's cold gray eyes seemed to aim her big marble nose dangerously at her interlocutor. "I think my husband and I can handle ourselves socially without
your
help, Mrs. Barnes."
"I never questioned it. I was only doing what Dr. Lockwood asked me to do."
"Did he ask you to speak to
me?
"
"No, I don't suppose he did. But he wanted the message conveyed to your husband."
"Then convey it, Mrs. Barnes. You're taking everything else on your shoulders these days."
Natica, left alone, contemplating one of her hostess's elaborately carved Belter chairs, was possessed of the sudden image of a knife slitting its tightly packed pink upholstery to reveal an ugly cavern of angry broken springs and ominously stained cotton.
She moved over to join the respectful female group around the chair where Mrs. Lockwood, a cigarette dangling from her thin lips, was chatting as she plied her needlepoint. Was it Natica's imagination that made her fancy that the headmaster's wife deliberately failed to notice the two perfunctory comments that she added to the perfunctory talk?
At the dinner table, where ten were seated, there was a dispute between the host and hostess across the board that drew a strained silence from the guests. Natica had heard of these disputes but had never witnessed one. They were rare and were supposed always to result in a total victory for the wife.
Lockwood had perhaps unwisely chosen this evening to discuss the book that he "and Mrs. Barnes," as he facetiously put it, were engaged in composing.
"It will probably never be finished. I cannot seem to become enough of a literary carpenter to put together the box that would contain the impact of the school on the world and vice versa. I should have to be an historian, even a statistician, a biographer, an autobiographer (oh, yes), a novelist (for some things would never be believed) and even a poet!"
"Leave novels to women, Rufus," his wife retorted dryly. "It's their province."
"My dear!" His eyes rolled. "Do you thus dispose of Tolstoy, of Balzac, of Dickens?"
"I'm talking about Americans. Or perhaps I should say New Englanders. We are New Englanders, are we not? Our men are at their best when they are serious, when they write essays or history, like Prescott or Great-Uncle Francis Parkman."
"And Hawthorne?"
"You will remember that Mr. Emerson deplored Hawthorne's novels, though he admired the man. And Henry Adams knew what he was doing when he published those two novels anonymously."
Somebody brought up the name of William Dean Howells, but Mrs. Lockwood rejected him as a Middle Westerner who had settled in Boston and then (worse) abandoned it for New York. The headmaster, uneasy at the curious warp of mind that his wife was revealing, tried to mollify her with a compliment, saying that in eschewing fiction he would at least be within the tradition of the Lowell family, who had written every kind of prose and poetry
but
that.
Natica suggested that Amy Lowell's prose poems were almost short stories.
Mrs. Lockwood, without looking at her, remarked sharply to the table: "If Mrs. Barnes had listened to the discussion, she would have heard me say that fiction should be left to women."
"And Amy was barely that," Lockwood murmured to the lady on his left. Unfortunately for him, in the embarrassed silence that had followed his wife's pointed rudeness to Natica, the remark carried to her ears.
"I'll thank you not to make unpleasant remarks about my relatives, Rufus Lockwood. They've been kind enough to
you.
"
What impressed Natica at this awkward moment was the completeness of the headmaster's rout. He muttered an apology and confined his
"The headmaster hopes that Roy will speed the gentlemen with their coffee and cigars after dinner. He is going to be closeted with Dr. Cotton, and Mrs. Lockwood doesn't care to be left too long with the ladies."
Marjorie Evans's cold gray eyes seemed to aim her big marble nose dangerously at her interlocutor. "I think my husband and I can handle ourselves socially without
your
help, Mrs. Barnes."
"I never questioned it. I was only doing what Dr. Lockwood asked me to do."
"Did he ask you to speak to
me?
"
"No, I don't suppose he did. But he wanted the message conveyed to your husband."
"Then convey it, Mrs. Barnes. You're taking everything else on your shoulders these days."
Natica, left alone, contemplating one of her hostess's elaborately carved Belter chairs, was possessed of the sudden image of a knife slitting its tightly packed pink upholstery to reveal an ugly cavern of angry broken springs and ominously stained cotton.
She moved over to join the respectful female group around the chair where Mrs. Lockwood, a cigarette dangling from her thin lips, was chatting as she plied her needlepoint. Was it Natica's imagination that made her fancy that the headmaster's wife deliberately failed to notice the two perfunctory comments that she added to the perfunctory talk?
At the dinner table, where ten were seated, there was a dispute between the host and hostess across the board that drew a strained silence from the guests. Natica had heard of these disputes but had never witnessed one. They were rare and were supposed always to result in a total victory for the wife.
Lockwood had perhaps unwisely chosen this evening to discuss the book that he "and Mrs. Barnes," as he facetiously put it, were engaged in composing.
"It will probably never be finished. I cannot seem to become enough of a literary carpenter to put together the box that would contain the impact of the school on the world and vice versa. I should have to be an historian, even a statistician, a biographer, an autobiographer (oh, yes), a novelist (for some things would never be believed) and even a poet!"
"Leave novels to women, Rufus," his wife retorted dryly. "It's their province."
"My dear!" His eyes rolled. "Do you thus dispose of Tolstoy, of Balzac, of Dickens?"
"I'm talking about Americans. Or perhaps I should say New Englanders. We are New Englanders, are we not? Our men are at their best when they are serious, when they write essays or history, like Prescott or Great-Uncle Francis Parkman."
"And Hawthorne?"
"You will remember that Mr. Emerson deplored Hawthorne's novels, though he admired the man. And Henry Adams knew what he was doing when he published those two novels anonymously."
Somebody brought up the name of William Dean Howells, but Mrs. Lockwood rejected him as a Middle Westerner who had settled in Boston and then (worse) abandoned it for New York. The headmaster, uneasy at the curious warp of mind that his wife was revealing, tried to mollify her with a compliment, saying that in eschewing fiction he would at least be within the tradition of the Lowell family, who had written every kind of prose and poetry
but
that.
Natica suggested that Amy Lowell's prose poems were almost short stories.
Mrs. Lockwood, without looking at her, remarked sharply to the table: "If Mrs. Barnes had listened to the discussion, she would have heard me say that fiction should be left to women."
"And Amy was barely that," Lockwood murmured to the lady on his left. Unfortunately for him, in the embarrassed silence that had followed his wife's pointed rudeness to Natica, the remark carried to her ears.
"I'll thank you not to make unpleasant remarks about my relatives, Rufus Lockwood. They've been kind enough to
you.
"
What impressed Natica at this awkward moment was the completeness of the headmaster's rout. He muttered an apology and confined his
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