Aunt Jo: As to what we talked about this afternoon: If that intolerable bore calls, as he will probably do, and begins his presumptuous whining, please speak to him frankly. Tell him I never loved him, that I never at any time claimed to love him and that his persistence is revolting to me. Say that I am old enough to know my own mind and that my greatest wish is never to see him again in this world.
Juan stood there aghast. His universe was suddenly about him. Noel did not care, she had never cared. It was all a preposterous joke on him, played by those to whom the business of life had been such jokes from the beginning. He realized now that fundamentally they were all akin—Cousin Cora, Noel, her father, this cold, lovely woman here—affirming the prerogative of the rich to marry always within their caste, to erect artificial barriers and standards against those who could presume upon a summer’s philandering. The scales fell from his eyes and he saw his year and a half of struggle and effort not as progress towards a goal but only as a little race he had run by himself, outside, with no one to beat except himself—no one who cared.
Blindly he looked about for his hat, scarcely realizing it was in the hall. Blindly he stepped back when Mrs Poindexter’s hand moved towards him half a foot through the mist and Mrs Poindexter’s voice said softly, “I’m sorry.” Then he was in the hall, the note still clutched in the hand that struggled through the sleeve of his overcoat, the words which he felt he must somehow say choking through his lips.
“I didn’t understand. I regret very much that I’ve bothered you. It wasn’t dear to me how matters stood—between Noel and me——”
His hand was on the door knob.
“I’m sorry, too,” said Mrs Poindexter. “I didn’t realize from what Noel said that what I had to do would be so hard—Mr Templeton.”
“Chandler,” he corrected her dully. “My name’s Chandler.”
She stood dead still; suddenly her face went white.
“What?”
“My name—it’s Chandler.”
Like a flash she threw herself against the half-open door and it bumped shut. Then in a flash she was at the foot of the staircase.
“Noel!” she cried in a high, clear call. “Noel! Noel! Come down, Noel!” Her lovely voice floated up like a bell through the long high central hall. “Noel! Come down! It’s Mr Chandler! It’s Chandler!”
The Adolescent Marriage.
(The Saturday Evening Post, 6 March 1926)
Chauncey Garnett, the architect, once had a miniature city constructed, composed of all the buildings he had ever designed. It proved to be an expensive and somewhat depressing experiment; for the toy did not result in a harmonious whole. Garnett found it depressing to be reminded that he himself had often gone in for monstrosities, and even more depressing to realize that his architectural activities had extended over half a century. In disgust, he distributed the tiny houses to his friends and they ended up as the residences of undiscriminating dolls.
Garnett had never—at least not yet—been called a nice old man; yet he was both old and nice. He gave six hours a day to his offices in Philadelphia or to his branch in New York, and during the remaining time demanded only a proper peace in which to brood quietly over his crowded and colorful past. In several years no one had demanded a favor that could not be granted with pen and check book, and it seemed that he had reached an age safe from the intrusion of other people’s affairs. This calm, however, was premature, and it was violently shattered one afternoon in the summer of 1925 by the shrill clamor of a telephone bell.
George Wharton was speaking. Could Chauncey come to his house at once on a matter of the greatest importance?
On the way to Chestnut Hill, Garnett dozed against the gray duvetyn cushions of his limousine, his sixty-eight-year-old body warmed by the June sunshine, his sixty-eight-year-old mind blank save for some vivid, unsubstantial memory of a green branch overhanging green water. Reaching his friend’s house, he awoke placidly and without a start. George Wharton, he thought, was probably troubled by some unexpected surplus of money. He would want Garnett to plan one of these modern churches, perhaps. He was of a younger generation than Garnett—a modern man.
Wharton and his wife were waiting in the gilt-and-morocco intimacy of the library.
“I couldn’t come to your office,” said Wharton immediately. “In a minute you’ll understand why.”
Garnett noticed that his friend’s hands were slightly trembling.
“It’s about Lucy,” Wharton added.
It was a moment before Garnett placed Lucy as their daughter.
“What’s happened to Lucy?”
“Lucy’s married. She ran up to Connecticut about a month ago and got married.” A moment’s silence. “Lucy’s only sixteen,” continued Wharton. “The boy’s twenty.”
“That’s very young,” said Garnett considerately; “but then my grandmother married at sixteen and no one thought much about it. Some girls develop much quicker than others.”
“We know all that, Chauncey.” Wharton waved it aside impatiently. “The point is, these young marriages don’t work nowadays. They’re not normal. They end in a mess.”
Again Garnett hesitated.
“Aren’t you a little premature in looking ahead for trouble? Why don’t you give Lucy a chance? Why not wait and see if it’s going to turn out a mess?”
“It’s a mess already,” cried Wharton passionately. “And Lucy’s life’s a mess. The one thing her mother and I cared about—her happiness—that’s a mess, and we don’t know what to do—what to do.”
His voice trembled and he turned away to the window—came back again impulsively.
“Look at us, Chauncey. Do we look like the kind of parents who would drive a child into a thing like this? She and her mother have been like sisters—just like sisters. She and I used to go on parties together—football games and all that sort of thing—ever since she was a little kid. She’s all we’ve got, and we always said we’d try to steer a middle course with her—give her enough liberty for her self-respect and yet keep an eye on where she went and who she went with, at least till she was eighteen. Why, Chauncey, if you’d told me six weeks ago that this thing could happen——” He shook his head helplessly. Then he continued in a quieter voice. “When she came and told us what she’d done it just about broke our hearts, but we tried to make the best of it. Do you know how long the marriage—if you can call it that—lasted? Three weeks. It lasted three weeks. She came home with a big bruise on her shoulder where he’d hit her.”
“Oh, dear!” said Mrs. Wharton in a low tone. “Please——”
“We talked it over,” continued her husband grimly, “and she decided to go back to this—this young”—again he bowed his head before the insufficiency of expletives—“and try to make a go of it. But last night she came home again, and now she says it’s definitely over.”
Garnett