The Lady of Situations by Louis Auchincloss Page A

conversation for the rest of the meal to his immediate neighbors. His wife knew just where and when to implant her deadly dart. No doubt she had had ample practice.
    Walking home afterwards with Tommy, she found him upset and bewildered.
    "What in God's name have you done to Mrs. Lockwood?" he wanted to know.
    "You mean, don't you, what has Mrs. Lockwood done to me?"
    "Darling, she
is
the headmistress. Or at least the headmaster's wife."
    "And that gives her the right to have the manners of a pig? Whose side are you on, anyway?"
    Tommy paused to stare at her in astonishment through the darkness. Never before had she shown herself so tart. "I thought I was on your side. But I thought on our side we could work out together our life at Averhill."
    "I didn't reproach
you
for not telling Mrs. Lockwood that her manners were foul. Let us leave it, please, at that."
    "But Natica, my darling..."
    "Let us leave it at that!"
    It came as little surprise to Natica that on the following day, which was Sunday, Roy Evans called at the apartment with a very grave countenance. Tommy was at chapel, preparing for the morning service.
    "This is a tough one, Natica. But I may as well get on with it. The headmaster does not want you to go to your office tomorrow. He's got a Miss Thurmond coming up from the village to try out as his new secretary."
    "He wanted
you
to say that for him?"
    "That's it."
    "He didn't have the guts to do it himself?"
    "Great men can keep their guts for the occasions when other men's won't serve. This is not one of those."
    "I see. Is there anything else?"
    "He wants you to know that your dismissal has nothing to do with any fault on your part. You have done, he asks me to tell you, an excellent job. But he feels that using a faculty wife for your post has aroused jealousies among the other wives."
    "Which ones? Or should I say, which one?"
    Roy's studied impassiveness admitted her accusation.
    "How have I hurt Marjorie?" she demanded angrily. "Have I taken anything from her she didn't already have?"
    "A school is like an Indian tribe, Natica. People resent the new favorite of the chief. It has nothing to do with the fact that they didn't have a chance of becoming the favorite themselves."
    "But was it also necessary for your wife to get Mrs. Lockwood to hate me? What did she tell her? That the old man's been making passes at me? Or that I've been inviting them?"
    "That was hardly necessary. The idea of the book was quite enough. Something shared by you and the headmaster in which nobody else had a part. Mrs. Lockwood is a very jealous, a very possessive woman."
    "And she knows just when to throw her Lowells in the fat red face of the butcher's boy!"
    She noted his wince. For all his realism, for all his diplomacy, it was cruelly painful for him to see his idol spattered. But she was remorseless now. "Of course, I see why I'm a threat to you all. You're in a conspiracy to keep the old man from wandering off the reservation."
    "What do you mean?"
    "I think you know exactly what I mean. You're all dreading the day when he may blow a fuse that will knock the school into a cocked hat. He was damn close to it when he wanted to interrogate and then fire those boys who had taken a drink on vacation. I'll bet you and Marjorie have weekly conferences with Mrs. Lockwood about how to keep him under control. And when you heard he was writing a book! That had to be the end, didn't it? God knows what the old boy would come up with that might scare away half the parents in New York and Boston!"
    "And what has all that—even assuming there's any truth in it, which there isn't—have to do with you?"
    "I was helping him, wasn't I? I was even the little baggage who had put the idea in his crazy old head, wasn't I? Oh, I had to be disposed of at any cost. Cost? There was no cost. A simple kick in the ass would take care of me."
    She thought she could perceive that he was impressed. But he would never show it.
    "Do I hear the would-be