_ XIV
"More beans, Oliver," says Mrs. Ellicott in a voice like thin syrup, her "generous" voice. The generous voice is used whenever Mrs. Ellicott wants to show herself a person of incredibly scrupulous fairness before that bodiless assemblage of old women in black that constitute the They who Say--and so it is used to Oliver nearly all the time.
"No thank you, Mrs. Ellicott." Oliver manages to look at her politely enough as he speaks but then his eyes go straight back to Nancy and stay there as if they wished to be considered permanent attachments. All Oliver has been able to realize for the last two hours is the mere declarative fact that she is
there.
"Nancy!"
"No, thanks, mother."
And Nancy in her turn looks once swiftly at her mother, sitting there at the end of the table like a faded grey sparrow whose feathers make it uncomfortable. It isn't feathers, though, really--its only Oliver. Why can't mother get reconciled to Oliver--why
can't she--and if she can't, why doesn't she come out and say so instead of trying to be generous to Oliver when she doesn't want to while he's there and then saying mean things when he's away because she can't help it?
"Stanley?"
"Why, no, my dear--no--yes, a few, perhaps--I might reconsider--only a few, my dear,"--his voice does not do anything as definite as cease--it merely becomes ineffectual as Mrs. Ellicott heaps his plate. He then looks at the beans as if he hadn't the slightest idea where they came from but supposes as long as they are there they must be got away with somehow, and starts putting them into his mouth as mechanically as if they were pennies and he a slot-machine.
It is hot in the Ellicotts' dining-room--the butter was only brought in a little while ago, but already it is yellow mush. There are little drops on the backs of Mr. Ellicott's hands. Oliver wants to help Nancy take away the dishes and bring in the fruit--they have started to make a game out of it already when Mrs. Ellicott's voice enforces order.
"No, Oliver. No, please. Please sit still. It is so seldom we have a
guest that Nancy and I are apt to forget our
manners--"
Oliver looks to Nancy for guidance, receives it and subsides into his chair. That's just the trouble, he thinks rather peevishly--if only Mrs. Ellicott would stop acting as if he were a guest--and not exactly a guest by choice at that but one who must be the more scrupulously entertained in public, the less he is liked in private.
The fruit. Mrs. Ellicott apologizing for it--her voice implies that she is quite sure Oliver doesn't think it good enough for him but that he ought to feel himself very lucky indeed that it isn't his deserts instead. Mr. Ellicott absent-mindedly squirting orange juice up his sleeve. Oliver and Nancy looking at each other.
"Are you the same?" say both kinds of eyes, intent, absorbed with the wish that has been starved small through the last three months, but now grows again like a smoke-tree out of a magicked jar, "Really the same and really loving me and really glad to be here?" But they can get no proper sort of answer now--there are too many other Ellicotts around, especially Mrs. Ellicott.
Dinner is over with coffee and cigarettes that Mrs. Ellicott has bought for Oliver because no one shall ever say she failed in the smallest punctilio of hospitality, though she offers them to him with a gesture like that of a missionary returning his baked-mud idol to a Bushman too far gone in sin to reclaim. Mr. Ellicott smoked cigarettes before his marriage. For twenty years now he has been a contributing member of the Anti-Tobacco League.
And now all that Oliver knows is that unless he can talk to Nancy soon and alone, he will start being very rude. It is not that he wants to be rude--especially to Nancy's family--but the impulse to get everyone but Nancy away by any means from sarcasm to homicidal mania is as reasonless and strong as the wish to be born. After all he and Nancy have not seen each other wakingly for three months--and there is still her "grand news" to tell, the grandness of which has seemed to grow more and more dubious the longer she looked at Oliver. Now is the time for Mr. and Mrs. Ellicott to disappear as casually and completely as clouds over the edge of the sky and first of all, not to mention the fact that they are going. But Mrs. Ellicott has far too much tact ever to be understanding.
She puts Mr. Ellicott's hat on for him and takes his arm as firmly as if she were police, and he accepts the grasp with the meekness of an old offender who is not quite sure what particular crime he is being arrested for this time but has an uncomfortable knowledge that it may be any one of a dozen.
"Now we old people are going to leave you, children alone for a little while" she announces, fair to the last, her voice sweeter than ever. "We know you have such a great many important
affairs to talk over--particularly the
splendid offer that has just come to Nancy--my little girl hasn't told you about it yet, has she, Oliver?'
"No, Mrs. Ellicott."
"Well, her father and myself consider it quite
remarkable and we have been
urging--very
strongly--her acceptance, though of course" this with a glace smile, "we realize that we are only her
parents. And, as Nancy knows, it has always been our dearest wish to have her decide matters affecting her happiness entirely
herself. But I feel sure that when both of you have talked it
well over, we can trust you both to come to a most
reasonable decision." She breathes heavily and moves with her appurtenance to the door, secure as an ostrich in the belief that Oliver thinks her impartial, even affectionate. Her conscientiousness gives her a good deal of applause for leaving the two young people so soon when they have all one evening and another morning to be together--but subconsciously she knows that she has done her best by her recent little speech to make this talking-it-over a walk through a field full of small pestilent burrs, for both Oliver and Nancy. They say
au revoir very politely--all four--the door shuts on Mr. Ellicott's meek back.
Mrs. Ellicott is not very happy, going downstairs. She knows what has undoubtedly happened the moment the door was shut--and a little twinge of something very like the taste of sour grapes goes through her as she thinks of those two young people so reprehensibly glad at being even for the moment in each other's arms. _